O-settee-ah? O-seesh-ee-ah?

The BBC says the former, the Georgians appear to pronounce the latter. Given the endless fighting during the Kosovan war over the difference between Kosovo and Kosova (I mean, within the British left) I am left wondering if there is a bias implicit in the pronunciation game?

Anyway, another ruddy war - the rules are different here, BBC reporters openly state that Russian forces have hit civilians - were it a Nato force you can be sure they would give balance to the official denial and merely state there have been "reports". The same goes for most of the reporting. But that's just an interesting aside.

Here's the skinny - a heavily armed superpower played for this and got it. It's old, old stuff. They recognise the breakaway republic. They guarantee them, they give them citizenship and claim relationship. Said breakaway republic thus drains rival power, and happens to contain the exit to a tunnel through a nigh impenetrable mountain range so that you can drive a column of tanks into the region easily.

Sit back, prod occasionally, and wait for warrrrr to break out.

Then there's t'other side, I mean Nato. Slowly encircling Russia, recruiting in it's traditional sphere of influence, buying influence over the Caspian oil routes.

I note as an aside that I can only boggle at the psychopathic mindset that it must take to be a General in any army. Any. They sat down and modelled this carnage out. They bought the guns, the tanks, the planes - casually plotting mass murder.

I note that Loonie is pro-Russia, seeing Georgia as a US stoodge, rather than as an independent actor with murderous aims and goals of its own. Mind, no one else seems to be commenting. HP are silent. Osler is silent. Clearly the enemy is at home.

So, for the record - as a socialist I can only aim for one thing from this conflict, immediate peace, irrespective of boundary outcomes. My allegiance is with the workers of Ossetia, Georgia and Russia - the wage-slave hired killers sent to die. The famillies slaughtered. The civillians cut down by the pass and fell of warring great powers. All other analysis aside, nation states are units of property - their wars are wars of property, mafia gangfights for loot. Workers do not benefit from these wars, we only die in them. The only way to stop these wars is to rid ourselves of the property system, and all the conspiracies to murder that are standing armies that stem from it.

The world for the workers, and nothing less.

Update: Young master Stross on the e-war side of things. Macleod has some comments as well. Chris Floyd (Whom Macleod links to) talks sense...