Let me get this straight -- Ukraine, the golden boy of the Bush's pro-democracy push, is sanctioning (or even worse, failing to monitor) arms sails to the Sudanese? I would expect Russia or China to pull a stunt like this, but Ukraine? I'm sorry. Just because you call yourself a demoocracy, does not give you carte blanche to send the Sudanese Russian-style tanks. I'm having a real difficult time distinguishing why Ukraine and Georgia are any different from Russia and Uzbekistan other than the former two have more lobbyists in Washington, DC and more paid advertising in the Washington Post.
US tightens vigil on hijacked ship, says arms were headed for Sudan not Kenya
By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN and BARBARA SURK | Associated Press Writers
8:12 AM CDT, September 29, 2008
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) _ U.S. warships and helicopters on Monday surrounded a hijacked cargo ship loaded with Sudan-bound tanks and other arms to keep the weapons from falling "into the wrong hands," an American Navy spokesman said.
Lt. Nathan Christensen, a deputy spokesman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said the shipment of 33 Russian-designed tanks, rifles and ammunition on the Ukrainian-operated Faina was headed for Sudan — not Kenya as previously claimed by Kenyan officials.
The U.S. fears the armaments onboard the Ukrainian vessel may end up with al-Qaida-linked Islamic insurgents who have been fighting the shaky U.N.-backed Somali transitional government since late 2006.
"We maintain a vigilant watch over the ship and we will remain on station while negotiations between the pirates and the shipping company are going on," Christensen told The Associated Press.
Pirates seized the Faina's Ukrainian, Russian and Latvian crew off Somalia's lawless coast on Thursday as it headed to Kenya and anchored the vessel off Somalia's coast near the central town of Hobyo. One crew member has died.
Christensen did not specify whether the arms were intended for the Khartoum-based Sudanese government, or southern Sudan, which was granted a degree of autonomy under a 2005 peace deal that also guaranteed the oil-rich region a referendum on full independence in 2011.
The U.N. has imposed an arms embargo on weapons headed to Sudan's Darfur conflict zone, but the ban does not cover other weapons sales to the Khartoum government or the southern Sudan's autonomous government.
Kenyan officials on Monday declined to discuss the destination of the weapons. Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Valentyn Mandriyevsky said the ministry was not dealing in weapons trade and didn't know where the cargo was bound.
A spokesman for Ukraine's arms trader, Ukrspetexport, had no immediate comment.
Western intelligence reports a few days ago said the ultimate destination was Sudan and that Kenya was only the transshipment point, said one Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing classified material. He said the issue became confused after Kenyan leaders had publicly referred to the tanks as their own.
Christensen said an unspecified number of destroyers and cruisers have joined the San Diego-based USS destroyer Howard within a 10-mile radius of the Faina.
"The safety of the ship's crew and cargo is a paramount concern to us," Christensen said, adding additional warships and helicopters were deployed to prevent the weapons from falling "into the wrong hands."
There have been 24 reported attacks in Somalia this year, according to the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center. Last year, U.S. naval helicopters fired on pirate skiffs tied to a hijacked Japanese tanker carrying 30,000 tons of benzene after they feared that pirates might try to use it as a floating bomb in a middle eastern oil port.
Seizing ships has become an important source of income for pirates in Somalia, which is riven between rival clan-based warlords since they overthrew a socialist dictator in 1991.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The relationship between the Georgian script and Georgian nationalism
I find the Georgian script (mxedruli) extremely interesting, which is one of the reasons I got interested in the Georgian language in the first place. The script reminded me of something out of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and it just looks cool when you write it, though a University of Chicago linguist I once knew joked that it must be a cruel joke to be born Georgian and dyslexic because several of the letters are variations on the numbers 3 and 6, backwards, forwards, and upside down. In any case, the Georgian script, like the Armenian and Cyrillic scripts, is based on a modified Greek alphabet. The Armenian script is the oldest of the bunch but not by much, since the Armenians claim they were the first to convert to Christianity and the Georgians second, thus, necessitating translations of Greek biblical texts sometime in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Cyrillic (to be more exact, Glagolitic) was a a relative late-bloomer and didn't arrive in southeastern Europe until approximately the tenth century after Cyril (pronounced Kiril and hence why Russians say "kirilik" as opposed to "cyrillic") and Methodius travelled to modern-day Bulgaria/Macedonia to translate Greek biblical texts for the edification of the illiterate slavs to the north and east. Thus, the Georgians take great pride in that they had invented an alphabet and had a decent pantheon of epic authors/poets well before the slavs, of which they love to include their despised Russians.
