Happy Birthday Rose Revolution! Here’s $250 million

The fundamental problem is that the western media in general has programmed itself to ignore or downplay anything that does not fit the script it has given itself.

On 14 november someone threw a smallish bomb at the EU Eulex headquarters in the Kosovo capital, Pristina. Windows were broken and cars were damaged. Who we paranoids asked ourselves did that? In whose interest is it to stir things up without doing too much damage just as policy is being decided? Had we replied out loud “Three German intelligence agents!” we would have been laughed to scorn and dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

However it turns out that three German intelligence agents of the Germany Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) have been arrested for the attack. So where is the outrage in the world’s media? Er, well there isn’t any. The perpetrators were neither Serbs, Russian Iranian nor Taliban so let’s just not get too excited about this amazing outrage.

“Had we replied out loud “Three German intelligence agents!” we would have been laughed to scorn and dismissed as conspiracy theorists.”

Except you wouldn’t have said that; you would have said it was Washington.

Tsk, tsk…

$24 mil. for school vouchers is an outrage, but $163 mil. for ’state pensions, state compensation and state academic stipends’ warrants no mention?

Which side is the toast buttered here?

However it turns out that three German intelligence agents of the Germany Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) have been arrested for the attack.

What outrage would you expect? Are you implicating the German goverment in an attack on the EU? Do you believe this is possible, or the work of 3 independent operators with undetermined intentions (if the Germans are even the guilty party in this)?

At this point, there is no story to tell about the alleged actions, which is why there is no “outrage”, as you put it. So-called “scripts” are based upon history and political actions that have occurred in the past – they are almost never complete inventions or total myths, but are based upon prior actions between governments and various parties.

Of course someone might expect that Serbs or some other angry group might have perpetrated an attack in Kosovo – that is the recent history of the region. It would be impossible not to acknowledge that.

W.Shedd “What outrage would you expect? Are you implicating the German goverment in an attack on the EU?”

Just pointing out that there is an astonishing lack of balance in media coverage of this sort of event. Bearing in mind that Germany started the break up of Yugoslavia, you would have thought the question was at least worth asking. The whole of your comment underlines a certain Western inability to see ourselves as others see us.

Which side is the toast buttered here?

greedy American! You don’t want to pay for the matter of freedom, do you, Candid?

So US pays pensions of Georgians… but has no influence or whatever on Saakashvilli…

I just imagine what would someone here say if Russia pays pensions or schools in Venezuela.

PS. I know, I know – all this about freedom etc…

The whole of your comment underlines a certain Western inability to see ourselves as others see us.

Not really. You should realize that non-Western peoples have just as many myths and “storylines” if not more. The fact that there is a conflict between different world-views should hardly be surprising.

On the whole, I see much more willingness of participants in this forum to at least understand or acknowlege a Russian-centric world view than in most other “western” forums.

However, that does not invalidate history.

I’m very curious how you see Germany as being the source of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, an amalgamation of nations that was barely held together by an authoritarian government for roughly 70 years.

Oh yeah, adjectives like “authoritarian” probably show a pro-Western bias and a tedious dependency upon the facts of history.

How droll of me.

I love how the Bush Administration snuck school vouchers into the aid. They’ve been trying to shove this code phrase for privatizing public schools down Americans’ throats to no avail.

Maybe it is not too late for Georgia to get better (via private) education. They most likely do not have an equivalent of National Extortion Association of baseball bat wielding union thugs that produce one of the most dismal education results any outfit could produces.

Chinese knock-off shoes are of better quality then the US union driven education. Not surprising that National Extortion Association and their ilk have been shoving this fraud down American’s throats and fighting off all attempts to improve education by bringing competition in.

Results? US Riverside reported, what, 60% freshmen requiring remedial math and English. Sure thing, Sean, let’s keep this gravy train home. Educators and those feeding off it need to live somehow.

Experiment of privatizing schools? Better then the excrement we have now. (кто помнит батьку Ангела?)

25 mil for vouchers beat billions that break budgets

Labor rights? You mean a right to work 160 days a year, produce dismal product and whine on every corner they are under paid? Poor Eugine Debbs.

Oh, but forgive me, I forgot the point is to privitize profits and socialize debt.

Извинить не могу. It has nothing to do with profit or debt. It is about efficiency via competition.

