The president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev has called on the powers of Europe to form a new alliance that is not based on the United States as the fulcrum of western politics and finance. From the Telegraph:

In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the United States was at the root of all the world’s problems.

He blamed Washington’s “economic egotism” for the world’s financial woes and then accused the Bush administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy. He also maintained that the United States was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

Are we escalating to a new cold war with Russia? We are stretched on as many fronts as we can go currently, it may not be in America’s best interest to continue to make enemies when we are on the verge of bankrupting our nation due to many factors, one of them being the backbreaking cost of defense and occupation of several parts of the world.

Personally, I don’t see this really accomplishing anything on behalf of Russia. This seems to be a series of political postures on Medvedev’s part but nevertheless, it looks as though the “smaller fish” are starting to pick and jab at the “big fish” of the pond.

Looks like there may be a reason that the U.S. and NATO are backing off from pressuring Russia’s recent brutal crushing of Georgia. From Globalsecurity.org:

Russia may proceed with plans to sell advanced S-300 air defense systems to Iran under a secret contract believed to have been signed in 2005, a Russian analyst said on Monday.

Commenting on an article in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper saying Russia is using the plans as a bargaining chip in its standoff with America, Ruslan Pukhov, director of Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said: “In the current situation, when the U.S. and the West in general are stubbornly gearing toward a confrontation with Russia after the events in South Ossetia, the implementation of a lucrative contract on the deliveries of S-300 [air defense systems] to Iran looks like a logical step.”

This, combined with Syria’s desire for Russian weapons systems might be “cooling off” animosity from NATO, the US and the WTO. From the BBC article:

Moscow and Damascus are reportedly preparing deals on anti-aircraft and anti-tank missile systems, as well as surface-to-surface Iskander missiles.

This could also be a case of “oneupsmanship” on the part of Russia in retaliation for the U.S. backed Missile shield being installed in Poland.

Since the US media isn’t even touching this story, stay tuned for more interesting developments…

But lets focus on the latest events. The truth is that the Georgian forces attacked the break away region of South Ossetia, who were content with being a russian protectorate. The initial reports by American media stated that Russia was invading Georgia (Fox news even equated the russian retaliation to Hitler’s expansion in europe) and was portrayed as the “aggressors” in the conflict.

According to this 12 year old american girl’s account on Fox news of all places, the truth is evident and probably made the network squirm a bit.

It seems as though the mass media cannot contain the truth. For all of the rehersals, scripting, camera cuts and editing, the truth somehow manages to squirm its way from out of the white knuckle grasp of corporate run media.

This conflict is a classic example of the old addage “you mess with the bull… you get the horns”.