lupercal wrote:Let's start with the fact that the first order of business of the new regime was to assure the 1980 election of Geppetto Bush and his puppet.
Yeah...
it wasn't really, though, was it? There was almost a year between Khomeini coming to power and the taking of the US Embassy (in which time Khomeini actually sabotaged a meeting between his PM and Brzezinski because the US let the Shah in), and then another full year until the end of the elections, when they were released after collaboration with Bush. It obviously wasn't the reason Khomeini got in. And then once in charge Reagan promptly started supporting Iraq.
lupercal wrote:I'd only heard of one in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, and true to form his story is full of holes, starting with the recent university degree he supposedly couldn't find a job with.
Bouazizi died on 19 December; on the 24th Hassan Ben Salah Neji publicly electrocuted himself in Sidi Bou Zid by climbing to the top of an electricity pole and grabbing the wires. Allaa Hidouri, 23, electrocuted himself on 11 January. I don't see what's suspicious about people getting the story wrong; graduate unemployment is the big story so it's not that odd that people assumed that was his case. The true story comes out now, precisely because journalists can go to Sidi Bou Zid and talk to his family.
lupercal wrote:the fact that it involved petroleum
It didn't.
lupercal wrote:the fact that it was vividly photographed and splashed all over everywhere
It wasn't.
As for the "Twitter did it" theme, I read
this good bit by Nanjala Nyabola this morning (excerpts, my bold):
Nanjala Nyabola wrote:As someone who has tried to use social networking sites to organise political action and failed, I'm still inclined to stay on the middle-ground with this one. I agree with those who argue that the internet and the mobile phone, much like the Gutenberg Press before them, do not create revolutionaries. The desire to effect social change in one's community is more a reflection of personality and passion, and a revolutionary will emerge whether or not he or she has access to the internet or to Twitter. Indeed, the greatest change-makers on the continent, the revolutionaries of yore like Cabral and Kimathi, did not even need the printed press to get their message out and organise successful resistance to colonialism. Many of the young people who came out in support of the PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde - African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) and Mau Mau couldn't even read or write, let alone produce pamphlets in support of their causes.
[...]
Acknowledging that social networking or technology in general has a role to play in catalysing activism doesn't diminish the agency or power of those who participate. Rather, what it does is acknowledge that the world has changed, and social activism with it. Technology, in the hands of passionate and organised individuals can and has been vital in fomenting social change in Tunisia and further afield, and this should not be underplayed. To corrupt an old saying, in as much as a good worker never blames their tools because they know that a tool is only as effective as those who wield it, anyone who's ever work on a farm will tell you, it doesn't hurt to have good tools.
Searcher08 wrote:The other aspect is that it is to my mind very worth checking out the belief that Arabs couldn't organise their own revolution without the all powerful western spooks directing it.
Yeah that's par for the course in the 'arc of instability'. I'm actually more offended by the way these guys, because they now believe the CIA is behind every change of government and the CIA are the bad guys, twist themselves into knots to paint the Shah as some kind of people's hero and Ben Ali as a man with a heart of gold once you learned to see behind his gruff exterior. It moves the position from ignorant to insulting.
