Word: westerns
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...clutch of Western countries have put curbs on burqas and niqabs, the full-face veils that leave only a slit for the eyes. The Irish have banned the burqa from classrooms, and in June, the Michigan Supreme Court gave judges the power to direct how witnesses dress for court, after a Muslim woman refused to take off her niqab while testifying. The French, however, have gone beyond practical arguments, saying that face veils don't just gum up processes in courts, surgeries and schools, but are an affront to the republic itself and its traditions of secularism. In 2004, France...
...Iran's women are determinedly political actors, claiming fundamental rights, and deserving our support when they do so. When they risk their lives to claim such rights, what they wear is irrelevant. With Muslim women showing such involvement in basic political struggles, is it too much to hope that Western male leaders will find something more worthwhile to comment on than their clothes...
...customers were peacekeepers, war correspondents and development workers. When fighting started again in 1999, the reporters returned, followed by mercenaries, and then - with the arrival of a second fragile peace after President Charles Taylor's defeat and exile in 2003 - a wild-eyed group of Western carpetbaggers after a quick buck. It was only when Harvard-educated Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won office as Africa's first elected woman head of state in 2005 and promised wholesale reform that the Mamba Point began to welcome what Bsaibes calls "respectables" - executives from multinationals eyeing Liberia for opportunities and, to Bsaibe's delight...
...conduct a reliable census - it has a reformist leader, two ports, rich resources and a history of exporting. In the 1950s, rubber powered economic growth of 8%, second only to Japan that decade. Fixing Liberia should still be a relative cinch. "It's everybody's favorite model," says a Western economist in Monrovia. "If it doesn't work here, it doesn't work anywhere...
...Liberia - the body that oversees the country's recovery - that a company headed by former Justice Minister Philip Banks took out copyright on the new national law code. The U.S. embassy in Monrovia found it had to pay Banks' company $5,000 for its 20 copies, says one Western diplomat; in theory, Liberian courts must do the same. The U.N. panel believes the firm's "grounds for claiming copyright are questionable and ethically dubious." Little wonder that Johnson Sirleaf struggles. "The President's default position is to do the right thing," says the diplomat. "When she makes the wrong decision...