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Congratulations to the whole region. It will henceforth be spared Tony’s malevolent presence to which the Middle East owes much of its present ordeal.

Had Mrs Leo Blair suffered a miscarriage 63 years ago, the Middle East might have been spared the Walpurgisnacht of Isis, while Europe wouldn’t be besieged by swarms of refugees risking watery death to flee from Libya.

Israel would also be safer, although, with the ‘Palestinians’ expertly playing on the West’s post-colonial guilt and perverse attraction to Third World diversity, she wouldn’t be completely safe.

But at least the threat of crazed nuclear-armed ayatollahs would be counterbalanced by Saddam’s Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libya, with Assad’s Syria sitting on the fence. Now, with those major players off the field, Iran is emerging as the region’s strongman.

America has withdrawn from the mess, having first started it under Dubya in collusion with our miscarriage manqué. Once bitten by the fiasco of the ill-conceived and illegal invasion, she is now twice shy to do something about Iran’s nuclear threat – other than tacitly encouraging it.

We’ll have to suffer Obama’s sanctimonious waffles for another couple of years, but at least we stand a good chance of not being exposed to the smug noises produced by arguably the most hideous character ever to occupy 10 Downing Street.

Tony had a good thing going while it lasted. First he went along with Dubya on his criminal aggression against Iraq. Then, when that went sour, he asked his American accomplice to put in a good word for him with the self-appointed Quartet of the UN, EU, US and Russia (!), which was looking for a front man.

“Yo, Blair,” said Dubya. “You scratched my back, I’ll scratch yours. Count on me, boy. And get me a refill, will ya?”

Bush was as good as his word. Tony ‘Yo’ Blair got the job of peace envoy and made it a resounding success. For himself, that is.

He could now go through the motions of global politics, while focusing his undivided attention on building his business empire, much of it made possible by his contacts with Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and other Emirates, not to mention the Palestinian mobile phone company he got together with another one of his clients, JP Morgan.

As to his supposed day job, he brought to it the defunct notions he shared with the US neoconservatives. According to Tony, all problems in the Middle East spring from the conflict between Israel and the ‘Palestinians’.

As Tony’s sponsor Dubya said, Islam is a religion of peace (Tony’s successor Dave saw fit to repeat this idiocy, but then he’s the self-described ‘heir to Blair’). Let those poor Palestinians, happily displaced for three generations, have their state, and Islam will return to its normal peaceful self.

A worthy goal towards which to strive, or rather it would be if it were true. In fact, the briefest of looks at some of the world’s flashpoints over the last 20 years will show that most of them involved Muslims – and had nothing to do with Israel.

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 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.

But moral and intellectual integrity mean nothing to our Tony. What matters is maintaining his image of the global dove of peace, while feathering his nest to the tune of hundreds of millions.

I don’t know the Hebrew, Arabic or Farsi for good riddance to bad rubbish. But whatever it is, the Middle Easterners should be saying it. There’s hope for them yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vlad and his trained cronies are the best travelling circus in the world. Its travel from Petersburg to Moscow is particularly entertaining.

When Vlad moved from his post as Petersburg’s deputy mayor to bigger and better things in Moscow, he brought his whole gang… sorry, I mean team, with him. Most members were Vlad’s comrades-at-arms in the KGB, so mutual understanding wasn’t a problem.

Those who are curious about the team’s shenanigans should Google Marina Salye, the Petersburg politician who a few years ago published a dossier implicating Putin et al in pilfering on a massive scale, to the tune of $100 million-plus.

But one always seeks fresh material, and this was provided a few days ago. The Petersburg businessman Freidzon gave an interview to Radio Liberty, in which he elucidated the team’s modus operandi.

He had to accept Putin as a silent partner in his firm, and Vlad was satisfied with a modest four per cent share. The unspoken understanding was that he’d take either a piece of the action or a piece out of Mr Freidzon, who was wise enough to make the right choice.

In addition, he had to keep greasing Vlad’s palm with whatever amounts Vlad thought fair, usually $10,000 at a time. Mr Freidzon stresses that Putin, being royalty in the making, never sullied his hands with the folding stuff. Instead he’d just summon Mr Freidzon for a chat, during which he’d absent-mindedly jot down a numeral on a pad. The businessman would then pass the specified sum to Alexei Miller on his way out.

Vlad thereby showed that KGB tradecraft was useful in covering one’s tracks. As a KGB case officer, he also knew how to be loyal to his assets. Hence, when Vlad became national leader, he not only brought Miller with him to Moscow, but put him in charge of Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer.

