Kazakhstan: Taking the blogosphere’s pulse for the month · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Bloggers continue to share their opinions on current events, from questions of government and regional development in the republic, to musings on the interrelatedness between social behavior and consumer priorities.
Thousand-Pa comments on the recent wave of publications about Turkish schools, which have been successfully working in the country for some time [ru]:
So they raise Turkish nationalists – traitors to the homeland, basically. But for some reason, everyone has ignored the news that there will be 1000 students from Afghanistan coming to study in Kazakhstan next year. I don’t like the prospect of the Taliban’s ideas penetrating the already-tumultuous sphere of Kazakhstan’s students.
Megakhuimyak quotes Almaty officials in saying that they received instructions from their superiors to replace 3000 foreign specialists as a means of reducing imported labor; however, only 1500 foreign specialists are registered in the city [ru]:
“This is how our local and federal agencies communicate when it comes to exchanging reliable information,” the blogger concludes.
In another post, he writes [ru]:
In the United States, those who cannot pay their mortgage simply abandon their houses so they no longer have to pay the bank. Here, people fight until their last breath for apartments. [For our population] the house is central, as are connections in the neighborhood. This is why our social mobility is so much lower.
Whenever Epolet goes on business trips, he always buys newspapers to with personals and advertisements [ru]:
It helps me get a feel for the business atmosphere of a city. Before me, for example, is a newspaper from Petropavlovsk (northern Kazakhstan). Every fourth automobile can be traded for grain; lots of personals say “looking to take out credit without a deposit;” and so on…
Blogger and financier azoo is perplexed by the government’s announcement that stocks of the embattled BTA Bank, 24.9% of which are owned by private investors, could be redistributed among creditors as part of the bank’s debt restructuring [ru].
Minority shareholders are hysterical. In what other country could investors simply be abandoned? This is against the background of the government trying to attract the populace to the stock market!
In conclusion, a bit of humor and irony from Kazakh bloggers. Idsg, upset by his fellow citizens’ manners, is putting his faith in technical progress [ru]:
Almaty needs to develop a new kind of asphalt using nanotechnology, which would cause a reaction that would rebound saliva back at spitting pedestrians and drivers. The city’s appeal would increase manifold.
Pulemetchizza’s experience shows what you can learn by reading newspaper headlines [ru]:
The Office of the Public Prosecutor has exposed over 4 thousand crimes that were concealed from official reports.
Over the past 10 months, Kazakhstan’s crime rate has dropped 7%.
Most importantly, everything is logical.
Translated by Andrey on neweurasia.net