-
Blog Search
Translator
Google Search
Submit a Story
Podcast
Join Us
Click to subscribeRecommended Podcasts
Member of:
Dushanbe is not a real city. It isn’t a real capital and Tajikistan is not a real country. The northern neighbour of Afghanistan is a failure with a flag, shiny passports and a gang of savvy criminals that calls itself a government. This buffer between the empires fell apart a long time ago.
The city has leafy boulevards laid out in an almost utopian socialist grid. The streets are quiet but on balmy Asian nights the streets come alive with drug mega-barons racing their SUVs, blaring out rap music and tossing a few coins at the impoverished police officers — teenagers in uniform — if anybody gets in their way. These boulevards are a Soviet mirage, a Potemkin city which was initially named after a dictator — Stalinabad. It became Dushanbe in 1961 as part of Khruschev’s de-Stalinisation.
Dushanbe is a hodge-podge of dirt tracks, sodden sewage holes, tiny whitewashed homes with corrugated-iron roofs. It swarms with under-fives, their veiled mothers, jobless dads, chickens and a nocturnal orchestra of wild dogs. Dushanbe is a slum for more than 650,000 people and the capital of a country where 70 per cent live in abject rural poverty. Tajikistan has soaring birth-rates, rising illiteracy, fraudulent elections, de-urbanisation and a 1,200km border with Afghanistan.
Rakhmatillo Zoirov has vacant pale eyes. His slacks are fraying. He lives in a dilapidated, garbage-strewn row of flats overlooking a desolate motorway. Repairmen have been absent since the fall of communism and children play gangsters in courtyards of broken glass. No one takes schooling here seriously. Zoirov is the only opposition politician publically to criticise the dictatorial leader Emomali Rakhmon.
Read the whole article here: Standpoint Magazine
12
From the outside, it’s an unremarkable industrial warehouse, home to Duke’s Auction House. But the stench of turpentine marks it out from the other buildings on the Grove Industrial Estate in Dorchester, Dorset. It’s the first clue that inside lurks a haven of Victorian taxidermy.
Step in, and you’ll see a Bengali tiger on its hind legs, 8ft tall, lunging claws-first (and canines first) towards you. Behind him is a peacock, glorious tail splayed behind it.
To the right are three zebras, a camel, baby rhinoceros and seven lions, the lioness twisted on the ground, sinking her incisors into a bloodied antelope. All in all, there are 250 animals, many of which are the treasures of an eccentric 19th-century professor and explorer.
Elsewhere are grotesque figures: shrunken monkey heads on spikes, Siamese lambs conjoined at the head, a velvet coffin with the body of a 16-year-old Congolese boy (complete with an elephant’s head stitched to his corpse), and dozens of glass-eyed waxworks with liver- spotted skin or daggers plunging into their chests.
Oh, and a blue dress once worn by Princess Diana.
Read more and see pics:
Out of the annals of the strange and the incredible, accounts of nightmarish creatures often appear to challenge our credulity. Here is the story of one such creature ….
Incredible, but true!
Click on the link in the side bar to subscribe for free to the podcast.
Stay tuned for other shows and clips.
Read more on this:
Abominable Snowman An Official Webpage
Thinkquest: The Abominable Snowman
Live Science: The Truth About the Abominable Snowman
Wikipedia: Yeti
Related Reading:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Bigfoot encounters this year have been coming in from all corners of the globe!
Two backpackers trekking in Australia recently reported encountering a Bigfoot like creature which was two meters tall and covered in fur.
Aboriginies have long believed in the existence of the ‘Yowie’, a tall hominid ape-like creature which closely resembles the North American Bigfoot and Asian Yeti.
“Ingrid Schön 23, of Germany and Adi Hassan, 22 of France decided to head back into town when they heard the breaking of branches and loud footsteps heading towards them. Ingrid shone a torch onto the track in front of them. At this point they both claim to have seen what they now describe as Bigfoot charge away into the distance.”
More recently, a Territory Yowie researcher believes the Bigfoot-like beast could be responsible for the recent death of a dog south of Darwin.
“The dog’s owners believed their seven-month-old puppy, which had its head ripped from its body, was mauled to death by dingoes.
But Andrew McGinn, who has been researching Yowies in the Top End for more than a decade, said it was possible the hairy ape-type beast was responsible for the attack. “
Moving from the bottom of the world to the top, we have reports of a surge in Yeti activity in Siberia.
A recent expedition to the Azas caves to find the creature was planned but unfortunately had to be postponed due to persistent bad weather.
“More evidence of the abominable snowman (more politely known as a Yeti or Bigfoot) has been uncovered in Russia’s Kemerovo Region in southwestern Siberia.”
Moving across to the US, a recent visitor to the Monument area of Southern Colorado is sharing what she captured on video, and saw with her own eyes.
“A choppy, 15-second video clip depicts a typical day on Palmer Ridge, until things get interesting along the treeline.
A shadowy figure saunters into the frame, long arms swinging by his side. ”
So it seems that this summer we will be in for an avalanche of sightings in the Northern Hemisphere!
