Secularism on the decline in France

PARIS — When 34 percent of surveyed voters admit they agree with the ideas of a political movement that is protectionist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-Euro, France has a problem.

France’s far-right political party, Front National, has surged in popularity over the past year to its highest level in thirty years. Led by European Parliament Member Marine Le Pen, the party has bragged it could win elections in at least 15 cities this year.

In 2011, Le Pen compared Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France. The party is known for railing against the country’s ‘Islamisation’, and calling for expulsions of Roma, a referendum restricting immigration, and a return to the French Franc.

Come May, when elections for the European Parliament are held, the FN party, which is gaining popularity with older French and citizens under 24, could top the list of French political parties. 

To the dismay of moderates — such as socialist parliamentarian Christophe Borgel, and philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who says the French are ‘afraid of everything’ — French political culture and society are fragmenting. 

With mayoral elections one month away, the country’s ruling socialists are worrying about mass abstentions and voters turning to the far right in protest against President François Hollande, who has failed to reduce high unemployment — still stuck at about 11 percent — as he promised.

The appeal of previously fringe political organizations and ideologies is dragging the birthplace of revolution further from national republican ideals. Not only are liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) under threat, but also laicité – the republican value of secularism enshrined in France’s 1905 law separating church and state.

Extreme right figures are pushing for the ‘rechristianization of France’ — erasing the secularism installed since the 1789 Revolution and the 1905 law. Meanwhile, militant Muslims refuse to accept national laws such as the ban on the burka.

A new IFOP survey shows extremist ideologies are becoming normalized in France, home to Europe’s largest minority population of both Muslims and Jews. Fifty-five percent of French citizens agree with the FN that there are ‘too many immigrants’ and that Muslims have ‘too many rights,’ according to the survey. 

Emboldened by its domestic success, FN has even formed alliances with several far-right parties in other European countries. Alongside Geert Wilders’ Dutch Party for Freedom, the National Front could constitute a new united force in the European Parliament after May.

Yet while more than one third of French voters are lurching towards the far right, there is a concurrent trend towards Islamist extremism.

Sometimes members of the extreme right and Islamic extremists unite. Fundamentalist Muslims have joined forces with ultra-conservative Catholics, some of them staunch FN supporters, to oppose what they claim is the imposition of gender theory in the French primary school curriculum. 

Two Toulouse teenagers traveled to Syria last month to fight jihad, thanks to contacts largely forged through Facebook. Both were devout Muslims — they said their daily prayers and performed regular fasts, according to leaked police and spy service interrogation documents.

Manuel Valls, France’s Interior Minister says up to 700 French zealots have headed to Syria to wage holy war. The jihadists include large numbers of radical young converts to Islam.

There is, however, one ‘middle way’ between these extremes. It is being practiced in the heart of immigrant and Muslim Paris, in the suburban region of Seine-Saint-Denis.

Paprec is a large recycling business employing 4,000 in the area, many of them Muslim. At the behest of owner Jean-Luc Petithuguenin, the company has instituted a ‘‘charter of secularism and diversity’’ in the workplace banning ostensible signs of religion such as the veil, and prohibiting prayer rooms.

‘‘As the head of the company, I believe I am responsible for enforcing social harmony,’’ Petithuguenin told L’Express magazine. ‘‘I am sincerely worried about the rise in religious fundamentalism, especially in France.’’

‘‘In our organization there are people who have suffered enormously from religious conflicts…and a certain number of our staff want to be protected from fundamentalist pressures,’’ he added.

The chief executive said some female employees fear they will be pushed into wearing the Muslim headscarf or head and body-covering veil if others are permitted to do so.

Despite the toughness of the charter, it has been unanimously backed by staff and unions.

‘‘I am fine with being a practicing Muslim but a prayer room at the workplace disturbs me,’’ said Jamal Razzouki, the secretary of the workplace committee at one of Paprec’s sites.

‘‘I do not want people to come to me and say I am not a real believer because I practice my faith only in private.’’

Some researchers and Muslim community leaders say this is good practice and protects all workers from pressure to be religious in the workplace, while on the other hand taking away excuses for extreme right sympathizers and racists to inflame religious and ethnic tensions.

Isabelle Barth, director of the Strasbourg School of Management and author of the book Management and Religion, said charters on religion in the workplace ‘‘often served to protect the silent majority who reconcile very well work and faith from the lobbying of a handful of others.’’

