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If you still have doubts that the world has gone mad, this will dispel them. The American firm Wilder Publication has seen fit to attach the following disclaimer to the title page of Kant’s three Critiques in one volume:

“This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

What a relief; I’m wiping my brow even as we speak. It’s good to see that someone cares about the spiritual wellbeing of our children so much.

Today’s children, and I bet you didn’t know this, are falling over themselves to get their hands on a copy of The Critique of Pure Reason – and as to Practical Reason, why, there’s a veritable stampede under way.

My impression was that they read nothing but text messages with the vowels left out for the sake of brevity. I’m happy to see I was wrong: apparently their young souls weaned on Twitter are reaching out, categorically if not imperatively, for moral philosophy refracted through the Kantian critical method.

In that they are far ahead of, say, Leo Tolstoy who – as a young man, not a child – ruefully admitted in his diary: “I read Kant and understood next to nothing…” That’s progress for you – today’s tots have no such problems.

True enough, once their spiritual thirst has been slaked, their impressionable minds can be corrupted by such Kantian aphorisms as “The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.” Especially those who work for Wilder Publications, the old Prussian would have added had that firm existed at the time – but we must refrain from such unfair remarks.

We must, however, be united in our desire to protect our young from Kant’s subversive tirades. Why, if he uttered them today, Kant would find himself in a prison cell faster than you can say ‘incitement to racial hatred’.

In the same spirit we must hail the removal of Huckleberry Finn from most school libraries in America. All American literature may have come out of that book, as Hemingway believed, but we know better.

After all, that objectionable scribble features a central character named Nigger Jim. In a country where a government official has to apologise publicly for using the word ‘niggardly’, there’s no room for such offensive stuff.

Of course, rather than removing Huck Finn from their libraries, US educators could have edited the text slightly. They could have re-Christened Jim as, say, “the socioeconomically disadvantaged Afro-American victim of racial oppression James.”

No doubt they considered this option and rejected it on the grounds of compromised readability. Getting rid of an American classic was much easier.

Personally, the idea of bringing great works of literature and philosophy up to date appeals to me. For example, Kant’s entreaty sapere aude (dare to be wise) could acquire a new lease on life if modified to read “sapere Audi” (dare to drive expensive cars in London traffic).

As to Kant’s views on matters amorous, they wouldn’t pass muster in any modern class on sex education, which makes them downright dangerous.

For Kant that whole area was purely an academic construct, for he remained a virgin until his old age, when his disciples insisted he should experience some hanky-panky. The old man was left unimpressed: “So many hectic movements and nothing more.”

It was no doubt from such truncated experience that Kant objected to what he spiffily called ‘objectification’, using another person merely for pleasure (the German word is even longer and therefore weightier).

Sex, he wrote, ought to be allowed only when serving a higher purpose, such as marriage. “Taken by itself,” he opined, “sexual love is a degradation of human nature”.

How wonderful that today’s children know better. They’ve been taught that the only purpose of sex is sex, because that’s what people like, and whatever people like is cool. The very same Hemingway did say “if it feels good, it’s moral,” proving that he wasn’t entirely reactionary.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly that our innocent creatures, trained as they are from their pre-pubescent years in the more inventive ballistic possibilities of eroticism, must be protected from such antediluvian nonsense.

It has to be said that Kant wasn’t all bad. Specifically, our children should be invited to share his idea that it wasn’t God who created man but more or less vice versa. “God is not a creature outside me, but only my thought,” he wrote – and Richard Dawkins couldn’t have put it better.

Also, Kant’s views on the French Revolution are consonant with those of modern educators. “This revolution finds in the heart of all observers the kind of sympathy that borders on enthusiasm.” Obviously Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France wasn’t on Kant’s reading list – and neither should it be on our children’s.

Protecting children from what was bad in Kant while encouraging them to absorb what’s good, mainly agnosticism, is the way to go. Of course withdrawal is also possible, followed by a soul-warming bonfire. The Critiques would keep the flame going nicely, with the president of Wilder Publications on hand to stoke the fire.

I hope he’ll emigrate to England at some point. We need bright chaps like him to give our ‘educators’ a helping PC hand in guiding children through the perilous undercurrents of Kant. Those few children who know how to read, that is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I admire such refreshing courage so much, I’d vote for Nick – provided I could lose whatever intellectual and moral sense God gave me.

Nigel Farage and his deputy, Nick declared, rarely vote in the European Parliament, and even when they’re there, they “don’t stand up for British interests”.

Of course Nick himself has missed four out of five votes in the Commons, as Mr Farage countered immediately.

Now I can only guess why Nigel is a bit laid-back when it comes to casting his vote within a body that has no moral, intellectual, historical and – I’d suggest – legal right to exist.

Why Nick misses voting in a body that has all those rights galore I know for sure. He likes to play tennis (badly) at my club, where he’s often seen on weekday afternoons.

But this is neither here nor there. What I find fascinating is that Nick obviously sees himself – and his comic-book party – as a tireless fighter for British interests.

Frankly, I don’t know what he’d be doing differently if his aim were to destroy this country as a sovereign nation. As you know, the LibDems under Nick’s industrious leadership are dedicated to the noble task of turning Britain into a province (or rather several separate provinces) of the EU.

To wit: time after time, in between hitting inept tennis shots, Nick expresses a longing for joining the euro, this at a time when even a reasonably informed child knows that such a move would destroy the British economy instantly and probably irrevocably. Nick obviously thinks such a development would be in British interests, yet some may beg to differ.

