So what is driving this ahem "disturbance" in Egypt

[nadinbrzezinski]

as well as other places?



See the buildings in the back... notice the slums at the front? this is common...



Oh and this is a well to do section of Cairo



And this is a Cairo slum..

This is what is driving some of this...

When you have PhDs that are happy as pie to get a job waitressing... well you have the seeds of a major crisis. No, not that is not happening here.. but it is not YET widespread.

But you want to understand why things happen... look at actual social conditions, poverty and all that. This will tell you WHY you have this explosion.

Oh and call it a sneaky... but this is also about Globalization.

[Name removed]

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[redwitch]

4. Eventually people do get fed up.

The slums have existed for a long time no doubt. But as more and more people join the ranks of the poor there comes a breaking point.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Your view is supported by oodles of social science research

revolutions tend to occur when there is a dramatic decrease in expectations. See PhDs working as waiters. No, not a few... either.

[readmoreoften]

8. It's a good point.

But there are a ton of Ph.D.s working as waiters. We've individualized our feelings of failure, though. If 50% of Ph.D.s are in low-pay conditions or not working in their fields or even working in service it's because we failed individually. I think that's part of the situation with "lowering expectations" here. Our anger is transmuted into low self-esteem.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Even here this is possible

when you cross that threshold varies from society to society... why it is a damn hard line to toe for national leaders... who want to please oligarchs and keep the peace. And we are at the point of oligarchy...

[Hannah Bell]

10. actually, that research is about a dramatic *increase* in expectations -- that isn't met.

kind of like obama's election.

and it's not like egypt hasn't produced more educated people than it could employ at expectation for decades.

similarly, india.

[Hannah Bell]

7. "slums" is too easy; it explains nothing.

and as you see, now nadin contradicts herself.

you might check into the fact that food prices have spiked to an all-time high.

it's a time-honored causal factor in civil uprisings; including the russian rev.

then check into the speculative factor in price hikes.

[redwitch]

11. Living in a slum means you cannot afford basic necessities, no?

When your belly is empty and you live in a tin shack and there is no hope eventually there is a breaking point. People cannot live forever without hope.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. I'll add a note

most Americans, for good reason, cannot imagine this.

So let me paint a very real picture of a Mexican slum.

The walls of the shack are made from corrugated metal, when possible, cardboard most of the time.

Cooking is done in a portable gas grill, when you are doing well, running from a portable LG tank.

The tv, yes there are tvs and antennas, this is not a basic necessity is how people distract themselves, run form a car battery.

The place smells musty, there is dust everywhere, and kids usually are running outside half clothed, many a times wearing shoes that are falling apart.

Running water? you kid me? They have a common fauchet at times upwards of a mile in distance, so people go get their water every day. There is no reason to expect water every day. Oh and of course, your waste, and that of your neighbors, runs down a central channel in the middle of the "street." This means that in the neat of summer the smell is something else...

Many kids and elderly die from very preventable enteric diseases... and oral rehydration formulas and clean water is something we always carried. Those little envelops with salt, sugar... and a litter of bottled water helped save many lives.

Oh and by the way, it tastes like crap... get gatorade, same crap, but taste better.

[LiberalLoner]

13. Thank you Nadine...I have seen Mexico and I have seen Egypt - and

from what I've seen, Egypt is far poorer than even Mexico.

What I have seen in Egypt:

Old man struck by a car, his whole midsection basically gone, lying in the road - no ambulances, no police, just lying there with someone standing beside the body.

Many many many children running around Cairo with no shoes, begging for "baksheesh" (tips.)

Women making pita bread in what looked to be vacant lots, cooking them in clay ovens heated by coal or wood or whatever.

Men and women squatting by the banks of the Nile to take their bowel movements.

Men and women taking their drinking and cooking water from the Nile.

People living in "the city of the dead" - a big graveyard - because they can not afford rent.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. I know the Mexican slums in the north are pretty well off

which is a hell of a statement.

[LiberalLoner]

19. I admit I have only seen the north...San Carlos is as far south as I got...n/t

[Name removed]

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[Hannah Bell]

15. there have been slums in egypt since before forever.

and in many other places as well, including the us.

it explains nothing about any particular manifestation of protest.

