Let us kill the disgusting disease-bearing swine-pig!
 

Oh snap where did all this garbage come from.

Well played government of Egypt.

Maaro maaro sooar ko, chamdi nocho pee lo khoon!

So is their whole deal trying to outdo the reputation of their ancient ancestors in the field of superstition?

so wait.

if I'm reading this article correctly, its saying that egypt claimed it killed all the pigs because of swine flu, but they really did it because the theocracy wanted an excuse to kill pigs, who are jews?

... what the fuck?

Basically they saw an opportunity to 1. insult their Christian minority 2. deprive a substantial part of that minority of their livelihood 3. take a cheap shot at Israel all while being able to say 4. that they were acting for the good of 'public health'.

The part where this was a really stupid idea doesn't seem to have entered into anyone's considerations.

I still can't believe someone didn't go, hey um, I may be new here but wouldn't it be a bad idea to kill all those pigs? Just to insult people?

People are, more often than not, short-sighted when it comes to politics.

Words escape me.

I did think Cairo was going down the crapper, just didn't expect it to happen quite like this. Meh, fuck em! If they're too stupid to realise how full of shit that city is then it's their fault. It sure ain't gona bother my sleep tonight, not like I was ever planning to go back there again anyway. Once was enough and I'm pretty sure I lost about 5 years of my life from all the smog inhilation.

Maybe once it reaches cataclismic proportions they'll start to pull their fingers out of their arses and clean the damn place up at last. Probably not though.

That would be all well and good were pollution not a global problem.

I find it amusing that when Hitchens actually has a legitimite case for once he overplays it terribly and thus ruis it.

That said, this is bad but Egypt has been pretty messed up for a while. While officially a democracy Mubarak has been basically a dictator for the last nearly 30 years. This is a strange action for him, though, as Mubrak has generally, over his reign, started to ease the tensions on the Christians in Egypt. I mean they are still discriminated against but this is due to old measures that he has been slow in removing, not due to a policy of persecution by Mubarak. Previous presidents arrested their leaders and made thier gatherings illegal whereas Mubarak let the leaders go and allowed them a lot more rights.
It just seems like an odd policy for Mubarak to pursue, out of line with his general policy of refusing to overtly oppress the Christains, just leaving what's already there to do it for him and only slowly reverting it.

The government has also claimed that it was a general health measure, like to prevent H5N1 (a type of bird flu which is prominent in Egypt) making a cross strain with some kind of pig flu which according to this this is possible but unlikely. It seems like a way to cover their tracks after the event especially in light of the fact that public health is getting much worse.