Author: Tambiyan Samvel

TURKISH EXPERT: "RUSSIA SENDS MESSAGE TO POST-SOVIET COUNTRIES BY ITS ATTITUDE TOWARDS GEORGIA"

Azeri Press Agency
Aug 19 2008
Azerbaijan

Istanbul – APA. "The basic principles of the Stability Pact for
the Caucasus offered by Turkey are not known," leader of National
Hegemonism Movement, former minister of state Kamran Inan told APA’s
Turkey bureau. He underlined that it would be difficult to coordinate
the interests of the states in the South Caucasus.

"Armenia’s accusations against Turkey are obvious, Armenians demand
lands from us. They have invaded 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s
territory. Iran always supports Armenia. Russia’s attitude
towards Georgia is obvious – lands of a sovereign state have been
occupied. Taking into account this situation, it is questionable how
the Stability Pact for the Caucasus will be formed," he said.

Kamran Inan took a stance on Russia’s recent actions.

"Russia could not stand Kosovo’s independence. Belgrade was the
closest ally of Moscow during the cold war and after that. Russia
can not resign itself to the separation of Yugoslavia and Kosovo’s
independence. Secondly, by the recent developments, Russia wanted
to send a message to post-Soviet countries: ‘I can not resign myself
to your closeness with the western world. You are my reserve firing
ground’. Remember, as soon as Russia declared its independence it
adopted doctrine ‘Near abroad’. In fact the doctrine means for the
East Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia not to leave the area of
Russia’s influence. Then Russians adopted a new military strategy,
which allowed them to use nuclear weapons while the national
interests demand it. Against the background of these events Poland
which suffered from the Russia’s rough attitude agreed to deploy
US missile defense shield on its soil. According to this agreement
the United States will also instruct the Polish army. I would like
to remind the Russia’s statements against it. The Russian defense
minister stated that Poland wouldn’t remain unpunished. Deputy
Chief of the General Staff stated that if it was necessary they
would use nuclear weapons and to direct the nuclear warheads towards
Poland. These are too harder statements. As you know, it was France
to force Russia to sign ceasefire agreement with Russia. However this
agreement has very hard terms". Kamran Inan said dividing of the world
between the powers re-started again. "Russia has a wide territory
and 152 million population but Russia can’t compete with the United
States in the military field. There is big difference between their
forces. USSR was very stronger than Russia in the period of Cold
War. After the collapse of USSR Russian soldiers sold their arms
to bring home the groceries. Only raise of oil and gas prices made
Russia stronger. However Russia can not be considered as a powerful
state despite its economic development. It is impossible for Russia
to compete with USA in future".

GLOBAL ENERGY FACING MILITARY RISKS
Igor Tomberg

1 7.08.2008

The active US and EU diplomacy in the Caspian region, which is mainly
aimed to lessen Russia’s influence by constructing a maximal number
of pipelines bypassing its territory, has long ignored the security
dimension of the corresponding projects. Recently the risks surfaced
when Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia threatened to disrupt oil
and gas supplies via the Transcaucasia. The military conflict affected
the energy landscape in the entire Caspian region and – indirectly –
the global oil price dynamics. On August 12, all oil and gas pipelines
traversing Georgia shut down operations due to security concerns. The
view upheld by Russian media is that the situation reflects the
tremendous risks entailed by the efforts of Washington and Brussels
to construct alternative fuel transit routes circumventing Russia.

Georgia has gained greater importance in the oil and gas transit,
especially to Europe, over the past 5-10 years. Besides, it is regarded
as a potential avenue in the framework of several projects of oil and
gas transit from Central Asia to the global markets, including those
of the Black Sea countries. However, Georgia’s aggression rendered oil
and gas transit via the Transcaucasia highly problematic. Currently,
analysts estimate the potential disruptions at approximately 1.6 bn
barrels of oil equivalent daily.

Already in the morning of August 11, the price of September futures
for WTI oil at the New York Electronic Mercantile Exchange rose to
$116.9 per barrel, $1.7 beyond the August 8 closing mark. Driven by
concerns stemming from the hostilities in South Ossetia, the prices
of September Brent futures in London and WTI futures in New York New
reached $112.18 and $114.8 respectively.

Oil importers say the supply process has been seriously affected. In
particular, gas supplies from Russia to Armenia via Georgia have been
30% below target. Exporters are complaining that it became impossible
to fulfill contracts and starting to eye alternative markets and
routes. Kazakh companies are looking towards the domestic market
and Azerbaijan is reorienting its export to the Baku-Novorossiysk
pipeline. Momentarily, Georgia became a risky transiter and left
other countries contemplating alternatives.

Somehow, the war in South Ossetia has overshadowed another event of
great significance in the context. Two days prior to the outbreak
of the conflict, fire halted the oil flow on the Turkish section of
the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Responsibility was claimed by the
Kurdish rebels. The fire took a whole week to extinguish and the oil
transit still has not been restored. BP declared a force majeure,
thus freeing itself of contractual obligations to deliver crude. On
August 12, BP closed the pipeline across Georgia used to transit oil
from Azerbaijan to Turkey. At the same time, BP stopped supplying
oil via the Baku-Supsa pipeline which comprises a segment located in
Georgia and links Azerbaijan to the Georgian coast of the Black Sea.

Even though Russian warplanes never attacked pipelines and the
conflict could only tell on marine routes, the reaction of oil
exporters was immediate and far-reaching. The State Oil Company of
Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) suspended export via Georgian seaports
and declared that its personnel from the Kulevi terminal would
be evacuated. Subsequently the same course of action was taken by
Kazakhstan.

Somewhat later than Baku, Astana said it would not export crude via
the Batumi seaport. Now Kazakhstan is looking into the possibility
of increasing export to China and Russia, and Azerbaijan intends to
channel greater volumes via the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline. SOCAR has
already submitted a request to Russia’s Transneft to provide greater
capacities at the pipeline.

SOCAR Vice President M. Barkov said the company asked to additionally
pipe 83,000 tons of oil a month (a total of 166,000 tons).

The impression is that the extraordinary circumstances at the transit
routes were not an unexpected development for the oil companies. In
any case, the experience of the past several days will make the
countries of the region assess with greater care the risks inherent
in new transit infrastructure projects and will instill a stronger
sense of loyalty to the already existing routes passing across Russia.

The Azerbaijani export dip is not projected to exceed 0.5-1% of
the global demand and consequently the disruptions are not going to
influence global oil prices to a considerable extent. Nevertheless, as
it is stated in a report circulated by the Troika Dialog investment
company, the conflict is likely to make companies involved in
international oil and gas pipeline projects focus on the risks of
transit across Georgia.

The fact that now Azerbaijan is open to new oil export options and
transit routes worries Poland, which seeks to alleviate its dependency
on fuel supplies from Russia. Warsaw planned to import oil via the
Odessa-Brody-Gdansk-Plock pipeline. Most of the workload for it was
to be provided by Azerbaijan, but the country is already forced to
shift routes as a result of the war.

The conflict can also have an adverse impact on the gas sector. Gas
from Azerbaijan is supplied to Turkey across Georgia via the
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum pipeline which has the potential to transit 30
bn cu km of natural gas annually but currently operates below the
planned capacity. Now that the pipeline is not functioning, Baku
is likely to appreciate Gazprom’s offer to buy all of Azerbaijan’s
export gas at the global price.

Considering the cost of gas transit to Europe via Turkey in the
framework of the pipeline projects which have not been completed
but have conti nuously swelling budgets, competing with Gazprom is
clearly going to be an uphill task. In any case, the risks of gas
transit bypassing Russia are growing, and the situation around the
transit via Georgia is the prime manifestation of the tendency.

At the same time, exotic undertakings like the White Stream project
invented by the team of Ukrainian Prime Minister Yu. Tymoshenko
finally seem dead.

The idea was to construct a pipeline across the seabed and via
Azerbaijan to link Turkmenistan and the Supsa seaport in Georgia, plus
a pipeline across the Black seabed and via the Crimea to the EU. The
Kyiv dreamers even planned White Stream-2 and White Stream-3, but now
the only risk-free route is the one across Russia, and locations like
Supsa or even the Crimea need not even be discussed.

It must be understood that it is not the Russian army who
is responsible for the shutdown of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline. Experts warned about the risks stemming from potential
Kurdish attacks against the transit infrastructure already on the
eve of the Turkish offensive against Kurds in Northern Iraq (October,
2007).

