Propaganda poster

For many the war in Georgia may have seemed as though it came from nowhere; as if it just suddenly erupted without any warning. And, if one were to believe what the pro-western mainstream media are telling us, one could be forgiven for believing that it did. The US and their western allies have taken full advantage of this anomaly and turned it to their advantage for propaganda purposes. They have been busy telling the world that the Georgians have been overwhelmed by the Russian ‘bully boys’ to their north when in reality the Russians were and are merely reacting to the murderous bully boy tactics of the Georgian army and their supporting band of US and Israeli mercenary thugs that ruthlessly attacked the civilian population of south Ossetia in an effort to force them to give up their demands for autonomy.

In fact the tensions in and around Georgia, once part of the Soviet Union, have been simmering for years.

The Georgian state is made up of many ethnic groupings many of whom feel more comfortable being part of Russia than having to be subservient to Georgia. Over the years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of present day Georgia in 1991, two regions of Georgia in particular, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, have evolved, against the wishes of the central Georgian government, into semi-autonomous regions whose status has been protected and supported by Russia. This has caused massive resentment from the Georgians who insist that these regions come entirely under Georgian control.

Every now and then the undercurrent of animosities between the Georgians and the Russians over these two regions well up to the surface and become a source of potential conflict. In the past Russia, simply by twitching a military muscle, which, if push really came to shove, could flatten Georgia in a flash, usually has seen an end to any further serious posturing by the Georgians.