Al Jazeera and the Arab awakening

Well said. As an American I’m embarrassed that our supposed Beacon of Democracy only shines sporadically and on those willing to do our bidding. What’s most disheartening is that when the history of these events are written, we will at best be seen as an oafish bystander, hemming and hawing while these countries and their people stand up for their rights.

I can only hope that some good will come of it and my fellow Americans will see this example and regain some of our democratic zeal and start standing up tot he corporations running our country through proxy politicians.

Good post. If you want to associate the 21st century Arab Awakening with any brand, that should be Al Jazeera rather than twitter or facebook. Not quite accurate, but not a bad place to start either.

I’ve read, e.g. on the excellent blog, Jadaliyya, calls for greater “specificity”, understanding differences between conditions leading to protests in Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, &c., and also attempts to identify the structural forces behind the revolutions–neoliberalism and food prices, &c.. These analyses all have their place, but I think the revolutions are, above all else, directly copying each other, and the shared basis they have is political discourse in an arena made up of different educated, middle-class professionals, not all of whom are wired. I have it on pretty good authority that Arabs were actually pretty conflicted about the Iranian 2009 protests, and there are even a few people on the left that were suspicious of them. The usually impeccable (on Middle East-related affairs) Guardian and Al Jazeera were both slow on the uptake and occasionally dismissive of the protesters. People were skeptical of the motives of journalists and outsiders who were instantly sympathetic to the protesters. But I think (I’m not 100% sure, but pretty sure) that the Iranian protests ultimately served as an inspiration for the Arab protests.

One important feature of this public sphere is strong connections with Teh West through professional connections and higher ed–Arabs studying in American and European universities, who have contact with friends back home. So American policy has been a dud as far as democracy is concerned, but the American public sphere is another matter altogether.

I think this is part of a wider phenomenon of greater openness and communication that includes an increasing difficulty of attempts to intimidate people who would speak up about the plight of Palestinians, and the attention Al Jazeera and the Egyptian protests have received in the US. Public protest is becoming more and more attractive, Wisconsin is part of this too.

As regards US military power in the region, it has repeatedly proved to be a burden not a blessing, even on the most shortsighted view of US interests. The bases in Saudi Arabia produced Al Qaeda, the occupation of Iraq gave the Iranians 150 000 hostages against any hostile action, and now the 5th Fleet in Bahrein means that US hands are tied there.

Apropos Ortega’s phone call to Qadaffi (which I hadn’t seen before Chris’s comment above): did Qadaffi turn bad (in the style of so many revolutionaries-turned-dictators) or was he always bad?

Clearly the US should be doing more to support democratic movements in the Arab World…but who exactly do you suspect the new Egypt and Tunisia and Libya to be allied with instead? Other Arab countries have been explicitly supporting the dictators, as have China and Russia, as have the Bolivarians, as has Castro (in the case of Qaddafi), etc. Weak as they have been, both Obama’s statements over the past week and American government actions in the past few years (e.g., funding of pro-democracy groups and behind-the-scenes rebukes of guys like Mubarak, both of which are widespread in Wikileaks) have almost certainly been stronger than words and actions from other regional and world powers, the EU certainly among them.

That said, Al Jazeera has been great indeed.

The democracies of the West contributed nothing to the revolutions in Eastern Europe, either. (And a good thing, too, considering the risks.) That hasn’t diminished the influence of the West in general or the United States in particular one bit. In the end, it won’t be what matters in a post-revolutionary Arab world, either. Governments, especially elected ones, have a habit of putting national interests ahead of sentiment.

Daniel Ortega has phoned Gaddafi to express his “solidarity”. How utterly depressing.

I wonder whether Mandela has?

Rob :
“Here here. For all the US politicians’ talk of creating democracy in the middle east it was always Israel first, stability second, democracy third.”

I’d put it as Israel first, oil second, and democracy never.

