Blog

 Ever since the brutal attack on the Ukraine, the world has been wracking its collective brain to find out what Russia is all about. Patriarch Kiril graciously agreed to satisfy this curiosity in a recent sermon:

“Our national idea consists in achieving sainthood… [This] largely determines our culture, the aims of our education, our literature and, finally, our people’s view of life, their understanding of what is good and what is evil, where they should go in life and what end they should reach.”

This is in stark contrast to the bloody Ukraine, whose national idea is godlessness, explained His Holiness. And in the Donetsk area that idea has led to Ukrainian genocide, added the patriarch. Now does ‘Ukrainian genocide’ mean murders by Ukrainians or of Ukrainians? Contextually, His Holiness meant the former, the mass murder of Russians by Ukrainians.

So far this outrage hasn’t been reported by any news service, which means Kiril is in possession of new and privileged information. If that’s indeed the case, he must by all means divulge it. I for one will be waiting with bated breath.

But never mind the connotation. The patriarch’s denotation clarified his meaning beyond any doubt. Since Russia is all about sainthood, continued His Holiness, Russophobia is by far the most dangerous of all xenophobias.

If other xenophobias are aimed against nations, Russophobia has to have God himself in its sights. And it’s Russophobia that has animated the on-going slaughter of Russians by the godless Ukies, which massacre has been maliciously overlooked by the world’s news services.

I must say that, as a Christian, I welcome any state that defines itself in spiritual, theological and eschatological terms, especially if it identifies sainthood as its national idea. And I’m proud of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) that leads this march to collective canonisation.

Even though I’m not an ROC communicant myself, I’m ready to go down on my knees and thank God for having guided Russia, her Church and its patriarch to such a holy mission. Or rather I would be ready to genuflect but for a few annoying facts.

Such as the personal record of His Holiness himself, which ill-qualifies him to set such lofty goals. Recently published documents, cited in the two-volume Mitrokhin Archives, identify Kiril as a lifelong KGB operative (codename ‘agent Mikhailov’).

The uncovered KGB dossier cites many assignments entrusted to ‘agent Mikhailov’ on his foreign travels, when he was head of The ROC Foreign Department. According to the dossier ‘agent Mikhailov’ carried out every assignment with distinction.

He is by no means unique in his dual loyalty. The entire ROC hierarchy is an extension of the KGB/FSB, and both rivals of ‘agent Mikhailov’ in the 2009 patriarchal election had KGB codenames of their own.

One must admit with chagrin (and a frightened look toward heaven) that His Holiness’s personal habits are more in keeping with his KGB identity than with his declared role of leading the nation to sainthood.

For example, he was recently photographed sporting a £30,000 Breguet watch at a press conference. Since all Russian senior clergy have to be monks, an outcry followed, and the patriarch’s PR men came out fighting.

They accused everyone who had commented on the timepiece of Russophobia, atheism and lies. The patriarch, they claimed, had never worn the offensive item – and as proof they showed a doctored version of the same photograph, with no watch anywhere in sight.

Alas, meticulousness not being the most salient Russian virtue, their Photoshop artist overlooked an important detail: the reflection of the watch on the tabletop in front of His Holiness. The picture became supernatural, as befits a prelate: only the shadow of an object, not the object itself, was in evidence.

In a more serious vein, whenever an evil and aggressive regime decides to go the route of self-sacralisation, it becomes particularly nauseating. Russia has always had this tendency, only suppressed during the early Bolshevik years, when religion was unfashionable and priests were being slaughtered en masse together with their congregations.

Ever since the war, when Stalin converted international bolshevism into the national variety, Russia’s criminal state has been making use of the ROC. While communism was still the nominal idea of the state, this was done more or less surreptitiously.

After Putin’s advent, Russia has achieved a successful fusion of  Third Rome, Third Reich and Third World, and the ROC is an essential hypostasis in this rather unholy trinity.

I’m not sure that Russia really has a national idea or, if she does, what it might be. Whatever it is, it seems to be not so much sainthood as its direct opposite.

A KGB state running a KGB church and using Third Rome drivel as its self-justification is heading not for sainthood but for perdition. The only question that remains unanswered is how many others it’ll take down with it.

It really saddens me, however, that so many good Western people, including some of my Ukip friends, fail to see the true nature of Putin’s kleptofascist state. Some even hold Putin up as a model our own leaders should follow.

He’s a patriot, they say, or better still a nationalist who loves his country, has no time for minorities, takes a tough line with liberals and bans homomarriage. So did Hitler, I invariably reply.

 

 

 

 

Sayeeda Warsi has bitten the hand that made her Baroness.

Back in 2012 Dave found to his horror that the focus groups were uneasy about lots of unticked demographic boxes. Dave scanned the available options and his eye stopped on Sayeeda, who ticked lots of relevant boxes. Woman – tick. Muslim – tick. Working class – tick. Iffy accent – tick. Under 40 – tick.

Alas, Sayeeda’s sole contribution to politics to that point had been losing an eminently winnable Tory seat.

Not to worry. Dave fast-tracked Sayeeda to the House of Lords, making her eligible for a cabinet post. Gratitude was in order, one would have thought, but Sayeeda had the bit between her teeth.

