Blowing up pipelines is not ordinary news, nor is it overly rare. It's happened in Iraq since the occupancy began under Bush, for instance. This one, coincidence I am sure, looks like a big burning cross the Klan would be proud to have caused. One camera shot, yet what a coincidence.
So what's it got to do with the headline? First, more on the gas pipeline explosion, this google. If you care to read more.
The headline is about NY Times reporting, Feb. 12, this link for the first of two pages. To encourage reading what's in between, the excerpt is of the opening three paragraphs, and the concluding three:
After Hosni Mubarak’s younger son, Gamal, left his job as an executive with Bank of America in London in the mid-1990s, he joined forces with Egypt’s largest investment bank. Today he has a significant stake in a private equity company with interests throughout the Egyptian economy, from oil to agriculture to tourism, corporate records and interviews show.
During President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule, he and his family were not flamboyant with their wealth, particularly by the standards of other leaders in the Middle East. While there is no indication that Gamal Mubarak or the bank were involved in illegal activity, his investments show how deeply the family is woven into Egypt’s economy.
Now with Hosni Mubarak out of power, there are growing calls for an accounting to begin.
[...] As the protest intensified last week, government prosecutors froze the assets of five government ministers and imposed a travel ban on them. The move appeared to be an effort by Mr. Mubarak to distance himself from the wealthy businessmen who had become the focus of public ire over corruption. It is unclear whether the military, which now runs the government and has vast business holdings itself, will allow a full inquiry into the Mubarak family’s wealth.
Perhaps the most difficult question to answer is the level of corruption involving Hosni Mubarak himself. Former American diplomats said he appeared to live relatively simply, particularly by the standards of rulers in the region. His main residence outside Cairo was a villa in a private compound in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el Sheik, where he went after resigning the presidency on Friday. Diplomats said the villa was not particularly grand for the neighborhood, smaller than the nearby home of Bakr bin Laden, a member of the wealthy Saudi construction clan and a half-brother of Osama bin Laden.
Mr. Mubarak’s villa is in a compound developed by Hussein Salem, an Egyptian businessman and close friend of the former president. Mr. Salem pleaded guilty in 1983 to overcharging the Pentagon $8 million for shipping military equipment to Egypt. Despite the conviction, he prospered in Mr. Mubarak’s Egypt and heads a lucrative business that ships natural gas to Israel.
[links omitted, italics added] Privatization - is it anything beyond crony looting, while the workers go hungry and unemployed. In Egypt that is. We have had no such tainted privatization here in the US of A, during the Gipper's times when the term was bandied about quite a bit, before then, and after. We are so fortunate. Yet, why shouldn't a ruling family become billionaires from it? In Egypt that is. Not here, not via Carlyle Group or Whitewater, we're not that way.