I salute the first blogger for such a lengthy and astute analysis (especially when yours truly is exhausted by such).
"Another battle front for the most criminally dangerous propaganda mill
Detain This
see "Are They Reporting the News or are They Taking Dictation?
The Associate Press is at its best in the Levant, where the Israeli military and Israeli settler-editors basically control the output of “news” from the W. Jerusalem bureau. But the Russia-Georgia-Ossetia affair is another front where the worlds “most trusted source of independent news and information” apparently accels. The following is the latest editorial-posing-as-a-news-report from AP, in its entirety.
— All text in red font denotes editor’s narrative, quotes, paraphrasing, casualty figures, etc., in favor of the neocon-Likudnik-inspired Georgians and their war criminal sponsors in D.C.
— All text in green font denotes Russian rebuttals thereto, pro-Russian narrative, quotes, casualty figures, etc., as well as any editor’s input which may be taken as critique of Georgian-U.S.-Israeli rubbish.
— Bold text are absolutely ridiculous insertions which should have been thoroughly rebutted by AP’s editors or left out altogether.
— All strikethrough text is where the wrong terminology is used on purpose to make Georgian and U.S. officials seem like “the good guys,” while normal text is AP’s typical filler material.
Russia defies truce with Georgia; US sending aid
CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA and MATTI FRIEDMAN
AP News
Aug 13, 2008 16:43 ESTA Russian military convoy defied a cease-fire agreement Wednesday and rolled through a strategically important city in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, which claimed fresh looting and bombing by the Russians and their allies.
President Bush said a massive U.S. aid package was on the way for tens of thousands uprooted in the conflict and demanded Russia “keep its word and act to end this crisis.”
“The United States stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia and insists that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia be respected,” Bush said sternly in Washington.
One day after the Kremlin and its smaller neighbor agreed to a French-brokered cease-fire to end the dispute over two pro-Russian breakaway territories, the pact appeared fragile at best.
An Associated Press reporter saw dozens of Russian trucks and armored vehicles leaving the city of Gori, some 20 miles south of the separatist region of South Ossetia and home of a key highway that divides Georgia in two, and moving deeper into Georgia.
Soldiers waved at journalists and one jokingly shouted, “Come with us, beauty, we’re going to Tbilisi.” The convoy roared southeast, toward the Georgian capital, but then turned north and set up camp about an hour’s drive away from it.
Georgian officials said the Russians had looted and bombed Gori before they left. Moscow denied the accusation, but it appeared to be on a technicality: A BBC reporter in Gori said Russian tanks were in the streets while their South Ossetian allies seized cars, looted homes and set houses on fire.
As confusion reigned on the first day of the cease-fire agreement, Bush called a Rose Garden speech to express concern about reports the Russians were already breaking it.
He said he was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice first to France and then to Tbilisi to reinforce U.S. efforts to “rally the world in defense of a free Georgia.”
For her part, Rice said: “This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.”
The president said a huge U.S. aid effort was under way, including American naval forces and C-17 military cargo planes, to get clothes, blankets, medicine and other supplies to refugees. The European Union agreed to consider deploying European peacekeeping monitors to the area.
Besides the hundreds killed since hostilities broke out last week, a United Nations agency estimates 100,000 Georgians may have been uprooted. A spokesman said the U.N. refugee agency was helping evacuate about 1,500 people fleeing the Kodori Gorge in the breakaway province of Abkhazia alone on Wednesday.
[Of course to AP, the first 1,500 or so civilians to be murdered — S. Ossetians and Russians — aren't newsworthy here.]
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili conducted a blitz of interviews with news outlets at home and abroad and made a series of claims, some of which were disputed as inaccurate or exaggerated.
He said on national television that the U.S. arrival of a military cargo plane with humanitarian aid “means that Georgia’s ports and airports will be taken under the control of the U.S. Defense Department.”
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell stressed the United States had no plans to take over Georgian airports or seaports to deliver the aid.
“It is simply not required for us to fulfill our humanitarian mission,” he said. “We have no designs on taking control of any Georgian facility.”
