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"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

December 2023

How to Become a Melting Pot


This country has always had a problem with integrating immigrants or absorbing former slaves and Native Americans. The ongoing arguments are about the best way to embrace these people into the American melting pot. The problem was particularly great in the 19th century, when ugly solutions were practiced.

The first immigration difficulties were with the Irish, who flocked here starving because of the potato famine in Ireland. We did not welcome them kindly. For some years, more...

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Minority Rule (1 of 2)


If one were to ask dozens of people on the street what is wrong with our country today, they would probably say the lies that have divided us into factions, or the tremendous gap in earnings between the corporate heads and the rest, or the corruption in the legal community (the Supreme Court the most) that suggests our justice system is crumbling

A new book, just released, has made me see a bigger picture about what is wrong with us and how it can be fixed. In the book: Ty more...

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Male Throwbacks


There is sorrow, but no surprise, at Afghanistan?s fanatical Muslim treatment of women. The Taliban government represents the worst culture and religion of the past. The Taliban men preside over a dying nation with a crashing birthrate, with the few trapped competent people slipping out of the country.

The documentary recently aired on MSNBC, "Ayenda," tells the story of the Afghan women?s soccer team that escaped from the Taliban?s hellhole. The film underscores the terri more...

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Afghanistan?s Dark Ages


Afghanistan was once the wild-wild-east of the Persian Empire. It has been a battle ground for centuries, since the Silk Road trade cities faded into the Soviet Union.

The country has always been divided between lively merchant cities and miserable tribal villages, a modernizing monarchy and the most feudal of Muslim tribal lands. Warfare has always been endemic: from the time of Alexander the Great, through the Arab invasion, then the British and Russians, the United Stat more...

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September 2023

Brief History of Slavery

This column should be directed to the Governor of Florida, whose knowledge of slavery reflects his defective education. Slavery was never of benefit to the slaves. This is also written to enlarge the view of slavery as a human institution, not just the Black slavery in the New World.

Hunter/Gatherers, Migration
Our earliest ancestors survived by cooperation. The men (and some women) hunted, but the main diet was provided by women, who gathered edible foods, fish, birds, an more...

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Historic Work Changes


There is growing concern that Artificial Intelligence (robots) may make human beings obsolete. If robots can perform all work better than humans, what is the value of human labor?

If we look at how human beings labored from the beginning of their emergence as a unique species, we will see great transformations in what we do as humans, and we are not only still here, but living much better than ever before.

Our first ancestors were small clans of hunter-gathe more...

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America: Good and bad


Just when we think we know what kind of country we are, history comes in to correct the record. We currently have Reactionary governors who want our children to uncritically love our country and think it the best in the world. On the extreme other side Radical Leftists want our children to see our dark underbelly, slavery and its consequences, and dwell on it.

These two extreme views fail our children, who, unlike other children in democracies around the world, are taugh more...

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Race-Based Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court Conservative majority has once more overturned previous set law in its latest decisions. They seem set to take things away from people, behavior at odds with popular concerns and at odds with all of these justices declaring at their Senate hearings that they believed in leaving set law alone.

It is becoming clearer every day that the older Republican party was much less ideological than today. Once, the majority of Court decisions were made by either unanimous o more...

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Teaching American History (2 of 2)


American history teaching has become a battleground between pollical operatives who want no mention of America?s original sin (slavery) or our gradual attempts at empathetic correction (emancipation of slaves and women and protection of the gender spectrum), and those who emphasize our past injustices.

America?s history is more than these two approaches. Students will benefit from exposure to the best scholarship available: both liberal and intelligently conservative, whi more...

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Constitutional Changes


The United States has enjoyed a prolonged democracy thanks to divided rule: three equal institutions: Administration, Congress, and Supreme Court. Each of these institutions have problematic periods in our history, but rarely at the same time. Today, all three need considerable reform if our government is to continue to be a beacon to the world.

Presidency.
The election system for president is suffering from a poorly performing Primary Election system. Our first pre more...

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Bigotry?s Sloppy Language

When I hear "Power to the people," I really want to know who "the people" are. This is the sloppiness of references because it implies the people, journalists, intellectuals, Jews, Chinese, Blacks, elites, are all one thing. One does not have to live to a great age to know that there is no "all" of any category that is just one thing.

The most common hate mongers today talk about hating "elites." What kind of elites? Are very rich people elite? Would you include prize fighters or more...

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Religion at War with Itself

Last month, I wrote that Religion and Democracy are a combination destined for conflict. Religion requires belief in something without proof: faith. Democracy involves arriving at consensus on how to organize an orderly society. It requires thinking, discussion, and ultimately voting for either representatives or issues. Democracy also needs representatives and voters themselves with good character: something once shaped by religion. We seem to need both.

Human beings have always more...

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Religion and Democracy


Human beings, "homo sapiens," are thinking creatures. Unlike animals, who live in the moment and are guided by instinct, human beings think about the past and speculate about the future. When something happens that we cannot explain factually, we spin stories to explain causes. T

The volcano erupts, and we do not know why, therefore we imagine that there are angry super-beings, gods, who are angry. We also imagine defenses against such frightening events: throw a virgin ma more...

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How Goes It With Women Around the World?

I am writing this on International Women?s Day, March 8, a holiday I remember well from its start in 1975. In 1999, I was heading the UN Association of San Francisco, responsible for public lecturing about UN issues: what the UN can and cannot do.

The UN can set standards, but has no real enforcement mechanism, such as stopping a war or protecting citizens from abuse. It can provide help in emergencies: such as food in a famine, aid in natural disasters, and programs that provide more...

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November 2022

Revolutiions in Russia and Iran


Our world has swung from a new passion for democracy at the end of the cold war to a pushback and swing to autocracy today. Now comes another swing: a revolt against ruthless autocrats.

It always seems hopeless once a dictator has seized power to get rid of him. Badly run countries in. the hands of an autocrat have managed to suppress demonstrations against their power. But no matter how much they control the courts, destroy the credible press, and are willing to kill opp more...

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September 2022

American Unjust Justice Problems (1 of 2)

One of the most important elements of fair government, supported by the majority of the governed, is justice. This is so basic that even small children protest when decisions or actions are "not fair." Revolutions often begin because of some very unfair action of governments: for example, when a policeman slapped a street vendor in Tunisia and arbitrarily seized his vegetable stand.

The vendor set himself on fire. The Tunisians had finally had enough of unfair police, corrupt off more...

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Evolution of the State Department

What we now call the State Department began as Foreign Affairs, whose first Ambassadors, even before we were officially a country, were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, with Benjamin Franklin serving as an unofficial Ambassador.

A recent PBS broadcast in the series "American Experience" (Season 34 Ep 2), provided the experience of Black diplomats serving during the Cold War. Their experiences were like those of so many other "non-White Protestant males" who monopolized State Depar more...

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The Constitution and Minority Rule


What defines us as Americans is the Constitution. We are not one race, one gender, or only native-born, conditions that identify most older societies in the world. We are united by an idea: the idea that we can rule ourselves, that we can hold fair elections, and that we can have a peaceful transfer of power. We never anticipated losers who whine, lie, and refuse to step down.

We are obviously not living up to those ideals today. Our two political parties are no longer ho more...

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The Good Old Days?



"Originalists" (conservatives who believe that we must follow everything that our founders established in the Constitution) are not alone in their love of the past.

The ugly White Nationalists roiling the country now believe the same thing, with violence replacing intellect. They think they would like this country better if it harkened back to a time when women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans were barred from voting and governance. The most ignoran more...

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The Good Old Days?



"Originalists" (conservatives who believe that we must follow everything that our founders established in the Constitution) are not alone in their love of the past.

The ugly White Nationalists roiling the country now believe the same thing, with violence replacing intellect. They think they would like this country better if it harkened back to a time when women, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans were barred from voting and governance. The most ignoran more...

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Replacement Theory Conspiracy


The Republican Party has adopted an old chestnut, the fear that demographers have been predicting that the "White Race" will soon lose its status as the majority, and will be replaced by people of color. Yes, "white" people, both in the US and in Europe, are having declining birth rates. Even the most fertile non-white people are beginning to have the same decline in fertility. The decline in birthrates everywhere should be applauded! This means that women are having more autonomy over t more...

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Democracy or Religion?

During our nation?s founding, western Europe, including England, had recently emerged from two centuries of ugly religious wars. The educated elites considered themselves men of reason, not religion, and they were in charge after religious wars ended. The French Revolution went resolutely secular, going so far as to persecute Catholic priests. Eventually, the two factions made peace, and France was never again an overtly Catholic state.

The new United States underwent the same ali more...

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Saving America?s Democracy (2 of 2)

In Reviewing the Index of Democracies for 2022, we can see the difference between Total Democracies and Flawed Democracies, a position that the United States currently holds.

Why do the countries at the top of the list succeed while we flail? We can see that the winning countries are all small and have a single culture that makes governing easy. Political parties are mostly either centrist liberal or centrist conservative, making for less contentious issues. Although most of these more...

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Saving America?s Democracy (1 of 2)


Last week, we reviewed America?s dismal performance on the world list of democracies. We do not have a national process for elections, leaving that to the states. Pluralism is certainly missing in our elections now, with one political party in meltdown (Republicans).

Civil liberties are under attack in a number of states. When Florida can punish a private company (Disney) for not supporting Florida?s attack on women, gays, and transgender children, civil liberties are in more...

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World Survey of Democracies


Two valuable non-partisan surveys track the standing of 166 sovereign states, 164 of them UN member states. One is the Democracy Index, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a UK-based private company which publishes The Economist.

The other is Freedom House, a non-profit, majority U.S. government- funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, more...

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Status of Women Around the World

January is a good time to see how women are doing around the world in the past year. The status of women has changed more in the past century than it had in 10,000 years. But these changes for the better (recognition that women are citizens, not property), has not changed in many of the darker, religious, backward places outside of the English-speaking world and Western Europe. Elsewhere, even with cautious new changes, there is unfortunate backsliding in recent years.

The backsli more...

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December 2021

Justice for All, Part 2


Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a book a few years ago tracking the history of the Supreme Court. He mentioned how often the court gets justice right, even when the justices were all male and all white. Yet the relatively few times when the court errs, the mistakes are monumental and have long-lasting damage.

The worst cited by Breyer was the notorious Dred Scott decision in 1857 that ruled that even when a slave was taken by his master to a free state, he could not sue in fe more...

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Justice for All? (1 of 2)


Human beings seem programmed to want fairness: justice. We want to know that our leaders are protecting us from those who are violent or taking our property. Most of us want a just world, one that we can count on to keep us safe or remedy abuse.

The system of justice that we have in the United States is largely the replica of the British system. We have judges, juries "of our peers," and prisons that enforce sentences. We also have two opposing lawyers or teams, one defend more...

