A YouTube video spoof of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi has tickled the Arab funny bone, even though the creator is an Israeli.
The setting, the circumstances, and Qaddafi's wild exclamations, cadence and gesticulations provided the perfect combination to spoof the Libyan madman.
Addressing the Libyan population on February 22 from the bombed-out remains of the place where President Reagan had attacked in the 1980s, Qaddafi set himself up to be mocked. He swore to hunt down his enemies "inch by inch, house by house, home by home, alleyway by alleyway."
Qaddafi repeated the Arabic word for alleyway, zanqa, which 31 year-old Israeli satirist Noy Alooshe tweaked as "zenga" as he altered the Libyan former leader's speech with computerized pitch correcter technology and set to music by American rapper Pit Bull, as performed by T Pain. Alooshe edited the footage and added images of a gyrating young woman dancing to Qaddafi's rant set to music, and called the video "Zenga Zenga."
According to the New York Times, Alooshe uploaded the techno hip-hop spoof on YouTube and promoted it on Facebook and Twitter to Arab political activists.
The video was an instant hit, generating more than 500,000 views in a few days (and more than 800,000 as of this posting). But even though some Arab and Muslim viewers didn't like learning that the satirist was an Israeli Jew, most who commented seemed to appreciate the video, with some even asking Alooshe to create a new video without the scantily-dressed dancing woman, so they could show it to their parents, the Times reports.
Libyans were already laughing at Qaddafi as he made the speech, but Zenga Zenga has propelled the dictator's defiant rant into Arab pop culture.
One viewer, presumed to be with the Libyan opposition, wrote Alooshe that once Qaddafi falls, “We will dance to ‘Zenga-Zenga’ in the square.”
With Muammar Qaddafi on the run as his regime falls to the Libyan people, ordinary citizens who lived under more than 40 years of dictatorship can finally laugh at the man who tormented them.
Time magazine covers the story from the dusty town of Tobruk, where a group of Libyans crowd around a television in a roadside cafe to watch Qaddafi's rambling, babbling speech amid the fallout of popular revolt.
"In 'Free Libya,'" Time reports, "people are laughing at Muammar Gaddafi as he goes on and on in a speech, dressed in a traditional outfit called a jard."
The viewers, though poor, "now have the luxury of poking fun at the man who once had the power of life or death over them. 'He has a hole in his shirt,' one says. 'Now he is a poor man!" another shouts. They all laugh.
"The men feel they can now call falsehoods for what they are."
"The crowd tonight was very angry from the Gaddafi speech," one local man tells Time. "He views us like his farm, his cows. And he told us, 'If you don't stop the revolution, I will fight you with the Community of Sahel-Saharan States [An economic union founded by Gaddafi in 1998], with Chad and Mali and Sudan.' And he said all of this is not the beginning of the fighting. But I think it's his last hours. For us, we are laughing at him."
The US or other countries can take quick, decisive action to undermine the Qaddafi regime in Libya - at almost no cost and with little organization.
President Obama should order the US military to jam the Libyan regime's communications. Simple, non-lethal electronic warfare activities carried out off Libya's coast can blind the regime, destroy its command and control, and isolate the leadership from one another and from the instruments of force.
We don't know who the Libyan rebel forces are, but and there's a danger until we know who they are. That's no reason not to help Libyans destroy Qaddafi's government and the dictator personally.
These flights can take place out of Europe or from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Cheap, easy and decisive.
As the Chinese regime steps up the sophistication and tempo of its international propaganda operations, the United States government is curtailing a mainstay of providing unfiltered news and information to the most restive large areas under one-party control.
The Voice of America (VOA) has announced plans to terminate its shortwave broadcasts into rural China and Tibet, citing cost-cutting measures and its move toward more digital programming.
Rural China and Tibet have been major sore points for the communist regime.
Farmers have led grassroots revolts against official corruption and taxation without representation. Because they do not have access to digital media, they depend on VOA shortwave broadcasts to stay informed.
“China has appropriated $7 billion on international propaganda in the past two years,” an Obama administration official close to VOA tells Bill Gertz at the Washington Times. “In 2011, CCTV [PRC state television] North America in Washington, D.C., plans to increase its reporters from 12 to 20 people. Meanwhile, VOA Chinese staff will be cut over 50 percent.”
Meanwhile, promised reforms at VOA's scandal-plagued Persian broadcasting unit are slow in coming, as this blogger has heard firsthand from dozens of Iranian democracy activists.
The office of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, the cleric-controlled judiciary and the security forces have agreed, until now, not to go after opposition protesters too aggressively for fear of creating martyrs as they did when they murdered Neda Agha-Soltan in 2009.
But in Iran's "parliament," regime allies want the opposition leaders dead - and they want it now. Take a look at this video, shot today, February 15, 2011, inside the Iranian "parliament" and brought to us by the Confederation of Iranian Students. A large number of members begin chanting, "Mousavi, Karroubi, Khatami must be executed." More and more members join in, egged on from the leadership at the dais:
Those being targeted for death aren't even the ones calling for regime change - they're merely advocates of "reforming" but maintaining the Islamic Republic.
The three are: Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as the Islamic Republic's prime minister from 1981-89 and ran against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 election for president as leader of the Green Movement; Mehdi Karroubi, a follower of the late Ayatollah Khomeini who chaired "parliament" from 1989-92 and, by regime standards is considered a "reformer"; and Sayyid Mohammad Khatami, a cleric and former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran who is also a "reformer" in comparison with the present leadership.
