Late Night Laugh: Why Marketing Guys Get Fired
July 29, 2008
In an increasingly metrosexual world, perhaps it was just a matter of time.
But yesterday a high street store announced that it would start stocking makeup designed just for men.
‘Guy-liner’ and ‘Manscara’ to enhance the eyes of the male in your life, will appear in Superdrug this week.
Yesterday, the company’s director of trading Jeff Wemyss insisted that its cosmetics – branded Taxi Man – are not just for transvestites.
He said: “These days you can be macho and wear make-up. If you look at people like Russell Brand and Robbie Williams, they both wear make-up and they are both very red-blooded men.
‘Men are more obsessed with their appearance than ever before. There is no longer any pain in being seen to be vain.’
He added: ‘We believe there is a real market for cosmetic products. The majority of our customers are women and we believe that these products will be bought by women for their partners, as well as by men themselves.’
The cosmetics’ creator Peter Kelly said: ‘We’ve developed essentials any guy would borrow from his other half.
‘It’s about subtle make-up rather than wanting to create the drag queen look.’
A spokesman for the company said that ‘Guy-liner’ pencil is chunkier than the female equivalent and therefore easier for men, who have bigger hands, to use.
However, it was less clear how the ‘Manscara’ differs from normal mascara.
In recent years the men’s grooming market has boomed as men become increasingly less ashamed of been seen to take care of their appearance.
According to business analysts Mintel, the UK market is worth £700m annually and is predicted to grow to £820m next year.
Until now most of the business has been for products such as shave cream, hair care products and moisturisers.
Yesterday Lucy Mines, the Daily Mail’s beauty editor, cast doubt on whether the new men-only range of make-up would catch on with British men.
She said: ‘I can imagine how some of the products, such as concealer, may be popular with men who want to hide blemishes.
‘But I would have thought it unlikely that straight men would want to wear eye-liner or mascara. When I asked my male friends whether they would wear it, they all replied with a very firm “no.”
‘However, a few years ago you would not have found many men admitting to wearing fake tan and now that is something that you see quite a lot.
‘But I think it will be a very long time indeed before it is generally accepted practice for men to put on some eye-liner before coming into the office.’
The Key To Scoring: Laugh At Yourself!
July 29, 2008
Men with a self-deprecating sense of humour have the best chance of charming a woman into bed.
Although it has long been known that making a woman laugh is the best way to seduce her, new research shows the most successful form of humour comes from one’s ability to poke fund at oneself, making men like actor Hugh Grant, 47, most sexually attractive to women.
Bringing attention to your flaws is a high-risk seduction strategy for men however and has the potential to backfire.
‘Dissing Oneself: The Sexual Attractiveness of Self-Deprecating Humour,’ will be published in next month’s Evolutionary Psychology.
During the two-year study, women students listened to tape recordings of men talking about themselves, and we asked to score the men on sexual attractiveness.
Lead researcher Gil Greengross, of the University of New Mexico in the US, said: “Many studies show that a sense of humour is sexually attractive to women but we’ve found that self-deprecating humour is the most attractive of all.
“People who used this humour were considered to be far more desirable as mates.”
He added a note of caution however, saying: “It is a risky form of humour because it can draw attention to one’s real faults, thereby diminishing the self-deprecator’s status in the eyes of others.
“Think about the secondary school child whom nobody liked, who makes fun of his shortcomings.
“His peers mocked him and he was considered more pathetic than he was previously.
“This is high-risk seduction. It is not for everyone.”
Self-deprecation is a very British trait, and problems can arise when the British attempt to do so with a foreign culture.
Americans however love the British sense of humour, with a prime example when Hugh Grant’s bumbling British bachelor character charms Andie MacDowell’s young sexy American.
In a memorable best man’s speech, he says: “This is only the second time I’ve been a best man. I hope I did OK that time.
“The couple in question are at least still talking to me. Unfortunately, they’re not actually talking to each other.
“The divorce came through a couple of months ago. But I’m assured it had absolutely nothing to do with me. Paula knew Piers had slept with her sister before I mentioned it in the speech.
“The fact that he’d slept with her mother came as a surprise but I think was incidental to the nightmare of recrimination and violence that became their two-day marriage.”
Does Barack Obama believe it’s time for America to apologize to al Qaeda?
Does he share the increasingly vocal calls of his fellow liberals that Americans should not just apologize to Osama and his followers but pay reparations as well? Having cited the U.S. treatment of Nazis, does he now believe the U.S. government should be subjected to a class action suit by his trial lawyer allies on behalf of any surviving Nazi soldiers or their descendants?
You think I’m joking, right? Wrong.
The push has begun among Obama’s fellow-liberals for reparations to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda warriors. Look no further than the Los Angeles Times review of the new book by liberal journalist Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. Mayer’s indictment of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism has predictably received glowing reviews from the gatekeepers of liberalism, including a July 15th review from Times staff writer Tim Rutten.
