Candidates for Greatness?
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Malvolio offers the advice; “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them” … actually he reads the words from a letter but they are quoted back at him in the final scene of the play.
Actually, although we tend to think in threes, which may have something to do the trinity, the syllogisms of Aristotelian logic or the Hegelian trilogy thesis, antithesis and synthesis … but in the Ethics of the Fathers there are a whole collection of sayings classifying all categories of men in groups of four and I think Shakespeare could easily have added a fourth category here : “those who seek greatness”.
One of the characteristics of greatness is that this is really a judgement of history, accorded in retrospect. Many characters throughout history have sought greatness, and may even have been thought of as great within their own lifetime, but when time has passed and the dust of history settles we can see that what they really achieved was their “fifteen minutes of fame”.
When we look back on the past week, I wonder which of the various characters in the news we will judge to have been great, to have sought greatness, achieved greatness or have had greatness thrust upon them.
Vladimir Sarafonov, for example. He is the Russian blogger who is being prosecuted on charges of inciting racial hatred in his postings. The case didn’t get that much attention locally … until this week, that is. Whereas commentators in the West made the occasional foray into the case it wasn’t until Vladimir Zhirinovsky, (the Russian Nationalist MP who apparently wanted to wash his feet in a “Russian Indian Ocean”), entered the fray that local began to take notice. Even Andrei, who doesn’t normally pay much attention to the news is up in arms – and although he is a Kyrgyz citizen he’s not Kyrgyz by nationality. Sarafonov has been criticizing the attitudes of ethnic Kyrgyz groups to others and that’s what got him into trouble, facing a considerable prison term. Zhirinovsky has said that if Sarafonov is convicted then he will arrange for all Kyrgyz migrant workers in Russia to be sent back to Kyrgyzstan. That would, of course, have a significant impact on the Kyrgyz economy.
As it happens, Moscow is already tightening up on the regulations relating to migrant workers, which is nothing to do with the Sarafonov case but perhaps, according to some people, an attempt to keep the Kyrgyz in line. The funny thing is that the Kazakhs have also been tightening up on the rules and regulations about foreigners living and working in the country … whereas in Europe there is a 180 day rule – in Kazakhstan it is a 120 day rule; foreigners are allowed to stay for 120 days in any year unless they have proper work and residence permits. That’s apparently causing some problems amongst the expat community and I suspect that means that we’ll have something similar introduced here in the near future.
One group of foreign workers which have been thrust into the public eye this week, are truck drivers who have taken to blocking the main Bishkek-Osh highway. Now, one of the most common forms of protest here is for people to come out and block the roads. It’s actually quite easy to do and remarkably effective as, being a mountainous country there are often no alternative routes available for diversions to by pass a particular trouble spot. During certain times of the year the roads can be blocked by avalanches or landslides but at others the problem is protesters. I remember how the same technique has been used by tanker drivers, lorry drivers and farmers back in Europe to draw attention to their grievances. These lorry drivers are complaining that Kyrgyzstan have introduced new regulations about the size of trucks permitted on Kyrgyz roads, limiting the maximum axle weight. This has been on the cards for years, but was introduced and implemented suddenly and, so they say, without consultation, so they found themselves caught out in the country and unable to move because their vehicles were too big. That might well have been acceptable, (annoying but acceptable), except for the fact that when they got to the border nobody told them … the authorities took the fees from them, allowing them into the country, only to get stopped once they were across the border and someway into the country.
Mind you, blocking the road is a fairly mild sort of protest. This week saw something a bit more controversial. A trio of Kyrgyz were apparently arrested in Tajikistan with 30 kilos of mercury – yes, mercury, not heroin. Some of their friends in their home village decided to try and get them released by “capturing” and holding hostage a group of Tajiks who came to the local market to do some shopping.
One group that got themselves thrust into the public eye this week were the farmers from the Balykchy area who caused a surprise when they started complaining about the Russian air force base at Kant. It seems that, as a result of their flights over the area, the hens in the region are becoming smaller(!). We are used to seeing complaints about the American airbase that this made for an interesting balance. Farmers in the country are facing another problem in an outbreak in a new form of Foot and Mouth disease, apparently it’s a new strain of the disease which has infected livestock that has already been vaccinated. So far something like 4000 infected cows have been slaughtered and everyone is hoping that the matter can be contained.
It is not just the health of farm animals that has been the subject of concern during the week. For some reason there was an announcement that we may face a problem over the question of resistant strains of tuberculosis. There is nothing new in this particular story, but what did surprise me was that it was being released now … this sort of story is normally released to coincide with a special UN/WHO commemorative day … but the International days connected with TB were all some time ago. Another heath related story concerned the low level of hemopexis drugs in the country. These are apparently used in the treatment of children who have Hemophilia and according to the report, the country only has enough stock for one operation, so we’ll have to hope and trust that the country’s 96 hemophiliac children remain fit and healthy and don’t need an operation in the near future.
Another group of children were thrust into the limelight when it was revealed that they had been sent to a religious school in Pakistan. Immediately people started speculating about why they were being sent abroad, if they had been kidnapped or coerced in any way and the central muftiat were involved. It seems that, in fact, everything was above board. It was good to see that the same sort and level of concerns were being expressed, as had emerged earlier when the issue had been about children being adopted into Western families.
