This is just the start and it never fucking ends | Inanities. After reading this gem in the New York Times, we prevailed on Thomas Friedman to provide us with a part two. And here it is. Future historians will long puzzle over how I was given an international platform to freely pontificate on the Arab people and be remunerated handsomely for it. It is true that I am not the only person in the world who formulates dubious theories based on scant or no evidence which I then harangue people with. Other people do it. They are called taxi drivers. But they are not as rich as me and haven’t been awarded three Pulitizer Prizes. Since I’ve been here in Egypt I’ve been putting together a list of “the-absolutely-irrelevant forces” that have captured the captive Arab mind and ignited the simmering coals of the instant garden BBQ that is the Middle East.
I started my last extremely important column with an introduction in which I listed tyranny, rising food prices, youth unemployment and social media as the “big causes”. Add it all up and what does it say? Gene Sharp: Author of the nonviolent revolution rulebook. 21 February 2011Last updated at 10:42 By Ruaridh Arrow Director of Gene Sharp - How to Start a Revolution In an old townhouse in East Boston an elderly stooped man is tending rare orchids in his shabby office.
His Labrador Sally lies on the floor between stacks of academic papers watching him as he shuffles past. This is Dr Gene Sharp the man now credited with the strategy behind the toppling of the Egyptian government. Gene Sharp is the world's foremost expert on non-violent revolution. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, his books slipped across borders and hidden from secret policemen all over the world. Continue reading the main story Key Steps on the Path to Revolution As Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine fell to the colour revolutions which swept across Eastern Europe, each of the democratic movements paid tribute to Sharp's contribution, yet he remained largely unknown to the public. Catching fire Continue reading the main story. 'We Stand With You as You Stood With Us': Statement to Workers of Wisconsin by Kamal Abbas of Egypt's Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services. February 20th, 2011 3:45 PM About Kamal Abbas and the Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services: Kamal Abbas is General Coordinator of the CTUWS, an umbrella advocacy organization for independent unions in Egypt.
The CTUWS, which was awarded the 1999 French Republic's Human Rights Prize, suffered repeated harassment and attack by the Mubarak regime, and played a leading role in its overthrow. Abbas, who witnessed friends killed by the regime during the 1989 Helwan steel strike and was himself arrested and threatened numerous times, has received extensive international recognition for his union and civil society leadership. Embed code available here. English translation follows, below: The poster in the background shows photographs of some of the recent young victims of the Mubarak government. KAMAL ABBAS: I am speaking to you from a place very close to Tahrir Square in Cairo, "Liberation Square", which was the heart of the Revolution in Egypt. Today is the day of the American workers. You're Next - And You Know Who You Are. In the aftermath of Tunisia and Egypt, many are asking, "Who's next?
" My confident answer is this: each and every leader in this region who rules by force and fraud, who has neither credibility nor legitimacy, and who fears nothing more than the wrath of his own people, is next. We cannot know the sequence, or plot it on a calendar. But the political upheavals in North Africa in just the first two months of this year put the lie to received wisdom in Arab and all-too-many Western capitals that the people in the region are not "ready" for democracy and will not rise to demand an end to tyranny.
To quell the noisy street displays of democratic fervor, many governments have relied on their rusty toolbox of repression. Yemeni security forces unleashed busloads of recruited counter-demonstrators armed with clubs and rocks to confront around 1,000 people marching to celebrate Hosni Mubarak's downfall, and then sent in riot police with their water cannons and tear gas. Egypt: The Distance Between Enthusiasm and Reality. McStrategy - by David P. Goldman > Tablet Magazine - A New Read on Jewish Life. How would you like to tap into an exclusive private intelligence service staffed by ex-CIA analysts who glean exclusive information from shadowy sources, cross-grid raw intel to detect relevant patterns, and alert you by email when the product requires your attention?
Membership in this elite club will cost you just $349 a year, and you’ll also get a free book that predicts the next 100 years of human history. Welcome to Stratfor, the brainchild of George Friedman, a Texas academic and sometime U.S. government consultant, who became an intelligence entrepreneur and runs what the press routinely calls “a private CIA” out of an office building in downtown Austin. In a crowded market where The New York Times can’t successfully charge for premium content, Friedman’s thriving business targets a key market niche: corporate types with geopolitical exposure who are too busy or too ill-informed to use Google. Does being Jewish affect the way you view the world, I begin. Poland?
David P.