It’s sobering to look at this blog at the moment – both in the length of time since my last post, and in its subject.
As you might’ve imagined, I’ve been agog over the last few weeks as Ben Ali and then Mubarak were eased out of their armchair thrones by vast throngs of their disenchanted countrymen.
I was most gobsmacked at the speed and at the scale – after 30 odd years of repression, that each individual in that collective mass had to make that decision to step outside their safe zone, when up to this point the implications tended to be beating, detention, torture… Yet so many chose to take that step. It must’ve been exhilarating to have been there, on the Friday when Mubarak resigned.
I liked one of the attendant quotes – ‘the people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of the people.’
And it seems, alas, that the fear that despotic governments are feeling is tickling the fight muscle rather than the flee – in every country afflicted in the region – Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen – violence has been the first response. Now Gaddafi has taken it to a new level, 42 years of paranoia isn’t going to go easily.
But we said that about the others, too. And yet it always strikes me as so straightforward – if you kill, repress, and generally ravage people they will respond negatively. If you do it on a large scale, over a long period of time, their response is going to be proportionate. Isn’t it obvious?
It’s not just despots who do it mind you – see the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for example. And the media did strike a sour note, through the last days of the revolution of Tahrir Square they kept on about peace treaties with Israel, when what was important was this moment, for the Egyptians. Let everybody else worry about tomorrow.
Ah. Israel. If anyone might know what the response to persecution can be, you would have thought they’d have a pretty good idea. But what do they do? Sure, they are worried about Hamas and disgruntled Palestinians. But why are they worried? Because they are disgruntled. And why is this? Israel only has itself to blame.
And yet, amidst all the hue and cry over their illegal settlements, the US once again vetoed a critical resolution. And this is what I struggle to get my head around. Why is it that the US continues to support Israel, even when it is quite clearly intransigent? The only vague answer I have is arms.
Not as many guns would be sold if there was peace..
Tags: International, Media, Politics
March 22, 2011 at 11:36 |
Thanks for your as-ever thoughtful and thought-provoking post: good to see you back.
As Iread it I’d just heard the Tunisian hip hop track by El Génèral called “Rayes Le Bled” — – Posted on the Web in Dec 2010, it went viral and mobilised a young generation to stand up and protest, spurred on by the direct attack on the despotic leader “Mr President, the people are starving” — quite something.
Penultimate BBC Word of Music show :http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fbctn#segments sad to see it go, a victim of recession and illegal downloads maybe? And also the ‘make your own” streaming mix that is a big f the web.
Tunisia