Reporter Géorgienne Touchée par une Balle en Direct Durant les Combats

This is the French translation of the Georgian Reporter Hit by Live Fire During Battle post by ultra-translator Natalie from France.

Charmante vidéo. Récemment durant la courte guerre en Ossétie du Sud, les troupes géorgiennes ont vaincu les rebelles d'Ossétie du Sud et les forces russes; une femme reporter géorgienne qui tournait depuis le théâtre des opérations à Gori, où la bataille faisait rage, a été touchée à la main par une balle ou un autre projectile. La caméra part en vrille dès que les assistants la poussent brusquement dans le fourgon pour l'amener à l’hôpital.

Durant tout ce temps elle continue de faire son reportage. Quelle dévotion pour son métier!

Georgian Reporter Hit by Live Fire During Battle

French translation (en Français).

Pretty amazing video. During the brief war over South Ossetia recently in which Georgian troops battled South Ossetian rebels and Russian forces, a female Georgian reporter reporting from the scene of Gori, where much fighting took place, is hit in the hand either by by a bullet or by shrapnel. The camera goes wild as helpers bundle her into a van to take her to the hospital.

Through it all, she keeps on reporting! That's some real dedication.

Great Article on Abkhazia

Unbelievable. The London Review of Books publishes an excellent piece by Neal Ascherson on Abkhazia advocating independence for that nation*.

The Abkhazians and South Ossetians followed the post-colonial model of separatism. A colony or de facto colony gains its independence (in this case, we are replacing the USSR's republics with colonies, which is problematic, but the model works the same way).

As soon as independence is declared, the new nation attempts a nation-building exercise and says that it is a coherent whole, typically without consulting the parts of its own body politic.

There are parts of the new nation that may have desired independence from the colony or larger whole (But maybe not; note that Abkhazians so feared Georgian ultranationalism that they voted to retain the USSR.).

Anyway, as soon as the new nation is declared, separatists emerge and announce that they are not part of this new nation, which has barely existed in history anyway, and hence has little to no legitimacy in terms of "territorial integrity".

The former ferocious independence fighters quickly transform into fascist-like ultranationalists safeguarding the fake sacrosanct borders of the new nation with no historical existence.

In most cases, we progressives need to side with those who chose to break away from the very start.

It is little known, but this is the typical model for separatism in the world today.

This is the model that is operative in multiple separatist conflicts in Burma, India, Pakistan, China, Sudan, Angola, Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Russia, Georgia, Moldova, and any number of other places. These movements never entered into a national compact upon decolonization. They were fighting from Day One.

The article notes that while the South Ossetians may well be comfortable joining Russia, the Abkhazians are not. The Abkhazians want an independent state and have had a de facto one for about 16 years now, but no one wants to give them one. Why not? Because Russia supports the Abkhazians. Russia opposed the Kosovars, so the West lunged to support the Albanians of Kosovo, the only reason being "screw Russia".

As Georgia is little more than a US (and partially, EU) vassal state, it figures that neo-imperialism in its EU and NATO form are backing up this state's fake claim to territorial integrity. The article makes clear that incorporating Abkhazia into Georgia at this late date is a lost cause.

Neither are South Ossetia and Abkhazia being colonized by Russia, which is how the idiot Western press puts it. Neither place wants any part of Georgia, and that's that.

For the moment, they have entered into a completely free marriage of sorts with Russia. Free associational agreements are never examples of colonialism, neo-colonialism or imperialism. They are simply alliances among free actors, states in this case.

This was the error in the ridiculous Cold War model that saw a free and independent Cuba as a colony of some imperialist (to US Cold Warriors) or social imperialist (to silly Maoists) USSR. Cuba was free to leave at any time, and if anyone was exploiting anyone, Cuba (the "colony") was making out a lot better than the "colonizer", the USSR.

Colonialism has always been all about the loot, putting the conceit of the British-inspired White man's burden self-serving model aside for the moment. When the colony is getting the meaty end of the deal, and there is no exploitation of the colony and no coercion by the colonizer, there can be no colonialism or imperialism. Real simple.

