Sunday, April 25, 2010

I stumbled upon some inept Russophone comments on Armenia coming out of Georgia yesterday. Comments that would seem more or less relevant and valid on any other day, but kind of stink on April 24, when Armenians mourn the innocent people killed 95 years ago.

It reminded me of the idiots who patiently store their smart opinions about the United States until September 11, as if this is the only day they expect to be heard properly. I don't mean to say that such comments shouldn't be made, but they reflect badly on the people who make them: they are bursting with schadenfreude today, then spend the rest of the year demanding sympathy and support for their own cause and their own innocent ones.

And I don't mean to say that the bitchy comments were numerous on April 24 - no, there was just a tiny bunch of them. But they've left me with a really bad aftertaste somehow.

On a different note, I was also reminded of a conversation about Georgia with an ex-Yugoslav friend: he asked for a quick explanation of the summer 2008 situation there - and ended up concluding that Georgia was very much like Serbia. His ex-Yugoslav background is pretty complex, which is typical, and his Georgia/Serbia analogy went beyond the usual good/evil geopolitical labels that stick so well to the two countries. And it has occurred to me now that it's really helpful for a relative outsider to know a thing or two about the situation in the Balkans to better understand the situation in the South Caucasus - and vice versa.

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