Polarization and the Coherence of Light: Arab Revolutions 2011 Set the Stage for More Concerted Reforms : الاستقطاب وتماسك الخفيفة مجموعة الثورات العربية 2011 الساحة لمزيد من الإصلاحات متضافرة
Just as in Europe in 1848, all the street demonstrations failed, so too in the Arab world, except for Egypt and Tunisia, revolutions have failed. And like the liberals in 1848, the new rulers of Egypt and Tunisia are now crushing demonstrations. Iraq, Syria and Libya are like open wounds that don't heal. But elsewhere, Arab governments have been fast to open their treasuries. Young people receive money, scholarships, cars, and the possibility of employment. This happened in Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Djibouti, in Iraqi Kurdistan. More political-type (symbolic) concessions are seen in Morocco and in Algeria. POLISARIO-directed demonstrations during the summer and autumn 2010, alternated between the four huge camps around Tindouf (in the extreme SW of Algeria).Four years ago, the United Nations Security Council called for a referendum to be held as to the status of the Western Sahara. The Moroccan government just sat on it, so, just this past April, the UN announced it was scheduling another referendum: Should the Western Sahara join with Morocco and harvest the many material benefits of independence for the Sahrawi, or should it pursue definite political independence?Just as the POLISARIO refuses to go away, so the Algerian protesters disobeyed the police. That was the first 24/7 revolution. The protests began in early December, 2010, and by January 1, the unrest was seething and full of menace. There were some 11 self-immolations, most in the suburbs of Algiers and Oran, which then helped spark the immolation that set Tunisia alight. Of course the Tunisians, Moroccans and Algerians listen to each others radio programs (boosted by huge transmitters) and see the others' TV news programs. Libyans, too, were listening. For the huge Feb. 12 'manifestation' outside Algiers was held simultaneously with the first rebellions in Libya,
the same day. The same simultaneity can be seen five days later, on the 17th, when huge demonstrations rocked Tripoli and Algiers. Genocide, however it is practiced, requires that the atrocities be kept secret and that all traces of that society be eliminated. That's why there are so few reporters in Morocco's South Sahara province, or in Gaza, the West Bank, or amongst the Shi'a in Iraq and Iran. You will not find reporters in Khuzistan, or amongst the Arab Bedouin who nomadize on the gentle eastern slopes of the Hindu Kush, in Afghanistan. We can only hope they have been totally overlooked and neglected by the Taliban and the war lords. So there are many, many places where these Arab revolutions are shocking peoples' 'habits of thinking.' No one can go back to the past. And no one knows what the future has in store. The gross demonization by each side against each side may appear as normal revolutionary 'method' or 'process.' The polarization of pro- and anti-regime factions occurred years earlier, but grew out of all proportion when the police led an attack on the Tahrir Square protesters. The retreat of the police led to lawlessness, in both Egypt and in Tunisia. It is this lawlessness which is preventing any return to a normal economy, be it in Algiers, Cairo, Tunis, Aden, Sana'a, Southern and Northern Sudan, in Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Revolutions are often unfortunate. They often achieve the exact opposite of what they had hoped to achieve. Many break into civil wars. The polarization comes near to destroying the country (or countries). Family are split, brother fighting against brother, father against son, daughter against mother: one can be a revolutionary, the other, a keeper of the status quo. Inside their heads, the bonds of history are loosened. Extreme polarization is when one sides starts killing the other. In the imperial past, the fight was over space and resources, human and material. But today ideology and identity seem to be bigger factors. They go well together: the ideology is a clutch of attitudes, backed by ideas, usually not transparent, while identity takes those ideas and attitudes, expands them genetically (in, say, a family, or a firm), and operationally, (as a movement) selecting heroes, images with extraordinary courage, and luck, taken from history. This may not be the place to mention the Muslim notion of the heroic, that genre. There are a number of strains, each as much influenced by local culture as by Islam.' For example, the old Greek hero Alexander was deified as a native hero even though historically, Alexander tore out the heart of a score of West Asian societies. To the Sufis, Hallaj is a hero. He said Ana al Haq 'I am the Truth' The authorities executed him by crucifixion. Not for calling himself God, but for revealing a secret