Why I hate writing

It’s something I think I have a talent for (not, of course, that I ever put a lot of effort into writing these posts) but not something I can ever see myself doing for a living. I’ve suffered a lot of frustration in this field which I could frankly be doing without. 

For instance, the newspaper scene. Papers typically have a policy of ‘to write for us, you must have already written for somebody else’…and considering this applies across the board to next to all of them it’s almost impossible to break into the industry. Those papers and magazines which do accept submissions from people who’ve never written professionally before are usually so insignificant they’re not even worth putting on your resume, anyway. 

Another thing I’ve encountered is enthusiasm…followed by rejection, since they already have someone working in that area. A British newspaper sent me very enthusiastic emails last October, told me they loved my writing style but couldn’t give me work because they already had someone in Tbilisi working for them. I was hoping they’d review the pieces from both myself and this mystery man and just see whose work they’d like to use best, but that wasn’t the case. They did tell me, however, they would keep me in mind, and got in touch a month later to ask if I knew anything about Tony Blair’s activities in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. As it happens, I did, and sent them my information and the premise of an article I could write for them in the tone they required. I received absolutely nothing in reply, which I thought damned odd since they were the ones who’d contacted me in the first place.

Then there’s the Moscow Times. I was originally surprised when I read on their website that they wanted people to blog for them, but no details were given about exactly what it was they wanted applicants to write about; the only thing it said was to get in touch with their editor, Andrew McChesney. I wrote to him, saying I keep a blog of my own and I can write extensively about Georgian politics and received an enthusiastic reply. I promptly sent off two samples from this blog, but then he sent me a really strange email. He said he’d liked the pieces, but getting information from me was like ‘pulling teeth’…couldn’t quite see that myself, since I’d sent him two fucking articles and his website told me sweet fuck all about what it was they wanted from their bloggers, and quite what else he expected within two emails of correspondence is anyone’s guess. And no, I hadn’t sent my resume off, simply because there really isn’t much on there which is relevant to writing. Besides, he looks like a weasel. Ginger hair and no chin. Always bad signs. 

But to be a writer in Georgia, you have to be American. That seems to be the way of it, since almost every contributor in the pro-Saakashvili English language newspapers is a Yank, and glorifies the United States and its influence on this country. Take, for instance, Mark Mullen, a blogger who writes for the Georgian Journal. His posts are a real mixed bag; his political insight can be quite interesting and perceptive, but frankly some of his other posts are just so much rubbish. I remember one entitled ‘Dog Poop’. Ah, Mark, how intellectual. A post about the cleanliness of our streets. Could you not have picked something more suitable? Then there was one about the Georgian Army and conscription, both of which Mr. Mullen believes need to focus on ‘team-building exercises’. I see his point, that conscription needs to be something worthwhile for people who don’t want to do it, but since Georgian military reform is so urgently needed, I’d much rather he wrote about that fact and persuaded the reader the Georgian Army needs to focus on actually winning battles. Then there’s my old friend Neal, and to be fair he deserves his place at writing for Investor.ge, since he is a talented writer…but not (I’m sure you’ll agree, Neal) significantly more talented than myself when I put my mind to it, and while our opinions may be different, mine is no less well informed. 

Then, of course, there’s the world of novels and self-publishing. Mine sold well initially, but after about a month the people who wanted to buy it had bought it, and then it fell to the back of the shelf, so to speak, since it wasn’t new any longer. I can’t gripe about that much, it made me a tidy packet at the time, but what does piss me off is that I like to think I had a (relatively) original idea; the danger with military action thrillers is that they all end up being the same thing, and I was very conscious of trying not to fall into the trap while fitting my work inside the genre. However, at the same time as my book was on sale, another bloke had written a generic SAS thriller which outsold my own work significantly. I read the book myself; the writing was nothing to boast about, and the plot was exactly the same thing that Chris Ryan and Andy McNab have done a thousand times before. But I suppose it’s like Fifty Shades of Grey. Why bother trying to write intelligently and with originality when you can just feed stupid people what they want? 

I can’t help but sound a little arrogant as I write all this, but it makes my blood boil to read things in newspapers and books when I just know I could do it better. There’s a student from my old university who is writing for the Guardian now – God alone knows how, since he can’t write worth a damn, but I think it’s something to do with the fact that he was always very interested in student politics and is filled with a fine sense of his own importance. Frankly I couldn’t care less who was student President or whatever the hell else they were, I was far more interested in politics in the real world, but it seems that’s what you have to do to get somewhere with these fucking things.

So there you are. Rant over. It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day since I highly doubt I’ll ever work within journalism, but it still pisses me off. No matter nevermind, after a beer and a wank I’ll feel much better. 

 

Languages in Georgia: expats and learning

As far as I can see, expats in Georgia frequently get into rivalries over local languages, specifically to test who knows the most Georgian, who can read their alphabet best, who also knows the Cyrillic alphabet and bits of Russian. I don’t bother getting into competitions with other people over languages; after all, you’re only really competing against yourself, since at the end of the day it doesn’t matter a damn what anybody else knows. It’s all on you. 

Nevertheless, I can’t help but compare myself to others on occasion. For instance, when it comes to actually defining fluency. A friend of mine from the United States told me he was fluent in Russian, but it turned out he didn’t have anywhere near as much knowledge of the language as I did. However, he could do basic things very well, such as ordering in restaurants, taking taxis and getting to his hotel room, so since he could do these exchanges so effortlessly he considered himself to be fluent, which I actually think is fair enough; after all, he had as much skill as he needed to get by in Russian and had turned his attention to learning Spanish, and as I stated before, you’re only in competition with yourself, so if you attain a level at which you’re happy to plateau at, then I don’t see the problem. However, after watching me talk to Georgian people in Russian, he stated that I was speaking like a native, which was flattering but sadly untrue. I’d consider myself an advanced intermediate, or at best the lowest of advanced levels; I can talk about anything with anyone, but on certain topics my vocabulary will be limited and in other instances I’ll have to take the long way around to get my point across if the linguistic territory is unfamiliar to me, and it is always obvious I’m not a native speaker. 

I’d say my Russian is better than most other foreign expats, but I put that mostly down to my never having investing a significant amount of time in Georgian. If I’m 1000% honest, as much as I love the Georgian culture and people, I don’t like the language; it’s harsh and guttural on the ear, and much harder to learn than Russian. After spending nine years of my life in France, I’ve been blessed with a significant command of the French language, and French enjoys many grammatical similarities to Russian, being an Indo-European language, which Georgian is not (even bits of vocabulary are the same in French and Russian, thanks to Napoleon’s wars in the 19th century). It took me weeks to learn in Russian the same phrases and words that I’d been struggling with in Georgian for months. It didn’t help that the throaty clicking noises necessary to pronounce certain Georgian letters were very hard for me (and are for most foreigners), while Russian is largely devoid of such things.

I put a lot of my inability to learn Georgian into two main factors. Firstly, as stated, it is not a member of any major language family, but is part of its own language group exclusive to Georgia (which also includes Svani and Mingrelian), a fact which makes it interesting and culturally significant but also rather difficult. Many people say that being around the language will allow you to just ‘pick it up’, and I found that to be true (to an extent) when I was in France. I also found it with Russian, but I have never found it to be true when it comes to Georgian. Adding credence to this idea is my friend Steffi, who speaks fluent Dutch and English as well as her native German, but has never made any significant headway within Georgian, and she’s lived here a much longer time than I have.

Secondly, I really don’t feel motivated to learn Georgian, slightly because I don’t like the sound of it but mostly because it’s hard and seems rather pointless putting in so much effort into so little reward. I hope I don’t offend any Georgian speakers here (I’ve actually spoken to a lot who understand and agree with me), but it has barely five million native speakers worldwide, and it frustrates me that if I’d put as much time and effort into a more globally significant language such as, say, Spanish or German, I would likely already be at an intermediate level. 

Learning Russian has been very useful, since it’s given me the ability to not only to speak to non-English speaking Georgian friends and family, but also to people during my infrequent visits to Latvia and Ukraine en route back to England. It will also open doors to employment opportunities in a way that Georgian language skills will not. However, I will admit that that there is a certain politeness in learning the language of the country within which you live, but I can communicate just fine in Russian and I quickly learned that settling into Georgian society is contradictory and riddled with hypocrisy. For instance, I am frequently told by Georgians in a typical Georgian grunt that because I live in Georgia, I must ‘live like Georgian’. That is to say, I must get my wife pregnant as quickly as possible, I must drink more beer and attend more tedious supras with young men who do nothing in their lives, and I must arrange to have an affair, as so many Georgian men boast of doing. Behaviour like this makes me resist adhering to Georgian culture all the more, and it extends to my language learning. Besides, since Russian is much easier, more useful and my blue eyes and pale skin always lead me to being addressed in Russian anyway, what’s the point? 

As I say, some of it is to some degree my slightly knee-jerk reaction to Georgian hospitality being more forceful and aggressive than even perhaps Georgians really imagine. But then again, if I lived in Ukraine, Armenia or Belarus, I highly doubt I’d bother trying to learn their national languages either, and (as far as I know) Russian is even more widely spoken in those countries than it is in Georgia. In fact, a lad from Almaty told me today that all over Kazakhstan the current trend is not to learn the Kazakh language at all, and it’s apparently widely believed that Russian will eventually overtake it as the state’s official language (at the moment it’s an official secondary language, I think). 

On the other hand, I absolutely do not understand people who live in Georgia and cannot speak either Georgian or Russian. I don’t particularly mind if you disagree with me about putting priority into Russian; I don’t even mind if you think I’m being impolite and inconsiderate to the Georgian culture, but I would take exception if you are one of these Western expats in Georgia whose language skill is still at greetings, courtesies and ordering food in restaurants simply by stating what you want and tacking on ‘madloba’ at the end. I honestly cannot imagine living in a foreign country and expect to everyone to speak my native language to me. That kind of attitude, which is sadly all too common, is (in my view) far more offensive than my preference of Russian, since Russian is practically a second native language to Georgians, anyway. It’s very typical of Westerners, and since many of the people I see who are incapable of Georgian/Russian language skills are teachers who are supposed to be taking something away from their time in this country I can’t help but wonder what it is they’re really doing with their time here. But ne’ermind, it’s little and less to do with me, but it still irritates me.

Anyway, since I love language learning so much, I thoroughly recommend Benny Lewis’ ‘Skype Me Maybe’ video on YouTube, and checking out all the polyglots who partake in the singing. It’s a really impressive and creative piece of art, and not a little inspiring. Check it out if you have the time.

One-Track Georgianism

To all those people who have commented and messaged me over the last few days, I have to say, I am really surprised. All the comments on here and the messages on my Twitter from Georgians have all been very positive, which I found very shocking; usually as soon as I say that Georgians respond to criticism, they start screaming and shouting, I typically get a lot of messages from Georgians screaming and shouting (thereby proving my point completely). It seems there are many more liberal and forward-thinking Georgians than I’d thought, and thanks to all of you, my faith in Georgian people has been slightly restored. It’s just a damn shame that none of you are in the government; I’ve no doubt you could turn things around.

