[A] MR: Nuggan and Turkmenbashi
Edmund R. Schluessel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3607467.stm.
For those of you that haven't been following it, Niazov, who likes to
be called Turkmenbashi, runs Turkmenistan with a reasonably iron fist
and has imposed a number of somewhat jarring rules on his country,
including:
- Naming a month after himself, and another month after his mother
- Building a giant gold statue of himself which turns to face the sun
- Creating a national holiday celebrating melons
- Forbidding long hair or beards
- Requiring braided hair for schoolgirls
- Redefining adolescence to end at age 27
And I'm just wondering if this might be a possible influence on some
of the Abominations in MR.
Edmund
Terry Pratchett
Schluessel <eschl...@yahoo.com> writes
Hmm. The melons one was last August, when MR was already out in proof,
and some are more recent than that...
--
Terry Pratchett
Eric Jarvis
though it is proof that no matter how imaginatively extreme the satire,
there's some bozo somewhere who is eventually going to do it for real
Hastings Banda did the banning long hair and beards thing in Malawi long
ago...it seems to be a regular hobby horse of insane dictators...which
makes one wonder if having long hair or a beard makes one immune from
megalomania...at one point when I was in Zambia the possibility of an
excursion to Malawi was discussed and it was decided that whilst it was
entirely possible that I might get across the border if I had a make over
and a new wardrobe, there remained the likelihood that I might speak
whilst I was there so on the whole it was probably best not to risk it :)
--
eric - afprelationships in headers
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
all these years I've waited for the revolution
and all we end up getting is spin
Speaker-to-Customers
(snip)
> Hastings Banda did the banning long hair and beards thing in Malawi
> long ago...it seems to be a regular hobby horse of insane
> dictators...which makes one wonder if having long hair or a beard
> makes one immune from megalomania...at one point when I was in Zambia
> the possibility of an excursion to Malawi was discussed and it was
> decided that whilst it was entirely possible that I might get across
> the border if I had a make over and a new wardrobe, there remained
> the likelihood that I might speak whilst I was there so on the whole
> it was probably best not to risk it :)
His Excellency the Life President Ngwazi Dr Kamuzu H. Banda (you could go to
jail for abbreviating the title, and especially for calling him 'Hastings')
used to be the Consultant specialising in Venereal Disease at South Shields
Infirmary. Which might be what gave him his paranoia about the decadence of
the West. Although why it made him lay down strict regulations about hair
length, the minimum length for men's shorts, etc. is hard to explain. I
remember when he banned denim. Why was a particular type of cloth evil?
Nugganism rules, not OK.
I also remember when he ordered the massacre of the Jehovah's Witnesses;
when he expelled the Asians because one of the guests at an Asian wedding in
Lilongwe switched the radio over to a music channel during a broadcast of
one of his speeches; and when he made it into a list of the world's fifty
richest men the same week as Malawi was listed by the UN as the third
poorest country on Earth.
He allowed free and open elections to Parliament. Except that all
candidates had to be approved by the President. We had a saying; "One man,
one vote, one candidate".
We had another saying that all the rulers in Africa came from the same
tribe; the WaBenzi. The WaBenzi might be black, or white, or brown; but
they could be recognised by their white Mercedes Benz limousines and their
habit of driving in convoys, with lesser mortals forced to pull off the road
to clear their path.
There were honourable exceptions, e.g. Thomas Sankara, Nelson Mandela,
Samora Machel; but quite a few African presidents were total shits. Banda
was right up there in the Premier League of bastards, and I have celebrated
few things in my life as enthusiastically as I celebrated news of his death.
--
Paul Speaker-to-Customers
"You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire,
Once the flame begins to catch, the wind will blow it higher..."
Daibhid Ceannaideach
>From: Eric Jarvis w...@ericjarvis.co.uk
>Date: 11/04/2004 18:39 GMT Daylight Time
>Message-id: <MPG.1ae393369...@news.individual.net>
>
>Terry Pratchett tprat...@unseen.demon.co.uk wrote:
>> In message <r22e70l1s076q7dr2...@4ax.com>, Edmund R.
>> Schluessel <eschl...@yahoo.com> writes
>> >Just happened to see
>> >http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3607467.stm.
>> >
>> >For those of you that haven't been following it, Niazov, who likes to
>> >be called Turkmenbashi, runs Turkmenistan with a reasonably iron fist
>> >and has imposed a number of somewhat jarring rules on his country,
>> >including:
>> >
>> >- Naming a month after himself, and another month after his mother
The Ceasars did that.
>> >- Building a giant gold statue of himself which turns to face the sun
>> >- Creating a national holiday celebrating melons
>> >- Forbidding long hair or beards
>> >- Requiring braided hair for schoolgirls
>> >- Redefining adolescence to end at age 27
>> >
>> >And I'm just wondering if this might be a possible influence on some
>> >of the Abominations in MR.
>>
>> Hmm. The melons one was last August, when MR was already out in proof,
>> and some are more recent than that...
Anyway, Nugganite dictats seem to pretty much focussed on banning things. I'm
sure melons would have been on the list somewhere.
>though it is proof that no matter how imaginatively extreme the satire,
>there's some bozo somewhere who is eventually going to do it for real
>
>Hastings Banda did the banning long hair and beards thing in Malawi long
>ago...it seems to be a regular hobby horse of insane dictators...which
>makes one wonder if having long hair or a beard makes one immune from
>megalomania...
Bin Laden suggests otherwise.
--
Dave
The Official Absentee of EU Skiffeysoc
http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/sesoc
Four-and-twenty Lib Dems came down from Inverness,
And when the vote was counted there were four-and-twenty less.
-Rory Bremner, 7/3/04
Eric Jarvis
>
> There were honourable exceptions, e.g. Thomas Sankara, Nelson Mandela,
> Samora Machel; but quite a few African presidents were total shits. Banda
> was right up there in the Premier League of bastards, and I have celebrated
> few things in my life as enthusiastically as I celebrated news of his death.
>
of course it should be noted that Banda was "our premier league bastard"
and therefore never actually committed human rights abuses, merely the
sort of quaint eccentricities that are easily forgiven so long as it
doesn't interfere with anyone else's "strategic interests"...not that it
actually makes any difference to the victims, but apparently it seems to
be very important somehow
erm, yes...it was probably a good idea that I didn't actually attempt to
go to Malawi :)
--
eric - afprelationships in headers
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
we don't need to make things idiot-proof,
we need to make idiots thing-proof
Edmund R. Schluessel
So maybe he reads you. *shrug* Causality's an artificial constraint
anyway.
Edmund