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Danger in the Black Sea
Yesterday the Russian parliament voted on non-binding resolutions calling on President Dmitry Medvedev to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.
Bush called on Medvedev not to endorse these:
He said Georgia’s borders merit the same respect as other countries’, including Russia’s.
One wonders why Bush didn’t mentioned Serbia in that little hidden threat.
Today the Russian Federation officially recognized the independence of both regions:
"I have signed decrees on the recognition by the Russian Federation of the independence of South Ossetia and the independence of Abkhazia," Medvedev said in a televised statement.
I had expected that Medvedev would wait, but the ‘western’ response to Saakashvili’s splendid little war was probably too much to take.
In the official ‘western’ media version Russia is the problem and overreached in response to the Georgian attack. But in reality the Russians refrained from conscious bombing of Georgian civil infrastructure and pulled their troops back as soon as possible. When was the last time U.S. forces attack in such a sensible way?
Meanwhile Sarkosy, with Rice’s prodding, issued a letter to Saakashvili that essentially lied about the ceasefire conditions Russia agreed to. The ‘western’ media do not mention that at all. Sending U.S. military ships and Saak’s continuous bellicose speeches did not help either. NATO introduced some punishing measures even while it depends on Russia for its logistics in Afghanistan.
Medvedev explicitly warned about that yesterday. NATO’s other logistic line through Pakistan is in serious danger. Yesterday two NATO vehicles were burned in Karachi.
Now it seems that Russia had enough. Both former Georgian areas are now independent and in a next step will likely ask to join the Russian Federation. It should be obvious by now that one can not bully Russia anymore. But the ‘west’ still tries. This is dangerous.
There are now nine NATO warships in the Black Sea with nine more said to be coming. In response, the Russians send their Black Sea flagship, a missile cruiser, back to sea. The NATO ships have over 100 tomahawk (land attack) and harpoon (sea attack) missiles on board. Such concentration of forces can lead to misunderstandings and escalation. They should be avoided.
Russia has air cover over the Black Sea and owns a lot of the
coast. In a conflict, the NATO fleet would likely get a serious beating.
But a conflict in the Black Sea would virtually guarantee a McCain victory in the upcoming U.S. election. U.S. foreign policy is always determined by domestic politics. That is what makes me really nervous about these escalations.
TOT, but perspective is called for … world wars blossom in hysteria-time,
and frankly, there’s not a damn thing MoA can do to stop Darth Cheney now.
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Local independents put together perfect office
The country’s local independent organizations officials claim to have opened a new perfect directorate and plan to expand projects. The announcement was made in a two-day workshop held by the office head to Pajhwak Press, to make changes to the official government system.
According to Pajhwak, the process of forming organizations in districts has been heeded, which will be an improvement to main organizations too.
The new process has already been completed in two districts of Dand and Daman, and it will soon be started in three other provinces of Kandahar, at Spin Boldak, Arghandab and Panjwaye.
Pajhwak explained that the recent workshop was held to educate district governors about the new office system. Workshop participants called it essential, and claimed that they have learned a lot about how to carry out official work. According to them, these workshops will play a big role in teaching functional office work, answering a constant criticism of the Afghan government, a lack of qualified workers for the office positions.
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Southern Reconstruction face problems
Enayatullah Durrani, the head of Loy Kandahar, the leading southern reconstruction association, has asked provincial officials to help with problems the trades union faces. Loy Kandahar was established by the Kandahar Provincial assembly, and has 220 active member companies.
Mr. Durrani, talking at the opening ceremony of the reconstruction corporations, said that despite facing many challenges, their companies still function and continue to work for country and fellow country men.
He also spoke about the importance of private sectors in the country’s economy, and said if private sectors are not developed, it would create distrust between local people and the national government.
Durrani blamed bureaucracy as one of the main reasons for their problems. He asked officials to launch more projects in Kandahar rather than Kabul so work in the district could be completed more effectively and easily.
Durrani also blamed some contracting organizations for selling each other projects which, according to him, often harms the quality of the work.
Ahamd Wali Karzai, the Kandahar Provincial Council representative, spoke opposite Mr. Durrani, blaming the reconstruction companies for low-quality work. He urged the companies to work as one and help rebuild the country. He asked them to provide better job opportunities for local civilians and take part in the country’s economical redevelopment.
Kandahar newly-appointed Governor, Rahmatullah Raofi, also spoke at the ceremony, promising that he will take these organizational issues into serious consideration. He challenged the reconstruction companies to think about their profits, but also to consider providing better quality work.
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15 % of population have no healthcare
Health ministry officials claim that 85 percent of the population have access to medical care but the remaining 15, most of whom are residing in remote regions of the country, have no medical attention whatsoever.
