Weird and weirder
by Gadgie, 3 September 2008
Edward Lucas asks why the far left, old tankies, a selection of Tories and a bunch of bankers (rhyming slang intended) have become cheerleaders for Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
It is all very odd. Russia is an oil-fuelled fascist kleptocracy ruled by secret police goons and their cronies. It is authoritarian: critics risk forcible incarceration in psychiatric hospitals, or are simply murdered - such as the shooting dead in police custody of Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush journalist, this week. It is imperialist: bullying neighbours with oil and gas cut-offs, let alone the occupation of Georgia, where Russia’s proxies have practised ethnic cleansing on a scale that recalls the atrocities of the wars in former Yugoslavia. And it is deeply corrupt and lawless: something that even Putin’s successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, has acknowledged publicly. However bad other countries may be, it is hard to find anything there worth emulating.
We live in strange times.
Wednesday 3 September 2008 at 22:02
Good catch, Gadge.
See also LabourStart’s Eric Lee on Russia’s invasion of Georgia:
http://tinyurl.com/6eswkq
“The response of the trade union movement and the democratic Left was swift – universal condemnation of a blatant act of aggression, an obvious attempt to seize control over a country whose independence Russia had recognised. Georgia had no better friend than the international labour movement which stood by its side at a difficult moment.
“That was in 1921 – not 2008. . .”
Wednesday 3 September 2008 at 22:06
Because Russia isn’t “The West” and the world is full of fucking cretins.
Wednesday 3 September 2008 at 22:37
What is even more disgusting in my book (because it is more pernicious in its effect) is the line taken by coward fucking chumps (usually pretend giant intellects who wouldn’t be able to take their own side in a fight) who immediately took sides by not taking a side — studiously distancing themselves from the Georgians because they supposedly “started it”. Bernard-Henri Lévy takes that shitty pathetic mindset of drivel merchants and clever clever dicks apart here:
http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-chroniques/avec-les-georgiens/989/0/269831
“Et puis la déconcertante facilité, enfin, avec laquelle les opinions publiques occidentales ont gobé la thèse avancée, dès le premier jour, par les appareils de propagande du Kremlin. On sait, aujourd’hui, que l’armée russe avait multiplié, dès avant le 8 août, les préparatifs de guerre. On sait qu’elle avait massé, à la « frontière » de la Géorgie et de l’Ossétie, une logistique militaire et paramilitaire considérable. On sait qu’elle avait méthodiquement réparé les voies de chemin de fer où devaient passer les trains à plates-formes transporteurs de troupes et on sait que 150 chars avaient, au matin du 8, traversé le tunnel Roky qui sépare les deux Osséties. Nul ne peut ignorer, autrement dit, que le président Saakachvili ne s’est décidé à agir que parce qu’il n’avait plus le choix et que la guerre était déjà là . Or, malgré cela, malgré cette accumulation de faits qui auraient dû crever les yeux de tous les observateurs de bonne foi, un grand nombre de nos médias se sont rués comme un seul homme sur la thèse du Géorgien fauteur de guerre, provocateur et irresponsable.”
Eng. translation:
“Western public opinion fell with disconcerting facility for the thesis advanced — from the very first day — by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. We know now that the Russian army had been hard at work on its war preparations since before Aug. 8. We know that it massed at the “border” between Georgia and Ossetia a considerable military and paramilitary logistical presence. We know the Russians had methodically repaired the railroad tracks that the troop-transport trains were to take, and we know that at least 150 tanks went through the Roky tunnel separating the two Ossetias the morning of Aug. 8. In other words, no one can ignore the fact that President Saakhashvili only decided to act when he no longer had a choice, and war had already come. In spite of this accumulation of facts that should have been blindingly obvious to all scrupulous, good-faith observers, many in the media rushed as one man toward the thesis of the Georgians as instigators, as irresponsible provocateurs of the war.”
Thursday 4 September 2008 at 1:56
We know the Russians had methodically repaired the railroad tracks that the troop-transport trains were to take, and we know that at least 150 tanks went through the Roky tunnel separating the two Ossetias the morning of Aug. 8. In other words, no one can ignore the fact that President Saakhashvili only decided to act when he no longer had a choice, and war had already come.
Oh, come on, that’s bollocks. We know the Russians moved tanks in on the morning of August 8 in response to Georgia shelling Tskhinvali on August 7. And that was in response to Ossetian sniper fire on Georgian security details. And that was in response to Georgian shelling of South Ossetian locations last month. And so on.
