To Help Nepal

You can send funds.  The New York Times gives a list of aid organizations.

I was told that the Lutheran World Federation of Churches is also a good organization to give to.  They have a lot of experience in crisis management, they do not try to convert people to Lutheranism and they seem to work on issues of gender justice, too.

I cannot personally vouch for any of the above, but they are avenues to get your pennies to make a difference.

As an aside, I really want to find a way to give help to the Yazidis in Iraq.  If you know of a way, leave it in the comments, with my thanks.

The Apocalypse And Its Miscreants

So I start this post with the title and have to Google "miscreant!"  That's how directly my posts are channeled from that goddess of snakes who takes me over.

Just joking.  But also linking to the religious arguments about us living in end times.  The valiant butchers of IS (ISIS/ISIL) believe that we are living in end times, and so do many American religious conservatives.  To give you a slightly humorous take, here's Michele Bachmann on that topic:

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) expressed a mixture of condemnation and appreciation toward President Barack Obama for, in her words, bringing the world to end times.
...
“Barack Obama is intent, it is his number one goal, to ensure that Iran has a nuclear weapon," she said. "Why? Why would you put the nuclear weapon in the hands of madmen who are Islamic radicals?"
Bachmann, however, then seemed to approve of the President moving mankind into "the midnight hour."
"We get to be living in the most exciting time in history," she said, urging fellow Christians to "rejoice."
"Jesus Christ is coming back. We, in our lifetimes potentially, could see Jesus Christ returning to Earth, the Rapture of the Church."

What a relief!  I can stop flossing!

The point of this post is that something like "end times" is not an exogenous variable from the point of view of politicians and those active in trying to make them come about.  "End times" can be achieved.  A nuclear war could do it nicely, but so could many other things, such as irreversible changes in the climate.

The reverse of that is that we can delay the "end times" by our behavior.  Sadly, people with certain religious views don't have any incentive to do so, because they have packed their suitcases and have their travel tickets for paradise tightly in one hand while they use the guns with the other.

I haven't read enough on the history of apocalyptic thoughts, but my guess is that there have always been many people who believed that they themselves were living in the "end times."  But I doubt they had quite the same power to push this planet closer to them than some people today have.  While rejoicing over it.

The Preference For Sons in India And China. Look What We got For it!

The Economist has a long and pretty fact-filled article on the consequences of the missing girls in India and China (sex-selective abortions and female infanticide), combined with a few other marriage rules.  Worth reading it.  You can also then read the comments if you wish.

I did.  And then I got a sore stomach, as usual.  The reasons are subtle, a bit like a giant hippo only showing its nose above the surface of the river.  Everyone else writes about the nose, whereas I see the rest of that hippo, the ignored part.

Note that the article very quickly hints at the reason for all this sex imbalance:  It's "preference for sons."  Then it skates off to study how all those abortions and infant killings will soon leave many young men eternal spinsters (why not call them that?) and how that is very bad for the society and men, with more crime and violence and the need for more prostitutes.

The solutions offered both in the article and in the comments are not about that "preference for sons."  If we realize that the same thing could be called "a dislike of daughters" or something much stronger, given that some parents even resort to killing the infant daughter, the disconnect between the problem (women are not valued) and the solutions offered (somehow get more women from elsewhere, say)  becomes as clear as a hippo rising from the river.

The article has other interesting stuff, such as women "marrying upwards" in those countries.  That's the same as men marrying downwards.  Terms matter, my friends.  Because if men marry downwards, it's better that there aren't too many women on the top of the societal ladders.  They will become "leftovers" as they are called in China.

Now, the eternal spinster guys are also given pejorative names, such as "bare branches."  But isn't it fascinating how something which has its roots in the fact that women are not valued results in an article where part of the problem of too many men is that educated women cannot find husbands?  When you would have thought that more women with education (and thus more opportunities to help their families financially) would have been one of the solutions which could raise the valuation of women in general?