What Georgians tend to overlook is that most of their early literature was taken straight from the Greeks or Persians with subtle variations on themes. That's not to downplay their literary feats, but they never had a written literary tradition approaching that of the Greeks or Persians and Arabs until well into the 11th and 12th centuries. Up until that time when east and west Georgia were unified by King David the Builder, the majority of the Georgians lived in the countryside and in the mountains and retained strong oral traditions with eastern and western Georgian remaining almost completely distinct Caucasian lanaguages. Even then, the centers of trade, such as Tbilisi and Batumi remained majority non-Georgian, including Turks, Armenians and Persians, so the most common languages used in urban bazaars would have been Persian, Turkish and Armenian, and Perso-Arabic script would still have been widely used since this is what the Ottoman and Persian bureaucracy and traders would've used as the equivalent of Latin script in the region, just like they would have in Central Asia, western China, and northern India for almost a millenium.
Because of Georgia's intertwined culture and history with the Middle East, there is a part of Georgian script that contains elements of Pahlavi, which was the script the Persians used between the era of the Achaemenids when cunneiform was still in use to the time the Ummayad Arabs exploded into southwestern and Central Asia in the 8th and 9th centuries and forced Arabic script to be adapted to a variety of non-semitic languages. Because of this semitic influence, Georgian lacks capital letters and has about ten more letters than ancient Greek that represent guttoral or aspirated noises that would be familiar to any speaker of Hebrew or Arabic. I often joke that it is impossible to speak Georgian correctly without spitting on the person with whom you are speaking, as I found out from my Georgian instructor at IUB slathering me in his spittle during our classes, so I had no choice but to do it back to him.
Georgian's a very bizarre language, but that's what makes it so interesting as one of the world's oldest languages that has survived alongside monolithic languages such as Greek, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Russian, which could have easily supplanted Georgian as a result of the overwhelming military and economic power of Georgia's neighbors throughout the centuries. The almost inexplicable is that it never happened, which I think is the greatest evidence of Georgians' resiliency as a people and culture, and one of the reasons why Georgians remain so nationalistic in a time when nationalism is fast fading as a unifying principle or condition of most western countries. The same applies to Armenia and Armenians, but the current political lines of that country have much less correspondence to the true historical lines than do the political lines of Georgia, which is perhaps the foremost reason that the current Georgian political leadership was willing to risk everything to get South Ossetia and Abkhazia back.
Sadly, until Georgians look past their difficult history and try to define the word "Georgian" slightly broader to include non-Georgians, they will never see the separatist regions or even the Armenian, Azeri and Kurdish minorities want to participate in Georgia's so-called democracy, and that's the true flaw in current US foreign policy -- we've encouraged Georgian nationalism on the pretext of defending a fledgling democracy, but the Georgians' very nationalism is undermining democracy in that country much more than the threat of Russian military force ever will.
Cyrillic (to be more exact, Glagolitic) was a a relative late-bloomer and didn't arrive in southeastern Europe until approximately the tenth century after Cyril (pronounced Kiril and hence why Russians say "kirilik" as opposed to "cyrillic") and Methodius travelled to modern-day Bulgaria/Macedonia to translate Greek biblical texts for the edification of the illiterate slavs to the north and east. Thus, the Georgians take great pride in that they had invented an alphabet and had a decent pantheon of epic authors/poets well before the slavs, of which they love to include their despised Russians.
