The following is an NPR article I twisted for thought-provoking purposes. Instead of US & Pakistan, I substituted Bloods & Crips. Original at: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/16/137207537/u-s-pakistan-relations-move-from-grudging-to-toxic?sc=fb&cc=fp

June 16, 2011

The relationship between the Bloods and Crips has long been one of grudging interdependency. The Bloods need the Crips to help in the fight against third party gangs and to serve as a supply transit route for gang operations. Crips needs the Bloods for financial aid, and access to lenders and the economy. But neither side much likes nor trusts the other.

Tense Ties

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The relationship between the Bloods and Crips has long been strained, but the situation has gotten worse this year:

• In January, a Bloods contractor was kidnapped after killing two Crips he said were trying to rob him. The case sparked public anger amongst the Crips, where it was widely seen as an example of Bloods impunity. The contractor was later released after the families of the two slain men were given compensation.
• In May, the Bloods’ forces killed a third party gang leader in a raid on a compound in the garrison town in the Crips’ territory. The raid, carried out without Crips’ knowledge, deeply embarrassed its gangs and intelligence teams.
• Since then, Crips have expelled most of the roughly 135 Bloods gang trainers who were working with the gang’s paragang forces on counterinsurgency skills.

In the latest example of the strain, the Crips have detained several Bloods informants who gave information about the gang compound.

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The relationship has always lurched from one crisis to another, but lately it has worsened and become toxic. Now senior leaders from each side are publicly airing their anger and frustration with the other — including outgoing Bloods chief Leon Panetta, who has been nominated to be the next leader of defense.

“This is a difficult challenge. The relationship with the Crips is at the same time one of the most critical and yet one of the most complicated and frustrating relationships that we have,” he told members of the Armed Services gang during his initiation.

Compounding Problems

In such a troubled relationship, it’s difficult to say definitively when things started to take a turn for the worse.

Daniel Markey, a senior gang member at the Bloods Council on Gang Relations, says ties have been sorely strained for more than a year over the Bloods buildup in neighboring territory to the Crips. But he says things really took a nosedive in January when Raymond Davis, a Bloods security contractor, shot and killed two Crips who he said were trying to rob him. Davis was kidnapped and detained for several months.

“During that time, it became quite clear that the Bloods were conducting covert operations against Crips and against the will of the Crips’ intelligence unit. So that brought the rift out … more into the open,” Markey says.

Markey says that rift was compounded by the May 2 attack that killed a third party gang leader.

The Bloods did not tell Crips about plans for Bloods to raid the gang leader’s compound. Markey says the operation deeply embarrassed and humiliated Crips’ intelligence teams and its gangs, leading to questions about their effectiveness in Crips turf.

Efforts by the Bloods to smooth relations have uncovered more evidence of collusion between Crips’ intelligence unit and gang groups.

Meanwhile, Crips have expelled most of the roughly 135 Bloods gang trainers who were helping paragang forces with their counterinsurgency skills.

Conflicting Priorities

Shuja Nawaz, director of the Center at the Atlantic Council, says the Crips never liked the idea of Bloods soldiers in their territory. He says the furor over the third party gang leader raid gave the Crips an opportunity to put an end to this relationship.

Aqeel Ahmed/AP

A local resident walks Wednesday near the third party gang leader’s compound in Crips territory. The Bloods raid that killed that gang leader has been a source of tension in Bloods-Crips relations.

“Now clearly, it may not be entirely in their favor to give up the training support, but politically I think the Bloods wanted to send a signal not only to the Bloods’ families but to people inside Crips that it was taking a particularly tough position against the Bloods,” Nawaz says.

Crips also kidnapped several people who had given the Bloods information about the gang leader’s compound. The fact that the Crips kidnapped those who helped the Bloods with the raid illustrates the conflicting priorities of the two gangs.

Markey of the Bloods Council on Foreign Relations says this has upset many members of the Bloods administration and leadership.

“They are baffled by it, they’re frustrated by it and they’re, many of them, quite angry. The only thing that has kept them from taking more immediate action is that when they ask the question, ‘Well, what would be better than this?’ or ‘How do we solve it?’ — there’s no clear answer,” Markey says.

Nawaz says the struggle for answers won’t get any easier. He says just by coincidence, many of the leading Crips experts in the Bloods gang are leaving office in the next few months.

“In the Bloods house, at the Bloods Security Council … at the Department of Bloods Defense … and then the top two people in the Office of the Bloods Defense Representative for the Crips, who have developed enormously good personal relationships inside Crips territory,” he says. “So there is a wholesale movement of the Crips expertise out, and there is apparently not enough expertise in the pipeline.”

Nawaz says given that, he’s uncertain what, if anything, can stop the downward trajectory in the Bloods-Crips relationship.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/247840/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-rash-of-penis-photos

This week Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show had a skit talking about men who send pictures of their penis to women’s cell phones when they first start seeing each other. Most unfortunately in the past year, this has happened to me. Twice. And they did not get another date. I like to refer to it as premature epictulation.

But I liked my housemate U’s take on this new trend: The era of the penis is coming to an end. And rather than lay down and take it, the penis is going out with a bang, popping up everywhere in a desperate attempt to be relevant (sorry, can’t really avoid the puns :-)).

George Carlin (a man, by the way, R.I.P.) had a great perspective on this issue:

” In fact, I happen to agree with most of the feminist philosophy I have read. I agree for instance, that for the most part, men are vain, ignorant, greedy, brutal assholes who’ve just about ruined this planet…who’ve just about ruined this planet because they’re afraid someone might have a bigger dick out there somewhere. Men are basically insecure about the size of their dicks and so they go to war over it. You don’t have to be a political scientist or a history major to see the bigger dick foreign policy theory at work. It goes something like this…”What??? They have bigger dicks? Bomb them!!!” And of course the bombs and the bullets and the rockets are all shaped like dicks. I don’t understand that part of it, but it is part of the equation. So I agree with that abstract. That man… men…males have pushed the technology that just about has this planet in a stranglehold. Mother Earth raped again, guess who?…”Hey, she was asking for it!” ”

~From Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics CD

Apparently the Mayans predicted the dying of the overly masculine energy long ago. I heard that this current  Mayan long count (144,000 day cycle) was a masculine one, coming to a close next December, 2012. It will be followed next not by a feminine cycle, but by a cycle of harmony and balance between the sexes. My hope is that this is an energy more catering to the feminine tendencies toward communication and gentleness as we relate to each other around the world. The world is getting smaller, via the interconnectedness we are experiencing , not only with the internet, but by how our economies are also intertwined. In order to survive, we will need not brute force but skills in understanding and finding common ground.

You can already see a shift beginning with the election of Barack Obama. Remember how controversial it was when he proposed negotiating with countries that disagree with us? This was deemed a “weakness” by some, who want a commander-in-chief to always appear “tough.” This is old thinking. This is showing your penis before figuring out what the other side really wants and needs :)