Written April 2011 by Cliff Feldwick
It’s truly amazing how much Facebook has contributed to the
rising revolutions in so many Middle East
countries. While the secret police were busy monitoring the email accounts and
tapping the phones of the dissidents (and many of their regular citizens as
well), they had no clue about Facebook and how it could spread messages out so
quickly.
So while most of us here see Facebook as a means to keep
somewhat in touch with acquaintances (and to be ticked off that some distant
relative insists on telling us that they made too many pies on Café World), it
has become a backdoor channel for spreading news of demonstrations and
incidents over there.
Like all revolutions, there have to be conditions ready for
them to grow. A highly educated, highly unemployed cadre of youth in many Arab
countries took to other jobs such as selling fruit to survive. They saw that
only friends of the rulers or political hacks got the real jobs. Subject to the
brutalities of day to day corruption, they grew impatient.
The spark that started all this was in Tunisia, where one
vendor, like most, was constantly harassed by police who stole not just one
apple, but bushels of them, and often insisted that the merchants carry them to
their cars. If they complained, they were fined on dubious charges or their
scales were confiscated. When his uncle complained to the chief of police,
several police came to the market, pushed him to the ground, hit him with their
batons, and in a final insult, slapped him in the face. In protest, he walked
to the front of the municipal building, poured paint thinner on himself and set
himself ablaze. No ambulance came for over an hour, and he died three days
later.
While there was no video of that, there was of the protest
that followed the next day. Other vendors gathered to share how they had been
treated, and a cellphone video was made and posted online. From there it was
picked up by a blogger who had been complaining for years about the regime. Knowing
that YouTube was closely monitored by government censors, he posted it instead
on Facebook. It mushroomed, and within days protestors took to the streets to
demand fairness, jobs and prosecution of corruption. Al-Jezeera then picked it
up and it spread further.
In Tunis,
the capital, people occupied the main square. And the dictator of twenty four
years decided to leave for Saudi
Arabia. In less than a month, the government
had disintegrated – secret police disappeared, news organizations actually started
reporting real news, and officials resigned. The spark had truly ignited a
revolution.
Say, have you
noticed…?
Over in Egypt,
security officials watched nervously. One particular dissident there had been
closely monitored, arrested and beaten before in an attempt to silence him, but
emboldened by the events in Tunisia
he planned protests. Again, Facebook became the method of choice to spread the
word. It also was used to get advice from the people in Tunisia on
practical matters such as how to deal with tear gas.
And so it was that protestors marched on Tahrir Square, coming in from dozens of
streets at once and bringing fresh
arrivals to the front of the march to replace those gassed. This started on
January 18th, and by February 11, Hosni Mubarak was gone.
How all this ends is anyone’s guess. As things spread to Yemen, Jordan,
Bahrain and of course, Libya,
social media channels continue to carry the bulk of the organizational aspects
of protests, etc. Dictators who wouldn’t know a Facebook page from a piece of
toilet paper are brought down (or not, in the case of Moammar Gaddafi, at least
at the time this is written). Turmoil prevails, and isn’t likely to end soon.
Maybe we shouldn’t be so harsh about that cousin and Café
World.
Cliff Feldwick is president of Riverside Computer
Consultants, and does PC troubleshooting, network setups, data retrieval and
many such techie things for small businesses. He doesn’t bring down
governments, even on weekends. He may be reached at 410-880-0171 or at cliff@feldwick.com.