Did the Arab Spring miss important steps in Egypt?

http://www.madamasr.com/opinion/power-january-25-revolutionaries-and-responsibility

"In short, at a time that could have made a critical difference, the revolutionaries did not realize the need to take initiative. As the protests to fulfill the democratic demand for presidential elections drew nearer, it was only a small group of revolutionaries that were dubious about the outcome. The rest merely made various public calls against military intervention when they should have focused on holding the main umbrella group, the National Salvation Front, to that anti-intervention principle as a condition, and established protocols to be followed if that intervention happened. That was their only leverage.

This is not to say the revolutionaries had control over, or were responsible for, the protests in any effective manner. Had the revolutionaries been silent at home on June 30, the size and the outcome of the protests would have been same, drawn from the broader, anti-Brotherhood segments of the population. Here, effective power, and the 'power of responsibility to provide alternatives' diverge – and it is the latter we must now examine."

 I'm reading Havel: a Life about the Czech president Vaclav Havel.  After communism fell in 1989, there was a power vacuum.  But there was also a group of people who had stood up to the communist government, who were well respected by most Czechs, and who were willing to form a new government from scratch. Somehow it worked, in a messy sort of way.

   Looking back on the Arab Spring, it seems to me that the revolution had one main goal, get rid of Mubarak.  There wasn't really much planning past that that I, from an extremely long distance away, could see.  Short-term thinking might be a problem inherent in collective action. I'll have to think about that.

And here's another overview; http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/What-We-Do/Strengthen-research-impact/Inform-public-policy/Documents/Understanding_Instability.pdf

protesting = terrorism? Come on NYPD

http://www.vice.com/read/how-the-nypds-counter-terror-apparatus-is-being-turned-on-police-protesters-119

"'When I see counterterrorism folks amongst protesters, it sends me a message that I'm the enemy, and that they are trying to keep other New Yorkers safe from those protesting for their civil rights," said Sarsour. "It vilifies the people who are being peaceful and asking for something they should already have, asking for things like ending of police brutality.'

The police wearing the counterterrorism jackets at protests are perhaps the most palpable sign of the agency's transformation since 2001. Before 9/11 the NYPD had no counterterrorism bureau and the Intelligence Division focused its resources on gang activity. After the September 11 attacks, however, billions of dollars were poured into the department to counter the threat of terrorism, as a 2011 60 Minutesreport showed. Critics of the NYPD's post-9/11 turn have been arguing that practices devoted to fighting terrorism have violated the Constitution.
Now, they say, the NYPD is unleashing its counterterrorism tools on activists against police brutality, conflating legitimate protest with the threat of terrorism."

Good grief. I'm assuming that this is happening because all those cops assigned to counter terrorism have to do SOMETHING, but this is counterproductive on so many levels.  Mainly, it sends the message that protests are scary, dangerous things, and that those who are practicing their first amendment rights might actually be criminals.

"Impossible" seeks to have people help each other, one year old

https://www.impossible.com/aboutus/

"What is impossible?
A global community who help each other out. People share their time, skills and objects.


Build valuable profiles —
impossible gives you a place to record your acts of kindness (complementing your LinkedIn/Facebook profiles). We reckon it’s easier getting a job or a partner or a friend if people know how kind you are.


Thanks currency -
impossible users earn Thanks when they give to one another, a social currency that can be used with some impossible partners.


Is Impossible a business or a charity?
Impossible is a social business which means that no private dividends are allowed, and 100% of profit goes back into Impossible."

This has been going for a year and I just found out about it.  Lily Cole started it.  Seems to have a good reputation.

making activism a group effort in Russia

http://www.vox.com/2014/12/30/7468609/alexei-navalny-russia

"Navalny began to normalize anti-corruption campaigning, turning it into something that ordinary people do in their spare time, rather than the futile quest of lone idealists with high tolerance for risk."

This is a good article about how collective action is stronger than the work of a high-end single player.  The Internet is what makes this collective action possible.

Victory for Arab Spring in Tunisia?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/22/us-tunisia-election-idUSKBN0JZ04F20141222

"(Reuters) - Veteran politician Beji Caid Essebsi has won Tunisia's first free presidential election, official results showed on Monday, the final step in a transition to democracy after an uprising that ousted autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
But rioting broke out in one southern city, with police firing teargas to disperse hundreds of youths who burned tyres and blocked streets to demonstrate against the victory of an official from Ben Ali's old guard.
Essebsi beat rival and incumbent Moncef Marzouki with 55.68 percent of the vote against 44.32 percent, the results showed."

