His Excellency, the Almighty, the All-Knowing, the Glorious, the Peerless, the Sublime President Sapurmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan appears to have started his own blog, The Blogmenbashi. Read, O Mortals, and Imbibe the Wisdom! Study the Ruhnama and All will be Revealed!
(We still need him, We still feed him, Now he’s sixty-four–as of February 19.)
Over the transom via The Ventilator
Filed under Central Asia
The promising new blog SiberianLight notes a poignant pair of anniversaries on 23 February 2004:
Today is the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the entire Chechen nation. Ingushetians were also deported, along with the populations of 10 other nations (approximately 1.4 million people) thought to be enemies of the state during World War II. Their exile lasted for more than ten years until Khruschev allowed them to return home after Stalin’s death….
Today is also Motherland Defender’s Day (previously known as Army Day), dedicated to the memories of those who have fought for the Soviet and Russian armies, and their heroic efforts defending the Motherland. Spare a thought for those Chechens who continued to fight in the Soviet Army even after the deportation of their families …
Read the whole blogpost and check out a bright outlier in the far north.
Filed under USSR
The kids at school in Kuwi were hungry and ELCONG Sunday was coming up so Friday Mr. & Mrs. S. & last daughter & I paddled over to pay a visit. ELCONG Sande commemorates the coming of the Gutnius to New Guinea, i.e., the founding of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of [Papua] New Guinea. The Gutnius was first brought to the area by Johann Flierl [who could hardly have had a more unpronounceable name in an area where few of the local languages distinguish either /f/ from /p/ or /r/ from /l/], a great huge bearded German from Neuendettelsau [in Bavaria] who established himself at Finschhafen [“Fints” at the eastern end of the Huon Peninsula] in 1886 and gradually, as his numbers increased, established mission stations at Salamaua (Kela), Lababia and Kuwi (later relocated to Siboma) among other places. Fortunately they had already begun work in Yabem or they would have had to work in Kela, whose speakers inhabit Kela, Lababia and Kuwi. [Though fairly closely related to Jabêm and Bukawa, Kela has much more severely eroded morphology and is one of the few local languages to phonemically distinguish nasal from oral vowels.]
Three men told the stories of how the Gutnius came to Kuwi, Siboma & Paiawa [whose language is non-Austronesian, thus not related to the other local languages in the Jabêm Circuit]. But they told it in reverse chronological order that briefly threatened to be set aright. The Paiawa guy, who is a relative of the kaunsil’s, acted out part of the story about a guy who planted taro according to the Gutnius (not accompanied by traditional magic) and, not impressed with the lack of immediate results (à la Jack and the Beanstalk I guess), angrily threw the ‘black mission[ary]’s’ church bell into the sea. The Paiawa man had apparently been around to hear the story from people who witnessed the first encounter themselves. The Kuwi & Siboma storytellers were less histrionic and were repeating stories that had been told to them. The Kuwi man told how the Kuwi [people] were slow to accept the mission; they mostly ignored it so it didn’t take root for some time. Also their local convert and lay missionary had a shakey grasp on Yabem which the storyteller illustrated by giving his pronunciation of Apômtau as [abomdou]. The Siboma guy got a chance to mention the mission school that used to be at Siboma. Evidently it was after mission contact that they moved from the old village in the next cove to the present site, which is a good place but not so easily defensible [from the sea].
The school kids enacted the arrival of Flierl in a decorated canoe. The guy playing Fl. dressed in white shirt & trousers, white plastic helmet and wore a long beard (actually a Standard 6 Siboma boy). All sang a singsing taught them by the ‘meri tisa’ [‘woman teacher’] we usually stay with when we visit Kuwi. She accompanied them on a hand drum with lizard skin top tuned by rocks or something [actually beeswax] fastened strategically on the playing surface. [The kaunsil was especially supportive and soliticitous toward the meri tisa, who was also an outsider, as he had been during his own long years as a schoolteacher.]
Some young folks from Kuwi acted out the story of the Good Samaritan dressed in modern conception of Biblical garb.
The service, stories and plays (called ‘piksa’ by older pidgin speakers and so written in the program) were all in Tok Pisin except for the Yabem songs. The commemoration service had locally composed Yabem songs, the regular service had translations of German. [For the difference, see Morobe Field Diary, June 1976: Naive Ethnomusicology.]
A special collection was taken up for ELCONG Sande by each village beforehand. The aim was one Kina from each Kristen memba. Siboma came up with K59, Paiawa with K41, Buso with K44, and Kuwi I think had K49 with the schoolteachers contributing K7. I suspect those numbers tell more about the cash income of the various villages [i.e., how many relatives they have working elsewhere] than about the number of Kristen members or their fervor.
An afterchurch circuit meeting took up the afternoon. It was conducted in Tok Pisin and Yabem in about equal portions. I’ve gotten so I can hear a number of things in Yabem now. It’s nearly as easy as Siboma, especially since I got a little mimeo on some grammar basics of Yabem [the last time I was in Lae].
Filed under Papua New Guinea
Anyone interested in Southeast Asia who wants to do some online sightseeing will enjoy browsing through the huge picture archive of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i. Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam are particularly well represented, but there are also pictures from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
The BBC reports that “Tonga’s former court jester has agreed to pay $1m to settle a legal dispute with the Pacific state, lawyers for the ex-jester have told AFP news agency.”
Court jesters are a very rare breed these days….
The island nation has for almost two years accused the king’s former jester – American national Jesse Bogdonoff – of mismanaging a $26m trust fund. Tonga alleged Mr Bogdonoff invested unwisely and took inflated commissions. But they have now come to an out of court settlement under which neither side has to admit any liability….
The row centred around Tonga’s claim that Mr Bogdonoff, who says he is the world’s only court jester, cheated King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV and his government out of the money the country made from selling citizenship to Hong Kong Chinese people ahead of the 1997 handover of the former British colony to Chinese rule….
The scandal is said to have caused great anguish for Tonga’s 85-year-old King, who reigns over 100,000 people across 170 coral islands in the South Pacific.
“It’s good to be the king,” quoth the jester Mel Brooks, but it’s no joke for those who have to endure the whimsical rule of doddering despots and their court favorites.
Head Heeb has been tracking other recent developments in the sad decline of this anachronistic kingdom; and Peter Wagner’s interview with Tongan Prince Ulukalala Lavaka Ata in the Pacific Islands Report offers another perspective on current political tensions among Tongans.
Filed under Polynesia
Yesterday was rainy so I decided to accompany the fishermen. My biking poncho kept me warm and dry for the most part and the clouds kept the sun off. But the wind and rain made it a lousy day for fishing. In the afternoon it cleared up some and, while I stayed aboard the [M.V.] Sago, some people came up with respectable catches. One fellow had a big fish (probably 5 lbs) bitten off at the gills by a shark as he was pulling it up. Another fellow caught a small shark and I saw another small one in the water (small = 2-3′). I had no desire to swim in those waters.
We fished around the islands offshore where the water is deep and most of the catch was (I think) red snapper (or red emperor] or various snappers [or sea perch, Lutjanus spp.] with sea bass [or rock cod, Epinephelus spp.] (called ‘big mouth’ in Tok Pisin) making up most of the remainder. The fishermen are paid 10 toea [= 0.10 K(ina)] a pound; the Sago sells them in town for 30 toea a pound and the retailer sells the fish (fresh or frozen depending on how long after the boat gets in you buy it) for 75 toea/lb. Makes American dairy marketing look pretty decent. The boat’s crew cleans and weighs the fish and must be paid and then there’s the gasoline and boat upkeep. Some men worked all day yesterday for 40 toea. The maximum earned was about K1.40 and the minimum 0 toea. Evidently a good day’s fishing would yield about K1.00 in cash per person. So a good steady fisherman (which few are) could earn about K4-5/wk at most.
Today I stayed here because it looked to be too sunny early this morning when all went out to the island where many left their canoes yesterday. And sure enough it’s a scorcher. Good for airing out the things left in my room when I was stuck in Lae.
Since the kaunsil had a lousy day fishing I suspected he might break open the case of beer I brought him last nite and he did and he & I and his son drank about a 6 pack, each getting pleasantly tipsy and storytelling. A wilder party was going on kitty-cornered from us: singing, laughing, music inside and a lot of beer bottles lying on the beach later. We put our beer on the ice in the Sago first so it was quite good.
I’ve gotten fascinated by the little Fishes of Hawaii book that I brought with me (by Gar Goodson). Apparently a large number of fish [especially wrasse and parrotfish] go thru color & sex changes that at first had scientists fooled into giving them 360 species names (in parrotfishes for instance) when there were no more than 80 or so going through their changes.
Filed under Papua New Guinea
The Argus links to a poignant story on IWPR about Soviet soldiers who remained behind in Afghanistan.
On February 15, 1989, General Boris Gromov was officially the last Soviet soldier to stand on Afghan soil before he crossed the Termez bridge into the USSR, drawing a close to the long and brutal campaign that Russian politicians were later to call “a tragic mistake”.
