Originally Posted by Aardvark:
ychtt,

Can you prove that the Georgian forces are American led as opposed to American trained?

Didn't you read the "evidence of US military build up" article I posted that says over a thousand U.S forces(probably way more) are taking part in miltary "exercises" ?

Originally Posted by Aardvark:
This conflict has to be stopped quickly, but Saakashvili has declared war. This is not a mouse that roared, this is someone who knows he has western support.

Exactly !
Isn't it completely obvious that Georgia would never attempt to instigate action and take on the military might of the Russians alone, knowing they'd get their butts kicked (and probably are) ?
So why the attack ? Obviously this is the work of the Americans.

Originally Posted by Aardvark:
Georgia is pro-EU and pro-NATO. Saakashvili is a US educated lawyer.

Is that reason to back them or to oppose them ? :-) :-)

Originally Posted by Aardvark:
Most Georgians I met, and I have lived there and worked there for a few weeks, are on our side.

They think they are on the side of the "west" as we're dragged into the false debates about west and east, democracy and communism etc.

No doubt there are good and bad people on both sides and Russia is no angel either and equally corrupt as Western governments are here.
The point is that Russia were attacked and we're all being used(including Georgia) like pawns in a chess game by the elite, (no doubt under the command of Mr "Lunatic" Cheney since Bush was in Bejing), who want an escalation of the conflict and control the neocons.
Remember how many times I've posted articles clearly showing how the U.S has aided foreign states/malitias like the Taliban and Al-Quaeda to further their foreign and domestic interests ? If not then it's time to face up to the truth.

Originally Posted by Aardvark:
They expect us to be on there side It will be a hard call.

Who is us ?
NATO and the EU ?
The average peace loving person who can see no reason for U.S backed conflict ?
The "west" ?

No doubt any possible escalation will be sold on the same false lie that Bush made when he said "either you are with us or you're with the terrorists".

Even if they are the terrorists instigating the conflict. :-)

Originally Posted by nemo:
Georgian president is just a pathological liar! He puts the blame for south Ossetia on the Russians.

As do the media who try to spin the story that Russia are the aggressor when it's clearly stated that Georgia instigated the attack, and further vindicated by your good self.

The analogy is like: someone attacks me, so I fight back, then the media reports that I am attacking.

People who believe the propaganda simply have not studied admitted and government declassified false flag terrorist events like the gulf of tonkin incident that led to the vietnam war. (more recently 9/11).

My god even Cheney recently admitted he wanted to build Iranian boats and fire them at U.S forces ! :-) Is it not obvious what this event is too ?

Originally Posted by kernow:
It is unwise to enter a fight you know you won't win!

Not if you're part of the elite who profit from never ending war$.
Vietnam was never meant to be won.
Neither is the "100 year war"in Iraq or the "war on terror" :-)

Originally Posted by nemo:
But I am back from South Ossetia (been engaged in the Red Cross mission) and I could see everything with my own eyes not by telly. Now look. It has been hell, which Saakashvili made! Key city of South Ossetia Tskhinvali has been ruined almost completely by Georgian howitzers and rocket complexes “Hailstones”. Several villages inhabited by Ossetins are have been razed to the ground by Georgian aircraft. Saakashvili just deliberately eliminated the civil population and the Russian peacekeepers who were hurdle on the way.

No way nemo - the people on the forum understand it far better than you and that's the end of it.

Forget the fact that this a US led attack meant to unstabilize Western-Russian relations(haven't we seen this coming for a while?) and possibly put us perilously close to world war now.

No the people know better than you and are with the west, end of story (even if the west has declared war on their own populations).

More important than facing the uncomfortable truth about what is attempted at being engineered is to be on the "winning team", even if western humanity possibly loses everything in the process by the same people that wish to destroy us :-)
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Originally Posted by Aardvark:
I am very sad about what's happening. My Georgian interpreter was a quarter Osset and there were Osset villages in my AoR during observation of the Presidential elections. Georgia is one of these countries with centuries old intermingling of ethnic communities - we had Leki, Osset, Azeri and Armenian villages to observe. There were also Kisti, a Chechen sub-group, in the Pankisi Gorge, but for security reasons we didn't go there.

The Georgians were very hospitable and I have many happy memories of my time there, as I have happy memories of my time in Moscow and Ekaterinburg with the Russians.

Yes it is a very sad time, especially for those personally involved with these people so must be very difficult for you - my sympathies.

Originally Posted by Aardvark:
I will be paying more attention to reports from Tbilisi than from Peking/Beijing. There is real potential for this conflict to expand beyond the currently limited area that is affected

I totally agree.

Originally Posted by Aardvark:
(look what happened when a Bosnian Serb teenager shot an Austrian aristocrat - a million Brits died).

Forgive me, which event was this ?

Originally Posted by Aardvark:
The USA cannot allow Russia to reoccupy former Soviet states that are independent under the pretext of protecting Russians. There are substantial Russian minorities in 3 EU states - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In Latvia and Estonia Russians do not have full civic rights and can't vote. That could lead to a pretext for invasion.

Russians live in all central Asian Republics. The Ukraine is seriously split between the pro-EU west and the pro-Russian east.

A difficult dillema.....

You say "under the pretext of protecting Russians" - do you believe Russia is more concerned about the build up of American bases in eastern Europe than large Russian minorities in EU states ?

If so what should they do ?

Personally I think the Americans are testing them to see how they will react to this turn of events - god knows how it will unfold, peacefully soon I hope.
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Originally Posted by :
Those Ossets who are not in south Ossetia have equal civil rights. Do the Georgians who live/lived in south Ossetia have the same rights as Ossets?

They don't have the right to govern themselves though and the Georgians do.