Health Ministry Deputy, Doctor Faizullah Kakar, while signing a contract in Kabul for construction of 71 new hospitals, said that there are 36,000 small villages in Afghanistan but the Health Ministry medical centers are limited to only 1,464. He also announced his plan to build 300 new local and 26 regional health centers worth 20 million AF$.
The 71 new hospitals are to be constructed in the following provinces: Laghman, Kunor, Samangan, Balkh, Meadan Wardak, Ghazni, Nemroz,Badghis, Paktiya, Khost,Bamyan, Baghlan, Takhar, Logar, Nengrahar, Zabul, Kunduz, Dai Kundi and Sari Pul.
According to Mr. Kakar, 167 local and 4 regional health centers have already been built and have started functioning. He explained that building health centers in more remote areas of the country would require a huge budget, which the health ministry says it couldn’t afford.
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Afghan Senators Propose Tribal Armed Forces
Masharano Jerga (Senior Assembly) representatives believe that having armed tribal forces would be a genuine step towards better security for the country Afghan national government senators are giving serious consideration to a plan to organize tribal forces, first suggested by the Afghan Border Army.
Afghan Border military, who sent their proposal for making tribal forces to the Mashrano Jerga and the Tribal and Ethnic Assembly, claim that tribal forces would have a big role in bringing better security to the frontiers and far remote regions of the country.
Tribal forces refers to a militia of local people of different ethnic groups chosen specifically by tribal leaders, and one that has no direct links with the government. Tribal forces would be armed by the government, but have the responsibility to secure their own districts of the country, without the direct involvement of the Afghan National Army.
According to Afghan senator Merbat Khan Mangal, a member of the Tribal and Ethnic Assembly, many families accept the need for tribal forces in the countryside. Mangal added, he believes that these tribal forces will strengthen those 86 districts lying near the Pakistani border.
Others believe the creation of an armed tribal militia would be opening another front on the continuing and ongoing conflicts in the country.
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Poppy eradication campaign makes gains
The Associated Press, August 26, 2008
Drought and anti-drug campaigns helped slash Afghanistan’s opium poppy cultivation by 19 per cent this year, but the country is still by far the world’s leading source of the heroin-producing crop, a United Nations agency said Tuesday.
Successful anti-poppy campaigns in the country’s north and east were mainly to thank for the drop in output of the plant, the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime said.
But, the agency said, fields in the south — where the Taliban resistance is strongest — remain awash in poppies, which produce opium, the main ingredient in heroin.
And because of a rise in yield, opium production this year will fall only six per cent compared with last year’s record haul. That means the Taliban stands to again earn tens of millions of dollars from the drug trade to support its insurgency.
Still, the UN agency and other drug officials said this year’s results provide reason to be cautiously optimistic.
“The opium flood waters in Afghanistan have started to recede,” the agency said in its report, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008.
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Afghanistan demands end to Nato air strikes
guardian.co.uk, August 26 2008
Tensions increased today between Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, and US and Nato troops, with the government ordering a review of foreign military activities amid claims that dozens of civilians have died in raids and air strikes over the past week.
The ministries of foreign affairs and defence said they would seek to regulate raids with a status of forces agreement and a negotiated end to “air strikes on civilian targets, uncoordinated house searches and illegal detention of Afghan civilians”.
The UN mission in Afghanistan has backed the government. Afghan and foreign soldiers entered the village of Nawabad in Shindand district last Friday and called in air strikes, villagers told UN investigators.
The UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said in a statement that an investigation “found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men. Fifteen other villagers were wounded.
“The destruction from aerial bombardment was clearly evident with seven to eight houses having been destroyed, with serious damage to many others,” Eide said. “Local residents were able to confirm the number of casualties, including names, age and gender of the victims.
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Japanese aid worker missing
Radio Australia August 27, 2008
Police are searching rugged eastern mountain regions in Afghanistan for a Japanese national thought to have been kidnapped by the extremist Taliban.
Earlier, the Afghan interior ministry told reporters 31-year-old Kazuya Ito had been freed in a massive operation, around 10 hours after he was snatched in the eastern province of Nangarhar, but it was later determined Mr. Ito is still missing.
Provincial police said they had men in the mountains between Nangarhar and Kunar provinces looking for Ito.
“There are police searches everywhere. It is a mountainous area full of trees,” provincial government spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai told AFP.
Posted by: Luke Skywalker | Aug 27 2008 5:33 utc | 46
Best analysis of the larger picture — Grand Imperial Strategy — that I have seen yet, from Richard K. Moore :
Friends,
Like most people who have any awareness of the world, you’ve probably been wondering about the events in Georgia. Is Russia going to be ‘isolated’? Is NATO going to expand into Georgia and the Ukraine? Will Russia bomb the missile systems the US is deploying in Poland? Might things spiral out of control into a nuclear exchange? I too have been wondering, and watching the developments carefully. The picture is now beginning to become clear.
The first thing to realize is that everything that is happening has been planned out well in advance by the usual suspects in Washington. The events have not in any sense been caused by tensions in the Caucus, rather those tensions have provided a convenient venue for Washington to pursue its grand designs.
The second thing to realize is that Russia has no interest whatsoever in conflict. By this I don’t mean ‘Russia is good’, but rather ‘Russia is sensible’. The conflicts now and to come are entirely the creation of US/EU elites, in their pursuit of global domination.
The third thing to realize – and this is well known in both Washington and Moscow – is that the US has been preparing for many years to carry out a nuclear first-strike against Russia. That’s what Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ was about, and the thread continues to space-based lasers, and right down to the missiles in Poland.
The fourth thing to realize is the reason why this first strike is critical to US/EU elite interests. Without it, the overwhelming balance of global power will shift to Eurasia, to Russia and China. Eurasia is growing rapidly economically, while the US & EU are in rapid economic decline, and these trends are not going to change without decisive military intervention.
There was a period where it seemed Russia could be defeated without a conflagration. Under Yeltsin, Washington thought it could destroy Russia from within. And then later the ‘colored revolutions’ looked like they might succeed. Those schemes, however, failed. The Russian Bear is now fully awake, with pockets full of cash, and prepared to defend its interests. Not a scenario that pleases a bully who wants to be King of the Schoolyard.
That’s the background to the events in Georgia.
What we are now seeing is the countdown to the first strike. There are many dimensions to the project. The military capability is only one part. Equally important is the psy-ops preparation.
Militarily, the US is not ready yet. The missile defense systems still need a few years to be sufficiently effective to enable a first strike with minimal damage to the US from Russian retaliation. Evidently, the Pentagon now has a reliable date for when it will be ready, and that’s the reason for the launch of the psy-ops part of the project.
That’s what the Georgian incident was all about: the beginning of a psy-ops project, Demonizing Russia. Washington hit Russia with provocation it couldn’t ignore (‘an offer it couldn’t refuse’), and then the propaganda machine (ie, the Western media) launched its well-prepared campaign of lies and deception.
This is only the beginning. Washington and its toady NATO will push Russia again and again, forcing it into moves that will be increasingly easy to demonize. By such means Washington will create a situation where populations in the West think of Russia as expansionist, just like in the Cold War. As the first-strike capability nears readiness, the pushing will be accelerated. Ultimately Russia will be forced to take an action that will be perceived by Western audiences as ‘going too far’, and that will be the excuse for the first strike. Of course I have no idea what the code name for this whole project is, but The Eagle Strikes might be it.
rkm
If Moore’s scenario is true, and I presume that it is, then it is clearly understood by all world leaders and planners, and is the driving force behind increasingly chaotic and unexpected events. It also renders “gatekeeper” commentators, like Monbiot, ludicrous in their misleading analyses. Perhaps one may read between the lines of Paul Craig Roberts. Those who fill the void with endless puffery about how dumb Dubya is, or how bellicose Dick is, or how incompetent Condi is, are fools, or worse.
The only thing I have to add is the necessary precondition of having assiduously placed puppet leaders in place in France and Germany (and Italy?), and also throughout the EU: Poland, Scandinavia, etc. UK and US also, but that goes without saying. The US Military, particularly the Air Force, is chock-full of brainwashed born-agains who will rush lemming-like towards Armageddon with glee frozen on their glassified masks.
And, of course, like the Color Revolutions, the plan may not be successful. We can only hope.
But this is brinksmanship raised to the highest degree: The final roll of the dice for the West, and the entire world, in all probability. One last chance to auger in on what Fukuyama termed “The End of History.”
Compared to this, the Obamamania spectacle playing out before the flocks of expectant sheep is but the slightest rustle of desicated leaves in a lonely copse of Quaking Aspens before a cold desolate Autumn breeze. Compared to this, moving into a “green” house, or searching for the right livelihood, or meditating upon the words of the Dalai Lama, is but the shaking of a single leaf in an immense forest on the edge of a vast volcano that is about to blow.
(Sorry, old friends, that I never post anymore, but despite all my talents and hard work, I have completely fallen through the social network — to the point where I cannot even properly care for myself, much less use my brain for anything productive. Keep up the great work, b, et al.)
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 27 2008 16:52 utc | 56
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