{"article":{"id":219349,"heading":"US puppy Georgia provokes war with Russia","author":"melch","created":"2008-08-09 09:55:16","modified":"2013-11-11 00:54:02","last_modified":"Mon, 11 Nov 2013 07:54:02","article":"
condy with agressor in Tblisi \"warns Russia\" (BBC)
The neoconservative President of Georgia, Michael Sakaashvilli, started a full scale attack on the separatist russian minority province South Ossetia. The Ossetian capital is besieged right now. Air strikes are done. Russian peace keepers were killed, as well as many civilians.
Georgia is a close ally of the US and major player in Zbigniew Brzezinskis wet dream \"the grand chessboard\". It is part of the US strategy to weaken Russia by provoking conflicts on its boarders.
What the US seem to forget: all good chess players are russian....
A few hours ago Russia was officially asked by South Ossetia and Abchasia for military protection, russian troops are already heading towards Georgia and Ossetia. No doubt: Georgia will loose this \"game\".
The question is: why did Georgia start this war? There´s no doubt Saakashvilli won´t do any step without the order and knowledge of Washington. Why going into war with Russia?
Is there perhaps a major US plan - may be a war against Iran? Forcing Russia to focus on \"its\" problems, instead of mixing in into the Iran thing? Attacking Iran while China ist the host of the Olympic Games? So that China will be kind of bound...?
Speculations... But, the questions remain...
youtube:
http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=reuhlteq0VM<\/a>
http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=guZQfn_hlLM<\/a>
http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RBZXTZkOd_w<\/a> \n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","summary":"\r\nGeorgia spits on Olympic Peace ","numcomment":5,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2008\/08\/a.jpg","filesize":"11.0 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2008\/08\/219349.php","image":{"original":"\/uploads\/2008\/08\/a.jpg","small":"\/uploads\/2008\/08\/a.jpgthumb.jpg"}},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":219448,"heading":"Order","article":"Noble seeming former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze found a way out after his unemployment and similar disintegration of the Soviet Union by becoming president and giving himself a new job and a new country, it seems, in that order of appearance and with that purpose, and the same effect, US-backed, now in Georgia. ","author":"Jaap den Haan","parent_id":219349,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2008-08-13 11:17:59","modified":"2008-08-13 11:17:59","fileurl":""},{"id":219449,"heading":"Order","article":"Noble seeming former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze found a way out after his unemployment and similar disintegration of the Soviet Union by becoming president and giving himself a new job and a new country, it seems, in that order of appearance and with that purpose, and the same effect, US-backed, now in Georgia. ","author":"Jaap den Haan","parent_id":219349,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2008-08-13 11:18:26","modified":"2008-08-13 11:18:26","fileurl":""},{"id":219464,"heading":"Problems 4 Georgian people when Pres. is lapdog","article":"The current President of Georgia, Michael Sakaashvilli, is putting the people of Georgia in grave danger by playing the role as a lapdog of the U.S. and provoking Russia by attacking south Ossetia. The interests of the U.S. are in controlling oil pipelines, the people of Georgia are seen as disposable. Not like Sakaashvilli is putting himself in any personal danger other than publicity stunts for the camera, though innocent people will (as usual) be the victims of the international power plays..\r\n\r\nFor a trip down memory lane let's remind ourselves of the interconnectedness of global affairs and how control of oil reserves and transport is the issue here. Include in this the global control of the opium market and the continued presence of the U.S. military in Afghanistan;\r\n\r\nFrom Micheal Ruppert (now living in Venezuala for personal safety reasons);\r\n\r\n"Now, as the CIA moves to control the drug trade in the region you can be sure of several things. First, when the world sees an explosion of heroin from the region it won't be the Taliban's doing. Second, the cash flows from the smuggling will now be directed through U.S. banks and stocks. That is what the CIA does. Third, those cash flows - as direct air operations from Tashkent to the U.S. become commonplace - will be