By John Ballard
As last Thursday's events become more distant memories, I'm coming off a high that had been building since the first of January. Normal blogging may resume in a few days, but until it does hot links keep coming faster than I can count. I'm wondering if Twitter might have an exaggerated effect on me because of my age. I know from gerontology classes that the effect of alcohol multiplies with age and old people are easier targets (for a variety of reasons) for predatory scams. I've been internet active for years, but my Twitter account is having an intoxicating effect on me like nothing I have experienced before. Amazing. And a little bit scary.
But enough navel-gazing. Here is today's string of links for readers still with me...
?Yesterday's post at The Arabist has a collection of links worth noting, including the photo to the right.
Click on the image for a bigger picture.
?Al-Qaradawi: Freedom takes priority over Islamic law from Al-Masry Al-Youm (An independent Egyptian media organization established in 2003 which includes a number of prominent Egyptian businessmen). This interesting short read puzzles together with what I posted yesterday regarding important changes taking place among Islamic leaders who in the past have been stiffly resistant to change. (Reports like this stand in sad contrast with the stubborn resistance of a swollen mass of US public opinion, both political and religious.)
Preserving the people's freedom is more important than setting up a system of Sharia (Islamic law), even though freedom remains part and parcel of Sharia, said Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Friday evening in an interview with Al Jazeera television network.
(Even as we speak a group Ron has accurately tagged as American Taliban is working hard to fasten its talons ever deeper in the GOP, many of whom are sucking up to their nutty demands for a range of reacionary social and political plays to reverse years, even decades of intelligent progress. Don't get me started...)
I am putting up this little video from The Arabist to help me calm down...
Take a moment to click the full screen icon and be sure the volume is adusted.
?THE MOROCCAN EXCEPTION by Ahmed Charai from the Foreign Policy Research Institute helps bring into balance the big picture of what has begun in MENA.
Excuse me for a moment while I pontificate...
From half a world away it is easy to lump together regions and groups with little in common other than geography, faith, politics or tribal/ethnic characteristics. Those commonalities are important but not deterministic. As any history student can tell you, the end of tyranny will not always end in rainbows and sunshine. More often than not it is replaced with another form of tyranny, sometimes worse than the ancien r�me. Those of us advocating and bragging about the virtues of non-violence should be prepared for changes that will not come about in accordance with out idealistic expectations. As the movie title said, there will be blood.
I'm an idealist, but over time my idealistic visions have been tempered by heavy doses of reality. Before being drafted as a conscientious objector I was certain that with right thinking wars and violence were not essential to bringing about change. My young mind was convinced that the success of the American civil rights movement, modeled after Ghandi's leadership in India and encouraged by a variety of similar movements around the world, was the answer to mankind's atavistic urge to overcome others by killing and violence.
But when I got past modified basic training (no weapons or hand-to-hand combat) and was assigned as the only CO among regular and conscripted troops, I quickly learned, even in the army medical service corps, there are many not only willing, but eager to kill other people. The reasons are as varied as the number, but the reasons are not important. What is important is that if that many of my peers believe that way, there is no reason to think there are not as many or more everywhere, whether officially "friend" or "enemy." I knew that as a CO I was in a small minority but had no idea how very small that minority was. I soon concluded that just as nature provides predators to keep populations in balance, these people need one another to keep their numbers in check.
Getting back to present realities, it would be easy for idealists like me to imagine that the relative non-violence witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt will be replicated across the Middle East and elsewhere as modern telecommunication lift millions of the world's citizens to a new level of understanding and intelligent choices. But as China, North Korea, Iran, Myanmar and other places clearly show, that is wishful thinking. Moreover, we have yet to find out what will happen when an armed population rises up to join the current wave of liberation movements. Yemen comes to mind. I don't know about Algeria, but it is certain that if places like Iraq and Afghanistan ever join the trend they have been taught well by America that the only path to change (excuse the reference to Mao) is through the end of a gun.
