Category: Uncategorised

If Russia decides to escalate the dispute with Georgia, one option is for it to recognize Abkhazia as an independent state. Abkhazia is [pushing](http://www.regnum.ru/english/722014.html) Russia to do just that.

What makes this a plausible scenario is Kosovo. From Russia’s perspective, the situation of Abkhazia within Georgia is parallel to that of Kosovo within Serbia: regions enjoying de facto autonomy within hostile states, and pushing for formal self-determination. In [Putin’s words](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b55abaf4-dfc0-11da-afe4-0000779e2340.html):

“If someone believes that Kosovo should be granted full independence as a state, then why should we deny it to the Abkhaz and the South Ossetians?”

The implied ‘someone’ is the UN, where glacial negotiations are moving towards the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state. Russia is unlikely to let this through the UN without demanding a similar decision on Abkhazia. It might not even wait for Kosovo to come up at the UN – ten days ago, for instance, [Mikhail Gorbachev](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/5b958386-975f-40ca-9824-90f0c1f1048f.html) wrote that the “

logic of international development may lead Russia to a situation in which we will have no other choice but to recognize Abkhazia

”

What I didn’t mention in the last post – because I didn’t believe it – was that Sanskrit isn’t the only course going. Cambridge is also

closing the Hindi department

. This is something like the fourth most widely-spoken language in the world, 400 million speakers (many more if you include urdu speakers, and speakers of hindi as a second language). How does nobody think it might be useful for somebody to be able to speak this language?

Ug. Is this true? No more undergraduate Sanskrit at Cambridge?

I just checked. There are over 200 undergraduates in the Classics department. But:

“Sanskrit manuscripts number roughly one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined. In the exact sciences alone their number is greater than the total number of Greek and Latin manuscripts.” [source]

I’m not entirely convinced by those figures, but there are certainly an immense number of Sanskrit texts. Many (most?) have not been properly edited, let alone published or translated. Do people honestly believe that there is nothing of value in any of those?

Fuming…

I’m breaking off the Georgia blogging for howls of rage that my old university course is being shut down. Apparently, Cambridge university sees no value in teaching Sanskrit to undergraduates.

Right now, I feel like running into the streets and screaming at the imbecility of the world.

Interesting take on the

Lancet

figures from Marginal Revolution:

A very high deaths total, taken alone, suggests (but does not prove) that the Iraqis were ready to start killing each other in great numbers the minute Saddam went away. The stronger that propensity, the less contingent it was upon the U.S. invasion, and the more likely it would have happened anyway, sooner or later. In that scenario the war greatly accelerated deaths. But short of giving Iraq an eternal dictator, that genie was already in the bottle.

If the deaths are low at first but rising over time, it is more likely that a peaceful transition might have been possible, either through better postwar planning or by leaving Saddam in power and letting Iraqi events take some other course. That could make Bush policies look worse, not better. Tim Lambert, in one post, hints that the rate of change of deaths is an important variable but he does not develop this idea.

Russia has made a point of maintaining transport links to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, despite the blockade of Georgia. It’s something that Georgian politicians have complained bitterly about. Now they’re driving it home by sending a train to South Ossetia loaded with $741,000 of humanitarian aid. Behind this is Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who is even more energetic than Ken Livingstone in maintaining his own foreign policy agenda. Luzhkov calls the train “

a symbol of Russian assistance to South Ossetia, which wants to live independently and not to obey those, who have subjected these people to genocide,

”

This is a picture predicting how long it would take nature to take over again after the freak destruction of humanity (originally from the Times, but via boingboing).

The graphic isn’t actually all that astounding, but the idea is fascinating. If I had even the least amount of graphic-design mojo I’d love to make a poster on the same topic.

In other news, it’s very bad how much easier it is to go through your emails after a bottle of wine. Unanswered emails really shouldn’t be that frightening. Bills, I can accept – the not-quite-monthly ‘get drunk and write cheques’ is as close to a financial routine as I have – but emails going over to the dark side of things I hide from is bad news.

Now, off out to “50% depeche mode, 50% kraftwerk”, which is a fantastic goth(ish) club night.

Edit

: link should work now!

Tagged


budapest

,

green

,

paranoia

Also….

I do not own a camera. There are lots of fascinating things around me that I would love to be taking photos of. Like all those protests outside parliament, for example. And perhaps a couple of buildings too.

Anybody want to recommend a cheap digital camera? I don’t know what the going price for these things is, but I’m after the ‘usable (just), turns out recognisable photos, but you wouldn’t be heartbroken if it got stolen’. Also, I’ll need to either find somewhere in Hungary to buy it, or somebody who will ship it here.

Hmmm…I imagine the problem here is that people like karohemd and who know about cameras, also have much higher standards than I do for photography. Guys, the standard here is that if you’d consider using it, it’s almost certainly better than I need.

Russia has made some apparently conciliatory moves towards Georgia this week – notably a [promise](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/21d0a8f7-6bd1-47dc-bc8c-db532164fad4.html) of early withdrawal of the Russian troops based in Tbilisi.

Is this an olive branch to Georgia? No – it’s shrewd international politics. The UN has just passed a [resolution renewing the mandate of the UN observer mission in Georgia](http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/13/news/UN_GEN_UN_Georgia.php). Had Security Council members agreed with the EU’s (obviously correct, but politically awkward) [assessment](http://mosnews.com/news/2006/10/12/russiageorgia.shtml) that “

Russia is not a neutral participant in the peacekeeping arrangements

“, they could have produced a resolution limiting Russia’s role in Georgia. So, Russia keeps them sweet by making a concession – but notice that it is a concession that doesn’t require any immediate action. By the time it comes to remove the troops from Tbilisi, everybody except the Georgians will have forgotten what Russia promised.


Update

: According to [Saakashvili](http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=13869),Russia was aiming for – and failed to get – two items included in the [resolution](http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8851.doc.htm):

The first is unconditional denunciation of the Georgian police operation in the upper Kodori gorge that would have a serious legal force, and the second, restoration of the status quo, which existed in the gorge prior to this operation. It would have meant the withdrawal of the legitimate Abkhaz authorities from the Kodori gorge and renaming of the Kodori gorge,

I tried to write a post on the high politics of the Russia-Georgia dispute, but I got sidetracked into the stuff that actually matters: the social impact of it all. There will be another post on Putin and Saakashvili throwing their toys at each other, but first, have something about the real people:

The politicians and pundits are talking up how bad things are. Saakashvili (Georgian president) calls it “

a form of ethnic targeting not seen in Europe since the Balkans in the 1990s

“, and to Bezuashvili (Georgian foreign minister) it is ‘_a mild form of ethnic cleansing_’. At Georgia Online, a columnist collects a list of recent anti-Georgian Russian headlines and comments “

Replace ‘Georgian’ with ‘Jew’, change the date 2006 to 1933, and we fall back to Nazi Germany.

”

Certainly, things are bad. Newspaper Novaya Gazeta (employer of Anna Politkovskaya) has printed copies of letters Moscow police sent to local schools, demanding lists of Georgian students. The information required includes:

Relations of children of Georgian nationality with other pupils, cases of hostile relations between children, and such [hostile] relations toward them [i. e. Georgian children], facts about disobedience of Georgian children to teachers, facts of antisocial activities, and unlawful acts.

All this is “

For the purpose of securing law and order and abidance of the law, the prevention of terrorist acts and aggressive feelings between children

“. [Sean](http://seansrusskiiblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/moscow-police-documents-show-attempted.html) has full translations and commentary.

But, there is some good news. Many Russian bloggers are still trying to counter the anti-Georgian prejudice – the “[I am Georgian](http://ya-gruzin.ru/)” site is one of many examples. And it is striking that the anti-Georgian events in Russia haven’t been mirrored by anti-Russian events in Georgia. At Radio Free Europe, Jimsher Rekhviashvili [interviews](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/2168b35e-cec0-4e67-9766-82089160b5a4.html) ethnic Russians living in Georgia. And finds…nothing. No mirror of the anti-Georgian sentiment in Russia. One says “

I continue to receive warmth and love, the lack of which I have never experienced from the Georgian people.

“. Another says her friends in Russia “

call and ask us not to believe what we’re hearing. We are by your side, they say. We love Georgia and Georgians.

”