Donatella Della Ratta on Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:21:24 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> Steven Levy: Joi Ito Explains Why Donald Trump Is Like |
Hey MP, this might be a bit off-thread but i feel i would like to add something cause this really touches me in my daily work and life I understand that the way Joi used the expression "Arab Spring" might be misleading there, expecially being compared to Trump's election But it saddens me very deeply, having lived in the Arab world for many years and loving Arab culture and language , to hear that the Arab so called Spring cannot be something genuine and domestic but should have been orchestrated by the US What is fundamentally wrong with us when we think that the US does have Agency, the Agency of big Imperialism, while poor Arabs dont? how do we know that? is it genetically proven that they couldnt revolt without being paid by US and other powers? I am sorry but your sentence saddens me..especially after having seen so many friends of mine dying or being imprisoned or loosing everything just for their dream of dignity and freedom, and definitively not for some US cash or conspiracy Anyone who know the Region and speaks Arabic knew that lots of political struggles were in the making far before 2011..The Arab Spring was not a Spring as it was portrayed by our media..but a long, painful struggle which started in the factories in Mahalla, Egypt and in the mines in Gafsa, Tunisia, in the mid 2000s.. and in Syria, if you go back to the history, there was a first peaceful "revolt "in the 2000 called Damascus Spring followed by a not so peaceful uprising of the Kurds in 2005 sorry I do not what to make a tedious history lesson., i do not want to cite books, articles etc.but, again, pls give Arabs a chance to have their uprisings without thinking that all that happens in the Arab world is US fabricated. and this really relates to the other thread opened by Vahid Salehi on Syria: Vahid, I totally agree with you. What's wrong with our left? are we silently backing a man killing his own people destroying cities erasing history only because he is (supposedly) anti-imperialist? where did we take this idea from? do we really know Assad's policy vis-a-vis Palestine? Just because we want desperately to have an ideal , a romantic idea of the anti-imperial left (and what's left of this left?) are we really gonna excuse this guy and what he and his regime did to the people? I am sorry but if the only idea that we have left as a progressive left is to be anti.imperialist (meaning anti-US), well that's too little for us to go ahead..we should wonder why the left is in such a deep crisis...politically speaking, what are our ideas and ideals beside saying: I am anti-.US? what is our positive, propositive vision of the future? are we going to justify a massacre, a genocide, people being killed in real time on social media with the excuse of eradicating terrorism just because the guy leading this massacre is an "anti-imperialist" leader? I hope we can find better ideas for our future, for our politics Having lived in Syria for many years, speaking fluent arabic and having so many young friends who died to defend romantic ideas of freedom and dignity I am horrified by the idea that we the progressive left could forget their fight in the name of a void , meaningless idea of being anti-imperialist sorry for the long email .. donatella 2016-12-08 15:44 GMT+01:00 mp <mp@aktivix.org>: > On 08/12/16 01:46, Patrice Riemens wrote: > > Joi Ito: > > > It’s about working class empowerment. This election was more > > like the Arab Spring than it was like some well-orchestrated, > > well-designed political maneuver. > > The thing about people in such power positions is that they are > often ignorant - structurally given in the organisational sense well > explained in Manufacturing Consent - or plainly don't give a toss. > Arab Spring? Well... what exactly was that? > > Could it have been any of these things? > > http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-arab-spring-made-in-the-usa/5484950 > > http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/04/official-arab- > spring-subversion-us.html -- Donatella Della Ratta Arab media blog www.mediaoriente.com twitter @donatelladr # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: