On Libya, Syria and Bahrain

I feel like I should voice out what I think of all that’s happening in the Middle East:

Libya: The Libyans’ celebratory gestures are definitely too premature and hasty. In fact, I don’t consider Libya to have succeeded in its revolution. The most successful revolution has been in Tunisia, where the population is much more educated, aware and civilized. They overthrew their regime through collective populist action and it worked, and I believe that democracy will evolve in the country. However, in Libya, the opposition was directly armed by Western counterparts that are now fighting over its oil resources. The New York Times had a huge piece about it and DemocracyNow! posted critical analysis of the situation there. I was following the news on Libya very carefully, and felt very – weirdly – uncomfortable  as I watched the rebels take over most of Tripoli, and didn’t know why. But looking back, it was because there were no women or children celebrating– it was only armed young men dancing in the streets and shooting their guns in the air, stepping on Gaddafi’s pictures and destroying his idols. The revolution was violent, and the violence was sponsored by the NATO. Sadly, I think Libya’s lost.

Syria: Asad Abukhalil summarizes progressive attitudes towards the situation in Syria very eloquently:

There are real divisions among progressives regarding the attitude to the uprising in Syria.  I can, from even communicating with people I know, discern three trends.  One trend supports the regime on the count that the enemies of the Syrian regime (Israel, US, Saudi Arabia, etc) are the enemies of all progressives and that a real conspiracy is targeting the Syrian regime not for its repression but for its stance on Israel.  Many progressives among the SSNP take this stance, for example.  Another strend holds that the Syrian regime should not be spared regardless of its stance toward Israel, which is weak at best, and that support for Arab uprisings should be universal regardless of the verbal pronouncements of the regime.  This trends faults those who refuse to speak out against the Syrian regime for fear of sounding like the rhetoric of the Arab counter-revolution which is mangaged by GCC and is opposed to the Syrian regime.  I count myself as part of the 3rd trend: a trend that opposes the Syrian regime and calls for its overthrow but also agrees that there is indeed a plot by the Arab counter-revolution in Syria.  This trend is also deeply suspicious of the dominant movement in the Syrian opposition (the Muslim Brotherhood and their liberal clients), and view them as tools of Saudi policy in the region.  Members of the second trend disagree and consider any criticisms of the Syrian opposition to be distracting and diversionary, and even unfair.  Members of the 1st trend use the connection and ideology of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to discredit the entire opposition movement in Syria.

I personally find myself among the first trend. I think that before hastily supporting/opposing any opposition movement as part of the Arab Spring we need to look at the bigger picture. I had a very hard time living with myself under this view, just because it first appeared to me as if I took a stance on an issue politically rather than ethically. However, I do denounce Bashar and all that he’s doing (I have no idea how that guy’s living with his conscious… if he had one). The violence and atrocious crimes he’s committed in Syria must be confronted.

But the overthrow of the entire regime is of no one’s interest but the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. The entire international community spoke against Bashar, but who spoke against Al Khalifa? Why hasn’t Saudi’s King given a speech against the atrocities committed in Yemen? It is a part of the counter-revolution movement, and it is a Western conspiracy, aided by its Middle Eastern allies, against the resistance movement against Israel. If the regime falls then we’re left with a massive imbalance of power in the region, in the favor of Israel (who just killed 29+ Palestinian civilians in its strike against Gaza, but let’s leave that to another post…). So how do we reconcile the two (oppressive regime and a vital foreign policy)? Reforms, ending of violence, and tolerating this dictator temporarily, until another player comes upfront (ahem #Egypt) in support of the resistance.

Bahrain: The revolution is still ongoing, but not as strong as it was in February. Bahrainis are the most suppressed of all, but hopefully they see the light. This documentary erased every doubt I had about the possibility of the opposition being sectarian, and reaffirmed my convictions regarding counter-revolution:

… and I’m Back

Today over lunch my friends and I started discussing the recent developments in Saudi Arabia with the women driving movement. I noted how pathetic it is for our society to debate such a natural basic human right, while some other societies have established transparent democracies, and the rest are uprising against their dictators. I guess Darwin was right, societies do evolve in civilization, and as much as it hurts me, I highly doubt there’s any other society that is more backward and uncivilized, than ours.

Religious authorities were successfully instituted, and maintained, by the government in the country— the main reason behind all our civil problems and backwardness. People blame “the people” for our slow (or nonexistent) progress, but if you consider all factors that lead to peoples’ resistance to change, you’ll see that they all stem somehow from a policy or organization instituted by the government. Or rather, no matter how resistant to progress or change society is, if the government wants to force it upon them and make a difference, it could. (Consider the cases of Saudi Aramco, KAUST, etc. I won’t elaborate on that point too much.)

