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Why Protesters In Cairo Use Laser Pointers
New submitter Ahmed Shaban writes "Why do protesters in Cairo use laser pointers? At the beginning, they were used to light up snipers on rooftops. Later, it just became fashionable to use them, and such things spread very fast among the youth of Cairo, who can find the high power laser pointers for sale on the sidewalks. The article contains amazing photos of a chopper lit up by green laser pointers."
Why does the lasers in laser war games (laser tag) show in the air but with laser pointers they just show where they hit a hard object? Are they different kinds of lasers?
stupid people do stupid things like live in Egypt and blind pilots of vehicles carrying a ton of fuel over their heads
In greece they are also used to confuse/temporary blid attacking riot police
With the Egyptian military completely on board with the protesters this time around, I guess the laser pointers dont have much actual purpose anymore.
Its actually quite remarkable what is happening there. More people were protesting than had voted for the president because the president decided that their constitution didnt apply to him, so the military takes down the president in response but remarkably doesnt assume power.
How many countries actually have a military that would do this sort of thing? I'm fairly certain that mine, with a military that runs an agency well known now for violating the constitution, would not.
"His name was James Damore."
aren't weapons that blind people banned by the Geneva Convention?
Anyone want to invest in a cataract treatment center in Cairo, they're going to need it in a few years...
Simple as that...
I know the 'copters are being illuminated by hand-held laser pointers but the photographs do look like those produced by Michael Yon http://www.michaelyon-online.com/the-kopp-etchells-effect.htm showing the Kopp-Etchells Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_rotor.
Buy your lasers now, because this behavior will catch on in the states and soon lasers will be illegal.
With the current batch of losers raping this country I wouldn't be surprised if your pointer gets reclassified as an "assault weapon".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It is not working because they did not actually have democracy there, contrary to what the media (which likes to suck presidential wang) tells you.
...are the moronic A/Cs on /. who seem happy to denigrate the Egyptian people for celebrating the peaceful overthrow of a useless leader.
The fact that the army has removed these incompetants and are immediately handing power back to the people is un-precedented and incredible. The Egyptian people and army could teach some other nations a thing or two, I think, not to mention some of the ignorant bigots who plague /.
Smivs on the intertubes!
The military is on their side! It makes no sense for them to do this. Why would you intentionally piss off pilots, possibly temporarily blinding them, in the worst case even causing an accident, when they are on the same side you are?
Now get a stack of 10,000 of those little laser pointers all hooked to one power source...
Now you have a weapon. Pretty good one too.
*warning, do not look into laser with remaining eye*
Technically they did have democracy and got what they voted for, but what they didn't have were safeguards to ensure that a president couldn't just declare himself dictator for life after being elected. And so that's what he tried to do as early as possible. They need to adjust their system, institute checks and balances, constitutional changes requiring national referendums etc.
Oh wait, it didn't crash! With hundreds of pointer directed at it, it didn't crash. I'm wondering, have there been any aircraft crashes attributed to pilot blindness caused by laser pointers reported anywhere in the world? It seems to me that the prohibition has more to do with law enforcement and the military not wanting people identifying where drones are flying overhead since the actual risk to pilots seems to be non-existent.
because they are idiots
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
My understanding is that they didn't really have much of a choice in who to vote for. It was between a known bad guy and a probably bad guy, so they went with the latter due to lack of choices to begin with. Is it really a free and democratic election if you don't have choices?
Seems the same in US too..
Sooo
This is just more US Hegemonic "agression"?
Didn't the Egyptians have a roll? or is this more infintalizing other contries/populations in favor of demionizing the US.
Take responsibility, stop trying to blame outside influence for everything. Morsi was a homegrown problem and the US didn't install him, Egyptians did.
the US worked with Sadat, Mubarak, Morsi, and it will likely work with the next in line and the one after that.
we didn't force Mubarak to oppress people and run sham elections, we didn't force Morsi to try to assume total control, and we wont be forcing the next gut to do whatever it is he does to cause some future grievence.
the US has plenty of dirt on it's hands but little of it is Egyptian dirt.
