Journeys
Cloud
Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

Amazon Associate
Contact

Entries in Turkey (154)

Sunday
Jan122014

article 301

“In summation your honor,” said a defensive attorney from the Land of Smirking Tomatoes, “my client is innocent of all responsibility. We rest our case.”

“Your discovery evidence in Article 301 is weak and inconclusive,” said the Turkish judge hiding Graft behind his back. “Your motion for acquittal and adjudication is forthwith dead and denied.”

“May I change my plea your honor? May I resume my please bargaining and negotiating hardball tactics on behalf of free speech? May I speak without fear of insulting the state, dead hee-haw headless horsemen heroes, fundamentalism in the form of religious heroin addiction and so forth?”

“File a brief, size small with elasticity.”

"Turkey has imprisoned more journalists than Iran and China,” said Zeynep, a five-year old historian. “Free speech here is a theory." 

“Do you need twenty-eight vanities of olives? Maybe a broom?" said a wage slave on his knees in Trabzon.

NYT article here.

Sunday
Nov242013

writing, sex and censorship #301

A Chinese computer science professor received a 3.5 year sentence for "crowd licentiousness."  This is vague government wordage. It covers crowds. It covers licenses. It means a crowd gets together and applies for a license. In this case with broad overtones they applied for a license to swap identities.

He led informal swinger clubs for partner swapping. He pleaded innocent. "I had nothing to do with the North Korean submarine attack in an apartment with eighteen people. I was only the middleman. I was formatting my hard drive and downloading data."

He was charged under Criminal Law 301. 

A Chinese academic said...“I feel that the thought process of the Chinese authorities is always to try to manage and control the population, the people. Beyond prosecuting criminal activities, they feel they have to control or manage people to their standards.” read more...

Turkey also has an infamous Article 301 law. This law makes it illegal to insult Turkey, Turkish ethnicity or Turkish government institutions.

Turkey's imprisoned 49 journalists, Iran 45 and China 32 as of December 2012.

Writers Orhan Pamuk, Noam Chomsky, Elif Safak, among others have been charged under this article. All the cases were either dropped or acquitted.

A spoiled young girl in Ankara was recently arrested and charged under Article 301 for insulting her mother's cooking.

"I hate Turkish food. Too many tomatoes. I don't want black olives. I don't want fresh salad. I don't want fresh seafood from the Marmara Sea. I want Italian pizza with extra cheese please squeeze." 

Her mother said, "Eat what I give you. Hurry up. I'm late for my wife swapping seminal seminary with binary logic."

It was thrown out for lack of evidence.

Number 301 is very popular. The number of words mating and swapping with other words is increasing. Words remove an article of clothing like a, an, the.

Burma
 

China

China

Turkey

Tuesday
Aug272013

moon metro

Moon Metro subterranean subway car sped through optical tunnels.

Outside, an old Turkish man wearing a crumpled white hat walked with his wife.

She is his noun. He is her verb, her action.

Just get to the verb, he whispered.

Their language is filled with autumn browns, yellows, greens, golds, sparrows, blue jays, and love’s doves.

Far away on Memories Street, a street of regrets spilling potential, Passion danced with Death.

Moon Metro picks up speed hurtling through space-time.

Silent, salient passengers wear sad eyed desire.

They crave sleep in a tyranny of sheep-less-mess. 

 

Wednesday
Jul242013

Turkish attitude

Adult Ankara language students said they were tired.

They loved being addicted to a phenobarbital phenomenon reality altering life, taking anti-depressants (Xanax) by mouth. He processed their fear and anxiety.

A national Turkish problem, according to a male psychiatrist is anxiety.

A clinking small musically inclined silver spoon dissolved square sugar cubes made in a factory where the hygiene conditions were abysmal.

We sat in a teahouse filled with Turkish and Iranian carpets, blue amber oil paintings and thick embroidered cushions near a well-thumbed Zen tarot deck. Fortune telling is an art and science depending on a suspicious, auspicious way. We gifted each other the state of relaxation. Reading, feeling, absorbing the future is the process.

These a-dolts eat their fear, humiliation and guilt with yogurt, said Zeynep in Bursa drawing in a Moleskine. 

Thursday
Mar072013

ah blood

Operatic actors offstage fashioned masks for their performance in a funeral formula.

         “This is not a fucking rehearsal,” directed the director. “Just get to the verb.”

         “Arrive on time, know your lines and wait for the check,” Leo sang as clouds shafted sunlight across mountains.

         Rational, thinking, speaking animals mumbled sounds, words, coalescing consonants, vowels and syllables. Etyms and atoms and axioms of choice.

         The logic of pain met pain’s tolerance, pain’s loss, pain’s memory, and pain’s fascination. The awareness of pain danced, creating itself, developing a heavy lidded dull throbbing sensation with kindness, a specific joy of pain pulsating through exposed jaw nerves sliding along invisible blood red threads you can’t see, dare to see or acknowledge, all minute tentacles of laughter. You know they are there. 

         Roots of pain bellow below the surface of appearances, in cold-hearted tissue. It needs a biopsy. What’s that? A lab techie’s evaluation analysis under a microscope, in a dust free, germ free sterile environment.     

         Tissue in the same sentence after five days of Bursa whiteout blizzards is the perfect moment to sit drinking iced coffee at dusk near a water fountain pen resolving a molar pain issue tissue, having had it yanked out after inserting 3-4 needles filled with antiseptic solutions into pink red gum soft pliable tissue.

Doctor Death massaged tissue preparing it for a needle, a heavy- duty stainless steel syringe cast in Turku, Finland, with a perfect circle for an index finger. The downward thrust of pressure was constant and bewildering. This is what happened and it didn’t take a well trained discerning eye more that a Nano-second after the partial was removed to see the tooth witnessing interior monologues, dialogue, and soliloquies of red stormed flesh dancing with pain - a sickness leaving the body - as Winter Hawk flew free from pain winging one true sentence.

         The old recalcitrant reclusive tooth had to come out. It had served it’s animalistic purpose dancing with food and multiple labia, clicking gum lined oral stories dazzling extreme pleasures of pain with comforts worth nurturing as a heartbeat’s death defying rhythm pulsated, vibrating faster than shadows divorcing themselves in blind love’s labyrinth. In theory.

         Ah, donating blood.

         Traveling is giving. Giving blood gives the gift of life. Experience, a wonderful little teacher nowadays said, Giving blood helps someone who needs it more than you. I have rare A-. I donated yesterday. Turkish medical authorities permitted a donation. The blood mobile bus sat near a busy intersection. I walked past pretzel sellers, cascading water fountains, shit covered statues of frozen WWI soldiers firing rusty iron guns into cobalt skies and climbed on the bloodmobile express.

         A smiling Bulgarian nurse asked health questions in broken English. Another nurse took blood pressure. She attached a tourniquet to a left arm saying, “You have excellent veins.”

         She swabbed a vein and slid the needle in. “Open and close your left hand.” Blood rivers flow.

         Outside tinted windows in a blinding sun immigrant parents gripped children’s hands. Scraggly half-starved men unloaded boxes of fresh red tomatoes from a white truck. Light reflected off sunglasses of cheerless pedestrians. Salvage operation boy teams folded, crushed and loaded cardboard boxes into metal carts. Recycle sales potential.

Sad, oh so seriously affected disordered businessmen carried battered brown briefcases filled with top secrets and nuclear fission material. Suchness is a burden and moral responsibility.