Actually, the antichrist has been around in Libya for 42 years now. Other signs of the time have recently been witnessed, including: - China calling on the United States to improve its economic performance, by seeking to reduce public debt in all seriousness. - Muammar Gaddafi accusing the British Prime Minister David Cameron of using violence against the ‘peaceful protests'. And it sounded as if the Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister was describing his own country, when he accused the British government of waging war against the British people, and claimed that the government and the prime minister have lost all legitimacy. Here, I will not say that Gaddafi has lost legitimacy, because he never had any to begin with, and because he has been waging war against the Libyan people since 1969. - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the United Nations to intervene to protect the protesters. His government then appealed on the British police to show restraint, just like the police forces of the Islamic republic did in 2009, when dozens of protesters were not killed, thousands were not arrested, and Nada Agha Sultan did not lose her life nor was filmed as she passed away. An Iranian Deputy even demanded that a fact finding mission investigate human rights violations by the British government. I leave China and its economic advices, since I will no doubt return to this subject in the coming days, and I stay instead with the riots in London, before I briefly discuss the protests in Israel. The problem of democracy is that it commands no reverence. The people do not fear the government or the police. A citizen in a democracy does not ‘button up' his jacket and move to the other pavement when he sees a cop or ‘a government type' as we say in Lebanon. For this reason, we often saw riots and sabotage from California to New York, and in France and Britain itself, twenty five years ago. We also saw riots in Greece, the country which invented democracy two thousand years ago and gave it to the world (we are still waiting for that merchandise to reach our countries). In Britain, policemen fear the people, because the latter can lodge complaints against them. Meanwhile, children below sixteen years of age are almost above the law, just for being underage. The recent riots were carried out by youths who are mostly unemployed, and who live at the expense of the state and its social welfare benefits. As the police were absent in the beginning, looting and theft encouraged others to follow suit in other cities. This was accompanied by sabotage and arsons, and as usual, the police stepped in only when it was too late. Cameron is now threatening the rioters. However, he too commands no fear, since democracy is not something revered or reckoned with. He had proposed, as part of his government's austerity measures, to cut police numbers. Now, he is meeting with opposition within his party, and from his Liberal Democratic partners in the coalition government, as well as the opposition Labor Party. On the other hand, Israel is a democracy for Jews only, which renders it a fascist and racist state. Thus we see Jews protesting against their government because they do not fear it, while only a small fraction of poor Palestinian Arabs of 1948 took to the streets, because there are racist laws against them in place, mostly passed by the government of the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. While the protesters in London did not raise any demands, instead looting everything they stumbled upon, they in Israel have called for lower housing costs, more housing and a lower sales tax. But I believe that the Netanyahu government would solve the housing problem by expelling more Palestinians from their homes, and by asking the bankrupt United States to fund the financial demands of the Israeli public, lest the Israel lobby rise up against the Obama administration once again. If it's any consolation for us for the absence of democracy, the youths of Tunisia, followed by the youths in Egypt, had not protested to steal television sets or jeans, but to overthrow the ruling regime instead. While the young revolutionaries seek the establishment of a democratic regime, and while I hope that they will indeed attain this goal, I fear that we may end up having replaced one dictator with another. I even fear a time when we may lament a better past, and sit and wait for judgment day. [email protected]
