A Bit More Detail

• Architectuul looks at some examples of endangered architecture in the world, in London and Pristina and elsewhere.


• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait examines a bizarre feature on the Moon's Lacus Felicitatus.


• The Big Picture shares photos exploring the experience of one American, Marie Cajuste, navigating the health care system as she sought cancer treatment.


• Centauri Dreams looks at a new proposal for an interstellar craft making use of neutral particle beam-driven sails.


• Ingrid Robeyns at Crooked Timber writes about the question of what individual responsibility people today should take for carbon emissions.


• The Crux takes a look at what the earliest (surviving) texts say about the invention of writing.


• D-Brief notes an interesting proposal to re-use Christmas trees after they are tossed out.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that India has approved funding for crewed spaceflight in 2022, in the Gaganyaan program.


• Andrew LePage at Drew Ex Machina takes a look at the Apollo 8 mission.


• Far Outliers looks at the experiences of British consuls in isolated Kashgar, in what is now Xinjiang.


• L.M. Sacasas at The Frailest Thing argues that it can take time to properly see things, that speed can undermine understanding.


• JSTOR Daily notes how people with depression use language, opting to use absolute words more often than the norm.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money notes how the Bolsonario government in Brazil has set to attacking indigenous people.


• Marginal Revolution links to a paper arguing that Greek life in the colleges of the United States, the fraternity system, has a negative impact on the grades of participants.


• George Hutchinson writes at the NYR Daily about how race, of subjects and of the other, complicates readings of Louisiana-born author Jean Toomey and his novel Cane, about life on sugar cane plantations in that state.


• Personal Reflections' Jim Belshaw reflects on his Christmas reading, including a new history of Scandinavia in the Viking age told from their perspective.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the Milky Way Galaxy in its formative years. What did it look like?


• Strange Company highlights its top 10 posts over the past year.


• Window on Eurasia wonders at reports the Uniate Catholics of Ukraine are seeking a closer alliance with the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church.


• Arnold Zwicky reports on the nearly iconic and ubiquitous phalluses of Bhutan, as revealed by a trip by Anthony Bourdain.

[Som] Subedi is one of almost 76,000 Bhutanese refugees who have come to the U.S. since 2008. He’s now a naturalized American citizen, who helps Bhutanese refugees adjust from life in a refugee camp to life in Portland, Ore.

Suicide is not usually associated with Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan nation of legendary beauty that measures its success in gross national happiness. But Subedi and the other Bhutanese refugees are not technically Bhutanese, according to the country’s government. Known as Lhotsampas, their ancestors migrated to Bhutan from Nepal in the 17th century. And in the 1990s, more than 100,000 of them – one-sixth of the country’s population – were trucked out of Bhutan as part of its “one-nation-one people” policy, effectively an exercise in ethnic cleansing. They’re now one of America’s fastest-growing refugee populations.

They’re also committing suicide at a rate higher than any other refugee group in America, according to a 2012 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. For every 100,000 Bhutanese refugees, 24.4 commit suicide, almost double the rate of 12.4 for the general population. Twenty-one percent of Bhutanese in America are also depressed, nearly three times the national rate. According to the Wall Street Journal, since November 2013, there have been seven known cases of Bhutanese refugees taking their own lives.

“It’s an epidemic,” Subedi said.

The suicide rate in the camps in Nepal is similar to the rate among resettled Bhutanese in America, according to the CDC. But Subedi believes the promise of the American dream is part of what’s killing his people. Many are excited to leave the Nepalese camps, where a generation of children have been born and raised in legal limbo with “no hope,” “no future” and “no identity,” said Subedi. But he said many Bhutanese refugees arrive in America believing there’s “money in the streets,” and instead end up isolated, unemployed and in debt.

• Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait picks up on the news that the Canadian federal government is only going to fund research that leads directly to economic gain.


• The Burgh Diaspora's Jim Russell wonders about the ethics of Cuba's export of trained doctors as contract workers.


• Could a "Nebula Winter" explain Earth's greatest glaciations? The Dragon's Tales reports.


• Eastern Approaches reports on the indecisive election in crisis-ridden Bulgaria.


• Geocurrents examines the reasons for Bhutan's surprisingly high level of development for a Himalayan polity.


• GNXP's Razib Khan wonders about the ethics of certain kinds of eugenics, arguably already in practice today (pre-natal tests for Down's syndrome, say).


• Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on the prospects that the disastrous building collapse in a clothing manufacturing plant in Bangladesh might lead to new global standards.


• Strange Maps has fun with the unusual placenames of the Shetland and Orkney islands, off the northeastern coast of Scotland.


• The Volokh Conspiracy notes that a German family claiming asylum in the United States on the grounds that homeschooling is not permitted in Germany has been turned down.


• Window on Eurasia reports on a conspiracy theory in Russia that Siberia is going to be stolen by Muslim guest workers.

Despite early misgivings, by now the majority of refugees – currently around 85,000 among a total of 108,000 – have declared their interest to leave the camps and attempt to set up new lives in the West. Resettlement countries include the US, which has agreed to take in the majority of those who want to leave, as well as Australia, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark and New Zealand, and potentially the UK. Within a year of the start of that process, the new diaspora’s growing presence began to be felt. In December 2009, a group of Europe-based Bhutanese exiles demonstrated in Geneva against the Thimphu government’s delegation tasked with presenting an official report before the UN’S Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights. Significantly, demonstrators were even allowed access to the meeting hall, requiring the Bhutanese delegation to present their report in the presence of members of the refugee community. The delegation was later forced to accept various recommendations put forth by the representatives of other member states on behalf of the exiled Bhutanese, including that Thimphu commit itself to resuming talks with Kathmandu regarding repatriation, and improve the human-rights situation in the country, among others.

Together, these turns of events were taken by exiles and activists as a triumph. Except for a few previous instances, due to their political status refugees had not been able to protest what they saw as Thimphu’s deceit regarding its process of democratisation. Most of the refugees belong to the Lhotshampa, the southern, Nepali-speaking Bhutanese community that has for decades been marginalised or actively persecuted by the Bhutanese state. Following a forced mass exodus in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the refugees found few outlets in which to air their complaints while in exile in Nepal. However, the Kathmandu platform had its limits, as became clear in retrospect.

Durga Giri, the chief coordinator of the Bhutan Advocacy Forum Europe, which organised the Geneva protests, says the resettlement offer has already turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the pro-democracy movement. “Testimonies of human-rights violations in Bhutan are no longer confined to bamboo refugee huts in Nepal,” Giri said recently. “In fact, the perspective offered by settling into new countries has given us leverage to re-organise the movement for human rights and inclusive democracy.”

When the days in the refugee camp seemed to last forever, Bhim Lal Kattel prayed to the gods to let his family return home to Bhutan.

Nearly two decades passed. His children grew and his mother aged. Mr. Kattel gave up his dream of reclaiming his family's farm in southern Bhutan. The grinding boredom at the Goldhap refugee camp in the nearby Himalayan country of Nepal sapped his spirit.

So, at age 37, with an anxious heart, he decided to take his family to a strange, cold land on the other side of the globe.

Mr. Kattel arrived at Vancouver International Airport on Thursday afternoon, his eyes shining with excitement and fatigue. Despite the warm July weather, his wife, Bishnu Maya, and three children, Prakash, 14, Menuka, 12, and Ganesh, 8, were clad in thick sweaters. His 73-year-old mother was pushed through the international gates in a wheelchair.

This week, as Ottawa issued strict visa requirements for Czech and Mexican visitors, citing a raft of bogus refugee claimants from the two countries, the Kattels were part of another unfolding Canadian refugee saga. Five thousand Bhutanese refugees will be arriving in Canada over the next five years – one of the largest government-sponsored resettlement efforts in recent years.

The political party comprising former members of the Maoist insurgency (1996-2006) succeeded in garnering support sufficient to leave its democratic rivals far behind. The scoreboard on April 10 placed the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) on top with 119 of 240 seats in the first-past-post segment of the poll. The nearest rival, the Nepali Congress, was trailing with 34 seats while the moderate communist party, Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML), stood third with 31 seats.

Pre-poll estimates had put the Nepali Congress ahead of others, expected to be followed by the UML. The Maoists were expected to be reduced to an unenviable 50 seats. But all such predictions failed, to the pleasant surprise of Maoist leaders. On the contrary, their party looked set to win a majority of the 335 seats filled through proportional representation of the electoral system. The remaining 26 seats in the 601-strong Constituent Assembly are to be occupied by government nominees.

"We have achieved more than what we expected," Baburam Bhattarai, a senior Maoist leader, said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Since his party was emerging as the leader among the three main contestants, it would be logical, he said, for them to head the next coalition government whose job is to assist the assembly to draw up a constitution that replaces the one promulgated in aftermath of first pro-democracy movement of 1990.

The poorest country in South Asia has suddenly catapulted itself to the vanguard of democratic reform and political transformation in the region. India, which basks in the glory of its democratic way of life, at once looks a little bit archaic and tired in comparison. After 60 years of uninterrupted democratic pluralism, vast sections of Indian society are yet to realize the potentials of political empowerment. The Nepalese people have come from behind and overtaken the Indians in expanding the frontiers of "bourgeois" politics.

Politics in India still meander through alleys of caste and parochialism and eddies of religious obscurantism and Hindu nationalism. The upper-caste Hindu elites in Nepal used to share social kinships with the Indian political elites. The Maoists have upturned Nepal's entrenched caste politics. The Indian electorate is yet to explore in full measure ideology-based secular political empowerment, which is the bedrock of democratic self-rule. Unsurprisingly, India's main opposition party, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, which thrives on Hindu fundamentalism, has been stunned into silence. It feels let down that a country that it dearly cherished as the world's only "Hindu kingdom" has taken to secular democracy with such panache.

The Maoist government will proceed to dismantle the pillars of Nepal's feudal structure and will take recourse to radical economic and political reforms based on distributive justice and egalitarian principles. That is bound to catch the attention of impoverished Indians in the sub-Himalayan belt sooner or later. The Indian states (provinces) bordering Nepal are notorious for their misgovernance.

On Sunday, after a seven-hour discussion ended months of bickering over the monarchy issue between the two major constituents of the seven-party alliance -- the centrist Nepali Congress party and the CPN (M) -- the death knell for the beleaguered monarchy, led by the hugely unpopular king Gyanendra Shah, was sounded.

The CPN(M), which led a decade-long armed struggle against the monarchy, before laying down arms under a November 2006 peace accord and joining an interim government, had threatened to disrupt elections to constituent assembly if the country was not declared a republic first.

For the Maoists, who as part of the peace accord had agreed to confine some 30,000 of their fighters in United Nations supervised camps, the main concern was that pro-monarchy forces could still undermine the elections and move to reverse the hard fought gains of the armed struggle.

But the Maoists relented after other parties -- chief among them the Nepali Congress -- refused to declare the country a republic before an elected assembly convened. As per the 23-point deal agreed to by the parties, Nepal will become a federal democratic republic after the first meeting of the constituent assembly, elections to which are to be held in mid-April. The parties have agreed to announce a date soon.

[. . .]

Nepal's monarchy has not recovered from a tragic massacre in the royal palace in June 2001. A majority of people do not believe the verdict of a government-appointed probe that the then heir to the throne, Gyanendra's nephew, killed nine members of his family before shooting himself.

Gyanendra, who succeeded to the throne after the massacre, dismissed the elected government in February 2005 after charging it with failure to end the Maoist insurgency and ruled as an autocratic monarch for 14 months.

But faced with mass demonstrations, Gyanendra was compelled to restore parliament in April 2006. Once his title as head of the army was removed his authority was severely crippled.

With even the top officers of the Nepal army now saying, both in private as well as public, that they would accept the verdict of the elected constituent assembly, it is truly the end of the road for the ‘world’s last Hindu kingdom’.

Bhutanese began voting on Monday to elect members to a new upper house of parliament for the first time, a step towards democracy after a century of absolute monarchy.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom has been preparing for democracy since former monarch, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to hand power to an elected government, even as many of his citizens said they were quite happy with the way things were.

Monday's vote is only the first step. More important polls are expected to take place in February and March with elections to the lower house, when newly formed political parties will be able to take part.

Queues of voters formed in the town of Deothang as the polls opened at 8 a.m. (0200 GMT), all dressed, as is compulsory, in traditional Bhutanese costume -- gowns for the men, long dresses for the women, some of whom were carrying babies.

"I pressed the button on the computer and I'm very happy to cast my vote," said Sonam Wangda, a 35-year-old farmer, one of the country's 312,817 registered voters. He was referring to the electronic voting machines being used.

The country has temporarily closed its borders as authorities fear Nepal's former Maoist rebels could cause trouble in support of ethnic Nepalis living in Bhutan, who complain of discrimination.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis fled Bhutan or were expelled in 1991 for protesting against discrimination and demanding democracy.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is being praised across the world because its king is abdicating the throne in favour of democracy. But on the flip side, the issue concerning the fate of the 100,000 Bhutanese refugees in neighbouring Nepal, thrown out of Bhutan in 1991, remains unresolved. The refugees are Nepali-speaking Bhutanese. They were driven out of Bhutan because they protested the passage of a law in the 1980s that arbitrarily cancelled their citizenship. Accounting for as much as a sixth of the Bhutanese population, most of them, living in the south of the country, fled from Bhutan to Nepal in 1990. They have been living in refugee camps in Nepal since then, desiring to get back home.

Bhutan, also known as Druk Yul or the Dragon Kingdom, is surrounded by India and Tibet. The country is witnessing a transition from absolute monarchy to multi-party democracy on account of the Dragon King, Jigme Singye Wangchuk abdicating the throne and not because of any popular uprising. Earlier, his main accomplishment (that was visible to the outside world) was his Gross National Happiness standard-of-living index but in December last, after setting in motion the transition to democracy, he abdicated the throne in favour of his eldest son, the Oxford-educated Crown Prince, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk.

The benefit of happiness, however, does not seem to have percolated through the Hindu Bhutanese. "Some 108,000 Bhutanese refugees have been registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees," says Suhas Chakma, the director of the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), a New Delhi based rights body. Following a visit to the refugee camps in Nepal last month, Chakma reiterated his demand that Bhutan be held accountable for settlement of the exiles.

[. . .]

The Nepal government has raised the issue with the Bhutanese authorities in 15 rounds of talks; but it has failed to persuade Thimphu to allow the refugees to return to Bhutan. Not a single refugee has returned to Bhutan.