>>Paul Mason: Bassem Youssef, it struck me while you were talking that indeed you have
leveraged the power of new technology and social media.
I've been -- every revolutionary I meet says to me, "Look, don't overestimate the power
of technology.
This is not really technology.
It's about Oz, it's about God, or it's about democracy," but really the technology is fascinatingly
powerful, isn't it.
>>Bernard Kouchner: Yes, it is.
>>Paul Mason: What do you think about that?
What would you say -- where does this go?
Because once the cork is out of the bottle, the genie is out, where is it going to end?
>>Bassem Youssef: Well, there's two sides of it.
First of all, 10 years ago, social media didn't have that much of leverage or effect on how
things were viewed, but we -- we really have to put it in their own -- its own side.
It's not a Facebook revolution.
It's not a YouTube revolution.
It's just part of it.
Because in Egypt, we only have less than 30% penetration of Internet.
So you have 70% of the people living out there that doesn't know anything what's going on
on Facebook.
The mistake that people in social media -- the social media gurus on Twitter and Facebook
think that if they create a Facebook page, that they will actually change things.
It doesn't.
Because so many -- I mean, I remember the referendum, a year ago when we had the referendum,
the "yes" or "no" on the amendments, and of course the religious groups were advocating
for "yes" and everybody else, like our generation, will select "no."
And if you look at Facebook, it's like, oh, my God, it's going to be like a 70/30 or an
80/20 "no" vote, and it was a 78% "yes."
We were shocked because we had actually to get out of the bubble.
Yes, of course it is a very good aiding tool, but it's not everything.
We just have to put it in its own perspective and we actually have, at the end, to work
on the ground, because the poor person with kind of a minimal socioeconomic level will
listen to the guy who gives him food, who gives him support, who talks to him in the
mosque, not the guy behind a screen on a keyboard making Facebook pages.
>>Paul Mason: Srdja Popovic, can I just ask you as well?
I mean, in the time since Otpor, you know, overthrew -- helped overthrow Miloshevic,
you know, that's -- I think -- I don't remember having broadband in 2000, to be honest, let
alone the social media.
How has it changed in the time you've been -- in the essential dynamics of these revolutions;
people power, as you call it?
What has technology done to change it?
>>Srdja Popovic: Well, I mean, in 2000 when we were launching our last campaign against
Miloshevic which was named "He's finished" -- and he was finished -- we were so happy
to discover the small GSM cards which you can put in your laptop, sending 20,000 text
messages with no trace.
And we thought this is the top of the -- this is how high technology can go.
And now it's something the commercial companies advertise this way.
It's a little bit expired.
There are three things which new media are doing to the -- these movements.
First of all, they make things faster and cheaper, so it -- I mean, organizing a rally
10 years ago, meaning putting posters, spreading leaflets, going door to door takes time, takes
risk, people get arrested, and of course cost.
Then, you know, it's like now we make a Facebook group and everybody grows.
But I would agree with my Egyptian friend.
It's like don't mix tools with substance, because substance is happening in the real
world.
Second, a very important thing is that the new media really put a price tag on state-sponsored
violence, because everybody is a reporter now and it was very easy for (indiscernible)
to do slaughtering harm some 22 years ago and, you know, kill 20,000 people.
Now, you know, you upload everything.
Very important for me is how this knowledge spreads, which is like what Farah was talking
about.
It's like now the knowledge spreads from one group to another very fast, and my big question,
because I'm always getting back to this over and over, I had a tremendous session with
a resigned British diplomat, Carne Ross, in New York a few weeks -- or few months ago
and we was talking about what the outsiders can do to help this movement.
Okay.
We have this refrigerator and we have sanctions and bombing there, okay?
This is most -- what most of the outsiders think about these movements.
And what else than that?
Educating people is one.
You know, educating 80 people costs like one rocket launcher, so it's like, you know, thinking
about the terms of the effect.
Then second, what if we can make an application which will efficiently help you to face the
oppression and make the oppression backfire?
Is it worth investing money?
So I mean, there are so many different things from safe communication platforms.
One of the beauty of the Skype is that it's very difficult to trace.
So technology was backwards, but those -- surveillance technology was backwards.
Now the technology is upwards and the governments are using powerful technologies to surveil
people.
So technology is one side of the thing.
Education is another side of the thing.
