Trouble in South Ossetia escalates

[Sephirius]

Reporter gets shot while broadcasting

Its only a graze, and surprisingly little blood.

looks like a BS fake to me. I mean, it IS Georgia state TV.

Also, bullets don't sound like that.

[Sephirius]

Note: this video is misleadingly titled, it's actually Georgians shooting at them, but this is what real gunfire sounds like.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=afa_1218829366

Oops forgot the video, someone fix my posts please!

[Guardsman Bass]

I don't normally agree with Pat Buchanon, and I don't necessarily agree with everything in this article, but I thought it was interesting:

Blowback from Bear Baiting
By Patrick Buchanan

Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.

Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?

The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.

We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Wait, isn't RUSSIA a democratic country, too?

I think for the neocons, it is not so much whether the country is democratic or not, but whether or not the country is subservient to the United States.

Just look at what happened to France after the French openly rejected the Iraqi war, and the childish antics of some idiots. Not being "wholely democratic" is just smoke for the blatant bigotry of these morons.

[Block]

Wait, isn't RUSSIA a democratic country, too?

I think for the neocons, it is not so much whether the country is democratic or not, but whether or not the country is subservient to the United States.

Just look at what happened to France after the French openly rejected the Iraqi war, and the childish antics of some idiots. Not being "wholely democratic" is just smoke for the blatant bigotry of these morons.

Eh, I'd say the French have been openly mocked in the United States for as long as I've been alive. They're looked at as a bunch of elitist pricks that are at heart, a bunch of cowards. I'm assuming that stereotype was carried back across the Atlantic after WWII but I'm not sure where it actually comes from.

[[R_H]]

I don't normally agree with Pat Buchanon, and I don't necessarily agree with everything in this article, but I thought it was interesting:

(snip article)

Wow, I just took a look at the Pat Buchanan entry on Wikipedia. I find it incredible that a guy that makes a lot of neo-cons look like liberals isn't supporting Georgia.

Just watched a BBC Newsnight interview with Robert E. Hunter, a former US Ambassador to NATO. Highlight of the interview - "Russia is pretending to be a world power." and something about Russia being like Saudi Arabia, except it has trees. Hilarious.

[[R_H]]

Ghetto Edit:

I don't normally agree with Pat Buchanon, and I don't necessarily agree with everything in this article, but I thought it was interesting:

(snip article)

Wow, I just took a look at the Pat Buchanan entry on Wikipedia. I find it incredible that a guy that makes a lot of neo-cons look like liberals isn't supporting Georgia.

Just watched a BBC Newsnight interview with Robert E. Hunter, a former US Ambassador to NATO. Highlight of the interview - "Russia is pretending to be a world power." and something about Russia being like Saudi Arabia, except it has trees. Hilarious.

[Mobius]

Ghetto Edit:

I don't normally agree with Pat Buchanon, and I don't necessarily agree with everything in this article, but I thought it was interesting:

(snip article)

Wow, I just took a look at the Pat Buchanan entry on Wikipedia. I find it incredible that a guy that makes a lot of neo-cons look like liberals isn't supporting Georgia.

Pat Buchanan is writing semi-regularly on Lew Rockwell and Anti-war
2 hard-line republican website that don't have a lot of sympathy for neo-cons.

[Darth Hoth]

Wait, isn't RUSSIA a democratic country, too?

Technically, yes; in practice, it depends on whom you ask. Personally, I would say no, based on the lack of working checks and balances and enforcement of basic civil rights. Though of course, there are those who would just call it an illiberal democracy.

[Darth Hoth]

As an aside, my local paper this morning claims the German Chancellor has voiced support for Georgia entering the NATO. Does anyone know anything about that; is it bullshit, or is she just not being serious?

[Thanas]

^Bullshit. No newspaper in Germany is reporting this, nor any internet media I checked one hour ago.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Eh, I'd say the French have been openly mocked in the United States for as long as I've been alive. They're looked at as a bunch of elitist pricks that are at heart, a bunch of cowards. I'm assuming that stereotype was carried back across the Atlantic after WWII but I'm not sure where it actually comes from.

Freedom fries anyone?

[Vympel]

Russia's haul:-

* 1,728 small arms, including 764 M16 assault rifles (or M4 carbines) and M40 sniper rifles as well as the usual AKs, PKs, NSVs etc

* 65 tanks, 20 of which were later destroyed due to being old/ broken (probably couldn't be moved so the Russians destroyed them on site) - T-72AVs, T-72Bs, T-62MVs.

* 5 Osa-AK SAMs

* Dana self-propelled howtizers

* BMP-1s equipped with Ukranian Shkval turrets

* BTRs

* D-30 howitzers, T-12 anti-tank guns, various mortars

* Turkish Cobra armored cars (mistakenly identified as American Scorpion BRDMs by the Russian officer, lol)

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Stas, can you shed any more light? Anything interesting said in the videos?

