Georgian Crisis: Ten Reasons Why Russia is to Blame

Okay, this is it. Resisting pressure for a recap of the Georgian crisis, this article written by Christopher Westley, an adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute signals that a review is actually long overdue.

Apart from the blatant postmodern moral equivalencing (Russia is the USA; Georgia is Texas; What's next? Bush is Hitler?) that one hardly expects from a self-respecting economic institute as the Von Mises, the time horizon in which these events are supposed to have taken place - as was the case with Kosovo and Bosnia - does not exceed the period when the crisis was shot into the public consciousness by the media. Conflicts have histories and run-ups which usually play out well before the first shot is fired. The relativist brainpower however is strictly limited to the here and now and cannot be bothered with historical perspectives or absolute realities.

Russia (and the anti-militarist Westley) claim Georgia provoked Russia - the self-imposed 'peace enforcer in the conflict - when 'the regime' dastardly attacked the South Ossetian town of Tskinvali with heavy artillery on the opening morning of the Beijing Olympics (08/08/08). In the consciousness of the Westleys this is the arbitrary starting point of the crisis. But military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent, Moscow-based defense analyst gives another sequence of events in "The Russian-Georgian War was preplanned in Moscow":

"Late in the evening of August 7, a heavy mortar bombardment of Georgian villages near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali provoked Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to order a major assault. The night attack by Georgian troops outfitted with Western-made night-vision equipment flushed the Ossetian fighters out and Tskhinvali was overrun in the morning. To stop the Georgian offensive thousands of Russian troops with hundreds of pieces of armor invaded through the Roki tunnel and rushed forward. Russian jets began bombing Georgian military installations and cities (see EDM, August 7)."

The Russian propaganda that Moscow had to take humanitarian action went unquestioned (because this allows an anti-American stance and saves one making a moral choice) and was repeated ad nauseam by the mainstream media (because our pragmatist position is so ethical that it justifies unethical behavior). It is by now just as irrevocably entrenched as 'the illegal Bush war' and the 'occupations'. There simply is no act of treason the deluded will not stoop to, in order to preserve their psycho-pathological projection.

As usual the train of logic to reach such an outcome requires a few maneuvers in irrationality. Who knows what goes on underneath the skull, but it may well be they believe that some KGB remnant in the Kremlin holds the secret to a Cold War period black-op, that enables them to levitate military hardware, as well as large troops contingents into the region practically overnight, by a sheer act of the will (thought creates reality). One just wonders what to make of the rapid deployment of the Black Sea naval task force, and the fact that large contingents of troops were also poured into Abkhazia.

This blog coincidentally stumbled upon a one year old item ("The New Russia: Georgia Alleges Second Attack in Four Months,"containing links to BBC and NYTimes articles) which has long passed out of the public consciousness, from which it transpires that Russia has been hurling missiles into Georgia since August 2007! So much for the hotheaded impulsiveness of the 'client' President Saakashvili (another poodle from the Bu$Hitler kennels)!

Of course this might be dismissed as a perverted form of double bluff, but the event that the US had to airlift some 2,000 Georgian troops from Iraq after the fact, and not before, is a strong indication there was no premeditated intention of poking the bear on the part of the Georgian Government, that was at the time for the most part, enjoying their holidays.

And then, there's the comment by aforementioned independent defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. He says the aim, from the start, was to overthrow the Georgian Government and the that trap was laid long ago, actually in April when NATO declined to offer Georgia and Ukraine a Membership Action Plan. Read all of Felgenhauer's "The Russian-Georgian War was preplanned in Moscow."

After the fact you've also got to relativize away the Human Rights Watch report, and before it the cyber-attacks, which turned out to be private initiatives. And intimidating and targeting the press is of course totally off topic. Also the wider economic and geopolitical pointers must be ignored, unless you can build a conspiracy theory which implicates 'the joint American and Israeli 'military industrial complex'; having done all that successfully, the fact that the playbook is the mirror carbon copy of the Kosovo precedent, must also be ducked.

If we turn to Brian Whitmore of Liberty Radio we read: " Less than one month before Russia's armed forces entered Georgia on August 8 and held massive military training exercises in the North Caucasus involving 8,000 servicemen and 700 pieces of military hardware. At center stage in those maneuvers -- which took place in the second half of July, not far from Georgia's border -- was Russia's 58th Army, the very unit that would later play a key role in the incursion. Those exercises were just one link in a chain of incidents suggesting that Russia's military action in Georgia was planned months in advance, awaiting only an appropriate pretext to act."

We've been caught napping and the West "dismissed the Russian warnings and preparations as bluff until it was too late. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza stated in Tbilisi, "Now we know" the true mission of the Railroad troops in Abkhazia (Interfax, August 11)," writes Felgenhauer.

That's water under the bridge, but we can stop repeating the propaganda canard that the Russians were 'provoked' and that their hand was forced by humanitarian considerations (the alleged genocide: goes to intent - in the light of the above, wish them a good time of it). Were they also provoked or moved by humanitarian sensitivities during the last century, when they forcibly incorporated the 'near abroad' into the USSR and force-fed them on vicious Marxist ideology?

The West made a grave mistake in seeking Kosovo's unilateral proclamation of independence towards a Greater Albania, but two wrongs wouldn't have made a right.

- Drawings by Victor Vashi from the book Red Primer for Children and Diplomats - Hat Tip: The People's Cube -

More on the Georgian Crisis, in chronological order:

- The Heat is on in the Caucasus (update)
- Caught Sleeping in Tbilisi
- Georgia Live Updates
- The Intricacies of Postmodern Diplomacy
- Georgian Crisis: Target the Messenger
- The War on Reality: the Return of the Evil Empire
- Georgian Crisis: since August 2007
- Georgian Crisis: The Islam Connection
- Georgian Crisis: "Russia is Blowing Up Europe"
- The LooneyGlobs and Cold War Ghosts
- Putinism Explained: the Power Tool

Related:

- "Freedom isn't Free"
- "Rumbling Russia"
- "Communist Crimes on Trial"

Update - Michael Totten in Georgia: "The Truth About Russia in Georgia"

- Filed on Articles in "Caucasian Heat" -

Putinism Explained: the Power Tool

Here follows an eight part CBC Newsworld documentary "The Putin System," which analyzes the life and politics of Russia's, now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.

Specifically those still swooning over 'having looked into his soul' romantics, or transnational idealists harboring otherwise dangerously Utopian One World notions, are strongly advised to watch it closely.

