It’s one of those stories that could happen to anyone. You meet, fall in love, get married and your partner ends up as president for life due to running a series of dodgy elections, locking up the opposition and billions of dollars of support from the United States. The icing on the cake is that your son is set to inherit his daddy’s job. What do you fill your time with?

Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak’s solution is to campaign on the issue of human trafficking. It’s described as “the third largest criminal activity worldwide, after arms and drugs. It is an increasing global scourge affecting all sectors in society Approximately 2.5 million people are trafficked every year (ILO, 2005). They are recruited or transferred through some form of coercion or deception and exploited, mainly for forced labour or sexual exploitation. Women and children are the primary targets but men are also trafficked.” Pretty unpleasant stuff in anyone’s book.

Mrs Mubarak’s allies in this noble fight on behalf of the world’s oppressed and voiceless include Countess Albina du Boisrouvray, Amr Badr (Board Member, The Suzanne Mubarak Women’s International Peace Movement – yes that peace movement), Her Highness Princess Basma bint Talal and Queen Silvia of Sweden. A rough looking crowd.

Of course it’s better that they have opted to take a stand against organised crime rather than coming out in favour of more rights for drug smugglers and calling for the United Nations to legalise slavery but when you watch Mubarak on one of those CNN ads which she is using to plug the charity you don’t have to be an expert on contemporary Egypt to find the whole thing very incongruous.

Begin with her “peace movement”. She could use her influence to open up the borders with Gaza, or at least take part in one of the aid convoys. Instead one website reports “recently Philip Rizk, an Egyptian-German dual national was arrested for organizing and participating in protests supporting non-violent resistance in Gaza as well as demanding that Egypt open the Rafah crossing.”

After that there is the whole business of what makes people pay thousands of dollars to be smuggled to Europe from Africa or China with no certainty of getting there alive and the prospect of years of hyper exploitation. One of the reasons is that they live on places not too different from the society that the Mubarak family has ruled since 1981. A small middle class and those above them lead lives of comfort and, in some cases, virtually unimaginable wealth. The rest of society endure decades of poverty and relies on subsidised bread to get by. Take a short walk away from some of the hotels for European tourists in Egypt and you step into another universe. Even the mass tourism hotels have unlimited buffets, top class rooms with all the water you want and often a couple of swimming pools. In some of the local homes women have to carry the water from a well and the kids have no shoes. The Mubaraks are probably not in close contact with that side of their own country though they must sleep more soundly knowing that if the locals did complain too loudly about their situation they’d be guaranteed a good thrashing from the cops.

When you are rich, bored and the country is the family business you have to find something to do. Yet when these people seek to do something vaguely worthy their utter blindness to the contradictions of their own position makes the result farcical. It does not help when the owner of the second most punchable face on the planet, Richard Branson, emotes in the same ad.

Much odder still on CNN is the little video of Silvio Berlusconi which pops up just after a news item and before an advert where he starts talking about the importance of family values. It may have been a dream or there was some hallucinogen in my tea but I’m certain I saw it.