Chronicling the evolution of this spiraling conflict that was threatening to escape the strategic designs of all the parties involved has provided a unique perspective on what contemporary Russia represents in and for (the future of) Eurasia and how the perceptions and behavior of her leaders might relate to her deep past especially in terms of national character (communitarian anthropology), evolving identity (torn between East and West), lack of fully formed civilizational core (unlike China, India, and Europe), etc., shaping he political choices. [to be completed]

The earlier among these almost daily posts on the conflict were, for the most part, simply compilation of links to significant news reports and opinion pieces (I was just leaving on a two-week vacation and had time for Internet browsing only early in the morning and late at night). Since the vast majority of the Anglophone media seemed to be serving as a global echo-chamber to amplify a truncated, crudely propagandistic version of the events and of the larger stakes involved, I focused on articles more sympathetic to Russian concerns or, at the very least, that made a serious attempt to understand the concerns of its leaders. In the process, I began to separate (though not too consistently) within each post the links  to dissident voices (below the horizontal bar) from those news reports (above the bar) that simply described the developing scenarios or served to illustrate the Anglo-American outlook (often relayed by the even non-English European media). After returning from vacation on 23rd August, I began to include summarizing extracts from many of the linked opinion pieces, and eventually started providing my own sustained commentary on the wider issues. The digest below is a compilation of my posts in reverse chronology that allows the reader to start on the firmer ground of ascertained facts, eventual balance of forces, and broad conceptual overview, before drilling one's way back to the obscure and disputed threads at the source of the conflict (the details and sequence of which are now of less interest in themselves). I have, however, begun retroactively adding [within square brackets] key extracts from the related articles to the earlier compilation of links [and retrospectively recording my evolving perceptions where reevant].

This endeavor has been greatly facilitated by the insightful, incisive, and delightfully personalized commentaries based on very close 'psycho-political' readings of the Anglophone press offered daily by Philippe Grasset at his www.dededensa.org web site, both on this Georgia conflict of August and the global financial meltdown of September 2008 (which have become closely interlinked in global consciousness insofar as they have undermined US power and prestige). These have allowed me, for the most part, to simply build on his analyses and hypotheses but from a perspective that is more civilizational than political. It has been a privilege to translate below numerous extracts from his regular blog-postings, and I would recommend my Francophone readers to follow up by scrutinizing his original articles in their entirety. Whereas Philippe focuses broadly on the growing "void" (vide), if not black hole, at the core of the Euro-Atlantist project of global leadership, I have been more interested, ultimately, in exploring how the (peaceful) rise of Eurasia, and its constituent civilizations, could help fill this void and provide more solid foundations for the future.

 [Introduction to be revised and completed]

Sunthar

Related threads at svAbhinava:

Global financial meltdown and its geopolitical implications: the implosion of homo oeconomicus - Sunthar V

Anti-Atlantic Imperialism, Greater Europe, or Asian Renaissance: which Eurasianism for Russia? - Sunthar V

"A crisis for nothing?" - Patrick Dombrowsky (Les Milieux des Empires, vol.#15, Sep 2008)

---

Anatol Lieven, "Against Russophobia", World Policy Journal, Winter 2000/2001

Philippe Grasset, "Sarko, or the man for others" (17 November 2008)

---

"What Really Happened in South Ossetia" (BBC documentary by Tom Whewell)

How is it they can put Karadzic in the Hague, but not Saakashvili??

It's great the West finally told the truth.

Truth is the first victim of war. But TRUTH is coming out. Slowly. Painfully. "Russia invaded 20 hours before". The tape the Georgians made of two Ossetian border guards? Why they are speaking Georgian? Not Russian, or Ossetian? Convenience? Bullshit.

That's what Russia said from the beginning but all was standing behind USA... I agree with angleechaneen... Saakashvili must go to Hague... and those who gave him weapons like Yushchenko and Israel.

The BBC-guys new the truth from the very beginning of Georgian invasion, and we know that they knew.

Now u Americans understand what happened? or u r still lying to your selfs? Russia stopped this war and Americans trained Georgian troops and gave them money and weapons and another bunch of American troops to provoke Russia, Saakashvilli is a sick person u shudnt believe him if u call your selfs Americans pleas don't let other nations think what an American is but proof that u can believe in truth and that ur not victims of American politics and forget about independent press which is victim of [$$$].

You know what. It's a great shame that the BBC chose to present false events on their 'news' broadcasts. Because they do know what's going on. But they often do this. In the News they will absolutely lie and spread propaganda about Russia like it's going out of fashion... Then they'll turn around and produce great productions like this that are spot on and 100% truth. I really don't understand it.

I knew Georgia were the instigators of this conflict, but couldn't understand why, do you? This video is good, but I still don't understand what the motive was, and what part the U.S/West had to play. What was the motive? that's what I don't know..the truth may never come out about what happened.

Do you want to know what's the motive? I think it was US trap to get Russia. They expected to get Russia to take Tbilisi and the pipeline in Georgia which is very important for Europe. It would be a very serious reason to get NATO to Georgia and begin a war between Russia and Europe. It would help USA to avoid of crisis and get a very good profit as they did during WWII. That's why they left the Rockski tunnel, didn't really fight with Russian forces, prepared a media war, tried to stop Sarkozy.

Look at the flag of the European Union in the background at 8:17 - what the fuck is it doing there? Georgia is not part of the EU, unless they've already been granted membership behind our backs. It must be a joke - I hope it's a joke or EU has once again exposed its conspiratorial Imperialist and Expansionist nature. Anyway, good video, although it was apparent all the time that Georgia - backed by NATO (U.S.) - started the war.

-------------

I don't believe in America. | let's see if we can do better when we have someone who thinks instead of just acts in the White House in January.

Saakashvili says he regrets. And then adds that he had no choice - apparently he had to kill these people to save his democracy. No wonder there's George W. Bush highway in Tbilisi. Both killed thousands, forgeting about the UN first human right - the right to live. F*ck their type of democracy!

Just look at Saakashvili at the end...Mumbling, making no sense, pathetic...Even Lavrov, who's not a president, has more skill explaining things. And at the end of the day, look for those who benefit from the war...Did someone just say "America"?! Oops

Thank you Tim Whewell, for bringing the truth to the West.

Viewer comments on BBC: What really happened in South Ossetia? - Part 1, Part 2

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon's plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev's previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact. Both presidents concluded a Russia-EU summit, in Nice in the south of France, with an agreement to convene a major international conference next summer at which the Americans, Russians and the 27 countries of the EU should come up with a blueprint for new post-cold war "security architecture" in Europe. The call for such a pact has been Medvedev's central foreign policy message since he succeeded Vladimir Putin as president earlier this year. Medvedev has called for the new deal in several keynote speeches but has been snubbed by western leaders until Sarkozy delivered a characteristic surprise yesterday, appearing to hijack the subject. Sarkozy said: "We could meet in mid-2009 to lay the foundations of what could possibly be a future pan-European security system." The Russians see such a deal as a way of halting Nato enlargement and stopping the controversial US missile defence projects in Poland and the Czech Republic. While western European leaders are lukewarm about the Pentagon project and president-elect Barack Obama has yet to reveal his policies, Sarkozy went further yesterday, branding the project a setback for European security.

"Sarkozy backs Russian calls for pan-European security pact" (Guardian, 15 November 2008)

How 'free' are the Western democracies when their mainstream media not only systematically distort the wider context of current events but manipulate the vital information on the basis of which we are expected arrive at ‘rational’ choices?

Does this documentary vindicate the BBC as being on the very frontline of the effort to discover and report the truth, or is this rather a belated attempt at ‘reputation management’ so as to continue effectively ‘manufacturing consensus’?

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (02 November 2008)

"Resumption of Europe-Russia partnership: is the (not just Caucuses) game up for the U.S.?”]

---

"Should we be scared of Russia?" (BBC Panorama, YouTube playlist)

Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression. Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia’s inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm. The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia’s insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. […] The monitors were members of an international team working under the mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E. A multilateral organization with 56 member states, the group has monitored the conflict since a previous cease-fire agreement in the 1990s. The observations by the monitors, including a Finnish major, a Belarussian airborne captain and a Polish civilian, have been the subject of two confidential briefings to diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, one in August and the other in October. Summaries were shared with The New York Times by people in attendance at both. Details were then confirmed by three Western diplomats and a Russian, and were not disputed by the O.S.C.E.’s mission in Tbilisi, which was provided with a written summary of the observations. Mr. Saakashvili, who has compared Russia’s incursion into Georgia to the Nazi annexations in Europe in 1938 and the Soviet suppression of Prague in 1968, faces domestic unease with his leadership and skepticism about his judgment from Western governments. […] “The Georgians have been quite clear that they were shelling targets — the mayor’s office, police headquarters — that had been used for military purposes,” said Matthew J. Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state and one of Mr. Saakashvili’s vocal supporters in Washington. Those claims have not been independently verified, and Georgia’s account was disputed by Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain who was the senior O.S.C.E. representative in Georgia when the war broke out. Mr. Grist said that he was in constant contact that night with all sides, with the office in Tskhinvali and with Wing Commander Stephen Young, the retired British military officer who leads the monitoring team. “It was clear to me that the attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation,” Mr. Grist said. “The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town.” […] Neither Georgia nor its Western allies have as yet provided conclusive evidence that Russia was invading the country or that the situation for Georgians in the Ossetian zone was so dire that a large-scale military attack was necessary, as Mr. Saakashvili insists. […] With a paucity of reliable and unbiased information available, the O.S.C.E. observations put the United States in a potentially difficult position. The United States, Mr. Saakashvili’s principal source of international support, has for years accepted the organization’s conclusions and praised its professionalism. Mr. Bryza refrained from passing judgment on the conflicting accounts. “I wasn’t there,” he said, referring to the battle. “We didn’t have people there. But the O.S.C.E. really has been our benchmark on many things over the years.”

“Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question” (New York Times, 06 November 2008)

I always read the New York Times the way Sovietologists used to read Izvestia, the government newspaper, and I half-kiddingly always ask the question: is the New York Times playing the role of Izvestia or the role of Pravda, which was the party newspaper? The New York Times owes its success, its long-term success, economic and otherwise, to being close to the government, to being sort of the semiofficial government newspaper and giving the administration line to the public fairly unfiltered. And Michael Gordon is just a tool. He’s just a conduit for this policy that the paper has been pursuing for decades. So, what’s interesting about Michael Gordon is that when he did the reporting on the phony aluminum tube story with Judith Miller four years ago, he somehow escaped unharmed and is now thriving. He has a book out, as you saw, and he’s doing very well, and he’s going around acting like he’s an expert on Iraq, when, in fact, he’s still playing the role of conduit for the official line, the Army line or the government line, depending on who he’s talking to on what day.

Rick MacArthur (Publisher of Harper’s Magazine), Interviewed by Amy Goodman (Democracy Now, 13 Feb 2007)

The New York Times on Friday carried a front-page article headlined “Accounts Undercut Claims by Georgia on Russia War.” The article cited a report by the [OSCE], a multinational association of 56 member states whose monitors were in Georgia when the fighting broke out, which demolishes the official US account of the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war, according to which the war was an act of Russian aggression. […] US government and media reporting at the time turned reality on its head, denouncing Russia in chorus for its “aggression.” As Russia sent reinforcements to South Ossetia and expelled Georgian forces, President Bush denounced Russia's response as “disproportionate.” Vice President Dick Cheney said, “Russian aggression must not go unanswered,” adding that its continuation would have “serious consequences” for Russia’s relations with the United States. In its August 12 editorial, the Times wrote, “Moscow claims it is merely defending the rights of ethnic minorities in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which have been trying to break from Georgia since the early 1990s. But its ambitions go far beyond that. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin [...] appears determined to reimpose by force and intimidation as much of the old Soviet sphere of influence as he can get away with.” In its Friday article, the Times implied that the findings of the OSCE was new information about which the newspaper was previously unaware. However, its own account contradicts this self-serving depiction of its role in spreading disinformation about the Georgian-Russian conflict. The article notes that OSCE representative Grist last August “gave a briefing to diplomats from the European Union that drew from the monitors’ observations and included his assessments. He then soon resigned under unclear circumstances.” There can be no doubt that the Times (as well as the US government) was aware of Grist’s report soon after it was given to EU officials. […] In fact, the OSCE report completely refutes the US line, which was shot through with inconsistencies. While seeking to place the blame on Russia, the US media also spread claims that Georgian forces had acted without US knowledge—even though the US kept over 100 military advisors in Georgia in the run-up to the invasion, which followed soon after a major exercise with US forces entitled “Immediate Response 2008.” Washington seized on the Russian-Georgian conflict to place missile defenses and troops in Poland and the Czech Republic, raising the specter of a direct military clash with Russia. It dismissed Russian claims of Georgian aggression out of hand. Republican presidential candidate John McCain telephoned Saakashvili and told him, “Today we're all Georgians.” Then-Democratic candidate Barack Obama issued a statement from Hawaii, where he was on vacation, denouncing Russian “aggression.” Later, in ceremonies for the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the candidates joined forces to issue calls for “national service,” with Obama saying, “If we are going to war, then all of us go, not just some.” Definite political conclusions must be drawn from a situation that created the potential for global war. First and foremost is the utter unreliability of the US political establishment and media, which expressed hardly any dissenting views, even as more critical accounts emerged in the European press in sharp contradiction to their accounts. The prominence the New York Times gave to its account of the OSCE report—the article was the front-page lead and continued to a full-page article in the inside pages—suggests a deliberate operation to prepare public opinion for a shift in US policy in the region. With President-elect Obama committed to increasing the US military presence in Afghanistan and the US facing a major economic recession, an attempt seems to be underway to repair relations with Russia, possibly at Saakashvili's expense. In Tbilisi 10,000 protestors marched against Saakashvili yesterday, marking the one-year anniversary of his violent repression of demonstrations supporting rival nationalist Irakli Okruashvili. The US also announced plans yesterday to open negotiations with Russia over nuclear weapons and the controversial US nuclear missile defense shield aimed at Russia. The talks would aim to revise the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and assuage “Moscow's growing opposition to a US missile-defense system for Europe,” according to the Wall Street Journal. A State Department official told the Journal such negotiations would not conclude under the Bush administration, but would rather “help get the ball rolling” for President-elect Obama.

Alex Lantier, “A damning admission on the Georgian war” (World Socialist Website, 08 November 2008)

The [OSCE] has been accused of failing to warn that this summer's Russia-Georgia conflict was looming. A former senior OSCE official, Ryan Grist, told the BBC he had warned of Georgia's military activity before its move into the South Ossetia region. He said it was an "absolute failure" reports were not passed on by bosses. But OSCE President Alexander Stubb said the risks were transmitted to member governments and the system worked well. […] Mr Grist said: "The OSCE had been working in South Ossetia for many many years. We were the one institution that knew, had a feel for what was going on there at the mission level. […] "There clearly wasn't the eye on the ball on the higher diplomatic level I would say. Because it was clear that something was brewing." He said he had made it "very clear" at a briefing to ambassadors there was a "severe escalation". "It would give the Russian Federation any excuse it needed in terms of trying to support its own troops," Mr Grist said. But Mr Stubb said reports were sent to member governments, who then made their own assessments. He added: "I myself got worrying information around the 7th of August that something, so to say, is cooking but that was going on all the time on both sides." Mr Stubb said the OSCE only had "diplomatic means" but admitted those means had failed. "That's why we had to act immediately when the war had started. Then we only had one aim and that was a ceasefire and I think we succeeded quite well in that." The OSCE has had a mission in Georgia since 1992 and last month co-hosted talks with the EU and UN that ended without the two protagonists meeting.

“OSCE 'failed' in Georgia warnings” (BBC, 08 November 2-008)

Dmitri Medvedev is to go to Washington next week for the first time as Russian president, with the chances of a meeting with president-elect Barack Obama clouded by his decision to station missiles in the heart of Europe. Medvedev's military announcement, in a speech delayed by a month in order to coincide with the election of the new White House occupant, sent a hostile message towards an Obama administration, aimed to sow friction between European capitals and a new-look Washington, and sought to intimidate the Poles and the Czechs, who are to host the bases for the Pentagon's missile defence project. Iskander-M short-range missiles will be deployed in Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost garrison, an isolated enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. The Russian announcement was the sole menacing message amid a wave of global optimism that accompanied the Democratic triumph in the US. Just as western diplomats and analysts were suggesting relations between Russia and the west, at their worst since the end of the cold war, could improve, the Russian leader's salvo was seen as an unnecessary challenge to Obama, who will be wary of appearing weak on national security. […] Lithuania is leading a losing battle within the EU to keep negotiations with Moscow frozen, and is furious at what it sees as a British U-turn in favour of resuming talks on a new strategic pact between the EU and Russia. British officials confirmed yesterday that the government favoured resuming talks with Moscow, which were suspended in September after the UK strongly criticised Russia over the Georgia crisis. "The UK view is that we want to get back to a position to pursue these negotiations," said a diplomat. […] The optimistic view among diplomats is that Medvedev delivered his threat to clear the air while the Bush administration is still in office, and that he is keen to pursue more ambitious nuclear arms cuts with the incoming Obama team. Yesterday, after his speech, the Kremlin announced that Medvedev had congratulated Obama for winning the US presidency, saying by telegram he was "counting on a constructive dialogue with you on the basis of trust and taking each other's interests into account". Medvedev is to make his first presidential trip to Washington next week to take part in the G20 summit on the global economic crisis. The Russian foreign ministry said he could meet Obama on the margins of the summit.

Ian Traynor, “Russia fires warning shot over US missile plan” (Guardian, 07 November 2008)

Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country’s bloody five-day war with Russia in August.Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds. Their accounts seem likely to undermine the American-backed claims of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that his little country was the innocent victim of Russian aggression and acted solely in self-defence. [...] Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister who helped broker the ceasefire that ended the war and has been a fierce critic of the Russian invasion of Georgia, is tomorrow due to announce a commission of inquiry into the conflict at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. The inquiry will be chaired by a Swiss expert as a mark of independence and will try to establish who was to blame for the conflict. European and OSCE sources say it is likely to seek evidence from the two former British officers. The inquiry comes as the EU softens its hardline position towards Russia amid mounting European scepticism about Saakashvili’s judgment.

"Georgia fired first shot, say UK monitors" (Times Online, 09 November 2008)

There were elaborate explanations yesterday as to why the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, had chosen to greet the election of a liberal to the White House by deploying nuclear missiles in its western enclave of Kaliningrad. Russia, we were told, was laying down a marker. It was saying: you can not ignore us. Or Medvedev was testing a greenhorn leader to see how he would react. There was every explanation except the obvious one: cause and effect. The cause was America's decision to deploy missiles and a radar system on Russia's border. It was a decision which no Russian president of any hue could ignore. […] The Kremlin is not blameless: it is nationalist, autocratic, the battleground of rival clans capable of provoking a conflict in the Caucasus for the purpose of sending a message to each other. But the regional stakes are now getting high. Mr Obama has to convene an early bilateral summit with Mr Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, his prime minister. The two sides need to untangle the issues dividing them, not tie them ever tighter into an intractable knot. If he does nothing and gets dragged in by proxies such as Georgia, Barack Obama's first international emergency may not be Iraq or Afghanistan but Russia.

“Poker with missiles” (The Guardian editorial, 07 November 200

Several points may be noted as a result of all these developments. The new Obama team seems to have already taken the measure of U.S. capacity in the present circumstances, with the judgment that the U.S. can do nothing in Europe if they want to maintain their position or even augment the latter in Afghanistan. It is a recognition of the well-marked limits of U.S. power, following the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon's budget mess, and the financial and economic crisis. It is quite likely that this revaluation was already underway before Obama’s election, and was done in coordination with the current administration, to facilitate the transition and the change of policy. There is clearly a deal that appears to have been made between the Obama team and the Bush administration, the latter preparing some political and strategic dispositions to facilitate certain restrictive measures in the U.S. policy of engagement. In exchange, it would seem that Obama will not throw GW Bush too much into the shade in his final weeks, for example by agreeing not to be present at the G-20 summit on the financial crisis of 15 November 2008 in Washington. Bush can at least maintain the illusion of having served for something till the end. It's good for morale. The demonstration seems to have been driven home that a firm attitude that diverges clearly from the ecstatic reactions of the rest of the world at the time of Obama’s election does indeed pay. The Russians have welcomed the election coldly and with the announcement of military measures that are hardly engaging from the U.S. point of view (announcement of the deployment of Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad). Result: the U.S. seems driven to discharge ballast [make concessions in a compromised situation – SV] on Georgia and on relations with Russia, including possibly the BMDE. The demonstration would thus be complete. ...This leads to a final remark on one of Obama’s promises, also passed on ecstatically by so many non-US commentators, particularly European, particularly French, on the “restoration of U.S. leadership." This batch of news on Georgia and Russia presents a rather original take on this "restoration." It is possible that we have not yet run out of surprises with the Obama administration. A remark in the form of a postscript: we can only confirm the interest in waiting until the NATO summit (of Foreign Ministers) in December, where the issue of Georgia’s accession to NATO will be on the agenda. We may look forward to the presentation of the U.S. position, — or will the U.S. argue that the transition prevents them from taking a position?

Philippe Grasset, “The Georgian Aggression of 7th August 2008 and the restoration of US leadership” (08 November 2008)

Not only did the Anglo-Americans (in concert with Israel, Ukraine, etc.) plan, instigate, and support the Georgian atrocities in South Ossetia, but they also unleashed a concerted propaganda barrage through a compliant, if not enthusiastic, media campaign to pin the blame on Russia, stirring up popular hysteria by playing upon old stereotypes. It should be clear from the above that impartial reports from concerned members of their own OSCE staff stationed in the war zone were deliberately ignored, suppressed, or played down until it has become no longer possible to do so (in much the same way that dutiful investigations and reports by the FBI and other government agencies preceding 9/11 were sabotaged by higher authorities…”inefficient bureaucracy” again?). Having failed to lay the groundwork for an attack on Iran (Israeli airbases in southern Georgia), to persuade the Europeans to rearm against the (neo-) ‘Soviet’ threat, to keep even its British allies in the same aggressive posture, what has the U.S. gained from this “crisis for nothing”? It has seized upon the intervening couple of months to justify putting the seal on the agreement to deploy its antimissile ‘defense’ in eastern Europe.

Perhaps the most valuable, permanent, and far-reaching result of these successive “U-Turns” on the Georgia conflict has been the inexorable discrediting of the mainstream media even among their Anglo-Saxon publics. Growing international outrage has converged with long pent-up frustration among American citizens at the continuing perversion of the news by their own ‘flagship’ newspapers in yesterday’s well-planned spoof on the credibility of the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes-se.com/2009/07/04/the-end-of-the-experts/

http://svabhinava.org/IndoChina/SuntharVisuvalingam/GeorgiaConflict-frame.php

http://www.nytimes-se.com/

What began as renewed attempts at EU-Russian rapprochement to reduce the risk of runaway confrontation is fast mutating into a common platform to challenge failed U.S. leadership and reckless unilateralism: right now, Sarkozy has joined Medvedev in not only coming up with a unified European front for challenging the status quo in world finances (that Bush is still insistent on defending…) but in denouncing the antimissile system being deployed in Poland and the Czech republic as a needless security risk, an unprecedented move by way of Europe forcefully seizing the initiative in U.S.-Russian relations. It would seem that the U.S., realizing that the game is up, is attempting to make the best out of a bad situation.

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (02 November 2008)

"Resumption of efforts towards Europe-Russia partnership: whom will Britain betray next?”]

---

For the most recent illustration of how the New York Times, the “newspaper of record” is little more than a discreditable propaganda machine, check out these three links in order:

Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question [New York Times]

A damning admission on the Georgian war [World Socialist Web Site]

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/2/13/new_york_times_trumpets_pentagons_claims [Democracy Now]

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (02 November 2008)

"Resumption of efforts towards Europe-Russia partnership: whom will Britain betray next?”]

------

[Editorial note: We hope the people who did this spoof on the NY Times and Tom Friedman don't get sued or go to jail, because this is some of the funniest and at the same time smartest things that have come down the pike in a long time. Send it to your friends. Apparently someone (with a lot of money--that same amount probably would have kept Tikkun funded for another few years) printed a million copies of this bogus issue trying to appear to be the NY Times and had them distributed free throughout NYC. But what is really amazing is not that fact, but what this particular article on Friedman points out--the absolutely disgraceful role that the NY Times plays in spinning the news, whether in foreign policy or domestic or culture or book reviews or the magazine, toward a subservience to the assumptions of the powerful. We saw it when the Times absolutelylied in its story about the founding conference of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, saying we had no specific ideas when in fact we were presenting the Spiritual Covenant with American and the Global Marshall Plan, which you can read at www.spiritualprogressives.org. Or the way the Times always quotes rightwing or establishment figures in the religious world but rarely comes to us spiritual progressives for our perspective. Or the way the Times rarely quotes the views of those American Jews who know that what it means to be pro-Israel in the real world is to be for an end to the Occupation of the West Bank, but instead the Times accepts the propagandistic notion that "pro-Israel" means pro the Occupation policies that have been pursued by both Labor and Likud while strongly opposed by the Israeli peace movement. Worst has been the op-ed page, which has not allowed the views of the spiritual progressive movement to even appear there. So laugh, but also learn by reading this issue of the spoof on the Times. Start reading at: http://www.nytimes-se.com/ [...]

The End of the Experts? Why I'm resigning from being a NY Times columnist

By Thomas J. Friedman 
Published: July 4th, 2009

http://www.nytimes-se.com/2009/07/04/the-end-of-the-experts/

---

Almost hourly over the five-day war, press releases landed on foreign news desks. "Russia continues to attack civilian population." The capital Tbilisi was "intensively" bombed. A downed Russian plane turned out to be "nuclear". European "energy supplies" were threatened as Russia dropped bombs near oil pipelines. A "humanitarian wheat shipment" was blocked. Later, "invading Russian forces" began "the occupation of Georgia". Saakashvili's government filed allegations of ethnic cleansing to The Hague. Note the use of terms that trigger western media interest: civilian victims, nuclear, humanitarian, occupation, ethnic cleansing. It would be unfair to accuse the British press of accepting the Georgian PR uncritically. […]But Georgia's actions in South Ossetia went largely unexamined, and it was hard to find, from press accounts, what refugees from the province were fleeing from. Again, the Georgians played the PR game more skilfully. Western correspondents were welcomed into Gori and shown areas apparently bombed by the Russians. Saakashvili held international media phone conferences, got himself on TV news channels and even found time, within hours of war breaking out, to write for the Wall Street Journal. Russia, by contrast, allowed little access to South Ossetia. Its government attempted no comparable media offensive. Though it also has a PR agency, GPlus Europe in Brussels (and Ketchum in Washington), it was not asked to issue press releases. As a source wryly put it, "the press release is not a common tool of the Russian government". The brief war in the Caucasus was a classic example of the situation outlined in Nick Davies's book Flat Earth News. Most newspapers hadn't a clue what was going on and lacked sufficient resources to find out. So skilfully presented PR was at a premium. Most journalists treated it with at least some scepticism, but it inevitably had an effect. If there was a military war, there was also an information one, and Georgia got the better of it.

Peter Wilby, “Georgia has won the PR War” (The Guardian, 18 August 2008)

So now they tell us. Two months after the brief but bloody war in the Caucasus which was overwhelmingly blamed on Russia by western politicians and media at the time, a serious investigation by the BBC has uncovered a very different story. Not only does the report by Tim Whewell – aired this week on Newsnight and on Radio 4's File on Four - find strong evidence confirming western-backed Georgia as the aggressor on the night of August 7. It also assembles powerful testimony of wide-ranging war crimes carried out by the Georgian army in its attack on the contested region of South Ossetia. They include the targeting of apartment block basements – where civilians were taking refuge – with tank shells and Grad rockets, the indiscriminate bombardment of residential districts and the deliberate killing of civilians, including those fleeing the South Ossetian capital of Tskinvali. The carefully balanced report – which also details evidence of ethnic cleansing by South Ossetian paramilitaries – cuts the ground from beneath later Georgian claims that its attack on South Ossetia followed the start of a Russian invasion the previous night. […] Naturally the man who ordered the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, president Mikheil Saakashvili, denies the war crimes accusations. But what of his Anglo-American sponsors, who insisted at the time that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered"? British foreign secretary David Miliband now accepts Georgia was "reckless" and says he treats the war crimes allegations "extremely seriously". US assistant secretary of state, Daniel Fried, meanwhile concedes Georgia's attack on Tskhinvali was "wrong on several levels", but feels that discussion of its war crimes is "not terribly useful". […] Within a week, the former Foreign Office special adviser David Clark was for example accusing me on Comment is free of making an "important error of fact" by stating that "several hundreds civilians" had been killed by Georgian forces in Tskhinvali. I based that on several reports, including in the Observer. Clark insisted there was "no independent support for this claim". But, as reported by the BBC this week, Human Rights Watch now regards the figure of 300-400 civilian dead in Tskhinvali as a "useful starting point". Meanwhile, with the exception of a small item in the Independent, Whewell's significant new evidence about what actually took place in a conflict likely to have far-reaching strategic consequences has been simply ignored by the rest of the mainstream media.

Seumas Milne, “The truth about South Ossetia” (The Guardian, 31 October 2008

The [Georgian military operation] "Clean Field" [against South Ossetia - SV] had been carefully planned, organised and sponsored by the West. This is one of the reasons [for] the mass hysteria in western media (orchestrated by the State Department, the CIA and such) – to divert public attention from this fact. […] There was not a single word uttered in the western media when Georgia started shelling Tskhinvali, despite the footage broadcast by Russian news channels. Only after Russia had sent its troops into Georgia, western media started its hysteria about Russian invasion, at the wave of a wand. As if that was not bad enough, they were now passing the video footage of the devastation and death in Tskhinvali for that of Gori. Western media has done itself a great disservice. After they were rewriting history in the making, the only response someone who mentions "free and independent" western media gets from people in Russia and many CIS countries is contempt if not homeric laughter. […] It is unbearable to see the video footage of the crimes perpetrated by Georgian troops against S Ossetians, crimes sponsored and supported by the now completely discredited west and its pathetic captive media.

Comment by Lenaa on Milne’s above article (The Guardian, 01 November 2008)

Britain is preparing to "sell" Georgia and hand a "victory" to Russia by agreeing to start talks on a partnership agreement between Moscow and the European Union, according to senior European diplomats. This would amount to a return to "business as usual" and a "clear signal" that Russia had escaped any lasting diplomatic penalty for invading Georgia in August, they said. Only eight weeks ago, Gordon Brown helped persuade other European leaders to punish Russia for its strike into Georgia by postponing talks on a new "Partnership and Cooperation Agreement" with the EU. Aside from verbal condemnation and a general review of the EU's relations with Moscow, this was the only tangible counter-measure imposed on the Kremlin after the war. Both the Prime Minister and David which holds the EU's rotating presidency, is expected to press for starting the talks with Moscow. British officials are said to have privately told other governments that London will not oppose this move. […] "Miliband was so strongly in favour of us from the first days of the conflict. Now he is making a U-turn within two weeks just to please Sarkozy. What happened in this world that caused this change?" asked the diplomat. "Sarkozy wants to have a good summit. He's an Emperor, he's trying to celebrate his victories, he's trying to say that Russia is doing everything it's supposed to do, which is nonsense." […] The European diplomat said a change in Britain's stance had been made clear in a series of meetings. "All our contacts with British diplomats confirm it, be it in Brussels or be it in London. The whole [British] diplomatic corps is saying the same in every country," he said. "If we sell Georgia like that, we will have another war and who will be responsible for that?" He added: "So we have two months of solidarity and then business as usual." A senior British diplomat based in a European country confirmed that London's position had "evolved" in the last two weeks and said the Foreign Office had decided against blocking dialogue with Russia in the long term.

“Britain accused of betraying Georgia and handing victory to Russia” (The Telegraph, 30 October 2008)

If the unsuspecting British media, hungry for marketable 24x7 news, had been fooled initially by Saakashvili’s PR, why the continuing reluctance to vindicate themselves by widely broadcasting the emerging contrary facts, even if only half-heartedly, to still bewildered Western and global audiences? If such a propaganda barrage on (alleged violations of) international law and human rights was deliberately intended to serve covert geostrategic aims targeting Russia, why is the British government now quietly backtracking and discreetly playing along with European efforts to mend continental ties with the Russians and even to forge a wide-ranging partnership that would shove the U.S. (and, hence, Euro-Atlantic solidarity) to the sidelines? For those who had ‘in good faith’ championed the Georgian version of events as a crucial battle within a larger Manichean struggle on behalf of the ‘free world’ against recidivist ‘Russian tyranny’, this U-turn could only be a betrayal of cherished ‘civilizational’ principles at the altar of Realpolitik. So much so that it is worth wondering whether Whitehall has been obliged to reverse strategy under duress, i.e., at the risk of otherwise being ‘betrayed’ by Europe?

So, instead of just obsessing about Russia, it might be instructive to start shifting our attention to the long-term damage that this Georgia conflict might have inflicted on Britain’s relationship with continental Europe. Long before the emergence of the EU, England was already ensuring her dominance by playing off these European nations against each other in a balance of power, even while maintaining her independence through control of the seas and then her own worldwide empire. After the loss of her colonies following World War II, Britain still remained buttressed by her privileged Euro-Atlantic partnership in projecting force across the mainland (the crudest expression and perhaps hidden template of which would be Operation Gladio….). When faced with the prospect of being left out of the European Union, the strategy adopted has been to join in (however reluctantly…), even (seem to) vie for leadership (against France and Germany), but in effect function as a braking mechanism from within on European aspirations towards an ever more perfect union. With NATO’s eastward expansion, the UK’s spoiler tactics have now harnessed the otherwise understandable (and historically legitimate) fears of Poland, the Baltic, and other eastern nations to sabotage Old Europe’s desire to ‘normalize’ relations with Russia (a project that the Anglo-American ‘coup’ in Georgia, had it succeeded, would have definitively and perhaps permanently scuttled). Now that “the truth about South Ossetia” is irresistibly making its impact on the consciousness (and conscience…) of the Western publics, Britain risks being abandoned by a growing Franco-German initiative to mend ties with Russia and even ensure its strategic alignment with Europe. The global financial crisis that Old Europe was swift to blame (whatever the degree of its own implication…) on the siren song of ‘Anglo-Saxon free trade’ (i.e., also the City of London) did not result in Gordon Brown falling back on the American approach to bailing out Wall Street, but in coordinating ‘from the outside’ with the Euro zone. The ‘fortuitous’ coincidence of the two crises, geopolitical and economic, serves to highlight the deeper anthropological underpinnings of the rift between British and Continental (whatever its own inner differentiations…) outlooks that may yet trump the constant politico-economic rapprochements attempted across the narrow Channel.

If Britain does not prove to be the Trojan Horse that prevents the emergence of an independent Eurasian bloc under the magnetic pull of Russia, it may well end up being jettisoned along the way as a dispensable American aircraft carrier:

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=5587.3901.0.0

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=5626.3951.0.0

So will Britain stop at “betraying Georgia” (= Saakashvili?) or will it go on to ‘betray’ Europe?

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (30 Oct 2008)

"Freedom fighter or rights abuser? - Goodbye, Mr. Saakashvili?”]

---

An influential group of Georgian opposition leaders has mounted a blistering political campaign against U.S.-backed President Mikheil Saakashvili, accusing his government of running an autocratic regime that tramples human rights and stifles democracy. The timing could embarrass the Bush administration, which is pressing NATO members to approve an action plan for Georgia — a key step toward full membership — at the organization's meeting in December. The claims by many in the opposition, some of which have been affirmed by a top Georgian human-rights official, go to the heart of Washington's rationale for backing Saakashvili as a democratic force in a region where Russia is trying to re-establish dominance. […] While Georgians have more freedoms today than they did under Soviet rule, Saakashvili's critics say that in the years since the Rose Revolution, he's dramatically consolidated state power under his office, taken control of national television and demonized his opponents. "He is building an authoritarian regime here," said Saakashvili, accusing his government of running an autocratic regime that tramples human rights and stifles democracy. The timing could embarrass the Bush administration, which is pressing NATO members to approve an action plan for Georgia — a key step toward full membership — at the organization's meeting in December. The claims by many in the opposition, some of which have been affirmed by a top Georgian human-rights official, go to the heart of Washington's rationale for backing Saakashvili as a democratic force in a region where Russia is trying to re-establish dominance. […] While Georgians have more freedoms today than they did under Soviet rule, Saakashvili's critics say that in the years since the Rose Revolution, he's dramatically consolidated state power under his office, taken control of national television and demonized his opponents. "He is building an authoritarian regime here," said Levan Gachechiladze, an opposition candidate for president earlier this year who finished second with about 25 percent of the vote. "The West closed its eyes because they were not ready . . . to change their so-called democratic star." […] Human Rights Watch released a report on the incident in which it said that the West previously had ignored "warning signs that the government was not only failing to live up to the principles of the rule of law and human rights it espoused during the Rose Revolution, but taking many serious steps to undermine these principles." That included "quick resort to use of force by law enforcement agents," the report said. Sozar Subari, the Georgian government's human-rights ombudsman, has documented what he terms severe human-rights abuses by government forces as well as elections in which police intimidated voters on a widespread basis and a corrupt elite that's allowed to use state offices to its own ends.

“Georgia's Saakashvili: freedom fighter or rights abuser?” (03 October 2008)

The Fat Lady has sung, the BBC, mouth piece of the British Neocons, has declared that, yes, Georgia and Saakashvili in particular are guilty of the murder of civilians in South Ossetia. Of course, they quickly then backed it up by saying Russia was wrong in defending those civilians being butchered by the Georgians. After all, we would not want Russia and the Russian people to feel they were right, even when they were, now would we? Anyways, moving right along, dear reader, we return to our useful fool, Saakashvili. Well, when one of the key propaganda organs of the Anglo-American Trotskyite Neocons declares you in the wrong and you are a petty dictator of a small nation and one, to boot, presently and from day one on the Neocon payroll, that can only mean one thing...you are done, yesterday's news, kaput. To boot, the opposition now plans marches on the 7th of November, the day that Saakashvili sent his Anglo-American trained goons in to beat the opposition to the ground in 2007. Back then, the Anglo-American Trotskyites still cared about their puppet, so they made a few noises about his assault upon unarmed peaceful demonstrators and then quickly blamed the demonstrations on Russia, surely not on the corruption and autocracy of their favorite puppet. This year promises to be different. Now that the puppet has been used to try to restart the Cold War and failed. Now that most of the sensible folks of Europe have told the Anglo-American Trotskyites to go pound sand and the evidence is mounting daily that Georgia is a rogue state in every definition of the word and the people will be rising up against the Soros paid, CIA/MI6 controlled puppet, the Anglo-Americans are moving to keep ahead of the situation. It is obvious that Saakashvili is useless, worse than useless now, so a new replacement must be picked, one picked by the Neocons before the Georgians manage to pick one themselves. Oh sure, just like the last 3 times, the pick will look like it came from the people but they are an easy bunch to fool. But what about Saakashvili? Surely a man in his situation might turn to Russia for help, except for that whole little August war thing and Russia having declared him a war criminal. Can't go there. To Europe? No, too much of a liability. Azerbaijan and Turkey have both declared their worries about his fitness to rule so they are probably out. Surely not the Armenians, not after what he's done against his own Armenians. Ukraine might be an option, at least as long as Yuschenko, the withered Orange is still hanging on the branch, but that too might not be for long. Gosh, few choices. It’s times like these one checks his life insurance policy to make sure it is paid up, the West does not like loose ends.

Stanislav Mishin, “Mr. Saakashvili, it is time to say goodbye” (29 Oct 2008) = Pravda (30 Oct 2008)

Here’s a plausible diagnosis (and prognostication) for this sudden ‘change of heart’ on the part of the BBC that would now make it more receptive to an ‘objective’ approach to the ‘human rights’ situation in Georgia.

Sunthar

P.S. While we’re at it, it might be also worth asking who — in these times of great popular dissatisfaction — is picking the American President….the sheeple?

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (21 Oct 2008)

"Georgia accused of targeting civilians" (BBC, 28 Oct 2008) - course correction?]

---

The BBC has discovered evidence that Georgia may have committed war crimes in its attack on its breakaway region of South Ossetia in August. Eyewitnesses have described how its tanks fired directly into an apartment block, and how civilians were shot at as they tried to escape the fighting. Research by the international investigative organisation Human Rights Watch also points to indiscriminate use of force by the Georgian military, and the possible deliberate targeting of civilians. Indiscriminate use of force is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and serious violations are considered to be war crimes. The allegations are now raising concerns among Georgia's supporters in the West. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told the BBC the attack on South Ossetia was "reckless". He said he had raised the issue of possible Georgian war crimes with the government in Tbilisi. The evidence was gathered by the BBC on the first unrestricted visit to South Ossetia by a foreign news organisation since the conflict. Georgia's attempt to re-conquer the territory triggered a Russian invasion and the most serious crisis in relations between the Kremlin and the West since the Cold War. […] The Russian prosecutor's office is investigating more than 300 possible cases of civilians killed by the Georgian military. Some of those may be Ossetian paramilitaries, but Human Rights Watch believes the figure of 300-400 civilians is a "useful starting point". That would represent more than 1% of the population of Tskhinvali - the equivalent of 70,000 deaths in London.

“Georgia accused of targeting civilians” (BBC, 28 Oct 2008)

The facts seem to be filtering out at last….

but why the ‘spontaneous outrage’ against Russia at the outbreak of hostilities with Miliband and the Anglo-Saxon press leading the charge…would these ‘corrections’ be forthcoming had Saakashvili’s backers achieved their geostrategic aims?

http://svabhinava.org/IndoChina/SuntharVisuvalingam/GeorgiaConflict-frame.php 

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (21 Oct 2008)

“Challenging U.S. Global Dominance - Lessons from the war in Georgia" (Herbert Bix)]

---

The crisis in the Caucasus highlighted the narrow, nationalist mindset of Western policymakers and many of their publics'. Secessionist movements exist in many of the multiethnic satellite states of the former Soviet Union, where Russians are in the minority. American and NATO policymakers and neo-conservatives have been only too eager to exploit them. But once Russian tanks and ground forces moved into Georgia, abruptly halted US-NATO encirclement, and exposed the limits of American military power, the Western mass media immediately poured fiery scorn on "brutal Russia", while ignoring, firstly, Georgia's role in starting the conflict, and secondly, US and Israeli military support for Georgia. President Mikheil Saakashvili made it easier for them to cover the war by hiring Aspect Consulting, a European public relations firm that sent in a top executive to disseminate daily, sometimes hourly, falsehoods about rampaging Russians attacking Georgian civilians. American journalists fostered Russophobic sentiment by disseminating completely one-sided war news, demonizing Russia as the evil aggressor, and championing "democratic", peace-loving Georgia. The American business magazine Fortune decried the bear's "brutishness" and its threat to an interdependent world; Forbes labeled Russia "a gangster state" ruled by a "kleptocracy". TV newscasters likened the Russian Federation to Nazi Germany at the time of the 1938 Munich crisis. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice even asserted an American moral right to lecture Russia on how a "civilized country" should behave in the 21st century. All of which led Russia's former president Putin to comment sarcastically, "I was surprised by the power of the Western propaganda machine ... I congratulate all who were involved in it. This was a wonderful job. But the result was bad and will always be bad because this was a dishonest and immoral work." Virtually everything about the Russo-Georgian war is contested, especially the question of who started it. But an abundance of published evidence contradicts Georgian propaganda and indicates that Saakashvili provoked the war with encouragement and material support from the Bush administration.

Herbert Bix, “Challenging U.S. Global Dominance” (Foreign Policy in Focus, 20 Oct 2008) = “Lessons from the war in Georgia” (ATol, 22 Oct 2008)

Here’s a comprehensive and balanced ‘postmortem’ of the conflict and its consequences for international relations, particularly U.S. foreign policy.

Sunthar

---

http://svabhinava.org/IndoChina/SuntharVisuvalingam/GeorgiaConflict-frame.php

I still need to write a proper Introduction to this svAbhinava digest relating it to the larger context of our home page on “Chindia, Russia, Europe: the peaceful rise of Eurasia”

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (13 Oct 2008)

“Western 'outrage' and anti-Russian propaganda: how 'rational' is the Anglo-Saxon view of the world?”]

Europe faces the risk of another major war. In 1939, Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland triggered the Second World War. Today the possible trip wire is not Poland, but Ukraine. And the aggressor will not be Adolf Hitler, but Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Under his iron-fisted grip, Russia has been transformed into a gangster state. Democracy has been dismantled, corruption is rampant, journalists are murdered, dissidents are imprisoned and the media is controlled by the regime. Flush with petrodollars, Moscow is seeking to restore the Great Russian Empire. It poses a strategic threat to its neighbors and to the West. Mr. Putin is a former KGB apparatchik, who has called the Soviet Union's collapse the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." The comment reveals his bloodlust and moral depravity. Soviet communism was the greatest system of mass murder in history. It was responsible for the deaths of more than 60 million people. The Soviet Union's disintegration in 1991 was not a catastrophe but the very opposite: a victory for democracy, national self-determination and civilization. […] a democratic, unified Ukraine stands in the way of Mr. Putin's goal. Ukraine is the strategic bulwark against Russian expansionism - the eastern ramparts of Western civilization. Kiev is not some regional capital of a Greater Russia, but a fundamental part of the European mainland. This is why Ukraine seeks to embrace NATO and the European Union. And it is also why Moscow desperately wants to derail Ukraine's integration into the Euro-Atlantic alliance. A prosperous and pluralist Orthodox Slavic state on Russia's borders would provide an attractive alternative to the Kremlin's brutal dictatorship. A successful Ukraine would pave the way for liberal democracy to triumph in Russia. And Mr. Putin is willing to do anything to stop this from happening - including possibly plunging Europe into another disastrous bloodbath. We are all Ukrainians now.

“Will Russia-Ukraine be Europe's next war?” (Washington Times, 12 Oct 08 – worth reading the comments from US residents in Ukraine…)

The Russian military’s recent incursion into Georgia means that many more west Europeans now regard Russia as a greater threat to global stability than states such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, according to a survey for the Financial Times. Despite this, a clear majority of people in western Europe remain firmly opposed to their governments spending more on defence and diverting resources away from public health and social programmes. Indeed, the Harris opinion poll for the Financial Times, conducted after the conflict between Russia and Georgia last month, indicates the citizens of three west European states would strongly oppose their national armies defending east European nations from a Russian attack. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are all legally obliged to defend their fellow Nato members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the Atlantic alliance’s Article 5 commitment to mutual defence. However, in Germany, Italy and Spain, more people say they would oppose the notion of their national troops rushing to defend the Baltic states than would support the idea. In Germany, as many as 50 per cent of people say they would oppose national troops going to the defence of the three states, compared with only 26 per cent who say they would support it. Only in Britain and France do more people support the idea of their armies defending the Baltic states than oppose it. The contrast between Europeans’ rising fears of Russia and their unwillingness to support any action to meet the challenge posed by Moscow militarily is the most striking feature of the survey. The difficulty for governments contemplating an increase in defence spending is that growing public anxiety about Russia is somehow doing little to change the debate. Even in the UK, which has the most fraught bilateral relationship with Russia of any west European state, 49 per cent of people oppose extra spending on the military as a result of Russia’s actions. Overall, the events in Georgia have pushed Russia up the table of countries that are perceived by west Europeans to endanger world peace. Over the past year, Harris has asked Europeans on a monthly basis which states they regard as the greatest threat to global stability. Russia has repeatedly ranked well behind China, the US, Iran and Iraq. As recently as August, before Russia’s incursion into Georgia, only four per cent of west Europeans deemed Russia as the greatest threat to world stability. But the September poll shows 17 per cent of respondents putting Russia top of the list, ahead of Iran on 14 per cent and not far behind China on 21 per cent. The number of US respondents who say Russia is the greatest threat has also soared, from two per cent in early August to 13 per cent this month.

“Europeans see Moscow as security threat” (Financial Times, 22 Sep 08

Beyond the noise of weapons and photographs of refugees by the hundreds that we are no longer used to at the gates of Europe since the end of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, the crisis that has rocked the Caucasus in August 2008 should have surprised neither by its timing, nor by its intensity that was after all limited, nor by the reactions it has generated. Brought to power in 2003, Mikhail Saakashvili has greatly disappointed since. Corruption continues to gangrene the entire Georgian society, while the indispensable economic reforms are slow to appear. With the end of his mandate approaching, and no doubt advised by his American allies, the president probably wanted to boast of an easy success in bringing into the national fold the two breakaway republics of Abkhazia and Ossetia South. A spiraling machination that is after all classic and fairly predictable. The Russian intervention was more a stinging reminder of the reality of the regional balance of power than an attempt to destabilize the sovereign state of Georgia. This why the Western reactions, although they have also been foreseeable, seem perfectly excessive and hypocritical. Since 1991, all Western governments, when it served their geostrategic interests, have supported secessionist temptations. Even if the price to pay was the dismantling of a State, as shown by the example of Yugoslavia. The international community had greatly accelerated the independence of Kosovo, upon political bases that are however fragile and following inept borders that are carriers of future conflicts. It is difficult to see what might be the legitimacy of this same international community denouncing Russian recognition of the independence (which is just as fragile and inept) of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The Georgian crisis confirms that the principles put forward by the West, primarily by the United States, since the end of the East-West system are now widely discredited. Once their application has become largely rhetorical, there's no cause to wonder at their having been co-opted, and used, by all states, including those that reject the bulk of Western values. The inviolability of borders, proclaimed from the beginning by the UN, is now no more than a trap. The right of national minorities to sovereignty, still invoked during the Kosovar independence, but curiously forgotten in the Georgian crisis, now shows its limits, especially because it is a process without end. On the one hand, in every new state structure, other minorities appear along the lines of fragmentation: the Transdnistriens in Moldova, Albanians in Macedonia, Serbs in Kosovo... On the other hand, gradually all states are affected: yesterday Timor and Kosovo; today, Abkhazia and South Ossetia; tomorrow Xinjiang, Corsica, Puerto Rico...? Elective democracy was the cornerstone of the whole construction of the post-Soviet world. The examples of Afghanistan and Iraq, but also the Congolese or Serbian ones, have shown that the stage of electing new leaders was for Western leaders a priority in the resolution of a crisis. It is to be feared that in many cases, this necessary condition for international maturity has been lived through as a sufficient condition. The authoritarian powers, particularly in Africa, have understood perfectly. Unfortunately, since an election has never been enough to resuscitate an economy or to (re-) build infrastructures, it is the elective system itself that is now discredited among populations. Nobody, in fact, emerges a winner from the Georgian crisis. The President Saakashvili has added to the economic and social neglect of his regime the snub of a military defeat. No doubt that the massive aid announced by the United States will be used quickly; it may be feared that this would be more to prepare the conditions for revenge than to enable the country to finally develop. Russia, of course, has firmly set the limits that should not be exceeded in its neighborhood. Westerners, finally, have again demonstrated their inability to manage this new international order that they invoke so ardently. By pushing the Georgian president into error, the U.S. has once again shown itself to be a lone apprentice-sorcerer indifferent to the geopolitical consequences of its initiatives. In failing to go beyond the stage of virtuous indignation, most European states have confirmed that the EU is not ready to construct a diplomatic project based on a real geopolitical vision. This is probably what is most regrettable...

“A crisis for nothing?” by Patrick Dombrowsky (Director of the European Center for Research on Central Asia), Milieux des Empires, vol. #15 (Sep 2008)

Russia's offensive in Georgia in August exposed the dangers of the Western alliance's lack of contingency plans against an invasion on its eastern flanks. Political leaders from the Baltics and Eastern Europe have subsequently demanded that Nato fulfil the requirements implied by its "Chapter 5" commitment to defend the territorial integrity of all its members. General James Craddock, Nato's Supreme Commander, has asked for the political authority to draw up contingency defence plans at a Nato meeting in Budapest later this week. France and Germany have signalled opposition to the move but Gen Craddock has the strong backing of America and Britain. But even US officials acknowledge there is a risk that the move will cause a rift within Nato. "This becomes politicised very quickly," a Pentagon official said. […] Relations with the Kremlin have steadily deteriorated as Nato accepted a series of its neighbours as members. Prior to the Russian incursion in Georgia, Nato members had refused to draw up plans to fight the Russian military in Eastern Europe. The majority feared that news of the decision would unnecessarily offend the Kremlin. The fighting in Georgia, which alongside Ukraine, has been accepted as a future Nato member, raised the stakes for advocates of expansion. A decision on granting a firm membership date to Georgia and Ukraine has been brought forward but deep divisions between Washington and Berlin could yet wreck a December summit. Pentagon officials said a date would bolster Nato's credibility. "We do want to send a message to the Russians that their actions will not affect our commitment to our colleagues and our allies," said one official. Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, signalled that Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defence, would lobby for a tougher line during a visit to Europe this week.

“Nato commanders to draw up plans to defend ex-Soviet bloc members from Russia” (Telegraph, 07 Oct 2008)

A recent request by the highest military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for the authority to draw up full defense plans for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, could lead to a serious rift in the alliance as it wars over how to deal with Russia. The move comes just two months after Russia's invasion of Georgia, and at a time when Russia constitutes the only conceivable military threat for the three Baltic members. […] London's Daily Telegraph, which first broke the story, said Craddock recommends Estonia, with its large Russian-speaking minority and increasingly fraught relationship with Moscow, be the first Baltic beneficiary of a NATO military risk-assessment study. But many continental European allies, led by France and Germany, feel any such move would threaten open confrontation with Russia. This divergence of views threatens the alliance with a serious rift. After the conflict in Georgia, many analysts see US and European interests parting ways when it comes to Russia, and Germany in particular seems to conclude it cannot afford to alienate Moscow. Berlin's reasons are complex, stretching from Germany's dependence on Russian energy to strategic balance of power calculations. Chancellor Angela Merkel on October 3 publicly ruled out quick NATO Membership Action Plans (MAPs) for Georgia and Ukraine, saying at a joint press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in St Petersburg that the two countries' immediate integration with NATO is not in German interests. NATO foreign ministers are scheduled to debate the issue in December. Baltic countries meanwhile fear that the trend towards accommodating Russia could materially affect their security, and that political considerations could begin to erode NATO's commitment to mutual defense.

