Lex Libertas

Last summer, I spent five weeks traveling around the Caucasus. One week of that trip was in Georgia. A full travelogue is in the works, but I wanted to capitalize on the news surrounding the recent arrival of American ships in Batumi. The capital of Adjaria (a former break-away province like South Ossetia and Abkhazia), Batumi is a resort city on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. I spent several days both in the city, and traveling around the countryside of Adjaria, and it is stunningly beautiful. Tropical plants and lots of water to swim in, everywhere.

I have an album of pictures set up on locally on Lex Libertas, on Facebook, and on Picasa.

Here are some of my favorities:

Adjaria has some of the most beautiful terrain on Earth

Park at night in the resort town of Batumi, Georgia.

Dolphin chilling in the resort town of Batumi, Georgia.

Adjarian and Georgian flags, interspersed

I love Adjaria!! You can go swimming and eat in the same restaurant in the jungle!

Restaurant in Batumi, Adjaria, Georgia

Shockingly, and inexplicably, Moscow didn’t make it into the new international version of Monopoly. Kiev, Riga, and Belgrade made the cut:

Hasbro held a contest earlier in the year:

The most valuable real estate will be on blue spots, for instance (normally occupied by Broadway and Park Place), and then green, yellow and so on. There is currently a vote going on that is open to anyone in the world with a computer, and you can vote once a day for up to ten cities. The top vote getters will be on Broadway and Park Place, and the rest will be apportioned to the remainder of the real estate.

According to the woman at Hasbro I spoke to, the website where the voting is going on–www.monopoly.com–is getting 10,000 votes a day. That’s not all that much. A concerted web effort can turn this around.

So, the whole thing was determined by voting. How did the Russian livejournal community not get a hold of this and flood it? I would have expected to see Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and maybe even a few others on the final version. ЖЖ, you have let me and your country down! I’d say the same about America, but our web presence is far more disjointed, and, truth be told, we don’t have the same sort of nationalistic fervor that the Russian net can at times have.

Instead, we have an absurdly high representation by smaller Eastern European cities. I mean Gdynia? Really? At first I thought that was an alternative spelling of Gdansk? How did all these cities get on, but not Prague? This is truly a bizarre outcome.

From RIA-Novosti:

Tom Clancy, author of the Hunt for Red October and a host of other military themed thrillers, predicted the South Ossetian conflict seven years ago. His story, describing Russia coming to the rescue of the South Ossetians and sending tanks into Georgia, was used in a computer game.

Check out the RIA-Novosti story, Tom Clancy predicted the South Ossetian conflict, to see the news report. I couldn’t rip the movie, and they don’t give an embed link. Get with the times Russian Information Agency-News!!! Kommersant allows you to embed, they understand the power of JJ (LiveJournal in Russian is JJ, Zhivoi Zhurnal). Oh, the virtues of capitalism.

The Times held a competition where people sent in their favorite communist jokes, and here’s their top ten:

A copy of Hammer and Tickle will shortly be winging its way to Tom Freeman for the following offering:

1) Three workers find themselves locked up, and they ask each other what they’re in for. The first man says: “I was always ten minutes late to work, so I was accused of sabotage.” The second man says: “I was always ten minutes early to work, so I was accused of espionage.” The third man says: “I always got to work on time, so I was accused of having a Western watch.”

And here are the nine runners-up:

2) An old man is dying in his hovel on the steppes.
There is a menacing banging on the door.
‘Whose there?’ the old man asks.
‘Death ‘comes the reply.
‘Thank God for that,’ he says, ‘I thought it was the KGB.’

Dan Sweeney

3)Pravda announced that it welcomed letters to the editor. All correspondents were required to include their full name, address and next of kin.
Neil

4) Q. “Why do the KGB operate in groups of three?” A. “One can read, one can write and one to keep an eye on the two intellectuals.”
Lee Jakeman

5) Leonid Brezhnev pays a state visit to France and he’s given a VIP guided tour of Paris. He’s conducted round the splendours of the Élysée Palace, but remains as stony-faced as ever. He’s shown the masterpieces of the Louvre, but the curators fail to get any reaction out of him. He’s taken to the Arc de Triomphe, but displays not the slightest interest. Eventually, the official motorcade drives him to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where Brezhnev finally stares up in amazement and astonishment. He turns to his French hosts and asks in bewilderment: “But, Paris is a city of 9 million people… surely you need more than one watchtower?”
(first heard by me in the Brezhnev era)
Geraint Jennings

