The Arab Democratic Revolts of 2011 – Coherence in Chaos
There occur days when multiple demonstrations break out simultaneously, suggesting coordination. There were huge demonstrations in Algeria and Libya on Feb. 17, and we see simultaneous manifestations (March 25th 2011) today in Jordan and Syria. Is this the Muslim Brotherhood coordinating things? Probably yes and no. As we will see, the MB is does not constitute any majority anywhere.
An Arab analyst in Dubai claims that “Ninety nine per cent of what the various protests demand is identical.” Lack of jobs, the high price of food, not enough housing for families or singles, and ever-present long-lasting martial law – these were and are the issues shared by all Arab uprisings.
One might call the recent demonstrations at the Ishma'ili Meydan (Tahrir Square), 'the fourth mass food riot in Cairo since 1972.' Going back thirty years, noting the introduction of structural adjustment, one would likely find that these earlier mass manifestations were also about jobs and housing, like this one.
The point is that the 'Washington consensus' is still wrecking economies, even though it is dead since 2008. The Seoul Model is also state-heavy, industrial, high-energy consumer driven. Over the next months, we will be exploring alternative economic systems, most not driven by consumerism.
Since 1967 SPECULUM has advocated careful study of the life-ways and knowledge of indigenous people. That includes the many millions of Arab bedouin, who somehow survive in the Sinai desert, the Negev desert, and the Sahara. I should quickly add that there still remain Arab nomads in Afghanistan (or did when I worked there in 1972-73).
Protecting minority populations in the Muslim world is a top priority. Like the other religions, Islam gets dumbed down real bad. Medieval Muslim scholarship has wonderful traditions, but today, knowledge of Islam demands the most modern of social sciences: history, pre-history, pre-Islamic literature, the archaeology of Arabia, economic history (trade routes, land and sea), ceramic traditions, comparative religions, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, 7th-C. centers of culture like Hira, Iraq, capital of the Lakhmids (where Muhammad likely studied).
SPECULUM's conclusion after a half-century of study and contemplation, is identical to that reached by Sayyid Jalal ad-Din Al Afghani, who said: “I traveled in the East and saw many Muslims but no Islam. I traveled in the West and saw no Muslims but found Islam.”
Muhammad Qurayshi's teaching in Medina 622-30, the 'amal, is of course that proffered by the religion. I can't think of anywhere, not even in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, where Muhammad's old laws are enforced. For example, men own the houses, which is definitely not Islamic. Actually what remains of genuine Islamic civilization, is scanty. The genuine reform tradition arising from Sayyid al Afghani in the late 19th C., focuses on the clergy as the obstacle, not foreign affairs and influences. In 1928-29, the elementary school teacher and wanna-be from Isma'iliya, successfully reversed that tradition, blaming the West and Israel, rejecting everything western as dangerous, and licensed themselves to assassinate government and cultural leaders. The paradox is that Al Afghani lived and worked in countries under European occupation (Iran, India, Egypt), while the Muslim Brotherhood reside(d) in independent nations, like Egypt (since 1917), Jordan, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Lebanon.
Is there rehabilitation for the Muslim Brotherhood? Their leaders must be enjoined to re-write their charter to bring the organization into line with the authentic Islamic reform tradition.
Yes, Islamists have jumped aboard the Arab revolts. They are out-numbered by secular and/or other religious groups. They have a role in serving the people on the most local level. But shou8ld not assume leadership positions inside governments unless they split out their perverse innovation (that everything western is un-Islamic, that non-Muslims, Shi'a and secular Muslims can be killed with impunity, et al.). The MB is strongest in Jordan (but married to 14 trade unions).
Western Sahara -
Did the Arab revolts begin in the Western Sahara? The Sahrawi parties have been protesting more or less continuously since October, 2010. Careful study of cell phone traffic and Google Trends (using Arabic search terms) should eventually show if the Sahrawi protests prompted new waves of protests in Algeria, in early January, which seem to have triggered the uprising in Tunisia.
Morocco -
Protests began Jan. 30,2011, in Tangier, where four people burned themselves.
The issue was, is, political reform, reducing some of the powers enjoyed by the king. On Feb.20, some 20,000 protested in Rabat. On Feb. 26, a thousand demonstrated in Rabat. The protesters are mostly labor unions, youth organs and human rights organs. Flash to one month later: On March 20, 20,000 are organized by Islamists, across 60 Moroccan cities.
Algeria -
Nineteen years of emergency law ended Feb. 22, 2011. That was the outcome of the Jan. 4-5 demonstrations, which spread from Algiers to Oran and Kabyle. Everyday there ios a demonstration somewhere in the country, or so it seems.
Tunisia -
Players jockey behind the scenes, since the Jan. 11 revolt, and the resignation of PM Ghannouch.
Libya -
As we write, Qaddafi security forces are leaving Ad Adjabiya, just south of Benghazi We expect the democratic forces to move on Sirt, and then Tripoli, where they'll have to fight for a few days.
The Feb. 17th Revolt started when protesters broke into an unfinished housing project. Another factor was the arrest of family members of those executed in the 1996 massacre, at Abu Salem prison.
On March 25th, the UN demands access to war-zone cities, to help the wounded.
Egypt -
Behind the scenes, parties are jockeying for influence. Who is sleeping with whom in Cairo is not visible. So we use intuition. The two established parties, the Muslim Brotherhood and the National Democratic Party, have a real advantage in pushing ahead elections in just over 4 months. Other parties will not be given sufficient time to evolve and work out policies as well as set up agents in the streets.
On the 25th of March, the interim gov. under Marshall Tantawi makes it illegal to hold demonstrations, like those seen in Tahrir Square. March 9th has been revealed as a potent cause behind the revolution, when many detained protesters, were molested. The torture set it off. Many were arrested, and given long prison terms, in kangaroo courts.
The May 1989 riots led to the gov. legalizing select parties, and it is these which remain today potent forces behind the scenes. Parties such as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Young Egypt Party (YEP), and the Green Party.
MEET THE PLAYERS: Since 1989 we've seen the approval of the Al Ghad party under Ayman Nur, Mr. Mubarak's contended in the 2005 elections. Ghad is smart, progressive, secular - “Tomorrow”
M. Al Baradei has joined with the Brothers, as a marriage of convenience. The MB will gain legitimacy while Al Baradei gains street organization and enforcement. His big mistake was not to de-fang the Brothers. How can they be trusted otherwise? Their charter calls for killing Shi'a Muslims, secular Muslims and non-Muslims. To them, everything modern or western is inappropriate for Muslims.
Wael Ghonim, a Google employee, claims some credit for the Isma'ili Meydan (Tahrir Sq.) protests, using his “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook page.
Ahmed Zewail, a 1999 Nobel Prize winner, has returned to Egypt where he linked up with the April 6 Youth Movement, a group of activists using social media to mobilize and steer the protests. Like Al Baradei, Zewail is seeking control of the street.
Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan is working behind the scenes, still under the command of Hasan Tantawi. The Field Marshall has been a veritable Sphinx, refusing to talk to the population. The protesters may go soft on the military because in times of storms an anchor is needed.
Amr Musa (correct spelling) has played an oversized role, running ther Arab League and bring them over to the Arab democrats. That's amazing in itself, but he went further and authorized the UN to license No Fly Zones 'plus' (hitting ground targets), on March 12th. He appeared to vacillate two days later, when French, British and American aircraft and missiles hit the Libyan air defenses.
Finally there is M. Badie, elected chief of the Muslim Brotherhood, now elbowing his way into 'decisive committees.' How possibly can he be trusted if he does not re-write the MB charter, spitting out its dumbed-down perverse ideology. He probably does not even know the 19th. C. writings of those authentic reformers (al Afghan, M. Abdu and R. Rida.)
On March 24th, Egyptian gov. hosts first Israeli diplomat. I'm sure Badie didn't like that. There's one type of MB-influenced Arab nationalist who still thinks Israel is the Arab's greatest problem. Assuredly the Likud regime in Jerusalem deserves 'eternal opprobrium,' but Arabs would be more effective (and honest) if focused on their own problems, like the abuse of women, an inability of the gov. to construct enough flats, due to corruption, and the steady rise in food and fuel prices.
Sudan -
The protests in Khartoum, Jan. 30-31, were hit by police with excessive force. Twenty remain missing, after arrest. Other hot spots include Abbiye, the oil-rich dusty town right on the border between North and South Sudan. Darfur is rather free of violence, thanks to Qaddafi's influence, as well as the emigration of a good half the pop.
Djibouti -
Demonstrations began in Djibouti City Feb. 3, 2011 with just some 300 protesters, then escalated so that, during the bigger protests Feb.19-24: larger demonstrations calling for the resignation of President Ismail Omar Guellah. Many opposition leaders have been arrested.
Yemen -
March 25th protests demand Saleh's resignation, and he agrees, except he wants to hand over the gov. to 'capable hands.' Ali Abdullah Saleh's position and influence has been fraying since 2009. The demonstrations began very small, in mid-January, 2011, following Friday prayers. March 17, 52 protesters were shot to death, in a coordinated sniper attack, during a peaceful protest. Pres. Saleh in response said: “I have big regrets.” Efforts are underway to find the perpetrators.
On the 27th of Jan., over 16,000 were demonstrating in Sana'a. Of course there were pro-Saleh demonstrations as well, and the two fought, though now, in late March, the riot police moves between them. The demonstrations keep getting louder and larger, hoping to drive Ali Abdullah Saleh from power, which he has held since before 1990 (when Yemen was united). He was head of North Yemen before then, and worked directly with the Zaydi imams and the royalists. Now the Yemeni Shi'i royals are hoping to get back into leadership positions. Saleh's own tribe has reportedly turned against him. His PM M. Qirte, says Saleh will resign in just weeks.
Yemen consists of rather distinct parts, each drawing from different cultural traditions: the North (royalist Zaydi Shi'a); the Hadramaut (SE), with its Indian Ocean connections; the south – Aden. The Tihama (west coast), and the East, Shibam and the mountains to the north, home of Al Qaideh of the Arabia Peninsula.
We suspect Saleh will step down by mid-April. Two figures to watch: Maj. Gen. Abd al Rab Mansour al Hadi, VP since 1994; and Ali M. Mujawwar, PM since 2007.
Saudi Arabia -
The Shi'a live in the east, just where the petroleum refineries and terminals are located. The Saudi king has always met with the Shi'a head ayatollah at least once a year. One might think the king might prefer him to the Wahhabis. Certainly the royal family has been struggling with the Wahhabis all along.
Demonstrations began in Jeddah in late Jan. when protesters assembled to push for infrastructure improvements, specifically the repair of roads after some flooding. On the 5th of Feb., some 40 women demonstrated in Riyadh, calling not for freedoms or change in gov., but release of protesters detained by police.
The gov. would have done itself a favor if they had released innocents like Faisel Ahmad Abdul-Ahad (Abdul Ahadwas). His death in detention triggered the March 11th 'Day of Rage,' in which two protesters were killed. A week of protests prompt King Abdallah Abdul Aziz to put up some $37 billion for all sorts of goodies.
This probably will not work. What will work is some protection and chances for Shi'a to move into office management positions. Demonstrations have been held in Qatif, Riyadh, Hofuf, Damman and Jeddah.
Syria -
Today March 25th, some 22 were gunned down by security police in Dera'a. Bashir Al Asad meets with his political advisors, and hints publicly of a return to representative government, with licensed political parties. Demonstrations in Syria began in the far south, in Dera'a, on the 26th of Jan. Today, 25th March, 2011, police and protesters clash yet again after a violent week of protests. “We will sacrifice our lives gladly to make this happen.” said one activist. Demonstrations spread to Damascus, Hama, Aleppo, and Banyas on the coast. The Syrian gov. of Bashir al Assad unleashed his official killers on Mar. 17 at Dira'a on innocent protesters calling for the dissolution of the state security apparatus. On March 19th, another 6 were killed in Damascus. Then over 20 protesters were killed in Dira'a, in the south, on 24 March. Such violence then galvanized even more protesters on the 25th, leading Bashir to make more than material concessions. We are amazed to think of democracy coming to Syria.
Lebanon -
Recent demonstrations are calling for the disarmament of Hizbullah. Also curious is that the new Hizbullah-installed president, vocally called for air strikes against Qaddafi's troops in Libya. Earlier demonstrations called for a change in 'confessionalism' – the automatic apportioning of jobs by sect and ethnicity. All those secular young people in Lebanon, will not fold to Hizbullah.
Jordan -
On March 25th, a large demonstration was held in front of the Interior Ministry, in Amman. Stones were thrown. King Abdullah II actually hopes the protesters will push through a new constitutional monarchy, as well as a democratic parliament with teeth.
Protests erupted on Jan. 14th, in Amman, Ma'an, Al Karak, Salt, Irbid and others. They appear coordinated, planned, perhaps by the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the front of the protest, consisted of trade unions, students, and leftists. The MB is working with some 14 trade unions. Demands include resignation of PM Samir Rifa'i, who some protesters call a 'cowards.'
There was held a protest in Amman on Jan. 21, featuring 5,000. On Feb. 1, King Abdullah dismisses his government. But the protesters saw that as a weakness, so held a huge demonstration on the 25th of Feb., over 10,000, demanding a right to vote, to have representatives, to dissolve parliament. Why parliament? The protesters see it as corrupt and pro-gov.
A recent protest sign read in English: “Jordan is not only for the rich. Bread is a red line. Beware of our starvation and fury.”
Palestine -
Demonstrations began small, in Ramallah, in late Jan., then, on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14th), PA PM Salam Fayyad resigns. Leaked memos from Wikiliks and Al Jazeera really did bring down the PA elders, exposing their concessions to the Israelis. That, and short-term-brutality by the IDF, may have triggered the upturn in war: Hamas launches some 90 rockets from Gaza, killing no one. Then smaller terror organs copy the tactic, firing missiles and prompting IDF retaliation. So now Hamas is patrolling Gaza's borders.
The call in late March has been for re-unification of all Palestinians, Fatah, PA, Hamas/MB, Druze. The re-unifiers are out-flanking both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. We expect popular protests for democratic choice. We wonder if these new democrats will demand 'the destruction of the Zionist state,' when their own prosperity and freedom depends on coming to terms with the Jews.
Bahrain -
On March 25, demonstrations in Manama were broken up by the police. A series of running battles ensued. We are awaiting casualty figures. The Bahrain protesters will tell you with a straight face that the Bahraini uprising is not sectarian – and the great majority are not religious – but in the back of the crowd, young agents of the imam are at work. Bahraini authorities really did intercept an Iranian intel squad delivering radios using speedboats.
The Bahraini revolt lost out when, after enduring violence, the protesters escalated their demands from the institution of a constitutional monarchy, to the removal of the Al Khalifa royal family altogether. The Shi'a claim to be the indigenous people on the island. Some may be, but the nomadic Al Khalifa brought benefits (control and distribution of fresh water, and investments in long-distant trade and boat building.
King Hamad Khalifa is amongst the most liberal of emirs. He issued the protesters a counter-demands” “Let us talk about your complaints in parliament.” The protesters did not think parliament an acceptable venue. The upper house (senate) is composed largely of Al Khalifa supporters, friends, protegees, offiers and employees. The lower house is the place for debate. But even the Shi'i reps in the house, are under attack and may not run again.
Kuwait -
Dozens were arrested Feb. 19th, when stateless Arab bedouin protested outside Kuwait City. Some 120,000 bedouin come in and out of Kuwait, but have no status. The Sabah family comes from the bedouin, and they gained ascendency by controlling Kuwait's only three fresh water wells, which are all in the west.
Kuwait, like Saudi Arabia, has been slow with promised reforms. The first woman entered Kuwait's parliament in 1974. Not much has changed. The MB is active in Kuwait. Caught in the middle are over a million foreigners, most laborers and home maids.
The emir promises free food and a $4,000 bonus, to citizens. The only problem is that the protesters are not citizens.
U.A.E. -
Back in February, there occurred a demonstration of maybe 200 intellectuals, calling for reform of the Federal National Council. Many of those signing the petition were former members of that council. Was can't the West link up with Arab intellectuals?
Oman -
Sultan Qabus is trying an ingenious approach, asking all unemployed to register at the Ministry of Manpower, and there to begin receiving $390 a month as long as one is jobless. Demonstrations have been small. They began on Jan. 17th, protesting for salary increases and help meeting the rising cost of living. The 18th Feb. riots were inspired by those in Bahrain. On Feb. 26th, we see the protests at the Sohar industrial city, which then spreads to Salalah.
Qabus has reshuffled his cabinet three times, seeking an acceptable mix.
Final note: only two revolutions have succeeded in toppling the head-of-state (Egypt, Tunisia). But huge concessions have been made in most Arab nations. At first these concessions were material, then later, they involved devolving power onto the 'smart street.' Syria and Libya and Yemen deserve continual monitoring.
- John Paul Maynard
legal anthropologist
Friday, March 25, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Intensification of the Unrest in Arab Nations
Demonstrations: Will They Lead to Real Revolutions?
The Manifestations Persist and Are Intensifying ... By J. Paul Maynard
Revolutions litter human history and though most fail, most do cause or effect positive changes, be they be immediate and/or in the course of time. Those in Europe in 1848 are an example. The costs of revolt are usually high: trauma, stereotyping, a dumbing down of discourse, a brutalization of combatants, economic loss, and loss of life. Revolutions are sparked by small groups. Only by analyzing their words and the tone of those words, can one determine whether it's a revolution or camarilla, or coup d'etat; a labor strike, or a bread riot, a slave uprising, or ethnic irredentism; a mutiny or a genocidal bloodbath; or the work of organized crime, or students, or some sect; or the secret work of foreign agents.
Every revolution is unique, because every nation is unique: revolutions are uniquely configured and polarized. But what all share is this: People are conditioned creatures. Most prefer the known, the status quo. Elite classes who seize or win power, identify themselves with 'their' land: their top priority is stability, control. But change is constant: if the professed leader does not assist social adaptation, then he slowly loses legitimacy.
We make a big difference between peaceful protest and violence, but most revolutions feature a challenge/response cycle of intensification, where events accelerate, where groups split one way, or another; where both end up causing the exact opposites of their voiced intentions and ideals.
Some revolutions exhibit great clarity and understanding and a sense of a shared destiny, leading to an inclusive clarity, a peaceful change. These kind of revolutions can be bloodless. More often, however, there is a haze, a vague confusion, a lack of coherence on all sides. The two sides cannot talk, and violence becomes the language they speak.
Humans eventually learned to talk, to negotiate. But speech can also be very destructive. Most nations have laws protecting leaders from slander, calumny. Maybe the most important of the Ten Commandments is: Thou shalt not bear false witness against another. Thou shalt not 'kill' has an inner meaning.
What was lost to us when we learned to talk and then, much later, to read? The brain is biased in deadly ways. People think people dressed in white are more trustworthy than people dressed in black. And the brain is configured to view social situations as a fight between 'us and them.'
These innate biases are often too strong for rational negotiations to solve issues. It is just too easy to exaggerate, to misconstrue, to label and stigmatize. Because speech fails, protests break out, or simmer unseen in heads, and there can be solution other than nature's persistent changes.
Revolutions are admissions of failure, the failure of rational speech, of give and take, of the distribution of wealth. The have-nots usually revolt against the haves, but it is not always so simple. Some aristocrats might support a liberal uprising, while popular, revolutionary peasant leaders usually become like the princes they replace, even worse.
The best revolutions never happen, or are almost bloodless, leading to negotiations where adaptive changes can be made. Ideally, both sides should give and take, but usually the revolutionaries demand everything.
Revolutions do not precipitate out of thin air – or do they? Some take decades to come to head, other revolutions are responses to very recent acts of violence or aggression. Events have a way of confirming one's worst suspicions. War breaks out.
The new social media has made communications faster than the thoughts communicated. Our human thinking is amongst the very slowest of the many processes controlled by the brain. Associative or conceptual thinking is almost as mechanical as chemical processes. Open up the heads of the two sides fighting and you'll find stereotyped caricatures and a sub-normal analysis of the 'objective situation.' Short term advantage usurps long-term resolution. Ethnic, class or nationalist identity is just too strong a psychic force to allow any synthesis of the society, any peace.