One hand washes the other and all that, so Miller was happy to do a Freidzon and hand over to Vlad a piece of the Gazprom action as well, and, if rumours are to be believed, a considerably larger chunk than a paltry four per cent. I wish I could put a monetary value on Vlad’s reputed 15 per cent share, but my counting ability doesn’t go that high.

Sergei Ivanov is another one of Vlad’s colleagues from the good old days of the Petersburg KGB, in which he actually outranked Vlad. He now heads Vlad’s personal administration, and it’s his job to put out fires – such as the one conflagrated by the Freidzon interview.

Apparently the fire spread to Western media, with an unspecified London newspaper and an American news channel daring to ask Gen. Ivanov for a clarification.

What they got instead was a torrent of abuse. Speaking on Russia Today, the good General waxed indignant about “the libellous statements about the circle of Russia’s head of state which often appear in foreign press.”

“Some articles appearing in Western media maintain that President Putin and his retinue are utterly corrupt and are concealing their huge wealth; even accusations of links with the criminal underworld sometimes slip in.”

Crikey. Just goes to show how deep Western media have sunk. Why, those running dogs of Wall Street and the City of London dare not only to read incriminating evidence but even to publish it.

Clarification? There’s nothing to clarify. And if you insist there is, read up on the cases of Messrs Litvinenko, Perepelichny, Berezovsky et al. Remember what happened to them?

Don’t know about Western media, but Mr Freidzon’s memory is in working order, and his interview was removed from the Radio Liberty site the day after it appeared. The text was replaced with an apology, to the effect that it had been removed on the interviewee’s request, as he is concerned about his safety. Obviously, Vlad’s KGB colleagues had dropped a quiet word into Mr Freidzon’s shell-like.

Meanwhile, the state of Russia’s economy is such that some responsible citizens are concerned about the cost of staging the 2018 World Cup. Not to worry, according to Vlad’s trained MP Alexander Khinstein.

He has pointed out that prisoners aren’t being used as effectively as in Stalin’s days. Why not use them, for example, to do logging in the Siberian taiga? Anyone who has read The Gulag Archipelago could have answered that question, but there was no need. It was rhetorical.

However, by way of concrete immediate proposal, Deputy Khinstein has tabled a bill solving the fiscal problems of hosting the World Cup. According to this legislation, all the necessary facilities could be built by prisoners, otherwise known as slave labour.

This cost-cutting measure is expected to sail through the legislative process, such as it is in Russia. No doubt it’ll be warmly and loudly welcomed by the population at large, about half of whom confess to nostalgia for Stalin’s way of running the country.

I, on the other hand, detect a spot of KGB perfidy in this idea. Vlad has used his Duma mouthpiece to make sure Russia finally wins a World Cup.

Since most countries in the world are still squeamish enough to boycott any event made possible by slaves, only North Korea is likely to take part. The organisers would thus be able to dispense with time-consuming preliminaries and proceed straight to the Russia-North Korea final.

Vlad’s bailiwick would be the odds-on favourite in such a confrontation, thereby demonstrating to the world the strength of Vlad’s leadership. Perhaps Peter Hitchens would like to present the trophy.

 

 

 

 

Amnesty International has written an open letter to our Lord Chancellor, begging him not to scrap the Human Rights Act.

The document has been published as an advertisement, signed and paid for by over 1,000 people. Well, there’s one born every minute.

They aren’t idiots simply because they support this hideous document – we are all occasionally misguided and misinformed. Errare humanum est and all that.

They are, however, idiots because they argue their case in an irredeemably imbecilic way. This starts from the title: Don’t Scrap Our Human Rights.

I’m not aware of RT Hon Michael Gove hatching a fiendish plan to do away with human rights, and I’m sure that neither are the signatories. Even should Mr Gove harbour such dastardly intentions, it’s a safe bet he wouldn’t be able to act on them.

In other words, the authors of the letter confuse human rights with the document featuring these words in its name. This is like believing that abolishing the inheritance tax would deprive us all of the right to inherit or that no one would have the right to buy in the absence of a corresponding law.

The argument starts from that low point and rapidly goes downhill: “A government cannot give human rights or take them away, nor can it decide who is entitled to human rights and who isn’t.”

Quite. I couldn’t agree more. A government can do no such thing – which is precisely why we in England don’t need a written document codifying human rights. This, regardless of whether the document is issued by our own government or especially the political, moral and legal abortion calling itself the European Union.

In this country – unlike on the continent – it’s not the government that traditionally imposes its laws on the people, but rather the other way around. Such is the difference between our venerable common law and the so-called positive law practised elsewhere in Europe.

