Check this out from Bloomberg:

Egypt's Stagnant Economic Growth Fuels Protests: Chart of the Day

First of all, Lebanon??? I mean, off the charts.
Secondly, how much does recent food inflation have to do with the Egyptian demos? I had someone tell me that the whole thing boiled down to food inflation driven by the Fed's easing policy. Leaving aside the latter, is food inflation a big deal in the poorer parts of the world now?

There is a direct connection between despairing messed up economics and the vampiric regime that rules them. But these events are different in kind -- bread (price) riots in poorer countries are dime a dozen and common intermittent storms; but mass cross-class broad confident sustained public actions to remove a dictatorial regime successfully in MENA as happened in Tunisia recently and is touch-and-go now Egypt are earthquakes. And novel ones too.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Seemed like a completely nutty theory, but figured I should run it past you guys just in case.
But on Lebanon, what's been going on there? That chart shows some wild growth.

1991, end of the civil war for a country otherwise under its potential. Democratic country since (imperfect, but still), with free business rules.

Thanks shaheen. That's what I suspected.
The gap between what we get reported to us here and what's actually going on over there is huge.