Trapped in Tbilisi.The Republic of Georgia wants the world to know it's is on a campaign to wipe out corruption. So why is Rony Fuchs--a businesman Georgia owes $100 million dollars-sitting in a Tbilisi prision"
Good Question?http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218058741193.htm
Georgia Pipe Dream This smells of JV corruption and double dealing on both sides, did not Saakashvili and his minions not repeat over and over again that if Georgia continues developing like it does not, we'll be there, where Dubai is now in five years. Well, hurry up and get started and stop wasting time!! I certainly hope that he is alluring to the tourism sector and not the business sector as a whole. Everybody knows that overseas investment in Georgia has all but dried up. Of couse, there are many politicians over the world who are currently trying to convince people that things are going to get better, not only in Georgia. The level of foreign investment in Georgia has crashed and burned, being just 20 percent of what it was in an already bad year of 2008, from what it was in 2005 (2008 year of a for profit war with Russian), at least for arms dealers and NGO types. Investor are growing a little too think on ground for comfort, hence the world is brainwashed with week long reports on CNN. Aside from the usual means of propping up the economy, by moving money around by various means - money laundering - and shell games. Jim Clancy looks more like a used car dealer than a real journalist, so let's see what will be the result with the latest breaking news. PR is good, best that the American taxpaper can but reality is reality - investiment here is too risky for clean business. Who is going to buy or invest in Georgia proper when the world is in financial meltdown? Who will want to risk their money in a country where conflicts are a cottage industry and talk of peace but political rhetoric. Subterfuge seem to be the only areas where there is any kind of growth? Who will start new construction projects where there are no clients - and when the money is but credit lines from development banks?
Battle of Blair Mountain must be taught internationallyJoni Simionishvili, Tbilisi GeorgiaRE: "Law enforcement officers know the difference between right and wrong,and Governor Walker's attempt to eliminate the collective voice ofWisconsin's devoted public employees is wrong," continued Palmer. "That iswhy we have stood with our fellow employees each day and why we will besleeping among them tonight."Reality Check: Look up the battle of Blair Mountain - Logan County WestVirginia – it was the last armed conflict in West Virginia and the firsttime bombs were dropped on civilians by an airplane. As a child I heardstories - and told that much of the real history of the United States isnot in the history books."In response to the organizing efforts, coal operators used every means to block the union. "One of their primary tactics of combating the unionwas firing union sympathizers, blacklisting them, and evicting them fromtheir homes. Their legal argument for evictions is best stated by S.B.Avis, a coal company lawyer; "It is like a servant lives at your house. Ifthe servant leaves your employment, if you discharge him, you ask him toget out of the servants' quarters. It is a question of master andservant."The UMW set up tent colonies for the homeless miner families, andsoon a mass of idle and angry miners was concentrated in a small areaalong the Tug River. Even with the coal operators' suppression, by earlyMay 3,000 out of 4,000 Mingo miners had joined the union. At the StoneMountain Coal Company mine near Matewan, every single worker unionized,and was subsequently fired and evicted.On May 19, 1920, 12 Baldwin-Felts agents arrived in Matewan, including Lee Felts, and promptly met up with Albert Felts who was already in thearea. Albert and Lee were the brothers of Thomas Felts, the founder anddirector of the agency. Albert had already been in the area, and hadtried to bribeMayor Testerman with 500 dollars to place machine guns on roofs in thetown – which Testerman refused. That afternoon, Albert and Lee alongwith eleven other men set out to the Stone Mountain Coal Company property.The first family they evicted was a woman and her children, whose husbandwas not home at the time. They forced them out at gunpoint, and threwtheir belongings in the road under a light but steady rain. The miners who saw it were furious, and sent word to town.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountainand at Kent State they shot people...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kent_State_massacre.jpgThink they'd do it again? Looking at some of the NED brainwashed killingmachines which come through Tbilisi I wouldn't doubt it.Revolution"Law enforcement officers know the difference between right and wrong, andGovernor Walker's attempt to eliminate the collective voice ofWisconsin's devoted public employees is wrong," continued Palmer. "That iswhy we have stood with our fellow employees each day and why we will besleeping among them tonight."http://www.squattable.com/news/022511/wisconsin-police-refuse-close-capitol-will-sleep-capitol-protesters-tonight"And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right toorganize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I will puton a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I'll will walk on that picket linewith you as President of the United States of America.Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in theircorner." Senator Obama 2007http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA9KC8SMu3o&feature=player_embeddedWell... where is he? Probably busy trying to figure out how he can help "lie" American bootsinto LibyaThey're shooting people in the hospitals you know, no - really, justlike Saddam's men were taking kids out of incubators... the mostemotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaitigirl, known only by her first name of Nayirah.According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidentialto prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait.Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospitalin Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kitprepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addanhospital,"Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into thehospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were inincubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took theincubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton (the PR companybehind the story) and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirahwas a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was SaudNasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in thehearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal thatH&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even heKuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.
