Eat Less, Egypt’s Government Tells Its People
Update: Egypt’s Daily News reported Feb. 10 that Egypt is cutting its bread ration to three small pita loaves per person, Supply Minister Bassem Auda announced at a press conference:
“Three loaves per person is not enough,” a middle-aged woman who preferred to remain anonymous said. “I can be content with three loaves; I have diabetes, yet my children each eat at least five loaves per day.”
Managing a family which consists of seven members, the woman said she pays 150 piastres per day, the worth of 30 loaves of bread. “A co-worker in the hospital I work in eats around ten loaves per day,” the woman said.
“Three loaves of bread would’ve been enough back in the day when the loaf was large and well-baked,” said Ahmed Al-Gazzar, a middle-aged street vendor. “Now what they sell us isn’t bread; it’s more like biscuits. I eat over six loaves per day and remain hungry.”
Al-Gazzar said that his two children eat around eight loaves of bread per day. “The stomach is never thankful,” Al-Gazzar said, citing a popular expression. “If they determine bread rations, people will go mad! They want to share even our food? Are we animals so that they determine our food rations?”
Update: CAIRO, Feb 10 (Reuters) – A run on Egypt’s pound has left foreign currency in short supply and driven some dealers into the streets in search of people with U.S. dollars to sell, spawning a new black market.
“Even Islamists have to eat,” I wrote under the headline “Food and Failed Arab States” in February 2011. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government takes a different view, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The trouble, the government says, is that Egyptians are eating too much. In a separate report, the government proposed to cut back its bread subsidy to three hand-sized loaves of pita bread per person per day, about 400 calories’ worth. A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state, and that’s why the Egyptian state is at the brink of collapse, as Egypt’s defense minister warned last week.
According to the Post report, the government is telling Egyptians (almost half of whom live on less than $2 a day) to eat less. You can’t make this sort of thing up. Egypt lost another $1.4 billion in foreign exchange reserves in January, and probably is flat broke after figuring in arrears to oil and food suppliers, and it imports half its food, so something had to give. In response, Egypt’s Islamist government is emulating North Korea’s approach to food shortages:
Egypt’s government is recommending that Egyptians avoid overeating in order to cope with rising food prices and chronic household shortages, according to local media reports.
“The government has acknowledged across-the-board food price inflation on a range of commodities in a new report. … In the report, the government also advises citizens not to over-eat,” Egyptian journalist Issandr el Amrani writes in the Cairo-based Arabist blog, citing local media.
According to our translation, the story from Elwatan News says: “The report also gave dietary instructions to citizens, including…that it’s up to the individual to learn what to eat and why malnutrition can develop from a lack of food or overeating, and why a balanced diet is commensurate with the real needs of people, depending on their age, weight, and level of physical activity.”
Amid reports of Egypt’s ongoing political violence, it’s a reminder that the country is also dealing with an incredibly weak economy that its new leaders have struggled to rehabilitate.
Tourism, once a pillar of Egypt’s GDP, has dried up, and there is little foreign investment. Egypt’s unemployment rate is projected to hit 14 percent this year, up from about 9 percent in 2010, and the United States is questioning whether to cut the $1.5 billion in aid it sends to Egypt each year.
“The [Egyptian] government subsidizes fuel and foodstuffs — things it can’t afford — but it also can’t afford to unwind those subsidies politically, so it is really in a very serious situation,” Middle East expert Steven A. Cook told the Council on Foreign Relations recently.
The economic struggles mean most Egyptian households don’t have enough money to buy clothing, food and shelter, according to a fall 2012 survey by the Egyptian Food Observatory. As the site Rebel Economy reported:
“Of the 1680 households surveyed in September 2012, 86 percent said their income was insufficient for covering total monthly needs including for food, clothes and shelter, up from 74 percent in June 2012.”
To cope, Egyptians are reportedly buying cheaper food items, reducing their food intake and buying food on credit.
The Egyptian government has tried to subsidize certain staples, such as everyday bread loves. But accounting mechanisms are shoddy, Rebel Economy writes, so people end up stocking up on the subsidized bread, leading to further shortages.
Reports like this highlight the reality of most Egyptians’ shoestring existence, especially as the Egyptian government is trying to find ways to end subsidies to save money.
“The subsidy issue has to be tackled in this fiscal year,” Amr Adly, Economic and Social Justice director at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said in November, according to the Egypt Independent. “The government is facing this paradox, even though the poor [are] not benefiting the most from the subsidies, but it’s them who will be hurt with their removal.”
The Egyptian Gazette reported February 5:
Significantly, the 2011 uprising was underpinned by the purely Egyptian slogan: “Bread, Freedom and Social Justice.” In short, ‘bread’ means a lot for the majority of Egyptians. To have it is to live.
Therefore, the Government sent shockwaves across the nation when, days before the second anniversary of the revolt, one of the Cabinet ministers disclosed a plan to offer every Egyptian just three loaves of the baladi (round) bread every day at the state-subsidised price.
The people who want to get more bread will have to buy the staple commodity at the market value, which is five times higher than the subsidised price per loaf.
The controversial rationing is part of an ambitious plan to phase out state subsidies on certain commodities, so as to reduce an unsustainable budget deficit. It is also believed to be part of a package of austerity measures that Egypt has to adopt before getting a $ 4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
The bloody civil disturbances that rocked Egypt during the past ten days were food riots as much as anything else.






I wonder how much the Iranians would pay for an F-15 or Abrams tank?
Quite a bit, I suspect. As much as Iran’s economy is struggling, with oil over $90 per barrel (China, India and South Korea continue buying it), Iran has the money. (Some reports suggest that NATO “ally” Turkey earlier granted Iran access to Israel’s drone technology.)
As to Egypt’s food shortages, perhaps they’ll try substituting “Islam” for wheat. After all, they keep telling us that “Islam is the solution”.
With Iranian oil exports now below 2,000,000 bpd — and trending lower — Tehran is no longer flush with mad money.
Real panic is just around the corner for Iran.
She’s only one step behind Cairo.
That’s right: Iran has its own food crisis. Its currency is falling out of bed: down 20% in less than one month.
20%? I hadn’t seen that one. No es bueno.
Let them eat yellowcake.
I wonder if the Muslim Brotherhood has a good recipe for cooking Qur’ans?
All Egypt needs to do is to knock down the High Aswan Dam and go back to Nile-based agriculture. The High Aswan Dam is what destroyed Egypt’s agricultural productivity.
Really is that “all”? Just knock down one of the largest man made structures in the world, and hope for rain in Ethiopia every year while giving up the electricity? That is it? Interesting.
David!
It may be that the Egyptians have a water problem as well as a social/economic problem.
I read a piece on another site claiming that the Ethiopians are building a dam along the blue Nile which could,if they so desired, stop the flow of water into Egypt.Other sub-Saharan nations like Kenya & Uganda are thinking of similar projects to retain their water.This could dry up the White Nile in Egypt
That would, I think, be an act of war.
Considering that we have built an M-1 tank factory in Egypt duting Mubaraks’ time I fail to see why we need to give them the tanks at all. Maybe they broke it ?
Would you ride in the M-1 tank built in the Egyptian factory?
Entirely too much.
The only answer?
Not one more PENNY of aid – financial, humanitarian, or otherwise – to any Muslim country.
If they wanna eat, let ‘em take aid from American CHURCHES – in return for allowing complete liberty for Christian proselytizing and missionary work in their country.
Ahmadinjidad’s Cairo visit has not gone well for him nor for Morsi. A report in the Atlantic:
“Ahmadinejad was leaving a historic mosque in Cairo, where earlier he and Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi met with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, who runs the 1,000-year-old “seat of religious teaching.” According to Reuters, Al-Tayeb, who is Sunni Muslim, “scolded” the head of the Shiite country for interfering in other Arab states and rejected Iran’s attempt to influence matters in Sunni-majority nations.
