[twitter.jpg] [find_us_fb.jpg] [masthead.gif] DailyNews Logo [readers.gif] Search ________________________________________ A value is required. Search Warning: include(../menu.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/dailynew/public_html/columnist/index.php on line 134 Warning: include(../menu.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/dailynew/public_html/columnist/index.php on line 134 Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '../menu.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/dailynew/public_html/columnist/index.php on line 134 Columnist Prague, Arab Spring: whats the difference? 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Reserve fund - your best tool in a crisis situation Let us give proportional representation a chance Sublease longer than head lease By KARL LYIMO, 28th August 2011 @ 12:00, Total Comments: 1, Hits: 830 ON Thursday this week Sept. 1; 42 years ago to the day an uppity Libyan Colonel, one Muammar Qaddafi, ended the reign of King Idris-I in a military coup. Today, things have come to a head in Qaddafis Libyan Arab Jamahiria... By last Wednesday (August 24), rebel (?) fighters had converged upon the capital Tripoli, taken over the international airport and the State broadcasting facility, camped outside Qaddafis compound! Much more willve taken place by the time you read this. Either the rebels wouldve been routed suffering a major setback to a mission embarked upon six months ago or theyll consolidate their victory, ending Qaddafis 42-year one-man rule via docile Peoples Councils! What happened in Libya wasnt an isolated development in the MENA (Middle East & North African) countries. Tunisia and Egypt were the first ones where rebels packed off their rulers to the sunset of their dictatorial regimes. If Qaddafi flees, hed go to a maverick-ruled country like Castros Cuba, Chavez Venezuela, Mugabes Zimbabwe, Abdullahs Saudia, etc. Alternatively, he could be carted around in custodial cage within his own country that has finally rejected him a la Egypts Mubarak! In boxing, they say the bigger they come, the harder they fall... And, with three of them down in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya, that leaves at least another three to go within MENA: Bahrain, Yemen and Syria! Pundits have called this The Arab Spring. This refers to the pro-democracy uprisings currently sweeping the MENA. Lexicographically-speaking, to spring is to move rapidly or suddenly, as from a constrained position. This didnt begin last year, or in the last decade... I remember my first experience was with the 1968 Prague/Praha Spring in Czechoslovakia, when the Alexander Dubcek regime sought to democratise the nation and loosen Moscows stranglehold on Czech affairs. However, the euphoria was short-lived, shattered by the Soviet invasion instigated by Leonid Brezhnev... And Dubcek was sent packing as the Czech Commie Party leader. [Living in The Netherlands then, I was abreast of the goings-on including the French students riots that leap year; the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Francis Kennedy...!] The main difference between the Prague Spring and the Arab Spring is that, while the former was initiated by the national leadership and was suppressed by extraneous forces the latter was initiated by ordinary citizenry instigated, aided and abetted by extraneous forces! But, thats another story... There were, indeed, many other political Springs across the globe in those times of turmoil...The US had its fair share, starting with the Black Power Movement in the 1960s taken to extremes by the Black Panther Party for Self- Defense, led by the likes of Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Louis Farrakhan... Today, the American Spring is springing back in subtler forms... Such as the Tea Party Movement (TPM) which, ostensibly, brings together Republicans of all backgrounds and interests, coalesced around a few common themes... TPM members protest in one form or another against a Govt. thats too big, spending too much... Americans are taxed enough already. We shouldnt spend more money than were already taking in. And, third, we should act within the Constitution. [Wheres the Tea Party Taking Us? Denver Post: August. 21, 2011]. Now, where did we hear that before? In Tunisia? Egypt? Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria...? Thousands of otherwise innocent civilians have died in those countries, compliments of the Arab Spring! Scores of security personnel have also died in the mayhem. I dont know; and, as the Denver Post editor rhetoricizes: wheres it all taking us to? The other day on July 22, 2011 to be exact scores of people in Norway were killed in two terrorist attacks, and a 32-year old Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik, was charged with the mass murders. Breivik is described as a right-wing extremist and an Islamophobe who is highly critical of Muslim immigration into Christian societies, is pro-Israel and an admirer of the US Tea Party Movement. Thats as may be. But, at least, he isnt a Mujahedeen, a Crusader, a Black Panther, an al-Qaeda or any of the other breeds whom the West likes to blacken when things go badly for them! Breiviks action, which was planned for years, was apparently in protest against his countrys liberal immigration regime, and his former state leader, Gro Harlem Brundtland, whom he accuses of destroying the country...! Oh, Im not sure that the London Mayhem- 2011 is an English (political ) Spring... Following the fatal shooting of one Mark Duggan by the London Police August 4, several UK metropolises suffered widespread rioting, looting and arson, with tragic consequences. [israellyimo@yahoo.com]. 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It is a good piece, keep it up. Semberya ADVERTISEMENT TSN Ad Contacts: TSN Daily News building, Samora Avenue, Plot No. 7, P.O.Box 9033, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. E-mail: me@dailynews-tsn.com, newsdesk@dailynews-tsn.com; webmaster@dailynews.co.tz; Telephone: +255222110595, Fax: +255222135239 0r +255222112881 All rights preserved, Copyright © 2009 Daily News Media Group