taken away from Russia, the Balkans, Turkey and Eastern Europe. Fourth, the result of that will be de-stabilization of the entire region. Fifth, destabilization in the region will Balkanize Russia. Sixth, the increasing U.S. military and economic presence will consolidate U.S. control over the vast oil and gas reserves in the region. A revived Unocal-Saudi pipeline project, which will begin construction soon after the U.S. establishes control, will take the oil and gas from Central Asia, through Afghanistan, and down to the Pakistani coast where it will then be sold to China and Japan. The profits from those sales will come back into Wall Street. This will be a further drain on Russian influence in the region and greatly increase global instability.\r\n\r\nThroughout the 1990s the United States - under an exclusive arrangement coordinated by the Harvard Endowment, Goldman Sachs and the U.S Treasury - looted some $300 billion from Russia. During the period from 1989-2001 the population of that country shrank from 165 to 145 million people. As infrastructure collapsed, as services disappeared, as unemployment skyrocketed, as the Ruble collapsed, the life expectancy for a Russian male dropped from 68 to 48 years.\r\n\r\nMake no mistake. Russia is the target here just as much as is the propping up of a feeble U.S. economy with drug money. And remember that Russia still has most of its nuclear arsenal intact." \r\n\r\n\r\narticle found @; \r\nhttp:\/\/www.fromthewilderness.com\/free\/ww3\/10_10_01_heroin.html \r\n","author":"Michael Sakaashvilli should step down","parent_id":219349,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2008-08-13 19:29:20","modified":"2008-08-13 19:29:20","fileurl":""},{"id":219568,"heading":"Great Analyses","article":"Political Pipeline\r\n\r\n\r\nHow anti-Iran policy contributed to war in the Caucasus \r\nby Muhammad Sahimi \r\nMuch has been written about the war between Russia and Georgia. Neoconservatives, as Justin Raimondo pointed out, have suddenly discovered the "democratic" republic of Georgia, which has been a historical "victim" of the Russian "empire." Never mind that not only was Georgia not a democracy before it was devoured by the Soviet Union in 1921, but also that the war, started by Georgia's forces, was a strategic blunder by Georgia's president, the confrontational, demagogic, American-trained lawyer Mikheil Saakashvili, who dared foolishly to take on his giant neighbor, thinking naively that NATO would rush to help him.\r\n\r\nWilliam Kristol, the "little Lenin" of the neoconservatives, who now has another outlet in the op-ed page of the New York Times, opines that the U.S. must not only give aid to Georgia, but must also help it become a member of the "League of Democracies" that John McCain has proposed. Never mind that in the Georgian "democracy" Saakashvili used police brutality to stop huge demonstrations after hotly disputed elections and shut down opposition publications, and never mind that when democratic elections in Palestine and Lebanon yielded results deemed undesirable by the U.S. (and people like Kristol), they were not only dismissed, but the voters were also punished by U.S. sanctions.\r\n\r\nAnd, as Robert Parry noted, the same neoconservatives who backed the illegal invasion of Iraq, and are now threatening to attack Iran over its nonexistent nuclear threat, are suddenly discovering respect for the rule of law and international agreements. Even Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, who supported the Iraq invasion, got into the act, writing in the Washington Post that "Whatever mistakes Tbilisi has made, they cannot justify Russia's actions."\r\n\r\nWhere was Holbrooke when the U.S. invaded Panama, helped the Contra thugs in Nicaragua, encouraged \u2013 and later supported \u2013 Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, and was silent when the Saudi-Pakistani-created Taliban overthrew the internationally recognized government of Afghanistan?