The days and weeks and now months progress as Aljazeera becomes an old friend to rely on, with in between visits to the BBC, France24 and occasionally CNN…
Watching the revolutionary spirit spread across North Africa and beyond, now to Syria, how more open can an occidental heart get to the men and women and children taking to the streets with a dream of better lives? Calling for dignity and freedom for all, an end to tyranny and dictatorship, corrupt government, grinding poverty, unfair distribution of wealth and mistreatment by competing sectarianism, we must all see our lives mirrored in their eyes….
I wondered how open our hearts and minds could be ‘internationally’…and it seems, we still have room for more, InshAllah/Isis…we have not closed off. I thought maybe ‘we’ (the communal/aggregate western and world-wide WE) might shut down when the Syrian one began, but perhaps by then we were more ready–not with solutions obviously, as each revolution seems more ‘tricky’ than the last and some are going very badly indeed. The Egyptians are walking their talk, helping the Palestinians unify as their own internal Palestinian demonstrations for unity put away their tents and flags…they won this round, between them…against the forces that would disunify and weaken. When will the Israelis have their own internal revolution to see the light? There are signs, with the American radical Mr Finkelstein brewing up openness from the American end (and visiting Palestine to share it).
Meantime, back on the Home Front in Libya, ‘The Peoples’ Army’ battles through the golden sand, inch by inch, becoming more professional by the day as various allies pop in with combative and non-combative support, as they find ways to act as a state, selling oil for paying salaries, starting their own bank, fixing their communication systems, supplying their people with food and health-care–succeeding against all odds in becoming a state faster than you could possibly imagine. If it weren’t REAL you wouldn’t believe it, it would be a Hollywood Tale of Daring-Do. Thus enter the cowboy from Arizona, Senator McCain; it’s rather odd but refreshing to be ‘on the same side’–and how can WE not be? We’ve seen enough in real life and history books to know that such battles for liberty are worth supporting and aiding, despite the cost, despite the politics; it would have been better if it could have been done by dialogue, peacefully, but monsters like Gadhafi don’t operate that way. They create evil dramas in which they play the leading role of misfit anti-hero, taking his family and his tribe into the dust with him. Hollywood will make a real good ‘un outta that scenario; someone is already working on it no doubt.
Meantime back at Westminster and Buckingham Ranch we have the Royal Wedding of William and Kate (Catherine actually) tomorrow. Withdrawing the invitation to the Syrian ambassador was a good sign of where we are going with this one. Getting ahead of the game. It shall not be said that a once and future king-to-be allowed a representative of a murderous dictatorship to celebrate HIS wedding with HRH. Of course, there are still other representatives of other nasty regimes allowed in, but we have to be reasonable, we can’t expect too much too quickly all at once. Of course, once those HRHs were tyrants, murderous ones too, not so long ago really. Till Cromwell and his lot came along, and then proceeded to do likewise, and the nobs got back in, albeit their power abated.
So, where are WE? WE, the Spectators or the Observers–preferably the latter, like the ‘observers’ in the air fleet arm (like record-guru, producer of The Beatles, George Martin was during the war) as they got to control the pilots, the action, by OBSERVING and giving orders. Thus The Observer newspaper, The Guardian and of course, we have to throw in The Independent. We are Observers then, sending our social media messages along with the force of our Collective WILL of the World as to how it ‘should be’ if we had our moral ‘druthers’: democracy, end of tyranny. Period.
My concern is how THEY/WE will create/build/sustain economies that will enable the building of enlightened new democracies. The Benghazi Community seems to be lighting the way, showing us how quickly it can be done, with Egypt and Tunisia working hard at it (with our collective fingers crossed). Luckily, the Libyans have oil to start them off–they will have to prepare really quickly for the End of Peak Oil Times, but that must look a ways off right now and they are rather busy with FIGHTING (and paradoxically one of their problems is getting refined oil).
Then of course we have The Runaway Train of Climate Change barreling toward US ALL. Some of the early fallout of it is already driving some of these revolutions, not a link that many pundits make reference to.
But enough for now, time to make the husband his dinner so the wife can go out tonight early. I don’t need to watch any more TV today as Reality is happening, and anyway, when I do, it’s only the news stations that capture my interest, as indeed Real Life has a Way of Doing That.