CNN misleading war video and reports.

By Mark Steinmeyer

American and British media distort their reports. Most Indonesia’s media especially MetroTV Indonesia trusting blindly the Western media are consequently distorted.

American broadcaster CNN has been using reports and the wrong pictures in their coverage of the conflict in South Ossetia. A Russian cameraman says footage of wrecked tanks and ruined buildings, which was purported to have been filmed in the town of Gori, in fact showed the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali.

Gori was said to be about to fall under the control of the Russian army but the cameraman says the video was actually shot in Tskhinvali, which had been flattened by Georgian shelling.

Aleksandr Zhukov, from the Russiya Al-Yaum channel, said: “When we arrived and news came that Gori was being shelled, I saw my footage. I said: that’s not Gori! That’s Tskhinvali. Having crawled through the length and breadth of Tskhinvali, I don’t need much to tell from which point this or that footage was recorded. I can swear in front of any tribunal. I can point at this location on the map of the town, because I and the cameraman of the Rossiya channel videotaped that.”

Igor Komissarov, deputy chairman of the Prosecutor’s Investigation Committee, said it had “initiated a genocide probe based on reports of actions committed by Georgian troops aimed at murdering Russian citizens, ethnic Ossetians, living in South Ossetia.”

According to the latest figures, about 1,600 residents and 74 Russian peacekeepers have been killed as a result of Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia.

Speaking at a joint media briefing with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, President Medvedev said double standards are inadmissible when evaluating the actions of politicians who are guilty of mass killings of civilians.

“The situation when one, who committed thousands of crimes, is characterised as a terrorist, and another as a president of a sovereign state, is very strange,” he said.

Meanwhile, Marina Gridneva, a spokesperson for the General Prosecutor’s Office, told Interfax that Russian law allows for foreign citizens to be brought to trial if they have committed a crime against Russia’s interests.

Moscow’s Georgians and Ossetians united in misery. As conflict engulfs their homelands, in Moscow, Georgian and Ossetian nationals are trying to comprehend what has been happening. They have issue a common message: peace is what they want most.

Tengiz Begishvili is from Georgia. He moved to Moscow sixteen years ago but still has lots of relatives and friends back in his native country.

Watching the reports from the battlefield in South Ossetia, he says that what is happening there is beyond his understanding.

“What should be done first of all is to hold a ceasefire,” he said. “We, Georgians, call Ossetians our brethren, and we can’t believe so many people have died or lost their homes in the last four days.”

As a representative of one of the world’s biggest Georgian ex-pat communities - more than a million live in Russia - Tengiz is confident that an understanding can be found between Georgia and Russia.

“I can put it straightforwardly - there are no problems between the Georgians and Russians,” he said. “I have a very good relationship with Abkhazians, Ossetians and Russians. And it hurts greatly to watch this conflict between Georgians and Ossetians.”

Those who want to help ease the humanitarian problems have been visiting Moscow’s Ossetian community. These days it’s full of volunteers packing essentials that were brought here by people of different nationalities. Everything from bedding to toys will be delivered to refugees from South Ossetia as soon as possible.

Trouble binds

At the Georgian embassy in Moscow, people with an interest in the Ossetian tragedy are gathering.

Oleg Taraev’s father and brother are in Tskhinvali now, but he says the trouble has brought together many nations.

“In those four days we all - people from South and North Ossetia, Abkhazia, Russia, Dagestan, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria - have been sticking together.”

It’s not the first day people have come to the embassy, and while their identities change from day to day, their call to stop the violence remains.

Putin also has said the West of double standards when it comes to judging war crimes.

“As we all know, Saddam Hussein was hanged for burning down several Shiite villages. But now suddenly the situation is different. The Georgian leaders who in a matter of hours wiped out ten Ossetian villages, who ran over children and the elderly with tanks, who burned civilians alive, those people have to be protected,” he said.

American Joe Mestas, who witnessed days of shelling, has said U.S. and Georgian leaders are responsible for the violence that has killed 2,000 people in the region. He told RT that Washington will have to answer for the violence.

“I thought that since U.S. is supporting Georgia there would be some control over the situation in South Ossetia and that there would be a peaceful solution to the conflict. But what is happening there now it’s not just war, but war crimes. George Bush and [Georgian president] Mikhail Saakashvili should answer to the crimes that are being committed – the killing of innocent people, running over by tanks of children and women, throwing grenades into cellars where people are hiding,” Mestas said.