Egypt

I don't have anything intelligent to say about the situation in Egypt because I don't know enough. That doesn't seem to stop the bloviators on my TV, who are spouting the most incredible nonsense and then coming back the next day to spout nonsense that is the complete opposite of what they previously said. Is this good for us? Is this bad for us?

It's not about us. The few Egyptians I talked to during my brief visit hated Mubarak, and said so openly. "We're what passes for democracy in the Middle East," is how one of my tour guides put it bitterly. She was funny and smart and passionate, and got up at three in the morning in Cairo to drive to Alexandria to meet our tour group, escort us to Cairo and back, and then drive back to Cairo after midnight. In her eighth month of pregnancy. If the streets of Cairo are full of women as tough as she was, Mubarak is definitely toast.

There's a canal on the road to Giza, full of trash and discarded furniture and at least one dead donkey. I saw two young boys with a cart full of carrots washing them in the canal water. If tossing out the government gets children like that a source of clean water, it could be a very good thing. Or it could be Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Or something even worse. I don't know. Nobody does. But how they love to hear themselves talk!

Photo of the pyramid of Chephren, or Kafre, at Giza