Something I Learned Today: Somewhere Far Away

Kurara, “Somewhere Far Away” (2024)

Even Lunacharsky Street is so transparent
Bicycles and horses race home
On these streets, my love, I honed my style
I touched the air with my hand
Even Lunacharsky Street can be so gloomy and wicked at times
And a cloud with a pointy beard delivers a delicious jolt
And it groans languidly

There is nothing beyond the black sky
And nothing will be first
Perhaps the gods played a trick on you
And scattered their plywood arrows in the corners
Somewhere far away
I take you without asking
Somewhere far away
I bury myself alive
In letters and numbers
I’m drowning and floundering
With an artificial belly
Like a clown in a circus

Upward and downward
This is
Real life
This is
The fleeting joy of a glance on the street
A smile, warmth
Your shadows kiss
You don’t care, you keep going
Leaving behind perhaps another life
I can’t do it—this thought terrifies me so
I can’t do it

Upward and downward
This is
Real life
This is
The fleeting joy of a glance on the street
A smile, warmth
Your shadows kiss
You don’t care, you keep riding
Leaving behind perhaps another life
I can’t do it—this thought terrifies me so
I can’t do it

Source: Genius. Translated by the Russian Reader

Amnesty International has published its annual Death Sentences and Executions report for the year 2025, with data showing a sharp increase in the number of executions carried out. At least 2,707 people are known to have been put to death by the state last year, up 78 percent compared to 2024. As our infographic shows, the death penalty continues to be quite widespread in Asia, with China, India, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia, among others, employing it. The use of capital punishment is very rare in Europe: it only exists in Belarus, and Amnesty International notes that 2025 was the first year it recorded neither new death sentences nor executions since President Alexander Lukashenko assumed office in 1994. While Russia technically also retains the death penalty in its law, the country is considered abolitionist in practice, meaning no executions have been carried out in at least ten years.

In the Americas, the death penalty is also mostly a thing of the past, with the notable exceptions of Guyana, Cuba and the United States. Last year, the U.S. executed 47 people across 11 states, almost twice as many as in 2024 (25 executions). Florida alone accounted for almost half of these executions (19). Capital punishment is still more common in Africa and the West Asia. In 2025, Iran executed at least 2,159 people, more than double its 2024 figure and the highest number on record since 1981, and the Islamic republic has been consistently using the death penalty as a tool of political repression.

113 countries and territories around the world have abolished the death penalty completely, most recently Zambia. In 2023 and 2024, African nations Equatorial Guinea, Ghana and Zimbabwe abolished the death penalty for all but very serious crimes. 87 nations still have capital punishment on the books, but 24 of them are considered abolitionists in practice. In March of this year, the Israeli Knesset voted to expand its death penalty law in such a way that applies only to Palesinians and dismantles fundamental safeguards to prevent the arbitrary deprivation of life and protect the right to a fair trial, a decision condemned by Amnesty International. The NGO has called on Israel to repeal the decision.

Source: Valentine Fourreau, “Where the Death Penalty Exists,” Statista, 21 May 2026

When Shiraz Calls

A personal account of day-to-day life in Iran told through the calls of two Iranian sisters – one in the UK, the other in the Iranian city of Shiraz. Since the outbreak of war at the end of February, a near total internet blackout and a shutdown of international phone lines by the Iranian authorities has meant limited information has got out of the country. Despite the risks involved, the sisters have made recordings of their conversations which have been shared with the BBC. They discuss when the bombs land, the destruction of places they love and the realities of an economy that’s being brought to its knees. They struggle to sleep at night. Salaries don’t come through. It’s a roller coaster of emotions. But there are also moments of calm and comfort…a spot of dark humour and the scent of hyacinths.

Actors:
Leila played by Lisa Zahra
Gita played by Zahra Ahmadi

Presenter: Caroline Hawley
Producers: Adele Armstrong and Soroush Pakzad
Sound design: Peregrine Andrews
Editor: Clare Fordham

Source: BBC Radio 4

This Census chart shows changes in where Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander populations were living in 2010 and 2020. By 2020, more than half of Native Hawaiians (at the top left, in blue) were not living in Hawaii, something local Hawaiian leaders attribute to the high cost of living on the islands.

Source: Monterey County NOW, 24 May 2026

This week, Rafia Zakaria won the 2026 National Magazine Award in the category of Columns and Essays. The winning piece, “Water Pressure,” was published in Issue 150 of The Believer and is available to read in full on our website. It follows Zakaria’s father on his search for clean water in Karachi, Pakistan, where the mounting climate crisis has crept into all aspects of daily life. Zakaria discussed the prize and the celebrated essay with our managing editor, Ginger Greene.

