Tuesday, February 16th, 2016
KAMEL DAOUD , Contributing Writer and Columnist for Quotidien d’Oran - The New York Times
Stephan: This is an excellent appraisal by a Muslim writer of the defining tropes of Muslim culture, sex and the relationship between genders.
At the social level modern history shows that that this set of values destroys a nation's capacity for creativity. It isn't religion, because it is at core the same regardless of the religion. It be fundamentalist. It is social values. You can see the effect in the number of patents awarded, Japan is awarded more patents in a year than the entire Islamic world gets in a decade, the paucity of internationally successful books, poems, symphonies, and on and on.
If you won't let half the human race (females) participate equally, and it takes, as it does, 7 to 11 per cent of the other 50 per cent (the males) to maintain this structure of repression, it must inevitably follow that your country will be benighted. Fundamentally it is a question of neurons working in the national interest. Islam's collective social mental illness is why those nations are so backward, even when great wealth is available, and will never be anything more as long as this dysfunctional world view continues.
That said for Americans I think we should look at this not only in terms of Muslims, but in terms of ourselves. It is a teaching moment, in which the Muslim social laboratory has conducted an experiment and is reporting the results to the rest of the world. Christian fundamentalism correlating strongly with conservative political views, fear, and an intolerance for ambiguity is obviously a powerful factor in U.S. society. It is the Republican Party as every Presidential debate amongst that party proclaims. And like all fundamentalism it comes with a spectrum of dysfunctionality concentrated around sex, and gender equality. We are being warned to be aware of this and to take steps to counteract it lest our own capacity for success be impaired.
ORAN, ALGERIA — After Tahrir came Cologne. After the square came sex. The Arab revolutions of 2011 aroused enthusiasm at first, but passions have since waned. Those movements have come to look imperfect, even ugly: For one thing, they have failed to touch ideas, culture, religion or social norms, especially the norms relating to sex. Revolution doesn’t mean modernity.
The attacks on Western women by Arab migrants in Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve evoked the harassment of women in Tahrir Square itself during the heady days of the Egyptian revolution. The reminder has led people in the West to realize that one of the great miseries plaguing much of the so-called Arab world, and the Muslim world more generally, is its sick relationship with women. In some places, women are veiled, stoned and killed; at a minimum, they are blamed for sowing disorder in the ideal society. In response, some European countries have taken to producing guides of good conduct to refugees and migrants.
Sex is a complex taboo, arising, in places like Algeria, Tunisia, Syria or Yemen, out of the ambient conservatism’s patriarchal culture, the Islamists’ […]
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Tuesday, February 16th, 2016
Economist Staff, - The Economist (U.K.)
Stephan: Traditionally one of the great strengths of America, and one of the explanations for our success is that as bad as we have been we are still much better than other nations at assimilating minorities. There are five reasons for this in my mind: Everyone including Native Americans traces back to an immigrant so we had to find a way to work together. Everyone came from somewhere else. Second, because we began with the frontier mentality we have traditionally been upwardly mobile, and have valued innovation. Third, again, as bad as we have been, we have still be better than other nations in terms of gender equality. On an isolated frontier farm everyone in the family is a player. Fourth, from the beginning we have built our society on laws that at least in theory treat people equally. Fifth, we had a fire wall between church and state.
This essay written for a British publication describes the challenge that is tearing Europe apart. How do those nations deal with immigrants, and gender relationships?
Credit: Reuters/AP
Four months ago, the body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach in Turkey after he, his brother and his mother drowned while trying to reach Greece. A photograph of Aylan quickly became the defining image of the masses of refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war. The picture helped cement a brief consensus that the Middle Eastern migrants risking death to get to Europe should be allowed in to apply for asylum. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, announced that her country would accept asylum applications from any Syrians who reached its borders. Much of Europe seemed on the verge of joining the project.
But Europe never joined. The task of absorbing the migrants has been left to Germany and Sweden, with a bit of help from the Netherlands and a few other countries. German and Swedish eagerness to welcome so many refugees has gradually been worn down. Now the events of New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other German cities may have buried it for good.
That night, gangs of young men, mainly asylum-seekers, formed rings […]
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Tuesday, February 16th, 2016
Zack Ford, - Think Progress
Stephan: I considered whether to run some of the jaw dropping stuff I find in the Theocratic Rightist media echo chamber, or this. I chose this, it made me smile, even as it pointed out the gender and sex issues being promulgated by the Christian version of fundamentalism.
Democratic Kentucky state Rep. Mary Lou Marzian
What it would it look like if the law imposed as many restrictions on men’s access to healthcare as it does women’s? One state lawmaker is hoping to start just such a conversation.
Conservative legislators in Kentucky, emboldened by the election of Gov. Matt Bevin (R), are moving swiftly to pass numerous new restrictions on women’s access to abortion. Bevin has already signed into law a stricter “informed consent” bill that requires a face-to-face consultation with a healthcare provider, while a forced ultrasound bill sailed easily through a Senate committee this week. (Jezebel notes that though women would be required to receive an ultrasound before an abortion, the bill does allow them to avert their eyes.)
One lawmaker, however, is trying to turn all of these restrictions on women back on men. Rep. Mary Lou Marzian (D) has filed a new bill (HB 396) creating numerous restrictions for men to access medication for erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra […]
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Monday, February 15th, 2016
LIndsay Oberst, - The Food Network
Stephan: Back in the 70s some friends of mine in Colorado, who liked to spend time in the state's wild places, created a company called Celestial Seasonings Tea Company. One of the women created the whimsical drawings that became the company's visual identity. They sold the company to General Mills, for many millions, but no one who bought the tea would know that. I never forgot watching that process, and recognizing it as an early example of a trend I realized would only grow: the purchase of small organic, almost folk corporations, by the big players in the industrial food industry. It was obvious that it would correlate with the growth of status of the organic category. And that is exactly what has happened. This story lays it out.
I know many think this is a bad thing, but I don't see that as necessarily so. It is possible we are seeing the beginning of a positive trend. The transformation of the food industry into an organic ecologically sensitive business model. The key to how it goes is, as always, going to be individual quotidian choices. Do we demand of food purveyors small or large that the food produce wellness, which among other things means organic and with ecological sensitivity. That's what gave organic is status in the first place. It is up to us.
A current chart of what is happening to the organic food industry
See the updated version below. (Click on the image to view a larger version,and then click on it again for even larger detail.) Or see a PDF version here.
Consider this fact: In 1995, 81 independent organic processing companies existed in the United States. Ten years later, Big Food had gobbled up all but 15 of them. (emphasis added)
The newly updated “Who Owns Organic?” infographic, originally published in 2003, provides a snapshot of the structure of the organic industry, showing the acquisitions and alliances of the top 100 food processors in North America.
According to The Cornucopia Institute, this chart — authored by Dr. Phil Howard, an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State — empowers consumers to see at a glance which companies dominate the organic marketplace.
Major changes since the last version in May 2013
- WhiteWave’s December 2013 acquisition of Earthbound Farm, the nation’s largest […]
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Monday, February 15th, 2016
DAVID NIELD, - science alert
Stephan: I did a lot of flying, for me at least, in January. And it made me realize what it did to my carbon footprint. Here is some very good news about air travel, and they think it will be operational in two years.
Credit: iurii/Shutterstock
Hydrogen fuel cells – an ultra-clean energy source – offer a lot of potential for powering the transportation of the future, but there are significant hurdles to overcome: price, size, and supply, to name just three. Now UK budget airline EasyJet thinks it might have found a way to incorporate hydrogen fuel cells into its planes in a way that’s safe and cost-effective.
While you’d struggle to find a hydrogen fuel cell refuelling station on your daily commute, these devices can be relatively easily supplied to airports, and EasyJet wants to use them on a limited scale to begin with – during the time that the aircraft are taxiing. That means while you’re trundling from the gate to the runway, your plane won’t be emitting any harmful carbon emissions, and will be a whole lot quieter.
The switch is likely to be cheaper for airlines too. A recent study commissioned by technology firms Safran and Honeywell found that fuel consumption could be cut by 51 percent while planes were […]
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