What About Georgia? Poland Next?

[big-boss]

Tom, David:
IS this Georgia thing being felt in Poland? Seems like the Polish gov. got off their butts and signed up for the missel stuff reel fast.

[Ronbo]

I'm not sure any of the countries of the former Warsaw pact are particularly interested in it re-forming.

Georgia was (is) a state of the Soviet union so it isn't much different than our government's reaction to the south cutting loose.

Would be nice if more US companies would follow the Kirkham's example instead of buying cheap junk from China.

[What'saCobra?]

Interesting question and commentary.

It is certainly true that it would be more than nice if US distributors/investors looked more closely at democratic states like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia and the Baltics rather than providing the investment capital for the Chinese Red Army to expand sufficiently to absorb Taiwan with ease.

But, to say that Georgia is not so much different than our south cutting loose is to seriously understate both Georgia's and the Soviet Union's long and variously ugly and heroic histories, cultures and leaderships. Georgia is a democracy. Russia is returning to a Tsarist dictatorship and starting the action with Georgia, hard on the heels of the Chechens. Ukrainia watches the invasion with considerable alarm.

i would avoid the serious inaccuracies of implying a moral equivalency between either Russia v Georgia or Georgia v our slave-owning South. Moral equivalancies are rarely valid when drawn between invading irregular thugs and defenders of democracy, however fledgling.

[Jamo]

David and I spoke about Georgia the night it went down...I pay attention cuz I gots people back there, and some sheep.

The Caucus (area between the Black and Caspian Seas generally covered by the Caucasian Mountain range) is the Balkans of Asia...consists of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). The ONLY force that could keep these bordered republics and the many groups of people who live within them under rational control over the past couple of thousand years were outside empires of overwhelming force...the Persians, Macedonians, Byzantines, Mongols, Tsarist Russia and, of course, the Soviets. Since the breakup of the USSR...there have been battles between religions, cultures and flocks of sheep. Armenia and Azerbaijan have locked horns over areas trying to break away from the latter with the support of the former. Georgia has its own breakaway regions due to entrenched populations. It's Yugoslavia all over again.

The Russians have another interest...the Georgians are becoming the transit land mass gateway for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea and Central Asian fields to the Black Sea for export to the West. This undercuts the Russian attempt at having a monopoly over the transportation of these two fuels to the European landmass and using it as an economic weapon a few steps beyond what the OPEC folks did back in the 70s...they already slowed the flow a couple of times, the latest being to the Ukraine to bring it in line on some political issues a couple of years ago.

Then again, the Georgian goverment has some unclean hands as well...pushing for a bit of ethnic cleansing by pushing out Russians and Russia supporters who live in its two northern enclaves which have been trying to break away...and swooped in during the Olympics when they thought nobody was watching.

Our interest? Of course we're there to protect democracy, but we've been forging good relations with Azerbaijan and the Central Asian "Sisters" so that we can get our hands on their oil and gas as a hedge against OPEC (consisting of Middle Easterns and other folks of inconsistent temperment such as Chavez) and future Russian control (Russia has untapped oil and gas reserves under the tundra way beyond Saudi Arabia's). Georgia is a nice little Christian Orthodox nation with a coastline on a sea controlled by our good buddies the Turks.

Now, Turkey has entered the fray as our local champion. Their president just visited Armenia to watch their historic soccer match (basturd Turks won...our goalie was a sheep). This is the first time a Turkish leader has ever stepped foot in Armenia since the genocide, a rather significant historical event if there ever was one. Why? Because Turkey is trying to forge ahead as a regional power and bring together an alliance of non-Arab Caucus countries...two Muslim (Turkey and Azerbaijan) and two Orthodox Christian (Georgia and Armenia). If you understood the politics of the region, you'd realize that less than two years ago such a thing happening would be as likely as the leaders of Israel and Iran swapping spit, but hey...the uni-brow peoples of the earth do strange things. The Turks need to do something culturally PC in order to gain full acceptance into the European Union...France asspecially is pushing the Armenian Genocide thing pretty damn hard. Our own Congress has to ponder the issue every session with both Democratic and Republican administrations warning how important Turkey is to our national interests in the area. Cheney just visited Azerbaijan...wants to make damn sure they'll ship it north through Georgia rather than south through Iran. The Kurds (essentially Asian Okies) reside in every one of these countries, so they constitute another factor to be considered.

