17 NATO Lost a Lot by supporting Aggressor on S Ossetia. Part 2.MOV 08-12 -17 NATO Lost a Lot by supporting Aggressor on S Ossetia. Part 1.MOV - RT Interview with Ron Paul on Russia 2008-01-20.flv - Russia hopes new U.S. leader would stop surrounding it with missiles.MOV - October 30, 2008, 5:52 BBC wakes up to Georgian 'war crimes' The BBC says it has obtained evidence that the Georgian army may have committed war crimes during August's military offensive in South Ossetia. Britain's flagship broadcaster heard testimonies during the first unrestricted visit to South Ossetia by a foreign news organisation since the conflict ended. Photographs taken by Russian journalists in the first days of the conflict tell a disturbing story. But it is only now - more than two months later - that the world is looking at these pictures and reflecting on their meaning. For many, they paint a picture of indiscriminate force used against unarmed civilians. It's a side of the story international broadcasters have been accused of ignoring. A report by the BBC's Newsnight programme suggests Georgia's armed forces committed war crimes during their attack in August. The BBC says the evidence proving this comes from the first unrestricted visit to South Ossetia by their correspondent. Taisiya Sitnik, or Taya, as the BBC reporter calls her, had spent many hours under the rubble of her apartment block in Tskhinval, with no food or water, in a dress covered with the blood of her dead son. She had already shared her tragic story once with an RT correspondent, three days into the conflict. More than two months later the BBC is finally telling her story. Richard Sakwa, a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent in the UK, said he'd been inundated with messages complaining about how the Western media were covering the war. "I'm a great believer in popular common sense - the amount of emails I received and other messages - because people know I'm involved in these questions - was astonishing! And the overwhelming message was disgust at the initial coverage by the BBC (it later did an excellent job) and in particular also CNN and other major western media. So what we are seeing is officialdom catching up with what I think was a genuine sense down below that we weren't being fed the truth from the start," Prof. Sakwa said. Until recently Georgia had been seen by many as a small state that suffered at the hands of its big neighbour. But that perception is slowly changing. Georgia's president, who has portrayed himself as the West's closest ally, now has to defend himself. "We strongly deny accusation of war crimes - but of course, we are very open for any kind of comments, we are very open for any kind of investigation," Mikhail Saakashvili said. Even Britain's foreign secretary, known for his unconditional support of Georgia, is now changing his tune. "On my visit to Tbilisi, of course, I raised at the highest level in Georgia, the questions that have been asked and raised about war crimes and other military actions by the Georgian authorities," David Miliband said. And this shift in Western attitudes seems to have improved relations between Russia and the UK, which have been at their lowest for decades. "I think there has been a shift in the British government's position on Russia in the last month or so. And some of Miliband's recent statements reflect that," says Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for European Reform. NEW YORK TIMES November 7, 2008 Georgia Claims on Russia War Called Into Question By C. J. CHIVERS and ELLEN BARRY TBILISI, Georgia - Newly available accounts by independent military observers of the beginning of the war between Georgia and Russia this summer call into question the longstanding Georgian assertion that it was acting defensively against separatist and Russian aggression. Instead, the accounts suggest that Georgia's inexperienced military attacked the isolated separatist capital of Tskhinvali on Aug. 7 with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire, exposing civilians, Russian peacekeepers and unarmed monitors to harm . The accounts are neither fully conclusive nor broad enough to settle the many lingering disputes over blame in a war that hardened relations between the Kremlin and the West. But they raise questions about the accuracy and honesty of Georgia's insistence that its shelling of Tskhinvali, the capital of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, was a precise operation. Georgia has variously defended the shelling as necessary to stop heavy Ossetian shelling of Georgian villages, bring order to the region or counter a Russian invasion. President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has characterized the attack as a precise and defensive act. But according to observations of the monitors, documented Aug. 7 and Aug. 8, Georgian artillery rounds and rockets were falling throughout the city at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between explosions, and within the first hour of the bombardment at least 48 rounds landed in a civilian area . The monitors have also