How will foreign powers determine Syria's future.
They will enable the democratic uprising to be crushed, and ordinary people will continue to live in a dictatorship. This will happen in these stages 1. The Shia and Sunni dictatorships with the aid of their superpower supporters will decide on a new dictatorship for Syria with a better sectarian balance (ie more wealthy Sunni business clans). 2. Military support for the rebels by the Sunni dictatorships will stop. 3. The new government will continue to receive outside help to murder and torture the uprising into submission. 4. Key figures in Assad's murder machine will retire in comfort and safety.
If you doubt this then consider that 1. The Middle East is really one interconnected dictatorship, the rivalries provide excuses to discredit or oppress internal opposition, the last thing they want is to defeat their enemies (ie Israeli elite need the Iranian elite, Iranian elite needs the Israeli elite, Saudi elite needs the Iranian elite.... ). 2. The real conflict in the Middle East as elsewhere is between powerful minorities and powerless majorities. 3. Ordinary people in Western countries sympathize with calls for democracy, but do not really understand how lack of democracy and economic distribution abroad is eating away their own political systems from the inside at home (in the last four decades power has been transferred from ordinary people and their democratic governments, to international financial organizations and economically powerful authoritarian governments).
Should also mention that Western governments (and Syrian apologists for oppression) will sell this betrayal as an humanitarian act to end suffering by civilians. I will ask them: Before the uprising did ordinary Syrians suffer? What has the sacrifice by tens of thousands of people achieved in the last forty years of Assad rule? Will the Syrian people ever get another chance to take back their rights? (answers Yes, Nothing, No)
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Egomaniacal Robert Fisk Talks Down Syria Democratic Struggle
Found this comment about Robert Fisk by Jazmin Medina on Al-Jazeera ( http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/empire/2012/03/201232212838378880.html ). I expanded links so you can see the disappointing truth about Robert Fisk.
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Well said !!!!!!
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Do not know if anyone will read this now. I was deeply disappointed and honestly disgusted by = Robert Fisk =. As a postscript to the comment above I should say why. He appeared to treat the immensely painful and often heroic struggle against the criminal armed gang lead by Bashar al-Assad that is running Syria , as if it was some kind of cafe discussion session, in which he was delighted to show, in his own egomaniacal estimation, how knowledgeable he was about the strange ways of the Middle East and it's people.
His status as a western reporter unafraid to report Israel-Palestine without the usual Zionist distortions, has given him cover, for his corrupt journalistic practices ( see www.hughpope.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/i-dont-read-hugh-pope-robert-fisk ). Most of his critics have been right wing fanatics with a moral blindness about apartheid in Israel. A catalog of Fisk's crimes against journalistic standards are in the March issue of well known the British investigative magazine "Private Eye" ( see www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=street_of_shame ).
Looking back at Fisk articles on Syria he was a believer back in 2000 that Bashar was a reformer. Then when the Damascus Spring ended after a year, he claimed that Bashar was still a reformer but he a powerless figure head who was being forced away from reform. The recent leaked emails and documents reveal this view to be false. Bashar and his clan have learnt well from [neighbor] Israel about the power of propaganda. Bashar's public face is just that.
Robert Fisk now expects us to believe him, when he says the Syrian Democratic Uprising is going to be crushed like the Islamist uprising in Hama in 1982 was (by Hafez Assad), and Syria is not going to end up as a war of mass murder "against the people" as waged by the Algerian government in the 1990s. Fisk has suggested in other articles that revolutions do not work, and the "Arab Spring" will be a very slow process of incremental change. If the people are patient enough not to ask for too much change too quickly, then decent rulers like Bashar will trickle out their rights over time.
This is utter unhistorical nonsense. Europe won it's democracy when autocratic regimes felt threatened by the people and needed their support to survive. The threat of the French Revolution being repeated lead to reform throughout Europe. The division of power between land owners and new industrialists, lead to restrictive parliamentary democracies extending the electoral franchise to recruit more supporters. The threat of the European revolutions of 1848 lead to further reforms. The struggle between European nations for military supremacy eventually (after WW1 and WW2) lead to governments implementing fully the rights of the people, in an effort to mobilize the masses behind government war efforts. Since the C18 and C19 there has been a revolution in armed conflict in which technology has overtaken numbers. This means dictatorships can subdue their populations will smaller armies. Consequently the threat of the "people" has diminished.
