Media Convergence or Confusion?

Watching Al Jazeera English today on their live Internet feed, I discovered their new program, The Stream, which they tout as 

a social media community that just happens to have a television programme on Al Jazeera English.

Being rather old-school, and not knowing what a "social media community" is, I was watching the television program. 

But here I was watching this television program on an Arab network based in Qatar that broadcasts in English, over the Internet. During the show, the hosts cued up Internet videos on their laptops, live. While conducting interviews with two guests, they also took comments from Facebook and Twitter and interviewed a Yemeni and a Chinese blogger via Skype. 

So . . . just to keep all the media straight:

1. I'm watching TV on my computer over the Internet.
2. They are broadcasting the show from a studio inside the Newseum in Washington, DC.
3. The headquarters of the television network, however, is based in Doha, Qatar.
4. The hosts interview their guests live in the studio about the role of social media.
5. They also interrupt occasionally to check their Twitter feed for comments or stories that are trending.
6. They pull video of a car accident in China off the Internet, click play, and maximize it to full screen, live. So now I am watching via TV cameras filming them watching a video hosted on the Internet. (Wouldn't it be more efficient to have the studio run it firsthand?)
7. They also interview the Yemeni and Chinese bloggers live, via Skype video chat. So I'm watching TV on the Internet, watching TV cameras filming them chatting via video on the Internet. (Wouldn't it be better quality if they could have TV cameras film each side of the conversation?)
8. Once their time us up, they continue the filmed conversation on their website, separate from the network's live feed. (I kept watching the network news feed.)

Lost in all my confusion over the media of transmission was much of a sense of message. While we can now connect and micro-blog instantaneously across multiple media technologies, I wonder if we are losing coherent narratives. If the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said, then what is being communicated here?

Don't get me wrong: this is fascinating stuff, but the fascination is focused upon the novelty of means of communication rather than the substance of the stories. These technologies haven't changed the fact that powerful state authorities retain the upper hand to repress their populations in Bahrain, China, Syria, Yemen, and many other places.

Another Helpful Take on Bahrain

Jean-Francois Seznec of Georgetown University has just published an interesting analysis of the Bahrain crisis on a site affiliated with the Arab Studies Journal.

He focuses on the combination of four volatile factors:

• The split between the reformist crown prince, Salman bin Hamad al Khalifa, and his great-uncle the (corrupt but powerful) prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa.
• An opposition divided between the reformist al-Wefaq group, which had elected eighteen members to the gerrymandered and weakly empowered lower house of parliament, and the more radical al-Haq group, led by Hassan Mushaima.
• The younger, Facebook generation which emphasizes being Bahraini over religious sectarianism.
• The large regional neighbors, Saudi Arabia (population 20 million) and Iran (population 65 million). The Saudis back the royal family hardliners (the prime minister), while Iran backs the mostly Shia protestors.

No matter what, he argues, the royal family will have to lose power, either to the Saudis (in the case of a crackdown) or to the population (in the case of a negotiated transition toward constitutional monarchy).

If the U.S. State Department is wise, it should be supporting negotiations toward real power-sharing. I think the appointment of a Shiite prime minister out of a freely, fairly, and democratically elected parliament would end this crisis. 

For now, the U.S. embassy in Bahrain was sharing donuts with protestors who were asking the U.S. for help the other day (see video).

It'll take more than sugar to satisfy the opposition. We need our government to push for a democratic transition in Bahrain, or else this crisis will only continue.

Saudi Sticks, Bahraini Carrots, Secular Demands

Protests continue to roil the Arab world. Citizens in Egypt and Tunisia keep pressing their regimes toward reform. Libya is collapsing into civil war. But keep your eyes on the Gulf region, on both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

After Friday's protest marches in Saudi Arabia's Eastern (al-Hasa) Province, the Saudi Ministry of the Interior issued a statement reminding "some people" that "the applicable laws in the Kingdom strictly prohibit all forms of demonstrations, marches and sit-ins." A not-so-subtle hint to those who were marching on Friday.

Will this law be enforced strictly on this coming Friday, the "Day of Rage" announced on Facebook? If not, expect protests to swell. If so, we may see violence. Either way, Friday, March 11 could be a decisive day in Saudi and Arab history.

