Translated from the French for Cubadebate, Rebelión and Tlaxcala by Manuel Talens, and from the Spanish by Scott Campbell and Machetera
This past August 20th, in the middle of the summer holidays, while the good people of France meandered worry-free between replete beaches and TV screens to follow the heroic deeds of the athletes in Beijing, making it possible to forget the stress of the impending return to the routine of “working more and earning less”, the news burst like a thunderclap in a serene sky: ten young and brave French soldiers just died in remote Afghanistan, in an ambush by the horrible Taliban 50 kilometers outside of Kabul, raising the figures for French military deaths to 22, since 2002, minutiae against the hundred British who’ve lost their lives and still less when compared to the thousands of murdered Afghans. And when I say Afghans, I refer to armed men, unarmed men, women, children, and the aged. (more…)
Machetera’s Russia correspondent, Anton Dech, writes:
There are some more thoughts featuring the conflict.
I tried to remember Ossetian people which are well known in the world. Maybe it is interesting. Only two came to my mind.
Valery Gergiev, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. I have found his interview to BBC with his opinion about the conflict.
Vitaly Kaloev; he killed an air traffic controller whose error led to the collision of two aircrafts in Switzerland. His wife and two daughters died in this accident.
That somehow characterizes the Caucasus mentality. I can add that Kaloev was a highly educated and successful person.
How many civilians died in South Ossetia, when after being cut off from water supplies for more than a month, they were attacked by U.S./Israeli trained Georgian military forces? Somewhere between 133 and 1,492. 1,492 is the figure given by local authorities. 133 have been identified so far by Russian investigators. How many does Human Rights Watch claim? Dozens. “We believe we are talking about dozens rather than thousands,” claimed Anna Neistat, a Human Rights Watch representative.
That’s right, the same Human Rights Watch which sports the blowhard Jorge Castañeda on its board of directors, the same HRW that has a more than $100 million budget, nearly half of which comes from “government funding,” (easily dwarfing the few millions it gets from private foundations) and the same human rights group that pays its executive director a salary of more than $340,000 a year. Speaking of math.
But Human Rights Watch doesn’t stop there. It accuses the Russians of dropping cluster bombs on Georgian cities. The accusation engendered protests in front of the Russian embassy in Dublin, and was widely picked up by major media which usually did not bother to air the Russians’ response, which was that they had not used cluster bombs and had no reason to do so.
This is nothing new for HRW though, which took a similar approach to Venezuela earlier this summer, after swallowing the documents from Colombia’s magic laptops, hook, line and sinker – demanding “answers” from Venezuela about its relationship with FARC guerrillas.
Human Rights Watch is calling for international organizations to send “fact-finding missions [to South Ossetia & Georgia] to establish the facts, report on human rights, and urge the authorities to account for any crimes.” What a great idea. Too bad there aren’t any international human rights organizations with the money to sponsor such an endeavor that aren’t, like HRW, completely compromised. HRW’s own reports on the conflict reveal a surface willingness to blame both sides (they’re not as brutish as Reporters Without Borders after all), as long as the lion’s share of the blame rests with the side least favored by the United States.
When Machetera visited friends in Leningrad St. Petersburg several years ago and they picked her up at the airport, one of them, Anton Dech, said “Welcome to the other side of the mirror.” Anton sends these notes on the current conflict in the Caucasus, which contain quite a bit of information you probably haven’t seen before, because the English language press isn’t bothering to report it. Context, what context?
“Everything is very complicated.”
What is about, Russian-Georgian Conflict. I will not go deep in the problem. But these are some facts.
Georgians and Ossetians are both Orthodox Christians but for some reason have long term conflict. I have once written to you that Caucasus is an extremely complicated region and it is very difficult to understand the real motivation. Georgians and Ossetians speak completely different languages.
There are about 5 million Georgian people and about 100 thousand South Ossetian people.
Ossetia is separated into two parts: South and North Ossetia. North Ossetia is a Russian territory. The capital is Vladikavkaz. The literal translation is “Own the Caucasus”. The most “famous” town is Beslan which is sadly known due to the recent tragedy.
South Ossetia is considered to be Georgian territory, but from 1992 is functioning as an independent state and has its own government and army. The capital is Tskhinvali.
South and North Ossetia are connected by one road which lies under the main Caucasus ridge. The tunnel is 4 kilometers long. The part of South Ossetia is populated by Georgians (they have Georgian enclaves on their territory).
The historical origin of modern borders is uncertain. After Russian Revolution, Georgia for about three years was an independent state. And Ossetia was the Russian territory. Then Georgia joined the USSR and South Ossetia was attached to Georgia by Stalin.(more…)
Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili is an idiot. But did you know he’s also a cretin? Not that he licks his comb or anything before drawing it through his hair. No, he just snacks on his tie.
Here’s the video of the FOX news interview with the San Francisco girl who was bombed by the U.S. Georgian army while she was visiting her relatives in South Ossetia. Hear the panic in the background at FOX when she thanks the Russian troops for saving them, and her aunt’s dry response when the reporter suddenly says sorry, they’ve got to cut to a commercial.
If you’re trying to watch the 2008 Summer Olympics from the United States you may be forgiven for not knowing that there are other countries competing in the games besides the United States and China, because that’s all you’ll see. NBC has apparently decided that it’s a matter of honor, and has set itself to proving that the United States empire can go toe to toe with China, and is not, despite all the evidence to the contrary, in a state of decline. It’s a little bit pathetic, really.
But it does at least conform to the general U.S. media blackout approach, which, when not engaging in presenting news from the point of view of empire (aka the ruling class), crumbling or no, is simply to lie. Case in point: CNN was banking on you not being able to spot the difference between the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali and the Georgian city of Gori, when it ran footage of Georgian attacks on South Ossetian civilians and labeled them Russian attacks on Georgians. How many U.S. citizens have ever been either place, after all?
“CNN is broadcasting misleading film from the conflict between Georgia and Russia, twisting public opinion to favor the Georgians,” according to an interview of a representative from Russia Today.
The representative accused CNN of having used video of Georgian forces attacking Russian civilians in Tskhinvali, the provincial capital of South Ossetia. CNN claimed that the images were of Russians attacking Georgians in the Georgian town of Gori. (more…)
The August 10th recall referendum in Bolivia, contrary to certain triumphal interpretations, is a clear defeat for the government that not only reinforces the country’s de facto division, but grants the subversive separatists a halo of legality that they did not possess before.
The government’s position has not moved forward because it was already known beforehand that Evo counted on around 60% of the public’s sympathies. Those who did consolidate and emerge more powerful were the prefects of Santa Cruz, Rubén Costas, with almost 70% of the vote, and of Beni, Ernesto Suárez, with around 68%, both (regionally) surpassing the vote for Evo. As a consequence of the voting, the separatists now “legally” govern five of the nine departments (provinces) of the country.
Rubén Costas, the undisputed leader of the sedition, has interpreted the vote as a “new ratification of departmental autonomy” and has announced a program for an autonomous republic that includes the implementation of its own legislative assembly; standards such as an “autonomous living wage”; the election by popular vote of sub-governors and co-leaders; the “control, taxation and distribution of the resources pertaining to the department”; the creation of a departmental tax agency and the constitution of its own police force. (more…)
By now, you’ve probably smelled a rat in the conflict over South Ossetia, and considering how slow Machetera’s translation factory is these days (August is just so very hot) you’ve probably already figured out what’s really going on. Nevertheless, Machetera always appreciates undiluted facts accompanied by good visuals, and this article from Luigino Bracci Roa, makes everything perfectly clear.
The Georgian President decided to resolve the problems existing since 1989 with the separatist province of Ossetia, in the most radical way: launching a surprise invasion, supported by the United States and taking advantage of the fact that the planet was distracted by the Olympic Games. Ossetia’s secession would need to be done away with before December, in order for Georgia to join NATO. 99% of the inhabitants of South Ossetia wish to join with North Ossetia, under the Russian Federation. But the world does not support them, although it did support Kosovo’s secession.
A heated conflict broke out last Friday in the Georgian region called Ossetia, when the Georgian army tried to take a city by surprise, in order to put an end to a movement that since the 1990’s had been trying to reunite this region into a single country forming part of the Russian Federation.
This brought on a strong response from Russia, which entered the territory. “The Kremlin sent tanks and planes to the separatist capital, Tskhinval, in order to thwart its capture by Georgian troops which, yesterday at noon, were on the verge of controlling the city after a massive assault, in which, according to various sources, there were numerous civilian casualties,” said Spain’s El País.
To better understand the conflict, one must understand exactly what’s going in Georgia right now. We should also explain Ossetia and its aspirations. And finally, we should understand the similarities and differences between Ossetia and Kosovo, and why. (more…)
On the emblematic 183rd anniversary of Bolivia’s Independence Day, the Bolivian President Evo Morales was unable to present his national address in the country’s constitutional capital, which carries the name of Bolivia’s Liberator, the Grand Marshal of Ayacucho, Antonio José de Sucre. According to Evo, he won’t be in Sucre “in order not to motivate an eventual confrontation between Bolivians that might end with serious consequences,” due to the fact that the authorities in Chuquisaca-Sucre back the provocations of violent groups against his government.
In turn, the honorary session of the National Congress in Sucre, scheduled for the date of the country’s founding, was suspended by the Republic’s Vice President, Álvaro García Linera, given that conditions for the physical security of the parliamentarians, state officials and invited diplomats could not be guaranteed. (more…)
And All of France Finds Itself Stuck in a War
Machetera’s Russia correspondent, Anton Dech, writes:
