Links - 24th November 2015

I am part of my people, says Palestinian lawyer in viral photo of tear gas kick - "11 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, and 68 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including 42 said by Israel to have been involved in attacks or attempted attacks... The Israeli government and many Israeli media outlets have framed it as a “wave of terror” unleashed by what they portray as Palestinian incitement. They point to a stream of bloody videos and fiery speeches by Palestinian leaders circulating on social media. Palestinians say there’s no need for anyone to incite, arguing that their day-to-day reality is infuriating as it is... Mr Ajaj, meanwhile, was cautious when asked what he considers permissible protests against occupation. “We are lawyers, we don’t throw stones,” he said, but added that he believes stone throwers have a role to play. He said he won’t condemn those who carry out stabbing attacks, arguing that they were driven to such acts by Israeli measures, such as land confiscations and movement restrictions. The “violence question” is rarely debated openly in Palestinian society. Mr Abbas has repeatedly argued that armed attacks counter Palestinian interests and has instructed his security forces to try to prevent them, but has not condemned the recent stabbings in deference to popular opinion. Many Israelis believe that repeated rounds of violence over the years, including the current one, prove the Palestinians do not want peace with them... social media also plays a negative role, encouraging Palestinians to live in a virtual reality and romanticising the idea of resisting occupation at a time when they lack a clear way forward."
What would happen if Israeli leaders released a stream of bloody videos and fiery speeches? What if Nelson Mandela had continued to support violence?

Don't assume I'm an internet troll just because you disagree with me - "Troll is a perfect word for the internet age, speaking to the general sense of distrust we operate under on the web. We receive tweets, emails and Facebook messages from people pretending to be people other than themselves, or robots pretending to be people, forwarding an informative link, just like we do... But I think we have more to lose by erring towards suspicion than we do towards gullibility. We hurt ourselves when we dismiss people too quickly. It’s easy to just lob an accusation of intellectual dishonesty out there and skate past any disagreement without engaging it. Better, I think, to suspend suspicion whenever possible, to give the benefit of the doubt, to take statements at face value... paranoia is a very unhealthy outlook, one that we should eschew. (Skepticism and vigilance are fine, even advisable; paranoia is, by definition, an errant excess.) It is, as Ray Davies told us, a “destroyer”. It destroys possibility. It cuts off communication. It makes the world smaller... the troll is not really arguing – the troll is laughing. The troll is laughing at you for taking him seriously. The troll does not take you seriously. I, however, do take you seriously. I imagine you are a person much like myself, sitting in front of a computer screen, reading and writing words just like I am. Communicating in these new, exciting and sometimes treacherous ways that these marvelous new machines now allow."

That Chinese Passport Story Sure Looks Like a Hoax [Update: It's Fake]

Men May Like The Idea Of A Smart Woman, But They Don't Want To Date One - "men were into hanging out with a smarter woman when they had yet to meet her, but they weren't so excited to hang out with a living, breathing intelligent woman staring them in the face. Men also felt less masculine when they were faced with a smarter woman sitting next to them than when they never saw said smarter woman. This study sheds light on one reason dating is so complicated: We don't always know what we want, even if we think we do"

A white guy named Michael couldn’t get his poem published. Then he became Yi-Fen Chou. - "Hudson, who is white, wrote in his bio for the anthology that he chose the Chinese-sounding nom de plume after “The Bees” was rejected by 40 different journals when submitted under his real name. He figured that the poem might have a better shot at publication if it was written by somebody else... perhaps because of its Rachel Dolezal-esque tangle of questions about identity, authenticity, political correctness and “affirmative action,” it didn’t take much longer for the wider world to notice. Pen names, as some on Twitter pointed out, have long been a staple of the literary world. And there are plenty of cases in which initials or a pseudonym have worked in the opposite direction — most often for women like Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and Joanne Rowling (J.K. Rowling), who thought they would be taken more seriously or better reach their target demographic if they didn’t appear to be female. But Hudson’s critics said the literary bait-and-switch was fraudulent, racist and fundamentally different from Charlotte Bronte publishing “Jane Eyre” under the name Currer Bell. “When you’re doing this from a position of entitlement, you’re appropriating an ethnic identity that’s one, imaginary, and two, doesn’t have access to the literary world,” poet and Chapman University professor Victoria Chang told The Washington Post. “And it diminishes categorically all of our accomplishments. He sort of implies that minorities are published because we’re minorities, not because of our work. That’s just insulting because it strips everything we’ve worked so hard for”... “Yi-Fen Chou” benefited from a form of minority writer nepotism... How important is an author to the meaning of a poem? When seeking out diversity, are we looking at names or at content?"
White Privilege means not having your poem published - and being told that this is racism against minorities (?!)
Comments: "I fear that so much social and political writing--with all the usual English department "race and gender" themes and NPR-inspired "issues"--will undervalue those minority writers who are truly great not because of the color of their skin or their names, but because they are simply world class writers, like Ha Jin and ZZ Packer. There is a creepy race celebration going on in literature. We do a disservice to great minority writers when we champion stories and poems that are not first and foremost excellent."
"The name test has been used to uncover systematic bias in job applications and grades using the same material but swapping male/female or white/minority names. This made the SJWs mad because this time the bias was demonstrated in favor of minorities. When it's reversed they make hay about it (justifiably). Can't they just admit that racial bias exists and move on?"
"Just remember that 2+2=4 only when it benefits a person of color. If 2+2=4 benefits a white person, then 2+2=5. This is to make up for billions of years of white privilege."
"Perhaps if we would stop ourselves from playing a twisted game of progressive pokemon, trying to catch 'em all, entities would stop making ridiculous decisions to try and stave off the pitchfork PC squad."
"Diversity, for its own sake, is neither inherently good or bad. It is simply diverse. When seeking pure gold, diversity is most unwelcome. Yet too often, we lose sight of the real stated goal - quality - while focusing on only one aspect, that does not lend quality innately, merely happenstance"

How 'A Clockwork Orange' Author Anthony Burgess Soured on Stanley Kubrick (Book Excerpt) - "Years earlier, Burgess had sold the film rights “for a few hundred dollars,” he groused. Regardless of how the film version performed at the box office, Burgess would see no profit points... I realized, not for the first time, how little impact even a shocking book can make in comparison with a film... He wanted to see how Americans were responding, and found that “the theology passed over their coiffures.” He was especially dismayed by “the blacks” in the audience who shouted, “Right on!” at the thug-hero Alex... “Neither cinema nor literature can be blamed for original sin. A man who kills his uncle cannot justifiably blame a performance of ‘Hamlet.’ On the other hand, if literature is to be held responsible for mayhem and murder, then the most damnable book of them all is the Bible, the most vindictive piece of literature in existence”... Burgess, for his part, grew to hate the film. Or Kubrick. Or both. A decade later when he adapted his novel for the stage, he made sure to include the following stage direction: “A man bearded like Stanley Kubrick comes on playing, in exquisite counterpoint, ‘Singin’ in the Rain‘ on a trumpet. He is kicked off the stage.”"

Florida eighth-grader gets detention for hugging a friend
Too bad she's white

Parental Age, Especially The Father's, Is Linked To Genetic Mutations In The Child - "Fathers passed on about four times the number of genetic mutations to their children than did mothers, which also agrees with earlier evidence. It’s believed that sperm cells are more likely to contain genetic errors because of the high rate at which they’re produced – hundreds of millions of cells per day – which increases the odds of a manufacturing error. The team also found that the older the father, the more likely was the child to have genetic mutations. And the risk just keeps rising with the father’s age. For example, a 20-year-old father will contribute about half the number of mutations of a 36-year-old father. A 70-year-old father will pass on about eight times the number of mutations as the 20-year-old."
If you claim to be against incest because of birth defects, you should be fine with homosexual incest - and you should be against older people having heterosexual sex

Promotion ads of green tea and soft drinks to face banning - "He said Thais’ daily sugar consumption is over four times the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s recommended level... Promotion campaign of soft drinks that offered cars and gold to consumers has encouraged over consumption of sugar, he said."

Japanese tourist center asks small-penised travelers to not make a mess in the bathroom
"Why is the Japanese message so different from the English one
In Japanese it means "thank you for always keeping the toilet clean while using""

Nixon: I chose to be a lesbian - "Actress Cynthia Nixon refuses to bow to pressure from the gay community to change her opinion that her homosexuality is a "choice", despite facing criticism for her beliefs... Nixon, who also has an 11-month-old son, Max, with Marinoni, is convinced her change in sexual preference was just that - a preference - because she considers herself a heterosexual who simply fell in love with a woman... In a candid interview with the New York Times Magazine the actress says, "I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line, 'I've been straight and I've been gay, and gay is better.' "And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it's not, but, for me, it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me... "I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn't realise I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I've been out with.""

Epigenetic 'tags' linked to homosexuality in men - "The biology of sexual orientation has been one of the most vexing — and politically charged — questions in human genetics. For the first time, researchers have found associations between homosexuality and markers attached to DNA that can be influenced by environmental factors. Twin studies and family trees provide strong evidence that sexual orientation is at least partly genetic. When one identical twin is gay, there is about a 20% chance that the other will be as well. But because this rate is not 100%, it is thought that environmental factors play a role as well. One of the best characterized is the 'older brother effect': the chance of a man being gay increases by 33% for each older brother he has. The reason is not clear, although one hypothesis holds that the mother’s immune system begins to react against male antigens and alter the fetus’s development... By scanning the twins’ epigenomes, the researchers found five epi-marks that were more common among the gay men than in their genetically identical straight brothers. An algorithm they developed based on the five epi-marks could correctly predict the sexual orientation of men in the study 67% of the time"

What should you do if your son says he's a girl? - "You could insist that he is a boy and try to put an end to behaviors such as cross-dressing and saying that he is a girl. The alternative is to let him be a girl: grow long hair, choose a new name, dress as he (or “she”) pleases, and when it is time, obtain the necessary hormones and surgeries for a female body. As scientists who study gender and sexuality, we can tell you confidently: At this point no one knows what is better for your son... Gender dysphoric children have not usually become transgender adults. For example, the large majority of gender dysphoric boys studied so far have become young men content to remain male. More than 80% adjusted by adolescence."

