Egyptian Military Junta Jumps the Shark, Interrogates Islamist Muppet

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http://www.juancole.com/2014/01/egyptian-interrogates-islamist.html

Egyptian Military Junta Jumps the Shark, Interrogates Islamist Muppet
By Juan Cole | Jan. 2, 2014

When the venerable al-Ahram newspaper, then under the control of the government of Hosni Mubarak, published the allegation during the 2011 revolution that the crowds were just coming down to Tahrir Square for KFC chicken, it was the beginning of the end of the Mubarak establishment. It might have survived being repressive, brutal and incompetent. It could not survive being viewed as ridiculous.

The military regime that came to power in a coup on July 3 has put January 25 revolutionaries in jail for protesting and has used brutal methods to clear sit-ins by the Muslim Brotherhood. But it is demonstrating a bizarre paranoia in its latest moves.

Vodafone had produced a commercial for the Egyptian market featuring muppet characters Abla Fahita and her daughter Karkura. Ms. Fahita speaks to an off-screen character, Mama Tutu, whom one television pundit, Ahmad Spider, accused of being symbolic of the now-proscribed Muslim Brotherhood. Spider had earlier maintained that the 2011 revolutionaries were a conspiracy of Freemasons.

The Egyptian government prosecutor general then actually asked the state security office to investigate the commercials. A Vodafone executive said “I don’t know what to say, I’m sad that we have reached this level of thinking…” The state security prosecutor interrogated him on Wednesday, asking if the muppets were transmitting secret code for the Muslim Brotherhood.