I may be nitpicking.  But I have written about this particular slant in the media takes about the missing girls for many, many years.  The problem really boils down, in those articles, to the question of how we can now get those men wives.

That the real problem is in the underlying assumption that all women are good for is being the providers of sex and sons just sorta sleeps under the surface of the debating river.

And  yes, as I have written before, there are reasons for the dislike of daughters.  In a system without good pensions it is the sons who are supposed to take care of their parents, while daughters must be provided with dowries and then they work for a totally different family.  And it is the sons who are seen as continuing the family genes, only the sons.  But all this, based on patrilocal marriage customs, is ultimately and circularly based on women not valued as much.

The Ethics of Journalism 101: Is it OK for NYT and WaPo to use Pre-Publication Opposition Research on Hillary Clinton?

This is an interesting question, even if I write so myself.  The case for your consideration:

The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have made exclusive agreements with a conservative author for early access to his opposition research on Hillary Clinton, a move that has confounded members of the Clinton campaign and some reporters, the On Media blog has confirmed.
"Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich" will debut on May 5. But the Times, the Post and Fox have already made arrangements with author Peter Schweizer to pursue some of the material included in his book, which seeks to draw connections between Clinton Foundation donations and speaking fees and Hillary Clinton's actions as secretary of state. Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative research group, and previously served as an adviser to Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

 I see three potentially serious problems with these exclusive arrangements.

First, depending on what newspapers are supposed to have as their objective*, getting opposition research on only one candidate can bias the reporting in the papers.  If conservative muckrakers are more diligent than liberal ones, the American people (how I love to be able to write that!) will be mislead, assuming that the Republican candidates might also have all sorts of skeletons in their mahogany cupboards.

Second, assuming that those at the newspapers know how to judge the research of Schweizer's book may be a form of hubris.  Or at least we should not just be told that there will be experts looking at all the stuff.

Third, and this links to my second point, using a book BEFORE it is published means that the newspapers won't have access to the expert criticisms which follow the publication of a book.  It's as if the book is allowed to hold the stage all alone, when the correct approach would be to wait to see what experts in the field might have to say about it.

----
*The naive me thinks that the newspapers should try to be objective, search for as much truth as people can agree on and provide voters with factual information that will help their votes.  Psst, Maureen Dowd, writing about Hillary Clinton with all sorts of sexist terms isn't helpful for voters.

But other objectives are possible.  For instance, to make the most money possible out of gullible readers.

Sam Brownback Likes Some Government Handouts And Hates Others

Don't you just adore governor Brownback?  He's such an extreme believer in his own little right-wing religious fundamentalist reality.  Even though it's Christianist, it's not very charitable.  Or rather, the charity goes to the haves and is removed from the have-nots.  I wonder what Jesus would say about that, hmh?

A few years ago Brownback cut taxes in Kansas something fierce.  Indeed, certain kinds of firms don't pay any tax on their profits!  That's giving the owners of those firms government handouts, in my divine and correct opinion.

But other types of handouts Brownback doesn't like.  His most recent move consists of making absolutely sure that welfare recipients don't spend that grudgingly-offered money on strippers or tattoos but on useful things such as baby diapers:

The measure bars spending relief funds on movies, at swimming pools, or on "cruise ships," as well as at any "jewelry store, tattoo parlor, massage parlor, body piercing parlor ... psychic or fortune telling business, bail bond company, video arcade ... or any retail establishment which provides adult-oriented entertainment in which performers disrobe or perform in an unclothed state."


It also places a $25 daily limit on ATM withdrawals using the debit cards issued to recipients under the state/federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, which is what's left of America's welfare program. That renders the cards useless for major spending, such as paying the rent, but it does mean that users will pile up ATM fees at $1 per withdrawal, plus bank fees.

Note that there is no evidence Kansas welfare recipients are desperately trying to use their welfare checks in the manner described here.  I'd be pretty surprised if such misuse is at all common, given that most recipients are single mothers with young children.

The point of this bill, Brownback tells us, is to get people to go to work!  I haven't checked if Kansas funds daycare for single mothers on welfare so that they can go to work in one of the minimum wage jobs many of them would end up with.  But whatever.  At least they can't get tattoos and massages while taking cruises.

Emily Badger in Washington Post writes about all this with great lucidity.  She points out that the treatment of one group of handout recipients differs from the treatment of all other groups of handout recipients:  They are held to higher moral and ethical standards:

The second issue with these laws is a moral one: We rarely make similar demands of other recipients of government aid. We don't drug-test farmers who receive agriculture subsidies (lest they think about plowing while high!). We don't require Pell Grant recipients to prove that they're pursuing a degree that will get them a real job one day (sorry, no poetry!). We don't require wealthy families who cash in on the home mortgage interest deduction to prove that they don't use their homes as brothels (because surely someone out there does this). The strings that we attach to government aid are attached uniquely for the poor.

And that is because we don't view other forms of government transfers as undeserved handouts.

It's not necessarily bad to limit what welfare payments can be used for.  But when you combine this particular move with Brownback's earlier handouts to much wealthier groups of taxpayers you wonder what type of Jesus his reality has.  If this man is supposedly following in his footsteps.

Terry Pratchett Thoughts. On the Role of the Media and On Citizens as Consumers.

I've been re-reading many of Terry Pratchett's books, in his memory.  I often come across little jewels (or chocolate truffles) of ideas.  For example:

"the public is not interested in public interest."

Which is true.  The reasons for that are many and varied, but it's almost impossible to try to write about topics of public interest on a commercial basis (so send money).

My most recent re-read is The Truth, about the first newspapers in Ankh-Morpork.  Mr. William de Worde starts the very first one, with actual news in it (though also stories about funny-shaped vegetables).  A competitor soon catches on with scandalous stories such as "a woman gives birth to a cobra."

de Worde gets a statement from the king of the area where this miracle-birth was supposed to have happened, at some cost for himself.  The king denied any cobra-human births to have happened.

The response of the readers was that of course the king would deny everything, of course.  In any case, stories about women giving birth to cobras are a lot more fun than stories about politics, say.

All that reminds me of American politics, in a gently ridiculous sense. Weird people writing or nattering about Hillary Clinton's cankles (a term for fat ankles) as if it matters what size ankles a president has and as if we ever otherwise measure the ankles of presidential contenders.  Presidents being judged on the basis of whether we'd like to have a beer with them.

Imagine using that way of judging for picking your neurosurgeon.

All this links in a vague way to a Finnish article I recently came across, on the new approach to citizens as consumers.  This is the part I wish to translate:

Kun on riittävän monta vuotta toisteltu, että kansa tietää parhaiten kaiken, ovat sivistysinstituutiot alkaneet nöyrtyä.
Korkeakoulujen oletetaan palvelevan paitsi liike-elämää ja politiikkaa, myös oppilaitaan, joista on tullut asiakkaita.
Lehdet ovat luopuneet vanhanaikaisesta valistajan roolista ja kyselevät yleisöltä, mikä on tärkeää. Nettiäänestyksissä media tenttaa lukijan mielipidettä asioihin, jotka eivät ole mielipiteestä kiinni: tuliko lama, lämpeneekö ilmasto, tappavatko rokotteet, mitä mieltä jengi.
Asiakkaan rooli voi imarrella meitä hetken, mutta demokratian ja sivistyksen osalta se on tylsä loukku: olemme aina oikeassa, ja siksi meidän ei tarvitse omaksua uutta.

My approximate translation:

When we have repeated for many years that the people (here meant as the audience) know best all the cultural institutions have begun to agree.  Universities are assumed to serve both business and politics but also the students who are now customers.  Newspapers have given up their old-fashioned role as educators and enlighteners.  Instead, they ask the public what is important.  In online polls the media wants the reader's opinions on matters which are not based on opinions:  did we have an economic recession, is the climate warming, do vaccinations kill.  What do you guys think?

The role of a customer can momentarily flatter, but it's a boring trap from the point of view of democracy and culture:  we are always right and that's why we don't have to learn anything new.

