While The World were caught off guard and deep surprise and shock when the uprising occurred in the Middle East , starting in Tunisia, continuing on to Egypt, causing Mubarak to resign, and so on to other Arab Countries, guess who predicted this revolution 10 years ago? PM Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech at CPAC February 17, 2001 at the Ronald Reagan banquet:
Watch the Speech on C-span
Below is the transcript:
Watch the Speech on C-span
Below is the transcript:
"I can tell you that simultaneously there is another process that is taking place.... It is the information revolution that is beginning to collapse the totalitarian regimes of our time. This is the first real change that is producing not only economic changes, not only social changes, but enormously important political changes. Because up to now, technology has really been at the service of dictatorships...
"The greatest service that dictatorships have received in the 20th century was this thing, the microphone. And the microphone would give a single dictator the ability to control the minds and hearts of millions of people, to tell them who is the enemy, who are the well poisoners of the earth, who are the cancer that has to be excised. That's how Israel was referred to in the Middle East. That's how the Jewish people were referred to in the heart of Europe by the Nazis.It is the power of the microphone, the power of mass communications, controlled from above, that was the greatest threat to freedom in the 20th century".
"We are witnessing the breakup of that monolithic control. Because you now have, or very soon will have, millions of people, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people, ultimately billions of people, who can access networks of information and communication from below, who can become their own broadcasters, or narrowcasters. And that is fundamentally eroding the power of dictatorships...."
"If you want to see where that is also changing, it is changing in Iran. Iran has 200,000 satellite dishes and Internet use. I once spoke to the head of the CIA, and I said: Look, if you want to encourage a change of regime in Iran, forget about all this standard CIA stuff. All you need are these bigger transponders to beam forth "Beverly Hills 20050" and "Melrose Place," Because the young people in Iran see these very nice houses and these nice cars and these swimming pools and they say, "We'd like to have that, too." And this is causing this enormous tension between this totalitarian Ayatollah regime and the forces of reform. I believe that this change is inevitable. I believe that the march of freedom is wedded to this collapse of technological control, of broadcasting control.."
"So, I'm telling you today, right now, that all those regimes outside the Middle East and inside the Middle East their time, as presently constructed, is running out. And they're going to have to modify themselves or collapse. One of those two things will happen. Now, I grant you, it's not going to happen overnight. I grant you, too, that in the Middle East it'll happen last. And they're going to try to build dams and walls to prevent that from happening. But ultimately I think it's likely to happen. But the race now is on. What will happen first? Will the change, the reformation of those regimes, the more democratized or less dictatorial version of these regimes, come into being, or will these regimes acquire the weapons of mass destruction that could prolong their life and increase the danger to all of us? That is an open question. It's not clear what will happen first."
"But it is clear to me that we have to make every effort to do two things. The first thing is to understand in which era we live. Until that day happens, we have to make sure that our policies are based on deterrence and standing up to aggression, The second thing we have to be sure of is that we do everything in our power, in the time we have available, to defend ourselves. ..."