#Face attendance in Pakistan

[pessimisticshapewithablog]

Narinder's Veil - An Analysis

A quick overview.

With the addition of the Bishop's of the old faith DLC, it was reveals Narinder's robes are actual a uniform of sorts denoting him as a death god. And once the Lamb has rescued all the bishops, they receive a version of these robes in fleece form. This made me wonder if TOWW's veil had any deeper meaning?

What is a Veil?

"A veil is an article of clothing or hanging cloth that is intended to cover some part of the head or face, or an object of some significance."

After some research, I was able to find an irl veil that most resembled the one TOWW wears:

A Sehra

"In some parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, men wear a sehra on their wedding day. This is a male veil covering the whole face and neck. The sehra is made from either flowers or beads."

Similar to veils worn by women, a sehra was worn to ward off the evil eye and to keep the bride and groom from seeing see each other before their wedding ceremony. While the reason for wearing the sehra is different, TOWW's veil very much resembles one.

TOWW wears a black veil that partially obscures his face. Similar ones can be seen on his attendants, Baal and Aym, and former members of his old cult, Klunko, Flinky, and Shrumy. They seemingly serve no pratical use as before initiating combat Aym and Baal rip the veils off, possibly for increased visibility and keep the stands out of their eyes. Because these veils are only seen worn by TOWW and those in association with him or his cult, I assume these veils are exclusive to him and the veils we see worn by others are derivatives of his.

Irl there are many cultural that require participants to adorn face veils or for sacred objects to be veiled. The most common practice that is familiar to most would be the wearing veils by brides on their wedding day. Interestingly the act of wearing a veil was prominently done by women and there are few cultures where men are expected to veil instead. In these cultrures, boys begin wearing veils after puberty and is considered a mark of manhood. It's interesting to note that everyone that wears a veil in COTL is male or male presenting.

Veils aren't always used for religious purposes.

Now that we have a better understanding of what veils are and why they are used let's move on to the next part of this analysis.

In-universe cultural meaning?

What could TOWW's veil mean to him and his servants?

Because all the information I've collected thus far, l'll break them down into seperate theories.

1.

As a mortal, Narinder died before or on his wedding day and was buried in his grooms clothes. Once he became a god, his wedding veil was one of the things he kept, either as a sentimental or cultural memento.

When the lamb usurps TOWW as death god, they don't recieve a veil, only his robes. This led me to assume TOWW veil is unique to him. For those that don't know, TOWW's name, Narinder, is of Indian origin. Because this and his face veil resembling a Sehra headdress, I like to image TOWW was originally from the COTL equivalent of India. Given how long TOWW has been a god, this place may no longer exist, with TOWW being the last 'living' member of this long lost culture. Only he would know the cultural meaning behind the veil. Others may have begun wearing them in association with TOWW.

11.

Given TOWW's station, being the patron of a cult and a literal god, it's plausible that his veil could be worn as a way of creating a barrier between himself and his followers. With the each number of strands denoting a rank amongst his servants. While Ratau's gang don't worship TOWW anymore, if at all given their dedication to Ratau, they may still wear the uniform of their ranks before the dissolution of TOWW's old cult.

"One view is that as a religious item, it is intended to honor a person, object or space. The actual sociocultural, psychological, and sociosexual functions of veils have not been studied extensively but most likely include the maintenance of social distance and the communication of social status and cultural identity."

The reason his servants are wearing them could be for a similar purpose. To seperate themselves from low level followers and layman. What is a cult if not a religion in it's infancy? Even still there seems to be a hierarchy amongst veiled servants of TOWW. Aym and Baal, likely due to their proximity to TOWW and having directly trained by him, have the most strands second only to TOWW himself. Ratau's gang each have different numbers of strands, possibly implying they were each at different level of their ordainment. Within TOWW's cult veiled members may have been the equivalent of enforcers

111.

TOWW's veil is a mourning veil of sorts.

"The mourning veil was commonly seen as a means of shielding the mourner and hiding her grief, and, on the contrary, seen by some women as a means of publicly expressing their emotions."

We don't know the deeper psychology behind what it takes to be a death god, to see hundred of thousands of millions of people die for all eternity. Granted TOWW seems quite psychopathic and is probably able to rationalize away his role as a death god, so maybe the veil is more for the souls that he reaps. A faux display of grief by an impersonal grim reaper. From a superstitious aspect, I'm sure looking directly into the face of death would be held as a very bad thing to do. TOWW also seems emotional constipated enough to wear something to show the emotions he won't let himself express.

A Deeper Look...

Something I noticed about the veils. Including TOWW, each character has a different number of strands/garlands:

Narinder = 22

Aym and Baal = 20

Klunko = 8

Flink = 6

Shrumy = 4

It's up to speculation as to why they each have a different number but that's what I'm here for. After a bit of searching I came to the realization that the amount of strands might correspond to the Major Arcana. While a pack contains 78 cards the first 22 are referred to as such and are considered more important than the rest. This is because they were meant to represent the spirtual journey through life. With that knowledge we can attribute each number of stands to a card in the Major Arcana:

Note the first card of the deck, The Fool, is not numbered.

If I match the number of veil strands to a card in the major arcana this is what we get:

Narinder (22) = The World (XXI)

Aym and Baal (20) = The Sun (XIX) or Judgment (XX)

Klunko (8) = Justice/Strength (VII/XI)

Flinky (6) = The Lovers (VI)

Shrumy (4) = The Emperor (IV)

The Arcana of the Lamb

Starting with TOWW, this what each correlation of veil strands to a card could mean.

Narinder The World (XXI)

"THE WORLD - Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.

Reversed: Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence."

The World card is said to represent the end of life. It makes sense that Narinder wears this number.

"The World represents an ending to a cycle of life, a pause in life before the next big cycle beginning with the fool."

The "nexus between what was and what was not" in TOWW's own words. It's says alot that the number of TOWW's veil strands corresponds with this card and not the literal death card (XIII). That could be because the death tarot does not actually represent death but change. Paradigm shifts, changes in beliefs and philosophies.

The reverse of this card also represents TOWW's situation. "Stagnation" & "permanence". As death, TOWW was a permanent fixture within the world of COTL. Even with his fascination with the new and novel, his siblings, or atleast Shamura, expected TOWW to remain unchanged and stagnant in his existence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_(tarot_card)

Aym and Baal The Sun (XIX) or Judgment (XX)

Judgment : self-evaluation, awakening, renewal, purpose, reflection, reckoning

Reversed: self-doubt, lack of self-awareness, failure to learn lessons, self-loathing

Per google, the word judgement has two definitions:

1. the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions.

2. a misfortune or calamity viewed as a divine punishment.

It can be assumed that the meaning of their corresponding tarot is the second definition. Within the story of COTL, they are fought after declining to return the red crown. Their battle could be interpreted as divine punishment, as they say as much. Within the game, they act as the precursor to TOWW's battle. Their fight could be considered a test of sorts for the player, as many of their attacks are diminutive versions of their master's.

Or

"THE SUN - Material happiness, fortunate marriage, contentment.

Reversed: The same in a lesser sense."

Considering their fate within COTL's story, I doubt this is the real interpretation of the number they wear. It is the actual 20th card of the Major Arcana but it can be assumed the devs meant the technical 20th card, The Judgement. Granted, depending on the players, the two can be reunited with their mother which makes them happy and content, that was retroactively added in the DLC and might not have been something the devs originally meant to add.

Klunko (and Bop) Justice/Strength (VII/XI)

Within the major arcana, the order of the Justice/Strength is switched or changed depending on the deck. So I decided to give the meaning of both.

FORTITUDE - Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; also complete success and honours.

Reversed: Despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord, sometimes even disgrace."

And

JUSTICE - Equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law.

Reversed: Law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity."

Within the game, Klunko, and Bop by extension, will give The Lamb the Strength from Without Tarot Card if they beat them.

Flinky The Lovers (VI)

THE LOVERS - Attraction, love, beauty, trials overcome.

Reversed: Failure, foolish designs. Another account speaks of marriage frustration and contrarieties of all kinds.

"In some traditions, the Lovers represent relationships and choices. Its appearance in a spread indicates some decision about an existing relationship, a temptation of the heart, or a choice of potential partners. Often an aspect of the Querent's life will have to be sacrificed; a bachelor(ette)'s lifestyle may be sacrificed and a relationship gained (or vice versa), or one potential partner may be chosen while another is turned down. Whatever the choice, it should not be made lightly, as the ramifications will be lasting."

While the numbers may align, I personally don't feel the card really applies to Flinky, unless the devs are implying some hidden relationship between Flinky and another character. This card better suits Ratau and Ratoo, given they give the in-game version of the Lovers card. They could also be twins, the Lovers cards us also associated with the star sign Gemini, known as the Twins. But I digress..

But Flinky's number of veil strands corresponding to the lovers card could have more to do with the imagery depicted on the Lover's card:

"In the Rider Waite deck, the imagery for this card is changed significantly from the traditional depiction. Instead of a couple receiving a blessing from a noble or cleric, the Rider–Waite deck depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. By reducing the number of human beings depicted in the card from three to two, Waite was able to reinforce its correspondence with Gemini. The Rider–Waite card also includes the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil with a serpent wrapped around its trunk. The symbolism of no return from making bad decisions, and the consequences of innocence lost, would be more widely understood from this imagery."

Flinky could be an homage to the serpent that tempted Eve to eat the apple of Eden. Maybe his consul is what influenced Ratau that leaving their old cult was an option.

Shrumy The Emperor (IV)

UPRIGHT: Authority, establishment, structure, a father figure

REVERSED: Domination, excessive control, lack of discipline, inflexibility

"The Emperor sits on a ram-adorned throne, a symbol of Mars. Another ram head can be seen on his cloak. His long white beard bears the symbol of "wisdom". He holds an Ankh scepter in his right hand, and a globe, symbol of domination, in his left. The Emperor sits atop a stark, barren mountain, a sign of "sterility of regulation, and unyielding power." He symbolizes the top of the secular hierarchy, the ultimate male ego. The Emperor is the absolute ruler of the world."

"In Astrology, the Emperor is associated with the masculine, cardinal-fire sign of Aries, the domicile sign of Mars which is symbolized by the ram."

Shrumy behavior toward the Lamb fits alot with this card, in my opinion. When they first meet he's quick to assert his dominance as a non-follower of the lamb. Shrumy also makes it clear that he has no care or respect for crown bearers, as the power they wielded seemed to change them.

"What are you looking at? Hmf. That's right. You crown bearers are all the same. Nothing without your adoring Followers. Ratau wasn't like that. He stayed true to who he was. You'll NEVER live up to him. Get out of my way, I've got Knucklebones to play and money to win. Come and play me if you want a real challenge."

- Shrumy to the Lamb

Shrumy falls more into the reversed position of this card. But I did notice a striking similarity to the Emperor Tarot and TOWW's role within the plot of COTL.

"The Emperor is the absolute ruler of the world."

Whatever TOWW'S gospel was the end result of killing his siblings would have made him the only god remaining and the De facto ruler.

After millennia, all may bask in my glory once more.

"Vessel, do you not worship me? Do you not give offerings in hopes of gaining my favor?

