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Obama’s triumphant tour of the African half of his roots was marred by Mike Huckabee, Republican presidential candidate.

Now I dislike any politician of a certain age who insists on being known by the diminutive version of his Christian name. However, Mr Huckabee’s ability to rile Obama entitles him to calling himself even Mickey if he so chooses. This is what he said:

“This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history… he would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven.

“We forget Iranians have never kept a deal in 36 years… There’s no reason to think they will suddenly start doing it.

“The Iran deal is a bad deal, bad for America and bad for Israel.”

Obama was so incensed he had to interrupt his Kenyan tribal dance in mid-step. The drums fell silent, and only the president’s voice was heard once he had regained command of it.

That statement, said Obama, “would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad…” And his acolyte Debbie Wasserman Schultz described Mr Huckerbee’s statement as “grossly irresponsible”.

This is good knockabout stuff, but it falls short of being a cogent argument. Trying to offer one, Barack Hussein proved he is as hard of hearing as he is hopeless at rhetoric.

“I have not heard another argument [against] that holds up.” That makes the president deaf, for every conceivable medium all over the West has been screaming devastating arguments against the deal.

These come from strategists, armament experts, political analysts, weapon inspectors – not all of them in the pay of the Republicans, Mossad or aliens from the planet Islamophobia.

But hold on, Obama has an argument of his own: “99% of the world thinks it’s a good deal.”

I congratulate the president on the proficiency of his polling service. Surveying a population of six billion in such a short time is a feat of monumental proportions.

So monumental in fact that one is tempted to think that no such poll has been conducted, and Obama’s calculation was pulled out of the portion of his anatomy he shakes when whirling to the sound of African drums.

But do let’s suppose for the sake of argument that what he said is true. In that case, his statement is a classic rhetorical fallacy, known as argumentum ad populum (if many believe it, it’s true.)

Of course modern, and especially American, politics is based on fideistic worship of majority opinion, which is one thing that’s wrong with modern politics.

But forget generalities of rhetoric or politics. Forget even Mr Huckabee’s oratorical flourishes that are as hyperbolic as to be expected from a politician in the throes of a campaign. Forget also the variously disparaging adjectives used by Obama and his retinue to describe Mr Huckabee’s statements.

Let’s just look at the points he made and, rather than calling them (and him) names, see if they’re true or false. Mr Huckabee believes this is a rotten deal because:

1) Iran has been trying to get nuclear weapons for decades.

2) Iran’s leaders honestly say such weapons will be used to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, presumably killing every Israeli.

3) Since Iran is a major sponsor and perpetrator of global anti-Western terrorism, her acquisition of nuclear weapons presents a danger not just to Israel but to us all.

4) Contrary to what Obama claims, the deal involves a great element of trust, for its provisions for verification are inadequate.

5) However, Iran is untrustworthy in view of her record of breaking or sabotaging every agreement she has signed since 1979.

6) Judging by the Iranian leadership’s publicly expressed belief that the deal constitutes America’s surrender, and huge Iranian crowds celebrating it with ‘Death to America’ chants, Iran’s view of it is different from Obama’s.

7) Hence the deal is awful first because it puts at the ayatollahs’ disposal billions that may be used for nefarious purposes and, second, because it practically guarantees their acquiring a nuclear capability within a decade.

8) Therefore Obama’s deal with Iran may well lead the world to nuclear holocaust.

These eight points, unchallengeable factually or intellectually, unpack the epigrammatic brevity of Mr Huckabee’s statement. Obama may call it what he wants, but I’ll call it what it is: true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his capacity as the Lords’ Deputy Speaker and Chairman of the Privileges and Conduct Committee, Baron Sewel, 69, was in charge of enforcing good behaviour in the Upper House.

His own behaviour, however, didn’t always meet the high standards whose guardian he was. The other day Lord Sewel resigned his posts after starring on hidden camera.

The video depicts His Lordship snorting cocaine through a rolled £5 note while cavorting with two prostitutes in his Dolphin Square flat. It’s unclear whether the pink bra His Lordship wore in some of the sequences belonged to him or was borrowed from one of his friends for hire.

