A Corrupt, Brutal Dictator in the White House? Maybe just for a visit
Posted on Friday, July 14, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.
Sources
In early 2004, President Bush issued a
presidential proclamation barring corrupt foreign officials from entering the United States. Then, a few months ago, in spite of that proclamation, Washington was treated to the disgusting spectacle of an official visit by Teodoro Obiang, the
corrupt dictator who rules over oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. But now the Bush Administration is preparing to roll out the red carpet for a man who, by sheer numbers, appears to have stolen far more than Obiang: President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.
Snip...
It's hard to see how Nazarbayev's visit could possibly be squared with Bush's 2004 proclamation. This fall, James Giffen, an American business consultant, is set to be tried in the Southern District Court of New York on charges that he funneled more than $78 million in bribes to Kazakh officials. And guess who is alleged to have received most of that money? President Nazarbayev himself, along with his former prime minister, Nurlan Balgimbayev.
The government's indictment says the bribe money came from fees Giffen received from American oil companies that won stakes in Kazakhstan's oil fields. It charges that in addition to showering Nazarbayev with cash, Giffen bought his-and-her snowmobiles for the president and his wife, bought fur coats for Mrs. Nazarbayev and one of the president's daughters, and also paid the tuition at George Washington University for the daughter. (Here's
the indictment , a wonderfully entertaining document, in which Nazarbayev is identified as “KO-2” and his former prime minister is “KO-1.” The government identified them by name in a subsequent filing .)
Snip...
Like Obiang, Nazarbayev is a thug as well as a crook. “Kazakhstan's oil riches, strategic location, and cooperation with the United States in anti-terrorism programs cannot conceal the fact that the country remains an authoritarian state,” said Congressman Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, in a speech on June 29. Smith also pointed out that Nazarbayev had run bogus elections, allowed relatives and friends to gain “monopoly positions in the most profitable sectors of the economy,” and repressed the media and opposition political figures.
Snip...
Why is the Bush Administration so eager to please Nazarbayev, whose government is pushing hard for the official visit? Oil, not surprisingly, is part of the story. Along with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan is a major Caspian energy producer and American companies, led by ChevronTexaco, have invested billions there.
more...
http://www.harpers.org/sb-a-corrupt-brutal-dictator-1152915051.htmlHOW DICK CHENEY SPENT HIS SUMMER VACATION
By Ted Rall
8 minutes ago
U.S. Plants Seeds of Disaster in Kazakhstan
Snip...
Dick Cheney has been spending a lot of time in the huge Central Asian republic, so much so that its windswept steppes have become his new Secret Undisclosed Location. Mostly the Acting President hangs out in Kazakhstan's landlocked hinterlands wooing a reviled dictator, the only ruler the nation has known since being evicted by the USSR in 1991. Thanks in part to more than $50 million a year in U.S. taxpayer money and ever-soaring bundles of military aid, Cheney hopes to secure "total energy dominance" via lucrative oil pipeline deals on behalf of GOP-connected energy companies.
Snip...
After the "election," the bodies of outspoken former minister Altynbek Sarsenbaev and four members of his Nagyz Ak Zhol Party, reported Radio Free Europe, "were discovered on a desolate stretch of road outside Almaty on February 13, <2006>, their bodies riddled with bullets and their hands bound behind their backs." As I write in my upcoming book about U.S. involvement in Central Asia, Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?, the Kazakh NSC (former KGB) "pinned the blame on Erzhan Utembaev, a former deputy prime minister then serving as head of administration of the Kazakh Senate, but political opponents and some militsia sources say Nazarbayev personally paid sixty thousand dollars to have him silenced." Again, there was no condemnation from the White House.
Cheney showed up to kiss up less than three months after the killings. The Bush Administration, hoping to convince the ruthless Nazarbayev to join its U.S.-backed Baku-Ceyhan Trans-Caucasus oil pipeline, remained silent about the Kazakh tyrant's unpleasant practice of dispatching his political critics.
Snip...
Sergei Duvanov, deputy director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, accuses the U.S. of siding with vicious dictators against the millions of people they oppress. "Nazarbayev was very glad to hear what Cheney had to say, and understood it as carte blanche to come down harder on the opposition," Duvanov, a former journalist who spent a year and a half in a Kazakh prison on rape charges trumped up to silence his pro-democracy reporting, said. "He now understands that building democracy is not as important as oil and economic stability."
more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20060705/cm_ucru/howdickcheneyspenthissummervacation
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