The trip has not been a good look for Morsi, either, who picked an odd time to play to host to Ahmadinejad and Iran. As Max Fisher at The Washington Post points out, secularists and liberals are already furious with Morsi for allowing his religious Muslim Brotherhood party to take over the revolution, while the mostly Sunni and Salafist parties are appalled at the idea of buddying up to Iran. With protesters spending most of the last two weeks camped outside his house with Molotov cocktails, inviting the most hated guy in the neighborhood to stop by may not have been Morsi’s best political move.”
…
Seems Morsi can’t do anything right these days. The Iranian astronaut isn’t doing much better the only difference being that Iran maintains a highly effective police state.
Why are we selling Egypt wheat at below market prices?
http://www.brecorder.com/markets/commodities/asia/104416-soybeans-near-6-week-top-wheat-up-as-egypt-buys-.html
Just a few observations, FWtheyareW.
How many calories per day do Morsi et al consume?
In a largely illiterate nation, what does an article in a newspaper really accomplish?
Recognizing that ‘rationing’ the 3/d bread is an impossible task, why not raise the price a little, such that the same money spent on the previous quantity (5 or 6?) only buy three? Thus the ‘rich’ pay the higher price for their first 3 as well. snark off.
Since it is obvious that barter will become the currency de jour, what has Egypt got to trade for wheat? (Have you noticed that Islamic nations, as a rule, don’t make anything. They live on trade and extraction, with the work done by others.)
What would happen if Egypt had a fire sale of military equipment? Is Egypt really afraid of an invasion? Do you really need F-16s to control the population? Who would want to invade Egypt and assume the burden of the mess now?
Could we convince the UK and France to colonize the place again? Since Rome, the British management of Egypt was their best times, Rommel notwithstanding.
ta
Largely illiterate?
The literacy rate in Egypt is over 72%. Not sterling, but not largely illiterate either.
That’s the official number. The most common (and more credible) estimate is that 45% of Egyptians are functionally illiterate.
Point taken, but, literacy is more than being able to ‘sound out’ or ‘see and say’ words. It includes a certain level of comprehension. Most Islamic ‘literacy’, in my limited experience, is related to the ability to read Koranic verse. Maybe I should have been a little less…pithy.
ta
They have TVs and can speak to other people.
I am sure that some can recite The Protocols of the Elders of Zion from memory.
‘Literacy’, in some areas, is related to the ability to write one’s name.
Wouldn’t that make them pretty literate?
Egyptian bread, as is typical, was price set a g e s ago, below the market:
“The price of bread has remained unchanged since the 1980s thanks to a policy of regular government intervention to stabilise the price of subsidised bread. Until this day, the price of a loaf of bread is about five piastres.”
“It is still a very tiresome process to purchase subsidised bread, as it was before the revolution: long queues, and sometimes bread isn’t available. It’s a daily struggle,” Samya Ahmed, a housewife and regular subsidised bread customer at the Sudan Street state-run bakery, told Ahram Online.”
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentPrint/3/0/63140/Business/0/On-Egypt-uprisings-nd-anniversary,-many-Egyptians-.aspx
The bread subsidy, per se, is termed a ‘rent’ in the world of economics.
So, standing in line to get it, is termed ‘rent seeking.’
One can hardly imagine the economic inefficiencies introduced by having millions of people queued up e v e r y day waiting to get ‘free’ benefits.
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They’d be better off with an EBT card. (America: Electronic(ally distributed) Benefits Card)
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When the list price is 5 piastres — even a bump to 6 piastres is a 20% leap in nominal price. That’s more than enough to get a vigorous food riot going. Of which, Cairo has had many — leading to the fall of the existing government.
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An intermediate solution would be to shave the weight of the bread by X grams.
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Longer term: there is a need to employ the legions of bread-line-standers. Set loose, it’s an army on the march.
>>An intermediate solution would be to shave the weight of the bread by X grams.
That would be noticed. What they will do is the soviet thing: throw some water into the oven towards the end of baking – you get slight soggier bread that is magically much heavier.
Shaving size and or reducing other ingredients is raising the price by another name. Not a lot different than debasing metallic currency by shaving the edges of the coins.
IIRC there is an old Russian tale about starving peasants looking through the windows as gentry ate a fancy meal. To shorten a longish story they decided they could make substitutions for the various ingredients. The punch line “what is so great about that food?”
On a similar note, the University of Kentucky ag school determined years ago that cattle food could be adulterated with up to 50% sawdust with no ill effects on the beast. The milk and beef had a different taste…
ta
That’s because sawdust isn’t all that different from grass. They’re both mostly cellulose, which is nigh useless to humans, but cows can break it down just as easily as starch, courtesy of their gut bacteria.
Maybe they can ask Mooch to share leftover food from the WH.
“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”
First off, as a person who DOES INDEED wanna see Egypt burn to the ground, I take offense to the label “malicious”. Wanting that sick regime to continue on is malicious. Wanting it to fail is the ONLY humane solution. Failure is to nations as insolvenct is to banksters! You know as well as anyone that a whole lotta people gotta die there before that place gets any better. What was your phrase? “MORE KILLING PLEASE, AND QUICKLY”. NOT wanting the Nazi regime to burn to the ground is malicious. Please dont be a politically correct wuss! Wanting that place to burn does NOT make me (or you) malicious! . F*@! Steven Cook and the horse he rode in on!
“Think of the Japanese after Okinawa, the Germans after the Battle of the Bulge, or the final phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Thirty Years War, or the Hundred Years War. Across epochs and cultures, blood has flown in proportion inverse to the hope of victory. Perhaps what the Middle East requires in order to achieve a peace settlement is not less killing, but more.”
And the oncologist reference is an apropos one. Some people r so sick with cancer that keeping them on life support is sick and cruel. MANY cancer patients are better off dead.
I would not cheer for death, and especially not for such a useless, pointless death. I would, however, greatly cheer the death of a failed system — a “getting one’s act together” that would lead to a new era of growth and prosperity.
And if anyone is standing athwart that and saying, “Islam or death!” — or, for that matter, “Socialism or death!” — well, then it wouldn’t be useless or pointless to have them breathe their last, would it?
…then inform that person these are false dichotomies.
very well put…
How well did it work in the Holomodor to inform the idiots who shouted “Socialism or Death” that this was a false dichotomy?
You would not say that if you lived in the country right to their North, as I do. There is one common solution for a lot of hungry men, and it scares me.
“Perhaps what the Middle East requires in order to achieve a peace settlement is not less killing, but more.”
I don’t like these folks very much either, but I don’t wish for their deaths just because they were unlucky enough to be born in Egypt.
It depends whom they’re killing. Since I live in the area, that worries me.
If “more killing” means reducing the number of Hezbollah or Hamas or al-Qaeda fighters, by all means. That is what I meant when I wrote “More Killing, Please.” Civilians dying of malnutrition in Egypt doesn’t further peace. It’s deplorable.
Dear Mr Goldman, when the people who continually cry for the blood of Jews are hurting, I am NOT bothered in the least. Perhaps they will rethink the hate that they espouse. Do they ever recognize that it was Joesph avinu who saved them.
If the Egyptians didn’t have their eyes blinded by hate, but humbly asked the Jews for technical help, wouldn’t Egypt flourish, similar to all countries that treat Jews properly [ie. lets them live as professing Jews?].
Where Will It End?
….humbly…. Surely you jest? In the Arab world, granted I’m no expert, but humility seems to exist only in females!
“Where will it end?”
War. War with billions dead.
“Civilians dying of malnutrition in Egypt doesn’t further peace. It’s deplorable.”
Deplorable yes! But it is necessary collateral damage. There is no other way things will change there. Get it over with.
Incidentally, I have some reports from my Egyptian friends that one benefit of these poor people starving to death is that these same poor people have stopped talking about Israel and ending the peace treaty. The suffering is already paying off.
Boohoo, Im crying for these poor people who r by and large a bunch of primitive, malevolent fanatical, misogynistic fascists. But you have to break some eggs to make an omelet! Just because you are poor, illiterate and primitive doesnt mean u cant be a worthless vile sack of $hit. Good riddance! Maybe from the ashes the Phoenix will rise! If not…Isch hub em en dreart!
