Ossetia
Lisa has pummeled me into creating this thread for Ossetia. (:
It is important, a defininte big shoe dropping in the Energy War. My own point on this is that it is both blowback and overreach for the US, that is sitting on the side, sputtering helplessly, while its Georgian puppet has just handed Russia the opportunity to militarily occupy a hostile salient. The consequences are — as they always are with men’s wars — terrible; yet from that detached realpolitik space where strategy is the primary consideration, Putin and Medvedev have just played chess to the lame-duck Bush-Cheney administration’s game of mystical neocon checkers.
Here are Lisa’s inks (with the request that Lisa take a deep breath… we’ll read these, but please, no more than one cross-post a day… we might have a discussion now):
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4484849.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4486297.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4499726.ece
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/10/73347/0903/840/565639
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20469.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20466.htm
http://russiatoday.com/news/news/28660
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9772
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9776
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9771
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9773
Finally, the eurotrib (De’s other home):
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/8/9/102157/8633
A couple sequelae stand out to me here, vaguely but signficantly.
The Turkish connection is the most obvious, since Turkey is undergoing an internal political and cultural crisis as Kurdish rebels allegedly planted the bomb that damaged the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline last week. Turkey borders Iraq, and the Kurdish independence movement penetrates both Turkish and Iraqi politics… the latter of which is about to get interesting, as the Iraqi “government” demands a timeline for US troop withdrawals in its “Strategic Framework Agreement” (as well as a Status of Forces Agreement that will address US troops’ and contractors’ immunity from all criminal prosecutions by Iraq) with the US as a demonstration of Iraqi “sovereignty.” The delicate balancing act between the quiet Sadrist movement, the Sunni former-guerrillas who are now on the US payroll, and the pro-Iranian Da’wa/SIIC, will be disrupted if these agreements are not settled with some recognition of sovereignty, leading the Kurdish parties to renew a more open — and Turkey-provoking — agenda of independence (Turkey already conducts military operations against Kurds in Northern Iraq in quiet coordination with the US). In any case, the US position is further weakened in Iraq, even as the US is tied down there to such a degree that Russia can attack a potential NATO member as Putin shares the stands with Bush at the Beijing Olympics.
One must wonder what the Iranian government is thinking right now. This unmasking of the profound weakness of the US — which will not be extricable by a President Obama, and will certainly be made worse by President McCain — must make a Russia-Iran condominium look pretty appetizing right now. The frameworks are already in place in two venues: the natural gas OPEC already under discussion between Iran and Russia (and including several other major gas extractors… Russia produces a quarter of the world’s NG), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
In one fell swoop, Russia has turned the tables on the “color revolutions” financed by the US State Department (that put Saakashvili in his positon) through the NED front, the “humanitarian intervetnion” ploy that the US and Germany employed to break up Yugoslavia, the expansion of NATO (now itself trapped in Afghanistan where it will be defeated… the ultimate irony from the Russian point of view), and positioned itself well for what now appears to be the inevitable rise of Iran as the most influential nation in strategic Southwest Asia. Russia does so with oil prices packing Russia’s treasury with well-backed roubles, European dependency on those exports at an all-time high, and the dollar taking a drubbing on international currency markets.
Stan:
Lisa’s latest links:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9791
11 August 2008, 10:51 amhttp://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9790
VJP:
Gee Stan, I’ve been waiting impatiently to hear what you’d have to say!
11 August 2008, 1:30 pmViv
Jonas:
I’m still looking for an explanation of the very significant drop in the price of oil and the rise of the dollar against the euro during the last days. The crisis in Georgia doesn’t seem to have any impact on these developements. Anyone?
11 August 2008, 3:25 pmKim Sky:
so in this case iran is on???
below is a short article from DEBKA (i know - former israeli intelligence writers)
nonetheless …
according to debka below …
Three major US naval strike forces due this week in Persian Gulf
August 11, 2008, 10:37 AM (GMT+02:00)
New America armada around Iran
*DEBKA/file/*’s military sources note that the arrival of the three new American flotillas will raise to five the number of US strike forces in Middle East waters – an unprecedented build-up since the crisis erupted over Iran’s nuclear program.
This vast naval and air strength consists of more than 40 carriers, warships and submarines, some of the last nuclear-armed, opposite the Islamic Republic, a concentration last seen just before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Our military sources postulate five objects of this show of American muscle:
1. The US, aided also by France, Britain and Canada, is finalizing preparations for a partial naval blockade to deny Iran imports of benzene and other refined oil products. This action would indicate that the Bush administration had thrown in the towel on stiff United Nations sanctions and decided to take matters in its own hands.
2. Iran, which imports 40 percent of its refined fuel products from Gulf neighbors, will retaliate for the embargo by shutting the Strait of Hormuz oil route chokepoint, in which case the US naval and air force stand ready to reopen the Strait and fight back any Iranian attempt to break through the blockade.
3. Washington is deploying forces as back-up for a possible Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.
4. A potential rush of events in which a US-led blockade, Israeli attack and Iranian reprisals pile up in a very short time and precipitate a major military crisis.
5. While a massive deployment of this nature calls for long planning, its occurrence at this time cannot be divorced from the flare-up of the Caucasian war between Russia and Georgia. While Russia has strengthened its stake in Caspian oil resources by its overwhelming military intervention against Georgia, the Americans are investing might in defending the primary Persian Gulf oil sources of the West and the Far East.
11 August 2008, 5:43 pmJames M:
<a href=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/brzezinski-russias-invasi_b_118029.html
Zbigniew Brzezinski lays out the real imperatives here (oil, pipelines, etc.,) albeit dressed up in his usual mendacious rhetoric. (Sure, Z.B. — this is exactly like the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland.)
11 August 2008, 7:00 pmCraig:
The price of oil has correlated with the euro/$ exchange rate, and we’re approaching the end of the peak oil and hurricane seasons. The dollar is getting “stronger” because the euro is getting weaker (see Henry CK Liu), as economic slowdown, additional suspected bank write-downs in Europe, and talk of rate cuts by nations like Australia, lead to a more favorable exchange rate for the dollar. If there’s any significant disruption to the B-T-C pipeline, you’re going to see a significant increase in oil prices.
11 August 2008, 9:15 pmStan:
Put the oil price into perspective. A 20% “drop” from two months ago is not a 20% drop from one year ago. It’s a down-tick on an upward launch curve. There are multiple secular trends that affect oil prices — supply & demand is only one dimension. Craig’s point is well-taken, as currency markets always point to deeper issues of “value” than mere supply & demand; and there’s still a mountain of fictional value remaining to be dumped from the housing bubble, which was well distributed throughout the global economy via derivatives trading. The BTC carries only about 1% of daily output worldwide, but that 1% is in avery tight market; and we still can’t see the real picture of where we are chronologically on the peak-oil plateau. Daily market fluctuations are jittered up and down by herd behavior, even as the deeper cycles of reality are characterized by unstoppable momentum. One of the last spikes was created by Iran firing one unloaded missle into the air. Looking to Russia, however, that now exports more than Saudi Arabia (last I checked), and that can swing the natural gas market at will, we see a behemoth over the next five years that cannot be ignored… a center-of-gravity shift that could be consolidated through the “gas OPEC” and through the SCO. If the dollar tanks, all bets are off; and everyone knows it (esp the Chinese, who are riding their own dangerous and unsustainable waves on the dollar US). As always, however, even the most complex financial trends, and even the stubborn material realities operating beneath them, rest atop history-bearing groups… of people, who have the capacity for creativity (unpredictability). So all the observable aspects of history — trends, structures, and periods — are subject to this malleability. What we just saw in Ossetia/Georgia may look like a miscalculation on the part of the US & Georgia’s leadership (it was); but what was miscalculated was a history-bearing group called Russia — where the actions of Medvedev-Putin are enormously popular, and therefore underwritten by a form of political stability that will be extremely difficult for outside actors to dislocate.