But then Nick does say odd things at times, which is painful to see in a fellow tennis player. For example, he says he’s proud of his Russian ancestry, hoping his audience would be unfamiliar with the nature of his Russian lineage.

In fact it derives from the family of Moura Budberg, née Zakrevsky, who immediately after the Bolshevik revolution acted as the honey in numerous traps set by the OGPU to blackmail foreign visitors and keep an eye on Soviet dignitaries.

Practising the world’s oldest profession within the ranks of the world’s most diabolical organisation, Clegg’s ancestor had affairs with the British envoy Bruce Lockhart, the writers Maxim Gorky and H.G. Wells, and God knows who else.

I’m sure Nick knows all this and, if pressed, he’d agree that there isn’t much to be proud of. It’s just that his internationalist heart demands a claim to an international family background.

He isn’t proud of descending from the family of a secret-police whore. He’s proud of being an internationalist.

Nigel Farage is proud of other things. That’s why he treats the European Parliament with the contempt it deserves. “Our objective as MEPs is not to keep voting endlessly for more EU legislation and to take power away from Westminster,” he told the BBC.

Nigel Farage isn’t an MEP because he believes in European federalism. He’s an MEP because he wants to undermine the EU from inside. He’s Britain’s scout behind enemy lines, which is doubtless how he sees himself.

That explains why his voting record is only 50 percent. By contrast, Nick treats the British Parliament with the contempt it doesn’t deserve. That’s why his voting record in Westminster is a mere 22 percent. So whose scout is he, and how does he think the lines are drawn?

When the two go head to head in their televised debate, Nigel will wipe the floor with Nick. If he doesn’t, I’ll never buy him a pint.

 

 

 

 

My today’s article can be found on: revpetermullen.com

Another day, another interview with Israel National Radio, another penetrating question that goes right to the core of the matter: “How does Russia’s aggression against the Ukraine affect the world in general and America’s allies in particular?”

Since the interview kicked off at an ungodly hour of 5.30 am, my thinking was as sluggish as my voice was hoarse. Some afterthoughts are therefore in order, for the problem is vast.

Many nations count on America to defend them from bullies, yet America’s record in that area is at best mixed (which is not to say that ours is much better).

When President Wilson dragged the USA into the First World War, his aim was not just to defeat the Central European powers but – more important – to rid Europe of all traditional empires, including the British and the Russian with which America was ostensibly allied.

Wilson correctly surmised that their collapse would herald the advent of a new order spearheaded by America. That’s why he (and, to be fair, our own Lloyd George) welcomed both Russian revolutions of 1917, including the Bolshevik one.

Both countries offered only a token support to the White armies fighting to protect some semblance of civilisation in Russia. With the prescience we’ve learned to expect from our leaders, the dynamic duo reassured their electorates that, “Bolsheviks would not wish to maintain an army, as their creed is fundamentally anti-militarist.” Ergo, “There must be no attempt to conquer Bolshevik Russia by force of arms.”

This, even though the Whites, unlike the Bolsheviks, were prepared to honour Russia’s obligations and keep their troops fighting for the Allies. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, signed a separate peace with Germany, which was bound to cost the Allies numerous lives.

Not to worry. To the Wilsons and Lloyd Georges of this world, the war against Germany didn’t matter as much as the war for the world. For what Henry Luce described as ‘the American century’ to kick in, old empires had to go.

The British Empire managed to hang on by the skin of its teeth, but that unfortunate situation was corrected in the Second World War. Roosevelt clearly saw his mission in not just defeating the Axis powers, but also in ridding the world of the last bastion of traditional civilisation.

In that, Roosevelt’s desiderata overlapped with Stalin’s, but obviously not with Churchill’s. That’s why he objected to the terms on which America’s aid was offered during the Battle of Britain.

That victory was won at the expense of not only British lives but also Britain’s post-war economic prospects. Churchill knew this was coming: Britain, unlike Russia, had to pay for everything in cash, and IOUs (the last of which was paid off only in 2006) were accepted only grudgingly.

To keep up the payments, Britain had to sell all her overseas holdings and all her gold reserves. It was clear to Churchill that, even if the war were won, the Empire would be lost.

On 7 December, 1940, he wrote to Roosevelt, pleading that the brutally unsentimental terms on which American aid was being proffered would consign Britain to a position in which “after the victory was won with our blood and sweat, and civilisation saved, and the time gained for the United States to be fully armed against all eventualities, we should stand stripped to the bone. Such a course would not be in the moral or economic interests of either of our countries.” Roosevelt acknowledged receipt and promptly collected Britain’s last £50 million in gold.

After the war the Americans continued this pattern of treating their friends in an unfriendly manner. In 1956 the CIA-controlled Radio Free Europe issued a call to arms for Hungarian patriots fed up with Soviet domination. They promptly rose up in full expectation of American help, which never came.

Soviet tanks rolled in and massacred Hungarian youngsters, while Americans were busy saving the fascist regime of Nasser in Egypt from the British-French-Israeli invasion force.

One would think that others would heed the lesson, but Cuban anticommunist émigrés didn’t. Aghast at watching their country raped by Castro’s thugs, they joined an armed force being trained, equipped and financed by the CIA.

On 16 April, 1961, Brigade 2506 landed at Playa Girón on Bahía de Cochinos (the Bay of Pigs). Their chances of getting rid of the communists were odds-on. After all, the air support promised by the Kennedy administration would offset Castro’s numerical superiority and his tanks.

