Speaker 1: M oh my god, Oh my god, the episode started
Speaker 1: and I don't introduction, Dave, Dave, what do I do?
Speaker 1: How do I introduce the episode? What is the show?
Speaker 1: What are we doing? It's oh god, it's behind your
Speaker 1: behind something the music? Yeah, this is behind the Music,
Speaker 1: a show where we tell you everything you don't know
Speaker 1: about the greatest pop hits of the nineteen nineties. Dave,
Speaker 1: this is part nine of our series on All Star,
Speaker 1: the hit smash Mouth song. Now, what do you think
Speaker 1: they meant with the line get your game on, go play? Well?
Speaker 1: I think it could mean a lot of things, Roberts.
Speaker 1: So if you almost threw pop type setting me there,
Speaker 1: Robert Evans is Behind the Bastards, of course, the show
Speaker 1: where we tell you everything you don't know about the
Speaker 1: very worst people in all of history. I am. I've
Speaker 1: switched out in my bubbly for a doctor's via much
Speaker 1: better drink. Can I get a little? Yeah? Can you
Speaker 1: wait a port over the over the recording equipment into
Speaker 1: your lacroix into my Oh hold on, I got a sweater,
Speaker 1: you can I can mop that up with your sweater, Dave,
Speaker 1: This is great. I think we're okay. Fine, it wasn't
Speaker 1: on spell my drink clean up. We're okay, it's all right,
Speaker 1: We're doing great. I don't know why people put us
Speaker 1: in a room together. Sophie's really close to throwing those
Speaker 1: pop darts. Great podcast content. I'm gonna the people in
Speaker 1: their cars really enjoyed that. Daniel, our our audio engineer,
Speaker 1: is uh not livid. This is the fourth set of
Speaker 1: thumbs up he's given us, which is a good sign
Speaker 1: we're on the right track. Sophie's punching her fist. I
Speaker 1: guess let's talk about the dictator of minister. Let's let's
Speaker 1: get back into it. So, as you might guess, nine
Speaker 1: eleven was a very dangerous time to be both a
Speaker 1: New Yorker and an ostensibly Muslim dictator in a country
Speaker 1: anywhere near Afghanistan. Neither of those were safe things to be.
Speaker 1: Even so, Niyazov made what was in retrospect the major
Speaker 1: mistake in the nineteen nineties of engaging in substantial trade
Speaker 1: deals with the Taliban, mainly so he could run pipelines
Speaker 1: through their country. As soon as the towers fell, turkwen
Speaker 1: Boshi reversed his stance on the Taliban and agreed to
Speaker 1: let the Pentagon use his country as a gigantic airstrip
Speaker 1: to prepare for the invasion of Afghanistan. Smart move. Now,
Speaker 1: I even't kept up on the invasion of Afghanistan since
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's, but I assume it went well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that work that wrapped. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that would get handled pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: I didn't get out. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I
Speaker 1: love about our wars is the defined in points. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the best part about how we do war in America.
Speaker 1: So good at infection. Yeah, we're like we're like lost
Speaker 1: the TV show of Countries. Yeah yeah, Yeah, you're done
Speaker 1: to a couple of seasons and you're done. Tell quick
Speaker 1: concise story. Now. Helping America bomb in neutral country has
Speaker 1: always been a lucrative endeavor for the dictators who let
Speaker 1: us do it. Uh. Turkwen Boshi benefited mightily for his
Speaker 1: help during Clinton's time, Turkmenistan had barely rated six thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year in military aid. By two thousand three,
Speaker 1: after giving the US access to Turkmen airspace and some
Speaker 1: land rights at a top nineteen point two million. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a thirty something times increase. So smart decision,
Speaker 1: letting us bomb other people from your country. It's an
Speaker 1: easy fix. It's an easy fix. Now. President Bush was
Speaker 1: happy to offer this dictatory security alliance, which Niazov used
Speaker 1: to crush what little resistance remained to his reign. There
Speaker 1: really wasn't much, though, and when Turkmen Boshi finally saw
Speaker 1: a major unrest, it would come in the form of
Speaker 1: one of his highest officials, Boris Shukmorrodov, at that time
Speaker 1: the Turkmen ambassador to China, which is a really important
Speaker 1: job in Turkmenistan because China is kind of like your
Speaker 1: your big trading partner that area, like you pretty pretty
Speaker 1: important to be in good terms with China. So this
Speaker 1: guy is a high up official. His nightmare came to
Speaker 1: life when his ambassador to China, Boris Shikmordov, resigned and
Speaker 1: again denouncing his regime. He claimed that Turkmen Boshi had
Speaker 1: ordered dissidence, tortured and executed, that he'd rigged elections, and
Speaker 1: that he'd embezzled billions of dollars in government funds to
Speaker 1: his personal bank account. No, Turkmen, yeah, he's not wrong.
Speaker 1: He's not wrong, and Turkmen Boshi responded by accusing Boris
Speaker 1: of embezzling tens millions of dollars, which is also probably
Speaker 1: not wrong. Yeah, yeah, probably both in beszling. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just everything's blowing up. Now. Everybody's pointing fingers.
Speaker 1: It's like that gift of Spider Man pointing at Spider Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening here. Uh Now, Schikmurodov went to Europe
Speaker 1: and became the international symbol of resistance to Niyazov's reign.
Speaker 1: Nothing happened for a while, and no resistance rose up
Speaker 1: from inside the country, but Chikmurrodov was sort of a
Speaker 1: thorn in his side, like always going around, you know,
Speaker 1: the world, talking about how terrible things were in Turkmenistan
Speaker 1: and trying to get people. You know, this is the
Speaker 1: period where the US is overthrowing a couple of dictators.
