Kyrgyzstan And The Battle For Central Asia by Rick Rozoff

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by Rick Rozoff
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April 8, 2010

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was deposed five years after and in the same manner as he came to power, in a bloody uprising.

Elected president two months after the so-called Tulip Revolution of 2005 he helped engineer, he was since then head of state of the main transit nation for the U.S. and NATO war in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon secured the Manas Air Base (as of last year known as the Transit Center at Manas) in Kyrgyzstan shortly after its invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001 and in the interim, according to a U.S. armed forces publication last June, “More than 170,000 coalition personnel passed through the base on their way in or out of Afghanistan, and Manas was the transit point for 5,000 tons of cargo, including spare parts and equipment, uniforms and various items to support personnel and mission needs.

As Obama Talks Of Arms Control, Russians View U.S. As Global Aggressor by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
March 28, 2010

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U.S. and NATO military expansion along Russia’s western and southern flanks diminishes the need for Cold War era nuclear arsenals and long-range delivery systems appreciably. Washington can well afford to reduce the number of its nuclear weapons and still maintain decisive worldwide strategic superiority, especially with the deployment of an international interceptor missile system, unilateral militarization of space, and super stealth strategic bombers and the Pentagon’s Prompt Global Strike plans for conventional warheads with the velocity and range of intercontinental ballistic missiles to destroy other nations’ nuclear forces with non-nuclear attacks.
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On March 26th U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev reached an agreement on a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1) of 1991.

Georgia: Simulating War Or Provoking It? by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
March 16, 2010

On the evening of March 13 Georgia’s Imedi television channel ran a 30-minute prime time “simulated” newscast about a Russian invasion of the South Caucasus nation complete with a report that the country’s mercurial (if not megalomaniacal) president – Mikheil Saakashvili – had been assassinated.

1989-2009: Moving The Berlin Wall To Russia’s Borders by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com
7 November, 2009

November 9 will mark the twentieth anniversary of the government of the German Democratic Republic opening crossing points at the wall separating the eastern and western sections of Berlin.

From 1961 to 1989 the wall had been a dividing line in, a symbol of and a metonym for the Cold War.

A generation later events are to be held in Berlin to commemorate the “fall of the Berlin Wall,” the last victory the West can claim over the past two decades. Bogged down in a war in Afghanistan, occupation in Iraq and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States, Germany and the West as a whole are eager to cast a fond glance back at what is viewed as their greatest triumph: The collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe closely followed by the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Will Guantánamo Prisoners Be Released In Georgia? by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
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www.andyworthington.co.uk
30 October 2009

Last week, Molly Corso, a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi, Georgia, got in touch with me regarding rumors that the Georgian government was considering accepting a number of cleared prisoners from Guantánamo, in connection with an article that was published this week. In September, in an interview with Fox News, President Mikheil Saakashvili explained that Georgia was “absolutely” willing to host prisoners from Guantánamo. “You know, whatever we can do to help America in its war on terror, we will do,” he said.

ABC Of West’s Global Military Network: Afghanistan, Baltics, Caucasus by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/
October 28, 2009

The century’s longest war continues to rage in South Asia with no sign of abating. Instead, the invasion of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 has exploded into endless armed hostilities that have spread across the length and breadth of the nation, with U.S. and NATO military forces fighting an intensified counterinsurgency conflict in the north, south, east and west of Afghanistan, now paralleled by equally brutal and even larger-scale combat operations in neighboring Pakistan.

With over 100,000 Western troops and rumors of perhaps a doubling of that number in the works, and with Washington spending billions of dollars in expanding bases to accommodate those reinforcements, the Afghanistan-Pakistan campaign under the direction of U.S. and NATO military commander General Stanley McChrystal and Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke portends yet greater violence, bloodshed and imperiling of regional stability.

Black Sea Crisis Deepens As Threat To Iran Grows by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/black-sea-crisis-deepens-as-threat-to-iran-grows/
September 16, 2009

Tensions are mounting in the Black Sea with the threat of another conflict between U.S. and NATO client state Georgia and Russia as Washington is manifesting plans for possible military strikes against Iran in both word and deed.

Referring to Georgia having recently impounded several vessels off the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia, reportedly 23 in total this year, the New York Times wrote on September 9 that “Rising tensions between Russia and Georgia over shipping rights to a breakaway Georgian region have opened a potential new theater for conflict between the countries, a little more than a year after they went to war.” [1]

Where is the Truth? By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
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liberalpro.blogspot.com
September 3, 2009

I was making a guest appearance on a radio show trying to promote my new book From Complicity to Contempt the other day, when a listener called the show and insisted that Russia was the aggressor in the Russo-Georgian War of last year. I had written an article after the brief flare-up https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/commonsense-and-the-russo-georgian-war-by-timothy-v-gatto/ and to this day it was Georgia that started things there by launching an artillery barrage on the South Ossetia capitol. The listener believed that Russia had wanted the war and that Georgia was the “victim” of Russian aggression.

