Central Asia

Lost in Google’s Translation

by Sarah Kendzior
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Last week Google Translate announced that it now has over 200 million monthly users. As Alexis Madrigal noted in the Atlantic, this means that Google is now translating as much in a day as a human being would in a year – an amount of text equivalent to a million books. Google Translate is far [...]

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A Bit of Gushing

by Joshua Foust

I had the pleasure of attending the Eurasia Foundation’s 2012 Gala Dinner last night. They were using it to kick off their Sarah Carey program, which tries to connect young professionals in the US with young professionals in Eurasia, and to give their first annual Sarah Carey Award for the advancement of civil society. Their [...]

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Guest Post: Will EurAsEC grow into Eurasian economic union?

by Joshua Foust
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The following is a guest post written by Azamat Seitov of the Regional Policy Foundation, Polit.uz. It was originally published there. *** The last of the EurAsEC summit in Moscow demonstrated that for all the optimistic public statements, the integration processes are not advancing well in practice. It was predicted that the summit will announce [...]

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Kremlin Ex Machina

by Nathan Hamm
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Russia clearly has influence and leverage in Central Asia like no other power. Russian remains the lingua franca of the region. The region’s economies connects to the world largely through infrastructure that flows through Russia. Household economies too, are kept afloat by opportunities to work in Russia. The Russian security and intelligence organs maintain robust [...]

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Romney and Russia and Around We Go

by Casey_Michel
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I don’t want to spend too much time dissecting Mitt Romney’s war-path to the presidency — the one that’s tarred anything he’s touched, and dropped his unfavorability numbers to record lows — because A) I’d hate to alienate any secret Romneycons among my friends, and B) while I do have enough time, I’d rather spend it transcribing [...]

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Just… Wow

by Joshua Foust
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Tara McKelvey reports on human rights in Uzbekistan, sort of: As I stood at the gate, I held my passport and a notebook filled with the names of both kinds: dissidents who had been outspoken about human rights abuses, along with others who were willing to talk as long as they could remain anonymous. The [...]

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Why Did the Taliban Kill a Chinese Student in Peshawar?

by yaqubjan
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On February 28, a 40-year old Chinese female was shot dead in Peshawar, Pakistan along with her male interpreter. According to various news sources, she was a “tourist,” which is surprising considering that the Chinese are famous for group tours and that even the boldest of female travelers is unlikely to engage in tourism in [...]

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Why Central Asia Isn’t Revolting

by Joshua Foust
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Scott Radnitz has a provocative take in Foreign Policy: On the surface, Central Asia would appear to be ripe for a popular uprising modeled on the Arab Spring. The “stans” are home to repressive governments, high unemployment, inequality, and widespread corruption. Over a year has passed since the wave of protests began to spread across [...]

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The Danger of Over-Generalizing

by Joshua Foust
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Frank Jacobs has a really interesting piece in the Opinionator about border areas and government control. But there exists another type of border, one that doesn’t reflect back our image. In vampiric asymmetry, it offers only the void. There are no barriers, no officials, no capitals on the other side. The world as we know [...]

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Framing Politics and the NDN

by Joshua Foust

The AP report: Pakistan’s defense minister said Tuesday that the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition. Pakistan closed the crossings over two months ago in response to American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts. The closure [...]

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