Russians threaten tactical Nukes in Ossetia!

[erosoplier]

Sarkozy and Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

The CIA media just reacted to Gardiner's comments about nukes with a DECEPTIVE justification for the US nuking of Japan.

Notice that this article seems to suggest that Tojo was going to keep fighting in WWII.
But at the END of the article we learn this was his private attitude he kept to himself.

Just Operation Mockingbird in action countering likely criticisms with heuristically-exploitive psyops.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080812/ap_on_re_as/japan_tojo_s_diary

Diary shows Tojo resisted surrender till end

August 12, 2008
By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO - Japanese World War II leader Hideki Tojo wanted to keep fighting even after U.S. atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accusing surrender proponents of being "frightened," a newly released diary reveals.
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Still, Tojo — who apparently wrote the diary for himself rather than as an argument to his contemporaries — said he would accept in silence the decision to surrender, which was made by government leaders in the presence of then-Emperor Hirohito.

"Now that the diplomatic steps have been taken after the emperor's judgment, I have decided to refrain from making any comments about it, though I have a separate view," Tojo wrote.

.....
COL. SAM GARDINER: Absolutely. Let me just say that if you were to rate how serious the strategic situations have been in the past few years, this would be above Iraq, this would be above Afghanistan, and this would be above Iran.

On little notice to Americans, the Russians learned at the end of the first Gulf War that they couldn’t—they didn’t think they could deal with the United States, given the value and the quality of American precision conventional weapons. The Russians put into their doctrine a statement, and have broadcast it very loudly, that if the United States were to use precision conventional weapons against Russian troops, the Russians would be forced to respond with tactical nuclear weapons.

[Username]

~
Online Journal
South Ossetia: superpower oil war
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Aug 13, 2008

The war in the Georgian province of South Ossetia is a classic superpower proxy war, pitting an aggressively US-backed regime, a member of NATO’s regional GUUAM (Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldava) military alliance, against Russia. It is being waged over control of the Caspian Sea, the region in which the third largest oil reserves can be found. The control over this region holds one of the most important keys to world power.

The pipelines

While incendiary propaganda, coded rhetoric (claims over South Ossetia, genocide, “democracy,” etc.) fly back and forth, the actual geostrategic agenda, the energy stakes over which the world powers have engaged in mortal superpower combat (as usual, with millions of innocent civilians used as cannon fodder) remain largely unreported and unaddressed.

A look at the map tells the story. It is taking place in the resource-rich and strategically critical Caucasus/Black Sea region, the same region of the 1990s US/NATO war on the Balkans, led by the Clinton administration.

The stakes involved with the current conflict are identical to those of the previous war: control over the oil of the Caspian Sea/Black Sea/Caucasus basin, and the control of multiple key oil pipelines criss-crossing the region, including the Baku-Supsa and Baku-Ceyhan-Tblisi routes through Georgia, the Baku-Novorossiyk pipeline (through Chechnya and Dagestan), and others.

The most critical pipeline, the infamous Baku-Ceyhan pipeline supported by the US government and a consortium of US-allied transnational oil interests (including Royal Dutch Shell, Unocal, and BP) takes oil from the Caspian Sea across Azerbaijan (another US-supported regime), whereby it crosses Georgia (bypassing Iran and Russia), then on to the Black Sea, where the oil is carried to Western Europe, and the rest of the world.

The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline has been viewed by the Bush/Cheney administration as one of its brightest geostrategic successes. All of the Anglo-American empire’s pipelines and oil facilities, including Baku-Ceyhan, are threatened, if the conflict escalates.

Anglo-American machinations around the Caspian Sea

As pointed out by Michel Chossudovsky in his book America’s ‘War on Terrorism,’ (which details the continuum of Anglo-American war policy from the 1990s Balkans/Kosovo/Yugoslavia conflict, to 9/11, to the present), GUUAM, formed in 1999, has been “dominated by Anglo-American oil interests, ultimately purports to exclude Russia from oil and gas deposits in the Caspian area, as well as isolating Moscow politically.”

