There has been a lot of public discourse about evil, greedy bankers over recent days. Irrespective of a complex global financial crisis, I don’t think there is any connection between wealth and morality as this story sadly illustrates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7644616.stm

When a stark raving bonkers Tafkiri starts to talk about subjects out of their comfort zone (the Hadith and murdering people) you tend to get statements which are beyond even Pythonesque parody. Gobby Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al Zawahiri recently held forth on Global Warming, stating that the problem showed "how criminal, brutal and greedy the Western crusader world is, with America at the top". Which made him sound like a cross between George Monbiot and Genghis Khan. After Zawahiri’s version of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ we had Saud Arabia’s top judge trying his hand at the role of chief Tafkiri TV critic. Sheikh Salih Ibn al-Luhaydan condemned the immoral nature of Arabic satellite TV and stated "There is no doubt that these programmes are a great evil, and the owners of these channels are as guilty as those who watch them. It is legitimate to kill those who call for corruption if their evil can not be stopped by other penalties." Although, to be fair, I do have similar feelings when ever I see ‘The Catherine Tate Show’ and at least the sheikh had one foot anchored in reality when he called for the murder of actual living people. Saudi cleric Sheikh Mohammed Al-Munajid meanwhile denounced Mickey Mouse as a messenger sent by Satan and issued what is probably the greatest fatwa of all time, “Mickey Mouse should be killed." I kid you not.

Anyway this week saw the annual General Assembly at the United Nations, a body which began with noble ideas but is now in danger of becoming a parody of itself. The General Assembly saw such democratic leviathans as Dimitry Mdevedev and Robert Mugabe dropping by for some diplomatic chit chat. Mugabe deftly swatted away questions about torture and murder with an absolutely hilarious sarcastic laugh; at which point any self respecting human would have punched him in the nose. Also in town was the rather dapper President Ahmedinejad who likes to use the occasion to hold forth on subjects outside his usual subject of, well, the destruction of Israel. In a wide ranging speech Mr Ahmadinejad managed to cover the global credit crisis, which is the fault of the Zionists; the collapse of the ‘American Empire’, which is also the fault of the Zionists; and the US presidential candidates, who are in thrall to the Zionists. Mr Ahmadinejad then announced “the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse, and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters”, all of which is presumably the fault of the Zionists. Despite such a wide ranging speech the president still found some time to predict the establishment of a global Islamic Caliphate and to criticise the global influence of the, er, Zionists.

Islamists have of course been predicting the collapse of the American Empire since 1989. Osama bin Laden, for example, seriously believes that he caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, despite the fact that the Arab Mujahideen were only involved in one rather farcical skirmish in Afghanistan, the Afghan Government only fell when the Soviet Union fell and the Soviet Union collapsed because its economic policy was utterly bonkers. Bin Laden believes he destroyed the Soviet Union and he believes the same thing will happen to the USA. Except the USA isn’t about to collapse and the rhetoric of Islamists is worthless and empty. Islamists can only offer hatred and violence and when they try to discuss other issues they can only discuss hatred and violence. Thousands will swallow their ideas but many more will choose their own path. They can influence events but they can never achieve their aims. Arabs will continue to watch tacky talent shows, America will continue to lead the world and Mickey Mouse will continue to spread his evil message of sin and corruption.

All good things must come to an end. In the City this week a 20 year long party was brutally interrupted; the music stopped, the lights were turned on and the bouncers sent the losers back home in disgrace. The City speculators enjoyed the fruits of free markets and light regulations for 20 years but they got greedy and they forgot to respect the rules of the market. The market like Mother Nature cannot be tamed by human kind. Like any badly run business, Lehman Bros et al were exposed by market forces they believed they were invulnerable to. Their bankruptcy was brutal and surprising; Lehman Bros was founded in the 19th Century, but they exposed themselves to toxic debts and they paid the penalty.

