Nobody Likes the Secret Police

In order to enforce the rule of despotic leaders nations like Egypt, Tunisia, Algiers, KSA, et al use a network of rats, moles, spy's, etc... on their own population.  If a military commander becomes too charismatic or popular, his helicopter meets with an unfortunate mechanical problem; if your uncle talks too much while drinking and gambling at dominos, the goons show up and take him for a visit to the "Back Room"...  You know, that nice place where those nice Law Enforcement people attached jumper cables to your wedding tackle?

The media battle to sway American public opinion is in full swing (remember Jeffers Media Theory: No story makes it into the MSM without sponsorship from a very powerful special interest group). "Iran's leader say Egypt heading for an Islamist Revolution!"

ROFL!!! LMAO!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA LOL!!!!!!

Dude, they are going to string you up on the Yardarm soon enough! Two years ago, Iran was able to steal the election and crush the opposition... now I doubt they last the year. 

The battle between the West and the Islamic extremists has been forever changed by the power of the internet.... and not just the Islamic extremists... ANY religious extremism is going to be brutally overcome by the Web.  The same forces that are going to wipe the floor with the former bottleneck (choke point) in our educational system have made it very difficult to come up with uninformed believers.

Remember the movie "The Da Vinci Code"? Released in 2006, filmed in 2005, based on the 2003 book by Dan Brown... the book inflamed many Christians who simply were not informed enough of their religion to know of the significance of the Council of Nicea.  These types of incidents are to be no more in the era of the Web (I saw street demonstrations in Nashville after the movie came out. Unreal.)

Have a position? Be prepared to defend it, to others AND yourself, in the face of TRUTH.  Abortion? Death Penalty? War? People support things that they have been censored from seeing, things they support in the abstract... that censorship has been permanently lifted, and when people see the truth of a thing they frequently feel differently than when they only think of it in the abstract, or when they have been pitched by charismatic snake oil salesmen.  Just ask anyone who has seen the physical results of an actual abortion... or who has been to Dachau or Hiroshima... 

All of the major religions have made massive changes and admissions because of the advance of science, some more than others. The earth is NOT the center of the universe. The sun does NOT revolve around the earth. The earth is NOT 6,000 years old. Man shares the same genes found elsewhere in the natural world. Some of these dogmas are harmless to believe (and none of them suggest that G-d does not exist, either)... others... like the justifications used to kill infidels... not so much.

The Arab world, and the larger Muslim world, is being affected by the information age just like everybody else, and all of their regimes are doomed.  The problem for the West is that the West liked those regimes.  They could be bought, and cheaply.  They were only too willing to sell out their people and keep the Oil flowing at rates that met the agendas of the ruling classes.  Those days are drawing to an end.

Politically, voters in the West will blame whoever is in office when the people of the Middle East and North Africa come to their senses on their oil resources... and therein lies the rub... and rub it will, and roil our politics, too... and we'll get over it. One way or another.