tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1482605996408837415.post5211096471394258597..comments2010-10-23T00:49:34.943+01:00Comments on Sauti Ndogo: Kyrgyzstan - what's Russia up to?Sauti Ndogohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17523162606546340417noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1482605996408837415.post-292031063930266522010-06-17T17:28:39.809+01:002010-06-17T17:28:39.809+01:00Thanks for the encouragement, Foghorn! The blog ma...Thanks for the encouragement, Foghorn! The blog may take a little time to find a comfortable voice and tone. It's a matter of steering between pomposity and whimsicality.<br /><br />There are plenty of views now on the web about Kyrgyzstan. I'm going to try to keep off the subject in this blog for a while, unless there are major developments that I could make something of - e.g. something regarding the media.Sauti Ndogohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17523162606546340417noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1482605996408837415.post-63895609742590049752010-06-16T17:26:41.403+01:002010-06-16T17:26:41.403+01:00There was also an excellent summary of the ethnic ...There was also an excellent summary of the ethnic factors at play in this worrying development, from a local correspondent on BBC Radio 4's "Today" on 16th June. It should be available on BBC i-player, both within the UK and elsewhere, until 23rd June. It was transmitted at about 07.20, i.e an hour and 20 minutes into the programme.<br /><br />I suppose Britons in particular could take several attitudes to this story. Sadly, in our geographical ignorance, the Little Englander mentality, it's all too easy to trivialise it and say something like "Gosh, Osh",as if there could ever be a capital city with that name. Taking a more honest view of it, as the correspondent did this morning, is to see the same influences at work, perhaps, as led to the tragedy that was the Balkan wars of the 1990s in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. The correspondent (sorry, I can't remember his name) suggested that what we are seeing is in part a response to post-USSR conditions, albeit 20 years after the break up of that entity.<br /><br />Let us only hope that we do not have another Chechnya/South Ossetia on our hands. That would be too tragic for words. <br /><br />Enjoying the blog, Sauti. May it long continue!Foghorn59noreply@blogger.com