Popular uprisings are like the forces of nature

29 March 2011,
Yahya R. Haidar

Popular uprisings are like the forces of nature – you can’t stop them

By Yahya R. Haidar

The little-predicted revolutions in Arab countries which shook the political world to its core have coincided with natural disasters that took their toll on the physical world with equal strength. But, there is an unlikely common denominator between the geographies where the two separate events occurred. The latest UN report on International Corruption ranked at one end of the equilibrium the countries of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen as being the most corrupt, while at the other end New Zealand and Japan where considered to have the cleanest record of national corruption; yet, the two extremely opposed governments were not immune to the unforeseen large-scale challenges that hit them. If natural disasters are difficult to pin down regardless of sophisticated scientific reasoning, the masses are proven to be a force equally unpredictable despite the millions of pages compiled by political think-tanks and strategy experts.

No doubt, the earthquakes and tsunamis that hit Japan are natural occurrences that defied the collective human ability to predict and to respond; but by the same token, there is nothing more natural than the revolutions spanning through the Arab world, which happened despite the hegemonic and almost supernatural climate of fear imposed by Arab dictators on their people with the aid of their western backers. These revolutions have been natural at all levels; in their lack of any form of ideological affiliation, and more importantly their emphasis on the principle of all human rights – the right to be genuinely free.

Popular uprisings are like the forces of nature, you can’t stop them. Indeed, neither can you predict them. No one could believe that Bouazizi burning himself in protest against the confiscation of his vegetable stall would instigate a mass uprising that would end 23 years of U.S. backed dictatorship in Tunisia. Neither the forty-day Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the war on Lebanon with all their atrocities, nor the U.S. invasion of Iraq, could signal mass protests the scale of which anywhere near what is afoot today. It is indeed a cause of perplexity to any inquiring mind. The masses carrying such formidable waves of change found no better slogan than the one that says ‘if the people want to live, destiny must surely respond’ In the midst of bewilderment, this stanza from a poem by the late Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, became immediately the most fitting chant to the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. But, if the common meaning of ‘destiny’ implies a power which tak es its own course irrespective of human will, the logic of mass uprisings have proven that when destiny responds to human will, it becomes identical with it; they together become an unstoppable force.

A new political status quo has been effected and the U.S. and EU states are struggling to ‘live with it’, and by living with it they mean to attune to the new scale of power and restore the ‘critical balance’ that maintains their political and strategic doctrines. But, by doing so they don’t seem to have understood the meaning of the new revolutions. The message of these revolutions is a call to see the world as it is, which might not parallel the dreamy western conception of it. By maintaining their political ideologies, the west fails to get the essential implication of the Arab revolutions. And just as the Japanese government and people are trying to co-exist with the natural course of the physical world, the west must know to live in harmony with the natural course of the political world, where the human will to be genuinely free will always prevail over preconceived political doctrines of domination and control.

Popular uprisings are like the forces of nature | Scoop News.

************* Yahya R. Haidar is a freelance journalist and researcher in religious studies

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• Robert Fisk: ‘The Arab awakening began not in Tunisia this year, but in Lebanon in 2005′ (independent.co.uk)
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• Revolutions: What went wrong in the west? – Aljazeera.net (news.google.com)

Global Revolution: We ain’t buying the BS

By Gerald Celente
2-1-11

KINGSTON, NY, 1 February 2011 – When the Tunisian government toppled, the mass media and their stable of experts ­ who were blindsided by these events ­ quickly stepped in to proclaim the obvious: that citizens of other Arab nations would be emboldened to challenge autocratic and corrupt governments.
Now Egypt is in the throes of insurrection, and Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen are already targeted for revolutionary change. The richer and more tightly controlled Kingdoms of the Middle East will not be immune to challenges from their citizenry to break the chains of royal rule.
But, as I had forecast in the Trends Journal, it is not solely the Middle East that is destined to experience episodes of violent upheaval. What is transpiring in the Arab world will spread throughout many European states.  While the call to arms will be spoken in different tongues, the underlying causes will be the same.
In December 2010 (before Tunisia made the headlines) we issued a Trend Alert® titled, “Off With Their Heads!” in which we predicted a “long war between the people and the ruling classes.” We noted that, “Anyone questioning the intensity of the people’s seething anger is either out of touch or in denial.”
It wasn’t Arab anger that led us to that forecast ­ it was the student and worker revolts spilling into the streets of Europe. The imposition of draconian austerity measures ­ higher taxes, tuition hikes, lost benefits, curtailed services, public sector job cuts ­ had young and old raging against a rigged system that paved the way for the privileged and punished the proles.
Though millions marched through the streets of Athens, Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon, London and Madrid, when the protests ended, the governments were barely shaken, let alone toppled. Unlike the autocratic Arab regimes, where the tight grip of repression could only be broken by violence, in the “democratic” West the illusion of representation and placating government promises mitigated the violence.
Both the press and politicians assumed the protests would run their course, people would accept their fate, and, like it or not, suffer the consequences.  The protests, however, have not run their course. The economic toll of austerity and unemployment continues to ravage the lower and middle classes. As we wrote in the Winter 2011 Trends Journal, “It will only be a matter of time before a series of final straw events breaks the public’s back, setting off uncontrollable uprisings, coups (bloodless and/or military), riots and revolts throughout the financially battered world.”
Trend Forecast: The unintended consequences of the regime changes in North Africa and the Middle East, and the uprisings we forecast that will roil Europe will be as fully dramatic as their intended consequences: the overthrow of governments. The calls by Presidents, Prime Ministers, cabinet officials and foreign policy experts for “orderly transition of power” are nothing more than diplomatic doublespeak and pure windbaggery. There is no such thing as a clean and simple revolution.
As we will see in Egypt, military coups will be disguised as regime changes. Already the public is being conditioned to view the Egyptian military as beloved liberators. But in fact they are simply another arm of the autocratic government, no more familiar with democratic ideals than the dictator they replace … who had himself been drawn from the ranks of the military.
The world leaders and world media are not recognizing the Egyptian uprising for what it is: a prelude to a series of civil wars that will lead to regional wars, that will lead to the first “Great War” of the 21st century.

(See “The History of The Future: Trends 2012: The Great War,” Trends Journal, Spring 2010)
To schedule an interview with Gerald Celente, Trends Journal publisher, please contact: Zeke West, Media Relations, zwest@trendsresearch.com 845 331.3500 ext. 1
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