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| Muammar you have reason to worry |
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| Isn't Tunisia next to China? |
Now we know we must defend Julian Assange, Wikileaks and Bradley Manning for sure. Manning is in the brig under conditions that amount to torture. A situation he’s been in for 7 months which is quite something considering he’s a man who has not been convicted of a crime, much like Guantanamo detainees. US politicians have called for the assassination of Assange and for Wikileaks to be declared a “terrorist organization” by the US government and now Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator in power in Neighboring Libya, is blaming the uprising in Tunisia on Wikileaks; that does it for me.
The media reports today that Gaddafi “condemns” the uprising in Tunisia and was “pained” by the fall of the dictator next door. I am sure he is. “He claimed protesters had been led astray by WikiLeaks disclosures detailing the corruption in Ben Ali's family and his repressive regime.” according to the Guardian UK. Gaddafi’s view of the Arab working class is classic in its contempt; so much for national and ethnic unity. How often have we heard from our bosses, their politicians and their media that when workers are forced on strike by oppressive and inadequate conditions that we are being “led astray” that we would all be happy little workers if it wasn’t for “outside agitators”?
This is how stupid they think we are, that we aren’t aware we’re being abused, exploited or ripped off, or even if they think we are aware but can be convinced we are not is just as bad.
Gadaffi claims the cables that Wikileaks released were written by "ambassadors in order to create chaos", not true Muammar. The ambassadors are experiencing some considerable chaos of their own due to their phoney diplomacy and their lies being shared with the peoples of the world. Gadaffi should be worried as he is next door and his dictator friend has scurried off to Saudi Arabia to relax in the sun with the thugs that run that society. Gadaffi has also governed Libya with an iron fist. He’s been in power for 31 years. Any organization, country or whatever that has the same individual head for 31 years is an unhealthy one indeed. Same with Unions, the heads of some of our national bodies in the US have ridden that gravy train for almost as long. It is as we said in a previous post, the leaders of these oppressive Arab states are sweating right now as they can sense the mood of jubilation that exists among the Arab masses from Morocco to Jordan, Syria to Yemen. They are afraid of their own positions.
In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s regime is second only to the Israel when it comes to being handed US taxpayer’s money (leaving the US bankers aside that is, they received more than anyone; they are Americans after all) and is feeling the heat. "I feel like we are a giant step closer to our own liberation," the Guardian quotes Hossam Bahgat, an Egyptian rights activist as saying, "What's significant about Tunisia is that literally days ago the regime seemed unshakable, and then eventually democracy prevailed without a single western state lifting a finger."
The Guardian’s Middle East specialist is overly confident that things will revert back pretty quickly, he writes:
"We can expect to see many more incidents like this over the coming months in various Arab countries. Inspired by the Tunisian uprising, people are going to be more assertive about their grievances and start probing, to see how far they can push the authorities. In the light of Tunisia we can also expect a tendency, each time disturbances happen, to suggest (or hope) that they are the start of some new Arab revolution. The reality, though, is that almost all of them will quickly fizzle out or get crushed."
This may end up being the case but I doubt it, I think the "expert" is misjudging the present period. I would like to think the movement would spread throughout the Arab world and in to Iran, wishful thinking on my part perhaps but I am not as pessimistic as the Guardian’s expert about these developments; I think the American century that we were told about at the beginning of the decade is turning in to a nightmare, times have changed without a doubt even if the Tunisian uprising faces setbacks things will not return to what they were and there will be more disturbances ahead.
Gaddafi, like all individuals obsessed with their own grandeur, said that Tunisia should adopt a Libyan style government as Libya "marks the final destination for the peoples' quest for democracy. If this is what the events [in Tunisia] are for, then it has to be made clear.”Gadaffi must count Francis Fukuyama as one of his heroes.
It’s confirmation how people like him and George Bush can seem so very similar, and so very wrong
1 comment:
The moral of the story might be that the world should be made up of organizations that promote jobs and economic fairness. Better conditions would surely avoid all this bloodshed. When people fall below the threshold of poverty they then are at the mercy of the markert place. They are quite often exploited in every way possible all over the world. It's all these people that have nothing that will strive for and demand change.
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