The propaganda machinery is in full gear for WWIII. Germany was the enemy of the west last time and now the nato/Eu stretches much further and wants full control. Too bad they have no more resources.

Such open hypocrisy as seen in this case by the MSM press and Merkel, Brown and Sarkozy is just incredible. They must have studied Hitler's march into Sudetenland and Austria and false flag operation as excuse to invade Poland. Just ignore facts and they will go away. Bush's quote on "making reality" comes to mind here.

It seems they have picked an enemy to make up for the chaos resulting from zero planning for their low energy future and for their credit crisis and it is named Russia. Now a nice provocation is called for to deflect from these extremely severe internal problems before elections in USA, Germany, UK, etc. could bring in people with possibly other points of view based on rational thinking.

The population is perceived as analagous to that in Orwell's novel 1984. Unfortunately virtually all commentaries by normal people on MSM newspaer sites in Germany , France, UK are pro Russia. They can't fool us with their lies. But I guess most people just play computer games and watch game shows so they can afford to ignore facts, such as attempted ethnic cleansing and potential genocide supported by NATO forces (training, weapons from NATO/Israel,etc. to Georgia).

Iraq war was done to get oil and control Middle East/Persian Gulf. Control of Georgia would enable attack of Iran from north by a very subservient minor league country (like baltics) and stationing of ICBMs or so and control of pipeline routes. Since Russia fought back against this genocide and obvious power grab for the region they now have "Russian aggression" as an excuse to demonize and isolate Russia so that Nato can get in to Georgia anyway with massive troops ("peacekeepers"- say 100,000 or so NATO troops).

It is like reading a script from a Greek tragedy. We know it ends like in WWII with Hitler shooting himself in defeat in the middle of rubble but this time it could be much much worse and western powers and media(who do no own research due to lack of funds, all just copy from each other and are brain dead by the way, relying on a stereotype concept of Russia from their cold war childhoods) want to bring such an end upon us all instead of planning for a low energy localized future.

Borwn/Merkel/Sarkozy/Bush:

"I don't know what to do without my Mercedes and credit card and endless growth. Oh, now it's gone so I have to blame someone else for taking it anyway and damn the consequences."

Incredibly Russia had their big collapse crisis ahead of us(1990s) so are now acting like adults. The West has the golden spoon in its mouth and lacks a sense of limits and how to deal with suffering responsibly.

The maniplation of media content (like what they showed of Putin's ARD interview on ARD a couple days ago, namely 10 minutes out of an hour) is incredible.

Just wait till true oil/gas shortages, rolling blackouts in Europe/N. America and 20% or more unemployment due to credit/energy crisis. Then the press censure and internet control will be complete. Only one message will get across like in Soviet times. Pravda was good only as toilet paper back then and from what we saw during this minicrisis this will certainly be the case in The West. So we know what to expect in the future. Only trust what you hear from eye witness accounts by the grapevine. The plan of TPTB is clear, so just follow the money trail to the military industrial credit complex.

The propaganda machinery is in full gear for WWIII.

I do not think so. It appears Bush provoked Saakashvili's South Ossetia adventure to help McCain get elected. There is no longer term reason to start another cold war. A world war might be starting, but it cannot be one where Russia is on the other side. That would be suicidal for the West.

Europe is much too dependant on Russian gas and oil for this to get out of hand. That is why, as Jerome points out, so much of this is bluster. Brown does not want to do anything that really hurts the Russians. They are just beginning to realize that they do not have real alternatives to this dependence as long as they depend on oil and gas.

I think that some of the elite opinion in the US is starting to realize that the Russians actually handled this pretty well. They defended the two separatist regions and then only secured a few strategic points leading into them and necessary to defend them. They never threatened the pipelines which do not run anywhere near the disputed areas. They have now withdrawn almost all their troops back into the two disputed provinces. The Russians did not over react.

It is very frustrating for the lords of the universe in the US and Britain that they have lost control of the world's oil and gas resources. They need an enemy so they can explain it to their publics. But this is just the anger stage of coming to terms with it. So they bluster. Maybe soon they will start to do something to really solve the problem. The world really needs to get rid of Bush so that this problem can begin to be seriously addressed.