The ‘real’ American economy has yet to dip into recession but such is the amount invested in the finance markets by working Americans that a market meltdown could have plunged America, and thus the world, into a severe recession. It seems the rescue package proposed by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve has managed to pull the financial markets back from the brink; indeed the major stock exchanges finished the week close to where they started it, after Friday’s rally. Yet it seems clear to serious analysts that the financial markets will never be the same again. It is abundantly clear that the regulation of the markets will have to be reviewed following this week’s events. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a 100% pure free-market economy and some form of regulation is not a controversial issue. Regulation of the markets is however, an immensely complicated topic and not something that the layman could realistically comment on. It is clear though, that too much regulation impedes economic growth and it would be unfortunate if populist political leaders now issued counter-productive regulatory measures.

Adam Smith wrote about the ‘invisible-hand’ of free-market economies acting to benefit all those who took part in economic activity. The ‘invisible hand’ theory remains, in my opinion, unassailable, and the best way for ensuring human economic development across the world. Yet you can never have a utopian free market in which every stakeholder is 100% informed and 100% free. In my judgement modern economics is a bit like a child learning to ride a bicycle. Put stabilisers on a bike and the child may be able to peddle but he won’t be able to go very fast or turn very nimbly. There comes a time when the parent has to take the stabilisers off so that the child can learn to ride for himself, pick up speed, gain independence, avoid obstructions and travel far greater distances. Sometimes the child may wobble and the parent is usually on hand to correct his balance. Occasionally the child may crash. The parent will usually be there to pick him up, soothe his wounds and put him back on the saddle, sometimes it may be better if the child picks himself up and gets back on his bike; who knows?

It seems that the action of Hank Paulson may have drawn a line in this particular crisis and sealed the markets of from all that toxic debt. With any luck the markets will continue to recover confidence and the ‘real’ economy won’t be affected by the panic at the stock exchange. Certainly with US house prices starting to stabilise there are hopes that US will indeed avoid a full recession; although many analysts fear there are many more unwelcome and perhaps even worse shocks still to come.

Of course the populists politicians have poured scorn on the ‘spivs’ and the short sellers and the general line has been to blame the greed of Wall Street for this week's crisis. Certainly many speculators and investors were guilty of huge arrogance and greed and they got their comeuppance with a ‘market correction’ in the form of a richly deserved p45. Yet can the workers of the West really wash their hands and absolve themselves of blame when the bubble bursts? I didn’t hear anyone complaining about the huge increase in public spending in health and education made possible by City revenues. I didn’t hear anyone moan about the easy access to credit to allow for that new car or extension to their (suddenly expensive)house. Plenty of people cashed in on the property boom and the increase in house prices. Nor was the any shortage of takers for 100%+ mortgagers or low-interest credit cards or easy finance for consumer goods. One reason why the Government has had to step in to solve this crisis is that so many working people have money invested in stocks and shares, pension schemes and bricks and mortar. Ordinary people in Europe and the US have enjoyed the fruits of the stock market and easy access to credit for the last 20 years. The banks are guilty of proliferating risky credit but consumers wanting to join the party did agree to sign on the dotted line.

The party in the markets is over but one night of excess doesn’t stop you from drinking alcohol it just teaches you to enjoy it more responsibly. Free market economics have given the entire world unprecedented increases in living standards. In East Asia, for example, since the 1990s the number of people living in poverty has decreased from 486 million to 275 million and it is still falling. It would be a disaster if the world now started to put the protectionist shutters as it did in 1929. So the rave has been busted but the party can continue with the music turned down, the lights on and mum and dad keeping a beady eye out upstairs.

Intelligent, literate and a master of organisation, Sheikh Ahmad Fartusi should be the manager of a company or a high ranking officer in Iraq’s security forces. Instead the 36 year old father of three is a top ranking field commander in the Mahdi Army’s Basra Brigade. Between 2004 and his capture in 2005, Fartusi orchestrated the killing of 67 British soldiers in Basra and enabled the Mahdi Army to instigate its reign of terror over the city’s citizens. Fartusi believes he was wholly justified in fighting what he regards as an occupation of his county, “I have killed defending my country and my honour. I have no regrets.”, he told the Sunday Times. But has he really helped his country?

