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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (3615)	4/14/2002 3:59:14 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

Mephisto, You might enjoy Kaplan's "Eastward to Tartary" if you could get through Rashid. I found Kaplan much more engaging. What you'll find is that all the "Stans" are run by despots. They have been since time immemorial. I loved Kaplan's description of the ruler of Turkmenistan, a brutal and vain character by the name of Turkmenbashi. Not his real name. Much like Iosif Dugashvili, he found a name change useful. Dugashvili became Josef Stalin. Turkmenbashi is no less interested in running a police state. ******************************************************** One of the problems with the youth of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and the other Stans, is that the young men there are largely superflous to the needs of the modern industrialized world. Resource extraction is largely automated, and vast armies of laborers aren't needed. There needs to be two fixes, 1) birth control and 2) artificially created jobs to keep existing people busy. Of course the Bush Mal-administration, with its usual cranial-rectal insertion, says no to birth control and swoons at the prospect of further automation and labor force reductions. Pure idiocy in the highest circles of policy creation.