Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt .......... Jordan

[GoodWitch58]

Thanks. I had not read that, but I did hear him saying pretty much the same thing in an interview...I guess I tend to view him as conservative, but not irrational...so, I was thinking of the more "outrageous" voices. (guess I answered my own question).

Thanks for posting this.

So, I wonder do the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions demonstrate w/out doubt, the "hearts and minds" argument...wonder what would happen if instead of sending our military to Afghanistan, we instead, took half the money that costs and gave it to Greg Mortenson (Central Asia Institute) for his schools--and the other half to some American company to go in and install Internet Service in the country...perhaps the Afghan young people would behave much the same way as the Egyptians and the Tunisian youth...wonder if anyone in our diplomatic and defense arenas are giving any thought to that idea...it would be good for world peace; good for Afghanis and good for U. S. economy....

this offers some hope: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/opinion/14cohen.html?_r=1&hp

Perhaps the most effective antidote to 9/11 will prove to be 2/11, the day Hosni Mubarak conceded the game was up with his 30-year-old dictatorship and left town under military escort for the beach.

We?ve tried invasions of Muslim lands. We?ve tried imposing new systems of government on them. We?ve tried wars on terror. We?ve tried spending billions of dollars. What we haven?t tried is tackling what?s been rotten in the Arab world by helping a homegrown, bottom-up movement for change turn a U.S.-backed police state into a stable democracy.

This is the critical opportunity Egypt now presents.

 

[Bob]

I think this says just about everything.

Egypt's Revolution: Coming to an Economy Near You - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review

It was a society in stagnation, if not decline. Despite ostensible stability, its people ? especially its young people ? faced a future bleaker than the dark side of Pluto. For decades, the richest grew even richer, as national debt mounted, middle-class people tried to make ends meet, and upward mobility fell. Government failed to address these problems, and the governed felt increasingly disenfranchised ? and partisan. Mass unemployment metastasized from a temporary illness to a chronic condition. One of its major cities decided to erect a permanent tent city, for a permanently excluded, marginalized underclass.

This isn't Tunisia, or Egypt ? but America. Yes, in many ways Egypt and America couldn't be more different. But the broad contours are just a little too similar for comfort.
Consider a tweet that made the rounds this weekend. "Youth unemployment: #Yemen 49%, #Palestine 38%, #Morocco 35%, #Egypt 33%, #Tunisia 26%". It sounds staggering. But youth unemployment rates are 20-40% across Europe. And in the USA, estimates range from 20-50% depending on how you count, and when. Egypt's youth unemployment crisis ? which many seemed to think on Twitter was merely an Arab problem (oh, those Arabs!) is, in point of fact, a global one.

What we're watching is a massive malfunctioning of the global economy. At the root of the problem: dumb growth. Dumb growth is, in many ways, bogus ? rather than reflecting enduring wealth creation, it largely reflects the transfer of wealth: from the poor to the rich, the young to the old, tomorrow to today, and human beings to corporate "people." Dumb growth is growth without prosperity. And it's far from an Egyptian problem.

Lane Kenworthy has recently called America's version of it "the Great Decoupling." In the US, net worth, median income, job creation, happiness ? all have been flat for a decade (plus). Other measures of prosperity, which I'd argue matter more, haven't just flatlined, they've cratered: polls show that trust, connection, stability, social mobility, are all down. The problem of dumb, empty "growth" is global.

And my hunch is that it's going to get worse, before it gets better. Consider the food, commodity, and energy price spikes likely to sweep the globe this year. Consider the costs of climate disruption. If it's bad for a family whose breadwinner is unemployed in the States, how bad is it for the more than three billion people ? that's more than half the world, folks ? living on less than $2 a day?

How do we fix it? In his new book, Tyler Cowen argues that the problem is that that we've eaten all the "low-hanging fruit," ? that there's not a great enough quantity of innovation. That's a sharp insight, but I'd argue that the problem's slightly different: not a high enough quality of innovation. The challenge now is leaping to a higher order of innovation: institutional innovation, because it's institutions that set the incentives that mold and shape human achievement in the first place.
And for far too many people, yesterday's economic institutions are literally not delivering the goods.Yes, the tools of capitalism have lifted entire nations out of poverty. But for decades, real prosperity has been flat. Now, at a macroeconomic level, our current economic institutions simply transfer prosperity upwards, to the richest 10% --> 1% --> 0.1% --> 0.01% and so on. This is what I call a global "ponziconomy" ? a titanic, gleaming whirling, wealth transfer machine. And we can't fix it with the same tools we used to build it. That's why it's never been more vital for us ? we, the people ? to challenge the institutions of yesteryear.

All of which brings me back to Egypt as the canary in a very large coal mine. It's hard to overstate just how unexpected a transformation is occurring in Egypt. Death, taxes, and Hosni Mubarak ? they were the three great certainties in modern Egyptian life.

But just underneath the surface, the tectonic pressure of dumb growth was steadily mounting. Bogus prosperity's like magma, filling the volcanic chamber of a society: you can bottle it up for only so long before it erupts, and spectacularly. Today, the world's gaze is fixed on the pyroclastic flow: never-ending demonstrations, protests, people self-organizing in a state that has shut down the internet, mobile networks, and public transport. But the fault lines underneath this explosion were laid down decades ago ? and they might just run across the globe.