The US plan to partition Iraq and to establish an independent Kurdistan
can easily turn the vast Kurdish-populated region into a zone of
a serious conflict. The offensive against the Kurdish organizations
based in Northern Iraq drew a minimal amount of attention in Western
media at the time it was launched, though t he expression "trans-border
operation" disguised an invasion of a neighbor country. Knowing how
much experience the Kurdistan Workers’ Party had in guerilla warfare,
it did not take a prophet to predict that the conflict would be
protracted and would contribute to the risks associated not only with
hypothetic projects like the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline and Nabucco,
but also with the existing pipelines such as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and
the ones linking Iraq and Iran to Turkey. The recent sabotage at the
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan may be the first in a series of bad news.

Central Asian countries will have to base their decisions concerning
the oil and gas transit routes on their understanding of the
general political context. Currently the high risk zones are by
no means limited to the Transcaucasia. For example, obstacles
of military-political character impede the implementation of the
Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline project. Since its
830-km segment is supposed to lie in the unpacified Afghanistan where
the NATO forces seem unable to curb rampant violence, a huge question
mark hangs over the entire plan. The tense relations between India and
Pakistan are an additional source of political risks to the project.

Thus, the main conclusion to be drawn from the recent events in
the Caucasus is that the military risks to oil and gas pipelines
are escalating.

Regardless of where the gas comes from – Russia or not E2 in the
post-Soviet space the risks affect any supply routes. As the efforts
of producers to diversify export avenues are confronted by political
and military limitations, it makes sense to return to the time-tested
and stable oil and gas transit routes.

FEW REPORTS OF RUSSIAN WITHDRAWAL IN GEORGIA
Steve Inskeep

National Public Radio
August 18, 2008 Monday
NPR

It’s MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I’m Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And I’m Renee Montagne.

The Russians promised to start withdrawing their troops from Georgia
today, but there’s little to indicate that this is happening. Western
leaders have warned Russia that it will pay a diplomatic price if
it did not abide by the cease- fire agreement signed with Georgia
last week.

Today, some reports suggest the Russians might have reduced their
presence in the Georgian town of Gori, although they seem to be
controlling an important transportation junction there. NPR’s Ivan
Watson has managed to reach the western part of Georgia, and he joins
us now from the town of Zugdidi. And, Ivan, are you seeing or hearing
any signs of a Russian withdrawal there? This is an opposite end of
the country from South Ossetia and Gori, right?

IVAN WATSON: It is. And, Renee, there have been no signs of a Russian
withdrawal. A Russian military patrol just passed by here in the
downtown area of Zugdidi. In fact, on the drive up along the Black
Sea coast to get here, there were two abandoned Russian vehicles
just left on the side of the road. I presume they may get picked up
at some point.

Last night, residents of the port town of Poti, they said that there
were Russian soldiers at the outskirts to that town. That’s south of
here. And I’ve put in a few calls around Tbilisi and the town of Gori,
and people have said that they have seen no signs that the Russians
are pulling out of entrenched positions that they’ve set up along
the key east-west highway that links the country.

MONTAGNE: Is western Georgia then cut off from the capital and the
rest of the country?

WATSON: Absolutely. The main highway that links this country is
cut off by Russian troops, who have set up checkpoints. So that’s
blocked vehicular traffic. In addition to that, there was a mysterious
explosion on Saturday, Renee, that Moscow has denied any responsibility
for. Basically, it was a huge bomb that blew up a 20-foot span of a
large bridge, a railroad bridge, that runs parallel to the highway.

Railroad workers told me that about 50 trains a day pass over that
bridge. And between the highway being blocked by Russian soldiers and
this mysterious explosion which the Georgian government has blamed on
the Russians, that has basically created a blockade of the Georgian
capital. And it’s extended further, because the neighboring republics
of Azerbaijan and Armenia also rely on this route for trade – for
the export of Azerbaijani oil and for the delivery of supplies,
everything from groceries and foodstuffs to energy products – to
neighboring Armenia.

MONTAGNE: So how did you manage to get there today?

WATSON: We came on a Georgian military helicopter. That’s basically
the only way to get back and forth from the capital to the western
parts of this – what’s really a small country. And as we flew very
low over mountains and through gorges and over farmland, we passed
another Georgian military helicopter coming the opposite direction.

So this is being used the main way to link the country up. I spoke
with a European diplomat yesterday, Renee. He said that already, he’s
seeing signs of the civilian administration here in the western part
of the country is starting to break down with no direct links to the
Georgian capital right now. It’s not clear whether or not that is an
intentional consequence right now of the Russian strategy to occupy
the main road linking the country together.

MONTAGNE: And, Ivan, just briefly, you’re there in the west near
another separatist region: Abkhazia. But it’s looking more and more –
the Russians have certainly said this – that Abkhazia or that South
Ossetia is not going to go back under Georgian control. So has the
government of Mikhail Saakashvili really taken a hit on this?

WATSON: Well, one of the successes that he had had was helping
to centralize Georgia, which really went through a decline in the
1990s. There’s a nearby region called Ajaria, and one of Saakashvili’s
first successes was to kick out a local baron who was pushing for
independence and autonomy and to bring that back under Tbilisi. Now,
that region has been cut off again from Tbilisi. And if this situation
continues, Renee, it puts to risk the centralization, the Georgian
state itself, whether it can continue to exist.

MONTAGNE: Ivan, thank you for keeping us up on this.

WATSON: You’re welcome, Renee.

MONTAGNE: NPR’s Ivan Watson speaking to us from the town of Zugdidi,
in western Georgia.

INSKEEP: You’re hearing him on NPR’s MORNING EDITION, the program
that keeps you in touch with the world.

ITAR-TASS news agency, Russia
Aug 12 2008

Diplomat denies Georgia-bound US experts landed in Yerevan

Yerevan, 12 August (ITAR-TASS correspondent Tigran Liloyan): The
Armenian Foreign Ministry has denied reports that an aircraft carrying
American military experts bound for Georgia allegedly landed in
Yerevan. Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Gegam Garibdzhanyan said
that "several special flights carrying foreign citizens leaving
Georgia had landed at Yerevan and Gyumri (formerly Leninakan –
ITAR-TASS note)". His remarks on Monday evening (11 August) were
disseminated by the Armenian Foreign Ministry’s press and information
directorate.

"No aircraft from Romania has landed in Yerevan over the past few
days," the diplomat said. "No military experts from any country have
entered Armenia," Armenia’s deputy foreign minister said.

SITUATION IN SOUTH OSSETIA "POTENTIALLY EXPLOSIVE" – SPANISH DAILY

RedOrbit
14 August 2008, 18:00 CDT
TX

At dawn last Thursday, Georgian troops launched a brutal and
unexpected land and air attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of
South Ossetia. A few hours later, Russia counterattacked with all
its military might. Shortly afterward Abkhazia went to Ossetia’s
defence, confronting Georgia. The Russian troops easily took control
of the situation in Ossetia. They crossed the border into Georgia
and harassed Gori, the country’s second city, which is very close
to Tbilisi, the capital. In the face of such a forceful reaction,
Georgia declared a ceasefire, but Russia continued its "preventative"
penetration into Georgian territory until it had secured its rear-guard
positions. Shortly before receiving French President Sarkozy, currently
serving as EU president, in Moscow, Russia also declared a ceasefire
through a provisional truce.

Georgia’s unexpected attack on South Ossetia occurred just at the
beginning of the "Olympic peace." On Friday, just hours after the
fighting began, Putin and Bush hardly knew what to say to each other
when they were together in Beijing at the spectacular opening of the
Olympic Games. Nevertheless it is quite improbable that the decision
for Georgia to attack South Ossetia was made independently by the
foolish President Saakashvili, a faithful pawn of Bush’s in the region.

Although analyses of the attack are not yet clear, everything
indicates that the purpose was to test how Russia would respond to a
provocation in the Caucasus region after having lost its influence
in the Balkans. What was demonstrated is that the Russia of Putin
and Medvedev is not the Russia of Yeltsin. Their current reaction
capability and political intelligence in defence of their own specific
interests is much better. What is most likely is that the attack has
to do with Bush’s latest foreign policy mistake and with the first
positive action by the European Union, an action that was also brave
and autonomous. This was the time for the EU to start asserting itself
in an area where it should be exercising influence.

At any rate, despite the truce, the Caucasus region is potentially
explosive. Let us examine some historical aspects that will help to
understand the situation.

The Ossetians are a Caucasian people, ethnically different from
the Georgians, who have traditionally had good relations with
Russia. They have enjoyed autonomy since the time of the czars. With
the independence of Georgia after the disintegration of the USSR in
1991, South Ossetia – North Ossetia is part of Russia as an autonomous
province – remained an enclave in Georgian territory. This situation
provoked a military conflict that ended in a precarious agreement
by which South Ossetia became a de facto independent territory of
Georgia under Russia’s protection. The Abkhazians, also located
within Georgian territory but ethnically different from Georgians in
addition to being Muslims, found themselves in a similar position,
which helped widen Russia’s narrow strip of access to the Black Sea
which remained after Ukraine got its independence.

