Where is Bilakh ( the equivalent of giving somebody the finger in Iran) coming from?

One of my British colleagues sent out this email regarding the origins of giving the middle finger in west, read it.

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as “plucking the yew” (or “pluck yew”).
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, “See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!”
Since ‘pluck yew’ is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F', and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute!
It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as “giving the bird.

I replied the email and explained how in Iran the thumbs up is conceived the same as middle finger in west but I had no story for it.
Now I am thinking where our Bilakh is coming from, I guess it has something to do with the secound world war and the invasion of Iran by American and British troops. I read something about Bruce Willis travelling to Iraq and his comments about how well he had been welcomed by Iraqi people who had shown him lots of thumbs up. I don't know if in Iraq holding thumbs up is the same as in Iran?

Think twice before giving advice

My older son Danial has started to draw naked people since a couple of months ago. He found out that it was fun and rewarding too. I think I just gave him some hint to a very interesting thing to do when I told him it was not good to draw people naked and specially to draw men's penis or women's breast. He drew his own conclusion out of my comments, If he wants to impress people and get some extra attention he just should draw them nude with their stuff hanging out . Actually it is working for him. A couple of days ago I took him to work with me and he really impressed everyone by drawing a very good looking breast on our big whiteboard. He is going to be 4 years old in February.

How to fight terrorism

In my opinion the most important reason that US government in particular and the western countries in general (in a lower extent of course) have not succeeded to contain terrorism is the kind of approach they traditionally have chosen to deal with the problem and problem makers. What I mean is that they ignore the human nature of these guys and the societies they are coming from and by demonizing these guys they choose the iron feast policy which is not going to work just because we are dealing with people not machines or animals. The fist and the important thing is to put yourself in their place and see what would you do in a similar situation and then deal with it wisely. US officials look at the international terrorism as a runaway process which has to be killed ( as a matter of fact that is the case!!) without doing anything about the operating system. I believe that the long history of unfair and unilateral US policy and mechanical reactions in middle east is the source of all these problems. A sick operating system is the source of the frequent runaway processes and if they do nothing about the system just killing the unwanted process won't resolve andthing in longterm. By acting violently and not wisely, US is encouraging and incubating an upsurge of the next generation of violent actions through an idealogic and consistent type of terrorsism .
US officials have to understand that they should seek an answer to resolve a very important and vital issue which is engraved in the middle eastern's minds and hearts instead of trying to erase and ignore the problem and the human nature of it.