For anyone that went through a decent course of Политэконоия капитализма in a USSR college the issue of monopoly distorting supply/demand should be quite obvious. For those not so lucky products of the US education system, the “We are the phone company” SNL skit should work.

But if making better educated citizens is as simple as making better shoes,

Oh no, it’s not. But churning out uneducated children seems to be easier for the union thugs then producing bad shoes.

Why privatize schools if the government would probably have to bail them out at some point anyway?

Sure. If the privatization process is akin to California energy deregulation or the proposed new Obama Volkswagen, then you are right. The public largess will be squandered again by politicians that like to think they are running economy.

Cyrill,

You’re teetering on a tower of soap boxes there with your unionized teachers tirade. I understand that you’re in the Bay Area where education spending and quality has been steadily declining since Proposition 13 was enacted in the 70s. Prop 13 limiting real estate taxes was a corporate gift wrapped in a populace package, and it’s at the root of many of California’s problems. Don’t take my word for it, take Warren Buffet’s. You don’t hear Kolya complaining about unionized teachers in Vermont. If you had experience at one of the “fortress” public schools, you would find the teachers to be first-class and you’d see the scores to match. What do they have there that they don’t in other California schools? Parents that care about education and that 1) have the $$$ to get into the fortress and 2) have at-home moms with time and more $$$ to donate to the schools. ( I do supplement my children’s math education with Russian-trained professors teaching with Singapore-method books. Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn’t expect to get a gov’t voucher to pay for it.)

But this thread was about Georgia…the U.S. wasting tax dollars we can’t afford on another ‘Charlie Wilson War’.

Prop 13 limiting real estate taxes was a corporate gift wrapped in a populace package, and it’s at the root of many of California’s problems.

Sure, prop 13 is to blame. Government having less money to spend at whim in exchange for political favors is the problem. Not that the union has been spending gazillions to fight every meaningful reform, like – what a novel concept – testing teachers. Please, spare the not enough spending canard.

California is in the sink because of teacher and prison guards unions plus a complete farce of an election process with politicians drawing districts for themselves that look like a Jackson Pollack’s masterpiece.

If you had experience at one of the “fortress” public schools, you would find the teachers to be first-class and you’d see the scores to match.

Fine, let’s tout a few decent public schools. My daughter went to one of these, in a very wealthy area of Seattle – Mercer Island to be exact. The school was swimming in money; her education was still sub par big time. Would you think that school and teachers were better financed then schools in the USSR 35 years ago?

I am sorry, USSR schools had algebra in the 5th grade. Geometry in the 7th. Basic calculus in the 10th. We are now debating if we should test high school students in CA for knowledge of algebra. When you are 5 years behind USSR 35 years ago, может что в консерватории поправить?

Nothing wrong with that, but I wouldn’t expect to get a gov’t voucher to pay for it.

Maybe, just maybe, you would not need to do any of it if there was competition among schools and teachers. Unfortunately we will never know, since the union and the outdated mentality cling to “education should be public” mantra disregarding abysmal results. И что думать – трясти надо!

But this thread was about Georgia…the U.S. wasting tax dollars we can’t afford on another ‘Charlie Wilson War’.

We sure as hell can afford it. Federal budget is about 3 trillion. These 250 mil is 1/12000th of it. It’s 1/32th of what Federal Government spends Every Day! Just like Charlie Wilson’s War was a good thing to spend money on (too bad they did not spend enough) this one I have no problems with. Better this then fat lazy incompetent teachers or massive automotive bailouts.

Overall, it never stops to surprise me that the certain faction of the left that never experienced not being free, love to mock longing others might have for freedom, since early attempts at freedom are never as good and free as freedoms these lefties had been given to on a silver platter.

But, as one of my french friends told me once, cynicism is a mere substitute for lack of sophistication.

” We sure as hell can afford it. Federal budget is about 3 trillion. These 250 mil is 1/12000th of it. It’s 1/32th of what Federal Government spends Every Day! Just like Charlie Wilson’s War was a good thing to spend money on”

So are you factoring in the unintended consequences of the training of Al Qaida, ie the bombing of the World Trade Center and other prior American hits? What’s the $$ value you’re putting on the 911 lives as well as all those American lives lost since in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting Al Quaida?

So are you factoring in the unintended consequences of the training of Al Qaida, ie the bombing of the World Trade Center and other prior American hits?

