Egyptian Revolution

Tarak Barkawi, senior lecturer in War Studies at the Centre of International Studies in the University of Cambridge, provides a Middle East centric take on the Egyptian revolution and its implications.

He places the brunt of the effort and work squarely on the Egyptians themselves, knocks the social networking theories down a peg, and provides some nice historical context.

Good read...

Al Jazeera: The globalisation of revolution

To listen to the hype about social networking websites and the Egyptian revolution, one would think it was Silicon Valley and not the Egyptian people who overthrew Mubarak.


...it was ordinary Egyptians, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, who toppled the regime, not the hybrid youth of the global professional classes.


When Indians rose in revolt in 1857, Frederick Engels analysed their mistakes - like the Libyan rebels today, they were too eager to stand and fight against a better organised opponent. Engels publicised the uprising in a series of newspaper articles that ultimately inspired Mao Tse-tung''s theories of guerrilla warfare, which went on to circulate as well-thumbed texts in the pockets of Vietnamese, Cuban, Algerian and other revolutionaries (and of those who sought to defeat them).