Today I’m writing an extension of the two posts which have attracted so much attention over the past few days, but veering away from politics and more into the Georgian mentality itself. I was prompted after speaking to a young man, Zevzua, from my boxing club on Facebook. He wanted to know why I haven’t been turning up to training lately. 

I find this with many Georgian people I know. They suffer from what people in Britain call ‘One-track mind syndrome’, only its on a nation-wide scale and I’ve christened it ‘One-Track Georgianism’. In layman’s terms, they only have one interest, and Zevzua is a perfect example of this. He never talks to me about anything except boxing. He never does anything at home apart from watch boxing on YouTube and look forward to training the next day. As much as I love the sport, there are times (like this week) when I simply can’t be bothered with it, and because I love reading, studying history, seeing my friends, video games and learning foreign languages just as much I don’t always have time for it. Never mind the fact I was a semi-professional musician in my school years and completed three years in the military. 

Zevzua isn’t alone. I know Georgian people who are only interested in military things, computers, computer games or football. I’ve found it rare that they have a balance. I know one particularly sad case called Ako.

Ako loves university and his academic studies, and from meeting him the first time I took that to mean he was an intellectual, and offered him a selection from my personal collection of books, which deal with the nature of politics, philosophy and a smattering of political commentaries. However, he wasn’t interested. 

He does things like go to meetings of NGOs I’ve never even heard of and comes away from it thinking he’s had an injection of life experience, and isn’t interested in reading books unless its ones his university has told him to study. He’s a sad character, but his persistence in inviting me to do these activities with him becomes very annoying, because I believe One-Track Georgianism leads to a substantial arrogance.

Zevzua, for example, has only been boxing for four months, but talks to me as though I am a complete beginner, even though I have told him I’ve been boxing for seven years and was a multiple champion in the military. Hell, he’s even seen me pummel his friends in the gym, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking he knows a lot of stuff that I don’t. After all, he thinks about boxing all the time, and I obviously don’t, because if I did, I’d be in the gym more often, wouldn’t I? Ako is no different. He actually has the gall to tell me I should be doing more to improve my CV, as though the fact that my private education in Britain at one of our nation’s oldest and best schools counts for nothing, alongside my military service, the fact that I’ve travelled the world from Mexico to Japan and everywhere in between, and also that I am now an official language teacher. 

The thing is, there’s plenty to do in Tbilisi. I used to be proficient in fencing (I was in the national championships in ’08), so I found a club in the city and went along, simple as that. There’s as much to do in Tbilisi as anywhere else in the world, more or less, but I just don’t think Georgians are pushed to find something to do as much as their Western counterparts. My parents certainly pushed me. Before I was 13, I’d been behind a piano for years, I’d sang in a cathedral choir for two years, then I was behind a drumkit, then I bought myself a guitar, I started fencing, boxing and tae kwon do just to try it all out. I wasn’t even sure I’d enjoy half of it, I just wanted to see what it was like; most of it I did enjoy, so drums, fencing and boxing stayed, and the rest went. While I personally never had a part-time job, I know plenty of people who did when they were young, and see no reason why young Georgians couldn’t do the same. 

I’m really thinking now about the hordes of young men who sit around on building steps smoking, drinking and muttering ‘Bicho’ to each other a thousand times a day while they stare at anything with legs that happens to walk past. Couldn’t they find something better to do with their time? I find it very hard to believe they couldn’t, and some of them are of an age wherein getting a job is becoming borderline essential. 

Of course, not all of them are like that. I know a chap called Guram, who is currently learning Japanese and is an avid snowboarder. His mother recently told my wife she was worried about him doing that, but Natia pointed out would she rather have him sitting around with a bunch of boys doing fuck all? Then there’s my old friends Lasha and Eduard. Lasha is an artist, but also goes kickboxing and has a whole stack of books in three different languages on military history. Eduard plays the guitar and speaks six languages, and is currently trying to learn a seventh and eighth. 

Perhaps you people who’ve been so supportive on this blog are like them; the kind of Georgians this country needs to hold up as examples. I’d like to hope so. The more people like that, the better it will be for everyone. 

 

 

It doesn’t look good, Georgia.

It’s usually what I think whenever I see a Georgian politician making a fool of himself, but since Bidzina was elected I’m feeling much more of what the Army used to call a ‘sense of urgency’. 

The fact is, Georgians just don’t understand what democracy is. The idea behind it is to vote for whatever you want, but to respect what the other chap next to you thinks as well. The elections of October were paraded as being a historic point in Georgia’s history since they were the first democratic elections, which is entirely true…up to a point.

In my view (and the view of almost every other European/sensible Yank) the elections weren’t democratic at all, since most of the Georgian Dream voters were injected with some kind of Bidzina fanaticism. Whenever you’d speak to a Georgian Dream supporter, a glazed look would appear in their eye as they told you how wonderful he was and about the evils Saakashvili had committed during his terms. I wondered, half-seriously, whether watching Bidzina’s TV9 station had actually brainwashed them. The way they paraded through the streets on the election night wasn’t very democratic at all. In fact, it was reminiscent of a South American country ushering in a new dictator. 

To a British person like me, democracy is just the best possible system available, and we all know that it isn’t flawless. We don’t even like the people we vote for, since nothing is very likely to change and it’s known all politicians are lying bastards anyway. Georgians, however, do not think like us. Remember that these are hot-headed and impatient people who, if calling someone who doesn’t answer, rather than wait an hour and try again or just send a message, will call the number again and again until the phone is picked up. Or when knocking on the door, it will take the owner of the property to actually turn up behind them and tell them they weren’t home. They are persistent, strong-willed to the point of ignorance, but surprisingly fickle where their politicians are concerned; the ones who were cheering for Saakashvili ten years ago are the same people who are now baying for his blood to be spilled.

