Blogs Feb 15, 2011 at 9:22 am

Comments

1
Can someone help me with parsing that?
2
He just saw that on the daily show like everyone else.
3
The people who actually performed the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, while they acknowledge the convenience of Facebook, point to rather a different set of models than social-network-obsessed American commentators: Jan Palach, the Czech student who immolated himself after the failure of the "Prague Spring" in 1968, and the despair that set in after, and who was 20 years later an inspiration for the successful "Velvet Revolution" in that country. Also, to some extent, the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine.
4
One creaky old man was -not- running Egypt, the military was running it. He's gone, they are not. The names of the corrupt front-men have changed. As in the US, (seen the budget news?) the military gets what it wants.
5
Fnarf is correct. Way too much credit is being given to facebook, et al.
6

Charles, you can ruin anything.

Is ANYTHING good in your book?
7
yeah fnarf.... it was the white guy that inspired it... not these Egyptians who have most recently set themselves ablaze...

Abdou Abdel-Moneim Jaafar- Egyptian – Jan 17th 2010
Mohammed Farouk Hassan- Egyptian – Jan 18th 2010
Ahmed Hashim El-Sayyid- Egyptian – Jan 18th 2010 died on Jan 18th 2010
Mohammed Ashour Sorour – Egyptian – Jan 18th 2010

not that you aren't an impeccable commenter otherwise...
8
@6 He's partial to Beyonce's ass, if I recall.
9

2004 Presidential debate.

George Bush to audience after rambling, discursive, flip-flopping statement by John Kerry:

Did you understand what he just said?

10
Oh c'mon Charles, I was so close to agreeing with you for once. Granted, the point of it being inappropriate to give all the credit to Americans despite the fact it was the Egyptians who set themselves free was made my Jon Stewart already, but it's still a good point. Then you had to make it odd and opaque.

Actually, @Fnarf isn't entirely off the mark, though he is overstating the direct importance greatly. Egyptians were not inspired by Czech students, they were inspired by Tunisians. However it wasn't 100% spontaneous. The April 6th movement had been planning a January 25th protest for months, and were fortunate that Tunisia inspired Egyptians at the exact right time to maximize impact. The leader of the April 6th movement visited the Czech Republic to learn tactics from the original dissident leaders. They taught him about how to keep it nonviolent, how to stay on message, how to move around etc. Al Jazeera, which is like CNN but actually good, had a reporter with the April 6th movement in the days before January 25th, and hence was right in the middle of it when it exploded, and has a great documentary to show for it.
11
@7, yes, and those immolations were preceded by and inspired by Mohamad Bouazizi in Tunisia on December 17th of last year. Bouazizi was in fact the Jan Palach of Tunisia, as any number of Tunisian commentators have pointed out. I'm not just making things up.

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