back to article Russia blames Google for Egyptian revolt

Russian deputy prime minister and energy minister Igor Sechin has blamed Google for unrest in Egypt, accusing the search giant of "manipulations of the energy of the people". The comments were made during an apparently ill-tempered interview about the investment climate in Russia with the Wall Street Journal. The interview …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Most Western politicians don't understand the interwebs

    so there's not a great deal of hope for the Russkies

  2. Drefsab

    right......

    So the people would have been perfectly happy if it wasn't for google? So it takes someone like that to cause a revolution? Well its good job that googles a new thing otherwise history would be dotted with people kicking tyrants and despots out, wait there.... :)

  3. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Sechin needs to brush up on his sources

    He mentions Marx in one place but seems to forget the Lenin's maxim that

    1) For a revolution to take place there must first be a revolutionary situation

    2) A revolutionary situation happens when the working classes no longer want to live as before while the ruling classes can no longer rule as before.

    I doubt Google executives could arrange that even if they really wanted to, but it is even less likely that any of the said executives would have decided to leave a nice office in Mountain View to go to Egypt, of all places, to work as an underground revolutionary, even only as an adventure holiday...

    1. Graham Marsden
      Coat

      @Sechin needs to brush up on his sources

      Perhaps he should have googled for them...

      1. TakeTheSkyRoad

        "even only as an adventure holiday"

        That sounds like a proper adventure holiday !

        White water rafting ? Pah...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Kind'a

      Quote: "A revolutionary situation happens when the working classes no longer want to live as before while the ruling classes can no longer rule as before."

      That is a description of half of the world. It takes an active involvement of a foreign power (not necessarily a state, anyone with resources can do) interested in a regime change to exploit the situation.

      There are many different ways of exploitation like shipping a Lenin across half of Europe in a railway cargo carriage, sponsoring pseudo-dissidents and keeping the first new president on your payroll, payments to appropriate organisations from "democracy supporting foundations" and so on.

      Further to this, even after a situation has been exploited, it takes money to finalise the exploitation. If you do not have the money to feed the "thick necks" to police the protest on your side you end up with provocators and idiots becoming the face of the protest.

      Example - the student protests in London this summer. I have run a "small" (national size) student protest myself a few decades back and I can tell you first hand - 30 minutes after we had the main uni building occupied a "friendly gentleman" from a "sympathetic union" was there with a briefcase full of notes. I was young and stupid then and I did not want to go into politics so I counted the steps of the main staircase with his bottom and ran the whole thing purely on public donations. I have understood however why the leaders of the previous protests about a year prior to that were driving brand new BMWs.

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: Kind'a

        "It takes an active involvement of a foreign power (not necessarily a state, anyone with resources can do) interested in a regime change to exploit the situation."

        No foreign power will ever be able to make a revolution among people who content and are not ready to revolt themselves.

        To say otherwise is like repeating that nonsense about butterfly in Asia causing a hurricane in the Mexican Gulf, yes, you need a trigger for any thermodynamic process but first you have to store the energy required for that process to take place.

        Water starts boiling around microscopic impurities and bubbles of air but no matter how much crap you put in it it won't boil until you heat it to the right temperature under the right pressure.

        The foreign conspiracy theories things are always nothing but fairy tales for easily impressionable, spread by the people who fear that the chairs under them are shaking.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    A new branch of SEO?

    Government Optimisation Techniques? :D

  5. Disco-Legend-Zeke

    Child Names In Egypt:

    Google ---0

    Facebook --- 1

    Twitter __a cuter name.

    Kill Switch ___too Goth

    1. The Fuzzy Wotnot
      Happy

      Kill Switch?! Seriously?

      You owe me a screen and keyboard!

      "Now class today we......Kill-Switch Andrew Jones will you please sit down!"

  6. James 5

    Politician ...

    ... not a scientist, not a web developer, not a technologist, not an engineer. Why does anyone value what pig-ignorant politicians say?

    1. lglethal Silver badge
      FAIL

      Because unfortunately...

      ... pig-ignorant politicians (is there another sort?) have a lot of sway and power to affect the lives of people by the decisions they make in parliament.

      Need i remind you of George Dubya? He wasnt a scientist, a web developer, a technologist or an engineer, but i think its fair to say he had a bit of an effect on the world... im sure the Iraqi people would agree with that...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Conservative member

    "Sechin is a long-time ally of Putin and seen as one of the more conservative members of the cabinet."

    Doesn't stop him being mad and mentally deranged.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      POST YOUR OWN MESSAGE

      "Doesn't stop him being mad and mentally deranged."

      But it might -start- him...

  8. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Happy

    Oh come on!

    I dislike Google as much as the next Goole-hater, but FFS how stupid are these politicians? Google might be a "Nasty-Corp(tm)" but inciting revolution in North Africa is not something I would attempt to pin on them, even in one of my rant moods!

    1. Andy ORourke
      Joke

      too tru

      Google would rather people stayed at home clicking and clicking bringing in those revenues!

  9. MinionZero
    Happy

    Hidden small print in their words... & playing Falling Dictatorship Bingo!

    @"Russia blames Google for Egyptian revolt"

    Because they fear their puppet dictatorship could be next!. After all, when Putin removes his puppet government at the next *"elections" he wants his job back!.

    * = I use the word "elections", in the time honoured context that has been used by all dictators. Oh hang on, that’s Machiavellian, two faced, lying, cunning and duplicitous dictators.

