If the world ditched middle eastern oil, their population levels would fall to pre 1800s levels and they would return to tribal warfare over damp spots in the desert.
I kinda like the sound of it.
Eqypt was once the breadbasket of the Mediterranean world. Some of the problem is that the farmers must sell to the government at the dictated price, destroying the incentives to produce, and to develope and improve farm land. Then there is the Aswan dam, which ended the annual Nile flooding, which enriched the soil, which, I have heard, is now seriously depleted.
Let em eat bullets.
Egypt has risen and fallen for centuries.
While the focus seems to be on Egypt by our pretty limited media. It is only one of a string of governments being overturned in the area. Tunis, Jordan, Syria is in deep crisis, Serbia, Turkey, Egypt Somalia.
South of Egypt tribes are being decimated. There is much more going on then Egypt.
The only reason I can think the stock market is going up is that the USA is the only place to put your money as you leave these countries.
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That is not a Muslim view (the practice is rare in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan), but an Egyptian Muslim view. In the most fundamental matters, President and Mrs Mubarak are incomparably more enlightened than the Egyptian public. Three-quarters of acts of genital mutilation in Egypt are executed by physicians.
What does that say about the character of the country's middle class?”
It says that whatever is coming in Egypt is not going to be good.
*ping*
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Egypt has gone from a population of 16 million prior to World War 2, to 80 million today. They’ve bred themselves into poverty and famine.