Akipress Re-Introduces Commentary Feature

The News Agency Akipress, according to statistics the most popular news agency in Kyrgyzstan, established a commentary feature. Readers now can leave their comment and start to discuss the information provided by the agency. Public opinion making as its best (uncontrolled).

In its announcement Akipress informs readers about the forced decision in February 2009 to close the commentary feature on its website. As far as I remember, Akipress had started to delete old comments long before that, making it impossible to go back and get an impression of public discussions in times of the Tulip Revolution, the For Reforms protests or the United Front actions. Back then, commenting on political events was actually widespread:

Opening up the possibility to comment on news is good news and – as first reactions show – welcomed by the public in Kyrgyzstan:

 

Der “Arabische Frühling” als Herausforderung für Zentralasien

In der Ausgabe Nr. 43-44 der Zentralasienanalysen fragen wir nach den Potentialen für Protest in Zentralasien:

To download the report follow the link: ZentralasienAnalysen43-44-1

German Delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly addressing Keldibekov

To download the letter in pdf follow the link: 110706 Brief OSZE Kiljunen

Slavoj Žižek and Expertism in Central Asia

Recently I went to Freie University to visit a lecture by Slavoy Zizek. His performance was all one could possibly hope for. And his ideas were very stimulating. His reading of Hegel’s philosophy as the very foundation of the modern idea of contingency (or the necessity for it) came quite unexpected. I never really read Hegel and always felt repelled by the idea of some guiding Weltgeist, something I considered the very end to the idea of contingency. I know, it sounds ignorant but, well, at least I made it to Zizek’s lecture. And Zizek continued his presentation with another killing of god (very funny: god – the bad programmer). With god gone there seems no hope left for a final solution to the problem of contingency. All the more irritating are attempts by capitalism (and before that communism) to fill the gap and present the world as a reality with no choice left but economic rationalization. However, instead of falling into despair because of such gloomy double outcome (no solution to contingency and the stupidity of capitalism), Zizek took the chance to ask for another revolution and called on us to overcome current limits to pure freedom or just ‘thinking’, as he phrased it. Since we were in the sphere of academia, he finished by claiming that the current Bologna process is a dictatorship, repressively simulating the representation of the capitalist need for technical solutions only. Bologna stands for a world considered to be a cumulation of problems that call for experts to deal with them. In Zizek’s words Bologna turns out to be one face of the new god and another end to the idea of contingency and the contingent making of our world. This comparison awakened the rebel in many of us; well, and it reminded me very much of the world of development aid in Central Asia and the question for development in general and the group of people responsible for its management: the community of experts.

Наблюдательный совет ОТРК и сама ОТРК под угрозой

Pdf: Торага+Жогорку+Кенеша+КР