A Boat in a Ravine

Dear Abbot,

Monk here.

Sunday. All week the region drew lines: in posts, in tax numbers, in cable.

TASHKENT. For Tashkent, a first. At the 13th summit of the Organization of Turkic States in Ankara on 30 October, leaders appointed Mirvokhid Azimov, its deputy secretary general from 2020 until May, as the fifth Secretary General and the first from Uzbekistan. His four predecessors came from Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan joined in 2019.

The latecomer waited its turn. It did not wait long: the queue had four people in it.

BATKEN. In Batken, Kyrgyzstan has finished nearly 328 km of fencing along its border with Tajikistan, the regional administration confirmed on 29 October. The whole border runs about 1,008 km. The two presidents signed a border treaty in March 2025 and, that same month, with Uzbekistan, the Khujand Declaration on Eternal Friendship.

The fence covers 328 kilometres. Eternal friendship is left to guard the other 680 or so.

COLOMBO. In Colombo, the Inland Revenue Department says a TIN certificate is mandatory from 1 November for eight transactions, among them opening a bank account, registering a business and obtaining a credit card. Anyone without one may register on the e-Services portal, and a printout of the online verification, showing NIC number and TIN, may be accepted in place of the certificate.

The certificate may be replaced by a printout of the website vouching for the certificate. Paper has been promoted to witness.

Noted.

JAKARTA. In Jakarta on Friday, Meutya Hafid, Indonesia’s digital minister, told the Indonesia Youth Summit that empathy and love of country cannot be replaced by AI, “because AI has no homeland.” And: “The final decision must remain in human hands.” Presidential regulations on AI ethics, and a national AI roadmap, are on the way.

No homeland, and therefore no tax office anywhere. The machine has solved what Colombo is still printing out.

JAKARTA. Also in Jakarta, her deputy, Nezar Patria, wants 100 Mbps fixed broadband in homes for an estimated Rp140,000 a month, and under Rp200,000 regardless. “We need to extend fiber-optic networks into households, allowing families to share a single connection,” he said.

The ministry calls it one connection per family. Every parent calls it the evening.

The boy has a copy of the Jakarta speech.

“Does AI really have no homeland?”

“So the minister says.”

“Then who collects its tax?”

“Colombo would, once it opens a bank account.”

In his sixth chapter Chuang Tzu has a man hide his boat in a ravine and his net in a marsh, and sleep easy. At midnight a strong man shoulders the lot and walks away, and the sleeper never knows. Hide the world in the world, he says, and there is nowhere for it to go. This week every capital found a smaller ravine. Batken hid a friendship behind posts. Colombo hid the citizen in a certificate, and the certificate in a printout. Ankara hid the top job in a queue of five. Jakarta wants the family inside one cable. Only the machine, by ministerial finding, has no homeland to hide in, so nobody can carry it off.

Fence: 328 km. Friendship: the remainder. Machine: stateless, untaxed.

Yours, with the boat left in plain sight on the beach,

The Monk