“NATO split over Baltic defense” (ATol, 09 Oct 2008

A little later, a paragraph recalls the overall evolution of the feelings of the European public. You will notice that, in this paragraph, there slips in among the countries considered the most serious threats against stability, "the U.S.," moreover oddly placed between China and Iran, as if the U.S. occupied this place: […] You rub your eyes, for what is the USA doing in this salad? Nowhere in the text is there any question of the U.S. being a "threat against security." Is there some error here? Then you check out the pretty graphics in the text and, surprise, surprise... You rub your eyes again and you discover that in the judgment of these same Europeans who would seem, to read the FT, take only Russia into consideration in this regard, the USA is the foremost threat against world security. 29%, 31%, 26% of Europeans consider it to be so, in July, August, and September respectively. Let's summarize with two points. The first point is that the whole article is an indirect but radical denunciation of Russia as if it was the single most serious threat, despite being seen as such by only 17% of Europeans in September, and a call to arms to arm themselves against this threat. Not a word, not a single word on the position of the USA, which is considered the foremost threat in the world to security because it is so for 26% of Europeans in September. Certainly, it is understandable that a journalist pays attention to such a threat (Russia) because it is on Europe's borders, but it is less understandable that it makes no mention of this other threat that is the USA, worse than Russia and consistently so for several years, a threat that lies within our borders through its many bases installed in Europe, and with which we are curiously allied. The second point, less important or less obvious, is nonetheless significant because it completes the picture with a lie, with a false analogy on a legal question. The FT states in passing, about Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, that the European countries that refuse to arm themselves "are all legally obliged to defend their fellow NATO members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the Atlantic alliance's Article 5 commitment to mutual defense." The way this statement is made, amidst moans about the fact that Western Europe does not want to go to war for Estonia, implies that Article 5 imposes an obligation to militarily defend all NATO allies. This is false, a most unequivocal lie. This is an exercise in disinformation of a rare coarseness, a work of propaganda carried out without any consideration for the reader. The Anglo-Saxons, especially the British in this case, who lose all measure when it comes to Russia, are losing their ability to handle nuances in their manner of doing their work as honorable auxiliaries of the system. They act as if their readers are becoming more and more stupid to the point where one wonders if they are not becoming themselves increasingly the victims of their virtualism. It is a worrying development, which is indicative of a letting go and a significant weakening of the technical capacity to falsify info. Still, we deserve better - so let them make an effort, by Jove. On the other hand, there is also the hypothesis that they are actually themselves too virtualized by their own propaganda to design maneuvers as low, and so badly executed, such as we might believe detectable in this case. It would then be that, for these people, it is unthinkable that the U.S. could be designated as a threat when it is in fact so, and that too in the first place without doubt. The unconscious erases it as an incongruity that may weigh excessively on the stomach, till the most unfortunate of incidents. There would then no longer be a lie but a denial of "toxic" reality, a medicine or a work of charity, just as the Paulson rescue plan will relieve us of all these "toxic" debts that could otherwise kid us into believing that the system is playing up a bit.

Philippe Grasset, “Choose your Enemy and I’ll say if you deserve to read me” (24 Sep 08) [on the FT article above]

The tale of what the Bush Administration is up to in the Caucasus is slowly filtering out, although the U.S. press has largely deep-sixed the story. The recent Georgia-Russia war was just one move in a chess game aimed at cornering the energy reserves of Central Asia, extending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to Moscow’s vulnerable southern border, and ending Russia’s control of the Black Sea. Georgia was just a pawn—an expendable one at that— in a high stakes game. While the White House and some in the European Union (EU) represent the recent war as one between an increasingly powerful Russia reasserting itself in its former empire versus a small, democratic nation trying to recover two of its former provinces, that story is fraying a bit. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was recently condemned by the EU’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights for undemocratic practices, and a recent NATO analysis of the war supports the Russian charge that Tbilisi started the whole affair. The maneuvers that led to the war, however, have gone largely unreported. […] When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently said that Russia was facing international isolation over the Georgia war, she was whistling past the graveyard. Rather than being isolated, the Russians have been lining up allies among the very states the U.S. had hoped would join it in ringing the Russians with newly recruited NATO allies. […] At a meeting of the EU’s inter-governmental commission in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said it was important to “strengthen the partnership between the European Union and Russia, and France and Russia.” While a Harris Poll shows that some Europeans are now “more concerned” with Russia than they were before the war, the same poll shows the U.S. is still considered a far more serious “threat to global stability.” The poll also indicates overwhelming opposition in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Britain to increasing military spending in the aftermath of the Georgian war. Indeed, any government that presses for a more aggressive posture toward Russia, or knuckles under to Washington’s pressure to increase military spending, is likely to find itself out of power. The Georgian war, like the Iraq war, were disasters brought on by a combination of imperial arrogance and fundamental cluelessness. The U.S. now finds itself locked into a military stalemate in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasingly isolated in the Middle East and Central Asia, and enmeshed in one of the greatest financial meltdowns in its history. Check. This is how empires end.

Conn Hallinan, “The Great Game in the Caucasus: Bad Moves by Uncle Sam” (CounterPunch, 07 Oct 2008)

The European Union and Russia formally got their relations back on track Wednesday when French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, met for talks on a common future. At an international conference in the south-eastern French resort of Evian, Sarkozy called for a total reconstruction of the European security structure. Sarkozy also proposed a summit meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to be held at the end of 2009 "to discuss (Russian) proposals and those of the European Union for new concepts of a pan-European defence." For his part, Medvedev urged the convening of a "special forum" at which "the leaders of all European states and the leaders of key organisations in the Euro-Atlantic area could take part." The object of the forum would be to discuss the new European Security Treaty, which Medvedev first suggested to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in June, and which he elaborated on in Evian. "The Euro-Atlantic area needs a positive agenda today," Medvedev said. "The events in the Caucasus have merely confirmed the absolute correctness of the idea of a new European Security Treaty." […] Another clause would assert that "no single state or international organization may have the exclusive right to maintain peace and stability in the region. This applies fully to Russia too." Sarkozy was receptive to the idea, saying, "We are ready to talk about it with the Russians because security in Europe and beyond is a common good." Medvedev also used the occasion to protest against the expansion of NATO to near Russia's borders. […] "Europe wants a strong Russia," he added, arguing that the world's current financial turmoil rendered it "essential" for the bloc to have strong ties with Russia. The relationship -- frozen by the 27-nation EU last month in protest over the Georgia conflict -- is up for review at an EU-Russia summit in November in the southern French city of Nice. In a United Nations speech last month, Sarkozy called for a common economic space uniting Europe and Russia.

“Sarkozy, Medvedev Call for New European Security Pact” (Deutsche Well, 08 Oct 2008)

•  Is increased public perception of Russia as a military threat due to the latter’s hostility and designs against Europe and its legitimate interests, or the intended result (through re-contextualizing) of especially Anglo-Saxon propaganda?
• Was the Georgia-Russian conflict a “crisis for nothing” in which all the (unwitting?) antagonists were losers, or was it provoked to mobilize Western public opinion (and divide the East) against Russia in the ongoing war for resources?
• Does Europe’s unwillingness to (sacrifice other priorities in order to) arm itself reflect a weakened commitment to democracy, human rights, etc., or rather a growing suspicion and recognition of being bound by double standards?
• Is NATO an embodiment of U.S. generosity designed to protect Europe from external threats, or does it ultimately serve to ensure that this fractious Union remains a vassal even while expanding Anglo-American interests eastwards?
• Are European perceptions of the United States as the greatest threat to global stability and peace driven by irrational anti-Americanism (= displaced ‘anti-Semitism’?) or solidly based on its consistent pattern of ‘erratic’ behavior abroad?
• How different is the media’s ‘unconscious erasure’ of the U.S. threat from the cognitive dissonance between the ‘messianic’ zeal to impose democracy by force while championing Israel (charted an even greater threat by global polls)?

Of course, “we are all Ukrainians now,” maybe because the Europeans, themselves divided, have begun following Timoshenko’s lead in supplicating Russia to assure not just energy supplies but also financial and global stability…and increasing numbers (not just in the now bankrupt Ukraine) are exclaiming “where, oh where, is [America's] Vladimir Putin, who will drive out the [only Jewish? – SV] oligarchs who have stolen the country's treasure and debased its currency?” (Spengler).

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (16 Sep 08)

“RE: Georgia-Russia conflict - the Great Game in Central Asia (beyond Western propaganda)”]

---

The ubiquitous post-Cold War question -- where is the threat? -- is thus misconceived. In a world in which peace and American security depend on American power and the will to use it, the main threat the United States faces now and in the future is its own weakness. American hegemony is the only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international order. The appropriate goal of American foreign policy, therefore, is to preserve that hegemony as far into the future as possible. To achieve this goal, the United States needs a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence. […] Conservatives these days succumb easily to the charming old metaphor of the United States as a "city on a hill." They hark back, as George Kennan did in these pages not long ago, to the admonition of John Quincy Adams that America ought not go "abroad in search of monsters to destroy." But why not? The alternative is to leave monsters on the loose, ravaging and pillaging to their hearts' content, as Americans stand by and watch. What may have been wise counsel in 1823, when America was a small, isolated power in a world of European giants, is no longer so, when America is the giant. Because America has the capacity to contain or destroy many of the world's monsters, most of which can be found without much searching, and because the responsibility for the peace and security of the international order rests so heavily on America's shoulders, a policy of sitting atop a hill and leading by example becomes in practice a policy of cowardice and dishonor. […] A neo-Reaganite foreign policy would be good for conservatives, good for America, and good for the world. It is worth recalling that the most successful Republican presidents of this century, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, both inspired Americans to assume cheerfully the new international responsibilities that went with increased power and influence. Both celebrated American exceptionalism. Both made Americans proud of their leading role in world affairs. Deprived of the support of an elevated patriotism, bereft of the ability to appeal to national honor, conservatives will ultimately fail in their effort to govern America. And Americans will fail in their responsibility to lead the world.

Robert Kagan, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” (Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996)

One of the smartest guys in Washington is political economist Tom Gallagher, who monitors the intersection of economics, policy, and politics for the ISI Group, a Wall Street advisory firm. On the subject of budget deficits, Gallagher is fond of quoting the late economist Herb Stein, who said that the problem isn't that wolves are at the door, it's that termites are in the foundation. Some of our country's problems are termites, not wolves. Unfortunately, as Gallagher warns, our system is geared more toward dealing with wolves. […] Clearly, a host of complex challenges will demand our next chief executive's time. But another of the really smart folks in Washington, ViaNovo lobbyist and policy strategist Billy Moore, argues, "History shows that new presidents can usually only accomplish three or four big things in their first term, and that reaching beyond this number results in fewer, not more, achievements." So, John McCain and Barack Obama, don't say we didn't warn you.

Charlie Cook, “Trouble, trouble, trouble” (02 Sep 08), Government Executive

In reading about the federal bailout of all those financial wheeler-dealer outfits that are supposedly "too big to fail," the layman may be forgiven for failing to comprehend the intricacies of the arcane financial instruments currently backfiring on their whiz-kid inventors. Such exotic creatures as "credit default swaps" may elude the understanding of the hoi polloi, but one thing the man in the street does know: he'll never be "too big to fail," of that he can be sure. […] Our rulers really do believe their empire is too big to fail, but of all the would-be lords of creation, our own ruling elite may have the shortest reign – and the hardest fall. The engine that runs the machinery of imperialism is breaking down at key junctures, and the whole structure is teetering and creaking ominously, as if to presage the coming implosion. For the truth of the matter is that the very bigness of the American Imperium, the sheer scope of its rulers' ambition, is precisely what is fated to bring about its downfall, and a very messy and painful descent it will surely be. As I relate in Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, during Rose Wilder Lane's eye-opening trip to the Soviet Union in the 1920s she met a Russian peasant who predicted, with perfect accuracy, the fate of the commissars some 70 years later: "'It's too big,' he said. 'Too big. At the top, it is too small. It will not work. In Moscow, there are only men, and man is not God. A man has only a man's head, and one hundred heads together do not make one great head. No. Only God can know Russia.'" The problem is that some men think they are gods. In the end, however, we will all pay the price for their hubris – the guilty as well as the innocent – as the American empire meets the fate of its Soviet predecessor, and for the same reason.

Justin Raimondo, “The American Empire: Too Big to Fail?” (Anti-war, 22 Sep 08)

Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over. You can see it in the way America's dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America's standing at the global level is even more striking. With the nationalisation of crucial parts of the financial system, the American free-market creed has self-destructed while countries that retained overall control of markets have been vindicated. In a change as far-reaching in its implications as the fall of the Soviet Union, an entire model of government and the economy has collapsed. […] China in particular was hectored relentlessly on the weakness of its banking system. But China's success has been based on its consistent contempt for Western advice and it is not Chinese banks that are currently going bust. How symbolic yesterday that Chinese astronauts take a spacewalk while the US Treasury Secretary is on his knees. Despite incessantly urging other countries to adopt its way of doing business, America has always had one economic policy for itself and another for the rest of the world. Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future. […] an unprecedented expansion of government is the only means of averting a market catastrophe. The consequence, however, will be that America will be even more starkly dependent on the world's new rising powers. The federal government is racking up even larger borrowings, which its creditors may rightly fear will never be repaid. It may well be tempted to inflate these debts away in a surge of inflation that would leave foreign investors with hefty losses. In these circumstances, will the governments of countries that buy large quantities of American bonds, China, the Gulf States and Russia, for example, be ready to continue supporting the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency? Or will these countries see this as an opportunity to tilt the balance of economic power further in their favour? Either way, the control of events is no longer in American hands. […] The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In America and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot. Like the Soviet collapse, it will have large geopolitical repercussions. An enfeebled economy cannot support America's over-extended military commitments for much longer. Retrenchment is inevitable and it is unlikely to be gradual or well planned. […] Having created the conditions that produced history's biggest bubble, America's political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.

John Gray, “A shattering moment in America's fall from power” (Guardian, 28 Sep 08)

The idea that the financial crisis, the "financial 9/11" of this month of September 2008, is more than a financial phenomenon is beginning to spread. It converges with my analysis that the " financial 9/11" is only a sectorial crisis, dependent on a central systemic crisis and, therefore, inscribed within the metahistorical logic of other sectorial crises (its link with the Georgian geopolitics crisis, particularly through the impact on the European situation), feeding on other sectorial crises, even expanding towards and enveloping them, as is the case with its enlargement into the political crisis Washingtonians. Hence our interest in this article by John Gray, author of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, in the Observer of 28 September. […] The logic is impeccable, if not relentless, taking into account the latest catastrophic developments. It however lacks my favorite dimension. The U.S. psychology is not ready to accept the idea of withdrawal, nor will ever be in my view, without a devastating change involving a psychological upheaval. An example is provided by the Georgian crisis: Gray is right to say that the U.S. has observed the Georgian crisis with the most total impotence ( "Georgia showed Russia redrawing the geopolitical map, with America an impotent spectator"). But this does not prevent the U.S. from continuing to affirm its omnipotence in this affair, to assert that Russia is isolated, to promote the entry of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, to rearm (cautiously, all the same) Georgia. They have not learned any lessons from the crisis, accepted nothing of its consequences, nor changed their peremptory and arrogant attitude. Their psychology forbids this. In my view, this is the major crisis that awaits us. Psychology is still the master of the game and the American psychology is totally infected by vanity, by hubris, and completely unable to learn from events. It is completely autistic, characterized by inculpability and indefectibility. The accelerated decline of U.S. power will be rejected by U.S. leaders, who will continue to assert their power as if nothing was going on, until the point of catastrophic failure. The breaking point could be from outside (in the antagonistic relations between the U.S. and other powers regarding U.S. claims that would have become unbearable). It could be, in my opinion more surely, from within, with self-destructive undertows sapping U.S. power; the rapid expansion of the financial crisis into a political crisis which we are witnessing today, with the possibility of turmoil at the popular level, makes me indeed believe that there is in this regard a serious potential dynamic.

Philippe Grasset, “How (fast) will the so-called American empire end?” (29 Sep 08)

It is quite right that this machinery, which exists just as much in the system of Wall Street as in the JSF program or the KC-45 program, as in the equipment of the U.S. Army by a monstrous Pentagon budget, as in the Iraqi adventure and in Americanist expansionism itself, is equipped against the external enemy (the wolves) that it would crush with joyful alacrity if faced with it (if wolves existed?). This machinery has not at all foreseen the possibility of its self-destruction, the investment of its own structures by the disorder, by psychological corruption; and has not planned for involvement in war without historical existence for itself, in which it cannot engage the enemy because it is unable to identify or even simply accept the existence of the latter, endless war as a consequence and thus resulting in dramatic wearing down through its own useless use; all this leads to loss of control, then powerlessness and vulnerability. In short, the Americanist machinery has not foreseen or planned against termites. The reason for this is the affirmation of self-perfection (perfection of the system), and it goes without saying that such machinery cannot, in its perfection, be infested by termites. This is the same dynamic at work which, from a certain degree of power and monopoly that it has actually established, seems to cross over the top of its curve of productivity and efficiency into the downward slope on the other side, to enter a negative field of accelerated degradation. This field of degradation is also manifest in the new inefficiency and the involuntary treason of its actors. It would seem that having reached the peak of its curve of productivity and efficiency, the position of power occupied is paid for henceforth, and in like measure, with a deterioration of legitimacy, which deprives the various actors of a sense of collective responsibility, sense of service towards the system (and, therefore, of effectiveness). The actors become irresponsible, corrupt, especially psychologically, nit-picking and bureaucratic, measuring their success by the effect on their hierarchy and on the communication services and no longer on the goal to be attained. (As for the political actors, they no longer think of anything than the polls and become arsonist firefighters.) Disorder sets in. It is now that the proposition is reversed; from "too big to fail," we arrive at the fall that is certain because of the weight and power, something like "too big not to collapse." The watchword then becomes, to adopt a more classic image: the harder will be the fall.

Philippe Grasset, “Too Big to Fail?” (25 Sep 08)

So if “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus” (Kagan), are we to assume that Vulcan, the “ugly Russian” (not Marlon Brando, but Vladimir Putin), will once again expose the illicit union and make off with his rightful bride?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E6D8173FF936A35750C0A9659C8B63

http://waltm.net/ares.htm

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (Sep 23, 2008)

“Foxes guarding the henhouse: Will the U.S. Government survive this financial crisis?”]

---

Why is this liar Matthew Chance talking Putin? Matthew Chance is idiot liar that made all the lies about GORI [while showing bombardment of Tskhinvali - SV] on CNN and BBC. (A1)

I am no fan of Putin, in fact I hold him in as much contempt as George Bush, but even so this clearly demonstrates that CNN did nothing short of a propaganda hit job on him. It's unfathomable to me that a world leader involved in a war would have his 30 minute exclusive interview edited down to 6 minutes of sound bites. It is bullshit like this that make authoritarian leaders like Putin infinitely popular amongst populations who feel emasculated by America and want someone to stand up to it. (A1)

Putin was able to strike an unusually sympathetic chord during the interview. He was level headed, reasonable and, most importantly, very convincing and believable—not what you’d expect from the evil Stalin/Hitler hybrid personality being pushed on the American public. And that worried the hell out of CNN editorial staff, enough to make them crudely censor the entire thing and hope no one noticed. (A2)

Watching Putin speak so articulately and intelligently makes me even more embarrassed of Bush. (A4)

I admire this man. His nervous system is in perfect condition. Also memory, intellect, logic, response time - everything. (B1)

This has to go viral. CNN's editing job for the Western viewers is portraying him as a conspiracy freak, while everything he said has a root in truths that no one wants or dares to speak about. (B1)

At least he doesn’t eat the tie... (B1 ;-) – [see the link in my earlier post]

Yes, also doesn’t drink, doesn’t choke on a pretzel and doesn’t divorce with his wife after her car-accident. (B1)

The full text of the interview (in German) can be found in the blog of Jens Berger. Well! You can see once again which country is free. Germany is certainly not! (B1)

Sad that CNN can't tell America what transpired, and is reduced to peddling the la-la land of the neocons. The whole world seems to have to educate these people about history, recent history, while they just take it and try to turn it into lies, to lead their viewers to kill and die for nothing. CNN is really run directly by the enemy of the people. And it was founded by Ted Turner, who is a member of the Committee of 300, top of the pyramid .. (B1)

Russian channels show all what going on. And, please tell me. Why did CNN, Fox News, BBC, Sky News show how Georgian army bombed Tskhinvali and the same time say "Look! Russia bombing the capital of Georgia". I'm waiting for your answer on this question. (B1)

The world, I repeat the world can feel lucky that this globe carries a man who’s called Vladimir Putin. Thank you very much uploading this interview and translating the text into English. (B1)

Finally, Russia has managed to crystallize the national leader, who fits the soul and the subconscious essence of Russian people. (B1)

...and it is vital for a state if it wants to live, to have a national leader who represents them: again something that is slowly vanishing. Not in Russia though, this is why the rest feel really uncomfortable, act and behave as we see they do...long live us humanitarian aid delivered by military ships, almost 20 of them! hail to those mentally disturbed, bribed puppets with convenient wives ;)) disrespecting and ignoring people who they live on. Typical parasites. supranational category. Trash. (B1)

Putin. You are not only the leader of Russia. For Ukraine you are a leader too, we have respect for you. (B1)

People, the [truth] is simple. European and USA mass media have transformed Georgian aggression in Russian aggression because it is much more favorable to the NATO. P.S. Youtube is independent source of information. Thanks. (B1)

How much of the American public or the Western public is privy to this scary version of events which I believe to be entirely true. Thank you youtube for showing the jingoism and brute force the Americans choose to use in the pursuit of oil and also to distract the American public from their disastrous military forays which have killed so many innocent young men and women service people. (B1)

Anyone who gives real moral credibility to a former KGB operative is a moron. This guy is a power-thirsty autocrat who is but hurt that Russia doesn't matter internationally any more. (B1)

Only a softhead can forget that Bush was the first person in CIA. Anybody could see three letters in his eyes: C, I, A. And he was not the only CIA operative president in the history of this nice country. Study your history. (B1)

For some reason all seem to forget one of pre-presidential posts of George Bush senior...did you forget who he was? DIRECTOR OF CIA...such a weak, senseless and irrelevant argument you brought about. your problem. (B1)

This man is what a leader should be. He would not sacrifice his own people for power or money. It’s enough to make me move to Russia I’m sick of British Israel. (B1)

I wish we could have such a man in our government. | So we wish, in the rest of Earth... (B2)

Compare this to the cry baby Saakashvili! Putin talks calm and straight. Saakashvili is trying to create propaganda all over the news to discredit Russia's image. (B2)

I don't think anyone is interfering in American affairs. CNN should have aired this interview...it's very good and Mr. Putin seems very Sincere. As I said I'm confused and disappointed if this is true. As an American I don't want War with anyone and I pray that talks with all Countries continue without military force. (B2)

I wonder, what do people of the U.S. and Europe think when they see or hear Putin.. %) I hope they realize the truth and think something like "I wish we could have such a man in our government" (flexible enough). I can't imagine living with the government which consists of uncovered public enemies like Bush and Condom-liza %) Why there are people who support them? )) Why Clinton was impeached, and public enemies of their own countries are not? =/ People are just plasticine, that's bad =/ [B3]

CNN censored this because of Putin's common sense. They showed the part about chickens.. trying to portray him as silly. But even then, there is nothing at all silly about wanting safe food. (B3)

Damn why can't the U.S. president be this smart. I'm not saying who's the bad guys here but Vlad is a intelligent man, whereas Bush is a retard. (B3 – [maybe he just had enough retards to vote for him? – SV])

Russia is in good hands. They were able to fight their economical crisis back in 2000, and now, they're taking it to another step, restoring the nation's image, and integrity. America wanted to play world Police, and failed. Russia took that failure to its advantage, and presented itself as World's Peace keeper. Putin deserves a round of applause for his outstanding work in and outside Russia. Hopefully Russia will help solve the Iranian nuclear issue, and help restoring peace in Middle East. (B3)

(Viewer comments on YouTube segments below)

Five weeks after the war in the Caucasus the mood is shifting against Georgian President Saakashvili. Some Western intelligence reports have undermined Tbilisi's version of events, and there are now calls on both sides of the Atlantic for an independent investigation. […] The Georgian president is also coming under pressure in his own country, as the united front that developed during the Russian invasion crumbles. Those who have long criticized Saakashvili and his senior staff as an "authoritarian regime" are speaking out once again. Back in December 2007, Georgy Khaindrava, a former minister for conflict resolution who was dismissed in 2006, told SPIEGEL that Saakashvili and his circle are people "for whom power is everything." A few weeks earlier, Saakashvili had deployed special police forces in Tbilisi, where the opposition had staged large demonstrations, and declared a state of emergency. At the time, Khaindrava expressed concerns that Saakashvili could soon attempt to bolster his weakened image with a "small, victorious war" -- against South Ossetia. In May 2006, former Foreign Minister Salomé Surabishvili had already cautioned against her former boss's actions. The "enormous arms buildup" he had engaged in made "no sense," Surabishvili said, adding that it created the impression that he planned to resolve the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia militarily. Last week, the heads of Georgia's two major political parties called for Saakashvili's resignation and the establishment of a "government that is neither pro-Russian nor pro-American, but pro-Georgian." In Moscow, former Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Temur Khachishzili, who spent years in prison for attempting to assassinate Saakashvili's predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, is drumming up support for a change of government back home among the more than one million Georgians living in Russia.

“Did Saakashvili lie? The West begins to doubt Georgian Leader” (Spiegel Online, 15 Sep 08)

This development is obviously an important fact. The West is faced with the need – both political and from the simple point of view of the facts – to consider revising its radical position, sparked by the media current and the humanitarist [i.e., ‘humanism’ as propaganda serving ‘liberal interventionism, in places like Dafur, as opposed to the humanitarian feelings that are frequently noticeable even among animals – SV] ideology which have been manipulated pro-Georgian networks of influence. In the long run, this radical position is untenable because it faces and will face a growing challenge from a simple view of the facts on the one hand, and because it nurtures, on the other hand, a radical alternative, hard to support politically, between a surrender to Russian pressures or a confrontation with Russia that the West cannot afford. We should note just how much this radical position, which did not exist in the first two or three days of the crisis, when the Georgian aggression was not called into question and which appeared under the pressure of the virtualist propaganda machine, was crude and completely knee-jerk, based on frivolous claims by dubious characters who are without consistency (from Saakashvili to Bernard-Henri Levy) but are excellent manipulators of media pressure. In the long run, this was hardly tenable in the context of a crisis of such importance, with an actor of power, determination, and (new) political communication skill that is Russia [see interview below]. Anyway, this evolution, which has strong chances of being confirmed, will represent, in the communication war that carries such a very heavy weight in the crisis, a defeat for the West, which has placed itself in a very untenable position in the long run. It is indeed strange that in a crisis of this magnitude, the political position of an ensemble of such power has been determined by so superficial, inconsistent factors that amount to crude attempts at influence. This reveals the extraordinary measure of decay into which Western political activity has sunk, its imprisonment with terrorist activities of influence. The contrast between the mediocrity and superficiality of the cause and the considerable political importance of the consequences is a frightening finding.

Philippe Grasset, “The West begins to doubt” (16 Sep 08)

You can see and hear (in Russian) the complete CNN interview with Vladimir Putin of 28 Aug 08 on YouTube. For the English subtitles, click the upward arrow in bottom right hand corner and then the CC button that pops up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ1HaztRKaY (A1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijQD0R84jtk (A2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9UkhLkTtwI (A3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebtfZN0fvHI (A4)

——— Also———

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwC5q-zMQnw (B1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMKNmW_9C5o (B2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VsNFEZKmgo (B3)

It’s worth reading the numerous comments of the viewers and their overwhelmingly positive impression of (the sincerity of) the Russian Prime Minister.

Sunthar

--------------------------------

Putin may strip CNN of its Russian broadcasting rights after it refused to air a 30 minute exclusive interview he gave the network. You probably didn't know that CNN censored Putin for being just too darn sensible. Yep, it's true. About two weeks ago, Putin gave the network an exclusive 30-minute interview. And you know what happened? Nothing. It was never allowed to air. CNN doesn't know it yet, but that decision might have cost them their Russian broadcasting rights. On August 29, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with senior political correspondent Matthew Chance for a CNN exclusive interview. "This was unprecedented access to Russia's powerful prime minister, the former KGB spy now increasingly at odds with Washington," an overly dramatic voice-over introduced the segment as Chance and Putin enjoyed pre-game banter and a walk through the courtyard of Putin's palatial Sochi residence. Once seated, Chance didn't waste any time with his provocative questions: […] Not only did CNN delete Putin's historical roundup of relations between Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia going back to the 18th century that followed, the network cut out almost everything else as well. Despite the "unprecedented access" hook, for its U.S. feed, CNN reduced the 30-minute interview into a series of sound bites that seized and ridiculed Putin's crackpot theory that the Republican party started the war to boost McCain's ratings. […] See, as it turns out, when Putin told CNN he wouldn't mind if they cut some of his comments, he wasn't exactly being honest. Not only did he mind, but he was sovereignly pissed off to find the entire interview censored. After all, he is the one that usually does the censoring. And it's not like he gives out TV interviews every month, or even every year. […] This time around, he was level headed, reasonable and, most importantly, very convincing and believable -- not what you'd expect from the evil Stalin/Hitler hybrid personality being pushed on the American public. And that worried the hell out of CNN editorial staff, enough to make them crudely censor the entire thing and hope no one noticed. So, what parts of Putin did CNN leave on the cutting room floor? […] Putin the anti-Stalinist: […] Putin the caring: […] Putin the peaceful: […] Putin the conscientious business man: […] It's true that the Europeans depend on our supplies but we too depend on whoever buys our gas. That's interdependence; that's precisely the guarantee of stability.

Yasha Levine, “Is CNN Getting Kicked Out Of Russia?” (15 Sep 08)

So is a catastrophic meltdown coming? If so, probably a majority of the people in the world are thinking: “Serves them right.” For the last 500 years, the West has been striding across the globe, armed to the teeth with firearms, warships, bombers, and—more recently—depleted uranium, enforcing the “white man’s burden” by enslaving nations and peoples and confiscating everything of value—ranging from art objects to gold to oil—that can be carried away. The financiers behind it all have also used the diabolically clever practice of creating money “out of thin air” to put the natives everywhere into debt, and, when that has proven insufficient, of doing the same to their own populations. All this is rationalized by various brands of racism, cultural superiority, social Darwinism, historical determinism, “dominion of the Elect,” “God’s chosen people,” etc. Or, simply, “might makes right.” Some call it “The New World Order.” So today, we Americans, denizens of the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” victors in two world wars, bearers of “democracy” to Afghanistan and Iraq, allies of the brave Israelis who hold high the banner of Judeo-Christian values among the ungrateful Palestinians—well, we Americans owe our own bankers almost $70 trillion at most recent count. With the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we owe holders of bad housing loans, including the governments of China , Korea , and Japan , another few trillion. […] Putin is heir to an epochal movement of patriots who began in the 1970s to take back Russia from within. It started with a base of operations within the KGB and the Orthodox Church, led to Gorbachev’s glasnost in the 1980s, and culminated in the Second Russian Revolution of 1991. At that point, the Western financiers gleefully rushed in to support an assault from the Russian “oligarchs” who were looting Russia of everything it owned. The oligarchs were the shock troops of a financier assault that had already begun to overlap in the West with the Russian Mafia. Cheered on by the Washington Post and aided by academic advisors from places like Harvard, this international syndicate nearly destroyed Russia during the 1990s. But when Putin was appointed interim president by Boris Yeltsin in 1999, and after winning the presidential election of 2000 in his own right, he began to fight back. […] Putin has declared that the world will not be governed in a “unipolar” manner; i.e. by the U.S. military as the police force for the global financiers. This does not mean Russia has to be our enemy. In fact the world would be much better off, and much safer, if we joined with Russia as allies in keeping the peace.

Richard C. Cook, “Has the West reached its limits?” (14 Sep 08)

Note that the Mike Wallace’s arrogant and overbearing interview with Ahmadinejad (that I had watched live) — as with that of reconciliatory and ‘moderate’ President Mohammed Khatami before him… — was likewise deliberately falsified:

http://www.daily.pk/world/worldnews/7283-iran-president-ahmadinejad-did-not-say-wipe-israel-off-the-map.html

Sunthar

P.S. Anyone who has watched the movie “The Insider” would be struck by the contrast between Mike Wallace’s bullish “nothing but the truth” media persona and his real-life cowardliness when it comes to speaking truth to power:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Insider_(film)

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/99/6/insider-review.asp

__._,_.___

At hand is the review by the Novosti agency of information published yesterday in the Russian newspaper Kommersant, this very 8 September, concerning the creation of a regional alliance. The proposal is from Turkey and addressed mainly to Russia, but also to Armenia (hence the importance of the very recent visit of the Turkish President to Armenia, to attend a football match), Azerbaijan and … to Georgia. The project is of Turkish origin and was first proposed to Russia, which would have immediately accepted during the voyage of Prime Minister Erdogan to Moscow on 12 and 13 August. […]

• The Russian “isolation” debated so much in the West follows a Western approach that is legalistic and conformist, and it is mainly an argument for (evidently Western) "media thinking" on the crisis, – that is to say an argument for newspaper columnists of the official Western media spreading the official line. As opposed to this, Russian "isolation" is not far from becoming a chimera in the complex and realistic framework of certain, particularly regional, situations notably that of the Caucasus. The project becoming evident here shows a cooperative approach with Russia formalized into a regional alliance that is proposed by a NATO country, and possibly including Georgia, – which says a lot about the differences between the official positions taken in keeping with the conformism of Western dialectic and the real positions. The conclusion to be drawn is that the Georgian crisis and especially the Russian intervention have led not so much to Russian “isolation” as to a calling into question of the existing situations, resulting in new initiatives, new orientations, etc. It seems to me more than probable, without any clear indications to this effect, that the Turkish initiative has been accelerated, if not completely driven by the Georgian crisis, and the advantages that this initiative brings to Moscow in terms of international stature vis-à-vis the officially affirmed lines around the Georgian crisis, as also in regional terms to counter U.S. influence, are clearly visible.

• The affair reinforces our plausible view on the “unique position” of Turkey in the crisis. A NATO member that condemned Russia on 19 August, this country will seven days later propose an alliance to Russia, one that would include especially and rather secondarily Georgia, and which is presented as “weakening […] US influence” in the region. (In the scheme proposed by Kommersant, it's in fact Georgia that would be isolated if it stood outside this initiative, which is dominated in this case by an interesting Ankara-Moscow "axis".) It seems clear that Turkey believes that the Georgian crisis disrupts the Caucasus region, and that it's important to launch initiatives towards stabilizing this same region, where this same Turkey will find itself naturally playing an important role in cooperation with Russia. From this viewpoint, it is understandable that Russia welcomes the Turkish initiative with great interest, in the evaluation of Kommersant. From this point of view again, we see that the Georgian crisis pushes Turkey to penetrate deeply into the region, in cooperation with Russia; and this puts Turkey on a line that clearly contradicts, if not antagonizes, that of NATO and the USA.

Philippe Grasset, “A new alliance in the Caucasus, mainly around Turkey and Russia?” (09 Sep 2008)

Wanting to admit the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, that's great (and the thriving media columns continue to scream that this is more than ever necessary). There however needs to be a leadership and a political stability leaning in this direction, in the affected country, at least to get a signature at the appropriate moment. This is no longer the case with the Ukraine. This could rapidly be no longer the case with Georgia. The first violent political attack has been launched against Saakashvili, with an implicit demand that this president draw the conclusion that he should resign. The Georgian opposition, now that the unavoidable period of "national unity” is over, rediscovers a critical attitude that is redoubled by the circumstances of the crisis. Whereas the Western narrative continues to maintain religiously the official version of a Georgia that would be an absolutely innocent victim, subjected to Russia's unilateral, barbaric, and deliberate brutality, and also, said mezzo voce, to the betrayal by the “West” in question not rushing in to rescue the innocent, the opposition prefers to refer to the facts. Matters have thus been restored, with Saakashvili being nailed to the pillory for having unilaterally unleashed this crazy war. […] Everything goes, all that Saakashvili could be charged with, except for the ultimate conclusion that everyone knows, that of being a creature relaying the various networks of US influence in eastern Europe. The picture of catastrophe is complete for Saakashvili, with the inevitable risks, even internal consequences. For NATO, the Georgian problem is evolving very fast towards the same category as the Ukrainian problem. A divided leadership, with a growing opposition to adventurous anti-Russian policies, and a probable evolution towards a position of very great prudence. Accelerating the processes of adhesion to NATO would constitute the ultimate anti-Russian provocation, with growing interrogations on the value of the security guarantee that this adhesion constitutes; this has every chance of encountering a more and more categorical opposition from the new tendencies that are manifesting, and perhaps from the new directions that are perhaps going to prevail. The circle will be closed on this pitiful diplomatic adventure that constitutes the Americanist project of NATO's provocative enlargement towards the East. We'll then have to think of revising our habitual slogans that stand in the way of axes of [real] reflection. In this way are taking shape today the great intellectual revolutions of the West which is so famous for its intelligence.

Philippe Grasset, “Georgia after the Ukraine” (10 Sep 2008)

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1429726.php/Georgian_opposition_members_demand_Saakashvilis_resignation [sometimes takes a good knock on the head to come to one’s senses….?]

David Gamkredlidze, head of the New Right party, said he expected to be branded a 'traitor and Russian agent' by the ruling party for his words. 'Despite numerous warnings Saakashvili unilaterally took the criminal and irresponsible decision to shell (the South Ossetian capital) Tskhinvali, which led to catastrophic consequences for the country,' Gamkredlidze said Tuesday. 'Saakashvili no longer holds either political or moral right to be the president of Georgia or commander-in-chief,' he was quoted by local media as saying. Saakashvili came under fire for the scale of the military defeat and for erring in his choice of allies. […] Over 80 prominent organizations and individuals wrote an open letter asking for an end to government war propaganda. 'Extensive propaganda is currently underway, blaming the catastrophic consequences on everyone - an aggressive Russia, an ignorant West (which, it is claimed, ignored the Georgian leader's warnings), the opposition, Russian spies, etc. - everyone, but not the authorities themselves,' the letter published in the Georgian daily Resonansi said.

This ends my month-long thread on the Georgia-Russia conflict from which we have squeezed out enough ‘civilizational’ lessons to mull over for an even longer time…

Sunthar

PPS. UK media picks up on Jean-Marie Bigard (and Ms. Marion Cotillard):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/2712363/French-President-Nicolas-Sarkozy-friend-says-911-was-a-lie.html

In an embarrassment to the French President, and with just two days to go before the seventh anniversary of the deadly terrorist strikes, Jean-Marie Bigard - a member of Mr. Sarkozy's inner circle of showbiz friends - said the official version was a "lie". […] The crude and scatological comic, whose humour travels poorly, was one of several celebrity friends Mr. Sarkozy took with him to meet the Pope late last year, as he is a devout Catholic.

---

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3626100,00.html

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10117

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10131

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10063

The name of the French comedian in my previous post ought to have been Jean-Marie Bigard, instead of (the French Oscar winner) “Marion Cotillard” (hastily copy-pasted from the article in Le Monde), who had made similar assertions earlier (before being forced to apologize for the same before his American critics…)

Sunthar

---

Washington DC , Sept. 9, 2008 – Thierry Meyssan reports from Moscow that he and other leading international 9/11 truth experts have completed taping a television debate which will be telecast on the first national program of Russian state television this coming Friday, September 12. This no-holds barred, free-wheeling debate, featuring strongly divergent opinions about what really happened on and about September 11, 2001, will be shown in conjunction with the documentary film Zero, produced and directed by Chiesa and Franco Fracassi of Telemaco Productions in Rome . Russians are thus about to receive an unprecedented evening of 9/11 truth. The telecast will go out in the middle of prime time. Among the participants, General Leonid Ivashov was the commander of the Russian armed forces on September 11, 2001 , and has been a leading critic of the US official version. A leading strategic thinker for his country, Ivashov is currently a fellow of the Strategic Culture Foundation (fondsk.ru) in Moscow. Giulietto Chiesa is a member of the European Parliament in Brussels , representing the region around Asti in northwest Italy . Chiesa has been the leading spokesman for 9/11 truth issues in the European Parliament, and has been the prime mover behind the documentary film Zero, as well as the collection of essays by the same name which has also attracted much attention in Italy since being published in the late summer of 2007. Thierry Meyssan, the founder and leader of the Voltaire Network in Paris , was one of the first critics of the US official story about 9/11. He is the author of several books, including 9/11: The Big Lie, and Pentagate. He also organized the Axis for Peace conference in Brussels in November 2005. Among almost a dozen Russian participants in the debate that will be televised Friday evening in Moscow, one of the most compelling speakers was a Russian cosmonaut who observed the 9/11 events from his post on the International Space Station in earth orbit. This cosmonaut recounts in the telecast that, as he watched the immense plume of smoke spread from New York out over the Atlantic , he took a large number of photos and films which were sent automatically to both Houston and Moscow . “We have been studying these images very, very, carefully,” commented the cosmonaut pointedly, “and we have seen some highly interesting things.” The host for the debate stressed that this landmark telecast did not imply that the Kremlin administration of President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin was officially espousing any particular point of view concerning 9/11, but rather reflected a commitment to free and open debate. Nevertheless, observers in the Russian capital sense a far-reaching change of mood by the Russian government in the wake of the August 7-8 genocidal attack on South Ossetia by the Georgian dictator and US satellite Saakashvili. The Russians, according to this view, are through with doing favors for the US , especially in regard to Washington ’s official myths about 9/11 and the war on terror, and this telecast will deliver that message in a clear and unmistakable way.

Webster Tarpley, “Landmark Russian TV Debate on 9/11” (09 Sep2008)

I’ve been wondering when they’d be getting around to this…about time the Russians started supporting the real America!

Sunthar

P.S. A French actor, [Jean-Marie Bigard] (supposedly close to Sarkozy…) made the same claim recently on public television and referred to the documentary Loose Change and to the work of David Ray Griffin:

http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2008/09/08/le-11-septembre-jean-marie-bigard-et-la-theorie-du-complot_1092919_3224.html

[you can use Google to translate]

---

So the Ukrainians are meeting with a delegation from the EU tomorrow. Cheney came to tell them, to these Ukrainians, that Washington is counting more than ever on bringing them into NATO, which is what they never stop desiring more and more each day. From Timothy Garton Ash to Miliband, from Cheney’s Washington to the entire West gathered around the bedside of Ukraine oppressed by Moscow, which Ukrainians are they talking about? About which Ukraine are they dreaming for their liberal-interventionist "narrative" of the state of the world? Which world do they want to make happy "unknown to its own free will"? This virtualist [i.e., having no contact with reality – SV] fever of our Western elites is a surprising phenomenon to follow, which must be observed with the zeal and patience of a researcher who, for his part, is not surprised by anything.

Philippe Grasset, “Speaking of the liberal-interventionist West: Timothy Garten Ash’s Ukrainian dream” (08 Sep 2008)

The crisis ends up indirectly posing the famous question, the most fundamental, the most "philosophical" in the long term: is Russia a part of Europe? The dynamics set in motion after the Brussels summit, the trend towards accommodation, provides an answer: yes, of course, for many well known reasons, this time, are united in a fundamental and general appreciation -- "Yes, Russia is part of Europe." […] Forced by events and the frightening alternative of conflict, Europe is now seeking a new framework of security and appeasement, which must necessarily include Russia. This quest indicates that the situation of appeasement in which Europe has lived since 1987 (signing of the Treaty [INF] on nuclear forces theatre USA-USSR in December 1987), whatever the benefit of that appeasement, was a mirage. The reasons are that, on the one hand, one of the signatories [the USA] is the promoter today, as it has been before but more discreetly, of a policy of destabilizing Europe, which is an unbearable contradiction, all the more as it is not European and because it is not European; and on the other hand, the other signatory [USSR] has disappeared, replaced by Russia, which is not the USSR, but which could well prove to be European [by altering the very meaning of ‘Europe’? – SV]

Philippe Grasset, “The crisis takes on sharper outlines” (08 Sep 2008)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/russia.eu [Timothy Garton Ash recants...?]

First, Georgia's leaders behaved with reprehensible folly in escalating the conflict in South Ossetia on August 7, allowing their forces to kill and wound civilians, and failing to anticipate the hammer blow of Russia's military reaction - despite indications that it had been rehearsed. "We did not prepare for this kind of eventuality," confessed Batu Kutelia, the Georgian deputy defence minister. What irresponsible idiots. Second, the dying Bush administration behaved with characteristic incompetence in allowing the Georgian government to nurse even the shadow of a hope that the US cavalry might ride to the aid of this would-be Israel of the Caucasus. Warnings to the contrary were reportedly conveyed by the state department, but not with equal clarity from all parts of this dysfunctional administration. Worldwide ridicule of Washington's indignant response also demonstrated how much credibility the US has lost due to the invasion of Iraq. (Don't invade a sovereign country - that's what we do.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/07/foreignpolicy.military [if Trotskyites, like Christopher Hitchens, can recycle themselves so easily as neocons, would this not be because they share the same Western narrative?]

Timothy Garton Ash was one of the most articulate and influential advocates of "liberal interventionism" and so his effective recantation of the doctrine yesterday should not go unremarked. In a subtle re-branding exercise he declared instead for "liberal internationalism" […] The initial impetus for liberal interventionism came from a genuine belief that "something must be done" to help people suffering in far-off countries, but it fitted into a wider political narrative by which a section of the liberal left came to identify themselves. The humanitarian crises of the 1990s coincided with an intellectual crisis of confidence on the left which left many flailing around for something else to believe in. Blair, the humanitarian war leader, convinced them that, even as they gave up on the radical transformation of British society, there was a wider stage on which to play out their political vanguardism. It has taken two bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to shatter these illusions, but judging by Garton Ash's article we can finally conclude that liberal interventionism is dead and buried.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-fukuyama_07edi.ART.State.Edition1.26bca62.html [is this ‘Hegelian’ gasbag’s attempt to cover his ass indicative of the future of academic philosophy in the West?]

I'm particularly interested in trying to discern the shape of the new international moment, because I wrote an essay in 1989 titled "The End of History?" It argued that liberal ideas had conclusively triumphed at the end of the Cold War, that Western liberal democracy was the final form of human government [is the (not so) hidden dynamics of the ongoing US elections the culmination of informed collective choice? - SV]. But today, U.S. dominance of the world system is slipping; Russia and China offer themselves as models, showing off a combination of authoritarianism and modernization that offers a clear challenge to liberal democracy. They seem to have plenty of imitators. […] We need a much more nuanced conceptual framework for understanding the non-democratic world if we are not to become prisoners of an imagined past. And we shouldn't get excessively discouraged about the strength of our own ideas, even in a "post-American" world.

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idarticle=15976&t=Europe%27s+massive+failures+in+Georgia [the neocons wanted America to be feared (rather than loved), now it’s Russia that is feared while the US is the butt of ridicule…]

If Europe wanted to demonstrate strength, resolve, and leadership, it should have deferred leadership of this crisis to one of its Central or Eastern European powers who understand the region better. The Joint Presidential Declaration of Poland and the Baltic Nations, which condemned Russia's action in unequivocal terms immediately after the outbreak of the crisis, now stands in stark contrast to the softly-softly, failed approach of France and Germany. The EU can still have leverage if it so desires. […]U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is correct that Russia's reputation on the international stage has been badly damaged by this crisis as well as its failure to adhere to the agreed upon cease-fire. However, it is unlikely that Moscow cared much about its reputation when it engaged in this old-fashioned big-power politics. Moscow has provoked a confrontation with Europe and America in Georgia, and it is one that cannot be ignored or go unpunished.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/157497 [who has been destabilizing Europe and playing it (‘new’) against itself (‘old’): Russia or the USA?]

Russia would like to split the EU from the United States and separate EU member states into competing nations. It has on its side a gang of useful idiots, who are willing to justify its policies out of dislike for the United States. But this is a struggle over Europe's future, and by understanding the key facts of the situation—and avoiding being misled about who is to blame for it—European policymakers will have gone a long way in figuring out what to do next. Putin is leading Russia into a dead end. If Europe sees through his bluster, he will be revealed as a bully and a would-be emperor who is more naked than he realizes.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/157500 [damage control by putting the cart before the horse? …and was the ‘global war on terror’ ever really about Islam, per se, or rather about seizing world resources, starting with control of Eurasia?]

In the aftermath of Russia's swift victory over the Georgian Army, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has suggested that the United States secretly provoked the conflict—perhaps even prepared Georgia's forces for it. Lt. Col. Robert Hamilton, who ran the U.S. military training program in Georgia until six weeks ago, finds the charge ironic. "At no time did the U.S. attempt to train or equip the Georgian armed forces for a conflict with Russia," he says. "In fact, the U.S. deliberately avoided training capabilities that were seen as too provocative" to Russia. So the United States never trained the Georgians how to use tanks, artillery or attack helicopters—precisely because those are the skills of all-out conventional warfare. Now the United States—with or without its European allies—is being pushed to build a Georgian Army that could face the Russians, next time. […] After eight years during which the United States concentrated on the Global War on Terror, the debacle of Georgia looks set to refocus the West's attention on the more- traditional challenges of the European continent—and the price of political naiveté. But it also looks likely, in the long run, to confront Russia with more armies than it has real reason to fear.

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=16079 [is China being expansionist in tacitly siding with Russia (even at the risk of seeming inconsistency), or is she attempting to ensure that she’s not the next target of NATO expansionism?]

The Georgian adventure is Russia's fight, and there is no need for China to expend its diplomatic capital in the affair, which explains why China's representative failed to speak up in the United Nations Security Council last Thursday (August 28) on Russia's behalf. Instead, China preferred to let South Africa and Vietnam play that role. After several fatiguing weeks dealing with Olympic-sized public relations fiascos, it suits China's diplomats to sit back and let the Russians take the heat for their Caucasian invasion. But in light of President Hu's assertion immediately after the invasion that Beijing and Moscow are "advancing across the board precisely in accordance with our commonly declared goals," one should not expect major fissures in the great Eurasian partnership of China and Russia.

http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7375&Itemid=132 [might the crisis result in a thorough house-cleaning in ‘European’ Russia as well…so that their actions ends up matching their public rhetoric?]

I call these camps, respectively, Russia’s global and national kleptocrats. Both sides firmly agree that there is nothing that the “weakened and cowardly West” can do to restrain Russia, a nuclear and petroleum superpower, beyond financial retribution against those Russian rulers with vast assets abroad. But the national kleptocrats seem to believe that they can live without overseas assets, or without educating their children and maintaining residences in the West. Instead, they are content to own properties in elite residential areas around Moscow and in Russia, such as Rublyovka, Valday, and Krasnaya Polyana. Both Putin and Medvedev (and their television propagandists) currently reflect the views and goals of the global kleptocrats. […] In order to justify their authoritarian rule and camouflage from the Russian public their massive theft of the country’s resources, the global kleptocrats have already convinced ordinary Russians that they are surrounded by ruthless enemies who are trying to dismember and destroy Russia. Now it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to explain why their wives and children are buying palaces in the capitals of countries that are supposedly Russia’s sworn enemies. By contrast, the national kleptocrats’ position is more consistent. They are not constrained by huge assets in the hated West. It would not be difficult for them to convince ordinary Russians, who have already been primed by today’s xenophobic propaganda, that Tbilisi, Sevastopol, Astana, and Tallinn belong to Russia and should be taken by force.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/07/punishing-putin/ [what’s so ‘unnatural’ about subordinating economic interests to political aims…other than for fanatics of the new ‘religion’ of market fundamentalism?]

Mr. Putin's war against Georgia will likely raise his popularity. The subservient press will explain it was Georgia's fault, and the Russian population will buy this story. Public opinion polls show the Russian people, like Mr. Putin, regard the political breakup of the Soviet Union as a mistake. U.S. or NATO aid to Georgia will be interpreted as a sinister attempt to encircle a valiant Russia. Kicking Russia out of the G8 would be interpreted similarly. […] Mr. Putin has conclusively demonstrated he is willing to sacrifice economic for political goals. He, like V.I. Lenin and Stalin before him, regard the economy's "commanding heights" as an essential instrument of domestic and international policy. […] Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev would like a booming Russian economy; they would like Russia's most visible companies to be highly regarded by international investors; they are proud of Russia's healthy growth rates. But they remain willing to sacrifice economic goals for political ones. Mr. Putin's soft spot is his popularity ratings, but with his control of the media, it would take an economic disaster for them to fall. At this point, the United States and Europe are not able to produce such a result.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/06/stories/2008090653891400.htm

The US military provided combat training to 80 Georgian special forces commandos only months prior to Georgia’s army assault in South Ossetia in August. The revelation, based on recruitment documents and interviews with US military trainers obtained by the Financial Times, could add fuel to accusations by Vladimir Putin, Russian prime minister, last month that the US had “orchestrated” the war in the Georgian enclave. […] MPRI was hired by the Pentagon in 1995 to train the Croatian military prior to their invasion of the ethnically-Serbian Krajina region, which led to the displacement of 200,000 refugees and was one of the worst incidents of ethnic cleansing in the Balkan wars. MPRI denies any wrongdoing. US training of the Georgian army is a big flashpoint between Washington and Moscow. Mr Putin said on CNN on August 29: “It is not just that the American side could not restrain the Georgian leadership from this criminal act [of intervening in South Ossetia]. The American side in effect armed and trained the Georgian army.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4698316.ece

As the shock waves from Russia's dismemberment of Georgia echo across the region, Western interests are toppling like dominos. Almost unnoticed in Britain, Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, paid a near-disastrous visit to Azerbaijan last week. Its President, Ilham Aliyev, inflicted a series of public snubs, including phoning the Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, the moment that a meeting with Mr Cheney finished. A disgruntled Mr Cheney apparently then failed to appear at an official banquet. Azerbaijan seems to be ruling out supplying gas to Nabucco. […] It gets worse. Even Turkey, the linchpin of Western security planning in the region, is wobbling. It depends on a Russian pipeline across the Black Sea for most of its gas. The Kremlin has been assiduously cultivating Ankara, just as the EU has been giving it the cold shoulder. The sight of a semi-independent Kurdistan emerging as the result of the US invasion of Iraq has chilled relations further. […] Turn down the heating: this is going to be a long winter.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JI09Ag02.html

As for Baku's geopolitical orientation, its cordial, business-like relations with Tehran, as well as its pragmatic approach toward the Russia-led geopolitical realities in the region, are prudent courses of action that Baku would be ill-advised to forsake in favor of closer ties with the West. After all, the West has been rather helpless in terms of pulling Tbilisi out of the grave mess that its adventurist leadership carved for itself. […] While we await the results of elections in both the US and Azerbaijan, the latter is likely to thread a cautious middle path that would steer it clear of the headaches gripping the South Caucasus. Needless to say, the pain of such headaches would be much alleviated if Democratic Senator Barack Obama wins in November and somehow succeeds in introducing real change in the hitherto hegemonic orientation of US foreign policy. In that case, the first priority of a president Obama should be to throw water on the new cold war logs fired up by Cheney.

