a useful offensive

Amnesty International and the Kuwaiti dead babies report

an entirely predictable reaction

Dayton 1994

not designed to block ethnic cleansing

provoking a fight

the disinformation is total

the pot and the kettle

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century" 1

Says who. Says the man who began the 21st century with unprovoked invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and who threatens to engineer a third invasion before the first decade of the century is over. Says the man at whose hands over a million have died and as many at least have been forced from their homes. Says the unelected President and Commander-in-Chief of the strongest military force the planet has ever known. Says the self-appointed ruler of the world.

"There is no justification for continued Russian military action in Georgia, which threatens the stability of the entire region and risks a humanitarian catastrophe" 2

Says the corpse of Gordon Brown. Who spat on stability and international law when he voted for the illegal invasion of Iraq, and spits on humanitarian needs as he continues the destruction of that country and Afghanistan.

"The British policy is founded on very clear foundations, that the rule of force does not replace the rule of law, and the territorial integrity of sovereign nations is to be respected" 3

Says who? Says the corpse of Gordon Brown's jet-setting pipsqueak foreign minister, who sat back idly while the Labour Government spat and shat on international law.

"Britain’s weight is being felt in establishing very, very clear lines that force is not the basis for redrawing international maps" 4

Says he whose pipsqueak weight as Blair's Head of Policy Unit was keenly felt by Serbs at the receiving end of forceful British bombs; the man who as a loyal member of the British cabinet ensured that nothing was done about the 150,000 Serbs who were chased from Kosovan land5 while it was a NATO protectorate; and the man who, as Foreign Secretary, drew clear new international lines dividing Kosovo from Serbia without UN approval. Not to mention, of course, his help in colouring in the new maps of Afghanistan and Iraq with stars and stripes.

But the Russians too are learning. They knew that force was not the basis for redrawing international maps. So they forced the independence-seeking Chechens to live according to their international map by smashing the country and the people, destroying and poisoning the land, reducing the infrastructure to rubble and appointing a local mafia boss to keep the order. Then having used force in order not to redraw any maps, they raised the architect of this destruction first to President of Russia for two terms, and then to Prime Minister. And now they can proclaim that:

"The Russian Federation is an example of largely harmonious coexistence by many dozens of nations and nationalities. ... Some nations find it impossible to live under the tutelage of another. Relations between nations living 'under one roof' need to be handled with the utmost sensitivity" 6

If they ask for independence: smash them and destroy the unharmonious ones - but do so with the utmost sensitivity. Preserve that sensitivity when neighbouring nations try to smash their inharmonious regions:

"The most important thing [in invading Georgia] was to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe" 7

So says the current 'President' of Russia. He who received a personal anointment from the murderer of Chechnya; he who appointed that same murderer as his own Prime Minister; he who has ordered the Russian peacekeeping forces in South Ossetia to abandon the land of South Ossetia and march on into Georgia to destroy the peace there, leaving some of the people of South Ossetia to burn the houses and chase from the land the other peoples of South Ossetia.

And finally, and not surprisingly, the media-savvy, crazed tie-chomping president of Georgia also took some lessons... My friends in NATO do it, my neighbours in harmonious Russia do it - the birds and bees and educated fleas do it. But of course he says it in his own tie-chomping, media-savvy, half-crazed style.

"When people say the Georgian army invaded that is a technically unclear term, what does it mean invaded, it was such a small place there was nothing to invade there" 8

!?*@!!??#*!?

It's very easy really. You can invade as long as something is small, and as long as it's not a neighbouring country. You can redraw (or colour in maps) by means of force, as long as you clearly establish clear lines that no-one else can do so. You can protect minorities by bombing them, or by bombing others, as long as... well - as long as you have more bombs than they do; and you can preserve human rights and keep the peace by leaving the locals to chase out other locals they don't like the look of, as long as the Kosovars do the chasing and you're NATO, or the South Ossetians do the chasing and you're Russian.

And the general rule about independence is that it is fine by those who seek to make you dependent on them.

1. 1. George Bush
2. 2. Gordon Brown calls on Russia to end military action against Georgia
3. 3. Miliband holds Georgia crisis talks
4. 4. Interview with World at One
5. 5. The New York Times on the Kosovo Crisis
6. 6. Why I had to recognise South Ossetia
7. 7. UK urges tough response to Russia
8. 8. Interview with Saakashvili

the victim of disinformation

I have been accused of relying on sources which are funded by the CIA - in particular, the reports by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and United States Institute for Peace (among about another 30 funding organisations). So the following was my justification for reading their reports, and even believing some parts of them. The particular article in question was How the Georgian War Began.

For those readers who are completely baffled as to why NED and USIP should be seen as CIA instruments, I recommend The Battle for Global Civil Society and Sourcewatch's article on the NED. My personal position on this aspect is that the NED / CIA / US government has undoubtedly poured millions into 'civil society' organisations (and civil society organisations) around the world in the pursuance of its own dirty goals. And that, in general, this strategy has been successful (in their terms). Organisations such as IWPR are almost certainly unwittingly carrying out the agenda of the US government while pursuing their own agenda; but individual journalists writing for the organisation are also carrying out their own agenda - which I would argue is still significantly different.