I presume you are referring to my comment about Charlie Wilson’s war, since there is hardly any suspicion that 250 mil for school vouchers in Georgia will blow up Sear’s Tower.

If you noticed (probably did, since you have conveniently dropped it from the quote) I did mention that we did not spend enough. Well, I was not a “we” at that time. If the US did not abandon Afghanistan after the Soviets left, and continued spending money there, trying to modernize it, then things would have been quite different but 911 might still have happened with Al Qaeda setting up bases elsewhere instead.

Fundamentalists blowing WTC has nothing to do with support of the mujaheddin during the USSR occupation of Afghanistan. Instead, the person that kicked the ball rolling to point finger at, was Jimmy Carter, who was played by the USSR like a child trying his first hand at Texas holdem. (Just wait for the newly elected walk into something similar)

It was Carter’s dumping support for the Shah of Iran – the best thing that happened to that country in a while – that stopped modernization of Iran and brought the cancer of Islamic theocracy we are paying for since then.

So, yes, I am factoring in that not only скупой платит дважды but that second payment might be in blood. If we can pour money in to stabilize that isthmus, it will be a benefit to all, including Russia, when it starts thinking of its interests as being different from interests of Putin Inc.

Overall, it never stops to surprise me that the certain faction of the left that never experienced not being free, love to mock longing others might have for freedom, since early attempts at freedom are never as good and free as freedoms these lefties had been given to on a silver platter.

Indeed. Lefty academics and journalists enjoying academic and journalistic freedoms unparalleled anywhere else in the world sneering at the concepts of individual freedom and liberty comes across as nothing more than adolescent attempts at being rebelious.

“It is about efficiency via competition.”

It’s more about you being a dick who continuously tries to shove his own preoccupations down other people’s throats. I realize Sean has more readers than you have listeners, but don’t you have your own venue?

PS. It’s EugEne Debbs.

to improve education by bringing competition in.

It is about efficiency via competition.

Guys and girls. Forgive Cyrill. He got his education for free in totalitarian Soviet education system, owned by totalitarian Soviet state. Only that could damage even more sophisticated brains

As a result of the damage he thinks that
1. everything that is private is always better by default.
2. everything that US government does is always better for the world by default

If we can pour money in to stabilize that isthmus, it will be a benefit to all, including Russia, when it starts thinking of its interests as being different from interests of Putin Inc.

And the sentence above summarize his current ideology.

Cyrill. There is one tiny error in you logic. People (including Russian people) think not because “we” are pouring money everywhere. I have no objections if you pour your own 250 mil somewhere. But I don’t think that you are making such money. Neither all “we”.

Back to Georgia. Does anyone knows where else US government pays pensions?

I love russia. I spend my summer vacation there almost every time. I appreciate russian hospitality, I sympathize with the tragic Russian history. It is not wise to say Russian do this or do that. Because ordianry russian people are just lovely. These are my pics from last winter, if you are interested: http://www.odyssei.com/travel-article/10240.html

Georgian order to attack

UPD
Domain georgiatimes.info registered in October, hosting – in Moscow.
Good example of free and honest press

Does anyone knows where else US government pays pensions?

I would guess and say – Israel, as our billions and billions of dollars seem to pay for that nations very existence.

We also give a ridiculously large sum of money to Egypt as well.

Russia is in the top 10 for foreign aid, receiving about $200 million a year now, with total benefit of approximately $8.3 billion since 1997.

Sean, what is Russia thinking? Seriously, how did the event go?

Shedd.
There is some difference between money for another country pensions and money “to promote democracy”.

But by your answer I can assume that Georgia is unique state in this respect

Keeping in mind recent development – pushing both G and U to NATO via “express procedures” – I think it would be more fair towards US taxpayers just to include Georgia as 51st territory… Then no need for NATO mess and much easier to explain to public what the fu*k US is doing there.

I just imagine what would someone here say if Russia pays pensions or schools in Venezuela.

Don’t be silly. Nobody here gives a shit about Russia helping another country with pensions or schools. Did anybody in this forum complain or comment when Russia recently sent aid to Cuba? Or course not.

It’s the billions and billions of dollars of arms sales to Venezeula, Syria, Iran, and Indonesia that draw comment here (or anywhere).

