Valin Posted December 1, 2013 Share Posted December 1, 2013 NY Times: THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN November 30, 2013 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates AND so it turns out that there were actually two Arab awakenings. There are the radical revolutions youve read about in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Libya, none of which yet have built stable, inclusive democracies. But then there are the radical evolutions that youve not read about, playing out in Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf monarchies. The evolutions involve a subtle but real shift in relations between leaders and their people, and you can detect it from even a brief visit to Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The Gulf leaders still have no time for one-man, one-vote democracy. But, in the wake of the Arab Spring, theyre deeply concerned with their legitimacy, which they are discovering can no longer just be bought with more subsidies or passed from father to son. So more and more leaders are inviting their people to judge them by how well they perform how well they improve schools, create jobs and fix sewers not just resist Israel or Iran or impose Islam. (Snip) There were torrential rainstorms when I was in Saudi Arabia 10 days ago and the Saudi newspaper, Al-Sharq, published a cartoon with three men answering this question: Why did all the streets of Riyadh flood? The government official answers: The streets didnt flood. Thats just a vicious rumor. The sheikh answers: Its all because of the sins of the girls at Princess Nora University. The citizen says: Its because of corruption but then the cartoon shows an arm labeled censorship coming from off the page to snip off this comment. That is in a Saudi paper! (Snip) Again, this is not about democracy. Its about leaders feeling the need to earn their legitimacy. But when one leader does it, others feel the pressure to copy. And that leads to more transparency and more accountability. And that, and more Twitter, leads to who knows what. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draggingtree Posted January 2, 2014 Share Posted January 2, 2014 The Failed Arab SpringBy Rod Dreher • January 2, 2014, 12:33 AM Patrick Cockburn takes stock of the disastrous round of revolutions in the Arab world: The uprisings of the Arab Spring have so far produced anarchy in Libya, a civil war in Syria, greater autocracy in Bahrain and resumed dictatorial rule in Egypt. In Syria, the uprising began in March 2011 with demonstrations against the brutality of Assad’s regime. ‘Peace! Peace!’ protesters chanted. But ‘if there was a fair election in Syria today,’ one commentator said, ‘Assad would probably win it.’ It isn’t only the protesters and insurgents of 2011 whose aspirations are being frustrated or crushed. In March 2003 the majority of Iraqis from all sects and ethnic groups wanted to see the end of Saddam’s disastrous rule even if they didn’t necessarily support the US invasion. But the government now in power in Baghdad is as sectarian, corrupt and dysfunctional as Saddam’s ever was. There may be less state violence, but only because the state is weaker. Its methods are equally brutal: Iraqi prisons are full of people who have made false confessions under torture or the threat of it. An Iraqi intellectual who had planned to open a museum in Abu Ghraib prison so that Iraqis would never forget the barbarities of Saddam’s regime found that there was no space available because the cells were full of new inmates. Iraq is still an extraordinarily dangerous place. ‘I never imagined that ten years after the fall of Saddam you would still be able to get a man killed in Baghdad by paying $100,’ an Iraqi who’d been involved in the abortive museum project told me. Why have oppositions in the Arab world and beyond failed so absolutely, and http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-failed-arab-spring/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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