Russia

Pajama Media blogger Kim Zigfeld has launched an ad hominem attack on Nimble Books author David Axe, who responds quite sensibly.

I feel impelled to observe how very tired I am of the degeneration of public discourse into an exercise in scoring trivial points against one’s opponents, or, often, merely against proxies for one’s opponents. (Obviously, David Axe did not personally invade Georgia, so it’s hard to see how discrediting him could roll those Russian tanks out of there …)

I also feel impelled to observe that Kim Zigfeld is apparently operating without any sense of irony, since her ungrounded “he’s only a blogger” argument could just as easily be applied to her (or me).

Grrr.

Oh, and incidentally:

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Russia: Poland risks attack because of US missiles - Yahoo! News

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland’s agreement to accept a U.S. missile interceptor base exposes the ex-communist nation to attack, possibly by nuclear weapons, the Interfax news agency reported….

The statement by Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn …added, in clear reference to the [U.S. Polish missile defense] agreement, that Russia’s military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them.” Nogovitsyn that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, he said, according to Interfax.

Or if the allied countries are “in some way” annoying?

The U.S. has already lost the Cold War for the Arctic. We have never been serious about icebreakers, and we are at a huge disadvantage in geography vis-a-vis Canada and Russia.

Arctic cold war as US sends a ship to claim riches under the ocean - Times Online

A US Coast Guard cutter will depart for the Arctic this week as part of a race against Russia to claim the vast spoils of oil and natural gas below the sea floor that both nations are scrambling to exploit.

The cutter Healy will leave Barrow, Alaska, tomorrow on a three-week journey to map the Arctic Ocean floor in a relatively unexplored area at the northern edge of the Beaufort Sea, in an attempt to bolster US claims to the area by proving that it is part of its extended outer continental shelf.

The rush to stake out territory across the Arctic has intensified since last August, when a Russian submarine planted the nation’s flag on the sea floor beneath the North Pole, which was viewed as a provocative land grab.