feasting like no other

NT Time has an article on mining rights in Khazhakstan obtained by Mr. Giustra. The article's narrative explores the role Bill Clinton played in this. This is somehow irrelevant as Bill Clinton's and Mr. Giustra's place could have been filled someone else just as well.

First disturbing part of the article is the following picture:

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

Then, this:

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy.

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The story that people are missing out is there are mineral resources and energy supplies in Central Asia. It is of less consequence as to how a deal was brokered and who was involved. Nazarbayev will be there, Khazhakstan will be there, and someone is going to broker the deal somehow. Whoever wins the deal, their economy gets a free ride on someone else's property. There will be feasting and it will be like no other.