Georgians have been promised a perfect system to replace the dictatorship of communism…and because of their hopes and dreams exaggerating the effectiveness of the system, they will not let anyone tell them different. Debates quickly turn into shouting matches, and peaceful protests are non-existant. Violent riots, however, are still on the menu.

I’m referring of course to the people gathered outside of the National Library to protest against Saakashvili’s planned speech and the UNM party in general. People were injured, and the American ambassador was forced to unceremoniously exit through the back door (all to the good, I hate the smug bastard). Then of course there was last night, wherein two MPs from either party had a fight on live television. 

I don’t think Georgians realise (or want to realise) that their future depends on the international community, and observers from other countries don’t just judge possible EU membership (or whatever) on economic growth and social stability. Why, most of the political observers I met in October were clueless about Georgia, and stared around themselves like rabbits in the headlights as Georgian men shouted to their friends (who were standing two feet from them) about Bidzina, or girls, or football (which, I think, are the only three topics of conversation your average Georgian men is capable of). 

My point is that these international observers don’t understand that when Georgian Dream supporters drive their cars through the streets screaming and shouting, it is just Georgians being Georgians. No, what they see are fanatical Eastern European lunatics who they don’t want anywhere near the European Union. But it applies for Georgian politicians, too, the kind of people who should know better. I’m all for settling differences the good old fashioned way by introducing my fist to another chap’s face, but at present I’m not in any position of responsibility and I sure as hell wouldn’t think about it on national TV. Did neither of those morons last night stop to think that if they let the other chap go crazy, they themselves would retain the moral high ground and make the other party look like violent lunatics? Furthermore, did they not consider the possibility that it will damage their international image? The Americans will groan, the Europeans will shake their heads and say ‘definitely not’, and the Russians will shrug and assume Georgia is going back to its old ways and will soon be under their influence again. Did they honestly not consider that? Of course they didn’t. And why? 

Because they’re Georgians. 

It’s all part of the fact that Georgians believe that what happens in Georgia should stay in Georgia, and it’s nobody’s business but theirs. Why should Georgian internal affairs affect their international relations? After all, it’s no business of the Americans or the Europeans if there’s friction between GD and UNM. 

Obviously that’s rubbish, but good luck trying to convince a Georgian of that. I could write more on this, but you’ve got the point, and the gym is calling. Maybe I’ll edit this later…or not. Who cares? 

Why are America and Georgia so weird?

…is a question I find myself asking myself more often these days. I’m writing this chiefly as a response to a blog entry by a chap called Benny Lewis, a linguistically talented polyglot I very much admire (check out his website; fluentin3months.com). Since my travels across the world have taken me all over Europe, Mexico, Japan, North America and Eastern Europe, I could write several books on social cultures, but since America is so globally influential and Georgia so personal to me I’ve decided to focus on these two only.

America

What frequently strikes me as odd about Americans my own age is that they seem so much younger than me, but their immaturity manifests itself in the most peculiar of ways. The clothes they wear, the hairstyles…it all reminds me of when I was 14, a time when I was straightening my hair like a female and making sure I took that ‘right’ photograph. By the time I was six months into my fifteenth year, I was well out of that, and simply sporting a short-back-and-sides with a little gel when I was feeling flash. Even that went in favour of a shaved head when I enlisted in the Army a year later.

I have two young American Facebook friends my own age (the others are all significantly older), and they seem to be living an X-rated version of the lifestyle I lived at 14. Their hair is the same as the girls I was with at the time, and they have the same ridiculous earrings, but now they’re sporting tattoos and boasting of taking drugs. Their menfolk aren’t any different, trapped in the emo culture wherein they attempt to appear sensitive at the same time as being ‘tough’. One of these girls’ boyfriends angrily responded to a picture comment on her Facebook who called her hot…even though it was a picture of her, standing in her underwear in front of a mirror, pointing to a provocative tattoo she’d got just above her crotch.

Drinking is also a very exciting thing for them still, since it’s not yet legal, or is just about to be. We were all more or less mature about alcohol by the time we hit 16 (which is more or less the rule for Europe), and anyone who posted anything about being drunk on their Facebook was seen as an immature attention-seeking twat. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I read statuses on Twitter and Facebook from these girls in their 20s who are treating booze like we did when we were effectively kids.

The stereotype of all British people being ‘I say old boy!’ dandies is bullshit, and I watch incredulously at how many American TV shows portray the Yank drinking the Brit under the table, or the Yank beating the Brit up because he tried to sneakily steal the American’s girlfriend (not having the balls to do it honestly, you see, as if there were an honest way to do such a thing).

Me and my mate Rob did a little acid test when we were in New York. We got talking to a few American lads, really annoying characters, and they challenged us to a drinking contest. Fair enough, we said, what are we drinking? They produced a few pitches of beer, and Rob and I exchanged a glance, both thinking we’d have our work cut out for us. But as soon I drank a sip, something seemed off about it, and I only had to look at Rob to see he was thinking the same thing. This stuff was half the strength of European beer, the stuff we were used to necking. The Americans were out of it when Rob and I were only just starting to feel tipsy.

If you read Benny’s blog, you’ll note he felt very threatened in many parts of America, and here I can’t agree; I’ve felt more insecure in Britain, even in small wealthy towns like the one my family used to live in (read my previous entries). In fact, Rob and I being drunken tourists actually tried to start a few fights in New York and never got anywhere; America might have more gun crime and gang-related violence, but the average American will not fight unless he has to. In Britain, sad to say it’s a choice of first resort. Obviously it’d be different in the gang areas of NYC, but I’m talking about in regular, middle-class areas; there’s no comparison between the US and the UK.

