The BBC aren’t the only ones still sorting out South Ossetia. Mark Ames dismantles the NY Times coverage in “The Cold War that Wasn’t“. Like most American media, the Times was fully on board with the Russia = bad, Georgia = good crusade. That is until facts made it too difficult to blindly sustain that line. Even then, the Times made no overt self-criticism, and instead opted for articles showing that maybe Georgia wasn’t the glowing democracy that we all were made to believe it was. A good correction, though horribly academic when it was published two months after the conflict was over. Taking this as a cue, Ames rhetorically asks, then answers:
It’s interesting that the Times published this exactly two months after Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia–a military decision so off-the-scale idiotic that to call it a “gamble” is an insult to struggling addicts like Bill Bennett.
The real question, then, is why the Times waited until this late to question its own position–why wait until the war was long off the front pages, to publish an article about what everyone with an ounce of journalistic curiosity already knew–that Saakashvili was about as much a democrat as he was a military genius?
The push in the West by outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post to get a new cold war on hinged on two major fallacies: (1) that Russia invaded Georgia first, totally unprovoked, because Georgia is a “democracy”; and (2), that Georgia is a “democracy.”
Justin Raimondo over at Antiwar.com tackles the Georgia issue by focusing on the fact that Saakashvili’s little war got him a big payout in return, proving the profitability of being recognized as a Western-style democracy. The World Bank donors’ conference in Belgium has $4.5 billion in Western money coming to the rescue to rebuild the Caucasian nation’s “infrastructure.” That’s about a billion more than the World Bank’s initial target. Though not intended for the Georgian military, one only assume that much of those funds will find its way weapons purchases. In more honest times, the US and its European allies would have just given weapons to Georgia. However, in these politically correct, “humanitarian” times, militarism must be shrouded in the facade of aid. And the fact that none of this money will go to the real victims, the South Ossetians, is a no brainer. As Raimondo concludes, the donor’s money will most likely slither its way
through Saakashvili and his cronies, who would rather leave the shattered infrastructure of bombed-out Tskhinvali as it is today, a stark reminder of what may very well reoccur should the Ossetians persist in going their own way. If anyone rebuilds, it will have to be the Russians. The private sector aid will be used to buy up Georgian assets on behalf of Western corporate interests. The difference between the World Bank figure and the number announced in Brussels – nearly half a billion – will cover bribes, covert action operations carried out by Western intelligence agencies, and other incidentals.When challenged, proponents of foreign aid programs invariably reply: yes, but look at the minuscule numbers! Why, foreign aid is less than one percent of the total overseas budget, including, one supposes, military expenditures – but so what? The point is that these programs do real harm, in most cases achieving the exact opposite of their intended purpose. And in this particular case, the entire package is premised on a lie, and a freshly debunked one at that. What’s really going on here is that the West is rewarding Saakashvili for his recklessness, and inciting him to commit fresh assaults. This course guarantees war.
shit… missed closing brackets
As Saak didn’t refute it neither BBC did – it must be true.
Saakashvili: Georgia Needs Clear Signal from NATO
Due to the lack to translators from Norwegian to Georgian I took responsibility to translate.
“Dear mister president! Fuck yourself! Sincerely Your Nato”
записки из сумасшедшего дома : ))))
Georgia saved the world from Putin! : )))
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At the same time he (Saakashvili) thanked the former chief of staff and hailed the Georgian army’s “furious resistance,” which he said had stopped the advance of the Russian army.
“Neither Bush, nor Sarkozy and Merkel nor anyone in the world could have stopped [Russian Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin, if he did not have a deep conviction that he would have met a furious resistance of the Georgian army in case of attempting to advance towards the Georgian capital and in case of attempting to overthrow the Georgian government.”
http://civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=19885
————–
What does he smoke?
full version
Doom is curious whether anyone else has noticed a marked shift in the Anglophone media’s coverage of Georgia recently. First the BBC, then the NYT, and now things like this:
Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country’s bloody five-day war with Russia in August.
Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds.
Their accounts seem likely to undermine the American-backed claims of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that his little country was the innocent victim of Russian aggression and acted solely in self-defence.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne…icle5114401.ece
Doom just forwarded a link to an article for your attention, but it appears to have been caught by Sean’s nefarious spam filter. Sean, Doom recommends that you keep an eye on your AI. Learn from the tragic experience of Henry Pym.
Thank you Doom. Apparently Ultron was manifesting himself by blocking several comments.
Other things have kept me from posting on this about face on Georgia. My first impression is how sadly academic it is three months after the conflict. As always, the NYT et al did their duty for the war machine when it mattered. I’m starting to wonder whether Baudrillard’s notion that the “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place” might have some application here.
Doom.
I’m just curious. Do you read others or are you a writer only?
“Генералиссимус Брежнев on November 7, 2008 7:36 am
Ryan Grist, a former British Army”
“Chris Von Doom on November 10, 2008 7:10 am
Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain,”
PS. Brezhnev is not dumb
Doom may have to smite you, Ivanov.