247 EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton to enter Gaza, testing Israeli ban

(1) Roy Tov "wrong about Skype being in league with Mossad" - Leland Lehrman
(2) EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton to enter Gaza, testing Israeli ban
(3) French protest against import of goods from Jewish Settlements in Palestinian territories
(4) NY Times' Jerusalem property makes it protagonist in Palestine conflict
(5) Georgia taunting Russia

(1) Roy Tov "wrong about Skype being in league with Mossad" - Leland Lehrman

{I have no way of judging this matter, or the differences between these two. All I can do is report what each says - Peter M.}

I rang Leland Lehrman about this, at his invitation. He says that Roy Tov is wrong about Skype being in league with Mossad.

He thinks that Skype is still independent and has not sold out. Skype "is blocked en masse in China; anyone who cracked Skype encryption - for example Mossad - would sell it to China".

Leland says that Arik is not the head of Mossad, but one of the "Art Students".

Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:46:14 -0700 From: Leland Lehrman <leland@mothermedia.org>
Subject: RE: Skype in league with Mossad

Some of the information in the article by Roy Tov is bullshit. I know because I'm the one he's accusing of working with the Mossad in connection with Skype. Roy is good on many things, but he has regrettably ended up in the paranoid regions in some areas of his work. The story is long, difficult and sad, for me having put years of work into his case only to have him turn on me based on his paranoid fantasies.

If you want to know the story, give me a call. It's important, but I don't have the time to write it down now.

Leland Lehrman
(505) 982-3609 ==

Reply (Peter M.):

From what you say, you must be the "American politician" Roy is referring to where he talks of "a very influential American" and "the American politician who was working for Arik Prince of Mossad":
http://www.roytov.com/refugee/skype.htm

Just out of interest, some years ago I put Mordecai Vanunu on my mailing list (when I came across an email he had send to someone), and he's still on it, even though I have never heard from him.

I don't imagine that he receives my bulletins; but they don't bounce.

He's totally controlled: all his email would be intercepted - so Mossad is on my mailing list. They might as well get my stuff directly from me, as having to get it by devious means. ==

From: Leland Lehrman <leland@mothermedia.org>  Date: 09.03.2010 06:27 PM Subject: RE: Roy Tov

I may well be. Roy was persecuted into insanity. He now sees the numbers  on the buses that go down the street as part of the surveillance. Every  time the number of some unit he worked for in IDF passes him, he tells  me about, or he did until I started getting aggravated over the bullshit  with Arik.

It's a shame, he's emotionally very immature, extremely brilliant intellectually. His book is great. Have you read it?

(2) EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton to enter Gaza, testing Israeli ban
From: Sami Joseph <sajoseph2004@yahoo.com> Date: 09.03.2010 05:11 PM

Ashton to try to enter Gaza on Middle East trip

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0308/1224265796376.html

The Irish Times - Monday, March 8, 2010

Ashton to try to enter Gaza on Middle East trip

ARTHUR BEESLEY European Correspondent in Cordoba

EU FOREIGN policy chief Catherine Ashton will try to enter the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip when she visits the Middle East next week, escalating pressure on Israel in the run-up to US-brokered “proximity” talks with the Palestinians.

At an informal meeting in Cordoba, Spain, where EU foreign ministers discussed how the EU might help break the stalemate in the peace process, the ministers asked Baroness Ashton to intensify efforts to persuade Israel to lift its blockade of the territory.

Israel routinely refuses to allow foreign officials into Gaza, where conditions since its military offensive last year have been branded “inhumane” by Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin.

The EU ministers received a briefing on widespread malnutrition in Gaza from Mr Martin, who visited there via Egypt two weeks ago. “I made the point as well that this is wholly counterproductive to the peace process, that Hamas is earning increased revenue from the tunnels, making Hamas stronger and it makes no sense,” the Minister said.

“The issue is to increase the level of pressure to get the blockade lifted.”

Baroness Ashton’s public demand to be let in to the area, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, marks a fresh effort to assert her authority in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Her performance has been criticised since she unexpectedly became the EU’s top diplomat late last year, and her visit to Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan will be her most high-profile diplomatic venture to date.

