Peti oktobar na bliskom istoku i arapskom svetu

[Gandalf]

Recep Tayyip je u kresanju krila generalskoj kasti imao zaleđinu ogromnog ekonomskog zaleta. Bojim se da njegovi saveti u tom pogledu neće biti od velike pomoći. Egipat, jednostavno, mora prvo da se razvije malo. To će biti surovo težak posao, pogotovo u doba globalne krize.

naravno. nisam ni mislio bukvalno - AKP je dosao na vlast u znatno povoljnijim okolnostima, s vetrom u ledja. Edited January 31, 2011 by Gandalf

[Gandalf]

vredi procitati ceo tekst...http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2011/01/mubarak-and-me.htmlUncle Mubarak ran a very tight ship. It wasn't that he was mean. It was more that he didn't want you to hurt yourself in your youthful exuberance. Just to make sure you knew that he cared, there were quite a few pictures of him looking like the kind yet tough teacher you wish you had in school. Mubsy, as we used to call him at work, didn't look like those other leaders who liked to see their photos all over the place. He didn't have Hafez al Asad's dead-eye menace or Vladamir Putin's unspoken snarl. No, Mubarak looked like he was there for you. The problem was that he was everywhere, he wasn't going anywhere and, in the end, it was clear he wasn't actually helping....There is hope. The Egyptians who turned up to prevent the looting of the Cairo Museum, the popular committees, the Muslim-Christian cooperation show glimmers of hope that Egyptians - despite the best efforts of three decades of Mubarak - have retained the civic values that will be vital for their future.

Edited January 31, 2011 by Gandalf

[Budja]

Nisam insajder, ziveo sam u Kairu nekih 4 meseca poslovno pre neke dve i po' godine... Ali dovoljno da upoznam ljude i nacin razmisljanja, i cujem malo njihove perspektive o sistemu u zemlji. U sustini, da ne duzim preterano, ja vidim dve potencijalne situacije: i) da ce Mubarak ostati na vlasti, jer ce se poltroni sa zapada jako tesko odluciti da mu uskrate podrsku u strahu od onoga sto moze doci umesto njega i ii) da ce revolucija proci (krvavo) sto, bar po meni, automatski znaci da MB preuzima vlast u zemlji, a to je zajebano za sve, posebno za region, a nije da ih plebs ne podrzava... U celoj situaciji, neko je vec pomenuo, najbitniju ulogu igra vojska i tajne sluzbe u manjoj meri. A oni nema teorije da dozvole da se na vlasti odrzi neka kombinovana koalicija manjih opozicionih stranaka. Pod Mubarakom se ta sila i moze nekako kontrolisati, a pod MB niko ne moze da predvidi.U sustini, ljudi su siromasni, zivi se lose i NDP sistem je frustrirajuce iskljuciv i korumprian - napravljen je da cedi kintu od naroda. I ja ne sumnjam da su ljudi, delimicno, zato izasli na ulice. Ali ako si bio 5 Oktobra u Beogradu, setices se da ta revoluciona masa tada i nije bas bila homogena, sta vise. Bilo je mnogo vise likova oko mene koji su hteli Slobi da jebu mater zbog Kosova nego sto su verovali u neke preko potrebne sistemske promene. Isti slucaj je u Egiptu - i mediji to propustaju big time, a to je kljuc za razvoj situacije par godina od sada. Cak i da se uspotavi neki demokratski rezim, ako se za godinu ili dve ne vide znacajne ekonomske promene, ta masa ce se radikalizovati u roku od par dana i opet cemo imati sranje u Egiptu. Jednostavno,region je takav, i jesu ove revolucije simaticne (i neocekivane) i meni, ali mislim da ima mnogo ljudi na svetu koji su u strahu sta ce te revolucije proizvesti. Steglo je i Amerima, pa su mi zato smesne ove probne vesti koje plasirju o demokratiji u Egiptu. A dupe bi dali da Mubarak prezivi.

