Remember who won the war

THE TREACHERY OF the evil Germans has been exposed thanks to opposition MP Hussein Ibrahim. Loyal German friends? Apparently not.

Why the sudden distaste for sauerkraut and lederhosen? Turns out our patriotic MP has uncovered a nasty German plot to poison the minds of our youth against their own country at a brainwashing facility previously believed to have been a prominent German-language secondary school in Cairo.

Worse: The German baddies are in cahoots with the evildoers at the Egyptian Ministry of Education (the same buggers who restored sixth grade), which approved the nefarious textbook thats key to the entire plot.

Valiant Ibrahim won the full attention of his fellow members of the PA (at least those who were still awake) when he began reading aloud a passage from the schools text on the floor of Parliament.

A German student was telling his Egyptian colleague that the traffic and public transportation situation in Egypt is distressing, characterized by chaos because everyone drives as he likes without following the rules of the road, the MP read from an Arabic translation of the text.

Diaa Khalil/Egypt Today Egyptian Museum

Gasp! The traitors! How dare they badmouth the traffic authorities? Didnt those horrible Germans get the message? Its part of our campaign to promote tourism: Come to Egypt for the driving experience of your life. Reserve your car in Cairo today to guarantee an adrenaline rush like no other!!

Before we get too carried away, Ibrahim offered into evidence another damning piece of writing, this one from a female Egyptian fifth-columnist to her German friend, in which she claims she doesnt enjoy the same freedoms German women do and that her brothers enjoy more privileges because Egyptian fathers prefer boys

Quick! Cut off diplomatic ties with Germany! Round up the Allies from the Second World War

Congratulations, youre Egyptian

WERE SO ACCUSTOMED to thingsgoing from bad to worse on the political front that we were stunned last month when the Ebeid government appeared to do the right thing in what could be among its last acts in office.

Mohsen Allam/Egypt Today

In mid-June, Cabinet signed off on a draft law that would see Egyptian women married to foreigners automatically pass Egyptian citizenship on to their children, giving them the exact same privilege Egyptian men married to foreigners have had for the past decade or so.

If approved by the PA as it currently stands, the law would include the long-awaited sentence Whoever is born to an Egyptian mother is Egyptian provided the child (or the childs guardians) inform the Interior Ministry of the childs desire to claim that right.

Poor Ebeid, though, couldnt win even for doing the right thing: More than one columnist in the local press was heard remarking that the outgoing PM could use all the prayers grateful mothers would care to offer.

Hidden treasures

DONT SAY STOLEN the word ismissing, insists Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni. And because we have a soft spot for this member of Cabinet, well follow his instructions in every sentence we write.

Cairo Opera House

The Egyptian Museums basement, you see, is a thiefs dream. (Whoops! We meant magicians dream. Really, we did)

In May, the Habi relief went missing from the fabled museums subterranean storage vaults, forcing Hosni to appoint a committee of experts to investigate the location to which the relief chose to disappear. While cynics said the answer was obvious (back to Japan, where it was missing until 1985), museum staff insisted its somewhere around here.

It seems they simply needed the help of a good fortune-teller to discover that it was, in fact, misplaced somewhere within the museum system.

With threats from the Peoples Assembly still ringing in his ears, Hosni promptly ordered Supreme Council for Antiquities head honcho Zahi Hawass to make a complete inventory of every item in the museums basement after discovering that the last one took place when Egypt was still under British tutelage (71 years ago, to be precise).

Sadly, the ministers prayers that it was all over fell on deaf ears. Last month, the museums storage system (or lack thereof) was back in the spotlight when the local press revealed that 38 pieces of ancient jewelry had gone missing from the Downtown tourist trap. The 36 gold bracelets and two gold rings dating to Roman times had been discovered in Kom Ombo in 1905 and sent to the museum for study and storage.

John Samples/Egypt Today Cairo Opera House

Unfortunately, the jewelry has yet to magically reappear, forcing Hosni to ask the Administrative Attorney General to investigate.

