Turkmen Tales

Let's hope this marks the final chapter in the story of Saparmurat Niyazov, the "Father of All Turkmen," who was absolute dictator of Turkmenistan for 20 years until his death in 2006.

The new ruler, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, ordered the rotating golden statue of Niyazov removed from the center of the capital, Ashgabat, to stand beside a highway near the edge of town with tacky billboards and other roadside curiosities.

The new president also restored the former calendar, which had been changed by Niyazov to name the months after himself, his mother and other family members.

A friend of mine-- an aid worker-- lived for a while in Turkmenistan several years ago, and came back with hilarious but also disturbing stories about this guy. That's when I started to notice reports in the press of his harrowing antics.

He banned ballet, gold teeth and recorded music; he ordered the construction of a lake in the middle of the desert and a ski resort on the snowless foothills of the Iranian border.

Using oil revenues, he undertook massive building projects to glorify himself, including a theme park --"The World of Turkmen Fairy Tales"--based on his country's folk tales, and made his book, a "spiritual guide" called the Ruhnama, compulsory reading for students, workers, and well... everybody.

I guess the books (and the old calendars) are now being used to heat people's homes as the country claws its way back into the 19th century.

The new administration isn't exactly all sweetness and light, though. Turkmenistan has promised to amend its Religion Law to become more liberal, but the majority Muslim population still can't leave the country for the haj to Mecca.

And on April 11, officials from the local Religious Affairs Department and the secret police, raided a Bible class held by the Greater Grace Protestant church in a private flat in the capital.

Pastor Vladimir Tolmachev told Forum 18, a human rights watch organization, he was warned that the church was not allowed to teach its own members without permission from the government's Religious Affairs Committee (even though that conflicts with its officially recognised Charter). Officials told Tolmachev further warnings could lead to the church's registration being stripped from it, rendering all its activities illegal.

The church has no building of its own and has already had to move its services ten times this year, the report said.

This is definitely not fertile soil for a prosperity-gospel church.


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Suffer the little children...

With all the discussion of child abuse at the polygamist ranch in West Texas recently, you might be thinking, "Surely they're not the only folks to mistreat their kids." And you'd be right.

In fact, people never get tired of finding novel ways to put their kids in jeopardy for what seems to be a good idea at the time.

Take the devotees of a Muslim shrine in Solapur in western India's Maharastra state. For more than 500 years they've been observing a bizarre ritual--throwing their young children off a tall building for luck and to improve their health. They believe it will make their children strong, and they say no accidents have ever happened.

(In fact, Maharastra is just teeming with good luck. The poverty rate is only 24 per cent, down from 38 per cent back in the '90s. Presumably, the impoverished didn't get dropped).

Closer to home, a Corpus Christi, Texas, judge reduced felony charges against the director of a Christian boot camp and an employee to simple assault in connection with the alleged dragging of a 15-year-old girl behind a van after she fell behind during a morning run. The 32-day boot camp for girls ages 13 to 19 includes 28 days at a facility near San Antonio, then four days at a camp in Banquete, about 10 miles west of Corpus Christi. The boot camp is run by the embarrassingly named Love Demonstrated Ministries of San Antonio.

But then, sometimes kids just need an old fashioned spanking.

It's too late for 18-year-old Ryan Schallenberger, a straight-A student who planned to blow up his South Carolina high school. He intended "to die and go to heaven and once he got there, he wanted to kill Jesus," according to police who arrested him. (Kids say the darnedest things). They discovered his journal, which lauded the Columbine killers, contained notes on more than 10 types of explosives that Schallenberger experimented with and evaluated a year ago.

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Shatner does Moses

We knew someone would step in to fill the shoes of Charleton Heston. But .... Captain Kirk?

It's too late for Passover, but you can hear William Shatner's unique vocal stylings as he reads passages from the book of Exodus and the Passover Haggadah, accompanied by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra playing music from Exodus: An Oratorio In Three Parts.

Didn't know Shatner was Jewish? All four of the Star Trek and Boston Legal star's grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. So he's got street cred for this role.


You can listen to clips from the opus here.

