@Palmyrene
Well for starters they couldn't give a shit about you.
Maybe not me individually, but we as a block sure do matter.
Secondly, Israel is allied to Saudi Arabia and the US which is also allied to Saudi Arabia.
Israel is allied to the US, true; Its "alliance" with Saudi Arabia, however, is one of convenience and not a fully established alliance in overall.
So why do you think an alliance with Israel is a good idea?
Israel, as it stands, is Lebanon's natural ally. Its population is a minority population in the region similar to that of Lebanon. We share borders and resources. And we have similar socially liberal cultures that makes cultural communication and integration easier and more solid, and, thus, better cooperation and coordination.
How is supporting Islamist groups and giving them more power good? Irresponsible funding of Islamist groups is what led ISIS to happen.
Not really. You're not giving them more power, you're arming them and their enemies so they can kill each other.
Regarding ISIS, this might sound controversial and would clearly piss off many people, but ISIS was a successful project.
The main purpose of boosting and arming ISIS was to weaken Syria as a whole and the Baath regime in specific; It worked.
There is a reason why Turkey would occasionally let arms pass through its territories to ISIS, and why Iran would allow ISIS to grow in Iraq before moving in.
I have discussed this previously a year or so ago here, but Iran and Turkey played a major role in the rise of ISIS.
For Turkey, ISIS effectively destroyed Syria and gave it the crisis it needs to hold leverage over the EU.
And for Iran, ISIS weakened and brought its political rivals in Iraq under its control (primarily the Sadrists), gave it massive control inside the Iraqi government and consolidated its holdings in Iraq, and, finally, allowed it to clear the way to trade with Lebanon and hold massive leverage and control over the Syrian government which, anyone following the news or looking through the news archives prior to the war would know, had disputes and on the verge of conflict with the Baalbek tribes, primarily following several clashes with the Jafar, Zaiter, Wehbi, Shraif, Noon, and even Awad clans, all of which hold significant investments in Iran mounting up to the 10s of billions under the Biyyar program which, on its own, is one of the main reason the Iranian economy is still standing after so many years.
This, needless to say, became important after the waves of sanctions began in the late 2000s, which made it ever more necessary for Iran to reduce the power of the Baath regime in Syria.
This might sound bad for many, and I know the dangers of ISIS myself as I was in Lebanon during the early stages of the ISIS incursions over the Lebanese borders and served on several shifts ( a shift lasts for a week or so) in the defense patrols over the borders organized by the tribes. So I am fully aware of what ISIS is; But, I also realize the strategic goals achieved over the course of the conflict and the long term benefits it may provide.
Your people will be effected by funding Islamist groups. Funding Islamist groups gives them more power, the more power they, the more they can spread their influence. And they don't discriminate on where they spread their influence.
Not if done right.
You don't arm them alone, you arm them and their enemies. That wont give them any power.
Al Qaeda was funded by the US. Guess what happened to them.
Regarding 9/11; Again, bad event that just happened to allow the US defense industry to gain massive amounts of funding and wealth in the form of profits, as well as massively expanding the US's sphere of influence.
The US was already attacked several times prior, and I don't believe they had the knowledge that an attack this bad would occur, but that overall policy of supporting and funding Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan has given the US establishment a massive advantage and significant profit.
Not to mention that establishing the Taliban in the 80s would, later on, act as an excuse to contain the rise of China (something that had already begun by that time) through the establishment of a military presence right on its doorstep, with the same towards Iran. As well as establishing a route into central Asia and leverage against China, Russia, and Iran.
The US's policy in funding the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan may have backfired in the form of 9/11, but in overall it was and still is a success in view of the global geopolitical interests of the US establishment. With an emphasis on the establishment part.
Dude, don't pretend anyone other than the government is funding proxies.
Governments don't exist in a vacuum.
You seem to think that the will of the government is the will of the people.
Not the will, the interests.
With few exceptions obviously, but that's a subject of another debate.
You go as far as to say dictatorships run on the consent of the population.
1-Dictatorships, as stated many times earlier, need the support of atleast a portion of their populations to maintain their powers.
2-When it comes to geopolitics, it is rarely relevant what form of government there is, the geopolitical and geoeconomic interests of the nation as a whole is what matters.
About what?
About the cycle you mentioned.
This includes Lebanon.
True, and we do the same at their expense. If we became allied, then we can maximize our influence by cooperating and coordinating.
The distinction uprising and revolutions is not dependant on which class starts it. That's not the difference.
I never said it (the distinction) depends on which class it starts with. I, very clearly, stated that uprisings started by the lower class generally do not have the steam to turn into a fully-fledged revolution and are quelled rather quickly; All while when the working and middle classes join up, or atleast a portion of them, then there will be enough to turn it into a fully-fledged revolution.
And it does. The Russian Revolution, French Revolution, Syrian Revolution, and thr Tahrir Square protests were all run by the lower class.
-The Russian revolution was conducted by blocks (soviets) of working and middle classes.
-The French revolution was done in a similar fashion, to the point of including lower levels of nobels joining in.
-The Syrian revolution started with a military coup with high ranking officers (arguably upper class) leading it and receiving tons of foreign support.
-The Egyptian "revolution" was only "successful" because the army stepped in, which would become obvious shortly after that it stepped in only for its leaders to take over instead. i.e it wasn't a revolution, just a very slow coup.
If you're dividing them based on wealth then it would be the working class and everything below that which would start the revolution.
They don't.
Creating a class called the "upper working class" is an oxymoron.
It's not.
Culture already does that. Culture changes by itself and based on the environment. That's why in 1950s America, the youth of that generation had a completely different culture compared to the previous generation. Because the environment changed.
It doesn't. If you don't lead and direct the evolution of culture, you might end up worse than before. As already happened in many places I'm sure you are aware.
