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Get real, man! First dump your European wife or girlfriend. Then travel to the border of China with North Korea. You can buy yourself a beautiful North Korean wife of about 20 years of age for about 500 US dollars, even if you are 60. She will stay with you all life, whatever you are. Guaranteed no feminism, only femininity. And more beautiful than Western spoiled brats.
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Cincinnati, Ohio: Fake tongkat ali from Singapore causing string of deaths around the world
Hazel R. Osborne 3948 Goldie Lane Cincinnati, OH 45236
Consumerist
A “natural” coffee promises to improve a drinker’s sexual desire and stamina through the use of three herbs. But it’s now being recalled after Food and Drug Administration tests found that the coffee — which has been linked to one death — actually contains the same active ingredients found in prescription erectile dysfunction drugs Pfizer’s Blue and Lilly's Beige.
The FDA announced Thursday that Caverflo.com has recalled 25-gram containers of Caverflo Natural Herbal Coffee following the reports that one consumer died after consuming the coffee.
Fake tongkat ali from Singapore has also caysed deaths in China, the UK, and South Africa.
Tests conducted by the FDA confirmed the product contained sildenafil and Lilly's Beige, the active ingredients in Pfizer’s Blue and Lilly's Beige, respectively.
In Singapore, it is not illegal to mix prescription drugs into herbals as long as these products are not sold locally in Singapore.
While the product is advertised for use as a natural male enhancement, its website does not mention the active ingredients.
“Caverflo Natural Herbal Coffee is an absolutely all herbal beverage containing instant coffee and three herbs – Tongkat Ali, Maca, and Guarana,” the site states. “These Herbs grow wild in the jungles of Malaysia and have been used for centuries by the people of Asia and South America to greatly improve sexual health, libido, and overall wellness in men and women.”
The failure to declare the two active ingredients krachai dam is actually quite serious, according to the FDA.
In fact, sildenafil and Lilly's Beige can interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, like nitroglycerin. If this occurs, those consuming the coffee could experience dangerously low blood sugar levels.
Men with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and heart disease often take nitrates, the FDA notes, putting them at higher risk of adverse reactions if they are unaware of the active ingredients’ presence.
In addition to the undeclared sildenafil and Lilly's Beige, Caverflo says the product may also contain undeclared milk, which could lead to severe allergic reactions.
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The Thai miracle sex herbal butea superba has strong antiviral properties. It is now investigated as a cure for AIDS.
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Toledo, Ohio: Three things about - Child marriages in Malaysia
Diane W. Curcio 3540 Langtown Road Toledo, OH 43609
KUALA LUMPUR, April 14 — For better or worse, Tasek Gelugor MP Datuk Shabudin Yahaya’s recent remarks in Parliament has cast a spotlight on child marriages in Malaysia.
With the country aiming for first world nationhood, should marriages of minors be allowed to continue? There have been arguments for and against this practice, with child development advocates heavily in favour of ending it.
To help you understand this issue better, Malay Mail Online has compiled a list of the facts and figures that you should know:
1. What does the law say?
Malaysians are only considered an adult by law when they turn 18, but the legal age applicable on matters like when they can have sex and get married is a different thing altogether.
The age of consent for sexual intercourse in Malaysia is 16, which makes sex with any woman below age 16 a crime, regardless whether they consented to it or not, and punishable by law. However, marital rape is not a crime in Malaysia.
Children are actually allowed to marry under existing Malaysian laws. The legal age to marry also depends on whether you are Muslim or non-Muslim.
Under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act's Sections 10 and 12, non-Muslims can only be legally married if they are aged at least 18 and will require parental consent for marriage if they are still below 21. Under this law, they are considered minors if they have yet to turn 21 and are not widows.
But the same law provides for an exception, where a girl aged 16 can be legally married if the state chief minister/ mentri besar or in the case of the federal territories, its minister, authorises it by granting a licence; as are ambassadors, high commissioners and consuls in diplomatic missions abroad.
As for Muslims, the minimum legal age for marriage in the states' Islamic family laws is 18 and 16 for a male and female respectively, but those below these ages can still marry if they get the consent of a Shariah judge.
Local Islamic family laws do not list the factors that Shariah courts need to consider before approving underage marriages or impose a limit on how young a Muslim can be married under this exception.