Again, language is both the cause and the solution, politically, culturally. We see how mass religion ends up condemning or disparaging or degrading others who are not of the sect – thanks to their sacred texts. These scriptures can be read as justifications of tradition and the status quo. Revolution is prohibited: one should obey temporal authorities.
But it's not that simple. The Gospel has Christ saying: “If you are a slave, I will maike you a freeman. And if you are a freeman, I will make you a slave.” (Book of Hebrews). Christ also said “I come not to make peace but with a sword...” Both speak of individuation, of self=-transformation. But none of this can be done in sleep. People do not know themselves, or their place in nature, so fall for cheap stereotypes, black-and-white thinking, slander and misrepresentation.
On this low level, people tend to identify with images of themselves, traditions of ancestors, ethnic stories with little bearing on present situations, and sometimes one will see history groups invent genetic identities, with selective narratives, not as a means to live, but as a way to differentiate one's tribe, favoring it while disparaging others.
Demonization of the enemy usually has a grain of truth, but then gets exaggerated and distorted. is highly irrational stemming from a black-or-white associative mentation, a kind of dumbing down. Often it is the enemy which could be of most help to us, if only we could make peace. That peace might even be submission, even enslavement, aware of how easy it was for slaves to end up controlling things.
Slavery began in Africa as a legal status permitting outsiders to become part of another clan or tribe. It was usually bestowed on refugees. Rather than be slain, it might be more advantageous to just surrender. Why fight against impossible odds?
Slavery may go way back, and less-developed societies still opt for the strong man, but the actual social condition of the evolving human was neither slave or big man. The clan was made up of. People were so few in number – and animals so dangerous - that any contact would likely be an occasion for a party – or a big hunt. Humans out-bred, pursued exogamy, thus besting their complicated (and nonhuman) genome. So the evidence is on the side of inter-ethnic negotiations, and not war. Humans could never survive war if it were cyclic or recurrent or long lasting. Everybody would die.
Civilization featured slaves, and owes much to them. Athens had more slaves than freemen, and Athens is typical, not exceptional, except that money had been invented, and the sacred precincts of the Temple, had become a bank for looted treasure, gold, silver, armor and weapons. Persia was a more advanced society, which likely had some slaves, but there is no evidence for it. It was Persia that gave us this one world in which all nations, all peoples, have a part. It was Persia who gave us the idea of a benevolent One God who cares for all its people. Diplomacy, embassies, were also Persian achievements.
It is the tendency of advanced democratic countries to look down on tribal peoples, calling them autocratic, and featuring a strong man. But most 'primitive' societies elect their leaders, and regularly end their consultations with a show of hands. For example, we keep hearing about how democratic Israel is, and how primitive the Arabs. The Middle East is the best textbook to study the slaying of others with words, of proto-national and 'spiritual' genocidal behavior. Even the so-called spiritual leaders, pointed the way to war and conquest, ethnic cleansing and the sacking of cities, all hoping for the complete extermination of the enemy's society. For example, on the run-up to the American Civil War, the churches all divided into pro- and anti-slavery camps. In the confederate south, religious fervor pervaded many – they were totally convinced that slavery was right, because it was in the bible. Often one can see the utter moral corruption of clergy. The role of clergy is social work on the most local scale.
In order to gauge a revolution, one must dis-entangled the delicate threads of physical need, the aspiration of ideals, and the images and words, the symbols of social intercourse and identity. One must look carefully at the politics of symbolic appeal, aware that people are emotional, not coolly calculating.
The world can no longer afford the politics of symbolic appeal. We must change in other ways if we hope to survive and thrive. Now the forces are conspiring: climate change, natural disasters, shortfalls in 22 required minerals, a chronic lack of food and affordable housing, the unintended depredations of money (impoverishing the rural countryside while enriching the cities), epidemics and energy shortfalls. No one ideology is appropriate.
At this stage in a greater world revolution we desperately seek solutions to unemployment, teenage pregnancy, food production, microbial infection, entrenched bureaucracies, pollution of the air and the water, the predation of huge corporate organisms loyal to no nation and no creed of moral conduct.
What solutions can the right or left give? The left thinks government intervention will meet real needs of the poor, the disabled, while the capitalists think the free market will automatically rise to meet these basic needs. Here, in Amherst, I befriended several Chinese grad students, and we all agreed: “There can be no real capitalism without real socialism, and there cannot be any real socialism, without real capitalism.” Capitalism rewards just a few, marginalizing many if not most, while socialism needs the tax receipts of a prosperous society engaged in exchange and investment.
Of course, the key word is 'real': real capitalism is what has been practiced in the Middle East for some eight to ten thousand years, where and when families set themselves up as businesses and, dividing wealth into shares, invested in long- distant trade, or in infrastructure, like irrigation canals, or trade routes.
Of course Thomas Jefferson's ideal dream of families once again becoming economic units, growers during the summer, and small industrialists in the winter. This is a very different form of capitalism than the one pertaining. As gasoline becomes too expensive to burn, we will the collapse of all these big firms, with many smaller ones stepping into the vacuum.
How dare we view Middle Eastern societies as primitive – they've been civilized for thousands of years. Yet tradition can preempt evolutionary adaptations. The politics of symbolic appeal usurp practical needs and individual aspirations.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the Arab revolutions of 2011, is that they were not uprising on symbolic issues. The increase in the costs of food and energy, the scandalous dearth of employment, the chronic lack of affordable housing (due to corruption), are coupled with more symbolic needs – legal changes, the need to be free, to be a participant, a member, while demonizing and deprecating others. This last symbolic impulse/drive is unfortunate, not just for the waste of conflict, but the forfeit of what our enemies might give to us.
It is just this truth that underpinned the reform theory of Jalal ad Din Al Afghani. Some 140 years ago he advised Muslims to learn from the West, the bette3r to challenge them. It was just this knowledge which would cause the Europeans to end their occupations of Muslim lands. He didn't blame others so much as his own society, which he called backward because of the ignorance of the clergy. Muhammad Qurayshi, of course, had no clergy.
Contrast that with extreme revolutionary rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood and its many splinter groups. They see everything Western to be inappropriate for true Islam. The clergy must rule with their Shari'a, jihad must be enjoined. Killing non-Muslims is sanctioned, as is the killing of Shi'a, or secular people.
No Islamic group played a major role in the revolutions of 2011: the impetus to rebel was not Islamic. In all cases, the demonstrations featured modern, educated democratic citizens, at least up front. In the back, other actors, 'puppet-masters,' can be found lurking in the shadows.
Yemen -
Demonstration got bigger and bigger till on the 19th of March, some 50 protesters were gunned down in cold blood by police snipers on roofs. Hours later, Ali Saleh fired his cabinet, in desperation. Saleh's own tribe wants him to step now now. Over 100,000 marched on the 18th of March, about one in twenty residents of greater Sana'a. But unidentified 'security' snipers shot right into the crowd, with some 50 demonstrators killed. What happened here was that the head of state for 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had made substantial concessions on the very night the first demonstrations broke out. He offered to step down in 2013, and permit some representative democracy. But the protesters would have none of it. Demanding the release of protesters detained by the state, they soon started agitating for the immediate removal of President Saleh. So with each new police assault, the rage intensifies, but it cannot keep getting so hot, so extreme. People can't sustain it. The truth is that the very existence of a state government in the Yemen is at stake. To the north, the Shi'a royalists of the Zayidis hope to win power. Down in the south, in the Hadramaut, there is a little war for independence. Throw into this, terrorist cells (Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula), MB hotheads, monarchists and educated secular citizens, and the revolution will be likely be harsh. Big ugly protests have erupted elsewhere in Yemen, in Aden and in Ta'izz. Here, revolutionaries should not have demanded everything. That would a coup d-etat, not a revolution.
Egypt -
On the 19th of March, Egyptians went to the poles for the first time, to vote on a constitutional referendum, enacting laws and conditions relating to coming elections. In just 5 months, political parties must form and gain critical mass, but this is not possible in so short a time. The democrats suspect that the army, led by Field Marshall Tantawi, the 'Sphinx,' have rushed elections, thereby favoring established parties, like the NDP (a gutted den of thieves) and the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) The union of M. Al Baradei and the Ikhwan seemed mutually advantageous, but the darker side is emerging. Fights are breaking out between secular and sectarian democrats. The MB will thrive off the honest pleading of educated folk. But the Brothers can only be what they are - a deviant freak, a mockery of Islam's genuine reform tradition, as traced through Seyyid Jalal ad Din Al Afghani, through M. Abduh and Rashid Ridda. No Brother can be trusted unless they recant their license to kill Shi'a, secular Muslims, sufis and non-Muslims. But such corrections are not required, foolishly.
Police are only slowly getting back onto the streets, so lawlessness and crime are rampant in Cairo. A demonstration against physical abuse of women was viciously attacked by enraged unidentified men. Copts demonstrating against discrimination and violent attacks by Sunni hothead clerics and their toughs, are themselves attacked while demonstrating. The democrats were focused elsewhere, to political party formation, the jockeying for power, and the elimination of the SSI, the state security apparatus. They'll build a new one in its place. But how can they do that if they do not attempt to change the sick founding ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Note: Founder Hassan al Banna was a primary school teacher who knew little about Islam but thought the real Muslim must reject everything western - all technology. He also thought it was proper to wage jihad, killing innocents, as long as they were secular modern educated people, or Shi'a, or Sufis, or non-Muslims.
Tunisia -
The Tunisians had earlier eliminated their secret police. With the return of exiles, largely Islamists, new party formation is in process. But lawlessness is endemic: too many criminal types try to benefit from the chaos.
Libya -
As I write, I'm receiving reports that US fighter bombers have penetrated Tripoli, and launched guided J-Dam bombs on Al Qaddafi's residence in the Al Aziziya suburb of Tripoli. Qaddafi does not like the J-Dams. Will Western intelligence locate the great underground storage garages and hangers where Qaddafi keeps his planes and tanks? His prisons also.
A month of revolt has led to foreign intervention. The world just could not stomach the elimination of the democratic dissidents by Qaddafi's apparat. We began sending e-mails to elected representatives (Senator Kerry, Brown, VP Biden and president Obama) arguing for 'intervention lite- just a few jets up over Cyrenaica.
The president was wiser (or more constrained) waiting till March 19 to declare America at war with the Libyan regime. By waiting, Obama was able to draw in some 25 nations. America's role is support. It is quite right that the French, the Italians, the Spanish, the Turks, are fighting for their oil.
Qaddafi was notorious in jacking up the oil price. From 1971 to 2010 Qaddafi kept putting a premium on the premium: because Libyan oil is free of sulfur, it is much sought after by advanced nations who, by law, must limit pollution. So Qaddafi practice extortion, basically, constantly raising the price. The nations were all addicts, so folded.
The USA has not taken a drop of oil from Libya for many years. It refused to play the rope-a-dope game. The Americans didn't go to bed with with Qaddafi, like the rich European states did, but with King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia.
So on the 19th of March French aircraft and American and British Tomahawk missiles attacked the Libyan air defenses, shooting up armor, and immediately restoring the fortunes of the dissidents in Benghazi, Mushratah, Zawiya, Zoura, al Kufrah, and Ghaddames. Just three hours after the French attack, the democratic fighters of Benghazi drove pro-Qaddafi forces from the city. (The Qaddafi units sought to avoid air strikes by moving into urban terrain, but did not succeed.)
Amr Musa, chief of the Arab League, and candidate for president of Egypt, denounced the allied air intervention, just a few days after making it happen. He's playing for the crowd.
The short war against the Al Qaddafi entity is now straightforward. A rebel army will form in Benghazi, to march west to Sirte. They will be able to call in air support, preventing the Qaddafi entity from concentrating his armor and artillery. After Sirte, it's another 500 miles to Tripoli, but the rebel democrats will get there in two days, provided NATO jets clear the way. Once Tripolitania is captured, then the Qaddafi family have no place to go except the Fezzan. Muammar often pitched his tent in the Sahara. So let him go down there. Cut a deal.
Bahrain -
Like Yemen in that the uprising is constantly burning, intensifying after each use of force by the authorities. Here, the back of the crowd takes over as the normal folk leave. So when officers from Saudi Arabia arrived on the 17th of March, they were immediately physically attacked by the mob. 'Get real' I said to both parties. The Shi'a claim to be the island's original people. Certainly some predate the emigration of the Al Khalifa family out of the Nofuz desert some 240 years ago. But most Shi'a families date from more modern times. For example, many were settled by the British, and the emirs, as laborers.
At first, the protesters did not call for the resignation of Hamid Al Khalifa and his government. But after attacked by police, the protesters put up new claims: complete surrender by the authorities. Of course the front of the crowd will tell you 'this has nothing to do with Shi'a/Sunni tensions.' 'We are secular democrats.' But the rear of the crowd consists of young hotheaded Shi'a Muslims. They claim that the Khalifas never did anything for them, but even a cursory look at Bahrain shows all the things that Al Khalifa wrought: infrastructure, like hospitals, theatres, roads and bridges, pharmacies, schools and universities, plus subsidies in fuel and food and housing.
Syria -
Coordinated protests were staged in Syria on the 18th and 19th of March, culminating in a huge manifestation The authorities used live ammo as well as rubber bullets, and gas, leaving some 6 protesters dead. The demonstrations spread, to the north and the south, in Damascus, Dara, Homs, Banyas, and Aleppo; we are waiting to see if there exists a critical mass sufficient to disobey the dictates of Al Asad's socialist privileged regime. Revolution in Syria will likely be bloody. There's a lot of bad blood between the Sunni Islamists (Mbs) and the secular socialist government. Certainly the young have reason to complain. Their first demand is the release of MB prisoners and secular protesters. Then the lifting of emergency law.
It is a tragic feature of the 2011 uprisings that only a few, maybe four, will succeed in overthrowing the state. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
What one needs and what one wants are two different things.
Some see the glass as half full. Others as half empty.
As the French proverb says: "The more one understands, the more one forgives."
(Tant en comprendre, tant en pardoner)
Or as the Arabs say: "A wise enemy is better than foolish friends." But that's too advanced for these young people. The fact that most leaders in the street are teenagers, is a serious debility, as their brains are not mature - the frontal cortex is still growing, sorting itself out. Hence the excitability, the impulsive nature of some protests, and the black-and-white thinking - the demonization. The Gulf Arab emirates don't have ogres like Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak: the rulers have been progressive, introducing elections for municipalities (Saudi Arabia, starting in 2004; avenues of complaint via the parliament (majles), something the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen and Algeria do not want. Other gifts are free education, including foreign study scholarships, infrastructure and food and fuel subsidies.
The Manifestations Persist and Are Intensifying ... By J. Paul Maynard
Revolutions litter human history and though most fail, most do cause or effect positive changes, be they be immediate and/or in the course of time. Those in Europe in 1848 are an example. The costs of revolt are usually high: trauma, stereotyping, a dumbing down of discourse, a brutalization of combatants, economic loss, and loss of life. Revolutions are sparked by small groups. Only by analyzing their words and the tone of those words, can one determine whether it's a revolution or camarilla, or coup d'etat; a labor strike, or a bread riot, a slave uprising, or ethnic irredentism; a mutiny or a genocidal bloodbath; or the work of organized crime, or students, or some sect; or the secret work of foreign agents.
Every revolution is unique, because every nation is unique: revolutions are uniquely configured and polarized. But what all share is this: People are conditioned creatures. Most prefer the known, the status quo. Elite classes who seize or win power, identify themselves with 'their' land: their top priority is stability, control. But change is constant: if the professed leader does not assist social adaptation, then he slowly loses legitimacy.
We make a big difference between peaceful protest and violence, but most revolutions feature a challenge/response cycle of intensification, where events accelerate, where groups split one way, or another; where both end up causing the exact opposites of their voiced intentions and ideals.
Some revolutions exhibit great clarity and understanding and a sense of a shared destiny, leading to an inclusive clarity, a peaceful change. These kind of revolutions can be bloodless. More often, however, there is a haze, a vague confusion, a lack of coherence on all sides. The two sides cannot talk, and violence becomes the language they speak.
Humans eventually learned to talk, to negotiate. But speech can also be very destructive. Most nations have laws protecting leaders from slander, calumny. Maybe the most important of the Ten Commandments is: Thou shalt not bear false witness against another. Thou shalt not 'kill' has an inner meaning.
What was lost to us when we learned to talk and then, much later, to read? The brain is biased in deadly ways. People think people dressed in white are more trustworthy than people dressed in black. And the brain is configured to view social situations as a fight between 'us and them.'
These innate biases are often too strong for rational negotiations to solve issues. It is just too easy to exaggerate, to misconstrue, to label and stigmatize. Because speech fails, protests break out, or simmer unseen in heads, and there can be solution other than nature's persistent changes.
Revolutions are admissions of failure, the failure of rational speech, of give and take, of the distribution of wealth. The have-nots usually revolt against the haves, but it is not always so simple. Some aristocrats might support a liberal uprising, while popular, revolutionary peasant leaders usually become like the princes they replace, even worse.
The best revolutions never happen, or are almost bloodless, leading to negotiations where adaptive changes can be made. Ideally, both sides should give and take, but usually the revolutionaries demand everything.
Revolutions do not precipitate out of thin air – or do they? Some take decades to come to head, other revolutions are responses to very recent acts of violence or aggression. Events have a way of confirming one's worst suspicions. War breaks out.
The new social media has made communications faster than the thoughts communicated. Our human thinking is amongst the very slowest of the many processes controlled by the brain. Associative or conceptual thinking is almost as mechanical as chemical processes. Open up the heads of the two sides fighting and you'll find stereotyped caricatures and a sub-normal analysis of the 'objective situation.' Short term advantage usurps long-term resolution. Ethnic, class or nationalist identity is just too strong a psychic force to allow any synthesis of the society, any peace.
Again, language is both the cause and the solution, politically, culturally. We see how mass religion ends up condemning or disparaging or degrading others who are not of the sect – thanks to their sacred texts. These scriptures can be read as justifications of tradition and the status quo. Revolution is prohibited: one should obey temporal authorities.
But it's not that simple. The Gospel has Christ saying: “If you are a slave, I will maike you a freeman. And if you are a freeman, I will make you a slave.” (Book of Hebrews). Christ also said “I come not to make peace but with a sword...” Both speak of individuation, of self=-transformation. But none of this can be done in sleep. People do not know themselves, or their place in nature, so fall for cheap stereotypes, black-and-white thinking, slander and misrepresentation.
On this low level, people tend to identify with images of themselves, traditions of ancestors, ethnic stories with little bearing on present situations, and sometimes one will see history groups invent genetic identities, with selective narratives, not as a means to live, but as a way to differentiate one's tribe, favoring it while disparaging others.
Demonization of the enemy usually has a grain of truth, but then gets exaggerated and distorted. is highly irrational stemming from a black-or-white associative mentation, a kind of dumbing down. Often it is the enemy which could be of most help to us, if only we could make peace. That peace might even be submission, even enslavement, aware of how easy it was for slaves to end up controlling things.
Slavery began in Africa as a legal status permitting outsiders to become part of another clan or tribe. It was usually bestowed on refugees. Rather than be slain, it might be more advantageous to just surrender. Why fight against impossible odds?
Slavery may go way back, and less-developed societies still opt for the strong man, but the actual social condition of the evolving human was neither slave or big man. The clan was made up of. People were so few in number – and animals so dangerous - that any contact would likely be an occasion for a party – or a big hunt. Humans out-bred, pursued exogamy, thus besting their complicated (and nonhuman) genome. So the evidence is on the side of inter-ethnic negotiations, and not war. Humans could never survive war if it were cyclic or recurrent or long lasting. Everybody would die.
Civilization featured slaves, and owes much to them. Athens had more slaves than freemen, and Athens is typical, not exceptional, except that money had been invented, and the sacred precincts of the Temple, had become a bank for looted treasure, gold, silver, armor and weapons. Persia was a more advanced society, which likely had some slaves, but there is no evidence for it. It was Persia that gave us this one world in which all nations, all peoples, have a part. It was Persia who gave us the idea of a benevolent One God who cares for all its people. Diplomacy, embassies, were also Persian achievements.
