With a totalitarian party to vote for.
These developments show that the twittering activists of Tahrir Square were incredibly out of touch with their own society—and that their Western cheerleaders were clueless as well. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, Western journalists, academics, and NGO officers predicted the spread of democracy and liberal values throughout the region. Such sunny scenarios seem increasingly farfetched.
Shows to go ya ..What a disarmed (in general), citizenry can accomplish.
“These developments show that the twittering activists of Tahrir Square were incredibly out of touch with their own society—and that their Western cheerleaders were clueless as well.”
The (gag) “Arab Spring” proved beyond all doubt that the so-called educated elites of the West are terminally naive as they fail to differentiate between their hopes and reality.
It became obvious early on that this was no classic grassroots “cry for democracy”, but a well organized and concerted effort to use all of us to further the agenda of Islamists.
Thankfully we have a wise and courageous man in the White House who will know how to conduct his Country’s influence and ensure world peace,starting this Spring in the Middle East.
And if anyone believes THAT……
Once again,REALITY and HISTORY reaches out,and kicks the useful idiots(leftards,academics,MSM) in the teeth and their clueless heads. Unfortunately,they will keep wearing their Red colored glasses,and keep preaching such crap as “well,it takes time for tribes to evolve to the level of”,blah,blah,blah.
Here’s two little hints for them:
that that evolution can be sped up greatly by admitting that these socities(Muslim,socialist,facist,communist) are an anthema to developed Western,Christian cultures,and that their attitudes towards us can be radically changed via a scorched earth policy(with no political interference allowed) and that no sane person,with their feet planted in reality,is willing to wait another 1500 years for that to happen,while their future generations are murdered and subjugated by these barbarians.
I do agree that these treeless baboons will eventually get there,but until they do,they should be treated as the ruthless,murderous,REAL racist,misgyonists they are!
So far, every dictator overthrown has made the situation worse and the Muslim brotherhood has been more than happy to fill the void. If our enemies planned this, they are a lot smarter than the West gave them credit for. They have learned that they don’t even need to fire a shot to take over a country. Simply exploit the immigration policies of gullible Christian countries and time will do the rest.
Pelosi has the Egyptian problem in hand..We have to pay to play,,How much? We won’t know until the UN speaks…UN new leader will have “Space” to speak after Nov Election..
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/15/pelosi_egyptian_ngo_crisis_a_bump_in_the_road
Yup – Every so often I like to remind the Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders about his stunning Egyptian misread from last year titled: “Who’s Afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?” in which he paints this group as a small, loose knit bunch of ne’er do wells who couldn’t possibly amount to anything.
Whatever you say Doug.
what justthinkin said as a priority reality check. ‘Political interference’ must end.
I’m shocked – shocked – to find that a mostly Muslim country isn’t tolerant of other ideas and beliefs.
And as usual, I disagree with the cynicism and ideological slant of ‘those people are incapable of freedom and democracy’.
It is naive to think that a tribal infrastructure, which is two-class, rigid, static, with a Ruler over the Ruled, is going to, in a nanosecond, set up a totally new infrastructure of a three-class system with the middle class as the political and economic base.
Such a transformation is a tectonic shift, not a simple ‘let’s get rid of the dictator and we’ll be OK’. The economic and political infrastructure has to change, not the rhetoric.
But, the facts, the hard facts of reality – quite separate from the rhetoric and ideology, require (and I mean that word) that the tectonic change take place.
The facts are: demography and economics. That’s all.
Demographically, the population base of Egypt and the other Islamic nations has exponentially increased over the past few decades. This increase is far beyond the carrying capacity of a statist economy. That’s the facts.
The Islamist nations are statist, ie, tribal, two-class, with no private enterprise (the domain of the middle class).
A statist economy, focused around state control of one or few resource-based economic sources (oil, the Suez tolls, tourism) is insufficient to sustain the population. It MUST change to a private sector small business economy. MUST change.
To enable such a private sector economy, the statist control must be removed..and, political authority must move into the hands of these private sector businesses. That means democracy.
I totally reject that the Islamic ideology will retain its power and thus prevents ‘all Muslims’ from democracy. Most certainly, Islamist ideology sets up and supports a tribal infrastructure. It doesn’t permit freedom. BUT – such a tribal system can’t support that new bursting population! So – do you seriously think that such an imbalance between ideology and reality can continue?
Reality wins. Always. It takes a LOT of repression of reality to try to maintain ideology as dominant. But in the end, ideology, since it’s based only in words, crumbles. That will happen in the Islamic nations. There will be a lot of internal unrest in these nations, as the imbalance between words and reality work themselves out.
But- it takes time. You can’t change a predominantly rural dependent population into a free working, independent economic mode in a year. It takes time.
At first, what will happen with the fall of the old regime, is that new power blocs will try to take over – in the same infrastructure. They will encounter the same problems: the economic system can’t support the population size.
But, it is naive to think in television size ‘bits’, where in one hour, the old way is out and the new way is in. Reality takes decades to change – and such a change is inevitable in the Middle East. Simply because of the size of the population. Period.
One caution; it is vital for the West to reject multiculturalism. That is, it should not set itself up as the saviour of Islamist fundamentalism.
By this I mean that Islamic fundamentalism can exist very well in the West. That’s because its followers are supported by the welfare of the West and are thus divorced from the hard reality of having to work, independently, in the economic realities of small businesses. This welfare support of Islamist fundamentalism enables the RHETORIC to continue – long past its functionality in the Middle East. The West must not support Islamic fundamentalism.
Dream on. Freedom and democracy can only exist within a foundation that must be built first.
Democracy is no cure-all, it’s simply a mechanism to determine the will of the people. If the people simply vote themselves largess, there is no gain.
Doug Saunders, heh.
Things can get better or worse without Mubarak. With Mubarak, things could only get worse.
They just need time. Well maybe but after what 1400 years you think show some advancement but hay that’s just me.
Worse under mubarack that exactly the same thing the christens were say last week.
Missing word and corrected word from last post before the church police get me.
Thy would,thats
@ET “But in the end, ideology, since it’s based only in words, crumbles.” Islam hasn’t crumbled since 613 AD (earliest preaching) or 622 AD (earliest state) or 629 AD (first attack on Christianity) or 1258 AD (end of caliphate), its still growing and vigorous. Even in Attaturk’s Turkey Islam is [slowly] trumping/thumping democracy.
fiddle – the infrastructure for individual freedom and democracy – is capitalism.
That is, an economy based around private ownership and operation of small and medium businesses. That economic mode is the foundation of the middle class; democracy is the political system of the middle class.
The Islamic nations have had a statist economic mode and tribal political system. Statism rejects private enterprise and the middle class; tribalism is a no-growth two-class political system.
Neither statism nor tribalism can deal with the adaptive dynamics of an exponentially increasing population size. They have to move to capitalism – which means – the end of tribalism.
Reality always, in the end, trumps ideology.
ET @12.48. The evidence is solidly against you.
fiddle – the infrastructure for individual freedom and democracy – is capitalism.
Yeah, right. Capitalism came about before the Magna Carta. And the morals and values that were it’s inspiration. Tell us another one.
oldfart – what evidence are you providing? Have you researched and analyzed the development of capitalism and democracy in the West?
fiddle – the rhetorical expression of freedom of the individual and the economic actualities go hand in hand. The Magna Carta, even in its first form of 1215, rejected the validity of Sovereign Will. But are you aware of what was going on economically? This was the development of the market economy, moving away from the local self-sustaining feudal and village economy.
Are you aware of the technological advances that increased the energy available to man (outside of human and animal labour) – such as water and windmills. Other technologies that enabled man, as an individual, to control the envt – such as the Mariner’s Compass , paper, the mechanical clock, the horse harness, ..
Then, the reform of the Church, which included the rise of individual free thought and realism (eg Abelard died 1142; Duns Scotus a bit later, Aquinas).
And the transition to a market economy based around large towns, with currency rather than direct barter. This was taking place in the West from the 11th and 12 c on.
By the time the Magna Carta was developed, the economic infrastructure was already in operation.
Intellectually, the mindset was already changing, with the rise of the universities in Europe from the 11th c with studies in them that were not theological but were legal and philosophical, dealing with current political and legal issues ofo the emerging city and nation states.
You could benefit from reading Fernand Braudel with has massive histories of the rise of capitalism and even J.D. Bernal.