Our society is not only backward for debating a basic human right, but looking at its reaction to the revolutionary movements across the Arab world, and the uprisings in Bahrain specifically… it’s absolutely hopeless. I once had hope of making an impact and developing it, but a society that does not even recognize an unattained right of democracy, or blames a just movement for liberty on sectarianism (which is an extremely cheap attempt of propaganda to curb the uprisings or turn them into a civil war rather than a revolution against authority) is in the lowest of lows on the standard of civilization, according to our world’s modern standards. And seeing that this cannot be changed, because it’s all governmentally instituted, leaves me with desperation. What can you do when your society is pathetically subnormal and you actually can’t do anything about it?

And that was my rant for the day.

Rev.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday, blog. It’s been long since I last visited you; I almost forgot about you. Sure, there was the occasional visit to reminisce about the old days, but no new posts. However, tomorrow is your very first birthday! That’s an incredible occasion, and you deserve a new post.

There have many things I wanted to blog about – double standards, internal conflicts, lots of injustices in the world… but I guess that sometimes it’s better to just keep the pain inside. To blog, you need to be really opinionated and have this consistent urge to share your opinion with the world. When this urge dies, why blog? Many friends asked why I stopped blogging, and I guess the reason is that I didn’t want to let the whole world know my views about everything. It’s true that I was overwhelmed with work and lacked free time, but that was only the easy way for saying I’m tired of opinions. The media is biased and people are (frankly) very stupid. They hear one thing from someone and they take it as a fatal fact – never consider questioning or even rechecking, so why contribute to the flow of ideas that brainwash people? I’m not here to impose my personal views on anyone and I’m certainly not looking for criticism or argument. Not to mention that this “revolutionary spirit” I had in me is sort of gone, so Cold Revolt isn’t very appropriate now. instead of looking for the flaws in society and bitching (excuse the French) about them, we might as well utilize our awareness, time and energy to actually making things better.

So, I’ve decided not to bother. There might be this occasional post (if the “urge” decided to resurrect over a persistent issue), but generally, there probably will be no more posts. I sure hope against this though.

I hope to see you before your second birthday.

Evolution.

Dr. Finkelstein at the University of Waterloo

American Economy Recovering

Although I’m not that into American politics or economics, I happen to have found this mildly interesting:

Revolution.

**Theme _seriously_ going white.

US-Israeli Relations, the Israeli Lobby, and Arabs

Israel is… a dominant state. The main reason behind its strength, influence, and well, being, is its US support. And I’m saying the US specifically and not the whole international community because the US support is frankly abnormal. Two years after Rabin’s assassination, Netanyahu said it: “The United States has given Israel – how can I tell it to this body? The United States has given Israel, apart from political and military support, munificent and magnificent assistance in the economic sphere. With America’s help, Israel has grown to be a powerful, modern state. I know that I speak for every Israeli and every Jew throughout the world when I say to you today, ‘Thank you, people of America.’”

The amount of aid the US provides Israel is incredible: in 2005, the total “direct” amount of foreign aid given to Israel by the US was about $154 billion. $154,000,000,000 is a huge number, and a very huge amount of money going out on foreign aid from a country that could spend it on health care or scientific research. Not to mention the amount of aid going to other countries (like Egypt for example) because of Israel – so they would “give Israel some slack.” As well as political (and moral) support. The US has backed Israel in every single war it started, and it has disregarded all the war crimes (by international standards, which can proven through the Goldstone report, but let’s leave that one to another post) it has committed.

My question is: why? To be honest, it hadn’t made sense to me that the US would cost itself so much in order to create a whole country in the Middle East, and give it such tremendous support, solely for materialistic motives. True, the Middle East has oil, but it would eventually run out, and I don’t believe that the US would bother spend so much on something on a motive not so sustainable. It also happens to be diversifying its oil importers and also working hard on researching alternative energy sources. The US wouldn’t start a whole country (Israel) in the place of another country and create such a vast conflict strictly for oil, so I disregard this hypothesis.

So, if it is not oil (the most logical reason; after all, it has started a whole war in Iraq for oil – regardless of what Bush says about it), then what is? The Israel lobby. This answer is so small that it might sound silly. I actually think it’s sad; that a whole country is started in the place of another country creating a whole crisis, depriving people from their land, committing crimes to human rights, violating international laws… and so on, mostly because of a lobby.

