So what happened in Tunisia? It’s probably worth pointing out that they’ve signed a gaggle of UN human rights conventions, dissolved the old ruling party, and are having a strike wave. Having done the broad strokes of the revolution, they’re now working on the detail.
Read More detailIs it meaningful to say that the Egyptian revolution is calming down, or petering out? I ask because a common flaw of the reporting on it has been to treat the basic dynamics of mobilisation as if they were signs of huge political shifts behind the curtain. It’s obviously true that both revolutionaries and reactionaries…
Read More From the noisy phase to the quiet phaseThis WSJ piece is a crucial document on Egypt: At 4 p.m., the battles appeared to tip decisively in the protesters’ favor. An order came down from Mr. Mubarak to the Minister of Interior, Habib al-Adly, to use live ammunition to put down the protests, according to a person familiar with the situation. Mr. al-Adly…
Read More tick-tockOur former prime minister supported Hosni Mubarak this morning in the name of stability. Blair said that meant there should not be a rush to elections in Egypt. “I don’t think there’s a majority for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. On the other hand, what you’ve got to watch is that they are extremely well-organised…
Read More da brother’s gonna work it outSomething else. Around the table sat his son James– the head of News Corp’s European and Asian operations – Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of its British newspaper division News International, plus the editors of the Sun and the Times, Dominic Mohan and James Harding respectively. Meatballs were on the menu, although staff preferred not…
Read More someone has to stay in controlSo what about that Murdoch? Gordon Brown is suing, and the government has been claiming that meetings between David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks were covered by MP-constituent privilege; Tessa Jowell (for it is she!) alleges that the monitoring was going on as recently as last week. The police investigation is back on with a new…
Read More the tapesThe Viktorfeed shows an Eastern Skyjets (icao ESJ) flight from Cairo into Dubai. Flight number ESJ020, arrived 2300Z, very likely one of their two executive-config DC-9s.
Read More surveillanceThe Philip Blond test: if you have a new policy idea, ask if Philip Blond would support it, and if so, bin it.
Read More Dumb BlondThis looks interesting. The low-cost base station element is already increasingly well served commercially, and also by the OpenBTS team. But I’d be really fascinated to learn more about the mesh-WLAN side, and I rather think they ought to concentrate on one or the other.
Read More interesting projectLooking back at Tunisia, and forward at Egypt, I think there’s an important point that this post almost hits but not quite. Specifically, I’m fairly sceptical about “Twitter Revolutions” and such – if your revolution has someone else’s brand name on it, how revolutionary is it? – but I don’t think it’s irrelevant. I’m feeling…
Read More in the future, trolls will be a natural resource like oil