C-C-C-Cairo!

Napoleon Plural

Anyone else had Walk Like An Egyptian running round their internal jukebox for the last few weeks?

It's all kicking off over that neck of the woods. Anyone been over there at all? The journalists seem to have been caught on the hop with it. I remember recently Gordon Brown was disparaged by journos for saying that a Rwanda massacre couldn't happen what with twitter and social networks sites now existing. They said that authorities could use such sites to moniter the wrongdoers. Er... such sites are instrumental in the unrest in the Middle East nowadays.

And some say it's all down to Julian Assange and his wikileaks, which prompted rebellion in Tunisia when it came out just how corrupt the regime was revealed to be... Now Assange would be a great Bond villain (Craig's Bond must protect slimy looking wristleblower with vested interests) and indeed has the expression of the 'Harrass me Mister Treasury Man' assassin in The Untouchables, or one of the villains in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Once again, real life is beating Bond to the punch.

Actually, that would be a good name for a Bond film. Beaten to the Punch. Unless people think it's set at a cocktail party...

The Domino Effect

I spent a few weeks travelling around Egypt a couple of years ago. Saw all the usual tourist sights but also headed off the beaten path, staying in tiny little local hotels, eating in back-alley cafes etc as well. What struck me then was the incredible number of people with guns. There was the army, the police, the antiquities police, the tourist police etc etc. Everywhere you looked there were men with very large guns. And yet I never felt that they were there solely to ward off terrorists as was the official claim. It always felt to me that they were there just as much - if not even more so - to make sure there was no uprising against Mubarak who even then was extraordinarily unpopular once you started chatting with the locals. It felt like a tinder box even then if you looked past the obvious and started engaiging in conversation. The terrorism angle was genuine however, ever since the attack on the bus load of tourists at the Valley of the Kings. We had to travel by police-escorted convoys when away from the main centres and each town we drove through was blocked-off to local traffic by the local police until we had passed through.

As for Assange, I think he's just a bitter attention-seeker and has no interest in the genuine freedom of the press that he purports. Instead, he seeks or selects the leaks and information that best serve his own interests. I fervently believe in freedom of the press, but I also believe that there's a responsibility that comes with it and there is some information that serves absolutely no good for anyone at all. I don't think there's been anything from Wikileaks yet that has surprised me. Anyone who follows international affairs can imagine what is said and what goes on behind closed doors. Anyone who has been shocked by a Wikileaks revelation probably doesn't read the news or follow international events because it's only ground-shaking stuff to people who live in holes below the ground!

I bet Elliot Carver would have loved Julian Assange!

Napoleon Plural

You see, that first para gives me more insight into the recent situation than any news reports I've read recently. -{ Mind you, I only subscribe to The Daily Sport. Kiddin'.

Someone did suggest (Matthew Parris if anyone's interested) that while WikiLeaks embarrassed the US, it more compromised the Middle East. Why? It makes them break ranks, the way they try to get Iran bombed because they think the guy in charge is mad. Parris posed the perennial journalist's question of the leaks: who benefits? Certainly not the Middle East despots. So could the US have a hand in it after all? (Prob not, but food for thought).

The Domino Effect

Don't ever underestimate The Daily Sport - it's a great body of work

Napoleon Plural

Well! It seems I spoke too soon.

The thread on Emily Bolton's whereabouts has garnered as many posts as this one.

Libya being bombed by cruise missiles, and there's nobody to make a crass True Lies /Living Daylights generalisation...

"You disappoint me, ajb, you are nothing but a stupid chat forum..."