Revolution at record speed: did spring give way to winter?

Christina/ August 14, 2011/ Ideas of philosophy

Until the end it does not become apparent what Correspondent Dietmar Ossenberg and his team want to put over with their documentary “The fragile dream – the Orient after the revolution”. The title already could be the key to the documentary’s statement: “Nice try but were all attempts in vain?” It is a pity that already at this point one is trying to bury a dream that has not started yet.

The search for consistency in this film is in vain. Moreover one gets the feeling that either everybody is yearning for the good old days like in Egypt (Quote: “At Mubarak’s times everything was better”) or is simply happy to have their old regime such as in Morocco (Quote: “A revolution initiated by the king himself”). Is the film’s statement really “stand by your regime, accept interference from the West for reasons of stability and everything will be okay?”

But stop: Is it not the so called West that finds itself in one of the biggest financial and social crisis ever like impressive pictures of young protesters from Greece, Spain, Italy or lately Great Britain have shown recently? Is it not that just those countries are fighting against comparable problems with high jobless rates, especially among the youth?

It is almost paradoxical that the TV station “ZDF” shows right after the documentary on the Orient Michael Moore’s latest master piece entitled “Capitalism – a love story”. If you oppose the misery of the American people to the one of the Arabic World than a different picture respectively a different angle to the whole story becomes obvious.

When Mr. Ossenberg and his team pays a flying visit to Qatar to show the home of “Al Djazeera” TV station he closes the sequence with the words “money serves as a tranquilizer”. With money one would fill up democracy in the Gulf region. Many monarchies in the gulf would follow this advice. Well, the question, what significance money and greed plays in states such as the United States is answered in Mr. Moore’s film. And, is the question who owns the better concept really conducive? Is it not rather a real global problem to divide money equally so that everybody can benefit from it and not only – as for example in the United States – an elite of 1 % of the population whose one and only problem is that the remaining 99 % of the population namely has no money but (still) owns the power of a vote?

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