When the War Ends, Start to Worry

NYT ^ | August 16, 2008 | Michael Bronner

[Schnucki]

EVEN as Russia and Georgia continue their on-again, off-again struggle over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a frenzied tea-leaf reading about the war’s global political ramifications has broken out across airwaves and think-tank forums. But as the situation on the ground recedes inevitably to some new form of the pernicious “frozen conflict” that has plagued the region since Georgia’s civil wars of the early 1990s, few are paying attention to a less portentous but equally critical international threat: an increase in the longstanding, rampant criminality in the conflict zones that is likely to further destabilize the entire Caucasus region and at worst provide terrorist groups with the nuclear material they have long craved.

While the Russian “peacekeepers” who entrenched themselves in the conflict zones in the 1990s (and who will now likely resume their posts anew) have proved ineffectual and uninterested in maintaining stability, they’ve been highly successful in protecting an array of sophisticated criminal networks stretching from Russia through Georgian territory. South Ossetia, in particular, is a nest of organized crime. It is a marketplace for a variety of contraband, from fuel to cigarettes, wheat flour, hard drugs, weapons, people and, recently, counterfeit United States $100 bills “minted” at a press inside the conflict zone.

“It’s a pretty sophisticated counterfeiting piece,” the American ambassador to Georgia, John Tefft, told me when I was in Georgia last year. He added that the fake bills appear so authentic that, if you weren’t specifically looking for a forgery, you’d easily miss it. More than $20 million worth have been found up and down the East Coast of the United States as well as in Israel, Russia and Georgia.

“We know where the printing press is,” Shota Utiashvili, a chief intelligence analyst at Georgia’s Interior Ministry, told me last year, when I was researching

[Nathan Zachary]

"a frenzied tea-leaf reading about the war’s global political ramifications has broken out across airwaves and think-tank forums."

More like a frenzied wave of blatant stupidity is what it is.
Nothing exposes MSM's astounding ignorance of world history and what is going on in the world today- and why- than it's idiotic "news desk" personalities and the so-called 'experts' they select to comment on these events.

It would almost be comical entertainment if it wasn't for being such as sad example of the DISSERVICE to the Public MSM has become.
MSM has become nothing more than it's own political party using it's resources (in vilolation of the law) to sway the public opinion towards it's selected candidates.

[Chunga]

Attention:

The possessive form of "it" is "its," not "it's."

Thank you.

[mallardx]

The New York Times refuses to surrender the Pulitzer Prize awarded to Walter Duranty, a shill for the Marxist murderers, who relayed Soviet agitprop and lied for money, casting millions of people into graves. This led to the murder of tens of millions of people. And the NYT and Duranty have that blood on their hands, but never have to apologize. We need to hold these people accountable. Now. They were direct sponsors of tyranny, murder, and slavery - and yet we let them have a voice?