It is the tendency of advanced democratic countries to look down on tribal peoples, calling them autocratic, and featuring a strong man. But most 'primitive' societies elect their leaders, and regularly end their consultations with a show of hands. For example, we keep hearing about how democratic Israel is, and how primitive the Arabs. The Middle East is the best textbook to study the slaying of others with words, of proto-national and 'spiritual' genocidal behavior. Even the so-called spiritual leaders, pointed the way to war and conquest, ethnic cleansing and the sacking of cities, all hoping for the complete extermination of the enemy's society. For example, on the run-up to the American Civil War, the churches all divided into pro- and anti-slavery camps. In the confederate south, religious fervor pervaded many – they were totally convinced that slavery was right, because it was in the bible. Often one can see the utter moral corruption of clergy. The role of clergy is social work on the most local scale.
In order to gauge a revolution, one must dis-entangled the delicate threads of physical need, the aspiration of ideals, and the images and words, the symbols of social intercourse and identity. One must look carefully at the politics of symbolic appeal, aware that people are emotional, not coolly calculating.
The world can no longer afford the politics of symbolic appeal. We must change in other ways if we hope to survive and thrive. Now the forces are conspiring: climate change, natural disasters, shortfalls in 22 required minerals, a chronic lack of food and affordable housing, the unintended depredations of money (impoverishing the rural countryside while enriching the cities), epidemics and energy shortfalls. No one ideology is appropriate.
At this stage in a greater world revolution we desperately seek solutions to unemployment, teenage pregnancy, food production, microbial infection, entrenched bureaucracies, pollution of the air and the water, the predation of huge corporate organisms loyal to no nation and no creed of moral conduct.
What solutions can the right or left give? The left thinks government intervention will meet real needs of the poor, the disabled, while the capitalists think the free market will automatically rise to meet these basic needs. Here, in Amherst, I befriended several Chinese grad students, and we all agreed: “There can be no real capitalism without real socialism, and there cannot be any real socialism, without real capitalism.” Capitalism rewards just a few, marginalizing many if not most, while socialism needs the tax receipts of a prosperous society engaged in exchange and investment.
Of course, the key word is 'real': real capitalism is what has been practiced in the Middle East for some eight to ten thousand years, where and when families set themselves up as businesses and, dividing wealth into shares, invested in long- distant trade, or in infrastructure, like irrigation canals, or trade routes.
Of course Thomas Jefferson's ideal dream of families once again becoming economic units, growers during the summer, and small industrialists in the winter. This is a very different form of capitalism than the one pertaining. As gasoline becomes too expensive to burn, we will the collapse of all these big firms, with many smaller ones stepping into the vacuum.
How dare we view Middle Eastern societies as primitive – they've been civilized for thousands of years. Yet tradition can preempt evolutionary adaptations. The politics of symbolic appeal usurp practical needs and individual aspirations.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the Arab revolutions of 2011, is that they were not uprising on symbolic issues. The increase in the costs of food and energy, the scandalous dearth of employment, the chronic lack of affordable housing (due to corruption), are coupled with more symbolic needs – legal changes, the need to be free, to be a participant, a member, while demonizing and deprecating others. This last symbolic impulse/drive is unfortunate, not just for the waste of conflict, but the forfeit of what our enemies might give to us.
It is just this truth that underpinned the reform theory of Jalal ad Din Al Afghani. Some 140 years ago he advised Muslims to learn from the West, the bette3r to challenge them. It was just this knowledge which would cause the Europeans to end their occupations of Muslim lands. He didn't blame others so much as his own society, which he called backward because of the ignorance of the clergy. Muhammad Qurayshi, of course, had no clergy.
Contrast that with extreme revolutionary rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood and its many splinter groups. They see everything Western to be inappropriate for true Islam. The clergy must rule with their Shari'a, jihad must be enjoined. Killing non-Muslims is sanctioned, as is the killing of Shi'a, or secular people.
No Islamic group played a major role in the revolutions of 2011: the impetus to rebel was not Islamic. In all cases, the demonstrations featured modern, educated democratic citizens, at least up front. In the back, other actors, 'puppet-masters,' can be found lurking in the shadows.
Yemen -
Demonstration got bigger and bigger till on the 19th of March, some 50 protesters were gunned down in cold blood by police snipers on roofs. Hours later, Ali Saleh fired his cabinet, in desperation. Saleh's own tribe wants him to step now now. Over 100,000 marched on the 18th of March, about one in twenty residents of greater Sana'a. But unidentified 'security' snipers shot right into the crowd, with some 50 demonstrators killed. What happened here was that the head of state for 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had made substantial concessions on the very night the first demonstrations broke out. He offered to step down in 2013, and permit some representative democracy. But the protesters would have none of it. Demanding the release of protesters detained by the state, they soon started agitating for the immediate removal of President Saleh. So with each new police assault, the rage intensifies, but it cannot keep getting so hot, so extreme. People can't sustain it. The truth is that the very existence of a state government in the Yemen is at stake. To the north, the Shi'a royalists of the Zayidis hope to win power. Down in the south, in the Hadramaut, there is a little war for independence. Throw into this, terrorist cells (Al Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula), MB hotheads, monarchists and educated secular citizens, and the revolution will be likely be harsh. Big ugly protests have erupted elsewhere in Yemen, in Aden and in Ta'izz. Here, revolutionaries should not have demanded everything. That would a coup d-etat, not a revolution.
Egypt -
On the 19th of March, Egyptians went to the poles for the first time, to vote on a constitutional referendum, enacting laws and conditions relating to coming elections. In just 5 months, political parties must form and gain critical mass, but this is not possible in so short a time. The democrats suspect that the army, led by Field Marshall Tantawi, the 'Sphinx,' have rushed elections, thereby favoring established parties, like the NDP (a gutted den of thieves) and the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) The union of M. Al Baradei and the Ikhwan seemed mutually advantageous, but the darker side is emerging. Fights are breaking out between secular and sectarian democrats. The MB will thrive off the honest pleading of educated folk. But the Brothers can only be what they are - a deviant freak, a mockery of Islam's genuine reform tradition, as traced through Seyyid Jalal ad Din Al Afghani, through M. Abduh and Rashid Ridda. No Brother can be trusted unless they recant their license to kill Shi'a, secular Muslims, sufis and non-Muslims. But such corrections are not required, foolishly.
Police are only slowly getting back onto the streets, so lawlessness and crime are rampant in Cairo. A demonstration against physical abuse of women was viciously attacked by enraged unidentified men. Copts demonstrating against discrimination and violent attacks by Sunni hothead clerics and their toughs, are themselves attacked while demonstrating. The democrats were focused elsewhere, to political party formation, the jockeying for power, and the elimination of the SSI, the state security apparatus. They'll build a new one in its place. But how can they do that if they do not attempt to change the sick founding ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Note: Founder Hassan al Banna was a primary school teacher who knew little about Islam but thought the real Muslim must reject everything western - all technology. He also thought it was proper to wage jihad, killing innocents, as long as they were secular modern educated people, or Shi'a, or Sufis, or non-Muslims.
Tunisia -
The Tunisians had earlier eliminated their secret police. With the return of exiles, largely Islamists, new party formation is in process. But lawlessness is endemic: too many criminal types try to benefit from the chaos.
Libya -
As I write, I'm receiving reports that US fighter bombers have penetrated Tripoli, and launched guided J-Dam bombs on Al Qaddafi's residence in the Al Aziziya suburb of Tripoli. Qaddafi does not like the J-Dams. Will Western intelligence locate the great underground storage garages and hangers where Qaddafi keeps his planes and tanks? His prisons also.
A month of revolt has led to foreign intervention. The world just could not stomach the elimination of the democratic dissidents by Qaddafi's apparat. We began sending e-mails to elected representatives (Senator Kerry, Brown, VP Biden and president Obama) arguing for 'intervention lite- just a few jets up over Cyrenaica.
The president was wiser (or more constrained) waiting till March 19 to declare America at war with the Libyan regime. By waiting, Obama was able to draw in some 25 nations. America's role is support. It is quite right that the French, the Italians, the Spanish, the Turks, are fighting for their oil.
Qaddafi was notorious in jacking up the oil price. From 1971 to 2010 Qaddafi kept putting a premium on the premium: because Libyan oil is free of sulfur, it is much sought after by advanced nations who, by law, must limit pollution. So Qaddafi practice extortion, basically, constantly raising the price. The nations were all addicts, so folded.
The USA has not taken a drop of oil from Libya for many years. It refused to play the rope-a-dope game. The Americans didn't go to bed with with Qaddafi, like the rich European states did, but with King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia.
So on the 19th of March French aircraft and American and British Tomahawk missiles attacked the Libyan air defenses, shooting up armor, and immediately restoring the fortunes of the dissidents in Benghazi, Mushratah, Zawiya, Zoura, al Kufrah, and Ghaddames. Just three hours after the French attack, the democratic fighters of Benghazi drove pro-Qaddafi forces from the city. (The Qaddafi units sought to avoid air strikes by moving into urban terrain, but did not succeed.)
Amr Musa, chief of the Arab League, and candidate for president of Egypt, denounced the allied air intervention, just a few days after making it happen. He's playing for the crowd.
The short war against the Al Qaddafi entity is now straightforward. A rebel army will form in Benghazi, to march west to Sirte. They will be able to call in air support, preventing the Qaddafi entity from concentrating his armor and artillery. After Sirte, it's another 500 miles to Tripoli, but the rebel democrats will get there in two days, provided NATO jets clear the way. Once Tripolitania is captured, then the Qaddafi family have no place to go except the Fezzan. Muammar often pitched his tent in the Sahara. So let him go down there. Cut a deal.
Bahrain -
Like Yemen in that the uprising is constantly burning, intensifying after each use of force by the authorities. Here, the back of the crowd takes over as the normal folk leave. So when officers from Saudi Arabia arrived on the 17th of March, they were immediately physically attacked by the mob. 'Get real' I said to both parties. The Shi'a claim to be the island's original people. Certainly some predate the emigration of the Al Khalifa family out of the Nofuz desert some 240 years ago. But most Shi'a families date from more modern times. For example, many were settled by the British, and the emirs, as laborers.
At first, the protesters did not call for the resignation of Hamid Al Khalifa and his government. But after attacked by police, the protesters put up new claims: complete surrender by the authorities. Of course the front of the crowd will tell you 'this has nothing to do with Shi'a/Sunni tensions.' 'We are secular democrats.' But the rear of the crowd consists of young hotheaded Shi'a Muslims. They claim that the Khalifas never did anything for them, but even a cursory look at Bahrain shows all the things that Al Khalifa wrought: infrastructure, like hospitals, theatres, roads and bridges, pharmacies, schools and universities, plus subsidies in fuel and food and housing.
Syria -
Coordinated protests were staged in Syria on the 18th and 19th of March, culminating in a huge manifestation The authorities used live ammo as well as rubber bullets, and gas, leaving some 6 protesters dead. The demonstrations spread, to the north and the south, in Damascus, Dara, Homs, Banyas, and Aleppo; we are waiting to see if there exists a critical mass sufficient to disobey the dictates of Al Asad's socialist privileged regime. Revolution in Syria will likely be bloody. There's a lot of bad blood between the Sunni Islamists (Mbs) and the secular socialist government. Certainly the young have reason to complain. Their first demand is the release of MB prisoners and secular protesters. Then the lifting of emergency law.
It is a tragic feature of the 2011 uprisings that only a few, maybe four, will succeed in overthrowing the state. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
What one needs and what one wants are two different things.
Some see the glass as half full. Others as half empty.
As the French proverb says: "The more one understands, the more one forgives."
(Tant en comprendre, tant en pardoner)
Or as the Arabs say: "A wise enemy is better than foolish friends." But that's too advanced for these young people. The fact that most leaders in the street are teenagers, is a serious debility, as their brains are not mature - the frontal cortex is still growing, sorting itself out. Hence the excitability, the impulsive nature of some protests, and the black-and-white thinking - the demonization. The Gulf Arab emirates don't have ogres like Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarak: the rulers have been progressive, introducing elections for municipalities (Saudi Arabia, starting in 2004; avenues of complaint via the parliament (majles), something the protesters in Bahrain and Yemen and Algeria do not want. Other gifts are free education, including foreign study scholarships, infrastructure and food and fuel subsidies.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Demonstrations Continue
Over the past week, democratic revolutions in Libya, Yemen, Morocco, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, have intensified.
The tragedy is that only two Arab states, Tunisia and Egypt, get to fulfill their revolutions, the rest failing. The main reason for this failure is that the protesters wanted to effect, in each case, a coup d'etat.
When the authorities moved against them, the demonstrators increased their demands. Democrats in Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria, and Morocco shifted from demands for constitutional change, to the resignation of the head-of-state, his ministers and advisers, and all police and army chiefs.
Egypt and Tunisia are going through this process: the government people are out, the secret police taken apart, with a new one to take its place. The Tunisians also have taken apart their mukhabarat.
As we write, forces loyal to Saif Al Qaddafi are preparing to break into Benghazi. Qaddafi's jets are overhead, his gunboats lurking off the coasts, and his army has been able to move tanks, APCs and trucks along the coast road from Tripoli and from Sirt. The world says, basically, 'curtains...' And curtains do fall.
Yes, genocide usually happens in the dark, with no publicity. As Qaddafi's goons go house to house, pulling out anyone who looks suspicious, we need keep in mind those many hundreds imprisoned in Qaddafi's underground prisons. The prisons do not have enough space, so they cram four-to-five protesters into a cell too small for a single person.
Yemen is on the ropes. Demonstrations as large as one hundred thousand, remain camped out at the university. These protests spread, so we note demonstrators in the Tihama and Hadramaut. President Saleh has offered to step down in 2013, but the protesters want him out now.
One reason protesters' demands are increasing, is that the back of the rally is coming to the front. Popular demonstrations have a front, made up by ordinary educated secular democrats, and a back, composed on manipulators and secret operatives. When stymied, the back go the front and the front to the back of the crow.
The Bahraini protesters kept emphasizing at the beginning that the cause had nothing to do with Shi'a-Sunni differences and disparities. The government under Hamid Al Khalifa offers to talk and listen, but inside parliament. This only angered the protesters. Now they want the removal of the Al Khalifa family. Saudi Arabia sent a thousand officers across to the causeway to Bahrain (March 14). As soon as they were seen in Manama, they were attacked by protesters. Several protesters were killed. One policeman is also said to have died.
In Gaza we note that democrats protesting peacefully we violently attacked by HAMAS toughs, and broken up, dispersed. The next day, HAMAS leaders seem to welcome combining with the PA to create a new government of unity.
The collapse of the Libya democratic resistance, is still too gruesome to think about. The Europeans will not fight for their energy, so I do not expect a war.
-John Paul Maynard, Middle East specialist
For longer studies about Islam, Islamic land-use and -ownership, and national economies, please log on to: http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com
The tragedy is that only two Arab states, Tunisia and Egypt, get to fulfill their revolutions, the rest failing. The main reason for this failure is that the protesters wanted to effect, in each case, a coup d'etat.
When the authorities moved against them, the demonstrators increased their demands. Democrats in Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Algeria, and Morocco shifted from demands for constitutional change, to the resignation of the head-of-state, his ministers and advisers, and all police and army chiefs.
Egypt and Tunisia are going through this process: the government people are out, the secret police taken apart, with a new one to take its place. The Tunisians also have taken apart their mukhabarat.
As we write, forces loyal to Saif Al Qaddafi are preparing to break into Benghazi. Qaddafi's jets are overhead, his gunboats lurking off the coasts, and his army has been able to move tanks, APCs and trucks along the coast road from Tripoli and from Sirt. The world says, basically, 'curtains...' And curtains do fall.
Yes, genocide usually happens in the dark, with no publicity. As Qaddafi's goons go house to house, pulling out anyone who looks suspicious, we need keep in mind those many hundreds imprisoned in Qaddafi's underground prisons. The prisons do not have enough space, so they cram four-to-five protesters into a cell too small for a single person.
Yemen is on the ropes. Demonstrations as large as one hundred thousand, remain camped out at the university. These protests spread, so we note demonstrators in the Tihama and Hadramaut. President Saleh has offered to step down in 2013, but the protesters want him out now.
One reason protesters' demands are increasing, is that the back of the rally is coming to the front. Popular demonstrations have a front, made up by ordinary educated secular democrats, and a back, composed on manipulators and secret operatives. When stymied, the back go the front and the front to the back of the crow.
The Bahraini protesters kept emphasizing at the beginning that the cause had nothing to do with Shi'a-Sunni differences and disparities. The government under Hamid Al Khalifa offers to talk and listen, but inside parliament. This only angered the protesters. Now they want the removal of the Al Khalifa family. Saudi Arabia sent a thousand officers across to the causeway to Bahrain (March 14). As soon as they were seen in Manama, they were attacked by protesters. Several protesters were killed. One policeman is also said to have died.
In Gaza we note that democrats protesting peacefully we violently attacked by HAMAS toughs, and broken up, dispersed. The next day, HAMAS leaders seem to welcome combining with the PA to create a new government of unity.
The collapse of the Libya democratic resistance, is still too gruesome to think about. The Europeans will not fight for their energy, so I do not expect a war.
-John Paul Maynard, Middle East specialist
For longer studies about Islam, Islamic land-use and -ownership, and national economies, please log on to: http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Arab Revolutions - March 12 2011 Posting
For deeper studies of Islam, of the traditional reform tradition, deviations and consequences, impacts and upshots, see http://middleastspeculum.blogspot.com
Arab Revolutions 2011 – Context and Precursors
Only Egypt and Tunisia have seen regime change; but the Arab revolutions spread and intensify. Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait have all seen persistent demonstrations, opposed and 'managed' by the state police and army. But what of more essential elements, like food? And housing? And jobs?
It is the task of this blog to provide prescriptions: cures for political health, economic health, and cultural health. So while receiving messages Speculum was already pulling together previous studies on the economies of Near East and North African nations. See our “Egypt after the January 25th Revolution: Politics and Economy in Uncertain Times.” In the next week, Speculum will be interviewing by telephone a small set of Harvard classmates and alumna, not all employed, by the way. We listen to their prescriptions. I'm sure they see some opportunities, especially if the Army sells off more companies. But, as we will see, the present 'Washington consensus,' - an assumed agreement by the rich nations, led by the IMF and World Bank, to make the so-called 'free' market, the ultimate determinator, engine and guide of growth.
Of course, what these technocrats do not see, is that traditional Islamic economies always gives the poorest vendor a place in the market. Secondly, while the Dutch started the stock market in Amsterdam where shares in ventures spread risk and profit. But the people in the Middle East have been using 'investment by shares' since about 8,000 BC. We don't know that. We do know that Muhammad divided the ownership of property between the family members, including the women, the old, even the children – all had shares. Of course today, men own all the houses (with a few exceptions.)
Food shortages take up the slack, as the US will not go back to growing wheat, corn and soy. Too much money can be made by growing grains for making ethanol, methanol, even though these fuels are actually more wasteful and expensive than Mid East crude. Other crops, like switch grass, are much better sources for these alcohol-based fuels.
PRICES FOR FOOD in Egypt have basically doubled in the past two years. Elsewhere, the same, even worse. Food usually can't be saved for long, so much is thrown out. Better that than bring the price down so that ordinary unemployed 'wallers' might be able to buy some. The food market is perverse up and down the line, not just the 2/5ths wasted, thrown out or eaten by rats or insects, but the irrational insistence that organic unprocessed foods, should be quite a bit more expensive, than processed foods with fats and sugars and no fibre. Brown rice costs more than white rice, cakes without sugar more than cakes with, 9-grain bread more than three times the price of white bread. Add to these market perversions, the world-wide craving for meat, now rising even faster than the rise in oil. The populations need shift their protein source from animal to plant protein.
All the Arabs revolutions are about employment. Why no jobs? Well, the money goes into the pensions, the salaries, the operating expenses, educational costs, and embezzlement of the ruling elites, their soldiers and police. Add to this the purchases of advanced weapon systems. So what remains for social projects, development? These nations have all lost their ability to feed their populations.
