Borat Sagdiyev

This article is about the Sacha Baron Cohen character "Borat". For the movie, see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Borat Sagdiyev
First appearance	F2F - The Granada Talk TV Show
Last appearance	Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Event for Autism Education
Created by	Sacha Baron Cohen
Portrayed by	Sacha Baron Cohen
In-universe information
Occupation	Journalist, Actor
Family	Asimbala (mother) Boltok the Rapist (father) Boltok the Rapist (grandfather)
Spouse	Oksana (deceased) Luenell
Children	Hooeylewis, Biram, Bilak
Relatives	Bilo (brother) Natalya (sister)
Friends	Azamat Bagatov, Sammk, Argyro

Borat Sagdiyev is a fictional Kazakhstani journalist portrayed by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. He is the eponymous protagonist of the mockumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Humour is often derived from Borat's taboo sociocultural viewpoints, deadpan behaviour, repeated catchphrases, exaggerated "third-world" status, and physical humor.

Origins of "Borat"

An original Borat character was first developed for short interstitials on F2F - The Granada Talk TV Show that Cohen presented in 1996-1997. The character was given another run by The Paramount Comedy Channel before being picked up by BBC2's Comedy Nation. This early version of Borat was nearly identical in looks and demeanor to his latest incarnation but was as yet unnamed. The character was rested while Cohen concentrated on his Ali G persona for Channel 4's The 11 O'Clock Show. With the subsequent success of Ali G and the creation of Da Ali G Show (also on Channel 4), Cohen revisited his Borat character.

The origin of the name is unclear. There is a Kazakh figure named Bolat Nurgaliyev.

Borat's life and family

Borat is said to have been born on February 17, 1972 in the fictional village of Kuzcek, Kazakhstan to Asimbala Sagdiyev and Boltok the town rapist (who is also stated to be his maternal grandfather as well as his brother and uncle). His mother was only 9 years old when she gave birth to Borat. He has a 13-year-old son named Hooeylewis and 12-year-old twin boys, named Biram and Bilak, as well as 17 grandchildren. He has an older sister, Natalya (who he has claimed at different times to be "the number four" best prostitute in Kazakhstan) and a younger brother, Billo, who is mentally retarded. Borat also had another sister, but when Billo tried to have sex with her he accidentally killed her. It is revealed that he has another wife in addition to a mistress, a girlfriend, and a prostitute with whom he has trysted on several occasions.

Borat is shown to have been married several times, after first having been betrothed to his half-sister's plough while in his teens. His first wife, Oksana, was reported in the Borat film to have been "broken" by a bear while taking his brother Bilo for a walk in the forest. Borat is not saddened by the tragedy; he thanks the man who brings him this "good news" by giving him a "High five" —and celebrates his newfound freedom by pursuing Pamela Anderson and eventually reunites with and marries Luenell, a black prostitute he met while filming his documentary.

As a fictional character, Borat is a professional journalist and announcer on Kazakh television. According to various in-character interviews with Sacha Baron Cohen, Borat attended Astana University, where he studied English, journalism, and plague research. He claims to have created five new plagues which supposedly "killed over 5 million goats and whores in Uzbekistan." Prior to his plague research, Borat worked as an ice maker, animal sperm retriever, gypsy catcher, and someone who removes dead birds from a computer.

Borat was nominally pagan for most of his life, sometimes remarking that his people "worship the hawk." However, in the film he attends a Pentecostal church service and later converts his village neighbors to Christianity.

Borat greatly admires the political views of Joseph Stalin, and claims that both he and Stalin are strong men with powerful "khram" (genitals). He is strongly against women's rights and was quite aghast upon learning of women's suffrage. In his spare time, he enjoys playing ping pong, sunbathing while clad in a lime green "mankini", disco dancing, spitting, sitting on comfortable chairs, and taking pictures of unsuspecting women while they "make toilet". He also enjoys hunting Jews in his homeland.