Concurrent with the formation of GUUAM, as pointed out by Chossudovsky, Washington began its Silk Road Strategy foreign policy, or SRS, designed specifically to promote the “independence” of “breakaway” republics in Central Asia, and undermine and destabilize its competitors in the oil business, including Russia, Iran and China.

As pointed out in the classic 1999 analysis of the Balkans conflict by the late Karen Talbot, “Backing Up Globalization with Military Might,” the New World Order’s onslaught was “related to the drive to extend and protect the investments of transnational corporations in the Caspian Sea region, especially the oil corporations,” while thwarting Russian and Chinese designs on the same energy wealth.

SRS and GUUAM, embraced by both neoliberal and neocon factions in Washington, led directly to 9/11, the “war on terrorism,” and the conquests of Afghanistan and Iraq, under the Bush/Cheney administration.

Georgia: US-created, US-backed proxy

On a more local basis, Anglo-American machinations across the GUUAM corridor have taken place for years under Bush/Cheney, from militarization, covert operations and destabilizations leading to regime changes (CIA-supported “color-coded revolutions,” manipulated elections), to the literal bottom-up construction of pro-US/transnational corporation-friendly “democracy” puppet governments, such as the Saakashvili regime.

As pointed out in the New York Times, “the United States did not merely encourage Georgia’s young democracy, it helped militarize the weak Georgian state . . . At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite the Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces -- with Israeli and U.S. firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield-management equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition . . . The public goal was to nudge Georgia toward NATO military standards.” Georgia’s leader, Mikhail Saakashvili, came to power in 2004, as a result of US covert operations.

South Ossetia, one of the so-called “breakaway” republics, is claimed by US puppet, Georgia, but has resisted Georgian rule. The Saakashvili government has attempted to seize South Ossetia for some time. In a pattern similar to that set during the 1990s Balkans conflict, each side accuses the other of genocide, atrocities and violations of international law.

What we are witnessing now is an overt and blunt Russian military response to years of Anglo-American encroachment in the region, and the prospect of a US/NATO-supported military force in South Ossetia, giving the West more control of the Caspian Sea/Black Sea oil.

US versus Russia and China, all over the world

Many wonder if this conflict marks the beginning of World War Three. The question itself is flawed. World war -- world resource warfare -- between the Anglo-American empire and its allies, and its main superpower adversaries, Russia and China, and its allies, has been continuous for decades.

This war of empire -- one war, the same war -- has been waged on multiple levels, but it has been fought in absolute earnest during Bush/Cheney, as energy scarcity, or Peak Oil and Gas, has manifested itself in nightmarish fashion, overtly and tangibly. Every geostrategic event since World War II has focused squarely around this paradigm. Analysis by Michael Klare, author of Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict, and many others, has clearly spelled this out.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s imperial war playbook, The Grand Chessboard, and the agendas of PNAC and other neocon groups, have been even more blatant: control the Eurasian sub-continent, the entire geography containing the majority of the world’s known oil reserves, while encircling, blocking and destabilizing Russia and China, and their allies.

The Anglo-American empire’s wars since the 1990s have been sequential and overtly about oil and gas. The 1999 NATO war in the Balkans was fought over the Caspian Sea basin, the location of the third-largest oil reserves. The pipeline politics connected to the control and transport of Caspian Sea oil led directly to the 9/11 event, and the resulting “war on terrorism” into Afghanistan. The attempt to seize and control the second-largest oil reserves led directly to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and a permanent military foothold in the Middle East.

Conflict (economic, political and military) has broken out over every piece of geography containing, or purporting to contain, oil, or involving oil and energy: Nigeria, Iran, Sudan, the South China Sea, Algeria, Darfur, Somalia, Chechnya, and even Canada. In all cases, the Anglo-American empire has faced off against Chinese and Russian interests.

