Russian nationalists, Russian geopolitics

Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 14 August 2008 00:24.

Geopolitics trumps everything, they say. That’s a pretty good rule, and pretty apposite in the case of the Russian invasion of Georgia now. The South Ossetians and Abkhazians are getting what they want, which is freedom from ethnic Georgia. They will doubtless feel that the military aggression they have wilfully exhibited towards the Georgians has paid off in the most handsome manner imaginable. But they are only foils for the real objectives of the Russian campaign. The problem is that no one knows exactly what those objectives are, and how far Russia must go to meet them. And they ain’t saying.

The possible objectives are:-

1. To prevent Georgia from joining NATO, thereby furthering the latter’s ambition to encircle the bear.

2. To make a gesture in the direction of empire unmistakable to other Western-oriented neighbours, and also to the world community (not coincidental, it seems to me, at the moment when China is announcing to a watching world its own arrival as a major international power).

3. Possibly, if Russia seeks to install a puppet government in a defeated Georgia, to exercise control over the movement of oil and gas supplies across Georgian territory.

Meanwhile, the Western press has moved swiftly to engineer public sympathy for poor little Georgia, notwithstanding the fact that Georgia was an inexplicable aggressor (or almost inexplicable). Judging from that Telegraph thread not many thinking folk are content to be engineered.

Here’s Stratfor’s somewhat kosher but still worthwhile, current take - not illuminating enough, but as good as I can find at present:-

The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power

The Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. The United States has been absorbed in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as potential conflict with Iran and a destabilizing situation in Pakistan. It has no strategic ground forces in reserve and is in no position to intervene on the Russian periphery. This, as we have argued, has opened a window of opportunity for the Russians to reassert their influence in the former Soviet sphere. Moscow did not have to concern itself with the potential response of the United States or Europe; hence, the invasion did not shift the balance of power. The balance of power had already shifted, and it was up to the Russians when to make this public. They did that Aug. 8.

Let’s begin simply by reviewing the last few days.

On the night of Thursday, Aug. 7, forces of the Republic of Georgia drove across the border of South Ossetia, a secessionist region of Georgia that has functioned as an independent entity since the fall of the Soviet Union. The forces drove on to the capital, Tskhinvali, which is close to the border. Georgian forces got bogged down while trying to take the city. In spite of heavy fighting, they never fully secured the city, nor the rest of South Ossetia.

On the morning of Aug. 8, Russian forces entered South Ossetia, using armored and motorized infantry forces along with air power. South Ossetia was informally aligned with Russia, and Russia acted to prevent the region’s absorption by Georgia. Given the speed with which the Russians responded — within hours of the Georgian attack — the Russians were expecting the Georgian attack and were themselves at their jumping-off points. The counterattack was carefully planned and competently executed, and over the next 48 hours, the Russians succeeded in defeating the main Georgian force and forcing a retreat. By Sunday, Aug. 10, the Russians had consolidated their position in South Ossetia.

On Monday, the Russians extended their offensive into Georgia proper, attacking on two axes. One was south from South Ossetia to the Georgian city of Gori. The other drive was from Abkhazia, another secessionist region of Georgia aligned with the Russians. This drive was designed to cut the road between the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and its ports. By this point, the Russians had bombed the military airfields at Marneuli and Vaziani and appeared to have disabled radars at the international airport in Tbilisi. These moves brought Russian forces to within 40 miles of the Georgian capital, while making outside reinforcement and resupply of Georgian forces extremely difficult should anyone wish to undertake it.

The Mystery Behind the Georgian Invasion

To understand Russian thinking, we need to look at two events. The first is the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. From the U.S. and European point of view, the Orange Revolution represented a triumph of democracy and Western influence. From the Russian point of view, as Moscow made clear, the Orange Revolution was a CIA-funded intrusion into the internal affairs of Ukraine, designed to draw Ukraine into NATO and add to the encirclement of Russia. U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had promised the Russians that NATO would not expand into the former Soviet Union empire.

That promise had already been broken in 1998 by NATO’s expansion to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — and again in the 2004 expansion, which absorbed not only the rest of the former Soviet satellites in what is now Central Europe, but also the three Baltic states, which had been components of the Soviet Union.