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2442300.0.leading_historian_issues_warning_of_a_new_cold_war.php [reader comments reveal just how much respectability a (neocon) Harvard background confers these days….]

THE SCOTTISH historian Niall Ferguson has warned that the strategic alliance between China and Russia is more of a threat to the West than the credit crunch. Ferguson, a best-selling author, broadcaster and professor of history at Harvard University, said that the development of the new Russia-China power block was set to put the two economic heavyweights on a path to confrontation with much of the rest of the world. […] "The more Russia and China establish that they have common interests, which could include Iran, the more powerful the SCO is going to become," Ferguson said. "The strengthening of the SCO has profound implications. If the countries which belong to that organisation decide they are going to defy the rules of the World Trade Organisation, then a fundamental shift has occurred in the nature of our international order, and that would have implications for all of us. The real threat to globalisation today is not the subprime crisis. The real threats are geopolitical."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JI09Ag01.html

The administration's relative caution, particularly with respect to military aid, appears motivated by several factors. Increasing tensions with Moscow further could seriously jeopardize other top foreign policy interests, according to senior officials and independent analysts, including Washington's hopes for applying additional pressure, particularly through the UN Security Council, on Iran to halt its nuclear program. It could prompt Russia to suspend an agreement that lets NATO use Russian and Central Asian bases and air space to supply its troops in Afghanistan. A more aggressive stance could also harm relations with key European allies, such as Germany, France, and Italy, which are eager to ramp down tensions, in part due to their own heavy investments in Russia's economy and dependence on gas supplies.

———

http://www.redress.cc/global/cking20080908

It is essential to recognize that the Russian view of the world is utterly different from that of the EU and particularly the US. Dr Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in his LSE lecture “The US – Dangerous Nation?”, describes at length the US’s aggressions but in the end, despite his apparently peaceful brief, wants us to believe that this enables the US to do great good: defeating Nazism and Japanese imperialism, helping defeat Communism, spreading democracy and opposing dictators. He believes that, until a perfect international system is invented, US dominance and power with US values are the best practical system. This is the US narrative of its role in the world. It is also the reason why the results of the current US elections are irrelevant to the rest of the world. As Kagan says, the Republicans and Democrats might debate mistakes and details of foreign policy, but both subscribe to the objective of US power, justified by its mission. […]the general difference between Russia and the US is that the Russians want to do things their way and to be left alone; the Americans wish to do whatever is to their advantage and to impose it on everyone else. […] the US’s wish to disrupt the EU’s relationship with the Russians and to provoke them, so providing an excuse for demonizing Russia. US missiles and bases on Russia’s borders are, as I have said previously, not to protect Europe but to protect the US, primarily by making Europe an initial theatre for nuclear exchanges with Russia if it should come to that. […]Those countries that are hosting US weapons are unbelievably naïve. The US is accustomed to having wars in and devastating other countries’ territory while insulating its own population not only from any inconvenience but also the truth of what it is doing. […] United States’ Christianity includes biblical Judaism with prominence given to apocalyptic New Testament material from the Revelation, rather than Jesus’s teachings. This Jewish/European mixture is closer to Marxism in motivation than Americans might like to think. There are also indications that the US is making similar mistakes to the Soviet Union in both economic and military excesses. It appears that, despite the differing economic systems, their underlying cultural motivators are the same and the US experiment might well be approaching failure for the same reasons that the Soviet Union failed. The US’s political leaders and advisers appear to be caught up in the myth of the US’s mission and have become detached from their rational, technical institutions in legal, economic, security and military matters. Europe should not follow them. Europe should remain true to its own ancient roots that are close to Western Russia’s roots, despite superficial appearances. These have the experience of two and a half millennia in development. It appears that the US social experiment has become detached from its European roots. It is currently under severe stress and is showing signs of lashing out at other nations which do not accept the legitimacy of its mission that is increasingly taking on a divine character. As I have said, the US offers nothing but trouble to Europe and Russia. The EU should urgently take the initiative in understanding and working positively with Russia, not primarily for economic benefit, welcome though that would be. The matter of simple physical survival may be at issue. Primarily, however, it should do so because peaceful relationships with other countries are in principle the only way in which we should seek to live.

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-le_songe_ukrainien_de_tga_et_de_l_occident_liberal-interventionniste_08_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_crise_se_precise_08_09_2008.html [French]

---

The paradox is that this [American] "prudence" [as regards concrete actions towards Georgia and Russia] is not at all taken into account, eventually to Washington’s credit, by those outside the USA, who support a measured approach to the problem. Of Washington’s attitude, they retain only the tough dialectic against Russia, the communicative role of which Cheney's trip is a part (as also the rhetoric of unconditional support for Georgia from the two presidential candidates). The impotence of the USA is real, but this does not, however, prevent the USA from being locked in a position that is seen as warmongering, provocative, and as contributing to block a constructive solution of the problem. The paradox is that, although we often talk about the "isolation" of Russia, the only country really alone in this crisis is for the moment the USA.

Philippe Grasset, “Cheney making the rounds amidst the paradoxical isolation of the U.S. in the crisis” (06 Sep 08)

http://www.rense.com/general83/ukr.htm

The collapse of Soros-Brzezinski control over Julia Tymoshenko, Queen of the Ukraine, is what appears to be the reality described below. This represents a parallel phase in the Ukraine to the emergence of Putin from what was the oligarchical and "pro-western" control of Russia by the gangsters who thought they controlled Yeltsin. If Tymoshenko finds in Yanukovich or similar, a serviceable knight, she will survive, along with the independence of the Ukraine from the IMF gang led by Yushchenko. Yelstin had the last laugh on the oligarchs who thought they controlled him when he picked Putin to succeed him. […] Lewis Lehrman, my father, once wrote a definitive article in support of Putin for no less than the Weekly Standard. A staunch Cold Warrior, Mr. Lehrman has spent time in Russia recently as an investor (and descendant of Russian / Ukrainian Jews) and knows well that the enemy image of the Soviet Union does not fit Putin's Russia.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=11272 [is the problem with just the U.S. ‘leadership’ (rather their puppet-masters…) or with the ‘great’ American people (whom Emmanuel Todd describes as “the imperial proletariat”?]

The next US president will inherit a country with a profound image problem. Anti-American sentiment around the world is already far worse today than it was in 2000. And the disconnect between McCain and, on some issues, Obama and the publics around the world is only likely to worsen that problem. Yet this erosion of America’s standing in the world does not concern many Americans. And it will not influence their vote in November.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=11283 [are we heading towards expanding conflict between (blocs of) nations or generalized civil war on a global (not just European) scale?]

Complicating the picture further are deep divisions within some EU governments over Russia. The schism within the German coalition is most marked, with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was born in east Germany, much less willing to compromise with Moscow than her Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier whose Social Democrat party favors a close partnership with Russia. Steinmeier once served as chief of staff for former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who is now co-manager of a Baltic Sea pipeline project involving Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas monopoly. In recent days, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his chief diplomat Bernard Kouchner also appear to be singing from distinctly different song sheets. The French president appears uneasy about ruffling Russian feathers, but known human-rights advocate Kouchner has accused the country of seeking to start another cold war.

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29961 [note that Azerbaijan channeled its gas through Russian (and Iranian) pipelines when the BTC flow through Georgia was suspended during the war]

Neither President Ilkham Aliyev nor the Prime Minister, Artur Rasizade, were there to greet Cheney at Baku airport. Instead, he was met by the country’s First Deputy PM and the Foreign Minister. The Kommersant newspaper reports that Cheney was very annoyed by the results of the meeting with President Aliyev and even refused to attend a ceremonial supper in his own honour.

http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5559

Israel was said to have used the two airfields to “conduct recon flights over southern Russia as well as into nearby Iran.” The US intelligence sources quoted by UPI reported that the Russian force also carried home other Israeli military equipment captured at the air bases. Our sources say that if the Russians got hold of an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle complete with sophisticated electronic reconnaissance equipment, they will have secured some of the IDF’s most secret devices for spying on Iran and Syria. When this happened before, Russian military engineers quickly dismantled the equipment, studied it and passed the technology on to Tehran and Damascus.

———

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/fake-georgia-pi.html [how gleefully the Western media became willing accomplices is illustrated by Fox News presenting the bombardment (by Georgians) of Tskhinvali as that of Gori (by Russians).]

Did major international media, including wire services Reuters and The Associated Press, clumsily help spread pro-Georgian propaganda during the recent war with Russia? Perhaps so, based on possibly staged photos by Reuters photogs David Mdzinarishvili and Gleb Garanich, and George Abdaladze, an Reuters AP shooter.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_28153.shtml

Brown's hypocrisy appears as merely the routine stuff of politicians compared to that of John McCain and George W. re the Georgia fighting: "I'm interested in good relations between the United States and Russia, but in the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations," said McCain, the staunch supporter of US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and leading champion of an invasion of Iran. And here is Mahatma Gandhi Bush meditating on the subject: "Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century."

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=13420

Increasing tensions with Moscow further, according to senior officials and independent analysts, could seriously jeopardize other top foreign policy interests, including Washington's hopes for applying additional pressure, particularly through the U.N. Security Council, on Iran to halt its nuclear program. It could prompt Russia to suspend an agreement that permits NATO use Russian and Central Asian bases and air space to supply its troops in Afghanistan. A more-aggressive stance could also harm relations with key European allies, such as Germany, France, and Italy, which are eager to tamp down tensions, in part due to their own heavy investments in Russia's economy and dependence on gas supplies. U.S. officials are also reluctant to address the question of additional military aid in light of the Georgian armed forces' poor performance during the war – the army retreated in chaos at the first contact, while all of its warships were destroyed in port – and what some of them describe as the recklessness of Saakashvili himself in ordering the attack on Tskhinvali that triggered Russia's offensive.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/chen-s05.shtml

Azerbaijan, under President Ilham Aliyev, has recently attempted to chart something of a middle course between Washington and Moscow. It has remained largely neutral in its public pronouncements regarding Russia’s standoff with the West over Georgia, and Moscow has been attempting to court the Aliyev government. Azerbaijan has even begun to route some of its oil through a Russian pipeline, citing the instability in Georgia as a reason. Analysts believe that Cheney’s visit was an attempt to cajole Baku back into line. Cheney also took time during his brief stop in Azerbaijan to hold private talks with the local heads of the BP and Chevron oil companies.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10055

Washington succeeded in probing into Moscow's reaction. From this standpoint, the developments in Georgia have been a sort of a reconnaissance operation. It made no difference to Washington and to the PR team of G. Bush's Administration in particular whether Russia would intervene in the conflict. Russia would have been lambasted under any circumstances – for being weak if it did not help the Ossetians and for being strong (for the “disproportionate use of force”) otherwise, which is what we have seen. Thus, Georgia's provocation helped Washington accomplish quite a few objectives in the international politics. In particular, one of the results is the legitimization of the US efforts to build up its military presence in the Caucasus on the eve of an operation against Iran, at least in the eyes of the European public opinion. Besides, judging by recent news, the US managed to deploy its nukes in the direct proximity of Russia. The second and the most important question is whether the aggression launched by Saakashvili's regime against South Ossetia was an isolated act or a link in the chain of the US activities aimed at exercising chaos control in the world along the line from Pakistan via Afghanistan, Iran, Georgia, and Ukraine to Kosovo, fracturing the Eurasian geopolitical space into conflict zones and preventing the leading Eurasian powers from integrating the continent? […] What is the objective set by the neo-conservative part of the US elite? In our view, the objective is to cause maximal damage to the image of Russia in the international relations sphere, to increasingly charge Moscow with imperial ambitions and attempts to return to the Soviet era in its worst – as seen in the West - Stalinist form. In case the US accomplishes the objective, the freezing of Russia's assets abroad and a breakdown of the emerging alliance between Russia and the “old Europe” will follow. Besides, Russia's parallel involvement in two armed conflicts in the same post-Soviet geopolitical space (in the Caucasus and, let us say, in the Crimea) and the inevitable threat of the international isolation would radically limit Russia's diplomatic potential in the case of an armed conflict between the US and Iran.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10067 [perhaps the primary focus of Russian global strategy, to be made explicit at the opportune moment, should be rather regime change in the United States?]

The politics of limiting interactions with post-Soviet countries to interacting with their leaders proved inefficient, as we have seen in the cases of Georgia and Ukraine. Russia should address broader audiences including various political elites and the general public in the respective countries. Moscow 's policy should not be exclusively oriented towards any particular authority groups in post-Soviet countries. The approach would be equally warranted from the economic standpoint. It will require substantial financial infusions, but it is cheaper than a war. […]The fact that the US elite aims at instigating a series of regional conflicts shows that the US is no longer able to carry the burden of the global leadership, and the coming war is the last resort to retain it. However, the conflict will not last forever and sooner or later the US will have to downscale its military and political presence worldwide. The reliance on war demonstrates that the US elite's intellectual potential needed to maintain the status of the US as the only superpower is exhausted. […] The US dollar will lose its current status of the global currency. The US will no longer be a country with attractive living conditions, and a migration of quality workforce from the country will commence. The US will be plagued by crime and will face the problem of preserving its territorial integrity. The international community will have to dispatch a peacekeeping force to the US territory to maintain order in the country and to prevent international terrorists from making inroads into its nuclear arsenals.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10062

American global strategy is in crisis, and this is clearly what Moscow has sensed. The United States has insufficient power to cope with the war in Iraq and increasingly in Afghanistan. Both were to have been an essential part of a US policy to militarily control Eurasian rivals, especially Russia and China. However, to act militarily beyond sabre rattling against Russia in Georgia has now been exposed for all Georgia’s neighbor states as essentially a US bluff. Continuing the current US strategy means dealing with the war on Islam rather than the Russian one. The confluence of US Presidential political posturing, a devastating US economic and financial crisis that is worsening by the day and the loss of credibility for US foreign policy around the world since the Bush Administration came to Washington in 2001, have created the opening for other powers to begin to act on what would be Halford Mackinder’s worst nightmare: A Russian Heartland that is vital and that is able to forge strategic relationships, primarily not through guns as during the Cold War, but through economic and trade cooperation, with China, Kazakhstan and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10053

If one of the powers becomes markedly stronger than others and if its decision-making elite internalizes an ideology that demands or at least justifies hegemony, the inherently unstable system of asymmetrical multipolarity will develop. In all three known instances—Napoleonic France after 1799, the Kaiserreich from around 1900, and the Third Reich after 1933—the challenge could not be resolved without a major war. The government of the United States is now acting in a manner structurally reminiscent of those three powers. Having proclaimed itself the leader of an imaginary "international community," it goes further than any previous would-be hegemon in treating the entire world as the American sphere of interest. As I pointed out two weeks ago, the formal codification came in the National Security Strategy of September 2002, which presented the specter of open-ended political, military, and economic domination of the world by the United States acting unilaterally against "rogue states" and "potentially hostile powers" and in pursuit of an end to "destructive national rivalries." To that end, the administration pledged "to keep military strength beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace." […] Four weeks ago the game itself became alarmingly asymmetrical. For America it is still ideological, but for Russia it has become existential. Russia is now acting as a conservative, pre-1914 European power in seeking to protect its "near abroad." America is acting like a global revolutionary power, whose "near abroad" is literally everywhere. It is therefore futile for Russia to try to "manage" the crisis in a pre-1914 manner and hope for some elusive softening on the other side, because the calculus in Washington is not rational. The counter-strategy of unpredictability, exemplified by Medvedev's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, is an eminently rational response, however. It may yet force the remnant of sanity inside the Beltway to try and exercise some adult supervision over the bipartisan "foreign policy community" of smokers in the arsenal.

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-retombees_et_opportunites_du_sommet_de_bruxelles_05_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-cheney_en_balade_et_le_paradoxal_isolement_us_dans_la_crise_06_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-de_la_mediocrite_des_origines_de_la_crise_05_09_2008.html [French]

Sunthar

---

To a large extent, China's foreign policy has gone back to its deeper philosophical underpinnings of "unity, harmony with or without uniformity" (he er bu tong). This is also one of the psychological anchors for the Sino-Russian strategic partnership after the two extreme types of relationship of "honeymoon" (1950s) and "divorce" (1960s and 1970s) between Beijing and Moscow. Western perceptions and expectations that Beijing and Moscow are heading toward some sort of "separation" are, therefore, an overstatement at best. It is also largely derived from the West's own experience and practice, which insists on unity because of (or by, of and for) uniformity. Hence, NATO members must be democracies and the European Union must be European, Christian and perhaps white. Applying the same "recipe" to the SCO and recent Sino-Russian relations, which have largely transcended the past practice of alliances, may lead to nowhere. When the Georgian dust settles, the West may start to comprehend that the Sino-Russian strategic partnership is perhaps not as strong or weak as it appears. What is unclear, however, is whether the crisis between Washington and Moscow will be over, as Washington has rushed US$1 billion aid, and Vice President Dick Cheney, to Georgia and NATO is amassing warships in the Black Sea. The US presidential candidates, too, are rushing to demonize Russia and glorify Georgia as if there is no tomorrow. If this continues, the "Western civil war" may well turn into a brave new page for the 21st century focusing on Russia as the problem. The irony is that Russia has wanted to rejoin the West over the past 20 years and is in no mood to confront the West. Each time, however, its unrequited affection of the West has led to dismay. Soon after assuming his presidency, Medvedev unleashed in Berlin his grand blueprint for a Euro-Atlantic community from Vancouver to Vladivostok. Within this community, Russia and Europe were said to share common roots, history, values and thinking. A month later, the Russian president again tossed around the same "Medvedev doctrine" at the Group of Eight summit in Japan. On the same day, however, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Czech Republic signed a missile defense agreement, to the dismay of Moscow. Putin, too, began his presidency with an unambiguous Westpolitik (visiting Britain for his first foreign tour as Russian president, toyed with a "hypothetical" idea of Russia joining NATO, and "confessed" to the visiting Rice his "European essence" and his Asian superficiality of practicing judo and eating Chinese food). Over time, however, Putin became increasingly Euro-Asian. Even Boris Yeltsin, father of the Russian Federation, began with an obsession of Western-style political democratization and economic shock therapy. Prior to his sudden exit from power at the end of 1999, Yeltsin chose Beijing to remind the West of Russia's huge nuclear arsenal, in a manner more like a recidivist Soviet premier. In between, the man who brought down the Soviet empire became progressively more disillusioned with the West. It is time for the West to reflect on its current Ostpolitik (missile defense, NATO expansion, etc), not necessarily for the West's own interests, but the human race as a whole. The alternative is to stay the course in making Russia a problem for the 21st century. A key difference between this newfound obsession of the West and past stages of the Western civil war is that the world is now in an era of weapons of mass destruction. Already, pundits are talking about possible mushroom clouds for World War III if Russia's rusted conventional military hardware fails to deter the other side. This scenario, no matter how distant, remains a possibility, which is qualitatively different from its predecessors of the 19th century when the West dealt with the French problem (the Napoleon Wars) and of the 20th century for the German problem (World War I and II). The latter sucked the whole world into West's own senseless mutual slaughtering. If this remains a possibility, China, together with the rest of the non-Western world, will be better off staying out.

Yu Bin, “China still on-side with Russia,” Asia Times Online (05 Sep 08)

Hi Geetanjali,

To begin with, the “West” is what (self-proclaimed) ‘Westerners’ claim it to be: the pre-eminent world-civilization with intertwined Judeo-Christian and pagan Greco-Roman roots that ushered in ‘enlightened’ modernity (with the attendant benefits of reason, science, democracy, humanism, technological progress, etc.) and happens to be centered in Europe and now North America (this is the subtext of the propaganda war that’s being waged across the globalized media). From a psycho-social perspective, it was also based on the increasing release of the economic motive (artha) from the restraints of traditional (primarily religious) constraints (dharma). Along with all benefits brought by the entrepreneurial (i.e., ‘capitalist’) spirit, this inversion of values, the ‘liberation’ of human greed, has resulted in not only aggravated conflict among (especially colonizer) nations but the exploitation of the many by the few (even within their own nations). Though the Communist reaction encompassed large swathes of the non-Western world, it remained ideologically rooted in the same civilization matrix and, in fact, claimed to fulfill the promise of homo oeconomicus. By branding the Sino-Soviet bloc as the “East,” the Euro-Atlantic bloc was (not just) implicitly claiming that their capitalist (read: ‘neo-liberal’) order alone was the true and legitimate inheritor of ‘Western’ civilization. The “rest of the world” (ROW) were simply caught up - often as the worst victims of proxy ‘hot’ wars – or as helpless ‘non-aligned’ witnesses, if they were lucky, of the Cold War.

When the Pax Sovietica eventually collapsed with the Berlin Wall, the Eastern Europeans, including the Russian elite (except for the rare few like Solzhenitsyn…), assumed that it was Communism that was bankrupt, not recognizing that it was homo oeconomicus who was imploding under the weight of his own contradictions. The ‘Communist Party’ has survived in ‘capitalist’ China only because of its indispensable social role as the temporary substitute (‘New Mandarins’) for (fresh ‘modern’ re-formulations of) age-old Confucianism. This sort of reversion to civilizational foundations in order to forge new beginnings, has been more difficult for the (Westernizing) Russians (as also for the Indians, but for very different reasons…) because they have (so far) only Christianity to fall back on. Instead of radicalizing the ‘Marxist’ critique of capitalism into a full-fledged critique of (the one-sided evolution of) ‘Western’ civilization (there is much that could be drawn for this purpose from the pre-Revolution conservative tradition without having to fall into outmoded reactionary postures…), the Russian oligarchs (with their mansions in London and the Riviera at Nice…) seem to have fallen back into a “if we can’t beat them, let’s join them” syndrome. If Russia is ultimately vanquished, this will be on account not so much of a rusting conventional army (that has already proved itself in Georgia), over-dependence on energy resources (being less enmeshed in the American economy, unlike China, might rather afford greater scope for autonomous global initiatives…), a dwindling white population (what’s preventing Putin, who himself has Asiatic traits, from encouraging Russian intermarriage with Central Asians and even Chinese…), but because it is already losing its soul.

The real problem is that (the ‘deep’) Russia (which embraces its Asian inheritance) and the United States (that exterminated its ‘native’ populations) are two different coins: Putin, who began by believing himself to be the other (junior?) face of the imperial coin newly minted by this impostor Bush (which is why he was the first to rush to the latter’s side proclaiming post-911 solidarity before the ROW…), may yet realize that Russia’s true vocation is (neither European nor Asian but) Eurasian (even if it takes another generation to properly fathom the implications of such a reorientation)!

Regards,

Sunthar

P.S. I’m inclined to think that the ROW should support Russia in whatever way we can (even while watching out over our own respective shoulders…), as we’ll otherwise become easy prey to Western hubris.

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (Sep 4, 2008)

“Re: Georgia-Russia conflict - the Great Game in Central Asia (beyond Western propaganda)”]

-----Original Message-----

Dear Sunthar,

I really do not understand what you are talking about. What is Putin talking about when he says he is different from the Western civilization when he belongs to the common Christian tradition that they share. What is "the West" according to you ??

Russia and the United States are two sides of the same coin.

Regards

Geetanjali

[Response to Sunthar's post (28 Aug 2008) at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/4613]

----------------------------------

The recent Russo-Georgian war was the last straw: from now on, Moscow, the Third Rome, the capital of the Eurasian empire to which all the numerous people of the empire have had a feeling of awe, a feeling that Moscow is also their capital, became a city of a foreign state. This feeling of Russia's foreignness is shared not just by the people of the Caucuses and Central Asia, but also by friendly Belarus, which offended Moscow by not supporting the Georgian war. Now, Russia is more alone, more alienated and hated among the republics of the former Soviet Union than at any other time in Soviet and post-Soviet history. [Quite apart from the open question as to which capital is more hated, Moscow or Washington, will this emerging polarity, with Russia still the weaker, increasingly oblige the latter’s Western-oriented elites to rethink what their country stands for? – SV] Still, the US's inability to defend its proxy Georgia, which it implicitly encouraged to attack South Ossetia, setting off the war, is a reflection of the broad geopolitical burden of Iraq and Afghanistan on the US's shoulders. These geopolitical debacles are related to America's increasing economic problems, for which no viable solution can be found in the context of present social-economic arrangements. The collapse of the American global imperial presence is structurally similar to that of the collapse of the Soviet empire. Neither Russia nor the US can be true imperial powers. The geopolitical structure of the global order created by Stalin and his American adversaries in the aftermath of World War II is collapsing, not just on the Russian side but also on the American side. This implies that the future - at least the immediate future - is not so much for Pax Russika or Pax America, but most likely a push for increasing global anarchy.

Dmitry Shlapentokh, “The failure of two empires,” Asia Times Online (04 Sep 08)

[The media-based propaganda war] played a fundamental role in this case [of the Georgia-Russia conflict], in particular to transform the perception of the crisis, in the "West", from a simple regional conflict to a high-level crisis of confrontation, with Russia standing accused. The reverse of this transformation, to which other factors have also contributed, is that it has allowed Russia’s military action to be figured within the conditions that we have seen elsewhere, i.e., as an assertion of power at the continental level that enhances Russia’s status. It is not at all certain that Saakashvili’s superiority in the "media war" has finally materialized into a success; there have been some tactical successes, but has this resulted in a strategic success? (…) Saakashvili has involved the Westerners, but not at all with the intensity and in a form that he would have desired. On the other hand, by raising the conflict to a "West-Russia” level, he has triggered unforeseen effects that are not in his favor. The "media war" is indeed a formidable power for those who launch and conduct it, but it is not always controllable in its effects.

Philippe Grasset, “Saakashvili’s Real War” (4 Sep 08)

Far from being a bright politician, Saakashvili is a second-class autocrat, made up by Washington and Tel Aviv, who thought his destiny was a highway designed by his American, Israeli and British allies, and encouraged by the technocrats of Brussels and a bunch of politicians of the same feather in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states. His central mistake lay in the fact that he trusted their common illusions that Caucasus had a European vocation (to joining the EU), that Georgia had a North-Atlantic vocation (to joining NATO),... while the big interest in fact at play was oil... and the only assets, the weakness of Russia and the rain of dollars poured over the region. In Washington, Brussels, London... I crossed the road of many Saakashvili's .. in their thirties or forties, US-trained, long-teethed wolves fascinated by politics to make a carrier, ready to “make History” as long as History is flexible and obedient. Disregarding signals sent out by many continental Europeans that their dreams were disconnected from any reality, they relied on promises made by the Americanists, those architects of the myth of an irresistible West and of an ever-expanding EU. But, as we say in French, “the advisers are not the payers” ... as the new Member-States already realized when London (their greatest sponsor into the EU) refused to pay for their accession.

