Rod Fleming | Rod Fleming's World

27/03/2024

Marijuana, hashish, pot. The 3 Ps Part One.

Originally posted 2015-08-01 11:11:57.

Pot — marijuana, cannabis, grass, weed, call it what you like, has been used by humans since the beginning of recorded history. It is likely that we have been using it for tens of thousands of years.

While there are risks associated with the use of pot, these are vastly overstated and much less than those of using alcohol or tobacco, both of which cause huge numbers of deaths and human suffering and by the way, cost society a vast amount of money. Marijuana prohibition is one of the greatest misuses of state resources and taxpayers’ money in the world today.

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27/03/2024

Europe’s immigration crisis erupts

Originally posted 2015-07-29 13:02:20.

A man was killed yesterday during a mass attack as at least 1500 people attempted to board trucks entering the Eurotunnel in Calais. This brings the death toll in the ongoing crisis, which began in June, to nine.

Eurotunnel, the operator, has invested heavily in security fences and personnel at the French end of the Tunnel but it is clearly not enough and they are swamped, daily, as would-be immigrants try to get into the UK.

The crisis has caused reduction in the frequency of freight trains through the Tunnel. Around Dover, the UK terminal, motorways have been closed for weeks as trucks waiting to depart for Europe are parked on them in what is called ‘Operation Stack’.

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27/03/2024

Reims Bikini Attack: Suspects named

Originally posted 2015-07-27 23:18:43.

The broader media gave the story of how a young woman was set upon by five other women for sunbathing in a bikini in a park in Reims, France, some attention today and a few new titbits have come out. (I covered this yesterday.)

According to the national newspaper Le Monde, under the headline ‘Emotions and hasty conclusions’ the woman who was attacked is Angélique Slosse. Three of her alleged attackers have been named, Inès Nouri, Zohra Karim and Hadoune Tadjouri. The other two are minors and their names have not been released. All five are Muslim.

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27/03/2024

Woman attacked for wearing bikini

Originally posted 2015-07-26 18:37:46.

It’s a case of double-speak gone mad.

On Wednesday lunchtime, at the Léo-Lagrange Park near the town centre of Reims, France, a 21-year old woman was sunbathing with two of her friends, dressed in a bikini. This is perfectly normal and if you visit any park in France in summer, especially a hot one like this, you will see plenty of women wearing swimsuits getting a tan. It’s a French passion.

However, the woman, whose name has not been disclosed, was spotted by a ‘group of five girls’. One of the came over and told her to ‘Get dressed, it’s not summer.’

The sunbather replied that the newcomer was not ‘the religious police’ and at that point all five of the girls attacked the woman, requiring her to be hospitalised. She was signed off work for four days.

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27/03/2024

Hot Cross Buns–Cakes for the Goddess

Originally posted 2013-07-08 16:49:11.

Hot cross buns. That’s what this article is about. So why do I have a picture of a Roman sculpture of a bull’s head here instead of a nice snap of some hot cross buns?

Hot cross buns actually originated in Assyria as a part of worship of the Moon Goddess Ishtar. At least that is the earliest record we have of them. The Egyptians continued the tradition of offering cakes to their Moon-Goddess Hathor. They decorated the cakes with bull’s horns, as the ox was the preferred sacrifice of the Goddess. The cakes, therefore, were symbolic of the sacrificed bull, whose flesh would be eaten by worshippers.

Hathor has been identified with Ishtar and Astarte, who was worshipped by King Solomon, as mentioned in the Old Testament (1 Kings 11, 2), and to whom he erected a temple or shrine in Jerusalem.

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27/03/2024

Sex with a ladyboy – is it gay?

Originally posted 2017-03-21 21:33:39.

Okay. So, maybe you just woke up after a wild night, looked over the bed and there beside you, happily dreaming away without a care in the world and looking as though butter wouldn’t melt, was a ladyboy; or, if you prefer, a transsexual. Possibly you’re just considering doing this. Maybe you did already, liked it, and are wondering about yourself. Maybe you’re in a relationship with a ladyboy and still confused. So I’m going to answer the question, ‘Am I gay for having sex with a ladyboy’?