Over in Bahrain, the Al Khalifa family is sticking with the carrot strategy. Their interior ministry pledged to hire 20,000 people, edging partway toward the demands of protestors, who complain that Sunni foreigners are naturalized as citizens and then hired as security and military forces. (The interior ministry is considered second-rate compared to the defense forces anyway.) But as I've been arguing on this blog, buying off the opposition will no longer work. At this point, it's just insulting.

As Bahraini opposition politician Ebrahim Sharif told the New York Times, 

"This is about dignity and freedom — it’s not about filling our stomachs." 

This is the message that the tottering regimes of the Arab world need to hear. What ordinary, young citizens want is an end to corruption, an end to repression, and an end to politics as usual. They want their voices to be heard. They want the rule of law. They want term limits for prime ministers or presidents. They want better governance. They want a growing economy and the prospect of good jobs.

Note what they are not saying. They are making modest, incremental, tangible, secular demands. These are not the demands of crazy religious fanatics. The protestors are not railing against the United States or Israel or chanting "Islam is the solution"--the vague, utopian slogan of the Islamic movements. They are asking for real reforms in the structures of power. (A demonstration today outside the U.S. embassy in Bahrain was not attacking the US, but asking for its help.) Democratization, not revolution, is their goal.

One observer of the Bahrain protests describes a sign with pictures of all the British prime ministers that have served since 1970: all eight of them. Below that is a picture of all the Bahraini prime ministers since then: one (Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa, right). After 41 years in power, he's gotten a little corrupt and out of touch. Hence, it's no surprise that the the protestors in Bahrain marched to the Prime Minister's office yesterday and demanded that he resign. 

The other interesting thing about the Bahrain protests, noticeable to anyone who's seen photos of the past two weeks of protests, is that nearly everyone is waving a Bahraini flag. The protestors are playing down their Shiite religious background and pushing their demands in the context of national unity. The discourse is using the terms of secular nationalism rather than of religious grievance.

Although this could change if things get ugly, I think this is another encouraging sign. And although we may be paying more for gas in the next few weeks, the turmoil may give birth to a more stable region for decades to come. Stay tuned. . . 

Another Solid Analysis of Bahrain

Jane Kinnimont of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) published a helpful overview of the history of Bahrain's struggle for a constitutional monarchy on the Foreign Affairs website.

Lots of observers are tracking the situation, which continues to remain tense, but this piece offers some historical perspective. None of us can predict what will happen next. Stay tuned.

Protests in Saudi's Eastern Province

Here's a video of a protest march today in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province. These young men were protesting the recent imprisonment of a Shia cleric named Tawfiq al-Amer, who has advocated openly for the empowerment of Shiites in Eastern Saudi Arabia, where they are a majority.

Hopeful Signs?

The other day at a forum on "Egypt, Social Media, and the Middle East" I praised the Obama Administration's handling of the wave of domestic unrest sweeping across the Arab world. And my colleague Greg Miller stressed that a role for Islam in the politics of these countries does not mean that we are headed for another Iranian Revolution. All of us stressed that the current situation is overall hopeful and not scary. Other than rising oil prices, which will only go up next week, the news is mostly good.

Our message: Let's not lose the good news in the midst of the upheaval. In the long run, in most countries, this process should yield more stable and legitimate governments.

This morning I see more positive signs that our hopeful analysis is holding up so far--and that the Obama foreign policy players have handled a fast-moving crisis pretty well:

• The Washington Post reports that administration officials actually understand the distinction between al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. In fact, they are preparing for the possibility that peaceful Islamist political parties might play roles in the transitions in places like Egypt and Tunisia. (In Tunisia the Islamist al-Nahda party has been legalized.)
• Foreign Affairs, the voice of the foreign policy establishment, published an excellent piece about sectarianism in Bahrain by Kristen Smith Diwan, one of the leading experts on Bahrain alongside Rutgers' Toby Jones. If people are listening to her analysis, which seems highly accurate in light of my experience in Bahrain, they will realize that empowering the Shia opposition in a truly democratic process (as opposed to the faux democracy of the past decade) is safer than repression. So far our government has been on the right side of this. As I told the forum crowd the other day, Obama most likely told the Bahraini government not to shoot their own people anymore. That's a wise policy right now.
• The other foreign policy establishment, ForeignPolicy.com (which is now owned by the Washington Post), ran a piece early in the week on Saudi Arabia by a respected expert on Saudi Arabia that reinforces my concerns that serious protests will emerge next Friday, March 11. The title is ominous: "Yes, It Could Happen Here." Really, if it can happen in Oman, it can happen anywhere. And while large-scale protests next Friday could scare the oil markets, it could also scare the Al-Saud family into a process of dialogue with opposition forces in the country that could yield something like a constitutional monarchy.

