Georgia on the verge of civil war:
<big snip>
><p>"On Friday, the U.S. State Department called on Georgia's government
>to conduct an independent investigation into the election results. State
>Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the poll results reflected "massive
>vote fraud" in some regions and "do not accurately reflect the will of
>the Georgian people." "
><p>No explanation as to why it took State until yesterday to say this,
>when the situation erupted on Nov. 2nd. Clearly, State sees now that
>they bet on the wrong horse, but they're still hedging...inded, the US
>Special Forces long stationed there, CIA, etc., must be pretty busy right
>now.
I've been following Georgia a bit lately. I can't find any recent news articles about US troops doing anything, one way or the other.
<big snip>
><p>AP also tried to paint this as another "Velvet Revolution against
>Communism".
>That track can be played over and over again for anything that happens
>east of Nuremburg, I guess.
I'm not sure if that was actually AP; I read an article that had that whole Velvet Revo thing in the mouth of this dude:
"The velvet revolution has taken place in Georgia," opposition leader Saakashvili of the National Movement said, as the hall applauded him. "We are against violence."
http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=27774
><p>The truth is, a US puppet is in the process of being toppled.
>For now it is a victory for us, not them. Cheer our side on!
Not so sure the victory's for "us" so much as it's (maybe) for a group of "liberal reformers" a la your Democratic Party (since the country's under the whip of the IMF, the reformers might just represent a more advanced and less thuggish party of capital). It might very well be that the Saakashvili isn't as corrupt as the old guard he and the coalition he's a part of are ousting, but I'm not terribly convinced about his left creds (what little I could find of them):
"But on June 13, the Labor Party made a surprise offer to Saakashvili’s National Movement. Labor leader Shalva Natelashvili met with Saakashvili and proposed to support Saakashvili’s party if Saakashvili quit Parliament and agreed to chair the capital’s city council. The two parties will effectively form a voting coalition. This deal ended a round of jockeying for the Labor party’s 15 council votes, which began when Natelashvili declared after the elections that he would not run for the chairmanship himself. It also surprised most Tbilisi veterans, who considered an alliance between the parties impossible. Labor has, in the past, called for distribution of land to fugitives; Saakashvili’s new party seeks to develop a more market-based model. Moreover, Natelashvili lambasted Saakashvili in pre-election campaigning, accusing him of posing as a reformer while maintaining covert ties to the government."
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav061902.shtml
The leader of the (apparently) Labour Party is pretty closed-mouthed about the deal:
"EurasiaNet: How probable is collaboration with the National Movement and Mikhail Saakashvili? You have more than once criticized him and called him a latent supporter of Shevardnadze. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Natelashvili: We are ready to cooperate even with the National Movement -- but, I shall repeat, only on concrete questions."
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/qanda/articles/eav112003.shtml
Chris, what do you know about all this? And just what exactly is Saakashvili and his party up to?
Todd
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