" The new wave of protests that erupted early this week in Baghdad, in which protesters are demanding dignity, jobs and services, has spread to other southern cities including Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Diwaniyah and Nasiriyah. It has escalated quickly and now includes calls for the 'fall of the regime'." It is interesting to notice another counter-sectarianism evidence. The majority of Iraq's population is Shi'a and the protests are taking place in Shi'a-dominated cities, with anti-Iranian slogans raised and the Iranian flag burnt. When the first Arab uprising erupted in Tunisia in December 2010, one the dominant slogans was: "Jobs are a right you band of thieves." Then came "the people want the overthrow of the regime." The socio-economic revolution in the MENA region is yet to come. And in the absence of radicalism, leadership and strategy, it is going to a be a long and protracted process that the counter-revolutionary forces, i...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51