Trump and white supremacy are passing phenomena

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Trump is a passing phenomenon

Riad Tabbarah

In the mid-1800s, there was a mass migration to the United States. Although it included Jews and Muslims, the ire of the Protestant American population fell on the Catholics, the majority of migrants, who came from Ireland, Sicily, Poland and other European countries. In the 1850s a major political party (“the Know Nothing Party,” later named the American Party), was established for the single purpose of resisting the migration and naturalization of Catholics. The Catholic Church was accused of demonic practices and the Catholic migrants of being drunkards and criminals not worthy of citizenship. To many they were the spearhead of a conspiracy to change the religion of the country to Catholicism. Violence erupted here and there and tension persisted between the two communities until World War II, when the common enemy became the heathen communist regime of the Soviet Union.

Then John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, was elected president in 1960. He still had to assure the electorate that his faith would not interfere with his decisions as president. “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who also happens to be a Catholic,” he said during his campaign. “I do not speak for my church on public matters – and the church does not speak for me.” Kennedy’s election was heralded as the end of prejudice against Catholics in the United States. Yet, although Catholics have constituted, for some time now, close to a quarter of the American population, no Catholic was elected president since. In fact, almost every president, since independence, has been a white Protestant (Hoover and Nixon were Quakers and Jefferson and Lincoln were of unknown religious belief).

Until 2008, of course, when Barack Obama, the first black president was elected, and Joe Biden, a Catholic, was elected as his vice president. What happened all of a sudden?

It was certainly not that white Americans became racially and religiously more tolerant. It was simply demography. The proportion of the white (and Protestant) population had shrunk drastically during the past several decades.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, the “non-Hispanic white” population, which accounted for almost 90 percent of the population in 1950, at present accounts for around 60 percent. According to official projections, this percentage will fall to under 50 percent within the next 25 years.

The American religious landscape is changing concurrently. According to the most extensive and recent survey on the subject, undertaken by the Public Religion Research Institute during 2016, only 43 percent of those covered by the 101,438 bilingual interviews identified as white and Christian compared to 81 percent in 1976. The fall under 50 percent seems, coincidentally, to have occurred around 2008, the year Obama was elected.

Together with these demographic changes came, of course, a change in social outlook: a greater tolerance for abortions, for LGBTQ rights, for gay marriage, and for a wider acceptance of a multicultural way of life.

More alarming to many, was that the white population was losing its political hegemony. In the presidential election of 2008 Obama received only 45 percent of the white vote and made it to the presidency. In the 2012 he received 41 percent of the white vote and won. This has never happened in the past.

This is when Trump came on the scene. He promised to reverse the march of history, as I wrote last year (The Daily Star, Dec. 7). He was going to rid America of illegal Hispanic migration, build a wall on the border with Mexico, stop Muslims from entering the United States, and, in return, invite white Europeans to come and settle in the United States. He was going to “make America great again,” which was translated by many of his supporters to “make America white again.” For much of the older white population this meant the return to old family values and the more traditional society that they still remembered.

Trump’s election brought into the open the feelings of the alt-right, the neo-Nazis, the anti-Muslims and other white or religious supremacist groups. At a celebration meeting immediately after the elections, one of the leaders of the alt-right, Richard B. Spencer, put the position of the white supremacists most succinctly: “America,” he said, “was, until last generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.” The choice before the whites, he said, was to “conquer or die.”

What happened in the 2016 presidential election was a clear reflection of this white upheaval. First, the percentage of white voters in the total of voters went against the trend. This percentage had been normally declining by 2 to 3 percentage points between presidential elections, that is, every four years. Thus, in 1996 it was 83 percent; it fell to 81 percent in 2000; to 77 percent in 2004; to 74 percent in 2008 and to 72 percent in 2012. In 2016 it reversed the trend and rose to 74 percent. Second, while, as indicated earlier, the first black president received 41 percent of the white vote for his second term, what seemed to be a record low, Hillary Clinton received only 37 percent. (Of the senior’s vote she received 45 percent.) In spite of all this, she had around 3 million votes more than her opponent, but not enough electoral votes to win.

