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811
For Your Information / TUC and Civil Liberties
« on: September 17, 2008, 06:52:38 PM »
13 Civil liberties
Congress expresses its concern at the steady erosion of civil liberties in the UK and in particular the negative impact such attacks have on members' working lives.

Congress congratulates unions who have resisted the imposition of draconian measures in the workplace and unions who have worked with civil liberty campaigners to expose the wider threat posed to civil liberties, including plans for ID cards, 42-day detention and limits on the right to protest.

Congress also expresses its grave concern at the threats to independent journalism posed by the Terrorism Act and other recent legislation. In particular, Congress condemns the threat to jail journalists such as Shiv Malik and Robin Ackroyd for protecting journalistic sources.

Congress recognises the importance of a free media in a democratic society, the essential function fulfilled by whistleblowers and the vital public interest in upholding journalists' rights not to reveal their sources.

Congress condemns attempts to use the Contempt of Court Act, Terrorism Act and other legislation to compel journalists to betray confidential sources in breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Congress urges the General Council to take a lead and work with affiliates to support legal and industrial challenges to defend civil liberties and the right of members to work free from such threats.

National Union of Journalists

The following AMENDMENT was accepted

In paragraph 3, line 1, after 'journalism' insert 'and academic freedom'.

At end of paragraph 3 add:

'Congress also condemns the use of the Terrorism Act to restrict the rights of academics and students to research and study terrorist tactics (as occurred at the University of Nottingham in May).'

Insert new paragraph 5:

'Congress also recognises the importance of academic freedom in guaranteeing a robust democracy.'

University and College Union

812
IN THIS NEWSLETTER: 
1) THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS COUNTRY   
2) PROTEST WHEN NATO COMES TO LONDON 
3) "DEEPLY SADDENED" AGAIN AND AGAIN 
4) GEORGE BUSH DESPERATE FOR "TROPHY STRIKE" 
5) IRAQI ART UNDER OCCUPATION   
6) YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP: NO. 2847

*************************************   
1) THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS COUNTRY

Iraq is the most dangerous country in the world. With at 
least a million civilians killed since the illegal invasion 
in 2003, the daily toll of death and destruction outstrips 
any other country, however much the mainstream media peddles 
George Bush's propaganda that his "surge" is working.   
Journalist Patrick Cockburn, described recently the all too 
frequent reality for the Iraqi people:

"A car bomb exploded in the Shia market town of Dujail, 
north of Baghdad, killing 32 people and wounding 43 others. 
"The smoke filled my house and the shrapnel broke some of 
the windows," said Hussein al-Dujaili. "I went outside the 
house and saw two dead bodies at the gate which had been 
thrown there by the explosion. Some people were in panic and 
others were crying." (See http://tinyurl.com/5tgp9d )

There are 4,500 British troops in the midst of this brutal 
occupation and the horrific instability it has brought in 
its wake. They almost never leave their base at Basra   
airport, on the outskirts of the city. Their only function 
-- at a cost to the British taxpayer of around one billion 
pounds a year -- is to provide political cover for George 
Bush's continuing aggression against the Iraqi people and 
the pillaging of the country's resources.

The most recent polls show that the majority of Iraqi and 
British people continue to want all foreign troops to be 
withdrawn. But, just as George Bush insists he plans to 
reduce US troop levels (they are in fact as high as they 
have ever been in the last five years), Gordon Brown has 
reneged on the promises he made when he became prime 
minister that he would make sizeable reductions in 2008. In 
practice, the number of British troops withdrawn from Iraq 
has been pitifully low.

Stop the War's demonstration at the Labour Party's national 
conference on Saturday 20 September will include the call 
for all British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq now. It's a 
message we will do all we can to press home for as long as 
there is a single soldier left in Iraq.

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD - STOP THE SPREAD OF WAR   
DEMONSTRATE AT THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE 
SATURDAY 20 SEPTEMBER: ASSEMBLE 12.30PM 
ALL SAINTS, MANCHESTER M15 
Updates: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

TRANSPORT DETAILS: See http://tinyurl.com/696px8 or call 020 

7278 6694 
LEAFLETS: Call 020 7278 6694 or download at 
http://www.stopwar.org.uk

*************************************   
2) PROTEST WHEN NATO COMES TO LONDON

NATO defence ministers are meeting in London on Thursday 18 
September and Friday 19 September. They will be here for 
'talks about NATO reorganisation' and the discussions will 
be chaired by our very own defence minister Des Browne. 
Items on the agenda include Afghanistan, US incursions into 
Pakistan and the 'Star Wars' missile defence project.

Well might the NATO warmongers discuss Pakistan, which has 
been a key ally of the US in the 'war on terror', against 
popular opinion in the country which says the alliance has 
brought nothing but violence and instability. The risk of 
igniting a regional war is clearly contained in the illegal 
US attacks on Pakistani territory, which in the past two 
weeks have killed at least 60 Pakistani civilians. The   
chilling shadow over George Bush's decision to sanction 
covert military action is that Pakistan is a nuclear armed 
state.

The US Missile Defence Shield is also on the NATO agenda. 
The Georgian crisis a few weeks ago has prompted 
acceleration of the 'Star Wars' project. The Polish 
government, despite widespread opposition in Poland, has 
agreed to provide bases for the US Interceptor missiles, yet 
another potential provocation to war in Eastern 
Europe.

Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear 
Disarmament are calling a joint protest at the NATO meeting 
on Thursday 18 September and we're asking all our supporters 
in London to be there if they can and to help make this a 
noisy protest. Please publicise the protest as widely as 
possible.

NATO COMES TO LONDON 
STOP THE SPREAD OF WAR   
NO TO US MISSILE DEFENCE 
Thursday 18 September, 12.30pm   
Lancaster House 
Stable Yard Road, 
London SW1A 1BB 
(Nearest tube Green Park)

FURTHER INFORMATION: 
A Stop the War briefing on NATO by Kate Hudson, Chair of 
CND, is available here: http://tinyurl.com/6ml2ty

NO TO NATO DEMONSTRATION APRIL 2009 
On 4-5 April 2009, an international protest, supported by 
Stop the War and antiwar organisations across Europe, is 
being organised outside the NATO conference in Strasbourg, 
France, which will mark the 60th anniversary of NATO's   
foundation. The call will be for NATO, a driving force   
behind global war, to be dismantled. More details to follow.

*************************************   
3) "DEEPLY SADDENED" AGAIN AND AGAIN

UK defence minister Des Browne's well of sadness is clearly 
very deep. In the past week he was three times "deeply   
saddened" by the deaths of three more British soldiers in 
Afghanistan. This brings to 120 the number of military   
casualties killed so far in this unwinnable war.

It's always worth recalling that when Browne's predecessor, 
John Reid, deployed British troops to Helmand -- 
Afghanistan's most dangerous province -- he certainly didn't 
anticipate being "deeply saddened" on a weekly basis. Rather 
he looked forward to the troops leaving "without a shot 
being fired".

With George Bush announcing a "quiet surge" of more troops 
to be sent to Afghanistan and British defence officials 
talking of the British army staying there "for a 
generation", there's clearly going to be a lot more 
pointless death and destruction.

The anti-war movement has always insisted that there is no 
hope of progress in Afghanistan while it is occupied by 
foreign forces. It is our task to mobilise all available 
pressure on the government to act in accordance with the 
majority view of people in this country and in Afghanistan 
that all troops should be withdrawn. Which is why we will be 
demonstrating on Saturday 12 September, at the Labour   
Party's annual conference, with the clear message, Troops 
Home Now.

PAMPHLET: AFGHANISTAN: WHY WE SHOULD GET OUT 
Stop the War has published a new pamphlet, called 
Afghanistan: Why We Should Get Out, with an introduction by 
John Pilger. It will be on sale for Ł1 (reductions for bulk 
orders) at Saturday's demonstration in Manchester and can be 
ordered from Stop the War's national office: Tel 020 7278 
6694

*************************************   
4) GEORGE BUSH DESPERATE FOR "TROPHY STRIKE"

George Bush has signed a secret order allowing US troops to 
operate in Pakistan, without permission from the Pakistani 
government or agreement by the United Nations, contravening 
numerous international laws and conventions. Bush says the 
recent ground assault by US commandos and the big increase 
in the number of US missiles fired from unmanned aircraft 
are directed at al-Qaeda leaders, but the Pakistani 
government and local observers say that most of the dozens 
killed in these attacks have been civilians, the majority of 
them women and children.

The Guardian newspaper suggests a different interpretation 
for these attacks: "Bush is thought to be in a desperate 
push for a trophy strike… before he leaves office." No doubt   
part of the calculation is the hope that this will boost the 
electoral chances of John McCain in his campaign to succeed 
Bush as president. (See http://tinyurl.com/68jpda )

Since 1945, American has bombed 25 countries round the   
world, killing many millions of people (some estimates put 
the figure as high as 20 million). But George Bush has a 
message for all the families grieving as a result of his 
contribution to this horrendous scale of mass slaughter. He 
recently expressed his sorrow, following the US attack in 
Afghanistan which killed 90 civilians: "I am a partner in 
your loss and that of the Afghan people."

And, of course, all those grieving families will be 
comforted by an earlier Bush pronouncement: "America is a 
Nation with a mission -- and that mission comes from our 
most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no   
ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace -- a 
peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and 
woman."

*************************************   
5) IRAQI ART UNDER OCCUPATION

RIDING ON FIRE is an exhibition of paintings and sculptures 
which have been created by Iraqi artists who are determined 
to keep art alive while everything around them is falling 
apart. It opens in London on 19 September and is highly 
recommended to all our supporters as a testament to how 
artists manage to remain creatively active, producing   
stunning works of art, in an unimaginably hostile 
environment.

It is only through overcoming hurdles and hazards which can 
be literally a matter of life and death that these 
twenty-two artists have been able to create their paintings 
and sculptures and get them transported to us in London.

Stop the War is proud to have helped in the organisation of 
RIDING WITH FIRE: IRAQI ART UNDER OCCUPATION, which will run 
at the Artiquea Gallery in south London from 19 September-31 
October. ( See: http://www.artiquea.co.uk )

RIDING WITH FIRE: 
IRAQI ART UNDER OCCUPATION 
19 September - 31 October 
Artiquea Gallery 
82 Wandsworth Bridge Road 
London SW6 2TF

FOR MORE DETAILS: 
WWW: http://www.artiquea.co.uk/ 
TEL: 020 7731 2090 
EMAIL: info@artiquea.co.uk

*************************************   
6) YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP: NO. 2847

"Things are better in Iraq. Life is returning to normal." 
This is the propaganda story from George Bush and the puppet 
Iraqi government, a story dutifully spread -- to its 
continuing shame -- by the mainstream media,. One supposed 
indicator of the good life returning to Iraqis is the   
announcement of lavish plans to build the Baghdad Eye, aimed 
to be the world's largest Ferris wheel. Baghdad citizens 
will be pleased to know that their city, in which there is 
usually only two hours of electricity a day -- and never 
enough to meet essential energy needs -- will at least find 
the power to rotate a 650 feet tall Ferris wheel, carrying 
30 passengers in each of its air conditioned compartments.

