Kazakhstan Photos: Billy Crowley

The continuing uproar over Sacha Baron Cohen’s film “Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” has reached new levels of emotionality. I found this ACTUAL email from a Kazak soldier at Ynet:

With all due respect to Mr. Cohen and all of you out there that find his antics funny i am ashamed for you.

I would have thought if anyone would be supportive of respecting anothers culture it would be the sons and daughters of abrahamm

There are some highly revered national shrines in the history of each people. Among those are the places which bore witness to great talents’ birth, formation, maturity. Such are Mikhailovskoe and Yasnaya Polyana for the Russians, Weimar for the Germans, Florence for the Italians, Stratford-on-Avon – for the Englishmen, the Dayan of Israel. With the Kazakh such a place of worship is Shyngystau, the birthplace of three geniuses of the Kazakh literature – Abai, Shakarim, Mukhtar Auezov.

The land of Shyngystau, spaciously outstretching over the steppe of Sary-Arka, has given us three men of letters of the world rank, which in itself is so rare a thing in the history of mankind, but not only them.

Prior to those three here lived and worked such notable people as Kengirbai, Oskenbai, Kunanbai, Nisan – biys, orators, sages, akyns, grieving over the people’s sufferings and sorrows; batyrs Aktanberdi, Mamai, Toktamysh, who sacrificed their glorious lives for the benefit of their homeland.

You might think we live like goats on the steppes but my people have been part of human history for thousands of years.

There is much too see outside your little country i suggest instead of seeking curried rice in india you try our world reknowned Uyz baked in Sut with helpings of Irimshik, Kurt and Sarysu…..and nothing in basle will hold a candle to our own Zhent, famous Kazakh chocolate

Long Live the Kazakh People and may we see peace in our time
Tarob Nazarbayev , Almaty, Kazakhstan (09.30.06)
tarob@www.kz

The clash of civilizations, between those who laugh and those who cannot, continues.