There’s an interview with me in the CUNY grad school newspaper titled Reluctant Revolutionary: Ted Rall.
Freedom Radio Interview Tonight
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I’ll be interviewed tonight, at 6:15-6:53 pm Eastern, on Freedom Radio.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: WikiLeaks: The Devils We Know
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Cables Reveal Background of Pro-Dictator U.S. Policy
After the Soviet collapse in 1991 U.S. policy toward Central Asia was transparently cynical: support the dictators, screw the people.
As the U.S. stood by and watched, corrupt autocrats looted the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Dissidents were jailed, massacred—even boiled.
Well, actually, the U.S. was anything but passive. They negotiated deals for oil and gas pipelines. They rented airbases after 9/11. They poured in tens of millions of American tax dollars—all of which wound up in secret bank accounts belonging to the dictators and their families. Meanwhile, average citizens lived in abject poverty.
During trips to Central Asia the locals constantly ask me: “Why doesn’t America stop supporting [insert name of corrupt dictator here] so we can kill him and free ourselves?”
Poor, naïve people. They believe our rhetoric. They think we like democracy. Actually, we’re all about the looting. Dictators are easier to deal with than parliaments. One handshake and a kickback, that’s all you need with a dictator.
Central Asia only had one democratically elected president, Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan. George W. Bush ordered the CIA to depose him in a coup.
Americans who care about human rights have long wondered: Is the State Department stupid and/or naïve? Or did the diplomats in Tashkent and other capitals of unspeakable misery understand the brutal and vile nature of Central Asia’s authoritarian leaders?
An examination of the WikiLeaks data dump answers that question: Yes.
Hell yes.
Like those from concerning more prominent countries, the WikiLeaks cables on the Central Asian republics can be funny. President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, a U.S. “ally in the war on terror” who seized power in a palace coup following the death of Saparmurat “Turkmenbashi” Niyazov, is described as “the ‘decider’ for the state of Turkmenistan.” This is true. Turkmenistan is an absolute dictatorship in which millions starve while Berdimuhamedov’s inner circle feasts on the profits from the world’s largest reserves of natural gas.
A December 2009 cable describes America’s pet autocrat as “vain, suspicious, guarded, strict, very conservative, a practiced liar, ‘a good actor,’ and vindictive.”
According to an unnamed source, the outwardly conservative dictator has a Russian mistress named Marina, with whom he has a 14-year-old daughter. Though Berdy’s power may be limitless, his intellect is not. “Berdimuhamedov does not like people who are smarter than he is,” says the cable. “Since he’s not a very bright guy, our source offered, he is suspicious of a lot of people.”
No one’s perfect. Least of all America’s allies in Central Asia.
On the other side of the steppe in Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev presides over the world’s largest oil reserves with an iron fist. Among his greatest hits: the convenient “suicides” of his top two political opponents a few months before a presidential “election.” The two men apparently shot themselves in the back of the head, then bound their own hands behind their backs and dropped into a ditch outside Almaty.
Needless to say, Nazarbayev is another valuable U.S. ally in the war on terror.
But that doesn’t stop American gossip. Nazarbayev’s defense minister, says an embassy staffer in Astana, “appears to enjoy loosening up in the tried and true ‘homo sovieticus’ style—i.e., drinking oneself into a stupor.” But alcoholism isn’t illegal. Graft is—and the president is public enemy number one.
“In 2007, President Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, celebrated his 41st birthday in grand style,” explains an April 2008 cable. “At a small venue in Almaty, he hosted a private concert with some of Russia’s biggest pop stars. The headliner, however, was Elton John, to whom he reportedly paid one million pounds for this one-time appearance.” How did he come up with all that coin? “Timur Kulibayev is currently the favored presidential son-in-law, on the Forbes 500 list of billionaires (as is his wife separately), and the ultimate controller of 90% of the economy of Kazakhstan,” states a January 2010 missive.
Membership has its privileges. The U.S. has never spoken out against corruption or human rights abuses in Kazakhstan.
So it’s clear: American diplomats have no illusions about their brutal allies. Interestingly, Central Asia’s overlords have a dismally accurate view of corruption in the U.S. government.
“Listen, almost everyone at the top [of the Kazakh regime] is confused,” First Vice President Maksat Idenov told the U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan early this year. “They’re confused by the corrupt excesses of capitalism. ‘If Goldman Sachs executives can make $50 million a year and then run America’s economy in Washington, what’s so different about what we do?’ they ask.”
No response was provided.
(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
New Kindle Edition! “The Anti-American Manifesto” by Ted Rall
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Amazon has just released my first-ever Kindle edition, this of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” It’s $9.99 and can be purchased here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Anti-American-Manifesto-ebook/dp/B004E9S7TE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1291823241
AAM Wins Press Action’s Book of the Year Award
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The Anti-American Manifesto has been named Press Action’s Book of the Year 2010:
Ted Rall’s The Anti-American Manifesto takes a serious look at how U.S. political and economic elites are pushing the planet and its inhabitants down a road to ruin. The book is a cry for Americans to stand up and show some courage against the leaders who steal their money to fight endless wars and destroy the Earth. Rall is a gifted writer. The Anti-American Manifesto is not a dense treatise on the evils of capitalism. Some reviewers have criticized Rall for not offering a clearer vision of what the United States would look like in the wake of the revolution that he believes the nation so desperately needs. But Rall explains the primary purpose of the book is to incite Americans to do whatever they can to dismantle the nation’s oppressive and destructive systems as soon as possible, with the full knowledge that there will be counter-revolutionaries, with great firepower, who will seek to fill the ensuing power vacuum. Rall apparently is writing a follow-up to the manifesto that may quiet some of his critics by outlining his vision for a sustainable and compassionate society.