813
News Items / Our murderous comedy of errors
« on: September 13, 2008, 09:59:33 AM »
Our murderous comedy of errors

John Pilger

Published 11 September 2008 New Statesman

Last month, “our” aircraft slaughtered nearly 100 Afghan civilians, two-thirds of them children aged three months to 16 years, while they slept

Try to laugh, please. The news is now officially parody and a game for all the family to play.

First question: Why are "we" in Afghanistan? Answer: "To try to help in the country's rebuilding programme." Who says so? Huw Edwards, the BBC's principal newsreader. What wags the Welsh are.

Second question: Why are "we" in Iraq? Answer: To "plant a western-style open democracy". Who says so? Paul Wood, the former BBC defence correspondent, and his boss Helen Boaden, director of BBC News. To prove her point, Boaden supplied Medialens.org with 2,700 words of quotations from Tony Blair and George W Bush. Irony? No, she meant it.

Take Andrew Martin, divisional adviser at BBC Complaints, who has been researching Bush's speeches for "evidence" of noble democratic reasons for laying to waste an ancient civilisation. Says he: "The 'D' word is not there, but the phrase 'united, stable and free' [is] clearly an allusion to it." After all, he says, the invasion of Iraq "was launched as 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'". Moreover, says the BBC man, "in Bush's 1 May 2003 speech (the one on the aircraft carrier) he talked repeatedly about freedom and explicitly about the Iraqi transition to democracy . . . These examples show that these were on Bush's mind before, during and after the invasion."

Try to laugh, please.

Laughing may be difficult, I agree, given the slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan by "coalition" aircraft, including those directed by British forces engaged in "the country's rebuilding programme". The bombing of civilian areas has doubled, along with the deaths of civilians, says Human Rights Watch. Last month, "our" aircraft slaughtered nearly 100 civilians, two-thirds of them children between the ages of three months and 16 years, while they slept, according to eyewitnesses. BBC News initially devoted nine seconds to the Human Rights Watch report, and nothing to the fact that "less than peanuts" (according to an aid worker) is being spent on rebuilding anything in Afghanistan. Such wags, the Welsh.

As for the notion of a "united, stable and free" Iraq, consider the no-bid contracts handed to the major western oil companies for ownership of Iraq's oil. "Theft" is a more truthful word. Written by the companies themselves and US officials, the contracts have been signed off by Bush and Nouri al-Maliki, "prime minister" of Iraq's "democratic" government that resides in an air-conditioned American fortress. This is not news.

Try to laugh, please, while you consider the devastation of Iraq's health, once the best in the Middle East, by the ubiquitous dust from British and US depleted uranium weapons. A World Health Organisation study reporting a cancer epidemic has been suppressed, says its principal author. This has been reported in Britain only in the Glasgow Sunday Herald and the Morning Star. According to a study last year by Basra University Medical College, almost half of all deaths in the contaminated southern provinces were caused by cancer.

Try to laugh, please, at the recent happy-clappy Nurembergs from which will come the next president of the United States. Those paid to keep the record straight have strained to present a spectacle of choice. Barack Obama, the man of "change", wants to "build a 21st-century military . . . to stay on the offensive everywhere". Here comes the new Cold War, with promises of more bombs, more of the militarised society with its 730 bases worldwide, on which Americans spend 42 cents of every tax dollar.

At home, Obama offers no authentic measure that might ease America's grotesque inequality, such as basic health care. John McCain, his Republican opponent, may well be a media cartoon figure - the fake "war hero" now joined with a Shakespeare-banning, gun-loving, religious fanatic - yet his true significance is that he and Obama share essentially the same dangerous prescriptions.

Thousands of decent Americans came to the two nominating conventions to express the dissenting opinion of millions of their compatriots who believe, with good cause, that their democracy is evaporating. They were intimidated, arrested, beaten, pepper-gassed; and they were patronised or ignored by those paid to keep the record straight.

Meanwhile, Justin Webb, the BBC's North America editor, has launched his book about America, his "city on a hill". It is a sort of Mills & Boon view of the rapacious system he admires with such obsequiousness. The book is called Have a Nice Day.

Try to laugh, please.

814
News Items / 100's of cities around the world Chalk4Peace2008 Sept13-21
« on: September 04, 2008, 10:59:04 PM »
100's of cities around the world Chalk4Peace2008 Sept13-21

Please copy this & forward this to your contacts

This is non political campaign- whether we are left, right or centrist,
PEACE is in all of our interests, especially our children
:)

Its Time To Get Out The Chalk!
Global Chalk4Peace2008 - Sept 13 - 21st
During the week of international peace events
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
United Kingdom...United States...Egypt...Austria...Germany...Canada...
Ecuador...Puerto Rico...France...Chile...Iran...Iraq...Mexico...Spain...
Italy...Cypress...Israel... In hundreds of towns and cities - Everywhere!

"Our Streets Are OUR Media"
WE have TOTAL access -
"We CAN Make the difference"
_______________________________________

http://www.infinitepossibility.org
Changing The World By Changing The Conversation"
Please Support The work of this website

----------------------------------------------------------

Mission Possible "Our World Working For ALL of Us"

We CAN Make THE Difference!
THE WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 13th - 21st Chalk4Peace!
On the pavements and sidewalks of our towns and cities

You are invited to Take Action! -
For your local organiser, LOOK IN THE MIRROR

(Scroll down for "WHAT CAN YOU DO?" to Participate in this
GLOBAL outpouring of public art. Where we make
our personal statements for peace on the pavements and sidewalks of
our cities all over our world.")

Chalk4Peace IS HAPPENING!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCjATioFPCI

All around the globe, together we are decorating, dedicating and
declaring, in deep sincerity our collective call for peace.

Chalk4Peace is about our empowerment. We The People, our global
culture, all people everywhere and our common desire to live in peace.

The Chalk4Peace project has already transformed the experience of
thousands of people attending demonstrations for peace and public
gatherings all over the
world during the past 3 years. Chalk4Peace is both a tool and a
conduit for non violent public self expression,
and participation in the growing global movement for peace.

Chalk4Peace is an opportunity for all of us of all ages to make our
feelings known, especially the young, whose future is in dire jeopardy
as our global village falls faster and faster into the fear breeding
fear breeding fear spiral.

Our global culture is teetering on the edge of extinction.

No one person alone can turn this around, but together WE CAN!

"The Structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, one
party,or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative
effort of the whole world"
... Eleanor Roosevelt

Our basic human instincts drive us to seek safety. This is what this
chaos is all about.Our essential human survival instincts are acting
out of context with the wider global cultural need resulting in
mistrust, fear and conflict.

Everywhere the media is bombarding us with WAR TALK, distractions and
negative belief patterns that encourage us to believe that the future
of our world is out of our hands entirely.

One place we still have communal access to, is OUR STREETS.

We can balance our GLOBAL CONVERSATION with collective self-expression
using OUR STREETS AS OUR MEDIA!

Chalk4Peace is one step, a catalyst that can transform our global
conversation as we the people, en masse make our statement that is our
common
aspiration for peace.

START NOW! Just DO IT!

Carry some chalk with you, invite a friend with you, to chalk
inspirations on the pavement whenever and wherever you fancy.

Chalk is harmless, cheap and washes away within a few days.

Especially PARTICIPATE in the Sept 13th - 21st
GLOBAL Chalk4Peace ACTION!

Make it happen in your Community!

(Scroll down further for "WHAT CAN YOU DO?")

Lets us turn our grey streets into a living river of colour and
possibility - With poetry, hearts, peace symbols, empowering
statements, also
expressions of our frustrations and despair.

All will be seen for several days by thousands of people, then as they
are washed away by the elements WE CAN CONTINUE to find fresh places
to Chalk4Peace.

We don't need to be an artist to Chalk4Peace. Every statement, however
small or large becomes part of the amazing tapestry that is our
global future.

This unique event conceivably, could be the largest of its kind in
modern history.

It is a global effort that is happening.

We The People are spreading the word and making the effort to be a
part of this huge creative endeavor to bring Peace back into the equation.

It is our goal for at least one million or more of us to participate
with this sidewalk/pavement chalk extravaganza, at thousands of
locations, in as
many countries, cities and towns around the world as is possible.

So WHAT CAN YOU DO to help make this happen?

1. NETWORK this email to your friends, contacts and where ever else
seems appropriate

2. JOIN the Yahoo group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chalk4Peace

or send a blank email to:
Chalk4Peace-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

also facebook
http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32458235549&ref=mf

To network with others around the world who will be Chalking4Peace.

3. EMAIL:
viziondanz@infinitepossibility.org
to let us know what you are doing in your community, and please send
us pictures. Or to find out how you can participate in the project.

4. ARRANGE with you local businesses, libraries, churches, mosques,
synagogues, restaurants, supermarkets etc to chalk on the pavement
outside their premises during the 13th to 21sr of September and whenever
else.

IDENTIFY public squares such and invite
all your friends and your friends' friends to show up with a few
boxes of chalk, or even get some from your local quarry.

TAKE extra chalk with you to hand out to passers-by.

5. USE this Email as a press release for you local TV, Radio and
Newspapers.
Let them know that Chalk4Peace is happening ASAP to get the
momentum going.

6. DOCUMENT YOUR Chalk4peace actions with photos and video.
Send them to your local media - copies for our website will be greatly
appreciated - send to:
viziondanz@infinitepossibility.org

7. ENGAGE co-creatively in local communal efforts, strengthen
working relationships and find what it takes
to stand for peace and freedom.

8. Have lots of FUN and keep on
Chalking4Peace after the September event.

"FUN The Final Frontier"

How did Chalk4Peace begin?
"Message in a bottle"
http://www.infinitepossibility.org/chalk/message/
http://www.infinitepossibility.org/chalk
http://www.myspace.com/chalk4peace

for Chalk4Peace locations in America
http://www.chalk4peace.org

Its time for us to move beyond the "No to War" position and come
together
"Saying Yes2Peace"

"If we don't create our future, our past will create it for us"

http://www.infinitepossibility.org/yes1
Lets skip the war bit and just get to the peace

Greet someone new today,
look into their eyes, smile, say hello,
shake their hand ...
LET THE PEACE BEGIN!

Brian
:)

--
1+1=11
We Are S.Y.N.E.R.G.Y

"There is nothing wrong with our world,
we are just having a weird conversation"
"Reclaim the conversation"
"Our New World Order IS Love

http://www.infinitepossibility.org
Please support the work of this website
with a financial contribution if you are able to.

Profile @
http://www.infinitepossibility.org/movies
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=522206103
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=viziondanz
http://www.myspace.com/viziondanz
http://www.myspace.com/chalk4peace

Social Acupuncture
http://www.infinitepossibility.org/sa

Sunrise Celebration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFunT6c_Pl0

The Synergy Project video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ecPKHAW0AXA

Waveform/Earthdance documentary
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AIC5T22-MDg

The Movement For Peace Enters A New Phase
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cSDimvFYVU

"This is what democracy looks like"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FZ01Z2pC2Is

Dedicated to the child inside each one of us,
All the children and
All the children to come

815
10,000 anti-war protesters rally outside Republican convention site
ST. PAUL, the United States, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- Anti-war protesters promise on Tuesday more demonstrations and decry police tactics, as the Republican National Convention enters day two in St. Paul, Minn.

