This week's issue of the Egyptian premier outlet Al Ahram reports the following:

Tongue in cheek, under the headline,"In Egypt there is press freedom" the national weekly newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom 's Anwar Wagdi took aim at officials and non-officials alike. Hailing his column with four photographs showing slightly-different poses of Minister of External Trade Youssef-Boutros Ghali, Wagdi (alias the paper's Editor Ibrahim Se'da) said he had decided to"resume writing about the scandal of Joe (Ghali) so that readers will remain assured that in Egypt there is freedom of the press, no censoring of writers or breaking of their pens". He will do this, he says, by doing more of the same.

Hammouda pointed out that the president"turned the tables" on his critics, who charge that there is no democratic reform, by abrogating the imprisonment of journalists on publication-related charges, restricting the implementation of the emergency law and, most important, immediately prior to his departure for the US, had the [recently-formed] National Council for Human Rights announce that it will look into the cancellation of the much-maligned emergency law, except under exceptional circumstances."

Sad, isn't it?