EGYPT: THE STRUGGLES TO COME

So the dictator of Egypt has been overthrown. Dictators have to be sure that the military is on his side, which didn't happen. As difficult as that was, the most difficult part is yet to come. Did the military want to take over and used the demonstrations as an excuse? For the time being, the military is in charge, but will the military turn the country to democracy after a suitable period ? After all, Mubarak originally said he would only stay for two terms, but he got to like it and overstayed his welcome. But the difficult road to democracy is just one of the questions.

A really big question is the matter of food. It appears that Egypt overall imports more than half of the food consumed. The only crop in which Egypt is self sufficient is rice, but wheat is the main staple for Egyptians and they import most of it. At one time they were self sufficient in agriculture, but rapid overpopulation has destroyed that. (http://countrystudies.us/egypt/84.htm). It will not be easy to become self sufficient again because rain-watered land is non-existent in Egypt with the "wettest" areas averaging only 2-in./yr of precipitation. Thus agriculture must be concentrated near the Nile or, in some case, near artisan aquifers. It is considered possible to increase the amount of reclaimed agricultural land and perhaps decrease the need for so much imported foods. About a third of the Egyptian workforce is devoted to agriculture.

Egypt recently has become an oil importing country; however, they have plenty of natural gas, some of which they are exporting and are trying to build up their natural gas industry. If there was peace in the Middle East, Egypt could do much more exporting by pipeline, but that is not the case and is unlikely to be the case in the foreseeable future.

A major part of the Egyptian economy revolves around cotton, including making cloth and finished goods, like clothing. This field has been hurt by the global recession.

Tourism is another major industry in Egypt and has been a major employer too. I suspect, however, that tourism will be hurt, perhaps severely, until a stable and friendly government is in place which may take a lot of time.

All in all, the future looks grim to me; however, if you read the writeup in Wikipedia, you could get the idea that things were pretty well under control with plans for improvements: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Egypt though the official unemployment is said to be around 11%. We were told during the demonstrations, however, that the unemployment of younger workers is about 25% which was one cause of the revolution so we shall see.

YOU ARE SO LUCKY (Biographical)

In 1965, we arrived in Tokyo, Japan, in the afternoon on Japan Airlines from Hawaii. We were a couple of geochemists (plus my wife) involved in the U.S.-Japan Scientific Cooperation Program. We were to be accompanied by some Japanese scientists to sample the volcanic rocks of all the active Japanese volcanoes but two under the tutelage of the legendary Professor Hitashi Kuno of the University of Tokyo. In Tokyo, we stayed at the Hilltop Hotel, a steel frame and brick structure which was indeed on the top of a hill.

That evening, we were taken to the Ginza to a restaurant for a sukiyaki dinner with Professor Myaki, whom I had briefly met when I was a student at the California Institute of Technology. But he also was the Professor of my partner, Dr. Mitsunobu Tatsumoto, when he was a graduate student at the Tokyo University of Education. Professor Myaki was famous for leading a small group that analyzed the radioactive fallout from a U.S. atom bomb on the Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon. In doing so, they found that the bomb had been of what was then a new type, a fusion and not a fission bomb - a hydrogen bomb. This so surprised the U.S. government, that they were sure that some spy had leaked the information. But they hadn’t accounted for the cleverness of the Japanese.

After the wonderful dinner, we left the restaurant and found there was a large parade on the Ginza, a very wide boulevard. Prof. Myaki said, "Ah, you are so lucky. We don’t have many demonstrations anymore." Then I noticed that as the groups of young people marched in orderly groups, many across, they would yell something about "‘Melicans" in unison. So I said to Prof. Myaki, "It sounds like they are saying, Yankee go home." He said, "Oh, no, but you are so lucky to see a demonstration." After appealing to some other Japanese in our party for a translation, I was finally told that the demonstration was an objection to the South Korean’s claim that the Japanese owed them reparations because of World War II. The Japanese felt that they had built a lot of factories in Korea so no more reparations were owed. The Koreans had countered that these factories were mainly in north Korea and didn’t count. Ah so, but I then asked why I kept hearing something about "‘Melicans this and ‘Melicans that?" "Oh," was the reply, "That is because you are siding with the Koreans." "Oh." I replied, "so it is Yankee go home." \

I began to look around and saw a huge crowd of people lining the Ginza with us being the only Caucasian faces I could see. This observation left me more than a little nervous, even though I did note about a dozen riot police nearby. Then there was a break in the demonstration and someone said, "Let’s go to the other side." I looked over to the other side and saw maybe twice as many riot police there so I was in total agreement. Once we were on the other side, someone said to me, "The demonstrators are the Zenga Kurin, a group of radical students, and, if you think the police are sympathetic with them, you are mistaken as these police have already put in a full day’s work. Soon the student’s will begin to snake around. Then the riot police will pull down their plastic shields over their faces and go out and beat the students with their night clubs. You are so lucky to see this." I replied that this was our first night in Tokyo, and we were so tired from our trip. We really would like to return to our hotel. So we were taken back. But it turned out that the students didn’t snake that night.

The first morning we were in Tokyo, there was an earthquake. The motion was lateral and not up and down so we were not over the epicenter; however, we were on the top, 5th floor, of the steel frame hotel so it was like being on the end of a seismograph needle and our room swayed back and forth alarmingly. My wife said, "Should we run down the stairs?" I yelled, "I couldn’t even make it to the door." as I held onto the bed. I figured that the hotel had survived many such earthquakes and that we would be all right. Though my emotional self wasn’t convinced of this rational reasoning during the event, my supposition proved to be correct. The earthquake seemed to last forever, but lasted for maybe 15 or 20 seconds at most. Soon after it was over, the telephone rang. One of my Japanese acquaintances was on the phone and asked, "How did you like your welcome to Tokyo earthquake? You are so lucky."

The following morning, there was a newscast of a typhoon coming. Shortly after that, the phone rang and another Japanese acquaintance said, "Ah, you are so lucky. You will experience a typhoon." Well, we were "unlucky" in this instance and the typhoon didn’t hit Tokyo or, at least, not where we were.

So I wrote to my mother, telling her of these events and saying, "The Japanese have such a wonderful attitude. You are so lucky to experience all of life’s disasters."