BALANCE of CULTURE

Elections Not So "Free" for Most Egyptian Women

Can we all agree that the concept of free elections is valid only if women of all classes are included the political process? 

While the rapid development of Egypt's new political era unfurls this week, most media outlets are focused on how the country's first free presidential will affect the voters, or whether voters will choose a secular v. Islamic path. Certainly this week will be some sort of "moment of truth" for Egypt, but I can't help but wonder if the inherent gender bias ingrained in Islam society has left the women who helped oust Hosni Mubarak largely shut out of the political decision-making process since the revolution. 

Despite small signs towards equality such as a recent women's rights conference in Cairo, many Egyptian women voters are rightfully concerned of a divisive class distinction in terms of this week's elections. The well-organized Muslim Brotherhood has some fearing that they are taking advantage of uneducated, lower-class Egyptian women by influencing their votes through religious and charity efforts. To counter this, the newly reinstated Egyptian Feminist Union is sending transport-less women by the busloads to voting booths in order to gain their checkmarks. Women seem to be valued as voters in a race, but not as equal citizens in a society. 

Whether these women will actually vote for the Brotherhood's candidate Mohammed Morsi remains to be seen, as polls seem to largely be unreliable to date (as they often are even in the first world countries) and the Egyptian Feminist Union has yet to endorsed anybody (telling sign?). 

I happened to find myself in the Middle East and East Africa region early last year when the Arab Spring first grabbed the media's spotlight. Since then, it seems to me that the main "war" going on in Islam societies is against their own women--and I'm certainly not alone in this, as Mona Eltahaway's recent article nearly blew up the internet and international affairs circles last month. 

But it's not just the scary past and present that shows the war on women in the region. The Egyptian parliament, Islamist-dominated, is discussing proposals that would cancel out any progress on gender equality that has occurred in the past +1 year: lowering the legal age of marriage for girls from 18 to 13, as well as revoking divorced mothers' custody of their children at earlier ages than before (of course, the boys' age is even younger than the girls').

It's so easy to recall the images of protesting Egyptian women on the streets of Cairo, seemingly finding their voice in a rather hostile environment. But these new proposals indicate concerning facts, such as how women take up less Parliamentary seats than before Mubarak's oust. While this is indeed an exciting time for Egypt, the division between men and women remains quite sharp, as do the positions of women who come from upper- and lower-classes of Egyptian society. 

Satellites of Reality

The two Koreas are always compared to each other in terms of their economic and social divergence despite sharing one peninsula in East Asia (much to Sarah Palin's surprise). The chart below shouldn't come as a surprise for most who are familiar with the region--South Korea begins to really gain momentum in the 1970s, leaving its northern sibling way, way behind, as Drezner notes:

But we've seen these numbers often. What about pre-1972? It looks like the two halves were more or less on par with one another for quite some time after the Korean War, at least a couple of decades:

It's amazing how the last several decades have panned out for the two nations. One is in the top dozen economies of the world while the other, North Korea, "has the awful distinction of being the only literate and urbanized society in human history to suffer mass famine in peacetime."

This brings me to the Sudan Sentinel Project, whose supporting members--including actor George Clooney--testified to Congress last week. High-tech satellites are available now for all sorts of reasons; monitoring humanitarian crises should be at the top of the lists of what these fancy toys are hired for. These machines have provided us with aerial coverage of locations where crimes against humanity are taking place, in real time.

It's unfortunate what little the public knows about global crises unless a celebrity or slick viral video is involved. Most people probably don't even know that this satellite approach has already been executed in the early 2000s over North Korean gulags by the US Commission for Human Rights in North Korea. Still, we'll always know those who would like to ignore these issues, as if WWII was the last atrocity that somehow "counts."

Let's just remember that during WWII, a surprisingly large amount of Western public opinion was skeptical of the Holocaust's existence as well as other war crimes happening in Europe. But nearly everyone was equally horrified and ashamed when they realized what gross crimes they had been ignoring all along once the war ended and Europe was opened up for autopsy. Based upon the evidence we do have (no satellites were working for our enlightenment during WWII, remember) history tells us that we'll face a similar situation when North Korea finally reveals itself.

