Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

[Armanen]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Have any of you come across any articles stating when other nations may recognize Abkhazia's and SO's independence? An article in today's wall street journal said that north korea, cuba, venezuala, belarus, and maybe some of the central asian nations may recognize the 2 soon.

[North Pole]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

GEORGIAN TANKS VS. OSSETIAN TEENAGERS

The Story of Tskhinvali's Resistance

SPIEGEL correspondent Uwe Klussmann in the destroyed capital of South Ossetia.

When Georgian forces moved into the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7, they underestimated the Ossetians' determination to resist them. Young men opened fire with Kalashnikovs and teenagers hurled petrol bombs at tanks. Now the local Russian-sponsored regime is triumphant.

Anyone who wants to know what Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's word is worth can see it in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali these days. Pensioner Wachtang Babeyev still speaks a little of the Georgian he learned in Soviet times, when Ossetians and Georgians lived together peacefully, although not without tension, as the citizens of one country. On the afternoon of Aug. 7 the retired carpenter was sitting in his apartment in Karl-Marx Street watching a televised speech by Saakashvilli. The president's words made him feel hopeful.

Saakashvili, speaking in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, said he had "given the very painful order not to return fire" if South Ossetians fired upon Georgian security forces. He ended his speech with the appeal: "Let us stop the spiral of fear. Give peace and dialogue a chance." A few hours later Babeyev was about to cook his dinner when shells started falling around his apartment block. He fled into the cellar of an adjoining building with nine neighbors. It was a sleepless, frightening night. Hours of artillery bombardment reduced apartment blocks into ruins, wrecked cars and turned gardens into shell holes.

The following morning Georgian warplanes flew bombing runs to complete the destruction. Then tanks arrived to "restore the constitutional order," as Saakashvili put it -- an order that never existed in South Ossetia. When the Soviet Union was dissolved, three de facto states emerged on the territory of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia: South Ossetia and Abkhazia and the new Georgia, which succeeded in becoming a member of the United Nations with the old borders drawn by Stalin.

Desire for Self-Determination

South Ossetians can't understand people who call them "separatists." They say they never broke away from Georgia because they never joined the new country when it was formed after the Soviet Union collapsed. It's impossible to find anyone in this part of the world who can seriously imagine the territory being a part of Georgia in future. What much of the world is labelling as "separatism" is in fact the yearning for autonomy by a small people that was divided against its wishes.

READ MORE -- http://www.spiegel.de/international/...574516,00.html

[North Pole]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

I am sure America OKed attack on South Ossetia.


Russian military experts stunned by contents found in Hummer vehicles seized from Georgians

MOSCOW. Aug 26 (Interfax-AVN) - Twenty people driving around in American Hummer vehicles near Poti have been detained and eight of them have been released, Russian General Staff Deputy Head Anatoly Nogovitsyn has said.

"We have checked these 20 and released eight of them. The 12 remaining persons are being checked further," Nogovitsyn said at a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday.

The Russian side has a special interest in this incident, he said. "It is not accidental, as we can see that the Pentagon is worried about its Hummer's," the general said.

"We have discovered a lot of interesting things stuffed into these vehicles. And we continue working in this direction," he said.

A video showing Hummers and captured troops.

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

http://www.izvestia.ru/cgi/lenta.cgi?id=2938&num=1

[Federate]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Expert of Mitk analytical center: "Armenia should recognize all the unrecognized states, including Kosovo and Northern Cyprus"

Armenia should recognize independence of the unrecognized states, considering the principle of non-application of double standards in the issue of the people's right for self determination", said expert of Mitk analytical center Edward Abramyan.

"Armenia has already witnessed recognition of independence of two self-declared states, which have much in common with Nagorno Karabakh. Taking into account the fact that 15 year consultations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have led to nothing, official Yerevan should start process of recognition of the self-declared "Nagorno Karabakh Republic" within its current borders.

After recognition of "Nagorno Karabakh Republic", official Yerevan should start an active process for gaining recognition of the self-declared "Nagorno Karabakh Republic" by different countries of the world", noted Abramyan stressing confidence that the large Armenian diaspora abroad will assist Armenia in this issue.

He also noted that considering the Caucasus solidarity, traditional ally relations with Russia and principle of non-application of double standards in the issue of the nations' right for self-determination, Armenia should recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which will probably recognize the so-called "Nagorno Karabakh Republic", being already the recognized states.

He said in order to soften West's rage following Armenia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, official Yerevan may also recognize independence of Kosovo.

"Moreover, in order not to worsen the tense external political situation between Armenia and Turkey, Yerevan can also recognize independence of Northern Cyprus, which may become a serious factor for Ankara's neutralization in the conflict with Azerbaijan", said Abramyan.

/Regnum/

Baboon source http://www.today.az/news/politics/47243.html

[RSNATION]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgSvYtjzZt8

I haven't finished watching it completely but it's an interesting video.
Amazing how Anatoly Barankevich personally took out a Georgian tank.

