Liveblogging the SCO Summit

No, I'm not really liveblogging the summit. But I am here at it -- or at least in the same city as it. Naturally, media access is pretty limited, and they have a big press room set up some miles away from the actual summit site. But they have a live TV feed of the proceedings in here. It's quite a lineup -- Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Hamid Karzai. As I type this I'm watching Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiev give his welcoming speech. It's in Russian and I can't understand much, but I can understand words like "friendship," "education," I think I even caught "ecological," which all suggests that the speech is nothing about the SCO's actual purpose. Aren't these guys all too busy crushing dissent to waste their time listen to all these inane speeches?

This is where I am now:

Later there will be a press conference at the summit site. I am a somewhat late addition to the press pool here and so I don't have permission to go to it. I thought I was going to be able to go -- a Chinese reporter sitting next to me in the press room (who, if there is ever a Chinese remake of Austin Powers, should definitely play the lead) -- is too hungover from last night and so gave me his pass. Sadly, that didn't work.

You can see two setup pieces I wrote on the summit, one on EurasiaNet.org and another in the Washington Times. More to come.