zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron ]

I was impressed by him in London in the early sixties.

Okay, I was young and impressionable. But others have noticed him more recently, too: Hugo Chavez accused him of being a conspirator with the CIA, and the Iranians thought he, George Soros and John McCain were in cahoots.

Gene Sharp has been in the news quite a bit recently [1, 2, 3, 4], because he pretty literally wrote the book on non-violent resistance.

The young leaders of the Egyptian revolt that toppled Mubarak studied tactics with members of the Serbian Otpor youth resistance who topped Milosevic, Otpor studied tactics in the writings of Gene Sharp, specifically his 90-page pamphlet From Dictatorship to Democracy [download as .pdf]. Sharp wrote that handbook for use in Burma, where it was apparently translated at the request of Aung San Suu Kyi — who once cautioned her readers that that phrase they kept hearing wasn’t “jeans shirt”, it was “Gene Sharp”.

And before that, he’d penned his masterful 900-page, three-volume work, The Politics of Nonviolent Action…

I told you he was impressive.

Recommended reading:

From Dictatorship to Democracy is now available in Amharic, Arabic, Azeri, Belarusian, Burmese, Chin (Burma), Jing-paw (Burma), Karen (Burma), Mon (Burma), Chinese (Simplified Mandarin), Chinese (Traditional Mandarin), English, Farsi, French, Indonesian, Khmer (Cambodia), Kyrgyz, Pashto, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Ukrainian, Tibetan, Tigrigna, and Vietnamese.

[ by Charles Cameron ]

It’s riveting to follow the tweets on protests in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya or Iran on Mibazaar in real-time to be sure — but mash that capability up with the one Shloky found and Zen just mentioned with video…

As Zen says, I mean, “automatic face-recognition and social media aggregation raises serious concerns about the potential dangers of living under a panopticon state”.

Two dots, two data-points, two apps connected.

[ by Charles Cameron ]

The first “quote” in this pair is a clever, geeky commentary on the situation in Egypt from shortly before the fall of Mubarak.

The second is a screen capture made today from the official Egyptian Presidency site — virtuality meets reality.

[ This post is a follow-up to my earlier DoubleQuote Egypt: uninstalling ]

[ by Charles Cameron ]

image of the awaited Twelfth Imam from Tehran Times

*

Here’s a report on remarks President Ahmadinejad made in celebration of the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, just hours before President Mubarak quit, from this morning’s Washington Post:

The crisis that has been roiling Egypt, a key U.S. ally in the region, dominated Friday’s celebration. Ahmadinejad said that the 12th imam Mahdi, a revered 9th-century Shiite saint, had directed the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.”

This is a global revolution, managed by the imam of the ages,” he told the crowds gathered in and around Tehran’s central Azadi Square.

He predicted the formation of a world government, ruled by the 12th imam: “Hearts and beliefs are swiftly leaning toward forming a global governance and the necessity of the rule of the perfect human, linked to the heavens.”

h/t @IbnSiqilli

I really should have seen that one coming!

[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted from SmartMobs ]