Georgia

The Other Side of Georgia

by Joshua Foust

Robert English has an historical perspective on Georgia: Large rallies in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi denounced the Abkhazians and Ossetians as “traitors” and “pawns of the Kremlin” while groups of angry Georgians took their protests directly to the Abkhazian and Ossetian capitals of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali. The resulting confrontations often turned violent. A 1989 [...]

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Georgia’s Side

by Joshua Foust

C.J. Chivers presents Georgia’s side of “what went wrong.” Georgia has released intercepted telephone calls purporting to show that part of a Russian armored regiment crossed into the separatist enclave of South Ossetia nearly a full day before Georgia’s attack on the capital, Tskhinvali, late on Aug. 7. Georgia is trying to counter accusations that [...]

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The Debate Is Really About Russia

by Joshua Foust

One of the challenges in the Russo-Georgian War is that is has characters we’re inclined to lionize and characters we’re inclined to villify. Hence, we have sweet innocent Georgia being bullied by big mean aggressive Russia, and this is the accepted wisdom in the American corps of flappy heads on TV news. The reality, of [...]

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Two to Nothing

by Joshua Foust

Onnik Krekorian was at the historic Turkey-Armenia World Cup qualifying match, and has lots of photos and coverage of the politics surrounding it. It is notable because Turkish President Abdullah Gul traveled to Armenia to watch the proceedings. Onnik covers all of this; his post is worth the read. UEFA President Michel Platini thanked the [...]

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For whoever is not against us is on our side: Russia looks to its friends

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

That’s the Gospel of Mark, and I think it will help me discuss the latest talking point from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, dealing as it does with the alphabet soup of international and supranational organizations. And, for the first but not last time, my studies have caught up with my blogging! This week’s assignment in [...]

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Georgians v. Georgian Government

by Joshua Foust

The comments section of the Georgian Propaganda post came up with some fantastic expansions on the theme. I highly suggest reading that. In light of the very uncomfortable truth that President Saakashvili behaved incredibly recklessly, and relied on his understanding of America to bail him out should something go wrong. An open letter, published by [...]

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Georgia’s Propaganda

by Joshua Foust

The emerging role of propaganda in the Russo-Georgian War is one of my new-found favorite topics. And for contributing to its discussion, David Axe deserves a big high five. In a triplet of posts, he lays out in meticulous detail one of the may ways Georgia and its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, engaged in a rather [...]

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The Rise of Citizen Propagandists

by Joshua Foust

I have a new essay up at Columbia Journalism Review, this time discussing the role and rise of citizen propagandists, and why that’s such a big deal. Although a lot of people were thinking clearly about the war in Georgia, these kinds of perspectives were lost in the flood of citizen propaganda coming from partisans [...]

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Who even knows anymore?

by Michael Hancock-Parmer

Here’s a little wrap up of Caucasian mayhem. Sadly, the list of murdered journalists on Registan has a new member, as mentioned in the comments. Magomed Yevloyev [Магомед Евлоев] was a journalist, blogger, and owner of Ingushetiya.ru. Earlier this summer his site was shut down by court order for “extremism,” which equates to being in [...]

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Saakashvili, Warmonger?

by Joshua Foust

William Pfaff has a neat theory about Mikheil Saakashvili: the real damage President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia has done has been to the United States and NATO, and to Georgia itself, which for the foreseeable future will be a nation of limited sovereignty, and an awkward embarrassment to its Western allies… Ukraine and the Baltic [...]

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