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Not Since Baghdad
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First in a series.
ASTANA, Kazakhstan – Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither was this fantasy
city, which lies in the flat, semi-arid and steppe north-central region –
but it seems like it.After Kazakhstan gained its independence in 1991, the city and the region
were renamed Akmola, meaning “white shrine” in Kazakh.In 1995, the city was designated as the country's future capital. On Dec.
10, 1997, the capital was officially transferred from Almaty, a Silk Route
city in the mountainous southeast, to Akmola. The new name, Astana,
meaning “capital,” was bestowed in 1998.
A stately presidential palace Photo: Linda Gasparello
The word “astana” in Kazakh, by one account, comes from the Persian verb
to stand, “istandan,” particularly in respect or awe. The city of Mashhad
in northeast Iran, which is the burial place of the 8th Shi'ite Imam Reza,
is an “astana.”Visitors can't help but stand in awe of the modern capital and the man
responsible for building it, President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He's built
Astana in much the same way as al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph, transformed the small Persian hamlet of Baghdad into a powerful and prestigious city in 762 A.D.Astana's futuristic skyline has been formed in 12 years, with brio,
bulldozers and billions in expenditure. The Baiterek monument and
observation tower, the capital's symbol, is one of many architectural
wonders. The 105-meter structure is named after the mythical tree. Its
base and consists of white steel girders bundled like branches. An
observation deck, 97 meters up the base (symbolizing the year of the
capital transfer) supports a 22-meter-diameter gold-mirrored globe,
representing the golden egg laid by the mythical bird Samruk.
Bird's-eye view: Baiterek monument Photo: Linda Gasparello
“According to a Kazakh legend, the Samruk laid an egg bright as the sun at
the top of the Baiterek, but at night an evil dragon gobbled it up. When
the patience of the local Kazakhs ran out, they killed the dragon,
allowing the sun-like egg to brighten up the world,” Dilip Hiro wrote in
his latest book on Central Asia.The tower's observation room – from which visitors can see much of the
city – features a malachite pedestal topped with a 4.4-pound block of
solid gold, in the center of which is an imprint of the president's right
hand. A plaque suggests that visitors place a palm on the imprint and make
a wish, which on special occasions triggers the playing of the national
anthem. (Recently, I was told, the lyrics were changed because Nazarbayev thought they were too downbeat for a dynamically developing country.)
Golden touch Photo: Linda Gasparello
Also installed in the chamber is a wooden globe, with 17 rays signed by
representatives of the world's religions. The globe commemorates the First
Congress of the Leaders of the World and Traditional Religions, which
Astana hosted in September 2003. The Palace of Peace and Harmony, a stone
and glass pyramid, 62 meters high, was built for the 2006 summit of
traditional religions in Astana.
Palace of Peace and Harmony Photo: Linda Gasparello
Kazakhstan is home to over 130 ethnicities, practicing over 40 religions.
“Kazakhs are aware of the need for peaceful coexistence on our planet,” a
tower guide said.British architect Norman Foster, who designed the tower and the pyramid,
has put an enormous imprint on the city. He also designed the Khan Shatyr,
or the “king's tent” – a regal 150 meters high with a 200-meter elliptical
base). It's a stately pleasure yurt, housing shops and restaurants, indoor
beaches and waterfalls, as well as a mini golf course and botanic gardens.
Khan Shatyr recreation center Photo: Linda Gasparello
Foster's latest design, the Abu Dhabi Plaza, is a matrix of staggered
high-rises, the highest of which will be 88 stories – and the highest building in Central Asia. The mixed-use complex, which will include hotels, offices, residences, a reinvented traditional marketplace, light rail and year-round gardens, was inspired by “a sister” project in Abu Dhabi, the Central Market Redevelopment.“We're a little competitive with Dubai – just like siblings,” a young
Kazakh told me with a laugh. - no responses
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‘White House Chronicle’ Available by Download
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For many years, public, educational and government access television stations (PEG) have received DVDs of "White House Chronicle" episodes. As of Jan. 20, 2012, the program will only be available to PEG stations by download.
For three years, we've provided ISO and MPEG-2 files of episodes for PEG stations to download. We've posted instructions on registering and downloading episodes in the Contact Us section of the Web site.
Downloading is a simple process and a reliable TV episode delivery system. Importantly, it helps us continue to provide "White House Chronicle" to PEG stations.