Nightmare scenarios

What is significant about the Georgian conflict is that for, arguably, the first time since the so-called end of the Cold War, it is not the Anglo-American empire unilaterally bombing, invading or occupying a politically weak nation with a primitive military, such as Afghanistan or Iraq. Russian military might is being unleashed directly on a US surrogate.

Russia is daring the Anglo-American empire to do something about it.

It is currently unclear, in the face of complexities (clouded by the violence, and the incendiary and escalating rhetoric from all sides) what scenario will unfold. What is clear is that it is beyond a nightmare scenario already.

See War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation? and the blog by Mike Ruppert.

Is this a war that Moscow wanted to start, and finish, at a key moment at which the Anglo-American empire, as a result of its own political and economic self-destruction under the criminal Bush/Cheney agenda, is in the midst of real death throes? Is this Bush/Cheney’s “chickens come home to roost” -- Russia calling the administration’s bluff?

What, if anything, has been China’s role behind the scenes?

Is this a war that the neocons, led by Bush/Cheney, via Georgia, provoked, in order to give themselves a new justification to unleash the “unthinkable” open nuclear war that they have insisted on waging “endlessly”? If Bush/Cheney were genuinely caught off guard, will they now, in neocon panic, pull out the stops, and “blow it all up”?

Would such a war trump all other events, including the upcoming presidential election? Is this war connected in any way to political factions backing John McCain?

With the world economy teetering on the brink of petro-dollar collapse, the US close to a depression, and with the US Federal Reserve and Wall Street engaging in ever more desperate actions to save the empire, is there significance in the timing of this war? Any disruption to the oil supply, in one blow, wipes out the economy, the stock markets, raises oil and gas prices to shocking new highs, and flattens an already discredited Bush/Cheney administration.

The spectacle of the Bush family, Henry Kissinger, Putin, etc., entertaining themselves at the Bejing Olympic Games, while South Ossetia burned, and neocons Dick Cheney and UN Ambassador (and CIA man) Zalmay Khalilzad manning the nuclear button in Washington (warning that “Russian aggression will not go unanswered”), should not only turn stomachs, but raise alarms like nothing since 9/11. Even more stomach-turning, but expected, is the near-total inattention to this gigantic war explosion. The eyes of the hopelessly ignorant and acquiescent public are transfixed on Beijing Olympics fun, and secondarily on the sexual misadventures of John Edwards. Again, the timing of all of this raises questions in and of itself.

Who knew what, and when? Who is in control? Who benefits? What horrific nuclear war scenarios are getting operational green lights?

If Bush/Cheney’s false flag event on 9/11, six horrific years of open criminality, its conquest and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the “war on terrorism,” have not already made painfully clear, this moment in history should serve as a wake-up call.

There has never been a more critical time to look past the billowing propaganda smoke.

This really is it.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
End

The Caucasus -- Washington risks nuclear war by miscalculation
By F. William Engdahl
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 12, 2008

The dramatic military attack by the military of the Republic of Georgia on South Ossetia in the last days has brought the world one major step closer to the ultimate horror of the Cold War era -- a thermonuclear war between Russia and the United States -- by miscalculation.

What is playing out in the Caucasus is being reported in US media in an alarmingly misleading light, making Moscow appear the lone aggressor. The question is whether George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are encouraging the unstable Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US president to back the NATO military agenda of the Bush Doctrine. Washington may have badly misjudged the possibilities, as it did in Iraq, but this time with possible nuclear consequences.

The underlying issue, as I stressed in my July 11 article, Georgia, Washington and Moscow: a Nuclear Geopolitical Poker Game, is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 one after another former member 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.

