by Gary Farber
Revolutions have happened in the Mideast? How? Why? Because this is the 21st century, and the revolution is online.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and I will give you 5000 in five pictures:
What happened? This.
[...]
The exchange on Facebook was part of a remarkable two-year collaboration that has given birth to a new force in the Arab world — a pan-Arab youth movement dedicated to spreading democracy in a region without it. Young Egyptian and Tunisian activists brainstormed on the use of technology to evade surveillance, commiserated about torture and traded practical tips on how to stand up to rubber bullets and organize barricades.
They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade — but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley.
[...]
By 2008, many of the young organizers had retreated to their computer keyboards and turned into bloggers, attempting to raise support for a wave of isolated labor strikes set off by government privatizations and runaway inflation.
After a strike that March in the city of Mahalla, Egypt, Mr. Maher and his friends called for a nationwide general strike for April 6. To promote it, they set up a Facebook group that became the nexus of their movement, which they were determined to keep independent from any of the established political groups. Bad weather turned the strike into a nonevent in most places, but in Mahalla a demonstration by the workers’ families led to a violent police crackdown — the first major labor confrontation in years.
Just a few months later, after a strike in Tunisia, a group of young online organizers followed the same model, setting up what became the Progressive Youth of Tunisia. The organizers in both countries began exchanging their experiences over Facebook. The Tunisians faced a more pervasive police state than the Egyptians, with less latitude for blogging or press freedom, but their trade unions were stronger and more independent. “We shared our experience with strikes and blogging,” Mr. Maher recalled.
For their part, Mr. Maher and his colleagues began reading about nonviolent struggles. They were especially drawn to a Serbian youth movement called Otpor, which had helped topple the dictator Slobodan Milosevic by drawing on the ideas of an American political thinker, Gene Sharp. The hallmark of Mr. Sharp’s work is well-tailored to Mr. Mubark’s Egypt: He argues that nonviolence is a singularly effective way to undermine police states that might cite violent resistance to justify repression in the name of stability.
The April 6 Youth Movement modeled its logo — a vaguely Soviet looking red and white clenched fist—after Otpor’s, and some of its members traveled to Serbia to meet with Otpor activists.
Another influence, several said, was a group of Egyptian expatriates in their 30s who set up an organization in Qatar called the Academy of Change, which promotes ideas drawn in part on Mr. Sharp’s work. One of the group’s organizers, Hisham Morsy, was arrested during the Cairo protests and remained in detention.
“The Academy of Change is sort of like Karl Marx, and we are like Lenin,” said Basem Fathy, another organizer who sometimes works with the April 6 Youth Movement and is also the project director at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, which receives grants from the United States and focuses on human rights and election-monitoring. During the protesters’ occupation of Tahrir Square, he said, he used his connections to raise about $5,100 from Egyptian businessmen to buy blankets and tents.
‘This Is Your Country’
Then, about a year ago, the growing Egyptian youth movement acquired a strategic ally, Wael Ghonim, a 31-year-old Google marketing executive. Like many others, he was introduced into the informal network of young organizers by the movement that came together around Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat who returned to Egypt a year ago to try to jump-start its moribund political opposition.
Mr. Ghonim had little experience in politics but an intense dislike for the abusive Egyptian police, the mainstay of the government’s power. He offered his business savvy to the cause. “I worked in marketing, and I knew that if you build a brand you can get people to trust the brand,” he said.
The result was a Facebook group Mr. Ghonim set up: We Are All Khalid Said, after a young Egyptian who was beaten to death by police. Mr. Ghonim — unknown to the public, but working closely with Mr. Maher of the April 6 Youth Movement and a contact from Mr. ElBaradei’s group — said that he used Mr. Said’s killing to educate Egyptians about democracy movements.
He filled the site with video clips and newspaper articles about police violence. He repeatedly hammered home a simple message: “This is your country; a government official is your employee who gets his salary from your tax money, and you have your rights.” He took special aim at the distortions of the official media, because when the people “distrust the media then you know you are not going to lose them,” he said.
He eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of users, building their allegiance through exercises in online democratic participation. When organizers planned a “day of silence” in the Cairo streets, for example, he polled users on what color shirts they should all wear — black or white. (When the revolt exploded, the Mubarak government detained him for 12 days in blindfolded isolation in a belated attempt to stop his work.)
