Keith Hudson [Editorial] The following exceptional item breaks my rule of about 200 words, but it consists of my reply to a piece by an Indian writer on another list. My comments are interleaved.

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Adnan Khan

Your concern for your white brothers and sisters seems to be warranted. First, the defeated and desperate Islamic peoples are bleeding your resources in a seemingly endless war of terror, and guerilla wars your army cannot win.

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President Bush's invasion of Iraq was just the same as all wars -- to gain resources (oil, of course) by a short-cut instead of trading for them. But in this case, Bush and his vice-president (the real architect of this disaster) were not intelligent enough to take the advice of those in the US State Department and the UK Foreign office who are Arabic experts. Whether America will ultimately win is a moot point. Even if American public opinion (and US mid-term elections in 2006) forces Bush into withdrawing large quantities of his troops in early 2006, four large and well-nigh impregnable bases are being built in Iraq in order to keep an eye on whatever happens in Iraq (probably a civil war) and to overfly Iran when it needs to.

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Second, the amount of scientists and engineers from China and India is so crushing and dominating it seems that in fifty years you will not be able to withstand it. It's like ten Japans into one.

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Yes, this is Khan's strongest argument. America has become economically powerful for three main reasons

1. Early in its life as an independent country it was able to plagiarise all the main inventions of (mainly) England, France and Germany (e.g. steam engine, electricity) to give it a head start. It was also lucky enough (in the 1840s) to be taught the principles of steel-making by Chinese engineers who were invited to Kentucky.

2. It was lucky enough to have major oilfields of its own, discovered from the 1870s and onwards, which enabled its industries to become much more efficient than Europe's from about 1900. By 1930/40 America was overhauling Europe in leaps and bounds. (America was so cognizant of the importance of oil that by 1945 President Roosevelt was already making preferential trade agreements with the Saudi Arabian royal family for even more cheap oil.)

3. As America's prosperity grew at an accelerated rate from the 1930/40s it was able to offer good salaries to the cream of Europe's university elite, particularly scientists. Starting with geniuses such as Einstein this gradually swelled to an annual intake of about 30,000 a year until very recently. From the late 1970s onwards, and encouraged by a more far-seeing Chinese government under Deng Xiaoping, an avalanche of brilliant young Chinese students -- as well as brilliant young people from India and Korea -- started to go to America for post-graduate training. The result was that half of the Silicon Valley start-ups by the 1990s/2000 were by Asian-born entrepreneurs, and far more than half of the heavyweight papers in the American physics journals are by Asian-born scientists.

As a result of this, America has been able to dumb down its state educational system to a level below that of almost all developed countries over the past 50 years -- but yet retain its entrepreneurial and innovative edge. But this is failing now. Despite a low value of the dollar, America has been unable to invent and manufacture enough new consumer goods of its own to make up for its rapidly growing trade deficit.

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Third, the Soviet Union as bad as it was, was a white power that still propagated the illusion of white supremacy. Now that it has fallen, the world will witness something it hasn't in three centuries.

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True. Almost every week brings further news of the Kremlin's tighter control of its parliament and its large industries, particularly oil. Meanwhile, except for a middle-class in Moscow and St Petersburg, its population is in despair and increasing poverty and its population is already collapsing.

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The undisputed superpower of the earth will be China. With China's plan to have the ten greatest universities on earth and its blistering 10% economic growth, it can achieve this.

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This will probably be so. But it won't be plain sailing. China has two main problems to overcome 1. the social chaos and unrest that's involved in the transformation of a mainly agricultural nation into an industrial one -- much like England's experience in the 19th century but writ much larger, of course; 2. Despite the hundreds of thousands of engineers and scientists its universities are already turning out every year, it still lacks a sizeable, experienced managerial-class both for its industries and its banking system. China has instituted a green card system to try and overcome this but the bulk of the new class will have to be home-grown. This will take another generation.

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Behind China will be India. What the world will witness is a non-white superpower. If India is second, the whities won't even be on the map.

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I'm not so confident about India. I think that regions of it will contiue to be prosperous but I can't see the country as a whole pulling through anytime soon, if at all.

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And consider that the third place USA will be, by 2050, more than half Latino and black. In the 2050 US, Asian Indians and Chinese will dominate your upper echelons financially and academically, and blacks would dominate sport and entertainment. Also Jewish people would continue their dominance.

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But there won't necessarily be a sharp (visible) dividing line between the meritocratic Asians and Americans. Discerning American-born females will lose no time in intermarrying with the brightest -- just as happened in England when the Jutes, Saxons, Angles and Danes invaded during the last 3,000 years.

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All white and non-white kids will wake up every day in a world where no white country is even close to power. Their psyche will be tremendously affected. The boost to the Asians will be enormous and the morale of the whites will shrink to non-existence. The old whites will sit on the fence and say, "I remember when whites ruled," and the Chinese and Indian men will laugh and ask, "When was this?" Well don't worry. You had your time. I am I writing this from my mansion in India.

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The above is rather too flamboyantly expressed, but generally true enough.

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I got a job from some American who was incredibly ignorant and miserably inadequate at accounting. I have no respect for Americans anymore. What was once a great culture built on learning and decency has nothing but a bunch of ignorant immoral morons. Such is your fate.

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When I was young, like many of my generation, I had a great admiration for America. But no longer. Nor have I any respect for the once admirable culture of much of Western Europe -- including my own country, England.

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Maybe your grandson can apply for immigration to China one day...or maybe the Chinese will remember how you guys let us in.

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I have already established a trust fund for the benefit of my grand-daughters if they learn Mandarin.

Finally, there's more than a little Schaden-freude in the way that Adnan Khan has expressed himself -- but it's all likely to be true enough.

Keith Hudson