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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 11, 2008 21:51:03 GMT -6
To begin the discussion of the South Ossetia—Georgia conflict, I've inserted a map of the involved region below: The media is ablaze with criticism of Russia's "aggression" against Georgia. Every political windbag (Bush, Obama, & McCain) has condemned Russia for its actions. The media has also gone after the Russians for their alleged "aggression." Little in the way of actual facts has been presented, however. There are some dissenters, however, from the "Russia-is-the-Evil-Aggressor" theory. Below is one such story from blogger American Goy: [/i]" americangoy.blogspot.com/2008/08/usa-calls-for-strong-action-against.html[/ul]
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 11, 2008 21:54:07 GMT -6
Here's another article describing the Georgia - Russia conflict: Israel backs Georgia in Caspian Oil Pipeline Battle with Russia DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 8, 2008" Georgian tanks and infantry, aided by Israeli military advisers, captured the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, early Friday, Aug. 8, bringing the Georgian-Russian conflict over the province to a military climax.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin threatened a “military response.”
Former Soviet Georgia called up its military reserves after Russian warplanes bombed its new positions in the renegade province.
In Moscow’s first response to the fall of Tskhinvali, president Dimitry Medvedev ordered the Russian army to prepare for a national emergency after calling the UN Security Council into emergency session early Friday.
Reinforcements were rushed to the Russian “peacekeeping force” present in the region to support the separatists.
Georgian tanks entered the capital after heavy overnight heavy aerial strikes, in which dozens of people were killed.
Lado Gurgenidze, Georgia's prime minister, said on Friday that Georgia will continue its military operation in South Ossetia until a "durable peace" is reached. "As soon as a durable peace takes hold we need to move forward with dialogue and peaceful negotiations."
DEBKAfile’s geopolitical experts note that on the surface level, the Russians are backing the separatists of S. Ossetia and neighboring Abkhazia as payback for the strengthening of American influence in tiny Georgia and its 4.5 million inhabitants. However, more immediately, 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.
Saakashvili need only back away from this plan for Moscow to ditch the two provinces’ revolt against Tbilisi. As long as he sticks to his guns, South Ossetia and Abkhazia will wage separatist wars.
DEBKAfile discloses Israel’s interest in the conflict from its exclusive military sources:
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.
Aware of Moscow’s sensitivity on the oil question, Israel offered Russia a stake in the project but was rejected.
Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel.
These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday.
In recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was “defensive.”
This has not gone down well in the Kremlin. Therefore, as the military crisis intensifies in South Ossetia, Moscow may be expected to punish Israel for its intervention." debka.com/article_print.php?aid=1358
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 11, 2008 23:09:32 GMT -6
from Global Research: globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9748August 5, 2008 " Russia will not stand by and do nothing if the situation in South Ossetia escalates into a full scale conflict. That's the view of the Russian Foreign Ministry, responding to an increase in tension between Georgia and its breakaway republic.
The Co-chairman of Joint Control Commission for Georgian-Ossetian Conflict Resolution (JCC), Yury Popov, said the key task is "to find ways of preventing what happened on August 1, and on July 4 - when Tskhinvali came under a mortar attack - from happening again".
He also said diplomatic steps were needed to settle the dispute. According to Popov, “The sides have agreed with our mediation to hold a high-level meeting in Tskhinvali on Thursday, August 7".
Georgia and South Ossetia have traded accusations claiming their police posts were shelled overnight. There are no reports of any casualties.
According to the president of the unrecognized republic, Eduard Kokoyti, Georgia is acting provocatively to drive Russia out of peace talks aimed at easing tensions between Tbilisi and Tskhinvali.
”It is sad but Georgia, under the instruction of its western partners, is doing all it can to disrupt the current diplomatic talks but also the peacekeeping efforts. Georgian terror groups have infiltrated South Ossetia to spread fear and chaos,” he said.
“This all shows that Saakashvili’s regime has chosen to go down the path of state terror towards its breakaway republics,” Kokoity added.
At a news conference in Moscow, the South Ossetian envoy to Russia, Dmitry Medoyev, said the situation had significantly worsened since last month's visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“Georgian troops that took part in NATO exercises in the region launched artillery fire on the South Ossetian capital on August 1, killing 6 people. There is a direct connection between the exercises of NATO troops and the latest attacks on us. And there can’t be two opinions about it,” he said.
Meanwhile, South Ossetia is continuing to evacuate women and children from the area following last week's artillery exchanges with Georgia. Around 3,000 people have left the region over the past three days.
6 people have been killed and 13 injured in recent sniper and mortar exchanges between the two sides.
The region’s government says it is responding to what it sees as an increase in Georgian troops on its border, fearing Tbilisi is planning an armed invasion. Georgia, however, denies the claims and calls the move a ‘political show’."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 11, 2008 23:22:25 GMT -6
from Chris-Floyd.com Marching Through Georgia: Cold War II Proxy Conflict Turns Hot Friday, 08 August 2008 " With the world distracted by the glitz and glam of the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing -- where George W. Bush (after some entirely rote criticism) nestled down with his long-time family business partners and fellow crony-capitalist authoritarians in the Chinese leadership -- the new Cold War fuelled by the old Cold Warriors in Washington took a sharp and bitter turn in Georgia.
Yesterday, Georgia's American-educated, pro-NATO president, Mikhail Saakashvili sent a heavy force into the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has enjoyed de facto independence since the early 1990s. Georgian forces shelled the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, and sent thousands of refugees fleeing north into Russia. Several Russian peacekeepers, which have been stationed in South Ossetia for years as part of earlier ceasefire agreements, were killed in the attack. Saakashvili announced that his invasion had "liberated" much of the region.
Today (August 8th), in retaliation, Russian troops and tanks began moving into South Ossetia (where up to 90% of the population hold Russian passports) and reportedly bombed some installations in Georgia proper. Saakashvili immediately appealed to his chief patron, George W. Bush, to step in and save him from the Russian bear: "It's not about Georgia any more," he told CNN. "It's about America, its values. We are a freedom-loving nation that is right now under attack."
Saakashvili had earlier broken a ceasefire agreement following the initial incursion. After promising to stop the attack, Georgian forces suddenly unleashed a fierce bombardment of Tskhinvali, then reportedly bombed a convoy of relief vehicles coming from Russia. Ossetian officials claimed that hundreds of civilians had been killed in the shelling of Tskhinvali, but that report -- like most of the others -- could not be confirmed in the swirling confusion of the moment.
Georgia claims its initial invasion of South Ossetia was in response to continued attacks from South Ossetian militias, and there is some truth in that. After years of relative peace, the tension between Georgia and the Ossetians accelerated after Washington and the Western nations unilaterally recognized the "independence" of Kosovo. (You know, that very independent, completely sovereign new nation whose affairs are entirely controlled by foreign viceroys, who exercise veto power over almost every function of Kosovo's government). South Ossetia -- and Georgia's other breakaway region, Abkhazia -- immediately asserted their right to similar recognition of their own independence. In the light of the West's move in Kosovo, Russian leader Vladimir Putin (it is amusing to see the media pretend that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev might be in charge of events in the Kremlin) said Moscow would increase its support for South Ossetia -- although the Kremlin denies, not very convincingly, supporting the Ossetian militia movement.
It is likely that Saakashvili -- who has been making increasingly authoritarian gestures to quash dissent and investigations into charges of corruption and murder in his administration -- will receive a sympathetic hearing from Bush. After all, under Saakashvili, Georgia is now the third-largest partner in war crime in Iraq, with some 2,000 troops taking part in the illegal occupation of the conquered land. Saakashvili has also avidly sought to bring Georgia into NATO, eagerly embracing the New Cold War strategy of ringing Russia with American proxy armies and bristling "missile defense" bases...."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 11, 2008 23:31:01 GMT -6
from the Guardian.co.UK: The tussle for South OssetiaThe breakaway region of South Ossetia, which has close ties with Russia, wants independence from pro-western Georgia by Anil Dawar Friday August 08 2008 " South Ossetia, about 60 miles (100 km) north of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, broke away from Georgia in a 1991-92 war that left several thousand people dead. It has close ties with the neighbouring Russian region of North Ossetia.
The majority of the roughly 70,000 people living in South Ossetia are ethnically distinct from Georgians. They complain that they were forcibly absorbed into Georgia under Soviet rule and want self-determination.
A peacekeeping force made up of soldiers from Russia, Georgia and North Ossetia monitors a 1992 truce. Tbilisi accuses Russian peacekeepers of siding with separatists, something Moscow denies. Sporadic clashes between separatist and Georgian forces have killed dozens of people in the last few years.
South Ossetia's location
The Georgian president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has proposed a peace deal that would give South Ossetia "a large degree of autonomy" within a federal state. But the separatist leader, Eduard Kokoity, says he wants full independence.
In November 2006, Georgian-controlled villages inside South Ossetia elected a rival leader, the ex-separatist Dmitry Sanakoyev. While he is endorsed by Tbilisi, his authority only extends to a small part of the region.
Russia has found itself pitted against the west for control of the Caucasus region, which is increasingly important as an energy transit route.
This tension has been heightened by Georgia's pro-western government, and more recently its application to become a member of Nato, which would bring western forces right up to Russia's borders."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 11, 2008 23:40:56 GMT -6
War in the Caucasus: Key characters The main protagonists in the current conflictSunday August 10 2008 " Mikheil Saakashvili
The President, a US-educated lawyer, ousted Georgia's ex-Communist old guard in the 2003 Rose Revolution.
He pledged to re-assert Tbilisi's control over the separatist regions of South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Adjara. He brought Adjara back into the fold with relative ease in 2004, but the other two provinces have proved tougher to rein in.
Saakashvili, now aged 40, also pledged to lead Georgia towards membership of Nato and the European Union, ending traditional Russian dominance of the country, something which placed him at odds with the Kremlin of Vladimir Putin and his successor, Dmitry Medvedev.
A vital pipeline taking Caspian Sea oil towards Europe runs through Georgia.Saakashnili was initially welcomed as a democrat, though he was later criticised when anti-government protests in 2005 were brutally crushed by Georgian police.
Vladimir Putin
The Prime Minister is Russia's most popular and most powerful politician, despite stepping down from the presidency to become premier earlier this year.
Insiders describe as terrible the personal chemistry between the diminutive ex-KGB officer Putin and the tall, burly, pro-Western Saakashvili, and relations between their countries deteriorated sharply after the latter took power.
Under Putin, 55, Russia and Georgia expelled each other's diplomats on spying charges, and Moscow deported hundreds of Georgians for alleged immigration violations, while also slapping an embargo on imports of Georgian wine and some foodstuffs.
Eduard Kokoity
The former wrestler was elected President of South Ossetia in 2001, and has categorically ruled out any suggestion of returning to Georgian rule, despite offers of broad autonomy from Tbilisi.
Once head of South Ossetia's Communist youth league, Kokoity moved to Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union and became a businessman. He returned to his homeland to campaign for president and, with significant support from Russia and prominent local entrepreneurs, comfortably defeated the incumbent, Ludwig Chibirov.
