Author: Alexander Boot

Barack Hussein, who owes 100 per cent of his ascent to 50 per cent of his genes, has generously given Britain the benefit of his geopolitical wisdom.

Britain, he hectored, ought to stay in the EU because that’ll give the USA “much greater confidence in the state of the transatlantic union”, and America hasn’t got “a more important partner than Great Britain”.

Britain must stay, explained Barack Hussein further, because the EU “has made the world safer and more prosperous”.

Now one suspects that Barack himself knows little about the EU and understands even less. But it’s shocking that his advisers failed to point out how ignorant and idiotic that statement is in general, but especially at this time.

There’s a war going on in Europe at present, with the EU comfortably sitting on its thumbs. At the same time, EU policies are directly responsible for the burgeoning social unrest across Europe, accompanied by a rapid rise to power and influence of various extremist parties.

And it’s bizarre to talk about the world made more prosperous by the EU at a time when most economies within it are in the doldrums. Never mind Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland or Eastern Europe, but even Germany’s economy is at a point of stagnation, and France’s well beyond that point.

None of this would be worth talking about if Barack Hussein shooting off the lip were an isolated event. But in fact the USA has for the past hundred years been a passionate, if not always open, advocate of a world government or its near approximations.

The motives behind this passion are often misunderstood, especially by people who think simplistically that America pursues nothing but commercial interests. From that standpoint it’s indeed hard to understand why the United States has always been a supporter of the manifestly anti-American United Nations, or, for that matter, of European federalism.

After all, the express economic purpose of the EU is to create a protectionist bloc aimed against America. Is America cutting off her nose to spite her face? Not at all.

The United States is more than just a giant commercial concern with an uncertain cultural background. It is the messianic flag bearer of modernity. And modernity loves uniformity of any kind.

The Americans aren’t just international traders but also international proselytisers. As such, they know that a single government would probably be easier, and definitely quicker, to convert to their way of life than many sovereign governments.

For a single European state can never be a traditional European institution. Its links with any culture, be that local European or general Western, are severed. Its traditional patriotic loyalties are nonexistent. Its only loyalty is pledged to the internationalist political elite and, if this elite isn’t Americanised already, it can be trained to be. If training proves difficult, it can be bought or browbeaten.

A single world (or European) government can be achieved only by an irreversible destruction of the traditional political and legal institutions. These institutions are, of course, traditional in form only. Their substance has long since been perverted by modernity.

Still, even if they’re nothing but a skeleton, there’s always the danger that some unexpected upheaval may put new flesh on the old bones. Hence the Americans will welcome any political development that’ll push traditional Western institutions closer to extinction.

Incidentally, the Americans’ unswerving devotion to the EU gives the lie to their much-touted commitment to fostering worldwide democracy. Even European federasts stop short of making the demonstrably false claim that this institution has anything to do with democracy. In fact, its whole political modus operandi is about as undemocratic as it’s possible to be this side of North Korea.

One begins to suspect that the word ‘democracy’ inscribed on the American banners under which so many Americans  died in the Middle East is nothing but a slogan of imperial expansion.

If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, fine too. Whoever is president at the moment will talk about ‘peace and prosperity’ instead.

And speaking of Americans dying, Barack Hussein isn’t better at arithmetic than at geopolitics. “If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism,” he said, “it’s less than 100”.

His calculator is as out of kilter as his moral sense. For using Muslim terrorism as a pretext, the USA set out in 2003 to bring democracy to Iraq, predictably succeeding only in creating a sea of blood.

Drowning in it have been, according to The US Department of Veterans Affairs, tens of thousands of Americans killed, along with untold and uncounted millions of other nationals, and we haven’t seen the end of it yet.

This ill-advised action created, and is continuing to create, enough local employment opportunities for Muslim terrorists not to seek much action in North America or Europe – for the time being.

But Obama sees the only downside of his presidency in his failure to take a few peashooters away from his own people. He doesn’t realise that his policies, and those of his predecessors, are directly responsible for the howitzers, soon to be loaded with nuclear charges, aimed at the West.

I’m terrified that at this critical juncture of history the West’s most powerful nation is led by this… Sorry, I’ve promised my wife not to swear in writing.

As a firm believer in progress, I’m convinced that, ever since Darwin created mankind, it has been going through a series of incremental improvements.

Imagine a steady climb from level ground to the top of a shining peak – that’s mankind progressing through the centuries. We may or may not have reached the very top yet, but we’ve certainly established a toehold within reach of the summit. 

Hence today’s head of Trinity’s philosophy chair is a deeper thinker than Plato and Aquinas put together, Tracy Emin is a better artist than either Piero della Francesca or Vermeer, Richard Branson is a more intrepid explorer than James Cook, and Justin Welby is a better Archbishop of Canterbury than Thomas à Becket.

To put this – only possible! – view of history to a test, I looked at the lyrics of one of the songs that enable the Trinidadian-American rapper Nicky Minaji to earn about $10 million a year. Here’s the refrain of the song (kindly posted on Facebook by a reader of mine):

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

You a stupid hoe, you a you a stupid hoe

Allow me to translate for the uninitiated: ‘hoe’ in this context is not the garden implement, but rather a certain ethnic, and therefore ‘cool’, way of pronouncing the word ‘whore’. However, you mustn’t assume on this basis that, when Father Christmas shouts ‘Ho, ho, ho’, he’s referring to three women of easy virtue.

