TILTING AT WINDMILLS: Kyrgystan

Monday, April 25, 2011

IT IS THE BLOODY BUSINESS...

Kyrgyzstan’s parliament wanted to exorcise evil spirits from the chamber after a string of violent incidents.

Earlier this month politicians arranged an armed show down in a row over corruption. Ten handguns and an AK47 were seized by police in the building.

So what did they do to stop the bloody violence that included the ousting of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev last year?

They ritually slaughtered seven sheep in the parliament building.

Bloody hell!

(It is the bloody business that informs – Shakespeare’s Macbeth)

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”