War and Peace

basement where Romanovs were killed

Tolstoy details the agonizing defeat of Napoleon’s force by the Russians in War and Peace. Then there was the Siege of Leningrad which went on from l941-44 when the Nazis tried to strangle the city much in the way the Russians are doing with Kiev. In likelihood it's Putin who has stepped in shit this time. Russia will likely be reduced politically and economically on the world stage. In general, the world situation is tantamount to the Ice Age. Which Troglodyte is going first? The two great powers vying for hegemony will be China and the United States. So of the major countries you have Australia and India aligned with the West with Chinese proxies like Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and naturally North Korea lining up with the Xi Jinping. It’s interesting to consider Russia becoming a Third World country and potential economic burden to the Chinese, who by that time might be experiencing a negative balance of trade despite Russia’s rich oil reserve. China, while less blustery and prone to the “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face" syndrome, and less nuclear arms heavy could still be a stiff political rival due to the economic weight of its 1.4 billion worker bees. The net is that the present crisis is likely to produce a new world order with Russia like one of the extinct species displayed behind glass in the Museum of Natural History. Remember the pictures documenting the execution of Czar Nicholas II and the last of the Romanovs at Yekaterinburg in 1918?

Read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "China Girl" by David Bowie