Anarquia no Egipto

In Egypt, as Everywhere, Anarchy is Order, por Kevin Carson, no Center for a Stateless Society:

In press commentary on the recent events in Egypt, there were frequent expressions of concern that Egypt might be falling into “anarchy.”  “Anarchy,” in conventional journalistic usage, means chaos, disorder, and bloodshed — a Hobbesian war of all against all — that occurs when the stabilizing hand of government is removed.  “Anarchy” is the agenda of mobs of kids in black circle-A t-shirts, smashing windows and setting stuff on fire.

But “anarchy,” as the term is understood by anarchists, is a form of society in which the state is replaced by the management of all human affairs through voluntary associations. (...)

And we saw a great deal of anarchy in Egypt in recent days, in that sense.  The people of Egypt have made a great start towards extending the spheres of free action, contracting new kinds of relationships between human beings, and creating the institutional basis of a real community.
Despite the poice state’s attempts to promote religious dissension and divide the opposition, Coptic Christians have stood watch over Muslims during their daily times of prayer.  Muslims, likewise, guarded the perimeter of Liberation Square during a Coptic mass.

The resistance organized patrols to safeguard shops and museums from looting, and to watch over neighborhoods from which the security forces had been withdrawn.  Meanwhile, as it turned out, most of the actions of violence and looting were false flag operations, carried out by security forces posing as protestors. So the functionaries of the state were the actual sources of violence and disorder; law and order emerged from anarchy — that is, from voluntary association.

The interim leader, Vice President Omar Suleiman — the object of so much hope on the part of neoconservative partisans of “stability” and “order” — is a torturer and a collaborator with the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program.  Never forget:  For every dubious example of an alleged “bomb-throwing anarchist,” like those at Haymarket, there are a million bombs thrown by governments.    For every innocent person harmed by an alleged anarchist in a rioting mob, there are a thousand people tortured or murdered in some police dungeon, or ten thousand slaughtered by death squads in the countryside.  For every store window broken by demonstrators, there are untold thousands of peasants robbed of their land in evictions and enclosures by feudal elites.

Intervenção saudita no Bahrain?

Surgem alegações que militares sauditas estão a participar na repressão no Bahrain (via Reason Hit and Run), embora eu não saiba até que ponto é possivel distinguir um saudita de um bahraini (desconheço se há alguma diferença - de aparência física ou de sotaque - facilmente observável).

De qualquer maneira, já no caso egipcio a monarquia saudita tinha tentado desempenhar o papel de guardiã das autocracias árabes, oferecendo-se para substituir os EUA como financiador do regime de Mubarak.

Petróleo saudita - auto-destrutivel?

Há uma teoria de que a industria petrolifera saudita está preparada para se auto-destruir (ou ser hetero-destruida com apenas um clique no botão) em caso de invasão externa ou de uma mudança de regime:

The dust jacket of Gerald Posner's Secrets of the Kingdom calls it an "explosive study" of Saudi Arabia. In 14 of its 15 chapters that's not true, but in chapter 10 it is -- literally.

There Posner reports that Saudi Arabia has wired all of its major oil facilities with interlocking Semtex explosive charges that can be detonated from a single control point. Moreover, he says, the Saudis have blended radioactive materials into the Semtex so that detonation would not only destroy the facilities but also contaminate them beyond repair.

Why would the Saudis set off what's essentially a networked dirty bomb over their oil infrastructure? Because, according to Posner, they want to make certain that nobody could benefit from invading their country or taking down the ruling House of Saud. If the al Saud family goes, Posner writes, the world's petroleum-based economy goes with it.

Essa teoria é bastante duvidosa, mas se for verdade, temos que nos preparar para uma catastrofe ambiental e um salto nos preços do petróleo no caso dos protestos no mundo árabe chegarem à Arábia Saudita.

Todo o poder depende do consentimento dos governados

Roderick T. Long, aqui[pdf] e aqui:

[A]s we have learned from La Boétie and Hume, state power does not and cannot maintain itself by force alone; as rulers are typically outnumbered by those whom they rule, states of any kind – democratic or otherwise – can maintain their claim to authority only so long as most of their subjects continue to act in ways that reinforce that claim.1 Hence while all states do in fact make threats of violence against their subjects (as is entailed by their status as territorial monopolists of the use and/or authorisation of force), the survival of the state system requires inducing acquiescence in the subject populace by means other than such threats alone. (...)

The inadequacy of violent means for the state’s maintenance might be doubted, of course. After all, while La Boétie blithely tells us, “Resolve to serve no more, and you are once freed,” this advice might seem to run up against a collective action problem: if only a few individuals withdraw their support while most of their fellow subjects maintain their compliance, the force of the state will ordinarily be quite sufficient to bring them in line. It might thus seem as though the state could compel all by force, simply by compelling each. (...) But the effectiveness of collective action problems by themselves in preventing mass disobedience is probably overstated; when the public mood is strong enough, collective-action constraints seem to melt away, as for example with mass resistance to the Ceauşescu regime in Romania in 1989.

*********************

We can now add another example: the Mubarak regime in Egypt in 2011. (We should also add the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, whose overthrow helped to inspire events in Egypt.)


Of course Egypt’s not out of the woods yet. While the people have in fact been maintaining order anarchistically for the past few weeks, they are not ideologically anarchist, do not yet understand the extent of their power and potential for autonomy, and so will doubtless end up supporting the replacement of the Mubarak regime with some other state regime – and what sort of regime they will get remains to be seen. But it is to be hoped that they have learned this much: if they tire of the new regime, they know how to get rid of it.

Separação do Estado e Casamento - Re: Privatização do casamento?

O termo "privatização" não me parece o mais adequado, não será preferível falar em separação do Estado e Casamento?

Como já defendo há muito, o casamento deve deixar de fazer parte sequer do código civil, as pessoas (nas combinações que lhes der na gana) que celebrem as cerimónias que quiserem, com ou sem contratos civis (sobre direitos, deveres e obrigações) de regulação da sua "união", como bem entenderem.

É isto que defendo por razões liberais e por razões religiosas conservadoras. Só assim, o acto consciente religioso pode recuperar o seu sentido natural e voluntário, reconhecido espontaneamente (ou não) por outros. Na medida em que a tudo se chama casamento, é o jogo social que tratará de apenas dar credibilidade de "casamento" sob certas condições. De resto, o "namoro" existe socialmente e para isso não é preciso definição estatista.

E que sentido faz uma figura no código civil sobre um tal de "casamento civil"? querem os ateus teimar no simbolismo da cerimónia civil com a presença da autoridade pública? será isso a prova da pré-existência de um religião civil á volta da presença mística do Estado (há muito prevista em literatura de ficção científica)?

Justin Raimondo on Fox Business Channel (video)

Justin Raimundo, o libertarian editor do www.antiwar.com na Fox graças ao libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, no seu programa Freedom Watch [não se quanto tempo até ter algum "problema" na Fox quanto à sua política editorial, mas até lá...]

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4542413/crisis-chaos-and-tyranny-in-the-middle-east/

Privatização do casamento?

Will Gay Marriage Lead to the Privatization of Marriage?, por Bryan Caplan

Sobre o fundamentalismo islâmico

De tanto se gritar "lobo" a propósito do Egipto, ninguém vai notar se afinal o canídeo ir uivar no Bahrein.

Reflexão acerca do "Verão Azul"

Comentário de uma colega de trabalho sobre essa série - "Nos dias de hoje isso não podia passar na televisão; há cenas em que eles vão fumar às escondidas"

Os limites naturais à dimensão das empresas

Merger Monday and the Destruction of Wealth

Murray Rothbard extended Mises's analyses to considering the size of firms, and the problem of resource allocation under socialism to the context of vertical integration and the size of an organization. He wrote that the

ultimate limits are set on the relative size of the firm by the necessity of markets to exist in every factor, in order to make it possible for the firm to calculate its profits and losses.

To make implicit estimates, there must be an explicit market. "When an entrepreneur receives income, in other words, he receives a complex of various functional incomes," Rothbard wrote. "To isolate them by calculation, there must be in existence an external market to which the entrepreneur can refer."

As firms get too big, economic calculation gets muddied because firms do not receive the profit-and-loss signals for their internal transactions. Managers are lost as to how to allocate land and labor to provide maximum profits or to serve customers best.