Also an article from Military Photos forum:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=140546

Armenian, do you post there?

Excellent article. Good find D3ADSY

[D3ADSY]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgSvYtjzZt8

I haven't finished watching it completely but it's an interesting video.
Amazing how Anatoly Barankevich personally took out a Georgian tank.

Also an article from Military Photos forum:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?t=140546

Armenian, do you post there?

[Anoush]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

It's a sheer shame that all around they play a game of hard core dirty politics. Not taking into any account the lives of innocent people.

I think if women were in control, countries would have less provocation and or wars.

I think Armenia should be first to recognize Abxazia and S. Osetia. Btw; I think first Armenia then I hope Russia would recognize our Artsakh. Although Russia doesn't have the interest she has towards our Artsakh as opposed to Abxazia and S.Osetia; as they believe that those two states will eventually be under the Russian Federation.

[North Pole]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

Why was Cheney aide in Georgia before the conflict?

Quote:

The LA Times reports that Joseph R. Wood, Vice President Cheney’s deputy assistant for national security affairs, “was in Georgia shortly before the war began.” James Gerstenzang wonders what Wood was doing there. Sergei Markov — a senior political scientist who is close to Vladimir Putin — claimed recently that the war was “part of a plot by Cheney” to help John McCain.

But media reports indicate that a “parade” of U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had warned Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili not to instigate the conflict with Russia.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/26/...e-the-conflict


There is only one word to describe today's America, that word is FILTH.

[RSNATION]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

August 26, 2008
*Calamity in the Name of Hegemony*
Is War With Russia on the Agenda?



By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS


> Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is
> sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a
> policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark--indeed
> brainwashed--about the most important and most dangerous events of our time.
>
> The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping Americans
> in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that demonstrates the control
> that the Israel Lobby exercises over Americans' view of the
> Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary is available
> here<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14055.htm>.
>
>
> As a result of the US media's one-sided coverage, few Americans are aware
> that for decades Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestinians from
> their homes and lands under protection of America's veto in the United
> Nations. Instead, the dispossessed Palestinians are portrayed as mindless
> terrorists who attack innocent Israel.
>
> If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or publications from
> Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee Against House
> Demolitions, one gets a radically different view of the situation than the
> propagandistic version delivered by US media and evangelical pulpits.
>
> Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists on the USS Cole
> in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39 wounded American sailors. But
> few have heard of Israel's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty that left 34
> American sailors dead and 174
> wounded<http://counterpunch.org/stclair06082007.html>.
> Pressured by the Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered Admiral McCain,
> father of the Republican presidential nominee, to cover up the attack. To
> this day there never has been a congressional investigation.
>
> The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of the
> Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented the conflict as a Russian
> invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and Israeli trained
> and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive
> the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a separatist province.
>
> Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been stationed in
> South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from Mikheil Saakashvili, the
> American puppet "president" of Georgia, the Georgian peacekeepers turned
> their weapons on the unsuspecting Russian peacekeepers and murdered them.
>
> This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the neoconservative
> National Endowment for Democracy, an election-rigging tool of US hegemony,
> was a war crime. In truth, the Russians should have hung Saakashvili, as he
> is far more guilty than was Saddam Hussein. But it is Russia, not
> Saakashvili, that the US media has demonized.
>
> Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell's Big Brother. They
> sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington
> Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What is wrong with Americans? Why do
> they put up with it? Are Americans the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P.
> Napolitano says they are? Americans flaunt "freedom and democracy" and live
> under a Ministry of Propaganda.
>
> Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with Soviet president
> Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war. But every one of Reagan's
> successors has sought to pick a new fight with Russia. In violation of the
> agreement, NATO has been taken to Russia's borders, and the US is determined
> to put former constituent parts of Russia herself into NATO. In an effort to
> neutralize Russia's nuclear deterrent and compromise her independence, the
> US is putting anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia's borders.
>
> The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia will lead to
> nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect John McCain, or the
> Republicans steal another presidential election, there will be nuclear war
> in the second decade of the 21st century. The neocon lies, propaganda, macho
> flag-waving, and use of US foreign policy in the interests of a few
> military-security firms, oil companies, and Israel are all leading in that
> direction.
>
> The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid nuclear war. But
> the opportunity might already have been missed. The Republicans have chosen
> as their candidate one of the most ignorant warmongers alive. The Democrats'
> choice was between one of the most divisive women in America and a man of
> mixed race with a funny name. Considering American's taste for war, the
> Democratic candidate could fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.
>
> Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black. Why does mixed
> ancestry confer the black label? If America's population was predominantly
> black, would Obama be considered white?
>
> Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the November
> election than any awareness or consideration of real issues by voters.
>
> The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class is
> being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the
> incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar's reserve currency
> status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad. Health
> insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured
> veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton's profits escalate.
> Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks.
> Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US
> hegemony.
>
> Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the
> people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane
> ideology.
>
> But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their frustrations,
> resentments, and disappointments on "Muslim terrorists" and "Russian
> aggressors." Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an
> unknown number of Afghans have died as a result of American invasions based
> on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator Biden,
> Obama's selection for vice president, who understand that the wars are based
> on lies, still want the US to win. So, it was all a mistake and a deception,
> but let's win anyway and keep on killing.
>
> I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North Vietnam.
> When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply, "if we had nuked
> them we would have won."
>
> What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and the loss of
> the cold war.
>
> For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take
> vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory. Millions of Americans
> are still bitter that "the liberal media" and war protesters caused America
> to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that this won't happen
> again. These Americans have no realization that there was no more reason for
> the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in
> Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.
>
> Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war. Obama has shown that
> he is as much under the Israel Lobby's thumb as McCain. Obama's foreign
> affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not a neocon, but he was born in
> Warsaw, Poland, and has the Pole's animosity toward Russia. The Bush
> administration has already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive
> nuclear attack. With the US government determined to ring Russia with puppet
> states and military bases, war is inevitable.
>
> Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any of Obama's
> appointees who might be out of step with plans for US and Israeli hegemony
> could expect opposition from large corporations and the Israel Lobby. There
> is no assurance that an Obama administration would not be positioned on "the
> issues" by the same special interests that have positioned the Bush
> administration.
>
> Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They have no awareness
> of the calamity that their government's pursuit of hegemony is bringing to
> themselves and to life on earth.
>
> *Paul Craig Roberts* was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
> administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial
> page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The
> Tyranny of Good
> Intentions<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0307396061/counterpunchmaga>.
> He can be reached at: [email protected]