The article discusses a particularly idiotic instance of Cold War insanity. Poland grabbed quite a bit of Germany after WW2, to the approval of a vengeful West, who also donated bits of Germany to other states. Germany is lucky to have survived at all. Germans were ethnically cleansed from Poland, and many never lived to tell about it. All in all, it is pretty sordid stuff, but paybacks are a bitch, as they say on the street.

German revanchism would seem to be the rallying cry of the very Nazi sympathizers and German nationalists that had been smashed into discredit by the war. So who would think that as soon as Poland fell into the Warsaw Pact, the West would suddenly throw all its weight behind a German nationalist-revanchist movement with Nazi roots?

Yes, the same West that delightfully chopped up Germany and donated hunks to Poland and twiddled thumbs while 100,000's of German Poles died in the process, now suddenly decided that the evisceration of Germany and donor operation to Poland was an outrage verging on casus belli for war. Insane? Of course. Realpolitik? You got it.

For decades, the West de facto sided with German neo-Nazism and agitated for a return of Pomerania et al to Germany. Willy Brandt finally put an end to this nonsense once and for all in 1971.

The West's embrace of Georgian fascist-like ultranationalism falls into this same quicksand of folly.

Recognize Abkhazia.

*The article downplays the differences between the Mingrelian - Georgian languages and the Abkhazian language, describing them only as mutually unintelligible. Mingrelian and Georgian are related and are members of the same family, but they can't understand each other at all, as Mingrelian and Georgian split 3000 years ago. Beria, Stalin's famous assassin, was a Mingrelian speaker, while Stalin himself spoke Georgian.

The family is known as Kartvelian and has no known relatives. Abkhazian, on the other hand, is Northwest Caucasian. Northwest Caucasian also has no known relatives, but I suspect a relationship at least with Basque and Yeniseien, as I did quite a bit of research on that a while back.

Despite living in close proximity to each other for centuries, Abkhazian is as different from Georgian - Mingrelian as English is from Chinese. And Mingrelian - Georgian and Abkhazian are as different from Turkish, Russian and Arabic (three closely neighboring languages) as English is to Chinese.

Georgian and Mingrelian are written in the very strange Georgian script. Here is an example of it, in this case Mingrelian. Kudos to any reader who can actually read this stuff:

რუსეთ რე ქიანა ბჟადალ ევროპას დო ჩრდილოეთ აზიას. რუსეთ ფართობით მსოფლიოშ უდიდაშ ქიანა რე. ცხოურენს კოჩი. რუსეთც გეშართუნს დიდ გეოგრაფიულ რეგიონეფ: ბჟაიოლ ევროპაშ ხორგული, ბჟადალ ციმბირიშ რზენი, ცენტრალურ ციმბირიშ ნარაზენი. ტერიტორიაშ თია უკებუ გვალამი რეგიონემც: ალტაი, ჩრდილოეთ კავკაცია, კოლიმა, საინი, ურალი. უმაღალაშ კოკი რე იალბუზ

People From the Caucasus are Blacks?

Take a lot at these "Black" and "non-White" Chechen kids in Jordan. Boy, they sure look pretty darn White to me! Especially that girl with the dark red hair and the turquoise eyes. Wasn't that one of Hitler's favorite combinations? White Power boneheads. These people would probably be considered to be members of the Balkano-Caucasian race*. In this group, there are many with fair skin, light eyes and a lot of body hair.

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated August 24:

This will go along with another post I wrote along the same lines, Are Dagestanis and Tajiks White?. The conclusion of that post was, yes, they are White. The reason it is even an issue is that Russians insist that the people of the Caucasus are "Blacks" and "non-Whites".

It seems that quite a few White nationalists also deny that Armenians, Georgians, Dagestanis, Azerbaijanis, Chechens and other Caucasian peoples are White. White in this case will refer to peoples having a phenotype that is not only Caucasoid but also resembles European Caucasoids.

As you can see in this neat video of cute little Chechen kids shot in Jordan. There is a large Chechen and Circassian population in Jordan dating back to the imperial wars of conquest that Russia waged on the Caucasus from 1806-1863.

