Helpless Ukraine is world's 4th largest weapons exporter

That's according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

That didn't stop Senator John McCain from showing up on Face the Nation yesterday to plead for US arming of Ukraine, which is probably just more evidence that McCain inhabits a peculiar time warp wherein the clock is forever stopped a few seconds before midnight and the Ruskies could at any moment trigger the final showdown between the Nations of Virtue and the Evil Empire.

McCain's fantasyland aside, there can be no doubt that the last thing Ukraine needs is more weapons. Nor does it need the kind of belicose talk that never stops coming from the mini-McCains in Ottawa, Mssrs Baird and Harper.

Yatsenyuk took to the airwaves the other day to offer the east of the country more autonomy. That's the official Russian position, and marks the kind of compromise that unfortunately isn't allowed to get traction when the war-mongers and Putin-haters like Harper, Baird, and McCain are vacuuming up all the oxygen in the arena of international public debate.

Ukraine is an economic basket case because for twenty years it has been systematically looted by its own oligarchy. Once "the people" of Ukraine are left to steer their own course, as opposed to being a pawn in America's quest for perpetual Empire, they will find their way. A glance at a map will suggest that they may well have more reasons to have closer ties to their Russian neighbours than to their self-proclaimed champions in the West.