Papua New Guinea women kill male babies to end tribal war

[Mari333]

WOMEN in Papua New Guinea's Highland region are killing their male babies to end a tribal war that has gone on for more than 20 years.



* Male children mean more war
* Women sick of the conflict
* Drastic action "will end tribal war"




http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6376834,00.jpg












http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24732391-401,00.html?from=public_rss


pretty damned drastic and sad.

[Parche]

1. I Heard They Do That Up In Wasilla Alaska Also

:hi:

[theoldman]

2. Just cut them off from having sex.

That should teach them to make love not war. LOL

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

4. Worked in Lysistrata

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Lysistrata popped into my mind immediately.

Led by the title character, Lysistrata, the story's female characters barricade the public funds building and withhold sex from their husbands to end the Peloponnesian War and secure peace. In doing so, Lysistrata engages the support of women from Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth. All of the other women are first against Lysistrata's suggestion to withhold sex. Finally, they agree to swear an oath of allegiance by drinking wine from a phallic shaped flask (the traditional implement, an upturned shield, would have been a symbol of actions opposed to the aims of the women). This action is ironic and therefore comical, because Greek men believed women had no self-restraint, a lack displayed in their alleged fondness for wine as well as for sex.

The men attempt to fight the women but the women refuse to back down, and angrily tell how they were forced for so long to stay silent and listen to the stupid decisions of men. They explain that they will take over the financial affairs of the city as they handled the finances of their homes, and also explain the injustice the war does to the women: that men will have no problem finding wives but women will never get husbands if they are too old.

Like the men, the women begin to miss sex and attempt to sneak home to their husbands. Lysistrata has them stay strong and they return to the public funds building.

After several days, the men begin to experience physical pain from lack of sex. They quickly settle peace negotiations between the countries. Lysistrata declares the sex feud over and allows the women to return home with their husbands.

[Frustratedlady]

3. Wanta stop war? It isn't the babies...it's the old coots who can't...

get beyond their boy toys or control their greed. Those are the ones the women need to control. Poor babies.

[Hekate]

6. My god that's sad. Maybe it'll get the old men's attention at last. Jeez. nt

[SoCalDem]

7. Maybe the women need to kill the old men, and teach the boy-babies to be nice

:)

[depakid]

11. There's a classic primatology case just like that

No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture

Sometimes it takes the great Dustbuster of fate to clear the room of bullies and bad habits. Freak cyclones helped destroy Kublai Khan's brutal Mongolian empire, for example, while the Black Death of the 14th century capsized the medieval theocracy and gave the Renaissance a chance to shine.

Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.

In a study appearing today in the journal PloS Biology (online at www.plosbiology.org), researchers describe the drastic temperamental and tonal shift that occurred in a troop of 62 baboons when its most belligerent members vanished from the scene.

The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon troop over the spoils at a tourist lodge garbage dump, and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them.

Left behind in the troop, designated the Forest Troop, were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling, as well as all the females and their young. With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.

Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside. (As is the case for most primates, baboon females spend their lives in their natal home, while the males leave at puberty to seek their fortunes elsewhere.) The persistence of communal comity suggests that the resident baboons must somehow be instructing the immigrants in the unusual customs of the tribe.

Much more: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E6DB1E38F930A25757C0A9629C8B63

[Cleita]

13. Interesting. Thanks for posting.

Maybe we should do the same thing by making the chicken hawks fight their own wars instead of sending our children to do it. They will probably eliminate each other and we might have world peace after all.

[SoCalDem]

14. Amen.. or at least a child/grandchild of their own

It's too easy for old men to start wars that young people have to fight & die in:grr:.

Let them go home & tell their wife/husband that one of their kids has to go to war because of a vote he/she made at work:)

[TexasObserver]

8. Like The Federation, my prime directive causes me not to give a shit ...

... about such internal matters of other cultures. It sounds harsh, but who's to say?

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

9. How about killing our nuclear weapons to stop what will come ?

[KittyWampus]

10. the Social Anthropologist in me says "interesting". On a personal note, of all the peoples I studied

objectively, it was only the tribal artwork, marks and body adornment of New Guinea aboriginal that freaked me out. Something from a past life?

[gogoplata]

12. You can take that thinking too far. To end all wars, get rid of all humans.

[Forkboy]

15. Don't tempt me.

:evilgrin:

[Forkboy]

16. This is sure to help.