The 'managed democracy' of the 'single economic space' of the reconstituted USSR is the nearest we will ever get in real life to the James Bond antagonist in a number of 007 films, SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Control, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion): total state through a corporation, in this case Gazprom, a gigantic transnational tool for the funneling of public resources to selective private coffers.

As a worthy heir to the manufactured reality that was every day life in the Soviet Union, Putinism proudly includes in its doctrine the contradictions of democracy (or what passes for it) and dictatorship, as well as state and liberalism. The latter is meant strictly nominally, as in "the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

The neotot KGB ship of state is tightly run under the premise that "control is safe, no control is a threat, therefore as many things as possible should be controlled."

The paranoid mass is collectively held together by the Sorelian myths of outside and inside enemies and the lie reaching back to the anti-modernist school of thought, that the individual is insignificant but that the collective is supernaturally powerful. It therefore comes as no surprise that the reversed sequence of events in the Georgian crisis is uncritically lapped up as Smirnoff on the rocks. Some never learn ...

Putinism, as a true total movement, likes 'em young: the Nashi youth organization's growth is prolific!

Whereas the doctrine has dispensed with ideology, it has seamlessly and effortlessly reconstituted all the Soviet trappings. Led by sheer Pragmatism (we unashamedly do whatever is in our interest), what's left is pure, brutal power politics for its own sake.

Those useful idiots in the West who took the communist idealism seriously and who - against all evidence - refused to believe otherwise, could draw some insightful conclusions from this (but they probably won't - as said, some never learn): the essence of the Marxist school of ideology always was a common power-grab and very little else. The core question was, how to get the unwashed to grab power on your behalf?

Putin has come up trumps from his long walk through the nomenklatura. The clever thing is, he's done it almost single-handedly. It is to be hoped that the overplaying of his hand in Georgia will put a number of Western politicians on the highest state of alert.

Now that 'history is back' it may help clear the postmodern, transnational air that can only lead to utter disaster (in fact, the anomaly in international law of Kosovo's unilateral independence has produced the present crisis and can potentially, cause many more besides).

It may well be that the autocrats Russia, China, a number of Muslim countries, and their Third World clients will gang up against the West and Israel. It may also bring about a re-alignment in Euro-American relations and bring them closer together.

If the latter decades of the last century were at times a little boring, developments in the new millennium have already handsomely made up for that. We live in interesting times after all.


get your vodpod

In case of problems the videos can also be accessed from the Vodpod page.

- Filed on Articles in "Rumbling Russia" -

Today's LooneyGlobs: Slow Retreat

Townhall: "Blame Everyone But Russia!" by Victor Davis Hanson

An inventory of Western reactions to the Russian invasion of Georgia ... European public opinion is probably sharply divided between the American Left wing and the liberal mainstream. Hanson's conclusion sounds about right:

"The more Russia promises to leave Georgia, the more it seems to stay put. One reason may be that Putin keeps counting on us either to be confused, contradictory or angrier at ourselves than at Russia over his latest aggression. And given our inability to speak with one voice, he seems to be absolutely right." >>>

In the meantime at the UN ...

BBC: "UN split over Georgia resolutions"

The UN Security Council is deadlocked over the situation in Georgia with the US and Russia rejecting rival resolutions on the crisis. Washington says it is prepared to veto a Russian resolution seeking to implement a six-point ceasefire plan. Russia has reiterated its opposition to a rival French text reaffirming Georgia's territorial integrity. Russian says its troops will leave Georgia on Friday but 500 will stay in a "buffer zone" around South Ossetia. Local reports suggest Russian troops are still dug in at positions inside Georgia, but there has been some movement around the town of Gori, which Russia has promised to leave by 1600 GMT (...) >>>

... we've seen this procrastination for over a week now ... 'buffer zones' and self-appointed 'peace-keepers' ... yet something appears to be moving ... Georgian Times: "Troops Quit Administrative Headquarters in Zugdidi", SOS Georgia: "The streets of Gori are already controlled by Georgian Patrol Police"

In all the confusion over Georgia it seemed we've missed a important detail:

Pajamas: "Will NATO Abandon Ukraine Too? - A newly aggressive Russia sure hopes so,"by Kim Zigfeld

(...) NATO (...) must arm Ukraine to the teeth. It must make it such a hard target that the lunatics who “govern” neo-Soviet Russia will not even consider moving against it, as they recently did in Georgia. The reasons are so obvious that they hardly need to be stated. The role played by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in brutally assaulting Ukraine has not been sufficiently reported (...) Last week, Ukraine demanded that Russia give 72 hours notice before activating war ships at its naval base in Crimea, on Ukrainian territory (similar to the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba). Russia said it would simply ignore the demand.

The Moscow Times reported: “The chief of Ukraine’s General Staff, Serhiy Kirichenko, promised to fulfill Yushchenko’s decree. ‘The president’s decree on the Black Sea Fleet will, of course, be implemented on the territory of Ukraine. The Defense Ministry and the General Staff are among those state bodies responsible for this task.’” As Ukraine stands up for its comrade Georgia (...) Russia uses this as a pretext to ratchet up its confrontation rather than defuse it. It is a clear signal that Russia’s intentions towards Ukraine are at least as malevolent as they are towards Georgia, if not more so (...) >>>

Governments, security services, everyone must have been comatose in the run up to the operation. Blogger Diana Chachua on Peace in Georgia is relaying an article on Radio Liberty that Russia's armed forces entered Georgia on August 8 and held massive military training exercises in the North Caucasus involving 8,000 servicemen and 700 pieces of military hardware. At center stage in those maneuvers -- which took place in the second half of July, not far from Georgia's border -- was Russia's 58th Army, the very unit that would later play a key role in the incursion. Those exercises were just one link in a chain of incidents suggesting that Russia's military action in Georgia was planned months in advance, awaiting only an appropriate pretext to act.

Military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says the aim, from the start, was to overthrow Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his pro-Western government."This was prepared long ago (...) April -- the month in which Felgenhauer claims Russia made its decision to invade -- was also the month when the NATO military alliance declined to offer outright a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine at its annual summit in Bucharest. In an August 14 article published in the "Novaya gazeta" weekly, Felgenhauer, who is credited with maintaining close sources in the Russian military, claims Moscow's plan began taking shape shortly after Georgia and Ukraine were denied a MAP.

