Britannia Radio

The first is from a Russian News Agency and mirrors Kremlin 
thinking.  It's on the rampage.

The second with excerpts from Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and 
Die Welt shows the complete subservience of the German ex-Chancellor 
to Russia after his palms have been crossed with gold - or roubles 
perhaps!

The Western position is being brutally attacked by Russian aggression 
asnd weeakened.  Not a good week for the MoD to cut the Navy budget 
by 20% [I will deal with this when I can!]

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EUROPEAN FOUNDATION INTELLIGENCE DIGEST - September 2008
   EXTRACTS

1. Russian analyst says Cuban base should be reopened
The head of the Department for Disarmament and Conflict Resolution in 
the Institute for World Economics and International Relations at the 
Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Pikayev, has said that Russia 
should re-open a listening and surveillance base in Cuba, which used 
to cover the whole USA, in retaliation for the American decision to 
install anti-missile radars and launchers in the Czech Republic and 
Poland or Lithuania. The electronic surveillance facility, which used 
to be near Havana, was shut down in October 2001 in a friendly 
gesture by Moscow towards the West in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. 
That gesture has never been reciprocated and the West has only become 
ever more anti-Russian since.

Pikayev said, "Cuba is a unique place to gather intelligence on the 
United States. I believe that the reopening of this station is both 
possible and necessary amid the threat that the Americans are 
creating for Russia. Russia has every right to respond." The facility 
covered 28 square miles and employed over one thousand Russian 
technicians and engineers; it enabled Russia to monitor 
communications in the US and between the US and Europe. [RIA Novosti, 
23 July 2008]

2. Georgia: Schröder wades in
Just as all the serving heads of state and government in Europe were 
issuing various forms of instructions to Russia to withdraw her 
troops from Georgia - Nicolas Sarkozy, for instance, published a long 
article in Le Figaro on 18 August, the same day that Angela Merkel 
was photographed visiting Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi - the former 
German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has expressed support for the 
Russian position in the conflict.

  In an interview with Der Spiegel, Schröder said that Georgia had 
started the conflict by invading South Ossetia (something Sarkozy 
also conceded in his otherwise pro-Georgian article). Schröder also 
warned against early NATO membership for Georgia and said that the 
chances of it happening had now become extremely remote. Schröder 
referred to Mikheil Saakashvili as a "chance-taker" and said that he 
was sure that Russia was not trying to annex any territory. He said, 
"I think nothing of this demonisation of Russia. I think of Russia as 
part of Europe." [Der Spiegel,16 August 2008]

Schröder's interview has caused outrage in the German political 
class. One CSU politician said that Schröder has become totally 
unreliable on matters Russian and that his interview was an insult to 
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the serving (Social Democrat) Foreign 
Minister. The same politicians said that the whole idea of a 
strategic partnership between Germany and Russia now had to be 
revisited. Many of Schröder's enemies attack him for being the voice 
of Moscow in Germany, especially since he now works for the 
consortium building the trans-Baltic pipeline which will bring gas 
directly to Germany.

His intervention comes just as the current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, 
travelled to Tbilisi where she gave strong support to the accession 
of both Georgia and Ukraine to NATO. Previously she had been opposed 
to both: indeed, it was largely as a result of German opposition that 
neither country was invited to join at the Bucharest summit this 
spring. Merkel called on Russia to withdraw its troops immediately 
from South Ossetia and reaffirmed her government's support for 
Georgia's territorial integrity.  [Handelsblatt, 17 August 2008]

As it happens, NATO is bitterly divided over the conflict in the 
Caucasus. According to diplomatic sources, the alliance cannot agree 
on who is responsible for starting the war. The Alliance members also 
cannot agree whether or not to support Georgia. The United States, 
Britain and Canada and the East European countries want a very firm 
anti-Russian policy; by contrast, Germany and France, while also 
basically anti-Russian, want to put the emphasis more on dialogue and 
diplomacy. One commentator wrote, "The Caucasus conflict has shown 
that NATO is a paper tiger." [Cerstin Gammelin, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 
19 August 2008; Richard Herzinger, Die Welt, 19 August 2008]