said they were unable to verify that ethnic Georgian villages were under heavy bombardment that evening, calling to question one of Mr. Saakashvili's main justifications for the attack. Senior Georgian officials contest these accounts, and have urged Western governments to discount them. "That information, I don't know what it is and how it is confirmed," said Giga Bokeria, Georgia's deputy foreign minister. "There is such an amount of evidence of continuous attacks on Georgian-controlled villages and so much evidence of Russian military buildup, it doesn't change in any case the general picture of events." He added: "Who was counting those explosions? It sounds a bit peculiar." The Kremlin has embraced the monitors' observations, which, according to a written statement from Grigory Karasin, Russia's deputy foreign minister, reflect "the actual course of events prior to Georgia's aggression." He added that the accounts "refute" allegations by Tbilisi of bombardments that he called mythical. The monitors were members of an international team working under the mandate of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or O.S.C.E. A multilateral organization with 56 member states, the group has monitored the conflict since a previous cease-fire agreement in the 1990s. The observations by the monitors, including a Finnish major, a Belarussian airborne captain and a Polish civilian, have been the subject of two confidential briefings to diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, one in August and the other in October. Summaries were shared with The New York Times by people in attendance at both. Details were then confirmed by three Western diplomats and a Russian, and were not disputed by the O.S.C.E.'s mission in Tbilisi, which was provided with a written summary of the observations. Mr. Saakashvili, who has compared Russia's incursion into Georgia to the Nazi annexations in Europe in 1938 and the Soviet suppression of Prague in 1968, faces domestic unease with his leadership and skepticism about his judgment from Western governments. The brief war was a disaster for Georgia. The attack backfired. Georgia's army was humiliated as Russian forces overwhelmed its brigades, seized their bases, captured their equipment and roamed the country's roads at will. Villages that Georgia vowed to save were ransacked and cleared of their populations by irregular Ossetian, Chechen and Cossack forces, and several were burned to the ground. Massing of Weapons According to the monitors, an O.S.C.E. patrol at 3 p.m. on Aug. 7 saw large numbers of Georgian artillery and grad rocket launchers massing on roads north of Gori, just south of the enclave. At 6:10 p.m., the monitors were told by Russian peacekeepers of suspected Georgian artillery fire on Khetagurovo, an Ossetian village; this report was not independently confirmed, and Georgia declared a unilateral cease-fire shortly thereafter, about 7 p.m. During a news broadcast that began at 11 p.m., Georgia announced that Georgian villages were being shelled,* and declared an operation "to restore constitutional order" in South Ossetia. The bombardment of Tskhinvali started soon after the broadcast.* According to the monitors, however, no shelling of Georgian villages could be heard in the hours before the Georgian bombardment. At least two of the four villages that Georgia has since said were under fire were near the observers' office in Tskhinvali, and the monitors there likely would have heard artillery fire nearby. Moreover, the observers made a record of the rounds exploding after Georgia's bombardment began at 11:35 p.m. At 11:45 p.m., rounds were exploding at intervals of 15 to 20 seconds between impacts, they noted. At 12:15 a.m. on Aug. 8, Gen. Maj. Marat M. Kulakhmetov, commander of Russian peacekeepers in the enclave, reported to the monitors that his unit had casualties, indicating that Russian soldiers had come under fire. By 12:35 a.m. the observers had recorded at least 100 heavy rounds exploding across Tskhinvali, including 48 close to the observers' office, which is in a civilian area and was damaged. Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that by morning on Aug. 8 two Russian soldiers had been killed and five wounded. Two senior Western military officers stationed in Georgia, speaking on condition of anonymity because they work with Georgia's military, said that whatever Russia's behavior in or intentions for the enclave, once Georgia's artillery or rockets struck Russian positions, conflict with Russia was all but inevitable. This clear risk, they said, made Georgia's attack dangerous and unwise. Senior Georgia officials, a group with scant military experience and personal loyalties to Mr. Saakashvili, have said that much of the damage to Tskhinvali was caused in combat between its soldiers and separatists, or by Russian airstrikes and bombardments in its counterattack the next day. As for its broader shelling of the city, Georgia has told Western diplomats that Ossetians hid weapons in civilian buildings, making them legitimate targets. "The Georgians have been quite clear