In advance of talks brokered by US special envoy George Mitchell, her demand may also be seen as a key test of Israel’s willingness to be flexible in renewed efforts to settle the decades-long conflict.

“I have asked to go to Gaza,” Baroness Ashton said. “We are providing a huge amount of aid into Gaza and I’m very interested to make sure that we are seeing the benefits of that aid going in.”

Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt said his counterparts were unanimous in the view that the foreign policy chief should pressurise Israel to lift the blockade.

“It is important to show also that we are concerned with the issue by allowing her to go in there,” he said.

He said “Egypt might be the alternative” if Israel refused to allow her in.

Baroness Ashton said the EU’s concentration was on supporting Palestinian authorities in building state institutions – “the enabling mechanisms that allow them to take the responsibilities” – while supporting US mediation in the talks.

“It is extremely important that we continue to boost that as the . . . talks get going,” she said.

Mr Martin said there will be further discussions as to what actions the EU takes in respect of the US-led talks.

“My view is that we should allow them take place, those talks, and see whether there’s substance in them or not before we do anything,” he said.

Asked whether others around the EU table shared his opinion, he said: “There’d be different views around the table. I’m not going to say what other people think.”

At their biannual informal meeting, the Ministers also discussed plans to establish a new EU diplomatic corps. Against the backdrop of resistance in the European Commission to the ceding of powers to the European External Action Service, ministers expressed the view that the body should not dilute their power in external affairs.

“The main player is the council of the foreign ministers with the high representative,” said Luxembourg minister Jean Asselborn, echoing the views of many of his counterparts.

“I think that we have to finish very, very quickly this discussion because foreign ministers are there to speak about foreign policy and not about formalities and all these logistical instruments.”

(3) French protest against import of goods from Jewish Settlements in Palestinian territories

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 09.03.2010 09:10 AM

French protest import of Israeli settlement goods

aletho | March 8, 2010

http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/french-protest-import-of-israeli-settlement-goods/

Press TV - March 8, 2010

Thousands of French protesters have rallied against the import of Israeli goods produced in Palestinian territories.

Monday's demonstration comes less then a month after the European Union's Court of Justice ruled that Israeli goods made in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank cannot be considered Israeli.

This means that those products cannot benefit from a trade deal giving Israel preferential access to EU markets.

The protesters, who came from all over France, symbolically gathered in the streets of the Mediterranean port of Sete -- a hub for the biggest Israeli food exporter, Agrexco.

Over fifty percent of the company, selling over 300,000 tons of fresh fruits and vegetables to Europe, is owned by the Israeli regime.

"The EU and Israel have agreed that Israel will get preferential import taxes on one condition, the goods should not come from occupied territories. But we know Agrexco grows its products in the occupied areas and is still benefiting from tax deductions," Tannich Coupe Sud de France General Secretary said.

"This is a campaign of stigmatization. It's not an illusion that the economy will be demolished, it's the image of Israel that we are trying to attack," Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan who also took part in the event told Press TV.

France is one of Israel's top ten economic partners, a fact that has disappointed many of the French.

Israeli companies based around the illegal West Bank settlements manufacture a host of products including confectionery, wine, cosmetics and computer equipment.

Palestinians have long argued that since the settlements are not part of Israel, the goods made there should not receive trade privileges.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners have also regularly protested that European supermarkets stock goods with Israeli labels on farm products from the West Bank.

(4) NY Times' Jerusalem property makes it protagonist in Palestine conflict
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences) <sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: 09.03.2010 01:48 PM

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 2 March 2010

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11109.shtml

During an appearance at Vassar College in early February, controversial New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was asked about the ongoing evictions of Palestinian families from homes in East Jerusalem which Israel occupied in 1967. Israeli courts have ruled that Jewish settlers could take over some Palestinian homes on the grounds that Jews held title to the properties before Israel was established in 1948.

Bronner was concerned, but not only about Palestinians being made homeless in Israel's relentless drive to Judaize their city; he was also worried about properties in his West Jerusalem neighborhood, including the building he lives in, partially owned by The New York Times, that was the home of Palestinians made refugees in 1948. Facts about The New York Times' acquisition of this property are revealed for the first time in this article.