Having looked at quite a few pictures of people from the Caucasus, I think that there is a distinctive phenotype there. Some say that the people of the Caucasus are the only Whites or Caucasians who should be considered "pure" Caucasians, as opposed to any mongrelized Europeans, although the whole concept of pure races and mongrelized races is pretty ridiculous.

More "non-Whites" or "Blacks" or whatever. This is a photo from a law firm in Georgia. This could be a photo of any American law firm. There does seem to be a bit of a Georgian phenotype. There are suggestions that the people of the Caucasus are the "purest" Euro-Caucasians of them all, though the whole notion is pretty silly.

On the other hand, it is thought that the Caucasoid race did begin somewhere around this region, and the Middle East, the Caucasus, India and North Africa have been among the most important regions in incubating and developing of the proto-Caucasians.

Georgians are probably members of the West-Caucasian type of the Balkano-Caucasian race. They are characterized by an above-average stature, a slight build, relatively light skin, sharp features and dark eyes.


A pretty typical Dagestani phenotype in this young girl. Notice the women with the head coverings. As you can see, these folks are obviously non-Whites. Snark. Dagestanis are part of the Caucasian division of the Balkano-Caucasian Race*.

This race is highly variable and varies among ethnic groups, but its principal features are a massive skull, medium height and relatively light skin. In the Bagulals, it is characterized by comparatively dark pigmentation, a massive broad face and a round skull and large stature. The Udis have massive skulls and relatively light skin.

The Tindis are more related to the Caspian Race, with a smaller skull and darker features. In the Tabasarans, a thin face is present. The Khinalugs have hooked noses like Jews and Arabs. The Archis have an aquiline nose, a high forehead and short stature.


A Dagestani girl with a possibly Iranian appearance. The people of the Caucasus are extremely diverse genetically, with as great a distance between small groups as between large groups around the world. They may have achieved this high rate of differentiation due to the high peaks which allowed people to remain in their valleys, interact and breed little with outsiders and cultivate strange and wildly divergent languages.

Genetically, they are Caucasians, but they are apart from most Europeans. But then so are Basques and Sardinians. There is a Chechen girl in the video above who has a similar phenotype.


Here are some Azerbaijani "non-White" kids. There are also some Dravidian influences in Azerbaijan and some Azeris do look like East Indians. This link is apparently due to trade as some Pakistanis have Azeri relatives. There are links between Persians and East Indians going way back.


Azerbaijani kids. The blonde and probably blue-eyed kids look like they could be Norwegians. The general consensus is that Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan are not a Turkic people. Instead, they are a people of the Caucasus, like Georgians or Armenians, who converted to Islam and adopted a Turkic tongue. The mechanism is unknown, but possibly they were conquered by a Turkic people. They may have been Christians before this conquest. Azerbaijanis are as White as you can get.


More very White-looking Azerbaijanis from their peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. They look like British, Americans, or Danes.


Some Azerbaijanis, probably at some sort of a town meeting. This is a secular Shia Muslim society, but the women generally cover their hair.

Some of the most infamous students of race, in particular the Caucasoid Race, especially the White or European branch of it, were the Nazis. The Nazis were actually incredible in this regard. Germans are pretty obsessive and studious about most things, and they love to write up ponderous, footnoted essays on everything around them. The Nazis were no different.

The were some of the most horrible murderers in history, but they were particular about who they killed. They were even particular about Jews. Their beef was not with the Jewish religion - the Nazi beef with the Jews had to do with race. All of the things that Nazis disliked about Jews were said to be genetically coded into the Jewish genome, and the Jews who they really hated with the Ashkenazim.

For instance, when the Nazis moved into the Caucasus and the Crimea from Spring to September of 1944, they ran into Mountain Jews (Jews of the Caucasus), the Karaites (a split-off sect from Judaism, and the Krymchaks of the Crimea.

The Krymchaks were determined to be Jews by Himmler himself and ordered destroyed, although they were generally considered to be non-Ashkenazi Jews.

The Karaites were considered to be racially Tatars, descended from the famous Jews of the Khazar Kingdom, and hence were ordered to be saved. However, there was some confusion, and some were killed.

Amazingly, the Einsatzgruppen themselves (the fanatical murderers of lore) actually conducted research studies into the Karaites when they showed up in the Crimea to determine if they should be killed or not. They also sent requests back to Germany for guidance on whether or not to kill the Karaites.