Yet again, however, the US administration got cold feet. In an act of egregious betrayal the promised air support was withdrawn at the last moment, and the Cuban freedom fighters were butchered on the beach.

Moving right along, apart from issuing a few empty threats, Americans didn’t bat an eyelid when Soviet tanks turned the Prague Spring into a long winter. Nor did they do anything to defend their staunch ally, the Shah of Iran, in 1979 when he was being ousted by the chaps who’re now plotting to bring the world to the brink of a nuclear disaster. And so forth, ad infinitum.

This is the context in which Putin’s aggression against the Ukraine ought to be viewed. Obama, Cameron et al have responded with the traditional weapons at their disposal: meaningless phrases and empty threats.

Dave went so far as to promise a boycott of the Sochi Paralympics – I bet that’ll make Putin break into a cold sweat. Obama and Kerry threatened to reduce the G8 to its former G7. They didn’t express any willingness to make up any subsequent deficit in gas that would ensue if Putin chose to turn off the tap on his supply pipe.

The deficit would be huge. France gets 14% of her gas from Russia, Italy 27%, Germany 36%, Austria 49%, Greece 76%, while the three Baltic republics plus Finland rely on Russia for 100% of their gas supply. Not to bore you with too many numerals I’ve left all other EU members out, but the point is made, don’t you think?

The whole situation sends a message to America’s allies, such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and – above all – Israel: Be afraid. Be very afraid, especially if you aren’t prepared to go it alone when the going gets tough.

My interviewer Tamar Yonah doesn’t seem to be afraid. On the contrary, she seems to believe that now Obama has shown his true colours, Israel will no longer feel obliged to follow America’s diktats.

Since under Obama’s sage guidance those diktats range from appeasement to virtual surrender to suicide, such courage is good news – provided Israel is strong enough to handle single-handedly such threats as Iran’s nuclear programme.

I pray she is; I fear she isn’t. One way or the other, Israel knows that Obama’s America isn’t necessarily a friend to be trusted.

The kind of affair I mean isn’t the coupling of bodies but the meeting of minds. When both minds are perverse, they run the risk of an awful affliction, a sort of mental AIDS (Acquired Intellectual Deficiency Syndrome).

Peter first went down on his knee in 2012, when he praised Col. Putin as the ‘strong leader’ he wished we had. In today’s Mail article, Peter, God bless his cotton socks, screams his love for Vladimir yet again.

Col. Putin, he says, is at odds with the West because he feels unloved. By us, that is. This is an injustice Peter has set out to correct, sticking out for his bit of rough.

Vladimir, according to his swain Peter, is like a murderer who, according to his lawyer, only killed because his Mummy was a whore, he never knew his Daddy and the flat-screen TV set in his room was only a 19-inch.

Thus the object of Peter’s affection is only raping the Ukraine the way he previously raped Chechnia, Georgia and his own people because “We have been rubbing Russia up the wrong way for nearly 25 years.”

Had we been rubbing Russia up the right way, Col. Putin wouldn’t be murdering everyone he dislikes, including, incidentally, dozens of Peter’s Russian colleagues. He wouldn’t have blown up blocks of flats in his own country to provoke aggression against Chechnia. He wouldn’t have turned Russia into a giant crime syndicate. And he wouldn’t have waged nuclear war in London by using polonium to murder Litvinenko.

Our lovelorn hero draws some interesting parallels. How is it, he complains, that we’re on good terms with China but not with Russia? That’s an easy question to answer and, if Peter’s burning love for Putin weren’t making him babble sweet nothings, he’d see it for himself.

First, ever since the so-called ‘collapse of the Soviet Union’ the West has been more than on good terms with Russia. It has been bending over backwards to accommodate her. Billions have been pumped into the country, with most of them settling in the private accounts of international gangsters, i.e. Col. Putin’s friends and proxies.

This vindicated the observation that foreign aid is the transfer of funds from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries, but then the late Lord Bauer was able to think straight – he wasn’t in ‘lurv’.

The West has been mollycoddling Russia, and specifically Col. Putin, with nothing short of spineless obsequiousness. Yet in every conflict in which the West is involved it invariably finds Russia on the opposite side.

Putin’s Russia has been arming, either openly or secretly, every disgusting regime you can think of. When this is done secretly, Col. Putin deals with every whistleblower in his customary manner. Thus the Kommersant reporter Ivan Safronov was defenestrated in 2007 for exposing Russia’s secret supplies of arms to Iran and Syria. And you don’t think all of Iran’s nuclear know-how came from France, do you?

True, China is no friend of ours either, but at least, over the last couple of decades she has been behaving in a reasonably friendly manner, mainly by eagerly turning herself into the West’s source of cheap labour. It may all come to grief later, and I fear it will, but the West’s dealings with China are based not on love but on a cold-blooded calculation of costs and benefits.

Vodka apart, the only thing Russia supplies to the West is the stuff that comes out of the ground, and it’s a wasting asset. In anticipation of the time when the asset has been wasted, Russia has been using her oil revenues to arm herself to the teeth.

Not only is Russia the dominant military force in Europe, but it’s clearly on the way to being able to match up to NATO globally, especially in view of the West’s demob-happy disarmament.

If Peter’s parallel with China is spurious, the one he draws between Scotland and the Ukraine is frankly ignorant. “Imagine how you would feel if Russia’s Foreign Minister turned up at SNP rallies in Edinburgh, backing Scottish independence,” he invites.

