In conjunction with the BBC World Service Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are fighting the good fight to confuse Indians into thinking condoms are fun.

First it was riddles, then red rover, now a ringtone…

Condom Condom! The a capella ringtone

Coming soon, the fourth and final phase of Making Condoms Fun: Mumbai — Condom Animals.

Obviously, this PROphylactic finale promises to make the most waves. After all, it encourages Indians to do what BBC and Gates’ have been doing from the start: Filling ‘em up with hot air.

• BBC World Service Trust: CondomCondom.org

As it turns out, while color-coded fear charts decide which of Crayola’s specialty crayons to choose, Iran’s busy with its own arts and crafts project.

Two days after launching highly provocative missile test, Iran has been caught broadcasting what appear to be two different photos from the exact same vantage point, taken at the exact same time. The first shows 4 missiles, and was published in America’s top newspapers — the New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune. The second, released a few hours later, shows 3 missiles and a dud in the middle who seems to be suffering from a little performance anxiety.

We may not be able to get it up, but we can get down with Photoshop.

• NYT - In Iranian Image, A Missile Too Many

Everyday, around mid-afternoon, a current of neatly dressed school boys pour over the sidewalks of New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta. Groups of friends stay close to each other, playing affectionately. Some have their arms around each other’s waists, others in each other’s hair, and still others with their hands clasped, fingers laced between fingers.

Grown men around them, too, are laughing and singing and swinging their locked arms like they’re on stage at the Birdcage.

Yeh dosti hum nahi chorenghe.

There is no audience, nobody stares and nobody whispers. This is normal. This is called dosti, friendship, and it is nothing more than a heterosexual expression of male bonding. Straight as an arrow.

Except, of course, if you’re gay. Then, its a sort of crooked and clandestine enjoyment taking place behind the opaque veil of socially acceptable touching.

Either way, it flies; one of the few remnants of a culture whose definitions of masculinity, affection and sexuality predate the prevailing, parochial notions of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Dammed up in the years since the British came and left, that ancient culture is finally resurfacing. And they’re not just holding hands and singing Kumbaya.

For the first time in its history, India celebrated Gay Pride Week with a series of parades across several major cities. Transgender hijras joined ranks with masked men and lesbians, marching in front of millions, hoping to bring a culture out of hibernation.

The London-based Economist saw it as an interesting departure for such a “conservative country.”

Yet historically, India has been a vastly tolerant place for sexual experimentation and homosexuality. Kamasutra aside, ancient Hindu texts and penal codes made similar provisions for hetero- and homosexuals. Both were acknowledged as acceptable forms of intercourse.

It was, in fact, British moral code that transmogrified that tradition. Indian Penal Code, Section 377, implemented under British rule, states:

Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment…

Today, that very code is being fought, one day to be stricken from the record and washed over by welled-up ancient culture unafraid to intertwine fingers.

Yeh dosti hum nahi chorenghe - This friendship: we will never let go.

• Economist: Glad to Be Gay (but a bit shy about it)
  
• YouTube: Hijra pictures

The French thought they got rid of theirs back in the sixties. All of them, all at once. You know, during that one protest. Remember? The one where thousands of feminists auto-erotically tore their hymens in choral unison, and then punctuated it with that unforgettable image of a thousand dainty hands raised in blood-dripping “V”s.

V-day for the V.J.! (That means “Victory for the Vagina,” you brownie-to-be…)

Or so they thought. The New York Times, of course, has got news for them. Hymens are baaack — with a vengeance, too.

Along with those offensive Turks banging at the E.U. gates and those Mohammed-loving Danes who still can’t seem to take a joke, a deluge of “ethnic” hymens are welled up at the levees of Europe, and they’re threatening to soak the entire continent in, you guessed it, blessed virginal blood! Ooooh! Just in time for summer!