Keeping Char Kway Teow Cheap—At What Price? - "
while hawker centres were traditionally celebrated as meccas for cheap food, in
recent years, hawkers and customers alike raised concerns over rising business costs, and the resultant increases in hawker food prices. Furthermore, the survival of the hawker sector was threatened by younger Singaporeans’ lack of interest in becoming hawkers, which was seen as a backbreaking, unglamorous and poorly paid vocation"

Case urges all hawkers to display prices - "The survey also found there was no change in mode prices - prices most commonly charged by hawkers - compared with a similar study in July last year for five surveyed food items. The mode prices were: $5 for chicken nasi briyani, $3 for chicken rice, $3 for fishball noodles, $3 for mixed vegetables rice (two vegetables and one meat) and $1.80 for roti prata (two plain pratas)."

Nazi Germany in 2015

"I sometimes wonder now how the regressive left would respond if the rise of Nazi Germany was to happen in 2015?

--"Germany has just invaded Austria"

++"Oh, it's because of imperialism because of the hideous terms imposed on Germany at Versailles by the Alliance"

-- "oh yeah. But don't you think this is a problem? They've now annexed Poland."

++ "Well this is all just Western media bias. I mean, Britain still has an Empire elsewhere so you can't complain that Germany is doing the same in Europe."

--"Yes, that is true. But don't you think that's another discussion for another day? The Germans have just annexed Denmark and Norway."

++"Well the problem is that you think that all Germans are inherently evil. It's not *all Germans*. Most Germans are peace-loving people who just want to get on with their lives."

--"Yeah, I get that, but it is Germans (and now others) who espouse a specific ideology and using this to commit acts of violence."

++"Besides, it is the Germans who are the largest victims of German Nazi violence. Not British forces"

--"Yes, I know. And particularly German Jews, gays, disabled, or Germans of particular Christian sects. But that doesn't add anything about what we should do *now*. They have invaded Belgium and the Netherlands."

++"Well violence only perpetuates violence. They *want* a war. And war will only lead to the deaths of many innocent lives."

--"Okay, yeah I get that. So what should we do, then? They are seeking war. There is no dialogue. They are killing people anyways. You say we shouldn't get into a war because we will end up killing people. It seems like no matter what we do, people are going to die because there is a group of people who are determined to make sure as many people suffer as possible. What do you recommend that we do? And BTW They are in France now. We can literally see them across the strait of the English Channel.""

Links - 23rd November 2015

Secret Sister Gift Exchange: The festive pyramid scam that's taking Facebook by storm - "the idea is that each participant gets up to 36 gifts as more join the exchange. However, like most other novel ideas that promise huge returns on a small initial investment, it's a total fantasy - in fact, it fits the definition of a traditional pyramid scheme exactly. Not only are pyramid schemes like this one mathematically impossible (the list of theoretical participants multiplies into billions of people a few steps into the scheme), they're also against Facebook's terms of use, and are illegal in some countries, including the US."
I see a lot of women sharing this. Maybe they don't grasp the idea of compounding

The Line between Victims and Abusers - "Victim identity is focus on damages suffered at the hands of other people. The desire to be identified as a victim creates a sense of entitlement and a motive to devalue anyone who does not offer special recognition and validation of victim status or compensation for it... The victim protection movement began as a noble attempt to counteract the most insidious aspect of the abusive dynamic - blaming the victim, which has the effect of making the victim feel ashamed of being abused. But as is the case with all effective social movements, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. We now have a victim identity movement, fueled by an industry of self-help authors and advocates, that has conferred a certain status to being a victim and thereby blurred the line between victims and abusers. For example, in the beginning of my career, I saw many male abuse victims who would become angry and verbally aggressive at the suggestion that their partners abused them. Now obvious victims, along with those who are not victims but who have identified with descriptions in self-help books, become angry and aggressive if they are not recognized as victims. The primary mistake with victims is urging them to think and sound like abusers... The primary mistake with abusers is to reinforce their victim-identity"

Is the Menstrual Cycle Linked to the Timing of Sexual Assaults - "Apparently, this woman did not find it necessary to verify the references in my book to determine whether I had provided relevant citations in support of the "provocative" claim. Also, note the number of times that she used the word "provocative" in her emails. Hence, at first she proclaims that this research is apparently dangerous, as accused rapists might use it as a defense strategy. Subsequent to my rebuttal, she still maintains that this is a very provocative contention. It is worth noting that all four authors on the Beirne et al. paper discussed in this post are women, as are many of the menstrual cycle researchers listed in the references below (Martie Haselton, Kristina Durante, Tara J. Chavanne, Natalia Hohmann, LeeAnn Renninger, Bettina Fischer, Mina Mortezaie, Eizabeth G. Pillsworth, and April Bleske-Rechek). I wonder if the woman in question thinks that these female scientists are all colluding in their quest to "promote a defense strategy for rapists." Nice."

Female hormone influences on sexual assaults in Northern Ireland from 2002 to 2009. - "Evolutionary psychology suggests that women would have suffered more negative consequences if sexually assaulted when fertile and that specific psychological mechanisms may have evolved in women to combat male coercion. Female behaviours towards men vary across the reproductive cycle and men's behaviour towards women may vary also as a result of changes in female hormones. Hormones play a major role in producing the characteristic cyclical changes throughout a woman's reproductive life. This study is the first study of female hormone influences on sexual assaults. The data for the study was collated retrospectively from the records of 105 females with regular, spontaneous menstrual cycles. These females alleged recent sexual assault and were examined in Belfast during the period 2002-2009. The study concluded that young girls in the middle of their cycle, i.e. the fertile phase, were most at risk of sexual assault. It is possible that both sexes are sensitive to signs, albeit subtle behavioural signs, indicating high risk of conception."

College Dean Accuses Texas Officers of Stopping Her for ‘Walking While Black’ — Police Claim Dashcam Video Tells a Different Story - "Bland figured she “was simply a brown face in an affluent neighborhood. I told the police I didn’t like to walk in the rain, and one of them told me, ‘My dog doesn’t like to walk in the rain.’ Ouch!” She added that “for safety’s sake” she used her iPhone to take a photo of the officers and their patrol car’s license plate, as Bland didn’t want to end up like “the dozens of others who have died while in police custody.” Within hours after posting about the incident on Facebook, Bland said more than 100 friends spread the news across the country. “You are now in the company of Henry Louis Gates and others with the same experience,” she said one of her former students wrote her. “We must stop racial profiling”... after Corinth Police Chief Debra Walthall caught wind of the incident, she wrote a response, which was in the second part of the Dallas Morning News piece, and said that the encounter was about Bland’s safety, not race — and that dashcam video from the officer’s patrol car proves it... Walthall noted that while the patrol car’s emergency lights were activated, no sirens were used, contrary to Bland’s claim — and the officers “immediately” told Bland about their concern for her safety and the pickup truck and that she should walk against traffic instead... Walthall noted that Bland never contacted police or returned the chief’s phone message about the incident. “The citizens of Corinth as a whole are a highly educated population,” Walthall concluded, “and it is disappointing that one of our residents would attempt to make this a racial issue when clearly it is not.”"
For all we know, a lot of the anecdotes about 'privilege' etc are also made up and/or imagined
Comment: "It all makes sense… She’s a Dean of Journalism. Of course she’s going to lie."

‘At a loss for words’: Man’s traffic stop post continues to go viral, police thank him for message - "Steven Hildreth, Jr., said he was pulled over by the Tucson Police Department for a burned out headlight. The 27-year-old author and National Guard veteran told officers he had a concealed-carry permit and had a gun holstered at his hip.
Hildreth said he followed the officers’ instructions and got out of the car so they could disarm him... “I’m a black man wearing a hoodie and strapped. According to certain social movements, I shouldn’t be alive right now because the police are allegedly out to kill minorities,” Hildreth wrote. “Maybe if you treat police officers with respect, they will do the same to you.”"
Addendum: Also published as: "Man’s Facebook post about traffic stop goes viral"

IPS Study on Perceptions of Singapore’s History - "events which did not feature highly in the individual consciousness of Singaporeans included Operation Cold Store, the “Marxist conspiracy plot”, the Laju hostage incident and the Graduate Mother Scheme. Less than a quarter of the Singaporeans polled were aware of these historical events. Events with a racial undertone were more likely to be recalled by the affected ethnic community. The Maria Hertogh riots in the 1950s and Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist plot, for example, figured more strongly in the consciousness of Malays than other racial groups. Conversely, the Chinese reported a higher degree of awareness of the merger of Nanyang University (Nantah) with the University of Singapore, which happened in 1980. Individual consciousness of events did not necessarily translate into empathy or emotional awareness. For example, while an overwhelming majority of Singaporeans (98.8%) were aware of the controversial introduction of the casinos in 2010, they did not feel that it was an important historical event to themselves or to future generations. The casino openings ranked at the bottom of the scale of importance to Singaporeans"

How much do you pay for your "take-away''? - "MOST of us would be familiar with paying 10 to 20 cents for a take-away container when buying food from hawker centres. But did you know that some hawkers actually charge up to 50 cents for the container, depending on what kind of container is being used?"

Thatcher: Respect for the dead is an outdated and foolish principle - "Do we owe the dead respect, even if we disagreed with them profoundly, even if we were harmed by them in some way, even if we think that their influence on their times was largely negative, and their legacy damaging?... The standard trope is: de mortuis nil nisi bonum – “Of the dead say nothing but good”. Why? Why should one not speak as one did when the person was alive? The story of a prominent individual’s life cannot be complete without the truth about what people felt at the moment of summing up, whether it is in mourning or rejoicing. Let us say what we think, and be frank about it: death does not confer privileges... Respect for the dead is a hangover from a past in which it was believed that the dead might retain some active influence on the living, and that one might re-encounter them either in this life or a putative next life... Frank opinions explain far more than the massaged and not infrequently hypocritical views expressed in obsequies."

They Might Sound Gross, But Intestinal Worms Can Actually Be Good For You - "Having worms isn’t necessarily bad for you. The largest randomized trial ever performed in human history – involving two million children in India – looked at how helminths affect health in places where humans naturally have them. The study showed that mass treatment with an effective deworming drug did not increase body weight or survival. Shockingly, the helminths didn’t seem to be doing any harm, since getting rid of them didn’t improve health... helminths have been found to protect laboratory animals from a wide range of allergies and autoimmune conditions. And recent findings suggest that many types of cancer can be reduced by helminths"

Please stop this SMRT seat shaming nonsense - "Note my use of italicized “alleged” and “claimed“. These are two words journalists, lawyers or experienced writers often use as disclaimers when describing an incident or details of a court case – because it’s one person’s word against another. And that’s precisely the problem with the “cyber-shaming” that has become the norm inside of trains and other public places – when you post these shaming photos online, you think you’re in the right and it’s your right to take this person down in the online space. But that’s only your side of the story... You prefer to let the howling crowds serve instant and brutal justice on your behalf, because you couldn’t solve it right there and then to your satisfaction (for whatever reasons)... You don’t care if they lose their jobs, get ostracised by colleagues or acquaintances, or go into depression for being publicly humiliated for just taking a seat. And of course, you don’t realize the very same things could happen to you too, the cyber-shaming photo uploader... Every seat is up for grabs by anyone, and every seat should be offered to someone more in need. Just because some SMRT staff stuck a sticker above one seat, doesn’t mean you have to get all huffy-puffy about that particular seat... You folks who believe in cyber-shaming over train seats, you say you do this to help someone in need. The minute you post that photo online of the stranger you hardly know, do you realize you’re actually missing the real point of being gracious?"

Cold-pressed juices are a waste of money. The (lack of) science behind them says so. - "Bazzano noted that the temperatures in regular juice blenders don't get high enough to significantly alter the plants' chemicals and vitamins. And even if temperature differences did change the nutritional value of the juice, they wouldn't be dramatic enough to then affect a person's health. So what about drinking fresh juices in general versus eating fruits and vegetables? Juicing advocates claim that the juice hits your system in a more beneficial way because you don't need to digest all that pesky fiber found in whole produce.
Bazzano explained that the only way juices hit your system faster is in a rapid sugar load akin to drinking a soft drink"

Tomb Tells Tale of Family Executed by China's 1st Female Emperor

The truth about Sweden's short working hours - "fewer hours do not necessarily lead to less stress, according to Mrs Webb. "The first thing I thought when I heard about six-hour days was 'what are they going to do with their time?'," she says. "I already see a lot of clients who finish work at 4pm to 5pm but they end up trying to take their kids to all these activities, to exercise, to make homemade food… "They have the summer house, they have the boat, so in theory they've got all this stuff to help them relax but it just makes more work for them. It's a very Swedish problem… In theory we have this work-life balance but, actually, we're not very good at sitting around and doing nothing.""

The Iranian Revolution, Revisited

This source explains the Iranian Revolution as a palace revolution with popular support arising from the Shah's liberalising, Iranian pre-modernity and explains the army's neutrality as being due to its traditional role as Protector of the Country, instead of attributing it to the Shah sucking.

THE IRANIAN: Monarchy and Theocracy, Fereydoun Hoveyda

"Continuity is the hallmark of Iranian culture . Indeed many "constants" blaze the trails of the three thousands years of Iranian history . Present historians , as well as those of the past century , have often underlined what they call the "permanence of Iran" , meaning that old Iranian traditions have survived the many calamities and invasions that struck the Caspian Plateau . Curiously enough the mindset of Iranians has barely changed over the centuries . Many ancient beliefs that linger in their unconscious trigger sometimes reactions which seem incomprehensible to foreign observers .

I remember a French journalist friend of mine who , after a travel to Iran in 1981 , asked me : "Are you Iranians insane ? You stunned the whole world by overthrewing with your bare hands the powerful Shah . And now your compatriots voluntarily , if not enthusiastically , submit to another dictator, even more totalitarian and repressive than the Shah and his regime ! ". No : Iranians are far from being mad ; they only are , so to say , "prisoners" of their own "permanence" , of their own mores . Indeed , despite its indeniable material and technical development under the Shah , Iran , in 1978 , remained at heart a traditional society .

The Shah , prey to his own hubris , entertained the illusion that Iran had already broken the walls of backwardness and underdevelopment and become part of the modern and advanced world...

The Iranian ruler is the "father-of-the-nation" and therefore supposed to provide for the well-being of his "citizens-children" ; but at the same time he is a very strict and adamant "father" who goes as far as putting them to death if they disobey him .He protects them as long as they submit to his commands , but do not hesitate to punish them severely when they fail to carry out his orders...

Iinvisible "bonds of servitude" link all levels of Iranian society from roots to branches . The "supreme ruler" himself , in a way , is far from being completely "free" . Indeed he must submit to God's authority . I evoked earlier the question of a French friend returning from a 1981 visit to Iran : "Are Iranians mad ?" . The answer is obviously negative . Indeed Iranians abandoned the Shah only when he lost his "fathership" by becoming "weak" and fleeing the country and when they found a replacement in the person of Khomeini . Screaming the slogan of "Islam is in danger" the latter startled them and appeared to them with the aura as a "saviour" sent by God...

By 1977, under the pressure of the Carter administration , Muhammad Reza Shah , already deeply impressed by Juan Carlos' example in Spain , wanted to "liberalize" his regime . He envisaged to install a real constitutional monarchy , authorize all political parties and organize free elections , under international scrutriny , in june 1979 . This new trend in his reforms , much more than the "modernization" inaugurated with the "White Revolution" , constituted a direct threat to the influence of the Shiite clergy whose paternalistic structure could only tolerate (and thrive under ) the despotic-father-rule of the traditional system , despite occasional frictions between the monarch and high ranking mullahs ...

What confused outside observers as well as some Iranians about the Islamic revolution , is that , save a limited group of intellectuals and educated members of society , the bulk of the Iranian citizens were not yearning for freedom , but rather looking for another "father" . The Shah with his so-called "liberalizing" program was softening his repressive rule . Under pressure by the United States and non-governmental Human Rights organizations (such as Amnesty International ) he pardoned some of his enemies (including Rajavi the head of the Mujahiddins who had been condemned to death ) . In 1978 he did not react harshly against his opponants and to the contrary accepted all their demands ... He showed weakness and therefore ceased to be a true "father" in the traditional sense ."

Continued:

"Such simple language [of Khomeini] was indeed soothing to the masses, bewildered by the sudden eruption of spates of novelties in their traditional environment. The Shah, who was acting like foreigners and speaking a complicated language, ceased to be a Father to them. They felt like orphan children in need of a protector, of a custodian. They feverishly looked for a real father, And the new father revealed himself in the person of Khomeini. whose religious aura compensated for his frailty: he possessed the title of Imam and had proven his endurance and force in past battles against the Shah. One day he descended from heaven in a Boeing 747 and appeared to the throngs in the full light of moon's sunshine. Order was restored, as a new shah, a high—ranking religious one to boot, came to sit on the throne vacated by his runaway predecessor...

The tripartite ideology can help in understanding an intriguing event during the turmoil that preceded the Shah's fall: the almost total neutrality of the armed forces in the last months of the imperial regime. The monarchists affirm that the Shah was against bloodshed and therefore ordered the armed forces to stay put. But what about his generals as individuals?... The generals who were pampered by the Shah could have stopped the demonstrations in a matter of hours. It was also in their personal interest to save their commander in chief and his regime. Many among them knew that they would later be executed by Khomeini. Why did they not budge?... the reason for the army's neutrality should be sought elsewhere. It is due to the very function of the army which, according to the tripartite ideology, is to make war or defend the country against aggression, not to insure internal security and order...

In this perspective the Islamic revolution appears as a kind of palace revolution. Indeed, it took place at the top level of the tri- functional pyramid, the palace, in which the Shah and the religious leader stood! To limit ourselves to the twentieth century, we see that Khomeini’s upheaval followed the pattern of a number of other palace revolutions: the coronation of Reza Shah in 1925 with the blessing of the clergy; Reza Shah's abdication and his replacement by his son Muhammad Reza in 1941; the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh and the return of the Shah in 1953; and the dismissal of feudal landowners and clergy members by Muhammad Reza Shah in 1963 (arrest and exile of Khomeini). Even in the 1905 constitutional revolution, one can find elements of a palace revolution as suggested by the tripartite ideology: it pitted feudal landowners and high clergy against the absolutism of the Qajar shahs...

It might be objected that the Islamic revolution, like some of its predecessors, was characterized by large popular demonstrations. But, actually, these demonstrations by the lower (third) level of the pyramid, square perfectly with Iranian tradition. The mythological order of Iranian society accounts for them, inasmuch as this behavior stems from the eminent place accorded to the father: whenever he disappears or weakens, the children (plain citizens) take to the streets...

In a couple of months, Khomeini put an end to all street demonstrations which were not organized by his religious under- lings. Everybody went back, so to say, to their natural places: the people to their third level of the pyramid; the opponents to prison or to exile in foreign countries. Given the present disorder and turmoil, as well as the bickering and struggle for power among the religious people, one can predict that the replacement of the mullah rule will also probably take the appearance of a palace revolution with a change at the top level of the pyramid"

--- Shah and the Ayatollah, The: Iranian Mythology and Islamic Revolution: Iranian Mythology and Islamic Revolution / Fereydoun Hoveyda


Related:

Iran and the Shah: What Really Happened

"Primarily by using oil-generated wealth, he modernized the nation. He built rural roads, postal services, libraries, and electrical installations. He constructed dams to irrigate Iran's arid land, making the country 90-percent self-sufficient in food production. He established colleges and universities, and at his own expense, set up an educational foundation to train students for Iran's future.

