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Escalating situation in (country of) Georgia (pg. 39)
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by otec
Without any international support looks like Russia is in deep right now.
If Europe puts economic-sanctions in a form proposed by Poland, Russia's economy will crash. |
I'm pretty sure EU won't impose sanctions on Russia because they won't have anywhere else to get their gas from. |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by otec
Without any international support looks like Russia is in deep right now.
If Europe puts economic-sanctions in a form proposed by Poland, Russia's economy will crash. |
Europe will never call it first. Russia, on the other hand, has been planning to get the fock away from European Russophobia since 1996:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangh...on_Organisation
Russia's trade and political relations have just skyrocketed with its members since its inception. No wonder why Europe is afraid and criticized Russia heavily when Russia announced it will build a massive oil pipeline to China in addition to the already lucrative market. Europe and NATO/USA have already lost Russia with their idiotic political direction. Its now only a matter time before Russia just starts fading out its European "friends" (friends????) |
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| otec |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
Europe will never call it first. Russia, on the other hand, has been planning to get the fock away from European Russophobia since 1996:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangh...on_Organisation
Russia's trade and political relations have just skyrocketed with its members since its inception. No wonder why Europe is afraid and criticized Russia heavily when Russia announced it will build a massive oil pipeline to China in addition to the already lucrative market. Europe and NATO/USA have already lost Russia with their idiotic political direction. Its now only a matter time before Russia just starts fading out its European "friends" (friends????) |
Mag, if you dont watch this new, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation showed a huge d..o to Russia's president Medvedev yesterday.
Only one idiotic regime (Belorussia) has expressed their support of what Russia is doing at the moment. |
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| otec |
| quote: | Europe Mulls Over Punishment
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced yesterday that the EU will probably impose sanctions on Russia at September 1 summit in Brussels. The sources say two drafts are being discussed � the tough scenario of Poland and the scenario of Italy that provides for critical statements of minor significance. Meanwhile, none of the nations has followed Russia and recognized independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Even Belarus has confined to voicing the intention to do it.
France currently presides in the EU and its Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner officially acknowledged yesterday that Europe is deliberating on imposing sanctions on Russia. France isn�t interested in halting relations, but it isn�t willing to accept the situation in Georgia either, Kouchner concluded, specifying that no more than two provisions of the Sarkozy plan (refusal to use military force and end of hostilities) have been accomplished to-date.
Moscow apprehends the sanctions, said a source close to the Kremlin. Two measures are imminent � the suspension of negotiations on the partnership and cooperation agreement and the decision to set into motion diversification of energy supplies to Europe, i.e. Europe is likely to oppose Russia�s Nord Stream and South Stream projects and boost Nabucco implementation.
Anyway, tougher actions are the highlight. Two drafts have been elaborated with Italy lobbying the softer of them and Poland standing for the tougher one.
The Polish scenario provides for imposing financial and economic sanctions on Russia. Big business will be advised to cut investments and certain products (steel, aluminum, fertilizers) could be banned from being exported to Europe. And last but not least, the EU may urge banks of Europe not to loan up Russia�s banks. |
http://kommersant.com/p1017420/Europe_sanction/
LOL, where the hell Russia is coming to? I didn't sign up for living in a village, eating bread and salt meanwhile working for some military establishment during the Cold War II.
WTF!? Doesn't this goverment value its relationships with the West? |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
I'm fairly certain that Polish scenario is just a scarecrow and that EU will probably go with Italian scenario, if any. Imposing sanctions on Russia will cost the Russians a hell of a lot of money, but it would collapse the economies of some EU countries. There's also the possibility that EU again fails to reach a common policy, something it's unfortunately notorious for. That all being said, the worst thing that EU can throw against Russia is boring them to death with a whole lot of nagging. And if they get really angry, they might include something like symbolic poultry sanctions like Russia did to the US.