There is no way Middle Eastern dictatorships are going to evolve into democracies without the active support of outside democracies. People in Syria know that if they give up the struggle there is not going to be a better opportunity to oust the internal colonization of the Assads.
Robert Fisk needs a long holiday. Nickolas Van Dam like his inspiration Patrick Searle is an academic and lobbyist in too closely a dependent relationship with his subject. Apologist in other words.
His status as a western reporter unafraid to report Israel-Palestine without the usual Zionist distortions, has given him cover, for his corrupt journalistic practices ( see www.hughpope.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/i-dont-read-hugh-pope-robert-fisk ). Most of his critics have been right wing fanatics with a moral blindness about apartheid in Israel. A catalog of Fisk's crimes against journalistic standards are in the March issue of well known the British investigative magazine "Private Eye" ( see www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=street_of_shame ).
Looking back at Fisk articles on Syria he was a believer back in 2000 that Bashar was a reformer. Then when the Damascus Spring ended after a year, he claimed that Bashar was still a reformer but he a powerless figure head who was being forced away from reform. The recent leaked emails and documents reveal this view to be false. Bashar and his clan have learnt well from [neighbor] Israel about the power of propaganda. Bashar's public face is just that.
Robert Fisk now expects us to believe him, when he says the Syrian Democratic Uprising is going to be crushed like the Islamist uprising in Hama in 1982 was (by Hafez Assad), and Syria is not going to end up as a war of mass murder "against the people" as waged by the Algerian government in the 1990s. Fisk has suggested in other articles that revolutions do not work, and the "Arab Spring" will be a very slow process of incremental change. If the people are patient enough not to ask for too much change too quickly, then decent rulers like Bashar will trickle out their rights over time.
This is utter unhistorical nonsense. Europe won it's democracy when autocratic regimes felt threatened by the people and needed their support to survive. The threat of the French Revolution being repeated lead to reform throughout Europe. The division of power between land owners and new industrialists, lead to restrictive parliamentary democracies extending the electoral franchise to recruit more supporters. The threat of the European revolutions of 1848 lead to further reforms. The struggle between European nations for military supremacy eventually (after WW1 and WW2) lead to governments implementing fully the rights of the people, in an effort to mobilize the masses behind government war efforts. Since the C18 and C19 there has been a revolution in armed conflict in which technology has overtaken numbers. This means dictatorships can subdue their populations will smaller armies. Consequently the threat of the "people" has diminished.
There is no way Middle Eastern dictatorships are going to evolve into democracies without the active support of outside democracies. People in Syria know that if they give up the struggle there is not going to be a better opportunity to oust the internal colonization of the Assads.
Robert Fisk needs a long holiday. Nickolas Van Dam like his inspiration Patrick Searle is an academic and lobbyist in too closely a dependent relationship with his subject. Apologist in other words.
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Well said !!!!!!
Monday, November 7, 2011
Alastair Crooke's Pro Syrian Government Propaganda Echoes The Tactics Of The Corrupt Algerian FLN.
"goldenruleapplies" on the Guardian "Comment Is Free" website..................
Alastair Crooke's thesis is that the Arab Democratic Uprising is a game instigated by foreign powers and local elites to control the Middle East. All this sounds like the racist notion that people in the Middle East are fundamentally different to us. The truth is that the Middle East has been extensively internally colonized by regimes which do not represent their people or Islam. The people especially the youth are sick of it, and shout loudly a plague on all your houses.
The real parallel here is not Afghanistan as Crooke claims but the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s. In 1988 the ruling FLN (that ousted the French in the 1960s) allowed multi party elections. When the fairly moderate Islamic Salvation Front (in French "Front Islamique du Salut" or FIS) were about to win elections in 1992, the ruling FLN cancelled elections. The result was a radicalization of the regime's opposition with the creation of armed guerrilla groups. The resulting "dirty" civil war, lead to 200,000 deaths, 15,000 disappeared and the extensive use of extreme torture as an instrument of intimidation. The conflict only wound down after eight years.
The FLN created a propaganda campaign to try to persuade Western governments that the opposition to their rule came from foreigners, rather than a popular rejection of their corrupt rule.
"Within months of the latest insurgency, the Algerian government, in effect run by a coterie of privileged and immensely powerful army officers, cast around the Middle East for inspiration in their struggle against 'fundamentalist terrorism'. They produced books and pamphlets on the roots of Islamic revivalism in an effort to persuade diplomats and foreign journalists that the roots of Algerian 'terrorism' lay in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, in Pakistan, in Saudi Arabia ..... The Algerians searched everywhere - anywhere - for some way of proving that the Algerian insurgency was not Algerian."