To encourage independent cultivation, the Shah donated 500,000 Crown acres to 25,000 farmers. In 1978, his last full year in power, the average Iranian earned $2,540, compared to $160 25 years earlier. Iran had full employment, requiring foreign workers. The national currency was stable for 15 years, inspiring French economist André Piettre to call Iran a country of "growth without inflation." Although Iran was the world's second largest oil exporter, the Shah planned construction of 18 nuclear power plants. He built an Olympic sports complex and applied to host the 1988 Olympics (an honor eventually assigned Seoul), an achievement unthinkable for other Middle East nations...

On the home front, the Shah protected minorities and permitted non-Muslims to practice their faiths. "All faith," he wrote, "imposes respect upon the beholder." The Shah also brought Iran into the 20th century by granting women equal rights. This was not to accommodate feminism, but to end archaic brutalization...

At the center of the "human rights" complaints was the Shah's security force, SAVAK. Comparable in its mission to America's FBI, SAVAK was engaged in a deadly struggle against terrorism, most of which was fueled by the bordering USSR, which linked to Iran's internal communist party, the Tudeh. SAVAK, which had only 4,000 employees in 1978, saved many lives by averting several bombing attempts. Its prisons were open for Red Cross inspections, and though unsuccessful attempts were made on the Shah's life, he always pardoned the would-be assassins. Nevertheless, a massive campaign was deployed against him. Within Iran, Islamic fundamentalists, who resented the Shah's progressive pro-Western views, combined with Soviet-sponsored communists to overthrow the Shah...

For Western TV cameras, protestors in Teheran carried empty coffins, or coffins seized from genuine funerals, proclaiming these were "victims of SAVAK." This deception — later admitted by the revolutionaries — was necessary because they had no actual martyrs to parade. Another tactic: demonstrators splashed themselves with mercurochrome, claiming SAVAK had bloodied them"


Was shah Mohammed Pahlavi a more benign dictator than Khomeini? - Quora

"30-40 year old Persians think of the Pahlavi reign as a golden age. I'm not Iranian, but this is what my Iranian friends are telling to me.

Granted - in his last years Shah Mohammed Pahlavi did some bad things, but judging his whole reign, he was predominantly a good person for Persia and brought it a great deal forward, most importantly in economic terms and prosperity. He was in many ways an enlightened monarch as Oman's Qaboos bin Said al Said, albeit with autocratic / oppressive tendencies"

Links - 20th November 2015

Man jailed 10 months for sex with underaged girl in Changi Beach handicapped toliet - "the girl had gone to Changi Beach at about 7am that day Khairulsabirrin, who was then in a shelter along the beach with his father, invited her to join them. While chatting with the victim, he learnt that she was a Secondary 3 student. They chatted until about 4pm before she decided to go home. Khairulsabirrin offered to send her off. When they arrived at a handicapped toilet, he suggested going into the cubicle and she agreed. He then committed the offence. They remained there for about 30 minutes to an hour and then went their separate ways. The offence came to light when the victim's aunt lodged a police report last December stating that the victim had been talking about sex with unknown persons on Facebook."
Like that also can

Sulaiman Daud - I want to thank well-meaning non-Muslims who, in... - "as a Muslim, I wish that we weren't so quick to emphasise that this has nothing to do with us. While I personally have never killed anyone and none of my friends and family have ever resorted to violence, radicalism has everything to do with Islam. And the failure to address that out of a well-intentioned commitment to tolerance is making the problem worse. ISIS is a Muslim organisation, and it is an Islamic problem. Let me say it again to be perfectly clear. ISIS is a Muslim organisation, and they are a cancer at the heart of Islam. And the problem will not go away until Muslims confront that... There are no Christians in ISIS. There are no Buddhists, Jews, Pagans, Taoists, Houngans, Catholics, Wiccans, Hindus or even Scientologists in ISIS. ISIS is a Muslim organisation and they kill in the name of Islam. So don't say that ISIS aren't 'true Muslims' or that they are 'not really Muslims'... you also have pious professionals, businessmen, and academics who read their Qur'an cover to cover, pray every day, were seduced into radicalism, and truly believe that the Islamic State's goal of conquest is a noble one. The so-called 'Caliph' Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has a doctorate in Islamic studies. So if you feel that Muslims are being oppressed or killed in Muslim countries, I expect you to also be just as outraged by ISIS. Because they have killed more Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Jordan than the entire US army. They have done more damage to the name and reputation of Islam than any Western nation. ISIS is Islam's biggest enemy... We have to own the problem... ISIS is not America's problem, nor the British, nor the French. ISIS is not Syria or Iraq's problem. ISIS is a problem for Muslims. And if you can't admit that, you're not really a good Muslim either."

iLove Shariah-compliant Deposits | Maybank2u.com Singapore

Marine study finds all-male infantry units outperformed teams with women - ""If you were to turn down a request for a waiver like that I guess the political machine in the White House would be saying we don’t care about the effectiveness of the ground combat units," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the Armed Services Committee who served in the Marine Corps and ha expressed concerns about opening up all positions to women... The Marine study is the first effort to measure what impact gender integration could have on combat effectiveness. "This is unprecedented research across the services," Marine Col. Anne Weinberg said... The all-male units outperformed gender-integrated units on 69% of the 134 tasks that were evaluated, according to the summary. The integrated teams performed better in two machine-gun related tasks than the all-male teams. There was no difference on the remaining tasks... Marine infantry units are required to walk long distances carrying equipment weighing more than 100 pounds and be prepared to fight once they arrive at their destination. The study concluded that all-male squads moved faster than integrated units, particularly when carrying heavy weapons, such as machine guns and mortars... On marksmanship, men who had not been through infantry school hit targets 44% of the time with M4 rifles, besting infantry-trained women, who hit targets 28% of the time. Women also struggled with obstacles designed to test upper body strength in simulated combat... The rate of injuries to muscles, tendons and ligaments was 40.5% for women, compared to 18.8% for men."
Addendum: Marine Corps Study: All-Male Combat Units Performed Better Than Mixed Units - "The summary of the Marine Corps study quotes a 1992 report from the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. That was the last time the government studied the effect of gender integration on ground combat units. According to that commission, winning a war is sometimes "only a matter of inches." Back then, the commission concluded: "unnecessary distraction or any dilution of the combat effectiveness puts the mission and lives in jeopardy. Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong."
Keywords: women in combat, mixed squads, opening combat roles to women

Putting Women in Combat -- Ineffective, Terrible Idea - "A recent study, for instance, by Britain’s Tri-Service Review found that mixed-gender combat units have “lower survivability,” a “reduced lethality rate” and reduced deployability. This study, along with countless others done over the last 40 years, demonstrate that combat capabilities are so heavily weighted toward men that the gap cannot be closed. As Marine Corps captain Lauren Serrano put it in a September 2014 article in the Marine Gazette: “Acknowledging that women are different (not just physically) than men is a hard truth that plays an enormous role in this discussion”... the last 40 years of aggressive integration efforts by the U.S. military have shown that women cannot meet the same rigorous standards as men — and the answer has been to implement different standards for women, while lowering the standards for men, too... the military’s physical and psychological toughness standards for men have also declined. The military as whole — even in basic training — has become kinder and gentler, partly in order to accommodate women. In one of the more ridiculous examples of this, Army drill instructors were required to wear “empathy bellies” and fake breasts to better empathize with pregnant women... The women who have died in service to their country need to be honored, but they should not be honored by increasing the chances that other servicemen and women will die as well. As former Marine Jude Eden writes in the April 2015 edition of Military Review, “Being in the combat zone, dangerous as it is, is still worlds away from the door-kicking offensive missions of our combat units.” Being killed in a crash or by an IED is not the same as surviving physically demanding combat patrols carrying combat loads of 60 to 140 pounds, which challenge even men’s superior endurance and strength... In terms of reflexes and reaction times, men significantly outperform women. When confronted with immediate danger, studies suggest men are “more likely than women to take action.” Women are far more likely to experience motion sickness and vertigo. In the Navy women go on sick call 60 to 70 percent more frequently. For the kind of violent events and situations found on the battlefield, women are far more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder and experience the symptoms for a longer duration than men. Despite the gender-specific ability to handle the pain of childbirth, “study after study” conclusively shows that men have a much higher overall tolerance for pain than women... Blows to the head or other concussive events that a man can shrug off will stun or render a woman unconscious, reducing her unit’s chances of survival, especially in hand-to-hand combat. Units will have to deal with feminine-hygiene issues that significantly reduce unit effectiveness... A Royal Society of Medicine study on the British military found that that injuries skyrocketed for women “when they undertake the same arduous training as male recruits”... The U.S. military is already awash in discipline and morale problems coming out of female–male interactions"

Reader Story: I Quit My Passion and Took a Boring Job - "I realized that the job I loved so much was actually destroying me... It took some painful life lessons and some hard financial times to learn that doing what you love is, in fact, absolutely not the paradigm we need to follow as individuals or a society. Instead, get out there and grab what affords you the most opportunities to be the best overall person you can be."

Was This Old-School Meme the First Ever "Netflix and Chill"? - "There's also another element at play in the "would you like to come up and see my etchings?" phenomenon: It requires that the asker have a removed space for their suitor to visit . And, according to Sherman, during and before the Restoration era, most people did not have access to any private space at all. In fact, he said that while Shakespeare and Restoration comedy abounded in sexual innuendo, almost none of it was in private. "All of the seduction happens on the public streets," Sherman said. Here's the thing about private space: It was a rarity before the 18th century. Back then, even royalty had public rooms. "Kings and queens often had public levees where they would wake up in the morning and courtiers would attend to them in the room," Sherman said. "That's to say that there are walls and a door, but basically where we have separate rooms, they had huge public shared rooms." Innuendo has clearly titillated us for centuries, and sexual invitations have existed as long as we've had private space, but the question remains: Why can't we just ask for a good fuck? Or, as Sherman put it, "Isn't it interesting that people would still want euphemisms of any kind at a moment when a kind of open, blatant language is available for sex?""