Going back to the maturity issue, I blame both the driving and drinking ages. Getting a car symbolises freedom, the idea to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want to…with the exception of drinking. Since some places in the States let you drive at 16, there’s a whopping five year gap before they’re allowed to have a drink. Does that mean their familiarity with cars makes it easier for them to fall into drink driving habits? I don’t know, I suppose it’s possible, but there’s so much of it in Britain where the drinking and driving ages are only a year apart you could also argue that creates more problems.

I’ve always been aware of the fact that America has a different culture to Britain, but I just never realised that the people my own age were so immature; it just seems so ridiculous, to have people behaving the way I did when I was 14 but sporting tattoos, piercings and openly smoking cigarettes and weed. A crazy, fucked up situation, that.

Georgia

Georgia is something else entirely. The big debate about young Georgian people these days is whether or not they’re going against the mould of the people in their mid to late 20s who are very Christian, owing to the fact their religion was oppressed until the collapse of the Soviet Union in ’91. The common belief is that kids aged from about 16-21 are defying convention, and screwing in fine European style, which has the older Georgians shuddering and the Yanks who are trying to take this place over thanking the Lord that the next generation of Georgians won’t be so sexually aggressive.

Since I’ve had a hell of a lot more exposure to younger Georgians over the last few months, I’ve come to realise it isn’t really true. The younger Georgians are just as frustrated as their older countrymen…but they are rather more unusual. While I’m sure there are some who are having sex, there are nowhere near as many as older people are saying; in fact I’d go as far as there probably aren’t that many more younger ones who are getting laid than people 7-10 years older.

One of the things I think is giving older people the impression of younger girls being sexually active is the photographs they take of themselves. They’re slutty, no other words for it, and some of them proudly flaunt belly piercings and lip rings, hardly the traditional signs of a chaste Georgian girl. I even know some girls who are 19 and work as models, taking revealing pictures of themselves but not ‘living the life’.

Of course, I’m sure you’ll be doubting me, saying ‘Ah, well, of course they’ll say they’re not having sex; they are, they’re just not telling you’. Well, I’ve done my research within various social circles, and you can take my word for it. In fact, I’ve been told by several younger Georgian girls (roughly my own age) that they feel comfortable talking to me about sex, since they feel that as a European, I won’t judge them, and since I’m not Georgian, I won’t try and jump on them and start humping.

These same people also frequently tell me they feel they can’t ‘have fun’ in Tbilisi, even though the majority of their free time seems to be spent with their friends in nightclubs, bars or just hanging around. They go bowling, to the movies, play video games…like anyone else anywhere in the world. I take from this, then, they define ‘fun’ as something to do with sex, and the fact that they can’t do it or are forced to do it in the shadows.

To be honest, I can’t wait to see the back of the Christian culture. Oh, I’m the first to admit that it’s wonderful how Georgian Orthodoxy has kept the country together through fuck knows how many occupations, and how Georgia proudly displays its Christianity rather than deferring to Muslims as the trend is in Europe. But is it worth it? Are all the failed marriages, miserable families and frustrated Georgian men truly happy? Of course not.

So there you have it. I’m sure there was more I had in mind to say about all this, but you get the picture. Enjoy. Or don’t. I couldn’t care less.

Do I understand Georgian politics?

I like to think so, at least from my own, foreign, perspective. However, not many Georgians will agree with me that my ideas and thoughts on politics in this are accurate, for the sole reason that I’m not Georgian. I’d like to examine a few things here and try and set the record straight…more or less.

Georgians are a passionate folk, and any criticism directed towards anything Georgian will be met with fierce resistance. It doesn’t really matter what it is you’re criticising; it could be anything from Georgian food to national athletes. The point is, despite how Georgians are usually flattered that a foreigner has deigned to visit or live in their country, they are mostly of the opinion that Georgia can only ever be understood by Georgians.

There is, however, a danger in this mentality. It is very, very insular, and not likely to help Georgia become part of any international body, such as the EU or NATO. First off, let’s begin with the criticism issue. Criticism is inevitable during political debates, even if you’re a party-neutral foreigner like me; I neither support Saakashvili or Ivanishvili. However, I had a very hard time convincing anyone of that during the election time, since even questioning the motives of either candidate was seen the same way as if I’d been highly critical.

It was true for either side. I’ve never liked the way Saakashvili has fawned to the Americans, the way every item of his administration has been stamped with a USA sticker of approval. It’s odd that, on the one hand, he was always very patriotic and nationalistic, and on the other wilfully sold this country out in the hopes of NATO and EU membership that the two organisations’ leaderships have (rightly) been fearful to grant.

People ask me if I think Saakashvili is a Western-style politician. God no. But then I wonder if any Georgian politician truly can be. As a people, Georgians are fiery, impulsive and passionate, as well as often being irrational; a world away from the cold Germans, cunning Americans or ruthless British. Whether you believe or not the rumours that Saakashvili locked up or killed people who didn’t like him, the fact that such rumours exist says a lot. There are no such whispers that David Cameron is plotting to kill Ed Miliband, and despite the aggressive nature of the US Presidential elections, it was always unlikely that Mitt Romney would suffer an ‘accident’ as he lampooned the Democrats for their failing economic strategies.

The point is, Saakashvili takes things very personally; the good and the bad. If you’ve read any of my other posts on this site, you’ll know that I think he took George Bush’s statement of ‘The Georgians are our brothers!’ rather too literally (this has to be the only country that ever liked George Bush). Never was this more apparent during the Georgian elections this year.

