Waves of Reform in Middle-east: A sign that Satyuga has begun?

[Guest guest]

As many people would have noticed, there are a some extremely

heartening news from middle east. The governments of the middle east

have had history of brutal repression of their citizens. For people

who dont have rights to express themselves, to information and to

vote (to name a few) the current waves of political reform in middle

east is nothing short of miraculous.

 

Lebanon govt resigned yesterday, Egypts premier calls for electoral

reforms, Iraq had elections and even in Saudi Arabia, there is now a

level of information not seen in the past. the Israel-Palestine

conflict is now on a cautious road to peace (recent suicide bombing

not withstanding). And many of these reforms are credited to

President Bush who was given self realization by Shri Mataji.

 

the fact that all of these have almost started simulataneously makes

me believe that the transformation has begun.

 

Jai Shri Mataji!!

 

anuj

[Guest guest]

Mideast Climate Change

 

It's not even spring yet, but a long-frozen political order seems to

be cracking all over the Middle East. Cautious hopes for something

new and better are stirring along the Tigris and the Nile, the

elegant boulevards of Beirut, and the impoverished towns of the Gaza

Strip. It is far too soon for any certainties about ultimate

outcomes. In Iraq, a brutal insurgency still competes for headlines

with post-election democratic maneuvering. Yesterday a suicide

bomber plowed into a crowd of Iraqi police and Army recruits,

killing at least 122 people - the largest death toll in a single

such bombing since the American invasion nearly two years ago. And

the Palestinian terrorists who blew up a Tel Aviv nightclub last

Friday underscored the continuing fragility of what has now been

almost two months of steady political and diplomatic progress

between Israelis and Palestinians.

 

Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each

one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The

Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the

credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of

Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had

any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences that

flowed from the American invasion of Iraq, there could have been no

democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still

been in power. Washington's challenge now lies in finding ways to

nurture and encourage these still fragile trends without smothering

them in a triumphalist embrace.

 

Lebanon's political reawakening took a significant new turn

yesterday when popular protests brought down the pro-Syrian

government of Prime Minister Omar Karami. Syria's occupation of

Lebanon, nearly three decades long, started tottering after the Feb.

14 assassination of the country's leading independent politician,

the former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

 

If Damascus had a hand in this murder, as many Lebanese suspect, it

had a boomerang effect on Lebanon's politics. Instead of

intimidating critics of Syria's dominant role, it inflamed them. To

stem the growing backlash over the Hariri murder, last week Syria

announced its intentions to pull back its occupation forces to a

region near the border - although without offering any firm

timetable. Yesterday, with protests continuing, the pro-Syrian

cabinet resigned. Washington, in an unusual alliance with France,

continues to press for full compliance with the Security Council's

demand for an early and complete Syrian withdrawal. That needs to

happen promptly. Once Syria is gone, Hezbollah, which has engaged in

international terrorism under Syrian protection, must either confine

itself to peaceful political activity or be shut down.

 

Last weekend's surprise announcement of plans to hold at least

nominally competitive presidential elections in Egypt could prove

even more historic, although many of the specific details seem

likely to be disappointing. Egypt is the Arab world's most populous

country and one of its most politically influential. In more than

five millenniums of recorded history, it has never seen a truly free

and competitive election.

 

To be realistic, Egypt isn't likely to see one this year either. For

all his talk of opening up the process, President Hosni Mubarak, 76,

is likely to make sure that no threatening candidates emerge to deny

him a fifth six-year term. But after seeing more than eight million

Iraqis choose their leaders in January, Egypt's voters, and its

increasingly courageous opposition movement, will no longer retreat

into sullen hopelessness so readily. The Bush administration has

helped foster that feeling of hope for a democratic future by

keeping the pressure on Mr. Mubarak. But the real heroes are on-the-

ground patriots like Ayman Nour, who founded a new party aptly named

Tomorrow last October and is now in jail. If Mr. Mubarak truly wants

more open politics, he should free Mr. Nour promptly.

 

It is similarly encouraging that the terrorists who attacked a Tel

Aviv nightclub on Friday, killing five Israelis, have not yet

managed to completely scuttle the new peace dynamic between Israel

and the Palestinian Authority. Israel contends that those terrorists

were sponsored by Syria, but its soldiers reported discovering an

explosives-filled car in the West Bank yesterday. The good news is

that the leaders on both sides did not instantly retreat to familiar

corners in angry rejectionism. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the

new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, have proved they can work

together to thwart terrorism and deny terrorists an instant veto

over progress toward a negotiated peace.

 

Over the past two decades, as democracies replaced police states

across Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America, and a new

economic dynamism lifted hundreds of millions of eastern and

southern Asia out of poverty and into the middle class, the Middle

East stagnated in a perverse time warp that reduced its brightest

people to hopelessness or barely contained rage. The wonder is less

that a new political restlessness is finally visible, but that it

took so long to break through the ice.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/opinion/01tue1.html

 

 

shriadishakti , " anujg_iitd " <anujg_iitd>

wrote:

>

> As many people would have noticed, there are a some extremely

> heartening news from middle east. The governments of the middle

east

> have had history of brutal repression of their citizens. For

people

> who dont have rights to express themselves, to information and to

> vote (to name a few) the current waves of political reform in

middle

> east is nothing short of miraculous.

>

> Lebanon govt resigned yesterday, Egypts premier calls for

electoral

> reforms, Iraq had elections and even in Saudi Arabia, there is now

a

> level of information not seen in the past. the Israel-Palestine

> conflict is now on a cautious road to peace (recent suicide

bombing

> not withstanding). And many of these reforms are credited to

> President Bush who was given self realization by Shri Mataji.

>

> the fact that all of these have almost started simulataneously

makes

> me believe that the transformation has begun.

>

> Jai Shri Mataji!!

>

> anuj