There’s a salient difference here, Peter. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, and has been for 300 years. The Ukraine, on the other hand, became an independent country in 1991 and wishes to stay that way. Unless this escaped Peter’s attention, she’s no longer part of the Soviet Union.

True, there’s little in the Ukraine’s history to suggest she can stay independent for ever. It’s also true that she joined the Russian Empire voluntarily 360 years ago, for fear of suffering the same atrocities at Poland’s hands as she herself had perpetrated on the Jews (Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s record of anti-Semitic massacres stood unchallenged until Hitler).

But the Ukraine has earned her chance at least to try – God knows she has suffered enough at Russia’s hands, mainly courtesy of Col. Putin’s sponsoring organization.

Now that we’re in the business of parallels, I’d like to indulge in one that works much better. Imagine how you’d feel if it were 1968, the same 23 years since the collapse of Nazi Germany as have elapsed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Imagine further that Germany’s government is made up of either career criminals or former SS and SD officers led by an Obersturmbannführer (an equivalent of Putin’s KGB rank).

This government openly refuses to atone for Hitler’s crimes, trying to rehabilitate Hitler and portray him as mainly a stern but effective manager (as Putin’s government is doing with Stalin).

Germany’s leader is publicly proud of his SS past (as Putin is proud of his KGB career: “There’s no such thing as ex-KGB. This is for life.”). He regards the defeat of Nazi Germany as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” (as Putin regards the collapse of the Soviet Union).

Under his tutelage Germany is committed to rebuilding the Third Reich by either bribing or forcing its former parts to rejoin Germany (as Putin is doing with the former Soviet republics). Even as we speak, it’s launching yet another aggressive war (as Putin is doing in the Ukraine).

Lest the West protest too vociferously, Germany, already the world’s second greatest nuclear power, is rebuilding her military muscle to its erstwhile strength (as Putin is doing in Russia).

So how would you feel? More to the point, how would Peter feel? One suspects that he’d scream bloody murder, demanding that the West unite to repel the evil, by force of arms if necessary.

But Russia wasn’t Nazi; she was communist as Peter himself was as a young but already mature adult. So he’s upset that the West is trying – feebly, it has to be said – to “detach Ukraine from Russia and draw her into the EU orbit, knowing very well that this would infuriate Moscow”.

Infuriate Moscow? Can’t do that, perish the thought.

Peter, Peter, Peter, such a sensible lad on most other issues. Apparently, to paraphrase his love interest, “there’s no such thing as” ex-communist. Once in, never out. No doubt, when the Ukraine is first raped and then murdered, Peter will dance on her grave, his arm tenderly embracing Col. Putin’s waist.

Seems like Angela Merkel hasn’t reached the age of consent yet.

I’m not using the word in the same sense in which Patricia ‘Eight’s Too Late’ Hewitt uses it, and nor am I hinting at any impropriety in the relationship between Frau Merkel and Dave.

Actually I could if I wanted to: pasted all over the papers are pictures of Dave kissing Angie on the cheek – though not the same Angie’s cheek that Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has accused Dave of kissing as a sum total of his policy.

On the other hand, the same pictures show Angie’s strained expression and her successful attempt to keep her lips out of the way. So even if Dave harbours indecent thoughts about Angie’s cheeks, wherever on her body they could be found, she won’t encourage him.

No, it’s not like that at all. Dave simply wants to be Angie’s friend. More to the point, he wants Angie to be his friend. Because friends help each other out of a bind, that’s what friendship is all about.

“My love!” said Dave. “Liebchen! I want you! I need you! I can’t have any life – any political life – without you! Please consent to be my friend! Meine Freundin! Give me a sign, a teensy-weensy sign that you’re relenting. One sign, or perhaps two or three?”

“Nein,” said Angie.

“Nine signs? Even better!” Dave put his hand on Angie’s beefy arm and reached for her cheek again (her facial cheek, that is, whatever that dastardly Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says).

“Nein, dummkopf,” winced Angie pushing Dave aside. “N-e-i-n spells nein. Zat’s ze German for no. No signs. None. Zilch. Bupkes. Nichts.”

“But Lieschen,” insisted Dave, showing off his fluent German. “Can’t you see I’m in dire straits? I need you to love me. No one else does. Boys and girls who live in the left wing say I don’t love you enough. Those in the right wing say I love you too much. And then all those Europeans land in Britain like bluebottles on a warm cowpat…”

 “Was ist das?” demanded Angie, sounding like a stern mistress – school mistress, that is.

“Well, you see, Liebchen,” explained Dave. In the last election I promised to ‘slash net migration by tens of thousands’.”

“Sehr gut!” smiled Angie. “Das ist a bloody gut idea. Zey come, zey collect benefits, ze economy goes kaput.”

“Yes, well, it does indeed,” agreed Dave ruefully. “Except I haven’t.”

“You haven’t vhat?”

“Slashed the damn thing, that’s what. In fact, last year net migration went up by a third.”

“Not my problem,” replied Angie firmly. “Talk to ze Nigerian Chancellor. Or Indian. Vy me?”

“Well, there’s the rub, Liebchen…”

“You’re not rubbing me, you Irregeführter… zat’s pervert to you….”

“No, Liebling, I mean that’s the problem. You see, net migration from your EU has gone up even more, by forty percent. We must do something about that blasted free movement of labour…”

“Labour is freely moving into Downing Street,” quipped Angie with the wit for which her compatriots are so justly famous. Dave made himself chuckle politely.

