MeccaFrom Austin Bay:
Oil and unemployed testosterone don't mix, they collide -- with war the likely result.
"Economics and demographics" lack the sizzle of oil and testosterone, which as eye-grabbers are an Oprah-notch below money and sex. But in the grand sense of geo-strategy and the intricate 21st century problems that produce wars, poverty and other forms of sustained misery, economics and demographics are the fire.
Anyone looking for instant soundbites won't find them in William Cooper and Piyu Yue's "Challenges of the Muslim World, Present, Future, and Past" (Elsevier, 2008). Cooper is an economist at the University of Texas. A spry 94 years old, he's comfortable with detailed history as well as voluminous data. Yue works at the University of Texas' IC2 Institute.
Read more ....
My Comment: From my point of view .... I believe it is the cultural component of Arab society that is probably the main ingredient that is causing so much grief for so many Arabs in the Middle East. Religious, cultural, and political intolerance are systemic in so much
of the Middle East. Treatment of women, an educational system that focuses on religious indoctrination, and limits on press freedoms, accountability, and political discourse have fed and produced a society that is now behind in every metric for a 21rst century society.
Can this cycle be broken .... the underlying purpose of the Iraq invasion and occupation was to change an Arab society with this mindset, and if successful be hopeful that this would then produce a trend in the rest of the Arab world. The next generation will tell us if we have been successful or not.