Imposing EU diktats on Britain can only serve the opposite purpose to the one professed by the signatories: it’s bound to diminish the rights Englishmen have enjoyed for centuries.

Really, the 1,000 idiots who signed the petition should take a remedial course in historical, political and legal literacy before bothering themselves with such matters.

However, they obviously don’t need a remedial course in demagoguery: “Human rights are universal – they apply to all of us simply because we are human.”

The first time this worthy idea was expressed in this kind of language was in 1789, and the language was French (actually, the Americans were first, but they had got the idea from the philosophes). By way of punctuation, nearly a million Frenchmen were then murdered, tens of thousands of churches were razed or defaced, and France began to pounce on everyone within reach, losing another two million people in a succession of aggressive wars.

This isn’t a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, but a causal progression. For whenever a government seeks to enforce the universal rights protecting the congenital goodness of its subjects, it inevitably acquires the urge to kill them all.

People always fall short of the loftier expectations, and operating the guillotine is an excellent way to express one’s disappointment.

I’d suggest another remedial course for the 1,000-odd idiots: theology. They’d benefit from learning how related issues were handled in various books that have evidently escaped their attention, from the Bible to Summa Theologiae. Alternatively, Google natural law, chaps. See if it rings a bell.

“[The Human Rights Act] protects women fleeing from domestic violence,” proceeds the letter. In other words, before 1998, when this pernicious act was passed, a bleeding woman running down the street with her thuggish husband in hot pursuit had no protection whatsoever.

A policeman, should he have happened to observe the scene, would have been powerless to intercede. “Sorry, love,” he would have said. “You’re on your own. We haven’t yet signed the Human Rights Act. So run faster.”

“It makes it safer to be gay…” Same situation here. Presumably until 1998 it had been legal to pummel homosexuals into a bloody pulp. It’s only thanks to the Act that they can now walk the aisle in perfect safety. It’s amazing that Britain managed to legalise homosexuality in 1967, all on her own.

“The Human Rights Act brought home to us the rights we have under the European Convention on Human Rights, enabling us to hold public authorities to account in our own country.” Absolutely. Until 1998 public authorities in England had been blissfully unaccountable.

The authors clearly haven’t heard of the great ancient charters aimed to protect the individual from the despotism of the rulers. The Charter of Liberties (1100) and Magna Carta (1215) were only the culmination of this development; its beginnings go back centuries earlier.

I suggest that on 15 June, when the rest of us celebrate the 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta, the signatories to this letter raise a glass to the Human Rights Act instead. May I suggest bromide as the beverage? These people are much too excitable for their own good.

“We urge you not to roll back our hard-won human rights,” they plead at the end. Well, by the looks of it, the right to idiocy is still held sacred in some quarters.

 

The arithmetic of Ireland’s homomarriage referendum has worked out exactly as I predicted the other day, which partly redeemed my prophetic powers in my own eyes, if no one else’s.

About 35 per cent of the Irish still follow ecclesiastical guidance in such matters, while 65 per cent voted Yes. I don’t know if there was an overlap between the two groups, but I doubt it. In any case it couldn’t have been large.

Observing crowds of homosexual men and women engaged in celebratory public foreplay with drag queens all over Dublin, Ireland’s equalities minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin couldn’t contain his paroxysms of joy.

He rushed to the computer and tweeted: “Ireland hasn’t just said ‘Yes’… Ireland has said ‘F*** YEAAHHHH!’” If so, and one has no reason to doubt the comments of a  man whose finger is on the pulse of progress, Ireland ought to have her mouth washed out with soap.

Nevertheless she should be congratulated on being governed by men/women/other who express themselves with such elegance and panache. Then again, the jubilation fits the cause.

I have pointed out on numerous occasions that a government boasting the post of equalities minister is ipso facto tyrannical, not to mention cavalier in its frittering of public money. I think Ireland should shut that ministry down and move Mr Ó Ríordáin up to the post of foreign minister, where his eloquence could find a proper outlet.

One can just see him asking a US Secretary of State “What part of f*** off don’t you understand?” He could also test the mental agility of his French counterpart Laurent Fabius by suggesting that he take the words ‘off’ and ‘f***’ and arrange them in the right order.

It fell upon Sinn Fein Gerry Adams to put the victory into a broad political context by stating that this was “a huge day for equality”.

Having scrubbed his hands clean after abusing them by shaking Prince Charles’s hand, IRA Gerry expressed the hope that this was but one battle in a never-ending war: “I also think that given that the government parties were pressing quite rightly for equality in this issue then we need equality in other issues – we need equality in social issues, economic issues, we need everything to be equality.”