This is a pretty popular question, as you’ll see from a casual Google of the terms, but almost none of the answers make any sense. They’re either written by people who have no experience of transsexuals, ladyboys, bonecas — call them as you will, they’re all the same — or they’re written by people with a hidden agenda, trying to promote a particular political point of view.

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27/03/2024

Baklas and Beer in the Afternoon: A Tale of Manila

Originally posted 2022-04-14 15:32:15.

I have just been to the Bureau of Immigration Visa Extension Office in Makati. I have to do this once every two months, for the economy of the Philippines.

My papers are in and my money has been paid, but for unknown reasons, they’re not handing the passports with the new visas out yet. I have plans for the afternoon so will have to come back on Tuesday. I sigh and decide to get a beer and some food. I had no plans, then, to meet baklas.

Baklas, to let you know, are the local ersion of the ubiquitous ladyboy, the transwomen found all over southeast Asia, under different names. They are highly feminised males who live as women and seek straight men for partners. They are often as beautiful as natal women — or more so.

I head for Market! Market! in Taguig. It’s my favourite mall in Manila by far, partly because half of it is actually outside. Unlike some malls, there are plenty of beer-bars and small restos too, serving a myriad array of meals in price bands to suit any bakla’s pocket, as they say. So I indulge in a taxi — 105 pesos — and, once I’m there, head for the bars at the back, near the van depot. I know from experience that these are good and cheap and so, attract locals — including baklas.

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27/03/2024

Autogynephilia Explained

Originally posted 2016-02-24 06:24:15.

Autogynephilia was defined by Dr Ray Blanchard. His studies focussed on patients born male who desired Genital Reconstruction Surgery (GRS) to change their male genitalia into cosmetic facsimiles of female ones.

Blanchard’s work is the definitive basis of the science on the subject of Male-to-Feminine (MtF) transition desire.

He defined, in the first place, a group he called ‘Homosexual Transsexual’ (HSTS). The most important factors that link the individuals together is that they are uniquely sexually attracted to men, in exactly the same way as women are, and that they are remarkably feminine in manners, comportment and appearance. Their parents and siblings would have noticed from an early age that they were ‘like girls’.

Today, the consensus is that these individuals were subject to in-utero anomalies in hormone delivery. This has been supported by digit ratio studies, neurology and more. These anomalies cause a phenomenon best expressed as Sexual Inversion, in which the subject is psychologically, sexually and morphologically more similar to norms for the opposite sex.

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27/03/2024

Transsexualism: Will it end the gay lifestyle?

Originally posted 2017-11-07 19:57:03.

It’s clear that there is a deal of brouhaha about the extent to which transsexualism is impacting on the lesbian and gay, and to a lesser extent bisexual, lifestyle and political hegemony in the West. This is contributing to an increasingly bitter spat about young transitioners — people transitioning gender before they reach their majority.

There is no doubt that political activists are operating on this body of young people, some with laudable motives, others not so; but why is the lesbian and gay community so exercised?

I first published this article on 5 May 2018 and while my thinking has evolved since then, the article remains sound and particularly in an era of increased transphobia, especially in the UK, on point. Today I would perhaps use some different terms but the sense is correct.

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27/03/2024

Fear of Islam is common sense in 2020

Originally posted 2015-01-31 03:17:47.

This article was originally published in 2015. If I thought then that things might be better by now, five years later, I was deluding myself. Today we see an upsurge, again, of Islamist violence and hatred. All of our appeasement has failed; the war intensifies. Fear of Islam is just the common-sense position to take, in 2020.

France and the world have been shocked by a brutal and vicious massacre of journalists at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. This atrocity was perpetrated by Islamists with the specific aim of preventing criticism of their ideology. In the aftermath, unprecedented levels of public outrage and grief were displayed all over France.

Just this week, 44 men of the Philippines Special Action Force were murdered by Islamists in southern Mindanao. The officers had their throats cut. This atrocity was carried out by the Islamist group the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which has made a career out of the usual stock-in-trades of the Islamist – murder, kidnapping, torture and extortion. Here too, there has been a massive outpouring of public emotion.

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