Posted by Sean on September 9, 2008
Talks between French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Dmitri Medvedev went in Russia’s favor. The Russian’s received a security guarantee that Georgia wouldn’t attack South Ossetia and Abkhazia in exchange for withdrawing its forces from Georgian territory and allowing the deployment 200 international monitors beginning Oct 1. Russia will keep nearly 8000 troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia just in case.
This is not to say that the talks went smooth. At one point Sarkozy almost walked out. Sounds like Georgia was left in the dust. Saakashvili tried to save face by calling the agreement “a step forward.” The scorecard: Russia: win; the EU: win, South Ossetia and Abkhazia: win; Georgia: lose; and the American Cold Warrior blowhards: lose.
According to the NY Times, the hardliners in the Bush Administration have lost another internal battle. Bush, to his credit, has decided follow the EU’s lead and not to take any unilateral action against ..read more
Posted by Sean on September 9, 2008
The Russian Extremism Law has found a new target: South Park. The notorious Basmanny court announced that the show “bore signs of extremist activity” in response to a motion filed by the Moscow city prosecutors office. The Prosecutors office charged twelve cartoons, South Park, The Simpsons, Family Guy (translated into Russian as the Griffins), Metalocalypse, Drawn Together (translated into Russian as Multreality), Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl, Angry Kid, and others with “promot[ing] violence and cruelty, pornography, anti-social behavior, abound with scenes of mayhem, the infliction of physical and ethical suffering, and are aimed at invoking fear, panic and terror in children. . . Practically all the cartoons exploit the topic of suicide, and characters demonstrate readiness to risk their lives for the sake of deriving extreme sensations.”
Well, yes. That’s why they’re funny.
What is missing from most reports in the English press is that the request to look into ..read more
Posted by Sean on September 9, 2008
The Georgia opposition and Saakashvili supporters “are calling for investigations into what they call failures in diplomacy and warfare, and some are predicting Saakashvili will be forced from office by a war they say he hoped would earn him a place in history,” reports the Washington Post. David Usupashvili, the leader of the Republican Party, and David Gamkrelidze of the New Rights Party, both tell the Post that Saakashvili needs to explain what he was thinking by invading South Ossetia. One unnamed Georgian official suggests that the reason might have Saak’s own ego and myopia. “He has no communication with anybody except this small circle, which is a serious reason why he decided to go to South Ossetia,” the official said. “[Saakashvili] “wants to be a hero, not a normal president who increases the taxes, et cetera.”
The Georgian oppositon is afriad their criticism will get them labeled as “traitors and ..read more