But Paprec’s landmark charter could find itself annulled under French law, which protects workers in the private sector from attacks on their personal rights and liberties.

This would be a shame, Paprec’s CEO Petithuguenin believes, because there is a uniquely French ‘laicque’ — secular —way of managing tensions in a society with scores of nationalities and religions.

A decade ago, former French President Jacques Chirac made international headlines for enforcing a ban on the Muslim headscarf and veil in schools. The controversial law was remarkably smoothly implemented, with only a very small number of Muslims withdrawing their children from the public system.

Today there are new initiatives designed to reinforce the veil ban, such as the controversial charter of school secularism, brought in under the socialist government, which states that ‘laicité’ is a fundamental value and principle of the republic. Analysts said the measure was aimed at fending off parental pressure for sex-segregated classes and Halal food, and as a riposte to some students’ rejection of secular teaching methods, sex education and the teaching of evolution. 

The question is whether such initiatives will be enough to stop the society from fracturing, or if it will increase community tensions by making Muslims feel unfairly targeted.

The Paprec case shows that a large number of of French Muslims favor the commitment to secularism.

Europe is battling a wave of often-violent anti-immigrant sentiment and widespread prejudice against Muslims. It is in need of sensible laws and charters that respect religious differences but also protect the silent majority that does not share the world view of extremists. 

Emma-Kate Symons is a Paris-based writer. Her research on street prayer is funded through a program of the Social Science Research Council and the John Templeton Foundation.

More from GlobalPost: Why India’s leading political party believes Hinduism ‘must prevail’

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/belief/secularism-france-front-national

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Secularism on the decline in France

The United States of Decline

America is unraveling at a stunning speed and to a staggering degree. This decline is breathtaking, and the prognosis is dim.

For starters, Obama now rules by decree. Reportedly for the 27th time, he has changed the rules of Obamacare singlehandedly, with neither congressional approval nor even ceremonial resolutions to limit his actions. Obama needs no such frivolities.

“That’s the good thing about being president,” Obama joked on February 10. “I can do whatever I want.” In an especially bitter irony, Obama uttered these despicable words while guiding French president François Hollande through Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson — a key architect of America’s foundation of limited government.

That very day, Obama decreed that the Obamacare mandate for employers with 50 to 99 workers would be postponed until 2016 (beyond an earlier extension to 2015), well past the November 2014 midterm elections. This eases the pressure on Democrats, whose campaigns would suffer if voters saw their company health plans canceled due to Obamacare’s unnecessary, expensive, mandatory benefits — e.g. maternity coverage for men.

So, by fiat, Obama has postponed the employer mandate. When Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) effectively tried to do this through legislation last fall, Democrats virtually lassoed and branded him.

Also by decree last week, Obama decided unilaterally to soften political-asylum rules. Refugees and other immigrants who provide terrorists “limited material support” now can come to America. So what if someone merely clothed and fed Mohamed Atta or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? After all, garments and meals don’t blow up. Welcome to America, Mustafa!

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is working hard to revoke the asylum of and deport the Romeikes. This evangelical-Christian family was granted refuge in America to escape prosecution for homeschooling their children, which German law forbids.

So, Obama believes, those who are only somewhat helpful to deadly, anti-U.S. terrorists may become Americans, while religiously oppressed homeschoolers who face prison should get the hell out.

The transparent electoral motive that fuels so many of Obama’s executive orders seems unprecedented. The tone is also brand new. Obama’s predecessors have signed executive orders and, more or less, left it at that. But Obama pounds his chest as he does so. As he told Congress at last month’s State of the Union address: “America does not stand still — and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do.”

While appalled Republicans sat on their hands, Democrats stood up and shouted like equatorial, rubber-stamp parliamentarians: “Hooray! We are irrelevant!”

Chilling.

Meanwhile, as the American Enterprise Institute’s Marc Thiessen wrote in the February 10 Washington Post, new Congressional Budget Office figures show that Obamacare will reduce U.S. incomes by $ 70 billion annually between 2017 and 2024. The CBO also estimated that by 2021, Obamacare’s disincentives to hire and incentives not to work would slash labor hours by the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs.

Rather than dispute these figures, key Democrats embraced them.

“We want people to have the freedom to be a writer, to be a photographer, to make music, to paint,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. She added that “people would no longer be job-locked by their [health] policies, but have the freedom to follow their passion.”

