The Emerging Trucial Omanese Supersheikdoms
Kristol, William
"The Emerging Trucial Omanese Supersheikdoms" but a mighty sea that stretches far beyond the Loop, and at least past Jackson Park. In the days long ago, when travellers came to the...
...Only two developments could impede Trucial Oman on its way to Supersheikdomness...
...of tourism adding still more impetus to Trucial Oman's spectacular economic growth brings to mind the possibility of currency problems...
...Professor Martin Diamond, a member of the government department at Northern Illinois University, con~ibutor to The Publ/c Interest, coauthor of The Demoeratw Republic and former organizer and campaigner for the Socialist Party, also spoke at Bloomington, delivering such a piquant lecture that he was invited to speak at the following east and west coast conferences...
...Warm industrial effluent, far from repelling the fish, beckons to them, and they come...
...The A l t e r n a t i v e F e b r u a r y , 1972 9 but a mighty sea that stretches far beyond the Loop, and at least past Jackson Park...
...The nets are strung from the docks at South Chicago Works, at Inland Stel, and in the U.S...
...Sporting men bring their wives and friends...
...this would lower per capita income...
...The famed Trucial Oman Scouts (numbering about 1,000) are gallant and tough fighters, but seem unlikely to be able to deter or defeat a determined invasion by a major power who wants to take over Trucial Oman and its wealth...
...when the Omanese played "a predominant part in ancient navigation...
...For example, Trucial Oman's present growth rate has been accomplished" in an atmosphere of political instabili...
...That is to say they are what the media considers h'relevant and booring...
...There was virtually no trading in the rial, so confident were its holders...
...This will be an economic phenonemon of some interest, if it comes about...
...Internally -- within each sheikdom -the political and social stability is remarkable...
...If this is done, and if some of the educated Omanese emigrate to the West (Trucial Oman is lacking in some minor amenities, like books) per capita income would go even higher...
...The Emerging Trucial Omanese Supersheikdoms William K r i s t o l T HE EASTERN part of Arabia known geographically as Truclal Oman has an area of about 30,000 square milew and a population of about 135,000...
...Or the People's Party Convention in Dallas in December (it drew 200 of the peoole...
...For example, Sheik Zaid announced in 1.968 a Five Year Development Plan, including "a modern road nctwork, three airports, mode~'ri port facilities, telephone networks, a water 'distribution system, sewage systems, schools, public buildings and 10w-cost housing units," and various industrial projects: The strengthening of Trucial Oman's already firm infrastructure cannot but help prospects for continued -- even increased -- growth...
...Garbage, the mills, the smoke -- they scare the men, all right," says an old timer...
...But they can't i~timidate a fish...
...One problem may "advanced" societies have suffered from in the past few years is educated incapacity...
...A month later, spawning nearly done, and the warmth filtering to deeper and more northerly waters, the smelt depart...
...this is certainly a good sign for the country's future...
...The times are rare when he can be coaxed into casting range of shore...
...as the world becomes more ancl more "modern," it would somehow be appropriate that the premier parl of the world (at least economically) be governed on the principle of the divine right of sheiks...
...From ten in the evening until two in the morning the shores are dotted with the gas lamps of the fishermen...
...I bear the news that the Lake lives, and life within it continues, and though the waters pass through the valley of the shadow of industry, and receive vast transfusions of filth, even at the very walls of the belching pouring giants, life is sustained...
...All we can say is that present indications point that way...
...A man remarks that he owns two deep freezers, and in three weeks of fishing he has nearly filled them...
...But...
...They were neither screaming leftist, threatening to liberate the solar system or Wallacite yokels...
...Cambridge, Massachusetts and Carmel, California, unfortunately do not fit into the "youth" stereotype that the media likes to porfi'ay...
...In fact, decision-makers and world leaders, to say nothing of policy analysts, ignore this area at their peril...
...And if so, what will be the effects of the emergence of Trucial Oman as a super-sheikdom (or a federation of super-sheikdom), both for Trucial Oman and the world...
...The highlight of the midwestern conference was M. Stanton Evans who is editor of the Indianapolis News contributing editor to Human Events, chairman of the American Conservative Union, and, according to National Review's masthead, an "exalted editor" of that journal...
...Extrapolating the growth rate of the past decade, we find that the GNP per Capita of Trucial Oman in the year 2000 shouM be about $20 million...
...Trucial Oman will have crossed a new threshold in world history...
...Chicago has struggled for years, for time out of mind, to fill the Lake with trash and poison...
...It is now in the process of developing a weapon more effective -and more fearsome -- than the nuclear bomb: an intercontinental guided oil slick...
...The only real problem the emerging Trucial Omanese Supersheikdoms will face in the coming years is defense...