‘Progress’ is of course a relative and dynamic concept. It signifies upward movement from a certain starting point, arbitrarily picked from the past.

That’s why I ignored the rather dubious absolute quality of Miss Minaji’s grammar and poetics – after all, poets, as we know, are entitled to some licence. Instead I set out to compare her lyrics with a reference point taken from the 16^th century.

Of course the temptation is strong to compare Miss Minaji’s output with a Shakespeare sonnet, just as he himself compared his beloved to a summer’s day. But that wouldn’t be fair: one should compare the like with the like.

So here are the same number of lines from the lyrics of a 16^th century song written by an anonymous minstrel who, at a guess, didn’t earn an equivalent of $10 million a year:

This sweet and merry month of May,

While Nature wantons in her prime,

And birds do sing, and beasts do play

For pleasure of the joyful time

I choose the first for a holiday,

And great Eliza with a rhyme:

O beauteous Queen of second Troy,

Take well in worth a simple toy.

There, you must agree that the notion of progress has passed the test: the poetic sensibility and sheer artistry of the modern verse is clearly superior, wouldn’t you say?

And if you’re still unsure, I suggest you listen to the CD of Alfred Deller singing 16^th century songs, most of them of folk provenance. Your faith in progress, as represented by modern rap, will be reinforced to tungsten strength.

It goes without saying that our morality has been progressing in parallel with our vocal music. And tolerance is such an important part of morality that, for all intents and purposes, it may be its full modern synonym.

To wit: the multi-talented if unfunny comedian cum political guru Russell Brand has just referred to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in writing as a “f***ing Kraut Nazi”. Yet in our progressive – and tolerant! – time he has suffered no adverse consequences other than a few disapproving words from those who, unlike me, are suspicious of progress.

Going back to the non-progressive and intolerant 16^th century, one wonders what would have happened to a jester who said something along the same lines about Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I – to say nothing of her song-writing father King Henry.

My off-the-cuff guess is that Russell Brand’s typological ancestor would have been merely drawn and quartered, if he was lucky. Now just imagine the hirsute Russell Brand, along with Nicky Minaji, being dragged to the block, where a muscular chap sporting a leather mask is taking practice swings with his axe…

No, don’t imagine that. The thought may prove to be too attractive – and too non-progressive for words.

 

   

 

 

                        

 

Many Brits, mainly those on the political right, are so fed up with our own spivocratic government that they go blind. The fetid slush on the other side looks like green grass to them.

This explains their attraction to Putin. The sentiments behind it are irrational, more akin to some perverse secular faith than to any conscious preference.

Hence rational arguments make no inroads on the believers’ creed. “Yes,” they acknowledge the obvious facts, “but at least he looks after his people.”

Yes, but apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? goes a macabre American joke. But at least there was a play on. However, Putin looking after his people is a figment of ignorant imagination primed by a well-oiled propaganda machine.

Two examples of Putin’s medical care, if I may. One involves Iosif Kobzon, a popular crooner, known as ‘Russia’s Frank Sinatra’ since I was a child. Alas, singing isn’t all Kobzon is known for.

After ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union’, he entered two new fields of endeavour: politics and organised crime, which in Russia are unbreakably fused into one.

Kobzon is a senior Duma member, while his involvement in the other aspect of Russian life earned him a ban on entry to the United States long before the current sanctions. His unswerving support for the annexation of the Crimea and the brutal attack on the Ukraine added most other Western countries to the doors now shut to Kobzon.

That’s where medical care comes in. Like most rich Russian criminals, Kobzon gets his treatment abroad. Or rather he did, until the sanctions kicked in.

Since the singer cum criminal suffers from cancer, effective medical care is for him a matter of life or death. And he knows that life isn’t an option, given the state of Russia’s medicine.

However, his friend Putin has announced urbi et orbi that the West can take its sanctions and shove them (I’m trying to reproduce the style of Vlad’s chosen mode of self-expression). Russia is self-sufficient in everything, including her medicine that’s leading the West by a wide margin.

Apparently not only Kobzon but all other Russian Mafiosi, sorry, I mean businessmen, disagree – in deed, though of course not in word. None of them would be caught dead in a Russian hospital (pun intended), which is why Kobzon appealed to his friend Putin to put some heat on the recalcitrant Westerners, which Vlad so far hasn’t.

Alas, it takes an awful lot of money to be treated abroad. This option is off limits for those Russians who, no matter how successful in their own fields, don’t earn millions.

Such as Oleg Bogomolov, member of Russia’s Academy of Science (RAN), an equivalent of our Royal Society. Yet he has access to the RAN clinic, which is infinitely better than the hospitals available to hoi polloi.

According to a story running on a banned Russian website, a month ago the academician checked into the hospital for a thorough check-up, something he, no longer a young man, did annually. Feeling fine, Bogomolov spent his first few days in hospital writing scientific papers.

Then things began to deteriorate. Suffering from dizziness and nausea, Bogomolov was moved to intensive care.

A fortnight later hospital officials rang the scientist’s family and told them to pick up his personal belongings as he wouldn’t need them any longer. The family promptly collected two plastic bags containing the patient’s clothes, books, unfinished articles, leftover food.

Out of idle curiosity they wondered what the doctors were doing about the academician’s health – only to be told there was nothing anyone could do. Both kidneys had stopped working, and the only thing to do was to wait for the end.

The inquisitive relations inquired why nothing had been done about the patient’s kidneys for a fortnight. The Head Surgeon demanded that the petitioners turn off their mobile phones and put their pens away before answering that the academician himself had refused treatment – orally, which is why no evidence of the refusal exists.

The family couldn’t get their heads around their dear relation dying after receiving no medical help for a fortnight. They were clearly going to do something about it, which is why that very evening they were informed that a life-saving operation had been performed successfully.

Three days later the family were told to take the bed-ridden and half-conscious academician home. They refused, and managed to make the President of RAS write a letter pleading that his colleague be allowed to stay in hospital for a while longer.

This Bogomolov was grudgingly allowed to do, and he’s still in his semi-private room. The family are paying for his food and also for a private nurse, since this – highly privileged! – hospital has only one nurse per 30 patients. As I write, the doctors are still trying to kick Academician Bogomolov out.

So Kobzon knows something that Putin’s Western groupies don’t. Putin’s Russia, this ugly hybrid of Third Rome and Third Reich, looks after her people the Third World way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trotskyism is a disease that causes irreversible damage. A sufferer may renounce it and show every sign of health, but that’s like renouncing cancer in remission. A relapse is always possible.

Anyone wishing to contest this observation could do worse than read Peter Hitchens’s articles. Unlike his unlamented brother Christopher, Peter makes some conservative noises, and many of them ring true. But the Trotskyist cells are still alive, gnawing at his mind.

Thus he correctly criticises our Middle Eastern policy, saying that the American attempt to democratise Iraq, in which we participated, has plunged the whole region into a blood-soaked chaos, while our overthrowing Gaddafi pushed criminal foolishness to a whole new level.

So far so good, the problem is identified correctly. Alas, then comes the solution part.

“The Iranian people long for Western friendship. Properly treated, they could be our best ally in the region.”

Yes, everyone knows how much Iranians love the West. One can only compliment them for the stoicism with which they have been concealing their feelings ever since the 1979 Islamic revolution (abetted by the USA, it has to be said).

Like a schoolboy bullying a girl he secretly fancies, Iranians mask their adoration of the West by regularly marching, in huge numbers, and chanting ‘Death to America’. ‘Death to Britain’ is another popular tune.

The words are thunderous, but the actions are louder. Iran supports, finances and conducts global terrorism against Western powers. This proceeds in conjunction with her government’s sustained efforts to add an apocalyptic dimension to terrorism by acquiring nuclear weapons. To give credit where it’s due, the ayatollahs never bothered to conceal what the intended targets are.

First such weapons would self-admittedly be used to wipe Israel, our only real ally in the region, off the face of the earth. Then the turn would come of Saudi Arabia, our other Middle Eastern ally, although Hitchens is correctly unhappy with that particular alliance.

And then Iran, now dominant in the Middle East and in possession of mid-range nuclear-tipped missiles, could start talking to the West in the language of blackmail, fluently spoken and perfected by her best friend Russia.

Hence the West imposed sanctions designed to depress Iran’s economy to a point where staving off starvation, rather than developing new technologies, would be the government’s priority.

Now, displaying its typically ignorant and craven cynicism, the West has agreed to repeal the sanctions in exchange for Iran’s support against ISIS and obviously lying promise not to develop nuclear weapons – a promise made by a historically mendacious and possibly half-crazy government.

Hitchens’s comment on this abject surrender, which may well result in an all-out nuclear war? Thus spake the (ex-) Trotskyite:

“It’s worth noting, as well, how hard the supposedly wicked and evil Kremlin worked to help us get the nuclear agreement with Tehran.”

The word ‘supposedly’ means that, to Hitchens, the kleptofascist KGB government of Russia is in fact not wicked or evil. It’s virtuous, so much so that it helped to put the world in danger of a nuclear holocaust out of sheer disinterested altruism – sorry, I mean “to help us get the nuclear agreement with Tehran”.

Hitchens’s love affair with Putin is nothing new, and it must be replete with homoerotic longings, so far, one hopes, unrealised. Otherwise it’s impossible to explain how nothing the object of Hitchens’s affection does ever makes a dent in the pundit’s passion.

Murdering Hitchens’s journalistic colleagues by the gross doesn’t lower the amorous pitch. Neither do similar murders in and around London, some of them with nuclear weapons. Neither do three aggressive wars started by Putin, including the on-going one against the Ukraine. Neither does his mafia economy, which has made him personally one of the world’s richest men.

Neither does… well, anything – including Putin’s efforts to further the Middle Eastern interests of his criminal regime by clearing the way for Iran to become a nuclear power.