The roots of the conflict
Article continues here.
~

[Ben D]

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[Username]

~
Online Journal
Set-up complete: Georgia the new Vietnam
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
Aug 14, 2008

Emerging evidence is already exposing the Bush/Cheney administration’s bloody fingerprints all over the conflict in Georgia:

US complicit in Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia

NATO encouraged Georgia

Hypocrisy over war in Georgia

Georgia war a neocon election ploy

Using Georgia to target Russia

Russia responded by finishing the South Ossetia fighting quickly, clearly establishing its dominance for the moment. But what will be Washington’s response now?

Georgia/Ossetia is a perfect set-up. It is even better than a false flag operation. The Russian Threat will be the only issue, bar none, and Washington has only just begun pumping it up. It will be “it,” no matter which faction ultimately sits in the White House, and could well decide which faction manages to be installed.

The Cold War is back, and it may not be cold for very long: Toward a Broader Russia-US military confrontation?

Both neocons and neolibs now have a unified enemy again, and a propaganda cause behind which to mobilize.

Note that neoliberal hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski, a chief architect behind imperial plans targeted against Russian and Chinese geostrategic agendas, has influence behind both US presidential aspirants, Barack Obama and John McCain. His ruthless colleague and neocon counterpart, Henry Kissinger is in McCain’s camp.

Washington functionaries and 90 percent of the media are marching uniformly with propaganda pushing the idea that it was a Russian attack on “sovereign” Georgia, not an armed response to an aggressive provocation by Georgia armed with US troops, covert operatives and US firepower.

The western media is trumpeting that “something has to be done to show the Russians that they can’t just run roughshod over the continent,” while the actions of US covert operations, unacknowledged American fatalities (dead intelligence assets, soldiers lying dead in the streets of Ossetia) get silence. Note how the massive propaganda apparatus, a save-Georgia public relations machine (identical to the save-Iraqi-babies campaign launched before the Gulf War) was in place, seemingly before the fighting even started.

There is a good reason why Kissinger and the Bush family appeared so relaxed at the Beijing Olympic Games. The top echelons of the Anglo-American empire have already set up the “chessboard,” with multiple contingencies. It’s all been taken care of.

Barring miraculous developments, Georgia has become the new Vietnam, complete with fear of commies, oil supplies threatened (genuinely as well as fictionally), and real world war. The perfect planetary conflagration.

Rank and file Americans, the entire world, may be sick of war and deception, but fear of a mightily-armed Russia -- a true, living superpower adversary that actually dropped bombs and rolled in tanks -- could do the trick in a way that 9/11 and phantom terrorists did not.

Watch Bush/Cheney. They are not done.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
~

[marmot]

War: it's just God's way of teaching Americans geography.

from the Daily Show, August 12, 2008; said while displaying a colorful topographical map of the Russian/Georgian (South Ossetia, Abkhazia) region in conflict.

[ninakat]

Watch Bush/Cheney. They are not done.

Username, thanks for posting those two articles by Larry Chin. Highly recommended for anyone who missed them. I think he's got the most cogent analysis I've read. I just hope the fuck he's wrong, especially about the nightmare scenarios, although I do think we should expect that Bush/Cheney will pull something nasty before Jan. 20, 2009.

[anothershamus]

Well, I am really glad that Condi Rice went over and made the president of Georgia and the "President" of Russia sign a cease-fire. Now we don't have to worry about the Russians advancing further into the sovereign nation of Georgia......

What's that!.....Russia is still advancing into Georgia and blowing up train bridges? I guess the cease fire means no one will shoot at them while they take over the country.

From Reuters:

Georgia rail bridge blown up; Russia rejects blame

16 August 2008
Print Print Article E-mail Send to A Friend
KASPI, Georgia - Georgia accused Russian troops on Saturday of blowing up a railway bridge on the main line west of the capital Tbilisi, but Russia denied carrying out any such operation.

A Reuters cameraman near the town of Kaspi, 45 km (30 miles) west of Tbilisi, said one end of the bridge had collapsed on to the bank of the Mtkvari River in a tangled mess of metal and rubble.

