According to The Times and Democrat, Norwegian Girl Scouts are sewing blankets to send to Kazakhstan children. After hearing that the Pine Hill United Methodist Church in Dublin, Georgia is trying to collect 100 blankets to send to Kazakhstan the two scouts in Norway agreed to sew 12 with the help of their troops.

I think this is a good project, and it will help those children from being so cold,” Peeples said.

Steadman added, “I like doing things to help other people. Making these blankets is easy. I feel good about helping those children, and I have learned a new craft.”

It’s all too cute.

At the same time, the government of Kazakhstan has announced competitions for the benefit of children, Balalyk shak dosy which translates as “friend of children”. Awards will be given for the best neighborhood club for children, best school, best media for children, best toys, best health center, best teacher, best pediatrician and a number of other areas. Awards will be given on the 24th of December.

The BBC is reporting on falcon hunting in Kazakhstan, specifically problems with finding funding to keep the birds. So now they are catering to the elite, selling hunting trips which subsidizes falcon preserves.
Check out the video here

And if anyone knows a good place I can go falcon hunting near Astana, let me know. It’s one of the things I really want to see.

According to the New York Times, two websites with .kz registration were shut down and two other sites blocked from access within Kazakhstan. The sites, kub.kz, and geo.kz as well as zona.net and inkar.info, were well known for publishing opposition articles and news criticizing the government. Most recently, they published phone calls allegedly recorded by Rakhat Aliyev, betweeen people whom the publisher claimed were high government officials, discussing various issues related to Aliyev himself and to corruption.

As the banking sector in Kazakhstan is viewed internationally as unstable, the government is taking controversial measures to try to stabilize the financial sector, including buying out shares of Kazakhstan companies and cutting the budget to put 4 billion tenge aside as a reserve fund to bail out banks.

Last week it was reported that Standard and Poor downgraded Kazakhstan’s credit rating to BBB-, the lowest rank still within investment grade:

while “”slightly less creditworthy” than before, Kazakhstan is “still relatively safe” to lend to, according to [Ben Faulks, a London-based S&P sovereign-ratings analyst]. “We have taken this step of moving Kazakhstan down by one rating but we still keep it within the ‘investment’ grade,” Faulks said. “In other words, we still consider it a solid country from the point of view of commercial debt repayment and we have a stable outlook, so we expect the difficulties to be managed.”

The primary reason for the downgrade is that banks in Kazakhstan depend heavily on foreign loans which they then invest in real estate, both inside Kazakhstan and in foreign projects. That means Kazakhstan banks are both heavily dependent on foreign lenders and on the real estate market, which is currently unstable worldwide in part due to problems in the US real estate market.

Problems in the Kazakhstan real estate market have been noted earlier, with many claiming that prices are artificially inflated–and anecdotal evidence suggests that prices in Astana and Almaty are equal to, or more expensive than those in major cities in the US (more…)

I went a little beyond the old new logo and with some help from my friends, ended up with a crazy new look. Hopefully it’s a little more colorful and friendly looking. Got it pretty much where I want it except that as usual with a new template in Wordpress, certain links just will not behave properly even though every other link in that part of the page is doing exactly what it was told. So if a link doesn’t change color when you hover over it, or suddenly jumps a font-size or two when you click on it, don’t worry about it. It’s just growing pains.

EDIT: Also working on the problem Nathan mentioned in the comments, where posts show up twice on post and comment pages. Any other problems or somments are gratefully accepted.

EDIT The 2nd: Nothing repeating anymore. Still happy to hear about problems or reactions to the new look.

Just a quick word of praise for the best beer in Kazakhstan-one that to me is fully competitive in the international market, Tyan-Shyan Gold. The Tyan-Shyan (named after the mountains, probably more familiar to western eyes as Tien-Shien) brand is not a new one and for a while they have sold light and dark beers. But the new gold label beer is unusual for its sweet and nutty flavor. It really reminds me of McEwan’s and other Scottish beers which are also distinctive for their sweetness. You wouldn’t think a sweet beer would be good, but it is.

Unfortunately Tyan-Shyan is a cheap beer. I say unfortunately because it means that it is not sold in the elite supermarkets like Ramstor or Gros. I have to buy it at the little convenience store next to my house and they don’t always have it in stock. A larger store would have the storage space to keep it on the shelves permanently. I am always afraid that, not being featured prominently in the big, cool stores, sales will never be high and eventually the brewer will discontinue it. So please buy this beer at least to ensure that I have a constant supply!

The other funny thing about preferring a cheap beer (Tyan-Shyan and Derbes are the Bud and Coors of Kazakhstan, always the cheapest buys) is that my friends sometimes assume I order it to save money.
“Come on, get an Amstel or a Hoegaarden.”
“No, I really want Tyan-Shyan.”
“We’ll pay for it, if you want.”
“No, seriously, I want a Tyan-Shyan.”

Anyway, just wanted to give credit where credit is due and encourage Kazakhstan to put this beer up on the international market–because someday we might move back to the US and then what will I do for beer?

On Sept. 22nd, Mongol, the historical epic about Chinghis Khan (Genghis Khan) opened in Astana. The film has been anticipated since Sergei Bodrov began filming it right after the release of Nomad. Bodrov is well-known as the director of Nomad, as well as co-writer on Schizo and East-West, among his other extensive producing, directing and writing credits.

Mongol is an impressionistic film covering Chinghis Khan’s earlier years. It is not a plot-driven adventure film nor is it a historical epic that tells the story of how the poor fatherless slave Temuzhin became Chinghis Khan, ruling over one of the largest empires in the world. The film does show battles and portray the young Temuzhin as a great and brave warrior. It also shows that even at a young age, he had innovative thoughts about rewarding loyalty and banning the cruelties of slavery and arbitrary tyranny that tended to rule the steppes. Lip service is paid to the way that Chingis Khan organized his empire and his army and instilled a sense of responsibility to others.

However at the heart of this film is Chinghis Khan’s own psychic life. In one scene, the young Temuzhin escapes from slavery and runs to a religious shrine. While he is praying to Tengri, the sky god, a wolf is shown walking above him, looking down upon him. Then we see the boy running across the snowy steppes only to fall through an icy river. In the next scene, about 15 years have passed and we have no idea how he survived. The film is not as concerned with plot as with giving a mood to the audience.

Central to the film are the relationship he had with two people: His first wife, Borte and his blood-brother Jamuke. In reality, it is believed that these two people in fact had a huge influence on him. So we see how Chinghis Khan risks everything to rescue his wife, taken as a slave by the Kerekeidi. Later we see his wife rescue him from slavery at an even greater price. While the film does play fast and loose with the facts, it leaves you with the impression that for all his tyranny and bloodthirstiness, Chinghis Khan was a man very in love with his wife.

We also see how Jamuke helps him become a great leader and eventually his greatest rival. Again, while the relationship is historically accurate, most of the events depicted are fictional or changed slightly. Again, plot is not always the central concern of the film as it sometimes seems that the characters suddenly change their minds for no reason other than to set up the next scene. However the relationship is what comes through. That here are two men who love each other and yet are drawn to conflict. It is probably no coincidence that the actor who plays Jamuke, the Chinese star Honglei Sun, puts in the best performance in the film. Borte, played by the unknown Mongol college student Khulan Chuluun, puts in the second best.

Unfortunately, Tadanobu Asano who is one of the most popular actors in Japan, apparently, portrays Chinghis Khan with little emotion. Except for a few moments with his wife, Chinghis Khan spends the film stone-faced, almost a victim of fate, doing whatever is presented to him. He doesn’t particularly grab the audience’s attention especially when playing next to Jamuke and there doesn’t seem to be much reflection going on in his head, particularly during an entirely fictional scene in which Chinghis Khan is imprisoned in the city of Tangut.

If you are looking for a historically accurate telling of Temuzhin’s life, this is not the film for you. If you are looking for an epic like Braveheart or Nomad with lots of battles and witty words of bravery, don’t bother with this film. But the film is well worth your time, bringing a mood to the life of the great Asian emperor and portraying a human side in the person of two people who influenced the young Khan.

Another review can be found here and much thanks to News from the Caravan for that link and for reminding me to review this flick.

I also wanted to note that one of the most interesting reactions to this film I heard was from a Kazakh friend of mine who said that it was a pity that the film only showed the early years when Chinghis Khan was fighting other Mongols, and it would have been good to show him fighting more foreigners in case people got the impression that Mongols were hateful to each other.

The Library of Congress has put up four albums of photographs of Turkestan commissioned by the first Russian governor of Turkestan, Konstantin Petrovich Von Kaufman, which were taken from 1850 to 1860. The Archeological Album focuses on Islamic architecture, mainly in Samarqand. The Ethnographic part includes individual portraits of different ethnic groups (c.f. the Kara-Kazakh girl pictured on the left) and notable people, including the Khan of Kokand and his sons. The Trade Album shows occupations and the Historical Part depicts Russian soldiers and battle maps.

It is fascinating for the casual observer and no doubt an incredible resource for the scholar. All descriptions of photos are presented in the original Russian and translated into English.

As someone who does want to learn Kazakh partially for fun, partially because I do run into situations where it would make life easier, and partially because it would give me great standing with my wife’s family and with colleagues, I have been searching for a decent textbook for a long time. I started with Kazakh Language Made Easy by Iraida Kubayeva, which is notable for having been written in English and Russian. However, like many textbooks produced in the CIS, it isn’t well organized. You can pick up some useful words quite quickly and get a good sense of the grammar system but there doesn’t seem to be a system to learning. After a grammar explanation they give you an exercise that has exceptions which weren’t covered in the explanation. You are given 15 words to memorize and then a dialogue with 20 different new words and then an exercise with another 10 brand new words meaning 1) you have to have your dictionary close and 2) you never really practice with any of the vocabulary. Nor is there any visibly logical progression. You do verb tenses for the third person and then the next chapter is on how to say Hello. You don’t encounter verb tenses again for several chapters.

