Revolutions can be short and bloody, or slow and peaceful. Each is different, though there are recurring patterns - including some that were on show in Egypt.
Trotsky once remarked that if poverty was the cause of revolutions, there would be revolutions all the time because most people in the world were poor. What is needed to turn a million people's grumbling discontent into a crowd on the streets is a spark to electrify them.
Violent death has been the most common catalyst for radicalising discontent in the revolutions of the last 30 years. Sometimes the spark is grisly, like the mass incineration of hundreds in an Iranian cinema in 1978 blamed on the Shah's secret police.
Sometimes the desperate act of a single suicidally inflammatory protester like vegetable salesman Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia, in December 2010, catches the imagination of a country.
>>>Person | About | Day |
---|---|---|
نسرین ستوده: زندانی روز | Dec 04 | |
Saeed Malekpour: Prisoner of the day | Lawyer says death sentence suspended | Dec 03 |
Majid Tavakoli: Prisoner of the day | Iterview with mother | Dec 02 |
احسان نراقی: جامعه شناس و نویسنده ۱۳۰۵-۱۳۹۱ | Dec 02 | |
Nasrin Sotoudeh: Prisoner of the day | 46 days on hunger strike | Dec 01 |
Nasrin Sotoudeh: Graffiti | In Barcelona | Nov 30 |
گوهر عشقی: مادر ستار بهشتی | Nov 30 | |
Abdollah Momeni: Prisoner of the day | Activist denied leave and family visits for 1.5 years | Nov 30 |
محمد کلالی: یکی از حمله کنندگان به سفارت ایران در برلین | Nov 29 | |
Habibollah Golparipour: Prisoner of the day | Kurdish Activist on Death Row | Nov 28 |
Of shape and substance
by comrade on Mon Feb 14, 2011 02:51 AM PSTI hope that Egyptian people won't allow anyone to define, describe, advise, design, execute, abort, or hijack their revolution which has yet to take place.
Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.