Egypt

[goodcompanion]

In a long-ago part of my past I was a scholar in classical Arabic, and studied for a while in Morocco. Like Egypt Morocco is essentially a totalitarian state with some of the trappings of western democracy. I was the only foreign student at the Moroccan university where I studied, and I learned a lot about the circumstances of my fellow students. As a rule they had zero confidence in the accountability of the system and the potential for their own achievements and efforts of ever being rewarded. The mentality in general was extremely mutually supportive–this was the only way to survive in a society where the most basic civic services can’t be relied upon. The group mentality trumps all. I have never in my life before or since felt so safe as I did in that setting.

I can’t look away from events in North Africa. It does seem to prove the old adage that power can’t be given away, it must be seized. The old regimes can’t let go voluntarily, they have to be torn limb from limb and replaced by something else. And what will that be? Nobody can really venture a guess. But with the collection of building blocks these people have, it’s hard to imagine a very good outcome. Huge demographic imbalance, massive unemployment, and dependency on food imports to a scale that is frankly terrifying.

There are 80 million people in Egypt. In 1993 the population was 50 million, and even then they imported half their food. Egyptian agriculture is among the most productive in the world still, even after all the problems with the Aswan Dam and silt buildup and salinization. But only a tiny ribbon on each side of the river is arable at all, and much of that is being lost to houses and such for all those people. It is people in Geoff’s parts with their price-supported commodity crops who are feeding the Egyptians. Egypt is the largest recipient of American food aid, but what isn’t delivered in aid must be bought. With commodity prices on the rise this year (good for us, maybe, terrible for them) the country is in an impossible bind. The pinch is felt throughout these countries whose agricultural heyday is long past, and where even where the land permits it, the legacy of colonialism prevents the development of capitalized western-style ag.

And where western-style ag does exist, guess what? All that stuff is exported for foreign exchange. Egyptian cotton feeds the government purse, not hungry mouths. The same could be said of Moroccan wines and pork! Both well-capitalized and lively ag enterprises in a land where nobody eats pork or drinks wine!

If you have never lived for a long time in a place where you must watch your public speech and words very carefully you might find it hard to imagine what it’s like. Lots of people (even here in placid VT) like to talk trash about the federal government and how it is robbing us of our freedoms. The worst thing the US government has done to any of you reading this does not hold a candle to the things that some of my Moroccan classmates had lived through, I would bet any money. And now that order is no longer able to contain popular anger as it has done, more or less, since the 50s.

What comes next I have no idea. The aspirations for freedom, true democracy and a better life are genuine. But the tragic truth is that the fundamental poverty of these lands will prevent them from being realized with any form of government. What then?

We in the west are quick to ascribe some sort of “crazy muslim” label to any social phenomenon in the Arab world. The reality is that religion barely plays into it. We are seeing people pushed to the brink by the price of bread and a government that does not care, just like those that tore down the Bastille in 1789. Hungry for change, yes, but mostly for bread. Seems unlikely that even if Mubarak is run out of town on a rail that bread is going to be any more affordable to these 80 million people. What then?

I’m afraid that this part of the world, for which I have no small amount of affection, is entering an epoch not of new freedom, but of almost unimaginable hardship. Maybe a precursor of the new age of Malthus. It is hard to bear.

[jac]

Very humbling reading Erik, thanks for posting this. We have little to complain about and much to be thankfull for in our world… for now.
John

[Robert MoonShadow]

@jac 24539 wrote:

Very humbling reading Erik, thanks for posting this. We have little to complain about and much to be thankfull for in our world… for now.
John

Actually, I disagree – it seems that we DO have a lot to complain about, and the point being that if we allow the opportunity to change to slip by (as the Morrocans and Egyptians did many years ago), then this is a preview of what we can very well expect to see our grandchildren deal with. I don’t know what the solutions are – here or over there – but we need to at least work on them.
JMO

[goodcompanion]

@Robert MoonShadow 24541 wrote:

Actually, I disagree – it seems that we DO have a lot to complain about, and the point being that if we allow the opportunity to change to slip by (as the Morrocans and Egyptians did many years ago), then this is a preview of what we can very well expect to see our grandchildren deal with. I don’t know what the solutions are – here or over there – but we need to at least work on them.
JMO

Okay, how many members of your family have had bones broken by government thugs or simply “disappeared” by secret police? When you are pulled over for a (supposedly) bad taillight, how big does your bribe have to be to have the police not impound your vehicle, sell it, and keep the proceeds? Then have you dragged out of your house in the night and beaten when you complain of the matter publicly? Practically every one I knew had a story like this. Even kids have their milk money extorted by teachers who are not paid a living wage. Don’t believe me? Go there and find out for yourself.