Cheri Honkala, a spokesperson for the protesters, told reporters that police arrested more than 280 people Monday during a series of skirmishes that ranged throughout downtown St. Paul, some within blocks of the Xcel Energy Center where the Republican National Convention began its four-day run.

In speaking with reporters Tuesday morning, a dozen protest leaders blamed the confrontations on police and their "intimidating" tactics.

Some of the 4,500 delegates, too, continue to feel harassed.

At a delegate breakfast in downtown St. Paul, the tires were slashed on two buses belonging to the Minnesota delegation, said state Republican Party chair Ron Carey.

On Monday, members of the Connecticut delegation told reporters they were attacked by protesters when they got off their bus near the Xcel Energy Center.

Of those arrested, 130 were booked on felony charges, including one assault on a peace officer.

The 51 people arrested for gross misdemeanors and 103 for misdemeanors had already been released or were expected to be released soon after they were booked.

As President George W. Bush will address the delegates Tuesday night via satellite, Police say they are prepared for violent protests to continue all week, though they are hoping the worst is over.

An estimated 10,000 people of all ages walked slowly down the route from the Capitol to the convention site at the Xcel Energy Center, frequently singing, chanting, and shouting against Bush and the war in Iraq.
 
 

816
Danger grows of NATO-Russian clash in Black Sea

A build-up of naval forces is underway in the Black Sea, involving both NATO and Russian ships. The provocative actions by the US-lead military coalition create the danger of a clash with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Late last week, General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian military’s general staff, claimed that 10 NATO warships were in the Black Sea and that more were on the way.

“In light of the build-up of NATO naval forces in the Black Sea, the [Russian] fleet has also taken on the task of monitoring their activities,” he said.

The ships include two US warships, ostensibly in the region to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia. These have since been joined by a third.

In addition, NATO admitted that four of its vessels are on a “pre-planned deployment” in the Black Sea, “conducting port visits with Romanian and Bulgarian forces”.

The “long-planned routine” exercise Active Endeavor—which is said to involve training in anti-terrorist and anti-pirate manoeuvres—comprises one warship each from Spain, Germany and Poland. They were reportedly later joined by a US frigate for a three-week schedule of port visits and exercises.

While denying a build-up, a NATO spokesperson said that other NATO countries may have ships in the sea. “Obviously, there are other NATO-affiliated nations out doing things,” Lt. Col. Web Wright said.

These reports confirm that at least six NATO vessels are in the Black Sea, meaning that Russian warnings that warships from the western alliance now outnumber their own fleet anchored off the western coast of Georgia are not as far off the mark as is claimed.

Russia has charged the US with using aid as a cover for rearming Georgia. “Normally warships do not deliver aid and this is gunboat diplomacy, this does not make the situation more stable,” said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Cliff Kupchan at the Eurasia Group, a US-based consultancy, was cited as stating, “It is a clever policy to have chosen military-led humanitarian relief.” He went on, “Given this administration’s consistently aggressive approach to protecting American influence, one has to ask how long it will allow Russians to dictate which Georgian port to use.”

On Thursday a US coast guard cutter docked at the Georgian port of Batumi, after the American embassy in Tbilisi had initially stated that it was heading towards the Russian-controlled port of Poti, in line with Georgian requests. According to reports, this statement was later retracted and the Dallas instead unloaded its aid supplies in Batumi.

Last Sunday the US destroyer, USS McFaul, docked at Batumi. The US military says a third ship, USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the US Sixth Fleet, will arrive in Georgia today.

The New York Times August 28 admitted the US was “pursuing a delicate policy of delivering humanitarian aid on military transport planes and ships, apparently to illustrate to the Russians that they do not fully control Georgia’s airspace or coastline.”

The report continued that this policy “has left American and Russian naval vessels manoeuvring in close proximity off the western coast of Georgia, with the Americans concentrated near the southern port of Batumi and the Russians around the central port of Poti. It has also left the Kremlin deeply suspicious of American motives.”

In a further provocative move by the US, the Dallas is to leave Georgia and visit the Ukranian port of Sevastopol the same day. The port is leased by Russia from Ukraine and is integral to its Black Sea operations. In a display of support for the US, Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko has said that the lease will not be extended beyond 2017 and has signed a decree requiring prior notice of all movements by Russian naval vessels and aircraft from Sevastopol.

Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper cited Nogovitsyn as claiming that the US ships are carrying nuclear missiles that could hit Russian targets as far away as St. Petersburg. The RIA news agency claimed that the NATO ships were carrying more than 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles, with more than 50 onboard the USS McFaul alone that could hit ground targets.

On August 26 Reuters reported that Russia’s flagship cruiser, the Moskva, had re-entered the Black Sea for weapons tests. The assistant to the Russian Navy’s commander-in-chief told Russian news agencies the cruiser had put to sea again two days after returning to its base at the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.

Russian warships also reportedly arrived in the separatist region of Abkhazia. Russian deputy admiral Sergei Menyailo said they would “support peace and stability”. He said, “Our tasks include the control of Abkhazia’s territorial waters and the prevention of arms shipments.” The leader of the separatist region said he will invite Russia to establish a naval base at Sukhumi, a deep-water port in the territory.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the extraordinary step of accusing the US of instigating the assault by Georgia on South Ossetia.

“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict to make the situation more tense and create a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president,” Putin said, clearly referring to Republican candidate John McCain, whose foreign policy advisor was a lobbyist for Saakashlivi government.

Putin also said he had reason to believe US military personnel were working with Georgian forces that fought Russians, a prospect he described as “very dangerous.”

The White House dismissed Putin’s assertions as preposterous. At the same time, McCain’s wife Cindy was visiting Georgia and US Vice President Dick Cheney planned to arrive this week, where he is expected to pledge American military assistance.

For his part, Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, has joined the bellicose threats against “Russian aggression” and said, if elected, his administration would be committed to protecting Georgia.

The Los Angeles Times ran an article under the headline, “Why Was Cheney’s Guy in Georgia Just Before the War?” on August 26. The piece named Joseph R. Wood, Cheney’s deputy assistant for national security affairs. It asked, “What was a top national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney doing in Georgia shortly before Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s troops engaged in what became a disastrous fight with South Ossetian rebels—and then Russian troops?”

Nogovitsyn has charged that a US national was amongst the Georgian commando units who invaded South Ossetia. He produced a colour photocopy of a US passport belonging to Michael Lee White from Texas, born in 1967. He told a press conference, “There is a building in Zemonekozi—a settlement to the south of Tskhinvali that was fiercely defended by a Georgian special operations squad. Upon clearing the building, Russian peacekeepers recovered, among other documents, an American passport in the name of Michael Lee White of Texas.”

There is a growing body of evidence and commentary regarding the US role in building up Georgia’s military, with the aim of provoking a conflict with Russia. Writing in the New Statesman August 14 Misha Glenny noted how the US and Israel had worked to arm Georgia, so that “Saakashvili and the hawks around him came to believe the farcical proposition that Georgia’s armed forces could take on the military might of their northern neighbour in a conventional fight and win.”

Glenny noted that the Georgian minister for reintegration of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Temur Yakobashvili, had praised Israel for its military assistance. Following the assault on South Ossetia, Glenny stated, Yakobashvili had said “Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers.” Thanks to its assistance, “We killed 60 Russian soldiers yesterday alone,” he said. “The Russians have lost more than 50 tanks, and we have shot down 11 of their planes. They have sustained enormous damage in terms of manpower.”

It is known that the US and Georgia held joint war games between July 15-31, codenamed Operation Immediate Response, which involved 1,000 US servicemen. One week later, on August 7, Georgian forces attacked South Ossetia.

As to the immediate future, the Times of London reported, “US military planners are now openly considering how to rearm Georgia’s forces” and cited a Pentagon spokesman as stating, “Down the road we will be looking at what may be required to rebuild the Georgian military... right now the mission of the United States military is to provide humanitarian assistance.”

The Times quoted the former British ambassador to Georgia Donald McLaren stating that NATO might have to send troops to the region. If Moscow rejected such a proposal, he said, NATO had only two choices: “To give up and surrender and say to the Russians, ‘It’s your backyard, you’ve won’, or to put men on the ground to protect Georgia’s sovereignty and the east-west oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian and Central Asia.”

McLaren wrote earlier in the Daily Mail that “Georgia is a part of Europe. It is our gateway to Central Asia and, with Russia and Turkey as neighbours and Iraq and Iran not far to the south, its location alone makes it of strategic significance.

“It is a friend and partner in one of the most highly-pressurised parts of the world. Georgia is a vital conduit for energy supplies from the Caspian to its East and the potential of the Central Asian suppliers beyond.

“There are few issues more immediate than energy security and Georgia’s fragile oil pipeline offers us one alternative to dependence on Russia.”

The US offensive against Russia is destabilising the entire region and inexorably drawing the European powers in its wake.

Asia Times reported, “The US-backed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline passes through Georgian territory and letting Russia dictate events in Georgia has a definite implication in terms of energy security, given the fierce pipeline geopolitics in the Eurasian landmass, Europe’s heavy energy dependency on Russia and Moscow’s willingness to rely on the energy card for security bargaining with Europe.

“This alone may explain why the European Union, which has been divided over a response to the Georgian crisis, has largely consented to the US’s muscular reaction. The issue has now turned into a defining moment of the post-Cold War era because of its broader implications.”

Both Germany and France have signalled they have retreated from their earlier opposition to Georgian membership of the European Union. EU and Ukranian leaders are to meet in France on September 9 and sign as association on closer relations. Although this does not spell out whether Ukraine will get EU accession, a recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank argues that the EU cannot afford any more delays in defining and deepening its ties with Ukraine.

Tensions between Russia and Georgia continue to worsen. As Tbilisi announced Friday that it would sever diplomatic ties with Moscow, officials in South Ossetia stated they would seek absorption into Russia.

As well as pitting Georgia and the Ukraine against Russia, the US has embroiled Turkey in a bitter row with Moscow.

Russia argues that the NATO presence in the Black Sea violates the 1936 Montreux Convention, which limits the time non-coastal countries can sail military vessels on the sea to three weeks.

Under the treaty, Turkey—which controls the straits of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles—must be notified 15 days before military ships sail into the sea. These can not remain in the area for longer than 21 days. But Turkey only announced its approval of the US passage on August 20. Russia has warned that Turkey will be held responsible if the US ships do not leave when they are supposed to do so.

817
Mark `Moloch' Brown:The Empire's Coup Man in Georgia
Aug. 12, 2008 (EIRNS) http://larouchepub.com/pr/2008/080813moloch_brown.html


—There is good reason for the British Empire's silence about the attack by Mikhail Saakashvili's Georgia on South Ossetia on Aug. 7, an attack that brought the world to the brink of World War III. Saakashvili was put in power by the duo of British agents—billionaire speculator and Nazi collaborator, George Soros, and Lord Mark Malloch Brown, now the United Kingdom's Minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). And, by tracking the records of the UN Development Program (UNDP) which Malloch Brown administered, and Soros's Open Society Institute and its offshoots, the proverbial check stubs will be found.