Soon I shall be freed, and the world remade in my image. All will pledge themselves to the Cult. All will bow to my name."

The words of a man(cat?) with enough ego to choke a horse lol. While not explicitly stated to be Baal and Aym's father TOWW does fill a father figure role to them. Having essentially raised and mentored them. Similar to Ratau's relationship with the Lamb, TOWW could also be considered a father/mentor to the Lamb too.

Conclusion

Initally I was only going to include the tarot card bit, but I couldn't keep my love of anthropology at bay so I added some cultural theories too.

I'm entirely sure the inclusion of these characters wearing veils doesn't actually mean anything but I'm just zooted off my gourd on caffeine so I'm gonna theorize anyway lol. Either way I had fun researching info for this rabbit hole I dug and I hope anyone who actually takes time to read this enjoys it too.

[xtruss]

Several Dead, Hundreds Injured in Pro-Independence Rallies in New Caledonia

Pro-independence protesters say France's new constitutional reform will dilute the share of the vote held by Kanaks, the Indigenous group that makes up about 41 percent of the population.

“World’s Most Wanted Criminal, Fascist, Extremist, Terrorist and the Butcher of Gujrat Indian Prime Minister Modi” urges Indians to focus on national development without making Pakistan a reference point. Photo: Reuters Archive

At least three people have been killed and hundreds more were injured during a second night of protesting in New Caledonia, authorities said.

Wednesday was the third day of demonstrations against a constitutional reform pushed by Paris that has roiled the archipelago, which has long sought independence.

Despite heavily armed security forces fanning out across the capital Noumea and the ordering of a nighttime curfew, protesting continued until overnight Tuesday virtually unabated.

The reform — which must still be approved by a joint sitting of both houses of the French parliament — would give a vote to people who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years.

Pro-independence forces say it would dilute the share of the vote held by Kanaks, the Indigenous group that makes up about 41 percent of the population and the major force in the pro-independence movement.

In Noumea and the commune of Paita on Wednesday, there were reports of several exchanges of fire between civil defence groups and protesters.

Security forces regained control of Noumea's penitentiary, which holds about 50 inmates, after an uprising and escape attempt by prisoners, it said in a statement.

Police have arrested more than 130 people since Monday night, with dozens placed in detention to face court hearings, the commission said. About 60 police have been injured, it said.

A nighttime curfew was extended, along with bans on gatherings, the carrying of weapons and the sale of alcohol.

The territory's La Tontouta International Airport remained closed to commercial flights and people were urged to restrict any travel during the day, the high commission said.

Pacific Rivalry

Macron said French lawmakers would vote to definitively adopt the constitutional change by the end of June unless New Caledonia's opposing sides agree on a new text that "takes into account the progress made and everyone's aspirations".

In the Noumea Accord of 1998, France vowed to gradually give more political power to the Pacific island territory of nearly 300,000 people.

As part of the agreement, New Caledonia has held three referendums over its ties with France, all rejecting independence.

As part of the agreement, New Caledonia has held three referendums over its ties with France, all rejecting independence. But the independence movement retains support, particularly among the Indigenous Kanak people.

A New Caledonia pro-independence leader, Daniel Goa, asked people to "go home", and condemned the looting.

But "the unrest of the last 24 hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France take control of them," he added.

France's Minister for Interior and Overseas Gerald Darmanin attends a debate on the constitutional bill aimed at enlarging the electorate of the overseas French territory of New Caledonia, at the French National Assembly in Paris

Source: TRT World 🌎 And Agencies

[septembriseur]

“After two years as a refugee, my former student M. has received his U.S. resettlement paperwork and is ready to start his new life in America!

I taught M. when I worked at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) in Kabul. The eldest son of a large, loving, but poor family, he spent his earliest years in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Like many Afghan boys, he grew up working to help support his family. But thanks to his obvious intelligence and his family's commitment to education, he was able to attend school and pursue his bachelor's degree.

When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August 2021, M.'s family faced danger and persecution as a result of his father's work with the American military. They were eligible for U.S. Special Immigrant Visas, but the process was slow and almost nonfunctional. AUAF was able to evacuate M. to a third country where he could continue his education and wait for his refugee resettlement to the USA to be processed. While finishing his BA as a refugee, he was also supporting his family in Kabul and searching for ways to help them: pursuing their SIV application through the vast maze of American bureaucracy and working with my sister Heather, who filed to sponsor them for Humanitarian Parole.

Over the past two years, M. has become like a member of my family. He's helped my nephew with a school presentation; my niece baked him a cake to celebrate his university graduation. I've talked to his baby niece on the phone. He's helped me learn to read and write Dari Persian, putting up with my endless mistakes and questions. We text each other animal pictures and political frustrations.

Though M.'s family have now received their Humanitarian Parole and SIV petition approvals, they are still waiting for State Department evacuation from Kabul for their visa interview. But for M., good news has finally come: he has received his resettlement paperwork and is arriving in America the day before Thanksgiving!

He could use some help: when he was evacuated from Afghanistan, he was only allowed to take one bag of stuff with him. In America, he'll need more: weather-appropriate clothes, a phone, bus fare, and enough money to continue supporting his family in Kabul while he looks for a job.

This is an opportunity to help give a solid start to a gifted young man who has overcome incredible odds to make it this far— and to help repay an Afghan family who risked it all for America and American values.

Whatever you can give will help M. get started on his American journey!”

[gumnut-logic]

It hurt.

“So, Mr Tracy, on a scale of one to ten how would you rate the pain you are in if ten is the worst pain you’ve ever felt?”

The worst pain? Hmm. He turned to Scott who was staring at him with worried eyes. “Well, it’s bad, but it certainly doesn’t rate up with the worst. Not like the time I broke my leg and you had to reset it halfway up K2.”

“God, I hope not. You screamed enough to cause an avalanche two mountains over.”

“Well, you held my leg wrong. I told you that.”

“Yeah, I’ll try to do better next time.”

Virgil just glared at him, not game to say there wouldn’t be a next time.

The doctor standing next to his bed was being extremely patient. “Let’s mark that at ten and work backwards.”

“Okay.”

Virgil focussed on his stomach and tried not to groan aloud.

“It’s not as bad as the elevator that fell on me. That ached for ages. This is different.”

Scott straightened. “What elevator?”

Oh shit. “Um, nothing to worry about.”

“What elevator?” Blue eyes glared at him.

“The hammer. It is kind of like the time Gordon hit my hand with a hammer.” God, that had hurt. For a bit there he had thought his brother had broken half the bones in his hand and his piano playing days were over. On second thoughts. “No, that was at least a five. This isn’t quite up there.”

Scott’s eyes were promising pertinent questions later. “Then what about the bruising you got from catching that ballooning guy and falling twenty metres into your ‘bird?”

“Nah, are you kidding me? I walked that off within a few minutes. Barely a one.”

“Then what about the concrete that fell on your leg and arm on that last mission with Cass?”

Virgil frowned. “You know about that?”

“Of course, I know about that, you were limping for a week afterwards.” Scott’s lips quirked a little. “And besides I know a little ‘bird in orbit who tells me all sorts of things.”

Virgil grunted and was loudly reminded of why he was in the hospital in the first place. Ow. “No, that was nothing. This is something.”

“Then what about the building that fell on you in Pakistan? You had a concrete beam land on your belly. How does that compare?”

Virgil frowned. “Hmm, close, could be a four. Though now I’m thinking of that time we had to rescue those kids from that massive rollercoaster in Moscow. You know, when my safety line slipped and I dislocated my shoulder.” He frowned. “Though come to think of it, when you put it back in was pretty close to the broken leg incident. You know how to cause pain.”

“Hey, you were the one who demanded I do it. You watch too many action movies.”

“I watch too many action movies?! The only action movies I see are the ones I watch with you.”

“You said you enjoyed them.”

“I enjoy them because I’m watching them with you. Why else would I watch them?”

“Because they are fun?”

Another grunt, another wince. “Okay, okay, I’m going to go with a five now. This is definitely heading into hammer hitting the hand territory.” He looked up at the young female doctor who was attending them in Auckland Hospital’s emergency department. She was staring at both of them a little warily. “Doc?”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “So the pain in your stomach is equal to that of getting your hand hit with a hammer.”

“Yeah, and it is slowly getting worse-“

“Virgil?” A familiar voice interrupted him and he turned to catch sight of an equally familiar face. Uh, oh.

“Jimmy? Uh, hi.”

The older doctor straightened his stethoscope and frowned. “What are you doing here…?” His eyes landed on Virgil’s arm clutching his stomach. “Oh, you didn’t.”

“I had to.” So he was defensive, big deal.

Jimmy turned to the young woman attending them. “Josephine, I’ll take the Tracys on my slate, if it is okay with you. I know exactly what is wrong with this one. Any of the other brothers reporting symptoms?”

Scott answered. “No, none of us were that stupid.” Blue eyes were again glaring at Virgil.

“If I may so ask, what is the diagnosis, Doctor Keene?” The young doctor was looking at him strangely.

Jimmy sighed and Virgil blushed.

“Mr Tracy here, loves his grandmother so much, he is willing to put his life on the line for her. Despite having been warned multiple times before.”

“She does her best.” Virgil had to defend Grandma.

“Virgil, her chilli is listed by the Poisons Information Bureau. You shouldn’t eat it. Kill a pot plant or two like your brothers.”

“I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

“Well, you’ve likely hurt your stomach lining instead.” Jimmy turned to grab a nurse. “See to it that Mr Tracy receives a full digestive tract examination and if necessary, schedule a flush.”

Virgil’s eyes widened. “Um…”

Jimmy arched an eyebrow. “You were warned last time.”

Virgil groaned and sank into the bed.

His brother’s hand landed on his arm and squeezed gently.

“This sucks.” Virgil shifted and his stomach yelled at him. “I’m upping this to a six. Suspension bridge cable across the back.”

“Ow.” Scott winced.

“I was wearing the exo-suit, don’t worry.” Virgil stared down at his hands. “Busted it though.”

Quiet. “Maybe we should give it its own number. Say six point five. Right between suspension bridge cable and that acid that ate our uniforms that time. I still have scars from that.”

Virgil frowned. “Actually yeah, that sounds about right. Six point five.”

“And don’t eat Grandma’s chilli again.”

“Okay. I’ve learned my lesson, I think.” Another groan and he clutched his stomach.

“Hey, doc.” He waved his hand in the direction of both the doctors having an earnest discussion, no doubt at his expense. “Definitely a six point five.”

“Grandma’s chilli is six point five.”

-o-o-o-

[justdonotaskmewhy]

The Crown fact-checked. Part 1/60

Before we begin I have to say a few words:

I understand that The Crown is a work of fiction and my goal is not to say "It's all lies!", we know it is full of stuff that has never happened, I just want to "do my own research" and see which facts were changed

I will try to be as unbiased as I possibly can. I can't promise you will like my stuff or agree with me, but my thoughts are just my thoughts, you can always decide for yourself

This being said, let's start our journey

Season 1. Episode 1. Wolferton Splash

King George's VI illness

The Crown's opening scene is that of the king spitting blood and coughing heavily. This theme of illness is recurring for the rest of the episode.

