Blog

My St Petersburg friends only agreed to send me the transcript when I swore it would be for my eyes only. Hence, in the good tradition of journalistic ethics, I’m publishing it immediately.

Putin (VP): This meeting will come to order! Everybody sit! Refusal to do so will be treated as an escape attempt! Sorry, inside joke.

Merkel (AM): Jawohl, Herr Oberst! But I’m not going to sitzen next to François. He always plays footsies.

Hollande (FH): Listen, sale boche, I’d rather play footsies with a dog!

AM: Ja. Like a rottweiler.

FH: Don’t you dare call Valerie that!

Cameron (DC): Can we please get back to the business at hand?

VP: Shut up, Dave. No one ever listens to you. Or your little island.

DC: Oh yeah?

VP: Yeah. Da.

DC: Says who?

VP: Says I.

DC: Well, I’ll have you know that our little island has made a big contribution to the world. We gave you the Beatles, Sid Vicious, Amy Winehouse…

FH: Amy Woo?

DC: Not Woo. She wasn’t Chinese, for heaven’s sake. Winehouse!

FH: Woo is Amy Winehouse?

DC: No, Woo is Chinese. Amy was a great British artist – as great at Mick Jagger and…

AM: You’re a fine one to talk about culture, Dave. You can’t even speak German.

DC: Oh yes I can! All Englishmen are multilingual!

AM: Ah so? Say something in German then.

DC: Er… Also, Schweinhund, vee’ve got vays to make you talk…

VP: Silence! We are world leaders, not squabbling fishwives! Speaking of which, Angela, why isn’t your foreign minister here? Westerwelle?

AM: Guido had to fly back home. His husband doesn’t know how to operate the dishwasher.

VP: I thought Guido was the husband…

AM: Not this week.

DC: He’s the husband to every man and the wife to every woman…

VP: Shut up, Dave, no one listens to you.

DC: A propos Guido, Vladimir, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about gay rights in Russia…

VP: Gay? Does this stand for Got Aids Yet?

FH: C’est pas drôle. Is not funny. Valerie is worried…

VP: I’ll tell you what she should be worried about, suka. Your going along with that mudak President Obama on Syria, that’s what. And where do you think you’re going, Barack?

Obama (BO): To the other end of the table. I’m not gonna sit next to you. Not after what you’ve just said.

VP: Oh really? Well, let me tell you this: you drop one bomb on Syria, and we’ll whack you in the shithouse!

BO: You will, eh? Well, let me tell you, we can bomb Syria flat and there’s zilch you can do about it!

VP: One bomb, Barack, one bomb, and we’ll sell Assad something to blow your ships out of the water to tsardom come.

BO: You do that and we’ll impound all your laundered cash in our banks.

VP: And we’ll dump all our dollars, a trillion of them. Your dollar will be worth nothing! Or a yen, which is the same thing.

Taro Aso (TA): I don’t rike the imprication.

Hu Jintao (HJ): I do. We have a couple of trillion of our own, please, Mr Obama. We could dump them too.

BO: You could, eh? So who’s going to buy your plastic underpants and polyester shirts?

FH: Hu is going to buy his own underpants?

BO: I’m asking, not telling. Who’s going to buy your stuff if the dollar goes kaput?

AM: See, Dave, Barack speaks German.

BO: What I mean, Hu, is stop making empty threats. See you at the noodle factory.

TA:  I don’t rike any of this. No agreement on Syria seems rikery.

BO: No kidding. Well, this is an economic summit, ain’t it? So we’re economical with agreements.

VP: As the chairman of this conference… What is it, Angela?

AM: I’ve heard a funny one lately. Knock, knock!

DC: Who’s there?

AM: No, it’s not Hu. It’s Angela.

DC: Funny, very. You Germans are known for your sense of humour.

VP: Shut up, Dave, no one listens to you. The meeting is adjourned. Dismisssed!

AM: Himmelherrgott! Take your hand off my knee, you bloody Frosch!