After the Tunisian revolution on Jan. 14, the April 6 Youth Movement saw an opportunity to turn its little-noticed annual protest on Police Day — the Jan. 25 holiday that celebrates a police revolt that was suppressed by the British — into a much bigger event. Mr. Ghonim used the Facebook site to mobilize support. If at least 50,000 people committed to turn out that day, the site suggested, the protest could be held. More than 100,000 signed up.
And the online revolution was real.
[...] A sign like that lends a little weight to the idea that, whatever tactical role that social technologies might have played in the Egyptian uprising, they've captured the hearts and minds of Egyptians. Alec Ross, the U.S. State Department's senior advisor on innovation, found vindication in the photo. "14:58 ... 14:59 ...," tweeted Ross this morning. "Cyberskeptics, your 15 minutes are up."
[...]
It's the real deal, or at least all signs point in that direction. The photo has been tweeted many, many times, but it was originally, it seems, posted to the hosting service yfrog by NBC New's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. And Getty Images is offering a photo, taken by staff photographer John Moore, showing what looks a whole lot like the same man grasping with both hands the same sign and wearing the same green jacket and light brown shirt, only this time standing alone in a Cairo street. Moore is a highly-regard photojournalist who, in 2007, was the man behind the camera for a gripping series of photos tracking in real time the assassination of Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto. So there's that.
As to what the sign itself actually reads, the Arabic-trained Aaron Banks translates it as, "Thank you...youth [of] Egypt," then the Facebook reference, and then "Steadfast we will not go."
It's one man and one sign, but the imagery of social media like Twitter and Facebook, as well as of digital culture more broadly, has for sure been popping up all through the Cairo protests. NPR strategist Andy Carvin linked this morning, for example, to a photo of a young man holding a red, white, and blue sign that reads "Mubarak" and "Shift + Del.," a call for the Egyptian president to erase himself from the political stage.
Mubarak has been deleted. Takeaway?
[...] the debate over what real true role of the Internet (and Facebook, and Twitter) has been in this historic Egypt uprising has to include consideration of what the idea that is the Internet (and Facebook, and Twitter) means to the ones doing the rising up.
How do we know? We saw the retweet:
Glance at the #Jan25 search results on Twitter, though, and you're likely to be taken aback by the quickness with which one Tweet follows the next. It's hard to keep up, let alone glean the most important, relevant and accurate information. That's where curation comes in. Retweeters like Mona Eltahawy -- an NYC based Egyptian Twitter user who stands out for arriving at the events earlier than most - and Andy Carvin of NPR dutifully shared and reshared Tweets from the ground, amplifying their impact.
The degree to which international observers relied on these retweeters underlines the importance of what they're doing and of other platforms which provide similar services. One example is Storyful, a well funded new platform that received a lot of attention at an event today on the subject of real time publishing. Similar, but different in a few important ways, is the more bootstrapped Crowdvoice [disclosure: this is a project of Mideast Youth, run by Esra'a al Shafei, who is a friend]. Crowdvoice, made by and for activists, allows them and their supporters to share and highlight the best information covering demonstrations and human rights campaigns.
[...]
This is real time publishing by protesters as opposed to by journalists. Each page (or voice) on a particular topic, for example police brutality in Egypt, spotlights information that's been added by a varied group, with a wide range of perspectives, home cities and religions.
Want to help the next Mideast revolution? You can.
What is CrowdVoice.org?
CrowdVoice.org is a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing information. The platform brings together activists and journalists with the topics they care about and want to follow. Information about human rights abuses, demonstrations and current events are chosen and approved by the community. Said information is pooled from news sources, blogs, video and social networking sites. Anyone is able to contribute news, suggest new topics, or approve what others already submitted.
You can be there now. Because the revolution has only begun.
[...]The White House had been debating the likelihood of a domino effect since youth-driven revolts had toppled President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, even though the American intelligence community and Israel’s intelligence services had estimated that the risk to President Mubarak was low — less than 20 percent, some officials said.
According to senior officials who participated in Mr. Obama’s policy debates, the president took a different view. He made the point early on, a senior official said, that “this was a trend” that could spread to other authoritarian governments in the region, including in Iran. By the end of the 18-day uprising, by a White House count, there were 38 meetings with the president about Egypt. Mr. Obama said that this was a chance to create an alternative to “the Al Qaeda narrative” of Western interference.