(...) Such interpretations contradict the official narrative of the war promoted relentlessly by the Kremlin in the domestic and international media -- that Russian forces acted only in order to defend Russian citizens and peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia from Georgian soldiers intent on "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" in the breakaway region. For now, there is no smoking gun to prove Russia methodically plotted its incursion into Georgia (...) >>> read it all

For the romantically inclined, here's fiction meeting reality, a blueprint for an African coup:

The Weekly Standard: "Destination Malabo - A group of mercenaries' failed attempt to take over the worst place on earth," by Mark Hemingway

It was a complicated plan. But the beauty of it was that it allowed for many things to go wrong without compromising the whole. (...) As the full details of the coup continue to emerge, aspiring writers should pay close attention. There are no doubt a few good novels to be wrung out of the ongoing intrigue (...) in the Worst Place on Earth (...) you just can't make this stuff up (...) >>>
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The LooneyGlobs and Cold War Ghosts

• Macedonia Online: " Russian Aircraft Carrier heads for Syria"
  
  The Russian aircraft carrier “Admiral Kuznetsov” is ready to head from Murmansk towards the Mediterranean and the Syrian port of Tartus. The mission comes after Syrian President Bashar Assad said he is open for a Russian base in the area. (...) The mission will also include the missile cruiser “Moskva” and several submarines, Newsru.com reports. President Assad in meetings in Moscow this week expressed support to Russia’s intervention in South Ossetia and Georgia. He also expressed interest in the establishment of Russian missile air defence facilities (...) >>>
  
  
• Jerusalem Post: "Analysis: Assad's shopping list"
  

• Euronews: Interview with Georgia's FM
  

• Breaking News: Obama has sneezed .... Patriot says USA did not do much for Czechoslovak citizens in 1968

• The Star: "Pressure builds on Russia - Canada to review 'everything' including Arctic ties; NATO suspends council, stops short of sanctions"
  
  Canada's relations with Russia over disputed Arctic territory could become frostier as NATO members seek to discipline the country for its invasion of Georgia, a top aide to Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggests. The warning comes after a meeting of the military alliance in Brussels where foreign ministers declared that a "business as usual" relationship with Russia cannot continue. Russia continues to occupy parts of neighbouring Georgia and Russian troops yesterday paraded bound and blindfolded Georgian soldiers on armoured vehicles and may have blown up a Georgian warship. (...) >>>
  

• The Russophobe is following developments closely ... the Exile has been suspended ...
  

• BBC - On this day in: "1968: Russia brings winter to 'Prague Spring'"
  
  Dozens of people have been killed in a massive military clampdown in Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact countries. Several members of the liberal Czechoslovak leadership have been arrested, including Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek. The Soviet news agency, Tass, claims "assistance" was requested by members of the Czechoslovak Government and Communist party leaders to fight "counter-revolutionary forces". But in a secret radio address, Czechoslovak President Ludvik Svoboda condemned the occupation by Warsaw Pact allies as illegal and committed without the government's consent. US President Lyndon Johnson said the invasion was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter (...) >>> watch the deja vue ...
  

• Here's another reminder:
  
  
• 
  

Today's Collection by the LooneyGlobs: Breaking News

"The program was about the answers, not about the candidates."

"Russia is Saudi Arabia with trees."

- Overheard on CNN

From Russia, With Tough Love - photos and a report from the front on Atlas Shrugs ...

NATO's "no business as usual" was dismissed by Russia as ... bias! Unbelievable ... seldom was a more morally relativized, even-handed message delivered by a NATO official. NATO's musketeer motto is its reason of being. But thanks to the postmodern (Pragmatist) Europeans NATO has now become a conflict mediator, a UN II or an EU II, that's how machismo Russia takes it, at least. For heaven's sake, NATO is supposed to be biased, it is a party, not a mediator. This needs careful watching ... George W. isn't buying.

In the meantime (10:13 CET) at Gori, Georgia ...

... there's blowback in Warsaw - there's no beating the strategy of fake paranoia and willful irrationality (a Soviet era remnant, now a retro communication weapon wielded by Western pomos) ...

And now for the good BREAKING NEWS!

EUX.TV: "Landsbergis: Russia is Blowing Up Europe"

"Vytautys Landsbergis was President of Lithuania in 1991, when he helped fight off a bloody attempt by the Soviet Union's army to overthrow his country's government. He now is a member of the European Parliament for the conservative EPP-ED group."

... much as the EU is a fundamentally undemocratic organization modeled on the Soviet Union, and as as such should be rejected, evidently it's not good news at all. Landsbergis is registering the moral agnosticism prevailing in Europe. Today he's tolling the knell in the European Parliament. He's distributed the following text:

The gloomiest premonitions are short to become true. Europe divided, and unfortunately toadying is at last giving into Russian aggression ... read it all >>> (full post follows shortly) ...

... symbolic is an accident reported by the same EUX.TV: ... ceiling of the parliament collapsed ...

Georgian Crisis: The Islam Connection

Prospect magazine has a must-read article "Caucasian Favours" on the situation in the Caucasus region in general, written by Daniel J Gerstle, a writer and human rights consultant.

Although according to some commentators the post inevitably comes along with a certain amount of bias, the writer's wish to deliver an objective piece of backdrop information was largely successful, specifically where the historical background is concerned:

(...) to understand why Russia’s response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia was so strong, it helps to understand the role played by Russia’s southern ethnic minorities. Today, Russia's top national security concern is the Islamic radical insurgency ravaging its southern republics. The insurgency and the two Chechen wars which spawned it have killed well over 100,000 Russian citizens. By 2001, Russian federal and Chechen loyalist forces had largely beaten Islamic rebels. But with its attention focused on Chechnya, the Kremlin lost an advantage. Islamic radicals began recruiting disgruntled Muslim fighters all across the southern federal district and the conflict spread to the neighbouring Russian republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kalbardino-Balkaria and Karachai-Cherkessia. The Kremlin has succeeded in securing the loyalties of all of the minority governments across the southern republics, including Chechnya, but the insurgency persists in a series of shootouts and bombings throughout southern Russia. With the insurgency still threatening to undermine regional governments, including that of North Ossetia, Russia desperately needed to find a way to re-consolidate its alliances among southern leaders. Russia’s protection of threatened South Ossetians in Georgia, in co-operation with North Ossetia, has done more to rally Kremlin allies there than any other political event since the terror attack on Beslan, North Ossetia, in 2004. Even Chechen special forces loyal to Moscow, who had taken a break from fighting insurgents at home, were spotted waving to photographers on their ride into battle in Tskhinvali, the devastated capitol of South Ossetia, on the frontline of Russia’s advance. Because of Russia’s action in Georgia, not only did North Ossetians move closer to union with South Ossetia, but southern leaders who represent minorities like the Cherkess, Kabardins, and Adyg, were able to bring their people closer to their ethnic brethren in Abkhazia. Southern leaders without ties to Georgia, like the Chechens and Ingush, joined in this fight to win points from Moscow as well as to repay neighbouring governments for the blood they sacrificed in the ongoing counter-insurgency (...)

