I used to joke that we should have a Ken Bacon Watch. Bacon is the head of Refugees International the lobbying arm for the refugee industry. One of the things they do is to make sure we get more refugees into the US, especially from Muslim countries. But, a more interesting person to watch is their Chairman of the Board, Farooq Kathwari, CEO of Ethan Allen Furniture.
See my post of May 3 for more on Kathwari.
Yesterday (May 13), the Washington Times ran a photo/with caption on the bottom of page A13 of Secretary of State Rice kicking off a new Public-Private Partnership to “empower” women in Muslim countries (if anyone finds a link for this photo and caption please send it to me).
The caption begins:
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice addresses a State Department audience about the One Woman Initiative, a public-private sector effort to raise $100 milliion to educate and lend to women in Muslim countries.
Sitting to Rice’s left are co-chairs Carly Fiorina (former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and now a chief economic advisor in the McCain campaign) and a sour looking Farooq Kathwari.
What a joke, “empower” women in Muslim countries. Women have few property rights or little opportunity to be educated in Muslim countries because men control their lives and their money, so who do you think is going to get most of this Public-Private money? Let Kathwari lend his private money and leave us taxpayers out of this project.
P.S. Anyone still guessing about which influential Muslim Americans got the State Department to stop using the word “jihad” in connection to terrorism, I’ll bet you Mr. Kathwari is one of them. He seems to be spending a lot of time at the State Department these days.