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February 20, 2012March 5, 2012

Carnival – Trinidad

March 7-8, 2011

February 20-21, 2012

Rarely has so much joy emanated from such a small dot on the globe, and reverberated with as much noise as Carnival.

Trinidad and Tobago is the 172nd smallest country in the world, but per capita, it’s party spot #1.

In the 1770s Trinidad had only a few thousand inhabitants, mostly Amerindians; it was one of the most underpopulated regions of Spain’s New World colonies. Spain opened immigration up to French colonists in the West Indies, who were somewhat miffed at the British takeover of the Caribbean. And to sweeten the deal, Spain included land grants for these emigrants and their slaves–provided they were Catholic and swore allegiance to the Spanish King. By the time the British took over the island in 1798—ending 300 years of Spanish rule—the French plantocracy was the dominant group. The island boasted sizable populations of West Africans, Spanish, and Amerindians as well, and was home to pirates, planters, slaves and soldiers alike.

The French celebrated fetes champêtre (garden parties) and bals masque (masquerade balls), borrowing some traditions from their homeland and picking others from the seemingly exotic rituals of their slaves. One highlights of these festivities was a canboulay ceremony, in which “landowners dressed up as negres jardins (garden slaves) and imitated the processions that occurred whenever a sugar cane field caught fire.” (NY Times, Dec. 28, 1986)

As a possession of the United Kingdom, slavery was outlawed in 1833 with the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act. Now it was the former slaves’ time to celebrate, and that they did, openly celebrating West African rhythms and rituals and mixing them with those of their former owners.

Grisso notes that the Carnival bears resemblance to the African Egungun festival, where families dressed in colors, in bands, to honor their ancestors. And while most European festivals transpired indoors, African communities celebrated in the great wide open. Grisso theorizes that the true origin of Carnival may have been the ancient Egyptian festivals, like the one Herodotus describes, in honor of the god Artemis…

Every baris [barge] carrying them there overflows with people, a huge crowd of them, men and women together. Some of the women have clappers, while some of the men have pipes which they play throughout their voyage. The rest of the men and women sign and clap their hands. When in the course of their journey they reach a community–not the city of their destination, but somewhere else–they steer the bareis close to the bank. Some of the women carry on doing what I have already described them as doing, but others shout out scornful remarks to the women in the town, or dance, or stand and pull up their clothes to expose themselves…more wine is consumed during this festival than throughout the whole of the rest of the year. According to the local inhabitants, up to 700,000 men and women, excluding children, come together for the festival.

Herodotus states, “the Egyptians were the first people in the world to hold general festive assemblies, and religious processions and parades, and the Greeks learnt from the Egyptians.”

The tradition was imported by the Romans, and through Rome to France. And it may be the Carnival of Trinidad was the reuniting of the Carnival traditions, filtered through two cultures on two separate continents over two-thousand years, and then merged together for the first time on a tiny island called Trinidad.

However, the British were not quite the party people that the French were. They banned the use of drums, fearing its pounding resulted in non-Victorian outcomes. The inhabitants merely used their creativity and banged on other objects, such as tins. Today the steel drum is universally recognized as a defining symbol of the Caribbean and of Carnivals world-wide.

Eventually the spirit of Carnival migrated eastward. London’s Notting Hill Carnival is the largest public event in the British capitol.

Looking Ahead to Carnival: Trinidad

Carnival in Trinidad: Evolution and Symbolic Meaning

The History of Herodotus: Book 2

The African and Spiritual Origins of Carnival

History is Made at Night: Politics of Dancing and Musicking – Trinidad Carnival

February 19, 2012February 27, 2012

Flag Day in Turkmenistan

February 19

Turkmenistan’s Flag Day was established in 1997 to coincide with the birthday of then-President Saparmurat Niyazov (1940-2006).

Niyazov ruled the country for over twenty years. He became Secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party (ie. Head Honcho) in 1985 and remained in power after Turkmenistan declared its independence in October 1991.