A successful democratic election is a good sign for the country where the Arab Spring started.  I hope this turns out well for all.

London housing saved

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/19/new-era-housing.html

"Having faced the grim prospect of eviction just before the holidays, residents of a housing block in east London are instead toasting an unlikely victory over U.S. property investors.
Multi-billion dollar asset management firm Westbrook Partners said Friday that it would abandon its plan to raise rents to market values — a move that would have tripled the cost to some residents — and instead sell the New Era estate to an affordable housing charity.
In ditching the plan, Westbrook appeared to bow to public and government pressure following a well-orchestrated campaign. New Era residents organized a change.org petition with nearly 350,000 signatures and attracted major media attention to their cause, thanks in large part to the efforts of British actor Russell Brand. On several occasions, the outspoken comedian turned social activist marched in the streets alongside New Era residents and supporters, and demonstrated outside Westbrook’s office holding signs that read, "Social housing, not social cleansing.'”

I would like to know more about how this protest was organized. It appears it was mostly run from the renters themselves.

Hong Kong activists unclear what to do next

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/10/27/hong-kong-protestorscancelvote.html

"Protest leaders in Hong Kong have cancelled a vote on what the next step should be in their month-long street occupation, saying they hadn't properly consulted with the demonstrators before calling the referendum.
The two-day vote, which had been scheduled for Sunday and Monday, was supposed to have gauged support among protesters for counter proposals to offers made by Hong Kong's government following talks last week between student protest leaders and authorities.
'We admit that we did not have enough discussion with the people before deciding to go ahead with the vote and we apologize to the people,' the protest leaders said in a statement.
They also cited 'differing opinions regarding the format, motions and effectiveness' of the referendum."

I watched how the Denver Occupy movement worked and thought it was a definite time waster as they hashed out for hours items of minute concern, it seemed to me.  When you have to come to a consensus before you do anything, just expect to be jawboning for a long time, maybe even longer than your eventual actions.

crowdsourcing can be sabatoged

http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/how-crowdsourcing-turned-on-me

"However, the crowd was hopeless against a determined attacker. Before the first attack, our progress on the fourth puzzle had combined 39,299 moves by 342 users over more than 38 hours. Destroying all this progress required just 416 moves by one attacker in about an hour. In other words, creation took 100 times as many moves and about 40 times longer than destruction."

"While we take for granted the way in which social media scales-up our ability to mobilize crowds in unprecedented ways, we must confront the challenge of ensuring those mobilized crowds do not fall prey to mobs."

Life in general is like this. You can raise a child, send him to school and college, relish the outcome, and then some idiot shoots him in a robbery.  It sucks, but destruction is much easier than construction.

Crowdsourcing helps find missing boat

http://blog.tomnod.com/tunante-concludes/

"On August 26^th 2014, the Tunante II, a 12.5 meter-long yacht with four crew on board, declared emergency during a storm off the coast of Brazil. Within hours, the Argentinian and Brazilian governments pulled together a search & rescue force.
A Tomnod campaign request was submitted and approved, and a satellite tasking order was placed. As planes were forced to suspend their search due to bad weather, Tomnod loaded satellite images online so thousands of people around the world could scan each pixel of the South Atlantic Ocean looking for clues of the missing boat.
Renewed Hope
During the course of the search, both governments halted and resumed their active participation for various reasons. However on October 8^th, an image was tagged on Tomnod which matched the description and projected location of the Tunante II."

Here's an example in which a mass of volunteers do a simple task to help someone in need.

so how about that crowd-sourced Icelandic Constitution?

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/07/five_lessons_from_iceland_s_failed_crowdsourced_constitution_experiment.single.html

"Iceland’s recent experiment in redrafting its constitution has challenged the assumptions that a constitutional process needs to be exclusive and opaque. In 2013 the country came close to passing into law the world’s most inclusively and transparently written constitutional text. This experiment—sometimes dubbed the 'crowdsourced constitution'—should prove inspirational for people around the globe intent on writing, or re-writing, their own social contract.

The Icelandic constitutional process included three original features. The first one was a so-called National Forum—an upstream consultation of a demographically representative minipublic of 950 quasi-randomly sampled citizens. These citizens were gathered in a one-day meeting and asked to list the principles and values they would like to see embedded in the Icelandic constitution. They listed, among others, human rights, democracy, transparency, equal access to health care and education, a more strongly regulated financial sector, and public ownership of Icelandic natural resources."

Well, it almost worked.  And here's some ideas for the next country to try it.