This post is about someone well known to European-Luxor residents and the moral backbone – or something akin to a back-side – of Egypt. Beware of who your heroes are.
Farag has always told lies and is a charged, if not convicted, fraudster but he tells lies to students. The purpose of those lies is to convince all of the great, heroic history of his Armed Forces.
He spent decades as a propagandist, then chief military propagandist so I suppose he’s good at that – he convinced a few Luxor residents who used to drivel on about him on this site but have gone all silent in the last few years as their businesses have collapsed following his exit.
In this case he’s giving this rot to up market students in Heliopolis although the photo has him obese and possibly senile – or in the prime of life for a high earning general running the arts and at least one major gas/oil company – pity he has no experience, training or skills for either which might explain why everything is badly run and a mess.
His theme – October 6 was a victory. What rot I’d love to see his evidence not that he has ever needed evidence for anything he did. It was not a victory except if you regard an inconclusive battle in a war Egypt lost as a victory. Egypt gained nothing so that can’t be a victory – except for a country that is desperate for 1 piece of good news in 70 years of continuous military dictatorship. I assume that Farag’s brain is small or he is such a poorly trained General that he does not understand the difference between win and draw. I think we can assume that his military skills are like some of his other skills are zero.
His teaching venue is run by the Arab League – a death sentence – but I think actually run by the Egyptian military. It is a scandal. Unbelievably badly rated in the world – over 2,000 places behind the awful Cairo University. Its so bad that not going there might be a good investment in your educational future. Of course its under military control at the board and teaching level which probably explains why its in its death throes. A bit like His Excellency, General, Professor, Doctor Farag.
http://www.aast.edu/en/colleges/clc-cai ... d=38100084
A large number of military and political leaders come from this abattoir and seem proud of it, it seems to have high status yet is a complete failure except in Egypt.
I think he should stick to fraud – he obviously did it well in at least Luxor and has many opportunities in his new civilian jobs to steal from his own people.
Oh I’d forgotten. As a retired General he was ‘tried’ for civilian fraud and corruption by a military court. Because it’s a secret court we don’t know what happened except he was never convicted. We don’t know the reasons for this either. It seems that ages after retirement you still get the ‘benefits’ of military ‘justice’. I’d love to see the law which makes this legal and how such a law doesn’t conflict with several provisions of the constitution. Where a law conflicts with the constitution the law is invalid. Well that’s the case in countries that believe in rule of law. At the same time he was running PR for SCAF from Cairo after he removed the previous propaganda chief and appointed his friend who then spread lies/intimidated the media and journalists and locked people up to ensure a democracy did not replace their friend Mubarak. is fitting for the value of properties being sold.Bou Nassif, Hicham. “Wedded to Mubarak: The Second Careers And Financial Rewards of Egypt's Military Elite, 1981–2011.” Middle East Journal 67, no. 4 (2013):509-530. doi:10.3751/67.4.11All were kleptocratic generals and none were convicted/jailed. I’m sure there were more military stick fingers.
Lets be clear. Farag was recalled from Luxor as Mubarak fell to run the media to ensure that the military and its parasites stayed in power.
Little noticed Farag was referred, along with former PM Nazif, on corruption to a military tribunal in 2011 over the sale of an army piece of land to businessman Mamdouh Fillip resulting in a loss of E60 million to the state. The land was located in Luxor City. “After hundreds of millions of Egyptian pounds were spent on the project, all of a sudden construction was suspended and all the spent funds went to waste, as the land was sold to a businessman that owned a hotel across the street.” https://muftah.org/business-usual-unfortunately/ The original idea was an Olympic swimming pool. No one went to jail.
There was also the corrupt sale of the public owned island in the Nile/nature reserve.
His time before Luxor running the Opera House is universally agreed to be declining standards, financial ‘irregularities’ and bully boy and incompetent management – a bit like Luxor except Luxor locals forgot to mention it then or now. https://atimetwaly.com/2012/03/22/resto ... -splendor/
An American research paper said:
“The slow decay of artistic values, which infiltrated the opera every year, started affecting all the companies working under its umbrella. During Farag's management, internal quarrels started escalating that eventually led to the removal of El Saeedy.” US Warfare Air College. http://web.isanet.org/Web/Conferences/C ... 70bea8.pdf and . http://eng.majalla.com/2012/03/article5 ... -splendour. He purged staff and used Nazi style approach to what was to be performed. Everyone was frightened of him and standards reduced – or worse. Sound familiar?
He continues in his senility nowadays to write articles on a broad range is issues in the Cairo state-owned media – Sudan, Palestine, economic reform etc. What he actually knows about such matters would seem to be zero but he is always supportive of Sisi which is good for Farag’s career and income.
