Hmmm, Haaretz wouldn't let me read them from Stockholm, so I can make a few blind suggestions. Well, the Arab immigration to Europe is a blessing to the middle east and paticularily to Israel. They are smart, they are adaptive, they learn the manners of the local democracies, they see how to fight for their rights as a religious minority, they send their kids to the best universities, they are alles klar.

The German economy is already benefiting from the large Turkish population there, which mostly speaks German, serves fantastic food for reasonable prices and doesn't drink. Their bright kids are slowly graduating universities and getting into leading research groups. They certainly open the door for other minorities like Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestenian.

In Sweden alone there are some 400,000 muslims, more than the Catholics and of course from the Jews (around 20,000). In the short term they concern the Jewish community because they bring their hatred with them, but they slowly adopt to the polite, ever-tolerant Scandinavian way of interaction. Norway is too oily for them to be accepted as fully equal members of society, but in Sweden and Denmark the nationalist parties keep losing their strength compared to the socialdemocratic party, so alles gut.

In Italy they react like Italians - Palestenian Italian antisemitism is extremely strong in Italy, and in some parts it might even be unsafe to admit you're an Israeli, especially in front of a gang of drunk or stoned Italians with Palestenian friends. However I wouldn't be surprised if they will one day conquer the Syrian embassy on the day of Al-Hamma massacre, or assasinate Assad the day he'll stop hiding in his palace in Damesek.

Portugal and Spain are somewhat tolerant to Arabs, but they're too poor for Arab immigrants to settle in.

France is as always a singular case of brutal ignorance. France still pays the Algirian government to keep slaughtering the muslims back after they slaughter the governement's controlled villages. A French man will know much more about the happennings in Ramallah than the happennings in Algiria, but that's because of the unique solidarity of the French media with the government's position.

So north-african and Senegalian music is now very popular in Paris and generally in France, but this is just because all the different minorities in France don't assimilate like in Germany but rather stay in their own ghettos where they can speak their own language, carry out their own rituals and avoid contact with the brutal, stupid, French policemen.

While a German policeman studies in the academy for cops for 3 years after graduating 13 years of school, the French police resembles the Israeli one in its level of training and required personal skills. Thus French policemen can be stupid laymen that speak only French and treat Arab immigrants in an extremely brutal way. If there is a single country in which the immigrant population might one day storm the parliament or assasinate the president, this is certainly France. Actually it shouldn't be so hard, with French strategical position currently relying on selling cheap nuclear electricity to the rest of Western Europe, based on a chain of Nuclear reactors they have built on the occupied German territories along its north-eastern border. The French foreign policy is still based on keeping oil prices up so their nuclear alternative will still be the preferred option for Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. However a malfunction in the operation of one of these reactors, or even a failed raid over a truck carrying radioactive waste away from one of these reactors, can totally change the picture.

Last but not least, Germany is doing its best as a superpower without a military force, to break the dominance of Arab oil and French nuclear electricity over global politics. Thus they invest cupious amounts of funds on fascinating research on renewable energy resources and supreme green engines working on methane instead of oil.

Germany is leading the global research in fuel cell technology, as they have much more money than Israel and much more motivation than the US or Switzerland. However there are not enough German researchers since the northern-European family structure (excluding Scandinavia) is corrupt - many many old people on top of 1 or no children per couple. Even in a socialist country like Germany, elementary facilities like daycare and kindergarten facilities inside the universities are virtually non-existent. People are expected to leave home for good when they move to a good university, usually 100-600km away from home. Public transportation costs about 3 times as much as in Israel and has to serve an enormous amount of small points due to the rural urban structure of Germany. Thus a good German student will only visit home several times a year, even if his highschool girlfriend didn't follow him to Stutgart or Munich, Berlin or Koln. He thus has to choose between getting a new girlfriend (common only for distances exceeding 500km) or freezing the old one for 4-7 years until he gets his diploma. This dillemma will iterate throughout his life, as in Germany of 2002 people are still expected to be dynammic enough to follow their job opportunities to continental distances. Whoever doesn't can stay unemployed with a very good social security system, but no chance to get anywhere. Out of 80 million Germans, 4 million are unemployed, yet the grand majority is just well-off even if avoiding work.