But Gennady, and more like him, were still there. As Russians, Ukrainians and the rest began shutting off from the Afghan war as a nightmare best forgotten, those who were left behind faded from memory, too.
Many would find it hard to go back – some were deserters, while others converted to Islam after being captured and held by the mujahedin. In the interim, the Soviet Union they had known collapsed into 15 different countries.
A few achieved some fame – notably the two Russian citizens known as Mohammadi and Islamuddin who served as bodyguards to the famous commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. As late as 1996, they were rumoured to be at the front line, fighting with Massoud’s Northern Alliance against the Taleban.
Since then the two men are said to have left Afghanistan, going back home to Russia. But others remain.
During a recent trip to Kunduz, a taxi driver tipped me off about someone called Ahmad, a former Soviet soldier now living as an Afghan.
This was far more than a rumour – I was given the address of the building where he rents a small room with his family.
Only half an hour later, I was sitting in a local store talking to a man in the typical flat “pakol” hat, with all the mannerisms and dialects of a native Afghan – but still looking like a Russian.
He looked so intimidating that I didn’t dare speak to him in Russian, switching over only after an initial conversation in Dari.
When I asked him what name his parents had given him, his face remained immobile as he whispered an Islamic invocation.
But after a long conversation in the dark, mud-walled room, Ahmad relaxed, and gradually revealed some of the characteristics of the young man he had once been – Private Alexander Levenets. The incongruousness of the situation was accentuated by the music he put on – Alexander Rosenbaum’s Soviet-era ballads of army life.
The 19-year-old Alexander, from the Ukrainian village of Melovadka, joined the Soviet army in April 1983. He thought his troubles were over, that he had a ticket out of a hard life of providing for his blind widowed mother and an elder brother with diabetes.
At first army life was good, as his unit was transferred around the USSR and eventually deployed at an airbase in Kunduz.
But things took a turn for the worse as – like many Soviet conscripts – he was subjected to beatings and other forms of humiliation by other, more senior soldiers in his unit. Eventually he could bear it no longer, and deserted.
One cold October night in 1984, Alexander fled into the night. His life was saved by a kindly old Afghan, who took pity on him and allowed him to hide at his house.
The man introduced the deserter to some mujahedin, who fortunately for him belonged to one of the more moderate factions. They listened sympathetically to his story, and treated him with a respect he had not had from his countrymen.
“I stayed in the group,” he said. “And after a month, I accepted Islam.”
So Alexander became Ahmad, serving under guerrilla commander Omir Ghulam – but not expected to take up arms against the army he had once served in. The Afghans’ acceptance of him grew into respect as he became a more observant Muslim than most of them.
Filed under Afghanistan, military
I grew up among both missionaries and heathens, and still retain what I hope is a healthy respect for both camps, so long as the methods of the missionaries are not coercive and (not or) the reaction of the heathens is not violent. I’m interested in different religious (and irreligious) perspectives, so long as they are reasonable and (not or) tolerant of alternative views. (I don’t regard “antireligious” as a synonym for either “tolerant” or “enlightened.”) In that spirit, I’d like to recommend for those with religious interests a fairly new Mormon group blog Times and Seasons. I have no interest in adhering to Mormonism or (substitute your religion here) ________, but I find that Mormon perspectives (mea culpa: I first wrote “a Mormon perspective”) sometimes challenge my facile assumptions about such issues as legislating morality, or about how much religion shapes political views, or about who qualifies to be counted as a minority or as part of a diaspora, and so forth. Here’s a sample of some of the issues discussed on Times and Seasons, “quite possibly the most post-liberal, yet acclaimed, onymous Mormon group blog in history.” The comment sections are generally lively and civil.
Perhaps nothing outwardly sets Mormons apart from the rest of society more than our adherence to the Word of Wisdom. And for insiders, as someone once said on this site, the Word of Wisdom just *feels* important. I’m far more likely to offend the Sabbath day, forget a fast, skip hometeaching, use inappropriate language, break the speed limit, or commit dozens of other sins of omission and commission than I am to join my friends sipping tea at a Chinese restaurant….
–The WoW replaced polygamy as something that sets us apart and makes us a peculiar people. Feeling like an outsider is, in some ways, integral to Mormon culture, and WoW adherence fosters this feeling.
As I drove home from work today, I heard an announcement for an upcoming program on Wisconsin Public Radio dealing with the topic of contentment. Implicit in the announcement was an assumption that contentment is a worthy life goal. This caught me off guard. Honestly, it has never occurred to me to pursue contentment. I’m not sure I even know what it means.