[pp649 Robert Frisk " The Great War For Civilization." 2005]
This is exactly what Bashar al-Assad is dong. He is paying foreign public relations companies to do the work. What is Beirut based "Conflicts Forum" and what previous statements have they made? They claimed for example that the Iranian government did not steal the 2009 election.
I assume Bashar is hoping to be like the FLN who clung to power, and continue to have Syria run by the same corrupt elite. The difference is that in Syria, it has been and will be, mostly Shia Alawites killing and torturing mostly Sunnis. If there is no intervention then Assad will create the regional conflict that he is warning will be created if there is intervention. Iran will be drawn in further as the self declared defender of Shia Islam, while Saudi Arabia will be arming Sunnis some of whom will be foreign radical salifists.
We must trust in the ordinary people in Syria who are putting everything on the line for their human rights. We must support them now. They are calling to us directly.
Alastair Crooke's thesis is that the Arab Democratic Uprising is a game instigated by foreign powers and local elites to control the Middle East. All this sounds like the racist notion that people in the Middle East are fundamentally different to us. The truth is that the Middle East has been extensively internally colonized by regimes which do not represent their people or Islam. The people especially the youth are sick of it, and shout loudly a plague on all your houses.
The real parallel here is not Afghanistan as Crooke claims but the Algerian Civil War of the 1990s. In 1988 the ruling FLN (that ousted the French in the 1960s) allowed multi party elections. When the fairly moderate Islamic Salvation Front (in French "Front Islamique du Salut" or FIS) were about to win elections in 1992, the ruling FLN cancelled elections. The result was a radicalization of the regime's opposition with the creation of armed guerrilla groups. The resulting "dirty" civil war, lead to 200,000 deaths, 15,000 disappeared and the extensive use of extreme torture as an instrument of intimidation. The conflict only wound down after eight years.
The FLN created a propaganda campaign to try to persuade Western governments that the opposition to their rule came from foreigners, rather than a popular rejection of their corrupt rule.
"Within months of the latest insurgency, the Algerian government, in effect run by a coterie of privileged and immensely powerful army officers, cast around the Middle East for inspiration in their struggle against 'fundamentalist terrorism'. They produced books and pamphlets on the roots of Islamic revivalism in an effort to persuade diplomats and foreign journalists that the roots of Algerian 'terrorism' lay in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, in Pakistan, in Saudi Arabia ..... The Algerians searched everywhere - anywhere - for some way of proving that the Algerian insurgency was not Algerian."
[pp649 Robert Frisk " The Great War For Civilization." 2005]
This is exactly what Bashar al-Assad is dong. He is paying foreign public relations companies to do the work. What is Beirut based "Conflicts Forum" and what previous statements have they made? They claimed for example that the Iranian government did not steal the 2009 election.
I assume Bashar is hoping to be like the FLN who clung to power, and continue to have Syria run by the same corrupt elite. The difference is that in Syria, it has been and will be, mostly Shia Alawites killing and torturing mostly Sunnis. If there is no intervention then Assad will create the regional conflict that he is warning will be created if there is intervention. Iran will be drawn in further as the self declared defender of Shia Islam, while Saudi Arabia will be arming Sunnis some of whom will be foreign radical salifists.
We must trust in the ordinary people in Syria who are putting everything on the line for their human rights. We must support them now. They are calling to us directly.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Osama Bin Laden Is Dead What Of His Vision ?
Osama Bin Laden one of the founders of Al-Qaeda ("The Base") is dead. Killed on the 1st May by US marines in a house just next to one of Pakistan's major military colleges, where he had lived for five years. He joined the fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s when he became disgusted with the greed of the Saudi elite, of which he was a part. The Al-Qaeda doctrine is that the Muslim world has lost it's way morally and politically. Only their form of radical Sunni theology can free it from the overwhelming external and internal colonization that dominates it today. Their only success seems to have been the Taliban rule of Afghanistan of the 1990s , which became a byword for the cruelty of fundamentalist religion.
If countries in the Middle East achieve democracy then this will be a real death blow to Al-Qaeda. Will Egypt and Tunisia achieve real democracy? Will the war in Libya end, with the pro democracy rebels still in charge? Will the Assad regime fall in Syria, or will it continue to be propped up by Iran, China, Russia, Turkey ....? Will the Saudi and Gulf oil states move to constitutional monarchy, and take seriously their Islamic duty to invest in the human resources of the Arab world? When all this has happened is the time to celebrate, and say that all that Osama Bin Laden stood for was wrong. I pray for that day. God bless you.
