Tag: dictatorship

  • Close Encounters of the Terminal Kind

    Ralph Chaplin said: “Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic throng, the coward and the meek who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong but dare not speak.” A friend asked me for my opinion about the Bhopal ‘encounter’ which is in the news at present…

  • Democracy in practice

    slavery. Today as I write this (July 18, 2016) a coup happened in Turkey but the people defeated it. So democracy apparently has more meaning in Turkey than it had in Egypt. But now what? And what really is the position of democracy in the Muslim world? A brief, even cursory look at the history…

  • If I were President of Egypt

    If I were President of Egypt

    The first thing that I would remind myself is that in politics facts mean nothing. Statistics less than nothing. Spectacle, impression, symbolism and communication mean everything. Symbolism, visibility and public eye are the platform on which politics runs. In politics being truthful is less important than being believable. That is the basis of all mythology.…