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.