Category: Blog

Before people say something nasty about you, say it yourself and make it sound ridiculous.

Peter Hitchens works this confidence trick to perfection, to preface every sycophantic piece he writes about Putin and his kleptofascist regime.

The latest sample was served the other day: “Speaking as a Kremlin stooge (this silly phrase is applied to everyone who doesn’t join in the current wild anti-Russian panic)…”

England being a residually free country, he can define a Kremlin stooge any way he pleases. But then so can I, and my definition is different from his.

A hack is a Kremlin stooge if he acts as a consistent mouthpiece for pro-Putin propaganda. Whether he does so as a paid agent of influence or an enthusiastic volunteer makes no moral difference.

Any sane person would have to agree that, knowing all we know about Putin’s Russia, only a Kremlin stooge like Hitchens would describe it as “the most conservative, patriotic and Christian country left in Europe”.

This is spoken of a country whose principal commercial activity is global money laundering; one that imprisons, maims and murders political opponents; suppresses most civil liberties; pounces on its neighbours like a rabid dog; turns the church into a department of the secret police; wages an all-out hybrid war on the West.

So the ruse of Hitchens’s introductory paragraph didn’t work, at least not on me. The stain of being a Kremlin stooge can’t be washed off by cheap verbal trickery.

What followed isn’t worth reiterating for any reason other than reinforcing my belief that, once a communist, always a communist.

Hitchens prides himself on being open about his political past. However, when one’s past leaves an indelible mark, it’s no longer just past: it’s also present and future.

In this case, he employs the old Leftist trick of exonerating the Soviets by appealing to ‘moral equivalence’. You know, they have the KGB, we have the CIA and MI6; they’ve murdered millions, the CIA tried to poison Castro; they run concentration camps, but it’s the British who invented them.

This is how Hitchens applies this Leftist larceny to the present: “No doubt Russian intelligence sometimes does wicked things, and also makes a fool of itself. But shouldn’t we be examining our own spy and security services before squeaking piously about others?”

What, our spies also do wicked things, and sometimes do them badly? Agreed.

But first, Western intelligence services practise wickedness on a vastly smaller scale – witness the nonagenarian George Blake, roaming the streets of Moscow unmolested by British hitmen.

And second, however deplorable our spies’ wickedness and ineptitude may be, at least they have the excuse of trying to defend our freedoms – which Hitchens’s Russian friends seek to undermine.

My hero then goes on to prove that no truth can be uttered in defence of a lie, and nothing intelligent can be said in support of a stupid proposition.

Addressing “the current wild anti-Russian panic”, Hitchens proves that point by making a statement as mendacious as it is idiotic:

“My advice in all such matters is ‘Calm down, dear’. Russia is in no position to attack us. Its economy is the size of Italy’s and failing badly.”

That’s like saying that British drivers are incapable of speeding. But they do speed, don’t they?

Likewise, Russia is attacking us already, although not yet by securing a bridgehead in Kent. The attack follows one leg of the hybrid strategy first developed by Gen. Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff.

Inundating Britain (and other Western countries) with millions of fake, disruptive messages; hacking into the computer systems of political parties and military structures; sowing panic and discord by disinformation on things like GM crops and vaccines – all this is part of the strategy outlined by Gen. Gerasimov.

Add to this ‘active measures’ on British territory, such as assassinations of British subjects with nuclear and chemical weapons, and we’re looking at a systematic offensive aimed at us and our allies.

None of this is an unsupported accusation. The governments of Britain, US, Holland and other Western countries provide plenty of hard evidence, complete with agents’ names, along with the SVR and GRU departments they represent.

Thus the GRU’s Unit 26165 has been traced as the source of the 2016 US election hack, malware assaults and ‘close proximity’ cyber-attacks in Holland.

That’s the mendacious part of Hitchens’s effluvia. Now the stupid part, one about Russia being in no position to attack us militarily because her economy is small.

One can infer that our strategist equates the size of a country’s economy with her capacity for waging war. Presumably, therefore, Alaric’s Visigoths were more prosperous than Rome, for otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to sack it.

Closer to our time, the Soviet economy in the 1930s featured famines killing millions, which didn’t prevent Stalin from building the largest and best-equipped army the world had ever known.

Hitchens’s strategic insights lead to an ineluctable conclusion. Since, say, Germany boasts a bigger economy than Russia, she could wipe the floor with Russia one on one.

So could Britain and France, whose economies are also bigger than Russia’s. Either country, never mind the two of them together, could show Putin what’s what.

This ignores the fundamental difference between us and Russia. Western countries, even such demonstrably nasty ones as Nazi Germany, can’t do what Russia can: dedicate most of their resources to the military.

Thus the Soviet economy was put on a war footing in the late 1920s.

All Soviet factories began to work in three shifts around the clock 10 years before a Soviet soldier fired a shot in anger (millions of shots were fired into the heads of recalcitrant Soviets, but not by soldiers and not in anger).

By contrast, Hitler’s economy was put on a war footing only in 1943 – when the country had been at war for four years. Until then all the talk of ‘guns before butter’ was just that, talk.

It would take too long to compare the relative military strength of Europe’s three leading economies and Russia across all categories.

But one weapon category, tanks, should give you a reliable glimpse of the overall picture. Tanks, after all, are predominantly offensive weapons, acting in the same capacity as cavalry used to in times olden.

Russia boasts 15,500 tanks in active service (and untold thousands of older models mothballed until the time of need). By contrast, the three biggest European armies, French, German and British, have, respectively, 423, 408 and 407 tanks.

And when Europe still hasn’t recovered from its post-perestroika demob happiness, Russia is pumping untold billions into new weapon systems, including strategic armaments.

But fear naught: all three countries make more fluffy loo paper, each roll contributing to their vast GDP that puts Russia to shame and renders her impotent.

Moreover, few Russians eat balanced diets and practically none can afford a new car every couple of years. Who says we should be on our guard against bellicose thugs with lean and hungry looks?