HOUSING SHORTAGES, NOW LEGENDARY, RENDER NULL 0R PERVERSE, MOST MARRIAGES
Why cannot the government build affordable housing? They've had a half-century to try. Look at the photos, and you'll see structures built by the French or during their occupation. Why? Because, almost inevitably, the contractors figure they can make much more money if they build a more expensive property. The premium is in the finishings. So all over the world, affordable housing has been trumped by luxury housing. The crushing need for housing squeezes out even the middle class, allows construction firms – and their bankers – to convert the whole deal into a predatory take. In America we know our banks did in July 1944, at the Bretton Woods conference, and we know what they did in 2008-10, in both the housing and the derivatives markets – triggering a slide so fast that governments barely intervened in time. The same costs of these one-eyed technocrats are trumped by what they do to developing nations.
At the Bretton Woords Conference in New Hampshire, the American bankers, led by a Mr. White, rejected the idea of an International Clearing Exchange, giving poor nations credits on the basis of their per capita exports. But the Americans wanted another arrangement, much more profitable for them, whereby credits were allocated to poorer nations, on the basis of the ratio between imports and exports.
Then came the 'structural adjustments.' Maybe it is too big an issue to even mention. But is it clear to most observers, that neither the socialists or the (heavy industrial) capitalists, offer appropriate prescriptions. Both are state-heavy. Both trust where they should not. The socialists trust 'Father Government,' while the capitalists trust 'the market.' But the world's wealth is tied up in housing and land, hard, solid assets that probably cannot even be converted in liquid, like money.
Those who invest in real estate really are removing wealth from circulation. So all the more reason to keep municipal taxes high. Before George W. Bush, almost all American communities received money from Washington. That ended. The money went to the very wealthy – a cool $1 trillion for the rich – and of course to the wars in Afghanistan and then, most regrettably in Iraq. The US had no more discretionary money, so funds of the old and the sick, were raided. Huge amounts have been borrowed. Indeed, debt must be a factor, one we must discover and describe, then quantify, if only by intuition. So expect DEBT realities, seen and unseen, little lessons and prescriptions, for an ailing world.
The extraneous factors now conspiring against all nations, are so serious and complex, that no politician should proffer an ideology. Americans have just a few years before common people can no longer burn much petroleum products. Poorer countries might feel the pinch, but the mostly the elite. These Arab countries are so poor, excepting the Gulf Arab states, that few can afford cars or trucks. Buses, too, are not common. Only one in 20 in Cairo can afford a car, but there are already way too many motor vehicles. These cities will change also, the air destined to become cleaner. Clean air and traffic safety would extend the average Cairene life span from 63 to 72 years (Speculum estimate).
The IMF's famous 'Austerity measures' seek to remove subsidies for the poor, so that farmers, usually corporate farmers, can make good profits. Subsistence agriculture is dismissed as inefficient and low-volume, but the time is coming quite soon, where it will be the subsistence farmers who save the day. I certainly have long advised governments and NGOs to study and enhance the most local ways of making a living. In 1972-73 I worked in Afghanistan for an NGO. My job was to find the poorest people in the country. I found very poor people, especially those far off any road. But they grew their own food, or traded for it. So how could I pity them?
The nomads sold meat, wool, hides, beads, textiles, and international goods in a long-distance trading net, while the settled farmers sold the nomads grains for themselves and their horses, iron tools and implements, weapons, and fancy clothes. Wisdom texts were also exchanged.
In all these Arab countries, nomads still ply the desert. The caravans are marching, as they have, continuously. They are part of the traditional economy, and USAID and other NGOs just do not help the traditional economy. Too backward, to primitive, not enough profit. But the traditional market in Muslim countries preserves many low-tech wonders: hand-made textiles, musical instruments, embroidered clothes, horse and camel tack and trappings, auto-construction materials and techniques, plus abundant food.
One thinks of all the money that has been thrown at economic development, how so little has happened, and one realizes that, yes, one can re-divert these capital flows, and glean enough cash to meet all the targets (food, fuels, housing, jobs). The traditional economy hires approximately 7 times more people than the modern corporate economies, per unit of production or per service. This is especially true in Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arab, Iran, and other Gulf countries, because the oil and gas industry is capital intensive, not labor intensive. Only a few workers are needed, and they're all highly trained. Note: Traditional economies are much smaller in Iraq and the former Soviet states of Central Asia. All the more reason to develop the traditional ways of growing food, weaving textiles, selling wares, animals, native materials (like sun-dried bricks).
So there are ways to multiply jobs. We have the same problem in the USA. Public servants can get rich legally in America – doctors, lawyers, even teachers and state employees, even nurses and medical secretaries, make big money. That's not the way it should be. That's why our health system is so expensive and so good: all these high-paid medical staff standing around with space-age electrical equipment. Education costs and salaries and pensions and perks, like free tuition for the children of employees, these too jack up costs, just to go to school.
In the corporate world, there is the re-appearance of feudalism, where a few surviving individuals take over the jobs of former peers and subordinates, so they are working three or four jobs, making a lot of money, but not nearly enough to make up for the corporate colonization of body, mind and soul. Why not just break up these jobs? Someone making $240 K a year with perks, could and should be redundant, the 'high-pressured drive' being divided, say, into ten workers making $24 K a year with limited perks.
Government assistance to private corporations, to create jobs, has generally not worked in the USA. Corporations have consistently broken their agreements, accepting cash but not creating many, if any, new jobs. Small business owners who get some cash are generally so needy, so much in the hole, that the money goes to the bankers, not for new jobs. And the bankers are hardly back to normal: who can they possibly trust nowadays? Only Uncle Sam, it seems. But he's broke too. So it's a beggar's banquet: we've all become 'wallers.' The 'players' in these casino-style financial houses still dread the distrust lurking between bankers on all levels and nations. Debt and fear are like awesome tidal undertows to all progress. Even the maintenance of what already is, becomes problematic, even doubtful.
High fuel and food prices are like continual tsunamis. The terrible 8.8 earthquake in NE Japan on the 11th of March, has switched world attention off the Arabs. Now Qaddafi and other vile players, can operate in darkness.
Then we have debt, the massive short selling and leveraged buy-outs, the junk bonds, the funny paper, all leading to the awesome spectre of rogue investors pulling down old, venerable trading houses like Barings, like Lehman Brothers, and many, many others that you don't hear about.
Of course our medieval forefathers spoke about the evils of making money off money. Rightly, we repudiate this condemnation of finance: good financial management and targeted investments, can generate wealth. But that wealth comes from technology, from betting on commodities, from exploiting labor, by short-changing education, particularly education in the humanities, and from artificially cheap materials, fuels and crops. Security also is so great a cost it cannot be calculated.
Let us now turn to the nations.
We begin with Algeria, as we should. It was the defiance of Algerian protesters, their disobeying of authorities on January 6, which prompted the Tunisians to do the same, on January 11th. Then the spark leaped to Egypt. The January 25th Egyptian revolution marks precisely those early morning hours, when the democrats opted to defy police and army. But let us look at Algeria. Less than nothing. These nations are all in debt, including Saudi Arabia.
Algeria – Cry the Beloved Country
At any given moment there is going on, some demonstration or sit down strike or sectarian raid or some desperate act by housewives and unemployed men, to lash out at the indifference, the crimes, the corruption, before going down.
Speculum has studied Algeria on a dozen occasions, since 1976. It has oil and much more NG. But ordinary Algerians do not see that money, any of it, except perhaps indirectly, like visits to clinics, roads and bridges, or less taxes for landlords, therefore less the cost of rent.
A note on provenience: We studied all this back in 1975-78, in Cambridge, Harvard, where I worked with A.J. Meyer, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. At that time he was the only American the OAPEC was listening too. Our class got to meet an array of oil experts and officers, including the then sec-gen. Of the OPEC, Mr. Ali Jaideh. Ali told us the OPEC has a preferential pricing scheme ready to be put in place, whereby richer countries pay for oil, and poorer countries less.
Why all this? Because we heard some deputy oil minister from Algeria talk about his country. He spoke about what we already knew: that Algeria lacks housing, low and medium income housing. Checking recent UN data (2010), we see that, over the past 40 years, the government could only construct about 1/3rd of the apartments necessary. So still, as before, it is common to find 6 to 8 people living in a single room. Young men and women of modest means have no chance of getting an affordable home. (Yet still the birth rate is high).
Another key issue is the climate of fear enforced by the police. They don't hesitate to charge protesters who block highways or who camp out in parks. Curiously, it is the old FLN (rebels who beat the French in 1960) who now criticize PM Abdel Aziz Bouteflika for such heavy-handed tactics. (That sounded weird since the NFL routinely tortured Algerians suspected of working with the French. But these NFL are different people...) Finally,
Algeria was one Arab nation that had to fight a war to be independent (1954-62). We recall how the FLN was so popular it was tempted to become a one-party state, following Nasser. But during the 1970-s-80s, the people swung against the NFL for its corruption and privilege. Algeria was rich but there was nothing really for the people, not nearly enough houses, jobs, or even food.
CIA data has Algeria's population growing 1.22% (2005 estimate), but we might double that, because accurate data from remote villages, or shanty suburbs, is not always collected. A better set of figures are these: In any given year, out of 1,000 Algerians, 17.5 children are born, while the death rate is only 4.6 per 1,000.
Recall those terrible days in December, 1991, when the army stepped in to a-null the national election, which was a landslide shoe-in for the Front Nationale Islamique (FIS). Then war raged from 1993-98, killing a cool 100 k., the great majority just innocent civilians killed in execution-style by FIS crazies.
At the height of this violence, the army (FLN) put Abdel Aziz Bouteflika up for election, threw the election, affording the army and FLN some cover, at least till
the elections of 2004, when Bouteflika is elected by citizens.
Why was the FIS so powerful, from 1982 to 2002? Because ordinary people supported them. Not so much for the Islam, as for their apeing of the Algerian rebel tradition, the NFL resistance against France. Bouteflika and his cabinet and secret police are savvy, since protests have been endemic, especially since the summer of 2010, when bombs started exploding again. The opposition does not call for regime change. Just jobs, cheaper food, and a decent house or flat. But first the emergency laws, dating from 1991, had to be rescinded, which they were at the end of February.
Algeria, like Libya, is an archipelago. The cities and towns are like islands. Need we name them? By order of pop. Size: Algiers and its suburbs; Oran, Constantine (in the Kabyle Mountains) Tlemcen (an old cultural center), Blida, Bechar, El Oued, Timimoun, Mostaganem, Djeffa, Tindouf, Tamanrassett (both legendary Saharan oases.)
Tunisia -
Demonstrators have becomes political operatives, even players, organized into tactical parties, and they succeeded in collapsing the Ghanouch apparat, from interim government (Feb. 27th). The secret police HQ also fell. One by one, former technocrats and power-brokers, are being forced out of the interim government, and new, untainted people, men and women, are appointed in their places.
Tunisia is probably the most advanced Arab nation. An education featuring tolerance and diversity was developed by the late Muhammad Charfi, education minister. All Tunisians know how he and President Habib Bourguiba tried to channel money out of the elite and into competent education. Women have more rights in Tunisia than anywhere else in the Arab world.
If the Tunisians are so advanced, let them ferret out a prescription for unemployment. We should give money to Tunisia just to discover some way of multiplying jobs, short of war and security.
Libya -
On March 11th, France recognizes Benghazi democrats, their National Libyan Council. Obviously Sarkozy hopes to lead the world in response. Of course he was in bed with Qaddafi, like so many other rich European leaders. But the stakes – 35 billion barrels of sweet crude – are just too great. When oil becomes short, there are no allies except between specific oil producers and specific oil consumers. The US did not sleep with Qaddafi, but with the Gulf royal families.
Qaddafi is committing crimes every hour. He uses populace as human shields. Puts the families outside their houses, preventing democrats from firing at Qaddafi's mercenaries. Then they move house to house, with photographs, dragging off any man (or woman) suspected of being amongst the protesters. These people are disappearing at a rate of about 12 an hour, we think. We know already that Qaddafi had been executing his high officers, for any sentiment or concern for the protesting democrats. Fifteen were apparently executed on the 8th Their bodies were seen.
On the ground, Qaddafi is rolling up the democrats on five different fronts, at least: in the west, Zawiya, Mushratah, Tripoli suburbs, and now, units moving east, to retake Ras Lanuf with its terminal and refinery,k then we expect by next Wednesday, Al Brega will fall, then Al Burayqah,k then Benghazi. We estimate Qaddafi will be breaking into Benghazi, to execute protesters and rebels, by the 6th of March. Opposition forces lose control of Al Jawad and the Marse Ras Lanuf complex, which consists of pumping stations, pipelines, a small refinery and an oil terminal, the port. When they take Al Brega, then Qaddafi controls all Libya's oil Or so he might think.
European leaders hate Qaddafi, and for good reason. But will they sanction any military intervention? Not by the Americans. The reason is that the richer Euro-states have signed 'obscene' contracts with the Libyan leader, and guard access to those Libyan fields. The USA is well-represented in the Libyan oil industry, but as engineers, roughnecks, geologists, contractors of various sorts. But the USA takes no oil from Libya. Yet it should – New England has strict environmental laws, requiring low-sulfur oil. Libyan oil should be shipped to the refineries in Newfoundland.
The US was not one of the rich governments 'in bed with Qaddafi.' The USA is in bed with the Saudi royal family. That's why we see the USS Enterprise staying in the Red Sea, with no way of intervening in Libya.
Qaddafi tries to break into the Arab League summit, where he often performed as a burlesque gag-man, on March 10-12. He no longer has the status of a head-of-state. In fact, it's open season on him. He and his sons are marked men, serial killers violating all sorts of norms and laws: Islamic, tribal, modern civil codes, and international law. Anyone can kill them with impunity.
WHAT ABOUT INTERVENTION? We say 'lite.' No need for ponderous no-fly zone. We sent 20 emails over the past ten days, all arguing for 'a phantom' intervention in Libya – just put up some jets over Cyranaica. 'When the hawk shows up, the sparrows go to ground.' We suggested the president ask the pilots to tell him what they can do, or consult with John McCain, and with my Senator Kerry, then 'play with their heads.' Spoof their radars, HARM them, fly off the deck along the Tripoli road going west, shooting up a few armored vehicles.' No real danger from AA or SAM, except perhaps one or two SAM-7s fired wildly, 'the trust-in-God aimless firing' so characteristic of these societies. So why can't we just intercept Qaddafi's jets over Ras Lanuf?
It turns out that there is no carrier battle group on station in the Med (as there always was). The USS Enterprise is safely squired in the Red Sea, unable to send aircraft to Libya (they must cross Egypt and/or Sudan). What happened to the US 6th Fleet? That bulwark? We never needed to use it, but, when we need to use it, it's not there. What a waste!
Furthermore, the weird caution of the administration is not a mystery. The US knows that its invasion of Iraq and its blind knee-jerk support for Israel, are, were, 'wrong calls,' so like dogs with their tails between their legs, Secretaries Gates and Clinton, led by the president, abdicate any effective power. “We must work in step with our allies.” Yeah, right. Those allies are the rich European nations, NATO, who do not want the US to win entry into the Libyan treasure house: 35 billion barrels of the sweetest crude on the planet. Qaddafi was a master at using that fact to jack up the price of his oil, some 14%-32% above the price of common crude. He has been very destructive to Western states, Arab states, and African states. For example, way back in 1971, Qaddafi was able to put through a quadrupling of Libya's oil's prices, and Pres. Nixon had to buy it, because New England had environmental laws requiring it to burn low-sulfur crude oil. Again, in late 1973, early 1974, Qaddafi and the Shah of Iran engineered OPEC's four-fold increase in the price of oil products. So it is impossible to quantify the damage the Colonel has done.
Mu'ammer Qaddafi thinks in terms of force. Reagan had already bombed him, so when the US went into Iraq, Qaddafi got the shivers, the fear, and turned himself in – all his WMD, all those precious nuclear centrifuges, chem warfare plants, and bio-toxins laboratories – exposed and dismantled – we assume. The US took Libya off the terrorist list in 2004, hoping for a sweet oil deal, and an embassy was opened. But not even Wiki-leaks has the transcripts of conversations between Qaddafi (or his minister) and the American diplomats. At least the US did not go to bed with Qaddafi like the leaders of Italy, France, the UK, Spain, Germany, Ireland and Turkey, did. Turkey remains a potent Qaddafi ally. Why?
How about our own revolution? At the current rate, oil will be too expensive to burn in just 4 months. Unrest in Libya – civil war – has caused a $20-30 rise in oil prices. They're heading for $150 a barrel by mid 2014. That's about $5/gallon.
Of course the Americans are often heard claiming for the society a supposed Judaeo-Christian culture or tradition. My own interest in the Middle East began when I was 6 years, looking at illustrations in a Bible (1956). Since then we've learned that our collective morality derives from English common law, which comes from Anglo-Saxon law, which is a typical Germanic tribal code, featuring independence and equality of women, a right to choose her mate, to divorce quickly, to own property, and to inherit. More recently, science has shown that even 1-year-old babies exhibit altruism, that, in fact, even chickens have been shown to be altruistic. So, following Albert Einstein, we know a human society has no real need for a revealed law from God. It can be fully moral and ethical without one.
In any case, we can also speak about science as our culture. And science in the West really owes a lot to the Arabs. And it is not just that they translated Greeks like Plato, Euclid, Hippocrates, and Aristotle. Or spoke to the West for centuries through Spain, Langedoc, Sicily, Italy, Crete, Cypress and the Balkans. The links were manifold. What were these sciences? Mathematics, astronomy, medicine, pharmacology, chemistry, the great chain of being, all these were laid out by Islamic scientists, not all Arab, by any means. Jewish, Persian, Indian, Turkic and Berber doctors and alchemists worked in the Pax Islamica.
Modern medicine began when Muhammad Qurayshi said: 'Every disease has its cause and its cure.' The Qur'an weighed in saying: 'Do not think that disease and death is God's punishment on you.' The Muslims did believe in tiny agents of contagion, and they knew about sperms and eggs, but the West wasn't ready for the germ theory till the Koch in the mid 19th Century.
Egypt -
Amr Musa, of the Arab League, and M. Al Baradei, have both announced that they are running for president. Free elections are imperative. But they will not prevent shenanigans at the polling stations. Amr Musa is not viable, as he never objected to the Mubarak apparat. Al Baradei was our choice back in May, 2010, whenn we deduced the regime change was imminent. (see May posting of www.middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com.)
Is Egypt going through a real change? It seems so.
PM Ahmed Shafiq was forced out of office two weeks ago, and has since been shown to order lethal force following the Jan. 25th citizen mobilizations. His whereabouts are unknown. It's high noon in Arabia.
Some 230 individuals assume they are competent to govern, and are now jockeying for influence and power. New power alliances are created in secret. Real antipathy repeatedly breaks out – fist fights – but 'this is normal.'
On International Woman's Day on the 8th of March, a group of some 350 women assembled with signs on Tahrir Square. They were protesting gross male behavior, like groping on the buses or subways. They were rough-handled by the police, then attacked by gangs of men throwing stones. This behavior is not Islamic; it is actually a symptom of mental illness; but it is found in Japan, in Russia, in Greece, in Armenia, in Israel, in Egypt, in Italy, in Pakistan, but not so much in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Algeria, France. It is rampant among Serbs and Croats but not characteristic of Muslim society in the Balkans (Sarajevo). We're speaking generally, of course.
Certainly, the right not to be abused and exploited, not to be touched, caressed, is fundamental, so we really are correct to include anti-abuse laws in this democratic movement. Freedom from sexual abuse is a basic. Gender issues should be at the top, for women will add competency and, of course, duty.
Egyptian democrats, young men, assaulted the secret police HQ, saving many thousands of documents and files. Thousands of prisoners have been released. Some of them are serial killers who will only do what they are programmed to do: kill those not dressed as Muslims, or who speak like Muslims.
Yemen -
Today the 11th of March, at least protester was shot dead in a demonstration on Tekiye Squrae, in Sana'a. This makes some 12 killed over the past week of continual protest. Worshipers poured out of Friday prayers, the police were waiting, but the leaders of the protesters, using cell phones and twitter, moved and maneuvered the crowds, from Tahrir to Tekiye Square. But the police moved in, shooting the democrats with rubber bullets, and gas – lots of tear gas. They used clubs and yes, they fired into the crowd with live ammo. And that's poor form.
