According to the report, Nadezhda Gerasimova, deputy chairperson of the Duma, believes that the best way to keep peace in the Central Asian region is 1) the presence and consolidation of international organizations that Russia participates in, 2) more Russian investment, 3) the protection of Russian citizens above all, and 4) excluding third parties.

Alexei Ostrovskiy, chairperson of the Committee for CIS affairs, believes the situation is “extremely alarming” as the population of Central Asia is growing fast, tribal relations are strong, and many people live in poverty. Only the opportunity to send labor migrants to Russia has prevented a “social explosion”. Russia’s strategy should be to exploit the “part of the political elite in the region [which] is pro-Russian”.

Other members pointed to the need for cooperation with the US, the EU and other countries and organizations active in the region to prevent serious conflicts and raise the living standards of the population of Central Asia.

Via NewEurasia

In preparation for the work of the Customs Union (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan), the largest number of adjustments of the tariffs will have to be made by Kazakhstan. Andrey Tochin, representative of the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia to the Commission on the Customs Union, reported this to a correspondent of Rosbalt.

“Regading Kazakhstan, they will have to change half of their tariffs. 40% of these adjustments will mean an increase in prices”, noted Tochin. In his opinion, this is the way to create preferential conditions for Russian goods in Kazakhstan.

According to Tochin, 80% of the unified customs tariffs which were approved on 27 November by the heads of state [of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus] in Minsk are in agreement with Russian policy. Therefore, Russia will not have to make large adjustments. “Only 10% of the current rates will be changed. Most of them will be decreased,” noted the official.

Belarus will also have to make minor adjustments in its tariffs. But a spokesman for the Ministry did not specify what will these changes.

So 1) Russia is announcing what Kazakhstan will do and 2) this is being reported in Russian newspapers but seems to get scant attention in the Kazakhstany press (as far as I can see, except for a vague statement by the Minister of the Economy that I wrote about here). And 3) Russian policy is being followed 80% of the time and 4) prices are going up again! Oh, and 5) Russian officials are stating baldly that these moves are good for Russian products, not good for all three nations.

It seems very strange that Kazakhstan and Belarus are entering a union the terms of which are being set by Moscow in order to benefit Russia. Now I’m not an economist, but I am not looking forward to the market being flooded with Russian goods and imported goods becoming more expensive. I need my macaroni and cheese and my books in English, people!

In all seriousness, as I glance around my home, most of the food and everyday household goods we buy was manufactured in Kazakhstan or Russia (including a lot of foreign brands). But most everything else came from somewhere else, from the furniture to the pens to the appliances. I’m not clear on how this will improve the quality of our life, and I’m not sure that Kazakhstani companies will benefit since it seems to me that people in Kazakhstan already buy a lot of goods that were made in Russia, so I don’t see that Russians will start buying Kazakhstan goods.

I’d love to hear in the comments what others think about this union, and if anyone has lived in Russia, are Kazakhstan-made goods bought there? Are our companies competitive?

But more seriously, disabled children are not normally sent to school. In fact I have yet to a see a school equipped for a physically disabled person. Every school has stairs to the front entrance and narrow stairs to each floor. A kid in a wheelchair would be helpless. Teachers are not trained in any way to deal with disabled children or children with learning disabilities. So they are either sent away to special boarding schools or have tutors come to their houses.

But it’s not only school. Soviet standards dictated that houses with five or less floors didn’t need elevators. So many buildings don’t have them. Or if they do, the entrance is up a flight of stairs. So many physically handicapped people can’t even leave their homes. Sidewalks in Almaty even have stairs on them. You may have seen ramps in the sidewalks with little steps in the middle and though those were for a wheelchair. You were wrong; those are for handcarts! Even the Ministry of Social Protection makes people in wheelchairs go in through the garage!

I’ve been talking a lot about people with physical handicaps because those accommodations (elevators, ramps, ground floor entrances) are most noticeably absent. However parents and teachers are not taught coping mechanisms for dealing with physical or mental handicaps. While I’m sure that doctors and social workers try, there isn’t any kind of institutional support for teaching enabling strategies, outside of a few NGOs (I understand there is such an NGO in Almaty that does work with the disabled and their family to work with the handicap and integrate people into society).

What there is, are special companies that employ the handicapped. These companies have special status in winning government contracts. Apparently the sheets on the trains are made by the handicapped as well as some school uniforms! However, these companies tend to be only factories that don’t pay higher wages or give any better benefits to their workers. So basically the only jobs open to the handicapped are minimum wage, industrial work at a factory machine!

