Thursday 9th February

On the surface this is so simple; oppressed people are rising up against repressive regimes, demanding freedom and democracy, the very values the West purports to uphold.  And this may have been true in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, where there does appear to have been a groundswell of almost spontaneous protest.  However we hear little now of the troubles in Bahrain, where the protestors were put down with such violence,  lent a hand by the might of Saudi Arabia. And even in Egypt one could see the hand of The Muslim Brotherhood strongly behind things.  These two “Successful” revolutions appear to have taken the West by surprise, and in a way we have lost two faithful Arab allies, to a possibility of chaos, and in Egypt’s case maybe a retrenchment into a more fundamental politics.  Yemen seems to have descended into its own brand of chaos, nobody seems to care what happens there anymore.  Libya was always a bit more suspicious if you ask me, the West were just a bit too quick off the mark to intervene and I am almost certain that we were covertly involved for some time; in any case the outlook now looks increasingly uncertain, as tribal politics takes over.  Syria is another case in point, on the surface, no argument, an evil dictator is massacring his own people, but maybe here the picture is actually a bit more muddled.  The country is rapidly descending into civil war, and one has to wonder just where the protestors are getting their weapons from.

But of course the big one has yet to blow; our strongest ally and friend Saudi Arabia is containing not only any protest but any reporting of unrest at all.  Why is it that though we in the West claim to support Democracy so much, we do nothing to persuade the rich and powerful Saudi’s or many of the other rich Gulf states to give their people freedom, and yet we almost totally ignore the only real democratic Arab state, Palestine, even doing all we can to appease the Isrealis in their shilly-shallying over any real negotiations.

And one only has to look at a map, and one can see that Iran may still be the ultimate target of all our machinations.  So wring your hands you politicians for the cameras, but look to the blood that is on them first.