Estado Sentido

...são os seus reflexos dignos de um cowboy habituado à violenta trepidação sentida em cima dos animais nos rodeos!

De salientar ainda as palavras de Nuno Gouveia sobre o contentamento da extrema-esquerda relativamente a este incidente:

Como se nota pela leitura de alguns blogues portugueses, muita gente ficou satisfeita com o acto do jornalista iraquiano. Sabemos bem como estas pessoas encaram a democracia. Mas se estas pessoas reflectissem, pensariam um bocado no que teria acontecido a este jornalista, se o visado tivesse sido Sadam Hussein. Ou algum dos déspotas que passam a vida da defender.

Torna-se interessante ler o seguinte artigo:

Georgian minister tells Israel Radio: Thanks to Israeli training, we're fending off Russian military
By Haaretz Staff

Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili yesterday praised Israel for its role in training Georgian troops and said Israel should be proud of its military might.

"Israel should be proud of its military, which trained Georgian soldiers," Yakobashvili, who is Jewish, told Army Radio in Hebrew. He was referring to a private Israeli group Georgia had hired.

Yakobashvili, Georgia's minister of reintegration, said this training enabled Georgia to defend itself against Russian forces in the warfare that erupted last week in the separatist region of South Ossetia, Georgia.

Yakobashvili said a small group of Georgian soldiers were able to wipe out an entire Russian military division, thanks to the Israeli training.

"We killed 60 Russian soldiers yesterday alone," said Yakobashvili. "The Russians have lost more than 50 tanks, and we have shot down 11 of their planes. They have sustained enormous damage in terms of manpower."

Yakobashvili warned that the Russians would try to open another front in Abkhazia, another separatist region in Georgia, and he denied reports that the Georgian army was retreating. "The Georgian forces are not retreating. We move our military according to security needs," he said.

He also denied that Russian troops had struck Georgia's international airport.

"There was no attack on the airport in Tbilisi. It was a factory that produces combat airplanes," said Yakobashvili.

"The whole world is starting to understand that what is happening here will determine the future of this region, the future price of crude oil, the future of central Asia, and the future of NATO," the Georgian minister added. "Every bomb that falls over our heads is an attack on democracy, on the European Union and on America."

Algo está podre no reino do Ocidente...
 

Transcrevo aqui uma excelente peça de contra-informação ocidental, redigida por Paul Craig Roberts.

Paul Roberts - Ex-secretário assistente do Tesouro na administração Reagan. Foi editor associado da página editorial do Wall Street Journal e editor colaborador da National Review. É co-autor de The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

The Neocons Do Georgia
Humanity's Greatest Enemy?

The success of the Bush Regime’s propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

It certainly worked with Americans.

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops.

We don’t know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their undeclared agenda.

That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity.

America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.

The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime’s criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises “change” is too intimidated by the neocon’s success in brainwashing the American population to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.

This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed “Russian invasion” to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.

Only this time, the rest of the world didn’t buy it. The many years of lies--9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, “the United States doesn’t torture,” the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated “terrorist plots,” the determined assault on civil liberties--have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.

The rest of the world reported the facts--an assault on Russian civilians by American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian troops.

The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to accept this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian military was sent fleeing for its life.

The neoconned Republican response to the Russian failure to follow the script and to be intimidated by the “unipower” was so imbecilic that it shattered the brainwashing to which Americans had succumbed.

McCain declared: “In the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations.” Imagine the laughs Jon Stewart will get out of this on the Daily Show. In the early years of the 21st century the United States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for attacking a third. President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century, echoed McCain’s claim that nations don’t invade other nations. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7556857.stm

This dissonant claim shocked even brainwashed Americans, as readers’ emails reveal. If in the 21st century countries don’t invade other countries, what is Bush doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what are the naval armadas and propaganda arrayed against Iran about?

Have two of the worst warmongers of modern times--Bush and McCain--called off the US/Israeli attack on Iran? If McCain is elected president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as “nations don’t invade other nations,” or is President Bush going to beat him to it?

We all know the answer.

The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on the basis of good will.

Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be thanking God they blocked Georgia’s membership in NATO.

The Ukraine, where a sick nationalism has taken hold funded by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, will be the next conflict between American pretensions and Russia. Russia is being taught by the neocons that freeing the constituent parts of its empire has not resulted in their independence but in their absorption into the American Empire.

Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with Russia.

The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.

Dá que pensar...

O original pode ser encontrado aqui

Tomemos em consideração as mais recentes afirmações do cowboy texano, especialmente esta pérola:

Mr Bush demanded that Moscow respect Georgia's territorial integrity and withdraw the troops it sent in a week ago - or risk international isolation.