The Russians had tolerated all that, but the discussion of including Ukraine in NATO represented a fundamental threat to Russia’s national security. It would have rendered Russia indefensible and threatened to destabilize the Russian Federation itself. When the United States went so far as to suggest that Georgia be included as well, bringing NATO deeper into the Caucasus, the Russian conclusion — publicly stated — was that the United States in particular intended to encircle and break Russia.

The second and lesser event was the decision by Europe and the United States to back Kosovo’s separation from Serbia. The Russians were friendly with Serbia, but the deeper issue for Russia was this: The principle of Europe since World War II was that, to prevent conflict, national borders would not be changed. If that principle were violated in Kosovo, other border shifts — including demands by various regions for independence from Russia — might follow. The Russians publicly and privately asked that Kosovo not be given formal independence, but instead continue its informal autonomy, which was the same thing in practical terms. Russia’s requests were ignored.

From the Ukrainian experience, the Russians became convinced that the United States was engaged in a plan of strategic encirclement and strangulation of Russia. From the Kosovo experience, they concluded that the United States and Europe were not prepared to consider Russian wishes even in fairly minor affairs. That was the breaking point. If Russian desires could not be accommodated even in a minor matter like this, then clearly Russia and the West were in conflict. For the Russians, as we said, the question was how to respond. Having declined to respond in Kosovo, the Russians decided to respond where they had all the cards: in South Ossetia.

Moscow had two motives, the lesser of which was as a tit-for-tat over Kosovo. If Kosovo could be declared independent under Western sponsorship, then South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway regions of Georgia, could be declared independent under Russian sponsorship. Any objections from the United States and Europe would simply confirm their hypocrisy. This was important for internal Russian political reasons, but the second motive was far more important.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once said that the fall of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical disaster. This didn’t mean that he wanted to retain the Soviet state; rather, it meant that the disintegration of the Soviet Union had created a situation in which Russian national security was threatened by Western interests. As an example, consider that during the Cold War, St. Petersburg was about 1,200 miles away from a NATO country. Today it is about 60 miles away from Estonia, a NATO member. The disintegration of the Soviet Union had left Russia surrounded by a group of countries hostile to Russian interests in various degrees and heavily influenced by the United States, Europe and, in some cases, China.

Resurrecting the Russian Sphere

Putin did not want to re-establish the Soviet Union, but he did want to re-establish the Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union region. To accomplish that, he had to do two things. First, he had to re-establish the credibility of the Russian army as a fighting force, at least in the context of its region. Second, he had to establish that Western guarantees, including NATO membership, meant nothing in the face of Russian power. He did not want to confront NATO directly, but he did want to confront and defeat a power that was closely aligned with the United States, had U.S. support, aid and advisers and was widely seen as being under American protection. Georgia was the perfect choice.

By invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not brilliantly), Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian army. But far more importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American consumption. It is something that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts and the Central Asians need to digest. Indeed, it is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to Poland and the Czech Republic as well. The United States wants to place ballistic missile defense installations in those countries, and the Russians want them to understand that allowing this to happen increases their risk, not their security.

The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.

The Russians also know something else that is of vital importance: For the United States, the Middle East is far more important than the Caucasus, and Iran is particularly important. The United States wants the Russians to participate in sanctions against Iran. Even more importantly, they do not want the Russians to sell weapons to Iran, particularly the highly effective S-300 air defense system. Georgia is a marginal issue to the United States; Iran is a central issue. The Russians are in a position to pose serious problems for the United States not only in Iran, but also with weapons sales to other countries, like Syria.

Therefore, the United States has a problem — it either must reorient its strategy away from the Middle East and toward the Caucasus, or it has to seriously limit its response to Georgia to avoid a Russian counter in Iran. Even if the United States had an appetite for another war in Georgia at this time, it would have to calculate the Russian response in Iran — and possibly in Afghanistan (even though Moscow’s interests there are currently aligned with those of Washington).

In other words, the Russians have backed the Americans into a corner. The Europeans, who for the most part lack expeditionary militaries and are dependent upon Russian energy exports, have even fewer options. If nothing else happens, the Russians will have demonstrated that they have resumed their role as a regional power. Russia is not a global power by any means, but a significant regional power with lots of nuclear weapons and an economy that isn’t all too shabby at the moment. It has also compelled every state on the Russian periphery to re-evaluate its position relative to Moscow. As for Georgia, the Russians appear ready to demand the resignation of President Mikhail Saakashvili. Militarily, that is their option. That is all they wanted to demonstrate, and they have demonstrated it.

