You've probably heard of the butterfly effect – an idea in chaos theory where some small event, such as a butterfly flapping its wings, can trigger hurricanes, tidal waves and other cataclysms.

In order to avert such crises in the future, Dr Makhboul Rasmi, a scientist at Azhar hospital, has come up with a plan to exterminate all of Egypt's butterflies, and he'll be presenting a paper on the subject at the Copenhagen Climate Summit next month, according to El Koshary Today.

It's completely untrue, of course. The story is mocking the Egyptian government's ludicrous decision last April to slaughter all the country's pigs in the mistaken belief that this would prevent the spread of swine flu.

El Koshary – named after the cheap but filling Egyptian dish and billing itself as "Egypt's most reliable news source" – was created by web designer Tarek Shalaby, and good luck to him. 

I've often thought there's far too little satire in the Middle East. But perhaps that's because the reality is often so bizarre that satirists can't improve on it. Anyway, all we have to do now is sit back and see who will be the first blogger or news organisation to pick up one of El Koshary's stories and report it as fact.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 2 November 2009.