In wonderfully liberal style that is beyond parody, Rutten uses a book review to endorse the idea of paying money to Osama’s fighters who, in the eyes of liberals, have been denied their “right” of habeas corpus at Guantanamo. The denial of habeas to non-Americans captured on foreign battlefields is, of course, also a major campaign point for Senator Obama. Obama, restating his long-held position about captured al Qaeda fighters having the right of habeas corpus, was prompted by the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush. The liberals on the Court, with the mind-boggling addition of Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy, held that contrary to Bush administration and congressional policy, not to mention all of American history, the prisoners of war or “detainees” picked up off the battlefields (in this case Afghanistan and Iraq) are in fact entitled to the same constitutional rights as American citizens.
Within weeks of this Obama-approved decision, his allies in liberalism have now started lobbying not simply for habeas corpus rights for al Qaeda but reparations as well. They believe American taxpayers should pay monetary damages to bin Laden terrorists, with Mr. Rutten of the Times approvingly citing the liberal editors of the Jesuit magazine America: The National Catholic Weekly. In their July 21st issue these presumed Obama supporters say this:
Finally, in the years ahead our country must still come to grips with our national acquiescence to the politics of fear, which has led to the detention and abuse of hundreds of individuals. Among the necessary steps will be restoration of freedom to innocent detainees, accompanied by public apology and some monetary restitution for the years they lost to incarceration. Furthermore, Congress needs to accept responsibility for its complicity with the executive in laws that denied suspects rightful appeal. A national truth commission should be instituted to establish political accountability for the decisions, policies and statutes that placed suspects outside the protection of the law.In other words, if you have been captured on the field of battle fighting the U.S. military on behalf of the global jihad and, as a result, are now on an extended stay at Gitmo, liberals feel the appropriate policy of the United States government is to 1) apologize for capturing you and 2) pay you some cold American cash to ease your pain and humiliation.
This sentiment is the obvious next step behind the Obama contention that foreign enemies are deserving of the same constitutional rights as American citizens. To the extensive applause of liberals like Ms. Mayer and Mr. Rutten, Obama has insisted that the “principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are.” Exhibiting a considerable ignorance of American history, he went on by saying:
“I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle….”Unsurprisingly Obama’s rehash of American treatment of German POWs is flatly wrong. Around 200 German war crimes defendants went on trial in what most people commonly refer to as the “Nuremberg Trials,” with another 1,600 tried under the laws governing military justice. All these trials, of course, took place after the German surrender in May of 1945. None occurred during the war itself. The trials ran from 1945 until 1949.
The obvious question never seems to occur to Obama. If America’s only problem was with a sum total of about 1,800 German soldiers, why all that disturbing fuss known as World War II? What happened to all the Germans who weren’t killed outright when they were captured on the battlefields of Europe and North Africa as al Qaeda fighters are being captured now in Afghanistan or Iraq? And what about all the captured Italians and Japanese who were busily fighting America in the 1940s?
TO BE SPECIFIC, almost a half million of them were brought to America. Once here they were stashed in 511 internment camps sprinkled all around the good old USA from North Carolina to Iowa to California. And no, I’m not talking about or including here FDR’s infamous internment camps for 120,000 Japanese-American citizens, who did indeed have their constitutional rights violated. We’re talking about captured Nazis, Italians and Japanese — warriors on the battlefield for Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini, the bin Laden’s of their day. From the viewpoint of the L.A. Times’ Rutten and Jane Mayer, that would mean these people were imprisoned in 511 “American gulags,” not just one measly Gitmo. Not a single one of these men were given their habeas corpus rights. They were not tried. Not one. They were held as prisoners, forced to do whatever labor their American captors thought suitable until America had won the war.
Forced labor was their lot. Like the case of a German POW known to history only as “Hans” who was made to load and unload trucks at the E.G. Morse Poultry house in Mason City, Iowa. Hour after hour, day after day, with no lawyer from the ACLU to come to his rescue and no Jane Mayer to write him up sympathetically, young Hans was forced to do the backbreaking labor American men weren’t around to do because they were overseas fighting Germans. Then there was the young German who signed himself in a note to an American girl only as “R.” “R” was frustrated that his status “thwarts all my plans” and described what he called his “instantaneous dead life here.” “R” was in this vicious state of affairs because the Roosevelt administration had him doing his forced labor at a cannery in Owatonna, Minnesota.
Then there was “Jerry.” Whether that was really his name or he identified himself as such because it was the American slang for Germans is not known. How did “Jerry” find himself in the wilds of Fairmont, Minnesota? He was captured in North Africa where he was trying to kill Americans as a member of Nazi General Erwin Rommel’s murderous Afrika Corps. Did I mention that “Jerry” was crying at his sad state one particular day that he was standing in downtown Fairmont during a momentary pause in his labors? It seems the day in question was June 6, 1944. Minnesotans in Fairmont were listening to radio accounts of D-Day and the fierce fighting that was in progress as American soldiers sought to break the iron grip “Jerry’s” fellow countrymen had imposed on all of Europe. Jerry’s tears, of course, were not being shed for the Americans charging those beaches. Beaches where, according to the D-Day Museum, almost 7,000 Americans were lost that June 6th as they fought the followers of a zealot obsessed with mass murdering Jews and establishing a thousand year Reich.