The Karaites themselves petitioned to the Nazis that they were not Jews, and a number even went to work for the Nazis. 400-500 even fought in the German Army.

In Crimea and Stavropol, communities of Mountain Jews were destroyed.

However, when the Nazis conquered part of the Caucasus from August to October 1944, in particular the towns of Mozdok and Nalchik, the Mountain Jews there were largely spared. There was a controversy in the party over whether or not they were really Jews. The Nazi Party said they were, but German specialists in Oriental Studies said they were racially Iranians. Here is a photo of the beautiful Sarit Hadad, a Mountain Jew whose parents moved to Israel. She's a very famous singer in Israel.

Incredibly, the Einsatzgruppen had scholars in its ranks who went into the homes of these Mountain Jews to conduct studies on whether to kill them or not! This controversy was not settled by the time that the Nazis were driven out in early 1943.

It is interesting that in general, the Nazis cared much more about the racial stock of a given Jewish group than about whatever strange brand of Judaism they practiced. A good overview of this strange and complex situation is here in a piece by Kiril Feferman.

Nazi racial scholars working at various institutes set up for the study of race in Germany (!) and within the Nazi Party also studied the people of the Caucasus. It is not known what they determined, but apparently the people of the Caucasus were considered non-Slavs and a good racial stock. At any rate, very large numbers of people in the Caucasus went over to the Nazis during World War 2.

There is current anti-Communist revisionist thinking that says that hardly any Caucasians went over, but this is not the case. Many people in this region had long wanted to be free of the Orthodox Slavic Russians, and the Nazis played up this fear by offering them the promise of independence.

At the time of the Russian invasion, Stalin put almost the entire population of Chechnya and Ingushetia on board trains for Siberia because he feared that they would cooperate with the Nazis. The local Chechen and Ingush governments had in fact welcomed the Nazis and said that they would collaborate with them.

These deportations were horrible, and it is said that when they were returned to the Caucasus a decade later, 1/3 of them had died. The Crimeans were also deported on the basis of collaboration, and many of them died too. Many Crimeans had in fact collaborated with the Nazis.

All through the region, there were lots of collaborators. There were separate Georgian, Armenian and Caucasian legions of volunteers in the Nazi military. After the Soviets withdrew, they went back to the Netherlands and served as an occupying force there. To be fair, many Caucasians also fought for the Red Army.

The emblem of the Georgian SS division of the Wehrmacht. The file says BeVOF, but I don't know what that stands for.


The Osttruppen Legion in the Caucasus already in 1943. I believe that these are local volunteers.


Gleeful Nazi soldiers murder an innocent Soviet female villager and steal her ducks. This was standard practice during Operation Barbarossa in the Slavic regions, and 75% of the "inferior" Slavs were slated to be killed in one way or another. This photo is from 1943, but I am not sure where in the USSR this took place.


A Nazi soldier gets ready to murder two Soviet Slavic women during Operation Barbarossa. This incident probably took place in the Ukraine or Belarus, but I am not sure. These women aren't being killed for any particular reason, only that they are Slavs.


The emblem of the Armenian volunteer legion of the SS. The file says BeVOF, but I am not sure what that stands for. There were quite a few Armenians who considered themselves Aryans and went along with Nazi racial doctrine, and there are even some today.

There are open neo-Nazi groups inside Armenia who distribute all sorts of nasty anti-Semitic conspiracy against Armenian Jews, tying them to the Armenian genocide and all sorts of nonsense. Anti-Semitism is a pretty serious problem in Armenia, and it's pretty widespread. Strange for the Armenians, often called in the US, "Jews without money".


The SS sleeve of the Berghaukasien volunteers. This SS group was made up of Caucasian volunteers for the SS.


A propaganda poster used in the Nazi invasion of the Caucasus. It says, "Free Caucasus From Bolshevik Tyranny."


Here is a propaganda poster for the Free Caucasus Movement set up by the Nazis after they invaded.


I'm not sure what this file represents, but I think it is was the flag of an Armenian pro-Nazi group at the time.