Franck Biancheri, “Georgia Crisis: the End of the Americanist Illusion”

http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/oped/29567/

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/world/europe/03georgia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/03/europe/letter.php?page=2?pass=true

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/wallerstein020908.html

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/02/older-weapons-efficacy-evident-in-georgia-conflict/

The effective use of decades-old Russian T-72 main battle tanks in the brief conflict with Georgia again shows how supposedly obsolete weapons can still play a potent and even decisive role in modern war. […] The Russian army today still could prove no match for the U.S. Army and its NATO allies at the peak of their power, but it doesn't have to. The U.S. Army and Marines have been exhausted by their ongoing commitment in Iraq fighting a relatively small but ongoing low-intensity counterinsurgency war against Sunni Muslim insurgents over the past 5 1/2 years. And the nations of the European Union in general have allowed their conventional forces to run down to an extreme degree since the collapse of communism.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/georgias-propag.html [did the Americans fall for Georgian propaganda or were they deliberately providing cover and amplification for the latter?]

http://warisboring.com/?p=1339

The five-day Georgian-Russian [war] saw Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and other Georgian officials waging an aggressive propaganda campaign and, in many ways, a disinformation war in the Western mass media. This media offensive was the result either of a carefully planned disinformation war or a rush by Western governments, mainstream media, and think tanks to get the Georgians’ side of the story and their side only. Either way, the Georgians were able to wage an effective and constant barrage of propaganda and disinformation against the Russians.

———

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=762&Itemid=1

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080902_russia_calls_natos_bluff/

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/72421

http://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page38?oid=61459&sn=Detail

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-l_ouest_combien_de_vieux_chars_demodes_04_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_vraie_guerre_de_saakachvili_04_09_2008.html [French]

Friends,

I began chronicling this Georgian-Russian war even as it broke out (and despite being on vacation) in order, among other things, that we may see, live before our eyes, how exactly Western, and particularly Anglo-Saxon, propaganda works in general, not just with regard to other global conflicts and tensions, but also with respect to any national, religious, or other significant force that stands in the way of a ‘civilizational’ hegemony that’s taken more or less for granted:

• How reliable then (if not downright perverse…) is the portrayal of China (Iran, Venezuela, etc.) with respect to ongoing developments, and how seriously should other Western-educated (e.g., Indian) elites (particularly those gung-ho on the nuclear deal) take these portrayals in the elaboration of their policy to such targeted third nations? To illustrate: whereas all the indications are that the timing of the hostilities (that Saakashvili vaunted as “ brilliant” …) was also meant to embarrass (a ‘paralyzed’ ) China and mar its hosting of the Olympics (note all the provocations by proxy that preceded the nevertheless successful conclusion of the latter), it is the Russians who are now being accused of having done so (with fresh articles attempting play off China’s dignity, responsibility, economic success, etc., in contrast to the barbarian Slavs…). How credible will Indian protests be when the subcontinent is eventually targeted?

• Would such blatant propaganda be so effective among the media consumers, viz. the European, and particularly American, public (even when subsequently contradicted by unimpeachable sources…there are still many Americans who believe that Iraq had WMD though their President may openly shrug his shoulders), if they did not share a common ‘narrative’ regarding the inevitable triumph of “Western” civilization (as a vehicle for their collective material interests)? Can such brainwashing be neutralized without questioning and unraveling this ‘Western’ narrative; and is this feasible without Chinese, Indians, Muslims, etc., (re-) discovering and re-formulating the values and achievements of their own traditions? Despite all the bashing they’ve been getting (and with even more to come…), the Russian elite remain shocked and unbelieving that, as (would-be) ‘Europeans’ they could deserve such a ‘welcome’ from (even old) Europe.

• Is this ‘Americanist’ psychology embodied by the likes of Saakashvili peculiar to the East Europeans (who, at least, can argue genuine security concerns in the face of their giant neighbor), or is it far more widespread and, in some ways, even more characteristic of segments of the Western- educated Indian elites, those who seek ‘great power’ status under an American umbrella (we see this most clearly among immigrant ‘successes’ like Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, who was a prominent cheerleader for Bush’s Iraq war…)? Why is it that those most able to see through this sham are the growing number of genuine Americans, those most knowledgeable about and attached to their ideological roots?

Do keep these questions churning at the back of your mind as the world plunges deeper into chaos and generates more puzzles about the widening gap between reality (at least as it becomes known) and the ‘virtual world’ of the media…

Sunthar

P.S. I’m now obliged to pass on to other more pressing tasks and responsibilities at hand…

---

… In other words: the "West", in a single sweep, rises to take Ukraine into its midst, into NATO, into the EU, into whatever you want, into Manchester United or into the Standard of Liege [Belgian team, so at the heart of EU– SV] while we are at it, so long as it escapes, this beautiful country, the claws of Moscow! But which Ukraine? That of president Yushchenko, of course, the man of the "orange revolution", homo democraticus par excellence according to the "West"? The problem is that on this very day, when President Yushchenko convenes the usual cabinet on Wednesday, 11 of 12 government ministers of the vivacious Prime Minister Timoshenko are boycotting the meeting, and Yushchenko held a council of ministers for two. That’s too little. […] Thus, the "West" is mobilized on behalf of a man, President Yushchenko, who has a pro-Russian and anti-NATO opposition in his Parliament, who has recently accused Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister normally on the side of presidential majority of "treason" because she would not be fundamentally opposed to Russia and would be rather lukewarm about joining NATO (Tymoshenko is thinking of the next presidential election) – All this amounts to an anti-Yushchenko majority, and therefore opposed to joining NATO in accordance with democratic norms, in the Parliament. The population remains overwhelmingly opposed to Ukraine’s entry into NATO. […] Seriously, the "West", whom are we going to bring into NATO? Yushchenko by himself, and we will say that this is the Ukraine, agreed? Normally, Cheney, who is due to arrive in the Ukraine within 24 hours visiting in a show of support for the massive popular current in favor of joining NATO, may be expected to make all this clear.

Philippe Grasset, “We are going to liberate the Ukraine! Sure, but whom in the Ukraine are we going to liberate?” (3 Sep 08)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JI04Ag01.html

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article6084.html

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080903/116506588.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JI04Ak01.html

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/229413,ukraine-parliament-defies-yushchenko-pro-west-coalition-crumbles.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7595667.stm

"I am sorry that the president behaves irresponsibly," she said at a cabinet meeting. "The coalition was destroyed under his instruction." The BBC's Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke says Mr Yushchenko's popularity is at rock bottom at the moment with opinion polls giving him single-digit levels of support. The prime minister and president are believed to be jockeying for position before next year's presidential election, though our correspondent says Mr Yushchenko's chances of winning with current popularity levels would be slim. The crisis follows mounting tension between the president and prime minister with Mr Yushchenko accusing Ms Tymoshenko of treason for allegedly siding with Moscow over the conflict in Georgia. […] The flare-up comes a day before a planned visit to the country by US Vice-President Dick Cheney. The trip is part of a tour of former Soviet states which the US sees as key allies.

http://www.metimes.com/Security/2008/09/02/commentary_israel_of_the_caucasus/f5e1/

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080903/116506588.html [what perfect timing with shot-gun Cheney’s triumphal roundup of the Caucuses...  ]

———

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10042

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=176933

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13397

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_division_radicale_au_sein_de_l_ue_et_le_role_de_washington_03_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-borchgrave_nous_dit_qu_israel_a_avait_des_bases_en_georgie_pour_attaquer_l_iran_03_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-nous_allons_liberer_l_ukraine_certes_mais_qui_en_ukraine_allons-nous_liberer_03_09_2008.html [French]

Sunthar

---

The Russians have hardened their tone everywhere and one can almost speak, to describe their attitude in some domains, of real intransigence, in no way devoid of provocation. In a sense, one could consider this attitude to be a surprise, for the Russians have accustomed us so much to massaging and softening their self-willed statements with the prudent nuances of political positions. The general Russian attitude of intransigence, even where nuanced through certain maneuvers, is an important factor in the crisis. It could even be seen as something of an enigma if we adhered to the judgment that this behavior is abrupt and too little nuanced. It should be noted immediately that the lack of nuance and a certain brutality in some cases may be the pursuit of political skill through other means. […] It seems that the situation is ideal for a Russian evolution that exceeds the mere political sphere, and we might even perceive some warning signs. My idea is that there could manifest and then exist today a growing surge of Russian patriotism, with the very great likelihood of a mystical dimension unique to this nation. The Russians are capable of this kind of momentum, it is a fairly common circumstance in their history. […] Besides this classic impetus for Russia, there also seems to be a belief among its political direction and the milieus specializing in media analysis relating to national security that the USA in any case, and not to mention the European case, is in a situation of extraordinary tension. This assessment is often encountered in informal conversations that may be had with some Russian officials, some analysts. Expressed in more concrete - analogical and historical terms - the idea is that it is time to take into account, possibly to influence policy, that the USA is today in a structural situation similar to that of the USSR before its collapse. Some remarks, including those of Zogorine, the Russian ambassador to NATO, show that Russia has indeed a radical and quite original analysis of the Americanist phenomenon, much more so than any of the leaders of our "advanced" Western peoples who still remain at the level down-town dinner-table analyses. […] Another element is the complete breakdown of Russian trust in the words of the USA, and also in the behavior (the rationality of the behavior) of the USA. An analysis of some Russian experts in this direction could be that a point of no return has been reached, not only for what is the state of the USA, but also for Russia's relations with the USA. The contacts that Western (European) diplomats and experts have today with the Russians, especially since the presentation that was made of the short Russian-Georgian war show, in the words of one NATO source, "a complete, total, and furious loss of Russian confidence in whatever the Americans, in particular, say and do; for the moment there are no trustworthy communications possible, specifically with the Americans." […] Putin’s remarkable speech in Munich in February 2007 shows that Russian leaders are capable of observations of this magnitude, a very powerful theoretical approach to History. This vision is actually not without a certain mystical dimension unique to the Russian soul, or, inversely: the "mystical dimension unique to the Russian soul" is likely to increase and strengthen this vision. […] the Russians have come to the conclusion that, under certain conditions of tension, the U.S. can be driven to encounter serious internal difficulties that place their system in grave danger. In this, after all, they (the Russians) have been educated by experience [of their own Soviet system collapsing under the weight of its internal contradictions when faced with unrelenting external pressure – SV]. (…) Is the Russian attitude in the Georgian crisis aimed, among other purposes, at exacerbating the tension within the Americanist system hoping that this will lead to some internal breach or other? Putin, following Chirac (and before the Turk Gül), is one of the few politicians to have concluded that a unipolar system was no longer possible - and we would add no longer tenable, when the bearer of this unipolarity can be seen to be irresponsible and erratic in its behavior, and leading the rest to the abyss [les moutons de Panurge? – SV]. Have the Russians concluded that the international system can no longer continue in a coherent manner with the U.S. in its current position of influence and have they begun to act to try to break its current structuring at the helm of the Americanist system? This hypothesis should be retained while monitoring the crisis as it develops.

Philippe Grasset, “The Russian Enigma” (26 Aug 2008)

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jKGyvl-wPdH2pItbNf_eGOGEWdkw

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d9009a6-7851-11dd-acc3-0000779fd18c.html

Leonid Ivashov [who seems to have a deeper insight into the sinister internal rationale for 9/11 than does the still naïve Putin… - SV], a retired general, who now heads the Academy of Geopolitics, a Moscow think-tank, conceded that there was widespread discontent among his active-duty colleagues when Mr. Medvedev ordered the operation to halt on August 12. “This was aggression, and according to the rules of warfare, the aggressor must be brought to capitulation. And I am not in agreement with my government which stopped the operation. The Georgian army should have been destroyed and disarmed – like we did with Germany, and with other aggressors,” he said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-dejevsky/mary-dejevsky-the-destructive-prejudices-of-europes-new-members-915625.html

The trouble is that while the “old” Europeans left past enmities at the door when they joined the EU – that was the whole point of joining – too many of the “new” Europeans saw the EU, like NATO, as a means of pursuing old quarrels from a new position of strength. […] In 2000, Jacques Chirac's fears about EU enlargement drew reproaches of condescension and worse. The official US and British view was preferred; that these countries would form a “bridge” to Russia. Over time, though, M. Chirac looks more right than wrong. Popular European opposition to the Iraq war was less effective than it could have been because of divisions between “old” and “new” Europe that were well exploited by the US. As Iraq faded as an issue, EU efforts to reach a realistic and mutually beneficial relationship with Russia were repeatedly thwarted by a chorus of "new" Europeans warning of the worst. […] That discussions on all these issues are coloured by the very particular experience of the “new Europeans” is a good part of the explanation why no solutions are being reached. Alas, that failure is now water under a premature enlargement that has proved more of a block than a bridge.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-schweber/russia-georgia-and-iran_b_123028.html [???]

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_United_States_Are_Slowly_Losing_Internet_Traffic_Hegemony_23454.html [the French were likewise concerned about US control of the Internet just before the Iraq invasion in early 2003… - SV]

———

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/wests-blunders-led-to-georgia-crisis-schroeder_10091394.html

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1016/42/370613.htm

http://www.larouchepub.com/hzl/2008/3535ww_miscalc.html [is the USA still a victim of the ‘British Empire’ or are we already dealing with an Anglo- American empire here? – SV]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10032

Russia could accelerate the process of accepting Iran as an equal member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). By accepting Iran, one of the key countries of the Islamic world, the organization could change fundamentally both in terms of its potential and in terms of its regional role. Meanwhile, as a SCO member Iran will find itself under the collective umbrella of this organization, including under the protection of such nuclear states as Russia and China. This will lay foundations for a powerful Russia-Iran-China axis, which the United States and its allies fear so much.

http://www.newropeans-magazine.org/content/view/8453/1/

http://www.counterpunch.com/walberg09022008.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-une_incertitude_de_plus_les_rapports_entre_l_armee_russe_et_le_kremlin_02_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_crise_venue_de_la_trahison_de_l_esprit_de_l_europe_par_l_elargissement_02_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_politique_anglaise_dans_la_crise_georgienne_jugee_par_tocqueville_02_09_2008.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-crise_troisieme_phase_02_09_2008.html [French]

Sunthar

---

“As for the public perception of the events that are taking place, of course this in large part depends not only on the politicians but also on how cleverly they manipulate the media, on how they influence world public opinion. Our U.S. colleagues are of course much better at it than we are. We have much to learn. But is it always done in a proper, democratic way, is the information always fair and objective? Let's recall, for example, the interview with that 12-year-old girl and her aunt, who, as I understand, live in the United States and who witnessed the events in South Ossetia. The interviewer at one of the leading channels, Fox News, was interrupting her all the time. All the time, he interrupted her. As soon as he didn't like what she was saying, he started to interrupt her, he coughed, wheezed and screeched. All that remained for him to do was to soil his pants, in such a graphic way as to stop them. That's the only thing he didn't do, but, figuratively speaking, he was in that kind of state. Well, is that an honest and objective way to give information? Is that the way to inform the people of your own country? No, that is disinformation.” []

Vladimir Putin, “CNN Interview” (August 29, 2008) – see Amanda 1 and Amanda 2

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/31/russia.georgia

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008/08/30/story_30-8-2008_pg3_6

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/2656824/Vladimir-Putin-threatens-Europe-over-energy-supply.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLV15028720080831?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/08/30/ST2008083000507.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/30/russia.oil

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/2651516/Russia-threatens-to-supply-Iran-with-top-new-missile-system-as-cold-war-escalates.html

http://www.sundayszaman.com/sunday/yazarDetay.do?haberno=151697

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSLT24567020080829

http://inthefield.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/29/why-putin-and-medvedev-spoke-to-cnn/

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/29/putin.transcript/

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=321110

———

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4641340.ece

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10009

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=&section=opinion&xfile=data/opinion/2008/August/opinion_August137.xml

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10022

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_contre-attaque_mediatique_de_la_russie.html [French]

Sunthar

---

In this case [of Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and Ossetia], Europe is in a new position. It cannot wash the matter of its hands, as in the case of Iraq, because everything is happening at home. But Europe is in an ambiguous even contradictory situation, indeed with a very wide palette of nuances among countries. On the one hand, it shares more or less completely the U.S. approach for various reasons – self-interest, cowardice, servility, facility, and also faith in the same constructing of moral virtualism [i.e., imprisoning itself in a self-serving ‘narrative’ of the highest ‘civilizational’ mission that corresponds less and less to the obvious realities of the world – SV]; Europe shares this approach, but there is no guarantee at all that the same psychological autism, by which it is afflicted, will not meet powerful obstacles that will seriously rock the boat, if not much worse. Indeed, faced with a situation that directly affects it, Europe has doubts, fears, she eventually rediscovers an ancient store of experience [Europe’s history is much older than that of America, and its collective unconscious is still fresh with the bloody trauma of recent follies…- SV] makes it uncomfortable before what is perceived at moments as a “U.S. folly.” This ambivalence leads in extreme cases to schizophrenia, which is hardly bearable for a long time. The remark is all the more acceptable – and we insist on this central fact – for the crisis in Europe and the pressure on Europe will now be constant. […] If the assumption of the rupture is correct, this crisis is on the verge of escaping those who initiated it and those caught up in it, of escaping everyone, including the Russians. An additional factor, especially for the European position, is the absence of the U.S. in terms of lack of power. The only echo that Europe has from the U.S. amounts to unsophisticated measures of provocation (ships in the Black Sea, rearmament of Georgia) and a crude propaganda, without any nuance, that accentuates the fundamental psychological malaise, caught between temptations to follow this propaganda through habits of servility as well as the belief in the Americanist myth, and a constant and pressing reminder of the underlying realities. There is no impetus from the USA, there is the exhibition without nuance of a mechanical fabrication of propaganda and provocation. It is very difficult in these conditions to maintain, within this tension, a psychological unity of the "West", which is what matters in this case. We are not, absolutely not, in a new Cold War, we are in a battle for the psychological perception of the world. The Cold War was by definition stability, long-term, an antagonistic arrangement; the current crisis is instability, short- if not very short-term volatility, variable antagonisms, and impossible to arrange within a stable status. The reference to a "new Cold War," which is systematic on the Anglo-Saxon side, is in no way a self-imposed fear or a technique of mobilization, but a desperate attempt on the part of archaic minds trying to cling to a bygone time where East and West could oppose each other in comfort with, on the "Western" side, the self-assurance of representing the mythical "free world"… A desperate attempt of the Anglo-Saxon dream at reconciling an irresistible hegemonic impulse and good moral conscience that ensures peaceful sleep.

Philippe Grasset, “The Enigma – An even more forceful continuation”

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=09a_1218873426 [Saakashvili – another American ‘success’ story…or proof of certifiable dementia? - ]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122006041734285393.html [nice to wash your hands off an (American?) failure…eh?]

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29694

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29636

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080829/116385723.html

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1219572145087&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121997087258381935.html

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20080829/116373473.html [French]

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10003

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/30/russia.eu

———

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=13370

“It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to communicate with someone so obsessed with managing the perceptions of reality that they've become incapable of recognizing reality altogether. In the Bizarro World of the Atlantic Empire, the bombing of Serbia was humanitarian, the invasion of Iraq was defensive, the occupation of Afghanistan was democratic, and the separation of Kosovo was legal – while the Russian intervention to neutralize the Georgian army and save the Ossetians from ethnic cleansing was "aggression" befitting Hitler or Stalin. Medvedev and Putin are not angels – but they never claimed to be. That claim is the sole purview of American Emperors, a sign of madness that Bush/Cheney, Obama/Biden and McCain/Whoever all have in common. To them, it doesn't actually matter what Russia does – whatever anyone but America (and its "allies") does is by definition evil. One wonders if they quite understand this in Moscow. And what will happen once they do.”

http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13377

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/georgians-stuck-in-limbo-begin-to-lash-out-at-saakashvili-911778.html

http://www.rense.com/general83/natoh.htm

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=stratfor&btnG=Search+Video#

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-pensees_et_programme_du_cmi_a_propos_de_la_crise.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-l_enigme_suite_fortissimo.html [French]

Sunthar

---

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,574516,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,572811,00.html

http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=9344

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/27/europe/moscow.php

http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/28-08-2008/106240-russia_topol_missile-0

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29626

http://www.rense.com/general83/geor.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/08/29/cnrussia129.xml

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4626430.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/29/russia.georgia

———

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqMhBEYGrXU&eurl=http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/2008/08/ron-paul-throws-fed-and-gop-under-bus.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH30Ag02.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/cloughley08292008.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-en_mer_noire_mullen_a_la_barre.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-desarroi_schizophrenique.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-l_isolement_de_dushanbe.html [French]

Sunthar

---

What has been highlighted is not only the finding that "Western strategic thinking is a vacuum" – it goes without saying – what has been highlighted, beyond this, is the implicit, or not sufficiently explicit, finding that Western psychology has become pathologic, with the ‘Americanist’ [i.e., dominated by a certain uncritical image of American culture and leadership – SV] pathology providing the matrix. That is what our author [Kishore Mahbubani] unconsciously implies when finishing an ironic paragraph on the Western belief regarding the unity of the world behind the West, by employing the term relating to fabrication, and hence to this sick psychology, of "narrative": "The gap between the Western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater." […] Hence the isolation of the "West" is all the more psychological rather than political. From this point of view, indeed, the “rest of the world" is on the side of Russia, although some among this "rest" do not necessarily approve of Russia, but they are all of the same world, which is that of reality. The "West" continues to evolve in a "narrative" which means that, despite everything, if it is empty and hollow, almost as if written by Saakashvili’s communication services and as filthy as a sewer, the type of article of the minimum standard syndicated by [Bernard Henri-Lévi] remains a benchmark for foreign policy analysts. […] This vision likewise "isolates" the Westerners or, in any case, the followers of Americanist culture as much as the crusaders of modernity who populate our living rooms. Most often, if we confront a Chinese, an Arab, even a Singaporean, with Americanist culture, i.e., modernity, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, his choice of using the term "barbaric" rarely goes to Russia; what is more, he sees Russia, in this case, as a victim of a form of Western supremacist thinking that is also exercised against him in general; this supremacism, which is an aggravated form of racism, is all the more unbearable in that it appears increasingly like a hoax in the very activity of Western modernity, as evidenced by the characteristics and the effects of Western activism since September 11, 2001. This trend plays its role in this crisis, to accentuate, or even define the isolation of the "West", because this crisis is brings all the more into relief this gap in perception.

Philippe Grasset, “Who is isolated and how?”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa0035f0-7459-11dd-bc91-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=70662e7c-3027-11da-ba9f-00000e2511c8.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9c7ad792-7395-11dd-8a66-0000779fd18c.html

http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/08/27/afx5364038.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4622422.ece

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c65798bc-6ec6-11dd-a80a-0000779fd18c.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/russia.usforeignpolicy

———

http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=4135

http://www.kommersant.com/p-13134/r_500/Russia_Georgia_South_Ossetia_conflict/

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/how-war-began-in-georgia/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4622004.ece

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH29Ag01.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-du_roi_abdallah_de_jordanie_au_ss-26_l_arme_secrete_des_russes_les_armes.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-qui_est_isole_et_comment.html [French]

Sunthar

---

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH28Ag01.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3940040a-739e-11dd-8a66-0000779fd18c.html

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/geor-a26.shtml

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/25/georgia.russia

———

http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2301

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=13356

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13365

http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13336

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_barbarie_en_georgie_les_incidents_afghans_et_l_indignation_internationale.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-courte_reflexion_anglo-saxonne_sur_la_politique_russe.html [French]

Sunthar

---

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=19335

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav082508a.shtml

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4608250.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4607471.ece

———

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/08/26/NATO/

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts08262008.html

http://www.larouchepub.com/hzl/2008/3534to_world_war_3.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_russie_invite_la_crise_afghane_dans_notre_grande_crise.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-l_enigme_russe.html [French]

Sunthar

---

“In recent years, we have been told, We are looking forward to meeting you and welcoming you to our civilized Western family of nations. Well, why would you decide that your civilization is the best? There are much more ancient civilizations in this world.”

[Vladimir Putin, 31 Dec 2007, “Person of the Year” interview in Time Magazine).

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH26Ag01.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH26Ag02.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/10/georgia.russia

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/will-we-pay-the-price-if_b_120670.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article4597385.ece

———

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/georgia-and-the-push-for_b_120478.html

“Seven and a half years into an administration that seems likely to go beyond January in all but name -- so deeply are its patterns now ingrained in the culture of lawmakers and the mainstream media--the signs are strong that we are run by a government-within-the-government.”

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/72115

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9933

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/medi-a22.shtml

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1012186.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-sebastopol_et_le_gout_salee_des_mers_chaudes_.html [French]

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-du_sud_au_nord_la_crise_bascule.html [French]

Sunthar

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20080825-156663/US-Russia-chill-threatens-NASA-space-program

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/600/42/370379.htm

———

http://www.tiraspoltimes.com/news/arms_build_up_as_georgia_prepares_war_on_abkhazia_south_ossetia.html

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9861

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/1162

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=&section=opinion&xfile=data/opinion/2008/August/opinion_August92.xml

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/08/21/the_puppet_masters_behind_georgia_presid

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/eu_russia0447_08_20.asp

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_trahison_existe-t-elle_encore.html [French]

Sunthar

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/20/business/EU-Russia-Iraq-Investment.php

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/2596872/Ukraine-leaders-divided-over-Russian-threat.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/154969

———

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9929

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/randalmark.php?articleid=13340

http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=13347

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=13342

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=27548

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/aug2008/russ-a13.shtml

http://www.rense.com/general83/whois.htm

http://www.kp.ru/daily/24150.4/366384/

http://www.rense.com/general83/rosw.htm

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3582864,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/22/syria.israelandthepalestinians

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13317

http://www.counterpunch.com/rhames08232008.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-le_systeme_bmde_mis_en_perspective_dans_la_crise.html [French]

Sunthar

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JH20Dj02.html

http://www.rense.com/general83/aur.htm

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/21/europe/policy.php

———

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9907

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9915

http://www.counterpunch.com/kagarlitsky08222008.html

http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/27245729.html

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/civicfeminism/archives/146751.asp?from=blog_last3

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1047509/OPINION-World-peace-Give-Putin-anyday.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/lichtman08212008.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/walberg08202008.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/neumann08202008.html

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shamireaders/message/1159

——— French ———

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-pourquoi_n_ont-ils_pas_ecrit_cet_article_en_2001_ou_bien_en_1991.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_meche_est-elle_allumee.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-lecon_essentielle_de_la_courte_guerre_la_centralisation_en_echec.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-lire_et_relire_pfaff_de_toute_urgence.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-les_anti-missiles_de_varsovie_ou_la_mediocrite_sans_fin_de_notre_decadence.html

Sunthar

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4525885.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4543775.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4568150.ece

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/08/19/oakley.georgia.russia.analysis/index.html

———

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/16/georgia.russia1

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/anne-penketh-there-is-only-one-winner-and-too-many-casualties-897558.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-end-of-empire-is-always-a-muddy-bloody-business-900659.html

http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=336

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9881

http://www.rense.com/general83/dip.htm

— French —

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-les_neo-neocons.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-l_otan_combien_de_divisions.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-condi_et_les_tu-95_qui_menacent_l_ouest_et_ses_valeurs.html

Sunthar

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_georgie_du_pentagone.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-un_desarroi_grand_comme_une_civilisation.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-l_inevitable_french_touch_.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-crise_interceptee_le_bmde_marche.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-le_f-22_sauve_par_saakachvili.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-l_engagement_israelien_en_georgie.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-le_discours_de_la_methode.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-les_consequences_inattendues_des_convictions_irreprochables_et_inebranlables_du_ministre_bernard_k.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_singuliere_position_de_la_turquie.html

http://www.dedefensa.org/article-condi_rice_deguisee_en_april_glaspie_de_la_crise_georgienne_.html

Philippe Grasset’s French commentaries (see above on Ossetia crisis) on Euro-Atlantic analyses appearing in the Anglo-American media and his bloc-notes on related current events are among the most insightful and incisive one can find…

Sunthar

---

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95713d6c-6966-11dd-91bd-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=70662e7c-3027-11da-ba9f-00000e2511c8.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH19Ag04.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH20Ag01.html

———

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9869

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH19Ag01.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH19Ag03.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9874

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/08/14/bush_putin/

http://www.rense.com/general83/ene.htm

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2867.htm

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3581182,00.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts08192008.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/lind08192008.html

The relentless transformation of NATO by Anglo-America and its self-serving allies among the (especially East) European elites from a defensive framework against the Soviet menace into a global instrument of Western imperial designs (targeted at Russia…to begin with) may strike most commentators as an aberration verging on folly, but it all depends on how we read European history. The violence and plunder exerted by the European powers on the rest of the world, through the technological advances made possible by post-Enlightenment science, were eventually turned back upon itself through a (Nazi) Germany that took their racist underpinnings, narrow scientism, and civilizational greed to their extreme logical consequences. Similarly, the ‘capitalist’ reduction of human existence and potential to its sole economic dimension and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of a vast underclass of their own nominal citizens, was likewise carried to its extreme logical consequences in the totalitarian communist regimes (characterized by the attempt to substitute existing social bonds, till then underpinned by shared religious values, with faith in homo oeconomicus). What’s happening now is not so much an inexplicable and seemingly self-defeating diversion of NATO towards ulterior goals but rather the resurgence of the original (now neo-) colonial project at a pan-European level, dressed up prettily in ‘multicultural’ trappings….

