The spread of protest

Events move quickly on the other side of the globe, but it appears that the protesters in Egypt have reached a point that the Iranian opposition failed to get to last summer. And it is having reverberations around the region.

I mentioned Jordan yesterday. Today’s paper brings word of Yemen, where

the longtime president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, announced a series of concessions on Wednesday that included suspending his campaign for constitutional changes that would allow him to remain president for life and pledging that his son would not seek to be his successor.

“No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock,” Mr. Saleh said Wednesday during a legislative session that was boycotted by the opposition. “I present these concessions in the interests of the country. The interests of the country come before our personal interests.”

He ordered the creation of a fund to employ university graduates and to extend social security coverage, increased wages and lowered income taxes and offered to resume a political dialogue that collapsed last October over elections. In answer to opposition complaints that voter records are rife with fraud, he said he would delay April parliamentary elections until better records could be compiled.

Yemen, which is a U.S. ally, is home to a significant al Qaeda presence.

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What side are they on?

New Jersey politics makes little sense. Democrats are calling for a rollback of toll hikes, while the Republicans want the new tolls to fund the Transportation Trust Fund. When did the world flip upside down and Republicans suddenly supporter higher tolls?

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  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
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Call them the White Dashes?

Bands come and go, but it is still tough to swallow when a great band splits. The news today that Jack and Meg have called it quits leaves me feeling like one of Jack’s harsher guitar runs has been cutting a hole in my ear.

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  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Political World: Pain at the pump may have benefits

Political World, my twice-weekly Patch column is up (here is the East Windsor link).

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  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Change in the Middle East: The people choose a different model

There appears to be a wave of change rushing across the Middle East. Tunisia, Egypt and now Jordan have faced or are facing massive demonstrations, with governments falling and change being forced upon calcified regimes.

Neocons had made the case back in 2003 that the toppling of Saddam Hussein by the American military would lead to a sea change in the region, but that sea change never came.

Suddenly, in response to the suicide of a fruit seller in Tunis, the revolution appears to be happening.

What the Bush administration and his neocon allies never understood back in 2003 was that democracy cannot be created at the point of a gun, that change would only happen from below. Now, with Hosni Mubarak’s regime teetering on collapse and Jordan having dismissed its cabinet, we are faced with the prospect of a change we cannot control — and it scares us, because we see a remake of the Iranian revolution in the offing.

But what if what we are witnessing is not Iran-redux, but a remake of the 1989 collapse of the Iron Curtain? Jonathan Schell, in his 2003 book, The Unconquerable World, talked of the power of people movements, as opposed to the use of force.

Violence is the means, as all dictators have known, whereby the few dominate and exploit the many. Nonviolence is the means by which the many can reclaim their rights and advance their interests. Peace begins, someone has said, when the hungry are fed. It is equally true that the hungry will be fed when peace begins. Equality and nonviolence–peace and justice–are inextricably linked, and neither can flourish in the absence of the other. Peace, social justice and defense of the environment are a triad to pit against the imperial triad of war, economic exploitation and environmental exploitation.

The Eastern Europeans, he said, along with others who have broken away from dictatorial regimes and managed to set up free and open societies, eschewed violent revolution for the force of human connectedness. Where violence was the means to the end, the overthrow of the strongman was followed by the creation of a new authoritarian regime (as with the former Soviet Republics that border on Asia and many of the former colonial holdings in African and Latin America).

Violence begets violence, which is why our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led to civil wars in those countries and has yet to bear democratic fruit. It is why we are more likely to see democracy grown in Tunisia and Egypt than in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least in the short term.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.