The war in Georgia, therefore, is Russia’s public return to great power status. This is not something that just happened — it has been unfolding ever since Putin took power, and with growing intensity in the past five years. Part of it has to do with the increase of Russian power, but a great deal of it has to do with the fact that the Middle Eastern wars have left the United States off-balance and short on resources. As we have written, this conflict created a window of opportunity. The Russian goal is to use that window to assert a new reality throughout the region while the Americans are tied down elsewhere and dependent on the Russians. The war was far from a surprise; it has been building for months. But the geopolitical foundations of the war have been building since 1992. Russia has been an empire for centuries. The last 15 years or so were not the new reality, but simply an aberration that would be rectified. And now it is being rectified.

Tags: World Affairs

Comments:

Posted by Robert Reis on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:37 | #

The usual suspects who control the media and politics of the United States are once more lying to the American people and to the world. Here are the facts that can be easily verified within the mainstream media, but are buried beneath the rhetoric of anti-Russianism. — David Duke

Here are the Cold Hard Facts:

1) Ossetia is a ninety percent Russian area. Georgia has made repeated efforts to ethnically cleanse the region. Russian peacekeeping troops have been in Ossetia for years and were approved in international agreements so as to protect the citizens of the region from attacks by the Georgian military.

2) Georgia, not Russia, started this war. Georgia invaded Ossetia trying to take control of the region and ethnically cleanse the Russian population.

3) The Georgian Army, commanded by their Minister of Defense (who is also an Israeli citizen), launched a surprise invasion and attack that caused the deaths of at least a thousand people in its first 24 hours. This attack was committed while the attention of the world was on the Olympics.

4) In the wake of Georgia’s military invasion and massacres, Russia responded by battling to protect the Ossetian people and fighting the Georgia military so it could not continue its invasion and assault. Thousands of Ossetian civilians became refugees from the Georgian assault.

5) Instead of reporting these cold, hard facts to the world, the Jewish-influenced media has been dishonestly reporting that the Zionist-allied Georgian state is a victim of “Russian aggression” and a “Russian invasion.” Georgia invaded, bombed, and massacred the people of Ossetia to start this conflict. On the cable news networks for hours after the Georgian launched invasion and massacres in Ossetia, all Americans were permitted to see was the Georgia President and Jewish U.S. State Department officials screaming about how Georgia was “invaded” by Russia!

6) Instead of condemning Georgia from the outset for the invasion and massacre, Neocon controlled politicians such as George Bush are condemning Russia and attempting to move America and Europe toward a completely unjustified conflict with Russia.

Now I offer you six reasons why the heavily Jewish-influenced media and political establishment of America side with Georgia

1) As Israeli newspapers freely report, Israel has long allied itself with Georgia, trained its troops, and supplied weapons to Georgia. Key figures in the Georgia government are Israeli citizens and partisans for Israel, including the “Georgian” who directly launched the war, Defense Minister Davit Kezerashvili. The major “Georgia” Spokesman is Temur Yakobashvili, also an Israeli citizen, is Georgia’s minister of reintegration.

2) Israel has strategic oil pipeline and economic interests in Georgia that it wants to keep under control.

3) Israel and Jewish powerbrokers around the world are angry with Russia because Russia keeps the Jewish Neocon-controlled United States from total domination of United Nations policy toward Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and toward a war against Iran.

4) The Russian government has had the courage to prosecute some of the Jewish criminal Oligarchs in Russia such as Berezovsky, Gusinsky, Khodorkovsky and others, a great many of whom have fled with their stolen billions to Israel and other nations.

5) Russia is a democratic state, and not controlled by special interests such as the United States is by AIPAC and Jewish campaign money. While Jewish-influenced newspapers and politicians complain about “democracy in Russia,” America maintains a completely controlled two party system that is structured to stifle Third Party dissent and representation. Russia is no longer a communist state but an anti-communist state in the true sense. While Russia has moved toward more freedom and healthy national sentiment, America has moved toward more state control of every aspect of life. Ironically, today American policy is dominated by Neocons, a Jewish extremist led group that was founded by followers of Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein) the notorious Jewish Bolshevik head of the Red Army in the early years of the Communist revolution in Russia, a man who murdered millions of Christians.