So what has all this to do with Morocco? Just this: Morocco, though a textbook example of "tyranny" in the political sense, can be expected not to experience a popular uprising such as we are witnessing in the neighborhood, for several reasons.
Why has Morocco largely been spared the popular angst and mass demonstrations that are becoming the norm across the Arab world? The government is flawed and much work is yet to be done in order to properly bring Morocco into the 21st century. Yet the government is also fundamentally stable. There are several reasons.
The first is a unique aspect of Moroccan political culture that most populous Arab countries cannot easily emulate. In a region in which political legitimacy is hard to come by, Morocco is governed by a monarchy with three centuries of continuous history in the country. The institution of the Makhzin, Moroccan Arabic for the kingdom�s administrative authority, enjoys historic popularity within the country. It is part of the fabric of Moroccan culture, woven into its music and art as well as its political and civil society institutions. King Muhammad VI himself enjoys immense popularity, particularly among the urban as well as rural poor, who largely perceive him as their champion.
But in his 11-year reign, the young king has not been content to rest on the laurels of his family tradition. To the contrary, he has made strenuous efforts to resist and overturn the dictatorial tendencies of his late father, Hasan II, whose years of rule were popularly known as the �years of lead.� Muhammad VI began his rule by relieving the late king�s long-serving and unpopular security chief, and replacing him, for the first time, with a civilian. He did so, on the backdrop of the growing strength of the country�s Islamist opposition, a menagerie of parties and extra-political movements which unsurprisingly include a local franchise of the international Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Within four years of taking the helm, the king established the first-ever truth and reconciliation commission in the Arab world, aiming redress humanitarian grievances stemming from the excesses of the previous regime. Many victims were compensated for their prior suffering. For the first time in the country�s modern history, he invited the political left to join his government in parliament. He held successive parliamentary elections in which Islamists registered unprecedented gains and became an influential component of the legislature. In the most recent parliamentary elections, voting was hailed by the French Daily Le Monde as the �Moroccan Exception� to the Arab region�s tradition of gerrymandered ballots. Though there are problems with the outcome of the election�26 parties ran candidates, and the outcome is a fractious coalition led by a technocrat prime minister�few dispute its fairness.
Go to the link for a fuller discussion. And make a mental note that as events of the coming days and weeks unfold, Morocco may be an exception to the rule. And germaine to my earlier remarks, non-violent change does not always occur because lots of citizens rise up and demand it. As the new young king demonstrates, sometimes it really can come about because of efforts of a "benevolent despot."
(Once again, I am reminded of our own aspiring rulers with good intentions, --Tea Party insurgency, Christian patriots of various stripes, libertarians, those who worship at the altar of free market enterprises and the like -- all of whom are convinced that their respective brands of a perfect state can resolve all our problems., all of whom want to take total charge as putative benevolent despots.)
?Bin Laden's nightmare in Egypt by Shibley Telhami in Politico is an excellent, short read.
He points out how vividly events in Egypt are diametrically opposite the Al Qaieda approach to bringing about social and political change.
Understandably, however, Americans are watching events with awe mixed with concern. We are divided between the exhilaration of watching peaceful public empowerment in pursuit of the values Americans hold dear and fear of the consequences for U.S. interests in the Middle East. The future of the U.S.-Egyptian relationship, the Israeli-Egyptian relationship and the power and design of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have consumed the lion�s share of the debate about U.S. interests.
But the biggest of all interests has been largely ignored: The power and pride that the peaceful masses exhibit in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities are Bin Laden�s worst nightmare. Peaceful masses, not the murder of innocents, overthrew a regime most thought was entrenched. If the demonstrators fail to fulfill their aspirations, it will be America�s nightmare.
Consider this: For at least two decades, we have known of the widening gap between governments and the public in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. The puzzle was never �When will people have reason to revolt?� but always �Why haven�t people revolted already?�
In seeking to overthrow Arab governments, long before the 9/11 horror, Al Qaeda leaders, including the second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor, told the Arab people to take on the seemingly overwhelming power of the state � with bloody attacks against its symbols. The Al Qaeda leadership insisted that militant Islam was the way. No one else seemed to have an answer.