However, Kathleen Tracy states in her book "Sacha Baron Cohen: The Unauthorized Biography: From Cambridge to Kazakhstan" that the character Borat was never intended to be entirely consistent, meaning that incongruities in Borat's personal details can be noticed if they are examined closely.

Da Ali G Show

Borat is shown in each episode of Da Ali G Show, doing satirical interviews with often-unwitting subjects in the United Kingdom and the United States. The segments were shot in low-quality video to maintain the satirical feel of poor quality television (similar to Chanel 9 segments on The Fast Show). Of Ali G, Borat comments on his website, "I appear on Alee G shows — He idiot, but it give me lot of girls & pickles; I like ..."My name a borat sadievye i like very much and her vagine hag like sleve of wizard

The Borat segments on Da Ali G Show use the rock-rendition Russian folk tune "Korobeiniki" as the theme song for the UK version.

Guide to Britain

Shown as part of a six-part Ali G show originally on Channel 4 (UK) in March 2000.

Five Borat sketches were shown, in the form of "Guides" to "Etiquette", Hunting, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Henley. The "Guides" to "English Gentlemen", "Politics" and "Sport" were also filmed at this time but released at a later date as part of Ali G DVDs.

Guide to USA 1

Shown as part of a six part Ali G Show originally on HBO (USA) in February 2003.

Six Borat sketches were shown, in the form of "Guides" to "Dating", "Etiquette", "Acting", "Men", "Baseballs" and "The (Deep) South". A "Guide to Animals" was filmed but released at a later date as part of an Ali G DVD. (Alyssa Greenfill was his co-star).

Guide to USA 2

Shown as part of a six-part Ali G Show originally on HBO (USA) in July 2004. (C4 was the UK channel where Ali G and Borat originally appeared, and the series for America was a HBO/C4 co-production).

Six Borat sketches were shown, in the form of "Guides" to "Wine Tasting", "Politics", "Country Music", "Hobbies", "Buying a House" and "Jobs" (careers). A "Guide to Hunting" was filmed but only aired in the UK.

Films

Ali G Indahouse

Borat had a small role in Cohen's film Ali G Indahouse as a Kazakhstani diplomat, in which he greets Cohen's character Ali G with a hug and kiss, but is rebuffed before he calls Ali G a "cocksucker". In the end, Borat performs a hip-hop duet with superstar Max Allard.

The "Movie Film"

Main article: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Subtitled Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the film Borat is mockumentary comedy. Most of those appearing in the film are not paid performers, but real people whom Borat met on his journey. The film was distributed by 20th Century Fox, and directed by Larry Charles. It premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released across Europe and North America on November 3, 2006.

The film follows Borat in his travels across the United States, as he commits cultural solecisms and exposes a few American ones. Over the course of the film, Borat falls in love with Pamela Anderson after watching a rerun of Baywatch, and vows to make her his wife.

The film opened at # 1 in the U.S., taking in $26.4 million on a limited release of 837 screens during its first weekend, beating Fahrenheit 9/11 as the biggest opening weekend for a film released in fewer than 1,000 cinemas. Cohen celebrated the release of the film with a host of promotional 'in-character' interviews.

The film expanded its release on the second weekend to 2,566 screens, where it took in an additional $29 million.

In 2007, Cohen won a Golden Globe for "Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical Or Comedy".

With a production budget of $18,000,000, the film has grossed $128,501,044 domestically and another $128,848,505 internationally, for a worldwide gross of $257,349,549 by mid-March 2007.

Book

In 2007, a book from Cohen was released entitled," Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan/ Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of U.S. and A.", with humor about both countries in a similar vein to the movie.