I’d still suggest we try to counteract the information weapons Putin deploys in preference to ICBMs for the time being. One such weapon is called Peter Hitchens.

Watching Her Majesty’s prime minister dance onto the podium to the accompaniment of some revolting pop noise had an instant emetic effect on every sane viewer.

Somebody has forgotten to inform our politicians that we expect them to govern us, leaving the task of entertainment to professionals.

The odd witticism is fine, that’s a classic oratorical device. But impersonating a court jester, otherwise known as fool, goes a long way towards making people despise politicians even more than they do already.

However, as Mrs May switched from choreography to rhetoric, her dance routine was quickly forgotten. For, displaying prodigiously lithe agility, she used her tongue to step on everybody’s toes.

That’s a feat almost as improbable figuratively as it is literally.

Her ill-considered proposal on Brexit displeased the Remainers in her own party because Britain would thereby gain some independence from the EU.

It infuriated the Leavers because Britain wouldn’t gain enough independence.

And the proposal angered the opposition because it was put forth by a Tory, however nominal.

Above all, it was nothing new. The Chequers plan has been knocking about for weeks, never failing to elicit just the reaction I mentioned from all the same groups, which is to say just about everyone in the country except Mr May.

Her ignorance of elementary economics is hardly earth-shattering news either, but at least Mrs May displayed some dancer’s dexterity by adding  some new twists.

First she lamented that we spend less on schools than on servicing the national debt. And of course improving our schools is a top (rhetorical) priority of this – or any other – government.

Considering that half of our school leavers can’t read, write and add up competently, one hates to think what’s going on in the departments to which a lower priority is assigned.

Such as defence, another top priority, but a marginally lower one. Which is why the French navy is now stronger than the Royal Navy for the first time since Admiral Nelson lost his eye. And the British Army is now smaller than it was at any time since the post-Waterloo demobilisation – smaller indeed than our police force.

It can’t be gainsaid that spending more on servicing the national debt than on either of those top priorities is indeed outrageous. And, theoretically, only two solutions to that problem exist.

One is to spend an extra £10 billion on education and an extra £15 billion on defence, making each edge just above our debt servicing cost. Two is to reduce our national debt and therefore the cost of servicing it by about a third.

Since spending an extra £25 billion would mean a drastic increase in borrowing, the first option would rather defeat Mrs May’s purpose.

That leaves the second option a clear winner. The bright sparks at Treasury should bang their heads together and think up a way of reducing our national debt enough to produce an approximately £15 billion reduction in servicing costs (from the present annual level of £48 billion).

Glad we’ve figured this out – you could see me wipe the sweat off my brow even as we speak. Oh yes, one more thing. How do we reduce the size of the national debt?

Our midnight oil won’t have to be burned because the answer is blindingly obvious. The Exchequer must spend less than it earns, rolling the surplus into debt repayments.

So is that what our fleet-footed PM promised to do? Er… not quite. Actually, not at all. As a matter of fact, she proposed something exactly opposite: putting an end to “10 years of austerity”.

Now the word ‘austerity’, as used by today’s politicians, is a lie in itself. Fiscal austerity means spending less than one earns and using the surplus frugally – exactly the measure that would reduce the debt servicing costs that vex Mrs May so.

But to our politicians the word means something so different as to mean nothing. Austerity to them is increasing public spelling stratospherically rather than cosmically – and consequently increasing the sovereign debt at a slightly slower rate.

Without overstepping the boundaries of logic, I’d suggest that it’s impossible to stop something that never started. But fine, being in a compliant mood, I’m prepared to accept the non-definition of austerity as legitimate.

Stopping it therefore means removing any sensible restraints on public borrowing, in this case by local councils. The councils will then be able to build more social housing, serving the noble goal of accommodating new, mainly Islamic, arrivals at our shores.

One doesn’t have to have a degree in economics – in fact one would be distinctly better off not having it – to see that this state-financed altruism will lead to a massive hike in borrowing.

That will in turn increase the size of the national debt and the cost of servicing it, which will exacerbate the problem our dancer has identified. Hence Mrs May performed a deft pirouette to end at the same point – or rather a much lower one.

But don’t despair. It’s not yet certain that our economy will be dealt this mighty blow. For Mrs May made her ruinous proposal contingent on the approval of her Brexit plans.

It’s a bonus or, if you will, a bribe: she’ll agree to damage the economy only if her fellow spivs are good boys and girls.

If to Mrs May asinine economics is a potential reward, sound economics is punitive. One of her threats to the EU is to lower our corporate taxes and reduce red tape if the EU continues to be bloody-minded.

Meaning that if the EU is compliant, corporate taxes and red tape will go up or, at best, stay the same, making Britain less competitive in world markets. I’m sure there’s some inner logic there somewhere, but I don’t get it.

Mrs May’s economic nous boosted by her talent for rigorous logic is making my head spin, as if I were whirling in a particularly brisk waltz.

Really, our PM missed her true calling. She should have built on her knack for dancing. With diligent application she could have made the chorus line in a West End musical. Barring that, there would always have been pole dancing to fall back on.

Yes, I know she’s a lousy dancer. But at least, had she embarked on that career, she wouldn’t have done much harm – certainly not as much as she’s doing now.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt mentioned the EU and the Soviet Union in the same sentence, with predictable results in certain quarters: bleating and baying and gnashing of teeth.

That’s pure reflex, like a dog reaching for its lead when hearing the word ‘walkies’. The likes of Oliver Kamm, one of the most idiotic columnists in Britain, are barking ‘inflammatory’ and ‘false’ in the same canine response.

All Mr Hunt said is that the EU seeks to punish every member trying to leave, and in that it resembles the USSR.

Of course to the Kamms of this world any negative remark about the EU is ipso facto inflammatory: their tinderbox is always ready to go off. But how is Mr Hunt’s statement false?

The USSR did punish those trying to leave its tender mercies, as the denizens of East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia will confirm. Hence until its disintegration the USSR never lost a single satellite.