What To Read Today on Gender, 4/16/15

1.  This article about feminist foreign policy is worthwhile.  A quote:

Last month, Saudi Arabia abruptly cut ties with Sweden, recalling its ambassador and announcing that it would issue no new visas to Swedish business travelers. The cause, according to Saudi Arabia, was some remarks made by Margot Wallström, the foreign minister of Sweden.

...

On February 11th, Wallström, speaking before the Swedish parliament, stated what may appear to be a few facts about Saudi Arabia: she said that women are not allowed to drive, that their human rights are violated, and that the country is a dictatorship in which the royal family has absolute power. Like representatives of several other European countries, she also criticized the public flogging of the blogger Raif Badawi and later called it “medieval.”
Wallström, whose government recognized the State of Palestine last year, had been asked to deliver a speech at an Arab League summit in Cairo in late March, but Saudi Arabia intervened, and Wallström was disinvited. On March 9th, Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador to Sweden, saying that Wallström had “unacceptably interfered” in the country’s internal affairs. The United Arab Emirates followed suit a week later. Due to Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic wrangling, Wallström was also condemned by the Gulf Cooperation Council (which consists of Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the U.A.E.), The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which includes fifty-seven countries, and the Arab League itself. Finally, Saudi Arabia leveled a more serious charge against Wallström: that by commenting on the punishment of public flogging, the Swedish foreign minister had criticized Sharia law and Islam.

There are similar pressures in writing.  How does one criticize beliefs and not people?  And are other people allowed to tell us not to criticize their beliefs?  Should Western feminists be silent about ISIS, because criticizing ISIS so easily is viewed as criticizing Islam, given the discrimination and labeling of Muslims, especially in the West? 

But if Western feminists are silent about ISIS,  what remains of feminism?  How can a feminist write about the forced-birth policies of US conservatives and not write about this?

I'm on Wallström's side in this, and that's why I worry about the argument that her comments are somehow the same as criticizing Sharia law (which is deemed to have a divine origin).

2.  Female chimpanzees are more likely than male chimpanzees to fashion weapons and use them in hunting, according to one study.  I have not read the study, but note the framing, especially in the last paragraph.  Then check how often this particular study is disseminated, compared to the earlier study about how female chimpanzees appeared to shape branches into dolls.  That one was widely disseminated and discussed, along the lines that "we all know the gender roles in humans are innate.  Just look at the chimps!"

I bet this one won't get the same amount of publicity, because it doesn't serve to prop up human gender roles.  As Terry Pratchett states in one of his books, people don't want news, they want "olds:" reinforcement for what they already believe to be true.

In any case, I've written about the gender politics in this field earlier.

3.  Martha MacCallum really really dislikes the idea of a woman's head on US paper money.  There's a movement to get a woman on the twenty-dollar bill, and Bill O'Reilly and Martha MacCallum ruminated on that at Fox News.  O'Reilly asked why everything must be so damn politically correct*, and MacCallum disliked the idea that this movement is all about women.  It would be more interesting, I guess, if it was about melons or papayas. 

Sigh.  The movement wouldn't have to be all about women if the US had had the same number of male and female presidents and if the Founding Fathers had been joined with some Founding Mothers, dear Martha.  Context matters.

MacCallum stated that for her the heads on money are US presidents and a few Founding Fathers, and that statement creates an infinite loop with my previous paragraph.  Or put Abigail Adams on the money.

4.  As many people say on Twitter:  "I can't even..."  That's the term describing utter exhaustion with the silliness that goes on in American politics.  Now that Hillary Clinton has stepped into the ring we are going to have several years hilarious sexism.  And I have this feeling I should write about it. 

Perhaps I will, perhaps I won't, but I can't help lifting up the skirt on the particular commentary of a Texas marketing CEO Cheryl Rios, who believes that women are too hormonal to run a country (even though apparently not too hormonal to run a marketing firm) and that this is why we shouldn't have a female president.  Imagine her hand on the switch which rules nuclear weapons!  She might start a poorly thought-out war!  Gasp!  And gasp!

