Former U.S. Amb. to Israel says Obama would be turned off by an Israeli unity government comprising Netanyahu and Beitienu. Kurtzer, himself is Jewish, and was a campaign advisor to Obama. (See 2 below.)
Off with her head and then he proceeded to do it. Extraordinary research report and analysis.
Where are the female right's protestors - back in the kitchen? (See 3 below.)
The Stimulus Bill is change alright and the implications are very dicey. There will be additonal stimuli demands down the road. Bank on it if you can find a solvent one.
If you are fair minded, objective and voted for Obama I am curious what you are now thinking? Are you comfortable with what has taken place in the last four weeks? Is what has occured what you thought would happen and why you voted for him and Biden? (See 4 below.)
Michael Lind is disturbed that a tidal wave of unrestrained populism could engulf Obama and the Democrats. (See 5 below.)
Kevin Hassett suggests Harvard MBA Narcissists did something wars, famines, depressions failed to do - sink Wall Street. (See 6 below.)
Now that we have stimulated our economy it is on to other problems - Afghanistan being one among others. (See 7 and 7a below.)
IDF continues to develop "James Bond" type weaponry in order to stay ahead of the times. (See 8 below.)
Dick
1)If this is true, think of the many ways it could be deployed to save lives
and battle damage!
I received this from a retired Army LTC. First time I'd seen this video.
It looks like Star Wars!
I am sure you will be intrigued by this new invention. It was developed by
Rafael (Israel Armament Development Authority).
I had the chance to see a demonstration of this "shield" some time ago. In
the group with me were several U.S. tank commanders who were absolutely
spellbound. Apparently, we are trying to research such an invention, but
are light years behind the Israelis.
Following the demonstration, my first question was obviously "How far are away are we from being able to erect such a shield for infantrymen?" The IDF
representative answered "We will talk later." Later never came, as we were
whisked immediately away from the demonstration area in an obvious move
designed to thwart the press, who were not allowed anywhere near the area.
I did find that ground troops within a certain vicinity of the armored
units would be included in the shield.
I thought that the rifle that fired around a corner was unbelievable when I
saw a demonstration of its capabilities, but this "shield" is the ultimate.
We were not allowed to take any pictures and even our cell phones were
banned from the area. The only pictures to date that I know of are those
taken by the IDF and the inventors. I just received an email from an IDF
general staff officer who told me that a promotional video of the "shield"
was on Utube. See if you are as astounded as I was!!!
Click
-
Active defence developed in Israel
2)U.S. ex-envoy to Israel: Netanyahu-Lieberman gov't is 'bad combination' for U.S.
By Natasha Mozgovaya
Daniel Kurtzer, the former U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv, said on Tuesday that a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu that also included Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman would be a "bad combination for American interests."
"It would be much more difficult for the right-wing even with determined American leadership to advance the peace process," Kurtzer said. "Not impossible, but very difficult."
The U.S. official position is that it looks forward to "working with any government," but in back-channel messages the Obama administration has made it clear it would like to see a Likud-Kadima unity government in Jerusalem over a narrow right-wing government which would in all likelihood result in a freeze in peace talks with the Palestinians.
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The former envoy added that the Obama administration would find it politically risky to embrace a government that included Lieberman, who has voiced controversial views about Arabs.
"There will be an image problem for an American administration to support a government that includes a politician who was defined as racist," Kurtzer said during an appearance at Georgetown University. "But the Israeli system doesn't respond well to perceptions of outside parties," he said.
Kurtzer, who was speaking at an event examining the U.S. perspective on the Gaza conflict, said the peace process will be on hold as Israel spends the next five weeks attempting to cobble together a stable coalition.
He added that the recent Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip had tacit support from Arab regimes who are fearful of growing Iranian influence.
"Israel was in a fact an instrument, a tool of the moderate Sunni majority in the Middle East that sought to push back Shia [influence]," Kurtzer said. "There was great anger at Hamas's means of governance in Gaza. To be sure, there was as well a great split in the Arab world between the Arab street and the governing circles. About week three of the war the pressure from the street was too much even for those regimes. But it'll be interesting over time to see over time if what we saw in the first two weeks of the war to characterize Arab government behavior."
3) Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?
By Phyllis Chesler
On February 12, 2009, Muzzammil Hassan informed police that he had beheaded his wife. Hassan had emigrated to the United States 30 years ago and, after a successful banking career, had founded Bridges TV, a Muslim-interest network which aims, according to its website, "to foster a greater understanding among many cultures and diverse populations." Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III told The Buffalo News that "this is the worst form of domestic violence possible," and Khalid Qazi, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, told the New York Post that Islam forbids such domestic violence. While Muslim advocacy organizations argue that honor killings are a misnomer stigmatizing Muslims for what is simply domestic violence, a problem that has nothing to do with religion, Phyllis Chesler, who just completed a study of more than 50 instances of North American honor killings, says the evidence suggest otherwise. — The Editors
Amina Said (L), 18, and her sister Sarah, 17, were shot dead by their father Yaser at their home in Irving, Texas, in January 2008. Said was upset by his daughters' "Western ways" and was assisted in the killing by his wife, the girls' mother. The victims of honor killings are largely teenage daughters or young women. Unlike ordinary domestic violence, honor killings often involve multiple family members as perpetrators.
When a husband murders a wife or daughter in the United States and Canada, too often law enforcement chalks the matter up to domestic violence. Murder is murder; religion is irrelevant. Honor killings are, however, distinct from wife battering and child abuse. Analysis of more than fifty reported honor killings shows they differ significantly from more common domestic violence.[1] The frequent argument made by Muslim advocacy organizations that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam and that it is discriminatory to differentiate between honor killings and domestic violence is wrong.
Background and Denial
Families that kill for honor will threaten girls and women if they refuse to cover their hair, their faces, or their bodies or act as their family's domestic servant; wear makeup or Western clothing; choose friends from another religion; date; seek to obtain an advanced education; refuse an arranged marriage; seek a divorce from a violent husband; marry against their parents' wishes; or behave in ways that are considered too independent, which might mean anything from driving a car to spending time or living away from home or family. Fundamentalists of many religions may expect their women to meet some but not all of these expectations. But when women refuse to do so, Jews, Christians, and Buddhists are far more likely to shun rather than murder them. Muslims, however, do kill for honor, as do, to a lesser extent, Hindus and Sikhs.
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families.[2] This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders.[3] The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women's empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.[4]
There are very few studies of honor killing, however, as the motivation for such killings is cleansing alleged dishonor and the families do not wish to bring further attention to their shame, so do not cooperate with researchers. Often, they deny honor crimes completely and say the victim simply went missing or committed suicide. Nevertheless, honor crimes are increasingly visible in the media. Police, politicians, and feminist activists in Europe and in some Muslim countries are beginning to treat them as a serious social problem.[5]
Willingness to address the problem of honor killing, however, does not extend to many Muslim advocacy groups in North America. The well-publicized denials of U.S.-based advocacy groups are ironic given the debate in the Middle East. While the religious establishment in Jordan, for example, says that honor killing is a relic of pre-Islamic Arab culture, Muslim Brotherhood groups in Jordan have publicly disagreed to argue the Islamic religious imperative to protect honor.[6]
Yotam Feldner, a researcher at the Middle East Media Research Institute, quotes a psychiatrist in Gaza who describes the honor killing culture as one in which a man who refrains from "washing shame with blood" is a "coward who is not worthy of living ... as less than a man." Therefore, it is no surprise that the Jordanian penal code is quite lenient towards honor killers. While honor killing may be a custom that originated in the pagan, pre-Islamic past, contemporary Islamist interpretations of religious law prevail. As Feldner puts it: "Some important Islamic scholars in Jordan have even gone further by declaring honor crimes an Islamic imperative that derives from the 'values of virility advocated by Islam.'"[7]
Islamist advocacy organizations, however, argue that such killings have nothing to do with Islam or Muslims, that domestic violence cuts across all faiths, and that the phrase "honor killing" stigmatizes Muslims whose behavior is no different than that of non-Muslims. For example, in response to a well-publicized 2000 honor killing, SoundVision.com, an Islamic information and products site, published an article that argued,
Four other women were killed in Chicago in the same month ... They were white, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian … Islam is not responsible for [the Muslim woman's] death. Nor is Christianity responsible for the deaths of the other women.[8]
In 2007, after Aqsa Parvez was murdered by her father in Toronto for not wearing hijab (a head covering), Sheila Musaji wrote in the American Muslim, "Although this certainly is a case of domestic violence … 'honor' killings are not only a Muslim problem, and there is no 'honor' involved."[9] Mohammed Elmasry, of the Canadian Islamic Congress, also dismissed the problem. "I don't want the public to think that this is an Islamic issue or an immigrant issue. It is a teenager issue," he said.[10]
Indeed, denial is rife. In 2008, after Kandeela Sandal was murdered for honor by her father in Atlanta because she wanted a divorce, Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, told the media that "most South Asian communities in the United States" enjoy "wonderful" relationships within their families and said, "This isn't a rampant problem within South Asian communities. What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities."[11] In October 2008, Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas branch of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), dismissed any Islamic connection to a prominent Dallas honor killing, labeled as such by the FBI, arguing, "As far as we're concerned, until the motive is proven in a court of law, this is [just] a homicide." He continued, "We [Muslims] don't have the market on jealous husbands ... or domestic violence … This is not Islamic culture." [12]
Case studies suggest otherwise.
