Ukraine War

When I was in high school, I was the ONLY student outraged over the slaughter in Rwanda and Burundi. For a progressive and highly educated student body, they were oblivious and unsympathetic over the situation there and the collapse in Yugoslavia, or having any particular opinion over the end of the Cold War, aka WW3, before we graduated from high school. I was better informed, and every bit as intelligent as they were. I wasn't insulated through indifference or snobbish enough to do vacations to Mexico. I was still engaged with reality.

The situation with Russia and the Ukraine and the invasion of Crimea after general outrage over throwing about EU membership for a Russian slavery package has resulted in Russian troops invading, without wearing their signifying patches, not under flag, taking the airport and then the country. Crimea has been invaded, and the majority Russian population seems all for it. Anyone who objected was likely shot already.

In 1939, Hitler took western Czech Republic for Germany, saying it was always Germany so should be again and Germany didn't want anything else. Then they gave a treaty to Britain saying that was all they wanted. And invaded Poland. If Hitler had stuck to building cars and planes, Germany would have gotten rich instead of bombed into ruins. That's the trouble with nationalist ambitions. And Putin is making the same mistakes Hitler made. Too much tyrannical power, too much grinning evil, and Hitler presided over Olympics too.

Realistically, there is nothing we can do about it, the Western world. We need Russia's oil, and their natural gas flows through pipelines across the Ukraine, and Russia has been screwing with them for years on this, turning it off. Ukraine wants discount gas to heat their homes and run their power plants, and Russia wants to sell that gas in Germany and France for hard currency. Ukraine has been stealing it, Russia has turned off the taps in February almost annually since 2000. They then jack up the price on the spot market and won't turn the gas back on without getting their way, which then pushes the EU to build more nuclear power plants and sign more missile treaties with weapons pointed at Russia because everybody knows they're Mad Dogs. Russia is rearming, building new planes, new tanks, and new warships, but the Bosporus remains a chokepoint and Turkey is a NATO member.

When Russia acts like a bully and makes obvious aggressive moves like this, the solution is more Green energy, more nuclear power plants, and more solar homes, which is tricky in the EU where its overcast and cold all winter. Especially with Global Cooling and the next Ice Age coming. EU population should be thinking hard about desalination and aqueducts into Morocco, Spain, and Algeria. Might even fix the issues with Muslims pissing off the French. The Spanish youth are moving to Central and South America, starting businesses because they can and aren't phased by "but my father was always a drunk and I can't be more successful!" thinking which seems to dominate. Africa is hard to fix, but South America is coming along, finally. I think that Satellite TV is actually one of the upsides there. People get examples of how they should behave in common situations. None of this slavery and kowtowing crap. None of the bullying we see with Putin. South America is going to have its century, and Asia is going to collapse into war. And we can't fix that.

As I see it, America has no real interests in protecting Russia's oil exporting, and we have no interests in Ukraine, as they compete with us for grain exports. We'll get rich without the competition. America is also expected to surpass Russia, the current leader for oil exports, this year. This is mostly due to Fracking oil and natural gas. Gas is hard to export. Best to use it domestically heating homes, but you can also fuel cars with it. Its not very efficient, but it works and it is cheap. UPS uses it, and the local garbage trucks are powered by natural gas, which they require multiple fillups to do the day's run instead of just one. However, it works and they get a tax break, and the exhaust is cleaner than diesel.

Ukraine has been through genocidal slaughters by Russia before. They knew this, going in. They knew that splitting off from the USSR two decades ago meant they needed a serious military capable of blowing the crap out of the Russian armies and air force as a deterrent, and they didn't do it. They told themselves that wars of aggression are in the past. Nothing could be further from the truth. As long as women have babies, there will be wars. War is population control. Of your side, of their side, and it IS March, after all. This is when enough of the snow melts to let the armies move.

I suppose it will be entertaining TV watching the Russian tanks demonstrate how they mow down opposing troops, and how well their armor works against modern RPG shaped charges, designed to burn a hole through a tank's armor and spray the interior with 20,000 degree steel and depleted uranium. Being a tanker is a very dangerous job. And its a big target. Like the Olympics, war is a spectator sport.

And hey, the current US president has gone to a lot of effort to convince the world we don't give a damn about them, do whatever. That his words are empty, that he's unable to think without a teleprompter. That America elected an empty suit for the color of his skin, a point the current president has made several times now. This is unfixable. We are much too late to rescue Ukraine from the incipient slaughter. The genocide could well be in the tens of millions, like last time. Stalin killed millions of Ukrainians, after all. Why not do it again under Putin? America is fine with tyranny. We have no rule of law, no constitution or civil rights. It's all just a lie.

I really hope that California splits into 6 states. Even if the states are kinda dumb. We should do it anyway. If Brown is right and he's fixed all the state budget debt, which I doubt, we can all walk away from the Republic that never was, that of California, and become a bunch of regions with actual local interests that are represented. Imagine if the new Southern States actually blocked the border, instead of letting the Mexicans through to the Central Valley where they mostly grow and harvest crops. The Central Valley certainly won't like that. Will they commit war against the South to reopen the illegals routes? The South wants the illegals out of their emergency rooms so the paying citizens will stop dying of heart attacks, which is a genuinely serious issue there. Lots of people HAVE DIED of that very problem. After all, if Russia can seize Crimea because most of the population are Russian, can't Mexico seize San Diego since most of the population speaks Spanish? And why stop there? Seize LA too. And Tucson, and El Paso. How about Phoenix? Because language is all that makes someone Mexican, right? How long before the French cede Marseilles back to Algeria? And Lyon, and Paris? Same difference, right?

But we'll stand there and do nothing, because that's America these days. A bunch of whiners that do nothing. We can invade Afghanistan because they are too few to fight us off, but we retreat from Iraq where a civil war continues to rage, each side fueled by Iran and Saudi Arabia, a great distraction for the Al Qaeda goons with their exploding vests. Better there than here, right?

Ukraine has my sympathy, but that's all. We'll watch your slaughter on TV and whine, but we won't DO anything. That's not American, anymore.