Dominoes Falling In The Arab world
By Hamid Golpira
05 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
The dominoes are beginning to fall in the Arab world, and it all began in Tunisia.
A series of street protests in December 2010 and January 2011 led to the ouster of Tunisia’s former president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14.
The events in Tunisia have set off a chain reaction across the entire Arab world as citizens of Arab countries have been inspired by the Tunisians’ people power movement.
Major demonstrations have been held in Yemen, Egypt, Algeria, and Jordan, and there have been smaller demonstrations and minor incidents in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Oman, Sudan, and Libya.
A demonstration was held in Jordan on February 3 in which protesters demanded that newly installed Prime Minister Marouf al-Bakhit step down.
After demonstrations in Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced that he would step down when his current term expires in 2013.
Over the past week, the demonstrations in Egypt have gained steam every day, and it appears that President Hosni Mubarak may have to step down.
The situation has been compared to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which led to the collapse of communism in the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe.
But there are some major differences between the events of 1989 and the Arab world awakening of 2011 that make the comparison not completely accurate.
The current confrontation in the Arab world is not between authoritarian regimes and the forces of democracy.
The day of the authoritarian regimes is done. It may take a little longer for some of them to fall, but eventually they will all fall.
Even their patrons in the West are abandoning the dictators of the Arab world, as evidenced by Ben Ali’s hasty departure.
The powers that be who run the Western world have decided that it is no longer in their interests to support puppet rulers running authoritarian regimes in the Arab world.
So they are turning to Plan B, which may have been prepared decades ago and put on the shelf until needed.
In Plan B, the Western powers will allow the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world to collapse and attempt to replace them with fake democracies run by puppet rulers beholden to their masters in the West.
And thus the current confrontation in the Arab world is actually between the forces of true democracy, who want independent countries, and the forces of fake democracy, who are seeking to establish comprador regimes, which would be the same old neocolonialism with a new face.
The forces of true democracy in the Arab world must be very careful in choosing their new leaders since the global ruling class does not want them to have independent governments and will do everything in their power to prevent such a turn of events.
And the globalists are adept at setting up governments that have all the trappings of democracy but which are actually client states with their vassals in charge.
Everything is in flux in the Arab world, which is a good thing since it provides an opportunity for change and progress after so many years of stagnation.
But there is also a great danger, since the Machiavellian manipulators of the global ruling class are skillful chaos players who plan ahead for such eventualities for decades.
The dominoes are truly falling in the Arab world, but it is not clear in which direction they are falling.
The writer is a veteran journalist working with the Tehran Times.
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