If Russia uses this conjuncture and its overwhelming power in an energy-thin world to consolidate the emerging influence of Iran in the Middle East, we are looking at at a world-historic turning point. Like UK in the last century, the US will be forced now — over the next decade, and quite possibly through a severe economic crisis and an expanding military quagmire — to step down from its imperial perch.
12 August 2008, 5:48 amVJP:
I have to wonder if that ’step down’ will be a hard or a soft landing.
And now there are reports that Russia will be sending bombers into Cuba– and maybe even Venezuela.
12 August 2008, 7:05 amLisa:
BP shuts down Georgian pipeline
2 hours ago
LONDON (AP) — Oil company BP PLC says it has shut down a pipeline that runs through Georgia as a precautionary measure, but says that it is unaware of any Russian bombing of pipelines in the region.
The London-based oil company says it closed the 90,000-barrel-a-day oil pipeline running from Baku on the Caspian Sea to Supsa on Georgia’s Black Sea coast earlier Tuesday.
BP spokesman Robert Wine says that the Baku-Supsa line was closed because it runs through the center of Georgia where there is greater risk of conflict.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jSy9sHVh-fPOSfbGrR2TADIYWvbgD92GOKF01
12 August 2008, 10:23 amLisa:
War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?
The importance and timing of this military operation must be carefully analyzed. It has far-reaching implications.
Georgia is an outpost of US and NATO forces, on the immediate border of the Russian Federation and within proximity of the Middle East Central Asian war theater. South Ossetia is also at the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes.
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.
Act of Provocation?
US-NATO military and intelligence planners invariably examine various “scenarios” of a proposed military operation– i.e. in this case, a limited Georgian attack largely directed against civilian targets, with a view to inflicting civilian casualties.
Full article:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9788
12 August 2008, 10:25 amgiles:
I was told today by a Russian that Georigan spies in Russia had been given the green light in Ossetia; was this a trap that Russia set for the Georgian ‘hot head?’ Where was US intelligence for this US colony?
12 August 2008, 9:05 pmVJP:
I thought this was an excellent summary/analysis about what’s going on re. Ossetia/Georgia/Russia/USA.
13 August 2008, 10:28 amThe Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/russo_georgian_war_and_balance_power
Lisa:
August 13, 2008
Two Morons: Bush and Saakashvili
“President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?”
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war.
Back in the Reagan years the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony. Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states…
The US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
13 August 2008, 12:58 pmLisa:
URL for full Paul Craig Roberts article above:
http://counterpunch.com/roberts08132008.html
13 August 2008, 12:59 pmLisa:
In the course of the last four years, Global Research has documented in detail the various war plans directed against Iran. Operation TIRANNT (Theater Iran Near Term) was initially formulated in July 2003, in the wake of the US led Iraq invasion.
U.S. Armada En Route to the Persian Gulf: ” Naval Blockade” or All Out War Against Iran?
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, August 13, 2008
The World it at a very dangerous crossroads. America in alliance with NATO and Israel has embarked upon a military adventure.
The Bush administration has launched with the approval of the US Congress a naval blockade against Iran, which could be a first step towards an all out war.
Military sources report a massive deployment of US and allied naval power in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea directed against Iran.
There has been a virtual media blackout regarding this naval deployment. The Western media, including the printed press and network TV have failed to meaningfully address these war preparations.
While war plans directed against are casually acknowledged, the broader implications of a war on Iran are rarely analyzed.
The US media has become a unconditional mouthpiece of the Pentagon. The Islamic republic is relentlessly accused, without a evidence and substantiation, of developing nuclear weapons, as well as working hand in glove with Al Qaeda.
The emerging political consensus among America’s allies, including France, Germany and Italy is that a war on Iran is warranted as a means to enhancing global security.
This consensus is formulated while carefully disregarding the fact that even a limited “punitive” aerial attack on Iran, would immediately result in escalation, engulfing the entire Middle East Central Asian region from the Eastern Mediterranean to China’s western frontier into an extended war zone. There are at present three distinct war theater in the region: Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. An attack on Iran could potentially engulf a large number of countries into a much broader conflict…
We have done our utmost to reverse the tide of media disinformation, to inform our readers and the broader public on the impending dangers underlying the US military adventure.
This is the most serious crisis in modern history which in a very real sense threatens the future of humanity.
Full article:
13 August 2008, 1:02 pmLegume Sam:
Don’t forget this one — over in the UK they talk about this stuff as if everyone knows. Here, otoh…
13 August 2008, 6:13 pmLegume Sam:
This one is pretty amusing too — US starts ‘war games’ in ex-Soviet state” — “this page is expired,” gee I wonder why.
13 August 2008, 6:31 pmLisa:
Putin Walks into a Trap
By Mike Whitney
13/08/08 “ICH”
,,,The Georgian army had no chance of winning a war with Russia or any intention of occupying the territory they captured. The real aim was to lure the Russian army into a trap. US planners hope to do what they did so skillfully in Afghanistan; lure their Russian prey into a long and bloody Chechnya-type fiasco that will pit their Russia troops against guerrilla forces armed and trained by US military and intelligence agencies. The war will be waged in the name of liberating Georgia from Russian imperialism and stopping Putin from achieving his alleged ambition to control critical western-owned pipelines around the Caspian Basin….
…Meanwhile, the fighting in the Caucasus has diverted attention from the massive US naval armada that is presently sailing towards the Persian Gulf for the long-anticipated confrontation with Iran…
…South Ossetia was a trap and Putin took the bait. Unfortunately for Bush, the wily Russian prime minister is considerably brighter than anyone in the current administration. Bush’s plan will undoubtedly backfire and disrupt the geopolitical balance of power. The world might get that breather from the US after all.
Full article:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20508.htm
13 August 2008, 8:55 pmStan:
Iran Schmiran! The US is not about to attack Iran. We’ve been hearing this Chicken Little call for years now. The US is certainly not going to do anything about Georgia except keep up the sputtering campaign of verbal Russophobia. I like Mike Whitney’s stuff on economics; but much of the liberal-left can’t seem to hold more than one thought in its head at a time. The “government” in Baghdad is “Made in Iran.” Attacking Iran snaps the kite twine that is holding the US occupation in Iraq together. And a sponsored anti-Russian military campaign in Georgia puts all Europe at risk, draws in Turkey (which is teetering on the cusp of a massive social crisis)… where the real action will be anyhow: watch Kurdistan and Pakistan over the next two years. Russia is in the catbird’s seat; and as long as it is the top oil & gas exporter, it’s going to remain there. Europe will initiate a rapproachement with Russia; and the US — after a face-saving interval — will follow suit.
