No subject

to work of any kind and inclination to jeer at infirm people.

In Russia there are many thieves from Georgia. Their specialization is flat
burglaries and burglaries from cars.

Fred comments:
Well, one thing this informant's information informs us is that Russian
chauvinism and prejudice to the South Asian peoples of the former empire is
still a factor. This is some evidence -- along with the extreme poverty of
the country -- for my judgment that Georgia remains today, as Lenin and
other Bolshevik leaders certainly believed.  An oppressed nation not only in
the world picture but even in relation to non-imperialist Russia (just as
the Ossetians and Abkhazians seem to have oppressed relative to the
Georgians).

I don't think our course or attitude toward a war is determined by its
designation of the participant states as oppressed, imperialist whatever.
The actual concrete circumstances have to enter in. Oppressed nations can
and sometimes do wage reactionary wars even against stronger states. Georgia
in this case was being used not only to wage a reactionary attack on South
Ossetia, but in a war that formed part (whether or not the imperialists
green-lighted the specific Georgian activities)of the US drive to extend
NATO military dominance over all of Eurasia. 

I note the evidence that Georgia is oppressed not to cancel out the positive
character of the setback to imperialism's designs, but to stress that we
should keep our eyes open to the complex relations in the region. That
means, among other things, not to slip into relying on capitalist Russia as
basically a liberator or protector of the Slavs and other peoples in the
region.
Fred Feldman