• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Russia Attacks Georgia, WAR

Free episodes:

How exactly do you begin a proxy war against an organization by fighting a non-member? That makes no sense.

More likely, they're hitting it now precisely because it's not NATO a member. If they attack it after it's a NATO member then they declare war on all NATO countries.
Your not thinking about what i said,Georgia wants to be part of Nato,so if your Russia what do you do. you wait , then,plan, and then you use excuses for war, Russia doesnt want georgia to join nato it has too much valuable raw materials such as petrol, Russia used a phoney war or proxy war so to flex it muscles , it is trying to show the west it's strenght and power .. the west is gaining too much influence in this area of the world this worries the Russians:exclamation:
,
 
Your not thinking about what i said,Georgia wants to be part of Nato,so if your Russia what do you do. you wait , then,plan, and then you use excuses for war, Russia doesnt want georgia to join nato it has too much valuable raw materials such as petrol, Russia used a phoney war or proxy war so to flex it muscles , it is trying to show the west it's strenght and power .. the west is gaining too much influence in this area of the world this worries the Russians:exclamation:
,

Ah, if that was what you meant then we are in agreement. I think that's exactly what's going on. My confusion came when you used the term proxy war, which usually means two powers using surrogate nations to fight their battles.
 
Ah, if that was what you meant then we are in agreement. I think that's exactly what's going on. My confusion came when you used the term proxy war, which usually means two powers using surrogate nations to fight their battles.[/quotee aIT IS OK, GEORGIA AND OTHER STATES LIKE IT HAVE BEEN USED BY NATO AND BY RUSSIAN FOR YEARS TO SHOW THERE STRENGHTS NEARLY THIRTY PER CENT OF THE WESTS OIL COMES THROUGH A PIPELINE IN GEORGIA:exclamation:
 
Update/ August 11, 2008.

-There is no sign of any ceasefire in the Russian-Georgian war.

-President George Bush has again condemned Russia’s “disproportionate” use of force and called for mediation. The U.S. has warned Russia must end its onslaught on Georgia or risk 'serious consequences' in terms of its relationship with America and the world.

-Reports that the Russian jets pulverized town of Gori, leaving hundreds dead.

-Russia is exploiting Washington's inhibition to advance its goals by force. In the face of President George W. Bush’s demand for an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and support for international mediation, Moscow poured an additional 10,000 men and armor into Georgia.

-This war is also a warning to Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia against joining up with the United States and the NATO bloc in areas which Moscow deems part of its strategic sphere of influence.

-"The war in South Ossetia could be the most dangerous flashpoint since the Cuban crisis"
 
Update/ August 11, 2008.

-There is no sign of any ceasefire in the Russian-Georgian war.

-President George Bush has again condemned Russia’s “disproportionate” use of force and called for mediation. The U.S. has warned Russia must end its onslaught on Georgia or risk 'serious consequences' in terms of its relationship with America and the world.

-Reports that the Russian jets pulverized town of Gori, leaving hundreds dead.

-Russia is exploiting Washington's inhibition to advance its goals by force. In the face of President George W. Bush’s demand for an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and support for international mediation, Moscow poured an additional 10,000 men and armor into Georgia.

-This war is also a warning to Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia against joining up with the United States and the NATO bloc in areas which Moscow deems part of its strategic sphere of influence.

-"The war in South Ossetia could be the most dangerous flashpoint since the Cuban crisis"
This is why a different civilization from outside our solar system , Does not show itself in mass to the mainstream public, we cant be nice to ourselfs , so after a while we would not be nice to a different culture through years of
intregation.racism is a feature in human society, So alien or if that term is wrong would suffer that type of human culture also:eek:
 
Apart from Russia' traditional campaign of violence, death and destruction... Russian state-sponsored hackers are breaking into Georgian government and commercial websites as part of a cyber war to supplement Russia's military operations.
"A cyber warfare campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
 
It makes me laugh that George bush thinks Europe or eastern europe cares what he thinks, Did george bush care what the rest of the world thiought when he invaded Iraq. Russia is adopting this policy now ,so bush go away and get a reality check:eek:
 
it was the other way around. this was an Israeli/American/Georgian attack on Russia. we have been training and supplying arms to georgia for over 10 years.
 
it was the other way around. this was an Israeli/American/Georgian attack on Russia. we have been training and supplying arms to georgia for over 10 years.

