Why Does a Revolt Fail? On Reexamining “Who are you fighting? Is your force and vision capable of victory?”

[If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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Jordan – a failed uprising and a re-emerging regime

“Up to now, the regime has been successful in absorbing the movement and fragmenting it”

by Hisham Bustani, Your Middle East, January 8, 2013

There is no doubt that the November 2012 events in Jordan dubbed Habbet Tishreen by many activists in recollection of its 1989 counterpart, the April Uprising, or Habbet Neesan, are unprecedented. Although both were triggered by an increase in the prices of oil derivatives, the 2012 version seems to have been much more radicalized in its approach to the ruling regime, especially the Hashemite monarchs/family and the king himself.

Before 2012, it was the virtue of the ultra-brave to publicly criticize the king and the royal family: they usually spoke with evident hints and innuendo, but without going the full route to directly uttering the name of the king. Criticizing the king and the royal family was simply not tolerated under Jordanian law, and it is still punishable by one to three years in prison. The law incriminating this sort of criticism has perhaps the world’s most absurd name for any legislation: literally, the ‘Law on elongating one’s tongue about the monarch’!

I was not one of the brave ones, but while others directed their criticism to ‘the government’, I have always referred to “the political authority” in my articles, making a point that governments do not rule in Jordan, they are mere executives, and the decision-making lies somewhere else, in spaces on a higher level: The Royal Court and the General Intelligence Agency (Mukhabarat).

Egypt: Before the ‘Arab Spring’, a determined underground media exposed and discredited Mubarak

Egypt: How We Did It When the Media Would Not

May 19, 2011

On February 11, 2011 Egyptians toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak. Blogger and viral video producer Aalam Wassef was one of the many people who worked for years to make it happen. This is first in a series on the daily life of
Egypt’s revolution. It’s a manual on how a civil resistance was built to win.

Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark

Documentary for Al Jazeera English by May Ying WelshBahrain: An island kingdom in the Arabian Gulf where the Shia Muslim majority are ruled by a family from the Sunni minority. Where people fighting for democratic rights broke the barriers of fear, only to find themselves alone and crushed. This is their story and Al Jazeera is their witness – the only TV journalists who remained to follow their journey of hope to the carnage that followed. This is the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world.

Egypt: A discussion on the “Foreign Policy of the Egyptian Uprising”

[At the point when the Egyptian uprising is incomplete, continuing, and under attack, AlJazeera assembled a group of activists, journalists, and several key sectors to discuss the “foreign policy” of the “new Egypt.”  While it is clear that the “new Egypt” has yet to emerge from the powers and relations which characterized the “old Egypt”–which is why the people continue to rise, wave up on wave–and it is not clear how well this conversation represents those at the heart of the uprising this year–this conversation raises many of the questions confronting the people’s revolutionary forces as they continue the struggle to organize. — Frontlines ed.]

The Cafe – What next for Egypt and its neighbours?

AlJazeeraEnglish on Jul 23, 2011