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Mulling over the Credit Crunch

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

In America today, you must borrow money, even if you don’t need to, to get a “credit record,” which is a ticket to borrowing more money, a vicious circle for many people.  Meanwhile, interest paid is money wasted, money that could have earned interest or dividends or capital gains.  Given the miracle of compounding, the less you buy or borrow the faster and larger your nest egg grows.  Then you can pay cash, even for big things.  But financial prudence, aka living within your means and saving regularly, horrifies bankers who dole out mortgages. Savers, in America today, are not creditworthy.  Savers are worthless. 

Buy, Baby, Buy

Why?  People who save present an existential challenge to elements of the banking system. Why didn’t you buy more stuff?  Why didn’t you finance your cars?  Why have you cheated us out of interest all these years?  But the bankers can get their revenge; they can refuse a mortgage if you have no credit record (as defined by those very banks). At the very least they can make you sweat—and they will.  They’ll drown you in paperwork as you try, anxiously, to prove you won’t be a deadbeat now that they’ve finally got you in their clutches.

In fact, I know a case in point, now pending.  This person went the saving route.  Bought nothing on time.  Paid credit card balances down to zero every month.  Saved enough for a 20% down payment without shrinking the remaining nest egg all that much.  Had a secure job with a good salary, so any monthly payments would be comfortably affordable.  But the bank said—Hmm, is this guy a risk or what? 

Is something crazy here or what?  I mean we taxpayers just gave these banks and mortgage companies billions for the express purpose of unclogging the credit pipeline. Solid small businesses are also having trouble obtaining the routine loans they need to maintain workable inventories.  Many are going out of business as a consequence.

The Borderline Blues

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Walls are always porous in one way or another, yet people keep building them because boundaries are frightening places where various sorts of intellectual and physical miscegenation occur.

The space between armies or warring states is traditionally a no man’s land, a place that’s safe for no one.  As one set of laws and customs meets another, a gap occurs where no writ applies, especially if that boundary coincides with mountains or jungles or pirate-ridden oceans or vast deserts, all of which have always symbolized the unbounded—the savage, the fantastic, the unowned, the undisciplined.  Walled or not, legal or not, borders are essentially arbitrary.  They break down.  They become bones of contention.  They make news.

Borders have been much in the news this week.  The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago.  That erasure of ideological boundaries was celebrated this week.  Meanwhile, India and China were at odds over the Dali Lama’s visit to Tawang because the two countries cannot agree on where their Eastern boundary runs. Here at home, the U.S. Supreme Court has to decide whether there is an inviolable line to be drawn between adulthood and adolescence when it comes to punishment for violent crime.  Many of the issues in play during the current period of economic recovery have to do with the boundaries between government and private enterprise in our economic lives. The American doctrine of the separation of church and state is also a border issue—as is the application of Sharia Law.  

Dragons and Diplomacy

So far as China is concerned, the dragon has been breathing heavily, in hopes of controlling people and events far from its physical borders.   The Frankfurt Book Fair erupted in controversy when China attempted to dictate which writers of Chinese origin could be featured during the Fair.   Because of its intense concern about its internal boundaries, China breathes heavily on countries that allow Uighur nationalists to speak more freely outside China than they may within Chinese borders; ditto for Tibetans.    As I wrote last week, China’s baleful influence even reached into the White House, preventing President Obama from meeting with the  Dali Lama.  Sanctions and financial manipulations are other ways to achieve, more or less subtly or successfully, cross border influence.

Thus, there are so many ways in which countries attempt to control events beyond their  formal boundaries.  War is one.  The threat of war is almost as effective.  Diplomacy is another way to achieve influence across borders, as is its hand-maiden public diplomacy, which characteristically attempts to distinguish itself from propaganda. The latter is no small debate.  It concerns the borders to be respected when attempting to influence.  At one end of the spectrum is rational persuasion through information and facts; at the other end is emotional manipulation—or worse.  At what point does legitimate persuasion turn into fraud, deceit, duplicity, conning?  All of the latter are usually considered to be immoral and/or illegal, however effective they may be in achieving the manipulator’s ends.  And how about this one—when does psychological pressure or physical discomfort turn into torture?  In domestic politics, a related boundary question is this: when does an inspiring speech turn into demagoguery?  Indeed, much of the debate over health care reform has crossed the border from informed debate to scare-mongering.