Baroness Warsi, as she now was, pretended to have many convictions, but there was only one she had really felt in her bone marrow: hatred of Israel, which she believed was a criminal state that had no right to exist.

Monomaniacs who reduce the whole complexity of life to a single passion inevitably divide mankind into two categories: friends, those who share the passion, and enemies, those who don’t.

Sayeeda thought Dave was her friend, but he proved to be her enemy by failing to share Sayeeda’s sole conviction. Being a person of strong, if single, principle, she had no option but to resign and keep a watchful eye on Dave.

Sure enough, he slipped by making a speech suggesting that some British Muslims “quietly condone” extremism. Baroness Warsi was instantly up in arms.

By suggesting that some Muslims are sympathetic to Isis, she declared, Dave is “demonising” the whole Islamic community. ‘Demonising’, you understand, is the vogue catchword denoting amply justified criticism.

Hence anyone who finds anything wrong with Putin thereby demonises Russia. Anyone objecting to homomarriage demonises all sexual minorities. Anyone saying that Sayeeda is a stupid ideologue demonises women, Muslims, working-class origins, iffy accents and people under 40.

“Muslim communities across the UK are fighting Isis ideology,” claimed Sayeeda and then, with her usual disregard for logic, contradicted herself: “It’s the children of British Muslims that Isis are targeting to recruit.”

That makes those Isis recruiters not only evil but also clueless. If Muslim communities “are fighting Isis ideology”, any attempts to recruit volunteers for a spot of suicide bombing must be doomed to failure.

They aren’t. In fact, hundreds of British Muslims have joined the ranks of Isis cannibals and beheaders. Why, just 10 days ago a teenager from Sayeeda’s hometown of Dewsbury became the UK’s youngest ever suicide bomber.

Such actions come from a base of solid popular support. In fact, the polls taken in the aftermath of the 7/7 massacres showed that 20% of British Muslims sympathised with the terrorists, and 25% felt the bombings were justified. Among young Muslims this number goes up to 35%, which is predictable, considering the impetuosity of youth.

Five per cent of British Muslims tell pollsters they wouldn’t report a planned Islamic attack, 27% are against the deportation of Islamic hate preachers, and 37% believe British Jews are a legitimate target.

One third of British Muslims believe that Islamic apostates should be killed, 78% supported punishing the publishers of Mohammed cartoons, 40% want Sharia in the UK, 28% want Britain to be an Islamic state, while two-thirds think ‘honour’ violence is acceptable.

And it’s not just violence: the community with which Sayeeda identifies so faithfully has strong ideas on family law as well: 51% believe a woman can’t marry an infidel, 49% don’t think a Muslim woman may marry without a guardian’s consent, and 52% feel a Muslim man may have up to four wives (just think of the mess of four divorces).

Considering that only 7% of British Muslims think of themselves as British first, one finds it hard to resist the feeling that perhaps the British Muslim community isn’t as staunchly patriotic as Sayeeda claims. The feeling grows even stronger when we translate all those percentages into absolute numbers based on the overall British Muslim population (three million that we  know about).

One just hopes that next time Dave targets his ‘demonising’ more precisely, aiming it at the true-blue Tory Baroness Warsi specifically.

Literally, that is. For by supporting the campaign to boycott Israel, the pianist-conductor has come out on the side of those who yearn to kill every Israeli.

It has to be said that only in our time could a musician of Barenboim’s modest abilities have possibly achieved his prominence. In the past, concert platforms were mostly inhabited by musicians whose talents were worthy of the giants whose music they played.

The subsequent collapse of education and taste put an end to such outdated elitism. Music has become just another entertainment genre, one that has to function according to the laws of pop. Under such conditions, a different talent becomes paramount – one for self-promotion.

It’s in this area that Danny ‘Boy’ Barenboim approaches genius, which God’s gift he has built into a life of renown matching that of pop stars.

Danny’s status in the musical world is unrivalled because he blows his trumpet better than anyone else. And the sound of that instrument is too loud to be contained within the concert hall.

Since Danny has become a Celebrity, he feels entitled to pontificate on areas outside his immediate expertise. And because he’s a Celebrity, our comprehensively educated masses are prepared to listen.

If the frankly savage Russell Brand can command a political following, then surely the cultivated Danny, who can mouth pseudo-intellectual leftie platitudes in several languages, can do even better.

Anti-Israeli invective is an essential part of today’s leftie parcel, what with the reflux from the erstwhile battle against colonialism still burning leftie throats everywhere. Israel, with her selfish desire to survive against odds, has to be portrayed as a colonial empire, while the Palestinians are seen as the virtuous third-world masses yearning to be free. 

Hence the emergence of Danny Boy as a world statesman, one who intends to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict single-handedly. To that end he has created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, staffed with both Israeli and Palestinian musicians.

That undertaking almost got Danny the Nobel last year, and his narrow loss still rankles. Clearly he has to step up his efforts and raise the already febrile temperature of his self-aggrandisement.