Domestic Violence versus Honor Killing
Domestic violence is a significant problem in the United States. Between 1989 and 2004, 21,124 women died at the hands of an intimate; 8,997 men died in domestic violence during the same time period.[13] Because the U.S. Department of Justice does not catalogue the victim's or murderer's age, religion, ethnic background, or immigration status, it is not possible to know what proportion of these killings are honor-related.
Unni Wikan, a social anthropologist and professor at the University of Oslo, defines honor killing as "a murder carried out as a commission from the extended family, to restore honor after the family has been dishonored. As a rule, the basic cause is a rumor that any female family member has behaved in an immoral way."[14] While honor killings are just a minority of total domestic violence in the United States and Canada, they constitute a distinct phenomenon. (See Table 1.) A 2008 Massachusetts-based study found that "although immigrants make up an estimated 14 percent of the state's population, [they, nevertheless,] accounted for 26 percent of the 180 domestic violence deaths from 1997-2006."[15]
Lenore Walker, author of The Battered Woman Syndrome,[16] agreed that fundamentalist immigrants control and patrol their women very closely. "Given the strict rules, there are a lot of things to kill them for," she said. Walker confirmed the difference between the victim-perpetrator in honor killings and ordinary domestic violence:
In ordinary domestic violence involving Westerners, it is rare for brothers to kill sisters or for male cousins to kill female cousins. And while child abuse occurs in which fathers may kill infants and children, it is very rare for Western fathers to kill teenage daughters.[17]
Other discrepancies exist. Walker observed that Western men are more apt to kill little boys than girls in their family. "Women with postpartum depression kill their babies, and men may kill babies by shaken baby syndrome," she explained. She did not "know of any batterers who are helped to commit the murders by their brothers or cousins or other family members. Occasionally, the man's relatives may be in the house when the murder goes down, but that is quite rare in my experience."[18]
The press has reported a number of honor killings in the United States, Canada, and Europe. These cases show the killings to be primarily a Muslim-on-Muslim crime. (See Table 2 and Table 3.) The victims are largely teenage daughters or young women. Wives are victims but to a lesser extent. And, unlike most Western domestic violence, honor killings are carefully planned. The perpetrator's family may warn the victim repeatedly over a period of years that she will be killed if she dishonors her family by refusing to veil, rebuffing an arranged marriage, or becoming too Westernized. Most important, only honor killings involve multiple family members. Fathers, mothers, brothers, male cousins, uncles, and sometimes even grandfathers commit the murder, but mothers and sisters may lobby for the killing. Some mothers collaborate in the murder in a hands-on way and may assist in the getaway. In some cases, taxi drivers, neighbors, and mosque members prevent the targeted woman from fleeing, report her whereabouts to her family, and subsequently conspire to thwart police investigations.[19] Very old relatives or minors may be chosen to conduct the murder in order to limit jail time if caught.
Seldom is domestic violence celebrated, even by its perpetrators. In the West, wife batterers are ostracized. Here, there is an important difference in honor crimes. Muslims who commit or assist in the commission of honor killings view these killings as heroic and even view the murder as the fulfillment of a religious obligation. A Turkish study of prisoners found no social stigma attached to honor murderers.[20] While advocacy organizations such as CAIR denounce any link between honor killings and Islam, many sheikhs still preach that disobedient women should be punished. Few sheikhs condemn honor killings as anti-Islamic. Honor killings are not stigmatized.
Table 1: Differing Characteristics of Honor Killings and Domestic Violence
Honor Killings Domestic Violence
Committed mainly by Muslims against Muslim girls/young adult women. Committed by men of all faiths usually against adult women.
Committed mainly by fathers against their teenage daughters and daughters in their early twenties. Wives and older-age daughters may also be victims, but to a lesser extent. Committed by an adult male spouse against an adult female spouse or intimate partner.
Carefully planned. Death threats are often used as a means of control. The murder is often unplanned and spontaneous.
The planning and execution involve multiple family members and can include mothers, sisters, brothers, male cousins, uncles, grandfathers, etc. If the girl escapes, the extended family will continue to search for her to kill her. The murder is carried out by one man with no family complicity.
The reason given for the honor killing is that the girl or young woman has "dishonored" the family. The batterer-murderer does not claim any family concept of "honor." The reasons may range from a poorly cooked meal to suspected infidelity to the woman's trying to protect the children from his abuse or turning to the authorities for help.
At least half the time, the killings are carried out with barbaric ferocity. The female victim is often raped, burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc. While some men do beat a spouse to death, they often simply shoot or stab them.
The extended family and community valorize the honor killing. They do not condemn the perpetrators in the name of Islam. Mainly, honor killings are seen as normative. The batterer-murderer is seen as a criminal; no one defends him as a hero. Such men are often viewed as sociopaths, mentally ill, or evil.
The murderer(s) do not show remorse. Instead, they experience themselves as "victims," defending themselves from the girl's actions and trying to restore their lost family honor. Sometimes, remorse or regret is exhibited.
Table 2: North American Honor Killings, Successful and Attempted
Victim Name (age) Year, Location Perpetrators' Name, Origin Motive Method
Palestina Isa (16) 1989
St. Louis, MO Maria & Zein Isa, parents, sisters also encouraged it / West Bank. (M) "Too American," refused to travel with her father, a member of the Abu Nidal Palestinian terrorist group, as "cover." Stabbed 13 times by father as her mother held her down.
Methal Dayem (22) 1999
Cleveland, OH Yezen Dayem, Musa Saleh, cousins / West Bank. (M) Refused to marry her cousin; attended college; sought independent career as elementary school teacher; drove her own car; too independent; turned back on her culture. Two cousins allegedly shot her, choked on own blood.
Lubaina Bhatti Ahmed (39) 1999
St. Clairsville, OH Nawaz Ahmed, estranged husband / Pakistan (M) Filed for divorce. Throat cut; her father, sister and sister's young child's throat also cut.
Farah Khan (5) 1999
Toronto, Canada Muhammed Khan, father, and Kaneez Fatma, stepmother / unknown region. (M) Suspected child was not his biologically. Father and step-mother cut her throat, dismembered her body.
Jawinder "Jassi" Kaur (25) 2000
Pakistan Gang of men hired by Malkiat Kaur, mother, and Surjit Sing Badesha, uncle / Canada/Pakistan (S) Against her wealthy, farming parents' wishes, married a man who was of inferior financial status, a Pakistani rickshaw driver. Kidnapped, throat slashed
Shahpara Sayeed (33) 2000
Chicago, IL Mohammad Harroon, husband / Pakistan (M) Motive is unclear. But they had been fighting for months. Burned alive
Marlyn Hassan (29) 2002
Jersey City, NJ Alim Hassan, husband / Guyana (Hindu wife) (M) His wife refused to convert from Hinduism to Islam. Husband, an auto mechanic, stabbed wife (and the twins in her womb), the wife's sister, and the wife's mother.