As these firms grow (especially by acquisition), one part of the company is often the provider and another part of the company is the customer, yet there are no market prices to allocate resources efficiently.

(...)

Professor Klein makes the point that

as soon as the firm expands to the point where at least one external market has disappeared, however, the calculation problem exists. The difficulties become worse and worse as more and more external markets disappear, as [quoting Rothbard]

"islands of noncalculable chaos swell to the proportions of masses and continents. As the area of incalculability increases, the degrees of irrationality, misallocation, loss, impoverishment, etc, become greater."

"Morrer sozinho"

...e eventualmente ainda ficar alguns dias morto em casa até darem connosco.

É bom sinal:

a) quer dizer que sobrevivemos à infância e adolescência - nessas idades, não morreríamos sozinhos, teríamos os país e irmãos a viver connosco

b) para a maior parte das pessoas (nem todas), quererá dizer que sobreviveram à maior parte da idade adulta - nessa idade, muita gente tem conjugues/companheiros, filhos e afins em casa, logo não morreriam sozinhos

c) muito provavelmente, também será sinal que uns dias/horas/minutos ainda estavam funcionais, sem grandes problemas de visão, locomoção, higiene, etc. - normalmente as pessoas vão para lares ou para casa de familiares quando começam a ter dificuldade em serem autónomos

Tunisia e Egipto - o papel dos sindicatos

Trade unions: the revolutionary social network at play in Egypt and Tunisia, no Comment is Free/The Guardian:

Perhaps the most overlooked factor in the demise of the authoritarian Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and the weakening of Hosni Mubarak's grip on state power in Egypt, has been the trade unions in both countries.

While the media has reported on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook as revolutionary methods of mobilisation, it was the old-fashioned working class that enabled the pro-democracy movements to flourish.

As working men and women in Egypt became increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and a deteriorating quality of life, the only legal trade unions – the ones affiliated to the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) – proved worthless. The result of all of this was an unprecedented wave of strikes across the public and private sectors that began in 2004 and has continued to the present day. During the first four years of the current strike wave, more than 1,900 strikes took place and an estimated 1.7 million workers were involved.

(...)

The state-controlled ETUF opposed these strikes and supported the government's privatisation plans. A turning point was reached when municipal tax collectors not only went on strike, but staged a three-day, 10,000-strong sit-in in the streets of Cairo, opposite the prime minister's office.

This could not be ignored, and the government was forced to allow the formation last year of the first independent trade union in more than half a century.

(...)
In sharp contrast to the last seven years of Egyptian labour unrest, the Tunisian trade unions played a kingmaker role during the end phase of the uprising.

After decades of lethargy, docility and state domination of the General Tunisian Workers' Union (UGTT), Tunisia's largest employee organisation –with roughly half a million members – helped not only eradicate Ben Ali's regime, but determined the shape of the post-Ben Ali government.

Working-class Tunisians were animated by the same goals as their Egyptian counterparts; namely, the desire to secure dignity and respect, bring about real political democracy, and improve their standard of living.

Mushrooming disapproval of Ben Ali's regime among trade union members, coupled with a vibrant youth movement demanding dignity and greater employment opportunities, seems to explain the shift of top-level UGTT officials who had hitherto been loyal Ben Ali.

(...)

In a precursor to the December-January protests against Ben Ali's corrupt system, phosphate mine workers in Gafsa waged a six-month battle against a manipulated recruitment process which sparked resistance among young unemployed workers. Rising discontent with the nepotism and cronyism of the state-controlled UGTT prompted workers to occupy the regional office.


This means that participatory economic democracy played a decisive role in Tunisian society before the Jasmine revolution. Ben Ali swiftly suffocated free and democratic trade union activity during his 23-year domination over organised labour (1987-2011). But he could not extinguish democratic aspirations among workers.

There are no exact parallels, but much of this reminds us of what happened in Poland in 1979-80. There, as in Egypt and Tunisia, we saw a mixture of a repressive, single-party state with trade unions that functioned as an arm of the ruling party. But there was also a network of NGOs that quietly worked behind the scenes, in workplaces and communities.

The result was the 1980 strike at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, the formation of Solidarnosc, and the end not only of the Communist regime in Poland but of the entire Soviet empire.

Today's pro-democracy revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia are the culmination of that process, and where it will lead we cannot predict – though Poland does provide an appealing model.

The pressing point is that experts misjudged the tumult in Egypt and Tunisia largely because they ignored and overlooked the democratic aspirations of working-class Tunisians and Egyptians. To understand why so many authoritarian Arab regimes remain fragile, one need to only to look through the window on to the court of labour relations.

[Via Esquerda Republicana]

E, entretanto, no Egipto - "Egypt's military leaders are reportedly preparing to ban strikes and act against "chaos and disorder" in an attempt to restore order in the country following weeks of protests that led to overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak" (Al-Jazeera)

Uma coisa que ainda não percebi muito bem acerca do Egipto

O que é que foi feito do Hosni Bubarak?

Não me refiro, claro, ao Mubarak enquanto presidente do Egipto (sei perfeitamente que foi destituído); é mesmo a respeito do Mubarak enquanto pessoa física que ainda não percebi o que foi feito dele (foi para o exilio? para Sharm el-Sheikh? Está detido? Evaporou-se?). É que nunca mais ouvi falar dele.

Sondagem egípcia

Sondagem telefónica feita no Cairo e Alexandria entre 5 e 8 de Fevereiro [pdf], feita pela Pechter Middle East Polls para o Washington Institute for Near East Policy (um think-thank conotado com o lobby pro-Israel).

 

Não é provavelmente a melhor sondagem - nem o método (por telefone e apenas nessas duas cidades), nem o timing (ainda antes da queda de Mubarak) nem talvez os patrocinadores (com uma agenda pró-israelita) serão os mais indicados - mas é talvez o mais parecido que há.

A nova frente?

[E não, não me enganei na bandeira...]

no comments

Jogos de computador

Videogames and the sexual division of labour, no Worthwhile Canadian Initiative:

I'm talking here about a special subcategory of videogames: World of Warcraft, Everquest, Halo. These games have three crucial features.

First, they require large human capital investments. For example, in MMORPG (massively multiplayer on-line role-playing games) like World of Warcraft, the player spends countless hours creating a character with special talents, skills, money, and other resources. Other games require the player to learn to navigate around huge imaginary hazard-filled worldds.

Second, they provide outputs that are close substitutes for real-world goods and services. Indeed, there are valuable commodities that individuals in post-industrial economies can achieve more easily through gaming than market or household production. As noted gaming expert David Wong writes, satisfying work requires autonomy, complexity, and connection between effort and reward, noting:

Most people, particularly in the young gamer demographics, don't have this in their jobs or in any aspect of their everyday lives. But the most addictive video games are specifically geared to give us all three... or at least the illusion of all three.

Há uns tempos que estou para escrever um post sobre o tema "porque é que as pessoas se cansam enquanto trabalham?" (relacionado com esta discussão); em parte terá a ver com isto.

O caso Augusta Martinho

Isto pode parecer a contra-corrente do que quase toda a gente anda a dizer, mas os adultos têm o direito a desaparecer, se assim bem entenderem. A que propósito os serviços administrativos, a GNR ou lá quem fosse iriam entrar em casa da senhora à sua procura? Por ela não aparecer há meses/anos? E depois? Se eu decidisse fazer uma viagem durante alguns meses, e não avisasse os meus vizinhos (e a que propósito os iria avisar?), isso seria razão para a PSP ir a minha casa ver se eu estava lá?

As várias forças no Egipto

Why Mukarak is out, por Paul Amar, no site Jadaliyya (via Al-Jazeera e Reason Hit and Run), sobre os diferentes grupos em em presença no Egipto, tanto na oposição como dentro do regime.

Nomeadamente, o autor considera que, dentro do regime há uma divisão entre, por um lado, o exército, o vice-presidente Suleiman e a burguesia nacional/industrial, e por outro a policia, a familia Mubarak e a nova burguesia que enriqueceu com as privatizações (segundo ele, o que aconteceu a 26 e 27 Janeiro foi quase um "golpe militar" em que o primeiro grupo afastou o segundo).

O martelo transformista

ou a angústia do prego.

