BBC Radio 4
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2011
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
'Politics at its most brutal, its most basic, democracy as a demolition derby.' That's Mark Mardell's view as he contemplates months of Republican infighting ahead of next year's US presidential election. The Moscow coup of twenty years ago: Bridget Kendall, who was there during that eventful August back in 1991, says it could so easily have succeeded. The smiles seem to have faded somewhat in newly-independent South Sudan but Robin Denselow, just back from the capital Juba, says they still revere their cattle. David Hargreaves has been attending a spectacular riverside religious festival in central India and Karishma Vaswani's had to call in the Indonesian witch doctor after strange goings-on at her house in Djakarta.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is from our own correspondent. |
| 0:02.6 | We make an edition for the BBC World Service as well, |
| 0:05.3 | but this is a download of the latest Radio 4 programme, |
| 0:08.4 | and here to introduce it, as ever, Kate Ady. |
| 0:11.2 | Today, 15 months to go and counting, |
| 0:13.9 | Americans gear up for the wacky races which are the Republican primaries. |
| 0:18.7 | Independent smiles fade in South Sudan, but we hear they're still singing |
| 0:23.4 | songs to their beloved cattle. There's a night of exuberant fire-raising on one of India's |
| 0:29.3 | holiest rivers, and a witch-doctor's called in after strange goings-on at our correspondence |
| 0:34.9 | house in Indonesia. The American President's Black Battlebus is back in the garage. |
| 0:41.2 | Mr. Obama has returned to the White House after his three-day road trip through the Midwest. |
| 0:46.2 | He tried to woo the country folk with a multi-million dollar plan for rural businesses |
| 0:50.7 | and talked of other initiatives aimed at reducing an unemployment rate |
| 0:55.0 | stubbornly stuck around the 9% mark. As he spoke, various Republicans were doing their best |
| 1:01.5 | to bolster their chances of securing their party's nomination to run against Mr. Obama |
| 1:06.4 | for the presidency next year. Mark Mardell says their efforts are certain to produce good copy in the |
| 1:12.5 | months ahead. They'll also provide a display of democracy in the roar. One of my favorite TV |
| 1:18.5 | cartoons as a child was wacky races. I hugged the sofa as improbable characters in unlikely |
| 1:24.6 | vehicles, careered around a course, smashing and crashing, plotting and conniving, |
| 1:29.4 | in seemingly endless contests of wills and wiles. |
| 1:33.3 | Now I feel like I'm having flashbacks. |
| 1:35.8 | This time it's not Dick Dastardly and Penelope pitstop, |
... |
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