But the march of history cannot be stopped no matter what Trump does. The “wall” will not be built. Even if it were, it will, at best, slow down the immigration from the south but not stop it altogether. The differential rates of natural increase, between whites and nonwhites, and the comparative youthfulness of the nonwhite population, will take care of the rest.

The fertility of the whites (less than 1.8 children per woman) is considerably lower than that of nonwhites, especially that of Hispanics (2.1 children per woman). This has resulted in a natural increase of whites close to nil, compared with a natural increase of 1.4 percent for Hispanics.

The median 

age of the white population is around 42 years, compared with 32 for blacks and 27 for Hispanics.

An older white population with lower fertility means that the decline in its proportion of the total, and in its political clout, will continue in the foreseeable future, and cannot be reversed.

This does not mean that American society or polity will be better; it only means that it will be different.

While extremism will probably never die, the white supremacists brand of it will soon become a minority in a minority, and will disappear, or be largely marginalized. No significant group would be able to claim that America was made by it and for it exclusively, since America will be a country of minorities, a more balanced multicultural society, at least for the foreseeable future. Populist presidential candidates will continue to exist, as they did throughout American history, but will not be carried to the presidency on the votes of white supremacists as was Trump.

To historians, Trump will probably represent the last gasp of the American white supremacy movement. On the other hand, the election of a black or Catholic (maybe Hispanic) president (one dare think a Jew or even a Muslim) will be a clear possibility, not because prejudice would disappear, but because of the new demographic reality.

Riad Tabbarah is a former ambassador of Lebanon to the United States.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on September 26, 2017, on page 7.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2017/Sep-26/420533-trump-is-a-passing-phenomenon.ashx

Destroying Statues تحطيم الأصنام

Aug. 31, 2017

Statues expose American hypocrisy

Riad Tabbarah

Donald Trump was combative at his news conference on Aug. 15. “This week it’s Robert E. Lee,” he said. “I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself where does it stop?”

Destroying statues and monuments has been going on forever. “Instances were recorded in the Bible. Medieval Christians smashed sculptures of Ancient Rome. Spanish conquerors destroyed temples of the Aztecs and the Incas,” says a recent article in the New York Times. More recent is the sensational destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan) in 2001 and the iconoclasm systematically exercised by Daesh (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq.

But getting rid of statues and other relics connected with slavery or the Confederacy in the United States is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, undertaking.

To begin with, their sheer number and widespread distribution over the country is foreboding. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces, 109 public schools named after prominent Confederates, many with large African-American student populations, and more than 700 Confederate monuments and statues on public property throughout the country.

One Confederate monument, the largest section of exposed granite on Earth, presents special difficulties. It is the State of Georgia-sponsored figure of three horsemen, representing Confederate Gens. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, in addition to the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Will it be dynamited in the same way as the Buddhas of Bamiyan?

But there is something more disturbing in what Trump said; something that Americans have desperately tried to ignore in their history. Until late in the past century, most American history books gave a polished picture of the founding fathers and the democracy they created. It took a new generation of American revisionist historians, led by Howard Zinn and his “People’s History of the United States,” to bring the naked truth out. It was followed by a slate of books with titles like “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and “Why American History is Not What They Say.” Thus Trump’s question opened a wound that most Americans prefer to keep under rap.

Of the first 12 presidents of the United States, 10 owned slaves while in office. The four largest slave owners among them (by approximate number of slaves) were; Thomas Jefferson, the principle drafter of the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal” – at 600, George Washington – to Americans “the father of our country” – at 317 (practically all acquired by his own toil since he inherited only 10 from his father), Andrew Jackson – who was also accused of being a slave trader – at 200 and James Madison – the principal writer of the U.S. Bill of Rights and the first Ten Amendments of the Constitution – at 100.