Via o http://cachimbodemagritte.blogspot.com

"O Martelo Universal" de Fernando Gabriel (Diário Económico)

Por grosso, a coisa resume-se à regurgitação do credo revolucionário de Thomas Paine. (...) [O]s repetidores actuais dispensam-se de maçadas e declaram a democracia como o único sistema de governo, intrínseca e irrestritamente bom. Pouco lhes importa que na Inglaterra, onde Paine nasceu, a "universalização" da democracia foi o resultado de quase um século de reformas políticas graduais; ou que os EUA (...) tenham nascido como projecto republicano, só posterior e gradualmente democratizado. Não lhes ocorre, ou não lhes interessa, considerar as consequências potencialmente desastrosas da súbita introdução da "democracia" num país sem qualquer simulacro verosímil de Estado de Direito e em particular, sem um poder judicial independente e imparcial.(...)

Contrariar os desejos da turba, ou mostrar cepticismo quanto à prioridade da "democracia", assegura imediatamente a condenação moral de "colaboracionismo" com a autocracia do senhor Mubarak, uma condenação sem recurso já aplicada às políticas externas dos países ocidentais. Rousseau e Paine também supunham que a política externa era uma "conspiração" de governos corruptos contra "os povos", e, à semelhança de Trotsky, não lhe viam qualquer utilidade depois do "triunfo revolucionário". As suas réplicas actuais desdobram-se em argumentos engenhosos para demonstrar a inocuidade prospectiva da Irmandade Islâmica e a desnecessidade de qualquer política externa: basta abençoar a democratização imediata do Egipto e o mundo árabe vai de si mesmo. (...) Emancipar o Egipto exige dotar o país de um Estado de Direito que faculte aos egípcios o acesso legal à propriedade, uma tarefa complexa que necessita do apoio de uma diplomacia ocidental cuidadosa e sofisticada. Insistir na democracia sem cuidar desta e de outras questões institucionais dará péssimo resultado; argumentar que a democracia encarregar-se-á de resolver os problemas, oscila entre a desonestidade e a ignorância, mas como dizia Mark Twain, quando só se tem um martelo, tudo se parece com um prego."

Agora, é substituir Egipto por Iraque ou Afeganistão e parece-me um excelente texto anti trostsky-neocons. Do tipo que texto que eu escreveria ou se calhar escrevi inúmeras vezes (mas sem o mesmo talento do Fernando Gabriel, pelo menos sem o talento de escrever:

"emancipar o Egipto exige dotar o país de um Estado de Direito que faculte aos egípcios o acesso legal à propriedade, uma tarefa complexa que necessita do apoio de uma diplomacia ocidental cuidadosa e sofisticada".

Como sabemos o direito de propriedade é algo muito, muito complexo, que as crianças Ocidentais reivindicam logo quase desde a nascença nos seus brinquedos, mas tal não se passa com as crianças do mundo árabe.

Faltaria mencionar a disfunção optimista na implementação de instituições político-sociais do ethos cristão ocidental nos desertos tribais (tipo federalismo Suíço no Afeganistão) e coisas do género. Aliás, no caso do Egipto sempre se poderá argumentar que há mais razões para arriscar a tal improvável mas possível sucesso do que no Iraque e Afeganistão). Mas podemos contar para essa transformação coma acção espontânea de instituições democrático-liberais pelo Estado Mínimo Grande para a reeducação dos povos apoiada por grande programas quinquenais de desenvolvimento.

PS: Para ser honesto, não tenho presente a posição passada e corrente do autor nos casos citados (Iraque e Afeganistão e teoria neo-conservadora em geral).

THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW by John Hasnas

Um interessante texto para juristas e não-juristas e em especial para aqueles (comum no anglo-saxonismo) que levantam a bandeira to "THE RULE OF LAW". Encontrado a partir de outro texto interessante Locke, Smith, Marx and the Labor Theory of Value, STEPHAN KINSELLA (o jurista libertarian anti-propriedade intelectual).


THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW, by John Hasnas

Na conclusão:

The fact is that there is no such thing as a government of law and not people. The law is an amalgam of contradictory rules and counter-rules expressed in inherently vague language that can yield a legitimate legal argument for any desired conclusion. For this reason, as long as the law remains a state monopoly, it will always reflect the political ideology of those invested with decisionmaking power. Like it or not, we are faced with only two choices. We can continue the ideological power struggle for control of the law in which the group that gains dominance is empowered to impose its will on the rest of society or we can end the monopoly.

Our long-standing love affair with the myth of the rule of law has made us blind to the latter possibility. Like the Monosizeans, who after centuries of state control cannot imagine a society in which people can buy whatever size shoes they wish, we cannot conceive of a society in which individuals may purchase the legal services they desire. The very idea of a free market in law makes us uncomfortable. But it is time for us to overcome this discomfort and consider adopting Socrates' approach. We must recognize that our love for the rule of law is unrequited, and that, as so often happens in such cases, we have become enslaved to the object of our desire.

No clearer example of this exists than the legal process by which our Constitution was transformed from a document creating a government of limited powers and guaranteed rights into one which provides the justification for the activities of the all-encompassing super-state of today.

However heart-wrenching it may be, we must break off this one-sided affair. The time has come for those committed to individual liberty to realize that the establishment of a truly free society requires the abandonment of the myth of the rule of law.

Rachel Maddow in Shock: Tea Partiers Defeat PATRIOT Act « Antiwar.com Blog

Rachel Maddow in Shock: Tea Partiers Defeat PATRIOT Act « Antiwar.com Blog

Rachel Maddow is using her “report” on the Republican tea caucus blocking the extension of the PATRIOT Act to replay her “interview” with Rand Paul, and rail about abortion. Rant all you want, Rachel, but people are noticing that you haven’t even mentioned the Act several minutes into your tirade.

Is this ad-libbed?

She misses, of course, the real story: which is that the libertarian wing of the GOP is defending what’s left of our civil liberties. There she is with a big Glenn Beck-like chart, explaining that there are two kinds of conservatives: libertarians and authoritarians. According to her — and me — the GOP party establishment has paid lip service to liberty, in the abstract, but in reality it has been quite the opposite. Everybody claims to be a “libertarian,” but when they get into power it’s a different story. Never mind that Democrats vote with them — they started it, according to Rachel. It’s all the Republicans’ fault.

And she still hasn’t mentioned that the Tea Party made the difference on the PATRIOT Act….

C”,mon, Rachel, you’re supposed to be reporting — and maybe even commenting on — the news.

OH WAIT — She’s finally mentioned it, over five minutes into her rant: “26 Republicans bucked their own party on this vote.” It’s “man bites dog” — Republicans voting against the Act “from the right.” And now they’re questioning Afghanistan. “What happens to American politics now?” she asks. “It’s a realignment.”

(...)

UPDATE 3: The Washington Post got it right, for once:

“House Republicans suffered an embarrassing setback Tuesday when they fell seven votes short of extending provisions of the Patriot Act, a vote that served as the first small uprising of the party’s tea-party bloc.”

Pesquisa

"uma mulher poderia ficar gravida de un porco" - alguém chegou ao Vento Sueste pesquisando isto.

Freguesias e o eficientismo

Diz-se que Lisboa decidiu diminuir o número de freguesias. Oram bem, mas quem o tem de decidir? É "Lisboa" ou as freguesias? Não devia o processo passar por consultas e referendos pelos próprios? Não conheço a legitimação formal do processo mas é indiferente, não se mudam identidades históricas na base administrativa no sim, porque sim.

Dizem que é uma questão de eficiência, e sensibilidades à esquerda e direita concordam que será uma questão de eficiência. Pode ser. Ou não. Se é para sermos "eficientes" podíamos usar todos uma farda de Mao, imagine-se o que se poupava de recursos.

A eficiência é uma argumento que pode levar as pessoas a decidir algo, mas é apenas um argumento.

Este processo (que não conheço o mecanismo formal) representará o pior do portuguesismo e da política em geral.

Acordam de repente e decidem coisas pelos outros do alto do seu eficientismo e do seu poder.

Egipto 2011 != Irão 1979

Why Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979, por Juan Cole:

Misagh Parsa argued that the revolution of 1978-79 was made by several different social groups, each for its own reasons. The revolution was fought against the monarchy, which presided over an oil-exporting economy that had gone into overdrive because of the big fourfold run-up of prices in the 1970s. Many felt that they were not sharing in that prosperity, or were inconvenienced by the Shah’s authoritarian government.

