Posts matching tags 'pakistan'
2006/3/13
In Pakistan, kite flying is an extreme sport, in which people get killed:
But adults and children love to indulge in kite duels, and that is where the danger lies. For duels, the kites are flown on a thin wire or on a thick string coated with glass or chemicals, to better attack opponent's kites. Stray kites can and do drag their strings unpredictably, tangling around a human neck or limb and cutting it.
The furor over kite flying gained momentum last month when a 3-year-old girl was killed by a kite string. On Feb. 19, she was riding in front on a motorbike with her father, mother and two sisters. The bike sped into the path of a coarsened kite string, which must have dipped low with the winds.
For opponents, the wisdom is unquestionable. "People are dying and we are celebrating!" said Khawaja Izhar, 75, the chairman of Anti-Kite Flying Democratic Front.
2002/12/8
The most popular toy in Pakistan these days: the Osama Bin Laden action figure, which comes with military jeep and bodyguards.
"As you know, Osama is very popular in the whole world," said Imran, a young boy eyeing up the goods on offer at a Karachi toy store. "The same thing is happening in Pakistan.
Bin Laden, it seems, has become a sort of Islamic Che Guevara in that part of the world. I wonder how long until overpriced OBL-themed fashion accessories (sewn by child labour in the third world) show up in the ritzy boutiques of the West.
2002/7/4
When a boy in rural Pakistan was seen walking with a girl of a higher social status, violating age-old conventions, the tribal council decided to punish him and his family by ordering the gang-rape of his sister.
This is the sort of thing that argues that, not only is the belief in the superiority of Western liberal-humanist values consistent with progressive thought (rather than the shameful manifestation of racism that many naïve ivory-tower leftists would say it is), it is perhaps an essential part of it. Human progress won't come from respecting barbaric ideas of "family honour" as equally valid, in the name of diversity and cultural relativism. (via Reenhead)