Andrew Jackson, the father of the populist “Jacksonian democracy,” was also the most ferocious fighter against the native Indians. He burned and razed scores of Indian villages, often with their inhabitants in them, to force the Indians away from their land in the south east, to west of the Mississippi River. In 1832, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall issued a court decision against the removal of the Cherokee Indians. Jackson refused to implement it retorting: “John Marshall has made a decision, now let him enforce it.” In 1830, Jackson signed the “Indian removal act,” which forced what remained of the Cherokee Indians in the east to start a long march westward, which they called the “Trail of Tears.” Four thousand of the 15,000 who took the journey died of hunger, disease or exhaustion.

Arthur Schlesinger, as most who wrote about Jackson prior to the 1990s, ignored this crucial aspect of Jackson’s life in his classic book “the Age of Jackson” (1945), but admitted his “mistake” years later when working in the Kennedy White House.

Thomas Jefferson’s main real estate, Monticello, was the home of both agricultural production and industrial undertakings. One of the latter was a nail factory, which apparently was extremely profitable. This factory depended largely on slave children ages 10 to 12 years. These little children were often whipped to increase their productivity. This was discovered by the historian Edwin Betts in the 1950s when doing research on the plantation. Betts decided to hide this fact, apparently because of the implicit taboo placed on such revelations at the time.

“Betts’s omission,” wrote Henry Wiencek in the Smithsonian Magazine in 2012, was important in shaping the scholarly consensus that Jefferson managed his plantations with a lenient hand.” In his autobiography Jefferson wrote: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people [the black slaves] are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.” This part of his statement was deleted from the quotation embedded in Jefferson’s monument.

Abraham Lincoln was, as we all know, “the Great Emancipator.” His Emancipation Proclamation issued in 1862 was actually a threat to the slave states fighting against the Union, that their slaves will be declared free if they continued their war. Slave states that did not go to war could keep their slaves. As a result, 10 states were declared slave free while five were permitted to keep their slaves. Zinn quotes the London Spectator: “The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.” Lincoln spent all his political life with doubts about the equality between the races. During his presidential campaign in southern Illinois, he once proclaimed: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.” He was thus echoing the position of Jefferson above, and of practically all other founding fathers.

So why should the statue of Jefferson Davis be downed, while that of Andrew Jackson remain? Is a slave owner and slave trader who killed Indians savagely and indiscriminately like Jackson more worthy of having iconic statues of him on public property than a General like Lee who fought on the side of maintaining slavery? Did anyone ask the Native Americans? If judged, as they should be, on the totality of their lives, they all have made major contributions to their country. Everyone knows the contributions made by George Washington in the war of independence, Jackson in the decisive battle of New Orleans and Jefferson’s contribution to democratic principles; but few know, for example, that Jefferson Davis had served as a congressman and a senator, and that he was widely acclaimed as a war hero of the American Mexican War.

The New York Times argues that the Confederate leaders did not work to promote the Union but attempted to divide it and, therefore, their statues and icons should go. This is true, for in the end, it is the winner of the war who determines who is good and who is evil, and whose statues represent the former and whose represent the latter.

Riad Tabbarah is the author of the book “America and Freedoms: an Historical View” (in Arabic) from which some of the information for this article is taken.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on August 31, 2017, on page 7.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2017/Aug-31/417782-statues-expose-american-hypocrisy.ashx

Temporary Solutions in Syria Benefit the neighbors حلول مرحلية في سوريا لصالح الجوار

الثلاثاء 18 تموز 2017

حلول مرحلية في سوريا قد تكون لصالح دول الجوار

رياض طبارة 

English summary at end 

مفاوضات جنيف الأخيرة، إذا لم تخُنّي الذاكرة، هي الجولة السادسة لجنيف أربعة، وكانت لتُسمّى جنيف تسعة لولا أنّ ستافان دي مستورا، المبعوث الخاص لأمين عام الأمم المتحدة لسوريا، شعرَ بالحرَج مسبقاً، فقرّر أن يعتبر كلّ ما يجيء من اجتماعات بعد جنيف أربعة «جولات» من ضمن جنيف أربعة، وقد وصَل العدّ إلى ستّ جولات، على أن تُعقد الجولة السابعة، أي ما يعادل جنيف 10، على الأغلب في أيلول المقبل.
إستلم دي مستورا المهمة في تموز سنة 2014 بعد استقالة الأخضر الإبراهيمي.

فبين حزيران 2012 عندما عقِد اجتماع جنيف واحد وحتى استلام دي مستورا المهمة، لم يُعقد سوى اجتماع ثانٍ هو جنيف إثنين. ولكن بعد استلام دي مستورا المهمّة تكثّفَت الاجتماعات إلى أن وصلت خلال السنوات الثلاث الماضية إلى سبع اجتماعات، فشلَت كلّها في إحراز أيّ تقدّم نحو حلّ الأزمة السورية بل، بحسب البعض، أحرزَت تراجعاً بالنسبة لقرارات جنيف 2 ألتي وضعت مبادئ للحل.

هذا الفشل مرَدُّه إلى أنّ دي مستورا يعقد الاجتماعات، الواحد تلوَ الآخر، دون أيّ أمل مسبَق في إحراز تقدّم، حتى فقَد الناسُ الثقة بفعاليتها. لا شكّ في أنّ اللاعبَين الأساسيَين الذين باستطاعتهما إحراز تقدّم في المفاوضات اليوم هما الولايات المتحدة وروسيا، ولذلك لا تقدّم حقيقياً في المفاوضات دون حدّ أدنى من التوافق بينهما.

بدأ التدخّل الروسي العسكري في سوريا في أيلول سنة 2015، بعدما فشلت إيران والميليشيات التابعة لها في حماية النظام. أرادت روسيا موطئ قدمٍ في الشرق الأوسط فجاءت الحرب السورية مفصّلةً على القياس.

لذا سرعان ما أنشأت روسيا قواعد عسكرية، بحرية (بتوسيع قاعدة طرطوس الصغيرة) وبرّية وجوّية وعَقدت اتفاقاً طويل الأمد مع الحكومة السورية يؤمّن لها البقاءَ غير المحدود في البلاد.

لم تحرّك أميركا بقيادة الرئيس باراك أوباما ساكناً، وظلّ الرئيس أوباما ينظّر بأنّ الروس سيغرقون في وحول سوريا حتى سيطروا على معظم ما يسمّى سوريا المفيدة.

سياسة أميركا اليوم في سوريا تختلف تماماً عن سياستها في عهد أوباما. الخطوط العريضة التي ظهرت حتى اليوم هي أنّها تعتبر أنّه ليس من المرغوب فيه أن توكلَ محاربة داعش والقاعدة في سوريا إلى إيران، لأنّ مِثل هذه الحرب ستنتهي بحرب أخرى مذهبية.

ألبديل بالنسبة للأميركيين هو تحالف سنّي في المنطقة تكون رأس الحربة فيه المملكة العربية السعودية، بالتعاون مع دول الخليج الأخرى ومصر ولربّما أيضاً تركيا.

الأهمّية التي تعطيها إدارة ترامب لهذه السياسة وهذا التحالف ظهرَت في أنّ أوّل زيارة للخارج قام بها ترامب كانت للسعودية حيث التقى القيادات السعودية وقيادات الخليج ورؤساء الدول الإسلامية ما عدا إيران.

بالنسبة لإيران سياسة إدارة ترامب، التي يساندها الكونغرس، هي في زيادة الضغوطات الاقتصادية عليها لإجبارها على فتحِ ملفات المنطقة التي تَعتبر أميركا أنّ لإيران يداً سلبية فيها، كالعراق، وسوريا، واليمن ولبنان، ليكون حلّها الشرط الأساسي لعودة إيران الكاملة إلى المجتمع الدولي.

هذا المخطط الأميركي أمامه عقبات كبيرة يجب تذليلها، ليس أقلّها إقناع روسيا بالتخلّي عن إيران، وإقناع إيران بالتالي بفتح الملفات المذكورة وعدم التدخّل في الحروب القائمة في المنطقة. وبصرفِ النظر عمّا إذا كان هذا المخطط سينجَح بالكامل، أو حتى جزئياً، فإنّ العمل على تحقيقه يعني أنّ الحلّ النهائي للمشكلة السورية، الذي يتطلب اتفاقاً أميركياً روسياً، ما زال بعيد المنال.

