Skip to main content

Blog war

Since Russia has launched cyberattacks against Georgia in parallel with their continuing military assault, I feel obliged to highlight sites that the Georgians have been able to use to get information about what is happening in the Russian invasion.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry site: http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/

Also the President of Poland has established a site on his own Home page in order to get further information out: http://www.president.pl/x.node?id=479

Most .GG websites are at best only intermittently accessable as a result of the Russian cyberattacks.

Russian government actions over the past 96 hours- picking a fight with their small neighbour and then responding is overwhelming and totally disproportionate force have been a massive wake-up call and warning for all of us.

I, and others like Edward Lucas, have warned for some time about the nature of the Putin regime- their can be no doubt about their intentions, determination and recklessness with human life.

The West faces a simple choice: determined resistance to the tyrannical regime of the siloviki now, or open warfare when that regime finally pushes its luck too far.

It is a tragedy that the Georgian people have had to pay the price for Western blindness and willingness to placate the Kremlin.

Despite the tragic blunder of Iraq, despite the greed and folly that have led to the credit crunch, I do not think that it is too late to rally those who believe in the open society. It is time to do so.

Za Wasze Wolnosci i Nasze!

Comments

Anonymous said…
Cicero


Sak is dominating all the 24 hour news channels so they seem to have no problem getting their version out. The Russians seem all but invisible by contrast. Beyond sympathy I can't see what you suggest would work. Your idea of voiding Russian US Treasury bonds is lunacy for this reason. In the first case ignoring Russian reatliation everyone else with a possible beef with the US in the future say China over Taiwan, Arab states etc will then probably promptly junk them wrecking the market. Second you may think it will only be used in extremis but once the precednt is there it maybe used in many ways and for many reasons globally by many nations. In short financial anarchy. Don't you see this.


Lepidus

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...

One Year On

  Head vabariigi iseseisvuspäeva! Happy Estonian Independence Day! It is one year since I stood outside the Estonian Parliament for the traditional raising of the national flag from Tall Hermann tower. Looking at the young fraternities gathered with their flags, I was very sure that Estonia too would soon be facing the aggression of the criminal Russian regime. A tragic and dark day. 5 eyes intelligence had been clear: an all out invasion was going to happen, and Putin´s goals included- and still include- "restoration" of Russian imperial power across Europe, even to the Atlantic. Yet there was one Western intelligence failure: we all underestimated the guts of the Ukrainian armed forces, the ZSU, and its President and people. One year on, Estonia, and indeed all the front line states against Russia, knows that Ukraine saved us. Estonia used that time to prepare itself, should that "delayed" onslaught ever be unleashed, but equally the determination of Kaja Kallas, ...

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...