Santa Fe: the Dysfunctional Museum City

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

All you people who love to come to Santa Fe to revel in our oh so charming adobe streetscapes, here’s a sorry tale of what we residents endure to fulfill your fantasies.  Did you know that a bunch of early 20th century Anglo aesthetes cooked up this look that’s as traditional as frozen pizza in Helsinki?  I’ve been thinking of writing this story for some time, but the world kept getting in the way.   Lately, however, my water and power bills have been arriving with slick little inserts designed to browbeat me into taking fewer showers—and those with a dribble of water.  I should also equip my lamps with bulbs whose wattage is totally inadequate for people who actually like to read.  Know what?  I am not inclined to discomfit myself.

Let it be known that I tried to be a super good citizen of the modern world, and I got defeated at every turn by the city of Santa Fe.

Here We Are 

The photo above is not a beauty-is-passé canvas by an up and coming artist.  It’s not a charming example of randomness or spontaneity as art.  It’s not even what I would call organic, exactly, but it shows pretty well how my house grew over the past century plus.  Each roof segment surrounded by a little wall or parapet represents one more addition to the original modest (to say the least) adobe cube thrown up by a very poor man.  When I say adobe, I don’t mean an elegant two course job.  I mean one course (or thickness) and often supplemented with pumice stone or the hollow tiles that preceded cinder block construction.  When I bought this place, it was a wreck, a fixer-upper’s fixer upper—and cheap, which was important because it needed work.  Oh boy, did it need work!  And thus began the tragicomedy of attempting to go green in Santa Fe. 

Renovation being a necessity, not a choice, I decided I wanted to end up with a water-and-energy stingy aka  green house.  Not a glass house for floriculture.  Not a house slopped in green paint. But this:  a house that would use water and energy as efficiently as possible, given the givens.    As for the facade, major surgery was necessary, but that was nixed by authorities, as were all my other dreams.  So the front of the house looks like a jungle now, as you can see, mostly xeric plants that need very little water and very little care, the latter my idea of the perfect garden. What you can’t see through the foliage isn’t worth seeing.

The Bottleneck

My problem (and the problem for all residents of Santa Fe) is the Historic Commission, which decides what you can or can’t do to new or older houses.  The Commission pores over floor plans and elevations and refuses to approve those that don’t place windows a full four feet from any corner of the structure.  There's hardly a spot in Santa Fe without a wonderful view, but view-embracing expanses of glass also fail the test, because the original Spanish colonists obviously didn’t have picture windows.  Of course, most of them didn’t have glass windows either, to say nothing of indoor plumbing.  So I guess we should be grateful.  Sort of.  Or laugh.  And order windows with phony dividers, which can mysteriously disappear.  Money wasted, but c’est la vie.  

So I’m writing this piece because I think that Santa Fe’s building and design codes should be changed for everyone—and for the health of the planet, but I must confess that I got into this fix by stupidity and  insufficient research.  I knew nothing of the Historic Commission when I bought this property.  I especially didn’t know that the structure  I was buying appears on mysterious but very important maps as a “contributing” structure.  That means it represents Santa Fe at some “authentic” phase of its history. 

I’ve met people who tell me they fought to keep their homes from designation as “contributing.”   Unfortunately, the family that built and lived in my place for three generations wouldn’t have had the funds to renovate creatively even if they’d wanted to.  Thus, the fact that the poor man’s home they couldn’t even afford to keep livable had been frozen in time didn’t affect them, especially since this buyer was so ignorant.  Result: not only did I have to conform to the constricted official notion of the "Santa Fe style," I had to respect the integrity and external appearance of the existing structure, which believe me—and I’ve delved into histories of New Mexico architecture—is of no significance whatsoever. Gulp!

The Bucket Brigade

What did I want to do?  I wanted to move the water heater from one end of the house to the middle, where the old structure met the wing I miraculously got permission to add.  No go.  Result: several gallons of water are lost before the water runs hot enough for a shower in the master bath.  Actually, I’m supposed to collect this otherwise wasted water in buckets, which must then be schlepped outside to water plants with.  We’re talking many many buckets here—and buckets of water are heavy.  Very heavy.  Now  I’m not happy about wasting water, but the city also refused to let me install a gray water system.   All of that slowly warming water, along with sink water and water from clothes washed in appropriate detergents, could have been put to good purpose without the efforts of this bucket brigade of one.

Failing/Passing the Dalai Lama Test

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Because the declining power that is America must kowtow to a burgeoning China on trade and financial issues, American President Barak Obama ducked the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama before he sets off for Beijing in a few weeks.  That’s the way the Times of India reports the behavior of the first U.S. president to shy away from a meeting with the exiled Buddhist leader.

