If it looks like a duck ...

And quacks like a duck ...

Then it must be time to slaughter the pigs.

700 down, 349300 to go ... and only a few members of a repressed minority disadvantaged.

My favorite part of this article reads, "The government denies the slaughter has anything to do with Muslim distaste for pork and maintains that new, hygienic pig farms using imported animals will be set up in two years time."

Yeah, right. If the new establishment runs on Egyptian time, we're looking at 30 years minimum - and everyone here knows it.

In other news, the weather here has been terrible. Oven-hot winds have been kicking up so much sand, I could barely see the river from my flat today. The usual rolling vistas of construction visible from my office window were obscured in a flat beige haze.

There's a metaphor here somewhere, and I'm reaching for it.