I got a measure of the supporters of both parties during the summer, and was astounded by both groups. Saakashvili supporters were blind to the fact that God alone knows how many battalions of troops were waiting over the Ossetian and Abkhaz borders all year, likely planning to intervene if Saakashvili rendered any more assistance to the US military with regards to the Iranian question. Ivanishvili supporters were, I think, even worse. ‘Bidzina did everything for us,’ said my brother-in-law’s girlfriend, ‘he paid for Sameba cathedral’. Quite how the construction of one building constituted an ‘everything’ was anyone’s guess, but she grew very angry when I reminded her that she didn’t even know Ivanishvili’s name at the same time of the previous year (he came to the public eye in November 2011, I think we were talking in August).

You have to give credit where credit is due, and Saakashvili is the one who eradicated the corruption in this country. Bidzina Ivanishvili has been rich for a very long time; several decades, I believe. If he had really wanted to help, I find it hard to believe he couldn’t have done it in the 1990s, when he was arguably needed the most. I put this point to Bidzina supporters, and was immediately branded as a Saakashvili follower, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Policy didn’t come into the elections even remotely. I would ask Bidzina believers, ‘What will he do with Georgia’s economy?’ and got only blank stares, before being told ‘Misha is evil! We are in Hell!’ (I wish I was joking). They had no idea of his foreign policy, and seemed to think Georgia’s economy was going to improve and they would all become richer because the man himself has over half of Georgia’s GDP in his personal wealth. It was all very, very personal. In Europe, politicians argue over economic strategy and foreign policy; in Georgia, they simply traded insults.

I do not understand how they could be so stupid and short-sighted. Didn’t they know how many foreign observers were watching? Did they honestly think that was good for Georgia’s image on the international stage? I can say the same about his supporters. I’m not a professional diplomat, but it doesn’t look good to any Western person when they see people parading in the street, screaming and shouting for a man whose policies are vague at best and whose political experience is non-existant. It reeks of fanaticism, exactly the extreme kind of behaviour that is not wanted in the EU.

You might say that ‘Oh, these people, they weren’t university educated, they weren’t professionals, they were just ordinary people who didn’t know any better’. You would be right; but in a democracy, it’s ordinary people who decide the vote. University professors and educated people are always in the minority.

My wife voted for Saakashvili, while her brother voted for Bidzina. They screamed and shouted at each other on more than one occasion, and even though my Natia knows I don’t like Saakashvili, she respects my opinion. Her brother Giorgi does not. Anyone who doesn’t support Bidzina is an enemy to him, and he’s not alone; I, along with an international political observer from America I spoke to, found it to be the case with most GD supporters. Giorgi and his friends and fellow Bidzina believers were mostly deaf to the irony that while they were screaming, shouting and throwing things around the room all in the name of democracy, democracy itself means that everyone has the right to believe whatever they want. In my own country, I can’t stand Labour Party supporters, but I don’t behave in an aggressive manner when one says they’d rather Miliband was Prime Minister than Cameron. They had absolutely no idea of the damage they were doing in the eyes of the foreigners sent to watch things.

It is now acknowledged by the Georgian newspapers that what tipped the balance in Bidzina’s favour was the prison-rape scandal. I agree it was terrible, and I agree that urgent reform was needed within Georgia’s justice and prison services, but nobody seemed able to admit that it came at a very, very convenient time. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that no one was thinking ‘Well, yes, this is terrible, but…it’s two weeks before the election, and this is something very damaging to Saakashvili…maybe a little too convenient?’.

I would have supported Ivanishvili if he had done something like, say, put forward a new plan for energy efficiency. Georgia has more mountains than it knows what to do with, as well as a coast; why not construct some wind turbines and begin harnessing wave power from the Black Sea? I would support him if he said he was open to restoring relations with Russia; ah, I hear you say, but he did say that! Well, yes, he did, but he refused to criticise Putin or his government; another reason I don’t understand his followers, since even the people who blame Saakashvili for the 2008 war can surely acknowledge the appalling crimes committed by Cossack mercenaries in Russian employ against Georgian civilians.

The reason I’m writing so much about Ivanishvili and not Misha is because I’ve done Saakashvili to death on this blog. You know I don’t like his politics, you know I don’t like the way he’s turned this country into an American playground. I’d like to make an important point about the Georgian Dream coalition that, again, none of their supporters seemed to appreciate. It’s a coalition of five parties all across the political spectrum. How on Earth can any government succeed when the Prime Minister is a conservative, the Minister of Defence a Liberal, the Minister of Justice a member of Green Peace and the Minister of Foreign Affairs a Communist? (Not the real posts, just examples).

‘You’re foreign,’ they say, ‘you don’t understand Georgia or Georgian politics’. No, well, maybe not. I don’t understand it like a Georgian, at least. I don’t understand why it’s so personal and unprofessional between politicians. I don’t understand why voters are so ignorant as to what they’re voting for; becoming an American slave-state or a returning to a vassal state of Russia being brought further away than ever from the West. I read today a spokeswoman from the Ivanishvili GD coalition has said that ‘We do not care what Western news outlets say. We act like they do not exist’. Since Georgian Dream say they want EU membership, I cannot imagine anything more stupid.

As of today, the Georgian Journal  has published an article detailing the opinions of foreign governments on Ivanishvili’s rule. Since the recent arrests of previous members of Saakashvili’s cabinet, the Western response is very negative. They are not happy with the return of known corrupt politicians from the Shevardnadze era, nor the way the government is seeking to replace all foreign ambassadors who began their work before Ivanishvili came into office.

As for my own beliefs…well, I don’t much like anybody or anything when it comes to politics. I don’t like the way Georgians are so passionate and personal with their politics. I don’t like Saakashvili’s American fawning and I don’t like Ivanishvili’s obvious corruption. I don’t like the idea that Georgia needs to be in NATO; it only antagonises Moscow, and NATO was never worth a damn thing, anyway. I do agree that Georgia needs to be in the EU, but it won’t happen for a long time. After the Rose Revolution, Saakasvhili got far too involved with the Americans, who aren’t trusted by Paris or Berlin. If he’d got into bed with the Germans or French instead, things might be different today…but it does no good to speak of roads not taken. To a Georgian who believes I don’t understand Georgian political mentality, I can just as easily say they have no real idea about the way Westerners think.

