Bush Says Russia Must Stop ‘Bullying’ Georgia

By ELLEN BARRY AND GRAHAM BOWLEY
Condemning as unacceptable what he called Russia’s “bullying and intimidation,” President Bush said Friday that Russia must withdraw its troops from all of Georgian territory and said the United States would stand with Georgia in the conflict.

“Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected,” he said.

Tensions have risen sharply in the past 24 hours, as the Russian president and foreign minister made it clear they would support separatist efforts by two breakaway Georgian territories and as the specter of a resurgent Russia helped persuade Poland to agree to a long-stalled deal on an American missile defense system.

Mr. Bush spoke as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the Georgian capital on Friday to hold talks with Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met with the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. Praising the small nation as a “courageous democracy” that has provided troops to support the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. Bush said, “The people of Georgia have cast their lot with the free world, and we will not cast them aside.”

In some of his strongest language yet on the war that flared up a week ago, Mr. Bush said in a brief statement at the White House, “Moscow must honor its commitment to withdraw its invading forces from all Georgian territory.”

Mr. Bush said that the cold war was over and that Russia had damaged its credibility and standing in the international order. Russia now has to “put itself back on the path of responsible nations,” Mr. Bush said.

Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has forced the start of a wholesale reassessment of American dealings with Russia, according to senior Bush administration officials, and jeopardized talks on everything from halting Iran’s nuclear ambitions to reducing strategic arsenals to cooperation on missile defenses.

Read more here.

This Can't Be a Good Sign....

By Jim Kavanagh
CNN

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio (CNN) -- Camryn Jakeb Wilson was bathed in TV lights the day he was born, celebrated on the local news as Summit County's 2008 New Year's baby after his arrival at 12:33 a.m. on January 1.

Just 12 weeks later, he was bathed in warm water minutes after he quietly died in his mother's arms, the victim of shaken baby syndrome. Camryn's 9-year-old sister, Tabatha, asked why he needed a bath now.
"We have to get him ready to go to Jesus," a nurse softly replied. Tabatha took up a sponge to help.

Camryn's father, Craig R. Wilson, 28, of Cuyahoga Falls, is scheduled for a pretrial hearing on murder and other charges August 20. Police say he confessed to shaking and squeezing the infant after arguing with his wife, Crystal Wilson.

But he has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and faces trial in September.

"There are no excuses for this to happen to any baby," Crystal Wilson, 26, told CNN. "This is murder. He had no reason to die. He died because he cried."

"It really is a tragedy," said Craig Wilson's defense attorney, Jonathan T. Sinn. "I mean, not only did Crystal and Craig lose a son, but Crystal lost a husband, and Craig's parents lost a son and a grandson. ... One day this was a happy, perfect family, and the next day it's been devastated."

The National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome estimates as many as 1,400 babies annually are injured or killed by shaking.

Read more here

U.S. to take control of Georgian ports

TBILISI (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's pledge to send aid to Georgia means that the U.S. military will take control of the ex-Soviet state's ports and airports, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Wednesday.

"You have heard the statement by the U.S. president that the United States is starting a military-humanitarian operation in Georgia," Saakashvili said in a television address.

"It means that Georgian ports and airports will be taken under the control of the U.S. defense ministry in order to conduct humanitarian and other missions. This is a very important statement for easing tension."

Bank analyst forecast Georgian crisis 2 days early

By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW, Aug 14 (Reuters) - The outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia shocked most of the world last week, but an investment bank analyst predicted it two days in advance.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent troops into the breakaway, pro-Russian region of South Ossetia on Aug. 7, on the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, and Russia responded with overwhelming military force.

Geoff Smith, a Kiev-based analyst for Renaissance Capital investment bank, had anticipated the Georgian move with uncanny prescience in an e-mail two days earlier to a fellow strategist.

"So whaddaya think? I say Saakashvili is going to 'restore the territorial integrity of Georgia' five minutes before the opening ceremony starts in Beijing and dare the Russians to invade while the games are on?" the note said.

Reuters has seen a copy of the e-mail and confirmed its validity with both the sender and recipient of the message.

The Kremlin swiftly asserted its vastly superior military might and thousands of Russian troops pushed out Georgian troops from the rebel region. Russian units are still operating inside Georgia proper.

Russian sovereign Eurobond spreads, a measure of investment risk, widened on the hostilities, and shares tumbled.

"It was just intuition," Smith said by telephone. "I said nothing about the possible Russian response, but if you had asked me I would say that Moscow could not have taken it lying down," Smith said.

Explaining his reasoning, the former journalist said the upcoming presidential election in the United States could have played a role in Saakashvili's decision to send troops into South Ossetia.

"Certainly the next White House will not be as supportive of Saakashvili as this one and so if Saakashvili wanted to reunite Georgia he really had to do it this year and he was probably hoping the Olympic Games gave him the right cover," he said.

He refused to forecast how the crisis would end.

More Monsters Popping Up

What's brownish-purple, goes to the beach and stinks of rotting flesh?

