Exile.ru is completely new to me, but very funny, now that I have read it. Some good writing, and the Al-Dilbert comics are very funny.

I think it’s fair to say that although a lot of Uzbeks are frightened to death of an Islamic state or a civil war, I think it’s also fair to say that most of them want a lot more from their government than they’re now getting. More than just stability; I’ve heard “there’s no future in Uzbekistan” from a lot of Uzbek people. I think it’s fair to want more from your government (think of the movement for change that’s even sweeping America right now)… what’s not fair, and what gets a lot of Westerners REALLY mad at the Uzbek government, is locking people up in prison for expressing it.

Again, I feel stupid for bringing up someone else’s English ability, especially as someone employed as an ESL English teacher!

Anyway, stability is one thing that Karimov brings with gusto. He’s not always so successful, though, as quelling the unrest his administration causes.

I am very impressed with the depth of knowledge displayed by people on this blog. I enjoy a spirited debate now and then; it stimulates critical thinking and introduces new information to participants. And, I think we have talked this subject to death.

How was my syntax, sentence structure, punctutation and composition?

I welcome a debate, but I think the only think that irks me about your arguments Shohmurod, is that they seem a bit uncritical and press-release-ish. Your main point, I think is that Karimov brings stability and stability is very important right now – a valid argument that I think many Uzbeks would agree with, and one worth debating.

It would only be hypocritical of me, for personal example, to criticize Karimov of human rights violations if I did not ALSO criticize my own president for the human rights violations… it would only be hypocritical of me to criticize Uzbekistani authorities for torturing prisoners if I did not also criticize my own government. In this criticism in general, I would only be a hypocrite (I can speak only for myself, but I am generally voicing what I think many of the Americans here would agree with) if I somehow supported a behavior by my own government and opposed it when it was employed by another one.

This, however, is not the case–there are all sorts of things I hate about my own government and my own society, all kinds of
behaviors of my own elected officials that I loathe–and, as it happens, these are elected officials that I didn’t vote for, so in a sense I myself am under a kind of siege, living under a government imposed on me by by a slim majority of my peers (or however it is that people become presidents).

The key difference here is obvious–I can, and do, talk, think, and write freely about this and nobody comes to my house to question me, nobody knocks on my door in the middle of the day and says, “we need to speak with Mr. Tucker, we’ve got some questions,” and seizes my passport or other identification. When I teach a class here in the US where I have a chance to possibly share my political views with my students, as I did a couple years ago when I was teaching, parents may write to the schoolboard (this happened–somebody complained that I had assigned students to read OP-EDs from the NYT, which is apparently a liberal anathema in Indiana), but the secret police don’t come and interview my students, demand to see all my teaching materials, and, threaten me, arrest me, and close down the school where I am teaching.

This, however, is exactly what happened to me in Tashkent last summer, and to boot the Russian citizen who ran the school was run out of the country for having (legally!) employed an American . If anybody believes that this was necessary to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from taking over Uzbekistan, they are entitled to their opinion–after all, my two year old son could… what the hell, why finish that sentence?

My experience was not important. What happened to me was totally insignificant, and it’s also irrelevant to why I feel the way I do about human rights in Uzbekistan or anywhere else, for that matter. But it does inform a larger discussion about what exactly is “necessary” to keep “Islamic fundamentalists” from taking over Uzbekistan… To bring the discussion back to where it started, I double checked and Zaynabiddinov (I also double checked the spelling of his name, sorry about that) was convicted in a secret trial for “sparking panic among the public” and “terrorism,” for writing articles that simply said that the Akromiya group was not a group of violent fundamentalists linked to the Taliban and al-Qayda. If, by the way, you ever want to see what all the fuss is about, read “Imonga Yo’l” for yourself and form your own opinion about who Yo’dashev was and what he preached. If you’re outside Uzbekistan, beyond the firewall, there are still copies available in Uzbek and Russian, and if you need it in English there is (finally) a translation published in a book edited by Allison Frank last year.

Anyway, while I’m still not expert on Uzbekistani legal code, as it turns out publishing something the government doesn’t like on the internet is prosecutable as “spreading panic among the public,” so it can be, literally, de jure illegal.

Shohmurod, whether or not you’re American or Uzbek [by American, I mean Uzbek-American, but I don't like adding those phrases, because then I would be a Polish-French-English-German-Scottish-Irish-American]. Men juda ham xursandman-ki siz biz bilan buyerda yozasiz, Shohmurodbek. I apologize for my bad Uzbek! I pray that my Uzbek will be like your English one day. I’m an English teacher at an ESL school, and if English didn’t have articles, our students would finish their courses in half the time, I swear it.

Shohmurod, I have to agree that Sveta’s reasoning is very solid. Not just on the Uzbekistan statistics, but also in that it’s silly for me to assume you aren’t a countrymen of mine. Your English vocabulary is clearly bigger than my grandparents’!

I recall you noting other peoples’ IP addresses, Nathan. I love it when you scare people into thinking you are a spy, when anyone using the internet well can see what kind of traffic their site gets. I mean, my blog tells me what machine they are running, what OS or Internet Browser, and of course their country of origin. And yet so many people that having access to such information smacks of the SNB and KGB. Maybe it does — but that’s the price of freedom of info.

We’re gonna know more about you than you know about us. [I hope] Definitely the way I prefer it!