Ossetia, Oh Ossetia. Where forth art thou?

A besieged ethnic minority living in a province that borders a country where its members are a majority, threatened by the army of the country within which it resides. Sound familiar? Well, it’s nearly identical to the scenario that played itself out in Kosovo. In support of the Kosovo Albanians we unleashed a devastating months long bombing campaign against Serbia, leading to hundreds of civilian deaths and massive destruction, which was condemned by Russia and endorsed by NATO. Now the shoe is on the other foot and Russia has intervened in South Ossetia to rescue ethnic Russians from an onslaught by the Georgian army. The outcry by Bush and company has to be the most hypocritical claptrap ever mouthed by a bloodthirsty tyrant.

The Soviet Union allowed itself to be wiped off the face of the earth (to use a phrase made popular by a certain middle eastern president) with barely a whimper, and the Russian Federation sat idly by as its chief rival, the US, situated half a world away, set up a coterie of lackey satellites surrounding it. Imagine our reaction to a similar state of affairs (perhaps Cuba comes to mind). But now that we’ve hamstrung ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s not much we can do but bluff our way through the “crisis” with rhetorical bluster. More fodder for the MSM and its campaign of perpetual disinformation.

McCain and his handlers, in the pay of the Georgian President Saakashvilli, would love to resurrect the Cold War and the halcyon days of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, the better to bamboozle the American public to support a policy of continued military spending and American hegemony, now that the “war on terror” has begun to fizzle. Obama and his reliance for foreign policy advice on the founder of Al Qaeda, Zbigniew Brzezinski, can only think to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age from which it never emerged. It seems that our foreign policy options are no better under either of these two regimes. When will we ever learn, oh when will we ever learn?

In this regard, the 29th Olympiad has been perverted to serve the purposes of the ruling class. In a two-pronged strategy, presenting a smiley face to the Chinese people and fear of the “yellow peril” to its homeys, the corporate elites hope to have their cake and eat it too, selling themselves to Chinese consumers while scaring the bejesus out of gullible Americans. Shaken to its core by China’s emergence as the economic dynamo of the 21st century (aided and abetted by the same monopoly capitalists who decry its success) the US corporate media has ignited a firestorm of invective directed against the world’s most populace and dynamic country. Orchestrated by stooges of American imperialism such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the cacophonous chorus of derision directed against China is truly deafening. Without any knowledge of its culture or history China is portrayed as the epitome of the evil totalitarian state.

And I fault voices on the left as well for perpetuating this pernicious lie. In its zeal to be seen as equal opportunity critics, human rights advocates have jumped on the bandwagon of the theocratic Dalai Lama, who has been in the pay of the CIA for upwards of 50 years. Part of the grand strategy of the neoliberal neocons is to dismember China as they did the Soviet Union, the better to digest it. Well, the Chinese have over 3000 years of geopolitical experience to draw upon and will not be fooled as their more malleable Soviet counterparts were into giving up the ghost of their ambitions. If it takes a little surveillance and a heavy hand to maintain their position in power the CPC will show no hesitancy in doing so. If only the Soviets had had the wherewithal to persist, as has the Chinese leadership, the world would not have witnessed the wretched excesses of the Bush/bin Laden conglomerate.