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Monday, August 11, 2008 |
WashingtonTimes: "Only a fortnight after Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice warned Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili to avoid bloodshed in the continuing Mexican standoff between that country and the breakaway South Ossetia, violence broke out.
Fighting between Georgian forces and separatists in the neighboring country, which is being backed by Russia, left six people dead and 13 wounded. The news was bleak, if not exactly front page.
But if that doesn't get Miss Rice's attention, nothing will.
Her bag wasn't even unpacked by the time the shooting broke out. Who's to blame for six human lives lost? And why is there no world outcry?
First, President Saakashvili - who came to power backed by George Soros in the so-called Rose Revolution - promised the Bush administration that he would behave himself. But the temptation was too great. He had head-butted Vladimir Putin when he was Russian president and will continue to do so with the new administration, much to the dismay of the struggling Georgian people.
As long as Americans naively support his administration, he will continue to ignore the advice of the hand that feeds him.
Georgia is not Iraq. There are no famous journalists, no Anderson Coopers, no Katie Courics embedded in the capital, Tbilisi. In fact, there is no free media. Not unlike Iraq under Saadam Hussein, my country is under a blanket of secrecy. After the May 21 parliamentary elections - in which Mr. Saakashvili claimed a constitutional majority - television and radio stations were under threat. In fact, there is only one television station (Rustavi 2) left with permission to air any news at all. The station, as it happens, is owned and operated by the Georgian government. How convenient. My friends and relatives back in Tbilisi report weekly of the media blackout, and they are deeply disturbed by the current, dangerous state of affairs.
Several months ago, the country was rocked by political demonstrations as Georgians took the streets demanding a new government. A state of emergency was declared. The unpopular president allowed for new elections, which were immediately deemed fraudulent by nonpartisan election observers, including the OSCE (Organization of Security Cooperation in Europe).
The regime has systematically, detained 'criminal' elements opposed to Mr. Saakashvili's reign of terror. In the last two weeks, I received word that six members of the major opposition party, the Labor Party, were detained by police and arrested for phony money-laundering charges. There is no judicial system, because the flotilla of so-called and highly corrupt judges have been personally appointed by Mr. Saakashvili himself."
Actually, the number of Ossetian victims is closer to 2,000. But even that does not seem to bother the US. It is clear that Mr Saakashvili is acting on his own in his country, that he has no support among the Georgian population and is using martial law to strengthen his power or, more exactly, to retain his waning power, and to provoke a reaction from the US and Britain, who very well know that Mr Saakashvili is just another dictator they are using in their dirty power game, but whom they will not support by military action. Endangering and disrupting the oil pipelines in the region is not America's idea of gaining and maintaining control.
Of course, our mainstream media did not report very much about the many demonstrations against Saakashvili the previous and present year and the violent repression that followed.
The US will do nothing apart from sending the Georgian soldiers in Iraq back home. What is worse is that again Israel is involved in creating unrest in the region. As long as they can sell weapons of mass destruction Israel is happy; the country is in fact bankrupt and is trying to keep afloat by selling arms to any country that will buy.
Sott: "There is an obvious Israeli involvement in the present conflict between Georgia and Russia. There are hundreds of Israeli military advisers in Georgia and this is not just the claim of the rather unreliable DebkaFile but also the more respected Ha'aretz expert Yossi Melman, the daily Ma'ariv and also the rather reliable website "News First Class" (NFC).
Melman wrote on 25.6.2008 that Georgia became a real El Dorado for Israeli arms dealers and numerous representatives of the army and intelligence services. Some former generals like Israel Ziv and Gal Hirsh (with his company Defensive Shield) are very active there.
'Gal Hirsh and Israel Ziv are mainly training and consulting Georgian arm units. They are using the 'chain' method common among Israeli arm dealers: a main contractor wins a tender and employs then sub-contractors - in this case Israeli officers and former Shin Beth employees," wrote Melman.
It is obvious that there are numerous Israeli and U.S. interests in Georgia and it is highly likely that they are behind the dangerous Georgian move."
Here are a few gruesome images of the victims that fell in the initial attack by Georgia on Tskhinvali.
SunTimes: "South Ossetian refugees on Sunday described being shelled and shot at and forced to run for their lives - leaving homes, family members and most of what they had behind.
Following the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali, Kulumbegova said she expects many South Ossetians who once might have agreed to reunification with Georgia to oppose the idea. More, she predicted, will support unification with Russia."
9:47:31 AM 
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© Copyright 2008.
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