Kazakhstan - Amazing Алматы

Like tattoo magazines or Scottish accents, that station from The Gambia was initially fascinating and engaging, but quickly fizzled out, and ultimately ended up being annoying.

Enough with the adverbs, let's move on to Kazakhstan.

Ok, so we know you’re pretty much all thinking about Borat, but let's see what else Kazakhstan has to offer – beyond comic fodder. 

If you weren't before, you are now...

Because it’s the largest land-locked country in the world with vast resources and few good rivers, trade has and always will be a bitch in Kazakhstan. This leaves them vulnerable to the influence of more powerful neighbors (i.e. Russia.) Sure, you can build a lot of roads with all that oil money, but that’s when the prices are good.

Did you know that the folks who lived there are thought to have been the first to domesticate the horse? Cool, huh?

Like pretty much everyone else in that part of the world, they ended up being Russia's bitch for most of the 20th century, finally declaring independence at the end of '91. At that point they were the last Soviet state to do so.

Former Soviet states... Kazakhstan is #6.

Man-o-man, is it a big country, and man-o-man, is it a corrupt one. Currently, Kazakhstan is run by a nutjob kleoptocratic autocrat now, who's rumored to have squirreled away over a billion dollars in foreign accounts. Whoa. That’s like, for lack of a better term, a lot of money.

Ok, what else... Hurm. In addition to oil, they're big in the agriculture field, too (no pun intended.) John Deere and Caterpillar were doing pretty brisk business over there before the financial crisis hit. They like that dependable American machinery, and with land comparable to the Dakotas, they perform well there. They're a HUGE wheat exporter, and it's pretty wild watching them get drawn into the grain cartel that Russia is trying to build with them and Ukraine right now. Scary stuff. Grain is totally the new oil.


So, today we're tuning in to a station based out of Almaty - or Алматы - which means "full of apples." How quaint! Kazakhstan sounds so hearty with all of those tractors and apples. Алматы is a large city of almost 1.5 million folks living a stone's throw from the Kyrgyzstani boarder - but Kyrgyzstan is a whole other kettle of fish that we'll fry up later.

See? Apples!

So, for today, just click that little play button, or you can download the RealPlayer thing by clicking that link in the line above the play button. This station is probably gonna be all awful Russian pop, but Pinky couldn't find a nice authentic old school one, so you can blame your misery on him. Whatever! Bye!

Avtor Radio

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