Tweet
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
I hope it spreads!
I hope it spreads!
-
For the first time in more than 600 years, Armenia is free and independent, and we are therefore obligated
to place our national interests ahead of our personal gains or aspirations.
http://www.armenianhighland.com/main.html -
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
Israel isn't the center of the Mideast, or of the world
The problem with Orientalist discourse of our commentators − which sees the world through the prism of the Shin Bet Security Service − is that it helps to seal off the ghetto into which we are gradually locking ourselves, a ghetto within the Middle East and within world history.
By Yitzhak Laor
Since the 18th century, revolution has shaped the world and its consciousness as a universal experience of popular sovereignty, from east to west, from north to south. But in the face of the Egyptian revolution, a kind of mean-spiritedness has been evident here in Israel − for example, in the television commentary. Commentators and moderators never stopped giving grades for behavior. A huge comet flashed past us, and Channel 2 commentator’s muttered, like the survivor of a traffic accident: Had they only suppressed the demonstrations at the start, everything would have been different.
Again and again, they searched for Islamic signs in the pictures of the masses, as though they were immigration officials checking for smallpox. Others were excited to discover signs that reminded them of “us”: Facebook, young people speaking English, and of course women in jeans. There’s nothing like a woman’s thighs as an index of progress.
But the person who deserves the prize for folly is Dr. Oded Eran, formerly our ambassador to Jordan. He suggested organizing elections in Egypt under European supervision, to ensure that monitors would turn a blind eye to fraud by the regime during the vote count.
For years, our Orientalists saw a danger in (secular) Arab nationalism. Both the right and the left examined Arab intellectuals with a fine-toothed comb in order to prove that they were “pan-Arabists.” What lay behind this, always, was a colonialist questioning of their right to self-determination on a par with our own standards.
But today, when people no longer demonstrate in Lebanon’s squares on behalf of Lebanese Arabism, and when nobody is singing paeans to the Arab nation in the streets of Cairo, our examiners are rewriting the questionnaire: Instead of “nationalists,” they are looking for “religious people.”
The problem with such discourse − which sees the world through the prism of the Shin Bet Security Service, with no inhibitions and no curiosity about what is unique to Egypt − is that it helps to seal off the ghetto into which we are gradually locking ourselves, a ghetto within the Middle East and within world history. We should recall Israel’s attitude to the nationalization of the Suez Canal, the “rotten business” we perpetrated in Egypt in the early 1950s, the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the affinity between these events and our alliance with the shah of Iran and his murderous security services, and the affinity between all these and the coronation of Bachir Gemayel as Lebanon’s ruler on the broken blades of Israel Defense Forces bayonets.
Forget about the strategic dimension. The issue is that military interests have always trained intellectual integrity and analysis to provide them with justifications and the status of “the truth.” The adoption of the region’s oppressive elites was carried out with the help of Shimon Peres-style language laundering and constant conciliatory gestures toward the West: We’ll be a base for you in the heart of darkness − even now, when the West is turning its back on these politics. After all, that is the only historical significance these events have as far as we are concerned: The United States no longer needs this offer.
Our ideas about the Arab world are blind to the sufferings of the nations around us and their hatred of their rulers. The average annual income in Egypt is $6,200; Israelis’ average annual income is almost $30,000. Will stability in the relations between two such countries be guaranteed by a huge, brutal police force, of all things? That is the discussion that we haven’t yet had.
The Egyptian revolution is costing blood. A great deal of blood. No elite leaves of its own free will, even if its sponsors in Washington have decided to get rid of it. Spontaneous action is fated to decline, and in the absence of a revolutionary party, it is not at all clear what will happen. The Egyptian opposition has been repressed for years, and there, too, the left has drowned in European subsidies to dozens of different human rights NGOs, which are always interested in obedient monitoring rather than change.
Nobody knows where the revolution will end up: in an Iranian-style republic? In something along Turkish lines? Or perhaps something new, the likes of which we’ve never experienced? At the moment, there is no need to reply, but only to think and remember this: It doesn’t all revolve around us. And in the face of the Egyptian people’s heroism, we should bow our heads in humility.