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Build Back Better Part 2

There is a division of opinion on what constitutes "infrastructure." The common definition has to do with the brick and mortar elements that make society possible: roads, bridges, transportation, water systems, and energy. There is no doubt that poor infrastructure of this sort makes for unhappy citizens. Potholes are a nuisance and can harm vehicles. But lead in water from rusting pipes can damage the health and brains of everybody. Neglected railroads can cause massive accidents and death toll more...

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Infrastructure Provisions: Part 1


Our history shows us that our usually slow-moving republic can periodically make leaps of progress that immeasurably better the lives of our citizens. If this happened too often, it could be destabilizing. But over time, we find needs that have not been met or require governmental planning. These leaps began almost immediately after becoming a nation.

President Jefferson promoted an infrastructure program that built the Erie Canal system along the rivers of New York that m more...

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Infrastructure Provisions: Part 1


Our history shows us that our usually slow-moving republic can periodically make leaps of progress that immeasurably better the lives of our citizens. If this happened too often, it could be destabilizing. But over time, we find needs that have not been met or require governmental planning. These leaps began almost immediately after becoming a nation.

President Jefferson promoted an infrastructure program that built the Erie Canal system along the rivers of New York that m more...

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Solving the Alienation


As I wrote in my last column, Fiona Hill, our former Russia expert who served in the Obama and Trump administrations, has provided a unique examination of comparable popular discontent in the US, England, and Russia. By comparing them, she has focused on a common cause: societal disruption so rapid and severe that large sectors of society are left feeling abandoned. When people are feeling abandoned by their governments, they are vulnerable to populist scoundrels who promise them leaders more...

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One Hand Clapping?

We have had few times in our history that one party was so dominant that it governed almost unimpeded. The Republicans after the end of the Civil War had an almost unchallenged role until Woodrow Wilson in 1914. And the Democrats during the Depression and throughout World War II dominated, even granting a president four reelections.

However, we have never had a time in which there was refusal of the minority party to engage in bipartisan legislation. The current Republican party, more...

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September 2021

Hatred of Women


Women make up half of humanity. We appear to be designed for a partnership with men, at least biologically. Yet for the 3,000 years of human civilization, women have been treated as property with no autonomy. At worst they have been abused, enslaved, and treated with scorn by men. At best, they have been protected and loved.

The most gratifying revolution of all the scientific and social revolutions since the 18th century is the transformation of women as an inferior speci more...

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Human Societies and Cultural Change (2 of 2)


Human societies have changed more in the 20th and 21st centuries than in the previous 5,000 years of civilization. Certain laws and customs that seemed impervious to change over most of that period have evolved. One of them was the status of women, who formerly were the property of fathers, husbands, and sons.

There were exceptions, of course: female leaders: queens and empresses, and in later European society, rich widows. There were also improvements among the upper clas more...

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Census Analysis (2 of 2)


In the 1990s, an alarmist but popular program was the need for zero population growth. Warnings were circulated that population growth was reaching disaster proportions, with the collapse of civilization imminent. This alarm was mostly ignored, especially in the lesser developed world, with many women having seven or more children. Civilization did not collapse, but overpopulation certainly did make the lives of many very unpleasant. Food crises were met quickly by the United Nations Foo more...

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An Asylum Issue


Our country has a long history of granting asylum to people in need. It was not usually an issue of compassion, however; it was the pragmatic need to increase the population of this country, particularly the need for inexpensive labor. We took in the Irish, victims of the British-made famine, and they served as domestic help and heavy labor building the railroads.

But they suffered suspicion as Catholics, fearing their loyalty was to the Pope, not the country. They were n more...

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Violence Against Wome (2 0f 2)

I am old enough to remember when women were not considered equal in rights to men. Women were "protected," according to the laws and courts. The benefits to being born female were thought to be respect, protection from heavy physical labor, and honor as wives and mothers. For some, these benefits were enough, but for many others, they were neither respected, protected, nor spared heavy labor.

They were paid much less than men, often those doing the same job. Even a university deg more...

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Violence Against Women (1 of 2)


One of the greatest historic mysteries to me is the global tradition of violence against women. Why would a man, who had a mother who cared for him, and later a wife and daughters who depended on him to love and protect them, hate women? Why do so many around the world beat and even kill their wives and sometimes their daughters?

This ancient practice has become socially unacceptable in every educated modern society today, supported by laws that protect women from the sti more...

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Dumbing Down History Pajaronian

Human beings are the only species capable of contemplating and preserving memories of past events. All human cultures revere some form of history, initially by story-telling, and later through sculpture and visual arts, along with writing. Of course, when it is by memory only, as in pre-literate societies, each generation tends to edit the memory. People get a word wrong, an idea flipped, and lose an entire history when a society suffers plague or invasion.

The best record of pas more...

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Pandemic Aftermath (2)

A cataclysmic pandemic does not end with everything going back to the world as it was. The Bubonic Plague in Europe led to changes in religion (distrust in Catholicism opening protesting sects, Protestantism); changes in work, serfdom giving way to free labor; urbanization and the rise of a middle class challenged monarchy; and older superstitions giving way to the birth of modern science.

Successive epidemics compelled crowded cities to clean up. Scientific improvements permitted more...

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The Possible Great Leap Forward


George Packer, a brilliant staff writer at The Atlantic magazine was one of the essayists in the October issue, devoted to the theme of "Making America Again." The Atlantic has been extremely astute in predicting the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, better than any of the other speculations I have seen.

He begins: "The country is at a low point---our civic bonds frayed, our politics toxic. But we may be on the cusp of an era of radical reform that advances citize more...

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Can Biden Produce another "New Deal?"


Our country is designed to move slowly, a protection that our Founders envisioned to protect us from dictatorship or anarchy. Moving with deliberate care, however, is not the same as gridlock in which emergencies go untreated.

It took almost a century for the blight on our republic, slavery, to become so dire that it threatened to destroy us one country. A devastating civil war and the presidency of a remarkable leader, Abraham Lincoln, saved us and ended chattel slavery. more...

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The Future of Work (Part 1)

One of the thorniest problems facing all the world?s modern governments is providing work for all able-bodied adults. Work is the process of providing all the needs of a society and paying those performing the work enough to support their families, their communities, and their government (through taxes).

In flourishing societies, most people who want to work can find it. When societies are in trouble, gainful employment shrinks, leaving many people potentially homeless and hungry more...

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December 2020

Biden?s Big Opportunity to Save Democracy


Democracy is not working well at this moment in history. A number of things that the Founders hoped for have been under attack for several decades now, with the final demolition of Trump?s wrecking ball.

Voting Rights. Our country began with limited democracy (voting permitted only to white male property owners, along with a few free Black men), yet the Founders expected enlargement and change to come in the future. Voting was indeed enlarged over the next two centuries, more...

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Perspective on History of Slavery


Much current discussion of the history of slavery ignores the larger picture. Slavery was universal, still exists in parts of the world, and was only finally abolished in the 19th century by England (1833), Russia (emancipating serfs in 1861), and by the United States in 1864. These emancipations were unique to the West, not the rest of the world, which still practices domestic slavery (women as property) and in some places in the Islamic world, sexual, agricultural, and mining slavery. more...

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August 2020

The Glass Half Full


We have had an ugly year, one in which we suffered a dreadful pandemic, a wobbling economy, and the daily offence of watching our president, a man we should be able to trust, do nothing but lie, falsify history, and pander to our worst behaviors.

If we do not put all of these spectacles in historic perspective, we could well be depressed. But history in perspective can save us from despair. Just consider the two-part final exam question I once asked my college students: a more...

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Global status of Women


I generally do an annual "status of women around the world" column, and this year is an important year to see some progress. Historically, in every civilization from the first ones in Sumeria, women have been oppressed, deprived of any autonomy, and doomed to lives of drudgery if poor or being ornamental playthings, if rich.

Despite this, some bold and lucky women throughout the centuries have had power---either as rulers or with husbands whom they could manipulate. One e more...

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Religion and Human Rights


There is a case now before the Supreme Court about how much can religious rights (beliefs) triumph over human rights. Do those who believe that their objection to abortion rights should prevent women from control over their own bodies? And will the court vote to remove legal protections from women with current rights to make decisions over their own future? Does a woman or girl who has been forcibly impregnated (rape) have no rights other than to submit to the consequences for years to c more...

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Rolling Back Regulations

We regularly hear about President Trump?s latest "rollbacks" to regulations, the primary excuse being that regulations, particularly Obama ones, "overreached." The real reason, it appears, is that President Trump cannot bear comparisons between Obama?s presidency and his. But he sometimes has other motives. As Nancy Pelosi warned, "in the Trump White House, all roads lead to Putin."

Early in Trump?s presidency, I recall his amazing comment about asbestos, and his scorn for regulat more...

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The Future of Work


One of the thorniest problems facing all the world?s modern governments is providing work for all able-bodied adults. Work is the process of providing all the needs of a society and paying those performing the work enough to support their families, their communities, and their government (through taxes).

In flourishing societies, most people who want to work can find it. When societies are in trouble, gainful employment shrinks, leaving many people potentially homeless an more...

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December 2019

How Goes it with Women?


Every year, I do a survey of how women are doing around the world. Historically, women have always been at the bottom of the power curve, domestic abuse being one of the main ways of keeping them subservient. Because women are generally smaller and less muscular than men, and because of child bearing, they are more vulnerable physically. The power curve disfavors women.

Religion and ancient traditions have also played a malignant role until changes in the Western world beg more...

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August 2019

Women?s Uneven Progress Globally



The treatment of women from the beginning of our species has been shaped by biology: female humans generally smaller than males, physically weaker, and hampered by childbirth and lactation. Even hunter-gatherer tribes, whose survival depended upon mobility, learned to space between births. A woman on the move can carry only one or two children.

After agriculture replaced hunting/gathering, when humans settled in villages, towns, and city-states, spacing childbirth more...

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Darwinian View of Women


It has taken thousands of years in which human beings struggled to evolve into the extraordinary beings we are today. Over that time, certain assumptions were widely accepted about the capabilities and values of women, the smaller and physically weaker of the two genders. Women were expected to provide sexual pleasure to men, to bear children and rear them, and to be free domestic and farm labor. Men were able to maintain this system through brute force, and later, religion and law.
more...

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The Abortion Hypocrisy


No one should force a pregnant woman to have an abortion, a practice in China years ago to address population explosion (the one-child policy). But forcing a pregnant woman to bear an unwanted child is "involuntary servitude." The key concept here is force. If men and women in a modern society are legally equal citizens, how is it that the radical branch of the Republican Party has been relentlessly trying to eliminate the 1973 law that permits women to make decisions about their own bod more...

