Reading Events
With an Eye
Towards Destiny

What's going on in the Middle East anyway? Is it 'like' the break-up of the Soviet Union?

Of course not. The difference between the USSR and the Middle East is not only vast but the comparison is nearly ridiculous. What saves it as a comparison is the mere fact that the two entities "the broader ME" and the former Soviet Union have one very important similarity and that is they are/were both Ideological Enemies of the Empire (US/Israel).

It cannot be argued that the Middle East is 'falling apart' in the way the USSR fell apart because exactly the opposite is true. The problem in the ME has been that the US and Israel prevented unity there. It cannot fall apart. Rather, it is Falling Together and this is far more significant than the demise of the USSR. One could argue that the Islamic Empire was once unified and then fell apart at the end of WWI (Low-rence and all of that) but that too is and was a false description. That was actually the Sunni Ottoman Empire which is not synonomous with Islamic Empire or the ME as a whole. That was the domination and oppression that began immediately after the death of the prophet Mohamed, SA and is ending with what we all know as Al Qaeda.

I don't think anyone can really read what is going to happen after this. No one can predict whether it will be a good thing for the parties concerned or a bad thing. Certainly however, any nation-state that was "imagined" by Churchill & Co with the Balfour, Picot-Sykes and the like....was surely Imaginative. And will vaporize en toto and that would include the fabrication known as Israel.

Peace belongs to those who deserve it. In this little article a "sheikh" (whatever that is) advises the armies to support the people rather than the tyrants.

In yet another article, an 'ayatollah' (translates more or less to a proof of Allah or one who upholds proofs of Allah), it looks like sedition might be in the air in Tehran also.

In yet another article, something even larger than Saudi or Iran is offered, "The Muslim Scholars Gathering considered that the repercussions of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are like an earthquake which will not only affect both countries, but rather would spread to the Islamic world, if not the whole globe."

I think when it comes to Iran/Iraq however, it is impossible to predict how people will perceive the changes that are in the air. Obviously there are two options and that is that people will 'catch' the disease called overthrow/anomie or two, they will perceive that this is the Manifest Destiny the Shia were promised and these events are to usher in not only a return of real Islamic Values and Practice but will also affect the entire world and people will enter the religion en masse i.e. in numbers too large for any of us to imagine.

I am in the second camp however do not want to hold my breath in terms of change. These types of things take hundreds of years and no one able to read this will be alive 100 years from now (which is a famous tradition of the Prophet, SA).

Finally, I believe the best way to describe events is not only in terms of Shia Manifest Destiny but also in terms of independence from the US and Israel, independence from foreign policies designed not with the locals in mind (except for the Israelis). When Israel is offered as the "only" democracy in the Middle East a person ought to really scratch their head at the likelihood of that either existing or surviving in the modern era. Certainly though, when it comes to the existence of 'natural' things i.e. things that were not imagined or created by foreign powers for their own benefit, we have to note that Lebanon has taken the bull by the horns so to speak and is in no way a creation of US/Israel foreign policy except as a type of collateral damage. It just so happens though that this collateral damage is beneficial and how!