A map showing German allies in the Caucasus in November 1942. It lists the large volunteer divisions that were easily recruited in this region among Georgians, Caucasians, Crimeans and Armenians.


Once more, the SS legions of the Caucasus who followed the Nazis out of the USSR and back to the Netherlands where they served as an occupying force. The Georgian, Armenian and Caucasian SS groups helped to occupy the Netherlands in from 1943-1945.



A photo of the Bergmann Legionnaires, apparently a group of local Caucasian volunteers for the Nazis, in action in the Summer of 1942 in the Caucasus.


The same Bergmann Legionnaires in action in Warsaw in 1944. I'm not sure what they were doing there, but possibly they were in action putting down a Warsaw Uprising that took place there in that year. Not the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of the Jews in Spring 1943, but another one of the Gentiles.

Incredibly, new anti-Communist revisionist material blames Stalin for the decimation of this uprising. Supposedly he waited on the outskirts of Warsaw until the Nazis had put down the uprising, and then he entered the city. Apparently he wanted to see all those Poles killed. Why? Commenters have more information about this in the comments thread for this post, including a more rational explanation for what took place.


More photos of the Bergmann Legionnaires, this time in Greece in 1944. I don't know what they were doing there, but I guess they were helping to occupy the place.


Bergmann officers at a meal, location unknown but possibly Greece.


The file says CD14 Festung Europa. I don't know what that means, but this is obviously an anti-Soviet propaganda poster showing a Red Army solider coming from the East to destroy Christianity, with a torch in his hand. The Christian armies of Europe apparently wait to do battle with this invader from the East.


This is apparently a book written by Eduard Abramian about the Bergmann Legionnaires, who included Georgian, Armenians, Azerbaijani and Caucasian factions. I bet that book is hard to find, but it might be an interesting read.


An Armenian legionnaire on the Western front.


This map shows the various Caucasian volunteer legions occupying the Netherlands in Summer of 1944


The Bergmann volunteer legion in Greece in 1944


Bergmann legionnaires in battle in 1944, location unknown.

*According to the old system of anthropology

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Support For South Ossetian Succession

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated August 28:

A good progressive principle, but one subject to some exceptions, is the principle of self-determination. This leads naturally to support for most if not all separatist movements. In my case, I do support most, but not all separatist movements.

It's interesting of all the people around the world, that only leftwingers and various seceding nationalities support this principle. It's also interesting that once nations secede and become their own state, suddenly they do not believe in the right to secede anymore! We on the Left have always upheld this basic principle.

The USSR held that all Russian nationalities had the right to secede. Unfortunately, it was not enforced much, but it was this very principle that allowed Gorbachev to permit the various USSR republics the right of secession in 1991. At that time, on at least that one variable, the USSR was the most civilized nation on Earth.

Its civilized nature was a direct result of the progressive principles that were embodied in the USSR by the first Bolsheviks in 1917. Later, Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The reason they were able to do this so civilly is, number one, because they are White, and number two, due to the decades of internationalism that had been inculcated into them by Communist rule.

I say that being White is important because I am absolutely convinced that only White nations are capable of breaking up civilly and peacefully without slaughtering each other in the process. In a way, breaking up your country without massacring your countrymen is the ultimate civilized act.

Even Asians, as civilized as they are, would never be able to break up one of their countries without turning it into a mass slaughter. On this metric, they are not that civilized.

What is it about Whites that allows them to break up a country? Is it altruism? Although studies are rare, in the US, Whites have rates of civic participation, volunteerism and donating to charity far above other groups.

Now, it is true that Communist China has not done a good job of living up the progressive principles of self-determination. Clearly, Tibet has a right to go free, and I would argue that East Turkestan does too. And Taiwan is a separate country. Mao never was a true internationalist. He was always a Chinese nationalist first and a Communist second.

Another reason to support secessionism is that the people who hate it most are the fascists. Idiots are always saying that fascism and Communism and fascism and socialism are the same thing. Let us call them on this one at least.

This is a prime difference between fascists and Communists, the Left and the Right. The Left supports self-determination and cultural autonomy for national minorities and the Right has always opposed this, instead choosing to force all national minorities into a single ethnoreligiolinguistic entity.