6) Zionists are trying to make the great, overwhelming White nation of Russia an enemy of America and Europe because nationalist Russia stymies their plans for the Mideast and for the New World Order. The conflict between Russia and Georgia is not in the true interest of either country, but one in which their main enemy, Russia is weakened both financially and in the court of world opinion, and Israel gets to sell Georgia more weapons. Once you understand the powerful role of the Jewish supremacists in media and government you can begin understand the nature of the world’s major conflicts.

What it all boils down to is simply the fact that powerful Jewish influence in politics and media in the United States see it in Israel’s interest and the interest of the Jewish people to side with Georgia and try to harm Russia. Sadly, as reflected by our Israeli policy, by our catastrophic War for Israel in Iraq, by our Jewish-influenced tottering to the brink of a cataclysmic war with Iran, and by this insane escalation of conflict with anti-communist Russia, we are acting not in the interest of the American people, not in the interest of freedom, justice or fairness, but simply showing our complete subservience to the Jewish extremists.–David Duke

Posted by Robert Reis on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:10 | #

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3580136,00.html
The fact that Georgia’s defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation.

Georgia’s Minister tasked with the conflict zones is Temuri Yakobashvili,

Yakobashvili is a Jew and is fluent in Hebrew. “We are now in a fight against the great Russia,” he said, “and our hope is to receive assistance from the White House, because Georgia cannot survive on its own.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:30 | #

McInsane’s Jewish foreign policy advisor is a paid agent of the government of Georgia:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/08/georgia-paid-400k-to-mccains-top.html

(It never ends with these guys. It just never ends. Welcome to Jewish Neocon Central, formerly known as the United States of America.)

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:46 | #

World War I was a war for the Jews( * ), World War II was a war for the Jews, the Iraq War is a war for the Jews, any Iran War, if one happens, will be a war for the Jews, and now in the offing is a U.S.-Russian or NATO-Russian war ostensibly over Georgia (imagine if McInsane wins!), in reality just like all the others, a war for the Jews.
______

( * Until the U.S.‘s entry it wasn’t a “world war” but something like the Franco-Prussian War albeit on a grander scale. The Jews maneuvered us into what was a limited European war about to be concluded in favor of the Central Powers, which turned it into what is known as “World War I,” this according to Benjamin Freedman who attended many of the meetings in D.C. that led to the U.S. getting into the war, knew many of the Jewish and other personages who decided we’d get into that war, and attended the Versailles Conference afterward. The Jews maneuvered the U.S. into that war, turning it into a World War and leading to Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s defeat, in order to secure for Zionist Jewry Britain’s promise of Palestine for their homeland. The event known as “World War I” [the event that resulted from the U.S.‘s entry into a European war in 1917] was, therefore, a war for the Jews.)

Posted by EA (European American) Steve on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:54 | #

I support Russia, South Ossetia, and Abkakia. The Georgian National Government is committing mass genocide. Even putting moral principle aside, I find it in our interest to have a strong Russia, to hold onto its resources (for our race), and fend off invasions. In the future, a strong Russia may be able to fend off an Asian (or other) invasion of not just Europe, but also White North America. We need a major power, to compete with China and India, after America falls. America is virtually guaranteed to slide to 2nd-rate, even if still integrated;multi-racial and debt-ridden, America is a sinking ship. (From this point on, America’s military might is only declining. We will be weaker in the next decade than we are now, and weaker in the 2020’s than in the 2010’s, and so forth.)

I am upset with the American and Jewish neocons, who want to destroy Russia to a complete overthrow. However, it’s actually against the Jews’ interests to destroy Russia. Whites and borderline Whites need a strong power to defend them; and Christians and religious Jews need a strong Judeo-Christian force to defend them. The Islamic World, anti-Religion China, and Hindu India are opposed to Christian and/or Jewish worship; a loss of a Judeo-Christian haven is much worse than overhearing a Christmas celebration, even for a religious Jew.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:29 | #

“a loss of a Judeo-Christian haven is much worse than overhearing a Christmas celebration, even for a religious Jew.” (—EA Steve)

Don’t bet on that. The degree to which lots of Jews HATE Christmas would astound Eurochristians if they knew.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:31 | #

Do they hate it enough to do something amounting to cutting off their nose to spite their face? Yes.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:38 | #

They’re deliriously happy over this for example. They’re DYING to see the last of Eurochristians.

