Why are we so bad at predicting major political events?

There were some signs of the Recession. People ignored them.

The collapse of the Soviet Empire and the current unrest were events that fed on themselves and the momentum built up.

People took over. people are changeable.

Difficult to see the future is. Always in motion it is.

It is easy to look backward, and see the signs of war and revolution. It is not always easy to see it going forward. Look at Egypt: The Anti-Mubarak are now holding posters with his face, with a star of David on it. That may be a sign that the protesters are anti-Israel, and that isn’t good.
Certainly a lot of people predicted the Republican takeover of the house. The Housing Market collapse was well forcasted, but many didn’t listen.

These events were very predictable. Have you ever heard the phrase “No country is more than three meals away from a revolution”? The economic situation makes a lot of places susceptible to instability.

They, we, the world saw it coming and a long time ago! It’s the same old Hear No See No Speak No Evil routine. The US has been in bed with Mubarak from day one and the strategies for peace that the US, Obama and the allies over there have centered around the stability Mubaraks dictatorship has been able to maintain. So we and these other allies of Egypt have turned a blind eye to the heavy handed tactics brought to bear by Mubarak and his thug police force.

Last June the spark that lit this fire took place when Khaled Said was beaten to death in the streets of Cairo by Mubaraks special task force undercover cops and that set the stage for former U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt’s most prominent opposition figure and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, to step up and lead the charge towards a fundamental and significant change in the way people are treated over there. This has been brewing for some time now and again until now we, Obama and the US knew this but had to turn a blind eye until it became clear which way the wind was going to blow. This one is going to be dicey and a huge mess before it is all said and done.

Marx was a pretty decent prognosticator of political vicissitudes, although the attempt at accurate, almost scientifically precise, political trends was overcooked. But generally speaking, the Arab world was always ripe for revolution, social media and leaked revelations has precipitated this, in combination with aggravating factors such as soaring food prices. People on the left like George Galloway have been warning the West for years that their hideous foreign policies were bound to end in failure and decisive rejection. The left are justifiably smug and cock a hoop, and i’m delighted, i’ve just returned from Luxor a fascinating place in it’s own right, but even the wonders of ancient Egypt couldn’t compete with the scintillating popularist mood that is gripping the country and the entire region.

Just because it wasn’t reported in any of the news media you peruse, or was, but you ignored it, doesn’t mean that “it’s not predicted”. These kinds of revolutions are entirely predictable as to likelihood when dictators try to hang on too long, even if the day or triggering event can’t be foretold.

It’s going to happen in Cuba, Korea, most African countries (again and again) and more than likely in China, too (hopefully not on the same scale). It will happen in a lot of the Central Asian Republics, especially (and very likely ‘first’) in Turkmenistan.

Unless we get our act together and rein in our exploding debt (or exploding inflation, which will be a symptom of the debt), then it could happen here, too.

People did see it coming. It if was written about in Adbusters, believe me others saw it coming.

Some people like Gerald Celente have made quite a name for themselves accurately predicting things like this. He’s often right, or at least damn close enough to impress people.

That said, I tend to be good at prediction where unrest will be based on food shortages and knowing which countries import the most grain. I called Egypt and Russia. ;)

I keep saying China.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir That’s probably a good guess. With an immense population like that, particularly one with small average income, a drought would cause a lot of tension. I don’t know how prone to drought rice and their other staples tend to be, but considering the rapid urbanization of the Chinese population and the rate at which China’s soil is being destroyed through industrialized agriculture and other forms of industrial production, some sort of shortage could easily strike hard. It could easily be caused by oil shortages, since their food production is so mechanized (in which case, I suspect it would be less than a year until that spread to the U.S.).