"One of the things that is most worrying not just the Left but a lot of people in Israel about this decision is if the courts in Israel are going to start recognizing property ownership from before the State [of Israel was founded]," Bronner said according to a transcript made by independent reporter Philip Weiss who maintains the blog Mondoweiss.net.

Bronner added, "I think the Palestinians are going to have a fairly big case. I for example live in West Jerusalem. My entire neighborhood was Palestinian before 1948."

The New York Times-owned property Bronner occupies in the prestigious Qatamon neighborhood, was once the home of Hasan Karmi, a distinguished BBC Arabic Service broadcaster and scholar (1905-2007). Karmi was forced to flee with his family in 1948 as Zionist militias occupied western Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods. His was one of an estimated 10,000 Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem that Jews took over that year.

The New York Times bought the property in 1984 in a transaction overseen by columnist Thomas Friedman who was then just beginning his four-year term as Jerusalem bureau chief.

Hasan Karmi's daughter, Ghada, a physician and well-known author who lives in the United Kingdom, discovered that The New York Times was in -- or rather on top of -- her childhood home in 2005, when she was working temporarily in Ramallah. One day Karmi received a call from Steven Erlanger, then The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, who had just read her 2002 memoir In Search of Fatima.

Karmi recalled in a 15 May 2008 interview on Democracy Now! that Erlanger told her, "I have read your marvelous memoir, and, do you know, I think I'm living above your old house ... From the description in your book it must be the same place" ("Conversation with Palestinian Writer and Doctor Ghada Karmi").

At Erlanger's invitation, Karmi visited, but did not find the elegant one-story stone house her family had moved into in 1938, that was typical of the homes middle- and upper-class Arabs began to build in Jerusalem suburbs like Qatamon, Talbiya, Baqa, Romema or Lifta toward the end of the 19th century. The original house was still there, but at some point after 1948 two upper stories had been built.

Erlanger, responding to questions posed by The Electronic Intifada via email, described the residence as "built over the Karmi family house -- on its air rights, if you like. The [New York Times] is not in [the Karmi] house." Erlanger described the building as having an "unbroken" facade but that it consisted of "two residences, two ownerships, two heating systems," and a separate entrance for the upper levels reached via an external staircase on the side.

Questions The Electronic Intifada sent to Thomas Friedman about the purchase of the property were answered by David E. McCraw, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for the newspaper, who wrote that the original Karmi house itself "was never owned even partly by The Times. The Times purchased in the 1980s a portion of the building that had been constructed above it in the late 1970s." The purchase was made from "a Canadian family that had bought them from the original builders of the apartment."

McCraw acknowledged in a follow-up conversation that as a general principle of property law, the "air rights" of a property -- the right to build on top of it or use (and access) the space above it -- belong to the owner of the ground.

Hasan Karmi hailed originally from Tulkarem, in what is now the northern West Bank. In 1938, he moved his family to Jerusalem to take up a job in the education department of the British-run Palestine Mandate government. Ghada -- born around November 1939 (the exact date is unknown because her birth certificate along with all the family's records, photographs, furniture, personal possessions and an extensive library were lost with the house) -- has vivid memories of a happy childhood in what was a well-to-do mixed neighborhood of Arab Christians and Muslims, foreigners and a few Jewish families. The neighbors with whom her parents socialized and with whose children the young Ghada and her siblings played included the Tubbeh, Jouzeh, Wahbeh and Khayyat families. There was also a Jewish family called Kramer, whose father belonged to the Haganah, the Zionist militia that became the Israeli army after May 1948.

Karmi describes the house at length in her memoir -- but she told The Electronic Intifada her fondest memories were of the tree-filled garden where she spent much time playing with her brother and sister and the family dog Rex. The lemon and olive trees she remembers are still there, Erlanger noted to The Electronic Intifada.

