03.25.12

All they need is Facebook and that Google guy, right?

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 11:24 am by George Smith

Remember when Facebook and that Google guy freed Egypt from tyranny?

It worked so well I went to Cairo last week to see the New Digital World’s Fair of Democracy and Freedom expo. Indeed, I have been posting on my Facebook page all this week from the bank of the Nile. I just didn’t geo-tag it on my wall.

Tom Friedman on the power of Google Earth to free the downtrodden from tyranny, March last year:

While Facebook has gotten all the face time in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, don’t forget Google Earth, which began roiling Bahraini politics in 2006.

Tom Friedman, lecturing the gullible at a university:

Friedman also noticed that the most explosive group of citizens were young men who used Facebook as a means of rallying protestors. Friedman compared these Egyptians to a tiger just let out of its cage, dangerous and unpredictable. They were ready for a change and did not care if the rest of the world was ready. Friedman used this example to warn students about the hazards of posting information for the world to see. Once the citizens pressed “enter??? on their Facebook pages, the protest was forever immortalized in the cyber world. Nothing could be changed, and the world would soon see the effects of their electronic planning.

Tom Friedman today, Facebook and the Google guy gone missing:

The young Egyptians who drove the revolution are desperate for the educational tools and freedom to succeed in the modern world. Our response should have been to shift our aid money from military equipment to building science-and-technology high schools and community colleges across Egypt.

Yet, instead, a year later, we’re in the crazy situation of paying $5 million in bail to an Egyptian junta to get U.S. democracy workers out of jail there, while likely certifying that this junta is liberalizing and merits another $1.3 billion in arms aid. We’re going to give $1.3 billion more in guns to a country whose only predators are illiteracy and poverty.

Build science and technology high schools and community colleges? What they really need is more Facebook and Google guy pixie dust, right?

So where is Facebook Google guy?

“Wael Ghonim attended the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in 2011, stating that ‘I feel like Joe the Plumber,’ referring to the conservative activist who became a shorthand for populist outrage during the 2008 U.S. presidential election,” reads his Wiki page.

“In April 2011 Ghonim announce he was taking a ‘long term sabbatical’ from Google in order to start a ‘technology focused NGO to help fight poverty & foster education in Egypt … In May 2011 Ghonim said that he has signed a ‘Revolution 2.0’ book deal …”

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