Rant on.

The situation in Egypt is a little scary.  Okay, it’s a lot scary.  Some political experts are expecting revolution to break out anytime.  Meanwhile, Egypt’s embattled leader continues to pretend he’s in charge of things, forming a cabinet for his administration while riotous mobs of his citizens are crying for him to leave office.  If he’s paying any attention to the ugliness of the situation, he’s not demonstrating it very well.

One thing Mr. Mubarak–or at least the Egyptian government–did was to shut down the internet for the entire country.  This is probably one of the worst things he could do, in my opinion.  Cutting people off from information which in today’s world drives everyday lives is going to cause as much unrest as anything else.  It won’t stop people from communicating their unhappiness; the aforementioned riotous mobs are testimony to that.  All it seems to be doing, quite frankly, is pissing people off.

Seventy years ago, when World War II broke out, governments understood communication was vital to everything they did.  They took over radio stations and broadcast propaganda to convince people they were doing the right thing.  When they silenced radio stations, as I understand it, reaction was minimal.  Sure, there was unhappiness, but few folks got boiling mad over it.  The internet, however, is not radio, and the reaction to its removal is more severe.  The Egyptian government has also cut off cell phone services.  To put it simply, this is not going to end well.  Radio is and was informational and entertaining to people, but the internet and cell phones are how people get through their days in modern times.  Cut off a lifeline or even two and instead of plunging people into ignorance you’re pissing them off.

Here’s a little perspective on this:  The Arab world is not known for looking favorably on the English-speaking world.  At least one protester’s sign I saw in a news story, however, was written in English.  The Egyptian people want the world to know how upset they are, and they’re willing to say it in something other than Arabic.

Some might point out my little blog is an odd place to rant about the Egyptian situation.  I don’t often talk about international topics.  I do, however, rant about censorship and attempts to infringe on people’s rights.  I see parallels between what’s happening there and what could happen here in the U.S.  I don’t think any group would try to take down the whole internet, but I know there are those who would censor it.  The recent and ongoing Wikileaks cable release incident (cablegate, if you insist) is evidence of this.  Officially, the U.S. stands against censorship, but when its bigger secrets are at stake, it appears to have no problem trying to keep them out of the public eye.

Being the liberal I am, I see other ways ignorance is promoted.  The Creation Museum in Kentucky is one.  Okay, technically that might be promotion of misinformation–all the scientific evidence of dinosaurs indicates they died out before even the earliest of humans were around but the CM says otherwise–but it leads to ignorance of well-proven facts.

This was not my original plan for today’s rant, but my original plan wasn’t a terribly good one.  As it happens, though, part of it fits into the theme of ignorance.  I was going to talk about Sarah Palin, wondering how she has such political power in light of her misunderstanding of so many things.  For example, she recently suggested Sputnik was the reason for the downfall of Russia in the Cold War.  For those who don’t know, and Sarah Palin is somebody who doesn’t or at least didn’t know, Sputnik was the first man-made satellite put into orbit.  Its launch kicked off the space race between the U.S. and the USSR, a race not concluded until America put a man on the moon.  The Cold War, however, went on for more than two decades after man reached the moon, three decades after Sputnik’s launch.  Although it might be argued the space race was part of the Cold War, it certainly did not bring it to an end and in particular Sputnik did nothing to cause any problems with the USSR.

My point is education is vital to everything.  One who enters into a situation without knowing the facts is likely to lose to one who does know what’s going on.  Governments influenced people with misinformation or lack of information in WWII using radio.  Now the Egyptian government is angering its people by withholding information access.  This only works when people don’t know what they are missing.  I suppose this means there are two kinds of ignorance:  The direct kind, where one does not have information, and the deliberate kind, where one has knowledge but chooses to ignore it.  The Egyptian government seems to be participating in the latter by attempting to push the former on its people.  As I said before, this is not likely to end well.  Ignorance of any sort rarely does.

Rant off.