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Scott Horton of AntiWar.com Radio Interviews
Brendan O’Neill
August 12th, 2008
Brendan O’Neill, editor of UK based Spiked Online, discusses the conflict
between Georgia and Russia over Ossetia, including the blame due the U.S.
for supporting and arming Georgia, the hypocrisy of western leaders and
media for condemning Russia while they sow catastrophe in the Balkans and
Iraq, Russia’s motivation, U.S. infiltration of the region under the guise
of the “War on Terror,” and the bankruptcy of the American-Anglo empire’s claim of moral authority.
(Click on Logo)
Special Comment
Georgia on Our Mind: Or, the Search for
Truth in a Propagandized and Politically Manipulated Post 9/11 America
“Americans have many fine
qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among
them.”
This
is a mark not so much of Nato's relative weakness in this dispute - it does
indeed have few levers with which to play - but
it is more an acknowledgement that we live in a much more complex world
where ties between Russia and the West have a number of dimensions - not
least an energy relationship - and a freeze could hurt the Europeans more
than it would hurt Russia.
For
all the overtones from the past - Russian tank columns on the march evoking
memories of Hungary and Czechoslovakia - this was a crisis with parallels
more in the 19th Century than in the one that has recently ended.
This
is not about an expansionist state with an ideology bent on world
domination,but a major power eager
to establish a sphere of interest in its own backyard and jealously
guarding what it sees as the approaches towards its own frontiers -
what Russians have traditionally called the ‘near abroad.’" Continue
Editor
Brendan O’Neill comments in UK based Spikede-zine: “The problem with this
fairytale script [Washington’s & the MSM’s] that is being
cut-and-pasted on to the horrendous massacres of people in South Ossetia
and Georgia is that it is almost entirely wrong. Georgia is no free-spirited, democratic republic,but an increasingly authoritarian regime that bans
overly critical media outlets and criminalises opposition parties (4).
Russia is acting not from an imperialist, expansionist standpoint but out
of desperation, behaving recklessly because it feels its sovereign
authority challenged by numerous ex-Soviet republics.
And, most
importantly, far from Western involvement being the solution in Georgia,
there has already been far too much of it: Washington’s arming, goading and
cajoling of former Soviet republics has intensified instability across the
Caucasus and Central Asia and around the rim of one of the most populous,
powerful nations on Earth: Russia.
The bloodshed that
occurred over the weekend, as Georgian forces bombed the breakaway
territory of South Ossetia and Russia responded by attacking Georgia, can
be seen as the destructive outcome of Washington’s
increasingly hungry and erratic foreign policy. What is missing from much of the Western morality tale of Georgia vs
Russia is any serious assessment of Washington’s role in militarising former Soviet republics and giving a green
light to their anti-Russian posturing. From the Ukraine to Uzbekistan to
Georgia, Washington has backed a string of dodgy ruling parties and
dictatorial leaders as they have upped the ante with their former rulers in
the Kremlin. The end result has been more authoritarianism in the East and
unpredictability in world affairs.
Georgia, like many
of the former Soviet republics, is a state with no real reason to exist.
Lacking a unified national elite or identity, it is another of those
Caucasian and Central Asian states that were born by default when the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It is fragile, changeable, and has various
ethnic or ‘national’
groups within its borders – not only in South Ossetia
(which wants to join with North Ossetia) but also in Abkhazia, a Black Sea
region that has largely run its own affairs since defeating Georgian forces
in a war in 1992-1993.