Nije to to.Postoji i autokratska vlast sa vojnim privilegijama ali sa smanjenom kleptokratijom NDP.I to se cini najizvesnije. Izgleda da je vojska digla ruke od Hosnije i da sada pravi deal sa Amerikancima i jos po nekima. Drugo, uporno se ignorise i podsmeva turskom receptu. Gandalf je vec zilion puta ponovio kako MB nisu Al Kaida i kako je slicnost mozda i veca sa AKP. Takodje, rast Turske koincidira sa dolaskom AKP na vlast. Jeste, strukture elite je drugacija, pod AKPom novi biznismeni ruse stare olinjale, ne znam da li fenomen "Anadolije" u tom smislu postoji u Egiptu ili su monopoli-tajkuni-NDP sve.

[hazard]

Ovde se nonstop spominje Mubarak i 30 godina na vlasti, ali mi se cini zaboravlja da taj NDP (tj. cela struktura u njemu, ranije je vladajuca stranka imala drugacija imena) vlada zemljom vec skoro 60 godina. Sve je to jedan fin kontinuitet: Sadat je bio Naserov potpredsednik, pa ga tako nasledio, Mubarak je bio Sadatov potpredsednik, pa ga nasledio kada je Sadat ubijen. Naravno svaki predsednik je odradjivao neke svoje male cistke kako bi ucvrstio svoju vlast (najvise Sadat u odnosu na Naseriste) ali poslednja smena vlast izvan vladajuce garniture desila se 1952. kada su oficiri svrgli kralja i ukinuli monarhiju. Jedno je maci Mubaraka, a drugo vladajucu garnituru (kako god da se ona zvala kroz decenije).

[Lancia]

Ovde se nonstop spominje Mubarak i 30 godina na vlasti, ali mi se cini zaboravlja da taj NDP (tj. cela struktura u njemu, ranije je vladajuca stranka imala drugacija imena) vlada zemljom vec skoro 60 godina. Sve je to jedan fin kontinuitet: Sadat je bio Naserov potpredsednik, pa ga tako nasledio, Mubarak je bio Sadatov potpredsednik, pa ga nasledio kada je Sadat ubijen. Naravno svaki predsednik je odradjivao neke svoje male cistke kako bi ucvrstio svoju vlast (najvise Sadat u odnosu na Naseriste) ali poslednja smena vlast izvan vladajuce garniture desila se 1952. kada su oficiri svrgli kralja i ukinuli monarhiju. Jedno je maci Mubaraka, a drugo vladajucu garnituru (kako god da se ona zvala kroz decenije).

manje vise ko da pricas o Srbiji.

[Marvin (Paranoid Android)]

Učinilo mi se da su na BBC-ju sad rekli da se u Kairu sprema (ili je već u toku?) neki kontra-miting, tj topik podrške Mubaraku?

[morgana]

bilo je vec jutros rijeci o tome negdje, mislim na gardijanu

Edited February 1, 2011 by morgana

[hazard]

Ako zanemarimo jaku ideolosku komponentu clanka, podaci su svakako interesantni:

Earlier this year, after drought prompted Russia to ban wheat exports, Egypt's agriculture minister pledged to raise food production over the next ten years to 75% of consumption, against only 56% in 2009. Local yields are only 18 bushels per acre, compared to 30 to 60 for non-irrigated wheat in the United States, and up 100 bushels for irrigated land. People have drowned in rivers with an average depth of two feet. It turns out that China, not the United States or Israel, presents an existential threat to the Arab world, and through no fault of its own: rising incomes have gentrified the Asian diet, and - more importantly - insulated Asian budgets from food price fluctuations. Economists call this "price elasticity." Americans, for example, will buy the same amount of milk even if the price doubles, although they will stop buying fast food if hamburger prices double. Asians now are wealthy enough to buy all the grain they want. One parameter to watch closely is the Egyptian pound. Insurance against Egyptian default was the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) +3.3% a week ago; on Friday, it stood at Libor + 4.54%. That's not a crisis level, but if banks start reducing exposure, things could get bad fast. In 2009 Egyptian imports were $55 billion against only $29 billion of exports; tourism (about $15 billion in net income) and remittances from Egyptian workers (about $8 billion) and other services brought the current account into balance. Scratch the tourism, and you have a big deficit. Egypt has $35 billion of central bank reserves, adequate under normal conditions, but thin insulation against capital flight. Foreigners hold $25 billion of Egypt's short-term Treasury bills, for example. It would not take long for a run on the currency to materialize - and if the currency devalues, food and fuel become all the more expensive. A vicious cycle may ensue.

