🚀 go-pugleaf

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...

Shut up a(ss)h(ole).

--
COOSN-266-06-39716
Official Overseer of Kooks and Saucerheads in alt.astronomy
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  as designated by Brad Guth

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