10
" Everything stinks: creosote, bleach, disinfectant, soil, blood, gangrene.
The military authorities say uniforms must be preserved at all costs, but that means manhandling patients who are in agony. Cut them off, says Sister Byrd, and she's the voice of authority here, in the Salle d'Attente, not some gold-braid-encrusted crustacean miles away from blood and pain, so cut they do, snip, snip, snip, snip, as close to the skin as they dare.
On either side of Paul as he cuts are two long rows of feet: yellow, strong, calloused, scarred where blisters have formed and burst repeatedly. Since August they've done a lot of marching, these feet, and all their marching has brought them to this one place. "
― Pat Barker , Life Class (Life Class, #1)
11
" On August 7, 2013, on the evening of the fifth anniversary of the war, Georgian President Mikheil Saakasvili, in a prerecorded interview on Georgia’s Rustavi-2 TV, told that he had met Putin in Moscow in February 2008 at an informal summit of the CIS. During the summit he told Putin that he was ready to say no to NATO in exchange for Russian help with the reintegration of the two breakaway territories. Saakashvili claimed “that ‘Putin did not even think for a minute” about his proposal. “[Putin] smiled and said, ‘We do not exchange your territories for your geopolitical orientation... And it meant ‘we will chop off your territories anyway.’”
Saakashvili asked him to talk about the growing tensions along the borders with South Ossetia, saying, “It could not be worse than now.” “That’s when he [Putin] looked at me and said: ‘And here you are very wrong. You will see that very soon it will be much, much, much worse.’” [234] "
― , Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism
12
" On September 11, 2008, during a meeting of the Valdai Club with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Carrère d’Encausse asked Putin if he would respond positively to Kokoity’s demand for integration of South Ossetia into the Russian Federation. She wrote: “Vladimir Putin answered with the greatest firmness that such a hypothesis was excluded. He explained that if Russia in this specific case was unable to ignore the will of the Ossetian people to be independent, it was firm regarding the principles of respecting the inviolability of existing frontiers. This principle, according to him, applied without exception to the Russian Federation which could not, therefore, welcome into its midst a nation or territory that so desired.”
Putin’s double-talk (he is speaking about the “inviolability of existing frontiers” just after having changed the frontiers of Georgia by brutal force) brings her to the — naive — conclusion that “the blunt refusal that was opposed to the Ossetian demand for integration into Russia makes the Russian position clear: the August intervention in Georgia... could lead to a settlement of a conflict between Georgia and its separatist minorities, [but] in no case to a dossier that was of interest to Russia.” [237] "
― , Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism
18
" On a number of occasions, Tamara joined “Che” on his sorties into the Bolivian highlands, without incident. However, on March 24, 1967, a guerrilla fighter who had been captured by the Bolivian army betrayed her by giving away Tamara’s location. Although she escaped, the Bolivian soldiers found an address book in her Jeep and came after her in hot pursuit. With no other place to hide, she made her way back to “Che” Guevara’s forces. It was considered an open secret that Tamara had been intimate with “Che” but now the troops could not help but notice what was going on. The way they looked into each other’s eyes, and whispered sweet nothings, left no doubt in anyone’s mind, but that she was his lover….
The Bolivian highlands are notorious for the infestation of the Chigoe flea parasite, which infected Tamara. Having a leg injury and running a high fever, she and 16 other ailing fighters were ordered out of the region by Guevara. On August 31, 1967, up to her waist in the Rio Grande of Bolivia, and holding her M 1 rifle above her head, she and eight men were shot and killed in a hail of gunfire by Bolivian soldiers. Leaving their bodies in the water, it was several days before they were recovered downstream. Piranhas had attacked the bodies and their decomposing carcasses were polluting the water. Since the water was being used for drinking purposes by the people in a nearby village, the soldiers were ordered to clear the bodies out of the river. As they were preparing to bury Tamara’s remains in an unmarked grave, a local woman protested what was happening, and demanded that a woman should receive a Christian burial.
When he received the news of what had happened, Guevara was stunned and refused to accept it, thinking it was just a propaganda stunt to demoralize him. In Havana Fidel Castro declared her a “Heroine of the Revolution.”
There is always the possibility that Tamara was a double agent, whose mission it was to play up to “Che” when they met in Leipzig and then report back to the DDR (Democratic German Republic), who would in turn inform the USSR of “Che’s” activities. The spy game is a little like peeling an onion. Peel off one layer and what you find is yet another layer. "
― Hank Bracker