1. THE BAZAAR: The bazaar is a way of referring to the old business and artisan classes who congregated in covered bazaars and around mosques and courts in the older part of Iranian cities. Everyone from tinsmiths, to moneylenders, to carpet import-export merchants is encompassed by the phrase. The bazaar came to be in significant competition with the new business classes (importers of tin pans were putting the tinsmiths out of business, and modern banking was making inroads against the moneylenders). The bazaar had many links with the ayatollahs in mosques and seminaries, including via intermarriage. The Shah despised the bazaar as a bastion of feudal backwardness, and imposed onerous taxes and fines on it, in addition to casually destroying entire bazaars, as at Mashhad. THE BAZAAR FAVORED THE CLERGY AND BANKROLLED THE REVOLUTION.

2. WHITE AND BLUE COLLAR WORKERS: Industrial and oil workers struck over their wages and labor conditions. School teachers and white collar professionals (nurses, physicians, etc.) protested the lack of democracy.

3. SECULAR PARTIES: The old National Front of the early 1950s movement for oil nationalization was weak and aging but still significant. The Communist Party was much less important than in the 1950s but still had some organizational ability. Left-leaning youth radicals, such as the Fedayan-i Khalq (which leaned mildly Maoist) had begun guerrilla actions against the regime. There were also secular intellectuals in what was called the Writer’s Movement.

4. RELIGIOUS FORCES: The religious forces included not only the clergy and mosque networks of dissidents such as Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (in exile in Najaf, Iraq and then Paris), but also religious party-militias such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK: Fighters for the People). In Shiite Islam, a doctrine had grown up that laypersons owe implicit obedience to the clergy when the latter rule on the practice of religious law. Ayatollahs have a place of honor not common for Sunni clergy.

Parsa argues, I think correctly, that the religious forces were initially only one of the important social groups that made the revolution, but of course they ultimately hijacked it and repressed the other three. Note that although the rural population was the majority in Iran at that time, it was little involved in the revolution, though it was very well represented in the subsequent revolutionary parliament and so benefited from new rounds of road, school and other building in the 1980 and 1990s.

Egypt is, unlike Iran, not primarily an oil state. Its sources of revenue are tourism, Suez Canal tolls, manufactured and agricultural exports, and strategic rent (the $1.5 bn. or so in aid from the US comes under this heading). Egypt depends on the rest of the world for grain imports. Were it to adopt a radical and defiant ideology like that of Iran, all its major sources of income would suddenly evaporate, and it might have trouble even just getting enough imported food. Moreover, the social forces making the revolution in Egypt have a significantly different profile and different dynamics than in Iran. Let us just go through the same list.

1. THE BAZAAR: To the extent that there is a bazaar (the Arabic would be suq) in Egypt, it is by now very heavily dependent on the tourist trade. Coptic Christians are well represented in it. The suq therefore tends to oppose social policies that would scare away Western tourists. The suq will do very badly this year because of the turmoil. One merchant in Khan al-Khalili once told me that the bad years for his business had been 1952, 1956, 1967, 1973– the years of the revolution and then the Arab-Israeli wars that would have been celebrated by nationalists but which he regretted.. Because few tourists came those years. That the Egyptian Market would bankroll Egyptian fundamentalists to establish an oppressive theocracy that would permanently scare away German holiday-makers is highly unlikely.

2. WHITE AND BLUE COLLAR WORKERS: These groups are among the primary instigators of the Egyptian uprising. The April 6 group of young labor activists first came to prominence when they supported strikes by textile factory workers in Mahalla al-Kubra and elsewhere for improved wages and work conditions. There have been more than 3,000 labor actions by Egyptian workers since 2004. The pro-labor youth activists have been among the major leaders of the uprising in the past week, and had pioneered the use of Facebook and Twitter for such purposes.

3. SECULAR FORCES. When I say ‘secular’ with regard to Egypt, I do not mean that these groups are made up of atheists and agnostics. Their members may go to mosque and pray and be personally pious. But such people can nevertheless vote for parties that are not primarily organized around religion. These include the New Wafd Party, a revival of the old liberal party that dominated Egypt 1922-1952 during its “liberal” period of parliamentary elections and prime ministers. The Wafd had originally represented the interests of great landlords and budding bankers and industrialists, though its original role in fighting for independence from Britain also gave it popular support. It reemerged when Egypt began turning away from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s socialism and it again championed private property rights. It attracted the allegiance of many Copts, as well as middle class Muslims. Although it has suffered divisions and declining popularity in recent elections, in a situation of free and fair elections it could regain some popularity. Then there is the Tomorrow (al-Ghad) party of Ayman Nur, who won 8% of the vote in the 2005 presidential election. And there is the Kefaya! (Enough!) movement. All three favor human rights and parliamentary democracy. There are also many secular figures in the literary establishment and in the film world (such as comic Adil Imam). And, of course, there is the ruling National Democratic Party, which has a generally secular bias and dislikes Muslim fundamentalism. Whether it can overcome its association with Hosni Mubarak and continue to contest elections credibly remains to be seen. It is now by far the dominant party in parliament, though nobody thinks the elections were free and fair.

4. THE RELIGIOUS FORCES: Unlike in Iran, there are relatively few prominent dissident clergy. “Televangelist” Yusuf al-Qaradawi, in exile in Qatar, should be counted among them. The Egyptian state had for the most part nationalized mosques and controlled the clerical corps. Few Egyptian clergyman command the respect or obedience of the laity to the extent that Khomeini did in Iran. The major religious party is the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. Although it developed a terrorist wing in the 1940s, it faced severe crackdowns in the 1950s and 1960s, and lost that capacity. Although the radical thinker Sayyid Qutb came out of their movement, the MB leadership disowned him in the late 1960s and even refuted his radical doctrines (such as declaring other Muslims with whom he disagreed to be ‘non-Muslims’) as “un-Sunni.” By the 1970s the Brotherhood’s leaders were willing to make their peace with the government of Anwar El Sadat. He let them operate if they agreed not to resort to violence and not to try to overthrow the government. In the 1990s, the Brotherhood came to counter the radical movements, such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and so had a tacit partnership with the state. Egypt does not allow parties to be organized on the basis of religion, but even so Muslim Brother candidates have done well in some parliamentary elections (especially 2006), running under the rubric of other parties.

So to recapitulate. The white collar and labor activists are far more central to the organization of the Egyptian protests than had been their counterparts in the Iranian Revolution. The Egyptian “bazaar” is much less tied to the Muslim clergy than was the case in Iran, and far less likely to fund clerical politicians. Whereas Iran’s bazaar merchants often suffered from Western competition, Egypt’s bazaar depends centrally on Western tourism. Secular parties, if we count the NDP, have an organizational advantage over the religious ones, since they have been freer to meet and act under Mubarak. It is not clear that the law banning religious parties will be changed, in which case the Brotherhood would again be stuck with running its candidates under other rubrics. And, Sunni Muslims don’t have a doctrine of owing implicit obedience to their clergy, and the clergy are not as important in Sunni religious life as the Shiite Ayatollahs are in Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood, a largely lay organization, has a lot of support, but it is not clear that they could gain more than about a third of seats even if they were able to run in free elections.

[via Ken MacLeod]

Mundo árabe 2011 != Irão 1979

Arab revolutions transcend Iran's, por Roxane Farmanfarmaian, no site da al-Jazeera:

That certainly has been the line Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has taken until now - and his excuse for three decades of martial law. His warning that it was either him - or the Muslim Brotherhood - was designed to instill fear both at home and abroad. And it is a message that has resonated well with Western concerns, particularly in this age of al-Qaeda extremism and Islamic terrorism.


The "either us or them" argument, however, had an earlier incarnation in a mantra often used by Iran's Shah. In his day, it was not Islamism but communism that struck fear in the Western heart, and that is what he suggested would replace him were he to fall. Ensuring against a Red Iran was the impetus behind the CIA coup that placed him on the throne in 1953 - and guaranteed him US support until the bitter end. As a result, the real story of the Iranian revolution – that it was a highly organised, mosque-based movement that over the course of several years had built up the momentum at last to topple the Shah – was ignored until too late.