It only ever lost one constituent republic, the Karelo-Finnish one (not because it was allowed to secede, but because its entire population quietly slipped across the border into Finland).

In the same vein only Britain has so far tried to leave the EU. And the EU is trying to respond with punitive measures.

These aren’t the same as in the USSR, but the objective is the same: to make sure that once in equals never out, and that all other members get the message. The USSR relied on violence, the EU relies on perfidy and blackmail, but that’s a distinction without a difference.

Thus the EU has tried to rig every national referendum or, that failing, make the offending nation vote again until it got it right. That’s precisely what the EU and its British quislings are trying to engineer here with the help of economic blackmail.

The list of threats is long: all European firms will pull out of Britain, the City of London will be boycotted, British planes won’t be allowed to land in EU countries, Britain will starve – that sort of thing.

All in all, any unbiased observer should be satisfied that the narrow parallel drawn by Mr Hunt is justified both factually and historically.

For sure, a broader parallel between any two political entities will always be fraught with oversimplification and inaccuracy, and a complete analogy is well nigh impossible.

Yet no political contrivance is new under the sun, and one is completely within one’s right to point out both the differences and similarities.

In this case, I’d suggest that any similarities between the EU and history’s most diabolical regime are damning, and these are plentiful.

Like the USSR, the EU is based on a lie. The founding Soviet lie was that power would rest in the hands of workers or peasants. Yet whenever those groups tried to claim even a modicum of independence, they were machine-gunned or poison-gassed en masse.

The founding EU lie was that it pursued no political goals, and its aims were mostly economic. Yet back in the early 1950s, one of the EU godfathers, Jean Monnet, explained that was subterfuge:

“Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose but which will irreversibly lead to federation.”

The EU started as it meant to go on. Every statement issued by its operators or supporters is a lie or, to be charitable, a falsehood.

It’s not committed to free trade, as they claim. On the contrary, the EU is a protectionist bloc, which is rather the opposite of free trade.

Contrary to their mendacious claims, it’s the US nuclear umbrella and NATO that have preserved peace in Europe since 1945 – not the EU, which was only created in 1992.

Nor has there been peace in Europe. Just ask the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians – they’ll tell you. Or else talk to the Ukrainians and Chechens, who are also European denizens. In all those cases, the EU made matters worse rather than better.

What EU functionaries mean by peace is the absence of war between Germany and France, whose bureaucrats jointly concocted the idea of post-war European federalism while the latter was still occupied by the former.

The post-war shape of Europe the Nazi and Vichy chaps envisaged was remarkably similar to what the Nazis planned if they won the war. In this aspect, the EU follows not so much the Soviet as the German model.

This goes back to the Prussian-dominated Zollverein, the customs union Prussia used to unite most German principalities under its aegis. The resulting pan-German federation was a reduced model of the federated pan-European Third Reich and then the federated EU.

Yet in many other aspects the EU does resemble the USSR – mutatis mutandis. True enough, the EU has no concentration camps, it doesn’t murder millions of people, and it relies on bribery and blackmail to keep itself together, not untrammelled violence.

That hardly needs pointing out, as all those dogs pouncing on Jeremy Hunt insist on doing. But that doesn’t mean there are no similarities. There are, plenty.

Political power in the free world derives either from divine right or democratic vote or, as in Britain, both. In both the USSR and the EU it derives from neither.

Like the USSR, the EU is led by bureaucrats, unelected and, which is worse, unaccountable. The European Parliament exists only in a rubberstamping capacity, like the Supreme Soviet did.

In both the USSR and the EU, power radiates from the centre (Moscow and Brussels respectively) to the periphery, where it’s personified by obedient figureheads typically despised by the locals.

In both the EU and the USSR, politics trumps economics. It doesn’t matter if the people are impoverished as long as the state hangs on, and the ruling elite enriches itself. Talk to the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese if you’re interested in details.

Or even talk to the French themselves, throttled by the garrotte of EU red tape in addition to their own. They – and most other EU members – will also tell you how the yoke of the euro makes them less able to compete with the Germans.

The single European currency, like the single European state, is about not economic prosperity but political control. In that too the EU resembles the USSR.

If Jeremy Hunt had said all that at the Conservative Conference, he would have been not merely abused, but drawn and quartered.

As it is, he only has to contend with vituperative and hare-brained columnists, like Kamm, and boozy, fanatical EU functionaries, like Juncker. This way Mr Hunt only has to pinch his nostrils, not duck.

Rank Islamophobes like to point out the rather understated contribution made by the Muslims to science in the past six centuries or so.

By way of illustration they mention that Trinity College, Cambridge, has produced 33 winners of the Nobel Prize for sciences, while the entire Islamic world has managed just three.

On that flimsy basis they reach the kind of conclusions that a champion of diversity like me can’t repeat in public, even for the purpose of debunking them indignantly and in no uncertain terms.

What those troglodytes don’t realise is that Muslim ingenuity isn’t dead. It has merely been rechanneled into other conduits.

Witness Feras, an illegal Palestinian alien and a convicted criminal in Sweden, tragically denied asylum to which he was entitled.

Deportation beckoned, but Feras warded it off, displaying the kind of mental acuity that, if applied to science, would give him a lock on the Nobels for years to come.

In December last year, Feras, in company with 15 other exponents of the religion of peace, set fire to the synagogue in Gothenburg. Even though no one died, that gesture suggested some animosity towards Jews, which, at a guess, was precisely the point Feras wished to make.

His legal team could now argue that deporting Feras back to Gaza would expose him to some retributive justice meted out by the dastardly Israelis. Hence deportation would violate his human rights, and that simply wouldn’t do.

I’m not going to bring this case to the attention of the Nobel Prize Committee, for it would be naïve to hope they’d recognise the seminal contribution Feras has made to Sweden’s social landscape.

But surely some accolade is in order, for Feras lit up a legal path soon likely to be followed by those of his co-religionists whose right to stay in Sweden or other European countries may be open to doubt.