Of course, we could all be wrong. The chaos in Libya, which is quickly turning into a civil war, could turn out to be the norm across the region. But for the moment, it seems like level heads are mostly prevailing in the region and in Washington.

Why I Haven't Given Up on Tom Friedman . . . Yet

If you've read my book, you know that I respond critically to Thomas Friedman's views of globalization in every chapter. Lately, though, I've found his columns in the New York Times less and less helpful.

But yesterday, he published a column analyzing the wave of unrest in the Arab world that reminded me why he's still worth reading from time to time. We have to remember that he got his start in the Middle East, after he earned an M.Phil. in Middle East studies from St. Antony's College at Oxford. And his first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, has some first-rate stories from the region in the 1980s.

In addition to the obvious factors--"tyranny, rising food prices, youth unemployment and social media"--yesterday's column also describes some less obvious ones that contributed to the Arab revolts:

• The Obama factor (a guy with the middle name of "Hussein" becoming president of the US offers hope). 
• Google Earth (where poorer Bahrainis could see with their own eyes the large estates of the Al Khalifa family, while they lived in cramped conditions). 
• Israel (whose top leaders have been arrested lately for corruption, right next door to Egypt).
• China (which hosted the lavish Olympics despite starting from a position of poverty similar to Egypt's in the 1950s)
• The Fayyad factor (the current prime minister of the Palestinian Authority Salam Fayyad, who is running the West Bank by promoting clean, effective, efficient governance).

The only problem with this list is that it mostly assumes that Arabs had to look outside their countries to be galvanized into action. It plays down the role that ordinary people played on their own. Did they really need to look at Israel to think that they wanted their corrupt leaders to be held accountable? Were people just sitting there passively?

Still, this is an interesting picture of a networked Arab world, full of young people who watch Al Jazeera and hear about what's happening all across the globe. Surrounding all these Arab revolts is the process of, yes, globalization.

What I mean is this: Taking Manfred Steger as our guide, we can define globalization as referring to "the expansion and intensification of social relations and consciousness across world-time and world-space" (Steger, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd ed., p. 15). We are seeing in the Arab world the consequences of a whole generation of young people connecting with each other and the outside world, of a whole generation becoming conscious of their power to change the world, and of a whole generation making those changes happen.

Thanks to Friedman, we can embed this global process in localized Middle Eastern contexts.

Footnote to earlier posts: Now it looks like the United Arab Emirates' rulers are trying the old pre-emptive carrot strategy of buying off opposition in advance. They have promised $1.5 billion in infrastructure projects to the poorer of the seven emirates that make up the federation (in addition to the wealthy ones of Dubai,  Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah, that would be Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, and Umm al-Quwai). That may be a sign of more danger to come.

The Carrot After the Stick?

Lester Pearson, a former Canadian prime minister, once described politics as the "skilled use of blunt instruments." And two of those instruments, for all politicians, are the carrot of positive incentives and the stick of coercion.

Even the madman of Libya, Muammar Qaddafi, understands this (in his own twisted way). Today's Washington Post reports  that he announced that his government will pay $400 to each family, basically bribing them to stay loyal. He also promised state employees up to 150 percent raises. Will it work? Umm . . . that's doubtful (to put it mildly).

Interestingly, though, Qaddafi continues a pattern that we've seen across the Arab world:

• The day before a "Day of Rage" scheduled for February 14, Bahrain's King Hamad promised to pay every citizen of Bahrain $2650 as a "sign of appreciation."  
• During the last gasps of the Mubarak regime, his government announced that it would give state employees a 15 percent raise. 
• King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia jumped on the bandwagon this week, mandating a 15 percent raise for Saudi state employees--and billions of interest-free loans to help young Saudis get married, start a business, or build a house. 