Language

When ostensibly using his native Kazakh language, Borat speaks neither Kazakh nor Russian (the state and official languages of Kazakhstan), contrary to what might be assumed by the audience and the people with whom he interacts onscreen. Instead, he speaks mainly Hebrew mixed few times with phrases that bear a similarity to Polish and other Slavic languages, such as "jagshemash (jak się masz)", "chenquieh (dziękuję)" and "dsen dobre" (Polish "how are you", "thank you", and "good day" respectively). He tends to talk mainly about having 'sexy time' with the hot girls and goes round using the phrases- 'Very nice!' or 'how much?' (for sex) or 'I like/I`m liking you'

The Borat character also lapses into Hebrew while purporting to sing the Kazakhstani national anthem at a Savannah Sand Gnats game. He kept repeating a famous Hebrew folk song: קום בחור עצל וצא לעבודה (kum bachur atzel ve'tze la'avoda - "get up lazy guy and go to work [...]" ) [...] קוקוריקו קוקוריקו התרנגול קרא (kookooriku kookooriku ha'tarnegol kara) ("cock-a-doodle-do the cock has crowed"), and also called Kazakhstan a distant/desolate place (literally "hole" (חור)(hor)).

His producer Azamat Bagatov is supposedly speaking the Kazakh language, but in reality he is speaking Western Armenian. The interactions between Borat and Azamat are ad-libbed.

In the opening scenes in the town of Kuzcek, because these scenes were shot in Glod, Romania, the villagers speak Romanian. As in the rest of the film, what is spoken does not match the translation given in the subtitles. For example, when Borat's wife Oksana speaks, the subtitles show her telling Borat to "Do something useful and dig his mother's grave," when she is actually telling him to go into "the devil's cunt."

Fate

Sacha Baron Cohen has stated that the character of Borat, alongside his Ali G character, will be retired. Borat's last appearance was at Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Event for Autism Education television special.

Criticism and controversy

See also Da Ali G Show: Controversy

Criticized as unfair smear against Kazakhstan

A number of commentators have argued that the film's portrayal of the people of Kazakhstan is unfair and unjustified.

In August 2004, the Chief Rabbi of Kazakhstan, addressing an international religious conference in Brussels, stated that in 10 years in the country he had never faced anti-Semitism. He praised the Government of Kazakhstan for its treatment of the Jewish community.

On October 19, the Associated Press reported that Kazakhstan's Deputy Foreign Minister, Rakhat Aliyev, had invited Cohen to visit Kazakhstan to see how inaccurate his portrayals were. In an interview, Aliyev asserted that:

His trip could yield a lot of discoveries—that women not only travel inside buses but also drive their own cars, that we make wine from grapes, that Jews can freely attend synagogues and so on.

Denigration of Gypsies

Borat's movie has frequently been accused of promoting antiziganism. The scenes supposedly filmed in Borat's Kazakhstani village were actually filmed in an impoverished Roma (gypsy) village of Glod in Romania. USA Today reports that poverty-stricken villagers were offered between $3.30 and $5.50 to bring animals into their houses and perform other acts some critics called humiliating. The studio contends that participants were paid double the rate recommended by the Romanian film office for extras. The villagers (none of whom knew English) were also told that they were being filmed on a documentary for American Awareness on the hardships of village life, and were told that Cohen was a famous documentary host called Nicolae Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Not only did the villagers have suspicions about the film itself for its humiliating acts but they also were suspicious of the name Nicolae Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej which was a mixture of the names of the two main Romanian Communist Leaders Nicolae Ceauşescu, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.

Two villagers of Glod have hired reparation attorney Ed Fagan to sue the makers of the film for $30 million for human rights abuses. Fagan intends to submit lawsuits in New York and Florida state courts, as well as in Frankfurt, Germany.

Denigration of Jews

The Borat character has elicited some controversy, mostly related to his frequent displays of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Baron Cohen, who is himself Jewish, has explained his character's racism by stating that the segments are a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry," rather than a display of racism by Baron Cohen himself. "Borat essentially works a tool. By himself pretending to be anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice," Cohen explains to Rolling Stone. Cohen, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, says he wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference:

When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.

Regarding the enthusiastic response to his song "In My Country There is Problem" (detailed below), he says, "Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism."

However, the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based group that “...combat[s] anti-Semitism and bigotry of all kinds”, complained to HBO after Borat performed a country western song titled "In My Country There Is Problem" that called on people to 'throw the Jew down the well', warning them that 'you must be careful of his teeth' and that 'you must grab him by his horns', to applause and participation from some members of an audience in Tucson, Arizona. The full chorus goes: "Throw the Jew down the well/So my country can be free/You must grab him by his horns/Then we have a big party."

