Chelsea - Ahly, Zamalek in Champions League!

El Nino fearing the mighty challenge

It is a fantastic match-up at last for Egyptian football, both Ahly and Zamalek taking on Chelsea in the Champions League!  Lampard, Terry, Torres facing off against Shika and friends at the historic Stamford Bridge.  Awesome!

Egypt Will Be

Only in Egypt

The hovering helicopter at the military-civilian “handover” ceremony displaying a massive Egyptian flag was a poignant symbol of the charade of the “revolutionary” events in Egypt over the past 18 months. The faded, heavily ripped and unevenly positioned flag fluttered over a high command trying to look serious while squinting through the desert sun. The handover event, which commenced suitably late, was staged on a cleanly paved flat of asphalt with fancy white lines in the middle of absolutely nowhere (Camp Huckstep (aka Hikstep, Hike-Step), a World War II era detention camp, cum prison for Islamists, cum staging ground for the "big day").  It was as convincing in projecting order as a decorative traffic light on a Cairo street. First, a rambling speech about the grand achievements of the “transition” period was supported by an amateur, and nearly totally irrelevant montage on Egyptian television that looked to have been pieced together by a failing first year media studies student, or possibly someone trying to create a Pink Floydian video to capture the surreal moment. Next, the supreme commander of the armed forces (who somehow remains the supreme commander notwithstanding transferring authority) went through another long-winded speech about the military’s great achievements. Then poor Morsi took the stage, doing his best to seem relevant, while the blank faces of the attending big wigs stared indifferently into the distance. Only Ganzo’s disgusted and impatient face seemed to exhibit any real feeling.

Hmmm

The event came after a series of similarly half-assed swearing in ceremonies, one before the ostentatious, faux-Pharaonic constitutional court (with the high court judges resplendent in newly tailored robes with colors and bows that did not quite look credible, but almost came across as serious), the other an Obama-inspired moment at Cairo University, where final exams were summarily delayed and the establishment crowd tried to look adult-like on cushy seats, as Morsi went through another monotonous, carefully censored monologue that said nothing offensive. 

Napoli Rumor Heats Up!!!

Dai Shika!  Dai Napoli!

FilGoal | اخبار |الزمالك يوافق على إعارة شيكابالا لنابولي مقابل 13,5 مليون جنيه

The Revolution Continues - the Pending Collapse of Ahly

ESL

No doubt seeing the writing on the wall, the face of Ahly's corrupted regime has departed the team (intriguingly, he claims to be negotiating with Zamalek to join the ranks of Morsi's men).  The dirty games that have allowed Ahly to constantly tip the scales on and off the field must now be put under the spotlight and corrected for Egypt to progress as a more civilized and hopeful country.

No more bloated budgets supported by fake and incestuous sponsorship bids. No more bottomless pockets to buy off all local talent, instead of developing players as do all other teams.  No more lackeys stuffed into the football federation.  No more tilted playing fields with bought-off refereeing to repeatedly secure a penalty in the 94th minute, "creatively" interpret the offside rule, randomly hand out red cards, cancel games and otherwise doctor the results.  No more.

 

                                                   Game over

A Silver Lining: Morsi and Zamalek

It is understood that Presidential-elect Mohamed Morsi (it is easier to write Presidential-elect, than it is President...) is a Zamalek fan, which at least means he is a man who comprehends football.    

Falling to shit

Shika to Napoli

No Salafi influence here

The rumour has been around for a couple of years about the transfer of Egypt’s biggest talent for generations, Shikabala, to SSC Napoli, only to be dismissed as una bufala totale. The story has resurfaced of late, however, bringing back the hope of watching Shika dance around defenders at Stadio San Paolo.

As hard as it will be for Zamalek – the club of il fan wal handasa, and the only team outside of Europe or Latin America that can inspire the creativity of a Shikabala – to lose this genius, the pathetic state of affairs of Egyptian football (get ready for A.C. Brotherhood) and Egypt more generally, make it unforgivable to have these skills atrophy any longer. Shikabala is 26 years old, at the late end of his career prime. He will be out of contract at the end of the month, and whether or not Zamalek is able to first sign him to earn higher transfer fees, it is time to let this eagle fly. 

It was bound to happen...

The writing was on the wall for the phantom revolution from the outset. As inevitable as the events leading up to January 25 might have been, the outcome of the ensuing chaos was even more so. There was never a scenario of governance provided by the self-proclaimed revolutionaries that was even remotely plausible, and the powers-that-be knew so. Hysterical chants and mass gatherings calling for perpetual "revolution" do not buy credibility with most people, let alone a conservative, security-minded leadership. The "revolutionaries" never really developed the will or the capacity to engage with this leadership on a basis that the leadership would respond to, instead either wishing it away through mythological notions of “one hand,” or confronting it head-on in a pyrrhic struggle. The "revolutionaries" also never really connected with the masses, instead cocooning themselves in a Marxist wonderland that was convincing to no one other than themselves.   