Trust me, you’re much worse than the average Egyptian.
you know that is how the MB work. you will need to align with them or no bread for you.
they use “charity” as a recruiting tool.
Of course that only works if they have bread to give. If they barely have enough for themselves, then they have nothing to use as a recruiting tool or even a peace bribe, and they’ll soon find that those who become dependent on free bread are inclined to riot when they don’t get it anymore, and such a population cannot be controlled except by providing them the bread they depend on.
Deplorable and inevitable.
Apparently, these fools also believe that lactating mothers are responsible for diareha. You can read about that at Drudge.
Ah, the Arab Spring, what enlightenment it provided! I’m only too glad to say I told you so.
The only bigger fools reside in Washington. They work at State and in the White House. Lenin would call them useful idiots.
Agreed. Tyrranical political policy is not made by starving day-laborers and their families. I very often disagree with your columns, but not on this one — this is a nail you’ve hit square on the head from day one, and that deserves a LOT more attention, *especially* given the global currency war.
Where Egypt is now pales in horror compared to where Egypt will be if all the world powers have pulled a “soft default” by trying to inflate away their debts.
“A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state”.
That’s not how to define the failure of a “state”, David, but it’s a pretty good way to define a failed “democracy”.
Only a minority of the Southern deaths in the civil war were battlefield deaths. Most were from illness and, if not starvation, then from the weakening effects of hunger. If you want civil war, expect hunger. Sherman lived off the land in Georgia and that was a zero sum game. For every meal his troops ate, the people in Georgia had one less. And by then the people of Georgia were the women and children – the women as fanatical as their men. If the Alawi and the Sunni, both of whom hate me, want to kill each other, am I supposed to pay for their women and children to be fed while they learn the same hatred over and over? UNRWA enables Hamas – enables the Gazans to do nothing but breed and plot my death. Should I encourage it? Did Lincoln send food to Georgia? Did Roosevelt send food into Germany in 1945 before the surrender?
If they can’t afford food, how can we sell them weapons? And what do they need them for? To take Libya?
We don’t really sell them weapons. In theory we give them more than a billion dollars a year but most of that is funny money which can only be spent on US made weapons.
So what it comes down to is that you are paying for weapons that the Egyptians buy.
This is a microcosm of what US-supported global capitalism has done all over the world. Their is always plenty of money for weapons while children starve. The millions of poor children starving in Egypt to satisfy the greed of the fat cats at Lockheed and General Dynamics is reminiscent of the 1980′s when millions of poor children starved throughout America in order to pay for Reagan’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
How many children must die before we get rid of greed and establish a world based only on compassion? Why can’t we just seize the wealth of the fat cats so all children could be fed?
Parody, thy name is Throbbin Yobbin.
When you come to seize my stuff, me, the Second Amendment, and my buddies Smith, Wesson, Colt, and Ruger will be defending my stuff from your communist, about to be fenestrated tush.
Reading his other posts made me realize it ain’t parody. His world view is roughly that of the President’s.
If he’s anything like his fellow travelers, he’s probably not much of a marksman.
THe governments of authoritarian countries buy shiny weapons for their military because they need the support of their generals to stay in power. They often used to buy weapons from the USSR, which had no greedy corporations at all . Today our weapons are arguably the shiniest so that is what is desired. The greed of Lockheed, if it exists, is immaterial.
Well stated.
Because thieves don’t have compassion; they only have greed and envy. Besides, how long do you imagine the seized wealth would last? Maybe a year or two, then what?
You’re joking, right!
Its not our obligation to feed their children. If the local governments don’t give a crap about their people neither should we.
“Why can’t we just seize the wealth of the fat cats so all children could be fed?”
Because “we” could only do it once. If you give a man a fish, he won’t go hungry today. If you teach a man how to fish, he’ll never go hungry again.
If you teach a man to steal someone else’s fish, make sure to defeat him in the primary.
You mean the buildup that destroyed the Soviet Union and their terrorrist training camps?
The US did give food aid at one point. PRoblems with that are that it the dictators shanghai it, and when it does get tot he people, it destroys local agriculture. Even the Leftists learned that it i s better to teach someone to fish. (Israel literally used to do this in Africa, teaching fish farming.)
The “aid” to both Egypt and Israel is really just a roundabout subsidy to the US defense industry. I am not saying I am always against it, every country has a defense industry, but this is opaque and can mask rotten corporate welfare, crony capitalism etc.
I think though that our the Israelis with our weapons have been the best salesmen ever. We cleaned the Russian clocks by proxy via the IDF. It may be that the US made a profit on their investment here via further arms sales prompted by proven combat success in the middle east.
We did not sell them weapons. We gave them the weapons to put down the riots of the hungry. The fewer of them, the less food they’ll need, the less pollutant-carbon dioxide they’ll produce. A big win for the strategic-thinking green Nobelist.
Corporations and their toadies are the only ones who need to kill hungry people ho rise up since they are the ones who benefit from their poverty. Greens have love and compassion and only want to help.
“Greens have love and compassion and only want to help.”
You are a riot! Keep doing what your doing!
See that’s what scares me. Greedy people are predictable and can be planned for. They’ll take their loot, but they don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, and if they are stupid enough to try, there’s a way around them. People who only want to help, however, don’t bother to check the results to determine whether they’re actually helping or making things worse. When such a person makes things worse, he only doubles his zeal to “help,” while the victims of his “charity” beg him to stop, but he refuses to listen because he considers those who object to be either evil or too stupid to know what’s good for them. “Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own consciences.”
Greedy people are easy to predict because they have a plan. They’re smart about getting what they want (or they end up not getting it).
The people who only ‘mean well’ aren’t so smart.
The real problem is that stupid is hard to predict.
Wrong.
There are an awful lot of psychopathic greedy people who will happily kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Just look at the corporate CEOs who bankrupt their own companies and walk off with “golden parachutes”.
They are actually extremely hard to deal with. They are very hard to work around. It is essential to have a system for keeping them out of power. “Long-term greedy” like Warren Buffet are fine, but the short-term psychopath greedy are *trouble*.
Burn green for fuels instead of food.
A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state. That is why the visionary Mrs. O tried to force the high schoolers to eat less to prepare for the eventuality after four more years of Obamanomics.
the can eat those F16s and Abrams tanks.
Eventually the money and food will run out and then we will witness one of the biggest mirgations in centuries. Europe should be weary what is brewing across the Med.
They will eventually have to defend their borders with force of arms or Europe will drown in the flood.
Ship ‘em SPAM in a can. Try making F-15′s out of the cans. We’ve got more than enough of it if the smell coming from the plant near the interstate in my southern town is anything to go by.
But that would imply cultural change.
Can’t do that.
“A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state.” That is a statist’s point of view.
I say: People that cannot feed themselves are a failed people.
I’d amend that with the idea that if a state fails to feed its people, it is the natural result of what happens when you delegate an unnatural responsibility to the state.
The natural responsibilities of the state are to protect its citizens from external threats and to punish lawbreakers. This must of course require a measure of ruthlessness and cruelty. When we assign anything else to it the natural result takes on the flavor of the state, which is why we see the inherent cruelty embedded in state-run welfare systems and anti-free market economic regulation.
LIKE!
Exactly. When I read “A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state” on the PJ Media site, I was surprised and thought, “Obviously you meant to say ‘A state whose people cannot feed themselves is a failed state.’”
I take your point, but the legitimacy of Middle Eastern dictatorships has rested on their capacity to meet basic needs. Without this their reason to exist collapses and the state fails. The fact that it was a bad state to begin with is relevant.
A dictatorship that can’t feed its subjects is a failed dictatorship?
A culture that can’t produce enough to compete in the global market for bread is a failed culture.
Yup. Or one that goes to war.
Tourism drying up? Who wouldn’t want to spend their vacation mingling with fun-loving Islamic fundamentalists? Just the excitement of wondering when you’ll either be kidnapped, beheaded or blown to smithereens is worth the trip.
gee…… that’s a problem happening somewhere else:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/05/16855511-masked-men-burst-into-vacation-home-rape-six-spanish-tourists-in-acapulco-mexican-officials-say
Well, Izz, I’m sure you know better than to accuse anyone on this forum of psychological cruelty.
