[Ifroham4]

by Austin Bay
July 30, 2008Oil 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.

The book is not a political polemic -- it is penetrating scholarship addressing persistent, fundamental structural issues that defy polemics. It analyzes problems that disregard America's four-year presidential election cycle and utterly defy the power of any theoretical popular two-term president whose party enjoys overwhelming congressional majorities.

Caesar divided Gaul into three parts. Cooper and Yue divide the Muslim world's challenges into three categories: oil, testosterone and war. OK, I'm synthesizing. The authors' three are: Consumption, Production and Location of Oil and Natural Gas; Demographic Changes and Social Instability; and History and the Contemporary Scene.

The authors have the communicator's knack many statisticians lack -- the ability to produce charts and figures that turn complex data bits and algorithmic contortions into dynamic pictures that explain. One such chart explains why gasoline prices in the United States have climbed roughly 70 percent since Cooper created the "World Energy Consumption by Economies, 1970-2025" in 2006.

The chart is "oil agnostic" -- it considers energy demands in quadrillion BTUs. In 1970, the world required 300 quadrillion BTUs; make it 645 quadrillion for 2025. The percentage consumed by "mature economies" (like the United States) declines from 65 percent to 42 percent. "Emerging economies" (China) rise from 16 percent to 46 percent. If the numbers boggle, slap your wallet and examine them again.

No matter how much energy any nation conserves, no matter how quickly anyone develops alternative energy sources, the data shows oil and natural gas will power the world economy through the first half of the century (and probably beyond).

The predominantly Muslim Middle East's vast oil reserves mean what happens in these Muslim lands matters and will continue to matter. The authors write, "A peaceful and stable Muslim world is key to stable and growing oil markets."

However, demographic change and economic development (or lack of it) impact "world peace and prosperity." We move to sex -- growing populations and the deadly "bifurcation" between the modern and the Muslim world: "The Muslim world seems unable to improve the standard of living for the majority of its populations even with the enormous wealth generated by precious energy resources."

More mouths to feed and more minds to educate are developmental pressures, but Cooper and Yue also analyze in detail the "troublesome cohort of male youngsters in ages from 15 to 29," arguing this helps "understand why some populations behave more violently or manifest disturbances in certain time periods."

Unemployed young men are easy prey for autocrats and theocrats using "historical grievances" (several 800 years old) to deflect blame for current circumstances. Cooper and Yue, after considering history and ideology in light of "demographic transformations and economic interconnections" conclude "the Muslim world is now at a critical inflection point," where it can either "join global communities for peace and prosperity" or "continue fighting" with itself and the rest of the world as its demographic and economic problems mount.

Put this book at the top of Barack Obama and John McCain's summer reading list.

http://www.strategypage.com/on_point/2008073012715.aspx

[Drugmachine]

The uniting factor in Isalm today is a political and religious belief that the Jews have no 'right of return'.

When it is convienent for the Muslims they will quote the Torah, but when faced with hard evidence in the Torah of the Jews right of return to Israel, they fall back to their "corrupted" view of the Torah.

We MUST confront this on the World Political Stage. We are being challenged nearly every day there by the Iranian claims that Zionism is evil. While the political reasons for Israel's creation are sound, they are becoming rapidly ancient, as the existing generation has no real memory of the horrors of World War II. The real reason for Israel's creation is that God promised that a decendent of David would sit on the throne forever, and that Israel would forever be a nation. We need to point this out, regardless of those secular political scientist majors that will certainly object. If Israel is to be a Jewish Nation, should Israel not also lead by example of proclaiming the eternal words of our prophets?

Islam's weakness is a claim to believe in all of our Prophets, this weakness needs to be exposed, and driven home that the words we have recorded as them saying are authentic and mean exactly what they say, and dare Isalmic leaders to deny it. Expose the real reasons for the Islamic Anti-Semitism, and challenge them to prove their claims that the Jews are to be exciled forever. Further a challenge should be made about who the real author of the Quran is, why it undermines, contridicts what the Prophets are recorded as saying, and most importantly why they choose to ignore all of these Prophets, and tell us exactly how their writings were corrupted, and PROVE it.

They claim a "Right of Return", we should put it in their face, not until they accept the "JEWS Right of Return"....

d-

[Big A]

And what would you think of the veracity of Muslim authentication methods if we accepted 100%? Would 10% make the hadiths more true in your eyes? Isn't it true that the writings of the Talmud underwent a varification process?

[Peptobismol]

That is a good point.

The Indoctrination of Islam is formidable to those who revert. Keeping your point of view is only possible by the strongest of minds, and hearts.

Those who do survie the constant brow beating by their peers, in Islamic nations, face the wrath of those who have dicovered the power of accusation in a court of law, where authorities dictate a penalty that can be as severe as death to apostates.

Islam today is a cult pure and simple.

[Drugmachine]

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell