{"id":195,"date":"2006-11-08T07:19:33","date_gmt":"2006-11-08T06:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=195"},"modified":"2006-11-08T07:19:33","modified_gmt":"2006-11-08T06:19:33","slug":"forgotten-world-43-kazakhstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten world (43): Kazakhstan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sacha Baron Cohen&#8217;s new film &#8220;Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan&#8221; may not give a totally accurate representation of the country, so what is the situation in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kazakstan\">Kazakhstan<\/a>?<br \/>\nKazakhstan&#8217;s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is not a totalitarian dictator; he is only moderately repressive: banning and intimidating opposition parties and jailing the odd journalist. He has been in power since the country gained its independence in 1991 with the break-up of the Soviet Union and won elections in 1999 and 2005 which fell short of international standards according to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.<br \/>\nThe country&#8217;s national drink is not horse urine; it is fermented horse milk that merely tastes like urine. And Jew-baiting is not, actually, a national sport. It&#8217;s more of a hobby, as in the phrase &#8216;You&#8217;re as tight as a Jew&#8217; or the practice of making &#8216;a Jewish phone call&#8217; (when you get the other party to call you back on your landline).<br \/>\nKazakstan covers an expanse of Central Asia which is the same size as Western Europe making it the ninth largest country in the world. However, it only has a population of 15.3 million, 60% of whom are actually Kazak, with 20% Russian, and smaller proportions of other ethnic minorities. It has huge reserves of crude oill and gas which is enabling it to achieve substantial economic growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sacha Baron Cohen&#8217;s new film &#8220;Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan&#8221; may not give a totally accurate representation of the country, so what is the situation in Kazakhstan? Kazakhstan&#8217;s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is not a totalitarian dictator; he is only moderately repressive: banning and intimidating opposition parties and jailing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}