Language as a window into human nature - "Language has to do two things: It’s got to convey some content such as a bribe, a command, or a proposition; at the same time it’s got to negotiate a relationship type. The solution is to use language at two levels: the speaker uses the literal form to signal the safest relationship to the listener while counting on the listener to read between the lines to entertain a proposition that might be incompatible with that relationship. And politeness is a simple example... Why we resort to indirectness even when there is no real uncertainty? For example, when the listener knows the speaker’s intent people aren’t naive and it’s hard to believe that any grown woman can be fooled by the line about the “etchings”... if Harry would say, “Would you like to come up and see my etchings?” and Sally says, “No!” then Sally knows that she’s turned down an overture and Harry knows that she’s turned down a sexual overture. But does Sally know that Harry knows? She could be thinking, “Maybe Harry thinks I’m naive!” And does Harry know that Sally knows that he knows? He could be wondering, “Maybe Sally thinks I’m dense!” There’s no mutual knowledge and they can maintain the fiction of friendship. Whereas if Harry would say, “Would you like to come up and have sex?” and Sally turns him down now Harry knows that Sally knows that Harry knows that Sally knows they cannot maintain the fiction of a friendship."

We Want It All Or Nothing At All When It Comes To Living The High Life, Study Says - "It turns out you can buy happiness after all -- you just can't rent it. It's no surprise that driving flashy cars, dripping in diamonds, and carrying the latest "it"-bag can all bring us joy, but a new study suggests it's only if the luxuries are ours to keep"

Africa expert: ′Sustainable living is a luxury′ - "When talking about sustainability we have to explain what is meant by that. 'Sustainable' only means that a situation continues over a long period. And that can also be negative! Just think about sustainable poverty and social imbalance...
How can Kenyan people overcome poverty?
First of all, they have to leave victimhood. I mainly work with young people in very poor circumstances. They believe that they can only leave those poor conditions with development aid. They expect someone to help them. We try to explain to these people that they can help themselves and that they have to utilize the resources that they have. A farmer who works only one acre of his land and leaves the other acre untouched, has to learn that land is valuable. And that he is not as poor as he thinks."

No Uncircumcised Man Will Ever Know the True Pleasure of a Blow Job
"are they saying that they circumcise the kids so that they can get blowjobs next time?"
"well its jezabel"

The Circumcision Wars: What's a Parent to Do? - "The twins’ parents, who both have advanced degrees, based their original decision to circumcise not on sound reasoning, as one might expect, but rather on what was the most common deciding factor we heard—whether or not the father had been circumcised. When our pediatrician told us that this is also the most common reason she encounters, I started referring to this as the golden rule of penises: Do unto your son what was done unto you... Almost half of our friends admitted that they considered the best way to help their sons procure oral sex as adults when making their “circumcision decision.”"

Why not let kids walk home alone? - "When I started secondary school in 1985 aged 11, it was taken for granted that I’d make the hour-long journey there and back on my own... The Scottish government plans to take this suspicion a step further and formally appoint a so-called named person, such as a teacher, social worker or health visitor, for every child. These state-sanctioned officials will have responsibility, above and beyond that of the parents, for safeguarding children’s development and wellbeing. As Josie Appleton has pointed out on spiked, such an arrangement inserts ‘a surveying, coercive authority – a spy – in the midst of every family’. The message behind the named-person proposals is clear: the state does not trust parents to bring up their own children. Many interactions between grown-ups and children are now characterised by this lack of trust and conducted defensively, with adults seeking to cover their own backs rather than spontaneously act in the best interests of the child. Sadly, if children are out in public on their own, some adults are more likely to call the police than talk to either the children or their parents... Children who grow up sheltered and suspicious of others move from wariness about ‘stranger danger’ to a fear of ‘rape culture’."

ROTK

"Beyond just famous faces, ROTK also has an immense backstory to draw upon - we are talking about several centuries of experience here. Most original gaming franchises initially suffer from a lore perspective since there is an immense amount of things to establish and explain. ROTK handily skips this complication altogether, especially since its numerous overlapping plots are almost perfect for a genre that requires extensive background information, and a MMORPG like the upcoming ROTK Online predictably takes advantage of this. The added plus is that, with the author long dead and buried, the franchise is public domain and hence free to be tweaked and modified to include (amongst other things) gothic lolitas, dragons, ghosts and zombies. without costly copyright fees. Speaking of gothic lolitas, the free licensing of ROTK has spawned some offspring including one ROTK hentai game. Developed by the ever perverse Japanese, it thankfully avoids the very scary possibility of massive guy-on-guy action by magically turning everyone into pre-pubescent schoolgirls"

--- GameAxis Unwire, Oct 2007, on Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Links - 16th November 2015

Harrison Ford Talks About "Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in a Hotdog Costume - YouTube

Has Bernie Sanders Peaked?

Kim Davis Uproar Shows How Lawlessness Is Only Okay When Liberals Do It - "Take, for example, Democrat Gavin Newsom, who is currently the California lieutenant governor. Back in 2004, when gay marriage was banned under California state law, Newsom openly defied the law and used his power as the mayor of San Francisco to force taxpayer-funded government clerks to issue gay marriage licenses... Just like Kim Davis, who is an elected Democrat, Newsom justified his lawlessness by citing his own conscience and beliefs about right and wrong rather than deferring to the actual laws of his state. If you look for evidence of gay rights advocates chastising Newsom for his blatant lawlessness, you won’t find it. Because it doesn’t exist. You similarly won’t find any evidence of these principled law enforcement purists chastising California state officials for refusing to enforce or defend the Prop 8 ballot initiative in California, which was passed overwhelmingly by California voters."

'Fake alcohol' can make you tipsy - "participants in an experiment who were told they were drinking vodka, but were not, were more swayed by misleading information and more certain their memory was correct than those who were told they were drinking tonic water... "Even on plain tonic water, the male students flirted with Seema as she conducted the experiment and the girls giggled a lot.""

How young women in China become mistresses - "Shanshan never referred to Wu as her boyfriend; he was her ‘man’, her ‘lover’, and occasionally her ‘uncle’. When she said ‘boyfriend’, she meant the man her own age back in Sichuan with whom she spent much of her free day exchanging text messages and whom she saw twice a year... K
eeping a woman is common among powerful Chinese men. A study by the Crisis Management Centre at Renmin University in Beijing, published this January, showed that 95 per cent of corrupt officials had illicit affairs, usually paid for, and 60 per cent of them had kept a mistress. Until recent crackdowns forced greater discretion, Chinese official life had two social circles. As the mobster Henry Hill puts it in the filmGoodfellas (a key reference point for Chinese provincial officialdom): ‘Saturday night was for wives, but Friday night at the Copa was always for the girlfriends’... ‘If you’re an official, you have to have a mistress, or at least a girlfriend,’ Xiaoxue said, ‘otherwise you’re not a real man. I used to have this friend who was a fake mistress. She was best friends with a gay guy — not a “duck” [male prostitute], just a normal gay guy — who was an official’s boyfriend. So the official would pay her to come out with him and pretend to be his mistress’... She distinguished being a mistress from short-term hostessing, where you had to be a perfect servant, always putting the man’s needs first. ‘If you’re too nice to him all the time, he’ll know it isn’t true,’ Xiaoxue said. ‘If he looks at another woman, you should be jealous and sulk all evening until he apologises, so he knows you care’... ‘I liked him so much I even arranged a threesome for his birthday. And I paid the other girl!’... Shanshan and her friends seem less like victims and more like players, aware of the limits of their work and astutely using the vulnerabilities of powerful men for their own ends"

Search Folder for all Meeting related messages - MSOutlook.info

PRODUCTIVITY IN SINGAPORE’S CONSTRUCTION SECTOR - "Japan's construction productivity levels averages 0.44 square—metres per manday (Table 1.3). This is from data obtained by the Management Research Society for Construction Research, Japan for more than 900 building projects of various types. The level of finishes and building services between Japan and Singapore can be considered to be similar although Japanese high rise buildings have to be designed for earthquake protection and higher wind loads. Broadly speaking, therefore, Japan’s productivity levels are about 30 percent higher than Singapore (based on an average 0.34 square—metres per manday... If we consider a highly industrialised country like Finland, we find a very high construction productivity level averaging 0.55 square-metres per manday (Figure 1.5). This is 60 percent higher than Singapore’s productivity levels"

These Famous Authors Made It Okay To Commit Grammar No-No's - "Jane Austen did not neglect to use double negatives in her writing. Often, as in the example above, she used redundancy to denote a character's snootiness. To show that the grand dame of Highbury was hesitant to act excited about a dinner party, Austen chooses to express her support convolutedly. The effect, more often than not, was to note the humor in the pretentiousness of high society."

Jamie Bartlett: How the mysterious dark net is going mainstream - "every single vendor on these sites uses a pseudonym, naturally enough, but they keep the same pseudonym to build up a reputation. And because it's easy for the buyer to change allegiance whenever they want, the only way of trusting a vendor is if they have a good history of positive feedback from other users of the site. And this introduction of competition and choice does exactly what the economists would predict. Prices tend to go down, product quality tends to go up, and the vendors are attentive, they're polite, they're consumer-centric, offering you all manner of special deals, one-offs, buy-one-get-one-frees, free delivery, to keep you happy"

Timeline Photos - Inclusive Mosque Initiative - "
"I never wear my hijab the same way, just because my mood changes all the time. I love the turban, I love the Arab style hijab, I love wearing a simple woolly hat and I love wearing a nice Panama hat. Covering my head is a part of me. And just to disturb the Islamophobic system I would keep doing it. I also decided to shave my head. You wanna see what’s under that hijab? Sorry boo, no long black hair soft and shiny like you may imagine in your 1001 Nights fantasy. I’m not Jasmine from Aladdin."
[The image shows a self described black arab woman standing in front of a wall and some foliage wearing a black turban, red lipstick, black hoop earrings, beaded braclets and a sleeveless denim dress. Her body is turned at a slight angle, She has tattoos across her right upper arm and across the top of her chest]"
Shouldn't you cover your arms before your hair? Aren't tattoos haram?