If countries in the Middle East achieve democracy then this will be a real death blow to Al-Qaeda. Will Egypt and Tunisia achieve real democracy? Will the war in Libya end, with the pro democracy rebels still in charge? Will the Assad regime fall in Syria, or will it continue to be propped up by Iran, China, Russia, Turkey ....? Will the Saudi and Gulf oil states move to constitutional monarchy, and take seriously their Islamic duty to invest in the human resources of the Arab world? When all this has happened is the time to celebrate, and say that all that Osama Bin Laden stood for was wrong. I pray for that day. God bless you.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Threats to a successful “Arab Democratic Uprising” .
The “Arab Democratic Uprising” is going to need the support of people from neighbouring countries, and from ordinary people in long established democracies outside of the region.
In Syria the large scale escalation of violent suppression by Bashir Al-Assad’s security brigades has provoked the usual suspects Russia and China, to signal that they will veto any UN security resolutions against Syria, of the type issued against Libya. Remember it was Russia and China who attempted to delay and muzzle UN Security Resolution 1973 against Gaddafi.
In Egypt Robert Frisk says in a recent article…. “Field Marshal Tantawi, the head of the Egyptian army, for example, is now running Egypt. Yet he is not only a close friend of America, but a childhood and lifelong friend of Mubarak, who was allowed to whinge the usual ex-dictator’s self-congratulatory excuses on al-Arabia television (‘my reputation, my integrity and my military and political record’) prior to his own questioning – and inevitable emergency entry into hospital. When the latest Tahrir Square crowds also called for Tantawi’s resignation, the field marshal’s mask slipped. He sent his troops to ‘cleanse’ the square.”[ British Newspaper: The Independent “A long Time Coming” 15/4/2011 Robert Fisk]
Added to this Saudi Arabia is willing to underwrite any Gulf State in fighting democracy, as it has done in Bahrain. They are also offering help to the Syrian regime, in addition to help from long term ally Iran. While Algeria is suspected of secretly sending arms to Gaddafi’s regime, via it’s 600 miles shared border.
Going back to Robert Fisk’s article “And now let’s go a little further. On 31 March, the Israelis – who have steadfastly opposed the overthrow of the Middle East’s dictators – published a series of photo-reconnaissance pictures of southern Lebanon, supposedly marking the exact locations of 550 Hezbollah bunkers, 300 ‘monitoring sites’ and 100 weapons storage facilities run by Syria’s Lebanese Shia militia allies in the country. They had been built, the Israelis claimed, next to hospitals, schools and public utilities. The documentation was fake. Visits to locations marked on the map uncovered no such bunkers. Indeed, the real Hezbollah bunkers known to the Lebanese are not marked on the map. The Hezbollah quickly understood the meaning. ‘They are setting us up for the next war’, a veteran Hezbollah ruffian from the village of Jibchit told me……. But last week, the Turkish air force forced down an Iranian transport aircraft supposedly flying over Diyarbakir en route to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo with ‘auto spare parts’. On board the Ilyushin-76, the Turks found 60 Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, 14 BKC machine guns, 8,000 rounds of ammunition, 560 60mm mortar shells and 1288 120mm mortar shells.” Forget Facebook. These are not part of any Arab “reawakening” or “uprising”, but further supplies for the Hezbollah to use in their next conflict with Israel. All of which raises a question. Is there a better way of taking people’s minds off [democratic] revolution than a new war against an enemy which has resolutely opposed the democratisation of the Arab world?”. [The Independent “The Arab awakening began not in Tunisia this year, but in Lebanon in 2005” 15/4/2011 Robert Frisk]
He is suggesting there is evidence of immanent preparations for another Lebanon war, which would simultaneously serve the purposes of Syria, Iran and Israel. It would provide the perfect excuse for the regimes involved to crack down on internal revolt.
In the same article Robert Frisk goes on to warn of the use of the phrase “civil war”, which was used by Western governments to delay intervention in halting the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia. Many western media commentators have wanted to apply this concept on the basis of the filmiest evidence to the conflict in Libya, without I think a great deal of success.
