🚀 go-pugleaf

freedomtofascism.com wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Dec 2006 05:45:55 -0500, ah <splifingate@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>www.freedomtofascism.com wrote:
>>> On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:15:00 -0500, ah <splifingate@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>>If you're an American, Brit or Israeli  in the Cascaus you're considered a terrorist.
>>> 
>>> November 20, 2006  
>>> Conflict in the Caucasus 
>>> First battleground in the new Cold War?  
>>> 
>>> by Justin Raimondo 
>>> 
>>> As world attention is fixed on events in the Middle East, particularly the
>>> continuing meltdown of the American occupation in Iraq, another crisis
>>> brews. It is the coming showdown between the U.S. and Russia, centered in
>>> the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Relations between Russia and Georgia,
>>> never good, degenerated recently when members of Georgian opposition parties
>>> were arrested, along with four Russian military officers, and charged with
>>> espionage. The Russians retaliated by ending commercial ties, deporting
>>> Georgians living in Russia, and closing the border.
>>> 
>>> To begin with, a little context: when the Soviet empire imploded, the
>>> various pieces were left to themselves, and in most cases the old Communist
>>> elite merely reasserted itself in the form of a local autocracy. Eduard
>>> Shevardnadze, the suave Soviet diplomat who served as the last Soviet
>>> foreign minister, seized power in a coup against elected Georgian President
>>> Zviad Gamsakhurdia and charmed the West into supporting his post-Soviet
>>> dictatorship. Georgia was put on a path to NATO membership and became the
>>> second largest per-capita recipient of U.S. aid – after Israel, of course –
>>> but Shevardnadze didn't toe the line completely, so he had to go. "Shevvy,"
>>> as U.S. officials called him, lost out, as Gwynne Dyer notes, when he defied
>>> Washington on a crucial matter:
>>> 
>>> "When Shevardnadze signed a deal last year with the Russian gas giant
>>> Gazprom, Washington went ballistic. Bush's energy adviser Steven Mann flew
>>> in to warn Shevardnadze not to go ahead with the deal, Mikhail Saakashvili
>>> denounced it – and Shevardnadze signed it anyway."
>>> 
>>> With plenty of help from George Soros, Georgia's "Rose Revolution" gave
>>> birth to the Saakashvili regime, which, like its predecessor, has
>>> degenerated into outright repression: arrests of opposition leaders, the
>>> closing of independent media outlets, harassment of political opponents –
>>> all of this culminating in a demagogic campaign against a supposed
>>> pro-Russian "fifth column" in the opposition ranks. The jails are filled
>>> with Mikheil Saakashvili's critics, and human rights organizations confirm
>>> that the bloom is long gone from the Rose Revolution. 
>>> 
>>> When a domestic crisis threatens the power of the leader at home, the
>>> age-old solution is to provoke some foreign trouble to divert attention away
>>> from the real problem and drum up support for the government. In Georgia,
>>> this tactic means vowing, once again, to retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia –
>>> two autonomous regions that have declared independence. Saakashvili's
>>> defense minister recently boasted that Georgian troops will celebrate the
>>> New Year in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia's capital city. 
>>> 
>>> In the case of South Ossetia, which recently voted overwhelmingly in a
>>> referendum in favor of independence, the ethnic Russians who make up the
>>> majority population of this region want reunification with Russia. They were
>>> forcibly prevented from doing so until South Ossetian rebel forces drove out
>>> Shevardnadze in the 1990s. Georgian efforts to bully the Ossetians are
>>> supported by the Europeans, who have discounted the referendum results in
>>> advance, and by such American bigwigs as Sen. John McCain, who visited
>>> Tskhinvali in August, and used the occasion to declare:
>>> 
>>> "Because there was not a direct response to our questions about why OSCE has
>>> been blocked from doing its job; why there has been no progress on peace
>>> initiatives from Georgia, from the UN, from the OSCE, from other
>>> organizations – there has been no progress. I think that the attitude there
>>> is best described by what you see by driving in [Tskhinvali]: a very large
>>> billboard with a picture of Vladimir Putin on it, which says 'Vladimir Putin
>>> Our President.' I do not believe that Vladimir Putin is now, or ever should
>>> be, the president of sovereign Georgian soil."
>>> 
>>> Is it really the role of a U.S. senator to decide what is and is not
>>> "sovereign Georgian soil"? Surely there is a limit to even McCain's
>>> arrogance. After all, the question of exactly where the boundaries of
>>> post-Soviet states should be drawn in order to make some sense, and at the
>>> same time ensure justice, is so incredibly complex that even experts on the
>>> region come away perplexed. Yet here is McCain, sanctimoniously echoing the
>>> rabidly nationalistic rhetoric of Saakashvili and his followers as if it
>>> were undisputed fact. 