Ali Abdullah Saleh is a wiley weasel. His opponents include secessionists from the south, royal Shi'a Zaydi imams in the north, and crazed Al Qaida cells in the east. Then there is the Muslim Brotherhood, and pressures from the international community, particularly from Saudi Arabia, the Brits and the US. It's a full plate, or, should we say, front and back burners ARE red hot and bubbling.
STEPPING BACK TO VIEW THE FRONT AND THE BACK OF DEMONSTRATIONS:
A typical 2011 Arab demonstration has a front and a back. The front consists of decent secular educated people, many professionals, including women. The middle is filled with poor men, unable to find jobs; and women protesting the high cost of fuel, and sexual assaults. But the back of the demonstration, invisible, are the shrew operators: some are left wing, including Maoists and many lesser degrees of socialism. Then there are the Islamic operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, who, of course, made a huge doctrinal mistake in 1929, thinking it best to condemn everything and everybody western, and to carry war over to non-orthodox Muslims.
These tenets still characterize the Ikhwan, and it just precludes them from power. For who, in this day and age, wants to give up cheap diverse foods, wonderful technologies like the IC Engine and medicine, all the ideas of social and physical science – in order to get back to Muhammad's teaching. Swell, we have news for them, namely, that if they don't embrace science, they have no chance to understand their own religion. I mean, they'll grasp and enforce the external aspects of the conventional Muslim religion; but prove ignorant of the complex environment of Arabia in the 7th C.: Muhammad relied heavily on Jewish and Zoroastrian precepts and practices. In short, the Ikhwan cannot tell you how Muhammad's teachings and practices at Medina, differ from the shari'a and the conventional religion.
These differences are sketched out in the Speculum paper entitled “Islam under the Knife: Reform Brings Power” which can be found at http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com. (scroll down).
THE ERROR AND THE TERROR OF THE BROTHERS:
On the 10th of March, the Egyptian democrats raided the secret police HQ of the Interior Ministry, overpowering guards, and saving voluminous files before they were destroyed. That Egypt was a police state was well known. All along we knew torture was being used, and upwards 9,000 'Brothers' imprisoned. So what's going to happen now? Just release all these fanatics, few of whom believe in the rule of secular law? These Ikhwan (Brothers) are all alike in that they think there is a great war between secular and sectarian, and of course, this mindset is the road to hell, in this world and in the next.
We keep arriving at the same conclusion: that as long as the Muslim Brotherhood deviates from the authentic Muslim reform tradition, they are dangerous. As Speculum readers well know, that authentic reform tradition was developed, discovered, taught, by the remarkable 19th C. peripatetic Sayyid Jalal ad-Din Al Afghani. He moved west out of Iran into Cairo and Paris, editing an influential news magazine (Al Manar or 'The Lighthouse,') with Muhammad Abdu, another genius who ended up top supreme court jurist at the Al Aqsa University, Cairo.) Rashid Ridda followed. All taught that the East should learn from the West, if only to fight them. Persuasion would work better. And all regarded the chief obstacle to progress, to be the clerical establishment, the mullahs and imams, who do not recognize secular legal traditions (or tribal ones).
Muhammad of course had no clergy, and couldn't conceive of such a hierarchy. He may have had an internal and external hierarchies of servants and students, but for other purposes than prayer and theological conformity.
There's a curious irony: the nations of the older reformers were dominated, occupied, by the European powers, yet they recommended dialogue and exchange of ideas and technology with the West. Not war or terror. But the contemporary post-WWII Ikhwan all blame the Europeans, everything western, even though Egypt and the other Arab nations have been free for over half a century. Why that paradox?
Let us look at the MB's birth. In 1928 a grade-school religious fanatic named Hassan Al Banna, reactivated Ibn Taymiyya's sociopathic takfiri ideology, whereby other Muslims, like Shi'a, or secular folk, can be killed with impunity for deviating from 'the Muslim way.' To him, that way meant dressing in robes, growing a beard, learning to sing the Qur'an by rote, praying in front of others, with no reference to meaning, forming secret cells and gangs sworn to secrecy, over-commanded by clerics, some unafraid to unleash their assassins on anyone who disagrees. Al Bannah was sick. He was a sociopath, a serial killer. The Royal Egyptian government, led by King Farouk, had to shoot Al Banna dead after he ordered successful assassinations of senior government ministers.
The Brothers expanded outside Egypt, as the error and the terror spread. Other governments rightly suspected them of fomenting discontent and staging bombings and targeted assassinations. Hamas, for example, is a branch of the Ikhwan. Yes, the Brothers can be found most everywhere in Arabia. But they are deviants, grotesquely mal-formed and admit that error, and correct themselves, they will always be a threat, not just to lawful government and secular citizens, but to other Muslim groups. The Brothers, like the Wahhabi, have moved against the Sufis, because the sufis are famously tolerant, open to new ideas, and too wise to be understood by the new Muslim fanatics. All these imposters share one thing: an ignorance of the religion they profess to represent.
Yes, there have been fist-fights between secular and sectarian protesters in Egypt. There were big fights at Tahrir Square. I bet it happens everyday. But that's normal. Healthy. As Muhammad Qurayshi said: “My people will not agree on an error.” The Ikhwan are of value as simple servants. Their vision of Islam is dumbed-down, involving medieval dress, one-liners, proper beards, the seclusion of women, the flossing of the teeth with a twig from particular shrub, the apeing the Qur'an, stealing from the prophet to get their own power. They talk of jihad. Foolishly, they believe the enemy is outside themselves. They forget the standard Sufi injunction (by Bistami): 'If you want to see the Devil, look in the mirror.' And “I saw the Devil and he was a Muslim.” The same gross miscarriage of spiritual understanding is seen in the homogenized conventional and indeed dumbed-down religions of Christianity and Judaism. Anyone who has read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, knows how dumbed-down present practice and dogma is. What they take as certain, the experts doubt. I am talking about specific word meanings.
We point this out, for progress in many of these nations, requires that the Muslim Brotherhood correct themselves. Instead of blaming science, technology and objective knowledge, they should check out their own dumbed-down version of Islam. You see, anyone who uses a religion or genuine spiritual teaching, to reinforce or embroider his or her ego, well, he or she goes immediately off the rails. The way is cheapened, raped. Only a few more mental assumptions lead to genocide and religious war.
The Egyptians and the Tunisians have lost their intelligence police, released thousands of convicts, many crazed ignorant Ikhwan, apeing Islam, mocking God, so who will help the new democrats. God? I suspect the Egyptians will be up to their necks in religious terror by 2015. Some say the Brothers are already acting with lethal malice. Was the bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria at the very end of 2010, was one of the precursors to revolution in Egypt. The Copts did not stand down, but attacked and burned a mosque.
It has been rumored that the Egyptian intelligence service staged that bombing, just to discredit the Ikhwan (or its splinter groups.) Egyptians like to think this way, and maybe they found documents in the newly-opened archives, indicating some association with the bombers. Those bombers were takfiris acting out the brutal logic of the Ikhwan: if you don't have a beard, if it is trimmed, then you are a kafir, who should be killed. The MB keeps spinning off splinter groups, who use the Ikhwan's discipline, resources and facilities, to murder governments and citizens alike. The letter of the law killeth the spirit of the law.
In Egypt, the leaders of the MB talk now of democracy. What a discovery...Bedouin have long elected their chiefs, shura meetings often end with a show of hands, and Muhammad himself said: “Government must consult with the people at every step.” The caliphs were elected, by councils of elders, at least the first four.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain -
Demonstrations broke out in eastern Saudi Arabia on the 6th of March, in Damman, Hufuf, and Khateef. Shi'ites ask for equal treatment, some share of the splendid Saudi treasure. After all, they do most of the hard work at the oil fields. But the oil industry employs few, and many are the educated men left with no prospects.
The Saudis were warned not to shoot to kill. The new technique apparently is shoot just over their heads. Some half dozen protesters are reported killed over some 5 days of demonstrations.
The protesters are not so much Shi'a as unemployed; but their beggars' banquet of symbolic actions, should not be blocked, unless they block traffic.
All the Arab protests are about unemployment. Any human society worth its salt would find jobs for its people. After all, so much needs to be done. Unemployment is a syndrome of the global system, a major flaw of our state-heavy industry-heavy capitalism.: that people are trained at great effort and expense, but jobs don't exist that would use and challenge this learning, as a career.
That basic contract – work hard, obey the laws, and you'll find a way to support your self, maybe even your family. Of course that contract has frayed, world wide. Even in China, even in Bangalore and Silicon Valley, even along Boston's Route 28 ring highway (the greatest concentration of applied high tech in the world), bright men and women, scientists, technicians, are being fired, laid off. Jobs are shrinking as debt takes hold. Firms can't hire folks because the money goes into repaying debt.
Small businesses tend not to hire because owners must make a windfall to repay. And corporations keep laying off folks because they must show big profits at every quarter. A stupid system rendered decrepit and malefic by climate change, high energy costs, and weird political biases, causing needed capital to be diverted into security.
Just across the causeway, in Bahrain, protestors still occupy a square in Manama. The dark back of the demonstration usurped the liberal secular front – demanding that the Khalifa family just give up the8ir wealth and power. Fat chance. Just ignore the fools.
The Shi'a claim to be the original inhabitants. All the Gulf emirates were set up some 260 years ago, when bedouin tribes migrated out of the Najd, due to drought. But the Shi'a are mostly newcomers, themselves, many brought into Bahrain from Khuzistan, by the British, though some can claim ancestral residence on the Bahrain Island.
Here is a case where the front of the demonstrations seem to be people like us – secular, educated, tolerant – while the back of the demonstrators features Shi'a operators and clerics, some trained in Iran, paid by Iran, and bent on removing the Sunni citizens, not all of whom are wealthy.
Oman -
Rebellion in the industrial suburb of Suhar by just a few dozen discontents, left a few dead, as demostrations briefly grow, then fade, as Sultan Qabus gives away some $2,400 to each family head and unemployed citizen. Qabus is English educated, Oman one of the most modern of Arab states, or so it might seem. But in beyond the Green Mtns., or down into the Hadramaut, and you find a primitive, undiscovered society, very remote.
How can revolutions, regime change, occur when all the citizens benefit from the largesse of Arab emirs: world-class hospitals, schools, highways, malls, and unemployment payments?
But some can't be bought off. Are they the self-righteous? The deluded? Time will sort them out.
Kuwait -
Kuwait also has problems with stateless Arabs. Though the ruling Sabah clan came in from the desert, as bedouin, today the nomads migrating in and out of Kuwait, some 100,000 of them, receive no benefits or legal status in Ku7wait. This is causing antagonism. Hence the violence directed at small congregations of male youths 'stateless' in an industrial suburb of Kuwait City. There were at least two deadly clashes, on the 19th of Feb., and the 21st. But demonstrations have grown as bedouin bring in their clan and kin. Water is a big issue. The three wells are all in the desert west. But the Kuwaiti emir controls them. Many of these nomads migrate through southern Iraq, and some may be sleeper Saddam agents.
Iraq -
Demonstrations have been a regular feature of Iraq in 2011. Again, the issues are jobs, housing, the high price of food, and regime change. It has not been reassuring to see Nur al Maliki maneuver to beat out Ayad Allawi, the secular Shi'a who works with secular Sunnis. The secular citizens won the election, but Mullah Sadr bent Maliki, telling him (we think) that he would kill him if he didn't close ranks against the Sunnis and the Americans.
US troops are pulling out, which has allowed murderous groups to emerge, mostly sunni death squads hitting Shi'a on pilgrimage. So Maliki reaps what Sadr sows.
They both see Iran as a good friend. The Kurds foolishly follow the Shi'a, backing Sadr and Maliki in exchange for a few perks, like access to Sunni neighborhoods in Irbil, Kirkuk, Takri, Baghdad and Mosul.
Those demonstrating need jobs, cheaper, better food, and some sense of being in charge of a practical destiny.
Iran -
Iranian protesters in 2009-2010 paved the way for using social networks to outwit the oppressive secret police. Unfortunately, the hardline clerics have arrested liberal oleaders, Mousavi and Kharrubi, even Rafsanjani and Khatami. Where is Ruhollah Khomeini when we need him?
We skipped over Jordan, and Lebanon, and Palestine, and Sudan, and Mauritania and Morocco. There have been demonstrations in all these countries. Stay tuned.
by J. Paul Maynard, regional specialist
Arab Revolutions 2011 – Context and Precursors
Only Egypt and Tunisia have seen regime change; but the Arab revolutions spread and intensify. Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait have all seen persistent demonstrations, opposed and 'managed' by the state police and army. But what of more essential elements, like food? And housing? And jobs?
It is the task of this blog to provide prescriptions: cures for political health, economic health, and cultural health. So while receiving messages Speculum was already pulling together previous studies on the economies of Near East and North African nations. See our “Egypt after the January 25th Revolution: Politics and Economy in Uncertain Times.” In the next week, Speculum will be interviewing by telephone a small set of Harvard classmates and alumna, not all employed, by the way. We listen to their prescriptions. I'm sure they see some opportunities, especially if the Army sells off more companies. But, as we will see, the present 'Washington consensus,' - an assumed agreement by the rich nations, led by the IMF and World Bank, to make the so-called 'free' market, the ultimate determinator, engine and guide of growth.
Of course, what these technocrats do not see, is that traditional Islamic economies always gives the poorest vendor a place in the market. Secondly, while the Dutch started the stock market in Amsterdam where shares in ventures spread risk and profit. But the people in the Middle East have been using 'investment by shares' since about 8,000 BC. We don't know that. We do know that Muhammad divided the ownership of property between the family members, including the women, the old, even the children – all had shares. Of course today, men own all the houses (with a few exceptions.)
Food shortages take up the slack, as the US will not go back to growing wheat, corn and soy. Too much money can be made by growing grains for making ethanol, methanol, even though these fuels are actually more wasteful and expensive than Mid East crude. Other crops, like switch grass, are much better sources for these alcohol-based fuels.
PRICES FOR FOOD in Egypt have basically doubled in the past two years. Elsewhere, the same, even worse. Food usually can't be saved for long, so much is thrown out. Better that than bring the price down so that ordinary unemployed 'wallers' might be able to buy some. The food market is perverse up and down the line, not just the 2/5ths wasted, thrown out or eaten by rats or insects, but the irrational insistence that organic unprocessed foods, should be quite a bit more expensive, than processed foods with fats and sugars and no fibre. Brown rice costs more than white rice, cakes without sugar more than cakes with, 9-grain bread more than three times the price of white bread. Add to these market perversions, the world-wide craving for meat, now rising even faster than the rise in oil. The populations need shift their protein source from animal to plant protein.
All the Arabs revolutions are about employment. Why no jobs? Well, the money goes into the pensions, the salaries, the operating expenses, educational costs, and embezzlement of the ruling elites, their soldiers and police. Add to this the purchases of advanced weapon systems. So what remains for social projects, development? These nations have all lost their ability to feed their populations.
HOUSING SHORTAGES, NOW LEGENDARY, RENDER NULL 0R PERVERSE, MOST MARRIAGES
Why cannot the government build affordable housing? They've had a half-century to try. Look at the photos, and you'll see structures built by the French or during their occupation. Why? Because, almost inevitably, the contractors figure they can make much more money if they build a more expensive property. The premium is in the finishings. So all over the world, affordable housing has been trumped by luxury housing. The crushing need for housing squeezes out even the middle class, allows construction firms – and their bankers – to convert the whole deal into a predatory take. In America we know our banks did in July 1944, at the Bretton Woods conference, and we know what they did in 2008-10, in both the housing and the derivatives markets – triggering a slide so fast that governments barely intervened in time. The same costs of these one-eyed technocrats are trumped by what they do to developing nations.
At the Bretton Woords Conference in New Hampshire, the American bankers, led by a Mr. White, rejected the idea of an International Clearing Exchange, giving poor nations credits on the basis of their per capita exports. But the Americans wanted another arrangement, much more profitable for them, whereby credits were allocated to poorer nations, on the basis of the ratio between imports and exports.
Then came the 'structural adjustments.' Maybe it is too big an issue to even mention. But is it clear to most observers, that neither the socialists or the (heavy industrial) capitalists, offer appropriate prescriptions. Both are state-heavy. Both trust where they should not. The socialists trust 'Father Government,' while the capitalists trust 'the market.' But the world's wealth is tied up in housing and land, hard, solid assets that probably cannot even be converted in liquid, like money.
Those who invest in real estate really are removing wealth from circulation. So all the more reason to keep municipal taxes high. Before George W. Bush, almost all American communities received money from Washington. That ended. The money went to the very wealthy – a cool $1 trillion for the rich – and of course to the wars in Afghanistan and then, most regrettably in Iraq. The US had no more discretionary money, so funds of the old and the sick, were raided. Huge amounts have been borrowed. Indeed, debt must be a factor, one we must discover and describe, then quantify, if only by intuition. So expect DEBT realities, seen and unseen, little lessons and prescriptions, for an ailing world.
The extraneous factors now conspiring against all nations, are so serious and complex, that no politician should proffer an ideology. Americans have just a few years before common people can no longer burn much petroleum products. Poorer countries might feel the pinch, but the mostly the elite. These Arab countries are so poor, excepting the Gulf Arab states, that few can afford cars or trucks. Buses, too, are not common. Only one in 20 in Cairo can afford a car, but there are already way too many motor vehicles. These cities will change also, the air destined to become cleaner. Clean air and traffic safety would extend the average Cairene life span from 63 to 72 years (Speculum estimate).
The IMF's famous 'Austerity measures' seek to remove subsidies for the poor, so that farmers, usually corporate farmers, can make good profits. Subsistence agriculture is dismissed as inefficient and low-volume, but the time is coming quite soon, where it will be the subsistence farmers who save the day. I certainly have long advised governments and NGOs to study and enhance the most local ways of making a living. In 1972-73 I worked in Afghanistan for an NGO. My job was to find the poorest people in the country. I found very poor people, especially those far off any road. But they grew their own food, or traded for it. So how could I pity them?
The nomads sold meat, wool, hides, beads, textiles, and international goods in a long-distance trading net, while the settled farmers sold the nomads grains for themselves and their horses, iron tools and implements, weapons, and fancy clothes. Wisdom texts were also exchanged.
In all these Arab countries, nomads still ply the desert. The caravans are marching, as they have, continuously. They are part of the traditional economy, and USAID and other NGOs just do not help the traditional economy. Too backward, to primitive, not enough profit. But the traditional market in Muslim countries preserves many low-tech wonders: hand-made textiles, musical instruments, embroidered clothes, horse and camel tack and trappings, auto-construction materials and techniques, plus abundant food.
One thinks of all the money that has been thrown at economic development, how so little has happened, and one realizes that, yes, one can re-divert these capital flows, and glean enough cash to meet all the targets (food, fuels, housing, jobs). The traditional economy hires approximately 7 times more people than the modern corporate economies, per unit of production or per service. This is especially true in Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arab, Iran, and other Gulf countries, because the oil and gas industry is capital intensive, not labor intensive. Only a few workers are needed, and they're all highly trained. Note: Traditional economies are much smaller in Iraq and the former Soviet states of Central Asia. All the more reason to develop the traditional ways of growing food, weaving textiles, selling wares, animals, native materials (like sun-dried bricks).
So there are ways to multiply jobs. We have the same problem in the USA. Public servants can get rich legally in America – doctors, lawyers, even teachers and state employees, even nurses and medical secretaries, make big money. That's not the way it should be. That's why our health system is so expensive and so good: all these high-paid medical staff standing around with space-age electrical equipment. Education costs and salaries and pensions and perks, like free tuition for the children of employees, these too jack up costs, just to go to school.
In the corporate world, there is the re-appearance of feudalism, where a few surviving individuals take over the jobs of former peers and subordinates, so they are working three or four jobs, making a lot of money, but not nearly enough to make up for the corporate colonization of body, mind and soul. Why not just break up these jobs? Someone making $240 K a year with perks, could and should be redundant, the 'high-pressured drive' being divided, say, into ten workers making $24 K a year with limited perks.
