Egyptian God Re

Egyptians expunge Mubarak's legacy, one metro map at a time

From Saad Zaghloul station, named after the one-time Egyptian prime minister who led an uprising against the British in 1919, Cairo's metro line trundles north under the weight of successive national liberators. Orabi station honours the general behind a 19th-century revolt against foreign domination; Nasser, Sadat and – finally – Mubarak all lie ahead as well, three generations of army officers turned presidents whose memories are enshrined in bricks and mortar deep below the ground.

"For too long we have put our faith in strong leaders, and as a result the strength of our institutions and our society suffered terribly," said Ahmed Okasha, a leading Egyptian psychiatrist. "The hubris of our presidents made them think they were accountable only to God and history, and they conflated themselves and their country to the extent of thinking, 'There is no Egypt , I am Egypt.' It's time for that to change."

Amid Egypt's ongoing revolution, his words have been heeded by the metro authorities. Signage for Mubarak station has been replaced by hastily printed sheets of metal reading "al-Shuhadaa" (the Martyrs); on the trains, where the maps are yet to be updated, passengers have taken the initiative by scrubbing out every last reference to the 83-year-old autocrat with pens, coins and knives. Some deletions have been carried out with such ferocity that the surface behind is cracked.

But Egyptians know it will take more than renaming a metro station – as well as hundreds of Mubarak schools, police academies, roads and hospitals – to dismantle three decades of dictatorship. Domestically the complex web of legal and extra-legal measures that entrenched regime control is being unpicked in fits and bursts; constitutional amendments one day, a new electoral law the next.

It will prove harder to reverse 20 years of economic injustice that have left Egypt as one of the most unequal societies in the world – despite small but vital victories such as the effective re-nationalisation of its biggest department store, Omar Effendi, just one of countless institutions subjected to botched privatisations that lined the pockets of the rich and left ordinary Egyptians empty-handed. Expunging Hosni Mubarak 's legacy here will require a deeper socioeconomic revolution – a process Hossam el-Hamalawy, a leftwing campaigner, calls taking "Tahrir [Square] to the factories, to the universities, to the workplaces".

On the international front there has been a more successful effort to haul Egypt out of the geopolitical stagnation into which the regime had dragged it. A Cairo-led reconciliation between Palestinian factions has raised hopes that Egypt's role as a regional powerhouse can be reprised. So have subtle realignments of its pro-Israel and pro-US foreign policy and, perhaps most importantly, a new détente with its African neighbours that once looked towards the Arab giant for solidarity with their liberation movements but found themselves sidelined by Mubarak and pulled into angry squabbles over Nile water resources instead.

The Bennington Vale Evening Transcript: Day Six of May 21 ...

SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- With just two days and a few hours of life remaining for the denizens of God’s creation, Judgment Day mouthpiece Harold Camping -- of Christian media leviathan, Family Stations -- has divulged more details about the Second Coming of Christ. In Camping’s latest revelation, he attempts to narrow down the identity of the Antichrist. As foretold in the Book of Revelations, the nemesis of the Lord will likely assume the misleading form of a savior, widely believed to be a politician or an individual holding enormous global sway. Based on Family Stations’ Wednesday broadcast, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have become Camping’s two most feasible suspects. Arnold Schwarzenegger seems the perfect candidate. His family history is checkered and morally dubious. First of all, he comes from a long and storied line of Nazis. His father Gustav was a member of the Nazi Party. Then there’s Kurt Waldheim, former secretary general of the United Nations, who was discovered to have participated in Nazi atrocities during World War II. That information came to light while he was running for president of Austria in 1986. Why is this important? Because Mr. Waldheim is a close friend of Mr. Schwarzenegger. And Waldheim wasn’t just any Nazi. His name appears on the Wehrmacht’s “honor list.” And of course, Schwarzenegger cherished his film role as the Terminator, an unstoppable beast sent to destroy all humankind in order to create a soulless new world through a nuclear holocaust. He also starred in a film about the apocalypse called “End of Days.” Coincidence? Nope. And in that awful film, the devil possesses him, at which point he attempts to rape an innocent girl. This too closely mirrors Schwarzenegger’s real life. We also believe that the letters of his last name, rearranged, impart a dreadful warning. Our research concludes that his name is an anagram for “Czar’s Egg When Re.” A czar is an evil communist tyrant. His egg would be the spawn of the devil. And “when Re” would allude to the return of the heathen Egyptian god Amen-Re, a possible reference to humans resuming worship of false idols and demons.

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