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We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all.

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http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9302

[ 04 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 04 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 05 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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The operational mistake that middle east experts keep making is the failure to recognise that backward societies must be left alone, as the French now wisely leave Corsica to its own devices, as the Italians quietly learned to do in Sicily, once they recognised that maxi-trials merely handed over control to a newer and smarter mafia of doctors and lawyers. With neither invasions nor friendly engagements, the peoples of the middle east should finally be allowed to have their own history—the one thing that middle east experts of all stripes seem determined to deny them.

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The operational mistake that middle east experts keep making is the failure to recognise that backward societies must be left alone, as the French now wisely leave Corsica to its own devices, as the Italians quietly learned to do in Sicily, once they recognised that maxi-trials merely handed over control to a newer and smarter mafia of doctors and lawyers.

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The problem with this line of thinking is that it ignores the fact that we live in a globilized world. What happens in the Middle East effects North America and what happens in North America effects the Middle East. To ignore the region is fool hardy. Yes, we should stop funding dictatorships in the Gulf, Levant and Mesopotamia, but we should never dismiss West Asia is unimportant.

[ 04 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 04 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Not all Arab states have wasted their oil money. The Baathist regime in Iraq used it to build schools and hospitals.

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Did any of the countries invest in creating any sustainable industry? Schools and hospitals can't run forever without money.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
I don't know. They're are probably people in the Middle East who are trying to make their countries less dependent on hand outs from the west and oil money, but such change is difficult, especially when most of the nations in the region are controlled by regimes which owe their existance to imperial Washington.

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Decades of US (and allied) support for wretched regimes in the Mideast has been a terrible mistake. Those regimes—and regimes that the US (and its allies) opposed—have wasted trillions of dollars of the peoples' wealth.

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It is a terrible lost opportunity.

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One forgets the Middle East is the way it is because of a hundred years of deep European/American imperialism. Heck, many of countries were created by the French and the British, including Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, etc...

[ 11 May 2007: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]