The Kazakh Follies
Fans of Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 film Borat, a “mockumentary” about the misadventures of a young Kazakh visitor to the United States, won’t be disappointed by the Wiki-Leaks diplomatic cables. The American diplomats assigned to the former Soviet republics of the North and Central Caucasus report on events there with sharp wits and gimlet eyes. The Scrapbook enjoyed their dispatches so much, we’ve collected some of the best bits here. Remember them the next time a Central Asian autocrat denies his regime is hopelessly corrupt.
A Foreign Service officer in Dagestan sets the tone. He reports that Gadzhi Makhachev, a Duma member who also heads the national oil company, owns “luxurious houses in Makhachkala, Kaspiysk, Moscow, Paris, and San Diego” as well as “a large collection of luxury automobiles, including the Rolls Royce Silver Phantom in which Dalgat fetched Aida from her parents’ reception. (Gadzhi gave us a lift in the Rolls once in Moscow, but the legroom was somewhat constricted by the presence of a Kalashnikov carbine at our feet.)”
The fun really starts when the action moves to Kazakhstan, the huge, mineral-rich nation led for decades by strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev. “Kazakhstan’s political elites also have recreational tastes that are not so exotic,” says one dispatch. “Some, in fact, prefer to relax the old-fashioned way. Defense Minister Akhmetov, a self-proclaimed workaholic, appears to enjoy loosening up in the tried and true ‘homo sovieticus’ style—i.e., drinking oneself into a stupor.”
But that may be too harsh. After all, some in the Kazakh elite just want to dance. Here’s a report on Kazakh prime minister Karim Masimov’s trip to a trendy nightclub:
“Masimov led his companions on to Chocolat’s dance floor soon after their arrival. The dance floor holds approximately 100 people, and at the time perhaps 50 patrons were dancing. However, Masimov himself chose to dance on an empty stage above the dance floor. His companions quickly tired but Masimov remained, dancing alone and animatedly on the stage for another 15-20 minutes.”
Kazakh weddings also sound fun:
“In 2007, President Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, celebrated his 41st birthday in grand style. 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. . . . There have been separate reports that Nelly Furtado performed at the August 2007 birthday bash for Kulibayev’s wife, Dinara Nazarbayeva.”
The food, however, could use some improvement:
“It is not clear what [Kazakh oligarch Alexander] Mashkevich is spending his billions on, but it is certainly not culinary talent. On all four occasions the ambassador has eaten at one of his houses, the menu has been similar and focused on beshparmak (boiled meat and noodles) and plov. The wait staff appeared to be graduates of a Soviet cafeteria training academy.”
Or maybe American diplomats are just picky. We can’t say we blame them: It’s easy to become cynical when confronted by such a desolate—geographically and morally—landscape. “The ambassador [to Kazakhstan] asked if the corruption and infighting are worse now than before. . . . [Oil tycoon Maksat] Idenov paused, thought, and then replied, ‘No, not really. It’s business as usual.’ ” Some things never change. ♦
Deborah Solomon’s Comeuppance
Deborah Solomon has annoyed New York Times Magazine readers for years with her obnoxious, reflexively liberal interviews of public figures (“You probably eat a lot of cheese,” she told Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in an interview earlier this year). But at least print subscribers can turn the page. The audience members at the 92nd Street Y in New York City on November 29 weren’t so lucky. After being forced to endure Solomon’s interview of comic Steve Martin live on stage, the disappointed crowd asked for and received their money back.
According to the Times, 900 people spent $50 per ticket expecting to hear Martin discuss his career as a television and film actor. Instead, they heard Solomon and Martin drone on about the art world. “Mr. Martin is an avid art collector,” reports the Times, “and Ms. Solomon has written art criticism.” That’s swell, but the audience was more interested in The Jerk and Father of the Bride Part II than The Scream and Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon. Halfway through the interview, a member of the Y’s staff passed a note to Solomon asking her to switch topics. “The audience cheered when Ms. Solomon read aloud the note.”