FH: Woo are you calling a frog, you sale boche…

Attached to the transcript was a copy of the joint statement by European Commission President Barroso and European Council President Van ‘Rumpy-Pumpy’ Rompuy:

“The G20 has proven its worth, in the face of the major challenges the global economy has experienced over the last five years, as the world’s premier forum for economic cooperation: all G20 members remain determined to implement our ambitious commitments and take further steps on the way to strong and sustainable growth. We are pleased that the European Union’s objectives for this summit have been broadly achieved.”

 

 

 

 

 

To kick off the G20 meeting in St Petersburg, Col. Putin’s aide described Britain as “just a small island no one pays any attention to”.

He forgot to mention that the only reason people listen to Russia is that she’s both willing and able to blackmail them into rapt attention with either nuclear weapons or oil, or usually both.

Dave’s reaction? An indignant “I don’t accept that for a moment.”

Exactly what doesn’t he accept? Britain is undeniably an island, neither the smallest nor indeed the largest one.

Yet, as a British diplomat commented in response, our economy is still much larger than Russia’s. Moreover, our income, unlike Russia’s, doesn’t mostly come out of the ground. Nor does it then get laundered before being paid in.

And yet the Russians are right: not many countries listen to us any longer. The reason for this is that Britain lacks a sense of purpose and our ‘leaders’ a sense of dignity.

The problem isn’t, as Times pundits and other lefties clamour, that we’re alienated from the EU. It’s that we aren’t alienated enough.

Nor is Britain’s refusal to go along with yet another idiotic US adventure a factor in our diminished status. It’s that normally we’re too eager to play the dummy to America’s ventriloquist.

The world’s financial centre, fifth largest economy and one of the West’s three nuclear powers deserves respect. But first such a country has to respect herself.

This self-respect is manifestly lacking in our ‘leaders’, which is why they are prepared to swallow any insults assorted thugs throw in their faces.

When Ed’s brother Dave (not to be confused with Ed’s spiritual twin Dave who’s our prime minister) was Foreign Secretary, he once made some perfunctory remarks on human rights to the Russian foreign minister Lavrov. The latter’s response was predictably thuggish: “Who the f… are you to lecture me?”

Any minister who respects himself and the great country he represents would have walked out, banging the door behind him. HMG would then have issued a note demanding an abject official apology, barring which diplomatic relations would be severed.

Alternatively or additionally, no holders of Russian passports would be admitted into Britain, and those already there would be summarily deported. This would include the oligarchs who, according to the proud boast of Putin’s minion, have “bought up Chelsea”.

Instead, Dave Mark I went on as if nothing had happened. So has Dave Mark II this time in Petersburg.

He should have got up and left, firing a parting shot that no civilised discourse is possible with manifestly uncivilised louts. Unless Russia wants to find herself in a position of an even worse pariah than she is already, Putin had better paper-train his spokesmen (and himself) to keep a civil tongue in their heads.

But then Dave has form in being spineless. Shortly before he became prime minister he agreed to appear on the talk show hosted by the hideous vulgarian Jonathan Ross. No self-respecting statesman would have done so, but hey, it’s Dave we’re talking about.

In his inimitable style Ross then asked Dave if, as a youngster, he used to wank to a picture of Margaret Thatcher. At this point, not just any self-respecting statesman but indeed any self-respecting man would have got up and left without saying a word. Not our PR Dave – he just smiled and went on being a man of the (vulgar) people.

To be fair to Dave, he isn’t the only Western politician prepared to lap up Russian spit off his face. Commenting on John Kerry’s accusation that Russia had supplied poison-gas technology to Assad, Sergei Ivanov, Chief of Putin’s staff, accused the US State secretary of “lying through his teeth” (the Russian expression he used is actually ruder). The undiplomatic word ‘lie’ was also used by Putin himself.

Diplomats don’t talk that way; thugs do. A foreign minister of a respectable country doesn’t lie. He may misrepresent facts. Perhaps he may be misinformed. His information may not be quite accurate. His accusations may be groundless. But – read my lips, Messrs Ivanov and Putin – HE. NEVER. ‘LIES’.