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is not really a firm alliance or something, it's a loose cooperation orgnaization like early EU. I really doubt India and Pakistan would go out of their way to help each other, and they're both aspiring to be member states. A better match for NATO would be CSTO, Collective Security Treaty Organization. Though keep in mind those are defense organizations, and just like in NATO, their member states do not have a joint foreign policy. After all, not all NATO members recognized Kosovo, and some probably won't do that in the forseable future (Spain, Czech Republic, Greece, Romania). |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by otec
Mag, if you dont watch this new, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation showed a huge d..o to Russia's president Medvedev yesterday.
Only one idiotic regime (Belorussia) has expressed their support of what Russia is doing at the moment. |
SCO is supporting Russia in this issue, they are just not goint to recognize the new states ... I watched the elegant SCO meeting just past week in Tashkent, and all members have voiced support of Russian political direction, just nothing direct and no recognitions are to follow.
Which means that Russia to them is not a threat since they are not taking over the provinces but giving them independence. Chinese rep of the group has said that China is supporting its friends and allies, bla bla bla, basically a very vague speech - overall meaning that SCO has given Russia a nod of approval on its actions but thats it as far as their response to it. This was aired on Russian television. Very warm and happy handshakes and discussions between Medvedev and other permanent members - plus lots of media and photos. Just nothing on it in Western media. |
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| otec |
I've found this article in Guardian. Very good point on the roots and consequences of this conflict.
| quote: | Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world
Russia's defiance in the Caucasus has brought down the curtain on Bush senior's new world order - not before time
If there were any doubt that the rules of the international game have changed for good, the events of the past few days should have dispelled it. On Monday, President Bush demanded that Russia's leaders reject their parliament's appeal to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Within 24 hours, Bush had his response: President Medvedev announced Russia's recognition of the two contested Georgian enclaves.
The Russian message was unmistakable: the outcome of the war triggered by Georgia's attack on South Ossetia on August 7 is non-negotiable - and nothing the titans of the US empire do or say is going to reverse it. After that, the British foreign secretary David Miliband's posturing yesterday in Kiev about building a "coalition against Russian aggression" merely looked foolish.
That this month's events in the Caucasus signal an international turning point is no longer in question. The comparisons with August 1914 are of course ridiculous, and even the speculation about a new cold war overdone. For all the manoeuvres in the Black Sea and nuclear-backed threats, the standoff between Russia and the US is not remotely comparable to the events that led up to the first world war. Nor do the current tensions have anything like the ideological and global dimensions that shaped the 40-year confrontation between the west and the Soviet Union.
But what is clear is that America's unipolar moment has passed - and the new world order heralded by Bush's father in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1991 is no more. The days when one power was able to bestride the globe like a colossus, enforcing its will in every continent, challenged only by popular movements for national independence and isolated "rogue states", are now over. For nearly two decades, while Russia sunk into "catastroika" and China built an economic powerhouse, the US has exercised unprecedented and unaccountable global power, arrogating to itself and its allies the right to invade and occupy other countries, untroubled by international law or institutions, sucking ever more states into the orbit of its voracious military alliance.
Now, pumped up with petrodollars, Russia has called a halt to this relentless expansion and demonstrated that the US writ doesn't run in every backyard. And although it has been a regional, not a global, challenge, this object lesson in the new limits of American power has already been absorbed from central Asia to Latin America.
In Georgia itself, both Medvedev's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence and Russia's destruction of Georgian military capacity have been designed to leave no room for doubt that the issue of the enclaves' reintegration has been closed. There are certainly dangers for Russia's own territorial integrity in legitimising breakaway states. But the move will have little practical impact and is presumably partly intended to create bargaining chips for future negotiations.
Miliband's attempt in Ukraine, meanwhile, to deny the obvious parallels with the US-orchestrated recognition of Kosovo's independence earlier this year rang particularly hollow, as did his denunciation of invasions of sovereign states and double standards. Both the west and Russia have abused the charge of "genocide" to try and give themselves legal cover, but Russia is surely on stronger ground over South Ossetia - where its own internationally recognised peacekeepers were directly attacked by the Georgian army - than Nato was in Kosovo in 1999, where most ethnic cleansing took place after the US-led assault began.
