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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  

October 2023

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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April 2023

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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October 2022

The Afghan Disaster (2 of 2)

September 30, 2022

Afghanistan, a weak, backward remote mountain and desert state in a terrible neighborhood (Russia; Iran (once Persia); Pakistan; India; and the Central Asian former Soviet states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) is an unlikely candidate for a major great states headache. But it has been, and still is. It has hosted fanatical religious terrorists with weapons used to attack the United States and other countries throughout the world. The US has spent 2 more...

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July 2022

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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October 2018

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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June 2018

Core Values In Immigration Policy


The issue of how much and what kind of immigration we should allow in this country has fluctuated from generous to xenophobic. From our beginnings and during the 19th century, we needed workers, farmers, and pioneers. The Chinese were welcomed to build our railways but then hunted down and murdered afterwards, culminating in barring them completely until their survivors were once again welcomed after the war. Hordes of other displaced survivors of World War II were welcomed, as were the more...

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April 2017

America Has 250 Years of Consistent Foreign Policy


The majority of Americans, furious over the Assad regime using poison gas on his own Syrian people, expressed approval of President Trump?s attack on the Syrian airfield that launched the gas attack. When one sees such horrors, such as when American soldiers first entered the Nazi death camps, the desire for revenge is powerful. But knee-jerk revenge is not policy. What is American policy about assaults on helpless civilians? Do we have a consistent policy? Do we always react by punishin more...

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Sweden Does Have an Immigrant Problem.


President Trump's recent comment about "Sweden, Sweden is a disaster" met with pushback when he cited a Muslim riot that actually did not happen that weekend. It happened the next week. Wrong details, right issue. This was like his comments about the Bowling Green "Massacre," a massacre that could have been, had it not been foiled by the FBI. He is sometimes on the right track, but with the wrong facts. Sweden is in trouble, despite the protestations of outrage by Swedish officials.
more...

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Ideas That Make People Kill.


Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Europeans engaged in mutual slaughter over religion: the Catholic-Protestant wars. Religion was not the only issue; the birth of nation-states added poisonous nationalism to the fray. The scientific and industrial revolutions added another element. Catholic states were fighting a rear-guard action in defense of the feudal world. The Protestant states, over time, advanced all the ideological changes that we value: participatory governance, religious to more...

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April 2015

When is "Economic Information" Espionage?


Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian has been cooling his heels in an Iranian prison for nine months without charges until now, when we are finally told that he will stand trial for espionage for having "sold economic information" to unnamed Americans. What this information is nobody has been told. What sort of economic information about Iran could there be that could threaten Iran's security, one wonders! I can imagine quite a few things, but cannot imagine that Jason Rezaian cou 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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Torture Is Not In America?s Best Interests.

Americans are debating several complex moral issues:
? Does torture produce essential information at a time of terror activity?
? Does torture do moral damage to the torturers themselves?
? Does imminent danger warrant violating US law?

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. The 9/11 attack really frightened this country and the government went into emergency mode to find out if more attacks were on the way. This is the ticking bomb theory: do anything nece more...

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June 2014

An Iranian in Exile Takes On a British MP.


Ever since the Iranian monarchy fell to a radical Islamic revolution, I have chafed over the nonsense that has passed for history. It has become accepted that Shah Mohammad Pahlavi was evil and that the west had sustained him for too long. I also flinch when Iranians insist that their travails were caused by either the British, the Americans, or the Israelis. This is a failure to take responsibility for the nation?s own folly in allowing Islamists to take control.

One such 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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Why We Can’t Make the World Safe for Democracy

When we believe that human beings are motivated most by economic self-interest, we are unfailingly wrong. The late 19th century was a time of incredible optimism. The economies of the world were increasingly linked, inventions were providing benefits only dreamed of in the past, and we enjoyed a half-century of peace that looked permanent. It seemed impossible for the sophisticated nation-states of Europe to ever go to war again.

How wrong they were. By 1914, almost all major Eur 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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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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April 2013

An Important Iranian Visitor is Coming: The Cyrus Cylinder


We are accustomed to seeing Iranians as revolutionary Shiite Muslims at war with the world, exemplified by Ayatollah Khamenei (and before him, father of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini). Soon-to-be ex-president Mahmud Ahmadinejad has been a mouthpiece for every obnoxious pronouncement such as Holocaust denial, denial that homosexuality exists in Iran, and membership in the cabal of fascist dictatorships, along with North Korea, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe, just to name a few. (They all ga more...

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Both American Political Parties Have Serious Blindspots.

“Liberals” or “Progressives” care for the weak, persecuted, and downtrodden. Liberals see the world as inevitably progressing, step by step, from a harsh and violent past to a future that they believe will be civilized and caring.

Traditional Conservatives believe that without governance, people are violent, destructive, and dangerous. Their ideology rejects changing something that is working for something that they see as “cloud cuckoo.” They worry about too much unn more...

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March 2011

How Goes Terrorism Around the World?


Every year, I revisit such issues as “How Goes Democracy Around the World,” “Status of Women,” and “Terrorism Inc.” This column surveys the condition of Militant Islam (Islamism) for the past year.

The term “Islamist” does not refer to ordinary Muslims. It has a specific definition. Islamism is a political ideology that uses a particular interpretation of Islam as its theology—with lessons from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia as its political methodology. more...

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Iran Is Closer To Imploding

Although Iran is an Islamic dictatorship that controls its news, certain things are leaking out. The revolts in the Arab world are making them very nervous.

• Disloyal Opposition. The opposition leaders during the disputed 2009 presidential election did not mean to undo the Islamic Revolution. The millions who voted for the opposition just wanted a better and less pious president. However, after the government set goons on the peaceful demonstrators in the streets, the world wi more...

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October 2010

Why Are We No Longer On The Same Page?

I remember when more Americans shared core values than had contentious differences. We have always had both Republicans and Democrats who valued fiscal prudence and self-reliance and both believed in the value of government. Both shared the values of a society of law and order, of vigorous but courteous debate, and of winning or losing an argument with grace. The losers in a national election still treated the president of the winning party with respect, and worked with him even while disagree more...

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