In the mid-1940s, the lively Qatamon social life gave way to terror as the dark clouds of what would come to be known as the Nakba approached. Violence broke out all over Jerusalem after the UN's devastating recommendation to partition Palestine without giving its people any say in the matter. Spontaneous riots by Arabs were followed by organized violence from Zionist groups and mutual retaliatory attacks that claimed lives from both communities. This climate provided the pretext for the Haganah's premeditated campaign to seize Jerusalem.

Poorly armed and disorganized Arab irregulars, who had nevertheless succeeded in disrupting Zionist supply convoys to Jerusalem, proved no match for highly-trained and well-armed Zionist militias which, on the orders of David Ben-Gurion, began a well-planned campaign to conquer the western parts of the city. The occupation of western Jerusalem and some 40 villages in its vicinity was executed as part of the Haganah's "Plan Dalet." These events are well documented in books including Benny Morris' The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949 (1987), Walid Khalidi's (ed.) All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (1992), Salim Tamari's (ed.) Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and their Fate in the War (1999) and Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).

Zionist militias used frequent bombings of Arab civilians to terrorize residents into fleeing. These attacks were amplified by posters and warnings broadcast over loudspeakers that those choosing to remain behind would share the fate of those killed in atrocities.

Karmi wrote that one night in November 1947, their neighbor Kramer came to see her father and said, "I have come to tell you at some risk to myself to take your family and leave Jerusalem as soon as possible .... Please believe me, it is not safe here." Many Qatamon families left after the Zionist bombing of the nearby Semiramis Hotel, which killed 26 civilians including the Spanish consul-general, on the night of 4-5 January 1948.

The Karmis however held on, and Ghada records in her memoir her mother steadfastly saying, "The Jews are not going to drive me out of my house ... Others may go if they like, but we're not giving in."

Toward the end of April, bombardment by Zionist militias against virtually undefended Arab areas became so heavy, and the terror generated by the Deir Yassin massacre earlier that month so intense, that the Karmis relented and departed by taxi for Damascus, via Amman, with nothing but a few clothes. Their intention was to bring the children to safety at their maternal grandparents' house while the adults would return home to Jerusalem. A few days after reaching Damascus the elder Karmis tried to return to Jerusalem but were unable to do so. So began the family's exile that continues to this day.

As Arabs left their homes, Jews were moved in by the Haganah. "While the cleansing of Qatamon went on," Itzhak Levy, the head of Haganah intelligence in Jerusalem recalled, "pillage and robbery began. Soldiers and citizens took part in it. They broke into the houses and took from them furniture, clothing, electric equipment and food" (quoted in Pappe, p.99). Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli scholar and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, wrote in his book Sacred Landscape of personally witnessing the "looting of Arab homes in Qatamon" as a boy. Palestinians also lost art work, financial instruments and -- like the Karmis -- irreplaceable family records, as the fabric of a society and a way of life were destroyed.

The Karmis' story is a variation of what happened to tens of thousands of Jerusalem-area Palestinians during the Nakba, in which approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes all over the country and never allowed to return. (In my book One Country I describe the departure under similar circumstances of my mother's family from Lifta-Romema.)

As of 1997, there were 84,000 living West Jerusalem refugees (23,000 born before 1948), according to Tamari. Half lived in the West Bank, many just miles from their original homes, but thousands of others were spread across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

Arab property is well-documented through administrative and UN records, but tracing the fate of an individual house or proving title is extremely difficult if not impossible for Palestinians scattered, exiled and forbidden from returning home. Some, who have foreign passports that allowed them to make brief visits, have attempted to locate their family properties. In recent years a small Israeli group called Zochrot (Remembering) has even joined in -- taking some displaced Palestinians back to their original villages and homes, whose traces Israel often made deliberate efforts to conceal or destroy. But such activities are not welcomed by most Israeli Jews still in denial about their state's genesis.

Ghada Karmi recalls an earlier attempt to revisit her family home in 1998. The residents were unwelcoming and would not give her the phone number of the landlord, though a plaque outside bore the name "Ben-Porat."

The owner of the original, lower-level house at the time The New York Times bought the upper levels was Yoram Ben-Porat, an economics professor who became president of the Hebrew University and was killed with his wife and young son in a road accident in October 1992. According to Erlanger, the house remained with heirs from the Ben-Porat family who rented it out until it was sold in 2005 to an Israeli couple who did some remodeling. It is unknown when the Ben-Porats acquired the house or if they were the ones who had the upper levels built.