So when a Georgian says to me, ‘You Westerners do not understand Georgia’, I can actually reply positively; yes, you’re right. We don’t understand Georgia as you do. You may have read my words and think ‘What you say is true, but you don’t see it the way we do. It’s different for us’. I can agree with you; we don’t see it the same way, we think differently. But if Georgia really wants membership into the EU, into NATO, if it wants membership into a future away from the mess of the post-Soviet era, then what Georgians think and believe about politics does not matter.

It’s what we think that will decide your future.

World War Two

This isn’t a very serious entry, but at the same time it sort of is. Since I’m a history/military fanatic, I’ve read more books on this subject than I’ve had hot meals, but I’d never consider myself an expert. I’m confident there are still many things I’ve yet to learn about this terrible conflict, and there are far more learned men than I who have written, lectured, or made documentaries about it over the last seventy years.

It fascinates me. The worst event in human history, yet mankind still fails to appreciate all the lessons it should have taught us. But the reason I’m writing about it here is because of the many differences of opinion I’ve encountered during my travels, the viewpoints of people the world over. Some I believe to be wrong, others more in line with my own beliefs (and therefore right).

The worst ones are unfortunately quite prevalent. The British believe the Americans and Soviets were little more than cannon fodder, the Americans think they had to win the war for the good guys (again), and the former Soviets are of the opinion they could have done it single-handedly, anyway. As evidence, the Limeys will point to America’s late-entry into the war, the British-dominated African and Burmese fronts, and the air superiority of the RAF in Western Europe after the Battle of Britain (the Luftwaffe having largely been relocated to the Eastern Front). The Americans will bring up their economic assistance to the Allies and the influx of countless US forces in Europe, as well as the Pacific campaign against the Empire of Japan mostly having been orchestrated by the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The former Soviet states will claim that they truly won the war, since they were in it from the first (not quite true due to their initial agreement with Germany) and suffered the heaviest casualties. I’ve heard all the arguments and fights over it, and who’s got the right of it?

To an extent, they all have a point.

Could the British have won the war without the Americans and Soviets? Of course not. Even with the force of the Empire behind them, early British engagements against German forces were disastrous. It took a long time and many hard-earned lessons for things to become more even. But during that time, much experience was gained which put British and Imperial troops ahead of their American counterparts.

But British industry was ineffective, not only due to German bombing. Small arms and vehicle production was generally of low quality and cheap to produce, as the war effort demanded. Though the Lee Enfield rifle was a fine weapon, other small arms and vehicles produced in Britain were of awful quality. For example the Sten gun, the standard British submachine gun, was badly designed and cheap, making it liable to break or jam, and not at all to be compared with the American Thompson. Small wonder so many British troops used these American weapons. Also, while the North African campaign typically conjures up images of pitched tank battles, it is often forgotten is that the great victories of the British Empire were often won with tanks of American manufacture. Furthermore, the war would never have been won without the intervention of the United States in Europe and the Pacific.

The Eastern Front will forever be associated with the appalling conditions and almost inhuman violence of both the Soviets and the Nazis. Since the numbers involved on this front are greater than those of Western Europe or the Pacific,  one can see why members of former Soviet countries will claim that they bore the brunt of the German onslaught, and why people I’ve met consider the North African, European and Pacific fronts as little more than minor skirmishes. The fact of the matter is, had the Eastern front not been fought, one can only speculate at the fate of the North African, Italian and Normandy campaigns with the presence of so many additional highly-trained German troops stationed there. Equally true, however, is the reverse; had the British Empire and the United States not entered the war, the troops defending Hitler’s western conquests would doubtless have been relocated to the Soviet front. Despite what Georgian or Russian people might claim, the German soldier was worth ten Soviet counterparts. Put simply, it is no coincidence that after so many devastating Nazi victories against the Soviet Union, the USSR only managed to begin to claw its way to victory about the same time as increased land operations were launched in North Africa.

I don’t want this to be a history lesson. Instead, I’d like to divulge a few weird and insane opinions I’ve heard about the war all over the world. Make of them what you will.

I’ll start with the Georgians. At a dinner party last year, several Georgian men told me that the Soviet Union won World War Two. Not only that, but Stalin himself won the war. And, since Stalin was Georgian, Georgia won the Second World War.

Now, to an extent, I don’t mind people from different countries claiming their nation had the biggest and most difficult role. Usually, we’ll agree to disagree. When it comes to individual heroes, I’m not surprised when the Brit picks David Stirling, the Yank John Basilone or the former Soviet Vasily Zaitsev. But Stalin? I also find it very strange that Georgians would support him in this way; asides from all the evil things Stalin did, he was very quick to renounce the Georgian (and other Soviet) people, instead making a speech at the end of the war in which he gave highest praise to the Russians.

I don’t want to take anything away from anyone from any country, or any service. The bravery which saw the US Marines take Iwo Jima is the same as that of the inexperienced, outnumbered and outgunned RAF pilots over the English Channel, or the Soviets fighting in ruined Stalingrad, or even the Germans defending Berlin to the last man. But I cannot understand how anybody anywhere would, or could, claim that Stalin won the war. These weren’t uneducated people, either. One worked for the Ministry of Justice (which is wonderfully and worryingly ironic) and the other had been educated at the University of Reading, in my native land.

