Egypt Starts the New Year by Launching War on Muppets

Well, not actually Muppets™; the Jim Henson folks weren't involved, but Egypt's defenders of truth, justice and the Egyptian way have uncovered a sinister plot by one of the country's biggest telecom companies to send coded messages to Muslim Brotherhood plotters of terrorist attacks via high-budget, professionally produced television commercials using puppets. I am not making this up. From AP:

Ahmed "Spider," a self-styled youth activist known as a strong supporter of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, says code about an upcoming attack is included in the details of the puppet ad.

Fahita and her daughter Karkoura search for her deceased's husband sim card, while explaining to her friend over the phone about another character "Mama Touta." In the background, a radio anchor explains how to make "stuffed turkey" for Christmas while sitting next to a cactus from which ball ornaments were dangling. She says she asked the building guards to get a sniffer dog of a shopping mall to search for missing things and gets money in return.

Spider explained the alleged code on the Al-Tahrir network on Tuesday night: the mall and the dog refer to the planned site of the attack, and "Mama Touta" is the Brotherhood's secret name.

"The dog, garage, guard, mall and next to us these are elements tell us that there will be a big mall and an explosion after a dog . fails to find the bomb in a car," Spider said. He said he filed a complaint with Egypt's prosecutor general who referred it to state security prosecutors, who handle terrorism and other political allegations.

Because television ads by major telecom companies are how terrorist groups communicate secret plans  to their plotters.

Yes, it started with paranoid talk show hosts, but now the Ministry of the Interior is going after the alleged offenders, Vodafone. George Orwell, please call your office.

I've been trying to decide how to comment here. Options:

1. Scathing sarcasm skewering the stupidity of it all seems appropriate until you realize the innate menace of delusional paranoia in high places, especially high places with powerful coercive apparatus at their disposal.
2. Spewing incoherent rants and extreme profanity: seems personally and emotionally satisfying but contributes little to the debate.
3. Finally realizing I love Big Brother and hate puppets as enemies of the state.
4. Just taling about it and letting you make up your own mind, but then the puppets might brainwash you!

Ahmad "Spider" is a Mubarak loyalist also accused of being an agent of influence of the security services. Piling on as well has been the Faraeen network of Tawfiq Okasha, often called "Egypt's Glenn Beck" but taken way more seriously by people in high places, who spends much time on the threat of Freemasonry, which is of course behind the Israeli-Zionist-American-Muslim Brotherhood plot to destroy Egypt.

The Economist notes the issue; (their Pomegranate blogger "M.R." sounds a lot like Max Rodenbeck), and one of the fuller explanations comes from Zeinobia, who also provides us with the offending ad:

Oh. My. God.

Sarah Carr, who has been far too silent of late, nails it as usual:

Sometimes it seems that Egypt does extreme tragedy and extreme comedy and nothing in between. As a result, living in this country is a bit like cohabiting with someone with a hormonal imbalance.

Egypt dazzled the world today with the revelation that a puppet is under criminal investigation. The particulars of this case are too traumatic to recount in detail, and can be read about here, but in summary telecom giant Vodafone is accused of employing a popular puppet, Abla Fahita, to send coded terrorism messages in one of its adverts. As evidence of this the instigator of the case mentions:

1.A cactus tree
2. A christmas bauble
3. Mama Toutou

The instigator concerned is non other than Ahmed ِElsayed AKA Ahmed Zbaydar, apprentice of late night television king and Freemason botherer Tawfik Okasha. Zbaydar is a lisping streak of piss who is no stranger to hair gel and who fancies himself a spy hunter.

He has been wafting about in the public sphere since 2011 when he shot to somewhere roughly 392 kilometres north of fame by appearing with Okasha and dropped earth shattering revelations about Freemasonry. He went on to fight the good fight for his beloved country by defaming opposition activists on his Facebook page. Both he and Okasha really came into their own after June 30 when their dire warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood being a secret Freemason organisation directed by Israel and America merged with popular suspicion of, and discontent with the group. And so they were brought out of the twilight slightly, along with that other grand wizard of bollocks Amr Mostafa, a music composer who also runs a Facebook page where he currently spends most of his time wishing death on members of the Muslim Brotherhood and getting many likes for doing so. His latest coup (insert joke here) was a series of illegally-got recordings of telephone conversations between opposition types in which nothing of any import was said. They were broadcast on a satellite channel with much fanfare.

And so it seems that this grand civilisation of 7,000 years is once again being held hostage by buffoons. Every country has its Glenn Beck type public figures, the difference in Egypt is that they are taken seriously where it suits the political ambitions of those at the reins and serves a useful purpose. Thus we have the Public Prosecutor accepting a complaint about a finger puppet while nobody has been charged for the deaths of nearly 1,000 people at Rab3a, because the current mood is almost fascistic in its reverence for the state and for state hegemony and for state opponents to be eliminated. If there was a page equivalent to We Are All Khaled Said now it would be Turns Out We Are All Adolf Hitler. Comedy and tragedy often overlap.