Government assistance to private corporations, to create jobs, has generally not worked in the USA. Corporations have consistently broken their agreements, accepting cash but not creating many, if any, new jobs. Small business owners who get some cash are generally so needy, so much in the hole, that the money goes to the bankers, not for new jobs. And the bankers are hardly back to normal: who can they possibly trust nowadays? Only Uncle Sam, it seems. But he's broke too. So it's a beggar's banquet: we've all become 'wallers.' The 'players' in these casino-style financial houses still dread the distrust lurking between bankers on all levels and nations. Debt and fear are like awesome tidal undertows to all progress. Even the maintenance of what already is, becomes problematic, even doubtful.
High fuel and food prices are like continual tsunamis. The terrible 8.8 earthquake in NE Japan on the 11th of March, has switched world attention off the Arabs. Now Qaddafi and other vile players, can operate in darkness.
Then we have debt, the massive short selling and leveraged buy-outs, the junk bonds, the funny paper, all leading to the awesome spectre of rogue investors pulling down old, venerable trading houses like Barings, like Lehman Brothers, and many, many others that you don't hear about.
Of course our medieval forefathers spoke about the evils of making money off money. Rightly, we repudiate this condemnation of finance: good financial management and targeted investments, can generate wealth. But that wealth comes from technology, from betting on commodities, from exploiting labor, by short-changing education, particularly education in the humanities, and from artificially cheap materials, fuels and crops. Security also is so great a cost it cannot be calculated.
Let us now turn to the nations.
We begin with Algeria, as we should. It was the defiance of Algerian protesters, their disobeying of authorities on January 6, which prompted the Tunisians to do the same, on January 11th. Then the spark leaped to Egypt. The January 25th Egyptian revolution marks precisely those early morning hours, when the democrats opted to defy police and army. But let us look at Algeria. Less than nothing. These nations are all in debt, including Saudi Arabia.
Algeria – Cry the Beloved Country
At any given moment there is going on, some demonstration or sit down strike or sectarian raid or some desperate act by housewives and unemployed men, to lash out at the indifference, the crimes, the corruption, before going down.
Speculum has studied Algeria on a dozen occasions, since 1976. It has oil and much more NG. But ordinary Algerians do not see that money, any of it, except perhaps indirectly, like visits to clinics, roads and bridges, or less taxes for landlords, therefore less the cost of rent.
A note on provenience: We studied all this back in 1975-78, in Cambridge, Harvard, where I worked with A.J. Meyer, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. At that time he was the only American the OAPEC was listening too. Our class got to meet an array of oil experts and officers, including the then sec-gen. Of the OPEC, Mr. Ali Jaideh. Ali told us the OPEC has a preferential pricing scheme ready to be put in place, whereby richer countries pay for oil, and poorer countries less.
Why all this? Because we heard some deputy oil minister from Algeria talk about his country. He spoke about what we already knew: that Algeria lacks housing, low and medium income housing. Checking recent UN data (2010), we see that, over the past 40 years, the government could only construct about 1/3rd of the apartments necessary. So still, as before, it is common to find 6 to 8 people living in a single room. Young men and women of modest means have no chance of getting an affordable home. (Yet still the birth rate is high).
Another key issue is the climate of fear enforced by the police. They don't hesitate to charge protesters who block highways or who camp out in parks. Curiously, it is the old FLN (rebels who beat the French in 1960) who now criticize PM Abdel Aziz Bouteflika for such heavy-handed tactics. (That sounded weird since the NFL routinely tortured Algerians suspected of working with the French. But these NFL are different people...) Finally,
Algeria was one Arab nation that had to fight a war to be independent (1954-62). We recall how the FLN was so popular it was tempted to become a one-party state, following Nasser. But during the 1970-s-80s, the people swung against the NFL for its corruption and privilege. Algeria was rich but there was nothing really for the people, not nearly enough houses, jobs, or even food.
CIA data has Algeria's population growing 1.22% (2005 estimate), but we might double that, because accurate data from remote villages, or shanty suburbs, is not always collected. A better set of figures are these: In any given year, out of 1,000 Algerians, 17.5 children are born, while the death rate is only 4.6 per 1,000.
Recall those terrible days in December, 1991, when the army stepped in to a-null the national election, which was a landslide shoe-in for the Front Nationale Islamique (FIS). Then war raged from 1993-98, killing a cool 100 k., the great majority just innocent civilians killed in execution-style by FIS crazies.
At the height of this violence, the army (FLN) put Abdel Aziz Bouteflika up for election, threw the election, affording the army and FLN some cover, at least till
the elections of 2004, when Bouteflika is elected by citizens.
Why was the FIS so powerful, from 1982 to 2002? Because ordinary people supported them. Not so much for the Islam, as for their apeing of the Algerian rebel tradition, the NFL resistance against France. Bouteflika and his cabinet and secret police are savvy, since protests have been endemic, especially since the summer of 2010, when bombs started exploding again. The opposition does not call for regime change. Just jobs, cheaper food, and a decent house or flat. But first the emergency laws, dating from 1991, had to be rescinded, which they were at the end of February.
Algeria, like Libya, is an archipelago. The cities and towns are like islands. Need we name them? By order of pop. Size: Algiers and its suburbs; Oran, Constantine (in the Kabyle Mountains) Tlemcen (an old cultural center), Blida, Bechar, El Oued, Timimoun, Mostaganem, Djeffa, Tindouf, Tamanrassett (both legendary Saharan oases.)
Tunisia -
Demonstrators have becomes political operatives, even players, organized into tactical parties, and they succeeded in collapsing the Ghanouch apparat, from interim government (Feb. 27th). The secret police HQ also fell. One by one, former technocrats and power-brokers, are being forced out of the interim government, and new, untainted people, men and women, are appointed in their places.
Tunisia is probably the most advanced Arab nation. An education featuring tolerance and diversity was developed by the late Muhammad Charfi, education minister. All Tunisians know how he and President Habib Bourguiba tried to channel money out of the elite and into competent education. Women have more rights in Tunisia than anywhere else in the Arab world.
If the Tunisians are so advanced, let them ferret out a prescription for unemployment. We should give money to Tunisia just to discover some way of multiplying jobs, short of war and security.
Libya -
On March 11th, France recognizes Benghazi democrats, their National Libyan Council. Obviously Sarkozy hopes to lead the world in response. Of course he was in bed with Qaddafi, like so many other rich European leaders. But the stakes – 35 billion barrels of sweet crude – are just too great. When oil becomes short, there are no allies except between specific oil producers and specific oil consumers. The US did not sleep with Qaddafi, but with the Gulf royal families.
Qaddafi is committing crimes every hour. He uses populace as human shields. Puts the families outside their houses, preventing democrats from firing at Qaddafi's mercenaries. Then they move house to house, with photographs, dragging off any man (or woman) suspected of being amongst the protesters. These people are disappearing at a rate of about 12 an hour, we think. We know already that Qaddafi had been executing his high officers, for any sentiment or concern for the protesting democrats. Fifteen were apparently executed on the 8th Their bodies were seen.
On the ground, Qaddafi is rolling up the democrats on five different fronts, at least: in the west, Zawiya, Mushratah, Tripoli suburbs, and now, units moving east, to retake Ras Lanuf with its terminal and refinery,k then we expect by next Wednesday, Al Brega will fall, then Al Burayqah,k then Benghazi. We estimate Qaddafi will be breaking into Benghazi, to execute protesters and rebels, by the 6th of March. Opposition forces lose control of Al Jawad and the Marse Ras Lanuf complex, which consists of pumping stations, pipelines, a small refinery and an oil terminal, the port. When they take Al Brega, then Qaddafi controls all Libya's oil Or so he might think.
European leaders hate Qaddafi, and for good reason. But will they sanction any military intervention? Not by the Americans. The reason is that the richer Euro-states have signed 'obscene' contracts with the Libyan leader, and guard access to those Libyan fields. The USA is well-represented in the Libyan oil industry, but as engineers, roughnecks, geologists, contractors of various sorts. But the USA takes no oil from Libya. Yet it should – New England has strict environmental laws, requiring low-sulfur oil. Libyan oil should be shipped to the refineries in Newfoundland.
The US was not one of the rich governments 'in bed with Qaddafi.' The USA is in bed with the Saudi royal family. That's why we see the USS Enterprise staying in the Red Sea, with no way of intervening in Libya.
Qaddafi tries to break into the Arab League summit, where he often performed as a burlesque gag-man, on March 10-12. He no longer has the status of a head-of-state. In fact, it's open season on him. He and his sons are marked men, serial killers violating all sorts of norms and laws: Islamic, tribal, modern civil codes, and international law. Anyone can kill them with impunity.
WHAT ABOUT INTERVENTION? We say 'lite.' No need for ponderous no-fly zone. We sent 20 emails over the past ten days, all arguing for 'a phantom' intervention in Libya – just put up some jets over Cyranaica. 'When the hawk shows up, the sparrows go to ground.' We suggested the president ask the pilots to tell him what they can do, or consult with John McCain, and with my Senator Kerry, then 'play with their heads.' Spoof their radars, HARM them, fly off the deck along the Tripoli road going west, shooting up a few armored vehicles.' No real danger from AA or SAM, except perhaps one or two SAM-7s fired wildly, 'the trust-in-God aimless firing' so characteristic of these societies. So why can't we just intercept Qaddafi's jets over Ras Lanuf?
It turns out that there is no carrier battle group on station in the Med (as there always was). The USS Enterprise is safely squired in the Red Sea, unable to send aircraft to Libya (they must cross Egypt and/or Sudan). What happened to the US 6th Fleet? That bulwark? We never needed to use it, but, when we need to use it, it's not there. What a waste!
Furthermore, the weird caution of the administration is not a mystery. The US knows that its invasion of Iraq and its blind knee-jerk support for Israel, are, were, 'wrong calls,' so like dogs with their tails between their legs, Secretaries Gates and Clinton, led by the president, abdicate any effective power. “We must work in step with our allies.” Yeah, right. Those allies are the rich European nations, NATO, who do not want the US to win entry into the Libyan treasure house: 35 billion barrels of the sweetest crude on the planet. Qaddafi was a master at using that fact to jack up the price of his oil, some 14%-32% above the price of common crude. He has been very destructive to Western states, Arab states, and African states. For example, way back in 1971, Qaddafi was able to put through a quadrupling of Libya's oil's prices, and Pres. Nixon had to buy it, because New England had environmental laws requiring it to burn low-sulfur crude oil. Again, in late 1973, early 1974, Qaddafi and the Shah of Iran engineered OPEC's four-fold increase in the price of oil products. So it is impossible to quantify the damage the Colonel has done.
Mu'ammer Qaddafi thinks in terms of force. Reagan had already bombed him, so when the US went into Iraq, Qaddafi got the shivers, the fear, and turned himself in – all his WMD, all those precious nuclear centrifuges, chem warfare plants, and bio-toxins laboratories – exposed and dismantled – we assume. The US took Libya off the terrorist list in 2004, hoping for a sweet oil deal, and an embassy was opened. But not even Wiki-leaks has the transcripts of conversations between Qaddafi (or his minister) and the American diplomats. At least the US did not go to bed with Qaddafi like the leaders of Italy, France, the UK, Spain, Germany, Ireland and Turkey, did. Turkey remains a potent Qaddafi ally. Why?
How about our own revolution? At the current rate, oil will be too expensive to burn in just 4 months. Unrest in Libya – civil war – has caused a $20-30 rise in oil prices. They're heading for $150 a barrel by mid 2014. That's about $5/gallon.
Of course the Americans are often heard claiming for the society a supposed Judaeo-Christian culture or tradition. My own interest in the Middle East began when I was 6 years, looking at illustrations in a Bible (1956). Since then we've learned that our collective morality derives from English common law, which comes from Anglo-Saxon law, which is a typical Germanic tribal code, featuring independence and equality of women, a right to choose her mate, to divorce quickly, to own property, and to inherit. More recently, science has shown that even 1-year-old babies exhibit altruism, that, in fact, even chickens have been shown to be altruistic. So, following Albert Einstein, we know a human society has no real need for a revealed law from God. It can be fully moral and ethical without one.
In any case, we can also speak about science as our culture. And science in the West really owes a lot to the Arabs. And it is not just that they translated Greeks like Plato, Euclid, Hippocrates, and Aristotle. Or spoke to the West for centuries through Spain, Langedoc, Sicily, Italy, Crete, Cypress and the Balkans. The links were manifold. What were these sciences? Mathematics, astronomy, medicine, pharmacology, chemistry, the great chain of being, all these were laid out by Islamic scientists, not all Arab, by any means. Jewish, Persian, Indian, Turkic and Berber doctors and alchemists worked in the Pax Islamica.
Modern medicine began when Muhammad Qurayshi said: 'Every disease has its cause and its cure.' The Qur'an weighed in saying: 'Do not think that disease and death is God's punishment on you.' The Muslims did believe in tiny agents of contagion, and they knew about sperms and eggs, but the West wasn't ready for the germ theory till the Koch in the mid 19th Century.
Egypt -
Amr Musa, of the Arab League, and M. Al Baradei, have both announced that they are running for president. Free elections are imperative. But they will not prevent shenanigans at the polling stations. Amr Musa is not viable, as he never objected to the Mubarak apparat. Al Baradei was our choice back in May, 2010, whenn we deduced the regime change was imminent. (see May posting of www.middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com.)
Is Egypt going through a real change? It seems so.
PM Ahmed Shafiq was forced out of office two weeks ago, and has since been shown to order lethal force following the Jan. 25th citizen mobilizations. His whereabouts are unknown. It's high noon in Arabia.
Some 230 individuals assume they are competent to govern, and are now jockeying for influence and power. New power alliances are created in secret. Real antipathy repeatedly breaks out – fist fights – but 'this is normal.'
On International Woman's Day on the 8th of March, a group of some 350 women assembled with signs on Tahrir Square. They were protesting gross male behavior, like groping on the buses or subways. They were rough-handled by the police, then attacked by gangs of men throwing stones. This behavior is not Islamic; it is actually a symptom of mental illness; but it is found in Japan, in Russia, in Greece, in Armenia, in Israel, in Egypt, in Italy, in Pakistan, but not so much in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Algeria, France. It is rampant among Serbs and Croats but not characteristic of Muslim society in the Balkans (Sarajevo). We're speaking generally, of course.
Certainly, the right not to be abused and exploited, not to be touched, caressed, is fundamental, so we really are correct to include anti-abuse laws in this democratic movement. Freedom from sexual abuse is a basic. Gender issues should be at the top, for women will add competency and, of course, duty.
Egyptian democrats, young men, assaulted the secret police HQ, saving many thousands of documents and files. Thousands of prisoners have been released. Some of them are serial killers who will only do what they are programmed to do: kill those not dressed as Muslims, or who speak like Muslims.
Yemen -
Today the 11th of March, at least protester was shot dead in a demonstration on Tekiye Squrae, in Sana'a. This makes some 12 killed over the past week of continual protest. Worshipers poured out of Friday prayers, the police were waiting, but the leaders of the protesters, using cell phones and twitter, moved and maneuvered the crowds, from Tahrir to Tekiye Square. But the police moved in, shooting the democrats with rubber bullets, and gas – lots of tear gas. They used clubs and yes, they fired into the crowd with live ammo. And that's poor form.
Ali Abdullah Saleh is a wiley weasel. His opponents include secessionists from the south, royal Shi'a Zaydi imams in the north, and crazed Al Qaida cells in the east. Then there is the Muslim Brotherhood, and pressures from the international community, particularly from Saudi Arabia, the Brits and the US. It's a full plate, or, should we say, front and back burners ARE red hot and bubbling.
STEPPING BACK TO VIEW THE FRONT AND THE BACK OF DEMONSTRATIONS:
A typical 2011 Arab demonstration has a front and a back. The front consists of decent secular educated people, many professionals, including women. The middle is filled with poor men, unable to find jobs; and women protesting the high cost of fuel, and sexual assaults. But the back of the demonstration, invisible, are the shrew operators: some are left wing, including Maoists and many lesser degrees of socialism. Then there are the Islamic operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, who, of course, made a huge doctrinal mistake in 1929, thinking it best to condemn everything and everybody western, and to carry war over to non-orthodox Muslims.
These tenets still characterize the Ikhwan, and it just precludes them from power. For who, in this day and age, wants to give up cheap diverse foods, wonderful technologies like the IC Engine and medicine, all the ideas of social and physical science – in order to get back to Muhammad's teaching. Swell, we have news for them, namely, that if they don't embrace science, they have no chance to understand their own religion. I mean, they'll grasp and enforce the external aspects of the conventional Muslim religion; but prove ignorant of the complex environment of Arabia in the 7th C.: Muhammad relied heavily on Jewish and Zoroastrian precepts and practices. In short, the Ikhwan cannot tell you how Muhammad's teachings and practices at Medina, differ from the shari'a and the conventional religion.
These differences are sketched out in the Speculum paper entitled “Islam under the Knife: Reform Brings Power” which can be found at http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com. (scroll down).
THE ERROR AND THE TERROR OF THE BROTHERS:
On the 10th of March, the Egyptian democrats raided the secret police HQ of the Interior Ministry, overpowering guards, and saving voluminous files before they were destroyed. That Egypt was a police state was well known. All along we knew torture was being used, and upwards 9,000 'Brothers' imprisoned. So what's going to happen now? Just release all these fanatics, few of whom believe in the rule of secular law? These Ikhwan (Brothers) are all alike in that they think there is a great war between secular and sectarian, and of course, this mindset is the road to hell, in this world and in the next.
We keep arriving at the same conclusion: that as long as the Muslim Brotherhood deviates from the authentic Muslim reform tradition, they are dangerous. As Speculum readers well know, that authentic reform tradition was developed, discovered, taught, by the remarkable 19th C. peripatetic Sayyid Jalal ad-Din Al Afghani. He moved west out of Iran into Cairo and Paris, editing an influential news magazine (Al Manar or 'The Lighthouse,') with Muhammad Abdu, another genius who ended up top supreme court jurist at the Al Aqsa University, Cairo.) Rashid Ridda followed. All taught that the East should learn from the West, if only to fight them. Persuasion would work better. And all regarded the chief obstacle to progress, to be the clerical establishment, the mullahs and imams, who do not recognize secular legal traditions (or tribal ones).
Muhammad of course had no clergy, and couldn't conceive of such a hierarchy. He may have had an internal and external hierarchies of servants and students, but for other purposes than prayer and theological conformity.
There's a curious irony: the nations of the older reformers were dominated, occupied, by the European powers, yet they recommended dialogue and exchange of ideas and technology with the West. Not war or terror. But the contemporary post-WWII Ikhwan all blame the Europeans, everything western, even though Egypt and the other Arab nations have been free for over half a century. Why that paradox?
Let us look at the MB's birth. In 1928 a grade-school religious fanatic named Hassan Al Banna, reactivated Ibn Taymiyya's sociopathic takfiri ideology, whereby other Muslims, like Shi'a, or secular folk, can be killed with impunity for deviating from 'the Muslim way.' To him, that way meant dressing in robes, growing a beard, learning to sing the Qur'an by rote, praying in front of others, with no reference to meaning, forming secret cells and gangs sworn to secrecy, over-commanded by clerics, some unafraid to unleash their assassins on anyone who disagrees. Al Bannah was sick. He was a sociopath, a serial killer. The Royal Egyptian government, led by King Farouk, had to shoot Al Banna dead after he ordered successful assassinations of senior government ministers.
The Brothers expanded outside Egypt, as the error and the terror spread. Other governments rightly suspected them of fomenting discontent and staging bombings and targeted assassinations. Hamas, for example, is a branch of the Ikhwan. Yes, the Brothers can be found most everywhere in Arabia. But they are deviants, grotesquely mal-formed and admit that error, and correct themselves, they will always be a threat, not just to lawful government and secular citizens, but to other Muslim groups. The Brothers, like the Wahhabi, have moved against the Sufis, because the sufis are famously tolerant, open to new ideas, and too wise to be understood by the new Muslim fanatics. All these imposters share one thing: an ignorance of the religion they profess to represent.
