Russia versus Georgia

[Avvakum]

This thread is to counter the impression that Russia is the agressor in the Caucasus, and to counter the impression that the present regime of Georgia is a victim of the agression. On the contrary, it is yet another country, like the United States under Obama, that seems to be fighting to make the World safe for Islam and Neo-Nazis. Read, please read, this article from 2010 from the online site 'Jihadwatch';





Gorin: More Details on the Georgia-Hosted Jihadi Conference Emerge

Robert Spencer Apr 12, 2010 at 12:12am Uncategorized
More Details on the Georgia-Hosted Jihadi Conference Emerge
by Julia Gorin
An analysis published Monday by Defense & Foreign Affairs offers some corroboration for the Georgia-hosted, U.S.-approved jihadi confab in December, the mention of which seemed to upset some readers.
Here are the relevant excerpts from the 16-page analysis, which is subscription-only and therefore not linkable:

Meanwhile, Georgia is actively seeking to exploit the spread of jamaats [jihadist mini-societies] in the North Caucasus in order to go after the Russian pipelines in hope of ensnaring the US into actively supporting a new confrontation with Russia. In early December 2009, Tbilisi organized a high-level meeting of jihadists groups from the Middle East and Western Europe in order “to coordinate activities on Russia’s southern flank.” The Georgian Embassy in Kuwait, for example, arranged for travel documents for jihadists from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. (There is a large and very active Chechen/Circassian community in Jordan since the 19th Century that is heavily represented in the intelligence services and the military.) In Tbilisi, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Lordkipanadze was the host and coordinator. The meeting was attended by several Georgian senior officials who stressed that Saakashvili himself knew and approved of the undertaking. The meeting addressed the launch of both “military operations” in southern Russia and ideological warfare. One of the first results of the meeting was the launch, soon afterwards of the Russian-language TV station First Caucasian.

The jihadists of the North Caucasus — including the Arab commanders in their midst — came out of the early December 2009 meeting convinced that Tbilisi is most interested in the spread of terrorism. The meeting was attended by, among others, Mohmad Muhammad Shabaan, an Egyptian senior commander who is also known as Seif al-Islam and who has been involved in Caucasus affairs since 1992. He took copious notes. According to Shabaan’s notes, the Georgian government wants the jihadists to conduct “acts of sabotage to blow up railway tracks, electricity lines and energy pipelines” in southern Russia in order to divert construction back to Georgian territory.
Georgian intelligence promised to facilitate the arrival in the Caucasus of numerous senior jihadists by providing Georgian passports, and to provide logistical support including the reopening of bases in northern Georgia. Russian intelligence was not oblivious of the meeting. Seif al-Islam and two senior aides were assassinated on February 4, 2010. The Russians retrieved a lot of documents in the process. Moscow signaled its displeasure shortly afterwards when the presidents of Russia and Abkhazia signed a 50-year agreement on a Russian military base in order to “protect Abkhazia’s sovereignty and security, including against international terrorist groups”.
A major issue still to be resolved is the extent of the US culpability.

The same analysis recalls when this misguided approach was used in the Balkans, and outlines how, in order to not alienate Muslims while we tried to contain terror from the Middle East, we fortified terror in the Balkans and jump-started the global jihad:

Initially, the US-led Western intervention in the former Yugoslavia was aimed first and foremost to salvage NATO (and with it US dominance over post-Cold War Western Europe) from irrelevance and collapse. As well, the support for the Muslims of Bosnia became the counter-balance of the US confrontation with jihadism in the Middle East. Anthony Lake, US President Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser, formulated the logic for the US-led intervention on behalf of the Muslims. The US national interest “requires our working to contain Muslim extremism, and we have to find a way of being firm in our opposition to Muslim extremism while making it clear we’re not opposed to Islam. If we are seen as anti-Muslim, it’s harder for us to contain Muslim extremism. And if we stand by while Muslims are killed and raped in Bosnia, it makes it harder to continue our policy,” Lake argued. That in the process the US would end up partnering with, supporting and arming, the very same jihadist forces Clinton was seeking to contain meant nothing to Washington. The only thing Washington cared about was the image of a US rallying to the rescue of a Muslim cause.

