Good Thing He Didn't Call the Kid Twitter

There is a free newspaper called mX which gets handed out at railway stations, apparently under the mistaken apprehension that somebody wants it. Actually calling it a newspaper skates dangerously close to a violation of truth in advertising laws and frankly I think it is overpriced nevertheless I get it most days. I get it for two reasons; firstly I feel sorry for the tree that died to produce it and secondly it is a great repository of human stupidity or to put it another way I use it as source material for my blog. Anyone who had any lingering doubts about the quality of the writing here should now have them pretty much laid to rest. The lame brained rubbish squatting in the pages of mX is grist to my mill.

On an unrelated note, what is grist? I'm sure there is a mill fanatic out there who can answer me.

In the "newspaper" the other day, in between a picture of Lady Gaga getting off a train and a piece on decorators robbing a police station, was a little snippet about an Egyptian man who has named his daughter Facebook presumably in honour of the social networking site's contribution to the early departure of ex President Mubarak. Not a bad idea for a name really, the only thing I can think of which might be more appropriate is if he named the girl Prolonged Period of Military Rule but that probably wouldn't fit on the birth certificate.

Yes the Egyptians have finally rid themselves of their dictator which only goes to show that a fake democracy is still better than a blatant tyranny. Mubarak left because various members of the power structure he built were sufficiently in tune with reality to know they had to toss the public a bone. Mubarak was the bone. Whether the public gets anything more remains to be seen. Across the border in Blatant Tyranny Land Colonel Gaddafi is washing the streets of his cities with blood. The Saudis are probably hoping he can cling to power, if any more deposed dictators wind up in Saudi Arabia they will be able to form their own minority group.

What exactly are we going to do if the Arab nations all become democracies? No quiet little torture cells, deniable prisons, proxy soldiers and the like. What will we do? Democracy could set the cause of democracy back decades. Besides how are western nations supposed to deal with countries that change their government every four or five years? The world is going to be in chaos. The Arab sections of our foreign ministries will have to actually do some research rather than just dusting off the same ten year old situation report every time a politician asks a question. The backlash has begun already. Not in the Arab world, for the moment they seem quite keen on democracy. Its the democracies that seem to be a little nervous about it.

Several knowledgeable and experienced commentators (they must be knowledgeable and experienced, they've been interviewed by the media) have wondered aloud if the Arabs are quite ready for democracy. Its a perfectly valid question, I have frequently wondered aloud if the Americans, British and Australians are quite ready for democracy. I think we all agree that the French won't be ready for democracy for at least another thousand years. Germany and Russia are definitely ready for democracy but that is largely because we've seen what happens when they don't have it. In Russia you can still see it.

I think the Arabs are ready for democracy personally. As one wanders around the "Arab Street", as people who want to pretend they know something about the subject are wont to call it, one can see a breathtaking combination of ignorance, stupidity, prejudice, irresponsibility and self interest masquerading as national pride and concern for others. Seriously, these guys already have democracy, all they need now is the vote.