{"id":278,"date":"2008-08-15T02:58:48","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T02:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/bologs\/vng\/han-shot-first-part-1\/"},"modified":"2008-08-15T02:58:48","modified_gmt":"2008-08-15T02:58:48","slug":"han-shot-first-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/han-shot-first-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Han shot first: part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Georgia conflict has many people very confused. That would have included me until a few minutes ago when I saw Larry King &#8220;interview&#8221; Michael Gorbachev, and then &#8220;interview&#8221; Mikheil Saakashvili. Normally I&#8217;d have gone away just as confused by the arguments, but today I had read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationclearinghouse.info\/article20508.htm\">a disturbing article<\/a>, forwarded by my dad.<br \/>\nThe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationclearinghouse.info\/article20508.htm\">article<\/a> disturbed me because it presented a view of the recent events in Georgia, Russia and America that would, if true, show that I have been sucked into the PR machine and been tricked. But, if they turned out to be false, then certain things I have observed to be true, would be wrong. Read it, all the way through, and then help me out.<br \/>\nIt seems that the article is suggesting several things (forgive my childish summation here):<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Russia doesn&#8217;t give a toss about taking back control of Georgia.<\/li>\n<li>Russia doesn&#8217;t give a toss about the oil pipeline that goes through Georgia.<\/li>\n<li>America deliberately constructed the whole Georgia situation to undermine Russia. They hoped Russia would retaliate to the military action so that their credibility as a European ally would be bruised.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Now, to me that sounded way too far fetched. But over the course of the day, things started to become clearer. No matter which way I thought about this, the only logical reasons for what is going on over there were&#8230;well&#8230;bizarre. It would mean that the news networks of the world were being coerced into avoiding the truth. And I mean <i>avoiding the truth<\/i>. They weren&#8217;t necessarily lying (apart from Fox, but they don&#8217;t count), but they have clearly avoided certain facts. For example, do you know the answers to these questions ? <\/p>\n<h3>Who invaded whom first ?<\/h3>\n<p>Do you know ? Do you have an idea ? Did Russia invade Georgia ? Or did Georgia invade South Ossetia ? Is South Ossetia part of Georgia or part of Russia?<br \/>\nIf you don&#8217;t know the answers to these questions then do some research. I&#8217;ll stop talking my bollocks now.<br \/>\nBut the answers are pretty fucking clear. The conclusions (and answers) another evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Georgia conflict has many people very confused. That would have included me until a few minutes ago when I saw Larry King &#8220;interview&#8221; Michael Gorbachev, and then &#8220;interview&#8221; Mikheil Saakashvili. Normally I&#8217;d have gone away just as confused by the arguments, but today I had read a disturbing article, forwarded by my dad. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}