Personally, I’ve never felt the need either to own a brassiere or to put one on after removing it from a woman, but I realise that some men have more sophisticated tastes. So my hat’s off to Lord Sewel.

As each of the young ladies comes with a £200 price tag, they set Lord Sewel back £400 – unless they came cheaper for two. As well they should have done, for the session came complete with valuable political insights.

Between sex acts his Lordship took breaks, understandably prolonged on account of his venerable age. Rather than wasting the downtime, he imparted on the young ladies some unsolicited pearls of political wisdom, enlightening them on the fine points of his colleagues.

Cameron, he said, “is false. He makes one-off commitments and cannot deliver… He just shoots from the lip… He’s the most superficial, facile Prime Minister there’s ever been.” The garment Lord Sewel sported when offering this observation takes nothing away from its accuracy, as far as I’m concerned.

Boris Johnson?  “A public school upper class twit… an a***hole [to be regarded as such up North]”.

One suspects that, being a career Labour man, His Lordship probably feels that all public school chaps fit this description. If so, he’s patently wrong. But there’s no gainsaying his judgement that Boris will be viewed in those terms “in Preston, in Burnley, in Manchester”. Why, I even know some people in higher-rent parts of the country who feel the same way.

Lest one might accuse Lord Sewel of bias against Tory politicians, he also took a swipe at the man to whom he owes his political career, Tony Blair.

In fact, he attributed the present, most pleasingly disastrous, state of the Labour Party to Blair’s dragging the UK into the “pointless” Iraq War: “He went to war because of this sort of love affair with George Bush… Blair fell in love with George Bush, absolutely.”

Love-related metaphors must have really rolled off His Lordship’s tongue under the circumstances, but one does detect a grain of truth in his diatribe. He might have added that Blair could give Cameron a good run for his money in the “facile and superficial” stakes, but party loyalty must have kicked in at that point.

In fact, he partly exonerated Tony by opining that his apparent obsession with money is inspired by his wife Cherie, who’s money-mad because she “comes from a working-class Liverpool background”.

One may think that the implicit contempt for such a lowly descent sounds odd when coming from a Labour peer, but in fact it’s par for the course. No one seriously thinks that there’s anything labour about the parliamentary Labour Party, or indeed anything conservative about the Conservative Party or anything liberal and democratic about the LibDems.

Blair, in fact, has a background similar to Cameron’s, and I’m sure that, just between them and a Krug bottle, they talk about the proles in equally derisory terms. And when Nick Clegg stops over for a quick glass, he must join in the fun.

Once Sewel got on a roll, there was no stopping him. The Labour leadership contest is “in a f***ing mess”. Again his judgement can’t be faulted.

Jeremy Corbyn is “a typical romantic idiot… Useless.” True, although I’m not sure about the ‘romantic’ bit. Communists are in my mind associated not so much with romanticism as with concentration camps, but hey, Sewel is a Labour man after all.

“Andy Burnham… goes whichever way the wind is blowing.”

Yvette Cooper is “not strong.”

Liz Kendall, whose name Lord Sewel couldn’t recall offhand, “is just too naïve”.

In short, “there’s nobody bright enough, or who has the leadership qualities…” And they’re all more or less run by union bosses like Len McCluskey who is “a f***ing idiot.” Yes, among other things, I’d be tempted to add.

And the SNP leaders aren’t much better. Alex Salmond, for example, is a “silly pompous prat.” And so on in the same vein, until His Lordship’s amorous vigour was restored by cocaine, and the young ladies stopped shirking and started working.

I don’t know if afterwards they agreed that the session was valuable in more than just monetary terms. I certainly think so – it’s not often that one can hear a politician talk in such an uninhibited fashion, or tell the truth about the sorry state of British politics.

Perhaps all our parliamentarians ought to be obliged by law to wear bras. Except of course the female MPs, who are likely to regard such a diktat as an expression of latent misogyny and the male desire to dominate women.

 

This, as the British cyclist Chris Froome found out, isn’t a figure of speech, at least not just that.

On course to win his second Tour de France, Chris has got up the nose of many a French spectator. They vent their frustration through other orifices, by spitting on the cyclist as he speeds by and throwing urine in his face.