Good on South Ossetia and good on Russia for once.
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Originally Posted by Westcountryman:
Will NATO and the EU just sit idly by? Probably.

Hopefully.
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Originally Posted by BonnieDundee:
They don't have the right to govern themselves though and the Georgians do.

Good on South Ossetia and good on Russia for once.

Yes, Russia trying to re-assert its dominance in the region under the pretence of 'protecting Russian citizens'. What a great idea.

I just hope for the Russians' sake that they don't try the same thing in the Baltic states.
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Originally Posted by BonnieDundee:
Hopefully.

We tried that route before, I believe it was called 'appeasement'.
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ychtt, The Bosnian Serb teenager was Gavril Princip, the Austrian was Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The shooting took place in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914. As a result European political leaders got involved in a series of event that culminated in WWI.
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Bonnie Dundee,

If all Osset communities were contiguous you could have one independent Ossetia, but that's not the case. Your obsession with self-determination for every village of 2-300 people isolated within regions dominated by other ethnic groups is frankly strange. Georgia has many ethnic minorities that live in small communities separate from any similar groups. Often communities are mixed and one street might belong to one group and the next street to another. In the former Soviet Republics there was a lot of inter-ethnic marriage and movement so that the communities are not homogenous. You cannot give all Ossets self-determination if they are scattered and cannot link together without forcing other ethnic groups, often the majority in an area, to abandon their homes. You don't address ethnic cleansing or majority depravation when you discuss these issues; you haven't even come up with a 'fair' solution for Kosovo that doesn't involve the Serbs sacrificing towns and villages where they were the majority, or a substantial minority, for 500+ years.

This is the ethnic mix in Georgia:

Ethnic groups: Georgians 83.3%, Azeris 6.5%, Armenians 5.7%, Russians 1.5%, Ossetians 0.9%, other 1.6%

The minority communities are scattered and often isolated from those of their ethnic group. They have no independent resources and for them all to have the self-determination you obsess about would mean creating hundreds of non-viable statelets incapable of supporting themselves.

I note that you have condemned Georgia, but have not asked for a unification of North and South Ossetia into a single independent country. That would mean upsetting the peace loving Russians who would turn the region into another Chechnya - look how far Ossetia is from Chechnya. The Ossets are not ethnic Russians, but have taken Russian citizenship to separate themselves from the Georgians, with whom their villages were intermingled. The area known as South Ossetia formerly contained Georgian villages - some of these have been the subject of ethnic cleansing. Why shouldn't they have self-determination within Ossetia?

Your theory of self-determination is not based on any real understanding of world history or geography or cultural or ethnic intermingling or separation.

Do you believe that all ethnic minorities in all countries, no matter when they arrived, should have self-determination? The world would divide into thousands of statelets incapable of trading, incapable of functioning, incapable of formulating international policy. There are only 500 or so Samaritans left, split between Israel, Palestine and Jordan - how would you give them self-determination? What about the Liv? The Ladina speakers of the Fassa Valley?

You talked of Kosovo being viable, even though 90% of its economy is foreign aid. How many millions of people would live in statelets existing on foreign aid with no ports, no airports, no main roads, no factories no nothing. Look at the tribal mix of Africa that bears no relationship to national boundaries. Try sorting that mess out on the basis of self-determination.

The Russians are playing realpolitik in the Caucasus. There are several ethnic groups in Dagestan alone. The Ossets, Abkhaz, Kistis etc are small ethnic groups who were swallowed into the Russian Empire in Czarist times. Georgia was annexed at the start of the 19th century as a buffer against the Ottomans. Many of the ethnic groups are Muslim. The Russians have largely left Georgia, but they are still present in large numbers in the 'republics' of southern Russia. They don't want to give up territory to anyone.

The love of South Ossetia is countered by a fear of North Ossetian independence, which will not be achieved, as the Chechens have discovered at the cost of the total destruction of their capital, tens of thousands of lives and accounts of mass rape by Russian soldiers. The Ossets will be a subject people of the Russians and there is no knowing whether they would be better off under Georgia or not.

BD, I assume, since you argue that 0.9% of Georgia's population in scattered communities of only a few hundred people are entitled to self-determination, you have no objection whatsoever to the Kashmiris in Birmingham having their own state. The English in Edinburgh are considerably more than 0.9% of the population and should have their own state within the semi-autonomous Scotland. The Arabs in Glasgow should also have their own state. Fair dos.
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Originally Posted by Aardvark:
ychtt, The Bosnian Serb teenager was Gavril Princip, the Austrian was Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The shooting took place in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914. As a result European political leaders got involved in a series of event that culminated in WWI.

Just proves how little control politicians and governments can have especially when other interested parties want war
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Again, IT'S ABOUT THE OIL. THE DAMN OIL. The oil pipeline running from Afgan
to Georgia and eventually to Europe. Of course Great Britain won't stop it.
They're backing it in the shadows. Make the US the bully (which we are) and
destroying them in the process. We are the scapegoats.

Georgia has received big bucks from the IMF/World Bank.

That's why we're pulling out of Iraq and refocusing on the
Iran/China/Russia alignment. We'll cause CHAOS within
Russia/Iran/China and the bordering countries around
Russia/Iran/China. The CHAOS of one lone Chinese man
killing family members of an U.S. Olympic coach and then
killing himself. Yeah, right. Of course, the intelligence
community is behind this.

Remember, Russia kicked out the international financial community
and plutocrats and Iran won't allow them their Central Bank. Iran
making oil deals with other countries.

We want those countries to see who's the boss.

Their troublesome to the EU/Israel/US and their future one world.
They MUST cooperate.

Their not be happy until they control the world's food, energy, and
food supply. That be the powers of Europe/U.S./Israel
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