Comment 1: If you want to build something then what you affirm counts more than what you reject, and the more specific your project is, the more viable it could be.
Comment 2: Global power alignments in absence of credible global leaders and in the midst of rising and clashing populisms and a nuclear arms-race is no ground for optimism and does not augur well for the immediate future.
Comment 1: Countries like South Africa, India, Malaysia and Indonesia that invest in education, technology and development can overcome much of their internal problems and shortcomings and emerge as real world powers in relatively short span of time. Meanwhile Arab countries focus on resistance ideology, importing technology and repelling indigenous talent. Authoritarianism is our plague. Continue reading “Development and Authoritarianism”
Comment 1: Even decorum can be approached with ideological passion, and that the desire to remain above the fray, to remain pure, can often be quite hypocritical. For change cannot be wrought out from High Heaven, that’s why “gods” always had interlocutors on the ground and why they often descended there themselves. Change can only be wrought out from within the fray, at the risk of ending up with a guilty conscience. Continue reading “Of Guilt and Hypocrisy!”
(In response to comments on US and western involvement in our regional conflicts)
Abuse of power is common to all who have it. But democratic countries like the US allow for self-criticism and self-reflection and therefore, for the possibility of course correction.
In our struggle to bring democracy to our part of the world, where authoritarianism makes course-correction on a variety of issues well-nigh impossible, it will be positive to lobby for support from established democracies. Failure to lobby in this regard will leave the stage to be occupied by pundits with little knowledge, understanding and appreciation of shifting realities in the region, and other lobbies which represent the interests of ruling regimes and all varieties of parties who are not interested in democracy to begin with. Continue reading “Democracy, Authoritarianism and Course Corrections”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 