Stargate and the Arab Revolutions

The Stargate poster with Kurt Russel and James Spader.

A couple of nights ago I got an urge to watch the original Stargate movie, from 1994. The movie is directed by Roland Emmerich and have actors like Kurt Russel, James Spader and actually the late Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors in important roles.

The characters are part of a military expedition, lead by Colonel O’Neil, which travels through a gate to a distant planet, where they encounter problems in going home and meet the indigenous population that is being oppressed by an alien despot calling himself Ra. I like the movie’s use of mythology, but what hit me the most was the resemblance the movie has with the Arab revolutions of 2011, in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

When the characters meet the indigenous population in the movie the population is portrayed as belonging to the Egyptian culture. They are a scared group of dark skinned people and are among other things not allowed by Ra to write anything.

The expedition tries to avoid getting into any conflicts and focus on finding a way to get back to Earth or at least destroy the passage between the planets. However Ra descends with his spaceship over the Pyramid where the gate is and thereby blocks the way home. The characters are obliged to fight, but get killed or caught by Ra’s henchmen. When they are about to get executed, to demonstrate Ra’s power, in front of the people a revolution begins.

When I first thought about how this relates to the ongoing revolutions I first just thought about an Arabic population revolting against their oppressor, but there’s even more relevancy to the film. The ones that lead the revolution are the young people who by their youthful curiosity and the older generations are doubtful about the wisdom in keeping on attacking the oppressor as the retaliation against them is hard with the death of loved ones.

A clear tendency in the Arab revolution is how it is the young people who raise their voices as it is their future. The present revolutions have in many cases been relatively peaceful as dictators like Hosni Mubarak has stepped down before any catastrophic incidents, but in the ongoing civil war in Libya the conflict have lead to many deaths and the war is being fought by people who have almost no training with the weapons they use.

One important factor in winning a war against ones own government is to have the support of the world. Both Tunisia and Egypt had the eyes of the world on them and although no (official) military intervention was made by other countries the people got help with keeping lines of communications open when the regimes tried to block access to them.

While their dictators stepped down, Gaddafi did not hesitate in killing his own people and it is still going on while I’m writing this. However, this blood bath cannot in it self be blamed on the World Community in the same way as the Iraqi turmoil began with an invading force with an oil fetish, but there is still a great question of responsibility towards humanity to avoid blood baths.

Ra and Gaddafi get the same kind of response from their people.

The question that comes to me is whether the World Community really want all the people in the Arab countries to have democracy or if the important thing is whether the west have access to the oil and other resources or not. When Palestine held elections and the ‘wrong’ people won, the fact that it had been a democratic election was not that important and I doubt that the stance has changed since then. All of those three countries have had a relatively positive attitude towards USA and the West and I don’t find it impossible that the World Community, with USA in the lead, could accept the change in Tunisia and Egypt. This could be because they are not that strategically important or probably won’t change their attitudes towards the west that much with a new government.

In Libya there is oil and as the West receives almost all of it, there could be an insecurity in how this would change with a new government. There could also be an unrest from the West that this chain of revolutions can get ‘out of hand’ and that by letting Gaddafi killing his own people it will let off steam in this revolutionary engine, discouraging new revolutions in the Arab world. Whether this is true or not, history may show, but the involvement (or non-involvement) by the World Community does in any case affect the outcome.

As the expedition in Stargate only involves themselves in the Ra conflict when their interests are at stake this implies that it is a common way of working in our civilisation. In the movie Col. O’Neil’s intention is almost through the whole movie to blow up the stargate, and thereby defend the interest of his Earth. The rest of the expedition react to this as it means they won’t be able to go home at all, but there is no real discussion about what the nuke he will use will do to the people living in the region.

I do believe it is a good idea to not involve one self in the revolutions of others to much, as revolutions has to be fought by the oppressed, but in the case of Libya for example a no-fly zone would be a good way to even the odds a little without taking over the war. This may very well happen in the coming days, but I wonder if it is already too late. And I wonder how much the World Community will grieve the failure of a full Libyan liberation. Perhaps as much as Colonel O’Neil would grieve the death of the indigenous people on the non Earth side of the stargate.

Tags: politics, Stargate