6) Stalin decides to go out one day and see what it’s really like for the workers, so he puts on a disguise and sneaks out of the Kremlin.
After a while he wanders into a cinema. When the film has finished, the Soviet Anthem plays and a huge picture of Stalin appears on the screen. Everyone stands up and begins singing, except Stalin, who smugly remains seated.
A minute later a man behind him leans forwards and whispers in his ear: “Listen Comrade, we all feel exactly the same way you do, but trust me, it’s a lot safer if you just stand up.”
Robert B

7) A man saves up his ruples and is finally able to buy a car in Soviet Russia. After he pays his money the he is told he will have his car in three years.
“Three years!” he asks “What month?”
“August”
“August? What day in August?” He asks
“The Second of August” is the reply
“Morning or Afternoon?”
“Afternoon. Why do you need to know?”
“The plumber is coming in the morning.”
Mark

Why do ex-Stasi officers make the best Berlin taxi drivers?
Because you only need to tell them your name and they’ll already know where you live!
Will

9) Moscow in the 1970s. Deepest winter. A rumour spreads through the city that meat will be available for sale the next day at Butcher’s Shop no. 1.

Tens of thousands turn up on the eve of the event: wrapped up against the cold, carrying stools, vodka, and chessboards, they form an orderly queue.

At 3 am the butcher comes out and says, “Comrades, I’ve just had a call from the Party Central Committee: it turns out there won’t be enough meat for everyone, so the Jews in the queue should go home.”

The Jews obediently leave the queue. The rest continue to wait.

At 7 am, the butcher comes out again: “Comrades, I’ve just had another call from Central Committee. It turns out there will be no meat at all, so you should all go home.”

The crowd disperses, grumbling all the while: “Those bloody Jews get all the luck!”

Andrew Vornic/Julian Cox

10) A KGB officer is walking in the park and he sees and old Jewish man reading a book.
The KGB says “What are you reading old man?” The old man says “I am trying to teach myself Hebrew.”
KGB says “Why are you trying to learn Hebrew? It takes years to get a visa for Israel. You would die before the paperwork got done.”
“I am learning Hebrew so that when I die and go to Heaven I will be able to speak to Abraham and Moses. Hebrew is the language they speak in Heaven.” the old man replies.
“But what if when you die you go to Hell?” asks KGB.
And the old man replies, “Russian, I already know.”

Larry Rasczak

In response, a friend sent me one of his favorite communist jokes:

Three men are talking at night in their barracks in a Siberian forced labor camp. By way of introduction, one man says, “I got 20 years for publishing samizdat, that’s why I’m here.” The second man says, “I got caught listening to BBC, that’s why I got 15 years. How about you ?”
– he asks the third man. The third man replies, “I got 10 years, for absolutely nothing !”. The first man then hits him in the face. “Liar ! For nothing, they only give you 5 years !”.

Technorati Tags: Russia,uniform,military,портяни,portyanki

Deputy Minister of Defense, army general Vladimir Isakov, reported that the Russian military will completely change to a new uniform by the year 2011. Isakov noted that, despite the good reviews, boots and foot-wraps are a thing of the past, and the whole uniform will be more expensive than the current one.

The old and new uniforms differ, according to Isakov, mostly in their details. Different branches of service will have different types of uniforms, particularly their formal uniforms: the army will be in aqua, the air force in dark blue, and the navy in traditional black and white.

The new uniforms have been designed by a famous Russian designer, Valentin Yudashkin. The “foot-wraps” mentioned above are what Soviet soldiers wore instead of socks. Apparently they’re quite comfortable, multi-purpose, and dry pretty quickly. My friends who served say they’re better than socks for a soldier.

Russian recruits learning to properly tie their портянки (portyanki).

A helpful illustration for anyone who hasn’t gone through Russian basic training.

They even put on a fashion show to display the new designs.

Доброволец (Volunteer), has a very long post on the subject, with more pics.  In general, I like the new stuff, but some of it is just too imperialistic for me, too gaudy and 19th century.  I prefer more down-to-earth and functional, even in formal dress.

Putin’s Coming to Regulate! You have to admit, that’s a pretty cool shot.

Speaking at an industry conference this week, Putin, Russia’s former president and now prime minister, spoke five sentences critical of one of his country’s big steel companies, Mechel, and its billionaire chief executive, Igor Zyuzin.

In a sign of Putin’s enduring power in Russia and around the world, that criticism came with a price: about $1.2 billion per sentence in lost shareholder value.

