Hard News: The newest neocon catastrophe
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The whole thing has necon teh stoopid written all over it.
The following is an brief description of a "Neocon plot" that is the fault of John McCain according to the "unbiased" analysis of the Belgravia Dispatch:
Georgians and Ossetians are two neighbouring tribes in the Caucacus Mountains. The Georgians were there first, the Ossetians were driven there by the Mongols.
Ossetia is the area inhabited by a Farsi speaking tribe. It was conquored by Russia at the end of the 18th century and was administered by the Tsars as a subject land. In 1936 its admistration was divided North & South between the Russian and Georgian Soviets. The Georgian Soviet ran their administration with mostly Georgians in South Ossetia. The Ossetians harboured some resentment for this Georgian dominance and aligned themselves more with Moscow.
Georgia was also siezed by the Tsarists in late 18th and administered seperately. It briefly gained independence after the Soviet revolution, before being invaded by the Red Army 4 years later. Due to its resistance agianst the Soviets successive purges were carried out by the Russians against the Georgians - with partial assistance of local Ossetian tribes.
During perestroika South Ossetia requested a redefining of South Ossetia into amalgamation with North Ossetia but were refused and 2 years later the Soviet Union fell apart with all Soviets gaining independence. Georgia Soviet included South Ossetia, Russia Soviet included North Ossetia. There has been a quasi active civil war occuring in every year since.
As such it the analysis of the Belgravia Dispatch that the war is an isolated incidence entirely generated for the benefit of the Republican candidate John McCain by neoconservative conspritators?
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The world is not a Marvel Comic
If only...Then it'd just be Omega Red vs Captain America, and would be all over in 10-15 pages tops...
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There is very little positive that can be said about McCain IMHO.
I see that a staffer has said they would like to see him take less phone calls as they are "Concerned About His Tendency to Adopt the Last Opinion He Has Heard"...
This is scary stuff and sounds like a Bush/Cheney relationship writ large, with anyone and everyone in the puppetmaster role.The Georgian conflict was an obvious mistake from very early on and Russia is definately going to regard it as a symbolic win, emboldening them further and reducing the US's influence in the region.
Its almost as if whomever nudged Georgia into action in South Ossetia was actually attempting to strengthen Russia's local and global reputation and resolve, as any other outcome was rather unlikely. Not that I subscribe to such conspiracy concoction.
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The depressing thing about TVNZ's 6pm news bulletin last night was the trumpeted 'exclusive interview' with the New Zealander who is the US volleyball team coach who's father was murdered in Beijing. That was trailed as their top story. War? What war?
Just listen to Sunday's Mediawatch - it speaks volumes about the state of news and current affairs in New Zealand.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch
The Halliburton story that ran on the Sunday programme recently was edited to about a third of its original BBC Panorama programme length!
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Correction: father in law - not father.
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Meanwhile, the Dom Post online's top story is... a man pissing on a parking meter.
Let me know when he's found pissing on a 'journalist'. (assuming its not a watersports story - I'm not interested in that kind of reporting either)
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Meanwhile, the Dom Post online's top story is... a man pissing on a parking meter.
And not even a single mention of Georgia on the stuff.co.nz home page this morning... Wow.
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There’s something oddly disturbing about those shots of a crowd of Georgian nationalists waving their flag.
Reminds me of English football hooligans.
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Yes, I would prefer Obama to McCain to be greeting the Aliens in his capacity as POTW. One thing that fascinates me about all this is the vastly improved performance of the Russian army after in debacle in Chechneya. The Georgians obviously thought the Russians wouldn't intervene, and if they did they would be as bumbling as they were in the 1990's.
Clearly, the vast mineral and energy wealth of Russia is flowing into it's military. The Russians are showing some combat finesse, with their powerful artillery and complete command of the air routing the Georgians. looking at the TV imagery, the shots of georgian Armour camoflaged and hiding under trees was so deja-vu. powerfully bring to mind those grainy black and white WWII pictures of heavily camflaged German tanks in Normandy, their crews fearfully scanning the skys for Allied fighter-bombers.
It takes a particularly jaw-dropping stupidity to take on a resurgent big power who is spoiling for a fight, and to do it without an airforce of your own nearly seventy years after it was shown you can't fight a war without an airforce.
Anyway, Russia is back, and it looks more like the Russia of the Tsars, with the sort of expansionist foreign policy that was constantly being checked by the British Empire, than the fear-driven policy of the Soviets.
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As such it the analysis of the Belgravia Dispatch that the war is an isolated incidence entirely generated for the benefit of the Republican candidate John McCain by neoconservative conspritators?
Thanks for the background Angus, but I really didn't get that from The Belgravia Dispatch story at all. In fact quite the opposite:
This being said, if the horrors inflicted on varied Abkhazians, Ossetians and Georgians this past week (by both sides) must be seen from these provincial, grossly self-interested shores merely through the lens of the U.S. Presidential election, let me chime in very briefly within these contours.
His tack seemed to be more that McCain is both out of his depth and leaping onto this for political advantage.
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The bear has definately escaped the cage. The question now is how hungry it is.
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Anyway, Russia is back, and it looks more like the Russia of the Tsars, with the sort of expansionist foreign policy that was constantly being checked by the British Empire, than the fear-driven policy of the Soviets.
Yes, agreed, and much emboldened by the US failures in Iraq and stalemate in Afghanistan. Georgia will be seen as a major blow to US ambition and foreign policy too, as a much weakened Georgia with likely a new leader is a probable end game here.
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The bear has definately escaped the cage. The question now is how hungry it is.
What astounds me, 17 years after the wall came down was how quickly the much touted single hyper-power era came to a close.
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What astounds me, 17 years after the wall came down was how quickly the much touted single hyper-power era came to a close.
Yeah... Its a totally different layout from a few years ago.
Russia, China, the US and the EU. Four quickly equalising pillars with different philosophies and politics.
A situation caused largely by America's foreign policy decisions. -
Any situation where you start the shooting and then find yourself begging for a ceasefire within 48 hours is a major blunder.
I think the latter part is redundant. Any situation where you start shooting is a blunder. As the fat man said, jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.
To John Campbell's credit, last night he showed the contrasting way the conflict is being reported in the US versus the UK, which is quite striking.
Damn, I missed that. But the impression I had was the US media going "evil aggressive Russians" and the Europeans going "mad stupid Georgians". I bet the latter are really keen on having such a government in a defensive alliance with them (OTOH, many don't see the point of that alliance anymore anyway).
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There’s something oddly disturbing about those shots of a crowd of Georgian nationalists waving their flag.
Reminds me of English football hooligans.
The sort of stupid nationalism which started this thing is simply football hooliganism writ large.
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Here is a question: For the Baltic states, is membership of NATO in reality as worthless as the security guarantees offered to Czechoslovakia in 1938? Would the Germans, French or Spanish (let alone the United States) really militarily confront Russia if it intervened to protect Russian minorities in those places? If not, why in God's name were they admitted to NATO in the first place?
The thing is, Western Europe is now hostage to Russian energy, and at the same time committed to defending members of its alliance who have huge Russian minorities (like in Ossetia). What worries me is we now have the potential of a Munich-like humiliation for the Western European nations over the Baltic States, followed by a "line in the sand" set of security guarantees for Poland, with the Russian dictator missing the new resolve in the West.... Where have we heard that sort of scenario before?
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A situation caused largely by America's foreign policy decisions.
Indeed and the litany of disastrous foreign policy missteps seem likely to be continued by any McCain administration, and, on current form, perhaps only slightly watered down by Obama as he reels from having to deal with the frankly cartoonishness of mainstream America's worldview.
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Fantastic post, Russell. I was looking for an analysis of this whole debacle that made some sort of sense.
Anyway, Russia is back, and it looks more like the Russia of the Tsars, with the sort of expansionist foreign policy that was constantly being checked by the British Empire, than the fear-driven policy of the Soviets.
Yes, agreed, and much emboldened by the US failures in Iraq and stalemate in Afghanistan. Georgia will be seen as a major blow to US ambition and foreign policy too, as a much weakened Georgia with likely a new leader is a probable end game here.
it does seem that way. How profoundly depressing...
Oh well, back to the Olympics. Yay!
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Russia, China, the US and the EU. Four quickly equalising pillars with different philosophies and politics.
A situation caused largely by America's foreign policy decisions.Don't forget India, either. They're not quite as militaristic as the others, but they'll get there. They have nukes, too, and having a nine-figure population is all kinds of quantitative power of its own.
In a lot of ways, not having a single super-power isn't a bad thing. We've seen what happens when one country thinks it actually does elect the POTW, but purely based on domestic issues. Americans just don't get that for a lot of the world, the election of POTUS has a greater impact than the election (even if it's a real, open, properly democratic election) of their own national leader. Hell, our economy's going down the tubes, in large part, because of the actions of the US government rather than our own.
Having other players with similar clout is a good thing in terms of curbing the US urge to meddle in the politics of other countries. -
BREAKING NEWS: White powder found in PM's mail
The Kiwiblog right strike again...
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I'm amazed that no mainstream TV or newspaper coverage has pointed out that Iraq, that other neocon disaster, is only 450km from Georgia - the same distance as Auckland to Wellington. Instead, every map of the region has Iraq and Iran cropped or blacked out as if they're not significant. Isn't that strange?
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I'd say the Ottoman invasions helped prolong the "Christendom" attitude to some extent
You would think that, in fact so did I, but not according to my history lectures. Could explain why I failed first year history. lol
They reckoned that the birth of the idea of Europe was a result of the invasion.
Byzantines weren't fond of the crusades from the get go. They only asked for a few mercenaries to help them fight off some tribes that were pinching their land and weren't happy with what they got. -
3410,
"America: the last/only superpower"
Was that ever true? Or merely wishful thinking, with the idea becoming widely entrenched via a certain level of media dominance.
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Was that ever true? Or merely wishful thinking, with the idea becoming widely entrenched via a certain level of media dominance.
well certainly in the decade after the wall came down, Russia was reeling in many ways, China was only just starting to find it's feet.
But that article I mentioned in some other thread out of Singapore's Straits Times where US candidates talked of policies for containing China was a fair indication that in mainstream America there is little realisation still that the time is long past.
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