Ordinary Arabs have direct experience of their rulers trying to encourage sectarian conflict to increase their hold on power. The internal colonizers using the same tactics as the external colonizers of empires past. Ordinary people have seen the consequences following the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and learnt the lesson that avoiding sectarian conflict is essential, rather than the misunderstanding picked up by western media pundits that sectarian conflict is inevitable.
It is the responsibility of people in Western countries to question their governments lack of intervention based on the excuse of “civil war”. It is also our responsibility to stop our government’s foreign polices, returning to the old policy of seeing the Middle East as a region fought over by rival powers using local dictators to secure advantage. This has been the case since the late nineteenth century, and the rivalry continues with the rise of China. In the past undemocratic foreign policies have been pursued by democracies, because their publics have been misinformed and disinterested. This must stop. Helping to secure true democracy abroad is in the interests of ordinary people in Western countries (rather than sometimes immoral elites) . It is evidently moral, and will in the long term secure real advantage over our undemocratic rivals.
In Syria the large scale escalation of violent suppression by Bashir Al-Assad’s security brigades has provoked the usual suspects Russia and China, to signal that they will veto any UN security resolutions against Syria, of the type issued against Libya. Remember it was Russia and China who attempted to delay and muzzle UN Security Resolution 1973 against Gaddafi.
In Egypt Robert Frisk says in a recent article…. “Field Marshal Tantawi, the head of the Egyptian army, for example, is now running Egypt. Yet he is not only a close friend of America, but a childhood and lifelong friend of Mubarak, who was allowed to whinge the usual ex-dictator’s self-congratulatory excuses on al-Arabia television (‘my reputation, my integrity and my military and political record’) prior to his own questioning – and inevitable emergency entry into hospital. When the latest Tahrir Square crowds also called for Tantawi’s resignation, the field marshal’s mask slipped. He sent his troops to ‘cleanse’ the square.”[ British Newspaper: The Independent “A long Time Coming” 15/4/2011 Robert Fisk]
Added to this Saudi Arabia is willing to underwrite any Gulf State in fighting democracy, as it has done in Bahrain. They are also offering help to the Syrian regime, in addition to help from long term ally Iran. While Algeria is suspected of secretly sending arms to Gaddafi’s regime, via it’s 600 miles shared border.
Going back to Robert Fisk’s article “And now let’s go a little further. On 31 March, the Israelis – who have steadfastly opposed the overthrow of the Middle East’s dictators – published a series of photo-reconnaissance pictures of southern Lebanon, supposedly marking the exact locations of 550 Hezbollah bunkers, 300 ‘monitoring sites’ and 100 weapons storage facilities run by Syria’s Lebanese Shia militia allies in the country. They had been built, the Israelis claimed, next to hospitals, schools and public utilities. The documentation was fake. Visits to locations marked on the map uncovered no such bunkers. Indeed, the real Hezbollah bunkers known to the Lebanese are not marked on the map. The Hezbollah quickly understood the meaning. ‘They are setting us up for the next war’, a veteran Hezbollah ruffian from the village of Jibchit told me……. But last week, the Turkish air force forced down an Iranian transport aircraft supposedly flying over Diyarbakir en route to the northern Syrian city of Aleppo with ‘auto spare parts’. On board the Ilyushin-76, the Turks found 60 Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, 14 BKC machine guns, 8,000 rounds of ammunition, 560 60mm mortar shells and 1288 120mm mortar shells.” Forget Facebook. These are not part of any Arab “reawakening” or “uprising”, but further supplies for the Hezbollah to use in their next conflict with Israel. All of which raises a question. Is there a better way of taking people’s minds off [democratic] revolution than a new war against an enemy which has resolutely opposed the democratisation of the Arab world?”. [The Independent “The Arab awakening began not in Tunisia this year, but in Lebanon in 2005” 15/4/2011 Robert Frisk]
He is suggesting there is evidence of immanent preparations for another Lebanon war, which would simultaneously serve the purposes of Syria, Iran and Israel. It would provide the perfect excuse for the regimes involved to crack down on internal revolt.
In the same article Robert Frisk goes on to warn of the use of the phrase “civil war”, which was used by Western governments to delay intervention in halting the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia. Many western media commentators have wanted to apply this concept on the basis of the filmiest evidence to the conflict in Libya, without I think a great deal of success.
Ordinary Arabs have direct experience of their rulers trying to encourage sectarian conflict to increase their hold on power. The internal colonizers using the same tactics as the external colonizers of empires past. Ordinary people have seen the consequences following the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and learnt the lesson that avoiding sectarian conflict is essential, rather than the misunderstanding picked up by western media pundits that sectarian conflict is inevitable.