These are my Bagwan predictions for the day. If McCain wins and scraps the script, we’ll see him fly his foreign policy about as successfully as he flew his plane.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JH15Ak01.html
14 August 2008, 5:40 amhttp://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH14Df01.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH15Df01.html
http://www.unpo.org/content/view/8520/116/
http://www.kurdishglobe.net/displayArticle.jsp?id=901922BDFD9F566C4E0AB10EA6053F21
Rhisiart Gwilym:
Siwmae Stan and all Ferals,
Thanks for your comment on Ossetia, Stan. Informative as ever.
Copied below is my contribution this morning to a thread running on the Medialens Message Board, (in Britain) about what’s happening in the Caucasus.
The two rather odd comments that I quote are from another post, which provoked my reply.
SELFQUOTE:
“Russia’s current strength will wane eventually.”
Er - really? How, exactly…?
Will all that oil/natgas (currently the world’s no.2 EXPORTER) suddenly just evaporate? Or maybe mystically migrate to the already part-drained geological structures beneath the US, which currently imports more than half of its — wholly unsustainable — oil demand?
The interesting question from this war is: who finally ends up with de facto control of the BTC pipeline. That’s the only one currently running petro-energy from the Caspian Basin which is not — sorry, that should read: which WAS not — effectively controlled by Russia. And it’s right on Russia’s doorstep, in a small country which has just received a quick, professional, well-heeled mauling from it’s huge northern neighbour, with plenty more available where that came from. The image of a shocked, out-of-his-depth little Mikheil cowering from the Russian helicopter, with not a single US ‘peacekeeper’ or ‘humanitarian helper’ to protect him tells everything in one shot, really. Dunnit?
Meanwhile, as anyone following the military situation of the US will understand, US forces are stretched almost to breaking point, even in their current failing imperial wars, and there are repeated rumbles of carefully covered-up, near-mutinous dissension within US military officer and general officer personnel, together with evidence that the US military themselves are fragmenting into factions and parallel command-structures. Cheney seems to be actively attempting to promote this for his own deeply-criminal, anti-US-constitutional purposes, but with little success, as genuine patriots within the US military frustrate his schemes every step of the way. See, for example, Noam’s link, just above on this board. Wayne Madsen Report is also a good source, but requires subscription. See also here, for example, for an idea of the increasing number of the US’s genuine patriots who are now aware that Cheney and other US gics were probably behind 9/11:
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/
The sane mafiosi in the US imperial mafias seem to understand their military’s severe overstretch. Increasing numbers of them are coming to understand also, belatedly, just how precarious and potentially disastrous the US energy situation really is. (Shit! If an utter outsider, an obscure commoner with a computer, like me, can get it, you can suspect that they will too eventually, however unwilling they may be to face it) Roughly speaking, you might call them the Zbig faction.
However, the criminal psychopaths running the fag-end of the neocon administration seem to be in the seriously-delusional faction, which the sane faction, quietly and well out of the public eye, are trying to contain. These are the crazies who still seem to think that they can take on another confrontation on top of their current failing ones, this time directly with Russia, on it’s own doorstep. Bit like Hitler ordering sweeping counter-attacks from the bunker.
Beggars belief, doesn’t it!
Matt Simmons — who actually understands the oil situation of the world, particularly in his own country, very deeply, as a matter of professional survival of his own consistently-effective oil-trades finance company — points out here:
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Simmons.html (very highly recommended. Also Matt’s book ‘Twilight In The Desert’)
that the US is currently teetering in a desperately dangerous domestic situation whereby, depending on the weather in the Caribbean, the continental US could be three days away from filling stations running dry, and therefore eight days away from serious, nationwide food shortages. As Matt puts it: “We [the US] are in a deep hole.”
And this fragile basket-case is now going to take on — on top of all its current overstretch — an eyeball-to-eyeball with the newly-resurrecting Eurasian empire (inevitably knocking-on serious problems for Eurasia’s current buddy-buddy Eastasia, who will also be seriously annoyed)? And of course with the EU’s criminal but at least sane gics jingoistically supporting the Washington neo-con delusionals? Despite the EU’s absolute dependency on Siberian and Russian-routed Caspian gas, just to keep their economies functioning and their homes heated and lit?
Hah!.
So, is this idea remotely credible:
“Anyway, here’s to many more American CENTURIES! as I fear there are many to come!”
I don’t think so.
Matt Simmons, a conservative, Republican realist, is talking soberly about the absolute inevitability of the US reverting to what he calls ‘village economies’ now — if it’s lucky and gets things right — and then the whole world being obliged by ungovernable force-majeure to have a worldwide conference and ‘new Marshall plan’ to deal equitably and effectively with the global energy crisis, which is here ahead of the climate crisis. If dealt with wisely over the next crucial hundred months, the energy crisis’s solutions would actually go a good way towards addressing wise responses to the climate crisis. But the energy crisis is here now. Which is why Russian tank tracks unexpectedly choking the oil-flow to Ceyhan (on the Mediterranean coast just north of Lebanon and Israel) has so appalled the US gics.
I think the neocon delusionals thought that they could push their schemes against Russia a bit further in Georgia last weekend, and were shocked by just how fast and effective Tsar Vladimir’s response has been.
If I were Tsar Vlad:
1) Would I keep my military forces in Poti, Abkhazia’s (allegedly part of Georgia) Black Sea port, where they might come into direct confrontation with US military ‘humanitarian helpers’?
No.
2) Would I understand just how precarious USAmerica’s military, economic and energy situation really is, overall?
Yes of course. (Chess:1.01. Vlad and several of his close consiglieri are advanced chess players — the game originally invented to help kings and generals to develop their uber-strategic capabilities. How do think Dick matches up? Forget George, of course.)
3) Would I wait patiently, time being absolutely on my side in this, whilst the US demonstrates to itself and the world just how little it can now do to extend it’s already fatally-overstretched military adventurism into the Caucasus?
Yes.
4) Would I, from my nearby pull-back position in South Ossetia, keep staring like a testosterone-drenched super-alpha Kodiak Grizzly directly at little Mikheil, so that he wouldn’t be in any doubt of the realities (people intent on not provoking bear attacks never, ever, stare them in the eye; the classic red-rag, to a bear)?
Well, what do you think?
So now here we all are, teetering on a knife-edge, with ‘our leaders’ deploying their usual wise and far-seeing strategy of: “Er- er-”
Grandmaster chess it ain’t.
Jesus, why was I born human! I don’t like this species very much, sometimes. I’m very glad my potato-plant friends are cropping so well this year. Earlies already building up in the clamp very nicely, ready for this Interesting Winter, and next Spring’s hungry gap……
UNQUOTE. Incidentally, ‘gic’ is an acronym: ‘gangsters-in-charge’. Anarchistically, I make no distinction between any of ‘our leaders’ in any country. Self-serving gangsters all, with only the most sporadic exceptions, and only then when the commons have strong, well-functioning constitutional checks and balances in place, to keep the gics in check.
14 August 2008, 6:21 amDa Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
Legume Sam: “This one is pretty amusing too — US starts ‘war games’ in ex-Soviet state” — “this page is expired,” gee I wonder why.”
