Russian Foreign Minister speaks out against US action in Georgia

[TrOtOaRkA]

August 13th, 2008 |

Via Reuters:

“Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington had to choose between partnership with Moscow and the Georgian leadership which he described as a “virtual project”.“We understand that this current Georgian leadership is a special project of the United States, but one day the United States will have to choose between defending its prestige over a virtual project or real partnership which requires joint action,” Lavrov told reporters.

U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday demanded Russia resolve a crisis with Georgia and said he would dispatch U.S. Military aircraft with humanitarian supplies.
Lavrov, speaking to reporters at a state residence outside Moscow, hit back, saying Moscow had warned Washington about the dangers of backing Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
“Bush’s speech said nothing of how Georgia was armed all these years, including by the United States,” Lavrov said.
“We have more than once warned our partners that this is a dangerous game. It (the Bush speech) said nothing about what had happened on Aug 8, when Western leaders maintained silence when Tskhinvali became a target of massive bombing,” Lavrov said.”
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Mikhail Saakashvili: Democratically elected credentials?

August 13th, 2008 | Category: Georgia, News Coverage, Politics, USA

In every single sodding sentence uttered by American officials, Saakashvili is referred to as the ‘democratically-elected president of a sovereign nation’.
We certainly seem to have a very short memory. In 2003, the US funded ‘Revolution of Roses’ brought Saakashvili to power via a thoroughly un-democratic coup.
British and Soros Stooges in the Georgia Regime

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August 11, 2008 (LPAC)--Ongoing research has thus far identificed the following British and Soros stooges in the current government of Georgia:
1) PRIME MINISTER: VLADIMER "LADO" GURGENIDZE
A British empire banker, citizen of the United Kingdom.
Born 1970, Tbilisi, Georgia. Beginning in 1997 he worked for the Anglo-Dutch giant bank ABN Amro, living in London 1998-2003. From 1997-1998 he directed the bank's corporate finance operations in Russia and neighboring countries. Among the ABN AMRO conquests was its "twinning project" ensnaring the Bank of Georgia, which had been privatized in 1994-95. From 1998-2000 Grugenidze was ABN AMRO's Director and Head of Mergers and Acquisitions in the Emerging European Markets.
After the 2003 Soros "Rose Revolution" he returned to Georgia and was chief executive (2004-2006) for the Bank of Georgia, in line with the joint UNDP-Soros structural/financial reorganization program for the country ("capacity-building"). Gurgenidze brought in a management team from ABN AMRO and other British-connected banks.
Gurgenidze was appointed Prime Minister and head of the government in November, 2007.
2) HEAD OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: ALEXANDER LOMAIA
A longtime top executive of George Soros operations in Georgia, now overseeing the country's military operations.
In 2003-2004, Lomaia was Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation). He "directed the foundation's operational grant-making and administrative activities, and fulfillment of its annual overall budget of more than $2,500.000. Supervised the staff of up to 50 program, finance, and administrative employees."
In 2003-2004, Lomaia was regional director for the former Soviet Union for the Open Society institute's "Democracy Coalition Project". He "facilitated NGO coalition-building in the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union to promote an activist democratic reform agenda.... The project facilitated the creation of an international federation of the national coalitions which collectively pursued ... Democratic reforms on the international stage."
3) CHAIRMAN, GEORGIA PARLIAMENT'S COMMITTEE FOR EUROINTEGRATION: DAVID DARCHIASHVILI
Former Executive Director, Open Society Georgia Foundation.
Darchiashvili has worked for the Soros-dominated NGO networks since 1992, primarily in the Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, a "partner institution" to the Soros Open Society Institute (among its achievements were publishing a Georgian translation of neoconservatve Francis Fukuyama's " "The End of the History and the Last Man").
Darchiashvili was executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation in the period (approximately) 2006-2007, apparently succeeding now-prime minister Gurgenidze as head of Soros operations in Georgia. In his present position he coordinates the Parliamentary institutions in Georgia with the British/Soros plans for the European Union, in conjunction with such channels as the Soros "European Council on Foreign Relations."