Speaker 1: So he's trying to be like, overthrow this guy. Maybe
Speaker 1: put me in charge, overthrow this guy. He's one of
Speaker 1: those people. Seems like it. Uh he may have been.
Speaker 1: And again this yeah, it just goes back to the
Speaker 1: there's corruption. Yeah, I'll do it, It'll fix the corruption. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: don't don't have anyone ever be in charge of anything
Speaker 1: because people are bad at being in charge of countries.
Speaker 1: Have people be in charge of like makes sense for
Speaker 1: a person to be in charge of a power plant,
Speaker 1: makes sense for people to be in charge of a factory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people shouldn't be in charge of something like a country.
Speaker 1: It never works out. It's it's bad of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I sorry, my radical politics infecting this history podcast. Burn
Speaker 1: it all, burn nop. Just burn all the leaders down. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: burn the leaders down. Use the ashes of their bodies
Speaker 1: to grow potatoes. Yeah. I feel like if there's one
Speaker 1: thing we need more of, its potatoes. It would be
Speaker 1: like you could celebrant dictators. Oh my god, Dave, you
Speaker 1: nailed it. I know I did. I felt that one
Speaker 1: coming from my gut. It would be perfect. It's one
Speaker 1: of those jokes that like shifts the fur moment of
Speaker 1: the universe. It's so appropriate. Oh boy, I I tickles me.
Speaker 1: We gotta go into the business. We gotta go into business.
Speaker 1: I wonder where they buried Saddam. Who I mean? I
Speaker 1: could find out. We could, and if we don't, we
Speaker 1: could lie and say we did exactly because he's gonna know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exact perfect. Oh man, I even know some people we
Speaker 1: could bribe in that. Anyway, Once turkmen Boshi had kind
Speaker 1: of put the kibosh on this, essentially accused this guy
Speaker 1: who had you know, risen up against him of being corrupt,
Speaker 1: he sort of figured that was that was it for
Speaker 1: a while, uh, and he went back to his favorite
Speaker 1: pastime of being a lunatic. In August of two two,
Speaker 1: at the annual session of the People's Council, turkmen Boshi
Speaker 1: announced that he was renaming all of the months. I mean,
Speaker 1: why not at this point? Why not? Why not renamed
Speaker 1: the months? Yeah, January was renamed. Can you guess what
Speaker 1: he called? He named January I assume after himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got it. January was turkmen Boshi. February was flat.
Speaker 1: April was named after his mother, apparently because the month
Speaker 1: April signifies growth in May was named after his favorite poet.
Speaker 1: Now as a fellow writer, Dave. You know how creative
Speaker 1: flow works. Once you're really focused and you're putting out
Speaker 1: good work, you don't want to stop. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: even if you like finish the project, you just start
Speaker 1: something else because you're like, well, I'm never im you know,
Speaker 1: you're mare to get in this headspace, you really want
Speaker 1: to take advantage of it. And I think Turkmen Boshi
Speaker 1: got caught up in that headspace a little bit because
Speaker 1: right after renaming all the months, he decided to rename
Speaker 1: all the days of the week. Sure, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: got you gotta keep that going. You might as well. Now,
Speaker 1: Monday was renamed Beginning Day, Tuesday was Young Day, should
Speaker 1: have been Fun Day, should have been fun Day. Wednesday
Speaker 1: was Good Day, Thursday was Blessed Day, Friday was Mother Day.
Speaker 1: Saturday and Sunday we're sol in Recovery Day, respectively. Recovery
Speaker 1: Day makes sense. Recovery Day, it makes especially since Saturday,
Speaker 1: Soul Day was also the day that everyone in the
Speaker 1: country was supposed to read his book, so you really
Speaker 1: need some recovery after that out after no debate, the
Speaker 1: parliament in the People's Council ratified all these changes to
Speaker 1: the names of the days and months. This basic method
Speaker 1: turkmen Boshi making a declaration and then changing suddenly huge
Speaker 1: aspects of daily life in an instant, happened with increasing
Speaker 1: regularity in the early two thousands. When Turkmenbashi learned that
Speaker 1: the traffic police were extorting bribes from motorists. He fired
Speaker 1: them all and replaced them with army recruits. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: that's gonna that's gonna work. As a bunch of new
Speaker 1: new guys with guns directing traffic with training. I don't
Speaker 1: see how that could work out badly. He also continued
Speaker 1: to shower Turkmenistan with the blessings of his wisdom. Here's
Speaker 1: the book inside Central Asia. Inspired by what he believed
Speaker 1: to be a semi divine revelation, he decreed that the
Speaker 1: life of a Turkmen consisted of nine stages of twelve
Speaker 1: years each, starting with childhood and progressing through adolescence, youth, maturity,
Speaker 1: what he called the prophetic stage, and then from age
Speaker 1: sixty one to sixty two the inspirational stage, which just
Speaker 1: happened to be his age at the time. Wisdom and
Speaker 1: old age followed, ending with the ogas con stage at
Speaker 1: age a hundred and nine. Ogus Khan was the legendary
Speaker 1: founder of the Turkmen nation, like the Romulus. So he
Speaker 1: divides life up in all these stages, ending it a
Speaker 1: hundred nine. That's how long you're supposed to live. So
Speaker 1: he's he's at this point he's now defining aging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised he's not personally naming every citizen at this point.