Not Even ONE Woman?

Take a look at the row of witnesses that testified on the birth control benefit yesterday on Capitol Hill. How naive and exclusionary does this situation look to you?

Again, this is in Washington, not somewhere in the Middle East or South Asia.

EU Fat Taxes & "Diet" Soda

By now you've probably heard of the "fat tax" that will go into effect in Hungary, Denmark and now France. With obesity rates in the EU skyrocketing to levels that have their governments on alert, these taxes should theoretically discourage residents from buying foods and drinks that are unhealthy. But these taxes also raise a lot of questions.

The fat taxes that will be imposed on foods with high fat, salt and sugar content are certainly a good start -- both Big Macs and the dobostorta (a sweet Hungarian favorite) would carry the tax in Hungary. Likewise, foods like butter, milk, cheese, pizza, oil and processed foods that have +2.3% saturated fat will be surcharged in Denmark.

But the fat tax in France is where it gets weird -- they'll charge extra for a can of Coca Cola or other sugary drink, but the tax exempts "diet" sodas. Why??! Diet sodas are already well-known as direct contributors to obesity, so this is completely backwards!!  The amount of ketchup and mayonnaise in French schools will also be limited, but really, this diet soda thing is complete nonsense! It almost seems more like an import tax to help their economies while disguised as a "reasonable" health policy (especially for Hungary, which is not usually known as the EU's unhealthier state). Whatever works, though…!

The weirdest thing about all these European countries and their lists of the most overweight in the EU is how the rankings differ between publications. This week the BBC claims that Greece is the unhealthiest EU country by far, while Der Spiegel gives that position to the UK (and sometimes you'll see Germany in the top spot as well).

Based upon this hot potato situation, I guess we can assume that these three nations are the EU's unhealthiest? Either way, we could use something like this in the US for sure.

Sayonara, Yakuza?

Anyone familiar with Tokyo knows quite well the understood influence of the yakuza in Japanese society. This past weekend, however, the Japanese government's organized crime exclusionary laws went into effect in order to discourage and limit (and eventually abolish) businesses from dealing with them completely. If you or your business pays them off in any way, you'll be treated like a criminal, too -- not to mention be publicly humiliated and potentially lose a lot of business (or even your job).

It's a bold move in a tough time for Japan, and it's a society that is generally a lot safer than the US or any European country, no question about it. So this will be a very intriguing case study for the implementation of such new laws that toss a lot of the traditional past in the trash.

And in case you're confused, the government has of course provided a cute illustrated guide that explains the new laws (minus those crazy tattoos though)!

Empowering women, one fine at a time

Over the last year France's burqa ban has been quite a debate (here and here) without much real-life consequence. But with the first "test case" arrests in Paris today resulting in two fully-veiled women being fined 200 euros by the courts (about $271 now), the ban's establishment is definitely taking place.

Interestingly a French businessman named Rachid Nekkaz stepped up and paid for the women's fines himself. He explains: "…I can't accept that my government [has] voted [for] a law [which] doesn't respect the European constitution…I think it is important to help these women to remain free on [the] streets."

Whether or not you support France's burqa ban, the main issue at hand remains -- is the burqa itself an obstacle for gender equality or is the ban an attack on the Muslim faith? (Sarkozy, being the big burqa expert he is, believes the former.)

Probably an impossible question to answer…but all this attention has empowered Parisian Muslim Kenza Drider, who wears a full-face veil, to announce her candidacy to run for president in France's elections next year.

Champions of the veil ban should be careful what they wish for…the tables could turn on them very quickly, especially considering the volatile atmosphere in both the EU and the Middle East these days.

People spend thousands of euros on shoes and clothes from chic French designers all the time. If a woman continuously wears her burqa and gets fined even a 1/4 of the time, that would make that burqa one expensive outfit -- but an outfit coming from defiance about a policy that doesn't seem to address the real issue at hand (if that was ever the true goal!).

