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Prague, Arab Spring: what’s the difference?
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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 Qaddafi’s 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 Qaddafi’s compound!
Much more will’ve taken place by the time you read this. Either the ‘rebels’ would’ve been routed – suffering a major setback to a mission embarked upon six months ago – or they’ll consolidate their ‘victory,’ ending Qaddafi’s 42-year one-man rule via docile People’s Councils!
What happened in Libya wasn’t 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, he’d go to a maverick-ruled country like Castro’s Cuba, Chavez’ Venezuela,
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, Abdullah’s Saudia, etc. Alternatively, he could be carted around in custodial ‘cage’ within his own country that has finally rejected him – a la Egypt’s 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 didn’t 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 Dubček regime sought to democratise the nation and loosen Moscow’s 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, that’s 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. that’s too big, spending too much... Americans are taxed enough already. We shouldn’t spend more money than we’re already taking in.
And, third, we should act within the Constitution.” [‘Where’s 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 don’t know; and, as the Denver Post editor rhetoricizes: where’s 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.”
That’s as may be. But, at least, he isn’t 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!
Breivik’s action, which was planned for years, was apparently in protest against his country’s
liberal immigration regime, and his former state leader, Gro Harlem Brundtland, whom he accuses of ‘destroying the country...!”
Oh, I’m 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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| Total Comments on the above stories (1) |
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Hi, Comrade Lyimo it is nice to read your article in the Daily News. It is a good piece, keep it up.
Semberya |
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