No one opposes separatist movements more than fascists, and no fascist nation has ever given one national minority an inch of cultural autonomy. Even in China, national minorities have considerable cultural autonomy and have the right to education in their national tongue.

It's true that the USSR's commitment to cultural and linguistic freedom varied throughout the lifetime of the state. Its commitment was highest in the 1920's, wavered seriously in the 1930's when Stalin murdered many leaders of national minorities and never attained earlier depths with the subsequent promotion of Russification by Stalin and his successors.

The Left nowadays is sleazy and unprincipled on the question of national self-determination. Sadly, the entire world Left refused to support the right of self-determination for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, all because Yugoslavia was a Communist state. Then they all opposed the right of Kosova to break away from Serbia, I guess because Serbia used to be Communist state!

This leads us to the recent fighting in Georgia.

First of all, Georgia is pretty much of a fake state. Sure, there have been Georgians living in that area for a very long time, but the Soviet republic called Georgia included not only Georgians but other nationalities as well. Other minorities included Abkhazians, Adjarians and South Ossetians.

It is possible that the republic of Georgia was seeded with these minorities as a divide and conquer strategy by the early Soviets, who were not perfect on the national question. Seeding Georgia with non-Georgians would make it more difficult for Georgia to secede from the USSR. Similarly, splitting the poor Ossetians between Russia and Georgia was probably another sleazy divide and conquer game.

Anyway, in 1991, this completely fake state called Georgia (really just a republic of the USSR) gained its independence. If we are to support the principle of self-determination, we need to allow national minorities in fake states newly birthed the right to secede.

On what fucking basis were Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia an inherent part of some entity called "Georgia"? On no basis whatsoever! On what basis is some new fake country one day or one month old entitled to the bullshit and fascist principle of "inviability of borders"? On no basis.

So, when the Georgian state (really just a place with lines on the map with a lot of Georgians living in it, but drawn wider than the Georgian nation) got its independence, Abkhazia, Adjaria and South Ossetia surely had the right say, "Screw this, we want no part of this new state. We're out of here."

Adjaria, a Muslim region in the southwest, seems to have settled its beef without fighting, but Abkhazia and South Ossetia both waged nasty and ugly separatist wars and managed to secede from the new state of Georgia.

South Ossetia apparently wants to marry with North Ossetia and become a state in Russia called Ossetia. I'm not sure what Abkhazia wants to do. I think they may wish to join Russia also. Abkhazia is located in the northwest and populated mostly by Orthodox Christians.

South Ossetia is located in the north-central part of Georgia and is composed mostly of Ossetians. The Ossetians were formerly called the Alans, an ancient kingdom related ethnically and linguistically to Iranians. They speak a language that is close to Iranian and resemble Iranians physically.

Russia is being cynical about this, as befits an imperialist state. While Russia under Putin has fascist tendencies in the nasty repression on national minorities such as the Mari and the people of the Caucasus, Putin is willing, like all sleazy imperialists, do support secessionism when it benefits imperial goals.

Russia has it in for Georgia, lately because Georgia has lined up heavily on the side of the US. There are US and Israeli advisors working with the Georgian military right now, and Russia is terrified by Georgian threats to join NATO.

We need to note that NATO doesn't have much right to exist anymore. NATO was set up to deal with the Soviet threat. That's gone. So why is NATO still there? Apparently to form an imperialist bloc to oppose Russia! The Russians are furious about this, and rightly so. Who can blame them?

Sadly, it is also possible that Russia is using this as a payback to the West for supporting the secession of Kosova. The West, including the US in its extreme cynicism, first of all supported the secession of all of the former states of Yugoslavia (apparently on the cynical grounds that since they were seceding from a Communist nation, therefore the right of self-determination was invoked).

Then, just to stick it to Russia for the most part, the US and most of Europe supported Kosova and Montenegrin independence, just so long as they were pro-West. I supported it too, on the basis of solid principles called the right of self-determination. It is sad that the entire world Left opposed the independence of Kosova. This made Russia furious.

Yet in Abkhazia, in the same sleazy West that championed every micro-state to be cleaved out of the former Yugoslavia, not a single Western state, nor any state anywhere, would support the principled secession of the Abkhazian people from Georgian imperialism.