Danny’s views on global, especially Eastern, politics were borrowed wholesale from Edward Said, the guru of anti- and post-colonialism, who was to jihad roughly what Diderot was to the guillotine – someone who didn’t call for it directly but provided the necessary philosophical basis.

That’s why Danny always hails the justice of Palestinian aspirations, pretending he doesn’t realise that the innermost of those is to eliminate Israel and kill every Israeli. The even-handedness that Danny preaches closely resembles the leftie sermon of moral equivalence between the KGB, an organisation that murdered millions, and the CIA, one created to prevent further murders.

The coveted Nobel being so tantalisingly near, Danny has come out in favour of  Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), the Palestinian-run campaign aimed against Israeli goods, scientists, artists – well, against Israel.

Delivering his Edward W. Said lecture in London, Danny spoke from the heart: “I think the boycott movement BDS is absolutely correct, it’s perfectly right and necessary with one limitation… It is… not positive… to boycott anything that has anything to do with Israel. Anything to do with government policies, yes.”

In other words, distinctions must be made between good Israelis, those who support the Palestinian cause (and let’s not forget that destruction of Israel is in fact its essence) and bad ones, those who support their government’s efforts to keep Israel alive. He’ll hate the parallel, which to me is unmistakable: the Nazis elevated ‘good’ Jews like Warburg and Oppenheim, those they saw as indispensable to their cause, to the status of ‘honorary Aryans’, thereby letting them live.

In a recent speech ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu cited one of the leaders of BDS as explaining that his real aim was “to bring down the State of Israel”.

Danny has no such far-reaching aspirations. His aim is more personal: to win the Nobel. But in pursuit of this lifelong dream, he has converged with those who are red in tooth and claw.

I’m sure he’ll succeed. If Arafat could win the Nobel, why not Danny?

 

 

One could be forgiven for getting the impression that the Churches of England and Rome are in some sort of contest, with the world title in lefty subversiveness at stake.

First the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a declaration calling for a low-carbon economy, an initiative avidly supported by other faith leaders. Score one for the Anglicans.

Then Pope Francis, having first anathematised capitalism, delivered himself of a 192-page encyclical demanding that political leaders pass tougher climate laws because the Earth is becoming “an immense pile of filth”. Score even.

And now the Bishop of Salisbury, the Right Rev Nicholas Holtam, reclaims the lead for the Anglicans by telling them to skip lunch on the first day of each month, thereby saving ‘our planet’ from melting away.

The General Synod, to meet next month, will rubber-stamp the motion, which also includes a demand for “ministerial formation and in-service training to include components of ecojustice and ecotheology”. Such training is to be provided in addition to studying the Bible, not yet – as will surely be the case soon – instead of it. 

I too have a motion, or rather a recommendation, of my own. Whenever someone refers to the Earth as ‘our planet’, punch him in the face. As he lies dazed on the floor, explain to him why the punishment was meted out.

Are our church leaders out of their tree? There is no such thing as ecojustice or ecotheology. There may be some anthropogenic warming going on at the moment, and a good job too.

However, by far the greatest effect on climate comes from solar activity, which is why ‘our planet’ has always gone through periods of warmer and colder weather.

There were grapes growing in Scotland in Caesar’s time, which betokens a warmer climate than it is now – and yet in those days people didn’t drive cars, didn’t have thermostats, never saw aerosol sprays and hadn’t yet identified global warming as the root of all evil.

Also, think of the pollution problem that would arise if each of the three million London cars were replaced by a horse. Why, one wouldn’t be able to walk the streets without a gas mask, and theology would be even further away from people’s minds than it is now.

The theological source of ecological wisdom is Genesis 1: 28-30, which in broad strokes tells us that everything on earth has been created for the use and benefit of man. Now I have news for our prelates: almost everything man does to make use of God’s gifts releases temperature into the atmosphere.

The greatest (and earliest) release comes from tilling the land and turning the soil to grow “every herb bearing seed”. This global-warming activity has been going on for rather a long time, proving that God didn’t create us to be ecology-obsessed cretins.

That scientific and industrial progress has some polluting effect that so vexes His Holiness is true – and he should pray that long may it continue. Before the Industrial Revolution, the average life expectancy was between 30 and 40 years. Now, by the mercy of God and as a direct result of modern science, it’s between 80 and 90.

Surely God doesn’t want us to die before our time? Well, then He must be happy that man has learned to look after himself so well. How He feels about our Catholic and Anglican prelates is, however, open to question.

I doubt that Pope Francis, Archbishop Welby or Bishop Holtam know enough science to form a firm view on such subjects on their own. Clearly, they must rely on the judgement of scientists.

In that case they ought to know that ‘global warming’ has the unique distinction of being the only discovery in the history of science made not by scientists but by a political organisation, specifically the UN.

The likelihood of a scientist supporting this theory is directly proportionate to the size of the grant said scientist receives from the UN, its branches or other similar political setups. Scientists who receive no such grants and are therefore independent tend to punch holes the size of St Peter’s basilica in this slapdash theory.

His Holiness, who is institutionally obligated to be concerned about the plight of the poor, should also remember that the acuteness of such plight is inversely proportionate to the amount of capitalism in the country – the more capitalism, the less poverty, and the other way around.