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Fasten Your Seat Belt, Obama’s Driving Energy Policy
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By Llewellyn KingIf President Obama were driving an automobile the way he's driving energy policy, he'd be stopped and breathalyzed.The president’s latest decision to defer a decision on TransCanada's Keystone XL oil pipeline is a sudden swerve to the left, after his sharp right turn in curbing the enthusiasm of the Environmental Protection Agency for limiting electric utility emissions.Similarly Obama has supported some new drilling for oil, but not in all the areas the industry would like to drill. He's in the middle of the road on this one, and no one is happy.On nuclear power, Obama signaled a right turn and veered left. He came to office endorsing the nuclear option, including loan guarantees. But in a tip of the hat to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the president opposed the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, and undermined the case he was making for nuclear.The mischief did not end there. Obama appointed Reid’s man, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to end the Yucca project and entomb, in effect, the $9 billion to $15 billion (depending on who is counting) in its abandoned tunnels. But because the government has longstanding legal commitments to take the waste, and has taken the money charged utilities (about $900 million a year) and treated it like tax revenue, the whole project has torn up the commission and landed it in court.Jaczko, a former Reid aide, has riled the other four commissioners and the NRC staff to such an extent that the four went to the then White House chief of staff to complain about the chairman. An act of frustration totally unprecedented and deeply damaging to the credibility of the commission. Nobody resigned and a damaged regulatory body is now passing on the safety of the nation’s nuclear fleet. To all appearances, the chairman’s remit was to tear things up in the commission; that he has done.In particular, the issue of licensing of Yucca Mountain has caused ructions. Jaczko has stopped the licensing in what the quasi-judicial Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in the case considers an illegal act. According to Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry wants the licensing to proceed if only to establish that Yucca was the right way to go and that it can stand the scrutiny that the NRC would give it in licensing. Fertel says that it's a marker for the future.Opponents of Yucca, presumably including Jaczko, fear that a license would pave the way for the Yucca project to come back to life under a different administration. Did Obama, a lawyer, not know that political brute force in a regulatory agency is bound to throw it into disarray, and to leave its decisions to be impugned in court later? So why did he do it?When it comes to alternative energy, Obama positively drove on to the left shoulder. The administration has promised wonders from wind, solar and advanced coal combustion. It has thrown money at these as though it were rice at a wedding. The most conspicuous of this mind-over-matter exercise was, of course, Solyndra. But the spending has been lavish, indeed promiscuous, and the bankruptcies are filling up court dockets and right-wing Web sites.Yet, the gods have smiled on the Obama administration. A boom in natural gas, brought on by new technologies, and enhanced oil production, fathered by the same technological improvements, have brought oil imports down below 50 percent for the first time in 20 years. Electricity supply is holding.Environmental organizations, having been cold-shouldered on climate change by the world in a time of economic upset, picked on the Keystone pipeline with fury. Particularly apoplectic about it has been the Natural Resources Defense Council, which hopes that by canceling the project, Canada would stop developing its oil sands.No, says Canada. I spoke with Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver shortly before Obama's first decision to delay the pipeline. Oliver said that if the decision weren't favorable, Canada would build a pipeline across the Rockies to British Columbia and export to China.The latest setback has infuriated Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government, which now says it will no longer rely almost entirely on the U.S. market for its hydrocarbon sales.So Obama’s latest swerve has angered our best ally and good neighbor, denied American workers thousands of jobs and will oblige refineries on the Gulf Coast to buy oil from unfriendly places on the world market.He has also given the Republicans a handsome gift in an election year. Masterful! – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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Winding Down the Nomination Show
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Now that Mitt Romney is pulling ahead, I’m saddened to see the greatest political show in years drawing to a close. When will we again thrill to the way Texas Gov. Rick Perry parachuted into Iowa and eclipsed Michele Bachmann briefly? At that moment the nomination was Perry’s to lose, and he wasted no time in losing it. He entered stage right with Texas panache. Writers and broadcasters, including myself, who had the temerity to question the Texas mystique – that famous swagger – got an earful from Lone Star loyalists. One thought that I should be roped and dragged behind a cutting horse. Another volunteered to do it. Texans with six-shooters on their hips were ready to defend the honor of their state with cordite. That was until their leader drew a bead on his own foot and fired. It wasn’t so much that Perry forgot the government department that was bringing down the United States, but that he gave the impression he had never heard of any of his targets before they were whispered to him seconds before he walked to the podium. One prefers one’s political heroes to explode rather than implode. We want to be able to laugh out loud, not feel terribly sorry. Poor Perry. When he had to substitute piety for swagger, it was over. We want our Texans loud and brash with belt buckles as big as lesser states. A personal favorite of mine was Herman Cain. Damn it. I liked him; an original by any measure, I’d say. But he was brought down by something less than original: a roving eye directing a roving hand. Jobs-for-sex would not, one feels, solve the unemployment crisis. I didn’t care that Herman the Lover didn’t know where Libya was. If it had had a Godfather’s Pizza franchise, things would have been different. The guy was appealing. While pizza may not have the same ring as computers or pharmaceuticals, he had a great resume as a mathematician and naval officer. It could be argued that Cain and that other roguish aspirant for high office, Newt Gingrich, at least have standard-issue libidos. The rest were, well, a little sexually hung up. The lovely Michele Bachmann, the righteous Rick Santorum and oh-so-pure Romney, who apparently has been untouched by human temptation or anything else as messy as human beings and their needs, all suffer from moral fundamentalism. It’s hard to imagine Romney as evincing passion of any kind, even though he is the father of five. Santorum is the most fanatically puritanical about sex. Especially gay sex. To Santorum, the family is the triumph of human achievement. Not since Oliver Cromwell, apparently, has anyone cared as much about the family or its sexuality as Santorum. For him it’s not the individual that builds the state, but only the family — unless it’s the gay family. Indubitably big government is dandy, so long as it’s in someone else’s bedroom. The same anti-gay fundamentalism animates Bachmann and, apparently, her husband who has a clinic to “cure” homosexuals. What is it about these people that has them so frothed up about other people’s private acts? Oh, let it go if they froth in private. Who cares now that the race is narrowing? When Gingrich goes, I’ll be shattered. Gingrich and his wife Calista standing by him as immobile as a cigar-store mannequin, belong on the high shelf of American political bric-a-brac. Gingrich sprouting his version of history, his version of his own role in history; Newt magnanimous in his brief ascendency and bitter as oblivion threatened. This was the Man Who Would Be President unmasked. The consolation prize of National Grouch surely belongs to Newt. Of course there was a bit player, an understudy, someone qualified but unsung: enter, stage center, Jon Huntsman. A brief appearance, exit stage left. No applause, no mention in the program even. So dim the lights, bring down the curtain, strike the set – never have so many outrageous eccentrics so unsuited the highest office in the world so entertained so many of us for so long. Sadly, the long national farce is over. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate - no responses
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Shakespeare Said It: ‘All That Glisters Is Not Gold’
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“There's gold in them thar hills,” goes the old saying. There’s also human blood and nerve damage in that gold. And there's dying animals and destroyed rivers.