Such acts don’t just defy fair play, a notion that has left a negligible imprint on the French mentality. They are actually against the law.

It’s hard not to notice in general, and this summer in particular, that commitment to observing the law is in France somewhat understated.

There’s a riot season on, or rather a current spike in one contiguous riot season. Access to the Channel Tunnel is regularly blocked by rioters taking advantage of the French take on labour relations.

Some thugs represent various unions, some just express their pent-up hostility, some others come along for the ride out of a peculiarly Gallic sense of fun. All are breaking the law, with the law looking on with avuncular kindness.

Cars are overturned and burnt, tyres are set aflame, with noxious fumes turning the Tunnel into a low-scale answer to gas chambers, revolting stuff is smeared over the road surfaces, frenzied crowds clash with the police on the rare occasions that the police try to interfere, thousands of refugees attack British vehicles – all of this is going on practically non-stop.

France, I’d like to remind those who may be forgiven for thinking otherwise, is a core country of our civilisation. One can’t help realising this when walking through, say, our local cities of Auxerre and Bourges.

The British simply don’t have places with such a concentration of monuments to a once-great Western civilisation; nowhere in England can one see so much unspoilt and lovingly preserved medieval grandeur.

The loving preservation is a phenomenon of rather recent standing, it has to be said. Following their Walpurgisnacht going by the name of the Revolution, the French spent the next century busily destroying the very same Romanesque and Gothic buildings – 80 per cent of them, according to the late, great medievalist Régine Pernoud – that enchant today’s cultured visitors.

But the remaining 20 per cent is still more than any country, with the possible exception of Italy, possesses. We certainly have nothing quite like it – but then neither are our more modest towns consumed by the wildfires of riots to anywhere near the same extent.

England – and les autres Anglo-Saxons who have come out of England the way Eve came out of Adam’s rib – has something the French and other continentals don’t have: intuitive respect for the law.

This, I dare say, is more important than great buildings only those few endowed with real aesthetic sense can properly appreciate. For being governed by just laws accepted by consent is a factor of freedom, whose fruits are equally nourishing to everybody.

The French will tell you that they too have the rule of law, but that’s not exactly true. What they have is the rule of lawyers.

For, in contrast to English Common Law based on precedents accumulated over centuries, the French have positive law, one imposed by government. Hence the two legal systems are vectored in the opposite directions: from bottom to top in England, from top to bottom in France.

This has been the case since God was young but, under the organic governments of Western civility, the French kings’ need for legislative activism was limited – their power was mainly restricted by their own conscience, which in turn was guided by the Church.

With the advent of a society inspired by the Masonic slogan of liberté, egalité, fraternité (personally, I would have preferred Aligoté, but I wasn’t asked) it all changed.

Lacking an organic claim to legitimacy, the revolutionary government – and all its kaleidoscopically changing successors – flooded the population with a deluge of laws, constitutional or otherwise.

All in all, in the 226 years since 1789 France has had 17 different constitutions, an average of 13.2 a year (to be fair, the latest one goes back 57 years). As to the number of different laws spawned by the constitutions, one would need a mainframe computer to calculate those.

Most of those laws come from the fecund minds of avocats who bang their clever heads together to devise legislation that’ll hasten the arrival of paradise on earth.

I’m not qualified to judge the level of legal thought that goes into this process and nor am I particularly interested. What is to me patently obvious, however, is that this system doesn’t foster a visceral, intuitive respect for the law – of the kind the English used to have predominantly and still have residually.

Positive law has one visible social effect: it divides people into ‘us’, those who are supposed to obey the laws, and ‘them’, the powers represented by the clever lawyers sitting on the Conseil d’État and similar bodies.

The ‘us’ will obey the law not out of respect but out of fear, and fear alone isn’t a sufficient inducement. When the ‘they’ lose the spunk to disperse riots with unrestricted violence and ship the organisers off to some hellhole like Devil’s Island, there exist no mechanisms strong enough to stop the outrage.

England has built a solid capital of justice, accepted as such by all. We are living off the interest on that capital, rapidly frittering it away. But at least there’s some left, and we must both give thanks and remain vigilant.

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.