 

 

Raising the Roof

The debt compromise passed the House on Monday evening with a vote of 269-161.

The breakdown: 174 Republicans and 95 Democrats voted to pass the debt ceiling increase, while 66 Republicans and 95 Democrats opposed the debt deal.

Although the Tea Party's role has been effectively solidified by this turn of events, the GOP and Boehner both took massive reputation hits (both within and outside of their ideologically-contentious party) during this process -- but nothing as damaging as what happened to President Obama's short term approval.

It seems that Obama's team did not anticipate this turn of events one year ago when even journalists were hyped up on this issue. Furthermore, considering that unemployment was a complete no-show at the negotiation table, none of this really bodes well for the future of the US simply because one of our biggest problems still hasn't been addressed. We may have escaped default for now but the US' potential ratings are still in a very discomforting place.

I doubt that Gabrielle Giffords' return to Congress wasn't a plan to counter this bad day for Dems, but they shouldn't be too upset: the President can now just focus on 2012, right?

Regardless of your political party or inclinations, the one element to this fiasco that will not be soon forgotten by observers is just how inflexible and unskilled these politicians are at negotiating on behalf of the American public as an entirety -- too much short-term, survivalist thinking rather than an overall, big-picture strategy. Desperation is never a good look.

History, Hypocrisy and the Future in Greece

One of the most chaotic aspects of the conversation on Greece's recent economic and social woes is how so much of the country's situation is being defined by nations other than Greece. Whether or not this is based upon what some say are Greece's past mistakes or its victimization by broader calamities imposed by her neighbors, one thing is certainly clear: the source of a country's woes today are rarely pinpointed to a single perpetrator. This is no longer a simple equation that can be succinctly surmised in a paragraph of a high school history book.

The simplest political answer, which is quoted in reference in the Atlantic (the writer is simply pointing out one perspective):

The Greek population got themselves into this by demanding that the government spend wildly more than they were willing to fund with their taxes; when the euro took away the government's ability to inflate away the value of the resulting debt, the previous government resorted to accounting fraud.  The German people are not going to pay for the Greeks to continue this behavior--not when the German people have been busily living within their means.

A piece from the Guardian points out Germany's blatant hypocrisy in Greece's current matters:

What is truly strange, however, is the brevity of Germany's collective memory. For during much of the 20th century, the situation was radically different: after the first world war and again after the second world war, Germany was the world's largest debtor, and in both cases owed its economic recovery to large-scale debt relief.

And what discourse on global -- or even regional -- economy these days leaves out China? (Yes, even a dialogue about the EU!):

But while the Chinese media will sell any intervention as a grand favour to impoverished Europe, it is worth remembering that Europe remains China’s biggest export market. And with the latest surveys indicating that Chinese factories have slowed to almost flat growth, China needs Europe to keep on buying its goods or face difficulties in what remains one of the key pillars of its economy. China may be the world’s fastest-growing major economy, but it still needs moribund old Europe.

No doubt a wildly complex and emotional situation (thanks to everything from WWII to today's rise of China), but the bottom line is that pinning all blame of a complex economic conundrum to simply the physical location of where the numbers ultimately failed first (in this case, Greece, but next in line will be Ireland and Spain if this isn't remedied logically) is not just an accounting error by the "Greece haters", but more of an indication that the rhetoric originates from hysterical social opinions rather than any solid economic understanding.

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Blood on their hands

Most people think of Hitler or Stalin when guessing  which dictator has wreaked the most havoc on human life, but it's actually Chairman Mao.

 

Anticipating President Obama on the Middle East this Morning

Taking a quick break at my desk this morning to tune in to the President's speech regarding the Middle East and North Africa (I like multiple screens whenever possible!), which I thought was supposed to begin at 8:40 am (Pacific) but I guess not! I'm quite curious as to what he will say -- particularly about Bahrain and, of course, Syria -- and I think we're all seeking much more than simply the eloquence from his Cairo speech.

As we wait, here are 5 things to watch for in Obama's speech, even though Stephen Walt isn't too excited about it.