Blackness Is Not a Social Construct

Those who assert that race is a social construct are ignoramuses, fools or liars, or quite possibly more than one of the above.

See: they're all the same color. (BRIC Nations create $100bn development bank)

Skin color is not the most important aspect of human diversity, although it's not insignificant either, but the beauty of skin color in the discussion of human race is that the facts about it are obvious and irrefutable, which means that, from skin color, the basic facts about of human racial differentiation can be inferred from what everyone knows.

For example, no black women bears a white child — ever, except in the extremely unusual event that the sperm or egg that went to form the zygote carried a rare mutation for albinism (in which case the child will likely be murdered by their relatives and it's body parts sold to a witch doctor). Conversely, no white woman gives birth to a black child unless she has had congress with a black man.

From these universally known facts, we can draw two irrefutable and obvious conclusions:

1. Skin color is inherited, which is to say it is genetically determined;
2. White people and black people have for long existed in more or less totally separate breeding populations, for otherwise they would have lost their distinctive skin pigmentation.

From those conclusions we discover two essential features of any human population constituting a distinct race:

1. It is an interbreeding population living in complete or partial reproductive isolation from other populations by barriers of geography, politics, tribe, religion, class or caste;
2. It is genetically distinct from other similarly isolated populations.

Further to these facts, a basic understanding of human racial diversity requires only an understanding of how reproductively isolated populations become genetically distinct. The answer to that question is not simple, although the basic idea is evident enough to common sense, as Darwin realized when he wrote his famous treatise: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In fact, mere contemplation of the full title of Darwin's most famous work gives you a pretty good idea as to how reproductively isolated populations diverge to become physically or psychologically distinct races. Reproduction generates variation as the result of a variety of more or less random processes and, among the variants, survival is greatest among those best suited to the prevailing conditions of life.

So there you have it. Environmentally dependent selection among spontaneously arising variants results in modification of population genetic constitution. To take the case of skin color, for example, dark skinned variants that protect against carcinogenic ultra-violet radiation are favored under tropical skies, lighter skinned variants that allow more ultra-violet radiation to penetrate the skin and convert 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D are favored  under the weaker sun of more temperate zones.

 Thus genetic differences among populations reflect past or present differences in the conditions of life, both physical and social, the latter including the political and religious order, the density of population, the mode of insuring that there is food in the refrigerator — if there is a refrigerator. All of these environmental factors exert a differential effect on the reproductive success of the various genetic forms, thereby altering the genetic make-up of the population as a whole. What that means is that populations living under different conditions come to differ from one another in multiple ways that adapt each race to its specific environment within the scope allowed by chance mutations and the other processes that give rise to genetic variation.

But to understand the significance of human racial diversity it is essential to understand that the effects of evolution are not just skin deep. Everything about humanity has a genetic base — the color of skin, hair, eyes, the frequency of sweat glands, the smell, the sense of smell, the coarseness of hair, the shape of teeth, resistance to particular diseases, malaria, influenza and smallpox, for example, intelligence, passion, musicality, speed of muscle contraction, tolerance to core temperature cooling, adaptation to high elevation. Thus it is that human races can and do vary in a multitude of ways.

Mostly these differences are invisible and only come to light under special circumstances. A global pandemic of a novel disease, perhaps, or where races compete internationally. For example in the last 30 or more years there has been no Olympic 100 metres finalist without West African ancestry, which effectively demolishes liberal claptrap about there being no such thing as racial superiority.

But not only are racial differences largely invisible, most are barely even thought of. Did you know, for example, that Australian aborigines have a larger proportion of brain devoted to processing visual information than other races, which corresponds with exceptional aboriginal skill in visual memory tasks, a useful characteristic among people living in a land of tractless bush and a further example of racial superiority.

So when ignorant, idiotic or lying liberals tell you that race is a social construct, what they are really saying is: "screw human biodiversity." Or more explicitly, the money power wants a mongrel, global slave proletariat and if that means destroying 50,000 years of human evolutionary adaptation and differentiation, so be it.

Related:

CanSpeccy: In Praise of Diversity.

Putin's Ukraine Policy: Exposing the Scoundrel New World Order in Action

By accepting the appeal of the overwhelming majority of the people of Crimea for accession to the Russian Federation, Putin obtained all that Russia wanted from Ukraine: correction of what former Soviet President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev called a "historic mistake," i.e., the arbitrary 1954 transfer of Crimea from the Russian Federation to Ukraine by Ukrainian Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev. In facilitating that bloodless transaction, Putin recovered what has been Russia's principle naval base since 1783, thereby regaining naval dominance over the Black Sea, Russia's most vital salt water gateway, while obtaining possession of the potentially vast oil and gas reserves of the adjacent areas of the Black Sea.

Having thus secured Russia's national interest peacefully and with a democratic mandate, Putin has consistently promoted a democratic solution to Ukraine's internal tensions, while refusing to be drawn into the civil war instigated and inflamed by the United States, its EU puppets and its Nazi agents in Kyiv. As a contributor to the Club Orlov blog explains, Russia's restraint in the face of grotesque US/Nato/Ukrainian Nazi provocation may greatly hasten the demise of the NeoCon driven project for a New World Order, i.e., a plutocratic world in which state powers would be entirely subsumed by the money power.

For a fascinating commentary on this analysis see Why Don't We Have Eyes To See? by James, at the Winter Patriot Community blog.

See also the Saker's most recent situation report on Ukraine in which he discusses the impact of US/Nato/Nazi atrocities in Ukraine on the position of the fifth column of Liberal "Atlantic Integrationists" in the Kremlin.

Meantime, Poroshenko establishes his Nazi cred by vowing not tens but hundreds of dead "rebels" for every Nazi soldier killed in the war on Eastern Ukraine. Even Hitler was more moderate than that, demanding no more than 100 dead partisans for every Nazi killed by rebel action.

Related:

Itar-Tass: Kyiv Junta Facing Dissidents on Maidan Square

Tony Catalucci: NATO Hopes for Russian Invasion of Ukraine

The Saker: Obama's Goal in Ukraine Is the Destruction of the Russian State

John Pilger: The return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth

Globe and Mail: Ukraine launches air offensive, kills 1,000 rebels, Kiev says

John Pilger: In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia

NBACFY (via the Saker): Meantime, in Kyiv Austerity Begins to Bite

Mish: Will Guerrilla Warfare Linger Long After Ukraine Takes Donetsk?

Moon of Alabama: Ukraine: Pro-Coup-Government Forces Hit Hard

VOR: Crimea is de-facto not part of Ukraine – Luxembourg FM

The Saker: Russian and Ukrainian sources are reporting a major battle near Lugansk

Anon: Meantime, the MSM Reports

Daily Kos: Ethnic Cleansing: State Terrorism in the Ukraine

America's Genocidal War on Russians in Ukraine

An article in The National Interest: by Professor Nicolai Petro asserts that there are six mistakes the West has made (and continues to make) in Ukraine.

Specifically, the article asserts that western (read US) policy in Ukraine is based on six misconceptions:

(1) That The Ukrainians are one people, united in their support of change;

(2) That intervention to ensure the success of the NeoNazi junta was supported by the majority of the Ukrainian population;

(3) That the contemptuous refusal by the revolutionary government of Ukraine to adhere to the February 21 agreement with France, Germany and Poland concerning the transition of power, would not destroy the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state;

(4) That it was possible to deny the massive and obvious role of Nazis and US stooges in the US approved revolutionary government;

(5) That tolerating the genocidal intentions of the Nazi junta toward the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine would somehow legitimate the Kyiv junta;

(6) That Russia could be blamed for for the division between East and West Ukraine.

With reference to Point 6, the author comments:

Russia’s primary objective in Ukraine has actually been to reduce the level of domestic instability. ... Russia would very much like to see Ukraine as a stable economic and political partner, able to provide enough growth and jobs to its own citizens to reduce the annual flow of more than 3 million Ukrainian migrant workers into Russia, and thus contribute to the prosperity of the 11 million Russians who live along the border with Ukraine. Having already spent as much as 300 billion dollars over the past two decades to prevent the collapse of the Ukrainian economy, it hardly seems likely that Russia now seeks its economic demise. It most certainly does not want to spend the tens of billions of dollars it would take to absorb these regions, and raise their standard of living up to that of Russia.

Further,the author observes:

Russia is not the USSR. In an odd historical twist, in the current crisis, [Russia]defending the rights of local populations to be heard by their government, whereas the West is defending the removal of a legitimately elected president. Significantly, all this is taking place in an area of the world that retains strong sympathies for Russia.

But such a supposedly bizarre reversal of roles between the freedom-loving West and the tyrannical Ruskies is not bizarre in the least. The US has assumed the role of the global hegemon in which capacity it is intent on the genocide of every nation state, the only unit of political organization with the potential to resist the plutocratic global system of control exercised through pseudo-democratic structures, known collectively as the New World Order.

The Nazis in Kyiv may imagine they can create a racially pure Ukraine from the remnants of Russian empire of which that country is composed, but Ukraine's incorporation in the EU will insure the mongrelization of Ukraine's population through mass population movement: both the exit of Ukraine's best and brightest to the imperial centres of wealth and power in England, France, and Germany and the uncontrolled immigration of millions from the rest of the EU including millions from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Having identified Washington's six "mistakes" the author argues the need for the West (read US) to adopt "a radically different strategy toward Russia — one of cooperation rather than confrontation in the pursuit of a strong and independent Ukraine.

But there, of course, it is the author who is sadly mistaken, for Washington's six mistakes are not mistakes at all but deliberate and brutal provocations intended to incite a Russian reaction that, in turn, would justify measures of ever-increasing harshness against Russia, not excluding sabotage and direct NATO military action. For Russia, today, is the world's last best hope for the continued existence of the nation state, where indigenous language, culture and racial distinctions can survive the universal genocide unleashed upon the World, including the United States itself, by the Neo-Cons that dominate both the Democratic and the Republican parties in the US and control the puppet leadership of Western Europe.

Related:

VOR: Kiev junta more dangerous than Hitler regime, enjoys US support



The Saker: commentary on the above Crosstalk discussion

The Saker: For Russia the issues is tactics, not strategy

Moon of Alabama: Ukraine: Retreat From Slaviansk Far From End Game

Banderastan is born: a zombified people lead by ugly evil freaks

The Saker, July 4, 2014: By now you all have probably heard it: the newly appointed Ukrainian Minister of Defense has officially pledged to re-take Crimea and to organize a victory parade in the streets of Sevastopol. His statement, made in the Ukrainian Parliament, was received with a standing ovation.

Obama: If I had a son, he'd look like this.

Needless to say, the notion of the Ukraine re-taking Crimea is ludicrous. The Ukrainian Defense Minister knows this, and so do the Parliamentarians. But what is important here is not that he would make such a statement, but that it caught the attention of the international media as if this was an exception. Sadly, I assure you that it is not. The sad and hard to imagine reality is that Banderastan lives in a total "la la land" in which literally everything is just as ludicrous as the idea of the Ukrainian military somehow kicking the Russians out of Crimea. As somebody who follows the Ukrainian TV (through the Internet) on a regular basis, can tell you that this kind of nonsense is absolutely the mainstream norm. The disconnect between the real world and the imaginary world in which the rump-Ukraine (aka "Banderastan") lives in today is total. The best image I can think of is the orchestra of the Titanic playing music while the ship was sinking, except that the disconnect between reality of the situation of Banderastan and what the poor people in Kiev and the rest of the Ukraine hear on TV is even bigger. This is not just "propaganda", it is really insanity, denial and delusional thinking at its most extreme. Even tonight I have heard respectable looking Ukrainian politicians seriously discussing how the Ukraine's "civilizational choice" will usher a new era in which, I kid you now, the "Ukraine will re-join its West European destiny". In the meantime, the Ukie solidiers in Luganks have shot all the stray dogs they could to feed themselves.

Banderastan, the junta in Kiev and, frankly, the zombified Ukrainian people are now in the situation of a person falling from a skyscraper and who, passing by the 15th floor in his fall, thinks "so far so good". The inevitable impact will be terrible. Part of me feels sorry for these people, but part of me is also disgusted with their capability to believe not only ludicrous lies, but ugly, nasty, ludicrous lies.

Read more

Related:

Zero Hedge: Zbigzzyniewzz Zbrzizzinzzki – Give Nazi Ukraine the tools for genocide

WUFYS: Thousands rally at anti-Kiev protest in Donetsk

Tony Cartalucci: Ukraine: Kiev's Ticking Time Bomb

VOR: Kiev promises war against Russia?

