FIZZLING FUZZSTANS: TRAVELLING THROUGH CENTRAL ASIA

Source: payvand.com.

By Gundhramns Hammer
September 19, 2014
Select, paste & translate
 

Flying carpets, Aladdin´s lamp, caravans of camels and merchants crossing hot desert sands, the Silk Road and other aspects associated with Asia´s legends, tales or ancient accounts of travels are things most people somehow are familiar with or ring their bells in the West. 

But if you asked anybody where Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan are, unless they have been there, chances are that there would be many Westerners that do not know where these countries are located on the globe.

Some of these folks would not even know how to pronounce the names of these two countries to begin with.

Besides stuffing their bellies with meat and sugar, making money, shopping crap they do not need, fighting and fucking or getting fucked, most humans (Homo insapiens) are only interested in what happens in their own hometown or backyard.

However, this would not be the case if they were multinational CEOs searching for raw materials for their satellites or other high tech products produced by their companies to keep consumers busy consuming what cannot be consumed but is consuming the mother of all consumers in the end: Earth.

These two mentioned countries and their neighbours around them comprise an area called Central Asia. They have already been zeroed in by multinationals hungry for natural resources.

In today´s world, Central Asia include five republics of the former Soviet Union (Wikipedia, 2014), and all are characterised by having a name ending in - stan (from sthāna, meaning "place" in Indo-Aryan languages). The total population of the five countries amounts to 67.1 millions as of 2013-2014 (Wikipedia, 2014), excluding afghanistan:

• Kazakhstan (pop. 17.9 million), 
• Kyrgyzstan (5.8 million), 
• Tajikistan (8.0 million), 
• Turkmenistan (5.2 million), and 
• Uzbekistan (30.2 million). 
• Afghanistan (pop. 31.1 million) is also sometimes included.

These nations are rich in natural resources (e.g., oil, gas, uranium, gold, rare earth minerals, etc.) needed and used to keep running modern economies. 

This is why the European Union, Russia, China and the United States have common interests in the region. 

And since economic investments are always wrapped and intertwined with armies and politics, thus Russia and the United States have military presence in the area.

Moreover, given the number of inhabitants, the area has an enormous economic potential to turn every single human being found there into a big consumer, i.e., a moronic biological robot always craving crap, like has happened in the West.

So, considering its importance in geopolitics, Central Asia is worth getting to know. At least to get an idea about the fizzle of the fizzling fuzzstans.

Let us take a look at these countries through Simon Reeve´s travels: Meet the Stans. Let us see what the fuzz is about.

Without leaving your hole at home, Simon Reeve will take you from Kazakhstan, through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the border of coveted Afghanistan, and west to Uzbekistan. 

Along the way, he will get you inside a fucking lab full of tubes filled with highly contagious germs, a potential terrorist´s target since the facility lacks good security, and also show you radioactive hills and meadows.

Ready to take off? Here we go (Videos 1-2):

Video 1. Meet the Stans. Part 1 & 2.

Video 2. Meet the Stans. Part 3 & 4.

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