Speaker 1: He's pretty big line outside, I did run into a
Speaker 1: bummer of a fact that's not related to him, but
Speaker 1: it is related to culture in Turkmenistan. It's one of
Speaker 1: those places where like people don't want to have too
Speaker 1: many girls because there's a lot of social cash and
Speaker 1: having too many boys, and so one of the most
Speaker 1: common names for girls is literally the word enough jus
Speaker 1: like if you've had too many girls, your girl enough
Speaker 1: or like there's another one that's like translates like please
Speaker 1: God stop. Yeah, it's pretty sucked up. That is fucked
Speaker 1: up because it's like, you know, is that like they're
Speaker 1: setting a reminder, like Okay, this is the last one
Speaker 1: you're telling God, like we're done, we have enough girls cheese. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that one, that one's not on Turkmen Boshi. That's
Speaker 1: just some uh culture needs to wake up a little
Speaker 1: bit on women's issues. Maybe yeah, yeah, people people are
Speaker 1: terrible and have been forever and are everywhere. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: On the twenty five November, two attackers in three vehicles
Speaker 1: ambushed President Niyazov's motorcade, firing on it with machine guns.
Speaker 1: Several of his guards were wounded as they fought off
Speaker 1: the attack. President Niyazov, inside his armored vehicle, reportedly did
Speaker 1: not notice he had been attacked until he arrived at
Speaker 1: the office later that day. Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad.
Speaker 1: He's all right. You're glad. You were worried, I could say.
Speaker 1: In the immediate wake of the attack, Turkmen Boshi declared
Speaker 1: that the shooters were quote hired, given weapons and sent
Speaker 1: to carry out the shooting. They got high and tried
Speaker 1: to carry out their orders. Punishment will be brought to them,
Speaker 1: but they are not the ones who bear the main responsibility.
Speaker 1: You want to guess who bears the main responsibility. Isn't
Speaker 1: that guy? It's that guy in a bunch of Turkmen
Speaker 1: dissidents who all lived in foreign countries, none of whom
Speaker 1: lived in the country. I mean, this is smart, he
Speaker 1: thought of it. It's a good opportunity to pin the
Speaker 1: blame well. And it may not have actually happened, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean the shooting itself happened. He he didn't notice, apparently,
Speaker 1: so it didn't happen for him. Yeah, yeah, and he
Speaker 1: declared Boris chikmard Off to be behind it all. But
Speaker 1: Radio Free Europe, which is just so there's a U. S.
Speaker 1: Government funded organization the reports from inside non democratic countries
Speaker 1: with no press freedom, but it is a government funded country.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things where like they're definitely
Speaker 1: tolling the US government line, but they're also often have
Speaker 1: good sources inside countries like Termenistan. But take it with
Speaker 1: a grain of whatever you take at U. S. Government
Speaker 1: funded journalism institute, you know. Uh. Anyway, Radio Free Europe
Speaker 1: talked to all of the accused dissidents and also to
Speaker 1: several other sources in the country, and they posited a
Speaker 1: counter theory about what happened. Quote the former deputy Prime
Speaker 1: Minister and National Bank had denied any role in the
Speaker 1: attack and said the assassination attempt, which allegedly took places
Speaker 1: Niazov was being driven to work, seemed strange. Nikazov has
Speaker 1: two v hicles, a Mercedes and a jeep. Both have
Speaker 1: double plate armor. These vehicles cannot be destroyed by machine
Speaker 1: guns or even rocket propelled grenades. Think for a minute,
Speaker 1: the alleged attackers let kniazof go by. Then they block
Speaker 1: the road in front of the police following nas off.
Speaker 1: If the plan had worked, it wouldn't have been for
Speaker 1: eliminating niasof So basically, the allegations that he faked an
Speaker 1: assassination at him a false. Yeah yeah, yeah, which yeah
Speaker 1: maybe right. I mean he he was like, well, that's
Speaker 1: a false exactly, And we all know that nine eleven
Speaker 1: was an inside absolutely because jet fuel cannot melt steel beams.
Speaker 1: I can't melt anything. You can't melt it's just jet fuel. Like,
Speaker 1: that's why I use it for hair palmmade. You can
Speaker 1: drink it. You can drink it, oh man, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what most doctors say. A pint of jet fuel a
Speaker 1: day keeps your insides from becoming steel beams. I mean
Speaker 1: you certainly won't have any other worries medically after that,
Speaker 1: after drinking your daily pie to your your problems are
Speaker 1: all set. So if Niaza's goal was to use the
Speaker 1: assassination attempt as an excuse to crush the tiny amount
Speaker 1: of resistance that remained in his own country, it worked.
Speaker 1: Chik Murodov turned himself in to stop his family from
Speaker 1: being horribly tortured or at least horribly tortured anymore than
Speaker 1: they'd already been horribly tortured. A few days later, he
Speaker 1: showed up on State TV clearly drugged and admitted to
Speaker 1: attempting to orchestrate a coup. He thanked me as off
Speaker 1: for the mercy that he'd shown and not executed them all,
Speaker 1: and also thanked the Great Leader for his compassionate, spiritual guidance.
