And a hard place.

Editor,

The Russian economic model is state-owned enterprise bolstered by private investment, cultural conformity, homophobia, and a beloved strongman bearing the standard of a crazed nationalism.

The American economic model is corporate rule, no taxes for rich people, no spending on social programs, privatization of everything, predatory capitalism in all its unregulated glory -- chemical spills in rivers, poison food, for-profit prisons, drugs that kill you.

These economic models are pitted against each other where domestic conflicts provide fertile ground for proxy wars -- Syria, Ukraine -- that support the usual cast of characters: corrupt and crazy autocrats, homicidal maniac street fighters, sadistic "security" forces, political hacks who ignore egregious violations of human rights in their own countries yet rail sanctimoniously against human rights abuses in their rival's.

Isn't war lovely?

Can you see how the lust for money and power motivate it on all sides?

Except in the middle, of course, where the pawns no one cares a fig about but use to advance their own interests are trying to live their lives squeezed between an ideological rock and a hard place.

Re: "Kiev’s Brief Truce Shatters in Bursts of Gunfire" (2/21/2014)