Good post. And Al Jazeera is great for non-ME news as well…

that has a strong chance of making bad debt visible enough to make corporate and banking entities irremediably unviable

It’s a nice thought, but in fact the Arab countries don’t have much in the way of external debt. Egypt has $35 billion and the rest have less, generally much less. (Libya doesn’t even have any government debt.) Unlike in Latin America and the European periphery, it’s really not part of the way imperialism operates here.

22: I am not sure what was originally meant, but I am thinking of private investments, financed by debt, going sour. Cargill is building a sugar refinery in Egypt, F1 in Bahrain, many multinationals moving into Libya, etc. If I remember correctly, it was private equity that got in trouble a ways back in Dubai, that ultimately had to be backed by the UAE.

I guess Cargill and Monsanto won’t go under if their projects get nationalized or shut down, so I don’t know what the ramifications might be.

Let us hope that he suffers a similar fate to Ceacescu.

Cue Brad DeLong in 3 … 2 …

In his speech, the Brotherly Leader condemned foreign news services spreading the lie that he had ordered the killing of protestors and ordered the murder of anyone protesting.

The lack of self-awareness was quite astounding.

Ortega’s intervention is somewhat interesting since it is pretty clear at this point that Gaddafi is highly unlikely to survive and there is almost certainly nothing to be gained from supporting him if he should survived. I find it interesting when pols act in an irrational fashion, I doubt he is doing so from ideological commitment.

@29 — Actually, most of them seem to be saying that the protests were inspired by the democracy in Iraq, so the neocons should be given credit for the uprisings.

I might also have mentioned I have three bibliographies (constraints: books, in English) that some might find helpful for further reading and research: on “the contemporary Arab world,” on “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” and on “Islamic studies.” While all three have been made available at the Ratio Juris blog, I’ve since updated them and will pass them along to anyone on request.

Finally, I have collections of articles from newpapers, blogs, and journals devoted to the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, the Egyptian Revolution, post-revolutionary developments in Egypt, and the quest for democracy and social justice in the MENA states generally (the latter two are ongoing projects), that I’ll send along upon request to any journalist or academic (including graduate students) doing research in these areas (you can find my e-mail address on Blogger).

but no-one is going to forget that the West backed many of the Arab dictators

I rather suspect they will.

Look. The USA, the EU and other powerful states are by definition not NGOs. It’s rather silly to blame them for not acting like ones. If the West had openly supported the protesters, the protests would have been compromised, maybe fatally so. I think “the West” has done just right in this, exactly by being, as Keith puts it @#4, ” an oafish bystander, hemming and hawing while these countries and their people stand up for their rights.”

The West should actively pursue passivity and irrelevance, and by and large that is what it has successfully been doing over these last couple of months.

Let us hope that he suffers a similar fate to Ceacescu.

Hm, call me a bleeding heart humanist, but I prefer my evil dictators ending up on trial in The Hague – Gaddafi, Castro and Chavez spending their retirement running a socialist book club or something.

the Greens in Iran are not helped one iota by making it hard for Iranian students or professionals to get a visa to come to the US. On balance, sanctions hurt ordinary people more than the government.

Indeed.

Chávez is democratically elected. But every single year he is less of a democrat. Right now he lives in a strange quantum state if you look at it on that axis. Or in a clear populist state ramping up to autocracy if you look at it by the correct frame.

See for example http://www.economist.com/node/18184396 . No amount of “democratically elected” grace can save him from showing up his true colors. He is constrained by democratic institutions and expectations, but then he destroys them as much as he can at every step.

Of course, I hope for a change (born in Venezuela, left when he got to power), but as the situation is bad, but not as bad as in say, Libya, I also hope the change can come without all the pains of having to throw an actual 100% despot.

I was under the impression that the last of these was democratically-elected.

Yes, but only by poor people. As NK has informed us all in the past they don’t really count.

One shouldn’t underestimate any politician’s dictatorial tendencies. Why Chavez should be specially singled out is beyond me.