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “I need to do something about it. Or rather to be seen to be doing something. That clown Nigel Farage is braying for my blood, that cadaver Vince is being sarcastic, and as to my parliamentary party, oy vey…”

“Zat’s not Deutsch,” said Angie. “Zat’s Jüdisch.”

“Well, you know what I mean. If you don’t show your love immediately, pigs will fly before I’m re-elected.”

“Schweinen don’t fly,” corrected Angie.

“Exactly. That’s a figure of speech. Means if I don’t win some concessions from you, Liebling, it’s lecture circuit for me in 2015…”

“Listen, Dave,” said Angie. “Du bist ein hübscher Junge and all zat… You’re a handsome boy, and I vish I could help… But, brace yourself Liebchen, I’m in love viz someone else. His name is José Manuel, and he tells me I can only love you if all 28 members get up and salute…”

“But they never will!”

“Afraid so,” commiserated Angie. ‘But ve can’t go against Ordnung. Ordnung is important. But you’re a clever Junge, you’ll think of somesing.”

Angie walked out, leaving Dave in despair. What is he going to do? A solution came to him in a flash. Dave took out his I-Phone and speed-dialled his Director of Communications.

“Craig? It’s Dave,” he said.

“The bitch gave me a run-around, just like you said she would. But tell you what, I’ve got an idea.

“Why don’t you get those hacks you’ve got on tap and tell them I was misquoted… Well, you know, during the campaign… Tell them I actually promised to boost net migration, not slash it. They just got it wrong…

“Yes, I know it’s thin… So think of something thick – and none of your stupid jokes about Frau Merkel.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Independent judiciary is the cornerstone of English polity, and has been for centuries. Technically speaking, it’s still independent, but of what exactly?

It’s true that a government official can’t easily tell a judge what sentence would be appropriate in a case. Nor is it likely that a judge would be told to favour either the prosecution or the defence.

However, as I suggested yesterday, our judges aren’t independent of a Zeitgeist that communicates with them in imperative ways.

One way is a direct, politically motivated diktat from the EU, whence 80 percent of our new laws come. Another is an equally political pressure applied by the legislature, which is not always driven by the purest of motives.

But perhaps the greatest weight of pressure comes from modern inversions of traditional certitudes. These may not undermine the institutional independence of our judiciary, but they certainly compromise its independence of thought.

Yesterday is a case in point. Last May two Muslim fanatics (who incidentally were raised as Christians by their Nigerian parents) hacked the Fusilier Lee Rigby to death, having first run him down with a car.

If you need a clinching argument for reinstating the death penalty, this is it. But even to suggest this is tantamount to branding oneself as a reactionary fossil who himself would be a prime candidate for the gallows, should that option become available.

For the first 1,965 years since the Incarnation, the inhabitants of these Isles never regarded the death penalty as a cruel and unusual punishment. It was understood that murder sent destructive waves throughout the community, and their amplitude could only be attenuated by just punishment commensurate with the crime.

Moreover, society believed that the death of the body wasn’t as catastrophic as perdition, the death of the soul. In this belief society followed the teaching of another famous, now largely forgotten, reactionary: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul…”

Before going to the block, a murderer was given a chance to repent, ask God for forgiveness and die with the hope that his soul would be saved – even though his body was no longer welcome to tread the earth.

It took the abandonment of Christ for mankind to grasp the true meaning of Christian morality. Since we now know that there’s no God, no soul and no afterlife, depriving the vilest of murderers of his earthly existence has become unthinkable: nothing is worse than physical death to modern barbarians.

They call it progress; I’d call it something else if decorum didn’t prohibit swearing in print. Be that as it may, these particular murderers were punished to the full limit of the law. One of them was given a whole-life tariff, the other will serve a minimum of 45 years.

So far so good, even though the European Court of Human Rights takes a dim view of life meaning life and it’s seldom bashful in letting its displeasure be known.

But then Mr Justice Sweeney had his say, explaining the verdict. He accused the defendants of betraying… their humanity? elementary decency? Judaeo-Christian morality on which our laws are based? their country?

Not at all. The evil murder constituted, according to the judge, “a betrayal of Islam and of the peaceful Muslim communities.”

One of the murderers screamed, “It is not a betrayal of Islam, you don’t know anything about Islam!” And you know what? He was right and the judge was wrong.

The other defendant reinforced his friend’s statement by shouting, “I swear by Allah: Britain, America will never have any safety!” Now that’s more like it. This is really in keeping with both the spirit and letter of Islam, of which Justice Sweeney is so woefully ignorant. To wit:

“Slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out… if they attack you there, then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.”

“Warfare is ordained for you, though it is hateful unto you.”

“Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.”

“Those who believe do battle for the cause of Allah; and those who disbelieve do battle for the cause of idols. So fight the minions of devil.”

There are 107 verses in the Koran unequivocally calling for the murder of infidels and apostates, plus another 41 preaching holy war and world conquest. True enough, there are also some other verses preaching peace.

But almost all those came early in the book, before Mohammed moved to Medina and hardened his position. According to Islamic law the later sanguinary verses ‘abrogate’ the earlier ones, invalidating them in case of a conflict.

Thus scriptural support for the judge’s assertion of the peaceful nature of Islam looks rather shaky, not to say nonexistent. Moreover, the blood-soaked history of the last 1,400 years shows that Muslims practise what Mohammed preached – you don’t need me to give you a list of clashes between Christendom and the Islamic world.

Why, 90 percent of armed conflicts currently under way anywhere in the world, from Indonesia and India to Africa and the Middle East, involve Islam. A betrayal of Islam, Your Honour? More likely faithfulness to it.