Quite aside from these “American gulags” in America were the American gulags in Europe and North Africa. The number of prisoners, according to General Dwight Eisenhower, was almost overwhelming. There were a quarter million Axis prisoners that had to be dealt with in Tunisia alone. The Battle of the Bulge all by itself produced German prisoners at the rate of 10,000 a day. Here’s this from the late historian Stephen Ambrose, an Eisenhower biographer, in a 1991 article in the New York Times:
There was widespread mistreatment of German prisoners in the spring and summer of 1945. Men were beaten, denied water, forced to live in open camps without shelter, given inadequate food rations and inadequate medical care. Their mail was withheld. In some cases prisoners made a “soup” of water and grass in order to deal with their hunger. Men did die needlessly and inexcusably.This, of course, on top of the fact that none of these hundreds of thousands of Nazi “detainees” were told of their habeas corpus rights by Allied troops.
So now what? Sixty-three years have passed. Isn’t it time make amends to the Nazis?
WILL OBAMA, MAYER and Rutten have the courage to follow their arguments to their logical conclusions? If the idea is to have American taxpayers fork over damages to Osama’s men, why not Hitler’s? Where are the trial lawyers who have been flocking to Guantanamo? The size of the damage pot in a suit against the U.S. government for the treatment of Nazis would, one suspects, be considerable. Not to mention that many of the men in these “American gulags” doubtless have descendants who should, according to this line of thought, be recompensed for the horrors visited upon their families by America and the “men of zeal” (Mayer’s favorite phrase for the Bush-Cheney administration) led by Franklin Roosevelt.
Amazingly, Mayer isn’t satisfied with just ensuring that al Qaeda fighters get their day in court. Doubtless uncomprehendingly (one would hope) she chastises Abraham Lincoln for his “infamous” decision to suspend the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War. One can only be stunned at the use of the word “infamous” here. As written, she leaves the impression she would just as soon, with a sigh of resignation, accept the existence of slavery rather than impose on the rights of white Confederate sympathizers Lincoln saw as a serious impediment to his objectives of preserving the Union and ending slavery. Her sentiments, while startling 143 years after the war ended, are a reminder of the “dark side” exhibited by the Democrats of the day. Not only did they violently object to Lincoln’s actions, in 1864 they ran on a platform that proclaimed the war a failure. In short, supporters of slavery before the war (and instigators of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation after the war) were prepared to accept slavery for blacks as long as the white folks had their habeas. Is this the logic Mayer, Rutten — and more to the point Obama — are endorsing?
To be blunt, yes.
What is the difference between, say, German detainees Hans, “R,” and Jerry and an al Qaeda Gitmo resident named Abdullah Salih al Ajmi? The first three remained lawyerless while they waited out World War II in Iowa and Minnesota. The last, Abdullah, went through Gitmo’s thoroughly lawyered process and was released. On March 23, 2008, he showed up in Mosul, Iraq, when he drove a truck packed with 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives into an Iraqi Army base. He killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 42 on his last mission, a mission that would never have occurred were he still in Gitmo.
Are mistakes made in war? Obviously, yes. No one would ever be foolish enough to deny it — whether in this war or any other. It is, as history sadly says, the nature of the beast. Should the now out-in-the open liberal demand for reparations to al Qaeda be an issue in this campaign? Should the thinking behind it be exposed and understood? One would hope that Senator McCain, the only man in this race who actually has seen war close up, would raise the subject.
Is it really okay with Obama that Americans pay damages to Osama?
Under the current law, contingency fee attorneys can pay their costs in one of two ways: they can elect to loan their clients the money and take their expenses out of the award; or they can simply pay the costs without expecting to charge them against future winnings, which allows them to expense the costs for tax purposes. However, in seeking this payout from their allies in Congress, these plaintiffs’ lawyers are trying to have it both ways. They want to get a special tax deduction for money they loan to their clients AND have those loans later reimbursed as part of their clients’ awards.
For more than 80 years, consumers with small grievances have been able to resolve their disputes outside the court system through arbitration. Despite public opposition to legislative action against arbitration, trial lawyers have launched an all-out assault aimed at eliminating pre-dispute arbitration clauses. Not only are they attacking arbitration broadly, but they are also discreetly advocating for the simultaneous enactment of multiple unwarranted, industry-specific anti-arbitration bills and provisions. In attempting to eliminate arbitration in favor of more lawsuits, the plaintiffs’ bar ignores polls and academic studies that show arbitration is the faster, fairer, more affordable, and more preferred alternative for the consumer.
Judges currently have the authority to issue protective orders to prevent the public disclosure of sensitive information that comes up during lawsuit settlement negotiations or is brought out in trial. The trial bar supports legislation that restricts judges’ discretion to protect the privacy and confidentiality of litigants, thereby increasing the cost of litigation and reducing the possibility of pre-trial settlement, further clogging any already overloaded court system.
