#South and Central Asia

[kritispointofview]

Can't tell if i want to BE HER or BE WITH HER

The her in question:

[sataniccapitalist]

Why does God kick people when they’re already down?

[meandmybigmouth]

ISLAM, CHRISTIANITY ONE IN THE SAME IN THE TORTURE, ABUSE AND ENSLAVEMENT OF WOMEN!

[bellamonde]

Iran is not the only country that carries out executions and public lashing. Taliban has carried out the first public execution. The execution was carried out by an assault rifle by the victim’s father. 

Irrespective of the guilt of the accused, death penalty should be banned. The main issue with death penalty is the miscarriage of justice. The death penalty is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on their position/connections, how much money they have, etc. For example, in Iran, Mohsen Shekari was executed for blocking a road whereas the man responsible for murdered Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian journalist, got 2 years in jail. Death penalty should be banned. Innocent people are too often sentenced to death. Justice becomes meaningless if the innocent are punished and murdered. 

27 people were publicly lashed in Afghanistan on Thursday (Dec 8) for alleged adultery, theft, drug offenses, and other crimes, according to a court official.

Please share this story. Take a few minutes out of your day to show support for people of Afghanistan and with one voice, say no to executions. The people who are hurt the most by such draconian laws are often the innocent and the powerless.

[sillyguy-supreme]

white americans when you tell them that the idea of climate change as an impending disaster is a reductive first world perspective because it’s a tangible reality for many in the global south already:

[emergencymanagementnews]

Dozens missing after days of heavy rain wash away vehicles and destroy buildings in Himalayan region

[faultfalha]

The Serious Fraud Office has dropped its 10-year corruption inquiry into Kazakh miner ENRC, according to sources close to the investigation. The decision is a major blow to the credibility of the SFO, which has been accused of dragging its feet in the case. ENRC has always denied any wrongdoing. The decision to drop the inquiry comes as a surprise, given that the SFO has been investigating ENRC since 2007. The case has been dogged by allegations of corruption and bribery, with the company accused of paying millions of pounds in bribes to government officials in Kazakhstan and Africa. ENRC has always denied any wrongdoing. The decision to drop the inquiry is likely to provoke criticism from transparency campaigners, who have long accused the SFO of being too close to big business. ENRC has always denied any wrongdoing.

[biglisbonnews]

When the music stops: how the Taliban’s fear of art is killing Afghan culture Musicians and artists are living in a state of terror. Can the country’s identity as a ‘crossroads of cultures’ survive a policy of strict repression?When the Taliban moved closer to Kabul in the early days of August 2021, a series of unusual advertisements flooded the shopping pages on Afghan social media. Musicians were putting their instruments and equipment – the tools of their trade – up for sale.Many were being offered for a fraction of what they were worth. Yet, even in a country with an immense love for music, there were few buyers. “I knew from past experience what they would do with people like us [musicians], and our instruments. They have a dislike for our art and culture,” a 49-year-old singer from the north of Afghanistan who wished only to be identified as Farhan, told the Guardian. Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/aug/15/when-the-music-stops-how-the-talibans-fear-of-art-is-killing-afghan-culture

[isayeed-blog]

A doubting Thomas might be pardoned querying the dramatic ballyhooing of Bangladesh in the Western media: the Guardian’s recent article labelled the country “an economic miracle” undergone “in recent years” - a period coinciding with the “rise and rise” of the anti-Islamic Hasina regime since 2009.

More sober sources, such as the World Bank, display continuity rather than inspiration: “The emergence of an export-oriented garment in Bangladesh - one of the world’s poorest countries with a GNP per capita of only $170 and with 57 percent of its population in poverty - was a great success in the early 1980s.” The country profile shows a secular doubling of income per head  every ten years from 1990 to 2021 - hardly a wunder geschichte. Life expectancy, fertility rate, infant life expectancy all show a similar upward trend over the time period.

Interestingly, the Guardian article focuses exclusively on women in the textile business - completely ignoring the number of migrants to the Middle East and elsewhere, who are mostly male. According to The Economist (“Migration in the Gulf”), a migrant to the Middle East earns 250-350% more than one who stays home. Research shows that  “by letting in so many migrants the GCC countries do more (per head) to reduce global income inequality than richer OECD countries, which send loads of aid but keep their borders relatively closed. Were the OECD countries to open their borders to the same extent as Kuwait, which has two migrants for every native, global inequality could be cut by a quarter.”

Approximately 7.5 million Bangladeshis were migrants in 2010, with 90% working in the Middle East and Malaysia. Between 1976 and 2018, a total of roughly 12 million workers migrated from Bangladesh, starting from a paltry 6,078. The figure compares dramatically with the number of women (4.5 million) employed by the garment sector. According to the World Bank, a 10% increase in the share of international migrants in a country’s population leads to a 2.1% decline in the share of people living on less than $1 per person per day (the poverty level in 2005). 

Since migrants are, by definition, invisible, they do not show up in Western reports on Bangladesh, such as the Guardian fable. Being mostly men, in addition, disqualifies them for attention. Further, journeying to the pogonocratic Middle East from the local pogonocracy is not regarded as a career move by the Western media. The Middle East is where mad mullahs, mediaeval sheikhs and murderous terrorists associate in well-reported disharmony.)  

[mondaymustread]

In November 2021, Munshi teamed up with Sherwin Everett, a vet and curator at an avian hospital in Ahmedabad, to launch the Feather Library website recording the details and images of bird feathers. The hospital treats about 2,000 birds a month. Many have been injured in road accidents and collisions, or during kite festivals, when they get caught in the kite strings. While many recover, some die of their injuries.

“Most rescue centres throw away the dead birds or burn them, and a lot of valuable data is lost,” Munshi says. “By collecting these feathers and documenting them digitally, we have a non-invasive way of getting valuable data. Our vision behind creating the feather library was to display the individual feathers of bird species and their markings, patterns, etc so that in the eventuality of their extinction there is a record for future generations.”

FeatherLibrary.com is the first online collection of its kind in India. It includes details such as the bird’s weight, body length, beak width, wingspan and number of feathers, as well as where the bird was found.

[nedsecondline]

Indian police are investigating the sudden deaths at a luxury hotel of a wealthy Russian politician who reportedly criticised the Ukraine war, and his travelling companion. The body of Pavel Antov, 65, was found on Saturday in a pool of blood outside his lodgings in eastern Odisha state, where he was on holiday with three other Russian nationals. His death came two days after another member of the travel party, Vladimir Bidenov, was found unconscious after an apparent heart attack at the same hotel and could not be revived.

[incognitopolls]

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