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| == '''Arab Spring''' ==
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| ''by [[User:Nick Gardner|Nick Gardner]]''
| | <small> |
| ----The term '''Arab Spring''' (also known as the "Arab Awakening") refers to the sequence of protest movements that started [[/Addendum#Tunisia|in Tunisia]] in December 2010. The protests there, and subsequently in other Arab countries, were intended to put an end to government oppression, corruption and incompetence. They have led to the overthrow of existing regimes [[/Addendum#Egypt|in Egypt]] and [[/Addendum#Libya| in Libya]] as well as in Tunisia, and to the initiation in those countries of transitional plans that include the election of representative assemblies and the adoption of new constitutions. Major protest movements [[/Addendum#Syria|in Syria]] and [[/Addendum#Yemen|in Yemen]] have so far been frustrated by governmental violence, and protest movements elsewhere in the Arab world have achieved little more than promises of minor reforms.
| | ==Footnotes== |
| | | {{reflist|2}} |
| ==Background: the Arab condition== | | </small> |
| The political structures of nearly all of the countries involved in the Arab uprisings have been categorised as authoritarian (with Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia ranking among the 15 least democratic countries<ref>[http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy_Index_2010_web.pdf ''The Democracy Index 2010'', Economist Intelligence Unit]</ref>), and the governments of five of them have been categorised as exceptionally corrupt (Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Libya and Yemen appear among the upper half in the ranking of Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index)
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| <ref name="CPI">''Corruption Perception :Index''[http://www.transparency.org/policy_research./surveys_indices/cpi/2010/in_detail]</ref>. Their populations are predominately ethnically Arab with small native [[Berber]] minorities. They include two mixed [[oil]] economies (Algeria and Libya); three oil economies (Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia); six diversified economies (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia); and one primary export economy (Yemen). The oil-producing countries of [[Oman]], Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Libya are among the world's more prosperous countries, but the prosperity of each of the others is below, or well below the world average in terms of [[GDP]] per head, with Syria ranking 153rd out of a total of 228. At least 19% of the Arab population lived below the [[poverty line]] at the end of the 1990s (according to an estimate based upon data from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen,.<ref>[http://www.arab-api.org/cv/aali-cv/aali/wps0402.pdf Ali Abdel Gadir Ali: ''Poverty in the Arab Region: A Selective Review'', (Background paper prepared for the IFPRI / API Collaborative Research Project on: ''Public Policy and Poverty Reduction in the Arab Region''.) page 26]</ref>)
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| ==The development of national protest movements==
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| Protesters [[/Addendum#Tunisia|in Tunisia]] and [[/Addendum#Egypt|in Egypt]] succeeded within a few months in ousting their governments, and regime change was achieved in Libya after eight months of [[/Addendum#Civil war in Libya|civil war]]. The governments of Morocco, Algeria, Jordan and Oman responded to more limited protests with promises of political and constitutional reform. [[/Addendum#Saudi Arabia|In Saudi Arabia]] the administration sought to avoid confrontation by a programme of infrastructure investment, and its forces were used to suppress dissent [[/Addendum#Bahrain|in Bahrain]]. Political instability in Lebanon inhibited governmental response to demonstrations for constitutional change. [[/Addendum#Yemen|In Yemen]] and [[/Addendum#Syria|in Syria]], continuing protests were frustrated by violent military opposition.
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| The processes of creating democratically-elected governments now dominate the situations in Tunisia and Libya, and in Egypt they are being accompanied by sporadic demonstrations against the behaviour of its transitional military government. The transitional process in Libya may be hampered by the need to disarm its local militias. The undeterred vigour of the protest movements in Syria and Yemen suggests a continuing prospect of democratic transition. Elswhere in the Arab Spring countries, the prospects appear to be limited to partial relaxations of authoritarian governance.
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| ''[[Arab Spring|.... (read more)]]''
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Latest revision as of 10:19, 11 September 2020
1901 photograph of a stentor (announcer) at the Budapest
Telefon Hirmondó.
Telephone newspaper is a general term for the telephone-based news and entertainment services which were introduced beginning in the 1890s, and primarily located in large European cities. These systems were the first example of electronic broadcasting, and offered a wide variety of programming, however, only a relative few were ever established. Although these systems predated the invention of radio, they were supplanted by radio broadcasting stations beginning in the 1920s, primarily because radio signals were able to cover much wider areas with higher quality audio.
History
After the electric telephone was introduced in the mid-1870s, it was mainly used for personal communication. But the idea of distributing entertainment and news appeared soon thereafter, and many early demonstrations included the transmission of musical concerts. In one particularly advanced example, Clément Ader, at the 1881 Paris Electrical Exhibition, prepared a listening room where participants could hear, in stereo, performances from the Paris Grand Opera. Also, in 1888, Edward Bellamy's influential novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887 foresaw the establishment of entertainment transmitted by telephone lines to individual homes.
The scattered demonstrations were eventually followed by the establishment of more organized services, which were generally called Telephone Newspapers, although all of these systems also included entertainment programming. However, the technical capabilities of the time meant that there were limited means for amplifying and transmitting telephone signals over long distances, so listeners had to wear headphones to receive the programs, and service areas were generally limited to a single city. While some of the systems, including the Telefon Hirmondó, built their own one-way transmission lines, others, including the Electrophone, used standard commercial telephone lines, which allowed subscribers to talk to operators in order to select programming. The Telephone Newspapers drew upon a mixture of outside sources for their programs, including local live theaters and church services, whose programs were picked up by special telephone lines, and then retransmitted to the subscribers. Other programs were transmitted directly from the system's own studios. In later years, retransmitted radio programs were added.
During this era telephones were expensive luxury items, so the subscribers tended to be the wealthy elite of society. Financing was normally done by charging fees, including monthly subscriptions for home users, and, in locations such as hotel lobbies, through the use of coin-operated receivers, which provided short periods of listening for a set payment. Some systems also accepted paid advertising.