Increased lawsuit filings as well as a rise in jury awards against healthcare professionals and organizations in the past decade have sent malpractice insurance premiums and overall healthcare costs soaring. Abusive lawsuits have compromised the quality and affordability of medical care and threatened patients’ access to medical procedures and medicines. However, the plaintiffs’ bar wants Congress to further expand medical liability.
Increased lawsuit filings as well as a rise in jury awards against healthcare professionals and organizations in the past decade have sent malpractice insurance premiums and overall healthcare costs soaring. Abusive lawsuits have compromised the quality and affordability of medical care and threatened patients’ access to medical procedures and medicines. However, the plaintiffs’ bar wants Congress to further expand medical liability.
For more examples on why the Trial Lawyers love the Democrats, Trial Lawyer Earmarks.
While it’s too early to tell which groups hostile to Israel will show up at the anti-racism follow-up conference to Durban next year, at least two hint at what treatment awaits the Jewish state in Geneva.
In less than a year, the United Nations will try again to tackle the thorny questions of racism around the world. Its effort in 2001 devolved into a virulent attack on Israel and Jews.
While it’s too early to tell which groups hostile to Israel will show up at the follow-up conference in April, at least two hint at what treatment awaits the Jewish state.
The Ford Foundation, the powerful philanthropy whose money fueled much of the anti-Israel activity at the anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, has opted out of the event in this Swiss city.
Indeed, Durban reportedly has become something of a dreaded “D word” in some diplomatic circles, prompting widespread concern that the follow-up could be a repeat of the anti-Israel extravaganza seven years ago.
At least two Palestinian organizations have declared publicly their intent to carry the crusade launched in Durban to Geneva.
That crusade paints Israel as an “apartheid state” like the South Africa of old to be similarly crippled through boycotts, divestment and sanctions. And by most accounts, even more pro-Palestinian groups are sure to arrive in Geneva to trumpet their cause celebre.
At the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, the rabid activism of numerous anti-Israel nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, virtually drowned out much of the world’s other ills.
Last month in Brazil, at the first regional meeting to determine the substance of next year’s conference, one group hinted at what to expect.
BADIL: The Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights issued an open letter to the “Latin American people, its governments, movements and organizations.”
The letter stated: “The world’s imperial powers, with the United States and Israel at the forefront, are putting pressure on states” to “silence the principled voices of the victims of racism.”
Latin America should resist, the letter said, because “the struggle against Israel’s colonial apartheid regime is one of the cornerstones of the struggle against state-sponsored racism and ongoing colonial policies worldwide.”
BADIL was not present in Durban.
A second group created since Durban recently sought and gained accreditation to the Geneva conference. The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, is at the forefront of the international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel.
It’s too soon to know which funding agencies will help send NGOs such as BADIL and the Wall Campaign to Geneva, but one watchdog suggests European money will likely be involved.
“European aid agencies give tens of millions of euros per year to very political, in some cases radical, anti-Israel NGOs, and these groups are the most active in the Durban process,” said Gerald Steinberg, the executive director of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, which recently detailed these links in its report “Europe’s Hidden Hand”
“There are many officials in those agencies who come from an anti-colonialist, anti-American, anti-Israel political ideology,” Steinberg said, “and they have almost no supervision, almost no open discussions in their parliaments over these budgets.”
European Union officials told JTA that none of its grants are explicitly for NGOs to attend conferences, like the Durban follow-up, but rather are directed toward specific projects.
Beyond the Durban process, the EU officials say a grantee’s words — like branding Israel as apartheid or endorsing boycotts — are the “sole responsibility” of the grantee and do not reflect EU positions.
Brussels “cannot be held responsible” for these statements, nor can it “oblige them to refrain” from making them, said David Kriss, a spokesman for the European Commission delegation to Israel.
“The Commission is respectful of freedom of expression as a key feature of a democratic society,” Kriss wrote in an e-mail from his office in Ramat Gan, Israel. “An open debate over political issues is indispensable on the way towards better mutual understanding.
“At the same time, the Commission is firmly committed to the fight against incitement to hatred between ethnic or religious groups as well as to the expressions of racism, xenophobia, discrimination, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, and will continue fighting these deplorable phenomena.”
The 2009 Durban follow-up will likely cost “several million dollars,” according to a U.N. official in Geneva, with U.N. member-states expected to foot the entire bill.
Few, however, have ponied up so far. Some $750,000 left over from the 2001 event is now being used, said the U.N. official, with Russia recently adding a contribution of $250,000 and China another $20,000.
Other countries have pledged funds but not yet delivered, which is typical among member-states that sometimes promise money but are slow to act.
Meanwhile, the United States, Israel, Canada and France have threatened to boycott the event, saying it should focus on racism and discrimination generally, not stir the Middle East conflict.
To urge fellow NGOs and U.N. member-states to rise above at Geneva, the Magenta Foundation of Holland, the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights and Human Rights First have circulated a petition with five “core principles” (www.magenta.nl/coreprinciples.html) that would reject any effort to “foment hateful stereotyping in the name of human rights” and instead “uphold language and behavior that unites rather than divides.”
