From Harper’s Weekly Review:
Citing harm to the local biosphere, Turkmenistan’s president announced that he wants to extinguish the ever-burning fires in the Gates of Hell.
Made me curious about Turkmenistan’s president, a guy who clearly has his fingers on the pulse of…his other hand. I’m not going to type his name in here and you’ll see why if you click on the above link to Wikipedia.
He won election with 98 percent of the vote. An explanation could be that Turkmenistan was an SSR and gained its independence (and awareness of the world at large?) when the Soviet Union dissolved.
Wikipedia has nothing much to say about this guy. All I have to say is, “ever-burning fires in the Gates of Hell” would seem to be located within the country, so I think that’s a start.
Or whatever.