[[R_H]]

Russia's haul:-

* 1,728 small arms, including 764 M16 assault rifles (or M4 carbines) and M40 sniper rifles as well as the usual AKs, PKs, NSVs etc

* 65 tanks, 20 of which were later destroyed due to being old/ broken (probably couldn't be moved so the Russians destroyed them on site) - T-72AVs, T-72Bs, T-62MVs.

* 5 Osa-AK SAMs

* Dana self-propelled howtizers

* BMP-1s equipped with Ukranian Shkval turrets

* BTRs

* D-30 howitzers, T-12 anti-tank guns, various mortars

* Turkish Cobra armored cars (mistakenly identified as American Scorpion BRDMs by the Russian officer, lol)

snip videos

What will happen to those vehicles/munitions that were captured? Will some go into museums, and the rest put in service (T-72s, BMPs, BTRs etc)?

[Thanas]

Eh, I'd say the French have been openly mocked in the United States for as long as I've been alive. They're looked at as a bunch of elitist pricks that are at heart, a bunch of cowards. I'm assuming that stereotype was carried back across the Atlantic after WWII but I'm not sure where it actually comes from.

I suggest you go read this: When an American mouths off about French military history, he's not just being ignorant, he's being ungrateful. I was raised to think ungrateful people were trash.

[consequences]

Amazingly enough, the French then killed basically everyone in their country that we had legitimate reason to be grateful too, and there's that slight matter of that little undeclared naval war we had with them in the last days of the eighteenth century.

I suggest that you not mistake the people who helped us out of enlightened self interest(ntm the desire to make life difficult for the British in general) 220 years ago with the people we're dealing with today.

[Knife]

Eh, I'd say the French have been openly mocked in the United States for as long as I've been alive. They're looked at as a bunch of elitist pricks that are at heart, a bunch of cowards. I'm assuming that stereotype was carried back across the Atlantic after WWII but I'm not sure where it actually comes from.

I suggest you go read this:

The present stereotype of the French doesn't go that far back, obviously. Granted some asshats want it too, which I think is the people the article was aimed at. Right or wrong it has more to do with having their teeth kicked in twice durring the first half of the century. Which over the long history of Europe shouldn't be that surprising, generally speaking, but...yeah there you go. Probably added to that the fact that in general they are every bit as arrogant as Americans.

[Thanas]

Amazingly enough, the French then killed basically everyone in their country that we had legitimate reason to be grateful too, and there's that slight matter of that little undeclared naval war we had with them in the last days of the eighteenth century.

I suggest that you not mistake the people who helped us out of enlightened self interest(ntm the desire to make life difficult for the British in general) 220 years ago with the people we're dealing with today.

I am a historian. You do not need to enlighten me about the general events of the last three centuries. The comment is rhetoric hyperbole, a concept you are probably unfamiliar with. And hooray for you taking one quote and implying that is the general meaning of the article. Which is, in fact, more a bludgeon to quickly answer idiots like those who describe the french as arrogant cowards. Seriously. Did you expect a historical essay at that link or what?

Also, I suggest you not mistake the people who "surrendered" in WWII for the french of today.

[Darth Hoth]

Eh, I'd say the French have been openly mocked in the United States for as long as I've been alive. They're looked at as a bunch of elitist pricks that are at heart, a bunch of cowards. I'm assuming that stereotype was carried back across the Atlantic after WWII but I'm not sure where it actually comes from.

I suggest you go read this: When an American mouths off about French military history, he's not just being ignorant, he's being ungrateful. I was raised to think ungrateful people were trash.

Heh. By this guy's logic, Sweden is a great and brave military power because of our prowess in the Thirty Years' War.

As for the actual stereotype Block was talking about (not, I believe, endorsing), I believe it came about for two reasons: French military defeats and resentment at their role in the creation and running of the European Union.

First, it is a fact that France was defeated in most of its recent conflicts (1879, 1940, and the colonial wars since; it does not help that only foreign aid allowed them to hold out in WWI). I am not saying that any of these conflicts were curb-stomps, far from it, but such is the popular conception. The post-war situation, when EVERYONE had supposedly been in "la Résistance" all along did nothing to help better France's image as turncoats and dishonest liars.

Second, many people (here in Sweden at least) are resentful of the EU and France's foreign political arrogance in general. I can safely say I consider de Gaulle to have been an arrogant prick, and that opinion appears widespread. Some people go even further and make cracks about how the EU was France's way of conquering Germany by diplomacy when they could not do so in war.

[Darth Hoth]

Also, I suggest you not mistake the people who "surrendered" in WWII for the french of today.

Why put "surrender" within quotation marks?

[Thanas]

The present stereotype of the French doesn't go that far back, obviously. Granted some asshats want it too, which I think is the people the article was aimed at.

Correct. It is a bludgeon to deal with those idiots who make little or no distinction between the french of 1940 and the whole french history. Also, it quite nicely deals with the charge of cowardice.

Right or wrong it has more to do with having their teeth kicked in twice durring the first half of the century.

Eh? when was the second time?