Torch a synagogue, ideally killing a Jew or two, and deportation orders will be consumed in the same fire. The assailant will get a leave to stay faster than you can say “violation of human rights by Israeli colonialists”.

He may face a prison sentence (Feras got two years for his Herostratus job), but the tariff will be generous. More important, once released he probably won’t be deported.

A 2017 report shows that 75 per cent of those sentenced to prison and subsequent deportation were allowed to stay in Sweden, that eternal paragon of liberal virtue. In the past year that proportion has grown to 90 per cent, which highlights the value of Feras’s pioneering effort.

It must be stressed that not any old crime can have such a liberating effect, certainly not on any perpetrator. Attacking Jews only works for Muslims from ‘Palestine’ or Israel itself, and this is the most promising avenue.

Otherwise, killing a Shia Muslim is good for a Sunni from an originally Sunni country now under Shia control (a reference to an actual case). But Jews are always a safe bet.

As a life-long champion of multi-culti diversity, I’m deeply chagrined to notice the evident link between the level of anti-Semitic attacks in a country and the proportion of Muslims in its population. France, for example, outdoes Britain two to one in both categories, and so does Belgium.

To be fair, not all crimes committed by Muslims target Jews. That would be too discriminatory for words, and Islam is a broad church (as it were).

Thus we learn that Muslim refugees commit 250,000 crimes a year in Germany. In Oslo, immigrants, mainly Muslims, are involved in two out of three rapes. In Copenhagen, in three out of four. In Sweden, in 85 per cent. And Malmö, a city of 350,000 souls of whom 40 per cent are Muslims, boasts more murders than the rest of Scandinavia combined.

All this is rather unfortunate, but mercifully such data in no way compromise Europe’s unwavering dedication to liberal values for all, especially Muslims if not necessarily Jews. That’s how it should be: numbers must never be allowed to affect the core principles.

Thus the illiberal Nazi precursors of the EU stuck to their guns and gas chambers to the bitter end, which steadfast fortitude was then passed on to their liberal successors.

It seems as if in both instances the Jews were destined to bear the initial brunt of ideological commitment, although the shockwaves spreading out from this epicentre eventually tend to hit millions of those boasting a more fortunate nativity.

This in no way diminishes my admiration for Feras, an innovative trailblazer in an otherwise rather humdrum country. Who says Muslim migrants make no contribution to their new homes? Certainly not me.

The funniest novel ever written, The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek, features a pimp as a minor character.

That creative fellow comes up with an ingenious way of charging customers: a menu of female attributes, each with a price tag attached.

A customer can order his preferences from the list: big, small; blonde, brunette; tall, short – that sort of thing.

One rubric gives a choice of educated, uneducated, with the latter being considerably more expensive.

The book should be compulsory reading for the female students of Brighton University, especially when they begin to consider their future professions in earnest. If they study some genuine academic subjects (not to be taken for granted with today’s universities), they may find themselves at a disadvantage when pursuing careers in prostitution.

But not to worry: their university offers invaluable guidance, preparing girls as young as 18 to negotiate their way through the undercurrents of that lucrative and rewarding occupation.

At its freshers’ fair, the university hosts a stand run by the Sex Workers’ Outreach Project (Swop), an advice service “representing student sex workers”. Apparently the word ‘prostitutes’ has been deemed to be too judgemental.

The advice on offer covers the use of condoms and lubricants (free samples provided at the stand), and also ways of making ‘punters’ believe the girl has a pimp even if she hasn’t. That subterfuge is supposed to deter post-coital aggression manifesting itself in violence.

I don’t know whether advice on S&M is also provided, complete with the appropriate kits of whips, chains and PVS attire, but that would be a good idea. Without offering a full range of services, a student may find herself losing out to better-trained competition.

“Sex work is work,” explained a spokesman for Swop, meaning work like any other, a workwoman worthy of her hire and all that.

I agree. Prostitution is indeed work – and hard work at that. Then again, so are burglary, theft and contract killing. That is to say, in a distinctly reactionary way, that not all work possesses redemptive value.

Now, mentioning the moral and aesthetic aspects of propositioning passersby (“Oi, handsome, wanna have a party?”) would be too curmudgeonly for words. But the legal side of that profession is a matter of objective fact, not subjective judgement.

While prostitution itself is legal in Great Britain, soliciting isn’t, which is a bit like legalising drugs but criminalising offering them for sale. Defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

Thus a girl taught at Brighton University that sex work is just work, like accounting or nursing, may, should she try to flog her wares, find herself on the receiving end of a criminal conviction.

This may curtail her opportunities in any career other than prostitution: even if the applicant doesn’t mention her prior trade in the ‘experience’ rubric, potential employers do run background checks.

But who says a woman has to retrain for a different career in later life? Isn’t prostitution work like any other, and more remunerative than some? It also requires less training than most, and whatever little is needed Swop is on hand to provide.

If Hašek is to be believed, the girls must be taught to increase their earning potential by concealing their education, but that would be no hardship, considering what most of our universities have become.

The University of Brighton, for example, is one of those polytechnics rebranded as universities in keeping with our commitment to class struggle and equality across the board. It was elevated to that status only in 1992, one of the hundreds of such sham institutions.

They were created to make it possible for our Conservative (!) government to announce proudly that Tony Blair’s cherished dream is about to come true: half of our young people will get university education.

This worthy goal is only achievable by changing the meaning of the word ‘university’ and attaching it to polytechnics and other professional training schools. Enter Brighton University, its doors hospitably open to Swop.

To this institution’s credit, however, it doesn’t pay for that esteemed organisation to supplement the students’ courses in women’s studies and other equally valuable academic disciplines.

But if the university doesn’t pay Swop, who does? After all, free brochures, condoms, lubricants, fishnets and PVC knickers don’t grow on trees. So where does the money come from?

From you, is the short answer. For Swop is financed by the NHS, the Home Office and other government departments, the National Lottery and the local council. So if you ever wonder where your taxes go, here’s part of the answer.

