By doing the unspeakable -- refusing to drink Georgian wine -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hoped Georgia’s heavily agricultural economy would go to seed, but the Russian prohibition turned out to be a blessing in disguise, Saakashvili argued. While Georgian wine is still consumed in Russia, Georgian winemakers have found new outlets, and have diversified and improved quality, he claimed.
The moral of this tale? The grapes of Moscow’s wrath can make for a good Georgian wine.
Georgia has canceled taxes for information technology producers in an ambitious bid to turn the country into the Silicon Valley of the Caucasus. Finance Minister Kakha Baindurashvili hopes that the profit tax-free environment will attract Internet and computer software giants such as Microsoft and Google to set up regional operations in the new IT tax haven.
“We want to declare Georgia a tax-free zone for the companies that produce . . . .information technologies and software,” Georgian Prime Minister Nika Gilauri told a June 18 cabinet meeting, Rustavi-2 television reported. Baindurashvili told journalists that major .com businesses will be informed about the tax-free opportunities in Georgia.
More details have surfaced about the alleged June 16 attack on an Azerbaijani journalist, Natiq Gulahmedoglu (Adilov). A Baku convenience shop-owner apparently punched and chased the journalist with a spade for plucking a leaf from a tree the storeowner had planted in honor of the late President Heydar Aliyev. Both men complained to the police.
The storeowner said of Gulahmedoglu, known for his criticism of the authorities: “I do not know what kind of journalist he is, but he does not look like a patriot to me.”
The whole incident may look trivial, but the fact that the police held Gulahmedoglu at the station quickly sparked fears among his colleagues that the authorities were looking for a way to punish a critical journalist. Brawls have led to other journalist arrests in Azerbaijan in the past.
Ganimat Zahid, Gulahmedoglu's editor at the pro-opposition Azadlig newspaper, is worried that the authorities may use the incident to punish Gulahmedoglu for his attacks on the Azerbaijani government’s poor democracy record. Zahid was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison following a similar incident.
Gulahmedoglu reportedly does not see a political motive for the attack, according to Kavkazsky Uzel.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have accused one another of all the mortal sins since they launched into battle over the separatist region of Nagorno Karabakh, but the list of assumed misdeeds at times seems endless.
Now Baku says Armenia is a compulsive arsonist, who apparently runs through Azerbaijani wheat fields, throwing lit matches left and right.
The blaze has destroyed wheat crops in the occupied region of Tartar and, with temperatures rising, the fire threatens to destroy some 1,300 hectares of farm land.
The Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict may have stemmed from deep-seeded differences, but the chronic bickering between the two countries has long become reminiscent of iconic writer Nikolai Gogol’s The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich. The two Ivans are good neighbors, but one unfortunate incident sparks a never-ending, excruciating squabble that no arduous mediation by their well-meaning community can resolve. The two country gentlemen reach the point of no return after one has the indiscretion to call the other a silly “goose.”
By comparison, such a mild insult, if delivered by one side or the other in the 22-year Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict, would most likely rank as an improvement in dialogue.
Twitter and Facebook reports are coming from Azerbaijan about the alleged detention of yet another journalist critical of the government in circumstances similar to the arrest of bloggers Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli.
Natiq Adilov, who works for the pro-opposition Azadliq (Liberty) newspaper, was allegedly beaten and taken into custody on June 16, reports say. As was the case with Hajizade and Milli, an unidentified man allegedly attacked Adilov (this time, on the street in Baku) and then accused him of assault.
Police could not yet be reached for confirmation or denial of the reports.
There is an interesting piece in Salon.com about how the row between Turkey and Israel over the humanitarian flotilla incident is changing the Israeli perspective on Ottoman Turkey's World War I-era slayings of ethnic Armenians. The story may be largely about its disgruntled author venting his grievances against The Los Angeles Times for allegedly killing his article on the same topic for a perceived pro-Armenian bias, but it nonetheless includes some fresh observations on the politics surrounding Armenia's genocide recognition campaign.
Mark Arax argues that the idea of recognizing the slaughter of ethnic Armenians as genocide is gaining currency with Israel, which allegedly refrained from doing so previously out of fear of alienating a strong Muslim ally. With Turkey and Israel now at loggerheads over the flotilla attack, that reluctance could soon vanish, Arax predicts.
It might have been advice the Red Queen herself would have proposed. As did the Queen to Alice in Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili essentially advised his ruling United National Movement party on June 15 that they can run fast to stay in the same place, but need "to run at least twice as fast as that" to "get somewhere else."
"We have no moral right to slow down the reforms we have launched," Saakashvili said. Without being "very successful," he claimed, "there will be no Georgia."
Singapore appears to serve as the model for this race against the clock. By emulating Singapore’s experience, Saakashvili continued, Georgia could not only solve its economic woes, but resolve problems with Russia, which continues to occupy two rooms in “our apartment.”
Singapore has in the past solved its problems with China by conducting sweeping reforms and becoming an attractive, developed place, he said, Georgia, Saakashvili pledged, will solve its problems with Russia in the same way.
An irreverent novella in Tbilisi has provoked a culture war that has Georgians fighting over the limits of individual freedom.
The work, titled Saidumlo Siroba (Holy Crap), takes swipes at the Georgian Orthodox Church, Georgian patriotism and Georgian mothers. It has become a William Burroughs-style bizarro bestseller, generating more shock and outrage than literary acclaim.
Ukraine wants to join the project, which could provide a shortcut to Europe for Azerbaijani gas exports, and leave aside both Turkey and Russia. Under the proposed itinerary, liquefied gas would travel from a Georgian terminal on the Black Sea across to Romania, to be turned back into gas. Ukraine, which has had more than a few gas supply worries of its own, proposes another re-gasification terminal, near its Black Sea port of Odessa, to receive the gas from Georgia for its own needs as well.
Just one catch: Ukrainian Energy Minister Yuri Boiko is hoping that the European Union will pony up the $1 billion estimated needed to build the terminal.
Forget about the dangers of France selling Russia high-end helicopter carriers. It is apparently the French plans to sell Georgia two helicopters that pose a real threat to regional security, claims one member of the Russian Defense Ministry's Public Council.
The French company Eurocopter plans to sell two of it Super Puma helicopters (a series with both military and civilian versions) to Georgia, a roughly $30 million sale that could run the risk of Russian sanctions against the firm, warned Igor Korotchenko, head of the recently formed Center for the Analysis of World Military Trade. In the wake of its 2008 war with Georgia, Moscow called for an international ban on selling arms to Tbilisi and vowed to punish embargo breakers. Korotchenko reminded Eurocopter that Russia is a VIP client and Georgia is not worth risking Russian sales.
Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze called the warnings a bluff. The Georgian government claims that the helicopters will be used for high-altitude emergency operations and to carry tourists into the mountains.
By contrast, the French-made Mistral helicopter carrier in Russia's shopping bag is capable of transporting 16 attack helicopters, dozens of armored vehicles and around 450 soldiers. Russian Navy commander Vladimir Vysotsky claimed that the carriers would have allowed Russia to complete its 2008 war with Georgia within "40 minutes."
