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Lacy Threads and Leather Straps Bind a Business
The NY Times ^ | April 27, 2009 | ADAM B. ELLICK

Posted on 04/29/2009 5:53:20 PM PDT by forkinsocket

KARACHI, Pakistan — In Pakistan, a flogger is known only as the Taliban’s choice whip for beating those who defy their strict codes of Islam.

But deep in the nation’s commercial capital, just next door to a mosque and the offices of a radical Islamic organization, in an unmarked house two Pakistani brothers have discovered a more liberal and lucrative use for the scourge: the $3 billion fetish and bondage industry in the West.

Their mom-and-pop-style garment business, AQTH, earns more than $1 million a year manufacturing 2,000 fetish and bondage products, including the Mistress Flogger, and exporting them to the United States and Europe.

The Qadeer brothers, Adnan, 34, and Rizwan, 32, have made the business into an improbable success story in a country where bars are illegal and the poor are often bound to a lifetime in poverty.

If the bondage business seems an unlikely pursuit for two button-down, slightly awkward, decidedly deadpan lower-class Pakistanis, it is. But then, discretion has been their byword. The brothers have taken extreme measures to conceal a business that in this deeply conservative Muslim country is as risky as it is risqué.

It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: pakistan; pron
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1 posted on 04/29/2009 5:53:20 PM PDT by forkinsocket
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To: forkinsocket
I wonder how long will they in business after this story is circulated?
2 posted on 04/29/2009 5:58:46 PM PDT by GSP.FAN
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To: forkinsocket; Slings and Arrows
 

Today, they sell their products to online and brick-and-mortar shops, and to individuals via eBay. Their market research, they said, showed that 70 percent of their customers were middle- to upper-class Americans, and a majority of them Democrats. The Netherlands and Germany account for the bulk of their European sales.

(edit)

A major perk, they say, is attending international fetish shows to see how their products hold up in action.

3 posted on 04/29/2009 6:20:15 PM PDT by Stoat (Palin / Coulter 2012: A Strong America Through Unapologetic Conservatism)
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To: GSP.FAN

Or alive?

BTW, if I order direct can I get a discount?


4 posted on 04/29/2009 6:20:54 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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To: Chode; Revolting cat!
 
 

In Pakistan’s commercial capital, Karachi, a company that makes 2,000 fetish and bondage products operates next to a mosque.

 

It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for. Even the owners’ wives, and their conservative Muslim mother, have not been informed.

5 posted on 04/29/2009 6:26:17 PM PDT by Stoat (Palin / Coulter 2012: A Strong America Through Unapologetic Conservatism)
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To: a fool in paradise

KINKY PINGIE!


6 posted on 04/29/2009 6:28:06 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: forkinsocket
I couldn't find Mistress Flogger, but here's Miss Lypzy ("Asian Goddess of Pain and Humiliation")


7 posted on 04/29/2009 6:34:53 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: Revolting cat!

Re your pic: “The Bony Mistress of Little Pity”


8 posted on 04/29/2009 6:36:40 PM PDT by Pearls Before Swine (Is /sarc really necessary?)
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To: martin_fierro; Xenalyte
latex
9 posted on 04/29/2009 6:46:21 PM PDT by Stoat (Palin / Coulter 2012: A Strong America Through Unapologetic Conservatism)
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To: Revolting cat!

#9 has much better idea of what is desired in this subgroup.


10 posted on 04/29/2009 6:51:25 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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To: Stoat
It helps that the dozens of veiled and uneducated female laborers who assemble the handmade items — gag balls, lime-green corsets, thonged spanking skirts — have no idea what the items are used for.

Yeah, right.

11 posted on 04/29/2009 6:53:11 PM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: Stoat
i can think of quite a few mouths i'd love to stuff a gagball into, then send them to Mistress Roxanne's House of Pain...
12 posted on 04/29/2009 6:54:04 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - Obama is basically Jim Jones with a teleprompter)
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To: Stoat

I’d comment at length but I’m tied up at the moment...


13 posted on 04/29/2009 6:58:31 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: forkinsocket
This site used to have standards
14 posted on 04/29/2009 7:03:45 PM PDT by MilspecRob (Most people don't act stupid, they really are.)
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To: MilspecRob

Yes, now it needs someone like you to whip it in shape!


15 posted on 04/29/2009 7:15:36 PM PDT by Revolting cat! (Let us prey!)
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To: forkinsocket

My name says it all! :) (But I wouldn’t buy from these people!)


16 posted on 04/29/2009 7:19:41 PM PDT by Longhair_and_Leather (The new presidential mantra--"Obama let babies die")
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To: martin_fierro
Yeah, right.

After looking at the video it's hard to believe that the workers actually don't have a clue, but the guy assembling the leather suspension-harness seemed to really believe that it was a beach chair.  Perhaps it's a wink-wink situation where the workers won't admit to understanding what they're doing in the event that the NEW YORK TIMES VIDEO gets seen by the local 'religious police'....this would give them "plausible deniability" if it came to court.

17 posted on 04/29/2009 7:25:18 PM PDT by Stoat (Palin / Coulter 2012: A Strong America Through Unapologetic Conservatism)
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To: Stoat

What their customers put themselves through is worth than anything that ever happened at Gitmo-at least, to the detainees!


18 posted on 04/29/2009 8:32:53 PM PDT by tanuki (The only color of a leader that should matter is the color of his spine.)
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To: forkinsocket

A million dollars a year?? Heck, I’d braid whips for $1million a year! As long as nobody narrates what they’re planning to do with them.


19 posted on 04/29/2009 9:00:29 PM PDT by Ellendra (Can't starve us out, and you can't make us run...Country folks CAN survive!!! -Hank Jr.)
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To: tanuki

worth is worse-drat!


20 posted on 04/29/2009 9:19:22 PM PDT by tanuki (The only color of a leader that should matter is the color of his spine.)
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