The Year In Google Search Terms
Radio Free Europe / Luke Allnutt
30-Dec-2009 (one comment)


 

December 30, 2009

The readers have spoken. Here is your ranking for the top stories of 2009.

1. Iran's protests
2. Global economic crisis
3. Obama's first year in office
4. Swine flu
5. Michael Jackson's death

But to drill a little deeper and really capture the zeitgeist, here is a selection of popular search terms that users typed into Google and then ended up on rferl.org. Some reflect the spirit of the time, while a few are just plain bizarre.

"ahmadinejad jewish"

"sex video"

"yugo car" 

"taliban vs al qaeda"

"obama speech"... >>>

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Hovakhshatare

In the face of protests, Iran's leaders are at an impasse

by Hovakhshatare on Wed Dec 30, 2009 09:52 PM PST

Another irony is that the Islamic Republic today is led by a politician as vacillating as the shah was.    ...Unlike in 1979, the clerical state today has had the luxury of confronting an opposition movement that is incohesive and lacks identifiable leaders. The candidates who challenged Ahmadinejad for the presidency, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi, seem more like intrigued observers than masterminds of recent events. This should be cold comfort to the regime, however, because the longer the movement survives, the more likely it is to produce its own leaders..   ...the Islamic Republic has reached an impasse; it can neither appease the opposition nor forcibly repress it out of existence.   ...The Islamic Republic, like the Soviet Union, is a transient phenomenon. America's embrace of individual sovereignty will place it on the right side of history as the fortunes of history inevitably change.   //www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/30/AR2009123002248.html 

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