Kyiv Post: Kyiv Nazis Promise Free Land to Soldiers Committing Genocide in Eastern Ukraine

Live Journal: American-sponsored Ukraine Genocide in Pictures

Paul Craig Roberts: Washington Murders Countries, the US Constitution, and the Presstitute Media Makes Americans Complicit

RT: US Rand Corp study recommends genocide, concentration camps and the full Nazi programme in Eastern Ukraine.

Gallup Poll: Most Ukrainians Oppose US-installed Nazi Government in Kiev

An opinion survey by the Gallup organization establishes beyond doubt that the majority of Ukrainians, and a vast majority in the South and East of the country, strongly oppose the US-Nazi takeover of their country:

Gallup Poll: April 2014

and, furthermore, the poll confirms that the vast majority of Ukrainians in Crimea support Crimea's incorporation in the Russia Federation:

Gallup Poll: April 2014

What these and and a mass of other information provided by the Gallup survey prove is that the mainstream media account of the conflict in Ukraine is a pack of lies and that far from combating parasites, terrorists and subhumans in Eastern Ukraine, the US-UK-Canada-backed Nazis in Kiev are seeking to crush the will of the people of Eastern Ukraine.

Related:

Peter Hitchens: A (not so) Brief History of Crimea

Daily Mail: Nazi's once again on the rampage: scenes in Ukraine reminiscent of WWII

Loony Jews and Stephen Harper Smear Millions of Canadians As Diseased Neo-Nazis

Robert Fisk: The Independent:, July 1, 2014:

Not long ago, I was handed the most outrageous, vile, dishonest and slanderous calumny uttered against the people of Canada. It was contained in a full-page advertisement in the National Post (founder, Conrad Black), a newspaper handed out – free, I’m happy to say – on my Air France flight out of Toronto. Here is the headline: “Almost 4 million Canadians are afflicted by this disease.”

Beneath this title is a half-page, very blurred and uncaptioned colour photo of a large crowd – they could be football supporters, rush-hour commuters in Vancouver, you name it; they are mostly white males but include women and with at least one dark-skinned man close to the camera. Beneath the picture, this incredible ad continues: “Left unchecked, it [the disease] can result in violence tendencies. Many times, those infected haven’t been diagnosed and may pass it on to their children, grandchildren, colleagues or friends. Please help stop the spread of this disease before it contaminates your community.”

This is frightening stuff, of course. Could this refer to some of the six million Canadians who may be living with HIV/Aids? Or the 4.5 million Canadians affected by arthritis? Or the 2.5 million Canadians believed to have diabetes? Or even some of the estimated 7.8 million Canadians treated for depression each year? Nope. This is far more serious. For the “disease” afflicting “almost 4 million Canadians” is “anti-Semitism” and this disgusting advertisement – published without comment by one of Canada’s leading right-wing newspapers – was produced by B’nai Brith Canada and the “Jewish Christian Alliance”.

“At the first sign of anti-Semitism,” this appalling ad concludes, “call the B’nai Brith Canada Anti-Hate Hotline…” In other words, this pro-Israeli Jewish group – whose exaggerations and hateful propaganda have been rightly condemned by Jewish Canadians – claims that four million of their fellow-countrymen and women are sick, racist neo-Nazis. What other conclusion are we supposed to draw if almost 9 per cent of the Canadian population is “diseased”, “infected” and “contaminated”.

Now let’s forget that B’nai Brith regards any criticism of the state of Israel – however justified, however mild, made by Jews and non-Jews alike – as anti-Semitic. Let’s forget previous protests by Jewish Americans against the organisation’s grotesque exaggerations. Let’s even ignore its equation of Palestinians with Nazis, a comparison that led it to publish a bowdlerised version of the infamous photograph of the wartime Grand Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Hitler – the Nazi dictator was “moved” in the B’nai Brith version of the snapshot about three feet closer to the Palestinian so that Hitler appears to be almost sitting on his visitor’s lap.

And let’s not ask why the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, did not immediately leap to the defence of his own Canadian people when confronted by this disgusting statement of “disease”. For alas, Harper told the Israeli Knesset last January – while archly claiming “criticism of Israeli policy is not in and of itself necessarily (sic) anti-Semitic” – that condemnation of Israeli policies amounted to anti-Semitism. This included those who supported the boycott campaign against Israel or referred to it as an apartheid state. “On some campuses,” said Harper, “intellectualised (sic) arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities, such as the shunning of Israeli academics and the harassment of Jewish students.”

“Sickening,” Harper called this. Yes, the Canadian Prime Minister himself was using the “disease” metaphor employed by B’nai Brith. And why not? Because there’s another reason Canadians can expect no protection from their own Prime Minister, who in his speech might have been a member of the Knesset rather than a guest of its members: Stephen Harper was awarded the “International Presidential Gold Medal” for “his commitment to the Jewish people and the State of Israel” in 2008 – by B’nai Brith.

Meantime, Stephen Harper smears millions of Canadian citizens as suffering from the disease of Nazism.

A New Recession and a New World Devoid of Washington’s Arrogance?

Paul craig Roberts: June 25, 2014. A final number for real US GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 was released today. The number is not the 2.6% growth rate predicted by the know-nothing economists in January of this year. The number is a decline in GDP of -2.9 percent.

The negative growth rate of -2.9 percent is itself an understatement. This number was achieved by deflating nominal GDP with an understated measure of inflation. During the Clinton regime, the Boskin Commission rigged the inflation measure in order to cheat Social Security recipients out of their cost-of-living adjustments. Anyone who purchases food, fuel, or anything knows that inflation is much higher than the officially reported number.

It is possible that the drop in first quarter real GDP is three times the official number.

Regardless, the difference is large between the January forecast of +2.6 percent growth and the decline as of the end of March of -2.9 percent.

Any economist who is real and unpaid by Wall Street, the government, or the Establishment knew that the +2.6 percent forecast was a crock. Americans’ incomes have not grown except for the one percent, and the only credit growth is in student loans, as those many who cannot find jobs mistakenly turn to «education is the answer.

In an economy based on consumer demand, the absence of income and credit growth means no economic growth.

The US economy cannot grow because corporations pushed by Wall Street have moved the US economy offshore. US manufactured products are made offshore.

Look at the labels on your clothes, your shoes, your eating and cooking utensils, your computers, whatever. US professional jobs such as software engineering have been moved offshore. An economy with an offshored economy is not an economy. All of this happened in full view, while well-paid free market shills declared that Americans were benefiting from giving America’s middle class jobs to China and India.

