Peace-ful Avenue

Peace Avenue and a parallel main road whose name I forget were for much of yesterday free of traffic in the centre. This was No Car Day promoted by the World Health Organisation. It allowed people to walk in the roads without fear of being run down. There was the odd ambulance or trundling police car and in mid-afternoon a small bike rally was held, but for much of the time the thoroughfares were calm.
Initially, as I left my apartment, I thought they had picked an unfortunate day with a dust storm so powerful it half-obscured the mountains that ring Ulaanbaatar. Once I reached the traffic-free zone though, the weather had eased off.
The traffic police had erected barriers to keep out vehicles and those cops patrolling inside the zone were breathing cleaner air than they would on any other day of the year. Plenty of children took advantage by playing football, bicycling, rollerblading, taking group photos in the middle of the road or drawing murals on the tarmac. It was an experience to be savoured when on all other days, it's a mad dash across the roads. I walked the entire 5km stretch of Peace Avenue that was free for pedestrians and then walked back, taking a detour after a little while to walk along the other main road. It was so pleasant that I think they should do this every Sunday.
12.14pm

Goodbye Yeltsin

Yesterday I watched Yeltsin's funeral on TV at the workplace (NTV's signal extends to Ulaanbaatar). In the UK, state funerals have the coffin on top of a horse-drawn nineteenth century gun carriage - here, Yeltsin's coffin was on top of a late twentieth century equivalent, an armoured personnel carrier-drawn howitzer carriage. I was a little disappointed that the Funeral March was not played during the procession; instead, the band performed some other mournful tune for the procession. The Russian patriarchs walked closely behind the coffin - the first time in over 100 years that they have had a role to play in a proper state funeral.
In the cemetery, the guards made a right hash of folding up the Russian flag on the coffin, all on national live television. You could almost hear them think, "How does this go?" When the coffin lid was removed for Yeltsin's wife and daughters to pay their last respects, the ex-leader looked like he was covered up to the neck in a giant Kremlin souvenir teatowel. Then the lid was replaced, he was lowered into the ground and the broadcast stopped.
Later on that night, I had my departing drinks with the UB Post staff as I stepped down from my position as English editor.
After that, Altaa and I went to pub that was still open and showing Champions League football. I wanted to see Chelsea vs Liverpool at such a strange hour. There were plenty of Mongolian Chelsea and Liverpool fans present who got excited a bit excessively for a largely prosaic match, kicking off at 2.45am. It was like a pantomine crowd. The match itself was not the snoozeathon the same fixture two years ago was, but though there was plenty of aggression in terms of muscular football, it wasn't focused. Too much heat and not enough light. At least, there was the precious sight of a goal, an exquisite break from Chelsea's own penalty box that took in Carvalho, Drogba and Joe Cole running on to smash it in. That gave the match extra spice.
12.57pm

Too much vodka

Bye bye Boris Yeltsin. A man of great stature, you impoverished most of your country folk, reducing admirals to moonlighting as taxi drivers, and the drunken buffoonery was hardly statesmanlike, but if history has one positive aspect on your rule, you were the first Russian leader to step down voluntarily, a path Putin is likely to follow. The acceleration of the end of the Soviet Union and that will be your legacy.
15.01

Of the week

Among other things that have happened in the past week, President Nambaryn Enkhbayar visited the UK and, though not a state visit, still had talks with Tony Blair inside Downing Street. At one point as they shook hands, with a Disraeli bust in the background, Blair's face was one of "so which country is this guy from again?" But once on the steps of Downing Street, once more shaking hands, Blair's visage is transformed into a joyous cackle: "yeah, cool, this is the Mongolian guy." Enkhbayar went to the UK as prime minister in 2003.

So Newcastle drew honourably 0-0 with Chelsea at home, especially since the latter club had added incentive to win with the premiership rival's draw the previous day. So all top four clubs have now visited St. James' Park and none have won in the league and though we only beat Liverpool, that's still an achievement. I don't know how managers cope, all the palpitations in my heart throughout the entire time I'm watching this match or any other close-fought match with Newcastle.