If Russia falls, China is next in line ,….as for the Indians, where Bush has a higher popularity rating than even in Europe, they’d probably feel even more flattered if they were ruled directly from the White House (by the likes of Bobby Jindal?) rather than by an Italian queen who would otherwise have had little qualification to rule even over her native city 

Sunthar

---

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hdGwu1hHTwcamJEm-Tf2-OQIe7Gg

———

http://www.counterpunch.com/tripathi08162008.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/hallinan08162008.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/whitney08162008.html

http://www.counterpunch.com/fantina08162008.html

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=66801&sectionid=3510203

http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn08162008.html

Sunthar

---

http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29005

http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/conflicts/15-08-2008/106111-georgia_ossetia-0

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7863e71a-689e-11dd-a4e5-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4543729.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/14/russia.georgia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/georgia.foreignpolicy

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article5862.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c26Q-qxDEA

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20535.htm

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1011396.html

http://www.rense.com/general83/shutup.htm

http://www.rense.com/general83/condo.htm

Sunthar

---

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9848

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9850

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/258649

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/15/russia.georgia

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9851

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9845

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13304

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3568763,00.html

http://www.rense.com/general83/blow.htm

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts08152008.html

Sunthar

---

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/2563260/John-Bolton-After-Russias-invasion-of-Georgia-what-now-for-the-West.html

————————————

http://sentinelsource.com/articles/2008/08/14/opinion/sentinel_editorial/free/id_318763.txt

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH16Ag01.html

http://www.rense.com/general83/soros.htm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9836

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JH16Ak02.html

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2008/08/russia-georgia-europe-nato

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH16Ag02.html

http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=13300

Sunthar

P.S. Note the Soros connection….

---

http://www.counterpunch.com/whitney08142008.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4525885.ece

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13292

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081400779.html?hpid=topnews

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH15Ag02.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH15Ag01.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9831

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9829

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9826

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9816

Sunthar

---

http://www.rense.com/general82/west.htm

—————

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag02.html [M. K. Bhadrakumar]

[A significant body of opinion always existed within the Kremlin that Georgia was never quite irrevocably lost to the US following the "color revolution" of November 2003, and with patience and tact and a judicious play of the factors of history, culture and economic ties, Tbilisi could be made to appreciate that friendly relations with Moscow were in its long-term advantage. Indeed, a similar train of opinion also existed in Tbilisi - in a muter form, though - that Georgia's future cannot be on an a antagonistic path with regard to Russia and a course correction by the President Mikheil Saakashvili regime was in order. As an economic crisis and lawlessness grew in Georgia in the recent past, Russian diplomacy began shifting gear in Tbilisi, encouraging the elements that stood for better relations with Moscow. Up to a point, Moscow was right in doing so. But it failed to see that from Saakashvili's perspective, as his authoritarian regime became more and more unpopular and the debris of misgovernance, corruption and venality began to accumulate, it paid to whip up xenophobia. Russia was the best target, as nothing inflames Georgian passions better than the issue of the country's integrity. [...] The master plotters in Washington will now keenly watch how Medvedev's leadership in the Kremlin handles the crisis. They will look for clues whether he has Putin's iron fist and steely nerves. When Putin took over in 2000, a similar test awaited him in Chechnya. He set about doing what Russia had to do. But times have changed. Chilly winds have begun blowing in East-West relations. [...] What is the US game plan? To begin with, Saakashvili is a progeny of the "color revolution" in Georgia, which was financed and stage-managed by the US in 2003. Georgia and the southern Caucasus constitute a critically important region for the US since it straddles a busy transportation route for energy - like the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf. It can be used as a choke point. Simply put, keeping it under control as a sphere of influence is highly advantageous for the pursuit of US geopolitical interests in the Eurasian region. A rollback of Russian influence therefore becomes a desirable objective. The geopolitics of energy lies at the core of the conflict in the Caucasus. The US has suffered a series of major reverses in the past two years in the great game over Caspian energy.[...] In geopolitical terms a flashpoint in the Caucasus at this juncture suits Washington. A furious propaganda barrage against Russia has begun. It is already at a high pitch. US statements have virtually overlooked the Georgian onslaught on South Ossetia and the attack on Russian peacemakers. The focus is on the Russian response to the Georgian provocation. An attempt has begun to portray Russia as the aggressor. Washington is carefully cultivating an opinion in Western capitals that Moscow is "bullying" Tbilisi. This propaganda is bound to strengthen Washington's case for inducting Georgia into NATO. [...] From Washington's perspective, there is nothing like getting Russia bogged down in the Caucasus if it saps Russia's capacity to play an effective role on the world stage. It is all too apparent that Moscow dreads a full-blown war erupting in the Caucasus and was desperately keen to avoid one. Moscow is fundamentally averse to any confrontation with the West. Its foreign policy gives top priority to Russia's integration with Europe. But Washington's best hope is that with some degree of "bear-baiting", at some point Moscow will lose patience and hit out, even if that might affect Russia's image in Europe. [...] The point is, the Bush administration cannot afford to fail in this Caucasian venture. It will be seen as needlessly having blood on its hands unless US diplomacy successfully turns the tide in its favor and takes matters to their cold, logical conclusion - induction of Georgia into NATO. Washington has barely four months to achieve this objective. But it is not a tall order. If the Bush administration succeeds, a page in history is written. We may conclusively say goodbye to the post-Cold War era. Russia's relations with Europe and the US can never be the same again. Blood has been drawn, after all. The Beijing Olympics, in comparison, pale in significance. ]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag05.html [F. William Engdahl]

Since the end of the Cold War in the beginning of the 1990s, NATO and most directly Washington have systematically pursued what military strategists call nuclear primacy. Put simply, if one of two opposing nuclear powers is able to first develop an operational anti-missile defense, even primitive, that can dramatically weaken a potential counter-strike by the opposing side's nuclear arsenal, the side with missile defense has "won" the nuclear war.As questionable as this sounds, it has been explicit Pentagon policy through the last three presidents from father H W Bush in 1990, to Bill Clinton and most aggressively, George W Bush. This is the issue over which Russia has drawn a deep line in the sand, understandably so. The forceful US effort to push Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO would present Russia with the specter of NATO literally coming to its doorstep, a military threat that is aggressive in the extreme, and untenable for Russian national security. This is what gives the seemingly obscure fight over two provinces the size of Luxembourg the potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo trigger to a new nuclear war by miscalculation. The trigger for such a war is not Georgia's right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to Russia's door.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/georgia.russia3 [Dilip Hiro]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9783

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gz1lE8_YLs-qUWFGqgy5qzc_Wisw

http://uruknet.info/?p=m46335&s1=h1

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3580136,00.html

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/01-08-2008/105959-national_public_radio-0

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=112727&d=12&m=8&y=2008

http://www.examiner.com/x-243-Progressive-Politics-Examiner~y2008m8d11-Did-the-White-House-know-Georgia-planned-to-enter-South-Ossetia

http://markalmondoxford.blogspot.com/2007/11/black-roses-georgias-reformers-fall-out.html

Sunthar

---

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11kristol.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1218477676-UCtbZGWtAtuFr9pBZ5hnVg

———

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH12Ag02.html [John Helmer]

For all Russians, not only those with relatives in Ossetia, the near-total destruction by Georgian guns of Tskhinvali is a war crime. The deaths of about 2,000 civilians in the Georgian attack, and the forced flight of about 35,000 survivors from the town - the last census of Tskhinvali's population reported 30,000 - has been described by Russian leaders, and is understood by Russian public opinion, as a form of genocide. Ninety percent of the town's population are Russian citizens. To Russians, the Georgian attack of August 8 looks like the very same "ethnic cleansing", which the US and European powers have treated as a crime against humanity, when committed on the former territory of federal Yugoslavia. But Russians view the international war that broke up Yugoslavia as a practice run for breaking up the Russian Caucasus, first by arming the Chechen secessionist Dzhokar Dudayev; then by financing anti-Russian terrorism in the Russian provinces of Chechnya and Ingushetia; and now by the Georgian military thrust against South Ossetia

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9791 [Mike Whiney]

Washington's bloody fingerprints are all over the invasion of South Ossetia. Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili would never dream of launching a massive military attack unless he got explicit orders from his bosses at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. After all, Saakashvili owes his entire political career to American power-brokers and US intelligence agencies. If he disobeyed them, he'd be gone in a fortnight. Besides an operation like this takes months of planning and logistical support; especially if it's perfectly timed to coincide with the beginning of the Olympic games. (another petty neocon touch) That means Pentagon planners must have been working hand in hand with Georgian generals for months in advance. Nothing was left to chance. Another tell-tale sign of US complicity is the way President Bush has avoided ordering Georgian troops to withdraw from a province that has been under the protection of international peacekeepers. Remember how quickly Bush ordered Sharon to withdraw from his rampage in Jenin? Apparently it's different when the aggression serves US interests.[...] Sometimes wars provide clarity. That's certainly true in this case. After this weekends fighting, everyone in the Russian political establishment knows that Washington is willing to sacrifice thousands of innocent civilians and plunge the entire region into chaos to achieve its geopolitical objectives. Bush could call the whole thing off right now; Putin and Medvedev know that. But that's not the game-plan. So, the two Russian leaders have to make some tough decisions that will end up costing lives. What other choice do they have? Putin needs to carefully weigh his options. Then, on Monday, he should announce that Russia will sell all $50 billion of its Fannie Mae mortgage-backed bonds, all of it US dollar-backed assets, and will accept only rubles and euros in the future sale of Russian oil and natural gas. Just watch as the dollar crashes and the Dow Jones goes into a death-spiral. Why use a blunderbuss when a flyswatter will do just fine.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9790 [F. William Engdahl]]

This past April at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, US President Bush proposed accepting Georgia into NATO’s "Action Plan for Membership," a precursor to NATO membership. To Washington’s surprise, ten NATO member states refused to support his plan, including Germany, France and Italy. They argued that accepting the Georgians was problematic, because of the conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were in reality saying that they would not be willing to back Georgia as, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which mandates that an armed attack against any NATO member country must be considered an attack against them all and consequently requires use of collective armed force of all NATO members, it would mean that Europe could be faced with war against Russia over the tiny Caucasus Republic of Georgia, with its incalculable dictator, Saakashvili. That would mean the troubled Caucasus would be on a hair-trigger to detonate World War III. [...] This means that the attack on South Ossetia is the first battle in a new proxy warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests and Russia. The only question is whether Washington miscalculated the swiftness and intensity of the Russian response to the Georgian attacks of 8.8.08. [...] Since the end of the Cold War in the beginning of the 1990’s NATO and most directly Washington have systematically pursued what military strategists call Nuclear Primacy. Put simply, if one of two opposing nuclear powers is able to first develop an operational anti-missile defense, even primitive, that can dramatically weaken a potential counter-strike by the opposing side’s nuclear arsenal, the side with missile defense has "won" the nuclear war.As mad as this sounds, it has been explicit Pentagon policy through the last three Presidents from father Bush in 1990, to Clinton and most aggressively, George W. Bush. This is the issue where Russia has drawn a deep line in the sand, understandably so. The forceful US effort to push Georgia as well as Ukraine into NATO would present Russia with the spectre of NATO literally coming to its doorstep, a military threat that is aggressive in the extreme, and untenable for Russian national security. This is what gives the seemingly obscure fight over two provinces the size of Luxemburg the potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo trigger to a new nuclear war by miscalculation. The trigger for such a war is not Georgia’s right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to Russia’s door.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9564 [F. William Engdahl]

The Caucasus Republic of Georgia as nations go does not appear to be a major global player. Yet Washington has invested huge sums and organized to put its own despot, Mikhail Saakashvili, in the Presidency in order to close a nuclear NATO iron ring around Russia. Now US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in Tbilisi making sharp statements against Moscow for supporting the independent neighbor states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in essence blaming Moscow for an imminent war Washington has incited in order to bring Georgia into NATO by the December NATO Summit. The Western media has either ignored the growing tensions in the strategic Caucasus region or has intimated, as suggested by Condoleezza Rice, that the entire conflict is being caused by Moscow’s silly support of "breakaway" republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In reality, a quite different chess game is being played in the region, one which has the potential to detonate a major escalation of tensions between Moscow and NATO. Since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, one after another, former members as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO. Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now Washington is putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO, especially Germany and France, that they vote in December to admit Georgia and Ukraine. [...] Just as Moscow refuses to recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo, so Washington refuses to admit the sovereignty of Abkhazia. In May a senior US State Department delegation was in Abkhazia meeting with local Non Governmental Organizations there as well as the President. In the past, from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine, Washington intelligence agencies have used various NGOs, the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA-linked Freedom House and Gene Sharp’s misleadingly-named Albert Einstein Institution to steer a wave of regime changes which became known as "Color Revolutions." In each case the new regime was pro-Washington and anti-Moscow as in the case of Saakashvili in Georgia and Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine. Both countries begin seeking NATO entry after the success of the US-financed Color Revolutions. In all this Washington is definitely playing with potential nuclear fire by escalating pressure to push Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic, Karl Schwarzenberg on July 8 signed an agreement allowing US deployment of special radar facilities on Czech soil as part of the top secret US "missile defense" it alleges is aimed at rogue missile threats from Iran. As even former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently pointed out, the Bush Administration’s categorical refusal to pursue the 2007 counter-offer of then-President Vladimir Putin to station US radar at the Russian leased reconnaissance facility in Azerbaijan instead, was a provocative mistake. It makes abundantly clear that Washington is aiming its military strategy at the dismantling of Russia as a potential adversary. That, as I have written previously, is a recipe for a possible nuclear war by mis-calculation. Rice’s latest Caucasus and Czech visit only added to that growing danger.

http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts08112008.html [Paul Craig Roberts]

With its editorial, “Stopping Russia: the US and its allies must unite against Moscow’s war on Georgia,” the Washington Post has established a world record for the maximum number of lies in the minimum number of words. Except for the Washington Post, the entire world knows that Georgia (the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, not Georgia USA) initiated the aggression that killed Russian peacekeepers and hundreds of civilians in South Ossetia, peacekeepers who were there with the blessing of Georgia and international agreements. The true facts are available all over the world press. [...] Yes, without America there would be no war in Ossetia and no war between Russia and its former constituent part. Without America there would be no war in Afghanistan. No war in Iraq. Without America there would not be 1.2 million dead Iraqis and 4 million displaced Iraqis. We have no idea of the toll on Afghan civilians, although women and children appear to be the prime targets of the US/NATO forces that are “bringing peace and freedom to Afghanistan.”

http://www.counterpunch.com/moses08112008.html

There are two sides bleeding and too many dead in what is hopefully the aftermath of a weekend war in the Caucasus. And right on cue, the prime opinion space for the American mind is being occupied this Monday morning by a propagandist for perpetual war. [...] In the end, I wonder if the propagandist has read any Jung lately, because he seems to have a very immature conception of himself, completely unable to recognize that he has become his own shadow: "dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical." But in this regard he serves his social function perfectly as a perfect reflection of the mind of New York Times readers everywhere.

Sunthar

---

Friends,

The developing conflict in Central Asia needs to be understood in a much wider ‘civilizational’ context and is fraught with dire global implications. Given the obvious propaganda bias of the Western (and particularly Anglophone) media, here are some links that you might find useful in attempting to make sense of what’s going on. Already subject to centrifugal forces, India, in particular, need to think hard what it means to get into bed with this American regime:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9788 [Michel Chossudowsky]

[Georgia does not act militarily without the assent of Washington. The Georgian head of State is a US proxy and Georgia is a de facto US protectorate. Who is behind this military agenda? What interests are being served? What is the purpose of the military operation. There is evidence that the attacks were carefully coordinated by the US military and NATO.  [...] Contrary to what was conveyed by Western media reports, the attacks were anticipated by Moscow. The attacks were timed to coincide with the opening of the Olympics, largely with a view to avoiding frontpage media coverage of the Georgian military operation. On August 7, Russian forces were in an advanced state readiness. The counterattack was swiftly carried out. [...] A humanitarian disaster rather than a military victory was an integral part of the scenario. The objective was to destroy the provincial capital, while also inflicting a significant loss of human life.  If the objective were to restore Georgian political control over the provincial government, the operation would have been undertaken in a very different fashion, with Special Forces occupying key public buildings, communications networks and provincial institutions, rather than waging an all out bombing raid on residential areas, hospitals, not to mention Tskhinvali's University. [...] The Russian response was entirely predictable. Georgia was "encouraged" by NATO and the US. Both Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels were acutely aware of what would happen in the case of a Russian counterattack. [...]

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13285 [Justin Raimondo]

The anti-Russian bias of the Western media is really something to behold: "Russia Invades Georgia," "Russia Attacks Georgia," and variations thereof have been some of the choice headlines reporting events in the Caucasus, but the reality is not only quite different, but the exact opposite. [...] The War Party has been running on some pretty low energy lately, and this revival of the Cold War will no doubt recharge its batteries. The warmongers need a new enemy, a fresh face in their rogues' gallery, to get the masses excited again, and Putin's Russia fits the bill. I've been warning of this possibility for what seems like years, and now the moment is upon us. What's interesting is how many left-liberal "peaceniks" are falling for the War Party's guff and lining up behind McCain, their hero Obama, and the neocons in the march to confrontation with the Kremlin.

http://www.counterpunch.com/almond08092008.html [Mark Almond]

To many Russians this vast geopolitical retreat from places which were part of Russia long before the dawn of communist rule brought no bonus in relations with the west. The more Russia drew in its horns, the more Washington and its allies denounced the Kremlin for its imperial ambitions. Unlike in eastern Europe, for instance, today in breakaway states such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Russian troops are popular. Vladimir Putin's picture is more widely displayed than that of the South Ossetian president, the former Soviet wrestling champion Eduard Kokoity. The Russians are seen as protectors against a repeat of ethnic cleansing by Georgians. [...] Given its extraordinary ethnic complexity, Georgia is a post-Soviet Union in miniature. If westerners readily conceded non-Russian republics' right to secede from the USSR in 1991, what is the logic of insisting that non-Georgians must remain inside a microempire which happens to be pro-western? Other people's nationalisms are like other people's love affairs, or, indeed, like dog fights. These are things wise people don't get involved in. A war in the Caucasus is never a straightforward moral crusade - but then, how many wars are?

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1010225.html

Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili yesterday praised Israel for its role in training Georgian troops and said Israel should be proud of its military might. "Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers," Yakobashvili, who is Jewish, told Army Radio in Hebrew. He was referring to a private Israeli group Georgia had hired. Yakobashvili, Georgia's minister of reintegration, said this training enabled Georgia to defend itself against Russian forces in the warfare that erupted last week in the separatist region of South Ossetia, Georgia. [...] "The whole world is starting to understand that what is happening here will determine the future of this region, the future price of crude oil, the future of central Asia, and the future of NATO," the Georgian minister added. "Every bomb that falls over our heads is an attack on democracy, on the European Union and on America."

http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2008/08/massive-us-naval-armada-heads-for-iran.html [link no longer valid, but content available also at:]

http://www.infowars.com/?p=3849 / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4eaGbAYAKU [see also the follow-up, below this citation, on the original source blog site:]

Operation Brimstone ended only one week ago. This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the “enemy force”. [...] The large and very advanced nature of the US Naval warships is not only directed at Iran. There is a great fear that Russia and China may oppose the naval and air/land blockade of Iran. If Russian and perhaps Chinese naval warships escort commercial tankers to Iran in violation of the blockade it could be the most dangerous at-sea confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US and allied Navies, by front loading a Naval blockade force with very powerful guided missile warships and strike carriers is attempting to have a force so powerful that Russia and China will not be tempted to mess with. This is a most serious game of military brinkmanship with major nuclear armed powers that have profound objections to the neo-con grand strategy and to western control of all of the Middle East’s oil supply. [...] A strategic diversion has been created for Russia. The Republic of Georgia, with US backing, is actively preparing for war on South Ossetia. The South Ossetia capital has been shelled and a large Georgian tank force has been heading towards the border. Russia has stated that it will not sit by and allow the Georgians to attack South Ossetia. The Russians are great chess players and this game may not turn out so well for the neo-cons.

http://europebusines.blogspot.com/search/label/Massive%20US%20Naval%20Armada%20Heads%20to%20Iran

http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/28788/video [Video]

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.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/solzhenitsyn_and_struggle_russias_soul [George Friedman (Stratfor)]

From Solzhenitsyn’s point of view, Western capitalism and liberalism are in their own way as horrible as Stalinism. Adam Smith saw man as primarily pursuing economic ends. Economic man seeks to maximize his wealth. Solzhenitsyn tried to make the case that this is the most pointless life conceivable. He was not objecting to either property or wealth, but to the idea that the pursuit of wealth is the primary purpose of a human being, and that the purpose of society is to free humans to this end. [...] Solzhenitsyn believed there was an authentic Russia that would emerge from this disaster. It would be a Russia that first and foremost celebrated the motherland, a Russia that accepted and enjoyed its uniqueness. This Russia would take its bearings from no one else. At the heart of this Russia would be the Russian Orthodox Church, with not only its spirituality, but its traditions, rituals and art. The state’s mission would be to defend the motherland, create the conditions for cultural renaissance, and — not unimportantly — assure a decent economic life for its citizens. Russia would be built on two pillars: the state and the church. [...] It must also be remembered that when Solzhenitsyn spoke of Russia, he meant imperial Russia at its height, and imperial Russia’s borders at its height looked more like the Soviet Union than they looked like Russia today. “August 1914” is a book that addresses geopolitics. Russian greatness did not have to express itself via empire, but logically it should — something to which Solzhenitsyn would not have objected. Solzhenitsyn could not teach Americans, whose intellectual genes were incompatible with his. But it is hard to think of anyone who spoke to the Russian soul as deeply as he did. He first ripped Russia apart with his indictment. He was later ignored by a Russia out of control under former President Boris Yeltsin. But today’s Russia is very slowly moving in the direction that Solzhenitsyn wanted. And that could make Russia extraordinarily powerful. Imagine a Soviet Union not ruled by thugs and incompetents. Imagine Russia ruled by people resembling Solzhenitsyn’s vision of a decent man. Solzhenitsyn was far more prophetic about the future of the Soviet Union than almost all of the Ph.D.s in Russian studies. Entertain the possibility that the rest of Solzhenitsyn’s vision will come to pass. It is an idea that ought to cause the world to be very thoughtful. ["Solzhenitsyn and the Struggle for Russia's Soul"]

And for those who read French:

http://dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=5338

http://dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=5337

http://dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=5335

http://dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=5327

http://www.dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=5322

Just about to leave on vacation, I’m unfortunately unable to comment systematically, but you should be able to put the pieces together…

[This Georgian conflict broke out in the midst of intense media coverage of an imminent attack on Iran and coincided with the launch of the Olympic Games in Beijing. Since both Russia and China, whatever their reservations, were working with the West on the Iranian nuclear standoff, a Russian geopolitical (mis-) adventure made no sense. My immediate intuition, even before corroborating evidence appeared, was that that Saakashvili's 'blitzkrieg' on South Ossetia was actively instigated by (influential, especially neocon, elements in) the USA to distract and soften Russia as a prelude to a sudden 'preemptive' attack on Iran. The gamble would have been that China was tied down by the unacceptable risk of jeopardizing the Olympics (to the point of being upset by an Russian escalation in response) and Russia would be caught in a bind by its own insistence on territorial sovereignty (Kosovo) to intervene decisively. At the very worst, a military defeat inflicted on Georgia would be still well worth the  propaganda windfall of discrediting Russia in the eyes of Europe (and the world) and casting its geopolitical ambitions as an implacable menace. The practical result would have been the mobilization of European public opinion in favor of NATO expansion and militarization under an Anglo-American aegis. More generally, Saakashvili's backers would have gambled that the Russian elite were far too invested in not just 'normalizing' relations with but becoming an integral part of the West to risk jeopardizing the game by reacting decisively and forcefully.

From a larger perspective, beyond the immediate configuration of forces around Iran and US manipulation of the great game in Central Asia to control the world's natural resources, Russia—with its nuclear deterrent, relative economic independence, and civilizational core intact (see Friedman above on Solzhenitsyn)—happens to be the most immediate and formidable obstacle standing the way of  Anglo-American ambitions of unfettered global hegemony. Having failed to take over the Russian economy from within under Yeltsin, this premeditated conflict should be seen as the first salvo in a militaristic campaign to wear down its resolve to reaffirm its national interests and come to the aid weaker powers likewise targeted for victimization.  - note added 30 Oct 2008]

Sunthar

---

The cynicism of some thrives at the expense of the naivety of others: if this is not a law of nature—or the moral of a fable—it’s at least, for the observer of the circles that animate empires, a valid contemporary reality, which is not really difficult to decipher… Between Iraq yesterday and today, and Iran tomorrow, if the worst should happen, one would be only too cognizant of this Machiavellianism ... Sometimes we advance backwards frightened by the idea of rejuvenating our institutions, sometimes we follow the powers of this world [USA? –SV], rushing headlong into the sea like the sheep [the European nations? – SV] abused by Panurge [Rabelaisian personage – Panurge “buys a sheep from the merchant Dindenault and then, for revenge, makes the sheep jump off a cliff.” - SV]. "Times change and we do not want to change," we prefer to demonize [Iran? – SV] what eludes us [for its vast energy reserves? – SV] and see the mote in the eye of the neighbor.