I have been exposing these lies for a decade or two, which is why I am no longer invited to speak at American universities or to American economic associations. Economists love the money that they receive for lying. A truth teller is the last thing that they want in their midst.

Read more

Related:

Obozo's Brain, Zbizgzniezv Zbrzezzinzskziz, on Why Russia and the Russian People Must be Destroyed

Zbigzsnozz Bzzrezzinskzizzz

Starting a war of criminal aggression is not something a normal person is inclined to do. Thus the President of the United States has a professional warmonger, the crackpot, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to make the call.

The name, obviously is important (Remember the ad for Smuckers jam: "with a name like that, it's got to be good"?). If it were, say, Jim Pollack or another such commonplace handle, nobody'd take the slightest notice of the crazy coot. But having an aristocratic sounding, unspellable Polish name makes all the difference. And then Zbigzzy talks in a fine hifalutin kind of academese, which involves repetitive use of words like "namely" and "concept," which make the advocacy of mass murder seem so much more reasonable. More decent even.

In this video (beginning at 14 min 15 seconds), we hear it directly from Zbzgzy, why the Unites States of Aggression should destroy Russia and the Russian people.

"What we are seeing in Ukraine ... namely, the gradual but steady emergence of Russia ... is a quasi mystical chauvinism ...

"Recently, the Russian International Affairs Council ... has come up with a report on Russia's national identity transformation and new foreign policy doctrine ...

"The key concepts of this report ... involve four basic concepts ...

"That of a divided people ...

"Secondly the theme of, quote, protecting compatriots abroad, end quote.

"Then, more broadly, the Russian World, "Russky Mir," in Russian, and the importance of acknowledging, and sustaining, embracing and promoting, quote, the Great Russian civilization."

What the fourth basic "concept" was, Zbzgz seems to have forgotten.

But there's the case for seeing Putin as the "new Hitler," the leader with a mystical view of the "Great Russian civilization." Of course the point is weakened a bit when one realizes that the "Great" in "Great Russian civilization" is simply a reference to the civilization of Great Russia, which is to say Russia excluding "Little Russia," i.e., Ukraine. To speak of the "Great Russian culture" is thus strictly analogous to speaking of the "Great British culture" with reference to the culture of Great Britain as opposed to that of Britanny, or Petite Bretagne (i.e., Little Britain), as it was known in Mediaeval times.

As for Russia being a divided people, well that's just a fact, but it has to be held against them since they might like to get together again as a united people, a vicious tendency only recently displayed by those damned Crimeans who exercised their UN Charter right to self-determination, and then decided to unite with the Russian Federation.

Equally vicious is the desire to protect compatriots abroad. Why, obviously they should let the Ukie Nazis genocide the Novorussians, all six million of them as Ukie Presidential Candidate Julia Tymoshenko planned to do, personally if possible, by machine gun.

But perhaps most evil of all, is that commitment to acknowledging, sustaining, etc., etc., the Great Russian civilization (i.e., the civilization of Great Russia, not the great civilization of Russia), you know, Leo Tolstoy, the Bolshoi Ballet, Yuri Gagarin and all that crap. As any well-brainwashed person knows, only the United States of Assassination should be free to protect and promote its culture of Coke, porn, atheism, child sexualization and the genocide of the nations of the world.

So there it is. The US of Aggression gets to overthrow the government of Russia's neighbor, Ukraine, in a violent coup d'état, thereby empowering a bunch of Nazi fanatics with a long track record of genocidal activity, and then declares it to be justification for military action against Russia, if Russia seeks to protect the lives and liberty of its compatriots in Ukraine.

Related:

Paul Craig Roberts The US War Against Russia Is Already Underway

RINF: Ethnic and Cultural Cleansing in Ukraine

Zero Hedge: Putin Advisor Proposes "Anti-Dollar Alliance" To Halt US Aggression Abroad

CanSpeccy: Universal Genocide and the New World Order

GM Versus BP

Every year, thousands of Americans as well as citizens abroad are killed or injured in accidents involving automobiles manufactured by General Motors Corporation. Many of these deaths and injuries could be avoided by automobile design changes, some of them quite trivial. But as in the case of the Chevy Cruze ignition switch defect, known to have been the cause of multiple deaths, GM is inclined to ignore such hazards to its customers rather than incur minimal costs. Following the exposure of GM's disregard for life and limb, the company has been fined $35 million by the US Transportation Safety Administration. In Canada and elsewhere, however, GM has suffered no penalty whatever.

In contrast with the indulgent attitude of American government and legal authorities toward death through negligence by the country's largest manufacturing company, the same authorities seem determined to do what they can to destroy BP, a foreign-based company, for an accident in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 oil-rig workers and injured others. So far the Deep Water Horizon blowout has cost BP over $40 billion dollars, a thousand times as much as the penalty imposed on GM for deliberately ignoring a fatal hazard, with the final cost to BP undetermined but potentially much greater.

Why the difference in treatment? No doubt the answer is complex. It is notable, however, that whereas GM deliberately ignored lethal defects in its product to achieve trivial savings, BP's Gulf oil spill was the result of errors and derelictions of duty mainly by its contractors and suppliers, including:

• Halliburton who supplied a defective cement mix to seal the well and then destroyed the evidence of this failure, for which deception they were fined by the US Government $200,000, or one two thousand five hundredth of BP's still rising oil spill cost, including cleanup, fines and compensation for losses, alleged or real, by Gulf area residents;
  
  
• Cameron International who supplied a blowout preventer of defective design;
  
  
• Transocean, the owner and operator of the Deep Water Horizon rig, who among manifold errors of omission and commission, mis-wired the blowout preventer and failed to recharge its battery; failed to monitor the "mud returns" as drilling mud in the well was being replaced with sea water thereby failing to spot a clear warning of a severe blowout risk; and a rig captain who failed to activate safety systems because he was too ill-trained (by the rig's owner) to understand his own authority.

What these contrasting cases suggest about the future of American capitalism is not encouraging. Moreover they are not encouraging for those concerned with the welfare of American workers and consumers, for it suggests that what corporations will in future focus on is not product and workplace safety but influence in Washington, DC.

Iraq: Time for US to Make Traditional Departure Via the Roof?

Americans departure: Saigon, Vietnam, April 29, 1075. Image source.

Related:

Mish: Assessing the Blame for Iraq: Bush, Obama, McCain, Others; Iraq Sunken Costs

Aangirfan: IRAQ CONSPIRACY; AL BAGHDADI WORKS FOR MOSSAD-CIA?