I’d rank Castro around the same level as Lee Kuan Yew. Possibly a bit worse, but then Yew was never under constant threat of destabilisation by the world’s superpower. There are democracies that are worse than Cuba.

The Economist is not some raving lunatic right wing Fox News wannabe. Yes, they are from the right. Not all the right is bonkers, yet. I dont agree with some of their bias or solutions, but they do not inhabit their own paranoid universe of self-delusion.

Apart from that, what the Economist reports there is a fact. One judge has been punished for going against Chávez wishes and following actual Venezuelan law in a case. This has been reported by many others, not only the Economist (that was the only English language source I got). And that is just one of the many reports of how things are rotting in the Venezuelan democracy.

The only thing one would need to convince people would be for them to open their eyes and not shield them cause, somehow, that clown is the hope of the Left, so lets keep the excuses not to evaluate him truthfully, like… discrediting the source without tackling the content of the criticisms.

Why Chávez would to be singled out? I dont know. For me is important. For Venezuelans too. If the US wants to use him as a “threat” for their own ends, well, two wrongs dont make a right.

But I’m kind of tired of having a lot of “progressive” people be so ready to throw the plight of Venezuelans , the continous decent of the countrey into more poverty and less democracy under Chávez, out of the picture cause, well, dunno, I dont really see what the use is on giving cover to that farce of supposed “revolution”.

Apart from again blowing any chance of presenting a coherent and attractive left alternative to the current “right or even more right” situation by insisting on romantic delusions of “red” princes when all you have is a red frog.

Latro – I think you’ll need a better source than the Economist to convince many people. It has a certain, how does one put it, bias on these matters.

Cian, here’s the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/world/americas/04venez.html

And the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/15/chavez-venezuela-judge-cedeno

And the United Nations:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/storyAr.asp?NewsID=33273&Cr=judges&Cr1=

I was not really talking about nationalization, so much as a general increase in unavailability of assets like oil platforms, factories, etc. Which can be due to labor disputes just as much as insurrection or nationalization. I was talking about this in the context of the present day economic climate where large sections of the economic infrastructure is functionally in default–which means there are many extend and pretend schemes going on. These schemes can only work so long as money isn’t truly required to carry value in services or products in quantity that the volume of present money suggests is needed. Another feature of these schemes is that the fundamental political and economic structure is assumed to be static, and that political structures can be compelled to spend credibility and assets towards that stability, a la Turncoat Clegg or Fianna Fail. In practice, this means that each infrastructure asset in this time and place of world affairs have multiple claimants who are not on the title and which the total dependency is well above what selling the asset could relieve. With respect to oil, the geopolitical game is all about extracting the large majority of the economic benefits from a natural resource to the benefit of the hub at the expense of the rim. What is happening now is that the rim is no longer able to support that extraction with even remote political stability–and this is not just true of the Middle East, there are many commodities/cheap manufacturing clusters at risk here.

Now, I’ve long considered that the next real step in the global economic crisis will be the failure of a national business concern, someone like Sinopec or a east asian style collective business group, that is essential for the proper functioning of the nation. The repercussions from the corporate bond market will be considerable by itself, let alone the ripples. The closure of Libya’s oil industry is a classic potential trigger, because Italy is dependent on Libya’s oil to some degree. If Italy has to spend geopolitical credibility to get oil from the north, some other nation is going to suddenly suffer an array of expenses relating to oil heading to Italy and not their country. Everything from the higher price of oil, to more repair work needing to be done fast on equipment that wasn’t vital until just now, to higher imposed interest rates (say, how dat bond spread on Portugal going?) because everyone knows their foreign reserves are under stress. Some big, critical supplier to industrial Italy and Germany might go down under stress like that as well.

As long as this “Arab Awakening” goes on, the more likely permanently strong increases in vital resource/labor costs will be.

