Michael Kimmel and Gloria Steinem on Consensual Sex on Campus – NYTimes.com
Michael Kimmel and Gloria Steinem on Consensual Sex on Campus - NYTimes.com.
ISRAEL’S 155mm CURE FOR ‘TERRORISM’ « Eric Margolis
This account of Israel's involvement in a historical 'axis of political subterfuge' with the USA, Britain... and whomever is interesting and may well be true.
I am instinctively inclined to be pro-Israel and sometimes wonder whether I am being duped.
Yet there is a relentless truth: Israel is surrounded by nations and sects that have formally announced that they will not rest until Israel is obliterated and Jews everywhere have been exterminated. How much licence does this grant Israel and the Jewish people to aggressively and pro-actively defend themselves? Quite a bit I think, especially when the nature of potential obliteration has been evolving.
What would happen if Israel's middle east enemies acquired nuclear weapons; or if terrorists got their hands on miniaturized versions of nuclear devices, or some version of biological Armageddon?
The next holocaust might not emerge as incrementally as the last.
Timely, vigorous prevention may be the only prevention possible.
BP May Be Fined Up to $18 Billion for Spill in Gulf – NYTimes.com
BP May Be Fined Up to $18 Billion for Spill in Gulf - NYTimes.com.
What Makes People Poor? – NYTimes.com
Excellent stuff!
But here's the thing: if we have any real interest in developing strategies and technologies able to rescue impoverished people 'over there', what would be wrong with identifying our own marginalized populations as de facto third world nations within, for example, Canada and the USA.
What would be more interesting that structuring alternative second economies for these marginalized populations - in a sense, rebooting dysfunctional local populations with new operating systems featuring new local currencies and using social media and other technological resources allowing individuals to produce and exchange value outside of the global economy?
These example and resources would be immediately relevant to rescuing marginalized populations 'over there'.
The fact that such repairs have not been occurring begs further questions.
ISIS Is a Disgrace to True Fundamentalism – NYTimes.com
Deftly argued. However the role of baseline religions in the emergence of fanaticism seems to me to set the stage for even Nietzsche's trenchant analysis of what is occurring, and indeed seems to be accelerating.
The shallow understandings of millions of disaffected young men (and women) equipped with UZIs, decapitating knives and peckers-at-the-ready may be setting the stage for unprecedented torment.
BBC News – Indian girl ‘humiliated’ by village elders found dead
One quiet, largely unasked, question about the persistence of misogyny across cultures and generations involves cultural mechanisms achieving this persistence. This is where a certain paradox seems to arise. Women are the principal victims of misogyny, if only by definition. Women are also the principal means whereby mores, folk-ways and cultural values are transmitted from one generation to another. Why, then, have women and mothers not been better at raising male children to become more wholesome, inclusive adults?
I think this question does not come up for two related reasons. The first is that men are identified as misogynistic in normative, moralizing ways - i.e., that they choose to behave abominably and that this choice is consciously made. This means that men originate misogyny and that it does not flow from proximate cultural sources.
So understanding the problem, the victims of misogyny are encouraged to overlook their own complicity - even if this complicity amounts to nothing more than being an unwitting conduit of culturally-embedded mischief.
BBC News - Indian girl 'humiliated' by village elders found dead.
Ready, Aim, Fire. Not Fire, Ready, Aim. – NYTimes.com
Friedman's analysis overlooks an important reality. Mainstream religious populations on every side of every sectarian conflict regularly deplore the excesses of their fundamentalist brothers and sisters. They emphasize that they themselves abhor violence and recommend peace, love and inclusion. The problem is, their mainstream religious lives establish the legitimacy of Holy Writ (The Bible, The Koran, The Whatever... ). They are the conduit transmitting faiths from one generation to the next, and even from one population to the next. So instructed with authentic, legitimated religious notions, new generations are positioned to take these faithful tenets to new heights and proper spiritual conclusions. Thus they often identify their own nation's cultural and spiritual softness and often turn upon their own moderate families and communities. Their faithful postures are not aggressive or rigorous enough to shield them from charges of apostasy.
None of this is surprising. The young are always on the lookout for ways to distinguish themselves from their parents. In secular nations these inclinations are usually merely annoying. In religious nations that easily become toxic.
The problem therefore is not the predictable existence of religious extremism - it is the global reach of faith-based religious populations. Moderate or not, they make bigotry and radicalism possible and perhaps inevitable.
Goodbye & Good Luck!
n a generational Ponzi scheme. As life expectancy increases and birth rates decline, the population pyra
via Goodbye & Good Luck!.