Speaker 1: That's a real bummer. That's a real bummer that's you're
Speaker 1: watching on TV. Like, I think we got to get
Speaker 1: out of this kind. I think we might need to
Speaker 1: leave this country, he told State News. Quote among us
Speaker 1: us being the conspirators is not one normal person. We
Speaker 1: are all nobody's. I am not a person capable of
Speaker 1: running a country. I am a criminal only able to
Speaker 1: destroy it. Yeah, it's one of those things I don't
Speaker 1: just like it's it's the third act, like the dark
Speaker 1: moment before the hero is able to like beat the
Speaker 1: dystopian leader, and I, yeah, I feel like it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be the thing that happens. That's only a thing
Speaker 1: that happens in movies. But it's just so overtly evil
Speaker 1: moment it is, And like shik Muradov. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things to raise to that position in the government
Speaker 1: of Turkmenistan. He's probably pretty corrupt himself, but he also
Speaker 1: seems to have been a lamently courageous guy and like,
Speaker 1: obviously this dude needed to be. Like, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know if he would have been good or not
Speaker 1: if like the dictator had been replaced. But I mean generally, yeah,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, if they're like, let me take over, it's
Speaker 1: probably not gonna It's just be the cycle beginning again
Speaker 1: with a new face. That is what the odds say.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, he also did turn himself into
Speaker 1: save his family, so maybe he was a decent person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's not an easy choice, I guess,
Speaker 1: not because you know you're getting tortured. Yeah, but if
Speaker 1: if you like your family, if you don't like your family,
Speaker 1: and it's like him, Yeah, he's not a total sociopath,
Speaker 1: because a total sociopath would not have turned him self. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I don't know. Chikmurodov, sorry that
Speaker 1: you got sentenced to prison for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: On TV, Nikazov explained that he had shown mercy to
Speaker 1: all of the conspirators because only Allah decides death. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised he hasn't taken that up to that he
Speaker 1: can decide death because he's a saying he's to sign
Speaker 1: a lot of things, and he did. He did have
Speaker 1: a lot of people executed. Okay, Yeah, he did have
Speaker 1: a lot of people like Okay, he's just a liar.
Speaker 1: He's definitely allowed. Okay. Uh. Now, next, Niazov clamped down
Speaker 1: on civil liberties even more. He ordered the secret police
Speaker 1: to monitor public conversations. He also asked citizens to report
Speaker 1: anti national talk being turkmenbashi. He also did something insane
Speaker 1: and banned anyone in the country from listening to the
Speaker 1: radio while driving in their car. His reasoning was that
Speaker 1: the noise would obscure subversive conversations from the eyes of
Speaker 1: hidden police. It really seems like these are moments in
Speaker 1: his life where he's like being driven around, here's the
Speaker 1: radio and it's distracting. He's like, you know what, no
Speaker 1: more radio for anybody. Fuck the radio. I hate the radio.
Speaker 1: Now put it on the list. L adio radio movie theaters.
Speaker 1: Make sure that puppet theater is still running. Who are
Speaker 1: the people running the puppet theater. I want to know
Speaker 1: about them. I bet they really need a cigarette or
Speaker 1: they were like, they're probably very passionate about puppets, and
Speaker 1: then he declared them they're like that was the time.
Speaker 1: There's just one puppet loving man who was this is
Speaker 1: the country I was born to be Yea, and they exist.
Speaker 1: There are puppet loving people. There are puppetly Matt Stone
Speaker 1: and Trade Parker. I hadn't. I hadn't been really successful here.
Speaker 1: I had a neighbor who kept asking me to come
Speaker 1: over and watch a puppet show. Yeah, it's like that,
Speaker 1: that's that I know you're gonna get murdered. It was
Speaker 1: I was living in this terrible apartment and this are weird.
Speaker 1: Neighbor was like, look, I do puppet shows every week
Speaker 1: if you guys want to come, and it was just like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to die. I'm young. I feel like
Speaker 1: the word no enters your mind as soon as the
Speaker 1: word puppet show enters your ears. I did have one
Speaker 1: roommate go and it's like I wasn't. He was like,
Speaker 1: it was weird. It's what it's what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's what it sounds like. Our neighbor's puppet show. Speaking
Speaker 1: of puppet shows, I don't answer my seat. You know
Speaker 1: what isn't a puppet? Busy bone dog treats the only
Speaker 1: dog treats currently sitting on this table. Yeah, they look good.
Speaker 1: You could probably eat them. I felt like this was
Speaker 1: the time for an ad plug. I also feel like
Speaker 1: the bones on the front of that kind of look
Speaker 1: like tampons. There's even a string coming out of one
Speaker 1: of them. Good god, they really do? Is that? Why
Speaker 1: is there a string coming out of that? Okay? It
Speaker 1: is an arrow? All right? That was an unnecessary digression,
Speaker 1: speaking of unnecessary digressions. Actually, speaking of necessary say, it's
Speaker 1: pretty necessary. You know what's necessary? A and we're back. Okay. So, uh,
Speaker 1: when we last left off, Niazov had just banned the radio.
Speaker 1: I mean, not the weirdest thing he's banned, Not the
Speaker 1: weirdest thing he's been The next and last period of
Speaker 1: Niyazov's life was a golden age for batty ass laws.