King George VI was a heavy smoker. The cigarettes were rather cheap after war and it is no wonder he developed such an unhealthy habit. Note: i phrased it badly but he started smoking much earlier than after the war ended, the cigarettes were just cheaper so it was even easier for him to get access to smoking.

Due to his smoking he had a lung cancer and coronary artery disease. Both of his illnesses appeared in the series.

2. Prince Philip renounces his royal titles

The series is true to the reality here. On the eve of his wedding to princess Elizabeth Prince Philip renounced his "foreign titles" of Greece and Denmark and was styled as "His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh,  Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich of Greenwich in the County of London"

3. King stutters

It is no surprise to anyone who has ever watched "The King's Speech". King George stuttered ever since he was a child and attended speech therapy to get rid of it. He almost get rid of it and it is hard to notice it in his public speeches. You can listen to this if you're interested, the real speech King George VI delivered on September 3rd, 1939 addressing Britain's involvement in World War II.

4. Prince Philip gave up smoking because princess Elizabeth couldn't stand it

As any loving daughter would be, princess Elizabeth was preoccupied by her father's health. Seeing that smoking did not do him any good, she insisted prince Philip should give up the habit. He did and some sources state he didn't smoke once after his wedding day.

5. Limericks

As fun as it may sound the king was fond of dirty limericks. However The Crown faced a controversy as the king says the word "cunt" in the opening episode.

The full limerick is as follows:

There was an old Countess of Bray,

And you might think it odd when I say,

That despite her high station, rank and education.

She always spelled "Cunt" with a K!

6. Princess Margaret at princess Elizabeth's wedding

Princess Margaret was one of princess Elizabeth's bridesmaids. However she was shorter than her sister (Elizabeth was 163 cm tall, Princess Margaret was 155 cm).

7. Winston Churchill at princess Elizabeth's wedding. I Vow To Thee My Country

He and his wife attended the wedding and, in fact, caused a "false alarm" of applause by their arrival as everyone thought it was the princess who was cheered with such an enthusiasm.

However I Vow To Thee My Country apparently never played upon his arrival. But This song is indeed regarded as synonymous with Churchill, and it played at his funeral.

8. Hatred towards Mountbattens

Lord Louis Mountbatten was the last Viceroy of British India. In 1947 the partition of Pakistan was inevitable but it resulted in a blood bath. Million was killed, 15 millions were displaced.

Churchill was unsatisfied with Mountbatten's hurry to operate the situation and called it "a shameful flight" which was shown in The Crown.

9. Peter Townsend

Group Captain Peter Townsend was an equerry to King George VI. He indeed had an affair with Princess Margaret, the king's youngest daughter.

A gross fact but may I remind you: he was 33 and she was 17 in 1947 when their romance presumably began. We will discuss it further in later posts.

10. Nazis and the British Royal family

The British Royal family is notorious for its connections to nazis. We are not going to talk about Edward and Wallace (because we will talk about them later), but Prince Philip had four sisters, all of whom married members of the German aristocracy—three of those men became Nazis. One sister, Princess Theodora married Berthold, Margrave of Baden; they tried to keep their distance from Nazism.

His eldest sister, Princess Margarita, married Gottfried, the 8th Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg—a German aristocrat who joined the Nazi party and served in World War II. He was involved in Operation Valkyrie, the plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944. 

Princess Cecilie, another sister, married German aristocrat Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse. They joined the Nazis in May 1937, but died in a plane crash months later. At her funeral, Prince Philip marched with their relatives who wore Nazi uniforms.

His youngest sister, Princess Sophie, married Prince Christoph of Hesse, an Oberführer in the Nazi Party and a director in the Third Reich's Ministry of Air Forces. Sophie said in her memoir of Hitler, "I have to say here, that, although Chri [Prince Chrisoph] and I changed our political view fundamentally some years later, we were impressed by this charming and seemingly modest man, and by his plans to change and improve the situation in Germany."

It is worth mentioning that Philip served Britain during World War II and did not himself support the nazi regime.

11. The royal family was against princess Elizabeth's marriage to Philip

It indeed happened but for an unexpected reason. Royal courtiers said that prince Philip "was too funny and had too many gaffes".

12. Lilibet

Lilibet was a nickname for princess Elizabeth. It is said that it was given by Princess Margaret who couldn't pronounce "Elizabeth" at a young age. Now it is prince Harry's daughter name, what a sweet continuity.

i stand corrected: according to this source its origin can be different. Elizabeth used to call herself Lilibet when she was a toddler.

13. Waving

Royalty way much slower than everyone else. This waving is easy to recognise, you've seen it multiple times. It is supposed that this particular style is safer for articulations, and this can be one of the reasons they wave like they do.

14. Princess Elizabeth's passion for filming

Though it is not clear whether she liked filming herself, she was clearly fond of watching clips filmed by her family members as it was shown in "Queen at 90"

15. Princess Margaret smoking habits

Princess Margaret had a reputation of a heavy smoker. Rightfully so, as she could smoke up to 60 cigarettes a day. Allegedly she started smoking in 1952 after the death of her father (she was 21 at the time). Smoking excessively could be a sign of untreated depression and mental health troubles which we will discuss in later posts.

Side note: Margaret's smoking was first noticed in her late teens when she became famous on the party circuit for her turtle shell cigarette holder.

16. King's operation

The operation to remove the lung indeed took place at the Buckingham Palace.

When the King's chest was suspected as the cause of his ill health, Sir John called in Geoffrey Marshall, 64, an expert on lung diseases, and Sir Robert Arthur Young, 80, grand old man of British chest experts. X rays by Radiologist Peter James Kerley and others showed what seemed to be a growth in the left lung. Australian-born Brigadier Sir Thomas Peel Dunhill, 75, who enjoys the title of Sergeant Surgeon to the King, agreed that an operation was necessary. The doctors decided that another Welshman, Chest Surgeon Clement Price Thomas, was the man to do the surgery.

17. Princess Elizabeth's curtsy to her mother and grandmother

A sweet gesture and a nice tradition to show respect which lasts up until this day.

Here is a clip of prince Harry bowing to his grandmother followed by kissing her on both cheeks.

18. Churchill elected the second time

Churchill became PM for a second time on October 26th, 1951. Fun fact: it happened month away from his 77th birthday.

19. Princess Elizabeth's Commonwealth tour

As the following episode will show the prince and the princess were on Commonwealth tour in 1952 when they received the news of king George's VI sudden death. They were in Kenya when it happened.

20. Carolers at Sandringham

Even though I can't find any reliable source about this scene, it is a decent metaphor. The king who learnt he is dying welcomes villagers who offer him a crown.

They sing "In a Bleak Midwinter" which I highly recommend to listen to closely.

The poem was written by an English poet Christina Rosetti.

What can I give Him, Poor as I am? — If I were a Shepherd I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man I would do my part, — Yet what I can I give Him, — Give my heart.

21. Prince Philip and Navy

Prince Philip's naval career began when he was 17. The Duke of Edinburgh’s active naval career ended as a commander in January 1953, after almost 14 years.

Despite his retirement from active service, Prince Philp remained both interested and involved in the Naval Service through official visits, patronage of, and association with, naval charities and clubs.

Useful links:

[rapeculturerealities]

The activists confronting period taboos in Pakistan | Women | Al Jazeera

The monsoon season last year, from June to September, saw record-breaking rainfall. August saw three times as much rainfall as the 30-year national average. Sindh and Balochistan provinces were the worst hit. Sindh, home to 50 million people, received eight times its average rainfall. More than 33 million people were affected by torrential rains and flash floods – that’s one in seven Pakistanis. The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described it as a “monsoon on steroids”. “One-third of Pakistan is under water,” said the federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman at the time.

Pakistan needed help on an unprecedented level. The United Nations called for $816m in relief by October. In November, when I visited villages in Sindh and Balochistan, families were still crowded by the side of some main roads under worn tents bearing the names of aid organisations. As large local and international organisations, usually helmed by local male coordinators on the ground, assessed the needs of millions, others wondered about women like Razia. In September, an estimated 73,000 women were expected to give birth. They required birth attendants, newborn care and support, but many women were not allowed to leave their homes and were dependent on husbands or fathers to provide access to healthcare, or to travel with them to medical camps. And then there was the question of more basic needs: How were the 8.2 million women of reproductive age living in the flood-affected areas managing their menstrual needs? Who was considering this?

[menalez]

Here is a critique: Argue all you want with many feminist policies, but few quarrel with feminism’s core moral insight, which changed the lives (and minds) of women forever: that women are due the same rights and dignity as men. So, as news of the appalling miseries of women in the Islamic world has piled up, where are the feminists? Where’s the outrage? For a brief moment after September 11, when pictures of those blue alien-creaturely shapes in Afghanistan filled the papers, it seemed as if feminists were going to have their moment. And in fact the Feminist Majority, to its credit, had been publicizing since the mid-90s how Afghan girls were barred from school, how women were stoned for adultery or beaten for showing an ankle or wearing high-heeled shoes, how they were prohibited from leaving the house unless accompanied by a male relative, how they were denied medical help because the only doctors around were male.

But the rest is feminist silence. You haven’t heard a peep from feminists as it has grown clear that the Taliban were exceptional not in their extreme views about women but in their success at embodying those views in law and practice. In the United Arab Emirates, husbands have the right to beat their wives in order to discipline them—“provided that the beating is not so severe as to damage her bones or deform her body,” in the words of the Gulf News. In Saudi Arabia, women cannot vote, drive, or show their faces or talk with male non-relatives in public. (Evidently they can’t talk to men over the airwaves either; when Prince Abdullah went to President Bush’s ranch in Crawford last April, he insisted that no female air-traffic controllers handle his flight.) Yes, Saudi girls can go to school, and many even attend the university; but at the university, women must sit in segregated rooms and watch their professors on closed-circuit televisions. If they have a question, they push a button on their desk, which turns on a light at the professor’s lectern, from which he can answer the female without being in her dangerous presence. And in Saudi Arabia, education can be harmful to female health. Last spring in Mecca, members of the mutaween, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue, pushed fleeing students back into their burning school because they were not properly covered in abaya. Fifteen girls died.

You didn’t hear much from feminists when in the northern Nigerian province of Katsina a Muslim court sentenced a woman to death by stoning for having a child outside of marriage. The case might not have earned much attention—stonings are common in parts of the Muslim world—except that the young woman, who had been married off at 14 to a husband who ultimately divorced her when she lost her virginal allure, was still nursing a baby at the time of sentencing. During her trial she had no lawyer, although the court did see fit to delay her execution until she weans her infant.

You didn’t hear much from feminists as it emerged that honor killings by relatives, often either ignored or only lightly punished by authorities, are also commonplace in the Muslim world. In September, Reuters reported the story of an Iranian man, “defending my honor, family, and dignity,” who cut off his seven-year-old daughter’s head after suspecting she had been raped by her uncle. The postmortem showed the girl to be a virgin. In another family mix-up, a Yemeni man shot his daughter to death on her wedding night when her husband claimed she was not a virgin. After a medical exam revealed that the husband was mistaken, officials concluded he was simply trying to protect himself from embarrassment about his own impotence. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, every day two women are slain by male relatives seeking to avenge the family honor.

