It’s nice to see that someone else thinks this too! Though it’s a bit vague:

The United States last month announced $150 million in military assistance for Yemen to fight extremists. In contrast, it costs just $50 to send a girl to public school for a year — and little girls like Nujood may prove more effective than missiles at defeating terrorists.

That appears in a New York Times article about Nujood and her new book about being ten years old, and divorced, in Yemen.

I’ve never thought about how mistreatment of women could be tied to extremism.  There’s a loose connection between the poor education of women and polygamy.  If you have lots of households with one husband and two wives, then you have lots of single, desperate men.   Which in turn feeds a male-dominated culture where education of women is supressed.   Perhaps that is a simplistic presentation, but sometimes simple is good.

But one thing seems clear to me:  Books, not bombs, give the loudest and longest lasting boom!

But first, some questions:  Does a nation have a right to pursue an energy policy that puts other nations at risk by adding the specter of nuclear proliferation?  Iran seems to be claiming yes.  It’s national sovreignty!  Does a nation have a right to defend itself in like manner against its foes?  Iran has answered no.  It has no intention to build nuclear arms even though Israel does apparently have that capability.

Yet Israel’s own nuclear armaments, which still are not publicly acknowledged, are widely known to exist.  It would behoove world leaders to get rid of Israel’s nuclear threat if they want to put rival nations and faiths at ease, particularly given Israel’s own tendencies to act as a maverick rogue, stomping over other people’s rights and kicking people out of their homes, all backed, largely, by the Divine and Magnanimous Will and Word of Almighty US.

So Iran claims to want to build nuclear reactors for energy.  That’s laughable.

Iran, not blessed with oil reserves of many other middle east nations, happens to be sitting on one of the largest and most accessible natural gas reserves in the world.  There’s enough gas beneath the asses of those Iranian leaders to light their energy fires for centuries.  So it’s hard to respect the country’s whining about the needs to build nuclear reactors for power.

Yet why haven’t any news articles ever highlighted the fact that Iran doesn’t actually need nuclear power to be energy self-sufficient? It seems to be a key fact that points to Iran’s true intentions.