Stirrings of Arab Revolution

EXTRACT: Everywhere in the Arab world then, as made more than clear by the wave of protests unfolding right before our eyes - with far more certain to come - the masses face the same problem of grinding poverty, grotesque inequality, rampant nepotism and the humiliation of being ruled over by obscenely corrupt and oppressive regimes. Most backed and bankrolled by the US - the most fitting, and disgusting, example being Saudi Arabia. A country of staggering wealth, possessing the world's largest oil reserves, yet sponsoring regional counterrevolution in order to defend and preserve the abominable privileges of its ruling family.

In other words, the Arab masses have a shared problem. The answer should be a common solution, which, of course, there is - revolutionary pan-Arab unity. There are nearly 300 million Arabs in a contiguous territory that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean, across north Africa, down the Nile to north Sudan, and all the way to the Persian Gulf and up to the Caspian Sea. Though studded here and there with national minorities, though separated into 25 different states and divided by religion and religious sect - Sunni, Shi'ite, Druze, Orthodox Christian, Catholic Christian, etc - there is a definite Arab or Arabised community. Yes, Arabs are binational - being Tunisians, Algerians, Yemenis, Egyptians, Jordanians, and so on. But for all that there is also a much wider Arab identity, which has its origins going back to the Muslim conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries. A community that comes out of a strong bond of pan-Arab consciousness, born not only of a common language, but of a closely related and interweaved history - of a shared experience.
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