You do know that in just a couple of days there are over 30 dead already? Hardly peaceful. Certainly not democratic in any sense.
#0 dead? For what amounts to a revolution in the Middle East.
30 dead.
Hardly "Democratic"? They -the Egyptian people without any outside help (No America World Police fucking things up!) just peacefully - without shooting - overthrew someone who wanted to be a dictator. The military helped - by the way - without shooting.
Do yo remember Libya by any chance?
The Egyptian people are going to do more for Middle Eastern Democracy and freedom with their laser pointers than the US military EVER did with their high tech weapons.
I really hope Obama and our idiot Congress does everything they can to support the Egyptian people.
Of idiots blinding aircraft pilots...
The pilot should have bailed out and let the damned thing crash into the crowd.
If it were so easy, many South American countries would have become as prosperous and democratic as the US since their constitutions were basically copies of the US Constitution. Yet, somehow, it didn't really work.
You can see the same in many former British colonies. If you read their Constitution, you'll see that they're not much different from what you find in any modern democracy. Bill of rights, checks and balances, constitutional protections for both negative and positive rights. They also inherited the common law tradition and much of their legislation is copy-pasted from UK legislation circa 1960. It's so similar in theory that UK-trained lawyers can usually practice with minimum to nil extra training, as most of the legal education is done from UK textbooks and case books anyway.
Yet, in practice, it's quite different. Sure, you have the same theoretical protections, but they do little good when everyone is free to ignore them. It's nice to tell the courts that they have to be independent and fair, but how do you guarantee that?
"They need to adjust their system, institute checks and balances", etc. is all wishful thinking. It's about as useful as telling a developing country that all they need to do is grow. It's true but pretty useless as far as advice goes. The tricky part is knowing how to move from the equilibrium where the law is widely ignored, where formal checks and balances don't work, where the constitution is not worth the paper it's written on, to a better equilibrium. As far as I can tell, no-one has yet found a magic recipe for that because things are usually the way they are for a reason. It's not like bad institutions just spring up at random: they are usually people who have an interest in maintaining the status quo, and we were able to see times and times again that removing whoever happens to be in power doesn't do much to solve the structural problems and can even lead to worse outcomes (Iraq? Libya?).
If an aircraft is on auto-pilot, there's negligible risk.
If an aircraft is currently under human control while cruising, there's a slight risk.
If an aircraft is under human control while taking off, landing or performing any sort of maneuver, there's a reasonably significant risk.
Have you ever had someone shine a bright flashlight in your face? It's a lot like that. It causes you to jerk away, confuses you, and partially blinds you for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. Any of those can be deadly given that the person with the laser probably doesn't know if the aircraft is on autopilot or is preparing to land.
It's one of those laws where, sure, 98% of the time nothing bad will happen if you do it. But that last little bit of a time, something *really* bad could happen. So it's a felony.
Not too smart are you.
The article states the lasers were originally used to illuminate/search for snipers. I wonder if IR lasers deployed in this manner would negate the advantages offered by IR night vision devices? Or if several laser diodes of different frequencies integrated into a single unit and and aligned would offer any value in this regard. Or does the design of the NVD's anticipate this happening and have countermeasures?
bigger picture:
http://mashable.com/2013/07/01/egypt-protestors-laser-pointers/
Why were there only two candidates? Couldn't they have used a larger piece of paper with room for 4 names?
As for the laser pointers, the video on the article was pretty cool. Hope the pilots don't have any problems flying like that.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
They need to adjust their system, institute checks and balances, constitutional changes requiring national referendums etc.
That isn't a good solution. The checks and balances only prevents the dickhead from making himself a dictator but you still have him as a leader, what you really want to do is have a system where dickheads don't want to be in a leading position.
One way is to kill off anyone trying to become a dictator until you get someone in charge who tries to actually make things better for everyone.
No, no.
We were perfectly free to ignore Crazed Religious Warmonger and Incompetent Hypocritical Dronemonger last time around and vote for some random non-entity instead, hoping against the very laws of the universe that somehow, without ungodly amounts of money and the entrenched PR machines surrounding our two parties, that a majority of our fellow Americans would do the same.
It's all fun and games, 'til someone loses an eye.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
return to base, return to base, your fight'n a laser war”
Egyptians revere cats.
So obviously they are fascinated with laser pointers as well.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You'd likely find an "Emergency Powers" clause which allow the President (or whatever he's called) to rule by decree. It only takes one clause like that to make a complete mockery of the rest of the constitution.
Is that not the textbook definition of a coup d'etat?
Just because a government is democratically elected doesn't mean it's a democracy. History is full of democratically elected governments that then turn into totalitarian regimes.
If Obama woke up tomorrow and ordered that all Tea Party members be arrested, I would expect our military to essentially remove him from office - in the immediate case by ignoring him, and in the longer case by Congress impeaching him and removing him from office - which would still require the cooperation of the military (they'd have to decide to listen to Congress and not the President.)
In Egypt, there isn't really a constitutional mechanism to get rid of a leader who, while democratically elected, isn't fulfilling his responsibilities as a democratic leader, so the best thing they have is the Army takes care of it.
So while this may technically be a coup in that the elected leader is being removed from office through a non-elective means, it's not necessarily undemocratic, if you believe the elected leader is abusing the freedoms of the people and the coup is to create the opportunity for someone who does respect the rights of the people to be elected.
paintball
If the military don't behave now that they're in power again,
the Egyptians will get
http://www.wickedlasers.com/arctic .. and do actual damage ..
-f
I saw them being used at a rally in Rio the day before as well.
A week ago in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt I have not seen a single plane preparing for landing or just taking off that was not hit by one or (usually) more laser pointers. Basically anything that flies or moves or might be remotely interesting is a target. If you are on a boat at the end of the day/early evening, better wear some serious eye protection as you/your boat will be a target. If a group of women gets into a taxi and are spotted they are covered in green laser light. They are sold everywhere, models with way too much power are more rule than exception and they are very popular both with Egyptians and the bottom-feeder all-inclusive crowd which in Sharm is mostly Russian, Polish and Italian.
Night vision goggles are extremely sensitive to light, If the laser hits the goggles directly, the shooter might be blinded for quite some time.
Alternatively, a democratically elected leader with a near impossible task was ousted after only a year (Most people consider an entire term of a US president not enough for lasting change) by a minority who shouted louder than everyone else. The army has now moved in to arrest people simply for being members of a legitimate political party that had done nothing illegal.
You think this is unprecedented? Are you joking? The army moving in to oust an unpopular democratically elected head of state? Yeah, that's never happened before! I'm sure it wouldn't have had dire consequences for that country either!
As it stands, what's happening in Egypt will at best lead to a rise in extremism ("we did things the right way and look what happened?") at worse, full on civil war.
So, like choosing between Lieberals and Cons in Canada?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Yeah, almost like they are pointing their laser pointers at the belly of the aircraft and not directly into the windshield at the pilot's face.
Yet these helicopters that were targeted at lenght by a few dozen to a few hundred laser pointers continually for several hours did not drop from the sky. The pilots were not blinded, they returned safely to their landing spot. Only thing that happened is that the surveillance camera's where less effective.
I'm thinking laser pointers aren't such a problem after all.
Only if you ignore the primaries. Which, of course, nearly everyone does.
Kind of like how here on slashdot, how everyone ignores slashdot's polite requests to participate in firehose (IE decide which stories get posted and which ones don't) and then bitches and whines about editors posting bad stories.
You would think that the lasers would make it easier to decide and execute a target from a good distance. All you would need is a little reflective material on your scope to protect your targeting eye.
Did you mean the primaries that also use first past the post voting?
It is turtles all the way down.
America has problems with its 'democracy', quite horrifying - especially as it claims to be the leader of the 'free' world!