Amandeep Singh Atwal (17) 2003
British Columbia, Canada Rajinder Singh Atwal, father / East Indies (S) Wanted daughter to end relationship with non-Sikh classmate, Todd McIsaac Father stabbed daughter 11 times.
Hatice Peltek (39) 2004
Scottsville, NY Ismail Peltek, husband / Turkey (M) Had been molested by brother-in-law Stabbed, bludgeoned with hammer along with daughters.
Aqsa Parvez (16) 2007
Toronto, Canada Muhammad Parvez. father, Waqas Parvez, brother (M) / unknown region Refusing to wear hijab. Strangled
Amina Said (17) 2008
Irving, TX Yaser Said, father; mother assisted / Egypt (M) Upset by her "Western" ways. Shot
Sarah Said (18) 2008
Irving, TX Yaser Said, father; mother assisted / Egypt (M) Upset by her "Western" ways Shot
Fauzia Mohammed (19) 2008
Henriettta, NY Goaded by mother, Waheed Allah Mohammed, brother / Afghanistan (M) Too "Western," immodest clothing, planned to attend college in New York City Stabbed
Sandeela Kanwal (25) 2008
Atlanta, GA Chaudry Rashid, father / Pakistan (M) Filed for divorce after arranged marriage Strangled
Legend: M = Muslim; S=Sikh
In these cases, the average age of the victims was 21.5, and 10 of the 14 were daughters. Importantly, more than half the cases involved multiple perpetrators. Nor is there a significant difference between honor killings in North America and Europe. Neither the average age (20) nor the percentage of daughters as victims in the European cases is significantly different from those in the North American cases. (See Table 3.)
Table 3: European Honor Killings
Victim Name Year, Location Perpetrators' Name, Origin Motive Method
Surjit Athwal (27) 1998
lured to India from England Bachan Athwal, grandmother-in-law, her son and another relative / India (S) Having an affair, planning to divorce. Lured to India for 'family wedding' and strangled.
Rukhsana Naz (19) 1999
England Brother and mother / Pakistan (M) Refused arranged marriage; pregnant with boyfriend's baby. Strangled by brother while held down by mother
Fadime Sahindal (32) 2002
Sweden Father and brother / Kurds from Turkey (M) Rejected arranged marriage; dated non-Muslim; sought higher education; sought legal remedy against father and brother. Shot
Heshu Yones (16) 2002
England Abdalla Yones, father / Iraq (M) Dating a Christian; too Western. Stabbed, throat cut
Sohane Benziane (17) 2002
France Jamal Derrar, ex-boyfriend and schoolmates / Algeria (M) Too Western Raped, tortured, and burned alive
Anooshe Sediq Ghulam (22) 2002
Norway Nasruddin Shamsi, husband / Afghanistan (M) Failure to listen to her husband, divorce. Shot
Maja Bradaric (16) 2003
The Netherlands Nephew and 3 others / Bosnia (M) Using Internet to find a boyfriend Burned to death
Sahjda Bibi (21) 2003
England Rafaqat Hussain, cousin / Pakistan (M) Refused arranged marriage Stabbed 22 times
Anita Gindha (22) 2003
Scotland Relative suspected / Pakistan (S) Married non-Sikh. Strangled
Shafilea Ahmed (16) 2003
England Parents suspected / Pakistan (M) Opposed her parents' plans for an arranged marriage Strangled or smothered
"Gul" (32) 2004
The Netherlands Husband/Afghanistan (M) Sought divorce Shot
Hatin Surucu (23) 2005
Germany Three brothers / Turkey (M) Fled forced marriage; did not wear scarf. Shot
Rudina Qinami (16) 2005
Albania Father / Albania (M) Accepted ride by male, non-relative. Shot
Banaz Mahmod (20) 2006
England Mahmod Mahmod, father, her uncle Ari Mahmod / Kurds from Iraq (M) Having an "affair". Raped, strangled
Samaira Nazir (25) 2006
England Azhar Nazir, brother and cousin / Pakistan (M) Fell in love with Afghan refugee; refused to consider arranged marriage in Pakistan Stabbing, throat cut
Sazan Bajez-Abdullah (24) 2006
Germany Kazim Mahmud, husband / Iraq (M) Acting in an "immodest "way. Stabbed, set on fire
Sabia Rani (19) 2006
England Shazad Khan, husband and in-laws / Pakistan (M) Wanted divorce Beaten
Ghazala Khan (18) 2006
Denmark Brother, father and other family members / Pakistan (M) Family did not approve of husband Shot
Caneze Riaz (39) 2006
England Mohammed Riaz, husband / Pakistan (M) Too westernized Immolated
Sayrah Riaz (16) 2006
England Mohammed Riaz, father / Pakistan (M) Too westernized Immolated
Sophia Riaz (15) 2006
England Mohammed Riaz, father / Pakistan (M) Too westernized Immolated
Alicia Riaz (10) 2006
England Mohammed Riaz, father / Pakistan (M) Too westernized Immolated
Hannah Riaz (3) 2006
England Mohammed Riaz, father / Pakistan (M) Too westernized Immolated
Hina Saleem (21) 2006
Italy Father and brother-in-law / Pakistan (M) Did not respect Pakistani culture, divorced, wore clothing that showed her midriff Stabbed
Sana Ali (17) 2007
England Husband / Pakistan (M) Not known, but detectives consider honor motive Stabbed
Morsal Obeidi (16) 2008
Germany Ahmad Obeidi, brother, and cousin / Afghanistan (M) Wanted too much freedom; did not appreciate Muslim values Stabbed
Legend: M = Muslim; S=Sikh
In both North America and Europe, family members conducted honor killings with excessive violence—repeatedly stabbing, raping, setting aflame, and bludgeoning—in more than half the cases. Only in serial-killing-type scenarios are Western women targeted with similar violence; in these cases, the perpetrators are seldom family members, and their victims are often strangers. Despite the obfuscation of Muslim advocacy groups, these case studies show that honor killings are quite distinct from domestic violence. Not all honor killings are perpetrated by Muslims, but the overwhelming majority are. Ninety percent of the honor killers shown in Tables 2 and 3 were Muslim. In every case, perpetrators view their victims as violating rules of religious conduct and act without remorse.
While the sample size is small, this study suggests that honor killing is accelerating in North America and may correlate with the numbers of first generation immigrants. The problem is diverse but originates with immigration from majority Muslim countries and regions—the Palestinian territories, the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, majority Muslim countries in the Balkans, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Afghanistan. Pakistanis accounts for the plurality. The common denominator in each case is not culture but religion.
Conflict of Cultural Moralities
The problem the West faces is complex. Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus view honor and morality as a collective family matter. Rights are collective, not individual. Family, clan, and tribal rights supplant individual human rights.[21]
In these groups, intellectuals and elites handicap the absorption of immigrants arriving from countries where honor is a communal virtue. For example, accusations of Islamophobia stymie discussion and policy formulation when policymakers seek to address problems occurring among Muslim immigrants. Still, there are legal interventions underway in Europe, home to between twenty and thirty million Muslim immigrants and their descendents, as opposed to perhaps four million in the United States and Canada.[22] Honor-related violence is, therefore, more visible in Europe than in North America. In 2004, Sweden held an international conference on honor killing, calling for "international cooperation" on the issue. Conference participants concluded:
Violence in the name of honor must be combated as an obstacle to women's enjoyment of human rights. Interpretations of honor as strongly connected with female chastity must be challenged. It can never be accepted that customs, traditions, or religious considerations are invoked to avoid obligations to eradicate violence against women and girls, including violence in the name of honor. Violence against women must be addressed from a rights-based perspective. … Measures should be taken in the areas of legislation, employment, education, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Respect for women's enjoyment of human rights is intrinsically linked to democracy. International conventions must be incorporated into national legislation.[23]
There have since been local conferences in England, France, and Germany. British law enforcement has begun to hide women in a program equivalent to the U.S. Federal witness protection program.[24] Great Britain has passed legislation to empower police to rescue British female citizens whose families have kidnapped and forcibly married them against their will, usually in Pakistan; the police will return them to Britain if the brides request it. There is a special police unit that deals with the forced, arranged marriages of children.[25] A new movement has also arisen in England, "One Law for All. A Campaign against Shari'a Law in Britain," launched by Maryam Namazie, an advocate opposed to honor killing and other honor-related violence. She has launched this movement to oppose the use of Shari'a courts because they discriminate against women.[26] Additionally, schools in the Netherlands have been asked to be "more alert to honor violence,"[27] following research conducted for the Ministry of Integration.
