This post is part of neweurasia’s cross-blog survey devoted to humor in Central Asia

The humor here is rooted deep in the centuries when Kazakhs were nomads. Despite a rather tragic history, Kazakh folklore is stuffed with easy-going characters playfully coming out of troubles with smile on a face, such as Aldar Kose, Zhirenshe and Yer-Tostik. The 20th century was even more dramatic – famine, repressions, war, nuclear tests… No fun, of course. But if people endure serious challenges, their sense of humor should not disappear. It just gets reshaped.

NOMADIC EXPERIENCE

Historians say that humor and satire were a big deal in Kazakhstan’s ancient times. Since the nomads spend most of their time moving from one pasture to another, almost the only places they could get together and practice their wits were different kinds of celebrations – in the first instance, certainly, weddings – and at the trade-fairs where they bargained the products of their year-round roaming with the cattle. Read the full story »

Our Kyrgyz-language bridge-blogger Mirsulzhan posts a chart in his LiveJournal, reviewing the most popular discussions in blogs. Based on a new service, provided by Russia’s leading web companies Yandex, it is possible to scan the blogosphere by keywords and visualize the outcome in a graph.

So, what Mirsulzhan did was typing names of five Central Asian countries, and the robot calculated which of them provokes more discussions in blogs. According to the chart, Kazakhstan is leading, stirring up three to four times more voices to write on the situation here. (Green stands for Kazakhstan, orange – for Uzbekistan, red – for Tajikistan, blue – for Kyrgyzstan, and violet for Turkmenistan).

[inspic=41,left,fullscreen,thumb]

There are possibly several reasons why Kazakhstan is better represented in the blogs – wider Internet access, hot political season and post-electoral muses etc. However, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are surprisingly outstripping Kyrgyzstan, which is (1) number 2 in the region in terms of Internet availability, (2) relatively more open in terms of free speech, and (3) permanently lively in terms of politics. What do you think?

All links are, certainly, in Russian.

Yesterday, on the same day with Minister of Economy of Austria Martin Bartenstein, former accomplices of Rakhat Aliyev, who were previously hiding together with the patron in Vienna, have arrived in Kazakhstan. Sergey Koshlai and Aidar Bektybaev voluntarily came to Almaty police department, confessed their guilt and expressed readiness to cooperate with investigators. As soon as they remain figurants of the criminal case on abduction of ex-managers of Nurbank, they both were taken under arrest.
Read the full story »

Another oddity has happened recently with the Kazakhstani leadership that strives for two mutually contradicting things – international recognition and preservation of its grip on power. “We have peculiar democracy, so, please, don’t preach us. Donn’t forget that we abandoned nuclear weapons and conduct conferences of inter-religious tolerance!” – such is the logic.

The idea of nominating president Nazarbayev for Nobel Prize, which was voiced on the last tolerance conference in Astana’s Pyramid, does not seem to be realizable. So, the one has to suffice with what is available, or, rather, with what can be effectively invented. The “First International Peace Prize of the Nova Southeastern University” seems to be the one of those.

Anatoly Ivanov from the Inkar-info Internet-radio (RUS) has investigated the fact and found out that the prize was established not by this Florida-based university, but by its department for conflict analysis and resolution. Such an “optional award” is not mentioned on the website of Nova Uni. However, there is a brief and quite funny press-release.

It appears that assistant professor Sam Baroni together with congressman Faleomavarga, who is known as “good friend of Astana” that repeatedly came out in support of “rise of democracy in Kazakhstan”, was invited to Astana for a governmental symposium “Kazakh way to nuclear-free world”. What is funny about it? A couple of things. Read the full story »

This is a translation of an excerpt from Ksenia’s post in Russian.

The Kazakhstani children have entered the new school year with ambitious novelties: more Internet access and 1,000 “interactive blackboards” – everything necessary for the new era education. However, the main problems occur in the very elementary basics.

Many pupils are starting the year without textbooks. In schools, only two-three books are given for the whole class. Indignant parents receive no legible explanation in schools and don’t know what to do. Buying textbooks is quite challenging. Each book costs 400-500 tenge, so the whole set of books will be a serious blow for an average family budget. The situation is aggravated by the fact that not all necessary textbooks are in the bookstores.

The authorities, namely the education department of the city administration says there is no problem at all: according to the governmental decree, the textbooks are given firstly to the kids from the families having many children and from the socially vulnerable families. Others have to buy the textbooks [although the secondary education is officially free of charge]. The authorities also recommend nurturing careful attitude to the books among the pupils. However, it is apparent that in order to look after the books, the one should get it first.

If after 1990, Almaty was a destination for B-list pop-musicians, the scene looks totally different in 2007. In 1998, anyone could see East 17 or Haddaway on a stadium – in 2007, “50 cent” and Craig David visit Almaty to perform on private parties only. The tickets for the parties are not sold – invitations only – but the rumors are spread, and sooner or later everyone knows that “golden kids” had a party with performance of some show-biz star.

Recently, the rumors started coming out onto the surface. The Sun reported that Jamelia, a sexy British R’n'B star, “has made a good impression on Kazakhstan’s president after she was asked to perform at his private party”. The newspaper notes that “Jamelia is a big hit there, and was personally invited by President Nazarbayev to play at the weekend”.

Another news arrived from the blogosphere (RUS). I met a guy, who works for the leading show-tech company; he told me about a birthday of Dinara, the president’s second daughter. She celebrated it on the parliamentary election day, August 18. The guests were enjoying a concert, played by the 50 Chinese drama actors, Moscow musical “Abba – Mama Mia!”, Anastacia and Nelly Furtado, who arrived in Almaty with the whole crew, including back-vocalists and musicians. The party was led by a guru of show-biz from Moscow.

And the last update on the cultural life of the Kazakhstani chosen ones has become known this week. Timur Kulibayev (a husband of the aforementioned Dinara Nazarbayeva and an influential oil and banking tycoon listed in the Forbes list of billionaires), also happened to have a birthday party lately. According to several sources among the local press and hearsays, his celebration was decorated with the concert of Sir Elton John. They say Maestro received two million dollars for the performance.

As President Nazarbayev said once: “How can I prohibit my children from doing business, if we are a democratic country, where everyone has equal rights, including to run a business?” You, certainly, cannot. Just try to recollect that the average pension in your country is 80 dollars, when you’ll be listening to Kylie or Robbie next time.

Be it the crisis of the country’s biggest oil project or the biases of the national media: Both big stories from Kazakhstan this week demonstrate that power is concentrated in very few hands, while social indicators point at huge income inequalities.

Kazakhstani bloggers discuss the controversy over the giant oil field Kashagan in Kazakhstan, currently developed by an ENI-led consortium, which postponed the start of production (now until 2010) and announced an increase of the project’s costs (2.5 times up to $136 billion) – for the second time already. The Kazakh government, dissatisfied with the delay, has come out with several sharp-shaped statements and orchestrated a number of aggressive checks from the state agencies.

Megakhuimyak, whose work is connected to the extractive industries in Kazakhstan, reports that the ministry reviews all projects concerning the Kashagan oilfield starting from 1999 and prepares official rebukes on them: “Agip is being raped in every way… All projects – more than 200 of them – are already approved and most of the planned works have been already implemented”. (RUS)

Former WSJ reporter and prominent oil blogger Steve LeVine reflects on the Russia’s role in the regional energy issues: “It starved Georgia of natural gas, cut off Turkmenistan’s access to foreign export markets and did the same in Kazakhstan, reducing the value of its giant fields — Karachaganak, one of the world’s ten largest natural gas fields, is absurdly reduced to exploitation as an oil field.”

Itsuken has heard that ENI faced problems in Kazakhstan because Russian Lukoil wants to take over Kashagan. Astana has repeatedly made serious concessions to the Kremlin over the past years in the oil sector — e.g. when it agreed to build a joint venture refinery for Kazakh oil in Russia, not in Kazakhstan, or when it was not too insistent about the division of disputable off-shore oil fields. Read the full story »

The fallout from the 18 August 2007 parliamentary elections is still having an impact on local and international bloggers. Apathy, resignation, anger, surprise – there were many emotions for a poll many Kazakhs called a sham election. Adam Kesher collects some voices.

On the eve of the elections, a result prediction poll on the top Livejournal community 101almatinec showed that the bloggers were far from being unanimous in their forecasts. This seems interesting, because most of the people here explain their absenteeism and apathy with the allegation that the “results were known in advance”. This time it wasn’t the case, apparently (RUS).

Woman casting their vote, by Flickr User hemak Read the full story »

The fact of mono-party parliament is already having an immediate effect on the future of Kazakhstan, even before the new parliament entered the office. It sends a clear message to the international community, which repeatedly – since 2001 – called for more political reforms, a message saying that no reforms will be done that may weaken the president’s grip on power.

But even more destructive influence this blatanatly defiant outcome of the elections will have on the Kazakhstani society. People pinned high hopes for broader democracy in 2004, but the parliament did not include any opposition member. People were discouraged, and the 2005 presidential race was ever more disappointing – a paranoid 91 per cent was not afforded even by Lukashenka and Karimov.

And this year, after a number of controversial constitutional amendments, people were almost sure that the time has come for a more inclusive legislature. But what they witnessed – the way this popular vote was forged and rigged – will finally destruct the faith of those few, who looked forward to changes. This result finally destroyed the myth of the possibility to have real political life in Kazakhstan, engage in real political activity here. Read the full story »

Having just written a comment to my earlier post – I only come to read today’s news now. And there’s a new development to the Kashagan charade: Nurlan Isakov, Kazakhstan’s environment minister said (The Moscow Times):

The permit for 2007 has been suspended. That is, we are suspending work for three months on our part.

Why has the Kazakh government done this? Their list of reasons reads:

• The Eni-led consortium has breached national environmental legislation. No details have been announced yet.
• “We have uncovered serious violations of fire safety rules there.” (Says an Emergency Ministry official.)
• “The Kazakh Finance Ministry’s customs committee said it had uncovered customs violations at the deposit concerning imports of two helicopters, and was opening a criminal case against unidentified consortium officials.” (From the Moscow Times article.)
• The delays in production (Kashagan won’t come onstream for another few years) make Kazakhstan’s oil export targets look increasingly unrealistic. Theoretically, the delay is a great opportunity to renegotiate the deal. Remember that in 2000 and the beginning of 2001, the oil price was extremely low. With the price for a barrel above $60 for the forseeable future, the consortium might just swallow if the Kazakh government gets a higher share of the profits.

And that’s the main point. Kazakhstan just wants to get a higher share than their current (and ridiculously low) 10% of the field’s profits. 40% do sound better. And they might as well get it soon. Otherwise, the Kazakh government’s concern over the environment, fire safety standards or import tax will further delay the $136 billion investment. What are three months when the project was originally slated to be onstream in 2005 already?