Any diplomatic representative of his country would be completely within his rights to leave the meeting there and then, saying that no further conversation is possible with louts. Talking to the journalists he may then say something along the lines of “Yes, we all know that Syria has a thriving missile production of her own.” But his immediate reaction ought to be a mighty bang of the door.

Take it from someone who spent his youth being bullied by Putin’s and Ivanov’s KGB colleagues: neither meekness nor reasoning works. Russian – and for that matter any other – bullies pounce at any sign of weakness and recoil from any show of strength.

Perhaps Messrs Kerry and Cameron should consult the history books to see how their predecessors used to handle loutish foreigners. On second thoughts, perhaps they shouldn’t – it wouldn’t do them any good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 …I’d love to see you at my book launch. But the invitation comes with a warning: the book may not be what you expect on the basis of my other work.

Those who read my books for their ideas will be disappointed: there are precious few of those in this one.

Those who for some unfathomable reason are interested in the details of my life, will be disappointed too, if less so. For the book really isn’t so much about me as about Russia – admittedly as seen through my eyes.

Disappointment all around then? Well, not necessarily.

What I’ve tried to do is help the reader learn about Russia the way a child and a youngster would learn it while growing up there. Actually, that’s the second objective. The first one is to keep the reader entertained and amused.

You’ll laugh quite a bit at some of the stories. But if you get in the spirit of it, you’ll laugh the way I did – through tears. In Russian literature this combination of mirth and lacrymosity goes back to Gogol, or later to Bulgakov and Platonov.

It’ll be up to you to decide how well the same trick can work in very English prose. One way or the other, this promises to be a hell of a good party.

Hope to see you there – but please let me know if you’re coming (sonata@btinternet.com). We don’t want to run out of wine.

 

 

You are cordially invited to the launch of

 

How the Future Worked

 

 by Alexander Boot

 

an anecdotal account of Russia based on the author’s

not altogether happy memories of it

 

Published by Bretwalda Books

 

Wednesday, 25^th September

 

at Daunt Books, 158-164 Fulham Road, London SW10 9PR

 

6.30 to 8.30 pm

RSVP

email: sonata@btinternet.com

telephone: 020 7736 3286

 

When this idea is put forth, my reaction is to say, “Pull the other one, it’s got church bells on.” Alas, these days I’m finding myself in the minority.

Western intellectuals are losing their minds so rapidly that a cynic is tempted to think they didn’t have much to lose in the first place.

Even conservative Christians, generally the brightest group, are showing signs of mental instability. In a way that’s understandable: they’ve been dealt enough head blows to suffer some mild brain damage.

One significant symptom is the growing if grudging admiration for Putin’s Russia, and Col. Putin in particular. Many British Christians, for example, have expressed admiration for Russia’s law banning homosexual propaganda among children.

Suddenly Col. Putin is being chalked up as one of the PLUs (People Like Us), if not without some reservations. At least, when this taxonomic perversion is committed by a British pundit, some sense of balance is occasionally preserved. When the accolade is tinged with the Gallic temperament, balance goes right out of the window.

Witness the article Tsar Poutine in the Figaro. The author, Eric Zemmour, thinks the West, specifically les anglo-saxonnes, has been beastly to Putin. Now whenever a continental uses the word Anglo-Saxon to lump all Anglophone nations together, he doesn’t mean it as a compliment.

In this instance, Zemmour “recognises the Anglo-Saxon techniques of demonisation. Remember, for example, comparisons of Saddam Hussein to Hitler.”

Unlike “Yeltsyn who sold his country out to trans-Atlantic groups”, Putin “has restored the state. And Russian patriotism. By authoritarian methods. In the tradition of the tsars.”

“Little by little, he has become the leader of  world opposition to the new ideological order dominated by the West [and characterised by] antiracism, globalism, homophilia, feminism, Islamophilia and Christianophobia.”