Over
the past decade, Washington’s foreign policy – increasingly patternless and self-defeating – has helped to make the
unstable state of affairs in the former Soviet republics worse. America has
sought to turn these republics into outposts in its ‘war on terror’. On the
ostensible basis of protecting Georgia, and the world more broadly, from
the threat of al-Qaeda-style Chechen terrorism, Washington has pumped more than £100million into Georgia’s
security forces (5). It has provided the Georgian military with Huey
helicopters, tonnes of weaponry, and high-level training – just last
month it was reported that 1,200 US servicemen and 800 Georgians were
undergoing intensive ‘joint military training’ at the Vaziani military base
near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi (6).Continue
Eric Margolis comments on Washington’s most
recent folly: “On 7 August, Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, ordered
his US and Israeli-advised and equipped army to invade the breakaway region
of South Ossetia, which has been struggling for independence from Georgia
since 1992. Most of its people were Russian citizens who wanted union with
Russian North Ossetia.
If
not directly behind Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia, Washington had to
have been at least fully aware of Saakashvili’s plans. The Georgian Army
was trained and equipped by US and Israeli military advisors stationed with
its troops down to battalion level. CIA and Israel’s Mossad operated
important intelligence stations in Tbilisi and coordinated plans with the
Saakashvili, whose political opponents have long accused him of being very
close to CIA and the Pentagon.
Georgia’s
attack on South Ossetia was launched while the world was absorbed by the
Beijing Olympics, and Prime Minister Putin was in the Chinese capital. The
attack was clearly planned to be a lightening strike that would occupy all
of South Ossetia and then Abkhazia before Moscow could react, presenting
the Kremlin with a fait accompli.”
Israeli based DebKa File reports: “In
granting Israel the powerful FBX-T radar system to enhance its early
warning resources against incoming missiles, Washington laid down a strict
hands-off proviso. The system will be installed at a US base in the southern Israeli Negev.
It will be off-limits to Israelis and managed exclusively by American
personnel.”Continue
The Neocons: The Greatest Danger Ever Faced By The United States And The
World
The success of the Bush Regime's propaganda, lies, and
deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it
difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future
of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as
Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of
thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign
media on the Internet have been brainwashed.
As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to
deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the
flag.
It certainly worked with Americans.
The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many
victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced
Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.
Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American
bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.
We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the
American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children
by US and NATO troops.
We don't know what the death toll would be in Iran
if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb
Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.
What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no
justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms
about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their
undeclared agenda.
That such evil people have control over the United States
government and media damns the American public for eternity.
America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped
upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.
The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that
the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime's
criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises "change" is too
intimidated by the neocon's success in brainwashing the American population
to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in
which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.
This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed
prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to
ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the
separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again
accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed "Russian
invasion" to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South
Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.
Only this time, the rest of the world didn't buy it. The many
years of lies--9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda
connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, "the United
States doesn't torture," the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children's
soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated
"terrorist plots," the determined assault on civil
liberties--have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside
America any longer believes the US media or the US government.
The rest of the world reported the facts--an assault on Russian
civilians by American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian troops.
The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to accept
this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian
military was sent fleeing for its life.
The neoconned Republican response to the Russian failure to
follow the script and to be intimidated by the "unipower" was so
imbecilic that it shattered the brainwashing to which Americans had
succumbed.
McCain declared: "In the 21st century nations don't
invade other nations." Imagine the laughs Jon Stewart will get out of
this on the Daily Show. In the early years of the 21st century the United
States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for
attacking a third. President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century,
echoed McCain's claim that nations don't invade other nations. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7556857.stm
This dissonant claim shocked even brainwashed Americans, as
readers' emails reveal. If in the 21st century countries don't invade other
countries, what is Bush doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what are the
naval armadas and propaganda arrayed against Iran about?
Have two of the worst warmongers of modern times--Bush and
McCain--called off the US/Israeli attack on Iran? If McCain is elected
president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as
"nations don't invade other nations," or is President Bush going
to beat him to it?
We all know the answer.
The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught
hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on
the basis of good will.
Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied
with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country
wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be
thanking God they blocked Georgia's membership in NATO.
The Ukraine, where a sick nationalism has taken hold funded by
the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, will be the next conflict
between American pretensions and Russia. Russia is being taught by the
neocons that freeing the constituent parts of its empire has not resulted
in their independence but in their absorption into the American Empire.
Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state
and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans
and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against
humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with
Russia.
The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the
United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.
Patrick J. Buchanan comments:“The arrogant folly of the architects of U.S. post-Cold War policy is today on
display. By bringing three ex-Soviet republics into NATO, we have moved the
U.S. red line for war from the Elbe almost to within artillery range of the
old Leningrad.
Should America admit Ukraine into NATO, Yalta, vacation resort
of the czars, will be a NATO port and Sevastopol, traditional home of the
Russian Black Sea Fleet, will become a naval base for the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
This is altogether a bridge too far.
And can we not understand how a Russian patriot like Vladimir
Putin would be incensed by this U.S. encirclement after Russia shed its
empire and sought our friendship? How would Andy Jackson have reacted to
such crowding by the British Empire?
As of 1991, the oil of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan
belonged to Moscow. Can we not understand why Putin would smolder as
avaricious Yankees built pipelines to siphon the oil and gas of the Caspian
Basin through breakaway Georgia to the West?
For a dozen years, Putin & Co. watched as U.S. agents
helped to dump over regimes in Ukraine and Georgia that were friendly to
Moscow.
Steve
Weissman, comments for Truthout: "John McCain calls the conflict in Georgia 'the first
probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War,' and
he is doing everything he can to make it his own, even at the cost of
upstaging the shrinking President Bush. But the tragedy in Georgia also
reveals the most embarrassing foreign policy blunder since - well, since
the Bush administration decided to wage a preemptive war in Iraq. If deep
thinkers in Washington insist on setting up a string of client states to
encircle Russia, they should never let the puppets pull their own strings,
as [Georgian President] Mikheil Saakashvili appears to have done when he
sent his army into rebellious South Ossetia."Continue
Patrick J. Buchanan
comments: “American charges of
Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia
finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they
end.
Russia's response was ‘disproportionate’ and ‘brutal,’ wailed Bush.
True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in
response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and
two captured? Was that not many times more ‘disproportionate’?
Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United
States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a
province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than
Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to
Tbilisi?
Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?
When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia,
Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we
rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are
ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence,
should succeed in breaking away?
Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they
advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia? Continue
Deutsche World
reports: “The former German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has blamed Georgia for starting the conflict
in South Ossetia and described its President as a ’gambler’. In an interview
with the German magazine Der Spiegel, he criticised President Mikhail
Saakashvili and warned against speeding up the country's accession to NATO.
‘Imagine that we had been forced
into military action on the side of Georgia as a NATO member, on the side
of an obvious gambler, as one must describe Saakashvili,’ he said.Continue
Sergei Ivanov: In a BBC HARDtalk interview broadcast on 14th August,
Stephen Sackur talks to Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Ivanov about the
conflict in Georgia.
In five days the Russian military crushed Georgia's armed
forces. Georgia's secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are in
effect under complete Russian control.
In Tbilisi there is anguish, in Europe and Washington
consternation.
In an interview for HARDtalk, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's Deputy
Prime Minister tells Stephen Sackur that South Ossetians and Abkhazians
must be allowed to determine their own future.
He denied Russian forces were moving further into Georgia and
said the comments by Britain's Foreign Secretary about Russia's imperial
ambitions were "total rubbish."