[LiberalLoner]

16. But there has not always been widespread hunger and starvation in Egypt until recently. n/t

[Name removed]

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[LiberalLoner]

24. Oh, yes, the food prices rising is an awful thing...makes me so angry that the

speculators are making money on the backs of the starving...I am to the point where I hate the banksters with all my soul. I really do. I think we need a worldwide revolution, not just in Egypt.

"Eat the rich" - interesting bumper sticker...would love to get one for my car....

Although compared to the Egyptians, most of them I mean, I am the rich....

The system is so wrong. It's so wrong to turn food in gasoline.

I feel helpless to change anything. I take vicarious pleasure in the people in Egypt standing against unfairness.

[LiberalLoner]

6. But the extremely wealthy did not exist to this extent, even twenty years ago

when I lived there. You did not have huge displays of wealth like they seem to have now.

When everyone is very poor, with a few lucky middle class here and there and maybe one or two wealthy, then there is not so much resentment.

When the extremely poor can look every day at people who are unimaginably wealthy...that is when unrest happens. And the poor have been squeezed much harder in recent years. The price of food is going way up, rents are going up, but wages are NOT going up.

The battle cry is "Bread, freedom, social justice."

When people are starving, they fight for their lives.

[Name removed]

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[Hannah Bell]

40. yes.

funny to see the same poster at the head of the world revolution & explaining it all to us morons.

it's about slums! hunger! overpopulation!

[earth mom]

42. Meanwhile, the OP thinks the poor little misunderstood gangster banksters are not responsible for

the dire and miserable living conditions in the world including the U.S. :eyes:

[Brickbat]

2. May I offer you a cough drop, Dolores?

You really should get that scratchy throat looked at.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. '''''WHOOSHHH'''''

Not you. I think I am tired of trying to keep up...

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. How are we suppose to provide an answer to this when no one is

taking population control seriously? I don't mean China style. I mean just simple education, Planned Parenthood style.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. Part of that actually is education of women

but that is the kind of conversation nobody wants to have.

[LiberalLoner]

22. Yes. Egypt's GDP has grown but the population grows faster. It will be

a difficult thing to change. Religion pushes more children "women are your fields, plow them as you wish" social mores push more children (a woman gets more status when she gives birth to many sons) birth control is expensive and hard to get (and yeah, giving birth costs money too - if you go to the hospital - most Egyptian women give birth at home) and there is no old age social security that I know in Egypt (sons take care of elderly parents.)

Don't even know where to start to change all that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. I know

incidentally we have similar problems south of the border, and among the poor here in the US.

At a policy level we need to have that conversation... but I don't expect it... not until global warning swallows alexandria (in the case of egypt)...

[LiberalLoner]

26. I know this has nothing to do with anything and is worthless drivel on my part...

But I miss Egypt so much. I have never fallen so in love with a place as I fell in love with Egypt and her people.

When I first came to Egypt, I attended a lunch with the head of MFO Cairo and the officials of Misr Petroleum Company with whom I would be interacting that year. As I drank my bottled water, they told me, "there is an old saying that he who touches the Nile, will always return to the Nile. This bottled water is from the Nile. Now you have touched the Nile."

Before I left, I made sure to go to the banks of the Nile....I squatted down and let the water run over my hands and repeated the old saying to myself. "Let it be true" I thought.

[Hannah Bell]

31. Egypt's total fertility rate = 2.89 children per woman, slightly above zpg of 2.1 children per

woman.

and just a fraction higher than israel's rate of 2.73 children per woman, as well as the rate of any of a number of countries whose populations aren't trying to overturn their governments.

mexico's total fertility rate = 2.2.

the us = 2.05.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate

Egypt is about as densely populated as the Ukraine, & less densely populated than Greece, costa rica, switzerland, the UK, kuwait, italy, germany, vietnam, austria, japan, or any of a number of other countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density


everytime something like this happens in the third world, people trot out "overpopulation" to explain it. been doing it for 100 years.

bullshit then, bullshit now.

[Scruffy1]

34. the overpopulation myth covers most neoliberal sins.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. The first person to talk about this

was one Thomas Robert Malthus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

He was all but a neo lib... I think liberal would be a hard qualifier on him to be accurate.

His observations still apply today. Yes, the land does have a limit to growth... only reason why it supports as many as it does right now... is industrial agriculture.