أقصى ما يستطيع الطرفان تتحقيقَه في هذه الأثناء هو اتفاقات تكتيكية مرحلية تهدف إلى خفضِ التوتر في بعض المناطق وفرضِ وقفٍ للقتال في البعض الآخر، كما بدأ يحصل في جنوب غرب سوريا ومناطق أخرى. مِثلُ هذه الاتفاقات بالنسبة لروسيا تُخفّف من إمكانية الغرَق في الوحول السورية التي لا يَسمح اقتصادها المتردّي به، كما يعطي للولايات المتحدة مجالاً لإيجاد حلّ لا يتطلب خسارات كبيرة لها، مادية أو بشرية.

ولعلّ الرابح الأكبر من هذه الاتّفاقات المرحلية، التي ستؤسّس لأماكن آمنة داخل سوريا، إضافةً إلى السوريين أنفسِهم، ستكون الدول المحيطة التي تعاني من تخمةٍ في أعداد اللاجئين السوريين فيها، وعلى رأسها لبنان. غير أنّ هذا يتطلب مقاربة عقلانية للموضوع والابتعادَ عن الحلول الشعبوية أو العاطفية التي لا تجدي نفعاً. فالعودة يجب أن تكون طوعية وآمنة، بحسب القوانين الدولية.

ولكي تكون كذلك فهناك شروط يجب أن تتوفّر. كي تكون العودة طوعية من الضروري أن يعاد اللاجئ إلى بلدته، أو على الأقلّ إلى مكان آمِن مؤقّت يوفّر له الأمان والطمأنينة. ولكي يكون المكان آمناً فيجب أن تكون هناك ضمانات بأنّ النظام، أو الميليشيات المنتشرة، لن تشكّلَ خطراً على حياة العائدين أو أمانهم.

هذه الضمانات لا تستطيع أن تعطيَها بشكل فعّال سوى الأمم المتحدة، بمشاركة حقيقية ومسؤولة من قبل العملاقين 

الأميركي والروسي. وهذا سيشكّل التحدّي الأكبر للسياسة الخارجية اللبنانية

 Summary:

Temporary Solutions in Syria May be to the Benefit of the Neighboring Coutries

The latest Geneva meeting on Syria should be called Geneva 9 were it not for the decision of Staffan de Mistura to call all meetings after Geneva 4 “rounds” within the latter.

Between 2012 and until July 2014, when de Mistura became the represenstative of the Secretary-General of the UN to Syria, only two Geneva meetings were held. Since then something around eight were held with no breakthroughs of any sort. The problem is that de Mistura holds meeting after another without any expectation of movement. Such a movement requires an understanding between the two superpowers on the ground, Russia and the United States, and this does not seem to have ripened yet.

The military failure of the Syrian regime, even after Iran interfered, offered a golden opportunity for Russia to intervene. Russia had been looking for a foothold in the Middle East since Putin took over. What helped Russia was the paralysis of the American foreign policy during the Obama era. Russia now has a number of military bases in Syria and a long term treaty with the government permitting it to stay virtually forever.

The new American policy, on the other hand, is to push Iran aside. The reasoning behind this is  that, using Shiite Iran to fight Sunni Daesh and al Qaeda, in a majority Sunni country like Syria, would likely end up in a sectarian conflict. Therefore, the U.S. should form a Sunni alliance for this task, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, assisted by the Gulf countries, Egypt and perhaps also Turkey. This American plan explains the visit of Trump to Saudi Arabia to meet there also with the leaders of the Gulf countries and the leaders of Muslim countries minus Iran.

But whether this plan succeeds or not, in the interim period the best the two superpowers could do is to create safe zones to reduce the dangers of falling into the quagmire of Syria.  These safe zones will permit the partial and gradual return of Syrian refugees from the neighboring countries. Lebanon, that has the largest number per capita, will be the first to benefit.

