Dictators in Egypt, Tunisia and Other Arab Staying in Power. How wrong we were. The popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and beyond have seized the world imagination like no events since the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
Regimes are teetering, dictators have fallen, and unexpected coalitions have managed to conjure street-level power seemingly out of thin air. Tunisians took credit for Egypt’s revolution; Egyptian demonstrators in turn claim they inspired people in Wisconsin and Bahrain. The Substance of the Arab Revolt. BEIRUT -- Three months since the first demonstrations in rural Tunisia initiated a wave of rebellions that has spread throughout the Arab world, we have witnessed to date the toppling or serious revolts against some regimes, and revived discussions about political reform in half a dozen others.
Seen from within the Middle East, several important issues emerge that should capture the attention of anyone who cares to grasp the substance of this new Arab Revolt, rather than its superficialities. These provide an important foundation for dealing with the political evolution that will continue to define the Arab world for years to come, and as such they are important guideposts for the future, rather than just analytical milestones from the recent past. They relate to the nature of the change that is demanded, and the fact that such demands have been around for decades, but the outside world was not interested in hearing or acting on them. Rami G. Copyright © 2011 Rami G. From fear to fury: how the Arab world found its voice.
It was early morning on Friday 11 February and the streets of central Cairo were throbbing with adrenaline and fear.
Long-haired American professor Mark LeVine and Shung, founder of the Egyptian extreme metal band Beyond East, were caught in the flow of a million Egyptians who seethed towards Tahrir Square, past tanks, burnt-out buildings and soldiers with taut faces, through the rubble and detritus of two weeks of revolution. Mubarak's surprise announcement that he was holding on to his rotten throne had sent a collective groan of frustration through the nation. The Arab Spring. Suddenly, people all over the Arab world are feeling a sense of pride—and the West is paying attention.
Suddenly, to be an Arab has become a good thing. People all over the Arab world feel a sense of pride in shaking off decades of cowed passivity under dictatorships that ruled with no deference to popular wishes. And it has become respectable in the West as well. Egypt is now thought of as an exciting and progressive place; its people’s expressions of solidarity are welcomed by demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin; and its bright young activists are seen as models for a new kind of twenty-first-century mobilization. Tunisia's press revels in new freedom. Please support our site by enabling javascript to view ads.
TUNIS, Tunisia — Since the overthrow of President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali on Jan. 14, Tunisians have been waking up everyday with a taste of freedom and that includes the country's newly free press. Despite the new Tunisia's general atmosphere of slight anarchy and economic problems, people are joyful, proud and optimistic about the outcome of their revolution. After 23 years of dictatorship, they are discovering the stimulation of an independent press. “Before, I didn't buy newspapers, now I do — it's enriching to get different points of view,” said Mohamed Taher Mrabet, a physician, referring to the time when the muzzled press only existed to propagate the government’s agenda.
How much did social media contribute to revolution in the middle east? - bookforum.com / in print. Tweets were sent.
Dictators were toppled. Internet = democracy. QED. African Digital Art: Pushing Digital Boundaries. North Africa is experiencing what is now called the biggest revolution in modern times as millions of protesters join in the fight against oppression, dictatorship and political domination.
With that said, designers and artists are joining in protest and here is a small collection of some digital/graphic art. Please feel free to suggest some more we would love to see what you’ve found. The Searcher Marlena Buczek Smith. Of Cyber-Skeptics and Cyber-Utopians – Debunking Myths and Discussing the Future » Article » OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism. This post was originally published on the Meta-Activism Project.
Reflections on the Revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt by Rashid Khalidi. This is above all a moment of new possibilities in the Arab world, and indeed in the entire Middle East.
We have not witnessed such a turning point for a very long time. Suddenly, once insuperable obstacles seem surmountable. Despotic regimes that have been entrenched across the Arab world for two full generations are suddenly vulnerable. Two of the most formidable among them -- in Tunis and Cairo -- have crumbled before our eyes in a matter of a few weeks. JapanFocus. The Middle East Revolutions in Historical Perspective: Egypt, Occupied Palestine, and the United States Herbert P.