Introduction, Milieux des Empires #13, June 2008 [Introduction translated by Google + Sunthar]

In this month of February, events follow each other with numerous elections that will have a definite influence on the empires, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and other regions of the world (Pakistan, Taiwan, Burma, Zimbabwe, etc.), with the electoral results exercising a geostrategic influence. Alliances are being formed, such as those among the Latin American and Caribbean countries following the Venezuelan president’s call to counter the American presence, or are being reinforced (Russia, Iran, India, China, etc.). Borders are being redrawn, other States are being born such as Kosovo, which has just declared his independence. It is time for rearmament. Will countries no longer trust their allies? Do they anticipate new conflicts? Or is it in their interests to provoke or aggravate such conflicts? Are not these States seeking justifications to consolidate or hold back their power and thereby save their economy? Peace, this period between two wars, would it not become a rare commodity, if not an inaccessible star?

Introduction, Milieux des Empires #09, Feb 2008 [Introduction translated by Google + Sunthar]

It is almost certain we will be at war with Iran before a new President is inaugurated: now that Obama has capitulated to the Lobby, nothing but Divine Providence can stop it. God help us all. I have to say I was wrong – dead wrong – about Obama. In my eagerness to find a bright spot in a rapidly darkening world, I grasped on to his alluring rhetoric and his at-times trenchant critique of the Bush foreign policy, like a sinking man holding on to a life-jacket. But looking for hope in all the wrong places doesn't create opportunities for peace – it only prolongs our illusions. We must face the prospect of a much more terrible conflict than we have ever known, and look it squarely in the face, without flinching or looking for false messiahs. I know many of you are disappointed, and some of you are now exclaiming "I told you so!" All that we can do now is hope, and pray, that our country – and the Iranian people – will somehow survive the coming catastrophe.

Justin Raimondo, “Obama Capitulates – to the Israel lobby” (06 June 2008) , Anti-war.com – speaking of a cascade of elections with geostrategic implications…- SV)

Check out also Michel Chossudovsky, “Iran: War or Privatization: All Out War or "Economic Conquest"?” (04 July 2008) for an excellent illustration of the observations above:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9501

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (July 04, 2008)

"In the Midst of Empires" (no #12 = May 08) - please contribute to this bilingual newsletter]

Merkel and Sarkozy are now jointly leading an EU-wide coalition dead set against making good on the decades-old promise for the integration of Turkey into the EU as soon as it is able to implement the acquis communautaire (total body of EU law). With the election of Sarkozy the "open-ended" accession negotiations have no chance of remaining open-ended and with his help Merkel will be able to outmaneuver her Social Democratic baggage while still insisting on negotiating with Turkey in good faith. For Merkel, Sarkozy and their civilizational warriors, Turkey has no European "vocation", for cultural, Christian, and occidental reasons. Merkel promises, instead, a "special relationship" and Sarkozy proposes to sponsor a "Mediterranean community", anchored on Turkey, Israel and Morocco, as a geopolitical barrier against African immigrants, Islamic fundamentalists, and as an additional venue for Israeli ambitions. [...] the AKP government is striving to scale down the use of Turkey as a strategic platform for all sorts of mayhem, focusing instead quite successfully on regional trade and investment opportunities to maintain Turkey's economic growth - thus stabilizing a growing middle class of "black Turks". This approach, though, crimps US efforts to expand the strategic threat against Iran. Even more importantly, it limits American access to the Caucasus and Central Asia and hampers its plans for pulling the Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan into a permanent and much more extensive military relationship. In sum: though prudent enough to have accommodated the Turkish military's usual level of cooperation with Western (US, Israeli, and German) operations against its neighbors, it still disregarded the demands of the Western grand strategy. Its policies did nothing to help in the "great game" of turning the Caucasus and Central Asia into a lever to be used against Russia and China. Neither did the Turkish government do enough for the shorter-term payoff, ie, gaining control over Central Asian oil and gas. All of this did not win the Turkish government friends in the right places. It set itself up, instead, for some variant of a regime-change operation in which the campaign against Turkey's EU aspirations will play a pivotal role.

Axel Brot, "Germany the Re-engineered ally - Part I: Readiness for endless war," (Asia Times Online, 8 Aug 07) "Refitting Turkey for its proper role"

The intentional obstacles placed in Turkey's accession path and the coming developments in the EU don't look promising. Proceedings for the accession negotiations are not advancing as well as in the honeymoon days. Soon after the stones settle in Turkey's Parliament, the new Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government will probably turn its face toward Russia and the Turkic (Turkic-language speaking) countries, rather than the EU. It seems quite obvious that Turkey and the Turkish people will give up their EU accession hopes and plans soon. After the parliamentary elections in Turkey Jose Manuel Barosso, president of the European Commission, clearly spelled out the impossibility of Turkey's accession and the inability of the EU to digest Turkey as a full member. Barosso made much of the difference between "accession talks" and "accession," clarifying that beginning accession talks may not mean or guarantee accession at the closure. His prediction was that the EU will never accept Turkey as a member -- the country is not ready for accession now and is [not] likely to be ready anytime in the near future. With no other choice Turkey is now turning an eye toward Central Asia and the southern Caucasus. Increasing the number of visas for the Turkic countries soon is on the agenda, particularly for Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. Already Turkey has started to develop good relations with Russia that many plan to be long-lasting. [...] In a speech during the opening ceremony of the eighth summit of the heads of Turkic-language speaking states in November 2006, the Turkish president at the time, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, emphasized the importance of forming a "Turkic-speaking-countries community." Vladimir Putin's dreams of establishing a Russian-Turkish Eurasian Union that would incorporate Central Asia and the Caucasus seem to be in line with those of the new Turkish government. In the third week of April, President Putin addressed the Russian parliament and made a call for Turkey to establish a Russian-Turkish Eurasian Union. It was a friendly gesture, asking Turkey to leave the EU and work hand-in-hand with Russia to establish the new union. This was of course the result of Russia's strategists' convincing Putin to look toward Turkey after sensing increased negative sentiments toward the country in the EU. The US will not react well to this unification and seeing Turkey on the side of a rival, especially because Turkey is one of their most important allies in this region. Given all the current obstacles to Turkey and the EU's seeming unwillingness for partnership with an Islamic country, it looks as though a Eurasian union would be the better place for Turkey. The giants and tigers of Asia are already on their way toward unification, or at least cooperation, in the form of the Shanghai Five. In a Eurasian alliance, Turkey's prestigious and decisive seat, especially when compared to a potential "privileged partnership," would be the best option for Turkey in the long run. It seems now that the fog is lifting and Turkey's new direction is becoming crystal clear -- the East and a Eurasian union.

Ata Atun, "Eurasian Union nearing reality" Turkish Weekly (13 Aug 2007)

But there was a common bond that cemented most Russians; a unity unique in historic national experience. That commonality is known as religion. Christianity brought a kind of social and spiritual unity to most of the Western nations which inherited the Roman Empire, but Russia adopted the Greek Orthodox version of the Christian faith from the Eastern Byzantine Empire and hence acquired a cultural tradition which distinguished it in many essentials from the West. Historically Russia did not experience several of the formative Western revolutions, such as the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and most importantly the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her industrial metamorphosis did not occur until Stalin's Five Year Plans of the 1930's. When she was finally industrialized and modernized it occurred under far different circumstances than that of the West European countries and the US--possibly also Japan. This fact makes her unique among major world powers. Russia went her own way. She met the challenges of nature and history in her own peculiar fashion. She was and is different. This calls for study, perception and understanding on our part. Why did she react differently to similar challenges? Why did she remain agricultural when the West was becoming industrial. Why did most of her people endure the lash of serfdom while other nations broke the chains of primitive bondage? Why did education and literacy make more rapid strides in the West than in the East? Why did major metropolitan areas develop more rapidly west of the Oder and the Pruth than to the East of them? Why did the Russian Revolution come a century after the French? Why did Western countries develop representative democratic institutions while Russia still languished in oppressive political absolutism and autocracy? Was Russia, in fact, a European country at all before the Revolution? Was she not more Asiatic and oriental than European? She was and is most certainly not Asiatic. Although there are Asiatic features in Russian culture and custom and a large part of her territory is formally within Asia, Russians are essentially Europeans. These Asiatic features stem from prolonged contact with oriental peoples, especially during the 200-year occupation of Russia by the Tartar-Mongols. Intermarriage gave many Russians Mongoloid physical features. Many of them also reveal mystical, inscrutable attitudes and moods thought to be characteristic of oriental peoples. Stalin is a prime example. This fact has mislead many Westerners to believe such simple-minded generalizations as ''scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar.'' But the original Slavic tribes belonged to the Indo-European family of peoples. The Greek-Orthodox religion is only a slight variant of Western Romanized Christianity. The Russians are Europeans living on the broad and largely artificial border between Europe and Asia. If there is such a thing as western Civilization and Eastern Civilization the Russians have historically provided all peoples with a natural bridge between them. Rudyard Kipling said, ''East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.'' The Russians and their history are living proof that such facile generalities are stupid and dangerous. In this respect as in so many others Russian history is unique.

Gerhard Rempel, "Why Study Russian History?"

One of the fundamental features of change in Islam during the Soviet period is the reinterpretation and adaptation of religious thought and practice. Based in the religious boards, the Muslim clerical elite is the initiator of these religious innovations. The reinterpretation of Islam has been promulgated in Soviet Muslim publications and conferences, in religious-educational establishments, and most immediately through the country wide network of mosques and organized parishes. In effect, all the institutional channels available to the Muslim elite have been mobilized to promote not only the principle of religious reinterpretation, but also its theological and practical applications. Western studies of this religious innovation are in variably based on Soviet scholarship. [...] My thesis is that the Muslim religious establishment promotes integration into the Soviet social order based on reconstructed concepts of specifically Islamic religious categories. The articulation of a new Soviet-Muslim symbolic system reformulates what the regime intends to be integrative secular values; nevertheless, reconstructed Islam at once posits a Muslim subgroup solidarity and promotes the integration of the subgroup into the larger social group—the Soviet social order. The Muslim elite strives to establish both a new Soviet and a new Muslim identity—identities which are defined as mutually compatible and not contradictory to the integration promoted through purely Soviet values. In short, the notion that one can be both a “good” Muslim and a “good” Soviet citizen is put forth. The Muslim elite’s reformulation of the Islamic symbolic universe, therefore, not only reflects the transformed political and social conditions of the USSR, but it also partakes in that transformation in its attempts to establish a positive identity for Soviet Muslims congruent with the Soviet sociopolitical order. [...] One of the major themes among the reform-conscious Soviet Muslim elites is the reconciliation of Islamic and Soviet identities. Thus the elites place emphasis on sociopolitical integration, not subversion. Muslim values are recast in Soviet terms, and Soviet values are recast in Muslim terms. An illustration of the former is how the concept of jihad has been redefined from struggle for the faith against non believers into struggle for social transformation and equality congruent with Soviet aims. Similarly, Soviet values are explained and legitimated in religious categories. Soviet Muslim leaders note that Allah prepared Marx, Engels, and Lenin for service on earth and that the October Revolution has put into practice many Qur’anic values, including equality of nations and sexes, freedom of religion, security of honorable work, and ownership of land by those who till it. For Soviet Muslim elites, the fact that the leaders of the USSR, as admitted atheists, actively fulfill Islamic religious prescriptions apparently poses no contradiction in their reconstructed views of Islam and the secular state. In doctrine and social thought, the Muslim elite’s reconstitution of Islam takes essentially two forms: historical and scriptural. That is, new definitions of Islam are established through both historical and scriptural references. Historically, Muslim elites refer to a selected set of Islamic theologians and leaders whose ideas and actions are recast—fairly or unfairly—in terms that reinforce contemporary interpretations of Islam. They emphasize the works or activities of historical Muslim figures, especially the numerous nineteenth-century Muslim reformers of Tsarist Russia, who promoted the ideas of social progress, national and sexual equality, and other currently dominant social and political values. In this way, the Muslim elites construct a historical Islam that is “progressive” in terms of the contemporary value system. [...] I have emphasized the integrative qualities of Islamic reconstruction while only briefly noting the points of tension and conflict. Similarly, I have concentrated on elite motivations and behavior more in terms of their ideal interests than in their material, pragmatic concerns. This approach is perhaps partially in response to the contrary, dominant trend in the Western study of Soviet Islam. Yet I should qualify my argument further. To date, the religious boards have fairly effectively demarcated a path to integrate their constituencies on two levels—the Muslim and the Soviet. Yet it remains to be seen to what extent the Muslim elite’s reconstructed Islam will successfully establish an integrative and complementary identity or become an alternative, subversive source of identity. As I have argued, religious reconstruction is not some thing that “begins” with traditional religion and “ends” with the establishment of modern religion. Islamic reconstruction is an ongoing response to social change—hence its development is contingent on both sociopolitical conditions and effective clerical strategies. Like the New Soviet Man, the New Soviet Muslim is still being built.

Mark Saroyan, "The Reinterpretation and Adaptation of Soviet Islam," Minorities, Mullahs and Modernity: Reshaping Community in the Former Soviet Union (1997)

Two important developments prompted the government to hold such a debate on country’s foreign policy. Firstly, some of the statements of U.S. Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama in which he vowed to attack Pakistani tribal areas to destroy al-Qaida hideouts in that area. Secondly, the recently concluded U.S.-India nuclear deal which caused concerns in Pakistani decision making circles. Both the government and opposition members of parliament (MP) severely criticized the statements of U.S. presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama and some of the MPs belonging to religious parties even suggested that Pakistan should sever its relations with United States. [...] However not all the members of Musharraf’s cabinet think like foreign minister Kasuri. A day before Foreign Minister Kasuri concluded the debate in the senate one of the influential government ministers Dr. Sher Afgan severely criticized United States in his speech in the senate. While criticizing U.S. presidential candidate statements Minister for parliament affairs Sher Afgan said that such statements threatening Pakistan’s security were reflection of jaundiced thinking [among] American leaders. He said that U.S. leadership has forgotten the lessons of history and glorious pasts of the Muslims. He was highly critical of the role played by Pakistan in bringing about the downfall of the Soviet Union. “This led to the emergence of uni-polar world and gave America a license to attack any country,” he said. Sher Afgan’s views were promptly endorsed by the members of parliament belonging to the religious parties on the floor of the house. Sher Afgan is the not the only government minister who has expressed highly critical views about United States during the last two months. Last month three government ministers were equally critical of the U.S. Administration while taking part in a similar debate on Pakistan’s foreign policy in the National Assembly (lower house of the parliament). The anti-American speeches of government ministers prompted Pakistan foreign office to issue a clarification that only foreign minister Kasuri’s statement were the true representation of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

Umer Farooq, "Pakistan FM Says It Cannot Afford to Make U.S. Its Enemy: Other government ministers criticize American attitude," OhmyNews (24 Aug 2007)

What is a "unipolar" world? It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign -- one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. It has nothing in common with democracy, which is the power of the majority in respect to the interests and opinions of the minority. In Russia, we are constantly being lectured about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.” (Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to the Munich Conference on Security Policy 2-10-07) [...] Putin’s speech articulated his vision of a “Moscow-centered” new world order which would create a "new balance of power'' that was less dependent on Washington. He said, "The new architecture of economic relations requires a completely new approach. Russia intends to become an alternative global financial center and to make the ruble a reserve currency for central banks.” “The world is changing before our eyes. Countries that yesterday seemed hopelessly behind are today the fastest growing economies of the world." Institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the IMF are "archaic, undemocratic and inflexible''. They don’t "reflect the new balance of power.'' Putin's speech is a repudiation of the present system. He is announcing the beginning of an asymmetrical war that is designed to cripple the United States economically, weaken the institutions which have traditionally enhanced its wealth, and precipitate a shift of global power away from Washington. Putin’s challenge to the US dollar is particularly worrisome. He emphasizes the inherent unfairness of "dollar hegemony" which has an extremely negative effect on the economies of smaller countries. "There can be only one answer to this challenge,” he boomed. “The creation of several world currencies and several financial centers.”

Mike Whitney, "Putin’s War-whoop: The impending clash with Russia" (www.globalresearch.ca, 22 June 2007)

But if the West is truly going to come to grips with Putin and a resurrected Russian state, it would do well to see him not as something relatively new but as something old, drawing on historical roots stretching back to the 18th century and Catherine the Great. Indeed, it is far more likely that Putin and his allies are following not the ghosts of Stalin and Khrushchev but spiritual masters such as Empress Catherine in seeking to reestablish Russia as a great nation on the world stage. Like Putin, Catherine II was a curiosity in her day, alternately bewitching and confusing her critics and supporters. From early on she was the liberal idol of the great Enlightenment philosophes of Europe. She corresponded with the eminent Voltaire, drew upon Montesquieu in governing Russia (nearly 20 years before the American Founders did), published Helvetius when he was being burned in effigy by Paris's public hangman, and subscribed to Diderot's famed Encyclopédie when it was banned in France. "What a time we live in," Voltaire enthused, "France persecutes the intellectuals while the Scythians protect them!" Catherine even took the remarkable step of not only corresponding with Thomas Jefferson but helping midwife America's independence through her League of Armed Neutrality, which diplomatically isolated Britain during our Revolutionary War. King George III first approached Catherine, not the Hessians, to request her hardened Cossacks to fight George Washington and the upstart colonials; she turned him down. American-Russian ties thus go way back. [...] Another hallmark of Catherine's Russia with striking portents for today was domestic opinion on the West. To be sure, she took great strides to Europeanize the Russian colossus: She built the Hermitage, amassed a world-class art collection, improved schools and hospitals, and sent French-speaking Russians abroad in droves. But Catherine did little to change the attitude of the average Russian toward what was often disdainfully referred to as "the peninsula of Europe." Putin, despite smiling Group of Eight photo ops, is in much the same mold. He likens U.S. policies to those of the Third Reich and darkly refers to the foreign enemies who seek to undermine Russia. Even many younger Russians, who analysts once predicted would be America's greatest friends in the post-Cold War era, openly profess their profound hostility to the United States. [...] So what should we conclude? It would be a great mistake to see Russia's actions as inevitably heralding a new Cold War. But it would be an equal mistake to ignore the fact that Vladimir Putin has learned well how to play Catherine's impostor game. Just as Catherine became a master of playing the budding democrat abroad while being a despot at home and of professing pacifism while beating the drum of bellicosity across the globe, so too has Putin. He should be viewed accordingly.

Jay Winik, "Vladimir the Great? Putin's Inspiration Is Much Older Than the Cold War," (Washington Post, 2 Sep 2007)

SPIEGEL: The idea of the influence of Orthodox Christianity on the Russian world can be traced throughout your works. What is the moral qualification of the Russian church? We think it is turning into a state church today, just like it was centuries ago -- an institution that in practice legitimizes the head of Kremlin as the representative of God.

Solzhenitsyn: On the contrary, we should be surprised that our church has gained a somewhat independent position during the very few years since it was freed from total subjugation to the communist government. Do not forget what a horrible human toll the Russian Orthodox Church suffered throughout almost the entire 20th century. The Church is just rising from its knees. Our young post-Soviet state is just learning to respect the Church as an independent institution. The "Social Doctrine" of the Russian Orthodox Church, for example, goes much further than do government programs. Recently Metropolitan Kirill, a prominent expounder of the Church's position, has made repeated calls for reforming the taxation system. His views are quite different from those of government, yet he airs them in public, on national television.

Spiegel Interview with Solzhenitsyn (July 23 2007)

[President Putin's recent turn toward authoritarianism seems heavy-handed. Yet, Russia has a traditionally egalitarian approach to international relations. Emmanuel Todd, author of "After the Empire," argues that — if the country can avoid the pitfalls of anarchy and authoritarianism — this universalist tradition could help Russia to become a much-needed global balancing power.] Russia’s temperament is universalist. Equality was inscribed in the heart of the Russian peasant family structure by a rule of inheritance that was absolutely symmetrical. Under Peter the Great, the Russian nobles rejected primogeniture — the rule of inheritance that favors the eldest son to the detriment of the other siblings. Like the French peasants who had become literate before the French Revolution, the Russian peasants who became literate in the 20th century spontaneously considered all men equal. [...] In my view, the Russian universalist temperament is cruelly lacking in international politics today. The dissolution of the Soviet Union — and with it a certain egalitarian angle on international relations — explains in part the unleashing of differentialist tendencies among Americans, Israelis and others. The theme of France’s little universalist music is faint indeed without the power of Russia as amplifier. The return of Russia within the international balance of power can only help the United Nations. If Russia can avoid the pitfalls of anarchy and authoritarianism, it could become a fundamental balancing force in the world — a strong, non-hegemonic nation expressing an egalitarian understanding of the relations between peoples. This attitude will be all the easier to maintain since — unlike the United States — Russia does not rely on asymmetrical levies throughout the world for its raw materials, finished goods, capital or oil.

Emmanuel Todd, "A Global Need for a Universal-Minded Russia," (The Globalist, 22 Nov 2004, extracts from After the Empire)

The lack of 'civilizational' imagination on the part of the current crop among the Western political elite is especially revealed in the objections raised against a (hitherto eager) Turkey's (gradual) integration into the European Union. The entire cultural spectrum from the secular (French and other) progressive 'humanists' to the devout Catholics of new member-states (such as once 'communist' Poland) converges upon the shared claim that this likewise internally polarized heir to the Ottoman Caliphate could never really belong to the 'Christian' West. Yet, the Islamic 'moderates' (AKP) have so far succeeded in advancing the national cause of human rights, civil liberties, and political reform largely by relying on EU pressure from the outside in the face of internal resistance from the 'secular' hardliners in the army (including pawns, whose dictatorial proclivities and coup d'états have been otherwise largely remote-controlled by their common American patrons...). Whereas the Europeanizing Turks, as a modernizing nation, have thus taken for their idealized model a 'Christian Enlightenment' where the religious impulse could increasingly serve as an inspiration for both rectitude and overture, both on the individual and collective planes, the (Americanizing) European elites seem to be instead regressing into a crusader mentality where the evangelizing zeal is now being channeled into a broader 'defense' of Western civilization against subhuman (not just Muslim) infidels. So we now witness the travesty of otherwise laic (even Jewish) intellectuals and politicians (like Sarkozy) parading as champions of the (Judaeo-) 'Christian' values, and their religious counterparts (like the Poles) as defenders of 'secular' Europe. The prospect of Turkey's accession could have served to fuel a wider public debate constructively reexamining the acknowledged roots of European civilization in Christendom and have given rise instead to a mixed and growing constituency of laic and devout citizens who might have jointly embraced the vision of a modernizing Islam participating in the reinvigoration of shared spiritual values even while extending them beyond the traditional boundaries.

Based on equality of inheritance among brothers still subjected collectively to the authority of the patriarch, the Central Asian Muslim and the Russian Orthodox family are both characterized by a strong ethos of communal solidarity bolstered by respect for social order (in contrast to the 'libertarianism' so prone to social anomy and inequality among the Anglo-Saxons), which would account for the peculiar evolution of Soviet Islam. What still keeps the two systems apart anthropologically is Russian exogamy, with its overture towards other communities, as opposed to Arab-style endogamy (preferred marriage between parallel cousins) that tends psychologically to pit Muslim solidarity against the outsider. Whereas the assimilative capacity was greatly enhanced within the secular ideological outlook of the Soviet 'Empire', the post-communist resurgence and official reinstatement of Russian Orthodoxy fosters the nationalistic perception of Muslims (non-Slav immigrants and even long indigenous Asian tribes) as aliens (often the objects of resentment). And whereas the Central Asian nations never opted to quit the Soviet Union but simply found themselves left out in the cold when ditched by Yeltsin's unilateral declaration of independence for Russia (against Gorbachev), the global resurgence of a politicized Islam, now being constricted in the opposite direction, risks a generalization of (Chechen-style) jihad against 'Christian' hegemony (covertly abetted by the Anglo-American Establishment through Al Qaeda, Inc....?). The challenge now for both Central Asia Muslims and Orthodox Russians is whether they can rediscover a common 'secular' space within which they could continue elaborating a shared socio-political vision to implement across the Eurasian continent even while drawing sustenance from their respective faiths in a transcendental power. In an extended pattern of checks and balances, the modernizing state would reign in the divisive and obscurantist tendencies of religious traditions and institutions, while collective faith operating from the grassroots level (much as it did in Puritan America...) would ensure that state power is not hijacked by elite circles (which would have earlier included the communist party bosses...) for self-serving ends. There is little likelihood, however, of a 'protestant ethic' sanctioning individual aggrandizement at the expense of social justice.

Now that Putin has sanctioned the rewriting of school textbooks to highlight the positive achievements of Russian history, it's perhaps time to attempt an 'anthropological' reevaluation of the egalitarian Soviet dispensation side-by-side with a civilizational critique of the increasingly untenable Western claim to world-leadership. While the Europeanizing elites since Peter the Great have pushed ahead with the inescapable modernization and technological advancement of feudal Russia, the communes of serfs have subsequently struggled, sacrificed, and adapted to gain their rightful place in the emerging new order, holding out the same millenarian promise to all other peoples under the sun. All during her travails, the duplicitous West has consistently sought to undermine, take over, and/or (otherwise) destroy Mother Russia: covertly financing the Japanese defeat of the Tsarist military machine even while encouraging her popular depiction as the white bear standing up on the frontlines against the Yellow Peril; subsequently funding Hitler against Stalin and providing the 'scientific' rationalizations for Nazi 'eugenics'; and now pressing ahead with NATO encirclement of her underbelly in violation of recent pledges all in the name of promoting that same 'democracy' that's being foisted upon an increasingly depopulated Iraq. In our haste to celebrate the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's all too easy to forget that the communist threat was largely instrumental in providing legitimacy to the 'welfare state' and other material gains of the European working classes (achievements that their capitalist and financial elites now seem bent on undoing under the 'inevitable' pretext of 'globalization'...), a watch-dog role that's still being played effectively by the 'Marxist' parties (and the specter of Naxalite insurgency...) in India. Why not amply fund a Eurasian research institute and think-tank in Moscow that brings together the best and most independent minds from the Muslim world, China, India, and even beyond, to attempt - once again after Marx - a critical re-reading of the Russian Revolution that goes back even further to ask "what went wrong" with the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution (to find ourselves in the current global crisis...), and what the Eastern civilizations and the religious traditions could contribute towards a more equitable New World Order?

While engaged last week in a lively wide-ranging discussion on religious beliefs and national characters with a senior American entrepreneur of SEA origin, who has steered through major corporate ventures in every part of the globe, the conversation wandered into the difficulties and risks of doing sustained business in the former Soviet Union (he's well aware of the Harvard dossier and is in fact a friend of Jeffrey Sachs...). "Scratch a Russian," he immediately quipped, but from personal experience, "and you'll find a Tartar!" (Russia was under their despotic rule for two centuries). The "New (post-) Soviet Man," one may plausibly argue, is as much the result of the Islamic pacification of the Mongol hordes as of the egalitarian outlook of the Slavic serf now resurfacing within an Orthodox garb. The Russian Bear - as the Western elites may soon discover to their chagrin - may well turn out to be (a pale) yellowish-brown (rather than a hypocritical 'white')!

Sunthar

[Rest of this thread at Sunthar V. (10 Aug 2007)

"In the Midst of Empires" (no #03 - July-Aug 2007) - please contribute to this bilingual newsletter"]