Red Sea disaster

It seems unbalanced to be posting about the Danish cartoons while having little to say about the Egyptian ferry disaster that has probably left 1,000 people dead. While theories have moved on from speculation that it might be a replay of the Zeebrugge capsizing in 1987, it's beginning to look like the Egyptian government will have much explaining to do. While comparisons are being drawn with other ferry disasters, another place to look might be the Flash Airlines crash of 2 years ago, which killed all 148 on board when a charter plane plunged into the Red Sea; in the crash investigation it emerged that the airline was very poorly regulated and would not have been allowed to operate in Europe.

Similar regulatory failures seem evident here -- and this just a few weeks after Egypt made a big show of holding up the decommissioned Clemenceau aircraft carrier, en route through the Suez canal to Goa for dismantling, on the grounds that the ship contained asbestos (which everyone knew long ago). It seems that while the bereaved in the Flash Airlines crash had the advantage of a foreign government (France) to press their case, the victims in the ferry disaster are mostly poor migrant workers and their families who don't figure much in the domestic political calculus. We'd also like to investigate further whether it's the case that Egypt's orientation on the Nile valley has led it to generally neglect issues in the Sinai peninsula and Red Sea coast, with the result that chronic failures like those seen here can persist with catastrophic consequences.