Posts tagged Arab Spring
Posts tagged Arab Spring
Egyptian Revolution: “The Flood”
Part one of a three part documentary created by Heba Kandil, a former Reuters journalist, and produced by TrustMedia, the media development wing of the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Run Time: 5:22.
Egyptian Revolution Part 2: The Clash. Egyptian Revolution Part 3: The Fall.
My dashboard has been full of “disaster-porn” from the 15-M protests in Spain. First off, I do think that recording incidents of violence for later use in civil court is crucial — but focusing on these acts (and making them symbols for an entire movement) is detrimental to the goals of the revolution.
It is my hope that the young people of Spain (… of any nation) can work with their governments to allocate funds towards building industries that aren’t dependent on fickle foreigners and can stabilize the country in the coming decades.
The energy sector comes to mind. What would it take for the Spanish government to team up with the soon to be established Egyptian government to create a solar thermal/photovolatic grid that could sell clean energy to their wealthy Northern European neighbors.
SPIEGEL: Monsieur Todd, in the middle of the Cold War, in the days of Leonid Brezhnev, you predicted the collapse of the Soviet system. In 2002, you described the economic and imperial erosion of the United States, a global superpower. And, four years ago, you and your colleague Youssef Courbage predicted the unavoidable revolution in the Arab world… On what indicators do you base your probability calculation?
Todd: Mainly on three factors: the rapid increase in literacy, particularly among women, a falling birthrate and a significant decline in the widespread custom of endogamy, or marriage between first cousins. This shows that the Arab societies were on a path toward cultural and mental modernization, in the course of which the individual becomes much more important as an autonomous entity.
Spanish Revolution via sustainablefuture