The Tawang Tiff

Perhaps Barack should borrow a page or two from India’s book.  Despite very strenuous objections sometimes amounting to threats, India is allowing the Dalai Lama to visit Tawang, a territory that China claims.  The Chinese also protested when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did some electioneering in Tawang some months ago.   Singh did not change his plans.

What’s the context here?  Back in 1914, when the U.K. ruled India and Tibet acted like an independent entity, although it was still more or less under Chinese suzerainty, the McMahon Line was drawn east from Bhutan to define the northern boundary of British India.  This is now the Line of Actual Control and it was recognized by China in 1957, but deep down Beijing is not happy: this area that is now the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh should be Chinese South Tibet.  In 1962 the Chinese army invaded the district of Arunachal known as Tawang.  The Red army swarmed over Se La, a 14,000 foot high pass, and drove south, pulling up heart-stoppingly close to the Brahmaputra River before withdrawing to China’s side of the traditional border.  Ever since, there have been occasional rumblings from China, a far-from-dormant volcano warning that eruptions are always possible.

The Rules of the Game

Now China was mightly miffed back then.  The 14th Dalai Lama had, only a couple of years before, escaped from Chinese control (house arrest, essentially) in Lhasa.  He crossed snowy Himalayan passes that took him through Tawang and eventually down into the rice fields of Assam along the Bhramaputra River.  India gave him asylum and allowed him to set up a government in exile in Dharamshala, which is still his headquarters.  India laid down a few rules, the most important being: no mounting insurrections against China from India territory.  Just last summer, India refused to permit a group of India-based Tibetans to cross the border and disrupt the Olympics in Beijing.  But otherwise, the Dalai Lama is free to go where he wishes and to say what he pleases, as are the thousands of other Tibetans who are based in India.  It helps that Tenzin Gyatso has proved to be a very wise and discreet leader.  He recognizes the limits of India’s patience and the material weakness of his own position vis-à-vis China. 

Not that India doesn't calculate its approach to China very shrewdly. Even as India insists that the Dalai Lama is free to go to Tawang, an ancient center of Tibetan buddhism where even in our times there is a large, active and prestigious monastery, the Indian government is not issuing press permits to foreign correspondents to cover the visit.  There will be no media circus—at least not officially.  But reports say the press are filtering in, which means that the Chinese can grumble all they want.  India!  Such a disorganized country! 

Meanwhile, after a meeting two days ago between Man Mohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jibao, China began singing a somewhat different song.  The criticism of India largely disappeared, although the Dalai Lama himself was still the target of harsh criticism.

Is Appeasement the Word?

Watching the latest act in the intriguing dance between the Asian giants, I found myself thinking of Barack Obama again.  Perhaps if he had been brave enough to act according to principle in his own country, in his own capital, in his own White House, he would find himself in a stronger, less compromised position to do business with the Chinese, who have not dealt gently with the weak in recent times.  By not meeting with the Dalai Lama for a cordial few minutes, he has announced that his commitment to the First Amendment is for sale.  Freedom of speech?  Optional.  Freedom of assembly?  Overrated.  Freedom of Religion?  Nonsense.

Now will you help us?  Pretty please!

Does anyone believe that such kowtowing will make the  Chinese more generous on issues of importance of the U.S.?  What’s more, world domination may be built on raw power, but world leadership is built on principle.  I’d thought that Barack Obama understood that.

What We Really Have to Fear about Health Care

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

We’ve been ruthlessly conditioned  to be afraid—to be absolutely terrified—of medical decision-making by government bureaucrats.  But we’ve got much worse instead:  employees rigorously trained by insurance companies to deny as many requests for care as they can get away with.  The less care you and I get for our  premium money, the happier (which is to say, the more profitable)  the private insurance companies are.

The Balance Sheet

SO:  You thought you would die but you didn’t.  Much as your insurance company tried to deny you access to testing, surgery and recuperative services, to say nothing of the precise drugs your doctor wanted you to have, you won the battle.  You got the care you needed and you are on your feet again.  You rejoice!  Your family rejoices.  Your friends rejoice.  Your employer rejoices.  Your doctor is happy.  Even a few drug companies are happy; you will be taking their products for x amount of time.  And, of course, your dog wags its tail, madly.

Meanwhile, your insurance company makes an entry in red, in the loss column. This year you are  a red blot on the balance sheet.  Next year there will be more red.  Ditto from now on, perhaps. You have been a mere profit or loss center for the company all along.  Now you are an out and out liability.  No matter how long you have been paying premiums to your insurance company, you would be better off dead, from its point of view, and it will drop you as soon as possible—or raise your rates until you are forced to drop out.