As to taking fasting out of its normal religious context and putting it into one of radical left-wing politics, Bishop Holtam ought to be ashamed of himself.

I have an idea: perhaps he ought to demand that the Church of England convert to Russian Orthodoxy. If the prescriptions of that confession are followed religiously, as it were, the communicants are supposed to have at least 200 fasting days in a year.

That’s something to ponder in the future, but in the meantime the leaders of our Western confessions ought to remind themselves of what they were brought into this world to do.

Their remit is to save souls, not ‘our planet’. The two desiderata are not only not identical, but in fact mutually exclusive. Are they bright enough to realise this? I’m beginning to doubt that.

 

This leftie with learning difficulties has felt called upon to comment on the Charleston massacre. Though by itself this is unobjectionable, the nature of Mr Morgan’s comment confirms both his political and intellectual credentials.

The rhetorical device he chose is called anaphora, the deliberate repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive sentences or paragraphs.

This trick has stood various orators (or demagogues, depending on how one sees them) in good stead, from Churchill with his “We shall fight them…” to Martin Luther King with his “I have a dream…” to Hillary Clinton, who once repeated “it takes…” six times in one sentence – and then started the next one with “It takes…” as well.

Following such illustrious role models, Mr Morgan wrote an article of 26 short paragraphs, each beginning ad nauseam with the phrase “I’m sick…”. (A piece of avuncular advice, Piers, if I may: the phrase isn’t ad nausea, as you seem to think, but ad nauseam – sic. It’s the Latin for till you wanna puke, mate.)

What brought on Piers’s serial bouts of emesis isn’t the gall of the British police who dare investigate editors for phone hacking, and nor is it the rotten taste of the American public whose indifference to some TV chat shows leads to their cancellation.

No, Piers feels sick thinking about 26 different things that all boil down to one: the availability of guns in America. (Another piece of avuncular advice, Piers: rephrasing exactly the same thought 26 times is neither grown-up nor clever.)

Like all intellectual vulgarians, he likes to reduce an extremely complex phenomenon to the simple terms even Daily Mirror readers can understand: If only Dylann Storm Roof had been unable to lay his hands on that .45, the truly sickening carnage wouldn’t have happened.

In what passes for Piers’s mind, the tragedy reflects a primitive equation: availability of guns equals gun crime. The reverse of this is another equation: unavailability of guns equals no gun crime. Oh if only things were as simple as that.

For example, take four New England states, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The first two have liberal gun laws, which is why they have some of the highest gun ownership in the USA.

However, in what Piers would probably dismiss as an inexplicable paradox, Vermont and New Hampshire have the lowest rates of gun assaults in the country.

Connecticut’s gun laws are also quite permissive, and the state’s rate of gun assaults is quite high: 22.46 gun assaults per 100,000 population.

Neighbouring Massachusetts, on the other hand, has some of the tightest gun controls in the world. One would expect the statistics of gun assaults there to be much lower than in Connecticut. In fact, at 30.8 per 100,000, they’re a third higher.

Broadening our scan, the incidence of gun crime in Japan, where firearms are tightly regulated, is extremely low. Yet it’s even lower within the Japanese community in California, where guns can be bought easily.

And in Switzerland, where practically every household possesses an assault rifle and, usually, a handgun or two, they don’t even bother to keep gun crime statistics. There is no gun crime.

All this goes to show that, in conditions of even relative liberty, the state can’t cut the supply of a product, be it guns, drugs or prostitutes, for which there exists a popular demand. Assorted psychos and criminals will always get weapons if they want them, as you can find for yourself by having a pint with a pub landlord somewhere is South London and asking him, “I say, you wouldn’t happen to know someone…” 

Getting back to Piers’s adopted land, John Lott in his book More Guns, Less Crime presents an analysis of crime statistics for every US county from 1977 to 2005. His scrutiny of reams of data proves beyond any doubt the truth of his book’s title: the relationship between gun ownership and violent crime isn’t direct but inverse.

Hence blaming guns for gun crime is a factual fallacy, but it’s more than that. In our morbidly politicised world, every piece of data has to have a political dimension, and gun statistics are no exception.

Piers lived in America for a few years, so he had time to cotton on to how the political cookie crumbles there. In America guns are one of the watersheds separating socialists (liberals, in the American misnomer) from conservatives.

As they do in everything else, the lefties rely on sheer demagoguery and fiddling of facts to make their point, and Piers instantly fit in. He knows what a good story is, and he won’t let facts interfere with it.

Never mind that in his own country gun crime almost doubled in the six months following the 1997 bans on firearms. Never mind the mass of incontrovertible data gathered by Lott and other serious researchers. Politics trumps it all.

John Adams once described facts as ‘stubborn things’. The arch-socialist Stalin added an interesting dimension to this adage: “If facts are stubborn things, then so much the worse for facts.”

No doubt the socialist Piers Morgan would agree. Sickening, isn’t he? 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you call a chap who explains his actions by saying: “A man like me cares little about the lives of a million men”? (Napoleon to Metternich, 1813)

I call him a monster, to be cursed in eternity and mentioned side by side with other ‘men like him’, such as Lenin, Hitler and Stalin.

