Sunday, February 27, 2011

The Middle East Revolts Are About Food And Dignity, Not Democracy

The Middle East revolts are about hunger. The prices of most vital food staples such as wheat and corn, have doubled in the past year, as vast numbers of people are unemployed and millions more work but at subsistence pay, leaving them desperate to feed their families.

This is what set-off the revolts: hunger, anger and frustration at unresponsive and uncaring governments. As for democracy, no doubt many people would like that as well, but they lived with tyrants as leaders for many years and as those tyrants are overthrown, it is the armies that are taking control. Hopefully at some future time democracies will be born and flourish there.

But for now, these revolts are about breadlines and a deep desire for human dignity, something that should touch us all as we feel the suffering of our Middle Eastern brethren.

Dick

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is a very well reasoned statement.
I think a lot of people overlook the economic factor here. Food shortages --> inflation is a huge catalysis for what's going on.

And at the end of the day, we've got to ask ourselves, are we just going to be replacing one bad government with another?