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Saturday, August 16, 2008 |
Now let's hear what a staunch right-winger has to say about Georgia.
Pat Buchanan: "Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.
After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.
Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.
American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight - Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.
Russia's response was 'disproportionate' and 'brutal', wailed Bush.
True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more 'disproportionate'?
Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?
Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?
When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?
Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?
When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?
American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.
Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.
When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?
The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.
We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic 'revolutions' in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.
Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.
How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?"
Buchanan is right. This is the most blatant proof of hypocrisy, double standards and state propaganda ever seen in history.
And it started with the brutal bombing of Yugoslavia, the legacy of a Democratic president.
John Pilger: "The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed.
The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte's role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this include Nato's 78-day bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, which killed hundreds of people in hospitals, schools, churches, parks and tele vision studios, and destroyed economic infrastructure. 'If I am not willing to [prosecute Nato personnel],' said Del Ponte, 'I must give up my mission.' It was a sham. Under pressure from Washington and London, an investigation into Nato war crimes was scrapped.
David Scheffer, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as '225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59' may have been murdered. Tony Blair invoked the Holocaust and 'the spirit of the Second World War'.
Del Ponte's tribunal announced the final count of the dead in Kosovo: 2,788. This included combatants on both sides and Serbs and Roma murdered by the KLA. There was no genocide in Kosovo. The 'holocaust' was a lie. The Nato attack had been fraudulent.
That was not all, says Del Ponte in her book: the KLA kidnapped hundreds of Serbs and transported them to Albania, where their kidneys and other body parts were removed; these were then sold for transplant in other countries. She also says there was sufficient evidence to prosecute the Kosovar Albanians for war crimes, but the investigation 'was nipped in the bud' so that the tribunal's focus would be on 'crimes committed by Serbia'. She says the Hague judges were terrified of the Kosovar Albanians - the very people in whose name Nato had attacked Serbia.
Indeed, even as Blair the war leader was on a triumphant tour of 'liberated' Kosovo, the KLA was ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Serbs and Roma from the province.
It was the perfect precursor to the bloodbaths in Afghanistan and Iraq."
So far, Russia has shown considerable restraint in not destroying the Georgian capital Tbilisi, or the pipeline. They have restricted themselves to clearing the towns that could pose a danger to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This kind of restraint would never have been shown by the US anywhere.
Saakashvili on the other hand acts like a dictator, who deliberately destroyed a whole town. Is that restraint? His attack was deliberately disproportionate and brutal with the purpose to cause Russia to invade Georgia, which would then be seen as the rationale to start a propaganda campaign like never before.
Independent: "Russia positioned itself yesterday as the unequivocal victor in its brief war with Georgia, with its Foreign Minister stating that the world could 'forget about' Georgian control of two separatist enclaves.
In Moscow, Russian politicians and analysts were furious about what they saw as hypocrisy from the West. 'Have you all forgotten about Iraq?' asked Sergei Markedonov, a Moscow-based analyst of the Caucasus. 'Georgia was part of Russia for 200 years... and what Saakashvili was doing in South Ossetia threatened the stability of the whole north Caucasus.'"
Russia is doing the right thing for the protection of their own citizens. If the West thinks it can continue bullying and intimidating and killing people in the region, they have a very twisted view of human rights.
For years and years Russia has been complying with the West's every demand. It became a democratic country. Allowed foreign ownership; in short, it went capitalist. Russia withdrew from Cuba and Vietnam; it did little to oppose NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia; it awarded lucrative oil and gas contracts to Western energy giants; it offered its political support in dealing with Iran and nuclear non-proliferation. How much respect did all of this earn Russia in the eyes of Washington and Brussels? None. NATO is continuing to expand closer to the Russian borders; Americans dropped the 1972 ABM treaty and are deploying missile defenses in Eastern Europe; neither the US nor the EU paid any attention to Russia's position on Kosovo's independence. The West has proven to be unreliable and treacherous.
4:56:23 PM 
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Haaretz: "The warning conveyed by Washington to Israel not to attack Iran, and its demand of Jerusalem not to surprise it with such an attack, should not startle us. The Bush administration, which during its two terms in office used the threat of war as a main strategy for curbing Iran's nuclear capabilities, has recently adopted a new policy that does not correspond with Israel's belligerent declarations.
Israel, which justifiably sees the threat presented by Iran, is liable to find itself in an inferior position in the face of European countries' diplomatic ambitions, the economic interests of China and Russia and the American pressure for quiet in Iraq. This requires Israel to maneuver wisely and cautiously so as not to render itself an isolated warmonger, and from there a regional threat. This is especially the case when it is clear that the region, Iran and the great powers all understand that Israel's military option has not evaporated and that faced with an existential, genuine and immediate threat, Israel will not take foreign interests into consideration.
At the same time, Israel must allow diplomatic efforts to move ahead, lower the tone of the military threat and understand that dialogue with Iran is essential to an attempt to reduce its military motivation."
1:08:44 PM
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DailyMail: "U.S. banking giant switches billions in debt to Britain to avoid paying corporation tax for 50 years.
Investment bank Merrill Lynch may not have to pay UK tax for decades."
1:03:52 PM
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Guardian: "The government has been accused of creating laws that have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in the UK in a sharply critical report from the United Nations' committee on human rights. The report calls for the reform of Britain's libel laws and controls introduced under recent terrorism laws.
The government's use of the Official Secrets Act to prevent issues of public interest being published is also condemned in an intervention from the UN which warns that public servants are being gagged even where national security is not at risk."
UNOG: "The Committee was especially concerned with the fact that anti-social behaviour orders could be imposed on children as young as 10 in England and Wales and 8 in Scotland, and that some of those children could subsequently be detained for up to two years for breaching them. Furthermore, the Committee was disturbed about the United Kingdom's statement that its obligations under the Covenant could only apply to persons who were taken into custody by the armed forces and held in British-run military detention facilities outside the United Kingdom in exceptional circumstances. Among a number of concerns regarding legislation and practices on terrorism was the fact that, under the Terrorism Act 2000, access to a lawyer could be delayed for up to 48 hours. The Committee recommended that the United Kingdom ensure that anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge, including persons suspected of terrorism, had immediate access to a lawyer. The United Kingdom should also consider amending section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 dealing with 'encouragement of terroris' so that its application would not lead to a disproportionate interference with freedom of expression. Moreover, the Committee was disturbed by the extension of the maximum period of detention without charge of terrorist suspects from 14 to 28 days, and it was even more disturbed by the proposed extension of this maximum limit to 42 days.
Among others, the Committee also recommended that the United Kingdom reconsider its efforts to encourage increased representation of women and ethnic minorities in the judiciary; that it conduct independent and impartial inquiries to ensure a full, transparent and credible account of the circumstances surrounding violations of the right to life in Northern Ireland; that it investigate allegations related to transit through its territory of rendition flights and establish an inspection system to ensure that its airports were not used for such purposes; that it prohibit corporal punishment of children in all schools in all British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies; that it conduct prompt and independent investigations into all allegations concerning suspicious deaths, torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment inflicted by its personnel (including commanders), in detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq and that it ensure that those responsible were prosecuted and punished in accordance with the gravity of the crime."
1:01:31 PM
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© Copyright 2008.
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