The Arab World?

The Economist have a Special Report on the Arab World this week. One article have some intriguing information:

"From 1980 to 2000 Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Jordan between them registered 367 patents in the United States. Over the same period alone South Korea registered 16,328 and Israel 7,652. The number of books translated into Arabic every year in the entire Arab World is one-fifth the number translated in Greece into Greek."

Now, the population of Arabia has doubled the last 30 years and one comment is where shall they find work for all these youngsters. In Sweden we complain about the unemployment of young people but this is something else.

Only one percent of Arabs think of themselves as citizens of the world which probably explain the little interest in what is written in other languages.

I got a feeling reading the Report that the Arabs want to be by themselves. In their own way. The question asked was: will all these youngsters let the rulers have a status quo?