U.S. law enforcement has made tremendous progress over the last forty years on issues related to violence against women. However, there are not yet any shelters for battered Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh girls or women who fear that they will be murdered for honor. A regular shelter for battered women does not specialize in honor killings, nor are there any provisions for foster families—Muslim or otherwise—who can protect girls targeted for murder by their biological families. Critics would oppose any such intervention, however, as a form of cultural oppression, for many victims may have to forfeit their identities in order to remain alive.
It will be more difficult to save adult Muslim women from honor killing because an adult immigrant may not have any regular contact with people outside her immediate family. Only if she survives injuries that require medical attention will she have contact with strangers who may try to help her rescue herself.
Religious education may also be necessary. According to this study, 90 percent of honor murders in the West are committed by Muslims against Muslims. The perpetrators may interpret the Qur'an and Islam incorrectly, either for malicious reasons or simply because they are ignorant of more tolerant Muslim exegesis or conflate local customs with religion.
Here, Muslim-American and Muslim-Canadian associations might play a role so long as they cease obfuscation and recognize the religious roots of the problem. Now is the time for sheikhs in the United States and Canada to state without qualification that killing daughters, sisters, wives, and cousins is against Islam. A number of feminist lawyers who work with battered women have credited pro-women sheikhs with helping them enormously. Sheikhs should publicly identify, condemn, and shame honor killers. Those sheikhs who resist doing so should be challenged.
As with issues relating to terrorism, law enforcement and civil servants must be mindful of which Muslim community activists they seek to engage. Many self-described civil rights organizations—CAIR or the Islamic Society of North America, for example—lean towards more radical interpretations of Islam. Groups such as the American Islamic Congress and the American Islamic Forum for Democracy advocate for gender equality and human rights, [28] but because their efforts against radicalism antagonize Saudi Arabia and other sources of funding, they often lack resources. Given alternative funding, they might be willing to assist in an effort to educate Muslims against honor murder.
U.S. and Canadian immigration authorities should also be aware of the issue. They should inform potential Muslim immigrants and new Muslim citizens that it is against the law to beat girls and women, that honor killings are crimes, and that both the murderers and their accomplices can and will be charged. Cultural equivalency will provide no excuse as it sometimes does in more permissive societies such as Great Britain and the Netherlands. As long as Islamist advocacy groups continue to obfuscate the problem, and government and police officials accept their inaccurate versions of reality, women will continue to be killed for honor in the West; such murders may even accelerate. Unchecked by Western law, their blood will be on society's hands.
Phyllis Chesler is emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at the Richmond College of the City University of New York and co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network.
[1] Citation for honor murders drawn from Ellen Francis Harris, Guarding the Secret: Palestinian Terrorism and a Father's Murder of his Too-American Daughter (New York: Scribner, 1995); James Brandon and Salam Hafez, Crimes of the Community: Honor-Based Violence in the U.K. (London: The Centre for Social Cohesion, Jan. 2008), p. 13, 44; The Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 22, 26, 2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 13, 1999; CBC News, Apr. 22, 2004, Mar. 1, 2005; The Indian Express (New Delhi), Jan. 30, 2005; The Asian Pacific Post (Vancouver, B.C.), July 24, 2003; Soundvision.com, Sound Vision Foundation, Bridgeview, Ill., May 6, 2002; The New York Daily News, July 31, 2002; Stabroek News (Georgetown, Guyana), Dec. 3, 2003; Canwest News Service (Don Mills, Ont.), July 8, 2008; The Rochester Chronicle and Democrat, Apr. 25, 2004, July 17, 2008; The Washington Times, Jan. 3, 2008; The Dallas Morning News, Jan. 6, 9, 2008; The Chicago Tribune, July 8, 2008; CNN, July 7, 2008; The Daily Mail (London), May 2, June 12, 2007, Jan. 8, 2008; The Observer (London), Oct. 8, 2000, Nov. 21, 2004, June 20, 2006; The Daily Telegraph (London), Jan. 28, 2002, Feb. 27, 2005; CNN.com, Oct. 2, 2003; BBC News, Sept. 30, 2003, May 4, Nov. 19, 2004, Apr. 8, 2006, Jan. 8, 2008; TechCentralStation (TCS Daily), Feb. 2, 2005; Time (European ed.), Oct. 11, 2004; CULCOM: Cultural Complexity in the New Norway, Feb. 17, 2006; Expatica (Amsterdam), Dec. 1, 2003, Apr. 27, 2005; The Times (London), Nov. 18, Dec. 4, 2004, Jan. 21, 2007, Feb. 3, Mar. 29, 2008; HiA Report, Humanity in Action Foundation, Washington, D.C., June 29, 2006; Deutsche Welle Radio (Bonn), May 1, 2005; The Guardian (London), May 8, 2003, July 15, 2006, May 24, 2008; Stern Magazine (Hamburg), Oct. 4, 2007; Associated Press, June 27, 2006; The Independent (London), May 7, 2003, Feb. 21, 2007; The New York Times, Dec. 19, 2004, Dec. 4, 2005, Aug. 26, 2006; The Evening Standard (London), May 14, 2007; United Press International, July 3, 2003; The Sun (London), Jan. 23, 2008; FOX News, Jan. 5, 2007; International Herald Tribune (Paris), Dec. 1, 2005; The Daily Times (Lahore), July 3, 2004.
[2] "Chapter 3: Ending Violence against Women and Girls: 'Honor' Killings," The State of World Population, 2000, United Nations Population Fund.
[3] IslamOnline.net, Jan. 11, 2007.
[4] The Daily Times, Sept. 20, 2008.
[5] Brandon and Hafez, Crimes of the Community, pp. 143-6.
[6] Yotam Feldner, "'Honor' Murders—Why the Perps Get off Easy," Middle East Quarterly, Dec. 2000, pp. 41-50.
[7] Ibid.
[8] SoundVision.com, Aug. 24, 2000.
[9] Sheila Musaji, "The Death of Aqsa Parvez Should Be an Interfaith Call to Action," The American Muslim, Dec. 14, 2007.
[10] Fox News.com, Dec. 12, 2007.
[11] CNN.com, July 9, 2008.
[12] FoxNews.com, Oct. 14, 2008.
[13] "Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Intimate Homicide, 1976 -2005," U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 11, 2007, accessed Oct. 2, 2008.
[14] Unni Wikan, "The Honor Culture," Karl-Olov Arnstberg and Phil Holmes, trans., accessed Sept. 23, 2008, originally published as En Fraga Om Hedre (A question of honor), Cajsa Mitchell, trans. (Stockholm: Ordfront Forlag AB, 2005), accessed Dec. 12, 2008.
[15] The Boston Globe, Sept. 12, 2008.
[16] New York: Springer, 1984.
[17] Author e-mail interview with Lenore Walker, Sept. 27, 2008.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Brandon and Hafez, Crimes of the Community, p. 94.
[20] Today's Zaman, July 12, 2008.
[21] Wikan, "The Honor Culture."
[22] Daniel Pipes, "Which Has More Islamist Terrorism, Europe or America?" The Jerusalem Post, July 3, 2008.