We can debate how well Venezuela meets our standards of democratic institutions and the rule of law; there are certainly legitimate criticism to be made. But claims about “the continuous decent of the country into more poverty” under Chavez aren’t debatable. They’re just ignorant nonsense.

Here are some relevant facts, from a 2009 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually.

Most of this growth has been in the non-oil sector of the economy, and the private sector has grown faster than the public sector.

During the current economic expansion, the poverty rate has been cut by more than half, from 54 percent of households in the first half of 2003 to 26 percent at the end of 2008. Extreme poverty has fallen even more, by 72 percent. These poverty rates measure only cash income, and do not take into account increased access to health care or education.

Over the entire decade, the percentage of households in poverty has been reduced by 39 percent, and extreme poverty by more than half.

Inequality, as measured by the Gini index, has also fallen substantially. The index has fallen to 41 in 2008, from 48.1 in 2003 and 47 in 1999. This represents a large reduction in inequality.

Real (inflation-adjusted) social spending per person more than tripled from 1998-2006.

From 1998-2006, infant mortality has fallen by more than one-third. The number of primary care physicians in the public sector increased 12-fold from 1999-2007, providing health care to millions of Venezuelans who previously did not have access.

There have been substantial gains in education, especially higher education, where gross enrollment rates more than doubled from 1999-2000 to 2007-2008.

The labor market also improved substantially over the last decade, with unemployment dropping from 11.3 percent to 7.8 percent. During the current expansion it has fallen by more than half. Other labor market indicators also show substantial gains.

Over the past decade, the number of social security beneficiaries has more than doubled.

Over the decade, the government’s total public debt has fallen from 30.7 to 14.3 percent of GDP. The foreign public debt has fallen even more, from 25.6 to 9.8 percent of GDP.

I’m sorry where was the middle east when we were fighting our civil war?

Retract my comment about Chavez. I do think he’s a bastard, but discussions of him are usually mind-numbingly tedious and tiresome, so scratch that.

Latro,
Its not really the bias with the Economist which I can live with, but the fact that over the years I’ve read too many stories by them which were selective with the facts, or ignored inconvenient details. Since expanding into the US market they’ve become worse, if anything.

I don’t like Chavez, as I find his style of charistmatic S. American politics pretty unattractive, and he does seem to have authoritarian tendencies. I also think his arrogance and relucance to delegate has resulted in a number of missed opportunies. His foreign policy is variable – certainly cosying up to anyone America hates isn’t terribly sensible. But compared to the guys that preceeded him he seems pretty good. I don’t remember all this international fuss about dictators then. And I might have more sympathy for Venezuela’s elites, if they hadn’t looted the country’s wealth for their own narrow benefit, or organised a coup (yeah, yeah Chavez. But hey, Caracazo you know. Context matters).

Yes rule of law matters, even if that law is enforced by the remenants of the old ogliarchy. It shows a worrying tendency. On the other hand he has unarguably helped the poor in Venezuela, something that the old elites showed no interest in doing. Furthermore given that the elites tried to overthrow him with a coup, and have tried many other dubvious tactics, not to mention the US’s history in the region (and what happened to one of his neighbours), I think the only chance for the poor in that region is, unfortunately, a strong man. And if a few bankers and the odd judge suffer in that process – well, c’est la guerre I guess. Better them than the poor masses who were suffering before.

For me is important. For Venezuelans too.

All Venezuelans? Are you sure about this? Quite a lot of them seem to like him.

Cian

Singapore has no resources, yet access to the world’s largest consumer market.

Cuba has resources, yet no access to the world’s largest consumer market.

Singapore also doesn’t have a neighbor with a Monroe Doctrine. Just a poor Muslim neighbor, and the host imperial power allowed it free commercial exchange with neighboring states, Anglo and not Anglo. Something that no Carrib nation was ever allowed to do, beyond the Caymans, I think.