Here’s google’s cache of the MSNBC version (page not found)
The Mike Whitney piece matches up with how I’m viewing it, but it’s good to note when discussing US/Russian strategic and tactical issues, that the Russians like to play chess, and Americans are quite fond of poker.
He might have ‘walked into that trap’ intentionally thinking X ‘number of moves’ ahead of reptilians like GW and Co.
14 August 2008, 11:18 amSandy:
Maybe I’m missing something, Stan, but in going over Mike’s article I see nothing about an attack on Iran. The article focuses on Ossetia.
Re: “if McCain wins and scraps the script,” could you enlighten us a little further about this “script?” What is “the script?” You seem to be pretty sure about what is going on at present, and I’m sure a lot of us would certainly be grateful for explanations of the bigger picture. In the case of the supposed massing of warship in the Persian Gulf, is that just bluffing? Is the planned economic blockade of Iran merely a threat? Do you see any real differences in foreign policy between Obama and McCain?
14 August 2008, 11:25 amgiles:
What is the meaning of Bagwan?
14 August 2008, 11:33 amDa Buffalo Amongst Wolves:
Speaking of the ’stans…
International Crisis Group - Kyrgyzstan: A Deceptive Calm
Asia Briefing N°79
14 August 2008
In other news: BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan’s police raided an apartment rented by U.S. officials and seized dozens of firearms before finding out that the Americans were training Kyrgyz secret services, the government said on Tuesday.
In full
14 August 2008, 11:42 amStan:
Bagwan is like The Amazing Kresgin, a spoof name for a Nicodemus-like guru-seer.
I want to apologize for any offense I gave in the post above where I employed sarcasm as a means of disagreement. It was un-called-for, and I could have said I don’t believe the US will invade Iran in a way that didn’t put other — fine people — down.
My reference to “the script” is the one where the US does everything within its power to hold onto its power abroad in order to maintain the ability to keep a quiescent population here where the voters live. Bush deviated from the script and accelerated the weakening of US power aborad; and McCain may very well do the same thing. There’s a lot of phallocentric delusion among certain politicians.
The most maddening aspect of this whole episode — aside from the terrible bloodshed of it — is the utter dishonesty of the US press, from the tv “news,” to the mainstream papers, to so-called public radio. The employment of the term “hostilities breaking out” (like a flue epidemic or something) between Russia and Georgia, the totally one-sided reporting for Georgia’s offcial point-of-view, and the constant mantra of “pro-Western, democratic Georgia” reminds me of a saying my mother — a very old woman from Arkansas — used to use: “This makes my ass want to take a dip of snuff.” Somewhere way back in Arkansas, that came to mean having a reaction of total disgust and contempt.
In the press version of the story, we are being trained to forget that this was initiated at just before noon, Moscow time, one week ago, when Georgian military forces initated the massive bombardment by land and air of Tskhinvali, the capital of Ossetia, where 30,000 civilians reside, along with the bombardment of surrounding villages.
What does Saakashvili’s electoral status — “democraticaly elected” — have to do with anything? George H. W. Bush started slaughtering Panamanians without the least provocation, after winning his election. Does that somehow make it okay? And pro-Western is code for pro-neoliberal: pro-opening capital markets to the US, pro-privatization, anti-labor, pro-transnational, pro-dollar hegemony. It is not synonymous with moral or legal, though that’s what it means in media-code. The Good Guys. Folks just don’t know.
It is apparent that the Russians had standing plans on the table to react to this contingency by the rapidity and brutal efficacy of their response; but only telling about Russian brutality, now that Georgian brutality has been stemmed, is plain dishonest and drips with agenda-setting. Once again the US press has demonstrated its craven status as Petnagon/State Department propagandist, and that includes so-called liberals like NPR.
The other thing that has not been taken into account by the so-called “reputable, objective” press is that the Government of the United States of America has no standing — political or moral — to issue judgements against Russia while they are occupying two nations with sanguinary military operations, maintaining an imperial military presence in almost 800 locations around the globe, and maintaining very cozy relations with the likes of the House of Saud and the violent expansionist state of Israel. Their nattering about the “territorial integrity of Georgia” is a joke, right? After the US participated in the provocation, exacerbation, then consolidation of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia? After the US provoked two coups in Haiti against democraticaly elected governments, and attempted to create a coup in Venezuela against a democratically-elected government? After the bloody invasions of Panama and Grenada? After Afghanistan and Iraq?
The sheer chutzpah of it will win the day, I’m sure, because the press’ echo-chamber is in lockstep; and with very little time, criticism of this deep dishonesty will be — like criticism of the Serbophobic campaign of historical effacement in Yugoslavia — considered beyond the pale… tantamount to holocaust denial.
The difference this time is that even as the US population will be vaguely convinced that the Russians are the sole heavies in this episode, the material conditions favor the Russians, not the perception managers of the US. This is a demonstration of waning US power, and there will be more.
14 August 2008, 2:28 pmRobert Karaffa:
Once again, correct analysis. Correct on all accounts. God Bless you Stan for saying it in concise terms.
Pipelines, Bases, large “Embassies.” (New Haiti embassy the 4th. largest?) Right behind Mombai. In Haiti!!??
Follow the money, follow the fear and control. BTW 20% of the Caspian outflow goes back to Israel to re-sell to the East, is that right?
I should be a commodities trader. And give the money back.
14 August 2008, 9:15 pmLegume Sam:
As far as I know, George W. wasn’t democratically elected.
At any rate, capitalist democracy is best viewed as a system for muting dissent — if the masses can be convinced that business-as-usual is the result of their votes and their consumer choices, then they can be effectively told that they have no right to complain.
It does indeed seem, anyway, that the main prerequisite for any real movement on the crises of this era is what Antonio Gramsci called a “war of position,” a culture war that will make the demand for a new society publicly effective.
However much the US government may be reaching the limits of its power throughout the world, in Georgia and elsewhere, the “war of position” doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction here at home. Does America have anything more, yet, that a vague feeling that things will be better when Obama wins the election?
STAN: George H. W. attacked Panama.
14 August 2008, 11:06 pmStan:
For most US-ians, the pain is not great enough yet and the dependency (without options) is too high. As Che pointed out, there is also a spiritual component to the dynamic of politics, economics, culture, epistemology… In this temporal complexity, as the lockstep news suggests to us, the sheer size and scale and hyper-concentration of power of the culture of commodification, the privatized economy (rule by contract), the self-legitimating politics, and the Nietschean-Spencerian episteme, is overwhelming — a metatrend that blows past microtrends like a great flood, sweeping them all up, disorganizing them, swallowing their dissociated parts. And for most of us US-ians, there is a profound spiritual poverty even among those who are not experiencing the violence of material poverty.
I just don’t know any more about the prevailing notions of strategy, be they position v. mobility, or Clausewitzian, or Leninist, etc etc. But creating a new culture in the margins strikes me as necessary and even redemptive, as it can anticipate the conditions that haven’t yet actualized and prepare to meet the essential needs of future emergencies — which we can see, I think. It may not be very “strategic,” but answering that spiritual poverty is the big intangible that will make or break any attempts that are made. I’m back on Wirzba’s comments about blueprints here, and the urgency of “restoring the sacramental sense.”
