PoliticsEgypt: Port Said demos: Demand hi-er court review of sports cases

A post-game soccer brawl broke out after the football clubs Al Masry (Port Asaid) and Al Ahly (Cairo) broke out between the bitter rivals' fans.  Some deaths occurred. The Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo decided on a severe law-and-order approach, ending up with trials resulting in death sentences for a number of brawlers.  This infuriated fans further.  A movement was launched against the government and its courts, a new politics of opposition to courts following the Mosri-Brotherhood direction of justice.  In an Egypt where the strain of crosscurrents of issues and conflicts had already taken a huge toll, now in a new arena, sports, where an intense breed of fans exists who seem really interested little else in Mosri's Egypt, an example is made of these fist-fiters ready for a go.  But really large-scale death sentences?  Police mobllized to the full becawz Mosri is afraid of anything in his country that can compel that kind of devotion to anything but his own caws.  It's pathetic.  And it prevents a focus on the mourning of those who lost loved ones, and are now trying to pick up the pieces of their lives, while the courts and Morsi know no mercy.

— Politicarp, refWrite Frontpage politics newspotter, analyst, columnist
     and Sportikos, refWrite Backpage sports newspotter, analyst, columnist


New York Times (Feb19,2k13)

Suez Canal kept open in spite of 

anti-government protests in Egypt

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: February 17, 2013

CAIRO — Thousands of demonstrators shut down the administrative buildings of the Suez Canal terminal in the city of Port Said on Sunday, as part of a general strike protesting the death sentences handed down three weeks ago to 21 local soccer fans for their roles in a deadly riot last year.

• A City in Egypt Erupts in Chaos Over Sentences (January 27, 2013)

The protests marked the closest that the chaos in Egypt over the last two years has come to threatening the operations of the Suez Canal, an artery of shipping critical to both international commerce and the battered Egyptian economy.

The administrative facilities were emptied as the protesters approached, residents said, but a military guard protected the port from disruption. President Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, had deployed the military to protect the city when the protests there started three weeks ago.

The success of the strike, as life had begun to return to the streets, was a vivid reminder that the government in Cairo has not yet restored full control over Port Said, a major city at the Mediterranean head of the Suez Canal with a population of about 600,000. The government essentially backed down from its attempt to impose a curfew, and nothing has diminished the underlying anger behind the riots, first over the initial death sentences and then over the deaths of dozens of protesters in clashes with the police.

The possibility of a threat to the flow of traffic through the canal remains remote, but the Sunday protest raised the specter of such disruption at a critical time. Political turbulence has cut deeply into tourism and economic growth in the two years since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. And now the political instability keeps delaying a proposed $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, whose seal of approval is essential to obtaining the further billions in loans needed to close the country’s deficit.

The Egyptian pound is falling sharply against the dollar. Unemployment is high, and prices are rising. The Suez Canal is one of Egypt’s main sources of hard currency, along with tourism, foreign aid and remittances from Egyptians abroad.

The protest was also a rare example of major civil disobedience in Egypt since the revolution that overthrew Mr. Mubarak in early 2011. It was the first day of the work week here, and Egyptian state media and residents of Port Said said that demonstrators had gathered outside the provincial headquarters at 7 a.m., blocking access to the building.

The protesters urged employees of the provincial government, the courthouse, the telephone and natural gas utilities, customs offices and other government institutions to quit work and join their strike. Many did, the Web site of the state newspaper Al Ahram reported. Protesters blocked railways. Photographs that circulated on the Internet showed women sitting on desks they had dragged outside in a shutdown of a school, although residents said some schools and courts remained opened.

Al Ahram reported that the demonstrators were demanding legal action against police officers who had killed protesters during last month’s clashes. They also sought a review by a “neutral court” of the death sentences against the local soccer fans delivered in Cairo. The soccer brawl in the case took place at a match between bitter rivals, El Masry of Port Said and Al Ahly of Cairo, both of which have large followings of violent hard-core fans. Many residents of Port Said say they believe the sentencing judge succumbed to pressure from violent Cairo soccer fans who demanded retribution.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

EconomicsSouthAfrica: Dambisa Moyo: "Resources nationalism" is playing with firre, short of nationalisation

The big news, economically speaking, will be the assessment and advice Africa's leading economist, Ms. Dambisa Moyo, is giving to the various stakeholders in South Africa's mining industry.  An orientation to her thawts is given below.  In a flash observation:  The position she critiques is perhaps best represented by Cyril Ramaphosa the ex-union leader who switched over to making money and is now South Africa's 21st richest man, who also switched from powerful union leader to deputy leader of the African National Congress, the governing political party.  It seems he's looking for his opening to take power at the top of the country.  To clean up his image as a strongman who deserted the union, he has left the Lonmin mining interest where he was on the board when the massacre of rebellious workers took place.   Three vital books by Dr. Dambisa Moyo on economics; see our Books mostly listings.

