Announcement: Moved to Wordpress

I've now moved my blog to Wordpress. I thought it would be better since this type of blog could use multiple pages. My new url is here.

An Invasion of Iran?

Iran has been in the news much recently; from its nuclear program, to its arming of militants in Iraq, and of course, recently with the capturing of 15 British sailors and then releasing them back to Britain. What also has been in the news is a possible invasion of Iran by the United States. This has especially been worrying to many because of the increased rhetoric of the Bush administration against Iran; much of the rhetoric and maneuvering towards Iran looks eerily similar to the position the United States took against Iraq in the last quarter of 2002. But is an invasion of Iran plausible, especially in today's political climate?

First, we should look at the country itself. Iran has a population of over 68-and-a-half million people with a land mass of 1.636 million sq. km. (1) Iraq only has a population of 26.783 million and a land mass of 432,162 sq. km. (2)

The U.S. military is already having enough trouble as it is in its occupation of Iraq and many military experts and ex-generals are critical of the current quagmire in Iraq saying that it is taxing the Army and stretching U.S. forces too thin. The downgrading of the famed 82nd Airborne is just one example of this.

Yet, despite all of this why would some in the Pentagon and the White House want to invade Iran, despite the fact that Iran's meddling in the resistance forces in Iraq is likely minimal at this time? Well, for one some neo-cons (the neo-con philosophy has been widely discredited in conservative foreign policy circles in Washington) think that one of the main factors for lack of success in Iraq is because of the "meddling" from Iran. Yet even if this was the case (more likely true on a smaller scale than a larger scale) invading Iran would make the situation in Iraq, and the Middle East, worse of the United States, not better. And many of the imperial wishes of the U.S. would go up in smoke. Another reason could be the fact that many within the Bush administration want to re-rally the American public with more drumbeats of war, hoping that the public would rally behind the White House as they did post-9-11 and during the first phases of the Iraq War. Yet this is also likely to backfire on them because of the recent mid-term elections (with even more loses likely in 2008, unless the Democrats overstretch their mandate from the voters) and the increased public antagonism against the Bush administration and against the Iraq War.

With these factors it may be the case that the wishes to go to war against Iran are just that, wishes, and not a reality. It could have been possible that if the Republicans managed to hold the House and Senate that there could have been an invasion of Iran (all though with the over stretching of American resources the invasion would have probably been quite weak), but this seems no longer possible. If anything we might see a small air war and special forces actions in Iran as we saw in Cambodia and Laos yet that too is subject to public criticism as well as a backlash by Congress.

With all of this it seems that an invasion, while still possible, might not come into fruition anytime soon.

Notes

1. CIA World Factbook: Iran.
2. Ibid: Iraq.

Image From:
Zmag

Faith and Scholarship

I recently read a great piece in the Biblical Archeology Review (a journal I subscribe to) on four scholars, two who lost their religious faith through scholarship and two who kept it. The author interviews them and asks them questions on their faith and loss of faith.

The article opens up with:

Several media stories recently reported that Bart Ehrman, a leading expert on the apocryphal gospels and one of BAS’s most popular lecturers, had lost his faith as a result of his scholarly research. This raised a question for us that is not often talked about, but seemed well worth a discussion: What effect does scholarship have on faith? We asked Bart to join three other scholars to talk about this: James F. Strange, a leading archaeologist and Baptist minister; Lawrence H. Schiffman, a prominent Dead Sea Scroll scholar and Orthodox Jew; and William G. Dever, one of America’s best-known and most widely quoted archaeologists, who had been an evangelical preacher, then lost his faith, then became a Reform Jew and now says he’s a non-believer.

Here are some highlights from the interviews:

Ehrman: First, I lost my fundamentalist faith because of my scholarship. Like Bill Dever, I have a fundamentalist background. I had a very high view of Scripture as the inerrant word of God, no mistakes of any kind—geographical or historical. No contradictions. Inviolate.

...I started finding contradictions and finding other discrepancies and started finding problems with the Bible. What that ended up doing for me was showing me that the basis of my faith, which at that time was the Bible, was problematic.

...

Theodicy is the question of how God can be righteous, given the amount of suffering in the world. The issue as it’s usually put today is that if God is all-powerful and is able to prevent suffering, and is all-loving so that he wants to prevent suffering, why is there suffering? This problem isn’t ever expressed that way in the Bible, but Biblical authors do deal with the problem by asking: Why does the people of God suffer?

