As of 0855 GMT Tuesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered a halt to Russian operations in Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This is according to the Russian press agency Interfax. Hürriyet reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attempt to cement a cease-fire.
“On the basis of your report, I have taken the decision to bring to an end the operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace,” Medvedev told Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, according to a Kremlin spokesman.
The ceasefire proposal is apparently the one drawn up by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was signed yesterday by Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili.
Not that this will return the region to normal. NATO’s eastward expansion has now finished, and American promises of friendship are not worth the paper they’re written on. As the Georgians have complained, why did the help the U.S. in Iraq if Washington turns its back on them when they come under attack? (That it appears that Saakashvili walked into a trap set by Russia is almost beside the point.) And could President Bush have appeared less concerned as he yukked it up with volleyball players in Beijing?
The world has entered a both a new period, but one that looks very familiar to those of us who remember the Cold War.
I like your point of view on this conflict, mainly because the Iraq “war” started as a conflict as well (what goes around comes around… unless you’re in America, eh?) and this could turn out to be something way greater than anticipated. Way to present the facts with just enough slant to keep me well entertained. Thank you.
Liberation, the French socialist newspaper, has a smug cartoon showing George Bush begging on the street: “Can you spare a trillion?” asks the American president.
Americans would gladly give up their liberties to anyone who could guarantee a rising housing market
The US$700 billion Paulson plan is barely three days old. Although he’s only asked for $700 billion up-front to deal with the bad assets, the Paulson plan could eventually require as much as $2 to $3 trillion in new Treasury money to buy asset-backed securities. Of course Wall Street will only want to get rid of the worst paper and keep the best for itself.
America is in a period of imperial decline. Its economy is slipping. It citizens are getting poorer, both absolutely…and relative to the rest of the world. The “smart” thing to do would be to hunker down, cut costs, bring troops home, reduce Medicare and Medicaid, raise interest rates, encourage saving and give the country time to get back on its feet economically…so it could enjoy its relative decline with good grace.
But that’s not the way history works. Did Alexander stop at the Hellespont? Did Napoleon stop at the Rhine? Did Hitler stop at the Oder? George Bush I stopped at the border of Iraq. But George W. Bush, under the sway of the neocons, kept going. His mission seemingly: to destroy the U.S. empire. Where did he go wrong? The question has probably crossed his mind.
Perhaps when he mounted the scaffold on January 21, 1793, it also crossed the mind of King Louis 16th of France. The Bourbons had been the most successful family in Europe. They had ruled Europe’s biggest and richest country since Henry IV. And now they were on thrones all over Europe. But in the language of the City, Louis 16th blew himself up. He was supposed to be an absolute monarch. Ah…there was the dynamite! He believed it. He had surrounded the Parliament with troops and turned the country against him. And now, he had absolutely no control over anything. Not even the power to save his own skin.
“Sire, you have committed something worse than a crime; you have committed an error…” Talleyrand might have told him. Poor Louis! He already had the bag over his head. And the blade at his neck. He must have felt like the dumbest man in France.
There was no one there to bail out Louis when he needed it. France was not too big to fail; it was too big to bail out. And everything had been going so well! When Jacques Turgot was Controller-General, he was getting rid of the internal customs barriers, lifting price controls, abolishing the trade guilds and the corvee (the system of forced labor used to build roads). The political system was being reformed too - evolving towards a parliamentary democracy.
But along came those damn Americans to stir up trouble. They sucked France into their war with Britain. France supplied money, materiel and troops - landing 5,000 soldiers in Rhode Island and ultimately winning the war by blockading Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.
“The first shot will drive the state to bankruptcy,” Turgot warned the king. He was right. By 1786, the French were in desperate straits, with half the population of Paris unemployed and a national debt equal to 80% of GDP. The French were counting on the Americans to begin repaying their $7 million in loans, but the United States was broke too. And soon, French credit was so bad, the king could no longer borrow from the moneylenders in Amsterdam nor even from his own creditors in Paris. Having borrowed too much, Louis no longer had any room to maneuver. All he could do was to march up the scaffold steps to a well deserved fate like a real monarch…The French knew how to deal with despots. The time is fast approaching when America must deal with their own.
The long suffering American taxpayer might well ask of the French…
“Brother ,can you spare a guillotine?”
“THERE’S A HANDOUT ON PANHANDLE HILL”
So ran the words of the chorus of the old Danny Kaye & Sy Oliver Orchestra recording of the Handout Song that I recall from my childhood as a kid in elementary school during the 1940’s.
At the time I wondered just where in hell was Panhandle Hill? Ah, somewhere in the Texas Panhandle, I naively concluded. Boy, how wrong I was. At last, the reality has finally hit home in the last few days as I behold that Gordon Gecko is alive and well still uttering words to the effect that “Greed is good” and holding out his begging bowl saying “Buddy can you spare a trillion or two?”
Yeah folks, Panhandle Hill is located right in Washington DC.
Hmmm. Nice try, but if you add up the difference between the actual bank debt and current housing value, I think you will find that it is more likely Paulson is going to require between $5 trillion and $6 trillion. Of course as property values continue to plummet this figure is continually blowing out.
$700 billion only gets Paulson’s foot in the door. Look forward folks, to years of deprivation,penury and destitution. Oh yeah, on your way to the soup kitchen, thank the Bushies.
Less than a month to the Presidential vote. Voters might care to first cast their eye over this candidates “heroic” naval record, then cast their ballot. Expect more of this once he is in office. Paste the link below into address bar for details.
Georgia is not worth starting WW3 over, I think if America had been hostile towards russia things would have gone from shit to shitter.
NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK IN NEW YORK RUNS OUT OF DIGITS
The national debt of the United States now stands in excess of $10.2 Trillion dollars. (For the financially challenged reader, that is money owed by the US government to foreign nations.)
The folks who set up the clock weren’t able to forsee the profligate extravagance of the current Administration so that the dollar sign has had to be omitted to allow the full amount to be shown. This may of course be comforting to the casual observer.
Looks like we are heading towards Zimbabwe status folks. No cigar for guessing who got away with the cash. Yeah, our great dual citizens.