[23] "Combating Patriarchal Violence against Women—Focusing on Violence in the Name of Honor," The Swedish Ministry of Justice and The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, Dec. 7-8, 2004, p. 51.
[24] International Herald Tribune, Hong Kong ed., Oct. 20, 1997; The Observer, Nov. 21, 2004; "So-called Honor Crimes," Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, Council of Europe, Paris and Brussels, Mar. 7, 2003.
[25] Brandon and Hafez, Crimes of the Community, pp. 13, 44.
[26] Author e-mail with Maryam Namazie, Dec. 1, 2008.
[27] Nederlands Dagblad (Barneveld), Nov. 19, 2008; Islam in Europe, Nov. 19, 2008.
[28] "Milestones," American Islamic Congress website, accessed Dec. 10, 2008; "Founding Principles and Resolutions," American Islamic Forum for Democracy website, accessed Dec. 10, 2008
4) Don't Believe the Stimulus Scaremongers: Americans are losing faith in the fairness and wisdom of economic policy.
By AMAR BHIDé
Our ignorance of what causes economic ailments -- and how to treat them -- is profound. Downturns and financial crises are not regular occurrences, and because economies are always evolving, they tend to be idiosyncratic, singular events.
After decades of diligent research, scholars still argue about what caused the Great Depression -- excessive consumption, investment, stock-market speculation and borrowing in the Roaring '20s, Smoot-Hawley protectionism, or excessively tight monetary policy? Nor do we know how we got out of it: Some credit the New Deal while others say that that FDR's policies prolonged the Depression.
Similarly, there is no consensus about why huge public-spending projects and a zero-interest-rate policy failed to pull the Japanese out of a prolonged slump.
The economic theory behind the nearly $800 billion stimulus package may be cloaked in precise mathematics but is ultimately based on John Maynard Keynes's speculative conjecture about human nature. Keynes claimed that people cope with uncertainty by assuming the future will be like the present. This predisposition exacerbates economic downturns and should be countered by a sharp fiscal stimulus that reignites the "animal spirits" of consumers and investors.
But history suggests that dark moods do change on their own. The depressions and panics of the 19th century ended without any fiscal stimulus to speak of, as did the gloom that followed the stock-market crash of 1987. Countercyclical fiscal policy may or may not have shortened other recessions; there are too few data points and too much difference in other conditions to really know.
Unfounded assertions that calamitous consequences make opposition to the rapid enactment of a large stimulus package "inexcusable and irresponsible" are likely to offset any placebo effect the package might have. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, as our last Treasury secretary did to peddle the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), didn't restore financial confidence. Similarly, a president elected on a platform of hope isn't likely to spark shopping sprees by painting a bleak picture of our prospects.
Stimulus therapy poses great risks. Years of profligacy have put the federal government in a precarious financial position. We don't have the domestic savings to finance much larger budget deficits. Unlike the Japanese, Americans don't have much stashed away under their mattresses: We are reliant on capital inflows from abroad. An insurrection by bond vigilantes or the long-predicted run on the dollar triggered by fears of a flood of new government debt is a real possibility.
Large increases in public spending usurp precious resources from supporting the innovations necessary for our long-term prosperity. Everyone isn't a pessimist in hard times: The optimism of many entrepreneurs and consumers fueled the takeoff of personal computers during the deep recession of the early 1980s. Amazon has just launched the Kindle 2; its (equally pricey) predecessor sold out last November amid the Wall Street meltdown. But competing with expanded public spending makes it harder for innovations like the personal computer and the Kindle to secure the resources they need.
Hastily enacted programs jeopardize crucial beliefs in the value of productive enterprise. Americans are unusually idealistic and optimistic. We believe that we can all get ahead through innovations because the game isn't stacked in favor of the powerful. This belief encourages the pursuit of initiatives that contribute to the common good rather than the pursuit of favors and rents. It also discourages the politics of envy. We are less prone to begrudge our neighbors' fortune if we think it was fairly earned and that it has not come at our expense -- indeed, that we too have derived some benefit.
To sustain these beliefs, Americans must see their government play the role of an even-handed referee rather than be a dispenser of rewards or even a judge of economic merit or contribution. The panicky response to the financial crisis, where openness and due process have been sacrificed to speed, has unfortunately undermined our faith. Bailing out AIG while letting Lehman fail -- behind closed doors -- has raised suspicions of cronyism. The Fed has refused to reveal to whom it has lent trillions. Outrage at the perceived use of TARP funds to pay bonuses is widespread.
The Obama administration assures us that it will only fund "worthwhile" and "shovel-ready" projects. But choices will have to be made by harried and fallible humans; witness the nominees who failed to calculate their taxes properly. What's more, subjecting projects to scrutiny conflicts with a strategy of sparking the economy with a jolt of new spending. We may get the worst of all worlds -- savvy and well-connected operators get funding while good projects languish.
The alternative isn't, as the stimulus scaremongers suggest, to turn our backs to the downturn. We do have mechanisms in place to deal with economic distress. Public aid for the indigent has been modernized and expanded to provide a range of unemployment and income-maintenance schemes. Bankruptcy courts and laws give individuals another chance and facilitate the orderly reorganization or liquidation of troubled businesses. The FDIC has been dealing with bank failures for more than 70 years, and the Federal Reserve has been empowered to provide liquidity in the face of financial panics for even longer.
These mechanisms are not perfect or to everyone's taste -- liberals and conservatives obviously disagree about their scope and generosity -- but they have been forged through a much more deliberate, open process than the stimulus bill or TARP. Legislators, the executive branch, judges, competing interest groups and the press have all had their say in their initial design and evolution. As a result there may be occasional mistakes and fraud but not widespread favoritism.
If the current crisis is indeed unprecedented, why not increase the funding and resources to battle-tested measures? When earthquakes or tsunamis strike, we rush in more doctors and supplies. We don't use untested medical procedures or set up new relief agencies on the fly.
Increasing unemployment insurance, bankruptcy judges, and the FDIC's capital and staff would certainly cost money, but these targeted expenditures would be much smaller than grandiose measures to revive overall confidence. And while the cautious approach might lead to a slower recovery, we wouldn't jeopardize the venturesome, pluralistic foundations of our long-run prosperity.
5) Stop the Democratic Suicide
By Michael Lind
If the Obama administration doesn’t start to deal with the populist wave headed for Washington, Republicans will tap a reservoir of resentment that could destroy his presidency.
First they came for the bankers. Then they came for the CEOs. Then they came for the liberals. That might be the epitaph of the Democratic Party, if Democrats cannot learn to surf the tsunami of populism created by the economic earthquake.
Already across the world you can hear the rumble. Nations are scrambling to bail out their industries and protect them against foreign competition. The Indian government is slapping restrictions on Chinese imports. In Britain, workers have struck, demanding “British jobs for British workers.” In the US, popular support for “Buy American” provisions is as high as disapproval of the same provisions in the elite press.
As more Americans lose their jobs and their homes, as more businesses crater and banks topple, popular anger is rising like a wall of water over a suddenly quiet beachfront resort. You’d think that the Democrats in Washington would be aware of the danger.
As more Americans lose their jobs and their homes, as more businesses crater and banks topple, popular anger is rising like a wall of water over a suddenly quiet beachfront resort. You’d think that the Democrats in Washington would be aware of the danger. After all, the massive expansion of Great Society spending in the 1960s, followed by the stagflation of the 1970s, allowed the marginal conservative movement to tap populist anger and dominate American politics for a generation. Substitute stimulus for Great Society and years of possible “stag-deflation” for stagflation, and you have a scenario in which the Obama’s overwhelming majority could collapse as quickly as LBJ’s.
To date, however, the Obama administration has seemed more concerned with reassuring Wall Street that it will be protected against Main Street hotheads than in disciplining Wall Street on behalf of Main Street Americans who have lost jobs, homes, and savings. First Obama appointed an economic team dominated by Robert Rubin proteges, like Timothy Geithner, who were considered safe by the Street. Then Geithner put forth a plan which many economists warn might force the public to pay too much for toxic assets held by the banks.