South Ossetia is not Georgia - Media Blurring Borders

August 13th, 2008 | Category: Foreign Policy, Military, News Coverage, Russia, USA

Over the past few days, the news media has been full of quotes such as these:
‘The US stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia and insists the territorial sovereignty of Georgia be respected’ - George Bush
The obvious implication is that South Ossetia is a part of Georgia, and the situation is framed as a simple invasion of a smaller country (Georgia) by a much larger one (Russia). And this neatly ties in with Bush’s decision to send ‘humanitarian aid’, (in the form of military forces), to heroically support the little guy. (Never mind the 1000 American troops in Georgia recently for training, or the American funding and equipping of the Georgian military since 2002).
But, as Russian deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov said on BBC’s hardtalk:
“We recognise the sovereignty and independence of Georgia … But territorial integrity, it’s just another matter. South Ossetia and Abkhazia never were part of Georgia as an independent country”.
What the news often neglects to mention is that the South Ossetians held an independence referendum on November 12, 2006, with around 98% of the vote supporting independence from Georgia. In an attempt to show the fairness of the vote, the South Ossetians pointed to the referendum having been monitored by international observers, and yet it was dismissed by both Georgia and the EU as ‘meaningless’, and ‘absurd’.
Eleven days before the referendum, South Ossetian authorities declared that they had thwarted a terrorist plot instigated by Georgian intelligence.
Four days before the referendum, the Georgian prime minister accused Russia of ‘political blackmail‘ after state-run Russian oil company Gazprom announced they would more than double oil prices in Georgia.
It is worth noting that the Ossetians form an identifiable ethnic group, with their own Ossetic language. A 2007 estimate places the number of ethnic Ossetians in South Ossetia at around 66%. A BBC article today asserted that most South Ossetians hold Russian passports and feel a strong affinity with North Ossetia. North Ossetia, which contains roughly the same proportion of ethnic Ossetians, is of course currently part of Russia. The same BBC article also contains this passage:
They [South Ossetians] very clearly blame Georgia for the fighting and are extremely angry with President Mikhail Saakashvili, comparing him to Adolf Hitler. Russian troops have been greeted in Tskhinvali as lifesavers.
I’ll leave you with a picture, dating from the time of the independence referendum, of some South Ossetians waving their flag. Just in case it doesn’t get much coverage elsewhere.

1000 US soldiers in Georgia from July 15 - July 31 2008 for ‘war games’

August 12th, 2008 | Category: Foreign Policy, Military, News Coverage, USA

Source: Georgiandaily.com
Details can be found here of a joint military training programme known as ‘Immediate Response 2008′, which took place at the Vaziani military base in Georgia only a couple of weeks ago. It involved 1000 US soldiers.
There’s been little to no mention of this in the mainstream coverage of the recent conflict. Searches for Immediate Response 2008 on the BBC website come up blank, as too on ITN news, Sky etc. Most news organisations don’t even seem to return any hits for the Vaziani base. (Though there is this Guardian article from 2002, which refers to US plans to set up a ‘terrorism school’ [sic] at the base. I can only assume they meant ‘anti-terrorism school’, though maybe it was a Freudian slip).
So was there a media blackout? Well, on the morning of July 15, the day the initiative began, Reuters covered it, even being so explicit as to use the term ‘wargames’.
U.S. Troops start training exercise in Georgia (Reuters, July 15 2008)
The Associated Press carried it too, on the same day. Maybe we’re a bit strange here at One More Promethean, but we just thought that information might be relevant to understanding current affairs.

Georgian army funded, trained & equipped by permanent US military presence

August 11th, 2008 | Category: Foreign Policy, Military, News Coverage, USA

I really am having a hard time finding any mentions of this minor detail in any of the recent news coverage (I’m mainly going on the BBC website here, but it seems the same goes for ITV, Sky and the rest). The Georgian military bases are just called ‘Georgian military bases’, and the Georgian army is apparently just the ‘Georgian army’. And who’d believe that Georgia would dare attack Russia?
Maybe Joe Public already knows all about the Krtsanisi US military base right next to Tbilisi, but you’d think it’d be worth a quick mention anyway. Y’know, just as a refresher course in any of the Georgian geopolitics we might have missed in school.
Still, at least there’s not a conspiracy to delete the BBC News archives:-
US role in Georgia alarms Russia - BBC (Feb 2002)
US army trainers land in Georgia - BBC (May 2002)
US army steps up Georgian training - BBC (Sept 2002)
US military will stay in Georgia - BBC (Jan 2004)
See? It even forms an understandable narrative and everything. Shocking.
But that’s not relevant to coverage of a Russia/Georgia conflict, is it? What is worth referring to are such delicious George Bush quotes as…
“Russia’s government must respect Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty”. (source: BBC)
We’ll just ignore the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, then. Oh, and how’s this for hypocrisy…
“[Russia] threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century”. (source: Guardian)
I guess this hinges on your particular definition of ‘democratic’, but I don’t think the Bush administration is an authority on the matter. In any case, President Chavez and President Ahmadinejad might take issue with Bush’s position.
I’ll not pretend to know anything much about this situation - I don’t. The point is, however, that the mainstream news is not really helping to alleviate my ignorance.
Britain's Georgia Gambit: So, Hitler Invaded Poland


