The Egyptian military has issued an ultimatum to the government of President Morsi: “The armed forces repeats the invitation to fulfill the demands of the people and gives everyone 48 hours as a last chance to begin bearing the burdens of this historic circumstance.” It appears as if the military is trying to force Morsi to appoint different ministers to his cabinet as a way of defusing the tensions that have accumulated over the last few weeks. The ultimatum is a stinging rebuke to President Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi himself was confronted with a number of resignations from his cabinet, and how he fills those vacant slots will determine how the military will enact the ultimatum. It will be a very tense two days.
Francis Fukuyama is an extraordinary scholar–someone who will teach you something even as you disagree strenuously with his analysis. He has written an essay for the Wall Street Journal looking at the global protest movement as one consistent with the emerging middle classes in many countries. The proposition is consistent with many studies of revolutions in the past, but it raises an interesting question: what happens when the middle classes start to decline in power (as in the US and Europe)? Does the Middle Class revolt on the way up as well as on the way down?
19 firefighters died fighting a wildfire in Arizona over the weekend. In a very real sense this tragedy was predicted back in 2004 as 2 scientists at the University of California-Santa Cruz wrote a paper that argued that a reduction in the Arctic ice pack (and 2012 was the most reduced level of ice ever recorded in human history) would lead to drought conditions in the American Southwest. If that link is as strong as the scientists predicted, then the American Southwest will likely get significantly drier in the future.
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