Egypt, Bread and Islamic Circuses

Spengler defends against his critics.

I can vouch for the fact that Goldman called the North African uprisings "bread riots" right from the start.  He never saw it as a move toward democracy but rather as a cry of desperation.  That the situation is deteriorating in Egypt and Libya indicates that he called it correctly.

The monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Japanese Central Bank, along with growth in demand from India and China, has put upward pressure on food prices while decreasing the available supply in the poor and barren regions of North Africa.  

Islamic militants have taken advantage of the situation to unseat western-friendly strongmen and "democratically" replace them with their sharia-sympathizers, but the basic cause of the unrest remains outside of the militants' control.  The rather naive support of NATO and the U.S. has given the militants access to additional weaponry.  The situation will remain unstable where the nation does not devolve into an outright authoritarian, Taliban-like Islamic "republic". 

In essence we are in the process of creating a whole tier of Afghanistans with the potential to wage effective war on Israel while threatening Middle Eastern oil supplies. 

This may not end well.