What next for North Africa/Middle East?

vivatifosi

Sky just played an extract of Gaddafi talking. He said (allegedly, paraphrasing) that the people of Libya should avoid becoming Baghdad. I didn't understand a word of it, but he did sound very agitated.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

I think its fixable in less then decades.

Well it's only been 2000 years so far, give or take a couple of decades.

pqrdef

One abiding impression of all of these people comes across to me on TV, whether it's government spokesmen or pundits or vox pops. You can never believe a word they're saying. Either they're in a deep well of denial and wishful thinking, or they're just lying through their teeth.

michaels

Interesting view - surely it is more like the transition the planned economies of the soviet block had to go through which was either wrenching as industries faced global competition or a very murky crony capitalism or a mixture of both.

These countries in some ways had favourable demographics for such a change, without the massive number of young workers entering the labour market, a more establish social security safety net protection against instability and a more benign global commodity backdrop.

Any way you look at in in my opinion it is going to hurt and going to be messy.

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

I think its fixable in less then decades. A free economy should be more profitable for everyone, if they can trade freely without mass disagreement is the test and it'd take a few years at most to see if thats the case.
Its possible they just descend into a nationalist type situation unfortunately

John_Pierpoint

Will it be that much better than Afganistan ?

vivatifosi

Some important safety advice for anyone who finds themself in a country post-revolution:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14616491

sabretoothtigger

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Will it be that much better than Afganistan ?

Entirely separate situation I think.

We might as conclude all Muslim countries are subject to terrorism and self destruction in absence of a dictator regime. That isnt the case imo

John_Pierpoint

Yes but I can remember when girls in Kabul wore mini skirts and the Russians had to invade to protect the "socialist" government from CIA financed reactionaries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan#Saur_revolution_and_Soviet_war

I can remember when Iran was ruled by a USA financed "Shah":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi

Do you think we will now see relatively honest western style elections leading to a liberal democracy and a "free" population?

Syria here we come?

I hope you are right;
but

vivatifosi

I remember the same too John. However I also remember people saying when the communist bloc fell that the countries would be ungovernable because there was no culture of democracy there. Now some have made a better go of it than others - the Czech Republic has clearly done much better than Serbia for example - but I'm wary of tarring all countries with the same brush.

It also wouldn't surprise me if, a couple of years down the line, the young of Iran think "I'll have some of that". Ironically I think that Iraq would now be having a crack at getting rid of Saddam too, plus they'd be a lot more united if they tried to get rid of him themselves. Sadly we'll never know.

StevieJ

pqrdef wrote: »

One abiding impression of all of these people comes across to me on TV, whether it's government spokesmen or pundits or vox pops. You can never believe a word they're saying. Either they're in a deep well of denial and wishful thinking, or they're just lying through their teeth.