But the Lebanese politicians have to stop approaching the situation in an emotional and populist fashion. The return of refugees has to be safe and that could be done only under the auspices of the United Nations, and the guarantees of the two superpowers. This is where the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs should direct its efforts.

Lebanese Women

Jul. 12, 2017

Lebanese women a vulnerable group?

Riad Tabbarah

There are obviously a number of issues to be resolved regarding the rights of Lebanese women, such as their right to give their children the Lebanese nationality, their right for a fair representation in the political process, and other such important issues. But this is not what I wish to discuss in this article. What I wish to discuss is, actually, some of the unheralded achievements of Lebanese women in many areas of development, in particular in the areas of education and the work force. These successes remain not widely understood, nor fully appreciated. The reason, I believe, is not the lack of information, statistical or otherwise, but because of a persistent misinterpretation of available information. Here are some examples.

Many writers point out that illiteracy among Lebanese women (around 8 percent) is twice as high as among men, and that this indicates a social bias against women. While the statistics may be correct, their interpretation is misleading. This gender gap in overall illiteracy rates reflects actually an even greater gap in favor of men among older people, but it describes, partly at least, a past situation. It does not apply to the younger population. Among the young (15-24 years), for example, illiteracy is virtually non-existent for both sexes. Therefore, as the older generation is replaced by the new one, illiteracy will naturally disappear among the population as a whole, men and women. This process has been going on for some time. Overall illiteracy rate before the Civil War was 25 percent for women and 10 percent for men.

Not only do young Lebanese girls enjoy a near-complete literacy as Lebanese boys, their enrollment rates at intermediate, secondary and university levels in Lebanon now surpass that of boys. Almost 60 percent of persons graduating from universities in Lebanon in the past couple of years were women.

The same thing is true of the participation of Lebanese women in the work force. It is often claimed that women are not entering the labor force in sufficiently large numbers. The economic activity rate of women in Lebanon increased only from 17 percent in 1990 to 25 percent in 2015, a very modest advance in 15 years. But here again, the statistics are valid but the interpretation is not. The main reason for the slow growth in the participation of Lebanese women in the labor force is that the young among them are entering educational institutions in much greater numbers than before. Indeed, for the 15-19 age group, participation in the labor force has actually diminished, not increased, during this period, because more girls are opting to go to schools and universities at this age than joining the work force. In return, among the post-university age group 25-29 years, participation in the labor force actually jumped from 26 to 44 percent in the same period, a very healthy increase. What this means, is that, as the entry into the school system approaches saturation, the rise in economic participation of women will accelerate substantially and naturally. There are also an increasing number of Lebanese women working abroad, mostly in the Gulf countries, who are not included in these statistics.

We often hear that the average salary of women is, nationally, lower than that of men. This “gender pay gap” exists, of course, in most countries in the world, including the most advanced, and has been presumed by some researchers to reflect a “gender pay bias” and the existence of a “glass ceiling” that confronts women in their career advancement. The “gender pay gap” in Lebanon is significantly wider than it is in Western Europe or North America.

But does this gap really reflect bias against women in the labor market? On the basis of extensive research that has been undertaken on the subject around the world, but meagerly in Lebanon, the answer is: most probably not. First, as in most countries, men’s work is concentrated in fields that have, generally, higher remuneration. To eliminate this structural consideration, let us look at a specific field, say, health. Here too, the difference, while less than in the country as a whole, is still significant. The reason, very succinctly, is that most nurses are women and most doctors are men. When only doctors are considered, the gap narrows again but remains nevertheless. Looking at the situation in one major hospital, it became clear that one of the basic reasons for the gender pay gap among medical doctors was the fact that male doctors had, on average, much more seniority, up to 30 years at times, than female doctors, due to the relatively recent entry of women into the medical profession.