So, rather than expand economic growth and jobs, Democrats applaud as Americans stop working — to do watercolors, draft poetry, and take naps — while exhausted taxpayers foot the bill.

Clearly unafraid of Obama, Iranian warships for the first time are steaming toward America’s Atlantic maritime borders. Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps navy commander Ali Fadayi said, “The Americans can sense by all means how their warships will be sunk with 5,000 crews and forces in combat against Iran and how they should find its hulk in the depths of the sea.” Tehran last week also aired fantasy videos of drones blasting a U.S. warship and bombing Tel Aviv. This is how Iran behaves while it negotiates with U.S. diplomats over “peaceful” uranium enrichment?

Nearby, embattled Syrians flee the city of Homs while they and their United Nations protectors dodge incoming mortar shells. This sorry spectacle has exposed Obama’s Syrian policy as a miserable flop. So does the fact that Syrian president Bashar Assad has handed over only 4 percent of the chemical weapons that his deal last September with Obama and Vladimir Putin was supposed to neutralize. According to GOP senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Secretary of State John Kerry privately conceded to them that Obama’s approach in Syria has failed.

America liberated Afghanistan from a regime that hosted al-Qaeda, banned kites and recorded music, and built a bridge to the seventh century. And what thanks does the U.S. get? Over American objections, Afghan president Hamid Karzai last week released 65 Taliban warriors from Bagram prison, where they were being held on suspicion of killing American troops, murdering Afghan civilians, deploying roadside bombs, and otherwise perpetrating mayhem. When U.S. officials complained that these killers could return to the fight — as have other Taliban thugs, once freed — Karzai exploded: “If the Afghan judicial authorities decide to release a prisoner, it is of no concern to the U.S. I hope that the U.S. will stop harassing Afghanistan’s procedures and judicial authority, and I hope the U.S. will now begin to respect Afghan sovereignty.”

For these and many other reasons, Democrats are fleeing Obama.

“I don’t care to have him campaign for me,” said Senator Mark Begich (D., Alaska).

A reelection ad for Representative Joe Garcia (D., Fla.) boasts that “he voted to let you keep your existing health plan, and he took the White House to task for the disastrous healthcare website.”

“He [Obama] is hurting the Democratic brand right now,” veteran Democratic campaign strategist Joe Trippi told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly on February 12. “The Obamacare snafus, his approval rating is declining, and his credibility problems all drag the Democratic brand down.”

Rather than resist an increasingly weak — yet ever more assertive — Obama, GOP congressional leaders hand him whatever he wants. Thus, House speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP chief Mitch McConnell of Kentucky pushed through a $ 1.012 trillion budget with, at best, minuscule and illusory spending cuts. A $ 956 billion farm bill includes $ 3 million to promote Christmas trees (who on Earth would buy them without federal assistance?), $ 100 million for maple-syrup market research, and $ 170 million for catfish protectionism. Boehner and McConnell sent Obama this gift-wrapped monstrosity, which was $ 56 billion higher than Obamacare’s original price tag. And in exchange, Obama gave them . . . zippo!

On February 12, Boehner and McConnell helped send Obama a measure to suspend the debt limit until March 15, 2015. (The debt ceiling was not raised from $ 17.2 trillion to a higher level; it simply was removed. The gas pedal remains in Obama’s Little Red Cor-debt, but the brakes are gone.) This passed the GOP House with Boehner and only 27 Republicans voting yes. The other 194 votes were from Democrats. When McConnell surrendered on cloture, 11 other Republican senators helped Democrats advance their dirty work. The debt ceiling is now a debt sunroof.

And what did Washington’s top two Republicans get for giving Obama 13 months to shop till America drops? Nothing! No repeal of Obamacare’s $ 47 billion bailout of health insurers. No approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. No termination of the cure-killing medical-device tax. No votes on these matters, which would have forced Democrats to choose. This could have helped Republican candidates in November.

Steely resolve could stymie the unpopular and untrustworthy Obama. Sadly, Boehner, McConnell, and other GOP leaders are as firm as foil.

Happy Valentine’s Day! The Senate Conservatives Fund has broken up with House Speaker John Boehner.

“Republicans are giving up because they know that winning is impossible when their leaders are determined to lose,” the Senate Conservatives Fund stated. “These leaders have telegraphed weakness to the Democrats and sabotaged conservative efforts so many times that Republicans now have no leverage.” The group concluded: “John Boehner must be replaced as Speaker of the House. . . . Unless we install a new leader who will actually go on offense, Democrats will never fear us and we will never have any leverage.”