Posted by Bill on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:36 | #

The Cold War is back, and it may not be cold for very long: Toward a Broader Russia-US military confrontation?

Both neocons and neolibs now have a unified enemy again, and a propaganda cause behind which to mobilize.

Note that neoliberal hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski, a chief architect behind imperial plans targeted against Russian and Chinese geostrategic agendas, has influence behind both US presidential aspirants, Barack Obama and John McCain. His ruthless colleague and neocon counterpart, Henry Kissinger is in McCain’s camp.

Washington functionaries and 90 percent of the media are marching uniformly with propaganda pushing the idea that it was a Russian attack on “sovereign” Georgia, not an armed response to an aggressive provocation by Georgia armed with US troops, covert operatives and US firepower.

The western media is trumpeting that “something has to be done to show the Russians that they can’t just run roughshod over the continent,” while the actions of US covert operations, unacknowledged American fatalities (dead intelligence assets, soldiers lying dead in the streets of Ossetia) get silence. Note how the massive propaganda apparatus, a save-Georgia public relations machine (identical to the save-Iraqi-babies campaign launched before the Gulf War) was in place, seemingly before the fighting even started.

There is a good reason why Kissinger and the Bush family appeared so relaxed at the Beijing Olympic Games. The top echelons of the Anglo-American empire have already set up the “chessboard,” with multiple contingencies. It’s all been taken care of.

Barring miraculous developments, Georgia has become the new Vietnam, complete with fear of commies, oil supplies threatened (genuinely as well as fictionally), and real world war. The perfect planetary conflagration.

Rank and file Americans, the entire world, may be sick of war and deception, but fear of a mightily-armed Russia—a true, living superpower adversary that actually dropped bombs and rolled in tanks—could do the trick in a way that 9/11 and phantom terrorists did not.

Watch Bush/Cheney. They are not done.

Top of Page

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:52 | #

Read the Vdare.com log entry linked at the word “this” in my comment above. It’s saying two things (among others): we’re in for an unprecedented civilizational demographic disaster if we continue current policy, and it’s not too late to avoid that disaster if only we change that policy.

All right now, forget Kevin MacDonald. Forget he did his research, forget he wrote his books. Forget he ever existed.

No one ever heard of Kevin MacDonald, all right?

And forget the past, forget 1965, that’s over and done with, let’s not dwell on it, what’s done is done, no recriminations, no resentments. It’s water under the bridge. Who did it? I dunno. Some say the Jews; they deny it. The Realist over at Inverted World denies it vociferously.

OK, I guess it’s not important: there are more important things staring us in the face and we’ve got to get this thing fixed, so let’s drop that other stuff, let’s drop the blame game. We’re sorry. Jews are fine, they never lifted a finger to harm this country, never did a thing wrong. They’re great. We’re going to start over with a brand-new slate.

Let’s simply see to a solution to the problem confronting us right now before it gets any worse. Time’s growing short. Let’s just look around us today and determine what the obstacles are to getting the problem straightened out, and the way things used to be demographically restored.

All right, there’s no Kevin MacDonald, there are no resentments over who engineered 1965, we’re starting over from scratch to get this thing solved, this non-stop nightmare ended finally.

Look around. What do we see around us today, not looking back to who the culprit was between 1924 and 1965, but today, all around us? Right now, not forty years ago.

What do we see? The biggest obstacle to getting this thing reversed is:

THE JEWS.

