A Place to Stand

The Sun headline headline shows Vladimir Putin saying "We'll nuke Poland" & the rest of the media is only a little more restrained. Technically they aren't lying since they don't actually say Putin said this they simple publish it beside the photo of a "furious" Putin. (There was once a joke about using the same photo of John Major to show him angry, happy & sad - same here.)

In fact, of course he never said any such thing. What actually happened is that a Russian general, not even a politician & certainly not Putin, explained that in the event of an American attack on Russia

"The USA is engaged in an anti-missile defence for its own government, and not for Poland. And Poland, in deploying (elements of the system) opens itself to a military strike. That is 100 percent," Interfax quoted Nogovitsyn as saying.

Well of course it would. If a missile base on Polish territory were being used as part of a nuclear attack on Russia it would be an act of war. If a nuclear missile were fired at the US from Cuba the Cubans would get it back. If Afghanistan were to provide logistical support for an attack on America the Americans would undoubtedly retaliate - indeed they did. So did we during WW2 when we bombed places in occupied France - even though we knew they didn't like being occupied. So would any nation suffering aggression.

What the general is pointing out is that by giving the US this base they take the decision of whether their country have war or peace out of their hands & put it in America's. This is the reason countries are correctly uncomfortable about giving their territory over to the unconstrained use of other countries military.

Since last Thursday we have seen our media day by day ratcheting up their enmity of Russia. It is indeed similar to the way, in 1984, the authorities always needed at least one enemy to focus popular fear on. After all "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" as the heading to this blog explains. When the USSR crumbled they ratcheted up global warming. Now that global warming has crumbled they ratchet up Russia.

Unquoted is "Preserving the territorial integrity of Georgia will not be possible without preserving the territorial integrity of Serbia in Kosovo and Metohija province", Russian Ambassador to NATO Dimitry Rogozin said in Brussels.

"It is unacceptable to recognize the unilateral independence of Kosovo province from Serbia and, at the same time, keep repeating the territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected when it comes to South Ossetia and Abkhazia", Rogozin said at the press conference.

"If we all respect the territorial integrity of Serbia in regards to its Kosovo province, then we are also going to honor the territorial integrity of Georgia. But if someone doesn't respect Serbia's territorial integrity and sovereignty over Kosovo and Metohija, then they better shut up about the territorial integrity of Georgia", Rogozin said.

That contains the seeds of a deal & it is very difficult to argue that this is an unreasonable position. If anything it is overly reasonable since it accepts NATO's original carve up of Yugoslavia keeping Srpska & Krajina under the control of our ex-Nazi friends. For that reason it isn't being mentioned by the MSM.