Pinyin In Six Minutes!

Just for Tom:

Beware The One Armed (Switchblade) Bandits!

If i hadn't run into this myself and read it with my own two eyes, I wouldn't have believed it:

According to the Ottawa's US embassy website, switchblades may not be brought into the US, unless the bearer has one arm.

You think I'm blowing smoke up you ass? Take a look:

Your Inspection At The U.S. Border: Questions And Answers

I guess I have a question: what if you have no arms? Do you lose your right to transport switchblades into the US?

Also, technically, somebody with two arms also has one arm. If someone asked you if you have one cat, and you have two cats, how could you say no. But if you had no cats, then certainly you certainly can't say you have one cat, can you?

If any Canadians care to drive down to the border, and argue this out with a customs officer, do email me and let me know how it goes (the jails down there just might have Wi-Fi).

Back From The Dead!

I managed to import my old blog entries!

What did I do different? Almost nothing. Almost nothing that is, except I waited a week and tried it again. That's life in the cloud.

R.I.P. Dear Blog…

Well, with al the dicking around I do with things, something like this was bound to happen...

Today, I lost all my blog posts: All 3.8 GB of hand typed in text. About 5 years worth. Gone.

Sigh. I hope I've learned something out of this.

The K & R Special (Again)

Hello World!

Misha And His Team - Part IX

From Грузия Online:

Миша И Его Команда

Below is a translation of part IX by my friend Timothy Blauvelt:

Misha and his Team - Part IX
October 26, 2009
Gela Vasadze

It is simple to carry out reforms in a given country. You eliminate the corrupt system of governance, purchase new cars and uniforms for the police, fix up schools and hospitals, put bribe-takers in jail, and take property away from the bad and give it to the good. All of this has been done many times over in many different places, sometimes successfully, other times not so successfully. As a rule, correct reforms lead to economic miracles, and incorrect ones to the emergence of awful regimes. But in this case we are interested in one concrete country.

The main enemy of Georgian reforms was not the corrupt bureaucrats, nor the criminal element that felt itself king of the roost in Georgia, nor even the persistent external threat, the constant small and large indignities and the fact that nearly a third of the country’s territory was outside the control of the central government. The main threat to reform was homo sovieticus, that is, practically every citizen of Georgia, even those who consciously supported the reforms. One can write endlessly about the mentality of Soviet peoples. Despite all of our ethnic particularities, we all have the same birthmarks of socialism. More than one generation grew up for whom “natural rights” was an empty concept. What is more, the disdainful attitude towards the rights of others was oddly combined with an infantile belief that society, personified by the state, was obligated to provide for its citizens. At the same time the state was seen as an absolute evil from which nothing good could be expected, and which should be swindled by every possible means. Add in that decades of the artificial and false politics of proletarian internationalism brought out the most sinister demons of cave-dwelling ethnonationalism and the total taboo on religion that instilled in many a religious ecstasy akin to fanaticism, and we get the phantasmagorical picture of a seriously ill society. The period of Eduard Shevardnadze’s rule did not enable healing, and instead the disease became chronic. No doctor would dare to give a positive prognosis under such a diagnosis.

The disease of homo sovieticus in Georgia afflicted absolutely everybody without exception. Notice that we’re not talking just about the opponents of reform, those who suffered as a result of losing their jobs or who were arrested for banal bribe taking. The reformers themselves grew up in the Soviet system and had once been exemplary Pioneers and even successful Komsomol members. Most of them were from families of the Soviet nomenklatura elite, who by will of fate, the education they received, or for some other reason realized the necessity of reform for their country. But it is a well known fact that it’s one thing to understand the need for reform, and another thing entirely to carry it out, breaking society and themselves. If anybody thinks that the change in mentality taking place in Georgia is any less painful than the one that took place decades earlier, this is an illusion arising from the absence now of the cannibalistic methods of the last great change. Naturally, the difference is that this process, in essence, is a return to people’s natural state. But imagine a bear that is released from a zoo. I think the process of return to free will is no less painful than the process of becoming accustomed to the cage, if not more so. Let us try to illustrate this with several examples.