Arab uprisings of 2011


Looking at the movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan as what they really are – rather than as what they are feared to be - reveals broad-based popular uprisings that do not bear the Islamist organisational or ideational imprint. The Egyptians in the streets, much like presumptive coalition leader, Mohamed ElBaradei and women's rights activist Nawal El Saadawi, all state categorically that what is happening in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. The demonstrations were started by bloggers, social media activists, Al Jazeera watchers - not by the Brotherhood - which joined the demonstrations three days later. There are no Islamist banners being held up in the streets, no Islamist leaders jumping on soap boxes calling the faithful to jihad.

In Iran in 1979, there were as many banners bearing Islamic slogans as there were banners calling for the Shah to go. The drumbeat of the demonstrations marked Shia holidays, such as Ashura and Tasua, and followed the 40-day Shia mourning ritual for 'martyrs' killed by the Shah’s army. The voices of Ayatollah Khomeini and other clerics led the demonstrations through exhortations at Friday prayers. In many demonstrations, the women and the men marched separately - the women shrouded in black, head-to-toe chadors. From the outset, for anyone willing to read it, the writing was on the wall: Iran's revolution was Islamic.

The Arab demonstrations look nothing like the ones in Iran at that time. In Tunis, Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia with no hint that Islamist groups – let alone al-Qaeda imports – had contributed to his ouster. And in Cairo and Amman, the women and men, boys and girls are marching side-by-side, calling for the right to vote, empowerment and human rights.

A ciencia económica e as cooperativas

The disappearance of cooperatives from economics textbooks, por Panu Kalmi (artigo completo aqui):

Discussion of cooperatives abounded in early twentieth century economics textbooks, but is virtually absent from their modern counterparts. In this paper, I assemble a dataset of economics textbooks used at the University of Helsinki during 1905–2005 and examine how the treatment of cooperatives has changed, and what factors have led to a neglect of cooperatives in textbooks. The quality and quantity of the discussion on cooperatives is noted to be much greater in books published before World War II than in post-World War II books. I argue that the main reason for the decline is the paradigm shift from institutional to neoclassical analysis, which led to a neglect of the potential of cooperatives in addressing social problems.

[Para uma tentativa de defesa das cooperativas a partir de pressupostos (essencialmente) neoclássicos, este post meu de 2009]

A Economia das Revoluções

The Economics of Revolution, por Gerard O'Neill:

 Has the price of revolution fallen? Gary North thinks so. In a brilliant analysis of the current situation in Tunisia and Egypt he observes that:

When the cost of political mobilization falls, more is demanded. When people can mobilize thousands of protesters without any centrally directed agency and without any organization that can be infiltrated and subverted, they are in a position to impose enormous political damage on any existing regime, as long as the regime really is corrupt, tyrannical, and hated.

Moreover, there are powerful network effects at play. (...). Or as Gary puts it:

When people around the world can see street protesters, this encourages thousands of other protesters, who had attempted to sit the fence, to get off the fence and go into the streets. There is safety in numbers. When they can see on television or on the web that there are thousands of people in the streets protesting, they assume that they will gain a degree of invisibility and anonymity if they join the protests. So, they leave the safety of their homes and join the protest movement. Because of social networking, this can take place so rapidly that government officials are unable to respond fast enough to put a stop to it before it is obvious that there are thousands of people in the streets.

We seem to be approaching a curiously Hayekian/Marxist moment - revolutions can take on a spontaneous order of their own, 'the People' really are revolting, without any leaders in sight. Indeed, Zbigniew Brzezinski is worried that the new revolutionary order might be about to become a global phenomenon.

Microfoundations of domino theory, por Chris Dillow:

It looks as if the Tunisian revolution might be spreading. Which raises the question: what are the micro foundations of such a domino effect?

That there are such effects is clear. They explain why the English ruling class was terrified by the French revolution; why the US was so desperate to resist Vietnamese communism; and why Georgia’s rose revolution inspired uprisings in the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. But what exactly is the mechanism here?
This paper (pdf) sheds some light. Consider someone pondering whether to protest. The gain from doing so is the probability of achieving your objective. The cost is the risk of being arrested or beaten up. How you weigh up these costs and benefits depends upon your belief about the strength of the government. If you think it’s strong enough to resist the protests, you might not bother. But if you think it’s weak enough to either give in or not punish protestors, you will protest.

And here’s the thing. The reaction of neighbouring governments to similar protests affects your judgment of your own government’s strength or weakness. If it is weak, you figure: “Maybe protests will work here as well.” At the margin, this gets more people onto the streets. One government’s reaction to protests has “reputation externalities” for other governments.

As it stands, there are a couple of holes here. One is the problem of collective action. To the individual, the potential costs of protesting are high - possibly death - whilst the benefits are spread over millions. So why doesn’t he just free-ride on others’ protests? If everyone does this, there’ll be no protests.

The very fact that there are protests shows that there’s something wrong with this. The answer, I suspect, is that some people - “extremists”! - gain symbolic utility from protesting. If they are not beaten up and arrested, other, less fanatical, people join them. This is why the size of protests sometimes snowballs. (A further mechanism here is Timur Kuran's theory of availability cascades: seeing others protest makes us think that protesting is a reasonable thing to do).

The second hole is: what exactly is going on the mind of the marginal protestor who sees a successful revolution in a neighbouring country? The paper seems to suggest that he has been always conducting a rational cost-benefit analysis of whether to protest or not. But I suspect what might instead be happening is a form of attention effect. The thought of protesting simply doesn’t occur to him, until he sees others - people like him doing so. And when he sees this, he figures: “I can do that.”

O conservadorismo social dos Democratas

What’s the Matter with Provincetown?, na Reason, por Tim Cavanaugh:

Yes, I know. The president routinely depicted by detractors as the demon seed of the ’60s counterculture is in fact an establishment figure who blocks efforts to end federal discrimination against gay people, supports immunity for federal agents who illegally engaged in warrantless wiretapping, declines to withdraw on any front from either the war on drugs or the war on jihad, made insurance giganticorps the centerpiece of his health care law, failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and helped deliver hundreds of billions of dollars into the hands of insolvent bankers and industrialists

But for the two years prior to the midterm elections, while all of Washington was captive to the whim of Eldridge the Jackal Obama, it still seemed faintly possible that the government might permit some more of the personal freedoms Democrats claim to favor. (...)

But where are the Democrats? No Right Turn describes a culture war in which Republicans succeeded in painting their opponents as the party of acid, abortion, and atheism. That sounds like a fun group, but it doesn’t sound much like the Democratic Party. It may be misguided to think Republicans will prevent social decadence, but is it any dumber than believing Democrats can deliver it?

Democracia Operária

Worker democracy works, por Chris Dillow:

Here’s some laboratory evidence that workplace democracy raises productivity:

We report evidence from a real-effort experiment confirming that worker performance is sensitive to the process used to select the compensation contract. Groups of workers that voted to determine their compensation scheme provided significantly more effort than groups that had no say in how they would be compensated. This effect is robust to controls for the compensation scheme implemented and worker characteristics.

This is especially impressive because it focuses upon only one channel through which democracy raises productivity, and ignores others - for example that workplace democracy increases workers’ monitoring of co-workers, or increases motivation over longer periods than can be measured in laboratory experiments.
One message I take from this is that a government that was serious about wanting to increase the efficiency of the public sector would consider ways of empowering workers.(...)

The best forms of democracy don’t ask; “what do you think?” This just invites speak-your-branes drivel. Instead, it asks: what do you know? Workplace democracy does this.

In this sense, workplace democracy does what Hayek attributed to markets: it mobilizes dispersed, fragmented knowledge (this is a separate virtue from maximizing efficiency). My enthusiasm for worker democracy probably owes less to Marx’s influence  than it does to Hayek’s.

"Ocupação e uso"

On occupancy and use, por Shawn Wilbur:

There's certainly nothing self-evident about how true lockean and neo-lockean property would actually work. In the homesteading model, "something" of the person is "mixed" with unowned resources, which annexes those resources to the person. Neo-lockeans throw up their hands because they can't make practical heads or tails of the "enough and as good" proviso (and generally ignore the proviso against waste), but, arguably, the provisos are a lot clearer and more clearly practicable than the mechanism of appropriation. Of course, neo-lockeans don't focus on appropriation anyway, skipping ahead from the "state of nature" to the exchange economy, where division of labor and exchange will have effects virtually "as good" as proviso-appropriation. But, yikes! If the original standard was impracticable, then how hard to practice is its virtual equivalent? Rather than basing itself on a principle that's about as close to self-evidently universal as you're going to get—and then confronting the problems of applying the principle—neo-lockean property simply abandons the principle, and asserts that which is far from self-evident: that an exchange economy in which the appropriation rights of others are simply not considered will have virtually the same effect as one in which appropriation is direct and guided by the provisos. Seems like an easy way to go astray. And, sure enough, true lockean property is virtually non-rivalrous (and amenable, at least in principle, to adjustment to account for long-term sustainability and ecological effects, for which "good fences" are hardly a solution), while neo-lockean property is rivalrous by definition, and inflexible (mostly unconcerned, really) with regard to the material, systemic complexities of actual property in the real world.

Compared to all of that, how difficult a principle is "occupancy and use"? Take the lockean provisos seriously, and add the fact that natural processes "unmix" all the while—observe that anything in perpetuity is about as un-natural a principle as you can imagine—and you can derive it from the same roots as neo-lockean theory, with less opportunistic reasoning and jimmying of the basics.

The straw-man depictions from propertarians probably reflect a basic difference in political aims and cultures. Mutualists are not occupancyandusitarians: our theory of real property comes a couple of steps after our account of "self-ownership" or "property in person," and it is certainly not prior to the principle of reciprocity. You could, no doubt, construct a mutualist account in which "all rights are property rights," but the "property" certainly wouldn't have the exclusive, perpetual character of most propertarian systems. From a propertarian perspective, the notion that property isn't forever—or isn't at least dependent on the intentions, however inert, of the proprietor—seems outrageous, so there really isn't that much difference between moving into your house when you nipped out for a carton of milk and opening the land of some distant holding company to occupation by the landless. Having jettisoned the provisos, and no longer being able to fall back on the actual homesteading mechanism (the effects of which market exchange is supposed to approximate), neo-lockean theory doesn't have a lot of guidelines to fall back on, so it makes a virtue of being "tough, but fair." If you question the "universal right of first-come, first-served" stuff, chances are the propertarian isn't even going to see a problem.

Anyway, apart from any mutualist reimagination of property, possessory occupancy and use conventions are going to be based on the principle of reciprocity. When propertarians insist that without their form of property, mutualists will "steal" anything that nailed down, my first question has to be: Dude? Is that the way you imagine the Golden Rule playing out?

Abelhas

Briefly Noted: The Secret Lives of Bees, por Jesse Walker:

People tend to project familiar institutions onto almost anything alien, making misleading metaphors that sometimes get frozen into our language. So it is with the “queen bee,” that fat mama bug who does not, in fact, rule anybody. In Honeybee Democracy (Princeton), the biologist and beekeeper Thomas Seeley reminds us that the queen “is oblivious of her colony’s ever-changing labor needs…to which the colony’s staff of worker bees steadily adapts itself.” Honeybee society, he writes, is a spontaneous order with “no all-knowing central planner” and “an enviable harmony of labor without supervision.”

 [Ver também isto e isto]

Gary Moore (1952-2011)

Os muçulmanos seguem o mesmo Deus que os cristãos?

De vez em quando algumas pessoas (creio que geralmente cristãos) defendem a tese que o Deus dos muçulmanos não é o dos cristãos, por vezes insistindo em que a palavra árabe "Allah" ("Deus", "A Divindade") não seja traduzida para "Deus".

Isso faz sentido? Poderá fazer num conjunto muito especifico de condições, mas duvido que algum cristão possa concordar com elas.

Primeiro, temos que ver uma coisa - de acordo com a doutrina muçulmana, o Deus que ditou o Corão a Mahomed, etc, etc, é o mesmo Deus que falou com Adão, Noé, Abraão, Moisés e Jesus, e segundo eles foram os judeus e cristãos que se afastarem dos ensinamentos divinos. É por isso que, segundo a lei islâmica, desde que se submetam, os judeus e cristãos podem viver e continuar a praticar o seu culto (porque serão uma espécie de "pré-muçulmanos"), enquanto que os "pagãos" são para passar à espada* (embora na prática esse estatuto de semi-tolerância fosse frequentemente alargado a qualquer religião organizada com peso social significativo, como os zoroastrianos na Pérsia ou os hindus).

Portanto, temos que os muçulmanos consideram-se a si mesmos como seguindo o mesmo deus que cristãos e judeus.

Assim, se considerarmos o islamismo apenas como um sistema de crenças, é evidente que o Deus islâmico é o Deus cristão e judeu, no sentido de "o Deus que os muçulmanos acreditam na existência é o mesmo Deus em que os judeus e cristãos acreditam" (se os muçulmanos acreditam que o Deus é o mesmo, isso quer dizer que acreditam no mesmo Deus).

Agora, o que se poderá dizer é que os muçulmanos até podem acreditar que seguem o mesmo Deus, mas na realidade seguem um Deus diferente. É possivel, mas defender que o Deus que os muçulmanos adoram é, "na realidade", outro Deus implica aceitar que:

a) o Deus que os muçulmanos adoram existe na realidade

b) e esse Deus não é o Deus judaico-cristão

Ou seja, essa posição implica aceitar que existe por aí, no mundo real, um Deus distinto do Deus cristão; penso que se um cristão defender tal ideia seria candidato à excumunhão...

Pondo a coisa de outra maneira, poderiamos dizer que há três hipóteses possiveis sobre o islamismo:

a) o islamismo é uma simples história da carochinha, que só existe na cabeça dos seus crentes (nesse caso, como na cabeça dos muçulmanos o seu Deus é o Deus dos cristãos, então é o Deus dos cristão)

b) os muçulmanos adoram um Deus com existência real, que coincide com o Deus cristão

c) os muçulmanos adoram um Deus com existência real, que não é o Deus dos cristãos

A única maneira de negar que o Deus dos cristão e muçulmanos é mesmo acreditar na hipótese c).

Há o argumento que, segundo os muçulmanos, Deus tem características diferentes das que os cristãos que lhe atribuem (p.ex., os muçulmanos não acreditam na Trindade, e o seu Deus não parece ter a benevolência que os cristãos lhe atribuem); mas tal (além de implicar que judeus e cristãos seguiriam diferentes deuses) implicaria também que as diferentes seitas cristãs não acreditassem no mesmo Deus, já que elas tendem a atribuir-lhe diferentes características.

Imaginemos duas pessoas a falar de uma terceira pessoa: um diz que essa 3º pessoa é muito simpática, o outro que a acha bastante antipática - poderemos a partir daqui dizer que elas a falar de pessoas diferentes?

*há uns anos houve um polémica entre os lideres muçulmanos do Iraque sobre se os seguidores de S. João Baptista contavam como cristãos ou não; o cerne prático da questão era exactamente se era ou não legítimo matá-los sistematicamente (creio que a opinião que prevaleceu foi "não são cristãos e portanto podem ser perseguidos sem problemas")

Afinal, não sou "esquerda caviar"

Eduardo Pitta (parece-me*): "a classe média (a verdadeira: salários líquidos a partir de 2500 euros mensais)"

*pelo contexto não se percebe muito bem se Eduardo Pitta está a expressar uma opinião dele, ou a referir uma opinião de Manuela Ferreira Leite, mas dá-me a ideia que é o primeiro caso

[Via Esquerda Republicana]

Sobre a desobdiência civil no Egipto

Go Down, Pharaoh, por Jesse Walker:

The momentum is with the rebellion, not the repression. That's why the president looks so pathetic right now. He's spent decades assembling a potent police state, and still he's losing.


Perhaps that isn't how you expect such events to play out. If you mention the idea of a revolution driven by civil disobedience rather than violence, you're apt to hear the old saw that such revolts only work in countries with good-hearted leaders at the reins, not savage regimes held together by torture and terror. But contrary to the popular stereotype, Gandhian uprisings don't succeed by shaming rulers until they can't bring themselves to crack down. They succeed by delegitimizing authority—by breaking the braces that support the structures of social control, so the rulers can't crack down. Political power is not a pyramid fixed in stone. It's a complex, dynamic ecology of shifting loyalties and allegiances. When those loyalties and allegiances shift swiftly and in sufficient numbers, the result is a revolution. (...)

Domestically, meanwhile, there's a wedge between Mubarak and the military. From the first day of the protests, the Egyptian army has presented itself as a neutral party, at one point declaring that the demonstrators' demands are "legitimate" and that it would not use force against the crowds.
Needless to say, that doesn't mean the army joined the uprising. The same troops who refused to shoot the demonstrators also refrained from intervening when the president's supporters assaulted Tahrir Square. And when Mubarak appointed a new government, the grassroots opposition wasn't appeased, but the army brass surely appreciated the ascension of their man Omar Suleiman to the vice presidency. Nonetheless, it's telling that Mubarak has had to rely on undercover cops and mobs-for-hire to do his dirty work. The country's biggest arsenal hasn't been his to command, and the people who do command it have been asserting their independence.
If it were up to Egypt's generals, we'd see a smooth transition to a new strongman—an outcome that probably isn't that far from what Washington wants. And that, minus the smoothness, is what we might ultimately get. But there may be another wedge at work, and it could change the endgame entirely: a wedge detaching the officers from the rank and file.

It doesn't matter what the generals want if ordinary soldiers won't follow their orders, a lesson several dictators and would-be dictators have learned the hard way. Egypt has a conscript army, and many soldiers surely sympathize more with their friends, relatives, and neighbors in the streets than with the men issuing commands. The police are more closely tied to Mubarak's regime, but a similar dynamic is at work in their ranks as well. There have been reports of policemen fraternizing with protesters, removing their uniforms, refusing to fill their assigned social role. The more the momentum turns toward the opposition, the less risk there will be for other cops and soldiers to follow suit.

If you're wondering what will happen after Mubarak falls, this may be the most important wedge to watch. If the revolution ultimately hinges on the generals switching sides, the military that already dominates the government will have the central role in deciding what happens next. That doesn't have to mean the police state will continue. Chile's transition from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship to democracy and civil liberties happened after the armed forces refused to impose martial law, with one general heroically tearing up an order right in front of the despot. But if the military coopts this revolution, Egypt will likely end up with Suleiman or someone like him as president, a few token reforms, and little else. If the revolution relies on a mutiny in the enforcers' lower ranks, by contrast, the rebellion is much less likely to be reduced to a backdrop for a palace coup.

If there's an iron law of politics, it's that everything can always get worse. But if you want a reason to be optimistic about Egypt, there's this: Unlike a coup, an invasion, or anything involving a vanguard party, a people-power revolution strengthens rather than disrupts civil society. Of all the ways a regime can fall, this is the path that's most likely to lead to a freer country. When it comes to political models, the liberated zone in Tahrir Square beats a barracks any day.

A auto-organização popular no Egipto

Volunteers Work to Keep Order in Chaos of Egypt (New York Times):

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — At the first protest, on Jan. 25, Majd Mardini noticed that an ambulance could not get through the crowd of demonstrators. Outgoing, voluble and anything but shy, he began asking people to step aside, parting the crowd so the ambulance could get through.

From this small gesture, Mr. Mardini, 37, and several other men who stepped in to help discussed the fact that citizens would have to work together if the protests against the Egyptian government were going to proceed without tearing their city apart.

Out of these humble beginnings, the Popular Committee for the Protection of Properties and Organization of Traffic was born. “What we tried to do first was protect the electricity, water, gas — even the state-owned ones,” Mr. Mardini said, his voice a hoarse whisper after starting on the street at 8 in the morning on Sunday and finishing at 6:30 a.m. Monday, with a two-hour nap before hitting the road again. His stubble is gaining on his soul patch, and if he does not shave soon he will have a full beard.

Compared with the chaos in Cairo, Alexandria has seemed relatively orderly, though only relatively. In some neighborhoods the only building that has been destroyed is the police station, though there has been looting in others. The streets are filled with volunteers.

“We want to show the world that we can take care of our country, and we are doing it without the government or police,” said Khalid Toufik, 40, a dentist. He said that he also took shifts in his neighborhood watch, along with students and workers. “It doesn’t matter if one is a Muslim or a Christian,” he said, “we all have the same goal.”

“I am glad, that they are all on the streets to protect us from robbers,” said Hannan Selbi, 21, a student. “We are sure that it’s in the interest of the government to create chaos.”

Soon after Mr. Mardini’s first tentative steps, committee members were recognizable by the simple white armbands they wore, often just strips of fabric. They created logos and distributed fliers asking for more help from the public. Some wear photocopied pieces of paper on their chests like marathon runners’ numbers. Mr. Mardini wore a badge that read simply People’s Committee in red Arabic. But the way people walked up to him and began talking, it appeared he needed no introduction.

The civic enterprise is now divided into four branches: traffic, cleanup, protection and emergency response.

Though others refer to him as the head of the committee, Mr. Mardini said: “We don’t have a leader. This is our country, and we all have to protect it.”

Mr. Mardini, of Syrian and Egyptian descent, has lived in Alexandria for 15 years. He studied in Britain and may have unwittingly prepared himself for his current work when he was employed at the Dubai airport in passenger services. His English is quite good, but he kept forgetting the word “demonstration.” “I never actually had to use the word ‘demonstration,’ ” he said, describing himself as apolitical until he became fed up with the police and corruption and joined the protests. (...)

In his neighborhood, Sidi Bishr, volunteers had caught and turned over 20 accused criminals to the military as they searched vehicles and checked registration papers against identity cards. The young men at the checkpoints look scary holding knives and heavy pipes but are polite, and despite being volunteers, professional.

Mr. Mardini said he was doing it for free elections. Asked what kind of government he wanted, he said he did not care, even if he disagreed with it, as long as it represented the people’s will.

Revolução Árabe ou Africana?

More than a prod to reform (Mail and Guardian - jornal sul-africano):

Egypt and Tunisia are African countries for footballing purposes but too often we treat the Sahara as a dividing ocean, cutting them off physically, politically, culturally and ethnically from the rest of the continent. Although there is a growing expectation that the sparks of revolt will travel eastwards to ignite resentment -- as they already have in Jordan and Yemen -- almost no one is talking about the African context of the uprisings.


There are certainly countries -- not least among those close to Egypt -- that could do with broad-based civil movements against authoritarianism. Chad is perhaps the most benighted, but the depth of its isolation and tyranny are such that it is difficult to imagine a people-power movement succeeding.

What about Ethiopia and its increasingly authoritarian president, Meles Zenawi? Or Uganda, where Yoweri Museveni is consolidating his grip on power? Or Angola, where oil revenues fatten the ruling elite and human development stalls? Or Zimbabwe? Or any of the pseudo-democracies that dot the continent.

In these countries, engaged as they are with the global community, and possessed of at least the rudiments of civil society, the crowds in Tahrir Square ought to be an inspiration, and for their leaders, a prod to reform. Popular protest needn't culminate in revolution or civil war; it can be a crucial democratic instrument in countries where institutional arrangements are incapable of representing the will of the people.

A dúvida neoconservadora

The Neocon Conundrum, por Steven Taylor:

The situation in Egypt creates quite a problem for many neoconservatives and it is the following: what impulse should guide their preferences? Should it be a) that the protests over throw the dictator in the hopes that democracy takes hold to vindicate the vision of George W. Bush (a position that is already percolating in the commentariat at the moment) or, b) does fear of Islamic extremists mean that democracy is too great a risk, as we cannot know who would prevail in a new, Egyptian democracy?

Slides for Libertarian Legal Theory, Lecture 1

Link aqui

Everybody Loves Loved Hosni

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/01/everybody_loves_loved_hosni

Petróleo vs. democracia?

Egypt, Oil and Democracy, por Nate Silver:

One thing that links Egypt and Tunisia, however — and which forms part of the background against which attempts at revolution might have been more likely in those countries — is that as compared to most of the region, they do not have much oil.

There is a large body of literature in political science connecting oil wealth and democratization. Although the conclusions are not universally accepted and there are some exceptions — Norway, for instance, is one of the most petroleum-rich countries in the world, and also one of the most democratic — the consensus view is toward what Thomas L. Friedman refers to as The First Law of Petropolitics: oil and democracy do not mix.

(...)
 
Whichever measure is chosen, Egypt belongs with the Middle Eastern countries that have relatively few fossil fuel resources, rather than those that have them in abundance. Tunisia’s oil exports are slightly higher, but still well below the regional average.