\r\n\r\nIn reality, the Russia-Georgia war involves three important elements:\r\n\r\nThe desire to encircle Russia with pro-U.S. clients in the former Soviet republics, from Ukraine to Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, and by setting up missile "defense" systems in Poland and the Czech Republic that are intended for the Russians, but are justified by the bogus threats posed by Iran's missiles and its nonexistent nuclear weapons program. \r\nRecognition, over strong and angry objection by Russia, of Kosovo as an independent state. I suppose so long as such unstable mini-states as Kosovo are clients of the U.S., their Islamic identity poses no problem to the neoconservatives. Most other Muslims, such as those in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq are considered dangerous. \r\nBut perhaps the most important element has to do with the control of the routes for transporting oil and gas from Central Asia and the Caucasus region to international markets and, in particular, to Western Europe. If the U.S., pressured by the Israel lobby, had not pushed for bypassing Iran, we would have perhaps been in a different situation than what we have now between Georgia and Russia, with all of its geopolitical implications. \r\nWhile many have written about the causes and consequences of the war, little emphasis has been put on the role that the U.S. government's failed policy toward Iran has played in this rapidly developing situation.\r\n\r\nAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and the three independent countries that emerged on the shores of the Caspian Sea, namely, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, declared that they would respect all the old international and bilateral treaties that the Soviet Union had signed. Crucial among them were two friendship treaties that had been signed by Iran and the Soviet Union in 1921 and 1940. An article in both treaties stated, "No country can take unilateral action regarding the Caspian Sea." Therefore, the five countries of the Caspian area, particularly Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, could not unilaterally decide what to do about the resources of the Caspian Sea without the consent of the other countries.\r\n\r\nEven aside from the old Iran-Soviet treaties that Russia accepted legal responsibility for after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fact is that, according to all the international treaties, so long as a territory is in dispute, no country can take unilateral action regarding its resources and riches. A good example is the dispute between Iran and Kuwait over the Dorra gas fields in the northern Persian Gulf. Both countries have avoided any action toward developing the fields, waiting for their final status to be negotiated. But, supported by the U.S., Azerbaijan and later Kazakhstan took unilateral actions and contracted out disputed oil and gas fields. Compare this with a similar situation, the dispute between Iran and Qatar in the Persian Gulf over the giant South Pars gas field (the largest in the world). Iran, the "pariah" nation, did no work on the gas field until negotiations between the two countries resulted in a framework for the field's development. Each country is now developing its own sector.\r\n\r\nBut that was not the end of the U.S. meddling in the affairs of that region, particularly its wrong-headed policy toward Iran. Equally important is how to transport the oil and gas from that region to the international markets. The issue has remained politically charged, contributing much to the war between Russia and Georgia.\r\n\r\nThere are several foreign-operated oil fields in the Caucasus region and Central Asia. The oil from the ChevronTexaco-operated field of Tengiz in Kazakhstan is transported through a pipeline north into Russia and by rail west to the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi. A second line was built by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to Novorossiisk in Russia on the Black Sea.\r\n\r\nThe Kashagan oil field in northeast Caspian is the largest of them all, but it is still being developed. In the southern Caspian, oil from the British Petroleum-operated field of Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli in the Caspian Sea has been producing several hundred thousand barrels of oil per day.\r\n\r\nThe most economical way of transporting all that oil is by pipelines through Iran. For example, the Kazakh government drafted a framework agreement for construction of an oil pipeline from the Tengiz field to Belek on the eastern coast of the Caspian and from there to the Iranian port of Khark, on the Persian Gulf. The pipeline was supposed to pass through Tehran, Qom, and Esfahan. The estimated cost for the 900-mile pipeline was only $1.2 billion. But, the U.S. strongly opposed this, and, as a result, the Tengiz oil is transported through routes that cost much more.