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Showing posts from April, 2011

the difference between Egypt and Libya is not Gaddafi

There is no amount of 'no fly zone' or no cache of weapons that will change Libya into another Egypt. The UN's belief that military power could be used to 'tip the scales', simply shows how fundamentally they misunderstand what has caused the successful revolutions to become so: nonviolence. If Gaddafi can be credited with preventing a successful revolution, it must be most closely linked with his having kept Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy  or its derivatives out of the hands of his people.  Because what is clear, is that they were not ready, and despite Western hubris, there is nothing that can be done at the last minute to make them so. If the UN wants to support the ending of oppressive regimes its money would be better spent translating and disseminating literature on effective nonviolent resistance to oppressed people around the world.  The spread of weapons and violence will never bring peace, for they are antithetical. It is not that I

The bus mantra

After Simon and I rode the bus the other day he couldn't stop thinking about buses and he couldn't stop saying, "bus" over and over. So I came up with this bus mantra to help him get to sleep that night. After repeating it a couple hundred times I realized that it deals with the journey of life as well as any. The bus stops. The doors open. People get off. People get on. The doors close. The bus goes. It also happens to be a practical guide to bus etiquette..