[ExI] LA Times: Rehabbing militants in Saudi Arabia (Meta)

[hkhenson]

At 08:26 AM 1/3/2008, you wrote:
> > If you really want to solve such problems, you need to deal
> > with a really hard issue: how to liberate the women in Islamic
> > culture.  Any ideas?
>
>Provide women in (all) islamic countries with equal and fair
>micro credits to create independent businesses. Microcredits
>are one of the most successful tools to generate family income
>in africa and work wonders in liberating women from oppression.

That's a good suggestion.  Please don't take my further EP analysis 
as any kind of a put down.  I really don't understand the social 
course of liberating women in the direction of them having a lot 
fewer children.

Part of it seems to stem from a drop in the influence of religion, 
which I also don't understand except perhaps it is a side effect of 
going a long time without a major war.  The Irish women did this over 
the last 40 years and I claim that a side effect was to virtually 
eliminate support for the IRA.  Other examples are Italy and Quebec.

>I am sure state officials will do their utmost best to resist such
>interventions (especially in wahabism-INFECTED countries)
>but once government see a source of tax revenues they'll turn
>around. I am pretty sure that if the US, [intensely political
>sneer deleted], invested 1% of what they wasted in the Iraq
>occupation since 1990, the islamic countries would have been
>substantially more democratic by now. There may even would
>have been no need for a "Middle east resource consolidating
>campaign".

I am not so sure about this.  I frankly don't think governments, or 
anyone else, knows enough about humans and societies to be able to do 
something with changing culture and have it work.  People tend to 
*think* they know what will work, but the record has been really 
poor.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_W._Forrester  Forrester's 
work discovered that a lot of social systems have completely counter 
intuitive behavior.

>However I also believe the US does NOT desire empowered
>and rich consumers in poor countries - it would drive up
>commodity prices and wages in third-world countries and that
>would reduce US prosperity. The US depends on widespread
>desperation.

That seems a bit over the top, especially when you consider China.

Keith