. Re: IP: Arab development

[David Farber <dfarber@earthlink.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Hinden <hinden@iprg.nokia.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2002 11:19:58 
To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Re: IP: Arab development

Dave,

This is a very good article that creates hope that there can be positive 
change in the arab world.  Unfortunately, if one actually follows the link 
to the actual UN report ( http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/) , the UN report 
includes in it's overview a section describing why all of the arab's 
problems are caused by Israel (and by implication the US), and, of course, 
no mention of terrorism.  My guess is that one can't publish anything in 
the arab world that is at all critical unless it first blaming Israel for 
all of the problems.  We have a long way to go.

Bob



At 10:59 AM 7/6/2002, David Farber wrote:

>-----Original Message-----
>From: "Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli" <mo@idiopathic.com>
>Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 15:16:55
>To: <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
>Subject: Arab development
>
>Dear Dave,
>I thought IP'ers might be interested in this article about a recent
>UN's report. It details reasons for the Arab world's consistently bad
>record on progress and development. (The article also contains a link
>to the UN's original report).
>
>======================================================================
>=======
>
>Arab development
>
>Self-doomed to failure
>Jul 4th 2002
> >From The Economist print edition
>
>"An unsparing new report by Arab scholars explains why their region
>lags behind so much of the world
>
>"WHAT went wrong with the Arab world? Why is it so stuck behind the
>times? It is not an obviously unlucky region. Fatly endowed with oil,
>and with its people sharing a rich cultural, religious and linguistic
>heritage, it is faced neither with endemic poverty nor with ethnic
>conflict. It shook off its colonial or neo-colonial legacies long ago,
>and the countries that had revolutions should have had time to recover
>from them. But, with barely an exception, its autocratic rulers,
>whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they
>die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as
>lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young,
>burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious
>tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they
>can.
>
>"Across dinner tables from Morocco to the Gulf, but above all in
>Egypt, the Arab world's natural leader, Arab intellectuals endlessly
>ask one another how and why things came to turn out in this
>unnecessarily bad way. A team of such scholars (it is indicative of
>the barriers to freely expressed thought that there are almost no
>worthwhile think-tanks in the Arab world) have now spent a year
>putting their experience to diagnostic use in the "Arab Human
>Development Report 2002", published this week by the United Nations
>Development Programme (UNDP)." [snip]
>
>http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1213392
>
>======================================================================
>=======
>
>mo
>
>Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
>e mo@idiopathic.com
>w www.idiopathic.com/mo
>w www.handheldsfordoctors.com
>w www.medicalapproaches.com
>
>For archives see:
>http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

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