The Curse of Being Egyptian

Logo with three stripes and an elephant

This afternoon, four-time World Cup champions Italy take on the reigning World Cup champion Spain.  Iniesta, Balotelli, Xavi, Casillas, Buffon, Fabregas, De Rossi, Ramos, Cassano,  and on and on.  It is world football at its best.  Why oh why then will our poor souls instead be pulled to Conakry to suffer through the tedium of watching the Egyptian national team take on Guinea's Syli Nationale?  What is it about us that causes this morbid attachment?  What have we done to deserve this fate?

Logo with three stripes and four World Cup stars

The New York Times Sucks

Not always fit to print

It is not really notable to point out that the editorial board of the New York Times has strong biases that influence not only its opinion pieces, but also its allegedly neutral news department.  This is self-evident when it comes to almost anything they cover on the U.S. domestic front, whether political, economic or social.  Less noticed, at least to a wide spectrum of disinterested Americans, is the bias of the New York Times on foreign policy coverage, which unfortunately is of disproportionate influence to the ignoramuses in government in Washington, whose interaction with the world is limited by language, culture, experience and basic intellect.

When it has come to the arrival of the "Arab Spring" in Egypt, the New York Times from the outset decided to portray the happenings as a revolution a la 1776, 1789 and Eastern Europe circa. 1989, conveniently overlooking the near complete absence of evidence of this being true.  Facebook and Twitter messages from a handful of self-declared, English speaking "activists" became the barometer for the emotions of 85 million Egyptians.  Islamist retrogrades were recast as enlightened and free-thinking.  Unionist failures have been somehow elevated as vanguards of the Left against "the Establishment."

A Dump

There is a view of Cairo late at night that reminds of the foothills south of San Francisco.  Driving on the Autostrade, just after passing the monstrosity of military-inspired apartment blocks and before hitting the grand Citadel of Mohamed Ali, white lights twinkle through the mist on a hill to the left.  Then one continues on, and the image passes away into the smog of decrepit vehicles, illegal mud-brick factories and burning garbage.  During the day, even this passing mirage of beauty is impossible to reconstruct, as the twinkling lights are nowhere to be seen in the squalor of half-constructed blocks, lethal boulders and pools of raw sewage in one of the city's most drug-infested and chaotic neighborhoods.  The view across the road that used to help erase this desperate site, of the beautiful minarets of Islamic Cairo and still-alive City of the Dead, is now gone, blocked by a monotonous, crooked and permanently exhaust-polluted brick wall that some municipal idiot must have thought helps the area appear more civilized.    

Made for TV

The iconic nighttime image of Tahrir Square, and what it is alleged to represent, is similarly illusive.  From a distance, the mass of people, rhythmic chants, waving flags and high-sounded proclamations of freedom looks so very inspiring.  Closer in, the reality of the dirt, smell, loud mouths and thuggish power grabs is much uglier.

  

Mubarak, Bread and Life

Gift of the Nile

In other news on this fateful day in modern Egyptian political history, a policy breakdown with a much more immediate impact is eating into the most essential part of life for the vast majority of Egyptians:  getting bread on the table.  Stemming from an ill-conceived control and command system fancifully designed to make Egypt self sufficient in wheat production, inflated prices offered for local wheat production are creating a cash machine for traders re-labeling foreign grown wheat as Egyptian. As consequence, the state treasury is wasting billions of scare dollars on procurements to support a hopelessly designed food subsidy system, further billions to support a hopelessly designed fuel subsidy system to run the plows and pump scarcely available water on limited arable lands, and millions and millions more on a vast bureaucracy to enforce this madness.

Ray, we hardly got to know you

The saga of our friend Ray Sadler has been moved to our sister site, Balasticman Baseball.

The "Revolution" is Dead...Long Live the Revolution

Another election, another loss.  From the constitutional referendum to the parliamentary elections to the presidential vote, Egyptians have decisively rejected the "revolutionary forces".  And, yet again, the same "revolutionary forces" have had the same delusional reaction, consoling themselves in wild tales of conspiracy, contorted mathematical breakdowns trying to recast defeat as victory, and basically anything else that puts the blame somewhere other than on themselves.  They again have failed to find a leader capable of presenting a credible vision for the future, their best offering apparently being an unrepentant believer in the same Nasser who founded the security monstrosity, bureaucratic labyrinth and cultural regression that for sixty years has dragged down the country internally, while gloriously leading Egypt into devastating war after devastating war, with Israel and Arab "brothers" alike.  And now they threaten to commit mass suicide by suspending all credibility in backing an unabashed Islamist (not that the backing covert Islamists really was any better) as the last salvation for the "revolution."  

Plack Eyed Beas

The Presidential Delusion

Presiding over a mess

In the sham otherwise known as democratic advancement in Egypt – where a dyed-and-stained Islamist can mascaraed as being open-minded, where a failed politician can implausibly revive a discredited Nasserist system as the hope for the future, where a union thug can promise mass expropriation as the golden bucket at the end of the rainbow, and where self-declared revolutionaries can willingly suspend belief to find credible that plastic ballot boxes, pie charts and moronic talk shows even remotely reflect a civilized system of self-governance – it is reassuring, even if only somewhat, to recall that the bankrupt Egypt of today, with all of its pitfalls, ignorance and depravity, is still somehow linked to 7,000 years of stabilizing norms.  