As Hosni related it, the treasures could have been moved without documentation to another location inside the museum or to an off-site storage area. And yes, he admitted, they could, God forbid, have been stolen. Still, he added, its most likely the gold pieces were simply misplaced in an administrative snafu.

Strangely enough, he could be right. The museums cataloguing process involves each piece being branded with a serial number, which is then entered on a running list a list that includes the numbers alone. No description of the item. No placing it on an historical timeline. Pieces are stored in wooden boxes, which are then handed off to storekeepers who sign for the boxes and their contents without knowing whats in any of them.

We asked whether the museum inherited the tracking system from Habis time, but it wasnt entered on the log sheet, either.

Ignorance is bliss

AS IF WE DIDNT already have enoughbad news on our plates each morning, heres a winner from Minister of State for Environment Mamdouh Riyadh certain to take our minds off the war in Iraq, terrorism and natural disasters.

Last month, the (allegedly outgoing) Riyadh announced he had received permission from the (now-resigned) Safwat El-Sherif to air a special daily report on air pollution in the Greater Cairo Area. The bulletin will run each morning on Sabah El-Kheir, ya Misr (Good Morning, Egypt), state-run TVs top morning current-affairs show.

Who says the public has a right to know? Even pesky journalists wonder in this case

Play nice, people

HE DIDNT SEE it coming, andif it was up to him, it would never have happened. Although Minister of Tourism Mamdouh El-Beltagui now insists he holds no grudge against law 89 for 2004, that pesky little piece of legislation that hiked taxes on a range of non-essential goods and services including hotels and tourism services he just wasnt comfortable with the timing.

Our competitors for the lucrative Arab summer tourism season, you see, are taking advantage. Last month, El-Beltagui was heard complaining throughout the capital that after Egypt hiked tourist taxes to 10 percent from five on hotel nights and general services, in addition to a new 25 percent surtax on flights to foreign destinations some of our Arab pals promptly slashed taxes in their tourism industries.

Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon all jumped on the bandwagon, trying to make themselves more attractive to the Gulfies who traditionally flee to Egypt to escape the summer heat.

While El-Beltagui admitted he could accept their competitive spirit (which may have something to do with the fact that he has no grounds under international law that would allow him to sue), he drew his line in the sand at foul play. A minister of tourism from one of the three countries, El-Beltagui alleged, was meeting with major tour operators in a number of European countries, hoping to convince them to cancel their packages to Egypt in favor of his (cheaper) country.

Not only did the move violate the spirit of Arab brotherhood and cooperation, El-Beltagui snarled to the local press, it also violated that cherished Arab notion of fair competition.

Arab brotherhood? Cooperation? Fair competition? Were sorry, Mr. Minister, but the number you have dialed is temporarily out of service. Please re-examine your concept and try again.

This is a recording.

Ramadan karim

BECAUSE MONEY is the last thing weshould worry about after all, whats an LE 40 billion budget deficit between friends? Dar El-Iftaa, the Al-Azhar body charged with declarations on whats haram and whats halal, came up with an idea last month sure to appeal to us all.

In a prominent advertisement that ran in one of the nations dailies, the religious scholars at the Dar tendered for a partner to help them design, manufacture and launch their own satellite. Why? you ask. For a holy mission, of course: To keep precise track of the movement of the moon and thus be able to declare a completely halal start to Ramadan and other hijra months. Just think! No more controversy over Ramadan starting on a Tuesday in Egypt, but a Wednesday or Thursday in the Gulf!

The only catch: The multi-million-dollar project is being paid for (get ready you know its coming) by: You! The Egyptian Taxpayer!

And dont bother asking why the geniuses at the Dar would want to spend the cash on a satellite when they could simply partner up with a national weather office or space observatory. It seems theyve come up with a new fatwa: The government taxing citizens is halal, but giving the proceeds to the Dar is even more so.

The day the music died

WE NEVER IMAGINED he had aninterest in the opera, but last month opposition MP El-Badry El-Farghally stunned us all with a full-frontal assault on the Cairo Opera House.