Such is the power of Putin’s words - even after “stepping down” to prime minister in May - that shares in Mechel, a coal mining and steel company, plunged almost 38 percent on the New York Stock Exchange after Putin complained that the company was charging more to its domestic customers than to its foreign ones. The comments wiped out, at least for a day, about $6 billion in stockholder value.

That is power. Of course, it’s built on the fact that Putin can ignore the rules of the market, confiscate businesses, and throw people in jail. But still, power. You want to know why Russians love Putin? Because he’s shown that you can’t push Russia around anymore.

Of course, our President’s words also carry some weight, just not in the same authoritarian, “oh no, he’s going to nationalize the company” way. Bush says “let’s drill for oil,” and the price of a barrel goes down $10. That’s just him expressing a sentiment, without any actual drilling going on, and the market reacts by dropping. Imagine what would happen if we actually started drilling . . .

Update:

I’ve found the video of the speech, and I’m going to have to agree with Lyndon that it’s not just the words, but the tone of voice and gestures:

Also notable is the sigh at the beginning, before he starts to speak. And I love how he starts it off with “this is just an example.”

В отпуске следует читать длинные книги. Нет, вернее, так — в отпуске у нас появляется возможность читать длинные книги. То есть читать их правильным способом: не урывками на ночь, а наоборот — длинными кусками на легкую дневную голову. Именно такого читателя видит в радужных мечтах заканчивающий семьсот двадцать пятую страницу рукописи автор. С длинными романами сегодня дело обстоит хорошо. Их опять пишут, и многие выходят даже похожими на настоящие — с сюжетом, с кучей действующих лиц, с разговорами и моралью.

I know that I just said I won’t post politics, but this is too good to pass up. The front page of Kommersant, the most established and respected Russian newspaper, headlines Chavez’s visit to Russia:

Hugo Chavez offers Dmitry Medvedev his Hand and Heart
And asks Putin for Weapons

Уго Чавес предложил Дмитрию Медведеву руку и сердце
А у Владимира Путина попросил оружия

They’re really taking the piss here, in a way unusual for Kommersant.

Their greeting is also informative:

Seeing Dmitry Medvedev, Hugo Chavez raised his hands very high, but didn’t try to give him a brotherly hug - learning, apparently, from bitter experience, when about a year ago Putin skillfully slipped away from such embraces.

Увидев Дмитрия Медведева, Уго Чавес высоко поднял руки, но не предпринял попытки по-братски обняться, наученный, очевидно, горьким опытом, когда из таких объятий около года назад профессионально выскользнул президент России Владимир Путин.

I’m back in the States, and working in a position that, unfortunately, requires me to take a break from any real political blogging. This blog’s raison d’etre is starting to look like a yo-yo. It started out as a political project back in Spring ‘03, then morphed into a travel blog for most of my three and a half years in Russia. Since returning, my posting, while erratic, has gravitated back to political. Circumstances require that, once again, I turn to more cultural issues.

That’s not really a problem, since I have a huge amount of Russian culture post ideas that never got put down. Lots and lots of pictures and anecdotes. It’s actually for the better, since political blogging doesn’t really add a whole lot of value to the blogosphere, not nearly as much as personal experiences (excepting, of course, the “I had a shower, washed my hair, ate Frosted Mini-wheats” style blogs).

A rotating map of the world which shows where economic creation is concentrated.

I’ve been busy with work and travel since I last posted. Just wanted to let you all know that I’m still alive, and am currently in Moldova. Some people from my church and I are helping to put on a summer camp for orphans. I’m very much looking forward to helping out, and to going off the grid.

For the EU to undertake any major changes (through new treaties), they have to be unanimously approved by all the member states - now 25. Each country has a choice of method of approval: either hold a referendum, where everyone gets to vote, or have the country’s legislative body ratify it. Not surprisingly, most countries choose the latter. Actually giving the people a choice is risky, they may reject what you’ve put a lot of work into. Much easier to just push something through parliament. As you may remember, the European constitution was scrapped because it failed in referendums in France and the Netherlands. Well, Europe is now faced with a new restructuring, the Treaty of Lisbon. Whatever you think about the treaty, you’d think that Euros would be in favor of democracy . . . not really. The Irish are the only people who are actually being given a choice in the matter. All the other countries have chosen to ratify through their governments. As insistent as we are on democracy in Iraq, we still have some work to do in Europe:

Since many EU leaders have since boasted that the Lisbon Treaty is practically the same as the “Constitution,” the fact that the French and Dutch will effectively get something they rejected is obviously a travesty of democracy. In some ways this is more antidemocratic than if the EU had rigged the referendums. To rig a vote is at least to accept the principle that political legitimacy requires victory at the polls, even if the “victory” is secured by cheating. To hold a ballot, lose it and then ride roughshod over the result is not even to accept that a democratic vote matters at all.