Enough exclamation marks for you?  In any case, Hillary Clinton probably has calmer hormones, given her post-menopausal stage, than any of the younger guys joining the race.  And quite possibly calmer hormones than the older guys, at least based on what I've observed of her in the public eye over the years.

But if that isn't enough to convince you not to vote for Hitlery** (a conservative pet-name for Clinton), there's also the Biblical argument which is very very logical Rios tells us.  (I've read the Bible and can't recall where the logic in the statements are.  They just tell us that men should rule over women and that women should shut up.)  And if even that won't make you face the facts, well, what will all those sexist countries think of the US if it is run by a woman?  How can we possibly invade them or start reckless wars against them if they won't even respect us because of our gender equality policies?

OK.  That last bit was me pretending to be inside the head of Cheryl Rios.  I got all dizzy and hormonal.

----
*  That term is a euphemism for "let's ignore large classes of people" in politics and in business.  It's also shorthand for "here comes the bit where we dis women and/or minorities."  It's a marvelous term!  And a boring one, because it doesn't say WHY the utterer finds something politically correct but in reality completely false and unnecessary and trivial.  It's right-wing code-speak.

**  This post is not about Hillary Clinton as a candidate.  Voters have their own reasons for voting or not voting for a particular candidate.  My focus here (and in the future) is in the kind of statements which are not about Clinton at all but about all women or all women of a particular age etc..  In other words, about sexism and misogyny and the use of extreme stereotypes based on gender.

The Chibok Schoolgirls. One Year Later.

It's a year since Boko Haram, an extremist Wahhabist terrorist group, captured a group of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria.  More than two hundred girls still remain disappeared.  Nobody knows their fate.  Nigeria's president-elect Mr. Buhari:

“Currently their whereabouts remain unknown,” he said. “We do not know the state of their health or welfare, or whether they are even still together or alive.”
The girls were taken late on the night of April 14, 2014, from their state school in the heartland of the Boko Haram insurgency, igniting fears among local officials that the girls would be used as slaves by the group if they were not rescued immediately.
Perhaps as many as 50 of the girls subsequently escaped. The majority remain missing, forced into “marriage” by their captors, forced to cook and do chores for them, or killed by them.

Boko Haram has since butchered and kidnapped an unknown (but large) number of people. From that angle the fate of the Chibok schoolgirls is no more awful than Boko Haram's general policies.  But this particular kidnapping is noteworthy not only for the human lives it destroyed (which is quite possible without killing someone outright).  It's also an example of Boko Haram's political views:  Western education should be banned and girls and women, in particular, should not be educated.  

To kidnap schoolgirls is to make those views into reality.  To turn those schoolgirls into domestic slaves or to force them into marriage clarifies the Boko Haram political stance even more.

Profits As A Reward For Risk Carrying?

Economists often argue that this is the ultimate function of corporate profits:  They reward those who bear the risks, and the losses punish those who made the wrong guesses in the corporate games.  So it's all ethical, right?

Given this, I find the new focus on transferring risks to employees an interesting one.  Logically every step towards workers-as-the-real-entrepreneurs should make it harder to justify high profits, correct?  But I'm not seeing that trend to follow the other new trend, this one, say:

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is probing chain clothing retailers for their practice of on-call scheduling, which forces workers into a purgatory of not knowing from day to day whether they'll have to report for duty, making something as simple as planning childcare or attending college extremely difficult—if the boss doesn't force you to quit school altogether.

This is not the only example of the new trend.  Corporations are now demanding no risks from what governments might do in the future, for example, as is visible in the trade agreements.

The Beauty of The Female Back. Today's Evolutionary Psychology Study.

A couple of readers forwarded me summaries of an evolutionary psychology study about what angle of lower back men* view as the most beautiful in women.  Thanks for those summaries.

I wasn't going to write about the study, because it didn't beep loudly enough on my freakometer**. 

