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rfmcdonaldJesus Jones' 1991 song "Right Here, Right Now" has been popping up on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, so I figured that I may as well post it here, too.
The song, the one-hit wonder for this group (a much bigger hit in North America than in the United Kingdom, so it seems), is a sort of panegyric to the time in 1989 and after when the Communist dictatorships of Europe fell and everything seemed possible.
Alex Harrowell's posts on Egypt at A Fistful of Euros have been filed in the Transition and Accession category at that group blog, the first new posts there since--well--the transitions and accessions of a goodly share of post-Communist Europe to the European Union. So, yes, with the transition of Egypt from Mubarak's dictatorship towards something more pluralistic and functional, a break point has been passed, etc etc.
One thing to note is that the transition from Communism wasn't nearly as pleasant and prosperous as people had hoped at the time, or would like to project retroactively in the past from now. Another thing to note is that the Arab world is far more diverse politically than Communist Europe, with populist presidential republics and conservative presidential republics and autocratic monarchies and nominally pluralistic monarchies, etc, all without any kind of coherent ideological or political union to unite things together. Tunisia's revolution spreading to Egypt wasn't that unexpected, inasmuch as the two regimes were similar, but, well, this is not 1989.
The song, the one-hit wonder for this group (a much bigger hit in North America than in the United Kingdom, so it seems), is a sort of panegyric to the time in 1989 and after when the Communist dictatorships of Europe fell and everything seemed possible.
A woman on the radio talks about revolution
when it's already passed her by
but Bob Dylan didn't have this to sing about you
you know it feels good to be alive
I was alive and I waited waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now, there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history
I saw the decade in, when it seeme
dthe world could change at the blink of an eye
And if anythingthen there's your sign of the times
Alex Harrowell's posts on Egypt at A Fistful of Euros have been filed in the Transition and Accession category at that group blog, the first new posts there since--well--the transitions and accessions of a goodly share of post-Communist Europe to the European Union. So, yes, with the transition of Egypt from Mubarak's dictatorship towards something more pluralistic and functional, a break point has been passed, etc etc.
One thing to note is that the transition from Communism wasn't nearly as pleasant and prosperous as people had hoped at the time, or would like to project retroactively in the past from now. Another thing to note is that the Arab world is far more diverse politically than Communist Europe, with populist presidential republics and conservative presidential republics and autocratic monarchies and nominally pluralistic monarchies, etc, all without any kind of coherent ideological or political union to unite things together. Tunisia's revolution spreading to Egypt wasn't that unexpected, inasmuch as the two regimes were similar, but, well, this is not 1989.