But for me, the question of all questions is what we can do to have these processes
without interfering into them.
Like empowering people by giving them knowledge, by giving them means to do stuff rather than
interfering.
>>Paul Mason: And that's a very weird question to be asking, especially if you're a social
or economic historian or just an amateur reader of these events.
It was not many of the revolutionary events in history that had a business community,
a democratic -- a preexisting democratic international diplomatic community that was even asking
it the question "How do we help without interfering?"
I mean, that's something that must be high on the State Department's agenda.
>>Farah Pandith: Well, of course it is, but let me point this out -- and I'm not saying
this just because we're at Google -- look at what Google Ideas did.
They understood that there are lessons to be learned from networks around the world.
They have built the first platform of its kind made by a private sector company's money
and ideas to pull together a worldwide network of former extremists -- IRA, former Islamists,
blah, blah, blah, on and on.
How wonderful!
How out of the box!
How important it is that it wasn't government that did that; that it was nongovernment that
did that.
My challenge to all of you is: What are you going to do?
How are you going to think about this?
This is about youth.
This is about how we think about the next generation.
And some of the tools we talked about, there's education, there's leadership training, there's
all that kind of thing, but there's also building the platforms that private sector money can
do, or the convening that they can do.
So it is challenging if it's just government because we're not the credible voices here.
>>Paul Mason: There are some corporations -- and even some social thinkers -- who might
say, "Okay, well, that's fair enough and it's motherhood and apple pie and great, but almost
in every country and every region, there are large sections of population that are naysayers.
The 20% in France who voted for Marine Le Pen, the 5% in Greece who voted fascist, the
people who are die-hard supporters of Miloshevic, and the people in your country to whom Muslim
empowerment is not a key attribute they like to hear about.
So what -- why should business associate itself with a -- one set of ideas, progressive, democratic,
liberal ideas, when large parts of the population don't buy those ideas?
>>Farah Pandith: So we're not talking about Muslim empowerment.
What we're talking about is -- >>Paul Mason: You know what I mean, though.
>>Farah Pandith: Right.
But I want to be really clear.
>>Paul Mason: If you go down to the southern United States and say the word "Muslim," in
some parts you'll not get a great response.
>>Farah Pandith: Well, I can push back with you on that because there are shrill voices
in every part of the world that would agree with what you have to say.
But I will say that the vast majority of Americans understand the dignity that is embedded in
our Constitution.
>>Paul Mason: I agree with you.
>>Farah Pandith: Okay.
So that's one.
>>Paul Mason: Yeah.
>>Farah Pandith: But the second piece is, it isn't about Muslims.
It is about understanding across the board how we think about the movement of ideas.
And as I said earlier to you, if we are looking at a future and a vision of a world in which
we are maximizing robust communities, we're building societies so that it can solve world
problems, human problems, whether we're talking about HIV/AIDS, whether we're talking about
education, whether we're talking about women, it isn't about Muslims or Christians or Jews
or Hindus or Baha'i.
We're talking about making sure that everybody is working together on those issues.
And if you have one-fourth of humanity that believes that there is an "us" and a "them,"
how are we going to stop polio eradication?
>>Paul Mason: Absolutely.
Bernard Kouchner, let me just throw that one at you as well.
I mean, the French ruling political elite hasn't excelled itself, hasn't it, really,
in the last 20 years from making correct cause.
You yourself in the Algerian case, you were against what happened.
The Rwandan case is a case in point.
You know, what -- do you -- could this just all be a flash in the pan, and could we -- and
so we go back to the world, the world the old political elite knew before all this happened,
before it became possible to -- for corporations to ally themselves with democratic and liberal
values?
>>Bernard Kouchner: Coming back to this world, no, certainly not, but having a clear view
on the future, this is also very difficult.
Very difficult.
And so we were talking mainly about Egypt.
Egypt is a very good example.
A better example than the other countries.
Sorry to say, but in Libya, when the new government announced that they were following Shia, we
were not very happy.
So this is difficult.
What about Yemen, where more or less they were supporting Saleh and a sort of escape,
a free escape, et cetera?
What about the main problem in between Shia-ism and Sunnitism?
This is facing us, facing them.
So don't believe that because of Google, thank for Google, we have solved all problem.
Certainly not.
Better to talk to each other, better to know that we are all together for the knowledge,
but we also have to express our views in election.