Last year, Germany’s former President Roman Herzog wondered whether given all the laws coming from Brussels, Germany could still be called “a parliamentary democracy.” If a former head of Germany’s constitutional court, who chaired the convention that drafted the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, says people worry that the “democratic control mechanisms are failing,” perhaps it’s time to sit up and listen.

It is not easy to define when referendums about European integration are appropriate. But given that the general thrust of EU integration has been to take powers away from national parliaments, genuine democrats should probably err on the side of calling referendums more often than not. Whichever way the Irish go this week, they can at least be proud their country has given them a choice. The rest of Europe looks on in envy.

Vaclav Klaus was right:

You cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state.

We could see the scaffolding of a nation-state that would retain a president and similar institutions, but with virtually zero influence. That’s my forecast. And it’s not a reassuring vision of the future.

LGF points us to some interesting stories that Robert Kennedy wrote as a young journalist:

* In April 1948, one month before Israel declared independence, Robert Kennedy, then 22, traveled to Palestine to report on the conflict for the Boston Post. His four dispatches from the scene were published in June 1948. The newspaper closed in 1956, and for decades the reports were virtually forgotten.

* “Unfortunately for [the Jews, Jerusalem’s water] reservoir is situated in the mountains and it and the whole pipeline are controlled by the Arabs. The British would not let them cut the water off until after May 15th but an Arab told me they would not even do it then. First they would poison it.”

* The Arab responsible for the blowing up of the Jewish Agency on March 11, 1948, said “that after the explosion, upon reaching the British post which separated the Jewish section from a small neutral zone set up in the middle of Jerusalem, he was questioned by the British officers in charge. He quite freely admitted what he had done and was given immediate passage with the remark, ‘Nice going.’”

* “The Jews informed the British government that 600 Iraqi troops were going to cross into Palestine from Trans-Jordan by the Allenby Bridge on a certain date and requested the British to take appropriate action to prevent this passage. The troops crossed unmolested….I saw several thousand non-Palestinian Arab troops in Palestine, including many of the famed British-trained and equipped Arab legionnaires of King Abdullah [of Trans-Jordan]. There were also soldiers from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq.”

* “The Arabs in command believe that eventually victory must be theirs. It is against all law and nature that this Jewish state should exist. They…promise that if it does become a reality it will never have as neighbors anything but hostile countries, which will continue the fight militarily and economically until victory is achieved.”

* “The Jews on the other hand believe that in a few more years, if a Jewish state is formed, it will be the only stabilizing factor remaining in the Near and Middle East. The Arab world is made up of many disgruntled factions which would have been at each other’s throats long ago if it had not been for the common war against Zionism.”

This doesn’t sound like an immoral black-hole:

Guantanamo Is a Model Prison

There is much talk in the media, in our capital and elsewhere about the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I have paid close attention to this dialogue, and after a year in command, it is clear that there are two Guantanamos: the one that exists in popular culture, and the one most discover when they actually see conditions there.

We house enemy combatants in one of several facilities according to their compliance with camp rules. Highly compliant detainees, approximately 20% of the population, live in Camp 4. Here they enjoy a communal, barracks-style environment, with movie nights, classes in Pashtu, Arabic and English, shared meals and prayers, and up to 12 hours of recreation per day.

Many of the enemy combatants, however, fail to comply with established rules. Offenses often include head-butting, kicking, biting and splashing young soldiers and sailors with feces and urine “cocktails.”

These detainees are housed in Camps 5 and 6 – modern, climate-controlled facilities modeled after existing U.S. prison facilities in the Midwest. They get a minimum of two, soon to be three, hours of outdoor recreation per day adjacent to three to five other detainees. And they are held in a block of single-occupancy cells where they communicate with other detainees, guards, medical staff, library assistants and mail delivery personnel. Prayers are led five times a day by a detainee-appointed Imam. Each cell contains an arrow that points to Mecca.

All detainees receive three-meals per day, a 4,000-calorie diet selected from six different menus that meet the halal cultural dietary requirements, and which provide for special needs such as low sodium, vegetarian or diabetic. We provide comfort items including sheets and bedding, uniforms, shoes, prayer beads, prayer rugs, toiletries and bottled water. Each detainee is issued a Quran in Arabic and one in his native language. An ever-expanding, 5,000 volume library is available for a weekly choice of reading material.

Continue . . .

The whole article is worth a read.