The Japan earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear danger at Fukushima, all together with the heroic actions of the Japanese people seem to be shadowed by the Arab world conflicts in the headline of the international news.
Is it a 1989 happening in the Arab world?
It certainly seems so, since several long term governments are either facing internal problems, such as protests and street conflicts or trying to prevent them: Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Tunisia, Oman, Sudan, Syria, Morocco, Iran.
There is of course, a minor difference that countries like France, UK, Canada and US decide to intervene with military forces as an official reaction to human rights infringement or express their support for the international alliances.
The discussions during talk shows on TVs all over the world are concentrating on the reasons for this upraises:
– human rights infringement in Libya,
– people’s desire to get democracy;
– poverty of people, and
– the power of social media.
Several articles have been written on the subject of:
– oil interests in the area;
However, while trying to find the reasons of why all, why so fast, why now, I find that the answers provided by political analysts, governments and journalists do not go deep enough so that the real reasons can be found and explained.
We all know that the people living in the countries affected by conflicts now have been living like this for many years, we all know that the Arab world was living in poverty, that the gap between the rich and the poor is very high for decades now. Yet, nobody decided to intervene with more than Aid forces up to this month.
The power of social media is relevant, but only when people decide that they are not afraid to go on the streets anymore, when they have already taken the decision themselves. The social media, where some of the countries did not even have access, can only show that others support their cause, and not more.
Therefore, I wonder at the moment: isn’t it more than economic powerful entities from those countries decision and lobby at international level to open the markets for higher profit, more than the already old struggle for oil/petroleum, more than there are no other remaining countries with low income work force to be covered?
Is it? Or the answer is so simple that I cannot see it: economic profit struggle for low paid employees doing the work that other, ex-communist countries for instance won’t do anymore, at least not based on a low income and on higher taxes?
While doing this research, I cannot help wonder why I could not find any official clear offer for economic support for Japan to recover after the earthquake & tsunami, why nobody speaks about the economic crisis anymore and I cannot help thinking of the movie “Wag the Dog”.
Once again, is there something else happening at the moment and we cannot see it or the above mentioned reasons are the mere truth?
kulturspot 