Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

21 September 2014

Not infrequently one gets the distinct impression that what concerns our masters, the ruling elite, wherever they may be in the world and whatever ideology they espouse, is light years away from what concerns the ordinary citizen whose interests they purport to represent.

Take the civil war that is ripping the Ukraine apart.

As we all know, very important geopolitical theology is at stake. The Western eagle is backing one side, the Russian bear the other. Both sides claim to have God, or at least right, on their side – according to the mutually identical propaganda that is bog standard in any war. Both sides claim to be waging a just war.

However, this is not always how it appears to Joe Public who, for some unfathomable reason, is not always one hundred per cent convinced that he should sacrifice his life and that of his family and friends on the altar of some ideological fire fight between well-paid apparatchiks safely ensconced in their offices in the White House and the Kremlin.

Wild enthusiasm for the conflict is not exactly what the civilian population caught up in the fray appears to be displaying right now.

Take the following snippet in a dispatch in the London Guardian on 2 September 2014 from Mariupol, a port city in southern Ukraine still loyal to Nato’s protégé regime in Kiev but increasingly beleaguered by heavily armed Russian-backed troops from Donetsk in dissident eastern Ukraine.

“After months of clashes, many locals are weary and suspicious of both sides and simply long for a normal life. ‘I don’t care if we are part of Russia, part of Ukraine or part of Mars,’ said Irina Filatova, as she took her daughters to school in Mariupol.”

Which, assuming that the third option won out,  might then perhaps be renamed “Marsiupol”.

However, given the fact that the Red Planet has now been dragged into the debate about Ukrainian sovereignty, one would hope that plans are afoot to ensure that our Martian friends have been consulted about whether they want to be embroiled in these tellurian shenanigans.

If I were a Martian, I’d give the Ukraine a wide berth.

Mind you, it has to be said that extra-terrestrial succour might not come amiss down in Mariupol, given the state of preparedness of the city’s defenders.

The Guardian report continues:

“ ‘Do you think we can resist armed people from the Donetsk People’s Republic?’, asked Dmytro, a local police officer, showing he and his colleagues had no guns.”

In the absence of an account of how the Guardian replied to this no-brainer, we can answer for it:

‘Well, no, you darn well can’t. Unless Nato’s cavalry rides in to the rescue lickety-split, the best thing you can do, buddy, is beat it, pronto.’

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
4. Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
5. Ladder  (21 June 2012)
6. A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
7. A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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