Enter the Tunisian people and now the Egyptian people � in some of the most extraordinary peaceful non-ideological revolts in history. If they succeed, Al Qaeda may remain a force, but its public appeal will ring hollow. If they fail, the energy, the mobilization, the taste of pride and empowerment, will not go away � but could be channeled somewhere else. These forces could turn into Egypt�s and the world�s nightmare.
That is partly why Ghonim says "Failure is not an option."
Again, go to the link for a fuller discussion, including some follow-up observations fo the Muslim Brotherhood.
?And finally, Robert Fisk: Cairo's 50,000 street children were abused by this regime
Of all the commentary from this last week, this is among the saddest and most tragic.
Read and draw your own conclusions.
They are everywhere in the capital, the 50,000 street children of Cairo, Mubarak's shameful, unspoken legacy, the detritus of the poor and the defenceless, orphans and outcasts, glue-sniffers, many of them drug-addicted, as young as five, the girls often arrested and � according to the children and charity workers � sexually molested by the police.
Egyptian government statistics claim that only 5,000 beggar children live on the streets, a figure which local non-governmental organisations and Western agencies say is another Mubarak fantasy to cover up a scandal 10 times as big.
Children interviewed by The Independent on Sunday, however, have also revealed how Mubarak supporters deliberately brought children to the outskirts of Tahrir Square to throw stones at the pro-democracy supporters, how they persuaded penniless street kids to participate in their pro-Mubarak marches. Swarms of other children forced their way into the square itself because they discovered that the protesters were kind to them, feeding them sandwiches and giving them cigarettes and money.
According to one local Egyptian charity, as many as 12,000 street children were caught up in the opposing street demonstrations of the past three weeks.
"They were told it was their duty � a national patriotic act � to throw stones at the demonstrators, to do violent actions," said an Egyptian doctor in Saida Zeinab. According to the same woman, many children were hit by police rubber bullets when they found themselves on the side of the pro-democracy demonstrators. At least 12 from this district alone were taken to hospital with wounds caused by police weapons.
Ahmed � he is not sure if he is 18 or 19, but is probably much younger � saw Mariam shot. Dressed in an orange T-shirt, faded jeans,plastic sandals and a blue baseball hat, he was shy and frightened, even though the Saida Zeinab police station was burned down by angry crowds later on the same night of 28 January � when the cops fled.
"It was just before Friday prayers and we heard the police were beating people in the street," he said. "I went out and saw lots of people throwing stones � so I started throwing stones at the police.
"Everyone was throwing stones, my family, every family, because everyone hated the police.
"Mariam was taking pictures on her mobile and the police were on the roof. She had her back to the police station, but they shot her anyway. People took her to the hospital and she came out bandaged, but she said the wound still hurt and she thought someone had stolen one of her kidneys. I saw her on the street afterwards, in the Abu Riche area. Now I don't know where she is."
Read the rest . And don't forget. Truly heartbreaking.
?Gamal Mubarak behind leader's surprise attempt to retain power from The Australian.
This informative postscript from AP reveals behind the scenes last-minute moves in the hours preceding the official announcement of Mubarak's abdication of power. His son Gamal seems to have been behind his refusal to step down the evening before, which apparently everyone else in the world expected.
Their [anonymous insiders] account portrayed Mubarak as unable, or unwilling, to grasp that nothing less than his immediate departure would save the country from the chaos generated by the protests that began January 25. A senior government official said Mubarak lacked the political machinery that could give him sound advice about what was happening in the country.
"He did not look beyond what Gamal was telling him, so he was isolated politically," said the official. "Every incremental move (by Mubarak) was too little too late."
I'm left wondering how isolated the dear leader of North Korea might be from reality.
Just thinking out loud.
?An hour ago it was about six o'clock in the evening when Wael Ghonim sent a tweet from Cairo
I am in Tahrir square and can't believe the scene.
Its amazingly clean! Am proud to be Egyptian
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