Moon of Alabama: Iraq's "World Of Hurt"

Craig Murray: Iraq deadly fiasco

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*: What is Going on in Iraq

Tony Cartalucci: NATO's Terror Hordes in Iraq a Pretext for Syria Invasion

Independent: Baghdad about to fall as Iraq army disintegrates?

Daily Beast: Iraq’s Terrorists Are Becoming a Full-Blown Army

Reuters: Iran US Alliance in Iraq?

Who Seized What in Ukraine?

While the Western corpo. media and twats like Harper and Cameroon bloviate about Russia's "seizure" of Crimea, albeit the result of a bloodless democratic process that returned to Russia a majority Russian population of a region that has been part of Russia since before the US of Aggression even existed, the US-backed Nazi-driven takeover of Eastern Ukraine continues amid much bloodshed and under the guidance of the NeoCon New World Order/Chatham House/NATO/US State Department stooge, Arse Yatsenyuk.

According to a situation report via the Saker's blog, the Ukrainian agents of the New World Order are today bombing and shelling civilian targets and taking hostages in Eastern Ukraine where the people have the temerity to oppose the rule of the US-created junta in Kiev in which the military and security services are under firm Neo-Nazi control and are operating in true Nazi fashion.

What is extraordinary is not the vile criminality of the actions of the ruling agents imposed on the people of Ukraine by the criminals in Washington and London, but the dumb, stupid acceptance throughout the West of the imperialist lies of the US and its allies, who use Nazi agents against those they brand as Hitlerites.

Related:

The Saker: Chemical weapons and phosphorus used by Ukraine army against own people in Novorossiya

Itar_Tass: Luhansk Peoples' Republic Seeks Recognition as Independent State

Pressimus: Putin Adviser Glazyev Calls For No-Fly Zone

OpEd News: Ukraine President Once Agent for U.S. State Department

WSWS: Nationalism and fascism in Ukraine: A historical overview: Part I

VOR: Ukraine has to decide who to side with – US or Russia, Europe

VOR:Ceasefire must be ensured in eastern Ukraine coming week - Poroshenko

Mike Shedlock: Unvarnished Ukraine Update; Steen Jakobsen on Impact of Ukraine on Germany

Moon of Alabama: Ukraine: Poroshenko's Hope For "Western" Help Is Deluded

The Saker: Poroshenko declares war on Novorossiia

...two things appear inevitable now: a Russian military intervention in Novorossia followed by the Cold War v2 the AngloZionists wanted so badly. Up until this moment the European colonies still had a chance to avoid a future which will hurt them much more than it will hurt the US or Russia, but they could not even muster the willpower to protect their own vital interests.

Paul Craig Roberts: The Lies Grow More Audacious

Reuters: Who won the war?

Global Research: “Russia never Annexed Crimea, no Plans to intervene in Ukraine, it’s a Western Delusion” – Putin

Stephen Harper's Belligerent Russophobia

Steve Harper is sending 75 Canadian soldiers to Europe to combat Putin menace.

No disrespect to our brave men and women in uniform, but, LOL.

Harper says Putin should be allowed at D-Day ceremonies in Normandy commemorating the allied defeat of Nazi Germany. (Yes, believe it or not — and listening to Stephen Harper, you probably wouldn't — those damn Ruskies were our allies in both World Wars and did most of the dying on both occasions.) And with several hundred times as many Russian war dead as Canadian, Harper's granting Putin permission like that is generous — not. Anyhow it's not Canada that's issuing the invitations to these ceremonies on French soil.

So what's with our Stevie? Why this clowning insolence toward Russia, a full-spectrum nuclear superpower, by the leader of a country with a negligible military budget and fewer soldiers than Toronto has police officers?

Does Harper believe that most of the one million or so Ukrainian Canadians are Nazi-loving Russophobes who will vote Tory in next year's Federal election because of Harper's support (including $220 million in Canadian taxpayers' cash) for the Kiev government that came to power by means of an anti-constitutional coup and whose first act was an attempt to deprive Ukraine's ethnic minorities of the right to use their native language? (It would be good to hear from some of them: real live Canadian neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, that is. I'm sure we'd all like to know what it is, exactly, that they think Canada owes them in the way of backing their fascistic kinsmen back home.)

Or is Harper a closet Nazi? Does he secretly lust to use the the Royal Canadian Air Force as the Kyiv junta is using Ukie Sukhoi jet fighters and helicopter gunships to terrorize troublesome provinces? Does he long to emulate Kyiv in deploying death squads against anti-government trouble-makers across the land?

Or is our Stevie the Eric Honecker of the West, the ultra-loyal imperial satrap, relentlessly following orders from Moscow — I mean Washington?

Yeah. That's probably it. Our Stevie's been tasked with distracting attention from the war crimes of our friends in Kiev by hootin' and hollerin' that Putin's a Commie dictator planning to rule the whole world.

Related:

Moon of Alabama: D-Day Propaganda Misses The Soviet Contributions

CTV: Harper chickens out of meeting with Putin: Fears being called a jerk?

RT: David Cameroon meets Putin, but no handshake

Itar-Tass: Ukrainian troops kill more than 25 people in Krasny Liman hospital (No reference to this event/story in the Gruniard, the G&M, WaPo, etc., etc.)

Ria_Novosti: Kiev’s Use of Heavy Weapons in Crackdown Violates International Law – Russia

YouTube: Ready to go anywhere': Ukrainians flee as Kiev intensifies military operations

Damn Putin: He Shouldn't Be Allowed to Comment in Public

RT, June 05, 2014: Vladimir Putin faced a barrage of tricky questions from French media ahead of his meeting with world leaders at the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings. Here are his best replies on key issues: Ukraine, Crimea and relations with the US.

On Ukraine, its sovereignty and Russian troops:

The ongoing crisis in Ukraine has been occupying the center of international attention since the end of last year. While the coup-appointed government in Kiev is carrying out a military crackdown on the southeast of the country, the US said that Russian troops are allegedly involved in the crisis and they have proof of that.

“What about proof? Why don’t they show it?” Putin told French media.

“The entire world remembers the US Secretary of State demonstrating the evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, waving around some test tube with washing powder in the UN Security Council. Eventually, the US troops invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein was hanged and later it turned out there had never been any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. You know – it’s one thing to say things and another to actually have evidence.”