Does fascist Russia under Putin support the right of self-determination, however limited? Of course not. As a capitalist, and in fact fascist and now imperialist state, Russia clearly has no principles whatsoever. As payback to Kosova secession which hurt their pitiful fascist pan-Slavic feelings, the Russians are now supporting secession in Georgia. Principles? Come now!

This whole conflict is shot through with imperialism all the way. The US is supporting Georgia not out of any principles, because as an imperialist state, the US has zero principles other than profiteering, plunder and subjection of other states and peoples. The US supports secessionism when it benefits imperialist interests, and opposes it when it hinders imperialist interests!

And of course, it never admits this. When it supports secessionism, the US apparently invokes the right of self-determination. When it opposes secessionism, the US invokes the right of inviolability of national borders, as it is doing now in the case of Georgia. Contradictory, no? Sure is!

The sleazy and pro-imperialist US media fails to point out this dissonance, and your average educated American will inconsistently invoke, like a moron, either the right of self-determination of the right of inviolability of borders, depending, as they support the imperial projects that they have been inculcated to support.

This conflict, like all imperialist bullshit wars, boils down to various imperialist nations waging armed conflict over access to markets and natural resources.

As is, oil from Azerbaijan and gas from the Stans goes through Georgia and I believe hooks up with Russian pipelines. The US, Georgia, Israel and Turkey wish to cut Russia out of the deal and cut a new pipeline through Georgia to Turkey. At least some of the oil will then go to Israel and from there, through the Suez and out to the Indian Ocean and various nations in that region, in particular India.

Someone suggested to me that the West is cutting this new pipeline because they are afraid that Russia will cut off the flow of oil to the West. Forget it. They will not do any such thing unless pushed to the wall. The US, Israel, Georgia and probably Turkey are all doing this because they are more or less imperialist states.

This conflict is also shot through with old Cold War "Beware the bear" bullshit. Even after the fall of Communism and the return of capitalism to Russia, US imperialism and anti-Communists everywhere have continued to see Russia through and Cold War and anti-Communist lens. It is as if the fall of the USSR never occurred. Any analysis of the conflict between the US and the West that leaves out this essential element is lacking.

As a socialist, I want to ask the supporters of capitalism on this blog some questions.

Show me how advanced capitalism can exist without imperialism. Prove to me that an advanced capitalist state can exist in the modern world without becoming an imperialist power.

It seems to me that large capitalist states are typically mandated to become imperialist states and from there to engage in conflict, often armed, with other imperialist states for markets and natural resources. If this is so (and I think it is) how then can one support capitalism as it now exists, since it seems to be impossible to have large capitalist states that are not also imperialist?

As you might have guessed, I support the right of South Ossetia to self-determination and to secede from Georgia and the right, however sleazy, of Russia to assist them in this principled endeavor.

This conflict is getting real nasty real quick. Russia is threatening Israel and the US over their support for Georgia and the US has incredibly ordered Russia to withdraw its forces from South Ossetia. And the conflict very quickly seems to have expanded to Abkhazia. We have the potential for a really nasty conflict here.

I would like to point out that the neoconservative scum who now pretty much run this country are first and foremost ferocious imperialists. They are some of the most voracious backers of US imperialism out there. In this endeavor, neoconservatives have been picking fights with Russia for a long time now.

Many Jewish neoconservatives are involved in this imperial conflict with Russia, and unfortunately, in this light, they have supported Chechen independence not out of any decent principles, since neocons have no principles, but just to screw Russia.

The fact that elements of imperialism have supported the Chechen separatists rouses Russian nationalism and paranoia and makes Russia all the less likely to give the Chechens and other Caucasian peoples the independence they deserve.

It's not known why the neocons have such a beef with Russia, but they also backed the Russian Jewish oligarchs in their fleecing of Russia. There seems to be an old beef between Jewish nationalists and Russia.

We can see the outlines of this conflict in the campaign to "free the Soviet Jews", which was one of the original catalysts for the formation of the Jewish neocons back in the 1970's. There may also be a "screw the Russians" mindset dating from the hostile history of Russians and Jews in Russia, a history replete with pogroms of Jews.

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