I don’t think that’s quite what John Henry Newman had in mind when he published his 1856 book The Idea of a University. The university’s soul, he wrote, lies in the mark it leaves on the students.

So if the mark is that of a whore, what sort of soul does the university have? Rhetorical question, this. Don’t bother to answer.

The spectacle of watching Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh confronting his accusers and also members of the Senate Judiciary Committee brought back some vivid memories of my KGB interrogation, c. 1972.

My interrogator knew I loathed the Soviets and everything they stood for, I knew that he knew, and he knew that I knew he knew. That wasn’t the point.

The point was to catch me out, make me say something incriminating about my friends or myself. To that end he kept trying to wear me down with monotonously repetitive questions, hoping I’d give him a usable reply the tenth time of asking.

Watching the Senate proceedings, I recognised the technique. Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris clearly knew the score, which at the moment is tied.

The Supreme Court is now hung, with four conservative members and four leftists cancelling one another out. If elected, Kavanaugh would swing the balance the Right way, which, as far as the Democratic senators are concerned, is the wrong way.

The issue is particularly critical because the US Supreme Court increasingly acts not just as a referee, but also as a player. Judiciary activism effectively means that judges play a role in establishing policy, not merely holding it to constitutional scrutiny.

Sen. Harris was particularly concerned that the Supreme Court might overturn the 1973 decision on Roe v. Wade, which extended a right of privacy to a woman wanting an abortion.

She kept banging on and on, trying to trick Judge Kavanaugh into admitting that he’d overturn Roe v. Wade, and first agreeing that the Supreme Court is within its rights to go back on its prior decisions with no statute of limitations applying.

Sen. Harris succeeded in making her mark sound less than completely coherent, but he still made more sense than she did. For example, he pointed out that earlier this year the Supreme Court repudiated the 1944 decision according to which the wartime internment of Japanese Americans was constitutional.

And so on, ad nauseam. But the real need for sick bags arose when Dr Christine Ford gave her testimony about being raped by Brett Kavanaugh 35 years ago, when he was 17 and she 15.

Well, not exactly raped but sexually assaulted. He was drunk, so was she. He threw her on the bed, tried to remove her clothes, failed – but nonetheless succeeded in traumatising Dr Ford for life.

As she was courageously fighting tears, the 51-year-old psychologist was asked whether she was sure it was actually Brett who traumatised her so egregiously. But of course she was sure, 100 per cent, replied the victim.

How can she be so sure, asked one of the senators. After all, 35 years is a long time.

In response, Dr Ford drew on her professional expertise. The explanation, she explained, lies in “the level of norepinephrine and the level of epinephrine in the brain that sort of, you know, encodes memories in the hippocampus so the trauma experience is locked there, whereas other details kind of drifted.”

That should have made it an open and shut case. What could have possibly been any clearer?

That bestial experience doubtless left an indelible imprint in Dr Ford’s brain. Unfortunately, the identity of her assailant seems to be one of the other details that kind of drifted.

For none of those present at that party, including a friend of Dr Ford, confirmed Brett Kavanaugh’s guilt. Moreover, two men have come forward to claim they were the ones who assaulted Christine Ford in 1982.

Other victims of Judge Kavanaugh’s youthful libido have been equally vague.

One of them claimed that roughly at the same time young Brett stuck his penis into her face at a party. Well, somebody did at any rate and, knowing what kind of person Brett is – the kind of animal who could overturn Roe v. Wade – it could have been him.

Could have been or was? To this lot it makes no difference. The issue is all about higher matters than nit-picking about little facts like that. He could have done it means he did it – the logic that again made me recall my Soviet youth.

As I write this, the Senate panel is voting on Judge Kavanaugh’s candidature. As a strong supporter of even post-natal abortion, say up to the age of six months – or, in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, 69 years – I hope they’ll send him packing.

And if the earth-shattering evidence presented by Dr Ford isn’t enough to deliver that result, I can offer a few more pieces of equally damning, irrefutable proof.

Judge Kavanaugh could have perpetrated serial murders. He could have committed war crimes in Bosnia, Iraq and Germany… oops, sorry, not Germany, the numbers don’t quite add up. Just Bosnia and Iraq then.

He could have poisoned Litvinenko with polonium and the Skripals with novichok. He could have laundered billions of dollars through Panama.

All those awful things he could have done – what other evidence do the senators need to stop this criminal in his tracks? I say hang Judge Kavanaugh and win a valuable prize: Roe v. Wade intact.

As the etymology of the word suggests, news is something that tells people what they don’t already know, throwing a new light on recent events.

My contention is that no information about Russia fits that definition. Just look at the two news items currently making all the papers.

First (in importance, not chronology), we’ve found out beyond any doubt that the chaps who poisoned the Skripals and everyone else in the vicinity are actually GRU officers.

One of them has been identified as Col. Anatoliy Chepiga, a much-decorated veteran of Spetsnaz (GRU special forces) and undercover intelligence work.

Crikey. And there I was, thinking he and his accomplice really were camp lovers of Gothic architecture and each other, who simply couldn’t miss the glory of Salisbury Cathedral. “Don’t you think this spire is absolutely scrumptious, darling, and ever so slightly naughty, the way its stands up at the ready?”

So the Botox Boy lied through his teeth when he declared publicly that’s what the two murderers were. That’s another bit of non-news.

Putin’s whole career is based on lies, from his youth in Leningrad street gangs to his early years as a small-fry KGB thug to his maturity as the principal Petersburg gangster to his current position of presiding over history’s first gangster state.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s always nice to find a confirmation of something one knows already. Such scoops are pleasantly tickling to one’s ego. What they aren’t is news, for they add nothing to existing knowledge.

Then there’s the item about Abramovich being denied Swiss residency because of his links with organised crime and propensity for money laundering. His presence in Switzerland, ruled a federal judge, would be detrimental to the country’s reputation.

That’s a bit like a prostitute refusing to enter a casino because gambling is immoral.

