Stealing from iocaste212 now.

[theweaselking]

This sounds so ... familiar....

It had taken more than seven hours to launch a rescue operation. Worried relatives had been greeted at the banks of the Red Sea by riot police who beat them back. For days, people sat on the street, under the sun, waiting for any information. And the state-run media tried to turn the whole matter into a public relations victory for President Hosni Mubarak.

Pick a day. Pick a tragedy. Match the government's response.

A train loaded with poor Egyptians burned in 2002 on its way to Luxor, and an official said the driver unhitched the flaming cars and continued on his way, leaving behind hundreds to die. No high-ranking officials were ever charged.

A fire tore through a small theater last year, killing at least 30 people. The only emergency door had been bolted shut. The minister of culture offered his resignation, but the president did not accept it.

"These disasters continue to happen because this is a decaying state," said Hesham Kassem, a member of the board of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and deputy managing editor of the leading independent newspaper, El Masri El Youm. "The corrupt government officials control all sectors and are responsible for all disasters we face. But the government would not hold itself accountable."

Islamists, in effect, already preach an alternative to resignation, saying Islam should become the government. And anger among those directly affected can explode — as it did among relatives of the missing. After days of frustration, they burned down the shipping company's offices.

This overt expression of anger is what Middle East governments fear most, if it were ever to spread to the general public. To many analysts, it explains the effort to focus on objects of hatred abroad — usually Jews and Israel, most recently countries in Europe.

Huh.

(The original post, which I have quoted in it's entirety, is here.)