One of Mikheil Saakashvili’s first initiatives back when he was chairman of the Tbilisi Sakrebulo was to repair the roofs on large apartment buildings from the city budget. Elevators and basements were repaired at the same time. When he came to power this project was extended to other cities of Georgia. Naturally it was a brilliant move that immediately brought the young politician enormous popularity. But all things have both a positive side and a negative side. We’re not talking here about the fact that the property of individual citizens was being repaired at the expense of taxpayers’ money. The main problem was that in that period there were not enough budget resources or even workers to go around. Dilapidated roofs became a real nightmare for municipalities, and they were flooded with petitions from affected citizens. The creation of waiting lists didn’t help, and receiving citizens turned into an endless tragicomedy called “help me first!” City bureaucrats simply had to find some solution to this situation. Everybody dealt with it as well as they could, and I personally, working in a Mayor’s office, thought up a rather effective means of forcing citizens to wait their turn. Upon hearing about the necessity of repairing a citizen’s roof right away, I proposed bringing in an investor to build a penthouse, and the problem of the roof would be resolved once and for all. It’s funny that not a single petitioner agreed with this, always giving the same answer: “No! The roof is mine!” Then wait your turn or repair the roof out of your own pocket.

On the whole this example reflects perfectly society’s expectations from the new government. After the revolution the majority of the population entirely seriously thought that the new authorities would fix all of the bad things that remained from the previous government, while at the same time leaving alone the “good things,” not understanding, and sometimes not wanting to understand, that this is impossible. It’s impossible to have good roads, high state pensions, quality state education, and a healthcare system without high taxes. In fairness it should be mentioned that the authorities themselves encouraged this attitude, at the same time promising social wellbeing like in Switzerland and a tax system like in Singapore. The president, bursting forth from a session of government to personally deliver the news to small businessmen that they would be freed from taxes, to no small degree solidified the belief among the population that such a thing was possible. But economics has its rules. So long as the tax system was filling the vacuum that remained from Shevardnadze, the budget grew like gangbusters, and expenditures in the social sphere could increase rather significantly, all the more so since the starting level was close to zero.

But as soon as the effect of administrative resources wore off and the state began privatization, not so much to fulfill the budget as to create new sources of tax revenue, our society began to grumble.

Kakha Bendukidze, the father of Georgian economic reforms, could properly be considered the poster child for privatization in Georgia. His words “We’ll sell everything but our conscience” provoked particular annoyance in society. Certain individuals expressed their protest against privatization in a particularly “original” way: supporters of Manana Archvadze-Gamaskhurdia [the widow of Zviad Gamsakhurdia] came every day to the Economics Ministry as if to work to chant “Bendukidze is a pig! Bendukidze is a pig!” Just as if going to work, from ten to six with a break for lunch. The explanation of why Bendukidze is a pig was very simple: he was selling off the Motherland. The fact that the Motherland was non-functioning factories, empty fields, abandoned farms, smashed electrical stations and so forth was of little interest to anybody. Of course only a very few resorted to such marginal methods, but if you were to ask, something like nine out of ten residents of Georgia would express confusion or even dissatisfaction that everything in Georgia was for sale. The thought occurred to only a very few people that Georgia was lucky that state property was being sold not at voucher auctions (an ugly phenomenon that is known to be infectious), but rather for real money.

Occasionally the emergence of dissatisfaction reached humorous proportions. For example, the majority of Tbilisi residents were unhappy with the construction of high-rise buildings of doubtful artistic value in the Sololaki district of old Tbilisi. But as soon as the authorities demolished one of these, which incidentally was erected illegally, public opinion turned sharply against this approach, considering the government’s decision to be unjust. The situation could have been “settled” if all such buildings had been demolished, but thankfully the authorities didn’t have the brains to do that. In general, the real complaint against the government lay precisely in the sphere of justness.

