Darn it! I think I've got it figured out, but you made me work for that one. ;-)

Well, then, be the first to give the information, Moody Blue!

Recall my article from more than three years ago, "La'ana-hum Allah." That title took more than a day, as I recall, for someone to translate. I think it was finally Peter of Lone Tree who figured it out.

This one should have taken longer than that.

The Dark Wraith awaits.

Umm... I am having a problem with the language / character / font thing. So...

That is the revival of the five cross flag that Georgia ("Sakartvelo") used in the 13th century, depicting the cross of St. George, their patron saint. [Originally the King of Georgia in the 5th century used the single large red cross, and the four extra crosses were added probably during the reigns of George V (1299 to 1302 and 1314 to 1346) of Georgia, and the five crosses represent the Holy Wounds of Christ.]

I think that the word on the lower R is "Freedom" which is the title of their national anthem, but I'm not sure of the word on the upper left... Victory? Strength?

The national motto "Dzala ertobashia" is "Strength is in Unity" which comes from a fable (about a king with 30 sons and the king had asked his sons break arrows, one by one, but when he asked them to break the arrows all at once and they could not).

The student now awaits the lecture.

No lecture needed, Moody Blue. You hit it all pretty much on the head.

Freedom and victory: regardles of the language, they are nohing more than words. The living speak them, as do the living who will soon be otherwise.

The Dark Wraith is glad the translation got worked out so quickly.

From ynetnews.com: "Israel began selling arms to Georgia about seven years ago following an initiative by Georgian citizens who immigrated to Israel and became businesspeople."

Freedom's just another word...

Well, it was an interesting little excursion to read up on some of the long history of this little country... not to mention the many extra side trips I took through some of the other inter - article links. Which I won't, because I ended up reading about some of the claimed biblical connections of the people of this area, too. Sheesh. (*giggle*)

Ah, yes, Peter. You will notice the interesting connections I make in "Hydrocarbon Battlefields."

One thing I might want to point out here is really rather obvious, though: given that Israel is involved quite deeply in Georgian affairs, even though it looks right now like Georgia is getting beaten severely by Russia, the war is not over quite yet.

The Dark Wraith never bets on Goliath when David is getting his slingshot stones from Boulder Mountain.

Bush's War in Georgia... [?]:

The Israeli news source DebkaFile elaborates on the geopolitical implications of Israeli involvement in the Georgia's politics:

"The conflict has been sparked by the race for control over the pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region....The Russians may just bear with the pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s ambition to bring his country into NATO. But they draw a heavy line against his plans and those of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route the oil routes from Azerbaijan and the gas lines from Turkmenistan, which transit Georgia, through Turkey instead of hooking them up to Russian pipelines.

Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean." (Paul Joseph Watson, "US Attacks Russia Through Client State Georgia")

The United States and Israel are both neck-deep in the "Great Game"; the ongoing war for vital petroleum and natural gas supplies in Central Asia and the Caspian Basin.

Why Georgia matters - 250km of gas pipeline:

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is the only practical route for carrying Caspian oil to Western markets that avoids Russia - a treasured asset for the a European Union trying to reduce energy dependence on Moscow.

The BTC, which connects Baku in Azerbaijan, via the Georgian capital Tbilisi with Ceyhan, a port on the south-eastern Mediterranean coast of Turkey, was once billed as the "pipeline of peace".

It featured in the James Bond film The World is Not Enough and can pump around a million barrels a day.

Now it finds itself on the fringes of war zone as Russian and Georgia face off.

"The whole conflict is not being waged over the pipeline. The reasons are definitely geopolitical," explained Natalia Leshchenko, a Russia analyst at Global Insight.

"However, the Russians know the pipeline is important to Georgia and may try to damage it. They have the capability to do so." [snip]

The security of the pipeline was already in the spotlight after an attack on a Turkish section by Kurdish separatists last week, and the Russian/Georgian conflict will not ease those concerns.

The pipeline runs 55km from the South Ossetian border.

This is a another fine @#$%ing mess! And each side is blaming the other for causing the problems?

That's a nice little bit of double speak: It's not "over the pipeline..." it's "...geopolitical." Jeezus!

And I suppose that doesn't mean that whoever controls the geopolitical area doesn't also end up with control of the pipeline??? And pffffft.

Russia's Medvedev halts military action in Georgia
Ya' s'pose Medvedev asked the Israelis if it was okay before he acted?
Or would he have asked Bus... whoever's controlling Bush these days?

BP shuts Georgia oil, gas pipelines as a precaution

One hour ago:

Georgia: bombs fall after Russian halt order

Georgia's prime minister said on Tuesday he wanted more evidence of a Russian halt to military operations because Russian fighter jets had continued to bomb Georgian villages. [...]

"Despite the Russian president's claims earlier this morning that military operations against Georgia have been suspended, at this moment, Russian fighter jets are bombarding two Georgian villages outside South Ossetia," Gurgenidze said. [...]

The Georgian government said Russian fighter aircraft were bombarding the villages of Ruisi in the Kareli region and Sakoringo in the Kaspi region, all in Georgia proper and outside the main conflict zone of South Ossetia. [...]

"Does that look like the cessation of hostilities?" Gurgenidze said.

In politics, truth and words intersect only incidentally. To find spiritual enlightenment, consult men of good will; to make a nation strong, speak to the Devil.

— Dark Wraith

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/08/trouble-with-georgia.html

Good evening, Cloud.

While the very first reports coming out of the Republic of Georgia were favorable to that country's cause, subsequent articles have been almost uniformly negative, if somewhat understated, in their take on the Georgians. This applies principally to reporting from the moderate and liberal press (such as there is of the latter). In fact, truthout.org reprinted an article
originally published by The Independent. The author of the article was brutally sneering to the President of Georgia, even going so far as to whip together a blend of praise for Reagan and and Leftists alike to contort reality to his point of view.

I posted a comment on the truthout thread, but as has been the case with every comment I have ever attempted to make on a thread at truthout, the editors there (primarily, Mark Ash) chose not to publish it, even though blitheringly uninformed comments were published.

In regard to the article to which you graciously provided the link, I shall make only some summary comments because I am disinterested in trying to bully my own point of view across in comments here. (I do that enough in the articles, themselves, that I write.)

Like the author of that article, I am a student of linguistics. The dominant language spoken by Georgians is, indeed, remarkable. It is one of only a small cluster of languages, the so-called "South Caucasian" group, that is apparently unrelated to any other languages in the world, although I must offer a qualifier on that fact. There is a marvelous and heated debate still on-going about the possibility that this group is actually related to another isolated language which has no extant relatives. The language spoken by the Basques, geographically an extraordinary distance from the Caucasus region, might be related. Many scholars dismiss this hypothesis out of hand, but I consider the arguments of its supporters and their evidence, if not compelling, at least striking.

To this day, I dearly love linguistics and what it can reveal about the migrations of the peoples of the world and their world-visions.

That having been said, to promote a thesis about the current events in the Republic of Georgia by keying on the peculiarities of its inhabitants' language is a reach that even I—someone given to making connections most scholars would never even imagine—would not make.

The writer is trying to launch a thesis against the Georgians and, in particular, against their leadership now and their preferences as such more broadly. I cannot work from there to an accommodation of the resulting conclusions. I got a subtle but distinct taste from that writer of someone who does not like the Georgians in a way that smacks of an ethnicism I have seen among Russians in their opinions of their supposedly rustic, less historically well-bred, lessers in the former Soviet sphere. The same forces that compelled the Russians to overtake and control those barbarians during the Soviet era were there before that, and they are still there now.

As I just noted, I smelled that ugliness ever so slightly in the way that author crafted his thesis.

I just keep staring in disbelief at the way in which the tide of journalists' opinions turned so suddenly into blind belief in Russia's ludicrous claims that Republic of Georgia troops just started indiscriminately—out of nowhere, without provocation—bombarding civilians and "peacekeepers," killing \many peacekeepers and thousands of innocent before the heroic Russian forces came in and drove the killers back into the hinterlands.

No, that does not work even on a logical level, much less on a level consistent with careful analysis of what was happening just prior to the beginning of the conflict.

—— continued below ——

— continued from above ——

That is not, however, to say that Georgian leader Saakashvili is not, as he has been characterized, something of a hot-head. He is not, on the other hand, a raving, suicidal idiot, which is what he would have to be to have tried to retake the restive region of South Ossetia without immediate reason and without some assurances.

I am getting a fairly consistent description of what took place in the days leading up to the Republic of Georgia's assault on South Ossetia. Unfortunately, I have no experience with most of these sources from which I am getting this scenario, and that means I cannot make some blustering declaration of "cause" that could end up being nothing more than a coordinated effort to find dupes to mouth propaganda that is a sack of lies, even though the sack is consistent with what I, personally, think happened.

In other words, Cloud, I can support the people of the Republic of Georgia, and while I can use the occasion of this conflict to point out, as I have many times in the past, that Russia is a brutish, violent hegemon led by one of the most ruthless, successful leaders of recent memory, I cannot promote a version of events based upon what might be nothing more than propaganda.

In other words, Cloud, I will not do what the mainstream media does all the time, in particular with respect to their now-concerted effort to represent the conflict in the Caucasus as if Russia is in the right.

The Dark Wraith hopes he can get a somewhat better source with which to relay a version of events other than what is now the "truth" of the mainstream media.