Spare us the rapture for Ukraine

No time is so tricky for any peoples of the world, that the American Right Wing will not condemn an American gov-ernment which does not extend a com-plicating hand. Thus the other day, the Right's senior prince of posture and pusillanimity flexed his perfor-ated nostrils that the nation lacks a nitwit capable of Reaganesque rattling of play sabers, to tweak the head of one nation to exploit the misery of another. I didn't listen because I didn't have to, at how the Murdoch network lent its droolers' chorus to the rousing of Right thinking in our exploited class. Voltaire said, in such a pinch we would have invented God. He hadn't imagined Mark Twain.

Times are hard in Ukraine. The novelty of this condition escapes us all, but the opportunity for mischief is not to be dismissed on grounds of futility. Already the IMF, Odyssean genius for infiltration that it is, has promised gobs of technical assistance and dreamy luscious lucre - only not with-out appropriate reforms, need they say. With such reforms, many a free people has been bent to the capital wheel; and who knows when we shall see Greeks again? Not to be outdone, the American government has said, whatever the IMF will do, it will do gladly. Tories have the best of both worlds: a complaisant American government, to blame when their policies fail.