HARDtalk is broadcast on BBC World News at
03:30 GMT, 08:30 GMT, 14:30 GMT, 20:30 GMT and 22:30 GMT
Hardtalk can also be seen on BBC News at 04:30
BST & 23:30 BST
Simon Jenkins
comments for the London Guardian: “Putin
would die laughing if he read this week's American newspapers. The
president, George Bush, declared the Russian invasion of Georgia
‘disproportionate and unacceptable’. This is taken as a put-down to the
vice-president, Dick Cheney, who declared the invasion ‘will not go
unanswered’, apparently something quite different. Bush says that great
powers should not go about ‘toppling governments in the 21st century’, as
if he had never done such a thing. Cheney says that the invasion has
‘damaged Russia's standing in the world’, as if Cheney gave a damn. The
lobby for sanctions against Russia is reduced to threatening to boycott the
winter Olympics. Big deal.” Continue
Glenn
Greenwald of Salon.com writes: “It's
hardly news that the U.S., like many countries, espouses standards that it
routinely violates, but still, even in light of such routine hypocrisy,
wouldn't you think that this, from Condoleezza
Rice today, on an airplane to U.S. reporters while traveling to a NATO
meeting, would be too brazen to utter:
Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the
one tool that it has always used whenever it wishes to deliver a message and
that's its military power. That's not the way to deal in the 21st century.
Whatever one's views are on the justifiability of
each isolated instance, it's simply a fact that the U.S. invades, bombs,
occupies, and interferes in the internal affairs of other countries far
more than any other country on the planet. It's not even a close
competition.Continue
Pravda (Moscow) columnist Timothy
BANCROFT-HINCHEY asks: “Is
Condoleeza Rice stupid? She claims to be a Russian expert but her command
of the language was recently exposed as being basic/elementary level on a
Russian radio programme, just as her grasp of what is going on in Russia
today seems beneath the informed blogger level.
Is Condoleeza
Rice stupid? How can this female purport to broker events between an evil
regime in Tblisi supported by her own evil regime in Washington, and
Russia, while not mentioning one single time
the war crimes committed by Georgia against Russian peacekeepers and
civilians?
So we come to
the conclusion that she is either stupid, or incompetent, or downright
evil. If she didn’t know
about Georgia’s war
crimes, when everyone else did, she is incompetent (as she proved as
National Security Advisor during 9/11). If she knows about the war crimes
and fails to mention them, as Secretary of State, she is plain stupid and
if she purposefully covers them up, maybe because her own armed forces were
involved, then she is one evil piece of work, as many of us suspected all
along.
Is Condoleeza
Rice stupid? Or incompetent? Or just plain evil?” Continue
The
Future of Freedom Foundation’s Richard Sheldon writes: “The tragic events in the
nation of Georgia show that U.S. foreign policy is a bust. In particular, NATO must go. This may seem
counterintuitive, but this relic of the Cold War has nothing to contribute to
peace. On the contrary, it is a destabilizing tool of America’s provocative
imperial foreign policy.
Let
us stipulate that the Russian government would undoubtedly be interested in
having Georgia in its camp even if NATO did not exist. The Russian elite
has always seen itself destined for a major role in world events, and that
dream of course included a large sphere of influence where friendly regimes
saw things the Russian way.
Nevertheless,
NATO — and the U.S. empire for which it stands — is a major aggravating
factor in the tensions between Russia and its neighbors. Not long after the
Soviet Union imploded and the Cold War ended, the U.S. foreign-policy elite
began talking about expanding NATO to include former Soviet Satellites and
republics. Considering that NATO was ostensibly created to counter the
Soviet Union in Europe, how could expanding the organization up to the
Russian border not be provocative? What was the point, except to show the
Russians who’s boss?” Continue
Israeli
contract mercenary Tomer (alias) quoted in Israel’s Ynet News:"The training companies [Israeli] wanted to finish the
projects as quickly as possible in order to create more projects and make
more money," he said. ‘We knew the training had to be completed
quickly because the soldiers would soon have to get into real military
activity.’
He added that the Georgian
officers told their soldiers they would be going to help NATO forces in
Iraq, while the real objective was Ossetia and Abkhazia.
According
to Tomer, Gal
Hirschcame to visit the trainers now and then, but was mostly
absent. And when the training was officially over, Tomer did not feel that
his soldiers were ready for war. ‘By Israeli standards, the soldiers had
almost zero capability and the officers were mediocre,’ he said. ‘It was
clear that taking that army to war was illogical.’
By
keeping in touch with one of his soldiers, Tomer discovered that most of
the men he had trained had indeed been killed in the war.Continue
George Monbiot comments in the Guardian,
London: “Poland is just the latest fall guy for
an American foreign policy dictated by military industrial lobbyists in
Washington.” Continue
Charley
Reese comments in LewRockwell.com: “As
for government corruption, it's all around us. Sure, there are honest
public officials, but the system itself is corrupt. It now requires so much
money to run for office that the field is narrowed to bored millionaires
and office-seekers willing to take as much money as they can from anywhere
they can get it. That's why Congress pays no attention to the people. It
pays attention to the suppliers of campaign funds – not to mention junkets, fancy vacations and
off-the-radar business deals.”Continue
DemocracyNow.org reports: “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind joins us for part two of
an interview on his new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and
Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind reports that in 2003 the White
House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents
linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. While much of the attention on the book has
focused on the forged letter, Suskind also reveals that the Bush
administration and the British government knew prior to the war that Iraq
had no weapons of mass destruction. We also speak to Rep. John Conyers,
chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating some of the
explosive findings in Suskind’s book.”Continue
Michael Scheuer, 22 year CIA veteran and former head of the Agency’s bin-Laden Unit
writes: “The U.S. invasion of Iraq, it seems, was not enough for the
Israel-firsters. Now, according to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a U.S.-launched war on
Iran is needed because ‘the threat that the U.S. and
Israel face from the Islamic Republic of Iran is today greater than ever.’ Though based on the
fantasy that Ahmedinejad's tin-pot regime is a threat to the world's only
superpower, this is a perfectly commonsense position for Israel and its
U.S.-citizen backers in AIPACto champion. In their view, U.S. wars with Muslims are the ultimate
good for Israel. Recall, if you will, the perfectly accurate April 2008, words of Benjamin Netanyahu, likely Israel's next prime
minister: ‘We
[Israel] are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the twin
towers and the Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.’ These wars, Netanyahu said, have ‘swung American public
opinion in our favor.’ How much more must Netanyahu and AIPAC believe that a U.S.
war with Iran would add to this ‘swing’ in Israel's favor?
My
own anger falls not on Israel, then, or on Palestine, for that matter; as I
have written elsewhere, America would do just fine and would be better off
without either or both. It falls rather on the lobbying efforts of AIPAC, that
organization's blatant purchasing of fealty from U.S. politicians in both
parties, and the media's obsequious parroting of specious canards about
‘Israel's right to exist’ and ‘the duty of Americans to support an island
of democracy in the Middle East.’"Continue
David Hambling writes for
NewScientist.com: “An airborne laser weapon dubbed the
‘long-range blowtorch’ has the added benefit that the US could convincingly deny
any involvement with the destruction it causes, say senior officials of the
US Air Force (USAF).
The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is to
be mounted on a Hercules
military transport plane.
Boeing announced the first test firing of the laser, from a plane on the
ground, earlier this summer.
Cynthia Kaiser, chief engineer of the US
Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed
Energy Directorate, used the phrase
"plausible deniability" to describe the weapon's benefits in a briefing (powerpoint format)on laser weapons to the New Mexico Optics Industry
Association in June.
John Corley, director of USAF's
Capabilities Integration Directorate, used the same phrase to describe the
weapon's benefits at an Air Armament Symposium in Florida in October 2007 (see page 15, pdf format).
As
the term suggests, ‘plausible deniability’ is used to describe situations
where those responsible for an event could plausibly claim to have had no
involvement in it.
Corley and Kaiser did not respond to
requests from New Scientist to expand on their comments. But John
Pike, analyst with defence think-tank Global Security, based in Virginia, says the implications are clear.
‘The
target would never know what hit them,’ says Pike. ‘Further,
there would be no munition fragments that could be used to identify the
source of the strike.’ Continue
“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
An extraordinarily prescient video
interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy
National Security Advisor to Former President George Bush Sr.