...I decided that I couldn’t believe in a God who was in any way intervening in this world, given the state of things. So that’s why I ended up losing my faith.

...

Strange: ...I’m still a Baptist minister. I don’t have a pulpit. The only thing I do every now and then is a wedding for someone—or a funeral. Maybe now it’s more funerals. [Laughs] I bury more than I marry.

But to answer you more directly, I just don’t see the connection. My faith is not based upon anything like a propositional argument. When I indulge myself in all this scientific research and explication, I’m not doing anything about faith.

...

My faith is based on my own experience—a good old Protestant principle.

...

I love the existentialist philosophers. I love to read them, not because they’re giving me any testable facts. It’s because it’s like reading a really good poet. It does something to you that propositional truth never does.

...

Propositional truth is like: There is a loving God that intervenes upon the earth. That’s a proposition. It’s testable or it’s not. If it’s not testable, then you can’t falsify it; you can’t know if it’s true or not. If it really is testable, then the way you test it is to start checking out a list of experiences people have—and suffering is a prime one human beings have in common. So you end up saying, I’ve tested the hypothesis and it is now wanting. Suffering tends to disconfirm the hypothesis.

Shanks: You say your faith is not based on this proposition?

Strange: That’s correct.

Shanks: What is it based on?

Strange: Based on my own experience with God. For a lot of people, this makes me sort of a mystic in a cave or something. But I think it’s eminently practical and out there.

...

Shanks: Would you say that your scholarship, then, has had really no effect on your faith?

Strange: Virtually none. I mean I have a wonderful intellectual time with my scholarship. I get the same existentialist thrill out of touching the dirt when I’m excavating as I do holding my wife’s hand.

...

I grew up in east Texas, where the choices were you believed in the Bible literally or you didn’t believe in the Bible literally. That was it. I didn’t. So it’s my own experience with God that tipped me over on the other side. My best analogy is falling in love.

...

Ehrman: It seems to me that Christianity—Christian faith—has always been grounded in certain historical claims, for example, about Jesus. One thing that scholarship did for me: It led me to question historical claims that Christians have made about Jesus.

...

If Jesus hadn’t been crucified, if he grew up to be an old man and died and was buried in a family plot outside of Nazareth, then for me, when I was a Christian, that would’ve destroyed my faith.

In other words, the faith is rooted in certain historical claims. As historical claims, they can be shown as either probable or improbable. And I got to a point where the historical claims about Jesus seemed implausible, especially the resurrection.

...

Schiffman: One of the principles of the Jewish faith is not believing in Jesus. [Laughter] But, like Bart, I of course believe that he lived, preached and was crucified by the Romans.

From a Jewish point of view, these kinds of problems aren’t problems. First of all, the Bible was never taken literally in Judaism. It doesn’t mean that it’s not historical, but it is not taken literally in the Protestant sense. It’s not an issue in Judaism. Admittedly there is a literalist strain in a minority of medieval Jewish thinkers and a minority—maybe a growing minority—in modern Judaism, but it’s not classical Judaism. The Talmud doesn’t take the Bible literally in the Protestant sense.

...

I heard a recent lecture by a rabbi who is becoming a medical doctor. He talked about the problem of creation. And he said, well, evolution is obviously true. What do I do about it if evolution is obviously true? He said that we learn from Nachmanides that nothing in the Bible about creation is intended literally. What’s important to me is that I have the experience of God as the creator.

Let's take the problem of evil...We talk about the debate in Job and the various approaches explored there. We see the continuation of these debates in Midrash. But we know that we can’t explain evil, especially after the Holocaust. Any person who says that he can give an explanation for the Holocaust is crazy. So the bottom line is that we all go along living with the fact that this horrible thing happened and we can’t explain it. Judaism doesn’t claim that the individual will get all the answers to everything.

...

Dever: Well, my father was a fire-breathing fundamentalist. I grew up hearing him preach in tent meetings in the hills of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. He had a bigger voice than I do. I was ordained a minister at 17, put myself through undergraduate school and on through divinity school, through Harvard, then a congregation. I have 13 years’ experience as a parish minister and two theological degrees. For me, it was this typical Protestant conundrum: It’s all true or none of it is true. My sainted mother once said to me, If I can’t believe that the whale swallowed Jonah, I can’t believe any of it.