When relatively progressive leadership does come around, they typically meet their demise about as fast or faster than that Honduras guy. At least he’s still around, unlike that Omar Torrijos fellow. Costa Rica managed to do okay for itself, but that is mostly for reason that aren’t of huge credit to it.

I think many people underestimate the extent to which East Asia prosperity was built on the back of Cold War antagonisms.

Nir Rosen appreciates Al Jazeera at his blog.

Even if the world’s superpower weren’t constantly destabilizing him, Cuba would still be miserably poor, just because of the system he runs.

Because of course “the system he runs” has nothing to do with those destabilization efforts or his perverse and inexplicable desire to keep breathing notwithstanding those destabilization efforts.

I’m not about to sign up as a defender of Castro, but dismissing the idea that there is collateral damage from the US’s anti-Castro efforts without even examining it, in your rush to blame everything on Castro and only Castro, is a bit much. Castro could be the worst villain unhung and it could *still* be the case that attempts to destabilize his regime have done more harm than he has himself. (Cf. Saddam Hussein — as bad as he was, the attempt to remove him was worse; even its success can’t justify the amount of damage done in the process.)

Because of course “the system he runs” has nothing to do with those destabilization efforts or his perverse and inexplicable desire to keep breathing notwithstanding those destabilization efforts.

Look, my point was in response to Cian ranking Castro and Lee Kuan Yew about equal. The point was entirely contextual, that the two aren’t equal and one’s entirely worse than the other.

Nowhere did I claim that the destabilization efforts didn’t do significant harm. I am merely stating that Castro is a magnitude greater of a bastard than Lee Kuan Yew ever was, which I think is a rather defensible position. In any case, like Venezuela, Cuba seems to have the ability to cause people to lose their sense of humour entirely. How intensely boring and enervating.

I think the only chance for the poor in that region is, unfortunately, a strong man.

Yeah, right – that strong man concept who will bring the poor into the socialist paradise if they only believe in him and cut him some slack has worked really well all over the world.

F@ck that.

Kaveh, if you improve this year mortality rates by a crash course of pumping oil money at it (and losing 9 of every 10 $ in the process), while at the same time you destroy the rest of the economy, what is going to happen when you find that you have 1/2 the money cause oil went down?

All the bumps in indicators, and yes, they are cooked a lot, but even the real “improvements”, are all like that. Oh, windfall of oil prices, just throw money at it.

Meanwhile there are serious doubts about PDVSA, the state oil company. Cause, being managed by cretins and ideologes, it is rotting in place, as everything else. When Venezuela says it produces X milion barrels of oil, their own friends at the OPEC look at the figures and say “eh… no, you dont”. There are serious doubts about their capacity to keep production.

Chávez style is purely populist. Oh, this barrio needs healthcare! Throw money at it! Something gets done… the first year. Maybe the second. Third year, well, you know, we forgot. Or there was something else to throw money at. Or this barrio elected as major somebody that is not my pal, so screw them. Or somebody stole all the supplies. Or the guy in charge decided to steal more money. Or hire more “workers” that dont work but are voters. Or …

If everything is “as good ” as you read on health care issues, can you tell me how come Venezuela went from having erradicated malaria (oh, how proud were Venezuelans of that, another proof of being the best coutry in Latin America) to 12% more cases in 2009, with 30000 new cases or so? Does that sounds like a country that is well managed and progressing toward better?

Again, all improvements (when you remove the cooking) are temporary improvements of throwing the boon of oil prices to issues in the most mismanaged, chaotic and corrupt way possible – and it works. for a while. Then it collapses and leaves everything worse than before.

