{"id":4237,"date":"2008-09-16T16:57:10","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T21:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4237"},"modified":"2008-09-16T16:57:10","modified_gmt":"2008-09-16T21:57:10","slug":"john-rosenthal-reporting-the-georgian-war-is-bernard-henri-levy-a-fabulist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4237","title":{"rendered":"John Rosenthal: Reporting the Georgian War: Is Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy a Fabulist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Rosenthal, World Politics Review, 10 September 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Upon arriving in Gori, L\u00e9vy reports seeing a city on fire. Gori is “a Georgian town,” L\u00e9vy writes, “And [the Russians] have burned it down, pillaged it, reduced it to a ghost town.” The full passage (in the translation of the Huffington Post) reads as follows:<\/p>\n

After crossing through six new check points, one of which consists of a tree trunk hoisted up and down by a winch commanded by a group of paramilitaries, we arrive in Gori. We are not in the center of the city. But from where Lomaia has dropped us, before taking off in the Audi to collect his wounded, from this intersection dominated by an enormous tank as big as a rolling bunker, we can see fires burning everywhere. Rockets lighting up the sky at regular intervals, followed by short detonations. The emptiness. The slight odor of putrefaction and death. Most of all, the incessant rumbling of armored vehicles. Almost every other car is an unmarked car jammed with militia, recognizable because of their white armbands and their headbands. Gori does not belong to the Ossetia which the Russians claim they have come to “liberate.” It is a Georgian town. And they have burned it down, pillaged it, reduced it to a ghost town<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The problem with this account, however, is that L\u00e9vy appears not to have seen what he reported seeing. In fact, as has since been confirmed by other members of the group and even conceded by members of L\u00e9vy’s own entourage, L\u00e9vy never made it to Gori. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Read the article<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Rosenthal, World Politics Review, 10 September 2008 Upon arriving in Gori, L\u00e9vy reports seeing a city on fire. Gori is “a Georgian town,” L\u00e9vy writes, “And [the Russians] have burned it down, pillaged it, reduced it to a ghost … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-16l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4239,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237\/revisions\/4239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}