If you're not watching Al Jazeera right now, fucking do it. English stream here.
Mubarak and Suleiman have just spoken, and shit is going down. I have a feeling things are about to get really really good, really really bad, or both.
UPDATE, Friday around 11:00 AM my time, I think around 6:00 PM in Egypt: In case you haven't heard, Suleiman has announced that Mubarak is "resigning" and handing leadership over to the military leadership.
5 comments:
I wonder if there's a clear chain of causation from Bradley Manning to the events in Tunisia and Egypt.
Hmm....if you feel like it, could you expand on that a bit?
Gladly, Ethan.
Manning is the likely source of the bulk of cable leaks to Wikileaks.
Wikileaks did not play a pivotal role in creating the conditions in Tunisia and Egypt. Nor did its citizens need a foreign source to tell or confirm for them what they already knew, right there in their own homes, villages, towns and cities.
But, in Tunisia, the ruling family was so worried about what Wikileaks cables showed, that they took active measures to repress the information:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/02/wikileaks-exclusive-book-extract
Which perhaps contributed to way the young in Tunisia viewed subversion, the necessary disavowal of obedience, and in general, the creation of an awareness of their own breaking point(s).
Wikileaks - despite Assange's plastic assurances to his commitment to rule of law liberalism - depends upon criminality, transgression and disobedience. And those who referenced it in Tunisia seem to be explicitly aware of that fact.
As for the connection to Egypt, that might run through Tunisia itself, since in the initial week of protests, more than one report seemed to spell an on the ground and acknowledged causative link between the success of the Tunisia uprising - however limited, in the final analysis - and the inspiration to resist and revolt, in Egypt.
Or something like that.
That should read "suppress the information." I suck.
Ah, OK, interesting. For a second the only thing I could think of was the silly "Tunisia needed wikileaks to tell them what was wrong" narrative, and I figured you were too smart to fall into that trap--and I was right to figure so.
Certainly seems like the events are, at least, not unrelated. I'm hesitant to read too much into it, though, particularly because your version of the narrative plays a bit too nicely into my hopes and thoughts regarding wikileaks' chance to actually change things. When things support my fondest hopes that well, I tend to doubt them. Time will tell, I suppose?
Post a Comment