The New Israel Fund, a group that promotes human rights and pluralism in Israel, is one of 96 signatories pushing for a more productive conference. But NIF told JTA it will not allocate funds for any of its grantees to attend the event. In 2001, the fund provided $50,000 for such participation through a Ford grant it had received.
There is no contradiction, said an NIF spokeswoman, nor does it indicate a lack of trust that its own grantees — some of whom were most active in Durban — would adhere to these higher standards.
“Basically, NIF was outraged at the misuse” of the Durban forum and was concerned about “a possible repetition” of the tone and substance, said the spokeswoman, Naomi Paiss.
[photo fordgeneva2708 align=right max-width=200]
“We are a family of organizations representing a range of opinions,” she said. “As strongly as we feel about Durban, this is not a question of forbidding another group from attending. We are saying we will not fund it.”One NIF and Ford grantee that played a prominent role in Durban — Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — says it has yet to decide whether to attend.
“Adalah will deal with the follow-up issues regarding Durban at the relevant time, not now,” Eva Mousa, the group’s media director, told JTA. “At that time, Adalah will speak about it and discuss it with our donors, including Ford and NIF.”
The United Nations, meanwhile, stung by criticism of the 2001 event, is taking steps to prevent a repetition.
In late May, member-states decided to host the event on the serene, secure U.N. campus in Geneva. In Durban, with thousands of activists milling about inside tents and on the streets, Jewish activists say the atmosphere often grew tense — even intimidating– punctured by anti-Semitic incidents.
The world body also is expected to eliminate a separate NGO Forum, which in Durban was the source of the harshest anti-Israel rhetoric. At the forum, the Jewish state was accused of such human rights crimes as genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Startled by the protest walkout of the American and Israeli delegations — and the discredit it brought upon the conference itself — the member-states who remained settled on two rather benign references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the government declaration.
At this point, it’s “very likely” that NGO participation in Geneva will be restricted and woven into the governmental gathering, said a U.N. official who asked not to be identified because there was no authorization to speak on the record.
NGOs instead will probably be encouraged to attend, but at most official U.N. meetings will have to request an opportunity to address the gathering beforehand. Each will be allotted three minutes to speak.
None of the 775 NGOs that attended Durban saw their accreditation revoked for their actions there, so they remain accredited and free to attend April’s event, according to the U.N. official.
“The NGO issue is a highly political issue here,” the official said.
This format may mean less Israel-bashing, but also less criticism of U.N. member-states that rank at the bottom of most global surveys of racism and other forms of discrimination. After all, few governments choose to freely chastise themselves.
This is left to the NGOs.
Still, three minutes available every day at a four- or five-day conference – the world’s largest in the sphere of human rights — is enough time to sling arrows, hammer home a message to the media and have it documented for eternity in U.N. archives.
That’s why some Jewish observers were taken aback by the conference accreditation granted to the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.
The group, according to its Web site, was formed one year after Durban, in October 2002, by one of the more extremist NGOs that did attend Durban — the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network.
The Wall Campaign partnered with another prominent Israel basher at Durban, the Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO, to hold the First Palestinian Conference for the Boycott of Israel (BDS) on Nov. 18, 2007. At the time of Durban, PNGO was a Ford grantee, but is no longer.
In addition, the Wall Campaign and PNGO are two members of the National Committee to Commemorate the Nakba, the Arab term for catastrophe used to depict Israel’s creation as a state.
On its Web site, the Wall Campaign links to BADIL, the group based in Bethlehem, on the West Bank, which declared its intent in Brazil last month to bang the apartheid drum against Israel in Geneva.
This link refers to BADIL’s role in leading the current “Nakba 60 campaign,” an international effort aimed at countering Israel at 60 celebrations.
At the April planning conference for the Durban follow-up, the Wall Campaign won accreditation without debate. More public attention in Geneva was devoted to Iran’s intervention to deny a Canadian Jewish group accreditation to attend the event next year. The group, the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, citing bureaucratic and political hurdles, eventually withdrew its application.
BADIL’s home page in July announced a new Web site, “It Is Apartheid,” with a “viral, guerrilla marketing” campaign that includes tips on how to propagandize neighbors, co-workers and strangers.
The group’s presence in Brasilia and its lobbying of Latin American delegations was another harbinger for Jewish observers who warn the Geneva event may follow in the politicized footsteps of Durban.
The Geneva-based UN Watch declared that the current working paper, in U.N. lingo known as a “non-paper,” already “breaches red lines” as laid out by the Europeans: It singles out the Palestinians for sympathy, implicitly criticizing Israel.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which sent two observers to Brasilia, described the event as a “lost opportunity” to underscore those red lines.
Latin Americans “have failed to stand up and be counted,” Shimon Samuels, Wiesenthal’s director for international relations, told JTA.
Meanwhile, with the Ford Foundation announcing that it won’t pay to send any grantee to the Geneva conference — both because of its prospects for failure and potential to become another anti-Israel festival — and with other donors, governmental and nongovernmental, reportedly wavering, Samuels says that some have found a target to blame in case the Durban follow-up disintegrates.
Samuels said that in Brasilia, he discussed how to prevent a pro-Palestinian “hijacking of the agenda” with an Afro-American group lobbying for slavery compensation.