The article ignited comments on the associated blog "First Drafts" that in narrative and idiom offer unintended insight how innuendo and false inferences prop up anti American prejudices, notably in reference to that 'American client' Saakashvili (alternatively referred to as hothead, popinjay, or loose canon): like Iraq's Government, he's a priori suspect - no shocking revelations there.

One gullible commentator refers us to a 'plausible' 'key-hole' story on Times Online, written by a committee of four on the basis of unspecified 'sources.' "The new cold war hots up" reads that ...

"(...) the US State Department’s internal timeline of the crisis pinpoints the explosion on August 1 of two roadside bombs, believed to have been planted by South Ossetian separatists sympathetic to Russia, as a decisive moment. Five Georgian policemen were injured, one severely.(...) It now appears that August 1 was a well-prepared “provocation” – one of the Kremlin’s favourit tactics. (...) the Georgian leader last week angrily said he had repeatedly warned Washington and EU countries that the Russians were preparing a military operation against Georgia but that he had been brushed aside. (...)"

That Georgian leader's claim is born out by the one year old article posted here yesterday ... the Russians have been hurling missiles at Georgia since August 2007. That in mind, puts the article's claim of the "US State Department's internal timeline of August 1" in certain light.

Since treason is second nature to the followers of relativist ideologies, it should come as no surprise that their mental radar screen remains virgin to the fact that the hothead merely did his prime duty as a leader, namely defending the people and the territory in his keeping.

Next stop: today's NATO emergency meeting in Brussels.

Here's the PDF to Daniel J Gerstle's entire article on Prospect, "Caucasian Favours."

- Filed on Articles in "Caucasian Heat" -

Georgian Crisis: since August 2007

The following posting on The Standard blog is dating back exactly one year: 15th August 2007.

Little did we know when we published our first post a few days ago on the subject of the rape of Georgia and titled it "Caught Sleeping in Tbilisi," that our misguided politicians and diplomats were actually long-term struck by a malignant form of catatonic coma!

Saakashvili may be a hot-head (the MSM's favorite qualification), but as it turns out, he was right all along!

As the Russians are playing word games over the French cheese ceasefire agreement they never intended to keep, and the relativized MSM are incorrigibly fixated on the Russia-was-provoked myth because that neatly covers their moral agnostics (they have already moved on to the resignation of President Musharraf of Pakistan), 160.000 refugees have descended on the Georgian capital Tbilisi. And now this ... dated 15th August 2007 ... read and weep:

The Standard: "The New Russia: Georgia Alleges Second Attack in Four Months - Missile Lands in Georgian Village"

Georgia has accused Russia of an "undisguised aggression," claiming two Russian Su24 jets entered Georgian airspace on August 7 and fired (or "ditched", according to other reports) a missile that landed near a house in the village of Tsitelubani.

The missile did not explode. (See The New York Times and the BBC for August 7 coverage.)

Georgia has called for an emergency UN meeting. Russia has denied all allegations.

The United States has called the act a "provocation" and the European Union has urged all sides to show restraint.

Meanwhile, the good people at The Economist have put the incident in context.

But there's much more context.

Well... A Second Missile Attack

As The Wall Street Journal notes, this was the second time in four months that Georgia has lodged a complaint with the international community regarding a Russian attack.

On March 11, two helicopters flew over the mountains into Georgia's Kodori Valley and fired a missile into a Georgian government building. This missile, as it happens, exploded.

- Caption: The People's Cube: "Red Primer for Children and Diplomats" - The Soviets' love for their fellow men never recognized borders. The new Ukranian Republic was allowed to join the new Russian Soviet Republics..."voluntarily." The independence of the new Georgian Republic was also granted by the Soviets in 1921. To "guarantee" this "independence," the Soviets incorporated Georgia into the Soviet Union eight months later, after Red Army invasion. -

Again from WSJ: "The sheer sophistication of a helicopter attack in high mountain passes at night would point to Russian authorship. Its military is the only one in the region known to have the equipment and training needed to pull it off."

The Russian government, not so unexpectedly, denied the allegations.

When asked by the UN to provide radar records, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the Russian military records "only flights by aviation of the Russian armed forces." As there were no Russian aircraft in the area that evening, the Ministry letter went on to explain, there were no records to provide.

At this point, let's all pause for three seconds and reflect on the purpose and uses of a military radar system.

Good.

It's should be clear now that Russian helicopters entered the airspace of a free, sovereign nation, staged a military attack, and the UN, the United States, and the European Union have offered no measured diplomatic response.

Now as the same free, sovereign nation makes a second accusation, the United States government has managed a whisper, while the European Union has taken upon itself the supreme responsibility of playing the role of kindergarten teacher.

Probably nothing to worry about...

An ultra-nationalist state that has changed its school textbooks to present Great Britain and the United States as its 'totalitarian' adversaries and stated directly that oil and gas supplies ought be used as geopolitical weapons (See previous post).

Cooler heads...

Here's the map of oil and gas pipelines (in French) from Russia to Europe, in case you were wondering...

The last half year has seen the Russian government take aggressive new stances in the international game of power and indoctrinate its new generation with belligerent nationalist ideology that lauds the glories of the Soviet past. It has also seen the Russian military accused of various acts of aggression. This above post is only a part of the whole. >>>

- Filed on Articles in "Caucasian Heat" -

The War on Reality: the Return of the Evil Empire

If reason makes no sense to your argument as reality clearly shows otherwise, attack reason as pernicious and superficial, and persuade the world that reality doesn't exist.

Communism was one of the main subjectivist ideologies that had their roots in the war on existence which was covertly pushed by the anti-modern philosophers of eighteenth century Germany. The battle was over the nature of thought itself. It grew out of fear for the 'cold' rationality of the Enlightenment, the liberty it propagated for peoples and individuals, and the Luddite angst over science and technology as expressed by Rousseau.