Some Georgian officials say Kokoity, 43, is nothing more than a small-time Moscow gangster who was selected by the Kremlin to conduct its political policy in South Ossetia.
They accuse him of running a 'criminal regime' that survives on handouts from Russia and income from smuggling of everything from cigarettes to lumber to weapons." www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/10/russia.georgia2
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 11, 2008 23:50:42 GMT -6
from the Guardian South Ossetia disputeHistory behind the breakaway region's push for independenceby Helen Womack Friday August 08 2008 " Why has fighting broken out in South Ossetia?
The South Ossetians and Georgians have been sniping at each other, both with words and guns, for several weeks now, and patience on both sides has finally snapped. South Ossetia and Georgia's other breakaway region, Abkhazia, have had de facto independence since the early 1990s, but Tbilisi has never recognised the loss of its territory. The dispute between Georgia and the two regions was called "the frozen conflict" because the issues remained unresolved but there was no fighting. The ice began to melt, and the heat to rise, earlier this year when the west recognised Kosovo, against Russia's advice. The South Ossetians and Abkhazians argued that if Kosovo could be independent, then so could they, and renewed their struggle for freedom.
What is the basis of the regions' claim to independence? The Ossetians are descendants of a tribe called the Alans. Like the Georgians, the Ossetians are orthodox Christians, but they have their own language. In Soviet times the Ossetians had an autonomous region within Georgia. The Georgians say the Ossetians cooperated with the Bolsheviks and tended to be more pro-Soviet. Their ethnic kin live across the border in the Russian region of North Ossetia, so they feel more drawn to Russia than to Georgia - and many have Russian passports.
Abkhazia on the Black Sea coast also had autonomy within Georgia during Soviet times. Because of its sub-tropical climate, it was the playground of Soviet leaders and is popular with Russian tourists today. It has a mixed population of Abkhazis, Mingrelians, Greeks, Armenians, Russians and Georgians, and a small but significant Muslim minority. Thousands of ethnic Georgians fled their homes in Abkhazia during the civil war at the beginning of the 1990s and now live as refugees in Tbilisi and Moscow.
Why has Russia become involved?
Russia says it cannot stand aside because many of the people in the breakaway regions are now its citizens. Georgia says Russia is meddling in its internal affairs and supporting the separatists, although Russia's peacekeepers are supposed to be neutral. Georgia accuses Russia of double standards in suppressing its own separatist rebellion in Chechnya while encouraging separatists in Georgia. Russia has become more engaged in the region since Georgia expressed an interest in joining Nato, an idea that Russia staunchly opposes." www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/08/georgia.russia4
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 12, 2008 0:10:02 GMT -6
Here's an excerpt from an another article, from Chris-Floyd.com, that includes individual commentary from an Ossetian. www.chris-floyd.com/content/view/1581/135/#comments" In 2006, McCain visited Georgia and denounced the South Ossetian separatists, proving that Scheunemann wasn't wasting his Georgian sponsor's money. At a speech he gave in a Georgian army base in Senaki, McCain declared that Georgia was America's "best friend," and that Russian peacekeepers should be thrown out.
Today, Georgian forces from that same Senaki base are part of the invasion force into South Ossetia, an invasion that has left scores--perhaps hundreds--of dead locals, at least ten dead Russian peacekeepers, and 140 million pissed-off Russians calling for blood.
Lost in all of this is not only the question of why America would risk an apocalypse to help a petty dictator like Saakashvili get control of a region that doesn't want any part of him. But no one's bothering to ask what the Ossetians themselves think about it, or why they're fighting for their independence in the first place. That's because the Georgians--with help from lobbyists like Scheunemann--have been pushing the line that South Ossetia is a fiction, a construct of evil Kremlin neo-Stalinists, rather than a people with a genuine grievance.
A few years ago, I had an Ossetian working as the sales director for my now-defunct newspaper, The eXile. After listening to me rave about how much I always (and still do) like the Georgians, he finally lost it and told me another side to Georgian history, explaining how the Georgians had always mistreated the Ossetians, and how the South Ossetians wanted to reunite with North Ossetia in order to avoid being swallowed up, and how this conflict goes way back, long before the Soviet Union days. It was clear that the Ossetian-Georgian hatred was old and deep, like many ethnic conflicts in this region. Indeed, a number of Caucasian ethnic groups still harbor deep resentment towards Georgia, accusing them of imperialism, chauvinism and arrogance.
One example of this can be found in historian Bruce Lincoln's book, Red Victory, in which he writes about the period of Georgia's brief independence from 1917 to 1921, a time when Georgia was backed by Britain:
Ames also points to the little-noticed -- and apparently pre-planned -- PR offensive by Georgia to obscure the reality of the situation -- i.e., that Saakashvili provoked Russia's massive response with his own brutal military incursion into South Ossetia:
Justin Raimondo is also on the case, noting, among other points (including , how Barack Obama's line on the conflict is quickly melding with that of McCain, and the usual "bipartisan foreign policy establishment" gang:...
"
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 12, 2008 1:10:35 GMT -6
Here's a video and an interview with an American who was visiting South Ossetia when Georgia attacked. www.russiatoday.com/news/news/28788August 10, 2008 " It's America's fault - US citizen in the conflict zone
An American man living in South Ossetia says U.S. and Georgian leaders are responsible for the violence that has killed 2,000 people in the region. Joe Mestas, who witnessed days of shelling, told RT that Washington will have to answer for the violence. “I thought that since U.S. is supporting Georgia there would be some control over the situation in South Ossetia and that there would be a peaceful solution to the conflict. But what is happening there now it’s not just war, but war crimes. George Bush and [Georgian president] Mikhail Saakashvili should answer to the crimes that are being committed – the killing of innocent people, running over by tanks of children and women, throwing grenades into cellars where people are hiding,” Joe Mestas said.
“The war is when military fight against military. But the Georgian army is killing innocent civilians. This is genocide,” he added." Here's the link to the video: www.russiatoday.com/news/news/28788/video
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 12, 2008 21:21:17 GMT -6
It's been interesting to hear the Bush-ites repeatedly refer to the "democratically-elected" leader of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. This is a gross distortion of how he actually came to power. On November 2, 2003, former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze won re-election. But the election results were disputed by the US-dominated international community, and the losing candidate, Mikheil Saakashvili, was encouraged to challenge the election results. Saakashvili was happy to oblige, given the tremendous international support meddling that was offered. Massive protests of the results were organized by numerous groups in support of Saakashvili's challenge. The opposition protest reached a peak on November 22, 2003, the opening day of the newly elected Georgian parliament (which was considered illegitimate). On this same day, opposition supporters led by (the loser) Mikheil Saakashvili seized the parliament building, interrupting a speech by newly re-elected president Eduard Shevardnadze, and forced him to escape with his bodyguards. Shevardnadze was forced to resign. New elections were held on January 4, 2004. Since the loser of the November election, Mikheil Saakashvili, had eliminated his major rival, he easily won the election. This is what the Bushtards call a "democratically-elected" president. See The Rose Revolution
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Post by agito on Aug 13, 2008 0:56:20 GMT -6
there already is a lot of info propagating through the tard-tubes about this conflict, i've even seen one post on Dkos that makes the case that neither putin or medved gave the go ahead on the russian accelaration. Medved was on vacation and Putin was in transit to the games. I don't put much stock in that allegation though.
In the middle of everything you've posted here UnLC, this Joe Mestas guy smells fishy. The fact that it's an interview on russia today should disqualify him as a source right off the bat.
what little i can find on this guy:
and he reads a prepared text SO well...
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Post by proletariat on Aug 13, 2008 16:48:38 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 14, 2008 2:52:12 GMT -6
from Information Clearing House Will American Insouciance Destroy the World?By Paul Craig Roberts August 13, 2008 " The neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=13288 are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war.
Back in the Reagan years, the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony. Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states.
The neoconservative Bush Regime used the NED to intervene in Ukrainian and Georgian internal affairs in keeping with the neoconservative plan to establish US-friendly and Russia-hostile political regimes in these two former constituent parts of Russia and the Soviet Union.
The NED was also used to dismember the former Yugoslavia with its interventions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
According to Wikipedia, Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, told the Washington Post in 1991 that much of what the NED does “today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The Bush Regime, having established a puppet, Mikhail Saakashvili, as president of Georgia, tried to bring Georgia into NATO.
[For readers too young to know, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a military alliance between the US and Western European countries to resist any Soviet move into Western Europe. There has been no reason for NATO since the Soviet Union’s internal political collapse almost two decades ago. The neocons turned NATO into another tool, like the NED, for US world hegemony. Subsequent US administrations violated the understandings that President Reagan had reached with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and have incorporated former parts of the Soviet empire into NATO. The neocon goal of ringing Russia with a hostile military alliance has been proclaimed many times.]
Western European members of NATO balked at the admission of Georgia, as they understood it as a provocative affront to Russia, on whom Western Europe is dependent for natural gas. Western Europeans are also disturbed at the Bush Regime’s intentions to install ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic as the consequence will be Russian nuclear cruise missiles targeted on European capitals. Europeans don’t see the advantage of helping the US block Russian nuclear retaliation against the US at the expense of their own existence. Ballistic missile defenses are not useful against cruise missiles.
Every country is tired of war except for the US. War, including nuclear war, is the neoconservative strategy for world hegemony.
The entire world, except for Americans, knows that the outbreak of armed conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia was entirely due to the US and its Georgia puppet, Saakashvili. Americans, alone in the world, are unaware that the hostilities were initiated by Saakashvili, because Bush, Cheney and the Israeli-occupied American media have again lied to them.
Everyone else in the world knows that the unstable and corrupt Saakashvili, who proclaims democracy and runs a police state, would not have taken on Russia by attacking South Ossetia unless given the go-ahead by Washington.
The purpose of the Georgian attack on the Russian population of South Ossetia is twofold:
To convince Europeans that their action in delaying Georgia’s NATO membership is the cause of “the Russian aggression” and that to save Georgia from conquest Georgia must be given NATO membership. To ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of its Russian population. Two thousand Russian civilians were targeted and killed by the US-equipped and trained Georgian Army, and tens of thousands fled into Russia. Having achieved this goal, Saakashvili and his puppet-masters in Washington quickly called for a cease fire and a halt to “the Russian invasion.” The hope is that the Russian population will be afraid to return or can be prevented from returning, thus removing the secessionist threat.
No doubt the Bush Regime can con the insouciant American population, just as it did with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and 9/11 itself, but the rest of the world is not buying it, least of all Moscow, the Asia Times, and not even America’s bought-and-paid-for European allies.
Writing in the Asia Times, Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar, a former career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, notes the disinformation that is being peddled by the Bush Regime and the US media and reports that “at the outbreak of violence, Russia had tried to have the United Nations Security Council issue a statement calling on Georgia and South Ossetia to immediately lay down weapons. However, Washington was disinterested.” www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag02.html
Amb. Bhadrakumar notes that the American and Georgian resort to violence and propaganda has brought an end to the Russian government’s belief that diplomacy and good will can bring about a settlement of the South Ossetia issue. If Russia wished, Russia could terminate Georgia’s existence as a separate country at will, and there is nothing the US could do about it.