The Israeli lobby is so strong and powerful that it has succeeded, ever since 1897 through Theodor Herzl, and the Zionists have been getting stronger and stronger, taking over every field and using every resource in order to strengthen their cause. Rupert Murdoch (owner of the Fox network, Newsweek…) is only one example of how Zionists have taken advantage of media to support their causes.

Gigantic organizations like the IAPAC have immense control over US politics. In fact, the Israeli lobby does not only play a major role in reaching the final electoral decisions in American politics, but might be the main decisive factor. Politicians would get letters from the IAPAC offering them campaign funding and support if they show them support for Israel and the Israel-lobby.

They have taken over technological fields and they have proven themselves through education. Sheldon Adelson, also a pro-Israeli lobbyist, proposed a great grant for creating a center for focusing on Jewish studies in Georgetown, because it would moderate the Arab presence at the university. That is particularly important because many Georgetown graduates “end up at the State Department.”

Aside from the strong (and I shall say “smart”) lobby, Israel has been allowed to get away with many double standards and international crimes by the international community. That is because Israel should not be compared to other countries in the region; we cannot compare Israel to Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, or Iran since Israel is different. Israel is a true democracy; it is transparent, it allows freedom of speech and it gives the right of self determination, unlike all the other countries in the region. Israel also has a right to murder and torture, since it is doing it for a “peaceful” and good cause. It is killing all those Palestinian terrorists and therefore it is doing a favor to the rest of the world.

By this, I’m trying to say two things: one is that the Israeli lobby has been very successful because it is a mastermind in propaganda acts, and the second is that the Arabs need to learn. I am not here to ask the Arabs to manipulate or use twisted ways in order to get international respect or attention, but  they could at least change a little in their methods. If they act a little smarter they’d see that they could make tyrannies out of their countries (if that’s what they’re drooling on) and still have democracy and transparency and freedom and all that (or at least be able to claim them – kind of like many Western countries) and that should give them a little more international support. They could also at least try to develop; support the environment, improve Arabic media, enhance scientific research and improve education. They could maybe start granting the Arabs some civil rights.

It’s amazing how very small things (people may even think they’re negligible) could have so much power as to even start whole states in the world. It is also amazing how one group in the world could influence its shaping so drastically. Finally, the Arabs need to find themselves a solution.

Revolution.

**I missed ColdRevolt.

Closed Doors

I’m not blaming WordPress for this long break, and this isn’t really much of a compensation, but my excuse is that I’ve run out of words. I’ve used all the words in me to finish the gazillion essays I had to write in those past two weeks.

Anyway, I decided to write about something that isn’t really political or news-ish, but it’s truly breaking my heart.

I was reading a friend’s college essay, and it was about her indisputable love for dancing. She is a dancer that can’t dance. She’s so in love with dancing that she dances to the sound of the printer while it prints. I asked her if she’s even tried asking her parents to consider letting her go to a dancing school. “You want me to die? It doesn’t matter anyway; where will I work?” I told her that she could open her own dancing studio, she could perform in plays and concerts… she could do a lot. But let’s face it: this is Saudi Arabia we’re talking about. Girls can’t even sell in grocery stores and I want her to open her own dancing studio? There are way too many societal and “religious” constraints.

I looked at another friend of mine’s (who is the most artistic person I know by far) college list. Half the colleges ended with “tech” and perhaps only two of them even offered artistic majors. This girl is the best writer in the world (and is currently working on a novel), plays the piano, paints, and enjoys nothing more than photography, and she wants to study chemical engineering. She isn’t bad at science, she just doesn’t like it; yet she’s forcing herself to go into engineering because it’s the best option out there.

It’s sad to see extremely talented and gifted people forced to endure a great amount of pain in order to pursue something they have absolutely no passion for. Our country lacks opportunities for the gifted, support for their talents, and societal mentalities that accept them. The only jobs available for women are simply at hospitals, banks, schools, or Saudi Aramco. Two of which are mixed working areas, so about half the population would be against the idea of letting their sisters/wives/daughters work in them. So women are basically set into two groups: one that comes from an open minded environment, and one that doesn’t. The women of the first group can only work in medicine, engineering, banking, or teaching. The ones of the later can either work in teaching or become housewives. Those that have passions for writing, music, history, politics, sports, or anything that isn’t religion, engineering or medicine, will basically have no future (unless they’re super rich and they could afford earning degrees to solely hang them on their rooms’ walls).

We need to open more doors to people and endorse their special talents. If people don’t go to the field they’re best at or the one they’re most in love with, they wouldn’t find the creativity or innovation in them to truly go far. If we want awesomeness in the country, we must give freedom.

Revolution.

**no complaints. I _promise_ I’ll write something more decent next time.

Judaism is Not Zionism

Even though there has been a lot of publicity about the difference between Judaism and Zionism, people still don’t seem to be able to tell the difference. Especially radicals.

For example, a religion teacher in a school teaching Islamic Jurisprudence would tell her students: “A Jewish company would take the Saudi dates and change the trade mark to another Israeli one and sell it as its own.” My question is: why Jewish?

A Jew is a person following the Judaism religion. A Zionist, on the other hand, is a supporter of Israel, or in other words, an advocate of creating a Jewish-based country for the Jews in the place of Palestine.

People also don’t seem to care that much about stereotyping and its consequences. They don’t seem to realize that saying “every Zionist is a Jew” or “every Jew is a Zionist” is just like saying “every terrorist is a Muslim” or “every Muslim is a terrorist.” It’s true that Zionism is related to Judaism, but that statement isn’t necessarily true. The most obvious example: Noam Chomsky. He happens to be Jewish, but he also happens to be one of Israel’s greatest condemners. He’s a really awesome person. He wrote books and gave lectures criticizing Israel. He’s anti-Zionism and he’s Jewish! There is a Canadian organization called Not In Our Name: Jewish voices opposing Zionism. They have been creating campaigns and advocating Palestine, too.

This is what happens when religion is assorted with other things. Terms get mixed up, religion is tradition and tradition is religion, people wear veil for political reasons and forget about God… there is no open mindedness. There is no peace. The West is calling Muslims terrorists, and we criticize that not knowing that we’re doing the exact same thing with the Jews. If we want them to stop relating the two then we should do the same too. Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews.

Revolution.

**Theme going white one day. And don’t be expecting any new posts for a really long time.

Compensation

I’m really sorry I haven’t blogged for a long time. I swear it’s all WordPress’s fault. How long has it been? A month? Never again.

I tried to post things about what happened during this long respite but all the facts were gone, all the news was old. But just a brief summary:

Barrack Obama does NOT deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. This just proves that this “Swedish Academy” is nothing but a bunch of biased people that don’t know how or what to decide. What about that Afghani woman who was the first Hazara (and woman) to reach the position she reached in the government? Or were Obama’s speeches and flashy smiles more worthy than that Latin American woman who went and helped the poor in the dirt with her own hands?

Some people say he’s the most “anti-Semitic president so far.” Well, other than the fact that the term “anti-Semitic” is used wrongly anyway (since Arabs are Semitics too), he hasn’t done anything against Israel so far. He couldn’t even stop the continuous Israeli settlements through his “negotiations” – apparently the only thing he’s up to doing.

Second thing, about what happened on the Saudi National Day. Look it up on YouTube. I won’t condemn what they did, or the act of letting half of them go because of (obviously) personal connections, but the people that actually considered it an “attempt to revolt.” Yeah, right. Because these people aren’t just a bunch of uneducated, immoral, immature kids that came from Riyadh just to try have some fun. As if.

Last thing…. OK I forgot. They were a lot though.

I’ll get more relevant, authentic, and better quality stuff soon. Promise.

Revolution.

**Wordpress should seriously die. I’m very serious. What’s the point of having a blog with no access to it?

Future note: if it ever happens again that you don’t see any new posts on this blog, know that WordPress has gone back to its old irritating habits again.

So Sad

I’ve recently had a conversation with a friend about a certain Arab country. It took a sort of “what’s wrong with a family ruling the country? They’re nice!” perspective.

Can you believe that? He actually said that. He also said: “what? You want us to be like the US or the UK with the economic crisis? At least they’ve got the economy stabilized!”

Well, dear friend, let me break the news to you. They only “kept the economy stabilized” because they didn’t have a soaring economy from the first place. All these newly built buildings you’re giving reference to as “prosperity” is nothing but foreign investments.

I asked him if we can go out in the streets and protest and have demonstrations, and he said yes. Well, again dear friend, your free writing and free demonstrations have their limits. Say one thing about a member in the royal family and see where it takes you.

Not only did his hasty naïveté and narrow-mindedness aggravate me, but the realization that it’s not just him. That’s how Arab people tend to think. It’s not the first conversation I have with someone debating democracy. People would actually come against democracy, thinking what’s the need? and we’re better off and it’s a Western call. With people thinking like this, the future looks nothing but ominous from here.

I’m guessing that our very objective religious curricula and censorship actually succeeded in reaching their goal; brainwashing people. If only there’s something to be done about it.

Revolution.

**I realized that adding photos and links to the post makes the theme look less bad.