history, Rod Fleming's World, Page 2

05/12/2023

Settlements and Cities

Originally posted 2023-06-14 18:38:33.

The suggestion that settlements and cities were a function of women’s desire to have better, safer and more comfortable places to raise children, is contrary to many assessments, which see these developments as masculine. The argument is that as men accumulated wealth, they decided to build settlements and cities to protect it.

There are a couple of problems with this. In the hunter-gatherer cultures we know of, wealth is a largely unknown concept. That was why the early colonists used valueless trinkets to seduce the peoples they encountered and would eventually enslave. Those people liked shiny pieces of coloured glass because they were pretty; they had no idea of relative material value. A gold doubloon or a worthless bauble, all were the same. The idea of personal property is similarly strange to them, so how could wealth possibly be amassed; and if it can’t be, because you don’t know what it is, then why would anyone need to protect it?

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05/12/2023

Thai kathoeys: transwomen of Siam

Originally posted 2022-11-18 18:58:50.

Thai kathoeys have long been recognised in the Kingdom of Siam and are now known globally. This article was translated from the original French, by me, and edited and improved.

According to Buddhist precepts, being kathoey might be a “punishment” from a previous life: in it, the man cheated on a woman and to understand how she feels, he is reborn as a woman in a man’s body. In part thanks to this legend, the kathoey are accepted in the Land of Smiles. After all, in a culture where male philandering is practically standard, being a kathoey might be the fate of all such men, in a future life.

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05/12/2023

Dar al-Harb: The Islamic stimulus for war.

Originally posted 2016-09-24 13:31:45.

If the Popes believed that their God intended to keep them in control of Jerusalem, or indeed, in such high esteem at home, then they were to be rudely disabused. Central to Islam is the notion that the entire world not under its control is Dar al-Harb.

(This is the second chapter of the book World War Three.)

The Qu’ran or Koran is the codification of messages believed by Muslims to have been received by Mohammed from the Angel Gabriel. It says a territory may exist under two conditions: Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. These mean, roughly, ‘Land of Submission’. and ‘Land of War’.

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05/12/2023

The Reasons for World War Three.

Originally posted 2016-09-18 12:42:55.

World War Three has been much talked about in the seven decades since World War Two ended. At that time, almost all of Europe and large parts of Asia were in ruins, scourged by years of brutal, mechanised, industrial war.

Since the beginning of that peace, war has raged incessantly throughout the world. It has never stopped. The killing, the butchery, the rapes, the genocides, the ethnic cleansings. Mass rapes, murders, enslavements. Whole cities destroyed, nations impoverished or obliterated.

Has World War Three begun?

As I write, war is raging in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia. Why? If the end of World War Two heralded in an ‘era of peace’, then why is there so much war? And how fragile is that peace?

This article and many others are available in the companion volume, Fifty-Two of the Best

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