In addition to all this, since 2006, the only pipeline carrying oil
from the deposits near the Caspian Sea north of Iraq and the former
Soviet republics north of Afghanistan that does not pass through Russia
has crossed Georgian territory. For that reason, Georgia has become an
enclave that is strategic for Western control of oil in that region. At
the NATO summit last April, Georgia and Ukraine were candidates to join
the Alliance. Because of pressure from Russia they were not admitted.

Up to now Russia has not forced the issue of independence for South
Ossetia and Abkhazia, leaving them in an uncertain legal limbo of
de facto independence. Nevertheless, the Russian foreign minister
announced last winter that the recognition of Kosovo as an independent
state would have implications on the situation of South Ossetia and
other territories in the Ca ucasus.

After the military activity of the last few days, some observers have
asked, "Why yes to Kosovo and no to South Ossetia and Abkhazia? The
legal precedents involving several breaches of international law
in the Balkans comprise another factor in the conflict. Also keep
in mind that other countries in the region – Daguestan, Chechnyia,
Ingusetia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia – are also notorious
centres of instability. In this sense the Balkans are a minor theme
in comparison to the Caucasus region.

Thus the ingredients of conflict are all present: ethnicity, religions,
nationalism to excite the people; oil and energy policy as real
economic factors; Russia’s outlet to the Black Sea and limits to the
area controlled by NATO as basic geostrategic factors; proximity to
war zones (Afghanistan and Iraq) or of conflict (Iran and the Middle
East ) as centres of military interest. Therefore to play with war
in the Caucasus region is to play with fire. We hope these brief and
tragic days have served as a lesson to certain sorcerer’s apprentices.

Originally published by La Vanguardia website, Barcelona, in Spanish
14 Aug 08.

(c) 2008 BBC Monitoring European. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All
rights Reserved.

TBILISI’S ARMENIAN THEATRE TO BE TOURING IN USA AND CANADA

Noyan Tapan

Au g 12, 2008

TBILISI, AUGUST 12, ARMENAINS TODAY – NOYAN TAPAN. For the first time
in the Diaspora’s history, Tbilisi’s Petros Adamyan State Armenian
Dramatic Theatre is invited to America. The theatre will be touring
major Armenian populated centers of the United States and Canada
during the months of September and October of 2008. The theatre is
now 152 years old, the oldest active theatre in the Caucasus. It
is the only state Armenian theatre outside Armenia, while also an
important center that contributes to the development of Armenian
culture. Gabriel Sundukyan, Petros Adamyan, Siranush and many other
famous Armenian artists have their names connected to this theatre.

ZIONIST PROXY GEORGIA – MAY DEATH BE UPON YOU ZIONISM !!!!!!!
By Ali Abunimah

Cleveland Indy Media
Aug. 12, 2008 at 12:26 PM
OH

Tel Aviv to Tbilisi: Israel’s role in the Russia-Georgia war Tel Aviv
to Tbilisi:

Israel’s role in theRussia-Georgia war Tel Aviv to Tbilisi: Israel’s
role in the Russia-Georgia war Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada,
12 August 2008 html
[] Israelis wave both Georgian and Israeli flags as they chant
anti-Russian slogans during a demonstration outside the Russian embassy
in Tel Aviv, 11 August. (Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images) From the moment
Georgia launched a surprise attack on the tiny breakaway region of
South Ossetia last week, prompting a fierce Russian counterattack,
Israel has been trying to distance itself from the conflict. This is
understandable: with Georgian forces on the retreat, large numbers of
civilians killed and injured, and Russia’s fury unabated, Israel’s
deep involvement is severely embarrassing. The collapse of the
Georgian offensive represents not only a disaster for that country
and its US-backed leaders, but another blow to the myth of Israel’s
military prestige and prowess. Worse, Israel fears that Russia
could retaliate by stepping up its military assistance to Israel’s
adversaries including Iran. "Israel is following with great concern
the developments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and hopes the violence
will end," its foreign ministry said, adding with uncharacteristic
doveishness, "Israel recognizes the territorial integrity of
Georgia and calls for a peaceful solution." Tbilisi’s top diplomat
in Tel Aviv complained about the lackluster Israeli response to his
country’s predicament and perhaps overestimating Israeli influence,
called for Israeli "diplomatic pressure on Moscow." Just like Israel,
the diplomat said, Georgia is fighting a war on "terrorism." Israeli
officials politely told the Georgians that "the address for that type
of pressure was Washington" (Herb Keinon, "Tbilisi wants Israel to
pressure Russia," The Jerusalem Post, 11 August 2008). While Israel
was keen to downplay its role, Georgia perhaps hoped that flattery
might draw Israel further in. Georgian minister Temur Yakobashvili —
whom the Israeli daily Haaretz stressed was Jewish — told Israeli
army radio that "Israel should be proud of its military which trained
Georgian soldiers." Yakobashvili claimed rather implausibly, according
to Haaretz, that "a small group of Georgian soldiers were able to
wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to the Israeli
training" ("Georgian minister tells Israel Radio: Thanks to Israeli
training, we’re fending off Russian military," Haaretz, 11 August
2008). Since 2000, Israel has sold hundreds of millions of dollars in
arms and combat training to Georgia. Weapons included guns, ammunition,
shells, tactical missile systems, antiaircraft systems, automatic
turrets for armored vehicles, electronic equipment and remotely
piloted aircraft. These sales were authorized by the Israeli defense
ministry (Arie Egozi, "War in Georgia: The Israeli connection," Ynet,
10 August 2008). Training also involved officers from Israel’s Shin
Bet secret service — which has for decades carried out extrajudicial
executions and torture of Palestinians in the occupied territories
— the Israeli police, and the country’s major arms companies Elbit
and Rafael. The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis appears to have been
cemented at the highest levels, and according to YNet, "The fact that
Georgia’s defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli
who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation." Others
involved in the brisk arms trade included former Israeli minister and
Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo as well as several senior Israeli military
officers. The key liaison was Reserve Brigadier General Gal Hirsch who
commanded Israeli forces on the border with Lebanon during the July
2006 Second Lebanon War. (Yossi Melman, "Georgia Violence – A frozen
alliance," Haaretz, 10 August 2008). He resigned from the army after
the Winograd commission severely criticized Israel’s conduct of its
war against Lebanon and an internal Israeli army investigation blamed
Hirsch for the seizure of two soldiers by Hizballah. According to one
of the Israeli combat trainers, an officer in an "elite" Israel army
unit, Hirsch and colleagues would sometimes personally supervise
the training of Georgian forces which included "house-to-house
fighting." The training was carried out through several "private"
companies with close links to the Israeli military. As the violence
raged in Georgia, the trainer was desperately trying to contact
his former Georgian students on the battlefront via mobile phone:
the Israelis wanted to know whether the Georgians had "internalized
Israeli military technique and if the special reconnaissance forces
have chalked up any successes" (Jonathan Lis and Moti Katz, "IDF
vets who trained Georgia troops say war with Russia is no surprise,"
Haaretz, 11 August 2008). Yet on the ground, the Israeli-trained
Georgian forces, perhaps unsurprisingly overwhelmed by the Russians,
have done little to redeem the image of Israel’s military following
its defeat by Hizballah’s in July-August 2006. The question remains
as to why Israel was involved in the first place. There are several
reasons. The first is simply economic opportunism: for years,
especially since the 11 September 2001 attacks, arms exports and
"security expertise" have been one of Israel’s growth industries. But
the close Israeli involvement in a region Russia considers to be of
vital interest suggests that Israel might have been acting as part of
the broader US scheme to encircle Russia and contain its reemerging
power. Since the end of the Cold War, the US has been steadily
encroaching on Russia’s borders and expanding NATO in a manner the
Kremlin considers highly provocative. Shortly after coming into office,
the Bush Administration tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and,
like the Clinton administration, adopted former Soviet satellite
states as its own, using them to base an anti-missile system Russia
views as a threat. In addition to their "global war on terror,"
hawks in Washington have recently been talking up a new Cold War with
Russia. Georgia was an eager volunteer in this effort and has learned
quickly the correct rhetoric: one Georgian minister claimed that
"every bomb that falls on our heads is an attack on democracy, on the
European Union and on America." Georgia has been trying to join NATO,
and sent 2,000 soldiers to help the US occupy Iraq. It may have hoped
that once war started this loyalty would be rewarded with the kind of
round-the-clock airlift of weapons that Israel receives from the US
during its wars. Instead so far the US only helped airlift the Georgian
troops from Iraq back to the beleaguered home front. By helping
Georgia, Israel may have been doing its part to duplicate its own
experience in assisting the eastward expansion of the "Euro-Atlantic"
empire. While supporting Georgia was certainly risky for Israel, given
the possible Russian reaction, it has a compelling reason to intervene
in a region that is heavily contested by global powers. Israel
must constantly reinvent itself as an "asset" to American power
if it is to maintain the US support that ensures its survival as a
settler-colonial enclave in the Middle East. It is a familiar role;
in the 1970s and 1980s, at the behest of Washington, Israel helped
South Africa’s apartheid regime fight Soviet-supported insurgencies
in South African-occupied Namibia and Angola, and it trained
right-wing US-allied death squads fighting left-wing governments and
movements in Central America. After 2001, Israel marketed itself as
an expert on combating "Islamic terrorism." Venezuelan president
Hugo Chavez recently denounced Colombia – long one of the largest
recipients of US military aid after Israel — as the "Israel of Latin
America." Georgia’s government, to the detriment of its people, may
have tried to play the role of the "Israel of the Caucasus" — a loyal
servant of US ambitions in that region — and lost the gamble. Playing
with empires is dangerous for a small country. As for Israel itself,
with the Bush Doctrine having failed to give birth to the "new Middle
East" that the US needs to maintain its power in the region against
growing resistance, an ever more desperate and rogue Israel must look
for opportunities to prove its worth elsewhere. That is a dangerous and
scary thing. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is
author of < 8.shtml>One
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli- Palestinian Impasse
(Metropolitan Books, 2006).