Turkmenistan prefers stability to change. One of the last of the Soviet Republics to formerly break from Russia, the country remained a one-party Communist state with party leader Niyazov as its President. In 1994 his term was extended to ten years by a vote of the Mejlis, the parliament which he controlled. Before the term was set to expire, a newly ‘elected’ Mejlis, consisting of members groomed by Niyazov, benevolently heaped a new title on their leader: “President for Life.”

Highlights of the Niyazov administration include:

Bestowed title upon himself: “Serdar Turkmenbashi.” (Great Leader of all Turkmen.)
Renamed the month of April after his mother.
Renamed January after himself: Turkmenbashi
Wrote the “Ruhnama,” a guide of his views on spiritual living–required reading for all schoolchildren.
Named airports, streets and landmarks after himself.

During his reign posters and statues of him were put up on almost every block in the country.

According to a segment from 60 Minutes (aired January 2004):

“He’s not only a brutal dictator, but a dictator who runs his country like it’s his own private Disney World…His face is everywhere, and you can’t walk a block without seeing either a statue or photo of him.”

Said the humble Great Leader in response:

“I’m personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets—but it’s what the people want.”

And as for renaming months after himself and his family, he explained:

“You can’t have a great country without great ancestors—and we had none before. We’re starting new, with a new society, and this new culture will be followed for centuries.”

In defense of his authoritative rule, he explained it from the Turkmenistan perspective:

“You Americans, you should understand one thing—for 74 years under the Soviets we were prohibited from thinking about political opposition parties. Look at America—you had a civil war, you didn’t have instant democracy. Yet now you demand we create democracy in Turkmenistan overnight.

Niyazov died in 2006 without an apparent successor.

International Crisis Group noted, “His two decades in power bequeathed ruined education and public health sectors, a record of human rights abuses, thousands of political prisoners and an economy under strain despite rich energy exports.”

The International Herald Tribune says that change has come to post-Niyazov Turkmenistan:

“For his 63rd birthday, [2003] Niyazov’s ministers proclaimed him God’s prophet on Earth. This year, [2008] according to a law passed last week, Flag Day – a holiday typically observed in conjunction with Niyazov’s birthday – will be celebrated exclusively.”

Though his legacy has begun to fade, Turkmenistan still celebrates Flag Day today, February 19, on what would have been the Turkmenbashi’s 69th birthday.

February 18, 2012February 27, 2012

The Gambia – Independence Day

February 18

Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a man-child was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.

So begins Alex Haley’s classic Roots: the Saga of an American Family. The book and subsequent mini-series reawakened the American consciousness to the history of slavery and the black experience in America.

It’s actually The Gambia, not Gambia.

Inclusion of the article “The” in the Gambia’s case is because the country is essentially a tiny sliver of land drilled into the west coast of Senegal. It’s made up of the land that hugs the Gambia River as it winds to the Atlantic.

In Roots, Kunta Kinte is captured in The Gambia, transported on a slave ship and sold into slavery in Maryland.

That Haley can trace his ancestral line to what is now Africa’s smallest country (At 10,000 square kilometers, The Gambia is smaller than Connecticut) is not unusual. According to Wikipedia:

As many as 3 million slaves may have been taken from the [Senegambia] region during the three centuries that the transatlantic slave trade operated.

If accurate, that would mean thirty Africans were abducted from Senegambia a day, every day, for three hundred years.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the first American President to visit Africa when he spent the night in The Gambia en route to the Casablanca Conference in 1943.

The Gambia achieved independence from Great Britain on February 18, 1965.

For the first 15 years of its independence The Gambia enjoyed its reputation as a model multi-party democracy for African nations. An unsuccessful but bloody attempted coup in 1981 dented that reputation. The country’s President Dawda Jawara was in England attending the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana when his government was nearly ousted from power. He maintained control via an agreement with Senegal to back his government with military force.

A second coup, in July 1994 was successful, ending Jawara’s near 30-year reign. The head lieutenant of the coup and Gambia’s future leader, Yahya Jammeh, had not been born when Jawara first became Prime Minister.