How to get the popular liberty genie, released by the Enlightenment, back into the bottle? For such a feat to be accomplished nothing less than the perception of reality needed to be altered, while the living conditions had to seen to be improving extensively. The followers have been working at it to this day.

The atheist branch went so far as to envision turning the physical world itself into the Paradise of Heaven. As a result the politics growing out of these philosophies use as their working material - not the realities of this world - but rather as it ought to be, at least from their point of view.

After the radicalism of Rousseau and the pious mind-games of Kant, the Hegelians divided into a Right and a Left faction. The Right had their base in Prussian Nationalism, which later morphed via Nietzsche into National Socialism; the Left produced Carl Marx, and the rest as they say, is history. After the Right was defeated in World War II all main arteries united together in Postmodernism. The philosopher Heidegger acted as the bridge over which Right and Left subjectivists unite.

As truth has the nasty habit of reasserting itself constantly, indeed oozes through every crack in the manufactured world of make-believe, the false perception needs to be actively inculcated on people's souls on a perpetual basis. Apart of manipulation of reality, ingraining is helped along by the use of physical coercion. This was justified by Rousseau's delusion, in which submission to the collective's 'common will' is seen as the highest ethical standard. Kant, Marx and Corporal Hitler agreed.

The main tool of Communism has always been the mind-games played on the masses as a means of control. The Nazis excelled in this as well. Leonard Peikoff in The Ominous Parallels makes the case that the Nazi concentration camps were actually a gigantic controlled experiment in mind-control. The Communist gulags and mental hospitals in which enemies of the collective were interned, are similar laboratories of evil.

It was one of the victims of those Siberian camps who died only last week, Alexander Solzhesitsyn, who worded so well how the war on reality works. “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.”

The last part in fact works the other way around: any man who has once accepted the lie as his core philosophy is inevitably forced to take violence as his method of maintaining it.

Today's Russian oligarchy have their roots in the Soviet version of the Gestapo: the KGB. Whatever the case, it is hardly surprising that men who were from early childhood severely indoctrinated with the pernicious Soviet ideology, in midlife suddenly turn round and become the champions of liberty; their brains are just not wired this way. Such an expectation is as naive as it is hazardous; yet the world nursed this illusion since 1989. Georgian President Saakashvili, himself well versed in the intricacies of the Soviet war on reality, in a interview said it like this: "They use lies as an instrument of communication."

Younger people, born before the implosion of Communist collective might well study the brilliant work by George Orwell, 1984 which describes to perfection how the manipulation of reality works in such totalitarian systems that are built on its denial. The New Speak vocabulary drives the world of Ingsoc's smoke and mirrors.

The finger prints of the Soviet Pavlov reactions are all over the Georgian crisis. Just one of those knee-jerks is the Russian attitude towards the press, the messengers of reality (at least, until they were assaulted themselves by the war-on-reality vampire; since then they have become its tools).

It may take some time for the penny to drop, but for the Postmodern transnational progressives the re-emergence of the Evil Empire is good news. After all, Communism was only a means to an end: the state would wither away to bring about a global, multicultural collective. This is precisely what the KGB demoralized tranzies, currently in power, want to establish.

With the tragic events of last week, in which the fledging democracy of Georgia was sacrificed on the altar of debilitated tranzy diplomacy, the phantom of a global dystopia has come one step closer.

After sitting on the fence for a day or so the Left and the mainstream media have made up their minds. This wasn't a hard one (see Socialist Causes Explained): the Russian Sorelian myth in the making, that Georgia provoked the attack by an all out assault on Tskhinvali is swallowed hook, line and sinker; besides thus being the aggressor, Georgians are also primitive flag-waiving 'Nationalists', Christians (too bad Muslims aren't in charge in Ossetia), but their greatest sin of all, is that they are uninhibited pro Americans and proud of it.

When will the relativized stooges, the useful idiots, get their heads around the fact that America - far from being the enemy - is the sole guarantor against the global dystopia? The Evil Empire never was about ideology. It was always about power for power's sake. Communism was but a means to an end; geopolitical Darwinism will do as well, as it did before the onset of ideology.

Update:

"The People's Tools," Communist Revisionism for Dummies

Update:

A post by Paul Goble, director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy on "Window on Eurasia" is instructive:

"Russian television, the most influential media channel in that country, has so distorted what is taking place in Georgia in the course of its “construction” of reality there that Russians who want to know what is really happening have been forced to turn to the Internet or, as during the Cold War, to Western broadcasters such as Radio Liberty.

In an analysis which was posted on Fontanka.ru today, media critic Sergey Ilchenko observes that “facts, especially in our days, do not exist on the television screen ‘in a pure form,’ separate from interpretation and commentary” as Russian TV’s approach to Georgia has clearly demonstrated over the last five days (www.fontanka.ru/2008/08/12/033/).

Catastrophes and conflicts, he points out, are “constructed” by television whose editors and reporters “ever more frequently appear in the role of directors of reality,” as the movie “Wagging the Dog” and Russian coverage of the war in Georgia show to the satisfaction of anyone who cares to pay attention. (...) >>>

- Filed on Articles in "Freedom isn't Free" -

Georgian Crisis: Target the Messenger

Committee to Protect Journalists: "Dutch cameraman killed, reporter wounded in Georgia"

New York, August 12, 2008—Stan Storimans, a cameraman with Netherlands-based television channel RTL Nieuws, was killed today during bombing in the central Georgian city of Gori. His colleague, reporter Jeroen Akkermans, suffered shrapnel wounds to his leg and was hospitalized in a Tbilisi clinic, Jaspir Teijsse, a spokesman for RTL Nieuws, told CPJ. Storimans was 39.

Three journalists have been killed and at least nine wounded since fighting erupted Thursday between Russian, Georgian, and local forces in the disputed region of South Ossetia, according to reporting by the Committee to Protect Journalists. (...) >>>

... Update: Human Rights Watch has now confirmed Storimans was killed by a Russian cluster bomb ...
EUX.TV: "Analysis: Russia's Contempt for Free Press Kills Dutch Journalist," by Raymond Frenken

The exact circumstances of his death are not fully clear yet, but some reports said a 'media centre', or a gathering place for journalists, was hit by a Russian bomb or shell. RTL reporter Jeroen Akkermans was injured and is being evacuated. Another report said several Greek journalists were also injured.

In order to 'justify' Russia's bombing of Georgian towns and cities, Moscow's propaganda machine is running in overdrive this week. Even Brussels journalists like yours truly now are invited to daily Russia embassy briefings. (Every day this week at 1500 hours in the Residence Palace).