Also, Earth’s sole superpower is sagging where it should be No. 1. America has slouched to No. 12 on the 2014 Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom.

“Now considered only a ‘mostly free’ economy, the U.S. has earned the dubious distinction of having recorded one of the longest sustained declines in economic freedom, second only to Argentina, of any country in the [20-year] history of the Index,” the report states. “The U.S. is the only country to have recorded a loss of economic freedom each of the past seven years.”

Regarding graft, America has stayed stable in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Unfortunately, and as recently as 2013, the U.S. has remained Earth’s 19th most honest country.

Thanks, in part, to Team Obama’s surveillance of journalists from Fox News Channel and the Associated Press, America tumbled 13 spots down Reporters Without Borders’ 2014 World Press Freedom Index. The U.S. dropped this year from No. 33 to No. 46. Hence, 45 nations now have freer journalists than does America. RWB calls America “satisfactory” rather than the top-rated “good.” As the report states: “Amid an all-out hunt for leaks and sources, 2013 will also be the year of the Associated Press scandal, which came to light when the Department of Justice acknowledged that it had seized the news agency’s phone records.”

America is a total mess.

The Land of the Free is governed by an out-of-control egomaniac, neither bolstered by managerial competence nor hindered by the legislature’s institutional prerogatives. In the Home of the Brave, half of Congress cheers Obama’s unconstitutional behavior, while the other half grumbles and then meekly carpet-bombs his path with white flags.

The American people have been betrayed — both by Obama and the Democrats, whose lust for control intensifies daily, and by Republican leaders in Washington, whose cowardice and defeatism have turned their guts and spines into tapioca.

America, as Paul Simon sings, is slip-slidin’ away. And the worst part hasn’t happened yet.

— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

The United States of Decline

Decline in US stock market moderates

Trader John Santiago works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. Stocks are mostly higher on Wall Street as investors shrug off worries about emerging markets that tanked the market last week. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader John Santiago works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. Stocks are mostly higher on Wall Street as investors shrug off worries about emerging markets that tanked the market last week. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Specialist Jason Hardzewicz works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Friday, Jan. 24, 2014. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Shaky economies and currencies in emerging markets are fueling a global sell-off in stocks.

Fearful investors on Monday pushed prices lower across Asia and Europe, though the drops weren’t as steep as last week. In the U.S. and in other rich countries, where economies are healthier, investors are also in retreat, but the selling is not as fierce.

Solid corporate earnings are offsetting fears of a slowing Chinese economy and the ripple effects of reduced stimulus from the Federal Reserve. The Dow Jones industrial average, for example, has fallen 5 percent over the past three days, less than the 8.4 percent drop in Argentina’s Merval index.

KEEPING SCORE: The Dow rose 48 points, or 0.3 percent, at 15,928, lifted by a big jump in Caterpillar’s fourth-quarter earnings. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose two points, or 0.1 percent, to 1,792.

After surging in 2013, both indexes had their worst losses last week since 2012. That has stoked fear that they could be heading for a correction, or a fall of 10 percent or more from a peak. U.S. stocks have not had a correction since October 2011.

The Nasdaq composite on Monday was down 16 points, or 0.4 percent, to 4,111.

OVERSEAS ANGST: Most major European stock markets were lower. Germany’s DAX fell 0.5 percent and France’s CAC-40 declined 0.4 percent. Spain’s benchmark index fell 1 percent. In Asia, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong and the Nikkei in Tokyo each fell more than 2 percent.

Stocks in emerging markets fell, again. The widely followed MSCI Emerging Markets ETF was down 0.7 percent. It has fallen 10 percent so far in 2014 after a nearly 6 percent loss last year.

THE BACKGROUND: The turbulence in emerging markets has been driven partly by signs of an economic slowdown in China, which is a major importer of commodities from other developing countries. But problems elsewhere are playing a role, too.

In Argentina, where inflation is running as high as 30 percent, the peso has collapsed and the government is running short of U.S. dollar reserves it could use to buy its currency and prop it up. In South Africa, a strike by tens of thousands of platinum miners is raising the specter of violence in the streets. And in Turkey, a corruption scandal has destabilized the government and scared investors into selling the currency, the lira.

HOPEFUL SIGNS: Investors were encouraged by a recovery in Turkey’s battered currency Monday. The lira hit a record low of 2.39 per dollar early in the day before recovering to 2.29 per dollar after the country’s central bank said it would hold an emergency policy meeting on Tuesday.

