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MER EDITORIAL:
G A S O L I N E   C H E A P E R   T H A N   W A T E R  I N    T H E   U.S.A.  
   A R A B    R E G I M E S    O U T D O N E  A T    E V E R Y    T U R N
            AS IF THE ERA OF COLONIALISM NEVER ENDED
 

MER - Washington - 10 March:
   For the West, the U.S. in the lead, the Middle East is about oil, Israel, petrodollars, and arms sales -- though the order is sometimes in doubt.  The American economy artificially floats on a vast sea of
cheap energy, recycled petrodollars, and massive arms sales -- all because of military and technological dominance of the Middle East.
   In the USA gas at the pump is cheaper than water these days -- even after transporting it half way around the world plus all the other expenses involved in refining and distributing!
   At every turn -- be it political, economic or cultural -- the Arabs are outclassed, outfoxed, and much more often than naught outright deceived and tricked.  The petro regimes -- Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
in the lead -- are little more than American protectorates whose regimes are manipulated to squander their resources and control their populations at the dictate of the West.  And the American-sponsored
"Peace Process" is little more than an ongoing plot to keep the region under American/Israeli domination while forcing the Palestinians onto the equivalent of modern-day Reservations and Bantustans.
   Throughout the Middle East today there is tremendous poverty and underdevelopement, unprecedented corruption and repression, a massive gap between the few wealthy controlling families and the masses; and seething resentment and depression.
   Furthermore -- as but one sign of what has happened to the Arab Middle East this century since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the takeover of the West -- the little country of Israel has
military power more than seven times greater than all the Arab States combined, and but for oil greater economic power as well.
    Corruption, greed, mismanagement and co-optation -- these are all words easily applicable to the Arab "client regimes" that are today holding the entire Middle Eastern region in their feudal grip.
    Rather than controlling and managing their resources for the benefit of their own peoples; rather than developing their countries with industrial and modern-day institutions; rather than building up
the Middle East region to be the equal of others in today's fast- paced world, the Arab regimes force their people to languish in powerlessness on behalf of those who keep them in power from afar.
    It is as if the era of colonialism never really ended.

 

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