Based on the reaction of Bahrainis, I think the carrot approach will actually backfire. Young people might well feel insulted by such blatant attempts to buy their loyalty. They are sick of this kind of politics of purchased loyalty. It obviously failed in Egypt.

And it's too late in Libya. There is already an armed revolt that is taking control of much of the rest of the country, isolating Qaddafi's control to the capital city of Tripoli. He's already slaughtered his own people; why would they be motivated by cash?

All eyes are on Saudi now. Even members of the royal family admit that political change is necessary. Can that happen peacefully or will there be conflict? Will the tried-and-tested politics of the rentier-oil-welfare state work? Will young people allow their loyalty to be purchased?

Or will they assert their dignity?

After the last few weeks of surprises, I'm betting on the latter. Watch Saudi Arabia in the next few weeks.

Bahrain Situation

Today, Rutgers historian (and family friend) Toby Jones and a colleague posted a helpful overview of the Bahrain situation up to the present on Middle East Report Online, just a day after a massive crowd of protestors marched along the most prominent section of highway in the country, from Bahrain Mall to the Pearl Roundabout. The day before, on February 21, the government rallied a large crowd of supporters, showing that it wasn't going to give up easily. Who's going to blink first?

The standoff is in stark contrast to the bloody crackdown in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Qadafi is not going to give up power, and he's not afraid to do whatever it takes to stay in power. It's ugly. 

Let's hope the Bahrain situation stays non-violent and that all sides can work out a deal. Who knows how this will end?

Libya in Chaos, Bahrain in Stasis

Although no reporters are in Libya, Al Jazeera English is covering the chaos unfolding there right now, mostly by interviewing foreigners and exiled Libyans who have some knowledge of the country. The leader of Libya, Muammar Qadafi, has apparently ordered his military to fire on his own people with live ammunition. He is rumored to have ordered tanks and air force jets to bomb protestors. Several Libyan diplomats have resigned their posts in protest, and many observers expect Qadafi's government to fall: another casualty in the Arab Revolutions of 2011 (along with the several hundred protesters killed there).

Meanwhile, the protesters in Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout are settling in for a long wait, making themselves comfortable, as this AJE story shows:



On the other side of the Bahrain issue is the royal family, the Al Khalifa. Providing a nice primer on them and the other royal families of the Gulf states, UAE expert Christopher Davidson published this piece today at Foreign Policy.com.

A Wave of Revolution in the Arab World: Bin Laden's Nightmare

The Arab world is in an uproar. Now that Tunisia and Egypt have settled down a bit, today there were pro-democracy protests in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain--as this AP video shows. (In Libya, as many as 200 people have been killed in a crackdown that makes Bahrain's look mild.)



Americans are programmed to freak out about unrest in the Middle East, but this is actually good news for us and bad news for Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda group.

As Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland argued recently, the news from Egypt was bin Laden's nightmare. He's correct to say that bin Laden and his right-hand Egyptian man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, see democracy as a threat to their cause. Zawahiri worked for years for the violent overthrow of the Egyptian regime, the "near enemy," as he called it, before he worked to attack the "far enemy" that supported Mubarak: the United States. The peaceful toppling of Mubarak is a direct challenge to their violent, revolutionary strategy.

A story in today's Washington Post even suggests that the protests in Yemen, a current center of Al Qaeda activity and a failing state, could be good news for the U.S. As the author puts it,

Yemen's protesters are demanding democratic freedoms, not the Islamic caliphate al-Qaeda seeks to create in this Middle Eastern nation and elsewhere. Such calls for democracy would make it harder for al-Qaeda to claim it has popular sentiments on its side, and would also give the disaffected a peaceful way to air their grievances without fear of persecution.

Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders have condemned the pro-democracy movements for being secular and godless, deviating from Islam.

But it's not clear that the young people in all these Arab countries really care. They're too busy trying to construct a more hopeful future within their borders to try and institute a pan-Islamic caliphate by violence.

While democracy could be messy at times--and could certainly yield governments that oppose U.S. interests--we should be celebrating with the Arab young people in the streets.

