I don’t feel like blogging right now, but my horoscope said I should try

Not really.

But I’m avoiding all other manner of professional activity at the moment, so I can at least justify that to myself if I produce a witty blog post in lieu of work. So here goes nothing.

I'm not lazy, I'm Svanetian.

As usual, Georgia has continued to be a source of plenty of good head-slapping news developments, many of which I’m way behind in commenting on.

First, the Georgian Ministry of Defense had to distance itself from a documentary it produced over a year ago that aimed to help recruit reservists to the Georgian Army by quoting Hitler: “It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn prayers, nor by hopes in any League of Nations, but only by the force of arms.’ Adolf Hitler, 1932.”

Although the most controversial part of this discovery in Georgia was merely the fact that they Hitler was quoted in a government video, to me, the content of the quote was far more distressing. The fact that the MoD is comparing the retrieval of its lost territories, Abkahzia and South Ossetia, to Hitler’s goal of unifying Germanic peoples and establishing the “Third Reich” is an even more boneheaded PR move.

Although the quote appeared in a video that was intended only for a young Georgian audience, I can’t imagine who it would impress. Certainly not Georgia’s Western benefactors, nearly all of which fought nazism 70 years go. But I don’t want to spend too much time on a small MoD screw-up. More governmental stupidity to come.

Next came the well-documented (except in Georgia) “election observers” scandal in Ukraine. Which, first of all, before we get into the details of the case, why did anyone think it a good idea to send election observers from Georgia, a country that has never had a democratic transfer of power in its history anyway? Surely if Georgia says the elections were legit, then we should believe them. They know democracy.

But back to the scandal, which involved Ukraine’s expulsion of over 2,000 Georgian election observers sent to monitor the first round of the Ukrainian presidential elections. All other nations of the world only sent collectively around 3,000 monitors to the crucial election and the situation looked even more fishy when taped phone conversations between Georgian officials and Ukrainian presidential candidate Yulia Timoshenko revealed that both sides were actively trying to get this unusually large number of non-registered observers in there.

Timoshenko is facing off against Viktor Yanukovich who has expressed his willingness to reestablish a close relationship with Russia, Georgia’s current archenemy. Yanukovich is leading by 10 points going into the run-off vote, and nearly half of Georgia’s observers were sent to  the Yanukovich stronghold of Donetsk.

All that would look bad enough assuming that the Georgian “observers” were election observers at all. But it was later revealed that they did not from Georgia’s Election Commission but rather from “various ministries” — mostly the Ministry of the Interior, which known mostly for breaking up protests and imprisoning Georgian dissidents.

Criminal charges are now being brought against some of the observers who apparently had fake IDs to boot — many of which are still hiding out in Donetsk.

“To date, between 400 and 500 Georgians have remained in the town, according to migration services. They chose a new tactic: they are trying to stay at private apartments and are most likely waiting for the second round. I have sent a letter to Georgian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Grigol Katamadze, expressing my concern over this fact and asked not to allow any Georgian observers, not registered in this capacity with the Central Election Commission, to enter Ukraine,” the Donetsk mayor said.

In other news, the observers are roundly being denounced by the Yanukovich campaign, praised by the Timoshenko campaign and Saakashvili has offered to send more for the runoff. Clearly they’ve been a huge help in Ukraine so far.

The other big news item that caught my eye was Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s new educational reform. Paying teachers living wages? Nope.

As a part of his reformation of the army including adding 3,000 “well-trained” reservists in four years (apparently inspired by Hitler) he also wants “every house to be a fortress to resist the enemy.”

“100,000; 200,000; 300,000 and if needed half a million people should stand with arms in their hands. We have enough automatic rifles for that and we have ammunition more than enough,” he added. “Each person and each family, which can fight for Georgia, should be ready to struggle and defend their country. Without it nobody will serve us on a tray either long-term guarantees of freedom or economic development and success.”

Yes, Misha, that’s exactly what has been holding up foreign investment in your country. International countries and firms have been waiting for some crazy pronouncement like that you want one eighth of your country running around with kalashnikovs fighting enemies before they would take you seriously as a good stable place to do business.

Luckily, Misha is a forward-thinking man. With all those automatic weapons and Soviet bullets flying around, some good people are likely to get hurt. Therefore, he’s decided to limit the collateral damage by teaching kids a few warfare lessons in class.

The aforementioned reforms involve the establishment of a cadet school where kids will begin playing with AK’s at the age of 14 and will also have a compulsory “patriotism” class in their public schools where they will undergo some sort of military training with a side of indoctrination. Georgia sounds more and more like a Western country every day, doesn’t it?

None of my Georgian high-school age students have any idea yet what will be included in this patriotism class, but they all think it’s stupid. While I have lots of things to say about this most recent absurdity, my colleague, Paul Rimple, who is currently contemplating raising his daughter in the Georgian educational system already hit the subject with greater eloquence, humor and despair than I think I can pull together here on Three Kings. Read with pleasure:

Isn’t this a bit over the top? Here we are ten years into the 21st century and some people are still living in the 13th. Queen Tamara died 800 years ago and Georgia hasn’t been able to defend itself since – not from foreign invaders or from itself. War destroyed the nation in the 1990s and two summers ago the Georgian army lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia for good in 5 days. They would have lost Tbilisi and the rest of the country too if not for the generosity of Russia.

I think it’s safe to say Georgia hasn’t had much luck with guns and stuff. Children cultivated in the evils of warfare are not going to save the country from the next Russian invasion. Might be time to nurture a new strategy, like preventive war.

Let children play army and kill invisible Russians all they want after school, but don’t force my daughter to learn about all the weapons Georgia has bought from the US, Israel, etcetera, etcetera, when the tools she is really going to need for the future are those that help her read, write and avoid pissing off a teacher that gets paid less than a garbage man.