Will the “gender pay gap” disappear completely if all the above factors are taken into account, that is, if women enjoyed the same occupational structure as men and the same seniority? Almost, but not totally, judging from the fact that some gap still exists in the developed countries where this condition is largely satisfied. An article in the New York Times, published last May, entitled “The major cause of the gender pay gap: Motherhood” explains that, on the basis of two recent studies in the United States, motherhood, is the culprit. It causes some women doctors to interrupt their careers because of pregnancy and post-pregnancy period, or forgo job opportunities as they follow their husbands to new places, or even because of employers anticipating these possibilities. At any rate, the remaining gap is relatively small.

In Lebanon studies on the subject are scarce. The two official studies show that the overall “gender pay gap” fell from 27 percent in 1997 to 6 percent in 2007.

The main reason for the narrowing of the “gender pay gap” in Lebanon has been the rush of women into the higher paid labor category officially designated as “specialists,” which includes doctors, pharmacists, engineers, lawyers, university professors and others. Official statistics indicate that, while only 3 percent of working women were classified in this category in 1996, in 2009 some 26 percent of working women had moved into this category and this rate may have actually reached the 30 per cent mark presently, according to credible projections. Actually, the number of women in this category has recently surpassed the number of men, in spite of the fact that the participation of men in the labor force as a whole is some three times that of women.

The judiciary field offers a good example of how Lebanese women are taking charge in some fields traditionally the preserve of men. In 2005 only 30 percent of judges were women. In 2015, 42 percent were women. Considering that more men judges will retire in the near future than women judges because of seniority, and that the number of women in the Institute of Judicial Studies is almost three time the number of men, it is expected that the number of women judges will very soon exceed the number of men.

The United Nations and a number of international institutions often classify women among the vulnerable groups in society, together with children, the elderly and the displaced. Does this apply to Lebanese women? You be the judge.

Riad Tabbarah is the author of the book “Lebanon: Development and Human Problems by the Numbers,” (in Arabic) from which some of the information for this article is taken.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on July 12, 2017, on page 7.

https://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2017/Jul-12/412458-lebanese-women-a-vulnerable-group.ashx

Trump in the crack

 may 30, 2017  

In first trip abroad Trump falls in the crack

Riad Tabbarah

Summary

During his campaign for president, and the first three months of his presidency, Donald Trump was the champion and the main stoker of American Islamophobia. He proposed a total ban on Muslims entering the United States during his campaign and, after becoming president, he tried twice and failed to ban citizens of seven, then six, Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. 

To begin with, Mr. Trump was the first president in the history of the United States who inaugurated his first trip abroad by a visit to a Muslim country, Saudi Arabia.

Although the planning of his May trip have started before April 5, the real work was probably done in the seven weeks that followed that date. It is of course significant that his first trip abroad included three summits in Saudi Arabia, all with leaders of Muslim countries (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries and the countries of the Islamic Cooperation Organization), followed by meetings with NATO and the EU that he had wanted disbanded.

During his campaign for president, and the first three months of his presidency, Donald Trump was the champion and the main stoker of American Islamophobia. He proposed a total ban on Muslims entering the United States during his campaign and, after becoming president, he tried twice and failed to ban citizens of seven, then six, Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. During the campaign, he claimed that, “Muslims hate us ... a tremendous hatred,” and promised to close some mosques. He proposed to implement a database and special identification cards for American Muslims. Saudi Arabia was not spared of course, as it was blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks, with “secret papers” to prove it.

Suddenly, in April of this year, all this changed drastically, and suddenly. This change culminated in the May summits in Saudi Arabia. To begin with, Mr. Trump was the first president in the history of the United States who inaugurated his first trip abroad by a visit to a Muslim country, Saudi Arabia. He authorized the sale of over a billion dollars worth of sophisticated weapons to a state, he had claimed, that masterminded Sept. 11. He thanked “the magnificent Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and assured the world that “this is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations. ... This is a battle between Good and Evil.”

What happened? Are we seeing Trump 1.0 morph into Trump 2.0, a completely different software? In a sense, the answer is yes. This is why.

