This is a screen snap from Libération, a Paris daily that is supposed to be on the leftish side of the political spectrum, about in the same way the Vancouver Sun might be, or somewhere between the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. The quote stems from a visit by Senator John McCain to the faction of the Ukrainian population demonstrating in favour of building closer ties with the European Union and moving farther from the Russian fold.

Now Here’s Some Good News!

It’s very sad that McCain rates anything like the attention he’s getting here, a son of Western privilege looking to fight the wars of the U.S. neocons on other peoples’ turf, after the fashion of Syria. His intent is to complete the Orange Revolution of 2004 and move the Ukraine definitively out of the Russian sphere of influence. McCain has been playing at this since his days flying for the US Navy over Vietnam, and it seems likely that part of the virulence of his campaign relates to having spent a stretch in the Hanoi Hilton when his aircraft was shot down in 1967. As with myriad US figures, he seems to operate on the premise that people care for his opinion. People who embrace John McCain’s dicta do so at their own peril unless they are wealthy American conservatives: anyone who can stand on the same stage as Sarah Palin with a straight face needs psychiatric help rather than an endorsement on policy.

In another situation where life for many of its citizens is difficult and where political circumstances can be troubling, Ukrainians find themselves caught between factions pulling in opposite geographic directions, but where neither choice is likely to provide better living and working conditions for the average citizen. Putin’s Russia has, under one leader or another, had many opportunities to build a thriving national economy and a society where debate and dialogue might be the norm. They didn’t, and there is ample discontent to attest to that lack of constructive action. Behind Door Number Two, Ukrainians can opt for closer ties to the European Union, where, on the face of it, there is freedom of expression, mobility, jobs, subsidies, the German economy and a perception that life will be considerably better than it is presently. Any reasonably astute observer will note that a good part of the EU is living a story of economic decay, of domination by the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, largely directed by large financial institutions and where neo-liberal economic theory, particularly austerity, is the rule. It could be that the right choice is neither Russia, nor the EU, but no one seems ready to propose this option which, admittedly, ensures at least short-term pain, but which gives a shot at real independence and freedom from the soul sucking ideologies of both other options. The very fact of the American involvement on one side of this conflict, and Russian on the other just might indicate the pawn status that should rightly be assigned to this, and other, revolutions with a colour assigned to them in the popular mythology.

Proxy wars are, of course, nothing new, and the Spanish Civil War is about as good a case study as any, wherein the forces of Fascism and Communism clash in someone else’s back yard as a prelude to more open and general conflict leading to the general devastation of large parts of Europe and other parts of the planet using the methods pioneered at the expense of the Spaniards. Did anything of real significance come out of the Arab Spring? See saw battles for power in Egypt, Libya under the rule of doctrinaire Islamist thugs, Tunisia rid of one dictator, quickly replaced by another oppressive régime, and Syria looking increasingly like the testing ground for a three-way tug-of-war between the US and its EU friends, Russia, and the Wahabist Saudi régime. No one is winning, but the Syrians are losing. There are attempts to make this conflict out, like so many others, to be a battle of good against evil, of the welfare of the population against either the invading hordes or the oppression of a dictator, and there is some justification in both cases, but the underlying notion of the conflict, and the reason it seems to have such staying power, lies in that same pawn status that the Syrians share with the Ukrainians, a status shared to some extent by all of us, on whatever side of whatever current divide we might live.

Update: Here is a video with some added perspective from The Real News network out of Toronto and Baltimore:

Isn’t it a little bizarre that we are putting rovers on the moon and on Mars, fighting shooting wars all over the world and preparing to square off over what’s left of the planet’s resources while we seem to need the intervention of charitable organizations to look after the most basic needs of a good part of the Earth’s population? Merry Christmas.

Then, there’s this gem from Dan Hicks going back to the days of the Charlatans and the Hot Licks, specially dedicated to John McCain: