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For years the news media have been full of shocking reports on the abuse of women, largely though not exclusively, in Muslim countries. Sentences of flogging and death by stoning for accused adulteresses in Nigeria and Iran, and forced marriage, the burqa and the niqab, female genital mutilation, flogging and prison sentences for “immodest” attire, and “honor” killings, not just in Somalia and Afghanistan, but also in the suburbs of Paris and Birmingham. It’s a pretty grim picture.
But now comes a new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, the research arm of The Economist magazine, which has devised a new index that ranks economic opportunity for women in 113 countries. [click to continue…]
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Economist Intelligence Unit,
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EIU,
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honor killing,
Indonesia,
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Nigeria,
niqab,
Somalia,
stoning,
Tunisia,
Turkey,
women,
women's economic opportunity
So says Geoffrey Wheatcroft, an English journalist, in an August 5 article in The New Republic. This, even though the new British Prime Minister David Cameron, on a recent visit to Turkey, said that Turkey should join the E.U. as soon as possible. Wheatcroft bases his argument largely on the economic and demographic disparities between Turkey and the rest of the Union. Turkey, with 70 million people and a growing population, would soon become the largest member state by population, though its per capita GDP is less than a third of Germany’s. Wheatcroft also brings up the resurgence of Islamist sentiment in a country that for the past 90 years has been characterized by a rigorous secularism. The EU, he says, is a place in which drinking wine and beer is part of the culture in a way that Turkey is not. Though Turks produce and consume excellent beer and wines, the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of what The Economist and the Brookings Institute always refer to as “the mildly Islamic Justice and Development Party” did ban alcohol when he was mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998, though with limited success. I visited Istanbul twice during that period and never even noticed the ban.
Wheatcroft’s points are valid as far as they go, but the real story is more complex and more interesting. [click to continue…]
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E.U.,
Erdogan,
European Union,
Islam,
Turkey,
Turkish accession
You don’t get to be a four-star general in the U.S. Army by being undisciplined. Men who attain this rank – and so far they have all been men – tend to be hyper-smart, educated, focused, dedicated, and driven. Ability counts, but so does the political savvy needed to climb the greasy pole of the military bureaucracy. By all accounts, Stanley McChrystal exemplifies the breed. So what was he thinking when he allowed a Rolling Stone reporter unfettered on-the-record access to his inner circle, a decision that led directly to his dismissal? [click to continue…]
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Afghanistan,
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McChrystal,
Politics,
President,
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tea party
I’ve just returned from a few days in Sydney, Australia, where it is more or less the dead of winter, which means sunshine, highs in the upper 60s, and lows in the 50s. Not a snowplow in sight. Leaving aside the World Cup and Aussie Rules football and the odd murder and sex scandal, the main news story is the precipitous loss of confidence in Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party leader who became Prime Minister in 2007, soundly defeating John Howard and his center-right Liberal Party, who had been in power for the previous eleven years. Rudd, a former civil servant in the Foreign Office known mainly for his fluency in Mandarin Chinese and his geekish, technocratic look, was meant to be the antidote to Howard’s proud pro-Americanism and belligerent attitude towards darker-skinned folks seeking political asylum in the Land of Oz. Rudd was the new internationalist, prepared to identify Australia as an Asian country and to place Australia in the vanguard on such cutting global issues as climate change. Barely three years later, and with the next election no more than 10 months away, Rudd appears to be hanging on by his fingernails, facing his lowest poll ratings ever as well as grumblings within his own party that he might have to be replaced by another politician – Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, for example – if Labor is to have any chance of staying in power. What went wrong? [click to continue…]
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China,
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Kevin Rudd,
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sovereign risk,
Venezuela,
Wayne Swan,
Xstrata
In Iceland, where I have spent the past week, it is illegal to name your son Dweezil or River or your daughter Moon Unit or Fifi Trixabelle. The Government has long maintained a list of legal first names, all of which come from the Norse (Thorgil, Gunnar, Guðrún) or Biblical (Jón, Margret, Kristjana) traditions. There is also a list of middle names, many of which refer to places. For most of Iceland’s history, people had only one name, sometimes with a nickname (Eirik Raud, or Erik the Red) or a patronymic (Leifur Eiriksson, meaning Leif, son of Eirik). [click to continue…]
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culture,
Gross National Happiness,
Iceland,
icelandic names,
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liberty,
McDonald's,
pursuit of happiness,
rotten shark,
Taco Bell,
whale meat,
whaling