Trump, it is well known, has no doctrine on foreign affairs and, indeed, has very scant knowledge of the political world and its complications. His mentor during the presidential campaign was Stephen Bannon who sees history as a struggle between Islam and Christianity. Bannon believes that past Christians understood the nature of this conflict and managed to stop the spread of Islam in Poitiers, France. But the present Judeo-Christian civilization has failed in this respect, as evidenced by the spread of Islam in Europe. Bannon is also an anti-globalist, actually, a “nationalist” who created the isolationist slogan of “America First” and advocated the breakup of NATO, the EU and the multilateral trade agreements. Trump was so impressed by his mentor, he not only adopted his slogans, he appointed him as his strategic adviser and as member of the Principals Committee (regular attendees) of the National Security Council (NSC) team.

Bannon became soon in conflict with the globalists inside Trump’s administration, a group which included, among others, the NSC head, Gen. H.R. McMaster, the Secretary of Defense James Mathis and the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In direct contrast with Bannon and his cronies, this group of more sober officials had openly advocated rapprochement with the Sunni Arab states in the Middle East to combat Daesh (ISIS) and the Nusra Front, and the strengthening of NATO and the EU. In April, the balance of power tilted toward this latter group. Bannon and his allies had gotten Trump in trouble with the failed proposal of a ban on citizens of Muslim majority countries entering the U.S. and also on the failed repeal of Obamacare. More important, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the husband of his favorite daughter Ivanka, dropped his support for Bannon and joined the generals. So on April 5, Bannon was removed from the NSC, and otherwise sidelined.

As a result, “America First” and its isolationist underpinnings receded to the background. On the recommendation of the generals, 59 Tomahawk missiles struck Syria on April 7, two days after Bannon was banished. A MOAB bomb, the biggest non-nuclear device in the U.S. arsenal, and never used before, was dropped on Nangarhar province, a remote rebel area in Afghanistan, just a week later. Although the planning of his May trip have started before April 5, the real work was probably done in the seven weeks that followed that date. It is of course significant that his first trip abroad included three summits in Saudi Arabia, all with leaders of Muslim countries (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf countries and the countries of the Islamic Cooperation Organization), followed by meetings with NATO and the EU that he had wanted disbanded.

This was a dizzying change in foreign policy for a democracy. Such a change may happen after a seismic event like Sept. 11, but this time it was due to a change in the ideology of the group, within the administration, that controlled the mind of the president. Indeed not unlike a change of software.

But a change from a basically isolationist doctrine to a globalist one comes with a price. Trump’s “alt-right” and other white supremacist supporters, elected him because he was going to make America white again. The Christian Right supported him, in spite of his divorces and womanizing, because he was going to ban Muslims from coming and make America Christian again. The “nationalists” supported him because he was going to have an inward-looking realist policy, which does not waste time and resources on international development or military adventures. And many supported him because he was going to turn history around and stop cultural integration. To please these groups, he toughened his stance toward the end of his trip when it came to the meetings with the NATO and G-7 partners. He declared Germany as “very bad” for having a big trade surplus with the United States. He emphasized the failure of some NATO members to pay 2 percent of their respective GDPs, the set minimum payment, toward the budget of the organization. In a speech in front of a Sept. 11 and Article 5 Memorial at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, he refused to affirm commitment to Article 5, which stipulates that the NATO allies will come to the help of any member under attack when it is invoked. (Ironically, Article 5 was invoked only once, on the occasion of the Sept. 11 attack). And in a tour of NATO headquarters, he, at one point, rudely shoved the Prime Minister of Montenegro to the side in order to take a place in front of all the other leaders.

But neither Trump’s shifting toward the globalists at the beginning of his trip win him support among liberals, nor did the theatricals at the end of his trip stop the decline in the support of his core groups. His already low approval ratings fell significantly during May, according to most polls. In attempting to satisfy both sides, he apparently fell in the crack.

Riad Tabbarah is a former ambassador of Lebanon to the United States.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on May 30, 2017, on page 7.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2017/May-30/407698-in-first-trip-abroad-trump-falls-in-the-crack.ashx