KZBlog is going down (2)
After some thought, I have decided not to renew KZBLog’s lease. As you may have noticed, I don’t do a lot of posting here anymore. I don’t have time to blog regularly. Thus I am taking the site down–it does generate some ad revenue but not as much as it costs to keep it up. […]
Culture
- Yurts Are High Fashion and Slum Fashion Too
2011-12-05 - Apples, Sure. But THC is from Kazakhstan too?
2011-10-05 - Naked Man Pot
2011-09-23
- Yurts Are High Fashion and Slum Fashion Too
Resources
- Oh, CNN
2012-07-21 - What Do You Know About Kazakhstan?
2012-07-19 - Books for Kazakh Students
2011-11-06
- Oh, CNN
Politics
- Image
2011-07-28 - Sub Rosa Endorsement
2011-07-26 - The Naked Truth
2011-06-12
- Image
News
- KZBlog is going down
2013-09-10 - Oh, CNN
2012-07-21 - Repentence
2012-07-15
- KZBlog is going down
Fun
- What Do You Know About Kazakhstan?
2012-07-19 - Yurts Are High Fashion and Slum Fashion Too
2011-12-05 - House Hunters Bishkek
2011-12-02
- What Do You Know About Kazakhstan?
Tourism
- Asian Games Torch
2011-01-12 - Wikitravel
2010-08-07 - ALZHIR, the Soviets and Democracy
2010-07-30
- Asian Games Torch
Life in KZ
- Photo Gallery: Almaty Subway
2011-12-07 - Healthcare and the Private Sector
2011-11-30 - Naked Man Pot
2011-09-23
- Photo Gallery: Almaty Subway
Redbubble
UFOs in North Kazakhstan (1)
I haven’t seen anything, but apparently there was a mass UFO sighting. The News-Kazakhstan agency (Kaz-Tag) has video of a glowing ball moving about which would be more convincing if we could see anything else in the shot at all. A photo posted on the same site also shows a tiny white blur in the sky, but the photo is so low quality that it looks like there might be a phalanx of 6 low-flying UFOs too, although those are likely just city lights.
Even if the evidence isn’t overly convincing, apparently many residents of Astana and Kostanai reported seeing a slow-moving glowing ball in the sky between 7:30 and 7:45am, the 28th. Officials think it was likely a rocket taking off from Baykanour. Apparently the Russians don’t always tell them when a rocket takes off (although so many rocket launches get press attention). However officials are unable to explain why people in Pavlodar claimed to have also seen a UFO the week before.
If it was a UFO, I just hope it doesn’t have a ten-foot tall robot with it that can destroy metal and shut off electricity from the whole planet.
RT @joshuafoust: Hey, are you … (Comments Off on RT @joshuafoust: Hey, are you …)
RT @joshuafoust: Hey, are you an Afghan who opposed the Taliban? Well, Julian Assange thinks you fucking suck http://ow.ly/3RajU
Peace Corps in Kazakhstan in the late 90s (Comments Off on Peace Corps in Kazakhstan in the late 90s)
An interesting video of a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served from 1997-1999 in Kazakhstan, as the fifth “class” of Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan.
The most interesting part I thought was about the views that Kazakhstani had about Americans at the time. A lot of this has changed now with time, but assuming that Americans are all spies or rich is still a normal global stereotype. I was also amused when he talked about how some people would insist on some incorrect fact about the US, like that there are 51 states. That still happens today, with people arguing with me about objective facts about the US.
Worth watching too if you are interested in what life and Peace Corps service is like in Kazakhstan or Central Asia. And I love the theme song: DDT’s “Eto vse” which is one of my favorite Russian rock songs ever!
see what a strong central gov’… (Comments Off on see what a strong central gov’…)
see what a strong central gov’t can achieve?
back for more figure skating. … (Comments Off on back for more figure skating. …)
back for more figure skating. Missed Ten’s victory
Elections on 3 April (1)
The President has issued a decree setting elections for 3 April 2010, 2 months from now. Elections would have been held in December of 2012, but in a speech on 31 Jan rejecting the referendum, Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed early elections in what is being called a “compromise” between those who feel the referendum to extned his term would have been undemocratic and those who supported the idea of keeping him in office unchallenged until 2020.
Presumably, if no amendments to the Constitution are proposed, the winner of this election will serve from 2011 to 2016, a five-year term. Commentators note that the referendum brought together a coalition of Nurotan and other pro-Presidential parties and groups which can now be easily used to campaign effectively for Nazarbayev. It is unlikely that the opposition will be able to put together such a strong campaign machine in two months.
Asian Games Snapshots (Comments Off on Asian Games Snapshots)
Jin Liu of ATP/Getty Images has gotten some great shots of the podium assistants in Kazakhstan for the Asian Games. Click on them to go to the attachment page where you can see them in larger sizes:
Commentators (2)
While everyone agrees that the Opening of the Asian Winter Games went very well, in the KazNet there’s a lot of talk about the commentators. I mentioned my discontents in this post, particularly the fact that they never stopped talking. But that is typical of Kazakhstani and even Russian and Ukrainian sports commentators, so while it is annoying for me, perhaps most people believe it to be normal.
What is making news however are some of the silly things they said. The talk forum Center of Gravity has a good discussion going: Bloopers from the Commentators [RU].