We were talking about election.
Because the presidential election is just coming in Egypt, et cetera.
So we have not solved the problem.
We are talking about HIV/AIDS.
Yes, this is a -- What about demography?
What about poverty is this poverty is a remaining problem with Google or without Google.
Certainly it will be better to know about and to share our view and to share our resources,
certainly.
So is there a French view on that?
Well, I don't want to criticize my country, but it was not clear, neither in your country,
the position facing the coming of the Arab Spring.
Not so clear.
And we change our mind, and we invited Khadaffi and we bomb Khadaffi, et cetera, et cetera.
[ Laughter ] >>Bernard Kouchner: Hey, it's a bit of contradiction.
>>Paul Mason: We did that as well.
>>Bernard Kouchner: So don't believe that will solve the problem only with better communication.
>>Bassem Youssef: You have to get croissant.
That's somewhere to start from.
You have a good patisserie.
We can solve the problem of the world by -- >>Paul Mason: I was going to bring you in
at that point.
>>Bassem Youssef: Croissant.
>>Paul Mason: What is your fear now?
For your own country.
It is the center of the process that's been unleashed.
It has huge resources, huge population, and it is physically in the center of the Middle
East.
What's the perspective now?
>>Bassem Youssef: Well, you know, as long as it's a democratic process where we are
allowed to actually elect and choose without any external interference, I have great hopes.
My only fear is there would be some sort of a unity between military Fascism and religious
Fascism.
That's the worst thing that could happen to anybody.
I mean, I'm not afraid like when people tell Egypt is going to become Saudi Arabia, is
going to become Iran, is going to become Afghanistan.
No, we are not going to be become like that.
The only problem is if we actually become something like Pakistan.
If the military makes some sort of a deal with the radical Islamic movement and they
will actually give them some sort of a protection so they can actually do -- or impose their
extremism agenda.
If their religious powers are left for their own and they are left to deal with the real
issues on the ground, people will actually decide for themselves who to choose.
Actually two, three months after the parliament elections, almost half of the people who voted
for Islamic power said they are not going to vote for them again because they have failed
on so many economic issues.
So just leave it to free fall.
And everything will sort itself out.
Just like don't get the military in and don't get external powers in.
That's it.
>>Paul Mason: Srdja Popovic, your manual for nonviolent revolution is --
>>Srdja Popovic: By the way, it's behind you.
>>Paul Mason: There it is.
Was downloaded, as you say, in Iran during the -- what is called the green revolution.
It was called by the Washington post at the time the Twitter revolution, rather optimistically
since only a thousand people in Iran at the time had Twitter accounts.
[ Laughter ] >>Paul Mason: Nevertheless, one was, as a
journalist, able to follow it quite accurately by following those thousand people.
Let me ask you, though, about Iran.
What do you think -- we have been through this iteration of successful revolutions,
networked revolutions.
The people in Egypt did, by a combination of mass force and ingenuity what the Iranians
weren't able to do.
What do you think now for Iran?
>>Srdja Popovic: I think the rules are the same and I don't think we should focus too
much on Twitter and social networks.
There are reasons why the revolutions -- these revolutions have three phases, and this is
exactly what my friend from Egypt said.
The one section we look at is bringing the bad guy down.
And then we need to prevent the coup.
And then we need to build up democracy, and it's a slow process.
So don't stick to the first one.
Looking at Iran, comparing to the other countries, you can look at many successful and nonsuccessful
cases.
And, you know, you look at the unsuccessful stalemates in the places like Zimbabwe or
Belarus or Iran, and it's more comparable, because when the opposition forces, this youth
movement doesn't have the unity, for example, all the Twitter in the world will not help
if they don't plan.
If they don't have a strategy, if they don't come out with clear tactics, then all the
networking doesn't come out.
And then if they don't have nonviolent discipline, which is very important, and somehow slip
into violence, they lose credibility, they give government every reason for a crackdown.
So it's about the unity, planning, nonviolence, discipline.
And, yes, it is very nice if they can put a little bit of Twitter as a strawberry on
the top of this story.
This is really finding their vision of tomorrow all together rather than just tweeting.
>>Paul Mason: Srdja Popovic, Farah Pandith, Bernard Kouchner, and Bassem Youssef, thank
you very much.
[ Applause ]