Other emerging market currencies continued to weaken against the dollar. The South African rand fell another 0.6 percent to 11.16 per dollar, and Russia’s ruble fell 0.6 percent to 34.72 per dollar.

In Argentina, the government eased currency controls, announcing Argentines can buy up $ 2,000 per month. The Argentine peso has fallen the most against the dollar in 12 years.

EARNINGS SURPRISES: Caterpillar was the biggest gainer in the Dow, rising $ 4.83, or nearly 6 percent, to $ 91 after the earth-moving equipment maker reported fourth-quarter net income that easily beat analyst estimates. Several companies report results after the market closes Monday, including Apple, Zions Bancorp and Seagate Technology.

THE QUOTE: “Earnings numbers are coming in good, but sales are weak and macroeconomic numbers are lower than expected — new home sales, payroll, industrial production,” said Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities. “We’re overdue for a correction.”

REDUCED FED BOOST: The Fed scaled back its stimulus for the U.S. economy last month as signs of growing economic strength emerged. It reduced its monthly bond purchases to $ 75 billion from $ 85 billion. The dialing back of easy-money policies has hit some emerging markets hard. When the Fed was pushing U.S. rates lower, emerging markets saw capital flowing in from investors hunting for bigger returns than they could get in the United States. Now investment is flowing back to America, and hammering currencies in emerging markets. The Fed meets again Tuesday and Wednesday, and many economists expect the central bank to cut its stimulus further.

AVOIDING RISK: Small-company stocks fell more than the rest of the market, a signal that investors were dumping assets seen as risky. The Russell 2000 index gave up 13 points, or 1 percent, to 1,131. Power and phone companies rose. Investors buy these “defensive” stocks when they want to play it safe and collect a rich dividend.

___

AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report from Washington.

Associated Press

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Decline in US stock market moderates

Red Light Cameras On The Decline, As Everyone Realizes They Don’t Make Roads Safer, They Just Make Money

Tech Dirt – by Mike Masnick

For many years we’ve written about the problems of red light cameras. Installed over the past few years in many cities, the public statements supporting them were always about increased safety on our roads. However, as we’ve noted, plenty of studies showed that the cameras actually tended to increase accidents, showed little to no safety benefit, and were almost always driven by monetary incentives. Because of this, there were numerous reports of various municipalities actually deciding to decrease the time on yellow lights, thereby getting more money from tickets, but massively increasing the safety risk. Multiple studies have shown that the one way to make intersections safer is to increase the yellow light time — but in order to make more money, many were decreasing it (often below legal limits).   

The anger over these tactics has been increasing quite a bit over the past few years and a variety of cities decided to cancel their programs, causing the leading company providing these systems (who takes a large cut of every ticket), Redflex, to face some financial difficulties.

It appears that the trends are definitely against red light cameras. Cyrus Farivar has a great article (though, annoyingly paginated) about the decline in red light cameras, noting that 2013 was the first year where more red light camera systems were turned off than turned on.

Redflex’s US operations took a hit in 2013 as the company installed 54 new systems—but removed 101. Redflex’s recent fiscal report (PDF) shows that its after-tax net profits in a six-month period have dropped by half: plummeting from $ 7.1 million in the first half of 2012 to $ 3.6 million in the first six months of 2013.

Meanwhile, the article also takes on the various “competing studies” concerning red light cameras, and pointing to one study that compared a whole bunch of the studies, evaluated their methodologies, and found that the ones that showed benefits to red light cameras, almost invariably had dreadful methodologies that didn’t take into account the basic variability in accidents at any given intersection, and the likelihood of a return to the mean (in short: intersections with an abnormally large number of accidents frequently see that amount go down the following year — and red light camera makers and the studies supporting them rarely took into account that variability, but assigned such a decrease to the cameras). When correcting for such problems, the study of studies found the data showed that red light cameras are a problem, not a solution:

The meta-analysis concluded that, when only the best studies were considered, “The results of the meta-analysis are rather unfavorable for RLCs… According to the results from these studies, right-angle collisions are reduced by about 10 percent, rear-end collisions increase significantly by about 40 percent, and the overall effect on all types of crashes is an increase by about 15 percent. Only studies with weaker study designs yield results that are more favorable for RLCs.”