Lord Malloch Brown has been in the business of overthrowing governments since 1986, when he left the London Economist for the international section of an agressive political consulting firm in the U.S. called Sawyer Miller, and from there advised the Presidential campaign of Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. He stuck with Aquino through the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, a role about which he boasts. In 1990, he represented the Presidential campaign of Peruvian fascist novelist Mario Varga Llosa, a drug legalization advocate, who lost the election after proposing a vicious austerity program to cut the living standards of Peru's lower classes. Sawyer Miller also helped promote the Dalai Lama against China.

From Sawyer Miller, Malloch Brown spent the next 18 years at the World Bank and the United Nations, forming a deep, but secretive relationship with Soros.

He is also secretive about his finances—he lists only his government salary of about $160,000 on financial disclosure forms. Prior to taking the Ministry job, he served as the Vice Chairman of George Soros's hedge fund, the Quantum Fund in 2007. For a bit of comparison, note that Soros earned billions of dollars heading the Quantum Fund in recent years!

Malloch Brown enhances his meager government salary, however, with a government-subsidized home in London called "The Admiralty House," which is valued at about 7.76 million pounds sterling, according to the British government. Both the Spectator and the Times of London have written exposes of Malloch Brown for this sweetheart deal, where the rent is over $300,000 per year, and for which he "leapfrogged" over 20 higher-ranking cabinet members to get the perk. The price Malloch Brown demanded, to leave Soros's Quantum Fund was a fat portfolio covering the entire world, a peerage (he is now a British Lord), the right to attend Cabinet meetings, and the luxurious home.

The subsidized home deal is identical to the arrangement which Malloch Brown had for about five years when he headed the UN Development Program, and then became Deputy Secretary General of the UN, and lived in New York. There he was a tenant at the five acre estate owned by George Soros in Katonah, New York, which the UN paid for, at $120,000 a year, to Soros. It was about 20% below the market price, but when asked about this house by a reporter, Malloch Brown stormed out of the interview, exclaiming, "I am doing God's work!"

Malloch Brown and Soros have been co-conspirators in a global plot against the nation state since at least 1993, when Malloch Brown joined a group organized by Soros that travelled to Serbia and Bosnia, to advise him on how to best spend a $50 million grant to "rebuild" Bosnia, after the British orchestrated war had destroyed it. In the 1990s, Soros had also funded the street thug apparatus OTPOR, that boasts of toppling Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. Soros's network later used the experienced Serbian mob-controllers to create the "democracy shocktroops" for the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia that put Saakashvili into power.

Throughout his time at the UN, Malloch Brown and Soros were a duo. They held a joint press conference in Monterrey, Mexico in 2002, to announce plans on how use UN funds, integrated with private funding from Soros and his ilk, to control the economies and policies of Third World countries. Soros was not there as a philanthropist—he was there as President and Chairman of the Soros Management Fund, a notorious hedge fund.

The Rose Revolution
There would be no Saakashvili regime today without George Soros and Malloch Brown. Even in 2001, Saakashvili was a Soros-financed operative. In January, 2004, at the annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Soros, Malloch Brown, and Mikhail Saakashvili gave a joint press conference where Saakashvili got $1.5 million—two-thirds from Soros's Open Society Institute and one-third from the UN Development Program. The funds were to be for a "Governance Reform Program" for Georgia, of which the main project was payoffs—a "Salary Supplement Fund," for which Malloch Brown arranged millions more.

Malloch Brown's UNDP bluntly describe how he and Soros would, in effect, not only give money, but would stack the Georgia government with the "skilled professionals" they would pick. The UNDP report says that,

Georgia "lacked the skilled professionals needed to design and execute sweeping reforms.... The state lacked the resources to pay salaries" that might lure the kind of globalist operatives that Soros and Malloch Brown wanted there.

So, continues the UNDP Report, "Working in close partnership with billionaire philanthropist George Soros, UNDP moved swiftly.... Speed was recognized as crucial to success. Even before Mr. Saakashvili was sworn into office, UNDP and Mr. Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) had agreed upon the creation of a new initiative to help the new administration secure the staff and expertise it needed." The initiative—to pay a supplemental salary to Saakashvili and top government officials—went on for three years, and Saakashvili himself admitted its importance at a Washington, D.C. press conference in early 2004, when asked about his financial dependence on Soros.

Saakashvili said: "Now regarding George Soros's contribution, this is primarily UNDP Fund: United Nations Development Program Fund to fund capacity building for Georgian government, and George Soros will not be the only contributor. We said we expect, as we already have pledges from a number of other contributions. We only have at this moment, two million dollars contributed by UNDP and Soros, but we have some other pledges, we need at least eight million dollars already this year and we will need some more for the next year.... Soros played good role in bolstering democratic processes in Georgia. He was very instrumental for many NGOs in their development and I think there is nothing bad about that, wrong about that."

Malloch Brown's UNDP report even boasted that this funding had provoked "Russian President Vladimir Putin ... to chide Mr. Saakashvili that he was on Mr. Soros's payroll." By 2006, the salary supplements were over $1 million per month, says the UNDP report.

These are the funds that go to a large contingent of Soros agents who are the government of Georgia: head of the National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia; Gigi Bokeria, Deputy Foreign Minister (who had been one of the early trainees of the Serbian Otpor for street demonstrations); Chairman of Georgia Parliament's Committee for Eurointegration: David Darchiashvili, to name a few.

818
Tongue of Flame: A Speech Presaging Endless War
August 28Tongue of Flame: A Speech Presaging Endless War
August 28, 2008

As we noted here yesterday, Arthur Silber has written a powerful and profound series of articles on the Joe Biden VP nomination, and its deeper implications. He has now followed these up with a piece on Biden's disturbing -- not to say blood-curdling -- acceptance speech on Wednesday night. You should read Silber's latest piece in full, but I wanted to add a few comments of my own.

Joe Biden's acceptance speech was indeed a remarkable performance -- bellicose and delusional and deceitful by turns. If you closed your eyes, there were moments when you would have thought that you were back in the Cow Palace in 1964, listening to Barry Goldwater belching fire and threatening doom for all those who challenge America's uniquely exceptional special unquestionable morally superior dominance of the world.

Arthur Silber points us to some of the money shots in Biden's speech. And the porn allusion is entirely appropriate in this case. The speech, like the whole evening -- which was given over to the glorification of war and the triumphant militarization of American society -- was a lurid example of the pornography of power.

For example, listen to Goldwat -- oops, Biden -- thundering at the evil Rooskies:



Ladies and gentlemen, in recent years and in recent days, we've once again seen the consequences of the neglect -- of this neglect, with Russia challenging the very freedom of a new democratic country of Georgia. Barack and I will end that neglect. We will hold Russia accountable for its actions, and we will help the people of Georgia rebuild.


What will he and Barack do to hold the Russians "accountable"? And accountable for what? For acting precisely as the bipartisan foreign policy establishment of the United States has acted for decades: using military power to achieve political ends and "project dominance" to protect "national interests" as defined by the ruling clique? And in this case -- unlike, oh, say, the Americans in Iraq or Somalia or Panama or Lebanon or Vietnam, etc. -- the Russians were provoked into action when their soldiers (lawfully stationed in South Ossetia with UN sanction, just like the American troops at the enormous Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo) were assaulted and killed, along with numerous innocent civilians, in a sneak attack by Georgian forces armed and trained by Washington.

What would an American administration have done in such a case? It would have laid waste to Tbilisi, as was done in Baghdad, Fallujah, Belgrade. It would have occupied Georgia; it would have sent soldiers barging into houses to drag out the menfolk and terrorize the women and children; it would have constructed enormous prisons to hold tens of thousands of Georgians captive, without charges, for months and years on end; it would bring in secret agents of unnameable agencies and private contractors to conduct "strenuous interrogations;" it would drop 500-pound bombs on residential areas if some guy at a computer console in a hole in Nebraska operating a drone camera spotted a Georgian man carrying a weapon or even -- heaven forbid! -- firing a weapon at the people who invaded and occupied his country, destroyed his home and killed his kinsmen.

In other words, the reaction of any American administration to such a provocation (or as in the case of Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Panama, Vietnam, etc., to no provocation whatsoever) would make Russia's action in Georgia look like a game of beach volleyball. Yet big bad Joe Biden -- and his commander-in-chief, Barry Goldwa--sorry, Barack Obama -- are going to hold Russia "accountable" (in some conveniently unspecified way) for not acting as brutally as any American administration would have done in the same situation.

(Of course, when the same Russian leaders did conduct a brutal, savage war of destruction -- in Chechnya -- there was no talk whatsoever about "holding them accountable," or kicking Russia out of the G-8, or imposing sanctions. But the Kremlin, being weaker then -- before Bush's wars and rumors of war enriched Russia with oil price spikes -- was thought to be more obedient. Now Moscow is more recalcitrant. And it is the recalcitrance -- not the "military aggression" or the "Putin tyranny" -- that sticks in the Anglo-American craw. For more on the implications of the "new Cold War-ism" breaking out among the Anglo-American elite, see these excellent analyses in the Guardian, here and here, and these letters to the paper's editor here.)

Biden declares that Georgia has been "destroyed." This is not true. There has been damage and there have been deaths, and none of them are justified (on either side). But Georgia is not in ruins, like Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, the three main targets (so far) of the American "War on Terror" that Biden so ardently embraced in his speech.

Biden called for a billion dollars in aid to "rebuild" Georgia. All well and good -- if this aid is really to be used to help innocent people in Georgia who got caught in the crossfire between the idiotic and violent Mikhail Saakashvili and the calculating and violent Vladimir Putin. Of course, it would be a first if such a thing happened -- if most of the "aid" didn't turn out to be weapons for the local warlord and pork for various cronies back home -- but these are days of hope and change, so who knows?

But here's a curious thing. Later on in his speech Biden says that, in Iraq, he and Obama will "shift the responsibility to the Iraqis." The Georgians, who instigated a war they could not possibly win, must be given all assistance to "rebuild" their undestroyed country; but the Iraqis, whose country was invaded and destroyed in a flagrantly criminal action by a vastly superior power, have to "take responsibility" for the damned mess that got made over there in Mesopotamia.

A mess that Biden himself was instrumental in creating, as Stephen Zunes points out in great and damning detail. Here are some excerpts of his article, via Arthur Silber again:


[Biden] has been one [of] the leading congressional supporters of U.S. militarization of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, of strict economic sanctions against Cuba, and of Israeli occupation policies.

Most significantly, however, Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the lead-up to the Iraq War during the latter half of 2002, was perhaps the single most important congressional backer of the Bush administration's decision to invade that oil-rich country...

It is difficult to overestimate the critical role Biden played in making the tragedy of the Iraq war possible. More than two months prior to the 2002 war resolution even being introduced, in what was widely interpreted as the first sign that Congress would endorse a U.S. invasion of Iraq, Biden declared on Aug. 4 that the United States was probably going to war. In his powerful position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he orchestrated a propaganda show designed to sell the war to skeptical colleagues and the American public by ensuring that dissenting voices would not get a fair hearing.


And, as Zunes and Silber note, Biden was calling for an invasion of Iraq years before "9/11 changed everything" -- just like the Cheney-Rumsfeld "Project for the New American Century" group, which openly yearned for a "new Pearl Harbor" to "catalyze" its agenda for the expansion of empire and further militarization of American society:


Rather than being a hapless victim of the Bush administration's lies and manipulation, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq and making false statements regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed possession of "weapons of mass destruction" years before President George W. Bush even came to office.