East Hampton Star Reviews the Manifesto
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There’s a good review of The Anti-American Manifesto in today’s East Hampton Star:
The extreme competence of the writing — with the exception of too many invectives — and the quality work put into the volume by the publisher indicates they both care. This message is all the more forceful in an era when the publishing industry generally does not care about the literary quality of what it publishes, only whether it will be profitable to the corporation that owns the publisher. Mr. Rall, you have influenced my thinking.
The author fears he may be arrested because of his views. If he is, I will help seek his freedom, but not with a gun or a brick, as he appears to recommend. I don’t agree with all he’s said, but he has said much that is true and important.
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Conning the Taliban
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Confessions of a Phony American Peace Negotiator
For much of the year now drawing to a close, U.S. and NATO bigwigs conducted secret peace talks with Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the #2 Taliban official. They paid him tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of dollars to show good will. NATO planes delivered him to the presidential palace in Kabul, where he met with Hamid Karzai.
“But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all,” reports The New York Times. The phony Mansour, Afghan intelligence agents say, was actually “a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta” who looked nothing like the real guy.
You can’t sugarcoat this debacle. L’affair Mansour instantly transformed the United States, previously reviled as the world’s most brutish bully, into an intergalactic laughingstock.
Yes, our government and military are headed by dumb-as-rocks hillbillies. But the Taliban can be fooled too—as I learned during my own top secret mission deep in the deepest valleys between the highest mountains of the Hindu Kush.
I found myself short of cash while traveling in Afghanistan in August. So I devised an ingenious scheme. Call it Operation Turnabout: Why not present myself to the Taliban as a high-ranking American official eager to end the war? It could be fun. It could be lucrative. And who knows? If they fell for it, I’d be up for the Nobel Peace Prize!
Finding Talibs didn’t take long. I walked up to two guys planting an IED. Or they were stoning some chick. I don’t remember. Anyway, it isn’t important.
“Salaam,” I greeted them. “I am American Vice President Joe Biden. Take me forthwith to your leader, Mullah Omar, he of one eye, and see that you are quick about it.”
The rogues chucked me into the back of their Toyota Landcruiser, wrapped in duct tape. Off we went. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear they hit every pothole on purpose.
Eventually, we stopped. They ripped the tape off my face. “American dog!” they cried in unison. “Time for dinner!” A kebab vendor glared at me from the side of the road. As did the goat head on the grill.
My animal cunning was too much for the two undereducated brutes. “Alas, my good fellows,” I replied, “my White House Amex card is not accepted by yon locals. Might I ‘borrow’ some money? You know—as good faith?”
Soon I was 17 afghanis richer. My plan was working!
A day or two later, my bound form was carried into an empty poured-concrete room in a complex somewhere in The Remote Tribal Areas Along the Border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and dumped on the floor. A bearded man with an eye patch walked in.
“I am Mullah Mohammed Omar, Head of the Supreme Council and Commander of the Faithful of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” he said.
“Hi there,” I said. “I am American Vice President Joe Biden of America.”
He grimaced.
“How do I know you are who you say you are?” he asked.
“Ask me anything,” I challenged. “The combination to the safe where the Oval Office porn collection is kept. Vladimir Putin’s cell number. I can even identify most of the American states.”
He smiled.
“Of course you can,” he said. “But you could say anything. We have no way to check it out. The United States is a distant, remote country. Its leaders have never been seen in public, certainly not by Afghans. We don’t even know if there is a ‘Joe Biden.'”
“We must trust one another,” I purred, “if there is to be peace.”
I had him there. He chuckled. “Yes,” he said.
“Of course, travel between my country and yours is very expensive,” I pointed out. “As you may have heard, we Americans have spent all our money on bonuses for bank CEOs and hedge fund managers. So, if our quest for peace is to have a future, you must front me some cash.”
Sated with watery tea and partly-cooked goat parts, I headed for the Peshawar bus terminal. Where I reserved two full seats in coach. So I could ride, legs spread. American style.
Before long the media reported that the Taliban was conducting secret peace negotiations with “a high-ranking U.S. official.” Naturally, the Americans denied the leaks. President Obama spat: “The cunning enemy is trying to expand its military operations on the basis of its double-standard policy and wants to throw dust into the eyes of the people by spreading the rumors of negotiation.”
No one believed him. No one ever believes Americans.
Ha!
My brilliant ruse continued throughout the month. Sometimes the two cartoonists with whom I was traveling asked me where I was spending nights. “With Mullah Omar!” I wanted to shout. “Eating his nan and blowing through dozens of his afghanis!” But I couldn’t. “I was in the bathroom,” I lied.
Yes, we are a dumber-than-dumb people led by a stupider-than-stupid government. But the Taliban aren’t much smarter.
So there.
(Ted Rall is the author of “The Anti-American Manifesto.” His website is tedrall.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2010 TED RALL
Coming to Ann Arbor, Michigan
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I’ll be speaking in Ann Arbor Thursday. In preparation, AnnArbor.com has run an interview with yours truly.
Grab ‘n’ Feel
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The big topic the week seems to be airport security. Millions of white, middle- and upper-middle-class people are now experiencing what until now was experienced by mainly young men of color–arbitrary pat downs and searches.
This is mostly academic to people such as myself. I haven’t had the money to fly since 2006.
But it should be obvious to people what would be most effective in this situation: Boycott the airlines until the nonsense stops. People’s voices and votes may not be worth much these days, but the “dollar votes” are still heard loud and clear by those in power. Vote with your dollars.
But of course, I know you won’t listen. You never do. You’re gonna keep flying, and you’re gonna stand in line at 4am this Friday morning to buy crap shipped in from China.
Get a clue. Please.
Susan out.
