Arab Spring or Eruption?

I don’t think it would be possible to identify a true start date for what has been described as Arab Spring. Yes, it is quite evident that one vendor in Tunisia had helped the uprising to take a dramatic turn, but there is no questioning that a massive grudge had been brewing slowly in the Arab world for a while, owing to issues from economic inequality to widespread suppression lead by autocratic governments in some cases for decades after decades. Let's take a quick look:

Syria – Since 1963 (Hafiz Al Asad and then Bashar Al Asad)

Yemen - Ali Abdullah Saleh - 22 years

Libya - Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi - 41 years

Tunisia -  Abidine Bin Ali - 24 years

Egypt - Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak - 30 years

Jordan – Constitutional Monarchy

Saudi Arabia – Absolute Monarchy

Bahrain – Constitutional Monarchy

Kuwait - Constitutional Monarchy

Morocco – Parliamentary Constitutional Monarchy

Algeria – Presidential Republic

Oman – Absolute Monarchy

To understand the origin of the spark that seemingly started the still ongoing upheaval in the Middle East I wanted to know the 26 year old Tunisian man Mohammed Bouazizi from the rural town of Sidi Bouzid with estimated unemployment of 30%, who poured a can of gasoline on his body and set himself alight – around noon – right in front of the governor’s office. A vegetable vendor throughout his youth he was constantly at the receiving end of harassment by the local law and order, possibly for bribes, something he simply couldn’t afford to give. 

On December 17 2010 after being humiliated and his electronic weight machine being confiscated by the local police Mohammed rushed to the governor’s office in a failed attempt to get his equipment back. Within one hour of the police incident, the young man who has been supporting his younger siblings and his mother ended up engulfed in fire, from which he never recovered. He died after 18 days on 4th January 2011.

The demonstrations that began in Sidi Bouzid as a result of his unusual death eventually spread to the capital Tunis, thanks to the secretly shot videos posted on social medias which inspired youths across the country to take to the road. Soon tens of thousands braved tear gas and battled police. After the army refused to shoot protesters Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia with his family, just after 14 days of Bouazizi’s death.

Not even three weeks later, Egypt's army too refused to shoot at the protesters and 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt for almost three decades had little choice but to resign.

Soon the protesters hit the streets in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city. Months later the struggle ends with Muammar Gaddafi killed while trying to escape. The wave of Arab awakening continued its rage through countries after countries in the Middle East – from Yemen to Morocco to Syria -- a nation infamous for its repression. Eventually a majority of the 22 Arab nations felt the heat of the erupting Arab fire that may soon burn all the disparity in that region and start a true democratic, not theocratic, process to develop. 

Since Bouazizi many others, equally desperate and absolutely frustrated, in the region have followed his path and set themselves on fire. Some of the names:

Mohsen Bouterfif, a 37-year-old father of two, Maamir Lotfi, a 36-year-old unemployed father of six, Abdelhafid Boudechicha, a 29-year-old day laborer who lived with his parents and five siblings, Abdou Abdel-Moneim Jaafar, a 49-year-old restaurant owner of Egypt and many more. Along with them died thousands in the process of demonstrations and armed struggle.  

A notable point:

On 7 October, the Nobel Committee announced that Yemeni protest leader Tawakel Karman would share the Nobel Peace Prize with two others. Karman was the first Yemeni citizen and first Arab woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Regretfully the time for this Arab eruption may have not yet come to a point that it can subside. One cannot stop but wonder about Syria’s fate. The unimaginable cruelty that the Syrian government have unleashed on its own citizens is hard to fathom. As I read the story of the 13 year old baby-faced boy Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb who was killed brutally by the government forces for graffiti against Bashar Al Asad my mind just cringed in total disbelief and disgust.  On April 29, 2011, he was detained during a protest in Dara. On May 25, 2011, his dead body was delivered to his family, tortured, burnt, shot three times, and his genitals cut off.A peak at his image and one must stop to wonder what monstrosity one needs to have to mutilate such an innocent life. The worst part of it is that Hamza wasn’t alone. There have been several other kids killed brutally by the Syrian army. I don’t even want to mention about the thousands of adults who perished.

Will this Arab eruption have enough lava to bury all the wrong and bring a new dawn in Syria? Time will tell. 

What's in a Calendar?

