Yesterday we saw F William Engdahl and George Friedman of Stratfor introduce the background to the Russo-Georgian war, Russia’s motivations and their re-emergence as a major power that has reached the limits of its tolerance for US neocon/imperialist tendencies and the drive to encircle Russia.

Engdahl continues today with the third in the three part series on the geopolitics of the situation in the Caucasus, with a discussion of growing Russian Asian cooperation and its ramifications in international relations as a counterbalance to US power, particularly in light of the continued provoking of Russia and sparking of a new cold war as the US and Poland agree to place a missile base in Poland, a plan that has infuriated Moscow and sparked fears in Europe of a new arms race.

“We have crossed the Rubicon,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, referring to U.S. consent to Poland’s demands after more than 18 months of negotiations.

Washington says the planned system, which is not yet operational, is needed to protect the U.S. and Europe from possible attacks by missile-armed “rogue states'” like Iran. The Kremlin, however, feels it is aimed at Russia’s missile force and warns it will worsen tensions.

U.S. officials also said the timing of the deal was not meant to antagonize Russian leaders at a time when relations already are strained over the recent fighting between Russia and Georgia over the South Ossetia region.

August 15, 2008 – 3 min 44 sec

F William Engdahl: The Geopolitics of Georgia (3 of 3)

Russia-Asia cooperation a nightmare for US hawks

Russia and Georgia swapped accusations today presenting a huge challenge to the EU-sponsored ceasefire agreement designed to end seven days of fighting. The accord had envisioned Russian and Georgian forces returning to their original positions. These conditions have yet to be met. The United Nations estimates 100-thousand people have been uprooted by the fighting, including 12-thousand South Ossetians who fled north into Russia. F William Engdahl believes that “Russia China and the nations of Eurasia are beginning to cooperate politically and economically and this is a nightmare for Washington.”

F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.” Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany.

Continuing the coverage of the Georgia/South Ossetia crisis provided yesterday by F William Engdahl, today Engdahl explains that Russia went into Georgia to essentially deliver a message to America and the world that Russia was not prepared to submit to being encircled by the US and was taking steps to reassert its power on the global stage and limit neocon expansion.

Engdahl also offers the observation that the neocons may unwittingly cause nuclear war by their miscalculations.

Following the Engdahl video we also have an in-depth intelligence background briefing on the situation in Georgia and explaining the re-emergence of Russia as a major world power, reproduced with permission from George Friedman, president of Stratfor, a private intelligence agency founded in 1996 in Austin, Texas that provides intelligence briefings to Fortune 500 companies and international government agencies. Barron’s once referred to Stratfor as “The Shadow CIA”.

August 14, 2008 – 4 min 4 sec

F William Engdahl: The geopolitics of Georgia pt2 – Nuclear war by miscalculation

ENGDAHL: Russia went into Georgia to essentially deliver a message. There are more than 1,000 US military special forces in Georgia doing exercising, training Georgian troops, before Georgia launched the attack on Ossetia on 8 August. There are 1,000 Israeli troops at least, private security firms and military advisors, including advisors who are upgrading the Georgian air force in an installation near Tbilisi. That’s what the Russian airplanes hit, and they essentially made the military strike on South Ossetia militarily impossible by making incursions inside Georgian territory before they announced that they were calling a halt to their military operations.

^{Mark David Chapman was denied parole for the fifth time yesterday. Protecting Lennon’s killer from the rest of us?}

Yesterday we learned from Pepe Escobar, reporting for The Real News, that contrary to most reports in the US media, Georgia had been the original military aggressor in the conflict between Georgia and Russia with it’s ground attacks and aerial bombardment beginning last Thursday of the separatist province of South Ossetia in it’s attempt to forestall any reunion of South and North Ossetia.

Today F William Engdahl summarizes the geopolitics behind the conflict, with the unnerving statement that “This is probably the most unstable area on the planet right now“.

August 13, 2008 – 3 min 8 sec

US attempts to get Georgia into NATO, coupled with its desire to erect an anti-missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech republic would give it first strike capability towards Russia. Moscow sees this as a national security threat against the sovereignty of Russia. Political economist F William Engdahl believes this is the geopolitical endgame being played out in Georgia.

F William Engdahl is an economist and author and the writer of the best selling book “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.” Mr Engdhahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s. Mr. Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of publications including Asia Times Online, Asia, Inc, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine; Freitag and ZeitFragen newspapers in Germany and Switzerland respectively. He is based in Germany.

August 12, 2008 – 6 min 8 sec

Pepe Escobar: Georgia is a strategic client state of the US with close ties to the Bush administration

Georgian troops launched an aerial bombardment and ground attack on its separatist province of South Ossetia on Thursday. South Ossetians want to join up with their ethnic brethren in North Ossetia, an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation. Seeing this as an act of aggression Russia launched bombing raids against Georgia, vowing to defend its citizens. More than half of South Ossetia’s citizens are said to have taken up Moscow’s offer of a Russian passport. Pepe Escobar believes that “the hypocrisy of the international community knows no bounds for if the West forced the issue of Kosovar independence then the independence of South Ossetia should also be on the cards.”

