Doaa El-Bey covers Obama's upcoming visit to Egypt and Netanyahu's consistent foiling of attempts to revive the peace process Writers look at US President Barack Obama's decision to deliver a speech to the Islamic world from Cairo next month from different perspectives. The official daily Al-Akhbar wrote that Obama's decision reaffirms his will to improve relations with the Islamic world, correct the mistakes of his predecessors and translate his promises into deeds. The newspaper's editorial expressed its wish that Obama's speech will open a new page in US relations with the Islamic world from Egypt, the heart of the Arab and Islamic worlds. "The Islamic world is looking forward to Obama's speech in order to listen directly to what he has to offer especially regarding the Palestinian file, which is the real test for him," the edit read. Mohamed El-Saadani described Obama as the astute president who planned to choose Cairo as the podium to address the Islamic world. Regarding Obama's motivation for that choice, the White House stated that Egypt is the heart of the Arab world and the Arab world is the heart of the Islamic world; thus Egypt is the heart of the Islamic world. The writer described Obama's speech as very important as it starts a complicated process to reveal to the Americans and Europeans the true racist face of Israel which was shown since the election of Netanyahu and Lieberman. El-Saadani also wrote in the official daily Al-Ahram that the visit coincided with the anniversary of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Thus the speech could be an accepted US apology for all the past blind bias towards the Zionist entity. Given that President Hosni Mubarak will meet Obama during his visit to the US at the end of this month, the two leaders will have met twice by the first week of next month. The meetings are a slap in the face of all who bet on ruining Egyptian-US relations and those who claim that Egypt's regional role is subsiding. Ibrahim Eissa had a less optimistic point of view in the independent daily Al-Dostour. He wrote that Obama's speech to the Islamic world will inevitably fail because the Arab and Islamic peoples are not used to listening to speeches that convey messages. They are used to their leaders' boring speeches that are full of lies and deceit. In addition, Obama is the president of the US, the country that showed flagrant bias towards Israel in its war against the Palestinians. Also, how can the people believe Obama when he still supports despotic leaders who rigged elections, squashed their opposition and are hated by their people? "Obama is not the saviour of justice or the symbol of inter-civilisation dialogue. He is an opponent of George Bush who tries to kill the Palestinians quietly using poison rather than noisy missiles," Eissa wrote. The controversy over the government salary raise is ongoing between the People's Assembly and the minister of finance. Fatma Baraka wrote that the National Democratic Party leaders reiterated that employees would get the so-called social raise. Although there was some concern about the repercussions of the global economic crisis on the Egyptian economy, the party viewed that it was necessary to keep the raise together with the social and economic reformation plans that the government initiated a few years ago. Experience has shown that reformation reduced the repercussions of the global economic crisis on the Egyptian economy. However, the percentage of the raise is in the hands of the Shura Council and the People's Assembly. While Baraka expressed her appreciation for the allocation of some LE10 billion for the raise, she called on parliament members to cooperate in working out the percentage of the raise to help employees in facing life's daily needs. The economic crisis affected citizens as well as the states, as the writer concluded in the weekly official newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom. Mohamed Ali Kheir cast doubt on the controversy between the Peoples' Assembly and the minister of finance over the raise. He believed that the former's reservation on the percentage of the raise was merely for electoral purposes. Kheir confirmed that the raise was a presidential matter and that in a few days time, presidential recommendations will be issued to increase the raise from five to seven or even 10 per cent. He lamented that the minister of finance did not stick to his suggestion to abolish the raise and invest the money earmarked for it in various production sectors to provide nearly 50,000 job opportunities. "Who is going to pay the price of the rise in unemployment rates at a time when all the crimes committed for the purpose of murder tied to burglary are carried out by the unemployed?" Kheir asked in Al-Dostour. Swine flu is still causing a scare although no cases have been reported in Egypt. Refaat Fayyad, who had to travel to Germany last week on a business trip, left Egypt with fear. He expected to find a similar scare in Germany. However, to his wonderment, he found hardly any signs of fear from the disease. When he inquired about the reason, the answer was that Germany is not afraid because the factors leading to the spread of swine flu among citizens are few and if any infected cases are found, they can be immediately controlled. Fayyad reiterated the situation in Egypt where pig farms are in dense residential areas in which they mix with people, other animals and birds. In addition, the pigs' food comes from rotten garbage that is sorted by humans, so eventually everything gets contaminated. Fayyad hailed the government's decision to cull all pigs in the country and then move their farms away from residential areas. However, he added in Akhbar Al-Yom that what remains is applying environmental requirements which reduce the pollution of farms and accordingly reduce the emergence of infection among pigs. Swine flu is not new, will not end and can change. In human influenza, the virus returns every year in a new form. Similarly, swine flu started in Mexico this year after it united with the bird flu virus and then moved to humans. Ahmed Ayoub satirically commented on the government's campaign to restrict hugs and kisses to control the disease. He wrote in the independent daily Nahdet Masr that it is not difficult to cull all pigs to protect citizens from swine flu and it is not impossible to slaughter all birds to protect us from bird flu, but it is impossible to stop kisses among Egyptians. This does not need a campaign, but a miracle from heaven.