Color Revolution in Georgia lost its shine. Mubarak is good role model!!A passionate reader writes, so did you say you met Saakashvili and spent time at his family where you discussed with him how to come power? He does sound delusional. That's crazy that he's plundering wealth building a palace and all. Will the palace save him from his ultimate demise?http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-mubarak-georgia-4924Whoever wrote this had too many details - and must be working for NED and regime change. I would be interesting in knowing more. I think that is perhaps the best option for the short term and the long term too.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsotne_Bakuria
Development aid as a "weapons system"--a soft one to be sureRanks of USAID riddled with endemic corruptionI thought of you, when they interviewed Andrew Wilder, a development expert some months ago – and reading about corruption in some of your posting about Georgia, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan. It seems to be never ending.Andrew Wilder is a professor at Tufts University. And he was talking about how foreign aid can contribute to endemic corruptions. He talked about how the military in Afghanistan now thinks of development aid as a "weapons system"--a soft one to be sure, but I couldn't believe it was so obviously stated as such. It's nothing new to us in the trade, but to hear it on the radio, it's a change-it's no long secret. Aid, which use to be thought of as "honorable, neutral" etc., is clearly exposed for what it is; and he talked about how the aid -depending on who gets it--creates winners and losers in the local community.He talked about how subcontracting and sub-sub contracting etc just adds to corruption. All this reminded me of your presentation of the Lugar et al report; bio weapons labs in Georgia, Bechtel National and my own work in the Middle East with weapons trafficking. From his site, I found this, "Wilder's current research study is titled Winning Hearts and Minds? Examining the Relationship Between Aid and Security in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa. This 18-month study, funded by AREU and the governments of Australia, Norway, and Sweden, focuses on the central question of the effectiveness of humanitarian and reconstruction assistance in promoting security in insecure areas. In particular, the study is researching the widespread assumption, especially visible these days in counterinsurgency doctrine and operations, that aid projects can help promote stability and security by helping to win hearts and minds.According to Wilder, "given how influential this assumption is in influencing where aid money is spent, how much is spent, and who spends it, there is currently remarkably little empirical evidence that either proves or disproves the assumption." Specific study questions include: Does reconstruction assistance win hearts and minds, and if so whose and how? Does winning hearts and minds promote security, and if so how? Is security-driven development effective in achieving poverty alleviation and development objectives?As to your recent correspondence about corruption in Afghanistan, for Rusty Shultz, I really can't say for sure what all happened other than he always somehow manages to show back up, even after being fired. All I know is that there was Juice Factory that ARFC, Afghan Rural Finance Centre provided a loan to; and it was Chemonics that provided the TA. Despite allegations, the factory's owner has never been a warlord as I understand it (maybe this warlord that you mention was someone else in a different deal).My contacts tell me that the loan was for about 4 million for a project that could have been done for about $900,000 from accounts, call that "leakage". Nonetheless, it does appear in retrospect that someone made a bit of pocket money and that explains some of the old crew "showing-up" in Georgia spending money like was going out of style. I haven't received any word of what is going on in USAID, and if they ever got back to you from the investigative branch, I imagine it is more bark than bite - is the clamp down on corruption - remember what I said about the Afghan corruption really being reflective of their Western advisors and money handlers.As to the project that you are most interested in, USAID's former Technical Cognizant Officer is named Dorvin Stockdale, who replaced at the helm a man named Lorene Stoddard; the word is Stockdale was removed along with three others in USAID, most likely related to corruption or the cover up of the corruption. Perhaps this is related to the nexus with Georgia and Rusty Shultz, weapons and drug for weapons swaps. I