— EconoMix, refWrite Frontpage economics, business, labour
     newspotter, analyst, columnist



Hat Tip to Shay Riley's Booker Rising (Feb19,2k13)

Business Day (South Africa)

From Business Day (South Africa), about the Zambian-born moderate-conservative economist: 

"The African National Congress (ANC) rejected nationalisation of South Africa’s mines at its policy meeting in Mangaung last year. The party did, however, adopt the State Intervention in the Mining Sector report, which included proposals for windfall taxes, the creation of a state mining corporation and declaring certain commodities as strategic resources."

The article continues about Dr. Moyo, who will keynote a speech tomorrow at an international mining conference in South Africa: "'We need to understand the government's role as measures such these are not viable in the long term,' Ms Moyo said in an interview with Business Day on Friday. Ms Moyo, who has worked at the World Bank, emphasised that the concept of resources nationalism was not unique to South Africa, and by extension Africa, but rather a global phenomenon. 'South Africa is not immune to what’s happening across the world,' she said. 'However any increase as proposed by the government could lead to industry structural pressure — that is, demand pressures relative to the availability of supply — as well as tactical pressures' she said. 'Although I see a lot of tension, I think that such measures will be tragic, as this will lead to higher volatility in commodity prices and lower investments in the mining industry.' She added: 'It’s also a question of the ability of the government to run the mines.'"
Read more ...

PoliticsEcuador: Re-election for Prez Correa: Means stabillity, social programs continue, especially for the poor

New York Times (Feb19,2k13)

President Correa handily wins 

re-election in Ecuador

Rodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Rafael Correa, left, and Vice President Jorge Glass celebrated at the presidential palace in Quito on Sunday.

By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Published: February 17, 2013

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Rafael Correa of Ecuador swept to re-election on Sunday in a vote that showed the broad popularity of his government’s social programs and support for the poor in a country to which he has brought stability after years of political and economic turmoil.

With about three-quarters of the ballots counted on Sunday evening, Mr. Correa had received 56 percent of the votes cast. Guillermo Lasso, a banker, the closest of his seven opponents, had 23 percent.

Thousands of supporters in the main square in Quito, the capital, began celebrating shortly after voting finished at 5 p.m., when television stations announced the result of exit polls showing Mr. Correa as the runaway winner.

“Many thanks for this immense trust,” Mr. Correa said from the balcony of the presidential palace. “We have never failed you, and we never will fail you.”

Critics of Mr. Correa have worried that such a strong mandate would embolden him to further concentrate power and proceed with policies that could limit press freedom and quash dissent.

Following the re-election last fall of President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Mr. Correa’s victory ratified the lasting appeal in the region of leftist governments that have used revenues from booming oil and mining industries to finance social welfare programs aimed at redistributing wealth and curbing inequality.

Now, with Mr. Chávez battling cancer, Mr. Correa could raise his profile as one of the most vocal leaders on the Latin American left.

Mr. Correa told reporters that he would continue policies aimed at ending poverty and diminishing inequality, saying the challenge of the next four years “is go faster and deeper in the same direction.”

His victory also highlighted the weakness of the political opposition in Ecuador. He faced a raft of opponents from across the political spectrum who split the vote from a fractured opposition that was unable to coalesce behind a single candidate or project a unified message.

Mr. Correa also won points from voters for bringing stability to Ecuador, a country that had seven presidents in the decade before he took office and was buffeted by severe economic problems. According to the new Constitution that was passed at his urging in 2008, Mr. Correa cannot run again when his new term ends in 2017.

Mr. Correa, an economist who studied at the University of Illinois, has improved access to education and health care for the poor and has built or improved thousands of miles of roads and highways. In a new term, he has pledged to continue signature social programs and to pass laws covering the news media, land reform and the penal code.

But he has governed with aggressive tactics that critics say undermine democracy by expanding presidential power; weakening the independence of the courts; and lashing out often at perceived enemies, including political opponents, the media and, at times, the United States.

“You have to trust Correa because he has done a lot that other governments never did in all these years,” said Rita Bastidas, a 42-year-old nurse, after voting for the president in the south of Quito. “Correa came along, and, in very little time, everything changed for the better.”

She added, “They accuse him of being authoritarian and arrogant, but this country needed someone like that to change things.”

An employee at the Ministry of Health said he voted against Mr. Correa because he did not like the way the president managed the health system, adding that qualified personnel had been pushed into retirement and replaced by members of Mr. Correa’s party.

“I want better days where they govern for everyone and not just for the greens,” he said, referring to the color used by the president’s party, Alianza País. The man spoke anonymously because he feared reprisals at work if it were known that he voted against the president.

Domingo Paredes, the president of the National Electoral Council, said Sunday that officials had detected an attack on electoral computer systems but that it was not successful.

Maggy Ayala contributed reporting from Quito, Ecuador.

EconomicsChina: How did capitalism rebuild itelf?: Under China's Communist Party?

Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize winner in economics and a legal scholar, has coauthored with Ning Wang, an important new book, How China became capitalist.  Ilya Somin has noticed this and points us to the Cato Policy Report of the same title by the same authors.  And what a deliteful pointer he provides.  The Coase and Ning article is one of most important I've encountered toward better understanding the transformations of the economy by purely economic forces, the Chinese government's acquiescence to many of these peasant-initiated changes in its tolerance of 'reform at the margins.'"

There is no doubt that the post-Mao Chinese government pursued a series of reforms. But today, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the economic forces that were really transforming the Chinese economy in the first decade of reform were private farming, township and village enterprises, private business in cities, and the Special Economic Zones. None of them was initiated from Beijing. They were marginal players operating outside the boundary of socialism. For these marginal forces, the Chinese government was happy to leave them alone as long as they did not threaten the state sector or challenge the Party’s political power. This created a room for what we called the “marginal revolutions” that brought entrepreneurship and market forces back to China during the first decade of reform.

If you know something about the field, meditate on this statement by Coase and Ning:  "The Special Economic Zones ... were established to coopt capitalism to save socialism."

Our authors mention the different account put forward by Huang Yasheng, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (2008).  If Huang is suggesting that "China moved away from a free market economy in the second decade of reform, it misses a fundamental change in the economy in the 1990s; the emergence of a common national market, which was a precondition for regional compettion to work."

Ronald Coase [and Ning Wing] on 

China’s Transition to Capitalism

Volokh Conspiracy (Feb18,2k13)

Ronald Coase on China’s Transition to Capitalism

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 07:20 PM PST

by Ilya Somin (reposted here by Lawt with interspersed notes and comments)

Legendary Nobel Prize-winning economist and legal scholar Ronald Coase has just published a new book, How China Became Capitalist, coauthored with political scientist Ning Wang. It’s incredible that Coase is still publishing books at the age of 102! He puts the rest of us academics to shame.

Coase and Wang summarize their thesis in this article in the Cato Policy Report:

No one foresaw that the “socialist modernization” that the post-Mao Chinese government launched would in 30 years turn into what scholars today have called China’s great economic transformation. How the actions of Chinese peasants, workers, scholars, and policymakers coalesce into this unintended consequence is the story we tried to capture. Today, we don’t need to present any statistical data to convince you the rise of the Chinese economy, even though China still faces enormous challenges ahead. Many Chinese are still poor, far fewer Chinese have access to clean water than to cell phones, and they still face many hurdles in protecting their rights and exercising their freedom. Nonetheless, China has been transformed from the inside out over the past 35 years. This transformation is the story of our time. The struggle of China, in other words, is the struggle of the world.

Against conventional wisdom, we take the end of 1976 as the start of post-Mao reform and argue that China basically became a market economy by the end of the 90s before it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. In the new millennium, the Chinese economy has kept its growth momentum and become more integrated with the global economy. As an account of how China became capitalist, our book focuses mainly on the first two decades of reform.