...

Living in the Holy Land, I became extremely cynical about religion. I began to think, more or less, maybe like all of you, that I had no talent for religion, that faith might be a matter of temperament as well as training. I never had a pious bone in my body. And I realized I was never really a believer, but it just took me 40 years to figure out that it was no longer meaningful. That’s when I converted to Judaism. [Laughs] I did it precisely because you don’t have to be religious to be a Jew. And I’m perfectly comfortable where I am.

...

Schiffman: You’ve got to decide: Do I believe there is a God? Do I believe that God communicated some kind of way of life to someone that became Judaism?

Dever: I think Judaism is about practices rather than a correct theology.

Strange: I think precisely that [about Judaism]. Christian tradition, on the other hand, made a mistake because we intellectualized it so much that Christian experience got submerged. Theology was bereft of any kind of experience.

...

Schiffman: But I think modern Judaism goes too far with the notion that you don’t have to believe anything to be Jewish. You don’t in the sense that you’re part of the community even if you don’t believe. But the question is, doesn’t Judaism really have in mind that a person will have certain types of faith commitments that are then acted out in certain ways?

Shanks: Larry, do you believe in God?

Schiffman: Yes.

...

I believe in a personal God, but I’m conditioned by the philosophical approach of Maimonides...I can say there’s a lot that I don’t know.

An Orthodox Jew can believe whatever he wants and be part of the community, but Orthodox Judaism assumes that a person does believe that there really is a God. There is a force that cannot physically be accounted for. There is a force, even if we don’t know how to present what it is in words. Somehow or other God reveals himself or his will to humanity. This revelation and its experience constitute in some mystical way, if not in a physical way, the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings. Otherwise, you could be a Jew...

Ehrman: It’s very interesting, because two of us have remained within our religious traditions and two of us have left our religious traditions. Bill and I have both left our original traditions. But there’s a difference between Bill and me. Bill adopted another tradition. It seems to me that, as somebody who has left his tradition, I have to decide if I’m going to believe something and what it is I’m going to believe. And even if that isn’t expressed propositionally, there still have to be reasons. Once one leaves one’s tradition, it isn’t an automatic move for me to go from Christianity to Judaism. There are ­hundreds of religions in the world. Why would I choose one over the other?

...

Schiffman: I don’t believe in pluralism. I believe in toleration and mutual respect. But I do believe that certain things are ultimately true or untrue. I believe that my religion is more correct than some other people’s religion. But I’m the first to admit that many other people’s religions make them better people and that many things taught in their religions are things that I agree with. We share a lot in common.

...

Ehrman: Larry thinks that at the end of the day you have to believe in God. And then your original question about “What kind of attributes does God have?” matters. Just believing in God is for me an amorphous idea. I think belief has content. Without content it’s simply some kind of feeling that you have inside. I think that faith has to have substance. But once you start putting some substance onto that, you get into trouble. Faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition has a God who intervenes...I don't see a God who intervenes.

Strange: What I can’t help but notice is that two people look at precisely the same event and one sees God intervening and the other does not. Apparently the one who has seen God is either fooling himself or there is something genuinely happening that’s going on.

...

Ehrman: I would actually like to be a believer.

Schiffman: I see the whole thing as a lifelong quest. It’s not that either a person believes or doesn’t believe. The life experiences of people are very difficult and very complex, and believing in God is itself a challenge. It’s not about whether I know the Exodus happened or didn’t happen. It has to do with understanding the difficult world that we’re in. Faith is a process.

...

Ehrman: I just think faith, in order to be intelligent, needs to have reasons behind it. I myself just don’t have sufficient reasons for believing in the Christian tradition. The same thing, I think, for the Jewish tradition.

...

Strange: I think I would say that faith/unfaith is sort of a false dichotomy. I think faith always contains elements of unfaith and vice versa. So in a way, we can’t avoid it. It’s just a matter of deciding what fits and what works. And also, where we get hope from.