American officials had seen no evidence of overtly anti-American or anti-Western sentiment. “When we saw people bringing their children to Tahrir Square, wanting to see history being made, we knew this was something different,” one official said.
On Jan. 28, the debate quickly turned to how to pressure Mr. Mubarak in private and in public — and whether Mr. Obama should appear on television urging change. Mr. Obama decided to call Mr. Mubarak, and several aides listened in on the line. Mr. Obama did not suggest that the 82-year-old leader step aside or transfer power. At this point, “the argument was that he really needed to do the reforms, and do them fast,” a senior official said. Mr. Mubarak resisted, saying the protests were about outside interference.
According to the official, Mr. Obama told him, “You have a large portion of your people who are not satisfied, and they won’t be until you make concrete political, social and economic reforms.”
[...]
“Eighty-five million people live in Egypt, and less than 1,000 people died in this revolution — most of them killed by the police,” said Mr. Ghonim, the Google executive. “It shows how civilized the Egyptian people are.” He added, “Now our nightmare is over. Now it is time to dream.”
The revolution is no dream; it has just begun.
Protests convulsed half a dozen countries across the Middle East on Wednesday, with tens of thousands of people turning out in Bahrain to challenge the monarchy, a sixth day of running street battles in Yemen, continued strikes over long-suppressed grievances in Egypt and a demonstrator’s funeral in Iran turning into a brief tug of war between the government and its opponents.
[...]
Even in heavily policed Libya, pockets of dissent emerged in the main square of Benghazi, with people calling for an end to the 41-year rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Iraq, accustomed to sectarian conflict, got a dose of something new: a fiery protest in the eastern city of Kut over unemployment, sporadic electricity and government corruption.
From northern Africa to the Persian Gulf, governments appeared to flounder on just how to outrun mostly peaceful movements, spreading erratically like lava erupting from a volcano, with no predictable end.
[...]
In Libya, Iran and Iraq, riot police officers also confronted the demonstrators — three of whom were killed in Kut, Iraq, when security forces opened fire.
Leaders fell back on habitual, ineffective formulas. A ban on strikes announced by the week-old military government in Egypt was ignored. The Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, called his Bahraini counterpart, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, to commiserate about the region falling victim to “foreign agendas,” according to the state-run Saba news agency.
[...]
new generation has served notice that the social contract in play in the decades since independence around World War II was no longer valid.Much of the generation in their 40s and 50s tried to effect change, but first accepted the empty promises of the rulers that change was coming. When it did not, many grew politically apathetic.
The protests are a fire alarm that the promises are not going to work anymore, said Sawsan al-Shaer, a Bahraini columnist. But governments that have stuck around for 20 to 40 years are slow to realize that, she said.
“Now the sons are coming, the new generation, and they are saying, ‘I don’t care that my father agreed with you — I am asking for more, and I am asking for something else,’ ” Ms. Shaer said.
Most rulers have surrounded themselves for so long with a tight coterie of advisers and security officers that they believe the advice that just a few young people are knocking around outside who will tire in good time, she said, even after the fall of the presidents in Tunisia and Egypt.
“The rulers don’t realize there is a new generation who want a better job, who want to ask what is happening, where did you spend the money?” Ms. Shaer said. “My father did not ask. I want to ask.”
The growing population throughout the 3,175-mile zone from Tehran to Tangier, Morocco, has changed too much, analysts believe, for the old systems to work.
[...]
In Bahrain, tens of thousands of people poured into Pearl Square late into Wednesday night, virtually all Shiites. They demanded changes in a system that they say has discriminated against them for decades in housing, jobs and basic civil rights.
[...]
In Yemen, police officers deployed in large numbers around Sana, the capital, and in Aden and the provincial town of Taiz in an attempt to end six days of street battles.
Students again organized protests at the capital’s central university, calling for Mr. Saleh’s ouster. But there were also clashes between antigovernment and pro-government demonstrators.
In Kut, Iraq, security forces opened fire, killing at least three people, according to a local government official. Protesters then stormed the governor’s headquarters and his house, burning both buildings. At least 27 people were injured in the violence, including one security officer, the official said.
