Information is power and in the age of the information revolution, cyber and satellite communication is transforming our lives, reinventing the relationship between people and power. New media, from WikiLeaks to Facebook, Twitter to YouTube, is persistently challenging the traditional flow of information, and cyber disobedience is exposing powerful governments. Websites are now being treated like hostile territories; whistleblowers and leakers as terrorists, and hackers as insurgents. Governments are scrambling to salvage their influence and take advantage of the new cyber and satellite media. From China to the Sudan, Egypt to Iran, despots and armies are tracking web activity and setting up Facebook accounts to spy on their citizens. So is this the century of free information and expression as the cyber utopians predicted, or new methods of electronic oppression as the cyber sceptics warned?
Category: Activism
This is an Arab 1848
by Tariq Ali
The refusal of the people to kiss or ignore the rod that has chastised them for so many decades has opened a new chapter in the history of the Arab nation. The absurd, if much vaunted, neocon notion that Arabs or Muslims were hostile to democracy has disappeared like parchment in fire.
Those who promoted such ideas appear to the most unhappy: Israel and its lobbyists in Euro-America; the arms industry, hurriedly trying to sell as much while it can (the British prime minister acting as a merchant of death at the Abu Dhabi arms fair); and the beleaguered rulers of Saudi Arabia, wondering whether the disease will spread to their tyrannical kingdom. Until now they have provided refuge to many a despot, but when the time comes where will the royal family seek refuge? They must be aware that their patrons will dump them without ceremony and claim they always favoured democracy.
If there is a comparison to be made with Europe it is 1848, when the revolutionary upheavals left only Britain and Spain untouched – even though Queen Victoria, thinking of the Chartists, feared otherwise. Writing to her besieged nephew on the Belgian throne, she expressing sympathy but wondered whether “we will all be slain in our beds”. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown or bejewelled headgear, and has billions stored in foreign banks.
What If the Egyptian Protesters Were Democrats?
by Steven Salaita
Their recent upheaval would certainly have been different, perhaps dramatically different.
In the past month, the people of Egypt—inspired by the recent democratic revolution in Tunisia and preceding emergent revolutions in Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, and Syria—have undertaken a revolt of truly stunning proportions, one that includes men and women from all class strata, religious and ethnic origins, and ideological commitments. They managed to rid themselves of a longstanding and brutal dictator worth over $40 billion and supported by the collective power of the United States, European Union, Israel, and the Arab Gulf States.
Now that two Arab dictators have been vanquished by the collective will of unaffiliated protesters, many American commentators have been forced to rethink their assumptions about the supposedly tribal and authoritarian Arab mind. Such commentators, sometimes conservative but often liberal, fancy themselves guardians of a civic and political enlightenment that in reality is misinformed in addition to being conceited and imperialistic.
Nevertheless, given the ardor and self-confidence of the notion that American values exemplify democratic modernity, let us imagine a few potential outcomes had the pioneering people of Egypt followed the example of today’s liberal American Democrats.
Continue reading “What If the Egyptian Protesters Were Democrats?”
When Revolution Becomes the Only Choice
by Ali Jawad
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has graphically chronicled the heart-wrenching realities that have shrouded over Manama in recent days. Whilst there may be criticisms of a sometimes de-contextualised narrative, his articles are nevertheless sufficient to shed light on the fundamental grievances that have spurred the popular protests across Bahrain. There is more than enough in his articles to evoke the deepest emotion and sympathy for unarmed civilians being systematically crushed under the juggernaut of a western-armed foreign mercenary force doggedly determined to maintain the vestiges of a brutally authoritarian regime.
Officials at the Pentagon have surely read some of Kristof’s reports by now, and have no doubt made note of the striking similarities between the Al-Khalifa regime and its ousted Tunisian and Egyptian counterparts. The intelligence services and their head, Leon Panetta, are also acutely aware – no doubt – of the voluminous grievances held by the vast majority of Bahrainis towards a ruling monarchy that is increasingly acquiring the “illegitimate” prefix; this in addition to a growing view amongst Bahrainis equating the Al-Khalifa regime as the prime obstacle to serious democratic change. In spite of this however, the placid petulance that has characterised the statements of the US Secretary of State has served to further underline to the lay Arab citizen that despite its mendacious, last-minute attempts to embrace the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the US remains firmly committed to the vocation of bolstering tyrants and dictators – only opting to disown them as the latter partake in their final rites.
Death toll rises in Libyan unrest
In a rambling and incoherent speech Gaddafi’s son Saif el Islam has issued a threat of further violence. As the regime was already inflicting massive casualties, this betrays the first sign of weakness. The protests have finally spread to Tripoli, gaining momentum along the way. The initiative now lies with the protesters. Might we be seeing the end of another moth-eaten dictatorship?
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is confronting the most serious challenge to his rule in 42 years.
Here is another report from yesterday:
Fisk on Bahrain
From Manama’s Pearl Roundabout, Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent for the UK’s Independent newspaper talks to Al Jazeera about the situation in Bahrain and the wider region.
The fall of Mubarak
Final installment of Al Jazeera’s excellent Egypt Burning series.
As the calls for regime change move into their third week, Egyptians have broken down the barrier of fear. Cracks between the protesters have started to show, but resolute protesters are standing firm on their call for the president to resign.
Clinton’s goons assault a 71-year-old veteran even as she berates Iran for violence against protesters
There is of course the further irony of the fact that she is speaking at a conference on Internet Freedom even as her government has spent the past few months trying to suppress websites associated with Wikileaks and to have its founder extradited. As the great Ray McGovern says: straight out of Kafka!
US wavers on Middle East
Barack Obama, who even today was lecturing Iran in the obnoxious school-masterly tone which American presidents feel obliged to adopt in their declamations, once again turns a blind eye when the violence is pepetrated by a friendly despot.
The US and president Barack Obama continue to waver in their position regarding the unrest sweeping through the Middle East. The country says it will not dictate events in the region. But Obama has criticised the Iranian government’s violent response to protests there, while at the same time maintaining a more neutral tone with Bahrain. Many find the US’s response disappointing, and some feel the White House will only react strongly to those governments it does not have a stake in.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane reports.
And this is the kind of violence that is being wrought by this ‘reliable ally.’
Social networks, social revolution
Al Jazeera Empire: Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation. Are social networks triggering social revolution? And where will the next domino fall?
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