Tunisia, which greatly prospered before the Arab Spring, is now a typical African basket case.
Tunisians have become beggars.
In April 2012, The Globe and Mail reports:
http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2409257.html#ixzz1tF9tiHUs
"The Tunisian economy is in rough shape, a huge disappointment to the many Tunisians...
"The economy has yet to emerge from recession
"(the Egyptian economy contracted last year for the first time in a decade and its bond yields are soaring).
"Worse still is the rising jobless rate.
"The Tunisian unemployment rate is 20 per cent, double the pre-revolution figure and comparable to the worst rates in the euro zone countries.
"Youth unemployment is 30 per cent.
"The streets of Tunis are filled with beggars and men standing on street corners and in coffee bars with nothing to do.
"They must be wondering: So what was that all about?
Laughing at the CIA's destruction of a once prosperous and liberal country?
"How did the numbers deteriorate so rapidly?
"Tourism, a crucial economic component, collapsed last year and has made only a tentative comeback.
"The kilometres of wall-to-wall hotels in Hammamet, the vast seaside resort about an hour’s drive southeast of Tunis, are largely empty.
"Five-star rooms can be had for the equivalent of €50 ($66) a night.
"Bank lending to businesses, while finally expanding, is still tight.
"Foreign investment dried up, probably for fear that the Tunisian revolution would be long and bloody or that the new Islamist government would be unfriendly to business.
"Business confidence has yet to return."
Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2409257.html#ixzz1tF9tiHUs
"How did the numbers deteriorate so rapidly?
"Tourism, a crucial economic component, collapsed last year and has made only a tentative comeback.
"The kilometres of wall-to-wall hotels in Hammamet, the vast seaside resort about an hour’s drive southeast of Tunis, are largely empty.
"Five-star rooms can be had for the equivalent of €50 ($66) a night.
"Bank lending to businesses, while finally expanding, is still tight.
"Foreign investment dried up, probably for fear that the Tunisian revolution would be long and bloody or that the new Islamist government would be unfriendly to business.
"Business confidence has yet to return."
3 comments:
These Arab countries (and other third world countries) never had these Years Of Enlightenment of the 18Th century.
For example: Frederic the Great mocked about the blind-believing Christians - but what Frederic laid out (first country with obligatory(!) public schools) propelled the "third world country" Prussia to a first world country of those times. Pussia's development was certainly different from those of the German countries, which remained - Catholics an protestants alike - in a middle age like backwardness. When Prussia united with the German countries, the latter profited from Prussia's scientific, intellectual (W. v. Humboldt, Universities), commercial an social dynamic. Prussia on the other hand was destroyed by the religion like racial ideology that swapped over from the German countries.
Even France, already a prosperous and intellectual leading power, profited from the French revolution and from the Napoleonic time - although both systems were political failures. But cutting off or, at least, loosing the ties to a religion that then differed only little from superstition, at least propelled France into one of the leading countries of the industrial age.
England and Great Britain also profited immensely from RATIO and TOLLERANCE that flowed out of the Years of Enlightenment and they were propelled to a - if not THE - leading european nation.
Of course this rational liberation hat not only winners but also losers. The latter where those persons and powers who lost control of the sheep herd of blinded citizens.
The "Arab spring" seems to be organised by exactly those forces, who want the people to have a fanatic and superstitious like religion with blind belief, so that the peoples can better be controlled by being awed and frightened and by silencing each other through fanatism.
Also in our european countries we are flooded by films and video games that can only be described as "fairy tales". And bad fairy tales at best. The real fairy tales at least usually have wit and brain. Here an example in the version of the early 1950s: "Little Red Rodent Hood" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anN10x-E0W4 .
http://news.yahoo.com/danes-arrest-3-men-suspected-preparing-terrorist-act-142726725--abc-news-topstories.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQCZ7Lw86Hg
Post a Comment