NATO AIR
Senior Member
Fascinating but chilling reading at the same time....
Iran is going to either be a major boon to us or a major problem.... and I suspect the chances of it becoming America's #1 enemy are very good...
Iran is going to either be a major boon to us or a major problem.... and I suspect the chances of it becoming America's #1 enemy are very good...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI13Ak01.html
Demographics and Iran's imperial design
By Spengler
Aging populations will cause severe discomfort in the United States and extreme pain in Japan and Europe by mid-century. But the same trends will devastate the frail economies of the Islamic world, and likely plunge many countries into social chaos.
By 2050, elderly dependents will comprise nearly a third of the population of some Muslim nations, notably Iran - converging on America's dependency ratio at mid-century. But it is one thing to face such a problem with America's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $40,000, and quite another to face it with Iran's per capita GDP of $7,000 - especially given that Iran will stop exporting oil before the population crisis hits.
The industrial nations face the prospective failure of their pension systems. But what will happen to countries that have no pension system, where traditional society assumes the care of the aged and infirm? In these cases it is traditional society that will break down, horribly and irretrievably so. Below, I will review the relevant numbers.
In a recent essay, I argued that declining Muslim population growth rates give the Islamists just one generation in which to strike out for their goal of global theocracy (The demographics of radical Islam, August 23). Muslim birth rates are collapsing as literacy rises, that is, as the modern world intrudes upon traditional society. Islamic traditional society is so fragile that it crumbles as soon as women learn to read.
But the Islamists will not wait for traditional society to unravel. I grossly underestimated Iran's new president Mahmud Ahmadinejad in a report on the Iranian elections (Iran: The living fossils' vengeance, June 28).
In programs made public on August 15, Ahmadinejad revealed a response worthy of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin to the inevitable unraveling of Iran's traditional society. He proposes to reduce the number of villages from 66,000 to only 10,000, relocating 30 million Iranians. That is a preemptive response to the inevitable depopulation of rural Iran, in keeping with a totalitarian program for all aspects of Iranian society.
As Amir Taheri wrote in Arab News on August 20, "He [Ahmadinejad] wants the state to play a central role in all aspects of people's lives and emphasizes the importance of central planning. The state would follow the citizens from birth to death, ensuring their health, education, well-being and leisure. It will guide them as to what to read and write and what 'cultural products' to consume so as not to be contaminated by Western ideas."
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