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Where are the peace demonstrators?
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I was wondering has any group member heard of any of the so called peace movements marching or demonstrating against what Russia is doing in Georgia?
Has there been any picketing of any Russian embassy anywhere in the world?
There have been demonstrations and protests in Europe (see here). Further, at least
one blogger has linked to reports and photos of protests by members of the local Georgian communities in Seattle, outside the United Nations in New York, and outside San Fransisco's Russian consulate; but also notes the absence of groups like International A.N.S.W.E.R. and Code Pink, including an except from a (rather dismissive) post on Code Pink's blog entitled "Yes, We'll Get Right On That": Quote: Newsflash to Ledeen and all the other critics of Code Pink: we are not the sole arbiters of peace, nor must we act or even have an opinion when ever aSo don't expect anything from those groups (I guess if it's not U.S. government action being protested, they're not interested). --The Twisted One "If you wish to converse with me, define your terms." --Voltaire 
Thanks. Well I think we pretty much have our answer (as if it wasn't already known) as to whether International A.N.S.W.E.R. and Code Pink are anti-war or
just anti-US. Quote: Logan Darklighter wrote: Or its possible they are anti-US war. You know, like they say they are, right in the quote. ------------------ Epsilon If you don't protest all the problems in the world you lose all your moral authority! So nyeah! 
C'm'on, you needed to be told this? I mean, "Code Pink" -- PinkCo -- Pinko. They hang it right out there in your
faces, people. But seriously, demonstrators will only demonstrate somewhere they think they can, a) be listened to, and, most important, b) not be machine-gunned. ----- Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
I was starting to wonder if there were any demonstrations at all, they sure didn't seem to be making local or national news and that is very very worrying.
I'd been glancing at all the news broadcast keeping an eye out for any escalation of the war and no peace demonstrations seemed to be breaking through the reports of the war, reports on the olympics and the noise of other events. Peace demonstrations might not have a direct effect on russia's leaders, but russia's leaders know that with extremely rare exceptions the majority of democratically elected leaders slavishly follow the "herd" when it comes to there decisions and if it doesn't look like the "herd" is stirred up then ultimately the politicians running a nation won't be stirred up. If there are no news worthy demonstrations especially in Europe then russia's leaders and military are the type of people to assume they can take the next step. Right now russia is in roughly the same position both economically, militarily and socially that Germany was in when Hitler started world war II and like then it almost certainly looks like the world is more interested in other things like the olympics in China or peace at any price. I have to give russia's leaders credit the planning, timing and execution so far has been nearly perfect and the leaders of Georgia played right into thier hands. China's preoccupied with the olympics and presenting a carefully crafted facade to her people and the world and to that end her peoples energy, her spies, military and police forces have been focused away from external events especially the russian borders toward internal problems and events. America is preoccupied with trying to close down a mostly successful war that has never the less been made very unpopular among many American citizens and around the world. Now add in the fact that America is heading into an presidential election where the retiring president is currently being demonized, vilified and accused of all sorts of actions by a significant percentage of the American population and you have a nation who's leaders are almost certainly paralyzed. howard melton God bless  Quote:I was starting to wonder if there were any demonstrations at all, they sure didn't seem to be making local or national news and that is very very worrying.We must be listening to/watching different news outlets, because I've been hearing about the odd protest since the beginning of the invasion. Not much coverage, but coverage nonetheless. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
So, just to make it clear, who are you supposed to be protesting against? Georgia, for invading South Ossetia? Or Russia, for invading Georgia in response?
It's not like this was a clear-cut case of one state invading another without casus belli, unlike certain other conflicts going on at this point. So, who's the bad guy they're supposed to be vilifying? It's hard to go "THEY'RE BOTH BAD!"; it kind of ruins the fun of the protest. Incidentally, America is paralysed in good part because the majority of her ground force projection capabilities are tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus rendering her essentially impotent to do anything but ineffectually protest Russia's crushing of a US client state.