It is certain that the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was a Bush Regime orchestrated event. The American media and the neocon think tanks were ready with their propaganda blitzes. Neocons had ready a Wall Street Journal editorial page article for Saakashvili that declares “the war in Georgia is a war for the West.”
Faced with the collapse of his army when Russia sent in troops to protect South Ossetians from the Georgian troops, Saakashvili declared: “This is not about Georgia any more. It is about America, its values.”
The neocon Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., quickly called a conference hosted by warmonger Ariel Cohen, “Urgent! Event: Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World.”
The Washington Post lifted its skirts and spread wide its legs to neocon Robert Kagen’s war drums, “Putin Makes His Move.”
Only a fool like Kagen could think that if Putin intended to invade Georgia he would do so from Beijing, or that after sending the American-trained Georgian army in flight, he would not continue and conquer all of Georgia in order to put an end to American machinations on Russia’s most sensitive border, machinations that are likely to eventually end in nuclear war.
That despicable whore, the New York Times, spread her legs for Billy Kristol’s rant, “Will Russia Get Away With It?” Kristol thunders against “dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes” that “seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.” Kristol presents a new axis of evil--Russia, China, North Korea and Iran--and warns against “delay and irresolution” that “simply invite future threats and graver dangers.”
In other words, “attack Russia now.”
Dick Cheney, the insane American Vice President telephoned Saakashvili to express US solidarity with Georgia in the conflict with Russia and declared: “Russian aggression must not go unanswered.” Cheney’s telephone call is like Great Britain’s “guarantee” to Poland against Nazi Germany. Only a complete idiot would tell Saakashvili anything other than “to cease immediately.”
What must be the effect on US Intelligence services and the US military of Cheney’s propagandistic and irresponsible statement of US support for Georgia’s war crimes? Does anyone really believe that the CIA or any US intelligence service told the vice president that Russia opened the conflict with an invasion? Russian troops arrived in South Ossetia after thousands of Ossetians had been killed by the Georgian attack and after tens of thousands of Ossetians had fled into Russia to escape the Georgian attack. According to news reports, Russian forces have captured Americans who were with the Georgian troops directing their attack on civilians.
The US military certainly has no resources for a war against Russia on top of lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a planned war with Iran.
With its Georgian venture, the Bush Regime is guilty of a new round of war crimes. What will be the consequence?
Many will reply that having got away with 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and with its preparations for attacking Iran, the Bush Regime will get away with its Georgian venture as well.
Possibly, however, this time the Bush Regime has overreached.
Certainly Russia now recognizes that the US is determined to exert hegemony over Russia and is Russia’s worst enemy.
China realizes the US threat to its own energy supply and, thereby, economy.
Even America’s European allies, chafing under their role of supplying troops for America’s Empire, must now realize that being an American ally is dangerous and has no benefits. If Georgia becomes a NATO member and renews its attack on South Ossetia, it must drag Europe into a war with Russia, a main supplier of energy to Europe.
Moreover, if Russian troops are sent across European frontiers, there is nothing to stop them.
What does America offer Europe, aside from the millions of dollars it pays to buy off Europe’s political leaders to insure that they betray their own peoples? Nothing whatsoever.
The only military threat that Europe faces comes from being dragged into America’s wars for American hegemony.
The US is financially bankrupt, with budget and trade deficits that exceed the combined deficits of the rest of the world together. The dollar has wilted. The American consumer market is dying from the offshoring of American jobs and, thereby, incomes, and from the wealth effect of the real estate and derivatives collapses. The US has nothing to offer Europe. Indeed, American economic decline is killing European exports by driving up the value of the euro.
America long ago lost the moral high ground. Hypocrisy has become America’s best known hallmark. Bush, the invader of Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of lies and deception, thunders at Russia for coming to the defense of its peacekeepers and Russian citizens in South Ossetia. Bush, the vampire who ripped Kosovo out of Serbia’s heart and handed it to the Muslims, has taken an adamant stand against other separatist movements, especially the South Ossetians who wish to be part of the Russian Federation.
The neoconned Bush Regime is furious that the Russian bear was not intimidated by the US supported aggression of the American puppet state, Georgia. Instead of accepting the act of American hegemony that the neocon script called for, Russia sent the Americanized Georgian army fleeing in fear.
Having failed with weapons, the Bush Regime now unleashes the rhetoric. The White House is warning Russia that failure to acquiesce to US hegemony could have a “significant, long-term impact on relations between Washington and Moscow.”
Do the morons who comprise the Bush Regime really not understand that short of a surprise nuclear attack on Russia there is nothing whatsoever the US can do to Moscow?
The Bush Regime owns no Russian currency that it can dump. The Russians own US dollars.
The Bush Regime owns no Russian bonds that it can dump. The Russians own US bonds.
The US can cut Russia off from no energy supplies. Russia can cut America’s European allies off from energy.
President Reagan negotiated the end of the cold war with Soviet President Gorbachev., The neoconservatives, whom Reagan fired and drove from his administration, were furious. The neocons had hoped to win the cold war, thereby establishing American hegemony.
The Republican Establishment reestablished its hegemony under Bush 1st that it had lost to Ronald Reagan. With this feat, intelligence was driven from the Republican Party.
The neocons engineered their comeback with the First Gulf War and their propaganda, pure lies, that Iraqi troops bayoneted Kuwait babies in hospitals.
The neocons made a further comeback with President Clinton, whom they convinced to bomb Serbia in order to permit separatist movements to become independent states dependent on America.
With Bush 2nd, the neocons took over. Their agenda, American world hegemony, includes Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.
So far the schemes of these ignorant and dangerous ideologues have come a cropper. Iraq, formerly in the hands of secular Sunnis who were a check on Iran, is, after the American invasion and occupation, in the hands of religious Shi’ites allied with Iran.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent, and a large NATO/US army there is unable to control the situation.
One consequence of the neocons’ Afghan war has been the loss of power of the American puppet president of Pakistan, a Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons. The puppet president now faces impeachment, and the Pakistani military has informed the Americans to stop conducting military operations in Pakistani territory.
The American puppets in Egypt and Jordan might be next to fall.
In Iraq, the Shi’ites, having completed their ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from neighborhoods, have declared a cease fire in order to contradict the US propaganda that American withdrawal would lead to a blood bath. Negotiations on withdrawal dates are now underway between the Americans and the Iraqi government, which is no longer behaving like a puppet.
Last year Hugo Chavez ridiculed Bush before the UN. Russia’s Putin ridiculed Bush as Comrade Wolf.
On August 12, 2008, Pravda ridiculed Bush, “Bush: Why don’t you shut up.”
Americans may think they are a superpower before whose presence the world trembles. But not the Russians.
Those Americans stupid enough to think that America’s “superpower” insures its citizens from danger need to read the total contempt shown for President Bush in Pravada:
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia’s border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq.
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone.
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to “Get back inside” and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties?
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen?
Do you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives?
Do you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion?
“President Bush,
Why don’t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is “magnificent foreign intelligence” such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being “driven around the country in vehicles”? Suppose Russia declares for instance that “Saakashvili stiffed the world” and it is “time for regime change”?
Nice and simple, isn’t it, President Bush?
“So, why don’t you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green.”
The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
A population that tolerates the insane Bush Regime and its criminal neocon operatives has no claims to life on earth." www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20507.htm
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Post by graybeard on Aug 14, 2008 5:26:54 GMT -6
Wow, that's strong! PCRoberts is very persuasive.
GB
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 14, 2008 18:02:07 GMT -6
from the BBC: Anger smoulders in rebel city rubble" Barely a building in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali escaped unscathed from the fighting that began last week, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford discovers.
Some, like the offices of the local administration, are smoke-blackened shells; in one residential area, a whole street has been reduced to rubble.
'We were bombed for three days and nights. If Russia had not helped, we would have disappeared' said Lusya, Tskhinvali resident
Everywhere, there are mountains of shattered glass. Those who didn't flee South Ossetia as refugees are now emerging from their basements to begin the clean-up.
There is no running water here now and no electricity.
One woman, Lusya, took me down into the basement of her apartment block to show me where she had hidden from the worst of the fighting. A small oil lamp threw the only light onto the dank, cramped cellar.
"We were here 4 days and nights. We couldn't sleep. Our whole building shook with the bombing," Lusya said. "I just sat here, with my 16-year-old son."
As soon as the fighting calmed down, Lusya sent her son across the border into Russia for safety.
She and her neighbours - and many Ossetians I met both in Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia - are furious about what has happened to their city.
They are very clear who they blame: Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region. That effort has clearly backfired. The pro-Russian sentiment I experienced on my last visit four years ago has become far fiercer as a result of this conflict.
"They signed a ceasefire, but Saakashvili can start bombing us again any minute," Lusya said, referring to the OSCE/EU-brokered peace plan between Moscow and Tbilisi.
"Look how many people died here! We can never join Georgia after this. We'll cope on our own."....
Moscow says that 1,600 civilians died in the fighting in Ossetia. In Tskhinvali, locals claimed bodies had lain in the streets for some time, and many are now buried in temporary graves in back yards....
"We were bombed for 3 days and nights. If Russia had not helped, we would have disappeared," Lusya's neighbour Elena said, visibly angry. "Only Russia takes us under its wing. We want to be with Russia."
On the next street, an armoured personnel carrier carrying Russian troops rolled past the mangled metal wreckage of two Georgian tanks. Other soldiers stopped to take trophy photographs.
We were escorted in South Ossetia by the Russian military, which now controls most of the territory here. Pointing out the tank wreckage, the deputy commander of Russian ground forces insisted that Georgia was the initial aggressor in this conflict - sending in tanks that targeted Russians and Ossetians.
*"Half an hour before the tanks began firing, the Georgian peacekeepers disappeared from the base," said Igor Konashenkov. "They left their food uneaten and abandoned their kit. Then the shooting began."
Despite international calls for a withdrawal, there is no sign of Russia pulling its troops out of Ossetia. By Wednesday, they had received an order to cease fire, but not to leave.
Their presence is popular with many locals, who wave as soldiers drive past in the street....
*On Wednesday, the military reported no serious breaches of the ceasefire, but a doctor at an emergency field hospital said 11 Russian soldiers had been wounded by Georgian snipers.
Heading out of Tskhinvali, we passed several houses in flames and many others that had already been burned out. At least two of the villages, including Kekhvi, were home to ethnic Georgians in Ossetia before this conflict, when, it appears, most of them fled. We met no Georgians at all on this trip.
"There were Georgian snipers in the villages and they were driven out," said the military spokesman we were travelling with. "Russian special forces will have used mortars and firebombs and the houses went up in flames. It's not revenge burnings.".....
This conflict has already destroyed any trust between Georgian and Ossetians. It now looks like any chance there was of reconciliation is burning along with the houses." news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7558619.stm
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 15, 2008 18:22:56 GMT -6
from Global Research: Georgians denounce Saakashvili regime’s aggression By Georgian Peace Committee August 15, 2008 " The Georgian Peace Committee declares asks World public opinion not to identify the current Georgian leadership with the people of Georgia, with the Georgian nation.