I promise – I won’t be silly

But don’t you think it’s silly to claim that one country has little or no influence on another when paying even pensions.
“Кто дэвушку угощает – тот её и танцет!” (с)

PS. US sells more arms than all others but this is for democracy really. I know that

Why privatize schools if the government would probably have to bail them out at some point anyway? Oh, but forgive me, I forgot the point is to privitize profits and socialize debt.

Hardly.

The reason the car companies are being bailed out is because they have enormous legacy costs of paying for the pensions of their former employees which make the company unviable. Note that it was Sean’s beloved Unions which insisted the companies adopt these policies which shafted the future workers for the benefit of those who will enjoy the benefits first, and which are completely unsustainable.

The US taxpayer is not being asked to bailout car companies, it is being asked to pay for the lifetime benefits of former Union members which could never have been afforded in the first place. Could it be that Sean is so against the privatisation of education because he intends to hook himself up to a similar taxpayer-funded gravy train in the near future?

I think the irony with Sean position is that he is employed by the University of California, which charges students for education received (although California residents pay reduced fees), that is not all that different from the voucher system.

So his outrage against vouchers appears to be strictly dogmatic and even contradictory to his own professional life (unless he wants to go work for some School District, which doesn’t seem likely, but I may be wrong).

The Bush junta’s spending priorities are incomprehensible.

1.5tn $+ –> the overgrown parasites that make up the finance industry = YES!

2bn $+ –> unashamed liars and war criminals = YES!

3tn $+ (according to Stiglitz’s final estimate) –> Iraq, which now wants US troops out to add insult to injury (deservedly, I’m sorry to say) = YES!

25bn $+ –> save the heart of America’s remaining manufacturing and root of its economic and military strength = NO!

“So his outrage against vouchers appears to be strictly dogmatic and even contradictory to his own professional life (unless he wants to go work for some School District, which doesn’t seem likely, but I may be wrong).”

This assumes that Sean agrees with the way the UC system is run.

Is Doom implying that Sean may be plotting to nationalize the UC system?, asks Candide.

Forgive Cyrill. He got his education for free in totalitarian Soviet education system, owned by totalitarian Soviet state.

ivanov, you got to wrap your mind around a simple concept: NOTHING IS EVER FREE. That education you and I and others got in the USSR was paid for by in part confiscation of my family’s property and then by shameless exploitation of everybody including you. That education seems to have beenn effective since you still think the state generates its own wealth and provides free services.

1. everything that is private is always better by default.

Stop operating o kindergarten emotional level of “better”, think “more efficient”.At some point slave labor is efficient enough for Belomorkanal. Government forced and provided ed is more efficient in an authoritarian state where the state has unlimited resources to enforce and coerce

2. everything that US government does is always better for the world by default

You are out of your mind. Right after my “rant” about government massive failure in k-12 ed and after blaming a US president for a host of problems the word faces today? You seem to only see what you programmed yourself to see.

Cyrill. There is one tiny error in you logic.

You should not be talking logic after creating the glaring oxymoron above: all private is better and all that govenment does is better too.

I agree with Cyrill, in real life nothing is free. Soviet public education was not free, and US public education is not free either. We all paid in the USSR, and we all pay in the US through taxes (in the USSR the price of all social services was factored into salaries that were ultimately set by the State).

For example, my kids public school has a budget. The money comes from the gov’t for every student enrolled, based on daily attendance. Each day a kid skips school, the gov’t witholds the money, so the school administration is always haranguing for 100% attendance, even if kids are sick.

The gov’t gets those money by levying taxes on all people, whether they have school age kids or not. Now, I’m satisfied with my kids’ school (located in a small and quite possibly exclusive District) and if the gov’t would give me the voucher, I’d most likely bring it back to the same school. But I think that allowing me to dispose of the voucher gives me more influence over my kids education. And I can see how other parents can try to use vouchers to get their kids out of the worst schools.

Sean’s position I can’t understand. Does it bother you if more people apply to UCLA or Berkeley than UC Riverside? Or all those people paying insane money to that remediate tech school in Palo Alto? If so, why?

Ex-ambassador blames Georgia for war with Russia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8086370

Tell us something we didn’t already know Mr. ex-ambassador. However it is interesting how he points to Condi:

“Georgian officials also perceived a July 9-10 visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as encouragement for the plan, Kitsmarishvili said. He said people in Saakashvili’s circle told him that Rice “gave the green light.”