Geithner himself is a lightning rod for populist wrath. Ordinary Americans who fail to pay their taxes can expect strict punishment. When Geithner forgot to pay sizeable sums, he was quickly forgiven and made Treasury secretary. Most Americans cannot afford maids, legal or illegal. Geithner’s violation of US employment laws, in paying an illegal-immigrant maid, was also judged to be a minor indiscretion. After all, he is simply the latest in a series of political appointees with illegal-immigrant maid problems. Let’s be reasonable. Important people can’t be expected to do their own housework, and ten minutes otherwise spent saving the world might be wasted on ascertaining whether their servants are violating US immigration laws or not. As the late Leona Helmsley might have said, immigration laws are for the little people.
Given the opportunity, Republicans can once again tap a reservoir of resentment, some of it justified. For a generation, the white-collar liberals who now dominate the Democratic Party have shown a remarkable ability to dress up their own economic interests in the rhetoric of globalization and anti-racism while attacking the motives and assaulting the characters of Americans who are far less wealthy and privileged. They conveniently forget to pay taxes for their illegal-immigrant maids and nannies, and then they denounce fellow citizens who can’t afford servants as Nazi-like xenophobes for insisting that all immigrants, not just some, obey federal immigration laws. They use their status as alumni of elite universities to get their mediocre children admitted by means of legacy programs (class-based affirmative action), and then they blame racism when working-class and middle-class whites criticize race-based affirmative action. They benefit from a regulated national labor market that effectively restricts the number of lawyers, MBAs and teachers allowed to practice in the US, and then they altruistically offer to sacrifice the livelihoods of American factory workers to help out the Chinese poor and to put American farms out of business to help the African poor. They claim that by living in expensive doorman buildings in fashionable downtowns and using uneconomical, taxpayer-subsidized mass transit they are saving the planet from global warming, and then they criticize working-class Americans with a fraction of their incomes who can only afford to live in exurbs and shop at Sam’s Club as sprawl-creating slobs. And they nod their heads in agreement when the elite editorial pages tell them on a near-daily basis that the greatest threat to America’s future is not ruthlessly nationalistic Asian mercantilism or lawless hedge-fund operations, but the danger that Congress might respond to the frightening number of non-Ivy League graduates in the electorate by enacting Buy American or Hire American policies which might inconvenience IRA investments or make it harder to hire an au pair.
The support of affluent liberals with attitudes like these helped Barack Obama to defeat his (somewhat) more populist rivals in the Democratic primaries. In his unguarded remarks to rich Californian donors in April 2008, Obama made his “bitter” gaffe about people from “these small towns” who lose their jobs and “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them” that Republicans undoubtedly have ready to roll out again on a feedback loop on talk radio. Obama’s “bitter” remarks echoed the “status anxiety” theory of populism promoted in the 1950s and 1960s by liberal scholars that looked out (and down) at populist Americans and saw, not Lockean-Jeffersonian democratic republicans with legitimate grievances struggling to preserve their independence against corporations and plutocrats, but crypto-fascist Central Europeans who might vote an American Hitler into power. The caricature of American populists by mid-century liberal professors was the grandest misunderstanding of American political culture since Leon Trotsky, visiting the US, began a speech: “Workers and peasants of the Bronx!” And yet as the farmer-labor component of the Democratic Party has dwindled, stereotypes about working-class and rural Americans have grown even stronger among the liberal intelligentsia.
At least Obama, with his appeals to national unity and post-racial rhetoric, recognizes the need to get away from the rote white-male bashing that contributed to creating a generation of conservative Republican hegemony in Washington between Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. The majority of Americans, even during the conservative years, were never against big government; they were against big government that provides special treatment whether to minorities, illegal immigrants, or the CEOs and shareholders of Wall Street firms that are too big to fail. What wrecked the Democratic Party was the public’s perception of double standards.
Amazingly, some prominent Democrats have yet to figure this out. In testimony to Congress on January 7, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich worried that too many stimulus jobs would go to “white male construction workers...I have nothing against white male construction workers, I’m just saying there are other people who have needs as well.” The conservative blogosphere has picked up on Reich’s comments, interpreting them as a call for race and gender quotas in stimulus spending. If the Right succeeds in defining the stimulus package as a giveaway to minorities and women at the expense of unemployed working-class white men (and their wives and their children), then conservatives have half the populist script written for them. The other half is provided by the bailout, if that is perceived as a massive subsidy to financiers with political clout in Washington. The acolytes of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove will find it easy to write a campaign ad in 2010 or 2012 portraying the Democrats as an alliance of the top and the bottom against the middle—a classic populist theme.
To hurt the Democrats, middle American populism does not have to be channeled through the Republican Party. A third-party presidential candidate in 2012 like Ross Perot might rob Obama of re-election, by winning or, more likely, by draining off enough disaffected Democrats to give the White House back to the Republicans. Lou Dobbs—tanned, rested and ready?
Two factors, however, might help blunt the damage to the Democrats when the populist waves come rolling over the beach. One might be the division of the Republicans between social-issue populists like Mike Huckabee and free-market libertarians like those of the Club for Growth.
Another is the presence in the Democratic Party of populist liberals, many of whom defeated incumbent Republicans in 2006, including Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown and Virginia Senator Jim Webb. The Democrats owe their majorities in both houses of Congress in part to politicians like these, whose criticism of US trade policies alarms the Rubinesque neoliberals around Obama and whose hard line toward illegal immigration upsets the liberal left. Absent these politically incorrect populists, however, the Democratic Party would be a coalition of socially liberal fiscal conservatives and pro-welfare social democrats with little appeal to the socially conservative, economically liberal white working class.
At the very least, the majority Democrats, while waiting for the tsunami to hit, can refrain from committing suicide in advance of the wave's landfall. Obama should drop all talk about “bipartisan entitlement reform,” a code word for gutting Social Security, a program popular with the majority of Americans if not the IRA-supported overclass. Social Security is not in as dire fiscal peril as deficit hawks claim, says Peter Orszag, Obama's budget director. As Orzsag has pointed out, it is health care that is busting the budget and requires reform.
While liberals oppose Social Security cuts, they favor a policy equally hated by populists, amnesty for illegal immigrants. There is no democracy in the world with rising unemployment where amnesties for foreign workers who disobey national laws would not be a form of political hara-kiri.
Above all, Obama and the Democratic Congress must refute the idea being spread by Republicans that the trillions of dollars that the federal government will spend are really disguised subsidies for particular Democratic constituencies, from environmentalists to minorities. By stigmatizing Great Society programs as special-interest giveaways, the Republicans built an alliance of conservatives and populists that marginalized liberalism and governed America for a generation. Don’t think that they can’t do it again.
5) Stocks Hate Obeynomics
By Rich Karlgaard
The results are clear. The market hates Obama’s stimulus package and just about everything related to Obamanomics. Or shall we call it Obeynomics? (I'll explain in a minute.) Stocks are down 27% since the Nov. 4th election. Stocks have plummeted more than 40% since Obama sewed up the Democratic nomination in June.
Capital is on strike. And why wouldn’t it be? Private capital has no idea what future holds in terms of taxes, regulation, trade, deficits and the value of the dollar. None whatsoever.
Capital has figured out one thing, however. The politicians in Washington most hostile to private investment are running the show. Example: David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. From Wikipedia: “Obey is one of the most liberal members of the House; he considers himself a progressive in the tradition of Robert La Follette.”
OK, if “Fighting Bob” La Follette is Obey’s professed model of leadership, then let’s look at the former Wisconsin governor and U.S. presidential candidate. La Follette’s 1924 campaign for president was run on a platform that included more steeply progressive taxes (anticipating Huey Long’s “soak the rich” slogan), nationalization of railroads and electric utilities, stronger labor laws and a cheap dollar. That’s some economic platform, isn’t it? (On moral issues, La Follette was better. He had once led the fight for women’s suffrage and he stood for free speech and against child labor throughout his political career.)
David Obey, like La Follette, dislikes corporations and private investment. But he isn’t against all forms of riches. According to this National Journal blog, Obey is Washington’s new king of pork--now that Ted Stevens is retired.
Wait a minute. Didn’t Democrats campaign in 2006 to end appropriation earmarks? They did. Have they followed through since taking over control of the House? No. Why not? Because Obey, the House Appropriations chairman, has undermined these efforts. From the same 2007 National Journal blog:
[Obey is] moving to undermine Democrats' pledge to be more transparent about "earmarking" projects in lawmakers' districts for federal spending.
Here’s a question. Why did President Obama let an economic fool and earmark liar like David Obey write the stimulus plan that is so disliked by a majority of Americans and positively hated by the stock market? This is the mystery, isn’t it?
My blog last week asked why libertarian Silicon Valley is not speaking out against Obama’s economic plan. David Obey is its chief architect, after all. During Obey’s near 40-year career in the House, he has nearly always voted for more government subsidies and less trade, according to the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. Let me repeat: The most anti-libertarian Congressman is in charge of the legislative wing of Obama's economic plan.
If you voted for Obama, you might ask: Why? And where is Austan Goolsbee? Even George Will liked the University of Chicago economist and pro-market centrist who was held up as Obama’s economic brain during the presidential campaign.
Goolsbee is missing in action. His ideas are missing in action. They’ve been replaced by the socialist hack David Obey. And the market has noticed.
Why did Obama abdicate the legislative portion of his economic plan to David Obey, whose brain is stuck in mid 20th-century socialism? Was this Obama’s intention, or was it a mistake made in the fog of confusion?
And again, as I asked last week, what explains the silence of pro-business Obama supporters? Can’t they see how badly their man is doing?
Fire away.
6) Harvard Narcissists With MBAs Killed Wall Street
By Kevin Hassett
For two centuries, Wall Street survived wars, depressions, bank panics and terrorist attacks. Now Wall Street as we know it is dead. Gone.
When a healthy and thriving person dies suddenly, a medical examiner may talk to family and friends to see if the deceased had recently changed behavior in some way.
Wall Street did change radically in recent years in one notable way. Twenty or 30 years ago, it was common for the best and the brightest to be doctors or engineers. By the 2000s, they wanted to be investment bankers.
When Wall Street was run by people randomly selected from the population, it was able to survive everything. After the best and brightest took over, it died the first time real-estate prices dropped 20 percent.
Are the two facts related? In other words, did Harvard kill Wall Street?
The suspect certainly had the opportunity. If you walked into any major Wall Street firm a year ago and randomly selected an employee, chances are that person would either be from an Ivy League school like Harvard University, or have an MBA, or both.
The statistics are striking. Back in the 1970s, it was typical for about 5 percent of Harvard graduates to work in the financial sector, according to a recent study by Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz. By the 1990s, that number was 15 percent. It probably climbed since then.
And the proportion of those with MBAs grew as well. Economists Thomas Philippon of New York University and Ariell Reshef of the University of Virginia found that, in 1980, workers in finance earned about the same wages, on average, as workers in other sectors. By 2005, financial-sector workers earned 50 percent more than similar workers in other industries.
Wages and Degrees
Philippon and Reshef went on to explore what caused the surge in wages in the financial sector. They found one of the key reasons was the increasing reliance on highly educated workers with post-graduate degrees.
Their results accord with anecdotal evidence concerning the hiring practice of Wall Street firms. A 2008 report in Fortune said that Goldman Sachs hired about 300 MBAs in 2007 and that, last year, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup were planning to hire 160 and 235 MBAs, respectively.
Is it just a coincidence that so many superstar minds arrived on Wall Street just as it died?
Perhaps not.
Wall Street is gone because its firms did a terrible job assessing the risks of the positions they took. The models these firms used to evaluate risks failed. But having a failed model brings a firm down only if the firm collectively buys into the model.
To do that, the firm must be run by people who have a great deal of faith in their models, and a great deal of faith in themselves. That’s where Ivy Leaguers and MBAs come in.
Master of Mastery
What do you get from an MBA? One recent study found that MBAs acquire an enormous amount of self-confidence during their graduate education. They learn to believe that they are the best and the brightest.
This narcissism has a real career impact. Psychologists at Ohio State University studied the behavior of 153 MBA students, who were put in groups of four and asked to orchestrate a large financial transaction on behalf of an imaginary company. The psychologists observed that the students who had the strongest narcissistic traits were most likely to emerge as leaders.
According to Amy Brunell, the lead author, the results of the study had large implications for real-world settings, because “narcissistic leaders tend to have volatile and risky decision- making performance and can be ineffective and potentially destructive leaders.”
The Bathroom Test
Guys like John Thain (Harvard Business School, 1979) exemplify this behavior when their sense of entitlement is so grand that they can spend a fortune renovating an office while their firm is going down in flames.
The consequences of Wall Street’s reckless brilliance in many ways parallel modern-day engineering disasters. If you travel through Italy, you can’t help but notice the many Roman bridges that still stretch across that nation’s waterways. How is it that the Romans could build bridges that would last thousands of years, while the ones we build today collapse after a few decades?
The answer is simple. Back then, they did not have the fancy computers required to calculate exactly how strong a bridge must be. So an architect made a bridge very, very strong. Today, engineers can calculate exactly how much steel they need to incorporate into a bridge to bear the expected load. The result is, they are free to make them weaker.
Room for Error
Another result is less wiggle room for design error. Hence, modern bridge’s predilection for collapsing.
The same is true of the financial sector. Back when Wall Street was run by individuals without fancy degrees, they had a proper skepticism toward fancy models and managed their risks with a great deal more humility and caution. Only when failed models became canon did catastrophe strike.
Wall Street didn’t die in spite of being run by our best and brightest. It died because of that fact.
7) Barack of Afpakia: The left is already doubting Obama's Afghan surge.Article
The regents are on the ground and commanders are crafting new battle plans: President Obama is girding for a war surge in Afghanistan. Let's hope he's willing to see it through when his most stalwart supporters start to doubt the effort and rue the cost.
As a statement of principle, the new Administration's preoccupation with Afghanistan signals a welcome commitment to what has been known by that out-of-favor phrase "global war on terror." The Taliban claimed responsibility last week for coordinated suicide attacks in Kabul, which killed 28 people and reinforced perceptions that security is eroding. America's recent success in Iraq showed that the key to victory lies in shifting those perceptions. That means improving security.
More U.S. troops will likely be needed, and Central Command General David Petraeus is undertaking a review of goals and the resources to meet them. Mr. Obama has talked about doubling forces by another 30,000, and we hope he's willing to give his Afghan commander, General David McKiernan, the number he needs to clear and hold areas and protect the population. However, size of force matters less than having the proper counterinsurgency strategy for a conflict that is different than Iraq.
Among other useful things, Mr. Obama's surge may help to educate his friends on the political left about Islamist terror. The National Security Network, an outfit that never missed an opportunity to bash President Bush, has quickly come into line behind the new President. The group says Mr. Obama's strategy must be focused "first and foremost on preventing the Afghanistan-Pakistan region from becoming a staging ground for terrorist attacks against the U.S. and other nations or a source for instability that could throw Pakistan into chaos."
Sounds good to us -- and sounds a lot like the Bush strategy. America's goal isn't to turn a backward Central Asian country into the next Switzerland, but to keep al Qaeda and its Taliban allies from using it as a safe haven. Toward that end, the U.S. and its allies can help build Afghanistan's institutions and army and help a weak Pakistan government flush out the terrorists in its wild west.
No doubt the strategy can be tweaked. That started well before Mr. Obama's election, as America took back ownership of the Afghan mission from an unwieldy NATO command. Though Britain and Canada pull their weight, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has learned that Americans can't count on Europe to fill the troop and equipment gaps, so the U.S. did.