February 18, 2012February 27, 2012

Democracy Day – Nepal

February 18

The Nepalese flag, the only non-rectangular national flag in the world, symbolizes the two religions of Nepal---Buddhism and Hinduism---and the peaks of the Himalayas.

For most of the half-century or so since Democracy Day was established in Nepal, the actual practice of democracy has been stifled or totally repressed.

Ironically, Democracy Day marks the return to power of a monarch, King Tribhuvan, in the early 1950s. The country had been run by a succession of despots known as the Rana dictatorship. For generations the Rana allowed the monarchy to remain but used the king as a puppet. In 1950 the pro-democratic King Tribhuvan fled the country with most of his family to India. The Rana declared the king’s 3 year-old great-nephew Gyanendra as the new king, as he was the most senior member of the family left in the country.

For whatever reason foreign powers refused to recognize the new king, and Tribhuvan, with support from India was able to topple the Rana rule.

Soon after, Tribhuvan’s son increased the monarch’s power, virtually taking over Parliament. The power of the monarch waxed and waned over the next half century.

In 2001 the Crown Prince Dipendra went on a shooting rampage, killing the entire royal family and then himself. Gyanendra, the former 3 year-old monarch, was once again the most senior member of the royal family left in the country. He reclaimed the throne, now at age 53.

On Democracy Day in 2004 King Gyanendra encouraged all Nepalese “to unite for making multiparty democracy meaningful through people-oriented politics.” (Democracy Day in Nepal)

The next year King Gyanendra celebrated Democracy Day by dissolving Parliament and seizing control of the entire country, ostensibly to curb Communist factions. (BBC)

The Parliament regained control in 2007 and voted to abolish the monarchy once and for all. King Gyanendra’s reign, and the two and a half century old monarchy, is set to end in April this year [2008] after national elections are held.

[originally published Feb. 2008]

King Gyanendra’s Democracy Day Speech 2008

Proposal to change Nepal’s flag

February 17, 2012February 25, 2012

Kosovo – Independence?

February 17

Happy Birthday Kosovo!

Although it’s not all that happy. The newborn nation is still in the throes of economic devastation and ethnic violence. Nor do we know yet if February 17 will continue to be celebrated as the young nation’s independence holiday. Or for that matter, if Kosovo actually is independent.

The State Assembly in Kosovo’s capitol of Pristina declared its independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. Since that time over 50 countries have recognized the world’s youngest nation’s independence. However, Serbia is not one of those countries.

According to Serbian President Boris Tadic, February 17 is “just a date when an illegal act was enacted, when Pristina proclaimed Kosovo a so-called state.”

Tensions between the ethnic groups that make up the Balkans and the former Republic of Yugoslavia were subdued under the leadership of Josip Tito, who ruled the amalgamation of states for over 30 years after World War II. The states that made up Yugoslavia were: Bosnia and Herzegovenia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia, of which Kosovo was an autonomous province. Tito’s government stressed “Unity in Brotherhood”, the idea that Yugoslavia’s people were essentially one, but had been divided by foreign occupiers over previous generations.

That idea didn’t fly after Tito’s death in 1980. Ethnic nationalism rose and in 1991 and 1992, most states seceded from Yugoslavia (literally, “South Slavs” land) leaving Serbia and Montenegro the sole members of the former republic.

Smaller than Connecticut, Kosovo is home to over 2 million people, 90% of them ethnic Albanians, with the remainder mostly Serbs. Kosovo first declared independence in 1991, but the movement was put down by Serbian leaders like Slobodan Milosevic.

War ravaged the Balkans throughout the 1990s. The Kosovo War of 1998-1999 left between 5,000 and 10,000 people dead, and culminated with the controversial NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The state was governed by the UN between 1999 and 2008.

…what Milosevic and his regime tried to do for the Serbian people during their time could not be more wrong. I mean you do not just dispose of people as they thought they could do. You do not fire people en masse, you do not take their housing rights, you do not ignore 2 million people as if they did not exist, and most of all you do not run them away from their homes and their property.