How was this attack on Russia? Russia was/is supplying arms to rebel parts of Georgia for the last 10 years, practically occupying 1/3 of the internationally recognized country. Please explain.
 
Basicaly i think this whole Russian Adventure smacks of "The Brezhnev Doctrine".

The Russians Provoked this mess. They have been shooting at Georgian peacekeepers all month by use of Ossetian Militia.
 
It seems like if South Ossetia wanted to be part of Georgia they wouldn't have fought a war against them (1991-1992) and declared themselves an independent republic.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991–1992_South_Ossetia_War

I don't know that South Ossetia wants to be a part of Russia either, I guess time will tell.

That's why they fast tracked issuing of Russian passports to South Ossetians.
Georgia exist within the internationally recognized borders:
georgiapc1.jpg


"If you look at the region on a map you can see that without Georgia, Russia has a difficult time getting down to the middle east.It also has a coastal significance. Perhaps this is some Russian empire building?"
 
That's why they fast tracked issuing of Russian passports to South Ossetians.
Georgia exist within the internationally recognized borders:
georgiapc1.jpg


"If you look at the region on a map you can see that without Georgia, Russia has a difficult time getting down to the middle east.It also has a coastal significance. Perhaps this is some Russian empire building?"

Perhaps so.

I was just reflecting on this idea tht the Russians started all this. The news reports I read made it sound like the Georgians thought they could blitz in to South Ossetia and reclaim it. Unfortunately for them the Russians weren't about to let that happen, and smacked them down pretty hard for their troubles. Either way, the South Ossetians clearly aren't interested in being a part of Georgia, regardless of what the international community believes the borders are.

Israel is another example of a country where the internationally recognized borders and the reality on the ground are two different things, so this situation is not unique.
 
On global issues like this I must refer to the 'so called' experts at the Washington post, not that they haven't let us down before but they still know a hell of a lot more than I do.

This page has some good editorials that can provide a greater context for what is going on. From all accounts Russia is re-exerting their power in the region and yes the oil that Georgia provides to Europe seems to be a big factor -

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/?nid=roll_postglobal
 
Here is the main problem for Russia:

btcpipelineroutedv4.png


"Recent escalation in the military engagement between Russia and Georgia poses a threat to certain key oil and gas pipelines which transit Georgia, the IEA said in a report issued shortly before Russia declared a ceasefire in Georgia.

The pipelines, built by foreign consortia with strong political backing from the US, have eased Russia’s stranglehold over oil and gas exports from the landlocked Caspian region.

...

There's little doubt that Vladimir Putin still wears the trousers in the Kremlin. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's boyish new President, may technically be commander-in-chief of Russia's armed forces, but when the bullets began flying in South Ossetia last week, it was to Putin that Russia and the world looked for answers.

Putin stepped down from the presidency in May, as the Russian constitution required. But the Ossetian crisis has clearly demonstrated that Putin is still very much in charge."


I bet Puttin still has wet dreams about the good old days of big mighty Soviet Union.
 
Gordon Brown has called for talks to find a permanent solution to the crisis in Georgia as Russia announced it was halting its military operations after five days of fighting.
<!-- Vendor: Yahoo, Format: Standard --><!-- GLOBAL STD FLASH ADSLUG 20071011 -->
<SCRIPT>var yad_template_target="_blank";var yad_template_URL=new Array();var yad_checkVersion="7";yad_template_URL[1]="http://uk.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=15b7o19f3/M=200096618.201630851.202928454.200493719/D=ukie_news/S=2022435296:LREC/Y=UKIE/EXP=1218577492/L=o6aD0Vf4aiuW7UKRSGPUoQISUZeWkkih6DQAAKgg/B=GpAzDVf4axE-/J=1218570292053538/A=200853905/R=0/id=flash/SIG=128hvds96/*http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=energy+saving&fr=on-ban-acq&sado=1";var yad_template_fv="clickTAG="+encodeURIComponent(yad_template_URL[1])+"&targetTAG="+yad_template_target;var yad_template_swf="http://eur.a1.yimg.com/java.europe.yahoo.com/eu/any/revise.swf";var yad_template_altURL="http://uk.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=15b7o19f3/M=200096618.201630851.202928454.200493719/D=ukie_news/S=2022435296:LREC/Y=UKIE/EXP=1218577492/L=o6aD0Vf4aiuW7UKRSGPUoQISUZeWkkih6DQAAKgg/B=GpAzDVf4axE-/J=1218570292053538/A=200853905/R=1/id=altimg/SIG=128hvds96/*http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=energy+saving&fr=on-ban-acq&sado=1";var yad_template_altimg="http://eur.a1.yimg.com/eur.yimg.com/a/eu/any/searchassistbtlrec300x250uk2.gif";var yad_template_pos="LREC";var yad_template_w=300;var yad_template_h=250;</SCRIPT><SCRIPT src="http://eur.a1.yimg.com/java.europe.yahoo.com/eu/any/flashgeneric20070608min.js"></SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT>

<!-- END GLOBAL STD FLASH ADSLUG 20071011 --><SCRIPT language=javascript>if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object();window.yzq_d['GpAzDVf4axE-']='&U=13onrh4oe%2fN%3dGpAzDVf4axE-%2fC%3d200096618.201630851.202928454.200493719%2fD%3dLREC%2fB%3d200853905%2fV%3d1';</SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT>
b
</NOSCRIPT>
The Prime Minister offered to send humanitarian aid to assist the thousands of people displaced in what he described as the "terrible set of events" which have rocked the Caucasus republic.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband warned Moscow there could be no return to "business as usual" until Russia showed it was prepared to accept the international rule of law.

Mr Miliband broke off his holiday in Minorca so he could attend an emergency meeting of European Union ministers in Brussels.
Meanwhile British Embassy officials in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, were frantically trying to organise the evacuation of remaining British nationals seeking to leave the conflict zone.

Mr Brown, speaking from his home in Fife, said the current halt in the fighting had come about as the result of international pressure.
"What we must do now is ensure that it's a lasting ceasefire," he said. There must now be talks that will resolve this once and for all. We cannot continue with the situation where hostilities are likely. We must bring them to an end by having a permanent solution to this problem."
Mr Brown said he had discussed the situation with both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy - the current holder of the rotating European Union presidency - who met for crisis talks in Moscow.

Mr Sarkozy offered to send EU peacekeepers to the disputed province of South Ossetia which has been at the centre of the crisis.

Mr Miliband suggested Russia's application to join the World Trade Organisation and talks on a new strategic partnership with the EU could be affected by the events of the past week. He also hinted that Russia could be frozen out of the G8, with ministers from the original G7 group simply acting alone when necessary.
I like the sound of the last sentance of the last Paragraph quoted.
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080813/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_russia_georgia

US, allies weigh punishment for Russia

WASHINGTON - Scrambling to find ways to punish Russia for its invasion of pro-Western Georgia, the United States and its allies are considering expelling Moscow from an exclusive club of wealthy nations and have scrapped plans for an upcoming joint NATO-Russia military exercise, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.

But with scant leverage in the face of an emboldened Moscow, Washington and its friends have been forced to face the uncomfortable reality that their options are limited to mainly symbolic measures, such as boycotting Russian-hosted meetings and events, that may have little or no long-term impact on Russia's behavior, the officials said.

With the situation on the ground still unclear after Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Tuesday ordered a halt to military action in Georgia, U.S. officials were focused primarily on confirming a cease-fire and attending to Georgia's urgent humanitarian needs following five days of fierce fighting, including Russian attacks on civilian targets.

"It is very important now that all parties cease fire," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "The Georgians have agreed to a cease-fire, the Russians need to stop their military operations as they have apparently said that they will, but those military operations really do now need to stop because calm needs to be restored."

At the same time, however, President Bush and his top aides were engaged in frantic consultations with European and other nations over how best to demonstrate their fierce condemnations of the Russian operation that began in Georgia's separatist region of South Ossetia, expanded to another disputed area, Abkhazia, and ended up on purely Georgian soil.

"The idea is to show the Russians that it is no longer business as usual," said one senior official familiar with the consultations among world leaders that were going on primarily by phone and in person at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where alliance diplomats met together and then with representatives of Georgia.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe confidential conversations among the leaders of other nations, said European and other leaders have been blunt with Russia that it must withdraw its forces. Russian leaders have said they do not plan a long-term occupation, the official said. The official was not specific about whether Russia has offered a timeline for withdrawal.

"People are saying, 'You know you cannot stay,'" the official said. "We have been hearing from Russia, 'We don't want to stay.'"
For now, the Bush administration decided to boycott a third meeting at NATO on Tuesday at which the alliance's governing board, the North Atlantic Council, was preparing for a meeting with a Russian delegation that has been called at Moscow's request, officials said.

In addition, a senior defense official said the U.S. has decided to dump a major NATO naval exercise with Russia that was scheduled to begin Friday.
Sailors and vessels from Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S. were to take part in the annual Russia-NATO exercise aimed at improving cooperation in maritime security. But the official said there is no way that the U.S. could proceed with it in the midst of the Georgian crisis.

The naval exercise began a decade ago and typically involves around 1,000 personnel from the four countries, officials said. The Pentagon also is looking at a variety of ways it could respond to humanitarian needs in Georgia, but officials have not yet made any final decisions.

In the medium term, the United States and its partners in the Group of Seven, or G-7, the club of the world's leading industrialized nations that also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, are debating whether to effectively disband what is known as the G-8, which incorporates Russia, by throwing Moscow out, the officials said.

Discussions are also taking place on whether to revoke or review the May 2007 invitation to Russia to join the 30-member, Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which consists primarily of established European democracies, the officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have yet been made and consultations with other countries involved are still under way.

Bush spoke on Monday and Tuesday with fellow G-7 leaders as well as the heads of democratically elected pro-Western governments in formerly Eastern bloc nations, some of which are among NATO's newest members and have urged a strong response to Russia's invasion of a like-minded country.

On Monday on his way home from the Olympics in China, Bush talked with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus and Polish President Lech Kaczynski. He then called Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the White House said. On Tuesday, he spoke with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.


Rice, who returned early to Washington late Monday from vacation to deal with the crisis, held a second round of talks with foreign ministers from the Group of Seven countries in which they were briefed on European Union mediation efforts led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who met Tuesday with Medvedev in Moscow.

"They believe that they have made some progress and we welcome that and we certainly welcome the E.U. mediation," Rice told reporters at the White House.

Later, Saakashvili told reporters that he accepted the cease-fire plan negotiated by Sarkozy.
Despite the flurry of activity, there was still uncertainty about whether Russia had in fact halted its military action in Georgia, with reports of continued shelling of civilian and military sites.

The State Department on Tuesday recommended that all U.S. citizens leave Georgia in a new travel warning, saying the security situation remained uncertain. It said it was organizing a third evacuation convoy to take Americans who want to leave by road to neighboring Armenia. More that 170 American citizens have already left Georgia in two earlier convoys.
Just hours after Bush said in a White House address that the invasion had "substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world" and demanded an end to what he called Moscow's "dramatic and brutal escalation" of violence, Medvedev said he had ordered an end to military action.
 
Back
Top