Those That Left Us This Year

And now, part one in a very special Barbarossa look back at some of those who left us this year.

Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow

The Man, The Legend, The great Dictator

Saparmyrat Nyýazow, president of Turkmenistan for an all-too short life, left us this year on the twenty-first of December. Born a humble orphan in Soviet Turkmenistan, he grew up to become Turkmenbashi, the head of the Turkmen people. He will no doubt be remembered for his numerous accomplishments: the banning of movies, video games, car radios, opera , ballet, facial hair, imposing a $50,000 tax on marrying Turkmen, the closing of all libraries outside of the capitol, the closing of all hospitals outside of the capitol, the construction of a theme park named after himself, making his autobiography the basis for university entrance exams, wire tapping all hotels, forcing physicians to swear an oath to himself and his autobiography instead taking the the Hippocratic Oath, renaming January after himself and April after his mother, and of course the Turkmen run of fitness, in which all bureaucrats were required to run up the miles of concrete steps he had built into a mountain as he started the race and then helicoptered to the the end to greet said winded bureaucrats. It is sad that one so concerned with the health of his people, would sacrafice his own health each year just to let the first runner bask in the knowledge that in seeing his supreme leader that he had won the race. His dieing of a heart attack only shows his endless sacrafice for his people.

We, howevere, are not here to glorify Tirkmenbashi, no history will do that, no instead we are here remember him, remember him as he was immortalized in this delightful piece of State propaganda:

Or in this picture of a younger Turkmenbashi:

Surprisingly grey considering the dark haired Turkmenbashi we see in later pictures, it can only be said that his own virility was revived just like that of Turkmenistan and the Turkmen people in the freedom he brough to Turkmenistan in independence. He filed with new life just as his country did. And of course who could forget the many golden statues of himself, like this one that rotates with the sun:

Turkmenbashi will be missed, but lives on in the month of January, his theme park, and as a Zommunist soon be to awakened. What is saddest is the fleetingness he has taught us about our own lives and our world, in unstable and ever changing times it is the entrench dictators we look to for continuity and reassurance. Turkmenbashi has taught us that even they can not always been there for us.

President Nyýazow leaves behind a country of two million people, two billion dollars in overseas bank accounts, and an illegitimate son desperately trying to take over the country.