In another scene, Borat visits the Serengeti Range ranch in Texas, where the owner of the ranch confides that he believes the Holocaust was a necessity for Germany. He further implies that he would have no problem running a ranch where people can hunt, in Borat's words, "deer... then Jew."

An interview with James Broadwater, an evangelical Christian and Republican candidate for U.S. Congress from Mississippi, caused Broadwater to receive some hateful emails after an episode of Da Ali G Show aired in which Broadwater stated that Jews will go to Hell. He was told that the interview would be played in foreign countries to teach others about the American political system. Broadwater later posted a letter on his website denouncing Da Ali G Show, explaining that his statement referred to a theological belief that anyone that "accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour will spend eternity in Heaven, while everyone who rejects Him will spend eternity in Hell." Broadwater did not apologise for his comments. Instead, he insisted that "the liberal, anti-God media needs to be brought under the strict control of the FCC, and that as soon as possible."

In the film, Borat continues his anti-Semitic stance, such as when he mentions his decision to avoid flying while in America. Borat says that his colleague "insists we not fly in case the Jews repeat their attack of 9/11". Later, he finds himself in a bed and breakfast run by a kindly old Jewish couple, he tries to "escape", and throws money at two cockroaches that have crawled into his room, apparently fearing that the Jewish owners have shapeshifted into the cockroaches. Ironically, Borat is completely oblivious to his hosts' religious beliefs when he first meets them, despite the immediate evidence: the man wears a kippah and the woman openly displays her paintings of Jewish people all over the house, but Borat does not understand until the woman explicitly tells him "I'm Jewish."

Cohen later joked, upon receiving a British comedy award, that Borat was a guest of honour at the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust in Tehran.

Iraq war sarcasm

In January 2005, after convincing the authorities that he was shooting a documentary, Cohen managed to infuriate a crowd at a rodeo in Salem, Virginia. The crowd first cheered at the beginning of his statements of "support" for the Iraq war:

"My name a Borat. I come from Kazakhstan. Can I say first, we support your war of terror! May we show our support to our boys in Iraq. May U.S. and A. kill every single terrorist. May George Bush drink the blood of every single man, woman and child of Iraq! May you destroy their country so that for the next thousand years not even a single lizard will survive in their desert."

It was notable that the spectators were outraged at his off-key rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, but didn't seem at all displeased when Borat mentioned the parts about drinking the blood of the Iraqis and making Iraq uninhabitable.

"If he had been out there a minute longer, I think somebody would have shot him," said one witness. "People were booing him, flipping him off." For his own safety, Cohen was escorted from the venue. (Much of the event appears in the movie. A credulous news report about the incident, aired on a local television station, is included in the DVD extras).

Conflicts with Kazakhstan's government

Baron Cohen has also been accused of creating a derogatory image of Kazakhstan.

In November 2005, following Borat's hosting of the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry voiced its concerns about the character. Spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev told a news conference: "We view Mr Cohen's behaviour at the MTV Europe Music Awards as utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with the ethics and civilised behaviour of Kazakhstan's people", concluding "We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind."

Baron Cohen has since posted a video on the "Official Borat Homesite" where Borat responds to Ashykbayev in character. In the video, Borat states, in part:

In response to Mr. Ashykbayev's comments, I'd like to state I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my government's decision to sue this Jew. Since the 2003 Tuleyakiv reforms, Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world. Women can now travel on inside of bus, homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats, and age of consent has been raised to eight years old. Please, captain of industry; I invite you to come to Kazakhstan where we have incredible natural resources, hardworking labour, and some of the cleanest prostitutes in whole of Central Asia. Goodbye! Dzienkuje!