But then I Googled it and found something fascinating about who quoted it:  The first ten pages of Google gave me a large harvest of pickup artist sites, a few misogyny sites and, in general, lots of tough-prehistoric-guy sites.  Many of those sites summarized the study as being about large butts, which is incorrect, but then misunderstanding studies is more common than understanding them.  What was more interesting is that this study  seems particularly loved by those who do not particularly love women.

That's one fascinating fact.  The other fascinating fact is a comment in one study summary:

Short Funny/Not-so-Funny Posts for 4/10/15. Futurist Ideas of 1930, Labiafaces And Other Weirdness.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Cats And The Dogs And Even The Birds

I had never heard of Saara Suvanto before yesterday.  That is a pity, because she had one of those voices which is an instrument (think of Billie Holiday whose centenary is today or of Odetta or of Janis Joplin).  She died at the age of forty from Type One diabetes and she was blind from her early twenties onwards.

What a voice!  This is an early 1980s song she created and performed.  It's called Kissat ja Koirat ja Linnutkin which means The Cats and the Dogs And Even the Birds.  I have given a rough translation of the words at the end of this post.



The topic of the song was the fear of a nuclear war.  But it applies equally well to global climate change, today's fear.

My translation of the lyrics:

Hey, dad, even the children
they want to blow up in air
All the cats and the dogs and even the birds
none of them will be left in peace.

Hey mom,  they slaughter the children, too
nothing will be left of them
all the cats and the dogs and even the birds
everything they destroy.

Listen to the voice of the child
when you still have time
stop being so  very busy
you restless nomad. 

In the noise the voice
of the innocent child drowns
At night when she/he sleeps
you can hear it clearly

Hey, dad, even the children
they want to blow up in air
All the cats and the dogs and even the birds
none of them will be left in peace.

Hey mom,  they slaughter the children, too
nothing will be left of them
all the cats and the dogs and even the birds
everything they destroy. 

Listen to the voice of the child
when you can still hear it
when the city quiets down
the frailest of voices sing
it is then the turn of the big ones
to join the song
and ? children’s choir
rings over all land

Hey, dad, even the children
they want to blow up in air
All the cats and the dogs and even the birds
none of them will be left in peace.

Hey mom,  they slaughter the children, too
nothing will be left of them
all the cats and the dogs and even the birds
everything they destroy.

Suitable Music For Today

The Fabled Hare

Cat For Friday

This is Iippa, decorating a party table.

She watches programs about squirrels and such on her very own laptop.

Meanwhile, in Indiana

Indiana has recently become famous for its particular version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which  has been widely criticized as a barely camouflaged attempt to give religious fundamentalists (and the firms they own) more scope to refuse service to people who might try to  order  cakes or flowers for same-sex wedding parties or who might try to renew their contraceptive pill prescriptions and so on.

Others have written about that in great detail.  What struck me when looking at the Indiana law was how it defined the "person" that the new law would provide with restored (refreshed! renewed!) religious freedom:

Sec. 7. As used in this chapter, "person" includes the following: 
(1) An individual.

(2) An organization, a religious society, a church, a body of communicants, or a group organized and operated primarily for religious purposes.
(3) A partnership, a limited liability company, a corporation, a company, a firm, a society, a joint-stock company, an unincorporated association, or another entity that:
(A) may sue and be sued; and

(B) exercises practices that are compelled or limited by a system of religious belief held by:
(i) an individual; or
(ii) the individuals;

who have control and substantial ownership of the entity, regardless of whether the entity is organized and operated for profit or nonprofit purposes.

Remember Hobby Lobby and the "closely held" companies?  This sounds similar, perhaps a child of that decision.  So now companies can be persons, too!

That's the background in my mind for thinking about the case of Purvi Patel, an Indiana woman who has been convicted* of feticide (based on an Indiana law Ind. Code Ann. § 35-42-1-6) and also of felony  neglect of a dependent.