The fellow activist agreed, he said, but “blew my mind with a vehement accusation of Jewish control of the Durban boycott movement” and “attacked me for stopping foundation funding of their participation in Geneva and destroying possibilities for a NGO Forum.”
Should Obama Be Worried? Results From The Electoral College, The Poll That Really Counts
July 29, 2008
That’s bad news for Obama. The electoral college makes the huge popular vote majorities Democratic nominees rack up in the large states “inefficient” — a lot of those votes are, to be crass, wasted. In 2004, for example, John Kerry carried New York by 1.4 million votes, way more than he needed to earn its 31 electoral votes. Republicans carry their best states inefficiently, too, but their best states are so small that the number of wasted votes doesn’t add up to much.
The significance for 2008 is that Barack Obama’s lead in the current national polls — pumped up as it is by his mega-margins in California, New York, and Illinois — is several points less than he’ll need to win a majority of electoral votes in November.
These are halcyon days for Barack Obama, right? A successful trip to Europe and the Middle East. A steady 5-point lead in the polls. An opponent who can’t seem to get his campaign in gear.
Having spent the morning crunching — that is, adding, dividing, listing, typing, and checking — a wearying array of political numbers, I’m not so sure.
My purpose was to find out what I could learn by compiling a list of all the states ranked according to how much support they gave to the Democratic presidential nominees in 2000 and 2004. Scroll down a few clicks, poke around the data to see what catches your eye (isn’t it amazing, for instance, that Vermont, one of only two states that Alf Landon carried against FDR in 1936, is now the Democrats’ fifth best state?), then scroll back up and see if you agree with the two observations that follow.
1. A good number of the Democrats’ best states in terms of average popular vote margin are large states — their top 16 include New York (ranked 4), New Jersey (ranked 9), Illinois (10), California (11), Michigan (15), and Pennsylvania (16). Of the Republicans’ top 16 states, only one (Texas) is a large state.
That’s bad news for Obama. The electoral college makes the huge popular vote majorities Democratic nominees rack up in the large states “inefficient” — a lot of those votes are, to be crass, wasted. In 2004, for example, John Kerry carried New York by 1.4 million votes, way more than he needed to earn its 31 electoral votes. Republicans carry their best states inefficiently, too, but their best states are so small that the number of wasted votes doesn’t add up to much.
The significance for 2008 is that Barack Obama’s lead in the current national polls — pumped up as it is by his mega-margins in California, New York, and Illinois — is several points less than he’ll need to win a majority of electoral votes in November.
2. University of Maryland political scientist Thomas Schaller drew considerable fire when he argued that the Democrats should just forget about the South in his 2006 book Whistilng Past Dixie: How the Democrats Can Win Without the South (Simon and Schuster). Sure, critics argued, the Republicans dominated presidential elections without carrying the South during the half-century between Reconstruction and the Great Depression, but the South is bigger now. When John W. Davis swept the region against Calvin Coolidge, the 117 electoral votes he received didn’t keep Coolidge from winning overall by 382 to 136. But the South today has 152 electoral votes — a big lead to spot your Republican opponent if you’re a Democrat. Kerry, for example, won the non-South 252-133 but still lost the 2004 election to Bush, who carried all 11 Southern states.
Point taken. But look at the table below to see how Obama gets to 270, which is the number of electoral votes he needs to win. Of the Democrats’ 22 best states, precisely none are Southern — and those states alone get him to 264. To be sure, Florida (the Democrats’ next best state) could put him over, but so could Ohio (the next best after that) or either of two others that rank about as high on the list: Missouri and Colorado.
I emphasize this because recent news reports indicate that Obama is already making a serious play for several Southern states that are far less winnable than Florida — namely, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. Some Democrats even want to add Alabama and Mississippi to Obama’s list based on his primary victories there and their large African-American populations. Curiously, Arkansas seldom gets mentioned by Democratic strategists, even though it supported the party’s recent presidential nominees to the same degree Colorado did.
Glance down the list below and here’s where you’ll find those Southern states Democrats want to put in play: toward the bottom. North Carolina? Gore and Kerry both lost it by 12 points. Georgia bas been a 14-point Republican state in recent elections, Mississippi an 18 point-state, Alabama a 23 pointer — even Virginia is +8 for the GOP.
Sure, if Obama wins the kind of 49-state landslide Richard Nixon won in 1972 and Ronald Reagan won in 1984, he’ll carry all sorts of unlikely states for a nominee of his party. But Obama’s strategy can’t be based on that hope, any more than Reagan’s was based on sweeping New England. Unless his lead in the polls reaches well into double-digits, Obama needs to focus exclusively on getting more electoral votes than John McCain. Among the Southern states, only Florida offers much chance of helping him to do that.