Hundreds of riot police officers surrounded the nation’s symbolic center, Pearl Square, in the early morning on Thursday, raining tear gas and percussion grenades on thousands of demonstrators who had poured into the square all day on Wednesday to challenge the country’s absolute monarchy.
[...]
The protesters, including women and children, had been camping out and the atmosphere had been festive only hours before. But by about 3:30 a.m. on Thursday, people were fleeing, screaming “We were sleeping. We were sleeping,” and ambulances, sirens blaring, were trying to make their way through the crowds. At least one protester was killed, according to a parliamentarian, Ibrahim Mattar.
[...]
Hours before the police action, the Internet was jammed to a crawl and cellphone service was intermittent. Those efforts, however, only seemed to energize the roaring crowds, which spilled out of the square, tied up roads for as far as the eye could see and united in a celebration of empowerment unparalleled for Bahrain’s Shiites, who make up about 70 percent of the country’s 600,000 citizens.“They say you are few and you cannot make changes,” said Ali Ahmed, 26, drawing cheers from the crowd as he spoke from a platform. “We say, ‘We can, and we will.’ ”
They can, they will, and they are. It cannot be fought.
And it is glorious.
Update, February 20th, 2011, 2:22 p.m., Pacific time, I follow up.
Facebook Officials Keep Quiet on Its Role in Revolts.
Want some freedom yourself? Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Can’t Find You.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 16, 2011 at 09:54 PM
And now let's hear some more about how relevant David Pryce-Jones is, and how nothing changes in the shame culture of the Mideast, and how much better informed he is about Arab culture.
And how irrelevant technology is.
Hmm?
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 16, 2011 at 09:57 PM
This is a wonderful photomontage, Gary.
Posted by: von | February 16, 2011 at 10:24 PM
Great stuff Gary, I hope to burrow into the links this pm. Via LGM is this link to Robert Fisk's piece in the Independent and they highlight this.
But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.
Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.
The thing that I'd point out here is how a mundane technology like cell phones can impact and effect events.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 16, 2011 at 10:52 PM
Thanks, Von. That's very kind of you, although it's all swiped, of course.
I'd like to claim that I was there snapping the shots, but, alas, my feet hurt too much to walk that far.
Besides, notice that I cleverly avoid writing very much. :-)
I actually have a ton more links and comments, but as usual, this was already Long Enough.
But I have a lot more to go on Bahrain, what's going on on Yemen, the off-switches, and a lot of related stuff, but figure I'll wait until tomorrow, and as usual, I feel like crap, and it can wait. Sort of.
But I'm tweeting now, and even there I feel like it's too easy to Do Too Much.
Sometimes I wish I didn't read so much so fast. I know that sounds like a brag, and I suppose it is, but it really makes conversation difficult for me when I want to add about 4000 relevant bits, and 300 pieces of fascinating news item from the last two hours. :-)
For me the downside of Teh Information Revolution is that I think too much is too interesting, and I want to share it all, but....
Anyway, thanks muchly for the compliment. And, yeah, I loved the pictures, and thought they made the point.
The notion that somehow Arabs are all tribal, and that they're primitive people is just racist garbage, and moreover it's in complete contradiction to one George W. Bush's philosophy and words and acts, so folks who revert to that sort of ancient Bernard Lewis/David Pryce-Jones stuff from fifty years ago might as well be citing Lawrence of Arabia as if it were relevant to a cometary probe, or nanotech.
This is what's been going on, and will be, not stuff from forty or fifty years ago.
And, oops, I only just noticed that I directly contradicted this title of this post by Doctor Science, and all I can do is apologize, Dr. S., and tell you the straight truth, which is that I totally forgot that you'd used the song title, too.
Wasn't trying to sound like I was trying to contradict or refute you. Drat! I just plumb forgot.
What I did have in mind was that set of exchanges starting here and below, but mostly because what I write here has the virtue of being true, and what was said by some about Pryce-Jones and company was, in my view, um, not so much.
I also want to go into why I think Obama and company have handled this pretty well, but will save that for another post, or not get to it. Etc., etc.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 16, 2011 at 10:58 PM
Also, as a student of Mideast politics since at least the Six Day War, I think this whole thing is f*cking awesome, and I meant every word about it being glorious, and I know that I'm over-emotional, but I also know that a story means a lot to me when I start crying when I'm writing it, no matter how few of my own words I use.