Who’s side do you pick in this? The “oil-fuelled fascist kleptocracy ruled by secret police goons and their cronies” in Moscow? Or the one in Tbilisi. Because they aren’t much fucking different. Sakashvili isn’t a democrat - if he were, he wouldn’t keep locking-up opposition politicians and threatening to massacre their families, or getting the charges dropped when his supporters kill his less eager supporters, or staging fraudulent elections. The current Georgian government has completely and utterly betrayed the reformist movement it was elected on, and now stands as a barrier to democracy. Or, yeah, we can talk about ethnic cleansing. Something like 100,000 Ossetians were cleansed from South Ossetia by the Georgians in the early 90s. Sakashvili sent the tanks in to finish the job.
The only side we could justifiably take would be that of the Ossetians. Put in troops under an international remit, remove Russian and Georgian forces, and then let the Ossetians decide which country they want to be part of (or form their own one if they like). But that isn’t going to happen. So, should we support Sakashvili in the ethnic cleansing of the rest of the Ossetian population of South Ossetia just because the Russians are more of a threat to us? That puts us back in the “our bastard” realpolitik that has repeatedly turned out to make everything fucking worse. Picking which bastard we’re going to support is a trap.
Thursday 4 September 2008 at 2:27
Have you ever read or heard of E H Carr Gregg?
Talks about shit like History and that. Immediate and superficial shit and that — causation and that. Dialectic at work and shit like that and that.
Heard of dialectics and that? Understand it and that?
Thursday 4 September 2008 at 2:50
Have you ever read or heard of E H Carr Gregg?
I have, as it happens. I was probably going to mention him in the response that I didn’t post to you saying there was no determinism in Marxism. Him and the usually-wrong-but-wrote-a-good-book-on-historicism Karl Popper.
Heard of dialectics and that? Understand it and that?
Yes. I’m not still picking a bastard, not in this case.
Thursday 4 September 2008 at 9:27
It’s true that both Georgia and Russia are somewhere on a continuum between bourgeois democracy and fully authoritarian regimes (neither could be called fascist regimes, except in anger; although an extremely weak and self-isolating country like Russia could perhaps develop into one). Also, both have also got worse over the past couple of years.
The numerous “indexes of democracy” have their weakness—not least of which is that they abstract from concrete socio-economic conditions, rendering their findings somewhat unintelligible, or “culturally unspecific”. However, in a political climate in which people are ready to argue, seemingly without irony, that Iran is as democratic in its own way as the US or the UK (which aren’t real democracies anyway), or to imply that the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib by US soldiers wasn’t in fact a marked improvement compared with the conditions that they would have preferred to see in place (which is not to say that it didn’t let down the democratic side, or that it shouldn’t be have been punished), we are in need of some refinement to enable us to distinguish more systematically between better and worse.
Thus, on most of the elements that are conventionally taken to comprise a democracy—the degree of pluralism; the degree of fairness and openness to participation of the electoral process; the extent of development of civil liberties and media freedom, and their enforcement in practice; as well as the specific character of political culture and the effectiveness of government institutions—Georgia almost certainly comes out ahead of Russia, on some counts significantly. Also I think it would be possible to argue that the thoroughgoing as systematic quality of the reversal of already weakly-rooted democratic development in Russia makes its deterioration worse and probably more durable.
Needless to say, both Iran and Syria come out significantly worse on such measures (Syria, for instance, has no meaningful electoral process, and the development of civil liberties in both countries puts them way behind even Russia, never mind Georgia).
Interestingly, the proto “pious” democracy in Iraq comes out considerably better than its Middle Eastern neighbours, rivalling or exceeding countries such as Venezuela in some areas—for example, on the strength of political culture or degree of political participation, although it is pulled back (necessarily, in the immediate aftermath of a revolutionary transformation) by a low level of government effectiveness, as the democratic state gradually extends its reach, as al-Maliki has done in the south and is now doing in Anbar.
None of this, however, impinges on the most notable feature of the (absolutely predictable) response of the reactionary left to Russia’s invasion of a sovereign country and annexation of its territory–completely against it own alleged principles, and theirs—is that there is in fact no concept in Marxist or socialist theory that allows you to recognise the “natural” precedence of the “spheres of influence” of big countries over the right of smaller neighbours to choose their own political path, even if that choice is merely to try a different empire.
Thursday 4 September 2008 at 13:26
“you saying there was no determinism in Marxism.”
Nope — didn’t say that — said no determinism in Marx.
Just for the record like.
Friday 5 September 2008 at 12:14
Weird alliances.
If I remember rightly, when the Russians invaded pieces of Georgia in the 1990s, they had some useful help from gangs of Chechen jihadists who, for their own reasons, also wanted to kill Georgians. The bit I remember is to do with the Chechen gangsters’ support for “independent” Abkhazia. That overlaps with spells when the Russians and the jihadists were trying to exterminate each back in Chechnya.