Note that in the 90s the U.S., like Britain, permitted and facilitated terrorist networks to operate in Bosnia and Kosovo for the purpose of Serb-killing, and along with Germany we trained Albanian and Middle Eastern terrorists in Albania. Sure enough, the same decade saw U.S. officials participating in a December 1999 meeting in Azerbaijan very similar to the December 2009 meeting in Tbilisi, where “programs for the training and equipping of mujahedin from the Caucasus, Central and South Asia, and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon.” The mention of this meeting comes in as the analysis gives background on how we decided to support terrorism against Russia:

By 1999, the US had given up on reconciling Azerbaijan and Armenia in order to construct pipelines to Turkey, and instead Washington started focusing on building pipelines via Georgia.
For such a project to be economically viable, the Russian pipelines would have to be shut down. Hence, in early October 1999, senior officials of US oil companies and US officials offered representatives of Russian “oligarchs” in Europe huge dividends from the proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline if the “oligarchs” convinced Moscow to withdraw from the Caucasus, permit the establishment of an Islamic state, and close down the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline. Consequently, there would be no competition to the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. The “oligarchs” were convinced that the highest levels of the Clinton White House endorsed this initiative. The meeting failed because the Russians would hear nothing of the US proposal.
Consequently, the US determined to deprive Russia of an alternate pipeline route by supporting a spiraling violence and terrorism in Chechnya….The Clinton White House sought to actively involve the US in yet another anti-Russian jihad as if reliving the “good ol’ days” of Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces in yet another strategic region.
In mid-December 1999, US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahedin from the Caucasus, Central and South Asia, and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. This meeting led to Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly the intelligence services of Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies” (of the type that did Washington’s dirty job in the Balkans while skirting and violating the international embargo the US formally supported) to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in spring 2000. Citing security concerns vis-Ã -vis Armenia and Russia, Azerbaijan adamantly refused to permit training camps on its soil.

Now, just to keep our — including my — heads straight, let’s remind ourselves that this exercise that Robert Spencer was good enough to let me engage in on these pages was not a defense of Russia; it was not meant to start an argument about how bad or how not-that-bad Russia is. The point is that foreign relations in a mad world require finding enough common ground with not-so-great states so that we can work together where we can work together. It’s to minimize the messiness of things. Why, when we had Russia in its historically most maleable form, did we insist on provoking and provoking and provoking? Why did we make a bad situation like Russia worse when we had an opportunity to make it better? As with all problematic countries that we nonetheless find areas of cooperation with, we narrowed even those areas by dealing with the Russians in the bad faith that had been their trademark. Simultaneously, we moved away from picking the lesser evil in a given conflict, and started siding with the greater.

It’s a surreal situation indeed when the actions of my savior country put me in the position of having to “defend” Russia, whose people my parents thank their lucky stars to not have to live among anymore. I myself am a self-proclaimed Russophobe; I just had no idea how much more pathological America’s Russophobia is. So for someone who is loath to visit even Brighton Beach, I find myself in a surprising position here, pointing out where we went wrong and shoved Russia back into old behaviors.

