Facebook Liberates Egypt

Are you on Facebook? If you aren’t you are truly the exception to the rule. Facebook is a worldwide phenomenon, and it now can take credit for liberating an entire country. Egypt, a country that has been existing under a cloud of a cruel dictatorship for 3 decades is now free of its dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

In three short weeks, and coming in reaction to Tunisia’s successful removal of its dictator, Egyptian protests, at times turning violent as Mubarak sent armed thugs in to make trouble, have finally stirred the Egyptian Army to withdraw its support of Mubarak. And with no backing from the Army, Mubarak had to leave.

The Egyptian Army is in charge now.

But getting back to the central thesis, all of this came about because of Facebook.

From the Associated Press through the Chron:

“Perhaps most surprising was the genesis of the force that overthrew Mubarak. The protests were started by a small core of secular, liberal youth activists organizing on the Internet who only a few months earlier struggled to gather more than 100 demonstrators at a time. But their work through Facebook and other social network sites over the past few years built greater awareness and bitterness among Egyptians over issues like police abuse and corruption. ‘Facebook brought down the regime,’ said Sally Toma, one of the main protest organizers.”

This is remarkable. I don’t think anyone ever suspected that social networking would ever do anything more than hooking people up and passing around recipes and photographs of your kids and vacations.

If Facebook can liberate an entire country, what could possibly be next? A cure for cancer? The perfect cup of coffee?

An end to conservatism as we know it?

The possibilities are limitless, it seems.

Cheney and Palin: Gas Emissions on Mubarak

Those not in power – thankfully – still can’t agree on everything, can they? Take for example the former Veep and the former Veep wannabe, Dead Eye Dick Cheney and former Half Governor Sarah Palin.

Both Cheney and Palin are holding forth on their opinions vis-à-vis the fate of soon-to-be ex President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Cheney at the Reagan Centennial in California, and Palin on the radio.

It seems Dick Cheney is again critical of the Obama Administration’s handling of the crisis in Egypt, saying that too much said in public is most certainly a bad thing.

From MSNBC:

“Cheney said the U.S. should take measured steps in public, and suggested that too much pressure could backfire. ‘There is a reason why a lot of diplomacy is conducted in secret. There are good reasons for there to be confidentiality in some of those communications. And I think President Mubarak needs to be treated as he deserved over the years, because he has been a good friend.’”

Not surprisingly, Sarah Palin has a different take on this.

Also from MSNBC (but not the same article):

“Sarah Palin says the Obama administration must tell Americans what it knows about who will be Egypt's next leader. In a Christian Broadcasting Network interview released Saturday, the 2008 vice presidential candidate says the administration should level with the American people on what it knows about the Egyptian crisis.”

You would think then, that these two are so far apart in their opinion on this that I might find myself falling behind one or the other and you would be mistaken if you think that. And that is because unlike these two gasbags, I have an idea that it should be the Egyptians that should have a say in who will be their next president, not Obama, not Cheney and certainly not Sarah Palin.

Now They All Want Freedom

I should have seen this coming. We should have seen this coming. Tunisia rids itself of a decades-long dictatorial regime after a few days of protest, and now nearby Egypt is on the brink of ridding itself of the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak has been in power since Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981. Nearly 30 years.

The main problem that the protesters have is that they don’t hate the Egyptian army. They actually like them, even though they are there expressly to bear arms against them now that peace has broken out between Egypt and Israel.

And whoever controls the army controls Egypt.

But throwing the people a bone, Mubarak went ahead and said he was going to dissolve his government – except for himself, that is.

So here is my question: is it going to stop here? Or is Syria next? Or Libya?

I like it that people want freedom and opportunity in an area where neither has been especially prevalent since practically forever. But what disturbs me is that this movement seems to be tinged with religion, and we all know when we read the Old Testament that when religion and politics has mixed in the Middle East, when people start to smite each other, giving their deity full credit for their deeds, that’s when I get a little uncomfortable with freedom and opportunity.