Switzerland’s reputation is that of a money launderer who somehow has cloaked himself in a mantle of respectability. If Abramovich’s presence is deemed too toxic for the rarefied atmosphere of Swiss finance, then he’s a money launderer lacking even such a flimsy cover.

So what else is new? Anyone who manages to make a fortune in a gangster state is himself a gangster. If he isn’t, then long before he makes his first billion he’ll end up ‘whacked’ (Putin’s preferred term), suicided or in prison.

None of those misfortunes has befallen Abramovich, who satisfies the main – some will say the only – requirement for massive enrichment in Russia: he’s Putin’s poodle, always at the Botox Boy’s beck and call.

Abramovich has to be one of the major conduits through which Putin’s personal billions flow to the West. Occupying that position is a major honour in Russia, and a prerequisite for making and keeping one’s own billions.

The honour comes at a price. Thus whenever the Botox Boy needs a few hundred million to bankroll some obscene extravaganza, such as Olympics or a World Cup, chaps like Abramovich fling their wallets wide-open.

Or when Putin needs one of his stooges to act as governor of a province, Abramovich is his first choice to take over Chukotka, a piece of icy tundra in the Russian Far East housing 50,000 thoroughly frozen souls.

Some personal tributes are also welcome, such as the timely gift of a £25-million yacht Abramovich presented to the Botox Boy. Neither the biggest nor the costliest, but hey – it’s the thought that counts. Modest but tasteful, as the Russians say.

Is any of this eye-opening news? Far from it, at least to anyone who knows that Russia is indeed history’s first gangster state, criminalised from top to bottom and run by a perfect blend of secret police and organised crime.

And anyone who doesn’t know this simply doesn’t want to know, like those Western lefties who denied the on-going slaughter of millions in the Soviet Union. You know, the empire whose demise the Botox Boy describes as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”.

For reams of amply documented facts are in the public domain. In the past month alone I have read three books that dispel any residual doubts anyone may harbour about the true nature of Putin’s Russia: Russian Roulette by Isikoff and Corn, House of Trump, House of Putin by Craig Unger and Moneyland by Oliver Bullough.

Among other things, these books cite and show photocopies of countless documents tracking Putin’s criminal career and those of his accomplices.

Abramovich figures prominently, along with that other great English footballer, Alisher Usmanov, and their French colleague Dmitry Rybolovlev. Football clubs must be useful laundromats – or else their function is simply to confer some respectability on Putin’s friends.

What upsets me about this story is that even the Swiss seem to be more moral than either the US or Britain. The two countries have gratefully absorbed an estimated two trillion dollars of purloined Russian cash flowing through the veins of their finance.

It’s only now, after the much-publicised tour of Salisbury Cathedral, that HMG is beginning to stir a little.

Thus Abramovich’s British visa has so far not been extended, and the poor chap had to become an Israeli citizen in a hurry. Our gain is Israel’s loss, I’d say.

Moreover, one even hears vague noises about impounding large Russian accounts whose provenance is dubious. A move in the right direction, but that’s something I’ll have to see to believe.

However, my sense of fair play, vicariously acquired but none the weaker for it, is such that I sympathise with Abramovich. Why single him out?

Since in a gangster state only gangsters become rich, every large fortune acquired in Russia (not necessarily by Russians) is proceeds of criminal activities.

Impounding all such assets, without going into casuistic detail in each individual case, would thus be a welcome hygienic procedure, making the air of London purer to breathe.

Russian loot is ecologically worse than carbon dioxide, you can take this to a bank – and feel free to cite me as the source.

The other day, the Botox Boy magnanimously acknowledged that Israeli F-16s had nothing to do with the downing of the Russian spy plane IL-20. It was just a tragic incident of friendly fire.

Those trigger-happy Syrians had been so unnerved by the Israeli raid that they were scatter-gunning those S-200s at everything that flew.

Since the Israeli fighters had already returned to base, the only thing flying at that time was the IL-20, a high-altitude, low-speed sitting duck. The Syrian AA chaps took it for an F-16 and brought it down. An easy mistake to make.

But then Vlad thought better of it. Let’s face it: when Russian-trained soldiers fire a Russian-made missile at a Russian plane, killing 15 Russian officers, whom are you going to blame?

Syrians? To the Russians, that’s like blaming children. The Russians themselves? Be your age: everyone, including Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn and Peter Hitchens, knows that Russia is the last bastion of goodness and, as such, has a blank indulgence against all sin.

Americans? That usually works, up to a point. But even Vlad’s intricate mind couldn’t find a way to make it work in this case.

As a young lad, Vlad read his Sherlock Holmes, when he had a break from running with his street gang. And the great detective taught that, when one has eliminated every possibility but one, the remaining possibility is the answer.

So it had to be the Jews, it was as simple as that. Selling that message in Russia is like selling water in a desert: success is guaranteed. If Jews exsanguinate Christian babies for culinary purposes, they’re certainly capable of using a Russian plane as a shield.

A swift 180, and first defence spokesman Konashenkov, then Defence Minister Shoigu, then Vlad himself, then all his trained propagandists put the blame on Israel, which had been their first reaction anyway.

So fine, the Syrian AA chaps got carried away a bit, but why? Because the Israelis – Jews! – had raided Iranian targets sited close to Russian bases. That was criminal negligence at best, aggression against Russia at worst.

More honest commentators would have mentioned that Iranians, who are as committed as their Hezbollah clients to exterminating Israel, deliberately put their facilities near Russian bases.

The trick has been perfected by Hamas and Hezbollah, who routinely place their rocket launchers near or in hospitals and schools. That gives them a ready-made propaganda coup when Israeli retaliatory strikes hit patients or tots.

So what exactly happened there? Did the Syrian S-200 crews make the mistake of confusing the IL-20 with an Israeli F-16?

Not according to the Russian officer Yuri Alexeev, whose commentary crossed my desk the other day. Here are some excerpts, in my translation:

“Since I studied the S-200 system at military school and then served at it for many years, I can state the following: the Arabs could not have confused an F-16 with an IL-20…

“All the surfaces of a jet plane reflecting the radar beam are immobile. That’s why the reflected signal formed by the plane’s several ‘hot spots’ has roughly the same frequency and looks like three adjacent vertical lines.

