The distance between stars is measured in time, but can the distances within identity?  This has been my third birthday in a foreign land: once in Britain, once in Israel, and now, once in Belgium. I am now 28, of which 25 birthdays have been spent in the United States.  Perhaps if I spend the next 22 far from home, I can then be considered a foreigner.

Today, 226 years ago, history’s first ever hot air balloon launched.  Two French brothers reached for the unreachable, riding upon air with nothing but air, their outstretched fingers inches from the sublime.

Today, 111 years ago, a Belgian surrealist was born.  He, too,  reached for the unreachable, his paintbrush piercing through language and object, yet always inches from the mystery it sought to capture.

Today, 28 years ago, an American philosopher was born.  Like his predecessors, he reaches for the unreachable, his pen diving through ideas and history itself in pursuit of meaning — and always inches still to traverse.

Four searchers, one search.

To celebrate his birth, the philosopher’s mother made a model of the balloon, while nearly 30 years before her, the painter, in similar sentiment, inserted it into a portrait.

And 30 years later: the philosopher, now in Brussels, stumbles upon the portrait in a museum.  Everyone else in the museum thinks he is crazy as he laughs and laughs…

An Arab district in Brussels. Photograph by Flickr user Aldask (CC-usage).

In this editorial, originally published on neweurasia, I explore the differences, as I perceive them, between the American and European Islamic communities.  It’s clear to me that the United States has been far more effective at integrating Muslims into society than Europe, which risks descending into a dangerous ethnic clash.

It comes up in conversation all the time with colleagues at neweurasia: what do I think about the situation of Islam in the West?  I think Central Asians are really curious to know about it because they’re probably looking for insight not only into the West’s relationship to them and the larger Islamic world, but also for insight into themselves.  After all, Muslims living in the West are exposed to lifestyles and a quality of life little experienced in the umma.

Why me?  Well, for one, I’m studying Islamic history and philosophy here in the West, which, unfortunately, is still a rare thing for a Westerner to do.  For another, I’ve previously written about the concept of an “American” or “Americanized” Islam, which I wrote after a very long personal struggle with the religion.

Nowadays I’m no longer so hot for the idea of an “American Islam” as a theoretical project, i.e., reforming Islam to better match American culture or somehow fusing American philosophical principles with Islam.  However, as a way of describing the ways in which Islam is expressed and practiced in the United States as opposed to elsewhere, talking about an “American Islam” still makes sense — perhaps all the more so if we compare it “European Islam”.

What the heck do I mean?

Muslims trying to understand the situation of their religious kinsman in the West need to realize that there are two humongous divisions that cuts it right in half.  The first is, obviously, geographical: water.  The second is culture.  And in both cases, the divisions really come down to language — English.

It is perhaps wiser to speak of “Anglophonic Islam” since the situation for Muslims in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States is actually very uniform.  (I should note, however, that British Muslims have very sharp class, ethnic, and generational divisions within their community).  Once we step across the Atlantic or the English Channel, we find ourselves in a very different world.  The political traditions of the Continent are very different from those which prevail in the British Isles, North America, and Australasia.

I should also note that I’m not including Turkey or the Balkans, which obviously have historical Muslim populations, in my definition of “Europe”, nor am I including most of the former Communist bloc.  I’m speaking very specifically of the Continent’s Romanic zone (France, Italy, Romania, Spain) and Germanic Zone (Austria, the Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, and Switzerland).

Ethnic make-up

American Muslims are both immigrant and native.  Like Britain, we have an historical immigrant population, albeit small, that dates back to the 19th Century, but unlike Britain, we also have an historical native population of converts from among the former slaves (or re-converts, as they tend to envision themselves).  Moreover, since the 1970s we have been drawing immigrants from every corner of the Muslim world — the umma, in all its manifoldness, is best represented not only in Mecca but also the streets of American cities.   All told, this means that American Muslims have an incredible array of intellectual, cultural, and human resources to draw upon.

