UnNews:Egypt looks ahead, doesn't see anything
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| Democracy Dies with Dignity | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Sunday, December 22, 2024, 01:44:59 (UTC) |
| Egypt looks ahead, doesn't see anything | 
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16 February 2011
CAIRO, Egypt -- Like pissing in a business suit, the nice warm feeling that the common man overthrew a dictator in Egypt is cooling off and becoming uncomfortable.
The stock market did not reopen this week, and officials say that reopening will be deferred until the banking system comes back on-line. And that will have to wait until someone finds or prints some money to use. (Unlike the United States, Egypt has no Ben Bernanke.) As for Egyptian pounds, many of them are now in numbered Swiss bank accounts. While it will never be possible to compare serial numbers, the amount is exactly the amount of U.S. foreign aid since Jimmy Carter got one-third of a Nobel Peace Prize for paying Egypt not to attack Israel.
Moreover, government economists this week concluded that the one million citizens who crowded Cairo's Tahini Square for seventeen days were, oddly, not at their jobs. Even more inexplicably, their work did not get done at all. One said, "This will somewhat reduce the gross national product for January."
Strangest of all, although the crowd of ordinary Joe Camels stared down the tanks--which, inexplicably, didn't fire at them--foreign tourists are not lining up to do the same, nor visit a country that nobody knows who's running. Despite the sun and the sand, it looks as though American college students will once again choose comparably endowed Fort Lauderdale for their Spring break.
The unfortunate flip side of ignoring the constitution, removing a head of state, and pulling a rule of succession out of a bodily orifice, is that if the next government uses rules and if it puts them in writing, everyone knows they will also be tossed aside if a mob shows up.
Another side-effect of the Cairo putsch is renewed demonstrations, from Libya to Iran. U.S. President Obama, who became the poster child for the overthrow of Mubarak, has been curiously silent on the right of these peoples to self-determination. "Iranians should stay home," said a spokesman. "We are making progress with economic sanctions."
In Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood again asserted its fitness to rule a new, democratic, Islamic Egypt. Spokesman Jake Muslim said, "We are totally seclear," a term coined last week by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence [sic]. "We don't do beheadings, stonings, and gang rape--even of American newswomen," recalling an event from last week that further put Egypt on the tourism map. His partner, Elwood Muslim, agreed. "Yes. That would be our military wing."
Sources[edit]
- Karel Janicek "Israel deputy PM: changes in Egypt not over yet". Associated Press, February 15, 2011
- Maria Sheahan "Egypt tourism faces blow, may only be short-term". Reuters, January 29, 2011