Weekly news - Ukrainian tension / Iain Duncan Smith versus food banks

The news coming out of Ukraine this week, beginning with Pro-Russian separatists seizing official buildings in Eastern provinces, as well as the humiliating theft of armoured vehicles from an aerodrome. Things appeared to be moving forward on Thursday as a diplomatic deal was struck in Geneva, yet at present separatists are refusing to budge which may yet muddy the slight diplomatic ground gained.

The rational response to the conflict would be for the international community to stand back and allow events to naturally transpire, whether that must mean Ukraine splitting in two. Putin's tactics might now have shifted from impatience to playing the long game. The focus now is centred on what happens with the East, and by engineering this, the Russian annexation of Crimea has receded into the background.

However, things are always more multifaceted than they appear, and certainly through the wider media prism that has firmly anchored in the minds of the masses the assertion of Russia as 'the enemy'. John Pilger's excellent article this week, elucidated some of the conflicting narratives that are currently at odds with one another.

He writes that 'since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has ringed Russia with military bases, nuclear warplanes and missiles as part of its Nato enlargement process'. This has consisted of Nato's absorption of the Balkan states adjoining Russia, who perceive the US's creeping presence eastwards to be a contravention of commitments made to Mikhail Gorbachev 'not to move beyond the boundaries of Germany after Cold War'.

The American intention is clearly to isolate Russia, by provoking the Ukrainian coup in February, and keep the imperialist military juggernaut fully chugging along. After all, its Afghanistan operations are winding down and it needs to find something else to occupy itself, if only to justify the inexorbitant sums pumped into it year after year.

Russia has sought to chastise Ukraine by escalating the costs of energy supplied, on which Ukraine is largely dependent. But, just as the Americans, with their arm firmly on the Nato tiller, will try and influence Eastern Europe strategically, its energy companies will be standing reassuringly by, ready to oblige with dollar-sign thrombosis bulging their eyes.

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It takes a particularly odious breed of snake to castigate a charitable organisation for providing help to those in need (at Easter!), but it would appear that Iain Duncan Smith is increasingly content to play the part.

Inconveniently for the Conservatives, the Trussell Trust (Britain's largest food bank provider) this week estimated that half of the nearly million people referred to food banks in 2013 had suffered benefit delays or changes, which would tend to substantiate Labour's persistent crowing about the 'cost of living crisis'.

Iain Duncan Smith, as Secretary of State of the DWP, accused the charity of 'misleading and emotionally manipulative publicity-seeking', as though the fact that in 21st century Britain nearly a million people needing the emergency help of food banks wasn't something worthy of being made public. Iain Duncan Smith is clearly walking the same ideological gang plank that says the rich achieve wealth entirely through their own efforts and conversely the poor entirely through their lack of effort.

He accused the Trussell Trust of 'aggressively marketing their services'. Or maybe there are people out there who just cannot afford to feed their families....

His comments seem to be at odds with his boss David Cameron who would appear to have found god this Easter. He was quoted as giving his full support to food banks, which would be fine if he wasn't one of few people in the country who could do anything about it. Ending the austerity measures might be start.

However, he also said 'I want to see the possibilities [of food banks] to expand', which might be some devious Bullingdon code for yet more swingeing cuts to the welfare state.

At any rate, Tesco will not be rejoicing at the PM's words since they announced yet more losses last year. I don't think there will be many tears shed or sympathy extended from the average consumer, who has had the enforced camcerous spread of Tesco across the urban landscape over the last few decades; enshrining dull homogenisation and the kind of monotonous shopping experience that treats individuals like little more than blank units of consumption to be sucked in and spewed out as quickly as possible.