Just try and analyze their statements when you watch the conflict on TV: All Russian ambassadors sing from the same hymn-sheet. Almost literally, the same words are used by Russian government officials speaking at the United Nations in New York, at NATO in Brussels as in Moscow.

This is coordinated communications. It's propaganda seeking to influence world opinion, even accusing pro-NATO and pro-EU Georgian President Mikhail Sakaashvilli of war crimes.

While attempting to analyze this propaganda, I can clearly envisage someone in Moscow taking inspiration from the Balkan Wars in the last decade, and from what the U.S. government, supported by its conservative pro-government media, managed to achieve in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Moscow guy is not by himself. He's part of a large team, that writes, in advance, a communications strategy that supports the military objectives of this particular conflict. Not just twisting the truth, but creating a whole new version of it that accuses Georgia of war crimes and genocide. (...)

Reporters covering 'undesirable' facts, such as a Russian reporter reporting from inside Georgia on the Russian bombing for the Russia Today channel, are no longer given air-time. George Orwell would have been proud. More of such instances and anecdotes will emerge in the years to come when communications scholars analyze the media coverage, but let us be aware that such misguided information already is affecting global thinking at this moment. (...) >>>

EUX.TV: "Russia Accuses EUX.TV of 'Dirty Propaganda'"

The Russian embassy at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Brussels has accused EUX.TV, the Europe channel, of "Russophobe" reporting that supports "dirty propaganda aims."

Reacting per email to an analysis article on the EUX.TV website, Alexey Zaytsev, press officer at the Russian Mission to NATO, said an article published on Tuesday shows the webtv channel's "interest in anti-russian campaign very clear."

The article involved, written by EUX.TV editor Raymond Frenken, was published under the headline "Russia's Contempt for Free Press Kills Dutch Journalist" (above).

It analysed media coverage of the war in Georgia in the light of the killing earlier that day of Dutch RTL Nieuws journalist Stan Storimans, who was reporting from the Georgian town of Gori. The article mentioned a number of examples of questionable reporting both on the Russia Today TV channel and on CNN to underline the need for independent reporting from inside a conflict zone.

"I'm not in the mood to analyse your Russophobe scribblings," said Zaytsev, "but if even you yourself write in your absurd article "the exact circumstances of his death are not fully clear yet" so how can you blame Russia for what is not proved?" (...) >>>

Here's a link to a video showing a Turkish media under heavy attack. It's a wonder they made it alive.

Georgian Crisis: The Moral Principles Explained

To the Postmodern politicians in Europe and the State Department the moral criterium is violence: never mind the rights and wrongs (in which they do not believe), aggressors are punished by being shunned from the global tribe.

For those who do believe in objective right and wrong - territorial integrity and the duty to defend - these are further explained in these CNN vids:




- Filed

Georgia Live Updates

CNN's Matthew Chance reported this afternoon that thousands of Russian troops were advancing from the abandoned city of Gori to the Georgian capital Tbilisi while there is supposed to be a EU brokered cease-fire going on ... shattered.

(Update: the Russian ambassador to NATO just consigned the information to the realm of Georgian propaganda. That is an obvious lie, as several Western journalists have reported live as the convoy passed them by. Update: EUX.TV here relates how the Russian propaganda 'hymn sheet' works.)

It is now becoming apparent that the Russian action was planned long in advance. Georgia, by reacting to the provocations allowed itself to fall into the trap. History being confined to the dust bin, collective memory had forgotten the Russians excel at chess: the art of thinking several moves in advance. Apparently it started in July with a cyber attack, but it is difficult to discern where that originated.

(Update: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday during this press meeting that the Georgian/S. Ossetian/Russian skirmishes are a piece of regional folklore, traditionally held each year during the month of August; this year, according to Gates, things got a bit rough and spiraled out of hand - the trap was set.)

The vanguard made up of troops fresh from Chechnya, Ossetian paramilitaries - balaclavas and all - were moving in their wake. It has been confirmed it is mostly these irregulars who are responsible for the looting and mayhem, alcohol heavy on their breath. The Georgian army has collapsed.

Things being that fluid, others report that the convoy has already been diverted but it is about 50km removed from Tbilisi. The target seems to be an arms depot outside the capital which Russia wants to destroy.

The Russians are peeved that the West questions their motives for their actions. What's so hard to understand in Russians wanting to protect Russians? This would be more believable had they stayed in South Ossetia and hadn't they had a history of utter contempt for human lives (even for those they say to protect), and lost all sight of proportion.

President Saakashvili in an interview this afternoon called some Europeans naive. This is an understatement. Saakashvili himself is also not untouched by naivity, not realizing that Europe's Pragmatist leaders have long moved beyond democratic ideals (tainted by the much vilified neocons).

How far the postmodernists in Europe have got removed from reality becomes apparent when one hears the comments along the lines of 'power politics has no place in the 21st century' -- surely their moralizing and threats of isolation will deeply impress the muscle men, whose rhetoric isn't matched by their actions.

To the evolved politicians this is a fresh opportunity to delete another national border. The vista is a human race in which no one has a claim to national real estate (Sweden is leading the way). The abomination of racist, ethnic homes, like Israel and Greece must belong to a primitive and unenlightened past.

The new ideal are empire-style entities like today's Russia, power-blocks ruled by power-sharing bodies made up by quotas of minority representatives. Meet transnational progressivism. And we all lived peacefully ever after ...

For Russian collectivists there's also good news. After all, communism was only a means to an end: the state would collapse to bring about a global, multicultural collective. This is precisely what the KGB moralized tranzies are trying to establish. Their weapon: states that do not comply will be shunned. It's global tribalism.

The EU has managed a joint declaration, but an East vs West division is inevitable. The new Europe (former Warsaw Pact countries) having had experience with Russian hegemony, have positioned themselves squarely behind Georgia. Italy and Germany are gas dependent on Russia, the rest are simplistically relativized, meaning - since Saakashvili overplayed his hand both parties are morally reprehensible aggressors - end of story. The EU will send humanitarian aid and observers into the area.

The first American aid flight just arrived in Georgia. Condoleezza Rice is flying tomorrow to Paris and then on to Tbilisi.

Cyprus - Kosovo - Georgia: anybody see a pattern here?

Caught Sleeping in Tbilisi

Among the fall-out of the ongoing conflagration in the Caucasus might well be the materialization of Robert Kagan's thesis posited in his last book, "The Return of History and the End of Dreams," or the return of autocracy and old-fashioned power politics, which marks an end to the Utopian approach to transnational diplomacy (book reviewed in "The Newest World Order").

