As has been pointed out, Russia has just invaded Georgia with 150 tanks rolling across the border. Sky has it as the lead story – the BBC has the Olympic opening ceremony as its lead story. World class broadcasting, eh? If you want news, best avoid the Olympic broadcaster. Clearly given the HUGE investment that the BBC has made with OUR money, viewers are going to have the Olympics shoved down their throat, like it or not, invasions or otherwise.
WHAT’S AN INVASION BETWEEN FRIENDS?
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update: Georgian PM to ask parliament to declare martial law.
targets near Tblisi attacked by Russian jets, including a military base and pipeline.
hmmm… i get a feeling that the Conservatives are ducking the war issue
http://www.conservativehome.com
in times past, you wouldnt have seen that level of avoidance.
Jonah Brown has also done a MacCavity the Cat…
incredible.. they’re both either extremely narcissistic, or just ducking the issue.
BBC inerview with Russian Foreign Minister –
Sir please take as long as you want, without interuption, to remind the BBC audience that Russians are just a group of peace loving hippies & that the Georgians are bayonneting babies & the wounded even as we speak
How do you think the vile BBC chooses its “outrage” stories? Is it simply – all US and joos stories be treated with moral ourtrage, and the others we’ll kinda sorta ignore – or is there some other determinant factor? Maybe there’s an “outrage” dept (staffed by 29734864967 Beeboids somewhere in BH?
Still all is not lost. Maybe Frei wil meet a Russian missile head on.
Well one can hope….
Cassandra: “the EU will not spill the blood of one EU ‘soldier’ they would stand back and watch Georgia smashed to pieces rather than act.”
So we should go to war with Russia(with all the risks that entails) over Goergia?! Are you mad?
“The EU cowards Brown,Merkal,Sarkozy,Barroso are as we speak stabbing Georgia in the back after encouraging them to set up a competing energy supply route!”
Let me get this right – we’re ‘stabbing Goergia in the back’ by not risking war with a global nuclear superpower over a small regional dispute.
And since when did ‘encouraging them to ‘set up a competing energy supply route!’ become a moral obligation to go to war on their behalf?
Then comes the clincher: “I HAVE HERE IN MY HAND A NOTE SIGNED BY……
Peace in our time”
Yes, it’s the old ‘invoke the Nazis’ trick so beloved by the left.
Get a grip, mate. I thought it was liberals who thought with their emotions.
The Beeb are indeed a disgrace; we shouldn’t be surprised.
Yet the concept of the Georgian state being hard done by by the Russian state is laughable.
All states exist by force over the region they claim to “govern”. Georgia’s state has no “ownership” rights over South Ossetia; neither does Russia. States live by war, so why side with one state who was agressive over another aggressive state?
The problem is the concept of the nation state.
Good oportunity to try out the new Eurofighter Typhoon. And then, when Broadcasting House has been flattened onto the Russkies in Georgia.
When showing edited highlights from the Olympics in the evening news bulletin and telling us that the world leaders were there the began with showing Putin. Old habits die hard…
Possible beginning of WW3. Or a celebration/freak show of imperial might and international show case for the pharmasutical industry.
In the establishments/BBCs eyes there is clearly no contest.
IMO
The Olympics is the way the system demonstrates to the common people a few of the BBCs most favorite facts of life.
1.The pleb’s can not win without their massively over authoritarian puppet governments wasting many billions.
2 The pleb’s can not win without the establishments mega enormously well financed drug companies products.
3 That the traditional methods of urban population control still work as well today as they did many thousands of years ago.
4 They are still well and truly in charge.
5 We are all still stupid, left/right wing divided and so therefore ruled, mind controlled idiots.
6 The BBC are great and still have a purpose in anyway devised for the good of the ordinary citizen. When in reality The BBC was setup as, and has continued to be, a submissive servant and propaganda mouthpiece of The British and therefore also American Imperial Corporatist Establishment.
( IMO The BBC is ONLY independent of democratically elected governments in order to keep the broadcast media as far out of the control of the ordinary people as The Establishment can keep it.)
IMO The British and therefore also American Imperial Corporatist Establishment, has historically shown itself to be potentially or otherwise, every bit as communist, socialist, fascist and often nasty, as virtually anything Hitler or Stalin ever came up with.
The fact that the world has always been run by EVIL, should to any self respecting historian be self apparent.
It is all just a matter of ‘who’s evil is the more clever,’ by the time the winners write the book.
@Atlas Shrugged: and to get to the point, the problem is the flawed concept of the nation state; it can only exist by force.
