Washington Babylon — September 14, 2009, 11:39 am
SIGN IN to access the Harper’s archive
ALERT: Usernames and passwords from the old Harpers.org will no longer work. To create a new password and add or verify your email address, please sign in to customer care and select Email/Password Information. (To learn about the change, please read our FAQ.)
Not a subscriber? Subscribe today!
Create a login here. Forgot password? Forgot email? More help here.
Before he was named as the administration’s special envoy on international energy, David Goldwyn advocated for closer ties to Stalinist Turkmenistan as head of the energy industry-endowed U.S.-Turkmenistan Business Council. That group argued for closer ties with the government there on the grounds of its energy reserves and alleged progress on human rights.
Here’s the latest news from Turkmenistan: The Turkmen dictator, who is coming to the U.S. in about a week, is panicked at the idea of Turkmen kids going to college. Of course there is no college in Turkmenistan, so the only way to get a higher education is to leave the country. So he’s clamped on controls to stop kids from going abroad to get an education. His thinking is pretty self-evident: anyone with a college education would probably want to overthrow his government, and that’s almost certainly true.
More from Ken Silverstein:
Commentary — July 25, 2012, 2:20 pm
Washington Babylon — September 29, 2010, 11:37 am
Lucas Mann on hope and change in a minor-league-baseball city
Minimum number of baboons forced to smoke crack in a 1989 study testing the efficacy of cigarettes as a drug delivery device:
A reduction in distrust toward atheists was documented among pious Canadians who are reminded of the Vancouver police.
A Missouri cinema apologized for hiring an actor dressed in body armor and carrying a fake rifle to appear at a screening of Iron Man 3.
Winner of the 2012 Olivier Rebbot Award for best photographic reporting from abroad in magazines or books
