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Tue, May 10, 2011 | Asia Times Online | By Spengler

Living in squalor: Copts in Egypt (http://sheikyermami.com)

Mubarak is gone, but the ‘Arab Spring’ in Egypt will not lead to an ‘Arab Summer.’ Living standards in Egypt were bad already, but are deteriorating even more. Egypt is going to crash economically and this will lead to a new crisis (or revolt, or war). And this is going to happen fast as well. Read this article by Spengler.

The hunger to Come in Egypt

Egypt is running out of food, and, more gradually, running out of money with which to buy it. The most populous country in the Arab world shows all the symptoms of national bankruptcy – the kind that produced hyperinflation in several Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s – with a deadly difference: Egypt imports half its wheat, and the collapse of its external credit means starvation.

The civil violence we have seen over the past few days foreshadows far worse to come.

The Arab uprisings began against a background of food insecurity, as rising demand from Asia priced the Arab poor out of the grain market (Food and failed Arab states, Asia Times Online February 2, 2011). The chaotic political response, though, threatens to disrupt food supplies in the relative near term. Street violence will become the norm rather than the exception in Egyptian politics. All the discussion about Egypt’s future political model and its prospective relations with Israel will be overshadowed by the country’s inability to feed itself.

Egypt’s political problems — violence against Coptic Christians, the resurgence of Islamism, and saber-rattling at Israel, for example — are not symptoms of economic failure. They have a life of their own. But even Islamists have to eat, and whatever political scenarios that the radical wing of Egyptian politic might envision will be aborted by hunger.

The Ministry of Solidarity and Social Justice is already forming “revolutionary committees” to mete out street justice to bakeries, propane dealers and street vendors who “charge more than the price prescribed by law”, the Federation of Egyptian Radio and Television reported on May 3.

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