“Does the media feel good? Then congratulations are in order!”, Ezra Levant quips:
Congratulations to Iran, which has for years done its best to undermine Egypt, the largest and most powerful Muslim counterweight in the region. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn’t been a tyrant as long as Mubarak. But Ahmadinejad proved during Iran’s own rigged elections that a successful dictator doesn’t let democracy activists rally day after day in the streets — they are immediately thrown in prison, or just killed. No messy protests are allowed in the Islamic Republic of Iran — unless their hate is directed at Ahmadinejad’s enemies.
But most of all, congratulations to the journalists of the mainstream media. As always, this revolution was about them — just ask them. More media attention was given to the fact that CNN’s dreamy anchor, Anderson Cooper, was roughed up by protesters than was given to investigating the anti-women, anti-secular, anti-Semitic, anti-western ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, though they’re the likely victors of any “election” that might be held in coming months.
AdvertisementMost of today’s journalists are too young to have covered the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, so this was their moment. So they are weepy cheerleaders, not reporters. And they are only too happy to say “ditto” to whatever Al Jazeera tells them is happening.
The fact that some of Egypt’s protesters use Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter is so flattering because journalists love those too. Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood also uses Twitter and blogs, just as Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeinei used audio cassettes in 1979 to spread his Islamic revolution.
And let me congratulate myself for my exquisite hatred of Mubarak, a hatred that predates the current fad. I savour this moment of jubilation and vindication. And I will wait until tomorrow to contemplate my new emotion — a deep fear that, like the fall of Iran’s shah in 1979, things are about to get far, far worse.
Don’t worry, the president also thinks that Egypt is about him as well, as Levant also writes.
Related: Michael Barone on “The Risk That 2/11/11 Will End up Like Iran’s 2/11/79.”
(H/T: 5′F)
“…just as Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeinei used audio cassettes in 1979…” Ouch! That’s a very interesting micro-quip. I’d like that point tweeted to about 100 newscasters.
Today’s journolisters in Egypt are historically challenged children. It has been simply pathetic watching them all cheer for Democracy in Egypt. Clue – There is no Democracy possible in a Muslim State with Sharia Law and the Muslim Brotherhood is going to be the winner here.
95% of Egyptian Muslim women have had clitorectomies. This barbaric procedure is “Islam” in action. Sharia Law will subjugate the remaining Christian Copts even more than their abject status in Egypt today.
MSM – you are truly uninformed fools. God damn your incompetence.
There is a Google representative in Egypt who is claiming credit for this putsch. If he were to have an equivalent in Iran or China or any place under the protection of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization and the helpful protection of experts from the People’s Public Security Bureau and said Google employee were to offer an opinion or attempt to use his expertise in social networking to organize a demonstration then said person would likely get returned to Mountain View California, strained through a sieve into a glass jar.
We know there’s no equivalent to this heroic Googler in the PRC – since Google itself worked as an arm of the Chinese state, turning over dissidents to the goons in Beijing.
That’s my point. They had strong incentives to cooperate and beat a hasty retreat when they realized that not only did they have to betray their customers to remain in the market and not only were the Chinese government fully intending to extract their engineering secrets and intellectual property as imperial tribute but that they were dealing with people who really were professional killers that viewed their pretensions with the same contempt that Harry Ellis elicited from Hans Gruber in “Die hard.” It would not surprise me in the least if one of the wittier Chinese with familiarity with the West had a horse’s head left in Eric Schmidt or Mark Zuckerberg’s bed.
The reason the Mubarak regime could not crush their opposition as effectively as the Syrian, Iranian or Chinese can was due to local conditions. First it proves that the Egyptian regime was a relatively mild by Middle East standards Authoritarian and not a Totalitarian Dictatorship. They were adapted to coexisting with a strong presence of foreign observers and a tolerated minority. The military sees their future and that of their nation in association with Europe and not in isolation or submission to a foreign Caliphate. In this they may resemble the Turkish model. Second they did not have a core of despised alien barracks troops prepared to act as an occupying army in their own cities. Truly repressive regimes know that they are always potentially at war with their own nations. The Chinese brought in troops from Inner Mongolia to replace the Beijing garrison and crush the students in Tien An Men. The Iranian Mullahs rely on Arabs in the Revolutionary Guards to terrorize their people. Most Arab regimes, including the minority Alawite based Syrian, rely on long service military contingents that are kept isolated from the general population. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded using such a militia, the Ikhwan. Later it was itself transformed into the current KSA National Guard.
Today’s reporters, like today’s liberals think in terms of TV episodes. Thinking that it can be solved within the scope of a mini-series or, a set of encounter-group psych-sessions.
For all the Journo-libs’ projection of the multi-culti rationale, there’s little understanding of the world around them, that doesn’t revolve around them.
I thought you meant that it is about Egyptians not about Israel, America or Iran.