Reuters quoted an unnamed Western diplomat as saying "They (the Government of Kazakhstan) are damned if they do [respond] and damned if they don't," he said. "It's sort of unfortunate that he hit upon Kazakhstan." Another unnamed source inside Kazakhstan's Washington embassy called Borat a "one-man diplomatic wrecking ball."

The next week, the government hired two Western public relations firms to counter Borat's claims, and ran a four-page advertisement in The New York Times. The ad carried testimonials about the nation's democracy, education system and the power and influence enjoyed by women. On a previous occasion, Borat responded to such official complaints by issuing his own "press release", which consisted of randomly arranged Cyrillic characters. He would again respond when promoting his movie in front of the Kazakhstani Embassy in Washington, roundly denouncing the advertisements as "Uzbek propaganda".

On December 13 2005, the right to use the domain name www.borat.kz was suspended, and the site attached to it was closed down. The domain-issuing body said that they took this action since false names were given for the site's administrators, and also because the site www.borat.kz was hosted outside Kazakhstan. However, the stated underlying cause of the action was in order to censor the content of the site: "We've done this so he can't badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name," Nurlan Isin, President of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, told Reuters. "He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains."

Reporters Without Borders petitioned the ICANN ombudsman to intervene and reverse this decision. Meanwhile, the "Official Borat Homesite" was moved to the .tv domain, where it remains. As of October 14, 2007, the former domain name was still suspended. The 2006 annual human rights report released by the US State Department cited the loss of the .kz website as evidence of the Kazakhstani government's efforts to curb free speech.

Borat has, however, recently been defended by Dariga Nazarbayeva, a politician and daughter of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev. She stated on a national news programme Karavan that Cohen's website "damaged our image much less than its closure, which was covered by all global news agencies," and "We should not be afraid of humour and we shouldn't try to control everything, I think."

White House "visit"

On September 28 2006, Cohen appeared in character as Borat at the White House gates to give a press conference and invite "Supreme Warlord Premier George Walter Bush" to a screening of his forthcoming film, along with "O.J. Simpson", "Melvin Gibsons" and other "American dignitaries", after which they would join him for drinks at Hooters. Secret Service Uniformed Division Officers would not admit him on to the grounds. The apparent publicity stunt was likely timed to coincide with an official visit by Kazakhstani President Nazarbayev the following day.

Complaint by Gypsies in Germany

On October 18, 2006, European Centre for Antiziganism Research, which pleads against discrimination of Gypsies, filed a complaint with prosecutors based on Borat's comments about Gypsies in his film. The complaint accuses him of defamation and inciting violence against the ethnic group.

Avian Flu "Gift"

At a press conference just hours before the live broadcast of the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards, he shocked local and international journalists in Lisbon, Portugal, by bringing a bag of birds from Romania (the first European country to detect avian influenza) as a gift, then proceeded to say he was sorry that they had all died.

Victims of Borat hoaxes

WAPT (Jackson, Mississippi) TV news producer Dharma Arthur states in Newsweek she lost her job as a result of her booking Borat on a local morning news program. At the time of the appearance, she was unaware of Cohen's act, despite the fact that as a journalist, she had a professional obligation to establish his authenticity before allowing him on air . During an interview with anchor Brad McMullan, Borat made sexual and scatological references, kissed McMullan, and later disrupted a live weather report. She said: "Because of him, my boss lost faith in my abilities and second-guessed everything I did... I spiralled into depression, and... was released from my contract... It took me three months to find another job, and now I'm thousands of dollars in debt and struggling to keep my house out of foreclosure... How upsetting that a man who leaves so much harm in his path is lauded as a comedic genius."

The broadcast, including the initial interview, the disrupted weather report, and several behind-the-scenes shots made by Borat's own film crew, is seen in the Borat movie.

Not all hoax victims threaten to sue, however. Behind-the-scenes interviews with Randall Shelley ("Guide to Baseball"), Danny Passmore ("Guide to Hobbies USA"), Jennifer Defrancisco/Charles Di Cagno ("Guide to Acting"), Ken Goldberg ("Guide to Being a Real Man") and Peta Heskell ("Guide to English Gentlemen") have all resulted in the subjects deciding not to sue.