“The Jews?” The Jews. “But I thought you were starting over from scratch, forgetting the past, letting bygones be bygones.” I am. “And it’s still the Jews you come up with as the biggest obstacle?” Yup. “But how are they doing it? They’re only two point five percent of the population.” When you’re only two point five percent of the population but a hundred percent of the media owners, sixty percent of the CEOs, millionaires, and billionaires, have astronomical representation in the other élites and professions who influence things such as the legal profession, college professors, and so on, and pound for pound, man for man, you have a thousand times more ethnocentricity than Euros and you act like a hive of bees each knowing his job instinctively and doing it in unison in matters where all Jews act in unison such as race-replacement immigration (no, JJR, Jews don’t act in unison on everything, such as Israel, but they act in unison on some things and race-replacement immigration is one), you can do stuff like buy/force/intimidate/brainwash a controlling interest in both main political parties, dictate lots of stuff to Congress and the President, inflict a lot of damage.

That’s how.

“But why don’t the goys wake up? Don’t they deserve what they get for being so stupid?” Well, we’ll see: nature imposes a hard penalty for their kind of stupidity. It’s called extinction. Death. Non-existence. We’ll see if they wake up in time. Things are showing signs of stirring in the right direction, I’ll say that.

So, looks like we were right the first time and didn’t have to go through that “forget Kevin MacDonald” charade.

Some things never change, as the expression goes. Or as Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà-Jew all over again!” — we tried to start things off with a new slate, but ... it looks like we’re back where we started.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:57 | #

Couple of Russian guys in the ‘Kwa had a confrontation with Negroes, found out the hard way that “hate crimes” don’t go in reverse, only in one direction:

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2008/08/14/a-real-anti-immigrant-hate-crime/

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:00 | #

Thirty on three. Brave Negroes, ten to one.

Posted by EA Steve on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:02 | #

Do they hate it enough to do something amounting to cutting off their nose to spite their face? Yes.

- Fred Scrooby

Whether they like it or not, it’s in the Jews’ interest to have a strong Russia.

Posted by DW on Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:24 | #

“There were many mercenaries from Ukraine and the Baltic states. We have found dead bodies of African Americans too,” Interfax quoted Kokoity as saying.

“It was a well-prepared and thought-out action, when there was only one opinion provided – the opinion of the USA, Great Britain and several other countries. Everyone started to support this opinion,” Sergei Bagapsh said.

http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/conflicts/15-08-2008/106111-georgia_ossetia-0

Posted by Bert Rustle on Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:04 | #

A quite remarkable interview of David Bakradze, Chairman of the Georgian Parliament, by Stephen Sackur on BBC News’ Hardtalk

... Russian forces have driven Georgian troops out of the tiny separatist enclave of South Ossetia, and they have the firepower to go much further, if the Kremlin wants them to.

Georgia’s President calls it the cold blooded murder of a small country. Is Georgia now paying the price for a massive strategic misjudgement? ...

David Bakradze was pressed repeatedly on why Georgia instigated this recent conflict and in my opinion failed to explain Georgia’s actions.

This interview is definitely worth a look.

Posted by Bill on Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:18 | #

Surprising what you find when your not looking, just joshing - all grist to the mill.

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200806/1212860127.html

Posted by Bill on Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:01 | #

And on the same theme,

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/09/365095.shtml

Posted by Bill on Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:48 | #

Sort of Overview.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WarOnFreedom/message/4596

Posted by snax on Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:02 | #

Who’s this guy? Not bad.

link if embed doesn’t work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PmysTGjwYk

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:23 | #

What’s up with this sudden explosion in Georgia? This article is the whole of it, as far as I’m concerned: the Jewish race-replacement advocates — nineteen million nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine thousand nine-hundred-and-ninety-four Jews, or 99.99997% of a worldwide population of twenty million Jews (but only 99.99996% if we leave out Paul Nachman, so Jobling is right, it’s not “all Jews”!) — the Jewish race-replacement advocates HATE the nationalism of Putin’s Russia and its associated rejection of Jewish hegemony over that country, rejection of Jewish overlordship of the sort we’ve been shriveling-up-and-dying under for forty-odd years here in the United States of Kwamerikosher.

Posted by cladrastis on Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:59 | #

Snax,

That would be the Obamanation’s number one talking head cheerleader, Keith Olbermann.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:56 | #

James McGrath, posting in the Filling the Empirical Gap thread, links to a god damned good blog (either his own, or one he likes, presumably). Check this out:

http://westerndefence.blogspot.com/2008/08/russia-and-free-world.html

George Bush has declared that Russia’s actions in Georgia have damaged its relations with the ‘Free World’, hmmmmm!