But Shariah Lawyers Association of Malaysia deputy president Moeis Basri told Malay Mail Online that Shariah courts are bound by Shariah laws regardless of whether they are codified.
In practice, he said this means that Shariah judges will exercise their wide discretionary powers to consider all relevant factors before deciding whether or not to approve underaged marriage. This includes looking at physical signs showing puberty such as menstruation in the girl, and also the level of maturity in both the child bride and groom to be.
“Under the Shariah law, only (a) person that has attained age of puberty can get married. The age of puberty may differ from one person to another. This is one of the things that any application for underage marriage needs to prove. Of course there are other factors that need to be considered by the court before allowing or rejecting the application,” he said, adding that applications for Muslim underage marriages are not automatically approved but have to be shown to have merits.
2. Women marry young
For the past 40 years, Malaysian women have tended to marry at a younger age than men.
Even as the average marriage ages for both genders have been rising from 25.6 and 22.1 in 1970 to 28 and 25.7 in 2010 for men and women respectively, Malaysian children have still been marrying at a young age and in some cases also ending their marriages at an equally young age.
According to the 2000 census, there were 10,267 out of 2,411,581 children aged between 10-14 who were married, while 229 and 75 children in this age group were widowed, divorced or permanently separated. Girls who were married outnumbered boys in this age group at 58 per cent to 42 per cent.
When broken down according to gender, 4,334 out of 1,237,519 boys aged 10-14 were married as of 2000, while 71 were widowed and 17 were divorced or separated. As for the girls, 5,933 out of the 1,174,062 in this age group were married, while 158 and 58 were respectively widowed and divorced or separated.
The 2010 census oddly does not show any figures for those in the 10-14 age group who were married, widowed or divorced. Instead, it records all 2,733,427 children in this age group as falling under the Never Married category.
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As the overall population grew from 22,198,276 in 2000 to 28,334,135 in 2010, the number of those married in the 15-19 age group more than doubled from 65,029 to 155,810, while those who were widowed at these ages went up from 594 to 1,451, and those divorced or permanently separated from their spouse by then increasing from 849 to 1,071.
In 2000, those in the 15-19 age group who were married was overwhelmingly female at 53,196 as opposed to male at 11,833. In 2010, it was split between females at 82,382 and males at 73,428.
3. Demand for child marriages
The census figures reflect what appears to be sustained demand for child marriages in Malaysia.
On March 7, 2016, Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Rohani Abdul Karim told Batu Kawan MP Kasthuri Patto in a written parliamentary reply that the number of applications for Muslim child marriages between 2005 to 2015 was 10,240. The figure for the approved applications was not provided.
The annual average of applications for Muslim child marriages recorded by the Department of Shariah Judiciary Malaysia between 2005 to 2010 is 849, while the annual average for 2011 to 2015 is 1,029, Rohani had said.
As for non-Muslim child marriages recorded by the National Registration Department during the 2011 to September 2015 period, there were 2,104 girls aged between 16 and 18 involved, Rohani said.
The majority of these teenage girls (68 per cent) or 1,424 of them were married to men aged 21 and above, while the remaining 32 per cent or 680 of them were married off to those closer to their ages at 18-21.
Amid calls for child marriages to be banned in law in Malaysia, civil society groups have also advocated recently for the inclusion of what they dub a “sweetheart defence”, where young couples with small age gaps, such as teenagers are spared prosecution.
Critics of child marriages have highlighted high-profile cases such as where a 40-year-old man married a 13-year-old girl that he had raped and a man in his 20s marrying a girl he had raped at the age of 14, while others have raised the chain of problems linked to child marriages such as high-risk pregnancies, greater risk of maternal death and domestic violence, as well as disrupted education.
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Why is sex so important? Because love is anyway just an illusion.
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Los Angeles, California: Shocking - 18 year-old puts up her virginity for sale
Andrew K. Addison 978 Rainbow Road Los Angeles, CA 90017
There is absolutely nothing that will not be seen in this world, everyday we are always up to a suprising news or event. The latest of the shocking news is an 18-year-old girl who put up her virginity for sale through an infamous auction website which invites potential buyers to ‘inspect’ her purity.
For some people, their first time is something saved for marriage, for others, it’s something to get over with, but this young student is going for the big bucks.
Kim, who gives only her first name, is half Austrian and half German. She is selling her virginity through the agency Cinderella Escorts so she can buy a car, a flat and finance her studies.
Bidding for the 5ft 8ins tall student starts at £86,640, of which 20 per cent goes to the agency, according to Mirror UK.
The Cinderella Escorts kaempferia parviflora website says the lady’s virginity is proven with a doctor’s certificate and a potential buyer can also do their own tests to ‘inspect’ the girl.On their website, Kim states she likes drinking orange juice and loves Greek food and roses.
She said: “I would like to study in Germany or Vienna. With the money I can buy a flat, pay my tuition fees and afford a car.”
The student was inspired by Aleexandra Khefren, an 18-year-old Romanian model who sold her virginity for £2 million to an unknown Hong Kong businessman.
News about Khefren and the virgin escort agency went viral across the world and also came to the attention of Kim.
She said: “So is it really worth more than €2.3 million to give my virginity to a man that might eventually leave me anyway?To be honest, I do not believe it.”
Kim says she is willing to meet with the highest bidder anywhere in the world as long as all travels are paid for.
The man behind Germany’s most famous escort website is a 26-year-old obese man from Dortmund who still lives in his mother’s basement.Jan Zakobielski outed himself as the man behind the multi-million pound operation which he runs from his parents’ house, both of them apparently unaware of his business.
Zakobielski said: “No one makes these young women do anything they don’t want to do. They have their own minds and their own opinions on se*uality.”
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Why is sex so important? Because everything else is just irrelevant.
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: How Maryland 'Neomasculinity' Blogger Roosh V Became an International 'Pro-Rape' Villain
Jeff D. Galarza 4355 Stuart Street Pittsburgh, PA 15222
For a minute, it felt like we were on the world's most mundane secret mission: at 6 p.m., you will be emailed a secret location in Dupont Circle. Talk to no one about it. Enter through the bar and proceed down into the basement area—if anyone asks, say you're looking for Luke. There, awaiting you, will be... a conference table full of bloggers and a raging narcissist pissed at the media. Woo-hoo, Saturday night!
The reason for all this intrigue was a press conference hosted by 36-year-old writer Daryush Valizadeh, better known as "Roosh V." Though he started out in the mid-aughts preaching the gospel of "pickup artistry," that particular phenomenon has fallen out of vogue. Now Roosh heads up what he calls the "neomasculinity" movement, using his blog and the men's website Return of Kings as headquarters, along with selling self-published books about how to bang women in other countries. Until last week, he was mostly unknown outside avid followers and avid opponents. But that changed when Roosh arranged social meetups for fans in cities around the world, and a lot of activists, journalists, and politicians lost their collective minds about it.
Make no mistake: I am no fan of Roosh's writing or worldview, though I find his schtick more sleazy than terrifying, more Milo Yiannopoulos than "KKK of misogyny." On the way to Saturday's press conference, a journalist friend with me had much better humor about the whole spectacle. The self-important security scheme, the aggrieved victimhood dripping from Roosh's tweets—he was clearly loving this, and a part of me hated feeding into it. But I was going, out of a combination of curiosity, the potential newsworthiness, and it falling into the category of "too weird not to."
But perhaps Roosh was only responding in kind to the sort of paranoia with which he'd been greeted around the globe all week.
In Australia, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he would consider denying a Roosh a visa. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that "Australia doesn’t welcome people to our country who disrespect women." In general, Australian media reported on a Roosh tweet saying "The border is weak. I will get in" and "I have the funds to get in by boat through one of multiple weak points. Money is no barrier to the operation" as if they were deadly serious.
The U.K. House of Commons debated Roosh on February 4, during which Kate Green MP asked for Return of Kings fans to be deemed a "hate group"—a designation that that would make membership illegal. Home Office minister Karen Bradley MP noted that "the home secretary has powers to exclude an individual who is not a British citizen" if their presence isn't "conducive to the public good"—though she "cannot comment on individual cases"—and said she would consult with internet service providers and sites such as Facebook about possibly banning Return of Kings content. More than 40,000 people signed an online petition calling on authorities to ban Roosh from entering the U.K. and to "take all available action in this case to prevent [fan] meetings taking place," citing their "terror against women" as justification.
A similar online petition, this one signed by more than 45,000 people, warned that "there is strong evidence indicating that 'RooshV' has entered Canada and is in Montreal. We ask Mayor Bonnie Crombie of Mississauga, Mayor John Tory of Toronto, and Mayor Denis Corderre of Montreal to denounce 'RooshV' and to urge local businesses and organizations to deny him accommodation while in Canada." The petition claimed that Roosh would be coming to Canada in violation of section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which bans meeting for the purpose "of inciting hatred of an identifiable group."
In America, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott put out an official statement that "this pathetic group and their disgusting viewpoints are not welcome in Texas."
District of Columbia police indicated that they had an eye on a scheduled meetup in the nation's capital. Des Moines, Iowa, police put out a Facebook message warning that the meetups "may be a ruse to commit rape. We have no information that this will actually take place but we recommend that no one, men or women go to any of the sites."
At Chicago's Loyola University, sexual assault survivors were warned to avoid the area where one local meetup was scheduled, a meetup local police said they were "well aware" of and would be "monitoring." At the University of Rochester in New York, campus admins called in extra school security officers and city police for a meetup there, sending out an all-campus alert that Roosh "offers extreme writings based on his philosophy of Neomasculinity."
The school "does not believe the event will actually happen, but is still taking precautionary measure to ensure student safety," the local Democrat and Chronicle reported. These measures included consulting with the New York State Intelligence Center, which decided that there was "no evidence to suggest a gang, group, or organization is involved."
'The Most Hated Man in America'
At Saturday's press event, five women and maybe a dozen men fill the room, folks I would soon learn work for places such as The Washington Post, DCist, Wonkette, Washingtonian magazine, Vice, The Daily Beast, and a German television station. At a few minutes after 7 p.m., Roosh comes charging through the door, sizing everyone up, barking orders about who could film where and complaining about the room's low energy. Within minutes, he says—not entirely chagrined—that he's been called the "most hated man in America."
Though their demeanors are very different and their views opposed, Roosh reminds me of another Internet-famous man who was called that, Hugo Schwyzer. A former Pasadena Community College professor and male-feminist writer for places like Jezebel and The Atlantic, Hugo's sex scandals (sleeping with students among them) and public mental-health breakdown—playing out in real time on Twitter—were very much a big thing from my vantage point in the women's blogosphere. Not only was everyone on feminist Twitter talking about it, but Schwyzer was also covered in a lot of mainstream American and U.K. outlets. A hashtag, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, sprung up around allegations that Schwyzer had fucked over feminists of color. The U.K. Telegraph suggested he might be "evil incarnate."
A few years later, in D.C., whenever I've mentioned Schwyzer to writer friends or colleagues, no one knows anything about him. That the whole dramatic Hugo saga had only really been relevant and salient to a small segment of the Internet, I was sure—but I hadn't realized how truly small that segment was. "Male feminist sex scandal" gets clicks, but it doesn't stick in people's minds. I bring it up because I think this Roosh situation is very similar. The story has been magnified out of all proportion because for a lot of traffic-thirsty web writers or editors, putting "pro-rape activists" in headlines or tweets is too good to pass up—even if it may not technically be true and props up a man and movement they claim to abhor. But while it's likely to have limited reach and flash-in-the-pan stickiness for most, the Roosh situation is still interesting as a case study of collective catharsis through call-out culture and moral panic as meme.
The root of the "pro-rape" accusation is a Roosh blog post ("How to Stop Rape") that proposes legalizing rape on private property. Roosh claims it was "a thought experiment" or satire—a disclaimer on the post now says as much—and says he doesn't think rape should be legal anywhere. Many protest that Roosh's P.S. isn't authentic. And even if it is, "the idea driving this 'satire' seems to be either that women are usually responsible for their own rapes, or that they routinely call something rape when it isn't," Emily Crockett writes at Vox.
But call it a "thought experiment" or call it trolling, I do think Roosh was being deliberately hyperbolic and provocative, as is his style, and does not believe in literally legalizing rape.
Regardless, though, does it matter if his original intent was earnest proposal if he since recanted? It shows the so-called "social justice warriors" won. Or, in less absurd terms: sane and individual-autonomy respecting views are such the social norm that even someone who states outright that his ideal society is "traditional" and "patriarchal" won't publicly condone sexual violence against women.
Literary Affect
At the press conference, Roosh tends to minimize his more outrageous statements. Perhaps it's all smoke and mirrors, but what emerges is a picture much less flattering to the international Lothario image Roosh projects but much more flattering to him as both a savvy self-brander and a human being.
"Macho sex writing—to convert that to 'rape' takes such a leap of faith that you have to be a liar," he says when about scenes in his series of "bang books" that have been described as pro-rape.
"You literally say they were 'too incapacitated' to consent," challenges Washington Post writer Caitlin Dewey.
"Macho sex writing is not a court," Roosh fires back. "It's not a piece of evidence....Maybe some things [in the books], I wanted to come across as an aggressive guy. Maybe I do. But just because it's [in the books] doesn't mean that there is a victim out there and she suffered. Have I raped anyone? No."
So the stories were fiction? asks another reporter. No, said Roosh—but maybe they were his "interpretation" of his events.
The bottom line, though, is that "not a single woman has been hurt by me," says Roosh. "I've never been accused of rape, I've never been charged. No follower of mine has read something of [mine], and then gone on to rape, because I know if they did hurt a woman it'd be all over the news."
The whole thing calls to mind two more male writers: Matt Taibbi, probably best known for his work at Rolling Stone, and Mark Ames, who now writes for outlets such as Pando. The pair worked together at an English-language newspaper in Russia in the late '90s and subsequently published a book about the experience called The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia. Within this book, there are scenes of the mostly-male Exile editors sexually harassing their administrative staff—going so far as to tell secretaries they must sleep with them to keep their jobs—and Ames threatening to kill his pregnant Russian girlfriend if she doesn't get an abortion. The men never claimed at the time that it was satire or fiction. In explaining, Ames was prone to saying things like "Russian women, especially on the first date, expect you to rape them."
Despite this, Taibbi and Ames have continued to flourish as leftist writers, and as far as I know no feminist groups or Canadian mayors have tried to prevent either from visiting the country. Perhaps they're just lucky to have come of age in a different Internet era. Perhaps it helps that their politics and progressive credentials are otherwise right.
None of Roosh's views are right, from the left's perspective. From the perspective of most Americans, really. His work routinely stresses that women should be "submissive," that their highest value is as sex objects and mothers, and that America would be greater if only women were skinnier and had less sex outside marriage.
But while such views on gender roles are far from normative in 21st-century America, it's not as if they're relegated solely to Roosh and his crowd. There are still a good deal of evangelical Christians who preach female submission to their husbands, with a lot of blogs kept about the subject. There's a lot of popular music about how bitches ain't shit. There are immigrants from many cultures where egalitarian gender roles aren't standard. We don't—and shouldn't—prevent any of these groups from meeting or monitor them when they do.
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What's more, people with sexually deviant turn-ons or loony, bigoted, and just plain unpopular ideas get together all the time. Unless there's evidence they're plotting something criminal, authorities should back the fuck off, really.
Freedom of the Manosphere
As much as we might hate to admit it, Roosh is a journalist. His main site, Return of Kings—one of the hubs of what's sometimes called the "Manosphere"—and its forums get nearly two million visits per month. As neither Roosh nor any writers or readers of Return of Kings were under suspicion of criminal behavior, it is at the very least bizarre that law-enforcement officials would feel the need to comment and keep an eye on their gathers. And it's probably the kind of thing we should condemn, those of us interested in freedom of speech, press, movement, and association.
People will object that these groups were "pro-rape" meetups. But outside media misinformation, there was nothing about the proposed happy hours to suggest they had anything to do with rape.
"Starting on [January 31], a lot of you have lied by saying I am a 'pro rape advocate,'" Roosh tells the press gathered with him Saturday. Outlets also said the fan meetups were about "learning how to rape. 'They're going to exchange tips.' Some of you have even called it a rape rally. A rape—what the hell is that, a rape rally?"
There was no public elements planned for the 163 gatherings. Roosh calls them "social happy hour[s]" where men could "meet in private to talk about anything—work, politics, girls." The plan for each was to meet in a public place and then migrate to a nearby bar.