Europe’s Muslims, however, are entirely immigrant — the last natives were chased out of Spain in the 15th Century.  They also tend to be homogeneous, drawn largely from only two sources, namely, Morocco and Turkey.  Of course, there is a healthy contingent of Muslims from African, Balkan, Central Asian,  Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian countries, but they are smaller.  Moreover, they tend to be more effective at integration, or at least keeping themselves out of the spotlight.

Education

American Muslims tend to have skills and education before they moved to America. Yes, America is, quite literally, brain-draining the umma.  And, although it is not uniform — Black American Muslims are still struggling academically and economically in many quarters — it is a consistent enough of a phenomenon to the point where it is being passed onto the first and second generations of Muslim children born and raised in the United States.

European Muslims, however, were originally imported as unskilled labor.  It’s a strange, even laughable, fact that the Europeans really believed the Moroccans and Turks would simply go home after their contracts ended.  Today, after three generations of continual immigration and ghettoization, European Muslims have the highest secondary school drop-out rates, and with it, the highest petty and violent crime rates.  They are also consistently the single largest group on the welfare rolls.

Integration

This element of ghettoization is critically important: with the notable exception of Black American Muslims, American Muslims are integrated — heck, we have a President of Islamic descent!   And where they aren’t, such as in Black communities, they nevertheless tend to have an ameliorative effect by uplifting otherwise self-destructing neighborhoods.  Indeed, Black American Muslims score higher in secondary school exams than their Christian or otherwise non-religious peers.

Europe’s Muslims, on the other hand, isolate themselves and are isolated by the surrounding cultures.  Speaking candidly, I take the Europeans to task for this: after all these centuries they still look upon themselves as “civilization” and the rest of the world, including America, as barbarous.  At the same time, they are very nervous about difference to the point where they have an almost pathological disinterest in other cultures.

Tim Pauwels, a Flemish journalist with Belgian State Television, put it to me bluntly:

For three generations we just didn’t care about the Moroccans and left them to rot in our cities.

“They have no respect”

As a result, there’s a massive conflict between cultures going on here.  Europeans fail to realize that the Muslims they encounter are impoverished strangers in a strange land; Muslims, in turn, resent that the Europeans they encounter would rather pretend that they don’t exist.

Putting aside all the big theory, here’s an example of what I mean: a Dutch friend of mine, who would like to have the Moroccans deported from the European Union, complained about an incident involving his girlfriend.  They were walking through a Moroccan neighborhood in the Hague during which she was whistled at, heckled, and called a whore.   “They hate women!” he said.  “They have no respect.”

There’s no country called “Assholestan”

I informed him that, to the contrary, the Moroccans do actually have a lot of respect for women.  Any stroll through a city park will be revelatory.  You can find Moroccan couples of all ages and religious inclination cuddling, laughing, and joking.  Some of my nicest memories of the Hague’s main park is of Moroccan guys taking their girls for bike rides through the forest.

What did my friend miss?  Well, for one, he failed to realize that the Moroccan punks cat-calling his girlfriend were precisely that — punks.  Alas, there isn’t out there in the world some country called “Asshole-stan” where all the citizens are punks; all nations have young hooligans.  For another, there is actually a legitimate cultural difference at operation.  Whether we Westerners agree or disagree with it, the fact remains that in the Moroccan’s home culture an unveiled woman in jeans or a short skirt in the company of someone who isn’t her husband or male relative is, in fact, a prostitute.

This is not to say that the punks’ behavior is defensible.  For one thing, after living in Europe for three generations one would think that by now the Moroccans overall would have some sense, however vague, of the difference between their culture and that of the Europeans, and would try to be more circumspect; indeed, the Turks for the most part seem to have learned this.  For another, the red light districts are packed with Moroccan men, so there’s a bit of hypocrisy going on here.

So, what’s the future of Islam in the West?  Simply put, the American model, while not perfect (just ask American Muslims how they felt during the paranoid Bush years), works.  The European model doesn’t.  I think at the heart of this is the concept of the nation-state, which, for Americans, is built around an idea — liberty — but for Europeans is built around a linguistic ethnic group.  In other words, America integrates Muslims better than Europe because it is ideologically prepared and desirous to do so.

Beyond the nation-state

The European nation-state is creating the conditions for a “clash of civilizations”.  The only answer, then, is to abandon it.  What does it mean to be Dutch, French, German?  Whatever it means, it certainly no longer means what it did two hundred, one hundred, or even fifty years ago.  If they are to avoid very real ethnic conflict from erupting within their cities, the Europeans need to re-define European-ness.

Of course, in many ways, the Europeans are attempting to do precisely that — the European Union is the grand experiment in re-definition.  So there is real hope that conflict can be avoided.  And, indeed, we are seeing hints of integration all around: mosques in Rotterdam, Zurich, and Paris, and Muslims getting elected to government.   Time will tell.

That’s my two cents on this subject.  On the one hand, keep in mind that I’m talking in terms of gross generalities here.  On the other hand, my views will probably continue to evolve while I’m here in Europe, so stay tuned!

Even if all the trees were pens and the ocean ink, backed up by seven more oceans, the words of God would not be exhausted. — Qur’an 31:27

Another late Sunday evening, but a good one.  Indeed, a weekend of good late evenings, ripe with meaningful conversation and encounter.  And the days, too, have been lush, but with work — for job, for school, for life.  And while others lament the coming winter, I am finally, quietly, defiant, like the blazing colors of the autumnal trees.  November has always been my favorite month, and not simply because it is my birthmonth.  The manifold colors reveal underyling unities, and with them, new focus.

“It is in the watches of the night that impressions are strongest and words most eloquent; in the day-time you are hard pressed with the affairs of this world.” – Quran, sura 73

It’s a full moon over Leuven tonight.  The small city is quiet, gently illuminated.  Between the Question and the Debate, between the why do i exist? and the contest of faith and reason, there is another space.  And underneath the quivering ego’s thirst for justification flows a river, subterranean and brisk — the one true drink.

Here is a story for you.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s the best one to tell you, but it’s the  first one that comes to mind whenever I think of Halloween or Israel.

It was October 31, 2004 — Halloween — and I found myself in Lud, Israel.  Lud is a terrible, desperate place. I’ve sometimes heard Palestinians from the Gaza Strip refer to it as “hell.” There are sections of the city where the houses are constructed of stapled aluminum siding and dried mud. The more civilized sections are fortresses. Most of the residents live in giant concrete blocks. The city elite (cops, politicians, and drug dealers) live in walled mansions. Lud’s dealers pioneered “ATM drugs”: the junkie walks up to a tiny slit in the wall of his or her dealer’s mansion, deposits some shekels, and out pops their heroin.

I had just returned from the north, visiting Nazareth, Akka, and Haifa, and other places.  I saw the minarets of Qalqiyah and Tulkarem peeking out over the top edge of the notorious Separation Wall and tendrils of black smoke from burning tires licking the blue sky.  I visited a small village called Kufr Manda, a poor farming community of Palestinians that had lost two of their sons in protests and whose hearts I would later break.  And I drank coffee with Bedouins — it had been brewed for three days and had the sharp texture of fine red wine.

On the return journey by train I was aiming for Ramle, near Lud, but overshot and ended up in Beer Sheva, deep in the south.  Israel’s a small country; such things can happen.  Several hours later, deep into the night and even deeper in the Negev desert, I sat with two security guards in the railway terminal of Beer Sheva. One guard was a newly immigrated Russian; the other, a second-generation Sepharadi. They had just finished their mandatory military service. They both served in Gaza, protecting the Israeli settlements there.

“I once saw a terrorist with a rocket,” the Russian said. “I shot him.”

“I ran over an Arab with my tank,” the Sepharadi said. “I don’t know if he was a terrorist.”

They both grinned with a savage joy. The Russian was twenty-four; the Sepharadi, twenty-one.