Read more:

Related:

Vladimir Putin’s interview with Radio Europe 1 and TF1 TV channel

Moon of Alabama: Kerry a Lying Piece of Shit

Steve Harper's Friends in Kyiv Killing Their Own People in Eastern Ukraine

Itar-Tass: Ukrainian troops kill more than 25 people in Krasny Liman hospital

Ukrainian city of Lugansk under attack by Ukraine Air Force Sukhoi-25:



Details: The Vinyard of the Saker

Further video: Deadly Ukraine Fighter Jet Bombing Caught On Tape

BlackListed News: Ukraine Air Force gunships in assault on Ukrainian city of Lugansk (June 3, 2014).

Itar-Tass: Kyiv Nazi's call for martial law in Eastern Ukraine

Itar-Tass: East Ukraine militia down fighter plane, helicopter gunship, 4 APCs

The Saker: Why Western Imperialists Hate Putin

The Saker: Making sense of Obama's billion dollar hammer

Juan: Russians are sub-humans in the eyes of the West

The victors of the Maidan coup d'etat, Oleg Tyagnibok (a sitting deputat of Ukraine Rada) and Dmitro Yarush, leaders of Svoboda Party and Right Sector Party respectively, had stated, during a live interview on Channel 5 TV in Kiev on 27 February 2014, that they were going to lead their combined 5500 fighters from Miadan down to Krim and Sevastopol and 'kill every Russian there' combined with 'we will put every Russian in Krim to the knife'. ...

On 02 May there was a football match in Odessa on the south coast of Ukraine. We all know what happened in Odessa with the massacre of the anti Kiev demonstrators, unarmed demonstrators, in and around the Labor Union Building in Odessa as they were beaten, shot and burned to death. What you don't know is the true number of dead that day and evening. 297 anti Kiev demonstrators AND innocents died that day. Over 50 were in hospital. Some of those who jumped from the entrance hall stairway at the fourth and fifth floor levels were beaten to death as they lay on the ground. Others were made to crawl away, severely injured, and were kicked and beaten as they crawled to the pile of wounded.

To this day not a single western government that I am aware of has expressed the slightest sympathy or condolences for any of the wounded or dead in Odessa....

Yesterday, 03 June 2014, shortly after noon local time there was an attack on the Lugansk City Administration Building in the center of Lugansk by a single Ukrainian Air Force Sukhoi 25 ground attack airplane. He fired a single volley of missiles at the front of the building. Yes, the building is the titular headquarters of Donbas Republic but 95% of the offices and workers in that building are city administration workers, civilians doing their work for the citizens of Lugansk and most of whom have worked there for years. Ukraine well knew that fact and attacked. The impact of the rockets are well documented in many videos extant on the internet ...

So far Stephen Harper has failed to comment. Apparently, Canada's one million plus citizens of Ukrainian extraction are all Russophobic Nazi sympathizers, or at least, that must be Stephen Harper's calculation since he seems to think it a fine thing for the Kiev junta to kill as many Russian-speaking Unkrainians as possible.

Moon of Alabama: Unveiling "Western" Hypocrisy Russia Connects Syria And Ukraine

Related:

The Tyee: Harper's Vote Grubbing Policy on Ukraine

Snowden, Assange and Chomsky, 9/11 and the People's Right to Know What Government Does in Their Name

During a recent NBC News interview, former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, remarked in unaired comments (now on U-Tube) concerning 9/11:

... what they [the 9/11 Commission] found, in the post-mortem, when they looked at all of the classified intelligence from all of the different intelligence agencies, they found that we had all of the information we needed as an intelligence community, as a classified sector, as the national defense of the United States to detect this plot. We actually had records of the phone calls from the United States and out. The CIA knew who these guys were. The problem was not that we weren’t collecting information, it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough dots, it wasn’t that we didn’t have a haystack, it was that we did not understand the haystack that we have.

Interesting, isn't it. All these heroic defenders of the people's right to be informed, Chomsky, Assange, and now Ed Snowden, have no doubts about the official story on 9/11: those 19 Muslim fanatics with box cutters did it all on their own, defeating the world's most expensive air defense system in the process.

What's more, Snowden, as he has now confessed, was (still is?) a spy for the CIA and NSA. Makes you wonder dunnit: is that heroic defender of the people's right to know, Julian Assange, CIA too? Some astute people certainly think so. Why not Chomsky too? The dean of leftist criticism of the American Empire, he had the perfect cover to visit Latin America, meet the leftists and revolutionaries, return home and shop them.

In fact, it would be bizarre — evidence indeed of gross incompetence — for the United States of Artifice, not to dominate the alt. media and the lib-left activist space with pseudo-revolutionaries and leftist fakesters.

And now not only Noam Chomsky, but also Daniel Ellsberg of the CIA, comes to the support of Ed Snowden,

The More the West Looks Like Detroit, the More It's Winning

Can anything be more disgusting than hearing that filthy rich, senile slimebag, George Soros, the Jew whose happiest days were spent betraying Hungarian Jews to the Nazis during WWII, explaining how the civil war that he and other Anglo-Zionist imperialist oligarcharchs are driving in Ukraine with the aid of Nazi death squads, people directly linked with the mass murder of Kiev's Jews during WWII, is a war on Russian Nazism?

Meantime, while Russia's detractors sneer that Russia's GDP is barely larger than that of Italy, America's GDP shrinks, even according to official estimates, whereas Russia's GDP has quadrupled in the last 15 years, outpacing even China's. True America's GDP per capita is three times Russia's, but in what exactly does the American advantage consist?

Healthcare at 20% of GDP and rising strongly under the impetus of "Obamacare," versus 10% or less in other, healthier developed countries such as Slovenia, and only 7% in Russia, where the chief health problems are to do with bad lifestyle choices, drugs, vodka and AIDS, not lack of healthcare spending.

But then there's education. No country surely spends more than the US, especially on salaries of university presidents and football coaches, even though American professors mostly disdain teaching, leaving it to desperate adjuncts on minimum wage to educate the next generation of American scientists and engineers, assuming anyone in America bothers to study the hard subjects now that manufacturing has been largely off-shored for the maximization of profits at WalMart, IBM, Apple, etc.

Meantime, at the imperial periphery, youth unemployment nudges 50%, in Greece, Spain and Italy, and, among black youth, back in the homeland too.

Apparently, this is the way forward. Chaos abroad, mass unemployment and social decay at home.But according to the leadership it's better than being Nazi — But of course we have to work with, and act like, Nazis, the better to beat them.