Villagers said the bridge had been blown up on Saturday by men in uniform who arrived by military jeep, uncoiled wires and detonated explosives remotely.

They said the men responsible were Russians, but the Russian General Staff denied this.

Georgia has alleged that South Ossetian militias as well as irregular forces from over the border with Russia in the North Caucasus have pushed through behind advancing Russian forces, looting and burning Georgian villages.

"At 12:20 (0820 GMT) this afternoon, Russian forces blew up a major railroad bridge near Gori," Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze told reporters in Tbilisi.

"That bridge being gone effectively results in the country losing east-west railway communications," he said. "For how long I do not know."

A Reuters correspondent witnessed Russian troops advancing to villages in the Kaspi region on Friday.

"We are in peacetime"

The railway line runs from Tbilisi, through the now Russian-occupied town of Gori, before splitting in three and running to the Black Sea ports of Poti and Batumi and southwest to just short of the Turkish border.

Russia's General Staff said Moscow was not in the business of blowing up bridges.

"We are in peacetime. Why should we be blowing up bridges when our job is to restore?" Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the General Staff, told a daily briefing.

"We are not conducting bombardments. I can say with full responsibility that this cannot be the case."

On Friday, a Russian military convoy advanced to the Kaspi region from Gori near breakaway South Ossetia, the deepest incursion into Georgia proper in the nine-day confrontation between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia.

Russia drove Georgian forces from South Ossetia last week, in a massive counter-offensive after Tbilisi tried to retake the region from pro-Moscow separatists.

Since the Georgian pullout, Russian forces have set about securing or destroying Georgian military installations and abandoned arms dumps.

On Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a ceasefire agreement ending hostilities. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili signed the document on Friday and the United States called for the immediate withdrawal of Russian forces.

[tal]

anyone else thinkin' maybe John Titor just fudged his dates a bit?

Pole Position: More U.S. Troops Sent to Russian Border
Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

August 15, 2008

First Georgia, now Poland. The Bush Administration announced Thursday that American soldiers will begin manning missile sites in Poland -- part of an agreement that surpasses even the NATO treaty in binding Washington to an armed response to any attack on Polish soil.

Spokesminions for President George Butt-Thumper said the installation of the missile base is designed to protect Poland from an intercontinental missile attack from Iran. (The perfidious Persians' long-standing plans to conquer Poland are well-known, of course.) The minions say that the missiles and troops are not at all intended as a threat to Russia, which is being slowly encircled by NATO bases and American missiles -- despite solemn promises from Washington to refrain from, er, encircling Russia with NATO bases and American missiles.

But while Butt-Thumper was playing coy about the latest interjection of American cannon fodder into the now-roiling region, the Poles were admirably frank: they wanted a signed, ironclad deal that would force Americans to fight for them -- unlike the hapless Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili, who depended on a nod and a wink from militarist factions along the Potomac (apparently John McCain and his neocon crowd) when launching his own sneak attack on South Ossetia. [Justin Raimondo has more on this.]

As we all know, Misha was left up Saakashvili Creek without a paddle when the U.S. cavalry failed to ride to his rescue as expected. (Can there be any other explanation as to why he would launch his tiny military on a reckless adventure that was certain to provoke a massive Russian response? Obviously he thought Uncle Butt-Thumper would back him up.)

But there was none of that boneheaded shilly-shally for the Poles. They took advantage of the Bush Regime's panicky anxiety to look big and tough in front of the Russians and quickly sealed the missile base deal, wringing concessions that Washington had been resisting for 18 months.

The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, put plainly what his country wanted out of the agreement: "Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later — it is no good when assistance comes to dead people. Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict."