As far back as 1998, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Even though UN inspectors and the UN-led disarmament process led to the elimination of Iraq's WMD threat, Biden – in an effort to discredit the world body and make an excuse for war – insisted that UN inspectors could never be trusted to do the job. ...

Calling for military action on the scale of the Gulf War seven years earlier, he continued, "The only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we're going to end up having to start it alone," telling the Marine veteran [and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter] "it's going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking Saddam down."

When Ritter tried to make the case that President Bill Clinton's proposed large-scale bombing of Iraq could jeopardize the UN inspections process, Biden condescendingly replied that decisions on the use of military force were "beyond your pay grade." As Ritter predicted, when Clinton ordered UN inspectors out of Iraq in December of that year and followed up with a four-day bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Fox, Saddam was provided with an excuse to refuse to allow the inspectors to return. Biden then conveniently used Saddam's failure to allow them to return as an excuse for going to war four years later.


Zunes and Silber also bring out one other point that bears repeating, over and over: Biden has been a champion of dismembering Iraq, chopping the country up in a forced partition that even the Bush Administration found too extreme. Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote here about one of the "partition" plans that so-called "liberals" like Biden have been bandying about:


While Bush pursues ethnic cleansing by stealth in Iraq -- or rather, pursues it quite openly, but just doesn't call it ethnic cleansing -- the Democrats and their outriders, the "liberal hawks" (or "humanitarian interventionists" or "Wilsonian idealists" or whatever tag they're wearing these days) are championing the policy in the public sphere. The idea of a three-way split of Iraq between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds has long been mooted in some quarters -- Joe Biden and "liberal" intellectuals like Leslie Gelb and Peter Galbraith were early enthusiasts -- and it is now gaining force within the foreign policy "clerisy"... Firedoglake points us to the incisive commentaries of Reidar Visser, "an actual expert on the regional aspects of Iraq and its history," who has lately been debunking the deeply ignorant and murderously arrogant "partition" proposals of Galbraith and others.

Visser takes aim at one of the most hideous of these proposals: "The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq," by respected "scholars" Michael O'Hanlon and Edward Joseph:



...using cool academic language, the authors review the nuts and bolts of relocating somewhere between 2 and 5 million Iraqis in order to create new ethnic federal entities. Snippets from this part of the report probably speak best for themselves: "we advocate where possible dividing major cities along natural boundaries" (p. 16); "on the actual day of the relocation operation, Iraqi and US-led coalition forces would deploy in sufficient numbers to look for snipers, cover the flanks of the civilian convoys, inspect suspicious vehicles for explosives and conduct similar tasks" (p. 17); and finally, on p. 24, "this [internal border] control system would place some burdens on Iraq’s internal trade and other aspects of its economy. It would complicate the efforts of individuals to cross from one region to another to visit family and friends. For the most part these burdens would be bearable. For individuals or businesses that need to make frequent crossings across Iraq’s new internal borders, or those willing to pay for the privilege, an EZ pass system [sic] might be developed to expedite movements for those with important and regular business to conduct."



"On the actual day of the relocation operation...." Try to imagine such a day, when millions of Iraqis are uprooted and forced to move to other areas, all under guard by "Iraqi and US-led coalition forces." Actually it's not that hard to imagine, for we have seen it before: in faded photographs and newsreel footage and films like "The Sorrow and the Pity," "Shoah," and "Schindler's List." Less familiar in the popular imagination but perhaps even more apposite are the "relocations" of ethnic populations carried out by Josef Stalin, when whole peoples, such as the Chechens, were uprooted and transported by force to other regions. Or we could of course look closer to home, at the "Trail of Tears," the deadly removal of the Cherokee from their homelands to concentration camps in Oklahoma.

These kinds of scenes are precisely what the clean-limbed O'Hanlon and his partner envisage for Iraq, followed by a life ensnared by checkpoints and passes and internal border controls. It may sound harsh, brutal and inhuman, but not to worry: "For the most part these burdens would be bearable."

I have a suggestion for Mr. O'Hanlon [and Joe Biden]. I propose that he subject himself to such a regimen, then come back and tell just us how "bearable" it is. He doesn't even have to move five million Iraqis under armed guard to participate in this experiment: he can go to Palestine right now, where the people already live under his kind of "soft partition." Let him try it on for himself, just for a few months -- not the lifelong sentence he proposes for the Iraqis. We can even give him an "EZ Pass" to expedite any "important business" he needs to do.

This is what we've come to -- or perhaps, harking back to the Trail of Tears, this is where we came in. Ignorant, arrogant, cowardly elites proposing -- and in Bush's case, inflicting -- vast human suffering on innocent people, driving them from their homes, terrorizing them, killing them.


All of this is OK with Joe Biden. As noted, he was one of the earliest advocates of partition. But in the end, it doesn't matter: partition the Iraqis, abandon them, occupy them openly -- or covertly occupy them with "non-permanent" permanent bases for "residual forces" and "training brigades" and "counterrorism response" and "force protection," which is the current Obama plan -- who the hell cares? We've killed a million of their sons and daughters and mothers and fathers, but now it's time to go strut around in Georgia, it's time to bring more heat to Afghanistan and nuclear-armed, politically unstable Pakistan, "the real central front in the war on terror," as Biden proclaimed on Wednesday. The Iraqis are trash, pure trash; let them "take responsibility" -- while we do whatever the hell we want to do, or don't want to do, with their country.

As we said here yesterday: listen to what Biden and Obama are actually saying. I consider myself a fairly skeptical person, especially about politicians and their promises of "change" and "hope," but even I have been taken aback by how openly brutal and bloodthirsty the Obama campaign has become. I thought they would make much more hay of the "anti-war" stance, but they threw that aside long ago, and have now put one of the chief enablers of the war on the national ticket. It turns out that Obama is not "anti-war" (even as a cynical, vote-getting posture); he and Biden and the Democratic establishment -- and vast tracts of the "liberal" blogosphere as well -- are simply "other-war."

Iraq was the wrong war, you see, the wrong application of deadly, murderous force for dubious ends that have nothing to do with the well-being and security and pressing concerns of ordinary American citizens. But they heartily approve such applications elsewhere, and hope to see more of them.

***

I must admit that these days I'm feeling much as I did in the weeks and months after 9/11, when it seemed the whole nation had gone mad -- and deaf as well, simply not hearing the crimes and atrocities and immoral, dishonorable actions that were being planned and promised in their names. For example, what in God's name did people think Dick Cheney was talking about when he announced on national television -- on Sept. 16, 2001, just five days after the attacks -- that "we will also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will"? Or when George W. Bush declared on Aug. 7, 2002: "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland." Or in the long, slow build-up to the act of aggression against Iraq, when the most transparent lies were told -- easily debunkable by the most ordinary person with an internet connection or the slightest acquaintance with recent history, as I used to demonstrate week after week in the Moscow Times -- much less by savvy "foreign policy experts" like Joe Biden?

To speak out against all this -- to simply point to plain facts and the obvious implications of what national leaders were actually saying, to take the very traditional and indeed conservative position that America should not wage aggressive war and should obey its own laws -- was in those days like shouting into a hurricane. Nobody listened, nobody cared, and any nay-sayer was denounced as a crank or a fool or a traitor, whose dangerous carping would give aid and comfort to the enemy, and help the bad guys win. Strange days indeed.

And here we are again. Joe Biden stood on a stage before the world Wednesday night and, echoing Barack Obama's own positions, clearly promised more hell on earth for us all. Yet his speech was greeted rapturously across almost all of the liberal commentariat, and treated respectfully, as a serious and completely legitimate policy statement, even by those politically opposed to Biden and his boss.

But if you point to the plain facts and obvious implications of what the leaders of the Democratic ticket are saying -- i.e., "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland" -- you will be accused of "helping John McCain into the White House." You will be denounced for trying to derail "our last hope for change, however imperfect it may be."

But it is not the critics of the openly stated positions taken by Obama and Biden who are "derailing our last hope for change." It is these powerful men in the pursuit of more power who are betraying those hopes by embracing the corruption and violence of domination, belligerence, greed, militarism, and imperial expansion. I'm not forcing them to do it. I don't want them to do it. But should we not tell the truth as we see it? 
 
, 2008

As we noted here yesterday, Arthur Silber has written a powerful and profound series of articles on the Joe Biden VP nomination, and its deeper implications. He has now followed these up with a piece on Biden's disturbing -- not to say blood-curdling -- acceptance speech on Wednesday night. You should read Silber's latest piece in full, but I wanted to add a few comments of my own.

Joe Biden's acceptance speech was indeed a remarkable performance -- bellicose and delusional and deceitful by turns. If you closed your eyes, there were moments when you would have thought that you were back in the Cow Palace in 1964, listening to Barry Goldwater belching fire and threatening doom for all those who challenge America's uniquely exceptional special unquestionable morally superior dominance of the world.

Arthur Silber points us to some of the money shots in Biden's speech. And the porn allusion is entirely appropriate in this case. The speech, like the whole evening -- which was given over to the glorification of war and the triumphant militarization of American society -- was a lurid example of the pornography of power.

For example, listen to Goldwat -- oops, Biden -- thundering at the evil Rooskies:



Ladies and gentlemen, in recent years and in recent days, we've once again seen the consequences of the neglect -- of this neglect, with Russia challenging the very freedom of a new democratic country of Georgia. Barack and I will end that neglect. We will hold Russia accountable for its actions, and we will help the people of Georgia rebuild.


What will he and Barack do to hold the Russians "accountable"? And accountable for what? For acting precisely as the bipartisan foreign policy establishment of the United States has acted for decades: using military power to achieve political ends and "project dominance" to protect "national interests" as defined by the ruling clique? And in this case -- unlike, oh, say, the Americans in Iraq or Somalia or Panama or Lebanon or Vietnam, etc. -- the Russians were provoked into action when their soldiers (lawfully stationed in South Ossetia with UN sanction, just like the American troops at the enormous Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo) were assaulted and killed, along with numerous innocent civilians, in a sneak attack by Georgian forces armed and trained by Washington.

What would an American administration have done in such a case? It would have laid waste to Tbilisi, as was done in Baghdad, Fallujah, Belgrade. It would have occupied Georgia; it would have sent soldiers barging into houses to drag out the menfolk and terrorize the women and children; it would have constructed enormous prisons to hold tens of thousands of Georgians captive, without charges, for months and years on end; it would bring in secret agents of unnameable agencies and private contractors to conduct "strenuous interrogations;" it would drop 500-pound bombs on residential areas if some guy at a computer console in a hole in Nebraska operating a drone camera spotted a Georgian man carrying a weapon or even -- heaven forbid! -- firing a weapon at the people who invaded and occupied his country, destroyed his home and killed his kinsmen.

In other words, the reaction of any American administration to such a provocation (or as in the case of Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Panama, Vietnam, etc., to no provocation whatsoever) would make Russia's action in Georgia look like a game of beach volleyball. Yet big bad Joe Biden -- and his commander-in-chief, Barry Goldwa--sorry, Barack Obama -- are going to hold Russia "accountable" (in some conveniently unspecified way) for not acting as brutally as any American administration would have done in the same situation.