The French (with some exceptions, to be fair) call him a hero and venerate the memorials to his grisly deeds.

Well, that hero was taken down a peg 200 years ago, and, unlike Napoleon’s own victories, this anniversary is worth cheering.

The anniversaries widely celebrated in France have been coming thick and fast over the past 10 years: Marengo, Austerlitz, Friedland, Wagram.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between their anniversaries and ours. Theirs celebrate a march of despotism; ours commemorates stopping despotism in its tracks.

Yet Napoleon is still given the benefit of doubt, nay adoration, by assorted groupies, not all of them French. We’ve had our share of those too, from the pop poet Byron to the pop historian Andrew Roberts.

But the French won’t be outdone. Thus Dominique de Villepin, former prime minister: “This defeat shines with the aura of victory”. Moral victory, that is, which is the traditional fall-back position for sore losers.

Much as I admire the French, the ability to lose graciously isn’t their most salient trait. Nous sommes trahis (we was robbed, in colloquial English) is the blanket explanation of all French defeats.

They never lose battles to superior, better-led armies. They only ever lose them to treason – by the enemy, their own generals or, as is claimed specifically in relation to Waterloo, God.

The amazing thing about Nappy’s groupies is that they don’t even realise how ridiculous they sound. This is, for example, how the most febrile of those groupies, Victor Hugo, contrasted Wellington’s soulless performance to Nappy’s inspired leadership.

Wellington’s: “precision, planning, geometry, prudence, a safe line of retreat, well-managed reserves, stubborn calm… nothing left to chance…”

Nappy’s: “intuition, feeling… superhuman instinct, flamboyant vision… prodigious and scornful impetuosity, all the mysteriousness of a profound soul.”

I know which army I’d choose to fight in, even though Hugo’s description of Nappy’s forces sounds as if they were made up of 50,000 St Pauls led by Christ himself.

This last phrase is merely a reiteration of a French blasphemy. Nappy was – in some quarters still is – well-nigh deified. That elevation to divinity became especially pronounced after his defeat at Waterloo.

Doing the rounds in France at the time was a disgusting mockery of the Lord’s prayer: “Our Emperor who art in St Helena// Respected be thy name// Thy will be done// Against the extremists who take away our pensions// Rid us of the accursed Bourbons// Amen.”

In the pagan groupies’ eyes Nappy’s free hand with pensions outweighed the 2,000,000 dead Frenchmen. Methinks their moral scales are badly in need of readjustment.

Nappy’s self-confidence indeed matched Christ’s, but with considerably less justification. If Jesus sacrificed himself for others, Nappy did exactly the opposite throughout his career.

Whenever he felt that military defeat threatened his power, he never hesitated to abandon his bleeding army and rush back to Paris to make sure his own position was secure. Nappy did that in Egypt and in Russia, and by any traditional military codes he ought to have faced tribunal with the firing squad at the other end.

Add to this Nappy’s summary executions of POWs (for example, between 2,000 and 4,000 of them after the siege of Jaffa), another offence worthy of tribunal, and one may wonder how he still enjoys a posthumous reputation as a great man, rather than as a great criminal.

Nor was his purely military judgement always as impeccable as is universally claimed. Attacking Russia knowing that his unprotected supply lines would have to stretch to 1,000 miles was sheer madness, as was Nappy’s failure to provide his soldiers with winter gear.

Another great failure of Nappy’s martial nous was his gross underestimation of opposing leaders, specifically Wellington. Speaking on the eve of Waterloo to his generals, with many of whom Wellington had wiped the Iberian peninsula, Nappy told them there was nothing to fear.

Wellington, he said, was a bad general. The beaten veterans of the Peninsular War must have exchanged glances, thinking “What does it make us?”

In fact, for a bad general, Wellington boasted a remarkable record of never losing a battle in his life. He also knew how to protect his soldiers’ lives by training them to rely more on accurate musketry than frontal bayonet charges so beloved of Nappy.

Wellington trained his infantrymen to deliver three shots a minute, as opposed to an average of two in the French army. That, plus the organisational brilliance and attention to detail so derided by Hugo, gave Wellington an in-built advantage. For example, rather than flying by the seat of his breeches, Wellington had personally reconnoitred the Waterloo battlefield a year before the battle.

Deploying his infantry beyond the crest of a ridge, out of enemy artillery’s reach, as he did at Waterloo, was another tactic pioneered by Wellington. To him, unlike to Nappy, the lives of men did matter.

Napoleon is also venerated as a great statesman, one who gave France her civil code and departmental structure. Both, however, were direct offshoots of the Enlightenment, whose storm trooper Nappy was.

Even if the Napoleonic code were indeed as great an achievement as some claim, mentioning it next to the millions perished in Napoleonic wars brings to mind the naughty American joke: “Yes, but apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

It’s those moral scales again. But even considered on its own terms, the Napoleonic Code is less than admirable. What it adumbrated wasn’t so much the rule of law as the rule of lawyers, along with legal and economic dirigisme – something from which France is still suffering.

