“Dealing with Dictatorships”

I just checked. We still live in interesting times, just like it says in the ALL catalog.  This Saturday we will take a little break from Healthcare “reform.”

Early this summer we were startled to see a blatantly fraudulent election in Iran spark open resistance from a large segment of the population.  We in America have been conditioned to see Iran only as a cradle of terrorism and disruption in the Middle East.  If you’d been paying closer attention, or had attended some of our earlier lectures kindly led by my friend and associate Mehdi Noorbaksh, you would have known that there was a reform movement which was very much alive.  But to see the reformers openly demonstrating in defiance of a very powerful authority structure was still impressive.  If you knew something of Iranians you might not be too surprised, but perhaps Gene Sharp and his work may have had some role in this development, at least according to a WSJ article excerpted below.

American Revolutionary
Quiet Boston Scholar Inspires Rebels Around the World
By PHILIP SHISHKIN, The Wall Street Journal, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122127204268531319.html

… Spread via the Internet, word-of-mouth and seminars, Mr. Sharp’s writings on nonviolent resistance have been studied by opposition activists in Zimbabwe, Burma, Russia, Venezuela and Iran, among others. His 1993 guide to unseating despots, “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” has been translated into at least 28 languages and was used by movements that toppled governments in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.
…
… in the United Arab Emirates (2005), Iranian oil and gas engineer Mehdi Kalantarzadeh found “From Dictatorship to Democracy” on the Internet, combined it with Robert Helvey’s book, and translated the mix into Farsi last year. The Iranian activist forwarded his translation to Shahla Lahiji, a prominent Iranian publisher who often pushes the limits of state censorship.

“I knew what I’m publishing,” Ms. Lahiji says. “I knew it wouldn’t make the regime happy.” Ms. Lahiji says the book was selling briskly at her stand in the book fair in Tehran last year, and that a few months later a pro-government Web site accused her of “teaching velvet revolution to the people.”

From Chapter One of“From Dictatorship to Democracy”

Since 1980 dictatorships have collapsed before the predominantly nonviolent defiance of people in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Slovenia, Madagascar, Mali, Bolivia, and the Philippines. Nonviolent resistance has furthered the movement toward democratization in Nepal, Zambia, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Uruguay, Malawi, Thailand, Bulgaria, Hungary, Zaire, Nigeria, and various parts of the former Soviet Union (playing a significant role in the defeat of the August 1991 attempted hard-line coup d’tat).

In addition, mass political defiance(1) has occurred in China, Burma, and Tibet in recent years. Although those struggles have not brought an end to the ruling dictatorships or occupations, they have exposed the brutal nature of those repressive regimes to the world community and have provided the populations with valuable experience with this form of struggle.

We will cover some of the high points of Sharp’s Book.  He spent a long time researching and studying revolutions and has produced some practical hard headed advice to those who wish to replace tyranny with a democracy.  Not surprisingly, for a couple of reasons, he strongly advocates against the use of violence.  He also points out how a dictatorships are often vulnerable and unstable and throughout history have not demonstrated much longevity.  The trick would be to keep one failed dictatorship from being replaced by another dictator.

We will also give some thought to other dictatorships political and otherwise and how they affect our lives

Definition –Dictatorship:1. A system of government in which the leader or leaders have complete power.  2.  A trap into which people or cultures or societies fall,  sometimes willingly, that eventually controls their lives and character, to the benefit of the dictatorial power, as in an addiction or an obligation. (Curt Gibby)

Also, think on how what this book has to say applies to other situations in which we find ourselves around the world.

For those who like to read ahead (and everybody else as well) Please check out the Albert Einstein Institute on the web athttp://www.aeinstein.orgto see the scope of  their work.

Also you can download the entire (short) 85 page“From Dictatorship to Democracy”in PDF form and read it at your leisure.  When you open it in acrobat or your browser you can make the type nice and large and if English isn’t your native tongue, you can download it in 21 other languages.   You will also see links to three videos… and other pertinent articles at the bottom of the page.