THE BELIEVER: You won a National Magazine Award last night in New York for your essay, “Water Pressure.” What did it feel like to see this piece recognized in that way?

RAFIA ZAKARIA: It was a tremendous surprise… It is very difficult to place personal essays, but it is the personal story that can ultimately make an abstract issue—such as water scarcity in a faraway city like Karachi—seem as real as the heat wave that was happening in New York on the day of the award ceremony. I was so grateful to work on this project, and to have the freedom and latitude to explore what extreme heat can do to ordinary people in an ordinary megacity.

BLVR: Your story explores the many difficulties of procuring water and power in Karachi, in an ever-warming world. What inspired you to approach this subject? And what were some of the difficulties you faced as you developed the essay?

RZ: I feel like a lot of climate journalism focuses on the deterioration of beautiful natural environments and the loss of wild ecosystems. I wanted to focus on how extreme heat, as well as water and power scarcity, affect human relationships, how it erodes and corrodes the scheme of relations between people and the environment. Sometimes it is not possible to see how it is happening, when you are in the midst of dealing with these problems every day. But as someone who is in and out of Karachi, I was able to perceive these dynamics.

One of the difficulties I faced reporting this story was a lack of precedence for this sort of exploration. For instance, there is excellent and deep reporting on natural or man-made disasters and their aftermath. But there is less writing on persistent issues, like decades-long water shortages, where there is no single cataclysmic event on which to center a story. I wanted to show that the story of chronic scarcity can also be told in an impactful and interesting way.

BLVR: The piece opens with a vivid scene from your family’s neighborhood in Karachi, in which a man is angered when he notices your aunt receiving an overflow of water into her underground water tank, such that it’s wastefully flooding out onto the street. Their confrontation ends when your aunt begins to throw rocks at him to get him to leave her alone. I was curious: What was your first reaction when you heard this story? Was it relayed to you as a problem of “water envy,” as you call it?

RZ: I will admit that my aunt’s reaction was a bit extreme, but it crystallized how chronic scarcity can create levels of seething frustration that can bubble to the surface in absurd ways. The story was told to me in the context of: Is she OK? But actually no one facing this sort of privation day after day is really OK. Water is a mainstay of existence, so the fact that you can now have an iPhone but not access to clean water is a bizarre juxtaposition of privilege and paucity.

I also felt that my aunt’s actions put into stark focus what people likely want to do but usually don’t. I came up with the term “water envy” because I wanted to start creating a vocabulary for phenomena that are felt, but for which there are often no words. I think the phrase encapsulates how policing resource consumption becomes just another part of living in a neighborhood. In most cases people will not challenge each other to the extent they do in this instance, but that is why it is such an apt story: Both characters had reached the end of their rope.

BLVR: Water politics in Karachi are complicated. For one thing, there are the daily strategies middle-class Karachiites have developed to procure water, which involves pumping water from the main lines into private underground water tanks. Navigating the uncertainty of main-line waterflow has become a full-time job for your father, as you point out. At the same time, there are many more people who don’t have access to these “pump games,” because they can’t afford a private tank. They are forced to purchase water from private companies that hike up their prices. How has the situation with Karachi’s water mafia progressed since you reported this piece?

RZ: I think the situation is much more dire now, because the pressures have become more acute. The population has grown dramatically and grows further still on a daily basis. Temperatures have risen, owing to climate change phenomena like the heat domes I talk about in the piece. As a result, people increasingly have to resort to taking their chances and obtaining water without knowing its source or even if it is potable.

In the summer there are thousands of deaths that are ultimately caused by lack of clean water, but they are not often tallied under this category. As the heat index rises in Karachi, these situations are pushed to the limit and people—particularly the very old and the very young—begin to die. The water mafias are more entrenched and merciless now; they know how to throttle competition and work with street gangs and land mafias to ensure that the consumers in a specific area have no options but to pay them.

BLVR: As we approach the summer months, Karachi is already reaching excessively high temperatures. In early May, the city recorded a peak of 111 degrees Fahrenheit, the city’s highest reading since 2018. This heat, as you describe in your piece, compounds with power outages and water shortages, which seeds the ground for long-term public health crises. How are you feeling about the upcoming summer?

RZ: I dread the summer months for Karachiites. If you fall sick during the summer, it is hard to get reliable care in a timely fashion and, most of all, to find a relatively cool environment to recover in. Any illness could threaten survival. Since there is no easily available large-scale refrigeration in poorer areas, there is also a huge risk of eating spoiled food. There is no way of telling if something in a store fridge was left out for hours the night before, or if the energy source powering the fridge is reliable. So it’s Russian roulette all summer long.