The tome is a sequence to "Of Paradise and Power," an essay that dealt with the world order that emerged from the early post Cold War period. It was characterized by the tension between the European model of bottomless diplomacy and global peace through interdependence versus the American geopolitical approach, calculated to deal with a more Hobbesian view of a world in chaos. (Something along the theme of 'Europeans are from Venus and Americans are from Mars.')

The Russian performance in the recent days in Georgia generally proves the correctness of American realism. Natural law is constant and human genes (or any other for that matter) do not evolve in ways that enable the species to propel to a higher level of moral order (the Materialist imagination in that respect is an endless source of inspiration for Hollywood SF productions). Pacifism and appeasement may do something beautiful towards the Left's feel-good factor, but on the other hand it tolerates, aids and abets evil.

Although Hume's law - confusing is with ought - is a central Postmodern mechanism for dodging reality, the recent cataclysm in the Caucasus shows how dangerous a place planet Earth can be if we don't stop whimsical interventions given in by emotion, that is more often than not just tacky sentimentalism on the part of public opinion, played on by a biased media.

Rewarding claims for independence on the basis of demographic dominance does not help towards ethic engineering, genocide, ethnic cleansing or other means of creating 'facts on the ground'. Thus invited, irredentism might well pop up soon in an area near you.

Neither intervention nor cessation are alternatives to a healthy respect for borders, an nation's untouchable sovereignty, and sacred territorial integrity. The tranzies aren't solving problems (that to a large extent are inherited from the past), their relentless assaults on autonomous states are instead creating new problems for the future.

The picture which emerges from the fog of war in Georgia is as banal as it is hazardous: emotional subjectivism firing old-world lust for power and vengeance (unexploded ordinance was found in Georgia, addressed to NATO). This is possible because in diplomacy, as is the case in other areas, objective standards are purposely being dropped in favor of a relativist world view in which everyone is right from his or her perspective.

This Russia Today video dating back five months is indicative in more ways than one. Not only does it prove the enormity of the Kosovo blunder flung back in our faces, it is also illustrative of today's subjectivism - indeed, the random whim - when the footage turns to EU representative Peter Semneby who rejects similarities between the two cases because ... "each conflict has its unique, specific character;" therefore no attention should be paid to the parallels, that moreover should not be over-emphasized ... to which the Russia Today narrator sarcastically adds that "indeed the case is certainly different from Kosovo, because unlike Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia have no support from the EU and the US.

The Russian action sends jitters bordering panic through the countries of the new Europe. Black Five's "The Devil Went To Georgia" links to this article in which the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia issue a joint statement condemning Russia and its hegemonic games.

Another post relays an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski who draws a few parallels of his own:

- Caption: Tskhinvali, South Ossetia (1886) -

"Fundamentally at stake is what kind of role Russia will play in the new international system. Unfortunately, Putin is putting Russia on a course that is ominously similar to Stalin's and Hitler's in the late 1930s. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has correctly drawn an analogy between Putin's "justification" for dismembering Georgia -- because of the Russians in South Ossetia -- to Hitler's tactics vis a vis Czechoslovakia to "free" the Sudeten Deutsch.

Even more ominous is the analogy of what Putin is doing vis-a-vis Georgia to what Stalin did vis-a-vis Finland: subverting by use of force the sovereignty of a small democratic neighbor. In effect, morally and strategically, Georgia is the Finland of our day.

The question the international community now confronts is how to respond to a Russia that engages in the blatant use of force with larger imperial designs in mind: to reintegrate the former Soviet space under the Kremlin's control and to cut Western access to the Caspian Sea and Central Asia by gaining control over the Baku/Ceyhan pipeline that runs through Georgia. In brief, the stakes are very significant. (...) Read it all >>>

Clearly the West's interventions in the former Yugoslavia are the Russians' frame of reference. Interviews with Russian representatives are laced with allusions to the Kosovo war and the Western push for its independence. On Monday on CNN we see the Russian Dept. Foreign Minister Sergei Ivanov openly comparing the Russian assault on Poti with the NATO's bombardment of Belgrade, repeated not three hours later by the Chairman of the International Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachev MP. (EUX.TV even calls it the Russian "hymn sheet").

Evidently, things do not compute. The Black Five post anticipates the slowly galvanizing opinion in circles of the European Left in observing that ... "For those that are still fixated on the idea that Georgia started this and Russia simply responded, answer me how what appears to be multiple combined-arms groups just happened to be able to respond so quickly, including the sortie of parts of the Black Sea fleet? It takes a lot of time, planning, and even movement and stockpiling of logistics to make that happen. The troubling question raised is how was it missed by -- apparently -- so many?"

Russia's newly acquired sensitivities concerning the humanitarian situation in the breakaway territories along with accusations of genocide and ethic cleansing throw back into the West's face their own novel pretexts for violent intervention in the former Yugoslavia. In geopolitical terms this is the logical blow-back from the West's bombing of Belgrade and Kosovo's independence (for as long as it isn't integrated in Greater Albania).

- Caption: Fresco in Ishkhani or Manglisi Church (11th century) -

Front Page: "Cold War II?" writes: "Now in retaliation, Russia sees the opportunity to inflict the same fate on America’s Caucasian ally. It reasons that if Serbia is divisible, then so is Georgia. Like the Albanians in Kosovo, the Abkhazians and South Ossetians should have the right to secede if they do not want to remain part of Georgia. And they don’t. As proof, many people in these two rebellious areas, as many as 90 per cent according to one report, have taken Russian citizenship" ... a clear case of demographic engineering.

During a press meeting in Moscow this afternoon French President Nicolas Sarkozy, when asked if replacing the Russian peace-keepers in the two separatist territories in Georgia with neutral, international troops might help the situation, Russia's President Medvedev rejected the notion categorically. Indeed how else can the traditional machinations be applied? "Russian Imperialism - It's Back":

"In Transnistria, a secessionist area of Moldova, Russian “peacekeepers” have kept the local gang of unreconstructed Stalinist smugglers since the early 1990s, and in Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian territory, it is the same “peacekeepers” and mercenaries who have ethnically cleansed the Georgian majority and annexed the area. The pattern has been the same in Abkhazia and South Ossetia – Russia has unilaterally granted citizenship to the secessionists and then, when Georgia has tried to recover its territorial integrity, claimed that it has the right, and duty, to defend its “citizens” - a claim repeated on August 8 by President Dmitry Medvedev, and reminiscent of the old Soviet “struggle for peace” in places like Afghanistan."