truth. Muhammad Qurayshi, Prophet of God, was a model, a hero, but one quickly distorted after his death in 632. The Qur'an says Muhammad was just one who warns – that's the only role. M. was not a universal law giver, an imperial dynast, a king, or some great scholar. He left no texts, no plans of conquest. And of course he had no use for clergy, even when new Muslims swelled the ranks. Priests and clerics he did not want. Muhammad failed to organize his legacy. Many unfortunate usurpations and delusions grew out of this failure to prepare his friends for his own death and disappearance. Muhammad was a modest man, unassuming and without pretense. He used to meditate in a cave. Once he heard voices. He couldn't stop them. He thought he was going crazy, ran home to his wife, Khadija, and said: “I'm going to kill myself.” “What do those voices say?” asked Khadija. Muhammad, who was shaking and sweating, said 'recite' and the Qur'an began. This why we sometimes say that Islam was a woman's project. Muhammad's own tribe turned against him, so he and his congregation emigrated to the city of Medina, some two hundred miles north of Mecca. There he found support and the exact possibility of re-constituting Arabian society according to a less barbaric model. Ask a Muslim “Is Muhammad's way different than the Islamic religion?” He or she will likely agree. But if you push them for details, they usually miss it. To that typical Muslim male, it's OK if the men own the land, the houses, barns, equipment, tools, while the women stay indoors working without pause all day long. Of course that's not Islamic law. Muhammad gave every family member (or firm) living in a house, shares of ownership, according to an exact mathematical formula. He also encouraged his traders and producers to solicit investment very broadly (through shares held widely). While the West was fortifying its own prison, under attacks by the Vikings, the Magyars and the Arabs , Islamic cities were flowering. The Muslims were better capitalists than we. Just look at how poor people are given access to the market.
Qaddafi basically strangled the world's middle class by jacking up the price of oil, by a factor of 7 over 42 years. Once he goes, new, more equitable, oil contracts can be signed.
Israel's far-right extremist colonizing government, led by 'Bibi' 'the Great Whiner' Netanyahu, says 'no chance for peace if Hamas and Al Fatah merge' to form a new government. But what business is it of Israel's. The Likud does not represent the best hopes of Israelis. Peace and freedom will remain just ideas, aspirations to long for but never fulfill. That's what creates the terrorists.
Enough! Americans of Jewish descent, why on earth do you support (or not complain about) a steady theft of land and water, reducing some 4 million Palestinian Arabs to a degraded kind of life barely worth living? Why the collective punishment?
If you want to control someone, put him on a long leash.
-JPM Amherst, Massachusetts 5/13/2011
Just as in Europe in 1848, all the street demonstrations failed, so too in the Arab world, except for Egypt and Tunisia, revolutions have failed. And like the liberals in 1848, the new rulers of Egypt and Tunisia are now crushing demonstrations. Iraq, Syria and Libya are like open wounds that don't heal. But elsewhere, Arab governments have been fast to open their treasuries. Young people receive money, scholarships, cars, and the possibility of employment. This happened in Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Djibouti, in Iraqi Kurdistan. More political-type (symbolic) concessions are seen in Morocco and in Algeria. POLISARIO-directed demonstrations during the summer and autumn 2010, alternated between the four huge camps around Tindouf (in the extreme SW of Algeria).Four years ago, the United Nations Security Council called for a referendum to be held as to the status of the Western Sahara. The Moroccan government just sat on it, so, just this past April, the UN announced it was scheduling another referendum: Should the Western Sahara join with Morocco and harvest the many material benefits of independence for the Sahrawi, or should it pursue definite political independence?Just as the POLISARIO refuses to go away, so the Algerian protesters disobeyed the police. That was the first 24/7 revolution. The protests began in early December, 2010, and by January 1, the unrest was seething and full of menace. There were some 11 self-immolations, most in the suburbs of Algiers and Oran, which then helped spark the immolation that set Tunisia alight. Of course the Tunisians, Moroccans and Algerians listen to each others radio programs (boosted by huge transmitters) and see the others' TV news programs. Libyans, too, were listening. For the huge Feb. 12 'manifestation' outside Algiers was held simultaneously with the first rebellions in Libya,
the same day. The same simultaneity can be seen five days later, on the 17th, when huge demonstrations rocked Tripoli and Algiers. Genocide, however it is practiced, requires that the atrocities be kept secret and that all traces of that society be eliminated. That's why there are so few reporters in Morocco's South Sahara province, or in Gaza, the West Bank, or amongst the Shi'a in Iraq and Iran. You will not find reporters in Khuzistan, or amongst the Arab Bedouin who nomadize on the gentle eastern slopes of the Hindu Kush, in Afghanistan. We can only hope they have been totally overlooked and neglected by the Taliban and the war lords. So there are many, many places where these Arab revolutions are shocking peoples' 'habits of thinking.' No one can go back to the past. And no one knows what the future has in store. The gross demonization by each side against each side may appear as normal revolutionary 'method' or 'process.' The polarization of pro- and anti-regime factions occurred years earlier, but grew out of all proportion when the police led an attack on the Tahrir Square protesters. The retreat of the police led to lawlessness, in both Egypt and in Tunisia. It is this lawlessness which is preventing any return to a normal economy, be it in Algiers, Cairo, Tunis, Aden, Sana'a, Southern and Northern Sudan, in Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Revolutions are often unfortunate. They often achieve the exact opposite of what they had hoped to achieve. Many break into civil wars. The polarization comes near to destroying the country (or countries). Family are split, brother fighting against brother, father against son, daughter against mother: one can be a revolutionary, the other, a keeper of the status quo. Inside their heads, the bonds of history are loosened. Extreme polarization is when one sides starts killing the other. In the imperial past, the fight was over space and resources, human and material. But today ideology and identity seem to be bigger factors. They go well together: the ideology is a clutch of attitudes, backed by ideas, usually not transparent, while identity takes those ideas and attitudes, expands them genetically (in, say, a family, or a firm), and operationally, (as a movement) selecting heroes, images with extraordinary courage, and luck, taken from history. This may not be the place to mention the Muslim notion of the heroic, that genre. There are a number of strains, each as much influenced by local culture as by Islam.' For example, the old Greek hero Alexander was deified as a native hero even though historically, Alexander tore out the heart of a score of West Asian societies. To the Sufis, Hallaj is a hero. He said Ana al Haq 'I am the Truth' The authorities executed him by crucifixion. Not for calling himself God, but for revealing a secret truth. Muhammad Qurayshi, Prophet of God, was a model, a hero, but one quickly distorted after his death in 632. The Qur'an says Muhammad was just one who warns – that's the only role. M. was not a universal law giver, an imperial dynast, a king, or some great scholar. He left no texts, no plans of conquest. And of course he had no use for clergy, even when new Muslims swelled the ranks. Priests and clerics he did not want. Muhammad failed to organize his legacy. Many unfortunate usurpations and delusions grew out of this failure to prepare his friends for his own death and disappearance. Muhammad was a modest man, unassuming and without pretense. He used to meditate in a cave. Once he heard voices. He couldn't stop them. He thought he was going crazy, ran home to his wife, Khadija, and said: “I'm going to kill myself.” “What do those voices say?” asked Khadija. Muhammad, who was shaking and sweating, said 'recite' and the Qur'an began. This why we sometimes say that Islam was a woman's project. Muhammad's own tribe turned against him, so he and his congregation emigrated to the city of Medina, some two hundred miles north of Mecca. There he found support and the exact possibility of re-constituting Arabian society according to a less barbaric model. Ask a Muslim “Is Muhammad's way different than the Islamic religion?” He or she will likely agree. But if you push them for details, they usually miss it. To that typical Muslim male, it's OK if the men own the land, the houses, barns, equipment, tools, while the women stay indoors working without pause all day long. Of course that's not Islamic law. Muhammad gave every family member (or firm) living in a house, shares of ownership, according to an exact mathematical formula. He also encouraged his traders and producers to solicit investment very broadly (through shares held widely). While the West was fortifying its own prison, under attacks by the Vikings, the Magyars and the Arabs , Islamic cities were flowering. The Muslims were better capitalists than we. Just look at how poor people are given access to the market.
في الماضي الامبراطوري ، وكان الصراع على الفضاء والموارد ، البشرية والمادية. ولكن الفكر والهوية اليوم يبدو أن
أكبر العوامل. هناك خطوات عديدة في ما بينStill today, the Algerian special police and army intel squats and quants, corporate cadets, do not hesitate to attack peaceful demonstrators. But there is a 'depth of understanding,' regarding violence and extreme sectarian polarization,which keeps the lid of the protest. Algeria fought a vicious 8-year war of independence, and then in the 1990s, another decade just as bloody, when the secular coastal populations waged war against the self-described 'Muslims.' Anyone who kills innocent Muslims is not a Muslim, obviously. On the 13th, in Syria, the regime seems to be restraining its police/intel forces,
instead of firing into the protesters, they just run them over with their personal cars.
'Something has to give.' Some 900 civilians have been gunned down. Our understanding is
that a small low-intensity civil war will occupy extreme elements on all sides.
As strong as the Syrian army is, the lower ranks are largely Sunni Muslim. We saw how they repeatedly attacked unarmed demonstrators in Dera'a and Al Homs. Weeks ago we were saying, how strange it was that there were no demonstrations in Syria'a largest cities: Damascus and Aleppo (Haleb). But today we see demonstrations in both, but they are not demonstrations, but running gun battles, as democratic partisans keep unflanking the army. Al Asad has put some 160 tanks plus unknown APCs in and around Homs - that three armor divisions. Maybe only two, with a mechanized infantry division, and some SF intervention. The message seems to be "Don't provoke us and we will not shoot you."
Realistically, I do not see any overthrow of the current regime. In Syria, the revolution is going from bad to worst. The Syrian authorities seem confident that they've detained the "armed gangs behind the violence and chaos." Any victory, for any party, seems far-fetched, unlikely.
that a small low-intensity civil war will occupy extreme elements on all sides.
As strong as the Syrian army is, the lower ranks are largely Sunni Muslim. We saw how they repeatedly attacked unarmed demonstrators in Dera'a and Al Homs. Weeks ago we were saying, how strange it was that there were no demonstrations in Syria'a largest cities: Damascus and Aleppo (Haleb). But today we see demonstrations in both, but they are not demonstrations, but running gun battles, as democratic partisans keep unflanking the army. Al Asad has put some 160 tanks plus unknown APCs in and around Homs - that three armor divisions. Maybe only two, with a mechanized infantry division, and some SF intervention. The message seems to be "Don't provoke us and we will not shoot you."
Realistically, I do not see any overthrow of the current regime. In Syria, the revolution is going from bad to worst. The Syrian authorities seem confident that they've detained the "armed gangs behind the violence and chaos." Any victory, for any party, seems far-fetched, unlikely.
In the Yemen, the protests have persisted for 3 months. All the large population centers, Ta'izz, Al Hudayda, Aden, Makallah, Ma'rib, and Sana'a, have had their protests. The demand is the removal of Ali Abdullah Saleh. But he (and his friends and family) are not budging till they get legal immunity from prosecution.
Yemen of course is already subject to 'compound irredentism,' that is, the south and the north and east are slowly diverging, which means elements might merge. Al Qaidah, under the American Anwar Auwaki, is operating freely in the (very) remote east (Minwak, Hisn al 'Abr, Saywun, Shibam with a port at Al Ghaydah in the Wadi Al-Jiz'.) All this is deja vu all over again – these eastern regions were the killing fields, in an insurrection backed by Nasser in Egypt, and defeated by combined forces of the Sultan of Oman, the Shah of Iran and the American CIA. The only witness I've interviewed says simply: “They were butchers, all of them.”
Tribes control Yemen outside Sana'a. The tribes don't like educated secular young people, but they would rather not back the government. That is why we see in the Yemen an odd 3-way stalemate between pro- and anti-gov. protesters, separated by the army. And at least seven discreet polities are in rebellion.
Remember, Saleh came from the army and intel services: he could be, as president, neither a royalist or a communist, or an Islamist. He receives over half his money from Saudi Arabia, the EU, Japan and the USA. Closer to home, he sought a balance of tribal influence. If he goes, can the secular democrats possibly prevent the de facto break-up of the Yemen? Opposition to the Saleh apparat – and support for it – is making for strange bedfellows. What new armed groups are forming out of mergers between enemy terrorist cells and tribal vendettas, can only be imagined. Who is in bed with whom will be determined when dawn arrives.
Yemen of course is already subject to 'compound irredentism,' that is, the south and the north and east are slowly diverging, which means elements might merge. Al Qaidah, under the American Anwar Auwaki, is operating freely in the (very) remote east (Minwak, Hisn al 'Abr, Saywun, Shibam with a port at Al Ghaydah in the Wadi Al-Jiz'.) All this is deja vu all over again – these eastern regions were the killing fields, in an insurrection backed by Nasser in Egypt, and defeated by combined forces of the Sultan of Oman, the Shah of Iran and the American CIA. The only witness I've interviewed says simply: “They were butchers, all of them.”
Tribes control Yemen outside Sana'a. The tribes don't like educated secular young people, but they would rather not back the government. That is why we see in the Yemen an odd 3-way stalemate between pro- and anti-gov. protesters, separated by the army. And at least seven discreet polities are in rebellion.
Remember, Saleh came from the army and intel services: he could be, as president, neither a royalist or a communist, or an Islamist. He receives over half his money from Saudi Arabia, the EU, Japan and the USA. Closer to home, he sought a balance of tribal influence. If he goes, can the secular democrats possibly prevent the de facto break-up of the Yemen? Opposition to the Saleh apparat – and support for it – is making for strange bedfellows. What new armed groups are forming out of mergers between enemy terrorist cells and tribal vendettas, can only be imagined. Who is in bed with whom will be determined when dawn arrives.
Libya: Qaddafi and his people were sure that time was on their side, but, unfortunately for them, time is on the side of the citizens of Libya, and their 'NATO plus' forces. On the 11th, rebel democratic fighters in hard-pressed Mishrata (Misurata) proved successful in driving Qaddafi forces out of the city, securing the port and the airport. For some days, Qaddafi has been hiding out in private homes and swank hotels, but rumor says he was wounded, and that he left Tripoli. Too much heat in Tripolitania, as NATO conducts its 6,000th bombing run in just two months. My guess is that he's moved to Sabha, in the center west. But he may also be hiding out in a camp in the desert. Will the bedouin kill him? Too many tribal people were treated badly. Even as we speak, there are some 30 groups searching for him. Time is not on his side. Will Saif al Islam call a unilateral ceasefire? The poor guy totally defamed himself.
Qaddafi basically strangled the world's middle class by jacking up the price of oil, by a factor of 7 over 42 years. Once he goes, new, more equitable, oil contracts can be signed.
Israel's far-right extremist colonizing government, led by 'Bibi' 'the Great Whiner' Netanyahu, says 'no chance for peace if Hamas and Al Fatah merge' to form a new government. But what business is it of Israel's. The Likud does not represent the best hopes of Israelis. Peace and freedom will remain just ideas, aspirations to long for but never fulfill. That's what creates the terrorists.
Enough! Americans of Jewish descent, why on earth do you support (or not complain about) a steady theft of land and water, reducing some 4 million Palestinian Arabs to a degraded kind of life barely worth living? Why the collective punishment?
If you want to control someone, put him on a long leash.
-JPM Amherst, Massachusetts 5/13/2011
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