With a totalitarian party to vote for:
On Wednesday and Thursday, Egyptians will head to the polls for the second stage of the country’s lengthy parliamentary elections. Unlike the first stage, which included Cairo and Alexandria, this stage will take place mostly in the countryside. So far the Islamists have won 69 percent of the seats in the first stage. This result will be repeated in the second stage with an increased percentage. The Islamist tsunami will only gain strength as it moves into more friendly districts.
So, it’s all good.
The hunger to come in Egypt
“Revolutions don’t only kill their children. They kill a great many ordinary people. .. Half of Egyptians live on $2 a day, and that $2 is about to collapse along with the national currency, and the result will be a catastrophe of, well, biblical proportions.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME10Ak01.html
Confirmation: October 10th, “”Egypt will not go bankrupt, and is not on the verge of bankruptcy,” Hisham Ramez was quoted as saying to Al-Youm Al-Sabaa newspaper on Tuesday. “Egypt’s economy is safe … and Egypt’s foreign reserves are currently at a strong level.”
No wonder Obama is all smiles these days.
And that, my friends, is the major short-coming of democracy.
Related: Michael Totten’s becoming less enthusiastic about Egypt.
Commentary Magazine: “Sin-Free” Egyptian Tourism? – Michael J. Totten, Dec. 12, 2011.
The Arab spring sprung from a food cost explosion. The MB promised they would solve that problem. They will fail spectacularly. Let’s see what happens then…
Spengler summarizes:
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2011/12/02/corruption-and-islamism-in-egypt/
Thanks for the link, Fred.
“The difference between Egypt and a banana republic is the bananas: the collapse of Latin American currencies during the 1980s never led to starvation, because it occurred in countries that exported food. The difference between Egypt and Iran is oil. An Islamist Egypt will resemble not Iran, but Somalia.”
The Copts are sitting where the Jews were in Europe 70 years ago.
I think it’s totally, incredibly, naive to assume that a people, moving out of a statist system, with a repressed essentially non-existent private economy, under a dictator – to suddenly move into a full blown democracy.
Democracy is not a choice; democracy is a mode of political organization that is necessarily – necessarily not probably – linked to one particular economic mode.
Democracy is the political mode operating within a middle class economy.
A middle class is NOT defined as ‘those who are in the middle of two perimeters’. We aren’t talking about ‘median’ here. A middle class is defined, economically, as those who are freely engaged in private businesses.
So- first, what has to emerge in Egypt, is a private small to medium business economy. This will then require, politically, democracy. The two co-exist.
What we are seeing now, is an interim governmental mode – emerging BEFORE this private economic mode has developed. It will be, ideologically, familiar to the population. Do you expect them to choose something unfamiliar? So, it will be, ideologically, Islamic.
BUT – my point is that Egypt cannot economically afford an economic Islamism. Islam is not supportive of a free middle class. Get it?
The Egyptian population, over the last generation, exponentially increased beyond the finite supporting capacity of its statism (tourism and Suez tolls). It absolutely must move into a private sector economy.
That takes time – time which many criticizers here are unwilling to allow. You think they should instantly move into democracy. Doesn’t happen that way; it took the West 400 years. It will take at least two decades for Egypt to do the same.
But it’s inevitable. What other nations must do, and that includes the West, but it includes nations like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, is to help Egypt with developing its private sector economy. They must do this – because Iran, which is trying to prevent its own implosion due to its own lack of a private sector economy –will try to prevent this implosion by imperialism in the region. [The West did the same in the 16th-17th c].
It’s much easier to bomb them when you know they all have acknowledged by their actions that they hate you and are actually trying to destroy you.
You don’t need such tight rules of engagement, nor as many expensive precision guided munitions to spare innocent civilian, because their civilians will be chanting aloha snackbar and death to the great satan.
mike
Soviet Russia,Maoist China and Castro’s Cuba all have “democracies”. Canada has a “democracy” with a party system consisting of several degrees of socialism. Without the safegaurd of absolute civil liberties all a democracy becomes is mob rule directed by a political elite. What we really need is a true Republic – a system where civil right is not subordinate to administrative fiat – Republicanism – a word/concept that has been politically cleansed from public discourse by a political class who embrace the plutocratic model.
Laugh at the farce of this arab spring all you want, we are not that far evolved from totalitarianism hen a citizen can be thrown in jail over a tax bill or prosecuted for the wrong political ideals.
“Laugh at the farce of this arab spring all you want, we are not that far evolved from totalitarianism hen a citizen can be thrown in jail over a tax bill”
I’ve never laughed at the “Arab Spring” moniker attached by dreamers to this “revolution”,only gnashed my teeth in frustration that once again people were reacting with their “wishful” side instead of their critical side,just as they did when Obama was elected.
Democracy is on shaky ground in all the world’s developed Countries,especially the U.S,and what can anyone say about the state of democracy in the European Union with their EU Parliament.
The facade of democracy is being maintained while in many Countries a ruling elite runs the Nation,to their own benefit. As long as they maintain the fiction of democracy,and fool enough of the people,all will be well. One more term of Obamanation in the U.S. and we’ll have to reconsider the term for the U.S.
It may take decades for Egypt to attain democracy,or they may go in a different direction under a more benevolent dictator than they’re used to.
A moderate Muslim dictator with the sense to let the middle class develop,while ruling with a firm but subtle hand,in other words,an Egyptian Obama,might be just the person to lead the Nation to peace and prosperity.
In the meantime,it appears the Islamists are going to take over for the next while and we need a Leader who recognizes the dangers of that fact and will take the appropriate action, not just make noble-sounding speeches.
In Iran, the Shah was ousted to the enthusiasm of the usual liberals. With the first general election Iran became the Islamist theocracy we know today.
BTW speaking of Iran, the animated film “Persepolis” is very good indeed (both story and animation). It is by a former Iranian, Marjane Satrapi, who finally decided to get out. It begins in the Shah’s day (an uncle, a radical, is in prison as the movie begins). The Shah is overthrown, the uncle is released. To the dismay of Satrapi’s parents, the Islamists win. Soon the uncle is back in prison. Then comes the oppression of the Islamist police, then the war with Iraq, and the missiles start to fall. Eventually Marjane leaves for France and her present life. All this is told from the point of view of a teenage girl becoming a young woman; a well-educated middle-class girl. It is curious that the repressive regime doesn’t have much effect on their private lives – very unlike Communist regimes.
One of our Iranian students commented that the film is an accurate depiction of Iran, and very much the way his own friends and relatives feel.
The Shah of Iran was more tolerant than the present Islamist regime, certainly of Bahai, which appears to have been eliminated (one Bahai at a time, likely) by the Islamists.
I rather think that the educated class in Egypt is much the same, though I only know one physicist there. He is a Copt, and is not having an easy time of it.
I don’t think that you can consider China or Cuba – yet – as democracies. And by ‘democracy’ I mean a constitutional democracy, i.e., a legislature constrained by a constitution.
The existence of elitism, of power blocs, of cronyism, is basic to our human nature. In any political mode, we will have these ‘sets’ emerging. Our task is to be always vigilante against these naturally emerging blocs of power.
That’s what a free press is/was supposed to do! That’s why freedom of speech is so vital! Democracy is never a closed system, it is always entropically decaying into those crony-sets of backroom deals. We have to fight for it – and that’s because it’s worth it.
As for the Middle East, I think the most serious threat is Iran. Iran has no intention of transforming and enabling a middle class. It has no choice, actually, but it will do anything to prevent this. And Obama, that mindless narcissist, has and is, enabling them to emerge as the most serious threat our world has seen in many decades.
Obama ignored the demonstrations in Iran for freedom; he instead, supported Ahmandinejad and that power bloc. Obama ignored the Iranian work on developing nuclear power and a bomb. Obama’s latest utterly stupid act has been not to destroy the downed drone but instead, to ask (nicely, he insists) for it back. His stupidity and arrogance are beyond belief. He’s actually enabling Iran to emerge as this great threat – a threat to Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt – the whole ME – and even Pakistan and India.
What might happen, is that Saudi Arabia and Iraq will team up to work with Egypt against Iran. Will Obama enablel this or work against it?
“That’s what a free press is/was supposed to do! That’s why freedom of speech is so vital! Democracy is never a closed system, it is always entropically decaying into those crony-sets of backroom deals. We have to fight for it – and that’s because it’s worth it.”
I believe that’s one of the best posts you’ve ever written.
I wonder what NATO’s plan is to keep the Suez Canal open when Egypt’s new government decides to either increase the cost of transit by several thousand percent and/or simply close it altogether for certain types of goods or specific destinations?
ET>
“I think it’s totally, incredibly, naive to assume that a people, moving out of a statist system, with a repressed essentially non-existent private economy, under a dictator – to suddenly move into a full blown democracy.”
The French and American’s were not so naive circa 1776.
Naivety falls greatest in cultural misunderstandings, of which knowledge of Arabic tribal cultures seems to be the greatest around here.
Hopefully you are still not backpedalling on your “wonderful Arab Spring” position with the +20 year predictions now. It would be disappointing.