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Science and Conspiracy Theories


Every year, I write a column dedicated to giving "Darwin Awards," awards to people who make such stupid decisions that they should eliminate themselves from the human gene pool. These awards are equal opportunity: some, who should know better, from supposedly educated cultures, and others whose ignorance is culturally based.

We have two examples for this column this year: the believers in the US that the century-old childhood vaccinations against Measles, Mumps, and Rubel more...

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The Pros and Cons of Tolerance


That famous bastion of intellectual freedom and tolerance, Universities, have lately been accused of hypocrisy: tolerant only of those ideas believed by the majority and unwilling to give ear to opposing views. The terminology covering this has given rise to a new term: political correctness. Only certain ideas are correct and all others are false.

Voltaire is attributed to have said: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." To more...

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Reparations for Slavery

The original American sin, slavery, was abolished by law by Abraham Lincoln. There was a brief attempt to provide former agricultural slaves with Forty Acres and a Mule, in hope that this would give them a start in being self-sustaining farmers. This measure was proclaimed by General Sherman under his authority as a military governor, but was quickly rejected when the Southern States regained their political independence.

Many slaves hoped to obtain ownership of at least a part o more...

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Women and "Pollution"


Women in modern, reason-based societies know that menstruation (monthly bleeding) is a normal process that marks the beginning and end of fertility. When I was a girl, it was often called "the curse," but one does not hear that today.

I would never have given any more thought to this topic if it had not returned in the news: a Nepalese woman and her two small children died when freezing overnight in a "seclusion hut." Around the world, remnants of this primitive custom re more...

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Women and Piety


I am a tireless advocate for women to have choices and rights in their lives. What makes this possible is the secular value system of modern, western civilization: freedom of---and from--- religion. Those countries in which women have little or no choices are those with religious dictatorships.

But what can we make out of India, a country that aspires to being a modern, enlightened, and multi-faith state? Why are we seeing so many women apparently having no choice over ho more...

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Women and Piety


I am a tireless advocate for women to have choices and rights in their lives. What makes this possible is the secular value system of modern, western civilization: freedom of---and from--- religion. Those countries in which women have little or no choices are those with religious dictatorships.

But what can we make out of India, a country that aspires to being a modern, enlightened, and multi-faith state? Why are we seeing so many women apparently having no choice over ho more...

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December 2018

Women with No Choices


I wrote about Pakistan?s hideous culture last week, about a woman accused of "blasphemy" who was sprung from execution by a brave court after a decade in prison. Pakistani men held violent demonstrations, outraged that the woman was being released from prison and not executed. They threatened the life of the judge too.

This time, Pakistan is my target once more. National Public Radio (NPR) jolted me by exposing what seems to me the most horrible situation that a woman can more...

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Pakistan?s Poisonous Underbelly


Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia, is a country with which we have alliances despite our distaste for their cultures. We needed Pakistan during the Cold War, when Russia had neutered India (they were "non-aligned") and we could count on them not to be seduced by Marxism.

But Pakistan, unlike Saudi Arabia, aspires to be a modern state with the institutions that protect a supposed republic: free press, independent courts, and respectable elections. They have a modern military, or more...

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What?s Happening to the Global Islam Project?

Islam as a global religion is having a crisis. Despite years of propaganda that began with the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the boast that Islam is on a roll around the world needs to be revised.

I have long rejected the mantra that "Islam is the world?s fastest growing religion," the illusion that people are rushing to convert. We really do not have any reliable numbers on how many people belong to a faith (modern censuses do not ask this question) so we must get the numbers from more...

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The Element of Time in Changing Society


One of the most important insights of our Founding Fathers, men who created an exceedingly revolutionary country, was that a democracy should never make changes hastily. They feared mob rule, which was soon to be demonstrated in the hideous French Revolution.

They deliberately separated the governing powers: the presidency, Congress, and the Courts, who were all to function as checks and balances on the others. Even the Congress was divided in two: one branch to represent more...

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The History of the US Justice System


One of the key benefits of a representative governing system is that it provides justice---fairness, something that autocracies do not provide. Populist systems do not provide justice either; they offer the passions of the mob. The American system (derived in part from the British system, part of Anglo-Saxon law that mandates a jury of one?s peers in a criminal case) has always been an evolving institution. We have evolved from exclusively White Male juries to those today that permit wom more...

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September 2018

The Me Too Movement in Perspective

As our political world is once more roiled by allegations of abuse of women, this time a woman who has come forth (obviously reluctantly) with an account of an attempted rape by a drunk schoolboy when the two of them were teens. She was 15 and he 17, but that boy is now a man, a judge, President Trump?s nominee for the Supreme Court.

If this were the only question about this nominee, Brett Kavanaugh?s behavior, it could well be dismissed as an example of "boys will be boys," and t more...

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Saudi men resist women driving.


Ordinarily, the status of women around the world is of more interest to western educated women than to most men. However, decent men find the nasty treatment of women around much of the world abhorrent, including today the remnants of abuse in our own society. Yes, we do have some men who abuse their power over women who work for them, demanding sex; but today, when this behavior is made public, there is a price to pay. We tend to forget that these values are relatively new in the world more...

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Clash of Civilizations


Western Civilization does not have all the answers to those wanting a perfect society. Even the excellent American Creed (everyone is an equal citizen under the law) does not have all the answers, but both are far better than any other older, traditional civilizations.

Modern intellectuals do not like to repeat what seems to be the arrogance of 19th century Europeans and Americans who looked down on all other cultures. We shudder at the notion that only White people of No more...

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Words Matter.

Definitions are very useful when words have power over our minds. Terrorism is one of those words. For some people, the only time "terrorism" is used is when an act of violence is committed by a Muslim. But playing loose and fast with a definition has resulted in calling a radicalized Muslim, who murdered 13 of his fellow military at Fort Hood, a perpetrator of "workplace violence."

Acts of violence by Muslims are not always terrorism, such as honor killings of family members (wo more...

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Let Us Take a Tour of Slavery Through History

Although slavery did not begin with America, its effects still poison the dreams of the America Black underclass and the fevered imaginations of Old South romanticizers and virulent racists. Unfortunately, slavery is and has always been a universal horror.

At our beginnings as a species, a practice emerged to compel some members of the clan to perform work that others did not want. Anthropologists tell us that among our hunter-gather ancestors, hunting required muscle and tracking more...

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It Is Just a Little Headscarf

In 1978, Pakistan?s newly elected president, Zia ul Huq, transformed his country from an aspiring secular republic to an oppressive Islamic state. A whole category of new laws was passed oppressing women (Zina Laws). It required two women testifying in court to equal one man, and rape went unpunished for men unless four pious men testified to witnessing it. Women who claimed rape were arrested for prostitution. And Hijab (Muslim modesty imposed only on women) saw the return of not only headscarv more...

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Thirteen Russians Indicted for Election Meddling



For several years now, we have heard about Information Warfare, a new way of fighting enemy countries. This method is as much of an "equalizer" as was the invention of firearms in the late middle age, which gave even a weak man lethality equivalent to a talented swordsman. Keen observers have always warned us that great new inventions can have terrible consequences. Although it is wonderful to have information so available to everyone, regardless of power and wealth, it is not wo more...

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Valentine's Day Has Religious Enemies


It is difficult to believe that a holiday as seemingly benign as St. Valentine's Day could arouse hatred, but it does. This dubious but nice Catholic holiday commemorates an early saint who provided dowry money to deserving but poor girls. But when romantic love (choosing one's spouse) became the norm in the 18th century Western world, this holiday morphed into one of courtship. Young people sent sweet and often anonymous messages or cards to the object of their affection. This practice more...

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The Kurds Are Transforming Islam


The Syrian city of Raqqa, recently cleared of its ISIS fanatics, is being rebuilt after nearly total destruction. Meanwhile, the residents are being housed in refugee camps in the wind-swept desert. Even these camps are better than living under ISIS rule, a government so fanatical that even the already pious population chaffed. Women were forced to cover up every square inch of skin under black sacks lest they "tempt" men from righteousness. Any deviation was punished by flogging, one of more...

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Fake News and Conspiracy Theories


History is full of examples of misinformation being broadly believed by the gullible. There were no newspapers or other media during the middle ages. People learned the news from town criers, priests in the churches, and edicts from rulers. Aside from that, the rumor mills were alive and well, and the superstitious believed anything.

The first Crusade was called by Pope Urban II in 1095, a call to arms in response to the Muslim takeover of the Holy Land, barring and perse more...

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December 2017

Is Fear of Strangers a Human Instinct?

Is fear of strangers (xenophobia) built in to the human genetic code? If genetic, it would be instinctive and innate. Blinking when something is thrown at us is instinctive. Fight or flight is an instinctive response to danger. Maternal protection of her young appears to be instinctive. But attitudes toward strangers are not uniform. The attitude is a learned response that depends upon our life circumstances.

People living in an environment of scarcity and hardship, such as the In more...

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Can There Be a Centrist Party?

The political pendulum in this country has now swung to two extremes, making it very difficult for a sensible person to select a party that is a big, tolerant tent. Once long ago, the Republicans were such a party and for the same length of time, the Democrats were also a big tent. Today, both parties are struggling for survival and both are being deserted by people in the sensible middle.

A good friend of mine, has stated the problem well:
"Centrist? God, I hope so. The ex more...

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Can There Be a Centrist Party?

The political pendulum in this country has now swung to two extremes, making it very difficult for a sensible person to select a party that is a big, tolerant tent. Once long ago, the Republicans were such a party and for the same length of time, the Democrats were also a big tent. Today, both parties are struggling for survival and both are being deserted by people in the sensible middle.

A good friend of mine, has stated the problem well:
"Centrist? God, I hope so. The ex more...

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Is Saudi Arabia Heading for Disaster?


Saudi Arabia is a unique nation-state: a kingdom named for its ruling family, the Sauds. The Saud tribe joined forces with the leader of the Wahhabi religious cult in 1744 and gradually conquered all other tribes. Their modern existence as a kingdom began in 1930, when Abdulaziz al Saud became absolute monarch, succeeded one after another by six of his sons from his first wife.

The modern Saudis solidified their hold on rule by marrying into all the other major clans in more...

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Gender Wars in Perspective


An obnoxious Hollywood mogul, a man who for decades sexually harassed seemingly every female who came in range, has been named, condemned by everybody, and even fired from the successful film company that he founded.

A once beloved comedian, Bill Cosby, now in doddering old age, has been outed as a sexual predator of young women whom he was supposed to be mentoring.

A conservative Fox Network executive and a popular show host on the same network have both b more...

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September 2017

"Why Can?t a Woman Be More Like a Man?"