Bix. 3quarksdaily. Egyptians and Tunisians Collaborated to Shake Arab History. The Arab 1989? An extraordinary wave of upheaval is beginning to sweep across the Arab world, with the potential to transform the political order in the Middle East. Mohamed Bouazizi’s desperate act of self-immolation galvanised a generation of marginalised youth to demand political freedom, economic opportunity and above all a sense of human dignity. Egyptians and Tunisians Collaborated to Shake Arab History. Fine art and Poetry of Tunisian-American Artist Rajaa Gharbi. Egypt's popular revolution will change the world. Tunisia, Egypt, Gabon? Our responsibility to witness. 2011 has been a remarkable year for rapid political change. Spurred on by Mohamed Bouazizi’s desperate self-immolation, protests in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid spread throughout the nation and ultimately accomplished the unthinkable: they forced the end of a 23-year dictatorship.
Inspired by the actions of the Tunisian people, protesters took to the streets in Jordan, Yemen, Algeria and, most notably, Egypt where protesters currently hold Tahrir Square in the center of Cairo and are pressuring Hosni Mubarak to step down. Mubarak has already offered several concessions, and it seems clear that Egyptian politics will shift sharply in the coming months. Seeking to address protester’s concerns, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has sacked his cabinet and ordered formation of a new government, while Yemen’s president Saleh has agreed to step down in 2013.
Egypt, and the post-Islamist middle east. For years, western political elites and their local allies have charged the Arab peoples with political apathy and lethargy. The argument that Arabs are uninterested in seeking to wrest greater democratic freedoms from their authoritarian rulers always rested on shaky foundations. But now that millions of Egyptians, following the Tunisians’ example, have proved it wrong by mobilising against power, the sceptical ground has adjusted: toward the murmured fear that Egypt’s uprising would develop into an “Islamist revolution” along the lines - demagogic, violent, intransigent, expansionist, anti-western - of that of Iran in 1979.
The idea of an “Islamic revolution in Egypt” is voiced by four sources. Social Media in the Arab World: Leading up to the Uprisings of 2011 The Sociology Elders on The Social Movements in Tunisia and Egypt. First, Manuel Castells (roughly translated from Italian, via Stephanie Wojcik) correctly notes that revolutions with people in the streets come first, the significance of Al-Jazeera, then social media catch on: “The protests that overthrew the dictator Tunisian Ali Ben once again demonstrate the power of spontaneous social movements in the era of digital communications.The process, which in less than a month has killed a stable and robust since 1987, has evolved family: a dramatic blows up the indignation so far withheld for fear, leading to demonstrations that the police suppressed, and immediately images of repression and protest messages spread on social networks.So the movement is amplified until the independent media – in this case Al Jazeera – inform and re-transmit the images and messages published by the demonstrators on YouTube and other sites.
And importantly: “Obviously communication technologies did not give birth to the insurgency. Foreign Policy, Tunisia and the net. I put this post together almost a month ago, when the events in Tunisia were just beginning, but couldn’t figure out how to get my images into the SmartMobs format — Howard gave me several nudges on twitter today, and voila! A second, more up to date post on Egypt and the net will follow shortly. [ cross-posted from Zenpundit ] Sorting through claims about the internet and revolutions, part 1. My last blog post argued that too many commentators on the recent events in Tunisia/Egypt/Yemen/etc. have become hamstrung by the “internet revolution” frame—advocates and opponents alike tend to orient their arguments with respect to it. But beneath the headlines, it turns out there’s a sprawling assortment of overlapping and conflicting viewpoints about the internet and revolutionary politics waiting to be teased apart.
This blog post will begin this sorting process by proceeding through items 1 and 2 of the following analytical to-do list (I will address items 3 and 4 in a subsequent post): Develop a rough typology of recent claims about the internet and political revolutions.Distinguish which claim types require or imply one another, which are compatible with one another, and which conflict.Identify the kinds of empirical data that would be required to substantiate each.Use this information to judge how well each claim type is supported by the available evidence. 1: A Rough Typology. Revolution 2.0: Rebooting Tunisia.