Tiny Tips

“This is a system of the elite, by the elite and for the elite,”
said Riyaz Hussain Naqvi, a retired government official who
worked in tax collection for 38 years. “It is a skewed system
in which the poor man subsidizes the rich man.” The problem
starts at the top. The average worth of Pakistani members of
Parliament is $900,000, with its richest member topping $37
million. “It’s a very good country for the rich man. Chauffeurs,
servants, big houses. The question is, who is suffering? The
common man.” :
http://tinyurl.com/3axvwj3

The anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, whose Freedom
party (PVV) won 24 seats and third place in the Dutch
national election last month, says he is forming international
alliances to launch branches of his Islamophobic party
across the Western world. Almost 1.5m Dutch people voted
for the PVV in June. “The message, ‘stop Islam, defend
freedom’, is a message that’s not only important for the
Netherlands but for the whole free Western world.”
http://tinyurl.com/38t7elg

The United Nations estimates that each year 5,000 mostly
Muslim women and girls are shot, stoned, strangled, stabled,
burned, or smothered by family members with the intention
of cleansing shame from the family’s name. While most
of these crimes occur in the Middle East and South Asia,
immigration is taking them around the globe:
http://tinyurl.com/27mmq6d

Fears are growing for the fate of thousands of young
girls in rural Mauritania, where campaigners say the cruel
practice of force-feeding young girls for marriage is making
a significant comeback since a military junta took over the
West African country. Aminetou Mint Ely, a women’s rights
campaigner, said girls as young as five were still being
subjected to the tradition of leblouh every year. The practice
sees them tortured into swallowing gargantuan amounts of
food and liquid – and consuming their vomit if they reject it:
http://tinyurl.com/ctoyjd

As 14-year-old Nguyen Hoang Anh was being branded
with hot irons, had solvents poured in his wounds and had
his teeth pulled out with pliers, those who heard him ignored
his cries. In most countries, suspicions of any kind of child
abuse, let alone such a horrific case, would rouse a small
army of social workers and police. Vietnam, however, has no
such public system and only loose laws protecting children
and other vulnerable people. “We don’t consider beating a
child to be violence against children,” concedes Nguyen Hai
Huu, director of the Ministry for Labour, Invalids and Social
Affairs’ child-protection unit.
http://tinyurl.com/2vpuhqv

An Indian court has ruled that Hindu gods cannot deal
in stocks and shares, reports said Saturday, after an
application for trading accounts to be set up in their names.
Two judges at the Bombay High Court on Friday rejected a
petition from a private religious trust to open accounts in the
names of five deities, including the revered elephant-headed
god, Ganesha. “Trading in shares on the stock market
requires certain skills and expertise and to expect this from
deities would not be proper,” judges P.B. Majumdar and
Rajendra Sawant said, according to Indian newspapers:
http://tinyurl.com/338skdn