Double Standards, the Ukraine and WW III

I'm starting to think that the Ukrainian people were and are deluded. I say this as a guy who loved his Ukrainian grandmother and who, as a Canadian eighty years later, has shed a tear when recalling the Holdomor. The Ukrainians were deluded because they thought they could join the European Union and that this would lead to a measurable improvement in their standard of living. In reality, the EU only offered them membership to draw them out of Russia's orbit. The EU is a tool of (mainly bankster) oligarchs who loath European social democracy and are actively trying to kill it in Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. The Ukrainians were ignorant of the onerous austerity package that the International Monetary Fund attached to EU membership. They believed that sending the corrupt elected president packing and replacing him with pro-Western stooges would rekindle the dream of joining the EU.

Who am I to say this of the Ukrainian people? I'll admit to not knowing all the facts on the ground. I could be wrong. But this is how I feel. And, I say this as someone who knows that Canadians are deluded. Canadians are deluded into thinking that terrorism is a greater threat to them than the Conservative Party of Canada. Canadians are deluded into thinking that the Liberal Party represents anything other than a kinder, gentler version of what the harpercons offer. Canadians are deluded about the real history of the First Nations in Canada. They're deluded about a lot of things.

Rather than being an arrogant presumption, I think the hypothesis that a people are deluded about things is quite rational.

I don't think the Ukrainians are deluded about the fact that their present economic situation is awful. I don't think they're deluded in their hatred of Russian imperialism. I don't think anyone is deluded in thinking Vladimer Putin is a criminal thug.

I do think that pro-US American writers and thinkers are guilty of having double standards when it comes to Russia in the Ukraine. Putin's annexation of the Crimea was a violation of international law. But if you supported the invasion of Iraq, or Israeli expansion, you have no right to speak on the matter. The separatists in Eastern Ukraine might have shot down that Malaysian airliner, but if you shrugged your shoulders at the USA's shooting down of that Iranian airbus (and the heroes' welcome to the ship that did it and the medal for the captain of that ship and President George H. W. Bush's stated refusal to ever apologize for the United States) then you have no right to speak. If you're going to wax rhapsodic about the Ukrainian people's hunger for democracy to support the coup against their elected government, but you support the USA's puppet governments and cruelties and subversions against Haiti, Honduras, Venezuela, and their counter-insurgency death-squad governments across the world, ... you have no right to speak.

Sure, there are unreconstructed Stalinists among the left who are critical of the North American framing of this issue. But most of us are genuinely concerned about peace. Most of us are the genuine advocates for democracy, liberty, human rights and economic justice. And, finally, given the reality that Russia is a major nuclear power with a highly trained conventional military, we're the sane ones who refuse to risk nuclear war over such a poor choice of brutal, kleptocratic, oligarchic scum.