This is almost making me nostalgic. Well done, sir.
A longstanding pet peeve of mine ably illustrated by juxtaposing how the Egyptian Army Orchestra plays national anthems and how they should be played. Hat tip @intensionality.
A friend received this in his email inbox yesterday. It seems the Nigerian 419 email scam has evolved. Love the reply-to address:
From: "mubarak"web0202@hlbbnk.com
Date: January 8, 2015 at 7:27:34 PM GMT+1
Subject: HEI
Reply-To: suzane.mmubarak@aol.comHello,
I am Mr Hosni Mubarak former leader of Egyptian am currently released from prison charges of complicity resulting from political turmoil during the 2011 the government has seized everything i have here and prevent us from traveling out of Egypt because the released is conditional.
As a result of this, I need somebody outside Egypt to represent my interest to manage our reserved funds value (25,000,000.00 [U.SD] in long-term business venture especially in public and private business (including real estate investment,
I am willing to negotiate with you how much I will offer you to handle this for me after your acceptance. And all needed to proceed the legality and movement of the (25,000,000.00 [U.SD] shall or will be duly obtained in due course.
Yours Faithfully,
Mr Hosni Mubarak
Nour Youssef writes to us regularly with a mix of legitimate, useful information and things I wish I'd never seen. I thought I'd put her latest missive up as a taste of the current ambient Egyptian insanity:
Reasons to at least limit ability to upload videos on Youtube:
- This person.
- And this one too. Remember that belly dancer Sema al-Masry who broke an olla in front of the US embassy and made that anti-Qatar song? She has her own show now where she wears a shirt with Mubarak's laughing face on it and had this supposed El-Baradei look-alike to shake her boobs at.
Things that maybe interesting:
- Bassem Youssef is coming back. On MBC.
- The transcript of the absolutely ridiculous interrogation of Ahmed Abdelaty, head of the presidential office under Morsi, and one of the defendants in the espionage case. What's funnier than the fact that their "evidence" of the "crime" that is talking to people out of Egypt -- or worse, not even Egyptian people in Egypt, or even worse out of it -- comes from hacking his email is that they a) don't care/understand that that is a crime and so don't react to his emphasis on that and b) el-Watan picked this up and ran with it like it proved that Mohamed Badie surprised the smuggling of weapons from Libya to Egyptian MB youth in 2012, completely indifferent to or unaware of the fact that the word Libya was not mentioned in the interrogation, that the man denied all charges and that the investigative bodies are a).
Didn't think I'd find such pointed socio-economic critique and truly inspired comedy at Cairoscene:
But the true slap in the face was the witnessing of the whole “convince the West that this is not a coup” social media campaign. Who cares what they think, honestly? Do they care that I think that their 2000 election was rigged and that George Bush is funnier than 90% of their sitcoms? No. And why weren’t these people also trying to convince the president of China that this allegedly wasn’t a coup? Is he not in their field of vision? Personally, I wasn’t seeking validation from the West regarding June 30th but I must admit that I did write a letter to Tommy Remengesau, the President of Palau, claiming that June 30th was caused by four middle aged women masturbating simultaneously to Mohannad from Nour. I explained that the electricity cut (Yes, fuck Morsi) prior to climax, and when it returned, MBC4 became state TV Channel Two and Mohannad became El Sisi. The dark shades conducted the activity to its orgasmic conclusions and 20 million people poured into the streets to celebrate the first genuine Egyptian female orgasm by parading posters of the suave general and his nipple-erecting gaze. Suffice to say, President Remengseau was skeptical. He simply wrote back “Tawfik Okasha, is this you?”
And check out the author's previous post about the secession of the island state of Zamalek, too.