Infuriatingly predictably, one of the comment posters suggested that the line I’m taking here is one that’s paid for by Russia. The same “tip” was offered to Robert by a fellow blogger — in that tone of providing “some friendly, professional, and cautionary advice.” The likes of which I’m all too familiar with by now. (One Wall St. Journal fixture advised me, “Your views on this [the Balkans] are deeply misjudged…You’re not doing your career any favors.” Thanks. Good thing I don’t have a career, then.) It certainly would be nice if anyone paid me for anything I do, but it wasn’t to be in this lifetime.
Regardless, it shouldn’t seem strange for someone to be pointing out that our foreign policy is being guided by people with a stronger anti-Russian agenda than anti-jihad agenda. And notice where this kind of thinking has gotten us. Take the past two decades of Western policy and media coverage in the Balkans, which were based on information that made its way into reporters’ notebooks directly from the Ministry of Information of the Bosnian Government run by the fundamentalist Muslim wartime president Alija Izetbegovic. The template was used again when politicians, reporters, NGOs and human rights organizations dutifully repeated what was coming out of the KLA-run newspapers and other propaganda organs of the Kosovo separatists. And so in service to consistency, having gotten into this hole, we’ve kept digging. With our Yugoslavia intervention, as the Defense & Foreign Affairs analysis points out, we’ve ended up “demonizing the Serbs and the world of Eastern Christianity as a whole.” Such that we’ve arrived at a place where the word “Byzantine” is now used to mean primitive or uncivilized. While the Muslim world and Islamic heritage represent the height of culture, tradition, heritage and civilization.

One interesting thing about the reactions to calling the U.S. on its aggressive alienation of Russia via, for example, the use of jihadists is the sense of outrage and shock at the suggestion that America would support these violent groups, followed immediately by a defense or justification of such tactics (e.g. “we *should* help the Chechens against the Russians”). Meanwhile, these oh-so-incendiary allegations happen to coincide with overtly stated intentions and policies. (See the late Senator Tom Lantos and his ilk applauding the creation of a U.S.-made Muslim state in Europe, which the jihadists should “take note of,” Lantos hoped.)

[American Patriot]

This thread is to counter the impression that Russia is the agressor in the Caucasus, and to counter the impression that the present regime of Georgia is a victim of the agression. On the contrary, it is yet another country, like the United States under Obama, that seems to be fighting to make the World safe for Islam and Neo-Nazis. Read, please read, this article from 2010 from the online site 'Jihadwatch';

One word... horseshit.


Vladimir Putin ‘wants to regain Finland’ for Russia, adviser says









Finland has increased border surveillance in recent weeks as Mr Putin moves to ‘protect what belongs to him and his predecessors’


Adam Withnall



Sunday 30 March 2014




After annexing Crimea and with troops massed on the border of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will not stop trying to expand Russia until he has “conquered” Belarus, the Baltic states and Finland, one of his closest former advisers has said.




According to Andrej Illarionov, the President’s chief economic adviser from 2000 to 2005, Mr Putin seeks to create “historical justice” with a return to the days of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Soviet Union under Stalin.


Speaking to the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Mr Illarionov warned that Russia will argue that the granting of independence to Finland in 1917 was an act of “treason against national interests”.


“Putin’s view is that he protects what belongs to him and his predecessors,” Mr Illarionov said.


“Parts of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and Finland are states where Putin claims to have ownership.



He added: “The West’s leaders seem, from what they say, entirely to have forgotten that there are some leaders in the world who want to conquer other countries.”
Read more: 'Russia threatened countries ahead of vote'
Putin calls Obama as Russia positions troops along border
Obama warns Russia 'must pull back troops' from Ukraine border
Crimea's dolphin army to be taken over by Putin

Mr Illarionov has helped draft a host of Russia’s economic policies in recent years, and served as Mr Putin’s personal representative at a number of G8 conferences. He is now a senior fellow at the Cato institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity in Washington.


Finland is not a Nato member, meaning a Russian invasion would not be considered an attack against the alliance. The commander of the Finnish air force has said it has increased surveillance operations over the Baltic Sea in recent weeks.


The Scandinavian nation was part of the Russian empire for 108 years as an autonomous Grand Duchy. Asked if Mr Putin posed an immediate threat to what is now a stalwart of the EU, Mr Illarionov said: “It is not on Putin's agenda today or tomorrow. But if Putin is not stopped, the issue will be brought sooner or later. Putin has said several times that the Bolsheviks and Communists made big mistakes. He could well say that the Bolsheviks in 1917 committed treason against Russian national interests by granting Finland's independence.”


