If Ceausescu would have lived and hit oil, Bucharest would have probably looked like Astana: an alien mix between Soviet-style and modernist buildings, such as the Pyramid of Peace and Accord - designed by sir Norman Foster. The thing cost 50 million euros and is only one of three different projects bearing the signature of the famous architect.
Astana reflects perfectly the personality cult of president Nursultan Nazarbaev, who just celebrated 20 years of non-interrupted reign in Kazakhstan. He’s the only USSR leader to have stayed in power until now.
Media freedom? Opposition rallies? Internet freedom? Forget about it.. And by all means, don’t ever mention Borat..it’s a national offence.
Yet everybody wants to be friends with the oil-rich country bordering Russia and China and almost as big as whole Western Europe. NATO needs its cooperation for the war in Afghanistan, the EU wants some of its lavish energy ressources. But so do Russia and China, and Nazarbaev has been around long enough to know how to play this game and let everyone believe he is their friend.
Here is how the Norman Foster pyramid looks like from the inside.
And watch some more Kazakh talent thrown for NATO guests invited to Astana for a security forum with partner countries:
Despite the arrests, killings and beatings of protesters in Iran, Western leaders keep the invitation for the Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the G8 meeting in Trieste (Italy) next week. The Obama administration apparently still hopes the Iranians will help in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and so the Italians followed orders and did not withdraw the invitation.
According to EUobserver, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi explained on Friday at an EU summit that the invite was "in agreement with the US administration."
"We equally believe it is important to involve Iran in the stabilisation of Afghanistan," he said.
German foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, who will also be present at the G8 meeting, also said that retracting the invitation would not help - not with the nuclear file, nor the current demonstrations.
"I think we must respect the US position in criticising strongly the reaction of Iranian authorities towards the demonstrators, but we must also realise that we won’t solve these conflicts just by withdrawing our foreign policy activities," said Steinmeier.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton broke her elbow and won’t be able to travel next week. Which makes it even less understandable why the US still wants the Iranian minister to be there. Wouldn’t it appear as if the West is accepting the brutal crackdown on demonstrators?
So the left lost bigtime in the European elections this week. In France, Germany, Spain, Italy, but first and foremost in Great Britain, where Labour scored its lowest since 1918.
Hopefully, that will tone down the whole "capitalism is dead, long live socialism" discourse. More importantly, isn’t it interesting how Europe is turning to the right, while the US is turning more to the left than ever before? Maybe now they will finally meet each other halfway and we’ll have a real economic connundrum.
Bucharest would have probably looked like Astana: an alien mix between Soviet-style and modernist buildings, such as the Pyramid of Peace and Accord - designed by sir Norman Foster. The thing cost 50 million euros and is only one of three different projects bearing the signature of the famous architect.
n foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki at the G8 meeting in Trieste (Italy) next week. The Obama administration apparently still hopes the Iranians will help in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and so the Italians followed orders and did not withdraw the invitation.
Even the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov looks worried.. "Whoa, Dmitri, careful with that gun!"
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