[Hannah Bell]

36. simplistic bullshit.

not the reason egypt is poor & the uk is rich, even though the uk is more densely populated.

not the reason israel is rich & egypt is poor, though israel has approximately the same birthrate.

not the reason egyptians are on the streets.

[LiberalLoner]

37. +1,000 n/t

[Hannah Bell]

23. what bullshit. there are a million ngos running around every third world country on the globe

spouting that bullshit "message".

because it's so useful to avoid the actual fact -- that births decrease as people stop being POOOOOOR.

[bhikkhu]

47. Yes, and I wish we tied more of our foreign aid to that

...at least rather than thoughtlessly handing out billions in military aid to an authoritarian dictatorship, without even a care how it treated its citizens, or whether it had the notion of moving in the direction of equality (which is at least as important a reason for education).

The whole subject can be pretty ugly, but a good book to build an informed opinion from is "Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population" by Connelly. After a harrowing tour of the history of the issue, he comes to the same broad conclusion: education for women is the one thing that we can support as effective, and which improves lives and evolves cultures at least as much as it reduces birthrates.

[Name removed]

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[Whisp]

27. omg I never thought of that

that unhappy people sometimes show their anger.


wow.
thanks

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Well this is beyond just unhappy people

we have revolts, in Tunisia (toppled the government) Algeria, Egypt (tottering) Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan... and rumors of something in Syria (they have cut the net off) and rumors perhaps in Saudi... observers are betting this will spread.

Who knew? This is the domino theory...

[Johonny]

38. I agree

this is the Domino theory.

Egypt is a large country, but with little available usable land. Most of it's available farm land is located on the Nile delta where much of it's population build up resides. What caused this: well duh poverty, oppression, distribution of resources... I think that's pretty easy to understand. What triggered this? Probably a very small event that unexpectedly unleashed years of built up unresolved conflict.

See LA riots. A court case ruling triggered the event... but clearly the LA riots were not about one case making people unhappy enough to get to the streets. The unresolved conflicts had been building up for years in LA before the event.

The cause and the trigger need not be the same thing. Many accidental deaths due to human stampedes are caused by total non-events. Once set in motion they can take on a life of there own.

[Hannah Bell]

44. no it's not.

Definitions of domino theory on the Web:

•the political theory that if one nation comes under communist control then neighboring nations will also come under communist control
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

•The domino theory was a foreign policy theory during the 1950s to 1980s, promoted at times by the government of the United States, that speculated that if one land in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_theory

[Tatiana]

28. A young man set himself on fire. He could not subsist.

Food prices were through the roof and people could not feed their families.

There was a lot of despair and frustration. Those in power were indifferent to the suffering of the masses and I think the stark display of that indifference to human life ignited something.

[LiberalLoner]

29. Yes, yes. There is a big difference between "poor but still have food to eat" and

"poor to the point where one cannot feed oneself or one's children."

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. BINGO!

that is one reason they will do all they can to keep food prices stable in the US... we may gripe, but we have not seen the inflation that other places have.

[Hannah Bell]

33. lol. no, we have seen packaging shrink.

as well as paychecks.

it's a global full court press, & it all stems from the defining moment WHEN THEY BAILED OUT THE BANKSTERS AND NEGLIGED TO EITHER PROSECUTE OR REFORM.

[Name removed]

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[defendandprotect]

43. It's about the Elite's "third world Egypt" and "third world America" ....

[Quantess]

45. When people are THIS angry, it's not just about one thing...

all of what you mentioned are factors, as well as more specific reasons.

[Fire1]

46. By George, I think you've got it!! n/t

[burrowowl]

49. When will Americans also

take to the streets?
We have almost the same conditions.

[OnionPatch]

50. When I was there some 15 years ago

we were shown that there was a whole community of people who lived in the dump. IN the dump. They lived off of the garbage they collected from everyone else. Nobody paid trash fees because the "dump people" would come by in their donkey carts to collect it and take it home to scavenge through. The poverty was sickening. Women with scrawny babies sitting in doorsteps, nearly too downtrodden to even bother begging anymore. I remember working with a man who asked me how I could afford to ride a taxi to work everyday since it cost so much (about 50 cents a day.) And this was in a legal office.

Whatever comes of this, I pray it will mean something better for the people there.