If English is your first language then 99.9% chance is you do have it pretty good compared to these people. To say that they let some opportunity pass to change their lot isn’t a lot different than saying the slaves in the old south should have done something along the way to not be slaves. Well, fact is they tried, but the system won out anyway–up to a point.

I’m not arguing for complacency as far as our many problems in the West go. And everyone’s situation is different and some of us have more serious bones to pick with the system than others. But when I look around me I see a society that’s generally made out pretty well in the global pecking order, rather than a depleted landscape overpopulated with people getting by on $2 a day. We in the West helped put those folks where they are in many, many ways.

[near horse]

IMHO – the “market” likes dictators and totalitarian regimes. While brutal to their people, they make investors comfortable with their stability with perhaps even a deal for us. And, that’s why we have a history of supporting folks like Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Hosni Mubarik, Pinochet in Chile, – even the often touted “most liberal” president in the 20th century, FDR, supported the dictator Somoza in Nicaragua and is quoted saying “yes, he’s an SOB but he’s our SOB!” That says a lot.

BTW – I heard a radio report that some air cargo planes from Israel landed last week in Cairo or nearby – they were providing anti- demonstration and crowd control disbursement equipment like armoured water cannons etc. How crazy is that?

[Robert MoonShadow]

Erik ~
Peace, Brother.
I’m actually agreeing w/ you = we need to speak up now, while we still can, or find ourselves in their situation.

As a side-point:
In 1983, I was in a bar in Apache Junction, AZ. I ended up in a confrontation w/ the bar owner and his 2 “pet” sherriff’s deputies – they had a scam going wherein they rolled the “strays” that wandered in, looking like they had money…the cops had guns; I had knives.
I won.
However, it’s inadvisible to get into it w/ the barowner, when 34 local patrons are in the bar – long and short of it, I was charged w/ 2 counts of aggravated battery against ‘peace’ officers…I took it to trial, and won (self-defense). The 2 cops went to federal prison. {Evidently a lot came to light, including a murder or two}. I don’t tend to go to Arizona any more, yet every time I’m in a situation involving the police – whether I’m a driver or passenger for a simple traffic stop or whatever, I find myself facedown on pavement, dirt, snow, whatever. This is more than 25 years AFTER the jury declared me innocent of any wrong-doing.
So what? Such is life. And yet I get along just fine w/ the local sherriff and his wife, who has a booth next to me at the farmer’s market. 🙂
So, yeah, I can identify just a little bit w/ some aspects of what the people in Egypt have dealt with; a deep leeriness of those in “authority”. Of course, I can avoid them to some great degree. {As I said, I avoid Arizona – if I want to see cactus and sand, I go to New Mexico 😉 }
And (for now) I can speak openly on this, as I just did, here. I don’t think they can.

[goodcompanion]

@Robert MoonShadow 24657 wrote:

Erik ~
Peace, Brother.
I’m actually agreeing w/ you = we need to speak up now, while we still can, or find ourselves in their situation.

As a side-point:
In 1983, I was in a bar in Apache Junction, AZ. I ended up in a confrontation w/ the bar owner and his 2 “pet” sherriff’s deputies – they had a scam going wherein they rolled the “strays” that wandered in, looking like they had money…the cops had guns; I had knives.
I won.
However, it’s inadvisible to get into it w/ the barowner, when 34 local patrons are in the bar – long and short of it, I was charged w/ 2 counts of aggravated battery against ‘peace’ officers…I took it to trial, and won (self-defense). The 2 cops went to federal prison. {Evidently a lot came to light, including a murder or two}. I don’t tend to go to Arizona any more, yet every time I’m in a situation involving the police – whether I’m a driver or passenger for a simple traffic stop or whatever, I find myself facedown on pavement, dirt, snow, whatever. This is more than 25 years AFTER the jury declared me innocent of any wrong-doing.
So what? Such is life. And yet I get along just fine w/ the local sherriff and his wife, who has a booth next to me at the farmer’s market. 🙂
So, yeah, I can identify just a little bit w/ some aspects of what the people in Egypt have dealt with; a deep leeriness of those in “authority”. Of course, I can avoid them to some great degree. {As I said, I avoid Arizona – if I want to see cactus and sand, I go to New Mexico 😉 }
And (for now) I can speak openly on this, as I just did, here. I don’t think they can.