State (EVs)/Dems’ avg. margin, 2000-2004 (%)/Cumulative Obama total (EVs)
01. Dist. of Columbia (3)/ +78.1/ 3
02. Massachusetts (12)/ +26.2/ 15
03. Rhode Island (4)/ +24.9/ 19
04. New York (31)/ +21.7/ 50
05. Vermont (3)/ +15.5/ 53
06. Maryland (10)/ +14.7/ 63
07. Hawaii (4) / +14.5/ 67
08. Connecticut (7)/ +13.9/ 74
09. New Jersey (15)/ +11.3/ 89
10. Illinois (21)/ +11.2/ 110
11. California (55)/ +10.9/ 165
12. Delaware (3)/ +10.3/ 168
13. Maine (4)/ + 7.1/ 172
14. Washington (11)/ + 6.9/ 183
15. Michigan (17)/ + 4.3/ 200
16. Pennsylvania (21)/ + 3.4/ 221
17. Minnesota (10)/ + 3.0/ 231
18. Oregon (7)/ + 2.4/ 238
19. Wisconsin (10)/ + 0.3/ 248
20. New Hampshire (4)/ 0.0/ 252
21. Iowa (7)/ – 0.2/ 259
22. New Mexico (5)/ – 0.3/ 264
23. Florida (27)/ – 2.6/ 291
24. Ohio (20)/ – 2.8/ 311
25. Nevada (5)/ – 3.1/ 316
26. Missouri (11)/ – 5.3/ 327
27. Arkansas (6)/ – 6.6/ 333
27. Colorado (8)/ – 6.6/ 341
29. Virginia (13)/ – 8.2/ 354
30. Arizona (10)/ – 8.4/ 364
31. Tennessee (11)/ – 9.1/ 375
32. West Virginia (5)/ – 9.6/ 380
33. Louisiana (9)/ -11.1/ 389
34. North Carolina (15)/ -12.6/ 404
35. Georgia (15)/ -14.2/ 419
36. South Carolina (8)/ -16.5/ 427
37. Kentucky (9)/ -17.5/ 436
38. Indiana (11)/ -18.2/ 447
39. Mississippi (6)/ -18.3/ 453
40. South Dakota (3)/ -21.6/ 456
41. Alabama (9)/ -23.1/ 465
42. Texas (34)/ -22.1/ 499
43. Montana (3)/ -22.8/ 502
44. Kansas (6)/ -23.1/ 508
45. Oklahoma (7)/ -26.6/ 515
46. North Dakota (3)/ -27.5/ 518
47. Alaska (3)/ -28.4/ 521
48. Nebraska (5)/ -31.2/ 526
49. Idaho (4)/ -38.8/ 530
50. Wyoming (3)/ -40.0/ 533
51. Utah (5)/ -43.4/ 538
Badr al-Hasnani was 18 when he got into a fight with a soccer rival and fatally stabbed him. He confessed and was sentenced to death by beheading, as prescribed by sharia, or Islamic law.
For more than two years, Hasnani has been in a juvenile detention center awaiting execution while his family has tried to save him.
The parents of the victim, Majid al-Mahmoudi, have three options under sharia: to demand punishment, to spare Hasnani’s life to receive blessings from God, or to grant clemency in exchange for diyah, or blood money.
The Mahmoudis agreed to accept diyah, setting the sum at $2 million in cash, much more than Hasnani’s family can afford.
Hasnani’s case highlights the growing trend of exorbitant blood-money demands, which many say are fueled by greed and tribal rivalries. Last month, tribal leaders in the central city of Kharj demanded nearly $11 million to pardon a man who had killed a member of their tribe.
Officials, clerics and writers have spoken out against the excessive requests, saying an ancient Islamic practice meant to financially support those who lose loved ones has been corrupted.
“Some families have become broke from these exaggerated sums being asked for diyah and live in poverty the rest of their lives,” said Abdul-Aziz Qassim, an author and journalist who has written about blood money. “The families of some of the victims have turned it into a business.”
To deal with the problem, the government recently set up the Reconciliation Committee, which works to lower the diyah requests and find wealthy donors to help the families of death row inmates unable to pay. Using a combination of religious preaching and mediation by influential tribal sheiks and prominent clerics, the committee says it has spared nearly 150 lives since its inception.
“Nothing is more precious to God than the sparing of a neck,” said Nasser al-Zahrani, head of the Mecca office of the Reconciliation Committee. “We try to explain to these families with victims that it provides a blessing like no other.”
Quoting the Koran, the Muslim holy book, Zahrani said he tells families: “He who takes a life, unless it be for murder or spreading terror in the land — it would be as if he killed everyone. And he who saves one life, it is as if he has saved all of mankind.”
Despite the committee’s work, Saudi Arabia carried out 166 executions in 2007, compared with 39 a year earlier, according to the Rome-based human rights group Hands Off Cain, which campaigns against the death penalty.
In the kingdom, the death sentence is handed down in cases of murder, armed robbery, drug smuggling and rape. The committee does not get involved in multiple murders, cases involving both kidnapping and murder, or rape.
When the court of last resort finds the crime to be especially grisly, the execution can be carried out even if the victim’s heirs have accepted blood money, or the offender can be sentenced to additional years in jail and lashes.
Qassim, who heads the Islamic affairs section at Okaz newspaper, said the government should establish an official cap and initiate a nationwide campaign to educate people about the blessings of forgiveness and the sin of turning a victim’s death into a money-making enterprise.
“Tribes like to say, ‘We got this amount of money for a member of our tribe,’ ” he said. “People start to think the more money you can get for a member of your family, the more valuable your tribe is.”
King Abdullah, who has paid off several blood-money debts over the past few years, has been quoted as saying that the amount should not exceed $130,000. The minimum set by the government is $32,000.
Hasnani’s father, Salem, a retired policeman who drives a taxi in the evenings, said he has sent more than a dozen emissaries to the victim’s father, Attiyah al-Mahmoudi, a former policeman he knew from work.
After a year of insisting on going through with the execution, Mahmoudi was persuaded by a mutual acquaintance from his police force days with Salem to spare Hasnani’s life for blood money.
“We’re from the same neighborhood,” said Salem Hasnani, 57, leaning on a floor cushion in his modest living room. “He knows my situation. He knows I can’t afford that.”
A mediator for the two families said the Mahmoudis did not want to discuss the case.
Salem Hasnani said he and his two brothers offered to give their homes to Mahmoudi, but he insisted on cash. They borrowed money, putting up their homes for collateral, sold several pieces of land and came up with $400,000.
A few days before Hasnani’s planned execution, initially set for the beginning of July, a committee member accompanied by a delegation of tribal sheiks and clerics persuaded Mahmoudi to decrease the sum to $1.3 million.
Mahmoudi also agreed to a one-month postponement of the execution to give the family time to come up with the money.
Salem Hasnani printed up copies of the official paper provided by the committee that explains his son’s case. With his brothers and his eldest son, Yasser, they have sought help from more than a dozen wealthy businessmen and businesswomen and a handful of princes in the capital of Riyadh and the coastal city of Jiddah. His young nephews have also posted appeals online asking for the money to be sent to a special account set up by the Reconciliation Committee.
In the past few weeks, they have raised $200,000, Salem Hasnani said. And this week, after a second visit by the Reconciliation Committee, Mahmoudi agreed to reduce the diyah to $1.2 million, leaving the Hasnanis $600,000 short.
Hasnani’s mother, Khairiya, said that she visits her son almost every week but that they never discuss his case. “He asks about his brothers, how they’re doing in school,” she said. “I always tell him to study and to pray.”
Salem Hasnani’s relatives said they do not know the details of the fight between their son and his victim. The two were in the city of Mina during the annual hajj pilgrimage, working over the school holiday, when they ran into each other.
“It started here,” said Hasnani’s brother Sayyir, 16, pointing to a large sandlot where they all used to play soccer. “They were on opposite teams, and they became enemies. And ever since then, anytime they met, they fought.”
The Hasnani family held a “charity tent” Friday, a weekend day here. More than 100 men came, drinking tea and coffee while Salem Hasnani appealed for help.
“Some donated $1,000, and some donated $5,000,” he said. “Together we raised half the money that’s left. There are many do-gooders here. We have one week left, but I am praying for the best.”
The Obama Youth Vote: Not So Fast
July 29, 2008
One of the stories this campaign season has been the youth vote, and the main story line comes down to this: Obama gives them inspiration. Type “youth vote inspired Obama” into Google and more than 600,000 hits come up.
If the youth vote does jump from its showing in 2004 (a significant increase from 2000), we should applaud 18-to-24-year-olds for their civic growth, and if Obama motivates them to cast their ballots in record numbers, he counts as more than a politician. He’s a leader.
We should pause, however, over the source of the increase in youth civic engagement. It sounds all to the good, and parents and teachers should advance the project of youth voter participation. But inspiration does have a down side, too, one that mentors should discuss with the young, for while it may ensure larger participation, it isn’t the best motivation for voting. Reasons:
One, it’s inconsistent. Inspiring politicians come and go, and if one doesn’t fill a slot on the ballot, inspiration-based voters stay home.
Two, it elevates the candidate into an idol, not a politician. The candidate edges toward celebrity status, making the inevitable political labor of compromise, deal-making, policy-drafting, and message-crafting seem almost a diminishment.
Three, it turns the voter into a “responder,” so to speak. Inspiration as the measure of participation makes individuals consult an inner yardstick for voting habits, not the objective demand of citizenship in a democracy.
Four, it eclipses the decidedly un-inspirational content of policy positions. Most of the work of administrations involves adjustments to existing programs, not creation of new ones or termination of old ones, and incremental changes in things don’t inspire citizens unless they see a direct impact on their lives.
And five, inspiration dispels one of the fundamental traits of citizenship, namely, mistrust of office holders — mistrust not because of the virtues and vices of the persons, but because of the powers they wield. The founders based the government on, among other things, the seasoned observation that power corrupts. Inspiration obscures the insight. It makes citizens identify with the leader and relax their vigilance, forgetting that the possession of power automatically sets the leader — any leader — more or less at odds with the rights of individuals.
So when campus discussions about the election arise this fall, the “Why vote at all?” question is worth raising. And if students say they intend to vote because Obama fires them up, reply with, “Very good, but why vote next time?”