During Karmi's 2005 visit, Erlanger invited her to see his part of the house and introduced her to the Israeli tenants in the lower level who gave her free access while Erlanger took photographs. For Karmi, revisiting the house was disconcerting. She described to The Electronic Intifada its occupants as "Ashkenazi Jewish Israelis, liberals, nice people who wanted to be nice." She felt like asking them, "how can you live here knowing this is an Arab house, knowing this was once owned by Arabs, what goes through your mind?" But, she explained, "in the way people have of not wanting to upset people who appear to be nice, I didn't say anything."

The New York Times

In the early years after their original residents left, many of the former Arab neighborhoods were run down. But in the 1970s, wealthier Israeli Jews began to gentrify them and acquiring an old Arab house became a status symbol. Today, Israeli real estate agencies list even small apartments in Qatamon for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and house prices can run into the millions. In Jerusalem, such homes have become popular especially with wealthy American Jews, according to Pappe. The New York Times did not disclose what it paid for the Qatamon property.

It was a curious decision for The New York Times to have purchased part of what must obviously have been property with -- at the very least -- a political, moral and legal cloud over its title. Asked whether The New York Times or Friedman had made any effort to learn the history of the property, the newspaper responded, "Neither The Times nor Mr. Friedman knew who owned the original ground floor prior to 1948."

As Friedman prepared to make the move to Jerusalem from Beirut where he was covering the Lebanon war in the early 1980s, The Times hired an Israeli real estate agent to help him locate a home. According to McCraw, Friedman's wife Ann went ahead to Jerusalem and looked at properties "and she, working with the agent, made the selection for The Times." During the process Friedman visited Jerusalem and looked at properties as well, a fact he mentions in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem. By the time the property was selected, Friedman had moved permanently to Jerusalem and oversaw the closing.

The choice of the Qatamon property -- over several modern apartments that the real estate agent also showed -- makes The New York Times a protagonist and interested party in one of the most difficult aspects of the Palestine conflict: the property and refugee rights of Palestinians that Israel has adamantly denied. It also raises interesting questions about what such choices have on news coverage -- with which the newspaper itself has had to grapple.

In 2002, an Electronic Intifada article partly attributed the pervasive underreporting of Israeli violence against Palestinians to "a structural geographic bias" -- the fact that "most US news organizations who have reporters on the ground base them in Tel Aviv or west Jerusalem, very far from the places where Palestinians are being killed and bombarded on a daily basis" ( Michael Brown and Ali Abunimah, "Killings of dozens once again called 'period of calm' by US media, 20 September 2002).

In 2005, The New York Times' then Public Editor Daniel Okrent echoed this criticism, writing:

"The Times, like virtually every American news organization, maintains its bureau in West Jerusalem. Its reporters and their families shop in the same markets, walk the same streets and sit in the same cafes that have long been at risk of terrorist attack. Some advocates of the Palestinian cause call this 'structural geographic bias.'" ("The Hottest Button: How The Times Covers Israel and Palestine," 24 April 2005).

Okrent recommended that in order to broaden the view of the newspaper's reporters, it should locate a correspondent in Ramallah or Gaza -- where she or he would share the daily experiences, concerns and risks of Palestinians. This advice went unheeded, just as Executive Editor Bill Keller recently publicly rejected the advice of the current public editor that current Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner should be reassigned because of the conflict of interest created by Bronner's son's voluntary enlistment in the Israeli army.