Here’s the skinny: French courts recently allowed a man to annul his marriage based on an absent hymen, and it’s sent a current through the country. On one side, Muslim women are running around the country getting their writs and “repairs” (you remember, nah Brownies? We’ve been through this already…), while on the other, French feminists are hot and bothered about the renewed attention bestowed upon that castaway membrane they thought they ditched back there with Robespierre and his guillotine.

Check out the link below… But first, a little taste from the man who’s church blessed the marriage in the first place:

The man [who filed for divorce] is the biggest of all the donkeys. Even if the woman was no longer a virgin, he had no right to expose her honor. This is not what Islam teaches. It teaches forgiveness.
–Abdelkibir Errami, Vice President of the Islamic Center of Roubaix

• NY Times: Operation Lets Muslim Women Reclaim Virginity
  

It was just months ago that Pakistan’s emergency government shut down outlets of traditional media — TV channels, newspapers, magazines, but only few internet resources — in hopes of controlling a brewing public opinion that the government needed to be checked. In a more recent crack down, they appear to have gotten the memo about Web 2.0.

Today, the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority forced all internet service providers in the country to block access to YouTube.com indefinitely because of the recent posting of blasphemous content that might offend strict Muslims.

Several reports cited the anti-Islamic and “viral” nature of some content as the motivation behind the mandate. Purportedly, users had become increasingly upset by the resurgence of the incendiary Danish Mohammad cartoons, as well as a Dutch legislator’s exclusive movie promising to smoke out the infiltration of Muslim values in Dutch culture.

But it was unclear whether the government response was meant to appease citizens threatening public backlash or whether it was taking ation to preempt the deterioration of their faith. There were, of course, no illuminating user-generated opinions broadcast on YouTube.

• BBC - Pakistan Blocks YouTube Website
• YouTube - Mohammad Cartoons

Twenty years ago, 90% of doctors in India didn’t know what AIDS stood for. Today, several NGOs are well on their way to spreading the word, hoping to chase out the spread of the epidemic.

The Pleasure Project, in conjunction with the Instititute of International Social Development, is taking a somewhat unorthodox approach. Since the game of preaching safe sex is all about how many ears you can tease, they’ve decided to bringing sexy back.

When they spoke at the most recent International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, they bared it all, and most definitely perked everyone up. Things started off with the slow sounds of smooth jazz, but when the moans crept in, it was inevitable what mirchi was to follow. Lo and behold, as the backdrop to their academic treatise they chose porn, projected in majestic proportion.

After sights like these, it was no surprise that when it came to educating prostitutes on safe sex, the Pleasure Project wasn’t evening thinking of whipping out the cucumbers and teaching these ladies the old pinch-and-roll.

No, apparently, these folk aren’t afraid of getting down and dirty, digging up India’s rich and voluptuous past — in the form of the Kama Sutra. In an effort to decrease the amount of sexual partners these prostitutes keep — but with full understanding that a girl (or guy) has gotta make a buck — they’re offering classes on practicing safe sex, using kamasutra.

“[The prostitutes] are specifically taught foreplay and other poses that will give men a high degree of pleasure,” chief of IISD Rajyashree Choudhury told BBC.

And, thanks to 2,000 years of horny yet scholarly Indians, that pleasure doesn’t have to come with pain.

“We teach the girls the art of ensuring a premature but very satisfying discharge,” assured Choudhury. “The Kama Sutra is a treasure house for all that.”

• IPS - Sexing up Safe Sex to Limit HIV Spread
• BBC - Kama Sutra Guide to Safe Sex
• The Pleasure Project

From Afghanistan, a father and a son tell of a life spent masquerading behind whichever ideology had the most guns. Whether it was the Russians offensive, the Taliban insurgence or the U.S. occupation, they’ve adapted as necessary.

“It [is] a bit like supporting a team,” the father, Malik, says.

Where war is concerned, they’ve played many different parts — renaissance men of sorts. Today, they’re members of the Taliban, but they reveal no sentiments one way or another about their cause. Their only mentions of Jihad sound more like discussion of what color camouflage they’re wearing these days.