Speaker 1: He required universities to test all applicants on their knowledge
Speaker 1: of his dumb book, The Runama. He reorganized the justice
Speaker 1: system so that prisoners could only be released when they'd
Speaker 1: sworn an oath upon his book. In two thousand four,
Speaker 1: he demanded that the Runama should be used in mosques
Speaker 1: alongside the Koran. I'm not one for burning books for
Speaker 1: ob yeah, but it feels like we need to get
Speaker 1: rid of this book. I also, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it's probably pretty clear to the listeners, but in case
Speaker 1: you haven't had a lot of oriens with like Muslims
Speaker 1: and Islam, I can't imagine anything more blasphemous than what
Speaker 1: this guy's done. Oh yeah, that's pretty hardcore blasphemy. Now,
Speaker 1: the National Mufti, the like Islamic religious leader for the
Speaker 1: nation of Turkmenistan, objected to this random dude's book being
Speaker 1: made a requirement alongside the Holy Book of the faith. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was instantly arrested and a player to be a
Speaker 1: part of the coup two years ago. Yeah, that sense
Speaker 1: about right, retroactively inactively responsible for the coup now. During
Speaker 1: a tour of small villages that same year two thousand four,
Speaker 1: Niyazov was allegedly angered that none of the local libraries
Speaker 1: had enough people in them. He ordered all rural libraries
Speaker 1: across the country shut down. This may have been due
Speaker 1: to the fact that turkinbosh, you described all writers who
Speaker 1: were not himself. He considered it a personal insult that
Speaker 1: anyone would want to read any book besides the Runama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Also, in two thousand four, he declared
Speaker 1: July tenth a melon holiday. In April horse day. Nice, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got a horse days day. He banned beards because
Speaker 1: he was worried. Sure, sure, he was worried about Islamic
Speaker 1: fundamentalists tiding amongst the populace. I think he saw that
Speaker 1: eating super was like, no more beards. So this tired
Speaker 1: assistants like, yeah, I got it, no more, no more beards,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll put it out. Uh. He banned circuses. Uh,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, you can't be pro puppet show
Speaker 1: and anti circus, especially being pro horse and anti circus. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I sort of get that. If you see a circus,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh god, those poor horses. Okay, that actually
Speaker 1: might make any sense, But like puppet shows and circuses,
Speaker 1: it's all in the same ridiculous spectacle, like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's all the same circle of like these are the
Speaker 1: things that are used for entertainment in hell. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like circuses, puppets. Yeah, it. So basically, anytime the president
Speaker 1: expressed a mild dislike for something, it was essentially banned.
Speaker 1: Now what he was not passing laws against these things.
Speaker 1: He wasn't saying it's forbidden to have a beard. He
Speaker 1: wasn't saying it's forbidden to do this, or that. He
Speaker 1: would go on TV and basically express his dislike for
Speaker 1: a certain thing, and then everybody would have to stop
Speaker 1: doing it because it's a police state. So like, that's
Speaker 1: the way this works. And a good example of how
Speaker 1: it proceeded was Turkmenbashi's hatred of gold teeth fillings. Uh.
Speaker 1: He denounced them in a speech, staying, quote, I watched
Speaker 1: young dogs when I was young. They were given bones
Speaker 1: to Now those who view whose teeth have fallen out
Speaker 1: did not gnaw on bones. This is my advice. What
Speaker 1: non on bones? Take out your gold teeth. Wait wait, yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't like gold teeth. He like expressed that he
Speaker 1: didn't think they looked good, that natural teeth looked better,
Speaker 1: and that people should not on bones if they want
Speaker 1: their teeth to be healthy. Okay, so he's like against
Speaker 1: just missing teeth in general, no gold teeth and specific. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you can lose a tooth and you can get
Speaker 1: like a like a replacement that looks like a normal tooth,
Speaker 1: but not gold. So here's how. A Telegraph article that
Speaker 1: interviewed several people in the country we had to get
Speaker 1: their teeth replaced described what happened next. Quote in Turkmenistan
Speaker 1: and he is off lifestyle tip is as good as law.
Speaker 1: In a Pavlovian response to his remarks, which were broadcast
Speaker 1: repeatedly on television, people rushed to swap their gold teeth
Speaker 1: for porcelain. Miss Tollivia, a thirty two year old laboratory technician,
Speaker 1: had been sent home from work because of her offending teeth.
Speaker 1: As universities, government departments, and state run companies humored their
Speaker 1: president for life. I have had gold teeth since I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, Miss Tolivia said. It was my dowry from
Speaker 1: my parents when I got married. Before, I was really
Speaker 1: proud of my teeth. They showed me as a success.
Speaker 1: But now I cannot work and have them. As her
Speaker 1: husband hovered protectively, each crown, bloodied and flecked with pieces
Speaker 1: of tissue, was carefully saved to be melted down later
Speaker 1: by a jeweler. The couple he confided. We're not quite
Speaker 1: sure what to do. Perhaps we have enough for a ring,
Speaker 1: he pondered, or maybe ear rings until he bands those,
Speaker 1: until he banns earrings and rings. Yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: they call it lifestyle tips, like this is goop, Like
Speaker 1: Paltrow's a dictator. It is kind of getting Gwenni Paltrow's
Speaker 1: a dictator. This guy's like, you know what, cigarettes are
Speaker 1: bad for me? Nobody gets to smoke. Cigarettes are out.
Speaker 1: A cigarettes are out, so are gold teeth. She wants
Speaker 1: some bones when it isn't Gwenna Paltrow's big into the
Speaker 1: bone broth right. Probably, probably this is a dictatorship of
Speaker 1: Gwyneth Paltrow. That's exactly what's going on in fucking Turkmenistan
Speaker 1: right now. Well we're during Lily two. Yeah, So when
Speaker 1: local meteorologists weren't correct about a forecast, uh Niazov fired
Speaker 1: the head of the meteorology department and also banned TV
Speaker 1: reporters from wearing makeup quote because it masked their natural
Speaker 1: weedish color, making them look white and mask the difference
Speaker 1: between the appearances of men and women. It really is
Speaker 1: just every every little thing that bugs. He's just always
Speaker 1: on TV. He has opinions about everything, and everyone's scared
Speaker 1: to like they're not laws, but everyone's scared to not
Speaker 1: to do something that the president doesn't like. But at
Speaker 1: this point, it's it's almost like it's almost like he
Speaker 1: has a like a show and he's just trying to
Speaker 1: fill time. So he's like, all right, what do I
Speaker 1: what do I not like what I pissed about today?