Could work for a much longer (forever) if that money was well managed and if also the economical policies were ones that made sense and provided real growth. Instead he wastes oil money not only by badly managing what needs to be done (healthcare), but by his stupid measures. For the money that took to “nationalize” all the bullshit he nationalized (and now runs huge deficits), he could have done even more. And put the country in a sustainable path of growth that let him do even more with taxes-

Lets get another story. PDVSA had a plan to bring gas service to the people from 2007 to 2013. A plan to bring gas to many many poor Venezuelans, improving their lives (instead of having to carry huge gas canisters up to their homes in the barrios). Good, thats a worthy objective

Last year it had to be “relaunched”. From 2007 to 2010 the project managed to bring gas to… 1% of the target population of 2 millions

On neighbourgh Colombia, with their oligarch right wing presidents and all (and they arent nice guys, really), they managed to bring natural gas to 4 million Colombians in 10 years. On Venezuela, with the revolutionary friend of the people in power, you get that. 1% of 2 million, 20000, in 3 years. For many reasons. Starting from “where is the money?” to “Well, as the gov keeps devaluating the currency this all is even more expensive…” to of course that if Chávez that day rose from bed and thought that he needed to nationalize the sardines-in-a-tin industry or the bicycle industry or whatever the hell he dreamed that night, well, there goes more money…

Does that look like a country getting out of poverty? Does that look like an achievement? Like a goverment that is really doing things well, that is responsible and efficient investing the country money? Cause this is exactly the same in everything – if you manage to see a positive growth in some indicator, is just a mirage, subject to crashing down at any moment, when money runs out or the idiotic management manages to screw up or all the inefficiencies and corruption end overtaking it.

He has done exactly the same as his predecessors. Another shot of the miracle drug Oil Dollars, patient seems to be in less pain for a while, then crash when the drug wears off. But hey, its effective while it last… not so much on the patient, but very effective if you are connected and can get some of those $ to go your way.

Again. If Venezuela is a fairly unexceptional “development state” … then the revolution is a huge fiasco, cause it manage to do even worse that the neighbourghs that, being in the same category, didnt follow that route.

Cause this is exactly the same in everything – if you manage to see a positive growth in some indicator, is just a mirage, subject to crashing down at any moment, when money runs out or the idiotic management manages to screw up or all the inefficiencies and corruption end overtaking it.

Is this describing Venezuela, or the US? It seems like it could be either.

Most of the comments are a bit Westo-centric.

What about the role of the ‘East’ in propping up these wretched places too? The votes of Russia and China at the UN in effect blocking any united active position against Gaddafi’s brutality? The way the ex-KGB have ducked and weaved to keep alive all their Soviet-era contacts in the region?

As each country concerned finds its feet and starts the decades-long road to better conditions, it will be mainly ‘Western’ money and advisers who are there to help. That’s where EU-style ‘soft power’ supported by US funds too actually does make a steady difference, albeit slowly (see Belarus, Ukraine).

The USA’s immediate problem is that President Obama in his “I am the anti-Bush” early mode seemed to invent a new doctrine of deliberately not rocking the boat with any corrupt Arab/Muslim regimes. See his strange Cairo speech. So he now has a credibility problem. But that too should pass.

On the other side, you have well, same tactics as may posters here. Oh, somebody mentioned Venezuela, oh, how boring, oh, how bad and disgusting and irrelevant and dont we have something else to focus on, this is you now, bad taste…

You mean like trying to focus on a complete different subject, like, say, Al Jazeera and the Arab Awakening? What a despicable tactic…

I am merely stating that Castro is a magnitude greater of a bastard than Lee Kuan Yew ever was

Why? Both occasionally lock up people who disagree with them, both are rather authoritarian. Castro wouldn’t let people leave, so that’s a difference, but other than that I’m not really seeing it Myles. One can make the argument that Lee is a better manager than Castro, but that’s a completely different argument (and rather a pointless one give the impossible of separating out the context in which both found themselves).

I can without much effort come up with a list of dictators far worse than Castro. People who killed and tortured their enemies, where their subjects lived in fear. And yet its also Castro is really bad. Chavez is really bad. I mean even Latro (who I’m guessing is, or was, a member of Venezuela’s more privileged classes) has basically admitted that Chavez is no worse than his predecessors.

