Generally, my view of anyone who 'harms' a child is they do not deserve the chance to rot in prison. 'Harm' is subjective, and I would define it very loosely as anything that causes physical harm to a child, and extreme emotional or mental harm. However, to cross into the area of no rotting in prison because they don't deserve it, one must cross a threshold that is more than spanking a child once in their life or yelling at a child once in their life. It does include any act of sex or sexual content. Nambla should pay attention. Tolerating the abuse for any reason is tolerating an evil that should not be tolerated.
I have heard of the issue that follows, and been aware of it for some time, and perhaps I have not thought too much about it to avoid the conclusion I must reach - we should leave and let them slaughter each other. Less of them. But, what of the children harmed by this evil practice. The disdain for them, their culture, their 'religion', their .... we die so they can sodomize little boys. Wrong on so many levels and worth crying over.
Afghanistan's dirty little secret
Joel Brinkley
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand."
All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, "Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked - and repulsed.
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.
"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."
Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.
President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he has six brothers. So the natural question arises: Has anyone in the Karzai family been bacha baz? Two Afghans with close connections to the Karzai family told me they know that at least one family member and perhaps two were bacha baz. Afraid of retribution, both declined to be identified and would not be more specific for publication.
As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time."
He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified.
In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape."
So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia?
Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.
"How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."
Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. A favored Afghan expression goes: "Women are for children, boys are for pleasure." Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"
That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It's not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren't in love with their boys.
Addressing the loathsome mistreatment of Afghan women remains a primary goal for coalition governments, as it should be.
But what about the boys, thousands upon thousands of little boys who are victims of serial rape over many years, destroying their lives - and Afghan society.
"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."
As one boy, in tow of a man he called "my lord," told the Reuters reporter: "Once I grow up, I will be an owner, and I will have my own boys."
It is more than a dirty secret. We may all have little secrets - like we drank too much in college, or we used a little too much of a drug, or we like to gamble or drive fast ... but this, is not a secret nor is it little - it is purely wrong on every level.
It is also not a matter of shrugging your shoulders, shaking your head and dismissing the issue as something done by the equivalent of Manbla in the West. No.
Not when generals and commanders, detectives and police officers, all the way up to their president and his family, and back down again to some really disturbing questions.
PBS has a program, about 54 minutes.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid
In it, so many questions. One I find very difficult, is when the police chief of this 'town' or 'city' is answering a few questions from the investigator / reporter for Frontline. On his desk / wall are two photos - one of Hamid Karzai and one of Massoud, the now dead Lion of Panjshir. Massoud led the Northern Alliance, and all the commanders in the Frontline were of the Northern Alliance. A man I respected, once - now a problem for me to reconcile given he is dead ...
For someone on the far left, the response would be - but there are paedophile priests in your churches, and scout troops, and ... everywhere. Yes, true - there were some. Of the total number of priests, the highest number estimated is 1-2%, so ok, it was possible, and same with scouts and ... the point is, we find them and we sort them out, even if we do not do enough - their culture protects it, their culture endorses it, their laws are ignored, their religion sanctifies it, for it surely does not oppose it when everyone knows it occurs and they do not act.
The next link- found by clicking HERE is interesting, especially one paragraph.
pedophilia
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