U.S. Marines In The Caucasus As West Widens Afghan War by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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September 3, 2009

On August 21 the chief of the U.S. Marine Corps, General James Conway, arrived in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to begin the training of his host country’s military for deployment to the Afghan war theater under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

“During the meeting the sides discussed a broad spectrum of Georgian-U.S bilateral relations and the situation in Georgia’s occupied territory.” [1] Occupied territory(ies) meant Abkhazia and South Ossetia, now independent nations with Russian troops stationed in both.

Politicizing Ethnicity: US Plan To Repeat Yugoslav Scenario In Caucasus Could Cause World War by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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August 14, 2009

Matthew Bryza has been one of the U.S.’s main point men in the South Caucasus, the Caspian Sea Basin and Central Asia for the past twelve years.

From 1997-1998 he was an advisor to Ambassador Richard Morningstar, coordinating U.S. efforts in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as in Southeastern Europe, particularly Greece and Turkey. Morningstar was appointed by the Clinton administration as the first Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Assistance to the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union in 1995, then Special Advisor to the President and the Secretary of State for Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy in 1998 and was one of the chief architects of U.S. trans-Caspian strategic energy plans running from the Caspian Sea through the South Caucasus to Europe. Among the projects he helped engineer in that capacity was the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan [BTC] oil pipeline – “the world’s most political pipeline” – running from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea.

Trans-Caspian, Trans-Eurasian Energy Strategy Crafted In The 1990s

In 1998 Bryza was Morningstar’s chief lieutenant in managing U.S. Caspian Sea energy interests as Deputy to the Special Advisor to the President and Secretary of State on Caspian Basin Energy Diplomacy, where he remained until March of 2001, and he worked on developing what are now U.S. and Western plans to circumvent Russia and Iran and achieve dominance over the delivery of energy supplies to Europe.

Afghan War: NATO Builds History’s First Global Army by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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August 9, 2009

Two months before the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of NATO’s first-ever ground war the world is witness to a 21st Century armed conflict without end waged by the largest military coalition in history.

With recent announcements that troops from such diverse nations as Colombia, Mongolia, Armenia, Japan, South Korea, Ukraine and Montenegro are to or may join those of some 45 other countries serving under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), there will soon be military personnel from fifty nations on five continents and in the Middle East serving under a unified command structure.

Never before have soldiers from so many states served in the same war theater, much less the same country.

By way of comparison, there were twenty six (higher, and looser, estimates go as high as 34) national contingents in the so-called coalition of the willing in Iraq as of 2006. In the interim between now and then troops from all contributing nations but the United States and Great Britain have been withdrawn and in most cases redeployed to Afghanistan.

All Compass Points: Canada Leads NATO Confrontation With Russia In North by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/41080
August 5, 2009

Continuing the pattern by top Canadian federal officials over the past year of issuing blunt and bravado statements aimed at Russia over the Arctic, on August 1 Defence Minister Peter MacKay was paraphrased as “warn[ing] Russia that Canuck fighter jets will scramble to meet any unauthorized aircraft” as a mainstream Canadian news agency less than delicately phrased it, and thundered that “Canadian fighter jets would scramble to ‘meet’ any Russian aircraft ‘approaching’ Canada’s airspace.” [1]

MacKay said that “We’re going to protect our sovereign territory,” [2] though transparently the message was directed solely against Russia, which in no manner endangers Canada’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and not the United States, which does.

South Ossetian village shelled

RussiaToday
August 03, 2009

The South Ossetian Ministry of Defense says the village of Otrev, near the South Ossetian capital Tskhinval, was shelled on Monday evening.

S. Ossetia under fire from Georgian territory

Dandelion Salad

RussiaToday
July 30, 2009

The South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali has come under fire. Two shells were reportedly fired from around five kilometers away near the Georgian town of Nikozi during the night.

Dark Days are Here and There’s ‘nary a Whisper By Timothy V. Gatto

By Timothy V. Gatto
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liberalpro.blogspot.com
July 28, 2009

I have said many times that you don’t have to be a genius or really intelligent to figure out what game the political parties and the administration is playing in Washington. The only prerequisite that is needed is for you to pay attention. Keeping your eye on everything that is being said, but more than that… what is being done. We as Americans have entered the nefarious world of “double-speak”. Now, more than ever, the novel by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, should be read by anyone who cares what is happening to this nation. If you have read it once, by all means, read it again.

The Senators, Congressmen and the administration, say one thing, and do the exact opposite. Today I was in a McDonalds with my wife and there was a sign taped to the front counter. On that sign was a proclamation that they = “E-Verify” employees. Being inquisitive in nature, I got down on one knee to see exactly what e-verification was. There, on top of the message, were the logos for Social Security and Homeland Defense. It seems that McDonald’s when processing new hires, sends the applicant’s Social Security number to the Social Security Administration, and just to be sure they are not hiring anyone that is a “terrorist” or on the terrorist watch list, they also send the Social Security number to Homeland Security. It’s a good thing; I don’t want a “terrorist” flipping my burgers!