Poland has an understandable fear of Russia, which has invaded and occupied its territory several times -- most recently, of course, in collaboration with the Bush Family's old business partners, Nazi Germany. Then again, Poland invaded and occupied Russia a few times too, back when it was a major power. Major powers tend to do that kind of thing. Which is why, as I noted in a recent comment exchange, one should be eternally suspicious of any person or group who takes control of massive, inhuman structures like states, because of our common human propensity to abuse power -- and to justify those abuses by claiming they are done in the name of some higher ideal. This applies no matter what system a particular state is based upon: capitalism, communism, theocracy -- or the grotesque chimera that now holds sway in both the United States and Russia: lawless, militarist authoritarian corporate-cronyism.

An American military move into Poland is the height of folly -- then again, we have been living on those dizzy heights for a number of years now, so there's nothing new in that.

But speaking of business partners, so much of the current unpleasantness would never have arisen if the dastard Putin had not begun hoarding Russia's natural resources for his cronies instead of giving it away to Butt-Thumper's buds. One recalls those halcyon days of yore when BP and Shell were striking fat oil and gas deals with Russian partners. Back then, Putin was Butt-Thumper's "soulmate," invited down for barbecues in Crawford. Back then, Putin was praised in the American media as the strong, steady hand that Russia needed, "a man we can do business with." Back then, Putin's astonishingly savage rampage through Chechnya and his installation of a regime of brutal thugs to preside over its remains were lauded as part of the war against Islamofascist terror.

But that was then and this is now. In the past few years, as the Kremlin has tightened its grip on Russia's oil and gas reserves and its indispensable pipelines to Europe, as it has grown rich from the spike in oil prices sparked by Bush's wars and threats of war, as its has rolled back Big Oil's presence in Russia -- often in harsh and humiliating ways -- Putin has steadily emerged in Western eyes as a tyrant, a bully, an ogre who threatens the stability of the entire world. (How long will it be before he is dubbed "the New Hitler"?)

The actual nature of Putin's regime has never mattered to our freedom-loving elites. The only "foreign policy" question they have is this: "Will they play ball? Will they fork over?" If Putin had only let the Western elite have a nice juicy slice of the Russian pie -- and maybe joined in one or two of Butt-Thumper's wars -- why, he could have romped and scampered around the region all he liked. But he didn't, and so now we have a "new Cold War," with Washington pouring oil on the fires in the Caucus and stirring the embers of fear and suspicion on the Russian-Polish frontier.

What next? Landing an expeditionary force in Vladivostok?

[Username]

~
[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/15/russia.poland.nuclear.missiles.threat]Moscow warns it could strike Poland over US missile shield
US condemns 'bullying' of Georgia
Russian general threatens nuclear attack
Ian Traynor in Brussels, Luke Harding in Tbilisi and Helen Womack in Moscow
The Guardian
Saturday August 16 2008[/url]

The risk of a new era of east-west confrontation triggered by Russia's invasion of Georgia heightened yesterday when Moscow reserved the right to launch a nuclear attack on Poland because it agreed to host US rockets as part of the Pentagon's missile shield.

As Washington accused Russia of "bullying and intimidation" in Georgia and demanded an immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from the small Black Sea neighbour, Russia's deputy chief of staff turned on Warsaw and said it was vulnerable to a Russian rocket attack because of Thursday's pact with the US on the missile defence project.

"By deploying, Poland is exposing itself to a strike - 100%," warned Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn. He added that Russia's security doctrine allowed it to use nuclear weapons against an active ally of a nuclear power such as America.

The warning worsened the already dismal mood in relations between Moscow and the west caused by the shock of post-Soviet Russia's first invasion of a foreign country.

There were scant signs of military activity on the ground in Georgia, but nor were there any signs of the Russian withdrawal pledged on Tuesday under ceasefire terms mediated by the European Union.

Instead, the focus was on a flurry of diplomatic activity that exposed acute differences on how Washington and Berlin see the crisis in the Caucasus.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, went to Tbilisi to bolster Georgia against the Russians as President George Bush denounced Russian "bullying and intimidation" as "unacceptable".