Litigation

• The state prosecutor in Hamburg, Germany, filed a complaint against Mr. Cohen, accusing him of slander, inciting violence against the Sinti and Roma Gypsy groups, and violating Germany's anti-discrimination law.
• Two frat boys featured in the movie have filed an anonymous complaint against corporations and persons affiliated with Mr. Cohen in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California, for fraud, rescission of contract, common law false light, statutory false light, appropriation of likeness, and negligent infliction of emotional distress. One of the plaintiffs has been revealed as Justin Seay, a graduate of the University of South Carolina and former Vice President of the Chi Psi Fraternity. On December 11 2006, an L.A. Judge denied the pair a restraining order to remove them from the film.
• Cindy Streit, the owner of Etiquette Training Service in Birmingham, Alabama, has claimed mistreatment and fraud after Borat attended a dinner party and subjected her and the other guests to "ridicule and humiliation". Ms. Streit has hired attorney Gloria Allred, who is demanding an investigation by the California attorney general. Allred says her client agreed to be filmed as part of a documentary for Belarus television, and for those purposes only. She is asking the attorney general to consider all appropriate relief, including a percentage of the profits from the film. 20th Century Fox denied the claims and stated that there was nothing in writing about only being shown in Belarus; the studio also asserted that the release form clearly stated the footage could be distributed worldwide.
• Michael Psenicska, the owner of the driving school in Perry Hall, Maryland, has filed a lawsuit seeking $100,000 in compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages. His lawsuit states that Twentieth Century Fox and Sacha Cohen fraudulently convinced him to approve his appearance in the movie by telling him that it would be for a documentary of immigrants integrating into American life.
• Jeffrey Lemerond, who was shown running and yelling "go away" as Borat attempted to hug strangers on a New York street, filed a legal case claiming his image was used in the film illegally, and that he suffered "public ridicule, degradation and humiliation" as a result. The case was dismissed.

See also

• Mahir Çağrı

External links

• boratonline.co.uk Semi-official Borat site since 1999 - contains interviews with Dan Mazer and Sacha Baron Cohen
• Borat at IMDb
• Video interview with Borat on Movies.com

Articles

• NPR Fresh Air Interview of Sacha Baron Cohen
• Interview with Dan Mazer about Borat, Producer of Da Ali G Show on April 23, 2003 on boratonline.co.uk
• "Did Ali G Go Too Far?" on August 13, 2004 in The Jewish Week
• "The Borat Doctrine" posted September 13, 2004 in The New Yorker
• "'Ali G' Comedian Riles Rodeo Crowd" on January 14, 2005 on CBS News
• "No Joke" by Kenneth Neil Cukier on December 28, 2005 in Foreign Affairs, on what the removal of the Borat site from the .kz domain portends for the administration of the global domain name system
• Borat on Gotuit Video
• And Now for the World According to Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen
• "Borat in Paris" on October 9, 2006
• "Offensive and unfair, Borat's antics leave a nasty aftertaste" by Kazakhstan Ambassador Erlan Idrissov on October 4, 2006 in The Guardian
• "Behind the Schemes", Newsweek, October 16, 2006 (profiling several people who became unwitting Borat punch lines)
• "Borat vs. Kazakhstan", brandchannel, October 30, 2006 (discusses Borat's affect on Westerners' perception of Kazakhstan)
• "Mahir to Borat: I Sue You!", Wired, November 2006 (Q&A with Borat look-a-like Mahir Cagri) "Can Borat be Sued by (Mahir Cagri)?", Electronic News Network, November 2006 (evidence Borat was developed before Mahir Cagri's internet fame)
• "New Borat Book Contains 100 Photos of Naked Kazakhstan Women", Russian Spy, November 2006
• "We survived Stalin and we can certainly overcome Borat's slurs" by Kazakhstan Ambassador Erlan Idrissov on November 4, 2006 in The Times
• "Borat 2 - A satirical explanation of the Borat movie."