by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
August 13, 2008 (LPAC)--Through the bold, and fully correct action of Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the matter of the British Foreign Office assets' orchestration of a war crime by George Soros puppet Mikhail Saakashvili against the people of South Ossetia, a proximate threat of nuclear weapons confrontation between Russia and London's accomplices was averted for the present time.
The elementary fact of the matter is that Georgia's Mikhail Saakashivili, a puppet of Britain's George Soros, ordered the armed invasion of South Ossetia on behalf of an attempted bluff against Russia which was launched under the direction of Soros' superiors in the British Foreign Office of Lord Mark Malloch Brown. Subsequently, it became clear to relevant British circles that the attempt to bluff both Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin into submission had failed. The reactions of President George W. Bush, Jr. And Senator John McCain were utterly stupid; while, naturally, the reaction of George Soros' puppet, Senator Barack Obama, was predictable.
Clearly, there was never any excuse, even that of extenuating circumstances, which could cover over the simple fact of the war-crimes for which Georgia President Saakashvili was guilty in this matter. Nor is there any stubborn denying of the fact that the Saakashvili virtually created by British Foreign Office asset Soros was acting on behalf of an attempted, ultimately nuclear strategic bluff of Russia's government. Nor, is there any competent reason to doubt that Prime Minister Putin's reaction to Saakashivili's war-crime aborted what could have become a missile-crisis-like nuclear showdown involving the forces of both the U.S.A. And British allies in western and central Europe. Leading elements of the British press, admit that Putin's actions wrecked Britain's strategic nuclear bluff. Compared to London's voices, the U.S. Press and government voices have behaved with absolute stupidity in this matter thus far.
Once the fact of the war-crime, and the fact of the clear intention of Saakashvili, Soros, et al. Is duly taken into account, as has already been done, effectively, the legal debate must end, and the makers of history must be permitted to take charge, instead of the lawyers, and make the new ruling body of law which will emerge from a global conflict thus unleashed. The fact of the matter is that the lawyers have failed because of an inherent, systemic incompetence in their inherently tragic, current, essentially Sophist notion of what law should be. The fate of humanity as a whole, will be determined, even during the relevant, immediately short-term period ahead, by the conflict with the sophist character of what has become the currently dominant, philosophically Liberal practice of international law, as opposed to those common aims of mankind implicit in the creation of our Constitutional United States.
There is no hope for the continuation of civilized life on this planet, for generations yet to come, unless, and until we have uprooted the implicitly imperial, predatory system of monetarist Liberalism which has now brought the planet as a whole to the brink of a global new dark age which would be comparable to, but far worse than the so-called New Dark Age of Europe's mid-Fourteenth Century.
The principal expression of this life-or-death crisis for civilization as a whole is the proposed new form of global imperialism, a virtual new "Tower of Babel," called Globalism. Either we return to the goal of a global system of respectively sovereign nation-state republics, or there will be nothing resembling civilized human life on this planet for a lapsed time of generations yet to come.
What the British foreign office intended by its deployment of its George Soros, in eastern Europe (and other places) was an undermining of a system of sovereign nation states in favor of a "globalized" world empire of so-called "free trade" run by predator financier interests centered in the Anglo-Dutch Liberal financial-monetary interests centered in the British empire. To bring that evil state of world affairs into being, two targets must be destroyed: the U.S.A. And Russia; without peaceful cooperation centered on a network of nations united around those two keystone powers of the present moment, there is no hope for a civilized life of mankind for generations yet to come.
People who have a different agenda, are effectively idiots, or worse.