Our local globe trotter David has recently returned from Turkmenistan on a business trip. Next time I meet with him, I’ll ask if he minds me using some of the photos he e-mailed over, as the scenery is quite impressive. It looks as though the new(ish) president of that country is not breaking the mould when it comes to creating and maintaning a personaliy culy. Dave travels quite a lot for his job, so I’m not sure when we will next hook up, but we’ve bought in an extra bottle of vodka ready 🙂
By the way, Chris#2 if you are reading this, you are welcome to visit on your own, you don’t need to wait for Dave to hold your hand, LMAO 🙂
Mar 14 2008
David Is Back!
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Aug 19 2007
Pure Personality Politics
Now the voting process has been completed, I feel a little more comfortable linking to a story the BBC ran on Friday. For those too tired to click on it, Natalia Antelava describes how she sees Kazakhstan’s president (Nursultan Nazarbayev) as a man in complete control of a stable country. The nation’s oil reserves have secured Kazakhstan’s income, where other countries in this region are still struggling. Whilst the middle class find their lifestyle improving, they is little urgency felt to changes the political landscape into a more democratized one. When people look across the border to the last (late) president of Turkmenistan, they see how much worse things could be; this country’s president, or his advisers, have been wise enough to see that excessive hero worship and cult status can run the risk of severely back firing. In terms of confidence in a nation, following the Soviet collapse in the 90s, this country is stable and although some people may wonder what a different president would be like after all these years, many fear that a new president, and his associated cronies would only lead to a new power base being established, with more resources being creamed off, and so an even longer wait for a fairer system.
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May 30 2007
Looking for news in the Stans?
Central Asia Now is a relatively new site dedicated to covering current affairs, well, in the Central Asian region.
In the above image, Central Asia is apparently shown as any country that on top the thick red line…
Central Asia now specifically covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The site will aggregate news from the region, and once every couple of weeks will feature an original article on matters effecting those who live within Central Asia. Topics that will be covered include democracy, economics, human rights, energy, strategic issues, the military, governance and religious questions.
This post is not sponsored at all, just thought that as this is a Kazakhstan blog, readers might appreciate the heads up on the site…
the site’s address is http://www.centralasianow.org , but I’ve removed the live link for now, as the site is down.
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