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I urge a read of yesterday’s post, on Israel’s indefatigable capacity for bare-faced mendacity, by Caitlin Johnstone. Always delivering punchy but cogent reads, she has the literary adroitness of a Julie Burchill but without the moral insanity.
I was tempted to reproduce it here, as I do from time to time with Caitlin, but two things held me back. One, stripping her posts of extraneous HTML – miss a single <div> or tweet code and I’m reduced to the humiliation of issuing a mass apology for yet another alert to a blank post – is as time consuming, and far less interesting, than creating my own from scratch. I’ll continue to do it – she’s that good – but on this occasion a second reason appeared in the shape of the Strategic Culture piece I’m about to replicate in full.
Such are the extent and success of corporate media’s demonising of Russia and Putin …
… that otherwise intelligent folk educated (within strict limits of course) to think critically are on this subject reduced to gibbering ignoramuses. Never mind that Washington, aided by its junior partners, has this century invaded, bombed, instigated countless coups, and funded proxy wars thousands of miles from its shores and borders! Our species-wide capacity for myth-making has on balance served us well but is now, in an age of mass media answerable to tiny but powerful elites (to which end ownership patterns plus advertising/wealthy sponsor dependency usually suffice, with state censorship a last resort) a force capable of destroying us all.
Or of painting an empire guilty of slaughter by the millions as a bastion of hope and freedom, and the actions of rising powers which refuse to kowtow to Washington as unspeakably evil. Ask a Western intellectual – Simon Tisdall, say – which is the most dangerous country in the world and they’ll likely tender China, Russia, Iran and/or North Korea. Ask how many countries these have invaded and, I guarantee it, they’ll go straight onto the defensive.
In the case of Russia’s “land grabs” they’ll angrily offer Georgia, Ukraine – even Chechnya. Once they’ve been put straight on that last being akin to accusing America of invading Texas, they’re down to two, both on her borders as opposed to halfway across the planet. Since I’ve covered Ukraine in countless posts, including yesterday’s, that leaves me with Georgia on my mind.
Which as luck would have it is the subject of the Strategic Culture piece that’s for once seen Affronted of Melbourne pipped at the post for replication on these hallowed pages.
One last remark before I hand over. What SC set out here is of a piece with Washington’s use of soft power across the globe. CIA meddling in other countries having become well understood, not least through its blood-soaked overreaches in Latin America, we’ve seen an increased use of seemingly benign agencies to project US power. These include the penetration, most visibly but not exclusively in Latin America, of right-wing evangelical Christianity, countless “human rights” agencies 1 – most infamously Syria’s “White Helmets” – and, perhaps most pervasive of all, the National Endowment for Democracy. I’ll be addressing these phenomena more fully when – in Road to WW3. Part 5 – I take up the theme of how a US ruling class now equalled militarily and surpassed industrially still reigns supreme in capturing the information spaces of targeted countries, to the extent they act against their own interests.
Georgia Exposes NATO and EU Lies About Russian Aggression and Who the Real Aggressor Is
The Georgian government is to be commended for speaking the truth about the country’s 2008 war with Russia. It exposes the lies that the United States, European Union, and NATO have used to inflame conflict and tensions with Russia, not just over Georgia but also the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine.
This month marks the 17th anniversary of a five-day conflict in the South Caucasus nation, which cost hundreds of casualties on the Georgian side and resulted in deeper splits with separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
In a forthright condemnation, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze laid the blame for the war on a treasonous gamble by then-President Mikhail Saakashvili, who, he said, started the war in a plot against Russia masterminded by the US and NATO. Saakashvili is currently serving a prison sentence in Georgia for multiple corruption crimes.
Indeed, this version of history is supported by a report commissioned by the European Union in 2009, which confirmed that the Saakashvili regime started the hostilities by attacking South Ossetia. But for 17 years, the West has been telling barefaced lies.
Significantly, this week the United States adopted a new position on the 2008 war by not endorsing – for the first time – a statement by European governments that reiterated condemnation of Russia for alleged aggression against Georgia. That statement, drawn up by Britain, France, Denmark, Greece, and Slovenia at the United Nations Security Council, perpetuates the false claims that Russia is to blame for the 2008 war.
One might think European states should defer to the Georgian government. But this discrepancy alludes to the bigger problem of foreign interference in Georgia’s sovereign affairs, whereby the European Union refuses to recognize the authority of the present Georgian government because the EU claims that its election victory last year was not valid. More on that in a moment.
The 2008 conflict was started when former President Saakashvili ordered a massive artillery assault on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, on the night of August 8 that year. Georgian forces also invaded the neighboring territory to attack Russian soldiers stationed there as peacekeepers. Russia quickly pushed Saakashvili’s forces back into Georgia in a humiliating defeat, and a debacle for NATO. A ceasefire was called on August 16. Russia then declared official recognition of the Republic of Ossetia and the Republic of Abkhazia, in a blow to Georgia’s territorial claims.
What seems to have been behind the war was a calculated provocation. In April 2008, NATO offered future membership to Georgia and Ukraine in flagrant defiance of Russia’s opposition to what it considered, and still does, a red line threat to its national security. It seems the Georgian government in Tbilisi wanted to provoke a crisis with Russia over the breakaway South Ossetia region as a pretext for NATO involvement. In the event, NATO balked at the fierce Russian response.
