Magic Statistics

I never thought I’d live to see the day when the Nobel Peace Prize would be given to a banker.  Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, has been awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.  By all accounts he is a brilliant choice.

The inspirational economist Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for helping lift millions of his fellow Bangladeshis from poverty through a pioneering scheme that lends tiny amounts of money to the very poorest of borrowers.

Professor Yunus shares the prize, and the cheque for 10 million Swedish Kronor (£730,000) that accompanies it, with the Grameen Bank, which he founded after the Bangladeshi famine of 1974 and whose micro-credit model has since been copied in dozens of countries around the world.

The bank, which is owned almost entirely by its own borrowers, has lent out some £2.9 billion to more than 6 million Bangladeshis, 96 per cent of them women. Even though its borrowers are not asked for collateral, more than 98 per cent of the money is repaid.

I’d never heard of Dr Yunus before this morning, but I know a little about the micro-credit concept.  As the name implies, it involves loaning small amounts of money to borrowers who would be considered too poor to merit conventional loans from banks or other financial institutions.  Like most micro-credit lenders, Dr Yunus’s Grameen Bank issues loans without demanding collateral.

Through Yunus's efforts and those of the bank he founded, poor people around the world, especially women, have been able to buy cows, a few chickens or the cellphone they desperately needed to get ahead.

"Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty," the Nobel Committee said in its citation. "Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights."

Dr Yunus’s fundamental belief is that the poor have economically productive skills that need to be supported.  Grameen Bank promotes an alternative to charity by encouraging initiative, creating opportunities for self-employment, building human and social capital, etc.

The micro-credit approach has proved especially useful and beneficial to poor women by making them self-reliant and economically productive.  Dr Yunus has been so successful in elevating the condition of women that Bangladeshi Islamists organised an unsuccessful boycott of the Grameen Bank.

A fitting choice for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Previous related post: Edmund Phelps wins Nobel for overturning economic myth

An Ontario Superior Court judge has struck down the law preventing small political parties from receiving public funding.  The seven small Canadian parties who joined the challenge were awarded $1.75 per vote retroactive to 2003, plus interest, for a total of $500,000.

The judgment was a major victory for a coalition of seven small political parties that argued that the law — which took effect in 2004 — violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by unfairly giving $1.75 for each vote cast only to federal parties with more than 2 per cent of the national popular vote.

"I consider that the existence of the threshold diminishes public confidence in the electoral process and encourages a public perception that the threshold exists only to benefit the major political parties, who alternate, from time to time, in forming the government and are in a position to maintain it," Judge Matlow said yesterday.

The complaint could have been remedied equally as well by striking down public funding of all political parties, but the judge apparently did not explain why he didn’t go that route.

The coalition that challenged the law includes the Marijuana Party; the Christian Heritage Party; the Canadian Action Party; the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada; the Green Party; the Progressive Canadian Party; and the Communist Party of Canada.

I can understand why the Greens, the Communists, the Moonbats, and the pot heads would want to wallow in the public trough, but isn’t the Christian Heritage Party supposed to be fiscally conservative?  How does it justify taking taxpayers’ money to pay election expenses?

And then there’s Tracy Parsons, leader of the Progressive Canadian Party, who forthrightly admits her hypocrisy.

"If you're going to fund any, you should fund all," said Parsons, who said she didn't really believe taxes should fund political parties at all.

Another politician for whom money speaks louder than principle.

Previous related post: Canadian party politics headed for a “state system”

The Muslim Canadian Congress has called on Ontario’s attorney general to outlaw what they see as threats from Islamic extremists.

The Muslim Canadian Congress told a news conference Wednesday that calling someone anti-Islam or an apostate should be considered a hate crime, since such accusations are frequently followed by threats, violence and even death.

Farzana Hassan, president of the Muslim Canadian Congress, said several members of her group and other prominent moderate Muslims have been accused of being "anti-Islam," which she called a coded threat.

"We have been subjected to a hate campaign by conservative and Islamist groups with allegations of being anti-Islam (or) smearing Islam, which is tantamount to being accused of blasphemy or apostasy," she told a news conference at the Ontario legislature.

Munir Pervaiz, secretary general of the congress, says that accusations are being circulated via e-mail and the internet.  The implied threats are intimidating moderate Muslims from speaking against extremist Islamism and should be classified as hate crimes.

It is troubling that some Canadian Muslims feel impelled to seek legal protection from other Muslims, but I don’t think hate crime legislation is the answer.  For one thing, tracking an e-mail or internet posting to its source can be problematic.  If the e-mail or post originated outside Canada, then no action could taken anyway.

Even more importantly, as has become increasingly evident, hate crime laws are sometimes used to gag legitimate expressions of unpopular opinions.  Hate crime laws, like accusations of blasphemy, can stifle free speech.

h/t: Persecuted Church Weblog

Previous related posts:

• Western Standard sued over Mohammed cartoons
• Canadian Muslims want laws against insults