One of the funniest songs in My Fair Lady is when two men, a professor and his best friend deplore the situation that women are not like men. Men are so easy, so uncomplicated, so decent. "Why can?t a woman be more like a man?" they ask.

George Bernard Shaw was making fun of them, of course, because at the end, the misogynistic professor finds that he cannot do without the woman that he considered at first a scientific experiment and learned how very special she was. No, s more...

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Iran's Simmering Rebellion

Misaugh Parsa, a Dartmouth professor, has published a fascinating book, Democracy In Iran: Why it Failed and How it Might Succeed (2016). He sought answers to why countries such as Taiwan and South Korea, both military dictatorships, accepted representative democracy in the late 20th century, while Iran's many attempts at democratization always failed. This comparison is interesting because all three of these countries once enjoyed a comparable level of economic development. Taiwan and South Kor more...

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The Past and Future of Work

There are people in the lesser-developed parts of the world who do work that our modern societies have long forgotten. Women and children live atop mountains of garbage that they sort through to find anything that can be sold for a few pennies. In India, women sort through slag heaps from coal-mines to find a few pieces of coal that can still be used for fuel.

Miners in China, Latin America, and Africa do not live as do our modern miners, whether coal or other minerals, who are u more...

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How Islamists Select Targets

Every time Islamists select a target, such as the recent attack in Manchester, handwringers come out with the usual nonsense: "These attackers are not acting in the name of Islam," according to mainstream Muslims and well-intentioned journalists. I sympathize with Muslims who quietly practice their faith (or not practice it if they choose), and nice people do not want to tar all Muslims with the same brush. However, Islamists are not outliers, but are ready to die for fundamental demands of th more...

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Afghanistan?s Gender Benders



The bathroom battles raging in the United States today (which toilets transgender people can use) reminds me of how little new there is in the world. For eons, some human beings have been born aware of wiring (or something else) amiss in their gender.

Ancient Greek mythology has been a gift to the world. Tiresias was the only human being who had been both male and female. He was a blind prophet who could warn kings of danger but was often not believed until too lat more...

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World Law and Reciprocity


After 75 years with a system of global norms that America created, many around the world are challenging these norms. "International laws" are treaties agreed to by nations and "norms" are behaviors believed beneficial to all who practice them. However, global norms and treaties are voided when one side violates the agreements. During World War II, because Germany, the US, and Britain were all signatories to the Geneva Conventions, they all abided by humane rules validated by regular Red more...

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December 2016

Tradition!

In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevya, the milkman, a poor Jewish villager trying to survive in Tzarist Russia, is faced by societal changes that he resists with all his might. Tradition is his shield and protection from what he sees as chaos.

Of course, there are limits to how much one can resist the present. Around the world, and even in our own country, there are people who resist the present, or, rather, resist some of the changes of the present. They cherry pick.

The more...

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Darwin Awards



My periodic "Darwin Awards" columns are to nominate those human beings whose existence lowers the global IQ.

Saudi Man Shoots Doctor Who Delivered His Wife?s Baby
This man was not only ungrateful, he was stupid. He was outraged to learn that a male gynecologist had been present at the birth of his wife?s baby. The doctor had seen his wife naked, he sputtered. The Saudi police tracked him down and arrested him, but will the Saudi "justice" system give him a more...

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Celebrating Native American Food


Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian
November 26, 2016

I have never seen a restaurant discussed and condemned on the front page of a newspaper before Saturday, November 4. On that day, Francis Ford Coppola, famous as the movie producer of The Godfather series and a posh winery he opened in Napa, was condemned for daring to open a restaurant featuring Native American foods. How terrible, said the critics, that someone dare to serve ethnic foods without growing up w more...

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Culture Matters Part 2

Last week, I wrote about the cultural chasm in the United States that gave rise to election results that surprised many of us. This time, I am looking at the global culture wars.

Along with cultural differences of class and ethnicity, there are cultural differences in religions: most of these benign, but some really divisive. No one cares about different dietary laws, for example, unless one culture forces the rest to practice them. Orthodox Jews have dietary issues: no pork or sh more...

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September 2016

Is There Global Rule of Law?


During President Obama?s recent visit to Asia, he spoke about Global Norms to students in Laos. He also said that America has been an enormous force for the good in the world, but that we often think that because of our size and clout, we do not need to know much about the rest of the world. Some people will be annoyed by this comment, but I think it is obvious. Only a steady ten percent of the American public has any interest in foreign policy, which is too bad, considering how importan more...

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Why Is Georgetown University Rewriting History?

Cherry-picking is no way to benefit from historic insight. Suddenly, it has become chic to revisit history and try to undo what was done. There is no way we can undo slavery, and this mode of rewriting history is of no benefit to the descendants of a very bad institution.

Georgetown University was financed in 1789 by the sale of slaves owned by the Jesuit fathers. The university wants to find descendants of those slaves and give them special access to attend Georgetown. Put them more...

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The Fuss over Headscarves

When President Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin wall and said: "Mr. Gorbachev, Take Down This Wall." Some of the President?s advisers were horrified that he said this, considering it very undiplomatic. The President was very lucky---that shortly after his challenge, events converged, resulting in the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the USSR.

The PBS program Frontline recently did an investigative report on Saudi Arabia, not an easy thing to do considering how paranoid and close more...

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Beliefs that Kill

What people believe matters. There are some beliefs around the world that result in murder. So many of us are like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland who said, when Alice noted "One can?t believe impossible things:" "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I?ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Too many of us believe impossible things.

? Albinos. The people in Malawi, in Africa, believe that Albinos should be abd more...

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Profiling the Muslim Community


What is so dangerous about Donald Trump is that he sometimes, quite by accident, takes a position that has some merit. He recently talked about "profiling the Muslim community," but, as always, with very little supporting data. If he were not so shallow and glib, he might have said: "There is a cult living in the Muslim community that advocates a most violent form of Islam." This is certainly true, but the notion of a blanket profile of all Muslims is a waste of resources because there a more...

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Religion, Sexuality, and Homosexuality


Many well-meaning people believe that the murderous aspects of today?s Muslim true-believers is a perversion of a good religion. To say that there are many Muslims who live peaceful lives is true. But a sizable minority of violent Muslims (Islamists) have Islamic texts to back them up. Islam is a religion, like all other religions, and the behavior of its adherents depends upon how literally they choose to practice their faith. I criticize all "true believers" for their choice of literal more...

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Letters to Editors: Primary Elections and Slavery Statistics

San Francisco Chronicle
June 2, 2016

Editor:

Slavery Statistics
The report that 18.35 million people in India alone comprise 40 percent of global slavery figures of 45.8 million (Walk Free Foundation) only counts unpaid or ill-paid labor as slavery. What about the status of wives in the 167 countries cited? If a wife is property of her husband, cannot leave the house without permission and a chaperone, may be beaten for "disobedience," cannot refuse se more...

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Darwin Awards


Mothers? Day, 2016

My periodic columns called Darwin Awards are to nominate those human beings whose existence lowers the global IQ. We hope that those described below will not father more fools.

First prize: Suicidal Skateboarder.
Someone took a phone picture of a skateborder in Syria who, while racing down the street, fell and detonated his suicide belt. This is a real Darwin Award, well deserved. He will father no fools.

Palestinia more...

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What Use Are Good Manners?

Being "polite" is not just a matter of saying please and thank you. Courtesy has always been the lubricant that makes the wheels of society turn smoothly. There is a movement today to conflate honesty with rudeness, mocking the "politically correct." Political correctness is an exaggerated monitoring of words and thoughts that might offend others. The revolt by some against political correctness is that these constraints sometimes muzzle debate. However, the revolt against "political correctness more...

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1400 Years of Inbreeding


Worldwide Muslim marriage practices are now under fire for a spate of genetic problems now in the Western spotlight. The birth defects and anomalies are real and their incidence within Islam is undeniable. The problem is determining if these incidences are all caused by the Muslim preference for first-cousin marriages, a practice forbidden in Judaism and Christianity.

We do not know enough about genetics to determine if this consanguinity is totally to blame, or if there more...

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Genocide extends back 7,000 years.

Archaeologists have just found a 7,000-year-old Stone Age mass gravesite outside of Frankfurt, Germany! This horrifying find erases what we had always thought about human behavior at the beginnings of agriculture and village life. Genocide has a long human history, but we didn?t know that it was that early in the agricultural revolution when population density could not have been large enough to provide for organized warfare.

This is just one of a number of similar mass graves. T more...

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With Women Like These?..

For all the vaunted "sisterhood" among women, we need to be aware that some are not always our friends. On January 17, a woman professor at Egypt's al-Azhar University, opined that "Allah allows Muslims to rape non-Muslim women." One would think that for a Muslim university to admit a woman professor at all is amazingly liberated; however, it is apparent that this woman is in no way a feminist.

Another "champion for women," a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, promoted more...

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Was the Past Really Better?


When we revere the past to the point of worship, we are saying that those who came centuries before us were smarter than we are. As a historian with little romantic illusion about the past, I think that this worship is misplaced. I checked this out with a two-part question on the final exam in the World History class that I taught: A) If you could go back in a time machine to any period in history, which would you select, and why? B) If you could not choose your gender or class, would t more...

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Europe's Good Intentions Hit the Wall of Reality.

Casandras (me included) have been writing for 20 years about Europe's failure to integrate a Muslim immigrant population that resists modern culture. The Islamist terror attacks were alarming enough, but the New Year?s Eve sexual assaults, mobs of "North African" men molesting, raping, and robbing women in Cologne, Hamburg, Sweden, and Finland, have embarrassed governments across Europe. Europe's open door to "refugees" has brought in not only good families capable of integrating, but also hord more...

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Poll Finds Christian-Muslim Divide on Religious Freedom.


The Associated Press put out an article on December 31 on a poll taken in the United States about religious freedom. A vast majority placed a higher priority on preserving the religious freedom of Christians (and Jews) than for other faith groups, ranking Muslims as the least deserving of these protections.

The article seems to be critical of American suspicion of Muslims and belief that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its followers. " more...

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Darwin Awards for 2015

I issue mock Darwin Awards each year for those so stupid they should be barred from adding to the gene pool.

Education Official Resigns.
At a press conference recently, Vasile Salaru, Romanian Minister of Education, said schools should teach female students how to walk while wearing high heels; dance the tango; be a good host[ess]; and walk with "chest out, bottom out, let the boys faint!" Several student organizations protested his comments and called for his resignation. more...

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December 2015

Neither Bigot Not Apologist.

Our country is tied in knots on how to regard Militant Islam. Donald Trump, a bumptious Republican presidential candidate, is gaining traction because he speaks openly about our Muslim problem. However, he is a bully and a demagogue, suggesting we bar all Muslims entering our country from abroad, even our own Muslim servicemen. Will he next suggest deporting all Muslims already here, including citizens, having them join the deported Mexicans, perhaps?

