A very interesting year draws to a close...

A very interesting year is drawing to a close – the public started to assert its authority over the ongoing economic crisis, titans fell (from Steve Jobs, to Col. Gaddafi) and News International looked extremely bad indeed.  One has to wonder if 2012’s news can possibly live up to 2011’s.

It could be said though, that all these momentous events point to a more general malaise of the world around us.  When you look more deeply at news stories, it may be that there is more than just the ruler hated by his public, or students suddenly complaining about their already high fees.  Let’s take the example of the Arab Spring:

At the NUS Student Media Summit back in the Autumn, I spoke to a respected investigative journalist.  As an example of his work, he gave us some info on the background to the Arab Spring.  It turned out that a Russian investor had bet billions of dollars on a low future price of Russian grain.  But back in 2010, the grain harvest in Russia was terrible.  Realising this would send prices skyrocketing and that he would have to pay the extra cash, this investor visited Russian PM, Vladimir Putin. ‘Coincidentally’ the next week, Putin announced that no Russian grain would be exported from the 2010 harvest, saving the investor his money.  But who should be be the biggest importers of Russian grain?  The North African Arab countries.  So while the price hovered in Russia, it rose prohibitively on the North African coast.  Huge social unrest followed.

That is not the first time that grain prices have revolutionised North Africa either.  During the 70s, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stopped huge grain subsidies as part of trade deals with the US, leaving many people to starve.  Seeing an opportunity, radical religious groups began to give out bread from mosques and community centres, converting whole swathes of the population to the ideas both militant and civil hard islamist organisations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now doing so well in the Egyptian elections.

The lesson of the story?  When Governments ignore the people, instead pandering to their business contacts – looking after the economy instead of the people – the public will start looking for other ways to get their voice heard.  We are starting to see that, with riots right across the last year and even last week, with around 5% of the entire working population on strike.