I hitched a ride with the train conductors, many of whom lived in Ramle or the surrounding Latrun region. Their tiny white Citreon zoomed across the dark desert, northward on Highway 6. Looking out the car window at the utter flatness of the black sands, I wondered if we were riding alongside the sea. But then the ruby glow of Gaza reminded me just how far away from everything I really was.

They dropped me off in Lud, early in the morning. I knew the city’s reputation, and immediately set about finding a taxi to get me the hell out of there. But no driver would take me back to Neve Shalom, the “Oasis of Peace”, the Arab-Jewish cooperative villlage where I had been working for several months, for anything less than 80 shekels. After all my travelling, I had very little cash on hand. I was stuck… until one driver took mercy on me. He had me split the fare with another customer, a giant Sepharadi man named Sasson.

Sasson was as round as a granite boulder and as heavy and intimidating as a bear. He struggled to get into the taxi, so the driver and I helped him into his seat. He tried to eat a falafel he had just purchased, but the sandwich disintegrated in his hands—which were cut and bleeding. The driver and I looked at each other. We asked Sasson what happened to his hands, but he only whimpered for his falafel. That’s when I noticed the stench: this bear of a man had soiled his sweatpants.

Minutes later, I returned to the night road. First we drove back onto Highway 6, then veered off into dark dirt paths which zig-zag throughout Latrun’s farmland. It was sometime during cotton season. Everywhere stalks with puffy buds of cotton rustled in the midnight breeze.

The driver decided to take Sasson to a hospital, but first the bear-man should go home and get cleaned up.  Turns out he lived in one of the many moshavs of Latrun.

Decades ago, when the State of Israel was just a newborn, waves of Middle Eastern Jews flooded the country. The world has often seen the United States as a land “where the streets are paved with gold”; for the Sepharadim, this mythic land of opportunity is Israel. But the Jewish State was created by and for Ashkenazi European Jews. What was to be done with these dark-skinned, Arabic-speaking immigrants?

The answer: concentrate them in Ramle, Lud and Latrin, the No Man’s Land, a region devastated by the 1948 war. Stick them in hastily built concrete huts and make them til the soil for their livelihood. Thus were born the moshavs, the Jewish shantytowns of Israel.

Many moshavs have since clawed up from impoverishment, becoming middle class towns and suburbs. Not Sasson’s. The houses were boxes on stilts, the road was ruined, and even the trees seemed twisted and bent from poverty.

The taxi pulled up to Sasson’s concrete box. He stumbled out, rang the doorbell. An angry thirty- or forty-something man opened the door.

“His brother,” the driver whispered.

The man screamed at Sasson and punched the door. The bear-man didn’t seem to notice. He quietly shuffled into the house and the door closed behind him. The driver and I chit-chatted for a few minutes.

“I’ve known Sasson for many years,” he said. “He is crazy. This happen to him when he was soldier.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There are many of us who get crazy. Israel takes care of them.”

“Why haven’t I ever heard about them before?”

He smirked. “They are, how do you say? They are patriots. Israel takes care of them, and in exchange, they say nothing.”  Then, glancing at me, he added: “You should ask Sasson about himself. He likes to tell his story.”

The door re-opened. Sasson, wearing a new pair of sweatpants, shuffled out. The brother appeared behind him, arms crossed, scowling at the meek bear-man. A woman timidly peered over the brother’s shoulder. The brother, noticing her, yelled and slammed the door. Sasson climbed back into the taxi (with our help) and we drove off.

Sasson looked at me with two round eyes and asked in Hebrew, “Are you Jewish?”

“Half,” I answered in my broken Hebrew. “My father is Jewish.”

“You are good. Don’t let anyone tell you different because you are a Jew.” Tears welled up in his eyes and streamed down his cheeks. “Do you like Israel?”

I had seen many awful things in this country. Did I like Israel? I sat back and thought about this: did I like Israel? No. Yet, I cared for Israel.

