Another story from the Uzbekistan days (my parents were stationed there for 3 years - but I wasn't with them anymore, I only visited them there during summer/winter holidays): Islam Karimov, the Uzbek dude, is a fan of tennis. So much of a fan that he went about organising an ATP tournament event in Tashkent (called: "the President's Cup"). He got a costly 3000 seat stadium built, managed to get some players to come (few top seeds). But, tickets were unaffordable for the masses, so he and his cronies/buddies ended up being the only ones, bar some exceptions, to watch the event.

All those -stan countries with their dictatorships... It's hard to differentiate, but I slipped on this one. Thanks for correcting.

Alas, alas. And Samarkand's domes are waiting in the sun... Oh, woe me.

I'm building a personal dataset to keep up with the nations of the world and how they are progressing. Hadn't reached Central Asia yet.

Say, on this raking thing , is there something above "crazy dangerous" or is that the highest rank a dictator can aspire for? Just wondering... Is Turkmenistan upped? How about North Korea?