ET, you do tend to babble on. One could say the same thing of the Babylonians and claim that is what led to the Magna Carta.
ET 2.30 pm Yes, have you?
Explain absence democracy throughout Germany, France and presence capitalism to 1789, and its disappearance in Italian city states after 1300, where capitalism led to tyranny. Citing erroneous moribund theories of outdated historians is not argument, it is merely reciting oldfangled dogma – a variant on Obama’s or Trudeau’s psuedointellectual marxism [you do remember our late liberal Qebecophony god?].
ET – You hypothesis seems to be that:
1. people require a certain standard of living delivered by an economy of a certain size, and
2. people will do what is necessary to maintain their standard of living
3. the per capita standard of living in the ME is declining
4. that is being caused by Islam and its tribal/statist political structure
5. to regain/attain their standard of living the people will overthrow the Islamist/statist governance.
However there is another possibility. If you look to what is happening in sub Saharan Africa (Zimbabwe, Mali, Malawi etc), you will see that a tribal/statist dictator can destroy an economy and peoples standard of living and the population just carries on suffering. Homo Economis is a theoretical concept used to explain what drives outcomes in a closed system of defined and generalized observations based on Western culture. Modern research is showing that the utility maximizing individual may maximize their utility by making choices that are irrational in a world populated by Homo Econimis. That is the world we live in. The population of the ME and sub Saharan Africa is driven by things other than advancing their financial wealth and physical comfort.
I agree that there is nothing to suggest that people in the ME are incapable of freedom and democracy. But why is that important or even necessary? What we need is for them to be non-violent and non-expansive.
I also agree that we should not be involved in providing them with economic assistance, largely for the reasons you provide. I don’t think we should ignore what is going on there though.
I posit that there is something unique about the Western world that has contributed to our economic growth and the per capita wealth we enjoy. I also posit that our standard of living is under attack as we begin to adopt the cultural and tribal values of the non-Western world. It may be unfashionable, but we have to take steps to defend our way of life if we don’t want to suffer under the alternatives like those in the ME and sub Saharan Africa. Maybe the F-35 is a good investment for Canada.
fiddle – nope, the Babylonian city state is completely different. That economy was what is known as an Irrigation economy, based around massive centralist farming around the rivers (Euphrates and Tigris), a steady-state no-growth economy, and necessarily two-class. It did not lead to the increases in population and the necessity for a network of local market economies as occurred in Western Europe with its Rainfall Biome and its local mixed farming economy.
There’s no comparison between the two; an Irrigation economy doesn’t move into a three class mode.
old fart – so, you consider that Fernand Braudel is an ‘erroneous moribund theorist and outdated’? Whew – that’s an incredibly arrogant statement on your part. What’s the basis for your assertion?
Provide the names of the historians whose work you do accept.
Your comment is cryptic and hard to understand, but, are you actually saying that there was a disappearance of capitalism in Italy after 1300? Surely you aren’t serious. Are you ignoring the growth of the merchants and trade?
Modern democracy developed in Europe with the growth of the market economy – gradually empowering those engaged in private business, with political power. The loss of power of the Sovereign and the landed class, as economic wealth moved to those engaged in manufacturing rather than agriculture, and as the manufacturing class increased in size – led to general democracy. Everywhere in Europe. In Germany, Italy, France, where the sovereign lost power.
Again- name the historians you support and explain your contempt for Braudel.
ET you merely recite others’ work as if quoting the bible. Capitalism did not die in Italy after 1300 DEMOCRACY DID. LEARN TO READ. Like all liberals you ignore hard facts and sneer most prettily. Ad hominem attacks are never argument.
If you present an argument you must back it with evidence. If this was a court case your statement of defence would be stricken, and I would have a default judgement [like usual]. Provide evidence to support your statements citing tertiary sources like Braudel ain’t evidence.
I posit that there is something unique about the Western world that has contributed to our economic growth and the per capita wealth we enjoy.
The sages never want to admit the obvious that it is countries with a Christian heritage who are the richest and most free. Absent Russia. Esau sold his heritage.
Doug Saunders!
Interesting: I had a pleasant and respectful exchange with him a while back in which he denied that Turkey was becoming Islamist under Erdogan. I had e-mailed to correct his delusiional view offering him a link to a Caroline Glick piece.
