{"id":17850,"date":"2011-02-03T05:45:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T11:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17850"},"modified":"2011-02-03T10:50:38","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T16:50:38","slug":"whatever-happens-in-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17850","title":{"rendered":"Whatever Happens In Egypt…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…at least something <\/em>good happened<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No, I’m not serious.\u00a0 What do you think I am, a leftyblogger?\u00a0 I don’t believe in “karma”, but I think what goes around comes around, so I have to believe there’s at least a little <\/em>cosmic payback going on for his “teabagger” slurs from two years ago.<\/p>\n

Still – while I believe Anderson Cooper is a poster child for the Hollywooding of the American “news” media, Violence, especially physical violence, is a bad thing.\u00a0 People – please, stop hitting each other<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There is <\/em>a more important, and sinister, story behind this; there appears to be a push by pro-Mubarak forces to push the western media away from the story.\u00a0 There’s a method to the madness; they’ve seen how radicals the world over (and there’s at least a fair case to be made that there are radicals behind, and using, the popular unrest for their advantage) use the western media, especially American media, to manipulate world opinion, frequently with grossly-mangled context.<\/p>\n

Liberty as we understand it in America is a wonderful thing – one we should try to export.\u00a0 But before you can have liberty, you must have stability, and the rule of law.\u00a0 Is Egyptian society stable enough, and are their society’s institutions mature enough in their approach to the idea of the rule of law, to be reasonably sure that what replaces Mubarak will be better?<\/p>\n

In Turkey, one can reasonably say “I think so”, and support the case.<\/p>\n

In Iran?\u00a0 Michael Ledeen has been making that case better than anyone in the media for half a decade at least.<\/p>\n

Tunisia?\u00a0 Syria?\u00a0 Egypt?<\/p>\n

Sorry to say, I’m less hopeful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…at least something good happened. No, I’m not serious.\u00a0 What do you think I am, a leftyblogger?\u00a0 I don’t believe in “karma”, but I think what goes around comes around, so I have to believe there’s at least a little cosmic payback going on for his “teabagger” slurs from two years ago. Still – while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17850"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17854,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17850\/revisions\/17854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}