#2
We cannot make progress in Afghanistan through
a war of attrition or a war of exhaustion. As I have
said and will continue to say, time is on their side. In an insurgency, all the insurgents have to do is not lose.
The concern should be that this apparently an insight not generally shared.
Humor goes where others fear to tread.
Click the link for some of her work.
For Saudi Arabia's lone female cartoonist drawing is more than just satire, it's "a duty."
"I think men have put women in an unfavorable position in this part of the world. They've put women in an oppressive situation," said Hana Hajjar, who works for the English-language newspaper Arab News.
"I feel it is my duty towards women to speak out on their behalf, because I have the tools and venue to do so," she told CNN.
Hajjar's drawings both challenge gender roles and critique political policy, often depicting inequality between the sexes and support for the Palestinian people, but she is careful not to push too far.
"I like to draw thought-provoking and argument-provoking caricatures. I like to see how much I can push people to think, but am mindful never to cross societal red lines," she said.
For a woman in the conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be dealing with such issues represents a significant break in cultural convention.
"The general attitude in Saudi about caricaturists is that women don't have the stamina and inspiration to last long in this field, unlike their male counterparts," Hajjar explained, adding that luckily her parents had always been supportive of her career.
"Caricature is regarded as a man's profession, which has discouraged women in the past from entering the field but I hope my presence is a dent in that armor and will open up the path for others."
Over the past five years, Saudi society has made some modest progress toward greater gender equality. There are now a handful of prominent women sitting in the Chamber of Commerce, working in the media and there is even a woman in government, the Deputy Minister of Education. Hajjar has one female colleague at the newspaper where she works.
Nonetheless social change is slow and resistance is strong. The opening of an elite new university in September caused uproar for offering mixed-gender classes and allowing women to drive on the campus.
Hajjar herself said she has never felt repercussions from the government or society in the five years she has been working professionally, but noted that since she works in an English-language newspaper she feels she is less subjected to censorship.
"People who read the newspaper I work for are either foreigners or come from the upper middle class in Saudi, and so I haven't gotten much negative reaction."
When a cartoon is rejected Hajjar typically publishes it on her personal Web site anyway: HanaHajjar.com
The youngest of nine children, Hajjar grew up constantly caricaturing everything around her. She drew her first political cartoon at the age of 12 and since then has received the support of her parents and siblings.
"My father was very interested in reading. He wrote satirical articles [though never published] and he constantly encouraged me to read the newspapers and always be up-to-date."
Hajjar first realized she could turn her talent into an actual career when she submitted her drawings to a competition organized by the Medina municipality. Although she didn't win because her submission was late, her school honored her for her outstanding work.
After winning a caricature competition years later, "Arab News" offered her the job she currently has.
Today Hajjar hopes that more Arab women will take up caricaturing. She has taught classes to others, but so far none have persevered.
"When I get feedback from women readers that tell me my caricatures express exactly what they are thinking I feel immense satisfaction. It means I am doing my job properly, expressing things others can't."
"I adore what I do and don't think of it as just a job. It is what I breathe, it is intrinsic to my being."
#3
A dissenter and nonconformist in a place where dissent and nonconformity can actually get you killed by the state. She has more courage in her fingernails than the whole Olbermann/Maddow/Dowd/Rall/etc. crowd put together.
Posted by: Mike ||
10/29/2009 11:52 Comments ||
Top||
#4
I looked, she's pretty good.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/29/2009 14:37 Comments ||
Top||
#5
authorities will be tracking visits to her site ... she's valuable to them re: interior security monitoring so they haven't shut her down.
#1
And replace it with what?
Barter?
Two chickens for a Gallon of milk and a pound of Butter( Or two pounds of Margarine)?
the article deftly doesn't say, just a DOOOOOM piece.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
10/29/2009 14:36 Comments ||
Top||
My apologies if this is a re-post, as it was first published two days ago. But I didn't see it up here on Rantburg and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed. So felt it deserved some exposure.
A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network.
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all of those things and more.
Whats remarkable is what hasnt happened. These episodes havent become metaphors for Obamas personal and political character or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda...
If Medicare were a bank, federal regulators would be closing its doors, selling its operations and sacking its managers. Thanks to soaring costs, the program is fast running out of money -- even though it pays such low fees that many doctors refuse to take Medicare patients. Meanwhile, Medicare fraud costs taxpayers some $60 billion a year, according to a report by CBS's "60 Minutes," making it among the most profitable fields for felons.
