Oh my...

The massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering. As former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts says, Americans have no awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth. What is wrong with Americans?

Georgia, Russia sever diplomatic ties

The Georgian government broke off diplomatic relations with Russia on Friday, and Russia responded by doing the same.


It marks the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russia had severed formal diplomatic ties with one of the 14 other autonomous republics that became independent states in 1991.

It was also a sign of ripples still being felt in post-Soviet politics after the war earlier this month over the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Adding to the tension, a lawmaker in South Ossetia said Friday that Russia intended to eventually absorb the province at the center of the war that broke out August 7 when Georgia sent troops into South Ossetia to wrest back control from separatists, prompting Russia to send in hundreds of tanks and troops.

The countries will retain consular offices on each other's territories, handling such matters as issuing passports and assisting their citizens with legal affairs, but the political ties will now be handled through intermediaries, a spokeswoman for the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.

Georgia is now in talks with several countries that may assume the role of representing Georgia in Moscow, the spokeswoman said, as, for example, the Swiss Embassy in Tehran represents US interests in Iran, a country the United States has no diplomatic relations with.

Read more here.

Russian-backed militias looted and burnt Georgian villages

By Damien McElroy in Gori

Russian-backed paramilitaries have systematically burned and looted Georgian villages inside South Ossetia, according to victims and satellite pictures released by the United Nations.

The images, obtained by Human Rights Watch, show the wholesale destruction of five villages near the breakaway region's capital, Tskhinvali. But witnesses have told the Daily Telegraph that South Ossetian militias are conducting a much wider campaign, targeted on the local Georgian population.

People who have fled the five villages, where a total of 606 buildings were burned to the ground or severely damaged, say the area was being cleared to create an airstrip. "I don't think I will ever return," said Makvala Mindiashvili from Tamarasheni village, where satellite images show that 177 homes and other buildings were burned down. "They told me the villages, not five but nine in all, would be destroyed to create an airstrip for the Russians."

A Russian news agency yesterday reported that Moscow will sign a deal to position military bases in South Ossetia, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. The aim is to establish a buffer zone around the enclave's southern border. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees, 2,300 Georgians have been forced to flee this area.

"Recent returnees have told us that there is intimidation, beating and house burning by irregular militias," said Peter Kessler, a UNHCR spokesman. "In the buffer zone clearly there is a lack of policing at the very least. Ethnic Georgians are fleeing because they fear for their lives."

The lush valleys are most terrifying at night when armed men roam the villages. The groups are led by South Ossetian fighters loyal to the Moscow-backed regime. Victims say they include Russians along with Chechen and Cossack mercenaries.

Nicholoz and Sonia Choladze lived in the village of Zemoachbeti until it was raided and largely destroyed on Aug 22. Seven men burst through the vine trellis into their home. They stroked Mr Choladze's neck with the blunt end of a machete before vandalising the family's possessions.

Read more here.

South Ossetians happily loot village in Georgia

KEKHVI, Georgia: A chicken pecks at the charred corpse of man lying near a house that, like every other dwelling in Kekhvi, has been burned down.

Scenes of grotesque desolation mark this village in Georgia, yet it is a popular destination for at least one group: Looters in trucks and cars are still coming to take whatever they can find.

Most of Kekhvi's people fled as Russian troops advanced from the Moscow-backed separatist republic of South Ossetia into Georgia proper two weeks ago. The few who stayed now can do little but watch in fear as Ossetian men plunder the village, driven by opportunism and revenge.

"This is not looting, this is trophies," said Garik Meriyev, 32, a stubbled South Ossetian dressed in green camouflage pants, black baseball cap and dusty jackboots.

He and four other men in similar clothes loaded their yellow Russian-made minibus Saturday with metal pipes, timber and bricks taken from a burned down house.

Read more here.

Russia keeps Georgia positions, US and France call for withdrawal

by Michael Mainville

TBILISI (AFP) - Russian soldiers were still holding key positions inside Georgia on Saturday, a day after Moscow pulled out most of its troops, as the United States and France called for further withdrawals.

Two weeks after rolling into the former Soviet republic, several columns of Russian tanks and troops withdrew Friday from deep inside Georgian territory and allowed Georgian police to regain control of the key city of Gori .

But a top general said strategic routes would remain occupied and some 500 "peacekeepers" were to remain in a buffer zone around the Moscow-controlled separatist region of South Ossetia.

"The pullback of Russian troops and units passed without incident and was completed on time" at 7:50 pm (1550 GMT), Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said in a statement released by the Kremlin.

Read more here.

Georgia leader says Russians not pulling back

By ANDREW E. KRAMER New York Times

TBILISI, GEORGIA — A day before Russian forces were to pull back from positions inside Georgia under a self-declared deadline, Georgia's president said Thursday he saw "very little if any movement" of troops from occupied areas.

Speaking beside a visiting American general in Tbilisi to show support for the Georgian government and coordinate humanitarian aid, Mikheil Saakashvili said in some cases Russian forces had advanced farther into Georgia on Thursday and had "been taking over additional sites in my country."

Read more here.

Russia blocks port city as deadline looms

Troops set up new mortars, dig trenches near Poti despite pullback pledge.

POTI, Georgia - Russian forces blocked the only land entrance to Georgia's main port city on Thursday, a day before Russia promised to complete a troop pullout from its ex-Soviet neighbor.



Armored personnel carriers and troop trucks blocked the bridge to the Black Sea port city of Poti, and Russian forces excavated trenches and set up mortars facing the city. Another group of APCs and trucks were positioned in a nearby wooded area.

Although Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has promised that his forces would pull back by Friday, Russian troops appear to be digging in, raising concern about whether Moscow is aiming for a lengthy occupation of its small, pro-Western neighbor.

Read more here.

Russia blocks draft Security Council resolution on Georgia crisis

Russia has rejected a draft resolution circulated at the UN Security Council calling for an immediate withdrawal of its forces from Georgia, which Moscow said goes against the terms of a previous ceasefire agreement.

Russia has insisted its forces began leaving Georgian territory on Tuesday, following a cessation of fierce fighting that started on Aug. 7. But Moscow said any UN declaration should include the initial six-point plan brokered by France last week.

Georgian officials have accused Moscow of ignoring its obligations under a French-brokered agreement that both sides withdraw to positions held before fighting began 11 days ago when Georgian forces moved to retake control of the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Read more here.

NATO-Russia feud erupts over Georgia conflict

MOSCOW: NATO-Russia relations plunged to their lowest point in years Tuesday over the conflict in Georgia and Russia's failure to withdraw from the former Soviet republic.

The Russian military took 21 Georgian soldiers prisoner in the latest flaring of tension in Georgia.

As Western criticism intensified, Moscow pulled its navy out of joint exercises with NATO, while foreign ministers from the alliance declared that "business as usual" would now be impossible.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer accused Russia of failing to respect a French-brokered peace plan requiring both sides to move troops back to their positions before Georgia launched an offensive on the separatist region of South Ossetia.

Read more here.

Iran launch troubling: US … Israel plays down concern

CRAWFORD, Texas (Agencies): The White House said Sunday that Iran’s announcement it had launched a home-built rocket into space was “troubling” because such technology could also be used for ballistic missiles. “The Iranian development and testing of rockets is troubling and raises further questions about their intentions,” spokesman Gordon Johndroe said as US President George W. Bush spent time on his Texas ranch. “This action and dual use possibilities for their ballistic missile program have been a subject of IAEA discussions and are inconsistent with their UN Security Council obligations,” Johndroe said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN nuclear watchdog. He spoke after Tehran said it had sent a home-built rocket carrying a dummy satellite into space on Sunday, in a move that could further exacerbate tensions with the West over its nuclear drive.

“The Safir (Ambassador) rocket was successfully launched. All its systems ... are Iranian made,” Reza Taghipour, head of Iran’s space agency, told state television, adding that a “test satellite was put into orbit.” “We have paved the way for placing a satellite in space in future,” state television said, showing images of the pre-dawn rocket launch. Western governments suspect Iran is trying to build an atomic weapon and have voiced concern that the technology used in the Islamic republic’s space program could be diverted to military use, claims denied by Tehran. Sunday’s development came amid an international standoff over Tehran’s long-standing refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a process which makes nuclear fuel but also the core of an atomic bomb.

Read more here

In Battered Villages, Georgians Speak, if They Dare

By C. J. CHIVERS

KARALETI, Georgia — The young Georgian woman stood behind the entrance of a darkened home. Only her dark brown eyes were visible, peering from a mail slot at strangers walking toward the door.

“Peaceful people!” she cried in relief, and swung the door inward, revealing two families standing in the shadows of their looted home. They had little food. Their house had been ransacked.

For more than a week, the villages on the roads running south from Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, some 20 miles to Gori, a central Georgian city now under Russian occupation, have been a corridor of grief, violence and crime.

Read more here.

NATO warns Russia on ties, offers Georgia support

NATO allies say that regular contacts with Russia is impossible until its troops are fully withdrawn from Georgia, and say they were "seriously considering" the implications of Moscow's actions.

"We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual," the 26 NATO states said in a joint declaration after emergency talks in Brussels over the South Ossetia conflict.

Separately, they agreed to set up a new forum known as a NATO-Georgia Commission to deepen ties with Tbilisi.

NATO secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference it would function along similar lines to an 11-year-old arrangement with Ukraine but would not prejudge Georgia's prospects of entering the alliance.

Read more here.

Much at stake in Russia-Georgia conflict

By Charles Krauthammer

The Russia-Georgia cease-fire brokered by France's president is less than meets the eye. Its terms keep moving as the Russian army keeps moving. Russia has since occupied Gori (appropriately, Stalin's birthplace), effectively cutting Georgia in two. The road to the capital, Tbilisi, is open, but apparently Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has temporarily chosen to seek his objectives through military pressure and Western acquiescence rather than by naked occupation.

His objectives are clear. They go beyond detaching South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia and absorbing them into Russia. They go beyond destroying the Georgian army, leaving the country at Russia's mercy.

The real objective is the Finlandization of Georgia through the removal of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his replacement by a Russian puppet.

Read more here.

Georgia, Russia, and Iraq?

Georgia’s borders on the Black Sea, surrounded from the north, east and south, by four countries Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia and Turkey.

From Azerbaijan, through Russia to Europe are the “corridors of power”, where the energy line passes via the Russian territory, across Georgian territory to Turkey (then to Europe) or to the Black Sea.

It is in the EU interest that “corridors of power” via the Georgian territory to stay safe and secure, and the need for the Russia’s oil and gas, is the strength of the “Russian defense” that the EU will not take the Georgian side.

The U.S. knows this, to “liberate” the EU from the Russian oil and gas, and will dominates the oil and gas export to the EU with Nabucco line (3300 kilometers), which will start in 2010 and become operational year 2013.

Read more here.

Russia says troops withdrawing from Georgia

Moscow/Tbilisi, Georgia - Russia's military pledged to begin a withdrawal from Georgia on Monday, but late in the day there was no sign of a pullout on the ground.

Under a French-brokered ceasefire, President Dmitry Medvedev promised his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, that Russian troops would start moving out by noon.

Medvedev arrived late Monday in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, the headquarters of Russia's 58th army now deployed in South Ossetia and Georgia.

But a Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa journalist said Russian troops were entrenched at checkpoints along the east-west highway from Tbilisi to the strategic town of Gori, just 10 kilometres from the border of the separatist region of South Ossetia, ripped apart by 10 days of fighting.

Georgia: Russian military entrench themselves deeper

By Adrian Blomfield in Gori

Far from pulling out, Russian military units are entrenching themselves in new positions deeper into Georgia.

Trenches have been dug and tanks, camouflaged with tree branches, are scattered through fields and in forests ever closer to the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

In the town of Gori, under occupation for a fifth day, residents are cut off from the outside world and running short of food. Orthodox priests handed out a loaf of bread to each of the few remaining residents in the eerily deserted town.

"When is it going to stop?" said Rusudan Kardzikidze, a 78-year-old pensioner. "When are they going to leave?"

Justified by Russian claims of atrocities committed by Georgia in the provocative advance through breakaway South Ossetia that provoked the conflict, the reprisals in Gori have been swift and brutal.

Iran has war evacuation plan in place

By FATEN BUSHEHRI

Iranian officials have drawn up a contingency plan to evacuate foreign visitors - including Bahrainis - if there is an outbreak of war with the US or Israel, according to a Bahraini travel operator.However, a looming crisis over the nuclear standoff has done little to deter Bahrainis making their regular pilgrimage to religious sites in Iran.

While the global media speculates about a potential nuclear war, some travel operators say they have seen a 50 per cent surge in the number of Bahraini pilgrims making the trip to the Persian state.

Read more here.

Georgia accuses Russia of destroying bridge

TBILISI, Georgia (CNN) -- Georgia accused the Russian army of destroying a key railway bridge Saturday and starting massive fires in the scenic Borjomi Gorge, in violation of a new cease-fire agreement between the two countries.

Fighting that began last week has died down, but Russian forces remained within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, on Saturday and were on the western front around the breakaway province of Abkhazia, according to CNN's Frederik Pleitgen.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that the agreement calls for the "immediate withdrawal" of Russian troops from its neighbor's sovereign territory, but CNN correspondents reported significant Russian troop movements Saturday.

When asked about those reports, Rice responded Saturday, "The Russians perhaps are already not honoring their word."

However, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Saturday that the cease-fire seems to be holding. There don't seem to be any aggressive Russian actions occurring, he said.

Read more here

How is NATO involved?

Washington hawks insist that the remedy to Russia's military humiliation of Georgia is to expedite the smaller country's incorporation into NATO. After all, Moscow might think twice about attacking any nation able to trigger the Atlantic Alliance's Article 5, which obliges all member states to respond militarily to an attack on any one of them. President Bush, in fact, toured Europe last spring to stump aggressively for Georgia and Ukraine to be granted Membership Action Plans, the first step toward joining the Alliance. But despite Bush's high-profile campaigning, the proposal was rebuffed at NATO's April summit by 10 member states, led by key U.S. allies Germany and France. That rejection, said Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain, "might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia," and he urged European NATO members to "revisit the decision."

Read more here

Russia signs cease-fire, tensions remain high

TBILISI, Georgia (CNN) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed the cease-fire plan designed to end its military conflict with Georgia, his office says.

However, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said it would not completely withdraw from Georgian territory until troops had finished cleaning up ammunition, weapons and boobytraps left behind by Georgian troops.

Medvedev saw the cease-fire as "very positive," said spokesman Andrei Nesterenko Saturday.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili signed the deal Friday, during a visit from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.