Speaker 1: Make up like him anymore? Yeah, I don't even think
Speaker 1: he's that passionate about this stuff at this point. He's
Speaker 1: just trying to make content. Yeah. Yeah. Turkmen Boshi's commands
Speaker 1: generally came during TV interviews. He would say something expressing opinion,
Speaker 1: and suddenly it was the way things were. In one interview,
Speaker 1: he ordered the Education Ministry to watch the hairstyles of students.
Speaker 1: Young men should not be allowed to have long hair.
Speaker 1: In addition to the beard band, all goates also had
Speaker 1: to go, which is the first time I'm on, you
Speaker 1: know what? All right, yeah, yeah, let's get rid of
Speaker 1: those I mean, yeah, I'm getting to that age where
Speaker 1: if I look at college students, I'm just like, change
Speaker 1: all that, change all that stuff, get rid of all
Speaker 1: of it. You know, when I think about what situations
Speaker 1: might justify the deployment of like a fire hose against people.
Speaker 1: It's every time I've walked past a frat house, just
Speaker 1: just hose him out, empty that building, pressurized water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like because yeah, yeah, you just need to clean it.
Speaker 1: You just need to clean it and the people inside it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that. Or if people are on fire, that's it. Yep,
Speaker 1: there's the only two circumstances frat houses or burning it
Speaker 1: to death. Now, as a cost cutting measure, Nia's off
Speaker 1: fired fifteen thousand healthcare workers and replaced them with untrained
Speaker 1: military recruits, figuring that what worked for traffic police would
Speaker 1: work just as well for a nurse as and E.
Speaker 1: M T s. Now did it work for traffic police?
Speaker 1: Of course? What if the e empt is gonna do
Speaker 1: whatever untrained nineteen year olds know how to do? Oh no,
Speaker 1: who would think that he's old enough to know he
Speaker 1: doesn't know a German doctor. He doesn't go to doctors
Speaker 1: in turkmenister. Yeah. He also closed down all of the
Speaker 1: hospitals outside of the capital, uh, saying that anybody who
Speaker 1: had a medical emergency could just come to the capital. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fair, that's fair. That's fair. In two thousand five,
Speaker 1: Nazov opened a gigantic horse track near the capital, the
Speaker 1: largest in Asia, because he'd gotten really in horses, solid solid.
Speaker 1: That telegraph reporter was in town during the opening of
Speaker 1: the racetrack, and his description of it is quite a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. The attention to detail is remarkable. Along
Speaker 1: the approach road, teenage conscript soldiers in khaki boiler suits,
Speaker 1: robotically placed whitewashed stones, and small circles around the trunks
Speaker 1: of newly planted fir trees. At the center, there are
Speaker 1: swimming pools, therapy centers, and state of the art veterinary
Speaker 1: facilities for the animals in our deg The president's stallion
Speaker 1: is almost as prominent in Turkmenistan as his patron. Niyazov
Speaker 1: is busy cultivating the myth that he is reviving an
Speaker 1: ancient breed of horse. The alcohol tech A is his
Speaker 1: personal claim to restoring national greatness. In fact, to criticize
Speaker 1: the money lavished on the accoltech horses is to commit
Speaker 1: the offense of parricide, defined in the National Criminal Code
Speaker 1: as questioning the policy of the president. So don't get
Speaker 1: angry at his horses or you'll go to prison. I
Speaker 1: bet Gwyneth Paltrow likes horses too. I bet she would
Speaker 1: do all of the things he's done. So key to
Speaker 1: a great nation. Statues and horses. What else could it be? Dave? Yeah.
Speaker 1: In addition to building a palatial racetrack, Turkmen Boshi ordered
Speaker 1: hundreds of homes bulldozed in the capital so he could
Speaker 1: build a series of massive, white marble apartment buildings he
Speaker 1: designed himself. The buildings were never occupied because no one
Speaker 1: in the city could afford them. The owners of the
Speaker 1: homes previously on the land were again not compensated for
Speaker 1: their loss. You know. Turkmen Boshi declared himself a landscape
Speaker 1: artist next, and promised to create a force in the
Speaker 1: desert that would last a thousand years and improved Turkmenistan's
Speaker 1: brutal climate. To achieve this goal, he planted a massive
Speaker 1: cyphress forest around a fake lake he had built in
Speaker 1: the desert. How Well, Paul Threw visited shortly after the
Speaker 1: forest was planted, and he observed that quote. Although Bashi's trees,
Speaker 1: mostly a type of juniper, were two or three feet high,
Speaker 1: wind planted, the forestation was not a success. Drip irrigation
Speaker 1: had been rigged for them, but they were baked by
Speaker 1: the sun and blown flat by the wind. A full
Speaker 1: third had that peculiar rust red hue, the vivid color
Speaker 1: of an evergreens death. He's just man, he's spinning out
Speaker 1: of control. At this point, I'm gonna make a four,
Speaker 1: make a forest now, motherfucker's He's great. Next, he built
Speaker 1: an ice palace outside the capital. Is it in the desert? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so at this point he's just like, fuck reality. What
Speaker 1: a nice palace. He built at ft tall pyramid. He
Speaker 1: built the largest mosque in Asia, which he named the
Speaker 1: Spirit of Turkmen Boshi himself a lot of stuff. By
Speaker 1: the way, I feel like are things that Nicolas Cage
Speaker 1: has done as well. Yeah, Like, I feel like the
Speaker 1: ven diagram, like there's a large crossover between the two.
