{"id":5246,"date":"2011-04-02T09:37:27","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T08:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5246"},"modified":"2011-04-02T09:39:02","modified_gmt":"2011-04-02T08:39:02","slug":"who-started-the-arab-revolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5246","title":{"rendered":"Who started the Arab revolutions?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Transformative historical events usually have profound, long-term causes but can be initiated by an incident or spark. Think of the First World War which was started by the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo.<\/p>\n<p>The last three months have seen amazing events in the Arab nations of north Africa and the Middle East. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria &#8230; The revolutions are not over, more changes are to come, and we will not know the full implications for years or even decades.<\/p>\n<p>The underlying causes of this Arab Awakening include dictatorial regimes in power for decades, growing nepotism and corruption, increases in those obtaining higher education, substantial youth unemployment, rising food prices and falling living standards, the ability to communicate and organise provided by social media on the Internet, and the confidence taken from experience in other countries as shown on satellite television.<\/p>\n<p>But what was it that actually set off this incredible chain of events? It was the self-immolation of a desperate man in Tunisia. His name was Mohamed Bouazizi and his name will be in the history books. You can find out more about him <a href=\" http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mohamed_Bouazizi\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Transformative historical events usually have profound, long-term causes but can be initiated by an incident or spark. Think of the First World War which was started by the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The last three months have seen amazing events in the Arab nations of north Africa and the Middle East. Tunisia, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5246"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5256,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5246\/revisions\/5256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}