I forbid psychological cruelty on this forum, except, of course, if it involves Steven Cook.
How about psychological cruelty to Tom Friedman (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/create-your-own-thomas-friedman-op-ed-column)?
MarcH-
Great! But that’s not psychological cruelty. Surely you don’t think that drinking the Kool-Aid-el-Fitr has anything to do with psychology!
I can’t think of one Islamist country I would dare visit. That’s a real shame because I am certain there is great beauty in many of them and many friendly people.
However, I can’t tolerate the enormous arrogance of Islam and it’s complete disregard for other peoples beliefs.I also will not agree ever with its subjugation of women.
No, I think it best that I never go anywhere near one of those countries.
And Islamists, if you think you are going to subvert the US Constitution or that of my state, well good luck with that.
I have visited many of the ME and some of the NA countries. (Roughly Red Sea, around Arabian Peninsula, onward to Karachi; and south from Red Sea to Horn of Africa and Mombasa. Plus Turkey and some intermediate places.)
Was there in the ’70s and ’90s trying to 1. do business and 2. keep from dying.
Nothing worth seeing.
Start in Dallas and drive to San Diego. Can’t tell the difference, geographically. (Mombasa = So. Cal. before folk, kinda, but has no future since the Brits left)
Now as to people…I won’t bore you with a recount of the horrors…you have heard them all already.
I found an article that says the Egyptian population has increased 21% since 2000. That’s a massive increase. All that poverty and poor education is contributing to this and it is hollowing them out. If economic growth can’t keep pace with or exceed population growth you get poverty. Having that many people in a mostly desert country is going to outstrip food supply very quickly and if they don’t have the economy to afford to import food, well, we’re seeing how that works out.
http://www.businessinsider.com/egypts-food-problem-in-a-nutshell-2011-1
Muslin clerics have encouraged this for years declaring that they will overtake the West with their wombs. I have no sympathy at all for any of the muslim countries. In fact, I would encourage everyone to shoot over to Sam’s Club and spend about $7 for a 50 lb sack of flour to spread around under the evergreens as mulch. If everyone in America did this the price of flour would skyrocket beyond the Egyptian pocketbook and the crisis would occur sooner.
The flatbread illustration at the top of the page looks very tasty and appealing. If I didn’t know better, I’d have to accuse someone here of extreme psychological cruelty…..’>>……
Looks like the pita I get in the bakery accross the street.
I’m not sure how much of our own wheat we grow. I think in many cases we produce specialty wheat for export and buy cheap wheat from the US.
“A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state”???
Hmm, how about “A state that tries to feed its people will fail”.
I can’t stomach the implication that a healthy state will or can feed its people. If you’re relying on the state to get fed there’s something wrong with you and/or the society you live in.
47 million on food stamps in USA.
But yet its a mystery why +5 million weapons were purchased by Americans in the last 90 days and the empty ammo shelves across the nation.
Fear and loathing in America.
Genesis 41. I see lean cattle coming Pharaoh’s way.
Millions can die, or Morsi can die at the hands of the military and put an end to the Muslim Brotherhood experiment.
I know which one I’d bet on happening first.
And no one said a word about the imposition of Islam on Egypt. The muslims there have plenty of energy and time to hunt down Coptic Christians after being inflamed by their local mullahs/clerics, but not enough time/energy to plant and grow their own fricking food!!!
A National day on strike April 15 of this year. We are not slaves! I will not be one! No revenue for government equals freedom for U.S.. Here it is simple and to the point! If we do not, who will? If not now, when?
Since the Camp David accords and the peace treaty with Israel, the US has been subsidizing the caloric consumption of the Egyptian people to a dangerous degree.
One could say that the do-gooder nature of the US government is to blame for the rapid increase in Egyptian population beyond their carrying capacity by feeding them.
A similar effect is seen when your regularly feed pigeons in the part. Every day, every week more arrive to partake.
The day you don’t show up there will be a flock of hungry pigeons.
Another example are bears in parks. They become so accustomed to eating human leftovers and “picnic baskets” that once the tourist leave, they have fogotted how to feed themselves.
Our gift of military gear could, in the most hopeful intepretation, encourage a military coup. With a more friendly regime in control, further food aid is politically possible.
However, I doubt the Obama Administration has that goal in mind.
I think when Sadat made peace with Israel back in the 1970′s we agreed to send them food air. That food aid takes the form of wheat which is purchased from US farmers.
Since then Egypt’s has experienced population, but not economic growth.
If we pulled the food aid maybe the Saudis and Persians would take up the slack, but I doubt it.
You don’t mention the cost of one F-16 or one Tank. I’m sure I could look it up but it’s irrelevant. What I’m wondering is what if we offered them the equivalent instead in wheat and a treaty with Israel and the US guaranteeing that they would not attack Egypt and that they would offer protection for Egypt if any other nation did attack. Nothing else except Egypt would not attack Israel or allow any other nation or group (gotta cover terrorists in there) to attack Israel through Egypt. I’m pretty sure Egypt doesn’t have anything Israel wants, they have enough sand of their own, so it doesn’t have to include anything else. That way the Egyptians get fed, and protected just for playing nice in their own sandbox. What’s wrong with that idea?
You need to read a tad more history.
Your proposal IS exactly what Carter negotiated — all those decades ago — more or less.
Our food aid replaced Soviet food aid.
And, going back further, Soviet food aid and technical support, replaced American food aid and technical support.
Kind of like a flip-flop circuit.
The big, big deal — w a a a y back when — was the High Aswan Dam. It was started by America when Truman was President; sort of a Marshall Plan for the MENA.
Nasser’s revolution led him to give America the digit… and rush into the arms of Moscow. It’s been flip-flop ever since.
Even in their desperate state Egyptian Muslims still feel the pain of their brethren being systematically exterminated just North in the Gaza (Dachau) strip. How can the Egyptians be sure the Zionazis won’t invade Egypt in search of more Muslims to exterminate just like the Nazis invaded Eastern Europe in search of more Untenmenschen to kill?
The funny thing is that it’s not all that hard to find educated people in Egypt who actually believe Israel covets the larger middle east.
How less than 7 million Jews will overturn some hundreds of millions of Muslims is never explained.
I don’t find that funny. I find it horrifying. And exactly why I don’t want to give any aid to Egypt and have no sympathy towards them. They, like the Palestinians in Gaza, need to be confronted by a little thing called “reality”. If we rescue them, they will continue to live in their dream land, assigning perfection to Islam and the Koran, blaming Jews, blaming the US, blaming everyone but themselves, for their entirely self-inflicted problems. If the average Egyptian wants 5 children with no way to pay for their upbringing and wants to teach them nothing but the Koran and so ensuring they cannot pay for even the next generation? Fine. Go right ahead. Just don’t ask me to pay. They can starve. It is very tiresome to see Islamic peoples creating absolute hell holes, then blaming their plight on the Jooz and Americans, calling them pigs and apes and then asking the pigs and apes for money to alleviate things, all the while praising themselves as the most perfect people on earth. Enough already. Let them use the Koran as their model. It is perfect. We are not allowed to say otherwise any longer. That would be Islamaphobia. And if it turns out not to be, well maybe they can draw the correct conclusion. Their local Coptic Church is right around the corner.
“Even in their desperate state Egyptian Muslims still feel the pain of their brethren being systematically exterminated just North in the Gaza (Dachau) strip”
Hahaha! Talk about delusional!
WRONG!!! Now that they are starving NO ONE in Egypt is talking about the Zionist entity or the loser Pals! This comes first hand from my Egyptian friends!
So can someone please explain to me again why a nation of 80 million savages going belly up is a BAD thing for world peace? Ok maybe not all 80 million are savages. But at least half that number is. The only thing that keeps these people from killing Jews is when they are too busy killing each other.
Now if Egypt could only be taught to emulate the Syrian Model!
