Showing posts with label Hosni Mubarak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hosni Mubarak. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

It's time to raise the 'Cuckoo's Nest".


WARNING! WARNING! Beware of the new meme coming from the wingnuts about Egypt: The uprising over there is being led by Communist and Jihadist and not by ordinary people who just want to be free from Mubarak's iron grip.

Apparently we get to decide when the will of the people is a good thing. If the people have free will but make the wrong choice with that freedom that is not a good thing. Saddam bad. Mubarak good. No, wait, both bad, but Mubarak supports our interests in the region, so Mubarak good for us...or something like that.

Anywhooo, one of the reasons I love to blog is because I get a chance to read what the conspiracy nuts and FOX followers are saying. (They leave comments on this blog all the time.) It's one crazy rant after another. A world view so bizarre and out of touch with reality that one really has to wonder what these folks are breathing for air. (Comparing Obama to Mubarak and Pharaoh?)

Their leader, for the moment, is one Glen Beckkk. And his take on what is happening in Egypt pretty much sums up the mindset of my wingnut friends.

I will let David Neiwert tell it:

"Like Steve Benen, I'm beginning to wonder if our favorite Big-Time Wingnuts are about to implode under the critical mass of their own overpowering wingnuttery. It seem as though Sarah Palin's bizarre "WTF" rant of the other night -- while not particularly spectacular in the context of a political career rich with embarrassing moments -- may have been the pebble that finally tipped even her reflexive defenders in the other direction. (You sure can't find anyone outside of Planet Palin who will defend it.)

Then there's Glenn Beck in the past couple of days. Conor Friedersdorf's reaction reflected the consensus: "the fact that Roger Ailes and his associates air this kind of nonsense –couched in these kinds of assurances! – is indefensible." As Benen says:

Over the last year or so, Fox News' Glenn Beck has lost about a third of his audience, which is a pretty significant drop, and may very well lead the deranged media personality to think of ways to bring viewers back.

One way, for example, may be for Beck to be even more creative when sharing crazy visions of global affairs. Yesterday, the strange man did his best to explain events in Egypt with a take that really has to be seen to be believed. Chris Hayes called it "a tour de force of paranoid ignorance," which sums it up nicely.

As you can see, all he's really doing is reinforcing what even some of Beck's Believers are now beginning to realize: that he's an ignoramus peddling cockamamie conspiracy theories with no regard to facts or truthfulness.

You see, Beck believes that events in Egypt are the culmination of conspiratorial forces he's been railing about for some time now -- essentially revolving around an obscure book by French anarchists that nobody is actually reading, The Coming Insurrection.

Basically, Beck foresees a Middle Eastern "Caliphate" overtaking Europe and China controlling big chunks of new territory, all fueled by a "Marxist" and "Islamist" conspiracy:

I believe that I can make a case in the end that there are three powers that you will see really emerge. One, a Muslim caliphate that controls the Mideast and parts of Europe. Two, China, that will control Asia, the southern half of Africa, part of the Middle East, Australia, maybe New Zealand, and God only knows what else. And Russia, which will control all of the old former Soviet Union bloc, plus maybe the Netherlands. I'm not really sure. But their strong arm is coming. That leaves us and South America. What happens to us?

Then Beck went on Bill O'Reilly's show and explained the nutshell version:

BECK: No, I think we're actually possibly the witnessing Archduke Ferdinand moment. Archduke Ferdinand was the guy who was killed -- shot, a few months later started the First World War. I think we're in real danger.
..
BECK: I understand that, but what you're not taking into account is that that is what the average person thinks, just like the average person on the street of -- of Cairo thinks they're swept up in some freedom movement. It is not about freedom. It is being orchestrated by the Marxists, communists and primarily also the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sean Easter and Todd Gregory at Media Matters have a thorough roundup of the madness, and conclude by observing:

All of this was offered up in service of his theory that the protests in Egypt are the manifestation of The Coming Insurrection, an obscure book that French police believe was written by a member of a small group of anarchists. Beck has repeatedly described the anonymous author (or authors) of the book as "communists." He's tied George Soros and President Obama to The Coming Insurrection, as well.

So, a diverse group of the Egyptian people are in the streets protesting an autocratic leader, and Glenn Beck has decided that this is directly connected to an anonymously written anarchist tract from France that he's been obsessing about for the past two years?

Normally, we are in the business of debunking the falsehoods and smears that Beck promotes. But how do you debunk pronouncements that quite obviously bear no relationship to reality?"
[Source]

Ahhh David, you can't. You can only listen and thank your lucky stars that you were born with a brain.

Friday, January 28, 2011

"A friend in need..."


"So much trouble in the world now Bless my eyes this morning
JAH sun is on the rise once again The way earthly things are going
Anything can happen"

Bob, (Marley) you speak truth.

Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist for over thirty years. Like others before him, with a similar ruling style, he has been an A-merry-can ally (1.5 billion is a lot of money) in a very volatile region of the world. So now what? His chickens, as the saying goes, are finally coming home to roost.

Egypt has a very young -and very unemployed- population, and they have taken to the streets. From the looks of it, they could be there awhile. Mr. Bush, if you had only waited this is what would have happened in Iraq. But noooo. Sorry folks, I couldn't resist.

Anyway, Hillary and Obama are scrambling like #7 on a Sunday afternoon at the Linc. They are trying to get on the right side of history. But, as Run- DMC so famously said: "It's Tricky".

If they come down too hard on Mubarak and speed up the revolution the end result could be the Muslim Brotherhood taking over. Not a good look if you are an A-merry-can. Don't come down on him and A-merry-ca will look like she is siding with an evil dictator who doesn't want to relieve himself of power pursuant to the will of the people. Again, not a good look.

What 's a president with a Muslim name to do?

O man here is a suggestion for you: Call your boy Hosni and beg him to step aside. Tell him that you will personally have him and his family escorted to a beautiful villa in Malibu where the A-merry-can government has laid it out with all the trimmings for him. Then, pray that the people of Egypt have democratic elections and a moderate government takes power. With any luck the joint will look like Turkey in twenty years.

Now this is all assuming that he will take your call. The pundits are already saying that you got the people fired up in Egypt with your little speech back in Cairo over a year ago. So let's just hope that Hosni isn't watching CNN.