The study which those researches said had the best methodology also found significant negative impact overall:

the increase in costs from the increase in rear-end crashes more than offset the reduction in costs from the decrease in red light running crashes.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end for red light cameras. We’re all for making intersections safer, but the way to do that is to increase the time on yellow lights — and for places that still don’t have this: have a brief interval where lights in both directions are red, rather than switching simultaneously to red in one direction and green in the other. And yes, every time I make that last point, people who don’t live in places where that’s the case marvel that any place in the world has this, but it’s true in many, many places. Switching that to having an interval with both directions red, plus a longer yellow light, will actually make people safer, and yet… it doesn’t make any more money, so very few have been willing to make this simple switch.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131218/00014725598/red-light-cameras-decline-as-everyone-realizes-they-dont-make-roads-safer-they-just-make-money.shtml

Red Light Cameras On The Decline, As Everyone Realizes They Don’t Make Roads Safer, They Just Make Money

Why Do The Saudis Want Then Decline A UNSC Seat?

Moon of Alabama
October 19, 2013

Today Saudi Arabia got itself elected as non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It was the first time that Saudi Arabia gained this position and an experienced diplomat expected great Saudi influence:

No doubt, it is a show of determination that the Saudi voice should be heard lest it is taken for granted by the big powers. It is a conscious decision to be assertive on the international stage.
…
Clearly, the Saudis are flaunting their prerogative to pronounce on the Syrian conflict. Many crucial decisions on Syria’s future will be taken at the Security Council through the coming year or two and Saudis want to influence them instead of being a passive onlooker.If all this is going to be a good thing or not, time will tell. The notorious P5 gang will be looking quizzically at the great pretender. But, the point is, Security Council will now have five-and-a-half veto holding members. This never happened before and a new alchemy is called for.

But shortly after news of the election by the General Assembly ran over the ticker and the diplomats piece was published the Saudis backtracked. They declined to take the Security Council seat citing three reasons:

“The continuation of the Palestinian Cause without a just and lasting solution for 65 years, resulting in several wars that threatened international peace and security, is irrefutable evidence and proof of the Security Council’s inability to carry out its duties,” the Foreign Ministry statement said.“The failure of the Security Council to make the Middle East a region free of all weapons of destruction, its inability to subdue the nuclear programs of all countries in the region without exception…is more irrefutable evidence of its inability to shoulder its responsibilities,” it added.

“Allowing the ruling regime in Syria to kill and burn its people through the use of chemical weapons, while the world stands idly by, without applying any deterrent sanctions against the Damascus regime, is also proof of the Security Council’s inability to carry out its duties and responsibility,” the Foreign Ministry statement said.

Notice that the first two very important and longstanding Arab issues will be barely mentioned, if at all, in “western” news reports. The Associated Press report  includes “Syria” nine times but mentions the Palestinian and WMD-free zone issue only in its thirteenth and last paragraph.

The Saudi move is a bit weird. A country does not get elected to the UNSC seat without wanting it. There is usually quite a competition about that position and bribes flow here and there to get the votes.

The Saudi foreign minister Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has his position since 1975. He by now certainly knows his job. Did he really attempt to get the UNSC seat only to decline it?

This is the second time the Saudis are throwing a temper tantrum at the United Nations. The Saudis canceled their planned speech at the last UN General Assembly also citing lack of action by the United Nations as their reason. Nobody really cared about that just like nobody will care about Saudi Arabia rejecting the UNSC position.

Why then are the Saudis doing this? What is their plan?

This article was posted: Saturday, October 19, 2013 at 10:43 am

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Why Do The Saudis Want Then Decline A UNSC Seat?

The Decline Of Breadwinner Jobs Has Resulted In The Longest Bread Lines In American History

As the number of good jobs continues to decline, the number of Americans that cannot take care of themselves without government assistance continues to explode.  On Friday, we learned that the U.S. economy added “195,000 jobs” last month.  But when you look deeper at the numbers, another story emerges.  Last month, the U.S. economy actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs.  Overall, the U.S. economy has only added 130,000 full-time jobs in 2013, but it takes about 90,000 full-time jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.  So we are losing quite a bit of ground as far as full-time jobs are concerned.  Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has added more than 500,000 part-time jobs so far this year.  Unfortunately, there are very, very few part-time and temp jobs that can be considered “breadwinner jobs”.  Part-time jobs are great for teenagers, university students and elderly people that only want to work a limited number of hours, but what most Americans need are good paying full-time jobs with benefits that will allow them to take care of their families.  Unfortunately, those jobs are continually becoming a smaller part of our economy.