New York's celebrity-obsessed Hamptons summer season got even sillier this week when a strange-looking, very dead creature washed up on a beach in Montauk at the far eastern end of New York's Long Island.

On Tuesday afternoon, a photo was posted on Gawker, the Big Apple's reigning gossip blog, which treated the Montauk monster with characteristic respect: "Good Luck With Your Hell Demons."

The animal looks like a bloated, hairless dog, except that it's got an eagle-like beak, a prominent brow ridge and a curiously elongated front paw.

Read more here.

Is this Bigfoot?

Two US professional Bigfoot hunters claim to have found a body of the legendary creature and will present evidence of the astounding discovery to the world's press and scientists tomorrow.

Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, who run Bigfoot expeditions, say they found a dead Bigfoot in the woods of north Georgia, in the southeast of the US, about two weeks ago and have put the carcass in a freezer.

Read more here.

Pic(k) of the Day

Eight killed during Mass

An armed group killed at least eight people during mass in a drug rehabilitation centre in a Mexican border town late yesterday.

Nearby security forces allowed the attackers to flee, police in Ciudad Juarez said, quoting witnesses.

An armed group "entered (the building) shooting at people who were praying, killing or injuring many of them," the municipal office of public security said in a statement, quoting witnesses.

After the shooting, the assassins "fled, without rushing, down Barranco Azul avenue, where there was a group of soldiers and ministerial police who did nothing to detain them,'' the statement said.

At least eight people were killed, but the final tally could be higher, local police said.

Two people were killed in a nearby rehabiliation center last weekend, in a town where the country's drug wars are played out daily.

Federal authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country, including 2500 in Ciudad Juarez, in an effort to combat drug trafficking and violence, but some ,000 people have been killed so far this year.

Authorities attribute some 780 assassinations in Ciudad Juarez this year to turf wars between drug cartels.

Russia to continue occupation of Georgia

TBILISI, Georgia (CNN) -- It is unclear when Russian forces will withdraw from Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, Russia's deputy chief of general staff says.

Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn said Thursday a withdrawal plan had to be approved by Russia's defense ministry, before it was signed by President Dmitry Medvedev.

"It is not easy to turn around the existing [forces] by 180 degrees," Nogovitsyn said.

His comments followed a report from CNN Correspondent Michael Ware that Russian forces had returned to the Georgian city Gori despite an agreement to hand over control.

A U.S. official later told CNN about 200 Russian troops were in Gori. Georgia's Interior Ministry said Russia tanks had returned there to aid the withdrawal.

Explosions heard in the city were the result of Russian troops clearing unexploded ordnance, the Interior Ministry said.

It said Georgian police had begun returning to Gori as Russian forces moved out. Once they were established the Russian troops would fully withdraw.

However, just how far Russia's forces would move remained unclear.

During a Moscow visit by the leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Georgia's current borders were "limited" -- an indication that the two breakaway regions may never agree to rejoin it.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia leaders were in Moscow to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to discuss the future status of their previously autonomous regions within Georgia.

All three voiced their unity against what Abkhazian leader Sergey Bagapsh called "those aggressors from Georgia."

South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity compared Georgia's initial assault on the region's capital Tskhinvali -- which prompted the Russian invasion -- to Germany's attempt to seize Stalingrad during World War II.

"Tskhinvali has become the Stalingrad of the Caucusus," Kokoity said at a joint news conference.

Kokoity and Bagapsh decried criticism of Russia's invasion in the Western media and among European leaders, saying Moscow was defending their people and cities from Georgian forces.

Lavrov told the radio station Echo of Moscow that "De facto territorial integrity of Georgia is limited because of the conflict."

"This problem can be solved only through [the] search for mutual solutions."

Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili suggested Russia invaded his country to establish control over the former Soviet republic, where a major oil pipeline passes through.

"The fact that the biggest number of bombs fell on purely economic and civilian targets clearly indicated that was a premeditated thing and it had nothing to do only with Abkhazia or South Ossetia," Saakashvili said at a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

He questioned why Russia attacked Georgia's oil pipelines which, Saakashvili said, "don't have any military significance."

"Why would one attack them unless there is some other purpose?"

Erdogan's visit to Georgia is part of a flurry of diplomacy aimed at stemming the Georgia-Russia conflict, which erupted last week.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who has expressed his deep concern about the situation, has sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to meet with European Union leaders in France Thursday. She will then head to Tbilisi.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, acting as the president of the European Union, negotiated Tuesday's cease-fire, which called for Russia and U.S. ally Georgia to return their forces to the positions they held August 6, before Georgia's crackdown on South Ossetia.

However, Georgia's Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Russian troops were moving back into the Black Sea port city of Poti, where the Russians had bombed targets including a military installation and ships.

Russian peacekeeping troops were also in the western Georgian city of Zugdidi, just outside Abkhazia. Video showed the Russians -- clearly wearing the blue helmets which signify their peacekeeper status -- at the official government residence in the town.

U.S. officials said it believed Russia may have 15,000 or more troops in the region, between 5,000 and 7,000 more than when the fighting began.

Lavrov said Russia's operations were about "peace-enforcement" in respect of Georgia, which "violates all of its obligations."

International agreements signed in the early 1990s allow Russian peacekeepers to maintain a presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia as part of a force including Georgians and South Ossetians.

Meanwhile, BP confirmed Thursday that it had resumed pumping gas into its South Caucaus pipeline. The line runs from Baku in Azerbijan, through Tblisi in Georgia to Erzurum in Turkey. The Western Route oil export pipeline, which runs from Baku to Supsa, Georgia, on the Black Sea, remained shut.

BP shut down the two pipelines Tuesday morning as a "precaution" during the fighting.

The conflict began late last week when Georgia launched a military incursion into South Ossetia in an effort to rout rebels.

Russia -- which supports the separatists -- responded the next day, sending tanks across the border into South Ossetia. The conflict quickly spread to parts of Georgia and to Abkhazia.

Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.

Interesting Times Revisited

Happy Birthday Alfred Hitchcock

The Olympics & World War III?

from http://europebusines.blogspot.com/

The Olympics are what is right about the world. On this last Friday, the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new millennium we witnessed a fantastic spectacle, a peaceful gathering of the many nations of our small blue planet; a competition of the best young athletes from all over the world. The Olympics make us proud to be humans; proud to be citizens of Earth.


Sadly on this same day, we saw what future historians will count as the day that the Third World War began. It was designed this way, by the evil people who worked hard to begin the war under the cover of the Olympics.

Read the rest here.

Hungry Puppies!

from KOMO News in Seattle, WA

By Keith Eldridge

PARKLAND, Wash. -- Unfed puppies may be to blame for the gruesome attack on the wheelchair-bound cancer patient who was critically injured while trapped inside his own home.


Investigators said 55-year-old Michael Warner was put in an unthinkable situation by his daughter and her friend who was also Warner's unlicensed caretaker.

Warner was attacked after he was left lying on the floor of his Parkland home in the 12100 block of Sixth Avenue East with 18 puppies and several adult dogs who had been given no food for days, investigators said.

Warner is unable to care for or defend himself due to his deteriorating medical condition.

"We believe some animals were left behind that were not fed and some of the puppies got to him," said Pierce County Det. Ed Troyer. "Not intentionally attacked him, but used him as a food source. There's just not a nicer way to say it.
"They just didn't know any better and he was on the floor, incapacitated for a couple of days, and became a victim of that."

Warner is believed to have been alone at the home for several days. As of Monday afternoon, he remained in critical condition and was unable to communicate with detectives.

The case came to light Friday when Yvonne Bell brought her father to Tacoma General Hospital with injuries. Bell and her friend, Jennifer Markwith, were arrested, accused of failing to take care of Warner.

"We believe there may be some drugs involved," Troyer said.

The pair's Monday court appearance was rescheduled as no charges had been filed against them. Possible criminal neglect charges are pending investigation. However, neighbor Anna Bruun believes the pair is responsible for Warner's attack.

"I mean, there's no excuse and it's deplorable," she said.

Bruun said she has complained about the dogs several times to animal control after a woman was bitten a few months ago. She also said Warner had been left alone at the home in the past, and had stumbled over to her house for help.

"Once I had to call 911 because he came over and collapsed in our front yard and so they came and took him away. And there was nobody there (at the home)," she said.

Another neighbor, Steve Majerick, said he talked to some of the officers who came to home, and was sickened by what he heard.

"According to what one of the officers said, there was quite a lot of feces and everything just in the rooms, which is a nightmare," he said.
Some neighbors claim seven or eight of the dogs have been a neighborhood menace for some time, barking and scaring people who walk by and chasing others back into their homes when they tried to go outside.

Warner's relatives, who live in Shelton, said they were shocked and angry to hear the news of their brother's attack. Warner's sisters, who said they had not seen or heard from their brother for some time, said they're now heartsick over his grave condition.

"That's awful that somebody could do that to somebody, not take care of them like you're supposed to. It's horrible," said sister Shirley Adams.

"I hope they throw the book at her (Bell)," said sister Michelle Wishon. "That's pure neglect and if he dies, it should be considered manslaughter. Not only that, but they neglected all those animals."

No charges have been filed against Bell in this case; however, she was to be transferred to the Kitsap County Jail on a domestic violence charge. Markwith was to be released, but faces several complaints through Kitsap Animal Control concerning her dogs.

The dogs, of all different ages and breeds, were rounded up and impounded.

Pic(k) of the Day

Interesting Times Revisited

On this date in 1985, in the world's worst single-aircraft disaster, a Japan Air Lines 747 crashed into Mount Osutaka, killing 520 of the 524 aboard.

Interesting Times Revisited

Today in 1984, not realizing that his weekly radio address is already on the air, President Ronald Reagan quips into his live microphone: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."