Basra should be one of the richest cities in the world; it sits on truly enormous oil and gas reserves, it acts as a trade nexus between Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and its port offers easy access to the shipping lanes of the Gulf. What Basrans really need is peace and security to encourage economic growth, foreign investment and the exploitation of oil fields. Instead Basrans got firefights between the British and the Mahdi Army and bombing, shelling and rocket attacks. When the Mahdi Army took over the city they started murdering alcohol sellers, barbers, adulterers, Sunnis, interpereters, policemen, civil servants, doctors, teachers and at least 50 ‘immodestly’ dressed women. The British had come to Basra to remove a genocidal dictator, restore law and order and then hand things over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. As a result of the Mahdi Amry’s reign of terror there are still 4,000 British soldiers in Basra. In the Iraq War plans the Pentagon had originally hoped to have as few as 5,000 soldiers in the entire country by 2004.

So what has Fartusi achieved then? A brutal 5 year insurgency has scared away investors and stymied the exploitation of Basra’s oil riches and his fighters imposed a deeply unpopular theocratic rule on the city until they were thrown out by the Iraqi Army in 2008. In short he has helped to destroy the counry he claims to be fighting for. The trouble is that for Fartusi, like many proud, xenophobic and macho Arab males, it is an insult to have foreign soldiers on his native soil. For him peace and economic development fall a long way behind his misguided sense of honour. An ardent follower of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, (who was murdered by Saddam), it is inconceivable to a man like Fartusi that the British could be in Iraq for altruistic purposes. Even if he accepted that, he would still want to kill them as foreigners and infidels.

The story of Ahmad Fartusi mirrors Iraq’s tragedy since 2003. Ba’athists, Islamists, Shi’ites; they all believed they were fighting in the name of Islam or Iraq but they have achieved nothing and killed many. The Americans are still in Iraq in their thousands; yet if there had been no insurgency then they would have left Iraq long ago, any fool can see that. Whether the invasion was morally right or wrong is irrelevant; the fact is that it happened and a dictator was replaced with a democracy. This should surely have been time for Iraq to start rebuilding itself rather than fighting an unwinnable war in the name of those hateful and destructive ideals, religion and nationalism.

In the 1940s the Germans and the Japanese were invaded and occupied by the Americans; the Americans ‘occupy’ these countries still. Indeed virtually every country in the world has an American military base; there used to be an enormous American bomber base down the road from my own home. However, the stationing of foreign troops in a country does not in any way impinge on the sovereignty of a Government.

The fundamental problem is that the West has come to develop a post-modern concept of altruistic military interventionism yet many people across the world are sill blinded by nationalism. There is also the added problem of the re-emergence of an ‘Islamic identity’ which has stifled the efforts of benevolent countries in the Islamic world. Last week, for example, two doctors working on a polio vaacine project in Afghanistan were blown to pieces by the Taliban simply because they worked for the UN; never mind the fact that they were helping the Afghan people. In Helmand Province three young British soldiers were shot dead this week even though they were helping to build a hydro-electric plant that will provide electricity to millions of Afghans. The Taliban kill foreign aid workers simply because they are foreign and non-muslim or even because they are Mulsims working for foreign aid agencies. Depressingly there are idiots in the West that see the Taliban as ‘freedom fighters’.

As a result of all this the idea that the world’s richest countries should help the poorest countries seems to be under threat from three sides. The indigenous peoples who believe that they are protecting the honour of their country or religion, those with ‘rich-man’s guilt’ who believe that their own country is always in the wrong and those that don’t believe that their country should scarifice its best men and women for the ungrateful other. Yet we must not discount the use of liberal intervention in the future; one might point at Iraq to underline dangers of liberal interventionism yet equally one point out the dangers of not intervening, such as Rwanda where 800,000 died while the world sat on its hands. Let us look also at Somalia where US troops intervened in 1993 to stop famine and civil war. Osama bin Laden was among those who believed that the Ameicans were attempting a new Crusade and he may have backed the militias that killed 18 US toops in Mogadishu. Whoever was responsible the US public decided that the humanitarian mission wasn’t worth the lives of its young soldiers and America pulled out of Somalia the following year. The result for Somalia was truly horrendous. Somalia collapsed into anarchy, civil war and famine that ravaged the country for the next 15 years and ravage it still today. Hundreds of thousands have died and many more have become refugees. What is worse the ‘occupation’ of a country by a foreign force or famine and genocide? I don’t particularly care whether you think the Iraq War was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, it is, any case, immaterial. The bottom line is that on one side you have a democratically elected Government, a national army and police force and a coalition that is spending millions of dollars on aid projects and on the other side you have nationalist/religious forces that bomb civillians in markets, kill doctors and do everything they can to stop the reconstruction of the country. It should be clear which side is acting in the general interests of humanity, whatever its numerous faults.

Since 1989 liberal inteventions have helped the people of Kuwait, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, East Timor and Kosovo. It doesn’t matter to me whether a Christian intervenes in a Muslim land or whether a Zoroastrian intervenes in a Christian land, what concerns me is that man helps his fellow man, regardless of nationality, race or religion. Let there be no doubt, there will be civil wars, famines and genocides in our world again, indeed they are happening at this very moment. The international community must be prepared to do what is right, despite the painful costs and whatever the criticism.

I thoght I better raise the tone a bit after yesterday's post so here is Adam Curtis sounding off on positive and negative liberty and its effect on the Iranian Revolution, soundtracked by LCD Soundsystem.

Curtis is a brilliant and provocative documentary maker and I recommend all of his films. A word of warning, however, don't believe everything he says. His skilfull combination of archive footage and a persuasive narrative style may carry the unwary along, but he often passes off opinions as facts. Yet such is the skill of his film-making that it is often difficult to notice.

The Rules: Drink two fingers worth of beer every time Mr Rooney scratches his head. Optional extra one fingers worth of beer every time he says "you know", "errrmmmm" or "obviously".

Apologies for the low-brow nature of this post. I will make up for it tomorrow with a post on 'The Existentialist Influence On Enlightenment Intellectual Development Between 1700 And 1831'.

Drive through any medium sized British town today and I guarantee that you will see:

a) An ugly concrete shopping centre

b) A concrete multi-storey car park

c) An inner ring road complete with enormous roundabouts

d) A tawdry collection of grey 1960s office blocks

e) A retail park, most likely featuring Boots, B & Q, McDonalds or some other place that you try and avoid at all costs.

Of course we rarely take notice of our day to day surroundings and it is easy to take our often tawdry town centres for granted, as if they’ve always been that way. But look at a pre-1914 photograph of any British town and you may begin to appreciate that Britain once had some of the most beautiful and best maintained towns in the world. Whether it was the Victorian swagger of Glasgow and Manchester, the dramatic vistas of Edinburgh, the beautiful Palladian architecture of Newcastle, the staggering architectural wealth of Liverpool or the medieval charm of Norwich, Worcester or Coventry, the organic growth of British towns spoke of history, character and craftsmanship. I have never seen an ugly pre-1914 building; indeed Victorian architecture was a brilliant combination of craftsmanship, respect for the past and a belief in modernity. When you look at pre-war photographs of Britain you cannot help but marvel at how clean the streets were, and admire the roads, uncluttered by street furniture, the parks enclosed by neat rows of railings and the elegant trams trundling down cobbled streets.

Of course time cannot stand still in a modern city and architectural change is inevitable. The modernism of the inter-war periods produced some outstanding buildings on the continent but Britain was slow to catch on, and some 1930s British buildings started to show signs of the decline in architectural craftsmanship. Ominously the inter-war period heralded the age of the motor car and town planners began to draw up sweeping plans that would turn our city centres into glorified motorways.

Much of our architectural heritage was destroyed in the blitz; part of the price the country paid for opposing fascism. Yet we ourselves were not innocent of this criminal act of war; the repugnant Bomber Harris specifically targeted the medieval German city of Lubeck for destruction because he knew its wooden buildings would burn. In response the Nazis launched the Baedeker blitz which targeted ancient British towns such as York and Canterbury. Many beautiful buildings were lost in the blitz yet the worst desecration of our towns was not carried out by the Nazis but by our own architects, planners, council leaders and politicians.