****************************************** ********************************
rpunch.org/walberg08122008.htmlAugust 12, 2008 How
the U.S. Invited a War in South Ossetia War a la Carte By ERIC WALBERG
Last week, Georgia launched a major military offensive against the
rebel province South Ossetia, just hours after President Mikheil
Saakashvili had announced a unilateral ceasefire. Close to 1,500
have been killed, Russian officials say. Thirty thousand refugees,
mostly women and children, streamed across the border into the North
Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz in Russia. The timing ? and subterfuge
? suggest the unscrupulous Saakashvili was counting on surprise. ?Most
decision makers have gone for the holidays,? he said in an interview
with CNN. ?Brilliant moment to attack a small country.? Apparently
he was referring to Russia invading Georgia, despite the fact that
it was Georgia which had just launched a full-scale invasion of
the ?small country? South Ossetia, while Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin was in Beijing for the Olympics. Twenty-seven Russian
peacekeepers and troops have been killed and 150 wounded so far, many
when their barracks were shelled by Georgian forces at the start of the
invasion. Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili
rushed to announce that their mini-blitzkreig had destroyed ten
Russian combat planes (Russia says two) and that Georgian troops were
in full control of the capital Tskhinvali. Russia?s Defense Ministry
denounced the Georgian attack as a ?dirty adventure.? From Beijing,
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, ?It is regrettable that
on the day before the opening of the Olympic Games, the Georgian
authorities have undertaken aggressive actions in South Ossetia.? He
later added, ?War has started.? Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed
that Moscow will protect Russian citizens ? most South Ossetians hold
Russian passports. The offensive prompted Moscow to send in 150 tanks,
to launch air strikes on nearby Gori and military sites, and to order
warships to Georgia?s Black Sea coast. Georgia?s national security
council declared a state of war with Russia and a full military
mobilization. US military planes are already flying Georgia?s 2,000
troops in Iraq ? the third-largest force after the United States
and Britain ? back to confront the Russians. By Sunday, despite
early claims of victory, Georgian troops had retreated from South
Ossetia, leaving diplomatic rubble behind which will be very hard
to clear. Truth is stranger than fiction in Georgia. The writing has
been on the wall for months. Georgian President Saakashvili?s fawning
over Western leaders at the ?emergency? NATO meeting in April and
his pre-election anti-Russian bluster in May made it clear to all
that Georgia is the more-than-willing canary in the Eastern mine
shaft. The Georgian attack on South Ossetia?s capital Tskhinvali
? I repeat ? just hours after Saakashvili declared a cease-fire,
looks very much like an attempt to reincorporate the rebel province
into Georgia unilaterally. But whoever is advising the brash young
president ignores the postscript ? no pasaran! South Ossetia has
been independent for 16 years and is not likely to drape flowers
on invading Georgia tanks. It also just happens to have Russia as
patron. The aftershocks of this wild gamble by Saakashvili are just
beginning. This is Russia?s most serious altercation with a foreign
country since the collapse of the Soviet Union and could escalate into
an all-out war engulfing much of the Caucasus region. Russian warships
are not planning to block shipments of oil from Georgia?s Black Sea
port of Poti, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said
on Sunday, but reserve the right to search ships coming to and from
it. Another source naval source said, ?The crews are assigned the
task to not allow arms and military hardware supplies to reach Georgia
by sea.? The Russians have already sunk a Georgian missile boat that
was trying to attack Russian ships. Upping the ante, Ukraine said it
reserved the right to bar Russian warships from returning to their
nominally Ukrainian ? formerly Russian ? base of Sevastopol , on the
Crimean peninsula. On Saturday, Russia accused Ukraine of ?arming the
Georgians to the teeth.? Georgia?s other separatist region, Abkhazia,
was mobilizing its forces for a push into the Kodori Gorge, the only
part of Abkhazia controlled by Georgia. ?No dialogue is possible
with the current Georgian leadership,? said Abkhazia?s President
Sergei Bagapsh. ?They are state criminals who must be tried for
the crimes committed in South Ossetia, the genocide of the Ossetian
people.? Britain has ordered its nationals to leave Georgia. British
charity worker Sian Davis said, ?It?s really, really quiet, eerily
quiet. Everyone was either at home or had packed up and moved out of
the city. People are really, really scared. People are panicking.? So
far the more than 2,000 US nationals in this tiny but strategic country
are mostly staying put. This is yet another made-in-the-USA war. US
President George W Bush loudly supported Georgia?s request to join
NATO in April, much to the consternation of European leaders. NATO
promised to send advisers in December. Not losing any time, the US
sent more than 1,000 US Marines and soldiers to the Vaziani military
base on the South Ossetian border in July ?to teach combat skills
to Georgian troops.? The UN Security Council failed to reach an
agreement on the current crisis after three emergency meetings. A
Russian-drafted statement that called on Georgia and the separatists
to ?renounce the use of force? was vetoed by the US, UK and France. To
dispel any conceivable doubt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
said Friday: ?We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by
aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia?s territorial integrity,
and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil.? But it?s
also yet another made-in-Israel war. A thousand military advisers
from Israeli security firms have been training the country?s armed
forces and were deeply involved in the Georgian army?s preparations
to attack and capture the capital of South Ossetia, according to the
Israeli web site Debkafiles which has close links with the regime?s
intelligence and military sources. Haaretz reported that Yakobashvili
told Army Radio ? in Hebrew, ? Israel should be proud of its military
which trained Georgian soldiers.? ?We killed 60 Russian soldiers
just yesterday,? he boasted on Monday. ?The Russians have lost more
than 50 tanks, and we have shot down 11 of their planes. They have
enormous damage in terms of manpower.? He warned that the Russians
would try and open another battlefront in Abkhazia and denied reports
that the Georgian army was retreating. ?The Georgian forces are not
retreating. We move our military according to security needs.? Israelis
are active in real estate, tourism, gaming, military manufacturing
and security consulting in Georgia, including former Tel Aviv mayor
Roni Milo and Likudite and gambling operator Reuven Gavrieli. ?The
Russians don’t look kindly on the military cooperation of Israeli
firms with the Georgian army, and as far as I know, Israelis doing
security consulting left Georgia in the past few days because of the
events there,? the former Israeli ambassador to Georgia and Armenia,
Baruch Ben Neria, said yesterday. Since his posting, Ben Neria has
represented Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in Georgia . By Sunday,
Putin was in Vladikavkaz and said it is unlikely South Ossetia
will ever be reintegrated into Georgia. There are really only two
possible scenarios to end the conflict: a long-term stalemate or
Russian annexation of South Ossetia. The former is beginning to
look pretty good, and Saakashvili is probably already ruing his
rash move. The Georgian president is clearly hoping he can suck
the US into the conflict. Alexander Lomaya, secretary of Georgia?s
National Security Council, said only Western intervention could
prevent all-out war. But it is very unlikely Bush will risk WWIII
over this scrap of craggy mountain. When US puppets get out of line,
like a certain Saddam Hussein, they are easily abandoned. Saakashvili
would be wise to recall the fate of the first post-Soviet Georgian
president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, also a darling of the US (in 1978 US
Congress nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize). He rode to victory
on a wave of nationalism in 1990, declaring independence for Georgia
and officially recognizing the ?Chechen Republic of Ichkeria?. But
South Ossetia wanted no part of the fiery Gamsakhurdia?s chauvinistic
vision and declared its own ?independence?. Engulfed by a wave of
disgust a short two years later, abandoned by his US friends, he
fled to his beloved Ichkeria. He snuck back into western Georgia,
looking for support in restive Abkhazia, but his uprising collapsed,
prompting Abkhazia to secede. Gamsakhurdia died in 1993, leaving
the two secessionist provinces as a legacy, and was buried in
Chechnya. Saakashvili rehabilitated him in 2004 and had his
remains interred in Mtatsminda Pantheon with other Georgian
?heroes?. Truth really is stranger than fiction in Georgia. Now
the burning question is: will history repeat itself? Eric
Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him
at< ;

ZIONIST PROXY GEORGIA

by ALI ABUNIMAH Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2008 at 12:26 PM

MAY DEATH BE UPON YOU ZIONISM !!!!!!!

Tel Aviv to Tbilisi: Israel’s role in the Russia-Georgia war
Tel Aviv to Tbilisi: Israel’s role in theRussia-Georgia war
Tel Aviv to Tbilisi: Israel’s role in the Russia-Georgia
war Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 12 August
2008 e9756.shtml [] Israelis wave
both Georgian and Israeli flags as they chant anti-Russian slogans
during a demonstration outside the Russian embassy in Tel Aviv, 11
August. (Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images) From the moment Georgia launched
a surprise attack on the tiny breakaway region of South Ossetia last
week, prompting a fierce Russian counterattack, Israel has been trying
to distance itself from the conflict. This is understandable: with
Georgian forces on the retreat, large numbers of civilians killed
and injured, and Russia’s fury unabated, Israel’s deep involvement
is severely embarrassing. The collapse of the Georgian offensive
represents not only a disaster for that country and its US-backed
leaders, but another blow to the myth of Israel’s military prestige
and prowess. Worse, Israel fears that Russia could retaliate by
stepping up its military assistance to Israel’s adversaries including
Iran. "Israel is following with great concern the developments in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia and hopes the violence will end," its
foreign ministry said, adding with uncharacteristic doveishness,
"Israel recognizes the territorial integrity of Georgia and calls for
a peaceful solution." Tbilisi’s top diplomat in Tel Aviv complained
about the lackluster Israeli response to his country’s predicament
and perhaps overestimating Israeli influence, called for Israeli
"diplomatic pressure on Moscow." Just like Israel, the diplomat said,
Georgia is fighting a war on "terrorism." Israeli officials politely
told the Georgians that "the address for that type of pressure
was Washington" (Herb Keinon, "Tbilisi wants Israel to pressure
Russia," The Jerusalem Post, 11 August 2008). While Israel was keen
to downplay its role, Georgia perhaps hoped that flattery might draw
Israel further in. Georgian minister Temur Yakobashvili — whom the
Israeli daily Haaretz stressed was Jewish — told Israeli army radio
that "Israel should be proud of its military which trained Georgian
soldiers." Yakobashvili claimed rather implausibly, according to
Haaretz, that "a small group of Georgian soldiers were able to wipe out
an entire Russian military division, thanks to the Israeli training"
("Georgian minister tells Israel Radio: Thanks to Israeli training,
we’re fending off Russian military," Haaretz, 11 August 2008). Since
2000, Israel has sold hundreds of millions of dollars in arms and
combat training to Georgia. Weapons included guns, ammunition,
shells, tactical missile systems, antiaircraft systems, automatic
turrets for armored vehicles, electronic equipment and remotely
piloted aircraft. These sales were authorized by the Israeli defense
ministry (Arie Egozi, "War in Georgia: The Israeli connection," Ynet,
10 August 2008). Training also involved officers from Israel’s Shin
Bet secret service — which has for decades carried out extrajudicial
executions and torture of Palestinians in the occupied territories
— the Israeli police, and the country’s major arms companies Elbit
and Rafael. The Tel Aviv-Tbilisi military axis appears to have been
cemented at the highest levels, and according to YNet, "The fact that
Georgia’s defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli
who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation." Others
involved in the brisk arms trade included former Israeli minister and
Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo as well as several senior Israeli military
officers. The key liaison was Reserve Brigadier General Gal Hirsch who
commanded Israeli forces on the border with Lebanon during the July
2006 Second Lebanon War. (Yossi Melman, "Georgia Violence – A frozen
alliance," Haaretz, 10 August 2008). He resigned from the army after
the Winograd commission severely criticized Israel’s conduct of its
war against Lebanon and an internal Israeli army investigation blamed
Hirsch for the seizure of two soldiers by Hizballah. According to one
of the Israeli combat trainers, an officer in an "elite" Israel army
unit, Hirsch and colleagues would sometimes personally supervise
the training of Georgian forces which included "house-to-house
fighting." The training was carried out through several "private"
companies with close links to the Israeli military. As the violence
raged in Georgia, the trainer was desperately trying to contact his
former Georgian students on the battlefront via mobile phone: the
Israelis wanted to know whether the Georgians had "internalized Israeli
military technique and if the special reconnaissance forces have
chalked up any successes" (Jonathan Lis and Moti Katz, "IDF vets who
trained Georgia troops say war with Russia is no surprise," Haaretz,
11 August 2008). Yet on the ground, the Israeli-trained Georgian
forces, perhaps unsurprisingly overwhelmed by the Russians, have done
little to redeem the image of Israel’s military following its defeat
by Hizballah’s in July-August 2006. The question remains as to why
Israel was involved in the first place. There are several reasons. The
first is simply economic opportunism: for years, especially since
the 11 September 2001 attacks, arms exports and "security expertise"
have been one of Israel’s growth industries. But the close Israeli
involvement in a region Russia considers to be of vital interest
suggests that Israel might have been acting as part of the broader US
scheme to encircle Russia and contain its reemerging power. Since the
end of the Cold War, the US has been steadily encroaching on Russia’s
borders and expanding NATO in a manner the Kremlin considers highly
provocative. Shortly after coming into office, the Bush Administration
tore up the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and, like the Clinton
administration, adopted former Soviet satellite states as its own,
using them to base an anti-missile system Russia views as a threat. In
addition to their "global war on terror," hawks in Washington have
recently been talking up a new Cold War with Russia. Georgia was an
eager volunteer in this effort and has learned quickly the correct
rhetoric: one Georgian minister claimed that "every bomb that falls
on our heads is an attack on democracy, on the European Union and on
America." Georgia has been trying to join NATO, and sent 2,000 soldiers
to help the US occupy Iraq. It may have hoped that once war started
this loyalty would be rewarded with the kind of round-the-clock airlift
of weapons that Israel receives from the US during its wars. Instead
so far the US only helped airlift the Georgian troops from Iraq back
to the beleaguered home front. By helping Georgia, Israel may have
been doing its part to duplicate its own experience in assisting the
eastward expansion of the "Euro-Atlantic" empire. While supporting
Georgia was certainly risky for Israel, given the possible Russian
reaction, it has a compelling reason to intervene in a region that is
heavily contested by global powers. Israel must constantly reinvent
itself as an "asset" to American power if it is to maintain the
US support that ensures its survival as a settler-colonial enclave
in the Middle East. It is a familiar role; in the 1970s and 1980s,
at the behest of Washington, Israel helped South Africa’s apartheid
regime fight Soviet-supported insurgencies in South African-occupied
Namibia and Angola, and it trained right-wing US-allied death squads
fighting left-wing governments and movements in Central America. After
2001, Israel marketed itself as an expert on combating "Islamic
terrorism." Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez recently denounced
Colombia – long one of the largest recipients of US military aid after
Israel — as the "Israel of Latin America." Georgia’s government, to
the detriment of its people, may have tried to play the role of the
"Israel of the Caucasus" — a loyal servant of US ambitions in that
region — and lost the gamble. Playing with empires is dangerous
for a small country. As for Israel itself, with the Bush Doctrine
having failed to give birth to the "new Middle East" that the
US needs to maintain its power in the region against growing
resistance, an ever more desperate and rogue Israel must look for
opportunities to prove its worth elsewhere. That is a dangerous and
scary thing. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is
author of < 8.shtml>One
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli- Palestinian Impasse
(Metropolitan Books, 2006).