I'm particularly pleased that Italy has finally had its comeuppance in football. People outside Italy thought the four match-fixing clubs got off relatively lightly, so to have their punishments made even more lenient was a hefty insult to justice. Then there was the hooliganism, the over-zealous policing against English fans and the unfit match stadia nationwide. What's more, when Italy hosted the World Cup in 1990, there was a rancorous divide between north and south.
But all that didn't matter compared to Calciopoli. The sight of big clubs getting away with undermining a game was what infuriated me. It was a slap on the hand for all bar Juventus, as evidenced by the fact that they have mostly recovered inside a season. When I read that Poland-Ukraine had won, I punched the air, much in a manner I imagine that the Polish and Ukrainian delegations did that I read. I thought Hungary-Croatia would have been a stronger candidate to challenge Italy, since Poland-Ukraine have a time zone dividing them for starters, but, since Poland and Hungary define themselves as Central Europe, having a bona fide host country from eastern Europe is exciting.
11.37am

Blue Mondays

After several days of reflection from the campus massacre at Virginia Tech. and in the wake of another crazie blowing holes in a NASA complex in Houston, I feel I should comment. I might have left these sad events as they were, but for the grating words of another gun-nut, albeit one who is the president of the second largest gun association in the USA after the noxious and obnoxious NRA. Living up to his name, Larry Pratt of the Gun Owners of America, sensing the threat to his interest, complained that, to quote, "there were 26,000 sitting ducks." He goes on to say that he has never heard of any school or campus shooting in Utah or another Midwest state where the rednecks do roam, places where guns are allowed on faculty. Leaving aside that he might be so dumb as to not read newspapers, watch TV or follow Internet, and also that school or uni slaughter is so common in the US that the media as a rough rule of thumb don't cover it unless there are four or more deaths, to use his argument, I've never heard of any school or campus massacres in Maine, Vermont or Rhode Island; therefore, we are back to square one, showing how worthless his argument was.
As for those sitting ducks, Cho was not allowed to take guns onto campus, but he did, what's to stop any other student doing the same surreptitiously? Pratt's solution was to arm every student or professor with a gun, but there's almost certainly more than one disturbed individual at Virginia Tech. so that would be madness. Moreover, more US cops die from criminals grabbing their guns and turning the weaponry on the police than any other single factor. The potential for accidents or fatalities would be far greater than Cho could ever have achieved.
When that argument fails, the fall-back dragged out is a clause in the American constition allowing "well-regulated militias to bear arms." That is a fossil of the days when its framers felt that a British re-invasion was a very likely possibility. In the age of nuclear weapons, a successful invasion of the USA by conventional means is unthinkable. And 'arms' is rather vague, ranging from a penknife to a nuclear bomb in a suitcase. But that's by the by.
Still, many Americans cling to this out-of-date clause as an article of faith; more one feels than they do for freedom of speech. So Virginia Tech. talks of security measures - a costly cure instead of cheap prevention. But the gunman who went into the NASA building, killed a fellow worker and made a hostage situation before turning the gun on himself penetrated massive checks. The reason it got reported was that it happened in a high-profile place (NASA HQ) and past reams of security checkpoints. The murderous disgruntled psycho will always get through. For extra security, they will lay extra plans.
Which is not to say all such nutters will achieve their aim, just that one or two will slip the net to wreak their carnage because of human error or some other imponderable factor . Jon Ronson, a journalist of whom I have the highest respect, had some interesting pointers about school or campus shootings. They usually happen in mid-April (presumably because most people prefer warmer weather and seeing more people become happy may just tip the angry sadsack over the edge) and they also frequently happen on a Monday (with all that weekend planning, they can't contain themselves). But most importantly, for every 'successful' slaughter, there are three to four failed ones. The psychosis in parts of society is there. It's present in Britain as well, but by banning handguns and most other firearms, we've made it harder for nutjobs to be destructive. Gun crime is too high in this country, but it's miniscule compared to New York gun homicides in a far smaller population than the UK and Los Angeles has twice the number of gun victims than the Big Apple.
It all boils down to one thing. Bill Clinton once said "it's the economy, stupid." For Virginia Tech., Houston and all the other places bereaved by similar incidents, it's the guns, stupid.
14.48 21/04/07