The author of the thread notes these mistakes, reprinted here for your reading pleasure (translation and comments mine):
– “Iron….golden man….Scythian…..Saka period….the new century before the Common Era” [Even I know the Golden man is not called Iron Man, and that Scythia and Saka were contemporary. Not clear what the new century BC means]
– “….Noah’s Ark is located on a mountain in the South Kazakhstan province….there’s an image of a ship there..” [Never heard that Noah’s Ark landed in Kazakhstan before]
– “… Assembled….a group of people…. in different clothes … ..” [Not the first or last time they gave literal descriptions of what we could see on the stage]
– “Kazakhs used to gather at the table…. .. around the cooking pot” [If you put your cooking pot on the table, you might burn a hole in the tablecloth]
– Baiterek .. .. symbolizes….the State of our Kazakhstan!”
– “The Dance of Iron has begun. There is Iron Man (that’s him on the Golden Warrior)”
– “For two days they’ve kept an ambulance on call specially, just in case, something suddenly happened to the director. Unfortunately, nothing happened and the ambulance left ” [Unfortunately?]
And of course many people are commenting on the part of the show where the two male commentators just began singing along to the music out loud!
Oh well, at least the Ceremony itself went off well!
Genghis Khan was good for the environment (Comments Off on Genghis Khan was good for the environment)
An interesting article I stumbled on: Mongols, Vikings, and Romans Connected to Climate from the Discovery Channel, citing a paper in The Holocene, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Apparently wide scale elimination of cities or populations reduces the amount of farmland, meaning that the land reverts back to forest land. Forests absorb more carbon dioxide than farmland and thus reduce the impact of global warming.
Besides the Mongol invasions, the study also looked, the Black Plague in Europe, the European conquest of the Americas and the fall of the Ming Dynasty in China. Only the longer lasting events, like the invasion of the Americas and Chinghis Khan’s campaigns had any impact on CO2 levels, but apparently not enough to make much of a difference globally.
Still, an interesting way to look at historical conquests.
Transcript of President’s Speech on the Referendum (1)
Sorry for yesterday’s brief post. I got an important phone call in the middle of the President’s speech on TV about the referendum so I just posted the main piece of news: that he would not appeal the Constitutional Council’s decision. The other big news, which has already hit the domestic and international news services, is that he called for early Presidential elections. Elections should be held in December of 2012, but there are suggestions that now they will be held on the 1 May, which used to be Labor Day and is now called the Day of the Unity of People of Kazakhstan. If I remember correctly, presidential elections has not had a single Presidential election that was not held earlier than scheduled. Some analysts believe that early elections benefit the incumbents because opposition candidates and parties have less time to prepare their campaigns, whereas the incumbents are constantly in the public eye and covered in the media.
As to why the President decided not to appeal the Constitutional Council’s decision and not to try to extend his current term until 2020, rumors and speculation are rife. Some cite the riots in Tunisia (where the President had been in power since 1982) and Egypt. However many people seem to feel that Kazakhstan is not comparable to Tunisia. More likely, international pressure from major powers like the US, the EU and the OSCE played a role. While the press in Kazakhstan could criticize the US for its condemnation of the referendum, it would be hard for any one in power in Kazakhstan to criticize the OSCE, after so much time and energy was spent becoming head of the OSCE and then getting a summit held in Astana. Some note that even while welcoming Minister of Foreign Affairs Kanat Saudebayev to Washington, “Hilary Clinton emphasized the United States’s concern that the national referendum that would extend President Nazarbayev’s term of office to 2020 would be a setback for democracy, and we hope that Kazakhstan will renew its commitments to democracy, good governance, and human rights.” So perhaps Kazakhstan did not want to put up with 10 years of bad press and embarrassment for its officials who go abroad. Some of course say that the whole idea of the referendum may have been aimed at achieving just what it did achieve in the end: early elections
One angle that hasn’t gotten a lot of coverage is the candidacy of the leader of the Alga party, Vladimir Kozlov and the issue of ethnicity that it raised. Kozlov, who is an ethnic Russian, faced quite a bit of resistance to the idea of a president who is not Kazakh. Among other things, leaders of a movement called Zheltoksan 86 threw eggs at him in Novemeber and have been quite vocal in their opposition. The name Zheltoksan 86 (December 86 in Kazakh) refers to protests in 1986 against the appointing of an ethnic Russian, Kolbin, as head of the Kazakh SSR. It is possible that the proposal to do away with elections had to do with avoiding any further conflicts that might be linked to the touchy issue of a non-Kazakh running for President. The fact that the Alga party, which is unregistered, claims that it has been prevented from registering through bureaucratic resistance could also embarrass the government.
In any case, the western governments that had condemned the idea of a referendum have praised Nazarbayev for his decision to let elections stand and most, if not all, pro-democratic groups had to admit that the right decision was made in the end.
The President also made one excellent point that I have never heard raised in the debates on the various laws about the First President of Kazakhstan. He said that he worried about the precedent it would set for the future. I think this is a key point. We don’t know who the second or third or 15th President of Kazakhstan will be, and if we set up too strong a presidency (and this applies to any government agency), one wonders if future generations will be satisfied with less than the first president had. At the very least, we may be setting up expectations that Presidents stay in power for life and this is the norm. So establishing respect for the Constitution is an important guarantee of stability for the future.
The Russian transcript of Nazarbayev’s speech is already up on the Akorda website if you care to read it yourself. The speech was broadcast live at 5pm Monday on most domestic news channels.
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