If queried, Justice Sweeney will probably admit he knows all this. After all, few people can advance to the bench without possessing some basic education. And yet he felt called upon to utter that nonsensical statement.

By the same token, few people can advance to the bench without possessing political skills. Prime among them is a weathervane’s sensitivity to which way the wind is blowing – and the current direction is strictly towards multi-culti political correctness.

All religions are equally good, which is to say equally irrelevant. Since some of them are manifestly religions of peace, they all have to be. Saying some aren’t may mean causing offence to a minority, and this is the worst crime there is.

In this instance, public pressure was such that his sensitive nose didn’t prevent Justice Sweeney from imposing the best available verdict. In a less publicised case, the result could be different – in many instances results already are different, with murderers getting derisory slaps on the wrist.

Which brings back the original question. Just how independent is our judiciary?

Allegiance is a two-way street: we owe it to the government, and in return the government owes us protection from external and internal enemies.

This simple arrangement has been around for a while. In a 1608 case it was stated that “[A]s the subject oweth to the King his true and faithful ligeance and obedience, so the Sovereign is to govern and protect his subjects…. Therefore it is truly said that protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem.”

This principle lies at the foundation of the state – each side has to hold its end of the arrangement, for otherwise it’s unclear why we need a state at all. It follows that any state that fails to protect us can no longer expect our loyalty.

Protection in this context means that the main – some will say the only truly legitimate – function of our government is to defend British subjects from foreign enemies and to protect each subject’s person and property from domestic criminals.

Enter the modern British government that clearly sees its role in merely extracting taxes from us without offering anything in return (at least to the taxpayers). This means the state is taking our money on false pretences. Put a simpler way, the state is a crook.

Two legal cases have put this point beyond much doubt this week. In one, Andrew Young, a man driven by civic responsibility, told a young chap not to ride his bicycle on the pavement.

Lewis Gill, the cyclist’s friend currently on parole for robbery, punched Mr Young without the slightest provocation and killed him. What do you think this pugilistic feat is worth in years of imprisonment (keep in mind we no longer have the death penalty, it’s just too awful for our delicate sensibilities even to contemplate)?

Life without parole? Life with a 40-year tariff? Sounds about fair? Not to the presiding Judge Cutler it didn’t.

“I bear in mind your early guilty plea,” he said to the murderer in his concluding statement. “I accept there is no pre-meditated element and provocation does exist,” he added.

Cutler then sentenced the murderous thug to four years. Counting the time already served, he’ll be out in two years – suitably pumped up in the prison gym and no doubt ready to kill someone else.

That’s it then. A mild reproach qualifies as provocation to murder. And a 20-year-old man throwing a punch strong enough to kill a victim didn’t pre-meditate to kill. Presumably this means he didn’t mount his bike fully intent to murder someone in passing. It just happened. We’d call it an act of God, except that Richard Dawkins has explained to us that no God exists.

It’s pure conjecture, but Judge Cutler may have seen other extenuating circumstances in his mind, clearly informed by another religion, that of political correctness.

The murderer was black and he was riding a bicycle. The former entitles him to compensation for all the wrongs done to his race by the victim’s, albeit in a rather distant past. The latter means he was interrupted in the act of saving our planet.

Though no explicit law exists yet spelling these out as mitigation, Judge Cutler must have been attuned to the osmotic emanations of the modern ethos. If you have another explanation for this gross miscarriage of justice, I’d like to hear it.

In a parallel development, the IRA murderer John Downey was arrested last year for the July 1982 nail bomb atrocity that killed four and injured 31 others.

But convicted terrorist Downey was told yesterday that he wouldn’t face prosecution because of a letter mistakenly sent to him in 2007 saying he wasn’t wanted by police – despite a warrant for his arrest existing since 1983.

This wasn’t a one-off error. Nearly 200 suspected IRA terrorists on the run have received  similar letters, effectively granting them an amnesty under a deal struck by Tony Blair and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

The deal meant surrender to terrorists, but hey – all those horrible things Oliver Cromwell wrought in Ireland in 1649 must entitle nail bombers to lenience in 2014.

On the one hand it’s good to see that HMG is capable of keeping its word, no matter how criminally obscene. On the other hand, one can’t help noticing that our leaders’ commitment to honesty isn’t always as manifest as in letting murderers go.

Why, we can safely assume that Tony-Dave et al lie whenever their lips are moving. I could keep you awake into wee hours of the morning just listing campaign promises they not only broke, but issued in the full knowledge they’d break them.

We don’t seem to hold this against them – that’s how the game is played, and only a naïve man will expect veracity from today’s lot. But by the same token we wouldn’t have held it against them had they broken the promise not to prosecute mass murderers.

If someone did blame them, they could justifiably plead insanity (I don’t think craven spivery is recognised as a valid legal plea). We’d happily let them off without as much as a warning.

Protectio trahit subjectionem, et subjectio protectionem. Protection entails allegiance and allegiance, protection. They clearly knew something in the reign of James I we’ve forgotten in the reign of Elizabeth II.

Such amnesia notwithstanding, the government, Tory, Labour, hybrid, whatever, has forfeited any moral right to our allegiance. A few more cases like these, and it’ll forfeit the legal right as well.

 

 

Normally I vary my topics from one day to the next, but the events in the Ukraine are so momentous that it would be frivolous to write about anything else.

By and large, the press is treating the Ukraine as a proxy in a confrontation between Russia and the EU. That may be, but it’s a curious confrontation, for Russia wins whoever the ostensible winner will ultimately be.

There are two possible scenarios on offer, with a few subplots.

Scenario 1 is that the Ukraine rejoins the Soviet Union (by whatever name Col. Putin favours), either as a constituent republic or, more likely, an obedient ally.

Scenario 2 is that the Ukraine forms a partnership with the EU, either as a full member or, more likely, a dependent adjunct.

In Scenario 1, Col. Putin will be an instant winner. A de facto reunification of Russia and the Ukraine would constitute a significant step towards undoing what Putin sees as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”, the collapse of the USSR.

This would create a monolithic bloc of the three Slavic components of the USSR, Belarus being the third and already in the fold. Add to this Kazakhstan with its tremendous natural resources, and Putin’s immediate goal would have been achieved there and then.

But it wouldn’t stop there. All other Soviet republics, with the exception of the three Baltic ones, would immediately lose whatever leverage they have vis-à-vis Putin’s Zollverein. Never completely independent of Russia anyway, they’d be drawn into an even narrower circle of hell than the one they occupy currently.

The Soviet Union would rise like Phoenix in all but name, and Col. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin would justifiably feel he’s as much of an emperor as Col. Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (commonly known as Nicholas II) ever was.

This much has been pointed out by numerous commentators, displaying variable command of historical and geopolitical facts but an invariably accurate grasp of the possible ramifications.

Where a void exists is in the analysis of Scenario 2, which admittedly is less straightforward.

The starting point of this analysis ought to be an accurate take on Putin’s mentality, and that of his whole Mafioso clique. This was formed not by Russian but by Soviet imperial aspirations.

The difference is telling. Though the Russian Empire had seen itself as the Third Rome since the fifteenth century, before it actually became an empire, her ambitions never included global domination.

Soviet ambitions did, as revealed by the USSR national emblem featuring a hammer and sickle superimposed on the globe. Even Soviet songs incessantly hailed the coming of a new era, with every country in the world added to the existing Soviet republics.

Col. Putin’s sponsoring organisation was at the cutting end of this strategy, both as its formulator and executor. It’s naïve to think that, now he has found himself at the helm, he’ll abandon the strategy faithfully pursued by his illustrious predecessors, such as Beria, Shelepin, Andropov and Gorbachev.

The EU is clearly seen as the lynchpin of this strategy, a much more promising one than the USSR. Starting with Gorbachev, all post-Soviet chieftains have been dropping broad hints to this effect.

It was Gorbachev who first referred, in his 1994 Nobel lecture, to “our common European home”. However, he seemed to be rather hazy on what constitutes Europe. Specifically, Gorbachev spoke of  “…the European space from the Atlantic to the Urals…”. “Since it includes the Soviet Union,” he added, “which reaches the Pacific, it extends over the nominal geographic borders…”

Speaking in unison, Gen. Shevardnadze, former Soviet Foreign Minister, talked about “Great Europe from the Atlantic to Vladivostok” which would constitute “a united military space”, dominated by you know whom. Other post-Soviet spokesmen further expanded the geographic borders of Europe, this time “from the Atlantic to Vladivostok” and even, alliteratively, “from Vancouver to Vladivostok”.

It’s interesting that Gorby still talked about the Soviet Union in 1994. After all, every child knows that the Soviet Union no longer existed at that time, and the area of the former Soviet Union that lies between the Urals and the Pacific is in Asia, not in Europe.

What every child doesn’t know, and neither do many of our grown-up analysts, is that “geographic borders” have become “nominal”. In other words, “Europe” is not a geographical but an ideological concept.

We must learn to take the tyrants at their word. No matter how devious, they tend to say what they mean and do what they say. Whether it’s Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Lenin’s What’s to Be Done or Putin’s speeches, the West would ignore their pronouncements at its peril.

In this instance we must assume that Col. Putin’s strategy involves a gradual undermining of the EU and then, having become a member, its subsequent takeover.  This assumption may prove incorrect, but it would be grossly irresponsible not to make it – especially when all signs are pointing that way.

It’s my contention that in Scenario 2 the Ukraine may well be cast in the role of the Trojan Horse. It would immediately contribute to the EU’s enfeeblement and, in the longer run, Russian dominance within it.

Acting on the foolish promises made by EU officials, including our own George Osborne, the Ukraine’s finance minister yesterday submitted what amounts to a bill for services rendered. We need, he said, £21 billion to last until the end of 2015. You wanted real democracy in the Ukraine, didn’t you? Well, put your money where your mouth is.

The EU’s experience with using money for political purposes on this scale is that the original demand is only a point of departure – for the moon. Remember Greece, and how confidently everyone predicted that the first tranche would be the last?

So let’s at least double, or more likely triple, the £21 billion and ask the inevitable question: Where is it going to come from? And if it does come from somewhere, what will it do to the EU economy? Hence the enfeeblement.

Should the Ukraine eventually join the EU, this fundamentally immoral setup will receive an influx of 45 million people utterly corrupted by a 100-year rule of criminal elites, from Lenin to Yanukovych. In due course, the bacilli thus introduced into an already diseased body will weaken it to a point where it won’t be able to resist a Russian takeover.

To use the modern jargon, Col. Putin thus finds himself in a win-win situation. This, I’d suggest, ought to be the angle from which we view the subsequent events.

 

 

The subject came up yesterday when I was interviewed by Israel National Radio.