Study shows US liberals think WEIRD (in a good way) - "American liberals are significantly more likely to think analytically, and American conservatives think more holistically — so holistically that conservative thought styles are more similar to Chinese survey participants than American liberals. This led Talhelm to call liberals, in what was for me the sweetest twist of irony when reading this, “extreme Americans.”... in order to have a productive debate, analytical liberals need to realize that conservatives aren’t necessarily ignoring facts. Instead, they are thinking about things in a fundamentally different way. Encouraging analytical thinking by conservatives, and holistic thinking by liberals, or at least encouraging both sides to recognize their cognitive differences before fighting about their political ones, could lead to more amicable (and productive) debates; and maybe, in the long term, a friendlier democratic discourse."

Associations, Civic Norms, and Democracy: Revisiting the Italian Case - "By exploring associational life in early modern Italy, which the arguments of neo-Tocquevillians such as Robert Putnam explore, this article critically reconsiders the effects of associations upon democracy. By revealing how rich associational life resulted in the establishment of Fascism, I argue that associations do not necessarily contribute to the stabilization of democracy"

Phenylthiocarbamide Detection and Political Ideology - "Phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) is an organosulfur chemical with the distinctive property of tasting very bitter or being virtually tasteless, depending on the genetic makeup of the taster. The ability to taste PTC is a dominant genetic trait controlled by the gene TAS2R38, located on chromosome 7. Since previous research has indicated that conservatives tend to be more attentive to their environments than liberals, including reacting more strongly to disgusting, harmful and threatening stimuli, they may be more likely to fall among those that can taste the bitter PTC. Here we test for a linkage between PTC detection and political orientations. Preliminary results indicate that there is a relationship between these variables, suggesting that the presence of TAS2R38 has an indirect relationship with political orientation."

Cereal Killer cafe owner says he had to barricade door to protect children from anti-gentrification protesters - "The Cereal Killer cafe in Shoreditch was attacked with paint and had the word "scum" daubed on it by demonstrators taking part in a "F*** parade" protest against renewal and rebuilding in the area accompanied by an influx of more affluent residents at the expense of poorer people. Alan Keery, who opened the cafe with his brother Gary last year, was in the shop with several customers at the time of the attack. He said he had to barricade the doors to stop the demonstrators entering. He told Sky News: "It was just crazy. Two hundred people turned up with torches, throwing paint and stuff at the window."

Surprise findings in sexual abuse victim study - "people who are sexually abused as children... are five times more likely than other members of the population to be charged with some sort of offence"

When Can Kids Walk to School Alone? - "There has been a huge drop in the number of kids who walk or bike to school regularly. According to the National Center for Safe Routes to School, in 1969, 48 percent of K-8th grade students walked or bicycled to school. But by 2009, only 13 percent did. But according to a 2012 report from Safe Kids USA, streets are actually getting safer for kids. The child pedestrian injury rates are down significantly since 1995 -- mostly because of increased education to parents and better traffic infrastructure surrounding schools, such as sidewalks and crossing guards."

The Real Reason Why Asian Americans Are Outmarrying Less - Speakeasy - WSJ - "“This may sound weird, but when I was in my 20s, I really thought I should marry a non-Asian because I wanted to have mixed race children,” says Mina Lim, an editor and writer who lives in Baltimore. “I thought the human race needed to evolve, and I wanted to be part of the ‘beige-ing’ of the planet.” Lim’s first marriage, which ended in 2003 — a half-decade after it began — was to a non-Asian, and she says that during their relationship, she constantly felt self-conscious. “If there happened to be another Asian girl-white guy couple, it always seemed awkward, especially if we got seated at adjacent tables,” she says. “And one of the worst experiences I had was traveling to Asia back in the late 1990s. Everyone we met thought I was his translator. Meanwhile, he expected me to have some kind of miraculous, mystical connection with my ‘homeland.’” A few years after she and her first husband divorced, Lim met and then married an Asian American guy, and they’ve been happily together ever since. “It’s easier,” she says. “With him, I feel like I can just be myself.” Mina says that that’s the case despite the fact that she and her husband aren’t of the same ethnic background. Although her family is Filipina and his is Taiwanese, there’s enough that’s just “understood” about their respective backgrounds that, in her words, “there’s no having to explain things” — important stuff, like the centrality of family and the significance of education; silly stuff, like taking your shoes off when you enter the house... more Asian Americans seem to be marrying Asian Americans that aren’t their particular flavor of Asian American... More Asians are marrying Asians because there are more of them around."

More Asian-Americans Marrying Within Their Race - The New York Times - "Because she had never dated an Asian man before, her friends tried to discourage Stephen Arboleda, a Filipino-American engineer, when he asked whether she was single. “She only dates white guys,” they warned. But Mr. Arboleda, 33, was undeterred. “I’m going to change that,” he told them."

The Rise of Intermarriage - "About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender... Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings... Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in"
When the man in an interracial marriage waas Asian, the combined earnings were highest. Obviously....

The Pains of Being an Islamic Terrorist

It must be incredibly frustrating as an Islamic... - Faisal Saeed Al Mutar

"It must be incredibly frustrating as an Islamic terrorist not to have your views and motives taken seriously by the societies you terrorize, even after you have explicitly and repeatedly stated them. Even worse, those on the regressive left, in their endless capacity for masochism and self-loathing, have attempted to shift blame inwardly on themselves, denying the terrorists even the satisfaction of claiming responsibility.

It's like a bad Monty Python sketch:

"We did this because our holy texts exhort us to to do it."

"No you didn't."

"Wait, what? Yes we did..."

"No, this has nothing to do with religion. You guys are just using religion as a front for social and geopolitical reasons."

"WHAT!? Did you even read our official statement? We give explicit Quranic justification. This is jihad, a holy crusade against pagans, blasphemers, and disbelievers."

"No, this is definitely not a Muslim thing. You guys are not true Muslims, and you defame a great religion by saying so."

"Huh!? Who are you to tell us we're not true Muslims!? Islam is literally at the core of everything we do, and we have implemented the truest most literal and honest interpretation of its founding texts. It is our very reason for being."

"Nope. We created you. We installed a social and economic system that alienates and disenfranchises you, and that's why you did this. We're sorry."

"What? Why are you apologizing? We just slaughtered you mercilessly in the streets. We targeted unwitting civilians - disenfranchisement doesn't even enter into it!"

"Listen, it's our fault. We don't blame you for feeling unwelcome and lashing out."

"Seriously, stop taking credit for this! We worked really hard to pull this off, and we're not going to let you take it away from us."

"No, we nourished your extremism. We accept full blame."

"OMG, how many people do we have to kill around here to finally get our message across?""


Addendum:

Comment: "White guilt is the best invention the regressives have come up with.
that is until they try to whitesplain to us brown people about why its their responsibility"

Aimer

"Le verbe aimer est difficile à conjuguer : son passé n'est pas simple, son présent n'est qu'indicatif, et son futur est toujours conditionnel."

Links - 15th November 2015

Ong Keng Sen 'embarrassed' talking about Singapore in front of international artists - "Ong: in '88, when I left law school - I graduated - things were pretty buoyant. It wasn't a very saturated scene. While right now actually, you can see that there is saturation in the arts scene, because we're all pushed to overproduction. Every company is doing four plays a year, or four productions a year, but there's no audience out there. This is a crazy thing where the country is saturated with production. We're producing, but there's no demand.
Bharati: Why are you producing so much?
Ong: Because our arts council is saying that you have to produce these KPIs. Therefore, very often, people are over producing beyond their desire. If you ask artists how much they really desire to make they will say that well, if I didn't have to support the company with KPIs and all these indicators, I'd do only one work.
Bharati: Why are there so many KPIs?
Ong: Because the arts is used to show productivity, and I think that this is one of the few countries where the arts is actually supported by EDB. Because the government has to show that they are productive, including when it comes to the arts. Only if you are productive then you get state funding from taxpayers' money. For me, the arts is never going to be economy. I think the arts can become an industry at a certain point when there is a market, but now, we're putting the cart before the horse. So we're saying there must be an industry, even though there's no audience, so this for me, is over-production...
Ong: There is no way in which the system can change if the economy is stacked against it. I tend to be quite pessimistic. I think that we are all pretending that an arts scene can exist in Singapore when it doesn't – when there's no viability.
Bharati: So what would you suggest then? Tear it all down? Make Singaporean artists go overseas and practice?
Ong: No, no, no - first of all, I believe that you can make art with very little money if there is a desire. But there is very little desire in Singapore. So, whenever I hear an artist saying, “well if I get this grant, I'll do it”. For me that’s not a true passion, it's not a true desire. I'm completely with this belief that Singaporeans have no desire and we are really machines working. And we are wound up in a certain way. I think for example, the arts in Singapore has a hard time because people want to just see the arts as somewhere to relax. But it cannot be. The arts is meant to be provocative, the arts is talking about issues in society."

Japan's hidden caste of untouchables - "The caste system was abolished in 1871 along with the feudal system. Yet barriers to their integration remained. Marginalised Burakumin communities were widespread across Japan... In the mid-1970s, a Buraku rights group discovered the existence of a 330-page handwritten list of Buraku names and community locations that was being sold secretly to employers by mail order. Many big name Japanese firms were using the list to screen job applicants... "Nowadays it's still a well-known fact that people are buying this information, but rather than corporations, it's individuals buying it to check on future in-laws ahead of marriage. That's one of the biggest examples of discrimination that we frequently face."... a third of yakuza come from Buraku communities, drawn to the organization when other doors were closed to them. A yakuza leader justified his organisation to Adelstein on the basis that it gave people who had suffered discrimination a family and discipline. "It's true - the yakuza is a meritocracy," Adelstein says. "If you are willing to be ruthless and a bully and pledge your loyalty to your boss, they'll take you."