Except for the bloody Prods, Gerry must have muttered under his breath, but was clever enough not to say it out loud. It’s good to see that the noble cause of equality all around has such distinguished champions who display not only self-restraint but also stylistic mastery.

The same issue wasn’t put to a referendum in the UK, for Dave belied his reputation for shilly-shallying by pushing it through Parliament without resorting to plebiscite. Some might say that such leadership qualities are worthy of a better use, but at least we were spared some of carnal festivities all over London.

I don’t think Ireland should rest on her laurels. Once some of the rainbow flags draping Dublin have been removed, the country’s equality-happy government, with IRA’s support, should open debate on another burning issue demanding speedy resolution.

Should the traditional slogan ‘Up the Republic!’ be changed to ‘Up the Republic’s!’? This is another idea whose time has come, and one hopes it’ll come to a popular vote.

I can’t vote in Irish referenda, but if I could, I’d reply with a resounding “F*** YEAAHHHH!” This would make me sound ministerial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As our re-elected PM embarks on a whirlwind tour behind EU lines, one hopes all those little-Englander vermin in Ukip feel suitably ashamed of themselves.

For, contrary to their vitriol, Dave has drawn a list of iron-clad conditions for Britain to stay in the EU, regardless of the results yielded by the referendum our re-elected government has promised.

Should the EU wisely choose to comply with these conditions, Britain will regain her sovereignty, and never mind the referendum:

1) The EU undertakes not to refer to the euro as ‘the single currency’. Henceforth, it shall be known as ‘the solitary currency’, ‘soccur’ for short.

2) The British pound shall be pegged to the soccur only under duress and definitely not in the next six months.

3) The French undertake not to refer to the English as ‘les rosbifs’. Instead the English shall be known as ‘les hautes cuisines’.

4) The EU will let Britain decide how many Australian-American billionaires she will allow to own British newspapers and TV stations.

5) Britain shall likewise decide how many Russian, Chinese and Arab oligarchs she admits, provided they have not secured EU citizenship beforehand.

6) When applied to Britain, Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen shall be known as Declaration of the Rights of Man/Woman/Other and of the Subject.

7) The Germans undertake to keep their bloody beach towels to themselves.

8) Britain’s right to buy as many German cars as she wishes shall in no way be curtailed.

9) Ditto, Britain’s right to buy French wine – even though our own Kent product is clearly superior.

10) Ditto, Britain’s right to buy anything continental at the asking price.

11) The EU undertakes not to send in its own police to arrest British subjects unless it must.

12) The EU shall not impose on Britain more than 60 (sixty) per cent of her new laws, give or take a few.

13) Those Eastern Europeans promise to stay in their own countries, crossing their hearts and hoping to die.

14) Britain shall be allowed to sign unilateral trade treaties with whomever she pleases, provided the EU does not mind.

15) The EU undertakes at least to match HMS’s funds required to launch a sensible campaign for the In vote in the upcoming referendum, provided it indeed upcomes.

16) The EU undertakes to adopt as its official anthem the British football chant ‘If It Wasn’t for England, You’d All Be Krauts’, adding the words ‘And Now You Will Be’ at the end.

17) The EU shall replace the words ‘ever-closer union’ with ‘ever-tighter union’.

18) Angela Merkel and members of her government undertake not to end their public speeches with ‘Gott Strafe England’ or any shout that includes the word ‘Sieg’.

19) The French shall take an enthusiastic part in celebrating the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June.

20) The EU undertakes not to tell us how much deficit we can run. We will borrow as much as we bloody well like.

21) No continental drinking establishment shall henceforth ban British stag and/or football parties.

22) Britain shall retain the right to abbreviate Jean-Claude Juncker’s name to ‘Junk’.

23) The Queen shall be allowed to renounce her EU citizenship, thereby becoming stateless.

24) Those Europeans who speak what they call English shall abandon their pathetic attempts to imitate the American accent. To provide a reliable guide to proper English pronunciation, EastEnders shall be taught as a compulsory subject in all continental schools.

We must all admire the diplomatic skill with which Dave has painted those Eurofederalists into a corner.

If they accept these conditions, on pain of Britain’s leaving the EU, nothing will ever again compromise our sovereignty. And if they reject them, Dave will think up some new ones.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love Thy Neighbour, says a poster prominently displayed in Dublin. A welcome reminder, one would think, except that this Biblical fiat appears under a secular one: VOTE YES. In tomorrow’s homomarriage referendum, that is.

I don’t know, it may be just me, but the two fiats seem to be at odds. I’m not sure that sexual perversion sanctified by the state is quite what either Testament meant by loving one’s neighbour. Then again, love comes in many different shapes, and scriptural texts do leave room for interpretation.