Declaration of the Georgian Peace Committee
Once more Georgia was launched into a situation of chaos and bloodshed. A new fratricidal war exploded with renewed strength on Georgian soil.
To our great disappointment, the alerts of the Georgian Peace Committee and of progressive personalities of Georgia on the pernicious character of the militarization of the country and on the danger of a pro-fascist and nationalist policy had no effect. The authorities of Georgia once again organized a bloody war, feeling the support of some Western countries and of regional and international organizations. It will take decades to cleanse the shame poured by the current holders of the power over the Georgian people.
The Georgian army—armed and trained by U.S. instructors and using also U.S. armaments—subjected the city of Tskhinvali to a barbaric destruction. The bombings killed Ossetian civilians, our brothers and sisters, children, women and elderly people. Over 2,000 inhabitants of Tskhinvali and of its surroundings died.
Hundreds of civilians of Georgian nationality also died, both in the conflict zone as well as in the entire territory of Georgia.
The Georgian Peace Committee expresses its deep condolences to the relatives and friends of those who have perished.
The entire responsibility for this fratricidal war, for thousands of children, women and elderly dead people, for the inhabitants of South Ossetia and of Georgia falls exclusively on the current president, on the Parliament and on the government of Georgia.
The irresponsibility and the adventurism of the Saakashvili regime have no limits. There is no doubt the president of Georgia and his team are criminals and must be held responsible. The Georgian Peace Committee, together with all the progressive parties and social movements of Georgia, will struggle to assure that the organizers of this monstrous genocide have a severe and legitimate punishment.
The Georgian Peace Committee declares and asks broad public opinion not to identify the current Georgian leadership with the people of Georgia, with the Georgian nation, and appeals to all to support the Georgian people in the struggle against the criminal regime of Saakashvili.
We appeal to all the political forces of Georgia, the social movements and the people of Georgia to unite in order to free the country from the Russian-phobic and pro-fascist anti-popular regime of Saakashvili!" The Georgian Peace Committee Tbilisi, Aug. 11, 2008 www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9848
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Post by agito on Aug 15, 2008 18:35:23 GMT -6
ultimately- its unspinnable.
either it's a old fashioned drop dead drag down fight for self determined sovereignty, (in which case you have to support the autonomy of both south ossetia and azkerb... whatever, give me a break i'm drunk at work)
or it's the manipulations of larger powers in a proxy war with "invisible" casualties (russia or usa).
unfortunately there is spin as to whether you can support the independence of geoorgia but not of south ossetia, ... or vice versa.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 16, 2008 3:05:10 GMT -6
ultimately- its unspinnable.... unfortunately there is spin as to whether you can support the independence of geoorgia but not of south ossetia, ... or vice versa. There certainly is much spin being published by the MSM on the South Ossetia - Georgia conflict. Almost all of it, however, portrays the Russians as the evil aggressors, who started the whole thing. In fact, it was the Georgians who started it, by bombing and invading South Ossetia. Little footage is shown of the South Ossetian capital of Tschinvali. That's because it's been reduced to rubble by the Georgians. Fortunately, the blogosphere gives an entirely different view of who is responsible for starting and perpetuating the conflict. And, rest assured, we're 'NOT all Georgians', as John McCain has so idiotically blurted out.
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Post by proletariat on Aug 16, 2008 6:36:18 GMT -6
It turns out the footage was of S Ossetia, but our media told us it was of Gori.
On my blog I have a video from a California girl who was trapped with family in S Ossetia. Fox was caught by surprise on this one.
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Post by judes on Aug 16, 2008 8:19:11 GMT -6
Interesting.....how things tie together. It really is amazing how small the circle of power is, with the same players popping up over and over again on the world stage committing the same crimes and twisted schemes over and over....controlling our destiny through any puppets they can muster. www.webofdebt.com/articles/wag_the_dog.php"What to do? War and threats of war have been used historically to distract the population and deflect public scrutiny from economic calamity. As the scheme was summed up in the trailer to the 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” --
“There’s a crisis in the White House, and to save the election, they’d have to fake a war.”
Perhaps that explains the sudden breakout of war in the Eurasian country of Georgia on August 8"
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Post by psychecc on Aug 16, 2008 10:39:57 GMT -6
Judes, Thanks for the really interesting article by Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt. This is one of my favorite quotes: “On July 16, 2008 . . . , the Federal Reserve reported holding $2,349 billion of US government paper in custody for central banks. In its report released today, this amount had grown over the past three weeks to $2,401 billion, a 38.4% annual rate of growth.. . . So central banks were accumulating dollars over the past three weeks at a rate far above what one would expect as a result of the US trade deficit. The logical conclusion is that they were intervening in currency markets. They were buying dollars for the purpose of propping it up, to keep the dollar from falling off the edge of the cliff and doing so ignited a short covering rally, which is not too difficult to do given the leverage employed in the markets these days by hedge funds and others.”2www.webofdebt.com/articles/wag_the_dog.phpYou're right; the power brokers are in control behind the scenes. They act as though that "invisible hand" of the markets simply reacts to investors without prejudice, but in fact, their fingerprints are all over the markets. This article was very interesting. Makes me want to read Web of Debt.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 17, 2008 3:11:49 GMT -6
from Vdare.com Blowback From Bear-Baiting by Patrick J. Buchanan 08/15/2008 " Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.
Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.
Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.
Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.
American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.
Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.
True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?
Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?
Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?
When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?
Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?
That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.
When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?
American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.
Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.
When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?
The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.
We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.
Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.
Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.
How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?
For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi." vdare.com/buchanan/080814_blowback.htm
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 17, 2008 21:31:15 GMT -6
from presstv.com Bush admin. disconnected from realitySat, 16 Aug 2008 18:30:05 By Afshin Rattansi, Press TV " The following is Press TV's exclusive full-length interview with former US treasury official Paul Craig Roberts.
Press TV: Paul Craig Roberts, you served with the US government. Tell us a little bit about the National Endowment for Democracy. Because I understand that, you believe they had a lot to do with the relations between these two former Soviet states and the United States.
Roberts: The National Endowment for Democracy is a neoconservative organization funded by the United States government and its purpose is to buy and rig elections in the former constituent parts of the Soviet empire.
It is the tool of the neoconservatives for establishing American puppet states in Eastern Europe, in the Caucuses, and of course, its money and election rigging was instrumental in what they call 'the Rose Revolution' in Georgia.
And of course they interfere in the Ukraine and Eastern Europe. The neoconservatives who have controlled the Bush regime in Washington their plan is to bring Russia along with the entire Middle East and Iran under American hegemony so that whatever happens in the world is dictated from Washington.
And so these puppet states such as Georgia are part of the surrounding of Russia with American military bases and American missile systems such as the one they are going to put up in Poland. They hope the Czech Republic and Kosovo.
So this is all part of the expanding American empire, the neoconservatives say the American empire is much more powerful than the Roman one. So the American's have the power to dominate the entire world. That is what this is about.
The assault on South Ossetia by the American and the Israeli trained Georgian army, both trained and equipped by the Americans and the Israelis the purpose of that assault was to ethnically cleanse that province of Russians.
So that their would be an end to the separation movement the separatists would simply be driven out or killed. That was the main purpose of this whole exercise.
Press TV: What cards has the Bush administration got left to play with? You said every state in the world is tired of war and perhaps the United States is not. However, with the Bush administration facing economic problems at home, do you really think the Bush administration thinks it can outplay Russia in the Caucuses?
Roberts: Yes, the neoconservatives are insane. They certainly think they can outplay Russia and they certainly think they can outplay Iran. They have two more navel armadas steaming there.
People in the world need to understand that the regime in Washington is the most dangerous regime that has ever existed, it is capable of anything. Here we have a regime who has invaded two countries, a regime that has been bullying Iran and the President of the United States announcing that bullying and using intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.
What has he been doing all these years? We had Condi Rice say the same stupid things and John McCain the Republican nominee for president say that in the 21st century nations do not invade other nations.
Well the United States has just invaded two nations and has oppressed them for six years and they talk this way. This has got to be insanity, this is disconnected from all reality. What they mean is that no one but the United States can invade other nations.
Press TV: What should we be expecting in the next couple of days with Condoleezza Rice going to Brussels? Paul Craig Roberts from your view if neocons in such power earlier we talked to Bill Christison a former senior CIA official who said there are placemen in all institutions after six years or more of the Bush presidency. What, is it going to go nuclear?
Roberts: Yes, I think there is a great danger. I did not say anything about the Republicans, I said the neoconservatives. They controlled the Clinton administration too. That is why you had all those bombings of Serbia.
I think your correspondent in New York is correct this is American foreign policy. It is not going to go away. I think it is most dangerous with Bush because he is essentially a moron. Cheney is too.
It is more dangerous in their hands but I agree its American foreign policy and yes, they are capable of going nuclear, because they are full of hubris.
Press TV: So you think they are ready to go for a war with Iran, with Russia. Some people are saying that Defense Secretary, Robert Gates does not answer to those neoconservatives that you were talking about.
Roberts: No he tries to resist it and I also know that many senior officers in the American military have put their foot down.
Nevertheless, there is a very powerful movement, the fact that they thought that Russia would sit there and do nothing while Russian citizens, people with Russian passports, were murdered, the capital destroyed and 30 or 40 thousand of them, which must be pretty close to half the population of South Ossetia, driven out into Russia and people thought Russia would do nothing.
How can you make such a miscalculation? Anyone who could make that miscalculation can make far more dangerous miscalculations. They are perfectly capable of attacking Iran.
The next point of trouble would be the Ukraine. The Americans would rush in there, stir all that up and cause another crisis. " www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=66757§ionid=3510302
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 19, 2008 2:52:00 GMT -6
Below are some reports from the Russian press and blogosphere. Though I suspect there are some major distortions in these reports, it is still worth seeing that there is another side to this story -- a side that neither the Bush regime or the MSM want exposed. osinform.ru/index.php?action_skin_change=yes&skin_name=full_enosinform.ru/news/7722-georgian-soldiers-were-shooting-down.htmlGeorgian soldiers were shooting down women, old people and children in South Ossetia 11 àâãóñòà 2008 Georgian soldiers were shooting down women, old people and children in South Ossetia. Eight populated areas were wiped off from the face of the earth. Their defenders fell during Georgian aviation attack. As witnessed by Ilona Djioeva, resident of Dmenis village, “Georgian war- civilians’ houses and then the village was entered by soldiers who shot up old people, women and children”. “We managed to get to the positions of the Russian peace-making contingent and they helped us to get to a safe place. Georgian shot down escaping people; the wounded were shot through the head. Only a few people survived. Russian soldiers helped us to get out of it. Now my mother and I are going to Mozdok region, which is in Ossetia. We don’t know anything about my brother. He works in Tskhinval militia” – told IA Regnum correspondent, a 19 year old student. osinform.ru/news/7688-gossekretar-juzhnojj-osetii-nikogda.htmlSouth Ossetia State Secretary: “Never will South Ossetia forgive what has been done to its nation” 10 àâãóñòà 2008 Konstantin Kochiev, South Ossetia State Secretary gave his comments to IA REGNUV over the phone from the site. “Within the last two days the situation in South Ossetia has changed dramatically. Today such city as Tskhinval doesn’t exist anymore. The death toll is not to be estimated. There are thousands of them. It is hard to imagine how many of them were martyred by Georgian aggressors. Such things are not to be overlooked. Barbarity of Georgian troops is beyond understanding. South Ossetia will never forget or forgive what has been done to its people. Now on the outskirts and even in the centre of Tskhinval there are a lot of dead Georgian soldiers’ bodies and damaged military equipment. Since yesterday Ossetian soldiers have been liberating the city from Georgian snipers and Special Forces, but they wouldn’t give way. We are running out of forces. We are craving for Russian support. It is not hours but minutes that matter. osinform.ru/7679-gruziny-ubivajut-ostavshikhsja-v.htmlGeorgians kill women and children Russian Federation citizens, remaining in the city. 9 àâãóñòà 2008 Fights against Georgian infantry are conducted on the south and south-western outskirts of Tskhinval. Resistance is being held so far, but a group of Georgian special forces came through the city, they throw grenades into basements which shelter women and children. Georgian tanks are approaching the south-eastern part of Tskhinval. Georgia doesn’t let evacuate civilians and journalists from Tskhinval. osinform.ru/news/7677-spasite-malyjj-narod-ot-unichtozhenija.htmlSave the small people from Georgian fascists! Stop the homicide! 9 àâãóñòà 2008 Since 1989-1990 the nationalist-fascist government has been pursuing the policy of physical annihilation and persecution of native Ossetian people from the populated territories. Since 1991 as a result of numerous military actions undertaken by corrupted Georgian authorities against small nations, as a result of ethnic cleanings conducted by Georgians- thousands of people- Ossetians, Abkhazs, Armenians, and Russians fell victims. The mass media tacitly omit the scale of homicide. Georgian fascists’ atrocities, inconceivable tortures of local population yane outshone those of World War II Nazis. The Georgian nation is ill, the ideas of their national uniqueness justifying intense territorial clames are fostered by the Georgian mass media. The Georgian bosses are financed by the US which follows its geopolitical interests in the region. At the moment we are suffering a tragedy. The Ossetian nation is systematically shot in their houses/ die under the ruins of their own homes. The Georgian fascists ruined, wiped off from the face of the earth Ossetian villages, Tskhinval is in ruins. It is hard to estimate the number of victims under the debris of houses destroyed by the fires of Georgian invaders. The toll is over thousands. Moans can be heard from under the ruins. The Republican hospital where the doctors could help the wounded has been destroyed by the Georgian artillery. There are wounded people and the medical staff and there is no one to save them, so heavy the fire is.The Georgian side in its turn cynically claims introduction of constitutional order, insinuates situations to denounce the Russian and Ossetian sides guilty of the conflict. The Abkhaz nation is to be the next victim. We ask for help, call for solidarity, access to international web-sites. May the world learn the truth, not distortions provided by Georgian experts.[/i]"
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 23, 2008 19:16:06 GMT -6
from opendemocracy.com South Ossetia: the avoidable tragedy Thomas de Waal " Georgia and Russia have stumbled into a war that need not have happened. The price of their political calculation - and folly - is being paid by civilians on both sides, says Thomas de Waal of the IWPR 12 - 08 - 2008
In the space of a few days, a conflict over a tiny piece of land has sparked an unfolding catastrophe in the Caucasus. At its heart of this catastrophe is great human suffering - a dimension which is not being given its proper weight as too many commentators muse on the geopolitical significance of the conflict.
The epicentre is South Ossetia, which is home to both ethnic Ossetians and Georgians (the latter accounting for about a third of the 70,000 population). The destruction there has been appalling, and it looks as though many hundreds of civilians have died, in the first place as a result of the initial Georgian assault of 7-8 August 2008. Gosha Tselekhayev, an Ossetian interpreter in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali with whom I spoke by telephone on 10 August said: "I am standing in the city centre, but there's no city left."
Ossetians fleeing the conflict-zone talk of Georgian atrocities, including the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Ethnic Georgian villages inside South Ossetia have also come under fire, and could now face expulsion as Russian forces push south. Their future must be in grave doubt.
Now, in a second wave of violence, Georgians - from Gali in Abkhazia to Gori in the north of the country - are fleeing and dying. Moreover, it was reported on 11 August that Russian troops had entered the town of Senaki in western Georgia from across the border with Abkhazia (after South Ossetia, Georgie's other breakaway territory). The Russians said later that they had left Senaki, but the threat of a widening of the conflict remains.
Behind the explosion
South Ossetia is a tiny and vulnerable place, which before the current outbreak of violence had no more than 75,000 inhabitants in a patchwork of villages and one sleepy provincial town in the foothills of the Caucasus.
The immediate trigger of this conflict both Moscow's and Tbilisi's cynical disregard for the well-being of these people. On 7 August, after days of shooting incidents in the South Ossetian conflict-zone, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia made a speech in which he said that he had given the Georgian villagers orders not to fire, that he wanted to offer South Ossetia "unlimited autonomy" within the Georgian state, with Russia to be a guarantor of the arrangement.
Both sides said they were discussing a meeting the next day to discuss how to defuse the clashes. That evening, however, Saakashvili went for the military option. The Georgian military launched a massive artillery attack on Tskhinvali, followed the next day by a ground assault involving tanks. This against a city with no pure military targets, full of civilians who had been given no warning and were expecting peace talks at any moment.
The attack looked designed to take everybody by surprise - perhaps because much of the Russian leadership was in Beijing for the opening of the Olympic games. It also unilaterally destroyed the negotiating and peacekeeping arrangements, under the aegis of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), that have been in place since December 1992. Russian peacekeeping troops based in South Ossetia were among those killed in the Georgian assault.
The inevitable response was swift. Moscow cares as little about the South Ossetians as it does the Georgians it is bombing, regarding the territory as a pawn in its bid to bring Georgia and its neighbours back into its sphere of influence. It was as recently as 4 August that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov - a relative moderate within the Moscow leadership - had said: "We will do everything possible to prevent the accession of Ukraine and Georgia to Nato."
The ordinary citizens of South Ossetia could feel little confidence either in the government of Eduard Kokoity, which has a reputation for allowing criminality and has engaged in provocative statements and actions towards Tbilisi over much of this summer. It is likely that the de facto authorities in Tskhinvali would long ago have lost power had they not been the rallying-point against Georgia.
Indeed, if politicians on all sides had shown more restraint and wisdom, this conflict could have been avoided.
Over the brink
The conflict's longer-term origin lies in one of the many majority-minority disputes that accompanied the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Ossetians, a divided people with one section living within Russia on the north side of the Caucasus mountains, and the other in Georgia, generally felt more comfortable with Russian rule than as part of the new, post-Soviet Georgian state. A small and nasty war with Tbilisi in 1990-92 led to a declaration of independence, at the cost of 1,000 lives and a huge legacy of bitterness.
In fact, away from high politics, ethnic relations were never bad. For a decade after South Ossetia's de facto secession from Georgia in 1991, it was a shady backwater and a smugglers' haven. The region was outside Tbilisi's control, but Ossetians and Georgians went back and forth and traded vigorously with one another at an untaxed market in the village of Ergneti.
Then Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the "rose revolution" of 2003-04, with heady promises to restore his country's lost territories. He closed the Ergneti market in June 2004 and tried to cut South Ossetia off, triggering a summer of violence. In modelling himself on the medieval Georgian king David the Builder, Saakashvili pledged that the country's territorial integrity would be re-established by the end of his presidency.
He sought to tear up the far-from-perfect Russian-framed negotiating framework for South Ossetia, but failed to come up with a viable alternative.
For their part, the Russians raised the stakes and baited Saakashvili - who had quickly become their bête noire - by effecting a "soft annexation" of South Ossetia. Moscow handed out Russian passports to the South Ossetians and installed its officials in government posts there. Russian soldiers, although notionally peacekeepers, have acted as an informal occupying army.
Saakashvili is notoriously volatile, a risk-taker who veers between warmonger and peacemaker, democrat and autocrat. On several occasions international officials have pulled him back from the brink.
During a visit to Washington in 2004, he received a tongue-lashing from then secretary of state Colin Powell, who told him to act with restraint. In May-June 2008, he could have triggered a war with his other breakaway province of Abkhazia by calling for the expulsion of Russian peacekeepers from there, but European diplomats persuaded him to step back. This time, he has stepped over the precipice.
The provocation is real, but the Georgian president is rash to believe that this is a war he can win, or that the west is happy to see it happen.
Both President George W Bush and Senator John McCain - now Republican presidential hopeful - have visited Georgia and made glowing speeches in praise of Saakashvili. But Washington is now caught in a bind: it is supportive of Tbilisi, looking for ways to stop the war, but also keen not to get involved in a conflict with Moscow. The reaction across much of Europe - not all - will be much more one of exasperation. Even before this crisis, a number of governments, notably France and Germany, were talking of "Georgia fatigue". Though they broadly wished the Saakashvili government well, they have never bought the line that he was a model democrat. The sight of his riot police tear-gassing protesters in Tbilisi and smashing up an opposition television station in November 2007 dispelled any remaining illusions, even if his subsequent re-election in the presidential vote in January 2008 was recognised.
Moreover, the Europeans have a long agenda of issues to discuss with Russia which they regard as more important than its post-Soviet quarrel with Tbilisi. Paris and Berlin will now say they were right to urge caution on Georgia's Nato ambitions at the April 2008 summit in Bucharest. When the dust settles, there will be angry words with Tbilisi as well as with Moscow. Both Georgia and Russia deserve to be condemned....
The worry now is that Moscow is using the plight of the Ossetians as cover for its ambitions to overthrow the government of Mikheil Saakashvili. There is almost certainly a debate going on within the Russian leadership about how far to go in Georgia - whether to stop now and claim the moral high ground in South Ossetia, or carry forward its military campaign and effect "regime change" in Tbilisi, ignoring western outrage.
The signs are that the hawks, in the shape of former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin - who has what amounts to a personal feud with Saakashvili - are in charge. Putin reacted angrily to events from Beijing many hours before President Dmitry Medvedev made a public statement. And it was Putin who flew down to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, to coordinate the Russian handling of the crisis and made the ominous comment that the Georgian people would "pass objective judgement on their own leadership".
Abkhazia too is an area of great concern. There are reports that Russia has sent in thousands more troops to the territory, much exceeding the 3,000 peacekeepers it is allowed to keep there under the terms of the 1993 ceasefire agreement.
There are suggestions that Abkhaz and Russian troops are pushing into the upper Kodori gorge, the only area of Abkhazia under Georgian control. There will also be fears for the more than 20,000 ethnic Georgians living in the southern Abkhaz region of Gali who live in a precarious position, caught between Tbilisi and the de facto authorities in Sukhumi....
The Russians, who hold a formal mediating role in South Ossetia, are now a party to the conflict. Nato countries on the western flank, and particularly the Americans, are seen as friends of Georgia.
For the conflict to begin to end, all parties must state clearly that this is in the first place a humanitarian tragedy for civilians - both Georgian and Ossetian - and promise impartial help and support for all those who are suffering. "
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 25, 2008 16:28:40 GMT -6
In this article, Pat Buchanan lays out the connection between a McCain lobbyist, and McCain's advocacy of US support for Georgia's invasion of South Ossetia by President Mikheil Sackashitty of Georgia, while hypocritically calling the Russians the "aggressors." from HumanEvents.com: And None Dare Call It Treason by Patrick J. Buchanan 08/22/2008 " Who is Randy Scheunemann?
He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States.
But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.
He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.
From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 -- pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.
What were Mikheil's marching orders to Tbilisi's man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.
Scheunemann came close to succeeding.
Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann's client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy.
U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce. But why should Americans fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own future in free elections?
Not only is the folly of the Bush interventionist policy on display in the Caucasus, so, too, is its manifest incoherence.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have sought for 45 years to stay out of a shooting war with Russia and we are not going to get into one now. President Bush assured us there will be no U.S. military response to the Russian move into Georgia.
That is a recognition of, and a bowing to, reality -- namely, that Russia's control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and occupation of a strip of Georgia cannot be a casus belli for the United States. We may deplore it, but it cannot justify war with Russia.
If that be true, and it transparently is, what are McCain, Barack Obama, Bush, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel doing committing the United States and Germany to bringing Georgia into NATO? For that would commit us to war for a cause we have already conceded, by our paralysis, does not justify a war.
Not only did Scheunemann's 2-man lobbying firm receive $730,000 since 2001 to get Georgia a NATO war guarantee, he was paid by Romania and Latvia to do the same. And he succeeded.
Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic annexed by Joseph Stalin in June 1940 during his pact with Adolf Hitler, was set free at the end of the Cold War. Yet hundreds of thousands of Russians had been moved into Latvia by Stalin, and as Riga served as a base of the Baltic Sea fleet, many Russian naval officers retired there.
The children and grandchildren of these Russians are Latvian citizens. They are a cause of constant tension with ethnic Letts and of strife with Moscow, which has assumed the role of protector of Russians left behind in the "near abroad" when the Soviet Union broke apart.
Thanks to the lobbying of Scheunemann and friends, Latvia has been brought into NATO and given a U.S. war guarantee. If Russia intervenes to halt some nasty ethnic violence in Riga, the United States is committed to come in and drive the Russians out.
This is the situation in which the interventionists have placed our country: committed to go to war for countries and causes that do not justify war, against a Russia that is re-emerging as a great power only to find NATO squatting on her doorstep.
Scheunemann's resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy. He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9-11. He signed the PNAC ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9-11, threatening him with political reprisal if he did not go to war against Iraq. He was executive director of the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq," a propaganda front for Ahmad Chalabi and his pack of liars who deceived us into war.
Now Scheunemann is the neocon agent in place in McCain's camp.
The neocons got their war with Iraq. They are pushing for war on Iran. And they are now baiting the Russian Bear.
Is this what McCain has on offer? Endless war?
Why would McCain seek foreign policy counsel from the same discredited crowd that has all but destroyed the presidency of George Bush?
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ... a free people ought to be constantly awake," Washington warned in his Farewell Address. Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason." This would be a great opportunity for Obama to get on the right side of the issue, instead of spinelessly following the lead of warmongers Bush and McCain. Sadly, Obama's only political concern seems to be winning over NeoCons and Republicans, not populist-leaning members of his own party.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 26, 2008 1:43:41 GMT -6
from the New York Times: August 25, 2008 Georgian President Vows to Rebuild Army By C. J. CHIVERS and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ " TBILISI, Georgia — President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia said Sunday that he planned to rebuild his country’s shattered army, and that even after its decisive defeat in the war for control of one of Georgia’s two separatist enclaves he would continue to pursue a policy of uniting both under the Georgian flag.
“It will stay the same,” he said of his ambition to bring the enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, under Georgian control. “Now as ever.”
Also on Sunday, France called an emergency summit meeting of the European Union for next Monday to discuss “the future of relations with Russia” and aid to Georgia, according to a statement from the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The meeting was framed as a response to Russia’s failure to meet the terms of the cease-fire agreement that Mr. Sarkozy had negotiated between Moscow and Tbilisi. Mr. Sarkozy, in a statement, said he was responding to the demands of “several states” for the summit meeting, which will deal with “the crisis in Georgia” and take place in Brussels.
According to senior French officials who helped negotiate the cease-fire agreement, the Russians must pull all their troops back to positions before the crisis began on Aug. 7.
The Russian troops stationed in South Ossetia and Abkhazia before that date may stay, and may continue to send out patrols into a “security zone,” a thin buffer roughly five miles beyond the enclaves’ borders.
But the Russians are not allowed to set up fixed positions in the security zone — an agreement that Russia has not adhered to, Mr. Sarkozy said Friday in a telephone call with President Bush.
In the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi, the first American naval vessel arrived Sunday to distribute American humanitarian aid.
A train carrying oil cars exploded while traveling near Gori, the city in central Georgia that Russia had occupied for about 10 days. Georgian officials said the train had struck a mine left behind by Russian troops. No one was reported killed in the blast or the raging fire that followed, which sent thick plumes of black smoke across the countryside.
With the bulk of Russian troops now withdrawn to the enclaves or to Russian soil, Mr. Saakashvili described the war against South Ossetia and Russia — a military defeat that imperiled his government and threatens Georgia’s fragile economy — as a seminal moment that offered the seeds of political and national success.
In an interview in his office that stretched until nearly 2 a.m., Mr. Saakashvili said that Georgia had gained allies in the world and would embark upon a campaign of rebuilding.
He predicted continued American support and said that he spoke by phone with the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain, as often as twice a day, and that he was in regular contact with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has been picked to run for vice president on the Democratic ticket.
He also said that the Bush administration had not communicated disappointment or signaled a decline in its support for him since he gave the order on Aug. 7 to attack Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.
He said that while he might face pressures in the months ahead, as the effects of the war ripple through the economy, he said he expected to weather any troubles. “There has been tremendous solidarity,” he said.
The Kremlin has characterized Mr. Saakashvili as delusional and dangerous.
Sitting in his office as he discussed the effects of the war — tens of thousands of refugees; the scattering of a national army that abandoned its dead and its hardware on the battlefield; the loss of territory to Russia and the hardening of separatist sentiment in the enclaves — he seemed prepared to resume the policies that had set Georgia and Russia at odds...." www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/world/europe/25georgia.html?_r=2&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 28, 2008 17:14:33 GMT -6
from Yahoo News / AP McCain adviser got money from Georgia By PETE YOST Aug 13, 2008 " John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser and his business partner lobbied the senator or his staff on 49 occasions in a 3 1/2-year span while being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
The payments raise ethical questions about the intersection of Randy Scheunemann's personal financial interests and his advice to the Republican presidential candidate who is seizing on Russian aggression in Georgia as a campaign issue....
On April 17, a month and a half after Scheunemann stopped working for Georgia, his partner signed a $200,000 agreement with the Georgian government. The deal added to an arrangement that brought in more than $800,000 to the two-man firm from 2004 to mid-2007. For the duration of the campaign, Scheunemann is taking a leave of absence from the firm.
"Scheunemann's work as a lobbyist poses valid questions about McCain's judgment in choosing someone who — and whose firm — are paid to promote the interests of other nations," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. "So one must ask whether McCain is getting disinterested advice, at least when the issues concern those nations."....
McCain has been to Georgia 3 times since 1997 and "this is an issue that he has been involved with for well over a decade," said McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.
McCain's strong condemnation in recent days of Russia's military action against Georgia as "totally, absolutely unacceptable" reflects long-standing ties between McCain and hardline conservatives such as Scheunemann, an aide in the 1990s to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott.
Scheunemann, who also was a foreign policy adviser in McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, has for years traveled the same road as McCain in pushing for regime change in Iraq and promoting NATO membership for Georgia and other former Soviet republics.
While their politics coincide, Russia's invasion of Georgia casts a spotlight on Scheunemann's business interests and McCain's conduct as a senator.
Scheunemann's firm lobbied McCain's office on 4 bills and resolutions regarding Georgia, with McCain as a co-sponsor or supporter of all of them.
In addition to the 49 contacts with McCain or his staff regarding Georgia, Scheunemann's firm has lobbied the senator or his aides on at least 47 occasions since 2001 on behalf of the governments of Taiwan and Macedonia, which each paid Scheunemann and his partner Mike Mitchell over half a million dollars; Romania, which paid over $400,000; and Latvia, which paid nearly $250,000. Federal law requires Scheunemann to publicly disclose to the Justice Department all his lobbying contacts as an agent of a foreign government.
After contacts with McCain's staff, the senator introduced a resolution saluting the people of Georgia on the first anniversary of the Rose Revolution that brought Mikhail Saakashvili to power. [That's when Mikhail Saakashiti staged a coup and overthrew the true "democratically-elected" president of Georgia]4 months ago, on the same day that Scheunemann's partner signed the latest $200,000 agreement with Georgia, McCain spoke with Saakashvili by phone. The senator then issued a strong statement saying that "we must not allow Russia to believe it has a free hand to engage in policies that undermine Georgian sovereignty."
Rogers, the McCain campaign spokesman, said the call took place at the request of the embassy of Georgia....
McCain called Saakashvili again on Tuesday. "I told him that I know I speak for every American when I said to him, today, we are all Georgians," McCain told a cheering crowd in York, Pa. McCain's Democratic rival, Barack Obama, had spoken with Saakashvili the day before. [The competition for who can be the biggest war-monger is intensifying. McCain holds the lead at present, but Obama is closing fast.]In 2005 and 2006, McCain signed onto a resolution expressing support for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia; introduced a resolution expressing support for a peace plan for Georgia's breakaway province of Ossetia; and co-sponsored a measure supporting admission of four nations including Georgia into NATO.
On Tuesday, McCain told Fox News that "as you know, through the NATO membership, ... if a member nation is attacked, it is viewed as an attack on all."
Scheunemann's lobbying firm is one of three that he has operated since 1999, with clients including BP Amoco, defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. and the National Rifle Association.
Scheunemann is part of the community of neoconservatives who relentlessly pushed for war in Iraq. [Who would have guessed?]"
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 30, 2008 18:24:55 GMT -6
Here's an interesting and fairly comphehensive article on the South Ossetia-Georgia conflict from Der Spiegel: 08/25/2008 ROAD TO WAR IN GEORGIAThe Chronicle of a Caucasian TragedyBy SPIEGEL Staff " Many in the West were surprised by the outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia. But there were plenty of signs that the conflict was approaching. SPIEGEL reconstructs the road to violence.
The Sheraton Metechi Palace Hotel in the Georgian capital Tbilisi has a sand-colored façade, dozens of floors and a bright atrium-style lobby. It is an ideal base for guests working abroad who are eager not to attract attention.