“Israel is a good place,” Sasson went on. “It is the only place where Jews can be Jews.”

And then he began to tell me about himself: “My parents were from Morocco and Iraq, but I was born here. I served in the army in 1973. I was in the Golani unit.”

His chest swelled with pride.

The driver explained in English: “He was, how do you say? He was commando.”

Sasson continued: “I killed hundreds of Arabs. I sneak up to them with my knife and,” he ran a chubby finger across his throat. “Not only in Golan. I was in the Suez, too.”

He gazed blankly at the floor. The driver and I waited. Then: “I stopped being myself in the Golan. It was night. I was sneaking and I saw the Syrians line up a hundred Israeli boys and…” he hesitated at the memory, “…shoot them all dead. I stopped being myself then.”

I remained silent.  Hundreds of Arabs, killed with his bare hands?  Hundreds of Israelis, executed in cold blood?  The numbers seemed unrealistic, warped.  And yet that didn’t diminish the horror before me: this fat, broken man was once a brutal killer, but not only that, a killer who came to a point where he could no longer bear it, that thing which has defined this country and its two peoples for so long – war.

The taxi came to a halt. We were at the Kibbutz Nachshon junction, where the well-lit highway met the shadowy road that snaked up an ancient hill to Neve Shalom. I could see the “Oasis of Peace,” about an hour’s walk away, atop the hill’s crest. Beside it rose the gently sloping hump of Latrun, upon which sat the ruins of the Crusader fortress that gave the region its name. Salahadin and Richard the Lionhearted fought there, as did Israel and Jordan a millennium later.

The hospital was too far out of my way, the driver explained. He would take Sasson by himself. I turned to the bear-man, who smiled at me like a child. He extended a quivering, bloody hand to me. Between his fingers was a paper, upon which he had scrawled his name and phone number. I promised to give him a ring sometime, and then stepped out of the taxi. I then watched the taxi drive away.

I was alone. The moon was as full and bright as a newly minted shekel. Somewhere in the night, jackals howled and the radio of Bedouins broadcasted a woman’s voice. She cried out to the universe, wailing the sorrow of generations upon generations upon generations. With her wail echoing in my ear and the moon illuminating my way, I grabbed a board of wood and began the long walk back to where I had to go.

Walking up the road was a moment I shall never forget.  It slithered up the dim hill like a snake with scales of night. I was terrified: my hands clutched at the board and my eyes darted constantly left and right, left and right, while my ears scanned the darkness for any hint of predators, human or otherwise.  This was my moment, like Sasson’s many years ago, and either it would break me as it did him, or I would scale the abyss.

I’m not entirely certain how long the ascent took — an hour, maybe two.  Time in Israel is already a relative thing, spanning as it does millennia and a vast expanse of collective memory.  With nothing but the silver light of the moon and the twisting serpent-spine of the road as my guides, linearity surrendered to its own absurdity and dissipated like a fading dream.  Time now meant survival, and survival now meant moments, ticked off by the pace of my aching legs, and it meant faith, measured in the inches of that hill.

Finally, I came round a bend and found myself in the main driveway of Neve Shalom.  My friend Rayek, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and former mayor of the village, was sitting there in the tiny security vehicle, reading a book under a flashlight and half-listening to an international broadcast of America’s National Public Radio.  I quickly tossed away the board of wood then stumbled toward him, knocked on the door, and asked if he would like some company.  In truth, my journey now complete, I was asking if I would like some company.

His sharp eyes were at first surprised to see me at that forsaken hour, but then they smiled: yes, you would indeed like some company. Come, my friend, sit down and listen to the radio with me.  The morning is nearly here.

Soon, the sun came up.  I never called Sasson. For several years afterwards I felt guilty; now, I simply feel free.

Moses said to his servant, ‘I will journey on until I reach the land where the two seas meet, though I may march for ages’

- Qur’an 18:60

We are all in the chiaroscuro, questing between the dark and the light, not so that we can embrace the one or the other, but to find our true selves, whatever or whoever that may be, at the vertical horizon between the two.