And that's what I do when I think about what I think this means.
No, I'm not making any hard predictions, and yes, there will be awfulness, and yes, revolutions eat their young, and yes, there may be the equivalents of Iran, but also: hey, revolutions can take place in the Middle East without America bombing the sh*t out of people, killing [pick your damn number and argue about it, I. Don't. Care], and invading a country.
Hey, who knew?
Oh, wait, I know who knew! (Was aware of the possibilities, at least).
Donald Rumsfeld. (This deserves a whole bunch of posts by itself.)
Read THIS FREAKING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT by The Donald.
Then vomit.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 16, 2011 at 11:10 PM
Actual pdf here.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 16, 2011 at 11:11 PM
But I'll say this. I think the dominos are very likely to now fall as fast as fricking Eastern Europe collapsed.
And we'll see some hangings, just like Ceauşescu.
This is apt to be the Mideast in the next few months, to some large extent, I strongly suspect. Not all, and not likely Saudi Arabia.
I also want to go into the way the net can be cut off, the ways this can be resisted, and all the other complications.
But. Still.
And we shall see. I've certainly been wrong before.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 16, 2011 at 11:17 PM
Thanks, LJ; good link and valuable point.
Some of the stuff I didn't quote pointed to Gamal Mubarak as fighting to get his father to crack down. That's totally plausible, since it was his own place as successor at risk, and, of course, now we're seeing, BIG SURPRISE, all the endless reports on the corruption, the mass arrests, the freezing of assets, and other good stuff like that.
And that's why I see dominoes, and I think anyone paying attention can, via Twitter and the web and the various aggragation sites, and so forth, watch it happening as fast as you can absorb it; not to mention YouTube, etc.
The information revolution simply means that until we get brainjacks and additional RAM in our heads, we have more info in livetime than we can possibly process.
It's. All. Happening. Live. In front of us.
And people need to open their eyes, and their browsers, to it, those who haven't. (A lot of this is an age thing, but it's as much a matter of comfort level with the internet as anything else; lots of younger people aren't, and lots of older people are, too.)
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 16, 2011 at 11:32 PM
CBS video report the use of Twitter, FB, etc.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 17, 2011 at 03:33 AM
The impact of instant, mass communication available to an educated, technologically sophisticated population is yet to be fully appreciated. I suspect it means the eventual end of autocracy. Good call, GF.
Posted by: McKinneyTexas | February 17, 2011 at 09:13 AM
Non-Violence Fail
I have never understood the visceral thrill so many on the center-left get at watching women and children get beaten to death by cops. Patton said it best:You win by making the dumb poor bastards die.
This martyr fetish sickens me.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 17, 2011 at 12:02 PM
This is fantastic, thank you.
Posted by: Arcinian | February 17, 2011 at 12:37 PM
"I have never understood the visceral thrill so many on the center-left get at watching women and children get beaten to death by cops"
WTF?
Posted by: Rob in CT | February 17, 2011 at 01:45 PM
WTF?
Ah, this I think I can explain. Bob wants direct action and he wants it last week. From bob's perspective, lefties talking about non-violence are just longing to send innocent people to their death. After all, anytime people try non-violence, there's a good chance that the security forces will simply execute them. He sees any happy talk about the power of non-violence as a fetish in much the same way that some violent Islamists fetishize martyrdom. The fact that we haven't all risen up in revolution over the AIG bail outs proves that we're a bunch of losers, or something.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't explain on someone else's behalf (especially when the explanation sounds kind of nutty), but bob shows up so infrequently.... I hope that makes, er, sense.
Posted by: Turbulence | February 17, 2011 at 02:28 PM
2:28:I hope that makes, er, sense.
Works for me, turb.
Now I have to get back to Kita Ikka and the Feb 26th Incident
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 17, 2011 at 02:49 PM
Mcmanus!
Posted by: Ugh | February 17, 2011 at 02:50 PM
Yes.
And its been so quiet around here in recent days.
Posted by: Countme--In | February 17, 2011 at 03:14 PM
Works for me, turb.
Awesome. In all sincerity, it is nice to have you back. I hope you can stick around.
