The New York Times has a couple of nice pieces on the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions: an interactive account of the key events and a more detailed piece outlining the role of the different protest groups, bloggers and Facebook-ites, nonviolent resistance tactics, and the Obama administration.
A few quick thoughts:
1) Max Forte is right about the U.S.’s equivocation, its policy of “hedging its bets” in a mix of realism and opportunism.
2) But it’s so much better to have Obama at the helm of global empire than Bush. (Not that it’s really the helm, but it’s an important figurehead position.)
3) Gene Sharp continues to be an un(der)sung hero-tactician of late-20th/early-21st century political struggle.
4) There’s something about “the multitude” in these events, in part at least because they come together in and through events (including digital events), not personalities or even ideas, and because they grow through the transmission of affect. (I’ve been reading John Beasley-Murray’s Posthegemony (the book), which he kindly sent me a digital copy of, and it is very good, and quite helpful for thinking about these things.)
5) How long will the Times (and The Guardian and other actual producers of news) continue to give us their services for (essentially) free? The enclosure of the digital commons remains an uphill battle; let’s make the most of the moment…
Hi,
Thank you for posting this. The thing is we are fed up with all this dictators and we need freedom. We been controlled for hundreds of year. This greedy leaders stole our money and life from us with giving us nothing in return only taking our freedom.
The main worries we have now is the religiosity or extremest will take over with there smooth inspiring words.
Thank you again
I have also been thinking/ making connections between the Mid East events and D&G, as well as Brennan and others. I can’t say I have anything coherent to say except that such social movements are reasons why the digital commons should remain open but may also spell their current openness as we know it.
Thanks for an always insightful blog!
Dvd
I was amazed at the number of dictators that are in the middle east. It is also amazing how the internet has become a medium that has created freedom in every aspect of our lives. These dictators must go and they must go now. The world cannot tolerate anymore these tyrants.