You're a Vegetarian. Have You Lost Your Mind? - "Entirely vegan diets are unknown among traditional human cultures. Back in the early part of the 19th century, dentist and explorer Weston Price went looking for vegans, but found only cannibals (link is external)*. Since vegan diets in nature provide no vitamin B12 and very little in the way of usable long chain omega3 fatty acids, it is not surprising that humans have continued to eat animals and animal-derived products. Nowadays one can obtain algae-derived DHA (the major long chain omega3 fatty acid present in the brain). and supplement B12. That wasn’t possible until a few years ago, and there’s little evidence that supplementation with DHA alone is helpful for the brain (link is external)... in all but two studies done in the past, vegetarianism has been linked with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and particularly eating disorders (link is external) (bingeing, restricting, and purging behaviors)... I don't think it is a coincidence that the two positive studies were done by the same group of researchers in the Seventh Day Adventist population... when the researchers went down the line of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders (things like body dysmorphic disorder, health anxiety and hypochondriasis), and eating disorders, the mostly vegetarian were more likely to be afflicted, and the strict vegetarian even more likely... Compared to the general population, the vegetarians were more likely to have mental disorders, and compared to the sex and education and population and age matched controls, the risk of mental disorders in vegetarians really shot up, with odds ratios hovering around 2 fold increased risk, some as high as 3 fold... participants in the study with depressive, anxiety, somatoform, and anxiety disorders consumed less meat than people without a mental disorder"

The search for talent - "an anti-elitist ethos prevails in many Western countries, especially amongst New Left groups in Britain. They glorify mediocrity into a cult. They condemn excellence as elitism. They advocate wild programmes to dismantle their own institutions of excellence because the children of manual workers are under-represented in these institutions"

How Does Parental Leave Affect Fertility and Return to Work? Evidence from Two Natural Experiments - "We find that mothers who give birth to their first child immediately after the reform have more second children than prereform mothers"

What Is the Case for Paid Maternity Leave? - "We assess the case for paid maternity leave, focusing on parents' responses to a series of policy reforms in Norway which expanded paid leave from 18 to 35 weeks (without changing the length of job protection)... the expansions had little effect on a wide variety of outcomes, including children's school outcomes, parental earnings and participation in the labor market in the short or long run, completed fertility, marriage or divorce. Not only is there no evidence that each expansion in isolation had economically significant effects, but this null result holds even if we cumulate our estimates across all expansions from 18 to 35 weeks. Our third finding is that paid maternity leave is regressive in the sense that eligible mothers have higher family incomes compared to ineligible mothers or childless individuals. Within the group of eligibles, the program also pays higher amounts to mothers in wealthier families. Since there was no crowd out of unpaid leave, the extra leave benefits amounted to a pure leisure transfer, primarily to middle and upper income families. Finally, we investigate the financial costs of the extensions in paid maternity leave. We find these reforms had little impact on parents' future tax payments and benefit receipt. As a result, the large increases in public spending on maternity leave imply a considerable increase in taxes, at a cost to economic efficiency. Taken together, our findings suggest the generous extensions to paid leave were costly, had no measurable effect on outcomes and regressive redistribution properties. In a time of harsh budget realities, our findings have important implications for countries that are considering future expansions or contractions in the duration of paid leave."

Does Maternity Leave Induce Births? - "If women are actually induced into the labor force as a result of available maternity leave, the possibility for a negative relation between maternity leave and fertility arises. In fact, Winegarden and Bracy (1995) find that a national program for paid maternity leave increases labor force participation, which subsequently reduces fertility. This possibility clearly indicates the need for additional study on the topic of the fertility effects of maternity leave"

Is Eating Your Boogers Good For You? - "One of the more credible sounding proponents of the habit is Scott Napper, a professor of biochemistry who made waves around the world’s media outlets in 2013 when he half-heartedly proposed to a group of his students that eating one’s boogers allows our bodies to safely develop anti-bodies to the weakened pathogens present in our snot and noses. He also suggested that the reason boogers have a sugary taste is to entice children to eat them, thus helping bolster their immune systems… It’s evolution. You can’t fight it."

Anonymity and aggressive driving behavior: A field study.
"Convertible drivers with their tops up behaved more aggressively than convertible drivers with their tops down"

Languages of Vanuatu - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - " there are over one hundred local languages spread over the archipelago. Vanuatu is considered to be the country with the highest density of languages per capita in the world, with an average of about 2,000 speakers for each indigenous language; only Papua New Guinea comes close."

Is it Chantilly or whipped cream ? - "“Chantilly” is a French word for sweetened whipped cream flavored with vanilla. Originally “Chantilly” is the name of a beautiful castle near Paris where sweetened vanilla flavored whipped cream became famous in 17th because served to the King Louis XIV th on August 17, 1661 on the occasion of a dinner supervised by Vatel, France’s pre-eminent chef. In 17th kitchens no food processor to whip cream but boxwood branches !"

Your MP is not the Chief Social Worker. He’s supposed to raise issues and make laws - "In Singapore, it seems MPs have to be all things to all men - and women, and children too. We want MPs to run town councils. They have to be financially trained too, to get accounts right. We want them to step in to sort out disputes, so they must be skilled mediators and negotiators. We want them to listen to our problems, so they have to be counsellors. We want them to help the poor and needy and the elderly and link them up with available resources, so they have to be social workers. We go to them to write letters of appeal to government agencies to waive fines or speed up/ review/ reverse a decision, so they are glorified scribes. We want them to get government agencies to put a playground here, or a bus stop there, and take away a funeral parlour elsewhere, so they are political lobbyists. But in fact, the core of an MPs’ role is as a legislator."

Transtheology - "Transtheology is an emerging area of religious study that is ancient and historied; it relates the human as imago Dei (image of G*d) beyond the polarized dualities of gender and sexuality, inviting human and Divine into liminal cohabitation. It is queer, postcolonial and sex-positive; we can't talk about G-d(s) without talking about sex or looking at the relationship between gender binarism and sexualized oppressions in economics and politics. If humanity is imago Dei and humanity is infinitely diverse and plural, then God must be, too. If humans reflect God and humans are in transition, then God is in transition, too. While it is fully appropriate for each individual to see themselves in the face of God, it is insufficient and dangerous to declare that one type of reflection alone is the only true reflection of God."
Uhh...

Australian PM Tony Abbott: No 'Vegemite watch' - "Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has warned against restricting the sale of popular toast spread Vegemite in remote indigenous communities after reports it was being used to make moonshine... "This is a deregulatory Government and the last thing I want to do is to have a Vegemite watch ... because Vegemite, quite properly, is for most people a reasonably nutritious spread on your morning toast or on your sandwiches," he said, when asked whether sales of Vegemite should be monitored"

Is it racist to ban alcohol from some Aboriginal communities?

Video: Drone catches man sunbathing on wind turbine in Rhode Island, US - Telegraph

Foreign countries view Malaysia as anti-corruption role model: Anti-graft agency

Support a Survivor | Know Your IX - "When a survivor comes out about having been sexually assaulted or abused by an intimate partner — whether it be their first time telling anyone or their hundredth — recognize that the process can be extremely difficult and that you should be as supportive as possible. When a victim comes out to you, remember that they have chosen to trust you with a part of themselves. Respect this."
Can you be a "survivor" if whatever you "survived" couldn't have killed you?

OrientBeauties.net

"Welcome to AsianBeauties!
AsianBeauties - 100% Joy Guarantee - Sexy Asian Dating...

What kind of girl do you want?
Conservative Outgoing Wild"

After logging in:

"One of the great aspects of AsianDate is that you can chat real-time with a host of gorgeous Asian women. Like you, they are looking for the partner of their dreams and are willing to spend lengthy periods of time online to get in touch with a special man. This section of AsianDate shows all those beautiful Orient women currently online and ready to Live Chat. It’s easy to visit this area and see immediately who you’d like to chat with and speed date in the comfort of your own home. This feature is one of the best and gives you a great chance to become immediately involved with scores of extraordinary women."

Note that there're already 3 names for this service: AsianBeauties, OrientBeauties and AsianDate. And the motto for AsianDate is "Love Knows no Boundaries" (well, if you're looking for Asian women at least).

At least of the 5 ladies in Singapore, 1 has a photo which was taken at Wisma Atria and another has one which looks like it could've been taken in an HDB estate.

Observations - 14th November 2015

"Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love" - Gabriel García Márquez

***

"I heard Jesus was not born in Australia...because they couldn't find 3 wise men and a virgin"

"I want you to do me right now." - Homework

For wedding banquet registration everyone should get QR codes you scan at reception

Planned obsolescence isn't actually bad: cheap(er), constantly improving products vs expensive durable ones with a fixed feature set

"If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then litigation is the most sincere way of saying thank you."

The only thing that stops an aircraft hijacker is a good guy with a gun. Allow guns on airplanes!

Is it child abuse to bring one to a nudist colony?


If I try to convince you that Zion Road Char Kway Teow is the best, am I forcing my Char Kway Teow beliefs down your throat?

A position that is so "subtle" that it cannot be articulated conveniently cannot be disputed

"he can't articulate what his idea of morality is beyond what agrees with his own value system"

Maybe politics is more like religion than people imagine - people cling to views despite evidence and get upset when challenged. No wonder it's one of the Holy Trinity of topics (sex, politics and religion) that are not for polite conversation

Taking an unpopular position is not the same thing as playing devil's advocate


RT @existentialcoms Intelligence is being able to come up with witty tweets. Wisdom is knowing that you are wasting your life on twitter.

IT Security philosophy: you're so scared a car will knock you down that you never leave the house

Why don't websites do micro payments? I don't want to spend $10 a month on a subscription but $0.30 an article is okay (I am informed that usually payment gateways charge a fixed fee for payments so micropayments don't make sense)


[My observation on Singapore's 2015 Elections] If the party can change, why change the party?