...The answer is no, because Trucial Oman has the one sure defense against educated incapacity: almost no one is t, ducated...
...they are spared for the coho...
...Instead, all participants emphasized the common element in their philosophies -- an underlying belief in the validity of the lraditions and principles of the American democratic system...
...The Alternative sponsored these conferences and, as with everything else done by moderate students, conservative students and responsible liberal students, we managed to maintain an amazingly low profile with the media...
...In fact~ almost no one can read (fewer than five per cent...
...Trucial Oman consists of seven technically independent but closely linked states, all ruled by sheiks...
...Many people - - e v e n those in responsible positions -- seem to be fairly ignorant of Trucial Oman, or, if they do know of it, chuckle when it is mentioned...
...Shaikh Zaid ibn Sultan alNihyan, the Sheik of Abu Dhabi and head of the federation of the seven sheikdoms, is truly the best of all political worlds...
...nothing has changed in a thousand years...
...As May descends upon the lake, the old men who fish for the joy of it bring their rods along with their nets...
...The 95 per cent of the people wh,~ are now farmers, fishermen, heedsmen are on the whole unproductive...
...This is just as effective as nuclear weapons -- and there is no fallout...
...Trucial Oman may well be the first post-nuclear power...
...One would be an influx of immigrants, attracted by the wealth...
...The governments, by virtue of tradition, have almost unQuestioned legitimacy...
...All Sheik Zaid has to do is push a button and whatever country is causing trouble becomes subsumed in oil...
...Mter each catch they set up a little assembly line, cleaning the fish, washing them, and stacking them in plastic bags for eating in the summer ahead...
...For Trucial Oman is going to become in the next thirty years even more important than it was when it last peaked (around 700 B.C...
...by the year 2000, they will have a $20 million per capita income , and no one will work...
...Studies underway at Hudson Institute indicate that there is probably less educated incapacity in Trucial Oman than anywhere else in the world (although Malawi is a close second...
...There seems to be little on the horizon to cause a slowing of Trucial Oman's growth rate...
...So, probably, would the qualitv of life -- there would be no "Abu Dhabi Review of Books" to get on people's nerves...
...But, unlike typical "youth culture" meetings, The Alternative conferences did not collapse into ideological bickering and tests of purity...
...Participants at these gatherings, held in Bloomington, Indiana...
...Furthermore, Trucial Oman's incredible growth has provided it with the means of ensuring further growth, especially given enlightened political leadership...
...Will spoke on the relation of foreign policy to the open society and the importance of a sound foreign policy to democracy...
...The famous Trucial rial is one of the most stable currencies in the world...
...Poor men bring their families...
...A group of Mexicans pull in a massive catch, chatting gaily in Spanish, singing of what they call in that tongue, 'the sardines...
...Will Trucial Oman be afflicted with this disease, thus cutting its growth rate...
...There have been all kinds of conflicts among the various sheiks, and there has been conflict between the richer and the poorer sheikdoms (especially between rich Abu Dhabi and the others...
...With April comes the warming of the waters in the Lake...
...Steel Gary turning basin...
...Coho salmon feed along the shores, finding the shad, the alewife, a tasty meal...
...Often cradled in the midsts of steel mills and petroleum refineries, the eggs are set and fertilized...
...Are they any significant "counterv3iling forces" at work which may slow Trucial Oman's growth...
...This is the true genius of Trucial Oman...
...Smelt are not pilchards, though, which are not found in Lake Michigan...
...Who can really tell...
...I have seen the magic of the Lake myself, and I have travelled along distant coasts far from the company, and the wastes, of men...
...Lampreys have moved into the fresh water lakes from the sea through the Saint Lawrence Seaway...
...It is a prosperous area...
...its Gross National Product grea at a rate of 37.3 per cent per year this past decade, raising the Gross National Product per capita to slightly under $2,000 (source: World Bank...
...But the recent establishment of a Supreme Council of the Federation of the Arab Emirates should bring greater cohesiveness and political stability to Trucial Oman...
...But Trucial Oman never had a Protestant Ethic in the first place...
...So, will the 21st century become known as the Trucial Omanese century...
...Since the sheiks have 50-50 profit-sharing deals, all they and their people have to do is sit back and watch...
...And it doesn't matter anyway, because by the year 2990, no one in Trucial Oman will have to work...
...There is virtually none now, but with all these modern amenities being built, and given the fact all the other chic places are becoming overcrowded, the rich may decide to "winter" in Trucial Oman, which has a curiously fresh 10 The Alternative February, 1972 and simple beauty in winter, when the air is bright and clear and rain has turned the desert green...
...Or the pro-abortion rally...
...since the leader ship is also enlightened, the problem of an~'ien reg~ae morale is avoided...