In other words, “While France has renounced her former mission, Putin has become the last defender of Eastern Christianity. …He defends national sovereignty, family and the Orthodox religion.”

A reality check, Monsieur Zemmour, s’il vous plaît. You know, reality? That elusive substance formed by facts, rather than ideological bias?

Col. Putin is a proud alumnus of the most diabolical organisation in the history of mankind. (“There’s no such thing as ex-KGB,” he once said. “This is for life.”) In the first 50 years of its existence it murdered 60 million people, including 40,000 priests just in Lenin’s lifetime (d. 1924).

In those turbulent days, Cheka (precursor of KGB/FSB) flying squads would machinegun whole parishes and rob the churches of their valuables. Worse still, Col. Putin’s sponsoring organisation turned the church hierarchy into its extension.

Specifically, priests were obligated on pain of death to divulge any juicy information vouchsafed to them in confession – and acceded, something that in the West would result in summary unfrocking.

This Faustian arrangement has led to an institutional paradox: the KGB in effect appointed and ran the prelates of the Russian church. Some of them, such as the first post-war patriarch Alexis and the Soviet representative at the World Council of Churches Metropolitan Nicodemus, were career KGB officers.

In the fine tradition of his lifelong employer, Col. Putin has kept this arrangement intact. All three candidates for the patriarchate in the 2009 election, including the eventual winner Patriarch Kiril, are professional KGB operatives.

Recently opened KGB files include countless reports on the activities of ‘Agent Mikhailov’ (Kiril’s KGB codename). Every report concludes that “Agent Mikhailov has fulfilled his assignment.”

Now imagine it’s 1967, 22 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany – the same time that has elapsed since the so-called collapse of communism in Russia in 1991. The West German government is led by an SS Obersturmbannführer (the equivalent of Putin’s rank) and is made up almost exclusively of officers in the SS, SD and Gestapo. Moreover, every notable clergyman is known to have collaborated with those organisations.

Do you think the Zemmours of this world would have been as ecstatic about the resurgence of Lutheranism in Germany?

Let’s extend the parallel – it extends so naturally, the temptation is irresistible. What if the same SS government had fused with organised crime to create the widest money-laundering network in history? Routinely murdered its opponents both at home and abroad? Suppressed free press? Maintained one of the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals? Consistently supported and armed the West’s enemies? Cynically used Christianity to advance its cause?

These are all accomplishments of which Col. Putin can proudly boast. Is Mr Zemmour aware of them?

Hitler ended unemployment and revitalised the economy. Stalin industrialised Russia. Putin has banned some of the things there we’d like to ban here. Is Mr Zemmour familiar with the downside in all three instances?

The downside makes none of the gentlemen a present-day answer to Charles Martel. In search of those able to defend Christianity, we should look inwards, not to Putin’s fascist state.

Zemmour’s revolutionary ancestors used to say “Pas d’ennemis a gauche” (no enemies on the Left). Like them, we desperately need allies. Unlike them, we have to apply moral criteria to choosing our allies, for otherwise we’d be just like them.

As to Christianity, God has saved it from countless enemies. Let’s pray He will save it from ‘friends’ like Col. Putin of the KGB. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Commenting on the Syria vote in the Commons, our Chancellor George said, ‘Look, I think Parliament has spoken.’

Now so has our mayor Boris. The motion should be re-submitted to Parliament, he declared, because “to use gas for mass murder is a crime that we cannot allow to go unpunished.”

It’s clear that Boris is taking lessons in democracy from the EU: if at first you don’t succeed, skydiving isn’t for you – but voting is. If the vote goes against you, keep’em voting until they get it right.

At a time when Presidents Barack Hussein and even François (!) have decided to seek legislative approval for military action, Boris is sorry his old Bullingdon Club friend Dave didn’t act as a dictator.

Boris certainly would have done, and that’s the whole point of his Telegraph article. Give me the chance, he seems to be imploring. I won’t wimp out like Dave. I’ll deliver “a calibrated and limited response to a grotesque war crime”.