Hitchens bizarrely hails his paramour for this, contextually also welcoming the treaty Putin facilitated, the one putting not only Israel but the whole world in grave danger.

Verily I say unto you, you can take a boy out of Trotskyism, but…

 

 

 

 

 A young man with a degree in engineering from Tennessee University hired a Ford Mustang and drove it to a US Naval Reserve Centre. There he pulled out a gun and opened fire through the perimeter fence.

Four marines were killed on the spot, three more wounded, and the young engineer was himself shot dead.

The FBI say that the man’s motives are unclear, which is a serious matter. After all, as any reader of detective novels knows, a thorough investigation of a crime is impossible without establishing the motive.

Mercifully, I’m here to help, taking advantage of the omniscient powers with which God endowed me. The FBI are looking for a clue, one paltry clue, but I in my munificence can give them not one, not two, but three ironclad clues:

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. Each of the three parts of the murderer’s name is a clue; each is an ample explanation of his action. Put them together, and the police don’t have to wrack their brains about the motive. It’s there for all to see.

The FBI hastily issued a statement saying that the murderer had no links with international terrorism. That could be true, unless one regarded, with ample justification, Islam itself as a terrorist organisation.

The FBI are of course under explicit orders from the very top not to indulge in such sweeping generalisations. What they meant was that the murderer had no established links with ISIS – as if Muslim terrorism started with this gang and has been monopolised by it.

This is the current line, or rather the current lie. Yet it was incessant acts of Muslim terrorism that provoked the First Crusade as far back as 1096. Narrowing our perspective, most of the world’s flashpoints over the last 20 years have involved Muslims –  long before the world was graced with ISIS.

Specifically one could mention the conflicts between Bosnian Muslims and Christians, Côte d’Ivoire Muslims and Christians, Cyprus Muslims and Christians, East Timor Muslims and Christians, Indonesian Muslims and Christians in Ambon Island, Kashmir Muslims and Hindus, Kosovo Muslims and Christians, Macedonian Muslims and Christians, Nigeria Muslims and both Christians and Animists, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in Iraq and throughout the Islamic world, Muslims and Christians in the Philippines, Chechen Muslims and Russians, Azeri Muslims and Armenian Christians, Sri Lanka Tamils and Buddhists, Thailand’s Muslims and Buddhists in the Pattani province, Muslim Bengalis and Buddhists in Bangladesh, Muslims and Protestant, Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox Christians in Kurdistan.

Yet not just the FBI but we all are under orders not to find, nor even to look for, any links between Islam and terrorism. “Islam is a religion of peace,” repeat Dubya, our own Dave and of course that walking argument against affirmative action, Barack Hussein Obama.

On what evidence have you, gentlemen, reached this conclusion? The probable answer would be that only a relatively small number of Muslims have a propensity for shooting US marines and flying planes into tall buildings.

However, using the same logic it would be possible to insist that no link existed between Nazism and genocide because only a relatively small number of Nazis gassed Jews. Nor could Bolshevism be held responsible for the acts of those relatively few who murdered millions in its name.

One piece of crucial evidence that’s routinely ignored is the way terrorists themselves describe their inspiration. Almost invariably they attribute their state of mind to the guiding hand of Allah.

The Chattanooga murder is no exception. In the immediate run-up to his crime he inundated his blog with helpful explanations. Here’s one:

“Take his (Allah’s) word as your light and code and do not let other prisoners, whether they are so called ‘Scholars’ or even your family members, divert you from the truth. If you make the intention to follow allahs way 100 per cent and put your desires to the side, allah will guide you to what is right.”

Here’s another: “Brothers and sisters don’t be fooled by your desires, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to allah may pass you by.”

Obviously it didn’t pass him by, even if the opportunity to learn English syntax did. But of course, should an intrepid policeman take the murderer at his word, the skies will open and the god of political correctness will smite the transgressor. This god knows no mercy.

One expects an outburst of spurious explanations of the murder, many focussing on the availability of firearms. Introduce gun control all over the Western world, and Islam will have no option but indeed to act as a religion of peace.

I’d say that the arguments for banning guns after the Chattanooga shootings are as powerful as those in favour of banning airliners after the similarly inspired 9/11. It’s such woolly, politicised thinking that prevents the West from stamping out Muslim terrorism once and for all.

It’s impossible to treat a disease without establishing a correct diagnosis. And it’s impossible to diagnose correctly without understanding the aetiology of the likely underlying cause.

In the absence of such understanding the patient may die. By the patient I in this case mean the West, if you’re wondering.

 

 

 

That is, Dave knows. You may not, especially if you’re a reactionary, racist, homophobic, misogynist global-warming denier (a conservative, in other words).

You may think that what’s wrong with Britain is exactly what Dave thinks is right.

Such as the NHS, so envied by all other European countries that none of them has tried to emulate it.

Or our comprehensive education that kindly doesn’t overburden young minds with superfluous knowledge, such as how to read and write.

Or our economy that has every characteristic of a pyramid scheme.

Or our army dwindling down to the size of a barely adequate police force.

Or the tectonic demographic shift caused by uncontrolled immigration, most of it from the low-rent part of the world.

Or trading our sovereignty for the honour of becoming a province in the EU.

Or… well, you can probably mention other things along similar lines. But that’s because you don’t know.

Dave knows, and he has generously shared his knowledge with Times readers. Britain has only one serious problem: women getting paid less than men.

First Dave expressed a heartfelt hope that his two daughters will “experience gender equality in the workplace when they start their careers”.

Eton obviously didn’t teach Dave that ‘gender’ is merely a grammatical category, and the word he meant is ‘sex’. Then again, I don’t think he has to worry about the earning potential of Nancy and Florence, ‘gender equality’ or no. Dynastic privilege will take care of that.

Then Dave modestly took credit for the growing number of women in business, politics and even the army, which he described as “a cause for celebration”. But “the job is not complete. The Commons is nearly a third female; it should be half.”

This is misogynist discrimination if I ever heard it. Just half, Dave? When women make up 50.7% of our population and men a paltry 49.3%? Where’s the ‘gender equality’ in that? (And if a man became a woman, would he/she be entitled to an automatic rise?)

It must be exactly 50.7% and never mind any other characteristics we expect in our legislators, such as integrity, courage, intellect, patriotism, honesty.

Now let’s talk turkey, which is to say money.

Dave acknowledges that the ‘gender gap’ for full-time workers under 40 is almost zero. But some discrepancy still exists, and “I’m determined to close this gap.”

One might think that the government can only close this or any other pay gap in the private sector by mandating how much companies must pay, and to whom. This in effect amounts to crypto-nationalisation, and I thought Miliband lost the general election.   

Dave is going to force companies with more than 250 employees to “publish the gap between average female earnings and average male earnings. That will cast sunlight on the discrepancies…”

It’ll also cast a dark spell over morale in the workplace, but then Dave has only ever worked in politics. And average earnings is a meaningless concept anyway. On average, Bill Gates and I make millions every year, so what does that tell you?

It’s likely that whoever owns a company with 251 employees draws a seven-digit income, all in. If he has the misfortune of being male, how many female employees would need to have their salaries quadrupled to close the gap in average earnings?

Dave’s right: there’s work still to be done. And – are you ready for this terrifying statistic? – “while they are 47 per cent of the workforce, women are just 34 per cent of managers, directors and senior officials.”

The gap doesn’t seem inordinately large, considering that such jobs require long hours, and some women between 25 and 40 still haven’t given up on childbirth and the ensuing care. Of course in Dave’s ideal world the burden of childbirth would be equally divided between men and women, but science hasn’t quite reached that point yet.

But not to worry; Dave has it sorted. First the outrage: “when women have children, many cannot afford to go back to work full time… That then prevents them from moving through the ranks.” Then the solution: making childcare tax-free, which would be “worth up to £2,000 per year for every child”.

Excellent idea. But Plato and Marx had even a better one: taking all children away from their mothers and making them wards of the state. That way their minds can be shaped to fit the state’s needs, not their mothers’ silly ideas.

While Dave’s proposal is different in technicalities, it’s identical in substance: mothers have no business bringing their children up, reading them fairy tales, teaching them right and wrong. Someone else will take care of all that.

Actually, this present brainstorm dovetails neatly with Dave’s other pet project, homomarriage. Two women marry each other and presto! – no children, they can both “move through the ranks” with no outside distractions.

Aren’t we lucky to have as PM a real Tory who knows exactly what’s wrong with Britain and how to put it right? 

The American people wouldn’t want to interrupt their pursuit of happiness by dying prematurely. But America is a modern democracy, which means people’s wishes don’t count.

Such matters are decided by a self-perpetuating elite made up of politicians, parasites feeding off the politicians and some influential businessmen. If we narrow the concept of ‘the Americans’ down to that group, the question becomes not only relevant but indeed urgent.

So do they? I don’t know. But neither do I know what they’d be doing differently if provoking a world war were indeed their goal.

Countries wishing to avoid war invariably take certain steps. First, they identify the flashpoints. Second, they do whatever necessary to douse the incipient flames: diplomatic pressure, a show of strength designed to discourage aggression or, in extreme cases, a pre-emptive strike.

Yet the West, as led by America, is moving in the opposite direction: it doesn’t apply sufficient diplomatic pressure; it’s showing an ever accelerating weakness; and it’s making not only a pre-emptive but even a retaliatory strike look increasingly unlikely.

The two major threats to world peace are unquestionably Islam and Russia. And everything the West is doing not only doesn’t discourage them from putting a match to the powder keg but positively begs for it.

With Islam, America, goaded by the neocons, first launched an ill-considered attack on Iraq. This plunged the country into a blood-soaked chaos, with much of the rest of the region soon to follow.

This action betokened the Americans’ ignorance of the outside world, a vacuum of knowledge filled by neocon ideology: a mixture of proselytising American supremacism with intellectual inadequacy.

In a nutshell, American democracy is the ideal that every nation, regardless of its history, religion or culture, yearns to reach. This includes the Muslim world that’s only being kept from bicameral parliamentarism by a small cadre of extremists, best described as Islamists or Islamofascists.

