This is definitely something to consider, seriously. I have spent years wondering at the ridiculous foolishness of the European royals, the progeny of Victoria and the Hapsburgs.

Who knows, perhaps the principal players of today's international melodrama are not just as clueless as the Austrian emperor, the Russian Czar, the Kings of England et al when they blew the world all to hell in 1914.

It seems to me that Vlad the Mad Putin is definitely in the same class with those wreckless royals of 1914.

This is a depraved world; I hope we can survive it.