It's hard to be an Egyptian revolutionary these days. You gave your blood and sweat to overthrow Hosni Mubarak last year -- but now one year later,some of the most senior officials from theancienregimeare leading the pack to replace him. It's a trend that appears toonly be accelerating:Multiple pollsthis week showed Ahmed Shafiq and Amr Moussa -- Mubarak's former prime ministerand foreign minister, respectively -- as leading the pack in the May 23-24elections.

Shafiq and Moussa have long been dismissed by protesters asfelool("remnants") -- officials fatallycompromised by their association with the old regime. The word's veryconnotation suggests that they will eventually be swept away in the new order --but judging by their showing in the upcoming elections, rumors of theirpolitical demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Shafiq's pitch to voters is simple: Only he has the experience necessary to restore Egypt to stability and prosperity."He has material, tangible results. You can feel them, you cansee them. He's not talking what he could have done," Shafiq spokesman Karim Salem said of the former minister of civil aviation."When you land in Cairo airport, or any airport in Egypt, you can feel thedifference."

Sure, you might ask, but is it really compelling to toutone's experience in a regime that was, after all, overthrown by the Egyptianpeople? To hear Salem tell it, Shafiq's role was largely bureaucratic."[Shafiq] was a core professional. He would take whatever assignment, do it,and succeed with it," he said."You can't say from an absolute perspective thateverything [under the previous regime] was corrupt, everything was bad -- therewere good things too."

Not everyone is buying that line, of course. From a smalloffice off Tahrir Square, Khaled Ali, the self-styled candidate of Egypt'srevolutionary youth, dismisses the experience of his rivals."Well, I don't have abackground of suppression and killing the revolutionaries," said the40-year old lawyer."I don't have background of silence and submitting underdictatorial rule. [We will see] if the people want to have this background fortheir candidate."

But Ali is stuck in the low single-digits in most polls, at thebottom of the pack. His plight is symptomatic of the larger weaknesses ofEgypt's left, which has found itself squeezed out of power by the old guard andIslamist candidates. Ali pointed to the seven seats won by the leftist"Revolution Continues" alliance and the roughly two dozen seats won by Egypt'sSocial Democratic Party in the recent parliamentary election to make the casethat the left hasn't been left completely out in the cold. But even given agenerous tally of leftists in Parliament, they appear to make up less than 10percent of the 498-seat body.

That leaves Egypt in a very dangerous place. Politics inCairo has moved toward the ballot box in recent months, but there is still acore of Egyptians who find legitimacy in the streets and will  protest en masse should they believe their revolution is being stolen from them. And if they find themselves faced with a choice betweenformer Mubarak officials such as Amr Moussa and Ahmed Shafiq, they will do just that.

Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator is not the only political comedyto hit the screens recently. North Korean local TV has aired a"satire on therat-like Lee Myung Bak for his high treason,"accordingto an article last weekfrom Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea'sstate news agency.

The article quotes from the show, which it calls a"comicchat," and which itself reads like a satire of North Korean satire:

Lee Myung Bak, a rat born in Osaka of Japan, left millions of peoplejobless, many of them killing themselves, and thus turning south Korea into akingdom of suicide unfit for human beings... Traitor Lee Myung Bak and hismilitary hooligans like Kim Kwan Jin and Jong Sung Jo have been deleted fromthe list of human beings.

If anyone has seen this show, please do let me know.

TheToronto Starhasposted some selectionsthis week from its archive of columns by Ernest Hemingway, who worked at the paper from 1920-1924 and served for a while as its European correspondent. The highlights are probably his crime reporting fromprohibition-era Chicagoand some earlybullfighting coverage. But with all the European currency news, I was amused by his column advising Canadians on how tolive frugally in Paris:

PARIS—Paris in the winter is rainy, cold, beautiful and cheap. It isalso noisy, jostling, crowded and cheap. It is anything you want—andcheap.

The dollar, either Canadian or American, is the key to Paris. Withthe U.S. dollar worth twelve and a half francs and the Canadian dollarquoted at something over eleven francs, it is a very effective key.

At the present rate of exchange, a Canadian with an income of onethousand dollars a year can live comfortably and enjoyably in Paris. Ifexchange were normal the same Canadian would starve to death. Exchangeis a wonderful thing.