This Blogger respects Russians; as Frederick the Great stated :” It takes two bullets to take a Russian soldier out; one to kill him and one to  stop him.” This Blogger   likes Russians; even though once, in Moscow, during the Soviet era, his incredibly attractive tour guide, aka KGB agent, told him and his brother   that they were in danger of being hit, fatally, by a Soviet car crossing a Moscow street. T his Blogger’s brother told her that he had ridden in a Soviet Car, the LADA; and that he could damn well survive any hit by that piece of junk. She laughed. That night, this Blogger’s brother slept in his room, under his bed, drunk. This Blogger admires the way Russians do business; when Soviet diplomats were kidnapped in Lebanon, the KGB paid the ransoms immediately, without complaint. Shortly thereafter, Beirut was flooded with Soviet agents and Soviet bribes; the kidnappers were identified. They were abducted, tortured and  castrated; their dead bodies strung from l

This Blogger just finished listening to Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech about the imbroglio in the Middle East, specifically between Israel and Palestine.  The speech started off as the best, most passionate speech John Kerry has ever given, and,then in typical Kerry fashion, deteriorated into mediocre tedium. As the speech never ended, this Blogger thought about the last Israeli lion, Shimon Peres, who died in this year 2016, at the age of 93. It is one of the great sins of 20 th Century History that an Israeli/Palestinian accord could not be forged when other great Israeli lions were alive: Moshe Dayan, David  Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, and Abba Eban. Alas, the great Arab lion of that age was Gamal Abdel Nasser; who was delusional. He threatened Israel with annihilation; then,rather than plan for an armed Israeli reaction to his threats, a preemptive strike, he spent hours discussing the future of Jews in a post Israeli, Palestinian state. With lions like Dayan, one