I was talking with MARIPOOH over this a night or two ago, regarding the likely future for Libya and the Arab world in general now that Kol Krazy is DOA and the "Arab Spring" has chalked up another kill mark.
I then talked a bit more with Shroomy, and he told me to coherentize what I was talking to him about, as it was more intruiging than RAR GRAEPHS and NUKE THEM ALL:
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Right now what we're seeing is the failure of the arab dictatorships.
They tried semi-secularism+socialism in 1950-1970ies, and it didn't work.
Even during that period, they still used Islam to try and hold together the country and explain away the shortcomings of the regime or to gin up anti-Israel fever when necessary.
"Kill the j00s and drive them into the sea!"
or
"The j00s are responsible for why the stores in Cario run out of bread at 2 PM"
They then got an extra lease on life when some of them semi-embraced islamism in the 1980ies, etc.
The most notable case of this was GEN Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's rule in Pakistan; where he embraced Islamization as a way to cement his own legimitacy after he had Bhutto executed. His rule is largely why Pakistan is the way it is today, with the ISI being a largely separate organization within the government answering to nobody.
That lease of life is expiring now, as their cupboards are now totally bare; revealing them as total shams and frauds.
By contrast, the Islamist movements have been repressed or controlled so tightly by the dictators for so long, that they've formed the only credible alternative power base that has not yet been discredited or distrusted by the masses.
Thus, when Islamist politicans promise that if the country adopts strict islamic principles and Shariah, a new road of prosperity will open up; the people believe them, or are willing to give them the doubt; because they have yet to be totally discredited.
What this is likely to lead to is another Cold War type "Long War" of containment where necessary.
9/11 and various other attacks like Mumbai showed us that we can't just sit back and consider Islamism and the crazy shit some of these loons spout as being "not our problem".
...yet at the same time, Afghanam and Vietraq have shown us that we can't pull them into modernity ahead of their natural timeframes.
So we face a really huge conundrum here.
The prospect of Islamism discrediting itself in the next five to ten years are not....good, because Africa for example; has yet to learn that brutal tribalism doesn't work after 40-50 years of trying it.
(all the talk about socialist/marxist/christian/etc movements was just that -- talk to disguise the fact that it was always a brutal tribal war at it's core, with whatever flavor of -ism of the moment being used to justify killing your neighbor and taking his cows)
BTW, if you want to know what I mean by Islamism; try this on for size:
Link
Egyptian jailed for Facebook Islam insult
By Samer al-Atrush (AFP)
CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced a man to three years in jail with hard labour on Saturday for insulting Islam in postings on Facebook, the official MENA news agency reported.
The Cairo court found that Ayman Yusef Mansur "intentionally insulted the dignity of the Islamic religion and attacked it with insults and ridicule on Facebook," the agency reported.
The court said his insults were "aimed at the Noble Koran, the true Islamic religion, the Prophet of Islam and his family and Muslims, in a scurrilous manner," the agency reported.
It did not provide details on what he had written that was deemed to be offensive.
Mansur was arrested in August after police tracked him down through his internet address.
Egyptian law outlaws insults to religion. The law has been used in the past to try Shiite Muslims.
It's not all gloom and doom however.
CHINA and the other ASIAN TIGERS likely will speed up the process of discrediting Islamism as a complete political/legal construct by simply being themselves.
Pretty much all of the Arab states import almost half of their cereal crops, and directly subsidize food prices -- rising food prices helped provide some of the spark for the ARAB SPRING movements.
The rising economies of Asia are placing a lot of pressure on the food staple market -- the Chinese and others want to eat more than just rice -- they want to sit down in Beijing and have a nice steak every so often.
Because of the booming Chinese GDP, they have the money to do this, and by buying up all the previously cheap food on the market, force the Arab states out of the market. Proclaiming your piety and adopting Shariah principles won't feed the masses...
And these people are taking joy in Gaddafi's death?
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- PeZook
"Complex issue"? Women's rights were in far better shape under Gaddafi, as were inter-racial relations in Libya, and that was noted by fucking everyone. So when I demonstrate the logical outcome of an uprising dominated by radical, militant islamists from the LIFG, you start harping about how I'm just writing "fuck America" posts.
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