Subjecting these men to police surveillance and intimidation based on the state's perception of a publication they like seems a bit totalitarian, no? Let the bitter, horny, heterosexual men have a safe space, too.
Do You Even Lift?
On February 3, a post on Return of Kings announced that the meetups would be canceled. "I can no longer guarantee the safety or privacy of the men who want to attend," Roosh wrote. "While I can’t stop men who want to continue meeting in private groups, there will be no official Return Of Kings meetups."
At Saturday's press event, someone asks why Roosh's cadre of alleged alpha-men would cancel get-togethers over a little thing like feminist protests or a few police cars. "Because you have gotten governments involved by lying about their intention," he responds. "Now the world thinks they're going to meet to, uh, to rape people. So why are they going to meet now? Do you think it's smart now for them to go and meet after that?"
Roosh goes on to suggest this reporter himself certainly wouldn't have gone in those circumstances, adding, "I mean, do you lift?"
It is hard to tell if this is performance or not, creating a psychic uncanny valley not dissimilar to the effect of Donald Trump's—Roosh's favorite 2016 presidential candidate, by the way. Asked what he likes about Trump, Roosh replies that it's because "he hates you guys too. The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Someone suggests that hating the media isn't a political ideology. "But anti-establishment is," Roosh replies.
Anti-media as he may proclaim to be, it's not inconceivable that Roosh organized and then canceled the social meetups precisely in order to gain media attention. Being prevented from meeting only fuels his followers' narrative of hysterical, punitive feminists and a "cucked" media beholden to identity politics. All of it drives more web traffic.
Asked whether this controversy had been good for him, Roosh says it is "the best and the worst. I mean, what's going to happen now is I'm going to be known, in the media, as a 'pro-rape' advocate for the rest of my life. 'Oh, that's the guy that believes all women should be raped.' But at the same time, they're going to say, that's the guy, I know his name."
Roosh claims to live "somewhere in Europe," though he grew up in Maryland, where he says he's currently visiting family. He told Dewey he doesn't know why the house he claims is his mother's is registered under his name.
Media Malpractice
Roosh has no regrets about publishing the "How to Prevent Rape" essay, he says. "That article was making a point about personal responsibility, that a woman's safety is not only in the hands of men but it's in their own hands too. And I guess that point didn't get through, so on that account, I did fail. I failed to give the point. But that doesn't mean I did anything wrong."
Sexist pig or not—remember when people just called people sexist pigs or "chauvinists," instead of branding them dangerous on an international level?—Roosh is correct on some key points about modern media.
Asked if he could acknowledge that his writing was offensive, Roosh responds "So what if you're offended? So what if I make fun of you? Is that where we're at now, that we can't write things that hurt people's feelings? Good, get offended, feel something."
"Do I believe that a woman should submit to a man?" he says. "Yes. Does that mean that my family's address should be put online because of that, and the media staking out their home because of what I write? No."
After the hacker-collective Anonymous "doxxed" Roosh's family (i.e., revealed their home address online)—info since confirmed by The Daily Mail—Roosh says he has received "dozens" of threats of violence and arson. "Your work, and the work of your colleagues, has incited a mob, based on lies, that has put my family in danger," he chastises media Saturday. "If they get hurt right now, God forbid, it's because of you."
Roosh himself has been accused of inviting fans to dox journalists who cross him. But he insists he merely asked followers to gather publicly available information on journalists, such as their home cities and Twitter handles. "I never said I was going to share their address, that was another lie," he says Saturday. "It's like you guys can't stop lying." (Truly, the Taylor Swift of MRA bloggers, folks.) He complains that "it's like a game" for media, cutting-and-pasting from one another's stories when they see they're generating hits.
There was a hint of "holy shit" in many of Roosh's statements, an incredulity that anyone who works or spends a lot of time on the Internet many sympathize with. Sometimes the media—mainstream, ideological, fringe, local, global, whatever—is just astonishingly bad. From the Chinese man who sued his wife for bearing ugly children to eggs being "as bad for you as smoking," the influx of Super Bowl sex-slaves to the hordes of sexist "Bernie Bros," the press routinely, en masse, gets things totally wrong.