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, met Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev on the Black Sea close to Georgia's borders and sent quite a different message, offering a mild rebuke of Moscow.

"Some of Russia's actions were not proportionate," she said.

Unlike the Americans and some European states who are saying the Russians should face "consequences" for their invasion, Merkel said negotiations with Moscow on a whole range of issues would continue as before and spread the blame for the conflict. "It is rare that all the blame is on one side. In fact, both sides are probably to blame. That is very important to understand," she said.

In Tbilisi, Rice was much more forthright, saying that the invasion had "profound implications for Russia ... This calls into question what role Russia really plans to play in international politics.

"You can't be a responsible member of institutions which are democratic and underscore democratic values and on the other hand act in this way against one of your neighbours."

The Russians have been refusing to pull back their forces in Georgia until President Mikheil Saakashvili signed the six-point ceasefire plan arranged by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France earlier this week, although the Russians had refused to sign it themselves.

Saakashvili signed yesterday, while accusing the Russians of being "evil" and "21st century barbarians". Rice said Medvedev had also signed it.

"Russia has every time been testing the reaction of the west. It's going to replicate what happened in Georgia elsewhere," said Saakashvili. "We are looking evil directly in the eye. Today this evil is very strong, and very dangerous for everybody, not just for us."

Rice's show of solidarity with Georgia's beleaguered president was theatrically undermined when Russia dispatched a column of armoured personnel carriers towards the Georgian capital.

As the talks were taking place, 10 armoured personnel carriers laden with Russian troops set off from Gori, penetrating to within 20 miles of Tbilisi.

"Georgia has been attacked. Russian forces need to leave Georgia at once," said Rice. The withdrawal "must take place, and take place now ... This is no longer 1968," she added in reference to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia 40 years ago next week.

The ceasefire terms favour the Russians who routed the Georgians. But the secretary of state argued the plan would not affect negotiations over the central territorial dispute between Georgia and the two breakaway pro-Russian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The deal allows Russian troops to remain in the two provinces and to mount patrols and "take additional security measures" on Georgian territory beyond the two enclaves.

Senior Russians continued to insist yesterday that Russian troops had not stepped outside South Ossetia and Abkhazia despite the fact they have been deep inside Georgian territory in several places all week.

"Our ground forces never crossed the border of the conflict zone," said Sergei Ivanov, the deputy prime minister.

Moscow also indicated it would resist possible European attempts to deploy international peacekeepers in the contested territories.

"We are not against international peacekeepers," the Russian president said. "But the problem is that the Abkhazians and the Ossetians do not trust anyone except Russian peacekeepers." He also attacked the agreement between Washington and Warsaw on the missile shield and said claims that the shield was aimed at Iran were "fairy tales"

"This clearly demonstrates the deployment of new anti-missile forces in Europe has as its aim the Russian Federation," said Medvedev. "The moment has been well chosen."

The timing of Thursday's agreement on missile defence means that tensions are soaring on Russia's southern and western borders.

Polish armed forces yesterday paraded in Warsaw to mark a rare defeat of the Russians 888 years ago and President Lech Kaczynski hailed the accord on the Pentagon project as a boost for Poland's security.

In return for hosting 10 interceptor rockets said to be intended to destroy any eventual ballistic missile attacks from Iran, Poland is to receive a battery of US Patriot missiles for its air defences and has won a mutual security pact with Washington.
End
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[geogeo]

I've been travelling this whole time and haven't had had the time to comment that I would normally have had. But it appears to me one of the anti-Russian sentiments one hears dragged up with regularity is this bit about Chechnya. I followed Chechnya in the early 2000s but not in the 1990s, and I remember that its fundamentalists Muslim leaders at one point were the only remaining 'state' with diplomatic relationships with Afghanistan. What's more, the Chechnyan fundies were bankrolled by Middle Eastern countries, and there was a website, kavkaz, that was I believe based in the US. I believe at the time I sort of bought it, a bit in awe of the jihadists shooting down Russian helicopters and posting the videos, but I wonder now whether the Russians were basically lured into Chechnya in the first war the same way they were lured into Afghanistan and now into South Ossetia.