So should we refrain from reading the reports of organisations which are funded partly through dirty money? I think most definitely not, for the following reasons:

1. The funding of civil society by the CIA - and others - is a general strategy, which means that there is room for certain initiatives not going 'as planned'. There has to be that slack, because the strategy wouldn't work if those implementing it on the ground thought that they were (merely) carrying out the CIA's agenda. Furthermore, with the amount of money being poured in and the number of initiatives being funded, plus the fact that the chain between the piper and the CIA-calling-the-tune is pretty long it's actually very difficult - impossible - for them to make sure that every local journalist who is hired is 'on message'. Not to mention the fact that the CIA - if it is involved in a particular organisation - is just one of many other funders, all of whom have their own slightly differing agenda.

To use another analogy: the CIA poured millions into the mujahideen. That was a 'good strategy' (in the short term - in terms of defeating the Soviet Union). But even in the short term, they couldn't control every individual mujahid: the reach is simply too long. The strategy worked as a whole, but it didn't depend on having total control of the whole operation (it couldn't depend on that). In the end of course, they lost control completely - and then you get blowback. I suspect the same may happen / may have happened already with much of the funding of civil society.

2. The fact that I believe there are numerous chinks in the system - rogue organisations, rogue journalists and rogue mujahideen - plus the fact that getting information out of the region is pretty difficult, plus the fact that I strongly believe we should be reading local reports and local analyses rather than just relying on international commentators - all mean that I consult publications / journalists from the region. But as a result of the economic situation in the region as a whole, these are in the vast majority of cases funded by the US or other governments, or by international organisations.

It should be said that the quality of analysis and the range of opinions is still far higher in these 'CIA-funded organs' than what you find in state sponsored publications (which also have their own agenda!). There are numerous examples - mostly in Russian - of articles written with western funding that contradict the CIA line. Here are just two English language ones from IWPR itself, both published in the past 10 days: Abkhaz open 'second front' and Eyewitness: Carnage in Tskhinvali

3. As far as agendas go — these are surely the possession of every individual, not to mention every media owner / editor. Which is why in general I think that articles should be allowed to stand on their own merits. Of course authors have their own position and bias, and of course to a certain extent (and in most cases) this 'fits' with what the CIA or any other funder wants to hear. But as long as we take this into account; as long as we understand why the author is saying whatever he or she is saying, and we consult reports from both sides in the conflict, I would have thought that the argumentation (which comes from the heart, not the CIA) and any additional information would only be a valuable contribution. At the very least, in the case of this article, in order to hear the best case for the side that we (on the left) are accusing.

In general, it is not hard to be aware of the 'agenda' of most journalists in this region — just as it is straightforward to understand the 'agenda' of a Guardian journalist, or indeed a journalist on a left website or publication. Knowing that, we simply need to be careful, in reading any article at all, to look out for weak arguments, unfounded claims, bias, or any other limitations imposed by editors or funders.

It's also worth remembering that in this region in particular, people became expert at doing their own thing while outwardly fitting the straitjacket of the state ideology. In the same way, most journalists and ngos now funded by western organisations are well aware of the agenda of the funders, and they mostly manage to milk the organisations while getting on with whatever they think is important. So I genuinely believe that these writers are writing about what they see — and I find that interesting, even if their vision is likely to be distorted both by their own prejudices and connection with the conflict and — to a lesser extent — by what they know they are permitted to write within the IWPR framework. Find me a writer who is completely free of prejudice, even on the left.

4. The content of the article in question fits well with what I have been observing myself over the past few years and it seems to me to raise a number of points that have not been discussed on the left at all. Having spent quite a lot of time in the region / studying the region, I do admit to being frustrated by the left's failure to recognise what I see as Russia's extremely underhand and provocative role in keeping these conflicts on the boil, and using them for its own interests. That is NOT to say I excuse Georgia, nor to say that I deny the contribution of NATO / the US, which has been immense. But I see Russia as much more of a dangerous and provocative agent than has been acknowledged in left commentaries. A simple glance at the local picture would show this up.

Most of the claims made in the article in question I had already read in different publications — including before the conflict started — or heard from people in the region. I would be interested to hear about specific claims for which there is evidence of their falsehood.

5. There is barely a Georgian on this planet who would not today write an article that could happily be funded by the CIA: the nation is practically united in its hatred of Russia. But need it mean, just because the CIA is also united in its hatred of Russia, that no articles by Georgians are worth reading? Or do they become not worth reading as soon as the CIA pays for them?

This is of course not quite what my accusants are saying , but given the financial situation at the moment in Georgia, and given the fact that you cannot be a Georgian and not 'serve the CIA's agenda' — one is almost forced to that conclusion. That leaves us in the position of having almost no sources who are actually living this conflict. I don't think that is the way to understand its complex and multi-faceted nature - and I strongly believe that the majority of reporting on the left has suffered as a result.

6. Finally: we do not refuse to read a single article in the Guardian simply because the Scott Foundation has an agenda which is to make as much money as possible; and we do not stop believing every statement made on the BBC, despite the fact that this is a state institution strongly controlled by the government. Why then should we apply different standards to media organisations in other countries, where the funding is far more difficult to come by and the possibilities of finding out for ourselves are far more limited? Media organisations are not completely monolithic structures and individual journalists can have something interesting - and credible - to say even within the limiting framework of an organisation funded with a particular purpose.

The standards are not even applied universally to media channels in the region: the very few reports by non-western journalists that are quoted by the left tend to come from Russia Today, which is as much an instrument of Russian governmental propaganda as those on the other side are instruments of US propaganda. I would say a great deal more so, because the control in the case of Russia Today is hands on, top down and comprehensive. You simply would not find an article on this channel that takes any line other than the official Russian one.

So: I shall continue to read the IWPR reports for information that western commentators simply have no access to, and in order to learn about the views of people in the region.

they need some bombing