It’s the resource-poor countries, however, that are more likely to be at least partially democratic. The Economist ranks Cyprus and Israel, which have little to no oil, as being democracies (albeit what it calls “flawed democracies”). Likewise, it classifies Lebanon and Turkey, which also have little oil, as “hybrid states” leaning toward being democracies.

By contrast, The Economist rates all of the oil-rich countries in the region as being authoritarian, with the partial exception of Iraq which — after the United States’ intervention there — was assigned a score of 4.00, placing it just at the brink between authoritarian and partially democratic.

Many of the studies that have identified this effect have concluded that it is not necessarily confined to the Middle East — some evidence also been cited in Africa, for instance, as well as the countries of the former Soviet Union. And many have also concluded that the effects are not merely incidental but, also, causal: when new oil discoveries are made, they tend to retard democratization and enhance authoritarianism (a recent example of this is Equatorial Guinea, which discovered significant amounts of oil in the late 1990s).

Michael Ross, a political science professor at U.C.L.A. who is among the foremost proponents of the hypothesis, has concluded that democratic transitions are 50 percent more likely in oil-poor states than in oil-rich ones. That fact alone is certainly not sufficient to explain why Tunisia has undergone regime change, or why Egypt may be on the brink of it — but it does suggest that the underlying probabilities were greater in those countries than for some of their regional neighbors.

Um ponto adicional - qual é o menos democrático pais lusófono?

O FMI e Portugal

O Delito de Opinião convidou-me a escrever um post - aqui está.

Egipto - momentos decisivos?

4:51pm [14:51 nossas] Gunshots heard live on Al Jazeera and reports of pro-Mubarak groups taking over three army vehicles. (al-Jazeera)

Despedimento colectivo

CNN - An animal welfare group is investigating the execution of 100 healthy sled dogs in Vancouver, British Columbia, after tour business got slow following the Olympics, according to Canadian news reports.

O que é a taxa de juro

A pergunta continua a não ser consensual na doutrina económica, especial, naquelas (quase todas) que defendem que a decisão seja por decreto, mas sempre dirá que ajusta a taxa de juro à inflação (ou expectativa... ou whatever) e ao crescimento e produtividade do capital. Os Keynesianos dirão que é o prémio para se afastar de liquidez, o que é um bocado estranho no sentido em que qualquer preço então (o de uma cerveja por exemplo) representa um prémio para se afastar de liquidez -> moeda). Os austríacos dizem que o juro representa simplesmente uma preferência subjectiva temporal (não está sujeito a óptimos ou optimizações sociais) entre o consumo presente e bens futuros.

The Austrians on Interest

When it comes to explaining the coordinating function of market prices, Austrians assign a very important role to interest rates, for they steer the deployment of resources over time. Loosely speaking, a high interest rate means that consumers are relatively impatient, and penalize entrepreneurs heavily when they tie up resources in long-term projects. In contrast, a low interest rate is the market’s green light to entrepreneurs that consumers are willing to wait longer for the finished product, and so it is acceptable to tie up resources in projects that will produce valuable goods and services at a much later date.

In the Austrian conception, it is the interest rate that allows the financial decisions of households to interact with the physical capital structure, so that producers transform resources in the ways that best satisfy consumer preferences. Consider a simple example that I use for undergraduates: Suppose the economy is in an initial equilibrium where households save 5 percent of their income. Then the households decide that they want to have more for their retirement years, because they don’t want their standard of living to plummet once they stop working. So all the households in the community begin saving 10 percent of their income.

In the Austrian view, the interest rate is the primary mechanism through which the economy adjusts to the change in preferences. (It’s not that people switched from buying hot dogs to hamburgers; instead they switched from buying “present consumption” to buying “future consumption.”) The increased household saving pushes down interest rates, and at the lower rates businesses can start long-term projects. From the individual entrepreneur’s point of view, the interest rate affects the profitability of longer projects more than shorter ones (as a simple “present-discounted-value” calculation shows). So a lower interest rate doesn’t merely stimulate “investment” but actually gives a greater inducement to investment in durable, long-term goods, as opposed to investment in nondurable, short-term goods.

How is it possible that the community as a whole can have more income in, say, 30 years? Obviously the households think it is financially possible, because their bank balances rise exponentially with the higher savings rate. But technologically speaking, this is possible because the composition of physical output changes. The households have cut back on going out to dinner, buying iPods, and so on, in order to double their savings rate. This means that restaurants, Apple stores, and other businesses catering to consumption will have to lay off workers and scale back their operations. But that means labor and other resources are freed up to expand output in the sectors making drill presses, tractors, and new factories.

In 30 years, the economy will be physically capable of much higher output (including the production of consumer goods), because at that time, workers will be using a larger accumulation of capital or investment goods made during the previous three decades. That is how everybody can have a higher standard of living, through savings.

My Reply to Krugman on Austrian Business-Cycle Theory, Robert P. Murphy

My Reply to Krugman on Austrian Business-Cycle Theory

Conclusion

I do not claim that the Austrian theory of the business cycle captures every pertinent feature of modern recessions. What I do claim is that a theory — including any of Paul Krugman’s Keynesian models — that neglects the distortion of the capital structure during boom periods cannot possibly hope to accurately prescribe policy solutions after a crash.

Entretanto, na Síria

The Syrians are watching (Al-Jazeera):

In the tea shops and internet cafes of Damascus, Syrians are asking what events in Egypt may mean for them.

In one of Old Damascus' new cafes, text messages buzzed between mobiles in quick succession, drawing woops of joy and thumbs up from astonished Syrians.


Suzan Mubarak, the wife of the Egyptian president, had flown into exile with her son - so the rumours went - driven out of the country by days of unprecedented protest against the 30-year rule of her husband.

The news from Cairo brought a flutter of excitement to this country, founded on principles so similar to Egypt that the two nations were once joined as one.

(...)

In a smoky tea shop in central Damascus, the usual babble of conversation was subdued as customers sat quietly but intently watching the TV broadcasting images of flames pouring from Egypt's ruling party's head office, a Soviet-era building much like many of those that house the state institutions in their own capital.


The young waiter, though, was sceptical that real change would come to Egypt. "Mubarak won't go. Why did the Egyptian people wait until now? It's only because of Tunisia. I'd like him to go, but he won't."

Others, though, said the genie was already out of the bottle.

"The most important message is that people can make the change. Before it was always army officers that lead a coup," said Mazen Darwich, whose Syrian Centre for Media, which campaigns for press freedoms in Syria, was closed by authorities soon after opening.

"It may not be tomorrow or a few months but I'm sure it is like dominoes. Before there was always an ideology - pan-Arabism or being an enemy of Israel. But now people are simply looking for their personal freedom, for food, education, a good life. The days of ideology are over."

On Friday evening, as protests in Cairo reached a crescendo, the streets of Damascus were unusually quiet, with many people staying at home to watch the news. Syria's state-run media quoted some news reports from Cairo, but offered no comment or analysis on the situation.

Online, however, it was a different story. Internet users reported a significant slowdown in the web, with searches for news on Egypt often crashing browsers.


Heavy user traffic could be an explanation but in Syria, where thousands of websites deemed opposed to state interests are blocked and where Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media are banned, authorities denied accusations they had restricted the service to prevent citizens hearing about events in Cairo.

Earlier this week, though, authorities banned programmes that allow access to Facebook Chat from mobile phones, a cheap and easy means of staying in touch that had exploded in popularity among young Syrians.

"People here are suffering much more than Egypt or Tunisia but you don't see it. They keep their mouths shut because they don't want to be locked up for 10 years," said a graduate medical student, surfing the web at an internet cafe.

Sitting next to him, a young lady finished updating her Facebook page and chatting with friends online - one of thousands of young Syrians adept at using proxy servers to get around the official ban on Facebook.

Although internet users must register their names with the cafe on a list that can be collected by the police, when asked if she had any concerns over breaking the ban on Facebook the young woman said all her friends do the same thing.

Indeed, President Bashar al-Assad, who opened Syria up to the internet when he succeeded his late father in 2000, has his own Facebook page.

Nos últimos tempos houve protestos populares no Irão, na Tailândia e agora no Egipto

Para não falar de uma revolução no país em que vi mais gatos na minha vida...