A future reason that these (and Egypt is just the beginning) failed states going belly-up is a problem is the ease with which bio-weapons will be produced in the near future. If you keep up with the science of genetic manipulation you will see that the technology is advancing rapidly and it will not be long before the ability to create mega-death disease is readily available both economically and technologically.
A nation of millions of starving people will not be ruled by temperate men and bio-weapons will give them reach that far exceeds anything ever available to such men in the past.
Imagine what the MENA will look like when/if substitutes for oil are developed (probably by the same genetic manipulation).
“Even in their desperate state Egyptian Muslims still feel the pain of their brethren being systematically exterminated just North in the Gaza (Dachau) strip”
Think of it as psychological projection.
You’re something else. Are you allowed outside without a minder?
Your level of stupidity isn’t natural, where did you acquire it?
Genocide in Gaza? Really? Wow! Who knew?
OK, this is too much. You are obviously a parody.
But unfortunately, to many (most?) in Egypt and the Muslim world (including Dearborn, MI) this is the “literal truth”.
Perry1949: “what if we offered them the equivalent instead in wheat and a treaty with Israel…”
You should stop right there. Everything else you mentioned is committing more resources than neccessary for such an arrangement. Food in exchange for civilized behavior is enough. We don’t need to be their protectors, nor do we need to be constrained if they misbehave.
Morsi is only “Bloomberging”Egypt……..
All 22 arab states are failed states, even those that can overfeed their population thanks to oil wealth.
None feeds it’s citizens Human rights, none export anything sprung from an inventive mind.
None create anything on high cultural level, be it art, music or whatever.
They create but death and destruction either by active participation or by financing those that perpetrate such.
For decades people have sloughed off the idea that rising populations mean anything, as if there is not a direct connection between mouths to feed and the land to grow that food.
In fact, people have warned that a nation’s falling population is itself a kind of disaster. But I am jealous of Japan, their homogeneity and falling population. The United Kingdom, also and island, is going in exactly the opposite direction: into politically correct diversity and failure. Muslim Patrols? In London? How did that sad science-fiction story happen?
Not many years ago, a way to increase rice yields averted a crisis in Java, the world’s most heavily populated island. Scientist’s can’t keep pasting calories onto crops while the world goes from 7 billion people from 3 billion in only 40 years.
Reality will assert itself and at some point that which is only imagined will come to be a fact.
Egypt’s problems are not so complicated. You simply can’t have almost 85 million people living on a river and it’s delta amidst desert. Like the rest of the world, Egypt has twice as many people as 40 years ago. And nascent nations south of Egypt will soon damn the Nile and Egypt is at break-even with water right now. More disaster and probably war with Sudan is on the decade long horizon, not Israel.
The U.N., while busy whining about pretty much nothing for years while Third World countries are on the periphery of disaster, has fallen down on the job. People who have the travel experience and the age to go with it are few and far between.
There was nothing on the northern Guatemalan-Mexican border in 1979. By 1997 a slum along both sides of the road running for hundreds of meters had sprung up. The same conjoining of small hub towns around Quetzaltenango and the attendant garbage had happened. Same story in Kuta Beach and Ubud in Bali – rice fields disappeared, houses gone up. Same story in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. Extrapolate that out to the entirety of the Third World.
There is disaster on the horizon. Oil-less countries in the Middle East have unsustainable populations. Nigeria and India are disasters waiting to happen. People are brushing up against one another like tinder and that will strike a fire.
Hispanics and Asians are not flooding into America because of some new paradigm, but because of babies. The mega-cities like Sao Paolo and Mexico City and other capitals can take no more from the countryside and we are taking the overflow, from all over the world. Water is simply finding its course into less densely populated countries, and with jobs.
Sure, some of this is due to mismanagement: It took $275 to buy 1,500 Egyptian Pounds 3 years ago – today it’s only $220, and that’s accelerating at a now dangerous rate. Caracas, a semi-slum of high crime and kidnappings, is bewilderingly one of the world’s most expensive cities.
This is why I am against immigration into America. If you don’t have a quiet enclave of common sense that might solve this, it won’t get solved. Instead our own population is accelerating, and our new neighbors are bringing their old problems – ancient feuds and incompetence. We are using our tax dollars to manage these populations and their gripes and failure rather than exploring space and investing in success.
I’d stop worrying about Egypt. We don’t live there. I’d figure out a way to stop them from coming here every time they stumble, and they stumble about like blind men. And these are not sophisticated cultures. If they were we’d be going there. For once an Orwellian-like dictum may be true: the more diversity America has the less there actually is. Wall-to-wall people with a centuries-long history of failure compared to the West is not complicated.
In this day and age geography is not destiny. It took hard work and investment to make the American great plains into the world’s breadbasket. Likewise, the Israelis really have made the desert bloom. It won’t be easy but first it takes a mindset that encourages self suficency ( a scarce resource world wide).
Israel has a population density greater than Egypt and less resources per person and most of Israel is desert. They grow what they need, export food, and export agricultural technology. Twice as many Israelis could live in Egypt with no food shortage whatsoever. So 85 million in the land of Egypt is not the problem, 85 million Egyptians is the problem.
In ancient times Egypt was a center of civilization. Ancient Greeks credited the Egyptians with pioneering mathematics. The pyramids were wonders then too. But all that was before Islam.
Also before prosperity enabled them to install a bureaucracy that strangled the nation.
I think ancient Egypt wasn’t all that different.
According to the author of “Judaophobia”, a study of Jew-hatred in the ancient world, they also invented anti-semitism.
Spindok at #2 above asked, “Why are we selling Egypt wheat at below market prices”?
IMHO,
1. Good guess: we’re concerned about access to the Suez Canal
2. Bad guess: President BHO is a secret Muslim Brotherhood member
3. Most realistic guess: President BHO and the national security establishment is afraid to admit that the whole Arab Spring meme was a bust and this step, at least, kicks the can down the road a bit.
The Arab Spring is not and cannot be a “bust” because it is a historical event that will be played out over decades, just as was the case with the pan-Arabist movement of the ’50s and ’60s and just as was the case with America.
America had slavery, women couldn’t vote, we had Jim Crow, and Jews couldn’t go in certain night clubs in New York City in the 1940s.
That hasn’t stopped us from calling ourselves the world’s oldest democracy. But on exactly what day did we succeed or fail as a democracy?
What day did the Arab Spring fail and on what day will it succeed and on whose terms – ours? Will we only be happy when they put up paintings of Jefferson and Washington in the halls of gov’t in Damascus and Cairo? All is not so simple.
What a bunch of relativist crap.
The Arab world is thrashing about wrestling with Islam and starvation. It is staggering from one untenable ruler to another. The new one thinks that cutting hands and clitoris’ off is appropriate justice and that women’s breasts give nursing babes the runs.
And by the way, the US is not a democracy, it’s a republic. It was a damn successful one for a time, not so much now.
“What day did the Arab Spring fail and on what day will it succeed and on whose terms – ours?”
My choice would be the day (or was it a two day period?) when our diplomats were murdered in Benghazi and the Egyptian government (at a minimum) stood aside and allowed our Cairo embassy to be trashed.
My discussion was explicitly focused on “our terms”, i.e., the U.S. policy w/respect to the “Arab Spring”. My point is that the BHO administration seeks to avoid blame for having reordered US relationships with the Arab/Muslim world based on their view that it featured important indigenous movements and trends which, despite their Islamist associations, would result in a more peaceful, moderate and pro-US region. This dates back to BHO’s advocacy of appeasing the Iranian mullahs during his 2008 debate with McCain.
Please note that it is also my view that, when feasible, the US should support genuine moderates in the Muslim world. Unfortunately, given the nature of the Muslim world, most of our logical allies there are traditionalists such as KSA who share our interest in protecting international stability.
BTW FB, I’m glad you comment on this site. It widens the scope of discussion.
Obama is not reordering anything. He and his advisers are leaping over the fields with their skirts held high in knee jerk reactions to events they don’t understand and can’t control. They’re trying to make it look like they expected everything good that happens and control it and saw everything bad that would happen and prepared for it.
There’s a problem when men like Obama spend their lives studying history and current events through race-colored glasses: it’s so distorted they literally can’t understand what’s really happening. Obama and his like deal with MB fronts in the U.S cuz they’re politically correct and naive, not cuz they are sympathetic.
Men like Obama have faith in anyone who doesn’t look like his stereotype of an Englishman with a monocle and his foot on the neck of a savage. Whether one or the other practice hate speech or ended slavery doesn’t even enter into it. Obama’s a visual guy and skin carries morality, not deed.
Let’s remember where the real fault for Egypt’s predicament lies. If the Israelis were less intransigent and ceased their unremitting oppression of the Palestinians, there would be no starvation in Egypt. And the Iranians wouldn’t be developing nuclear weapons. And Afghanis wouldn’t be killing Americans. And Pakistani thugs wouldn’t be harassing gays and raping women in London.
Thank heavens John Kerry is restarting the Peace Process just in the nick of time. With any luck, Egypt will soon be rolling in it. Bread, tourism, an end to tyranny–Egypt could have it all. If only the the stubborn and stiff-necked Israelis can be convinced to make a few concessions for peace.
I laughed out loud when I read this, until I realize 52% of Americans (supposedly) voted to reelect Barack Obama, and apparently at least 90% of U.N. agrees with your posted assessment of the Middle East situation.
The parody will escape somebody…you might even get a few attaboys from the Leftists that frequent the board here.
That was very good.
You could write for the New York Times, LOL
Yes!
Don’t need to make it up. Reads like out of the Book of Barack.
I don’t know about you guys, but keeping my tires inflated hasn’t trimmed into the dependency like horizontal drilling has. Inflated tires good; horizontal drilling bad.
Slow the rising seas didn’t work well for New Jersey or New York in October.
Veggies in the school diets will trim the kids – yes, starvation always does.
The fastest way to restore the economy is more food stamps.
And yes, I do predict a Weimar Republic moment sometime Obama economic near future when the food shelves are empty or the wheelbarrow of worthless bills full, we’ll be told to eat 3 slices of low-fat, unrefined, whole grain bread too. If Michelle Antoinette Obama still standing, substitute broccoli for the bread.
Maybe we should send them Michelle?
eqyptian farmland- getting it- has been a subject of books for years. It’s in Hernando de Soto’s book ‘The Mystery of Capital’. It’s in femininist books profiling Muslim women. It’s in books on women in the middle east.
People cannot get access to land, not even for something like a community garden, because of arbitrary rules issued in one building in Cairo, where most people running the place are taking tea breaks all day.
at least, that’s my impression of books of impression.
also, they keep killing Christians. The Christians are the indigenous farmers. The Muslims came in and took over the cities, not the farming villages. So, I’m not sure Muslims even know how to farm for yield. It’s about like us wiping out the midwest, or starving inland farms in Cali, for sake of little fish. So far, it’s made things more expensive. Imagine 100, 200, 700 years of it. We’re a few decades into an exciting EPA regulating everything.
And, well, honesty. Christians and Jews get commanded to be honest. Muslims, not so much. So, factories? Under the British, preferred Christian or Jewish bookkeepers. I’m not sure factories keep getting investment, if the books are known to be a bit cooked.
“I’m not sure factories keep getting investment, if the books are known to be a bit cooked.”
For a short period of time, yes. China is the prime example. Mark Steyn, peace be upon him, was right. “China will go broke before they get rich.” China’s demographics are sure to make their bordering neighbors uneasy as well.
“Mursi’s solidarity with Iran undermines American and allied efforts to suppress Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Obama administration is proceeding with the sale of 20 updated F-16s and 100 Abrams tanks to Egypt.”
Aside from the staggering insanity of this type of thinking in Washington, it’s a safe bet that even a soviet Russian raised with that famous(infamous)phrase, “…to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities” would see the folly of a national priority such as aircraft and tanks taking priority over bread, compounded by that nation having nothing to produce to pay anyone…..for anything….we unwashed infidel Ameddicans are sending our cash in bales over to Egypt to purchase our tanks and planes while the “subsidies” of the Egyptian “state” have no capital to back them up.
I confess that my B.A. Econ.1954 renders me incapable in all this……now…..add in a bloodthirsty scimitar-wielding religion……and even George Orwell is shaking his head.
[...hey..mebbe I could be one o' them "Consultants" in Washington?...]
People will put up with damn near anything – except starvation. When people are starving, you’re half way to a bloody revolution. It’s happened time and again.
I don’t want Egypt to fail, in the sense of being a failed state peopled with starving savages, but that is far superior to a scenario where Egypt SUCCEEDS! Maybe some hungry days will take some of the snap out of the anti-semitism that is the Arab/Muslim’s bread across the globe. In any case, there is NO reason we should be subsidizing these loons, especially as subsidies, true to their nature, offer only brief and transitory benefits.
Malthus can be defeated if you focus on the right priorities. The current lack of Egyptian farmland can be remedied. But there is a price as always. They can have water conserving drip agriculture imported from the north or spend money on antisemitic/ anti Israel propaganda. They can invest in factories or they can invest in worthless university graduates fit only for makework projects in the vast Egyptian bureaucracy. They can have better infrastructure or F15s. It all comes down to guns or butter. Unfortunately, the muslim mentality favors blustering with guns over producing butter.
Mr. Goldman,
How does it feel personally to be one of the only people to be proven unambiguously correct on this issue from the very beginning, especially considering the fact that nearly every other pundit at the time was hailing the Arab “Spring” as an unalloyed success? Having been on record that early and watching events unfold precisely in the manner you’ve predicted must be sweet vindication indeed.
Thank you for the kind words. I feel sad, to answer your question. There is nothing to cheer about in the misery of ordinary Egyptians. As for the punditeska: being the Establishment means never having to say you’re sorry. I wait in vain for the slightest sign of introspection. The same pundits who were catastrophically wrong still think that they should have been right, because they are the right-thinking people. Like Thomas Kuhn’s analysis of scientific revolutions, we will simply have to wait for them to retire.
Re: being the Establishment means never having to say you’re sorry: I for one blame Sen. Rand Paul. If it wasn’t for his agitating for Egypt not to get those Abrams tanks everything would be fine.
Is it ok to blame Rand for circulating the myth that the US funded Al Qaeda (http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/06/rand-paul-advances-folk-myth-the-cia-funded-bin-laden/)?
MarcH, That article from the DC sounds very clever, like much of the pro-Establishment ‘libertarianism’ bow-tied Tucker’s minions put out, but falls apart like a cheap suit upon further examination, much like Jamie Weinstein’s on-camera trolling of Bildeberg summit protesters…
Here’s the video of what Sen. Paul actually said — did he state categorically that the CIA literally put money and arms directly iton Bin Laden’s hands? No, the Senator from Kentucky said the CIA backed Islamists like Bin Laden against the Soviets, and this came back to bite us later. A simple fact that all but the most hardcore neocons and reality distortion field operators in D.C. accept without much argument (I would assume even the host of this site who eagerly ‘signed on’ to destroy the Soviets in the early 1980s). But don’t take it from the ‘Ronulans’, take it from former National Security Advisor Z. Bzrezinski’s infamous statement to a French newspaper that (preemptively arming Afghans prior to the Soviet invasion) was ‘worth it’ even knowing what we know after 9/11 because the death of the USSR was much more important than the noisy activities of a few Salafists (I paraphrase here, but you can look it up here).
And by reality distortion field operators in D.C., I include precisely the type of ‘Arab Democracy’ advocates who’ve taken over National Review, the Weekly Standard and the like that Spengler has clashed with. Here’s a fine example of NR dissembling on Syria, trying to attack Sen. Paul while damning his Heritage Foundation speech with faint praise:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/340038/rand-paul-s-side-effects-frederick-w-kagan?pg=2
In this case it’s Kagan who’s in la la land insisting there is something like mainline Islam that labels all Salafists or jihadists who want to fulfill the prophet’s verses instructing his followers to slay infidels as heretics (Kagan’s statement that no neocons advocate direct NATO/U.S. intervention in Syria is also a twisting of language, to the point that neocon simply means nothing).