I haven’t made sense of South Ossetia. I guess I would have to go there and seriously risk getting shot before I could really get it straight, but the causal chains are much longer and more tangled than even Dave says with, at least, Dagestanis, Ingush, Chechens, North and South Ossetians, Georgians and Russians all driving each other out of patches of territory they temporarily control on both sides of the Russian border, and even if the particular gang doesn’t have a presence in South Ossetia this week they still influence what happens there, especialy by driving refugees into it. So, I take sides with the government which seems to have the best record of calming things down, tolerating refugees, stopping fights rather than starting them, and so on. It ain’t good, but so far as I can see that is overwhelmingly Georgia, at least compared to the other bastards.
Saturday 6 September 2008 at 8:51
Dave excellent post, you seem to be a gentleman with a head on your shoulders.
What seperates you from the others, is that your writing sounds adult, rather than the wrankle and childish finger pointing of the others.
All leaders are designated “bastards” in the spirit of defeatism.
Heck the world doesn’t stand a channce all its leaders are garbage, so lets just sit back and watch the fun from a distance.
Seems that what you folks hate about the Americans is what I appreciate.
What if Russia had continued into Tablisi and proclaimed “Georgia, the birthland of Stalin, an integral part of the Russian Fatherland!”
What would the European union have done, published a communique, wagged their fingers as well as their tails at those naughty Slavs!
The only thing that kept the Russians from totally occupying Georgia was their sense that the Yanks will not put up with this shit.
So while everybody on the Left speak of liberty, freedom, national determination (certainly a non-Marxist concept), and squeeze out a salt-less tear while watching the pictures on their lap-tops, it is only the Yanks who would summon up the courage and the moral fortitude to come to another nations age.
Remember WWII, from the Phillipines to Normandy and Cairo, it is the Americans who shed their blood so WE could enjoy OUR roles as beer-drinking, bikini wearing, teenage fucking citizens of the West. You should all show alot more appreciation for the lives you lead, rather than acting like spoiled post-pubescents who want the keys to the car.
Saturday 6 September 2008 at 10:59
artist
Did you read these comments properly, or others on this site?
First, all governments are not bastards, and I certainly didn’t say so, but that one in Tbilisi shows a lot of the signs. However, I’m with Will here and against Greg because the difference between them and the other governments and ‘quasi-governments’ in the area is more than enough for me to say the US is right to side with Saakashvili, and I wish the European left would do the same. That doesn’t mean I think Greg is being childish about this stuff. Things are difficult enough that it is worth going through the detailed argument and, armchair or not, a few minutes spent on helping form a little bit of public opinion in a Blog is a low cost way of doing some good, so what’s wrong with it?
Second, I do hate G W Bush (though nothing like as much as I did Reagan or Nixon), but I am on the same side as him with Iraq, Afghanistan and with the basic line he has taken over Georgia, the Ukraine, Poland and Russia’s other long term victims. The ‘howevers’ with this are that the US Constitution is an admirable piece of work, the US public does not always elect scum, and even the scum sometimes do good things, so I often take the side of the US, as now.
Saturday 6 September 2008 at 11:28
Hey Anarch, good to read that you agree with America’s actions on the most part, we can all thank them for assuring that we write these posts in english and the freedom of expression.
As for Tiblisi, of course it is an imperfect gov’t, I would like to see one that is perfect. These folks have never tasted this system, known as democracy, ever, so give them some time, stop being a hanging judge.
As for your selective hatred of American presidents, and yes you did use the word “hate”, I find it interesting that they are all Republicans and you did not include Jimmy Carter on your list of one’s you “hate”. He wasn’t very good, and went to war more than Reagan, who once sent the troops into Grenada.
So it is obvious you are very partisan, which leads you to be incapable of objective thinking.
Actually I do not believe that you really “hate” Bush. This would be very shallow of you, since you do not know the man, nor disagree with him to the extent that you claim.
I think you are running on some very plastic emotions. You may have problems with the image, given to you of the man, but to “hate” him seems childish and agenda driven.
Stop hating so easily. For example I live in Israel, do not automatically hate me for this. We found ourselves targeted by suicide bombers, one a fourteen year old boy, one hundred meters from my home. I do not hate the Arabs, I am wary of them, but even though they have shown delight in killing my people, I still do not hate those that I meet or on a general level.
This is a sign of maturity, letting go of one’s hurt pride, superseeding a shit disturbing ego.
Be well Anarch, and while pleading for humanity, open your heart as well as your mouth.
Take care.
Saturday 6 September 2008 at 11:39
Ain’t comment facilities on blogs just fucking great.