Don't freak out: peaceful pro-democracy protests are better than al Qaeda's alternative. Indeed, they are a repudiation of that dark, violent scenario. Democratization in the region is a hopeful and encouraging sign.

Most Encouraging Protest Sign I've Seen in Weeks

Taken by Nick Kristof of the New York Times and posted on his Twitter account yesterday at the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain:

The ball is firmly in the court of the royal family of Bahrain, the Al Khalifa. What happens next? I see a few possibilities:

1. The protestors follow the moderate, peaceful course of this sign and there's a longer stalemate, as the family resists making any concessions to share more political power. Most likely, but also most likely to create a resurgence of turmoil.

2. The protestors stay moderate and real concessions are made to share power with the Shia majority population. The best possibility.

3. The protestors stay moderate and there is another violent crackdown on them. Worst possibility of all.

4. The protestors split, with the young people demanding the overthrow of the monarchy and the older generation negotiating with the regime, which makes a few superficial concessions to keep the peace for the short-term. This is closer to what happened from 2001 to the present, when King Hamad was able to get the Shia al-Wefaq political movement* to run for elections to the lower house of parliament, despite the fact that the parliament is quite toothless and the districts are gerrymandered so that the Shia can only snag about 18 seats (the current strength of al-Wefaq after recent elections). Call this "the return to the status quo" option: young people getting shot and detained in the streets, the older generation negotiating with the power structure. Obviously, this status quo led to the current crisis, so it's not preferable.

Scenarios 1 and 4 seem most likely, but you can pray for all sides to embrace 2 and for the regime to avoid 3.
---------------------------
* For a quick background on the main political movements in Bahrain, see this Reuters story.

Bahrain: When Global and Local Collide

Globalization and the regime in tiny Bahrain are colliding today, keeping this tiny country at the top of international news. The crisis reflects both global trends and very localized political grievances.

The reason Americans should care about Bahrain is that it's located just off the coast of Saudi Arabia and across the gulf from Iran, a volatile neighborhood full of oil. In fact, most Saudi oil exports are loaded onto tankers near Bahrain. If things go pear-shaped in Bahrain, it could easily spill over to Saudi. Gas prices have already gone up in the U.S. because of oil traders' unease over protests.

But what are the global trends driving the Bahrain protests? Information technology, satellite television, and higher education, among other things, are contributing to the growth of an educated, Arab middle class. Some of this growing middle class were my students in Bahrain in 2004-05, and I was impressed by their tech-savvy, their idealism, and their global awareness. The region is full of such bright, earnest, educated young people who are often underemployed and living at home. 

One young man, who had just graduated, became a very good friend. His struggles in finding a meaningful job seem typical of his generation. He's bounced around a bit but feels stifled in Bahrain. Like many young Middle Easterners, he's trying to find a meaningful job that matches his skills (he has a Bachelor's in banking and finance and did some graduate work abroad). And, yes, he spends time on Facebook. 

His experience speaks to this table from a report based on International Labor Organization data and created for a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan in 2007:

Employment of 15-24 year olds as a percentage of that group is the lowest in the Middle East and North Africa (the lowest of any region in the world). Which is one reason why young Bahrainis like my friend are frustrated.

But that's not the whole story. There are also very localized political issues driving the unrest in Bahrain, as I noted in an earlier post. (For a vivid photo essay on Bahrain, check out this Foreign Policy post.) It's only the Shiite community in Bahrain that is out in the streets, because they feel disempowered and discriminated against by the minority Sunni community. Unless their grievances are addressed and they gain some political power in Bahrain, this crisis will not end. One Bahraini Shia friend tells me that the young people are not afraid of the regime and will protest peacefully.

To get a sense of why the Shia are angry about the crackdown on the peaceful, sleeping Pearl Roundabout protestors, check out this disturbing clip from al Jazeera English or this disturbing clip from Nick Kristof of the New York Times. Reports today indicate that five people were killed in the crackdown. The Pearl Roundabout is now abandoned and surrounded by barbed wire. 

