revolution

Abstract:

Russia's Foreign Minister, a man with a square-shaped logic and a square-shaped rhetoric, recently summed up Russia's "grand achievement" thus: That Moscow has finally convinced Washington that Arab dictators, both those who departed and those who are alive and killing, are better than Islamic terrorism.

The people's revolution in Tunisia heralds the end to this miserable last chapter. More importantly, it has given us a glimpse of the latent possibilities of the coming phase. The darkness has begun to lift and the features of the horizon have come into view.

Egypt's January 25 protests did not start as a revolution but as an angry popular movement against the practices of the Egyptian security agencies. These are the same masses that are claimed to have joined a new revolution: the June 30 Revolution.

This essay is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive historical or sociological treatment of the subject of intellectuals and their role in revolution; rather, it is a conceptual contribution that aims to produce knowledge through critique and the differentiation of key terms-linguistically, conceptually, and historically.