The same Free World where its governments unleash millions of third world savages on their own people?

The same Free World where the indigenous peoples are banned from objecting to this third world invasion, sponsored by its governments, and threatened with persecution and imprisonment if they do oppose it?

The same Free World where half of our incomes are stolen by those very same states, much of it to pay for the health, lodgings, employment (or more often unemployment) and education of the same third world invaders?

The same Free World where we are told we have the power to ‘change things’, when in fact all we have is different versions of the same political prostitutes who are selling their peoples down the river?

Well, if that is the Free World, I want nothing to do with it. Although Russia is not perfect, at least their leaders don’t sell their people down the river for a quick buck, at least they don’t steal half their incomes to pay for a third world invasion of African and Islamic savages, which they then unleash against their people!

We are being lied to, we are being whored out for the benefit of these political pimps, the same ones who now condemn Russia for protecting their own people. I know whom I would rather have rule me!

Good stuff.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:24 | #

“links to a god damned good blog (either his own, or one he likes, presumably).” (—my comment)

I just checked it: the blogger at that site isn’t McGrath but Tristan Murphy, blogging from London, U.K.

Posted by MarieSihm on Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:26 | #

I enjoyed reading the first blog on this site. Does anybody know where he is from and who he is? I would like use some of his ideas for an analysis i’m doing on Russia.

Regards,

Marie, Denmark

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:42 | #

Marie,

Robert is an American academic living and working in the Middle East. If you want to get in touch with him I can forward your mail. Just use the contact button under the header.

Posted by Richie Gamer on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:17 | #

I think that Mr. Reis would do well to re-examine the current state of Russia and re-evaluate potential motives for the actions of that government.

Further, the US is in now way subservient to anyone.

Point 4 is the first specific point I will examine. The major reason that the Russian government persecuted the Oligarchs initially was to retake the majority of the country’s most potent industries: petroleum based industries internationally and the Media domestically. As you will remember, once the formerly government run industries were auctioned off, one could purchase major stock for wholesale prices. A few influential and/or rich individuals quickly gobbled up shares and essentially ran the country through these industries. The monopolies that were created devastated the average citizen. In a stroke of deft political maneuvering, the Russian government went after these Oligarchs in every way possible. Most of these efforts resulted in the defacing or death of many wealthy or influential people who wouldn’t be cowed by the government. Needless to say, the fledgling government twisted every imaginable line in their favor; thus, they destroyed what many would call political morality or due process. Key political figures today (Putin) were at the political epicenter of the dismantling of the oligarchs.

The point being that the Russian government didn’t act out of this righteous motivation. They acted against the Oligarchs to recreate the autocratic state that seems to be required to rule such a large nation with such a divers populace. In my opinion, it is this seizing of private industry that reestablished Russia as a legit nation. This crushed something that Americans love dearly: private industry. The reason that Russia got painted the bad guy in situation is the fear of a resurgence of a politically and economically potent Russia. If there is one thing that the Cold War did for the US, it established a sense of fear and paranoia towards an old rival. That’s the biggest reason, in my opinion, that we see Russia as the bad guy. Old fears die-hard and can be easily re-established. Further, the influence of Jewish media is irrelevant to the actions of US media.

Point 5 is my next place of examination. If the US is built with a two party system that is built to stifles the third party (It basically is. I’m not going to try to defend that) than Russia has the One party system that stifles all parties. Look at the stats. The numbers released by the government from the polls show the United Russia Party are so disproportional that even the most hopeful examiner would have to call fraud. There simply aren’t enough people who voted to get the numbers they put out. Second, the incumbent United Russia Party also has the luxury of using the state-run media to promote their candidate with little cost and unregulated ease while “stifling” all candidate that oppose the incumbent. So, if the basic idea of a democracy entails that people examine the candidates they wish to represent them than the Russian system of elections is far from democratic. This has disillusioned millions of Russians to the point of major political apathy. So, Russia has not moved to healthier state of anything. It has simply repressed its people past the point of care or capability. Further, the United States is still one of the freest countries in the world. If we were all in Russia right now, we would have government official trying to shut us down. Political dissidents are not tolerated in Russia. Finally, the Liberals are in power. Where have you been?

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