The greatest gold rush in all of human history is on. It's not a pretty, a romantic or a benign business. Indeed, it's a catastrophe for the environment and for human and animal health.
The high price of gold – it has tripled since 2000 – is such that every gold-bearing plot of land and river is being ravaged in more than 70 countries. As many as 50 million of the world’s poorest people now depend
on this kind of plunder for a living.It's the mining equivalent of subsistence farming, but it's lethal in the cruelest ways. Mercury is used to identify the gold (2 grams of mercury for 1 gram of gold) to which it adheres. With each use, some of the mercury is washed away and vapor escapes into the air. In another variant of this practice, cyanide is used to leach gold out of ore in vats or ponds. Either way, two deadly substances are released without control into the environment.
The problem isn't with the deep mines of Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United States – the hard-rock mines. It's with two other categories of mining that use mercury or cyanide: alluvial and artisan.
Alluvial is working a river with pans and sluice tables, which are primitive devices that trap gold granules in a blanket or grease. Artisan – a term used by the United Nations and environmental groups — uses
bigger machines and expensive “shaker tables,” which process earth by the ton rather than the bucket. These can be found in surface gold deposits in rivers and farther away. This is a mechanized version of finding gold that is not deep in the ground.While artisan mining may conjure images of dedicated craftsmen coaxing gold out of rock with love and skill, don’t be deceived. The activity is savage and brutal; the plundered rock and soil is left to wash away, causing death and destruction over many years.
The Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, and its cohorts at the U.N. Development Program and the World Bank, consider cyanide to be
the lesser of the two threats. Maybe. But I've seen great piles of mining spoil which the cyanide has rendered lifeless. Nothing lives in it or grows on it.Certainly, mercury is the largest of the real-and-present danger of subsistence mining. In Indonesia, men stand in rivers with their hands in buckets of water, muck and mercury, according to one Associated Press
report. The BBC also has reported promiscuous use of mercury in Indonesia and Peru.From China to Romania, in much of Latin America and throughout Africa, there is extensive mining on the surface — and that means mercury use. Miners in these countries are well aware of the dangers — miners often
are. But the economics of their lives dictate that they mine until it kills them, or the food chain collapses and their families are poisoned, or the operation has to move to a pristine area to be repeated.The economic life that sustains also destroys.
The United States and the European Union have restricted the export of mercury. But that's only increased the price, while there appears to be
plenty in international trade – enough for the nomadic miners of those 70 or so countries.I have to declare a personal interest in alluvial gold mining at its simplest: panning and sluicing. My father, whenever his many little business endeavors failed, headed for the beautiful Angwa River in Zimbabwe, both before and after World War II, to look for gold. He mined it with picks, shovels, pans and sluices. The activity was so minor it left no lasting mark. In those days gold fetched $35 an ounce, hardly enough to sustain him and his family, but better than nothing. Now it's about
$1,600 an ounce.My father loved that river. He often spoke about its beauty and tranquility. I've been reviewing photographs of it today: a ravaged moonscape of pits and waste piles. Crime is unchecked, murder is common.
Shakespeare said it: “All that glisters is not gold.” Indeed not. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics
January 30th, 2012
Guests: Aram Bakshian, author and critic; Atul Singh, Fair Observer
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet
January 23rd, 2012
Guests: Tim Farley, Sirius XM Radio; Adam Clayton Powell III, University of Southern California; Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”
January 16th, 2012
Guest Craig Shirley, author
World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway
January 9th, 2012
Guests Arnaud de Borchgrave, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrei Sitov, Itar-Tass; Al Leeds, The Washington Post
The Joys of Transportation
January 2nd, 2012
Guests Bill Gouse, Transportation Consultant – Originally Broadcast October 16, 2011