The French feel nostalgic about their country’s greatness, which they mistakenly equate with martial glory. Yet only just wars contribute to a country’s greatness. Those waged by Napoleon are largely responsible for France’s present misfortunes, something the French fail to understand, which is why they ignore today’s anniversary. 

For us, however, there is much to celebrate. But for the victory won by the Wellington-led coalition, despotism would have arrived in Europe a century earlier than it actually did. And – perish the thought! – Trafalgar Square would be called Place de l’Empereur, while Waterloo Station would probably be known as Gare du Sud.

Cheers!

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How does the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) differ from Western confessions? You might mention things like filioque or papal supremacy, and that would be God’s own truth. But it wouldn’t be the whole truth.

For the ROC, in the person of Patriarch Alexis II (a career KGB operative, like all the post-war patriarchs), issued in 1997 a blessing to the singer Zhanna Bitchevskaya, thereby making her an official performer of ROC songs.

Unofficially, her patriotic, religious and nationalist oeuvre has deeply endeared her to my friend Vlad, who developed an affection for religious songs, or indeed religion, at the time of his first presidential campaign in 2000.

Until that momentous event, Vlad’s biographies, including the book First Person Singular he had dictated, had never mentioned any inchoate religious feelings, unlike, for example, his affection for German beer. Yet already in 2000 Vlad decided to turn Russia into an eerie amalgam of Third Rome, Third Reich and Third World, for which undertaking a public demonstration of religiosity was de rigueur. 

Incidentally, that campaign was bankrolled by Boris Berezovsky who subsequently fell out with Vlad and hence came to a sticky end in his London exile, proving yet again that Vlad’s enemies can run but they can’t hide.

Bitchevskaya (I wonder how she abbreviates her surname) is still going strong at 71, performing and recording non-stop, a sort of ROC round the clock. She ought to be congratulated for staying on the same wavelength with her church and her state.

Actually the two entities have been one and the same since Peter I’s reforms, which effectively turned the ROC into a department of the state and, usually, an extension of its secret police.

Both before and after that fusion, the Russian state and the ROC have always been united in their pathological hatred of the West. This is a shame, for, unlike the state, the ROC is after all a Christian institution and, as such, ought to preach love, not hate.

The ROC’s record of hatred isn’t automatically attributable to its Byzantine origin, as some commentators suggest. After all, Greek and Coptic churches have the same provenance, and yet they don’t openly preach anti-Western invective.

No, this trait is peculiarly Russian – it’s the leitmotif of the country’s whole history. And you can trust Zhanna ‘Bitch’ to keep her finger not only on her silvery guitar strings but also on the nervous pulse of Russia.

The Russophones among you can confirm this observation courtesy of YouTube. But for the benefit of my linguistically challenged readers, allow me to translate a few bits and pieces from her lyrics (many, incidentally, written by the arch-monk Roman) and writings.

“Russia will be free again, and the world will fall down at her feet!”

“Russia spits on the power of Americas and Europes!”

“May you all [Westerners] croak!”

And then, in a different genre, that of journalism: “When we cross ourselves, we spit on the West thrice. And say, ‘I deny you, Satan’. All filth, all the refuse of the disgusting Antichrist comes from the West. That’s why everything that comes from the West should be expunged from our heads, our homes. Don’t dance to the West’s tune!”

“I do what God has put into my hands, my mouth, my soul. The songs I sing lead people to the church, to God.”

In other words Zhanna ‘Bitch’ is God’s apostle. Hence it stands to reason she should have healing powers: “The head physician of Moscow’s oncological centre once told me, ‘Zhanna, I must tell you something important: some patients in the last, fourth stage of cancer recover having heard the records of your songs by the arch-monk Roman. Not all, but some.’”

It’s then incomrehensible that every Russian cancer patient who can afford it still seeks treatment in the West. They could save themselves a lot of money and trouble by staying in Russia and listening to Zhanna ‘Bitch’ intoning ‘May you all croak!’ at the West. Or watching her clip We are Russians, Russians, Russians where Zhanna’s voiceover accompanies the footage of Russian bombers firing missiles, which is then cut to wide shots of burning American cities.

I do hope the Putin groupies among my Ukip friends will read this. They just may change their view of Vlad, he of staunch faith and nationalism. (‘Nationalism’ is seen as a desirable quality in some quarters – the distinction between that and patriotism is lost.)

Underpinning both his ‘faith’ and nationalism is visceral hatred of everything the West stands for. And the art of Vlad’s favourite performer faithfully imitates the life he fosters in Russia.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond doesn’t seem to agree that being ‘gay’ is something to be proud about. To express this distinctly old-fashioned feeling he has banned British embassies from flying the rainbow flag to mark this year’s ‘gay pride’ parades.

Indeed, one struggles to see how people’s sexuality, perverse or even normal, can be a source of pride. One can more easily see how it can be a source of shame.

For example, my own, boringly conventional, sexuality has led me over a lifetime to do quite a few shameful things – and not a single one of which I can be proud, even though some have made me happy.

