Hillary Clinton isn't just a Democratic candidate for president of the United States; she's co-president of the breakaway Republic of Clintonstan. As Clinton said herself in the early '90s when her husband was running for president: "If you vote for my husband, you get me. It's a two-for-one, blue plate special."
Something is going on in Uzbekistan. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Bruce Pannier reported this week that Uzbekistan's National Security Service (SNB) has been responding to a series of bomb threats in a town outside of the capital, Tashkent.
The tragic saga of the late former son-in-law of Kazakhstan's all-powerful president took a further twist Tuesday as two of the dead man's associates on trial for murder in Austria were released from custody.
Two Kazakhs who were co-accused along with Rakhat Aliyev over the murder of two bankers in 2007 have been released from pre-trial detention after an Austrian judge found inconsistencies and contradictions in the evidence brought against them, their lawyer has confirmed.
Die beiden Angeklagten im Mordverfahren um den Tod zweier kasachischer Bankmanager wurden vom vorsitzenden Richter überraschend enthaftet. Wien – Einen Knalleffekt brachte am Mittwoch der Alijew-Prozess: Andreas Böhm, Vorsitzender des Geschworenengerichts im Mordverfahren gegen Alnur Mussajew und Vadim K. hat die Untersuchungshaft über die beiden Angeklagten aufgehoben.
New York Times reporter Jo Becker said that after Bill Clinton gave Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev a "propaganda coup," businessman Frank Giustra got a large uranium concession in the country, and then gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation in an interview broadcast on Friday's Fox News Channel special "The Tangled Clinton Web."
A Uranium One sign that points to a 35,000-acre ranch owned by John Christensen, near the town of Gillette, Wyo. Uranium One has the mining rights to Mr. Christensen's property. Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times
As oil-rich Kazakhstan votes for a president Sunday, the governing elite is pounding home a mantra of stability as fears percolate about the country's massive Russian minority taking inspiration from the Moscow-backed insurgency in Ukraine.
Mitt Romney held nothing back when he was asked about a recent wave of allegations that hit Hillary Clinton's family foundation on Thursday. In an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Romney said one of the reports about the Clinton family's charitable organization details something that "looks like bribery."
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, the authorities don't even have to stuff the ballot boxes, their presidents have done everything they can to appear irreplaceable. In post-Soviet Central Asia, presidential elections are routine affairs. In a region where power has very seldom been transferred at the ballot box and where governments and opposition simply do not talk to one another, competitive elections have come to display some very paradoxical features.