It’s not even ten days into the so called New Year 2012 and we are already burdened with a flurry of unfortunate events – locally and internationally. To name a few that sort of got my attention:

1. Several murders right after the New Year in several parts of the city (GTA)
2. Female journalist harassed in Dhaka while doing investigative  report in the hands of a local MP
3. Death of several dozens of Shiite Muslims in Iraq in yet another suicidal bombing
4. New scuffle between the West and Iran on Iran’s nuclear ambition. There are threats of sanctions and blocking Straits of Hormuz by opposing parties (US and EU vs. Iran)
5. Many deaths and thousands desperately in need for help in South Sudan after another tribal conflict
6. Two Canadian’s death in Mexico in the hands of miscreants

However, none of these are out of ordinary and 2012 has nothing to do with it. It’s only a number to define a time frame. Things happen all the time and there are plenty of media and analysts to report and analyze them. I feel very little need for me to add to that mass today. Instead I went on to perform a little investigation into the origin of calendar concept itself. It is a vast field but here is a very concise summary of my findings.

Calendar:

             

The motivation for most calendars is to fix the number of days between return of the cycle of seasons (from spring equinox to the next spring equinox), so that the calendar could be used as an aid to planting and other season-related activities. The cycle of seasons (tropical year) had been known since ancient times to be about 365 and 1/4 days long.

Some of the primary calendar systems are: Solar, Lunar, Lunisolar, Astronomical.

The Ancient Egyptians were the first people to make a calendar which kept in step with the Sun and the seasons. They were also the first people to use a twenty four hour clock.
Before starting to use solar calendar the earliest Egyptian calendar was based on the moon’s cycles, but the lunar calendar failed to predict a critical event in their lives: the annual flooding of the Nile River which took place at a certain time of the year.  This was due to the fact that a solar year is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes 46 seconds long or 365.242199 days and the time between full moons is 29.53 days. Unfortunately, the cycles of lunar month and solar year did not mesh evenly. As a result lunar calendar would become out of synch of the seasons. The observant noticed that the sun moves northward and southward, through the equinoxes and solstices, as the cycle of nature in the temperate latitudes takes place. For an agricultural society, this cycle is of practical importance. Besides, it is also a good impetus for religious observances.
The Ancient Egyptians divided the day-time into twelve hours, numbered one to twelve, and the night-time into another twelve, numbered thirteen to twenty four. The hours were not all the same length: in the summer the hours of the day were longer than the hours of the night, and of course the other way round in the winter. By making all their months an even 30 days, they abandoned trying to sync with lunar cycles and concentrated instead on aligning with the solar year. However their calendar didn't quite align with a solar actual year. (30*12 = 360 days)
Eventually Julius Caesar, the Greek ruler of Egypt, asked an astronomer, Sosigenes of Alexandria, Egypt, to devise a better calendar. What resulted is called the Julian Calendar. He adopted months of 30 or 31 days length, keeping February at 28 days and introduced an extra day in February in leap years (to take care the ~.25 days per year discrepancy). Julius Caesar re-named the 5th month after himself. His successor, Augustus Caesar, re-named the 6th month after himself.
The 12 month calendar which currently serves as the world standard of time is called the Gregorian Calendar, named for Pope Gregory XIIIth who “revised” the previous Julian calendar (named for Julius Caesar). October 5, 1582 was followed by October 16th, 1582, correcting for the Julian calendar which had slipped behind the Spring Equinox by 10 days (the reason is that a tropical year (or solar year) is actually about 11 minutes shorter than 365.25 days. These extra 11 minutes per year in the Julian calendar caused it to gain about three days every four centuries, when compared to the observed equinox times and the seasons). Aside from an improved leap year calculation, Pope Gregory’s calendar has no structural differences from Julius Caesar’s calendar. The longer months were placed in the summer because the sun’s movement through the stars is slower in these months. A further correction of omitting the extra day on even century years, except every 400 years, keeps the calendar in close synchronization with the seasons.

Okay, now let’s end it on a different note. We hear so much about New Year resolution. Is it worth having? Does it make any difference whether we list out things to do in the new year or not? The answer may both be yes and no. It is always a good idea to first identify what needs to be done. So, listing them out is a good start. However, carrying them out in reality is a totally different thing. Perhaps having a long list of things that are not achievable serves no purpose. My suggestion: create a short list and work on to make them reality.

Source: Various web sites in the internet. Primarily: Wikipedia.