Imagine that a corporation ran your country. Now imagine this corporation has managed to take over at least a third of the country’s assets. Imagine if this corporation enacted laws that allowed it to enlist most of the young men in the country as slave labor, getting paid peanuts, and having to work all day, sometimes in productive jobs, and sometimes sending men to do nothing more than smoke cigarettes as they stood in a deserted spot of land. Imagine that this corporation was run by a cabal of businessmen who were above all the laws and subject to none of them – so that they were not held accountable to the country or its laws. Imagine further that this corporation could not only ignore the law but could actually change laws to suit itself. Imagine if this corporation was not only exempt from taxes but was actually partly funded by taxes and received further funding from foreign countries, all on top of the profit that it makes from its businesses selling gasoline, water, pasta, cheeses, and various foodstuff. Imagine that these profits are made at almost no cost to the corporation since the labor, as we said before, was basically slave labor. Imagine that this corporation not only controlled the law in a country but also had the power to tailor the constitution so that all the citizens of the country were subject to the laws of the corporation, whereas those employed by the corporation were subject only to the laws of the corporation, and to its board of directors. Imagine if this corporation could kill anybody that it chose to, imprison anybody that it chose to, direct the media as it saw fit, destroy any media that it didn’t approve of, ban any writers that it didn’t like, and it could do all of this with complete impunity. Now imagine that this corporation was not only immune to the law, but in actual control of the judiciary, and could impose sentences simply by lifting the phone, and giving directives to judges, telling them exactly what kind of verdicts it wanted to see in any cases that piqued its interest. Imagine further that this corporation had greater powers than the president himself, but that, just to be sure, it chose to install as president one of its own, who continues to serve its interests. Imagine that this corporation held an absolute monopoly on the use of heavy weapons in the country, and that, just to be sure, it employed the police force as its first line of defense, since, as a matter of public relations, it chose not to get its own hands ‘dirty’ when that could be avoided. Are you starting to realize that you really don’t have to use your imagination at all?
Welcome to Egypt.