>>> 
>>> The rebellion of tiny Abkhazia is even more complex: the Abkhazians seek to
>>> establish their own independent republic, and have resisted Georgian efforts
>>> to reincorporate them into Georgia proper. Ethnic Abkhazians form a distinct
>>> national minority within Georgia, with their own language, a long history –
>>> Abkhazia is the ancient kingdom of Colchis, land of the Golden Fleece – and,
>>> now, a functioning democracy that has clearly expressed the will of the
>>> people. Yet no country anywhere recognizes Abkhazia, not even the Russians,
>>> who are nevertheless championing their cause in a number of ways, including
>>> issuing passports to Abkhazian (and Ossetian) nationals. 
>>> 
>>> A recently passed UN resolution clearly puts the onus on Georgia, which has
>>> been the most belligerent party, to put an end to the conflict. The text
>>> "once again urges the Georgian side to address seriously legitimate Abkhaz
>>> security concerns, to avoid steps which could be seen as threatening, and to
>>> refrain from militant rhetoric and provocative actions, especially in upper
>>> Kodori valley."
>>> 
>>> The Georgians have been aggressive of late, invading the disputed Kodori
>>> Gorge and using it as a base from which to attack the Abkhazians.
>>> Saakashvili and his government are clearly intent on provoking some sort of
>>> conflict, and the only question is whether they will receive U.S. backing.
>>> Recent statements by Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, cited by the
>>> Moscow Times as being "adamantly opposed to a military option on the part of
>>> the Georgian government," cast doubt on the possibility, but with this
>>> administration you never know. 
>>> 
>>> The anti-Russian rhetoric coming out of John McCain's mouth, dutifully
>>> echoed by the White House, is not just talk. The playing of the "Great Game"
>>> in Central Asia involves a U.S. strategy to lock the Russians out of the oil
>>> bonanza and claim the area as an alternative source of energy, i.e., an
>>> alternative to the Middle East. This may have something to do with why the
>>> regime-changers have their sights set on the former Soviet Union, demonizing
>>> Vladimir Putin as the alleged reincarnation of Joseph Stalin and targeting
>>> Russia as a renewed threat to the West. 
>>> 
>>> The Russians are using the Ossetian and Abkhazian examples as counterpoints
>>> to the recent suggestion by the Western occupiers of Kosovo that the
>>> formerly Serbian province be granted formal independence. The Kosovars are
>>> demanding it, and why, after all, did the U.S. and its European allies fight
>>> a war to "liberate" Kosovo from the former Yugoslavia, anyway? Yet if Kosovo
>>> deserves independence, then why not Abkhazia and South Ossetia? This riposte
>>> is meant to stick in the craw of the Europeans, who have made a special
>>> point of taking the Georgian side in this dispute. 
>>> 
>>> Russian "peacekeepers," OSCE "observers," South Ossetian troops, and the
>>> U.S.-trained-and-equipped Georgian military are facing off along ill-defined
>>> borders, with renegade "rebel" bands supporting one side or the other
>>> running wild in the no-man's land in between. This is a recipe for disaster,
>>> and an armed confrontation is bound to occur, with the distinct possibility
>>> of escalating into all-out warfare. The Russians would soon be drawn in, and
>>> the U.S. could not escape being dragged into this particular vortex – with
>>> fateful consequences all 'round. 
>>> 
>>> I can just hear McCain barnstorming the country in '08, denouncing "Russian
>>> imperialism" and demanding that we "stop Putin" in the Caucasus before
>>> Russian troops cross the Bering Straits. 
>>> 
>>> Whether or not Abkhazia deserves independence, or South Ossetia should be
>>> part of the Russian Federation, are questions that Washington should take no
>>> position on, because no legitimate American interests are involved. We have
>>> no business meddling in Russia's "near abroad." We should, however,
>>> recognize the de facto governments of these two breakaway regions, simply as
>>> a matter of diplomatic convenience: we can't understand what is happening if
>>> we don't have people on the ground. We should also use our considerable
>>> leverage with Saakashvili to get him to back off: his inflammatory rhetoric
>>> during Georgia's recent election campaign, and the statement by his defense
>>> minister that Georgian troops would have a New Year's party in the capital
>>> of South Ossetia, does not inspire much confidence. 
>>> 
>>> What seems like a small, obscure dispute could balloon into a major crisis
>>> because of the stakes involved. The rising amount of U.S. aid to Georgia
>>> greatly aids Saakashvili's military buildup: his belligerence begs for a
>>> stern rebuke, perhaps an aid cutoff. It's time to rein in this would-be
>>> Napoleon-of-the-steppes and nip Georgian imperialism in the bud – before it
>>> destabilizes what is, after all, a volatile region. If John McCain, George
>>> Soros, Anne Applebaum, and the usual neoconservative suspects have their
>>> way, Georgia may be the first battleground of a revived Cold War. The
>>> problem is that the conflict may turn hot with frightening swiftness.
>>> 
>>>  http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10043
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 
>>
>>Retract these lies, immediately!
>>
>>The clock is ticking...
> 
> It's much more fun 'coercing' the CIA into destroying Wall Street.

As if . . . .
-- 
ah