Offering it is one of the functions of the Church, and it still hasn’t wavered in its opposition to this particular step in the march of progress. But the Church no longer wields the same influence in a historically pious Ireland: only 35 per cent admit to following ecclesiastical guidance in such matters.

It may be a pure coincidence, but the polls are predicting a Yes vote of 65 per cent. Since 65 is the balance between 100 and 35, arithmetic indicates where the watershed runs in the Republic.

The country has come a long way since 1993, when she finally bowed to the diktat of the European Court of Human Rights and decriminalised homosexuality. Nonetheless, the distance Ireland has travelled towards perdition still remains somewhat shorter than elsewhere in Europe.

True, the referendum on divorce delivered a Yes vote in 1995. But the government still hasn’t called a referendum on liberalising abortion, which is wise. Why fight a battle you’re likely to lose? Let’s wait until the influence of the Church has dropped down to zero, which it will soon enough under the sage guidance of the European Union.

This, in spite of the EU supposedly being a direct descendant of the Holy Roman Empire, a claim often made by the more fanatical and less clever fans of European federalism.

Well, not quite. The Empire’s adhesive was Christianity, whereas the EU’s is brought together by Germany’s urge to conquer Europe by peaceful means. This is underpinned by France’s fear that Germany might change her mind and again opt for the old way.

Still, it isn’t the EU that’s responsible for originating most of the existential ugliness of modernity. Starting from the counterintuitive pronouncement that all men are created equal, that distinction belongs to the USA by right (or wrong, as the case may be).

Step by step, that dubious idea has degenerated into political correctness, the most pernicious tyranny of our time. Part and parcel of it is the conviction that all men are created equally entitled to marry one another.

Since America is the natural leader and flag bearer of modernity, Europe is often eager to push her subversive notions to their logical extreme, with Holland tending to lead the way. And when Europeans are a bit slow on the uptake, Americans are increasingly eager to lend a helping hand.

As they have done in this case, in the shape of a massive transfer of funds to the Yes campaign and other LGBT causes in Ireland. Specifically, the US charity The Atlantic Philanthropies has pumped £25 million into four influential organisations: GLEN (the Gay and Lesbian Network), Marriage Equality, TENI (the transgender Equality Network Ireland) and LGBT Diversity.

Has the money been well spent? The columnist Bruce Arnold thinks so: “In my opinion, The Atlantic Philanthropies has bought this referendum.”

The other side doesn’t disagree. Brian Sheenan, director of GLEN, isn’t bashful about giving credit where it’s due: “Atlantic’s commitment to GLEN allowed GLEN to follow the strategy of building a majority from a minority…”

Broden Giambrone, director of TENI, explains that “Atlantic’s multi-year commitment allows for TENI to employ core staff, which was unprecedented in the trans community.”

And Marriage Equality’s director Healy puts it in a nutshell: “…We have unleashed that potential and that passion that the supporters of marriage equality have, but more than that we’ve been able to channel it into political change.”

While congratulating the Irish on the upcoming political change, I feel sorry they have to rely on American support to promote the noble cause of debauching marriage. We in England managed to do it all by ourselves.

But then we are blessed with an all-powerful domestic resource, called DAVE (Destroy Any Vestige of Ethics).

 

Belfast-based Christian baking company Ashers (so named after a Biblical tribe of Israel boasting many skilled bakers) got off easy. A paltry £500 fine plus court costs? I’m amazed the bakers weren’t all sent down. Or, better still, put down.

Their crime is much worse than, say, burglary or mugging. For such indiscretions only hurt individuals, whereas the Christian bakers struck against the very essence of modernity. Its essence, as I see it, is an unquenchable desire to uproot the last vestiges of Christendom and then sow the field with coarse salt to make sure nothing ever grows again.

Those wishing to contest this observation could do worse than to consider the Asher case.

‘Gay rights’ fanatic Gareth Lee staged a fiendish, well-timed provocation by asking the bakers known for their staunch Christian beliefs to put the slogan ‘Support gay marriage’ on the cake he ordered.

The provocation was fiendish because Lee knew they’d refuse. It was well-timed because Northern Ireland is at present debating the issue of homomarriage. Lee and his fellow fanatics clearly felt that the ensuing publicity would serve their cause well, and they were proved right.

Homosexuality no longer has much to do with merely an act of sticking certain body parts into receptacles not manifestly designed for that purpose. It has become a political movement, a sort of cross between sexual democracy and homosocialism.