    By the way, its not Google, its the whole Internet!. People all around the world are finally comparing notes about their own tyrannical two faced bastards in power over them and surprise surprise, we all find our tyrannical two faced bastards over us all have the same pattern of Narcissistic behaviour!

    Reading the news these days feels like playing Dictatorship Bingo! ... who will be next? ... So far we have for example, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya. I see the Saudi King has today announced increased benefits for his people. Funny how they only start caring about their people, when their people start protesting! So who's next?. Clearly this news shows Russia is more than a bit rattled. Meanwhile Greece yesterday had 30000 people march on their parliament!.

    The Dictatorship Bingo number I'm most waiting for people to finally get totally fed up with, is Putin's old friend in Italy, non other than Mr two faced crooked himself, Berlusconi.

    Its about bloody time the tyrannical greedy two faced bastards of this world were made to look over their shoulders. They show they don't have empathy for their people, so they need pressure on them, from their people to make the tyrants think of their people!

  10. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    According to BBC,

    "Google executive and prominent internet activist Wael Ghonim" is one of the leading Egyptian revolutionaries. And "former UN atomic energy chief, Mohamed Al-Baradei" is now talking about running as President - he previously was talking about not running as President.

    So anyway, that's what it's got to do with Google: one of their senior blokes apparently used his 20% of time to work on personal projects to overthrow a Middle East government that was next door to Israel in more ways than one. This may have been done in order to put something interesting to read on Google News, and YouTube.

    Personally I expect each of these revolutions to generate a new Somalia or possibly Dafur/Darfur, I forget which spelling it is and a certain news search engine isn't helping me to decide... suspicious?

  11. copsewood
    Gates Horns

    All politicians

    Are 2 faced, in the sense when you learn you got something wrong you have to either persist in wrongness or change your mind. When you have to do a deal based on positives and negatives which add up differently from how they did when you made promises before an election you've sometimes got to change your mind.

    That is part of the nature of reality which inherently sucks and it doesn't matter what the name of your party is. We're all as bad as each other in these respects.

    Not the same as living in a country where you can't vote us out and another bunch of fools/jokers in instead.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    The Russians never take responsibility for their lot in life

    The Russians never take responsibility for their lot in life, they always pretend they are someone's "victim" to justify everything, especially their disproportionate responses to things. So it's no surprise they'd blame something like Google for the Middle East people's revolts, rather than accept that the populations finally reached a point where being fed up created more pressure than fear of the regimes.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Russians?

      Considering that Russians carried out the biggest fracking revolution in the history of the world to date your generalisation sounds somewhat hollow...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        And then followed the revolutions of February and October

        With a civil war that lasted until 1923 and killed at least a couple of million

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    not a scientist, not a web developer, not a technologist, not an engineer.

    Seriously, "a web developer"? I've yet to meet "a web developer" who rose to the same intellectual level as the "scientists" and "engineers" I know. As for "technologist", that's even worse.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tim Berners-Lee

      Did OK for a web developer.

  14. Chris Hunt
    Paris Hilton

    Valley girls?

    > Other officials objecting to Western support for the unrest said revolutions often

    > start like February, but end like October

    Have the officials concerned perhaps been spending too much time in California?

    "These revolutions often start like February but, like, go on for ages and end like October".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      It's not funny if ...

      ... you have to deliberately leave out the immediately-following explanation that made sense of the preceding part of the sentence to try and make it look funny. It just makes you look like you didn't read to the end of the line.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        But it is funny if...

        ...as the article implies, the original quote did not include the explanation. I mean, can't you imagine a blonde, busty Russian politician with a surf board?

    2. Zero Sum

      To Chris Hunt: Metonyms?

      Isn't he using "February" and "October" as metonyms here? Or is there a more suitable term?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Metonyms

      In the article, "February" and "October" are used as metonyms (if that is the right term). It was you who added the extra "like,".

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    In good company

    Blaming google for the revolt sounds as stupid as crediting google (or twitter or whatever) with the revolt.

    For me, I'd put my money on 20+ years of popular resentment.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Russia has 'one of the world's most stable political systems'

    In the sense that Vladimir Putin always seems to be in charge, I guess that's true.

    1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Stability

      Is what comes prior to volatility...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Kinda like

        when a volcano hasn't erupted for a while.

    2. Loki 1
      Joke

      Democracy

      Its a democracy. One man, one vote. Putin is the man, he has the vote.

  17. NogginTheNog
    WTF?

    Google's fault?

    So Google's responsible for toppling thieving repressing murdering dictators now??!

    Fuck me I may even buy an Android phone then! :-O

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Oh come on!!!

    We all know it was Facebook, not Google, that is responsible

  19. asdf
    FAIL

    funny that

    I thought the huge spike in food prices had more to do with it than Google. Heck one could argue the wikileaks cables showing that the former Tunisia leaders were even more corrupt and richer than their public image had more to do with this movement starting than Google. Sounds like autocratic Russia feels a bit threatened.

  20. Hans 1
    WTF?

    Google?

    There was one Google exec imprisoned, Ok, but that was about it ...

    Let's be stupid and believe the conspiracy theory: it was Google, Google has the power to topple dictators and Russia brought it out to the world .. great ... which dictatorship will be next to go tits up? Krml

    So we will soon see if it was all google ....

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Russia is next

    Next on the block , one russian government ready to be thrown out by it's people.

    Any takers ? Gentlemen .. place your bets.!

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