The BBC has put Georgia top of the bill now. The hot Olympic news is the murder of an American tourist, so the Olympics have been allowed to slip down the billing. We can’t have bad news from the China Olympics displayed too prominently on the BBC can we, and anyway the murder victim is American and probably deserved it because of American imperialism.
Whatever happens – murder, smog, drugs, these games are going to be a raving success according to the BBC!
Annon, you fail to see the greater importance of the conflict I think, you see it as a regional spat when in fact it is a prelude to a much bigger conflict and there is much at stake. Russia has a plan, Russia wants an energy monopoly, Russia is working to a very precise timetable and the longer as the EU sit back and watch the economic noose tighten the bigger the eventual conflict with Russia will be! Stop Russia now, stop it dead in its tracks and the later conflict will be stacked in our favour BUT as is typical with the EU, they will wait and appease and crawl to Russia. If Russia wins this then the Ukraine/baltics are in for a taste of Russian diplomacy(jackboot style).
Your attack on my post is understandable and I can see why many would say, ‘why should we get involved’ and ‘its so far away’ and ‘whats it got to do with us’! Look past your critisism of my post and look at history, look at the current international situation, dont rely on anyone else. Ive been to Georgia and I know first hand what the Russians are doing OK? Look at a map and study the tactical ground/pipelines/strategic location/ oil/gas production areas. and find out about the Russian strategic game plan.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat the tragedies of the past.
Just a further note to Annon,
Russia sees the EU as weak and divided, the US bogged down in the mid east with an unpopular president.
Russia was able to break apart the NATO allies earlier this year with threats and this in the mind of the Russian elite is a crucial boost to their pride and self confidence. NATO is broken and impotent(how long for is debatable) but they are out of the game for now and Russia sees a chance to press home part of its strategic plan before the west/EU/NATO can pull itself together and act as one! Russia is in no shape to take on NATO face to face BUT what they can do is split the alliance/EU/NATO and attack piecemeal. If Russia can take all of S/O and turn it into a heavily armed battle platform which can be used to split the Geogian rump in two within 72hrs as and when required (just the threat will be enough to bring Georgia to heel) then it has won and the west has probably lost an alternative energy highway and a critical strategic edge in the coming conflict.
Sorry to drone on but I know a little about this conflict and feel the need to share my limited knowledge.
there was a fantastic map on sky news showing the path of the the pipelines through Georgia.
i’ll try to find an online version of it , but when i saw it, the penny well and truely dropped…
found it: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan_pipeline
this has been built and is operational.
Another is the proposed South Caucasus gas pipeline , which again, circumvents Russia…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Caucasus_Pipeline
The liberal media in America is also playing down the Russia/Georgia war. Let’s see now – 1500 innocent civilians slaughtered in one day by Russia, and the top stories on CNN and ABC are the death of comedian Bernie Mac and the affair of John Edwards.
So…. is this “disproportionate”?
Well Beeboids?
ArchDuke,
This is a competing energy highway beyond moscows control and that is something they cannot tolerate! Moscows plan revolves around being the exclusive energy supplier to Europe and using this to bribe and threaten the weaker elements in europe into falling in line. There are also gigantic in the ground reserves just out of Moscows grasp which would threaten its aim of becoming and ‘energy empire’. If Georgia was locked into NATO and not only became an energy hub but also tapped into the gigantic reserves thought to exist within Georgian and sattelite sovreign territory then Russias main strategic weapon(oli&gas) would be utterly worthless. Who needs atom bombs when you control your enemies wealth and economy?
For centuries Russia has followed a simple set of strategic goals pursued by a simple methodology, learn that and you can divine Russian intentions almost before they are executed!
The Russian plan is obvious to all except those who are too blind to see. This article may be of interest. Thanks Archduke for the tip re the South Caucasus pipeline, I will add it to my article.
And while Rome burns….Jonah McBroon is fiddling. I’ll leave the rest to your fertile imaginations.
“The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia,” he said. “They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis.We call for an end to the Russian bombings.”
Is that Bushspeak for Russia can have SO?
Cassandra,dearest of Russophobes, how do you interpret Abkhazia’s claim of independence from Georgia? Reports say “Sergei Shamba, the region’s foreign minister, said its forces intended to oust Georgian forces from the Kodori Gorge. The northern part of the gorge is the only area of Abkhazia that has remained under Georgian government control.”
This blog is well known for exposures of Pallywood, can’t help thinking BBC TV might be showing a bit of “Georgiawood” too? Any sceptics agree?
When the US introduced NATO membership proposals for Georgia and Ukraine a few months ago (April summit in Bucharest), the fat housewife in Germany vetoed the move. Berlin, w/ French agreement, didn’t want to upset Moscow. The Russians, who are powerful analysts always impressed by strength, surely drew the right conclusion: they understand EU ‘soft power’ means precisely nothing and that today’s Nato is a charade.
It’s prudent to recall that US policy is, and has always been, pro-EU, aimed at balancing/checking Russian power. At what point EU members will lift a finger to help themselves is unknown but surely will be driven by Russian estimates of how far the world’s biggest blusterers can be pushed. It may come as a shock, but the US can live with any result. The focus of US interests is now elsewhere.
BTW, where are the All About Oil/Not In My Name chants from the usual suspects? And isn’t Shroeder still getting rich at Gazprom? It seems unlikely that the Webb-Frei tag team will get round to any of this.
Sad truth is this is a big and widening wedge: Europe will get what it deserves, as is normal for those who shit where they eat. What did you expect?
JohnJ,
I am a Russorealist I can assure you!
I know many Russians and have family by marriage in the Ukraine who are ethnic Russian/Ukrainian, my position on russia is based on first hand experience and common sense, I have no ‘racist hatred’ of the Bear although I fully understand you skeptical position and I fully respect it and I hope you can understand my position. This is not about which race is good or bad OK? Its about the Kremlins strategic goals and its desire to see a greater Russia.
funny thing is – this war REALLY is about the oil…
On the radio the BBC correspondent said that it was “impossible to tell which side started it”. This was a complete lie because yesterday they were correctly reporting a Georgian attack on & shelling of South Ossetia’s town. The Russian intervention/invasion/liberation started only as a response to that & to the killing of Russian peacekeepers.
Since the Georgian army has just finished an exercise with 1,000 US soldiers it is clear that, what was attempted was very similar to the Krajina Holocaust, which was also organised by US officers.
Knowing the Russian leaders would be out of the country they hoped to have accomplished a similar ethnic cleansing before the Russians reacted but have clearly failed.
Expect the BBC to work round to claiming the Russians started it. We will get lots of pictures of places where Russian bombs landed, with kids interviewed & very few of the Pentagon prganised killings that started it.
Hopefully the US will not decide that South Ossetia is worth the bones of an American grenadier or the consequences are incalulable.
Knacker,
You have the Russian physche to a tee! They hate weakness and respect strength in their enemies. Merkel/Sarkozy made a massive mistake in cringing before russian threats and sabotaging NATOs strategic goals, a mistake they will live to regret i am sure. BUT the main casualty was NATO cohesion and very convenient for Merkel/Sarkozy who wish to break NATO and set up a EuroForce based on a Franco/German model, so from their perspective a crippling blow to NATO would be welcome! But as always with ‘best laid plans’ there are always ALWAYS repercussions and concequences, the Euroforce couldnt invade Luxumborg and if it tried they would fail, the French Forces are decades out of date and the Germans are not much better and the sattelite EU regions all have a strong pacifist tendency! So obviously the Russians looked on and thought, great! the planks are fighting each other and the short sighted dumbos are putting political pride/ambition before their own strategic interests, lets kick em in the nuts while the going is good.
Pride comes before a fall and the EU leaders have shown not only pride but utter stupidity based on envy(of the US) and a futile belief in a federalist Franco/German ruled EU superstate. when it all goes pearshaped it is the hated Americans who will have to come to the rescue again, they must hold the EU clowns in absolute contempt!
Cassandra,
Have to agree with your post. The EU leaders have culpability here but I don’t see ANY media coverage of THAT aspect, do you?
David,
Thanks for the kind words.
I think that the EU will do everything it can to supress that line of inquiry to be sure but at some point the total fantasy that is the notion of EU ‘soft power’ will be dicredited! A political asperation is not the same as a strategic reality no matter how hard they wish for a fantasy to become reality, cold hard facts will always pour cold water on the dreamer.
Neil Craig,
Good blog and lots of good info! will visit more often now I know its there. I am always looking for more useful knowledge to fill my creaking morris Marina of a brain!
@Atlas Shrugged: and to get to the point, the problem is the flawed concept of the nation state; it can only exist by force.
Not so sure about the actual concept of a nation state being flawed. Force will aways be needed to protect individual liberty and property rights though the use of common law. The United States of America started off with the right idea. However the whole project quickly sold out to the banksters before the constitutions ink was dry.
