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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (11143)	1/28/2002 4:05:22 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Re: For you, everyone and everybody, except yourself, is involved in a complex, insidious plot, but, at the same time, everyone is incompetent. LOL! You're a shrewd customer... But you've put it pretty well. Now let me tell you what I was thinking about all that mess as I strolled toward my computer den. I thought to myself that the whole Middle East/Arab conflict basically boils down to a demographic crisis. Yet, it's a crisis that concerns Europe, Russia and Israel only. The Yanks merely try to broker a durable modus vivendi between all the parties; the US does its best to defuse the situation. As far as Europe is concerned, we all know that its native population is aging and, in several countries (Germany, Italy, a.o.) declining. Of course, migrant minorities from the Maghreb and Turkey still make up only a small fraction of the total EU population --that is, between 3% and 9%. However, they act as active minorities as they've mainly settled in big/capital cities and account for a sizable part of the GDP of their host countries. As a sociological group, immigrants are far more "critical" than the farmers (who make up only 2-3% of the workforce and soak up half of all EU monies). Same with Israel: it's almost laughable to hear that PM Ariel Sharon himself takes the trouble to personally welcome a family of Argentine Jews at Ben Gurion Airport --like a desperate hotel manager anxious to lure more customers in.... Indeed, Israel's real challenge is all about demographics: the Russian pool's been drained off, most of the Jews living in the Arab world have also made it to Israel (Morocco,...). So, who's left? American Jews and (West) European Jews --both of them being rather reluctant to relocate in Israel. As for Russia, the picture is even gloomier: Russia's population is dwindling at a rate of 750,000 units/year. Russia no longer has the financial and human resources to contain its buoyant Central Asian backyard... Gus