Arab Spring Update
on February 6, 2013 at 10:39 amEgypt’s government (such as it is) tells its people to eat less:
We are watching something unique and terrible in modern history, namely the disintegration of a society of 80 million people, with the prospect of real hunger–a self-made famine brought about by social and political disaster rather than crop failure or war. It is horrific and dangerous. Those (like the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven Cook) who maliciously accuse me of wanting Egypt to fail might as well accuse oncologists of wanting their patients to die of cancer. No-one proposes to cough up $20 to $30 billion a year to bail out Egypt — the taxpayers have enough troubles of their own. Instead, the establishment goes through the motions of prescribing macroeconomic measures to the Egyptian government which imply starvation at the micro level — and wonders why all the parties in Egyptian politics won’t play together nicely.
Sadly, Egypt isn’t the only country with problems in the Arab world.
Is the Arab Spring about to become the Muslim Brotherhoods Fall?
Egypt won’t have mass starvation, it might go hungry, but it will be no North Korea or Subsaharan African type famine. World food supplies aren’t so restricted yet as all that and the gulf states will kick in some charity. And the Western intelligentsia will blame climate change, and of course we know who will blame the Jews. I once joked to a colleague about the Tamar Gas Field: “Why is this gas field different from all other gas fields?” He didn’t get it at first, apparently Brazillians are not that informed about Passover, but I later heard him repeat it.