I wouldn’t mind so much if they wanted to say that they felt the Soviet troops were the bravest. I might point them in the direction of the British Pathfinders or the US Rangers, but I’d tolerate it. But they smiled and shook their heads as I asked them to consider the toil in North Africa, the horrible conditions endured by British and Indian troops in Burma, the enormity of the Normandy landings, or the ferocity of the Japanese defending tiny scraps of island against the Americans.

I also didn’t understand how they could be so ignorant to the conditions of their own troops. They described the Soviet troops as being so brave, they just walked towards enemy machine gun fire without flinching. There’s an element of truth to that, since Soviet troops who tried to retreat or take cover were liable to be shot by their own officers, but it’s not a humane or militarily effective way to soldier, and certainly nothing to be proud of. Oh, the men who were in those places deserve the utmost respect, but it must be understood that they weren’t the same as the men on Soviet propaganda posters, stern-faced and iron willed, unafraid of death for the greater glory of the Soviet Union. No, they were men like anyone else, they felt fear the same as their Allied counterparts, but these poor people had to worry about being shot from behind as well as in front. Good old Stalin, eh?

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to bring myself to accredit a politician for winning a war. Oh, for starting them, sure enough, but it wasn’t Churchill, or Roosevelt or Stalin who earned the victory. They weren’t there with the blood on their hands and mud on their boots. Also, since Stalin is universally known as such an evil bastard…they didn’t really want to hear about that, either, but I pointed them in the direction of any history book ever written in any part of the world.

A common British view is that all Americans are loud, intolerant, ignorant and stupid. I’ve met many who have proved the point, but rather more who suggest that stereotype is utter bollocks. Nevertheless, it prevails, and while many British people can be brought to admit that we did need the Americans during the war, they will mostly subscribe to the belief that what the Americans added to the effort was numbers, equipment and money, while the expertise and experience was mostly in British hands.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. Bad decisions were made by American generals, no doubt about it, but British commanders were hardly unanimously better. Why, look at Montgomery, one of our most celebrated battlefield commanders. El Alamein was a success, one of the first major land victories in the war, but according to revisionist historian Anthony Beevor, by the time Monty was in command of the Eighth Army, the majority of the fighting had already been conducted by his predecessors and his cautious campaign of attrition was hardly deserving of the ‘lightning victory’ status with which it has been treated. Monty, you might also know, was the architect of Operation Market Garden, which ended in disaster (though his opinions of American conduct in Vietnam years later were spot on). Also, look at Signapore. Thousands upon thousands of British troops who were prepared to put up a spirited defence were forced to surrender by their commanding officers, and were condemned to slavery as Japanese prisoners for the duration of the war.

Then again, I hate the American belief that they won the war for us. It’s a fairly common way of thinking as far as I can tell, and in some ways its easy to see why they’d think that; after all, besides Pearl Harbour, no American soil came under direct attack, but plenty US troops were killed fighting far away from home. This belief is also plastered all over their pop culture, and I point here to the fact that modern American war films rarely feature other Allied troops, and when they do, they’re typically useless.

Take the British in Band of Brothers, for example. My countrymen make two appearances in the series, the first time not listening to the Americans and getting everyone killed, and the second being stranded and having to be rescued by US soldiers. They have stereotypical posh accents, words like ‘bloody’ and ‘chaps’ constituting for roughly 50% of every sentence they say, and just seem so bad at soldiering you’d be forgiven for thinking that they only put their uniforms on the previous week. Easy Company, however, despite never having been in combat before 1944, are an almost unstoppable force in the series; the point is, you’d never guess that the British and German forces were mostly combat veterans of five years from the way they get gunned down or make fatal blunders.

I read Stephen Ambrose’s book on which the television series is based, and personally I didn’t rate him very highly as an historian (for those of you who think me biased, I wasn’t very impressed by his Pegasus Bridge project either, which is about British soldiers). I understand that as he was interviewing the men of Easy Company so extensively it must have been very difficult to remain emotionally unattached after hearing so many deeply moving stories, but if one was completely ignorant of World War Two and read Ambrose’s book, you’d have thought that Easy Company damn near won the war single-handedly. If any readers doubt my words, Ambrose himself was called into question over the accuracy of his books over the years.

I like the old war films the best, ones like The Longest Day, which shows the entirety of the Normandy Landings from everyone’s point of view; British, Americans, Imperial, French, even the Germans…the whole lot, giving everyone credit for what they did. I can appreciate that the lack of other Allied troops besides Americans wasn’t so inappropriate in a film like Saving Private Ryan, since it dealt solely with American areas of attack, but nonetheless…why not make a new TV series or film based around a new topic entirely? They don’t call the British troops in Burma ‘The Forgotten Army’ for nothing, and George MacDonald’s autobiography of his time in that theatre (Quartered Safe Out Here) is a book I think everyone should read, and would make an excellent Band of Brothers-style series. Or better yet, what about the first American heroes of the war, the Eagle Squadrons? I’m surprised these guys aren’t publicised more in the USA. Long before America entered the war, these Americans (several of whom were pilots in the US Army) left their jobs, homes and families to enlist in the Royal Air Force and fight the Germans. I don’t think it gets anymore self-sacrificing than that. A TV series about these guys would be awesome.

I know I haven’t mentioned the Chinese here very much, and since I’m asking for everyone to receive credit, I should mention the suffering of the Chinese people due to the awful campaign of conquest waged in China by the Japanese. Significant amounts of Chinese troops also worked closely with the British, Indian, Gurkha and African forces in the Burma campaign, as well as on their front, defending their own lands.

So there you have it. I think I’ve said all I wanted to, but there’s probably a shed load of things I’ve forgotten and will rant about in a later post. Oh well. Enjoy.

End of broadcast…