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News Network. He’s been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of Globalistan and also Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad During the Surge both published by Nimble Books in 2007.

From Jeralyn at Talkleft this morning:

I get e-mails and press releases daily from protest groups asking me to “come to Denver” and join them. Here’s the platform of one of them (I’ll tell you which one at the end):

If you think no government should be allowed to do what the Bush regime has done the past 7 years, come to Denver and join others building a movement to that end.

If you are sickened by your government waging an endless, illegitimate, immoral war and occupation in Iraq, with ominous and immediate threats on Iran, and you demand U.S. aggression in the Middle East stop now, come to Denver and say it loudly!

More…

If you are outraged that the war crime of torture is being committed by your government in your name with the Democratic leadership’s involvement, come to Denver to say “We Won’t Live in a Torture State!”

If you don’t buy the justification of your government spying on private calls and mail, no matter which party makes it, come to Denver to repudiate the new FISA law.

If you’re tired of politics as usual selling “change” while Obama refines the Bush program from “faith-based” initiatives to 80,000 troops “stabilizing” Iraq, and refuse to settle for less and less, come to Denver make a moral and political declaration.

The group is World Can’t Wait:

World Can’t Wait, other organizations, and thousands of Denver activists will march against the war & torture, attacks on immigrants & women’s rights; gather in parks with permits, drop banners, and meet the world press with the our demand to bring the Bush program to a halt, no matter who is president!

The press release came from Revolution, “Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA.”

Samadhi and the God-laugh of creation          I found myself one night sitting back with my eyes closed and witnessing what I could never truly describe but what I can best suggest as the dynamic, uncreated, convulsing, primordial energy of the universe; the fiery, orgiastic rippling cauldron of molten prima materia, cascading about within me, and then pouring out into the world as form; and it was upon opening my eyes that I recognized what I had never conceived as plausible- that I was carrying within myself this living, undulating, cosmic clay which I was projecting out and thus manufacturing the world; which is to say, I knew then that …I was God, and that we are all God, effortlessly producing a world yet without a clue of how we are doing it. I was making everything that night. The whole thing. That is, I was making the world, but not the I who the world thought I was, not even the nobody who I was, but the I which lives before the me in all of us; the original self, casting out the glowing, red, swirling energy of creation, out of the core, out of the mind of God, out into the realm of form, figure, and content.          And let me tell you I was laughing. I was laughing a laugh I had never laughed before in my life. I was laughing God’s laugh- the God-laugh which has never known care, nor worry, nor entrapment; the God-laugh which sprays out the universe from the immanent, infinite, incomprehensible bliss of formless consciousness; the great, emancipating God-laugh of hilarious nonexpectation, disbelief, and ambitionless wonder at the impossibility and unavoidable realization that I, God, was creating the miracle of creation.          I had come to exist in the non-existent space. An infinite bridge across a finite chasm. A flame within an inferno. A drop inside the storm.          I was in the storm. I was the storm. And everything else sped up and catapulted through the living stasis of my soul. It was an exhilarating, innocent act of creation; I gave ground in the hollow of my wonder and the world grew through that infinite hole. The unworldly, horrible stillness in which I basked seemed impossibly to produce the song of everything else. How is that possible I haven’t a clue. Not one.          I can only presume that the whole shmeer about becoming what you are, or what you could be- but as yet you never have been- eventually comes right back to where it started- to you. But when it gets there- and let me tell you it gets there, with all the fire and brimstone of your day- there is no ‘you’ left to conceive of it. Because, instead, you conceive it, immaculately conceive it.          That night the prisoner and the warden had changed places. Good and Evil fused into one. And God leapt up for joy inside of me.          The primitive understandings which had so embalmed me all my terrible and fabulous life instantly vaporized away, and the Creator’s eyes …looked through me. The pulsing, primal, fluid medium flowed out of me, I did not know what I was making, nor how I was doing it, but to be sure it was me.          When finally you encounter the Great Soul, you will not hesitate to call it I. You are the source of all things. All of it. Like the root-stock of a great underground rhizome, when you stick your head finally out of the ether, whoever is around you …is you. from IN AND OF, by Jack Haas

Renowned (and reviled by some) film maker Michael Moore has written a new book to be released September 01 this year: “Mikes Election Guide 2008” in which he offers up a smorgasborg of helpful tips and hints that the Democrats and Barack Obama can easily use to live up to the long history and promise of the Democratic Party and blow the election again for themselves this year.

With a hat tip to T. Christopher Kelly who blogs at TalkLeft as TChris, here’s the problem to be dealt with this year:

Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it. And they don’t just simply “blow it” – they blow it especially when the electorate seems desperate to give it to them.

So. How to do it bigger and better than ever before this year?

Well, Good old Mike has published a “preview” of his new book in an edited extract from Mike’s Election Guide published in todays Guardian.

Here’s a few choice quotes, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy the entire article.

From The Guardian, here’s How to blow it

It’s the most winnable presidential election in American history – but the Democrats are old hands at losing. Michael Moore offers some helpful hints on how they might gift it all to the Republicans.