How Long Can Western Elites Continue Branding the Largest Popular Faction "Far Right," "Extremist," and "Anti-Semitic"?

The essential thing to understand about the latest European Parliamentary election in which the mainstream parties of Britain, France, Denmark and Austria were trounced by national sovereigntists is that there has been a victory for the hateful forces of the "Far right," of "extremism," of anti-Semitism and of homophobia. Or so the corporate media and those speaking for the threatened establishment will tell you.

To most of those who are the beneficiary of a dozen or more years of daily indoctrination by the state in the name of "public education," this will be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Europe, they understand, is under threat from Hitlerites driven by irrational hatreds who must be beaten back by every means at the disposal of the state and the corporate media: including state infiltration and internal disruption of political parties, politically correct hate speech directed at the "Fascist enemies of decency and tolerance," and rigorous enforcement of legal restraints on politically incorrect speech and behavior.

But for the substantial minority of the European populace for whom the Eurovision Song Contest is evidence not of benign tolerance but of a conspiracy to destroy Western civilization and the European people, politics should not be about promoting child sex, aberrant sex, banning use of the national flag, the mass occupation of one's homeland by people from elsewhere, or of allegiance to a foreign state, but about survival, earning a living, buying a home, raising a family, defending the homeland from a mass influx of foreigners, from Vikings of old to Muslim Settlers of the present day.

The great danger for today's treasonous Western elites, who have submitted to the plan for a global empire ruled by a plutocratic oligarchy, is that the urge to hate, which they have cultivated as a powerful weapon for the promotion of political correctness, may escape their control and be turned against them.

Related:

CanSpeccy: Are you a far-right-wing extremist, racist, anti-Semite against genocide?

JAY: An inspiring YouTube video — Europe Belongs to Us

Clinton Was Right: What's Happened to Ukraine Is Reminiscent of Hitler's Occupation of the Sudentenland — the US Being the Occupier

Hitler's ambition was to fulfill Bismark's dream of a European empire incorporating all of central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Belarus. Hitler's first step on that Eastward march was the occupation of the Sudetenland — a step taken in accordance with an international agreement negotiated by Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

America's NeoCons dream is of a Eurasian empire stretching from Iceland and the Azores to Vladivostok, and the Sea of Okhosk, incorporating not only Western and Central Europe, but all of the former Soviet Union with it's vast storehouse of natural resources.

The US-instigated, Nazi-backed coup against the  democratically elected government of Ukraine was the first step on that NeoCon imperial adventure and thus bears a strong resemblance to Hitler's occupation of the Sudetenland. In each case, the transaction was unapproved by, and against the wishes of, the population of the country affected.

For Hitler, the next step on his the Eastward march was the rape of Poland, a joint venture with Stalin. For the US, the next step in the Eastward march requires the full collaboration of the EU, contrary to the will of the people of the Western European states. To win EU support,therefore, the NeoCon strategy is to goad Russia into an occupation of Ukraine, which will unnerve the Europeans sufficiently to enable the Empire to  drive Western Europe to war with Russia.

Hence the multiple provocations of the Kyiv junta, intended to inflame the feelings of both Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine: the deployment of Nazis and their fellow travelers in the rebel government; threats to the language rights of the Russian-speaking majority in Eastern Ukraine; the sniper killings of both police and demonstrators during the EuroMaidan riots; the atrocities committed by agents of the Kyiv junta in Odessa and in Eastern Ukraine; the CIA chief in Kyiv; hundreds of US mercenaries in Ukraine; the US Vice-President giving directions to the Kyiv junta. All these factors indicate that the coup in Kyiv was a US psyop: the beginning of a fourth generation war targeting Russia, the object being to provoke, provoke and provoke until Russia is forced to react, thereby providing the propaganda pretext for an all out US-NATO war on Russia.

Instead, Russia merely took back Crimea, a vital strategic asset, dominating the Black Sea, the gateway to the vast majority of Russia's sea-borne trade. Russian territory since before the founding of the United States of America, Crimea returned to Russian control without bloodshed and with a democratic mandate provided by the majority Russian population, for the most part very glad to return to the motherland.

Score the first point to Russia. The return of Crimea to Russia is irreversible and does nothing to spook peace-loving Europeans into a Hitlerite lust for Eastward expansion. Hence the driveling comparison of Putin with Hitler by the likes of Hilary Clinton, as the US of Aggression consorts with real Hitlerite racists and terrorists in Kyiv. That the Putin–Hitler analogy is drivel is only confirmed by its silly repetition by the fatuous, vain, and common-sense challenged, constitutionally improper, heir to the British throne, Prince Charles.

US-EU sanctions against Russia are proving, it seems, to be equally counter-productive. They provide Russia justification, in the name of reciprocation, in denying entry to every NeoCon subversive who might like to hand out cookies while stoking anti-Putin riots in  Moscow or encouraging acts of sodomy in a Moscow cathedral.

Russia has, furthermore, been provided with a perfect opportunity to penalize US-Government-backed globalist corporations to the benefit of domestic Russian undertakings. They have stuck Visa with a $3.8 billion penalty deposit, while threatening fines of $380 million per day  for discriminating against Russian customers. And a draft law submitted to the Russian parliament seeks to criminalize producers (i.e., Monsanto) of genetically-modified organisms harmful to health. Sponsors of the bill say that punishment for such deeds should be comparable to the punishment allotted to terrorists, if the perpetrators act knowingly and hurt many people.

An interesting view of the current state of play in the opening stages of this Third World War, launched by the US as a proof of concept of Fourth Generation Warfare technology, is provided by the Saker.

Related: 

The Saker: Ukie death squad murders conscripts
NY Times: Far-Right Fever for a Europe Tied to Russia

Far-Right being those racist bastards opposed to the genocide of their own people by mass third-World immigration; the term often being qualified by the word "extreme," "fringe," "crank," etc.

Ria Novosti: Luhansk People’s Republic to Announce Full Mobilization
The Saker: Ukie death squad murders conscripts
CannonFire:  Ukraine and the horrors -- or should that be "whores"? -- of American journalism
Telegraph: The Prince of Wales’ remarks that President Putin is like Hitler are “outrageous, unacceptable and low”, says Russia
Guardian:  Prince Charles 'should abdicate' after comparing Putin to Hitler, says MP

The Brits just need to make accession to the throne subject to an IQ test.