Posted by: Turbulence | February 17, 2011 at 03:17 PM
I just dropped in mostly to congratulate lj, express appreciation to Jacob Davies and the other newish posters; and otherwise let the community know I've never stopped reading the blog. Everyone is doing good.
It's always hard to tell what GF has not linked to recently, and easy to presume the answer is "everything", but I thought this academic lady (h/t Digby) was interesting on
Social Media and Revolution.
As far as the above comments, consider it just my usual ironic stinkbomb tossing, sent from the heart and not at all serious. We wait and will see whether these are bourgeois or social revolutions, and whether the 44.4 per cent of Egyptians in poverty get better lives or if it is just "meet the new boss." on his Facebook page.
I am of course, hoping these Revolutions succeed and spread to the managed democracies (Sheldon Wolin;Hardt & Negri), like the USA, but remain skeptical and pessimistic.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 17, 2011 at 04:02 PM
On the violent/nonviolent thing, the Egyptian revolt wasn't completely nonviolent--
link
The NYT article above doesn't describe a bunch of Gandhian pacifists standing there as the police beat them. They threw stones, from what I can recall in some TV reports, and battled police and burned down police stations and that was before the counterattack by Mubarak's thugs.
Not that I'm saying it was a very violent revolution--far from it. But some people set the bar for nonviolence fairly strictly, at least sometimes--
link
Posted by: Donald Johnson | February 17, 2011 at 04:03 PM
Thanks for stopping by and the kind words, Bob. While I can't encourage stinkbomb tossing, I think that the occasional one adds to the inimitable ObWi bouquet
Speaking of stinkbombs, this one was a beaut.
If you want to see a really trollish response to that, go not further than Jeffrey Goldberg
Any number of ways to go with this, and if you choose one, you'll be accused of ignoring the others. Any takers?
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 17, 2011 at 05:53 PM
Rosen's brutal and disgusting remark really depressed me--I hate it when someone whose politics I like says something awful. At least he seems to be realizing it in that interview, because I'd seen other quotes where he was still clueless.. But his career is done.
Goldberg, of course, is only a warmonger so he continues to have a bright future in American journalism.
Posted by: Donald Johnson | February 17, 2011 at 08:07 PM
Hi bob! It looks like the revolution in Egypt has inspired one in Wisconsin. My brother is out on the barracades.
Posted by: wonkie | February 17, 2011 at 09:18 PM
Annoyingly, I wrote a long comment back about all of the above, full of links, and the the computer crashed completely.
Not rewriting it now. Drat.
But I commented on you all, at length.
Drat.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 17, 2011 at 09:31 PM
"It looks like the revolution in Egypt has inspired one in Wisconsin."
You wouldn't know this, but plenty of people have said variants of this on Twitter, and a whole lot of Egyptian people on Twitter are freaking furious. Nobody in Wisconsin is being shot, beaten bloody, disappeared, or tortured, and they're really really angry at remarks like this from Americans.
This, too, is part of what being part of a global network is about.
Bob, it's great to see you come by, I hope you won't be a stranger, and will come back, though it's useful when you make it a bit clearer when your stinkbombs are more or less serious; I, for one, often can't tell, and I sometimes have the suspicion you can't entirely tell, depending on your mood. :-)
I hadn't seen your link, though I've posted about Clay Shirky's power laws a zillion times (we first "met" when I first went online, back on panix.chat, in '95, which was a terrific place to learn online), and it's a fantastic piece, and I may swipe from it in a big way.
And, of course there's been plenty of violence in Egypt, will be more, and, well, that's stuff I should save for a post, which I'd really hope to get to early today, but first arthritis had my hands locked up, then other stuff jammed my bandwidth, then my computer crashed, and lots of spiffy excuses. Damn it.
But tomorrow is another day, though... I hate to sound like a broken record, but I also really have to get back to Highland Hospital again in the next few days, so my appearances will continue to be catch-as-catch-can. There's no lack of stuff to blog about, as ever!
Wanna cover Wisc-- well, no point in announcing stuff I may not get to, and there's always more.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 01:06 AM
In no particular order:
1) We all say stupid things. Some of us just say them more publically than others, and some of us much more frequently than others, and some both.