So yes, it's easy to see Russia as the big bad bear as usual and they are to a huge extent, but don't assume Georgia isn't a little regional PITA starting sh!t because they fugure their pipelines buy them good tidings from the West.

Armenia...we gots rocks and sheep and we're smack in the middle of all of this as usual.

Poland? They're all busy changing lightbulbs.

[badrich]

Very interesting commentary. I just hope that our chickenhawks in Washington don't get us into another cold war before we clean up our messes we started in the Middle East. By the way, Jamo, I've heard that the rumors about you and your sheep are totally unfounded. Rich

[Murphy]

It is interesting that both Joseph Stalin and Jimmy Carter were both from Georgia?

[powerslide]

Hey Juggernaut, get out the popcorn, here we go!

[Ron61]

Not nearly as knowledgeable nor informative about the regions as Jamo, but I have felt for the past few years that Russia is interested in restoring the old Soviet Union. About 3 years ago they started rebuilding their military with new and updated weapons, then that one person, Forgot who, made the statement that they don't care if they start another cold war. Now a few weeks ago they test fired a long range stealth missile that our outposts didn't pick up. I believe it has a range of over 7,000 miles. And of course will carry up to a 50 Megaton warhead. I am not posting this as pure fact, just from scraps of stuff I have seen in various military watch magazines and a few more or less reliable news sources. I hope that I am wrong but I think they now believe they can drive us into bankruptcy just as we did to them before. And they have a lot of oil and other things of their own to survive without depending on other countries to help them.

Ron

[Jamo]

Murphy...yup, it's a sickness.

You need to go back to WWII and the days of the Great Game before then to understand the modern contexts before now. Hitler drove to the Caucus for the oil in the region and for a land route to the Middle Eastern interests held by England (notably the beginnings of modern Iraq). He was stopped in Stalingrad thankusbetogawd.

The Great Game (between England and Tsarist Russia) was for the control of the Middle East, again for oil and for the protection of greater India (before the partition). This is when the British learned about how fun trying to control Afghanistan was (Alexander had learned that centuries earlier, and the USSR was soon to find out a 100 years later).

The Caucus was always the crossroads...everyone had their crosshairs on it.

Russia's expansionist intentions are nothing new...look back to Ivan, Peter and Catherine...always looking to the south and east. Not unlike our own Monroe Doctrine...it's all a sphere of influence thing.

Russia's new President is rattling Putin's sabor these days, and warned of a backlash to having the US Navy in what it considers its lake (the Black Sea). Note that Chavez just announced some Russian navel vessels have been invited to play with his little boats in a war game in our little lake...

[Ronbo]

But, to say that Georgia is not so much different than our south cutting loose is to seriously understate both Georgia's and the Soviet Union's long and variously ugly and heroic histories, cultures and leaderships. Georgia is a democracy. Russia is returning to a Tsarist dictatorship and starting the action with Georgia, hard on the heels of the Chechens. Ukrainia watches the invasion with considerable alarm.

i would avoid the serious inaccuracies of implying a moral equivalency between either Russia v Georgia or Georgia v our slave-owning South. Moral equivalancies are rarely valid when drawn between invading irregular thugs and defenders of democracy, however fledgling.

Assuming you think the civil war was about slavery... Russia doesn't consider Georgia a country just like the north not recognizing the south's right to leave the union. Religion and morals are excuses for war, while power and wealth are always the real reason for them breaking out.

Personally I think the northerners were afraid they'ed get stuck wearing scratchy wool shirts cause we were cutting off the cotton supply, plus we had all the sugar cane so they were jonesing for a sugar fix.

[big-boss]

I do not think it has anything to do with oil- really. Russia are not capitalists they are communists 80% of Russians living today were raised commy. They took the country for the power and to show everybody thay can- they did and we are all sitting around thinking what to do. Don't be suprised if they do it again.
Their bellys are full now so they are going to do waht the commys like to do- force their beliefs onto others.

JAMO- Lets get a group toghether and go on a field trip to Poland and Armenia.

[Jamo]

Armenia...who the hell would want to go there?

[What'saCobra?]

Saakashvili has written one check too many that bounced big and he certainly does not have lilly-white hands. Mikheil’s a young “turk” (by nature and idiom, not birth or culture) and has given Tsar P license to hunt. Admittedly, P was ready, willing, able and significantly pre-staged. Have a nice Olympics, looking into P’s soul, W. More than one icy stare and cold shoulder were at the hockey play-offs. Even the beach-bims got chilly.

Meanwhile, back at the mishmash Balkans, there are so many minority minorities and majority minorities, it’s an Olympian effort to keep score on the clusterf underway. I’m always happy to see something nice like the USS Dallas stop by and say hello, while delivering supplies of various sorts.

Admittedly, the earlier annexing of Abkhazia by the Rus set the sequence of events in play, just as night follows day.

P is a big game-theory guy; but all games necessarily include implicit presumptions, which may be wrongly assumed by either player. For instance, Dear Sarahcudda is a game changer, not unlike adding an extra White Queen to the chessboard. Not easily forecast, the game has radically changed; perhaps Biden looks now a wasted choice, if winning was the only goal. [Perhaps Joe the Mouth will now get “Torched”, like Torricelli’s forced switcheroo for Frank “ADP” Lautenberg in NJ.]

But, P has invaded to protect “Russian Citizens”, who carry recently gift-wrapped fast-food papers from the local Russian “Cultural Exchange Centers”. Didn’t Hitler “peacefully” invade the Germanic Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938 to “protect their sovereignty and historical Germanic dignity”? At least they were “Germanic” of sorts.

The history of several hundreds+ of years of various wars in the region is far beyond my pay grade (although I am more certain about when human life begins than some other folks).

NB: To say that the War of Succession or the War of Northern Aggression was not ALSO about slavery flies in the face of reality, not just Yankee over-statement. Lincoln, “our” President, said he wanted to preserve the union at any cost of life or treasure. Before the war began and just after the beginning he made it quite clear that anti-slavery was NOT his purpose. He said if allowing slavery would save the Union he would be for it and that if eliminating slavery would save the union, he would be for that. He wanted to save the Union. Subsequent events provided the latter.

After all, if eliminating slavery was the only Linconian objective, why did he only "free" the slaves in the Confederate States and Territories and not include the North? Were Northern Slaves any less deserving of their freedom?

Clearly, the Declaration provided that we could declare our independence from England’s yoke. Our capacity to make that Declaration stick was our own un-guaranteed responsibility. Events could have turned out not unlike the latter Confederation’s failed attempt to susceed.

But, please let us make no mistake failing to see the slavery in the Soviet State’s ambitions in all of the extra-Rus Soviets. The Soviets were squeezed of their gold, ideas and women, all of which went to Moscow. The invasion of Russian families into the properties of each captured state ensured the “proper” weight of any votes (see Islamic invasion of Europe and Hispanic invasion of North America), along with wholesale voter fraud (see New Jersey).

On topic, i wish our brilliant investor class would expand into the new european states with more gusto. The cheap slave-like labor of China is a sucker's choice in the end.

Kudos to the K-Boys for reaching out to the Polish Democracy.

[big-boss]

Thanks guys- Amazing how many smart guys hang out here.

I know when human life begins too: When you do something pretty dumb at over 100MPH in a Cobra, crap your pants but do live to tell. Life is different-It begins.

I would love to go to Armenia. Any relitives there Jamo? Do you think if we get to Poland- Kirkhams would let us drive a Cobra around the country side? That would be one of the things a guy needs to do before he dies!

[powerslide]

Reading between the lines of Big Bosses' original question....Do the Kirkham's have a contingency plan in place to keep the aluminum body bucks safe, and out of the hands of the Russians, should the Russians resume their adventurous behavior and retake Poland? How about the safety and welfare of the skilled fabricators, and their families? Does NATO draw the line with Poland?

[Ronbo]

The irreplaceable part is the cheap skilled labor.

There's no way to protect assets located in a foreign country, so you'd be building new bucks. The trick is paying US labor rates for skilled people capable of hand forming aluminum to test fit on the buck. Not to mention the complex frame building process.

For it to work in the US you'd have to switch to stamped panels, since we're talking about some 14 die sets needed the cost would be considerable. But this would eliminate a lot of expensive, skilled labor.

According to David and Joe, the chassis components are made in Provo. Poland just produces the frame/body. From what I've seen they've invested quite a lot in their facility at home and have pulled a lot of tasks "in-house".

Ultimately the cars would become more expensive and exclusive than they already are, good for bragging rights, but bad in that less people could afford to enjoy them.

I can see the reaction already: "Gee, you actually have one of the Polish cars?"

[Jamo]

Biggie...yup, some family there, some are rather wooly. Also have family in Tehran, but I ain't gonna go see them soon.

[brobehr]

certainly puts the Tito regime and Soviet...influence...in perspective

brobehr