"What if" features more piracy in the Med, other security issues

Set out here:

One of Britain’s most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat due to future migrations and North African "barbary" pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the next ten years making it unsafe to sail a yacht between Gibraltar and Malta, The UK Sunday Times reported.

While not claiming that all the threats will come to fruition, Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the development, concepts and doctrine centre at the Ministry of Defence (UK), is warning that such a situation is likely to happen if threatening factors such as agricultural decline, booming youth populations, water shortages, rising sea levels and radical Islam are not addressed by politicians with the consequences surpassing effective government control.

Parry was reported as saying that Europe could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries. “These groups would stay connected to their homelands by the internet and cheap flights,” he said.

If a security breakdown occurred, he said, it was likely to be brought on by environmental destruction and a population boom, coupled with technology and radical Islam which results he compared to “the 5th century Roman empire facing the Goths and the Vandals".

Hmmm.

UPDATE: (6/13/06) Link to original article here. Hat tip to CDR Salamander for having the link.