His proposals are obnoxious, more...

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Militant Islam has a Woman Problem.


In the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack on America, there was a knee-jerk assumption that Muslims had reasons for hating us. Many left-wing chest-beaters blamed "western colonialism" for creating Muslim hatred; others blamed Israel for daring to occupy "Muslim lands." "What did we do wrong?" they asked.

Scholars revisited the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the godfather of all subsequent Islamist terror groups. This movement began in 1928 when other compar more...

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Do Refugees Have Responsibilities?


Nobody seems to be asking if refugees themselves have responsibilities to their host country. When people are running for their lives and are welcomed with open arms (as in Germany and Sweden), many are grateful and will eagerly integrate into their new homes. But there are many who will not.

Notice that reporters covering this stressful refugee flood pick and choose whom to interview. On 60 Minutes, I saw interviews with young men who spoke English, one of whom (a teen) h more...

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Is the Paris Massacre a Game Changer?


Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian
November 21, 2015

Santa Cruz Sentinel and Monterey Herald
November 28,2015

In a multi-pronged attack on Paris, reminiscent of the nightmare attack in Mumbai, India several years ago, a tipping point seems to have arrived. Many assumptions about our enemy have had to be rethought:

First, the Mumbai siege was executed by Al Qaeda under the direction of the Pakistani Intelligence Service. The P more...

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The Saudis Are Not Alone in Religious Stampedes.


When I was a child, my father said: "never chase an ambulance!" He warned that mobs of people can quickly turn lethal, something that he remembered as a child himself when pogroms roiled Russia. I have a life-long horror for crushes of people, and, apparently, with good reason.

In September, Saudi Arabia hosted the annual Hajj, an event that they should have by now learned how to manage. Millions of people descend upon Mecca and reenact a Koranic story about Abraham's conc more...

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The World Has A Strange Fixation on Sex.

Human sexuality has two areas of concern for people who govern: population numbers (Reproduce and Multiply!) and social order (control your women!).

Human sexuality, since the time that men figured out that having babies was not a mystery controlled exclusively by women, has been to make certain that men know which children they father. If a man is to be responsible for protecting, feeding, and leaving a heritage to his offspring, he wants to know that these offspring are his own more...

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Whose Fault is the Immigrant Crisis?



Wouldn't you know that the moment any crisis occurs in the world that the usual commentators would blame the United States? Amy Goodman's recent column blamed the chaos in the Middle East on the US and Europeans sending arms to the region. Others, many on the political left, have blamed the crisis entirely on the disastrous aftermath of our Iraq invasion. However, I have not seen any of these critics pinning blame on the total failure of governance and religion in the Muslim Worl more...

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September 2015

Whose Fault is the Immigrant Crisis?


Wouldn't you know that the moment any crisis occurs in the world that the usual commentators would blame the United States? Amy Goodman's recent column blamed the chaos in the Middle East on the US and Europeans sending arms to the region. Others, many on the political left, have blamed the crisis entirely on the disastrous aftermath of our Iraq invasion. However, I have not seen any of these critics pinning blame on the total failure of governance and religion in the Muslim World itself more...

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Another View of Pope Francis

Santa Cruz Sentinel
September 21, 2015l

Editor:

As much as we admire charming Pope Francis and as much as we usually dismiss columnist George Will as a conservative mouthpiece, his column (September 21) was brave and well worth reading! Will takes on Francis' attack on capitalism as wrongheaded and supports that view with solid facts.

Capitalism (and the scientific revolution) have been responsible for the tripling of life expectancy even in th more...

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Tradition!


Tevye, the father living in revolutionary times of rapid change, struggled with what to do about traditions in the much loved musical, Fiddler on the Roof. This Russian-Jewish story, later a Broadway play and then a movie, played to audiences of many other cultures around the world who understood the issues very well. The 20th century was beset with traditions biting the dust. Children were in rebellion everywhere and parents did not know what to do about it.

My own view o more...

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Tradition!


Tevye, the father living in revolutionary times of rapid change, struggled with what to do about traditions in the much loved musical, Fiddler on the Roof. This Russian-Jewish story, later a Broadway play and then a movie, played to audiences of many other cultures around the world who understood the issues very well. The 20th century was beset with traditions biting the dust. Children were in rebellion everywhere and parents did not know what to do about it.

My own view o more...

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Defunding Israel but Blind to Islamophobia Ripoffs?

Only in the free Western world can such asymmetrical nonsense take place. Israel, the one western country unfortunately located in the middle of the Muslim world is the focus of accusations of Islamophobia and targeted with boycotts of its industries and products. How ironic. Israel is the one country where Arab citizens can vote, have the highest standard of living, and have any kind of future. Yet young stupid liberals in Europe and the US vent their spleen on Israel and turn a blind eye to th more...

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Defunding Israel but Blind to Islamophobia Ripoffs?


Only in the free Western world can such asymmetrical nonsense take place. Israel, the one western country unfortunately located in the middle of the Muslim world is the focus of accusations of Islamophobia and targeted with boycotts of its industries and products. How ironic. Israel is the one country where Arab citizens can vote, have the highest standard of living, and have any kind of future. Yet young stupid liberals in Europe and the US vent their spleen on Israel and turn a blind e more...

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ISIS Runs from Amazon Warriors.

Even if you do not know the great Greek myths about the ancient women warriors, the Amazons, whom Plato described, most of you do remember Wonder Woman, that beautiful comic book heroine who was an Amazon warrior princess. Plato's Amazons were fierce; they could fight as well as any men, and were so devoted to the art of war that they amputated their right breasts so that they could use a bow and arrow as men could. They lived communally, capturing men only to procreate, dumping male children. more...

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Marriage of One Man and One Woman, a Sacred History?


The Supreme Court has not weighed in on the issue of Gay Marriage yet, but plenty of people have had their say, in and out of the court. Even those who believe that it is time to recognize that a same sex couple should have the dignity of being recognized as a family with the same rights as a married couple do note that marriage has a long traditional history of being the sacred union of one man and one woman.

However, I choke when I hear that one. Does it really? Do thes more...

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Laina with April Movies

Laina At the Movies
By Laina Farhat-Holzman
April 2015

Effie Gray

If even at the beginning of Downton Abby, during the Edwardian era, when sexuality was something done behind closed doors and, as one spicy lady said: "Do what you like, but don't do it in the street and frighten the horses," the sex in Effie Gray was not just hidden, it was smothered.

Emma Thompson is not only a marvelous actress, but also wrote a sensitive screenplay ba more...

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"Clash of Traditions" Offer Glimmers of Hope


Samuel D. Huntington warned in his landmark book Clash of Civilizations (1996) that we were headed for stormy times when the largest civilizations would not meet peacefully. His views were met with torrents of argument by most scholars who, upon the end of the Cold War, were convinced that the world had globalized; that the United States and its values had dominated all others, and that there was nothing really left to fight about. War was no longer really conceivable. We had every insti more...

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Puritans Are So Threatened By Pleasure!


There has always been a strain in religions from the beginning of time that has feared pleasure. Perhaps it is connected with a struggle between male and female power. Without wanting to push this too far, women can be a distraction. "Let's play!" distracts from the serious work of hunting with the fellows or thinking serious philosophical thoughts in the monastery. Female beauty makes men, even late into their dotage, weak in the knees. My sourpuss puritanical grandfather was pinching t more...

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Poor Jihadi John: People Picked on Him!


"Jihadi John" has been identified as Mohammad Emwazi, a young immigrant from Kuwait, welcomed and reared as a privileged Englishman with a college degree in computer science from the University of Westminster in London. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

But let us look at the surprise that so many people express that this "nice, gentle boy" should turn into the monster whom we all saw taking pleasure in decapitating people (who had done him no harm) in a most the more...

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What to do with Returning Jihadis?


Parents know that teenagers must make some mistakes in order to learn, and we always hope that the mistakes are small enough not to destroy their lives. For most of us, they are. In my own case, for my daughter, that was so. Hers were small. Not so for my son, whose experiments with drugs killed him.

For the good liberal non-Muslim parents whose children have gone to Yemen to "learn Arabic" and wound up converting to Islam and becoming Muslim, their choices turned deadly. more...

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Annual Darwin Awards


Every year, I gather up notes on people so stupid that they should not add to the human gene pool. Alas, they do, but I would wish they wouldn?t. Some of them are low hanging fruit, very obviously defective, but others really shouldn?t be on this list at all. They ought to know better.

? Boko Haram. Let us start with the low hanging fruit, which usually comes from the Muslim world. Boko Haram means: Western Learning is Forbidden. They believe the world is flat and water more...

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Human Trafficking Numbers Are Spun From Fantasy.


The subject of Human Trafficking is appearing in the press this month largely because of the Foreign Policy Association?s "Great Decisions Program." Sixty Minutes ran one dispiriting feature of a human rights official in Northern India trying to get enforcement from indifferent police to raid a prostitution ring. It seems that the reluctant police warned the fathers in advance, fathers who were the pimps selling their own daughters.

Years ago, a reporter in Lagos, Nigeri more...

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It is Not Smart to Take Rule of Law for Granted.


We take "rule of law" as much for granted as we assume that our supermarkets will not run out of food. It is part of modern society that these things work. Most of us drive our cars on the right side of the street, stop at stop signs and traffic lights, and generally drive with consideration of traffic flow and other drivers whether a police car is patrolling or not.

When we are stopped by a highway patrol officer for something we might have done, the exchange is usually more...

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Youth who seek "meaning" find it in bad places.


Intrepid TV journalists have managed to conduct interviews with some of the most puzzling Jihadis flocking to ISIS. It seems inconceivable that a French teen-ager raised as a Catholic in Normandy could choose to join ISIS and decapitate a prisoner on television. But when asked why he does this, he says that he hopes to die and go to heaven. He hates western civilization because it is corrupt, run by Jews, and full of shameless women who dare to show their faces and who do not defer to m more...

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November 2014

The Women?s Revolution Threatens The Old Guard


Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian
November 29, 2014

Of all the modernizing "revolutions" (Industrial, Religious, Political, Scientific, and even Nuclear), the most destabilizing has been the emancipation of women. Opponents of the female revolution are engaging in a last ditch effort to put that particular genie back in the bottle, but they are losing.

Women have only been emancipated in liberal democracies. In the Western world (and only there), more...

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August 2014

Caliphates and Tooth Fairies Are Cousins.


Those Islamists who have announced that they are a new Caliphate must also look under their pillows when they lose a tooth. Maybe they will find a quarter there. The likelihood of the quarter is better than that of a Caliphate. However, they represent pure Islam, tracing their decapitation of non-Muslims to the example of the Prophet himself. Mohammad preached a war of terror, with plenty of examples of it in the Koran.