Many town planners actually welcomed the destruction of their cities as it gave them the chance to impose grandiose and egocentric planning schemes upon their fellow citizens. Many bomb damaged buildings could have been saved but they were left to collapse in the name of progress, but the vast majority of the destruction of our towns and cities occurred in the 60s and 70s and it is no exaggeration to say that British architects were responsible for more destruction than Hitler’s Luftwaffe. Much of our architectural heritage was wantonly destroyed sometimes for no particular purpose; Liverpool’s 18th century custom house was demolished ostensibly to ‘provide employment’ according to Liverpool council. More often than not planners, architects and councillors put profit before heritage and pushed through the destruction of ancient buildings to develop hideous office blocks and shopping centres; the ubiquitous Arndale Centres being the worst culprits. Some criminal architects such as T. Dan Smith and John Paulson were convicted of bribery and corruption; but not before they had destroyed vast swathes of Leeds, Bradford and Newcastle in order line their own pockets. The architecture they imposed blights the towns to this day. The Royal Institute of British Architects may trumpet the beauty of architecture but its members often destroyed architectural masterpieces in order to win a commission for a new shopping centre/car park/office block well into the 1980s.

The worst offenders were the town planners whose obsession with the motor car resulted in ring roads that left our town centres isolated and decaying and pushed pedestrians into dank subways and over brutalist footbridges. And let us not forget the dunderheaded town councillors (ignoramuses on power trips, not a good combination) who led the wanton destruction of so many glorious buildings between the 1950s and the 1980s.

It may have been some consolation if the replacement buildings were of architectural merit, but apart from notable exceptions (Royal Festival Hall, Coventry Cathedral), we have been left with horrendous, brutalist eye sores which straddle our town centres like Communist era secret police headquarters. Our tram systems were needlessly scrapped and motorways, dual-carriageways and flyovers acted like medieval moats and made town centres hostile places for cyclists and pedestrians.

Thankfully the wanton destruction has abated and planners and councillors now understand the value of conservation and tourism. Incredibly tourist magnets such as Covent Garden were once slated for destruction but were saved at the last minute by the efforts of local residents. Alas it is too late as virtually every British town has already been vandalised and desecrated by architects; including towns that weren’t touched by the blitz, such as Worcester, Dundee, Newcastle and Edinburgh. The waste of so much money and resources on shopping centres, office blocks and road widening schemes at a time when the country was so strapped for cash was nothing short of criminal.

So next time you are in town and you spy a concrete 60s monstrosity then you may well idly wonder what beautiful building once stood in that spot and you may well feel a sense of anger and frustration, but let us also appreciate what did survive. Mercifully the wrecking ball could not destroy everything but many of our less famous buildings are under threat; next time you hear about a local piece of architectural heritage then make sure you do everything you can to save it; if only for future generations to enjoy.

Karma; ‘What goes around, comes around’, people say. Well actually, it doesn’t always work like that, does it? Take Pol Pot, for example, a man with the blood of 3 million on his hands. He died peacefully, as an old man, in his own bed. So much for Karma, eh? Although, granted, he might have been re-born as a worm.

But the concept of ‘Karma’ is based on a grain of truth. There are no cosmic forces at work but if you treat someone nicely then they will probably, but not necessarily, treat you nicely too. Treat them badly and they’ll probably show you contempt, or worse. This isn’t a supernatural force at work, it’s just common sense.

This principle applies to everyone and everything from ordinary people like you and me to multi-national corporations. You can also apply it to the foreign policy of nation states. For example US foreign policy between 1945 and 1989 was periodically dominated by the theories of Realism and Containment whereby the US supported local rulers as long as they helped to contain the spread of Communism. In reality this counter-productive policy meant that the US became tainted by association with despotic local rulers and even led to the establishment of regimes just as threatening as the USSR, for example the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Of course America is a democratic country and different Presidents took different views on foreign policy. Wilson and Carter, for example were particularly vociferous in their promotion of democracy and since the 1980s America has been at the forefront of the spread of global democracy from Indonesia through to the Balkans and latterly Iraq and Afghanistan. If the US continues to promote democracy and free trade then our children will hopefully live in a more peaceful and prosperous world.

America has many faults but it has at least been the biggest force for the spread of global democracy in the twentieth century. Meanwhile dictatorships such as China support and prop-up brutal regimes without invoking the ire of the supposed liberal left. More recently Russia, the bastard son of the Evil Empire, has muscled its way back onto the global stage powered by record oil prices and plenty of nationalist bluster.

Russia has never been a paragon of human rights, nor has it ever sought to be any such thing. The modern Russian state controls the national media; it imprisons political rivals, cuts off energy supplies to its neighbours and curbs free speech. An incredible 61 journalists were murdered in Putin’s Russia and we all know who was responsible for Alexander Litvinvenko’s cruel assasination. The only ex-Soviet countries that ally themselves with Russia are brutal dictatorships such as those in Belo-Russia and Turkmenistan. Putin certainly had a hand in reforming the cronyism of Yeltsin’s chaotic rule but only a blind man would describe his own rule as anything other than nationalistic, authoritarian, anti-democratic and confrontational.

Many US-haters have fawned over Putin’s Russia and the recent war in the Caucasus was widely cited as a victory over ‘the West’. Except that it was no such thing, was it? Georgia is an inconsequential country, South Ossetia and that other province even more so. Even if the US hadn’t been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan it would never have risked World War III over South Ossetia. So Russia trounced a pathetic Georgian Army, so it may have annexed South Ossetia and that other province, frankly so what? What’s to gain from annexing a rural province in the middle of nowhere from a country the size of Scotland?

Every former Warsaw Pact country, apart from the dictatorship of Belo-Russia, has become a democracy with a free-market economy. The people of these countries who grew up under Communist tyranny have ditched Russia and voted to pursue the wealth and freedom that EU countries enjoy. Russia’s military actions will only strengthen their love of democracy and free markets and convince them that their future lies with ‘the West’. America has no strategic need of countries like Georgia, but America is interested in protecting the rights of free citizens to choose their future.

Aside from the fact that it has enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the world several times over Russia isn’t even a first rate power. Despite oil revenues of $1 billion a day Russia still has a smaller economy than the UK and its per capita GDP is lower than that of Botswana. Indeed the Russian military hardware seen in Georgia was distinctly Soviet in appearance. Furthermore the Russian population is steadily shrinking and the life expectancy of a Russian male is barely 61. Since last month’s invasion of Georgia the Russian stock market has plummeted by 30% and some $20 billion of foreign capital has been pulled out of Russia by investors who now see the country as unpredictable and unstable. Since the invasion the value of the rouble has slumped and the central bank has had to step in to stop the slide. The EU has also woken up to the militant nationalism of Putin’s Russia and leaders such as Brown have emphasised the need to escape the ‘dictatorship of oil’. The west does not want to be subject to the whim of troublesome states such as Russia and Saudi Arabia and it is slowly trying to break its addiction to oil. Pumping oil out f the ground isn’t exactly difficult and without this natural wealth, Russia would have a basket case economy and the Government would go bust, for a third time in 20 years. Russia would do well not to scare away the customers who give it all its money, after all Russia needs the West far more than the West needs Russia.

Georgia has learnt its lesson, its shattered towns will be rebuilt with money from US AID, Ukraine and Georgia have again asked to be allowed to join NATO, and the Baltic States enjoy the fruits of free markets and democracy. The 'victorious' Russians gained South Ossetia and some other God-forsaken place and killed a few thousand hapless Georgians. Meanwhile foreign investors have fled Russia as quickly as they can wire their money back home and the EU is now looking for someone else to supply its expensive gas and oil.

Perhaps Karma does work after all.

'Let there be no compulsion in religion'

Qur'an 2:256

When I see a girl in a burka, or a veil or a headscarf I have to admit I feel a slight sense of melancholy. Yes it’s a free country and people should be free to wear what they want, within reason, but to me it just smacks of misogyny and repression. Equally I am sure that there are many people who feel depressed at the sight of a girl in a boob tube and mini skirt.

On the face of it both girls would appear to have exercised their own free will in choosing what clothes they wear. When a girl wears a headscarf she does so because she thinks that she is honouring a God (albeit one that quite simply does not exist). When a girl wears a mini skirt she does it because she feels that is what she needs to look and attractive and, um, get laid. On the face of it they are both rational choices. If we accept that I am wrong and one billion are right about the existence of Allah then the girl in the headscarf will end up in paradise. Equally the girl in the mini skirt will, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination. So on the face of it both girls are exercising their own free will.

Yet there is one important rider. The girl in the mini skirt is likely to have been heavily influenced by peer pressure but if she chose to wear something more conservative then she would not come to harm. The girl in the burka will also have been influenced by cultural pressures but more than likely she would not be able to exercise her own free will and wear something else. In Saudi Arabia and Iran ‘immodestly’ dressed girls are arrested and sometimes flogged. Of course there are no religious police in the UK but many of the burka clad girls in the UK are likely to live within a culture that threatens violence if she chose to dress ‘immodestly’. If you don’t believe me then you really need to research ‘Honour’ killings in the UK. For me the burka is the sign of the repression of women through fear, intimidation and the imposition of a narrow world view.

Of course millions of girls are happy to wear a headscarf and do so without fear of earthly punishment. Yet they do so because they have been influenced by a meme which tells them that this will bring them closer to God. The girl that dresses in the mini-skirt ultimately does so in order to achieve personal gratification. One sartorial choice displays submission to a supposed higher being while the other shows relative independence of mind and, very, very controversially, greater dignity.

The bottom line is that everyone should be free to wear whatever makes them happy personally; but they must be given full cultural, philosophical and religious freedom to make that choice.

“What is rich? . . . Rich is education . . . expertise . . . technology. Rich is knowing. We have money, yes. But we are not rich. We are like the child that inherits money from the father he never knew. He has not been brought up to spend it. He has it in his hands; he doesn’t know how to use it. If you do not know how to spend money you are not rich; we are not rich.

Without this knowledge, this understanding we are nothing. We import everything. The bricks to make houses we import. The men who build them, we import. You go to the market, what is there that is made by Arabs? Nothing. It is Chinese, French, American . . . it is not Arab. Is a country rich than cannot make a brick, or a motor car or a book? It is not rich, I think.”

Mohammed Manne, Arab Merchant Banker

In the sixteenth century, Imperial Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful kingdom in all of Europe. Conquistadors brought tons of gold and silver back from the New World to fill the coffers of the Royal Government. To many observers it seemed that Spain had been blessed with a gift from God, yet within a century the empire was in terminal decline and Spain had been superseded by the Protestant states of England and the Netherlands. Abundant gold and silver turned out to be God’s curse. First of all the influx of treasure decreased the incentives in the Spanish economy to increase productivity; furthermore it also cause rampant inflation. Spanish buyers saw no need to produces goods when they could simply buy them from other countries and the Spanish economy began to steadily stagnate. Furthermore with its new found wealth the Royal Government saw no need to promote critical thought and learning among its subjects. Instead it imposed its dogmatic and anti-intellectual Catholic faith upon society. Free-thinkers and entrepreneurial Jews and Muslims were persecuted, causing a fatal haemorrhage of knowledge and talent. The dogmatic faith and arrogance of the Royal Government was summed up by the refusal of King Philip to dredge Cadiz harbour because he felt that only God had the right to alter nature. And so it was that the Protestant Northern Europeans forged ahead and dominated the next four hundred years of economic history.

The story of imperial Spain is important in two ways. First it shows that any country wishing to become rich must encourage the pursuit of knowledge and critical thought amongst its citizens. The British industrial revolution, the second industrial revolutions in Germany and America, the Meji Restoration in Japan and the Asian Tiger Economies, they were all made possible by pursuing knowledge, adapting to new ideas and allowing ordinary citizens to explore their full potential.

Wealth is based on knowledge and productivity and whilst some countries may appear superficially rich their wealth and power is, actually transitory and fleeting when looked at from the perspective of history.

In the 1930s Saudi Arabia was a poor, conservative, fiercely religious backwater with a population of around 2 million, its capital Riyadh was a sleepy oasis town of 100,000 people. Today there are 27 million Saudi citizens and Riyadh is a metropolis of over 5 million people. Superficially Saudi Arabia may seem like a rich and industrialised nation but at its core it is still the same religious and conservative society of the 1930s.

Saudi Arabia’s economic fortunes were transformed when American geologists discovered oil in the 1930s. American engineers pumped the oil out of the desert and taught the Saudis how to do the same. American oil companies then paid the Saudis for this oil. The Saudi Royals eventually took over all oil production throughout the Kingdom and started spending the fantastic revenues. To put it bluntly Saudi Arabia became rich without earning it, just as Imperial Spain had done. It had found wealth not through hard work, frugality, innovation, entrepreneurship or discovery, but by a pure fluke of geography.

