Posted on 08/19/2002 2:18:09 PM PDT by scratchgolfer
“The Situation is Really Bad”
15 August 2002
A senior Saudi Arabian columnist for Arab News and the al-Madina Newspapers group, Abdul Qader Tash, last week wrote a rare, self-critical article, entitled “Realities We Can’t Blame Others For”. The article comes in reaction to a recent report on the Arab world prepared by the United Nations Development Fund and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, which, according to Tash, “presents a depressing reality that we cannot blame others for. Nor can it be dismissed as a propaganda gimmick by our ‘enemies’.” The report, prepared by Arab researchers, succeeds in “painting vivid picture of the wretchedness of the people in Arab countries,” writes the Saudi columnist (For a more culturally-oriented analysis by an Arab author see our own Arab Press Review).
The report points to three areas of underdevelopment in the Arab world, according to the Arab News: “[L]ack of freedom, marginal participation of women in public life and educational backwardness.” According to Tash, “Arab people enjoy least freedom compared to any other region in the world… Arab women get the least opportunity to participate in the economic and political activities compared to any other place in the world. The level of education among Arab women is the lowest in the world. More than 50 percent of them are illiterate.” In general, the Arab world suffers from “educational backwardness,” according to Tash. The rate of illiteracy among Arabs is reported to be 43 percent of the Arab population. In addtion, the Arab News reports, “Only 0.5 percent Arabs have access to Internet. It is also the lowest in the world.”
As for books, the Saudi columnist informs his readers of the following incredible statistics: “The total number of translated works to Arabic in the last 10 centuries is the same as the number of books translated in one year to Spanish. The pitiful number of 220 books translated to Arabic annually is only one-fifth of the works translated to Greek every year, while the Arab population is 28 times the size of the Greek population.” Particularly frustrating for the Saudi writer is “the backwardness of Arabs in the field of science… the per capita spending on scientific research and development is the lowest in the world. In 1996, it was 0.4 percent of the GNP which is one-third of what Cuba spent on scientific research. In 1994, Israel allocated 6.35 percent for the GNP for research programs while in Japan it was 6.9 percent.”
Economically, the report revealed, the Arab world, including the oil-rich Gulf states, are doing very poorly. “The average economic growth in the last 20 years is not more than 0.5 percent,” Tash writes, “At this rate, it will take 140 years to double the capital investments in these countries while it will take only 10 years in most other parts in the world… [T]he net domestic product in 1999 was less than 11 percent of Spain, which has only one-seventh population of Arab countries.”
In short, the author concludes, “We have to admit that the situation is really bad.” Tash calls on “governments, people and organizations… [to] cooperate wholeheartedly to lift the Arab world from the depth it now finds itself in.”
Thanks for the news flash, Achmed, but I think you could have phrased it a little differently.
Try this: "We're a bunch of backward, rag-wearing barbarians with no sanctity for human life, or respect for individual liberty. Without oil, we'd all be herding goats, not just 99.5 percent of us. We're savages, and whatever we get, we deserve. Oh, yeah: We worship a pagan god."
I think that's better. Accuracy and all.
& oh yeah, just before the deed, send in the choppers with the big speakers {A-pack-o-lips NOW} only instead of Wagner play real loud the AOL sign-off...,
.. good-bye
It's worth noting that .5 percent national economic growth is LESS than their rate of population growth.
That means that their societies are growing more poor (per capita) each year.
Saudi Arabia, for instance, had an average household income of $30,000 per year in 1970 (unadjusted for inflation, btw).
Today, Saudia Arabia's average household income is below $15,000 per year.
My thoughts exactly.
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