Ilya Somin: As a property scholar, I was particular interested in Coase and Wang’s emphasis on the crucial importance of the reestablishment of private property in agriculture:

There is no doubt that the post-Mao Chinese government pursued a series of reforms. But today, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the economic forces that were really transforming the Chinese economy in the first decade of reform were private farming, township and village enterprises, private business in cities, and the Special Economic Zones. None of them was initiated from Beijing. They were marginal players operating outside the boundary of socialism. For these marginal forces, the Chinese government was happy to leave them alone as long as they did not threaten the state sector or challenge the Party’s political power. This created a room for what we called the “marginal revolutions” that brought entrepreneurship and market forces back to China during the first decade of reform. 

One such marginal revolution is private farming. Private farming was certainly not new in China. Before 1949, it had existed for millenia [May I recommend here a book of social anthropology on the ancientness and longevity of the  'Green Circle' of the Chinese village. — Lawt] In the early 1950s, Mao tried ruthlessly to collectivize farming. Some peasants believed in Mao and hoped collectivization would offer them a way out of poverty. After 20 years of collective farming and 40 million famine deaths, they knew better. Many went back to private farming after Mao died, even though Beijing was still trying to beef up the commune system. In September 1980 Beijing was forced to allow private farming in areas where “the people had lost their confidence in the collective.” But once the floodgates of private farming were opened, it could no longer be controlled. By early 1982 it became a national policy. Chinese agriculture was decollectivized. Later in the official account of reform, Beijing would credit itself for launching agricultural reform. But the reform enacted by Beijing merely raised the purchasing prices of grain and increased grain import; private farming, which really transformed Chinese agriculture and freed Chinese peasants, did not come from Beijing.

Mao Zedong’s collectivization of Chinese agriculture cost tens of millions of lives, and was probably the largest mass murder in all of world history. [This figure takes us beyond what I had earlier thawt. — Lawt]  In a society where the vast majority of people were still peasants, the re-privatization of agriculture in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a huge step forward, possibly doing more to generate economic progress than any of the other reforms adopted by the Chinese government during that period.  [But this process is not without its own agonies. Land that had been seize3d for building factories, schools, and civic buildings took much of the rich farmland that the former owners and heirs can no no longer recover.  Property law becomes a critical location of recovering some of what has been lost, but there are parallels to the same sort of process thru-out the Western world, not least of all the USA and Canada. - Lawt]

The Chinese government’s respect for property rights is far from ideal, even today. But it is a major improvement relative to the bad old days of Mao.

PoliticsNetherlands: Candidate for Dutch 2nd Chamber: Jet Weigand-Timmer seeks widespread principled discussion of political economy

Compliments of Jet Weigand-Timmer.  She's running for a seat in the Dutch Parliament's lower house when the next election rolls around.  An education consultant, she's got the 28th slot on her party's list, her party being ChristenUnie.

Right now she's helping to circulate a new book in English by Paul Mills and Michael Schluter.  It's published by a joint venture of European Christian Political Foundation and Jubilee Centre UK.

See the presentation in "Academics" refWrite page 3

PoliticsMalaysia: Malaysian Borneo: 100-member armed force from Philippines arrives in Malaysia with a land claim based on the one-time "Sulu Sultanate" a Muslim kingdom that's disappeared into Muslim-majority Malaysia

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

PoliticsSyria: Opposition to Assad divided: Islamicists with vision and plan vs Free Syrian Army with no vision and no plan

The following news report by Malcolm Garcia seems fairly accurate to me.  Knowing a little bit about sociology, and seeing that Sunnis who want a visionary politics with a battle-plan for complete conquest of Syria and domination of all powers and tendencies by their own are choosing an Islamicist grouping that is supplying the staple of bread to Aleppo's bedraggled citizens after all the bombing.  On the other hand, to Garcia, the more tolarant main body of the Free Syrian Army is drifting, irresolute, and waiting for signals from the political arm of the anti-Assad movement to direct its next steps.  That seems fully obvious to me.  The political side of the Syrian revolution has to take up its own responsiblity rapidly and radically; among others things, it must send clear instructions and define new tasks of social repair and rebuilding as the enemy, the Assad régime gives more and more ground.  Good for the Islamicists, meanwhile and no matter what their motives, in helping the people in their need.

-- Politicarp, refWrite Frontpage politics newspotter, analyst, columnist



New York Times (Feb16,2k13)

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Why Syria’s Islamists are gaining

by J. MALCOLM GARCIA

Published: February 14, 2013

A YOUNG fighter for the Free Syrian Army sat at a checkpoint on a couch taken from an abandoned house. He cradled his Kalashnikov and waited on the empty street for a car to inspect, or a pedestrian to pat down. If only the future of Syria would reveal itself to him as easily.