Para além de me parecer que Putin e Medvedev devem andar por ora a brindar com champanhe enquanto vão colocando a sua brilhante estratégia em prática, que de espontâneo parece ter muito pouco, até porque o frio daqueles lados não permite rasgados laivos de espontaneidade, faço apenas uma analogia ao chamado fast track ou mandato negociador, mecanismo do Congresso norte-americano que permite ao Presidente e à Administração negociar em determinadas matérias sem que seja necessário o Congresso aprovar o resultado final, desde que caiba dentro dos parâmetros definidos no mandato antes sequer das negociações. Foi o mecanismo utilizado para granjear maior legitimidade a Bush e garantir a coincidência entre discurso e acção no que respeita às negociações da Ronda de Doha. Quando a validade desse mandato se esgotou, com reflexos evidentes na legitimidade de Bush, por mais que esse prometesse mundos e fundos aos seus parceiros internacionais não tinha qualquer garantia de que conseguiria implementar as medidas negociadas. É mais ou menos o que acontece agora, em contagem decrescente para o fim do seu mandato e tendo em apreço as confusões que gerou em todo o mundo, já ninguém se importa muito com o que diz, é um menino rabugento completamente desorientado porque desta feita sabe que não pode resolver a situação através do seu instrumento preferido, ou seja, o mecanismo militar, uma das suas poucas prerrogativas exclusivas.

Além do mais se há alguém que pode eventualmente agir no sentido de um isolamento internacional da Rússia é a União Europeia, pela proximidade geográfica e pela inevitável interdependência entre os dois actores. Mas essa mesma interdependência é a que os europeus sabem que teria custos muito superiores se incorresse em relações conflituais em determinados campos ou sectores de cooperação,como os sugeridos neste artigo da The Economist (via O Insurgente):

The European Union, which has too often split into camps of appeasers and tough-talkers over Russia, should drop negotiations on a new partnership and co-operation agreement. Visa restrictions should be tightened, and the personal finances abroad of top Russian officials probed more carefully. The EU should work harder at reducing its dependence on Russian energy imports and improving internal energy connections—and EU countries should stop striking bilateral deals with Russia.

Só que a Rússia está a fazer com que os europeus reaprendam a equacionar mais estrategicamente e menos moralmente a sua política externa. Não me parece sequer viável entrar em conflito com a Rússia seja em que campo for (vistos, acordo de cooperação, vias diplomáticas etc.), principalmente devido à questão da dependência energética. E por mais que se clame pela diversificação de fontes e de tipos de energia, no curto e médio prazo isso não vai acontecer pelo que teremos de saber enfrentar e jogar com essa dependência dentro do quadro da interdependência.

Já agora, só para finalizar quanto a Bush, mais uma vez recorro a um artigo indicado pelo Henrique Raposo:

At the Beijing stadium this week, George Bush came off as the most wretched American president in history. A president who needlessly provoked the Russians, but ultimately did not withstand them. A president who brandished the flag of human rights and democracy, but ultimately kowtowed to a world power that tramples human rights - China - and abandoned the brave little democracy of Georgia.

The Bush era came to an end this week, but with it ended two decades of America being the sole superpower. The Pax Americana that maintained global stability for a generation has run its course.

O mesmo artigo termina da seguinte forma bem esclarecedora quanto ao impacto daquilo a que estamos a assistir:

August 8, the day the Olympics began and the fighting in Georgia erupted, will be remembered no less than 9/11. When the history of the 21st century is written, it will view this past week as the week that symbolizes the rise of two new world powers: China and Russia. It will be decades before China surpasses the United States economically. It will be years before Russia goes back to being a Tsarist power. But August 8 marked the way.

The question now is not what sort of world we are heading toward. The question is how fast we will get there.

Via Exílio de Andarilho aqui fica um outro ponto de vista contrário ao do excelente post do Bruno Alves. A História nos dirá qual dos dois será mais válido.

Via CNN online

"I think that American officials and analysts -- and I would put myself in this boat -- underestimated the scope of the Russian reaction to Kosovo's separation from Serbia," Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a conference call."The Russians at the time said that they may well retaliate by stirring up trouble in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and I think many people said, 'Well, that's going to be mostly talk.' In fact, they've gone ahead and done it."In addition to reasserting Russia's regional preeminence, the incursion into Georgia also demonstrated the United States' relative weakness.

Janusz Bugajski, author of a forthcoming book on Russia's relations with its neighbors, said Washington's lack of forceful response sends a chilling message to nations that had been relying on the U.S. to counter Russia's power.Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin "is demonstrating to the rest of the world that the United States is not the sole superpower any more. Or if it is, it's so stretched that it's not going to come to your aid," Bugajski said. "That weakens the U.S. position globally quite a bit."Even if the United States resists the idea, it's possible that a resurgent Russia is ready for a new geopolitical rivalry in which powerful countries compete politically and militarily."

I think it's not inappropriate to put this conflict in the context of a 'great game,' " Kupchan said. "There is still a battle going on for influence -- Western influence vs. Russian influence -- in the Caucasus and in the southern borderlands around Russia. And clearly I think as a result of this conflict Russia will probably feel that it has taken a step forward in maintaining a 'sphere of influence.' "