Russia Invading Georgia

[spring-peeper]

Didn't see them competing in the Olympics and was a little concerned that female footie didn't exist there.

eta: I just looked at new posts and you are last post on all the sports stuff.

 

[Bang to Rights]

Didn't the french come out with comments, didn't Gordon Brown? I am sure most countries released a statement on the situation. But you only care what come out of Washington. Why is that?

You probably have a point. Perhaps. But there are two things that are spooking your logic.

1). The French and UK lack of self-bloated pomp (in contrast to the Americans) was so subdued as to render their protest paternally congenial as well as down-right constructive.

2). Considering French (in particular) non-participation in the invasion of Irak (and its' condemnation of it from the very start), they've got more credit to their righteous indignation. The US have absolutely none.

 

[mears]

You probably have a point. Perhaps. But there are two things that are spooking your logic.

1). The French and UK lack of self-bloated pomp (in contrast to the Americans) was so subdued as to render their protest paternally congenial as well as down-right constructive.

2). Considering French (in particular) non-participation in the invasion of Irak (and its' condemnation of it from the very start), they've got more credit to their righteous indignation. The US have absolutely none.

I don't understand your first point. The French and British were more diplomatic, you like the language they used?

As far as Iraq goes, you supported the status quo, keeping Saddam in power and the subsequent sanctions which supposedly killed thousands of Iraqi children a year.

No reason for you or the Frecnh to be self righteous is there.

 

[Bang to Rights]

I don't understand your first point. The French and British were more diplomatic, you like the language they used?

It's called "non-threatening", a tactic no American (neither on the diplomatic front or in the individual domestic home) has ever learned. It's because of this common threatening Amierican tactic that you're losing friends on an unpresidented scale and why you've got every muhajadeen (with access to a handful of rocks) down your throat.

As far as Iraq goes, you supported the status quo, keeping Saddam in power and the subsequent sanctions which supposedly killed thousands of Iraqi children a year.

According to this theory of yours, your police (or anyone else's) ought to shoot first and put them on trial afterwards. I can agree with that in certain circumstances. For example I firmly believe that Bush should be shot post haste; now THAT would save thousands of lives (men, women AND children) every week. But other than that example, your theory stinks.

No reason for you or the Frecnh to be self righteous is there.

You don't seem to be following world events very closely I see.

 

[nino_savatte]

You are speaking to someone who's country rejected the metric system. I don't think it really bothers them to be out of step.

Btw - how is your womens "football" teams doing these Olympics? Mear's "out-of-step" team made it into the semis after they beat Canada. Do you even have a womans team?

1. Just saying, the majority of the world refers to the sport as "football" and not "soccer". That's a fact.

2. What's your point?

 

[nino_savatte]

The National Football League (NFL) is the most popular professional sport league in the states.

Big deal. The Baseball World Series is played in the US and only has US teams competing. Hardly "world", is it?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Big deal. The Baseball World Series is played in the US and only has US teams competing. Hardly "world", is it?

US and Canada.

 

[nino_savatte]

US and Canada.

Ah, yes, they include one club from Canada.

 

[spring-peeper]

Ah, yes, they include one club from Canada.

Toronto is the only city that has a team. Not enough fans to support a team in the rest of Canada. We prefer a sport with a bit more action.

But Toronto did win the series - twice in a row.

Often wondered why they never included Japan. iirc - they have numerous teams.

 

[nino_savatte]

Toronto is the only city that has a team. Not enough fans to support a team in the rest of Canada. We prefer a sport with a bit more action.

But Toronto did win the series - twice in a row.

Often wondered why they never included Japan. iirc - they have numerous teams.

Baseball is hardly action-packed: it's a fucking dull game that's more boring than cricket.

 

[spring-peeper]

Baseball is hardly action-packed: it's a fucking dull game that's more boring than cricket.

Even the Olympics have dropped the sport

 

[nino_savatte]

Even the Olympics have dropped the sport

Case in point.

 

[TAE]

Baseball is hardly action-packed: it's a fucking dull game that's more boring than cricket.

None-sense, cricket is 'boring', while baseball is merely 'relaxing'.

 

[Bang to Rights]

None-sense, cricket is 'boring', while baseball is merely 'relaxing'.

Either they're equally boring or equally relaxing.

Yes. I think that the spectators of baseball are bored in an equal degree as the players of cricket are relaxed - while the batsmen of both are neither one or the other.

 

[nino_savatte]

None-sense, cricket is 'boring', while baseball is merely 'relaxing'.

I disagree.

 

[agricola]

Medvedev officially recognizes Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "independent" (with 90% of their citizens being Russian passport holders) nations:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7582181.stm

Good news for the Chechens, one would have thought - and it will probably remove any of the remaining doubters within NATO to Georgia joining.

 

[d.a.s.h]

The Georgian leadership would have done better selling South Ossetia to the Russians. After all, they're supposed to be young, business-savvy types, all with MBAs under their belts and so on.

Instead they ended up getting involved in a tank war with Russia and predictably enough lost the province altogether. How gormless is that?

 

[zoltan]

Medvedev officially recognizes Abkhazia and South Ossetia as "independent" (with 90% of their citizens being Russian passport holders) nations:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7582181.stm

Good news for the Chechens, one would have thought - and it will probably remove any of the remaining doubters within NATO to Georgia joining.

bad news- not likely to defuse regional tensions

Good news- 2x new countries to visit!

 

[elbows]

Oh dear well Im not sure where this will all end, today wasnt good for stability. I said before that its not like relations with Russia were ever amazing, or that the cold war ever really went away, but all the same Im not exactly complacent or comfortable with the way things are going.

Russia felt the need to flex its muscles after things like Kosovo made it feel somewhat disrespected. Tragically normal for a show of force to follow such feelings, and Russia not famous for its subtlety.

Dont know why I was still surprised at the announcement that theyd recognised these states independence, should probably be more surprised at how little Russia has exercised its power in the last 15 years, but there you go. The last decade or so almost made me forget how uncomfortable a cold war balance based on restraint is, when neither the USA or Russia are well known for restraint.

I guess all we really need to officially have another cold war is for enough people to start describing it as that?

 

[elbows]

Another 'interesting' day where it seems Russia failed to get support from Shanghai Cooperation Organisation nations, and Putin stated the idea that the USA was behind Georgia's attack, in order to help election of McCain!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/28/georgia.russia2

Oh blimey, things get complex enough when some people suspect that international warlike decisions are sometimes made for domestic purposes, let alone when its the US Presidential election and the person making the accusation is the power man of Russia.

I thought the bin laden tape in 2004 election might of had some sort of affect on some people voting in that election, is what Putin said today going to be quickly forgotten or is it going to play into McCain's hands?

Anyways I guess Russia's final hope of gaining ground in the international propaganda battle was lost when they recognized independence so quickly. Almost anything they say or do now is unlikely to help them. I guess our press will mostly mock what Putin suggested today about US involvement to benefit McCain, and we'll never find out whether there was even a hint of truth to such an idea? For me the idea is not impossible, but not something I have any certainty about, Putin saying it doesnt help, so for now I label it pure speculation, pending the possible emergence of any hard facts to support such a theory. I mean we know that the USA has been supporting Georgia in many ways, including militarily, and we might well presume that Saakashvili would at a minimum have told USA in advance of their plans, but would you bet your life that the USA was behind Georgia's actions which triggered the Russian invasion?

Plus anybody who touts that version of events runs the risk of either being labelled, or of actual being, a propaganda tool for Russia.

 

[elbows]

Oh and this quite quite interesting Guardian article suggests its the end of Bush Senior's 'new world order':

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/28/russia.usforeignpolicy

I dunno, part of me always though the 'project for a new american century' was doomed to fail and may even hasten US decline, but its really too soon for me to be sure. USA is a long way from being a spent force, and we do not know what horrors may significantly shape this century. Anyway the above article has some interesting stuff about what the end to a unipolar world may mean.

Either way its just another reason to encourage those with oversimplified ideas or fears about 'new world order' or 'world government' to smell the far more complex realities. The momentum of the agenda's of so called 'global elites' has reduced and may not be sustainable. Forces that may have been dominant since the end of world war 2 will not last forever. Some of the rhetoric post-9/11 from the likes of Blair is probably appropriate to the wider events of this century than the war on terror in particular...

"The kaleidoscope has been shaken," Tony Blair told a Labour Party conference in October 2001. "The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order the world."

What has happened this month is certainly a reminder to any that need it that there is no single 'us' in charge of re-ordering.

 

[MikeMcc]

I believe that it's a pretty dumb interpretation in that editorial. Fair enough the idea of the US as the sole major power may have died, but the Russians have just rolled us back 20 years. Given that China hasn't given it's usual support to the Russians it's looking increasingly like the Russians are going to be squeezed politically and economically. Personally I think Russia has more to worry about from it's asian neighbours rather than it's European ones. While it is reorganising and retraining, the Russian military is still a very pale shadow of what it once was and I doubt it could sustain operations for long against either the US or China if it came to it.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting comments from Putin.

In an interview with CNN Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said the Georgian-South Ossetian conflict may have been staged to secure a victory for one of the presidential candidates in the U.S. He says preliminary reports show that U.S. citizens may have been present in the combat zone.

“We have serious reasons to believe that American citizens were right at the heart of the military action. This would have implications for American domestic policy. If this is confirmed, we will have grounds to suspect that somebody in the U.S. has created this conflict to aggravate the situation and create a competitive advantage for one of the presidential candidates”.

Russia’s Prime Minister also commented on the media coverage of the recent events.

“As far as the perception of these events by the general public goes, it depends not only on politicians, but also on how artful they are in controlling the mass media. And our American colleagues do this much better than we do and there's a lot we can learn from them”.

..........from MediaLens where I found the above piece...

"The writer Simon Louvish once told the story of a group of Soviets touring the United States before the age of glasnost. After reading the newspapers and watching TV, they were amazed to find that, on the big issues, all the opinions were the same. "In our country," they said, "to get that result we have a dictatorship, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. So what's your secret? How do you do it?" (Quoted, John Pilger, Tell Me No Lies, Random House, 2004, p.9)

 

[Mikey77]

Given that China hasn't given it's usual support to the Russians it's looking increasingly like the Russians are going to be squeezed politically and economically.

I don't know if it's a question of spin, but while China didn't recognise the independence of those regions, Russia Today claimed that the countries at the Shanghai Cooperation meeting agreed with Russia's military action. I don't know if that's true.

China is the only consistent one. It's in their interest to recognise no independent region anywhere. I suppose the west and Russia are showing hypocrisy, although Russia can claim the recent Kosovo precedent as setting the new rules.

 

[nino_savatte]

Both sides are accusing the other of starting / provoking the conflict.

Both sides are accusing the other of targetting civilians, genocide/ethnic cleansing, either directingly or via support for irregular militia.

Both sides disagree about where troops and militias actually are and what they are doing now.

Neither side has made a clear proposal about a fair/peaceful way of resolving the underlying issue of the status of South Ossetia, as far as I am aware, or even about an appropriate way of stopping the violence and destruction and preventing either continued military clashes or a more low-level (but perhaps more deadly?) militia 'free-for-all' as seen in the balkans.

Does anyone have any hard facts about any of these things?

(edit: here's a first hand account from an irish times journalist: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0814/1218477549192.html#)

So what's easier? Sit on the fence and wait for the press to hand you the story; the story of how Russia was the guilty party and how poor, hard done by Georgia deserves 'our' support?