The savagery of some of these murders is worth a moment’s pause. In 2000, two Punjabi sisters, 20 and 21 years old, had their throats slit by their brother and cousin because the girls were seen talking to two boys to whom they were not related. In one especially notorious case, an Egyptian woman named Nora Marzouk Ahmed fell in love and eloped. When she went to make amends with her father, he cut off her head and paraded it down the street. Several years back, according to the Washington Post, the husband of Zahida Perveen, a 32-year-old pregnant Pakistani, gouged out her eyes and sliced off her earlobe and nose because he suspected her of having an affair.

In a related example widely covered last summer, a teenage girl in the Punjab was sentenced by a tribal council to rape by a gang that included one of the councilmen. After the hour-and-a-half ordeal, the girl was forced to walk home naked in front of scores of onlookers. She had been punished because her 11-year-old brother had compromised another girl by being been seen alone with her. But that charge turned out to be a ruse: it seems that three men of a neighboring tribe had sodomized the boy and accused him of illicit relations—an accusation leading to his sister’s barbaric punishment—as a way of covering up their crime.

Nor is such brutality limited to backward, out-of-the-way villages. Muddassir Rizvi, a Pakistani journalist, says that, though always common in rural areas, in recent years honor killings have become more prevalent in cities “among educated and liberal families.” In relatively modern Jordan, honor killings were all but exempt from punishment until the penal code was modified last year; unfortunately, a young Palestinian living in Jordan, who had recently stabbed his 19-year-old sister 40 times “to cleanse the family honor,” and another man from near Amman, who ran over his 23-year-old sister with his truck because of her “immoral behavior,” had not yet changed their ways. British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels reports that British Muslim men frequently spirit their young daughters back to their native Pakistan and force the girls to marry. Such fathers have been known to kill daughters who resist. In Sweden, in one highly publicized case, Fadima Sahindal, an assimilated 26-year-old of Kurdish origin, was murdered by her father after she began living with her Swedish boyfriend. “The whore is dead,” the family announced.

As you look at this inventory of brutality, the question bears repeating: Where are the demonstrations, the articles, the petitions, the resolutions, the vindications of the rights of Islamic women by American feminists? The weird fact is that, even after the excesses of the Taliban did more to forge an American consensus about women’s rights than 30 years of speeches by Gloria Steinem, feminists refused to touch this subject. They have averted their eyes from the harsh, blatant oppression of millions of women, even while they have continued to stare into the Western patriarchal abyss, indignant over female executives who cannot join an exclusive golf club and college women who do not have their own lacrosse teams.

But look more deeply into the matter, and you realize that the sound of feminist silence about the savage fundamentalist Muslim oppression of women has its own perverse logic. The silence is a direct outgrowth of the way feminist theory has developed in recent years. Now mired in self-righteous sentimentalism, multicultural nonjudgmentalism, and internationalist utopianism, feminism has lost the language to make the universalist moral claims of equal dignity and individual freedom that once rendered it so compelling. No wonder that most Americans, trying to deal with the realities of a post-9/11 world, are paying feminists no mind.

To understand the current sisterly silence about the sort of tyranny that the women’s movement came into existence to attack, it is helpful to think of feminisms plural rather than singular. Though not entirely discrete philosophies, each of three different feminisms has its own distinct reasons for causing activists to “lose their voice” in the face of women’s oppression.

The first variety—radical feminism (or gender feminism, in Christina Hoff Sommers’s term)—starts with the insight that men are, not to put too fine a point upon it, brutes. Radical feminists do not simply subscribe to the reasonable-enough notion that men are naturally more prone to aggression than women. They believe that maleness is a kind of original sin. Masculinity explains child abuse, marital strife, high defense spending, every war from Troy to Afghanistan, as well as Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet. As Gloria Steinem informed the audience at a Florida fundraiser last March: “The cult of masculinity is the basis for every violent, fascist regime.”

Gender feminists are little interested in fine distinctions between radical Muslim men who slam commercial airliners into office buildings and soldiers who want to stop radical Muslim men from slamming commercial airliners into office buildings. They are both examples of generic male violence—and specifically, male violence against women. “Terrorism is on a continuum that starts with violence within the family, battery against women, violence against women in the society, all the way up to organized militaries that are supported by taxpayer money,” according to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who teaches “The Sexuality of Terrorism” at California State University in Hayward. Violence is so intertwined with male sexuality that, she tells us, military pilots watch porn movies before they go out on sorties. The war in Afghanistan could not possibly offer a chance to liberate women from their oppressors, since it would simply expose women to yet another set of oppressors, in the gender feminists’ view. As Sharon Lerner asserted bizarrely in the Village Voice, feminists’ “discomfort” with the Afghanistan bombing was “deepened by the knowledge that more women than men die as a result of most wars.”

If guys are brutes, girls are their opposite: peace-loving, tolerant, conciliatory, and reasonable—“Antiwar and Pro-Feminist,” as the popular peace-rally sign goes. Feminists long ago banished tough-as-nails women like Margaret Thatcher and Jeanne Kirkpatrick (and these days, one would guess, even the fetching Condoleezza Rice) to the ranks of the imperfectly female. Real women, they believe, would never justify war. “Most women, Western and Muslim, are opposed to war regardless of its reasons and objectives,” wrote the Jordanian feminist Fadia Faqir on OpenDemocracy.net. “They are concerned with emancipation, freedom (personal and civic), human rights, power sharing, integrity, dignity, equality, autonomy, power-sharing [sic], liberation, and pluralism.”

Sara Ruddick, author of Maternal Thinking, is perhaps one of the most influential spokeswomen for the position that women are instinctually peaceful. According to Ruddick (who clearly didn’t have Joan Crawford in mind), that’s because a good deal of mothering is naturally governed by the Gandhian principles of nonviolence such as “renunciation,” “resistance to injustice,” and “reconciliation.” The novelist Barbara Kingsolver was one of the first to demonstrate the subtleties of such universal maternal thinking after the United States invaded Afghanistan. “I feel like I’m standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming ‘He started it!’ and throwing rocks,” she wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “I keep looking for somebody’s mother to come on the scene saying, ‘Boys! Boys!’ ”

Gender feminism’s tendency to reduce foreign affairs to a Lifetime Channel movie may make it seem too silly to bear mentioning, but its kitschy naiveté hasn’t stopped it from being widespread among elites. You see it in widely read writers like Kingsolver, Maureen Dowd, and Alice Walker. It turns up in our most elite institutions. Swanee Hunt, head of the Women in Public Policy Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government wrote, with Cristina Posa in Foreign Policy: “The key reason behind women’s marginalization may be that everyone recognizes just how good women are at forging peace.” Even female elected officials are on board. “The women of all these countries should go on strike, they should all sit down and refuse to do anything until their men agree to talk peace,” urged Ohio representative Marcy Kaptur to the Arab News last spring, echoing an idea that Aristophanes, a dead white male, proposed as a joke 2,400 years ago. And President Clinton is an advocate of maternal thinking, too. “If we’d had women at Camp David,” he said in July 2000, “we’d have an agreement.”

Major foundations too seem to take gender feminism seriously enough to promote it as an answer to world problems. Last December, the Ford Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundation helped fund the Afghan Women’s Summit in Brussels to develop ideas for a new government in Afghanistan. As Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler described it on her website, the summit was made up of “meetings and meals, canvassing, workshops, tears, and dancing.” “Defense was mentioned nowhere in the document,” Ensler wrote proudly of the summit’s concluding proclamation—despite the continuing threat in Afghanistan of warlords, bandits, and lingering al-Qaida operatives. “[B]uilding weapons or instruments of retaliation was not called for in any category,” Ensler cooed. “Instead [the women] wanted education, health care, and the protection of refugees, culture, and human rights.”

Too busy celebrating their own virtue and contemplating their own victimhood, gender feminists cannot address the suffering of their Muslim sisters realistically, as light years worse than their own petulant grievances. They are too intent on hating war to ask if unleashing its horrors might be worth it to overturn a brutal tyranny that, among its manifold inhumanities, treats women like animals. After all, hating war and machismo is evidence of the moral superiority that comes with being born female.

Yet the gender feminist idea of superior feminine virtue is becoming an increasingly tough sell for anyone actually keeping up with world events. Kipling once wrote of the fierceness of Afghan women: “When you’re wounded and left on the Afghan plains/And the women come out to cut up your remains/Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains.” Now it’s clearer than ever that the dream of worldwide sisterhood is no more realistic than worldwide brotherhood; culture trumps gender any day. Mothers all over the Muslim world are naming their babies Usama or praising Allah for their sons’ efforts to kill crusading infidels. Last February, 28-year-old Wafa Idris became the first female Palestinian suicide bomber to strike in Israel, killing an elderly man and wounding scores of women and children. And in April, Israeli soldiers discovered under the maternity clothes of 26-year-old Shifa Adnan Kodsi a bomb rather than a baby. Maternal thinking, indeed.

The second variety of feminism, seemingly more sophisticated and especially prevalent on college campuses, is multiculturalism and its twin, postcolonialism. The postcolonial feminist has even more reason to shy away from the predicament of women under radical Islam than her maternally thinking sister. She believes that the Western world is so sullied by its legacy of imperialism that no Westerner, man or woman, can utter a word of judgment against former colonial peoples. Worse, she is not so sure that radical Islam isn’t an authentic, indigenous—and therefore appropriate—expression of Arab and Middle Eastern identity.

The postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the intellectual godfathers of multiculturalism and postcolonialism, first set the tone in 1978 when an Italian newspaper sent him to Teheran to cover the Iranian revolution. As his biographer James Miller tells it, Foucault looked in the face of Islamic fundamentalism and saw . . . an awe-inspiring revolt against “global hegemony.” He was mesmerized by this new form of “political spirituality” that, in a phrase whose dark prescience he could not have grasped, portended the “transfiguration of the world.” Even after the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power and reintroduced polygamy and divorce on the husband’s demand with automatic custody to fathers, reduced the official female age of marriage from 18 to 13, fired all female judges, and ordered compulsory veiling, whose transgression was to be punished by public flogging, Foucault saw no reason to temper his enthusiasm. What was a small matter like women’s basic rights, when a struggle against “the planetary system” was at hand?

Postcolonialists, then, have their own binary system, somewhat at odds with gender feminism—not to mention with women’s rights. It is not men who are the sinners; it is the West. It is not women who are victimized innocents; it is the people who suffered under Western colonialism, or the descendants of those people, to be more exact. Caught between the rock of patriarchy and the hard place of imperialism, the postcolonial feminist scholar gingerly tiptoes her way around the subject of Islamic fundamentalism and does the only thing she can do: she focuses her ire on Western men.

The most impressive signs of an indigenous female revolt against the fundamentalist order are in Iran. Over the past ten years or so, Iran has seen the publication of a slew of serious journals dedicated to the social and political predicament of Islamic women, the most well known being the Teheran-based Zonan and Zan, published by Faezah Hashemi, a well-known member of parliament and the daughter of former president Rafsanjani. Believing that Western feminism has promoted hostility between the sexes, confused sex roles, and the sexual objectification of women, a number of writers have proposed an Islamic-style feminism that would stress “gender complementarity” rather than equality and that would pay full respect to housewifery and motherhood while also giving women access to education and jobs.

