Caution: Storm Approaching

by Carline B. Glick - July 15th, 2011 - Jerusalem Post

It was seven months ago that Mohammed Bouazizi, a vegetable peddler in Tunisia, set himself and the Arab world on fire. The 26- year-old staged his suicidal protest on the steps of the local city hall after a municipal inspector took away his unlicensed vegetable cart, thus denying him the ability to feed his family of eight.

Most depictions of the Arab revolutions that followed his act have cast them as struggles for freedom and good government. These depictions miss the main cause of these political upheavals. No doubt millions of Arabs are upset about the freedom deficit in Arab lands. But the fact is that economics has played a decisive role in all of them.

In Bouazizi’s case, his self-immolation was provoked by financial desperation. And if current trends continue, the revolutionary ferment we have seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg.

Moreover, the political whirlwind will not be contained in the Middle East.

The last time the world at large bought into the Keynesian idiocy was during the great depression of the last century. The same economic crisis that lead to hunger and then starvation a century ago is once again finding leaders who use its misguided Utopian dream a panacea for economic stagnation. The hopelessness of the situation in various countries of the world led to a general rejection of cultural stability and fed into the growing willingness to resort to the horrors of war to solve each nation's problems. When such conditions prevail, any nation capable of feeding itself is a major target of the nation's whose leadership has to find a way to feed its own people or face annihilation from brutal purges at the hands of the mob.

War is coming. Pakistan, North Korea and Iran are not meaningfully different than Germany, Japan and Italy were in the 1930s. Their governments are risking everything to be a part of the nuclear club because they recognize, survival in the coming years will be dependent on armed might. Russia and China are in the same situation. Both have allowed a certain economic growth. Instead of staving off the coming horrors, they have created a growing hope that will not be contained even within their own countries when the world economy collapses.

At the same time three movements seek our destruction. Global socialism, islamofascism and larazan racism are daily finding new adherents who seek someone to blame for their economic distress. America is becoming a scapegoat for starvation and poverty we did not cause. However those who seek scapegoats are not going to discuss their problems rationally. The discussions will take place when they have their boots on our throats, our food in their bellies and our wealth in their bank accounts.

There is a storm approaching. World War in the form of nuclear Armageddon will be war as we have never seen it before. Yet our leaders dither. They argue about who gets to be in charge when the bombs start dropping, yet both sides refuse to accept the bombs are coming.