Campaigners for homomarriage like Gareth Lee – or, for that matter, our re-elected PM – are the shock troops of the movement, the present-day answer to Hitler’s SA or Mao’s Red Guards. They might as well call themselves Pink Guards and, if Peter Tatchell runs with this designation, I’ll demand royalties.

The less said about these gentlemen the better. What’s truly worrying is that the law plays along. Perversion of justice seems to be in synch with the sexual variety.

For the wronged Mr Lee immediately ran to the good offices of the Equality Commission, which was more than happy to file a discrimination lawsuit on his behalf. Such parasite organisations couldn’t possibly exist in civilised society, and even in our uncivilised one they still have to earn their keep somehow.

The worst was still to come. For Belfast County Court district judge Isobel Brownlie ruled that the bakers “have unlawfully discriminated against the plaintiff on grounds of sexual discrimination… This is direct discrimination for which there can be no justification.”

Given our tradition of common law, this ruling establishes a precedent that in one fell swoop wipes out many civil liberties the Brits have taken for granted since God was young.

One of them is freedom of religion, which for devout Christians means more than just freedom of worship. It also means organising their life in accordance with the moral demands of their faith.

For such people homosexuality is a deadly sin, and legalising homomarriage means that the state endorses, institutionalises and thereby promotes the deadly sin.

Hence the Ashers bakers have not only the right to refuse to participate in the propaganda of homomarriage, but indeed the duty to do so. They have to regard reneging on this duty as a sacrilege that might jeopardise their salvation.

It has to be said that theirs isn’t some obscure cult but the religion that lies at the foundation of our constitution. To prove this point, this perversion of justice occurred in the same week in which our new MPs swore this oath of allegiance:

“I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.”

Another liberty violated here is that of enterprise. A privately owned company ought to be able to decide which custom to accept and which to turn down – within reason.

The qualification is important here, for refusing to serve, say, Jews, blacks or Muslims in a restaurant is sheer savagery, which ought to be discouraged with or without law. Members of such groups don’t ipso facto violate any moral traditions of our society.

However, propaganda of aberrant sexuality does – again whatever the law says. To demand that pious Christians actively participate in it denies them not only religious but also commercial freedom.

This affront is aimed not against religion in general, but specifically against Christianity. If you doubt this point, I suggest you stage a little private experiment.

Go to a Muslim bakery in Brick Lane and ask them to decorate a cake with the inscription “Support Israel”. Then, if you are still in one piece, ask an Orthodox Jewish baker in Golders Green to put “Support Hamas” on his cake. When they refuse, ask the Equality Commission to sue both businesses for discrimination. See what they say.

The Asher bakers should count themselves lucky. A few years from now a crime like this will surely bring about a custodial sentence. That is, if the country is still there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

My friend Vlad is working hard to make sure I never run out of subjects. At a time when Dave has gone quiet, Vlad manfully steps in to fill the gap.

Actually, neither Dave nor any other Western politician possesses the epic élan with which Vlad so generously provides material for my vituperation.

For example, I can’t for the life of me imagine the somewhat wimpish Dave donning full ice-hockey gear and scoring eight goals in an exhibition match against Canadian professionals who have just won the World Championship in Sochi.

Yet Vlad has done just that, and at the venerable age of 62. Not just a judo master, tiger tamer, long-distance swimmer, hunter, lawyer, intrepid KGB spy, musician, national leader, bare-torso horse rider – a hockey star too. Verily I say unto you, Vlad’s picture ought to be in the dictionary next to the entry for ‘Renaissance man’.

Or rather pre-Renaissance, according to his admirers who have just unveiled near St Petersburg a bust of Vlad as a Roman emperor. Vlad is depicted wearing a toga adorned with Russia’s escutcheon.

The style is neo-Classicist, favoured by Vlad’s role model Stalin. The facial expression is dreamily stern, making Vlad look like a cross between Caligula and Nero, surely not the desired effect. He should have been sculpted to look more like Caesar, whose martial exploits he is clearly out to emulate.

Whichever emperor Vlad sees as his pre-Stalin role model, one wonders how long before the Russians march around the bust, chanting “Ave Vlad, morituri te salutant”.

And speaking of morituri, Vlad suffered a minor setback the other day though, when two Spetsnaz commandos, Cap. Yerofeeyev and Sgt. Alexandrov, were captured behind enemy lines, meaning deep in the Ukrainian territory.

When interrogated, they revealed the details of their search-and-destroy mission, providing yet again incontrovertible proof that it’s the Russian regular army that’s raping the Ukraine, not some mythical local enthusiasts acquiring tanks and AA missiles at local hardware shops.