think now that the Russians are cooperating in this sphere, there might be some warrants issued when they start tracking the drug flows and funding sources. It is going to be hard to deny the involvement of USAID people in weapons trafficking and drugs, and not just using them.There were dozens of projects and contracts that Stockdale oversaw and anything could have happened, especially with Rusty Shultz and ACDI/VOCA former staffers and pound scum show up again. One possibility has to do with Dovin Stockdale doctoring a contract that went missing from the files – everybody was looking for it, and it was found on his desk, it appears that it had to do with doctoring it up, so that the bloody tracks in the snow would not be so obvious.My suggestion, for your next investigation, Afghanistan Rural Finance Center – start digging there, and what you already know, you should not have too much trouble connecting the dots to what went on in Georgia/Azerbaijan with ACDI/VOCA and others. You would think that someone would realize who and what Rusty is, his sorted record, and who all stands behind him; it was well known the things he was doing wrong even when I was in Georgia with the ACDI project (that was 2003 and the very beginning of his involvement there). Several of my Georgian staff (we had some very good people that ACDI treated shabbily after I left) knew all kinds of shady things that were going on with Rusty, but no one seemed to care when they reported it.Later, there were a number of people who showed up as key personnel when I was serving on the USAID evaluation teams for the alternative livelihoods projects, another sink hole, and they had been kicked of projects in other countries for being alcoholics and worse. However, they were right there in prominent positions from the likes of Chemonics and DAI.Being on those USAID evaluation committees reviewing project proposals was a real eye opener for me. What a useless process that is. I was appalled at some of the horrible proposals that they would review and then say they were in the competitive range. Some of the bidders who won projects had no business winning them; it really makes you wonder if the whole process is rigged as so people claim.So, the novel that you are working on sounds like it is "about the life of Jeffrey K. Silverman", huh? Is he going to be the hero in the latest version of a Tom Clancy novel, or maybe the next Jason Bourne??????? SMILE……………..By the way, here is the response on the information that he shared with me to send to DC, and let's see if anything comes out of it.This is to acknowledge receipt of your hotline complaint. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Office of Inspector General Hotline has reviewed your message and determined that additional information is needed to thoroughly assess the matter being reported.Please supply as much of the following information as possible: (1) A detailed description of the problem with specific examples or references to fraud, waste, or abuse within a USAID program or by USAID personnel provide the names- first & last; titles, office(s), locations, of all USAID personnel directly involved in the matter being reported); (2) indicate how you became aware of the problem; (3) state how long this matter has been going on (give specific dates and formal examples); (4) Specify when the most recent action(s) occurred; (5) identify and submit any documents, names of people or actions that we can use to verify the problem (provide phone numbers, etc.). Your complaint will be evaluated by this Hotline based on the existence of fraud, waste, or abuse by a USAID employee or within a USAID program and/or bureau. --
Onward Christian Soldier - "blow back" in Pakistan going to be substantialhttp://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/24916/Dawn New has reported that a GPS chip recovered from Davis was being used to identify targets for drone attacks in the tribal region. He made up to 12 confirmed trips to Waziristan, where the US has been conducting extensive bombing, and has been pressuring Pakistani army to conduct a ground offensive for the last 2 years.It seems that if the US manages to secure his release, Pakistan will implode in civil unrest, and the backlash would be directed at all US personnel and activities, thus screwing up the whole operation. I guess the good news in all of this is that drone strikes have ceased for the last four weeks. NATO, largely US forces, deployed in eastern Afghanistan have already been seeing an increase in violence.A real fucking mess the US has created in bringing freedom and democracy to far-away lands. --