The refrain they both repeated:

My entire life I’ve been fighting. I’m ready for peace…

• The Guardian Weekly: ‘We Have Lost Everything’

Picture this: Two men are not getting along. One has the other hoisted over his shoulders.

Enter: black-haired beauty. Frame by aching frame, she bounces to the scene. Her jogging bosom tenderizes the tension. Both men freeze. As she arrives, she leaps slightly into the air… and when she lands, her breasts ripple and blur the… umm, I don’t remember… whatever was, you know, happening.

Suddenly, hoisted man is dropped by said perpetrator. And, for that moment, everybody is happy.

I know, sounds an awful lot like a rerun of Baywatch. Never fear, Brownistan wouldn’t Hasselhoff you like that. It’s actually a commercial for Egyptian media company Melody Entertainment.

If this seems like an exception to you, if this doesn’t fit into your baklava box of what to expect from syndicated Arab content, fair enough. I was caught off guard, too. It’s supposed to be hijabs and burkas and those poor, repressed Arab women, right?Well, it seems as though their businessmen have learned more than a thing or two from our American ads. Money and women — men tend to confuse their desires for both quite easily.

Check out how nearly identical these two Pepsi ads are:

• Pepsi, U.S. - Eva Longoria
• Pepsi, Egypt - Haifa Wehbe - Waa-wa-wee-wa!
  

Both illustrate this iconic Western woman who unveils her body but masks her mind. She can pass you flowers and brighten your day, and, by Allah, she can cool you off a bit. She’s distilled for her ability to please, physically.

For the rest of the world that still insists on being mentally active: too bad. This is the raw deal. Don’t worry, you’re gonna getting it, but with an added 54 grams of sugar…

Al-Qaeda propaganda videos surfaced today, apparently telling the story of a desperate terrorist organization. Following in the vein of Monday’s statement that Iraq’s most recent suicide bombers had Down Syndrome, bombastic little boys are shown shrouded in masks, training to be terrorists in Diyalah, Iraq.

They are smaller than the rocket launchers and AK-47s they drag with them. But they are not slowed by their heavy machinery. Their nine and ten and eleven year old legs serve them well. Naturally, they strap on suicide vests, halt cars, apprehend and interrogate passengers, press pistols against their heads, yip war cries and finish off the day’s work with a prayer.

There you have it — a day in the life of an Iraqi kid. American authorities suggest that al-Qaeda recorded the footage so that it could be circulated amongst other Iraqi children who might be easily influenced. You know, make it viral…

But, since US forces intercepted the video on December 4th during a successful hit mission, our generals have decided to spread the message elsewhere. Earlier today, it was screened for the American press. Coincidentally (or perhaps because of its very viral nature), it was also was broadcast around the very same time today on Saudi TV network Al Arabiya.

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“Allah” said women couldn’t play soccer. And for centuries, his people listened.

But this Allah (or whoever does the talking for him) doesn’t sit on the International Olympic Committee. And the IOC mandated that any country wishing to participate in its games must be compliant with certain standards by 2010. One of the standards: all member states must set up women’s sports clubs.

Saudis like their soccer. Their men are pretty good at it, actually. So they’re going through the motions. They’ve set up women’s clubs over the past year, and they’re growing. Just last week, the country held its first women’s soccer game at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University campus in front of a large number of female fans. No men were allowed. The referee staff was entirely female. The game ended in a tie, 2-2.

And that’s how Saudi appeased the IOC. But, makes you wonder, this IOC… did they just twist the arm of Allah or what? It’s not the first time they’ve done such a thing, either. Just last year, they got Mao to do political jumping jacks. After China announced it would host the Beijing Summer Olympics, threats of a boycott coaxed the world’s fastest growing economy to scale back their oil interests with stiff-armed Sudanese power-mongers.

IOC, IOC, you’re the man, if the U.N. can’t do it, surely you can!

• Gulfnews: Saudi Arabia to establish sports centres for women
• NYT China’s response on Darfur