This summer will not be any different. The political rift between Karachi and the rest of the province means that the city is constantly starved of resources and the federal government seems disinterested in the plight of the people that live there. Many Karachiites are the children of people who migrated from India in 1947 and hence distinct from Punjabis, who make up the majority ethnicity. All of these divisions make the situation one of constant chaos. People are living a bit of a Hobbesian existence there.

BLVR: How has the situation in Karachi shaped your relationship to your experience of the US? You recently moved to Salt Lake City in Utah, which is also in the midst of a climate-related disaster. Have you noticed any similarities between the two places?

RZ: Well, there is a war over water underway in Utah as well. Last week, three county commissioners in Box Elder County, Utah, passed a proposal to build a 40,000 acre data center in the area—that is twice the size of Manhattan. The residents, aghast at what their elected representatives have done, are now trying to organize a referendum that will stop the plan. If the data center is built, the project will suck up all the water left in the already drying Great Salt Lake. It is estimated that it will also increase nighttime temperatures by 8 to 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

This situation really reminds me of Karachi, and it is difficult for me not to feel a bit like a Cassandra. Utahns have little idea of what that sort of scarcity and extreme heat can do to the fabric of society. It transforms our individual and collective relationships with the natural environment, but also the relationships we humans have with each other.

Source: “A Short Interview with Rafia Zakaria,” The Believer (Substack), 24 May 2026

April Fools’ Day

And more news:

Source: Moscow Times Russian Service daily newsletter, 1 April 2024. Translated by the Russian Reader. Unfortunately, none of these headlines is a joke.

State Duma (Russia’s lower chamber of parliament) Maria Butina has proposed an option that would allow the Russian authorities to implement the previously voiced threat to execute those involved in the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack. Agenstvo news agency says she has proposed to extradite the Crocus City Hall terror attack suspects to Belarus, which maintains the death penalty.

“Unfortunately, the tragedy has become common to us, because citizens of Belarus also died there. I am quite knowledgeable about your legislation, including the death penalty, which is maintained [in Belarus]. In this case, it is the murder of two or more persons, therefore you have exactly the same right to try these people as the Russian Federation,” MP Butina was quoted as saying.

“I think that discussions are already underway among the competent authorities. If they count on the fact that, since Russia has imposed moratorium on the death penalty they will be able to escape this type of punishment, then let’s wait and see, because negotiations are underway,” Butina was cited as saying in an interview with Belarus 1 TV Channel.

Pervy Otdel (First Department) lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov told Agenstvo that “indeed, the Russian legislation allows, on the basis of an international agreement, to extradite people who committed a crime in the territory of Russia to another country.”

According to him, “if a request arises from Belarus, the agreement with it will have priority over Russian norms.”

“However, in the case of at least one accused — Alisher Kasimov, who rented out the apartment to other defendants – it is impossible, because he has Russian citizenship,” Smirnov noted.

Belarus still maintains the death penalty.

Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Belarus. At least one execution was carried out in the country in 2022. Also known as an Exceptional Measure of Punishment it has been a part of the country’s legal system since gaining independence from the Soviet Union on August 25, 1991. The current national constitution prescribes this punishment for “grave crimes.” Later laws have clarified the specific crimes for which capital punishment can be used. The death penalty can be imposed for crimes that occur against the state or against individuals. As of 2021, Belarus is the only country in Europe that continues to carry out the death penalty.

Maria Butina (born November 10, 1988) is a Russian politician, political activist, journalist, and former entrepreneur who was convicted in 2018 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia within the United States.[

While residing in Washington, D.C., Butina was arrested by the FBI in July 2018 and charged with acting as an agent of the Russian Federation “without prior notification to the Attorney General.” In December 2018, she pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia. In April 2019, a federal judge sentenced her to 18 months in prison. She served around five months at Tallahassee Federal Correctional Institution. Her 9-month pretrial prison term was counted towards her sentence. She was released and deported back to Russia in October 2019. She publicly denied being a Russian spy. In 2021, she was elected to the State Duma as a member of United Russia.

Source: “Russian MP proposes to extradite Crocus City hall terror attack suspects to Belarus,” Asia-Plus, 1 April 2024

That’s When We Reach for Our Revolvers

The trigger fingers at Fontanka.ru, a popular Petersburg news and commentary website, are getting itchy as Russia’s officials and wagging tongues publicly contemplate exiting the Council of Europe and jettisoning all the cumbersome obligations of membership, including a moratorium on the death penalty that has been in place since 1996.