Ehrman: Historical scholarship calls into question certain beliefs and can call into question faith. But it can’t resolve any faith issues. There are historians who agree with everything that I think about the historical Jesus, about the New Testament, about the development of Christian doctrine, and yet they’re professors in theological seminaries training pastors. If you ask them, they will say, “Yes, Jesus is God. Historical scholarship doesn’t determine what we believe.” So I think what’s important is that people engage in historical scholarship. It’s better to have a knowledgeable faith than an ignorant faith...

Image From:
The Age

Iraqi Death Report

Man, it's been quite some time since I've posted a blog on this blog. I've been floating around ideas about Iran and a recent pseudo "revelation" of the family tomb of Jesus (bunch of bullshit) but I haven't gotten around to posting it. I have been posting plenty though on The Blog and the Bullet and Double Consciousness.

Here's an excerpt from an article on from The Guardian (U.K.) about a report on Iraqi civilian deaths:

Chief government advisers accepted as "robust" research that put the death toll from the Iraq war 10 times higher than any previous estimate, new documents have revealed.

The study, by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, prompted worldwide alarm when it was published in the Lancet medical journal in October last year.

It estimated that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the violence in the country. It has now emerged chief advisers warned ministers not to "rubbish" the report.

Image From:
Hyde Park

News Analysis: French Elections

I thought I would give you guys some news and views from around the world on the French elections. I'm working on a short blog on the continuing focus on Iran by the Bush administration, but I'm not sure the angle I want to do for it since it has been covered so much by other bloggers, possibly a strict foreign policy angle. But, on to the news.

Le Monde (France)
March 7, 2007
Smiles Do Not Erase the Dissension Between Mrs. Royal and Merkel
By Cecile Calla and Isabelle Mandraud

Divergences "I do not see any," ensured Ségolène Royal, while leaving a meeting in Berling on Tuesday March 6, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I would say that despite the political differences things went very well," said the socialist candidate at the end of an hour long meeting which was described as "very cordial, I was even going to say supportive." With a handshake, smile, and photograph Mrs. Merkel has, on other side, scrupulously and equally respected Nicolas Sarkozy during his visit to Berlin on February 12. And as in this case, she left the meeting without commenting.

For Mrs Royal this is her last trip abroad before the presidential election, which is of a particular importance due to due to the debate on the reorganization of Airbus, but it also to shore up links with German partners before the French rotation of the European Union presidency in 2008. "This is preparing for at least a year in advance," underlined Elisabeth Guigou, the former minister for European business, during a private conversation with the French delegation...(Read More)

Der Spiegel (Germany)
March 6, 2007
Paris Calls for End to Dual Management at EADS
By SMD, Reuters, Spiegel, DPA

With the French presidential campaign heating up, politicians in Paris are seizing on the Airbus crisis as an election issue. Sarkozy is calling for an end to the dual leadership at parent company EADS and Royal is calling for more state investment instead of job cuts.

French politicians are calling for an increase in state involvement in Airbus. The principle of dual French-German leadership is also being questioned in Paris...(Read More)

EUobserver.com (Belgium)
March 5, 2007
French commissioner worried by presidential election campaign
By Helena Spongenberg

Jacques Barrot, the French EU commissioner, has warned the French presidential candidates that France could lose out if it does not resume its leadership role in Europe.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Barrot, responsible for EU transport, said Europe is in danger of becoming the "big forgotten issue" in the French presidential campaign, at a time when the country needs to get out of its "whingeing, pessimistic and defensive" mindset...(Read More)


Deutsche Welle (Germany)
France's Presidential Elections Face Neck-And-Neck Race
Feb. 27, 2007
By DW Staff

The French election campaign has focused closely on the leading candidates Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. But the "third man" François Bayrou could upset the first round of voting on April 22.

The latest polls in France show that conservative presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist rival Ségolène Royal are running neck-and-neck. But outside contenders in the vote could upset a clear outcome...(Read More)


Journal Turkish Weekly
France's elections, Turkey's choice
March 4, 2007
By Beril Dedeoglu

As the president has important powers in the French political system, the winner of the presidential elections this May is important not only for France but also for many other countries. The rightist UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, who says that “Together Everything is Possible,” seems to receive the support of the conservative sectors of the electorate. He wants to restore France’s former power and importance.


But having said that, he seems to be supportive of a federal Europe. He affirms that as in De Gaulle’s time, France and Germany should be the EU’s pivots, and he thinks that the UK is an obstacle on the path to full European integration. Sarkozy would be right if the world were the same as in De Gaulle’s time. Today the UK is a member of the EU -- and a powerful one -- even if it doesn’t please France. Sarkozy also affirms that France would be stronger if it joined fully in the dynamics of globalization. He defends globalization and a federal Europe at the same time. Beside this, he promises to take harsh measures to tackle the immigration issue, even though it’s not understandable how he reconciles this with globalization...(Read More)

People's Daily (China)
March 8, 2007
Feminist campaigners split over 'sexy Socialist' Royal
By China Daily and Agence France-Presse

The women of France agree electing a female president would be a giant step forward for a nation which has treated career women poorly.

However, feminists are split over whether presidential hopeful Segolene Royal is the best person to advance their fight for equal rights in a country where a revolutionary heroine is the national symbol...(Read More)

Time Magazine (U.S.A.)
March 8, 2007
Not Your Father's Anti-Immigrant Right
By Bruce Crumley

U.S. comedian Dave Chapelle wrought comic havoc by creating a fictional blind African-American who supports the Klu Klux Klan, unaware of his own blackness. But Farid Smahi is not a comedian, nor is he blind, although he does confound a stereotype: The son of Algerian parents and a longtime victim of anti-immigrant prejudice, Smahi is a candidate in France's forthcoming legislative election — for the anti-immigrant National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

"There is no contradiction in being Arab or black or any other minority and voting Le Pen," argues Smahi, who joined the party a decade ago after having initially backed leftist causes and marching for immigrant rights. "French minorities and banlieue [housing project] residents see they've been manipulated and exploited by both the hypocritical left and sham right for years now. Nothing has changed except the racism. So this time around, expect a lot of people to be casting votes for Le Pen in the hopes that, at last, things may change."...(Read More)

Washington Post
March 5, 2007
Candidate Wants Le Pen on France Ballot
By Elaine Ganley

PARIS -- One of France's top presidential candidates asked mayors and other elected officials on Monday to give their backing to an extreme right-wing politician to ensure he has enough endorsements to run in the spring elections.

Nicolas Sarkozy's plea for goodwill on behalf of Jean-Marie Le Pen _ in the name of democracy _ followed a similar call earlier in the day from Sarkozy's party, the governing Union for a Popular Movement, known as the UMP...(Read More)

Globe and Mail (Canada)
March 2, 2007
Suddenly sexy
By Doug Saunders

PARIS — Until a few days ago, Margot Gardelon's friends were telling her to get with the reality of French politics: Either side with the romantic promise of socialism offered by Ségolène Royal or the stern certainties of a U.S.-inspired conservatism represented by Nicolas Sarkozy. In this year's dramatic presidential election, those were the choices.

The 20-year-old university student was ridiculed, even harassed, for her distinctly unfashionable affinity: She backed an obscure, charisma-challenged farmer named François Bayrou, who proudly called himself a centrist, a concept that has never been taken very seriously in French politics...(Read More)

Mail and Guardian (South Africa)
Feb. 20, 2007
Royal Faces the nation to revive campaign


Ségolène Royal mounted a determined effort on Monday night to revive her ambitions, appearing on primetime TV to defend her campaign to become France's first female president.

Three months ago, Royal (53) a mother of four and the Socialist head of Poitou Charentes region, appeared to represent an unstoppable new face in politics. But her popularity has been dented by gaffes and infighting, with more than 20 consecutive opinion polls in recent weeks showing the public is not convinced. Her right-wing opponent, the Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has a lead of up to 10 points...(Read More)

Target Iran

Seymour Hersh writes an interesting article (having read it in full but I will) in the New Yorker on certain groups within the Pentagon who are planning to attack Iran and want to attack Iran. Here's a short excerpt:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”

Image From:
Fly Over Guy

Announcement: Change of Blog Mission

I'm changing the concentration and mission of my blog site. Essentially I'm making it into more of a blog and less of a website where I post long essays. This will still "be a place of well thought out and smart discussions on mainly theological and political issues pertaining to American foreign policy and on religion in general." But instead of posting long essays every two weeks or so filled in with other articles I find interesting I'm going to be publishing more posts that are blogs and less posts that are "articles." I'm still doing my Mesopotamia Burning series (see part II and III) and I will still be publishing long articles as well. My blogs and my articles will both "be well thought out with good supporting evidence, and with footnotes." So I won't just be blogging and spouting off my opinion without (at least) some evidence to back it up.

Part of this change has to do with the fact that school is getting in the way of concentrating on quality essays and I'm now working at UPS as a loader and unloader for trucks (with the Teamseters Union) from 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. Monday through Friday. So this change also reflects my busy schedule. Right now I'm in the planning phases of Mesopotamia Burning Part III, I'm going through a bunch of articles, journals, and Frontline documentaries. It should be done in a few weeks or so. Thanks to all of those who are reading my blog.

News Analysis: Elections in Turkmenistan

There were elections recently in the former Soviet Republic, Turkmenistan. The country had been ruled, dictitorially, by one president, Saparmurat Niyazov, for the past 21 years, until his recent death on Dec. 21, 2006. Here are some of the news and views about the elections from around the world.

Europe:

BBC News
Feb. 11, 2007
High Turnout for Turkmen Election

Voters were choosing between six men, in the gas-rich Central Asian nation's first multi-candidate election.

Interim leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, a former dentist, is seen as the clear favourite...(Read More)

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (U.K.)
Feb. 9, 2007
Turkmenistan Needs to Choose its Friends Carefully

As the February 11 presidential election in Turkmenistan draws close, there is little doubt who will win, but considerable uncertainty about what will happen next. Will Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov really live up to his pledges to reform education, health and pensions and give his people greater opportunities to travel and access information, or will he revert to the tough style of the man he replaces, the late Saparmurat Niazov?

On the foreign policy front, most observers agree Russia will remain Turkmenistan’s key partner, not least because it buys most of the country’s natural gas. But Turkmenistan’s proximity to Iran is likely to give it some role to play - albeit unwillingly - in the confrontation between Washington and Tehran...(Read More)

International Herald Tribune (France)
Feb. 11, 2007
Turkmenistan Votes For New Leader
By C. J. Chivers

MOSCOW: Turkmenistan held the first officially contested presidential elections in its history Sunday, conducting a carefully choreographed vote almost certain to be won by a confidante of the reclusive Central Asian country's late autocratic leader.

The election, organized by the tightly controlled state after Saparmurat Niyazov, the only president in the country's 15-year history, died in late December, was not formally monitored by international observers, who sent small teams of experts that were not expected to make any public statement about the government's conduct...(Read More)

North America:

Eurasia Daily Monitor (U.S.A.)
Feb. 9, 2007
Turkmen Elections Provides Opportunities For International Condemnation of Authoritarian Regime
By John C. K. Daly

As foreign observers gear up to monitor Sunday’s presidential elections in Turkmenistan, the first since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, more adventurous foreigners can catch a bus from Ashgabat and journey some 40 miles north of the capital into the Karakum desert, where they can visit one of the more odious remnants of the Soviet “gulag archipelago,” a custom-built prison housing about 150 opponents of the Niyazov regime.

They had better hurry, as it might not be there much longer. According to Deutsche Welle, the facility is being demolished and its prisoners transferred elsewhere (Novye izvestiya, February 7)...(Read More)


East Asia:

Chosunibo (South Korea)
Feb. 12, 2007
Turkmenistan Votes for Presidential Successor

Voters in the isolated, gas-rich Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan are voting for a successor to replace the late president, Saparmurat Niyazov, who died last December. VOA's Lisa McAdams in Moscow reports the current acting president, Gurbanguli Berdymukhammedov, is expected to easily defeat his five lesser-known challengers.

By mid-day local time Sunday, Turkmenistan's Central Election Commission declared the election valid, saying more than half the country's registered voters had cast ballots in the country's first multi-candidate election...(Read More)

South Asia:

Tehran Times
Feb. 12, 2007
Turkmens Begin Voting for New Leader

KIPCHAK, Turkmenistan (AP) -- The people of Turkmenistan, ruled for more than two decades by Niyazov, began voting Sunday for his replacement in their first presidential election with more than one candidate — but still only one party. The multiple candidates in the election are among a series of hints that Turkmenistan, a strategic Central Asian nation with immense natural gas reserves, may be slowly changing its ways. But it's unclear how far it will move out of the late President Saparmurat Niyazov's shadow...(Read More)

Image From:
Bassirat.Net