Speaker 1: I feel like if Nicolas Cage built a mosque, it
Speaker 1: would be less blasphemous than this. He would show more
Speaker 1: respect for the religion. And of course, this gigantic mosque
Speaker 1: was again festioned with quotes from the Koran and from
Speaker 1: Turkmen Boshi's equally important book, The rook Namau. Turken Boshi
Speaker 1: insisted that turk Men visit the Mosque as a regional
Speaker 1: equivalent to the Hajj, which is, you know, the Muslim
Speaker 1: requirement to go to Mecca if you possibly can. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he just he's put himself around that level. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: is also around the time when he declared himself a
Speaker 1: prophet of God. So man, well, he hadn't done that yet,
Speaker 1: not officially. Okay, Yeah, you gotta make sure everybody knows.
Speaker 1: You know, he had written a book to claring himself
Speaker 1: God's son, but you gotta make it clear, you know
Speaker 1: that you're a prophet of God. In two thousand six,
Speaker 1: when New Yorker writer Paul Thuroe visited Turkmenistan, the people
Speaker 1: of the country had just spontaneously declared their leader the
Speaker 1: National Profit. So sorry, that's how it went. Mixed up
Speaker 1: my notes there for a second. So in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, the Turkmenistan people declared their leader the National Profit,
Speaker 1: did they? Yeah? I mean, of course they did, Dave,
Speaker 1: like the they love them, they love them. The president
Speaker 1: for life of Turkmenistan would not lie about the people
Speaker 1: of Turkmenistan declaring him the national Profit. Yeah. Now, in
Speaker 1: Paul Throw's trip through the country. He saw portraits of
Speaker 1: the leader everywhere quote several of them, measuring hundreds of
Speaker 1: square feet everywhere in Ashgabat and some he looked like
Speaker 1: a fat and grinning Dean Martin and others he was
Speaker 1: the truculent CEO with a chilly smile. A common image
Speaker 1: showed him chin on hand, squinting an insincere bonhamie, like
Speaker 1: a lounge singer, a heavy drinker, a bully, and aware
Speaker 1: of bling two or three diamond rings on each hand.
Speaker 1: He had Italianate features and was sometimes portrayed with a
Speaker 1: stack of books, like an author on a book tour. Geez, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just realized, I don't know what this guy looks like.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we gotta pull up a turkmen boshy picture
Speaker 1: for you. Well, throwing up on the site too. Now.
Speaker 1: As he aged, turkmen Boshi became increasingly insistent on demanding
Speaker 1: that his people smile at all times. He's that is
Speaker 1: that guy? Oh yeah, here's his picture. Okay, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that looks about right. Yeah, that looks about right. It
Speaker 1: looks like a big old, big old baby, big old
Speaker 1: baby gold baby faced turkmen Boshy uh In the Runama,
Speaker 1: he had written, quote, A smile can make a friend
Speaker 1: for you out of an enemy, and when death stares
Speaker 1: you in the face, smile at it and it leave
Speaker 1: you untouched. How is that not the thing that it
Speaker 1: cites a revolution? Like, hey, guys, smile more. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're done here. I was okay with the puppets,
Speaker 1: but I'm ready to die now. Over the years, Turkmen
Speaker 1: Boshi continued to drive home his point about smiling, telling
Speaker 1: his people to talk to each other with smiles and
Speaker 1: promising there will never be any wrinkles on a smiling face.
Speaker 1: He claimed his love of smiles had been inspired by
Speaker 1: his sainted mother. Her smile is visible to me in
Speaker 1: the dark of night, even if I have my eyes shut.
Speaker 1: So that's sweet, Yeah, real sweet. He renamed ketchup. He
Speaker 1: declared he's well because the word catch ups a foreign term,
Speaker 1: and he believed it deserved a real Turkmen name. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it's not the only thing named with a foreign term.
Speaker 1: He was getting around to all of them, but ketchup
Speaker 1: was a priority. Started catchup, starting loves catch up. He
Speaker 1: really loved renaming things. What did he rename catch up? Too. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just a Turkmen word. Okay, Yeah, yeah, I didn't,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't catch that, Okay, I wish it
Speaker 1: was his name Turkmid. Yeah, oh, dear god. He also
Speaker 1: required that doctors swear an oath now on the runama,
Speaker 1: rather than the hippocratic oath. Sure, I'm surprised I didn't
Speaker 1: already happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I may
Speaker 1: have got my times a little bit mixed up on
Speaker 1: that one. That might have happened when he closed down
Speaker 1: most of the hospitals. Yeah. Sorry. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: crazy things to to keep track of an order here,
Speaker 1: and they're not it's not consistently crazy. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: this this beautiful potpourri. It's puppet shows and catch up
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh man, and then like false flag
Speaker 1: attacks that oppressed dissidents in like really smart policies of
Speaker 1: neutrality and renaming catchup right, Yeah yeah, like some of
Speaker 1: the stuff, it's like, oh yeah, he's doing the classic
Speaker 1: hits of Addictator and then he's thrown in these crazy ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Could you can imagine Stalin doing some of the U
Speaker 1: But he would never have bothered a rename catchup. Here's
Speaker 1: no funck it It's fine, maybe linen sauce. In two
Speaker 1: thousand six, turkmen Boshi had constructed the turkmen Boschi Eternally
Speaker 1: Great Park. Yeah. It was an enormous wooded park with
Speaker 1: a contrete creek path up a mountain built by turkmen
Speaker 1: Boshi is part of an effort to urge his people
Speaker 1: to be healthier and exercise more often. In two thousand six,
Speaker 1: Nasof declared the first Saturday in November to be health Day.
Speaker 1: He demanded that all of his ministers part taken a
Speaker 1: five mile walk, starting at turkmen Boshi Eternally Great Park
Speaker 1: and going all the way up to the top of
Speaker 1: the You're making them walk. Turkmen Boshi himself did not walk.