(Of course, when the same Russian leaders did conduct a brutal, savage war of destruction -- in Chechnya -- there was no talk whatsoever about "holding them accountable," or kicking Russia out of the G-8, or imposing sanctions. But the Kremlin, being weaker then -- before Bush's wars and rumors of war enriched Russia with oil price spikes -- was thought to be more obedient. Now Moscow is more recalcitrant. And it is the recalcitrance -- not the "military aggression" or the "Putin tyranny" -- that sticks in the Anglo-American craw. For more on the implications of the "new Cold War-ism" breaking out among the Anglo-American elite, see these excellent analyses in the Guardian, here and here, and these letters to the paper's editor here.)

Biden declares that Georgia has been "destroyed." This is not true. There has been damage and there have been deaths, and none of them are justified (on either side). But Georgia is not in ruins, like Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, the three main targets (so far) of the American "War on Terror" that Biden so ardently embraced in his speech.

Biden called for a billion dollars in aid to "rebuild" Georgia. All well and good -- if this aid is really to be used to help innocent people in Georgia who got caught in the crossfire between the idiotic and violent Mikhail Saakashvili and the calculating and violent Vladimir Putin. Of course, it would be a first if such a thing happened -- if most of the "aid" didn't turn out to be weapons for the local warlord and pork for various cronies back home -- but these are days of hope and change, so who knows?

But here's a curious thing. Later on in his speech Biden says that, in Iraq, he and Obama will "shift the responsibility to the Iraqis." The Georgians, who instigated a war they could not possibly win, must be given all assistance to "rebuild" their undestroyed country; but the Iraqis, whose country was invaded and destroyed in a flagrantly criminal action by a vastly superior power, have to "take responsibility" for the damned mess that got made over there in Mesopotamia.

A mess that Biden himself was instrumental in creating, as Stephen Zunes points out in great and damning detail. Here are some excerpts of his article, via Arthur Silber again:


[Biden] has been one [of] the leading congressional supporters of U.S. militarization of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, of strict economic sanctions against Cuba, and of Israeli occupation policies.

Most significantly, however, Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the lead-up to the Iraq War during the latter half of 2002, was perhaps the single most important congressional backer of the Bush administration's decision to invade that oil-rich country...

It is difficult to overestimate the critical role Biden played in making the tragedy of the Iraq war possible. More than two months prior to the 2002 war resolution even being introduced, in what was widely interpreted as the first sign that Congress would endorse a U.S. invasion of Iraq, Biden declared on Aug. 4 that the United States was probably going to war. In his powerful position as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he orchestrated a propaganda show designed to sell the war to skeptical colleagues and the American public by ensuring that dissenting voices would not get a fair hearing.


And, as Zunes and Silber note, Biden was calling for an invasion of Iraq years before "9/11 changed everything" -- just like the Cheney-Rumsfeld "Project for the New American Century" group, which openly yearned for a "new Pearl Harbor" to "catalyze" its agenda for the expansion of empire and further militarization of American society:


Rather than being a hapless victim of the Bush administration's lies and manipulation, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq and making false statements regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed possession of "weapons of mass destruction" years before President George W. Bush even came to office.

As far back as 1998, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Even though UN inspectors and the UN-led disarmament process led to the elimination of Iraq's WMD threat, Biden – in an effort to discredit the world body and make an excuse for war – insisted that UN inspectors could never be trusted to do the job. ...

Calling for military action on the scale of the Gulf War seven years earlier, he continued, "The only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we're going to end up having to start it alone," telling the Marine veteran [and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter] "it's going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking Saddam down."

When Ritter tried to make the case that President Bill Clinton's proposed large-scale bombing of Iraq could jeopardize the UN inspections process, Biden condescendingly replied that decisions on the use of military force were "beyond your pay grade." As Ritter predicted, when Clinton ordered UN inspectors out of Iraq in December of that year and followed up with a four-day bombing campaign known as Operation Desert Fox, Saddam was provided with an excuse to refuse to allow the inspectors to return. Biden then conveniently used Saddam's failure to allow them to return as an excuse for going to war four years later.


Zunes and Silber also bring out one other point that bears repeating, over and over: Biden has been a champion of dismembering Iraq, chopping the country up in a forced partition that even the Bush Administration found too extreme. Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote here about one of the "partition" plans that so-called "liberals" like Biden have been bandying about:


While Bush pursues ethnic cleansing by stealth in Iraq -- or rather, pursues it quite openly, but just doesn't call it ethnic cleansing -- the Democrats and their outriders, the "liberal hawks" (or "humanitarian interventionists" or "Wilsonian idealists" or whatever tag they're wearing these days) are championing the policy in the public sphere. The idea of a three-way split of Iraq between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds has long been mooted in some quarters -- Joe Biden and "liberal" intellectuals like Leslie Gelb and Peter Galbraith were early enthusiasts -- and it is now gaining force within the foreign policy "clerisy"... Firedoglake points us to the incisive commentaries of Reidar Visser, "an actual expert on the regional aspects of Iraq and its history," who has lately been debunking the deeply ignorant and murderously arrogant "partition" proposals of Galbraith and others.

Visser takes aim at one of the most hideous of these proposals: "The Case for Soft Partition in Iraq," by respected "scholars" Michael O'Hanlon and Edward Joseph:



...using cool academic language, the authors review the nuts and bolts of relocating somewhere between 2 and 5 million Iraqis in order to create new ethnic federal entities. Snippets from this part of the report probably speak best for themselves: "we advocate where possible dividing major cities along natural boundaries" (p. 16); "on the actual day of the relocation operation, Iraqi and US-led coalition forces would deploy in sufficient numbers to look for snipers, cover the flanks of the civilian convoys, inspect suspicious vehicles for explosives and conduct similar tasks" (p. 17); and finally, on p. 24, "this [internal border] control system would place some burdens on Iraq’s internal trade and other aspects of its economy. It would complicate the efforts of individuals to cross from one region to another to visit family and friends. For the most part these burdens would be bearable. For individuals or businesses that need to make frequent crossings across Iraq’s new internal borders, or those willing to pay for the privilege, an EZ pass system [sic] might be developed to expedite movements for those with important and regular business to conduct."



"On the actual day of the relocation operation...." Try to imagine such a day, when millions of Iraqis are uprooted and forced to move to other areas, all under guard by "Iraqi and US-led coalition forces." Actually it's not that hard to imagine, for we have seen it before: in faded photographs and newsreel footage and films like "The Sorrow and the Pity," "Shoah," and "Schindler's List." Less familiar in the popular imagination but perhaps even more apposite are the "relocations" of ethnic populations carried out by Josef Stalin, when whole peoples, such as the Chechens, were uprooted and transported by force to other regions. Or we could of course look closer to home, at the "Trail of Tears," the deadly removal of the Cherokee from their homelands to concentration camps in Oklahoma.

These kinds of scenes are precisely what the clean-limbed O'Hanlon and his partner envisage for Iraq, followed by a life ensnared by checkpoints and passes and internal border controls. It may sound harsh, brutal and inhuman, but not to worry: "For the most part these burdens would be bearable."

I have a suggestion for Mr. O'Hanlon [and Joe Biden]. I propose that he subject himself to such a regimen, then come back and tell just us how "bearable" it is. He doesn't even have to move five million Iraqis under armed guard to participate in this experiment: he can go to Palestine right now, where the people already live under his kind of "soft partition." Let him try it on for himself, just for a few months -- not the lifelong sentence he proposes for the Iraqis. We can even give him an "EZ Pass" to expedite any "important business" he needs to do.

This is what we've come to -- or perhaps, harking back to the Trail of Tears, this is where we came in. Ignorant, arrogant, cowardly elites proposing -- and in Bush's case, inflicting -- vast human suffering on innocent people, driving them from their homes, terrorizing them, killing them.


All of this is OK with Joe Biden. As noted, he was one of the earliest advocates of partition. But in the end, it doesn't matter: partition the Iraqis, abandon them, occupy them openly -- or covertly occupy them with "non-permanent" permanent bases for "residual forces" and "training brigades" and "counterrorism response" and "force protection," which is the current Obama plan -- who the hell cares? We've killed a million of their sons and daughters and mothers and fathers, but now it's time to go strut around in Georgia, it's time to bring more heat to Afghanistan and nuclear-armed, politically unstable Pakistan, "the real central front in the war on terror," as Biden proclaimed on Wednesday. The Iraqis are trash, pure trash; let them "take responsibility" -- while we do whatever the hell we want to do, or don't want to do, with their country.

As we said here yesterday: listen to what Biden and Obama are actually saying. I consider myself a fairly skeptical person, especially about politicians and their promises of "change" and "hope," but even I have been taken aback by how openly brutal and bloodthirsty the Obama campaign has become. I thought they would make much more hay of the "anti-war" stance, but they threw that aside long ago, and have now put one of the chief enablers of the war on the national ticket. It turns out that Obama is not "anti-war" (even as a cynical, vote-getting posture); he and Biden and the Democratic establishment -- and vast tracts of the "liberal" blogosphere as well -- are simply "other-war."

Iraq was the wrong war, you see, the wrong application of deadly, murderous force for dubious ends that have nothing to do with the well-being and security and pressing concerns of ordinary American citizens. But they heartily approve such applications elsewhere, and hope to see more of them.

***

I must admit that these days I'm feeling much as I did in the weeks and months after 9/11, when it seemed the whole nation had gone mad -- and deaf as well, simply not hearing the crimes and atrocities and immoral, dishonorable actions that were being planned and promised in their names. For example, what in God's name did people think Dick Cheney was talking about when he announced on national television -- on Sept. 16, 2001, just five days after the attacks -- that "we will also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will"? Or when George W. Bush declared on Aug. 7, 2002: "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland." Or in the long, slow build-up to the act of aggression against Iraq, when the most transparent lies were told -- easily debunkable by the most ordinary person with an internet connection or the slightest acquaintance with recent history, as I used to demonstrate week after week in the Moscow Times -- much less by savvy "foreign policy experts" like Joe Biden?

To speak out against all this -- to simply point to plain facts and the obvious implications of what national leaders were actually saying, to take the very traditional and indeed conservative position that America should not wage aggressive war and should obey its own laws -- was in those days like shouting into a hurricane. Nobody listened, nobody cared, and any nay-sayer was denounced as a crank or a fool or a traitor, whose dangerous carping would give aid and comfort to the enemy, and help the bad guys win. Strange days indeed.

And here we are again. Joe Biden stood on a stage before the world Wednesday night and, echoing Barack Obama's own positions, clearly promised more hell on earth for us all. Yet his speech was greeted rapturously across almost all of the liberal commentariat, and treated respectfully, as a serious and completely legitimate policy statement, even by those politically opposed to Biden and his boss.

But if you point to the plain facts and obvious implications of what the leaders of the Democratic ticket are saying -- i.e., "There's no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland" -- you will be accused of "helping John McCain into the White House." You will be denounced for trying to derail "our last hope for change, however imperfect it may be."

