Headline, August21, 2013

''' !!! THE RAGE & SEETHING -OF- 

THE YOUNG HEROES !!! '''

You will hear many stories. You will read many versions. You will discern many symptoms, many facts, many fictions,  but I will tell you the truth and the real cause: Over the spread  past two decades, even more, a demographic change has swept across the Arab World. Roughly a third of the population in the region is under 30:

Morocco 29%, Egypt 29%, Lebanon 27%, Kuwait 25%, Yemen 30%, Saudi Arabia 28%, Jordan 30%. Frustrated by the daily grind, a lack of political freedom, diminishing economic opportunities, the young have lost patience. Egyptians, in particular, are no longer willing to wait to communicate with anybody, even with time, space, eternity, or the 21st century. In the days ahead their world will turn crimson with sufferings.

In the very recent upheaval, in just around 2011,  right in the heart of Tahrir Square, 35 years old Safar Attiya, a mother of 4, screamed questions for all to hear and mourn : ''What did the President ever do for us?'' she demanded. ''Nothing! Nothing!'' He didn't do anything for us. We can't even find work.We see videos of rich people's mansions and villas on TV, while we are beaten out of street.'' Attiya's husband is a day laborer, and she is a part-time house help. Between them they make $60 a month!!?

Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski of John Hopkins, President Carter's National Security adviser during the 1979 fall of the Shah in Iran, has dealt intimately with history bending revolutions, addresses all the elements of how he saw these  -Arab Spring-  developments:

''Today we have somewhat between 80 million and 130 million young people around the world who come from socially insecure lower middle class and constitute a community of mutual infection with angers, passions, frustrations, and hatreds. The Students are revolutionaries-in-waiting. When they erupt at volatile moments, they become very contagious.

And whereas Marx's industrial proletariat more than a century ago was fragmented in local groups, today these young people are interacting via the Internet. On sites like the Facebook and Twitter, they are communicating more than broad ideas. They are actually transmitting techniques, as major social movements long have.

Think back to the upheavals in Central Europe a generation ago. Solidarity used slogans and colors. The most recent uprisings in Central Europe followed suit: the Velvet Revolution. Everybody is imitating everybody. And today we see young people in Cairo have clearly been watching what is happening elsewhere and energized to action.

All these happening pose a question : Is this a youth revolution? Yes! But all revolutions are young. What is new is the scale of of the numbers of disaffected youth and the level of their political consciousness. In addition to their shared slogans, there is a lot of ideology mixed up with emotion and hatred and nationalism.

What sets the Arab world apart? : A very special feature of this new political consciousness of course, is religious fanaticism. Look at the every age of the suicidal killers. They are very young. Enthusiasm for change can quickly degenerate into fanaticism, and with it comes brutal lethality and self destruction.

But does youth movements have democracy as their goal? : What young people want is political dignity. Democracy may enhance that. But political dignity also encompasses ethnic, or national self-determination, religious self-definition, and human and social rights. All of this now takes place in the wired world where the youth are acutely aware of economic, racial and social inequities.

And the Flames in Egypt? : Egypt is seething. And if it erupts it is not only going to destabilize the country, but it will also change relationships of the entire region because the masses are seething underneath the surface.

So, from the West, what is to be done? : To the extent it is possible, it is best to channel these aspirations. That does mean coping with certain problems that we know are contributing to the intensification of radicalism and extremism. One factor indeed is the nature of the regimes in the region. Simply sweeping these problems under the rug is not a solution. So I think Obama started out right in outlining in his recent Cairo speech a notion of how to deal with these problems. But since then, he has simply lapsed into passivity.''

Muhammed Elbaradei, who wrote ''The Manifesto''  when the first swallow first arrived, quickly found himself under house arrest : ''Of course, the people in the West have been sold the idea that the options in the Arab World are between authoritarian regimes and Islamic Jihadists. That's obviously bogus. If we are talking about Egypt, there is a whole rainbow variety of people who are secular, liberal, market-oriented, and if you give them a chance they will organize themselves to elect a government that is modern and moderate.

They want to desperately catch-up with the rest of the World.''

ElShaheed, a student, enumerates the truth, as he sums up: ''At the end of the day, I am a virtual leader. Once everyone is on the ground, everyone is his own leader.'' 'That's very very true!!  This is something the world has to think about, -in a real hard and objective manner, before the flames turn to blaze, more bloodbaths and Ruin. In the last few weeks, the Egyptian people broke the barrier of fear, and once that is broken, there is no stopping of what may happen!!

With respectful dedication to All the Students, Professors and Teachers of the World. See ya all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless: ''The Manifesto For The Whole World''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless