MetaFilter posts tagged with georgia

Photo essay: Women at risk in central Asia's heroin highway

madamjujujive — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:30:33 -0800

House of Happiness - photos by Rena Effendi of women in the Ferghana Valley, part of central Asia's ancient Silk Route now known as "the heroin highway" - "a geographical and cultural mishmash where three countries and many ethnicities cluster." More about the photos. (Some photos NSFW) Rena Effendi is an Azerbaijan-born social documentary photographer focusing on post-Soviet and postwar melding of cultures and the oil industry's effects on people. Her site includes a generous sampling of selections from her book Pipedreams, a chronicle of lives along the pipeline in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Really, all the photo essays in her portfolio are well worth exploring - I particularly liked the Xinaliq wedding series, Twenty-something in Tehran and the powerful series on the Georgia conflict. Warning: As many photographer's portfolios are wont to be, her site is in flash so avoid it if that bugs you.

Got Real (?) Milk?

Medieval Maven — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:13:45 -0800

Raw Milk is milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized. Raw milk is legal in England, but not in Scotland. Similarly, it's legal in South Carolina and illegal in Georgia. Enter MeFi's Own^® ewagoner of Athens Locally Grown. Athens Locally Grown connects consumers with farmers throughout Georgia and South Carolina, including raw milk dairies. The State of Georgia caught wind of this relationship and sent representatives from their Department of Agriculture. This is what happens when the state impinges on your neighbors' rights to drink what they want. Hear Eric talk about the seizure on the radio (scroll down to 10/22/2009), check out Ron Paul's proposed regulation, and read the FDA rule in question. Previously: Raw Milk is Secret in Brooklyn

1989, revolution in Eastern Europe

Kattullus — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:49:20 -0800

The BBC World Service has put together a special report on the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe (they also have a simpler portal). There is a wealth of material, including TV reports on key events from the BBC archives, interviews, a map timeline, a report on Catholicism's role in the 1989 revolutions, a first-hand report of what it was like to gather news in East Germany during that time and much more.

The latest fashions from Bedrock Vogue

kmz — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:31:24 -0800

34,000 year old fibers found in Georgia. You can find the abstract of the original Science paper here but the full thing is behind a paywall.

Dear Mandir

notashroom — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:16:09 -0800

When you think of Hinduism, you probably don't think of suburban Lilburn, Georgia, yet it is home to BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, at over 30,000 square feet the largest Hindu temple in the world outside of India. The beautiful temple was assembled from 34,000 pieces of Turkish limestone, Indian pink sandstone, and Italian Carrara marble hand-carved by some 1500 craftsmen in India, then shipped to Georgia, where about 900 volunteers put in over a million man-hours to bring the architects' vision to fruition (YT), at a cost of about US$19m. There is no steel in the mandir's structure (YT) at all, which was built in the Nagara style common in 8th to 10th century India. The mandir is stunning at night, thanks to the multicolored LED lighting used to highlight architectural details, add color to festival celebrations, and comply with religious rules that the lighting be hidden from view. Related

American Stonehenge

Artw — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:24:16 -0800

The Georgia Guidestones - Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse.

Brave New Welfare

Pope Guilty — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:54:14 -0800

"Lies about surgical sterility requirements. Questions about their sex lives. Outright threats. Here's what faces families in Georgia when their luck runs out."

How to screw up a war story

Anything — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:04:02 -0800

What was so shameful and embarrassing to me, an American journalist whose own Moscow-based newspaper, The eXile, had just been driven out of existence [previously] by these same Kremlin bastards, is that Sasha was rightly frustrated. A Kremlin minder right and the Western journalists wrong? What has this world come to when the Kremlin has a better grasp of the truth than the free Western media?

How to screw up a war story: The New York Times at work

The law of unintended consequences?

desjardins — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:49:38 -0800

Wendy Whitaker is a sex offender. At 17, she had oral sex with a boy, just shy of his 16th birthday. She's losing her house because she cannot live within 1000 feet of any area where children congregate, and the local church runs an unadvertised daycare. In 2006 she sued over the residency restrictions. Last Thursday, she lost. She filed a new lawsuit, saying that her sex offender status is cruel and unusual punishment. Like the case of Genarlow Wilson (previously, 1, 2), if they'd just had intercourse instead of oral sex, it would have been a misdemeanor, not a felony. What she did is no longer a felony in Georgia, but a law was passed so that justice does not apply retroactively, so Wilson and Whitaker remain convicted felons. Another law effectively barred sex offenders from the entire state, and Whitaker moved to South Carolina. She returned to GA when the law was overturned. They're allowing Whitaker to stay in her home during the lawsuit but she won't be volunteering at the church.

Georgia and Russia: the aftermath

languagehat — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:01:17 -0800

Georgia and Russia: This is the most balanced and informative discussion I've seen since the invasion over three months ago (MeFi thread). If you've been wanting to catch up, this essay and its many useful links are the way to go. The author, Donald Rayfield, is professor of Russian and Georgian and knows both countries well. (Via wood s lot.)

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

markkraft — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:14:33 -0800

This thing ain't over yet! Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia has failed to reach 50% of the vote, thereby triggering an automatic runoff election on December 2nd, between him and Democratic challenger Jim Martin, who received 47% of the vote. This gives the Democrats a rare opportunity to concentrate all their efforts over the next month on a state in the heart of the South. Can we expect President-elect Obama and Jim Martin to launch a concentrated campaign across the state of Georgia, hoping to do what they did in Indiana, and turn a traditionally Republican state blue again? Yes, I suspect, we can!

Georgia: "They Started It!"

LMGM — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:34:34 -0800

Georgia offers evidence that Russia made the first move. (login NYT ; Bugmenot) Georgia is circulating recordings of intercepted telephone calls from the period leading up to the Georgia-Russia war in August, showing that Russian troops were moving through the Roki tunnel into South Ossetia a full day before Georgia started shelling Tskhinvali (the capital of S.O.). Russia claims that it was part of routine troop rotation in the region (where they maintained a peacekeeping force), while Georgia accuses them of invading on soverign territory.
In the meanwhile, NATO gives "partial support" to Georgia.

Are you there, God? It's me, Medvedev

stammer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:58:37 -0800

Why I had to recognise Georgia’s breakaway regions, by Dmitry Medvedev.

Reporter Catches Bullet

Surfin' Bird — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:15:28 -0800

Turkish journalists were caught in a war zone while on the job. The Turkish team was in between the town of Gori and breakaway South Ossetia where Georgian and Russian forces have collided. The video is from the inside of the car being shot at with automatic weapons.

On the Ground in Gori

chunking express — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:13:01 -0800

"Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak is in Georgia for The Wall Street Journal. His photographic essays from the region span two decades and tell a moving story of the people and now war there." And for those of you who hate flash, you can view the photos at the WSJ's Photo Journal blog. [via hardcore street photography]

War by Miscalculation?

notsnot — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:48:13 -0800

The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power- the Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. (the real meat and taters starts after the first gray box)

Has the US peaked and is in decline?

yoyo_nyc — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:24:02 -0800

Some books you might want to read about the US and recent political developments in the world. In 1987 Paul Kennedy published The rise and fall of great powers. He predicted the decline and collapse of the USSR and analyzed patterns that came with the rise and fall of great powers in the last 500 years. A superpower basically gets builds on economic strength, over-stretches its power, exhausts itself by over-stretching and finally falls, at least by the theory of Kennedy. Kennedy points out that nearly every power has reacted to decline with increased military spending, which leads to a feed-back effect. Money and resources that are needed for economic growth are consumed by an ever increasing military budget. In 2006 nearly 50% of the worlds military spending was done by the US. Recently we have seen problems in Georgia and other former USSR states (Orange revolution in Ukraine). Brzezinski laid out his most significant contribution to post–Cold War geostrategy in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. He defined regions of Eurasia and in which ways the United States ought to design its policy toward each region in order to maintain its global primacy. Brzezinski recommends in this book that the US should support and encourage separatist movements in and around Russia and China. Currently the US has military bases not only in Eastern Europe but also in Uzbekistan and Kirghistan. The US also wants Ukraine and Georgia to join the NATO. Seven years ago, in 2001, the French scientist Emmanuel Todd wrote "After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order", a book that was widely received as left wing US-bashing. Recently this book has been re-reviewed more positively and Todds description of the US housing bubble, industrial decline, trade deficit and "military theatricalism" might be more than just US-bashing. Todd predicted in 1976, at the age of 26, the decline of the USSR in "The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere" what could be seen as a kind of track record. Emanuel Todd claims that the US has peaked and that the future economic center will be Eurasia. With Europe and Asia connected by Russia, the central piece of geostrategic interests Here, Todd and Brzezinski agree that Russia holds the key to many geostrategic scenarios. For Todd it is Russia that will economically connect Eurasia, for Brzezinski this is a threat and hence separatist movements should be supported. Amazingly Todd sees fewer problems with Muslim extremists due to increasing literacy rates especially among the females but not everybody agrees with him.

Russian tanks and jets roll into Georgia

Happy Dave — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:52:54 -0800

Reports are coming in of up to 150 armoured vehicles entering South Ossetia. Russian peacekeepers have been on the ground in Georgia since 1992, and have reported being attacked in the last 24 hours during heavy fighting between seperatist forces and Georgian troops. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claims "Georgian peacekeepers opened fire on the Russian peacekeepers with whom they are supposed to work together to carry out their mission of maintaining peace in this region." and goes on to say

It is these circumstances that dictate the steps we will take now. We will not allow the deaths of our fellow citizens to go unpunished. The perpetrators will receive the punishment they deserve.

Georgian politicians say 'this means war'.

Southern College Accepts Dwarves

netbros — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:07:13 -0800

SCAD Shorts, playful videos that stretch the imagination are from The Dandy Dwarves, an eclectic group of students who formed a video production company while attending Savannah College of Art Design. Each month the dwarves will release a brand new video short like the recent Scribe Conjures Alternate Dimension. It’s up to us to create fitting, descriptive, and creative S-C-A-D titles for each new video.

Streaming audio from former Soviet Georgia.

nebulawindphone — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:09:07 -0800

Streaming audio of traditional music from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. This is some of the strangest, most haunting and blissed-out singing you can hear on this planet. (And check out those swell outfits, fellas!) The front page tracks are:

Orira, sung by the Georgian Voices. That yodeling you hear is called krimanchuli.
Chona, sung by the Mamuli folk ensemble.
Lechkhumuri Makruli, sung by the Rustavi Choir, who are probably the best-known in America of all these groups thanks to a few albums that came out here in the 90s.
The youtube link is a Georgian pop group called Orera. Apparently several of the members went on to get famous in the Soviet Union, but I'm having trouble finding information on them in English.

There's a lot of good stuff elsewhere on the site, although there's also a lot of broken links, missing files and badly ripped audio; browsing through it can be frustrating. Some of my current favorites:

Kheuro, by the Mamuli ensemble: slow and powerful.
Orovela, by the Rustavi Choir: no harmony to speak of on this one, but the melody's worth it. The penultimate phrase gives me shivers — it's like he just tosses his voice into the air and waits for it to come down.
Khasanbegura is one of the classics of the Georgian repertoire. It's sung here by the Georgian Voices; if you're into yodeling, though, be sure to check out this snippet of it on youtube, which really showcases the awesome krimanchuli part.
This set of recordings from the 30s by Varlam Simonishvili. Some really intense performances; sadly, the sound quality's not great. More brilliant yodeling if you're into that sort of thing.
Mravaljamier, by Quintet Urmuli. ("Mravaljamier" isn't a title so much as a genre of songs — they're toasts wishing someone long life. You can find more examples on the Georgian Voices page.)

