The Qadri Affect
03/12/2011
Economistan - Economic Analysis Think Tank
Picture: Civil disobedience at the protests of the Republican National Convention, New York City.
Picture taken by Jonathan Mcintosh, 2004.
It was the 4th of January when Malik Mumtaz Qadri opened fire and killed a powerful governor Salman Taseer of the most populous province of Pakistan. He killed him to protest against the controversial blasphemy laws of which the late governor was very vocal in publicly condemning. The reaction to the murder amongst the masses in Pakistan was rather surprising. People were seen distributing sweets in the streets and not a shot was fired to condemn the murder of Salman Taseer, a member of the popular Pakistan Peoples Party. This is in big contrast to the murder of Benazir Bhutto also a member of Pakistan Peoples Party and an ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan. The furor over the murder of Benazir Bhutto was evident from the street protests that ensued. The incident probably shows that the blasphemy law based on the religious principle of observing respect for the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is central to the lives of Pakistanis and cuts across all the sectarian boundaries of Islam. To speak against is to condemn oneself to the wrath of 99 percent of the Muslims living in Pakistan.
The images of an ordinary guard killing the powerful governor of Punjab reverberated through all the major media outlets of the world (the small village we call our home). These images probably incensed the imagination of oppressed people all over the world from Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Libya, Bahrain, America and many more countries where oppression of different sorts prevail. So much so that when Mohamed Bouazizi of Tunisia (a street vendor who set himself on fire to condemn the government repression) died incidentally on the same day when Qadri shot dead the Pakistani Governor, i.e. 4th Jan, 2011, the global cocktail of the Qadri media coverage and the anger over the death of Bouazizi sparked a revolution that became the mother of all revolutions in the Middle East and possibly beyond whose full effects have yet to be realized.
On 8th of January, 2011 American congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was a victim of shooting which was reported to be an assassination attempt on her. The incident left six people dead along with many wounded till the attacker was overwhelmed by a few people attending the event. Jared Lee Loughner was charged with the killing. It is reported that Loughner did not have enough faith in the United States government and so called New World Order and believed in many conspiracy theories surrounding 911 events. Loughner was also a heavy drug user. The killing sparked many comments on facebook and other newspaper websites which suggested there might be a parallel between the Qadri shooting of the governor and the Loughner shooting of the American congresswoman. The US Congress joint session that followed showed a rare act of solidarity amongst the Republicans and the Democrats where members from both the parties sat side by side to show that they were one during the State of the Union address of the US President. This event could possibly pass a message that the US government run by two parties were in affect one party as the aftermath to the assassination attempt depicted. It also shows that the reaction to this “One Party System” in the US is growing and there might be a hint of a revolution in the US with the anti-war protestors, the Julian Assaunges, the Lakota secessionists, the oppressed minorities like the Blacks, Hispanics and persecuted religious (Peter King’s public commissions are a case in point) and other racial minorities slowly gathering steam.
The ensuing revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain etc. show a resolute vote of no confidence in the US policies in the region and the US planted dictators in the Middle East which the US wanted to keep in power till the last possible breath of the ailing regimes. None more important than the brutal regime of Hosni Mubarak which the US was not ready to divorce at any cost but eventually had to when the Egyptian people gave the US no option but to accept the writing on the wall. Calls for Mubarak to step down were not heard from the US capital, only ones for the regime to hold early elections and listen to the needs of its people. The silence from the US in case of Mubarak was deafening but the Egyptians won in the end after enduring a brutal onslaught from pro-Mubarak paid mercenaries. The revolutions in the Middle East are a slap in the face of the US policies in the region and do not bode well for the US in the future. Before long the unequal sharing of wealth in the US where the powerful, rich and strong Jewish lobby becomes richer by the day while other religious and racial minorities become proportionately poor might be the final straw for the American Revolution.
rolleyes
to put paid to that nonsense.