He referred to the goddess Caroline Glick as a “marginal” observer. She LIVES in Jerusalem so clearly she’s too close to see. Related: Matt Gurney told me that Caroline Glick is “humourless”. I told him that the situation wasn’t a knee-slapper.
old fart – I’d suggest that you learn to write; as I said, I couldn’t understand your cryptic comments.
I’ve asked you to provide the names of the historians whose research and analysis you support. You reject Braudel. So- who do you support?
Third party analysis? Do you think that there IS a first party analysis of events of centuries ago – and that the historians of all ages, who are second party analysts, are therefore inadmissable?
I made no ad hominem comments. To critique your comment about Braudel as ‘incredibly arrogant’ is not ad hominem. Kindly learn the critical fallacies and apply them correctly.
Again, provide your sources and your evidence; provide the names of the historians whose work you support. You don’t provide either. Surely you don’t expect me to simply accept your own third party opinions.
rroe – yes, your list is ‘superficially’ correct as an outline of my analytic framework. However, you leave out demographics; the increasing (or decreasing) size of the population within an economic area is extremely important. That is what has tipped the economic balance in the ME.
What we see in Sub-Saharan Africa is a set of dysfunctional populations, trapped within tribalism, and without the means, economically, of moving out of it and into a manufacturing or industrial economy. That is, their environmental restrictions are severe; they are limited in terms of water availability, soil fertility, climate (heat/cold). They could, in previous eras, manage via either hunting/gathering small populations, and limited grain or animal husbandry. A key necessity was migration – moving out of a depleted area to a fresh source of food and water. With settlement of these areas, the ecological imbalance and lack of resources is extreme. That’s why we see the mess in those areas.
Freedom, capitalism and democracy are vital for the massive populations of the ME. That’s because these actions promote the dominance of the self-determined individual, the individual who reasons, who takes economic risks, who invests, innovates, participates constructively in the world. This type of individual is not submissive to the dogma of a tribal ideology – which is Islam. Nor are they susceptible to the violent imperialism of the dogma of Islamism.
The uniqueness of the Western world is, I suggest, due to a whole plethora of things. The first, is the ecological nature of Europe, its biome is the richest on this planet – perfect soil, rain, domesticated plants and animals. These led to frequent rises in population, which required economic and technological adjustments to deal with these expanding populations.
And, I posit that Christianity, as well as the Greek philosophers, provide a unique perspective, for it is focused on the individual will rather than the sovereign will…[at least, after the removal of the Church as a political power and the return to basic Christianity!]. Religions, in my view, reflect the economic system of the time.
The uniqueness of the Western world is, I suggest, due to a whole plethora of things. The first, is the ecological nature of Europe, its biome is the richest on this planet – perfect soil, rain, domesticated plants and animals.
This is the typical explanation by the left for Alberta’s richness. But it didn’t jump out of the ground by itself.
ET’s recipe for the ME is just a variation on the left’s ‘spread the wealth’ philosophy. Spread the right economic philosophy and all will be well.
Germany, under Hitler, had capitalism, but it sure wasn’t free. oldfart cites other examples to which ET has no answers beyond reiterating the same bafflegab she has repeated over and over.
no, fiddle, the expansion of a particular economic mode is not the same as the distribution of a material entity, money. Don’t mix up ‘things’ (money) with ‘systems’ (an economic mode). That’s a serious error.
No, Germany’s fascism is not capitalism. Capitalism rests on the free movement of individuals into the economy, where the individual can, as a private person, buy, manufacture, sell goods and services. Fascism controls the economy and regulates it for the promotion of the state – not the individual.
What is of great concern now, is how the U under Obama is moving out of capitalism and democracy and into socialism and fascism. That is, such changes can happen without full awareness of their causes and results.
no, fiddle, the expansion of a particular economic mode is not the same as the distribution of a material entity, money.
Duh, that’s why I said your recipe was a variation on the theme.
Fascism controls the economy and regulates it for the promotion of the state – not the individual.
Oh, you mean like paying over half your income to the state as taxes? Or control of interest rates to ‘cool’ or ‘stimulate’ the economy?
Kate get some therapy. You must’ve had a very bad childhood.
ET, I never left out demographics, you did. However, I don’t see how that adds to the discussion. The main point of your thesis is that the per capita economic decline suffered by a growing population under tribalism/statism will cause them to choose to replace that form of government. You say it could take centuries. I agree change there will require centuries. But when it happens, how are we to know that it was economics that caused it? My point in the discussion is that the decisions of Homo Econimis – wealth and comfort maximization are necessary but not sufficient to cause the change.
I ask you does the self determined individual you refer to not in fact promote the advancement of democracy rather than the other way round as you suggest? A self determined individual can be someone who is free of religious dominance of religious leaders. The nailing of the 95 Thesis to the door of a church is the act of a self determined individual. That individual is motivated by something other than what motivates the Homo Econimis.
Regarding Africa, I wrote of sub Saharan Africa (that is the part south of the dry, infertile Sahara desert). In most places that is a Garden of Eden with no lack of resources. In fact there may be too many resources in that part of it that is covered by rain forest. But there are still places that are very fertile and accessible to agriculture and industry. The whole continent does not need to be verdant for development to occur. Remember that even in the ME where farming developed in the Fertile Crescent it was not the whole continent. My point here is that if Homo Econimis is what drives the advancement of man, why hasn’t that advancement occurred in one of these Gardens of Eden? I say that suggests that more than economic factors are going to be required to drive the change in the population of the ME (and Africa). Remember that the West didn’t have the economic means to advance its economy until it developed those abilities. And that development was done in an environment no more conducive than the Fertile Crescent, the Russian steppes, the Chinese river valleys, or even North America before the Europeans came etc.
There is more than economic self determination and environmental advantage that drives development. I think you know this too.
I think Kate’s tag line for these threads is very clever and identifies a major additional need. That is freedom from religious statism. That is why when the Islamists want to import their beliefs into our Western World we ought to be very concerned. There is a risk of an erosion of one of the very underpinnings of our society. That is why when any religion trys to become part of our constitution and dictate our behaviours, we should be very concerned.
I think Kate’s tag line for these threads is very clever and identifies a major additional need. That is freedom from religious statism.
Religious state-ism is just the mechanism. Control freaks will use whatever mechanism will work to divide and confuse enough to maintain control.
Every control freak, or controlling system, uses the same MO, right from Pol Pot to Federal Reserve. The rules are never known (confusion), and when they are made known rules most often are retroactive. Or have a retroactive effect.
So-called capitalism is just a system, like a tool. The hands in control of the levers of power make all the difference.
So-called capitalism won’t save anyone without the recognition of unalienable rights. Rights that aren’t given by any gov’t, therefore cannot be removed by any gov’t.
Without that recognition one may as well whistle in the wind as expect a system to save anyone.
rroe – I’m not convinced by your arguments against the economic infrastructure as a, if not the, major cause of societal organization.
Demographics, or the statistical evaluation of a population (size, skills, background etc) is a key component of my societal analysis.
I disagree that the subsaharan Africa is similar, ecologically, to the Western European. First, as you know, a rain forest is not conductive to pre-industrial agriculture and most certainly, not to the large domesticated animals for such an economic mode. Hooved animals cannot function in that biome.
Second, the subsaharan Africa did not, on its own, have the type of animals that could be domesticated (cattle, horses, goats)and thus, this food and work-energy was not available to the economy.
Third, outside of the rainforests, in the grasslands, you have a seasonal rainfall and this makes non-industrial agriculture difficult.
I maintain the the economic mode is a logical adaptation to the ecological realities of the area (rainfall, water, soil, climate and temperatures, type of plants and animals).
No, the individual is only the short-term ‘surface’ level of the deeper infrastructural forces of societal structures. The long term material reality of the ecology, is basic; then, comes the medium time phase of the infrastructures developed to adapt to this ecology (economic mode, political mode etc)..and the individual is the short term expression and articulator of these more basic systems.
Religious or ideological statism is a specific response to a fragile system – fragile in ecology or economy. I consider Islam to have emerged in the 7th c as an ideological response to the expanding agricultural settlements of the Roman cities – which were removing land from the pastoral nomadic economies …The latter turned to Islamism to fight against this encroachment on their land base.