Ismael Hossein-Zadeh has written a fascinating essay on the Arab Spring from an Arab perspective. Most Americans know that Arabs live under dictators, but have no idea that the brutal tyrants are often under our protection. So our leaders have to publically pretend to support popular democratic movements while, at the same time, destroying any hope that they will actually be effective. This is usually true whether the leader is Republican or Democrat.
“Caught off-guard by the initial wave of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, the US and its allies struck back with a vengeance. They employed a number of simultaneous tactics to sabotage the Arab Spring. These included (1) instigating fake instances of the Arab Spring in countries that were/are headed by insubordinate regimes such as those ruling Iran, Syria and Libya; (2) co-opting revolutionary movements in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen; (3) crushing pro-democracy movements against “friendly” regimes ruling countries such as Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia “before they get out of hand,” as they did in Egypt and Tunisia; and (4) using the age-old divide and rule trick by playing the sectarian trump card of Sunnis vs. Shias, or Iranians vs. Arabs.”
Please read this essay with an open mind. Look honestly at the possibility that you have been the unwitting citizen of a ruthless corporately driven empire. Then consider what the rest of your life would be like if you became a citizen of the whole world. The first step in gaining that citizenship for anyone anywhere is to stop believing the propaganda of their own nation no matter which nation that is.
“Liberal” and “Conservative” are places on an arc. But if the entire circle is a cut off from sanity and the masses of humanity, then it is not enough to choose between those places in the continuum. One must step off that circle, and join the whole human race.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/13/whatever-happened-to-the-arab-spring/