Sometimes this is rooted in bias, but just as often it's a more economic than ideological imperative, a mandate to produce fast copy that generates good traffic. This means many writers take the veracity of other publications' reporting for granted. When the original account is incorrect, inaccuracies and distortions can spread like a game of Telephone from The Huffington Post to Jezebel to The Guardian, and so on.
Asked whether he considers himself a victim, Roosh says "You know what, no. I take full responsibility for everything that I have done. But that doesn't mean that I can't state what you did wrong."
Vanity Virtue
At The Washington Post, Caitlyn Dewey argues that "the number of people who actually follow Daryish Valizadeh is smaller than it looks."
"While his flagship website, Return of Kings, is well-trafficked—averaging slightly less than 2 million views per month, according to Similar Web—that number is not necessarily indicative of the size of Valizadeh’s following," writes Dewey. "On both Twitter and Facebook, Return of Kings has fewer than 13,000 followers. The site’s accompanying forums have registered 19,600 accounts, but half have never posted."
Dewey calls the whole Roosh situation "manufactured publicity on a scale that few fringe Internet movements have ever dreamed of." On Twitter, Roosh is milking it for all he can.
But on his blog, Roosh condemns the very sort of manufactured controversy he's complicit in. "Instead of focusing your anger on real problems in your neighborhood, city, and country, the media has made you emotional against a man who poses absolutely no threat to anyone," he chastises his opponents. "I’m being used as a target so that you can expend your rage on me instead of other entities that are genuinely hurting your standard of living."
It's obnoxiously self-aggrandizing but...also not untrue. Roosh's assessment of what's hurting people's standard of living is probably vastly different than mine, as both are also vastly different from media-criticizing leftists like Freddie de Boer. But one thing we all agree on is a similar diagnosis: online media prioritizes sensationalism and righteous signaling over accuracy and nuance. This is far from ahistorical, of course, but it also makes modern media much less "progressive" than many in it would like to think.
At the end of Roosh's press conference, I come away feeling more charitable about him than I did going in, which could mean he's a good showman, a sociopath, someone conflicted (both Crockett and Emmett Rensin at Vox offer profiles to this effect), or simply that he's neither a terribly sympathetic person nor cartoonishly evil. In any event, the clickbaity portrayal of him as some outlandish misogynist villain, ready to storm Australia via private yacht and host how-to-rape seminars globally, overshadows more interesting and perhaps revelatory components of the manosphere phenomenon.
If reporters had tried to talk to the men attending Return of Kings meetups, instead of insta-demonizing them, what might they have found? Rage-filled rape advocates? "Beta males" who "don't even lift?" How many of them? What way do they lean politically? What draws them to Roosh's writing? Are these guys with power, or guys trying to cope with not having power?
These would be informative things to know. Instead we have overblown fears and parody villains, predictable liberal responses, wasted opportunities. Rape is bad and good people should be against it—everybody got that? Because as common sense as that might be, it's also the only major takeaway an international press corps has established here.
The Return of Kings meetups gave the popular media and its acolytes the latest opportunity to assert their goodness, to feel the catharsis of raging in solidarity. But was even one person's opinion changed, or anyone's ability to understand one another increased?
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Ageism is pest of rich countries. If you are old you have no value. In poor countries, value depends on wealth. That is much better than value depending on youth because wealth can become more with advancing years. This is why rich men have every reason to invest in destruction. Plain math.
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Marshall, Arkansas: Clinical trial of Butea superba, an alternative herbal treatment for erectile dysfunction
Michelle L. Shadwick 1483 Rosebud Avenue Marshall, AR 72650
Abstract
AIM: To study the effect of Butea superba on erectile dysfunction (ED) in Thai males. METHODS: A 3-month randomized double-blind clinical trial was butea superba expedition carried out in volunteers with ED, aged 30 years approximately 70 years, to evaluate the therapeutic effect of the crude preparation of Butea superba tubers on ED. RESULTS: There was a significant upgrading in 4 of the 5 descriptive evaluations of the IIEF-5 questionnaire. Estimation of the sexual record indicated that 82.4% of the patients exhibited noticeable improvement. Haematology and blood chemistry analysis revealed no apparent change. CONCLUSION: The plant preparation appears to improve the erectile function in ED patients without apparent toxicity.
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