That's our experience with government-run health insurance for the elderly. So what do congressional Democrats propose to do? Offer government-run health insurance to everyone else.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid capitulated to his party's more liberal elements when he said he will insist that health care legislation include a "public option" -- a government insurance plan -- to bring "meaningful reform to our broken system." But deploying a version of Medicare to repair the status quo is like using a brick to improve a window.
President Obama says it would help consumers by giving private insurers some real competition. But the typical state has 27 companies competing in the small-group health insurance market. If there were insufficient competition, the health insurance sector wouldn't rank 86th among American industries in profitability.
Health care plans average profits of just 3.3 percent. In wireless communications, a vigorously contested market, profits are 11 percent. Does Obama think we need a government cell-phone company to compete with Verizon and AT&T?
The proponents also believe that, like Medicare, a new government plan could be run far more efficiently than private firms. Don't make me laugh. Medicare, keep in mind, is going broke. And its alleged efficiencies are illusory or nontransferable.
Health economists Regina Herzlinger of Harvard and Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation note that on a per-person basis, Medicare has higher administrative costs than private firms. They look smaller only because the average Medicare patient uses more services than the average private insurance patient. "Expressing them as a percentage makes Medicare's administrative costs appear lower because they are spread over a larger base of health care costs," write Book and Herzlinger.
A "public option" might duplicate one of Medicare's means of saving money: limiting reimbursements to doctors and hospitals to far less than what private insurers pay. But 19 health-care organizations that support reform, including the Mayo Clinic, explained the flaw in that approach.
"Under the current Medicare system, a majority of doctors and hospitals that care for Medicare patients are paid substantially less than it costs to treat them," they said in an open letter to Congress. "Many providers are therefore already approaching a point where they can not afford to see Medicare patients." Last year, the government's Medicare Payment Advisory Commission reported that 29 percent of recipients who were looking for a primary care physician had trouble finding one.
Skimpy reimbursements lower Medicare's costs. But if a new government-run plan tries the same trick, it will have trouble attracting providers and therefore patients. If it pays the same rates as private insurers, on the other hand, it will lose that big competitive edge.
Fortunately for disciples of government expansion, the "public option" insurance has other advantages. Obama insists it will have to cover all its costs. Oh, really? When Medicare Part B (which pays doctor bills) was set up in 1966, premiums paid by retirees were supposed to cover 50 percent of its outlays. Instead, Congress limited rate increases so that before long, premiums were covering just 25 percent of the bills, a practice later written into law.
If the Washington-run plan charges too little to pay its expenses, will it raise rates, thus antagonizing what could be a sizable group of voters? Or will Congress cough up the money to keep it going? You know the answer.
In the end, the key to the success of this program, writes Cato Institute analyst Michael Cannon, is that "government possesses both the power to hide its true costs (which keeps its premiums artificially low) and to impose costs on its competitors (which unnecessarily pushes private insurance premiums higher)." Private insurers will be "competing" against a team that gets to write the rules, run the draft and hire the referees.
With those artificial advantages, the public option could eventually become the only option. If that happens, a lot of Americans will be surprised. But I suspect Harry Reid and Barack Obama will not be among them.
#1
Hijab-wearing mole number two, Christine Brim, is senior vice president for
policy and program management at the Center for Security Policy. She was asked
to leave the event after being observed surreptitiously recording the banquet
speeches, despite earlier being given legal notice that such recordings were
prohibited. Instead of speaking to security personnel, Brim immediately fled
to the hotel's exit. (CAIR's dinner was an open event with media present.
Unauthorized recordings are prohibited only to prevent abuse by those who
have, in the past, sought to smear the speakers by distorting their words.)
Free speech for me, not for thee. He's not only a hypocrite, but a f*cking liar as well.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
If Medicare were a bank, federal regulators would be closing its doors, selling its operations and sacking its managers. Thanks to soaring costs, the program is fast running out of money -- even though it pays such low fees that many doctors refuse to take Medicare patients. Meanwhile, Medicare fraud costs taxpayers some $60 billion a year, according to a report by CBS's "60 Minutes," making it among the most profitable fields for felons.