You would feel at home with your story in Morocco or Egypt.

Forgive me for being a little touchy. In many ways I have a stronger bond with those people over there than with my own, and I over-react to things I perceive as blaming the victim.

[jac]

Robert I can see what you mean.. every day another of our civil liberties are taken away in the name of “terrorism”.. and sooner or later they will all be gone and we will be in the same situation as those poor folks in Egypt..history repeats.. Native Americans, Aboriginies and even the Scottish people were all sold down the river and lied to at first then it just escalates… in Scotland the ordinary people were betrayed by the so called leaders or clansmen.. all in the past but so easy for crap like that to happen in modern times. Whats that saying.. “bad things happen when good men do nothing”. That is how the mafia got so big.. lazy sobs that never did a days work in their life and stole everything they have .. we had those kind here too.. the kray twins for example. Wyatt Earp had the right idea..
John

[Robert MoonShadow]

Who was it that said “Those that do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”?

[near horse]

Unfortunately, the history that we “learn” is often not the truth but a rewrite that redirects our perception of reality.

Read “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn and compare it to what we’re taught in school.

Erik makes a great point about international ag – people in developing countries starve while their ag sector grows export crops for the developed world. Corporate colonialism or, is it “the new world order and globalization”? Somethings don’t change and are so lucrative that they’re just repackaged and sold back to us over and over. Yick.

Mubarak just resigned so let’s see where Egypt goes with this. Regardless, it is impressive that the protest has made this much progress!

[goodcompanion]

@near horse 24758 wrote:

Unfortunately, the history that we “learn” is often not the truth but a rewrite that redirects our perception of reality.

Read “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn and compare it to what we’re taught in school.

Erik makes a great point about international ag – people in developing countries starve while their ag sector grows export crops for the developed world. Corporate colonialism or, is it “the new world order and globalization”? Somethings don’t change and are so lucrative that they’re just repackaged and sold back to us over and over. Yick.

Mubarak just resigned so let’s see where Egypt goes with this. Regardless, it is impressive that the protest has made this much progress!

An analogy you could use in this situation is a bunch of slaves chained to the oars of a galley, building up over the years a festering anger towards the overseers, captain, and officers. Then one day they break their chains and kill their masters and rejoice. Only kind of briefly because there they are, on a galley in the middle of the ocean with very little food and water, and nobody left alive who knows how to sail the thing.

I realize that I’m not giving the Egyptian people a lot of credit here but I do think the situations is extremely grave due to the massive population and probably unresolvable economic problems, and the understandable political myopia most people there have developed over the years, since the old regime never allowed party outsiders to deal with each other or the wider world in a political way. So everything bad was attributable to the regime.

So now no more regime. What now?

[near horse]

Hi Erik,

I see what you’re saying but I think of my Iranian friend (now exiled from Iran and the rest of his family) who spoke out more than once against the shah and was jailed and beaten. When the shah was overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeini (sp) became the leader, many of his friends said “see what happens when you speak out. We get a worse leader.” His response was, “the shah was a tyrant regardless of who replaced him. And now I’ll speak put against the Ayatollah. And the next leader after him and the next until we get someone who treats the people well.” I think he makes a good point but also recognize that he’s in exile for those beliefs as well.

Another analogy would be slaves on southern plantations – a master provides you with food and a place to live. Are you willing to stay a slave for those “benefits” or take the risk of living free and possibly fail or die?

The Egyptians could be in for a rough road ahead but it’s their road. Maybe they can grow food instead of export cotton. We’ll see. I hope for the best.

[goodcompanion]

Yup..we’ll see. Stats don’t look too good though. Consider: About 2 and a half million acres of arable land in Egypt. And when we say arable, oh boy is it ever. Vermont had about the same “arable” acreage in 1978 but there is no comparison for quality. In the Nile valley we are talking two, maybe three crops per year. So, for counting purposes, let’s say each Egyptian ag acre has three harvests of 3000 lbs of grain each per acre. Wow! 9000 lbs (4.5 tons) per acre. Total annual harvest:

4.5 tons per acre x 2.5 million acres = 11.25 million tons of grain. For argument’s sake let’s also say no waste, no spoilage, and no exports.

So now let’s play pharaoh here and allot each egyptian citizen 1000 lbs per year.

80 million people x 0.5 tons each = 40 million tons consumption.

Cough cough–note time of post–still nursing a cold that, like a certain north african autocrat, just does not want to call it quits.

[Author]

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