On the subject of what can be done to stop the progress of Russian expansion, Mr Illarionov said sanctions had helped rather than hindered Mr Putin because they “confirm his view of the world” – and that of “the Kremlin’s propaganda”.


“We must offer resistance by all means available,” he said. “I'm not a bloodthirsty person, but there is sometimes no other way than military power to stop an opponent. The only answer to pure aggression is demonstrating willingness to offer a collective defence.”

[American Patriot]

Former adviser to Vladimir Putin, Andrej Illarionov, says Russian president wants to ‘regain Finland, Belarus and the Baltic States’

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VLADIMIR Putin’s ambitions lie far beyond Crimea, according to one of the Russian president’s former advisers.

“Putin’s view is that he protects what belongs to him and his predecessors,” says Andrej Illarionov, who served as Putin’s chief economic counsellor from 2000 to 2005.
OBAMA TELLS PUTIN TO PULL TROOPS BACK
“Parts of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and Finland are states where Putin claims to have ownership.”


Andrei Illarionov. Source: AAP



Mr Illarionov is no small fry. He served as Putin’s personal representative at a number of G8 conferences, alongside officials from the world’s most powerful nations.
Now he has discussed Putin’s long term intentions with a Swedish newspaper, the Svenska Dagbladet.
THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT PUTIN
“It is not on Putin’s agenda today or tomorrow. But if Putin is not stopped, the issue will be brought sooner or later,” Mr Illarionov says.
“Russia gave independence to Finland in 1917, but this was an act of treason against national interests. Since Finland is not a member of NATO, Russia will have easier work in reclaiming the territory.”


That’s the handshake of an uncompromising man. Source: AFP



Russia insists it has no intention of invading Ukraine, let alone Finland. That’s despite its annexation of Crimea and a massive build-up of troops on the nation’s eastern border.
“We have absolutely no intention and no interests in crossing the Ukrainian border,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says.
‘WE WON’T INVADE UKRAINE’
But Mr Illarionov is sceptical of Putin’s denials, and believes the Russian president could seize other European territories as well.


A Russian tank is pictured outside the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Source: AP



“Putin has said several times that the Bolsheviks and Communists made big mistakes,” Mr Illarionov says.
“He could well say that the Bolsheviks in 1917 committed treason against Russian national interests by granting Finland’s independence.”
COULD A SELFIE STOP PUTIN? REALLY?
So what can other nations do to stop Russia’s aggression? Mr Illarionov says military action can’t be ruled out.


Russian soldiers guard the centre of Simferopol. Source: AP



“The West’s leaders seem, from what they say, entirely to have forgotten that there are some leaders in the world who want to conquer other countries,” he says.
“We must offer resistance by all means available. I’m not a bloodthirsty person, but there is sometimes no other way than military power to stop an opponent. The only answer to pure aggression is demonstrating a willingness to offer a collective defence.”

[Avvakum]

I tell you what; recently i've talked to some people who are in a position to know about the situation in Eastern Europe/Russia/Eurasia, and I'm a bit confused now as to what to believe about what's really going on. From the research i've done, and what i've learned, we're all being duped by the players in this game. Putin and his cronies ARE of the same band of looters and gangsters that have feasted on the flesh and blood and soil of Great Mother Russia, and indeed all the Russias, since 1917. And many of his 'opponents' are in on this little Mafiya Game too. The System is utterly corrupt to the core, and the infection of this Cancer has infiltrated the whole World, the whole Global polity.

"Smoke and Mirrors" is all it is and has been. I'm not qualified to speak on these matters for a time, I am humiliated and chastened. While much of my information has been correct, it has also been one-sided and served up to myself and others to serve an agenda, while the Gangsters, who allegedly are at loggerheads with each other, laugh behind the scenes.

For them I say; 'fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me'. Shame on me, because i've had the discernent to know better and my initial instincts were good and more correct.

[American Patriot]

So you're saying then, that we have been right all along and Putin IS a cossack...

Just some advice from an old pissed off Cold Warrior:

When you couch your answers in terms of religion - and this is just my point of view, you completely isolate yourself from reality.