(Via Jewcy.com)

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Beastie: Can any good come out of Idaho?

Forget about political gaffes, missteps and the fickleness of the polls. We can all relax. The election's already decided.

Zodiac vodka has determined America's next president by comparing the astrological signs of past election winners.

(The zodiacal "signs" link people's birth dates to star "constellations" that many claim can be seen out in the country, in the desert or from the deck of a cruise ship. Good Christians are already in bed by that time, anyway, so I wouldn't know.)

FYI-- It's Obama. The company's press release [slightly suspect because it was released April 1] was triumphant:

"ZODIAC Vodka, a luxury potato vodka handcrafted and distilled in Idaho, USA, has concluded that the Leo Barack Obama, will defeat the Scorpio Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, as well as the Virgo John McCain in the general election.

"ZODIAC researched every major presidential contestant since Washington and Adams in 1789. Statistics were compiled for each of the twelve zodiac signs. The Leo/Scorpio match up in the Democratic Party heavily favors Obama. Leos have a 12-point advantage in the win percentage category, with Scorpio at 24 percent and Leo at 36 percent. Leo has never lost to a Scorpio. Scorpio, however, has lost to 11 of the 12 signs and has the greatest number of election losses, 16."

Uh, hey, watch it! ... I'm a Scorpio, that is if you don't take into account Ophiucus, in whose sign the sun actually sits on my birthday. (I've never seen that adequately explained, but never mind).

Zodiac’s methodology accurately predicted in January that John McCain would be the Republican nominee, so there you have it.

All the more reason for us to get back to calculating more important things, like the spiritual Sons of Belial lurking behind the Number of the Beast.

Come to think of it, Idaho is the last place anyone would think of finding the Antichrist. Or vodka, for that matter.

Hmm.

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Gird up your loins with the 'Carb-Load Seder'

Jewish marathon runners are in a quandary. This year, Passover begins just two days before the Boston Marathon April 21. The holiday's strict dietary rules mean Jewish runners can't eat bread and pasta, the normal staples in the days before the big race.

For Jonah Pesner, the answer is matzoh, the unleavened bread used in the Passover ceremony. Besides matzoh, Pesner plans to pound down foods such as potatoes during a rare "carb-load seder" the night before the race.

The "carb-load seder" might strike some as strange, but it sort of fits with the historical circumstances of the Exodus. The Jews had to high-tail it out of Egypt into the desert carrying all their stuff. Things went well until they hit "the wall," which for marathoners occurs about 20 miles into the race when the carbs run out, glycogen runs low, and the body starts burning fat instead.

For the Israelites, "hitting the wall" meant running into the Red Sea with Pharoah's chariots closing in fast. Something had to give. For Moses & Co. it took a miracle. For some of the Jewish marathoners, it simply means breaking the religious restrictions. One Jewish runner says he'll eat some oatmeal and maybe a bagel on race day.

"It's not like I've been perfect in my religious beliefs. I'm beyond that," he said.

The question he needs to ask is: What would Charleton Heston do?


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Et ne nos inducas in sputum

This week's religious "people person" award will have to go to Rev. Dr. Tom Ambrose, 61, of St. Mary and St. Michael Church in Trumpington, England. The vicar was accused of spitting on his parishioners and exhibiting "arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty behavior."

The vicar denies the spitting part. "I do not spit and I never swear," he insists.

Apparently, Rev. Ambrose upset older parishioners by using slide shows instead of sermons and using so much incense in church that some worshippers felt sick. He was relieved of his post by his bishop after a tribunal investigated the charges.

As the good vicar should have realized, slide shows are just the first step on a slippery slope toward flash animations, youtube videos and God knows what else. Glad they caught it so early.

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Damn, dirty apes!

In memory of Charleton Heston's passing, I'd like to reprise a guest column contributed by Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, that ran last summer.

"There is no contradiction between faith and science... true science. I think the sacred scrolls are clear on this. It may be more true now than ever. Man is a menace. A walking pestilence."

Dr. Zaius' entire article "Intelligent Design, Live Earth and the Shaping of Simian Behavior" can be read here.


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