It is the responsibility of people in Western countries to question their governments lack of intervention based on the excuse of “civil war”. It is also our responsibility to stop our government’s foreign polices, returning to the old policy of seeing the Middle East as a region fought over by rival powers using local dictators to secure advantage. This has been the case since the late nineteenth century, and the rivalry continues with the rise of China. In the past undemocratic foreign policies have been pursued by democracies, because their publics have been misinformed and disinterested. This must stop. Helping to secure true democracy abroad is in the interests of ordinary people in Western countries (rather than sometimes immoral elites) . It is evidently moral, and will in the long term secure real advantage over our undemocratic rivals.
Friday, April 22, 2011
The Myth Of Democratic Inevitability
Like many people I have waited a long time for the Arab Democratic Spring. I have been both amazed and humbled by the sacrifices ordinary Arabs have made to win freedom. It is good to see all the rubbish spouted by so called experts that has demeaned Arab society, culture and religion to be exposed as rubbish. However I am also worried this pro-democracy movement could be crushed and reversed.
Recent sociological theory on the transformation of societies to democracy ("democratization") claims that democratic change is inevitable due to the creation of middle classes, reaction to inequality and the inherent inefficiency and corruption of autocratic systems. The idea is to promote peaceful economic and political cooperation between states and wait for autocratic states to sort their own internal political systems.
It is therefore not very surprising, given the severe problems following politically botched interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current theories of democratization, that it is fashionable to heavily criticize intervention in pro-democracy struggles in the Middle East.
China and Russia are authoritarian regimes. According to the Democracy Index 2010 rankings (Economist Intelligence Unit) China is 136th and Russia is 107th , while the US is 17th and the UK 19th (what unites them however is they all have an equal veto vote in the UN's security council, what then of the reasonableness of this organization's mandates?). Both China and Russia are stable and are making economic progress, with no movement towards democracy.
A recent paper "The Myth of the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail" by Deudney and Ikenberry 2009, makes the now standard arguments for the inevitability of democracy. It presents a false dichotomy between autocracy and full democracy. Recent events in Libya, Syria and Bahrain show repressive states crushing mass protests demanding freedom and equality with well armed security brigades. Given the state of sophisticated military technology available to today's unprincipled despot, what power does the fear of mass revolt really have? The arguments of accommodating the emerging middle classes and increasing economic efficiency still apply. Therefore the autocracy gives way to a hybrid system with wider democracy and strong legal protection (except for the poor), but which still leaves a large percentage of the consequently poor population with no representation.
Many Indians claim that there own country is like this. Aravind Adiga, author of "White Tiger"(2008) explained in an interview in 2009 with Brad Frenette. "The age old divide between the rich and poor takes a heavy toll on people who bear the brunt of poverty; leading impoverished lives. The chasm between the haves and have-nots defies all logic and reason. The burgeoning nexus between the corrupt public servants and the perverted political class is devouring the lesser mortals. This rot is not just killing but soul destroying. In the largest democracy of the world, BPL [Below Poverty Line] families are at the receiving end, used as pawns to be exploited and eliminated. There seem to be just two classes- the oppressor and the oppressed; the victor and the victim that define our social fabric." India is ranked 40th in the Economist rankings, despite the state sanctioned political violence that allows everyone to vote, but only some people to stand for election.
I know that the increase in the percentage of people who could vote, and concessions made to the poor in general, in nineteenth century Europe depended to a significant extent on the fear of a repeat of the French Revolution and the revolts of 1848. Democracy was then further extended in the twentieth century by the need to get entire populations motivated to fight two world wars. We underestimate in Western countries how much our success in creating democracies depended on the state of technology, that gave the masses economic as well as military power.
In summary democracy may well not prevail. If democracies do not support pro democracy revolts in other countries, then these waves of change may fail. The result will be a world in which democracies compete economically with countries with economies that only give meaningful support to small sections of their populations. The result will be a pressure for democracies to ditch their principles. In the words of President Lincoln in his famous 1858 House Divided Speech. ".....Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South." If you think this is an overblown comparison, then imagine also a world that has a climate, food, resource and population crisis. We need good governance more than ever.
Recent sociological theory on the transformation of societies to democracy ("democratization") claims that democratic change is inevitable due to the creation of middle classes, reaction to inequality and the inherent inefficiency and corruption of autocratic systems. The idea is to promote peaceful economic and political cooperation between states and wait for autocratic states to sort their own internal political systems.