No, thanks, mate. One Bullingdon cabinet is enough.

It’s clear to Boris, if not to the rest of us, that Assad has “killed hundreds of civilians in an act of utter savagery.” Hence the proper response is to kill a few hundred more by launching a ‘calibrated’ laser-guided response, with its predictable collateral damage.

I think Boris has got it wrong. He’s a member of the Conservative party, not a neoconservative one. Those chaps operate on the ancient wisdom ‘spare the bomb and spoil a land’.

Serbia? Of course. Libya? Naturally. Iraq? Definitely – the best way to introduce democracy is to attach it to laser-guided missiles. Now of course the democratically controlled Iraqi army has massacred Camp Ashraf, so what should we do? Bomb them again? But hey, we’re the ones who put them there.

Dave has been saved from having to grapple with such dilemmas by Parliament, but Boris can rely only on his flaming conscience, fluent pen and flatulent mouth. As a mayor, he’s accountable to Londoners. As a columnist, he’s accountable to no one.

As if to allay the suspicions of cynics like me, Boris gave a sop to his erstwhile friend, now his competitor, Dave. I’m not angling for Dave’s job, he pretends to be saying. On the contrary, “I predict that by the end of this episode it will be Labour that looks divided, and David Cameron who looks the statesman.”

Nothing, and certainly not an attempt to trick Parliament into another vote, will ever make Dave look the statesman – for the simple reason that he isn’t one. What’s more, Boris knows this perfectly well – and he knows that everybody knows he knows.

In other words, while indignantly accusing Labour of playing politics, Boris is trying to show the Milibandits how the game should be played for real. Morality doesn’t even come into it.

In our post-Christian world it never does. “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint,” warned Edmund Burke. The warning wasn’t heeded.

In the absence of virtue (which to Burke meant specifically Christian virtue), real politik has to mean really amoral politics. Under such conditions, democracy manifestly can’t elevate to government those fit to govern.

Instead democracy turns into spivocracy, the rule of those driven exclusively by self-interest and specifically by lust for power. On second thoughts, one has to be careful when using the word ‘lust’ in the context of Boris Johnson. Perhaps ‘striving’ would be safer.

Since these days every assertion has to be supported by forensics, this comment on democracy must also demand evidential proof. By way of such I suggest a little experiment you can conduct yourself.

Take any four consecutive British prime ministers during Burke’s lifetime (1729-1797) and compare them to our last four ‘leaders’ (John, Tony, Gordon and Dave). See what I mean?

It’s clear that a time when neither ‘Christianity’ nor ‘constitutional monarchy’ was a figure of speech in the UK, politics attracted an infinitely better grade of human material.

That’s what enabled England to civilise half the world, after a fashion, and Britannia to rule the waves, and not those of the electronic variety.

And Boris? He’d be well-advised to stay within his remit, that of the mayor of London. The city doesn’t conduct an independent foreign policy, though some of its boroughs do. Lambeth, for example, declares itself to be a ‘nuclear-free zone’, perhaps in the hope of avoiding direct hits from enemy missiles, should it come to that.

Boris really ought to curb his impatience: he may eventually get there in the end, but he should watch his step. He may be popular with some Tories, but Dave won’t be supplanted without a fight.

And you don’t ride into such battles armed with ideas that 75 percent of the people and most of your party reject. It’s best to contain your impatience and wait for Dave to stab himself in the back once too often. He’s bound to oblige.

Please click http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.fr/2013/08/cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys.html

Dave has achieved two feats for the price of one defeat:

He became the first prime minister since 1782 to lose the parliamentary vote on military action.

And even more improbable, he made me side with Labour, Putin and Assad. What do you know, he may yet make a pacifist of me.

There’s much circumstantial evidence to support the view that Parliament was right and Dave was wrong. One bit of good news is that an Obama spokesman suggested that Britain is becoming isolated from her allies, both the United States and the EU.