Thus, in a sense, Bronner's structural and personal identification with Israel has become complete: when the younger Bronner joins army attacks in Gaza, fires tear gas canisters or live bullets at nonviolent demonstrators trying to save their land from confiscation in West Bank villages, or conducts night arrest raids in Ramallah or Nablus -- as he may well be ordered to do -- his father will root for him, worry about him, perhaps hope that his enemies will fall in place of his son, as any Israeli parent would. And on weekends, the elder Bronner will await his soldier-son's homecoming to a property whose true heirs live every day, like millions of Palestinians, with the unacknowledged trauma, and enduring injustice of dispossession and exile.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11109.shtml

(5) Georgia taunting Russia

From: efgh1951 <efgh1951@yahoo.com> Date: 03.03.2010 05:55 PM

Georgia vs Russia: Fanning the flames

Will there be another war in the Caucasus? This is a smoldering issue on more than one front, finds Eric Walberg, in the first of a two-part analysis of the spectre of conflict in this crucial crossroads

Tuesday, 02 March 2010

http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=231:georgia-vs-russia-fanning-the-flames&catid=37:russia-and-ex-soviet-union-english&Itemid=90
http://www.faxts.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=391:georgia-vs-russia-fanning-the-flames&catid=72:politics

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world expected a new era of peace and disarmament. But what happened? Instead of diminishing, US and NATO presence throughout Europe, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Central Asia rapidly increased, and the world experienced one war after another -- in the Caucasus, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, each one hotter and more horrible than the last. And we are far from seeing the end to the savagery now unleashed by the anti-communist jinni.

Though a pokey backwater for the past millennium, the south Caucasus is now a key battleground, the "critical strategic crossroads in 21st century geopolitics", writes analyst Rick Rozoff, the focus of ambitious energy transit projects and a military corridor reaching from Western Europe to East Asia, controlled (or not so "controlled") from Washington and Brussels.

Surely peace in this vital region should be a paramount goal for both Russia and the West, for their own reasons -- Russia because, well because it is there and its cultural and economic links are vital to Russia's well being. The US, if only to benefit economically, since peace everywhere is a boon to economic well being and logically should be blessed by the world's superpower, whether or not it is a benevolent one.

But this logic has been betrayed -- egregiously, in the case of US abetting Georgia in its disastrous war against Russia in 2008, less obviously in likely covert US and other involvement in Chechnya and its neighbours, as well as in the Armenia-Azerbaijan stand-off over Nagorno Karabakh.

Topping the list in recent times are Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where firebrand Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili struts and threatens, running from one NATO gathering to another, embracing one US military envoy after another, as he shakes his fist at his northern nemesis and vows to retake his breakaway territories Abkhazia and South Ossetia, now fully fledged republics. This pits a NATO hopeful against a NATO foe, and despite the fact that NATO expressly forbids membership to any country with disputed borders, it continues to vow that Georgia will soon be a full member, a project that can only mean war with Russia.

US encouragement for Saakashvili in his failed 2008 war with Russia was, to put it mildly, an embarrassment for the US and should be a warning to politely distance itself from further abetting a dangerously unpredictable character. Despite the likelihood that Saakashvili's extreme pro-West policies will be reversed by a future government, the US navy is conducting war exercises at this very moment with Georgia in the Black Sea, and the Pentagon is preparing to build three military bases in Georgia and dispatch of up to 25,000 US servicemen to the country by 2015. It seems the embarrassment is also a "window of opportunity", a chance to put facts on the ground which a future government would find very difficult to change.

Georgia is a tempting morsel for other reasons. US special envoy to AfPak Richard Holbrooke just last week visited Georgia to arrange transit of arms to his killing fields via Georgia. Saakashvili offered Georgia's Black Sea ports Poti and Batumi as docks for military supply ships and the country's airports as refuelling points for cargo planes. "The route to Afghanistan is already used extensively, because almost 80 per cent of cargo which is not going through Pakistan is going through Georgia, and only 20 per cent through Russia," boasts Alexander Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Security in International Studies.

Saakashvili is pursuing a propaganda campaign aiming to destabilise the region through direct and indirect provocation of Russia and support of terrorists with the tacit approval of Washington and Brussels. He has launched a Russian-language TV station First Caucasus beamed into South Ossetia, much like Reagan's TV Marti set up in 1985 for Cubans. He has also reached out to Abkhazians and Ossetians to try to convince them to subvert their current governments and join Georgia.

The idea, according to analyst at the Strategic Cultural Foundation Nicolai Dimlevich, is to foment instability throughout the Caucasus and in Transcaucasia and then call for all the zones of conflict to be passed into UN, EU and/or NATO hands for safekeeping, since Russia would be proven to be incapable of ensuring the security of local populations. In this scenario, the US and NATO "benefit" from war in the region, as it is an opportunity to weaken Russia and extend control over the region. Terrifying thoughts, but unfortunately perfectly "rational".