In short, those scarey death panels exist.  They obey your private health insurance company.  And people die every day because care has been denied.  Not just granny, folks.  People in every age bracket.

Hillary in Pakistan: Assessing That “Charm Offensive”

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Who came up with the idea of calling Hillary Clinton’s visit to Pakistan a “charm offensive”?  First of all, the term is sexist.  Imagine sending Richard Holbrooke on a charm offensive!  Secondly, the concept is insulting to Pakistan.  As if that proud and prickly country would take kindly to the publically-declared notion that it could be seduced into dancing for America.  Finally, and most important, anyone who is in the least aware of the complexities of the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan would know that what’s needed in this relationship is insight, persistence and constancy, not a three days’ flirtation which would be only too reminiscent of the on-and-off romance that the U.S. has been so angrily and so often accused of.  This week included.

So Washington is shocked that Hillary didn’t sweep particulars under a lovely Baloch or Kashmiri carpet?  I am going to take issue and suggest that she did exactly what was needed.  She let some fresh air into the discussion.  She got serious.  Most likely we shouldn't assume that her comments about someone surely knowing the whereabouts of al Qaeda or about trust needing to be a two-way street or about Pakistan’s needing to take responsibility for education were bloopers, blunders, or obnoxiously preachy.  I think they were carefully embedded in the innocuous stuff.   Lawyers know how to do this.

I have read every interview text on the Department of State website, particularly the questions with which Secstate Clinton was peppered by journalists, students and tribal leaders.  (Whoever was responsible for the recordings that yielded so many “inaudibles”  should be fired!).  These were good discussions, and I find it regrettable that the American press so frequently framed the story so as to deserve a headline like this: “Clinton Suffers Barbs and Returns Jabs on Pakistan Trip.”  Here is more of such misrepresentation:

She submitted [itals mine] to four round-table interviews...in which Pakistan’s leading journalists took their best shots at her, and she even counterpunched once or twice.  By the time she left...she appeared to have fought Pakistan’s fourth estate to a draw.

What’s offensive about such a description?  It’s inaccurate.  It’s inappropriate.  What was going on was more like the first phase of a negotiation.  Everything gets laid on the table.  The fears.  The resentments.  The angers.  The misunderstandings.  The disappointments.  Unless you get through that stage, you can never progress to anything like productive cooperation. 

Blind Buddhas and Incendiary Cartoons

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Santa Fe is full of Buddhists, but no one has erupted with religious rage since this image (a sculpture by David Kimble Anderson) was placed on display in the atrium of a building that housed an art gallery and other business enterprises.  As anyone with the least facility in reading symbols will immediately have grasped,  there are innumerable ways of interpreting this work of art.  Since many possible interpretations are decidedly negative, I found my recalling the violent  reactions to the now infamous Danish cartoons, which were condemned by many believers as an affront to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.  The result?  Riots in several countries.  Some people unfortunately died.

Multiple Interpretations

Let’s consider some ways in which the Anderson piece might be understood.  The gold surface could be an indictment of materialism on the part of traditional Buddhist temple builders or on the part of current practitioners whose lives verge, hypocritically perhaps, on the sumptuous.  Of course, many traditional images of the Buddha are also flamboyantly gilt, to symbolize the transcendent value of the teachings and to honor the one who enunciated them.

In this case, however, the figure appears to be bandaged.  It is, evidently, blind and essentially quadriplegic.  Unable to see.  Unable to act.  Impotent.  Useless.  Is this a statement about the futility and irrelevance of Buddhism? On the other hand, meditative insights are available to those who sit without moving,  looking inward.  Sometimes these insights have effects that are far more powerful than actions that are not guided by wisdom. 

Which, one wonders, did the sculptor have in mind?

Mummies, Too

I simply don’t know.  When I first saw this image, I was and still am totally ignorant of the sculptor’s intention, as ignorant as many of those who rioted over the Danish cartoons surely were.  Nor would many of those angry Muslims have cared in the least whether the cartoonists’ intentions were pure or not.  The cartoons, taken at face value, appear to insult the prophet.  Enough.

This past weekend I had an opportunity to show a photo of the blind Buddha to a very knowledgeable Buddhist teacher/scholar.  “Give me your first reaction,” I asked.  “How do you feel?  What are your unconsidered thoughts?”  I should have known better.  I did not get any unconsidered thoughts. 