What Georgians tend to overlook is that most of their early literature was taken straight from the Greeks or Persians with subtle variations on themes. That's not to downplay their literary feats, but they never had a written literary tradition approaching that of the Greeks or Persians and Arabs until well into the 11th and 12th centuries. Up until that time when east and west Georgia were unified by King David the Builder, the majority of the Georgians lived in the countryside and in the mountains and retained strong oral traditions with eastern and western Georgian remaining almost completely distinct Caucasian lanaguages. Even then, the centers of trade, such as Tbilisi and Batumi remained majority non-Georgian, including Turks, Armenians and Persians, so the most common languages used in urban bazaars would have been Persian, Turkish and Armenian, and Perso-Arabic script would still have been widely used since this is what the Ottoman and Persian bureaucracy and traders would've used as the equivalent of Latin script in the region, just like they would have in Central Asia, western China, and northern India for almost a millenium.
Because of Georgia's intertwined culture and history with the Middle East, there is a part of Georgian script that contains elements of Pahlavi, which was the script the Persians used between the era of the Achaemenids when cunneiform was still in use to the time the Ummayad Arabs exploded into southwestern and Central Asia in the 8th and 9th centuries and forced Arabic script to be adapted to a variety of non-semitic languages. Because of this semitic influence, Georgian lacks capital letters and has about ten more letters than ancient Greek that represent guttoral or aspirated noises that would be familiar to any speaker of Hebrew or Arabic. I often joke that it is impossible to speak Georgian correctly without spitting on the person with whom you are speaking, as I found out from my Georgian instructor at IUB slathering me in his spittle during our classes, so I had no choice but to do it back to him.
Georgian's a very bizarre language, but that's what makes it so interesting as one of the world's oldest languages that has survived alongside monolithic languages such as Greek, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Russian, which could have easily supplanted Georgian as a result of the overwhelming military and economic power of Georgia's neighbors throughout the centuries. The almost inexplicable is that it never happened, which I think is the greatest evidence of Georgians' resiliency as a people and culture, and one of the reasons why Georgians remain so nationalistic in a time when nationalism is fast fading as a unifying principle or condition of most western countries. The same applies to Armenia and Armenians, but the current political lines of that country have much less correspondence to the true historical lines than do the political lines of Georgia, which is perhaps the foremost reason that the current Georgian political leadership was willing to risk everything to get South Ossetia and Abkhazia back.
Sadly, until Georgians look past their difficult history and try to define the word "Georgian" slightly broader to include non-Georgians, they will never see the separatist regions or even the Armenian, Azeri and Kurdish minorities want to participate in Georgia's so-called democracy, and that's the true flaw in current US foreign policy -- we've encouraged Georgian nationalism on the pretext of defending a fledgling democracy, but the Georgians' very nationalism is undermining democracy in that country much more than the threat of Russian military force ever will.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Letter to a Georgian friend
Dear Georgian friend,
I don't think Misha will be leaving office before his five years are up, but I do think the median voter in Georgia won't forgive him anytime soon for overplaying his hand, particularly those Georgians who were residing in South Ossetia and Gori. If anything, Saakashvili will be looked upon as another Gamsakhurdia or Gorbachev who had little patience to bring divisive factions together in his own country through words and bargains as opposed to violence, and instead, appealed to his non-democratic, elitist base in a capital city or, even worse, completely removed from the country, for much of his political legitimacy.
I know it seems that I'm staunchly anti-Georgian these days because I don't agree with how President Bush has interacted with Georgia the past five years, but the reality is that foreign aid, in whatever form, can have unintended consequences and moral hazards, not the least because the people handing out the aid usually have not spent significant time with the people they are trying to help to sufficiently understand both their aspirations and limitations.
US foreign agricultural support, which Georgia receives, is a great example of the American foreign policy hypocrisy and self-interest at work where we, omniscient and omnipotent American foreign service workers, condition USAID or MCC money on land privatization and encourage inefficient subsistence farming at the expense of much more efficient Soviet collective farming (we tried the exact same thing in Iraq in regard to the state enterprises when we tried to "liberate" it and realized eventually that all we did was make people unemployed and liable to pick up a gun and go shoot someone). To make matters worse, we then do our tax-subsidized farmers in Iowa a favor by dropping thousands of tons of corn and wheat on Georgian soil with the expectation that giving the Georgians American food will somehow make them grateful, when in fact, the majority of this in-kind aid disappears in the country and is resold illegally (against US law -- not the recipeint country's), and this in turn only depresses commodity prices more that the subsistence farmers depend entirely on to survive.
Another such example is the construction of the trans-Georgian highway funded in large part with MCC funds. Although that's good and all that American taxpayers are helping subsidize car and truck use in Georgia, the fact is, both Turkey and Russia have large amounts of capital and they use Georgian roads much more than Americans ever do or will. I don't know how many countless Turkish trucks I saw on Georgian roads when I lived in Georgia, and so why is it that I have a financial or national security interest in seeing Turkish companies transport goods to Azerbaijan, Iran, and Central Asia when in fact Turkish companies have that very apparent economic interest and (the Tbilisi airport is sufficient proof of this) are willing to put up and risk large amounts of capital to keep their flow of consumer goods to the east open given the current situation in Southeastern Turkey.
Georgian friend, if you're a true capitalist (and I think you are), you see why foreign aid destroys the very incentive structure for raising capital. All across the United States, we have governments that issue bonds and we have corporations that manage toll roads for profit. The Georgians could do the exact same thing, but they have to turn to where the capital is, and that's neither the United States or Georgia. For godsake, the United States is literally broke. All the truly liquid money for high risk investing is in Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and China. The largest corporations in the world -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- were just nationalized by the US government this past Sunday, a few days after the Bush Administration announced its one billion aid initiative to Georgia. What does that say about our capital situation currently? I mean, the trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars for 30 years was not enough indication that the US wasn't exactly anymore the favorite, rich Uncle Sam to turn to for money, with which to build roads for Turks?
Americans are the last people that should be investing in Georgia right now. Turks, Iranians, and Russians should be, first and foremost, and then maybe other people like the Germans and Chinese if there comes a need for additional capital. You counter the Turks, Iranians, and Russians won't give your country capital, but I say that's more of a chicken and egg problem. These highly potential investors won't give your country capital because the they don't trust your politicians for taking on unnecessary political risks and nor do they trust the people that run your economic system for not practicing such common sense capital control/monitoring methods as external auditing and internal controls in corporations and governments.
You ask me what hell does this have to do with US foreign aid to Georgia? I ask you, why the hell when I see people getting laid off left and right from my firm and other large DC accounting firms and elderly and low-income people in cities like Cleveland and Youngstown being thrown out of their homes should American tax money be going to reward a country that did the equivalent of the greedy and selfish managers at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- they gambled big time on Americans' livelihoods without their full and informed consent as to the associated risks and lost the house -- literally.
Just like Americans are paying the price of not saving enough and hedging their financial risks these last two decades, it's time for Georgians to suffer the consequences of the choices made by their political leaders. I'm personally quite sick and tired of seeing money spent on a country when my homestate of Ohio has just as many economic problems as Georgia right now, and that economy has a much larger affect on the global economy, in particular Canada's, than Georgia ever will. Maybe it's not fair I say something like this, but Georgian friend, realize that I have self-interests, too, and that your self-interests and those of most Georgians are probably not the same as mine or those of most Americans.
Look. I'm consistent in my free market beliefs. I don't want to see the US government bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the sake of New York I-bankers and Chinese and Russian bond holders. That said, too many people in my country made stupid decisions, which they're now going to put on the backs of future generations to pay off. If you don't see the injustice when my country gives your country 200 dollars per man, woman, and child, and that's not actually coming out of current assets that my country currently has but rather out of the pockets of my salary 30 years down the road, then I guess we will never see eye to eye on why Americans should sacrifice so much for a country most Americans couldn't locate on a map (and most probably still can't) until a few weeks ago. Then again, most Georgians can't
locate my homestate of Ohio on a map, either, and the last time I checked, Ohio decided the 2004 election that gave Georgia it's beloved President Bush.