It seems like a pattern. We use Russia's well-known mission to protected the Slavs (as in the Balkans) to move the chesspieces into a check situation, and then make geopolitical hay. This would be the Brzezinskians, I suppose.

I also remember the horrible school massacre a couple years ago--and dark allegations that 'outside countries' were involved; as well as the theater take-over in Moscow, with similar comments being made (by the same sorts of Russians who made some intriguing comments about 9-11). Then there was a shootdown of plane full of Israelis, and at the very beginning some apartments being blown up in Moscow. Most of this dark stuff was pushed on the Russians themselves, particularly the apartments, but it has always seemed to me that there is a certain pattern of MI6-type provocation, or whatever.

[tal]

I followed Chechnya in the early 2000s but not in the 1990s, and I remember that its fundamentalists Muslim leaders at one point were the only remaining 'state' with diplomatic relationships with Afghanistan. What's more, the Chechnyan fundies were bankrolled by Middle Eastern countries, and there was a website, kavkaz, that was I believe based in the US. I believe at the time I sort of bought it, a bit in awe of the jihadists shooting down Russian helicopters and posting the videos, but I wonder now whether the Russians were basically lured into Chechnya in the first war the same way they were lured into Afghanistan and now into South Ossetia.

It seems like a pattern. We use Russia's well-known mission to protected the Slavs (as in the Balkans) to move the chesspieces into a check situation, and then make geopolitical hay. This would be the Brzezinskians, I suppose.

I also remember the horrible school massacre a couple years ago--and dark allegations that 'outside countries' were involved; as well as the theater take-over in Moscow, with similar comments being made (by the same sorts of Russians who made some intriguing comments about 9-11). Then there was a shootdown of plane full of Israelis, and at the very beginning some apartments being blown up in Moscow. Most of this dark stuff was pushed on the Russians themselves, particularly the apartments, but it has always seemed to me that there is a certain pattern of MI6-type provocation, or whatever.

Precisely. Remember, The Muslim Terrorist Apparatus was Created by US Intelligence as a Geopolitical Weapon

[Penguin]

What's more, the Chechnyan fundies were bankrolled by Middle Eastern countries, and there was a website, kavkaz, that was I believe based in the US.

Kavkaz media center is a chechen news service, run by chechen exiles. The server is in Finland and Sweden. It was briefly shut down about a year ago, may be more, due to demands of russian authorities to finnish government (Supo, the secret police in Finland, went and shut down the server). It was quickly put back up due to public outcry here, and an additional backup server put up in Sweden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kavkaz_Center (is missing the info on current hosting, which is only in Finnish language version Wiki)

Thats really all I know, I have no more info on their background otherwise. Russia has said all along that Kavkaz is a muslim extremist terrorist site ...

Edit: Actually, the server has been closed repeatedly in many countries..
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/
Dont know where it is now.

[anothershamus]

tal wrote:

Precisely. Remember, The Muslim Terrorist Apparatus was Created by US Intelligence as a Geopolitical Weapon

I was watching Bill Moyers and I had the thought that (ex?) KGB Putin was just wanting to go back to the good times of the cold war. We know that he doesn't want to give up his Dacha on the Crimea. He also wants to put nukes on the boats in the baltic sea,:

Russia is considering arming its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads for the first time since the cold war, senior military sources warned last night.

The move, in response to American plans for a missile defence shield in Europe, would heighten tensions raised by the advance of Russian forces to within 20 miles of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, yesterday.

Under the Russian plans, nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of the Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between the European Union countries of Poland and Lithuania. A senior military source in Moscow said the fleet had suffered from underfunding since the collapse of communism. “That will change now,” said the source

link here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 547883.ece