KZBlog

Category archive for ‘News’

• Oil Workers Appeal to President

  Just discovered this draft post on my site. Interesting in light of recent events that they felt appealing to the President would help. Although it hasn’t made much news inside Kazakhstan, for several months yet again oil workers have been striking in Western Kazakhstan. Now they have come to Astana to ask the President to [...]

  12/22/11 • (0)

• Raiding and Inspecting Religious Groups Begins

  So as the end of the year approaches, I’m looking at all the articles I bookmarked or starred on Google Reader and tweets I favorited and then never blogged on. I’m going to try to make up for that. So here’s one on the first victims of the new religion law: Alleged Extremist Materials Confiscated [...]

  11/28/11 • (3)

• Peace Corps Leave Kazakhstan, but Why?

  It’s official. Peace Corps has left Kazakhstan. Official reasons are not given. However given that they didn’t let it just wind down, but instead evacuated volunteers with little notice and given that they didn’t make any official announcement until all volunteers were out, there are a lot of rumours out there as to why. Most [...]

  11/19/11 • (2)

• More Bombings

  This is very disturbing as two bombs went off in Atyrau. Credit was taken by the heretofore unknown Jund al-Khilafah (Knights of the Caliphate) group. The name makes them sound like they want to create some kind of Muslim state/caliphate. But so far all anyone seems to know about them is that they had earlier [...]

  11/02/11 • (10)

• Would the Koran Have Been Approved by the Government?

  I’ve been meaning to post on the new religion law which just passed the Senate in Kazakhstan leaving it up to the president to sign. The Huffington Post has nice breakdown of the law, what it says and where it sits in historical context. And a link to a nice review of the law! As [...]

  10/11/11 • (6)

• 

  No Marrying Foreigners?

  This was one I couldn’t pass by without commenting on even though it will probably come to nothing. One citizen of Kazakhstan, Arman Turdaliyev, left a comment on Karim Massimov’s blog recently, saying that the only way to stop China from taking over Kazakhstan slowly was by preventing all foreign marriages. Dear Karim Kazhimkanovich! As [...]

  9/03/11 • (0)

• Can You Read This in Kazakhstan?

  I suppose it would be a badge of honor to be on the list of 13 foreign sites blocked by Kazakhstan (that article seems to no longer be there, but this link takes you to the same article) because, “These Internet resources … spread materials with propaganda of terrorism and religious extremism and open calls [...]

  8/20/11 • (3)

• Image

  I am constantly amused by the way Kazakhstan government officials choose to portray themselves when a scandal breaks. For example, when rumors started spreading that President Nazarbayev was having surgery in Germany recently, government officials answered by saying he was on vacation and no one knew where he was. The government was, quite understandably, trying [...]

  7/28/11 • (1)

• Sub Rosa Endorsement

  The article everyone is talking about today is Yermukhamet Yertysbayev’s interview with Russian newspaper, Kommersant in which he stated that Timur Kulibayev will replace President Nazarbayev if something should happen. The interview covers a lot of recent controversies, and was pretty clearly designed to allay concerns about some of the machinations in Astana, such as [...]

  7/26/11 • (1)

• German Tabloid Reports Nazarbayev in Hospital

  Eurasianet.org is reporting that President Nazarbayev is in the hospital in Hamburg, according to the German tabloid Bild. Nazarbayev is officially on vacation and the Kazakhstan Embassy in Germany says they have no idea if he is there or not. It seems to me that there are a lot of unscary possibilities here: 1) Some [...]

  7/19/11 • (2)

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