The horrible treatment South Asian workers receive in Arab nations has been receiving more and more press coverage of late. Hopefully, the spotlight will ensure that something changes for the better but until then, it’s our job to bring forward stories like this –

The imminent execution of a teenage maid in Saudi Arabia drew fierce criticism yesterday…According to the Saudi authorities, Rizana Nafeek admitted strangling the four-month-old boy while feeding him with a bottle.

But Nafeek, whose job was not meant to include child care, has denied making any such admission. She claims the child had begun to choke before losing consciousness in spite of her desperate efforts to clear his airway.

Tonight is the deadline for appeals in the case.

This criminal trial is especially ghastly on 2 counts —

Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, said: “It is an absolute scandal that Saudi Arabia is preparing to behead a teenage girl who didn’t even have a lawyer at her trial. The Saudi authorities are flouting an international prohibition on the execution of child offenders by even imposing a death sentence on a defendant who was reportedly 17 at the time of the alleged crime.“

Prior SM coverage here and here and here.

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How do you solve a problem like Maria Musharraf? It’s so dang hard to figure out what we should (much less can ) do with him. Lets be clear, by nearly any measure, he sounds like a pretty awful leader. And yet, perhaps he’s a Stalin in our conflicted time — someone we’d otherwise hate but whom other, more pressing international circumstances force us to extend a bit more, uh, courtesy than we’d like. If his umpteen missteps have brought us to the verge of actively “regime changing” him (a great read, BTW!), then perhaps this latest diatribe from the Hitler of our time (no, not Bush, sheesh) wins Mushie back a few more points –

Not in the Musharraf Fan Club Either

I talk to you today on the occasion of the criminal aggression carried out by Musharraf, his army and his security organs – the Crusaders’ hunting dogs – against Lal Masjid in Islamabad, and on the occasion of the dirty, despicable crime committed by Pakistani military intelligence – at the orders of Musharraf – against Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi when it showed him on television in women’s dress.

This is a message of blinding clarity to the Muslims in Pakistan, the Pakistani Ulema, and indeed, the Ulema in the rest of the Islamic world, and this crime can only be washed away by repentance or blood. I call on the Ulema in Pakistan and tell them: this is what you are worth to Musharraf, and this is the treatment that awaits you in the prisons of Musharraf’s hunting dogs, and this is what you are worth to the Crusaders. Musharraf and his hunting dogs have rubbed your honor in the dirt in the service of the Crusaders and the Jews, and if you don’t retaliate for your honor, Musharraf won’t spare any of you, and won’t stop until he eradicates Islam from Pakistan. Lowly Musharraf, who has sold his honor and religion to the Crusaders and Jews, is arrogant with you in the extreme and regards you with the utmost contempt, and treats you like animals and dogs, and only is satisfied by portraying you in the lowliest and most despicable light.

This is an eloquent message [from Musharraf] to every scholar and every free and honorable person in Pakistan: that resisting Musharraf, confronting him and demanding that he adhere to Islam and refrain from worshiping the Crusaders and Jews will only get you the worst types of contempt, humiliation and degradation.

Of his litany of complaints, it’s almost comical that perp-walking Ghazi on TV in a dress ranks quite so highly. Perhaps there’s some insight here into the Honor/Shame dynamic commentators have noted in the shadowy corners of Arab society that breed Zawahiris…. Whatever the case, if the other guys think he’s out to destroy Islamism, then perhaps there’s another twist to this Gordian Knot. A tough problem to solve indeed.

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As Abhi points out, one of the key elements of the proposed immigration bill was a Canadian-/Aussie-style points system to allocate immigration spots. The overall bill failed.

The proposed point system, however, was pretty interesting. The general goal was to provide a more systemic, color-blind way of sorting the through the massive pool of applicants. Factors like English proficiency, degrees, and occupations would be allocated values and the sum determined where in the stack you ranked….

Of course, the world being the non-uniform soup it is, the second you start calling some traits more ‘desirable’ than others, you’re going to run into, uh, disparaties in how frequently those traits are found across ethnic groups. Towards this end, the NYT published this very interesting chart which showed how, based on the past 15 yrs of immigration data, a few select groups would have been allocated points. By my eye, Desi’s would have scored rather conspicuously well….

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