Gunners in more ways than one

12.48pm

The latest front in the war on international terrorism is north London, specifically Arsenal. But when Osama bin Laden and Chris Martin are supporters of the club, you know international terrorism is never far away.
Stan Kroenke is willing to invest a fortune in purging Arsenal of its base for international terrorism, comparable now to Afghanistan under the Taliban, because of his love for freedom. But the roots of international terrorism run deep and he has been rebuffed. The latest sign of this is the removal with immediate effect of David Dein, Arsenal’s vice-chairman, who supports Kroenke. Dein is passionate for his club and is most unhappy that it has fallen into the hands of freedom-hating international terrorism. He was against the stadium switch, knowing the problem could be contained, prior to elimination, at the smaller ground of Highbury, but he was overruled and now international terrorism has more converts than ever at Ashburton Grove. It’s called the Emirates stadium after all, a clear reference to establish a global Arabic caliphate.
The board members forced Dein out. Danny Fizsman may be a Jew, but his name smacks of German descent and as we saw in 2002, when, for electoral purposes, Gerhard Schroeder called the Iraq war an ‘adventure’, the Germans aren’t serious about combating international terrorism and if they aren’t serious, then they are for it! Peter Hill-Wood may have family connections to Arsenal, but as his name suggests, you can’t see the wood for the hills – he cannot be trusted!
The pursuit of Arsenal by Kroenke will be relentless, but the cause is right and he will prevail. Once he does, he will allow the US government to deport all those in the home section to Guantanamo Bay. Arsenal fans will soon realize ‘extraordinary rendition’ isn’t a footballing trick from Cesc Fabregas. Transporting 55,000 by aeroplane may leave a massive carbon footprint, but there is a more pressing case at hand than global warming – the fight against international terrorism. Anyway, global warming is a ruse cooked up by international terrorists to ruin our economies in trying to stop it. A few away fans may get swept up as the home section is taken down and be subjected to immense degradation over many years, before being sent back to prison by an unconstitutional military court, but that’s collateral damage for you. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. This is for freedom.
In Gitmo, the Arsenal fans will acknowledge their craven allegiance to international terrorism. Many will say they dislike the glorious war leaders, Bush and Blair. Terrorists! Most will say they think peace for the Palestinians and a two-state solution is just. Terrorists! Almost all will say they think Fair Trade is a good thing. Terrorists the lot of them! Fair Trade takes money from the pockets of the rich people like Stan Kroenke who fight international terrorism and desire freedom, especially economic freedom. The world needs more stupendously rich Americans. We should be grateful to our US ally for helping us out in tackling international terrorism.
The Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, admits to feeling sad at Dein’s departure, but as we know in the run-up to Iraq, all Frenchmen are deluded! Having spent years devaluing English football, such as going a league season unbeaten, his latest insult was to try and win the honourable League Cup with his youth team. Is it just co-incidence that Arsenal have won nothing since all foreign first XIs became commonplace in the last two years? Wenger can’t stand speaking English, hence no English players, but needs English wealth for his ambitions. Kroenke will sort this Frenchie out or send him packing. Beguiling football, ha! George Graham had it right with an agricultural back four and Ian Wright nicking a 1-0 win. You didn’t see any international terrorism flourishing then, did you?