Legislative Judgments of Morality
Randy Barnett has an interesting post up at the Volokh Conspiracy, giving a persuasive argument about why legislative judgments of morality are not a particularly good basis for legal punishments or restrictions. Barnett makes the very interesting initial assertion that: “A legislative judgment of ‘immorality’ means nothing more than that a majority of the legislature disapproves of this conduct.”
It suddenly occured to me last night that our group’s marital homogeneity is rather striking. Consider: We have eight bloggers; we live in different locations; we come from different professions; we have different political beliefs; we find a lot to differ on.
We are all married and all have children…. This makes us unusual in the world. At work, school, or social groups, there is often a sizable single contingent. Many people are happy to avoid marriage altogether, and even married colleagues are unlikely to begin having children very soon.
This is a photograph of George Q. Cannon, then First Counselor in the First Presidency to John Taylor, and other polygamists taken while Cannon was incarcerated for unlawful cohabitation (polygamy) during the 1880s….
Comment: “Group photos of men incarcerated for polygamy were extremely common, and were displayed as a symbol of loyalty to the Gospel. Interestingly, although there were women incarcerated as part of the anti-polygamy raids, I have never seen any photos of them. The few who were imprisoned were jailed for either contempt of court (refusal to testify against fellow Saints) or fornication. The charge of fornication, in the 19th century, was most often used to punish prostitutes. The few inditements against polygamist women were self-conscious attempts by federal officials to brand Mormon women as whores. This (along with the relative rarity of such cases) may account for the lack of photographs.”
Resenting Our Baptism of Your Dead
Comment: “I had exactly this discussion …. Everyone seemed satisfied that their people (everyone there was Jewish or married to a Jew, or me) would be able to reject the baptisms for themselves. Plus, one woman noted, it was a great way to boost your membership numbers. I said yeah, but it doesn’t help your attendance percentages.”
I’d like to pay tribute here to the multitude of Iranian bloggers (aka Weblogestan) many of whom will be blogging their phony elections instead of voting on February 20, thanks in no small measure to pioneer and blogfather Hossein Derakhshan (aka Hoder), born in Tehran, but resident in Toronto since December 2000.
And I’d like to pay equal tribute to the smaller but growing numbers of Iraqi bloggers, pioneered by Salam Pax before the invasion and many blogfathered by Zeyad afterwards, who have been recording the successes and failures of both the occupation and the international media.
Here’s a sense of how revolutionary the message of the new medium has become in Iran, from Persianblogger‘s recent essay about Weblogestan:
The final example I will discuss is Hossein Derakhshan, the person who sparked off the vulgarity debate in the first place with his piece about the inherent contradictions between Islam and human rights. The work of Derakhshan, or Hoder, is a prime example of defiance against the cultural hegemony of the Iranian intellectual class. He can even be seen as trying to establish a new kind of cultural hegemony in the blogosphere; one that values self-expression, individualism, and even hedonism against any kind of traditional authority [15] . As far as language is concerned, Hoder says his blog is the “scratchpad of my mind” (2003b) and his language “is consciously messy” (2003a). He prefers to spend his time writing a new entry instead of going back over what he has already written to correct possible grammatical or spelling mistakes (ibid). Additionally, he has no qualms about coining new terms (like donbaalak for trackback, and linkdooni for linkdump – both blog-related terms) without feeling any need to consult a linguistic authority, and is especially good at putting carnivalesque twists on familiar expressions, like “aytiollaahi” [16] , which combines “IT” (information technology) and “hezbollaahi” and refers mockingly to religious conservative technocrats, and “fakhr-ol internet hazrateh muvebel taaip (saad)” [17] , which both expresses extreme devotion for MovableType (a prominent blogging tool) and pokes fun at the Prophet Muhammad (or his devotees at least) by making use of a popular phrase that is used to praise him. Interestingly enough, Hoder does not share the same attitude towards the English language as he does towards Persian. Being an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, he has bemoaned several times the difficulties of writing essays in English, and he once linked to an online resource with guidelines on writing well in English, which he described as “very useful”. Hoder’s approach to cultural hegemony, then, is highly differentiated between Persian and English speech communities: whereas he directly assaults authority in the former, he feels a need to assimilate in the latter.
UPDATE: Click here for English translations of live election reports from Persian blogs.
Filed under Iran
Here’s a tribute to the farthest outlier of all, the Mars Rover Blog. Sample transmissions:
Filed under blogging