As to sexual perversion, taking pride in that is in itself perverse, while expressing such feelings publicly would in any sane society attract the attention of chaps in police uniforms or, perhaps more appropriately, white coats.

Moreover, a lifelong egalitarian like me can’t abide by the unequal treatment afforded to various perversions. If crowds are allowed, nay encouraged, to march in support of ‘gay pride’, any man who gets his jollies from incest, animals, corpses or faeces should feel slighted.

I can hear a strengthening chorus of voices harmonising various polyphonic strains. Where’s my ‘dead’s beautiful’ necrophilia pride march? And what about my ‘Daisy, Daisy, I’m half-crazy’ march for bestiality pride? My ‘eat and enjoy’ coprophilia pride march? Where can I join the ‘come to daddy’ incest pride parade?

It’s terribly unfair, not to say discriminatory, that some perversions can take precedence over others. It’s like those green fanatics picking out just one exhaust gas, carbon dioxide, for their attacks, whereas some others may be as or more damaging. Arbitrary or what?

That embassies representing Her Majesty’s interests abroad should even consider flying the rainbow flag has to be grounds for a wholesale change in personnel. The Union Jack is a symbol of the whole nation, and the only British flag that may on occasion appear next to it is the Royal Standard – not the rag celebrating deviant sexuality or any other particular interests.

Yet not only our embassies but also the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall flew the striped rag last year. William Hague, who had Mr Hammond’s job then, was so keen to broadcast that fact ad orbi et urbi that some warped minds began to suspect a personal interest.

I don’t know about that. A more likely reason for that show of weakness was that Dave was pushing his subversive homomarriage bill through Parliament then, and Hague, who has been a loyal party man since before he knew what ‘sexuality’ meant, must have felt duty-bound to stand by his man Dave.

I’m sure that even Peter Tatchell’s followers realise how utterly ridiculous this whole ‘gay pride’ movement is. It makes no sense – other than political sense, which is of course the whole point.

In common with many historically marginalised groups, politicised homosexuals resent traditional morality and the institutions upholding it. When they are not only politicised but fanatical, they feel the urge to destroy the morality and undermine the institutions.

The rest is simply expressing this animus as political action and massive propaganda. When the propaganda reaches a certain decibel level and breadth, it does what propaganda is supposed to do: override people’s traditional feelings and replace them with a new set.

Yesterday’s deviancy becomes today’s orthodoxy, the voices of isolated fanatics become vox populi, and that’s not the sound any modern, which is to say post-Christian, which is to say spivocratic, government can ignore.  

Mr Hammond has restored a previously lost modicum of sanity to our embassies, but for how long? One already hears a rumble of discontent among our embassy staff in Rome and elsewhere. Before long it’ll segue into a crescendo culminating in a finale that’ll attract Dave’s attention.

If you can give me decent odds, I’m prepared to bet that Dave, now secure in his slender parliamentary majority, will overrule his Foreign Secretary. I’m not sure he’ll go so far as to follow the suggestion in the title of this piece, but I wouldn’t bet against it.

Any takers?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since Russia’s parliamentary tradition is neither strong nor of long standing, one would expect the Duma to be rather different from our own Mother of Parliaments.

So it is, to no one’s surprise. However, what is indeed surprising is how different. One critical difference is that the Duma doesn’t legislate; it rubber-stamps.

You see, my friend Vlad is fully committed to the system of one man, one vote, as long as he’s the man. Hence, whenever a serious decision is to be made, Vlad debates it with himself and, overriding his own objections, casts his vote as he sees fit. Since according to official doctrine Vlad is synonymous with Russia, the Duma never votes against the country.  

Yet this isn’t to say it performs no useful function. Quite the contrary: by using parliamentary immunity, it keeps some politicians out of prison; and by using its daises, it keeps some others in the public eye.

Alexei Lugovoy, he of the polonium fame, is one of the many examples of the first category; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Deputy Speaker, by far the most colourful example of the second.

He is also a useful illustration of the difference between Russia’s parliament and ours. For instance, I find it hard to imagine that our own dear Deputy Speaker would ever match Zhirinovsky’s eloquence, as displayed a fortnight ago on Russian TV.

In broad strokes, he called for launching nuclear strikes against the Ukraine and the nearby Nato countries, while blackmailing the more remote ones with nuclear-tipped ICBMs. Here are some choice excerpts:

“I’d talk to Barack Obama and tell him: ‘Barack, you’re playing too complex a game, you’re spending too much money in vain. I’m offering a cheaper solution: I’ll restore all USSR borders except Poland and Finland.’ [Actually, Mr Z got carried away here: ‘restore’ is a wrong word because neither Poland nor Finland was ever part of the USSR. But hey, it’s the thought that counts.]… I’d tell Obama in no uncertain terms: ‘You don’t want to fight with us, you’re scared of nuclear war. Fine, it’s even possible you could hurt us badly. But I’d wipe out half of America. To begin with Washington, there’d be a hole in its place, and no one would find even a living hair in that hole.’ Europe is scared of us anyway, so there’s no point even talking to it… If you [meaning the Ukrainian government] bomb Donbass, we’ll bomb Kiev… We’ll shoot all your governors, starting with Saakashvili [former president of Georgia, recently appointed governor of the Odessa province]. Then they’ll be scared. Then we’ll have a different situation both in Europe and the Ukraine. Because no one would know what would happen tomorrow. Come on, Shoigu [Russia’s defence minister], put our missiles on red alert! Aim them at Berlin, London, Washington!… Then they’ll say: ‘What, tomorrow there will be war? No, don’t, we agree to everything.’ They want to stay alive, see? They’re having fun there, a picnic – they’d never fight.