Mind you, when it was revealed that something like one in twenty of all children in the 117 children’s homes and orphanages in the country don’t have the most basic of all identification documents, (a birth certificate), it suggests that there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to providing care for the most vulnerable sectors of the country’s population.
As the school year has come to an end, there have been a number of stories about the state of the educational system, and although I haven’t seen as much about the shortage of teachers as in previous years, there were some interesting articles which caught my eye; one about the lack of faith and trust placed in the system by parents, many of whom are apparently opting for private education if they can possibly afford it, and this was furtther reinforced by the news that after two years of coming bottom of the league of school performance in the international PISA rankings, Kyrgyzstan has decided to pull out and not participate this year. Then there was a survey ranking Universities in the country – well 35 out of the 52 institutes of Higher Education in the country. The rating was based purely on the preferences of applicants and did not include data on financial aspects, the faculty, research papers, or other factors which might be thought moderately important when it comes to selecting a university. The final rankings produced few surprises, most of the institutions you would expect to find at the top of the list were there, (although two that might been expected to figure prominently weren’t included at all … which was a pity because it would have been interesting to see how the fared against the competition), and I was intrigued to see that Medical Academy came out as the most respected institute.
A couple of other ranking systems have been released this week which proved to be relatively good news for Kyrgyzstan. In the Happy Planet Index, (I kid you not! – apparently it is the product of a private British economics foundation), Costa Rica is recognized as the world’s happiest country with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan having the happiest people in Central Asia, (that is, compared to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan … hmmmm … is that really a surprise?). Based on three main criteria, (experienced well-being, life expectancy and Ecological Footprint), Kyrgyzstan was ranked in 38th place out of 151 countries. It seems that this was due to the fact people are “relatively satisfied with the standard of living, life expectancy in the country is at the middle level and the position of the country in terms of environmental welfare is at high level”. Personally I have doubts about this result – actually, quite a lot of doubts – and I noted that the same news report wryly noted that, according to the UN World Happiness Report published in April, based on factors like political freedom, corruption, social security, public health, the number of happy, stable marriages and life expectancy … Kyrgyzstan was ranked 102nd. Hmmm … it looks to me like a case of “you pays your money and takes your choice”.
A bit more impressive was the Failed States Index, produced by two “leading American political science institutes”. Now, there is no generally accepted definition of what constitutes a “failed state” but their analysis is based on 12 different criteria grouped in three main categories, social, economic and military/political, and it does look pretty comprehensive. What’s more they have been producing the index since 2005 so it possible to see how things are developing over a period of time. It seems that Kyrgyzstan did particularly well, being the “most improved” state in 2012; improving their score 4.4 points from 91.8 down to 87.4 and their ranking by 10 places, from 31st to 41st. That’s a lot better than Somalia, at the top of the list, bot a long way off Finland, at the bottom … and, unlike the PISA rankings, this is one list where you want to be at the bottom. However, the news was all good. When you consider that last year’s results the situation immediately following the country’s second revolution and the mayhem, experiences in the south of the country which cost over 400 lives and, (according to most commentators), still fuels distrust and unease between different ethnic groups, then some improvement might naturally be expected as the passage of time contributes to healing wounds and situation appears to stabilize. It seems, however, that many of the factors that contribute to the index show little improvement which, to put a positive slant on it, at least suggests that we can still improve yet further.
I am sure that by now, regular readers of my postcards will know that have big problems when it comes to such surveys and the statistics that they generate. One statistic, however, jumped out at me from a news report as an example of something that demanded to be challenged. One of the MPs, (who gets his fair share of “15 minutes of fame”), was making a statement about the existence of prostitution in the country. He said that people were to focused on economic issues and didn’t pay enough attention to morality. He compared the situation in Kyrgyzstan to that in Thailand where, or so he said, “80% of women … are engaged into prostitution”.
The economy is certainly a major issue; (who was it who said that everything boils down to the bottom line? – they obviously haven’t got their 15 minutes of fame because I can’t find the quotation). There are certainly a number of major issues but at least we aren’t facing the criticism from the IMF which Uzbekistan is receiving – the IMF seem to find their statistics a little suspicious - “unrealistic”.
One of the worrying “economic statistics” released in Kyrgyzstan during the week was that sewing enterprises in the country have reduced their output by some 40%. This is apparently tied in to the creation of the the Customs Union, and the difficulty of transporting goods across the border – Kazakhstan and Russia being our major markets.