\r\n\r\nThe French oil firm TotalFinaElf, with support from the National Iranian Oil Company, studied a pipeline that would take crude oil from Kashagan across the Caspian to the Iranian border. From there another pipeline was supposed to be built to transport the Kazakh oil across Iran to its Persian Gulf export terminals. The Russian pipeline operator, Transneft, and its Kazakh counterpart, KazTransOil, also carried out a feasibility study for developing a pipeline to Iran in order to link Omsk, in Siberia, with Iran's port Neka on the Caspian Sea. That pipeline would have allowed Russian, Turkmen, and Kazakh crude oil to be swapped for Iranian oil in its terminals on the Persian Gulf. Although some oil-swapping does take place between Iran and the Central Asian countries, U.S. opposition and pressure have prevented the pipeline from becoming a reality.\r\n\r\nBut the most contentious issue was about transporting Azerbaijan's oil to international market. All that had to be done was the construction of a pipeline from Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, to the Iranian border, a short distance away. From there, an Iranian pipeline, when upgraded, could have taken the oil to the Persian Gulf terminals. But the U.S., pressured by the Israel lobby, opposed this pipeline. Israel wanted to reward Turkey for having established close diplomatic and military relationships with it. Therefore, its lobby went to work in Washington to advocate an alternative route through Turkey.\r\n\r\n\r\nThe result is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that connects the Sangachal Terminal in Baku to the Marine Terminal in the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea, a 1,100-mile pipeline, 155 miles of which passes through Georgia. It was built at a cost of $4 billion and was officially inaugurated on May 25, 2005.\r\n\r\nThe Baku-Tehran-Khark (BTK) pipeline could have been constructed at a fraction of the cost of the BTC pipeline. Another great advantage of the BTK pipeline would have been the fact that it would have passed through the politically stable Iran, whereas the BTC pipeline passes not only through Georgia, but also through the restive Kurdish areas of Turkey. The entire pipeline requires constant guarding in order to prevent sabotage. On Aug. 6, 2008, the pipeline was shut off by a major explosion and fire in the eastern Turkish province of Erzincan. The Kurdistan Workers Party took responsibility for the attack. The vulnerability of the Georgian portion of the BTC pipeline was also manifestly demonstrated when Russia bombed the areas around the pipeline's route in Georgia, just to send the "proper" message to the West.\r\n\r\nOne bogus justification for the construction of the costly BTC pipeline was that it would transport oil from several large Azeri oil fields to international markets, totaling 1 million barrels\/day, without involving Iran or Russia. That has not happened. The Kurdashi field did not live up to the Italian oil firm Agip's expectations. TotalFinaElf failed to find any significant oil in the Lenkoran-Talysh field, and ExxonMobil could not find any oil in its Oguz and Zafar-Mashal concessions. Chevron's work yielded only lackluster results in its Absheron field. These failures would have made the BTK pipeline even more economical.\r\n\r\nBut all such advantages of the BTK pipeline were set aside. Instead a political pipeline was built, just to satisfy the Israel lobby. Its construction was also accompanied by numerous violations of human rights by both the Azeri and Turkish governments, which have been documented in the Czech documentary film Zdroj ("Source") and by Kurdish human rights activists.\r\n\r\nBut the U.S., following Israel's lead, was not yet done with its blind opposition to Iran's participation in the oil and natural gas market of the Caucasus and Central Asian regions, which would have made negotiations regarding Iran's nuclear program more susceptible to success. The U.S. even pressured Kazakhstan to build a trans-Caspian pipeline from the Kazakh port of Aktau to Baku, in order to connect the Kashagan's oil to the BTC pipeline, which would have been a gigantic environmental disaster waiting to happen. But Russian and Iranian opposition killed that project.\r\n\r\nThus, had the U.S. not decided that, in order to isolate Iran to appease the Israel lobby, it would make a minor nation like Georgia the cornerstone of its policy in the Caucasus\/Central Asia region; had the U.S. not demonized Iran, creating "threats" from its nonexistent nuclear weapon program to justify what it does in Europe against Russia; and had the U.S. agreed to economical oil pipelines through Iran, not a political one through unstable, war-torn regions in Georgia and Turkey, the Georgia-Russia war would not have seemed as significant, and the U.S. and NATO would not have looked so impotent. In fact, the war might not have happened at all.