NEWS
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Arab Spring’s Third Anniversary A Recap of the Last Few Years Zoe Quinn Shaw Staff Writer
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n December 17 2010, a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi found himself abused by police and unemployed, like so many of his friends, family, neighbours, and countrymen. His self-immolation sparked a revolution in a number of countries and territories in the Middle East and in North Africa, a revolution known as the “Arab Spring”. Bouazizi’s death, which occurred a couple of weeks after he set fire to himself, drew attention to Tunisia’s corrupted government and law enforcement, as well as social injustice, which includes to this day an abnormally large unemployment rate. Protests against these injustices followed the attention that Tunisia received. These protests succeeded in overthrowing President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s government.
Inspired by Tunisia’s success, surrounding countries sought to overthrow their own oppressive governments in the fight against inequality. Three years after Bouazizi’s tragedy, some participating countries have managed to overthrow their governmentsand some have spiraled into chaos. In Egypt, two governments were overthrown, the first in February 2011 and the second in July 2013. When the Egyptian people started noticing unemployment and sinking wages paired with high costs for food, they demanded a government reform. Strikes and protests resulted in the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s government, and Mohamed Morsi was elected as the following president. After encouraging Islamist politics and heightening his power through the Egyptian Constitution of 2012, his government was overthrown by a coup d’état. Today he awaits trial.
Syria’s ongoing civil war started in March 2011, taking place between the Syrian Regional Branch of the Ba’ath Party and those who are against it. According to the Huffington Post, over 130,000 people have been killed as of December 2013. With the use of chemical weapons and the resulting in terrible living conditions, the war has done little to change the government that had been the problem in the first place. In 2011, Tunisia overthrew its government, exiling President Ben Ali, ridding themselves of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, and putting a halt to the politicallyassociated police force. However, the fight did not resolve itself completely. The country’s interim government, led by the Islamist Ennahda Movement, has inspired a new wave of protests. Following the assassinations of politicians Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi in early 2013, Tunisia’s
revolutionaries took up arms once again against the second government they disagreed with. Eventually, Ennahda stepped down from their power. Last month, with the third anniversary of Bouazizi’s self-immolation approaching, Tunisia’s political parties chose Mehdi Jomaa as the interim Prime Minister alongside President Moncef Marzouki. Many countries have put a halt to anti-government
protests and some protests are still ongoing, but a number of countries stand out in the importance of their actions. Libya’s government was overthrown in August 2011 and Yemen’s in February 2012. Protests in Algeria, Morocco, Oman, and Palestine have ended, resulting in positive government changes. The Arab Spring has been successful for the most part,all in the memory of Mohamed Bouazizi.
Source: www.tednguyenusa.com
OBAMA and mary-j Turning 420-degrees on the Marijuana Debate Zachary Hirsch Production Manager
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ith the recent legalization of marijuana for recreational and commercial use inside the states of Washington and Colorado, American president Barack Obama’s position on the issue has been a hot topic as of late. In an interview with the New Yorker released September 19th, Obama said: “I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” President Obama’s remarks on Marijuana being “...less dangerous than alcohol” received a lot of media attention as of late. However, his other points about the ethical issues raised by marijuana criminalization should
not be forgotten. “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do.”, Obama noted. “We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.” Although he acknowledged points raised by those who wish to legalize marijuana, Obama made sure also to acknowledge the arguments of those against it. “... those who argue that legalizing marijuana is a panacea and it solves all these social problems I think are probably overstating the case. There is a lot of hair on that policy. And the experiment that’s going to betaking place in Colorado and Washington is going to be, I think, a challenge... I also think that, when it comes to harder drugs, the harm done to the user is profound and the social costs are profound. And you do
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start getting into some difficult line-drawing issues. If marijuana is fully legalized and at some point folks say. Well, we can come up with a negotiated dose of cocaine that we can show is
not any more harmful than vodka, are we open to that? If somebody says, We’ve got a finely calibrated dose of meth, it isn’t going to kill you or rot your teeth, are we O.K. with that?”
Despite the president’s recent remarks, many Americans continue to be prosecuted for use and possession of marijuana “drug paraphernalia”.