IS And Women. Part 3: The Western Female IS Militants

 Introduction

Meet Zahra and Salma Halane, seventeen-year-old twin sisters from Manchester, England who are not currently living the lives of typical British teenagers.  That's because they left England last June to follow their brother, Ahmed, in joining IS/ISIS/ISIL in Syria.  In the short time since then they have both been married to IS militants and they have also both been widowed.

Zahra's online communications suggest that the twins are members of one of the two women's brigades in Raqqa, Syria, possibly the al-Khansaa brigade, which has the task of policing other women's behavior according to the IS version of sharia.  Violations of the sharia code might mean not being adequately covered (say, missing the obligatory face veil) or being out without a mahram (husband, father, brother or adult son).  Some violations result in floggings.

Here Zahra Halane poses in front of the IS flag while holding an AK-47:

Meet Aqsa Mahmood, a twenty-year old student from a fairly affluent family in Glasgow, Scotland.  She is no longer attending to her studies, because she left Scotland for Syria in late 2013 to join IS:

Since then she has married an IS militant and commented online under the name of Umm Laytt.  Some see her as an online recruiter for IS.  Whether that is her official role or not,  her online site  contains suggestions of help for other women who might wish to join IS as well as explanations for her reasons for becoming a female jihadist.  She appears to live in the Syrian "capital" of IS, Raqqa.  Here she is with two other female jihadists (Umm Haritha and Umm Ubaydah)

These are three examples of the women and girls of IS who have independently joined the terrorist movement and cut their ties to their families and previous homelands.  All three come from the UK, but other women have traveled to Syria to  join IS from countries such as France, Germany, Austria, the US, Sweden, Canada and Indonesia.

Who are these foreign women of IS/ISIS/ISIL?  Why do women and girls voluntarily join a terrorist organization which plans for a caliphate where women's rights would be minimal and their freedom of movement nonexistent?  Why do women and girls voluntarily join a terrorist organization which openly practices rape and sexual slavery of "non-believing" women and children, not to mention the beheading of aid workers and journalists?

A Flu Thought

What does it say about me that the front of the Sudafed box seems to have a line saying Noam Chomsky?

That was Non-Drowsy for those of you who don't have a head full of snot.

This Is Weird. A Press Release from the House Judiciary Committee.

It's full of those moving GIFs which always make me feel as if I'm trying to follow table tennis played very fast by very small mice. 

But that's not what is weird about the communication.  The topic is president Obama and US immigration laws.  And the GIFs:

In a reflection of the racial demographics of House Republicans, all of the GIFs in Wednesday's Judiciary Committee press release depict white people, among them Jennifer Lawrence, Britney Spears and Steve Carell. The vast majority of the 245 House Republicans are white. Seven are Hispanic, and two are black.

Unlike House Republicans, however, the people seen in the GIFs are nearly all female. Only 23 House Republicans, or a little less than 10 percent, are women.
“The Little Mermaid” tells the story of a woman who is part fish and who longs to emigrate from sea to land. In the 1989 Disney film, the mermaid stays on land.

Who is the press release intended to reach?  I wonder and wonder.

And yes, this is old stuff.  My apologies for it.  I got the flu even though I got vaccinated.  

Monopoly. The Game.

Yesterday was the eightieth anniversary of the game called Monopoly.  There's an interesting subtext to the history of the game.  Or a sub-game, if you wish:

Legend has it that Charles Darrow, an unemployed salesman, invented the game in his kitchen in 1930. But the roots of Monopoly actually date back a few more decades, to a game called the Landlord's Game created by Elizabeth Magie in 1903.

The Landlord's Game was meant to be educational, illustrating economist Henry George's belief -- inspired by the Gilded Age -- that property ownership by individuals is inherently unfair. Magie's game was an underground success, leading to a number of offshoots, including the one that Darrow tweaked. Parker Brothers bought her patent for $500 in 1935, closing the loop.

