You Kraine, I Kraine, We All Kraine for Ukraine

Given that my primer on last summer’s Syria situation was one of my most popular posts and yet least liked, I thought I would seek to keep my readers misinformed as to what is going on with the whole Ukrainian geopolitical crisis that is so dominating the first five or six minutes of American newscasts these days.  (And just so you know, I will attempt to do so without any obvious lame jokes mentioning that Ukrainian pipelines supply Russian natural gas to Europe; that is, that the primary Ukrainian industry is passing gas.)

Just so there’s no misunderstanding, when I say ‘geopolitical’ I mean it in the classical sense: that is, ‘geo’ as in ‘small Chevy’ and ‘political’ as in ‘what everyone hates more than aspic.’  And when we apply this term to the Ukrainian crisis, we get more confusion than a 2000 Dade County ballot.  This is because nobody knows exactly what is going on due to a decided preference for beer.

As you can see from the map below, Continue reading

Time to Get Syria-us

Pilfered from thewashingtonpost.com

Pilfered from thewashingtonpost.com

This week I am going to do my readers a disservice and dabble in the very world of international intrigue that everyone is talking about these days except the media, who in their defense, is pretty focused on bringing us anything and everything about Miley Cyrus right now.  The Washington Post has put out a couple of articles about Egypt and Syria entitled “9 Questions About [one of the afore mentioned countries] You Were Too Embarrassed to Ask” which have been popular and informative and are to be commended for their intricate simplicity.  And so I thought to myself, “Who am I to not steal such a good idea?  After all, I am as uniquely qualified to dabble in international affairs as anyone, as I have been receiving International Male catalogs for years now.”

The result is the following: a conTIMplating version of

9 Questions About Syria You Were Too Embarrassed to Ask Because You Haven’t Read The Washington Post Article Continue reading