What it is strong on is, as I said, getting an overall sense of what the cases are and how endings work plus good useful vocabulary. Plus it has great explanations of why the months are named the way they are, and a lot of really interesting cultural notes and readings from history.

Then I bought Kazakh Language for All by A. Bekturova and Sh. Bektuorv which is considered to be a classic text. It’s in Russian which limited me because I don’t know a lot of grammatical terms in Russian but it wasn’t too hard. Unfortunately, while the lesson plans are much more logical and it goes very slowly, it also has a tendency to throw 50 words at you to memorize, words that have no relation to each other and then give you an exercise with 10 new words. It also comes with a small dictionary, but not all the words in the exercises are in the dictionary. Some of the lessons looked pretty good with pictures and diagrams, but a lot of the lessons are also very dry “memorize” and “repeat”. So that didn’t last too long, though I now have a pretty solid grasp on the past tense.

I was given a copy of Kazakhstan: Kingdom of Three Languages part of a new series to try to teach kids Kazakh, Russian and English. It is miles a head of a lot of previous books for kids in that it has lots of big pretty pictures and a fun story about 6 friends from Kazakhstan, Russia, and the UK who try to learn to talk to each other. It even has songs in all three languages and some games! Really good for basic vocab like parts of the body, colors, and every day speech ‘How are you?’ ‘I am going to school’ and so on. Unfortunately, once again, badly organized. There are about 4 exercises throughout the first chapter where you make dialogues of the “Hi, my name is Azamat, what is yours?” variety. But it introduces “Good morning” “Good evening” and other phrases without any exercises to reinforce them.

I had pretty much given up on self-study, and was hunting for a tutor who at least spoke some English to make it easier, when I found a really good textbook, Kazakh Tili by Kanat Ibragimov (Almaty:KAZakparat, 2004 ISBN 9965-643-54-7). It goes slow, it has logical explanations and the exercises actually cover the material in the explanations and they cover all of it. When you learn new vocab, you are expected to use that vocab and they don’t throw tons of new words at you. Finally I know when to use “min”, “bin” and “pin” for first person predicates! Before I knew that there were these three options and it had something to do with the letters but this book actually explains in a nice easy to use chart, rather than just asking you to memorize example after example. Unfortunately, these books were donated to my friend so I have no idea where to buy them.

So just a product recommendation for anyone interested in learning Kazakh, although since one man’s trash is another man’s treasure maybe the other books I mentioned will work well for you. Also, if any readers have recommendations let me know. You can also check out some of Amazon.com’s offerings and if you pick them up by clicking on the link below, I get some bucks out of it (None of the books I list here are on Amazon).

The Corruption Perceptions Index for 2007 from Transparency International was released on the 27th of September. A table of the results can be found here. Kazakhstan, with a score of 2.1 out of 10, is tied with Azerbaijan, the Republic of Congo, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Tajikistan, Zimbabwe and 5 other countries as 150th for corruption in the public sphere out of 179 rankings. Regionally, that puts it in 14th place with only Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan scoring lower in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

This signifies a serious drop for Kazakhstan, which scored 2.6 in 2006 and 2005, after rising from a score of 2004 of 2.2. This year is the lowest Kazakhstan has scored in 9 year.

As numerous news media sources are pointing out, this whole thing is rather embarrassing in the face of so much anti-corruption rhetoric in the past two years. Some of the highlights of this year’s Address to the People of Kazakhstan were shots at corrupt bureaucrats. But implementation never happened for a few obvious reasons: Mainly, the government cannot monitor itself. Involving the people of Kazakhstan is difficult as well. The people of the country tend say, “What did you expect? Our country is corrupt.” And the whole thing ends.

It would be nice if this was used as a motivator. For all the attempts to motivate the people of Kazakhstan by telling them not to shame their country internationally, corruption would seem to be an area where shame could be an effective motivator. Instead of people feeling resigned, perhaps they could be moved to act: “Every time you give or take a bribe, another American believes Borat is real,” would be a catchy slogan. Unfortunately as long as the government is the monitor of corruption in the government, the problem will never be solved for the obvious reasons.

The CPI measures corruption in public organizations–not private business or other spheres. It is an indexing of 12 different surveys that measure the perceptions of corruption in these nations. These surveys variously cover uses of public offices for personal gain, efforts to fight corruption, existence of opportunities for corruption, conflicts of interest of politicians and public officeholders and bribery. These surveys were administered by a variety of organizations including the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, Freedom House, the World Economic Forum and the Economist Magazine. Respondents include business people, experts, expatriates, and journalists. The survey is not a direct measure of corruption, but a measure of perceived corruption.

The full methodology can be found here