Category Archives: War

Andy Garcia has been cast to play President Mikheil Saakashvili in the upcoming film Georgia.  I just hope that Garcia’s audition required to see how he looked chewing on his tie.

The film, directed by Renny Harlin, will revolve around the last year’s war between the Caucasian nation and Russia.  Though war remains extremely politically charged on both sides, the film promises to “not take sides” reports the Telegraph.  I have no idea how that will be possible considering that its executive producer is Papuna Davitaia, a pro-Saakashvili MP.  Nevertheless, Michael Flannigan, one of the film’s other executive producers, told Georgian TV: “Our main concern was to show war as a bad thing.  We had an opportunity to make a really anti-war film.”  We’ll see about that.  My prediction is that war will be shown to be a “bad thing” only when the Russians are involved.  But who knows?  I do ..read more

Feeling the pains of economic crisis? Can’t find a suitable place for expanding market share?  Don’t fret.  There is one sure fire way to keep those exports up.  Sell more weapons.  President Medvedev seems to agree, according to comments he made on Tuesday.  Russia sold 10 percent more weapons in 2008–a record $8.35 billion worth.  The Russian President hopes that 2009 will be another bumper year despite the economic crisis. “We must treat markets more attentively, look in different directions, diversify our supplies, reach markets where we haven’t been present.”  Or to quote Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross, “A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing.” That means closing those sales to returning customers like China and India and increasing market share in Venezuela, Algeria, and Iran. It is this kind of success that makes Russia’s second to the US in the death market.

Second? Indeed, both AP and ..read more

With Labor set to go down in flames in next month’s parliamentary elections in Israel, what is a beleaguered Ehud Brarak to do to pump up his tough image among crucial Russian voters?  Why, “Putinize” himself, of course. As Lily Galili reports in Haaretz:

In a bid to gain the vote of the Russian immigrants in the elections, Labor leader and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will quote Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s statement about killing Chechen terrorists “on the toilet.”

“As you people say, they should be whacked when they’re on the toilet,” Barak will say in a radio election broadcast intended for Russian speakers. Labor, which is launching its campaign among the Russian speakers this afternoon, will ask them to support him, as they did when he last ran for prime minister 10 years ago.

Galili goes on to explain that Barak’s Putin plagiarism is his way of “fashioning his image after ..read more

The Russians say they’ve pulled out of Georgia.  George Bush and Nicholas Sarkozy charge they didn’t pull out.  All this talk of pulling out sounds like they’re arguing whether Russia knocked up Georgia.

Well something is certainly gestating in Georgia. And the Russia-Georgia love child appears to be occupation.  Russia’s gradual pull out has left a string of posts along the border of South Ossetia as part of a plan to leave 2500 peacekeepers inside a security buffer zone.    The zone, according to Deputy Commander Anatoly Nogovitsyn, will be 6 to 18 kilometers thick, and will effectively allow Russian troops to occupy Georgia. The Guardian reports that Russian troops were seen digging trenches 7 km. outside of the port city of Poti.  Hundreds or thousands of Georgians (it depends on who you listen to) demonstrated against the presence of twenty Russian troops yesterday, shouting at them to go home.  You gotta ..read more

The Western media is finally discovering the Ossetians.  The Washington Post details the destruction of Tskhinvali. The Post‘s Peter Finn writes,

The scale of the destruction is undeniable; some streets summon iconic images of Stalingrad during World War II or Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, which was leveled in two wars between Russian and Chechen separatists.

The Financial Times also gives voice to the anger Ossetian refugees feel toward Saakashvili.  My favorite quote in the article comes from an Ossetian woman’s take on the assault on Tskhinvali.  “They must have been Nato troops,” she told the Times. “The Georgians don’t know how to shoot.”

The quote by this woman raises another interesting aspect to the coverage of the war.  The vast majority of quotes from “average people” are from women.  It all makes me wonder if the prevalence of women’s voices is because they are the majority of refugees (all the men have ..read more

The other day I addressed the looting and mayhem Ossetian militias on waging on Georgians.  It is still difficult to assess the scope of this violence but Gori appears to be a center of activity.  Russian troops, according to one report, have cordoned off the city, virtually locking out Georgian police. Unconfirmed eyewitnesses reports say “bands of South Ossetian armed men have been breaking down the gates of homes and stealing families’ cars” and there have been “break-ins in which the Ossetian men kidnap women in addition to taking the car.”

Most reports in the Western press report incidents along the lines of the following:

“It’s impossible to live like this, with this fear,” said one old Georgian man yesterday, nervously wheeling a wooden barrow stacked with his family’s meager belongings out through the Russian cordon that ringed Gori and towards the Georgian lines.

“What you have seen in the town is nothing, ..read more