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Thursday, August 28, 2008 |
RussiaBlog: "The war in South Ossetia and Georgia, though appalling, resulted in fewer deaths and damage than originally reported. It is still not 'over' and probably won't be for some time. Meanwhile, it definitely did serious damage to Russia's relationship with the West. In some ways, relations are worse than at any time since well before the collapse of the USS - in other words, in roughly a quarter century.
Meanwhile, before the war we wrote a report on Ten Reasons Americans Should Care About Russia. It follows, and, as you will see, it remains valid. Perhaps as tempers cool, people of good will can consider what is at stake; what there is to gain, and what there is to lose."
MoD: "Russia is unlikely to threaten its Western neighbours with direct military force, although its wealth in energy resources will give it substantial strategic leverage. Its military strategic priorities are likely to remain concerned with maintaining high capability and quality nuclear and defence forces and the ability to respond to instability internally and around its periphery, particularly in the Caucasus. Russia may develop and favour a twin track approach whereby it emerges as a strategic partner with Europe and a strategic competitor in Asia. In all cases, it will seek to exclude Western, especially US, influence and investment in Central Asia and its near-abroad.
Russia's significance and influence in Europe is likely to increase, reflecting its extensive natural resources, particularly in oil and gas, but its ability to exert direct leverage or leadership will be limited by its internal tensions, not least its acute demographic crisis, threats to stability from radical Islam and severe regional instability on its southern periphery.
The US is likely to sustain its international leadership until at least 2020, after which a more multipolar world will challenge its hegemonic status, with China, Russia, India, Brazil and Indonesia and a host of alternative, possibly rival polities weakening its grip on certain regions and the international system. US strategic power will also be
progressively diluted by its integration within an increasingly globalized economy and the
need to address large budgetary imbalances and deficits."
It is in the interest of Europe to have a good relationship with Russia. The US is a dwindling power. Tying our future to an irresponsible and destructive America is counterproductive. Britain's and in particular New Labour's clinging to an outdated and immoral 'special relationship' with the paragon of the New World Order will have severely negative effects on the British economy. It is very likely that Britain will split up and Scotland will demand its independence.
The West should stop moaning. It has been caught with its pants down and has incontestably been seen to be hypocrite and inconsistent. Russia has the right on its side.
Russia's intervention was quick, resolute and proportionate. If the Russians had followed the Western example of 'shock and awe', they would have destroyed the pipeline, destroyed Tbilisi and occupied the whole country. This intervention was over in a few days. America and Britain can take this kind of intervention as an example. Russia can seriously disrupt the war drive of the US and Britain, by using the same methods the US and Britain used. The West should for once use reason and common sense. Now the West sounds like a child that has started crying, has forgotten why, but still continues in the hope of getting something out of it. Get real!
12:43:28 PM 
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GreaterSurbiton: "Florence Hartmann, former spokeswoman for Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), is the first senior official of the ICTY to have written a book discussing its inner workings (Paix et chatiment: Les guerres secretes de la politique et de la justice internationales, Flammarion, 2007). She has used her eyewitness's insight into the inner workings of the ICTY to support her blistering critique of the failure of the Western alliance to support the cause of justice for the former Yugoslavia. Her book paints a portrait of Western powers, above all the US, Britain and France, stifling the ICTY and preventing the arrest of war-criminals through a combination of obstruction, manipulation, mutual rivalry and sheer inertia.
One of the best parts of the book concerns what Hartmann terms the 'fictitious pursuit' of the two most prominent Bosnian Serb war-criminals, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, involving repeated failures to arrest them. Hartmann gives various reasons why the Western powers might have behaved in this manner, among them the alleged agreement in 1995 between Milosevic, Mladic and French President Jacques Chirac, that in return for the release of two French pilots shot down by the Serbs over Bosnia, Mladic would never be prosecuted by the ICTY; the similar alleged agreement between Karadzic, Mladic and the US's Richard Holbrooke in 1996, for Karadzic to withdraw from political life in return for a guarantee that he would never be prosecuted; and the readiness in 2002 of Bosnia's High Representative, Britain's Paddy Ashdown, to sabotage the attempts of Bosnian intelligence chief Munir Alibabic to track down Karadzic, out of rivalry with the French intelligence services with which Alibabic was working."
The above was written by someone who obviously supports the war crimes of the West and has only eyes for the war crimes committed by one other party, which is nothing but hypocrisy.
However, the recent trouble Florence Hartmann is having with the ICTY, shows that there is a secret part in the whole tribunal that leads us to conclude that the West is not keeping its promises and that the ICTY was meant to be a show trial to punish the Serbs. What Hartmann obviously wants is to go ahead with a biased political trial that does not honour previously made agreements and is not fair. At least the ICTY still has a remnant of integrity. The West is as much involved in mass murder as any other side. That is what Ms Hartmann does not want to recognize.
ICTY: "A Trial Chamber of the Tribunal today issued an Order in lieu of an indictment against Florence Hartmann on two counts of contempt of the Tribunal."
Mark Curtis: "So the situation at the beginning of the bombing campaign appears to be that NATO, led by the US and Britain, launched military action knowing that it would provoke a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign by Milosevic. This occurred in stark fashion, with immense consequences, which then enabled NATO leaders to claim that they were acting to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe that they had provoked. With bombing under way, military figures publicly refuted political leaders' whole justification for the war, by saying that the military strategy could not prevent the humanitarian disaster.
There was one other reason given for going to war: to preserve NATO's 'credibility'.
NATO leaders had long searched for a new mission for the organisation after the collapse of the Soviet Union... As war raged in Kosovo, Blair delivered a speech in Chicago outlining some principles of 'humanitarian intervention', that he termed a 'doctrine of the international community'.
In the Chicago speech, Blair explained the meaning of 'credibiltiy':
'One of the reasons why it is so important to win the conflict is to ensure that others do not make the same mistake in the future.'
This is frightening stuff. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, Blair is acting like a mafia don. When a shopkeeper fails to pay protection money the goons despatched do not simply take the money, they leave him a broken wreck, so that others will get the message.
NATO was guilty of numerous violations of international law in the bombing.
Amnesty International said in its report one year after the bombings that 'NATO forces violated the laws of war leading to cases of unlawful killings of civilians.'
Massive human rights abuses took place under the very noses of NATO troops.
... a number of things are clear: the launching of the war was illegal. NATO conducted violations of humanitarian law and war crimes; NATO actions precipitated rather than prevented a humanitarian catastrophe."
People like Hartmann and Marko Attila Hoare are hard core biased propagandists for an imperial new world order in which any other viewpoint is tracked down and suppressed ruthlessly. They want to make of the ICTY a victor's tribunal; even the little bits of integrity that still remain in the West are belligerently pushed aside. These people completely destroy the credibility of the West, if any is still left. They are blind to the war crimes of the West.
12:22:40 PM
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UN: "The World Bank has revised upward its estimates of the number of the world[base ']s poor from nearly 1 billion to 1.4 billion, drawing on new data that indicates that poverty is more widespread across the developing world than previously thought.
In East Asia, the poverty rate has been slashed from almost 80 per cent in 1981 to 18 per cent in 2005, driven by China's success in elevating the poor."
UN: "World leaders will come together in New York on 25 September 2008 for a high-level event convened by the UN Secretary-General and the President of the UN General Assembly to renew commitments to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and to set out concrete plans and practical steps for action."
11:41:43 AM
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FilmForum: "In this charming, elegantly shot fable set in neighborhoods of poverty and privilege in Goa, India, 18-year-old Venkatesh ekes out a living working in a hotel and pounding the pavement selling plastic baggies. It's a far cry from his fantasy - to dive into the glimmering David Hockney-esque swimming pool of an upper-class family. Remarkably, this neorealist tale, reminiscent of the great Satyajit Ray, is written and directed by an American, Chris Smith, acclaimed director of AMERICAN MOVIE and THE YES MEN."
Trailer.
11:37:14 AM
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CraigMurray: "David Miliband was making great show today of fulminating in Kiev against Russian disregard of international law. Yet simultaneously he is continuing the sorry British record of participation in war crimes and contravention of the UN Convention Against Torture, Article IV of which covers 'complicity' in torture. Both of these are serious breaches of international law."
11:32:53 AM
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