His ‘behaviour’ was part of a broader military theft under Mubarak. Through preferential access to management positions in the public sector as well as in the bureaucracy, they took advantage of Mubarak’s expanded privatization policies in the twenty-first century to appropriate extra funds by selling public properties below market price in exchange for handsome commissions. Bou Nassif (2013) tracked a number of cases involving major generals Sa’d Khalil (former governor of Matruh), Samir Farag (former governor of Luxor), Sayf al-Din Galal (former governor of Suez), ‘Abd al-Galil al-Fakhran (former governor of Isma‘iliyya), and ‘Abd al-Fadil Shusha (former governor of South Sinai). They earned commissions amounting to millions each, which I’m sure they paid tax on and I’m sure didn’t end up in Switzerland or a UK Crown Dependency.
Farag is delusional and incoherent and did this interview with Masry a long time ago whilst Governor – either evidence of senility or grandiosity.
‘Farag: For example, this area where we have the hotel here, now it is full. Where can we have hotels in the future? So we started to choose another area south of Luxor to be the next hotel area, in el-Tod. Now we are building a new (Nile) cornice area here. If you come in two or three months you will see this new cornice. We will start next month.
Farag: The el-Tod area, this is the new resort area. We are planning for that area to accommodate 20,000 rooms (not done nor even started). That means we are doubling the rooms in Luxor. These are the three main projects in Luxor.
Al-Masry: What is the budget for the 2030 master plan?
Farag: One billion (US) dollars.
Al-Masry: What is the breakdown of the cornice, the marina and the hotels?
Farag: The cornice, we are talking about in Egyptian pounds, it's going to be 300 million for the cornice ($US30 million where did it go). The marina itself, it will cost about three billion dollars (you could build a whole industrial/commercial harbour in Alex for that).
Al-Masry: But you said the whole project is one billion dollars?
Farag: Except the marina because the marina is a mega project and it's going to be done by the private sector, it is not going to be done by the government. We visited Greece (don’t have hundreds of tour boats just harbours for E30 million yachts) two weeks ago with [Minister of Investment] Mahmoud Mohieldin (later appointed to the World Bank, found incompetent or worse, Bank functions stripped from him and now sidelined there. He managed many of the most corrupt public asset sales in the 2000’s and was a friend of Gamal. The PR firm have superbly rewritten his Wkikipage – (full of lies) and we are going to visit Holland and Germany (no relevant yachting/boat harbour experience or projects) for that purpose.
Al-Masry: Can you share the master plan?
Farag: No this is our own master plan. Okay? (if the plan actually existed it was always secret but the use of the taxpayers money on it wasn’t)’ http://today.almasryalyoum.com/article2 ... eID=230798
In 2009 he was still ranting/exaggerating in this case to the premier UAE newspaper – which neither liked nor trusted him, He said this:“The governor says he's building new resorts capable of holding tens of thousand of people outside the city (never done nor started); that Luxor will soon have the biggest youth hostel (5-7 ks south of the city sitting in a dusty desert site 3 ks back from the Nile and with no shops nor transport, got that one but its closed to youth and the general public and partially occupied by well off insiders who also go to 5 star Cairo hotels and glamorous nightclubs) the Middle East; that a forest of jatropha trees, whose seeds contain up to 40 per cent oil (possibly done but who owns it is unclear but I have a hint, only usable in diesel engines, requires a skilled factory to process, large user of water to produce energy, high cost and still at experimental stage in Egypt 9 years later and the refining of the oil done in the UK), is being grown to provide the city with engine oil (rot, it doesn’t provide oil but only a small additive to oil and a larger additive to diesel); that treated wastewater is being used to irrigate 22,000 acres of farmland (not done, and as at 2013 there are only 11,000 feddans irrigated with wastewater for the whole of Egypt. Wastewater use in Egypt is worse than Farag. http://www.swim-sm.eu/files/Best_Practi ... _Reuse.pdf ) ; that investment zones are being opened to bring in new businesses (North of the city a k from the Nile a complete failure supported by taxpayer subsidies). "We are building a new factory just to produce a lot of things for the hotels (what the hell was that)," he says. Farag thinks the city can double the annual number of tourists it currently hosts. In the end, he says, people will appreciate what he's done (they don’t).” https://www.thenational.ae/uae/the-thro ... d-1.529252
Here is a real laugh. An incoherent proposal by a whole swag of Egyptian academics for a Jatropa trial industry. The figures are bizarre and unrealistic/unproven but the best of this fiasco is their budget for the operation – 40% of costs for engineers, 30% for supervisors, 20% for administration and 10% for the labour workers. 2% for maintenance and nothing for depreciation/replacement. Its unbelievable and a 1st year accounting student would be failed for developing it. Its evidence of all that is wrong in Egypt – obsession with status/engineers/managers, no one actually doing work, no planning for the future/risk, nothing spent on technology, training, machinery/capital or science. The place is crackers.
