yesterday, like today

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

George Orwell, 1984.

We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror.

Maximilien Robespierre, Speech to the National Convention, February 5, 1794.

The country’s newly appointed prime minister, Kamal al Ganzouri, addressed the nation for the first time on Monday, calling the recent events an “attack on the revolution,” and denying that the military shot anyone. He asserted that the people gathered in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square, the center of Egypt’s winter uprising, were not “pure” revolutionaries.

“We have never used anything that could be labeled as violence,” he said.

"Egypt clashes continue for second day; 8 killed, 300 wounded," Washington Post, December 17, 2011.

The title of this post is the title of a book written by Charlie Weber who died while in the custody of the Stasi, the East German secret police. The German title is Gestern Wie Heute, and the book, according to his wife, Miriam, is "about the way that one dictatorship here is the same as another." (Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, p. 34.)

phew

I'm leaving Goa and India in two days to head for Thailand for the holidays with my girl. Try and imagine the momentary shock seeing this headline on Google News, clicking the link, reading the article, and only then, seeing the big blue banner.

"Indo-Goa border sealed"

so an elephant, a camel, and a cow walk into an intersection.

...And that's rush hour in India.

in-flight electronics

The news says that Alec Baldwin was kicked off an airplane for playing a game on his phone.

You hear lots of stuff about the importance of turning off your electronics while flying and lots of stuff about how it's airlines on a power trip. No one seems to know whether its really necessary. I read a report of a study recently, don't remember where, that said the use of in-flight electronics would continue to be banned because the study concluded there wasn't enough proof that these devices didn't mess up a plane in flight.

When I flew on Royal Air Maroc from Marrakech to Munich back in November they didn't say a thing about using electronics on the plane. I listened to my iPod from the time I sat down till the time I went through customs. We cleared the Alps just fine.

And on one of the legs of my journey from Berlin to Goa, I read my Kindle straight through takeoff - even after having been spied by one of the flight attendants who said nothing. During landing they made me put it away.

I suspect that the real reason is not because these things will mess with the aircraft but rather they want you undistracted in the event that something goes wrong and you need to be alert for evacuation instructions and its easier to enforce a blanket ban on electronic devices than it is to parse through who's wearing headphones, etc., etc.

Right? Wrong? I don't know. What I do know is that I prefer to keep reading during a landing than craning my neck out the window thinking about the landing.

killer coconut

A second coconut landed in front of me today. There was no danger this time because I was under a roof but I clearly saw it hit the ground. No joke. These things fall with such force and with no warning. If they didn't kill you they'd probably at least split your skull.