Social change must certainly come if Arab states and people will have any chance to advance. Efforts to hold onto past must be seen as futile (old Arabs don't recognise their countries anyway), as ridiculous as attempting to stop tide from coming in. Change can never be completely avoided, but with world changing as rapidly as it has in past 200 years, efforts to avoid change have become social poison, destroying societies trying to embrace stagnation.

Calling one version of Islam or another heresy really misses point. If only way to stop Salafism remains to directly fight against it, putting people in position where they either support Salafism or oppose it, Salafism will emerge victorious. New forms of Islam more engaging and powerful than Salafism have to render Salafism boring, uninteresting, and easily discarded.

Shia progress, as in Iran, won't help in Sunni countries any more than fundamentalist progress would help in Catholic countries or vice versa. Sunnis have to grab for their own destiny. If they fail to do so, they will collapse, with range of unfortunate consequences for societies in which they represent majority of population.

Russia may not be land of sweetness and light (especially "light", especially during winter), but it has raised living standards substantially during last few years and has more international influence now than at any time except during height of Soviet empire.

You say "If there's anything Northern Ireland has taught us, isn't it that if we work had to provide physical security, and give people freedom and education and economic prosperity, in a few decades they'll be so busy stuffing their faces with beer and crisps while watching the telly that they'll be too busy to go kill each other?" But countries like South Korea and Taiwan show that "freedom" need only become factor after people get security and education and economic prosperity, that only then do they demand "freedom". Except that Saudi Arabians have security and education and economic prosperity, but you don't see them demanding (or even getting ready to demand) "freedom". Maybe cultural issues make difference as well.

Most religious fanatics have become dangerous, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or whatever. Most of them feel threatened by modern world, and most of them want to destroy modern world to preserve their quaint understandings of what their god demands of them. In world with 6,600,000,000 people, they fight to force women to have children, then predict that world will run out of food. In world with weapons powerful enough to cause "nuclear winter", they fight for more weapons, more killing, and more torture of enemies, then blame others for their own barbarism.

Wealth in North America also gravitates to elites, and poor people get screwed because they have temerity to be poor. Why don't your critiques of Arabs apply with equal force in North America? You can't start paradise in North America either, because omnipresent government will insist on overseeing everything you do (think Waco), so why doesn't your criticism of parasitism apply elsewhere?

Arabs have allowed themselves to wallow in dirt for too long, and now they must get up and do something. Making excuses for them doesn't help them any, it just allows them to wallow longer. It starts with allowing ordinary people to see what they must confront in rest of world, it starts with education about other cultures and other religions. Satellite Television may get things started, but sooner or later Arabs have to recognise that world has passed them by and that they need to catch up. Only then will they even try.  

Russian male life expectancy has dropped to 60 years.  The economy is still in very bad shape, despite being much better than it was a few years ago, when it was in the midst of the post-Soviet depression.  The political influence of Russia isn't so much due to their economy being strong as it is to deciding to spend a relatively large share of their GDP on their military and stirring up trouble around the world.  Japan for example has a much bigger economy, but nowhere near the political influence of Russia.

Regarding Saudi Arabia and parasitism,

The non-oil government revenues are constrained by a largely non-competitive market place where monopolies and “exclusive dealerships” are dominated by members of the royal family and their cohorts, and usually they do not generate revenues for the government in the form of sales or income tax.  While some monopolies and single dealerships control large segments of the market, they are protected by the Shari’a (Islamic law) from paying taxes on their earnings.  Rather, they are required to make a voluntary contribution of 2.5 percent in the form of zakat (religious charity) to organizations or groups or individuals of their choice.

     This religious protection of the rich and the powerful deprives the government of vital sources of income to address the social and economic needs of the majority of the people. The result is a skewed income distribution and the growth of extensive poverty and deprivation. Despite growing social needs, Khalid al-Qusaibi, the Saudi minister of planning has recently confirmed that the Saudi Government will not introduce the income tax to reduce the burden of the national debt or redistribute national wealth.

So, the oil is a government-run monopoly with the profits going mostly to very few people, and the rest of the economy is mostly a government-enforced monopoly with the profits going to very few people as well.

In North America, a much larger fraction of economic activity is in the manufacturing, services and intellectual property generating areas than in raw materials generation.  At least theoretically, anyone can start up a company in these industries and compete, whereas in the raw materials sector, there is a finite amount of resources and you have to buy out an existing owner in order to start up a business.  Even in the raw materials sector, unlike in Saudi Arabia there is competition amongst the individual owners, and there are few situations where an adequate substitute for a material cannot be found elsewhere.  This keeps profit margins down to a reasonable level, and situations like producing oil at $10/barrel and selling it at $90/barrel are rare.

Income distribution in the U.S. is now worse than it has ever been before, narrowly beating out its previous high in the 20s.  Income disparity has been significantly increased by increased rates of immigration swelling low-skill labor availability.  Nevertheless, the poorer classes are not entirely restricted from having their children become doctors or lawyers and joining the elite classes.  And when the government takes in money, more of it goes to help out the people in general than to enrich just a few.

So I wouldn't call the situation in North America "parasitism", but there are other examples in the Middle East, Africa and South America.

In regard to a lack of freedom hurting development prospects, this effect is greatest when you're talking about freedom from an external ruler, as in the Irish fighting British rule or the Palestinians fighting Israeli rule, and not where fighting for civil liberties from a ruler of the same race, as in South Korea and Taiwan.  And the economies of South Korea and Taiwan are based on industries which require educated native workers, whereas the economy of Saudi Arabia is based on hiring western engineers to come in and tell their Egyptian and Pakistani and Bangladeshi laborers how to get the oil out of the ground.

I have little doubt that freedom from external rulers makes enormous difference in development prospects, but South Korea and Taiwan were for many years as in thrall to US military as any Middle East country with arguable current exception of Iraq. Yet they managed to take development opportunities that were available and run with them. South Korea today has become 13th largest economy in world, and current president thinks it can become 7th largest with prudent management. If Egypt were run as well as Korea, with same number of people and comparable resources and with no foreign troops muddying economic picture, impact on Arab world in general would be substantial.

No doubt Russia's external influence has been enhanced by its military spending, but it has also been enhanced by its technology. For example, because it sold nuclear reactor to Iran, it has more pull with Iran than US has. In turn, its technology has been enhanced by its economic revival.

Income distribution in North America really has been worse recently than ever before, but I think that may be about to change. Merchant class in US has allied itself with soldier and priest class ever since beginning of Reagan years, and both merchants and workers have suffered in consequence. (Merchants have suffered primarily because of terrible economic policies which have been natural consequence of trusting classes that don't have any deep appreciation of basis or importance of economic power.) But now merchant class sends most of its political contributions to Democrats, which suggests that they have begun to understand that they can trust working class, their natural ally, more than soldier and priest classes, and that Democrats will be better stewards of economy than Republicans have been.

Saudi Arabian oil policies don't strengthen their country in long term, for reasons you make clear. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait would be much stronger if they were lifting up ordinary people to greater extent. Instead, they try to keep everyone "paid off", just well off enough to avoid outright revolution. What they have gotten from this approach was radical clergy with vast anger at West, revolutionary ferment, and diminished international influence. If Saudi Arabia had used its resources better, can anyone doubt they would have more influence than Israel? Yet instead, they still get seen as backwater, place to be exploited rather than partnered with. Having Bush kiss their leaders doesn't change facts. With vast oil reserves and revenues, Arabs really could lift themselves up and become players in international scene, but coasting on past glories won't do trick.