In essence, the whole question of change in mentality came down to one simple thing: forcing citizens to obey the law. But it turned out to be not so simple. The reforms, as we’ve already mentioned, were carried out by people who also grew up in the Soviet reality, and this naturally left a specific imprint on them. After all, laws are supposed to be obeyed by all citizens, regardless of rank or position. The constant personnel merry-go-rounds and even arrests were not enough to force bureaucrats to become completely honest, and systemic changes lagged behind the course of events. More generally, the issue of bureaucrats is a special question. During the “old regime,” the salary of a deputy mayor of a large city was about 80 US dollars a month, although nobody was surprised that bureaucrats in the Shevardnadze and Abashidze epoch drove the latest model SUVs and built mansions that many EU citizens with exponentially higher salaries would have been envious of. As soon as the new team came to power, George Soros made a grand gesture. The Open Society Foundation allotted funds for additional salaries for state employees in order to root out corruption in governmental administrative bodies. As a result, in 2005 bureaucrats’ salaries approached the minimum subsistence level. For comparison, that same deputy mayor started to receive $500 per month. Not a huge sum: enough to keep from starving, but not a salary to write home about. About sixty percent of salaries were financed from the state budget, and the rest from the resources of George Soros. It was from this that the legend arose that Georgian officials’ salaries were being paid by the Americans, a legend in which the majority of citizens of the Russian Federation are absolutely convinced.

But let us return to the painful reforms. The issue of street traders was one of the main problems of the first years after the revolution. Under Shevardnadze cities turned into enormous bazaars. People subsisted, and survived as well as they could, through selling right on the street, naturally in unsanitary conditions. This of course looked very unaesthetic. Therefore the decision was taken to do away with street trading. In essence, the decision was more or less correct and supported by the majority of the population. The majority, that is, except for the street traders themselves, who had no desire to give up their accustomed spots and move into the proper markets, where nobody was particularly happy to see them. If the authorities had decided to create better conditions for street trade, success would have been guaranteed. But they chose a different path and received the opposite result. The bitter conflict continued until November 2007, after which the authorities backed down. This could be called “dizziness from success,” when it seemed that high popularity ratings could cover over any unpopular decision. But even the most ardent proponents of the street trading ban must have experienced mixed emotions when seeing the faces of these people, whose lives were far from easy, on the nightly news. The attitude towards the government began to change from enthusiasm to indifference, and even to irritation.

The main problem of the Georgian authorities of that time was one of communication. There were surprisingly few people among them who were able to speak with the populace in anything other than the language of slogans and PR adverts. The authorities undercut the positive effect of many of their initiatives because of their preference for strong-armed solutions to urgent problems. Most of the dissatisfaction, in essence, could have been avoided if painstaking efforts had been made to reach out to the population to explain things. A clear example of this is the fixing up of apartment building yards. It is something of an axiom that people prefer to live in clean, well maintained yards with playgrounds for children and comfortable benches to sit on. But the problem was that it was impossible to fix up yards that had been filled up with illegally erected garages and storage sheds, built during the hard times for storing firewood. It should have been the simplest thing to explain to the population that these would be removed and that cars could be parked in well-lit lots in those same yards. It would have been simple, but it wasn’t done. Garages and sheds were torn down as illegal constructs to the outcry of the population, and the yards were fixed up only several months later. So unsurprisingly, most people never made the connection between the two events, and the sense of insult remained.

He who does nothing makes no mistakes, as they say. But sometimes the mistakes were utterly stupid. For example, it’s impossible to understand why they had to take away from distinguished citizens the apartments that had been given to them by Tbilisi City Hall, only because these gifts at the time it had contravened the law. There was no corruption involved, and those who received the apartments were not at all rich, even though they were well-known. All of Georgia empathized with a famous actress, raising a child on her own, who was turned out onto the street. Even stupider was the demolition of a church that was built, albeit illegally, on a mountain in the outskirts of Batumi. This was later blamed on a mid-level bureaucrat who could never have taken such a step without orders from above. As a result, the community was so aggravated that the church was rebuilt at the government’s expense. These are only a few examples that shed light on the causes of November 2007.

