>I caught this on Russian TV last night. The footage of the opposition
>storming parliament was very impressive.
Yeah, I saw it on either CBC or BBC news shows (we get both here). When they actually got into the chamber itself, I had to laugh at this one guy pitching sheaves of papers at the retreating pols.
>Shevardnadze is not (was not) a "US puppet." He is a very canny politician
>who has stayed in power by playing Russia and the US off against each
>other. Russia is very pro-Shevardnadze.
Saw that all over the Eurasianet articles. Russia's concern, that is, not about S.'s playing off both sides.
>: >Chris, what do you know about all this? And just what exactly is
>>Saakashvili and his party up to?
>>
>I'm hardly well-informed on Georgian politics, but anyway...
<TSK!> What are we to do! Our one reliable set of ears in the field! "Hardly well-informed" he says! How can we find stuff to talk about! Oh woe! !{)>
>>><p>AP also tried to paint this as another "Velvet Revolution against
>>>Communism".
>?!? Shevardnadze is very pro-Western.
Where do you get that? My impression is more of "any port in a storm" mentality; he'll accept "help" from anyone who'll offer it. He was also the one in power when the IMF came a-calling around '94
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/pdf/092396b.pdf
http://www.europeanforum.net/country_updates/georgia
Does that make him "pro-Western"?
>>"The velvet revolution has taken place in Georgia," opposition leader
>>Saakashvili of the National Movement said, as the hall applauded him. "We
>>are against violence."
>Saakashvili may have said this, but other Georgian opposition people are
>calling for a rerun of Romania 1989.
Yeah, but Saakashvili's the one I always see on the tube, so that makes his take on the situation true, no? !{)>
>>Not so sure the victory's for "us" so much as it's (maybe) for a group of
>>"liberal reformers" a la your Democratic Party (since the country's under
>>the whip of the IMF, the reformers might just represent a more advanced
>>and less thuggish party of capital).
>Shevardnadze is a liberal reformer himself.
Yes, after all the IMF came in on his watch, but there seems to be lots of charges of payola and graft floating around him, which could just be rumour.
But the whole situation just seems to smack of stories I hear every so often about "newly democratized countries" whose first presidents get mired in graft charges, then a fresh-faced reformer comes along who wants to clean house. The old guard, with its cronyism, gets booted out, younguns come in, there's no more talk of graft but plenty of talk of austerity (not helping those already in poverty, of course).
I just doubt Sakashvili's "on our side" much if at all.
>I think the Washington has backed out of Georgia because it has been
>muscled out by the Kremlin, personally.
The US troops are still there apparently:
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav050503.shtml
Maybe it's not so much the Kremlin as Washington simply doesn't really give a rat's ass at the moment, having more important fish to fry. They don't care who's in power so long as the place is relatively quiet.
Todd
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