Caliph is the Arabic word for successor to the Prophe more...

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Village Justice in India Doesn?t Belong in a Modern Country.


We hear all the time that India is the world?s largest democracy. Certainly by demographics, this is so, but by quality, they are not good enough. However, the good news is that India?s underbelly is no longer hidden; world press has caught up, and decent Middle Class urban Indians are outraged.

India continues to have too many published cases of gang rape and abuse of women. It is good that these are now in the open, but how many thousands more cases never make it to the more...

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What is Boko Haram and Why Should We Care?


An army of dirt-ignorant terrorists has been running rampant in Africa for the past few years. They call themselves ?Boko Haram,? which has been liberally translated as ?Foreign Education is Sinful.? But this is as misleading as when the Taliban first appeared on the scene in Afghanistan. Their name was translated as ?students,? a strange term for phenomenally ignorant rote memorizers of the Koran in a language few of them understood.

Boko Haram is just what its words say more...

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Let's Give them a Big Hand: Current Darwin Awards

Periodically, I round up all the most stupid human behaviors that manage to reach the press worldwide. My view is that these individuals are so stupid that they should not contribute to the human gene pool. The fact that they do contribute provides the ongoing fodder for this review.

o Women Driving. The Saudis are notorious for keeping their women from driving automobiles. Their reasons cannot be Koranic, since the Prophet Mohammad did not have automobiles and couldn't forbid more...

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Turkey: How to Lose a Democracy

Once more, supporters of “democracy” in the Muslim world do not understand the issue. Majority rule, when there are no institutions to temper it (such as the courts or free press), does not provide a “liberal democracy.” Rather, it offers abuse of power or anarchy.

Turkey, the one seemingly genuine participatory republic, is teetering on the edge of losing it. The European Union, which rides herd on Turkey's evolution toward a European-style democracy, mistakenly regards more...

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Polio Returns to Countries Needing Regime Change


The world almost eradicated polio forever. The UN’s World Health Organization has struggled to reach every remote corner of the globe to provide babies with the few drops of medicine that could make the world free of what was once a frightening and crippling disease.

So, why hasn’t it been finished? Some very stupid and obviously evil Muslim clerics have ordered mothers to reject the polio campaign, which they claim is designed by the west to make Muslim girls sterile. more...

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Nelson Mandela Soared Above The Real World.


In late December, the remarkable Nelson Mandela died at 95, leaving behind many admirers, but few followers in governance. His funeral brought together world leaders---astonishing, considering that half a century ago, he was imprisoned as a terrorist by the apartheid South African government. But most remarkable was his release from prison, his forgiveness for those who had harmed him, and his leadership as the first Black president of South Africa. He established a model of racial tole more...

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International Marriages Are Risky.

One of the most important decisions in our lives is the choice of marriage partner. This trumps almost any other relationship we might have---because when good, it outlasts even our relationship with our children.

Marriage choices until our own time were the prerogative of parents (mostly fathers) or, in the still benighted parts of the world, clans and tribes. The children were rarely consulted because it was considered much more important than their whims or hormones. Love was more...

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December 2013

India and China Are Not in the Same League.


Much of our foreign policy, as well as that of Europe, has to do with the rising powers of India and China. These are two of the most populated countries in the world, and for the past few decades, they have been attempting to catch up with the developed world. China is doing better than India, and it may clarify our policies to understand why.

The late Shah of Iran once made the comment that backward countries must get their economies in line before political liberalizati more...

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Can We Legislate Against Sin?

From the beginning of human society, control of behavior was essential to cohesion. You cannot have a community of human beings living in anarchy; they would be at each other's throats. Nor can you have an individual surviving for long in isolation. We are tribal, and need each other to survive.

There are several ways to control behavior: first, training the children with rules, rewards (affection), and punishment; brute force from leaders (or male punishments on women who defy ru more...

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The Politically Correct Only Recognize “Selective Slavery.”


Many years ago, I submitted a paper for a conference on Slavery (World History Association), which was rejected. The problem was that I offered a history of slavery going back to its ancient roots, but the association was only interested in the evils of Black Slavery in the West. This was my first exposure to “selective Slavery.” Then later, serving as the director of the United Nations Association in San Francisco, I questioned the organization’s authorities about enlarging the UN more...

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Why Some Women Love Violence.

There is an old joke (a John Wayne movie?) that tells of why women put up with violent husbands. “How else can I know he loves me?”

In the developed world, wife beating is no longer considered a sign of love; it is bullying, intimidating, and criminal, which means the batterer can go to prison. But in the modern world, where violence against women is no longer tolerated, it is a mystery why some modern women choose to convert to Islam where wife beating is common. Some not onl more...

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Revisiting American and Global Culture Wars


George Will recently wrote a column about “When liberals became scolds.” He was certainly right about that, when considering such liberals as Amy Goodman and Media Benjamin (the notorious Code Pink). I have never heard either of these women say anything positive about our country. If one were to ask them, I am certain that they would say that they love this country so much that they want it to be better than it is. They seem to think of all their carping as loyal opposition.
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Laina with Late October Movies


Captain Phillips

Richard Phillips was captain of a cargo ship, the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, that was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009. This was the first time in 200 years that an American flagship was hijacked.

This true story was based on a book: A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea, and was turned into a thrilling movie with the always believable Tom Hanks playing the role of the captain. Also remarkable was t more...

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August 2013

Darwin Awards: People Who Should Not Be Part of the Gene Pool

Periodically, I assemble items from around the world in which people make decisions that warrant removal from the gene pool.

•Banning Female Farting in Indonesia

No, this was not a joke. I checked. An Islamic city council in Aceh, Indonesia, has banned female citizens from passing gas loudly. The city’s mayor explained that farting aloud violates the Islamic values of modesty---not all farting, of course, just female farting. The mayor said that farting loud (s more...

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How Do We Know that Domestic Violence is an “Epidemic?”


The World Health Organization (WHO) has just released a report on an”epidemic” of domestic violence around the world. They say that at least one-third of women are assaulted by a partner at some point in their lives. When I see numbers like this, I wonder how they know this.

According to this report, 40 percent of women killed worldwide were slain by an intimate partner and being assaulted by a partner was the most common kind of violence experienced by women.
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Europe Has an Ostrich Problem: Denial of Immigrant Violence


Despite the howls of some reactionaries against American immigration reform, it is clear that most people come here to better their lives. They are decent, hard working, and ready to become real Americans, (with the exception of the radicalized few, such as the Somali youths bamboozled into becoming suicide bombers). With exceptions (in Michigan and Minnesota), there are few Muslim ghettos in the US.

Europe's immigration problem is different. Muslim immigrants from some of more...

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In Defense of Dead White Men

The youth and women’s revolutions of mid 1980s, attacked western civilization, particularly the traditional educational focus on the great figures of Western history. It became chic to call all of our progenitors, the likes of Shakespeare, Socrates, and our Founding Fathers, “Dead White Males.” Academic institutions and the popular media hastened to get on board, deeming Western Civilization overblown in importance (at least) and deserving of obliteration (at best).

The fem more...

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The Global Gender Gap


Every year, the World Economic Forum presents a report detailing and ranking global progress toward equality under the law for women. They rank countries from the best to the worst, showing progress (or lack of it) over the prior five years. Needless to say, there is still an enormous gender gap around the world, but there is some movement.

The 2012 report had three authors: Ricardo Hausman, Harvard Center for International Development; Laura Tyson, an economist with Berk more...

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How Much Freedom is Too Much?


Years ago, there was a government publicity campaign that ran full-page pictures of the American flag with the caption: “Freedom Isn’t Free.” Because this ad was run during the time of the Bush Administration, it did not sit well with many liberals; but it did with me, a card-carrying feminist.

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist who takes on cultural issues that most avoid, recently commented on the public support for gay marriage---not as a new freedom, but more...

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Do We have an Empathy Deficit?


One of the key attributes of the truly civilized is empathy: being able to comprehend the feelings of others around us. Most babies have this attribute, showing great distress when in a room with a baby who is crying. Some animals have this as well, most apparent in good dogs who are very gentle with a human baby or who befriend an animal of another species. I recall seeing a clip on television about a young dog who befriended a fawn, the two playing together with great delight.
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Anthropology Wars Affect Us All.

Anthropology Wars Affect Us All.

Humans have always been curious about the customs of others, as first systematically applied by the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, who traveled the ancient world observing its varied cultures. It is obvious that human cultures differ. We are not just the product of natural instinct; rather, we make survival decisions based on our geography, experience with our neighbors, responses to dangers, and the luck of bad or good leadership.
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Rape Epidemics May Spell Death Throes for a Culture.


When I first lived in Iran, before the Islamic Revolution, I never felt threatened in the streets. Upper class women went about their errands in Tehran, dressed in the latest Paris fashions of the day, including miniskirts during the 1960s. Other than being pinched in a crowd, the prospect of rape was nil. Lower class women were dressed in chadors (faces visible) and managed to hang on to these unwieldy veils with their teeth, while managing several tots and netted shopping bags. I felt more...

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Why is Slavery Still With Us?

Why Is Slavery Still With Us?
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Sentinel
March 2, 2013

I have just revisited the 1997 movie, Amistad, based on an actual case. In 1839, a Spanish Cuban slave ship washed up on shore with only Africans on board, the crew, with the exception of two White men, having been killed. The queen of Spain demanded the return of the vessel with its “cargo.” The two White survivors claimed the cargo as well, based on fraudulent documents. But even more...

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Puritanism Has A Long Global History.

It has always been a mystery to me why at various points in history, religions have gone puritanical, viciously hostile to any vestige of pleasure. This is not to say that puritanism is only nasty; it can also promote such good human values as self-control, industriousness, and honesty.

American puritanism in the 1600s was one such movement, a movement responsible for the American Protestant Ethic, and it produced a dynamic civilization. But it also had a dark underbelly in its more...

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Here Are the Annual Darwin Awards


My annual Darwin Awards are granted to people so stupid that they should not contribute to the human gene pool. There are many candidates this year.

• Somalia. Being at the top of the list for failed states, it is deadly for journalists----and women. In February, one journalist was jailed, as was the woman who had complained to him about being raped by Somali soldiers. They are both accused of “Insulting the Government.” Such a government should have no future.
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We Are Providing the Wrong Cure to Dysfunctional Nations

What groups of human beings believe and how they behave is called their culture. Ant colonies and elephant herds do not seem to have much variation or change in how they behave; they are programmed by nature. Human beings, however, choose their cultures and behavior—and sometimes individuals within these cultures diverge from them. We call this free will, although scientists dispute that we are ever totally free of the cultures in which we are born.

Since the end of World War II more...

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Sex Crimes Are Part of the War Against Women and Modernity.