[North Pole]

Re: Georgian-South Ossetian conflict

TEXT - Medvedev's statement on S.Ossetia, Abkhazia
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday signed decrees recognising the independence of Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Following is the Reuters translation of his statement, which was posted on the Kremlin web site at: http://www.kremlin.ru/appears/2008/0...4_205744.shtml


"Respected Russian citizens!

You without doubt know about the tragedy in South Ossetia. The night-time artillery attack of Tskhinvali by Georgian troops led to the deaths of hundreds of our peaceful citizens. Russian peacekeepers, who carried out their duty to defend women, children and elderly people to the end, died.

The Georgian leadership violated the U.N. Charter, their obligations under international treaties, ignored common sense, and launched a military conflict in which civilians became the victims. A similar fate awaited Abkhazia. Apparently, Tbilisi counted on a blitzkrieg, which would hand the world a fait accompli: the most inhumane means to achieve their goal of taking over South Ossetia at the price of exterminating a whole people.

This was not the first attempt. In 1991, Georgian President Gamsakhurdia gave the order to storm Sukhumi and Tskhinvali under the motto "Georgia for Georgians". Just think about these words. It was Russia which then stopped the extermination of the Abkhaz and Ossetian people. Our country has become a mediator and peacekeeper which was looking for a political settlement. But we always proceeded from a recognition of Georgia's territorial integrity.

The Georgian leadership has chosen a different path. Undermining talks, ignoring signed agreements, political and military provocations, attacks on peacekeepers - all this flagrantly violated the regime in the conflict zones established with the support of the United Nations and OSCE.

Russia has shown restraint and patience. We have more than once called for a return to the negotiating table and did not depart from our position even after the unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence. But our insistent calls to the Georgian side to sign agreements on the non-use of force with Abkhazia against South Ossetia remained unanswered. Unfortunately, they were ignored by NATO and even by the United Nations.

It is clear now: a peaceful solution of the conflict was not part of Tbilisi's plans. The Georgian leadership has been methodically preparing for war, while political and material help from outside mentors only strengthened its feeling of impunity.

On the night of Aug. 8, 2008, Tbilisi made its choice. Saakashvili chose genocide to solve his political tasks. Thus he killed with his own hands all hopes for the peaceful coexistence of Ossetians, Abkhazians and Georgians in one state.

The peoples of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have more than once spoken out in referendums in support of the independence of their republics. We understand that after what had happened in Tskhinvali and what was planned in Abkhazia, they have the right to decide their fate themselves.

The presidents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, basing (their arguments) on referendums and decisions by regional parliaments, have appealed to Russia asking it to recognise the state sovereignty of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Federation Council and the State Duma have voted in support of these appeals.

In the current situation it is necessary to make a decision. Taking into account the free will of the Ossetian and Abkhazian people, proceeding from provisions of the U.N Charter, the 1970 declaration on principles of international law referring to friendly relations between the states, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the conference on security and cooperation in Europe and other basic international documents, I have signed decrees on the recognition by the Russian Federation of the independence of South Ossetia and the independence of Abkhazia.

Russia calls on other states to follow its example. This is a difficult choice, but this is the only chance to save peoples' lives.

Turkish source http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/h...d=244&sz=50363

South Ossetia and Abkhazia Celebrate

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-34620.html