Friday, April 22, 2011

Game Over

The day of reckoning awaits
Neither Ahly's corrupt officiating, Ahly's budgets tainted with corrupted funds, Ahly's corrupted media, Ahly's tail-between-the-legs pleas to cancel the league, nor any other human force in Tahrir, Tanta or Tizi Ouzo will stop Zamalek's rightful ascension to victory.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

We're gonna be rich!

My other car is a Cadillac
So based on the latest fanciful figures dreamed up by Egypt’s ever so precise prosecution team, every man, woman and child can expect to receive over 50,000 Egyptian Pounds from stolen funds from just the former president.  And surely there must be at least an equivalent sum from the other rascals being put behind bars to feed the masses lust for raw meat, so it is very reasonable to believe that after all is said and done, your average citizen will be dressed up in silk suits and driving a shiny new Benz.  Add to this the exciting prospect of re-instituting the great successes of public ownership of private assets (we all remember the excellent the quality at Omar Effendi, Stella (aka “One Million Cockroaches Can’t Be Wrong”) and other marquee brands before the evil efficiencies of private ownership took over), and things really are looking splendid. 

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Dear President Obama: Shut the Hell Up

Thanks for Nothing
President Obama and his clan of “experts” middling in the affairs of Egypt is going from bad to worse. The continuous effort to accommodate Islamists generally, and the Muslim Brotherhood specifically, is legitimizing and empowering a movement that is antithetical to a modern Egypt. Now Team Obama is injecting itself even further into the domestic debate by recklessly advising that Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution – an article that is per se discriminatory and against the principle of a country that treats its citizens equally – should not be part of the reform discussions. Not only is a public comment on the what to change and not change in the Egyptian constitution stepping well over the bounds of what any U.S. official should be doing, but to single out this particular issue is putting the U.S. squarely on the wrong side the debate.

The U.S. Government can and should be a force for positive change in Egypt, but this Administration is ill serving Egypt, the United States and indeed the world.


Saturday, April 2, 2011

Fawda

Madness
When a country is unable to host and secure a preliminary round soccer match, it is not ready to put at stake its entire political future.  That might seem trite and simplistic, but it is the crude reality.

With all due respect to the organization of the protests in January, Egypt is not prepared politically, socially or otherwise for democratic elections to decide its fate.  The country has no culture of acceptance of winning and losing, a fatal flaw in any democratic environment, but especially one where there are no institutional checks and balances to measure the outcome.  Yes, there was a peaceful voting process for the referendum (nb:  not really sure why we had that vote, given many other changes to the constitution were subsequently passed by decree), but there the proscribed outcome was overwhelmingly approved, and the stakes were transient.