Unfortunately, the usual pattern appears to be that if a family gives birth to a disabled child or someone in the family is injured seriously in an accident, Mom or Dad will have to quit their job to stay home and be a caretaker. They receive an inadequately small allowance from the government. But invalids are left at home, badly educated and lacking job skills. Or the opportunity to physically go to a job. In fact, after the age of eighteen, disabled people can be sent to state nursing homes! So a family that can’t or doesn’t want to take care of their disabled son or daughter can send him or her to live with abandoned pensioners from the age of 18!

The picture seems pretty bleak and I would love to hear in the comments that I am wrong and that there are stories of hope for the handicapped.

While in Kazakhstan, the press has been relatively silent over details of the Union, rumor has it that all policies and import duties will be set to the Russian standard. Many government officials are privately expressing concern that this union will give much larger benefits to Russia than to Kazakhstan by adopting policies that are good for Russia. One serious issue if the Russian duties are enforced, is that Russian import duties are generally much higher than Kazakhstani duties. So prices of many imported goods, from cars to gold to jewels to furniture, will sky-rocket (Russian import duties on cars are over 100%, meaning your popular Land Cruiser will go from $64 000, minimun price to around $100 000). This will of course force Kazakhstani to buy domestic or Russian goods. While proponents of the union point out that this will be good for domestic producers, and I agree that Kazakhstan producers should be helped, in many areas there simply are no local producers with competitive quality products. So it looks like prices will go up and Kazakhs will be buying a lot more Russian goods.

According to Interfax-Kazakhstan, prices will rise but the Minister of the Economy, Bakhyt Sultanov is optimistic:

He sited some data provided by the Economy Ministry, which showed that higher import costs “will only have a slight effect on the inflation” in Kazakhstan. “It will only increase by approximately 0.5-0.7 percent points. However, the rise in the inflation will level out if we reduce imports replacing them with the domestic products,” the minister said.

“Today the customs duties account for about 2% of the import costs (94.4 billion tenge of customs duties on all imported goods totaling 4,626 billion tenge in 2008). After our import duties double to be in line with the customs duties of the Customs Union, the import costs will rise by 2%,” Bakhyt Sultanov explained.

I have a feeling that the Minister is playing with figures, citing averages over specifics. Of course in all likelihood the things that the normal Kazakh buys will not be affected too much–especially as we are already buying food and household goods from local and Russian companies. But the middle class will probably be severely affected. And in general it is depressing to think that yet again, prices will go up.

I would love to hear from readers. Do you have more information on this Customs Union? And what do you think about it?

A debate between philosophers at an international forum ended in a fistfight Monday that left two people slightly injured, Interfax reported.

A woman and man were injured in the fight at the International Philosophical Forum, held in the House of Scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Ulitsa Prechistenka.

One suffered a bruise, while the other one was left with a scratched face, a police source told Interfax, without elaborating. It was not immediately clear what prompted the fight. Several squads of police officers were called to restore order.

Russians take their philosophy seriously!

This is no news to residents. My own wife remembers her grandmother’s apples, which were as big as a baby’s head, grown outside Almaty. Now that area is all villas for the rich and powerful. When I go to the store to buy apples, I find plenty of Russian and Chinese apples and even apples from Kyrgyzstan, but rarely any local apples. Hopefully this book and research will encourage businessmen or the government to revive the Kazakh apple. After all, being the home of the world’s best apples would be a pretty effective form of brand-imaging.

Three Chinese tourists have bought a 274-kg piece of depleted uranium and brought it home from Kyrgyzstan as a souvenir, the China Daily newspaper reported. The three tourists bought “the glittering treasure” for $2,000 at a flea market in Kyrgyzstan, hoping to make money by reselling it in China. Not knowing what they had actually bought, the tourists sliced off a piece of the stone and took it to experts from Beijing’s University. After identifying the souvenir as a piece of depleted uranium, the scientists called the police.

I’ve heard of people sneaking dinosaur bones out of Mongolia, valuable art out of Russia, and artifacts out of Kazakhstan, but depleted uranium is a new one!

Registan has an interesting, and from the comments, controversial editorial by Jeffrey T. Renz, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Montana. Renz is primarily targeting Alexander Cooley, whose editorial on Eurasianet argues that the US itself is to blame for losing Manas.