Big Wedding

Posted 12.10pm
This Wednesday, 18th April 2007, Altaa and I were invited to a society wedding, where a big-cheese Mongolian film-maker's daughter was getting married. Inconveniently, it in the middle of the day in the middle of the week, but we still made it. The wedding itself was a private affair, held in the Wedding Palace, but we went to the reception. This was held in the main hall of the five-star Ulaanbaatar Hotel. I had no idea how grand it would be and so was glad that we had bought as a wedding present a gas-fired stove (that I could carry) for 55,500 tugrugs. We put the present in the ger (traditional tent) that had been erected in the hall to one side. The settings were majestically opulent. I partook of four different alcohol drinks that were on our table - fine Mongolian vodka, red Bordeaux wine, Budver Budweiser (Czech) and red label Johnnie Walker whiskey. The latter is usually mass-produced in China while sold as authentic, but this was the real thing, even with its Kilmarnock post code, let alone where it was being served.
The newly wed bride, bulge of a second baby on the way prominent, arrived with her husband after about one hour after the invitation stated we should come. The entertainment was lavish, with many famous Mongolian musicians performing on the stage, which ironically in all this splendour looked like it had been mocked up for a Sunday school nativity play, with its gold paper stuck to walls and swishy curtains. The pick for me was Nuans - a band that specialises in the synergy of pop and opera or Popera - and in their repertoire that they sang was a classically rendered, Mongolian-language version of Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart and followed that up with Faure's Pavane with an underlying guitar rythym and occasional backbeat.
As we sat at the table, we were served with a three-course meal. There were many speeches by the family of both bride and groom. The brother of the groom pledged a wedding gift of 1 billion tugrugs, before realising that was beyond his means and scaling it back to 100 million tugrugs (he confused 999, million with 99 million, perhaps intentionally). Altaa noticed that I was only one of two foreigners present, so I did indeed feel privileged. There were also three former Miss Mongolias there; I don't if these were them, but two women with their glamorous ball gowns reminded me of Natasha and her friend in Tolstoy's War And Peace where they make their ball debut in society. Along with all the multitude of guests we retrieved our gift from the ger and went up to give it to the couple at the end.

Spring freshening

Thursday 12 April 12.02pm
Ah, the first rain of the year in Mongolia. Most of it came in the night, leaving Ulaanbaatar to wake up to a freshened, clean feeling. It lifts the soul.

Crossing time

Posted 11/04/07 11.15am
However, other people spent their Easter Sundays, I don't think they could beat mine for bizarre - namely being stuck in a Chinese border town.
With Altaa, I had made my way down from Ulaanbaatar on the Friday by night on the train to arrive at the Mongolian border town of Zamyn-Uud at 8am, Saturday 7th April, the day my Mongolian visa expired. Going into China, was a means of renewing my tourist visa (though in effect, getting a new one).
Crossing the border was gruelling - a mammoth 3 and a half hours, mainly due to a rookie Chinese customs officer (while his counterpart on the desk across worked at twice the speed - something we didn't know at the tremendous crush of people at the rear of the hall, until we were in a semblance of a 70-person queue).