Finally, both you and another friend cite the Marshall Plan as being an example of US foreign aid doing good. However, both of you also fail to recognize that the Marshall Plan had nothing to do with backing certain politicians or policies in western Europe. The Marshall Plan was about getting food and construction materials to people who would surely starve or freeze to death otherwise. Yes, at some point the program did become political in the sense it was meant to send an obvious political signal to the Soviet controlled parts of Europe that the US supports its capitalist/democratic allies better than the Soviets support their communist/autocratic allies. However, in general, I think it's fair to say that there was no political pretext originally behind the Marshall Plan. If you don't see the political pretext behind what the Bush Administration just gave Georgia (and granted, they only gave half of what they promised this fiscal year, but I'm sure whoever is in the White House come January will find the way to offer up the other half a billion), then you're quite blind to how George Bush has played your president just as most Americans are quite blind to how Saakashvili has played our's.
Like with any friendship, sometimes friends need a chance to cool off and reestablish a more realistic, genuine friendship. I think this would be an ideal time for such cooling off of emotions, so that for once, Georgians might realize that what could be best for Georgia in terms of hedging its political and economic risks so that it can move on from this tragedy and rebuild is to try to be as independent of both Russia, the United States, and Europe as possible. Just some food
for thought.
Sheni megobari,
Brian
I don't think Misha will be leaving office before his five years are up, but I do think the median voter in Georgia won't forgive him anytime soon for overplaying his hand, particularly those Georgians who were residing in South Ossetia and Gori. If anything, Saakashvili will be looked upon as another Gamsakhurdia or Gorbachev who had little patience to bring divisive factions together in his own country through words and bargains as opposed to violence, and instead, appealed to his non-democratic, elitist base in a capital city or, even worse, completely removed from the country, for much of his political legitimacy.
I know it seems that I'm staunchly anti-Georgian these days because I don't agree with how President Bush has interacted with Georgia the past five years, but the reality is that foreign aid, in whatever form, can have unintended consequences and moral hazards, not the least because the people handing out the aid usually have not spent significant time with the people they are trying to help to sufficiently understand both their aspirations and limitations.
US foreign agricultural support, which Georgia receives, is a great example of the American foreign policy hypocrisy and self-interest at work where we, omniscient and omnipotent American foreign service workers, condition USAID or MCC money on land privatization and encourage inefficient subsistence farming at the expense of much more efficient Soviet collective farming (we tried the exact same thing in Iraq in regard to the state enterprises when we tried to "liberate" it and realized eventually that all we did was make people unemployed and liable to pick up a gun and go shoot someone). To make matters worse, we then do our tax-subsidized farmers in Iowa a favor by dropping thousands of tons of corn and wheat on Georgian soil with the expectation that giving the Georgians American food will somehow make them grateful, when in fact, the majority of this in-kind aid disappears in the country and is resold illegally (against US law -- not the recipeint country's), and this in turn only depresses commodity prices more that the subsistence farmers depend entirely on to survive.
Another such example is the construction of the trans-Georgian highway funded in large part with MCC funds. Although that's good and all that American taxpayers are helping subsidize car and truck use in Georgia, the fact is, both Turkey and Russia have large amounts of capital and they use Georgian roads much more than Americans ever do or will. I don't know how many countless Turkish trucks I saw on Georgian roads when I lived in Georgia, and so why is it that I have a financial or national security interest in seeing Turkish companies transport goods to Azerbaijan, Iran, and Central Asia when in fact Turkish companies have that very apparent economic interest and (the Tbilisi airport is sufficient proof of this) are willing to put up and risk large amounts of capital to keep their flow of consumer goods to the east open given the current situation in Southeastern Turkey.