Attacking from the religious front, a number of “Islamic feminists” are challenging the reigning fundamentalist reading of the Qur’an. These scholars insist that the founding principles of Islam, which they believe were long ago corrupted by pre-Islamic Arab, Persian, and North African customs, are if anything more egalitarian than those of Western religions; the Qur’an explicitly describes women as the moral and spiritual equals of men and allows them to inherit and pass down property. The power of misogynistic mullahs has grown in recent decades, feminists continue, because Muslim men have felt threatened by modernity’s challenge to traditional arrangements between the sexes.

What makes Islamic feminism really worth watching is that it has the potential to play a profoundly important role in the future of the Islamic world—and not just because it could improve the lot of women. By insisting that it is true to Islam—in fact, truer than the creed espoused by the entrenched religious elite—Islamic feminism can affirm the dignity of Islam while at the same time bringing it more in line with modernity. In doing this, feminists can help lay the philosophical groundwork for democracy. In the West, feminism lagged behind religious reformation and political democratization by centuries; in the East, feminism could help lead the charge.

At the same time, though, the issue of women’s rights highlights two reasons for caution about the Islamic future. For one thing, no matter how much feminists might wish otherwise, polygamy and male domination of the family are not merely a fact of local traditions; they are written into the Qur’an itself. This in and of itself would not prove to be such an impediment—the Old Testament is filled with laws antithetical to women’s equality—except for the second problem: more than other religions, Islam is unfriendly to the notion of the separation of church and state. If history is any guide, there’s the rub. The ultimate guarantor of the rights of all citizens, whether Islamic or not, can only be a fully secular state.

To this end, the postcolonialist eagerly dips into the inkwell of gender feminism. She ties colonialist exploitation and domination to maleness; she might refer to Israel’s “masculinist military culture”—Israel being white and Western—though she would never dream of pointing out the “masculinist military culture” of the jihadi. And she expends a good deal of energy condemning Western men for wanting to improve the lives of Eastern women. At the turn of the twentieth century Lord Cromer, the British vice consul of Egypt and a pet target of postcolonial feminists, argued that the “degradation” of women under Islam had a harmful effect on society. Rubbish, according to the postcolonialist feminist. His words are simply part of “the Western narrative of the quintessential otherness and inferiority of Islam,” as Harvard professor Leila Ahmed puts it in Women and Gender in Islam. The same goes for American concern about Afghan women; it is merely a “device for ranking the ‘other’ men as inferior or as ‘uncivilized,’ ” according to Nira Yuval-Davis, professor of gender and ethnic studies at the University of Greenwich, England. These are all examples of what renowned Columbia professor Gayatri Spivak called “white men saving brown women from brown men.”

Spivak’s phrase, a great favorite on campus, points to the postcolonial notion that brown men, having been victimized by the West, can never be oppressors in their own right. If they give the appearance of treating women badly, the oppression they have suffered at the hands of Western colonial masters is to blame. In fact, the worse they treat women, the more they are expressing their own justifiable outrage. “When men are traumatized [by colonial rule], they tend to traumatize their own women,” Miriam Cooke, a Duke professor and head of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies, told me. And today, Cooke asserts, brown men are subjected to a new form of imperialism. “Now there is a return of colonialism that we saw in the nineteenth century in the context of globalization,” she says. “What is driving Islamist men is globalization.”

It would be difficult to exaggerate the through-the-looking-glass quality of postcolonialist theory when it comes to the subject of women. Female suicide bombers are a good thing, because they are strong women demonstrating “agency” against colonial powers. Polygamy too must be shown due consideration. “Polygamy can be liberating and empowering,” Cooke answered sunnily when I asked her about it. “Our norm is the Western, heterosexual, single couple. If we can imagine different forms that would allow us to be something other than a heterosexual couple, we might imagine polygamy working,” she explained murkily. Some women, she continued, are relieved when their husbands take a new wife: they won’t have to service him so often. Or they might find they now have the freedom to take a lover. But, I ask, wouldn’t that be dangerous in places where adulteresses can be stoned to death? At any rate, how common is that? “I don’t know,” Cooke answers, “I’m interested in discourse.” The irony couldn’t be darker: the very people protesting the imperialist exploitation of the “Other” endorse that Other’s repressive customs as a means of promoting their own uniquely Western agenda—subverting the heterosexual patriarchy.

The final category in the feminist taxonomy, which might be called the world-government utopian strain, is in many respects closest to classical liberal feminism. Dedicated to full female dignity and equality, it generally eschews both the biological determinism of the gender feminist and the cultural relativism of the multiculti postcolonialist. Stanford political science professor Susan Moller Okin, an influential, subtle, and intelligent spokeswoman for this approach, created a stir among feminists in 1997 when she forthrightly attacked multiculturalists for valuing “group rights for minority cultures” over the well-being of individual women. Okin admirably minced no words attacking arranged marriage, female circumcision, and polygamy, which she believed women experienced as a “barely tolerable institution.” Some women, she went so far as to declare, “might be better off if the culture into which they were born were either to become extinct . . . or preferably, to be encouraged to alter itself so as to reinforce the equality of women.”

But though Okin is less shy than other feminists about discussing the plight of women under Islamic fundamentalism, the typical U.N. utopian has her own reasons for keeping quiet as that plight fills Western headlines. For one thing, the utopian is also a bean-counting absolutist, seeking a pure, numerical equality between men and women in all departments of life. She greets Western, and particularly American, claims to have achieved freedom for women with skepticism. The motto of the 2002 International Women’s Day—“Afghanistan Is Everywhere”—was in part a reproach to the West about its superior airs. Women in Afghanistan might have to wear burqas, but don’t women in the West parade around in bikinis? “It’s equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burqas in order to survive,” columnist Jill Nelson wrote on the MSNBC website about the murderously fanatical riots that attended the Miss World pageant in Nigeria.

As Nelson’s statement hints, the utopian is less interested in freeing women to make their own choices than in engineering and imposing her own elite vision of a perfect society. Indeed, she is under no illusions that, left to their own democratic devices, women would freely choose the utopia she has in mind. She would not be surprised by recent Pakistani elections, where a number of the women who won parliamentary seats were Islamist. But it doesn’t really matter what women want. The universalist has a comprehensive vision of “women’s human rights,” meaning not simply women’s civil and political rights but “economic rights” and “socioeconomic justice.” Cynical about free markets and globalization, the U.N. utopian is also unimpressed by the liberal democratic nation-state “as an emancipatory institution,” in the dismissive words of J. Ann Tickner, director for international studies at the University of Southern California. Such nation-states are “unresponsive to the needs of [their] most vulnerable members” and seeped in “nationalist ideologies” as well as in patriarchal assumptions about autonomy. In fact, like the (usually) unacknowledged socialist that she is, the U.N. utopian eagerly awaits the withering of the nation-state, a political arrangement that she sees as tied to imperialism, war, and masculinity. During war, in particular, nations “depend on ideas about masculinized dignity and feminized sacrifice to sustain the sense of autonomous nationhood,” writes Cynthia Enloe, professor of government at Clark University.

Having rejected the patriarchal liberal nation-state, with all the democratic machinery of self-government that goes along with it, the utopian concludes that there is only one way to achieve her goals: to impose them through international government. Utopian feminists fill the halls of the United Nations, where they examine everything through the lens of the “gender perspective” in study after unreadable study. (My personal favorites: “Gender Perspectives on Landmines” and “Gender Perspectives on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” whose conclusion is that landmines and WMDs are bad for women.)

The 1979 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), perhaps the first and most important document of feminist utopianism, gives the best sense of the sweeping nature of the movement’s ambitions. CEDAW demands many measures that anyone committed to democratic liberal values would applaud, including women’s right to vote and protection against honor killings and forced marriage. Would that the document stopped there. Instead it sets out to impose a utopian order that would erase all distinctions between men and women, a kind of revolution of the sexes from above, requiring nations to “take all appropriate measures to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women” and to eliminate “stereotyped roles” to accomplish this legislative abolition of biology. The document calls for paid maternity leave, nonsexist school curricula, and government-supported child care. The treaty’s 23-member enforcement committee hectors nations that do not adequately grasp that, as Enloe puts it, “the personal is international.” The committee has cited Belarus for celebrating Mother’s Day, China for failing to legalize prostitution, and Libya for not interpreting the Qur’an in accordance with “committee guidelines.”

Confusing “women’s participation” with self-determination, and numerical equivalence with equality, CEDAW utopians try to orchestrate their perfect society through quotas and affirmative-action plans. Their bean-counting mentality cares about whether women participate equally, without asking what it is that they are participating in or whether their participation is anything more than ceremonial. Thus at the recent Women’s Summit in Jordan, Rima Khalaf suggested that governments be required to use quotas in elections “to leapfrog women to power.” Khalaf, like so many illiberal feminist utopians, has no hesitation in forcing society to be free. As is often the case when elites decide they have discovered the route to human perfection, the utopian urge is not simply antidemocratic but verges on the totalitarian.

That this combination of sentimental victimhood, postcolonial relativism, and utopian overreaching has caused feminism to suffer so profound a loss of moral and political imagination that it cannot speak against the brutalization of Islamic women is an incalculable loss to women and to men. The great contribution of Western feminism was to expand the definition of human dignity and freedom. It insisted that all human beings were worthy of liberty. Feminists now have the opportunity to make that claim on behalf of women who in their oppression have not so much as imagined that its promise could include them, too. At its best, feminism has stood for a rich idea of personal choice in shaping a meaningful life, one that respects not only the woman who wants to crash through glass ceilings but also the one who wants to stay home with her children and bake cookies or to wear a veil and fast on Ramadan. Why shouldn’t feminists want to shout out their own profound discovery for the world to hear?

Perhaps, finally, because to do so would be to acknowledge the freedom they themselves enjoy, thanks to Western ideals and institutions. Not only would such an admission force them to give up their own simmering resentments; it would be bad for business.

The truth is that the free institutions—an independent judiciary, a free press, open elections—that protect the rights of women are the same ones that protect the rights of men. The separation of church and state that would allow women to escape the burqa would also free men from having their hands amputated for theft. The education system that would teach girls to read would also empower millions of illiterate boys. The capitalist economies that bring clean water, cheap clothes, and washing machines that change the lives of women are the same ones that lead to healthier, freer men. In other words, to address the problems of Muslim women honestly, feminists would have to recognize that free men and women need the same things—and that those are things that they themselves already have. And recognizing that would mean an end to feminism as we know it.

There are signs that, outside the academy, middlebrow literary circles, and the United Nations, feminism has indeed met its Waterloo. Most Americans seem to realize that September 11 turned self-indulgent sentimental illusions, including those about the sexes, into an unaffordable luxury. Consider, for instance, women’s attitudes toward war, a topic on which politicians have learned to take for granted a gender gap. But according to the Pew Research Center, in January 2002, 57 percent of women versus 46 percent of men cited national security as the country’s top priority. There has been a “seismic gender shift on matters of war,” according to pollster Kellyanne Conway. In 1991, 45 percent of U.S. women supported the use of ground troops in the Gulf War, a substantially smaller number than the 67 percent of men. But as of November, a CNN survey found women were more likely than men to support the use of ground troops against Iraq, 58 percent to 56 percent. The numbers for younger women were especially dramatic. Sixty-five percent of women between 18 and 49 support ground troops, as opposed to 48 percent of women 50 and over. Women are also changing their attitudes toward military spending: before September 11, only 24 percent of women supported increased funds; after the attacks, that number climbed to 47 percent. An evolutionary psychologist might speculate that, if females tend to be less aggressively territorial than males, there’s little to compare to the ferocity of the lioness when she believes her young are threatened.