Eventually staggering through, we crossed into China proper. In the lead-up to the hall, we had indulged in five minutes of people-smuggling. In our jeep, we had five passengers including ourselves, but one had joined since we left the Mongolian border hall. The Chinese guard at the road gate to the Chinese hall didn't seem to like this, so our driver turned around, drove 250m and then stopped out of sight of the gate. The woman who had joined us lay down at the back of the jeep and then we put the removable back seat on top of her and covered her up with luggage. Then we drove back. This fooled the border guard. Though she entered the hall, on the other side we didn't see the woman again.
Once in Erlian (as the Chinese call it - Mongolians call it Ereen), we searched for a Mongolian-speaking taxi driver - we were in Inner Mongolia after all - who could take us to the Mongolian consulate. Upon reaching it, the security guard on duty told us it was closed until Monday. "How am I going to get back into Mongolia," I loudly exclaimed. He gave us a telephone number of an official, but, even with the offer of financial inducement, she refused to open up the consulate (or rather the small visa hut in the courtyard next to the perimeter wall).
After the initial shock, I took this turn of events with equanimity. Wisely, I had stocked up on plenty of yuan and we quickly found a decent hotel for 100 yuan (14 pounds) a night. I had my New Testament and Psalms to hand as well. Altaa would miss the busiest workday of the week and I too would have to forgo Monday's work, but it was an inconvenience rather than a calamity.
For the weekend, we pottered around Ereen, which is quite pretty with its wide boulevards and occasional art-deco structures that had a feel of Russia's Far East. At night, the edges of buildings are lit up - delineating the city with their bright colours far more than the dusty street lamps could. I did cough a lot on the first day but I put that down the fresh Gobi air removing the gunk that had built up in my lungs in UB.
In the hotel, Altaa had a good time watching TV since she had no opportunity to do this at home. One show was a Chinese comedy-drama series set in medieval Kazakhstan with Inner Mongolian actors speaking Chinese dubbed into Mongolian. This state-sanctioned Mongolian channel (MTV no less) also had an edgy police drama.
Ereen goes a bundle on dinosaurs and its dinosaur park in the south is far more impressive than Tiananmen Square, which is interrupted by Mao's mausoleum (the only human statue of the Chairman was a bold, whitewashed sculpture outside a bank). There were several dinosaur statues dotted around the park and appropriate dried, yellow grass, some of it burnt in places to give the impression of tar pits. It won't look right in the summer when it will probably be green. We came at the right time. Also in the south of the town are the cheapest stores where we did the majority of shopping on the Monday.
I handed my visa over to a now thankfully open consulate at around 11.15pm on the Monday, coming back at 3pm to collect it. Then it was to the border, which this time was largely pain-free. We met an American and two Mongolains at the consulate and traveled back with them. Entering the Chinese border check building, I joked with the American that our driver was heading back to China - with our bags! This prompted him to keep looking at the jeep until he could see it no more inside the hall.
Once in Zamyn-Uud, we were lucky to buy some tickets for the 5.50pm train - the first one out of town. Thye were cheap but it was in a hard-seat carraige and it was a sixteen-hour journey overnight. Though hard-seat, they had slim cushions and one could just about stretch out on them in the cramped conditions. Altaa and I curled up on one. Eventually, we arrived in UB around 10.15am. We got a taxi home, I changed most of my clothes I'd been wearing since Friday (I had at least taken a spare pair of socks) and went straight back out to the office.

