Georgia, South Ossetia, Russia - Part 14

And here's your Wiki piece.  I haven't had time to read it through let alone double-check any of it, against others, so feel free to pick it apart if you can.  At a glance though it does seem relatively balanced and has more links than most.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_South_Ossetia_war

South Ossetia and Abkhazia celebrate Independence Day:

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/08/25/south-ossetia-abkhazia-to-celebrate-i...

"Another reminder of the lingering tensions from last year's brief Russo-Georgian War, the republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, separatist enclaves whose claims of independence were finally recognized by Russia on August 26, 2008, celebrate the one year anniversary of this recognition as an independence day.

The permanency of their de facto independence is still very much in doubt, as the US has promised to use its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to ensure that the international community never recognizes the move."

The U.S. and a majority of countries recognize the independence of Kosovo but not South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Sounds like a contradiction to me.

The Abkhazians have a very nice bit of territory along the Black Sea, unlike landlocked Ossetia, and I expect they will do well.

[/quote]

Georgia is currently even spitefully trying to interfere with that:

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article...

Looks like the propaganda apparatus is moving into the neighborhood for sure.
[url=http://ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=54262&cid=219&p=11.11.2009]Russia says fascist nations still arming Georgia for another round of aggression[/url]

Quote:

Russia possesses irrefutable evidence that Georgia continues to receive mediated consignments of foreign arms. In an interview for Vesti television Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recalled the situation in the summer of 2008 when many countries ignored Russian warnings that modern arms in Saakashvili's hands may prompt this man to unleash a military aggression. On August 7th, Georgia used Ukrainian-supplied weaponry and American-provided military expertise for launching an unprovoked assault on South Ossetia. The attack killed dozens of Russian peacekeepers and hundreds of local civilians. Russia had to wade in and wage a five-day campaign to compel Georgia to peace.

N.Beltov wrote:

 

Eric Redburn, who posted upthread and raised what seemed to me at the time to be rather thinly veiled attempts at thread derailment, may, along with other babblers, be interested in following up (from the article in Counterpunch) the following quote:

I'll kindly ask you once to not ascribe motives to me that I don't have, or reopen arguments that have long since passed.   It aint my fault if some still feel the need to assign all the world's evils on one imperialistic power.

Yes I remember Beltov, and I can always relive the highlights by reading back, I'm just wondering why you're resurrecting all this again. 

US, NATO Intensifying War Games Around Russia's Perimeter

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/u-s-nato-intensify-war-games-...

"Along with plans to base anti-ballistic missile facilities in Poland near Russia's border (a 35 mile distance) and in Bulgaria and Romania across the Black Sea from Russia, Washington and the self-styled global military bloc it leads, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have arranged a series of military exercises on and near Russia's borders this year..

That trajectory - from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the Caucasus and Central Asia places US and NATO military presence along a substantial portion of the land borders of European Russia..."

N.Beltov wrote:

Saakashvili militarist regime causes panic by brodcasting hoax of Russian invasion ...

The story:

RT wrote:

On Saturday night Georgian TV channel Imedi aired a false report that caused a shockwave across the country.

What is "Imedi"?:

Wikipedia wrote:

Imedi Media Holding is a private television and Radio Company in Georgia. The stations were formerly owned in part by the late Georgian media tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation . . . A preliminary agreement on the purchase of Imedi Holding’s shares was signed in New York on April 28, 2007, details of which remained confidential. It is currently owned by I-Media, which has given power of attorney over 100% of its Imedi shares to News Corp. Europe. The television station’s board chairman is Badri Patarkatsishvili. Patarkatsishvili also owned shares in RTVi, an international Russian-language television network.

. . . so why exactly is N. Beltov blaming Saakashvili or is government for the actions of a private broadcaster? I mean, I have a pretty good idea why, but I'm curious to see what excuse N.Beltov would like to put forward.

Sounds like a low budget false flag op.  Dr Strangelove said once, "Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack!" Or perhaps the art of producing in the minds of the people the fear of an attack? Who knows what lurks in the dark and rotten depths of the fascist mind?

Perhaps the Georgians in street interviews got it wrong, or it was just "gov't inspired."  Can't imagine another group out to frighten folks.

Quote:

That almost 400 Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded by Georgian military forces trained, equipped and supported by the U.S. and NATO before, during and since the war doesn't appear to mean much to President Medvedev. That his 28 fellow heads of state in the NATO-Russia Council had unanimously supported the perpetrator of the 2008 war while demanding Russia humiliate itself by rescinding its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia - and withdrawing its troops, thereby leaving both states easy prey for Georgia's next assault - also didn't take the fixed smile off Medvedev's face during his huddling with President Obama and 27 other NATO leaders this past Saturday.

[url=http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/]Source[/url]

N.Beltov wrote:

That's a very long article from which you've quoted. Rozoff seems to expect the Russians to jettison the Ossetians and Abkhazians at the first opportunity.

