Persiflage & Paroxysm

It was over 200 years ago that a French Emperor led his Grand Army across the Neman, a river now located in Belarus, its significance was as epoch-defining as Caesar crossing the Rubicon. The young Russian Tzar Alexander I was attending social engagements in Saint Petersburg at the time the French emperor led his army eastward. Tzar Alexander I was attending a celebration where young Russian aristocrats were dancing wearing the latest French fashions to the strains of the latest European music written by German and Italian composers. Russia admired all things European.  Napoleon I and Alexander I, a short-lived romance Confident that Napoleon I would not invade his country over a simple matter of trade and that the Treaty of Tilsit he signed with the French Emperor on a raft on the very same Neman river would hold, Tzar Alexander I wasn't worried, but he should have been. Often conflicting interests are what turn friendly countries into adversaries. Napoleon wanted to enforce a str

Lebanon needs a full-time citizenry, not part-timers who are present for the good times, and flee the minute the going gets tough, becoming remote citizens sending kisses, best wishes, and their ballots from a distance! Unfortunately, the post civil war bourgeoisie of Lebanon are a nomadic bunch. My peers among them, who hit their 50s this decade, remember their parents' advice to keep a bag packed and ready to go, to strive to get a foreign passport or two, and to always have an escape plan. Who escapes their own country? All packed and set to go The middle class have the resources to escape, but who do they leave the country to? Do they leave it to the wealthy elites who are mired knee deep in corruption along with the political class? For them, all is well, in fact the price per head at the ballot box has plummeted, so winning elections costs them less now. The cost of the Lebanese worker also plummeted, so those in control of major investments and capital tend to benefit. Who d

If the US, UK or their allied media publish it, its undeniable fact; if Russia and their allied media publish it, its exaggerated propaganda. If NATO and the US expand their military presence eastward, they are defending Ukraine, US troops thousands of miles from US shores risking war, that's ok! if Russia holds large military exercises on its own soil or in neighboring Belarus, its an aggressive mobilization of forces and encirclement of Ukraine ahead of an invasion. The much vaunted Western media is unashamedly biased and slanted in its coverage. But what else can they be, their countries are on a war footing and they, like all citizens, must fall in line behind their countries' military agendas. (Source: Wikipedia) Since the 1990s, NATO has done what any aggressive military alliance would do upon the internal collapse of its main adversary, the Soviet Union. It stepped in to fill the vacuum and hoovered up new members from among the detritus of the defunct Warsaw Pact, inchi