Solomon responded to the rebuff in typical liberal fashion: The audience, she told her newspaper, was a bunch of unsophisticated dolts. “Frankly, you would think that an audience in New York, at the 92nd Street Y, would be interested in hearing about art and artists. I had no idea that the Y programmers wanted me to talk to Steve instead on what it’s like to host the Oscars or appear in It’s Complicated with Alec Baldwin.” The rubes.
Martin’s appraisal of the situation was more realistic, however. “As for the Y’s standard of excellence,” he said, “it can’t be that high because this is the second time I’ve appeared there.” He said it, not us. ♦
There Are Leaks & Then There Are Leaks
The New York Times, November 20, 2009:
A thick file of private emails and unpublished documents generated by an array of climate scientists over 13 years was obtained by a hacker from a British university climate research center and has since spread widely across the Internet starting Thursday afternoon. Before they propagated, the purloined documents, nearly 200 megabytes in all, were uploaded surreptitiously on Tuesday to a server supporting the global warming Web site realclimate.org, along with a draft mock post, said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist managing that blog. He pulled the plug before the fake post was published. . . . The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.
The New York Times, November 29, 2010:
The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables online on Sunday. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match. . . . The documents—some 250,000 individual cables, the daily traffic between the State Department and more than 270 American diplomatic outposts around the world—were made available to the Times by a source who insisted on anonymity. They were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets, allegedly from a disenchanted, low-level Army intelligence analyst who exploited a security loophole.
Besides the obvious double standard here, The Scrapbook enjoys the divergence in the vocabulary used by the Times to discuss leaks of which it approves and those of which it disapproves. Hacker, purloined, surreptitiously, illegally—none of these judgmental words make the grade when it comes to discussing WikiLeaks, which doesn’t “purloin” but “obtains” its wares. Naturally. After all, it’s “an organization devoted to exposing official secrets”—an anodyne phrase that, come to think of it, also describes the New York Times these days. ♦
Tweeting the Prince
If you’ve glanced at a supermarket or airport magazine rack recently, you know that spring 2011 will bring us The Royal Wedding Part Deux: William and Kate. What you may not have heard is that that great American institution Snoop Dogg is trying to get in on the act. Since Prince Harry, a well-known fan of hip-hop, has been put in charge of the engagement party, there may be something to this rumor.
Mr. Dogg has officially dedicated, via Twitter, his new single “Wet” to Prince William for his bachelor party. (A note of caution from The Scrapbook to our sensitive readers: The song is exceptionally raunchy.) “This song is tha one for Prince William’s stag do,” tweeted Snoop, suggesting, according to the Guardian, that “US president Barack Obama [also] get in on the action. ‘U know they need tha Top Doggs in USA to roll to [the] bachelor party,’ he wrote. ‘@BarackObama, u in?’ ”
The rapper has not been formally approached to perform, but he is reportedly “really interested.” No word yet on whether the president will drop by the “stag do.” The Scrapbook will be collecting our one pound notes for you, Sir, just in case. ♦
Take a Hike
In order to generate much needed funds, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, or Metro for short, decided to hike fares this past summer. But as the Washington Post reported last week, “The across-the-board fare increase imposed by Metro this summer has led to a drop in bus ridership and less-than-expected rail revenue as a result of changing travel patterns, an initial analysis by Metro shows.”
How on earth could this happen? Shouldn’t an increase in fares simply have led to an increase in revenue? Unless, of course, consumers actually altered their behavior because of the change in price. According to the analysis, some Metro users decided to ride the bus instead of the train, which costs more. Others used rail but during offpeak hours. And still others chose to walk. (Whether or not some commuters ended up driving to work remains classified.)
There are those who argue that the higher the price of a good, the less the demand for it. Or something like that. Who knows? Meanwhile, The Scrapbook has learned the Obama administration is looking into whether or not this sort of unintended consequence could have implications for its tax policies. ♦