What if Putin isn't bluffing?

The cabal of dorkshits who pissed away $300 million every single day for twenty years before cutting and running from the Taliban, now see themselves entitled to dictate what's what to Russia and China.

I don't think you have to be a genius political analyst to see this can't possibly end well.

The Americans spent billions to over-throw the democratically elected government in Ukraine. After decades of encroaching on former Soviet satellites, Ukraine was to be the big prize. If we could turn Ukraine, NATO would be right on Russia's border!

Alas, the "Revolution of Dignity" wasn't much of a revolution, nor did it bring anything in the way of dignity to the people of Ukraine.

The current tensions in Ukraine can be traced back to comments the clown-comedian leader of Ukraine made back in the spring, about re-taking the Crimean peninsula. That's when the first "build-up" of Russian forces on the other side of the border happened.

Since then, Western politicians and media have been recklessly goading Zelensky to make good on his threats. Even as both the UK and USA announce up front they won't back Ukraine militarily, they keep up the confrontational rhetoric and flood Ukraine with hundreds of millions in fresh weaponry. 

The reporting in Western media on last week's meetings between EU, OSCE, NATO, and Russia was dismissive of any Russian concerns. We are, after all, the Good Guys, whereas Putin is an evil dictator looking to revive the Stalin era.

In Canada, the two primary organs of state propaganda, The Globe and Mail and CBC, are full of hubristic twaddle about how we and our allies need to call Putin's bluff and put him in his place.

Canada cut and ran from Afghanistan years before the Americans gave up. Yet somehow, we think it's our job to rally round Uncle Sam as the Americans provoke a military confrontation with an entity that is infinitely more capable than the Taliban?

This will not end well for the self-proclaimed Nations of Virtue.

When is a "OSCE observer" actually a NATO spy?

If ever there was an opportunity for the OSCE to achieve something useful, one would think that the Ukraine crisis would represent that chance. After all, both Russia and Ukraine are members.

How odd, then, that the thirteen OSCE "observers" detained in Slavyansk last week all happen to be soldiers from NATO countries? (with the possible exception of a lone Swede among them.)

Like NATO itself, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is one of those Cold War relics that refuses to climb quietly into the dustbin of history. Instead, it provides a cushy sinecure for various well-connected political and military insiders who then face the conundrum of reinventing reasons for its existence.

In the present climate of hysterical propaganda-slinging by all sides, the question of whether this group were "observers" or "spies" is moot.

They were both, and what you call them depends on which direction you're hoping to fan the winds of propaganda.