If you think Castro and Chavez are among the world’s worst dictators, then either you’re extremely badly misinformed, very naive indeed, or have a bit of an ideological obsession with leftists. Criticise them for their failings by all means – but please, some proportion here.

Yeah, right – that strong man concept who will bring the poor into the socialist paradise if they only believe in him and cut him some slack has worked really well all over the world.

Given that in my comment I made it quite clear that this is because only a strong man would survive the onslaught brought on by both the continents Ogliarchs, and the USA, I think it was very clear why I wrote what I did. I also made it very clear that I didn’t like this fact, but couldn’t see any alternatives.

So what explains your deeply unserious response? Stupidity, or trolling?

And in any case, I see a giant, blinking inconsistency between your recognition that a strong man might be the only option for Venezuela, and complete obduracy that somehow Lee, someone who wasn’t even that harsh of a strong man, who at least kept up a pretence of rule of law and did institute rule of law for most thing, is no better than someone who seems incapable of throwing aside his own silly ideology so that his people can stop being dirt-poor, when that is the most eminently practical thing to do.

China’s leaders seem to get it. Castro doesn’t.

So we’ll add Cuba to the list of things that you know very little about, yet feel compelled to comment on then, Myles?

Oh, economic freedom. You’re one of them. Viva Pinochet.

Math time!

If Country A has 100 units of civil freedom and 0 units of economic freedom, and Country B has 150 units of civil freedom and 200 units of economic freedom, which country has more overall freedom?

The point is that not only does Singapore have a bit more civil liberties, it has tons more economic liberties. It has more of both.

I found the figures Lemuel cited @54 very compelling; but Latro’s objections are also quite plausible, and very disturbing. If anyone has any authorititive-seeming references on the subject of Venezuela’s welfare under Chavez, I’d be grateful.

I also made it very clear that I didn’t like this fact, but couldn’t see any alternatives.

There are no alternatives to Hugo Chavez? Give me a break.

Castro wouldn’t let people leave, so that’s a difference, but other than that …

And that difference is far from negligible. If a government sucks so much that it has to imprison its people to prevent them from leaving in droves, it’s a total failure, cf. GDR.

@novakant:

Cuba has a population of 11 million, it’s situated around 120km from the US, and the US grants permanent residence rights to anyone who leaves Cuba for the US. If the US extended that policy to *anywhere else* in the Caribbean or Central America, no matter how well-governed or otherwise, then that country would lose a vast proportion of its people a matter of months. It’s not a reflection on Cuba’s regime in particular that many of its people would like to take advantage of the US policy.

Given that point, you can see why Cuba is reluctant to allow people to emigrate en masse to a hostile regime that’s dedicated to overthrowing it. I’m not an expert on WWII-era population controls, but AIUI we weren’t particularly keen on granting visas for people to emigrate from the US or UK to Japan, Germany or Italy between 1941-1945…

It’s just really quite obvious that Castro is a much worse human being than Lee Kuan Yew, just by looking at the countries they run.

Its really quite obvious that Mandela is a worse human being than Berlusconi by just looking at the countries they ran/run.

Nope, really not seeing that as a viable argument.

If he actually cared about his people he wouldn’t be so horrendously insistent on his failed socialist experiment, and reform the economy like China has done.

Yeah Myles I get it, you don’t know anything about Cuba. There’s no need to keep demonstrating it. Unless your argument is that he’s a horrible human being because he hasn’t done exactly what China has done, in which case. No even you couldn’t be arguing that.

Math time!

If Country A has 100 units of civil freedom and 0 units of economic freedom, and Country B has 150 units of civil freedom and 200 units of economic freedom, which country has more overall freedom?

Okay I get it, you’re pre-college. Everything starts to make sense now.

Its about as easy to get into the US from Cuba as from any other Caribbean country, so there’s that I guess.

No doubt the people on this thread who so hate Cuba, spend as much time condemning all the other shitty governments in the Caribbean. No doubt.

