I’m listening to a Polish expert who’s saying that in the past year, the US has pushed Russia out of the European energy markets to the tune of up to 30 trillion dollars. That’s getting close to our entire external debt.
I know people aren’t capable of perceiving good news, so I’ll put it more bluntly: this is 30 trillion dollars going to us. And we are taking them away from really nasty dudes. This is great all around.
An aside for the particularly gifted: no, this doesn’t mean the US “provoked the war”. Russia and nobody else “provoked” it by starting it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Wanted to share the full text of an interesting article:
// My Great-Grandfather, the Nigerian Slave-Trader
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
July 15, 2018
My parents’ home, in Umujieze, Nigeria, stands on a hilly plot that has been in our family for more than a hundred years. Traditionally, the Igbo people bury their dead among the living, and the ideal resting place for a man and his wives is on the premises of their home. […] Down the hill, near the river, in an area now overrun by bush, is the grave of my most celebrated ancestor: my great-grandfather Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku. Nwaubani Ogogo was a slave trader who gained power and wealth by selling other Africans across the Atlantic. “He was a renowned trader,” my father told me proudly. “He dealt in palm produce and human beings.”
…
The descendants of freed slaves in southern Nigeria, called ohu, still face significant stigma. Igbo culture forbids them from marrying freeborn people, and denies them traditional leadership titles such as Eze and Ozo. (The osu, an untouchable caste descended from slaves who served at shrines, face even more severe persecution.) My father considers the ohu in our family a thorn in our side, constantly in opposition to our decisions. In the nineteen-eighties, during a land dispute with another family, two ohu families testified against us in court. “They hate us,” my father said. “No matter how much money they have, they still have a slave mentality.” My friend Ugo, whose family had a similar disagreement with its ohu members, told me, “The dissension is coming from all these people with borrowed blood.”
https://kot-kam.livejournal.com/3637962.html
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