...Readers may scoff at my mention of these fables, long rejected by the smug belief that Lake Michigan is but a puddle fit for garbage...
...The standard argument would be that the people of Trucial Oman will become fat and lazy and degenerate like us...
...And .the conflict between Abu Dhabi and the other sheikdoms is lessening as the other sheikdoms do become much richer, and as a true federation resulting in the virtual unificatioh of lhe seven sheikdoms becomes more imminent, the prospects are that wealth will be shared more evenly...
...Trucial Oman's total GNP (with a poloulatiop...
...They seek warmth for spawning, so they swim for inlets and harbors along the lake...
...But these should bo non-oxi~tent...
...They build fires and catch their dinners...
...less than one tenth of one per cent as big as that of the U.S...
...Beginning in the southern reaches along the Indiana coast, then spreading northward by Chicago and along the opposite Michigan shore the shallows come alive with fish urging to spawn...
...Both the speakers and participants at the tl~ee conferences represented a cross-section of the American ideological speclrum - - representing such diversified groups as Young Americans for Freedom and the Young People's Socialist Alliance...
...Lake perch and coho are drawn from spring to fall, frequenting the shallows in the early morning, moving to the depths as the sun pours warmth into the water...
...Shad and lampreys are not haman food...
...in fact, Trucial Oman may well grow even faster in the future...
...Despite the fact that attendance at all fofir events fell far short of the announced goal, the media was there with cameras whirring, flash-bulbs popping and reporters scribbling trying their best to prove that the youth movement is still alive and still left-liberal...
...I doubt it...
...Or what about the New York Times tale of the 400 (that's right, 400) "veterans of the New Left (who) voted to form a new group called The New American Movement" in Davenport, Iowa...
...Fishermen have lined the public and corporate wharves: spreading their nets into the water, pulling them up only minutes later ladened with twenty, forty, or sixty fish...
...The question therefore is, will Truclal Oraan's present rate of economic growth, continue for the next three decades...
...Does this mean that Trucial Oman will be forced to become a nuclear power...
...In his talk, entitled "The Perspective of the Framers, A Decent Regime Although Democratic" he provided valuable historical and political ineontinued on page 20...
...In the recent monetary crisis, when all other currencies were moving up and down and causing trouble, the rial held firm...
...I think nol...
...Some 'Youth Meetings' the Media Ignores Baron Von Kannon D ID YOU READ the newspaper stories about the big Chicago meeting of The Emergency Conference for Young (an unacknowledged code word for left liberal) Voters last month...
...In the West the collapse of the Protestant Ethic, of the work ethic, has been and is a serious matter...
...Sometimes they hook carp, sometimes the salmon...
...As the flow of smelt drops from a flood to a crowd to a trickle, the men with the lines begin drawing perch...
...He tests the ingenuity of men, he demands they come to meet him in boats...
...In the days long ago, when travellers came to the University cf Chicago, they brought with them tales of shoreline miles out of sight, and of unseen streams and inlets...
...They can be seen in Chicago's Calumet Park, or at Harbor Park in East Chicago, or at Clark Sh'eet in Gary...
...All the economic growth is being generated and will continue to be generated by foreigners, aided perhaps by a few educated natives...
...Another feature atiraction in Bloomington was George F. Will, special assistant to Senator Gordon Allott and Washington columnist for The Alternative, who occasionally finds himself at odds with hard-line conservatives...
...It will be the first post-postindustrial state...
...Not necessarily...
...If you look at the newspapers but once a week you could hardly have missed their reports...
...will be comparable to ours -- about $2.6 trillion...
...But many other fish are...
...The vision (spectre...
...Maybe someone up lhere's trying lo tell us something...
...The ancient struggle between an individual man and a single agent of natur.e goes on, undaunted by folly or social policy...
...But they are wrong...
...Participants at The Alternative c o n - ferences were serious students interested in the concepts of the American democratic system and the open society...
...A form ot government which has existed for ages but which can produce men like H.H...
...Ten fish will fill you up,they Say...
...Men pursue the salmon, but he is a competitive fish, and not easy prey...
...In addition, tourism should help Trucial Oman's economy...
...Early in April, propelled by lust, the smelt head for the southern shallows...
...the Women's Abortion Action Committee staged in Washington in November...
...when the country becomes rich, it will be easy to import everything needed for the 135,000 people...
...But did you read or hear about the three nation-wide conferences held this fall to study democracy and the open society...
...Trucial Oman is about to regain its former glory -- and then some...
...Today, readers may feel that it has successfully accomplished its task...
...Evans warned of the dangers and challenges the radical left poses to the democratic system...
...The only way to forestall this is not to let anyone immigrate...
Vol. 5 • February 1972 • No. 5
