#Turkey #Erdogan #DomesticViolence Turkey pulls out of treaty criminalizing violence against women

#COVID19 #coronavirus UK police scuffle with anti-lockdown protesters as thousands march in Germany, Austria

Video - The White House - President Joe Biden - A Weekly Conversation: On the Line With Jocelyn

Exasperated Don Lemon Has A Damning Question For Republicans

By Lee Moran

The GOP and its base “are still under the spell of a disgraced, twice-impeached, one-term president,” lamented the CNN anchor.

Don Lemon on Friday demanded to know, “What is wrong with the right?”

The “CNN Tonight” anchor questioned why Republicans would spend their week railing against so-called “cancel culture” as the country reeled from the “brutal” killing of eight people at massage parlors in the Atlanta area. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent.

Lemon also hammered the 14 House Republicans who this week voted against a measure condemning the military coup in Myanmar, highlighting that the Burmese army alleged mass voter fraud — a claim not unlike former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The GOP and its base “are still under the spell of a disgraced, twice-impeached, one-term president,” suggested Lemon. “This is about truth, or maybe I should say this is about a lie. Because if people were acting on the truth, then there would be no need for an insurrection.”

“While America is reckoning with the hate that he left us with, that is what is going on,” he said.

Opinion: What the 2020s Need: Sex and Romance at the Movies

 By Ross Douthat

We’ll know we’re actually escaping stagnation when the cinema of desire returns.

A slight giddiness is overtaking prognosticators as the pandemic nears its end. Economics writers, normally a cautious bunch, are speculating about how a Biden boom might really be different — bigger, longer, its fruits more widely shared — than the limping recoveries we’ve seen recently. Tech and science watchers are talking about the 2020s as an age of breakthroughs, a long-awaited acceleration.

But what about culture? If stagnation in the economy has been matched by sterility in social and artistic pursuits (it has), what would signify cultural acceleration or escape?

Here’s one possibility: We’ll know we’re actually entering a new era when sex and romance make a comeback at the movies.

Note that I said sex and romance. Traditionally these were somewhat separable movie-industry commodities. Eras famous for turbulence and libertinism (Hollywood before the Hays Code, the post-sexual revolution 1970s and 1980s) were more likely to sell sex, while in eras of conservatism or restoration the romantic comedy and the marriage plot prevailed. The two peaks of the “rom-com” were the 1940s and the 1950s and then the 1990s and early 2000s, when even sex comedies passed from being proudly depraved to (in the Judd Apatow era) almost wholesome.

But in the last 15 years the “sex movie” and the romantic comedy have both declined or disappeared. This means that if you’re a proud anti-puritan who misses nudity or “adult themes” in your movies or an old-fashioned filmgoer who swoons for true love triumphing over all impediments, you can reasonably complain that Hollywood isn’t telling your kind of stories anymore. In the modern blockbuster, as the film writer R.S. Benedict put it recently: “Everyone is beautiful. And yet, no one is horny.” Movie stars have never been so ripped and chiseled and godlike; they have to be, if they aspire to play a Marvel or DC superhero. But unlike the old Olympians, these gods rarely seem to have the hots for one another, and their movies mostly exist within the parameters of early adolescence, with little adult smoldering permitted. (Adam Driver did his best to break this mold in the recent “Star Wars” movies, but in vain.)

It isn’t just the adult rom-com that’s waned. Watching “Raya and the Last Dragon” with my kids last week, I realized that it was the fourth animated Disney movie in a row — following “Onward,” “Frozen II” and “Moana” — without a central love story. (“Frozen II” technically has a marriage-proposal story carried over from its predecessor, but it’s completely vestigial.)

A lot of different forces have marginalized movie sex and romance. The blockbuster industry has been bad for all kinds of adult movies, because it’s assumed that superhero fight scenes travel better internationally than more complex and culturally specific plots. Some of the audience for sexually themed stories — the people who used to line up for “Basic Instinct” or, more pretentiously, for sexy art-house fare — has migrated to cable and streaming services; some of that appetite has been sated and deadened by online porn.

The decline of the love story has led to a few creative innovations. Hits like the original “Frozen” and HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” for instance, successfully centered female relationships in narratives — the fairy tale, the soap opera — that traditionally foreground romance or sex instead.

Still, in general there’s a cultural void where romance used to be. And it doesn’t seem coincidental that this void opened at a time when the sexes are struggling to pair off — with fewer marriages, fewer relationships, less sex.

Courtship structures, formal in the old days and casual in the 1990s, were always useful to the romantic comedy. But lately even the casual structures have collapsed, with a Darwinian ecosystem of online dating (much less charming in reality than on “You’ve Got Mail”) supplanting older, more cinematic alternatives.

Ideological trends have also made it more challenging to portray happy relations between the sexes. The dramatic material of traditional romance is male and female distinctiveness, different forms of la différence. But these differences sit uncomfortably with the current progressive emphasis on the interchangeability of the sexes — which may be why the recent cable hits with the most sex or romance have been set in historical and fantasy landscapes, from “Game of Thrones” to “Outlander,” where certain problematics can be forgiven (to a point) as essential to the setting.

Just consider the contrast between Netflix’s “Bridgerton,” a multiracial bodice-ripper set in an alternative but safely-past-tense 19th century, and the best picture nominee “Promising Young Woman,” set in a present-day dating landscape so bleak that it makes you want to cancel heterosexuality itself.

But maybe the popularity of “Bridgerton” is a foretaste of a very different 2020s. Maybe it’s a sign that an age of libertinism lies just around the corner. Or maybe the show’s particular concern with married sex is a signpost on the path to a new traditionalism.

Either way, everyone should be rooting for the cinema of desire. For artistic reasons, yes — but also for the sake of the continuation of the human race.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/opinion/sunday/sex-romance-movies.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

#Pakistan - #COVID19 - Mahira Khan, Iqra Aziz and others ask for help in curtailing spread of Covid

Pakistani celebrities are coming forth to stress on the significance of social distancing and wearing protective gear as the nation battles the third wave of the coronavirus.

The Ministry of National Health Services issued a video message by acclaimed stars, Mahira Khan, Adeel Hussain, Bilal Abbas and Iqra Aziz who are pushing fans to build up the safety measures to curtail the spread of the virus.

“Let’s defeat corona together,” said the Humsafar actor in the video posted on Twitter.

“Let us vow to use face masks and sanitize our hands regularly,” Hussain and Abbas tell fans.

“Maintain a six feet distance with each other and avoid going to crowded places,” urges Aziz.

In the last 24 hours, the country lost 42 people to the deadly virus, taking the nationwide death tally to 13,799. So far, 579,760 have recovered from the coronavirus after testing positive.

The surge in the positivity cases has alarm bells ringing in the country, as a day earlier Pakistan positivity rate stood close to 8%.

https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/807210-mahira-khan-iqra-aziz-and-others-ask-for-help-in-curtailing-spread-of-covid.

#Pakistan - Underage brides in Chitral

 

By Adnan Ali

Chitral was the biggest district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in terms of area before its division into two units: Upper and Lower Chitral though the division is yet to be crystallised. It frequently remains in the news and social media because of its tourist attractions like the Shandur festival, Terich Mir peak, and Kalash Valleys to name a few. These are positive and attractive features which every Chitrali takes pride in and will boastfully talk about. But hidden under the lure of beautiful landscape and mighty mountains, there lie troubling social evils that are gracefully brushed under a rug and hence do not become part of public discourse.

The unsettling news of Maulana Salahuddin Ayubi, an MNA from Balochistan, marrying an underage girl from Chitral was in the news and social media this past month. This might not be the only case of underage marriage from the district, but the involvement of a member of the National Assembly has garnered traction to the case. The incident is a blatant disregard for the Child Marriage Restraint Act from the legislator, and legislators flaunting laws is not healthy for the sanctity of the laws. The incident brings two white elephants to the fore: underage marriage issues in Chitral and a clash of traditions and Islamic learnings with modern laws, especially on marriage.

A newspaper recently published an article on Chitrali girls marrying outsiders and it quoted, “In Chitral, girls are sold like cattle”. It is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is a widely accepted notion among the Pakhtuns of Dir and Peshawar. This is not true. 

The underlying reason behind this gross misunderstanding is that outsiders do not understand the traditional nuances related to the institution of marriage in the district. Traditionally, when both parties agree to a marriage, the bride’s father puts certain demands in front of the groom’s family, unlike marriages in mainland Pakistan where the groom’s family puts their demands in front of the bride’s family. Historically, the bride’s family would ask for animals, money, and a good single or double bore gun. The gun is kept as a souvenir and memory of the marriage, but the animals and money are used in the arrangements of the ceremony by otherwise financially-limited families. This tradition of the girl’s father asking for animals and money before the marriage to make arrangements for the marriage is misconstrued as the buying price for the girl by outsiders. This indifference to the local customs by outsiders puts a bad name to a tradition that has been a quintessential part of nuptial ceremonies in the valley.

Often old and rich outsiders visit the valley and pay a certain amount and take in brides of their likings. As a Chitrali, I often get in arguments with outsiders about the misconstrued tradition and the utter disregard for the tradition from outsiders. I am certain every Chitrali has debated this issue among friends, and with prospective grooms looking for a new bride in the valley. Once I was travelling to Chitral and a Pakhtun driver told me he was looking for a second bride in Chitral and he has saved up some money for it too. I tried to reason with him regarding the customs and traditions, but he did not understand a thing. Other Chitralis are in denial and contend that nothing of this sort happens.

Recently, the Tahafuz Haqooq-e-Chitral Movement (THCM) called it organised trafficking under the guise of marriage. This is no less than trafficking because a majority of the families in these transactions are poor and they are often handicapped when anything happens to their daughters. Once married, these girls face a lot of problems and sometimes end up dead as well. Some of these girls are also forced into prostitution by their so-called husbands. UNICEF’s report also highlights these issues in KP especially in the district of Chitral and tribal areas.

The Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 is still in place with some modifications, which limits the marriage age for girls to 16 years and boys to 18 years. After the 18th Amendment to the constitution, all these laws are now the responsibility of the provinces. KP still has to enact an updated law. The Council of Islamic Ideology, a legal body which advises the government and the parliament on Islamic issues, ruled that laws regulating minimum marrying age are against Islamic injunctions and children could get married if they attained puberty. Child marriages issues in Chitral are attributed to a lot of different factors. Misconstrued tradition, poverty, lack of awareness, and lack of law enforcement are a few reasons which keep the shameful raft of child marriages afloat. 

Most of the time, these ceremonies are held in private spheres and fake or forged Nikahnamas are crafted to fool people and on other occasions a nikkah ceremony is carried out under a guardian which makes it hard to crosscheck the age of the girl. 

 As we move forward, the issue of child marriages must be acknowledged as a problem at all levels. On a personal level, underage girls undergo physical and mental trauma. As a society, we do not give equal opportunities to girls and in Chitral, boys are still preferred to girls like the rest of Pakistan. Although Chitral leads in KP in terms of the literacy rate, but for equality of opportunities for girls, we still have to walk miles. Education and community awareness will help discourage the practice in the district. Expectations are high from the newly elected female senator from Chitral, Falak Naz Chitrali to work for female rights and space in the district.

https://nation.com.pk/19-Mar-2021/underage-brides-in-chitral

EDITORIAL - #Pakistan - PDM’s future

That cracks that appeared in the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) when Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) refused to play along with other opposition parties when the matter of en masse resignations from assemblies came up apparently run deep. That much has been confirmed by the collective decision of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif and Jamiat Ulema I Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman to move ahead even if PPP choses to disengage itself from the alliance. The maulana’s bitterness was visible when he spoke to the press after being blind sighted by PPP the other day, as we walked away without taking any questions from reporters, precisely because he saw no purpose in dragging the movement along without the resignations to give it the potency that it needs if it is really going to have even an outside chance of sending the government packing.

But it remains to be seen what the other members of the alliance, minus PPP, can really hope to achieve once the cleavage widens even further. Fazal and Nawaz’s surprise is difficult to understand because there were signs from the very beginning that PPP would resist handing in any resignations. Why on earth would it jeopardise its government in Sindh for an initiative that has had very few, if any, chances of success since it took off? That is why former president Asif Zardari has always preferred to engineer whatever change the opposition wants to bring from within the august houses of parliament. And the other parties played along for a while, at least till the Zimni elections and the Senate poll turned out to their liking.