Even among some who consider themselves feminists, there is some grudging recognition that Western, and specifically American, men are sometimes a force for the good. The Feminist Majority is sending around urgent messages asking for President Bush to increase American security forces in Afghanistan. The influential left-wing British columnist Polly Toynbee, who just 18 months ago coined the phrase “America the Horrible,” went to Afghanistan to figure out whether the war “was worth it.” Her answer was not what she might have expected. Though she found nine out of ten women still wearing burqas, partly out of fear of lingering fundamentalist hostility, she was convinced their lives had greatly improved. Women say they can go out alone now.

As we sink more deeply into what is likely to be a protracted struggle with radical Islam, American feminists have a moral responsibility to give up their resentments and speak up for women who actually need their support. Feminists have the moral authority to say that their call for the rights of women is a universal demand—that the rights of women are the Rights of Man.

my god this dude wrote the world’s worst thesis and sent it to the worst candidate possible (a muslim-born woman from the middle east that regularly talks about the issues feminists apparently never talk about)

[beardedmrbean]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s main opposition leader and former prime minister, Imran Khan, was arrested Tuesday, authorities said, raising the stakes of the country’s political crisis and sparking clashes between his supporters and police.

Footage showed demonstrations across the country. Tear gas and water cannons were reportedly deployed against Khan supporters in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and other cities.

Pakistani authorities said Khan was arrested in a corruption case that has been evolving for months. The former prime minister stands accused of money laundering and faces a number of other charges in separate cases, all of which he has rejected.

Pakistani authorities said they had unsuccessfully sought Khan’s cooperation in the corruption probe. He was subsequently arrested by officers on high court premises in the capital, Islamabad, where he was to attend hearings linked to different cases on Tuesday. Pakistani police battle protesters in attempt to arrest opposition leader

Footage distributed by Khan’s party showed the opposition leader being pushed into a law enforcement vehicle. Officials said the arresting officers — members of a paramilitary force — were operating on a warrant from the country’s anti-corruption watchdog.

They denied accusations from Khan’s allies that the former prime minister was beaten during his arrest. Neither side immediately provided evidence to back its claims.

Members of Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or Movement for Justice, say they suspect political motives behind the arrest. The government has repeatedly sought to delay key regional votes this year after Khan performed above expectations in by-elections last October.

The country’s deteriorating economic situation has become the top concern among many voters, with the current government and Khan trading blame over the root causes of the crisis. Financial experts fear that the country may be on the verge of defaulting on its international loans.

Khan, who was ousted as prime minister in April 2022, was arrested after public disputes with the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the country’s powerful military. Khan recently accused a senior officer of involvement in an assassination attempt against him in November, which he narrowly survived.

Khan has described himself for months as the victim of a plot, starting with what he says was a Western move to oust him last year. There have been several attempts to arrest him since, including one in March that resulted in fierce clashes and left many Pakistanis injured.

As he left his residence in the city of Lahore to attend the scheduled court hearings in Islamabad early Tuesday, Khan released a video message in which he said he is “ready to go to jail,” but added that the accusations against him are unsubstantiated.

Later, in a response to Khan on Twitter, Sharif, the prime minister, accused his predecessor of “blatant lies, untruths, U-turns, and vicious attacks on institutions.” He charged that Khan was bending “the judiciary to your whims and behaving as if rules don’t apply to you.”

[five4life114]

I Am Stronger Than Fear

There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and one is the pen.

-Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai, the remarkable Pakistani Female Educational Rights Activist, has left an ineradicable mark on the world. Honored as the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate at the age of 17, she stands as a beacon of inspiration for the global community. Hailing from Pakistan, she became the first Pashtun and the second Pakistani ever to receive the prestigious Nobel Prize. Her unwavering determination to secure quality education for every child, regardless of their gender, has solidified her legacy as a true advocate for change.

During the Taliban’s brutal takeover of Swat District in Pakistan, an oppressive ban was imposed on girls attending school. Shocked and enraged at this repressive action, Malala seized the opportunity to address the injustice. Unyielding in her conviction, she vehemently questioned the audacity of the Taliban, daring to strip away the fundamental right to education from her and countless others. Within the walls of the prestigious Peshawar Press Club, Malala fearlessly delivered a captivating speech, standing as a beacon of hope and defiance in the face of adversity.

With unwavering courage, she fearlessly voiced her opinions, thereby becoming a target for the extremists. In a fateful turn of events in October 2012, as she journeyed home from an exam, a masked man boarded her bus and asked, “Who is Malala?” Once he located her, she shot her on the left side of her head.

Malala’s attempted assassination sparked a wave of global outrage. As she regained consciousness after ten days in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK, the medical team shared with her the shocking details of the attack, while also informing her that people from every corner of the globe were fervently praying for her swift recovery.

Malala’s journey of triumph over adversity, undergoing numerous surgeries and persevering through a tough recovery, propelled her to the forefront of activism. A driving force for change, she co-founded the esteemed non-profit organization, Malala Fund, alongside Shiza Shahid. The Malala Fund is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting girls’ education and empowering young girls to reach their full potential. Through the fund, she has supported initiatives in Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, and other countries, ensuring that girls have access to quality education.

Malala’s incredible journey continues to inspire countless individuals to stand up for what they believe in, challenge the status quo, and fight for equality and education for all. Her resilience in the face of adversity is a testament to the power of one person to create change, and her unwavering determination serves as a beacon of hope for a better and more inclusive world.

[sesame-sim]

BOOK - Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

QUICK SYNOPSIS - As the book cover says, Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan. Our Elizabeth and Darcy in this book are Alysba Binat and Valentine Darsee.

IMAGE 1+2 - Alys snorkeling in Sulani with her childhood best friend Tana Fyres and the two of them taking photos on the beach. Tana is her classmate from the co-ed international school that Alys and Jena both attend. This was an unforgettable school trip which she will one day look back with longing when her family's financial situation shifts and they move away.

BOOK TIME/PLACE - 1980, The Red Sea

MY SAVE TIME/PLACE - Sim Year 50 / Sim Day 5629 / Summer D2 / MON / Sulani

Popular song from the times, 1979's Good Times by Chic (for Alysba's good times that will be left behind in her childhood. Sad face.)

[iluvmoneyandcats]

TF2x reader xEW

fem reader

tw: gore, thats it babes

<;3 New beginnings  (chapter 1)

Y/n was stabbed, not only was she feeling the unbearable stinging and burning, she was loosing to much blood from the Side of her stomach. she was so dizzy, and cold, numb, she was shocked, and sad she wanted him to be with her but instead she was hurt by him, she was betrayed, leaving a void of nothingness in her heart. 

She was bleeding out in the winter, staining the snow scarlet.

The only thing she could hear was her own shaky and desperate breathing.

She was ready for death to take her, it was just her, in the white snow, bleeding out, as her head starts to hurt more of the dizziness, she was a goner. 

^^^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^

~Y/NS POV.

——————————

“ I just got fired from my job, but why?, I did a good job in everything I am a hared worker, everything I did was on point. And I mean EVERYTHING. 

And it was such good money!” Y/n wined in her head, but at least all of her coworkers got fired as well, then she wouldn’t feel that bad about her self.

“ Look everyone, I know you all loved this job.  but since gray Mann took over, wear all fired” said ms, paulling “ well….I guess this is it,……..goodbye everyone” I seid  holding both of my suite cases in both hands, “ GOODBYE  SOLDIER! IT WAS AN HONNER  FIGHTING COMMIES AND HIPPYS WITH YOU” screamed soldier, I flinched at the sudden scream in my ear. why was he so loud, I never hated It I was just confused, like…..why? 

“ Yeah toots! I’ll miss you, but ya know….you can always come over~” said scout wile winking “Ew heck no” I said was he frowned and a light chuckle was earned  from the French man, “ but scouts right, we’ll miss ya darling” the engineer said “ yeah, I’ll miss you guys” I gave everyone a small smile and left.

 now what will I do? Wear should I live? All these thoughts clouded my mind as I hoped on my suzuki gsx-r 750 pink and black motorcycle,  I put my helmet on and drove, drove thru the sandy dessert, till I reached the airport, I was thinking of moving in with my friend Edd! i never actually met him before, I just met him on social media, and we talked about “ me moving in with Edd” a lot.

I wear pretty excited to go to the UK, i’ve never went to the UK before, sure i’ve been to more impressive places ( no offense to the UK people ) like Japan, turkey, Pakistan. But I guess, I just like traveling. 

I tried to shake the thoughts off as I hoped on my plain and sat in my seat, and slowly I started to drift to sleep.

~timeskip brought to you by your mom~y/npov

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Ma’am pleas wake up, we reached UK, … ma’am wake up” said the flight attendant as she shaked my arm,  I shot up and rubbed my eyes, “ohhh yeah, im sorry “ I quickly shot  up and took my suitcase from the drawer in the ceiling and ran out, but before I go I said sorry to the attendant and left.

~timeskip ~   at the arrival area 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edds pov

========================================================

I was waiting for y/n in the arrival area,  wile holding a bored that written “ y/n welcome to the UK!!” I hope he (Edd thinks y/n is a boy btw ) notice me, even if we never met before I know we will become friends! Oh gosh im soooo excited!!!!

I can’t wait to see him!

Then I  made eye contact with a very beautiful woman, too beautiful, 

she looked at the bored then looked back at me shocked…….wait…..is he… A SHE?!?!?!?

Wile I was being shocked she came to me and asked “ hey! Are you Edd?” With a small smile. My mouth was a gape, but I managed to shut it “ yes I am ! “ I said excited “ so you must be y/n?” I asked “ yes “ she said with excited smile.  

She was sooooooooooo beautiful!!!! I have never saw someone this amazing since..since dudette! I felt my face warm up at the thought of living with her.

But, Honestly I thought she was going to be a man……but I guess she was very girly, and now that I come to think about it I started think of how dumb I am.  

We started talking about how excited we are about living together and left the airport, going to the parking lot to the car, we kept talking.

But  not only was she pretty she had a GOOD PERSONALITY!!!! 

Y/ns pov

========================================================

Gosh I never was told how cute he was… like heck he’s…..-id…..id smash….

Gosh ew! What am I thinking?? He probably dose`int even like me like that !shut up y/n! 

I  couldn’t take the bubbling feeling out of my stomach  wean I talked with him, we both talked about things we like and the house and other things, and he was super chill, and I found out he has a cat….A CAT *sigh* I think I like him more, I wasn’t planing on falling in love with a 23 year-old that is good at drawing and loves his cat….but I guess I did! 

But he was so innocent if anything happened to him id flip, for sure.

We talked all the way to the house and, I just noticed how tired I am. 

“ hey Edd, im so tired so I’ll rest a bit and then come down, okey?”

