But it has a lot to do with national selections. For background look at February 2008 when our parish newsletters were stuffed full of helpful advice on how you and your community could recognise the statehood of Kosovo and of course Kosovars. There is little point recognising a statehood extending to it sovreignity and then not bothering to learn how to recognise its people.

You might as well just leave it as a protectorate.

Now back in February we thus all learnt how to avoid embarassment should we find ourselves in the awkward situation of distinguishing between an Albanian and a Serb or the happy event of learning that our grandchildren are dating a Kosovar. (Not that I'm either choosey or a grandparent). No sooner had the EU/NATO protectorate of Kosovo declared its independence and launched a "thank you" website c/f  http://www.kuvendikosoves.org/  http://www.kosovothanksyou.com/ then states within the EU as well as without got uppity about the implications of recognising a state on what appeared to be very very old-fashioned ethnic grounds. That is indeed why some states with substantial internal seperatists movements of all hues have still to recognise Kosovo.

Quicker than you can dictate the Kosovar internet telly address over a phone  http://www.rtv21.tv/site/?id=1,0,0,1,a

both Abkhazia and South Ossetia were on the table.

Thus it was no surprise when at the beginning of March 2008 the Abkhazia region in Georgia called on the UN and other international bodies [yet again] to recognise it as independent. The appeal was made by the separatist Abkhaz parliament on Friday 7/3/08 , a day after Russia had said it was lifting trade restrictions on the territory. Georgia condemned Russia's move, warning that it encouraged separatism.

[".....Tens of thousands of ethnic Georgians were driven from their homes in Abkhazia during a war in the 1990s. On Wednesday, Georgia's other breakaway region, South Ossetia, asked the UN and other international bodies to recognise its independence.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7283192.stm ]

So if you're looking for "fall-out" from this, & not of the nuclear kind, then the realpolitik points to a reconsideration of the EU/NATO protectorate of Kosovo and the route of Abkhazia as well as South Ossetia to independence and some local soul searching in the Basque mountains as the count down to their October 25th 2008 referendum "on the right to hold an independence plebiscite".

= You look west on this one - not east.


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ossetia
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhazia

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7548715.stm

1500 killed according to the Beeb. And yet no confirmed deaths outside of one air-raid.

Georgia is not Chechnya like Iran is not Iraq. 1500 deaths says the BBC and not a peep from the Tibet/ Burma protestors here. I guess this came as a bit of a surprise ? That's the thing with wars....

Yeah, a full-scale war raging in Georgia and the newswire is bereft of any mention of it........ makes me wonder.

did they think Georgia timed the war with the Olympics.
42% thought yes.

oddly enough the Olympics gave both Putin and Bush a chance to talk about it.

 http://www.russiatoday.ru/poll/results/357

more links & blaa blaa on this short war here  http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/405939.html
and here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_South_Ossetia_%282008%29

Back about 1960 Australian Communist Bill Evans, the one who changed a bit after deliberately being late to get back on the train in, was it Kiev, after buying a paper, so that he had to get in with the ordinary soldiers instead of the Officers and their gold dripping wives up the front of the train.

He told me that whenever the Stock Market was slipping, there was always a war to make it recover.

Somehow I do not think it will work any more. What causes the Stock Market to rise now is Capitalists getting out of money before it is inflated to valueless. And the wars are what now destroys the value of the Currency.. Prepare for Depression. Fair shares of Poverty!

A Chinese woman won Air Pistol shooting in the Olympics. She was smiling as the second and third hogged the TV carmras, they were hugging - and calling for a ceasefire between their home countries Russia and Georgia.