More information on the following links:

- Wall Street Journal: "The War in Georgia Is a War for the West," by Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili

- Financial Times: "Saakashvili says Moscow wants to oust him" - includes an interesting video commentary by the International Affairs Editor

- Here's Black Five's Georgia blogroll:

Baltic Times
Civil.Ge
The Messenger
Scraps of Moscow
All About Latvia
Lex Libertas
foreign notes
Registan.net
Novayagazeta
Yezhednevny zhurnal
Global Voices
The 8th Circl
A Fistful of Euros
Nosemonkey's EUtopia
Wu Wei

- Times Online archive Sept. 26, 1924: "The Revolt in Georgia - A General Rising"

- The file on Kosovo and Bosnia: "The Balkan Caliphate"

- History and culture of Georgia

- Filed on Articles in "Caucasian Heat" -

The Heat is on in the Caucasus (update)

Both parties disagree which side upset the status quo: Russia says it is protecting the ninety percent of the South Ossetian population who hold Russian citizenship; Georgian President Shaakashvili claims Georgia has been attacked for its pro Western position. There's no contradiction here thanks to a fateful error made elsewhere by the West. At this point the plot thickens, as a mirror image of Kosovo's secession from Serbia emerges.

Circumstantial evidence or double bluff, Georgia is only now repatriating its troops from Iraq, after the fact.

And what should we read in the fact that both Vladimir Putin and George Bush were attending the Beijing Olympics when the news broke?

Meantime reports have it the fighting has spread to nearby Abghazia, another breakaway region attacking Georgia.

- Caption: ethnic map of the Causasus -

President Saakashvili said 150 Russian tanks invaded Georgian territory on 7th August at 23:50 hours. He claims the Russians have been holding military manoeuvres for months, openly discussing the invasion with the protection of the Russian citizens in S. Ossetia as a pretext. Georgia for its part sought to preserve its territory, but apparently overplayed its hand.

But it is also a fact, that Russia has an entire history of waging war on civilian populations. Its style of warfare is to simply obliterate the will to fight. Residential complexes are indiscriminately bombed - no sensitivities over collateral damage there. Already the burnt out, Soviet style apartment buildings resemble scenes from the Chechen wars (first and second) (image: Grozny).

The Russian Black Sea fleet is preparing a blockade of Georgian ports.

A handful of orthodox thinkers have been warning for years of the dangers of Kosovo breaking away from Serbia, to no avail: how can any number of separatist actions be avoided with that precedent in mind? Ironically it was only Russia that supported Serbia in seeking to preserve its territorial integrity, but the postmodern tranzies wanted Kosovo's independence. Today in Georgia the shoe is on the other foot with Russia in the role of NATO, playing the humanitarian card. But no one is prepared as yet to interpret the Ossetian bit for independence as a 'Lockean revolution.'

CNN just reported that Vladimir Putin has arrived in the region. Just how that will influence the situation will be seen in the coming hours.

Meantime, here's some background information by George Gvishiani:

Georgia and the South Caucasus: "BACKGROUND: Russian Invasion of Georgia"

Please distribute to all relevant platforms on the Facebook or on other websites this statement of the Georgian Embassy in the US (they are my friends). File is attached and main text is in this e-mail below. I've just talked with Government in Tbilisi and with our Embassy here ... Almost all Gov. sites are down. Here is the text. Russian planes are hitting Poti where we have main communication points. (...) During the last 24 hours military forces of the Russian Federation in coordination with the Russian-supported and supplied South Ossetian militia launched combined air and ground attacks on Georgian territory. (...)

The Danger Room has another perspective:

Danger Room: "Did the U.S. Prep Georgia for War with Russia?"

Georgia and Russia are careening towards war. And the U.S. isn't exactly a detached observer in the fight. The American military has been training and equipping Georgian troops for years. The news thus far: Georgia, which has been locked in a drone war over the separatist enclave of Abkhazia, has launched an offensive to reclaim another breakaway territory, South Ossetia. Latest reports indicate that Georgian forces are laying siege to Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital. And Russia, which has backed the separatists, is sending in the tanks. So why should we care? Oh, just the prospect of a larger regional war that could drag in Russia – and involve the United States as well. When I last visited South Ossetia, Georgian troops manned a checkpoint outside Tskhinvali -- decked out in surplus U.S. Army uniforms and new body armor. (...) One of the U.S. military trainers put it to me a bit more bluntly. “We’re giving them the knife,” he said. “Will they use it?” >>>

Update: Here are two links on the oil connection:

SF Gate: "Georgia's oil pipeline is key to U.S. support"

(...) The pipeline that crosses Georgia can pump slightly more than 1 million barrels of crude oil per day, or more than 1 percent of the world's daily crude output. The 1,100-mile pipeline carries oil from Azerbaijan's Caspian Sea fields, estimated to hold the world's third-largest reserves. Its potential vulnerability was already in the spotlight after it was sabotaged this week, apparently by Kurdish separatists. Most of the oil is bound for Western Europe, where gas prices are even higher than the $4 and more a gallon that U.S. consumers are now paying. With only so much oil to go around, what the pipeline carries affects prices elsewhere. The United States also hopes it will be a model for other development projects that could have a more direct effect on the U.S. market. (...) >>>

Reuters: "Russian jets targeted major oil pipeline-Georgia"

Russian fighter jets targeted the the major Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which carries oil to the West from Asia but missed, Georgia's Economic Development Minister Ekaterina Sharashidze said on Saturday. (...) There have been no independent verifications (...) >>>

Update:

Pajamas: "Russia’s Pathetic Defenders"

(...) Let’s be clear: What happened in Georgia is that Russia gave diplomatic recognition and support to a breakaway region of another country without international agreement, massed troops on the border, repeatedly violated Georgian airspace, shot down a Georgian aircraft, fired missiles into Georgian territory, and attempted to assassinate a major Georgian official in the region. Then it goaded the region into launching an attack on Georgian forces, and when Georgia finally responded with a limited strike against the region, after more than a year of provocation during which Georgia responded only with diplomatic protests, Russian invaded and seized the region, including the use of strategic bombers that destroyed civilian apartment blocks. Now, the breakaway region is engaged in massive attacks on Georgian civilians, in the manner of a pogrom. (...) >>>

- Filed on Articles in "Caucasian Heat" -