Exploring the question of why the normally totalitarian government of Turkmenistan has suddenly and aggressively striven to increase internet access among its population, this article is ultimately a reflection upon the impact of technology upon human society.  As a piece of what can only be described as “journalistic philosophy”, I’m particularly pleased with how it turned out; indeed, its core ideas are why I am a committed cyberjournalist.

Note: a shortened version of this editorial was published under the title, “A Pandora’s Box“, in the “Our Take” section of Transitions Online (TOL).  The expanded version, republished below, originally appeared on neweurasia under the current title (click on the image above to read it).

It’s a philosophical riddle as old as when humanity first learned to harness the power of fire: Will technology bring freedom or slavery?  Lately, observers of Turkmenistan find themselves asking this very question about the Internet.

Turkmenistan has one of the world’s lowest rates of Internet penetration: According to Internetworldstats.com, a website that measures global Internet access, a meager 1.4 percent of Turkmenistan’s population is wired, putting the country in 216th place out of 226.

However, two years ago, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, recently ascended to the Turkmen presidency, vowed to expand the Internet in his nation. Speaking at Columbia University in September 2007, he remarked, “Let me tell you frankly that the atmosphere today in Turkmenistan is just incredible. Our children feel such a strong and intense yearning for knowledge that we just can’t fail and let them down.”

At the time, neweurasia’s pseudonymous blogger Conquistador noted that the speech was accompanied by a presentation showing young students typing on new laptops. In light of the paranoia that marked the previous regime of Saparmurat Niyazov – during which Internet access was sequestered to a tiny elite – the images were a bold statement.

“Will any of this emerge?” Conquistador asked. “That remains to be seen.” Yet, remarkably, it seems that the Berdymukhammedov regime is actually intent on keeping its word.

In September Turkmenistan hosted an IT-themed exhibition called Turkmentel 2009 and a scientific conference. Berdymukhammedov personally addressed the audience, saying, “We are doing our best so that every citizen of Turkmenistan has access to the Internet and modern communication technologies.”

Subsequently, the government declared its intention to launch Turkmenistan’s first ever communications satellite.

BIRTH OF THE TURKMENET

neweurasia’s Annasoltan, has been monitoring the rise of what she calls the “Turkmenet” – the Turkmen-language online community. Although minuscule, it is energetic and growing rapidly.

The Turkmenet’s appearance has already seen the rise of diverse phenomena, ranging from the dissemination of political hip hop songs in the Turkmen language to Islamic revivalism on Facebook.

A salient moment came on 12 September, when riots erupted between Turkmen and Chinese workers for a Chinese energy company in the Samandepe region of eastern Turkmenistan. According to RFE/RL, the Turkmen workers had complained of poor working conditions and wage discrimination.

“Although, as usual with such situations, the incident was completely unmentioned by the tightly-controlled Turkmen media, news of it still reached the Turkmenet,” Annasoltan reported. “[It] quickly sparked a vibrant and very public discussion.

“The riot has been particularly disappointing to those already embittered by the government’s constant refrain that it is defending the interests of the Turkmen population. Many are interpreting the incident as proof that the Turkmen government has sided with foreigners – in this case the Chinese – over its own citizens. One user even compares the Turkmen to the Uighurs of China.”

Remarkably, the Turkmen government did nothing to stop the criticism. In fact, the opposite happened: Ashgabad.ru, a very active online forum where residents of the Turkmen capital comment about their city which was mysteriously shut down in June, was abruptly reactivated.

Several of the forum’s topics are openly critical of the government; one topic even asks expatriated Turkmen, “Do you ever want to return?” [Click here and here to see screen captures of the controversial topic in Russian and English, respectively.  Observe the thread entitled, "I hate Turkmenistan."]

“Something is brewing online,” Annasoltan observes.

THE MOTIVATION?

Reacting to the satellite announcement, Annasoltan writes, “Indeed, aside from boosting national pride and invoking trust in the country’s development, [the satellite launch] does in reality mean good news for the country’s internet and mobile phone users.   Of course, a satellite isn’t exactly what Niyazov had in mind when he vowed to put Turkmens into space during the 21st Century.”  This raises an important question: if not the stars, what is Berdimuhammedov’s destination?

We should first consider the possibility that the government is actually being sincere. It may envision a steady and controlled increase in Internet access as necessary for the country’s development. Certainly, this interpretation seems consistent with what the government itself has said, including a 20 September statement that connected the planned satellite launch with catching up with the “critical role that telecommunication systems [have] played in the modern world.

There has obviously been no mention of the Internet’s potential use for dissent. Yet, a certain tolerance for criticism would also be consistent with a policy geared toward long-term development.

However, given the government’s consistently grievous track record on human rights and democracy, the idea that the authorities may actually envision a free and unfettered Internet as useful to the country’s development strains credulity.

Another possibility, along the same lines, is that the government is naïve, incompetent, disorganized, or some combination of the three. The authorities may simply not yet understand the anarchic effect of the perceived anonymity that comes with the internet – a social phenomenon known all too well in the wired West. Similarly, the government’s online expansion may be outpacing its own ability to police the new cybernetic spaces its decisions are creating.

Yet, the mental image of the government somehow being caught off guard by the Internet, much less its own policies, seems highly unlikely. In fact, previously the authorities have demonstrated a very high aptitude in regulating the Internet.

A more frightening possibility, then, is that the authorities actually want digital dissent. They may be confident in their policing abilities to the extent that they don’t feel a need to obsessively squash online dissent because they see it is as limited to an observable few and easily stoppable.

Conversely, the authorities may find digitalized dissent useful to vent discontent. Indeed, they may be seeking to lure out malcontents in order to catalog them for future elimination. It’s an Orwellian proposition, yes, but Turkmenistan wouldn’t be the first totalitarian regime to try it.

As always with this shadowy government, it is impossible to know its motivations. But one fact is clear: Turkmenistan has embarked upon a journey that could have major consequences for its future political and cultural life.

The satellite launch may one day be seen as symbolic by future Turkmens as the moment when their country embarked upon a unique cyberspace odyssey.  The year 2009 for them could be for them in reality what 2001 is only metaphorically for Westerners.

That’s a pretty bold prophecy to make.  However, recent events in Iran have shown that the Internet, once unleashed, is infectious and resilient. It carves out new and ever-shifting spaces of personal freedom too slippery for state control. It is within these spaces that dissatisfaction finds its voice. Dissidents, newly cyberized, discover that they are not alone and that there is strength in numbers, even binary ones.

Yeah, this is what my cough often feels like.

Whatever bug was ransacking my health last week, whether the dreaded spek griep or history’s angriest chest cold, has been dissipating over the last few days.  I’ve been left with a phlem-spewing cough that would make a xenomorph proud, but I’m feeling better.

I’ve taken set several of my recent Belgium posts to “private” status in preparation for a larger reflection in this space.  I now consider them to be something like rough drafts, albeit angry and despondent ones, of a much more serious but thoughtful post.  Stay tuned. 

I’m always thinking of what I should do with my blog.  Got an idea?  Add it to the suggestion box.

Since my last blog entry I have been very sick.  Don’t panic, but yes, the symptoms have matched those of the flu, and yes, it has demonstrated the speed and intensity that distinguishes a certain bacon-based export from Mexico.

Happily, after sleeping away my week, I’m feeling 75% normal.  I’ve still got one of history’s most disturbing coughs, Droopy Dog sniffles, and persistent fatigue.

I intend to spend this weekend trying to get back in the loop at neweurasia and school.  I’ve got lots of articles to edit and philosophy to read.  Can Medieval Islamic Aristotelian thought cure me?  Let’s find out…

Hahaha it seems that Belgium is full of wonderful surprises for me! *cough *cough