Why after thirty years of dictatorship, the Egyptians are awake right now?
Perhaps the measure was full or perhaps there is something else. The spark that ignited the revolt was an increase in the price of food, but because there was this increase?
coll'osservare start the graph of domestic consumption of oil: we see that grew rapidly while the amount of oil extracted is constant.
The two curves have crossed and Egypt is passing from the condition of the exporter to importer of oil (If there is oil available for him on the world market since many other nations have a production steady or declining since 2005 while the demands are growing).
Egypt is not a major exporter, but the earnings on exports of oil provided the money for state subsidies with which they were kept down the prices of food and fuel, subsidies - in part - still guaranteed by the export of gas, whose production has remained virtually flat since 2005 and which are not expected to increase.
The end of exports, therefore, means the abrupt end of subsidies, and then rising prices of basic commodities and fuel.
While this was happening, the population Egypt has increased (by its own push wellbeing induced by oil exports) and therefore increased the demand for food has declined but the land for agriculture replaced by urban areas. Egypt is so today the biggest importer of wheat in the world (imports 40% of its food and 60% of the grain).
But the world cereal production is not growing to meet the demands, both for ongoing problems related to weather events and forest fires in Russia, but also because of the fertile land is used for biofuels, and because the increased production related to the Green Revolution (ie the use of fertilization and irrigation) are now finished.
the world shortage of raw materials and food adds a greater demand due to the fact that the global economic system it has been argued - after the financial crisis - a flood of money pouring into India, China, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia. The standard of living of two and a half billion people stood up quickly, and with it the consumption of foodstuffs and consumer discretionary (consumer model to sustain themselves looking for new customers).
Lower supply and higher demand leads to higher prices at which adds the increased costs of production and transportation related to the increased cost of oil.
In Egypt, therefore has a problem with the peak in oil production that crosses local with the world of rising commodity prices and the food.
Many are oil-producing countries whose business model is the same in Egypt and who are - or will - in similar situations (export land model): including Mexico (the second largest exporter to the United States) , Iran, Algeria, Yemen, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Argentina, Colombia, but also the same as Saudi Arabia and Russia.
The other countries outside of economies "emerging" and without oil resources are "simply" experiencing higher prices pushing millions of people from subsistence level to that of poverty.
The demand for democracy of the peoples of the Mediterranean is thus demand for food to eat and clothes to dress: two dollars a day in which most people live in the southern Mediterranean are not enough to meet basic needs.
You can stand under a dictatorship for decades, if you eat, but when its survival is at stake there are no police or boundaries that can stop the desperate.
Globalization is a competition in which areas of privilege are maintained on the massacre of people in weaker countries. A competition that also begins to hit from the "rich" countries where they create expanding pockets of outsiders redundancies, waste. The
keeping the system of exploitation will be the sealing of the border between the wealthy and extreme poverty, the boundary line until a few weeks ago was manned by ruthless dictatorships and oligarchies in which the West had issued an international permit in exchange for the regulation of flows migration and marginalization of religious fundamentalism.
But now it has unleashed the monster of hunger, which blew a political balance that lasted thirty years.
Now, another graphic: the trend of world food prices (source: FAO):
prices have fallen with the financial crisis but now are new upsurge. Behind this graph there is poverty, hunger, death, riots and wars, there are attacks and pirates attacking oil tankers, there are the oil producing countries that sell life dearly, there are children who die without treatment in Iran or burning in their barracks in Rome.
The food is about to open another front: the price of rice has so far not followed the race to the top, most Asian governments are selling their stocks for moderation by the market's most important global food resource and for the moment the situation seems under control.
In six months the stock will end and probably will follow that the price of rice grain with the result that more than one billion people will hunger, a quel punto i confini degli Stati avranno lo stesso valore di una linea tracciata sulla sabbia travolta da un'onda enorme di disperati.
Ed alla fine un pensiero per il nostro paese: senza materie prime e con i terreni agricoli invasi dal cemento e dai rifiuti. L'unica cosa che avevamo erano i cervelli, ma sono scomparsi ormai da parecchi anni. Nelle scuole pascolano solo bocche che pretendono di essere sfamate - ignare vite di scarto. Tutto quel che dovremo importare - se ce ne sarà a sufficienza - ci costerà di più. Senza una guida, illusi fino all'ultimo di essere in un mondo - se non fatato - comunque controllabile con l'uso della prepotenza istituzionale verso i più deboli e con la diminuzione delle spese per la solidarietà, health and education, always waiting for some miracle of technology, when we awaken from the dream we will find ourselves in the nightmare.
The real crisis is coming and will not be temporary, there will be no recovery, the consumerist model is the last stop. There are no local solutions to this global crisis. We will have to rethink our whole way of life because the solution (not bloody) will be only one: return to the center of the whole man, who is now in place of money.
PS this post is a summary of many articles and lectures I try to list below:
What's Behind Egypt's Problems? Food price index Export land model Military scam Egypt Massimo Fini the daily 16 / 2
Alarm hunger for the West SuperBonus the daily 15 / 2
