La vita è bella

“There is no gravity – The world sucks” era un’espressione comune negli anni ’60 e ’70, gli anni della Guerra del Vietnam. Espressione di frustrazione, di scazzo, di sconforto, di impalpabile tristezza.

Stamani leggevo sul sito della BBC una serie di notizie “locali” su quest’area del mondo, ve le riporto, in fedele citazione.

Saudi government warns women over campaign to drive.

A spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry has warned women that measures may be taken against them if they take part in a campaign against a ban on female drivers.

A new campaign to give women the right to drive will culminate in Saudi Arabia this Saturday. Women are being encouraged to take to the wheel in defiance of the ban. It is the third protest of its kind; in the first in 1990, a number of women were arrested or lost their jobs. The interior ministry spokesman, Mansour al-Turki, has considerably toughened the Saudi government line on the women drivers’ campaign.

Iran minister says ‘no need’ to hang criminal again

Iran’s justice minister says there is “no need” for a man who survived a hanging to be hanged a second time. Lawyers want the head of the judiciary to stop a repeat hanging after the man was found alive in a morgue.

Justice Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said executing the man would have repercussions against Iran’s image, the ISNA news agency reported. The government has no direct control over the judiciary which has to decide whether a second execution takes place.

Iran has one of the highest rates of execution in the world.

The 37-year-old convicted drug smuggler, named as Alireza M, was found alive in a morgue after being hanged at a jail in the north-eastern city of Bojnord last week. He had been left to hang for 12 minutes after which a doctor declared him dead, reports said. But when the prisoner’s family went to collect his body from the prison morgue the next day, they found he was still breathing. The man was then moved to a hospital where he was being kept under armed guard. His condition is not known although the IRNA news agency reported on Monday that he had fallen into a coma.

Yemeni ‘burns daughter to death for contacting fiance’

A 15-year-old Yemeni girl was burned to death by her father for getting in touch with her fiance before their wedding, police say. The 35-year-old man was arrested after the teenager’s death in the remote village of Shabaa, in Taiz province.

“The father committed this heinous crime on the pretext that his daughter had been keeping in contact with her fiance,” a police statement claimed. Local news websites said he had caught the pair chatting on the telephone. Traditional tribal customs in some parts of Yemen prohibit contact between men and women before marriage.

Last year, the UN Human Rights council raised concerns about so-called “honour killings” in the country. Perpetrators were not charged with murder, and faced only a six-month to one-year prison sentence, it found. Accorded a low status in the family and community, many Yemeni women are subjected to various forms of violence, deprivation of education, early and forced marriages, sexual abuse, restrictions over freedom of movement, forced pregnancy, and female genital mutilation.

Last month, there was an outcry after an eight-year-old girl reportedly died of internal bleeding on the night she wed a 40-year-old man.

“THE WORLD SUCKS”, oggi ho trovato un accendino per terra, un vecchio Zippo. Binh Long era la prigione militare americana, teatro di una dura rivolta il 29 Agosto 1968 …