“On the other hand, due to the Doppler effect, a turboprop plane (its rotating propellers create various Doppler additions to the signal frequency) produces a signal in the shape of multiple vertical lines that fill practically the whole radar screen.

“Any training of radar operators and other crew members starts from explaining these very differences. I’m sure our instructors who trained the Arab crew did just that…

“It has to be said that the S-200B system is complex to maintain and operate. All sorts of procedures are involved in launching a rocket…

“If the crew managed to launch a missile, they were clearly trained and definitely knew the difference in the footprints of a jet and a turboprop plane…

“There’s a theory that the Syrian crew followed and attacked an F-16 that then performed an evasive manoeuvre, pushing into the radar coverage our plane that has a much larger reflective surface. The missile re-targeted it automatically and a hit occurred.

“Yes, that’s possible – but only if our plane was ‘lit up’ by the radar. If there had been no reflected signal, the missile would have self-destructed. That means the Arabs had been tracking our plane and therefore saw the reflected signal on the radar screen.

“Moreover, to re- target, the operator had to switch manually to the automatic tracking of the new target…

“In my opinion, the Arabs knew what they were tracking and launched a missile deliberately. This is a matter of ‘corporate ethics’.

“Losing a target is the worst thing that can happen to an AA officer. When we were on duty, we were issued pistols. Being young, we’d ask our commanders what the guns were for. They’d reply that, if you lose a target, go and shoot yourself, to save the paperwork at the court martial.

“All personnel at AA missile systems knew that still having unlaunched rockets after an enemy raid was a guaranteed death sentence for themselves. It’s likely that the Arabs had been imbued with that principle, so they fired at whatever they saw.”

Such is the expert view, confirmed by every informed commentator on the incident. But that doesn’t matter to the Botox Boy and his jolly friends.

The choice between blaming themselves or the Jews was in reality no choice at all. It was a foregone conclusion.

To the rest of us, the tall story about Israel’s guilt is considerably less credible than the possibility of the Russians themselves downing their own plane by way of a provocation.

I don’t know whether they did or didn’t, nor what they were trying to provoke (one possibility is causing a rift with Israel to strengthen ties with Iran). I’m only saying that this is more plausible than Israel’s perfidy.

For many years now Israel has been trying to cultivate Russia as an ally. The two countries have been ostensibly as friendly as friendly can be – partly, I’m sure, because many gangsters from Putin’s entourage park their ill-gotten gains in Israel.

Israel, surrounded by enemies seeking her annihilation, desperately needs every ally she can get. Thus committing a hostile act against Russia is simply out of the question for the Israeli government.

Netanyahu and his ministers have been bending over backwards trying to please the Russians in every possible way. They didn’t seem to realise that, when one sups with the devil, no spoon is ever long enough.

Found guilty of three counts of sexual assault, the comedian Bill Cosby will be sentenced soon.

The guilty verdict came at the second time of asking, the first trial having ended in a hung jury last year. The second trial, however, did the business, helped no doubt by the now prevalent me-tooism.

Meanwhile, by way of a warm-up, the judge called Mr Cosby a “sexually violent predator” and ruled that he must undergo counselling for life.

Considering that he’s 81, that may not be a particularly long time. Nevertheless, the pre-sentencing ruling strikes me as odd.

Mr Cosby’s wooing technique involved slipping a girl a mickey and then proceeding to have a bit of how’s-your-father with her. One would think that, given his star status and influence in show business, he wouldn’t have had to resort to chemicals to get his jollies, but probably they do save time.

Now considering the mass hysteria surrounding such cases, one tends to question the justice of any verdict to convict – one tangible result of this madness.

But, assuming that Mr Cosby really is guilty as charged and convicted, he’s indeed a criminal. Lock him up and throw away the key, as the saying goes.

But what does counselling have to do with anything? Does the judge really believe that a man in the twilight of his life will reform as a result of regular meetings with a chap asking probing questions about Mr Cosby’s childhood urge to shag his Mum, kill his Dad and poke his own eyes out?

I know I’m oversimplifying the job of a counsellor, but I don’t think it’s by much. For it’s oversimplified thinking that’s behind this bizarre ruling.

The assumption seems to be that criminals in general and Mr Cosby specifically suffer from a correctable personality disorder depriving them of any ability to make a free choice between good and bad.

Hence an elaborate inquiry uncovering their innermost childhood cravings about their mothers or some such pay dirt may make them better men, less likely to reoffend. Such an inquiry is seen as a valuable addition to incarceration and often its replacement.

The notion of free will, without which our civilisation might as well pack up and go home, no longer applies. A sentenced criminal is no longer just a villain. In some convoluted way, he’s also a patient.

This tune sounds throughout society, and witnesses, especially victims, know they mustn’t strike discordant notes. Thus Mr Cosby didn’t just have sex without permission – because of his psychological disorder he inflicted a profound, lifelong trauma on his marks.

Just listen how one of them, Andrea Constand, describes her ordeal: “Bill Cosby took my beautiful, healthy young spirit and crushed it. He robbed me of my health and vitality, my open nature, and my trust in myself and others.”

Who on earth, what normal person, ever talks like that? How long did the defence counsel have to rehearse this oration with Miss Constand? Did he write it out and make her learn it by heart? Was there a psychologist involved, to make sure she’d sing the psychobabble song in every tonal detail?

I must say, had I been on that jury, I would have voted not guilty simply on the strength of that objectionable rhetoric. I would have simply refused to believe that Miss Constand was honest. That’s not how honest people talk.

Why did she and her legal team feel all that nonsense had to be mouthed? Surely, if Mr Cosby had indeed drugged and raped her, no verbal ornamentation of the facts should have been necessary.

The act, if proved to be what it was, should by itself be sufficient to make Mr Cosby celebrate his ninetieth birthday in prison. So yes, by all means punish him for what he did.