I just checked. We still live in interesting times, just like it says in the ALL catalog.  This Saturday we will take a little break from Healthcare “reform.”

Early this summer we were startled to see a blatantly fraudulent election in Iran spark open resistance from a large segment of the population.  We in America have been conditioned to see Iran only as a cradle of terrorism and disruption in the Middle East.  If you’d been paying closer attention, or had attended some of our earlier lectures kindly led by my friend and associate Mehdi Noorbaksh, you would have known that there was a reform movement which was very much alive.  But to see the reformers openly demonstrating in defiance of a very powerful authority structure was still impressive.  If you knew something of Iranians you might not be too surprised, but perhaps Gene Sharp and his work may have had some role in this development, at least according to a WSJ article excerpted below.

American Revolutionary
Quiet Boston Scholar Inspires Rebels Around the World
By PHILIP SHISHKIN, The Wall Street Journal, SEPTEMBER 13, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122127204268531319.html 
… Spread via the Internet, word-of-mouth and seminars, Mr. Sharp’s writings on nonviolent resistance have been studied by opposition activists in Zimbabwe, Burma, Russia, Venezuela and Iran, among others. His 1993 guide to unseating despots, “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” has been translated into at least 28 languages and was used by movements that toppled governments in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.
…
… in the United Arab Emirates (2005), Iranian oil and gas engineer Mehdi Kalantarzadeh found “From Dictatorship to Democracy” on the Internet, combined it with Robert Helvey’s book, and translated the mix into Farsi last year. The Iranian activist forwarded his translation to Shahla Lahiji, a prominent Iranian publisher who often pushes the limits of state censorship.

“I knew what I’m publishing,” Ms. Lahiji says. “I knew it wouldn’t make the regime happy.” Ms. Lahiji says the book was selling briskly at her stand in the book fair in Tehran last year, and that a few months later a pro-government Web site accused her of “teaching velvet revolution to the people.”

From Chapter One of“From Dictatorship to Democracy”

Since 1980 dictatorships have collapsed before the predominantly nonviolent defiance of people in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Slovenia, Madagascar, Mali, Bolivia, and the Philippines. Nonviolent resistance has furthered the movement toward democratization in Nepal, Zambia, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Uruguay, Malawi, Thailand, Bulgaria, Hungary, Zaire, Nigeria, and various parts of the former Soviet Union (playing a significant role in the defeat of the August 1991 attempted hard-line coup d’tat).

In addition, mass political defiance(1) has occurred in China, Burma, and Tibet in recent years. Although those struggles have not brought an end to the ruling dictatorships or occupations, they have exposed the brutal nature of those repressive regimes to the world community and have provided the populations with valuable experience with this form of struggle.

We will cover some of the high points of Sharp’s Book.  He spent a long time researching and studying revolutions and has produced some practical hard headed advice to those who wish to replace tyranny with a democracy.  Not surprisingly, for a couple of reasons, he strongly advocates against the use of violence.  He also points out how a dictatorships are often vulnerable and unstable and throughout history have not demonstrated much longevity.  The trick would be to keep one failed dictatorship from being replaced by another dictator.

We will also give some thought to other dictatorships political and otherwise and how they affect our lives

Definition –Dictatorship:1. A system of government in which the leader or leaders have complete power.  2.  A trap into which people or cultures or societies fall,  sometimes willingly, that eventually controls their lives and character, to the benefit of the dictatorial power, as in an addiction or an obligation. (Curt Gibby)

Also, think on how what this book has to say applies to other situations in which we find ourselves around the world.

For those who like to read ahead (and everybody else as well) Please check out the Albert Einstein Institute on the web athttp://www.aeinstein.orgto see the scope of  their work.Also you can download the entire (short) 85 page“From Dictatorship to Democracy”in PDF form and read it at your leisure.  When you open it in acrobat or your browser you can make the type nice and large and if English isn’t your native tongue, you can download it in 21 other languages.   You will also see links to three videos… and other pertinent articles at the bottom of the page.