So far I've been linking to folk choirs, but there's a whole parallel tradition of sacred polyphony in the Orthodox church:

Try a few chorales from the Church of St. Pantelmion the Healer: Tsmindao Chmerto, Romelni Kerubinta.
The Sioni cathedral choir sound to me like they're more influenced by Western church music. The Alilo (means "alleluia" — a whole genre again rather than a title) sounds like something you'd hear in a European cathedral, but it sure is beautifully done. Or try Christ is Risen from the Dead for a more Georgian sound — and a floor-shaking bass voice on the first line.

The South will Rise

meeshell — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:44:38 -0800

Tennesse and Georgia's war over water There are about five million residents in north Georgia affected by the drought. The phrase "if its brown flush it down, if its yellow let it mellow" has become part of the local jargon in an attempt to encourage water conservation. Two weeks ago two Republican lawmakers, Sen. David Shafer and Rep. Harry Geisinger,proposed that Georgians simply invade their northern neighbor and take their water. Citing a survey from the 1800s, they claim that the state border has crept southward in an incorrect manner and advocate restoring the pre-1818 state lines. The obvious reason for this is the millions of gallons of water in the Tennessee River, one mile north of the present border. "I would offer to settle this dispute over a friendly game of football, but that would be unfair to the State of Georgia,” said Tennessee State Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, rubbing salt in the wound inflicted by the Volunteers upon the Bulldogs last year.

Now that Kosovo has declared independence, will Abkhazia follow?

gregb1007 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:33:01 -0800

Now that Kosovo has declared independence, will Abkhazia follow? The Abkhazian "autonomy" within Georgia already has its own president and parliament, as well as an independent army that has managed to expel Georgian presence by 1993. They've even got their own flag. The only thing missing? Official recognition from the UN. However, this insufficiency can be remedied. Reflecting on Kosovo's success in breaking free from Serbia, President Sergei Bapash pins his hopes on achieving a similar miracle in his own land. Declaring his intentions during a February 18th press conference held in Moscow, Bapash made it clear that he will turn to Russia and other former Soviet states for support in his quest to make Abkhazia officially independent.

The Last Battlefield

beagle — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:17:11 -0800

It has been called the Last Battlefield of World War II in Europe. On the Dutch island Texel, on April 6, 1945, a batallion of soldiers from Georgia (Soviet Union), who had been impressed into the German army, started a rebellion against the German soldiers and officers on the island [Wiki]. The Germans brutally supressed the revolt in fighting that left dead 565 Georgians (out of an original 800), about 800 Germans (more by some accounts) and 117 Texel residents. A month later, on May 5, the war officially came to an end in Holland. But German troops remained in charge of Texel, and continued to hunt down Georgians in their hideouts, until May 20, when liberating Canadian troops finally arrived. The Georgians were repatriated via a process that is still not completely clear. Not until the fall of the USSR were contacts and visits re-established between Texel and the few surviving Georgian veterans of the affair. In 2005, Georgian president Saakashvili visited Texel as part of a 60th anniversary commemoration. Most of the Georgian dead were buried in a special cemetery on Texel that is named after their leader, Loladse. There's a book on the subject [scroll down for English version; not on Amazon, alas].

Origins of the US carpet industry

russilwvong — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:44:21 -0800

How do regional clusters of economic activity get started? For example, why is Dalton, a town in northern Georgia, the center of the American carpet industry? It started with a farm girl named Catherine Evans, who made a tufted bedspread as a wedding present in 1900. Via Paul Krugman.

"Here are our guests."

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:05:20 -0800

Live footage (in Georgian) as special police forces shut down dissident Georgian TV station IMEDI amid Tbilisi protests; the anchor staunchly trods on (transl. English by RussiaToday). IMEDI TV is co-owned by News Corp.