Speaker 1: He had a helicopter fly him to the top of
Speaker 1: the mountain where he had a hell of pad installed.
Speaker 1: He made fun of anyone who took more than two
Speaker 1: hours to make the walk. He's perfect, classic ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at this point he's just like, I wonder what more
Speaker 1: I can get away? What more can I get That
Speaker 1: turned out to be the last thing he could get
Speaker 1: away with because of December thirty, first two thousand six.
Speaker 1: Soupramaratna is a great leader of the Turkmen's God's profit
Speaker 1: on Earth. Died of heart failure. Good good. Here's how
Speaker 1: the book was. Really. The thing I've agreed with the
Speaker 1: most that he's done is dying of heart failure. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here's how the book Inside Central Asia sums up his legacy.
Speaker 1: The Turkmen despot left behind a republic where the average
Speaker 1: monthly income was sixty dollars, yet most people managed to
Speaker 1: get by on generous state subsidies for housing and basic foods,
Speaker 1: free electricity, water and gas. We are not free, but
Speaker 1: we are not hungry, an unnamed Turkmen told visiting New
Speaker 1: York Times correspondent C. J. Chippers, who noted that food
Speaker 1: was inexpensive, gasoline sold for four cents per gallon, and
Speaker 1: bazaars were filled with Chinese goods. And that is about
Speaker 1: the best that anyone can say for Turkmen Boshi, the
Speaker 1: lunatic president of Turkmenistan. He was a brutal monster and
Speaker 1: a nut, but food and gas were cheap, so nobody
Speaker 1: murdered him. Yeah. I mean, it really does kind of
Speaker 1: come down. I know I said it earlier, but I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of this is like, so we
Speaker 1: gotta call catch up something else, but gas is still cheap. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel like people here would put up with a
Speaker 1: lot for four c the gallon gas. I've been I've
Speaker 1: been saying this a lot. Is that if we got
Speaker 1: like Red donned Um when they land, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: so what do you have to offer? So, yeah, what
Speaker 1: what's y'all's playing? Ye, things are not going great here
Speaker 1: right now? What's that? What's the it's not good? I'll
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, go Wolverines, but like, yeah, first I'd
Speaker 1: say I'd hear the pitch. I'd hear the pitch. And
Speaker 1: even if I went Wolverines, I'd probably take advantage of
Speaker 1: the free healthcare first. Oh yeah, I've been to a
Speaker 1: doctor in a while. Oh yeah, I am falling apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's disaster. He was replaced by a dentist, by the way, Okay, yeah, okay, ye.
Speaker 1: The dentist banded cigarettes and had all the cigarettes in
Speaker 1: the country and centerated. So it seems like things are
Speaker 1: continuing right on that path Uncle teeth that now that
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of, Yeah, I want to know. That's
Speaker 1: another episode. The dentist president who came next, so it's
Speaker 1: not going great for them. Still again gas prices, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think gas is still pretty cheap, so it's not nothing.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean he killed people, those homes,
Speaker 1: those homes, Oh man band ballet in the radio. What
Speaker 1: a weird maniac, What a weird maniac to have a
Speaker 1: country oddly specific, very oddly specific, Like I'd love to
Speaker 1: talk to the people who lived who lived there, because
Speaker 1: they you have to be confused by that ship. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a great passage in that Paul throw New York
Speaker 1: New Yorker article where like he recites a conversation that
Speaker 1: his driver and his interpreter had where they were trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what the days of the week were
Speaker 1: and they were both natives, like they were no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is what he renamed the day to and then
Speaker 1: like no, I think it was this, and it was
Speaker 1: like it clearly took time for everyone to figure out
Speaker 1: because maybe it was a performance art piece. The whole
Speaker 1: thing about how arbitrary like dictators ships are, because it's
Speaker 1: that where it's like I guess it's it's renaming the weeks.
Speaker 1: It's like it's, as it says, worthwhile, is anything else
Speaker 1: we Do. I guess I did check and the timing
Speaker 1: did not work out for him to have been Andy Kaufman.
Speaker 1: I was kind of I was suspicious of that. One
Speaker 1: of these days one of them will be Andy Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Work out, Dave um no jeez. I mentioned my patreon
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com slash Gamefully Unemployed we Do podcasts were streaming.
Speaker 1: I also want to give a shout out to some
Speaker 1: More News, which I write episodes of. Oh yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: give money to some more Newsfully Unemployed, which is Cody's
Speaker 1: Cody's showdy Neither of them will ban golden teeth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I was all right for Bunniers dot com. Check
Speaker 1: that out. Mccoley Cokin might ban golden teeth. Oh he
Speaker 1: already has. Yeah, Okay, he's a monster. He's the Turkmen
Speaker 1: boshivt com. Oh yeah, this has been Buying the Bastards.
Speaker 1: You can find us on the Internet and Buying the
Speaker 1: Bastards dot com. You can find us on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram at at Bastards pod. You can find my book
Speaker 1: on Amazon dot com, A Brief History of Vice. It's
Speaker 1: I hurt my friends with drugs. He poisoned me, my
Speaker 1: poisoned Dave with drugs very irresponsibly. When I say I
Speaker 1: am the opposite of a doctor, I mean it. Uh,
Speaker 1: I am the opposite of a doctor. Yeah. It's still
Speaker 1: fun to get medical advice for you. Oh man, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got hit. Hit me up on Twitter at I right,
Speaker 1: okay and ask me medical advice. I will give you
Speaker 1: medical advice, um legally binding medical advice. Yeah. Absolutely, all right.
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