Kairouan, Tunisia, May 2012, from a rooftop. Photo by Juan Cole For more on this UNESCO Heritage City, see this link.
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Tunisia
Ayatollah Santorum Excommunicates Obama, Mainstream Protestants
Rick Santorum attacked President Obama on Saturday for his theology. Although people assumed that Santorum was, like other conservatives, hinting around that Obama is not a Christian but rather a secret Muslim, Santorum denied this allegation. And, likely he meant instead to lump Obama with the 45 million members of mainline Protestant churches in the […]
Mohamed Bouazizi (d. 2011) from Tunisia to San Francisco to SOTU
Graffiti from Mission Street, San Francisco in honor of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation kicked off the Tunisian Revolution, inspired the Tahrir Square demonstrations, and the Arab Spring: OWS San Francisco demonstration, California Street, January 20, 2012 (inspired by the Tahrir Square demonstrations of January 25, 2011, and after in Egypt): Occupy Wall Street in turn […]
Sharp-Elbowed Politics in the New Arab World
What are the big stories in the Arab world today? A newly elected parliament is being seated, and a deposed president is leaving the country. But beyond that, the remarkable thing is that there are any political stories at all. There weren’t, a year and a half ago. The political stories of today are not […]
Top Ten Myths about the Arab Spring of 2011
1. The upheavals of 2011 were provoked by the Bush administration’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq Bzzt! Wrong answer. None of the young people who made this year’s revolutions ever pointed to Iraq as an inspiration. The only time Iraq was even brought up in their tweets was as a negative example (“let’s not […]
One year on– Mohamed Bouazizi’s Sacrifice
Aljazeera English on the one-year anniversary of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia– an act of despair that sparked the Arab upheavals of 2011: In Sidi Bouzid today, people were outting up banners in his honor. See also the retrospective by AFP: Russia Today also covers the anniversary and continued Tunisian […]
Democratic Developments in the Arab Upheavals
The Arab upheavals of 2011 have been very different from one another across countries, but have in common a language of parliamentary democracy as the ultimate ideal (albeit one that sounds more like the old West German Social Democratic Party ideal than like the Neoliberal parliamentary regimes of the US and its close allies). Democracy […]
Top Developments in the Arab Spring Today
1. Egypt’s security police and other forces are alleged to have killed 13 persons and wounded hundreds more at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo as they systematically cleared it of protesters. The protesters were demanding that the military step down in favor of civilian government. The interim government of PM Essam Sharaf and the Supreme […]
Surprises of the Tunisian Election
Tunisia kicked off the Arab Spring, with its urban crowds effectively protesting the decades-long dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his nepotistic in-laws, the Trabelsi clan. The Tunisians were the first to demonstrate that flashmobs could, if sufficiently determined, outmaneuver the secret police and send a dictator into exile. Even more remarkable than […]