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Every now and then I have to go out to the airport in Rome, usually either picking up or dropping off, and the trip out to Fiumicino is pretty tedious. For me requires a trip into the city, and then back out of it again, in more or less the same direction and almost the same distance (thanks Trenitalia!). So it’s a good idea either to bring someone lively along to talk to, or something to read because the sights in the airport end of the City, particularly those you can see from rail yards, are not exactly inspiring.

Today I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune, which is, essentially, the European edition of the New York Times, and I noted two items of interest.

I read all about the concurrent multiple political melt-downs going on in Tunisia and this weekend in Egypt. It was fascinating, but reading between the NYT’s liberal bias, things look pretty grim down there. Ominous.

I wondered, while the shouting crowds (“Allahhu Akbar!” according to at least some video footage on YouTube) welcomed the arrival of the Islamists’ choice for president, Mohamed ElBaradei, what was happening in the small but determined Coptic Christian community in Egypt. Around the corner from my parish in Rome, there is a church that has been given to a group of Ethiopian Copts. I never pass the place without thinking about the early Roman martyrs whose graves I have visited and wondering how many more there will be from this small and heavily persecuted, but doggedly faithful group.

I must say the Herald Tribune’s coverage struck me as familiar. I am just old enough to have caught a glimmer of understanding in 1979 of the news footage of the revolution in Iran that deposed another man, the Shah – whom the Islamic leaders called a “dictator” – and imposed the current regime. The Byzantine complexities of Middle East politics are beyond my remit, but the echoes are definitely the same. The same shouting young men, the same fists in the air, the same Islamic militant leaders, the Muslim Brotherhood, carefully positioning themselves.

I read elsewhere that the U.S. today started evacuating US citizens and that Egypt’s airports are “in chaos.”

While most media outlets are being optimistic, and Presient Obama and his staff talk about following the “will of the Egyptian people,” I am holding my breath. Someone on CBS News wrote of “fears among most Christians that if the president steps down, a far more radical authority – possibly far less amicable to the Coptic population – may take over.” I’ll say.

I expect that soon the Holy See’s Secretariat of State will be considering offering places for refugee Coptic Egyptians to worship in the City.

After the massacre of 23 Copts at Mass in Alexandria on January 1st by Islamic militants, I read an extraordinary account of a huge crowd of Muslim Egyptians escorting Coptic Christians to Mass and standing guard, forming a human shield, outside the Church during the service. I don’t know how much credence to give this story. I also read that this was necessary because the police and other security forces of the government in the country do nothing to protect Christians.

But none of this, naturally, made it into the Herald Tribune’s column space between the statements from Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and the garbled purple prose of the Herald Tribune’s Cairo correspondent.

One thing that did become clear while reading it was that if one wants to know what is actually going on in some country like Egypt, where even the most principled journalists could not possibly have the full story, one must not read any organ of the ossified liberal mainstream press.

The International Herald Tribune is, however, a wonderful way of finding out what the American liberal elite are thinking about it all. For that, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The second item was about the Chinese economy that is experiencing inflation that is “sending ripples around the globe.” The Chinese, it appears, are having a little trouble getting workers for their factories. It seems that the traditional age group for factory worker are those in their 20s and 30s. But these are rather more scarce than anticipated, due, the Herald Tribune surprisingly admits, to the communist government’s One Child policy implemented about three decades ago.

The Chinese Tiger economy has been largely dependent on exports, doing the manufacturing work when Western Nations like Canada, the U.S. and Britain decided to “outsource” and close their own factories. But this global exchange of labour for cash on a grand scale, has created a material wealth not seen in China throughout its history. That wealth, combined with the modern wonders of artificial contraception and abortion, has created a generation of young people who now no longer need to be coerced into not having children, as the growth of voluntary abortion, particularly to university students, has shown.

“The number of Chinese in their 20s and 30s,” the paper says, “is slowly shrinking.”

With the government dealing with inflation by increasing minimum wages and labour shortages pushing competitive wages up, “a rapidly growing university system” is enticing more of China’s already scarce young people to go to university, thus leaving factory drudgery behind. I have no doubt that this new, wealthy, educated middle class will follow the suit of the West and marry late and voluntarily forego childrearing in favor of iPods as we have done.

China has been turning itself into an economic giant, mostly by sheer main might and determination and a total unwillingness to allow human considerations, like the value of an individual human life, to stand in the way. But it seems that the very ruthlessness that has created this surge of wealth has painted the Chinese into an impossible economic corner.

It is worth thinking about. An admission by the New York Times that the Chinese government’s favorite population control measure, fully backed by the United Nations, is resulting in unintended consequences is rare indeed. When I was reading it, I wondered if these little troubles in China’s gigantic economy might not be the gentle little breath of wind that presages the catastrophic storm. Or maybe less dramatically, is this where the demographic/economic bubble will finally burst?