The authoritarian cultural laws like forcing everyone to wear a certain hat or forcing hijabs off women also had alot to do with it. At the eve of the revolution, only mosques were the places where people could freely criticize the regime.
Hardly.
The main thing that drove the collapse of the dynasty was the Shah attempting to 1- Remove the autonomy of the clerics (noting that the Qum clerics have always been an autonomous imperial institution going all the way back to Ismail the first), 2- attempting to cease tribal lands to feed his industrial revolution (an example would be the river valleys in Semnan), and 3- pissing off the old imperial dynasties like the Osmans and the Timurs, which ended up with them making a "deal" with the clerics.
No it isn't. Coups are done internally and work with the factionalism in the government. They don't join the protesters.
Then you don't know what coups are dear.
Most of the Islamist groups were former Baathist soldiers.
True, from both Syria and Iraq. Though in Syria, lots of tribals and so as well.
You aren't.
We are. You tried to move it to the end results, but I keep pulling back.
One of them said they were going to join the armed part of the rebels and I never heard from them again.
The rest of them just joined existing factions. One friend I was talking to on WhatsApp said he was going to join an Islamist group that his brother joined to keep an eye on him.
I occasionally hear from him. He got out of the group, has kids (he's from the rural areas so marrying young is common).
Well, then you proved my point.
It's not a clash of ideology, it's a power struggle. All hierarchical structures are the same.
Power struggles for the upper class needs fuel for the rest to join.
Working class people are poor, at least in Syria and Iraq. They have plenty if expertise and organizing is easy if you know how to do it. A vanguard is impossible nowadays so small chapters and groups are formed.
North Korea is oppressive ontop of their being no food. Meanwhile Syria is just corrupt which is why when the drought happened people had no issue protesting.
-Working-class people are not poor, they're the ones between being poor and middle class.
- Organizing and leadership aren't easy, if they were, everyone would've done it.
The working class was there from the start. There was no middle class in those countries, only the property owning nobility. Most people at the time were serfs.
All of Europe had notable middle classes since the Black death.
The working class can take over the factories they work at and run it themselves then federate with other worker owned facilities.
They can't.
Even in the most hardline communists recognize that there need to be organizers for any institute to operate.
They could do a general strike and destroy all the resources the upper class has.
Nothing is that simple.
What safer means? These countries don't care about protest, they haven't seen the same level of public discord that goes on in Syria or Egypt or Iraq.
"Public discord" is relative.
In China for example, a billion people have left poverty behind into the middle class, and if you work your way correctly, you can make it big with the CCP.
In Saudi Arabia, corruption rules the day, and a Saudi citizen can indeed join the corruption game. Or they can just sit back and relax while demanding stuff from the government since Saudi Arabia's power structure is much much more fragile than most other countries, not only the ruling faction face rivalry from inside the house of Saud, but also from the Shias in the north east and the Hijazis from the west.
So they have to appease their population to a notable degree.
Now, of course I know you're going to start screaming about how "insane" and "stupid" for me to say that Saudi Arabia's ruling elites need to appease other factions, but anyone who knows anything about the kingdom or even briefly followed the news regarding the Saudi internal power struggles would know that Saudi Arabia's rulers stand on very thin ice.
The reason why first world countries don't revolt even if their liberties are broken is because they're too content to. It takes too much effort and there's so much to lose. That's why.
How does this contradict what I said?
Tell that to Vietnam or the Russian Revolution or the Chinese Revolution.
Vietnam = Supported, armed, and funded by the Soviets.
Russia and China= Working and middle class , not peasants.
And most of Syria's population was starving due to the drought.e had to completely import our food from neighboring countries which strained the economy even more than it was before and the corruption became more public when the country was doing bad.
No they weren't.
Importing your food doesn't make you starving.
Regarding corruption and the economy, sure, and it would've gone worse actually if the aforementioned factors didn't come into play. Just look at Jordan right next door.
It's what you have to do in order to get rid of influence.
It didn't, infact it arguably broke the communist party and turned allowed state capitalism to rise in China.
But alot of those things will be instantly opposed because it's the state imposing it.
1- People don't inherently oppose everything the state does, not everyone is an anarchist.
2- They'd barely notice, most of these policies will affect rising generations more than the older ones.
You live in Lebanon, you know how any religious figure has influence with or is in bed with the state.
I don't live in Lebanon at the moment, I used to however.
For the rest, which state?
You do realize that the "state" in Lebanon primarily control Beirut, while the rest of the country is divided by factions.
Every form of oppression and indoctrination derives it's legitimacy from the state.
More accurately from the power hierarchy established.
But it's nonsensical to say that this is a bad thing because we humans naturally organize this way, all the good and bad things in any given society comes from the same source.
Which movements?
Radical Sunni Islamist movements.
Thankfully no country actually follows Islamic economic laws. No Islamic country has banned interest and many quote on quote "Islamic banks" still give out loans with interests under different names.
They don't apply it in full, they just derive inspiration from it for the moment.
This strikes me as grasping for straws.
Nothing I said is grasping for straws.
Read it more thoroughly.
I mean all empires became rich due to conquest. Do you think the industrial revolution would've happened if Britain didn't have an abundance of raw materials from it's colonies?
The Gulf is rich due to oil but North Africa isn't. Morocco relies on tourism not oil and Tunisia has no economy at all but it's better than most countries.
Actually yea, it would. The industrial revolution was the culmination of several factors, the empires just made it quicker to take place. If there were no empires, it would've just been slower.
Islamic economic polices have never been fully implemented. Also, to be fair, Islamic countries with Islamic economic policies on loans were unaffected by the 2007 global financial crisis so there's something good here.
They weren't affected because the sector was already stagnant.