The truth is The Nation State as we think we know one has not really existed for hundreds of years. The really big money has in one way or another transcended national borders since the term Empire was first invented.
Since the term British and therefore American Corporate Empire was first used, national borders and the democratic puppet governments that run them, have been as good as redundant, and forever becoming more so.
As George Galloway once famously said.
“If elections changed anything, they would abolish them.”
The EU is the best idea the ruling class could come up with to effectively abolish establishment agenda challenging elections. Hitler had a less subtle method, but the ultimate result will I fear, be almost identical in every way.
“On the radio the BBC correspondent said that it was “impossible to tell which side started it”. This was a complete lie because yesterday they were correctly reporting a Georgian attack on & shelling of South Ossetia’s town. The Russian intervention/invasion/liberation started only as a response to that & to the killing of Russian peacekeepers.” Neil Craig | Homepage | 09.08.08 – 6:45 pm | #
Well said Neil. I more or less expected the kind of hysterical revisionism that I have just read to be somewhere on Biased BBC. I’m just surprised these are only baseless comments, and not actual posts on the site. Things like “Let’s see now – 1500 innocent civilians slaughtered in one day by Russia, and the top stories on CNN and ABC are the death of comedian Bernie Mac and the affair of John Edwards.” from “Jason”.
Oh really! Georgia decide to indiscrimnately shell South Ossetians, and Russia become the mass murderers. Yawwwwn.
The BBC puts the Georgian president on BBC news 24 to rant about his country being the victim, and to boast that his country has a free press, yet the BBC interviewer challenges him on neither point, despite their decision to launch an attack, or the fact they beat up opposition protestors and close down TV news stations when it suits them.
That’s not bias though is it, because that despot nutter is pro-west.
Three words for the anti-Russian opportunists here – Kosovo Kosovo Kosovo. Don’t forget the conflict that the western media loved for its meritorious humanitarian aims. But, now South Ossetians die from indiscriminate shelling you just have to claim that they are Georgian instead – ha ha, Brilliant!
Surely this should be the pro-bias BBC blog since nobody cares about bias, apart from when the USA or Israel are on the receiving end.
But, I agree with Neil. If the conclifct continues you can expect the facts to be further twisted to make sure Russia are seen as the real aggressors, and any dead bodies will be attributed to them so “Jason” will have his day.
I’m loving the puppet govt of Georgia. Their president loves to create drama. He sat himself in front of a camera and starts accusing Russia of everything while a blue European Union flag waves in the background… very smart, but the world is not black and white. The Kremlin is far from perfect but at least you can’t accuse them of being a puppet govt for George Bush.
So now we have three people who have poked their heads in to gloat about some sort of pro-US angle in all this? Georgia is responsible for this problem?
Georgia may not be anywhere near perfect, but can any of you name any other country in the region that is any better? No. Other than the Ukraine, the rest are run by dictators, presidents-for-life, etc. (Baltic states don’t count.)
Of course, Georgia is pro-West, so they are the bad guys in your eyes, no? Georgia attacked innocent separatists, none of whom had any support for Russia? Putin – and all his ex-KGB buddies – never had designs on all of Georgia before? Are we denying history now, just to bite Bush’s ankles?
Ooh, a puppet of George Bush is worse than Putin! Clearly the election was rigged by Cheney and Haliburton, right? Condi Rice just makes a phone call, and Georgia sends out the troops. Another BBC believer, obviously.
Very weak, and very revealing. Any connection to the US and here come the crybabies.
Amazing how the comrade come out of the wood work.
It was convenient that Russia had an armoured brigade handy on the border,oh, and the paratroopers ready with a battle plan.
“Georgia attacked innocent separatists, none of whom had any support for Russia? David Preiser (USA) | 09.08.08 – 9:39 pm |”
No they attacked and shelled indiscriminately. If that was Kosovo you would be harping on about “ethnic cleansing” right now, but since the dead civillians are on the Russian side you couldn’t give a hoot.
South Ossetian rebels never had any desire to invade Georgia, but Georgia does have an ambition to enter the region and bring the seperatists under control – only they miscalculated. You are trying to rewrite history as it is happening, but your opinions are based on gut reaction politics, and nothing else.
“Amazing how the comrade come out of the wood work. It was convenient that Russia had an armoured brigade handy on the border,oh, and the paratroopers ready with a battle plan.
Peter | 09.08.08 – 10:01 pm”
Right, because they hadn’t heard about NATO countries arming Georgia for the last few years.
And the cheek of the Russians to have armoured units on their own borders!! Don’t they know NATO is coming the cheeky sons of guns? I can’t believe these NATO, trigger-happy loonies spouting this nonsense.
“John Bull | 09.08.08 – 10:05 pm”
and the Ukrainians are involved – armaments sales.
plus the Israelis – military advisors.
interesting analysis by debka.com as well – that this is fallout over the rush by the EU to recognise Kosovo, which the Russians had opposed.
http://www.debka.com
The Russians aint no superpower and thats the problem.Its the USA and China that are the superpowers.
“And the cheek of the Russians to have armoured units on their own borders!! Don’t they know NATO is coming the cheeky sons of guns? I can’t believe these NATO, trigger-happy loonies spouting this nonsense.”
John Bull,at least have the balls to use your own name.Or should I just call you Bull?
Tiny Georgia,with insignificant armed forces attacking a military superpower like Russia.
Amazing that the armoured brigade was ready to role at short notice.Interesting that South Ossetia isn’t part of Russia.
“Peter | 09.08.08 – 11:22 pm ”
and south ossetians arent Russian – they’re a distinct ethnic group that speak a language related to Farsi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossetia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossetic_language
but somehow, Russia deemed that these people were “Russian” and started to dish out Russian passports to them.
odd that. nothing WHATSOEVER to do with oil and gas pipeline routes, of course… 😉
Russian jets bomb Georgia Is the pipeline to the West a target?
Archduke,
It all seems reminiscent of the Sudetenland.
this SVG graphic of the caucasus shows something interesting – that there are ossetians within georgia , just west of t’bilisi
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Caucasus-ethnic_en.svg
its marked “19”. doesnt take a genuis to figure out what could happen to georgia if those ossetians link up with south ossetian – georgia split in two…
“It all seems reminiscent of the Sudetenland.
Peter | 09.08.08 – 11:36 pm”
indeed it does. the Germanic Bohemians – who had lived there since the Middle Ages- were all of sudden part of the greater “Volk”….
the parallels are uncanny.
i’m beginning to see the Georgian attack as more of a pre-emptive strike.
“Russian jets bomb Georgia Is the pipeline to the West a target?
Peter | 09.08.08 – 11:33 pm”
yes it is – the Baku-Tbilis-Ceyhan pipleine is mentioned in that Mail article.
here’s the wiki page on it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan_pipeline
and here’s a PNG graphic map of the route… it completely bypasses Russia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Btc_pipeline_route.png
you dont have to be a genius to figure out what Russia’s true intentions are here.
interesting factoid on that pipeline:
“The first oil that was pumped from the Baku end of the pipeline on May 10, 2005 reached Ceyhan on May 28, 2006.”
so its not a Soviet-era pipeline – this is a relatively new one.
Archduke,
The absence of the left anti-war machine is in itself very revealing.
No screams of “Stop the war”. “No in my name”.I’ll hand it to the Russians they kept the old Soviet networks going.
Perfect timing too.The Olympics,the big girls blouses in Brussels have signed themselves into impotence,Bush is on the way out,America is in the throes of an election,the comrades run Britain and most of the useful militaries are engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.Oh yes,the world economies are paralised by the credit crunch and the greens are spending all our money on windmills.A pipeline would be a nice thing to have.
“indeed it does. the Germanic Bohemians – who had lived there since the Middle Ages- were all of sudden part of the greater “Volk”….
the parallels are uncanny.
i’m beginning to see the Georgian attack as more of a pre-emptive strike.
archduke | 09.08.08 – 11:39 pm |”
Oh, of course, old chap. An indiscriminate pre-emptive strike against civilians. I’m amazed that the liberal interventionists aren’t up for this one.
I have to say it reminds me more of Kosovo than Sudetenland. The Czechs only discriminated against the German speaking people, whereas the Georgians just want to kill these pesky Russian wannabes.
Anyone remember Kosovo around here?
Wasn’t cluster bombing a moral action when the US killed Serbian civilians?
What are the Russians bombing in Georgia? It is certainly not in South Ossetia.
“The absence of the left anti-war machine is in itself very revealing.
No screams of “Stop the war”. “No in my name”.I’ll hand it to the Russians they kept the old Soviet networks going.
Perfect timing too.” Peter | 09.08.08 – 11:56 pm | #”
Well the west isn’t reacting militarily to Georgia so that isn’t a surprise.
Anyway, what about… err… Kosovo. Remember that? “The left” were over the moon with it.
“The Czechs only discriminated against the German speaking people,”
So you support Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland ?