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Just like everything else, perceptions of sexiness have globalized. Hollywood movies, the fashion industry, MTV and Miss World beauty contests have set universal standards for female sexual appeal. It is in this context that Arab and African men have come to measure the beauty of their women. But the pressure on women to meet men’s expectations of beauty isn’t a recent invention, and standards have changed over the years.
Talking about leftist regimes in the Arab world is a bit anachronistic. The Arabs have nothing but bitter memories of their socialist past during the Cold War period. The leftist policies and patriotic rhetoric of Egypt’s Nasser, the Baathist regimes in Syria and Iraq, and socialist dictatorships in Algeria, South Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan have brought only economic disasters, military defeats and demoralized populaces.
In my opinion there is no judicial system in the entire world that is independent of political influence. Yes, hypothetically, the expression judicial independence is beautifully written into almost every constitution of the UN member states. But experience has taught us that it is politics that rules in the provision of justice.
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