Nov 29

Saakashvili obviously never left kindergarten:

“Mr Saakashvili admitted yesterday that Georgia began military operations in South Ossestia but insisted that it was in response to Russian provocation.” (So the Russians ’started’ and it was all ‘their fault’. Grow up you idiot. How many people have suffered and died for this nonsense?)

This explains why Vladimir Putin ‘wanted to hang Georgian President Saakashvili by the balls’.
__________________________________________________________________________

Source: The Times

Iron Lady Nino Burjanadze finds the steel to threaten her struggling ally

She styles her hair like Margaret Thatcher and counts the Iron Lady among her political idols. Now the female face of Georgia’s pro-Western Rose Revolution is challenging her former ally Mikhail Saakashvili.

Nino Burjanadze is emerging as the key threat to President Saakashvili over the disastrous handling of the war for South Ossetia. Protest was muted while the Russian Army occupied Georgia but its withdrawal is stirring opposition demands for him to go.

Mrs Burjanadze, 44, poses a particularly potent threat because she was the revolution’s second-most powerful figure. She marked the fifth anniversary of the Rose Revolution this week by founding her own opposition party and demanding early elections, saying her former allies had no moral right to remain in power.

Mrs Burjanadze was acting president while Mr Saakashvili campaigned in a snap election in January that was called after he ordered riot police to break up opposition protests last November.

She was chairman of parliament for seven years until she resigned from his ruling National Movement a month before elections in May.

She began her campaign against Mr Saakashvili by publishing a list of 43 questions in Georgian newspapers demanding explanations for the political and military conduct of the war in August. “These are quite objective and reasonable questions and, of course, I and a lot of people in Georgia want direct and adequate answers . . . It’s absolutely necessary to understand what happened,” she told The Times. “Unfortunately, the country is in very serious trouble after these events.”

She lists the costs: the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, now recognised as independent by Russia, are farther from rejoining Georgia than before the war; Nato scepticism about membership for Georgia has been reinforced, and foreign investment has been scared away.

Mr Saakashvili admitted yesterday that Georgia began military operations in South Ossestia but insisted that it was in response to Russian provocation.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 15


(Dmitry Astahov/AFP/Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin reportedly wanted to hang President Saakashvili “like the Americans hanged Saddam”

Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” - a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace.

The Russian Prime Minister had revealed his plans for disposing of Mr Saakashvili when Mr Sarkozy was in Moscow in August to broker a ceasefire in Georgia.

Jean-David Levitte, Mr Sarkozy’s chief diplomatic adviser, reported the exchange in a news magazine before an EU-Russia summit today. The meeting will be chaired by the French leader and President Medvedev.

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” - he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah - you have scored a point there.”

Mr Saakashvili, who was in Paris to meet Mr Sarkozy yesterday, laughed nervously when a French radio station read him the exchange. “I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It’s funny, all the same,” he said.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Nov 09

Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country’s bloody five-day war with Russia in August.

Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds.

Their accounts seem likely to undermine the American-backed claims of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that his little country was the innocent victim of Russian aggression and acted solely in self-defence.

During the war both Grist and Young were senior figures in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The organisation had deployed teams of unarmed monitors to try to reduce tension over South Ossetia, which had split from Georgia in a separatist struggle in the early 1990s with Russia’s support.

On the night war broke out, Grist was the senior OSCE official in Georgia. He was in charge of unarmed monitors who became trapped by the fighting. Based on their observations, Grist briefed European Union diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with his assessment of the conflict.

Grist, who resigned from the OSCE shortly afterwards, has told The New York Times it was Georgia that launched the first military strikes against Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital.

“It was clear to me that the [Georgian] attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation,” he said. “The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town.”

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Nov 05

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said he would deploy new missiles in Europe, confronting the U.S. on the day Barack Obama was declared the winner in America’s presidential election.

Medvedev said he would place a short-range missile system designed to carry conventional warheads in Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania.

“An Iskander rocket system will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region to neutralize the missile-defense system if necessary,” Medvedev said, referring to U.S. plans to place elements of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Medvedev blamed the U.S. for failure to coordinate its economic policy with other countries so that a “local” crisis turned into a global one, leading to “a fall on the markets of the whole planet.” He also renewed his assertion that the U.S. provoked the war between Russia and Georgia in August.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sep 16

Part1: The West Begins to Doubt Georgian Leader

Five weeks after the war in the Caucasus the mood is shifting against Georgian President Saakashvili. Some Western intelligence reports have undermined Tbilisi’s version of events, and there are now calls on both sides of the Atlantic for an independent investigation.

AP
Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili visits Gori last week.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sep 14

PARIS (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had long planned a military strike to seize back the breakaway region of South Ossetia but executed it poorly, making it easy for Russia to retaliate, Saakashvili’s former defence minister said.

Irakly Okruashvili, Georgia’s leading political exile, said in a weekend interview in Paris that the United States was partly to blame for the war, having failed to check the ambitions of what he called a man with democratic failings.

Saakashvili’s days as president were now numbered, he said.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sep 12


Mr Medvedev said he hoped lessons would be learned from August’s events

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has described Georgia’s assault on South Ossetia as Russia’s 9/11.

He said the world had learnt lessons from the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 and hoped the same would happen after events in the Caucasus.

Reports say Russian troops are showing signs of preparing to pull back from inside Georgia.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sep 04

*Kakistocracy is government by the very worst, least principled, and most incompetent people. You will be forgiven for thinking that the word, kakistocracy, perhaps derives from the word, “caca”, itself derived from the Latin, “cacare”. In fact, kakistocracy derives from the Greek, kakos, meaning “bad”.)

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sep 03

(BBC NEWS) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has described his Georgian counterpart as a “political corpse”, saying Moscow does not recognise him as president.

“President Saakashvili no longer exists in our eyes. He is a political corpse,” he told Italy’s Rai television.

He said US support for Mr Saakashvili had helped provoke the crisis, which has seen Russian troops invade Georgia.

He said Russia did not fear isolation by Western countries that have condemned the Russian intervention.

Fighting between Russia and Georgia began on 7 August after the Georgian military tried to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force.

Russian forces launched a counter-attack and the conflict ended with the ejection of Georgian troops from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia has since recognised the independence of both regions, though no other country has.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 31

Related article: De Telegraaf: “Attack on Iran expected”:

“AMSTERDAM - The Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has conducted an ultrasecret operation in Iran with the purpose of infiltrating and sabotaging the weapons industry in the islamic republic.”

“The operation, deemed extremely succesfull, has recently been cancelled because of an imminent aerial attack on Iran. Targets include sites that are connected to the Dutch spying.”

So the attack is already on its way and this is just another excuse to justify it:
_______________________________________________________________________________


Russian S-30 missiles

US intelligence says escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow could prompt Russia to sell the sophisticated S-300 system to Iran.

“If Tehran obtained the S-300, it would be a game-changer in military thinking for tackling Iran. That could be a catalyst for Israeli air attacks before it is operational,” said Dan Goure, a long-time Pentagon advisor.

“This is a system that scares every Western air force,” he said.

Continue reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,