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To: dougjn who wrote (14035)	8/23/1998 8:18:00 AM
From: limtex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

dougjn - **OT*** 1. Able I thought quite neatly described the phenomenon of how fanaticism can develop in a society. 2. Of course it is true that once upon a time Islamic civilization was more advanced in certain fields than its contemporaries and produced some advances but that was all a very long time ago and since then it went into what might have been terminal decline had it not been for the chance location in Arabia of what turned out to be a key commodity for the entire world during the Twentieth Century. It was funding from the revenues of that commodity that fueled the upsurge in the religion over the last thirty years. 3. Poverty is still one of the main issues. The masses from the Atlantic ocean to Indonesia remain dirt poor and without hope whilst most of the rest of the world improves economically despite the ups and downs that are implicit in the world economy over a given time. Their civilization has failed and failed them but the aderents and fanatics will sell the masses the same scapegoat story that the Germans were fed in 1918/19, the Stab in the Back story. This time they blame the US ( and of course Israel/ the Jews ...every nasty regime in the last two thousand years blamed the Jews) but their problem is poverty and religion. Interesting that when the inhabitants of those countries affected come the West they usually do very well and are a great contibution to our society. Only when the religion follows does the hatred start up. China is the biggest population on the world and went through a downturn in its fortunes for a couple of hundred years or so and then had fourty years of communism to contend with. Having a communist regime is like getting crude oil all over your body. It takes ages to get it all off and in the meantime slows you right down. But Taiwan prospers and so does Korea and Vietnam is getting on its feet. Russia has always been a mess and then it too had seventy years of communism to top it off. But it will get its act together even if more slowly than the rest even if it has to break up into even smaller units. India too is picking itself up even if slowly, it is the second biggest population on earth. As it happens there are almost as many Hindus as there are Moslems in the world but there isn't a great hate the West campaign on with the Hindus neither is there with the Bhudists of whom there are also quite a few. Mr Bin Laden (and others) has made his/their aims quite clear and they are firstly to get Americans out of "their" region and secondly to spread Islam over the whole world including America and to use whatever force necessary to achieve those aims. He's not going to go away and he will gather additional followers. Regards, L