BTW Candide, you make a nice plea for vouchers; but the challenge of educating the populace is one of those ‘too big to fail’ businesses that would likely only be made worse by such ‘free market’ experimentation.

I’ll support Sean’s off-hand comment about vouchers with an off-hand comparison: Vouchers would be like “let’s have an insurance system whereby all the sick pay into it; and all the healthy people can opt out.” I’d like to see momentum toward making more public school districts viable, rather than moving toward dismantling them – and I think vouchers would bring on the latter.

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to the voucher cause or haven’t experienced a broken public school system: My parents put 7 of us through Catholic Grammar schools and High Schools in a big Eastern city where the public schools were racial battle zones in the 60s/70s. However, there is that old separation of church and state problem that stopped the voucher movement then — and gives reason for pause now.

Finally, you cannot mix the discussion of k through 12 School vouchers with post-12 education discussion/examples. Apples and oranges.

But can we get back to Russia/Georgia/US please? Because frankly this debate about US education is

If somebody came onto this thread for the first time they’d assume you’d been blogging for a week, not a few years.

You yourself brought the subject of school vouchers into the post itself for no other reason than getting in a cheap shot at the Bush administration for a policy with which you disagree, one or two readers challenged you on it and asked you to elaborate on your views, and now you’re evading the questions and asking everyone to move quietly on.

Therein lies one of the many perils of blogging.

I did not think of it as a cheap shot. Not initially. Sean, you have set up the scope by bringing up the breakdown of the package. How do we discuss the merits of the package without discussing its components?

As for aid to Georgia in general, I would bring Iran as an example. Saak is no “jeffersonian democrat” (a laughable misnomer anyway since democracy that Jefferson set up only applied to less then half of the country). Neither was the Shah. But Shah was moving Iran towards modernization, including allowing women to vote.

Would it have been better to have a jefferson in Iran instead of Shah? By all means. Would it have been better to prop up a less awkward figure then Pinochet? By all means. Unfortunately these were the only ones available and alternatives were much worse.

We know for sure what the alternative to Shah is. Dumping Georgia and Saak now might throw that country into an unstable phase and who knows what alternative might come on top.

US and the West did not come to what they are now without ugly and bloody periods. I would like other countries to be able to avoid them. Afghanistan is another great example. It seems to go through the stage of nation building. We all know what tools of nation building were employed by countries that went through that stage and we seem to be against Kharsai using these tools. Well, in this case we have to pay up of get off the pot.

I would like us to avoid stepping on the proverbial rake Carter stepped on with Iran. I personally consider this one of the best investments we can do. Anywhere we can. Since we do not have unlimited resources, we must choose where to apply them. Georgia now presents a target of opportunity. Its strategic proximity to energy reserves makes it a more valuable target with a higher success multiplier.

Naturally, this presupposes the view of historical progression towards democratic capitalism. Your mileage might vary greatly.

“The reason the car companies are being bailed out is because they have enormous legacy costs of paying for the pensions of their former employees which make the company unviable.”

I can’t buy this argument. Everything else aside, I would like to point out in 2004 the companies’ declining market share and mounting losses in their core auto operations prompted Standard & Poor’s Corp. to cut their debt ratings to “junk” status. So in 2006, GM secured a $1.5 billion loan from J.P Morgan Securities, using equipment and plants as collateral to pay back debt to investors. (to guarantee payment in the event that GM and Ford were unable to satisfy all debt payments). In attempts to justify emerging practice, Sometime in late 2006, to increase the companies’ liquidity, they chose to use secured loans since it was a more cost-effective way of funding (Since secured loans are less expensive than unsecured financing). Yet nearly ALL the debt that they have been accumulating for the past decade is unsecured. The shift to asset-backed loans – almost as a last resort — revealed the financial difficulties all three companies began facing AGES ago.
It makes me wonder if these people ever grasped basic Econ 101 theory. I do not see why we should have to bail out a company that can obviously not run a business. It just seems as if they are taking advantage of the financial crisis to save their own ass at the expense of the taxpayers…

I can’t buy this argument.

It is too simplistic, I admit. The car companies are also hampered by crap management and an inability to produce decent cars. But the legacy costs add a crippling burden to companies which are already struggling to compete.

I do not see why we should have to bail out a company that can obviously not run a business.

Quite.