Double Standards http://firedoglake.com/2011/02/16/irans-hypocrisy-matched-by-obama-and-clinton/Good article - Clinton criticizes Iran's crack down while ignoring 300 dead in Egypt by "their" government employing the same tactics.And now tear gas & batons used to break up the protests in Bahrain, home of the USN's 5th Fleet. Sounds like Georgia. Only US-supported regimes can do that - they support the regime or they stoke dissent by launching all of these Twitter messages themselves, in cahoot with the Israelis.Iran is sending some blue touch-paper (a.k.a. a frigate and a supply ship) through Suez to Syria. It'll pass through international waters but little things like that don't worry the Israelis. --
"Its called political leveraging, manufacturing dissent. Support the dictator as well as the opponents of the dictator as a means of controlling the political opposition." The same game is on in Georgia - and the US government support both the violators and defenders of civil rights. This is pure riding with the fox and running with the hounds.http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=22993 --
How safe is Tbilisi Georgia? How could it?http://www.finchannel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8...According to recent warning reports issued by the UK Embassy in Georgia (updated on 19 July 2010), there is an underlying threat from terrorism in Georgia. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers.Travel to Georgia is not highly recommended by the U.S. Embassy in Georgia either. However, at least the police are being trained up to find out how US citizens were killed. Blood spatter analysis course is part of the Forensic Development Project, a U.S.-Georgian effort to improve the professional capabilities of Georgia's law enforcement agencies. The U.S.Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) of the Department ofState collaborates with the MOIA Main Forensic Division and L. Samkharauli National Forensic Bureau of Georgia to deliver trainings through a multi-faceted project combining technical assistance, professional exchange programs, equipment donation, and a forensic laboratory accreditation program. --
Sickening cronyism in Georgia over mine deaths! Misha sends his crony to the US while the heat dies down about the coal mine deaths. http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=23102Gela Bezhuashvili, the head of Georgian intelligence service, will continue his tenure after return from the United States where he is "to complete course of study," the Georgian President's spokesperson, Manana Manjgaladze, said on February 1. "We confirm that he is really in the United States to increase his qualification… it will last for several weeks, maximum month and a half; he departed to the United States to complete course of study and after that Mr. Bezhuashvili will return and continue his tenure," Manjgaladze said.[what course of study would this be - and who is paying for him to lie low for a while - the poor old tax-payer?]. There were unconfirmed reports recently in the Georgian media that Bezhuashvili had resigned. Bezhuashvili, 43, became head of intelligence service in early 2008 after serving as Foreign Minister since late 2005. He served as Defense Minister for a few months in 2004, before being appointed as secretary of the National Security Council in June 2004.Bezhuashvili's brother, lawmaker Davit Bezhuashvili, is a founder of the Georgian Industrial Group (GIG) – a conglomerate with diversified business interests ranging from coal mining in Tkibuli and energy to travel. GIG is a shareholding of Rustavi 2 and Mze television stations.It is also thought there are close connections here with Russian Gazprom and the bankrupting of Tbilisgazi before it was sold off to the Kazaks (Russians)....After a deadly blast at the Tkibuli coal mine, President Saakashvili accused [the] owners of the mine of neglecting safety norms and of covering up real reasons behind similar incidents last year. The statement was followed by arrest of two mid-level [SCAPEGOATS] of the mine, who, according to the investigation, were in charge of safety norms.Two persons were arrested in connection with an explosion in coal mine in Tkibuli, western Georgia, which killed one miner and badly injured four others on January 22. Edem Sturua and Giorgi Devdariani were, as prosecutors say, in charge of safety norms.The case is investigated under article 240 of the criminal code, which deals with the cases of breach of safety rule when performing mining. "The investigation is underway and in case of revealing of other persons responsible for the tragedy, similar measures will be undertaken with respect to them," a representative of the prosecutor's office said on January 26. --