That is what the current Georgian government refers to in its condemnation of Saakashvili’s treasonous war under the direction of NATO powers.
It wasn’t the only such treason in Georgia’s history since independence in 1991, after the fall of the USSR. The former Soviet republic has been ravaged by Western interference which made it into a plaything of U.S. and NATO geopolitical interests to antagonize Russia. (The country has added strategic importance given its proximity to the vast Caspian oilfields. 2 ) Western interference was similar to that in Ukraine. Georgia was intended to be a second front against Russia to its south, just as Ukraine is the first front against Russia to its west. 3
Fortunately, in more recent years, the Georgian people, under the sensible direction of the Georgian Dream ruling party, have steered away from US, EU and NATO intrigues. This is why Biden cut off US aid to Georgia in 2024, and why the EU refuses to recognize Kobakhidze’s government, claiming that the election last October was flawed.
For the West all was fine and dandy in Georgia following the Rose color revolution of 2003. The US and EU orchestrated that by funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars into Georgia. The US State Department, via cut-out conduits like the National Endowment for Democracy, sent $327 million in 2002 alone, while George Soros reportedly disbursed over $42 million in a private capacity. 4 The funds were used to set up thousands of NGOs and media groups to push through the Rose Revolution based on allegations of election fraud.
The same scenario was used in Ukraine for the Orange Revolution in 2004 and again in 2014 with the Maidan Movement to overthrow an elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.
After taking power through an electoral coup, Saakashvili paid back his Western masters by aligning the country with NATO and the EU, in calculated antagonism with Russia. That culminated in the 2008 war, which, as it turned out, petered out quickly. Ukraine would not be so lucky, having endured a NATO proxy war now in its fourth year, with newly reported figures of Ukrainian military casualties at over 1.7 million.
Saakashvili was voted out in 2012, his tenure notorious for corruption, human rights violations and abuse of power. Georgian journalists protested at brutal repression under his rule. This in a country hailed by George W Bush in 2005 as a “beacon of democracy.”
The Georgian people stood up and rejected the treachery that befell their country. The Georgian Dream ruling party has been re-elected for four consecutive terms since 2012. According to Stanislav Krapivnik, a Russia-based political analyst and former U.S. Army officer, the re-election in October 2024 was based on a platform of normalizing friendly relations with Russia and avoiding a repetition of the Ukrainian proxy war that NATO has imposed there. In comments for this weekly editorial, Krapivnik estimates some 10,000 Western-backed NGOs still operating in Georgia, though a foreign agent law last year has curtailed their influence. He says most Georgians appreciate growing prosperous trade with Russia, while this Orthodox Christian nation has rejected a Western-promoted LGBT gender agenda it views as a stealth attack on the country’s traditional values and society. 5 (See his channel here.)
The Georgian government and people have repudiated the Rose Revolution as a foreign-orchestrated violation of their sovereignty. Likewise, the government has condemned the reckless 2008 war with Russia, spawned by that regime-change operation.
Despite these facts, the US, EU, and NATO have maintained the lie for nearly 17 years that it was caused by Russia’s aggression. Again, there is an analogy with the propaganda the West uses to blame Russia in Ukraine, when the reality is that of another staged provocation.
The Trump administration now seems to have disavowed the false claims against Russia over Georgia. This may be a signal to Russia of Trump’s apparent willingness to make peace in Ukraine. 6
In any case, it is telling and deplorable that European states continue to peddle the lies about Georgia, as they do regarding Ukraine.
The Georgian people appear galvanized by a saner national consensus to reject foreign interference in their sovereign affairs. They have voted consistently for a government that wants to seek diplomacy with Russia and reconciliation with its separatist neighbors.
The violent street protests that followed the new foreign agent law and the re-election of Georgian Dream last year were an attempt at launching a second color revolution. Such interference by the West is, of course, a violation of international law, as outlined in the UN Charter. So far, that seditious plan appears to have run out of steam, and Georgians may look forward to a more peaceful future, one based on a truthful understanding of history and genuine independence.
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OK, it’s a different Georgia but what a song, what a performer!
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- See Kit Klarenburg’s post today, How “Human Rights” Became Western Weapon.
- The SC piece might even more usefully have added that, just as Iran matters for reasons beyond its oilfields, Georgia is well placed to disrupt the New Silk Road linking China to Europe in ways that bypass the Malacca and Hormuz chokepoints.
- For the second time in as many posts I recommend a reading of the 2019 Rand Report, Extending Russia – or at least of the passages cited in my post, on the eve of Russia’s SMO in Ukraine and apropos the failed US coup in Kazakhstan, of January 2022.
- George Soros, who made his fortune through currency bets in casino capitalism – most (in)famously by shorting British sterling – is a well known backer of colour revolutions to replace ‘authoritarian’ governments with US-pliant regimes.
- Whatever we think of “the LGBT agenda” – I speak as one with a daughter in a happy same sex relationship these past fifteen years – its weaponising to further neoliberal agendas merits a dedicated post whenever I can find the time. Ditto the inability of brainwashed liberals to distinguish social conservatism, of the kind Strategic Culture represents, from fascism.
- For reasons given as recently as yesterday, “Trump’s apparent willingness to make peace in Ukraine” does not merit a moment’s serious scrutiny.
