Peace please!

 NO WAR!

View from outside our house in Sicily

Silly us. We left our rainbow peace flag back in the USA when we moved to Italy, so we had to get another one once Ukraine was invaded.

While plenty of people have pointed out the US invasion of Iraq was not very different (and ironically done by the same US president who invited Ukraine into NATO, which some would say wasn't much different than the USSR putting missiles into Cuba) the worldwide reaction certainly has been!

Who knows where this will end? Nuclear armageddon, a long bloody insurgency like Afghanistan (notably fought by both USA and USSR at different times...do we never learn?) or maybe a Brutus type intervention in Russia as was the case in ancient Rome with Julius Caesar?

Meanwhile, the world-of-sport's throwing competitors and teams out right and left. What seems unfair to Zio Lorenzo is the fate of the poor guys who have signed up to race for teams like Gazprom, who were refused a start yesterday at Trofeo Laigueglia. They're not in favor of war but can't compete simply because their team is bankrolled by a Russian entity?

The Drone Hopper team showed up in jerseys with a Ukraine flag design and a "NO WAR!" message while Russians and Belarussians on non-Russian/Belarussian bankrolled teams will be allowed to compete for their sponsors, but an Italian on Gazprom is banned?*

Of course all this is small potatoes when people are getting killed but the US seems mostly concerned about how much it's gonna cost 'em to fill up the tank on their Chevrolet "Subdivision". We guess they forgot the price of oil spiked to more than $100 a barrel in 1980, 2006, 2010, 2012-2013-2014 but then dropped to under $25 as recently as March 2020, when production way out-paced demand.

Can worldwide outrage put a stop to all this before it's too late? The Covid-19 pandemic finally seems to be waning, now we get a(nother) war?

Make your voice heard no matter where you live!

* There are actually six Italian riders currently on Gazprom who are not allowed to race at present. How is that fair? How does that further the cause of peace? The Italian National Team sort of came to their rescue, putting most of them onto the roster for upcoming races where the Azzurri are competing.