Monday 14 April 2014

No wonder that Ukraine's leaders feel betrayed by the West

No wonder people in Ukraine feel betrayed by the West:

When Russia invaded Crimea and massed 40,000 or more troops in the east, Ukraine turned to an old friend, the United States, and asked for light arms, antitank weapons, intelligence help and nonlethal aid. The Obama administration agreed to deliver 300,000 meals-ready-to-eat. As this newspaper reported Friday, military transport planes were deemed too provocative for Russia, so the food was shipped by commercial trucks. The administration refused Kiev's requests for intelligence-sharing and other supplies, lethal or not.

Read the entire WSJ article here

UKIP and other EU-critical parties are on the march across Europe ahead of the EU elections

EU-critical parties are looking good ahead of the European elections in May. The latest UK opinion poll must be great news for UKIP leader Nigel Farage:

Voter support for Britain's anti-European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) is at a record high according to one opinion poll on Sunday, reflecting a wider pattern of growing support for the party ahead of European elections next month.
The rising popularity of UKIP, which calls for an immediate withdrawal from the EU and tighter immigration laws, threatens to split the vote for Prime Minister David Cameron at European parliament elections in May and a national election in 2015.
UKIP's profile has been raised by the upcoming European elections on May 22, when polls suggest it could beat Cameron's party into third place.
A ComRes poll of voting intentions for next year's national election put UKIP on 20 percent - up four percentage points at their highest in the four-year history of the poll. Cameron's Conservatives fell three points to 29 percent.

No wonder that the traditional EU establishment and liberal MSM - like the Economist - are scared stiff:

Ms Le Pen’s rise should serve as a warning not just in Paris but also in Brussels and elsewhere. Populist parties, mostly but not solely on the far right, are on the march across Europe, from the UK Independence Party in Britain to the Finns Party in Finland, and from Geert Wilders’s PVV in the Netherlands to Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza in Greece.