Georgian friend, if you're a true capitalist (and I think you are), you see why foreign aid destroys the very incentive structure for raising capital. All across the United States, we have governments that issue bonds and we have corporations that manage toll roads for profit. The Georgians could do the exact same thing, but they have to turn to where the capital is, and that's neither the United States or Georgia. For godsake, the United States is literally broke. All the truly liquid money for high risk investing is in Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and China. The largest corporations in the world -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- were just nationalized by the US government this past Sunday, a few days after the Bush Administration announced its one billion aid initiative to Georgia. What does that say about our capital situation currently? I mean, the trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars for 30 years was not enough indication that the US wasn't exactly anymore the favorite, rich Uncle Sam to turn to for money, with which to build roads for Turks?
Americans are the last people that should be investing in Georgia right now. Turks, Iranians, and Russians should be, first and foremost, and then maybe other people like the Germans and Chinese if there comes a need for additional capital. You counter the Turks, Iranians, and Russians won't give your country capital, but I say that's more of a chicken and egg problem. These highly potential investors won't give your country capital because the they don't trust your politicians for taking on unnecessary political risks and nor do they trust the people that run your economic system for not practicing such common sense capital control/monitoring methods as external auditing and internal controls in corporations and governments.
You ask me what hell does this have to do with US foreign aid to Georgia? I ask you, why the hell when I see people getting laid off left and right from my firm and other large DC accounting firms and elderly and low-income people in cities like Cleveland and Youngstown being thrown out of their homes should American tax money be going to reward a country that did the equivalent of the greedy and selfish managers at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- they gambled big time on Americans' livelihoods without their full and informed consent as to the associated risks and lost the house -- literally.
Just like Americans are paying the price of not saving enough and hedging their financial risks these last two decades, it's time for Georgians to suffer the consequences of the choices made by their political leaders. I'm personally quite sick and tired of seeing money spent on a country when my homestate of Ohio has just as many economic problems as Georgia right now, and that economy has a much larger affect on the global economy, in particular Canada's, than Georgia ever will. Maybe it's not fair I say something like this, but Georgian friend, realize that I have self-interests, too, and that your self-interests and those of most Georgians are probably not the same as mine or those of most Americans.
Look. I'm consistent in my free market beliefs. I don't want to see the US government bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the sake of New York I-bankers and Chinese and Russian bond holders. That said, too many people in my country made stupid decisions, which they're now going to put on the backs of future generations to pay off. If you don't see the injustice when my country gives your country 200 dollars per man, woman, and child, and that's not actually coming out of current assets that my country currently has but rather out of the pockets of my salary 30 years down the road, then I guess we will never see eye to eye on why Americans should sacrifice so much for a country most Americans couldn't locate on a map (and most probably still can't) until a few weeks ago. Then again, most Georgians can't
locate my homestate of Ohio on a map, either, and the last time I checked, Ohio decided the 2004 election that gave Georgia it's beloved President Bush.
Finally, both you and another friend cite the Marshall Plan as being an example of US foreign aid doing good. However, both of you also fail to recognize that the Marshall Plan had nothing to do with backing certain politicians or policies in western Europe. The Marshall Plan was about getting food and construction materials to people who would surely starve or freeze to death otherwise. Yes, at some point the program did become political in the sense it was meant to send an obvious political signal to the Soviet controlled parts of Europe that the US supports its capitalist/democratic allies better than the Soviets support their communist/autocratic allies. However, in general, I think it's fair to say that there was no political pretext originally behind the Marshall Plan. If you don't see the political pretext behind what the Bush Administration just gave Georgia (and granted, they only gave half of what they promised this fiscal year, but I'm sure whoever is in the White House come January will find the way to offer up the other half a billion), then you're quite blind to how George Bush has played your president just as most Americans are quite blind to how Saakashvili has played our's.
Like with any friendship, sometimes friends need a chance to cool off and reestablish a more realistic, genuine friendship. I think this would be an ideal time for such cooling off of emotions, so that for once, Georgians might realize that what could be best for Georgia in terms of hedging its political and economic risks so that it can move on from this tragedy and rebuild is to try to be as independent of both Russia, the United States, and Europe as possible. Just some food
for thought.
Sheni megobari,
Brian
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