In this case, Asian demand has priced food staples out of the Arab budget. As prosperous Asians consume more protein, global demand for grain increases sharply (seven pounds of grain produce one pound of beef). Asians are rich enough, moreover, to pay a much higher price for food whenever prices spike due to temporary supply disruptions, as at the moment.Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians and Yemenis are not. Episodes of privation and even hunger will become more common. The miserable economic performance of all the Arab states, chronicled in the United Nations' Arab Development Reports, has left a large number of Arabs so far behind that they cannot buffer their budget against food price fluctuations. The trouble isn't long-term food price inflation: wheat has long been one of the world's bargains. The International Monetary Fund's global consumer price index quadrupled in between 1980 and 2010, while the price of wheat, even after the price spike of 2010, only doubled in price. What hurts the poorest countries, though, isn't the long-term price trend, though, but the volatility. If wheat output falls, for example, due to drought in Russia and Argentina, prices rise until demand falls. The difference today is that Asian demand for grain will not fall, because Asians are richer than they used to be. Someone has to consume less, and it will be the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, in this case the poorer Arabs. That is why the volatility of the wheat price (the rolling standard deviation of percentage changes in the price over twelve months) has trended up from about 5% during the 1980s and 1990s to about 15% today. This means that there is a roughly two-thirds likelihood that the monthly change in the wheat price will be less than 15%.It also means that every so often the wheat price is likely to go through the ceiling, as it did during the past 12 months. To make life intolerable for the Arab poor, the price of wheat does not have to remain high indefinitely; it only has to trade out of their reach once every few years.And that is precisely what has happened during the past few years: After 30 years of stability, the price of wheat has had two spikes into the $9 per bushel range at which very poor people begin to go hungry. The problem isn't production. Wheat production has risen steadily - very steadily in fact - and the volatility of global supply has been muted: It shows an approximately two-thirds likelihood that world wheat supply will change by less than 3% each year. Wheat supply dropped by only 2.4% between 2009 and 2010 - and the wheat price doubled. That's because affluent Asians don't care what they pay for grain. Prices depend on what the last (or "marginal") purchaser is willing to pay for an item (what was the price of the last ticket on the last train out of Paris when the Germans marched on June 14, 1940?). Don't blame global warming, unstable weather patterns: wheat supply has been fairly reliable. The problem lies in demand. Officially, Egypt's unemployment rate is slightly above 9%, the same as America's, but independent studies say that a quarter of men and three-fifths of women are jobless. According to a BBC report, 700,000 university graduates chase 200,000 available jobs.A number of economists anticipated the crisis. Reinhard Cluse of Union bank of Switzerland told the Financial Times last August:

"Significant hikes in the global price of wheat would present the government with a difficult dilemma.Do they want to pass on price rises to end consumers, which would reduce Egyptians' purchasing power and might lead to social discontent?Or do they keep their regulation of prices tight and end up paying higher subsidies for food? In which case the problem would not go away but end up in the government budget.Egypt's public debt is already high, at roughly 74% of gross domestic produce (GDP), according to UBS. Earlier this year the IMF projected that Egypt's food subsidies would cost the equivalent of 1.1% of GDP in 2009-10, while subsidies for energy were expected to add up to 5.1%....Tensions over food have led to violence in bread queues before and it wouldn't take much of a price rise for the squeeze on many consumers to become unbearably tight."

