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5 comments

• Comment Link Saturday, 29 January 2011 00:47 posted by David

  Hi, Chris. Why isn't reform an option for you? Wouldn't a replacement regime like the Muslim Brotherhood likely be no less repressive? They want an Islamic state. Mightn't they also be less friendly with Israel?
• Comment Link Saturday, 29 January 2011 02:29 posted by OV

  A few days ago I was reading in the Vancouver Province about praises from the World Bank on how well Tunisia had been doing over the last decade and how economically competitive it had been. In other words the people would work for next to nothing and investors would reap huge profits. It doesn't surprise me that a popular movement would rise up against this. The impression that I've been getting from Tunisia is that the cellphone/social media was used as a tool to coordinate surprise flash mobs.
  
  Compare this to to Iran of a few years back. Ahmadinejad's opponent, Mousavi, was running on a platform of privatizing the oil fields with the consequence that all social welfare payments would be cut off. I can't imagine the majority of people voting for that, and it appears that they didn't. Prior to this the standing government and Ahmadinejad had been villanised by the Western press, and the desired outcome of the protest was to bring in free market capitalism. It looks more like an elite ten percent making it appear as if they were the overwhelming majority. (a similiar tactic was tried a few years earlier in Venezuela but unsuccessfully because the other 90% had too strong a face to face social network) In Iran the cellphone was not used to coordinate the protesters, everybody knew where and when the faceoff would be, but rather the cellphone was used to try to influence the rest of the world. A different situation than in Tunisia.
  
  I don't know about Egypt but at this point I'm inclined to believe that this is a legitimate mass movement rather than one contrived by a well financed and coordinated minority.
• Comment Link Saturday, 29 January 2011 04:02 posted by Chris Dierkes

  @David. Possibly the Muslim Brotherhood could takeover though I wouldn't overestimate their chances. This is a quite broad movement. But so was Iran in '79 and that turned out Islamist, so who knows really.
  
  I meant more that I don't think the current regime will be able to find some middle position. Mubarak as of today has announced that he has fired his cabinet and is replacing it. From what I've heard, that is insufficient for the protesters. As one commentator said, "They don't want a change in the regime, they want regime change."
  
  So I think either Mubarak will be replaced (military coup to a transitional government?) or they will totally crack down and hold power but be purely dictatorial.
  
  The regime is too corrupt and too ossified in my view to be able to gently practice a slow descent and evolve beyond themselves to something else.
  
  But you're right, there's no guarantee if Mubarak does fall that whatever replaces him will be more liberal.
• Comment Link Saturday, 29 January 2011 04:07 posted by Chris Dierkes

  OV,
  
  I'm not sure what you mean by Mousavi didn't receive the vast majority of the vote in Iran. Are you telling me you think Ahmadinejad actually won the contested election?
  
  Also are you actually comparing the Iranian situation to the Venezuelan one? 10%????
  
  It's certainly true I think that hyper neo-liberalism lines the pockets of super uber-rich and leaves mass social disparity. I don't think, however, you want to lionize (if that's what you were doing) the Hugo Chavez or Ahmadinejad model of economics however. Have you seen the economies of those countries recently? Particularly Iran. Not pretty.
• Comment Link Saturday, 29 January 2011 08:01 posted by OV

  Yes, I think Ahmadinejad got 2/3 of the vote, because the alternative was privatization of oil fields and loss of state income resulting in an inability to provide social assistance.
  
  Venezuela was about 10%. I'm guessing at the numbers in Iran. Most of the coverage was in Tehran where the university population would have been densest so there would be higher numbers there. The pictures of the demonstrations that I saw were single streets stretching for many blocks, probably tens of thousands, but this included both sides. If you want to use pictures to show majority numbers I'd expect to see something like a Woodstock crowd; otherwise it's just camera distortion.
  
  Chavez, I see as primarily barter between friendly countries, a ship of oil for a few thousand Cuban doctors sort of thing and kind of like blackmarket between countries. Iran is in bunker mode with the majority of its problems being from economic sanctions; however in terms of percentage of people below the poverty line I think Iran is doing better now than they would be if the multinationals stole all their assets.
  
  Depends on which economic indicators you look at. For example Vancouver is probably looking pretty good; even though we have the lowest minimum wage in Canada, the highest rate of child poverty, and the third highest housing prices in the world. On the one hand a $6.66 blueberry smoothie might be chump change, but the social assistance allocation for food for three units (that's what the government calls a mother and two kids, three units) is $6.57/ day. Plus we got a debt built up that will take a few generations if ever to pay down. So do the economics look good or bad.