A small group of American soldiers along with US advisors in civilian clothes stand huddled around laptop computers, whispering with officers and looking at images on the screen. As soon as a visitor walks over to see what they're up to, they snap the computers shut. A man in his mid-30s, wearing a blue polo shirt, explains: "We're the worst-informed people in Tbilisi. I can't even tell you what we're doing here."
As of the end of last week, the roughly 160 American military advisors still stood their ground in Georgia. They weren't the only foreign soldiers in the country, though. Russia withdrew far more slowly than Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had promised. And Moscow has likewise announced that some 500 soldiers will remain in the country to secure a buffer zone between Georgia and South Ossetia.
It is, in short, a messy situation. But who is actually responsible for this six-day war in the southern Caucasus?
Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili criticizes what he calls a "brutal Russian attack and invasion." In return, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin calls Saakashvili a "war criminal" and talks of the "genocide" committed against Russian citizens. But what are the representatives of the Western community of values saying? The fact is, they are still puzzled.
If They Only Looked
This is surprising, because the war that erupted on the southern flank of the Caucasus Mountains was almost as inevitable as thunder after a lightening strike. The dozens of witness statements and pieces of intelligence information at SPIEGEL's disposal combine to form a chronicle of a tragedy that anyone could see coming -- if they only looked.
But a true reconstruction of events must begin well before Aug. 7 -- the day when Georgian troops marched into South Ossetia. A war of words had been raging between Moscow and Tbilisi since the beginning of the year and, before long, both sides were conducting military maneuvers, which, in retrospect, can be seen as preparation for actual conflict. A number of intelligence agencies had observed troop movements in Georgia and South Ossetia, with satellites providing precise images of what was happening on the ground. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became involved in shuttle diplomacy, trying to appease Saakashvili on the one hand, while criticizing Putin, on the other.
In truth, the world should have been able to predict what was about to happen in the southern Caucasus. Nevertheless, when the armed conflict finally erupted, it was to great astonishment worldwide. No one had wanted a return to the Cold War.
Between Jan. 5, 2008, the day of Mikhail Saakashvili's re-election as president of Georgia, and May 7, 2008, the last day of Vladimir Putin's term in office as president of Russia, there was a great deal of movement along the fronts in the conflict over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, separatist Georgian provinces for the past 18 years.
Wreaths laid at the Russian barracks in Tskhinvali where nearly a dozen soldiers were killed in a Georgian attack. It was as if the Caucasus populist Saakashvili and the coolly calculating Russian Putin, facing the nominal end of his regency, had realized that it was finally time for a showdown.
'Only Through the Force of Weapons'
Saakashvili wanted to bring his country into NATO as quickly as possible and was confident that he had the support of the West. Putin, who wanted to establish his country as a hegemonial power in the southern reaches of the former Soviet empire, relied on the skills he had acquired as an agent working for the KGB -- especially those involving a careful analysis of the enemy.
The signals that Saakashvili was sending after his re-election set off alarms in Moscow. The Georgian, who, since 2004, had been promising his people that he would regain control over all of Georgian territory, was getting impatient. Saakashvili attempted to discuss a plan to invade Abkhazia with Washington, before Georgia, as a candidate for NATO membership, came under more intense scrutiny. Meanwhile, SakarTVelo, a Georgian military television station with the motto "We serve those who serve," was using a 1932 quotation attributed to Adolf Hitler to advertise for new recruits: "Only through the force of weapons" could lost territory be regained.
Putin, meanwhile, watched and waited -- he wanted to see how the Kosovo question would turn out. He made it clear that if the ethnic Albanian province was granted the right to secede from Serbia, the West could not deny Abkhazia and South Ossetia the right to secede from Georgia. On Feb. 17, 2008, the United States, Great Britain and France recognized Kosovo's independence.
After Saakashvili's state visit to Washington on March 19, when he clearly enjoyed his reception as the president of a key ally in the war on terror, there was the NATO summit in Bucharest. In response to a German and French initiative, the alliance denied Georgia and Ukraine its consent to their joining NATO, but promised membership at a later date.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko promptly predicted that this decision would have "the gravest consequences for overall European security." US President George W. Bush met with Putin at his Black Sea vacation home in an effort to restore calm. But Bush apparently failed to take the Russian president's warnings as seriously as they were intended. In retrospect, Western observers describe what happened in the ensuing few days in April as a "point of no return" for the Georgian-Russian war.
Ideologue of Expansionism
Twelve days after the NATO summit, Putin issued an order to upgrade Russia's relations with the separatist regimes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia almost to the point of recognition. On April 20, a Russian fighter jet shot down a Georgian reconnaissance drone over Abkhazia. According to observations by the International Crisis Group, Saakashvili then assembled 12,000 Georgian soldiers at the extremely well-fortified Senaki military base. It was still a good 3 months before the outbreak of hostilities.
In May and June, Moscow sent additional troops to the separatist regions, allegedly for "humanitarian purposes." They included 500 paratroopers and a maintenance team of 400 men, which arrived in Abkhazia on May 31 to repair segments of a railroad south of the capital Sukhumi. The work was necessary to prepare for transporting tanks and heavy military equipment.
By that time, Alexander Dugin had set up camp. Dugin is the bearded chief ideologue of those in favor of an expansionist Russia -- and an advisor to Putin's United Russia Party. He had come to the region to tour a tent camp set up by members of his youth movement about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Thirty army tents housed the 200 attendees. The program included geopolitical seminars and paramilitary training. The pro-Russian forces in South Ossetia provided the group with Kalashnikovs and live ammunition for its field exercises.
"Here is the border in the battle of civilizations," said Dugin. "I think Americans are great. But we want to put an end to America's hegemony." It was a sentiment shared by the young men in the tent camp -- and Dugin's dreams did not end at the Russian-Georgian border. "Our troops will occupy the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the entire country, and perhaps even Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, which is historically part of Russia, anyway," he continued.
As Dugin's supporters were preparing for the worst, the situation along the borders between both South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the areas controlled by Tbilisi became increasingly tense. There were even exchanges of grenade fire between the two sides, all under the eyes of OSCE and United Nations emissaries.
Practicing for War
On July 3, an assassination attempt was made on the pro-Georgian head of the South Ossetian administration, Dmitry Sanakoyev. Sanakoyev had once served as the separatists' head of state and was then recruited by Saakashvili -- and he is widely considered to be one of the wild cards in the Caucasus region. His name rarely surfaces in the threat analyses prepared by Western intelligence agencies. And yet men like Sanakoyev hold key roles in the geopolitical jockeying for position in the Caucasus, where even village chiefs and minor Mafiosi occasionally manage to enter the global spotlight.
In mid-March Sanakoyev, Georgia's man on the Russian border, said: "If Moscow recognizes South Ossetia, there will be war." On July 3, his Nissan SUV hit a landmine and then came under machine-gun fire. Three bodyguards were seriously injured, but Sanakoyev miraculously survived.
Five days later, Russian fighter jets penetrated Georgian air space in what Moscow called a signal to the "hotheads in Tbilisi." The timing of this show of strength was carefully chosen, being only one day before Georgian President Saakashvili planned to meet with US Secretary of State Rice over dinner in Tbilisi. In retrospect, Saakashvili and Rice would interpret their conversations in different ways. Rice claims that she warned Saakashvili against military conflict with Russia, while Saakashvili recalls Rice's assurances of firm solidarity. Rice left Tbilisi 28 days before the war broke out.
Combative Language
On July 10, Georgia recalled its ambassador to Russia, in protest over the violation of its airspace. At the same time, tensions were growing in the Black Sea republic of Abkhazia, where bomb attacks killed four people. There were even explosions in the nearby Russian resort of Sochi, the site of a future Olympic venue. Georgian nationals were suspected of committing the attacks.
Even as Russian tourists were enjoying their low-cost vacations on Abkhazian beaches, troops and military vehicles were being deployed to the breakaway region. Using combative language, Abkhazian leader Sergei Bagapsh told the Moscow magazine Ogonjok: "We are ready for war. But I am not about to stand here and tell you exactly how we have prepared ourselves."
On July 15, an unprecedented show of military strength began on both sides of the main ridge of the Great Caucasus Range. In the south, not far from Tbilisi, close to 1,000 Americans joined the Fourth Infantry Brigade of the Georgian army in a maneuver called "Immediate Response 2008."
On the same day, a maneuver called "Caucasus 2008," under the command of high-ranking General Sergei Makarov, the commander of the northern Caucasus military district, began on Russian territory north of the Caucasus ridge, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The exercise included 8,000 troops from all branches of the military. Troops with the 76th Air Landing Division, from Pskov, conducted their exercises openly on a military training ground in the Daryal Canyon, not far from the Roki Tunnel to South Ossetia -- the eye of the needle between Russia and Georgia.
According to claims coming from Moscow, Russia's troops in the field were prepared to "come to the aid of the Russian peacekeepers" stationed in South Ossetia. The government in Tbilisi was quick to respond, noting that it was unaware of a "right to conduct any actions on Georgian soil."
Western intelligence agencies observed that, after the July 30 end to the "Caucasus 2008" exercises ended, the dispatch channels set up by the Russians were kept in place, hardly the usual practice following military exercises. Furthermore, the 58th Army remained in a state of heightened readiness. For US intelligence, with its arsenal of spy satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and unmanned drones, this should have been a reason for concern.
48 Russians for each Georgian
More reasons for worry quickly followed. Following the military exercise on the Georgian side, President Saakashvili -- directly under the noses of the American military advisors -- sent parts of his army toward South Ossetia instead of ordering them to return to their barracks. The artillery brigade, for example, which would begin firing on the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali eight days later, on Aug. 7, is normally divided between two towns, Senaki and Gori. But after July 30, the brigade was concentrated in Gori.
The outbreak of the war was still seven days away. Two armies, both well-equipped but of unequal strength, were facing off across the border. In case of conflict, there would be 48 Russian troops for each Georgian soldier. A tragedy was gradually taking shape, and yet the world public was still in the dark.
The skirmishes became more frequent in the final days leading up to all-out war. On Friday, Aug. 1, five Georgian police officers were injured in a bomb attack in South Ossetia. A short time later, snipers shot and killed six people, most of them police officers with the pro-Russian separatist government, while they were fishing and swimming. Ossetians began sending their women and children to safety in Russia.
On Aug. 3, the Russian foreign ministry issued a final warning that an "extensive military conflict" was about to erupt. Officials in Europe's seats of government and intelligence agency headquarters had a sense of what the Russians were talking about. Saakashvili's plans for an invasion had been completed some time earlier. A first draft prepared in 2006, believed to be a blueprint of sorts for the later operation, anticipated that Georgian forces would capture all key positions within 15 hours....
3 days before the outbreak of the war, officials in Israel emphatically stated that the country had not sold offensive weapons to Georgia in months, and that "frantic requests" from Tbilisi, including those requests for Israeli-made Merkava tanks and new weapons, were rejected. From the perspective of the Israelis, Georgia and Russia were clearly on a collision course....
Georgia had increasingly made headlines as a goldmine for Israeli arms dealers and veterans from the military and the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. According to reports in the Jerusalem media, cousins of Georgian Defense Minister David Kezerashvili, who himself lived in Holon near Tel Aviv and speaks Hebrew, acted as reliable contacts for Israeli arms dealers. And Temuri Yakobashvili, who, as Georgia's state minister for reintegration, is responsible for South Ossetia and Abkhazia, said openly: "The training of our military units by Israelis makes me proud to be a Jew."
But did Georgia's young elite misinterpret the importance of their own country and misunderstand the motives of its allies, friends and trading partners? That conclusion seemed more and more likely as war approached. But it would be the people who would pay the price.
At about 10 p.m. on Aug. 5, teacher Sisino Javakhishvili, after bathing her granddaughter, went into the courtyard of her house in the Georgian village of Nikosi, three kilometers from the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, to fetch water. She had heard gunfire before, but suddenly she sensed that it was serious. "No one here is surprised by individual gunshots or even machine-gun fire, but this time it was truly massive," she says. "We had not noticed anything out of the ordinary in the days before then. The only thing we did notice were the television stories about Ossetian residents being taken out of Tskhinvali. We saw busses full of people departing for Russia. But my husband said that it was to intimidate us."
The evacuation of the women and children was complete by Aug. 6. In the Georgian-controlled villages of South Ossetia, skirmishes between Georgian army infantry and South Ossetian militias became more intense, erupting into nonstop artillery exchanges during the ensuing night. Georgian sources reported that Russian soldiers had entered the conflict on the Ossetian side.
According to Western observers, by the morning of Aug. 7 the Georgians had amassed 12,000 troops on the border to South Ossetia. 75 tanks and armored personnel carriers were in position near Gori. In a 15-hour blitzkrieg, the tanks were to advance to the Roki Tunnel to seal it off. At that point, there were only 500 Russian soldiers and another 500 fighters with the South Ossetia militia armed and ready to defend Tskhinvali and the surrounding area. At 4:06 p.m (Aug 7)., the South Ossetian authorities reported that Tskhinvali had come under attack from grenade launchers and automatic weapons. Fifty minutes later, they reported "large-scale military aggression against the Republic of South Ossetia." According to Western intelligence sources, the Georgian artillery bombardment of Tskhinvali did not begin until 10:30 p.m. on that Thursday. It was orchestrated by 27 Georgian army rocket launchers capable of firing ordnance with a maximum caliber of 152 millimeters. At 11 p.m., Saakashvili announced that the goal of the operation was the "re-establishment of constitutional order in South Ossetia."
A Disastrous Decision
During his invasion, the Georgian president relied primarily on infantry units that had to advance along major roads. At 11:10 p.m.,(Aug 7) the Georgian side informed the general in charge of the Russian peacekeepers that they planned to use military force to re-establish "constitutional order" in the Tskhinvali Region, the Georgian term for South Ossetia. Half an hour later, a Georgian grenade struck the roof of a three-story building occupied by Russian troops, killing two soldiers on observation duty.
Salvos from multiple rocket launchers rained down on the complex. The peacekeepers' cafeteria was reduced to rubble and all of the buildings went up in flames. 18 Russian soldiers died in the attack. Four minutes before midnight, the South Ossetian authorities reported: "The Georgian armed forces' storm on Tskhinvali has begun."
Russian soldiers did offer resistance. According to Georgian reports, they included members of both the peacekeeping force and Ossetian militias. The Georgians, however, became bogged down during their attack and failed to advance beyond Tskhinvali. They were inexperienced -- the civilian casualties in Tskhinvali were high. The Georgian interior ministry -- instead of the defense ministry -- managed the campaign. The choice was consistent with international law, given the fact that South Ossetia nominally belongs to Georgia. From a military standpoint, however, the decision was disastrous.
Saakashvili Was Unavailable
In Russia, shortly before the war began, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin was sitting in his office on the seventh floor of a Stalin-era skyscraper in downtown Moscow. It was the evening of August 7, following a rainy, late-summer day. Karasin is in charge of managing Russia's strained relations with the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), including conflict zones on the territory of the Black Sea republic of Georgia.
In the past 3 years, says Karasin, hardly a day has gone by when he has not discussed South Ossetia and Abkhazia with European, American or Georgian officials.
But starting in early August, Karasin began receiving unsettling reports from Yuri Popov, the relevant special ambassador and commander of the Russian portion of the peacekeeping force. At approximately 9 p.m. on the evening of Aug. 7, Karasin was informed that Georgia was amassing troops along the South Ossetian border. The special ambassador reported counting 5 tanks, 6 armored personnel carriers, 5 howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, trucks and buses full of soldiers and officers on the road back to Tbilisi from Tskhinvali.
Karasin stayed in his office until after 10 p.m., and when he arrived at home he called Russian President Medvedev. It was one of seven conversations with the president conducted that night. Medvedev instructed Karasin to contact Saakashvili immediately, but the Georgian president was unavailable. Instead, Karasin called Dan Fried, his American counterpart, who told him that Washington was doing its best to get the situation under control. That was the extent of the conversations on that night.
By the next morning, it was too late for a peaceful solution. Starting at 2:06 a.m. on Aug. 8, the tickers of international press agencies began running reports of Russian tanks in the Roki tunnel. Depending on the estimate, the Russians moved between 5,500 and 10,000 soldiers into South Ossetia through the Roki tunnel. Meanwhile, there were already between 7,000 and 10,000 Russian soldiers at the Georgian-Abkhazian border, many of them brought there on ships from Russia. The "Moskva," a guided missile cruiser and flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, with the fleet commander himself on board, was patrolling off the Georgian coast.
Sukhoi and Tupolev combat aircraft, including the models Su-25, Su-24, Su-27 and Tu-22, were patrolling the air. For the people living in the Georgian villages in South Ossetia, Russian air superiority quickly became a nightmare.
'Explosions Every Few Seconds'
A 68-year-old mechanic from Kurta, a village northeast of Tskhinvali, couldn't believe his eyes. "It was terrible, when the planes came and shot at us. Every bomb didn't explode only once, but several times in succession, a little farther along each time, creating long strips of explosions; the planes made a droning noise as they approached. I hid in the cellar and looked at my watch. There were explosions every few seconds."
The Russian planes must have been using cluster bombs -- as did the Georgians, according to reports by observers with the organization Human Rights Watch. It was a war that was unleashed on the basis of archaic 20th-century geopolitics, but fought with 21st century technology. It was a war that caught the world policemen in a globalized community off-guard. And by the time the world noticed, it was already in full swing.
Alexander Stubb, the Finnish foreign minister and current chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), did not see the war coming: "The OSCE has always been involved here, since 1992. There were many reports about smaller conflicts. I received the first information about the major conflict in the night before Aug. 8. It took us by surprise. I spoke with my mission chief in Tbilisi on Aug. 7. She told me that it was very dangerous there, but that it was not a problem. The, in the night before Aug. 8, all hell broke loose."
The civilian dead have now been buried. No one knows the real death toll. 74 Russian soldiers died (400, according to Georgian sources), and the Georgians lost 165 (4,000, say the Russians). But which of the countries truly won? Which can hope for a better outcome once the dust from this strange Caucasian war has settled? And how long will the new Cold War, which appears to have erupted between Russia and the West, last?
In recent days, President Saakashvili has tirelessly met with foreign dignitaries and relished the international spotlight. First Condoleezza Rice returned to Tbilisi, followed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Foreign Minister David Miliband. Meanwhile, Poland signed a treaty with the United States for the development of the missile defense shield. Moscow responded by commenting that in doing so, Warsaw had also placed itself into Moscow's nuclear sights. In the UN Security Council, Russia and the West introduced resolutions that had no chance of approval, because the current and former superpowers were vetoing each other.
During all this, the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian soil dragged on into the night before last Saturday. The soldiers destroyed key bridges, railroad lines and roads. The military victor went to great lengths to humiliate the loser, which had allowed itself to be provoked into an attack.
It could take Georgia years to recover from this Six-Day War." By Manfred Ertel, Uwe Klussmann, Susanne Koelbl, Walter Mayr, Matthias Schepp, Holger Stark and Alexander Szandar Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan URL: www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,574812,00.html
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Post by psychecc on Aug 31, 2008 9:29:51 GMT -6
I suspect the timing of this reduction of chicken imports is related to the U.S. response to the current Georgia/Russia conflict. It seems entirely appropriate to me. Tyson Foods has a horrible record of treating both workers and chickens poorly, resulting in sick and dead workers (A few years back, they couldn't get out a chained door during a fire.) and in contaminated chickens. I never buy Tyson; I don't know why the Russians should either. The article speaks of Russia's use of tariffs to control chicken imports and reduce competition with domestic suppliers. WOW! You mean they take care of their own people first? What a concept! Meanwhile the CEO of Tyson was on CNBC within the last month talking of the need to cut supply of chicken here in his own country in order to raise prices. In a time of hefty food inflation, that seems pretty much unamerican to me. Link to full article follows. Russia Takes Aim at US ChickensBy Reuters | 29 Aug 2008 | 07:38 AM ET Russia, the biggest market for U.S. poultry exporters, will ban imports from 19 producers in the United States and warned on Friday that another 29 suppliers face a possible ban on health and safety grounds.
The ban will take effect from Sept. 1 and includes two plants belonging to U.S. meat giant Tyson Foods , Russia's animal and plant health watchdog said, a day after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin first spoke of the measures.
"Joint Russian-U.S. inspections of U.S. poultry processing plants at the end of July and the beginning of August showed a number of inspected plants do not fully observe the agreed standards," the watchdog, Rosselkhoznadzor, said in a statement. "The inspection showed that many plants have not taken steps to eliminate faults discovered by previous inspections."
The United States last year exported nearly $1 billion worth of poultry, mainly frozen chicken leg quarters, and other meat products to Russia. The ban comes as Moscow prepares separate cuts to existing meat import quotas to help domestic suppliers.
Rosselkhoznadzor said its inspectors had not been allowed to visit some poultry farms and had not received results of a probe into a possible excess of arsenic in some U.S. poultry supplied to Russia. It said it wanted to receive these results within one month.
"A timely reception of this information by Rosselkhoznadzor will prevent the imposition of restrictions on poultry imports to Russia for 22 plants belonging to Tyson Foods, four plants of Peco Foods and three plants of the Equity Group," it said.
Dangerous Bacteria
Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev, in a separate statement, said inspectors had more than once found an excess of arsenic, salmonella, E.coli and other dangerous bacteria in shipments of U.S. poultry to Russia.
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"In the last seven years, poultry meat output has been rising annually by 15 percent," Gordeyev said. He said Russia planned to raise poultry meat output by more than 300,000 tonnes this year from the 1.9 million tonnes produced in 2007.
The minister said poultry meat and pork import quotas should also be cut by hundreds of thousands of tonnes. "It is time to change the quota regime and to cut imports, which, lamentably, have been rising in the last few years."
Russia regulates imports of poultry and red meat by tariff quotas, which have been fixed for 2005-2009. The United States has the largest share of the poultry quotas. ....
In March 2002, Russia banned all U.S. poultry for about one month, citing safety concerns such as salmonella contamination....www.cnbc.com/id/26453291/
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