Both China & America spy extensively on their own citizens and practice censorship, although the American forms are normally more subtle - neither is 'free' & 'democratic'. Possible the Americans are more hypocritical?
Morsi tried to "declare himself dictator for life after being elected."
Sorry, but citation needed. I've been Googling for this and can't find him guilty of anything above rank incompetence.
If anybody can show me what he did that was so bad other than being a crap leader or vague accusations of being devious and manipulative (of course he is! He's a frikkin' politician!) I'd love to see it.
The most factual account I can find is here where author Esam Al-Amin says:
"The people in Egypt went to the polls at least six times: to vote for a referendum to chart the political way forward (March 2011), to vote for the lower and upper house of parliament (November 2011-January 2012), to elect a civilian president over two rounds (May-June 2012), and to ratify the new constitution (December 2012). Each time the electorate voted for the choice of the Islamist parties to the frustration of the secular and liberal opposition.
"To the discontent of the Islamists, all their gains at the polls were reversed by either the Mubarak-appointed Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) or the military."
I'm really trying not to be a troll but people keep saying that Morsi wanted to become a dictator but I can't find any stories of him doing anything other than breaking election promises. In my country, that's considered pretty normal and no cause for a coup.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
I don't see anything inherently wrong with first past the post voting. There are disadvantages, sure, but there are also disadvantages to any alternative, such as second choices counting as half votes or something like that. And the options are really limited since a primary must be winner take all: you can't have a candidate as, say 60% Romney and 30% Ron Paul.
I think it would be worth considering switching to a parliamentary system, but changing the constitution to allow for it seems far less likely than voters simply outgrowing stupid partisan politics.
If the pilots were wearing night-vision goggles the combination of the goggles having peak sensitivity in the red or near IR and the automatic gain circuits, green or blue lasers would be reduced to minor annoyance rahter than a hazzard.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It's one of those laws where, sure, 98% of the time nothing bad will happen if you do it. But that last little bit of a time, something *really* bad could happen. So it's a felony.
Frankly, in the list of crazy things in the US that are considered felonies I think this is one that should stay on the list. Aiming a laser at a plane puts hundreds of peoples lives at risk. It is criminal negligence at the very least, and attempted murder at worst.
IMO crimes should be judged on intent, not results (yes, I realize this isn't how it is usually done). Somebody who attempts to kill somebody but fails is a FAR greater danger to society than somebody who does something that most would consider perfectly safe and yet accidentally kills somebody. Negligence is obviously a lesser crime than malice, but it should still be punished, especially when it could cause loss of life.
Got any studies, statistics to back up your assertions? Didn't think so.
What, we can't pass judgement on whether it is a good idea to let kids play with nuclear warheads until a statistically significant number of cities have been vaporized?
Just staring at a bright light causes loss of night vision which makes flying more hazardous (there aren't exactly street lights in the sky). A laser pointer can actually cause permanent vision damage. Firing lasers at eyes is even a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
You don't remember back in November, when Morsi granted himself unlimited legislative power with no oversight?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Egyptian_protests
Where I live, $1000 will buy you a 1000mW (1 watt) green hand held laser from wicked lasers(tm). I suspect that they might be getting their lasers from another source, but they seem to be powerful, green, and widely available. I also saw some scanning lasers being used to print messages on the sides of apartment buildings in the square.
People bring up the Lincoln thing all the time (usually it's some bitter old southern racist who still hates Republicans for their "war of aggression" against his slave-owning grandpappy and who is angry the rest of the Democrats have moved-on...) but Lincoln was in an utterly unique situation (for the U.S.) which was that half the country, including parts of the military, had broken-off to form their own country over their demand that they had the right to own, and treat like cattle, another chunk of the population. At that moment in time, with even many families split by the war and brothers fighting against brothers, Lincoln was in a place never contemplated by the Constitution. if Half of America was currently Muslim-Brotherhood-aligned, blowing-up buildings and bridges, openly fighting the US military in cities around the country with hundreds of thousands of dead people and the US Military actually losing some of the battles, not many sane people would criticize a President for taking Lincoln-style actions. The criticisms of Bush43 and Obama is that they have undertaken many actions more severe than Lincoln did but without facing a threat anywhere near what Lincoln faced.
