I saw some pretty great headlines on Yahoo News lately. One was "Barbados Faces Invasion by Giant Snails." I think they meant, say, 10 to 12 inch snails hurting crops, but obviously 200 foot ones would be neater. Then I saw "Piracy Fines to Increase in Vietnam." Turns out they don't mean Captain Kidd or Blackbeard, but rather software copiers. In a side note, the fine for piracy in Vietnam is 100 million dong. That's 100 million dong.
I finished Rory Stewart's The Places In Between. I guess that's, wow, two books down for me in 2006? I dunno who here is interested, so I'm not gonna do a long typed excerpt. I learned a lot, though. Interesting to see the hospitality or aggression, beautiful sites or horrid weather and war-torn sites, he runs into.
Did you know the religious make-up of Afghanistan? The Taliban were (or, with their resurgence, I should say "are") Sunni Muslim, as are most of the people in the west and south regions. The Hazara people in the central mountains, who physically have Asian/ Mongol-descended physical features, are Shia Muslim... as a result, they suffered the worst under the Taliban. The Taliban burned orchards, stole livestock, held mass executions, and bombed/ burnt villages much more in Hazara areas. In most other areas, the Taliban rarely had influence and were seen neutrally or even favorably.
Sunni Muslims are, as you might guess from the Taliban, a more ascetic, bare-bones version of Islam- no worship of saints, idolatry, or mysticism allowed, and the stricter social rules. This kinda conflicts with what you might expect, from Iraq being Sunni and relatively modernist under Saddam Hussein.
To me, one of the most interesting things of the book was seeing, as Rory went from ethnic group to ethnic group and town to town, which places had a good or bad opinion of (among other things) Russia, the Taliban, the U.S., the Karzai government, and so on. It turns out that past or present collaboration with any of these may or may not be acceptable, depending on the place. In some areas, it would be perfectly acceptable to have collaborated with, or given recreational business to, the Russian invasion forces of the 1980s. Also, there were some warlords who went any way the wind blew, collaborating with Russia, then the Taliban, then with people who were (more or less) U.S. allies (although, to most people Rory met, the U.S. was at best an abstract concept, with most people never having travelled far outside their village and no radio/ TV/ print media).
Glad to have seen brokenbeatnik around (karaoke tomorrow), and hope to see hansel tonight before he leaves town. I can't say as I spent a HUGE amount of time with them, but he and Eddie are extremely boss folks, and I can def say I'd love to see them and Canada some day next year.
Still need to see Borat. You might wonder if Rory Stewart ran into any Borats in Afghanistan. Noooo. He said people would mention the beauty of Persian women for dinner conversation when he was in Iran, but Pakistani and Afghan villagers of all cultures didn't discuss women.
I finished Rory Stewart's The Places In Between. I guess that's, wow, two books down for me in 2006? I dunno who here is interested, so I'm not gonna do a long typed excerpt. I learned a lot, though. Interesting to see the hospitality or aggression, beautiful sites or horrid weather and war-torn sites, he runs into.
Did you know the religious make-up of Afghanistan? The Taliban were (or, with their resurgence, I should say "are") Sunni Muslim, as are most of the people in the west and south regions. The Hazara people in the central mountains, who physically have Asian/ Mongol-descended physical features, are Shia Muslim... as a result, they suffered the worst under the Taliban. The Taliban burned orchards, stole livestock, held mass executions, and bombed/ burnt villages much more in Hazara areas. In most other areas, the Taliban rarely had influence and were seen neutrally or even favorably.
Sunni Muslims are, as you might guess from the Taliban, a more ascetic, bare-bones version of Islam- no worship of saints, idolatry, or mysticism allowed, and the stricter social rules. This kinda conflicts with what you might expect, from Iraq being Sunni and relatively modernist under Saddam Hussein.
To me, one of the most interesting things of the book was seeing, as Rory went from ethnic group to ethnic group and town to town, which places had a good or bad opinion of (among other things) Russia, the Taliban, the U.S., the Karzai government, and so on. It turns out that past or present collaboration with any of these may or may not be acceptable, depending on the place. In some areas, it would be perfectly acceptable to have collaborated with, or given recreational business to, the Russian invasion forces of the 1980s. Also, there were some warlords who went any way the wind blew, collaborating with Russia, then the Taliban, then with people who were (more or less) U.S. allies (although, to most people Rory met, the U.S. was at best an abstract concept, with most people never having travelled far outside their village and no radio/ TV/ print media).
Glad to have seen brokenbeatnik around (karaoke tomorrow), and hope to see hansel tonight before he leaves town. I can't say as I spent a HUGE amount of time with them, but he and Eddie are extremely boss folks, and I can def say I'd love to see them and Canada some day next year.
Still need to see Borat. You might wonder if Rory Stewart ran into any Borats in Afghanistan. Noooo. He said people would mention the beauty of Persian women for dinner conversation when he was in Iran, but Pakistani and Afghan villagers of all cultures didn't discuss women.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
Nope, AdRock wasn't involved.