For the first time in more than 600 years, Armenia is free and independent, and we are therefore obligated
to place our national interests ahead of our personal gains or aspirations.
http://www.armenianhighland.com/main.htmlComment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
The White House is apparently negotiating a deal with the head of state of a foreign government for him to step down and be replaced with people they are suggesting...
Am I insane or do other people here see something completely retarded in this???Azerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
Are you defying the laws of democracy? lolOriginally posted by Federate View Post"Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it." ~Malcolm XComment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
Khamenei hails 'Islamic' uprisings
Iranian supreme leader urges Egyptians to follow in the footsteps of Iran's 1979 revolution.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader has called the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia an "Islamic liberation movement".
In his address, during Friday prayers at Tehran University in Iran's capital, he said that people are witnessing the reverberations of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
"The awakening of the Islamic Egyptian people is an Islamic liberation movement and I, in the name of the Iranian government, salute the Egyptian people and the Tunisian people,"he said.
Khamenei has urged Egypt's protesters to follow in the footsteps of the Iranian revolution which toppled a pro-US leader and installed an Islamic Republic, calling on Egyptians to unite around religion.
He said events in Tunisia and Egypt, were a sign of "Islamic awareness" in the region and that these movements will spell an "irreparable defeat" for the United States.
'Servant of Zionists'
Khamenei added that the Egypt's embattled president, Hosni Mubarak, is a "servant" of Israel and the United States.
"For 30 years this country [Egypt] has been in the hands of someone who is not seeking freedom and is the enemy of those seeking freedom.
"Not only he is not anti-Zionist, but he is the companion, colleague, confidant and servant of Zionists. It is a fact that Hosni Mubarak's servitude to America has been unable to take Egypt one step towards prosperity."
The spiritual leader's remarks were received by cheering crowds of worshippers who, raising their hands, chanted "Death to America! Death to Israel!"
The sermon marked the first time in seven months that the leader has addressed the weekly Friday prayers, and came as protesters were massing in Egypt to participate in "departure day" demonstrations to force Mubarak to quit.
"Today's events in North Africa, Egypt and Tunisia and some other countries have different meanings for us," Khamenei said.
"This is what was always talked about as the occurrence of Islamic awakening at the time of the Islamic revolution of the great Iranian nation and is showing itself today."
Top Iranian officials have supported the protests in Egypt and have warned Tehran's arch-foe Washington against "interfering" in what they say is a movement of the people.
Khamenei said that Israel was the country most concerned about the Arab revolts.
"Today more than the fleeing Tunisian and Egyptian officials, Israelis and the Zionist enemies are the most worried about these events as they know if Egypt stops being their ally and take its rightful place, it would be a great event in the region," he said.
Dorsa Jabbari, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, said Khamenei "is asking them to follow through what he is calling a real earthquake in the region".
The Iranian people are supporting the uprising in Egypt as "they believe that it has been long time in the making and it is about time that [the Egyptian] people put an end to the dictatorship in their country", our correspondent said.
"They [the Iranians] see the events as extremely significant as they feel that it is the opportunity to change the religious field in the region."
Azerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
Israel is not worried! This is their plan as they have already infiltrated the top positions of these so called "Islamic" countries."Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it." ~Malcolm XComment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
Look at this little boy go!
Van runs over 20 people... viewer discretion is advised
Azerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
Apparently it was an American diplomatic car.Originally posted by Federate View PostComment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
The Arab league's chief Amr Moussa attended the protests in Tahrir square. Just like most things coming out of the Arab League, it did nothing proving how ineffective it continues to be and his attendance almost went unnoticed.Azerbaboon: 9.000 Google hits and counting!Comment
-
Re: Revolutions in the Middle East
U.S. has big problems, not only in Egypt but "all" of Arab/Islamic world.Originally posted by Lernakan View Post
Any chance of a puppet successor leader for Egypt has vanished long ago.
Major geopolitical changes in the Middle East are inevitable, will not necessarily mean stability.Politics is not about the pursuit of morality nor what's right or wrong
Its about self interest at personal and national level often at odds with the above.
Great politicians pursue the National interest and small politicians personal interestsComment
Comment