Egyptian intifada

Last days I have spent watching carefully what is going on in Egypt, it is important to me for several reasons: though I am not an Egyptian myself, I can say I love this country, but putting personal reasons aside: Egypt is a big and important country and taking down the dictator and introducing democracy in there will, probably, be a turning point for all Middle East and maybe even for a wider area. this is evident from reaction of leaders of neighbouring countries, like Israel or Saudi Arabia which supported dictator Mubarak and Israel is called a democratic country! What a mockery.
Democracy means that all of the citizens have their say in a country, this is not the case in Israel, Saudi Arabia or any of the Middle Easy countries, where tens of millions people every day are oppressed, but they also mostly live in extreme poverty.

I really hope that Egyptians will succeed in introducing democracy, for their sake and for the sake of freedom in the world. This would be an evident proof that reasons for which Western countries support tyrants like Mubarak are just a lie, nothing else but this!

We, in Europe and USA are being told constantly that only those dictators can guarantee a stability in those countries, which extremely peculiar point of view, as it assumes that Arab people are not able to make reasonable decisions! It is racism, called by professor Edward Said "orientalism", the view widely spread throughout western media and, I'm guessing among our so called "elites".

Egypt's protest shows clearly that Arabs are capable of peaceful protesting and non-violent demanding their natural and basic rights!

I hope that Egypt and other countries in region will manage soon to abolish their oppressing leaders and send them to their supporters in Washington D.C. and London.

Leadership

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/01/2011113192110570350.html

"I understand the Tunisians, I understand their demands. I am sad about what is happening now after 50 years of service to the country, military service, all the different posts, 23 years of the presidency," Ben Ali said.

I don't know enough about president Ben Ali to judge whether his sadness over the recent occurrences in Tunisia is genuine or not, I just know what Tunisian themselves write about him on forums and blogs, not much good things....

What stuck me was he astonishment that after so many years of "service" people of Tunisia are apparently not happy. I am not much surprised from little I know about the standard of life of Tunisians.... enough to say that resent riots started as a result of a death of a young man who set himself on fire in an act of desperation after police confiscated his vegetable stall, his only of of earning livelihood. The young man was graduated from a university, had to sell vegetables for living, burnt himself alive because Tunisian police decided to take even that away from him.
I do not really know how common such situations are in Tunisia, but consistency with which young Tunisian keep trying to get illegally to Europe, even though if they succeed their life here would be very difficult, lets me think it must be rather tough life over in Tunisia.
Yet president Ben Ali is surprised.

And he is not isolated in this astonishment, in this lack of understanding of his own nation. That seems rather common illness of politician, not just in such dictatorship countries like Tunisia, but in Europe as well. My personal feeling is that our governments have no really knowledge what their nations want, what is good for them. They talk about things they have no idea at all. Most of our presidents, prime ministers, ministers, members of parliament never in their lives did any work, they were always well off, their went to good schools, never used public transport, they never had to look for a job, to spend hours in job agencies, to cut expenses to cover financial crisis caused by some rich people we will never see. No, they do not know hat is it like. And yet, they claim to speak on hour behalf, to act on hour behalf and most of their actions shows clearly we are actually loosing out on their decisions.

It is assumed democracy is a political system of representatives of some particular group of people, but I do not really feel at all like this would be the case. Do you? I can hardly remember any acts or bills introduces by parliaments or governments that would in some way made my life easier. What can recall easily, though, is constant talk of necessity of cutting off public spendings, constant promising of creating new place of work for millions and millions of unemployed people in Europe

The idea of democracy is actually great, sadly we have a huge problem with putting it into practice. I have read an article claiming that in UK 90% of higher public offices are occupied by graduates of 4 best universities. I don't know whether it is true or not, but it certainly feels like that. I do not think that those people can represent warehouses workers or people spending most of their lives on the assembly lines, can they? I do not see a reason why cannot be a son or daughter of butcher to be a prime minister, why does it have to be a child of a professor or some kind of a noble? What is wrong with butchers?

I will finish today with a quote, a saying by a Prophet of Islam:

‎"Leader of a group (nation) is their servant". (Prophet Mohammed - peace be upon him)

I wonder if president Ben Ali consider himself a servant of a young man that burnt himself alive?

The very basic assumption of most modern political systems is that governments represent their electors. This is not true.
Moreover, they not only do not represent the majority who gave them power, their actions more and more often actually work against the best benefit of their nations. Our, democratically chosen governments betrayed us and they keep doing this, they keep lying to us on a daily basis.
If they don't represent me, someone may ask, whom do they represent then? I will answer this with a short story: as a young boy I read lots of stories about Sherlock Holmes, by sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This brilliant detective kept saying: if don't know who the criminal is, look for a motive, this will show you inevitably a perpetrator. I strongly believe this rule of thumb applies here as well. My dear reader, think for few minutes: who is constantly gaining, whose power and wealth increase.

Still not sure? OK, I will tell you.

Those of the shareholders of the global corporations.

Let me put that plain: I do believe and I have good reasons for this that our governments represent nowadays global corporations, which seriously affect the living of the people all over the world.
USA is still the most powerful country in the world, people living there, still enjoy quite often a good living, however both common opinion and statistic say that the life of an average citizen of USA lost on quality during last thirty years, things get more expensive, bills consume bigger and bigger chunks of our salaries, more and more of us lose our jobs, education gets more expensive, so does health care ( I luckily live in the country where this one is free, which is told something bad, as American capitalists keep claiming.... hmm... from my point of view, free health care gives me a lot of benefits, and I'm willing to pay for that). Those processes are very slow, however they take place in USA, in Europe and everywhere else. On the other hand those huge, powerful companies usually increase their profit year by year, like British Tesco, last financial year they had nearly £3 billions of pure profit. Can you even imagine so much money? But those profits happen on someone expanse, and this someone is YOU!!! Whoever you are, and wherever you live, you, my dear reader pay for those ever increasing profits.

Governments and the rich work most of time hand in hand, as in most of the cases members of the governments are those lucky ones who are at the same time part of those very small (comparing to the rest) group of the privileged.

We, the people (sounds a bit odd, doesn't it?) have to understand: THEY - the governments do not represent us any more. We, the people have lost the power, we have lost influence over our lives, over fates of our children, because there is someone else who make decisions, someone who does not care if you have enough money to pay your bill, to pay off your mortgage, to pay for your children education. You don't even know this people, they don't hang around your neighbourhood, even your presence in their neighbourhood would be consider an insult, and you can be sure that a police officer would ask you what on earth are you doing there? You don't even exist for those people. You are the number. Same as the profit. Ooops, sorry, I really forgot, I am talking now about the most important value of our times, and I should do so with greater respect: THE PROFIT.

You, whoever you are and wherever you live have to understand, they will sacrifice you and your family and all of your friends in the name of financial profit. You are not important any more. You are nothing, so am I, of course.

And, no, I don't agree with this, I don't want the world to bow in front the golden calf. Do you remember this story? And, yes, this is a sin, making money more important than a human being is unforgivable sin. It is a sin against humanity and against God. It is also a crime, and it leads to crimes.

Any man, even poor, uneducated, in rags is more important than all of the money of the world. You, my dear reader, are more important than all the money of the world!