It's not that I have anything against religion. I never have. It's just that is ought to be completely separated from how we view what others do.

NEVER believe that the other guy follows the same rules you do. Ever. Especially not Russia. Or Chinese. Or North Korea. Or anyone from Islam. Or even other Christians... because frankly everyone sees the world through a different prism, and each of us sees different colors of that rainbow at different times.

[Ryan Ruck]

NEVER believe that the other guy follows the same rules you do. Ever.

This is a good way of putting it and sound advice to live by.

[Avvakum]

So you're saying then, that we have been right all along and Putin IS a cossack...

Just some advice from an old pissed off Cold Warrior:

When you couch your answers in terms of religion - and this is just my point of view, you completely isolate yourself from reality.

It's not that I have anything against religion. I never have. It's just that is ought to be completely separated from how we view what others do.

NEVER believe that the other guy follows the same rules you do. Ever. Especially not Russia. Or Chinese. Or North Korea. Or anyone from Islam. Or even other Christians... because frankly everyone sees the world through a different prism, and each of us sees different colors of that rainbow at different times.

If only Putin WERE a Cossack.

I think you read my 'mea culpa' wrong somewhat, and if so, that's still my fault. I am looking at all this from the perspective of Orthodoxy and Russian Nationalism, two things i'm definitely for; Orthodoxy and genuine Nationalism for each genuine Nation on the Earth. Not 'tribes or families with flags' or failed States or failed Nations (a failed Nation is one in which the basic meaning and purpose of the National existence has been lost by the people or the elites). Putin pretends to be a Russian Nationalist and Orthodox, as such he makes certain claims which have to be evaluated. From what I understand now, he is not the responsible and nationalist leader he claims to be but is rather cut from the same cloth as the bandits and gangsters which have raped and plundered the whole former Czarist Empire from 1917 on.


If Putin were of the sort to actually restore the whole Czarist Polity which was overthrown by Marxist Revolutionaries in 1917 I would welcome it as a kind of historical justice (Finland was justly ruled by the Czars for over 100 years, and was never 'Russian', but was in personal union with the Crown, having it's own self-government as a Grand Duchy with an Parliment, Georgia was actually willed to the Czar by it's last king, in the face of the Islamic threat), but instead he's grown personally wealthy of the misery and division of the post-soviet years, and he's actually a kind of Russian version of Obama, transforming Russia into a liberal european-type multicultural cesspool, owned by the Chinese, despite all his rhetoric.

And, he's involved with the same Oligarchical World Elite, indeed is one of them, that is as I said in the Ukraine and really now worldwide.

My hope was not based on delusion but on seeing a possibility of him being somewhat different than the rest of the plunderers and opposing Obama geopolitically. He isn't on either count. I want a strong Russia that isn't part of a 'trans-asian axis'. What he and these others want worldwide isn't even geopolitical, but is as the old Medici model; "Money to make Power, Power to make Money", period. Same as here and in the EU and the Middle East an the Far East, the politicians, the clergy, and the monied elite are all now exactly like the Mafia but with better taste perhaps and the pretense of law and morality. Putin was never someone I liked and I always opposed his regime, but as I have said, I believed that he wasn't as bad and somewhat opposed the same crowd behind Obama. But he's not, he and Obama and Merkel, etc... Are reading from a script, each playing a part.

I think its past fighting a 'Trans-Asian Axis' now, but a 'World Government Axis'.

Spiritually, I was prepared for all this disappointment, but I didn't want to believe that we were as far down the road to destruction as we are. The following Nations I think have stood in the way of all of what's coming or had the potential to, at various times in history; Russia, America, Germany and Serbia. And all four have been destroyed and taken apart from within and/or from without.



Yes , your point about the other guy not following the same rules is well taken and accepted by me. But once i've made my evaluation about the man and his clique, I have to modify my response to the guy. If we are further along down the road to collapse and world tyranny (same thing), I have to plan accordingly.