Apology, yes. Reparations, no

As the comment dies down on the 200th anniversary on Britain's abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, I thought I'd add a little rejoinder has now absorbed most of the arguments that have gone before.
First off, is the issue of an apology. The government expresses its 'deepest regret' - essentially a non-legally binding apology. Jeremy Paxman doesn't see why he should say sorry for something he didn't do and happened so long ago. Black people (and Indians too) are adamant that an apology is the very least that should be delivered. Well, I think if it soothes ruffled feathers and eases community relations then an apology is definitely worth making. Many white people have indirectly benefitted from the slave trade - essentially the entire population of Bristol is guilty by family association. But the trouble with sweeping generalisations is not everybody who is white today (or then)benefitted from the revenue accrued from the slave trade, just as everyone who is black in Britain did not necessarily have a slave descendant. If we are going to get pernickety, and have apologies 'demanded' then we should identify who needs to apologise for their family's actions and who doesn't. If it is raised that all whites benefitted at least in some minute way, what about the propagation of sweatshops in the Indian subcontinent, which black Britons too patronise with their footwear and clothing as much as their white counterparts. Should we issue an apology to all the poor workers there? Should anyone who buys a diamond apologise to the victims of the 'dimond conflicts' in Sierra Leone and the Congo region, for fueling the civil wars there. Kanye West was very firm on this in his album 'Late Registration' - "people ask me if I'm going to give my chain back/ that'll be the day I give the game back," from the song "Diamonds From Sierra Leone." On the album, he brilliantly skewers the self-pity and victimhood myth-making of certain blacks. Black people do face many unfair advantages but there's no point in promoting the 'poor me' mentality as that leads to defeatism.
And this brings us to reparations. Reparations are nothing new, but are usually applied between states after wars. This chain was broken when Jewish groups sued Swiss Banks for knowingly harbouring Nazi gold taken from Jewish people exterminated in the death camps. The banks hated such a high-profile and to rapidly withdraw from the glare reached a settlement with the Jewish relatives of victims. This set a precedent and in our increasingly litigious age, black groups suddenly heard 'ker-ching', when even ten years previously no-one seriously taked about reparations for the slave trade. Now it's a burning matter for many right-on black people. The thing they can't agree on is the reason why its a burning matter. It's either a salve for the humiliation they suffer from having a slave ancestor or compensation for being torn from the mother continent or its to give back Africa in monetary form what it lost from what it could have earned from the labour and so on. It's all rather nebulous. The Jewish groups had a clearly articulated central plank - the banks deliberately took gold they knew was from murdered Jews. Black groups don't have this and their argument falls through because of it. Maybe all the reasons should be collated as the basis for reparations, but court process doesn't work like that. Our litigious self-absorbed age, aided by ambulance-chasing lawyers, entitles anyone with a grievance to get some pay-back, because it's all someone else's fault, not their own, if they tripped on a paving stone or are poor.
Perhaps if we are going to get into the matter of reparations, what about paying the Royal Navy for trying to stamp out the slave trade. The Royal Navy may have done it for reasons of self-interest (if the British aren't going to benefit from the slave trade, nor is anyone else), but they still did it.
And what about the Arabs? They started taking slaves from sub-Saharan Africa before Europeans began exploring the west coast of Africa. No-one is demanding an apology from the Arabs though, let alone reparations because Arab governments would laugh in their faces and tell them to get stuffed (even though the OPEC countries have oil-money coming out of their ears). No, black groups have followed the money trail that leads to softer, more touchy-feely western governments, becaue they think they'll be more successful there.
Let us not forget the African kings who made a packet out of selling their subjects to the Europeans. Is it the fault of the Europeans that these kings squandered that wealth instaed of building up their territories?
And what about all the slaves of the ancient world? Spartacus didn't want reparations from the Romans, just his freedom, but then he was living in age when freedom was enough (not that the Romans agreed). In post-Roman western Europe, Verdun was the biggest slave market in all Europe. Oh, but the self-righteous black people say, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was done on a far grander scale. But it was still done or doesn't the principle of slavery matter any more, just who suffered the most (an argument without any principles behind it would be struck down in an instant by a court)?
And if we're talking about devastation of Africa - one commission says the developed world owes almost 780 trillion dollars to Africa - what about all the countless devastations by marauding empires done throughout history? Iran calculates that in relative terms it still has not recoevered from the depradations of the Mongol hordes and many central Asian civilisations were wiped out or severely debilitated. Russia and China also suffered terribly. Should Mongolia reparate all these countries for what its ancestors did? On the contrary, they praise Chinggis (Genghis) Khan.
All empires throughout all history have raped, pillaged and occasionally destroyed subject peoples. They have all used slaves to a greater or lesser extent, under one name or the other. To claim preferential treatment reveals the presence of a persecution complex.
To link racism today to what people did two hundred years ago is preposterous. Slavery itself did not finally end in Britain until 1838. It was still in force in parts of the British Empire until 1938. But do racist thugs or bourgeois racists think of the slave trade or slavery when they beat up a person of a different colour or silently disqualify them from a job interview? Prejudice comes from historical roots, but this is usually passed down through families or low-level insidious culture, not derived from what may be read in books.
This is not an adequate basis for reparations. When it is all added up, the quest for reparations by certain black groups seems petty and money-grubbing, do black people no favours whatsoever. 20% of the world's population may control 80% of the world's wealth, but then it said that in the USA 99% of assets are effectively owned by an elite 1%. That affects both black, white, Hispanic and Native Americans. Find that hard to believe? Well, 1% in the USA translates to 3 million people. Aid is not the answer, nor is re-labelling aid 'reparations' because it represents both tokenism and a legal avenue for massively ramping up aid input from black African elites against unwilling democratic populations in the developed world. This just creates dependenct culture. What Africa needs is fair trade deals that allows, at the very least, some wealth redistribution. There never will 100% of the world's wealth owned by 100% of the world's population - total equality is a pipe dream.
Far more damaging for Africa today is global warming with the principle culprits in the western world but also China and India. Technology transfer and payments for the increasingly unfavourable climate will do far more for the people there than black groups nursing a grievance like a badge of honour.