On the other hand what that regime did was not new to Kosovo at all, it had all been done before by the Albanian side…between 1974 and 1988. And let me tell you, it was not easy to be anything but Albanian during those years in Kosovo.

…Having said all of this I can say the place is cursed and will never be peaceful.

— “Srecko”, from Kosovo, “Memories of Kosovo“, BBC

[Published 2009]

February 16, 2012February 25, 2012

Kim Jong Il’s Birthday (no longer observed)

Sadly, this holiday is no longer celebrated.

Mr. Jong Il passed away on December 17, 2011, aged 70 (or 69).

—————————————————————————————

February 16 used to be celebrated by North Korea as the birthday of its Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. He was a Water Tiger Aquarius.

Kim Jong Il, official portrait — The late Kim Jong Il

According to http://www.usbridalguide.com/special/chinesehoroscopes/Tiger.htm

“Tigers are also incorrigibly competitive – they simply cannot pass up a challenge, especially when honor is at stake, or they are protecting those they love. Tigers are unpredictable and it would be unwise to underestimate their reactions…They often have a hidden agenda…Tigers do not find worth in power or money.”

In honor of the late Dear Leader, here is a clip of his former bodyguards in training.

So You Think You Can Be a Kim Jong Il Bodyguard???

“Under the wise guidance of Leader Kim Jong Il the Party, Army and People have built the utopian socialist workers’ paradise that is the envy of the whole world.”– “Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, the Great Brilliant Commander”

North Korea electricity map — North and South Korea - electricity map

“North Korea may have the bomb, but it doesn’t have much electricity.” — Daily News

February 16, 2012February 25, 2012

Lithuanian Independence Day

February 16

“The Council of Lithuania in its session of February 16, 1918 decided unanimously to address the governments of Russia, Germany, and other states with the following declaration:

“The Council of Lithuania, as the sole representative of the Lithuanian nation, based on the recognized right to national self-determination, and on the Vilnius Conference’s resolution of September 18-23, 1917, proclaims the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania, founded on democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital, and declares the termination of all state ties which formerly bound this State to other nations.

“The Council of Lithuania also declares that the foundation of the Lithuanian State and its relations with other countries will be finally determined by the Constituent Assembly, to be convoked as soon as possible, elected democratically by all its inhabitants.”

These short paragraphs are what the nation of Lithuania celebrates today, February 16, as its independence day. A declaration that declared an end to over a century of Russian occupation.

Lithuania was first united in the thirteenth century by the enigmatic Mindaugas. (No, he was not a Harry Potter character, that’s Mundungus.) Mindaugas was the first and last King of Lithuania. He converted to Christianity to attain the support of the Pope and the Livonian Order, but reverted back to Paganism after. He and his wife Morta were crowned King and Queen in 1253. When she died ten years later Mindaugas made the fatal mistake of taking Morta’s sister as his wife. She was already married to a former ally of Mindaugas, Daumantas. Mindaugas was used to annexing numerous lands, but Daumantas did not take the annexation of his wife so readily, and helped Mindaugas’s nephew assassinate the King along with two of the king’s sons. Never again was there crowned a king of Lithuania.

By the end of the 1300s Lithuania was the largest state in Europe. Its land included parts of what is now Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Russia.

One gift the Lithuanians bestowed upon Eastern Europe during the 16th century was the codification of its laws in the Three Statutes of Lithuania. The Sobornoye Ulozheniye, the first complete code of Russian law, was based in part on the Lithuanian codes.

A political bond with Poland endured in various manifestations through the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries until the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was eaten up piece by piece by the superpowers growing around it: Prussia, Austria, and mainly Russia.

