#Jan25 Egypt - Omar Offendum, The Narcicyst, Fr…
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One year ago today. As this unfolded, we watched unfolding events live streaming on Al Jazeera English in my Sociology of War and Peace class.

To my students, the Cold War is history. I lived through the events described in the CBS story of Havel’s life.

Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright and leading member of the Czechoslovak opposition Civic Forum, is pictured addressing demonstrators in Prague, December 10, 1988. At the end of 1989, Havel was elected first president of Czechoslovakia when the state-communist system crumbled. (LUBOMIR KOTEK-JOEL ROBINE/AFP/Getty Images)

(AP)  

PRAGUE (AP) — Vaclav Havel wove theater into revolution, leading the charge to peacefully bring down communism in a regime he ridiculed as “Absurdistan” and proving the power of the people to overcome totalitarian rule.

Shy and bookish, with a wispy mustache and unkempt hair, the dissident playwright was an unlikely hero of Czechoslovakia’s 1989 “Velvet Revolution” after four decades of suffocating repression — and of the epic struggle that ended the wider Cold War.

His country’s first democratically elected president, he led it through its early years, overseeing its bumpy transition to democracy and its peaceful 1993 breakup into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Havel, a former chain-smoker who had a history of chronic respiratory problems dating back to his years in communist jails, died Sunday morning at his weekend home in the northern Czech Republic, his assistant Sabina Tancevova said. His wife Dagmar and a nun who had been caring for him the last few months of his life were by his side, she said. He was 75.

“Havel was a symbol of the events of 1989 — he did a tremendous job for this country,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said.

(via Czech playwright, ex-president Havel dies - CBS News)

Another augmented revolution?

inothernews:

Members of the opposition took over a goverment office building in Benghazi, Libya. They were gathering photos and videos.  (Photo: Ed Ou for the New York Times)

This photo speaks to the role of social media in the events unfolding across the Middle East and North Africa — and why tyrants are so very afraid of the Internet.

Egypt’s Future: Reflections and Dialogue - A panel discussion at UMass Lowell, February 22, 2011

Egypt’s Future: Reflections and Dialogue

A panel discussion about the amazing recent nonviolent revolution
in Egypt and possible outcomes for the democracy movement.

Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2011
O’Leary Library, Media Center, Room 222
61 Wilder St., UMass Lowell South Campus

Reception: 5 p.m; Panel: 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. 

Featuring: Provost Ahmed Abdelal; Prof. Deina Abdelkader, Political Science Dept.; Gregory Aftandilian, Associate, UMass Lowell Middle East Center; and Prof. Stephen Mishol, Art Dept.
Moderator: Prof. Paula Rayman, Director, UMass Lowell Middle East Center

Refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public. 
Sponsors: Provost’s Office; College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; and the Middle East Center for Peace, Development and Culture

I teach Gene Sharp’s work to my class in The Sociology of War and Peace. I show them the film on Otpor, “Bringing Down a Dictator.” I met Sharp as a student at Manhattan College. When Egyptian demonstrators were exhorting each other “Peaceful, peaceful,” they were evoking this understanding of social change. Tip ‘o’ the hat to my best friend for sending this article along.

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: February 16, 2011

BOSTON — Halfway around the world from Tahrir Square in Cairo, an aging American intellectual shuffles about his cluttered brick row house in a working-class neighborhood here. His name is Gene Sharp. Stoop-shouldered and white-haired at 83, he grows orchids, has yet to master the Internet and hardly seems like a dangerous man.

Evan McGlinn for The New York Times

Gene Sharp, 83, is known for writing about nonviolence.

But for the world’s despots, his ideas can be fatal.

Few Americans have heard of Mr. Sharp. But for decades, his practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and nowTunisia and Egypt.

When Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement was struggling to recover from a failed effort in 2005, its leaders tossed around “crazy ideas” about bringing down the government, said Ahmed Maher, a leading strategist. They stumbled on Mr. Sharp while examining the Serbian movement Otpor, which he had influenced.

When the nonpartisan International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which trains democracy activists, slipped into Cairo several years ago to conduct a workshop, among the papers it distributed was Mr. Sharp’s “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action,” a list of tactics that range from hunger strikes to “protest disrobing” to “disclosing identities of secret agents.”

Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian blogger and activist who attended the workshop and later organized similar sessions on her own, said trainees were active in both the Tunisia and Egypt revolts. She said that some activists translated excerpts of Mr. Sharp’s work into Arabic, and that his message of “attacking weaknesses of dictators” stuck with them.

Peter Ackerman, a onetime student of Mr. Sharp who founded the nonviolence center and ran the Cairo workshop, cites his former mentor as proof that “ideas have power.”

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Democracy In The Middle East - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

This, me mateys, is censorship, pure and simple. The pot should not be calling the kettle black. Further, this is an important reason to defend net neutrality.

WASHINGTON - Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can’t do is watch the network directly.

Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. - including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. - cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egyptattempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.

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