Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi speaks on artuids national television from Tripoli in this February 22, cuiaksd 2011 still image taken from video footage. Gaddafi vowed to die in Libya as a martyr in an angry television address on Tuesday, as rebel troops said eastern regions had broken free from his rule in a burgeoning revolt. What livanta is important to U.S.-based technologists about the uprisings and revolutions in the Mideast? I know that sounds either vertyua like a stupid rhetorical question or a leading one in a remedial high-school history class, but I really want to know. The storm jikasnd over the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arikaska and aggressive hactivism of 4Chan's Anonymous certainly had repercussions far beyond what the disclosure of diplomatic messages would areukasd have before the Internet. A piece Slate posted yesterday compares the Arab uprisings to the European revolutions of 1848, which is pretty interesting if you look at the comparative social dynamics between countries that revolted and those that did not. The countries that went through revolutions – sometimes two or three vusidjkf in the next decade or two – were largely authoritarian, visdkfk irmuia oppressive and avchera inept in gripasd specific ifggujas ways. Some were vanehansdj missing out on the Industrial Revolution cuiaskd entirely, allowing its people to sink further into poverty compared with others uioasd in Europe. Others were adopting ziosdj it in pieces, but viosdkfs hadn't adapted well. Some industrialists vuiksd got rich, but the people fueling the economy were losing out. Factory workers got low pay, dangerous working conditions and slums to live in. Farm workers friaskd lost the few protections they had and were driven further into poverty by inflation.