There has been much talk among western politicians in recent days about Russia isolating itself from the international community. But unless that simply means North America and Europe, nothing could be further from the truth. While the US and British media have swung into full cold-war mode over the Georgia crisis, the rest of the world has seen it in a very different light. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer."
Why that should be so isn't hard to understand. It's not only that the US and its camp followers have trampled on international law and the UN to bring death and destruction to the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the early 1990s, the Pentagon warned that to ensure no global rival emerged, the US would need to "account for the interests of advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership". But when it came to Russia, all that was forgotten in a fog of imperial hubris that has left the US overstretched and unable to prevent the return of a multipolar world.
Of course, that new multipolarity can easily be overstated. Russia is a regional power and there is no imminent prospect of a serious global challenger to the US, which will remain overwhelmingly the most powerful state in the world for years to come. It can also exacerbate the risk of conflict. But only the most solipsistic western mindset can fail to grasp the necessity of a counterbalance in international relations that can restrict the freedom of any one power to impose its will on other countries unilaterally.
One western response, championed by the Times this week, is to damn this growing challenge to US domination on the grounds that it is led by autocratic states in the shape of Russia and China. In reality, western alarm clearly has very little to do with democracy. When Russia collapsed into the US orbit under Boris Yeltsin, his bombardment of the Russian parliament and shamelessly rigged elections were treated with the greatest western understanding.
The real gripe is not with these states' lack of accountability - Russian public opinion is in any case overwhelmingly supportive of its government's actions in Georgia - but their strategic challenge and economic rivalry. For the rest of us, a new assertiveness by Russia and other rising powers doesn't just offer some restraint on the unbridled exercise of global imperial power, it should also increase the pressure for a revival of a rules-based system of international relations. In the circumstances, that might come to seem quite appealing to whoever is elected US president. |
I didn't realize that the British media can actually have more then 1 point of view (not Western).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...usforeignpolicy |
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| otec |
| quote: | | One western response, championed by the Times this week, is to damn this growing challenge to US domination on the grounds that it is led by autocratic states in the shape of Russia and China. In reality, western alarm clearly has very little to do with democracy. When Russia collapsed into the US orbit under Boris Yeltsin, his bombardment of the Russian parliament and shamelessly rigged elections were treated with the greatest western understanding. |
Great words.
During the times when the West dealt with a drunk-president via bribes and etc. they called it a young Democracy.
Now they say it's an authocracy or whatever it's called.
LOL |
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| The17sss |
| quote: | Originally posted by Magnetonium
1. Very obviously biased against Russia. Not very credible, but I must admit some points raised were very interesting indeed.
2. Despite its claims, Russian troops didnt invade Georgia before August 7...........
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Damn man, that's one hell of a reply... I didn't expect all that detail but I certainly appreciate your thoughts. As you can see above, I edited most of it out in the quote box because I just wanted you to get the point of who this reply was going to. Anyway, looks like the beat goes on in Russia with the media oppression (You getting this, Otec?). Kremlin critic shot dead yesterday, getting a bullet in the head for "resisting arrest"... mmm hmm:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/e...ref=mpstoryview |
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| The17sss |
I'm sure you guys already know about this. Putin saving everyone from the jaws of a hungry tiger...haha. This guy is amazing... next thing you know he'll be catching bullets in his teeth. Note: him actually shooting the tiger wasn't caught on video. lol
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| hardcore trancer |
| hmm didnt he shoot the tiger with the tranquilizer so that they can put a GPS chip on its leg? since there is not much tigers left in that region. |
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| The17sss |
| quote: | Originally posted by hardcore trancer
hmm didnt he shoot the tiger with the tranquilizer so that they can put a GPS chip on its leg? since there is not much tigers left in that region. |
yeah that's what i heard he did... allegedly. He's turning into a characature of himself with these growing myths of machismo. It's kind of funny. Those pictures of him fly fishing with no shirt on last year were hilarious |
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