Whence Cometh

THE UNITED STATES SENATE and the American intelligence gathering community are involved in a bit of, shall we say, a "tiff", if you will, and this is a good thing. If nothing else, it means that both all powerful entities are busily engaged in something other than the oppression of the American people, and the exploitation of the rest of the world, eh? The former has been "investigating" the latter, and vice versa. The two are locked in a mutual investigatory death grip, and consequent downward spiral. The last vestiges of representative democracy may be crumbling to a whimpering demise, at long last. How long until an all powerful chief executive is crowned to clear all this up? But it won't be another Obama, what with his token foray into cooperative economics. No, this one, the one that really counts, will come from America's far right, whence cometh all capitalistic dictators.

Confronting Our limitations

PRESIDENT OBAMA is being accused of being weak and indecisive with regard to the unfolding drama in the UKRAINE. The dirty little secret is that he has no choice. The United States of America is capable of doing nothing that is anything other than weak, whether decisive or not. An atomic bomb, perhaps? They are useless, because they are unusable. Aircraft carriers with flight decks replete with fighter planes? A beach head invasion of the Crimea? We are free to speculate, and to listen to our words and threats vanish in the winter wind. Obama's domestic political opponents suggest that he should kick Russia out of the G20. But isn't the next G20 meeting scheduled to be held in Russia? They could have their meeting, and kick the other nineteen members out. The Unites States of America is confronting its own limitations, the limits of power, and this is a painful process, for us as individuals, and for us as nations. Precisely how, and with what, do you intend to enforce your demands, you who have chosen to join the ranks of blustering bullies?

The Wind, Which Blew Through Our Cities.

PRESIDENT OBAMA IS incorrect. Russia is not behaving like a nineteenth century power in the twenty first century. His behavior is quite twenty first century. The Americans should know; it becomes difficult to recall all the nations the U.S. has aggressively invaded in the new century. Two, at last count, isn't it? The Russian government is behaving quite normally, for humans. Like Einstein said, as long as there are people, there will be war. The Crimes is simply too tempting to let go permanently. The resources, mineral and agricultural, of the Ukraine must surely be controlled from Moscow; after all, there are thousands of people in the eastern Ukraine who speak Russian, and enjoy Shostakovich. All that oil, all that wheat. Presumably, the Russian people at large, like the American people, are largely indifferent to the machinations of empire, or no empire. Some favor it, some oppose it, but most are indifferent. They understand that what they think is of no account. Half the American people share this awareness, choosing not to vote in pseudo elections in which the choices are chosen by their elite ruling masters. Long after Putin and Obama and the rest of us are gone, the wars of competition for mineral and agricultural resources will continue, and as Bertolt Brecht understood, there shall remain of our cities but the wind that blew through them.