“Let’s snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

“We never met an election we’d like to win.”

“Why get elected when you can be defeated!”

Yesterday we saw, against the backdrop of war between Russian and Georgia over Ossetia, The Real News discussing the decision by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to step down amid corruption allegations and the coming contest in Israel between the two major contenders to replace Olmert as head of the Kadima party; frontrunner Tzipi Livni, a former Mossad operative and current Foreign Minister, and her main rival Shaul Mofaz, a hawkish former general and current Transportation Minister, and whether the next Israeli leader will order an attack on Iran.

Today, The Real News presents, from American News Project:

Washington’s neocons are alive and well, advising both John McCain and President Bush. Now many are saying Bush should permit Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities after Election Day before the new president takes office. ANP investigates as we chase down John Bolton, Bill Kristol and Frank Gaffney to see how far ahead these hawks are thinking. And a new report says the whole plan could backfire.

August 9, 2008 – 8 min 16 sec

Operation Comeback

November 1, 2006

by Joshua Muravchik

American Enterprise Institute (AEI.org)

TO: My Fellow Neoconservatives
FROM: Joshua Muravchik

RE: How to Save the Neocons

UPDATE from CBS/AP: Georgia Says Russian Attacks Continue

Fighting reportedly raged well into the night with Georgia’s interior ministry saying early Saturday that warplanes attacked three Georgian military bases and key facilities for shipping oil to the West.

The fighting, which devastated the capital of Tskhinvali, threatened to ignite a wider war between Georgia and Russia, and escalate tensions between Moscow and Washington. Georgia said it was forced to launch the assault because of rebel attacks; the separatists alleged Georgia violated a cease-fire.

“I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars,” said Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, who had fled with her family to Dzhava, a village near the border with Russia. “It’s impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged.”

The fighting broke out as much of the world’s attention was focused on the start of the Olympic Games and many leaders, including Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Bush, were in Beijing.

6:50 PM PST NOTE & CORRECTION – Rice is NOT in Georgia (that is a story from July)

The Associated Press is reporting that:

Not just troops–heavily armed regular Russian Army forces. You don’t quell riots and unrest with Self-propelled artillery.

BBC: Russian tanks enter South Ossetia:

And the region is in turmoil.

Russian authorities said several of its peacekeepers died in a Georgian attack in South Ossetia, which borders Russia and has strong ties to its vast northern neighbor, and they vowed not to leave Russian citizens in the territory unprotected.

“The Georgian leadership has launched a dirty adventure,” a statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Friday. “We will not leave our peacekeepers and Russian citizens unprotected.”

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Georgia started the fighting and warned that Russia would respond to their actions.

“Heavy weapons and artillery have been sent there, and tanks have been added. Deaths and injuries have been reported, including among Russian peacekeepers,” Putin said in comments carried Friday by Russia’s Interfax news agency.

“It’s all very sad and alarming. And, of course, there will be a response.”

Earlier Friday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said in a televised statement that Russian aircraft bombed several Georgian villages and other civilian facilities.

We will watch what happens through the day and the weekend–this could end up being the biggest story of the month, Olympics notwithstanding.

August 08, 2008 – 5 min 38 sec

The decision by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to step down amid corruption allegations has left many questions in Israel and in the region. There are two main contenders to replace Olmert as leader of the Kadima party.

The frontrunner Tzipi Livni, is a former Mossad operative and current Foreign Minister. She was a protégé of Ariel Sharon in the Likud and jumped with him to Kadima when it was formed. Her main Kadima rival is Shaul Mofaz, a hawkish former general and current Transportation Minister.

Warning: This is a depressing essay. If you find reality offensive in nature, or simply do not wish to be exposed to it, I advise you to read the other fine essays here at Docudharma instead of this one.

I have a habit of roaming the net soaking up information and opinions like a sponge. It often leads me to learn things that if repeated tend to sound very depressing and and to attract the criticism of some who seem to prefer “hope” to reality.

The past eight years have seen a relentless slide towards mind control by mainstream media and an obviously fascist government apparatus constructed by the Bush administration accompanied by the denial and burial of information by those many people hope would reverse these processes, the democratic congress and a probable democratic president after January 2009.

Reality seems to be on the defensive, and when people need hope more than anything else they seem to be willing to suspend rational judgment and curiosity in favor of hoping against all reason.

This morning I ran across an article that I’ll reproduce in full here because I think it contains some very sound information, opinion and analysis.

Written by editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report: The journal of African American political thought and action, here is…

Freedom Rider: Obama Pardons Bush

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

July 30, 2008

There will be no need for George Bush to pardon himself and his fellow criminals. Barack Obama promises to let the “W Gang” off, scott-free, when he takes over the White House. Impeachment? Heavens, no! “That is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances,” says Obama, apparently in the belief that Bush’s behavior has been routine for an American president. Obama surrogates say bipartisanship should decide the question of investigating current and past presidents. In other words, Obama will let the Republicans decide if Bush gets away with murder. “So Bush crimes will be buried by a Democrat.”

^{article continues on the flip}