Catherine II of Russia’s attitude was: “Polotsk and Lithuania have been taken and retaken about twenty times, and treaty was ever concluded without one side or the other claiming part or all of it, depending on circumstances.“

Lithuania remained under Russian control for over a century. During World War I the Lithuanian government exploited the weakness of the Russian Empire and the animosity between Russia and Germany. A Council of Lithuania passed a series of Acts starting in late 1917 and early 1918 which repudiated Russian rule. Germany, which occupied parts of Western Russia, was happy to see pieces of the Russian Empire break away, thinking they would pick up the crumbs. However, when Germany began losing the war in 1918 their position to negotiate declined. And with the Act of Independence of February 16, 1918, Lithuania achieved independence from both Russia and Germany.

The 20 Signatories of the Act of Independence

The celebration was short lived. During World War II Lithuania was overrun by Soviet tanks on their way to Poland, followed by German tanks on their way to Russia, and again by the Soviets on their way to Berlin.

January 13, 1991, the Soviet Union, fearful of increasing nationalist sentiment in Lithuania invaded the city of Vilnius and attacked the TV tower and other buildings. Images of the attack spread throughout the world, and were influential in the eventual fall of the Soviet Union eight months later.
The short Act of Independence of 1918, with its emphasis on democratic principles, was cited by Lithuanians as the inspiration for and the basis of the rebirth of their sovereign state.

Blogs of note:

http://irzikevicius.wordpress.com
EU Newcomer Lithuania celebrates 90 years of Independence

February 14, 2012February 25, 2012

Would the real St. Valentine please stand up?

February 14

Valentine #1:

Valentinus was born in Africa around 100 AD. He was schooled in Alexandria, and was taught by a disciple of St. Paul named Theodas.

Valentinus was a Gnostic Christian who taught that God could not be known directly and was neither masculine nor feminine but a combination of both.

The teachings of Valentinus directly contradicted Orthodox Christianity, but he garnered a large following when he moved to Rome around 135 AD.

“Valentinus, the Gnostic who almost became pope, was thus the only man who could have succeeded in gaining a form of permanent positive recognition for the Gnostic approach to the message of Christ.”

Stephan A. Hoeller, A Gnostic for All Season

Valentinus died around 170 AD. The Catholic Church (literally “universal” church) declared Valentinus’s teachings heretical and all its writings were destroyed. Everything we knew about Valentinian Theology came from his detractors until the Nag Hammadi scrolls, discovered in 1945, were translated in recent decades.

Valentine #2:

But it’s unlikely that the Catholic Church would declare a Saint a man whose teachings it deemed heretical. Another candidate for the real St. Valentine is:

Valentinus of Interamna (Turin), a bishop and martyr who miraculously healed the deformed son of Craton, a Greek rhetorician in Rome.

Valentine #3:

Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledges a third Valentinus, who was a Christian priest in Rome with miraculous healing powers. He was imprisoned for teaching Christianity. While in prison, the jailer, hearing of Valentinus’s abilities, asked if he could cure his daughter of blindness. Valentinus did so using a special crocus. According to legend, Valentinus and the jailer’s daughter fell in love, and the last note he left to her before his execution (on February 14 of course) was signed “From your Valentine.”

Valentine #4:

The most popular candidate may be #4, whose legend is often merged with #3. Both were said to be Christian priests in Rome and share the same date of execution, February 14, during the short reign of Emperor Claudius II. (268-270)

During Claudius’s reign, Rome was fighting enemies on all sides, and the Emperor was having a tough time restocking the army with fresh recruits. So he temporarily banned marriage, thinking men without families would be more likely to fight in the army.

Valentinus defied the Emperor by conducting wedding services for couples in secret. Valentinus was found out, and was tried and beheaded–like #3–on February 14, 270.

There’s no actual evidence #4 existed as a separate entity from #3. Long before any of the Valentinuses, Romans associated the middle of February with love between the sexes. They celebrated Juno Februata on February 14 and Lupercalia on February 15. As Valentinus’s Saint Day happened to fall right in the middle of the pagan celebrations, it replaced the festivals in name, though not in practice. Over the centuries Valentinus’s legend may have been “spiced up” to explain why we associate this Roman bishop with all things romance.