The money used to pay for the oil had been entirely created in economically developed countries. Indeed this wealth was then spent by Saudis in Western economies on Western products and Western services that Saudi Arabia could not produce. The vast Royal Family has squandered billions in order to live lives of sickening greed and opulence, but the ordinary Saudi citizen has also benefited from oil wealth. Despite living under one of the most authoritarian dictatorships in the world, Saudis enjoy lavish welfare benefits, a free healthcare service, free education and Government subsidies. As an example of the Government’s largesse a failed Saudi suicide bomber who killed 6 Iraqis when he blew up the Jordanian Embassy to Iraq in 2003, is given lavish grants by the Government because he claims to be a victim of the explosion as much as anyone else. Other Saudi former Al Qaeda members are also given lavish payments by the state.

But until the recent upsurge of oil prices the Saudi economy was actually shrinking rather than growing. Despite the fabulous oil wealth, per capita income actually fell from $11,800 during the oil boom of 1981 to $6,300 in 1998. This was because the population began to increase exponentially in the 1970s whilst oil remained as the country’s only income. Indeed the population of Saudi Arabia is essentially economically inactive; oil accounts for over 90% of GDP and an incredible 94% of employment is in the oil sector. If the world found an alternative to oil tomorrow, then Saudi Arabia would become the world’s poorest country.

So why are Saudis so economically inactive? Well, in a nutshell, they have no need to work; the oil rich monarchy will provide them with all their needs. Saudi Arabia uses 7 million guest workers from the Third World to do the difficult, dirty and dangerous work that Saudis refuse to do. These workers are paid a pittance, treated appallingly, refused legal rights and denied citizenship. Saudi Arabia only officially banned slavery in 1964, after all. For the jobs that Saudis can’t do they import Western knowledge and expertise. Around 100,000 Westerners work in Saudi Arabia as engineers, architects, managers and advisors. Furthermore Saudi Arabian society is dominated Wahhabism and closed to alternative ideas or beliefs and the education system is dominated by strict adherence to Islam. A recent report by Freedom House showed that Saudi education promoted the hatred of non-Muslims. Furthermore 50% of Saudi Arabia’s potential talented is wasted; women are banned from travelling around without a male relative and they are virtually hidden from Saudi society.

So just like Imperial Spain, unearned riches and the stifling of intellectual curiosity have led to an economy that is in terminal decline.

The Saudi elite have spent 50 years wasting trillions of dollars on themselves and spent billions of dollars exporting the hateful Wahhabist meme across the world; we see the result of that everyday on the news. The lavish welfare state has seen the population increase by a factor of ten in fewer than 60 years and a staggering 40% of Saudis are under 15. The oil, Saudi’s only current source of wealth is starting to run out and the country is heading for disaster if it does not change its ways. The Saudi royals can see it, indeed they’d be blind not to, and with oil revenues running at more than $1 billion a day they intend to spend their way out of disaster.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has a vision which he believes will transform the Kingdom's economy and society. Six major developments will be built across the Kingdom over the next 15 years, the centrepiece being King Abdullah Economic City, 100km (62 miles) north of Jeddah. There will be several universities in the new economic cities, which reforming Saudis believe could be the catalyst for social freedoms. The King also wants to promote the Saudisation of the workforce by offering grants to companies that employ Saudi workers. However at the Delta Marketing water bottling plant, a flagship scheme, just 12% of the workforce is Saudi. The plant’s Jordanian manager, Nidal Abdul Kareem, stated

"Low-educated Saudis have very few choices . . . [They can] work in the unskilfull work with low salaries and compete with the expats. Or they can stay at home without work and some of them unfortunately like to stay at home without work. Sometimes you feel strange that they don't like to work."

And that’s the rub, until Saudis are given incentives to work, until they are given modern and secular educations and until they are allowed control over their own lives then they will not create a productive economy. Indeed it seems unlikely that the modern world will exist within the boundaries of the new economic cities; for example it is still doubtful that the law banning Saudi women from driving will be lifted in the supposedly ‘liberal’ cities. Tellingly the cities are being designed by Western architects and built by Third World labourers overseen by Western managers. The Saudi royals can buy themselves a shimmering city in the desert; they cannot buy a future for their society with money alone.

And the moral of the story? A prosperous future is one thing that money cannot buy.