It takes a prince of
darkness like Daniel Pipes who set out to spread ignorance in America , to
draw attention to the light of dawn that is breaking on a region of the world
where other princes like him have managed to impose their brand of darkness for
a while but have failed to maintain it.
And in the way that
the creatures of the deep have always done things, Pipes is alleviating his
pain and consoling his comrades by working to make the American people believe
in the lie that the situation which he and his kind have failed to achieve,
does indeed exist and has always existed. He tells the sons and daughters of America about a
condition that is so exaggerated, it does not exist as he describes it.
Nevertheless, he counsels his audiences to get hysterical about it because it
will breed consequences that will soon hurt them.
Pipes does that in
an article that is titled: “Hunger growls in Egypt ” and the subtitle: “A growing
population and shrinking farmland lead to food shortages.” It was published on
October 3, 2014 in the Washington Times. His message as stated at the end of
the article is this: “Starvation in Egypt
is yet another of the Middle East 's problems
which outsiders cannot solve, only protect themselves from.” Are you hysterical
yet?
There are two
important points to consider here. First, what does he do to navigate his way
to that conclusion? Second, why does he want to do that now? Well, the second
question being the easiest to answer, I begin with it. As it happens to
everyone when the time is ripe, Egypt
has gone through a difficult period that lasted three years. The promise that
was there for an economic miracle to take off before the events, vanished over
the period. However, the miracle is coming back with a vengeance, now that the
difficulties are over.
And so, instead of Egypt being one
of the “Next Eleven” on the way to becoming an economic tiger, it now stands
alone as a one of a kind economic giant in the making. This is happening
because large pools of investment money from around the world are flowing into
the country to participate in the massive projects that were started recently,
and that will rival those undertaken in the places where explosive growth has
resulted in the past. The goal of Daniel Pipes and those like him is to tell
potential American investors not to participate. The fear that Pipes and the
others harbor is that the more the Americans get involved in the Arab world,
the more the Jewish influence on America is reduced.
Now to the first
question. How does the author of the article navigate his way to that
conclusion? Well, he follows the Friedman/NYT method of balancing out every
grain of truth with a ton of lies, every Arab accomplishment with a ton of
Jewish pretenses, and every Arab reality with a ton of Jewish fantasies. For
example, when a rabbi saw he could not collect enough money to feed the Jews of
Israel, he founded the kind of fellowship that only a Jew would found. It is
one in which the Christian fellow gives and the Jewish fellow grabs and runs
with it.
This told the world
that contrary to the claims made by the Jewish propaganda machine to the effect
that Israel is a technological whiz nation, it is in reality a Third World
hellhole that has managed to evaporate a trillion dollars in aid donated to a
population of Jews that ranged from one million to 5 million people over a
period of 70 years. And while these realities were coming to the fore, a set of
heretofore unknown realities about Egypt were also coming to the fore.
They revealed that Egypt was
one of the three best fed nations in the world; the other two being America and Germany .
So then, in the face
of these realities coming to the fore, what do you think the Friedman/NYT book
says must be done to balance things out in the Jewish style? Well, they spun
things; that's what they did. Yeah, they look kinda skinny in Israel and kinda plump in Egypt , they said, but that's only because in Israel they follow the anorexic fashion of the
high class society whereas in Egypt
they eat the unhealthy starchy foods of the poor. Starchy foods? What kind of
starchy foods? “Kushari,” says Daniel Pipes. What about kushari? Oh my God, he
wants you to believe he knows all about it. Here is what he says: “Egypt 's poor
rely on the infamous all-starch kushari that causes both nutritional
deficiencies and obesity.”
If only he knew. The
poor man, if only he knew he was digging himself a hole to bury him several
times over. Well, let me tell you, my friend, what could have happened that
caused this man to blunder so badly. He must have collected pieces of
information from several sources, and stitched them together not knowing that
the pieces were not compatible.
To begin with,
kushari is a delicious meal that is prized by all classes in Egypt . It is
made with rice and lentils. Rice is starchy but lentil is not. It is a pulse
that is often recommended to those who wish to lose weight. As for rice, it is
the most consumed grain in the world, mostly by the Asians who are not exactly
suffering from obesity. What counts is not only what you eat, but also how much
of it you eat. And the Egyptians have been big eaters since ancient times. They
get fat on everything because they eat too much of everything.
What is starchy in
what the Egyptians eat a great deal of is wheat. And that's because it has been
a part of their culture since ancient times. They have a surplus of rice which
they export, and they use the money to import wheat to supplement what they
produce locally. And this is what's at the core of the whole controversy
regarding the food situation in Egypt .
The truth is that much disinformation is tossed around by the opposition groups
in that country, and this provides ammunition to the Friedmans and the Times of
the world to produce all the lies, pretenses and fantasies that make their day.
The reality is that
of the 93 million or so Egyptians in the world today, 85 million live in Egypt , each
consuming a pound of wheat a day on average. When you do the math, the total
consumption comes to 14 million tons a year. They produce locally 9 million
tons, and need to buy 5 million to fill the gap. At 400 dollars a ton, it costs
them 2 billion dollars a year to import wheat. This is how much they bought
this year, down from the 10 million that the country used to import in previous
years. Why was that? Because the program of subsidies was without controls and
was rife with corruption. Gangs were buying wheat from abroad, passed it as
locally produced, got subsidies for that, and then re-exported the wheat. But
now that a system of controls has been introduced, the corruption has vanished,
and the figures are back to where they should be.
To a country that
exports 60 billion dollars worth of goods and services, 2 billion dollars to
import wheat is not a figure that should alarm anyone, especially when you
consider the fact that 10 percent of the 60 billion in export is in processed
foods and other agricultural products. In short, the whole controversy about
the wheat situation in Egypt
is but a tempest in a tea pot. And to put that thing behind them for good, the
Egyptians have started building silos that will store 50 million tons of wheat
and other grains. With this, they plan to turn Egypt into a hub for the trade in
commodities.
But that's not all
they are doing in this vein. There is a place called the golden triangle in the
Eastern Desert
Now, those who
understand economics and those who trade on the stock market know something
that everyone must learn about. It is that the state of transportation is a
leading indicator as to the overall health of the economy. When it starts going
up, you know it is time to buy the market.
And by coincidence,
something that tells a nice little story was published at the same time as the
Pipes article. It has the title: “Egyptian delegation eyes Chattanooga products during buying mission,”
was written by Dave Flessner and published on the website Timesfreepress.com.