You’ve all heard the “horror stories” about Americans being totally oblivious to events in other countries. A classic that comes to mind is Miss Teen South Carolina’s 2007 reference to “the Iraq” and the fact that “some people don’t have maps” as to why that is. Another would be the country questions from “Jaywalking on the Tonight Show” where Jay Leno asks a bunch of random people on the street questions about pop culture and foreign affairs and has whole segments of solely wrong answers. One Google search brings almost a billion results (such as the image below) about how Americans only know stereotypes of other countries. We pay the Department of Education more than the 21 poorest African countries’ GDPs combined. How does this joke still exist?!
$70 billion education budget and this is still a thing. Source: alphadesigner.com
A New Cold War: the US/Russia Battle over the Ukrainian Crisis
By Niles Wimber
Update:
Russia has begun deploying troops to the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine “for the safety of ethnic Russians in the region”. Considering they have a major naval base there and the region borders with Russia, that only further confirms my commentary below about Russia’s motivations there. Read on.
Since my original review of the Ukrainian Maidan Revolution on February 20th, things have changed quite a bit, namely, the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych and the installation of a new opposition led government. The new government has immediately turned towards the US and the European Union for help with Ukraine’s crippled economy, much to the dismay of Russia who had previously offered to buy out Ukraine’s debt to the tune of $15 billion dollars. For their part, the Russians have started running massive war drills for troops bordering Ukraine, just for the heck of it according to them. Ukraine isn’t really an influential country compared to, say, Germany or China; what’s provoking this sudden Cold War flashback?
Russian tanks on parade. Source: Niles Wimber
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Tagged America, Cold War, EU, national security, protests, Russia, Ukraine