By the way, I am just noting, before you actually go off the rails, that I honestly don’t care what Castro does, I find him more comical than sinister, and the rest of it. The people you’ve got to convince isn’t me; it’s rows of rows of people who are sympathetic to Castro’s basic aims but believe that he’s more or less been a tragic mistake.

I find him quaint and amusing, unlike some of his more rotund defenders. Charming fellow, really, and wonderfully gesticulative.

Myles, you’ve really got to stop spending so much time on Word of the Day websites. For your own sake as much as anyone else’s.

And what contribution you are making towards ‘the hard part’ of ‘working to establish pluralistic and democratic society’ in Venezuela? Do you have any ideas about how this should be done?

I am simply unwilling to accept the dichotomy you posit (sellout to evil capitalists vs. authoritarian leadership)

That dichotomy’s in your head, mate. I gather that you have problems reading properly, so I try to make this really simple.

Chavez faced down a coup, and various attempts by the elites to undermine the economy. One of his neighbours, also democratically elected was kicked out via a coup only recently. Others over the years have also lost power in similarly nefarious circumstances. The conclusion I draw from this is that anyone who wishes to stand up to these elites probably has to be pretty ruthless, otherwise they will be driven out in some form of coup.

And because you seem to be really struggling. I do not particularly like Chavez. But I’d rather criticise him for his real failings, rather than the propaganda of his (many of them far worse) enemies.

Cian, you’re position boils down to “he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard” – that approach hasn’t been very beneficial in the past except for the bastards. Also, you seem to be unaware of Operation Zamora, which is rather ironic.

Cian, you’re position boils down to “he may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard”

Nope, that’s the position you’d like to boil it down to because its easier to argue with.

Also, you seem to be unaware of Operation Zamora, which is rather ironic.

El Caracazo you mean?

Presumably this would require hardware on the ground that isn’t widely available in the short-term, but medium-term to what extent is something like this feasible?

As I understand it, it’s not so easy to make a conveniently human-portable device that can communicate two-way with a satellite (let alone one in geosynchronous orbit, which would seem to be required for it to be “over the Middle East” in any lasting sense). That’s one reason why we still have so many cell towers. (Another is that many of the richest, highest-tech countries are in high latitudes where geosync satellites are inconveniently low in the sky, but that would be less of a problem in Libya.) But cell towers are stationary targets, pretty easy for the government to shut down or blow up if it doesn’t like how they’re operating.

But I’m not an expert on satellites, so I could be wrong. On the Internet. You know what would happen then.

I can’t remember if the Wall Street Journal headline “Venezuelan Dictator Loses Referendum” was real or apocryphal, but si no vera …

I’m glad that this discussion has contributed to the most important debate currently ongoing between white, middle aged, middle class, males in the US, the UK and Australia, which is ‘In the world of Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Libya, North Korea, China, Equatorial Guinea and the LRA, is Hugo Chavez the most Evillest Man in the Whole Cosmos who has Ever Lived (Ever!) or is he merely the most World’s most Evillest Man in the Whole World of The World of Earth!

And it’s good to see that we all feel this is a relevant debate to have while Tripoli burns.

In all the talk about Chavez, will no one respond to comment 93?–

” Obama’s election made these revolutions possible. It shamed the Arab world into action. These nations—their youths, primarily—could no longer sit their cafes and blame all their ills on America. America now had a president descended from their history, bearing their name. America had elected—in their minds—one of them. It had repudiated and replaced its own leadership. The world stood in disbelief—and thought, So that’s democracy.”

Yeah, the self-deluded liberals who voted for Obama thinking that he represented some sort of revolutionary “change” should pat themselves on the back. They were the inspiration for all those lazy Arabs in their cafes, who decided to get off their butts and risk their lives in a fight to overthrow the brutal dictators who dominate their lives. Dictators the Obama Administration would have been happy to continue supporting.

I’m sure Obama’s cave-in to Netanyahu was equally inspiring.