The rebels in the Free Syrian Army don’t doubt that they will drive President Bashar al-Assad from power — eventually — but they have no idea what will happen afterward: Democracy? An Islamic republic? An Islamic dictatorship? The fighters I met on a recent visit here were unable to articulate any long-term political vision.

While the young rebel sat at his checkpoint, and while Americans continue to debate whether to intervene in Syria or just look the other way, Islamist militants are exploiting the uncertainty here. They have a clear mission: imposing an Islamist state in place of Mr. Assad.

“The people who believe in a strict Islam will do anything, fight anybody, do anything for Islam,” a barber who recently reopened his shop told me. “They are like the U.S. Special Forces. They like death more than life.”

The grass-roots supporters of the Islamists whom I spoke with were a mixture of devout fundamentalist Muslims, returning merchants struggling to make ends meet, parents of dead fighters for the Free Syrian Army, and some of the fighters themselves.

They insisted that they wanted only a “pure” Islam, not a Taliban-style government, to replace the Assad family’s regime, which has ruled Syria since 1971. But they offered examples of purity that sounded Talibanesque: Women must cover their entire bodies. Everyone must pray five times a day. Dancing should be prohibited. Differing interpretations of Islam would be tolerated, they say, as long as those beliefs remained “a secret” — a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

What the Islamists conveyed most clearly, however, was a firm sense of direction. They also managed to deliver much-needed social services in the rebel-held parts of Aleppo.

Perhaps their determination and efficiency were meant to silence qualms about their ultimate goals; if so, the tactic seemed to be working. Just as Afghans welcomed the Taliban in the 1990s — not for its harsh interpretation of Islam, but for the prospect of respite from decades of dislocation — some Sunni Muslims in this ancient, multi-sectarian city are now embracing Islamists out of sheer exhaustion from the conflict, which is nearly two years old.

“I had a shop,” one man told me, “but when the revolution came to Aleppo I couldn’t stock it, so I sold everything. Islamic youth organizations now give us flour. We need bread, at least, just to live. We support the Free Syrian Army, but the Islamists let us eat.”

If the West and moderate Arab nations want to prevent a Taliban-style dictatorship from replacing the current Baathist regime, it’s time for them to offer Syrians more hope. The Syrians I met here seemed ready to support anyone, or anything — except negotiations with Mr. Assad — that could restore normalcy to their lives.

The United Nations recently reported that record numbers of Syrians have poured into Jordan and Lebanon. But as of late January, the United Nations fund for Syrian refugees had collected less than 20 percent of the $1.1 billion it had sought from donor nations to care for the refugees. And even that money would not begin to address Syria’s shattered cities and ruined economy, even if the war were to end today.

So Syrians feel abandoned and increasingly skeptical of Western expressions of concern.

“Why did America go into Libya and not Syria?” asked Abu-Mohammad al-Husen, a Free Syrian Army commander. “In my opinion, America wants to maintain the war so Al-Assad won’t have a huge army to attack Israel. America only cares about Israel. That’s why we say only Allah and the jihadists support us.”

The Free Syrian Army soldiers, meanwhile, seem content with fighting a war with no clear end in sight.

One afternoon, I stood with a rebel commander as he rocketed a building that housed government soldiers. After he and his men fled the area shouting, “God is great,” he returned to his wife and children and considered watching a “Lord of the Rings” DVD. He had no firm plan to follow up the assault. “Possibly tomorrow,” he told me, “when they won’t expect us.”

His strategy embraced a skewed kind of logic, I suppose. Why rush? Without war, without guns, many of these fighters would most likely be unemployed or back at school. Their bravery and passion can’t be denied, but the longer the war lasts, the longer they have a purpose. “I don’t know what will happen when the war ends,” Akran Ahmed, a 16-year-old rebel, told me. “I just have my gun.”

The belief that the enemy of my enemy is my friend has allowed the Free Syrian Army and the Islamists to cooperate — but only for now. Disappointment about American disengagement seemed to grow by the day. “Nobody there cares,” Khaled Sandah, 49, whose son, a rebel, was killed in the fighting. “They just talk and talk.” He added: “We will keep going with our own power and our guns and Allah. We will make victory ourselves and have freedom and an Islamic country.”