Of course the residents of Georgia were not prepared for reforms, and of course in their imaginations the supporters of the reforms drew an idealized picture and the opponents an apocalyptic one. Today one can discuss endlessly how and where the authorities made mistakes. But today, thinking about whether things could have been better, one involuntarily reaches the conclusion that they could not have been. The causes of this are what I tried to explain at the start: all the residents of Georgia were nurtured in the Soviet system, including those who carried out the reforms. Changing mentality is a long and painful process that takes place over a period of time after the creation of particular conditions. In November 2007 society was taught a painful but unavoidable lesson. But more about that next time.

To be continued...

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A Final Thing About The Stupid Swiss Ban On Minarets

Yesterday, as I was musing the recent Swiss decision to ban Islamic minarets (see this and this) when suddenly something really funny occurred to me:

I wonder how many of Sexy Swiss realize that they share their intolerance with of all people the so-called fundamentalist Wahhabists.

You see, Wahabists or Muwahiddun as they prefer to be called, ban minarets too. Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, from which Wahhabist get their more common name, hated minarets and ordered them destroyed.

His idea was that human attempts at art were un-Islamic because they were acts of immodesty against divine beauty. Wahhabi mosques have to be as plain as possible.

Ул. Левоняна

Spotted in the town of Yeghegnadzor, Armenia:

Actor Who Immortalised Soviet Spy Stirlitz Dies At 81

From the BBC:

Actor Who Immortalised Soviet Spy Stirlitz Dies At 81

Want some background? Here's the Wikipedia article on Stirlitz.

My favorite Stirlitz joke:

Лампочка гарела, а Света не давала...
Штирлиц, выключил лампочка и света дала!

Sorry, this one is completely untranslatable without teaching you Russian grammar.

Misha And His Team - Part VIII

From Грузия Online:

Миша И Его Команда

Below is a translation of part VIII by my friend Timothy Blauvelt:

Misha and his Team - Part VIII
October 26, 2009
Gela Vasadze

A Change in Mentality

Recalling the first years of Mikheil Saakashvili’s Georgia brings to mind the words of an old Komsomol song: the revolution has a beginning, but the revolution has no end. I don’t think the author of that song knew about the theory of historical development, but he perfectly illustrates one of the laws of that theory. Revolutions never end, and they only begin with the coming to power. The two main questions of any revolution are the division of property and the change in mentality. Whatever anyone may say, Mikheil Saakashvili was brought to power by “the street,” and the slogans under which he came to power expressed the expectations of “the street.” But as everybody knows, it’s easier to take power than it is to hold on to it. The example of the first president of Georgia, who enchanted the majority of the population and then less than two years later ended his life in a remote village in western Georgia, is more than indicative.

After the collapse of the USSR, all of the post-Soviet republics faced the same complicated problem: that of the legitimacy of property. If the Baltic republics were able to overcome this problem simply through the only possible means, restitution, for the rest of the republics the problem not only remained unresolved, but it determined the course of development for years to come. Of course Georgia was no exception, although in my view Georgia in fact had a chance to follow the Baltic countries. As it happens, a restitution law was passed under Gamsakhurdia, and several families were able to have their property, particularly buildings, returned to them. But after only several months the law was suspended and then finally halted entirely. The main obstacle to returning properties to their former owners was not the possibility of social tension, but rather the sadly notorious ethnic issue. The problem was that before the Bolshevik revolution most of the merchant class in Tiflis was made up of Armenians. Georgian aristocrats had their estates in the countryside and apartments in the city, but the landlords from whom they rented them were again usually Armenians. After the establishment of Soviet power, these buildings were naturally confiscated from their owners. Thus the Gamsakhurdia government would have to return buildings in which several generations of Georgians had grown up to Armenians, who were often their neighbors. In many cases, the Soviet authorities showed an uncharacteristic humanitarianism when expropriating property, leaving one of the apartments in a building to its previous owners. That was in the city. The situation was much worse in the countryside. For seventy years everything was collective, so returning the land to the descendents of Chavchavadze, Gurieli, Dadiani and whomever else might have led to a Georgian peasant rebellion no less pointless and bloody than the Russian one, about which so much has been written. So even though there was a chance to show society that the right of ownership is sacred and inviolable if only the Georgian leadership of that time had displayed sufficient political will, all the same I would not hurry to unequivocally condemn Zviad Gamsakhurdia and his supporters for the failure of restitution.

In considering any event, one must always take into consideration the condition of society and the state at that given stage of historical development. The Rose Revolution and the first years of Saakashvili’s governance are no exception. Let us then take a close look at that Georgia. The formation of the modern Georgian nation (not to be confused with medieval or more ancient analogies) began in the period of Ilia Chavchavadze. It was then, during the economic boom at the start of the 20th century, that various Georgian ethnic groups began to feel themselves to be a united people, linked not only by Chavchavadze’s well known triad of “Language – Fatherland – Faith,” but also by solid economic ties. The development of the cities, particularly Tiflis, Kutaisi, Batumi and Poti, where Kakhetians settled together with Kartlians, Gurians with Mingrelians, and Rachans with Imeretians, and also the colossal educational efforts of the Georgian intelligentsia of the period, laid the foundation of the new Georgian nation. The acquisition of statehood in 1918 was an entirely logical step, and despite the rapid Sovietization of Georgia, several generations of Georgians grew up with a sense of conscious belonging to a new commonality, one that gradually became dominant over belonging to a specific smaller ethnic category. By the early 1990s, Georgian society was prepared for the creation of its own national government, precisely on an ethnic foundation. Thus the “nationalism” of Zviad Gamsakhurdia was historically determined. The first step in the formation of this national government, starting with the raising of ethnic self-consciousness on April 9, 1989, reached its conclusion with the creation of the institutes of state under Shevardnadze.

Mikheil Saakashvili’s team faced a task of an entirely different order: to complete the process of creating a European-type state based on the principle of citizenship. But in order to fulfill this task they had first of all to preserve power, that is, to create a vertical of power in the conditions of that society that existed in Georgia in early 2004. In modern Western society there is a functioning triad of money – power – money. That is, the leading political forces gain financial support from particular circles who in turn receive dividends in the form of one or other economic policy implemented by the government. In the post-Soviet space there is an entirely different schema of power-money-power, that is, that politicians who come to power try to concentrate control over monetary flows in their hands as much as possible in order to preserve power. In this sense, the policies of Saakashvili’s team differed little from those of other post-Soviet elites. What is more, if one were to analyze the arrests and confiscations that took place in the first years after the Rose Revolution, they would serve as perfect textbook examples of how to strengthen power through taking hold of the commanding heights of the economy. Immediately after coming to power, Saakashvili stated that he believed the political ambitions of his team members were much greater than their financial ambitions, and therefore he was hopeful for a quick and total victory over corruption. I have no basis to think that the president was being dishonest, and accusing Saakashvili’s team of excessive material greed would not be methodologically sound. The problem was that in those conditions of post-Soviet reality it would have been political suicide to give their opponents the opportunity to make use of major financial resource streams. It was not particularly difficult to reorient these streams towards themselves, since any property that had been acquired during the period of primary capital accumulation was inherently illegitimate. Did the Nationals use Bolshevik methods? Undoubtedly. Did they have any other choice? Unquestionably, no.

It should also be taken into consideration that the government was composed of two opposing camps, each of which was trying to provide itself with the best advantages. At first the Zurab Zhvania team looked more solid, first of all because it had the backing of one of the wealthiest Georgian industrialists, Badri Patarkatsishvili, and when the Prime Minister was able to bring back to Georgia another Russian oligarch, Kakha Bendukidze, it seems that its financial possibilities were practically limitless. This was particularly relevant during the period of total privatization, which meant the serious and long-term legitimization of capital. True, everything was not really so rosy within the Zhvania team: for example, Patarkatsishvili’s relationship with Erosi Kitsmarishvili (the owner of TV company Rustavi 2) was far from ideal, and the business interests of a number of Zhvania’s “friends” were continuously clashing with one another. The Prime Minister had to endlessly broker between domestic and foreign business partners, at the same time that Saakashvili, having command over the power ministries, could freely provide his people with control over business sectors that had previously belonged to “enemies of the revolution.” Under these conditions, the first person in the government after the president became, of course, not the prime minister, but the chief prosecutor, the minister of state security or the minister of internal affairs. It was no coincidence that Saakashvili used the most effective managers in his team for these roles, such as Irakli Okruashvili, Zurab Adeishvili and Vano Merabishvili.

