A reader offers this quote:

"How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read" (Karl Kraus, Austrian journalist and satirist)

Herr Kraus said lots of arch things before he moved on to the next world in 1936.

But this one? Do wars really start like that?

Not clear to me that his fellow Austrian Adolf Hitler/Schickelgruber really had that approach in mind as he prepared to give Germany a goodly slab of lebensraum.

Or that Saddam Hussein was thinking along such lines when he attacked Kuwait.

Ditto the Georgian and Russian Presidents in August this year?

Or anyone anywhere anytime?

Wars start because leaders want to grab something that does not belong to them.

The problem rather these days is that journalists, not diplomats, tell lies to everyone. 

The hapless diplomats are caught in the middle, doing their puny best to interpret leaders to the media and vice versa? 

But maybe Karl was on to something here:

Sexuality poorly repressed unsettles some families; well repressed, it unsettles the whole world.

Now you’re talking.