I mostly pay attention to the big five 3 letter news services you know ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC followed by Local channels and a scattering of Blog or News
posting sites. Usually I do very quick scans of the triple letter webpage headlines and randomly drop in on their news video feeds when available. As far as protesting goes I'd say they need to protest against Russia's actions and escalation by moving ground forces out of S Ossetia into Georgia itself. Yes Georgia made an unethical decision to send troops into the break away area, but it's was also an extremely foolish decision because of the amount of activity Russia had both within the break away area and just across the border within Russia itself. Russia's movement of tanks and troops straight through the break away area into Georgia is a clear sign she has bigger plans for Georgia than to simply smashing her military and teaching her a lesson. It was fairly obvious before and is now a certainty that russia was trying to get a military reaction out of Georgia and they played right into thier hands. Those tanks and men rolling across Georgia require a large logistic tail, a tail that almost certainly required months to get into place in preparation for this attack. I wouldn't be surprises if by the time the russian militery leaves Georgia that it will be a nation in name only with leaders and laws that fulfill what russia's leaders want. A captured territory returned to much the same condition it was in during the days of the USSR. I don't know if I agree with your reasoning about America being paralyzed because of the large concentration of armed forces being in Iraq. I'll have to think about that for awhile. I can come up with arguments on both sides of it being a advantage and disadvantage for any type of military reaction. howard melton God bless
Okay, having been into Vladivostok recently on a Politically driven port visit, I can easily tell you why we aren't doing anything about this and the
wisdom behind it as well. The simple fact of the matter is that we do not want our political relations to sour any further with Russia at all, so interfering with this is a big bad no-no, even if Georgia is a client-state of the US. Reasons: 1) He can't stay in there forever! It's pretty well known, all around the world and even in Russia herself, that nobody really likes Vladamir von Putin. He brings with him too many echoes of the old regime. However, Mother Russia is now a democratic government and it will only be a matter of time before Putin must yeild to another leader. 2) We've been here before. The last thing that I think anyone wants is another cold war with a country whose industrial capabilities can easily keep up with, or even outpace our own. 3) United we stand. As much as we dislike their current leader, we need Russia's help to maintain good political standing with Asia. Russia has been warming up to China lately and we would be madmen to think it would be a good idea to go pissing with a heavily industrialized nation that can call upon another nation that is equally industrialized and has some serious manpower to throw away at you. We need both Russia and China as allies. And there you have it. As sad and wrong as it is, we honestly cannot do anything without making the other two major super-powers in the world our enemies. It would be suicide to do so, especially if some kind of deal was cut with the Arabs to continue throttling our oil supply. Just another reason why we should be striving for energy independence - preferably ecologically sound energy independance.
Umm, Putin isn't in charge anymore. On paper, which is as good as it gets until he's dead. However, it is flatly incorrect to say nobody in Russia likes him; overall, they like him a hell of a lot. He's damn close to an object of worship to a significant chunk of the Russian population.