15 August 2008, 5:32 amld:
NPR is the house organ of “humanitarian intervention” ideology par excellence. And they’re just playing to the biases and conceits of their core audience. To (US-ian) upper middle class liberals more than any other conceiveable constituency, the unexamined notion that “Russians are preternatural aggressors”/
15 August 2008, 12:32 pm“former Soviet republics are angelic victims” comes across as automatic “common sense.” The vast unwashed masses of the US are just that, unwashed; it is up to the (upper middle class, liberal) educated professionals to be the viral marketers of the National Endowment for Democracy-PBS-Soros Foundation worldview.
Lisa:
Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War
By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, August 15, 2008
The signing on August 14 of an agreement between the governments of the United States and Poland to deploy on Polish soil US ‘interceptor missiles’ is the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis. Far from a defensive move to protect European NATO states from a Russian nuclear attack, as military strategists have pointed out, the US missiles in Poland pose a total existential threat to the future existence of the Russian nation. The Russian Government has repeatedly warned of this since US plans were first unveiled in early 2007. Now, despite repeated diplomatic attempts by Russia to come to an agreement with Washington, the Bush Administration, in the wake of a humiliating US defeat in Georgia, has pressured the Government of Poland to finally sign the pact. The consequences could be unthinkable for Europe and the planet.
The preliminary deal to place elements of the US global missile defense shield was signed by Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and US chief negotiator John Rood on August 14. Under the terms, Washington plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland coupled with a radar system in the Czech Republic, which it ludicrously claims are intended to counter possible attacks from what it calls “rogue states,” including Iran.
To get the agreement Washington agreed to reinforce Poland’s air defenses. The deal is still to be approved by the two countries’ governments and Poland’s parliament. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in televised remarks that “the events in the Caucasus show clearly that such security guarantees are indispensable.” The US-Polish missile talks had been dragging for months before recent hostilities in Georgia.
The Bush White House Press spoksperson, Dona Perino stated, officially, “We believe that missile defense is a substantial contribution to NATO’s collective security.” Officials say the interceptor base in Poland will be opened by 2012. The Czech Republic signed a deal to host a US radar on July 8.
Full article:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9836
15 August 2008, 4:27 pmLisa:
Wag the Dog: How to Conceal Massive Economic Collapse
By Ellen Brown
Global Research, August 14, 2008
webofdebt.com
Last week, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere. Investors had every reason to expect the dollar and the stock market to plummet, and gold and oil to shoot up. Strangely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 300 points, the dollar strengthened, and gold and oil were crushed. What happened?
It hardly took psychic powers to see that the Plunge Protection Team had come to the rescue…
he mystery over what was going on with the dollar the first week in August was solved by James Turk, founder of GoldMoney, who wrote on August 7:
“[T]he banking problems in the United States continue to mount, while the federal government’s deficit continues to soar out of control. . . . So what happened to cause the dollar to rally over the past three weeks? In a word, intervention. Central banks have propped up the dollar, and here’s the proof.
“When central banks intervene in the currency markets, they exchange their currency for dollars. Central banks then use the dollars they acquire to buy US government debt instruments so that they can earn interest on their money. The debt instruments central banks acquire are held in custody for them at the Federal Reserve, which reports this amount weekly.
“On July 16, 2008 . . . , the Federal Reserve reported holding $2,349 billion of US government paper in custody for central banks. In its report released today, this amount had grown over the past three weeks to $2,401 billion, a 38.4% annual rate of growth. . . . So central banks were accumulating dollars over the past three weeks at a rate far above what one would expect as a result of the US trade deficit. The logical conclusion is that they were intervening in currency markets. They were buying dollars for the purpose of propping it up, to keep the dollar from falling off the edge of the cliff and doing so ignited a short covering rally, which is not too difficult to do given the leverage employed in the markets these days by hedge funds and others.”2
There is more bad news coming down the pike, news of such magnitude that no amount of ordinary manipulation is liable to conceal it.
For one thing, roughly $400 billion in ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) have or will reset between March and October of this year. Assuming 3 to 6 months for strapped debtors to actually hit the wall with their payments, a huge wave of defaults is about to strike, continuing through March 2009 – just in time for the next huge wave of resets, in option ARMs.3 Option ARMs are loans with the option to pay even less than just the interest on the loan monthly, increasing the loan balance until the loan reaches a certain amount (typically 110% to 125% of the original loan balance), when it resets. The $800 billion credit line recently opened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be not only tapped but tapped out, at taxpayer expense. The underlying problem is little discussed but impossible to repair – a one quadrillion dollar derivatives scheme that is now imploding. Banks everywhere are facing massive writeoffs, putting the whole banking system on the brink of collapse. Only public bailouts will save it, but they could bankrupt the nation.
What to do? War and threats of war have been used historically to distract the population and deflect public scrutiny from economic calamity…
Full article:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9828
15 August 2008, 4:33 pmLisa:
The end of the post-Cold War era
By M K Bhadrakumar
…
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.
Full article:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH13Ag02.html
16 August 2008, 11:55 amLegume Sam:
Stan,
Antonio Gramsci wasn’t interested in blueprints. Gramsci was trying to find a way to imagine a revolutionary context outside of the context of early-20th-century Russia. In Russia, the Romanov dynasty attempted to create a technologized, modern nation-state while maintaining a governmental form appropriate to 11th-century Byzantium. The Russians, in short, were asking for it, so it’s not as if their experience could be duplicated throughout the world. Gramsci saw this from the depths of his Italian prison-cell.
Gramsci suggested an important distinction: the war of movement was appropriate to a country ripe for revolution, the war of position was a culture war as necessary to create revolutionary conditions.
It seems to me as if the alternative culture is already in place in the margins. Time is running out on the civilization as a whole, however, and it just seems appropriate at this moment, with the Bush administration desperately looking for another war to start, that we ought to make our pitch to the mainstream. The climatologists know this, and have started to suggest that reductions in atmospheric CO2 will be necessary to preserve civilization. Not even they, however, have considered what that entails. The oceans are dead and full of plastic, the forests are either being chopped or burnt down, and so on. There is nowhere to run, and even if there were, at some point soon we will be unable to afford the gasoline that would get us there.
16 August 2008, 2:25 pmgiles:
“Time is running out on the civilization as a whole, however, and it just seems appropriate at this moment, with the Bush administration desperately looking for another war to start, that we ought to make our pitch to the mainstream.”
Fear and greed motivate mankind. The mainstream is currently motivated more by greed than fear. Only when the reverse is true will the mainstream act rationally, reasonably and morally.
17 August 2008, 8:19 amStan:
MANkind might be motivated by fear and greed; but that’s dishonest as a generalization. Anyone who has raised kids in a loving home knows it. It is not fear or greed that predominates this relation (or others like it [agape?]), but selfless love and a sense of fusion with another.
Who is this mainstream anyway? Is it American, Chinese, Haitian, Peruvian? If its American, is it white or black, northern or southern, rural or urban or exurban, old or young, male or female, gay or straight, native-born or foreign-born, what?
This is cop-out cynicism. A great abstraction for doing nothing except spreading hopelessness and demoralization from a lofty perch. Note that great social movements do not and can not accept this pessimism of the will. One cannot imagine Martin Luther King or Ella Baker telling their movement such a thing; and had they done so, we’d still have apartheid right here where I live.