that they were shelling targets - the mayor's office, police headquarters - that had been used for military purposes," said Matthew J. Bryza, a deputy assistant secretary of state and one of Mr. Saakashvili's vocal supporters in Washington. Those claims have not been independently verified, and Georgia's account was disputed by Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain who was the senior O.S.C.E. representative in Georgia when the war broke out. Mr. Grist said that he was in constant contact that night with all sides, with the office in Tskhinvali and with Wing Commander Stephen Young, the retired British military officer who leads the monitoring team. "It was clear to me that the attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation," Mr. Grist said. "The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town." Mr. Grist has served as a military officer or diplomat in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kosovo and Yugoslavia. In August, after the Georgian foreign minister, Eka Tkeshelashvili, who has no military experience, assured diplomats in Tbilisi that the attack was measured and discriminate, Mr. Grist gave a briefing to diplomats from the European Union that drew from the monitors' observations and included his assessments. He then soon resigned under unclear circumstances. A second briefing was led by Commander Young in October for military attachés visiting Georgia. At the meeting, according to a person in attendance, Commander Young stood by the monitors' assessment that Georgian villages had not been extensively shelled on the evening or night of Aug. 7. "If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn't," Commander Young said, according to the person who attended. "They heard only occasional small-arms fire." The O.S.C.E turned down a request by The Times to interview Commander Young and the monitors, saying they worked in sensitive jobs and would not be publicly engaged in this disagreement. Grievances and Exaggeration Disentangling the Russian and Georgian accounts has been complicated. The violence along the enclave's boundaries that had occurred in recent summers was more widespread this year, and in the days before Aug. 7 there had been shelling of Georgian villages. Tensions had been soaring. Each side has fresh lists of grievances about the other, which they insist are decisive. But both sides also have a record of misstatement and exaggeration, which includes circulating casualty estimates that have not withstood independent examination. With the international standing of both Russia and Georgia damaged, the public relations battle has been intensive. Russian military units have been implicated in destruction of civilian property and accused by Georgia of participating with Ossetian militias in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Russia and South Ossetia have accused Georgia of attacking Ossetian civilians. But a critical and as yet unanswered question has been what changed for Georgia between 7 p.m. on Aug 7, when Mr. Saakashvili declared a cease-fire, and 11:30 p.m., when he says he ordered the attack. The Russian and Ossetian governments have said the cease-fire was a ruse used to position rockets and artillery for the assault. That view is widely held by Ossetians. Civilians repeatedly reported resting at home after the cease-fire broadcast by Mr. Saakashvili. Emeliya B. Dzhoyeva, 68, was home with her husband, Felix, 70, when the bombardment began. He lost his left arm below the elbow and suffered burns to his right arm and torso. "Saakashvili told us that nothing would happen," she said. "So we all just went to bed." Neither Georgia nor its Western allies have as yet provided conclusive evidence that Russia was invading the country or that the situation for Georgians in the Ossetian zone was so dire that a large-scale military attack was necessary, as Mr. Saakashvili insists. Georgia has released telephone intercepts indicating that a Russian armored column apparently entered the enclave from Russia early on the Aug. 7, which would be a violation of the peacekeeping rules. Georgia said the column marked the beginning of an invasion. But the intercepts did not show the column's size, composition or mission, and there has not been evidence that it was engaged with Georgian forces until many hours after the Georgian bombardment; Russia insists it was simply a routine logistics train or troop rotation. Unclear Accounts of Shelling Interviews by The Times have found a mixed picture on the question of whether Georgian villages were shelled after Mr. Saakashvili declared the cease-fire. Residents of the village of Zemo Nigozi, one of the villages that Georgia has said was under heavy fire, said they were shelled from 6 p.m. on, supporting Georgian statements. In two other villages, interviews did not support Georgian claims. In Avnevi, several residents said the shelling stopped before the cease-fire and did not resume until roughly the same time as the Georgian bombardment. In Tamarasheni, some residents said they were lightly shelled on the evening of Aug. 7, but