In fact, Sen. Paul’s Heritage speech was more admirably nuanced than Kagan’s interpretation of it because he did indicate in some cases the U.S. would have to fight Salafists, but in all cases it should seek to avoid protracted occupations in Islamic countries precisely due to Muslim memories being so long.
Now even setting aside the ultimately pointless debate about whether Bin Laden ever benefited or worked with organizations the CIA supported against the Russians — as IF Bin Laden would’ve ever admitted to taking the slightest support from the Great Satan — we don’t need to go that far back to see blowback.
It’s plain as day from the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya. There’s no question despite neocon counter conspiracy theorists insisting Stevens was murdered by Gaddafi loyalists (see @ReginaldQuill for more of that) the killers were from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the same types of scum and villains that the CIA and French DGSE paired with to overthrow the Duck of Death.
As for the National Review/Weekly Standard crew, they remind me of the public sector workers in Wisconsin who think if they just make enough noise and denounce certain politicians (or damn them with praise) they can keep their own particular party going. The bloated warfare state the NR/WS/Heritage/AEI crew all profit from whether directly or indirectly is going to have its day of reckoning right alongside the welfare state sooner or later. Paul alluded to this fact in quoting one of our top admirals that the greatest threat to American national security was our debt (and he could’ve added, the looming death of the dollar).
For once in my life I agree woth that jerk Brezinski. Of course arming the Afghans was the right thing to do under the circumstances.
I’m sure the story of Cassandra is a familar one for you.
Are we on the same path as Troy?
“As for the punditeska”
Punditeska? What is the derivation of that? Pundit + what?
It derives from “Soldateska,” undisciplined rabble of soldiers prone to murder and loot.
Thank you very much. A vocabulary gem.
Nonsense. Mubarak or Morsi, Egypt is a house of 85 million cards that has the same problems today as they did in 2010. Unless you agree with Friedman that an Obama with dictatorial powers could help America out of its problems, the Arab Spring is the only hope for countries like Egypt. You have to start somewhere and the story has yet to be played out so I’m not sure what you’re crowing about, other than “to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”
Hahahahaha.
Egypt needs what every Middle East Muslim country needs and which is what Turkey before Erdogan had: A military junta at the top that strictly enforces a separation between mosque and state, that allows the civilian government to operate without interference as long – and only as long – as that separation is maintained, and will intervene and oust any civilian government that violates this rule.
Then we need a dictator in America to separate the weird faith-based cult of political correctness from gov’t called the Dem Party. They don’t see things right in front of them and see things that don’t exist. Dems are religious fanatics who worship minorities, gays and anyone who fails at something.
And they don’t predict the fall of America, they cause it.
So you’d support a military junta in the US which would strictly separate church and state? Stop all those Christian prayers in the Air Force Academy, for instance?
I think that a Muslim country with separation of religion and State has more religion mixed into government than a Western country (including Israel) without. It’s all relative.
It is funny how historically pre-islamic Egypt used to be a breadbasket while even the rest of pre-islamic North Africa was once irrigated farmland, until the brutal muslim arab invasion reduced the region to basket-cases as the invading arabs were herdsmen not farmers, which brings us to today’s situation where much of North Africa is unable to feed itself.
Since they constantly prattle on about the following being a solution or cure that provides sustenance, I say let them continue to eat islam.
Your history is wrong; Egypt remained the breadbasket of the region until the High Aswan Dam was built.
The ONLY thing the United States needs to do to win the “War On Terror” is to cut the jidza (foreign aid/backdoor loans) to zero and stand back.
Well said.
“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.”
Ah, picture this on a global scale, what you are seeing in Egypt is going to spread, the global debt crisis is not going to end well and don’t think we cannot see massive problems here, it is just a question of when. The bread lines from the 1930s have been replaced with food stamps…not a good situation.
Eat Less, Egypt’s Government Tells Its People
Eat Less, America’s First Lady Tells Its People
Eat air, eat air, it’s a might good food,
it’s all in the fixin’s if you do it up good.
You kin serve it up done, you kin serve it up rare
no skillet to wash, after all, it’s just air…….’>….
What do you mean by global? More than half of the world’s population lives in Asia, where a billion people will achieve middle-class living standards during this generation. Part of the reason Egypt is in trouble is that Chinese pigs eat better than Egyptian peasants–the rise in food prices stems in part from price-inelastic demand from newly prosperous Asia. A rising tide lifts some boats and sinks others.
And men with guns such as The Brotherhood will eat better than men without guns. Unless the West is blackmailed or guilt tripped if you will in to providing massive aid for decades this will end very badly. Even if the aid is given, it will only postpone the inevitable. Therein lies the problem, in the internet and satellite TV age there really are no unknown areas of disaster that we in the West hear about months or years later about. Watching millions starve is not something most of us are not as yet callous enough to ignore. In a sense we to are trapped by our own morality.
Really?
when are you going to start feeding the NORKS?
Maybe one day soon they’ll be so wan with hunger they’ll no longer have the strength to gang-rape tourists or murder Copts.
Until then, I’m fresh out of sympathy.
Not a month goes by without Israel developing some new technology that purifies water, increases crop yield and nutritional content or develops new strains of hardier grain that can be grown in a wider variety of climatic conditions. For example-
http://israel21c.org/news/new-strain-of-chickpea-packs-nutritional-punch/
Yet the muslim world prefers to let their own children starve rather than make peace with us.
Insanity.
Demolish the High Aswan Dam and return to traditional Nile Flood cultivation methods, and Egypt would be able to feed itself without imports again.
“Unsustainable budget deficit”?
What’s that?
Let ‘em eat cake… worked so well for Marie Antoinette.
Don’t my little muslim tweekers, King Obama will send them all the cash they need to sustain their filthy lifestyle.
Congratulations to Mr Goldman for having seen this dreadful threat coming so long a time in advance.
Trying to add a few facts:
- Egypt’s wheat imports were 10.5 million tons in 2010
- Wheat is presently priced circa 350 $ / ton
>>>So Egypt imports circa 3.5 billion $ of wheat every year
- Egypt exports 155,000 barrels of oil per day, out of a production of 630,000
- Oil is presently priced circa 100 $ / barrel
>>>So Egypt exports circa 5.5 billion $ of oil every year, which could be increased markedly at the price of more limited use of oil in-country. Even allowing for production costs, oil exports alone are enough to cover Egyptian imports of their most basic and essential foodstuff.
These few facts would seem to demonstrate that mass hunger in Egypt is ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE, even in the absence of external help.
The Egyptian government could just put the payments on Egypt’s foreign debt on hold, then direct the proceeds of Egypt’s exports towards buying first what’s essential for physical survival of all of Egyptian population (consumer electronics and 4×4 for the rich would have to wait) This as a stopgap measure while the economy recovers. Which in the short term, has to mean ensuring stability and order in order to attract back tourism.
Distressingly, the above little calculation doesn’t guarantee that no mass hunger will take place! It only shows that if it does, it will be because of ***kleptocrats, profiteers and other irresponsible politicians***
David Goldman unfortunately may well be right on this one. But not because of any financial impossibility for Egypt to escape the catastrophe on her own…
I heard a newsflash when the “Arab Spring” began and many protesters were in the streets against Mubarak. Washington decided immediately to send
5 ship loads if wheat to Egypt to feed them ” because they were not working”…
This is from our government. Supposedly, it was a gift.
The US will keep sending something, if only to be able to ‘manage’ and ‘have influence’ in that Marxist parlance. The argument is to some undefined danger if Egypt fails.
My question is simply what danger? Because the US has armed them, they could do something ‘rash’. The problem is simply that they have to legs. They would be like a bug on a windshield, make a big splat, but no ability to do it again, probably ever.
Get a bad government, well they have one that doesn’t work now. G. make the point they could survive, but the government probably wouldn’t, surviving as it does on symbolic display, as governments have there, time out of mind.
