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Transgression- Exhibit by Galim Madanov & Zauresh Madanova

Posted by Daniel | in Migration, Art, Culture | on September 29th, 2007
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Galim Madanov & Zauresh Madanova are an intellectual duo and creative team that are working together on new art project for the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts in Almaty.
The new Soros Center moved last summer to its new “posh” location in the Luxor gated housing complex on Lenina Street in Almaty. This […]

Ordinary Cult

Posted by Adam Kesher | in Media, Politics, Oddities | on September 27th, 2007
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The trend of growing personality cult has been recently supported by B.Tlukhan, a Member of Parliament. He said that considers the president a symbol of the country that cannot be smeared, and added: “For me Nazarbayev is a man, chosen by God”. The whole fuss is about publication of the president’s photo in one of […]

Resource nationalism and failure in ratings

Posted by Adam Kesher | in Business, Development, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Domestic Affairs | on September 27th, 2007
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The Kazakh government now can review and break up the contracts in extractive sectors. From now on, according to the new bill unanimously adopted bill by the Kazakh parliament, it will be legitimately a one-way road, not requiring negotiations as such. The state can change the contract conditions if the foreign investor’s actions […]

About Gastarbeiters

Posted by Adam Kesher | in CIS, Migration, Development, Economy | on September 25th, 2007
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This is a translation of Marat’s post on the Russian-language Neweurasia-Kazakhstan weblog. 
Here are some figures concerning legalization of labor migrants in Kazakhstan. They might be especially interesting for those living in Russia, who enjoy making fun of “wild immigrants” from the “stans”, but don’t take this post too close to heart.
164,586 instead of expected 100,000 […]

Efforts to Improve Kazakh Language

Posted by Arseny | in Education, Culture, Domestic Affairs | on September 25th, 2007
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This is a translation of the post by our Russian-language author Nurgeldy.
September 22 is celebrated as a Day of Languages in Kazakhstan. Usually, such days are meant to provoke some thought about achievements or troubles. But it is much more important to work for improvement of the situation and to do this work […]

Humor in Kazakhstan: Laugh or cry

Posted by Adam Kesher | in Cross-blog survey, Culture, Oddities | on September 24th, 2007
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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 […]

Kazakh blogosphere leads the chart

Posted by Adam Kesher | in Blogosphere | on September 23rd, 2007
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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 […]

To Come and to Confess

Posted by Arseny | in Politics | on September 18th, 2007
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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 […]

PR, Indeed

Posted by Adam Kesher | in Politics, Oddities, Foreign Affairs | on September 17th, 2007
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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 […]

New Schoolyear without Textbooks

Posted by Adam Kesher | in Youth, Education, Domestic Affairs | on September 16th, 2007
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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 […]

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