The Price of Arab Optimism! Or, Wagging Israel!

What would you do if you an embattled Arab leader and suffering from major crises at home and wit the international community and you know you simply cannot own up to your mismanagement and your corruption, not to mention the mismanagement and corruption of those around you? You stir up trouble with Israel of course, knowing that your people are either stupid enough and/or cowardly enough to play along. As such,Israel is really the best thing that has ever happened to Arab dictators. Well, that and oil, in some instances. Continue reading →

Prelude to War!

I have long come to believe that the cause of national liberation and independence, upon which we were raised and never weaned, has served more as an instrument for our continued enslavement by the ruling regimes than anything else.Indeed, the national discourse and the constant calls for mobilization against a declared enemy were at best a diversionary measure meant to postpone any serious consideration of our developmental problems and our ruling regimes’ corruption and inherent authoritarian predilections. Continue reading →

ADC – The Arab Discrimination Committee!

Hardly a day goes by in Syria these days without new arrests taking place or activists getting banned from traveling or sentenced to long prison terms on some idiotic trumped up charges that only diseased minds can conjure. This is what happened when the Assads regime is in a defiant mode, and this is what will keep on happening when the world remains silent. Continue reading →

Democratize but Stabilize

First posted on my short-lived blog Tharwalizations.

No one can any longer deny that there is a real and serious need for a concerted well-coordinated multilateral approach to the processes of development, modernization and democratization in the Broader Middle Eat and North Africa Region. Quick fixes are indeed impossible, but a need to shake the status quo is, nonetheless, quite urgent. If the UNDP reports of 2002-4 have served to elucidate anything, it is the necessity of drastic changes in policies in the region, but few of the existing leaders seem willing and/or capable of this. National interest considerations are not at stake here for them, it is their parochial interests, and, in typical cynical human fashion, they tend to override all other considerations. Continue reading “Democratize but Stabilize” →