Yes, there have been fist-fights between secular and sectarian protesters in Egypt. There were big fights at Tahrir Square. I bet it happens everyday. But that's normal. Healthy. As Muhammad Qurayshi said: “My people will not agree on an error.” The Ikhwan are of value as simple servants. Their vision of Islam is dumbed-down, involving medieval dress, one-liners, proper beards, the seclusion of women, the flossing of the teeth with a twig from particular shrub, the apeing the Qur'an, stealing from the prophet to get their own power. They talk of jihad. Foolishly, they believe the enemy is outside themselves. They forget the standard Sufi injunction (by Bistami): 'If you want to see the Devil, look in the mirror.' And “I saw the Devil and he was a Muslim.” The same gross miscarriage of spiritual understanding is seen in the homogenized conventional and indeed dumbed-down religions of Christianity and Judaism. Anyone who has read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, knows how dumbed-down present practice and dogma is. What they take as certain, the experts doubt. I am talking about specific word meanings.
We point this out, for progress in many of these nations, requires that the Muslim Brotherhood correct themselves. Instead of blaming science, technology and objective knowledge, they should check out their own dumbed-down version of Islam. You see, anyone who uses a religion or genuine spiritual teaching, to reinforce or embroider his or her ego, well, he or she goes immediately off the rails. The way is cheapened, raped. Only a few more mental assumptions lead to genocide and religious war.
The Egyptians and the Tunisians have lost their intelligence police, released thousands of convicts, many crazed ignorant Ikhwan, apeing Islam, mocking God, so who will help the new democrats. God? I suspect the Egyptians will be up to their necks in religious terror by 2015. Some say the Brothers are already acting with lethal malice. Was the bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria at the very end of 2010, was one of the precursors to revolution in Egypt. The Copts did not stand down, but attacked and burned a mosque.
It has been rumored that the Egyptian intelligence service staged that bombing, just to discredit the Ikhwan (or its splinter groups.) Egyptians like to think this way, and maybe they found documents in the newly-opened archives, indicating some association with the bombers. Those bombers were takfiris acting out the brutal logic of the Ikhwan: if you don't have a beard, if it is trimmed, then you are a kafir, who should be killed. The MB keeps spinning off splinter groups, who use the Ikhwan's discipline, resources and facilities, to murder governments and citizens alike. The letter of the law killeth the spirit of the law.
In Egypt, the leaders of the MB talk now of democracy. What a discovery...Bedouin have long elected their chiefs, shura meetings often end with a show of hands, and Muhammad himself said: “Government must consult with the people at every step.” The caliphs were elected, by councils of elders, at least the first four.
Saudi Arabia and Bahrain -
Demonstrations broke out in eastern Saudi Arabia on the 6th of March, in Damman, Hufuf, and Khateef. Shi'ites ask for equal treatment, some share of the splendid Saudi treasure. After all, they do most of the hard work at the oil fields. But the oil industry employs few, and many are the educated men left with no prospects.
The Saudis were warned not to shoot to kill. The new technique apparently is shoot just over their heads. Some half dozen protesters are reported killed over some 5 days of demonstrations.
The protesters are not so much Shi'a as unemployed; but their beggars' banquet of symbolic actions, should not be blocked, unless they block traffic.
All the Arab protests are about unemployment. Any human society worth its salt would find jobs for its people. After all, so much needs to be done. Unemployment is a syndrome of the global system, a major flaw of our state-heavy industry-heavy capitalism.: that people are trained at great effort and expense, but jobs don't exist that would use and challenge this learning, as a career.
That basic contract – work hard, obey the laws, and you'll find a way to support your self, maybe even your family. Of course that contract has frayed, world wide. Even in China, even in Bangalore and Silicon Valley, even along Boston's Route 28 ring highway (the greatest concentration of applied high tech in the world), bright men and women, scientists, technicians, are being fired, laid off. Jobs are shrinking as debt takes hold. Firms can't hire folks because the money goes into repaying debt.
Small businesses tend not to hire because owners must make a windfall to repay. And corporations keep laying off folks because they must show big profits at every quarter. A stupid system rendered decrepit and malefic by climate change, high energy costs, and weird political biases, causing needed capital to be diverted into security.
Just across the causeway, in Bahrain, protestors still occupy a square in Manama. The dark back of the demonstration usurped the liberal secular front – demanding that the Khalifa family just give up the8ir wealth and power. Fat chance. Just ignore the fools.
The Shi'a claim to be the original inhabitants. All the Gulf emirates were set up some 260 years ago, when bedouin tribes migrated out of the Najd, due to drought. But the Shi'a are mostly newcomers, themselves, many brought into Bahrain from Khuzistan, by the British, though some can claim ancestral residence on the Bahrain Island.
Here is a case where the front of the demonstrations seem to be people like us – secular, educated, tolerant – while the back of the demonstrators features Shi'a operators and clerics, some trained in Iran, paid by Iran, and bent on removing the Sunni citizens, not all of whom are wealthy.
Oman -
Rebellion in the industrial suburb of Suhar by just a few dozen discontents, left a few dead, as demostrations briefly grow, then fade, as Sultan Qabus gives away some $2,400 to each family head and unemployed citizen. Qabus is English educated, Oman one of the most modern of Arab states, or so it might seem. But in beyond the Green Mtns., or down into the Hadramaut, and you find a primitive, undiscovered society, very remote.
How can revolutions, regime change, occur when all the citizens benefit from the largesse of Arab emirs: world-class hospitals, schools, highways, malls, and unemployment payments?
But some can't be bought off. Are they the self-righteous? The deluded? Time will sort them out.
Kuwait -
Kuwait also has problems with stateless Arabs. Though the ruling Sabah clan came in from the desert, as bedouin, today the nomads migrating in and out of Kuwait, some 100,000 of them, receive no benefits or legal status in Ku7wait. This is causing antagonism. Hence the violence directed at small congregations of male youths 'stateless' in an industrial suburb of Kuwait City. There were at least two deadly clashes, on the 19th of Feb., and the 21st. But demonstrations have grown as bedouin bring in their clan and kin. Water is a big issue. The three wells are all in the desert west. But the Kuwaiti emir controls them. Many of these nomads migrate through southern Iraq, and some may be sleeper Saddam agents.
Iraq -
Demonstrations have been a regular feature of Iraq in 2011. Again, the issues are jobs, housing, the high price of food, and regime change. It has not been reassuring to see Nur al Maliki maneuver to beat out Ayad Allawi, the secular Shi'a who works with secular Sunnis. The secular citizens won the election, but Mullah Sadr bent Maliki, telling him (we think) that he would kill him if he didn't close ranks against the Sunnis and the Americans.
US troops are pulling out, which has allowed murderous groups to emerge, mostly sunni death squads hitting Shi'a on pilgrimage. So Maliki reaps what Sadr sows.
They both see Iran as a good friend. The Kurds foolishly follow the Shi'a, backing Sadr and Maliki in exchange for a few perks, like access to Sunni neighborhoods in Irbil, Kirkuk, Takri, Baghdad and Mosul.
Those demonstrating need jobs, cheaper, better food, and some sense of being in charge of a practical destiny.
Iran -
Iranian protesters in 2009-2010 paved the way for using social networks to outwit the oppressive secret police. Unfortunately, the hardline clerics have arrested liberal oleaders, Mousavi and Kharrubi, even Rafsanjani and Khatami. Where is Ruhollah Khomeini when we need him?
We skipped over Jordan, and Lebanon, and Palestine, and Sudan, and Mauritania and Morocco. There have been demonstrations in all these countries. Stay tuned.
by J. Paul Maynard, regional specialist
Friday, March 4, 2011
Friday Prayers Propel Protests
Middle East Speculum Report - Arab Revolutions 2011
You can access accurate studies re Islam, the genuine Muslim reform tradition, and the changing political economies at http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com Those interested in the ways electricity is changing politics, would be interested in reading the list of research topics undertaken by Speculum, at http://thehumanpreservationproject.blogspot.com.
Also listed are 'primed blind-spots.' The Dark Spaces, assumptions, images in the head, the general disorientation of typical Americans. Plus 'affluenza' - the diseases of affluence. Now get ready for Arabia.
Algeria -
We begin with Algeria for several reasons. It was after prayers on Friday Feb. 11th, that the crowds grew and became so brave and determined, that they defied the government's order to disband and obey curfew. The courage of just a few score citizens was enough to tip the whole Arab political equation, resetting its mainspring. The Tunisians adapted, as did the Egyptians. Algeria has a long, long history of street demonstrations going back into the French period; but are also wary and reluctant to trigger violence, because they have seen how violence spirals out of control, how it triggers more violence. And this they don't want. Nor do the protesters demand a new government; just more freedoms. Just a few hundred showed up in Algiers today. Things are not so hot, perhaps, because Algerian society possesses genuine freedom of speech.
Furthermore, this police state has made concessions. Although Bouteflika was an army creation, he does not represent them today. The FLN does. He re-installed food subsidies, and just recently, on March rescinding the emergency powers. The protesters will still be attacked by police, as demonstrations remain illegal.
Many in the Arab world are demonstrating of the first time, but Algerians have a long history of protesting. Is non-violent political change possible? The Algerians may again lead the way by actually addressing the critical economic issues: lack of jobs, the high costs of food, the drastic shortage in adequate affordable housing, for individuals and families. But this is exactly what Speculum prescribed back in 1976, as a student at Harvard, working under A.J. Meyer.
Demonstrations do not demand new government, but more freedoms. Just a few hundred showed up in Algiers, because Algeria has genuine freedom of speech. This police state has made concessions, rescinding the emergency powers. The protesters are attacked by police. People are tired of violence. The civil war, 1991-2002, featured naked violence and arbitrary killings of innocents on a large scale.
TOWARDS ACCURATE PRESCRIPTIONS: Neither left or right, east or west, has the prescriptions. Nor does Islam, as long as it is run and directed by clergy, very few of whom have any social-scientific background. The backwardness is the dead conventions of religion, a dumbed-down version of a prophet's behavior, stealing the prophet's own prestige and holiness, for themselves, to dress themselves up. Of course any spiritual work that reinforces the ego is off the rails and potentially harmful to society. It is not so easy to see genuine Islam in the Islamic world. The houses, for example, are almost all owned by men, when, of course, in Islam, property is owned by all who live therein, that is, everyone in the family gets a share.
Just as the reforming master of the 19th C., Jalal ad Din al Afghani, blamed the Muslim clergy for the backwardness of Islamic societies, so do contemporary observers see the usurpation by an uneducated clergy as the root cause of the troubles. He saw what we see, that the Muslim religion and the Prophet's own teaching, are different and diverging.
If the Left and the Right are bankrupt of prescriptions, where to now? Let us rephrase the question: what are the 3rd forces? We don't see any. Political history seems to be a simple alternation of left and right, collective and individual rights, a kind of dialectic. But it is not so simple. Hegel and Marx believed in a dialectic between 2 forces, when of course there are three involved. We see this on the atomic level, where the neutron, last to be discovered, is distinguished by a mass as great as a proton, but no charge.
So what is the 'third force?' Personal initiative, study and effort? "Where two are gathered in my name, I'll be the third." There is the kind of thinking that does away with all contradictions. It's this resolution that we seek, a Third which resolves the tension between plus and minus, active-passive. But the 3rd is Unseen: all but invisible. For example, to bake bread one needs flour and water, then a heat, which you can't see. Islam offers some possible solutions, but paradoxically, perhaps, the loudest teachers of Islam at Al Aqsa possess only, from my own experience, an incomplete awareness of the history and environment in which the Prophet lived. There are big differences between what the Muslim religion says today, and what Muhammad Qurayshi practiced in the city of Medina from 622 to 630 AD. You should know this stuff, it's basic. So reference “Islam under the Knife: Reform Brings Power” at the Middle EastSpeculum website.
Speculum is 'mirror' in Latin, while the word mirror derives from the Arabic mira'a, 'mirror' which is a masdar, a verbal noun, of the 4th Form Verb from the root Ra'a 'to see into.'
Those who study the documents on line at http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com will discover the genuine tradition of Islamic reform.
Tunisia –
Prime Minister Ghanouch kicked out, replaced on Feb.26, which immediately relieved tensions in the resistance. Muslim Brothers are welcomed home, and take their places in their mosques. Tunisia is the most tolerant Arab country, thanks to a liberal curriculum and textbooks. The older ones remember Pres. Bourguiba fondly.
Prime Minister Ghanouch kicked out, replaced on Feb.26, which immediately relieved tensions in the resistance. Muslim Brothers are welcomed home, and take their places in their mosques. Tunisia is the most tolerant Arab country, thanks to a liberal curriculum and textbooks. The older ones remember Pres. Bourguiba fondly. The prime minister is M. Ebsebsi, who accuses Ben Ali of treason (March 2).
Libya -
King Idris is similarly recalled in Libya. A small demonstration in Tripoli was broken up, apparently with two killed and some twenty seriously wounded. Rapid response with violence succeeded in breaking up these protests. The citizens might lay low – except it's Friday, the weekly common prayer and sermon. Eventful day. Special militias, not army: the Khamis Brigade, or some twelve other little armies. Internet shut down. Mosques become HQs for protesters. Outside Tripoli, following Friday prayers, demonstrations broke out in Tajura, a coastal town just 20 km. to the east, which led to a clash with police, who fired tear gas and fired with rubber bullets into the crowd. Again, there were casualties.
Also on March 4th another attack by Libyan elite forces on Zawiya, in which hundreds were injured and some four killed. Some 65 protesters remain missing The Qaddafi clique is sewing up a workable half-state, extending from Tripoli down through Ghadames, Sabha to Ghat and al Birkah. Qaddafi has been flying in African mercenaries into the airport at Sabha, then driving them up on the country's best tarmac road, to Tripoli.
Qaddafi has been ordering bombing missions on each day since March 2. On the 3rd of March, Qaddafi forces attacked the colossal oil terminal (and small refinery) at Marse al Brega, part of the larger Marse Burayqah complex.
Then on the 4th, Qaddafi's pilots bombed the big arms dump outside Benghazi, successfully, setting off huge explosions and eight fires. Many dead and wounded surround the base, leaving huge fires. Too bad the president did not heed the need, as the mad-dog colonel, the Qaddafi apparat, now secures his truncated nation.
Also on the 4th, Benghazi democratic forces with soldiers assaulted the oil terminal at Ras Lanuf, winning it. Qaddafi must be angry, and it may be that he can only fly a few of his pilots. On March 2nd and 3rd, 'the mad dog of the Middle East' (as R. Reagan called Qaddafi) fumed and vented to the microphone: 'we will kill all foreigners and Americans.”
King Idris is remembered fondly in Libya. The Idris family were sufi teachers. A small demonstration in Tripoli was broken up, apparently with two killed and some twenty seriously wounded. Rapid response with violence succeeded in breaking up these protests. The citizens might lay low – except it's Friday, the weekly common prayer and sermon. Eventful day. Special militias, not army: the 32nd Brigade, or some twelve other little armies. Internet shut down. Mosques become HQs for protesters. Outside Tripoli, following Friday prayers, demonstrations broke out in Tajura, a coastal town just 20 km. to the east, which led to a clash with police, who fired tear gas and fired with rubber bullets into the crowd. Again, there were casualties.
Also on March 4th another attack by Libyan elite forces on Zawiya, in which hundreds were injured and some four killed. Some 65 protesters remain missing The Qaddafi clique is sewing up a workable half-state, extending from Tripoli down through Ghadames, Sabha to Ghat and al Birkah. Qaddafi has been flying in African mercenaries into the airport at Sabha, then driving them up on the country's best tarmac road, to Tripoli.
Qaddafi has been ordering bombing missions on each day since March 2. On the 3rd of March, Qaddafi forces attacked the colossal oil terminal (and small refinery) at Marse al Brega, part of the larger Marse Burayqah complex.
Then on the 4th, Qaddafi's pilots bombed the big arms dump outside Benghazi, successfully, setting off huge explosions and eight fires. Many dead and wounded surround the base, leaving huge fires. Too bad the president did not heed the need, as the mad-dog colonel, the Qaddafi apparat, now secures his truncated nation.
Also on the 4th, Benghazi democratic forces with soldiers assaulted the oil terminal at Ras Lanuf, winning it after an intense battle. Qaddafi must be angry, and it may be that he can only fly a few of his pilots. On March 2nd and 3rd, 'the mad dog of the Middle East' (as R. Reagan called Qaddafi) fumed and vented to the microphone: 'we will kill all invaders, Americans, Europeans. We will set Libya ablaze.'
Libya is an archipelago, consisting of islands, isolated communities. Starting from west and going east, the main ones are Ghadames, Sabha, and in the far south, Ghat and Birka. They're connect to Tripoli, and the coastal towns of Tripolitania: Al Jami, Sabratha, Shurman, Janzur and of course Zawiye. The center column runs from Sirt (Surt) down through Al Waddan and Zilla to Al Qatrun and Tijarhi in the Sahara. The east, Cyrenaica, its head in Benghazi, includes Al Marj, Al Bayda, Shahhat, Darnah, and Tobruk. To the west, is Ajdabiya , where the road goes south, to Jalu and the Kufrah oasis. Add to these coastal towns and villages, lthe main ones being Sirt (Surt), Al Baida, As Sidra, Mishratah, al Khums.
Egypt -
After Friday prayers on March 4th, crowds swarmed and teemed outside, seething in guttural chants, as in the mosques, delegates search for some way out. The army and the regime's caretaker PM Ahmed Shafiq seemed to exercise control exclusively, closing out the protesters. Marshall Hussein Tantawi is a Sphinx, saying nothing. Everyone assumed he would freeze the democrats out. Had already done so. But the Armed Forces Supreme Council still rules. It consists of three judges from the Supreme Court, the Muslim Brotherhood, as led by Sobhi Saleh, and secular leftist, Tariq al Bishri. Conspicuously absent are labor unions. The workers strikes that followed the Jan. 25 revolution, were smothered with kisses from the democrat reformers. 'Just wait' they told the unions.
When a rumor started circulating: Shafiq was fired, and Hisham Sharaf appointed prime minister. All that anxiety just fell away as the government gracefully opened itself up to a people's shura. I think the deal went like this: “You (the people) choose 12 and we (the army/police) will choose 8. And the 20 of us will sit around a large table, and go through the issues one by one.”
Sometimes it takes nations generations to come together in a proportional representative administration. Military service, trade and the state's need for labor and foodstuffs all served to fuse different ethnics and sects together. That's true even to the point that war has artfully grafted our pacific approaches to social harmony. The Egyptian army 'deployed to the coasts,' as the Egyptians joke, has much to give in the way of spinning off businesses. Looking by sector, there are definite reasons not to privatize all of the army's businesses. Hosni Mubarak privatized many, but was careful not to damage or kill firms producing tools and materials, or offering lucrative services in the precious tourist industry, or making anything necessary to the function of many other firms.
This demonization of others precludes their gifting what they know. Are any of us strong and wise enough to not learn from our enemies? There cannot be real socialism till there is real capitalism. And cannot be real capitalism without real socialism. Now we need to find the third way, for only out of that, will Egypt's wound and sickness be cured. The IMF and World Bank lead the bankers in pressing for 'structural adjustments' but they've been in effect since 1981 and only impoverished the people and poisoned the air of Cairo. Obviously, the leaders of the world, the leaders of Egypt, must find prescriptions to the malaise. For Egypt at the present time, has more of a humanitarian than development need. Water, food, housing, jobs. Neither socialism or the present species of corporate capitalism, can guide these deprived nations.
Saudi Arabi -
Protests begun last Friday Feb. 27th in the east by Shi'a, were still demonstrating one week later. After prayers on Friday the 4th of March, small protests took place in Ad Dammam, Hafuf, and Khatif. These Shi'a just don't want to be discriminate against. They don't want to overthrow the royal family. They all benefited, and just to shore up that reality, King Abdul Aziz Abdallah II announced he's giving a cool $36 billion in goodies to the people. Can these hotheads be bought off? I wonder.
Reform in Saudi Arabia has a quiet history. Just five years ago, municipalities featured elections for local offices. The royal family is seen as corrupt, but not all or even most of them: many have worked hard to get where they are, educated overseas, or have spent years serving the country in some way.
Any talk of overturning the monarchy for a representative democracy, just makes it more likely that the crazed Wahhabis will inherit the whole thing, including what is under the ground (gas and oil and water). All along the royal family has been battling the stranglehold the Wahhabis have in the mosques. The grand mufti al Baz proved, quite ignorant and bigoted on any issue outside his own Hanbali orthodoxy, which, amongst the Wahhabis, gravitates on your appearance, your beard, your ouzoo, attendance at prayers, the enforced vanishing of women. I laugh because I've read Ahmend Hanbal and recall him saying: “God doesn't care about your clothes or appearances. God looks into the heart, the conscience. Woe to those who have no shame, who usurp God's prerogatives, you act in the name of the Prophet yet betray his spirit of mercy.” That's a paraphrase I recall from Ahmed Hanbal.
Bahrain -
Crowds still occupy the Pearl roundabout. The front of the mob educated Bahrainis who don't believe the protest is bv Shi'a against Sunni. The back of the mob are the younger uneducated Muslim-bent Shi'a who get encouragement, if not weapons, from Iran. They want the complete overthrow of the existing Sunni regime. In their view, the Khalifa family is way too pro-American.
Oman -
Small demonstrations in the Shuor industrial district outside Muscat, trigger a proportionate deployment by the authorities. Demonstrations protest the two killed on Feb.27th. Qabus announces undisclosed grants of cash to all Omani citizens. Then on March 5th, he fires two cabinet ministers, opening places for 'the people.' Life in Oman has been rather good; protests may persist, but numbers are very small. As small as they are, one can argue that the protesters have done more in the way of prompting reform, than forty years of parliamentary procedure.
Jordan -
Another situation where the opposition does not call for the overthrow of the monarchy, but insists on better representation, cheaper food, more affordable housing, and jobs. Zarqa, which I know, remains a hotbed of dissidence, just as it produced some al Qaida secret operatives – terrorists. Years ago they did the same.
Sudan -
North Sudanese forces are massing some 100 km north of Abiya, while Southern forces are massing near the lakes. Expect an attempt by the North to gut the Southern forces, using armor, artillery and aircraft.
This great war that rages from Mauritania to Mindinao, from Daghestan to Nigeria, will not be solved till Muhammad's practices at Medina receive as much attention as the regulations and legal casuistry of the Islamic religion, as conventionally understood.
The big differences relate to land-use and land-ownership, the rights of children (orphans) and women, a lack of clergy – Muhammad had none and couldn't imagine such a hierarchy – his diplomacy, relating to non-Muslims; to violence against civilians, to those who cause distress, fear and terror, and war.
Somalia -
African Union (Ugandan) forces beat back packs of youths heavily armed, led by die-hard Muslim pretenders, effectively denying the Somali people a government. “It's slow work, house by house.” We need keep in mind that the human frontal cortex does not fully mature till the early 20's. Youth can be dangerous in six or eight ways, and the revolutions in the Arab world, have been taken from those who started them. For what do young people know? They are more apt to demonize, fall for the politics of symbolic appeal.
Speculum is 'mirror' in Latin, while 'mirror' is mira'a in Arabic. The dictionaries says 'mirror' comes through the Old French from the Latin 'mirabilis' 'a wonderful thing.' Mira'a is the 4th form masdar or verbal noun, of the Arab root-verb ra'a 'to see into.'
About the author: John Paul Maynard has studied Arabic, Persian and Turkic literature since 1970. He has lived and worked in eight Islamic societies, working for NGOs and as an NGO. An independent diplomat, he has operated in Russia and Serbia, and in Sweden and Switzerland, as well as Central Asia and the Middle East. Since 1988, he has published of the Middle East Speculum Report, a newsletter, now on line, and The Central Asian Law Review, published irregularly but soon to have its own web site. He has taught in colleges in New England and holds degrees from Wesleyan and Harvard Universities.
You can access accurate studies re Islam, the genuine Muslim reform tradition, and the changing political economies at http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com Those interested in the ways electricity is changing politics, would be interested in reading the list of research topics undertaken by Speculum, at http://thehumanpreservationproject.blogspot.com.
Also listed are 'primed blind-spots.' The Dark Spaces, assumptions, images in the head, the general disorientation of typical Americans. Plus 'affluenza' - the diseases of affluence. Now get ready for Arabia.
Algeria -
We begin with Algeria for several reasons. It was after prayers on Friday Feb. 11th, that the crowds grew and became so brave and determined, that they defied the government's order to disband and obey curfew. The courage of just a few score citizens was enough to tip the whole Arab political equation, resetting its mainspring. The Tunisians adapted, as did the Egyptians. Algeria has a long, long history of street demonstrations going back into the French period; but are also wary and reluctant to trigger violence, because they have seen how violence spirals out of control, how it triggers more violence. And this they don't want. Nor do the protesters demand a new government; just more freedoms. Just a few hundred showed up in Algiers today. Things are not so hot, perhaps, because Algerian society possesses genuine freedom of speech.
Furthermore, this police state has made concessions. Although Bouteflika was an army creation, he does not represent them today. The FLN does. He re-installed food subsidies, and just recently, on March rescinding the emergency powers. The protesters will still be attacked by police, as demonstrations remain illegal.
Many in the Arab world are demonstrating of the first time, but Algerians have a long history of protesting. Is non-violent political change possible? The Algerians may again lead the way by actually addressing the critical economic issues: lack of jobs, the high costs of food, the drastic shortage in adequate affordable housing, for individuals and families. But this is exactly what Speculum prescribed back in 1976, as a student at Harvard, working under A.J. Meyer.
Demonstrations do not demand new government, but more freedoms. Just a few hundred showed up in Algiers, because Algeria has genuine freedom of speech. This police state has made concessions, rescinding the emergency powers. The protesters are attacked by police. People are tired of violence. The civil war, 1991-2002, featured naked violence and arbitrary killings of innocents on a large scale.
TOWARDS ACCURATE PRESCRIPTIONS: Neither left or right, east or west, has the prescriptions. Nor does Islam, as long as it is run and directed by clergy, very few of whom have any social-scientific background. The backwardness is the dead conventions of religion, a dumbed-down version of a prophet's behavior, stealing the prophet's own prestige and holiness, for themselves, to dress themselves up. Of course any spiritual work that reinforces the ego is off the rails and potentially harmful to society. It is not so easy to see genuine Islam in the Islamic world. The houses, for example, are almost all owned by men, when, of course, in Islam, property is owned by all who live therein, that is, everyone in the family gets a share.
Just as the reforming master of the 19th C., Jalal ad Din al Afghani, blamed the Muslim clergy for the backwardness of Islamic societies, so do contemporary observers see the usurpation by an uneducated clergy as the root cause of the troubles. He saw what we see, that the Muslim religion and the Prophet's own teaching, are different and diverging.
If the Left and the Right are bankrupt of prescriptions, where to now? Let us rephrase the question: what are the 3rd forces? We don't see any. Political history seems to be a simple alternation of left and right, collective and individual rights, a kind of dialectic. But it is not so simple. Hegel and Marx believed in a dialectic between 2 forces, when of course there are three involved. We see this on the atomic level, where the neutron, last to be discovered, is distinguished by a mass as great as a proton, but no charge.
So what is the 'third force?' Personal initiative, study and effort? "Where two are gathered in my name, I'll be the third." There is the kind of thinking that does away with all contradictions. It's this resolution that we seek, a Third which resolves the tension between plus and minus, active-passive. But the 3rd is Unseen: all but invisible. For example, to bake bread one needs flour and water, then a heat, which you can't see. Islam offers some possible solutions, but paradoxically, perhaps, the loudest teachers of Islam at Al Aqsa possess only, from my own experience, an incomplete awareness of the history and environment in which the Prophet lived. There are big differences between what the Muslim religion says today, and what Muhammad Qurayshi practiced in the city of Medina from 622 to 630 AD. You should know this stuff, it's basic. So reference “Islam under the Knife: Reform Brings Power” at the Middle EastSpeculum website.
Speculum is 'mirror' in Latin, while the word mirror derives from the Arabic mira'a, 'mirror' which is a masdar, a verbal noun, of the 4th Form Verb from the root Ra'a 'to see into.'
Those who study the documents on line at http://middleeastspeculum.blogspot.com will discover the genuine tradition of Islamic reform.
Tunisia –
Prime Minister Ghanouch kicked out, replaced on Feb.26, which immediately relieved tensions in the resistance. Muslim Brothers are welcomed home, and take their places in their mosques. Tunisia is the most tolerant Arab country, thanks to a liberal curriculum and textbooks. The older ones remember Pres. Bourguiba fondly.
Prime Minister Ghanouch kicked out, replaced on Feb.26, which immediately relieved tensions in the resistance. Muslim Brothers are welcomed home, and take their places in their mosques. Tunisia is the most tolerant Arab country, thanks to a liberal curriculum and textbooks. The older ones remember Pres. Bourguiba fondly. The prime minister is M. Ebsebsi, who accuses Ben Ali of treason (March 2).
Libya -
King Idris is similarly recalled in Libya. A small demonstration in Tripoli was broken up, apparently with two killed and some twenty seriously wounded. Rapid response with violence succeeded in breaking up these protests. The citizens might lay low – except it's Friday, the weekly common prayer and sermon. Eventful day. Special militias, not army: the Khamis Brigade, or some twelve other little armies. Internet shut down. Mosques become HQs for protesters. Outside Tripoli, following Friday prayers, demonstrations broke out in Tajura, a coastal town just 20 km. to the east, which led to a clash with police, who fired tear gas and fired with rubber bullets into the crowd. Again, there were casualties.
Also on March 4th another attack by Libyan elite forces on Zawiya, in which hundreds were injured and some four killed. Some 65 protesters remain missing The Qaddafi clique is sewing up a workable half-state, extending from Tripoli down through Ghadames, Sabha to Ghat and al Birkah. Qaddafi has been flying in African mercenaries into the airport at Sabha, then driving them up on the country's best tarmac road, to Tripoli.
Qaddafi has been ordering bombing missions on each day since March 2. On the 3rd of March, Qaddafi forces attacked the colossal oil terminal (and small refinery) at Marse al Brega, part of the larger Marse Burayqah complex.
Then on the 4th, Qaddafi's pilots bombed the big arms dump outside Benghazi, successfully, setting off huge explosions and eight fires. Many dead and wounded surround the base, leaving huge fires. Too bad the president did not heed the need, as the mad-dog colonel, the Qaddafi apparat, now secures his truncated nation.
Also on the 4th, Benghazi democratic forces with soldiers assaulted the oil terminal at Ras Lanuf, winning it. Qaddafi must be angry, and it may be that he can only fly a few of his pilots. On March 2nd and 3rd, 'the mad dog of the Middle East' (as R. Reagan called Qaddafi) fumed and vented to the microphone: 'we will kill all foreigners and Americans.”
King Idris is remembered fondly in Libya. The Idris family were sufi teachers. A small demonstration in Tripoli was broken up, apparently with two killed and some twenty seriously wounded. Rapid response with violence succeeded in breaking up these protests. The citizens might lay low – except it's Friday, the weekly common prayer and sermon. Eventful day. Special militias, not army: the 32nd Brigade, or some twelve other little armies. Internet shut down. Mosques become HQs for protesters. Outside Tripoli, following Friday prayers, demonstrations broke out in Tajura, a coastal town just 20 km. to the east, which led to a clash with police, who fired tear gas and fired with rubber bullets into the crowd. Again, there were casualties.
Also on March 4th another attack by Libyan elite forces on Zawiya, in which hundreds were injured and some four killed. Some 65 protesters remain missing The Qaddafi clique is sewing up a workable half-state, extending from Tripoli down through Ghadames, Sabha to Ghat and al Birkah. Qaddafi has been flying in African mercenaries into the airport at Sabha, then driving them up on the country's best tarmac road, to Tripoli.
Qaddafi has been ordering bombing missions on each day since March 2. On the 3rd of March, Qaddafi forces attacked the colossal oil terminal (and small refinery) at Marse al Brega, part of the larger Marse Burayqah complex.
Then on the 4th, Qaddafi's pilots bombed the big arms dump outside Benghazi, successfully, setting off huge explosions and eight fires. Many dead and wounded surround the base, leaving huge fires. Too bad the president did not heed the need, as the mad-dog colonel, the Qaddafi apparat, now secures his truncated nation.
Also on the 4th, Benghazi democratic forces with soldiers assaulted the oil terminal at Ras Lanuf, winning it after an intense battle. Qaddafi must be angry, and it may be that he can only fly a few of his pilots. On March 2nd and 3rd, 'the mad dog of the Middle East' (as R. Reagan called Qaddafi) fumed and vented to the microphone: 'we will kill all invaders, Americans, Europeans. We will set Libya ablaze.'
Libya is an archipelago, consisting of islands, isolated communities. Starting from west and going east, the main ones are Ghadames, Sabha, and in the far south, Ghat and Birka. They're connect to Tripoli, and the coastal towns of Tripolitania: Al Jami, Sabratha, Shurman, Janzur and of course Zawiye. The center column runs from Sirt (Surt) down through Al Waddan and Zilla to Al Qatrun and Tijarhi in the Sahara. The east, Cyrenaica, its head in Benghazi, includes Al Marj, Al Bayda, Shahhat, Darnah, and Tobruk. To the west, is Ajdabiya , where the road goes south, to Jalu and the Kufrah oasis. Add to these coastal towns and villages, lthe main ones being Sirt (Surt), Al Baida, As Sidra, Mishratah, al Khums.
Egypt -
After Friday prayers on March 4th, crowds swarmed and teemed outside, seething in guttural chants, as in the mosques, delegates search for some way out. The army and the regime's caretaker PM Ahmed Shafiq seemed to exercise control exclusively, closing out the protesters. Marshall Hussein Tantawi is a Sphinx, saying nothing. Everyone assumed he would freeze the democrats out. Had already done so. But the Armed Forces Supreme Council still rules. It consists of three judges from the Supreme Court, the Muslim Brotherhood, as led by Sobhi Saleh, and secular leftist, Tariq al Bishri. Conspicuously absent are labor unions. The workers strikes that followed the Jan. 25 revolution, were smothered with kisses from the democrat reformers. 'Just wait' they told the unions.
When a rumor started circulating: Shafiq was fired, and Hisham Sharaf appointed prime minister. All that anxiety just fell away as the government gracefully opened itself up to a people's shura. I think the deal went like this: “You (the people) choose 12 and we (the army/police) will choose 8. And the 20 of us will sit around a large table, and go through the issues one by one.”
Sometimes it takes nations generations to come together in a proportional representative administration. Military service, trade and the state's need for labor and foodstuffs all served to fuse different ethnics and sects together. That's true even to the point that war has artfully grafted our pacific approaches to social harmony. The Egyptian army 'deployed to the coasts,' as the Egyptians joke, has much to give in the way of spinning off businesses. Looking by sector, there are definite reasons not to privatize all of the army's businesses. Hosni Mubarak privatized many, but was careful not to damage or kill firms producing tools and materials, or offering lucrative services in the precious tourist industry, or making anything necessary to the function of many other firms.
This demonization of others precludes their gifting what they know. Are any of us strong and wise enough to not learn from our enemies? There cannot be real socialism till there is real capitalism. And cannot be real capitalism without real socialism. Now we need to find the third way, for only out of that, will Egypt's wound and sickness be cured. The IMF and World Bank lead the bankers in pressing for 'structural adjustments' but they've been in effect since 1981 and only impoverished the people and poisoned the air of Cairo. Obviously, the leaders of the world, the leaders of Egypt, must find prescriptions to the malaise. For Egypt at the present time, has more of a humanitarian than development need. Water, food, housing, jobs. Neither socialism or the present species of corporate capitalism, can guide these deprived nations.
Saudi Arabi -
Protests begun last Friday Feb. 27th in the east by Shi'a, were still demonstrating one week later. After prayers on Friday the 4th of March, small protests took place in Ad Dammam, Hafuf, and Khatif. These Shi'a just don't want to be discriminate against. They don't want to overthrow the royal family. They all benefited, and just to shore up that reality, King Abdul Aziz Abdallah II announced he's giving a cool $36 billion in goodies to the people. Can these hotheads be bought off? I wonder.
Reform in Saudi Arabia has a quiet history. Just five years ago, municipalities featured elections for local offices. The royal family is seen as corrupt, but not all or even most of them: many have worked hard to get where they are, educated overseas, or have spent years serving the country in some way.
Any talk of overturning the monarchy for a representative democracy, just makes it more likely that the crazed Wahhabis will inherit the whole thing, including what is under the ground (gas and oil and water). All along the royal family has been battling the stranglehold the Wahhabis have in the mosques. The grand mufti al Baz proved, quite ignorant and bigoted on any issue outside his own Hanbali orthodoxy, which, amongst the Wahhabis, gravitates on your appearance, your beard, your ouzoo, attendance at prayers, the enforced vanishing of women. I laugh because I've read Ahmend Hanbal and recall him saying: “God doesn't care about your clothes or appearances. God looks into the heart, the conscience. Woe to those who have no shame, who usurp God's prerogatives, you act in the name of the Prophet yet betray his spirit of mercy.” That's a paraphrase I recall from Ahmed Hanbal.
Bahrain -
Crowds still occupy the Pearl roundabout. The front of the mob educated Bahrainis who don't believe the protest is bv Shi'a against Sunni. The back of the mob are the younger uneducated Muslim-bent Shi'a who get encouragement, if not weapons, from Iran. They want the complete overthrow of the existing Sunni regime. In their view, the Khalifa family is way too pro-American.
Oman -
Small demonstrations in the Shuor industrial district outside Muscat, trigger a proportionate deployment by the authorities. Demonstrations protest the two killed on Feb.27th. Qabus announces undisclosed grants of cash to all Omani citizens. Then on March 5th, he fires two cabinet ministers, opening places for 'the people.' Life in Oman has been rather good; protests may persist, but numbers are very small. As small as they are, one can argue that the protesters have done more in the way of prompting reform, than forty years of parliamentary procedure.
Jordan -
Another situation where the opposition does not call for the overthrow of the monarchy, but insists on better representation, cheaper food, more affordable housing, and jobs. Zarqa, which I know, remains a hotbed of dissidence, just as it produced some al Qaida secret operatives – terrorists. Years ago they did the same.
Sudan -
North Sudanese forces are massing some 100 km north of Abiya, while Southern forces are massing near the lakes. Expect an attempt by the North to gut the Southern forces, using armor, artillery and aircraft.
This great war that rages from Mauritania to Mindinao, from Daghestan to Nigeria, will not be solved till Muhammad's practices at Medina receive as much attention as the regulations and legal casuistry of the Islamic religion, as conventionally understood.
The big differences relate to land-use and land-ownership, the rights of children (orphans) and women, a lack of clergy – Muhammad had none and couldn't imagine such a hierarchy – his diplomacy, relating to non-Muslims; to violence against civilians, to those who cause distress, fear and terror, and war.
Somalia -
African Union (Ugandan) forces beat back packs of youths heavily armed, led by die-hard Muslim pretenders, effectively denying the Somali people a government. “It's slow work, house by house.” We need keep in mind that the human frontal cortex does not fully mature till the early 20's. Youth can be dangerous in six or eight ways, and the revolutions in the Arab world, have been taken from those who started them. For what do young people know? They are more apt to demonize, fall for the politics of symbolic appeal.
Speculum is 'mirror' in Latin, while 'mirror' is mira'a in Arabic. The dictionaries says 'mirror' comes through the Old French from the Latin 'mirabilis' 'a wonderful thing.' Mira'a is the 4th form masdar or verbal noun, of the Arab root-verb ra'a 'to see into.'
About the author: John Paul Maynard has studied Arabic, Persian and Turkic literature since 1970. He has lived and worked in eight Islamic societies, working for NGOs and as an NGO. An independent diplomat, he has operated in Russia and Serbia, and in Sweden and Switzerland, as well as Central Asia and the Middle East. Since 1988, he has published of the Middle East Speculum Report, a newsletter, now on line, and The Central Asian Law Review, published irregularly but soon to have its own web site. He has taught in colleges in New England and holds degrees from Wesleyan and Harvard Universities.
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