Under the title The Failed Muslim States to Come (Asia Times Online December 16, 2008), I argued that the global financial crisis then at its peak would destabilize the most populous Muslim countries. I was wrong. It wasn't the financial crisis that undermined dysfunctional Arab states, but Asian prosperity. The Arab poor have been priced out of world markets. There is no solution to Egypt's problems within the horizon of popular expectations. Whether the regime survives or a new one replaces it, the outcome will be a disaster of, well, biblical proportions.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MB02Ak01.html

[luba]

ndp je najavila da ce praviti protest u ismailiji, ali mnogi sumnjaju da ce to uopste biti moguce jer su tamo jos prvih dana protesta demonstranti i bukvalno isterali policiju. juce su, navodno, pokusali ndp i policija u luksoru da se prosetaju po centru i brzo zbrisali.ne znam jel gledate snimke, ako bismo procenjivali (galantno ko za peti oktobar), na trgu slobode i okolnim promenadama sigurno moze da stane i do 200 hiljada ljudi. izgleda da ni prekid autobuskih i zeleznickih linija nije sprecio mnoge da dodju, kazu da iz pravca letovalista dolaze i dalje ljudi.zizekijana

What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope.

[Marvin (Paranoid Android)]

ne znam jel gledate snimke, ako bismo procenjivali (galantno ko za peti oktobar), na trgu slobode i okolnim promenadama sigurno moze da stane i do 200 hiljada ljudi. izgleda da ni prekid autobuskih i zeleznickih linija nije sprecio mnoge da dodju, kazu da iz pravca letovalista dolaze i dalje ljudi.

Onako laički gledajući TV snimke, čini mi se da je na Trgu gustina mnogo mnogo veća nego prošlih dana.

[Marvin (Paranoid Android)]

Jordan cabinet has resigned amidst the protests.

[Аврам Гојић]

ndp je najavila da ce praviti protest u ismailiji, ali mnogi sumnjaju da ce to uopste biti moguce jer su tamo jos prvih dana protesta demonstranti i bukvalno isterali policiju. juce su, navodno, pokusali ndp i policija u luksoru da se prosetaju po centru i brzo zbrisali.ne znam jel gledate snimke, ako bismo procenjivali (galantno ko za peti oktobar), na trgu slobode i okolnim promenadama sigurno moze da stane i do 200 hiljada ljudi. izgleda da ni prekid autobuskih i zeleznickih linija nije sprecio mnoge da dodju, kazu da iz pravca letovalista dolaze i dalje ljudi.zizekijana

Onako laički gledajući TV snimke, čini mi se da je na Trgu gustina mnogo mnogo veća nego prošlih dana.

Racunao sam nesto. Trg Tahrir i okolne slobodne povrsine imaju 40.000 kvadratnih metara. Egipcani su mrsavi i ne beze od fizickog kontakta, pa ih moze stati 2 na kvadrat (u Americi se za guste proteste racuna 3 coveka na 2 kvadrata). Znaci 80.000 do 10.000 ljudi ako se napuni sve do okolnih ulica.

[Marvin (Paranoid Android)]

Racunao sam nesto. Trg Tahrir i okolne slobodne povrsine imaju 40.000 kvadratnih metara. Egipcani su mrsavi i ne beze od fizickog kontakta, pa ih moze stati 2 na kvadrat (u Americi se za guste proteste racuna 3 coveka na 2 kvadrata).

dobar kontraprimer.

[Аврам Гојић]

Ih sta bih dao da sam na Tahriru sada, samo da mogu da prelazim sa jedne na drugu stranu trga bez razmisljanja o tome koliko je tesko preneti mrtvo i zgazeno truplo iz strane zemlje.

[Marvin (Paranoid Android)]

E, a zna li se gde je Mubarak? U Palati pod zaštitom?