Vlad’s Defence Ministry hastily claimed that the two commandos weren’t on active service. Well, the service didn’t look passive to me, considering that the two gentlemen carried current army ID, their mission was terrorist, and they shot several Ukrainian officers when being taken. If I were them, I’d be rather upset by being disowned in such a dismissive manner by the government they serve so bravely.

That takes us from Luhansk, Ukraine to Weybridge, Surrey, where a young and healthy Russian oligarch Alexander Perepelichny collapsed and died while jogging in 2012. Perepelichny’s heart had been no doubt weakened by his grassing up the Russian participants in the Magnitsky case, and also in the newly traditional Russian pastime of money laundering.

(For details, see my article posted at the time http://alexanderboot.com/content/surrey-jogger-could-run-he-couldn%E2%80%99t-hide.)

Anticipating the onset of heart trouble, Mr Perepelychny had taken out a multi-million life insurance policy, with the attendant medical examination missing the fatal cardiac defect. At the same time he had reported multiple death threats, which must have contributed to his ill health.

Death by natural causes, ruled Surrey police at the time. However, the newly released results of the chemical analysis show that the grass died by, well, grass. I suppose this does qualify as a natural death in that it was caused by a naturally occurring substance.

The culpable plant is called gelsemium, which has several varieties, all highly toxic, all found only in the remote areas of China. In the spirit of the burgeoning Sino-Soviet alliance, the Chinese kindly make their native flora available to Russia’s emergent industry, contract killing.

Vlad evidently has a taste for exotic methods of chastising those whose loyalty he has reason to doubt. Polonium and gelsemium are so much more elegant than a bullet in a dark alley, and, on a more practical note, so much harder to detect.

Yet one has to admit regretfully that Vlad still hasn’t quite matched the fecund imagination of his North Korean counterpart, who dispatches his enemies either by ripping them to shreds with AA machineguns or by using wild beasts for that purpose.

Vlad has no shortage of either, and in fact he has been photographed on numerous occasions bear-back [sic] riding and whispering into a tiger’s ear. A suspicion grows that he was briefing the animal on a mission designed to show that anything Kim can do, Vlad can do better.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

In good hands, and none are better than those moved by a journalist’s brain, a technically accurate quote can lie as successfully as a made-up one.

Hence the quote “John can make any shop girl…” is legally unimpeachable but ethically mendacious if the full sentence was “John can make any shop girl laugh.”

Now it’s the Pope’s turn to find himself at the receiving end of such sleight of hand. For His Holiness didn’t call Mahmoud Abbas ‘an angel of peace’, as is universally reported by every paper I’ve seen.

The Pope did use the phrase when talking to the Palestinian chieftain, but it was an expression of hope, not a statement of fact. This is what His Holiness actually said: “May the angel of peace destroy the evil spirit of war. I thought of you: May you be an angel of peace.”

Along with faith and charity, hope is of course a principal Christian virtue, going back to three martyred saints. Peace is also among important Christian desiderata. The Pope was thus speaking within the remit of his job, although, in our secular world, one may argue that vesting the hope for peace in Abbas betokens touching naivety.

After all, since 1961 he has been a member of Fatah, a patently terrorist organisation, where he first earned his spurs by channelling the funds used to finance the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games.

Neither does Abbas’s record at the Palestinian Authority point at his inclination towards pacifism, as the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians suggest.

However, one of the requirements for Christian ministry is the belief that no one is irredeemable because we have all been redeemed. Therefore I, for one, find nothing objectionable in the Pope’s expression of hope, much as I suspect it’s misplaced.

That, alas, is more than one can say for the Vatican’s announcement that it will soon sign a treaty recognising ‘the State of Palestine’, the first time this term will have been used in an official document.

This effectively cuts Israel out of the process that can conceivably end in her obliteration. Understandably the announcement has caused much consternation in Israel, where Pope Francis is widely regarded as a friend of the Jews.

In fact, writing in the Holy See’s Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope says: “We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked… Dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus’s disciples.”

The Pope’s whole CV shows that this statement came from the heart. Unfortunately in His Holiness this organ seems to house not only philo-Semitism but also a leftward political slant, with its attendant affection for ‘national liberation’.

The two are in conflict, and one hopes Pope Francis finds a resolution in the city of God (Civitas Dei) rather than in the secular realm ruled by ‘the prince of this world’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allow me to remind you of the facts, on the assumption they’ve been buried under the avalanche of politicised verbal rubble.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a disease that, if left untreated, will leave the sufferer with an average life expectancy of about 10 years.

AIDS can be successfully controlled with anti-retroviral drugs that are as effective as they are dear. But the value of a human life can’t be weighed against a few quid, or rather up to 25,000 of them, which is, give or take a few thousand, the annual cost of such therapy.

