{"id":290,"date":"2008-08-29T11:33:09","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T11:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/?p=290"},"modified":"2008-08-29T11:51:50","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T11:51:50","slug":"georgia-started-it-acknowledges-brit-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/2008\/08\/georgia-started-it-acknowledges-brit-public-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgia Started It, Acknowledges Brit Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/2008\/08\/on-lies-hypocrisy-and-war-criminals\/\">yesterday<\/a> about the rampant bias in the Western mainstream media and the inexcusable hypocrisy of G7 leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Today the BBC has included in an article <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/europe\/7587598.stm\">documenting<\/a> Russia&#039;s latest defensive remarks the most seemingly honest summary of the original events that I&#039;ve seen so far:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The conflict in the region began on 7 August when Georgia tried to retake South Ossetia by force after a series of lower-level clashes. Russia launched a counter-attack and the Georgian troops were ejected from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This acknowledgement that it was, in fact, Georgia (an Iraqi coalition country) that provoked the original fighting is squashed towards the end of the article, but it&#039;s there nonetheless and uncharacteristically stated as fact, despite its stark contrast with the recent rhetoric about Moscow being the aggressor.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#039;s a fact which fits with the Kremlin&#039;s line. Russia&#039;s Foreign Ministry accused the G7 of making &#034;baseless assertions about Russia undermining Georgia&#039;s territorial integrity,&#034; saying, &#034;this step is biased and is aimed at justifying the aggressive actions of Georgia.&#034;<\/p>\n<p>That Abkhazia is prepared to be absorbed into the Union of Russia and Belarus &#034;within five years&#034;, and that South Ossetia is also open to such a notion, should be all we need to hear to know that Russia&#039;s so-called &#034;transgressions&#034; are precisely what these regions want. And if the prevailing view is that Georgia began the conflict, what exactly is the problem here?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bootnote<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If South Ossetians really have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/english\/docs\/2008\/08\/28\/georgi19712.htm\">torching<\/a> Georgian villages, then that should be investigated and dealt with as a matter of course. Any Western politician trying to blame Russia directly for such acts can only be attempting to instigate a climate of fear and terror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the BBC has included in an article documenting Russia&#039;s latest defensive remarks the most seemingly honest summary of the original events that I&#039;ve seen so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[25,13,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}