Compared to the 365 killed in crackdowns on the Egypt protests, five deaths might seem small in comparison. But consider the populations of each country. There are only 500,000 Bahraini citizens, so the five killed reflect a ratio of 1 death per 100,000 residents. Egypt's population is 80 million, so their ration is 1 death per 219,178 residents. In other words, the Bahrain crackdown had a more lethal impact relative to the total citizenry. 

Thousands of people are marching in funeral processions for slain protestors in Bahrain today. For the peace of our world, for our friends on all sides, let us pray that the death toll goes no higher.

Tiananmen on the Gulf

It's not very often that Bahrain, a country our family lived in for a year, makes the top headlines. But, sadly, it did today.

In the middle of last night (late night on the East Coast of the US), Bahrain's security forces cracked down on a peaceful encampment of protestors at the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain, shooting tear gas, shotguns, and rubber bullets into the crowd. At least three people were killed and hundreds injured, some of them seriously.

Yet again, al Jazeera's coverage is a bit behind the story, while CNN offers better reporting--including images that remind one very much of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. Armored personnel carriers were seen rumbling down one of the main highways toward the site of the now-disbanded demonstrations.

The question now is whether the opposition forces will respond with more protests. They have already announced a day of protests on Monday, but I also think that people will pour out into the streets tomorrow after midday Friday prayers.

Toby Jones, a historian at Rutgers University and a family friend of ours, offered an insightful analysis on last night's PBS NewsHour program. Even as he was being interviewed, the security forces were mobilizing to crack down on the peaceful demonstrators. Toby noted, as I did in my previous post, that this is now very serious. The seriousness has multiplied after last night's crackdown.

I continue to be very concerned about the dangers of the situation in Bahrain--and across the region. If things get uglier in Bahrain, as seems likely, this will have implications for the Shia population across the straits in eastern Saudi Arabia, which is the primary oil-producing region in the country. Kuwait, too, has a Shia minority (roughly 25% of the population) with ties to those in Bahrain. Meanwhile, across the Gulf, the Iranians are watching closely, as they feel a kinship with their fellow Shia. Libya, Algeria, Yemen, and Jordan are also facing unhappy young people who demand an end to corruption and a start to political power-sharing.

We are seeing a wave of revolutionary pressures that rivals 1848 or 1989. And it's not clear when that wave will crest or whether peaceful protesters can win out. As China showed, sometimes violent repression can keep a regime in power. The Al Khalifa family of Bahrain is banking on that, but they may overdraw on their account. I pray that they will see the wisdom of power-sharing and a peaceful end.

People Power in Egypt

So Mubarak resigned today, and the military has taken over the reins of power. Which means that Egypt's uprising will not go down in the history books alongside Hungary in 1956, the Czech Republic in 1968, or Tienanmen Square in 1989. Instead, we can look to the Philippines in 1986, when Ferdinand Marcos was ousted by a People Power movement that took the U.S. government, a close ally of Marcos, by surprise. And the leader of this "yellow revolution," Corazon Aquino, led the transition. (Will there be an Egyptian Corey Aquino? Stay tuned.)

Watching al Jazeera English right now, it's impossible not to be moved. People in Egypt are ecstatic, stunned, exhilarated, screaming, and crying in the streets. They can't believe that a popular movement forced an entire regime out of power. This has never happened before in the Arab world. And just a few weeks ago no one could have imagined it--especially in Egypt. It's unbelievable.

Phase 6? The Egyptian Revolution Will Escalate Tomorrow

Hosni Mubarak made a speech in Egypt tonight, but he refused to step down. While he made some concessions to the opposition forces (amending the constitution), and even gestured toward the young people of Egypt, he did not got far enough to quell the protests.

While Mubarak played good cop, his vice president, Omar Suleiman, played bad cop. Suleiman gave a speech on Egyptian television not long after Mubarak, calling on the demonstrators to go home.

They will not go home. Tomorrow they will hold large-scale protests for the third Friday in a row. Eyewitness accounts from Tahrir Square this week--including this Thomas Friedman column and this Baltimore Sun story--describe a euphoric, peaceful, freedom-loving crowd. These protestors will be happy with nothing less than the ouster of Mubarak,his cronies, and his regime.

Before Mubarak had even finished speaking, the protesters camped out in Tahrir Square were jeering him. Totally unsatisfied, they and their friends will turn out in force tomorrow afternoon, following midday prayers.

It's clear that Mubarak and his regime just don't get what is happening in the Square. They think they can dribble out small concessions to meet tangible demands, which of course they are only granting under duress in the first place. They will only embolden the opposition, which has discovered that it can bring serious political change that was unthinkable just a few weeks ago.

Watching a Revolution Unfold--Live

With increased globalization of media, we can now watch a revolution unfold live in real time. And a revolution is what Egypt is getting (unless something changes soon). Like Iran in 1979 or Eastern Europe in 1989, popular mobilization is driving events.

Al Jazeera's live stream continues to broadcast stunning live footage from the streets of the capital city, Cairo. In just the last few minutes, pro-government gangs on horseback and camelback charged into the crowds of anti-government demonstrators. (Some of them were carrying police IDs, which suggests that the regime fomented this counter-protest.) Groups are prying up pavement and throwing rocks at each other. It appears that anti-government forces are trying to keep the pro-Mubarak groups from getting to Tahrir Square, the center of the protests. With popular violence escalating, we are now in Phase 3 of the ongoing power struggle between the regime and its critics in the streets, with no glimpse of resolution.

Phase 1 of the protests ran from Tuesday to Friday of last week. The anti-government forces seized the initiative and surprised the regime with their bold and open contempt of the Mubarak regime. The police were ordered to crack down but failed. On Friday, January 28, the government shut down all Internet and mobile phone service, which only inflamed popular anger. After Friday midday prayers, thousands of people streamed to Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo, although the police prevented many from coming by blocking passages on the two main bridges over the Nile (6 October Bridge and Qasr al-Nil Bridge). The military was ordered into the streets on Friday night, but they took no action. On Friday night, in a speech on Egyptian state television, Mubarak made his first concessions, dismissing his cabinet and appointing a new prime minister. He also claimed to be standing "on the side of the poor," a statement so far detached from reality as to be laughable.

Phase 2 began on Saturday. Defying a military curfew that was supposed to begin at 4:00 pm local time, hundreds of thousands of people poured out to Tahrir Square, at the center of Cairo. That night, looters, many of them carrying police IDs, rampaged through Cairo neighborhoods. The police disappeared from the streets and the military remained neutral, a position that they publicly announced as their official stance on Monday afternoon. Protestors also welcomed the military with hugs and smiles, doing nothing to provoke them. By Tuesday, with military protection, up to a million demonstrators responded to opposition leaders' calls to march, making these the largest demonstrations so far.

However, the opposition forces were not organized enough to march on any government sites. Had they surrounded the presidential compound in Heliopolis, they might have been able to convince Mubarak that he was truly in danger. (Of course, such a move would have put them in danger, too.) Instead, Mubarak continued to believe that he could survive this crisis--despite the protestors' demands that he go immediately. Unlike Tunisia's, Egypt's anti-government resistance is divided. That may be their undoing.

Today Egypt is in Phase 3, the escalation toward revolutionary violence. Last night (Tuesday night, February 1), in a speech on Egyptian TV, Mubarak offered a mix of responsiveness and stubbornness. He responded by announcing a few concessions, saying that his new vice president  would open a dialogue with opposition forces, that he would not run for re-election in the September presidential elections and that he would allow amendments to the constitutional articles that currently allow limits on candidates for presidential elections. But he did not explicitly rule out the possibility that his son Gamal could be one of those candidates. He also hinted darkly at the possibility of chaos, calling for people to return to normalcy. And he said that he planned to be buried in Egypt. In other words, he would not be leaving like Tunisia's Ben Ali.

Whether they are following orders or responding spontaneously to this speech, Mubarak's allies in the police are today fomenting counter-revolutionary chaos. To evoke the poet Dylan Thomas, instead of going gently into the good night, Mubarak is raging against the dying of the light. He and his regime cannot imagine giving up power. They will try to cling to power as long as possible, even if that brings violent clashes on the streets and widespread destruction of property. Mubarak will allow Egypt to burn before he will lose face.

Neither pro- nor anti-government forces have any leadership on the streets to restrain them. Unless the military topples Mubarak soon, this could easily escalate out of control into social breakdown and revolutionary chaos. Across the world, we are witnessing the utter collapse of a regime and a social revolution--live.

