Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Arab Spring? Could it Happen?
A number of people who I know aren't naive, and also are generally knowledgeable, are suggesting the Arab Spring actually could happen. It isn't clear it will, but it isn't clear it won't, either. So here's hoping. Max Boot, for starters, but more significant, for his greater scholarship, Daniel Pipes.
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Arab spring?
It can't happen. Sorry, it's just not possible.
Unfortunately.
(And let's hope I'm 100% wrong on this. Let's hope, and pray, and fast, and self-flagellate, and blame the Jews----whatever works..... We could, of course, always redefine "spring," or use any of the already-extant alternate definitions....)
Me? Well, I'm waiting---desperately---for a European spring:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362386/Libya-Colonel-Gadaffis-links-London-School-Economics-spy-masters.html
(Alas, that ain't gonna happen either....)
More on that remarkable institution known as the LSE....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362029/Gaddafi-supported-Blairs-cronies-ex-MI6-chiefs-LSE-millions.html
(Well, at least, they seem to have got the "economics" part more-or-less right.)
(Both links courtesy of Martin Kramer.)
http://martinkramer.org/
Needless to say....
http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2011/02/europe-is-worried-about-israel.html
And good for them, too.
Honestly.
Where would Israel be without them?
Israel desperately needs decent, principled, earnest, honest---good---friends to worry about us, to be anxious for our well-being, to be troubled about our health, to be concerned about our security.
TO HELP US IN SPITE OF OURSELVES!!
(Or should that just be, "in spite"?....)
There is no chance of democracy breaking out in the Arab world. Today, in the New York Time it is reported that there is a massive outbreak of violence in Cairo. The police have not returned to the street and criminal gangs are running wild. IMHO this suits the army clique running the country fine because this way they can confront their people with the start choice : chaos (e.g. Iraq, Somalia, Libya) or an iron-handed dictatorship.
In any event, there is no way they can really liberalize the economy in order to forster long-term reforms. This would mean cutting subsidies and freeing the business sector-something that no Arab country has ever allowed. Arabs are taught to look to the gov't as the stern father who chastises them, but also provides for them by putting huge subsidies on basic food products. All the gov'ts now are INCREASING the subsidies in order to gain public favor, yet all this will do is stangle their economies even more.
Hopeless situation.
I like Benny Morris' comment on it
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-west-the-real-qaddafi-4947
spring is coming? Haven't you heard about Erdogan's rant in Germany? that he wants to build his own war planes and similar scratch-my-heads and his is the country that does best on economics.
Unless they give up on Koran induced phantasies of supremacy and most and first of all renounce anti-semitism/anti-Zionism/anti-Israelism call it what you want spring there may be but it will be a shaky one.
We have those quite often btw all the buds swelling and then boom come the Eisheiligen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Saints
followed in June by the Schafskälte http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schafskälte
After that Frost isn't expected until sometime in October which is followed by winter and then and only then will there be spring again.
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