Lincoln was a good man, and his cause was entirely just. The founders of the nation tolerated slavery in the south as part of forming the union to fight for independence from King George... but they wrote at the time that they expected slavery to come to a natural end on its own. By 1860, however, it was quite clear that the Democrats were never going to give-up on owning black people and indeed they were demanding that new states added to the union be slave states. When Lincoln was elected, running as an opponent to slavery, the Democrats went crazy and split the nation over the fear he would free their slaves. They were dirtbags who deserved to lose the war. I hate sugar-coating. I'm sure some Democrat, unable to handle the truth, will flag this as a troll post... but it is a provable, well-documented FACT that no Republican ever owned a slave and nearly every slave owner was a Democrat. Indeed, after the war, it was Democrats who formed the KKK and one of the groups the KKK targeted for violence was Republicans (these too are documented FACTS.... as is this: Many Democrats currently sitting in the US Senate have knowingly cast at least one vote to have as their party Senate leader an actual Klan member (the Late Dem. Sen. Robert Byrd)).
Are you REALLY so dense that you think the US supports/prefers all the elected leaders of all the democratic countries? REALLY? In the US, our two main political parties cannot even agree on who is leading the US! Our two parties have entirely different views on who should lead other countries too. Republicans in the US LOVED Maggie Thatcher but many Democrats despised her. Republicans tend to despise Danny Ortega in Nicaragua, but many Democrats have loved the guy for decades. The U.S. State Department has a mind of its own (one with no wisdom and a VERY low IQ) and thinks it should run the world... but those folks are generally incompetent
I can understand (a little) why you might think what you think if you are outside the US and only getting news from your nation's perspective... many countries find local benefit from painting the US as some sort of geopolitical evil wizard (which can be blamed for all bad things) and the US State Department adds fuel to that propaganda by briefing every American President to be "diplomatic" in speeches and praise every leader as "a good friend" etc (which makes the nation look extremely two-faced). Your conspiracy theory, however, requires a level of competence that is simply lacking.... our state department often likes stability in various places (stupidly not facing the fact that that stability is provided by a distasteful dictator) while championing "democracy" then after the dictator is replaced and the stability is gone, they panic and get confused. Best advice for any nation wanting to replace a tyrant and have no trouble with the US State department is: achieve stability QUICKLY... then they'll not even notice you...just like they did not notice you while a dictator had you under his boot.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/
"You don't remember back in November, when Morsi granted himself unlimited legislative power with no oversight?"
Yes, I do and I also remember (from the link you yourself posted) that "On 9 December, Confusion and disarray pervaded the ranks of Egypt's opposition after Morsi rescinded his November 22 constitutional declaration a day earlier."
So, he revoked the powers he had granted himself less than three weeks later. As I understand it, he gave himself these powers to protect the writing of the constitution that was later put to the people in a referendum. It was the opposition who were against letting the people decide on the constitution:
"Opposition leaders also called for more protests after Morsi refused to cancel the constitutional referendum in the wake of the declaration's annulment." (from your article).
The people from whom he was protecting the constitution were the unelected judges who were appointed during the reign of the previous dictator, Mubarak.
I'm not saying Morsi is a saint (he isn't). But the American media is making him out to be a bogey man because he is affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood (who happen to be the party who won power in what is regarded as a free and fair election). And nobody in the American media is calling BS on the Obama administration for refusing to recognise this as a military coup. If they call it a military coup, by law they can no longer pay the people who overthrew Morsi $1.3 billion a year. Don't you find that just a little odd?
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
Well, I think that may be correct, but that may also be a biased view. One provision in the constitution bases the law on Islamist views. Considering he used his power to prevent the constitution from being altered, and he's a part of a strong Islamist group, many in the opposition were kept from attempting to prevent the Egyptian government from being inherently based in Islamist views. His group also added more to the constitution, mentioning Sharia law, during that time period.
What's so surprising about an Islamic country having an Islamic constitution? Most Christian countries have Christian principles enshrined in their laws too. The monarch of the UK for instance is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
"Considering he used his power to prevent the constitution from being altered..."
If the people didn't like the constitution as Morsi's team wrote it, they had the chance to reject it in the referendum of December 2012. They didn't. They voted for it by a majority of 64%.
"...and he's a part of a strong Islamist group"
You mean the coalition that won a fair election?
Obviously, I've not read all the former Egyptian Constitution but it does have this proviso in it:
"Citizens are equal before the law and are equal in general rights and duties without discrimination between them based on gender, origin, language, religion, belief, opinion, social status or disability."
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Egypt
That doesn't sound that terrifying to me. Now, compare that to Egypt's neighbour, Saudi Arabia, where women are not even allowed to drive and I, as a non-Muslim, do not have the same rights in court as a Muslim. Yet, I don't see us supporting a coup there...
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
He threatened the militarys supply of American cash ($1.3bn per year) by moving closer to Iran. Go check out what Iran is saying via their foreign minister. America must see a return on its investment in terms of regional control, or it will cut the supply off.
The various monarchies around the region, on the other hand, hate the whole Ba'athist ideology. Think of it this way - what happens to kings when republics are established by popular overthrow? *chop chop*
The Islamists were also filling many roles in Egypt with party loyalists. This was happening, allegedly, down to the level of head teachers in schools being replaced. They were setting up ownership for the long haul.
Now, none of this is to say that they should have been thrown out. But really, even if you are in the right by virtue of having been elected fair and square, you can't mess with the people who have the guns. Also, the Egyptian military is not run in the same way as a Western military. They are very rich and powerful in their own right, in terms of ownership of land and assets. Not necessarily as individuals, but as a group.
The monarch of the UK also has almost no power in the government besides the natural sway from being connected. Just the ability to veto legislation, AFAIK, a power that hasn't been used in quite a while.
You can always say that religion isn't a factor, then say that religion is the basis for your laws. That doesn't mean that your laws are going to be nondiscriminatory by nature. On the contrary, by claiming the Quran as a basis for the laws of your country, you're inherently going to bias them towards Muslims.
In fact, the guarantee given by the Egyptian constitution is only applicable to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Here's a direct translation: link. Specifically, see article 43, where it states:
The state guarantees the right to practice one’s religious rites and establish places of worship for the heavenly religions. Details are specified by law.
Those "heavenly religions" are only the 3 Abrahamic religions, and nothing more, as those are the religions that the Quran, unsurprisingly, describes as the heavenly religions. In addition, it describes the details as being set in law, which means they're completely subject to change at any time, not an absolute right as we would consider it.
As for the issue of the legitimacy of the constitution itself, the High Constitutional Court ruled it was illegitimate before the coup, but after this wave of demonstrations was already taking place. However, Morsi's move to hold unlimited authority over the law was in response to the possibility of the courts making such a ruling and preventing the constitution from being finalized in the first place. The groups that did not like the constitution and filed those lawsuits? Largely the non-Islamist sects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituent_Assembly_of_Egypt
I don't believe 33% is a reasonable number to have voted on it, either - if you're able to assemble the largest protests in recorded history at over 16% of the population, and a whopping 26% signed a petition for Morsi to resign, you'd think more than 1/3rd of the population would show up to vote on the constitution. Maybe was a type of protest in not voting, maybe it was coerced voting/nonvoting, maybe it was an unusually high turnout from the Islamist supporters. Honestly, who really knows without being there (because I sure as hell wasn't), but the actual number seems unrealistically low given the unusually high level of involvement of Egyptians in their government right now. I'd expect it to be higher than average US presidential election turnout given the situation.
What I'm saying is that there's a lot at play on both sides, and it seems like a substantial number of people were upset with what was being drafted. Also, this isn't even touching on his group's total ineptitude at actual governance, and likely-to-exist corrupt practices, just the umbrella issue of the constitution.
