What do you want on four hours sleep?

[muckefuck]

Just got off the phone with my Bahraini friend Blondie. It was a very successful call in that it ended up working as a pep talk for the both of us. There's enough uncertainty about the events in Egypt (even if a Tiananmen scenario has basically been ruled out due to US pressure, there's still far to much scope for a Iranian-style governmental-victory-through-attrition) that we're both struggling to hold back our emotional investment, but on the other hand we can both identify enough portents of positive change in the Arab world that we're able to keep our cynicism at bay.

He's a fervent Pan-Arabist and sees more health in that movement that at any time in ages. Satellite television and the Net have done more than undermine the narratives imposed by the individual authoritarian regimes, they've given those opposing the status quo a common language for voicing their grievances. (One example he gave was that crowds in Egypt were singing the words of a Tunisian poet on the power claiming control of one's own destiny.)

A lot of our chat was about globalisation of information, particularly our disappointment that the "long tail" hasn't yet achieved what's been promised due to more to legal barriers than technological. (He mentioned iTunes, with its lack of "zoning" as being a prominent exception.) Although, as mentioned before, the current upheaval in the Arab World irresistibly reminds of Eastern Europe c1989, one thought I was left with was that I might find a better model a bit further back in the South American wave of democratisation. (Just an idle thought at this point until I look closer at the aetiology of that.)

I know I'm rambling; that's what the conversation was like. "I wish you were here," he said, "we could go out to dinner and talk about these things, drive around, hang out." Until then, we can make use of the same channels that have Gulfis talking to Lebanese, Tunisians talking to Syrians.

Comments

[itchwoot.livejournal.com]

Lack of "zoning" in iTunes? I don't get it.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I'm decidedly lukewarm about the Tunisian revolution, and far from hopeful about Egypt. To the extent Mubarak is a genuine lone dictator, he makes an excellent target. To the extent he's merely a capstone on a, erm, much larger and broader military government structure, removing him is likely to provide at best a fleeting satisfaction. I kinda thought the same thing about Saddam Hussein, who was much, much more of a solitary dictocrat, but several years of armed foreign occupation and the effective destruction of the former regime's means of biopower did a lot to prevent any simple succession.
We'll see, of course.

I agree this is much more like S America than the USSR, but I don't see a Simon Bolivar waiting in the wings, and if there were one, he'd have a very wide field of uneasy truces to cover. Viva the Druzes, Copts, Turks, Isma'ilis...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I mean compared to DVDs. There are similar restrictions on publishing. (I gave the example of a comic written in French by a Quebecois author which in North America is available only in English translation--even in Quebec!)

"Zoning"

[ursine1.livejournal.com]

There are a number of times when people post video clips here on LJ and I am unable to view them because the copyright holder refuses to allow that.

Chuck

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I especially hear complaints along those lines from my German friends and acquaintances. The whole international copyright regime is such a crazy patchwork.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Regardless of when Mubarak goes, I think the satisfaction could be more than fleeting. Right now, the government is seated at a negotiating table with the Muslim Brotherhood, and that alone is huge.

[itchwoot.livejournal.com]

I think we have about half of YouTube left to watch.