Re: Devilling a little

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. There is a lot of propaganda about the Middle East in America, and the idea of rampant pedophilia there is part of it. The gov't and media know how Americans feel about this issue and played into it to help justify our wars over there.

There is indeed much truth to this analysis. Ironically (on more than one level!), although the KSA officially proscribes homosexuality, the Saudis have been bent over, ankles grabbed, to be sodomized by Uncle Sam since 1953. Even so, even this is not enough for chickenhawk neocons fanatically set on fulfilling their armchair Napoleon fantasies regarding a 'Clash of Civilizations'. So seemingly ever other post on Little Green Footballs (I don't even exaggerate much) is about little brown asses being sodomized by sheiks. Sometimes they'll invoke white slavery so people can picture little pale asses too.

When certain GCers take this propaganda at face value, it smacks of wishful thinking. There is no set AoC in KSA precisely because marriage, rather than consent, is the prime legal requirement for sex. I've been reading some actual Saudi Arabians and they say that although child marriages are sometimes allowed, these are typically arranged marriages rather than the result of pedophiles picking the sexiest girls out of a lineup! Moreover, marital consummation is discouraged until puberty. Yes, early puberty is often invoked as making early marriage understandable and acceptable. Yet pedophilia, subtracting the broader meaning which has come to include hebephilia, is all about sexual desire for prepubescents.

Pedophiles think that it's difficult to go around checking out girls in America and the west, but in Saudi Arabia it is even more difficult, unless one is wealthy and well-connected. No Western country is a paradise for pedophiles, that's for sure, but in Saudi Arabia even a mild child modeling site, a band like Prussian Blue or most of your artwork would be considered beyond the pale.

Let's say a pedophile Saudi is lucky enough to be a man and also lucky enough to get hitched to someone who is still a child, at least by western standards. Okay. What happens when it turns out that he's not too sexually attracted to that particular girl? What if the child is approaching or already in puberty, as is usually the case, and the pedophile is a narrowly focused exclusive? Islam theoretically allows a man up to four wives, but most men in Saudi Arabia are not wealthy.

I recall right when the Iraq War started, there were rumors circulating in the media that one of Saddam's sons liked to pick up random little girls, rape them and then kill them.There was never any real evidence for this, just recirculated propaganda.

Indeed. It's also funny how Saddam (a secular strongman who appointed women and Christians in his government and did everything he could to crush Islamist insurgents) was lumped together with some alleged global 'Islamofascist' conspiracy.

I do feel (heh) Heinlein's observation that more than rational beings, humans are rationalizing beings.