2) The more well-known you are, and the larger your megaphone is, the more an off-hand or casual remark or sentence or stupid paragraph will spread.
3) Stories of someone being stupid, saying something offensive, being an assh*le*, spread and stick around 100k faster and last 100k longer than all the wise, sensitive, insightful, and good things you ever say. You can undo years of good work in two minutes, if you're caught on camera, or instantly transmitted around the world by modern global media. I'd say "particularly social media," but it's all social media now. Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and the tv networks, and the major newspapers, and their blogs, are all inextricably mingled and intertwined now, with all reporting on each other, in a hall of mirrors.
4) There's nothing you can say that won't offend some set of people. And usually for very good reasons.
5) You can't keep your mouth shut all the time, particularly if you're a politician, writer, commentator, or otherwise public in some fashion.
6) Nobody should say stupid and offensive things. It's inexcusable.
7) I'm a man; I'm not trying to make excuses for a man saying terribly sexist things, but I'm a man, and no matter how much I may like to think I'm a feminist ally, I'm a man, and no matter how much I may read, talk, empathize, imagine, I'm not going to be a woman. At least I know that. But I still don't know that.
8) Nobody knows what it's like to walk in the shoes of another until you do. (I have a lot to say about this from the experience of someone recently learning a lot about what it's like to be disabled in some ways I previously wasn't, and how educational it's been.)
9) This is all no win.
10) Eventually, almost everyone will realize, when it dawns on everyone that privacy is a largely obsolete concept, that we're all in this no-win situation, unless we bury ourselves in 500 feet mineshafts on desert islands with no outside communications.
11) Shirkey's power laws apply to how the power of words are amplified, and we'll never all be equal, so #10 is only partially true at best.
12) Technology and the rate of change will continue to increase, so #11 is only partially true at best.
13. We're all better off keeping our mouths shut, and therefore no one should write, blog, or twitter.
14. Those of us with something to say won't do that.
15. We all need to be careful, and we'll all fail.
16. This is why I believe in extending good faith to people, and why I think that Nir Rosen said some awful things, didn't realize at the time what the context was, and I believe his apologies are sincere, and moreover, he's suffering now, and will suffer for a long time a direct hit to his career and life, and thus he's being punished for what he said, and it's not for me to speak for anyone else, but I think that's punishment enough. But that's just myself speaking for myself, not for anyone else, not for any women, nor for anyone appalled at what he said, and neither do I disagree with anyone who is appalled or has a harsher conclusion.
17. My heart goes out to Lara Logan. I tweeted this on the 15th, when I heard the news, which was when it was first breaking: "16 Feb GaryFarberKnows Gary Farber
CBS News' Lara Logan: http://t.co/uyeSSSU via @cbsnews Surrounded, brutal sustain sexual assault beating b4 saved women&soldiers. Horrible.
15 Feb
18. Everyone gets to have their own reaction.
19. That's mine at the moment, and it may be different in an hour when I read something else that influences me, or in five minutes when something else occurs to me.
20. There is no #20, but it's a nice round number.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 01:30 AM
Donald: "But his career is done."
I don't believe that for a moment. He damaged himself. Life goes on. Writers still write. It's hardly as if he was universally beloved for his points of view before this, as witness Goldberg.
About whom I also have somewhat mixed feelings. Really, one of the ways I drive people crazy is that I can see some good in almost everyone, or at least, the reasons why they're insane kooks, and often genuinely think they're doing some good, and even the kooks do some good. Yes, even Mr. Hitler did some good, even Mao, Stalin, Charlie Manson, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, you name your figure of evil and hate, and they've all at one time or another helped some people.
But the larger a figure you are, the more good or evil you are able to do, and do do. This is not moral equivocation on my part, nor am I trying to make any moral equivalencies. I'm hardly defending any of the above, either.
But nobody can be fully reduced to a bumper sticker, not if we truly want to understand them, and I believe understanding is valuable, and doesn't require forgiveness, or even lack of hatred.
But emotion isn't a substitue for reason, and yet we're, again, all human, and would be sociopathic if we didn't feel passionately abou those who we believe do evil.
Bottom line is that there are always second, third, fourth, and twentieth acts, and that when F. Scott Fitzgerald declared: "There are no second acts in American lives," he was being an idiot.