\r\n\r\nBut this is what happens when our foreign policy is held hostage by a foreign nation and its lobby.\r\n\r\n http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/orig\/sahimi.php?articleid=13301\r\n\r\nTwo Morons: Bush and Saakashvili \r\n"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?" \r\nBy PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS \r\n\r\nThe neoconned Bush Regime and the Israeli-occupied American media are heading the innocent world toward nuclear war. \r\n\r\nBack in the Reagan years the National Endowment for Democracy was created as a cold war tool. Today the NED is a neocon-controlled agent for US world hegemony. Its main function is to pour US money and election-rigging into former constituent parts of the Soviet Union in order to ring Russia with American puppet states. \r\n\r\nThe neoconservative Bush Regime used the NED to intervene in Ukrainian and Georgian internal affairs in keeping with the neoconservative plan to establish US-friendly and Russia-hostile political regimes in these two former constituent parts of Russia and the Soviet Union. \r\n\r\nThe NED was also used to dismember the former Yugoslavia with its interventions in Slovakia, Serbia, and Montenegro. \r\n\r\nAllen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, told the Washington Post in 1991 that much of what the NED does \u201ctoday was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.\u201d \r\n\r\nThe Bush Regime, having established a puppet, Mikhail Saakashvili, as president of Georgia, tried to bring Georgia into NATO. \r\n\r\nFor readers too young to know, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was a military alliance between the US and Western European countries to resist any Soviet move into Western Europe [and to ensure European countries lined up behind the US, and bought its weapons systems. Editors] . There has been no reason for NATO since the Soviet Union\u2019s internal political collapse almost two decades ago. The neocons turned NATO into another tool, like the NED, for US world hegemony. Subsequent US administrations violated the understandings that President Reagan had reached with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and have incorporated former parts of the Soviet empire into NATO. The neocon goal of ringing Russia with a hostile military alliance has been proclaimed many times. \r\n\r\nWestern European members of NATO balked at the admission of Georgia, as they understood it as a provocative affront to Russia, on whom Western Europe is dependent for natural gas. Western Europeans are also disturbed at the Bush Regime\u2019s intentions to install ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic as the consequence will be Russian nuclear cruise missiles targeted on European capitals. Europeans don\u2019t see the advantage of helping the US block Russian nuclear retaliation against the US at the expense of their own existence. Ballistic missile defenses are not useful against cruise missiles. \r\n\r\nEvery country is tired of war except for the US. War, including nuclear war, is the neoconservative strategy for world hegemony. \r\n\r\nThe entire world, except for Americans, knows that the outbreak of armed conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia was entirely due to the US and its Georgia puppet, Saakashvili. Americans, alone in the world, are unaware that the hostilities were initiated by Saakashvili, because Bush, Cheney and the Israeli-occupied American media have again lied to them. \r\n\r\nEveryone else in the world knows that the unstable and corrupt Saakashvili, who proclaims democracy and runs a police state, would not have taken on Russia by attacking South Ossetia unless given the go-ahead by Washington. \r\n\r\nThe purpose of the Georgian attack on the Russian population of South Ossetia is twofold: \r\n\r\n To convince Europeans that their action in delaying Georgia\u2019s NATO membership is the cause of \u201cthe Russian aggression\u201d and that to save Georgia from conquest Georgia must be given NATO membership. \r\n\r\nTo ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of its Russian population. Two thousand Russian civilians were targeted and killed by the US-equipped and trained Georgian Army, and tens of thousands fled into Russia. Having achieved this goal, Saakashvili and his puppet-masters in Washington quickly called for a cease fire and a halt to \u201cthe Russian invasion.\u201d The hope is that the Russian population will be afraid to return or can be prevented from returning, thus removing the secessionist threat. \r\n\r\nNo doubt the Bush Regime can con the American population, just as it did with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and 9\/11 itself, but the rest of the world is not buying it, not even America\u2019s bought-and-paid-for European allies. \r\n\r\nWriting in the Asia Times, Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar, a former career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service, notes the disinformation that is being peddled by the Bush Regime and the US media and reports that \u201cat the outbreak of violence, Russia had tried to have the United Nations Security Council issue a statement calling on Georgia and South Ossetia to immediately lay down weapons. However, Washington was disinterested.\u201d \r\n\r\nAmb. Bhadrakumar notes that the American and Georgian resort to violence and propaganda has brought an end to the Russian government\u2019s belief that diplomacy and good will can bring about a settlement of the South Ossetia issue. If Russia wished, Russia could terminate Georgia\u2019s existence as a separate country at will, and there is nothing the US could do about it. \r\n\r\nIt is certain that the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was a Bush Regime orchestrated event. The American media and the neocon think tanks were ready with their propaganda blitzes. Neocons had ready a Wall Street Journal editorial page article for Saakashvili that declares \u201cthe war in Georgia is a war for the West.\u201d \r\n\r\nFaced with the collapse of his army when Russia sent in troops to protect South Ossetians from the Georgian troops, Saakashvili declared: \u201cThis is not about Georgia any more. It is about America, its values.\u201d \r\n\r\nThe neocon Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., quickly called a conference hosted by warmonger Ariel Cohen, \u201cUrgent! Event: Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World.\u201d \r\n\r\nThe Washington Post hosted neocon Robert Kagen\u2019s war drums, \u201cPutin Makes His Move.\u201d \r\n\r\nOnly a fool like Kagen could think that if Putin intended to invade Georgia he would do so from Beijing, or that after sending the American-trained Georgian army in flight, he would not continue and conquer all of Georgia in order to put an end to American machinations on Russia\u2019s most sensitive border, machinations that are likely to eventually end in nuclear war. \r\n\r\nThe New York Tiimes hosted Billy Kristol\u2019s rant, \u201cWill Russia Get Away With It?\u201d Kristol thunders against \u201cdictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes\u201d that \u201cseem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies.\u201d Kristol presents a new axis of evil--Russia, China, North Korea and Iran--and warns against \u201cdelay and irresolution\u201d that \u201csimply invite future threats and graver dangers.\u201d \r\n\r\nIn other words, \u201cattack Russia now.\u201d \r\n\r\nDick Cheney, the insane American Vice President telephoned Saakashvili to express US solidarity with Georgia in the conflict with Russia and declared: \u201cRussian aggression must not go unanswered. Only an idiot would tell Saakashvili anything other than \u201cto cease immediately.\u201d \r\n\r\nWhat must be the effect on US Intelligence services and the US military of Cheney\u2019s propagandistic and irresponsible statement of US support for Georgia\u2019s war crimes? Does anyone really believe that the CIA or any US intelligence service told the vice president that Russia opened the conflict with an invasion? Russian troops arrived in South Ossetia after thousands of Ossetians had been killed by the Georgian attack and after tens of thousands of Ossetians had fled into Russia to escape the Georgian attack. According to news reports, Russian forces have captured Americans who were with the Georgian troops directing their attack on civilians. \r\n\r\nThe US military certainly has no resources for a war against Russia on top of lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a planned war with Iran. \r\n\r\nWith its Georgian venture, the Bush Regime is guilty of a new round of war crimes. What will be the consequence? \r\n\r\nMany will reply that having got away with 9\/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and with its preparations for attacking Iran, the Bush Regime will get away with its Georgian venture as well. \r\n\r\nPossibly, however, this time the Bush Regime has overreached. \r\n\r\nCertainly Russia now recognizes that the US is determined to exert hegemony over Russia and is Russia\u2019s worst enemy. \r\n\r\nChina realizes the US threat to its own energy supply and, thereby, economy. \r\n\r\nEven America\u2019s European allies, chafing under their role of supplying troops for America\u2019s Empire, must now realize that being an American ally is dangerous and has no benefits. If Georgia becomes a NATO member and renews its attack on South Ossetia, it must drag Europe into a war with Russia, a main supplier of energy to Europe. \r\n\r\nMoreover, if Russian troops are sent across European frontiers, there is nothing to stop them. \r\n\r\nWhat does America offer Europe, aside from the millions of dollars it pays to buy off Europe\u2019s political leaders to insure that they betray their own peoples? Nothing whatsoever. \r\n\r\nThe only military threat that Europe faces comes from being dragged into America\u2019s wars for American hegemony. \r\n\r\nThe US is financially bankrupt, with budget and trade deficits that exceed the combined deficits of the rest of the world together. The dollar has wilted. The American consumer market is dying from the offshoring of American jobs and, thereby, incomes, and from the wealth effect of the real estate and derivatives collapses. The US has nothing to offer Europe. Indeed, American economic decline is killing European exports by driving up the value of the euro. \r\n\r\nAmerica long ago lost the moral high ground. Hypocrisy has become America\u2019s best known hallmark. Bush, the invader of Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of lies and deception, thunders at Russia for coming to the defense of its peacekeepers and Russian citizens in South Ossetia. Bush who ripped Kosovo out of Serbia\u2019s heart and handed it to the Muslims, has taken an adamant stand against other separatist movements, especially the South Ossetians who wish to be part of the Russian Federation. \r\n\r\nThe neoconned Bush Regime is furious that the Russian bear was not intimidated by the US supported aggression of the American puppet state, Georgia. Instead of accepting the act of American hegemony that the neocon script called for, Russia sent the Americanized Georgian army fleeing in fear. \r\n\r\nHaving failed with weapons, the Bush Regime now unleashes the rhetoric. The White House is warning Russia that failure to acquiesce to US hegemony could have a \u201csignificant, long-term impact on relations between Washington and Moscow.\u201d \r\n\r\nDo the morons who comprise the Bush Regime really not understand that short of a surprise nuclear attack on Russia there is nothing whatsoever the US can do to Moscow? \r\n\r\nThe Bush Regime owns no Russian currency that it can dump. The Russians own US dollars. \r\n\r\nThe Bush Regime owns no Russian bonds that it can dump. The Russians own US bonds. \r\n\r\nThe US can cut Russia off from no energy supplies. Russia can cut America\u2019s European allies off from energy. \r\n\r\nPresident Reagan negotiated the end of the cold war with Soviet President Gorbachev.,The neoconservatives, whom Reagan fired and drove from his administration, were furious. The neocons had hoped to win the cold war, thereby establishing American hegemony. \r\n\r\nThe Republican Establishment reestablished its hegemony under Bush 1st that it had lost to Ronald Reagan. With this feat, intelligence was driven from the Republican Party. \r\n\r\nThe neocons engineered their comeback with the First Gulf War and their propaganda, pure lies, that Iraqi troops bayoneted Kuwait babies in hospitals. \r\n\r\nThe neocons made a further comeback with President Clinton, whom they convinced to bomb Serbia in order to permit separatist movements to become independent states dependent on America. \r\n\r\nWith Bush 2nd, the neocons took over. Their agenda, American world hegemony, includes Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. \r\n\r\nSo far the schemes of these ignorant and dangerous ideologues have come a cropper. Iraq, formerly in the hands of secular Sunnis who were a check on Iran, is, after the American invasion and occupation, in the hands of religious Shi\u2019ites allied with Iran. \r\n\r\nIn Afghanistan, the Taliban are resurgent, and a large NATO\/US army there is unable to control the situation. \r\n\r\nOne consequence of the neocons\u2019 Afghan war has been the loss of power of the American puppet president of Pakistan, a Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons. The puppet president now faces impeachment, and the Pakistani military has informed the Americans to stop conducting military operations in Pakistani territory. \r\n\r\nThe American puppets in Egypt and Jordan might be next to fall. \r\n\r\nIn Iraq, the Shi\u2019ites, having completed their ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from neighborhoods, have declared a cease fire in order to contradict the US propaganda that American withdrawal would lead to a blood bath. Negotiations on withdrawal dates are now underway between the Americans and the Iraqi government, which is no longer behaving like a puppet. \r\n\r\nLast year Hugo Chavez ridiculed Bush before the UN. Russia\u2019s Putin ridiculed Bush as Comrade Wolf. \r\n\r\nOn August 12, 2008, Pravda ridiculed Bush, \u201cBush: Why don\u2019t you shut up.\u201d \r\n\r\nAmericans may think they are a superpower before whose presence the world trembles. But not the Russians. \r\n\r\nThose Americans stupid enough to think that America\u2019s \u201csuperpower\u201d insures its citizens from danger need to read the total contempt shown for President Bush in Pravda:\r\n\r\n\u201cPresident Bush, \r\n\r\nWhy don\u2019t you shut up? In your statement on Monday regarding the legitimate actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, you failed to mention the war crimes perpetrated by Georgian military forces, which American advisors support, against Russian and Ossetian civilians \r\n\r\n\u201cPresident Bush, \r\n\r\nWhy don\u2019t you shut up? Your faithful ally, Mikhail Saakashvili, was announcing a ceasefire deal while his troops, with your advisors, were massing on Ossetia\u2019s border, which they crossed under cover of night and destroyed Tskhinvali, targeting civilian structures just like your forces did in Iraq. \r\n\r\n\u201cPresident Bush, \r\n\r\nWhy don\u2019t you shut up? Your American transport aircraft gave a ride home to thousands of Georgian soldiers from Iraq directly into the combat zone. \r\n\r\n\u201cPresident Bush, \r\n\r\nWhy don\u2019t you shut up? How do you account for the fact that among the Georgian soldiers fleeing the fighting yesterday you could clearly hear officers using American English giving orders to \u201cGet back inside\u201d and how do you account for the fact that there are reports of American soldiers among the Georgian casualties? \r\n\r\n\u201cPresident Bush, \r\n\r\nWhy don\u2019t you shut up? Do you really think anyone gives any importance whatsoever to your words after 8 years of your criminal and murderous regime and policies? Do you really believe you have any moral ground whatsoever and do you really imagine there is a single human being anywhere on this planet who does not stick up his middle finger every time you appear on a TV screen? \r\n\r\nDo you really believe you have the right to give any opinion or advice after Abu Ghraib? After Guantanamo? After the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens? After the torture by CIA operatives? \r\n\r\nDo you really believe you have any right to make a statement on any point of international law after your trumped-up charges against Iraq and the subsequent criminal invasion? \r\n\r\n\u201cPresident Bush, \r\n\r\nWhy don\u2019t you shut up? Suppose Russia for instance declares that Georgia has weapons of mass destruction? And that Russia knows where these WMD are, namely in Tblisi and Poti and north, south, east and west of there? And that it must be true because there is \u2018magnificent foreign intelligenc\u2019 such as satellite photos of milk powder factories and baby cereals producing chemical weapons and which are currently being \u2018driven around the country in vehicles\u2019? Suppose Russia declares for instance that \u2018Saakashvili stiffed the world\u2019 and it is \u2018time for regime change\u2019? \r\n\r\nNice and simple, isn\u2019t it, President Bush? \r\n\r\n\u201cSo, why don\u2019t you shut up? Oh and by the way, send some more of your military advisors to Georgia, they are doing a sterling job. And they look all funny down the night sight, all green.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe US is not a superpower. It is a bankrupt farce run by imbeciles who were installed by stolen elections arranged by Karl Rove and Diebold. It is a laughing stock, that ignorantly affronts and attempts to bully an enormous country equipped with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. \r\n\r\nPaul 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.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com \r\n\r\nhttp:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/roberts08132008.html\r\n","author":"Analyses Media Missed","parent_id":219349,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2008-08-16 22:53:08","modified":"2013-11-11 00:54:06","fileurl":""}]}