Well, I know this may come as a surprise to our American friends, but every sovereign nation acting in its interests is to some extent isolated. After all, her interests may not always coincide with others’.

Presumably, not being isolated from the USA means joining her on any asinine adventure and paying with British lives for America’s ignorance of the outside world.

As to the EU, Britain has gone along with it on everything, apart from joining the euro. Had we done so, we’d no longer be ‘isolated’. We’d be bankrupt. As it is, we’re only staying afloat because we’ve been able to devalue the pound, a device inaccessible to, say, Greece or Portugal.

If this is what isolation means, then the more the merrier, I’d say.

The other piece of good news was provided by Lord Ashdown, who has announced that the vote made him “depressed” and “ashamed”. Anything that has such an effect on Paddy can’t be all bad.

Assuming that the Americans won’t go it alone, as they well may, the group with the greatest reason to rejoice is the Syrian Christians. For any action on the part of the West, which the Muslims mistakenly regard as still Christian, would certainly result in violent reprisals against this community.

Christians make up about 10 percent of Syria’s population, and there’s no denying that, should Assad’s regime be driven out by Western action, they would be hit by a double whammy.

First, Assad’s forces would abuse them on the way out, taking their resentment out on defenceless people. Second, the victorious Muslim fanatics, many of them associated with al-Qaeda, would do what comes naturally: spill Christian blood.

This is a matter of fact, not conjecture. For the rebels have already given us a taste of things to come by destroying dozens of churches and driving thousands of Christians out of Syria and into refugee camps.

Just a fortnight ago, 15 Christians were murdered in Wadi al Nasara, and only a victorious regular army can prevent such outrages from occurring on a massive scale.

If further proof is needed, it’s kindly provided by other countries where American purveyors of democracy über alles have succeeded in creating troubled waters in which Muslim fanatics could then fish.

In Iraq, about 800,000 Christians have been driven out of their homes and many have been killed. Ditto in Libya, where al-Qaeda groups have had a field day in the south of the country.

No Muslim country in the world has ever disproved this simple observation: the more influential the Sharia law, the more Christians will suffer. Provided that our parliamentary vote gives Obama some second thoughts, the advent of the Sharia law in Syria may be indefinitely put off – and surely any sensible Christian should welcome such a development?

Dave, of course, is a self-confessed “active member of the Church of England”. Nowadays this apparently doesn’t preclude being a passive Christian, for otherwise he wouldn’t have campaigned so hysterically for an action guaranteed to result in Christians’ misery.

This would have been suffered not only by Syrian Christians but also by the home-grown variety. For Syrians have promised that any British involvement in Western aggression against their country would result in suicide-bomb attacks on England. Experience suggests that this is one promise the Muslims tend to keep.

All that would be worth it if Britain’s national interests were at stake. Yet not even Dave and his fellow war-monger Tony claim that this is the case.

They want us to play poodle to the Americans as a way of punishing Assad for his alleged use of poison gas against his own people. This moral transgression has so far not been proven, but the Ba’athists do have form in using such weapons. However, one doesn’t recall too much American indignation at Saddam’s gas attacks on the Iranians during the 1979-1987 war.

So they object not to the use of such weapons in se, but to their use by those who aren’t upholding American interests, however misconstrued. Well, at least Parliament didn’t misconstrue ours.

In any case, Dave being such an active member of the Church of England, he should recall a saying from the book his Church still holds sacred:

“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

 

 

 

 

 

Those of you old enough to remember the 1962 Cuban standoff between America and Russia, must still cringe at the memory.

Those who aren’t old enough, just take my word for it: the possibility of a nuclear Armageddon was, or at least seemed, real.

Those who like to discern historical parallels will no doubt worry about today’s news of the Russians beefing up their naval presence in the Mediterranean.

“The well-known situation shaping up in the eastern Mediterranean called for certain corrections to the make-up of the naval forces,” explained the Russian General Staff.

The corrections include the introduction of an anti-submarine ship from the Northern fleet (the Tomahawks are likely to be fired from submarines). Also coming in over the next two days will be the missile cruiser Moskva from the Black Sea and, in a month or so, the missile cruiser Variag from the Pacific.