Edd noded in response with a light hum, and opened  the door. 

“HEY EVERYONE, Y/NS HEAR BUT SHES TIERD SO SHE`L  REST FIRST”

Wow, is  screaming something I have to live with again?? 

“Wait, how many people are living here ? “ Edd talked about  having roommates but he never said how meany roommates he had.

“Oh, 3 people including myself, but because of you now 4

” he said with that sweet smile that killed me every time.

 “ so ill get you to your room? And you can unpack and get some rest, I already put furniture in so make your self comfortable, and wean your ready come down anytime” he said as he guided me to a room in a hallway of other rooms, im guessing the other 3 rooms are the other roomies rooms.   ( y/n dose not know that the other roomies are men )

“ Well come down anytime, bye!”said Edd as he left. I went to my room and shut the door and put my clothes in the drawer and changed my clothes and went to sleep.

an: yoooo this is my first fanfic so pls enjoy! from now it will just be EW but later on in the fic tf2 will come in and itll all make sense.

btw love you~

[xtruss]

“Pakistan’s Corrupt to their Cores Army Generals, Politicians, Election Commission and Judges” Can Keep Imran Khan Out of Power, but It Can’t Keep His Popularity Down

— By Charlie Campbell | January 17, 2024 | Time Magazine

Supporters of PTI, the Most Popular Political Party of Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, rally against the national election commission’s decision to ban the party’s cricket bat symbol, in Karachi on Jan. 14, 2024. Fareed Khan—AP

It’s not been a great couple of years for Pakistan’s Imran Khan. Since his ouster as Prime Minister in an April 2022 no-confidence vote, the cricketer-turned-politician has been shot, hit with over 180 charges ranging from rioting to terrorism, and jailed in a fetid nine-by-11-foot cell following an Aug. 5 corruption conviction for allegedly selling state gifts. As Pakistan approaches fresh elections on Feb. 8, the 71-year-old’s chances of a comeback appear gossamer thin, despite retaining broad public support.

Pakistan’s military kingmakers are using every trick at their disposal to sideline the nation’s most popular politician and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party. Over recent months, thousands of PTI workers have been arrested, dozens of party leaders resigned following lengthy interrogations, Khan’s name was banned from mainstream media, and constituency boundary lines were redrawn to allegedly benefit his opponents. Khan’s own nomination papers have also been rejected.

“Elections are being held but I’ve got serious doubts whether real democracy or democratic principles are being followed,” says Samina Yasmeen, director of the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia.

And now Khan won’t even have his cricket bat.

On Monday, Khan’s PTI party was banned from using its iconic cricket bat logo on ballot papers, significantly hampering its chances amongst an electorate which is up to 40% illiterate. Most crucially, it effectively bans the PTI as a party and means its candidates will likely have to stand as independents, who will reportedly use a range of symbols ranging from a rollercoaster to a goat. “The election symbol is an integral component of fair elections,” Raoof Hasan, PTI’s principal spokesman and a former special assistant to Khan, tells TIME. “It’s rendering the party toothless.”

Pakistani lawmakers are constitutionally obliged to vote along party lines for certain key matters, including the leader of the house and financial legislation. But if PTI-backed candidates are officially independents, they are under no such constraints, making it much easier for the opposition to cobble together a coalition by targeting individuals with inducements. Additionally, PTI will be ineligible to receive its rightful proportion of the 200-odd parliamentary “reserved seats” for women and minorities that are allocated according to a party’s proportion of the overall vote, which would instead be divvied out to the other registered parties.

Imran Khan Waves a Cricket Bat, the Election Symbol of His Pakistan’s Most Popular PTI Party, during a rally in Faisalabad on May 5, 2013. Daniel Berehulak—Getty Images

Then again, even registering as independents has not been easy for the PTI. Each candidate must file their nomination in the constituency where they intend to stand, but PTI’s candidates frequently find their nomination papers snatched from their hands by shadowy security personnel. To avoid this, the PTI has taken to dispatching several candidates with nomination papers in the hope that one might break through the security cordon.

But even if one does manage to submit papers, each candidate requires a proposer and seconder to attend the nomination in person. On many occasions, a PTI candidate has presented his papers only to find either or both has abruptly been “kidnapped,” says Hasan, meaning that an alleged 90% of its candidates’ nomination papers have been rejected. “This is massive pre-poll rigging.”

The hurdles facing Khan and PTI stand in stark contrast to the lot dealt to Nawaz Sharif, three-time former Prime Minister, who was most recently ousted for corruption in 2017 and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In 2018, Sharif traveled to London on bail for medical treatment but absconded and remained a fugitive in exile. But on Oct. 21, an apparently healthy Sharif returned to Pakistan, where his corruption conviction was swiftly quashed and last week his lifetime ban from politics also overturned. On Monday, Sharif, 74, launched his campaign to return as Prime Minister for a fourth time—much to the chagrin of disenfranchised PTI supporters.

“The temperature is going to rise in the next few weeks when candidates step out to do rallies,” Khan’s sister, Aleema, tells TIME. “There’s going to be anger on the streets.”

It’s no secret that Pakistan’s military kingmakers have thrown their support behind Sharif, which ultimately means he’s a shoo-in to return to power. But Khan’s enduring popularity means more heavy-handed tactics will be required. Despite all PTI’s headwinds, and extremely patchy governance record while in power, a Gallup opinion poll from December shows the imprisoned Khan’s approval ratings stand at 57%, compared to 52% for Sharif. PTI remains confident that they will win if allowed to compete in a fair fight.

“People, especially at the grassroot level, are very pro-Imran Khan,” says Yasmeen. “Even if he tells them to vote for a piece of furniture, it will be elected.”

Corrupt to His Core, Thief, Looter, Traitor, Money Launderer, Morally Bankrupted Boak Bollocks and Pakistan Army’s Production Pakistan's Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif addresses his supporters in Lahore on Oct. 21, 2023. Aamir Qureshi—AFP/Getty Images

A big question is why the international community has been so muted in the face of such brazen irregularities—especially the U.S., which under the Joe Biden administration claims to have made democracy promotion a key foreign policy priority. The stakes are high; nuclear-armed Pakistan is drowning in $140 billion of external debt, while ordinary people are battling with Asia’s highest inflation, with food prices rising 38.5% year-on-year.

The truth is that Khan has few friends in the West after prioritizing relations with Russia and China. “From a Washington perspective, anyone would be better than Khan,” says Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

Sharif, by contrast, is perceived as business-friendly and pro-America. Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington’s foreign policy priorities have shifted to China, Ukraine, and now Gaza. Yet the importance of a trusted partner in Islamabad was made plain this week following an Iranian airstrike on alleged Sunni militants in Pakistan territory that killed at least two children and threatens a further escalation of the violence already roiling the Middle East.

American priorities in Pakistan are keeping a lid on terrorism and stabilizing relations with arch-nemesis India—and Sharif has a better record on both. However, these priorities aren’t necessarily shared by Pakistan’s military overlords, who may be backing Sharif today but have engineered his ouster thrice in the past—once via a coup d’état. There remains “a lot of bad blood between Nawaz and the military,” says Kugelman, “even if he were to become the next Prime Minister, civil-military relations could take the same turn for the worse.”

After all, no Pakistan Prime Minister has ever completed a full term—and if Sharif gets back in, few would bet on him becoming the first at the fourth time of asking. It may be part of the reason why Khan has adopted a stoic disposition despite the deprivations of his prison cell. “He is cold in jail but quite happy,” says Aleema Khan. “He’s read so many books, maybe two to three every day, and he’s very content to have this retreat time—spiritually, mentally, and physically, he says he feels better.”

Perhaps content in the knowledge that, while February’s election may be beyond hope, in Pakistan you may be down, but you’re never truly out. And that’s all the more reason to keep fighting. “We shall be in the election,” says Hasan. “We’re not going to back off, we’re not going to walk away, we’re not going to forfeit even a single seat throughout the country.”

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

2022 - Afghanistan ... while the world looks away.

          The Taliban in Afghanistan has further clamped down on human rights in the country. In the latest blow, the Taliban's supreme leader has ordered judges to fully enforce Sharia or Islamic Law. It is an edict that could see the return of public floggings, executions and stonings for certain crimes. Women especially could be at the receiving end of many of these punishments. During their previous rule in the mid-nineties, the Taliban routinely stoned women for the crime of adultery. Last week, the group banned women from entering parks, gyms and public baths. The ban adds to a slew of curtailments to freedom Afghan women already face, as the Taliban ratchets up restrictions on public life after its return to power in August 2021. Since the chaotic withdrawal of NATO forces paved the way for the Taliban's comeback last year, Afghanistan's new hardline rulers have deprived girls of getting a secondary education. The group made its U-turn on indications it would open all girls' high schools in March. Taliban authorities have also suppressed activists who have protested for women's rights to education, work and freedom, and there has been an increase in murders of women that go unpunished. The group has also told women they should not leave the home without a male relative and must cover their faces.

          Ever since the Taliban came to power, the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan have continuously shrinked. The chance that most teenage girls will be able to return to school is dwindling by the day. Under increasing economic pressure, some parents have had to marry off their daughters - often to men much older than their age.

          At the onset of the second winter under Taliban rule, Afghan families face a grim choice between warming their homes or eating. But many can't afford either, as an increase in malnutrition and pneumonia cases among children indicates.

          Afghanistan's Taliban rulers won't allow women to join their cabinet, but they have no qualms meeting a woman cabinet minister from another Islamic country. Pakistan's deputy foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar was in Kabul earlier in the week to meet her opposite number in the Taliban. The Taliban happy to greet her at the airport and then sit across the table from her. An Afghan woman doing the same would be unthinkable. Among other things, Taliban rule has seen most Afghan women prevented from going back to their jobs and girls prevented from returning to secondary school. Women human rights activists have been arrested and tortured. Parwana Nijrabi spent 24 days in jail after being arrested for participating in a women's rights protest in Kabul in mid-January this year. She's now in Germany as a refugee and spoke to DW News about her experience in prison.

          Three major aid groups have suspended their operations in Afghanistan, saying they can't work without their female staff. This follows an order by the country's Taliban government telling all humanitarian organizations to stop employing women. The ban comes just days after the group barred women from attending universities.

[gumnut-logic]

It hurt.

“So, Mr Tracy, on a scale of one to ten how would you rate the pain you are in if ten is the worst pain you’ve ever felt?”

The worst pain? Hmm. He turned to Scott who was staring at him with worried eyes. “Well, it’s bad, but it certainly doesn’t rate up with the worst. Not like the time I broke my leg and you had to reset it halfway up K2.”

“God, I hope not. You screamed enough to cause an avalanche two mountains over.”

“Well, you held my leg wrong. I told you that.”

“Yeah, I’ll try to do better next time.”

Virgil just glared at him, not game to say there wouldn’t be a next time.

The doctor standing next to his bed was being extremely patient. “Let’s mark that at ten and work backwards.”

“Okay.”

Virgil focussed on his stomach and tried not to groan aloud.

“It’s not as bad as the elevator that fell on me. That ached for ages. This is different.”

Scott straightened. “What elevator?”

Oh shit. “Um, nothing to worry about.”

“What elevator?” Blue eyes glared at him.