****************************************** ********************************
rpunch.org/walberg08122008.htmlAugust 12, 2008 How
the U.S. Invited a War in South Ossetia War a la Carte By ERIC WALBERG
Last week, Georgia launched a major military offensive against the
rebel province South Ossetia, just hours after President Mikheil
Saakashvili had announced a unilateral ceasefire. Close to 1,500
have been killed, Russian officials say. Thirty thousand refugees,
mostly women and children, streamed across the border into the North
Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz in Russia. The timing ? and subterfuge
? suggest the unscrupulous Saakashvili was counting on surprise. ?Most
decision makers have gone for the holidays,? he said in an interview
with CNN. ?Brilliant moment to attack a small country.? Apparently
he was referring to Russia invading Georgia, despite the fact that
it was Georgia which had just launched a full-scale invasion of
the ?small country? South Ossetia, while Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin was in Beijing for the Olympics. Twenty-seven Russian
peacekeepers and troops have been killed and 150 wounded so far, many
when their barracks were shelled by Georgian forces at the start of the
invasion. Georgian State Minister for Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili
rushed to announce that their mini-blitzkreig had destroyed ten
Russian combat planes (Russia says two) and that Georgian troops were
in full control of the capital Tskhinvali. Russia?s Defense Ministry
denounced the Georgian attack as a ?dirty adventure.? From Beijing,
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, ?It is regrettable that
on the day before the opening of the Olympic Games, the Georgian
authorities have undertaken aggressive actions in South Ossetia.? He
later added, ?War has started.? Russian President Dmitry Medvedev vowed
that Moscow will protect Russian citizens ? most South Ossetians hold
Russian passports. The offensive prompted Moscow to send in 150 tanks,
to launch air strikes on nearby Gori and military sites, and to order
warships to Georgia?s Black Sea coast. Georgia?s national security
council declared a state of war with Russia and a full military
mobilization. US military planes are already flying Georgia?s 2,000
troops in Iraq ? the third-largest force after the United States
and Britain ? back to confront the Russians. By Sunday, despite
early claims of victory, Georgian troops had retreated from South
Ossetia, leaving diplomatic rubble behind which will be very hard
to clear. Truth is stranger than fiction in Georgia. The writing has
been on the wall for months. Georgian President Saakashvili?s fawning
over Western leaders at the ?emergency? NATO meeting in April and
his pre-election anti-Russian bluster in May made it clear to all
that Georgia is the more-than-willing canary in the Eastern mine
shaft. The Georgian attack on South Ossetia?s capital Tskhinvali
? I repeat ? just hours after Saakashvili declared a cease-fire,
looks very much like an attempt to reincorporate the rebel province
into Georgia unilaterally. But whoever is advising the brash young
president ignores the postscript ? no pasaran! South Ossetia has
been independent for 16 years and is not likely to drape flowers
on invading Georgia tanks. It also just happens to have Russia as
patron. The aftershocks of this wild gamble by Saakashvili are just
beginning. This is Russia?s most serious altercation with a foreign
country since the collapse of the Soviet Union and could escalate
into an all-out war engulfing much of the Caucasus region. Russian
warships are not planning to block shipments of oil from Georgia?s
Black Sea port of Poti, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin
said on Sunday, but reserve the right to search ships coming to and
from it. Another source naval source said, ?The crews are assigned
the task to not allow arms and military hardware supplies to reach
Georgia by sea.? The Russians have already sunk a Georgian missile
boat that was trying to attack Russian ships. Upping the ante, Ukraine
said it reserved the right to bar Russian warships from returning to
their nominally Ukrainian ? formerly Russian ? base of Sevastopol ,
on the Crimean peninsula. On Saturday, Russia accused Ukraine of
?arming the Georgians to the teeth.? Georgia?s other separatist
region, Abkhazia, was mobilizing its forces for a push into the
Kodori Gorge, the only part of Abkhazia controlled by Georgia. ?No
dialogue is possible with the current Georgian leadership,? said
Abkhazia?s President Sergei Bagapsh. ?They are state criminals who
must be tried for the crimes committed in South Ossetia, the genocide
of the Ossetian people.? Britain has ordered its nationals to leave
Georgia. British charity worker Sian Davis said, ?It?s really, really
quiet, eerily quiet.

Everyone was either at home or had packed up and moved out of the
city. People are really, really scared. People are panicking.? So far
the more than 2,000 US nationals in this tiny but strategic country
are mostly staying put. This is yet another made-in-the-USA war. US
President George W Bush loudly supported Georgia?s request to join
NATO in April, much to the consternation of European leaders. NATO
promised to send advisers in December. Not losing any time, the US
sent more than 1,000 US Marines and soldiers to the Vaziani military
base on the South Ossetian border in July ?to teach combat skills
to Georgian troops.? The UN Security Council failed to reach an
agreement on the current crisis after three emergency meetings. A
Russian-drafted statement that called on Georgia and the separatists
to ?renounce the use of force? was vetoed by the US, UK and France. To
dispel any conceivable doubt, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said
Friday: ?We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and
missiles, respect Georgia?s territorial integrity, and withdraw its
ground combat forces from Georgian soil.? But it?s also yet another
made-in-Israel war. A thousand military advisers from Israeli security
firms have been training the country?s armed forces and were deeply
involved in the Georgian army?s preparations to attack and capture
the capital of South Ossetia, according to the Israeli web site
Debkafiles which has close links with the regime?s intelligence and
military sources. Haaretz reported that Yakobashvili told Army Radio
? in Hebrew, ? Israel should be proud of its military which trained
Georgian soldiers.? ?We killed 60 Russian soldiers just yesterday,? he
boasted on Monday. ?The Russians have lost more than 50 tanks, and
we have shot down 11 of their planes. They have enormous damage in
terms of manpower.? He warned that the Russians would try and open
another battlefront in Abkhazia and denied reports that the Georgian
army was retreating. ?The Georgian forces are not retreating. We move
our military according to security needs.? Israelis are active in real
estate, tourism, gaming, military manufacturing and security consulting
in Georgia, including former Tel Aviv mayor Roni Milo and Likudite
and gambling operator Reuven Gavrieli. ?The Russians don’t look
kindly on the military cooperation of Israeli firms with the Georgian
army, and as far as I know, Israelis doing security consulting left
Georgia in the past few days because of the events there,? the former
Israeli ambassador to Georgia and Armenia, Baruch Ben Neria, said
yesterday. Since his posting, Ben Neria has represented Rafael Advanced
Defense Systems in Georgia . By Sunday, Putin was in Vladikavkaz
and said it is unlikely South Ossetia will ever be reintegrated
into Georgia. There are really only two possible scenarios to end
the conflict: a long-term stalemate or Russian annexation of South
Ossetia. The former is beginning to look pretty good, and Saakashvili
is probably already ruing his rash move. The Georgian president is
clearly hoping he can suck the US into the conflict. Alexander Lomaya,
secretary of Georgia?s National Security Council, said only Western
intervention could prevent all-out war. But it is very unlikely
Bush will risk WWIII over this scrap of craggy mountain. When US
puppets get out of line, like a certain Saddam Hussein, they are
easily abandoned. Saakashvili would be wise to recall the fate of
the first post-Soviet Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, also a
darling of the US (in 1978 US Congress nominated him for the Nobel
Peace Prize). He rode to victory on a wave of nationalism in 1990,
declaring independence for Georgia and officially recognizing the
?Chechen Republic of Ichkeria?. But South Ossetia wanted no part of
the fiery Gamsakhurdia?s chauvinistic vision and declared its own
?independence?. Engulfed by a wave of disgust a short two years later,
abandoned by his US friends, he fled to his beloved Ichkeria. He snuck
back into western Georgia, looking for support in restive Abkhazia,
but his uprising collapsed, prompting Abkhazia to secede. Gamsakhurdia
died in 1993, leaving the two secessionist provinces as a legacy,
and was buried in Chechnya. Saakashvili rehabilitated him in 2004 and
had his remains interred in Mtatsminda Pantheon with other Georgian
?heroes?. Truth really is stranger than fiction in Georgia. Now the
burning question is: will history repeat itself?

NY Hyortik AYF Chapter
69-23 47th Ave.
Woodside, NY 11377
(718) 651-1530
[email protected]
August 11, 2008
For Immediate Release

New York AYF and Yeraz Dance Group Host Summer Barbeque

DOUGLASTON, NY – On August 9 the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) New York
Hyortik chapter and the Yeraz Dance Group brought community members together
at St. Sarkis Armenian Apostolic church for fun, family, and food. The event
drew a large crowd from both organizations as well as members of groups such
as the Columbia Armenian Students Club, AGBU Young Professionals, the
Armenian Network of America-Greater New York Region, and St. Illuminator’s
Armenian Apostolic Cathedral.

On the hot summer day attendees enjoyed hamburgers and hot dogs, salad, soda
and dessert as they sat to watch the youth play basketball, soccer, and
dodge ball. Under the high-flying Armenian and Artsakh flag people learned
new Armenian dances led by the Yeraz Dance group instructors; played
basketball with the AYF juniors; and participated in field games organized
by AYF senior members.

During the event representatives from the AYF and Yeraz Dance Group thanked
people for attending and supporting the work of both organizations and the
church. Then St. Sarkis pastor Rev. Father Nareg Terterian spoke about the
importance of such community gatherings. He said that he was very please
that such an event was finally organized at St. Sarkis, drawing the younger
generation to the church and Armenian organizations.

The event also featured an extensive table of information about the AYF and
Yeraz Dance Group, as well as local Armenian youth activities that help
preserve the culture and rich Armenian history. Included was information on
the St. Sarkis Bible Study, Siamanto Academy, as well as the Armenian
National Committee (ANC) of New York. The Armenian Prelacy Bookstore was
also present with a table of items such as Armenian children’s books,
videos, DVDs, and gifts for sale.

"This event was an all-around success for us. It brought together different
community members from the various local organizations to share ideas and
each other’s company as Armenians," said New York AYF chapter president
Sevag Parsehian. "The bonds and fraternal spirit fostered at events like
this secures the continuation of the next generation," he said.

PHOTO CAPTIONS:

Youth: Armenian youth of all ages attended the AYF and Yeraz Dance Group
barbeque where they played games such basketball, soccer, and dodge ball.

Group: The barbeque drew a large crowd of youth from the AYF, Columbia
Armenian Students Club, AGBU Young Professionals, the Armenian Network of
America-Greater New York Region, and St. Illuminator’s Armenian Apostolic
Church

Information Table: Featured was also an extensive table of information about
the AYF and Yeraz Dance Group, as well as local Armenian youth activities
that help preserve the culture and rich Armenian history

Girls: On August 9 the AYF New York Hyortik chapter and the Yeraz Dance
Group brought together young and old to enjoy the weather and each other’s
company at St. Sarkis Armenian Apostolic Church in Douglaston, NY.

Playing Basketball: During the day, young Armenians from the community
joined together for activities organized by the AYF and Yeraz Dance group.

MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA III: REALITY’S ROUT AND CHENEY’S VIAGRA
by Chris Floyd

The Baltimore Chronicle
Monday, 11 August 2008
MD

Russkies on the march! Aggression! Kremlin! The crisis in Georgia is
like a big dose of Viagra for these guys, taking them back to their
hot youth and all the Cold War hubba-hubba.As noted here the other day,
I don’t think the current crisis in Georgia will spiral into any kind
of military confrontation between Russia and the United States. The
U.S. government has a long history of egging on other people to slap
at Washington’s enemies — then abandoning them when the inevitable
slapback occurs. George Bush I’s incitement of a Shiite uprising in
Iraq in 1991 and his subsquent collusion with Saddam in crushing
the rebellion is a prime example. As I said earlier, the American
elite’s armchair militarists — like Dick "Other Priorities" Cheney,
and George W. "I Quit" Bush — prefer to slaughter defenseless
people in broken-down states, not take on nations with powerful
modern militaries.

Then again, there is a long, strong lunatic strain running through
the American militarist establishment, a cultish faction that has
always longed to unleash "the Big One" on the Russkies or the
gooks or the Ay-rabs or somebody out there. The Cheney faction
in particular is riddled with adherents of this cult, who, like
their leader, measure their manhood by the throw-weight of America’s
nuclear missiles. Thus every flashpoint on the international scene —
which inevitably involves "American interests," because the American
Empire has extended its military and monetary reach into every nook
and cranny of the world — carries with it a disproportionate danger
of escalation into annihilation. In almost every case, this threat is
extremely low; but it is always there, like background radiation, or
perhaps a dormant fever, and must be considered. Especially considering
the moral idiots in charge of the "great" powers of our day.

But although there is little chance of extreme escalation in the
Russia-Georgia conflict, the crisis has sufficient dangers in itself
— not least the increasing divergence from reality in the American
response. Excellent analyses of this and other aspects of the situation
continue to appear.

First up, The Nation provides an informative perspective on
Russia-Georgia from Mark Ames — Getting Georgia’s War On:

The outbreak of war in Georgia on Friday offers a disturbing and
somewhat surreal taste of what to expect from John McCain should he
become our nation’s Commander in Chief. As the centuries-old ethnic
animosities between Georgia and Ossetia boiled over into another armed
conflict, drawing in neighboring Russia, McCain issued a stark-raving
statement from Des Moines that is disturbingly reminiscent of the
language used in the lead-up to NATO’s war against Yugoslavia in 1999,
a war McCain zealously pushed for:

"We should immediately call a meeting of the North Atlantic Council
to assess Georgia’s security and review measures NATO can take to
contribute to stabilizing this very dangerous situation," McCain said.

Calling on NATO to "stabilize this dangerous situation" is not going
down well with Russia, where images of dead Russian peacekeepers and
of frightened Ossetian refugees streaming across its borders have
put the country in a very vengeful mood. It’s hard to imagine what
measures NATO could take under a McCain presidency, but in the mind
of a man who thinks US troops should stay in Iraq for 100 years, and
who runs around singing "Bomb Bomb Iran!" it’s not hard to guess–and
even harder not to be horrified by what it may mean come January 2009,
should he win….

The problem with McCain’s bold demand about going to the UN is that
Russia already tried doing exactly what McCain called for–and got
rejected by McCain’s neocon pals in the Bush Administration. Early
this morning, Russia convened an emergency session of the UN Security
Council, calling on both sides to immediately cease hostilities,
return to the negotiating table and renounce the use of force–but the
last part about renouncing the use of force is exactly what Georgia’s
president Mikhail Saakashvili refuses to do.

The Bush Administration showed that it too has no patience with crunchy
"renounce the use of force" resolutions. According to a Reuters report
from earlier in the day:

At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency
session in New York but failed to reach consensus early Friday on a
Russian-drafted statement.

The council concluded it was at a stalemate after the United States,
Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a
phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required
both sides "to renounce the use of force," council diplomats said.

The meaning of this is clear: the United States and Britain are backing
Saakashvili’s invasion. Why would we back Saakashvili’s reckless
war, when last year even Bush was denouncing the Pinochet-wannabe’s
violent attack on his own people during a peaceful opposition protest
in Georgia’s capital, as well as shutting down the opposition media
and exiling of political opponents? That would be a brain-teaser if
the last seven years hadn’t answered this question so many painful
times already.

But with McCain, answering this is a little trickier. When he issued
today’s Des Moines statement calling for Russia to do what Russia
already did a few hours earlier, you have to ask yourself: either
McCain’s short-term memory is totally shot, encased in an impenetrable
tomb of aluminum-zirconium plaque… or worse, McCain simply doesn’t
give a damn about reality, he just wants to get Georgia’s war on,
as badly as Saakashvili does.

The awful truth is probably a combination of the two, which is the
worst of all worlds, considering McCain’s raving Russophobia, and
his campaign team’s financial and ideological ties to Saakashvili….

In 2006, McCain visited Georgia and denounced the South Ossetian
separatists, proving that Scheunemann wasn’t wasting his Georgian
sponsor’s money. At a speech he gave in a Georgian army base in
Senaki, McCain declared that Georgia was America’s "best friend,"
and that Russian peacekeepers should be thrown out.

Today, Georgian forces from that same Senaki base are part of
the invasion force into South Ossetia, an invasion that has left
scores–perhaps hundreds–of dead locals, at least ten dead Russian
peacekeepers, and 140 million pissed-off Russians calling for blood.

Lost in all of this is not only the question of why America would risk
an apocalypse to help a petty dictator like Saakashvili get control
of a region that doesn’t want any part of him. But no one’s bothering
to ask what the Ossetians themselves think about it, or why they’re
fighting for their independence in the first place. That’s because
the Georgians–with help from lobbyists like Scheunemann–have been
pushing the line that South Ossetia is a fiction, a construct of evil
Kremlin neo-Stalinists, rather than a people with a genuine grievance.

A few years ago, I had an Ossetian working as the sales director for
my now-defunct newspaper, The eXile. After listening to me rave about
how much I always (and still do) like the Georgians, he finally lost
it and told me another side to Georgian history, explaining how the
Georgians had always mistreated the Ossetians, and how the South
Ossetians wanted to reunite with North Ossetia in order to avoid
being swallowed up, and how this conflict goes way back, long before
the Soviet Union days. It was clear that the Ossetian-Georgian hatred
was old and deep, like many ethnic conflicts in this region. Indeed, a
number of Caucasian ethnic groups still harbor deep resentment towards
Georgia, accusing them of imperialism, chauvinism and arrogance.

One example of this can be found in historian Bruce Lincoln’s book,
Red Victory, in which he writes about the period of Georgia’s brief
independence from 1917 to 1921, a time when Georgia was backed
by Britain:

the Georgian leaders quickly moved to widen their borders at
the expense of their Armenian and Azerbaijani neighbors, and
their territorial greed astounded foreign observers. ‘The free and
independent socialist democratic state of Georgia will always remain
in my memory as a classic example of an imperialist small nation,"
one British journalist wrote…. "Both in territory snatching outside
and bureaucratic tyranny inside, its chauvinism was beyond all bounds."

Ames also points to the little-noticed — and apparently pre-planned
— PR offensive by Georgia to obscure the reality of the situation —
i.e., that Saakashvili provoked Russia’s massive response with his
own brutal military incursion into South Ossetia:

The invasion was backed up by a PR offensive so layered and
sophisticated that I even got an hysterical call today from a hedge
fund manager in New York, screaming about an "investor call" that
Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze made this morning with some
fifty leading Western investment bank managers and analysts. I’ve
since seen a J.P. Morgan summary of the conference call, which pretty
much reflects the talking points later picked up by the US media.

These kinds of conference calls are generally conducted by the heads
of companies in order to give banking analysts guidance. But as the
hedge fund manager told me today, "The reason Lado did this is because
he knew the enormous PR value that Georgia would gain by going to
the money people and analysts, particularly since Georgia is clearly
the aggressor this time." As a former investment banker who worked in
London and who used to head the Bank of Georgia, Gurgenidze knew what
he was doing. "Lado is a former banker himself, so he knew that by
framing the conflict for the most influential bankers and analysts in
New York, that these power bankers would then write up reports and go
on CNBC and argue Lado Gurgenidze’s talking points. It was brilliant,
and now you’re starting to see the American media shift its coverage
from calling it Georgia invading Ossetian territory, to the new spin,
that it’s Russian imperial aggression against tiny little Georgia."

The really scary thing about this investor conference call is that
it suggests real planning. As the hedge fund manager told me, "These
things aren’t set up on an hour’s notice."

Where this war is leading is impossible to say, but as Iraq
and Afghanistan, not to mention Chechnya, have shown, wars have a
funny way of lasting longer, costing more in money and lives, and
snuffing out whatever individual liberties the affected populations
may have. As good as this war is for Saakashvili, who has become
increasingly unpopular at home and abroad, or for McCain, whose poll
numbers seem to rise every time the plaque devours another lobe of
his brain, it also bodes well for the resurgent Prime Minister Putin,
who seems to have become increasingly peeved with his hand-picked
successor, President Dmitry Medvedev’s flickering independence and
his liberalizer shtick. There’s nothing like a good war to snuff out
an uppity sois-disant liberal who’s getting in your way–even McCain
can still grasp this concept.

Justin Raimondo is also on the case, noting, among other points
(including , how Barack Obama’s line on the conflict is quickly
melding with that of McCain, and the usual "bipartisan foreign policy
establishment" gang:

What’s really interesting, however, is how Barack Obama has taken up
this same cause, albeit with less vehemence than the GOP nominee. As
Politico.com reported:

"When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John
McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward
the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama, and much
of the West. But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far
beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama, and others have moved
closer to McCain’s initial position."

While calling for mediation and international peacekeepers, Obama went
with the War Party’s line that Russia, not Georgia, is the aggressor,
as the Times of London reports: "Obama accused Russia of escalating
the crisis ‘through it’s clear and continued violation of Georgia’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity.’" While his first statement
on the outbreak of hostilities was more along the lines of "Can’t we
all get along?", the New York Times notes:

"Mr. Obama did harden his rhetoric later on Friday, shortly before
getting on a plane for a vacation in Hawaii. His initial statement,
an adviser said, was released before there were confirmed reports
of the Russian invasion. In his later statement, Mr. Obama said,
‘What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia’s sovereign – has
encroached on Georgia’s sovereignty, and it is very important for us
to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.’"

This nonsense about Georgia’s alleged "sovereignty" rides roughshod
over the reality of the Ossetians’ apparent determination to free
themselves from Saakashvili’s grip, and it’s the buzzword that
identifies a shill for the Georgians.

"I condemn Russia’s aggressive actions," said Obama, "and reiterate my
call for an immediate cease-fire." This cease-fire business is meant
to feed directly into the Georgians’ contention that they have offered
to stop the conflict, even as they continue military operations in
South Ossetia, which have already cost the lives of over a thousand
of that country’s inhabitants.

That didn’t stop the McCainiacs from attacking Obama as a tool of
the Kremlin. Sunday the news talk shows were abuzz with rumors of
Democratic discontent over Obama’s seeming inability to hit back at
McCain’s viciously negative campaign, yet it’s much worse than that
– it’s not an unwillingness, but an inherent inability to do so. I
hate to cite Andrew Sullivan favorably, but he was one of the first
to note the convergence of the Obama camp and the McCain campaign
on such central issues as Iran, and the process continues with
this confluence of opinion on the Russian question. While the Obama
people have dutifully pointed out that Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s
foreign policy guru, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his
public relations firm as a paid lobbyist for the Georgians, their
own candidate’s position on the matter differs little from McCain’s,
except, as the New York Times notes, in terms of "style."

Finally, Jonathan Steele weighs in at the Guardian with "This is not
pipeline war but an assault on Russian influence":

The flare-up of major hostilities between Russia and Georgia has been
dubbed by some "the pipeline war". The landlocked Caspian sea’s huge
oil reserves are a factor, especially since Georgia became a key
transit country for oil to travel from Baku in Azerbaijan to the
Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.

The pipeline, which was completed in May 2006, is the second longest
in the world. Although its route was chosen in order to bypass Russia,
denying Moscow leverage over a key resource and a potential source
of pressure, the current crisis in the Caucasus is about issues far
bigger than oil.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is only a minor element in a much
larger strategic equation: an attempt, sponsored largely by the United
States but eagerly subscribed to by several of its new ex-Soviet
allies, to reduce every aspect of Russian influence throughout the
region, whether it be economic, political, diplomatic or military.

Needless to say, that inveterate old Cold Warrior, Dick Cheney,
has been predictably vehement in his reaction. (Cheney has always
appreciated the value of the "Russian threat" in advancing his lifelong
agenda of establishing an authoritarian, militarist, belligerent,
crony-capitalist regime in the United States.) In a call to buck up
the Administration’s Georgian protege, Cheney sputtered "that Russian
aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have
serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well
as the broader international community," the New York Times reports.

"Serious consequences"! Russkies on the march! Aggression! Kremlin! The
crisis in Georgia is like a big dose of Viagra for these guys, taking
them back to their hot youth and all the Cold War hubba-hubba. But
let’s hope that this hormonal outburst doesn’t blind them totally
to vastly different circumstances surrounding the current situation,
and send that dormant fever spiking to nightmarish levels.

Chris Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years,
working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various
newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. Floyd
co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque, and is also chief editor of
Atlantic Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].

This column is republished here with the permission of the author

Press TV, Iran
Aug 11 2008

Iran: US behind extremism in ME
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:07:42 GMT

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says the emergence of
extremism is the brainchild of the US policies in the Middle East.

`Today, extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan has turned into an
irresolvable dilemma even for those who helped develop the ideology,’
said Manouchehr Mottaki in a meeting with Hedayat Oroujev, the
Chairman of the State Religious Affairs of Azerbaijan.

Mottaki expressed Tehran’s readiness to help settle Baku-Yerevan
differences.

`Iran’s foreign policy is based on peaceful coexistence and Tehran is
prepared to act as a mediator to resolve disputes between Azerbaijan
and Armenia,’ said Mottaki.

Oroujev, for his part, said the activities of hardliners incur damages
to Islam adding that the aliens fan extremism both openly and in
covert operations.

Azerbaijan and Armenia went at loggerheads over the strategic
Nagorno-Karabakh region. The disputes between the two states broke out
in 1988, when the Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh appealed to
Moscow to help them join Armenia, but in 1991 rejected unification
with Armenia and proclaimed total independence in 1992.

MRD/DT