[evilgenius]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear Islam blamed for the failures of the West as it intervenes in the Arab World. The West is failing for much more obvious reasons. The chief reason being that the Arabs have nothing to lose.

Consider things the way they are. The Arab world is separated into various kingdoms where the elites reap not just off the top but off of the whole. There are no industries in the Middle-East that take advantage of what should be very cheap energy costs. There is no naturally occurring middle class. There is only the middle class of hand outs from the elite structure.

I maintain that the powers that be in the West have always been afraid to encourage the Arabs to use their own oil. They have been afraid because it might choke their own economic miracle. I believe that this have proven to be a mistake.

Now that peak is certainly approaching the folly of this is obvious. The West has created a capricious monster that seeks to satiate its own self. No Arab state can be trusted to survive the coming tumult intact and friendly to the West. Even Saudi Arabia could turn on the West at any moment. Everywhere there is a populace that thinks Islam can give it what only the true and meaningful secularization of their states can give them.

Is it too late to industrialize the Arab world and in so doing give it a true middle class? Imagine an Arab world where in every country insurgents and agitators were put down by the people around them, in their own communities, because they posed too great a threat to their successful middle class way of life. Imagine an Arab world where the police forces adequately handled the problems and there was no need, and indeed it would be counter-productive, for the military to intervene.

Imagine an Arab world that rose up quickly to compete with China not because of any central planning but because of circumstances beneficial to it.

Imagine an Arab world that no longer had to arrive at political decisions based on the influence of its narrow pipeline of customers but rather based on a much more broken up and complex array of client countries that bought from it everything from aluminum to plastic.

Imagine a Palestine that could negotiate with Israel on an equal footing because of the jobs available to its residents in neighboring countries or in Palestine itself. Further, imagine a Palestine whose population no longer sought war with Israel because it knew that to do so would imperil everything that it had achieved to gain success. Conversely, imagine Israel no longer reliant on cheap Palestinian labor and the stronger for it.

Is it possible? I think so, but alas...

[ohanian]

You should thank your Allah that the arabs are not industrious like the chinese because otherwise they will be controlling all the oil in the middle east and selling underprice consumers and industrial goods to the rest of the oil deprived world and constantly denying oil to their compatitors.

Oh yes, you have to be a muslim to buy their goods at "muslim prices".
Everyone else has to pay "infidel prices".

[evilgenius]

You make an assumption when you say, my Allah.

The truth is that the first recession caused by a two tiered muslim non-muslim pricing structure would have killed any such structure. The market would have done away with that in the same way that the spot market has done away with nations independently setting the price of a barrel of oil.

People only accept the interference of religion in economics when for some reason the economics is not allowed to work properly. When the reason is obscure the people tend to think that the answer must be moral in nature. That is the way it is in America with the religious right and that is the way it would work for the Arabs too.

[Fergus]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I hear Islam blamed for the failures of the West as it intervenes in the Arab World. The West is failing for much more obvious reasons. The chief reason being that the Arabs have nothing to lose.

Consider things the way they are. The Arab world is separated into various kingdoms where the elites reap not just off the top but off of the whole. There are no industries in the Middle-East that take advantage of what should be very cheap energy costs. There is no naturally occurring middle class. There is only the middle class of hand outs from the elite structure.

I maintain that the powers that be in the West have always been afraid to encourage the Arabs to use their own oil. They have been afraid because it might choke their own economic miracle. I believe that this have proven to be a mistake.

Now that peak is certainly approaching the folly of this is obvious. The West has created a capricious monster that seeks to satiate its own self. No Arab state can be trusted to survive the coming tumult intact and friendly to the West. Even Saudi Arabia could turn on the West at any moment. Everywhere there is a populace that thinks Islam can give it what only the true and meaningful secularization of their states can give them.

Is it too late to industrialize the Arab world and in so doing give it a true middle class? Imagine an Arab world where in every country insurgents and agitators were put down by the people around them, in their own communities, because they posed too great a threat to their successful middle class way of life. Imagine an Arab world where the police forces adequately handled the problems and there was no need, and indeed it would be counter-productive, for the military to intervene.

Imagine an Arab world that rose up quickly to compete with China not because of any central planning but because of circumstances beneficial to it.

Imagine an Arab world that no longer had to arrive at political decisions based on the influence of its narrow pipeline of customers but rather based on a much more broken up and complex array of client countries that bought from it everything from aluminum to plastic.

Imagine a Palestine that could negotiate with Israel on an equal footing because of the jobs available to its residents in neighboring countries or in Palestine itself. Further, imagine a Palestine whose population no longer sought war with Israel because it knew that to do so would imperil everything that it had achieved to gain success. Conversely, imagine Israel no longer reliant on cheap Palestinian labor and the stronger for it.

Is it possible? I think so, but alas...

As I see it, islam has nothing to do with the war. Sure a few fanatics kidnapped and few pple and shot a bunch of others. But again as I see it, this war is about securing future oil. Since these Islamic based governments have the oil we need, they are the unlucky ones that gets the attention of the US war machine. But the war has nothing to do, or very little to do with being muslim. Now if the fanatics had not shot up the place and traised hell with American interests there, we might have had a harder time getting our nose in their business, but they opened the door and the Americans came charging in to rescue the world from the same fanatics as a cover to secure oil for the future.

Its got nothing to do with muslims, middle class or even the pple. Its about oil.

[evilgenius]

I agree. I also think that it is the West's insistance on fearing a true global world economy for all things oil that has gotten us here. They could not imagine a world where the oil producing countries, that's more the way I should have put it, had a future as wide open as the West. Sad because we could use some real allies over there, not the kind likely to melt away without coercion.

War for what is left wouldn't even be necessary if the West had played its cards right. When will the powers that be learn to stop listening to those who so voiciferously point out other's percieved weaknesses while hiding their own with equal rancor and drive?

It might not be too late to reverse course. I doubt that anyone in the current US administration has a clue, but the Europeans will definitely looking for a way out as soon as the Russians tighten the vise.

[evilgenius]

I'll post this here because it is a relevant place for it.

I just listened to Tony Blair admit that the illegal immigrant problem in the UK is mostly due to economic refugees and not to legitimate political asylum seekers. That wouldn't be the case if the oil producing countries had by now adopted a different stance vis a vis the economic use of their own oil. Those people would instead be flocking to the oil producing countries, or staying put there, as those very countries and their neighbors are a big part of the European illegal immigration problem.

It was the West's responsibility long ago to develop new technologies that could have gotten it past its reliance on oil. They should have done this because of the time involved for discovery of new technologies and because they otherwise knowingly use up a limited resource that should belong to the world as a whole. People like Tony Blair, a man of a certain integrity, find themselves having to justify the unjustifiable because the West has dropped the ball. It will cost billions and it threatens to rearrange the basic taxing structure that lets the rich stay rich. The West needs to spend 100's of billions on alt energy research. The rich should realize that they can adjust to a new order that requires more from them.