Thanks to Neweurasia’s videoblog.

From the human interest department here at KZBlog: A Kazakhstani woman and a Ukrainian in Euclid, Ohio have opened a Central Asia/former-Soviet/American restuarant called Kebab House. The menu includes American-style shish kebab with meat and vegetables as well as the experimental “best kebab” is grilled chicken, spicy carrots, French fries, lettuce, tomato, pickles and cheese topped with dressing and wrapped in a tortilla. They are planning to introduce the more traditional meat-only lamb kebab. You can also get manty and borsch as well as American classics like chili, hamburgers and mac and cheese.

The most interesting footnote in the article is that there is a Russian Tea Room in Lyndhurst, NJ. Must be a lot of Russian emigrees there!

Team Astana will probably meet the UCI deadline of May 31stand retain its license. However the UCI has requested new guarantees of the team in order to ensure that it stays in the black to the end of the year. UCI threatened Team Astana with revocation of its license after the Kazakh sponsors failed to pay salaries to its riders for two months and used up its reserve cash. The UCI requires that all teams have $2 million in a bank account untouched.

The President of the UCI, Pat Mcquaid is quoted in Cycling Weekly as saying:

The deadline we’ve given them is a bank guarantee deadline and the payments are up to schedule. They’ve paid sums of money in recent weeks, and they may be in order. The bank guarantees I believe have been put back in place,” McQuaid said before the stage 19 of the Giro d’Italia to Mount Vesuvius.

However the UCI has made new requests of Team Astana. As of Friday the Kazakh authorities had not responded. The licensing commission meets in the middle of July so any decision to revoke the team’s license would be taken then. Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is whether the team will be able to ride in the Tour de France, the most famous cycling race and the one that Lance Armstrong has won seven consecutive times (1999-2005). The Tour starts on July 4th. General Manager Johan Bruyneel has said previously that the team will race in the Tour de France, whether as Team Astana or under different sponsorship.

Team Astana is primarily sponsored by a number of state-owned Kazakh companies including Air Astana, KazMunaiGas, KazZinc, and Kazakh Temir Zholi. However many of these companies have been unable to make payments due to the financial crisis and changes in the priority of spending state budget funds. Sponsors pay the Kazakh Cycling Federation who then pay Team Astana.

A bit of shameless self-promotion. In addition to my photos up at Red Bubble, I designed a T-shirt. I’ve seen parodies of Guitar Hero for the cello and the accordion, but I thought “Dombra Hero” was a needed addition. Hope you like it and check out the site for the shirt where you can get a look at it in different colors and buy it in different styles.

By the way, one of the reasons I chose Redbubble is that they deliver anywhere in the world, including to Kazakhstan. So don’t be afraid to order. You’ll get it.

Font designed by Lettering Delights

So far Borat’s “national anthem” and Freestailo are the most popular search requests on this site. And people wondering what exactly Mr. Freestylo is saying make up a large percentage of visitors to this site. So I thought I’d post the lyrics in Kazakh (so you can sing along at home) and then translated into English. Thanks to Lurkmore, Russia’s answer to Wikipedia, for the transcription and a Russian translation.

As always corrections, comments, notes always appreciated. (more…)

A great website Central Asia History, which consists of oral interviews with people from Kyrgyzstan, particularly focusing on older people and the early years of the Soviet Union, World War I, the settlement of nomadic people, World War II/the Great Patriotic War, and life now. It’s extremely interesting to read and I’d love to see something similar done in Kazakhstan.

Manfred Nowak, the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, visited Kazakhstan last week to evaluate prison conditions. He noted that prison conditions have improved greatly in recent years, especially in physical conditions. He urged officials to put more emphasis on rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners, and less on punishment and to give prisoners more activities.

More troublingly, Nowak reported that:

he received many “credible allegations” of beatings with hands and fists, plastic bottles filled with sand and police truncheons.

He was also told of kicking, asphyxiation through plastic bags and gas masks used to obtain confessions from suspects. “In several cases, these allegations were supported by forensic medical evidence.”

The Special Rapporteur added that there are some groups that run larger risks of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment than others, noting that the likeliness for foreigners to be subjected to such treatment seems to be “higher than average.”

Equally troubling is the fact that despite these reports from prisoners and suspects in criminal cases, there is a lack of official complaints. Nowak speculated that prisoners do not trust the justice system or are afraid that if they complain, they will be punished further.

As a protest against the new Internet media law currently under consideration in the Parliament of Kazakhstan, which would empower the government to block access to websites that “run counter to” the legislation of Kazakhstan” , an NGO has sent a draft law to Parliament proposing regulation of graffiti.
Parodying the language of the law on the Internet, the president of Adil Soz said:

“The draft bill…forms the legal base for generating, sharing and storage of information on fences,” Tamara Kaleeva, the president of international freedom of speech fund “Adil Soz”, is quoted as saying.

She said the law would also define the main principles of the state “fence policy”, the rights of “fence readers” and the way information sharing should be controlled.

The main objective of this bill, Kaleeva said, is “to show the absurdity of the amendments” the lower chamber of the Kazakh parliament (Majilis) have adopted….
Tamara Kaleeva said the protest organizers’ idea was to show the future of Kaznet, “when it will turn into useless ruins”, reports Regnum, a Russian news agency.

There’s some bad news for Kazakhstan officials who wish to hold on to Team Astana and its stable of super stars. The riders are protesting the fact that staff have not had their salaries paid by wearing faded jerseys in the Giro d’Italia. Specifically, the new jerseys show only faded logos sponsors who have not paid. That means that only KazMunaiGas (the national oil and gas company), Trek, SRAM, and Livestrong (Lance Armstrong’s foundation) have their logos clearly showing. Only Andrey Zetis chose to wear the original jersey. Zetis is the only Kazakhstan native on the nine-man team.

However despite not receiving salaries and the potential loss of sponsorship at the end of the month, Team Astana is doing very well in the Giro d’Italia! I found a nice article by Chris Horner describing his day riding in Stage 8, published in The Oregonian. He notes his food intake that day: (more…)

Local residents in the Zelenovsk region of West Kazakhstan oblast reported seeing a UFO that then crashed. The Russia Today story:

Two slivery balls fell from the sky on Wednesday night in western Kazakhstan, local residents report.

“It was at about 3AM. I was standing by my tractor when the guys started shouting: ‘Look, there are some balls flying.’ They were big and sparkling with yellow, red and green,” an eyewitness told Interfax news agency over the phone.

According to the witnesses, the balls are approximately 60 cm in diameter, have a slivery surface and a small opening. They failed to bend or dent the balls with their tools and said the balls produced sparks when they attempted to do so.

There is no official confirmation of the report yet, but local emergencies officials are due to perform an on-site investigation.

And the slightly different story from APA:

Residents of Zelenovsk region of Western Kazakhstan witnessed UFOs fall down, APA reports. One of the witnesses Vladimir Bichkov said it happened at 3 o’clock at night.

“At about 3 children said strange objects were flying. They were very big flamy objects, had yellow, red and green sparkles,” he said.
The local residents said the UFOs fell on the area ploughed by the farmers.
“At first we were afraid to approach, then the objects got cold and we touched them. We could not determine the material of the objects. We tried to break it, but could not. It sparkled when we struck,” he said.
Vladimir Dyadkov said the diameter of the silver object was 60 cm, there was a small outgrowth on one side of the object. Officials have not commented on the fact yet. A special group has been sent to the region to investigate the objects.

So it is unclear whether one object fell or multiple objects. We look forward to the official investigation and possibly Kazakhstan becoming the first country to provide irrefutable evidence of alien life!