Updates on WikiLeaks and Tunisia's Revolution

Just hours after I posted on the debate over WikiLeaks' effect on the revolution happening in Tunisia on Saturday, I turned on my car radio and heard NPR's "On the Media" program debating the same issue.

And the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski said yesterday that Tunisian sources confirmed that the release of U.S. State Department cables did play a role.

Protestors in Egypt have been inspired by Tunisia, and yesterday they got a little out of hand. Since I am scheduled to go with a group of students to Egypt in May, I'll be watching events there closely.

Tunisia: The First WikiLeaks Revolution?

If you haven't been paying attention to international news the past few weeks, you've missed an amazing and important story. Protestors in the small North African country of Tunisia have driven the long-time president, Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali,  from the country and brought about a revolution that is gripping the entire Arab world. As the interim prime minister (and former close ally of Ben Ali) tries to cobble together a stable government, analysts are debating whether this is the first "WikiLeaks revolution" (Google "Tunisia wikileaks revolution" and you'll see a number of commentators weighing in). Are they right?

The catalyst that provoked the protests was a 26-year old street vendor named Muhammad Boazizi who, after refusing to pay a bribe, was harassed and arrested by a female government inspector and shortly after killed himself by setting himself on fire. (This New York Times story offers the most vivid details of his story so far in the mainstream American media.) Social media and Arabic TV networks (especially al-Jazeera) picked up the story. Text and picture messages spread the word and helped organize protests. There's no question that information technology helped speed up the process of ousting Ben Ali. But did it cause it?

The frustrations of ordinary Tunisians were no surprise to those familiar with the country. In March 2005, during what some called an "Arab spring" (of popular mobilization in Arab countries), I was able to spend a few days in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. I arrived just a day after large protests had erupted, and in the streets I saw buses full of riot police waiting to contain any new demonstrations. A U.S. diplomat told me about serious corruption in high places. One reason that there so few multinational food chains like McDonalds or Pizza Hut in the country, he said, was that they were facing constant pressures to pay off corrupt officials. Rather than pay constant bribes, they stayed away.

University students were very careful about what they said, because the secret police had informants everywhere, but they were deeply unhappy with the regime even then.

Corruption was not news in Tunisia, but last month WikiLeaks unveiled several U.S. State Department cables containing lurid details of wealth and extravagance that outraged Tunisians outside the president's inner circle. Chief among them was a cable in which the U.S. ambassador reported on a party he attended at the large beach compound of Ben Ali's son-in-law, where evidence of decadence and excess abounded: Roman artifacts such as columns and frescoes, a carved "lion's head from which water pours into a pool," a lavish dinner,  talk of private jets, and a caged live tiger that ate four chickens a day. Although word-of-mouth and rumor on the street talked of the president's cronies being a mafia, this was colorful and official confirmation of extreme corruption.

But can we say that WikiLeaks caused the revolution (as Andrew Sullivan and Elizabeth Dickinson and others suggested)? I don't think so, because conditions on the ground were the real frustration, and the immediate catalyst was Mohammed Bouazizi's suicide. But the WikiLeaks cables spread details of the corruption more widely and quickly--and they demonstrated that the U.S. and the French governments were doing nothing to stop it. People realized that they were on their own.

Furthermore, social media--as even skeptics like Evgeny Morozov, Dan Murphy, and Timothy Garton Ash admit--helped to facilitate popular mobilization.

As I argue in the book, the globalization of politics is a mixed bag. The Internet and social media may be speeding up politics around the world, but they are not fundamentally altering the structures of authority vested in the state (at least, not yet). However, they are making it harder for politicians to get away with some of their old ways, as Ben Ali and his cronies found out too late.

Canada's Push to Claim the Arctic? The WSJ Says "Yes."

Today's Wall Street Journal carries a story about Canada's attempts to "burnish its position as position as [an] Arctic Power", which returns us to themes discussed in chapter 9 of the book and discussed last week here. Unlike the Foreign Policy story that I covered last week, the Journal story takes seriously Canada's military muscle-flexing. I'm just glad to see that my brother-in-law's favorite publication supports my position in the book!