It is therefore not very surprising, given the severe problems following politically botched interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current theories of democratization, that it is fashionable to heavily criticize intervention in pro-democracy struggles in the Middle East.
China and Russia are authoritarian regimes. According to the Democracy Index 2010 rankings (Economist Intelligence Unit) China is 136th and Russia is 107th , while the US is 17th and the UK 19th (what unites them however is they all have an equal veto vote in the UN's security council, what then of the reasonableness of this organization's mandates?). Both China and Russia are stable and are making economic progress, with no movement towards democracy.
A recent paper "The Myth of the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail" by Deudney and Ikenberry 2009, makes the now standard arguments for the inevitability of democracy. It presents a false dichotomy between autocracy and full democracy. Recent events in Libya, Syria and Bahrain show repressive states crushing mass protests demanding freedom and equality with well armed security brigades. Given the state of sophisticated military technology available to today's unprincipled despot, what power does the fear of mass revolt really have? The arguments of accommodating the emerging middle classes and increasing economic efficiency still apply. Therefore the autocracy gives way to a hybrid system with wider democracy and strong legal protection (except for the poor), but which still leaves a large percentage of the consequently poor population with no representation.
Many Indians claim that there own country is like this. Aravind Adiga, author of "White Tiger"(2008) explained in an interview in 2009 with Brad Frenette. "The age old divide between the rich and poor takes a heavy toll on people who bear the brunt of poverty; leading impoverished lives. The chasm between the haves and have-nots defies all logic and reason. The burgeoning nexus between the corrupt public servants and the perverted political class is devouring the lesser mortals. This rot is not just killing but soul destroying. In the largest democracy of the world, BPL [Below Poverty Line] families are at the receiving end, used as pawns to be exploited and eliminated. There seem to be just two classes- the oppressor and the oppressed; the victor and the victim that define our social fabric." India is ranked 40th in the Economist rankings, despite the state sanctioned political violence that allows everyone to vote, but only some people to stand for election.
I know that the increase in the percentage of people who could vote, and concessions made to the poor in general, in nineteenth century Europe depended to a significant extent on the fear of a repeat of the French Revolution and the revolts of 1848. Democracy was then further extended in the twentieth century by the need to get entire populations motivated to fight two world wars. We underestimate in Western countries how much our success in creating democracies depended on the state of technology, that gave the masses economic as well as military power.
In summary democracy may well not prevail. If democracies do not support pro democracy revolts in other countries, then these waves of change may fail. The result will be a world in which democracies compete economically with countries with economies that only give meaningful support to small sections of their populations. The result will be a pressure for democracies to ditch their principles. In the words of President Lincoln in his famous 1858 House Divided Speech. ".....Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South." If you think this is an overblown comparison, then imagine also a world that has a climate, food, resource and population crisis. We need good governance more than ever.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Russian Government propaganda on Arab Democratic Revolution.
Russian Government propaganda exposes why we should support Arab Democratic Revolution.
Below is the full text of an article that appeared in the British Newspaper "The Telegraph" on Tuesday 19th April, in a special supplement "Russia Now", supplied by the Russian State News Agency RIA Novosti. This piece of propaganda is the best evidence I have seen, for why Western democracies should be giving as much support as possible to the Arab Democratic Awakening.
The problems with this article are as follows:
1. If Arab countries achieve democratic transformation, then the pride of Russian citizens will no longer put up with the very limited democracy they now have to endure.
2. The problem with Tunisia is that the economy has being growing but the wealth, in this until recently brutal “police state”, has been controlled by a small elite. The democratic transformation has only started in this country.
3. The Russian 1917 Revolution is a prefect argument against the kind of non intervention that the Russian government is now urging in the Middle East. In Russia in the chaos of a country losing the First World War and with internal revolution, without foreign assistance for the provisional government, an extremist group (the Bolsheviks) were able to grab military control.
4. Gaddafi is running a police state, in which any dissent is met with torture and death. According to his government’s propaganda he enjoys popular support. Clearly this is a lie. What he does have is approximately 20,000 to 30,000 well armed and trained security brigades, who are able to terrorise an entire nation. How can you make meaningful peace agreements with this man?
5. Mr Babich then bizarrely quotes Joseph de Maistre, an 18th century staunch absolute monarchist whose ideas have been utterly rejected by every European nation, apart from perhaps Putin’s Russian Government. We should worry.