But it is not the critics of the openly stated positions taken by Obama and Biden who are "derailing our last hope for change." It is these powerful men in the pursuit of more power who are betraying those hopes by embracing the corruption and violence of domination, belligerence, greed, militarism, and imperial expansion. I'm not forcing them to do it. I don't want them to do it. But should we not tell the truth as we see it? 
 

819
The Puppet Masters Behind Georgia President Saakashvili
August 21, 2008

The controversy over the Georgian surprise military attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia on 8.8.08 makes a closer look at the controversial Georgian President and his puppet masters important. An examination shows 41 year old Mikhail Saakashvili to be a ruthless and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. The famous 'Rose Revolution of November 2003 that forced the ageing Edouard Shevardnadze from power and swept the then 36 year old US university graduate into power was run and financed by the US State Department, the Soros Foundations, and agencies tied to the Pentagon and US intelligence community.

Mihkail Saakashvili was deliberately placed in power in one of the most sophisticated US regime change operations, using ostensibly private NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) to create an atmosphere of popular protest against the existing regime of former Soviet Foreign Minister Edouard Shevardnadze, who was no longer useful to Washington when he began to make a deal with Moscow over energy pipelines and privatizations.

Saakashvili was brought to power in a US-engineered coup run on the ground by US-funded NGO’s, in an application of a new method of US destabilization of regimes it considered hostile to its foreign policy agenda. The November 24 2003 Wall Street Journal explicitly credited the toppling of Shevardnadze's regime to the operations of "a raft of non-governmental organizations . . . supported by American and other Western foundations." These NGOs, said the Journal, had "spawned a class of young, English-speaking intellectuals hungry for pro-Western reforms" who were instrumental laying the groundwork for a bloodless coup.

Coup by NGO

But there is more. The NGOs were coordinated by the US Ambassador to Georgia, Richard Miles, who had just arrived in Tbilisi fresh from success in orchestrating the CIA-backed toppling of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, using the same NGOs. Miles, who is believed to be an undercover intelligence specialist, supervised the Saakashvili coup.

It involved US billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Georgia Foundation. It involved the Washington-based Freedom House whose chairman was former CIA chief James Woolsey. It involved generous financing from the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s to "do privately what the CIA used to do," namely coups against regimes the US Government finds unfriendly.

George Soros’ foundations have been forced to leave numerous eastern European countries including Russia as well as China after the 1989 student Tiananmen Square uprising. Soros is also the financier together with the US State Department of the Human Rights Watch, a US-based and run propaganda arm of the entire NGO apparatus of regime coups such as Georgia and Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. Some analysts believe Soros is a high-level operative of the US State Department or intelligence services using his private foundations as cover.

The US State Department funded the Georgia Liberty Institute headed by Saakashvili, US approved candidate to succeed the no-longer cooperative Shevardnadze. The Liberty Institute in turn created "Kmara!" which translates "Enough!" According to a BBC report at the time, Kmara! Was organized in spring of 2003 when Saakashvili along with hand-picked Georgia student activists were paid by the Soros Foundation to go to Belgrade to learn from the US-financed Otpor activists that toppled Milosevic. They were trained in Gene Sharp’s "non-violence as a method of warfare" by the Belgrade Center for Nonviolent Resistance.

Saakashvili as mafioso President

Once he was in place in January 2004 as Georgia’s new President, Saakashvili proceeded to pack the regime with his cronies and kinsmen. The death of Zurab Zhvania, his prime minister in February, 2005, remains a mystery. The official version—poisoning by faulty gas heater—was adopted by American FBI investigators within two weeks of the killing. That has never seemed credible to those familiar with Georgia’s gangland slayings, crime, and other manifestations of social decay. Zhvania’s death was followed closely by a functionary of the Premier’s apparat, Georgi Khelashvili, who allegedly shot himself the day after his chief’s demise. The head of Zhvania’s research staff was later found dead as well.

Figures allied with Saakashvili reportedly had a hand in the premier’s death. Russian journalist Marina Perevozkina quoted Gia Khurashvili, a Georgian economist. Prior to the fatal incident, Mr. Khurashvili had published an article in Resonans newspaper opposing the privatization and sale of Georgia’s main gas pipeline. Ten days before the prime minister’s body was found, Khurashvili was attacked and his editor-in-chief—citing pressure from 'security service’ figures he refused to name—issued him a warning.

The late premier’s position on the pipeline issue was believed the direct reason for the murder of Zhvania. Zhvania’s brother, Georgi, also told Perevozkina that not long before Zhvania’s death he received a warning that someone was preparing to kill his brother. Saakashvili was reportedly livid when the US State Department invited Zhvania to Washington to win a Freedom Medal from the US Government’s National Democratic Institute. Saakashvili tolerates no rivals for power it seems.

Saakashvili, who cleverly marketed himself as "anti-corruption," appointed several of his family members to lucrative posts in government, giving one of his brothers a position as chief adviser on domestic issues to the Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline project, backed by British Petroleum and other oil multinationals.

Since coming to power in 2004 with US aid, Saakashvili has led a policy of mass-scale arrests, imprisonment, torture and deepened corruption. Saakashvili has presided over the creation of a de facto one-party state, with a dummy opposition occupying a tiny portion of seats in the parliament, and this public servant is building a Ceaucescu-style palace for himself on the outskirts of Tbilisi. According to the magazine, Civil Georgia (Mar. 22, 2004) until 2005, the salaries of Saakashvili and many of his ministers were reportedly paid by the NGO network of New York-based currency speculator Soros—along with the United Nations Development Program.

Israel US military train Georgian military

The current military assault on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in violation of Saakashvili’s pledge to seek a diplomatic not military solution to the territorial disputes, is backed by US and Israeli military "advisers." Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that on August 10, Georgian Minister of Reintegration, Temur Yakobshvili, "praised the Israel Defense Forces for its role in training Georgian troops and said Israel should be proud of its military might, in an interview with Army Radio. 'Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian soldiers,’ Yakobashvili told Army Radio in Hebrew, referring to a private Israeli group Georgia had hired."

One of the targets of Russian bombs near Tbilisi was, according to IsraelNN.com, "a Georgian military plant in which Israeli experts are upgrading jet fighters for the Georgian military… Russian fighter jets bombed runways inside the plant, located near Tbilisi, where Israeli security firm Elbit is in charge of upgrading Georgian SU-25 jets."

Israeli Foreign Minister and candidate to succeed ousted Israeli Prime Minister, Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, proclaimed on August 10 that "Israel recognizes Georgia’s territorial integrity," code for saying it backs Georgia’s attempt to take South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The reported 1,000 Israeli military advisers in Georgia were not alone. On July 15, the Reuters news wire carried the following report: "VAZIANI, Georgia - One thousand U.S. troops began a military training exercise called "Immediate Response 2008," in Georgia on Tuesday against a backdrop of growing friction between Georgia and neighboring Russia. The two-week exercise was taking place at the Vaziani military base near the capital Tbilisi, which was a Russian air force base until Russian forces withdrew at the start of this decade under a European arms reduction agreement... Georgia has a 2,000-strong contingent supporting the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, and Washington provides training and equipment to the Georgian military. The United States is an ally of Georgia and has irritated Russia by backing Tbilisi’s bid to join the NATO military alliance... "The main purpose of these exercises is to increase the cooperation and partnership between U.S. and Georgian forces," Brig. Gen. William B. Garrett, commander of the U.S. military’s Southern European Task Force, told reporters."

With Russia openly backing and training the indigenous military in South Ossetia and Abkhazia to maintain Russian presence in the region, especially since the US-backed pro-NATO Saakashvili regime took power in 2004, the Caucasus is rapidly coming to resemble Spain in the Civil War from 1936-1939 where the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and others poured money and weapons and volunteers into Spain in a devastating war that was a precursor to the Second World War.

In a curious footnote to the actual launch of military fighting on the opening day of the Olympics when Putin, George W. Bush and many world leaders were in Beijing far away, is a report in IsraelNN.com by Gl Ronen, stating that "The Georgian move against South Ossetia was motivated by political considerations having to do with Israel and Iran, according to Nfc. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili decided to assert control over the breakaway region in order to force Israel to reconsider its decision to cut back its support for Georgia's military."

Ronen added, "Russian and Georgian media reported several days ago that Israel decided to stop its support for Georgia after Moscow made it clear to Jerusalem and Washington that Russia would respond to continued aid for Georgia by selling advanced anti-aircraft systems to Syria and Iran." Israel plans to get oil and gas from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the Caspian.

Although as of this writing Russian President Medvedev has announced Russia is halting its military response against Georgian targets, the situation is anything but stable. The insistence of Washington in bringing Georgia into its geopolitical sphere and backing an unstable regime around Mikhail Saakashvili may well have been the straw which broke the Russian camel’s patience if not his back.

Whether oil pipeline disputes or Russian challenges to Israel are the proximate trigger for Saakashvili’s dangerous game, it is clear that the volatile Georgian and his puppet masters may have entered a game where no one will be able to control the outcome.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

© 2008 F. William Engdahl
 
 

820
The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power

http://www.stratfor.com/

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
In this simple chronicle, there is something quite mysterious: Why did the Georgians choose to invade South Ossetia on Thursday night? There had been a great deal of shelling by the South Ossetians of Georgian villages for the previous three nights, but while possibly more intense than usual, artillery exchanges were routine. The Georgians might not have fought well, but they committed fairly substantial forces that must have taken at the very least several days to deploy and supply. Georgia’s move was deliberate.

The United States is Georgia’s closest ally. It maintained about 130 military advisers in Georgia, along with civilian advisers, contractors involved in all aspects of the Georgian government and people doing business in Georgia. It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia’s mobilization and intentions. It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. U.S. technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The Russians clearly knew the Georgians were ready to move. How could the United States not be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the posture of Russian troops, how could intelligence analysts have missed the possibility that the Russians had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian invasion to justify its own counterattack?

It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew of the Russian forces but — along with the Georgians — miscalculated Russia’s intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s-1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an invasion.

If this was the case, then it points to the central reality of this situation: The Russians had changed dramatically, along with the balance of power in the region. They welcomed the opportunity to drive home the new reality, which was that they could invade Georgia and the United States and Europe could not respond. As for risk, they did not view the invasion as risky. Militarily, there was no counter. Economically, Russia is an energy exporter doing quite well — indeed, the Europeans need Russian energy even more than the Russians need to sell it to them. Politically, as we shall see, the Americans needed the Russians more than the Russians needed the Americans. Moscow’s calculus was that this was the moment to strike. The Russians had been building up to it for months, as we have discussed, and they struck.

The Western Encirclement of Russia
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.

 
 

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US troops kill 95 villagers in Afghanistan - 50 of them kids
Way to go troops - you must be proud...

How many kids must you murder before you figure out that there's something wrong with this picture?

Remind me, what exactly are you fighting for?

-----------------------------

KABUL, Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned on Saturday a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghans — including 50 children — in a village in western Afghanistan on Friday, and said his government would be announcing measures to prevent the loss of civilian life in the future.

Government officials who traveled to the village of Azizabad in Herat Province on Saturday said the death toll had risen to 95 from 76, making it one of the deadliest airstrikes on civilians in nearly seven years of war.

The American military said Saturday it was investigating the attack.