The failed war against Russia in 2008 also left behind storm clouds in Saakashvili's own Tbilisi, where opposition to his reckless political gambits has hardened. Even as Saakashvili blusters, key Georgian opposition figures have been visiting Moscow since late last year, disowning their president's plans. "We are prepared to receive those, who come not for fighting and trickery, but for making some changes," Russian Deputy Minister Gregory Karasin told reporters in Geneva recently. Karasin quoted Georgian parliament's ex-speaker, current leader of the Democratic Movement-United Georgia, Nino Burjanadze: "When Saakashvili made a decision to wage war in summer 2008, I am quoting her `he intended to make Russia bend on its knees and to cause tension in relations with Russia, but Saakashvili lost the war and put the country in a tragic situation.' We want to have open and pleasant relationship with Georgia."

Former Georgian prime minister Zurab Noghaideli was received by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in December, the first time that the Russian leader openly met with a Georgian opposition leader. He openly advocates cooperation between his Movement for a Just Georgia and United Russia, and has developed close ties with the Union of Georgians in Russia. Noghaideli has repeatedly stated that without a radical change in Georgia's foreign policy priorities his country's "destruction will continue", warning that "there is danger of Georgia's further dismemberment" if Tbilisi's current course continues.

"Saakashvili understands that his rule is in danger, and therefore he is prepared to plunge the country into a new war. He prefers to be a president banished from Georgia by Russia than to be banished by his own people," said Burjanadze, condemning the TV station beamed into Ossetia which features a talk show hosted by the late Chechen rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev's widow. Giorgi Khaindrava, a former Cabinet member and now an opposition leader, said. if the channel devotes coverage to the insurgency in Russia's north Caucasus, Putin may declare it a terrorist threat and use force to shut it down. "This isn't just fantasy. It could happen."

The entire spectrum of Georgia's politicians agree. Conservative Party leader Kakha Kukava says, "Russia doesn't have any strategic plan towards Georgia nowadays. It is in Saakashvili's interests to provoke Russia and attract international attention to obtain support." Even "some of the people close to President Saakashvili may also agree, but they can't say so openly because they're afraid of him," asserts Noghaideli.

Perhaps Saakashvili's bluster is just hot air. But the war exercises with the US and the planned US bases aren't. Nor is the fact that the south Caucasus has become a transit route for drugs to Europe and Russia. Russian Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov said last week that the ports of Batumi and Poti are "the main ones in drug trafficking, and the Georgian city of Kabuleti is one of the key points of trafficking of Afghan heroin."

Only Saakashvili seems to think it's possible to reunite the two breakaway regions with Georgia any time soon. For better or worse Abkhazia is ever more securely tied to Russia, as confirmed by President Sergei Bagapsh's visit to Moscow last month to commemorate 200 years since Abkhazia was absorbed into the Russian empire. Though not Moscow's favourite in the 2004 elections, Bagapsh has agreed to establish a joint military ground force for the next 49 years and to upgrade an existing Russian base at Gudauta, where 1,700 Russian troops are presently stationed. He also proposed that Abkhazia join the Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan Customs Union even though neither Minsk nor Astana has recognised Abkhazia as a sovereign state. Ironically, says analyst Sergei Markedonov, if even a half dozen European countries were to recognise Abkhazia, "maybe Bagapsh would favour European integration." Carnegie Moscow Centre analyst Alexei Malashenko suspects that Turkey may set things in motion. "Turkey is ready to establish special relations with Abkhazia."

The mouse's defeat in 2008 also was an important incentive for Ukrainians to turn against their Orange revolutionaries last month. Incumbent Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich is merely expressing the will of the people when he dismisses any future move to join NATO and tones down the anti-Russian rhetoric. When Saakashvili goes, a similar move will surely take place in Georgia, as a future president tries to repair relations with Russia, though -- hopes the Pentagon -- leaving by-then existing US bases in place. ***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/