A defense of honest inquiry, and of Gene Sharp. | 61 comments (61 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: US DOD and Non-Violence (none / 0)

You still don't justify this: "having otherwise missed the whole story." The story cited is from the beginning of the protests, makes it clear that the opposition is wide-ranging. Later reports, as you acknowledge, go into the background more and deal with the recent history of strikes - which "partly" lead up to the revolution.

The coverage of the new media aspect was not just because it was "familiar" to them, but because, as is widely acknowledged, it did play a significant role in building suppport for and organising the revolution, and here's another reference to earlier strikes:

Published: February 5, 2011
Its power and importance has been building for years. In 2008, the April 6 Youth Movement used Facebook to gain more than 70,000 supporters to help raise awareness for striking workers in Mahalla al-Kobra, Egypt.
In the last two years, that movement and other human rights advocates have also turned to Twitter and to YouTube, the third most visited Web site in Egypt after Google and Facebook. YouTube, which human rights advocates have used to upload dozens of videos showing Egyptian police torture and abuse, has evolved as an enormously powerful social media tool as more people have been able to capture and share video on cellphones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06face.html

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 07:41:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: US DOD and Non-Violence (none / 0)

The coverage of the new media aspect was not just because it was "familiar" to them, but because, as is widely acknowledged, it did play a significant role in building suppport for and organising the revolution

Widely recognised by whom? The people who were actually bleeding and sweating in the streets, or the people who were looking on from outside? In the former case, how do we know? Who has had feet on the ground that understood the local language and were familiar with local conditions?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 08:07:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: US DOD and Non-Violence (none / 1)

Already cited here a few times- some of the Egyptians centrally involved in organising the revolution say so:

They are the young professionals, mostly doctors and lawyers, who touched off and then guided the revolt shaking Egypt, members of the Facebook generation who have remained mostly faceless -- very deliberately so, given the threat of arrest or abduction by the secret police.
Now, however, as the Egyptian government has sought to splinter their movement by claiming that officials were negotiating with some of its leaders, they have stepped forward publicly for the first time to describe their hidden role.
There were only about 15 of them, including Wael Ghonim, a Google executive who was detained for 12 days but emerged this week as the movement's most potent spokesman.
Yet they brought a sophistication and professionalism to their cause -- exploiting the anonymity of the Internet to elude the secret police, planting false rumors to fool police spies, staging "field tests" in Cairo slums before laying out their battle plans, then planning a weekly protest schedule to save their firepower -- that helps explain the surprising resilience of the uprising they began.
...
Mr. Elaimy, who was imprisoned four times and suffered multiple broken limbs from torture for his political work, now works as an assistant to Mohamed ElBaradei, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In turn, his group built ties to other young organizers like Ms. Moore.
The seeds of the revolt were planted around the time of the uprising in Tunisia, when Walid Rachid, 27, a liaison from an online group called the April 6 Movement, sent a note to the anonymous administrator of an anti-torture Facebook page asking for "marketing help" with a day of protest on Jan. 25, Mr. Rachid recalled. He wondered why the administrator would communicate only by Google instant message. In fact, it was someone he already knew: Mr. Ghonim, the Google executive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/world/middleeast/10youth.html

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 10:56:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: US DOD and Non-Violence (none / 1)

Cf.:

Keen to preserve their achievements, the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution, which includes members of the April 6 Youth Movement, the Muslim Brotherhood Youth and young supporters of Mohamed ElBaradei, plan to form their own opposition party.
During the protests, they were successful in mobilising the Egyptian people with the help of social media. But as the roadmap for the future is planned, will their voices be heard in the clamour for real change?
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/02/20112148266284265.html

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 11:07:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: US DOD and Non-Violence (none / 0)

That tells us what the ElBaradei faction thinks, and who they are. It doesn't tell us how influential that faction is, or what role they played.

I'm not saying they aren't central, let alone that they played no role. But I'm not prepared to take the American press' word for it, and your Al Jazeera quote only mentions them as one faction among several.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 02:18:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: US DOD and Non-Violence (none / 0)

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 02:42:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: US DOD and Non-Violence (none / 0)

What, you mean I should take the American press' word for it?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 02:44:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The NYT article (none / 0)

tells a compelling narrative that has this small group organising in poor neighbourhoods, organising feints, etc. to finally arrive in Tahrir Square with a crowd too numerous to dislodge by the police.

It hangs together. The Egyptian police are very good at keeping the lid on, they have done so for 30 years while there has been no shortage of people with legitimate grievances.

Unless someone can come up with a plausible competing narrative as to how Tahrir Square got occupied (and I think we can agree that this was the indispensible catalyst of the revolution), I'm happy with this one. Even if it was printed by the NYT.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 03:46:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The NYT article (none / 1)

But there is an alternative, and not prima facie less compelling, narrative. Namely that the mass protests in Egypt were the culmination of a number of years' escalating labour conflicts, with the Tunisian revolt being the trigger that caused the conflicts at individual workplaces to coalesce into a coherent revolutionary movement.

I'm not arguing that that's the true version, or even that the two are mutually exclusive. But I am arguing that when attempting to ascertain their relative importance, you need to take the American press with a heavy dose of salt. Mass union organisation as a basis for democratic revolutions is so far outside its frame of reference (and what it is politically possible for it to print) that it is liable to underestimate its importance.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Feb 23rd, 2011 at 04:05:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

A defense of honest inquiry, and of Gene Sharp. | 61 comments (61 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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