As David Stockman has noted, the U.S. economy has only regained 200,000 of the 5.6 million breadwinner jobs that were lost during the last recession…

By September 2012, the S&P 500 was up by 115 percent from its recession lows and had recovered all of its losses from the peak of the second Greenspan bubble. By contrast, only 200,000 of the 5.6 million lost breadwinner jobs had been recovered by that same point in time. To be sure, the Fed’s Wall Street shills breathlessly reported the improved jobs “print” every month, picking and choosing starting and ending points and using continuously revised and seasonally maladjusted data to support that illusion. Yet the fundamentals with respect to breadwinner jobs could not be obfuscated.

This is a big problem.  As I wrote about the other day, the quality of jobs in America is falling very fast.  Only 47 percent of all adults in the United States have a full-time job at this point, and 53 percent of all American workers make less than $ 30,000 a year.

Meanwhile, the number of part-time jobs has hit an all-time record high, and the number of temp jobs is absolutely exploding.

Incredibly, the number of temp jobs has increased by more than 50 percent since the end of the recession.  Approximately 10 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were temp jobs, but close to 20 percent of the jobs gained since then have been temp jobs.

We are witnessing a fundamental shift in our economy.  Full-time jobs are on the decline.  Part-time and temp jobs are on the rise.

In fact, the second largest employer in the United States is now a temp agency.  Kelly Services has become the second largest employer in the country after Wal-Mart.

But it is really hard to pay the bills stocking shelves at Wal-Mart or working temp jobs for Kelly Services.

Unfortunately, these days millions of American workers find themselves having to take whatever they can find.  We live during a period of chronic unemployment.  In fact, according to John Williams of shadowstats.com, unemployment in the United States is now higher than it was at any point during the last recession after you factor in discouraged workers and workers that have taken part-time jobs for economic reasons.

So why don’t more Americans go out and start businesses and create their own jobs?

Unfortunately, thanks to the federal government, state governments and local governments, the environment for small businesses in America today is incredibly toxic.  In fact, the percentage of self-employed workers in this country is at an all-time record low.

As a result of everything that I have discussed above, more Americans than ever find that they cannot take care of themselves without government assistance.

I have often written about the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed in recent years.  In the year 2000, there were only 17 million Americans on food stamps.  Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.

But the number of Americans that are dependent on our “modern day bread lines” is actually far higher than that.

According to a recent CNS News article, a total of 101 million Americans are enrolled in food assistance programs.  The following are some of the staggering numbers for some of these programs…

The National School Lunch program provides 32 million students with low-cost or no-cost meals daily; 10.6 million participate in the School Breakfast Program; and 8.9 million receive benefits from the Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) program each month, the latter designed for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women, as well as children younger than 5 years old.

In addition, 3.3 million children at day care centers receive snacks through the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

There’s also a Special Milk Program for schools and a Summer Food Service Program, through which 2.3 million children received aid in July 2011 during summer vacation.

At farmer’s markets, 864,000 seniors receive benefits to purchase food and 1.9 million women and children use coupons from the program.

Yes, there is some overlap in some of these programs.  So the actual number of Americans receiving food assistance is going to be less than 101 million.

But clearly something has gone horribly wrong.  Our economy is not producing enough good jobs, and more Americans than ever cannot take care of themselves as a result.

This is not normal.  What we are witnessing is the slow-motion collapse of the middle class.  The number of Americans that are dependent on the government for their daily bread is so large that it is difficult to comprehend.  The following are a few statistics from my recent article entitled “21 Facts About Rising Government Dependence In America That Will Blow Your Mind“…

-Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

-Today, the number of Americans on food stamps exceeds the entire population of the nation of Spain.

-According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

You can read the rest of that article right here.

So what is the solution?

Well, we need a lot more full-time “breadwinner jobs” that will enable men and women to be able to take care of their families.

Unfortunately, we continue to ship millions of good jobs overseas, and our politicians continue to pursue policies which are making the business environment in this country very toxic.

There is not going to be any easy way to fix all of this.  We should have seen a nice bounce in the employment numbers during this so-called “recovery”, but that did not happen.  And now the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching, and the employment crisis in this country is going to become a lot more painful.

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The Economic Collapse

The Decline Of Breadwinner Jobs Has Resulted In The Longest Bread Lines In American History