The New York Times recently published an article about Elizabeth Magie and her Landlord's Game as the possible basic source for Monopoly.  I recommend reading the whole piece, because it's a fairly representative case study of the "disappearing women"  phenomenon:

Magie’s game featured a path that allowed players to circle the board, in contrast to the linear-path design used by many games at the time. In one corner were the Poor House and the Public Park, and across the board was the Jail. Another corner contained an image of the globe and a homage to Henry George: “Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages.” Also included on the board were three words that have endured for more than a century after Lizzie scrawled them there: “Go to Jail.”
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It was a version of this game that Charles Darrow was taught by a friend, played and eventually sold to Parker Brothers. The version of that game had the core of Magie’s game, but also modifications added by the Quakers to make the game easier to play. In addition to properties named after Atlantic City streets, fixed prices were added to the board. In its efforts to seize total control of Monopoly and other related games, the company struck a deal with Magie to purchase her Landlord’s Game patent and two more of her game ideas not long after it made its deal with Darrow.

Magie never really benefited financially from her game, whereas Darrow became very rich indeed.  The reasons why history ended up that way can be many, but Magie's gender certainly would not have helped. 

There's something about the way we (as humans) write history which downplays or erases the contributions of individuals which don't fit the subconscious patterns we have in our minds,* and women working in science or literature have frequently found their work  ignored or reinterpreted for that reason.  Sometimes the erasure is conscious, but often it is not. 

What fascinates me is that often the unconscious or conscious rewriting seems to take place a short time after** the events, not immediately, as if it's the slightly more distant observers who have erased, say, any women from stories of inventions or scientific discoveries or assigned them to the more "natural" helper roles.   That could be because the effect of the unconscious patterns becomes more powerful when the actual individuals are no longer known.

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*The case of Rosalind Franklin is a well-known example of this.

For an example outside gender, consider the case of Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay as an example.  The early recognition went mostly to Hillary, perhaps because Norgay was seen as someone just doing his job whereas Hillary was the white adventurer.

**Time is a relative concept here, and I refer to such things as the evaluation of literary merit of various writers a generation after their work, rather than hundred years later.

And To War, To War We go? On Iran As The Next Target.

Joshua Muravchik has written an opinion piece in the Washington Post about what the United States should do with respect to Iran's plan to acquire nuclear weapons.  Muravchik would like some other people to sacrifice themselves in a war against Iran, because he believes that a war with Iran is the best possible answer to the disagreements. 

Even the title of the piece says that if you are in a hurry and can't read the rest of the column:  "War with Iran is probably our best option." 

The opinion piece is fun to read if you ignore what it's all about.  Muravchik worries about nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran's hard-liners and explains to us why it is imperative to avoid that situation:

What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. Ideology is the raison d’etre of Iran’s regime, legitimating its rule and inspiring its leaders and their supporters. In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world. Iran aims to carry its Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond. A nuclear arsenal, even if it is only brandished, would vastly enhance Iran’s power to achieve that goal.

Hmm.  I think it's Saudi Arabia that is financing and spreading the Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond, in the form of Sunni Wahhabism.  And Pakistan, a major base for various Islamist terrorist groups, already has nuclear weapons.  Some suggest Pakistan has a deal with the Saudis to let them have those weapons if necessary. 

Indeed, though Iran has been an eager beaver at home in propping up the rules and restrictions concerning women*, those pesky critters which just won't stay inside their allotted little cages and therefore rattle the structure of the Islamic revolution, I don't see Shia Islam as a major aspect of today's international terrorism.

The whole opinion piece is probably one of those click-bait pieces.  But it's also a little like that time-honored Tarzan move:  You bang your hairy chest with your fist and ululate, to frighten everyone who happens to be within hearing range in the jungle. 

But that doesn't work when every country in the area is run by their own Tarzans, all banging their chests.  And then you have to do something more or you lose face.

Muravchek's piece made me wonder who the "we" in the title of this post might be.  But it also acutely reminded me of the types of opinion pieces we got after 911, all telling that Iraq is the place the US should invade to find bin Laden who was in Afghanistan etc. 

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*You can download a whole report on the position of women in Iran at that link.