RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was not solely 1400 years ago that a little girl named Aisha married a 55-year-old man, although Muslims, their scholars, Sheiks and Imams argue to the contrary. Tens of thousands of “Aishas” are being forced to marry elder man on a daily basis under the name of Islam in Muslim nations in the 21st century. No one is even raising an eyebrow. For example, according to the latest reports from Persian news outlets, the number of the child marriages has been dramatically increasing in the Islamic Republic. According to the Students’ News Agency and Radio Farda, these marriages include girls under 10 years old.

On the other hand, the hypocritical politicians in the Islamist regime of Iran point out that there is gender equality in Iran and that Islam respects both women and men. For example, recently, Shahindokht Molaverdi, the Islamic Republic’s vice president for women and family affairs who led a delegation to the United Nations in New York, lied to the international community in stating that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has always had the empowerment of women and improving their status…on its agenda.”

What is also hidden by the ruling clerics, and from most of the reports, is the fact that the notion of forcing a child girls into marriage is encouraged in Iran. In addition, the groom is normally a much older man. These children are forced to sleep with their older male husbands on the first night of the marriage so that the family of the groom can be certain that the child is a virgin.

Many of these girls are forced into marriage due to the fact that their parents want to get rid of their daughters since a girl is considered much more inferior to a man. There exists a plenitude of verses from the Quran and hadiths from Muhammad declaring that women are legally, physically, socially and intellectually inferior to men.

The dear leader of North Korea, Kim Jung Un, threatened to take out New York City with a nuclear weapon. His threat responds to a new round of sanctions imposed by the international community after Pyongyang’s most recent nuclear test. Kim might be posturing—more than a little. Still there is every reason to take seriously the chance of waking up one morning in a mushroom cloud.

One of the top analysts of the danger posed by North Korea concludes that the regime has a working long-range ballistic missile that can range U.S. territory and it is more than likely that they can top their weapon with a functioning nuclear warhead. That is not the same, however, as saying Pyongyang could hit New York with a bomb big enough to take out the city.

Still, don’t dance in the streets of Times Square. Kim Jung Un continues to press the development of the regime’s nuclear arsenal. It is only a matter of time before Kim does have a city-killing missile or the ability to destroy the U.S. nuclear grid with a EMP attack in his hands.

When North Korea gets a weapon that can take out the Big Apple, here is what the results might look like. With a low-altitude explosion with a 10-kiloton weapon “about 50 percent of the energy released by the detonation takes the form of the ‘blast,’ an enormous wave of over pressurized air caused by the nuclear explosion. Within seconds, nearly all of the buildings within a half-mile radius would be destroyed by the concussion from the initial blast. Roughly half of the population within the blast radius would die almost instantaneously from collapsing buildings. Many others, without hope of rescue or aid, would soon die from mortal injuries inflicted by the blast. The blast would turn debris from collapsing buildings into makeshift missiles, extending as far out as 3.5 miles.”

The French see René Descartes, a 17th century philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, as the truest expression of their national mind. I am afraid they are right.

Descartes rejected authority in intellectual life and insisted on reconstructing knowledge on plain sense and strict reasoning, hence his famous motto, cogito ergo sum (“I think and therefore I am”). However, he also disdained experience as long as it could not be boiled down into logical and mathematical terms. This approach, so much at odds with the empirical and pragmatic approach favored in the Anglo-Saxon world, is indeed a hallmark of French culture — including politics.

The French elites relish in abstract, “élégant,” symmetrically organized concepts; they have problems with hard, rough, irregular facts. And should it come to pass that facts do not fit with concepts, they would rather ignore the former than question the latter. Even if major aspects of reality are being denied in the process, and the concepts themselves turned into inert dogmas or voided of any meaning.

Such a tendency was worrisome enough in the past, as some of the greatest French authors or thinkers realized, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Hippolyte Taine to Marc Bloch. It grew into an intractable problem after 1945, when France was reorganized as a statist nation, and a new administrative elite, engineered and trained by meritocratic academic institutions like Sciences Po (Political Science Schools), Ecole Normale Superieure (the Higher School for Education), and above all, Ecole nationale d’Administration (National School of Administration) engulfed the political class. Admission to ENA — through competitive examination — and graduation from ENA depend largely on mastering the required conceptual framework and never departing from it.

When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger, and said he would not obey the supreme court’s ruling.

Turkish courts, controlled by Erdogan’s government, put the newspaper Zaman, one of the last remaining media critics of Erdogan, under state control. A court actually appointed administrators to run the newspaper. Editor-in-chief Sevgi Akarcesme said that this was effectively the end of media freedom in Turkey.

Turkey ranks 149th amongst the 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2015.

Quite realistically, Nigel Farage, a British opposition figure, accused Turkey of “blackmailing” the EU over the Syrian refugee crisis and its proposed EU membership.

Turkey has been sliding into an ugly Islamist despotism. Yet its relations with the European Union (EU) which it aspires to join has rarely been better. Some call it a mutually “transactional” improvement: “pragmatism.” Others, in less diplomatic language, call it Turkish blackmailing on the back of the refugee crisis. Even Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogu admitted that his latest round of negotiations with Europe’s leaders was a fine bargaining “a la Kayseri,” a Turkish city famous for its tough-bargaining merchants.

In reality, modern Turkey has never been this galactically distant from the core values enshrined by the European civilization and its institutions, including even the EU.

When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger. He said he would not respect or obey the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The journalists had been charged with espionage and terrorism after their secular newspaper, Cumhuriyet, ran photos and a story about Turkish intelligence sending trucks full of arms to jihadists fighting in Syria. Prosecutors demand life sentences for the prominent journalists.