Here is the article, judge for yourself………………
“You say you want a revolution?” Russia Now , April 19 2011 .
Why aren't Russians brimming with admiration for the Arab revolutions? I have heard this question at least 20 times in the past three months. It came from BBC journalists interviewing me; from Western university professors lecturing Russian students; sometimes even from West European diplomats.
Somehow, we Russians (according to others) are never supposed to be free, A refusal to see our condition as anything but the most miserable of states crying for an immediate new revolution is seen at best as resignation before evil; at worst, as a gross injustice. "Don't you want to have the same freedom as Tunisians now have? How rotten of you not to want it! "This was a question with a readily attached answer from a friend of mine, a British journalist whose every report from Moscow starts with the words, "In another blow to Russia's democracy..."
No, I don't want to be one of those 25,800 Tunisians currently waiting for the Italian government to decide their fate as illegal immigrants on the island of Lampedusa. We Russians have learnt the hard way since 1917 - or maybe even since 1789, when the first refugees from the French Revolution started coming to Russia - that a revolution's quality is best defined by migratory flows.
Having overthrown the Tsar's autocracy in 1917, millions of Russians suddenly found themselves in the situation of émigrés, enduring such humiliations that the Tsar's "humiliating" rule seemed a paradise lost in comparison. Worse still, those who stayed in Russia, and found themselves under Lenin and Stalin, envied their relatives who had left. So, if the wind of change is so sweet as the European press describes it, why are so many people now fleeing North Africa?
But this is a different kind of revolution, my British reader will tell me, one that is not about Communism but freedom. My answer will be: how do you know which form the now flowing Arab lava will take? To the tune of heated debates about a few hundred niqabs in France, a longtime ban on this sort of Muslim dress was lifted in Tunisia and Syria, and I wouldn't be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of them appear. Why? Because Tunisia, for example, which was expected to post economic growth of 4-5% this year, will actually muster no more than 1% not a good time to have to find work for 80,000 young college graduates who will join the labour market this year in Tunisia alone. Consequently, the heightened expectations of the young are going to dash with reality, and then we shall hear the familiar slogan: "Islam is the solution."
Much has been written about the "conflict" between the Russian president and his prime minister over the Libyan problem. In reality, their two approaches reflect the complicated nature of the problem, which only self-assured ignoramuses could deny. Dmitry Medvedev explained why Russia did not block the UN Security Council's resolution on helping Libyan civilians, while Vladimir Putin expressed his doubts about the ease with which Western nations resort to force in humanitarian interventions.
Aren't there grounds for such doubts? Hope is not a strategy, as American president Barack Obama rightly said recently, and Nato action in Libya seems to be more based on hope than on actual knowledge of the situation. The hope, obviously, was that Colonel Gaddafi's defenses would collapse with the first news about French air strikes. The hope was unfounded. But now Nato members are disqualified from working as intermediaries in the Libyan conflict. Would it help if Russia and China, as well as Brazil, disqualified themselves from this role too, by giving their full support to resolution 1973?
One may try to acquit the "French George Bush," President Sarkozy, by his not having sufficient information on Libya. But who is to blame for Nato and the EU having such sketchy intelligence about the life of their close African neighbour? How did a situation arise where the French president recognizes the National Transition Council in March 2011, while the identities of two thirds of its members were still a mystery?
Of course, establishing contacts with the Libyan opposition during Gaddafi's rule was hard; talking to the "star" of the Russian opposition, Boris Nemtsov, in a fancy Moscow restaurant is much easier. But isn't it the responsibility of governments and media to see real leaders and threats instead of invented ones?
The European press and the EU's policy planners failed the Libyan exam horribly, concentrating on imaginary threats for decades. It is enough to recall the sheer amount of stories written about how to respond to Russia's eventual decision to cut gas supplies to the EU. Whole institutes and policy centres made their living on such plans. But I don't remember a single story or policy plan discussing a cut in energy supplies from Libya.
Russians learnt the hard way to appreciate the wisdom of the words of philosopher Joseph de Maistre, a refugee from the French Revolution who lived in Russia in the early 19th century: "Revolutions happen because of the government's iniquities; but no government iniquity is as bad for people as revolution itself ."The West seems to have forgotten its own wisdom on revolutions, despite the pain of its original acquisition.
Dmitry Babich is a political analyst for RIA Novosti.
(for more of this kind of worrying propaganda see http://rbth.ru/)
(for more of this kind of worrying propaganda see http://rbth.ru/)
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