But I did get some interesting information.  This scholar said that the image reminds him of the mummy of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Cha’an (or Zen) Buddhism, who was born in AD 638 and is known for enunciating the revered Diamond Jewel Platform Sutra.  Evidently it was the custom to mummify great teachers back then in China.  The proper term, I just learned courtesy of Google, is “whole body relics.”  Mummies!  This seemed strange to me.  Buddhism supposedly teaches impermanence, while mummies are intended to make the physical remains last forever or as long as possible.  My bewildered personal reaction to Buddhist mummies notwithstanding, could Anderson’s work be an homage to Hui Neng?

And so the inquiry widens, opening my horizons, giving me pause to think.

Thoughts on South Africa, Zimbabwe, Israel and Palestine

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I was mostly on retreat last week, which is why I wasn’t posting, but only as a commuter, so I was able to sneak a look at two PBS programs that turned out to be entirely consistent with what I was doing during the daytime.  I saw the Masterpiece Contemporary presentation of Endgame, an utterly compelling docu-drama about the secret negotiations that preceded the  official negotiations for the end of apartheid in South Africa and a Bill Moyers interview with South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who led the UN commission of inquiry into human rights abuses by Israel and by Hamas last year.  These are the thoughts that emerged.   They begin with Zimbabwe.... 

Banes of Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe, I suspect, calculated that a power-sharing agreement with Morgan Tsvangirai would placate the West and bring in the big bucks he needs to provide food and rudimentary survival services to a population he has ravaged and terrorized.  Dutifully, his new prime minister set out on a begging trip, hoping to convince prospective donors that the shotgun marriage was cozy and legit.  When the would-be saviors, U.S. and European, saw through the ruse and refused to cough up enough to suit the white-baiting octogenarian president, Mugabe seems to have lost interest in the PR value of minimal cooperation with Tsvangirai, who is now more or less on strike.  So Mugabe has resumed his well-honed harangue: all of Zimbabwe’s current miseries can be traced to colonialism, even if Zimbabwe was in terrific economic shape when the British left in 1980.

Meanwhile, starving, sick, miserable and thoroughly desperate refugees finally began streaming into South Africa from neighboring Zimbabwe.  The result: murderous local mobs pushing back from South African townships whose residents have not prospered as they had hoped in the years since apartheid gave way to majority rule.  Their cry: how can we share when we have so little?  Although South African police managed to quell the worst of the violence, South Africa has continued its policy of not seriously pressuring Mugabe to reverse course or to resign, despite urging by the U.S. and others.  African nations, for obvious reasons, are very touchy about sovereignty. 

The good news is that South Africa itself has not been destabilized by spillover from disarray next door.  Nor has the post-Mandela leadership adopted the poisonous anti-White propaganda and policies of the Mugabe regime.  Whites continue to be a relatively prosperous minority in South Africa where they have a significant presence in urban and rural economies.  Whites also continue to be personally safe, as far as anyone is safe in South Africa’s crime-ridden cities.  This accord didn’t happen by chance.  Unlike Zimbabwe, where Mugabe is the black mirror image of the implacable white racist Ian Smith, South Africa has produced some remarkable leaders, men who saw that retribution, deserved or not, was no way to achieve stability and prosperity in a post-apartheid country.

South African Treasures

South Africa was blessed with Nelson Mandela, who became the reincarnated country’s first president, with Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu who served as conscience for the reborn country, and with a Boer realist  F.W. de Klerk who knew when the game of white monoply on power was over.  South Africa was also blessed with a nationalist party whose millitant wing  was willing to lay down arms without preconditions and let the party leaders join in the process of writing a new constitution.   Long jailed lawyer and African National Congress leader  Nelson Mandela would have as Vice Presidents ANC activist Tabo Mbeki, who would succeed Mandela as president, and—yes!—that very same F.W. de Klerk.  Finally, instead of setting up a war crimes court, the new government chose to conduct a truth and reconciliation process: tell the world exactly what you did, however horrible, and you’ll be free to build a new South Africa with us. 

Confessing is hard.  Letting go of vengeance is equally hard.  By and large, the process seems to have worked. The new South Africa was made possible by realism and idealism, by mediation, negotiation and diplomacy, plus a willingness to live and work together and a disposition to try and trust one another.  The economics, however, have been a little disappointing. South Africa may be the most prosperous sub-Saharan country, but not all share equally in that GNP.  Some Blacks have become very very rich.  Others are hardly better off than they were under the Boers, which makes for anger.