17 August 2008, 1:58 pmgiles:
It seems we agree MANkind is motivated by fear and greed. I have no experience raising kids but lots when it comes to the mainstream. The mainstream would be registered voters in the district where you live since I am ’strictly legal.’ As for cynicism, I got it honest. And I never thought my criminal prosecutions were abstract especially the last felony indictment; it was very real. It’s easy to remain hopeful if you never try and the lofty perch is where I am now but not where I’ve been. As for ‘will,’ we come back to fear and greed. Martin and Ella had the courts on their side; as for apartheid I oppose legal discrimination (which still exists right where you live) but I also oppose forced integration and support freedom of association.
17 August 2008, 3:53 pmLegume Sam:
I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will is the famous statement attributed to Antonio Gramsci.
Stan — the mainstream is all of those things which you say it is. Male, female, old, young, gay, straight, all of us are more or less 62% water, and so all of us will be affected by the increased evaporation and melting rates that we can expect to accompany abrupt climate change.
If you want to see pessimism of the will, check out DailyKos.com, where they’re trying to tell me that, politically, “if you’re a truck driver or factory worker, you likely view global warming talk as a hit against your job.” Are we to assume that the great mass of voters are uninterested in “global warming talk” or anything of the sort?
And if you’d like to see the opposite reaction, check the pages of the Monthly Review, where they’re doing a whole issue on the subject. The Foster, Clark, and York piece contains a positive review of James Gustave Speth’s new book. Speth, an insider in the “mainstream” environmental movement (& thus also in the “mainstream” environmental movement’s spouse, the Democratic Party), has opted for anti-capitalism. It would be nice if the good activist folks at DKos would follow along, don’t you think?
The Foster piece argues that wars such as the one which just occurred in Georgia are a consequence of “peak oil,” and that the ever-increasing temptation to wage oil wars is a consequence of the precipice of resource-dependency upon which our current, hierarchical, civilization is standing.
The Li piece notes the narrowing of choices attendant upon our present-day, 385 parts per million, global atmospheric CO2 endowment. (For an understanding of why this number is significant, please take a look at the article in Nature magazine, 3 June 1999, on CO2 levels for the past 420,000 years. We’re now way off the charts.) The choice has become one between ecosocialism and barbarism:
Li is a writer to watch, with a sharp understanding of both economics and climatology.
The Farley piece is another scientific demonstration of the anthropogenic nature of abrupt climate change. The Clark and Clausen piece discusses the dreadful state of life in the capitalist oceans. Are these writers all really that far away from the public mentality? Sure, the vocabulary they use might need a bit of humanizing, but beyond that?
Giles — to say that “greed” or “fear” or any average reaction to capitalist life is human nature is like observing an enormous city-wide fire and claiming that it is human nature to cough. We will put out the fire, and, voila! “human nature” will have miraculously changed.
17 August 2008, 8:53 pmSandy:
That is a very sweeping generalization, it’s true. On the other hand, every single religion insists that human are subject to passions and egoism that can be very destructive and which causes suffering. I think that is incontestable and obvious just by living among human beings and seeing just how much suffering there is in the world and how much injustice. At the same time, of course there is much goodness and greatness that one observes. The idea is to appeal to the best in people. And people respond according to their capability and circumstances. There really isn’t a choice, whether in ourselves or around us: we must strive towards the good and the true. If we don’t strive upwards, we fall downwards. Certainly there are brutal, violent, greedy, vicious people. But at the same time, at the very core of life there is a great good. It’s just that it’s covered over more in some and less in others. That is what I believe. The Buddhists say all sentient beings are Buddha in essence, and Christianity teaches that at the core of humans there is the immortal soul. I think that basically they point to the same reality.
17 August 2008, 9:44 pmStan:
That’s quotable. And thanks for these links, Sam
18 August 2008, 6:14 amgiles:
“Giles — to say that “greed” or “fear” or any average reaction to capitalist life is human nature is like observing an enormous city-wide fire and claiming that it is human nature to cough. We will put out the fire, and, voila! “human nature” will have miraculously changed.”
Like it or not, human nature (rooted in fear and greed) predates ‘capitalist life;’ fires don’t find their origins in coughing; and while we are being ‘honest’ lets admit that your ‘greed’ to hang onto your job, reputation, etc. and ‘fear’ of personal injury to yourself and your family stops you from ‘mak[ing] [y]our pitch to the mainstream.’
American citizens are motivated in their local communities (when they aren’t fusing with one another at home) by fear and greed. I live in the poorest state in the country and most people here are extremely obese with lots of toys (bass boats, 4 wheelers, deer stands, expensive autos, expensive homes, you name it, etc.); they could give a rat’s ass about Ty:
You may want to blame ‘capitalist life’ but I believe the root cause is more local in nature.
18 August 2008, 9:01 amStan:
Giles, no one is saying that capitalism (I would call it hydrocarbon captialist patriarchy) is the exclusive system of exploitation that reproduces itself in the minds of those within the system as ideology (habits of thought). We are saying that it is the current system. Nor is anyone posing a dichotomy between the social and the individual. We are, after all, individuals; but we are communicating in a socially-constructed medium (a written language that we had to learn, and that differs from many other languages).
Where do you think “bass boats, 4 wheelers, deer stands, expensive autos, expensive homes” come from?
Here’s a brain-teaser. 100 years ago, no metropolitan woman was worried that someone might see the hair that grows naturally in her axillae. Now most metropolitan women do? How did this specific worry emerge? Genetically? Tell us, why do women shave their armpits?
18 August 2008, 9:18 amLegume Sam:
Giles –
To say that it is human nature to cough is to mistake “human nature” for the reaction to a fire. Fires produce smoke, smoke makes people cough. Human nature doesn’t make people cough. Are you finished mangling my metaphor now?
Nomadic societies aren’t (or weren’t) “greedy.” This probably has to do with the notion that they can’t (or couldn’t) keep more than they could carry. Maybe you could write them a ticket or something for violations of human nature.
To be greedy, of course, you have to accumulate property, which entails life in a property-accumulating society. There are quite a few definitions of “property” in the anthropological record, many of them invented by anthropologists without consultation with the societies they were studying. Do the research. People have been alive on planet Earth for about a million years, and “property” in the accumulative sense is a product of maybe the last three millenia at most. Where do you suppose the greed gene comes from?
To be fearful, you have to have something to lose. It isn’t my nature to “hang on to your job,” since I don’t have one. Maybe you could write me a ticket for a violation of human nature.
18 August 2008, 9:50 amgiles:
Whether you call it the capitalist system, hydrocarbon capitalist patriarchy or simply the current system, most individuals support it and are unwilling to oppose it because of fear and greed.
“Where do you think ‘bass boats, 4 wheelers, deer stands, expensive autos, expensive homes’ come from?” Your answer is:
A. The Capitalist System.
B. Hydrocarbon Capitalist Patriarchy.
C. The Current System.
Mine is simply fear and greed. You seem to suggest there is an army of individuals who are principled and honorable with lots of willpower who are ready to ‘rally on the flag.’ I disagree profoundly from personal experience. There must be profound and prolonged social unrest during which time those ‘toys’ are first lost and the very lives of those who once played with them are lost and threatened.
