Revolution Trends

There is currently a wave of Occupation Movements in the United States. The movement has its origins in both the North African/Middle East revolutions and the protest movements in Europe (Greece and the Spanish occupation movement).

I wrote a blog post about my ideas So You Want to Occupy Wall Street and some links to the protests.

They are currently growing like wildfire.

Insightful and powerful documentary on the Bahrain movement by Al Jazeera:

Watch It

The estimates vary but even NPR was saying "hundreds of thousands" of people demonstrated in Syria yesterday.

AP Story

Today the governor of Hama - one of the protester's main targets (the other is Assad) was fired.

Violence in Syria is increasing. Over 1000 people are dead making it the tied second/third most violent revolution with Yemen (after Libya, though much less so on a per capita basis). Syria is roughly tied with Yemen for deaths.

This confirms my hypothesis about two types of revolution (violent and nonviolent). It looks like Syria is suffering from the lack of an existing democratic/reform movement (which was most notable in Egypt) and this is making the revolution very violent.

There are several countries that are more likely to successfully crack down on their movements because they can use external regional military forces to do so.

We are witnessing this in Bahrain where a very peaceful movement in a highly developed country is being crushed with the help of Saudi and Kuwait armed forces. Currently there are mass arrests and a state of emergency.

Intrade has a new market for Morocco.

No shares have traded so far.

Intrade just added a market for President Assad of Syria

Actually they added two markets. They've added a shorter term "leader gone" contract for most of the countries. The long term market is for Dec 31, 2011. The short ones are for mostly for Jun 30th (exception Libya where they have a Apr 30th contract).

Yemen - the market for Saleh Gone (by Dec 31) has increased dramatically. Now trades at 91.5%. The market for Jun 30th also trades around 90%. There is good volume too.

Al Jazeera often has a good bias - one in favor of the protest movement. However in some cases we should question it. Its bias is similar to that of the Qatar government.

Bahrain - The Qatar government supports the Bahrain state and its crackdown on the protest movement.

Libya - Qatar is sending planes to participate in the bombing.

The Path
1. Grievance

2. Initial protest of grievance

3. Protest catches on

4. Protest really catches on

Protester Options
1) regular protesting
2) civil disobedience - disruption (shutting down the city or parts of the government)

Government Options
1) negotiate
2) ignore - sit tight
3) give in
4) pretend to give in
5) crackdown

Now if the government cracks down, this can mean
1) protesters quit - too costly to take risks and the movement dies. The state wins in the short term, but loses legitimacy in the long term.