The attack was so vicious that many of El-Faraghallys colleagues told him to Chill out! when his eyeballs began to pop out of their sockets and his vocal cords grew hoarse.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni came in for the lions share of El-Farghallys ire as the MP demanded to know why the Opera House was contributing to the nations unemployment problem by showcasing foreign musicians, staff and conductors for the Cairo Symphony Orchestra instead of internationally acclaimed Egyptian talent.

There was even this foreign orchestra conductor who cost the Opera House a fortune even though he failed to upgrade the quality of El-Farghally paused, grasping for the right word, conducting!

Egyptian artists are frustrated, the MP continued, because their talents have been frozen. Theyve been demoted from their national leadership roles!

Hush, El-Faraghally, or well stage a special 24-hour kabuki marathon just for you. We promise: Well use only Egyptian talent.

Xenophobia rides again

EL-FARGHALLY wasnt the only oppo-sition member of Parliament dancing to a xenophobic tune last month: Nasserist MP Heider El-Baghdady took advantage of one of the last sessions in the PAs 2003-04 legislative season to savage a Tunisian he thinks is also stealing jobs from Egyptians.

Topping El-Baghdadys list of evildoers is Tunisian management guru Selim El-Talately, a top official at the European Union-funded Industrial Modernization Programme (IMP), whom El-Baghdady claims commands the princely salary of $30,000 (roughly LE 192,000) per month.

What the hell is this? El-Baghdady thundered. This is more than the combined monthly salaries of all the Egyptian experts at the Ministry of Industry, which together stand at a mere LE 108,000!

(The Ministry of Industry doesnt publicly break its salary budget down by line item, so well offer no nasty comments here.)

So, did Minister of Industry Ali El-Saidi reprimand the MP for asking such nasty questions? He didnt need to the head of the PAs Industry Committee took care of that, telling the opposition MP to relax. After all, he said, El-Talatelys salary is paid by the EU, not Egyptian taxpayers.

The salary range is stipulated in the agreement signed between Egypt and the EU. We ran an international ad listing the qualifications for the job, he said, explaining that the salary is both reasonable and paid from a EUR150 million grant.

Moreover, he said, the pay scale was discussed by the PAs Industry Committee and approved by Parliament as a whole.

Undeterred, El-Baghdady has demanded that Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (International Cooperation) Fayza Aboul Naga appear before the PA to discuss El-Talatelys salary and how it compares to the paychecks Egyptian experts take home.

For his own personal safety and to ward off the evil eye now that 71 million Egyptians know how much he makes we recommend El-Talately stick to the color blue in the weeks ahead. (You can learn more about the protective nature of certain colors in our et guide / lifestyles package on color therapy this month. See page 118.)

Sweet treats

WITH THE G-8S Broader MiddleEast Initiative now looming before us, we doubt tempers in the Middle East could get much hotter. But think twice before you reach for an ice-cream cone to help you cool down you just might be adding to the nations trade deficit as you do!

Last month, an Egyptian importer ran an ad in a national newspaper that broke chilling news to domestic ice-cream manufacturers: He has just received a massive shipment of wooden ice-cream and popsicle sticks from China and is looking for buyers.

El-Baghdady! El-Faraghally! No ice cream for you this summer!

A homeless minister?

PAY CLOSE ATTENTION, real estatebrokers: We may have some new clients for you!

Last month, the Administrative Judiciary Court (AJC) ruled that Minister of Education Hussein Bahaa Eddine be removed from his office.

Not stripped of his post, just kicked out of his physical office.

How? The court ordered the immediate implementation of a 1997 Supreme Constitutional Court verdict that declared unconstitutional law 521 of 1955. The law originally gave the Ministry of Education the right to seize any villas, palaces or buildings owned by the pre-revolutionary élite that it thought might be needed to establish the ministry as well as its schools and institutes. The owners were paid peanuts for properties worth millions.

To right the wrong, the AJC is ordering them returned to their original owners now. At the top of the list: Bahaa Eddines office building, the local press growled.

Jeez, guys. Isnt respect for the rule of law in the national curriculum? et