Violating women and girls is as old as human existence. Incest taboos in so many cultures is testimony to the problem that even within the family, little girls are preyed upon by fathers, uncles, and brothers.

Even in religions without the familial incest taboo (such as Islam), the pious are told that it is a sin to permit your daughter to have her first menstruation under your roof. She must be married before she becomes a “temptation” to the menfolk.

• Rape more...

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The Dilemma of Changing IQ outcomes


We used to think that IQ (Intelligence Quotient) was something that we were born with. Some of us were bright, some not so bright. Over the decades since IQ was first tested, we can no longer assume that IQ is a fixed genetic talent. IQ can be stimulated to increase or can be damaged into decline (or failure to develop), both the consequences of human behavior.

Although this finding gives us a heads up of what seems to be a evolutionary increase in brain functioning, accor more...

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December 2012

What Can a Husband Do About a Disobedient Wife?


A month ago, an Iraqi woman was found on a roadside, beaten to death. A sign was pinned on her: “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” There was immediate hand-wringing from good-hearted people, led by the Islamic American legal propagandists (CAIR), pointing to one more hate crime against American Muslims.

Because there have been very few American Muslims murdered by American thugs, my antennae went up. In short order, the police in El Cajon announced that the mu more...

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Should National Defense be "Proportional?"


Media coverage of the Israeli/Hamas conflict has promoted the idea that Israel’s response to months-long missile attacks on Israel is “disproportionate” because so few Israelis have died compared with the number of Gazan deaths. This outrage comes from people who should know better, such intellectual elites as Amy Goodman, whose syndicated column appears in the Sentinel; the British Economist magazine, and National Geographics.

Amy Goodman is the darling of the poli more...

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Why the Taliban Shot a Teenage Girl


The Pakistani Taliban roused the ire around the world with their latest horror, an attempted assassination on a teenage girl for promoted educating girls. They recently beheaded a 7-year-old girl and nobody noticed. But this time, mobs of Pakistanis demonstrated in support of the girl and in criticism of the Taliban. Is this issue about the status of women or is there more to it?

When, on 9/11/2001, President Bush was asked why these Islamists hate us, his answer was: “ more...

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How Does Testosterone Fuel Political Rampages?


Riots by the insulted and furious are not exclusive to the Muslim world, although it has become a standard cultural exercise there. I remember the student demonstrations of 1973, furious demonstrations that spread throughout Europe and America. We came to think that “students” owned revolutions; but they are only cannon fodder. I was taking my doctoral oral exams at USC when the proceedings were interrupted by the sound of breaking glass across the campus. For months, I had moved more...

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The Saudis Have A “Modest Proposal” for Women

In 1951, Philip Wylie, an American social critic, wrote a novel called The Disappearance. In this fantasy, something happens in the cosmos, a spasm of some sort, that resulted in the disappearance of each gender from the other, both living in parallel worlds. It is always fascinating to contemplate how men and women would manage alone, a fantasy as old as ancient Greece, whose mythology included the Amazons, a tribe of women warriors who managed very well without men.

Men withou more...

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September 2012

When is Cultural Criticism “Racism?”


Mitt Romney is a diplomatic disaster, but I do want to defend one comment he made on his summer travels that has been unjustly attacked. He commented on the cultural differences between the Israelis and the Palestinians that account for their economic disparities. He was immediately called a “racist” by the Palestinians, a cry launched at any who dare do cultural criticism.

A distinguished historian, Tom Holland, just produced a documentary on “The Untold Story of Is more...

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What Does “Educated” Mean?


The newly elected president of Egypt is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which should alarm us a bit. But we are being reassured that he has a Ph.D. in Engineering from an American university---USC.

Iran’s president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, also has an Iranian Ph.D. in Engineering. Syria’s dictator has a degree in ophthalmology from England. We will find leaders from all over the developing world with such degrees. How “educated” are they?

The UN’s more...

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Why Do We Give a Pass to Evil?

I recently wrote an editorial about Genocide, with its long trek through history—but one of my colleagues noted that I had not mentioned the USSR, one of the worst human rights offenders ever. My friend, Swedish human rights attorney Bertil Haggman, compiled the violent death statistics of the USSR from 1917 to 1982: The Communist Genocide (in Swedish), ten years before the demise of the Soviet Union. Haggman estimated about 104 million dead in his 1982 book; now the numbers are known to be cl more...

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Religion Has Two Faces: Benevolent and Malevolent.

Militant atheists believe that religion is entirely negative, stupid, and harmful to human beings. Religious historians believe that without religion, a civilization has no moral guidance and no sense of community. Some of today’s extremist religious sects are growing because modernization has produced such existential pain for them. A key sticking point for many, of course, is the emancipation of women. With freedom for women, they ask, what will happen to families?

We have al more...

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The “War Against Women” Rages On


Modern social values for women had a brief, uneven life in the Middle East, and are now in meltdown as Islamist parliaments take power.

Countries that have revolted against dictatorships (with a modicum of modern law) are now seeing the results of their “democratic” elections. When largely ignorant populations vote, they vote for what they know: in this case, Islam. Traditional Islam would not be the problem, but its radical versions are. The first issue to come under more...

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What Is Making Population Numbers Crash?


The UN Population Agency reports that Europe’s fertility rate may have plummeted to the point of no return. Certain countries (Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece) have fertility rates in the single digits that by the end of this century could spell doom. This applies to Japan as well, and threatens the modern and developed parts of China and India. In 1980, China’s median age was 22; today it is 34.5. Not enough young to support the old. The same is happening in India’s more...

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Is There a Legal Problem with “Hate Crimes?”

The definition of “hate crime” is one of those overkill legislative initiatives with unforeseen consequences. It is noble to recognize that some people commit crimes out of hate, but a murder is a murder, and this should be enough.

How can we possibly know a criminal’s inner thoughts (his hatred for his victim); furthermore, even if we can know this for certain, what difference does it make to the victim? The hatred of the murderer should only reflect upon the ultimate sent more...

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More Electoral Fraud in Egypt? What a Surprise.


In our enthusiasm for the Arab Spring and its promise of democracy, we now watch elections and parliaments in Egypt and Tunisia with some concern. How did we get so much wrong?

First, we never talked about “liberal” democracy, the system used in the West that provides checks and balances and protects against abuse of power. We just talked about elections, and they have indeed had those.

All Egyptian players have a stake in the outcome. The military esta more...

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What Happens When People Suddenly Have Choices?


The very notion that people have choices in their lives is so new that much of world is still reeling from this idea. For the millennia since the emergence of homo sapiens, choices have been limited. Survival depended upon families, tribes, and later kingdoms, where individual choice was inconceivable, except for the leader, whether father, clan chief, or king. Bad decisions could bring disaster on them all, and leaders were always challenged by others who would then make decisions. Dict more...

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Arab Spring Is a Conflict between Religion and Nationalism.


The enthusiasm for the Arab Spring and its birth of democracy in the Middle East gives me heartburn. What we hoped is not what we got. Now, as disillusion sets in, not only ours, but also that of the young demonstrators (particularly young women) who shed their own blood in Tahrir Square and Tunisia, we need to see what the optimists missed.

We have again mistaken voting for democracy. Although people who have never had choices love to vote, they really do not like choices more...

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October 2011

Is Human Violence Really on the Wane? Part 1 of 2

Despite rampant pessimism at the moment, history can show us that life has never been better. The majority of today's humans have more to eat, better health, more stable governance, and much less violence than ever before. Violence needs to be seen in context.

Several authors (The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and A History of Violence: From the end of the Middle Ages to the Present) insist that violence has decline---even in the face of the horrific 20th more...

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What are the Best and Worst Countries for Women? (Part 2)


Last week, I addressed a major issue for most of the world’s women: marriage. This time, there are other issues equally important: women getting a fair justice system, access to health services, education, economics, and political participation. Newsweek (September 26, ) did an enormous service by providing in-depth articles (“The Global Women’s Progress Report”) and some very revealing charts show the best places to be a woman and the worst. There was also a searing article on more...

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How Goes It With Marriage Around the World?(Part 1)


This is a two-part series on how women are faring worldwide. Marriage is part I, and four other major concerns are part 2, next week.

Americans are great romantics about marriage. In the traditional past, women were property and were disposed of in marriage as best suited their relatives and clans. But in the past 400 years, Europeans (and American colonists) began to accept a young couple marrying out of mutual affection. Of course, we are talking about people with some f more...

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July 2011

Heavy Lies the Saudi Head That Wears the Crown.

Although the King of Saudi Arabia does not wear a crown, his head is heavy. His country has problems that may bode ill for the survival of the Saudi royals.

I have written before about cultures that embrace patterns that do not have long survival value. Arabia has many such patterns, starting with the unyielding form of Islam that was part of the deal that won the country’s rule for the Ibn Sauds. Nothing is more at war with the currents of modernity than Salafi Islam (Wahhabi more...

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How Do We (and Afghanistan) Negotiate with the Taliban?


It is a matter of doctrine that if the conflicts in Afghanistan (and Pakistan?) are to be resolved, military force alone cannot do it. Our planners are trying to separate the Taliban from Al Qaeda, as though they are really different. I do not believe they have ever been different in philosophy or tactics.

On June 29, the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, was on fire, after being attacked by nine Taliban (or Haqqani Gang) suicide bombers. Only one was an actual more...

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Some Democracies Are Not Wonderful.


I recently heard an idealist complaining that President Obama was not enthusiastically supporting the “democracy movement” in the Arab world. He could not understand why we were intervening (tepidly) in Libya, but not in Yemen or Syria. To this idealist, democracy is something we profess to promote—so why aren’t we?

The trouble with this view is that there are two kinds of democracy: liberal and illiberal. Liberal democracy has imbedded in it a number of essenti more...

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Is Turkey Still A Secular Muslim Model?

Until now, Turkey has modeled how an Islamic state can modernize and democratize. When the Ottoman Empire crumbled after World War I, the Turks retreated to what they considered their original homeland in Anatolia, once the homeland of the Byzantine Christian Roman Empire until the Ottomans conquered it in 1453. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul.

Under cover of World War I, the Turkish military carried out the century’s first ethnic cleansing, a deliberate massacre of the Chr more...

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For Girls, Idealism Can Be Deadly.


President Kennedy urged American youth to consider a stint in the Peace Corps where they could help the world's poor and spread American values. Thousands have heeded this call, and for many, their time abroad was a valuable learning experience. But for many others, mostly young women, there was a big problem that was swept under the carpet until now: rape.

The idea that women and men are equally human and entitled to equal opportunities and dignity is very new. The Unit more...

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Sometimes Marriage and Childbirth Customs Have Serious Consequences.