Washington's Blog: Western Media Blackout on the Reality in Ukraine

Ukraine: May 16–18, 2014

Global Research: America Brings Hell to Ukraine as Part of its Plan for World Domination

EuroWeeklyNews: Russian warships dock at Spain's North African port: Tory Conniption in UK

Washington's Blog: Is the CIA Directly Responsible for the Massacres In Ukraine?

Israel Shamir: Ukraine in Turmoil. War May Come at any Time

Voltairenet.org: Is Germany involved in Ukraine?

The Local: Ex-chancellor Schmidt slams EU over Ukraine

Chicago Tribune: Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, renews autonomy call for ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine

Moon of Alabama: Ukraine: Recommended Reading

Henry Kamens: Kiev snipers killed both sides during EuroMaidan protest

Or how the US and the EU collaborate in murder with Nazis to attain their criminal objectives.

David Stockman: Bill Clinton’s Epic Double-Cross: How “Not An Inch” Brought NATO To Russia’s Border

VOR: Poroshenko opposes Ukrainians referendum on joining NATO

VOR: US/Nazi collaboration: Ukraine and worldwide – Prof Barry Lituchy

That's why we're Nazis. Once you allow the peasants a referendum, you're on the road to a full-blown goddam democracy.

Itar-Tass: Donetsk People’s Republic prepares draft for acceding Russia

RT: Kiev proclaims post-referendum Donetsk, Lugansk regions ‘terrorist organizations’

So what's best, really. To be a terrorist or work with the Nazis in Kiev?

Itar_Tass: Donbass will do without Ukraine, hardly vice versa

CCTV: Donetsk unveils constitution, "new gov't" elected

WUFYS: Protesters in Berlin call for arrests of Nazis in Ukraine

Henry Kamens: Kiev snipers killed both sides during EuroMaidan protest

Or how the US and the EU readily collaborate in murder with Nazis to attain their criminal objectives.

Zero Hedge: Ukraine's Richest Man Mobilizes Private 'Army' After Assets Threatened

NEO: Kiev Junta Joins Al Qaeda

Presumably the CIA are also seeking out Dervishes and cannibals to fight for righteousness in Ukraine.

UTube: How they count votes in Ukraine: An Official Does It For You

NYTimes: Workers Seize City in Eastern Ukraine From Separatists

The workers who took to the streets on Thursday were among the hundreds of thousands in the east who are employed in metals and mining by Ukraine’s richest man...

Mr. Akhmetov (net worth $12 billionplus or minus a few hundred million) has evidently decided to take decisive action to protect his property and power, recognizing that Under a Russian-dominated East Ukraine, his political influence would likely be severely curbed.

The hope on the US-Kyiv, Nazi side must be that Russia's oligarchs, denied political influence as the price of keeping their stolen easily acquired assets, will take a lesson from Ukraine, stab Putin in the back and assume the public position of authority that, despite their vast wealth, Putin has so unjustly and outrageously denied them.

The Saker: I love the BBC — the Lying Bastards

Ukraine Journal: Ukraine's SBU security service probing gas pipeline explosion

Moon of Alabama: Ukraine: Who Wages The Pipeline War?

Reuters: Canada Sanctions on Russia: More Bark Than Bite

Canada, like America's European tributaries, gives mighty verbal support for the empire, while anxiously awaiting the empire's demise. The end, like that of the Soviet Union, may be both abrupt and far sooner than anyone expected. Only by reverting to a semblance of decency, sanity, moderation and honor is the US likely to survive in anything like its present form. But reform is impossible when the emperor, his sycophants and his handlers are committed to creating their own reality. Instead, the gap between imperial fantasy and reality has become a yawning chasm.

Related: Ukraine May 8–12, 2014

America's Three Great Ukraine Problems

In Ukraine, the United States has launched another in it's seemingly endless sequence of dirty wars of imperial expansion employing every criminal tactic, including atrocities against civilians, in alliance with the scum of the earth from Al Qaeda and cannibals in Syria to Nazis and Zionists in Ukraine. However, in attempting to subjugate Ukraine to the will of the empire, America faces three great problems.

One problem is that the struggle in Ukraine is closely monitored by Russia, a greatly interested party, which means that the public in the West will not likely remain entirely oblivious to Anglo-American war crimes. The dirt on US actions in Ukraine is being dished publicly via non-Western-controlled English language media. The West's highly concentrated corporate media will endeavor to maintain a bodyguard of lies to conceal the truth about American-instigated war crimes in Ukraine, but the truth will seep out, drip by drip.

The second great problem is that Russia is affected too closely by the struggle in Ukraine to stand idly by, since the action in Ukraine is clearly intended as a prelude to the progressive Western domination of Eurasia. Americans tend to dismiss Russian power with sneers about a "gas station masquerading as a country," and by pointing to the relative insignificance of Russia's GDP compared with that of America. However, when oil accounts for close on 5% of world GDP and underlies the war making power of any nation, being the world's number 1 oil producer with 13.25% of global production is nothing to sneer at.

Moreover,  power bears only the most tenuous connection with GDP as a comparison of, say, Athens with Sparta confirms. America's GDP may in nominal terms be the largest in the world but it consists mainly of things that few people really need, and most do without. That Russians mainly do without spending almost a fifth of their wealth on healthcare and huge amounts more on legal services, advertising, entertainment, construction of MacMansions and the filling thereof with stuff means that Russia has a far greater proportion of national talent available for things like intelligence gathering, cyber-warfare research, weapons system design, etc. So by confronting Russia in Ukraine, America has gone up against a very tough opponent: a superpower, in fact, with 1700 nukes and the means to deliver them.

Third, Russia does not stand alone. The Chinese know that if Russia falls to American aggression they will be targeted next. Moreover Europe cannot be indifferent. Russia is the EU's third largest single-country trade partner, and increasingly, Europe's gateway to Asia. Eurasia is ceasing to be a collection of peripheral entities chiefly connected by water and is increasingly an integrated block connected by roads, railways, pipelines and air routes. Russia forms the hub of that integrating economic colossus. Thus, for Europe, America's attempt to smash Russia is highly problematic. It most likely means war on their doorstep, damage or total destruction of important and growing commercial relations and, perhaps most objectionable of all, continuation of American occupation of Europe.

America can either abandon its reckless adventure in East Europe and withdraw to the homeland still with some dignity intact, restore its industrial base, repair its relations throughout the Western hemisphere, particularly the nations of Latin America, and thrive for generations to come, or it can push on to what seems increasingly certain self-destruction in an insane and criminal drive for world domination.