No problem with Islam as such is the mantra – this in spite of the fact that Muslim aggression against the West has ebbed and flowed for 1,400 years. It ebbs, when Islamic passions are weak and the West is strong. It flows, when it’s the other way around.

In 2003 America instantly impassioned Islam, which until then had been kept in check by its own evil but secular regimes. Such is the immediate origin of Isis (the long-term origin goes back to Islam’s founding). And Isis is a source of global danger that the Americans have no idea how to counteract.

Since their fiasco in Iraq has spoiled their taste for direct military involvement, the best they could come up with was the divide et impera stratagem of using Shiite Iran against Sunni Isis.

As payment, Iran, the world’s principal instigator of anti-Western terrorism, has effectively been given carte blanche to develop nuclear weapons – and all the cash she needs to do so.

Since everyone knows who the first target of an Iranian A-bomb will be, Israel, sold down the river by Obama’s administration, will have to prevent extinction all on her own. Since only tactical nuclear weapons can bust Iran’s underground reactors, Israel may have to resort to those – with consequences both dire and unforeseeable.

Hence America’s actions since 2003, and especially her current craven deal with the Ayatollahs, creates a clear danger of a world war.

Russia is another flashpoint, and here Western actions are just as suicidal. This started with triumphalism over the ‘collapse’ of the Soviet Union, which perceptive observers (modesty prevents naming one) knew at the time was essentially a transfer of power from the Party to the KGB.

Once the KGB grasp on power was consolidated by Col. Putin’s rise, only the naïve could expect history’s most evil organisation to change its spots. Even those who didn’t fit that description to begin with were dumbed down by the neocons’ assurances that the Russians, like the Muslims, were desperate to become a USA Lite.

Hence the West’s response to Putin’s aggressive wars against Chechnya, Georgia, then the Ukraine. The first two incurred no reaction other than some mildly disapproving noises. The third one, more of the same, plus a few token sanctions.

Meanwhile Russia has launched a vast rearmament programme, unprecedented since the 1970s. The programme, to be completed by 2020, emphasises strategic arms, of the kind Russia doesn’t need to fight the Ukraine.

Russian troops are massed along the western border, while the Duma is currently debating the legality of the three Baltic republics’ declaring their independence in 1990-1991.

I’d say the legality of that action stacks up well against Stalin’s 1940 conquest of the Baltics after his criminal pact with Hitler. But one way or the other, the Baltics are Nato members.

Since Nato’s charter states that an attack on one member is an attack on all, KGB aggression must be discouraged. This can only be done by making the KGB government realise that, should such an attack occur, Nato will go to war and it’s strong enough to destroy Russia.

Instead the West is disarming at a rate suggesting the intention to surrender. This is accompanied by appeasement noises and mild sanctions of no deterrent value.

The West, ineptly led by America, clearly hasn’t learned the lesson of Munich: appeasement invites aggression. And, unlike Nazi Germany, KGB Russia is a nuclear power, of which Putin’s propagandists remind us every day.

No, I don’t think the Americans want a world war. But their ill-informed, weak-kneed policies are making it likely.

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 A French diplomat present at the Brussels negotiations between Greece and the EU, most of which took place in Donald Tusk’s office, described them as “extremely hard, even violent”.

That piqued my interest, for I know that my friend Angie likes it rough… negotiating, that is, what did you think I meant? So I rang Angie up and asked her to send me the transcript of the session, swearing to her on the eurozone’s grave to keep it off the record.

She kindly obliged, and here are some excerpts, strictly between you and me:

Angela Merkel (AM): Alexis, you know ve’ve got veys to make you sign. He who signs goes home. He who doesn’t sign goes Luft. Like in ze old days.

François Hollande (FH): Easy, Angie, if it pleases you. No need to get upset. Alexis is going to sign. Aren’t you, Alexis mon ami? We don’t want to make Angie angry, is that not so?

Alexis Tsipras (AT): Yes, but this thing with loo paper…

AM: Sei still, you Greek schwein! Two-ply Klopapier is a vaste of Papier! Das ist ausgeschlossen! Out of ze question! Zat’s how your whole economy vent down ze toilet!

AT: Speaking of which, may I be excused for a minute? I need to, you know…

AM: You need to sign zis, zat’s vhat you need, and you’re not leaving ze room until you do. Verstehst du? Ve’ve got veys to make you verstehen!

AT: At least let me to talk to Junk… Jean-Claude Juncker, that is. Why isn’t he here?

AM: He’s pissed as a Furz, zat’s vy.

FH: Now, now, Angie, mon petit poussin, let’s not be crude. Jean-Claude is otherwise engagé, let’s put it this way. And he hates being called ‘Junk’.

AT: If I sign this, they’ll have my you-know-what for keftedakia, meatballs, back home! We owe hundreds of billions, for Zeus’s sake! What kind of difference will an extra ply on a bog roll make?

FH: You forget, mon ami, what our teacher Mao taught: un voyage de mille kilomètres starts with a single step. Mao tells you everything you need to know about the economy. So take this one step…

Donald Tusk (DT): And if you don’t take it, psa krew, I’ll beat the living gówno out of you, like we do at football matches…

FT: Spare us your childhood memories, Don, mon ami. There’s no besoin existentiel ou immanent to beat the living merde out of notre ami Alexis. He’ll sign, is that not so, Alexis? You’re not going to hold this deal over papier toilette?

AT: It’s not just that. It’s that my people voted in the referendum…

AM: You know vhat you can do with zat referendum, Schweinhund? Use it for Klopapier! Single-ply!

FH: Angie, doucement, s’il te plait… We’ve avancé past the papier toilette, single- or double-ply. And Don, mon ami, let go of Alexis’s lapels. Can’t you see he is agreeing with you?

DT: If this piece of gówno doesn’t sign, his dupa is grass!

AT: Please, I need to call my people in Athens…

AM: Go ahead, call away, Dummkopf. If you can still afford to call long distance, that is.

AT: But there is no phone in the room…

DT: If there were, I’d shove it up your dupa!

FH: Doucement, Don, doucement, Angie. Comment dites-vous en Anglais? Easy does it. Oh, so sorry, Alexis… it was an accident. Angie didn’t mean to hit you, did you, Angie?

AM: Hit? I’ll kill this Abschaum! I’ll send him back to Greece to be a goatherd! Himmelherrgott!

FH: You must comprendre, Alexis, this hurts Angie more than it hurts you. She’s only doing this for your own good…

This is all my friend Angie sent me in strict confidence. The transcript is regrettably incomplete, but we know how the scene ended, even if the overall soap opera is still on-going.

As the lead paragraph in The Times story put it: “Greek leader gave in to every one of Merkel’s demands in brutal talks behind closed doors.”

Hence prospective British visitors to the birthplace of selective democracy would be well-advised to take several rolls of two-ply loo paper with them, if that is the type they prefer.

Meanwhile, I’d like to congratulate my friend Angie on her astonishing attention to detail. Sunday trading, bakery deregulation, sell-by date on milk – nothing escaped her probing eye, no square of Greek loo paper was left unturned. She has done her great nation proud.

I hasten to reassure Alexis’s few fans: physically he’s very much alive and, one hopes, in good health. Politically, however, he’s that proverbial doornail.

Or at least he would be in any place where parliamentarism has any meaning. The brave new EU isn’t one. No parliament there, including the European one, does much more than wielding the rubber stamp.

In any country with a sovereign parliament, a PM who calls a national referendum, campaigns for and gets the consensus he wants, then goes against it by succumbing to external pressure, would have tendered his resignation already.

But, by surrendering to EU blackmail, Alexis may have earned himself an elevation to the inner sanctum of the pan-European mafia. He’ll never make Don, but he may be allowed to hang on as caporegime.

I watched some of Merkel’s press conference at breakfast, and she almost made me choke on my croissant. In the good tradition of modern politics, Angie never answered a single question directly.

Whatever the question, the reply was the same: the deal is done, Greece has agreed to be like Germany, her communist government can be trusted to oversee this conversion, the €350 billion debt will eventually be paid off, even though only €50 billion’s worth of public assets will be sold off. Details? Don’t you worry about them. Our finance ministers will thrash them out, that’s what we pay them for.

Angie sounded like a demented godfather (godmother?) making you an offer you can’t understand. 

Jean-Claude Juncker, Junk to his friends, was much more forthright. “Grexit is gone!” he screamed triumphantly, the decibel level typical of a man who has had a few during an all-nighter.

That’s what it’s all about. Angie, Junk, Tusk et al don’t care how many more billions they stuff into the shredder known as the Greek economy, nor about how much worse the already ailing European economies will get as a result.

Like a mafia family going to the mattresses, they don’t stop to think about the possible casualties. The family must survive at any cost. Grexit is gone! What else is gone with it is of no consequence.

You’ll be happy to know that some of the billions to be splashed against the Greek wall will come from our own pockets. But the brunt will be borne by the Germans, who don’t normally exhibit indifference to money among their salient characteristics.

One wonders how much longer Angie herself will survive as capodei tutti capi. Granted, things like national sovereignty, tradition or even basic honesty are these days pure phantoms, vague memories of European childhood. But money is real life, and at some point the Germans may wake up to what’s going on.

And Greece? Well, that soap opera has many instalments, and we’re nowhere near the end yet.

Like Red China back in the ‘50s issuing dozens of ‘final’ warnings to Taiwan, the federasts may heave a sigh of relief and congratulate themselves on having been able to shove their own Final Warning No. Whatever down Greece’s throats. Yet in a few months new final warnings will be needed and, more to the point, new billions.

Politics can trump economics, but only at the cost of destroying it. The very notion of 19 different economies sharing a single currency pegged to the monetary unit of by far the strongest one is sheer madness.

Such an undertaking can only succeed if the 19 economies become one. But fusing 19 countries into a single economy is only possible if they are also fused into a single nation, one with a single government, a single leader, a single monetary and fiscal policy, a single set of laws, a single army, ultimately a single people.

That’s what so many commentators mean when saying correctly that the EU isn’t an economic but a political project. But it isn’t just any old politics – it’s the nasty type.

Because the EU is founded on lies, every statement issued by it, including this morning’s effluvia, is a lie. And any political union based on lies and bribery will eventually have to dissolve or else use brute force trying to keep itself together.

The Zollverein, the 19^th century tactical inspiration for the EU, set the good example. Prussia used bribes and lies to unite the German states under her aegis, but when one of the states, Schleswig-Holstein, refused to play along, military aggression saw the light of day.

This is the choice the EU will face sooner or later, probably sooner. When another country – be it Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or possibly even France – goes the Greece way, and neither Germany nor the IMF is any longer able to find the trillions needed, the EU will either have to self-liquidate or plunge the continent into a major war.

If history is anything to go by, evil political setups never leave without banging the door. I hope our own china won’t shatter inside the cupboard as a result.

Six days is a long time in politics, to paraphrase Harold Wilson, Alexis Tsipras’s ideological cousin.

Didn’t Tsipras go all out for the No vote in the bailout referendum on 5 July? Didn’t he get what he wanted? And didn’t the No refer to exactly the measures he’s now proposing in order to get another handout from the EU?

Then again, when an EU member holds a referendum, its results are only accepted if they suit the EU. If they don’t, the country is ordered to have another referendum – and keep doing it until she gets it right.

In this case, the EU hasn’t even bothered to do that. Its underhand dealings with Tsipras are proceeding as if no referendum had taken place. This is another useful reminder we ought to keep in mind: in the unlikely event the Brexit referendum returns the right result, it’ll be ignored.

However if the combined weight of Dave’s/EU’s Goebbels-style propaganda gets the In vote, Britain may never get another chance to regain her sovereignty.

But to get back to Greece, sitting down to write this piece I promised myself not to resort to cheap puns based on the country’s name: no suggestions that euros ought to be printed on Greece-proof paper and especially no wondering how many palms have been Greeced for Tsipras to come up with his 13-page SOS.

But it’s impossible for any halfway intelligent person to think that the unfolding saga is strictly aboveboard.

Essentially, contravening his voters’ wishes, Tsipras has agreed to pretend that, in exchange for another €53.5 billion in EU lucre, he’ll make sure that the Greeks will abandon their very ethos and, economically speaking, turn into Germans.

Specifically, they’ll raise taxes, cut social expenditure, eventually pay off their debts of hundreds of billions in whatever currency you care to name, and in general adopt the kind of approach to matters economic that they’ve never practised since Pericles, and probably not even then.

In her turn, Angela Merkel, who calls the EU tune because she pays the piper, will pretend that she believes Tsipras, against all historical, psychological and common-sensical evidence.

Just as two wrongs don’t make a right, two lies don’t add up to truth. The Greeks will gratefully take the €53.5 billion, provided Angie can twist the Bundestag’s arm to cough it up. Then this amount will sink without trace into the same hole that has already gobbled up €240 billion’s worth of two previous bailout packages.

There’s a pipeline well-hidden in the hole. Through it many of the proffered billions will be instantly pumped into discreet offshore accounts seemingly owned by numbers. Hiding behind the numbers will be the flesh-and-blood parties to the deal, mostly Greek but some EU functionaries as well.

The rest of the money will simply be frittered away by Tsipras’s or someone else’s socialist government. The situation will again come to a head soon, at which point a new pack of lies will be put together. Let the poor Greeks die so the eurozone may live.

For there’s no doubt whatsoever that the poor will, as usual, bear the brunt, which they always do in socialist economies.

Writing in The Mail, Alex Bummer, who understands economics unusually well for a journalist, shows that his understanding of socialism is less reliable. “It is a mighty poor form of socialism,” he writes, “when it has been the most vulnerable people in society who are the hardest hit.”  

But that’s what socialism is all about. Mr Bummer makes a typical mistake here: he confuses the socialists’ slogans with their practices. It is, however, more productive with people in general and socialists in particular to look not at what they say but at what they do.

Such an inspection will show that all socialist economies (which is to say all modern economies) have the widest gap between the rich and the poor. And, the less developed the socialist economy, the greater the gap, the harder the poor are hit.

For example, in the 19^th century, the era of dog-eat-dog capitalism, the average ratio of income earned by US corporate directors and their employees was 28:1. Yet in 2005, when socialism had made heavy inroads into the post-New-Deal US economy, this ratio stood at 158:1.

If such is the situation in America, you can imagine how socialism operates in Greece, which in her approach to the economy is typologically closer to Muslim caliphates than to Western social democracies.

We shouldn’t wonder about the cynicism of both parties to the deal, which may well go into effect tomorrow. Since the EU is founded on lies and blackmail, it can sustain itself only by lies and blackmail.

In this instance the blackmail is mutual. The EU is blackmailing Tsipras by promising to plunge Greece into an economic catastrophe, and himself into oblivion, if he refuses to proffer all the right lies. But Tsipras gets his own back, by blackmailing the EU with dark hints at accepting Vlad’s cash (and naval bases) if the EU refuses to take Greek lies at face value.

The whole thing is more reminiscent of dealings between two mafia families than of legitimate diplomacy. But hey, it’s the EU we’re talking about.