I also believe in redemption. Nir Rosen has, in my opinion, written invaluable journalism, and he's often had views I don't agree with at all. This is no contradiction: there are few people, if any, I agree with entirely. Goldberg offends me often, and yet, he, too, has had some valuable things to say at times.
When you write a lot, you end up saying a lot of things both stupid and smart. It's the percentages that matter, not the bits and pieces.
And that's where I end up at this tonight, where I usually do: taking the long view, and looking at the big picture, but not missing the close-up that people have been terribly hurt, and I'm very sorry this all happened.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 01:41 AM
Oh, and Bob? Wanna do a guest post?
Really. I've seriously been meaning to ask you.
We would have to discuss it, but I'd like to see you throw a bomb or two, so long as you're willing to accept some feedback, and then decide whether you want it to be posted, or not.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 01:45 AM
Oh, and Bob? Wanna do a guest post?
Really. I've seriously been meaning to ask you.
We would have to discuss it, but I'd like to see you throw a bomb or two, so long as you're willing to accept some feedback, and then decide whether you want it to be posted, or not.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 01:45 AM
How 480 characters unraveled my career.
He was better off not turning defensive. This part was also rather dumb:
Dumb. Now if he'd stuck with the earlier part, fine, but not having figured out the above prior to this is just an announcement that he Doesn't Get and still doesn't get, the entire essence of how every casual remark being able to be played up like this is the issue, not the details of this specific incident.But it's also natural he wouldn't have perspective on this, both because he was the center of this incident, and also that this isn't his area of expertise at all: understanding and have a perspective on Iraq, American imperialism, and so on, are.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 07:00 AM
GF:You wouldn't know this, but plenty of people have said variants of this on Twitter, and a whole lot of Egyptian people on Twitter are freaking furious. Nobody in Wisconsin is being shot, beaten bloody, disappeared, or tortured, and they're really really angry at remarks like this from Americans.
This, too, is part of what being part of a global network is about.
Richard Seymour "Class Struggle in America" ...from Great Britain, about Wisconsin, 2/17
Seymour:"I've just heard that one of the key teaching union organisers spent a week in Egypt studying the movement there recently, just to get an idea of how successful struggles work."
"Phil":"He's actually a member of the Teaching Assistants Association--the grad student union on campus."
Angry Arab News Service
...As'ad AbuKhalilAfter generations of American/Western support for brutal dictators, including the Obama/Clinton attempt to protect Mubarek/Suleiman until their exit was inevitable; and after the last decade of US invasions and attempted re-colonization of the ME and South Asia; and the ongoing Obama reluctance to support the freedom movements in places like Bahrain and Jordan...I certainly can understand their resentment and suspicion. And of course, the movement in Egypt is not monolithic, and the labor/union aspects of it may be more "International" in outlook.
But Solidarity can be useful, and as shown above, Tunisia & Egypt etc can help Americans with technical advice and the benefit of their experience.
(Gary, I am pretty busy reading, and as always, feel better linking to those smarter and more knowledgeable than myself. And if resistance to Obama's "Grand Bargain" or any opportunities arise in Texas to protest the Global Neo-Liberal "Shock Therapy"...well, I may be otherwise busy)
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 18, 2011 at 07:27 AM
GF:Nobody in Wisconsin is being shot, beaten bloody, disappeared, or tortured
It's very early, but it isn't as if the US gov'ts haven't had a lot of practice with the above in the last decade. Even American citizens, the consensus among rights groups is that Bradley Manning is being tortured.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | February 18, 2011 at 07:37 AM
Well, that was extremely annoying.
Long story short, is I wrote what I think was very good post this a.m. on Egypt, information tech, Arab world, combination of things, but all very time-dependent, and in the end, computer problems made it into dust in the wind.
Arthritis interfering with hands, typing, posting, other crap in life, just feeling like sh*t right now. Too much suck in life.
And can't even get good post posted without it destroying self.
Shouldn't comment here for a while until things are better.
But that frustrates me, too.
Life sucks and then you die. What's it all matter, anyway?
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 05:14 PM
Must go work on being philosophical happy fun guy again. Having Depressed Guy Moments, or day. Everything is making me cranky, grey day outside everywhere, okay, am going away now.
Posted by: Gary Farber | February 18, 2011 at 05:18 PM