“One sharp shout from Moscow, and that’s it. Nato would be disbanded in 24 hours because otherwise all Nato capitals would be destroyed. They’d give it a think and say, ‘Fine, we’ll disband Nato to stay alive, to keep having fun…’ The Russian flag must be raised everywhere where the Russian army has ever been [Paris and Berlin spring to mind, not to mention all of Eastern Europe]…”  

You might say this is a madman’s rant, and I might agree or disagree. But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Vladimir Zhirinovsky is one of the top politicians in Russia, where he is used to enunciate in hysterical, seemingly deranged words his namesake’s policy.

For the theme of nuclear blackmail keeps popping up in the speeches by Putin’s spokesmen and even the national leader himself. Zhirinovsky just adds a bit of crazy spin, which is a tactic widely used by bullies.

When trying to pre-empt any resistance, they’d feign madness, planting a seed of doubt into the opponent’s mind. He’s unlikely to stick this pencil in my eye, but who knows, he just may be crazy enough…

I for one have no fear of Zhirinovsky. But you know what scares me? That he just may be right about Nato’s likely reaction to the blackmail.

 

 

This conversation took place circa 53 AD. James and Peter, who headed the Jerusalem Christian community, had summoned Paul from his peregrinations to explain to him the facts of life.

James: Saul, there’s trouble in Corinth.

Paul: There’s no Saul here, Jim. The name’s Paul, as you well know.

James: Okay, fine, there’s trouble in Corinth, Paul.

Paul: Too bloody right there is. Every mass is a God-awful shouting match. They all scream, argue, turn the whole thing into a unholy mess. But I’ve sorted them out.

Peter: Yes, well, that’s not the kind of trouble we mean, Paul. The trouble we’re talking about was caused by the way you sorted them out.

Paul: What on earth do you mean?

James: I mean this [picks up a parchment scroll and reads]: “Let the women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” Did you write this, Paul?

Paul: You bet I did. So what?

Peter: So every Corinthian lass is screaming her head off, calling you an insensitive bigot, a male chauvinist pig and an antediluvian troglodyte. What are you trying to do, mess up the whole show?

Paul: Oh come off it, Pete. I just didn’t want those gals to sputter spittle all over the place. We needed some discipline there, that’s all I said.

James: Well, let me tell you, that’s not how it came out – and it’s certainly not how they took it. We’ve received 153 complaints. Here’s one from Sabina…

Paul: Sabina who?

James: Never mind Sabina who. Just listen: “This bloody bigot thinks he’s the bee’s knees, but I’ve got news for him: this is the 1^st century AD, the reign of Emperor Trajan. We, female persons, are equal to any man, including this Saul, Paul or whatever he calls himself. And I don’t just mean equal before God – we’re equal in every way. How dare he tell us to shut up and listen to our husbands? Who the hell does he think he is? We don’t want his kind preaching to us, ever.”

Peter: And this is the most polite letter. Most of them want you whipped and stoned, at least. Are you off your rocker or what?

Paul: But the law saith…

James: Never you mind what the law saith. You are finished, do you hear me? She’s right, this isn’t bloody Athens under bloody Pericles. Female persons in Corinth won’t stand for this kind of talk, and neither shall we!

Paul: But Jim…

Peter: You’re history, Paul. We want your resignation today. Go back to Tarsus, make some tents.

Well, as you’ve probably guessed, I’ve made this up. No such conversation took place in Jerusalem circa 53AD – moreover, it could not have taken place. But a similar exchange did occur at University College London, circa 2015.

At the end of it, Sir Tim Hunt, the Nobel-winning biochemist, was effectively sacked (“hung out to dry”, as he put it) from his job at which he is generally believed to be rather good.

His crime? An offhand light-hearted remark he made in a speech. “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” he said, digging a huge hole for himself. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.”

Now you must agree that, on the scale of male chauvinist piggery, this remark doesn’t even come close to 1 Corinthians 14: 34-35. Yet it never occurred to the good women of Corinth to report Paul to the authorities.

Had they done so, it’s a safe bet James and Peter would have dismissed their complaint for the silly, insecure, borderline psychotic rubbish it was. And Paul was dead serious when he wrote his epistle.

Sir Tim wasn’t when he talked about lab girls. He just made an innocent remark that, to anyone with the sense of humour of your average German (shepherd, that is, not a person), would have sounded like exactly what it was: a joke.

Yet in the reign of Emperor Dave a joke like that is a career-ending sacking offence, even if the offender is one of the world’s top scientists. That’s progress for you. Aren’t you happy we’ve advanced so far since the reign of Emperor Trajan?

Ave Dave, morituri te salutant.