Current Trends

Using a Twitter tracking site I looked to see what major US cities were Tweeting specifically about the Egyptian uprising in the last day or so.


LA, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Houston, Tweeted about “Mubarak”

NYC Tweeted about “Egyptian”

Seattle Tweeted about both “Mubarak” and “Egyptian”

Atlanta, and Miami Tweeted about everything but Egypt.


But good old Washington DC Tweeted about “brotherhood” and “Egyptian” a lot. Does this show our leaders Islamaphobia?

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

So what are some of the reasons that Egyptian people are revolting against Hasni Mubarak?

It was given scant attention but two years ago the Egyptians went out and rioted not about Mubarak but over a lack of wheat and grains. In other words food riots.

Poor harvests and especially the speculation of Wall Street (and other world casinos) have only added two more years of high prices. At the same time the Mumbarak regime was pushing for lower wages and reducing government programs.

Egypt’s food supply is highly reliant on the world food supply, as Egypt must import more than half of its food.

Now we are to 2011 where an average Egyptian spends over 50% of their income on food (the Average American spends 10%)

These price hikes are largely pushing the entire revolutionary sweep across the Middle East. From Tunisia to Yemen these price increases have hit hard, and the poor are the most effected.

A large part of the large increases in speculation is the deregulation of the Wall Street speculation markets by G.W. Bush. As regulation decreased, speculation (and thereby prices) increased and helped destabilize the Middle East. Yet another latent present from G.W. The Federal Reserve both under Greenspan and Bernake had their own roles to play as well.

Now I am in no way suggesting that this is the only reason that the Egyptian or indeed any Middle Eastern peoples are rising up, this is only the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. America’s small contribution to a revolution.

So now what is the price that America and other speculators must pay for their greed? Higher food prices of course. The Suez Canal and most of the world’s oil are in the areas now under unstable and unpredictable circumstances. Oil prices had been falling and then made a sharp spike up immediately following the news of mass uprisings, it has since stabilized but still at a much higher price than before the unrest. Oil futures in New York rose 3.2 percent based on the idea that a political coup could cause a supply disruption

Add this to the speculation on food and the severe weather the country has been seeing this year and we could see huge food price spikes here in the U.S. Processing, production, transportation and advertising costs all factor into food prices. Supply and demand both drive the price of commodities. U.S. food prices in December were only 1.5 percent higher than the previous year, so it looks stable.

Until you read last years joint report from the OECD and UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which found that world food prices will raise up to 40% in the next decade. Add to this the inevitable rise in petroleum prices that affect production, packaging, shipping, and even the amount of money one has to spend on food and you have an explosive combination.


So what to do?

Get local, build a greenhouse, buy land, grow food, meet your neighbors, live a life, don’t let the revolution pass you by, and don’t be limited in your definition of a revolution.

What Is And What Could Never Be: Egypt Free or Theocracy?

Here is a more positive example of what could happen in Egypt.
It could follow the Republic of Indonesia circa May of 1998, not Iran 1979.

In 1997 and 1998 there were riots in various parts of Indonesia. Some riots looked spontaneous and some looked as if they had been planned.

At the start of May 1998, students were holding peaceful demonstrations on university campuses across the country. They were protesting against massive price rises for fuel and energy, and they were demanding that President Suharto should step down.

On May 12th students in Jakarta began marches, 13 Students were killed. On the 13th and 14th of May rioting across Jakarta sparked by these deaths destroyed many commercial centers and over 1,000 people we killed.

Long story short, the President stepped down, the Vice President led an interim government for a year and then elections and a stable secular government resulted from this. East Timor even voted to break away from Indonesian rule and become an independent nation, so there were really two liberation's for the price of one here.


According to the pew research center in 2009 Indonesia was 88.2% Muslim, meaning that nearly 203 million people identified as Muslims, mostly Sunni like Egypt, not Shia like Iran. Indonesia is the home of the largest single Muslim population in the world.

Not only did a mostly Muslim country elect a secular government, but also in 2001 they elected Megawati Sukarnoputri, a woman, to office, something we have never done in America.


The process of reform in Indonesia has also been characterized by greater freedom of speech in discernible difference with the suppression of the old era. In the political sphere this has led to a more open political debate in the news media, as well as a renaissance of cultural expression in the arts.

Many Muslims say that Egypt's governments have been secularist and even anti-religious since the early 1920s, there is no reason to believe the Islamists are going to take over this region, or that the people of Egypt would allow it.

Not to mention what happened to the Muslim Brotherhood in post 1954 Egypt. The Brotherhood was accused of the assassination of the President in 1954, the leaders were imprisoned and over the next two decades the Brotherhood divided into at least three factions. The more militant faction was committed to a policy of political opposition to the government. A second faction advocated peaceful withdrawal from society and the creation, to the extent possible, of a separate, parallel society based upon Islamic values and law. The dominant moderate group advocated cooperation with the regime. The group has been outlawed for thirty years since Mubarak took office. They are weak and often choose to work within political means to enact Sharia law and influence society.

The point of all this is to get you to please look beyond certain small furry animal news networks (and others) and see that Egypt has been around for nearly 5000 years, it can handle what kind of government it wants, its been through this before, Islamasists don’t have much power in Egypt and they are not going to take over. Look for the positive examples of what could come from this like Indonesia, not for the fear mongers soothsaying about the “coming insurrection” of Islam and the world.