Denver Bob,
I agree with you. The US government will (and should) do something, because we want to keep options open, and we want to look helpful — but I don’t think we’re going to cough up $20 to $30 billion a year.
Morsi has yet even to apply Islam (the cure all) to the problem. When he bans alcohol, interest, corporate limited liability and bikinis, forces people to pray 5 times a day and institutes even harsher blasphemy laws and – we’ll that is about the extent of how actual Islam the civilization is implemented, surely the crops will grow faster, the industry more efficient and all your troubles are over.
I’ll close my comments to MarcH in this thread by pointing out that Rand is far more clever at using political jujitsu than his father. For example, the Weekly Standard, National Review and other ‘never met a recent war they didn’t like’ crowd all had to scrupulously ignore Rand’s comment upon returning from Israel that he’s concerned weapons sent to the Syria rebels will end up being used against Israelis by Sunni jihadists later down the line.
They CANNOT address this contradiction between their ‘more pro-Israel than thou’ position and there ‘arm the Syrian rebels now, faster please!’ cheerleading, so they just pretend the contradiction doesn’t exist and no has pointed it out. (The Saban people also can’t explain how the Emir of Qatar bought out a pro-Israel think tank, so they just ignore my questions on Twitter).
This is why I have so little respect for these mediocrities who purport to represent conservatives in Washington D.C. They cannot argue their way out of a paper bag with the LESS (not stricly non) interventionist position from their own ostensibly Consitutionalist and conservative premises, so they resort to ad hominem or stating BS like that Rand is a closeted anti-Semite or some similar nonsense. Say what you will about Spengler but at least he can argue for his positions. These mediocrities who represent how the Right as well as the Left among the political class are largely nincompoops cannot.
A “conservative” who thinks it’s the state’s job to feed the people is a failed conservative.
A libertarian state also “feeds its people”. It does this by defending property ownership from brigands within and invaders without, and by otherwise staying out of the way.
Provate property needs the muscle of the State behind it.
Although the land grant colleges and the government ag reps probably did a great deal towards feeding the US and the world, and that’s a mildly Statist program.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Brennan_Hearing
Nuff said (re: drones), we all know how notoriously ‘Ronulan’ and tin foil hat wearing those writers are at Esquire magazine…
There are several projects which involve converting using sunlight to generate power to convert seawater to freshwater to run green houses in the desert.
http://saharaforestproject.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-16/solar-greenhouse-outback-desalination/3952090
http://bit.ly/W1z6oZ
The israelis are doing considerable work in this area.
http://bit.ly/XbN2y6
Here is a project that uses sunlight to convert water co2and bacteria to fuel diesel and ethanol for 1.20@gallon
http://www.jouleunlimited.com/
http://bit.ly/TRRbYd
Both the Quataris and the Israelis plan to be mostly food independent within 10 years.
The Egyptians are slow. But eventually the work of desert farmers around the world will catch on. About in the same way as they did during the 1950′s with the construction of the Aswan dam. That was two decades and a world war after the construction of the Hoover Dam.
As it happens there is a huge river of water under the sahara that runs north from the sudan. The famous oasis of the Sahara are like tips of the iceberg of this massive underground aquifer. The aquifer is all that remains of massive lakes that dried up 5500 years ago when the sahara was a green savanah. Parts but not all of the aquifer is brackish water.
The Sahara dried up further back than 6,000 year ago…
Be that as it may…
The deep water of Libya and Egypt is NOT the result of ancient rains — it’s too deep.
It flows — s l o w l y — from the Nile — particularly the South Sudan super-marsh.
That goo goes down thousands of feet into the crust. Attempts to drill it — way back when — couldn’t find the bottom.
Simply put, that zone is where the Great Rift Valley is pulling the plates apart.
Thus, Nile waters — all the way upstream — are fed into the Libyan and Egyptian deep rocks.
The Nile has been running northwards for, apparently, millions of years. That’s more than enough time to pump up the floor of todays North Africa with hydrostatic pressure.
When the reverse happens, say at San Jose, California, pumped out water causes the terrain to sink into an expanded flood plain.
Always here to help.
Israelis are food independent . The little they import is offset by the greater amount they export. But they do not meed to import to eat. (Even America imports some food). The Egyptians tried an enormous desert agriculture project – the New Valley. Predictably, a total failure. No one even knows how many billions were wasted and nothing accomplished. Look at a satellite map of the northwestern Negev and Sinai. You see an absolute straight line between vegetation on the Israeli side of the desert and waste on the Egyptian. Gradually the north west Negev fills up with farms. The exact same land on the Egyptian side? Nothing. But you can be sure when the Israeli side is all prosperous farms and the Egyptian side, still waste, the Egyptians will say look what the Jews stole from the Muslims. These people are truly disgusting. And I have been there. And this is what they do say. They are disgusting.
I could be wrong, but I think we import wheat and soy (for oil) from the US because it is sop cheap. Then our tiny agricultural sector can concentrate on more profitable stuff.
Well you were able to take a poke at Mr. Cook and get a plug in for the book, good day.
LET THEM EAT CAKE!!!
Egypt is not America’s problem. Let the charity of the avaricious Saudis, Qataris, and Kuwatis feed the Moslem poor. I’m sure they will be devout and happy to help. Charity is one of the five pillars of Islam. And if they don’t…, let’s take their money and use it to feed Egypt instead of using our own (it’s win-win).
There are a couple different models for desert farming depending on the type of soil and water available.
Here are some pictures of Libyan farms that use the circular pivot method drawing on fossil water.
http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/136757/view
http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/06/libya-pivot-irrigation/
As mentioned above, the Israelis are using brackish water from deep wells to water salt resistant plants. Here is another model that uses salt water. An american company called Global Seawater Inc is using seawater for irrigation in two projects in Eritrea and Mexico. They pump seawater inland that first is used for tilapea and shrimp farms. The water then used to grow salicornia and mangrove. If the israelis can breed their tomatoes and other crops for higher salt tolerance then this model can expand significantly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0L-PLtNvRg
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/10/business/fi-seafarm10
The desert farming methods described above provide a nearly complete toolkit for
farming much of the world’s deserts. Sometime in the future several of these models will jell and there will be a sudden explosion of desert farming all over the world.– Much as happened back in the 1920′s when the combination of railroads and mechanized tractors suddenly made 1000′s of square miles of plains from the US midwest to the Ukraine available for farming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0L-PLtNvRg
Well it may be that really ubiquitous desert farming will have to wait until
extrusion pipeline technology matures
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-aerospace-materials-endless-pipeline.html
and some form of portable nuclear power plant cuts the cost of electricity by 1/4.
Bill Gates is working on one type of reactor that will deliver electricity for 1/4 the cost of current cheapest coal byo of a company called Terrapower.But that’s not expected for another 10 years.
Much of the rest of the world is working on some variation portable nukes that run on thorium energy. That’s expected to to prototype in 5 years.
Cheap electric power would drive pumps to pump water in bulk.
Bill Gates gives his energy vision at Ted2010. This utube is too long but he does mention his own company terrapower and the need to cut the cost of energy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I
(I don’t buy his stuff about anthropogenic climate change.)
In the same 5-10 year time frame its not unlikely that the cost of solar power will fall below that of coal.
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/5-breakthroughs-that-will-make-solar-power-cheaper-than-coal
Nuclear Fusion have been 10 years in the future for the past 30 years. So is Solar.
55. Jh
The exact same land on the Egyptian side? Nothing. But you can be sure when the Israeli side is all prosperous farms and the Egyptian side, still waste, the Egyptians will say look what the Jews stole from the Muslims. These people are truly disgusting. And I have been there. And this is what they do say. They are disgusting.
……………
There is a feeling among some Mexicans towards that is similar to Egyptians feelings toward Israelis. Likely because some Americans feel about America about the same way Israelis feel about Israel.
Repbulicans in washington are about ready to grant amnesty to illegals against the wishes of their base. The result will be to demoralize the base in ways the leadership doesn’t understand anymore. imho this will accelerate the ungluing of America.