Then we can ascribe honor and duty and willpower to ending the current regime. I would simply say it will be nothing more than utter fear and a fight for survival that will be the impetus.
But I was never a good politician; y’all may be better at it and I wish you good luck.
Designer vaginas, http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080801145404.zfnnx1i6&show_article=1, trump hairless female armpits in our sick society. Moreover, I’ve decided that I don’t want to represent any POS who will put tattoos all over his or her body.
18 August 2008, 10:20 amStan:
It is very tedious to argue against sophistry, because it constantly shifts its premises. It’s about point-scoring, not understanding.
No such suggestion was made or intended (an army of individuals who are principled and honorable, etc); and my answer to the question about where things come from is not (a), (b), or (c), but that these things are produced out of a social relation, legitimated by a concept of “property.”
You link to designer vaginas is certainly emblematic of the extreme end of a trend; but you have not answered my point. These fears are not genetic, but manufactured and maintained… by men who want women infantilized, but the owners of industry that makes products to sell to the fears they inculcate in women, and by the oppressive norms that have grown up around these practices. Women do not have an innate fear of axillary hair. Fear is not like some ether floating above us waiting to descend and possess us. It is always attached to something.
Fear is certainly a motivator in human relations, but it is not innately the predominating factor, nor is fear and greed sufficient to account for all human activity. To say that they are is Skinnerian nonsense. You sloughed over my point about the relation between small children and their primary caregivers… because this stimulus-response reductionism is simply inadequate.
I’m sorry that you have staked this kind of unsupportable claim, and sorrier still for whatever defensiveness leads you further out on this intellectual limb to defend it. And your claim that “courts” were responsible for the victories won by the Civil Rights movement is both stupid and offensive.
18 August 2008, 11:32 amgiles:
“Stupid and offensive” That’s an ad hominem response. I meant neither; the only deliberate intentions that I have are to raise my own organic food and eventually sell the excess and to interview the world’s most influential people.
You seem to have an eye towards the scoreboard too.
As the primary caregiver of my 96 year old grandfather I have to go now and take him to the doctor; while I have no nuclear family, I do have ‘family’ that I love as much as you love your wife and children.
STAN: Well there you are! Are greed and fear what motivate you to care for your grandfather?
18 August 2008, 12:36 pmgiles:
“Are greed and fear what motivate you to care for your grandfather?”
No. But most mainstream Americans today warehouse their grandparents in nursing homes, re: fear and greed.
I believe you are in denial if you will not admit/recognize how GD despicable most people are today. The War for example; people where I live still support it and Bush notwithstanding all the innocent men, women and children who have been killed.
18 August 2008, 3:31 pmLisa:
JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER: REALITY BITES AGAIN
The feeble American response to Russia’s assertion of power in the Caucasus of Central Asia was appropriate, since our claims of influence in that part of the world are laughable. The US had taken advantage of temporary confusion in Russia, during the ten-year-long post-Soviet-collapse interval, and set up a client government in Georgia, complete with military advisors, sales of weapons, and even the promise of club membership in the western alliance known as NATO. These blandishments were all in the service of the Baku-to-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which was designed specifically to drain the oil region around the Caspian Basin with an outlet on the Mediterranean, avoiding unfriendly nations all along the way…
So, this asinine policy has now come to grief. Not only does Russia stand to gain control over the Baku-to-Ceyhan pipeline, but we now have every indication that they will bring the states on its southern flank back into an active sphere of influence, and there is really not a damn thing that the US can pretend to do about it.
We could have spent the past ten years getting our own house in order…
Full article:
http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/656/1/
18 August 2008, 5:35 pmStan:
NOTE TO COMMENTERS: De is out, and I am headed to the labor and deliver room where my daughter-in-law is about to have our first grand-DAUGHTER, third grandchild. Moderation will back up for a day or two. Continue sending; there is nothing wrong with the site… we’re just out for a bit.
18 August 2008, 9:07 pmLisa:
Congratulations!
Lisa
STAN: False alarm; they sent her home to wait a bit longer.
18 August 2008, 10:57 pmLisa:
Leave Georgia Alone, George
By WILLIAM S. LIND
August 19, 2008
What interests does the United States have at stake in the war between Russia and Georgia? Only one: that we remain out of it.
It almost passes belief to think that the Bush administration, bogged down in two wars and planning a third (with Iran), might move toward a confrontation with Russia. Yet that is what the White House appears to be doing.
Full article:
http://counterpunch.org/lind08192008.html
19 August 2008, 11:35 amjohn steppling:
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann08202008.html
20 August 2008, 12:24 pmLisa:
Proportion and Distortion
Russia and Georgia
By MICHAEL NEUMANN
It’s said that Russia’s response to Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia is disproportionate: we hear of “Western leaders anxiously watching for a withdrawal and puzzling over how to punish Moscow for what they called a disproportionate reaction to the Georgian offensive”. No one has asked whether a disproportionate reaction or response is always wrong.
Full article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann08202008.html
20 August 2008, 1:23 pmjohn steppling:
and this, which i tried to post before, but somehow it got lost…
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann08202008.html
and this which is well worth reading….technical but important i think
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_10/LewisPostol
20 August 2008, 2:00 pmjohn steppling:
sorry, meant this
http://www.bestcyrano.org/cyrano/
20 August 2008, 2:20 pmLisa:
The Eurasian Corridor: Pipeline Geopolitics and the New Cold War
by Michel Chossudovsky
The ongoing crisis in the Caucasus is intimately related to the strategic control over energy pipeline and transportation corridors.
There is evidence that the Georgian attack on South Ossetia on August 7 was carefully planned. High level consultations were held with US and NATO officials in the months preceding the attacks.
The attacks on South Ossetia were carried out one week after the completion of extensive US - Georgia war games (July 15-31st, 2008). They were also preceded by high level Summit meetings held under the auspices GUAM, a US-NATO sponsored regional military alliance.
Full article:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9907
22 August 2008, 1:53 pmLisa:
COMMENT & ANALYSIS
Comment
Close
The west is strategically wrong on Georgia
By Kishore Mahbubani
Published: August 20 2008 19:19 | Last updated: August 20 2008 19:19
Sometimes small events can portend great changes. The Georgian fiasco may be one such event. It heralds the end of the post cold-war era. But it does not mark the return of any new cold war. It marks an even bigger return: the return of history.
The post cold-war era began on a note of western triumphalism, symbolised by Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History. The title was audacious but it captured the western zeitgeist. History had ended with the triumph of western civilisation. The rest of the world had no choice but to capitulate to the advance of the west.
In Georgia, Russia has loudly declared that it will no longer capitulate to the west. After two decades of humiliation Russia has decided to snap back. Before long, other forces will do the same. As a result of its overwhelming power, the west has intruded into the geopolitical spaces of other dormant countries. They are no longer dormant, especially in Asia.
Indeed, most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater.
Full article:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c65798bc-6ec6-11dd-a80a-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1
26 August 2008, 6:37 pmLisa:
Why is the “West” so bad at strategy?
by Jerome a Paris
Thu Aug 21st, 2008 at 09:55:53 AM EST
In a hard-hitting Op-Ed in this morning’s Financial Times, Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani writes that The West is strategically wrong on Georgia.
