March 23, 2014, Crimea River
Our friends at Pravda give us their take on the recent plebiscite followed by Russian accession/annexation of the Crimea region. We note the continued hand-wringing by morons incompetents fools the Obama Administration and its NATO allies, who seem hellbent on turning a minor act of consensual consolidation in a region unquestionably in Russia's sphere of influence (and not ours) into an excuse to either reignite the Cold War, or perhaps, even start a shooting war.
Well, this might be thought to be necessary as we consider the geopolitical implications of Ukraine as a world energy choke-point. Still, it is probably a really good idea to remember that we are dealing with rudderless, principle-less idiots (I'm talking about our side, btw; Comrade Putin has a rudder and has principles, even if we don't necessarily like them): it is much more likely that what we are watching, the not-likely-to-be-effective-at-much-of-anything "sanctions," the bellicose talk, and so forth, is not coming from any kind of global strategy, but from a seat-of-pants reaction to a system coming apart, while an American "leadership" starts to believe its own bullsh*t (thus causing reasonable people to question what they are smoking, to paraphrase I.F. Stone).
In short, boys and girls, say what you will, but Team Neocon and those people whose intelligence we disrespected in the George W. Bush Administration understood that the world was closing in on Peak Oil, and they were damned well going to do something about it. What they did, of course, was to take military control of Iraq, holder of the top two or three largest proven reserves of oil in the world. While some (that would be anyone with an i.q. above, say, 45) will acknowledge that operationally, the Iraq adventure proved to be a counter-productive disaster, whose costs in both human life and treasure are incalculable, one must nonetheless acknowledge that the vision that led to doing it was quite clear, even if the methodologies utilized to try to ameliorate the present and future energy problems of the Western nations were unnecessarily costly, and, without doubt, criminally insane.
Still, we now have an Obama Administration hellbent on continuing to use the collateral belligerence of the Bush Administration (complete with its psychotic cost), as well as the attendant police state measures that went with it (albeit somewhat expanded, as I have noted many times that George W. Bush, unlike Barack Obama, was too squeamish to actually acknowledge that he was ordering the murders of American citizens and others).
And so, for people who wish the United States and its aggressive arrogance would just "go away," they have the best of both worlds: an American leadership presiding over an ever-less-healthy populace and ever-less-healthy economy that, through its own sheer incompetence, finds itself ever less relevant in major world affairs, while still eager to stick its nose in them, of course, all while ramping up the infrastructure of its own internal police state without (thankfully, so far) the current will to fully use it, although, of course, making it awfully easy to do so should someone show up who wants to use it.
But go ahead-- repeat after me: Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine. Heh. (Anyway, here is a transcript of a leaked phone call from U.S. State Dept. official Victoria Nuland to the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine, famous for her suggestion to "f***the E.U," but more notable for the clear implication that the US of A and/or its allies were up to their tushes in orchestrating the Ukraine political collapse of recent vintage... my favorite part of the story is that Ms. Nuland is married to Robert "Neocon Numero Uno" Kagan.)
In short... Crimea river.