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.