Why not? Have the Romney-Paul Corporation. Corporations are people too, so they should be able to run for office.
"The monarch of the UK also has almost no power in the government ... Just the ability to veto legislation..."
Am I missing something? That's a huge amount of power. You don't have to use the power. The fact that you have the power will stop people putting forward legislation that they know you will veto.
(It's interesting to note that officially the UK's form of government is not a democracy but a "unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy". The difference is important to lawyers if not citizens.)
"[B]y claiming the Quran as a basis for the laws of your country, you're inherently going to bias them towards Muslims."
That would be directly contrary to the Constitution (as quoted in my previous post).
Also, I don't see non-Christians being discriminated against in Western countries whose constitutions are clearly based on Christian values.
Good point about the "the 3 Abrahamic religions" being covered in the Constitution, though.
"In addition, it describes the details as being set in law, which means they're completely subject to change at any time, not an absolute right as we would consider it."
How do you make something an absolute right? You can't. Putting it in the Constitution (which declares your legal modus operandus) is the best way but even that is subject to change. The American constitution has had 27 amendments, most recently in 1992.
"As for the issue of the legitimacy of the constitution itself, the High Constitutional Court ruled it was illegitimate..."
So, unelected judges mostly appointed during a dictator's 30 year reign trump the will of the people?
"I don't believe 33% is a reasonable number to have voted on it..."
With respect, it doesn't matter what you think. The majority of people who voted were in favour of it. That's all that counts in a democracy.
If you claim there was systematic coercion, then please present some evidence and an explanation why nobody thought this was worth reporting. Otherwise, this is speculation and not relevant to the discussion.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
After Morsi temporarily granted himself unlimited powers to "protect" the nation in late November 2012,[7][8] and the power to legislate without judicial oversight or review of his acts, hundreds of thousands of protesters began demonstrating against him in the 2012 Egyptian protests.[9][10] On 8 December 2012, Morsi annulled his decree which had expanded his presidential authority and removed judicial review of his decrees, an Islamist official said, but added that the effects of that declaration would stand.[11] George Isaac of the Constitution Party said that Morsi’s declaration did not offer anything new, the National Salvation Front rejected it as an attempt to save face, and the 6 April Movement and Gamal Fahmi of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate said the new declaration failed to address the "fundamental" problem of the nature of the assembly that was tasked with drafting the constitution.[11]
Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Morsi and the citations are there to back things up.
It seems like most people on both sides of the aisle are pretty disgusted with the options we're being offered. So how about for the next presidential election cycle we work to mobilize the majority of the population that doesn't vote at all. Ideally get them to vote for only third party candidates, at least as the default for every office they don't have strong feelings about the candidates for. Get enough disillusioned votes circulating and third party candidates will have a real chance. Sure, the immediate results would probably be a congress full of a bunch of nut-jobs and extremists who can't cooperate enough to get anything done, but is that really worse than a bunch of jaded career politicians beholden to unelected powers that want to screw us all over?
And once we prove it's possible we can at least realistically hope to get some decent un-beholden candidates in the next election cycle. If nothing else I'm betting several third parties would cross the threshold to qualify for federal campaign funds, and congress would be sufficiently dysfunctional to keep the goal-post from being moved.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Actually, the crowd was helping. They were monitoring radio transmissions and learned the helicopter was losing power and could crash (perhaps into the crowd itself). The leaders in the crowd organized all the laser pointers and had them all point (simultaneously, mind you) at the bottom of the helicopter. The additional lift generated by all those little green photons pushing the helicopter up provided just the help needed to enable the pilot to safely recover the helicopter to the ground a few blocks away from the town square.
These are critical problems with first past the post voting that many other simple systems lack:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling's_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law
I have every expectation that short of violent revolution, the situation will not change and I act accordingly. We get the government we deserve.
So how would you classify Egypt now, since it isn't a revolution of a coup?
A coulution, or a revoup?