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POPSRussia Charges US Is Rearming Georgia
This is abut the USA, Israel and the West trying to get oil and gas from the Caspian Sea. Georgia is critical for the pipeline. Amazingly, the Georgian Defense Minister is an Israeli (!) and an Israeli general is a prime advisor to their Georgian Army and was involved in starting last year's war. U.S. troops also there, on the ground; and NATO as well, even though Georgia is not in NATO but the West is trying to get it in. This headline is made at the same time, the same day, that Russian nuke subs are reported off the East Coast of the USA, the Cold War quickly being microwaved reheated. I think we should BUY and oil and natural gas we need and invest and develop more alternative energy and our own oil reserves if we have to. I hope we don't have to listen to any more propaganda about fighting for "peace and democracy," or twist it around to make it sound like Russia is the aggressor (on it's own border, while we're 12,000 miles from home) It's another war for B
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POPSAmerica Being Taken Less Seriously These Days By Our Friends And Our Enemies men arrested on suspicion of having ties to al Qaeda. While none of these events amounts to the foreign policy crisis that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said during the campaign would test the new president in his opening months, Mr. Obama's reaction will shape foreign perceptions of the new U.S. leader's mettle. Any substantive policy changes toward Pakistan are awaiting the outcome of a trip to the region this week by Mr. Obama's representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, as well as a strategic review by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. Central Command. In some ways, the Iranian satellite launch was the biggest rebuke for Mr. Obama, who on the campaign trail promised to begin constructive engagement with Iran in an effort to get the Islamic republic to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
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POPSWashington asks Israel To Clarify First Sale Of Spy Drones To Russia A drone transaction with Moscow would give the Russian army a technological-intelligence edge over Caucasian and Caspian nations, like Georgia and Azerbaijan, and therefore place in doubt their future arms purchases from Israel. Jerusalem consulted with Washington over the deal, as required under the US-Israel 2006 security pact covering Israeli weapons transfers to third countries. The advanced state of Israel-Russian negotiations indicates its approval by the outgoing Bush White House and incoming Obama administration in line with their efforts to improve relations with Moscow.
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POPSGeorgia Says Russia Has Massed 7,000 Troops In South Ossetia Russia recognized the independence of South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, from Georgia on Aug. 26. Only Nicaragua has followed suit. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Sept. 8 that his decision to recognize the regions was ``final'' and ``irrevocable.'' Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said the following day that Russia had agreed to deploy about 3,800 soldiers in each region. A European Union-brokered cease-fire agreement that ended the fighting in Georgia requires Russia to remove its forces to their pre-conflict positions. Russia sent about 10,000 soldiers into Georgia during the fighting, according to state-run news service RIA Novosti.
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POPSSeparatists 'to host Russia bases' Maybe it was a good move to have Palin as a candidate - prevents Alaska from breaking away as the Russian states did. America could give Alaska to the neocons and tell em all to go live there. They could rename the State, Armageddon.
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POPSRepublican Congressman: Russia was Right! But you won't hear this from McCain or Palin, nor Obama or other democrats, who all parrot the LIE of the neocon's official story. A bold republican Congressman is quoted, virtually paraphrasing the piece written by Pat Buchanan earlier (which I clipmarked, "Georgia Started It, Russia Finished It"). The tide against the propaganda is turning. Buchanan, Savage, now this Congressman and many more. Now this is from a Russian news agency, so to be objective I see no citation of the title that "US Intelligence" (not just the Congressman quoted) takes this view. But then the MSM does not report intelligence usually. They usually parrot the neocon propaganda. Note the unreported toll on civilians in just a few days in S. Ossetia, from Georgia's assault! More than 1500 civilians were killed in that time, according to South Ossetian authorities.
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POPSSaakashvili’s Days Numbered Okruashvili also said that after 2006 Georgia didn't have the possibility for success by military means. “The Russians had repositioned and improved their military infrastructure in the North Caucuses, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. He also criticized the United States for unwavering support towards President Saakashvili’s administration. “ “Lack of criticism from the U.S. allowed him to go too far,” Okruashvili said.
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POPSAbkhazia, Ossetia and Iran – Risks of Spreading Conflicts What is puzzling after reading all the press on Ossetia and the US involvement is why does the US really have interest. Thinking more and doing some Google Earth it seems that Georgia area has great position in terms of range to Iran. So what if the US an ally worked out a deal to use that as a launching point on Iran? Might that not piss off Putin and Russia who has publicly acknowledge providing nuclear power guidance,etc. So with that in mind, Putin/Medeved could easily say - get out of our region. Not sure what is more scary - the idea that the US/allies might have been planning to attack Iran or the fact Putin and crew are willing to possibly defend Iran.
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POPSBush Wants $1 Billion to Georgia for Attacking South Ossetia The NYT finally admits that Georgia was the aggressor: "fighting that began on the night of Aug. 7 when Georgia tried to establish control over a breakaway region, South Ossetia, only to be driven back by Russian forces". And to put that $1 billion figure in perspective the articles says: The aid would dwarf the $63 million the United States provided to Georgia last year, roughly a third of it for training its soldiers, police officers and border guards. Excluding Iraq, the infusion would make Georgia one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid after Israel and Egypt. That Dick Cheney was "sent" by Bush is indicative of the neocon agenda. Georgia did not attack without US or Israeli knowledge, but with their full support. So in essence, the US is to pay $1billion to Georgia for a defeated military invasion and attempt to capture South Ossetia--i.e. for a proxy war.
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POPS Kremlin: South Ossetia Will Join 'One United Russian State' Georgia announced that it was recalling all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Moscow in protest at the continued Russian occupation of its land in defiance of a ceasefire agreement brokered by President Sarkozy of France. “The regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia should think about the fact that if they become part of Russia, they will be assimilated, and in this way they will disappear.” Lado Gurgenidze, the Prime Minister of Georgia, scrapped agreements that had permitted Russian peacekeepers to operate in the two regions after wars in the early 1990s. Russia attacked the G7 after the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan condemned its “excessive use of military force in Georgia”. Having been rebuffed on Thursday by China and four Central Asian states, Russia will seek support next week from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) for its recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
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POPSMoscow’s Plan is to Redraw the Map of Europe: Mikheil Saakashvili
Since Russia’s invasion, its forces have been “cleansing” Georgian villages in both regions – including outside the conflict zone – using arson, rape and execution. Human rights groups have documented these actions. It hopes the west will forget ethnic cleansing in Abkhazia drove out more than three-quarters of the local population – ethnic Georgians, Greeks, Jews and others – leaving the minority Abkhaz in control. Last week Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president, put us on alert: “Russia does not really know where it begins and where it ends.” He noted that the Moscow regime is “a lot more sophisticated” than the Soviets under Leonid Brezhnev. He should know – he was on the front line the last time Russia invaded a European country. Backing Georgia with Europe’s political and financial institutions is a powerful response. The most potent western response to Russia is to stay united and firm by providing immediate material and political support.
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POPSRussia Defiant Ahead of EU Summit Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said there was "no turning back" on the country's position concerning breakaway South Ossetia and Abhkazia, adding that Moscow was ready to retaliate if the EU opted for sanctions at a summit on Monday. Sunday 31 August 2008 Russian troops entered Georgia on August 8 to push back a Georgian offensive to retake the rebel enclave of South Ossetia, which broke away from Tbilisi in the 1990s with Moscow's backing. Russian troops continue to hold positions in western Georgia, serving in what Moscow describes as a peacekeeping mission. Tbilisi has labelled them an occupation force. By AFP (text) / Romain Goguelin reports from Tbilisi, Georgia (video) video on website http://www.france24.com/en/20080831-russia-defiant-ahead-eu-summit-medvedev-georgia-south-ossetia-abkhazia
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POPSGeorgia breaks ties with Russia Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Moscow regretted Tbilisi's decision. "The possible end of diplomatic relations with Georgia is not the choice of Moscow, and Tbilisi will have to bear the entire responsibility," the state-controlled Tass news agency reported him as saying.
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POPSRussia receives unexpected rebuke from SCO SCO-Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Moscow also seems to be growing desperate in its search for diplomatic support. On August 28, Belarus, a pariah state that has close relations with Russia, indicated that it would soon follow Moscow in recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
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POPSGeorgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world Cont... There has been much talk among western politicians in recent days about Russia isolating itself from the international community. But unless that simply means North America and Europe, nothing could be further from the truth. While the US and British media have swung into full cold-war mode over the Georgia crisis, the rest of the world has seen it in a very different light. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer." And that has the neocons scare witless!
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POPS'Ethnic cleansing continues' All the while Europe and the rest of the World stand by and do nothing...except condemn and talk. Inaction only emboldens Putin. Where will he move next? I wonder what John Bolton would do?
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POPSEU Leaders To Discuss Georgia As Russia Flouts West French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned that Russia could face a deterioration of relations with Europe, Moscow's largest trading partner, including ties involving energy, Russia's main export. Most of the troops left Friday, but Moscow retained its peacekeepers in Kremlin-defined security zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia. "They are trying to keep instruments to suffocate Georgia and create further trouble at any moment," said Giga Bokeria, Georgia's deputy foreign minister. In Ukraine, meanwhile, pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko said the conflict in Georgia showed his country needed to accelerate its bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, speaking at a military parade in honor of Ukraine's independence. Russia opposes the idea of Ukraine joining NATO, which the Kremlin views as an anti-Russian bloc.
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POPS NATO Has Acquiesced To The Kremlin Writing in the Times of London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband even opposes expelling Russia from the G-8 -- a perfectly calibrated and long-overdue measure. And a German diplomat says the Georgia issue should not have been brought to NATO in the first place, but instead to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a completely toothless consultative body, and to the United Nations, where inaction is guaranteed by the Russian veto. To their credit, the French tried to do something. Unfortunately, President Nicolas Sarkozy was snookered by Moscow. Article V of the cease-fire agreement he brokered, allowing Russia the right to "implement additional security measures" within the borders of Georgia, is a blank check for Russian occupation. Eastern Europe understands the stakes in Georgia. It is the ultimate target. Russia's aims are clear: (1) sever South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia for incorporation into Russia;