Anthropologists have been telling us for the past century that traditions and cultures have survival value for their people. We have been carefully taught not to criticize another culture because there is no single way to be human. Today, however, we see cultural practices around the world utterly disconnected from “survival value.” People persist in certain behaviors because they believe they are sacrosanct parts of either their religion or traditions.

• Africa. One is ha more...

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There Are Consequences For Lying


Brain scientists tell us that when brains are scanned to see which areas light up, brains scan differently when told a known lie or truth. Even without brain scans, it should be obvious that those who live where truthfulness is promoted live in a community of trust. Those who are accustomed to living in a culture where lying is part of survival are resigned to it, but not happy.

Trust and truth go hand in hand. As children, we either learn to trust our parents and their tr more...

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What is the future of religion around the world?


The United States is, and has long been, a religious country, sometimes to the point of obsession. Our safety net is having no officially recognized state religion; we have instead vigorous competition among faiths so that no one can dominate.

Around the world there seems to be an explosion of Islam, thanks to rampant population growth and prison conversion. But demographers already note that fertility rates around the world have peaked and are in decline. Muslim countrie more...

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How Do We Deal With “Sticks and Stones?”

In our present day culture, we have been taught (usually at mother’s knee) that “sticks and stones may break your bones but names can never harm you.” Annoying as it is to have people call you names, it does not warrant punching them in the face. But this is not so elsewhere, not did it used to be so in our own civilization’s past. What we are talking about here is “the honor culture.”

Until the middle of the 19th century, gentlemen fought duels of honor. That by ser more...

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How Goes It With Women Around the World?

By Laina Farhat-Holzman
Santa Cruz Sentinel
March 5, 2011

International Women's Day is coming up on March 8. Regarding women as human beings, equal in rights and dignity with men, is the boldest revolutionary change for mankind and is only a product of modern Western civilization. This view is not universal. Much of the world sees women as property to be disposed of as the men see fit. As my late mother-in-law once noted, it is better to be lucky than good.
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A Few Surprises Are Happening in Afghanistan!


Although it seems like pushing a rock up a hill, our Afghan War may be coming to an end. We certainly want out of a war that seems to have no way of declaring victory—but we have been in that position in every war we have fought after World War II, the last war we definitively won. War is changing, just as social mores are changing.

Although Afghanistan seems to be the end of the world where civilization scarcely reaches, there are a few hopeful signs of change.
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Arab Spring Is a Conflict between Religion and Nationalism.

The enthusiasm for the Arab Spring and its birth of democracy in the Middle East gives me heartburn. What we hoped is not what we got. Now, as disillusion sets in, not only ours, but also that of the young demonstrators (particularly young women) who shed their own blood in Tahrir Square and Tunisia, we need to see what the optimists missed.

We have again mistaken voting for democracy. Although people who have never had choices love to vote, they really do not like choices that th more...

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November 2010

Sometimes Important News Hides in the Back Pages.


Iran’s Problems.
The latest news from Iran: sanctions are really starting to bite. The government has suspended subsidies for food and fuel—which will not please the masses used to the largesse of bread and circuses (stoning women for adultery). People may put up with bad justice systems—but do not take kindly to losing subsidies considered entitlements.

In addition, the internal stresses in Iran’s government are difficult to confirm. Iran has such a lo more...

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Paul Berman: The Flight of the Intellectuals, Melville House, 2010.

One of the most amazing transformations of our time is that a large block of important intellectuals, who still think of themselves as liberals, are supporting some monstrous reactionaries. This phenomenon was taken up by Jonah Goldberg in his Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, Doubleday, 2007. He made a case for noting that whether they consider themselves leftist or rightist, these groups all descend from the same source: the Fr more...

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Is the West Really Islamophobic—Or Under Attack?

An AP article on October 5/6 ran with a headline: “5 Germans killed in Pakistan with Europe on Alert.” Had the Nazi party revived? Reading further, the article said: “An American missile strike killed five German militants Monday in the rugged Pakistan border area where a cell of Germans and Britons at the heart of the U.S. terror alert for Europe---a plot U.S. officials link to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden—were believed in hiding.”

This long paragraph never mention more...

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Some People Have to Lie to Survive.


From the beginning of time, human beings have learned that telling the truth is not always the best policy. Courtiers learned not to tell truth to a king; workers had to lie to their bosses; women feared speaking the truth to a husband, as did children to their parents. Telling the truth, a value of modern Western life, is a luxury born of a society that punishes lies, not truth. And yes, our politicians are still learning this.

A recent movie, Easy A, tells the story of a more...

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Iran’s Islamic Justice Is a Message to the World

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, convicted in 2006 for having an “illicit relationship” with two men after her husband was murdered (by someone) the year before has become a cause célèbre in the western world.

This woman was accused, arrested, tortured for a confession, and was scheduled to be stoned to death for adultery this summer. However, the outcry from the US and Europe got her a little extra time. The Iranian Islamic government, very annoyed at the uproar, then decided t more...

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September 2010

Laina At the Movies, September, 2010


The American.
It is unusual to see George Clooney in a film that is better shown in an art house than a multiplex—but this one really fits both venues. Furthermore, Clooney’s performance could well win an Oscar. He appears in every frame—and without much dialogue—his face reveals a most painful inner struggle.

The story is that Clooney has been a government (US?) assassin for many years. As the story opens, he is pursued in Sweden by assassins from the oth more...

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A Venetian Tradition Bites the Dust—a Woman Gondolier!


On 9/11, our country was attacked by a sect particularly offended by the equality of men and women (an abomination in suicide/murderer Atta’s eyes). It is appropriate, then, to celebrate one of the most amazing revolutions in history—that women are not property but are persons. This revolution still horrifies many of the world’s more benighted cultures, as we know from their words and actions. See Time Magazine’s August 9 cover showing a young Afghan woman whose nose and ears wer more...

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Is There Any Hope for Afghanistan?

Imagine a country where:
• Five minutes out of the capital you need armed guards to travel.
• Without a national army or police, where only tribes and warlords control each region or fight with each other.
• The vast majority are not only illiterate, but are locked in a dreadful marriage of vengeful tribal law and an unenlightened Islam.
• That cannot defend itself from any its neighbors or from any great power that wants something there.
• T more...

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Religious Toleration Has Never Been Absolute.


The First Amendment of the US Constitution requires: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There is no quarrel that Americans have the right to have their own religion (and that the government will not select an official one) and that they ma more...

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When is IQ a Major Security Issue?

August 7, 2010

Katie Baker (August 2 Newsweek) cites a new study that theorizes that constant endemic diseases can stunt brain (and body) development in children. This explains the lowest IQ scores in the world in Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Mozambique, and Gabon. But these are not the only countries with bad numbers. The disease exposure for children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and village India are equally bad—and it is possible that not only disease, but other factors—incest more...

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Is Guatemala A Toxic Place for Women?


About 15 years ago, when I was running the UN Association in San Francisco, I was asked by women immigration lawyers to address their legal society to convince the male lawyers that women could qualify as a category suffering state persecution. This would make them eligible for US immigration—but there was fear that such eligibility would become a flood. The women lawyers were already on board, but their colleagues were not.

At that time, there was a notorious case in Ca more...

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Does Enlightened Self-Interest Rule the World?


Our founding fathers were influenced by the European Enlightenment, a movement reacting to two centuries of Catholic/Protestant religious wars, which ultimately disgusted intellectuals. Religion was the glue that had held Europe together from the fall of Rome to the end of the religious wars. But in its absence, what would be the new glue?

Jefferson took apart his Bible, discarded the “superstitious parts,” and rebound the remaining slim volume. He liked the moral tea more...

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What Are The Good Old Days?

In final exams given to my World History classes, the last question was: “If you had a time machine, which culture in the past would you choose to live in—and why would you choose it?” Then came part 2: “ If you had to gamble on being female rather than male, slave rather than upper class, would you still choose that culture?”

They all got it. The good old days were not good for everyone, and those cultures that had the largest number of unfortunate people were the ver more...

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Some Bedfellows are Incomprehensible

There is an Arab adage: “The Enemy of my Enemy is My Friend.” Unfortunately, this is not always so. The enemy of your enemy may be your enemy too! It makes no sense to me that the University world has demonized Israel in favor of the most repressive of Islamic “friends.”

Since the 1970s, the most radical-left factions of activists in universities have been bedfellows of the most radical-right, socially benighted groups. I recently watched a German film: The Baader-Meinh more...

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Why is Sex Such a Global Problem?


For a biological system programmed for species survival, humans have manage to turn sex into a hideous institution for exercising power over others. This perversion of sex is used by some men to exert control over women, girls, and boys. What should be a partnership between mates, as in the rest of nature, is too often a bludgeon for abuse of power.

Of course, some men have grievances too, claiming that beautiful women (or any women) deliberately drive them wild with desir more...

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Annual Darwin Awards?


Darwin Awards usually refer to those whose decisions are so stupid that they remove themselves from the gene pool by dying. My annual survey uses a slightly different definition: those whose decisions are so flawed that the consequences of their actions reduce the global IQ.

Religious Wisdom. A senior Iranian cleric, the ever dazzling Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, who leads Friday prayers at Tehran University, knows whom to blame when Tehran has a huge earthquake. This cit more...

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What Can These Women Be Thinking?


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April 20, 2010

Since 1985, more than 250 women, Tamil, Chechen, Indian, and Muslim, have become suicide bombers.

An unsettling new trend is emerging: conversion of Western women to Islam and their recruitment into Islam’s most murderous cults. How can such a misogynistic movement seduce women?

Recently two American women were picked up on terror charges: one the petite blonde known as “Jihad Jane” and the ot more...

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Europe is Having an Important Burqa Debate.


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Europe, with a seemingly large immigrant Muslim population—and not a well integrated one at that—is having open discussion on what to do about women wearing total face-obscuring garments. It is one thing to wear a headscarf, which bothers secularists, but another thing altogether to have women wearing the Arab niqab or Afghan burqa. Why should this be such an issue?

Reciprocity has not been mentioned. If a European woman travels to more...

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Does Bad Childrearing Produce Terrorists?

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There is a long tradition on blaming mothers for creating criminal children. We hear about neglect, abuse, and ignorance—and, of course, bearing children out of wedlock. However, childrearing since the 20th century has improved markedly in the Western world and continues to occupy an important place in the minds of most parents.

But another sort of childrearing is under the microscope today: the traditional childrearing practices in the Musli more...

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October 2009

Is There Any Hope for Afghanistan?




Imagine a country where:
• Five minutes out of the capital you need armed guards to travel.
• Without a national army or police, where only tribes and warlords control each region or fight with each other.
• The vast majority are not only illiterate, but are locked in a dreadful marriage of vengeful tribal law and an unenlightened Islam.
• That cannot defend itself from any its neighbors or from any great power that wants somethi more...

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