But now, when push has clearly come to shove, the maulana, who officially heads the PDM, feels that it would not be possible to build any more momentum without the resignations. And that is where what little everybody in the opposition had in common, to the point that they were willing to come out on the streets and actually march on the capital, has dissipated. Now the likelihood of the long march has diminished considerably. But, at the risk of repetition, that does not mean that the government can breathe easy just yet. Its biggest threat comes not from a disunited and disgruntled opposition but from the unhappiness of the people. And till prices are high and the economy is struggling, no manner of disunity within PDM will give the government too much to celebrate.

https://dailytimes.com.pk/736284/pdms-future/

Hindu journalist shot dead in Pakistan’s Sindh province

Ajay Lalvani, a reporter with a private channel and an Urdu language newspaper died, after he sustained bullet injuries in stomach, arm and knee. A 31-year-old Hindu journalist in Pakistan has been shot dead by some unidentified assailants while getting a haircut at a barber shop in the country’s Sindh province, the police said on Saturday.

Ajay Lalvani, a reporter with a private Royal News TV channel and an Urdu language newspaper Daily Puchano, died on Thursday after he sustained bullet injuries in stomach, arm and knee. He was sitting at a barber shop in Sukkur city when assailants on two bikes and a car drove by and opened fire. Lalvani was rushed to a nearby hospital where he died.His father Dileep Kumar said that the family did not have any enmity, dismissing the police’s claim of the murder being the result of a personal enmity, according to The News International. Condemning the killing, Hindu member of Pakistan’s National Assembly (MNA) Lal Chand Malhi said that it is a “matter of great concern”.

“Strongly condemn D killing of yet another journalist Ajay Kumar at Saleh Pat, Sindh. It is a matter of great concern that media persons are increasingly feeling unsafe in Sindh. Offered condolence to the heirs of the victim. Police should (go) beyond forming comtes. [sic],” he said on Twitter.

A group of journalists, holding the police responsible for the incident, protested against Lalvani’s killing and carried out a march, claiming that it was a targeted killing.

Lalvani’s body was cremated amidst tension in Sukkur city which remained shut on the second consecutive day, the police said.

Journalists, many of whom from Karachi, Khairpur, Shikarpur, Larkana, Sukkur and other towns, participated in the last rites along with Lalvani’s relatives, friends and members of the minority Hindu community, Dawn newspaper reported.

The police said that they were investigating the motive of crime, and if it was linked with the victim’s professional responsibilities.

Pakistan ranks ninth on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual Global Impunity Index, which assesses countries where journalists are murdered regularly and their killers go free. Meanwhile, New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an American independent non-profit organisation, urged authorities in Sindh province to “must immediately launch a credible investigation” and apprehend those responsible for the killing.

Hindus form the biggest minority community in Pakistan. According to official estimates, 75 lakh Hindus live in Pakistan. However, according to the community, over 90 lakh Hindus are living in the country.

The majority of Pakistan’s Hindu population is settled in Sindh province where they share culture, traditions and language with Muslim residents.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/hindu-journalist-shot-dead-in-pakistans-sindh-province/article34117032.ece

شاہد خاقان نے این اے 249 ضمنی الیکشن پر بلاول بھٹو سے حمایت مانگ لی

سابق وزیراعظم اور مسلم لیگ (ن) کے سینئر رہنما شاہد خاقان عباسی نے پیپلز

پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری سے کراچی میں ملاقات کی ہے۔

بلاول ہاؤس کراچی میں ہونے والی ملاقات میں شاہد خاقان عباسی نے بلاول بھٹو سے این اے 249 کے ضمنی انتخاب کے حوالے سے تبادلہ خیال کیا۔

ملاقات کے دوران پیپلز پارٹی کی سینیٹر شیری رحمٰن، نوید قمر اور این اے 249 میں ن لیگ کے امیدوار مفتاح اسماعیل بھی موجود تھے۔

اس دوران شاہد خاقان عباسی نے پی پی چیئرمین سے این اے 249 میں مسلم لیگ (ن) کے امیدوار کے لیے حمایت مانگ لی۔

بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے سابق وزیراعظم کو جواب دیا کہ میں پارٹی سے مشاورت کے بعد آپ کو اس حوالے سے آگاہ کروں گا۔

https://jang.com.pk/news/900466