The Karzai government has expressed outrage over recent airstrikes that have led to civilian deaths, as popular support for the coalition presence in Afghanistan dwindles. The tension comes at a delicate time for the American-led coalition, which is facing a resurgent Taliban with a perceived shortage of troops, leading it to rely more on air power to battle militants.

Karzai also denounced the coalition after an airstrike on July 6 killed 27 people in a wedding party — most of them women and children, including the bride — in eastern Afghanistan.






Karzai's spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said civilians, including children, were brought to a provincial hospital in the town of Jalalabad. The American military is still investigating that attack; it has not acknowledged that civilians had been killed.

Hamidzada said civilian casualties had been declining over the past several months but that the recent airstrikes had reversed that trend. He said requests to American forces for greater care concerning civilian casualties had had little effect. The coalition has said it does all it can to prevent civilian deaths.

"This puts us in a very difficult position," said a government official, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the matter. "It provides propaganda to the Taliban, and if they don't take responsibility, it actually helps the Taliban."

The Afghan official said the government would demand broader, strategic-level cooperation on military operations. There have also been calls among members of the Afghan Parliament and Western analysts to put Special Forces, which often call in airstrikes, under stricter constraints.

The account of Friday's airstrike by Afghan officials conflicted with that of the United States military, which said that coalition forces had come under attack in Azizabad, a village in the Shindand District of Herat Province, and had called in an airstrike that killed 25 militants, including a Taliban leader, Mullah Sadiq, and five civilians.

After the Afghan government said Friday that more than 70 civilians had been killed, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, the commander of coalition forces, ordered an investigation into the episode, the public affairs officer, First Lieutenant Richard Ulsh, said.

"Coalition forces are aware of allegations that the engagement in the Shindand District of Herat Province Friday may have resulted in civilian casualties," a statement issued from Bagram air base said. "All allegations of civilian casualties are taken very seriously. Coalition forces make every effort to prevent the injury or loss of innocent lives. An investigation has been directed."

Colonel Rauf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the police chief of the western region, denied that there were any Taliban in the village at the time of the strikes. "There were no Taliban," he said by telephone. "There is no evidence to show there were Taliban there that night," he said.

The dead included 50 children, 19 women and 26 men, Ahmadi said.
A presidential aide who declined to be identified said that the Interior Ministry and the Afghan intelligence agency had reported from the region that there were no Taliban present in the village that night. The Afghan National Army, whose commandos called in the airstrike along with American Special Forces trainers, were unable to clarify their original claim, he said.

A spokesman for the Afghan Army declined to comment on Saturday.

A tribal elder from the region who helped bury the dead, Haji Tor Jan Noorzai, said people in the village were gathered in memory of a man who was anti-Taliban and was killed last year, and that tribal enemies of the family had given out false information.

"It is quite obvious, the Americans bombed the area due to wrong information," he said by telephone. "I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners and they do not understand. These people they killed were enemies of the Taliban."

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News Items / Interior Ministry: US Airstrikes Kill 76 Afghan Civilians
« on: August 24, 2008, 04:18:01 PM »
http://news.antiwar.com/2008/08/interior-ministry-us-airstrikes-kill-76-afghan-civilians/
 
Interior Ministry: US Airstrikes Kill 76 Afghan Civilians
Written on August 22, 2008

Last Updated 8/22 11:00 PM EST
Just one day after US airstrikes in Laghman province were reported to have killed at least 20 civilians, a much larger incident has occurred on the opposite side of the country in Herat Province.
As with yesterday’s story, the initial US report claimed that 30 militants were killed, including an al-Qaeda commander. Though the Afghan Defense Ministry reported several homes were destroyed and that civilians were among the dead, US officials denied that there were any civilians killed.
Shortly later, Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry released a statement regarding the incident. In it they announced that 76 people, all civilians, had actually been killed in the strike. Among those killed were seven men, 19 women, and 50 children under the age of 15. The Independent quotes council member Saeed Sharif as saying the victims “were attending a holy Koran recitation” when the bombing began. The Ministry expressed “profound regret” for the killings, which they described as accidental, and promised to dispatch a delegation to conduct a full investigation.
In May of last year, US airstrikes in the same region killed over 50 civilians. After the incident, NATO promised to review its military tactics to ensure that similar incidents didn’t happen in the future. An American commander said he was “ashamed” of the incident, and announced that compensation of approximately $2,000 would be paid to each victim’s family.
compiled by Jason Ditz
 

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Growing threat - Join us in mobilizing to Stop War on Iran!

US Stop War on Iran

August 12, 2008

As we write, the arrival of new U.S. warships will mark the largest build-up of Naval forces in the Gulf since the 1991 Gulf War.

The aircraft carriers USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Ronald Reagan, along with the USS Iwo Jima, an Amphibious Assault Ship are sailing toward the Persian Gulf to reinforce the US strike forces in the region, along with a British Royal Navy carrier battle group and a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine.

This move follows the ominous Operation Brimstone, a massive military exercise involving more than a dozen warships from the US, England, and France in the Atlantic Ocean in preparation for a possible confrontation with Iran.

The USS Roosevelt, which participated in the just-concluded exercise, and the USS Ronald Reagan will join two US naval battle groups in the area: the USS Abraham Lincoln with its Carrier Strike Group Nine ; and the USS Peleliu, and Amphibious Assault Ship with its expeditionary strike group.

Naval forces now heading towards the Gulf include:

Carrier Strike Group Nine: USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) nuclear powered carrier with its Carrier Air Wing Two Destroyer Squadron Nine: USS Mobile Bay (CG53) guided missile cruiser USS Russell (DDG59) guided missile destroyer USS Momsen (DDG92) guided missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG86) guided missile destroyer USS Ford (FFG54) guided missile frigate USS Ingraham (FFG61) guided missile frigate USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG60) guided missile frigate USS Curts (FFG38) guided missile frigate Plus one or more nuclear hunter-killer submarines Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Group: USS Peleliu (LHA-5) a Tarawa-class amphibious assault carrier USS Pearl Harbor (LSD52) assult ship USS Dubuque (LPD8) assult ship/landing dock USS Cape St. George (CG71) guided missile cruiser USS Halsey (DDG97) guided missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG65) guided missile destroyer

Carrier Strike Group Two: USS Theodore Roosevelt (DVN71) nuclear powered carrier with its Carrier Air Wing Eight Destroyer Squadron 22: USS Monterey (CG61) guided missile cruiser USS Mason (DDG87) guided missile destroyer USS Nitze (DDG94) guided missile destroyer USS Sullivans (DDG68) guided missile destroyer USS Springfield (SSN761) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine IWO ESG ~ Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group USS Iwo Jima (LHD7) amphibious assault carrier with its Amphibious Squadron Four and with its 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit USS San Antonio (LPD17) assault ship USS Velia Gulf (CG72) guided missile cruiser USS Ramage (DDG61) guided missile destroyer USS Carter Hall (LSD50) assault ship USS Roosevelt (DDG80) guided missile destroyer USS Hartfore (SSN768) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

Carrier Strike Group Seven: USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76) nuclear powered carrier with its Carrier Air Wing 14 Destroyer Squadron 7: USS Chancellorsville (CG62) guided missile cruiser USS Howard (DDG83) guided missile destroyer USS Gridley (DDG101) guided missile destroyer USS Decatur (DDG73) guided missile destroyer USS Thach (FFG43) guided missile frigate USNS Rainier (T-AOE-7) fast combat support ship

This massive deployment means that hundreds of nuclear-armed warplanes, thousands of troops, and destroyers capable of launching cruise missiles carrying nuclear weapons, bunker busters, or fragmentation bombs will be available for a strike on Iran. While Russia is bogged down with the crisis in Georgia, and China is occupied with the Olympics, the Bush Administration may believe that this is an opportune time to strike. This massive deployment is occurring as both Houses of Congress are set to approve resolutions that would mandate a U.S. blockade (which is an act of war under international law).

The time to act is now:

Please sign the petition online at http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml

And please help us get the word out - use the Tell a Friend Link at http://stopwaroniran.org/friend.shtml

Also, in the next few days and weeks, we will (US Stop War) be mobilizing in the streets against an attack on Iran. As we write, we are preparing placards, banners, and printed material to take to the Republican and Democratic national conventions. We know that the only force that will stop the warmongers in Washington is a grassroots peoples movement. We need your help to take the message to the conventions and to mobilize for other emergency actions. Please consider making a donation to help with expenses at http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml

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News Items / Stop War Coalition Statement on Georgia Crisis
« on: August 22, 2008, 10:29:59 AM »
Stop War Coalition Statement on Georgia Crisis
Statement on Georgia Crisis
Written by Stop the War Coalition
Sunday, 17 August 2008

The outbreak of war in Georgia is a disaster for the people of the Caucasus, creating thousands of casualties and refugees and further destabilising a region already beset with tensions.

Georgia marks a new stage in the growth of instability around the world, threatening confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation.

The immediate issue behind the conflict was that of national independence. The government of Georgia claims that the military attack it launched on South Ossetia was to ‘restore constitutional order’ and assert its independence from Russia, while the people of the two disputed regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, do not wish to be ruled from Tbilisi.

Ultimately, the cause of this war – like the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, and the threat of military action against Iran – lies in the ambition of the USA to exercise global hegemony.

Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-western president is an important ally of the US in the region. The US seeks to integrate Georgia into its sphere of influence through membership of NATO. Saakashvili took US support for Georgia’s membership of NATO as direct encouragement of its conflict with Russia. NATO’s eastward expansion to Russia’s borders, together with the siting of US Missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and the new US bases established IN Central Asia, is seen by Russia as a direct threat to its interests.

Disregarding the implications of NATO expansion, the western media attributes the conflict in Georgia to ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘historical grudges’. In doing so, it forgets the long experience of great power rivalry in the locality where Europe and Asia meet, which is now the hub of an important energy transit route.

Georgia is a key participant in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline developed by a British Petroleum-led consortium, which bypasses Russia AND IRAN to take oil westward from the Caspian basin.

These are all the circumstances in which the outbreak of war has taken place.

Few people can have failed to register the breath-taking hypocrisy of George Bush’s denunciation of Russia for ‘invading a sovereign neighbouring state’ The originator of the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq already bears responsibility for the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and the daily misery and suffering of the peoples of those countries.

As in Afghanistan and Iraq, the British government is following in US footsteps over Georgia, with Gordon Brown and David Miliband repeating US assertions that ‘Russian aggression must not go unanswered’.

The anti-war movement must once again make its presence felt by bringing to bear every possible pressure on the British government to break with US foreign policy.

Add your voice to the call for No More Wars. Join the demonstration at Labour Party conference in Manchester on 20th September.
 

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EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them
Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.

“Look, is it high school? Yeah,” Hersh said. “Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.”

Transcript:

HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected — which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted — one of the items was why not…

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected — uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats.

But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe. But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.

…What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January, the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit. So that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.

Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.

UpdateKevin Drum adds:

If this story sounds familiar, that's because it is. In one of David Manning's famous memos describing a prewar meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair, he says that Bush admitted that WMD was unlikely to be found in Iraq and then mused on some possible options for justifying a war anyway:

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

In the end, of course, we didn't do this. We just didn't bother with any pretext at all.
 

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