avrom_caucasus

Грузия переплюнула Россию с ее феерическим назначением мебельщика Сердюкова – новым министром обороны Грузии стал главный тюремщик страны.

Только если это и водевиль - то водевиль, пахнущий кровью.

«Институт свободы» звучит тут, в контексте Ахалая, особенно смешно. Хотя это весьма серьезная организация, именно «Институт свободы» был штаб-квартирой «революции роз», а Бачо Ахалая был рядом с Михаилом Саакашвили во время взятия здания парламента 22 ноября 2003 года.

Опыта в военных вопросах у Ахалая не больше, чем у мебельщика Сердюкова. Но это не важно - главная должность в его послужном списке: «глава департамента по исполнению наказаний», остальное прикрытие.

Объявляя о назначении, Михаил Саакашвили называл главным плюсом нового министра обороны ту «жесткость», которая «дала Грузии историческое достижение, а самому Бачо множество врагов».

«У Бачо Ахалая по вполне конкретным причинам очень много врагов ( Read more... )

djdrive

The only Russian-made products I still use in my daily life are gas in my kitchen and matches I light it with. While I cannot yet expect the disappearance of matches - as they apparently aren’t a product strategic enough for Russia to cut it’s supply to Georgia - soon I won’t be able to tell for sure that the gas I’m using is Russian.

read more

djdrive

Johan  Norberg in his Liberalism-Capitalism-Globalization Blog

I mentioned that Georgia is reforming. More than anyone else, actually.  According to the Doing Business index 2007, Georgia has moved from place 112 to 37 in just one year – unprecedented in the history of the report.

Georgia has reduced the minimum capital required to start a new business by 90 percent, and the number of days to meet bureaucratic requirements to export from 54 to 13 days. The labour market has been deregulated and social security contributions have been reduced from 31 percent of wages to 20 percent.

At the same time, the number of new businesses has increased by 20 percent and unemployment has fallen by 2 percentage points.

The problem is implementation. The new laws are not always upheld by the local civil servant and policeman. So the priority is improved governance and anti-corruption reform. And, naturally, deregulation that strips the bureaucracy of powers entirely.

For example, the Georgian government recently decided to abolish all tariffs until 2008. Way to go.

A couple of days ago I've been to talking to a friend of mine who's starting a consumer electronics import business.  He is a specialist in the trade and has worked in the industry in Russia for years.  Due to a recent changes to the customs laws he will have nothing to pay when importing his goods.  It took him and his partners a couple of months to transform the idea to an actual start-up, financed by a bank loan and ready for the first import in coming 4 weeks.  As of now he has not have pay a single bribe.  He agrees that was he in Moscow things would have been very different.

Kaxa Bendukidze is actually the one who is to be thanked for the liberalism in the economy.

djdrive

Georgia's treachery almost took Russians by surprise. To prevent that from happening again, Vlast analytical weekly has prepared a guide to Russia's neighbours and methods of combating them.

Some of my favourite recommendations:

• Check Belarussian-made furniture and clothing for radioactivity. Receive a positive result.
• Stop using the sports term “finish.”\
• Explain to the public that the president of Russia is first and foremost a master of the purely Russian form of hand-to-hand combat known as sambo and that karate was only a temporary distraction.
• Make the Super League basketball players change their names.
• Announce that all residents of Alaska are eligible for Russian citizenship and that the state has the right to self-determination.

djdrive

FT writes that Kosovo's hopes for independence fall hostage to rivalry between big powers.  While Putin hints unequivocally that Russia is ready to apply Kosovo independence as a precedent to South Ossetia and Abkhazia conflict resolution Russia may not have finally decided how it will vote at the UN.

"That depends on the overall status of the US-Russia relationship, the results of World Trade Organisation negotiations and the forthcoming meetings in November between Presidents Bush and Putin, first in Moscow and then in Hanoi," he [Dimitri Simes, head of the Nixon Center think-tank which has close contact with Moscow] said .

But he warned that it might be difficult for Mr Putin to back down over Kosovo. "The Russian leadership, including President Putin personally, is making it increasingly clear to the Bush administration that Georgia is becoming a defining issue in the US-Russia relationship the way Iran and North Korea are on the American side."

Glen Howard, president of the Jamestown Foundation security think-tank, said Mr Putin had "let the genie out of the bottle with nationalism" and warned of the dangers posed by a Russia seeking to regain its Soviet-era domination of the Caucasus and its strategic oil and gas pipelines.

Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, kept making concessions only for Russia to keep "upping the ante", Mr Howard said. It was possible the Bush administration would seek to delay Kosovo's bid for independence and Georgia's bid for Nato membership to keep Russia on board over Iran and North Korea, he added.

While the war of words continues between Georgian and Russian presidents it seems that something big is steering up around Georgia.  The rhetoric on both sides of Caucasus can be a sign of major "bulldogs under carpet" exercise going on and the outcome of it we're about to learn in the nearest future is to define Georgia's fate for some years to come.

djdrive

“We are trapped here," admitted Javier Solana to the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in Brussels telling the Committee that Kosovo's campaign for independence could set an unwanted precedent for Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia for a long time now is speculating that it won’t be able to ignore “the will of people” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and allow Europe to apply “double standards” to conflicts which Russia considers to be similar to the one in Kosovo, which being by 90 percent populated by Albanians is (it seems successfully) seeking an independence from Serbia.

"President [of Georgia] Saakashvili is trapped; all of us are trapped in a double mechanism that may have good consequences for one, but not for the other.  It may not be a win-win situation -- although we should be able to look [for] and find a win-win solution.  But it will not be easy." Solana told the Committee.

And Tbilisi seems to have found one.  Or it has found Tbilisi.  The trick is an alternative ballot to the upcoming South Ossetian presidential elections and referendum.

djdrive

ФСБ сообщает, что хлеба зря не ест и недавно изловила литовского шпиона, который, почему-то, работал в Федеральной службе исполнения наказаний.  Интересно, объявит Литва блокаду России под предлогом стремления последней решить проблему Чечни силовыми методами?

djdrive

Москва. Октябрь 2005. Сажусь такси у гостиницы Украина. Едем на Маяковского.

- Хорошо, что Путина в городе нет...

- А где он?

- В Сочи.

- Почему хорошо?

- Стояли бы часа два.  Он только пиджак надевает, а перекрывают весь центр и Рублёвку.

Когда я рассказал водителю как возят Саакашвили (перекрывают веерно, по пути следования, на минут пять) - он хотел выйти из машины на ходу...

Thanks to predator_2005

djdrive

Jacques Chirac, the French president, indicated that Europe should adopt a light touch. But Aigars Kalvitis, the prime minister of Latvia, and Valdas Adamkus, president of Lithuania, voiced strong concern at the treatment of Georgia - once, like them, part of the Soviet Union. Mr Putin turned to talk to Mr Kalvitis and pretended not to be able to pronounce the word for Latvia, before saying that he seemed to remember that Russia had a pipeline dispute with its neighbour; he then "corrected" himself and said the dispute was with Lithuania.
( more from The Guradian )