This wasn’t my first such experience, and yet again I marvelled at the difference between the way such interviews are handled here and there.

On our own radio stations one is seldom asked probing, intelligent questions, and even more rare are occasions when one is given enough time to sound reasonably coherent in reply.

By contrast the Israeli talk-show host Tamar Yonah was asking questions not only intelligent but on occasion deliciously provocative – and she gave me a full 20 minutes, an eternity in broadcast terms, to try to appear intelligent in return.

Still, broadcast has inherent limitations, which I realised after the interview ended and hindsight kicked in. Being able to think on the hoof may help one out in a rapid-fire oral exchange, but it’s well-nigh useless when trying to ponder a serious issue at depth.

Also, much has happened in the intervening 20 hours, as history tends to speed up at the time of revolution. Yesterday I said that the EU didn’t really want the Ukraine as a fully fledged member, what with her economy making Greece look like a Balkan Tiger. Today I’m not so sure.

Mea culpa, really. I forgot for a second that the EU, its protestations notwithstanding, is really not about the economy. It only ever uses it, either as a carrot or as a stick, in pursuit of megalomaniac political aims.

One such aim is to create a giant superstate, the bigger the better. The size does matter, and if this entails beggaring Europe, the federalists will see it as the cost of doing business.

In that vein, EU officials, including our own Chancellor of the Exchequer (you don’t doubt he’s merely an EU official these days, do you?) have proffered blank cheques to the Ukrainian interim government. Billions? Tens of billions? Doesn’t matter. Progress can’t be held back by a few zeroes here or there.

Yet if history has taught as anything, it’s caution against the presumption of progress. Alas, simplistic Western minds are weaned on the binary view of politics: tyranny – democracy. If it’s not one, it has to be the other.

This leads the West, in particular its leader the USA, into appalling errors of judgement, most notably in the Middle East. Americans can’t seem to get their heads around the simple proposition, proven empirically beyond much doubt, that, in countries that have no history of stable, just institutions, every tyrant tends to be replaced by a worse one.

Whether the replacement is effected by violence or elections is immaterial, and democracy is an inadequate yardstick by which to measure the nature of each power shift.

Yanukovych, for example, was democratically elected and violently overthrown, which proves neither that his reign was truly legitimate nor that his successors are impeccably virtuous.

I for one see no reason to believe that the billions foolishly being proffered by the EU won’t reach Kiev only to double up and go back whence they came, this time ending up in the numbered accounts belonging to the kleptocrats who have been governing the Ukraine since… well, for ever.

The sainted martyr Yulia Timoshenko is one such. This formidable lady does possess a lot of fortitude, yet she displayed it not only during her imprisonment but also when amassing billions, many of them courtesy of criminal gas deals with the Russians.

With characteristic impetuosity she has been beatified in the West as the Ukrainian Joan of Arc plus hydrocarbons, whereas in fact she’s much closer to Elena Ceausescu minus the hubby-wubby.

God only knows how events in the Ukraine will develop. One of the intelligent questions I was asked yesterday was whether the country was strong enough to remain sovereign. I replied it was possible but not the way to bet, and I stand by that comment.

Modernity raises optimistic economic expectations, and Ukrainians are no different. However, their economy is too wobbly to be able to satisfy such expectations widely, that is beyond the criminalised gang of kleptocratic rulers.

Massive infusions of freshly minted, in effect counterfeit, euros won’t solve poverty in that country any more than welfare handouts can solve it in our own lands. Such handouts corrupt and, when delivered on an international scale, they corrupt absolutely.

Moreover, the Ukrainians can’t put euros into the furnaces and machines that keep the economy going. That requires energy, and much of it is coming from the Russian gas pipeline.

The control valve on the pipe is regulated by the lever that’s firmly in Putin’s hands. Turned this way, it looks like a carrot. Turned the other way, it turns into a stick with which Russian kleptocrats can beat their Ukrainian counterparts on the head.

Can the EU make up any potential deficit in energy supplies should Putin put his foot down? Somehow one doubts it. If they begin to freeze in the dark, it won’t take Ukrainians long to return to the Maidan – they know the way.

Another question intelligently asked and evasively answered in yesterday’s interview was whether or not the Ukraine was setting an example for others to follow. What if America or, say, Greece follows suit?

The possibility of an anti-Obama revolution in the States sounds as far-fetched as it would be welcome. But Greece and other sick men of Europe are a different matter.

It’s conceivable, for example, that the EU’s attempt to underwrite the Ukrainian revolution just may be the last straw that’ll break the back of the whole wicked project. For, as we’ve had numerous opportunities to observe, politics can ride roughshod over economics only for so long.

Turning the Ukraine into another major recipient of European welfare is something the Europeans simply can’t afford. It’s back to those economic expectations that have for all intents and purposes turned into entitlements. Frustrate them en masse and sparks may well fly all over Europe.

Political disputes in America haven’t been settled by violence for 150 years, and in England for 350. But the southern and eastern reaches of Europe can’t boast the same history of political stability. Violence is programmed into their DNA much more firmly than docility.

Meanwhile the Ukraine will remain lodged between the rock of the EU and the hard place of Russia. She may find a way to survive by playing both ends against the middle, she may split into two separate states divided by the Dnieper, she may sink into chaos, she may turn into a version of Belarus, she may eventually join one or the other multinational Walpurgisnacht.

Before loosening the strings of the purse filled with our money (that is, yours and mine) it would be wise to see which course is the most likely. But no one who accuses our governments of wisdom can himself be wise.