kazakhstanweb

“No offense, but this is kind of boring. Write an editorial about Kazakhstan.” Online comment made by ‘Drew’ on the Wheel website.

Few know the name of the world’s ninth largest country – the origin of Sputnik, the testing plains for the Soviet atom bomb, the untamable steppe where the first incipient apple trees blossomed alongside the wild ancestors of today’s tulips, soon to spread across the globe. Few have tasted kumis, our beloved fermented mare’s milk. Few have eaten bisbarmak, “five fingers,” our delectable dish of horse and noodles. Fewer still have skied our slopes and galloped upon our swift steeds or felt upon their cheek the glorious rush of orange and purple behind our mountains that ushers in the twilight. A tear of pity for my reader wells within me as I write, but the pity shortly turns to a burning patriotism as I hum the national anthem. Our time is coming.

For too long has Kazakhstan been lost in the shadows of its dwarfing neighbors, Russia and China; for too long we have been neglected as unimportant in world geography and history; but now we are about to redefine geography and history, we are about to step from the shadows and neglect into the world’s spotlight.

At our northern border is the steppe – miles upon miles of frozen wasteland the Soviets used to test nuclear weapons. The soil, as you can imagine, is more dangerous than the asbestos in McTeiyre. The first plan of our quest for world domination begins there, in the steppes.

Releasing the underfed inhabitants of our neglected zoos into the steppe, we will wait for the mutational effects of radiation to work their magic. In several generations’ time, then, we should have an army of mutated monsters roaming our northern, sparsely populated borders, eventually wandering into Russia and China and eating its inhabitants. With China out of the way, the United States will too collapse, depending as it does on cheap Chinese products.

Of course, all who heard of the recent meat scandal in Europe with horse in the hot dog think it mere happenstance. How wrong they are. For years we have been undercutting cattle ranches on a global scale with our own government-subsidized horse meat programs, designed to put cattle farms out of business and increase the world’s dependence on horse meat. Already, the hamburgers at the DUC are adulterated and impure, made mostly of Central Asian stallion. All it takes is a simple pull of the plug, and the world’s meat supply will be critically crippled, countries toppling to their knees before us!

One of the problems that has plagued our country since its existence is a lack of water. As the world’s largest landlocked country, we can do little more than enjoy caviar from the Caspian. Our token naval force stationed there is a joke. We have a plan, of course. We have been stockpiling cotton since our independence in 1991. Uzbekistan, our southern neighbor, relies fairly heavily on that cash crop. Their dependence on cotton diverts for irrigation the majority of the water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers that otherwise flow into the Aral Sea.

Our plan is to sell cotton at greatly-reduced prices to Uzbekistan, thereby eliminating the need to grow so much. Because spiking salinity levels in the Aral Sea have killed most of the fish and surrounding wildlife, they will no longer be around to greedily drink up all the new water from these tributaries.

We anticipate a major rise in water level, soaking and flooding the southern deserts and hopefully creating an island of our mountainous steppe.

We have docks and ports ready to use up in our mountains, with ships prepared to cruise around the world and deliver nuclear payloads.

The last stage in the master plan is to bring to fruition our alliance with North Korea to harness the power of her nukes, trained, as we speak, on this nation’s capitol. Long live communism!

The world is ours. Родина-мать зовёт!

Jonathan Warkentine is not a native or a citizen of Kazakhstan, however, he is a faithful patriot after spending most of his life there. His views expressed in this article are purely fictitious and should not be taken seriously.

Photo courtesy of United Nations. Flickr

Emory Wheel
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The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.

The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.