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The tepid televised debate between two drab presidential candidates is a poignant symbol of the superficiality of the events that have transpired in Egypt over the course of the past 18 or so months.  Egypt's pompous political class -- from the candidates to the idiotic talking heads -- is utterly shambolic.    

The Solution to Democratic Chaos in Egypt

Move over Justin Bieber...

For starters, raise the voting age and ban girls from voting (it must be the manly appeal of the beard).  While we are at it, may as well ban boys from voting too, and outlaw those with brown hair and/or brown eyes, in addition of course to banning the entirely unreliable black, red or blond haired and/or blue, green or hazel eyed voters. Needless to say, the same rules shall apply to eligibility for candidacy, supplementing the well-reasoned rules for those with any non-Egyptian familial ties (no more experimentation with failures like Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Mohamed Ali or Taha Hussein).

Strawberry Fields Forever



Perish the thought

Hold the farawla bil ishta.  The highly qualified agricultural experts of Tahrir have identified the root cause of Egypt's food problems.  The cause is not the 85 million inhabitants haphazardly living along the narrow Nile valley, the country's finite water resources, nor the distortive control and command policies that have dictated how, when, where and at what price farmers can grow and sell crops.  The cause is strawberries.

Capitalist-flavored shisha

Never mind that strawberries grow on approximately 0.00175% of Egypt's cultivated land. Never mind that the Egyptian strawberry industry is underpinned by a natural competitive advantage attributable to the country's warmth and location, which enables the delicious red berries to hit the domestic and European markets before surrounding producers can do so. Never mind Egypt is one of the top strawberry producers in the world, with products successfully marketed as far away as China. And never mind that the staple cereals that the revolutionary "experts" would like to have replace the strawberries are much more cheaply imported into Egypt, rather than seeking to re-produce the rolling plains of the American Midwest or East Asian rice paddies in a cramped river delta surrounded by an endless expanse of desert.

A Day in the Life of Egypt

Left Behind: Egypt's Hopeless Socialists

The self-appointed leftist guardians of the Egyptian “revolution” are as naïve as they are intellectually bankrupt. Their vast overestimation of their evidently limited appeal, combined with their patently inadequate political capabilities, have allowed for Islamists to manhandle the social and political scene.

Tired defenses of adverse domestic and foreign agendas are made even more redundant when the Left tries to conjure up an excuse for an economic agenda. They resist acceptance of IMF loans at a fraction of the rate of domestic borrowings, while campaigning to “drop Egypt’s debt” (note to the uniformed – Egypt already has benefitted from unmatched and massive rounds of debt relief from supposedly evil Western creditors, negotiated under the watch of Egypt’s supposedly debt-crazed past governments). They now oppose the prospect of a free trade agreement with the European Union, Egypt’s largest export market, because “local shoemakers and cobblers will be out of jobs, which will set back the economy far more than the few cents consumers save buying the foreign made shoes.”

Charm City

Baltimore, Maryland:  eclectic, electric America.

The land of Poe.

Surprise, Surprise: Obama's US without Friends

Blowing it

After blindly championing a policy of trying to look popular and ignoring the consequences of undercutting a leadership nurtured over decades, and then pursuing a hopelessly flawed accommodation with regressive Islamists, the U.S. Government finds itself desperate to find friends in Egypt.  With the years of dominant U.S. military, political and economic presence, this is nothing short of outrageous.

So what does Team Obama do next?  It carries on with its amateurish attitude of getting into highly publicized tiffs with junior ministers over peripheral issues, and acts with a chip on its shoulder through a self-defeating policy of turning international financial institutions against Egypt.   

Young Africans v Zamalek - Football (and Normality?) Returns at Last!

Egypt for too long has been in in a state of fear, mourning and pessimism.  The causes of this are numerous, ranging from the depressed economy to inflated revolutionary expectations to ominous signs of further curtailments of already meager individual rights to the worrisome stream of criminal activity.  There are some -- both of the "revolutionary" and "counter-revolutionary" variety -- who see value in chaos, instability and a general lack of normalcy.  For the rest of us, however, we want to live our lives, and life for the tens of millions of us means having our football back.

Zambia Wins! Inspiration from Humility

  

David overcometh Goliath

Against all the odds, Zambia pulled it off.  In the very country where their entire national team was killed in an airplane tragedy nineteen years ago, this undersized squad of no-names with a funky Chipolopolo moniker overcame one favored adversary after the next, culminating in the triumph over the most star-studded sides of them all, the annoyingly francophone Côte d'Ivoire.  The storyline is awesome and inspiring in its goodness, and reinforces belief in the power of sport in general, and its most beautiful game in particular.