The World Bank/IMF/FAO/UNESCO/ILO/WHO and many others must know its crackers but still deliver truck loads of cash to be wasted by these incompetent fools. https://conference.ifas.ufl.edu/cimr/Pr ... Diwani.pdf 4 x Professor authors, the National Research Canter of Egypt. A related UN study proves, to those who are blind, that Egyptian farmers waste water, drench soils and as a result leech them of nutrients requiring more fertilizers. http://www.swim-sm.eu/files/Best_Practi ... _Reuse.pdf p 30. In this Luxor project using waste water for farming all workers tested positive for Hep A but the author thought they may have been infected before they were employed by the Imperial Ministry. This was a Ministry project so its impeccable and without fault. If they were infected on the farm it proves the Luxor wastewater plant doesn’t work. Which do you think more likely?
Back to human waste. At the moment Farag has control over World Bank projects/grants for Egypt – what do you think will happen? Given his track record its an outrage that the World Bank trusts him with our money. His track record is corruption and incompetence and proves the World Bank cares little for Egypt or our money.
His planning aspirations in the past extended well beyond things he knew nothing about – town planning, opera, theatre and ballet, and archaeology and tourism to agriculture. He also wanted to get rid of sugar and replace it with grapevines in Luxor – and ignore the farmers in the process, the lack of markets, storage of grapes, processing/packaging of grapes, transport to market, refrigeration, skills, machinery to harvest, root stock, aversion of grapes to salt, lack of farmer skills in this area, the years of delay before a first full harvest etc. He is an impulsive, no knowledge idiot like a lot of self-important others. https://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.com ... after.html What horror actually happened I don’t know.
He and Hawass destroyed Qurna (3,500 families Farag says) and ruined the lives of scores, maybe hundreds, and did it with rough speed, unclear objectives, poor planning and callousness. https://dailynewsegypt.com/2006/12/04/h ... -in-luxor/. Hawass justified Qurna it by saying hidden treasures were ‘there’ yet in the 12-14 years since no one has gone looking, including Hawass, and nothing found. As ever he was just wind and lies. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleea ... 71601.html
The Egyptologist quoted in defense of the Qurna ‘cleanup’ is a friend of Hawass and they both went on sex pick-up tours of Philadelphia bars in the old days – as his friend brags of.
The damage done to the people of Qurna was close to evil even if a few may have been none prosecuted, for illegal digs.
On the ‘cleanup’ on the East bank – 2,000 families (another figure) displaced for what is now an eyesore of broken sphinx’s. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-10895138. on a trench-like walkway no one uses overlooked by crumpling 3 story houses and dead trees/bushes. Paid for by us via UNESCO.
At the time and now the water table problem on temples is unfixed – millions of western money spent – and climate change ignored as it always is by brutal autocrats.
A not uninteresting article written about Luxor archaeology describing anecdotes about climate change in Luxor and its impacts on the arch. sites. Do you think the Supreme Antiques/Farag care/cared? https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and- ... -treasures
Of all his unbelievable plans the one most finished is the avenue of the sphinx’s and the following photograph, allegedly form late 2017, showing the great achievements of millions to make Luxor beautiful and archaeological. Note the dead and struggling palm trees, the great efforts to screen the shambolic buildings from the ‘beauty’ of the site and how all the digging/house destruction/money has exposed hundreds of beautiful ancient objects some with cement/rendering ‘repairs’.
The Sphinx Avenue is a great beauty, a tourist attraction and superbly designed and made. Farag’s tens of millions of western money have been well spent on it and worth every penny. I wonder who got the competitive public tender for the work?
Notice the new 1.5-1.8 metre high structures in the left to, presumable, mount sphinx on, in a non-sexual way. They are unbalanced and seemingly higher than similar structures on the left. Mounting at such a height of small objects seems the poor taste we rely on the Supreme Antiques for whom the word ugly is a career advancing comment on their work.
Farag also personally drove the opening of a new Torture Museum in Cairo – opened about 10 years after he said it was about to open and based on no rational analysis of what people/tourists are interested in or what human beings need. http://www.cairoscene.com/ArtsAndCultur ... -June-26th What sane person would see this as a good use of the taxpayers money – as if he ever worried about that. It was his pet project – god protect his house dog/wife/mistress.
Maybe Farag’s very existence is a torture to Egypt.
This completes a small chapter of the Farag story on the damage that one creature can do to humans, farmers, tourism, antiquities and the western taxpayer. Bring on his new octogenarian job of determining what World Bank projects are best for Egypt or the west.
Where he got his doctorate and what it was on I would like to know but this is a Hawass story – a thesis never published, the opposite of what happens with the minimum of 3 years of study that lead to doctorates. Maybe he lied about that.