The situation is indeed well-known, if not necessarily well-understood, at least not by Dave. He may be ready to go to war against Syria, his own party, the opposition, some of his cabinet (including the State Secretary for Defence) and most of our generals. Are Dave and his boss Barack also ready to take on Russia?

This is not to say that either side necessarily wants to risk a major war. However, such a risk is inherent in a confrontation between two naval forces armed to the teeth and led by congenitally bellicose men.

While it’s not immediately clear how British national interests can be served by replacing Assad with al-Qaeda chieftains, such a development will definitely jeopardise Russia’s national interests.

For much of her history the country craved a naval presence in the Mediterranean, yet only acquired it when Syria let her set up a base at Taurus. At the same time, Syria has at least £2-billion’s worth of current military contracts with Russia, with a promise of more to come.

Hence the show of force. The hint is transparent enough: go ahead, lads, if you must. But have you considered the possible consequences?

Military calamities occur when international pressures build up while the key countries involved are led by either criminal or incompetent men. Putin richly qualifies for the former role, presiding as he does over a regime that routinely murders or imprisons its opponents and practises money laundering on a scale never before seen in the world.

The three countries facing up to Putin are led by Barack, Dave and François, and not even their mothers will describe them as competent to handle an international crisis.

In addition, there are strong and utterly believable rumours that Dave’s bolshiness is inspired by his wife Sam who, last time I checked, had no mandate to shape Britain’s foreign policy. Apparently, the Girl with the Dolphin Tattoo visited a Syrian refugee camp and was deeply shaken by the experience.

As someone who saw Chechen refugee camps in 1995, I sympathise with her feelings. Yet my reading of our constitutional arrangement suggests that it’s not part of Sam’s remit to commit our armed forces to yet another harebrained American adventure.

Could it be that the three Western countries involved actually want a war? I’m not saying they do; I’m only asking a question, and it’s not entirely groundless.

History shows that people and governments tend to feel about wars differently. Most people don’t like them, but most governments do.

This is easy to understand for unchecked democracy inexorably degenerates into ever-growing statism, and statism thrives on social and economic turmoil.

The same goes, ten-fold, for war. War is the ultimate expression of the innate statism of modern states, the sustenance on which they build up their muscle mass. The state has emerged stronger, and the individual weaker, out of every modern war.

War is also a time-proven way out of economic and political crises. It is also a guarantor of the leaders’ political longevity.

All three Western economies involved are in dire straits, ridden with ruinous debt, unemployment and declining standard of living. Though this is masked by the odd minuscule increase in some indicators, the real problems are structural.

The US federal debt now stands at $14.5 trillion, not including the growing deficits in the funds financing the welfare state. Ours is over £1 trillion – and growing.

Quantitative easing (presumably ‘queasing’ for short) is no longer an option: given the risk of hyperinflation, the remedy is worse than the disease. Yet the history of the Great Depression hints at war as a cure for economic ills.

Roosevelt’s socialist New Deal failed to pull the country out of the economic morass. It took a world war to do that, and America emerged out of it better off than she had been before. Moreover, FDR had a good war personally: he was elected to an unprecedented four presidential terms.

Is it possible that such elementary history may figure as a factor in Obama’s calculations? Dave’s calculations are less critical here: he’ll do what his friend Barack asks, especially if Sam feels the same way.

Too may questions, too few answers. I suppose we’ll get some in a few days.

 

Our gun is primed, loaded and ready for yet another cock-up.

Syria is very much in the news and momentum is gathering behind the battle cry WE MUST DO SOMETHING! No one is quite sure exactly what, when and especially what for. Uncertainty reigns.

So much more grateful we must be to Tony ‘Yo’ Blair who took time from his busy tour of Mediterranean yachts to teach us morality in international relations.

Now when the likes of Tony begin to pontificate on this subject, we know we’re in trouble. And when he laces his moral cocktail with strategic insights, it’s time to run for the hills.