[AP omits the U.S. and Israeli training and arming of the Georgian military before all of this began. Also omitted is that hundreds of Israeli and U.S. personnel have been there and are still there in military and political capacities. And of course the ridiculous quotes from Bush, Rice, and other U.S. war criminals are never "disputed as inaccurate or exaggerated."]
In a sharp response to Bush’s speech, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called Georgia’s leadership “a special project of the United States. And we understand that the United States is worried about its project.”
Russian news agencies quoted him saying the United States would have to choose “support for a virtual project” and or “real partnership” on issues such as U.S.-Russian cooperation on Iran and other world tension spots.
Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili criticized Western nations for failing to help Georgia, a U.S. ally that has been seeking NATO membership. “In a way,” he said, “Russians are fighting a proxy war with the West through us.”
The conflict centers on South Ossetia and another region claimed by Georgia that leans Russian, Abkhazia. When Georgia cracked down on South Ossetia on Aug. 7, Russia sent its tanks and troops into the two regions and deeper into Georgia proper.
Georgia, bordering the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians. Its coast was a favorite vacation spot in Soviet times and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics.
Russia has distributed passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and stationed peacekeepers there since the early 1990s. Georgia wants the peacekeepers out, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has insisted they stay.
[AP omits that Russia is bound by mutual agreement with S. Ossetia to defend the territory.]
Jeffrey Mankoff, an adjunct fellow for Russian studies at The Council on Foreign Relations, said it was too soon to tell the real intentions behind Russia’s push into Georgia.
“On the one hand this could be a way to set up a buffer zone between the separatist regions, and on the other it also seems there is an aspect of disbanding the Georgian military aspects,” Mankoff said.
In defiance, a few dozen Abkhazian fighters, some with assault rifles and one with a dagger, planted their red, white and green flag in Georgian territory across the Inguri River.
“This is Abkhazian land,” one of them said. Another laughed that Georgians retreating from Abkhazia had received “American training in running away.”
The peace plan apparently would allow Georgian forces to return to the positions they held in South Ossetia and Abkhazia before Aug. 7 and clearly requires Russia to leave all parts of Georgia except South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Nevertheless, Georgian Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia said 50 Russian tanks entered Gori on Wednesday morning. Some of the Russian units that later left to camp outside the city were camouflaged with foliage.
The convoy was mainly support vehicles, including ambulances, although there were a few heavy cannons. There were about 100 combat troops and another 100 medics, drivers and other support personnel.
About six miles away from the camp, about 80 well-equipped Georgian soldiers were forming what appeared to be a new front line, armed with pistols, shoulder-launched anti-tank rockets and Kalashnikovs.
Sporadic clashes continued in South Ossetia where Russians responded to Georgian snipers.
In the Black Sea port of Poti, and Georgian television showed boats ablaze in the harbor. Georgia’s security chief also said Russian forces targeted three Georgian boats, while Lavrov said Russian troops were nowhere near the city.
For several days, Russian troops held the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the region’s main highway. An AP reporter saw a convoy of 13 Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers in Zugdidi’s outskirts Wednesday. Later in the day, Georgian officials said the Russians pulled out of Zugdidi.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree Wednesday saying that Russian navy ships deployed to the Georgian coast will need authorization to return to the navy base Russia leases from Ukraine.
The rights group Human Rights Watch said it has witnessed South Ossetian fighters looting ethnic Georgians’ houses and has recorded multiple accounts of Georgian militias intimidating ethnic Ossetians. The report was important independent confirmation of the claims by each side in the Russia-Georgia conflict.
Meanwhile, at the Olympics in Beijing, Georgia and Russia clashed in competition for the first time. Georgia rallied to beat Russia in beach volleyball, two sets to one.
“Russia and Georgia are actually friends. People are friends,” said the Georgian beach volleyball team leader, Levan Akhtulediani. “I say once again, its better to compete on the field rather than outside the field.
___
Associated Press writers Christopher Torchia reported from Zugdidi, Georgia, and near the Kodori Gorge; Matti Friedman and Sergei Grits from outside Gori, Georgia; Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili and David Nowak from Tbilisi, Georgia; Vladimir Isachenkov, Jim Heintz, Lynn Berry and Angela Charlton in Moscow; Matthew Lee, Pauline Jelinek and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington; John Heilprin at the United Nations; and Carley Petesch in New York contributed to this report.
[Source: http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=295011]
When will AP stop taking sides and promoting unconstitutional, illicit government policies?
By the way, the strikethrough of “aid” is because it is actually “loot” — as in U.S.-taxpayer funding not approved by either the U.S. Constitution or the U.S. taxpayers it is stolen from. And who knows what other materials they are shipping over there.
Source: http://detainthis.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/another-battle-front-for-the-most-criminally-dangerous-propaganda-mill/#more-804 "More:
"The two-faced, underhanded foreign policy of Georgia
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/08-08-2008/106028-twofacedgeorgia-0
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Ask anyone in the Caucasus region, and they will tell you never to trust a Georgian because they would shake your hand with a smile and then stab you in the back. On Friday morning, we saw a perfect example of this treachery, when hours after declaring a ceasefire, Georgian military units launched a savage attack on the civilians of South Ossetia.
Hours after Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili, the pro-western Washington-backed anti-democratic stooge (attacks on opposition policians in Georgia are rife) declared a unilateral ceasefire, the Georgian army lanched a savage attack on the capital of the province of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, with tanks and infantry, while the air force bombed a village and strafed a Russian humanitarian aid convoy.
According to South Ossetian government sources, there were many civilian casualties in the city of Tskhinvali, a large part of which was destroyed. The Parliament house has burned down and several buildings are on fire. Apart from this, Georgian Su-25 Frogfoot aircraft strafed civilians in the village of Kvernet and attacked a Russian humanitarian aid convoy.
Yet where is the criticism of the West against this blatant act of war crimes perpetrated by the criminal and murderous regime of failed lawyer Saakashvili? While the Russian Foreign Ministry has been issuing daily reports about the escalating tension in the area, and while Moscow has bent over backwards to find a peaceful and mutually acceptable solution, the Western media have consistently ignored the story while Georgia has consistently snubbed all efforts towards peace, while carrying out cowardly underhanded and treacherous attacks such as we have seen today.
Then when there is a retaliation, Tblisi goes whining like a cry-baby to the UN Security Council, playing the victim. The question remains, what is behind Tblisi’s policy? Is it the USA, launching a war by proxy against Russia, using its puppet in the area to start a full-scale confrontation? What does Washington hope to gain with such a policy? Is this Custer’s last stand, as the Bush-Cheney regime flushes down the sewer where it belongs, a last-gasp attempt at world domination by provoking the only country capable of standing up to Washington’s imperialist plans?
The position of the Russian Federation has been consistent, clear and as usual, by the book of diplomacy. Mocow has worked tirelessly behind the scenes, convening peace councils, trying to mediate between the two sides, always respecting both positions and constantly stressing the need to find a solution which satisfies Tblisi as well as Tskhinvali. The Foreign Ministry has been careful to inform all media outlets of what has been going on and of the growing escalation in the region.
It seems that nothing changes. The West remained silent, as if nothing was happening then when Georgia gets a hiding, suddenly become interested, but fail to report who started the conflict. It seems that nothing changes. Georgia declares a ceasefire one minute and within hours commits war crimes in savage attacks against civilians.
It seems that nothing changes. Georgia’s most infamous exports are its undrinkable wines and disgusting, low-quality dangerous food products while its most famous export was Josef Stalin. Maybe he should have stayed at home and concentrated more of his efforts there.
Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
The information war between Russia and Georgia is continuing, even after a ceasefire agreement has stopped the military conflict. On Wednesday evening, Mikhail Saakashvili spread panic in Tbilisi, by claiming that Russian tanks are on the move towards the Georgian capital.
Russian Troops Withdraw From Gori Russian troops have begun pulling out from Gori, the Georgian city that has been hit by shelling and looting, according to Georgia's Interior Ministry.
Captured map shows Georgia planned to invade Abkhazia
Russian troops have discovered what they believe are plans for an invasion of Abkhazia in a captured Georgian command post vehicle.