The lesson: You can't steal the future forever ? and, in a hyperconnected world, you probably can't steal as much of it for as long.

Now, I don't think Americans will take to the streets to oust their government. The challenge of the democratic, developed world is a quieter rebellion: against a bankruptcy not just of the pocketbook, but of meaning. It's not to take a stand against a dictator, but to take a stand against an unenlightened, nihilistic, hyperconsumerist, soul-suckingly unfulfilling, lethally short-termist ethos that inflicts real and relentless damage on people, society, the natural world, and future generations.

If we want to deliver the goods ? enduring, meaningful stuff that engenders real prosperity ? we're probably going to have start with delivering them to one another. Our untrammeled path back to prosperity ? should we choose to blaze it ? is millions of personal revolutions made up of billions of tiny choices that reclaim our humanity from the heartless merchants of indifference, fear, anger, and vanity.

Some say it's impossible. Me? I believe that in a world of bogus prosperity, what's impossible is for the status quo to stand.

perhaps Mubarak was an 80 something dictator, propped up by US dollars, whose time had come after 30 years of repression.

 

[GoodWitch58]

I especially like this portion of the article:

If we want to deliver the goods ? enduring, meaningful stuff that engenders real prosperity ? we're probably going to have start with delivering them to one another. Our untrammeled path back to prosperity ? should we choose to blaze it ? is millions of personal revolutions made up of billions of tiny choices that reclaim our humanity from the heartless merchants of indifference, fear, anger, and vanity.

Some say it's impossible. Me? I believe that in a world of bogus prosperity, what's impossible is for the status quo to stand.

 

[DuneAHH]

I especially like this portion of the article:

If we want to deliver the goods ? enduring, meaningful stuff that engenders real prosperity ? we're probably going to have start with delivering them to one another. Our untrammeled path back to prosperity ? should we choose to blaze it ? is millions of personal revolutions made up of billions of tiny choices that reclaim our humanity from the heartless merchants of indifference, fear, anger, and vanity.

Some say it's impossible. Me? I believe that in a world of bogus prosperity, what's impossible is for the status quo to stand.

I agree... and

That's why it's never been more vital for us ? we, the people ? to challenge the institutions of yesteryear.

 

[scooterbug44]

The list keeps growing - Tunisia, Algeria, Iran, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen.

This is a cool interactive map showing the demonstrations and giving info on what is going on:

Bahrain protesters take control of main square - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com

 

[Alicia Leonard]

The list keeps growing - Tunisia, Algeria, Iran, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Yemen.

This is a cool interactive map showing the demonstrations and giving info on what is going on:

Bahrain protesters take control of main square - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com

I saw a graph in The Economist a few days ago that listed Saudi as like number seven on the "shoe throwers index" their name, not mine. I'll see if I can find it. Two traits that posters on the blog mentioned as factors were age of unemployed (under 30) and access to the Internet.

AH..here it is..

An index of unrest in the Arab world
IN THIS week's print edition we ran a table showing a number of indicators for members of the Arab League. By adding a few more and ascribing different weights to them we have come up with the Shoe-thrower's index, which aims to predict where the scent of jasmine may spread next. Some factors are hard to put a number on and are therefore discounted. For instance, dissent is harder in countries with a very repressive secret police (like Libya). The data on unemployment were too spotty to be comparable and so this important factor is discounted too. We took out the Comoros and Djibouti, which do not have a great deal in common with the rest of the group, and removed the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Somalia for lack of data. The chart below is the result of ascribing a weighting of 35% for the share of the population that is under 25; 15% for the number of years the government has been in power; 15% for both corruption and lack of democracy as measured by existing indices; 10% for GDP per person; 5% for an index of censorship and 5% for the absolute number of people younger than 25. Jordan comes out surprisingly low on the chart, which suggests the weighting might need to be tweaked. Post suggestions in the comments below and we will refine it.


Daily chart: Arab unrest index: The Shoe-thrower's index | The Economist

 

[BeachSiO2]

I bet the Televangelists are making money hand over fist right now. They should definitely be moving on up. Be warned, Dec 2012 gets closer EVERY DAY!

 

[scooterbug44]

Add Libya and Bahrain to the list! :shock:

 

[BeachSiO2]

SB44=Nostradamus?

 

[Beach Runner]

Newsweek's latest cover: Egypt: How Obama Blew It

Obama's Egypt and Foreign-Policy Failures - Newsweek

An indictment of the inexperience of Obama.

Obama missed the revolutionary wave of middle Eastern democracy. The consensus is a colossal failure of American policy. This failure wa not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration's lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy. Obama was an unusually parochial politician prior to his election, judging by his scant public pronouncements on foreign-policy issues. I can think of no more damning indictment of the administration's strategic thinking than this: it never once considered a scenario in which Mubarek faced a popular revolt. Yet the very essence of rigorous strategic thinking is to devise such a scenario and to think through the best responses to them, preferably two or three moves ahead or actual or potential adversaries. It is only by doing these things that a coherent foreign policy can be made. He has no map at all.