http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/32596
11 February 2011 Could Chinese Weather bring about "The Death of Allah" in Egypt? http://www.newenglishreview.org/images/clear.gif Rabbi Jon Hausman <http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/34041/sec_id/> and I spoke in preparation for a talk he gave in Nashville this week about a basic problem in Egypt - the lack of bread. Hausman is one of the few Americans who received graduate education in Arabic and Islamic doctrine at the American University in Cairo in 1977-1978. He reads, speaks and writes Arabic in pure Egyptian dialect, a complement to his native English and acquired Hebrew. He noted that while studying there, the country experienced bread riots. He also noted that the mainstream media hadn't highlighted the withdrawal of food subsidies by the Mubarak regime last November that had been discussed by the Egyptian press. We speculated as to whether this might have triggered the uprising and demands by the sans culottes gathered in the tens of thousands nightly for the past 18 days in Tahrir Square demanding that Mubarak vacate his post as virtual dictator in Egypt. Coincidentally, this is the thesis that David Goldman, an economist, who writes under the name of Spengler in the Asia Times, addresses in a recent column, <http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/points%20out%20in% 20his%20Asia%20Times%20column,%20%E2%80%9CChinese%20Weather%20and%20Tahrir%2 0Square%E2%80%9D,> "Chinese Weather and Tahrir Square". Goldman suggests that the foul weather in China that caused a huge drop in wheat production will spike world food demand causing local bread costs in Egypt to spiral out of control. Perhaps, as Goldman speculated this remote weather problem in China might provoke a breakdown in what passes for the Egyptian economy, capital flight by the privileged and outright starvation among the poor fellahin existing as they do on less than $2 a day. As it is, Goldman notes tourism revenues in Egypt, estimated at $12 billion annually, have virtually disappeared. The irony as Goldman points out is that the poster child for world concerns about starvation, Gaza, the Muslim Brotherhood statelet, is exporting some of its largesse received from the EU, the US and UN to alleviate the starving fellahin across the frontier in Egypt. Egypt unlike Saudi Arabia and the Islamic republic of Iran doesn't have much of what the world and the Chinese also demand, oil and gas. Israel, to whom Egypt has exported some of its limited natural gas from fields in the Sinai peninsula, has gotten lucky and discovered a vast natural gas field of its own offshore in the eastern Mediterranean Sea assuring energy independence for its growing 21st century economy. While the pundits, in what passes for the mainstream media and on Cable TV, ululate about the nightly vigils in Tahrir Square as being the moral equivalent of Iran in 1979 or Berlin in 1989 teetering on the brink of possible eruption of an Islamic 'democracy' in a predominately draconian Muslim country of 80 million, the reality beneath the surface, as Goldman trenchantly states is that we may be witnessing the death throes of a failed Arab state for lack of basic food, bread. Other Arab states may also be in the same quandary - how to stabilize food prices in the face of this weather driven disaster in China driving world commodity prices for wheat and other grains into the stratosphere. No international 21st Century version of the post WWII Marshall Plan that might, in desperation, be cobbled together by the US and the developed nations, for a region of the world, whose economies are virtually non-existent, will prevent excess deaths from starvation in the Arab Muslim ummah. This is ironic, as I discussed with Rabbi Hausman, that Egypt, ancient Egypt, was once the granary of the ancient Middle East, upon which a flourishing civilization was built. The restive Egyptian population seeking basic sustenance and political liberty may have run into a contemporary Malthusian trap with untoward consequences for the Muslim Brotherhood. The country's lack of resources like oil and natural gas, failed development of a functioning economy, corruption by governing Military elites, hamstrung by a totalitarian religious belief may potentially seal the fate of Egypt and perhaps Islam itself. Praying to Allah five times a day when babies and loved ones are starving to death at home seems absurdly irrelevant. Those deaths will doubtless go unreported by the media now entranced by the nightly vigils in Tahrir Square. That is the reality and not the eruption of democracy in Egypt and other Arab Muslim failed states propounded in the columns of pundits like Timesmen Thomas Friedman of <http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/the-world-is-fla> The World is Flat fame and Roger Cohen, who like proverbial ostriches, have their heads in the sand. But then we have the jejune antics of the Obama Administration in the West Wing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue spinning spidery cobweb theorems of world transformation, while wringing their hands about the inability to promote useful changes here and abroad, especially in Egypt. Like their failed intelligence minions, they had best look at the escalating basic food commodity price indices, as Goldman has thoughtfully suggested, as to the root cause of Arab unrest. The price of bread is beyond the reach of the starving fellahin beating his head against his prayer carpet generating inedible 'raisins' on his forehead. It could be an unlikely irony that the grim reaper of starvation in Egypt and throughout the Arab Muslim ummah caused by foul weather in China might result in the demise of Islam, a thesis propounded in a new book, Allah is Dead: why Islam is Not a Religion <http://www.amazon.com/Allah-Dead-Why-Islam-Religion/dp/0578073..> by my colleague, Rebecca Bynum. Perhaps. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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