I'm not buying it. There's a little too much wishful thinking by the author.

Really? Wishful thinking?

Maybe you should have read at least the first few paragraphs of the "very long article". It's clear to me that the last thing Rozoff "wishes" is for Ossetia and Abkhazia to be under Georgia/NATO control. The blog is, after all, called "Stop NATO".

Rozoff wrote:

The day before the NATO-Russia Council meeting, where Russia was outnumbered 28-1, U.S. President Obama met privately with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Russia's Public Enemy No. 1 as military analyst Alexander Golts described him on the occasion.

Saakashvili, who was educated in the U.S. on a State Department fellowship and came to power through a U.S.-sponsored coup in 2003 which its perpetrators termed the Rose Revolution, ordered sniper and mortar attacks on South Ossetia on August 1, 2008, killing six people including a Russian peacekeeper. The day after the Immediate Response 2008 NATO war games led by 1,000 U.S. troops had ended and with American soldiers and military equipment still in Georgia.

Six days later, as the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was underway in Beijing, Georgia launched an all-out assault on the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.

By the time Russian reinforcements beat back the Georgian offensive and the war ended five days after it had begun, 64 Russian service members had been killed and 323 wounded. The U.S. provided military transport planes to bring 2,000 Georgian troops back from Iraq for the fighting.

Shortly afterward the U.S. rewarded Georgia with the signing of the United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership and NATO formed the NATO-Georgia Commission, out of which an individually tailored Annual National Program(me) was created to further Georgia's integration into the North Atlantic Alliance.

I was speaking to a friend of mine who sings in a Georgian choir (unbelievably good music) that while Georgians are not real happy with Sakashvili's adventuring all of the Russians in that part of the world are occupying populations from the era of Soviet imperialism.

They don't cry a lot over them getting attacked.

And your source for this claim is?

A priori you have less credibility with me on the subject than my friend.

Cueball wrote:

You would be more accurate in saying "Russian Imperialism", as opposed to "Soviet Imperialism", since of course all the Soviet Union did was reinforce and continue the policies of military domination and colonial settler expansion. The borders of the Soviet Union were very much the same as those of the Russian empire. To say "Soviet Imperialism" is to imply that the colonial and imperial project was ideologically linked to the Soviet Union, when it is pretty clear that the Soviet Union basically co-opted the boundaries of the empire that preceded it.

That's pretty contorted reasoning.

A distinction needs to be made between the Russian Empire, Stalinist Russia and the Soviet Union that existed before and after the Stalinist period.

Under the Russian Empire, Finland was a semiautonomous Grand Duchy, eastern Poland was part of the Russian Empire as was Moldavia (or "Moldovo".)

In 1939, in accordance with the Nazi-Sovet Pact, Stalin invaded Poland. In 1940, Russia attacked Finland in the "Winter War" and in the same year, Russia attacked/invaded/occupied Moldavia, then a province of Rumania.

The only unique case in the Inter War Period is Poland where it can be said that non-Stalinist Soviet Russia attempted to carry on the imperialist policy of Imperial Russia. However, the Russo-Polish war decided that.

The only thing that has been determined here is that Stalinist Russia successfully continued Imperialist Russia's colonial policy: the borders of Finland, Poland, Rumania, displacing people from the Don Basin, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia for anti-Soviet activities and forced migration of Russians to these areas as well as to Kazakhstan (in the desire to start new collectivized farms there.)

If (and I don't know for sure whether or not this was done) these policies were carried out in the Soviet Union prior to and after the Stalinist era, then it can be said that Soviet communism not only passively allowed Imperial Russian colonialism, it actively participated in it or had a colonial policy of their own that was like Imperial Russia's.

What are Georgia's claims to Abkhazia and Ossetia?

Ask Abkhazians and Ossetians what they prefer, they would rather be "protected" by Russia than Georgia.

Given the geography of the area, it is easier for food, fuel and other resources to be supplied to the area from Russia.

Mountains make travel and communications from Georgia more difficult.

DP

Frmrsldr wrote:

Cueball wrote:

 

Be that as it may, the point I am making is that Russian settlement of Asia and the Caucuses continued unabaited from the Czarist period right through until the end of the USSR in 1990's, leaving large pockets of Slavic Russian persons living throughout many of the former Soviet Republics that did not join the CIS.

I thought communism generally and Soviet communism specifically was anti-imperialism/anticolonialism.

I guess I was wrong.

The evolution of this particular relationship between the USSR and the Czarist Empire has a consistent logic. For one thing, not capturing all of the territory of the old empire offered a legitimate base for anti-Soviet activity. It's not as if the White Russians were not trying to wipe them out. On the other hand, legitimate movements seeking to liberate themselves from Russian hegemony were ruthlessly crushed.

Its hard to know exactly how one would reasonably proceed under such circumstances.