Tony, you remember, was the only Western leader prepared to play poodle to George W. Bush in the calamitous invasion of Iraq. A few billion pounds and, more important, a few hundred wasted British lives later, the whole region has been turned into a bloodbath.

What does Tony, able abetted by ‘heir to Blair’ Dave, want to do now? Having dug us into a hole he wants to go on digging. Let’s now attack Syria, he screams in his Times article. For openers.

His reading of the situation can’t be faulted: “Syria [is] mired in carnage between the brutality of Assad and various affiliates of al-Qaeda.”

Correct. So where does this leave us? Logically, we have two options: a) let them sort it out between themselves and b) support one of the sides.

Since doing nothing goes against Tony’s impetuous nature, option b) is the only one on the table. So which side should we support?

Tony is clear on this: “…the side of the people who want what we want; who see our societies for all their faults as something to admire; who know that they should not be faced with a choice between tyranny and theocracy.”

Right. Assad represents tyranny, his al-Qaeda opponents stand for theocracy, and we should waste more British money and lives to support the latter because they admire our societies. Makes sense. Let’s win one for al-Qaeda.

So what’s Tony’s problem with Iran then, which also troubles him? “Iran still — despite its new president — a theocratic dictatorship, with a nuclear bomb.”

No doubt Tony has his own intelligence data on the second part – the rest of us don’t realise that Iran already has a nuclear bomb. But he’s right on the first part: Iran is a theocracy, just like the regime with which al-Qaeda rebels wish to replace Assad’s tyranny.

Does this mean we should support Iran “despite its new president” who, as a Muslim cleric, isn’t according to Tony a theocrat? Don’t know about you, but I’m confused.

Let me get this straight. We must go to war in Syria on the side of al-Qaeda to uphold Tony’s morality offended by Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, which was a terrible thing to do.

However, numerically it’s less terrible than many other instances of states murdering their own citizens. Russia, for example, is now being run by an organisation (and led by its veteran) that murdered 60 million people. The ruling communist party of China ran up a similar score.

Yet the West happily buys Russian gas and Chinese undergarments – how does Tony reconcile his flaming conscience with that?

He answered this query while still prime minister: “They ask why we don’t get rid of Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot. Yes, let’s get rid of them all. I don’t because I can’t, but when you can, you should.”

So Tony wants to hit Syria for the same reason a dog does something one can’t mention: because he can. Should it stop there? Not as far as Tony is concerned:

“From the threat of the Iranian regime to the pulverising of Syria to the pains of the Egyptian revolution, from Libya to Tunisia, in Africa, Central Asia and the Far East, wherever this extremism is destroying the lives of innocent people, we should be at their side and on it.”

We’ve just left the area of self-vindicating idiocy and entered one of lunacy. Our dwindling army must, according to Tony, engage every unsavoury regime on earth to comply with his moral tenets. Methinks our 80,000 men (the size of our army in a year’s time) may be stretched a bit thin.

Compare this rant with the words of a politician from the time when the West was run by statesmen, not spivs. Speaking of America, John Quincy Adams (d. 1848) said, “She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

That’s how statesmen think. They know that nations go to war to uphold their interests, not their debatable take on morality.

But sorry, according to Dave ‘heir to Blair’ Cameron, the projected bombing raids on Syria don’t constitute an act of war: “Let me stress to people this is not about getting involved in a Middle Eastern war or changing our stance in Syria or going further into that conflict.”

Yes of course, Dave, bombing a sovereign nation doesn’t mean getting involved in a war, we all know that.

A reality check is in order. Britain has nothing to gain from being instrumental in radicalising and Islamising Syria – which, as the experience of Iran, Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt etc shows, will be the only possible result of Western meddling.

In some instances, Tony and Dave, nothing is the best thing to do. God spare us from spivs drunk on their own power and with activism coursing through their veins.

Will no one rid us of this troublesome lot?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please click http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.fr/2013/08/god-is-liberal-democrat.html