felt safe enough not to retreat to their basements. Others said they were not shelled until Aug 9. With a paucity of reliable and unbiased information available, the O.S.C.E. observations put the United States in a potentially difficult position. The United States, Mr. Saakashvili's principal source of international support, has for years accepted the organization's conclusions and praised its professionalism. Mr. Bryza refrained from passing judgment on the conflicting accounts. "I wasn't there," he said, referring to the battle. "We didn't have people there. But the O.S.C.E. really has been our benchmark on many things over the years." The O.S.C.E. itself, while refusing to discuss its internal findings, stood by the accuracy of its work but urged caution in interpreting it too broadly. "We are confident that all O.S.C.E. observations are expert, accurate and unbiased," Martha Freeman, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail message. "However, monitoring activities in certain areas at certain times cannot be taken in isolation to provide a comprehensive account." C.J. Chivers reported from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Olesya Vartanyan contributed reporting from Tbilisi, and Matt Siegel from Tskhinvali, Georgia. The New York Times Company November 28, 2008, 17:13 Saakashvili: we started the war For the first time ever, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has admitted that his country started the military conflict in South Ossetia in August.. He was testifying before a parliamentary commission investigating the five-day war. Opposition: EU should treat Saakashvili like Zimbabwe's Mugabe The opposition Labour Party in Georgia has called on the EU to freeze the bank accounts of Mikhail Saakashvili and several other top officials. According to party secretary, Georgi Gugava, such a move would stop them from fleeing the country. "The Saakashvili administration have packed their suitcases and hope to flee and live a quiet and prosperous life abroad on what they've stolen and looted," he said. The proposed sanctions would be similar to those imposed against more then 100 Zimbabwe officials, who had their bank accounts frozen by the EU in June. November 26, 2008 Ex-Diplomat Says Georgia Started War With Russia By OLESYA VARTANYAN and ELLEN BARRY TBILISI, Georgia - A parliamentary hearing on the origins of the war between Georgia and Russia in August ended in a furor on Tuesday after a former Georgian diplomat testified that Georgian authorities were responsible for starting the conflict. Erosi Kitsmarishvili, Tbilisi's former ambassador to Moscow, testified for three hours before he was shouted down by members of Parliament. A former confidant of President Mikheil Saakashvili, Mr. Kitsmarishvili said Georgian officials told him in April that they planned to start a war in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions at issue in the war, and had received a green light from the United States government to do so. He said the Georgian government later decided to start the war in South Ossetia, the other region, and continue into Abkhazia. He would not name the officials who he said had told him about planned actions in Abkhazia, saying that identifying them would endanger their lives. American officials have consistently said that they had warned Mr. Saakashvili against taking action in the two enclaves, where Russian peacekeepers were stationed. Mr. Kitsmarishvili's testimony in front of a parliamentary commission, shown live on Georgian television, met with forceful and immediate denials. One commission member, Givi Targamadze, threw a pen and then lunged toward Mr. Kitsmarishvili, but was restrained by his colleagues. The chairman of the commission, Paata Davitaia, said he would initiate a criminal case against Mr. Kitsmarishvili for "professional negligence." Mr. Kitsmarishvili walked out amid the furor on Tuesday. "They don't want to listen to the truth," he told reporters. Russia and Georgia have each painted the other as the aggressor in the five-day war. Georgia said it launched an attack on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, because a Russian invasion was under way. Russia says it sent combat troops into the enclave to protect civilians and peacekeepers after Georgia's offensive had begun. In his comments, the former diplomat said that Mr. Saakashvili was responding to Russian provocation, but that he had long been planning to take control of the enclaves, which won de facto independence from Georgia in fighting in the early 1990s. Mr. Kitsmarishvili said the president aimed to start an offensive in 2004, but met with resistance from Western and other Georgian officials. Among the catalysts for the offensive, Mr. Kitsmarishvili said, was the belief that United States officials had given their approval. When he tried to verify that information with the American diplomats in Tbilisi, Mr. Kitsmarishvili said, he was told no such approval had been given. Georgia started the war - Pat BuchananDid US officials know about Georgia's plans to attack its breakaway region? The issue deserves a special hearing in the US Congress, according to American political commentator Pat Buchanan. August 15, 2008 Blowback from Bear Baiting By Patrick Buchanan Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships. Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours. Russia took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin. Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli. American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end. Russia's response was "disproportionate" wailed Bush. True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"? Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi? Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing? When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away? Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia? When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do? American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members. Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet. When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia? The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand. We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus. Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them. Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow. How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior? For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi. Disinformation wars-Georgia and the West: Goebbels Would Have Been Happy! Posted on August 13, 2008 by realarmenia The war in South Ossetia is a war of medieval atrocity unleashed by a country whose culture is based on Orthodox Christianity, a country claiming to be "a young democracy" and seeing itself as part of the "humane" Europe. The aggression launched by the current Georgian regime and its puppeteers * is marked by extraordinary cruelty and cynical lies. *Georgian authoritarian Saakashvili would have never dared to do what it did without the support of some politicians in the U.S. Even in Ancient Greece, there was an understanding that wars can be fair or unfair. The civilized West, part of which Georgia is trying to be, is obsessed by human rights and believes to be superior to the Greeks, but this does not prevent some (Georgia) from perpetrating genocide and others ( some leaders in Europe and the US, plus most OF THE WESTERN MEDIA) - from encouraging the aggressor. The analysis of the way the aggression began - without a formal declaration of war - and of the overall conduct of the Georgian leadership makes one ask a number of questions. One of them is: can a crazy fanatic be regarded as a human being? The answer is - definitely not! The crimes committed in South Ossetia - the killings of women, children, and senior citizens, the deliberate extermination of civilians - are instances of inhuman conduct . Specialists in ethical anthropology (Boris Didenko) either explain this type of behavior by brain disease or attribute it to the specifics of conduct of super-aggressive human species. In the latter case, their intentions simply cannot be changed. These are monstrous creatures more dangerous than any wild beasts. The protracted standoff in South Ossetia is something much greater than just a regional conflict. Nor has it ever been exclusively a conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia. It also has axiological, moral, and geopolitical dimensions. The unexpectedness and unjustifiable atrocity of the current war, the careful planning of its military and informational offensives show clearly that one of the objectives was to provoke Russia's STRONG response. Moscow was expected to act, and those who planned the aggression calculated the options open to Russia. Option 1: Russia's nonintervention and a withdrawal of the peacekeepers (or the limitation of their activity to the defense of their checkpoints). By the way, this mode of behavior was typical for peacekeeping forces of various levels throughout the conflict in Yugoslavia. Operation Storm and Operation Flash launched by the Croatian army in May-August, 1995 against the unrecognized Republic of Serpska Krajina were particularly similar to the Georgian offensive in South Ossetia. One of the results of the above operations was the total (and, as I firmly believe, deliberate) demise of the entire UN system of peacekeeping and region security measures. The world literally watched the flight of 250,000 Serb civilians and the bombardment of refugee convoys by Croatian warplanes. The Serb population in the region decreased by 90.7% following the Croatian offensive which was silently OKed by the international community (1)! Confident of the US support, Saakashvili's regime hoped to achieve a similar result in South Ossetia. * Croatia** practically turned into a mono-ethnic state. * Russia chose to act otherwise. In the horrible days of the tragedy, Russians not only truly fulfilled their peacekeeping obligations, but - above all - they also did not betray their countrymen in South Ossetia. This means a lot! Option 2: desired by the US instigators of the war ( Russophobes McCain, Cheney, Rice, etc) and the Georgian aggressor: Russia's direct involvement in an armed conflict with Georgia. The failure of the expectation made Saakashvili change his plans on the first day of the war. On August 9, the Georgian Fuhrer gave a 10-minute interview to CNN, which opened an obviously synchronized anti-Russian campaign in the Western media. Currently, the main theme is that Russia used all of its military might against the tiny Georgia* . Having such dedicated followers could make Nazi propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels happy*. As for Saakashvili, he has learned by heart not only *Goebbels*'s notorious commandment "A lie repeated 100 times becomes the truth", but also the ninth commandment of national socialism which said "Do what must be done in the name of the New Germany without shame! " (2). In the case of Saakashvili, it could read the same but with "the New Georgia" instead. Over the past several days, the independent and objective Western media have been launching an all-out mankurtization campaign. The term mankurt was introduced into modern languages by well-know Soviet-era novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov in his The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years. According to an ancient Turkic myth, a fresh raw camel hide would be put as a cap on the thoroughly shaven head of a captive meant to be turned into a slave. The slave with his hands tied and with a large wooden stock around his neck preventing him from reaching his head would be left in a desert for several days. Once the hide would start drying it would shrink and bind to the head, thus causing intolerable sufferings further strengthened by thirst. In a while the victim either died or lost the memory of the past life and became a perfect slave having no independent will and totally subdued by its master. In the modern world, the complex procedure of suppressing human will and ability to think and to analyze has become extremely simple and is known as brainwashing . Judging by the dirty lies about the war waged by the Georgian leadership against civilians and Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, the biased Western media and political leaders of the Euro-Atlantic civilization regard their own citizens as mankurts. The global success of brainwashing during the Croatian, Kosovo, Chechen, Iraqi, and other crises is renowned. The aggression of mankurts was invariably directed at the nations designated by the masters - Serbs, Russians, Iraqis... What could prevent Georgia from resorting to the familiar technology? Here is an example: the interview given to CNN by Russian envoy to the UN Security Council V. Churkin, in which he condemned the barbarian conduct of the Georgian aggressor, was aired with a caption saying that Russia was bombing Georgian towns, and the title remained on the screen throughout the broadcast. German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer would have explained the current policies adopted by Western media as follows: " Invariably, the source of lies is the intention to dominate others by suppressing their will in order to reaffirm one's own. Consequently, lies as such stem from injustice, greed, and anger". Western journalists who never visited South Ossetia and used the footage from Russian media consistently avoided mentioning the following appalling facts: hundreds of people in South Ossetia - had been killed in less than 24 hours. The Western international community so preoccupied with human rights issues does not seem to be concerned about the people trapped without water, electric power, and food under the ruins of Tskhinvali. Why is it that Russia is the only country to supply humanitarian aid to South Ossetia? What has happened to your hearts, humane Europeans? Have you forgotten how to use Internet? Do you no longer have satellite TV? Are you really so afraid of alternative information sources? *** To an extent, my criticism of the Western media and their audiences applies to Russian news agencies and TV channels as well. They must be doing a fairly poor job if it is so easy to portray Russia as the aggressor and the suppressor of the Caucasus! It is common knowledge that whoever has information has power. In the case of Russia, the issue is extremely serious: its national security and the protection of its national interests are impossible without informational security, which must be promoted by everyone here from the President to a provincial newspaper journalist. Anyhow, we are people, not mankurts! _____________________ (1) Z. Lilic. Prospects for Peace and Cooperation. Serbia, Belgrade, 1996, #29, p. 7. (2) Thus Spoke Goebbels. Selected Papers of the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. //*Goebbels* J. Die ausgewählte Reden und Artikel. - http://hedrook.vho.org/download/goebbels.rar http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=1539 Tagged: genocide, Georgia, gori, information warfare, news, osetia, politics, south ossetia, tskhinvali, war « Aspects of Genocide in South Ossetia from the Standpoint of the International Law