In addition, high education in Germany is still free or very cheap, so people keep changing fields of studies forever while working de facto in resturants, living in a flat based on social security money, and spending the excess money on beer and weed. This lifestyle is now very common in Berlin, which is the fastest developing capital city in Europe and the most interesting one for students, and yet it's a place where you can walk into an internet cafe and could not explain the whole management that you expect your computer to have a telnet terminal or any other way to make a UNIX connection.

Back to the point, I wouldn't be surprised if a Palestenian researcher makes the breakthrough that would make the methane fuelcell efficient enough for common daily use. Then we could drive 90 km per liter of methane, which is a cheap greenhouse gas produced in anerobic decomposition of organic materials, among else in catlle farts caused by modern ill nutrition... So it sounds like a dream - A single discovery by an Arab immigrant could liberate us from tyrant Arab oil, French imperialism, greenhouse gases and explosive reservoirs of methane deep inside each and every garbage dump site in the world, including, unfortunately, the local ones...

Is it elaborative enough for a suggestion?

Good night

Now can you tell me about a free MP3 recorder to convert Rabih Abou-Khalil's interview and send it home, or do I have to pay you for servicing you?

Publishing it in Haayal, StageMag, FAZ and such was the initial intention. The problem is it takes me about 12 hours to transcribe 1 hour of slow interview. In this case it was a streaming interview, though we used Rabih's recorder with a very good microphone so we sound loud and clear. I'm afraid it might take me a week only to write it all down by myself, and then picking the interesting parts and adding my comments will take forever. That's why I require assistance, or atleast interested in making one online database with the full interview (divided into four sides of 90 minutes cassettes), so Dubi, Itai and Yuval could decide *beforehand* what are the interesting parts for their journals, and transcribe the relevant parts accordingly.

Back at night,
Lior

2. I didn't understand your concern. Can you elaborate?

3. Well, when they run the kiosks, the bakeries and many of the resturants, it mens they're mingling and slowly standing on their feet, soon to be mingling.

5. A safe recipe? I'm too stupid to follow your hints. If you find the time, please explain yourself.

6. Generally, French policemen are narrow-minded, rude and violent towards immigrants who cannot speak French. There surely is a better way to fight illegal immigration than to opress them into ghettos.

7. That's the only semi-rational explanation I (we) could come up with regarding the mad way of the French to do foreign affairs. Why else would they do everything they can to piss off everyone in the middle east against each other?

8. Thanks, it's all home made ;-)

9. Well, I'm talking about the cultural influence over their common mentality, the expectation value of their path in life, their preference in life as compared to those done by drunk/stoned Europeans. And I was talking specifically about Arabs from middle-eastern tyrannies - Syria, Palestine and Turkey. The Marrocans are also heavily stoned, Egyptians are too proud of their country.

Statistically, the flux of researchers is such, that in a decade from now (assuming no peace will be made by then) I will bet the following:

* 50% that a foreign researcher will make the breakthrough on full cell research in a German facility, with German funds. By foreign I mean - not from the EU.

* 20% he's coming from the EU (including Germany)

* 10% he's an Israeli in an Israeli institute.

* 5% he's a foreigner doing post-doc in Israel, with foreign funds.

* 10% he is Finnish, Danish or Swedish in a Scandinavian research institute.

* 5% surprises (Japan? Australia? Hong Kong? Teheran? That will be the day...)

10. We have nothing to be concerned about Europe taken over by Islam. We can only benefit from it in the long run. If we like it or not, our set of values is much more compatible with theirs. Sometimes you have to live in Yurop for 3-4 months to understand it.