@WasCy Cuba may have dictators but they have kept up diligently with the needs of the people, you should focus on the ones artificially being propped up by the Nasty guys in Washington. Cuban dictators don’t enjoy that level of financial and political support in fact they are under economic siege by the big bad bullies next door, so by all accounts they should have had a counter revolution years ago. You seem to forget, they have already had their revolution, but yes i’d like to see democracy in Cuba, but only when America withdraws from Guantanamo, they are squatting illegally on someone else’s land, not only that, they using the area as an experimental centre for Human rights abuse.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir is completely correct, China is next, but the trauma would be unimaginable. Please let it be bloodless.

I don’t think China will be the next in line, but not too far along it. As far as I’m aware, India already has more problems with food scarcity, and their domestic food production has been completely destroyed in the past 50 years by neoliberal corporatism. They’ve also already got at least one rebel group fighting the government openly for things like access to and sovereignty of land as a result of government collusion with foreign corporations, which could inspire more people. It could easily boil over.

As much as I’d like bloodless revolutions, there’s already blood being shed in these countries as a result of many of these factors. I just hope it starts shifting to be the blood of those who deserve it being spilled.

@incendiary_dan possibly India, they have a burgeoning Maoist movement that is extensive which the Western press seem to quietly ignore, Nepal is virtually split in two, the highlands is almost exclusively a Maoist stronghold, they seem to have ground themselves into stalemate. But Chinese people have a quicker temperament and the reminder of Tiananmen square burns deeply.

@mammal Excellent points. I expect seeing something work it’s way from south/central Asia towards the east, but it might just work the opposite.

@mammal

Where do you get your information on the “burgeoning Maoist movement” in India? Even the Indian press more or less ignores the Naxalites.

According to the Wikipedia article:
On 6 April, 2010 Naxalites launched the biggest assault in the history of the Naxalite movement by killing 76 security personnel. The attack was launched by up to 1000 Naxalites[16][17] in a well-planned attack, killing an estimated 76 CRPF policemen in two separate ambushes and wounding 50 others, in the jungles of Chattisgarh’s Dantewada district. On 17th May naxals blew up a bus on Dantewda-sukhma road in Chhattisgarh, killing 15 policemen and 20 civilians. In third Major attack by Naxals on 29th June, at least 26 personnels of Indian Centre Reserve Forces (CRPF) were killed in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh.

That’s not ‘nothing’, of course, but it’s hardly ‘burgeoning’, for an organization that is supposed to have been around since the 1960s.

@WasCy & @mammal Have either of you read Arundhati Roy’s piece “Walking with the Comrades”? Last year she spent time with the guerrilla fighters and the tribes from which many of them come, interviewing and observing, and did one of the best journalistic pieces about the rebels.

@incendiary_dan i have now, beautifully written, but i’d prefer something more in the pragmatic style of George Orwell than Salman Rushdie, just saying, but fascinating nonetheless.

@WasCy here i’ll think you’ll find that the Indian press is in the pocket of the corporations who most probably, like you, would rather play down their significance. Whether the Maoist insurgency is gaining momentum or not, whether it is burgeoning or not, i can assure you resentment amongst the most impoverished and maltreated definitely is.

Butterfly effect. Too many variables. So same reason we can’t predict the weather for December 21, 2012.

@mammal no doubt. And the article made clear that abuses are rampant.

I liked the police chief’s attitude in the article, though (and he was probably more than half right), when he said, “Just give them all a television and it will all sort itself out in time.”

@mattbrowne I predict the sun will come out that day. :P

@incendiary_dan – For this in principle there’s one variable: rotation of the Earth. If we take a closer look the likelihood for the sun to come out on December 21, 2012 is not 100%. There are multiple potential causes, for example

1) Quantum effects could place Earth somewhere else in space (extremely extremely unlikely)
2) The solar system is no longer stable due to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem (extremely unlikely)

Wagering that the sun will come up tomorrow is a pretty safe bet. Not only are the chances of it happening pretty close to 100%, but on the very off chance that you lose, nobody is going to be around to exchange any money.

Yes. But a pretty safe bet still means slightly less than 100%.

Well, now I’ve just turned this silly.