Lee Smith: In Bin Laden-ruled Syria, No Cell Phone Camera = Death Sentence…
Why? you might ask. Well, because they can share their story and what’s going on. So writes our dear Lee:
You starve a population by denying it food and water, but to cut off its electricity is, in today’s media climate, effectively a death sentence. Without the ability to recharge the cell-phone cameras that have documented the Syrian uprising from its outset, demonstrators will be consigned to a silent death.
This is quite a remark for Smith, who literally sighed with exasperation as he declared recently that the uprising in Egypt was not driven by social media (‘driven by’ is his strawman formulation; ‘facilitated by’ is what most observers say). Okay, he doesn’t say here that the Syrian uprising is ‘driven by Twitter’, but surely it’s these cellphone camera videos are important not just for historical documentation, but also because they are distributed to the public via social media.
I don’t want to be crass, but I think Smith is just pissed that he’s not getting pictures and videos for his demonization campaign against the Syrian government. It’s not as if the Syrian authorities need any help looking like assholes, but Smith is happy to oblige by tapping into the recently re-exposed nerve of 9/11 (as, let’s be honest, neoconservatives are wont to do). The headline on his piece reads: “Bin Laden Lives in Syria”. I guess it’s fair enough to give Smith his totally unnecessary smear campaign, but I shudder to think what his policy prescriptions would be.
No word yet from Smith about how his Strong Horse theory about Arabs is holding up (hint: it’s like a chocolate chip cookie that’s been left in milk overnight).