He extends that diagnosis to our overall approach to the world (as quoted below the fold) and makes a convincing case that the West has an incoherent strategy towards the rest of the world. I would like to suggest, however, that the current ’strategy’ has a narrow rationality intimately linked to our current dysfunctional politics.
Full article:
26 August 2008, 9:37 pmhttp://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/8/21/95553/5042
charles:
Invasion of Poland Redux
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2008w34/msg00010.htm
——————————————————————————–
To: “The A-List”
Subject: [A-List] Invasion of Poland Redux
From: “MARGARET WYLES”
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:47:20 -0800
——————————————————————————–
So it may be that the US strategists had Poland (not Georgia) on their
minds when they sent errand boy Shakashvili on a suicide mission.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20606.htm
If the Bush administration proceeds with its plan to deploy its
Missile Defense System in Poland, Russian Prime Minister Putin will be
forced to remove it militarily. He has no other option. The proposed
system integrates the the entire US nuclear arsenal into one
operational-unit a mere 115 miles from the Russian border. It’s no
different than Khrushchev’s plan to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in
the 1960s.
Early last year, at a press conference that was censored in the United
States, Putin explained his concerns about Bush’s plan:
“Once the missile defense system is put in place it will work
27 August 2008, 3:57 pmautomatically with the entire nuclear capability of the United States.
It will be an integral part of the US nuclear capability….And, for
the first time in history—and I want to emphasize this—there will
be elements of the US nuclear capability on the European continent. It
simply changes the whole configuration of international security…..Of
course, we have to respond to that.”
Legume Sam:
I see Jerome plenty on DKos. The US is “blundering” because as a nation-state it is captive of a dominant fraction of capital; but the analysis stops there. That dominant fraction of capital is getting what it paid for, so how is any of this a “blunder”? It looks to me like the selfsame “free market transaction” the elites are advertising.
27 August 2008, 6:57 pmLisa:
Why I had to Recognise Georgia’s Breakaway Regions
By Dmitry Medvedev
27/08/08 “Financial Times” — - On Tuesday Russia recognised the independence of the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was not a step taken lightly, or without full consideration of the consequences. But all possible outcomes had to be weighed against a sober understanding of the situation - the histories of the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples, their freely expressed desire for independence, the tragic events of the past weeks and international precedents for such a move.
Not all of the world’s nations have their own statehood. Many exist happily within boundaries shared with other nations. The Russian Federation is an example of largely harmonious coexistence by many dozens of nations and nationalities. But some nations find it impossible to live under the tutelage of another. Relations between nations living “under one roof” need to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.
Full article:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20628.htm
27 August 2008, 9:07 pmLisa:
Putin’s Ruthless Gambit
The Bush Administration Falters in a Geopolitical Chess Match
By Michael T. Klare
02/09/08 “TomDispatch” — - Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of Stalin’s jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores.
Neither of these explanations is accurate. To fully grasp the recent upheavals in the Caucasus, it is necessary to view the conflict as but a minor skirmish in a far more significant geopolitical struggle between Moscow and Washington over the energy riches of the Caspian Sea basin — with former Russian President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin emerging as the reigning Grand Master of geostrategic chess and the Bush team turning out to be middling amateurs, at best.
Full article:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174971/michael_klare_the_bush_administration_checkmated_in_georgia
2 September 2008, 6:53 pmgiles:
“Putin and Medvedev have just played chess to the lame-duck Bush-Cheney administration’s game of mystical neocon checkers.”
A Russian told me recently, it’s Russian chess versus U.S. poker.
I’m no geostrategist but it seems to me the U.S. has lost a Knight and a Bishop maybe even a Rook in Iraq and Afghanistan and is in the process of losing pawns (Georgia, Ukraine, etc.) while all the strategic advantages lie with Russia especially oil, e.g., QB1-KB4, i.e., S-300 to Iran and Syria.
But being an enthusiastic poker player with lots of poker fans at home who like poker talk you would never know what this conflict is really about, who is in the right, who is in the wrong and who has the advantage if war breaks out.
BTW, I’ve never seen a more astute political choice for VP in my lifetime; Putin and Palin are in our futures methinks.
3 September 2008, 7:54 amgiles:
Russia’s reaction to NATO ships “will be calm, without any sort of hysteria. But of course, there will be an answer,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying during a visit to Uzbekistan.
Spoken like a true Chess Master.
3 September 2008, 11:18 amLisa:
Russia, Europe and USA: Fundamental Geopolitics
By F. William Engdahl
Global Research, September 4, 2008
As details of the larger strategic picture emerge over what is at stake in the Georgia and larger Caucasus crisis, it is becoming clearer that Moscow is not determined to roll back the borders of Stalin and the Cold War of 1948. What Putin and now Medvedev have begun is a process of defusing the highly dangerous NATO expansion, led by the Washington warhawks since the end of the Cold War in 1990.
Had events progressed as Washington had planned up until the surprise rejection of NATO membership from no less than ten European NATO member countries, including Germany and France at the April NATO Summit, Georgia would today have been in the admission process to NATO-ization along with Ukraine. That would have opened the door to full-scale encirclement of Russia militarily and economically…
Washington has made devastating strategic miscalculations, but not merely in Georgia. They began back in 1990 when there had been a beautiful opportunity to build bridges of peaceful economic cooperation between the OECD and Russia. Instead, George Bush senior and the US sent NATO and the IMF east to create economic chaos, looting and instability, evidently thinking that a better option. The next President will bear the consequences of having lost that opportunity.
Full article:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10062
4 September 2008, 2:16 pmLisa:
Wonderful article (very relevant to energy–don’t know where else to put it at this point):
Dr. Albert Bartlett on Compounding
Dr. Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy
[Transcribed from a speech]
It’s a great pleasure to be here, and to have a chance just to share with you some very simple ideas about the problems we’re facing. Some of these problems are local, some are national, some are global.
They’re all tied together. They’re tied together by arithmetic, and the arithmetic isn’t very difficult. What I hope to do is, I hope to be able to convince you that the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
Full article:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/dr_albert_bartlett
22 September 2008, 2:05 pmLisa:
Another excellent article, and remarkably prescient:
Energy Resources And Our Future
Admiral Hyman Rickover 1957
We live in what historians may some day call the Fossil Fuel Age. Today coal, oil, and natural gas supply 93% of the world’s energy; water power accounts for only 1%; and the labor of men and domestic animals the remaining 6%. This is a startling reversal of corresponding figures for 1850 - only a century ago. Then fossil fuels supplied 5% of the world’s energy, and men and animals 94%. Five sixths of all the coal, oil, and gas consumed since the beginning of the Fossil Fuel Age has been burned up in the last 55 years…
I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendants - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age…
We might even - if we wanted - give a break to these youngsters by cutting fuel and metal consumption a little here and there so as to provide a safer margin for the necessary adjustments which eventually must be made in a world without fossil fuels.
One final thought I should like to leave with you. High-energy consumption has always been a prerequisite of political power. The tendency is for political power to be concentrated in an ever-smaller number of countries. Ultimately, the nation which control - the largest energy resources will become dominant. If we give thought to the problem of energy resources, if we act wisely and in time to conserve what we have and prepare well for necessary future changes, we shall insure this dominant position for our own country.
Full speech:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/energy-resources-and-our-future
22 September 2008, 2:46 pm