National Education was launched in 1997. So this is the first election where those exposed to it all the way since Primary 1 are all voting. Aha!

Amused at catastrophizing about cutting the defense budget. You might as well say the US has an ageing population so it cannot afford to spend less money on health

"We still have 5Cs.
CPF ambiguity
Chinamen
Cheap labour
Constituency Inconsistency
Chee Pie tactics"

If the WP really stole AHPETC money, how come no one has made a police report?

At least Lui Tuck Yew shows us that you don't need to be a "minority" to have people make fun of your name.

Wondering how many Singaporeans think an MP should be a cheat code for their everyday lives rather than a national representative

Male and Female Genital Cutting

Why Some Women Choose to Get Circumcised - "She also challenges some common misconceptions around FGC, like the belief that it is forced on women by men. In fact, elderly women often do the most to perpetuate the custom. I thought African girls were held down and butchered against their will, but some of them voluntarily and joyfully partake in the ritual. I thought communities would surely abandon the practice once they learned of its negative health consequences. And yet, in Shell-Duncan's experience, most people who practice FGC recognize its costs—they just think the benefits outweigh them... for us, we believe that bodies are natural and perfect. Not everybody believes that. Some people in Africa believe that bodies are androgynous and that all male and female bodies contain male and female parts. So a man’s foreskin is a female part. And for a female, the covering of the clitoris is a male part. The idea of becoming a wholly formed female includes being cut—having any part that is somewhat male-like removed from the body... One of the things that is important to understand about it is that people see the costs and benefits. It is certainly a cost, but the benefits are immediate. For a Rendille woman, are you going to be able to give legitimate birth? Or elsewhere, are you going to be a proper Muslim? Are you going to have your sexual desire attenuated and be a virgin until marriage? These are huge considerations, and so when you tip the balance and think about that, the benefits outweigh the costs... Some of the campaigns talked about infibulation, which was not the most common form of FGC. Infibulation is the most severe form. That’s when they cut the labia minora, and they take the cut edges together and stitch it together and leave a pinhole opening for urine and menstrual blood. They partially open it for intercourse and to give birth. But that’s about 15 percent of cases. So activists were saying, “Look how terrible this is. And the people in these communities were like, “Well, that might be true in Somalia, but we don’t do that here.” There was a real credibility gap."

The Lure Of Vaginal Rejuvenation And Labiaplasty: Barbie, Barbie Everywhere - "some observers believe the general culture may be “brainwashing” women into believing they need these surgeries. It can be inferred such critics are also suggesting that, similar to a child, grown women lack agency — the ability to think for themselves and act independently"

Counting genital piercings as FGM 'undermines' abuse says union - "All women who have "intimate piercings" will be classified as having suffered female genital mutilation (FGM), the Department of Health says. Even if an adult consents to having it done, she will still be said to have undergone a "harmful procedure"... "Now we're faced with a situation where men are able to make up their mind and consent to an intimate piercing where women are not.""

PRESS RELEASE: 11.13.12 Western Media Coverage of Female Genital Surgeries in Africa is “Hyperbolic” and “One-Sided,” says International Policy Group - The Hastings Center - "Despite widespread condemnation of female genital surgeries as a form of mutilation and a violation of human rights, an international advisory group argues that the practice is poorly understood and unfairly characterized. In a public policy statement in the Hastings Center Report, the Public Policy Advisory Network on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa, a group that includes doctors, anthropologists, legal scholars, and feminists, argues that media coverage of the practice is hyperbolic and one sided, “painting the now familiar portrait of African female genital surgeries as savage, horrifying, harmful, misogynist, abusive, and socially unjust.” The advisory network’s statement takes no position on whether the practice should continue. It aims to “move the coverage of the topic from an over-heated, ideologically charged, and one-sided story about ‘mutilation,’ morbidity, and patriarchal oppression to a real, evidence-based policy debate governed by the standards of critical reason and fact checking”...
• Medical research has found that a high percentage of women who have had genital surgery “have rich sexual lives, including desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction, and their frequency of sexual activity is not reduced.”
• Reproductive health and medical complications linked to female genital surgery happen infrequently.
• Those who value female genital surgery view it as aesthetic enhancement, not mutilation.
• In almost all societies where female genital surgery is performed, male genital surgery also takes place. Broadly speaking, then, such societies “are not singling out females as targets of punishment, sexual deprivation, or humiliation.”
• The link between patriarchy and female genital surgery is unfounded. Almost no patriarchal societies adhere to the practice and, at the same time, the practice is not customary in the world’s most sexually restrictive societies.
• Women manage and control female genital surgery in Africa and the practice “should not be blamed on men or on patriarchy.” Ironically, the authors contend, groups that fight against female genital surgery weaken the power of women.
• An influential WHO study about the "deadly consequences" of female genital surgery is the subject of criticism that has not been adequately publicized. The reported evidence does not support sensational media claims about female genital surgery as a cause of perinatal and maternal mortality during birth...
• The media, activists and policy-makers must “cease using violent and preemptive rhetoric” that paints a sensational image of African parents mutilating their daughters and damaging their reproductive and sexual health.
• It should be acknowledged that female genital surgery is not unique to African women; the authors liken it to “genital piercings on college campuses” and “vaginal rejuvenations requested by some Western women.”
• Advocates fighting for safe, hospital-based female genital surgery should be given a voice in public policy forums.
• “Zero tolerance” slogans promoted by anti-mutilation groups are counterproductive. Not only do they limit thoughtful, respectful dialogue, but they can make genital surgery more dangerous by driving the practice underground.
• Legislation and regulations that criminalize female genital surgery for adult women are discriminatory, because they deny women’s autonomy “to choose what makes them happy with their own bodies.”
• Studies of genital surgery should be multidisciplinary, and there should be support for a network linking researchers and advocates who have diverse points of view.
• Women and girls who have undergone genital surgery as children and are now living in countries where the practice is nonexistent or illegal should not be subjected to discourse that stigmatizes them or teaches them to expect sexual dysfunction. Such discourse “may provoke what could be called ‘psychological mutilation,’” potentially compromising the development of a normal and healthy psychosexual life"
Keywords: societies which practise female circumcision also practise male circumcision

The Association between Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and the Risk of HIV/AIDS in Kenyan Girls and Women (15-49 Years) - "The inverse association between FGM and HIV/AIDS established in this study suggests a possible protective effect of female circumcision against HIV/AIDS. This finding suggests therefore the need to authenticate this inverse association in different populations and also to determine the mechanisms for the observed association."
This is related to "Female Circumcision and HIV Infection in Tanzania: for Better or for Worse?" which showed that female genital cutting (FGC) reduced HIV infection rates for women
Keywords: Kenya

A fatal irony: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase transmission of HIV - "The “randomized controlled trials” upon which these recommendations are based are not without their flaws. Their data have been harnessed to support public health recommendations on a massive scale whose implementation, it has been argued, may have the opposite of the claimed effect, with fatal consequences... the men who were circumcised got additional counseling about safe sex practices compared to the control group, and then they had to refrain from having sex altogether for the simple reason that their lacerated penises had to be wrapped in bandages until their wounds healed — leading to what Boyle and Hill refer to as “time-out discrepancy” in the quote above. By contrast, the non-circumcised men got to keep having sex during the full two month period during which the treatment group was in recovery mode. Then (due to a statistically significant effect having been detected) the trials were stopped early — which tends to lead to an overestimation the true effect size of the treatment... The absolute decrease in HIV infection between the treatment and control groups in these experiments was just 1.31%, which is likely to have no appreciable effect at the demographic level... “Before circumcising millions of men in regions with high prevalences of HIV infection, it is important to consider alternatives. A comparison of male circumcision to condom use concluded that supplying free condoms is 95 times more cost effective”... In Uganda, as Boyle and Hill uncovered, the Kampala Monitor reported men as saying, “I have heard that if you get circumcised, you cannot catch HIV/AIDS. I don’t have to use a condom.” Commenting on this problem, a Brazilian Health Ministry official stated: “[T]he WHO [World Health Organization] and UN HIV/AIDS program … gives a message of false protection because men might think that being circumcised means that they can have sex without condoms without any risk, which is untrue.”"
Someone I knew said that it was okay for him to have unprotected (raw) sex with prostitutes because he was circumcised, so he had a lower chance of getting HIV

Misconceptions about Modern and Ancient Genital Mutilations - "the American Medical Association:... "behavioral factors are far more important risk factors for acquisition of HIV and other sexually transmissible diseases than circumcision status, and circumcision cannot be responsibly viewed as "protecting" against such infections"... Richard Hain claim that female genital mutilation and male genital mutilation are "not the same" probably stems from lack of knowledge. Removal of the male prepuce does compromise male genital function. The prepuce, unlike the glans but like the lips and fingertips, is sensitive to light touch, pain, heat and cold. The glans and the penile shaft gain excellent sensitivity from the foreskin. The foreskin appears to be an important component of the overall sensory mechanism of the human penis. Men circumcised in adulthood report diminished penile sensitivity, less penile gratification, more penile pain and cosmetic deformity. A larger study measured the degree of sexual satisfaction before and after circumcision in adult new Russian immigrants that were circumcised in Israel. The circumcised immigrants report a decrease in their sexual satisfaction. Women that experienced sexual contacts with both mutilated (circumcised) and intact (uncircumcised) men report strong preference for the latter. These findings should come as no surprise. Maimonides, a famous Jewish sage and a physician, wrote in the 12th century about circumcision "that one of its objects is to limit sexual intercourse, and to weaken the organ of generation as far as possible, and thus cause man to be moderate. ... for there is no doubt that circumcision weakens the power of sexual excitement, and sometimes lessens the natural enjoyment; ... It is hard for a woman, with whom an uncircumcised had sexual intercourse, to separate from him"... In the societies that practice it, Female Genital Mutilation exactly like Male Genital Mutilation has many alleged benefits"