Also like the Bush Administration, Team Obama recognizes the Pakistan dimension to the Afghan problem -- even calling the place "Afpak." The Taliban came back in the past three years only after finding sanctuary around Quetta, in southern Pakistan, and in the country's northwest tribal regions. The U.S. has also won Islamabad's sotto voce cooperation to strike terror leaders, though more should be done around Quetta.
Mr. Obama's special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, has been in Afpak for a week's fact-finding. Before arriving, he said, "In my view it's going to be much tougher than Iraq." Even by Holbrookeian standards, that's hyperbole. The government in Kabul isn't in danger of collapsing, the Taliban isn't popular where it has ruled, and the insurgents are no match for the U.S.-led force on the battlefield.
Ultimately, as in Iraq, the Afghans will need to stand up more for themselves. That may take a while. But start with expanding the increasingly able Afghan army, a bright spot. The force of 80,000 is too small for a country the size of Texas and bordered by enemies. The police are a shambles, alas. Corruption, narco-trafficking, a weak central government: Afghanistan shares vices with other Western protectorates like Bosnia, and could improve on all counts.
However, notwithstanding President Obama's swipe last Monday that "the national government seems very detached from what's going on in the surrounding community," the rulers in Kabul are legitimate. Hamid Karzai has tolerated too much corruption, but any change of leadership should come from an Afghan challenge, not a U.S. desire to play kingmaker. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden -- who stormed out of a meeting with Mr. Karzai last year -- need to avoid JFK's mistake of toppling South Vietnam ally Ngo Dinh Diem.
The Obama team wants to play up Afghanistan's troubles so it can look good by comparison a year from now. But soon enough Mr. Obama will own those troubles, and talking down Afghanistan carries risks. Our allies and the American people may come to doubt that the conflict is winnable, or worth the cost.
Already, canaries on the left are asking a la columnist Richard Reeves, "Why are we in Afghanistan?" The President's friends at Newsweek are helpfully referring to "Obama's Vietnam." Mr. Obama may find himself relying on some surprising people for wartime support -- to wit, Bush Republicans and neocons.
7a) A Foreign Policy of Obsequiousness
By Anne Bayefsky
Yesterday in Geneva, President Obama unveiled the new look of America’s foreign policy — obsequiousness. It was Day One for his emissaries to the U.N. planning committee of the Durban II conference. This is the racist “anti-racism” bash to be held in Geneva in April. The U.S. and Israel walked out of the first go-round in Durban, South Africa in September 2001. Ever since, the U.S. government has refused to lend any credibility to the Declaration adopted after they left. That is, until yesterday.
U.S. representatives were addressing a human-rights negotiating committee with an executive consisting of a Libyan chair, an Iranian vice-chair, and a Cuban rapporteur. Russian Yuri Boychenko was presiding over Monday’s “human rights” get-together. Before them was a draft document which participants plan to adopt in finished form at the conference itself. The draft now contains mountains of offensive references to limits on free speech, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish provisions, and incendiary allegations of the victimization of Muslims at the hands of counter-terrorism racists.
Here is how the American delegates responded to a proposal they understood was incompatible with U.S. interests (“Brackets” denote withholding approval at any given moment in time.): “I hate to be the cause of unhappiness in the room . . . I have to suggest this phrase remains in brackets and I offer my sincere apologies.”
Having watched U.N. meetings for the past 25 years, I can’t remember a U.S. representative in a public session so openly obsequious, particularly in the presence of such specious human rights authorities. And yet the U.S. delegates appear happy to be there and convey the marching orders of their new commander-in-chief.
Unfortunately, while Obama’s calling the tunes, items like freedom of expression are being rearranged. On the table was a provision which “Calls on States to ensure that lawmakers discharge their responsibilities in conformity with . . . article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination . . . ” What did the American delegation have to say about that? Among other things they proposed: “add after article 4, ‘and 5(d)(viii) of the Racial Discrimination Convention.’”
Flashback to 1994. The United States Senate imposed a reservation on U.S. ratification of the Racial Discrimination Convention concerning article 4 because it restricts free speech. Article 4 aims to limit incitement to racial hatred, but is open to an interpretation in direct conflict with the First Amendment.
Obama’s delegation, however, did not object to the proposal to ensure lawmakers adhere to article 4. Instead, they suggested adding a reference to another part of the Racial Discrimination Convention that guarantees an equal right to freedom of expression regardless of race. This idea does not in any way meet the Senate’s command to ensure that the Constitution trumps the treaty in matters of free speech.
There is no escape from Durban II — at least with our vital principles intact.
On Monday, President Obama’s decision to wander into the Durban II sinkhole also raised concerns in the Jewish community. In deciding to attend the planning session, Obama had ignored the direct plea from Israel’s Foreign Minister to stay away, along with Israel and Canada. Instead, on Monday the President sent reassuring messages via phone calls from senior White House and State Department officials.
According to reports, these officials claimed “that Washington's decision to participate in the conference was being coordinated with the Israeli government.” That would be true — if “coordination” meant announcing hours in advance that the United States intended to do the opposite of what had been requested.
Jewish leaders were also told that the U.S. presence was “an effort to change the direction of the conference.” Apparently, someone in the administration forgot to read the map. The conference objectives have already been unanimously agreed to by all participants, including the European Union. Objective number one is to “foster the implementation of the Durban Declaration” — the same one that claims Israelis are racists, in fact, the only racists U.N. member states could recall. Those directions aren’t going to be changed. On the contrary, the opening words of the Durban II document — also already accepted by consensus — read “reaffirming the Durban Declaration.” Change you can’t believe in, again.
Overall, on Day One, U.N. members were delighted by the new administration’s timidity. And they know exactly how to ensure those promises of change continue. In an entire day of a four-day meeting, they reviewed only 11 of the 140 paragraphs. The next set of meetings will be in April right before the conference itself. By the time somebody begins to suspect it might not change, it will all be over, in more ways than one.
8) IDF using 'James Bond' gadgetry
By YAAKOV KATZ
Some gadgets look like they came straight out of a James Bond movie. One is a softball-sized camera that can be thrown into a suspect house and transmit images to soldiers outside. Another is a special door-buster that is connected to an M-16 and can blow open booby-trapped portals.
On Tuesday, the IDF Ground Forces Command put these weapon systems and others - most of them used during last month's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip - on display in a military base in the South.
Called the Eyeball, the spherical camera was developed by the Tel Aviv-based company ODF Optronics.
An advanced, audio-visual surveillance sensor, the Eyeball was used by IDF troops during the Gaza offensive to survey homes and suspicious areas before entering them.
Each unit is only slightly larger than a baseball and can be simply thrown into the area that needs to be checked out. It can also be mounted on a pole or lowered on a cable into a tunnel.
Another product from the same company is the Eyedrive, a lightweight, four-wheel, remote-controlled, observation and surveillance mini-robot that provides continuous, real-time 360º audio and video surveillance. Due to its durability, the robot can be thrown on the ground, go down stairs, flip over and keep on going.
The IDF also tested the HTR 2000, a new sniper rifle that will be distributed to all infantry battalions. It has a range of more than 1,000 meters and can be used with a special night-vision add-on scope. The adjustable heavy tactical rifle is made by H-S Precision INC in the United States.
Also used for the first time during the offensive was the Matador shoulder-launched anti-structure munition.
Used by infantry to destroy Hamas positions inside homes and other structures, the Matador incorporates an advanced tandem warhead concept that can be operated in two modes: against fortified positions and other structures, and to create a hole in a wall without destroying the inside of a home.
The system was acquired by the IDF in light of the Second Lebanon War, when infantry forces had problems hitting Hizbullah positions inside homes in the absence of a tank or attack helicopter.
The Ground Forces Command also put the IDF's new armored personnel carrier on display. The Namer (Tiger) is based on the same platform as the Merkava MK4 Battle Tank and has the same high-level of reinforced steel protection.
"The Ground Forces Command is more prepared today than it was in the past decade to deal with the threats and challenges in the North and the Gaza Strip," OC Ground Forces Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrachi said.
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