In short, those who brought the world the Islamic revolution and plunged Iran under shariah dictatorship are now bent on devouring one another.
History shows that this can't exist for long - if the "reformers" cave in to preserve themselves, they will lose their own support base and will radicalize Iran's young people beyond all control; if they end up siding with the young people who want a secular democracy, they will have had a hand in destroying what they built. Either way, the system is unsustainable.
By publicly and enthusiastically calling for the deaths of these three former regime officials who seek mere reform, the pro-regime members of "parliament" are hastening the death of the Islamic Republic.
History also shows that, in times like these, regime figures will start to defect to the intractable opposition. That's good news. The world should be encouraging those defections and be welcoming and merciful to regime figures who switch sides.
Time to keep up the pressure in the streets, friends!
After more a year of low visibility, Iran's internal resistance movement showed itself in cities across the country today. Iranians of all ages took inspiration from the people's revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt despite being attacked with paramilitaries on motorcycles, tear gas and electric prods.
The size of the demonstrations appeared to take Islamic Republic authorities off guard, in what the Washington Post called a "surprisingly large" show of opposition. Here's what CNN reported tonight:
The Islamic Republic announced it would hold rallies in support of the Tunisian and Egyptian movements, trying to put an Islamist face - or perhaps providing open political support for covert operations - on Facebook-based protests. However, it forbade opposition groups from taking to the streets to voice their solidarity with the Tunisians and Egyptians.
On February 8, internal reform leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who heads the Green Movement inside Iran, announced plans for nationwide solidarity protests on February 14 - the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
Mousavi's call came after an unprecedentedly broad group of Iranian expatriates and exiles met at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, to set aside their differences and unite for the first time against the regime. The three-day Iranian Democratic Transition Conference, led by former political prisoner Amir Abbas Fakhravar, was sponsored by the Center for Culture and Security at my school, the Institute of World Politics.
The IWP-sponsored event occurred on the birthday of the Iranian regime's murder of democracy protester Neda Agha-Soltan, an underground musician and singer who has become a martyr's face for the democratic resistance. Neda's parents and her fiance, Caspian Makan, supported the conference. Makan tried to attend but could not get a US visa in time.
The regime of mullahs has been in a quandary about what to do with pro-democracy leaders, fearing that arresting them would turn them into political martyrs or "saints."
The Islamic Republic's propaganda machine, especially the mouthpieces of the Revolutionary Guard, attacked the conference, singling out Fakhravar and other organizers by name. Regime agents intimidated some Iranians from attending, and IWP received death threats. One of the invitees who could not attend, political prisoner Arzhang Davoodi, secretly issued an audio message to the conference that the Confederation of Iranian Students brought out of prison. When news of that message got out, prison officials beat and tortured Davoodi and carried him to a solitary part of the prison. He has not been heard from since. See the video of his message, below:
The conference took place January 22-24, coinciding with the toppling of the regime in Tunisia and the beginning of protests in Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Jordan. Iranian student activists came from across Europe, Asia and North America, as did some inside Iran who participated on Skype.
As the Egyptian protesters demanded President Hosni Mubarak's resignation, Fakhravar, who heads the Confederation of Iranian Students and is a research fellow at IWP, issued a statement in Arabic warning the Egyptians about the mistake Iranians made in 1979 when they toppled the shah and welcomed in an Islamic Republic. Fakhravar urged Egyptians to learn Iran's lessons and to maintain a pro-western, secular republic.
As of the night of February 13, protests were planned in at least 41 Iranian cities.
People showed up across the country on February 14, though the regime was able to clamp down on news coverage and cut Internet and mobile phone service in selected areas. Even so, Iranians posted videos on YouTube and Facebook, and circulated them by email and phone.
Al Jazeera reported many thousands of people in Tehran, calmly walking peacefully, with a massive presence of police, undercover police and Basiji paramilitaries:
In some places, the crowd was more spirited, amid reports of sporadic beatings and arrests at the hands of the security forces. An amateur video shows Basijis on their trademark motorcycles corralling people down a street and sidewalk, and about 1:05 into the video the paramilitaries take out their truncheons and begin beating people before the videographer flees:
Thus provoked, people start resisting. The next video shows protesters climbing the side of a mosque to tear down a poster of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Basiji paramilitaries can be seen through the window, hiding inside the mosque:
A man identified as a Basiji paramilitary tries to rescue the poster, mistakenly believing that he has intimidated the crowd. But the people are unafraid. They throw the regime's solidarity-with-Hezbollah propaganda back in the paramilitary's face, saying they want regime change: "Na Ghaza! Na Lobnan! Tunis o Misr o Iran!" ("Not Gaza! Not Lebanon! Tunisia and Egypt and Iran!"). The protesters turn on him and beat him senseless:
Chanting that Khamenei should meet the same fate as Mubarak, the demonstrators then try to set the Khomeini/Khamenei poster afire:
It will be interesting to see how the news reports put together the pieces of today's February 14 protests across Iran. The good news is, the internal opposition movement is very much alive.
And thanks to Fakhravar's Iranian Democratic Transition Conference last month, the external opposition and lead student movement are united for the first time ever. Below is a promotional video released prior to the event:
