Have We Reached The Tipping Point?

Last night, my local PBS station ran an episode of BBC's Newsnight from Thursday's broadcast in Britain in which Francis Fukuyama, among others, argued that the uprisings in the Arab World are a "1989 Moment" for Arabs and the world in general.

Comes now the tipping point that the Busheviks were forever yapping about forcing on the Middle East through wars and deception, brutality and connivance. This is it. We're in it. Now. Not through Bushevik force, but through the natural aspirations of miserable Peoples.

"A nation can be reborn as a citizenry." As Simon Schama puts it.

And who would have thought it would happen in the Middle East? Who would have thought the uprisings in the Middle East would trigger/inspire others to rise up as far away as Madison, WI?

"You have people whose dignity, like that vegetable seller who set the whole thing off in Tunisia, whose dignity is simply trashed by a state that's simply arrogant and unresponsive." says Francis Fukuyama.

Well. Yes. That's kind of how it goes. Ultimately, this tipping point and these uprisings are about Dignity, as I've said over and over again. And the absence of Dignity for the Common Man is not limited by any means to the authoritarian regimes long propped up by the United States in the Middle East. Not at all.

The Uprisings have been going on all over Europe due to the mindless imposition of Austerity measures demanded of governments by the various financiers who obviously rule governments world-wide in contravention of the People's Will. These Austerity measures the financiers are demanding -- putting the entire economic burden of the global financial collapse on the backs of the poor and marginal and the working class, while absolving and holding harmless the High and the Mighty -- have inspired revolts everywhere, most recently, again, in Greece, where the streets have frequently turned violent. By putting the economic burden entirely on those least able to absorb and pay it, the Powers That Be -- governments in collusion with the Financier/Rentier Class -- are playing with fire. By denying Dignity to the poor, the marginal, and the working class, they are mindlessly triggering the next phase of Revolution against them.

Lacking functioning crystal balls, we can't know at this point how these uprisings and the fall out from them will turn out. We don't even understand where these uprisings, revolutions and revolts are grounded. The universally expressed conceptions of Dignity and Justice simply don't register among the Powers That Be. They are not just nonsensical to those in the Palace, they are non-existent nonsense.

A Koch (or a Koch handmaiden like Scott Walker) has no idea what Dignity and Justice mean to a prole any more than the Sultan of Araby can possibly imagine what it means to a common Street Arab.

The notion is incomprehensible to the powerful -- whoever and wherever they are.

Of course, even with some of the insights we see on "Newsnight" or wherever -- and there are other segments of this show worth watching at the link provided above -- our media is essentially useless as the course of revolt and revolution unfolds around the world today. Not only can the media not keep up with the flow of events, its principal interest is in shaping and controlling those events for the benefit of themselves and their sponsors, be they government or corporate. They are finding they can't do it in these many cases.

Al Jazeera shows the way on reporting what's going on. They are still playing catch up, not leading at all. As for much of the rest of the media, they don't seem to have a clue, any more than than the propagansist state media of the Arab Autocracies has had any idea what is really going on.

Another view: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/26/949976/-The-Tipping-Point:-Ten-Wake-up-calls-for-Americans-from-Coffee-Party-USA