I'd also dispute that Russia's industrial capacity can outpace the US. Even at their best (and with significantly more territory) they couldn't do that; there's not much chance of Russia returning to superpower status soon, but what they are doing is returning to Great Power status and regional hegemon; in honesty, that's been the norm for a long time and is likely to continue to be, with the situation since the fall of the SU more an aberration than any new status quo. As for protesting, the fact remains that Georgia was the unquestioned aggressor in the conflict and that they killed Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. They are not good guys, and if the Russians let them walk into a trap, it's a trap they walked into with eyes open (since as you say, it would be utterly impossible for the US not to know of Russia's military buildup in the region, and the Georgians as an American ally would therefore also know of it). Georgia probably hoped to do a little better on the ground, or perhaps they didn't, since their only real hope in this situation (unless they had delusional ideas about the incompetence of the Russians) is to get world opinion and American might on their side and win in the long-term by forcing the Russians to back down. The Russians, meanwhile, rely on the fact they were rightly confident they could stomp Georgia (an important thing for the prestige of the Russian military after the dragging through the mud its good name took since the fall of the SU) and the fact that America is powerless to send enough men and material in to prop up Georgia and Europe is impotent as long as they rely on Russian energy exports. They are also relying on the precedent the West set in Kosovo to say that Georgia is just as divisible as Serbia was. There is also the rather obvious fact that Georgia has been trying to get in NATO, which is a strategically unacceptable situation for Russia and one they can almost not help but take strong measures against, much like the Ukraine. All of this doesn't answer the basic question - which side are you supposed to be cheering for? Are we supposed to protest that one state thuggishly invaded a breakaway portion, killed soldiers of another state that were guarding same, and then promptly got their asses stomped in a retaliatory strike? Russia won't annex Georgia; that sort of thing just isn't done anymore. They've already demanded the resignation of their leader and will presumably present South Ossetia's Russian-sponsored independence as a fait accompli. That isn't quite making Georgia a Russian client state - what it is is a message of "being buddies with the Americans will not protect you". Unless they can mobilise a widespread condemnation of Russia's actions and sanctions with real teeth (which is unlikely to happen for the reasons above), Georgia will have to accept that reality - and will likely cut a deal that means they shut up about NATO in exchange for being left alone. They gambled; they lost. It happens in geopolitics. Ultimately, I'm not sure what anybody would be protesting with the situation as it currently is. "Russia did it; therefore it's evil" seems to be a widespread belief which I no more accept than I do "America did it; therefore it's evil".
Stuck in Southeast Asia (and not even the good parts) for a good long while now and I absolutely missed the beginnings of this war, DESPITE following it two
years back! Argh! Anyway, it certainly seems like Genocide is the new WMD and that's terrible. Border disputes, ethnic migrations, and OIL are the heart of this and seemingly every other conflict that's going on today. Was South Ossetia really the target of "genocide" by the Georgian government? Part of me thinks that it doesn't really matter, as that's not the reason why Russia is invading and supporting the so-called local militias. And what support Georgia has outside it borders has nothing (well, very little) to do with Georgia itself. It's all about that damn pipeline. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see the upcoming NATO talks about inclusion of Georgia into the Alliance. Will the over-stretched, understaffed and tepidly supported military beuracracy accept a currently-under-attack nation, even if it means actually fulfilling its original mandate of kicking commie pinko scum off their godless patch? Prooooobably not. But hey, maybe I'll be surprised. What this further demonstrates, however, is that because of the Axis of Evil, an idea that has more to do with Tom Clancy-esque reductionist jingoism than reality, the United States is too distracted to actually deal with international terrorism as well as the diplomatic kerfuffles that too quickly turn into South Ossetia and Southern Lebanon (and Haiti, and Darfur, and Kenya and Zimbabwe and even goddamn Pakistan and . . . and . . . and. . .) -murmur
Well, I'm gonna go with a bit of what both Murmur and Ayiekie said. Georgia whacked the Russian peace-keeping soldiers, which was wrong no matter how thin
you slice that particular piece of bologna. They deserve to have their asses handed to them. Whether it was a ploy on Russia's part to secure themselves a pipeline... Well, we can't really say now, can we? If it was, then it was a brilliantly executed manuever of the order of Magnificent Bastardism - a text-book example, even! My hat's off to them. It was a far less ham-handed move than we ourselves made in the Middle East. *Casts sideways glare at Dubbya.* Was it wrong to sacrifice troops in order to obtain this goal? Yes, I wouldn't deny that, but you have to admit that booting out a regime that leaves much to be desired is a good thing in and of itself. In essence, Russia is just doing what we ourselves have been doing... Except unlike us they have a legitimate excuse. Right or Wrong? Can't really say. I'm neither Russian nor Georgian so it's a really tough call to make. |
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