Alaskans: Beware of the Shell Game

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

A letter to the NYT editor by the President of the Shell Oil Company complains that Shell's plans for Alaska are being “held up by unnecessary litigation and unreasonable federal permitting delays.”

Marvin Odum claims that Shell "is a leader in environmentally superior operations" and asserts that his company  has "prepared one of the most environmentally sensitive and responsible exploration plans ever for offshore Alaska."  Considering the highly insensitive operations of many oil companies, that's not saying much, but Shell's own record suggests that extreme caution is in order.

As one who worked in Nigeria, where Shell’s record is as deplorable as it gets, environmentally and from the point of view of human rights, I urge Alaskans and the federal regulators involved to be extremely careful about working with this company.  Get everything in writing, in detail.  Inspect operations rigorously.  Watch everything and everyone every minute.   Your land could be in danger.  Your water could be in danger.  Your wildlife could be in danger.  And anyone who protests a spill would do well to think twice.

Prominent Nigerian writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa led his Ogoni people in protest against Shell’s ruin of their Niger delta homeland.  Operations were sloppy, and there was at best laughable reparation made to people whose lives were being changed forever.  Instead of taking Shell to task, an oil-corrupted government in Lagos found a way to silence Saro-wiwa and fellow environmental leaders.  They were hanged in Port Harcourt on November 5, 1995.  Finally, in June of this year, and only because a high visibility trial was about to open, the Shell Oil company paid a settlement of $15.5 million to the heirs of those victims, claiming in the process that the company was shelling out purely from the goodness of its corporate heart.  This article gives an idea of the sorts of damning documents that would have got wide circulation had the case actually gone to trial.  Conviction was not unlikely.

As for Nigeria today, militant pirates spawned by oil companies’ corporate greed and negligence continue to plague remaining oil pumping operations in the Niger delta and vast areas of Ogoni land remain infertile due to seepage from supposedly capped oil wells.  

The solution to the “hypocrisy of relying on other countries’ resources” for fuel and energy isn’t to ravage Alaska  and keep on pumping the pet.  The solution is to promote major reductions in energy consumption and to replace as much petroleum-based energy as quickly as possible with clean and renewable energy. 

Meanwhile, should there be excruciatingly careful scrutiny of Shell's plans for Alaska?  Absolutely.

The Dangerous Business of Female Education

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I mentioned the International Islamic University in Islamabad yesterday.  That’s where the latest suicide bombings in Pakistan took place.  Six not five persons were killed.  Three were girls and not by coincidence.  This was not one of those "senseless" incidents.  Here's an interesting Pakistani take on the bombings.

The best way to get an idea of the ambiance at the IIU is to take a look at the university’s website.  Women attend, but it's not really a co-educational institution.  It’s a highly segregated place.  Do a little browsing on the site, and soon you will realize that you are being bombarded with references to “the female wing”  of the IIU.  Naturally there are no references to the “male wing.”  If you find this as irritating as I do, think of similar practices in our own society. For instance, it is quite “normal” for  female high school athletes to be called by the hideous term of, say, the “Elkettes,” while the real teams, the male teams, are always the “Elks,” the nickname that would  apply to the school taken as a whole.

In pictures of classes and activities at IIU, you will note that most of the female students are very heavily veiled, even with no male present (unless the eye of the camera counts).  Only at the highest administrative level is an occasional female faculty member or dean represented with face fully revealed, often in the context of receiving foreign visitors, eg. pandering to the outside world.  

Otherwise the IIU world is male male male.  Male students.  Male teachers.  Male administrators.  Not so different from the way it used to be, not so many decades ago, in  many contexts in the West, for that matter.  Only recently have female faces turned up regularly in leadership roles or even as a good percentage of street crowds.  Re this, I’m going to see that both my sons get copies of the new book by Gail Collins: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.  Being a woman was pretty horrible when I was a kid—and lots of us vowed we’d change things or die trying.  Fortunately, the latter wasn’t needed in our case, but Pakistani girls who want an education and a professional life may be targeted by those who fear social change.    And their schools certainly aren't safe, not even the schools for primary students.

All the above notwithstanding, there is much to be said for the IIU as a way to provide a higher education for girls who would never otherwise be able to obtain a college degree.  As the website photos prove,  there's nothing like equality between the sexes here and the curriculum certainly does not offer anything close to a liberal education, but IIU does signify a step in the right direction.   Above all, the young women who graduate will be able to read the Koran for themselves and do some thinking of their own, which is unlikely to please the village mullahs who accustomed to quoting convenient