Which over the long history of Europe shouldn't be that surprising, generally speaking, but...yeah there you go. Probably added to that the fact that in general they are every bit as arrogant as Americans.

I have met so far hundreds of french people Not one of them felt the need to publibly declare themselves the best country in the world to my face. Unlike, say, several americans. Granted, personal experiences may vary.

[Knife]

Correct. It is a bludgeon to deal with those idiots who make little or no distinction between the french of 1940 and the whole french history. Also, it quite nicely deals with the charge of cowardice.

Your bludgeon is quite nice yet so obvious in this case I think people are taking you for being arrogant in the posting, hence the replies.

Eh? when was the second time?

They may have not been over run in the Great War the way there were in WWII but they were hardly doing well in the Trenches. Sorry, but the Germans were well with in French terrirtory and were not repelled for years. Sure the French held them with allied help but that's not a win, that's a holding action which by definition is defensive.

Also they didn't fair too well in Indochina in the 50's-60's which probably doesn't help their rep much in America since Vietnam isn't exactly a good topic here either.

I have met so far hundreds of french people Not one of them felt the need to publibly declare themselves the best country in the world to my face. Unlike, say, several americans. Granted, personal experiences may vary.

I thought we were talking about stereotypes? Or just American ones?

[[R_H]]

I don't think this has been posted yet

McCain: "In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:"in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."

It was the type of foreign policy rhetorical blunder that has regularly plagued the McCain campaign and could have diplomatic ripples as well. Certainly the comment was meant in innocence. But for those predisposed to the notion that the U.S. is an increasingly arrogant international actor, the suggestion by a presidential candidate that, in this day and age, countries don't invade one another -- when the U.S. is occupying two foreign nations -- does little to alleviate that negative perception.

There is another, less controversial undertone to McCain's remark. Since the Georgia-Russia hostilities have commenced, parallels have been drawn to U.S. intervention in Iraq. The two scenarios are highly different in all intents and purposes, both due to regional significance and the longstanding territorial disputes. But some still would dispute the idea, as McCain seemed to imply, that America's involvement in Iraq is any less an invasion than Russia's involvement in Georgia.

Later in his press conference, McCain was asked to address how the Georgian crisis -- which has ceded to a tenuous ceasefire -- was amplified on the campaign trail. The presumptive Republican nominee demurred from attempts to get him to engage with Barack Obama.

"This isn't a time for partisanship and sniping between campaigns," he said. "This is about hundreds of thousand of individuals whose lives are being taken... Maybe later on in the campaign let's have a back and forth about whose comments and statements... but now lets devote all our efforts to resolving a situation that is fraught with tragedy."

A subsequent questioner asked McCain whether this non-partisan window applied to Sen. Joseph Lieberman as well, who, at a townhall on Tuesday, suggested that Barack Obama had not always "put his country first." McCain's answer was classically evasive.

"Let me respond by just saying that I think that whatever we think at the moment that we can all reserve that for a future time. And I think that judgments will be made about how we handled this situation and approached the situation in Iraq and how much experience knowledge and background means in selecting who should be the next commander in chief, all I can say is there will be plenty of time for that and we can move forward. "

Wow. It's only those evil Russians who've been invading countries in the 21st century. Oh wait, that's only in McCain fantasy land, he forgot all about America invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Thanas]

First, it is a fact that France was defeated in most of its recent conflicts (1879, 1940, and the colonial wars since; it does not help that only foreign aid allowed them to hold out in WWI). I am not saying that any of these conflicts were curb-stomps, far from it, but such is the popular conception. The post-war situation, when EVERYONE had supposedly been in "la Résistance" all along did nothing to help better France's image as turncoats and dishonest liars.

Well yeah. However, that alone is not very sufficient to explain american animosity. One can make such statements about every country (Germany being the perfect example). However, I think there is a deeper level at play here - the French practise a model of government and social politics that are very far removed from America - and *gasp* - how dare they succeed at it? Plus, this only started in force when they stood up to american jingoism during the first Bush presidency.

Second, many people (here in Sweden at least) are resentful of the EU and France's foreign political arrogance in general. I can safely say I consider de Gaulle to have been an arrogant prick, and that opinion appears widespread. Some people go even further and make cracks about how the EU was France's way of conquering Germany by diplomacy when they could not do so in war.

Yes, that is true. France's foreign policy as such is quite france-centered. Like any country, they are using their influence to further their own aims. Every country does that. The French are more obnoxious about it, though, that is certainly true.

[Knife]

Plus, this only started in force when they stood up to american jingoism during the first Bush presidency.

French bashing has been a popular sport long before that man, and quite bad frog bashing. Between resentment for 'bailing them out twice' but the French bailing out of NATO militarily, resentment for their fuck ups in Nam, which the Americans tried and failed their hand at (so we're not scot free on that one either) and quite honestly their 'save the French culture from encroching Americanism' sprinkled on top.

There is plenty in there to foster resentment or perceived resentment, and it's a lot older than King George.