Betzee said...

Betzee at 10:33 PM JST - 13th August

Now that Russia has pulled this off they are not going to submit to the indignities of anything like UN mediation (which Moscow views with the same contempt as its neocon counterparts in the US).

What do you think of the way the U.S. government has been reacting so far?…

Posted in Russia decides to end operations in S. Ossetia at 10:33 PM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 10:08 PM JST - 13th August

You can probably describe a NeoCon a lot of different ways, but one of their core principals is the spread of democracy.

In fact not. Neoconservatives favor the use of force to promote US interests, one of which is the spread of freedom, or "democracy at gunpoint" as detractors…

Posted in Russia decides to end operations in S. Ossetia at 10:08 PM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 12:47 PM JST - 13th August

Who, exactly, are these people who see Putin as a Russian neo-con?

Robert Farley, left, of the University of Kentucky and Jacob Heilbrunn of The National Interest debate the causes of the Russia-Georgia conflict.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=773e55f8f675df004bc1055b0e5e99bf5d277421

Posted in Russia decides to end operations in S. Ossetia at 12:47 PM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 12:37 PM JST - 13th August

The Russians decided not to go as far as regime change because they don't want to get stuck with installing a new government in a hostile land." Well, just yesterday, Russia was saying Georgia's president has to go.

That demonstrated how much power they had. The world could only wait…

Posted in Russia decides to end operations in S. Ossetia at 12:37 PM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 12:17 PM JST - 13th August

The US's current battles in the Middle East are irrelevant.

In fact not. Many people understood the US attack on Iraq as, in part, as a post-9/11 demonstration of what happens with you mess with the US. Some of those same people see Putin not as a KGB guy but…

Posted in Russia decides to end operations in S. Ossetia at 12:17 PM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 10:30 AM JST - 13th August

And the letters of complaint from China will follow to each of those countries he visits.

No worries. The two countries Ma will visit still maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan (ROC) and not the PRC. If Ma is allowed to do more than stretch his legs as his plane refuels…

Posted in Taiwan's Ma leaves for S. America on first presidential trip at 10:30 AM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 04:00 AM JST - 13th August

WilliB,

From me the crucial chapter in the history of Mindanao where all the problems started was the first half of the twentieth century:

[T]his was a frontier zone, legal property rights to the income its natural resources had the potential to generate had not been established. This was remedied…

Posted in 23 killed, 27 wounded in fighting in S. Philippines at 04:00 AM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 03:50 AM JST - 13th August

Well, Vlad the impaler has thrown down the gauntlet on this, SezWho, (which will no doubt provoke outrage from the usual quarters):

*'"Of course, Saddam Hussein ought to have been hanged for destroying several Shiite villages . . . And the incumbent Georgian leaders who razed 10 Ossetian villages at…

Posted in Russia expands Georgia blitz, deploys ships at 03:50 AM JST - 13th August
Betzee at 11:06 PM JST - 12th August

The Pentagon takes the opposing point of view. Before they dispatched assistance to Jolo (described in the article linked above) they wanted a detailed history of the region. One of the things which residents of Jolo remember is the Battle of Bud Bagsak in which the US took the island,…

Posted in 23 killed, 27 wounded in fighting in S. Philippines at 11:06 PM JST - 12th August
Betzee at 10:48 PM JST - 12th August

SezWho,

This is the final paragraph from an article in the NYT's today about Putin:

*It may take time to work out the messages Mr. Putin has sent in the past week, but this one is clear: Russia insists on being seen as a great power. “The problem is, what…

Posted in Russia expands Georgia blitz, deploys ships at 10:48 PM JST - 12th August