Noam Chomsky: ‘The Arab World Is on Fire’

[marmar]

from In These Times:




Views » February 2, 2011 » Web Only

‘The Arab World Is on Fire’
By Noam Chomsky


“The Arab world is on fire,” al-Jazeera reported on January 27, while throughout the region, Western allies “are quickly losing their influence.”

The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that drove out a Western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator’s brutal police.

Observers compared the events to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there are important differences.

Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless it is properly tamed.

One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the East European dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his overthrow while the past was erased. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6911/the_arab_world_is_on_fire

[ladjf]

1. "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". For those that remember

that movie, millions of people were having a common intuition that was heralding the arrival of a space ship, telling them where the landing site was.

I believe that millions of people on Earth are experiencing a mass, synchronized realization that the massive and rapid transfer of wealth, world-wide will obviously end in total tragedy for all. That will include humans, all animals, all plants and all environments. The outbreaks in the middle East are the avant guard of that premonition.

Looking at the problem objectively, one only has to take current statistics on the subject of wealth shift and extrapolate them out for about 40 years to see that by that time, 1% of the people on Earth will possess over 90% of everything of monetary value. Such a condition would render the World
almost uninhabitable.

[DirkGently]

2. Wonder if the Saudi royal family is nervous. Probably not, with all those American weapons at hand.