“The hammer. It is kind of like the time Gordon hit my hand with a hammer.” God, that had hurt. For a bit there he had thought his brother had broken half the bones in his hand and his piano playing days were over. On second thoughts. “No, that was at least a five. This isn’t quite up there.”

Scott’s eyes were promising pertinent questions later. “Then what about the bruising you got from catching that ballooning guy and falling twenty metres into your ‘bird?”

“Nah, are you kidding me? I walked that off within a few minutes. Barely a one.”

“Then what about the concrete that fell on your leg and arm on that last mission with Cass?”

Virgil frowned. “You know about that?”

“Of course, I know about that, you were limping for a week afterwards.” Scott’s lips quirked a little. “And besides I know a little ‘bird in orbit who tells me all sorts of things.”

Virgil grunted and was loudly reminded of why he was in the hospital in the first place. Ow. “No, that was nothing. This is something.”

“Then what about the building that fell on you in Pakistan? You had a concrete beam land on your belly. How does that compare?”

Virgil frowned. “Hmm, close, could be a four. Though now I’m thinking of that time we had to rescue those kids from that massive rollercoaster in Moscow. You know, when my safety line slipped and I dislocated my shoulder.” He frowned. “Though come to think of it, when you put it back in was pretty close to the broken leg incident. You know how to cause pain.”

“Hey, you were the one who demanded I do it. You watch too many action movies.”

“I watch too many action movies?! The only action movies I see are the ones I watch with you.”

“You said you enjoyed them.”

“I enjoy them because I’m watching them with you. Why else would I watch them?”

“Because they are fun?”

Another grunt, another wince. “Okay, okay, I’m going to go with a five now. This is definitely heading into hammer hitting the hand territory.” He looked up at the young female doctor who was attending them in Auckland Hospital’s emergency department. She was staring at both of them a little warily. “Doc?”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “So the pain in your stomach is equal to that of getting your hand hit with a hammer.”

“Yeah, and it is slowly getting worse-“

“Virgil?” A familiar voice interrupted him and he turned to catch sight of an equally familiar face. Uh, oh.

“Jimmy? Uh, hi.”

The older doctor straightened his stethoscope and frowned. “What are you doing here…?” His eyes landed on Virgil’s arm clutching his stomach. “Oh, you didn’t.”

“I had to.” So he was defensive, big deal.

Jimmy turned to the young woman attending them. “Josephine, I’ll take the Tracys on my slate, if it is okay with you. I know exactly what is wrong with this one. Any of the other brothers reporting symptoms?”

Scott answered. “No, none of us were that stupid.” Blue eyes were again glaring at Virgil.

“If I may so ask, what is the diagnosis, Doctor Keene?” The young doctor was looking at him strangely.

Jimmy sighed and Virgil blushed.

“Mr Tracy here, loves his grandmother so much, he is willing to put his life on the line for her. Despite having been warned multiple times before.”

“She does her best.” Virgil had to defend Grandma.

“Virgil, her chilli is listed by the Poisons Information Bureau. You shouldn’t eat it. Kill a pot plant or two like your brothers.”

“I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

“Well, you’ve likely hurt your stomach lining instead.” Jimmy turned to grab a nurse. “See to it that Mr Tracy receives a full digestive tract examination and if necessary, schedule a flush.”

Virgil’s eyes widened. “Um…”

Jimmy arched an eyebrow. “You were warned last time.”

Virgil groaned and sank into the bed.

His brother’s hand landed on his arm and squeezed gently.

“This sucks.” Virgil shifted and his stomach yelled at him. “I’m upping this to a six. Suspension bridge cable across the back.”

“Ow.” Scott winced.

“I was wearing the exo-suit, don’t worry.” Virgil stared down at his hands. “Busted it though.”

Quiet. “Maybe we should give it its own number. Say six point five. Right between suspension bridge cable and that acid that ate our uniforms that time. I still have scars from that.”

Virgil frowned. “Actually yeah, that sounds about right. Six point five.”

“And don’t eat Grandma’s chilli again.”

“Okay. I’ve learned my lesson, I think.” Another groan and he clutched his stomach.

“Hey, doc.” He waved his hand in the direction of both the doctors having an earnest discussion, no doubt at his expense. “Definitely a six point five.”

“Grandma’s chilli is six point five.”

-o-o-o-

[5sosfanfictioncatalogue]

Arranged Marriage Masterlist

Angel of the Morning (ao3) - boomercal Luke/Calum G, 900 

Summary: Calum has a wife to meet and he and Luke have an affair to end. 

Convivencia (ao3) - antisocialhood Luke/Asthon M, 4k

Summary: Everyone knows Kingston University is expensive, but Ashton has a plan. There's a rule, a clause, that gives a married couple attending the university a break, just over $50,000, and allows them to live off campus.

Ashton has his eyes set on attending Kingston, and he's willing to cross whatever lines he must to pay his way through. Even if that means marrying a complete stranger and trying not to fall in love.

Enter a freshly graduated boy named Luke that has an unhealthy coffee fixation and his own eyes set on Kingston

~

Or, Ashton and Luke find themselves twisted up in a fake marriage for a cheaper college tuition, and somehow, feelings come about.

Crowns and Riches. (ao3) - snickerz Luke/Ashton G, 9k

Summary:  Prince Luke meets Stable Boy Ashton, his mother informs him that he is betrowthed to be married, he agrees at first but starts to develop an untold amount of feelings for the boy which are later returned, he is faced with the dilemma of what he is expected to do vs what his heart and soul is telling him to do.

Everybody Wants To Rule The World (ao3) - TheRadioactiveWizard Michael/Luke, Luke/Ashton, Calum/Ashton N/R, 9k

Summary: "Since Lucas, King of Scotland, was a child the English have wanted his country and his crown. He is sent to France to wed its next king, to save himself and his people - a bond that should protect him, but there are forces that conspire, forces of darkness, forces of the heart. Long may he reign." 

or King Lucas of Scotland and Prince Michael The II of France are in an arranged marriage and eventually fall in love.

I need you to stay (ao3) - CutesyMe Michael/Calum, Luke/Ashton N/R, 10k

Summary: Apparently his parents have found a ‘perfect’ boy for him now, and apparently they expected him to woo this boy, win his heart over and marry him. Whether he liked him or not. How was that possible? It was the fucking 21st century and he was living in a country where he had rights. How can his parents arrange a marriage for him? This wasn’t Pakistan or India. He couldn’t believe that was happening, especially right after he met that cute red haired guy, and had lost him instantly but that wasn’t the point.

Oh, We Could Be Falling In Love (ao3) - malumqt (bunwuji) Michael/Calum, Luke/Ashton N/R, 9k

Summary: Michael Clifford is only prince of Australia. Calum Hood is the prince of New Zealand. Both are enemy countries and decided to have an arranged marriage to have peace. Michael doesn't want an arranged marriage. He's determined to hate the unfairly adorable New Zealand prince.

Once Upon a Dream (ao3) clamu_hnod  Luke/Ashton, Michael/Calum N/R, 9k

Summary: Prince Ashton is promised the hand of the next born Hemming’s child as a result of an agreement made between their fathers. When a tall woman in a dark cape arrives, chaos ensues and plans run a muck.

Princes Among Peasents (ao3) - magicalmadhatter Michael/Luke, Luke/Calum, Calum/Ashton N/R, 4k

Summary: Five years ago Michael escaped his kingdom in the cover of darkness with his friend and advisor Ashton. The pair of them have made a life for themselves in the lower city of the castle in the neighboring kingdom. But what if the past they thought they left behind wasn't so far behind them? Especially after they are uprooted from the life they have made and thrown into the hustle and bustle of what their past life was.

To Our Happiness (ao3) - heavenlytouch Ashton/Calum, Michael/Calum, Ashton/Luke G, 1k

Summary: Calum just know that his parents already planned this wedding before his was born.

under the blanket (ao3) - homoxavier Luke/Ashton T, 2k

Summary: They said it would be better to be married young; you would die longer. At age 21, Ashton had had made his decision. 

"I knew you were the one the moment I looked into your eyes. I made you cry bloody murder." "Oh, you sap."

[slashcrz]

☼☾ ( sibylla deen , 38 , she / her , cis woman , singh 2 ) - have you seen HASPIRA KAUR SINGH?  we’ve heard through the grapevine that they’re INFLUENTIAL but also SECRETIVE. when you think of them , you think of BAREFEET RACING ALONG HOT SAND, LOST LOVE CAPTURED IN PRESSED FLOWERS & UNSIGNED LOVE LETTERS, A CROWN THAT STILL FEELS NEW.

name; princess haspira kaur singh of the sikh empire in pakistan.

nicknames; n / a.

birth date; november 30th, 1761, a sagittarius.

orientation; demisexual && heteroromantic.

relationship; single, officially mingling.

politics; as a new power, established less than a year ago && already facing many foes, she is all about networking && finding a strong alliance to solidify with her hand in marriage to further ensure the sikh empire's reign. is happy to adopt whatever opinion of the bourbons best benefits her nation.

religion; sikh.

languages; tba.

HEADCANONS && BACKSTORY.

tw: parental death.

she was born just one half of a whole && wailing with the fight of a hundred armies. the cries did not waver until nearly 30 minutes later when her hand happened to fall into her brother, and she was instantly calm.

the attending midwife was left unsure of what to do with them, for their mother had passed during the delivery, and their father was absent - out at war, as he often was, not due for a return until months later. they bounced between assumed relatives && distant friends, until my some stroke of luck finding their way back to their father some years later.

they were left little to want for, their father amassing immense wealth in his military endeavors, rarely at home but bringing back riches && luxuries. the band of militia that followed their father was loyal, and their wives && sisters became aunties to the twins, but it was mostly haspira who stepped up into the maternal role for her brother && father to rely on. she was quick to pick up the habits of a home, older than her age by years early on.

word of their father's heroics in battle spread, as did word of her brother's as he, too, earned a name for himself in the line of duty. her contribution was just as grand - their home became a waypoint for important officials conducting business between the powerhouse nations that sandwiched their little region of low authority. ambassadors && dukes && sultans && more would pass through their lavish halls, remodeling conducted every time her father stopped back by home. at the center of it all was haspira, the perfect hostess, as the word of her hearth && home spread far.

unfortunately, her charm in the role of host went a little too far with one visitor, and haspira came to know intimately the feeling of longing. her heart would belong to him for some time, and the proof of their secret romance ( for who was she, really, in the eyes of a royal? ) was bore in the child she claims to have adopted from orphanhood. a daughter to the unwed new princess she claims is not her own, and a father who never knew.

of course, their little slice of heaven was not untouchable, and as the war-torn lands around them started to close in && the fight for sovereignty over their desserts escalated. it was a grueling few years as a fight for independence waged, and only just less than a year ago was victory accomplished && her family the obvious chosen disciples meant to govern the land. the people already respected both haspira && her twin, older by only mere minutes, and now well decorated in battle. they had never had a title before, but it felt right now, assuming the throne. haspira now works just as tirelessly as the homeowner she grew her fame in being to be an essential asset to the blooming kingdom she && her brother are building. for her, part of that begins with a solid marriage alliance with another large power, if she can keep her secrets under lock && key.