So far we’ve stayed within the realm of medical or, if you will, medico-economic facts. With any other disease, this is where we’d remain.

But AIDS isn’t just any old disease, and HIV isn’t just any old virus. For this organism attacks not only the immune system but also every precept of our multi-culti PC culture of share, care, be aware.

It has been known since AIDS first became fashionable that the disease has a pronounced anti-homosexual bias, nowadays known as homophobia. Without going into unsavoury graphic detail, HIV is typically (at first, almost solely) transmitted through amorous practices seldom favoured by straight men and, due to certain anatomical limitations, never by women.

This means that, while all progressive mankind celebrates homosexuality as a perfectly valid ‘lifestyle’, equal to the hetero kind socially and superior to it aesthetically, one biological organism insists on indulging in what my Texas friends used to call fag bashin’.

When this medicalised homophobia was first established, progressive mankind’s initial reaction was to deny that HIV had any homosexual bias. Much evidence was suppressed – until there was too much of it to suppress without losing all credibility.

Progressive mankind had to regroup then and give the matter some serious thought. Fine, they said, AIDS kills homosexuals. Now who else does so, or rather would love to, given the slightest chance?

Correct. All those homophobic, sexist, racist, misogynistic reactionaries who collectively add up to what Tony Blair so aptly called ‘the forces of conservatism’, from which he had proudly ‘liberated… the extraordinary talent of the British people… to create a model 21^st-century nation’.

This observation could then be easily parlayed into a course of action. A fight against AIDS was no longer a medical challenge. It became a form of political struggle.

Though only deeply deranged fanatics go so far as to blame the ‘conservative establishment’ for having synthesised the virus deliberately, many make such allegations syllogistically.

The Hegelian syllogism works like a charm. Thesis: HIV hates homosexuals. Antithesis: so does the conservative establishment. Synthesis: ergo, it’s all the conservatives’ fault.

Flaming passion serves to plug the obvious logical gap, and passion, real or trumped up, is what progressive mankind has aplenty. It has also gradually acquired that powerful tool of all tyrants: control of language.

Hence they are able to insist that, while people dying of, say, cancer or multiple sclerosis are to be pitied, those dying of AIDS are to be sanctified. Their names must be entered into the martyrology of other victims of the conservative establishment: racial minorities, women, Muslims et al.

At a time when doctors routinely refuse to treat smokers because their diseases are caused by behavioural bloody-mindedness, no one is allowed as much as to suggest that a behavioural change is the most reliable way of keeping HIV at bay.

At the same time billions in whatever currency you care to name have been channelled out of research into, say, cancer and multiple sclerosis and into AIDS. This had an overall negative effect on mortality, but it wasn’t just about saving lives – it was about saving victims of conservatism.

No politician can now say anything along the lines of what I’ve said so far and hope to keep his career. Suggesting that most cases of AIDS are the sufferers’ own fault is a combination of sacrilege and suicide note.

It’s in this context that one can understand Douglas Carswell’s comments on Nigel Farage’s attack on health tourism. Those HIV carriers, said Mr Farage, come to Britain specifically to sponge off the NHS to the tune of £25K a year, give or take.

Mr Carswell, Ukip’s only MP, agreed that health tourism is a bad thing, but took exception to Mr Farage’s illustration. Using HIV for that purpose was, according to the parliamentary mouthpiece of true conservatism, ‘ill-advised’.

Why, pray tell? HIV is a better example than, say, cancer or multiple sclerosis, because not only is it comparably expensive to treat, but it’s also contagious. Predictably so, because many HIV carriers, especially those from places where AIDS is most prevalent, are less than prudent in keeping their condition to themselves.

This is a serious problem, and a deadly aspect of our overall immigration disaster. After all, many of our new arrivals come from sub-Saharan Africa, where 25 million people carry HIV. Africa in general, while having only about 15 per cent of the world’s population, accounts for 69 per cent of the world’s AIDS deaths.

The way to help those people is for HMG not to invite them here but to give pharmaceutical companies incentives to send anti-retroviral drugs to Africa at greatly reduced prices. What’s ill-advised is giving them access to Britain’s population in general and the NHS in particular.

Mr Carswell knows this as well as I or even Mr Farage. What he objected to wasn’t the substance of the argument, but the blasphemous disregard for the creed of share, care, be aware.

This means that the PC tyrants have won: they’ve imposed the terms of debate and can punish anyone for lack of compliance. If even our supposedly conservative politicians offer abject, supine surrender, what hope do we have? Don’t answer that.