One of the questions I put to Ziad Majed in my last post was shaped by what I learned reading Jeffrey Goldfarb’s book, The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times. Jeff tells me that he has started a blog, DeliberatelyConsidered, with help from some of his colleagues at the… Continue reading DeliberatelyConsidered’s Hope against Skepticism
Tag: Egypt
Ziad Majed on the Middle East & Democracy
An Interview with Ziad Majed To get a better perspective on the prospects for democracy in the Middle East, GonePublic’s author, Noelle McAfee, interviewed Lebanese intellectual and activist Ziad Majed, who has been working with other Arab researchers and activists for the past ten years to elaborate a regional democracy agenda. More recently he helped… Continue reading Ziad Majed on the Middle East & Democracy
After Nonviolent Protest…
As nonviolent protest rolls across the Middle East—now in Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran—we see governments convulsing and fighting back, violently, but in a way that shows their ultimate lack of power. Today’s New York Time’s reports on how the quiet American intellectual, Gene Sharp, took Gandhi’s ideas and compiled them into a primer… Continue reading After Nonviolent Protest…
Whither Egypt?
Will Egypt go the way of the Iran? Will religious extremists take over the country? Will the vacuum left over from a dictator’s departure pave the way for religious and ethnic conflict and extremism? What kind of regime will take over now that Mubarak has departed Cairo? These are all the wrong questions. Whether Egypt… Continue reading Whither Egypt?
From 1989 to 2011
Happy Day!!! Today 2011 joins 1989 as a year in which public power has overthrown autocratic power. In 1989 in Eastern Europe civic groups formed in the space left by crumbling Soviet power. Those civic organizations stepped up and called the lie that the state socialist governments were the “People’s” governments. The public communicative, rather… Continue reading From 1989 to 2011