But in the process don’t punish the rest of us by making the law sound ludicrous, in hock to modern fads and pseudomedical perversions. Spare us the psychodin – and spare Mr Cosby the indignity of psychoanalysis.

He doesn’t need it – in fact, I doubt anyone ever does. He knew what he was doing. He knew it was wrong and he did it anyway. That’s a vile crime, not a symptom of mental illness, and it’s not something that can be treated.

It’s something that must be punished – and if any attendant rhetoric is deemed necessary, it should revolve around good and evil, and the God-given free will enabling us to tell the difference between the two.

Anything else diminishes every human being, by debauching the very idea of humanity.

My approach to socialists is rather simplistic, and I’m man enough to admit this failing.

More sophisticated analysts than me divide socialists into finely nuanced categories: national (Nazi), international (communist or some such), moderate, democratic, Christian and so forth.

I simplify this taxonomy by dividing socialists into just two broad groups: good people and those who are still alive.

I’m ashamed of this lack of subtlety, but I can do no other. (Doesn’t this sound so much better in English than in Luther’s original German, Ich kann nicht anders?)

What separates different hues of the socialist red is trivial compared to what unites them: the urge to destroy things that make Britain British or, more generally, the West Western.

When they want to destroy all such things, they’re called extreme or hard left. When they don’t mind keeping the odd thing or two for old times’ sake, they’re called moderate or left of centre.

A distinction without a difference, at least as far as the underlying destructive animus is concerned.

There’s some difference in the chosen weapons of destruction, and that’s admittedly more valid: on balance, I’d rather die impoverished in a care centre than emaciated in a labour camp.

There’s also a difference in the words they use: some are more forthright than others.

For example, Tony Blair, the most perfidious nonentity among our socialists, hid his hatred of every traditional custom and institution behind a smokescreen of fake neo-Thatcherism.

Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, doesn’t mind openly coming across as an evil nonentity. Where Blair is typologically close to Gramsci, Marcuse and Adorno, Corbyn gravitates more towards Trotsky, Chavez and Maduro.

That’s why I trust Jeremy implicitly. Whenever he promises to introduce a policy guaranteed to reduce Britain to the status of Venezuela, he means what he says – and he’ll do what he promises.

My credulity begins to totter, nay come down crashing, whenever he insists that Britain will profit from his premiership. But, to give Jeremy his due, he’s so vague about any specific benefits that one gets the impression he doesn’t even expect to be believed.

Many people have made the mistake of not taking evil, destructive men at their word when they preach mayhem. Such people clearly have no faith in human honesty, a quality on which I pride myself.

When Lenin talked about wiping out every noxious bourgeois insect, defined in rather open-ended terms, most people assumed that was just a figure of speech.

They noticed that included in that wide category weren’t just factory owners, but everybody Lenin hated: priests, the intelligentsia, army officers, financiers, administrators, engineers, scientists, artisans or simply university graduates.

Surely, people were saying, he couldn’t possibly mean wiping them all out physically. He’s smart enough to realise Russia would be a basket case without her educated classes.

Oh yes, he could mean just that. And he did what he meant, with precisely the dreaded consequences.

In the same vein, when Stalin defined as kulaks every hard-working peasant and called for “liquidating them as a class”, he wasn’t taken literally. Who’d feed the people if all the productive peasants were ‘liquidated’?

They missed the point. Socialism, at least its hard variety, isn’t about feeding people. It’s about liquidating them, and that’s precisely what Stalin proceeded to do, picking up the relay baton his syphilitic predecessor had dropped – with millions starving to death as a result.

And when Hitler published his Mein Kampf, spelling out his plans involving the German Jews, no one – least of all the German Jews themselves – believed him.

Germany, with her Kultur and Bildung, was the most civilised country in the world, they were saying. It can’t possibly allow mass murder, and Herr Hitler, for all his stridency, was only speaking figuratively, wasn’t he?

Yes, quite.

Now Jeremy Corbyn, unfortunately for him, lives at a time and in a country that aren’t quite ready for mass murder. Being a clever chap, he knows it, which is why physical destruction of millions isn’t on his agenda.

But the destruction of the British economy certainly is, and, to Jeremy’s credit, he’s honest about it. He has proposed a whole raft of policies, each of which would damage the economy grievously.

Executed together, they’d take Britain close to the country Corbyn admires with every fibre of what passes for his soul: the Venezuela of Chavez and Maduro.

Two of those proposed policies are very much in the news: obligating companies to transfer 10 per cent of their shares to their employees, and putting several employees and union representatives on company boards.

The second policy is pernicious enough on its own, but it’s the first one that assails not only the country’s economic health but indeed her fundamental principles.

One such principle, without which Britain wouldn’t be Britain, is property rights – and the liberties derived therefrom.

Where will those 10 per cent of the shares come from? There are only two possible sources, both amounting to confiscation.

One is robbing the existing stockholders of 10 per cent of their property; the other is issuing more shares, thereby reducing the value of those already held. This mugging will be exacerbated by many stockholders dumping their shares and reducing the value of the stock even further.

I could easily imagine the practical ramifications of this rape of Britain’s ethos, but mercifully I don’t have to: there’s enough empirical evidence. The effects of this policy have been about the same everywhere it has been tried.

Some companies, and most of the foreign ones, simply move their business elsewhere, leaving behind a gaping hole in the country’s finances and employment statistics.

Those that stay, do two things: lower wages and roll back hiring. That delivers a blow to the country’s economy by effectively reducing GDP and again increasing unemployment.

You see, unlike Corbyn, most companies want to create wealth, not rob or otherwise destroy it. When they see their creative impulse extinguished, they won’t take it lying down. If there’s one thing that history teaches it’s that people – and businesses – flee from socialism.

This policy can do a fine job impoverishing Britain all by itself, but Jeremy isn’t taking any chances. To guarantee his desired outcome, he also plans stratospheric tax rises and wholesale nationalisation.

So please trust Corbyn to deliver on his promises – I certainly do.