Thanks to Nathan’s post here at Registan.net:

Kazakhstan’s bid for chairmanship of the OSCE in a statement at the meeting of the Permanent Council last week.

Tokayev’s statement and his closing statement

From Den Hartog Stork:

Tonight the Den Hartogs had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Bobi ordered the National Meat Assortment. When the dish arrived she noticed the different cuts and asked the waiter “Kakoi?” (Which kinds)? He reared up like a horse and whinnied.

I mean, anyone could have told them that horse was the national meat, but I have a hard time imagining the waiter doing a horse impression! That is truly rare! And shows that the average Kazakh will go to great lengths to help guests understand.

Two weeks ago, there was a government assembly and the Prime Minister presented new projects for the government. As Kazakhstan Today reports, Social Business Coportations were on the list. “Sara Arka” will be the first, to be established in Karaganda (because the akim there was on the ball, they say). By the end of the year, six more will be established in the regions.

These coporations were first brought up in the President’s Annual Message to the People in February of 2006:

2.7. Creation of regional “engines” of economic development through formation of regional corporations for social development and enterprise

Social-business corporations (SBC), sustainable business structures, could be formed in various regions and take over management of communal property, land, non-remunerative, but working businesses, that can be used for new business creation.

Each SBC will become a kind of a regional development institute and act as a holding company, managing state assets in a particular region.

Further on with management experience accumulation and increase of SBC capitalization level we could talk of extension of their “responsibility areas”, including exit to regional and international markets.

These corporations will pursue attraction of new projects, business development and cooperation extension.

As a result SBCs will become big employers and “engines” of the country’s development.
from KazPravda

And two weeks ago, the President criticized the government for not realizing his vision yet (among other things).

The idea is that these coporations will solve social problems in the regions. All well and good. Traditionally, social entreapeneurships do things like build cheap computers to sell to students in developing countries (re: MIT) or come up with simplified drug regimes for AIDS patients, or other solutions to social problems. They run at a profit, unlike NGOs or development organizations, and this is believed to be good because they are sustainable. An NGO that provides free services will some day go out of business; a business that provides services at an affordable rate can go on forever.

However, these SBC’s will be different. (more…)

As part of the Wiki Project Central Asia on Wikkipedia.com, I put up a new requested article on the Education System in Kazakhstan: here.

Edit away! I don’t guarentee the 100% accuracy of everything but I figured having a framework up there (adapted from a report I did for a foreign consultant last year) would make it easier to edit and correct, than facing the big, blank screen would!

In other education news, Bolashak students in Indiana University put on a national cultural program for Republic Day, and to educate people that Borat doesn’t show the real Kazakhstan.

Rob Nokes, the sound supervisor editor for the film Nomad, has a video up of his experiences recording sounds for the film.
Interesting stuff and this guy is experienced enough. It appears he will do a larger “Making of Nomads” feature, according to the blurb on Youtube.

I’ve been playing around with advertisements on this site–I’d do this site for free, but if I happen to be able to make some cash off of this by putting up some ads, that’d be pretty nice.

Let me know if the ads are obnoxious; I’d like to make sure they aren’t driving anyone mad.

Kazakhstan Neweurasia has a nice overview of the articles and research being done in Kazakhstan about horse domestication. They’ve found a very early corral and rumor has it, Kazakhs may have been the first to domesticate the horse. well, proto-Kazakhs. Check out the entry: Ben links to all sorts of good stuff, worth digging around in.

Now if only they would open some archeological sites to the public, I would love to go see this stuff.

Two Borat-related videos came to my attention.

Chris Merriman has put up the BBC coverage of the London premiere of Borat’s film, with discussion of the uproar, Aliyev’s invitation, and his insistence on remaining in character.

Second, the first four minutes of the Borat film, the bit set in Kazakhstan:

It’s not particularly funny to me, but I never went for that line of comedy anyway.

EDIT: A Bolashak Scholar in New Zealand spoke to the news there about Borat.
Video here Click on the video below Archive, where it says

We talk to some visiting Kazakstani’s about their reaction to the upcoming “Borat” movie.

Two articles came out last week about Astana. Both focus on the Palace of World Peace and Unity—the new pyramid designed by Lord Foster, a well-known British architect. The pyramid was designed to host the second World Congress for Religious Tolerance, a conference of religious figures and political leaders which attempts to bring together religious leaders to solve problems and contribute to world peace—a noble enough goal. The first conference is preserved architecturally at the top of Bayterek tower where a wooden panel features a half-globe surrounded by the signatures of religious figures from almost every religious tradition you can think of—a representative of the Vatican, the World Jewish Conference, the Shinto association, various Muslim groups. This year’s conference will be remembered for the pyramid, and sadly, the pyramid gets more international press than the conference itself. Many argue that the conference is really nothing more than a press stunt, with no substantial thought behind it, just a hope that Kazakhstan and the President will be famous for making this great effort toward world peace by inviting all the religious leaders to speak in one place. To be fair, it is not a bad idea. On the other hand, after the first conference Nazarbayev allegedly invited Palestine and Israel to come to Astana; what his plan was to solve this bloody and deeply held conflict was not made clear. There was just the hope that peace would happen here and Kazakhstan would be famous!

These are the two sides of most of the massive projects in Kazakhstan: on the one hand, they are generally well intentioned, even quite noble. On the other hand, the form seems to get more attention than the content and the mechanisms are never really clear, so the whole thing comes off as more of a press stunt than anything else.
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Kazakhstan Today noted a small event on Friday, an event that could only fit in the miscellaneous section: Kazakhstan holds akim of oblasts and cities of regional value elections

Why aren’t elections a newsworthy event? For a few reasons: Until a few years ago, the President appointed (and Parliament approved) akims (or chief executives) of the oblasts (or provinces) and major cities, who then appointed the akims of regions and towns or villages. However for the past two years some test elections have been run here and there and it turns out that the incumbent was reelected back in, in most cases.

Also, note the headline—these are oblasts and towns of regional value i.e. not of national value. The big cities and the big, important oblasts are still under Presidential control.

The third reason is that the elections proceeded as follows: The incumbent akim made a list of candidates and then the local Mashlikhat (a popularly-elected assembly that performs primarily an advisory role) voted on them. Advertisements ran on Khabar television, that the elections were coming, but the joke was that no one was expected to do anything, since the elections weren’t open to the people and perhaps they could advertise elections in the Czech Republic on Khabar as well.

I happened to catch on the 26th of December, a representative of the Central Election Committee, Onakyn Zhumabekov, on Khabar’s “Betpe bet” (Face to Face) show—a feature that follows the news every weekday where a journalist interviews someone on a pressing issue of the day, and callers/emailers and welcome to send in questions.
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