Even today, January 30, 2015, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service maintains lists of volunteers obliged, if necessary, to shoot those sentenced to death. The moratorium, after all, is a temporary understanding. State Duma deputy speaker Lebedev’s comment that if Russia exits the Council of Europe, it will have the right to restore capital punishment, is a good occasion to discuss how executions technically happen. The door to secret room 2/0 has not creaked for a long time in the depths of the Crosses Prison.

[…]

In the second cross at the Crosses there is a wing that previously held prisoners sentenced to death. Now those sentenced to life imprisonment wait there to be transferred.

The wing is known as 2/1. It is harder to access than the other sections of the prison. The corridor is shorter than in the others, containing not thirty cells, but something like twenty-five. One “cell” there is exceptional. Its door looks like the other doors, but it leads into a secret basement codenamed 2/0.

I have no idea what governs departmental orders in early 2015, but under the Soviet regime the guidelines for selecting executioners had an ideological tinge. Only volunteers could execute prisoners. The guidelines stressed that volunteers would receive no perks or, God forbid, any monetary remuneration.

The takers were few, of course. Age and length of service also had to be taken into account. You could not send a young officer to do the job. Thus, when drawing up the annual lists, the warden at the Crosses would summon veterans and tell them someone had to do it.

People at the prison would guess who was on the list, but it was bad form to gab about it. The incognitos [sic] themselves signed nondisclosure agreements.

When the time came, the officer had the right to examine the case file, to peruse photo records of dismembered bodies or strangled children. It mattered that hand and heart did not tremble in doubt.

At the right time in the evening, the condemned man was visited in solitary confinement by the prison warden, the responsible prosecutor, a doctor, two attending officers and himself [sic]. The prosecutor would briefly read out the Supreme Court’s final decision and denial of clemency. The guards quickly snapped handcuffs on the criminal. Hands behind the back.

At this moment the condemned man’s behavior would become clear. Some would go into a trance and become wobbly, while others would go berserk. It was then that a towel would be thrown over their heads and tied at the back so their screams and curses would be inaudible.

“What kind of towel?” I asked, somewhat surprised, in my conversation with a prison officer.

“A white honeycomb towel, the kind issued to all the prisoners,” he replied.

And the man would be dragged to where he no longer existed [sic], to the door of “cell” 2/0.

It is [sic] already open, the steps leading down. He [?] didn’t count how many. The march ends. A dimly lit basement space with a container in it, something like a trough. The head is bent down, the command is given, a shot from a Makarov pistol, the doctor’s diagnosis.

They say that it would happen that the first bullet didn’t kill. Then it would happen again: command, shot, diagnosis.

The body would be wrapped and, accompanied by a document reading “This transport not subject to checks,” would be taken in a prison vehicle to a cemetery. In Soviet times, this would have been [Petersburg’s] Northern Cemetery. A pit had already been dug in advance, whose significance only the cemetery director knew. The body would be buried and forgotten.

In the archives, this place will forever be designated by a three-digit secret number.

It’s all humdrum. None of the myths about drawing lots or firing squads in which only man’s gun is loaded with live rounds [is true.]

“I come home once after this, and my wife is partying with guests in the kitchen. They’re listening to ABBA on a tape recorder. I take off my coat, sit down, and peck at a salad. My wife starts in on me: ‘Why are you spoiling our mood?’ What could I say to her?” an executioner recalled to me twenty-five years ago or so.

That’s right: if you destroy a dozen unknown boys in battle you’re a hero, but if you kill a maniac you’re a hangman.

That door—to cell 2/0—has not opened since the moratorium was announced in 1996.

The state is sturdily organized: the moratorium is not a dogma, but a timeout. The formal lists of firing squad members are constantly drawn up and amended depending on personnel changes at the Federal Penitentiary Service for Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Region.

So if push comes to shove, they could be ready today, January 30, by nightfall.

source: Fontanka.ru

____________

Since I’m not a very good translator, it is hard for me to convey the hard-boiled relish with which Fontanka.ru journalist Yevgeny Vyshenkov, an ex-cop, contemplates the return of capital punishment in Russia. Maybe this will do the trick instead:

Here, Alexei Didenko, deputy leader of the LDPR faction in the Russian State Duma, excitedly reports that within “24 hours” of exiting the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly all the legal mechanisms would be in place for executing “millions and millions of perverts, rapists, and pedophiles.”

Since the prison population in Russia was reported as 671,700 inmates as of December 1, 2014, one wonders where Didenko is going to find all those “millions and millions of perverts.”