[Bill Carpenter]

Hi Janice,
Not trying to put words in your mouth, just attempting to infer first principles. It seems that a certain peaceful just, transnational order is the highest desideratum. This should be achievable on a democratic basis, but not until populations are sufficiently enlightened to know that this is best. As people are now, they will be at each other's throats without a higher power to keep them in line. The democracy at several removes of the EC seems to answer for now, with its ability to guide national governments. That is what I infer, not maliciously, from your various statements and I'm not making any judgments on it, just trying to clarify. The viability of a U.S. of Europe remains to be seen, as does the ongoing viability of the U.S.A. and Russia.

Don,
I was not referring to Eurabia as an imaginary dystopia to which I was passionately objecting, but as the name given to the long-term economic and legal integration of European, North African, and Middle Eastern nations. I don't think that description is inaccurate and I don't think people have objected much until relatively recently when conflicts have broken out over the occupation of cultural and physical space. Integration turns out to be more challenging than most people expected. Actually it is very easy at the top of the social ladder and virtually impossible at the bottom. People look at the problems from different altitudes. It even becomes a status symbol not to know about difficulties là bas.