One way or another, the country was in a precarious state of equilibrium when tragedy struck. On a cold March morning in 2005, Georgia was shaken by news of the death of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania. His body was discovered in an apartment on Saburtalo Street, and the official explanation was that the death had been caused by gas poisoning. The deputy governor of the Kvemo-Kartli region, Raul Yusupov, died together with him. Naturally nobody believed the official explanation. I don’t want to get into speculation, and I say honestly that I don’t know who killed Zhvania, but for a number of indirect reasons I will risk maintaining that Saakashvili had nothing to do with this death. The main reason for this is the statements of former (among other things) interior minister Irakli Okruashvili. This person hates Saakashvili as much as any person can hate another who has taken everything from him. He is in relative safety, with political asylum in France. As the result of the positions he has held he cannot help but know the whole truth about the death of Zhvania. And nevertheless, at that moment when it would have been extremely beneficial for him to accuse Saakashvili of murdering the Prime Minister, he restricted himself to talking about how Mikheil Saakashvili knows that Zhvania did not die a natural death. There was nothing new in this statement, since all of Georgia could guess that Zhvania did not die a natural death. The Georgian authorities of that time could be accused only of concealing the fact of Zhvania’s murder. But then who could commit this crime? Who was so powerful that even the top leadership of the country decided not to make a case? Of all of the theories that I’ve heard, the most convincing for me would seem to be that the murder was arranged by one of the large international corporations. The motive was the transfer to competitors of a business project that had particular political significance. Too many members of the Georgian political elite, including friends of the Prime Minister, shake their heads when thinking about his death, saying that the poor fellow got caught up in his own intrigues, and he was killed over big money. But it is very hard to say anything concrete. This is only one theory, and in reality I don’t think that the public will ever know the whole truth about the tragedy on Saburtalo Street.

After Zhvania’s death the political configuration in the country could not but change. Despite many people’s expectations, Zhvania’s team members did not fade away into political obscurity, but instead flowed entirely organically into a new team, comprising a backbone of reformers. Much has been written about the reforms of Mikheil Saakashvili: the reducing of the bureaucratic apparatus, the reform of the system in the ministry of internal affairs, the military reforms, and so forth. Here the new authorities were able to reduce corruption at the lower and middle levels to a minimum and to create comfortable conditions for the citizenry. The bureaucratic feeding trough was mercilessly annihilated. Did bureaucrats of that time still take bribes and participate in corrupt schemes? Naturally, but to the same degree as in practically all other countries. What was new was that the level of bribe-taking was severely reduced because the bribe-takers were completely terrified. Practically no bureaucrats willing to take bribes at their own risk remained, and those who did this under the protection of a higher patron became with enviable regularity tools in the political game. Thus it became so dangerous to take bribes that today this is done by only the most desperate bureaucrats of the middle rank. As concerns corrupt schemes, participation in these is possible only for political leaders of the highest status.

An interesting detail is that the reforms in Georgia were linked exclusively to personalities. For example, it is hard to imagine the reforms of the interior ministry system without the name of Vano Merabishvili, the most talented manager in Saakashvili’s team. In precisely the same way, the complete eradication of corruption in such a sphere as higher education would have been absolutely impossible without the ferocious energy and staggering work ethnic of Alexander Lomaia. The reform of the Georgian military is undoubtedly linked with the name of Irakli Okruashvili. And the economic successes would be impossible to imagine without Kakha Bendukidze. Unfortunately, the selection of talented managers in Saakashvili’s team was limited. This was precisely the reason for the endless “personnel carousels” that the president manipulated with predictable regularity.

But perhaps the hardest task in that period was to change people’s behavior. One can replace the fat traffic cops with shiny new patrol cars, create a modern contract army or a new system of education, reduce taxes and perfect a state administration system. It is much harder to force people to abandon old stereotypes, not to pay off beseeching bureaucrats and to obey the law. For this a change in mentality was required, but more about that later.

To be continued...

Click here to search for the remaining parts.