Personal Internet Commentary on Current Events

 You can say what you like on the internet. Some interesting unsolicited material has been circulating as a result of the current situation in Georgia. The political crisis has prompted people to send e-mails to THE GEORGIAN TIMES , and posts to various internet sites, adding their twopennyworth on the unfolding events.

 Various Georgians around the world have received an invitation to sign an online petition entitled “Stop abuses by the government of Georgia.” This was begun by US based Georgian human rights activist Anna Dolidze and is targeted at the Government of the United States, the United Nations Organization, the Council of Europe and the European Union. The petition describes the actions of the government in regard to the demonstrations and calls for the international community to intervene in the crisis, condemn “massive violation of human rights”, stop the “persecution of opposition members”, pressure the government to cancel emergency rule, compel the government to “release political prisoners” and satisfy the appeal for peaceful dialogue. The petition is hosted by the independent international petition hosting forum www.gopetition.com. As of 18:00 on Saturday 10 November it had attracted nearly 4,000 signatures, some of them well known names in Georgia such as Shalva Natelashvili, Jondi Baghaturia, Irakli kakabadze.

Another item doing the rounds through Skype is an online poll. This is a rather odd item because there is no indication to the outside observer of what it is about. It is hosted by free poll website http://poll.pollcode.com/eBF and simply says in a red box, “2008 Parlamentarian (sic) Elections (Spring-Fall)”, giving users the option of clicking on the spring or fall box. There is no reference to Georgia. By 18:00 on Saturday only 27 people had voted, of which 18 favoured spring and 9 fall (autumn). The poll has been overtaken by the decision to hold the Presidential election in January but it does warn users at the bottom, “Poll results are subject to error and are for entertainment only.”

Photographs are also being sent around. One received by GEORGIAN TIMES, without any accompanying text, showed Avtandil Jorbenadze, former Minister of State under Shevardnadze being beaten with a stick by a man wearing black civilian clothes, but having a balaclava on his head masking his face. The Flickr site (www.flickr.com) also has a number of photos of the police action against the demonstrators. The international YouTube video site has several entries on the current crisis. One shows the police using tear gas and another the demonstrations in Zugdidi, subtitled in English. Ironically the source of many of these is “Russia Today.”

 Bloggers have of course been busy. The ‘Resistance Georgia’ blog (http://resistancegeorgia.blogspot.com) has reported that Levan Mikeladze, Georgia’s ambassador to the Swiss Confederation and Head of the Mission of Georgia to International Organizations in Geneva, has resigned from his post as he can no longer support a government which uses force on the opposition. Joshua Keating, an editor of the journal ‘Foreign Policy’, writes a blog at http://blog.foreignpolicy.com. Thursday’s entry is entitled “The sad end of the Rose Revolution” and includes quotes by people who were beaten by police. This identifies the people wearing black clothes and balaclavas as police. Another blogsite called ‘BoingBoing’ (www.boingboing.net) has a different take on the conflict. A posting on November 8 displays a photograph of a riot policeman in a mask. The accompanying text is: “The Rose Revolution in the former Soviet state of Georgia is collapsing under phalances (sic) of riot-cops. This is distressing, but also fascinating -- who knew that the Georgian riot cop standard issue included a freaky white Mickey Mouse mask?” The mask does indeed resemble the face of Mickey Mouse, the well known icon of American and pro-American culture.

TOL Georgia (http://blogs.tol.org) carries an article by ‘jibs’ headlined “Georgia: Democracy in Crisis.” This is one of a number of articles under the heading ‘Saakashvili’ that have been building up during the week. One of these directly quotes the GEORGIAN TIMES. Another blogging website is Global Voices (www.globalvoicesonline.org). This is a “non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, a research think-tank focused on the Internet’s impact on society.” A post from Wednesday by Onnik Krikorian is entitled: “Georgia – End of a Fairy Tale?” This is a summary of blogs from various sources. One of the most interesting is from an Armenian blogger on Unzipped: “Just listened to President Saakashvili’s speech on the latest developments in Georgia, involving the forceful dispersal of the opposition demonstration. He put the blame on Russia again. I think Russians need to pack on and leave somewhere towards South America, so that they are not blamed for Georgia’s internal affairs. How can all this be blamed on Russia? Are those 70,000 people that showed up in the first day of the protests ALL Russian puppets? Long live our saviour and protector against the Russian dark magic!” The Global Voices blog however also directs readers to pro-Saakashvili comments on other blogs, such as “There are huge possibilities for good in this country and I hope that the President, Saakashvili, is smart enough to be able to quell this thing without having to resort to Soviet era tactics of repression. I will be an unequivocal supporter of him if he can figure out a way to address the core of what the protestors are saying.”

 Internet contributions are not usually moderated and therefore have much more scope to be opinionated. But perhaps the most remarkable of the internet comments come from a source designed to be entirely neutral. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia already has an entry on the “2007 Georgian Demonstrations”. It does warn readers that this is a current event and that the content of the article may change as it unfolds. But it gives a full account of events so far and now purports to be a finished article. It includes a timeline of the events leading up to the demonstrations and some international reaction. Encyclopedia articles about historic events are usually not written or published until well after the event, when hindsight has lent a different layer of meaning to what happened. An encyclopedia article written about something while it is taking place will be a valuable addition to the yet-to-be-written history of this period.

 Internet activity gives people who have no other outlet the chance to express their views to the world. Every view under the sun is therefore likely to appear. The tone of the internet activity visible so far is resolutely opposed to the government’s actions against demonstrators, and its arguments are based primarily on this occurrence rather the wider range of concerns expressed by government and opposition and in print media.