Central and South Asia

Central Asia

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A map of Central Asia comes in handy for today’s Geo Quiz. There are quite a few countries, regions, and even fictional places that end with the suffix STAN.

STAN means the “the place of ” in Persian. Afghanistan springs to mind. Dagestan , which means the “place of mountains” is a Russian republic. Fans of “A Prairie Home Companion” may have heard of a fictional country in the Middle East called “Hotdogestan”.

And there’s a place we’ll tell you about in a minute called “Nowhere-istan.” But for now — we’ll stick to the real world. Try and name 7 countries that are sometimes simply referred to as the STANS.

We’ll give you a minute or so to ponder the possibilities.

At least that’s the plan stan.

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Geo answer:
For our Geo Quiz today we’re looking for the stans – 7 countries that end with the suffix stan. Well they’re all located in Central or South Asia.

Afghanistan
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Pakistan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan

So that’s the list. Now here’s a twist. Imagine a place called Nowhereistan. It doesn’t exist on any map. But it’s a place where you can find the best of everything:

“This is the country from where everything started. And we are very happy to have the pyramids, and to have the Louvre and to have the Statue of Liberty. And it’s a really interesting country because we have very different climates, for example we have tropical forests, we have the highest mountain in the world, we have volcanoes; we have the tallest trees, the Sequoias…. we have everything.”

Nowhereistan is the creation of Lebanese businessman Michel Eleftriades (who says he’s grown weary of the nationalism and militarism that has divided his country….

So he’s proclaimed himself ruler of a place called: Nowhereistan.

“So I’m the first and last emperor of Nowhereistan. I started taking part in the political life at the age of 15. The Christian militias during the Lebanese war arrested me… being tortured at the age of 15 is not something very easy to swallow and I started being more and more involved in politics to take my revenge on the militias. And they killed a lot of my friends; a lot of them were deported. And then they tried, in one week, two assassinations on myself and this is when I understood that maybe what I’m doing is not the right way. So we have to change everything, we have to create a world where such things cannot happen. We have to find the real cause of these problems. The real cause is that we have to stop working on nationalism, working on the idea that everyone who is not my compatriot is different from me. So we have to realize that it’s not genetic or racial or religious things that make us close. It’s much more ideas, much more very personal things like humor. People have to realize that an American an be best friend with a Chinese and maybe not get along at all with his neighbor. So how would they take power? They will take power by civil disobedience, by bringing down governments. We will never use violence. I tried violence and I know that it does not lead anywhere. Violence bring more violence, and violence is the best way to have a lot of people hating you. The day the entire planet will be inhabited by Nowhereistanis, we will change the name to Everywhereistan.”

When he’s not performing his official duties as emporer of Nowhereistan — Michel Eleftriades runs a popular nightclub in Beirut, Lebanon.

http://www.nowheristan.org/
http://nowheristan.blogspot.com