Statistics about the country’s economic performance is often quoted in two forms, one with and one without the contribution made by the Kumtor gold mine and the big news on the economic front involves the situation surrounding the Kumtor Gold Mine. A parliamentary commission has been looking into the affairs of the company and issued an 800-page report. It was accompanied by statements suggesting that the mine and its parent company should be nationalized. The report was issued a day before a debate on it was tabled, and the debate had to be postponed to allow deputies the chance to become acquainted with it. as it happens, the debates, (arguments), over the various agreements between the government and the company have been rumbling away for many years – ever since independence – and there a number of issues simmering away which affect the whole of the mining industry including the introduction of new “taxes” being introduced, so it is probably a coincidence that other news has been released along with that connected with the report. Apparently the government have shares in the company and asked if it can pay dividends for the next five years in advance – and got turned down. Then they asked for a “soft loan” – and got turned down again. The company have running a campaign publicizing how much they have contributed to the community in taxes and other forms of sponsorship. Anyway, Kumtor have certainly received their fair share of attention in the press … probably more than they would have welcomed and I think it might be worth keeping an eye on the share price of the various mining companies that operate in Kyrgyzstan.
There is a lot more that could said but the really big story as the week comes to a close concerns an attempt to arrest and interrogate one of the deputies, Tuleev, who was Mayor of Bishkek during the closing stages of the Bakiev regime. As with Kumtor, Tuleev has also received a fair amount of publicity, perhaps more than he would have wanted.
The police wanted to question him, apparently in connection with allegations of corruption tied to the purchase of buses from China. The trouble is, as a deputy he has some immunity from arrest – except for some serious crimes … so there is a question about whether the police could arrest him. The police also tried to conduct the interrogation after 10:00pm which is not allowed. The news of the raid on his home and the fact that he had been detained hit the news services and several of the deputies gathered at the offices where the interrogation was taking place, forcing the authorities to release him.
As with the stories about Kumtor, all this may be coincidental, but Tuleev is one of the opposition deputies who seems to have been involved with some of the deputies starting to gather signatures to hold a vote of confidence in the government. Both the President and the Prime Minister were away from Bishkek. Tuleev is saying that he considers the arrest was nothing more than a political ploy and he is going to pursue the matter through all channels.
I appreciate that in this postcard I have tended to equate greatness with being in the public eye and that’s not really a good definition of the word. However, it’s probably the only yardstick which we have. As I said in the beginning, “greatness” is really a judgement of history, awarded retrospectively, and cannot really be applied by contemporaries.
Today is, or would have been, the birthday of one of the unlikely heroes who has had “greatness”, (or at least “notoriety”, if that’s not too perjorative a phrase), thrust upon them: Alan Turing. Turing was a mathematician and considered by many to be one of the fathers of computers, computer science and, in particular, artificial intelligence. Although one of the leading figures working at Bletchley Park during the second world war, breaking the messages encoded and transmitted by the German Enigma machines, he would probably never have emerged from academia and being one of the “backroom boys” … except for the fact that he had a secret which, when combined with unfortunate circumstances, was to tragically change all that: he was a homosexual at a time when committing homosexual acts was against the law.
In itself that might have passed unnoticed and unremarked, but when his home was robbed he reported it to the police. It turned out that he and one of the robbers had, albeit briefly, been involved in a relationship. As well as prosecuting the perpetrators of the robbery, the police decided to pursue a charge against Turing for “gross indecency” which led to him receiving treatment which is euphemistically known as chemical castration, the loss of his security clearance, (thus affecting his work), a period of depression and his apparent suicide. (I say “apparent” because, although the inquest concluded that it was a case of suicide, his mother continued to argue that it was all an accident.)
Turing’s case was taken up by the Gay community along with a campaign calling for him to be granted a posthumous pardon. Although they managed to obtain an official apology out of Prime Minister Gordon Brown for the way that Turing had been treated, the appeal for a pardon was turned down as “Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted.” (It’s not as if his crime was he was taking a stand in fighting some great evil such as Bonhoeffer’s participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler, something that was against the law and which would be prosecuted with vigour if and when the plot failed, resulting in the pastor’s gruesome execution … an action for which a pardon does seem appropriate.)
This year, however, to mark the centenary of Turing’s birth and his mammoth contribution to the development of computing and hence the age in which we live, there is a year-long programme of events around the world honouring his life and achievements with events scheduled in many countries around the world, (including the USA, Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, New Zealand, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Portugal and Germany … and, of course, in the United Kingdom – The keystone events will be a three-day conference in Manchester examining Turing’s mathematical and code-breaking achievements, and a conference in Cambridge).
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Postcard from Bishkek: the weekly postcard that I send out as an email also gets posted on the website ianbek.kg each week – and there are other postcards which don’t get sent out. This week, for example, there were postcards about:
- Togolok Moldo - to mark what would have been the 152nd birthday of the Kyrgyz bard Togolok Moldo, whose portrait appears on the 20 som banknote
- A slip of the pen - another birthday … or is it ? … Andrei’s passport say’s it was on Monday, but Mum says it’s not until next month!
- Horse meat - a delicacy in Kyrgyzstan … but not everywhere
- Kara Balta – Black Axe - one of the cities of Northern Kyrgyzstan
- Dandelion and Burdock - a taste from my past and an unexpected answer to a common question
- Leather - one of the traditional crafts of the nomadic Kyrgyz which is often overlooked
It is now possible to follow me on Facebook, (where I have specific pages for Celestial Mountains and ianbek … and also links.kg and Kyrgyz Diary), and on twitter, (@Bishkekpostcard and @celestialMTC ).
Bishkek