Month: September 2015

One country’s ambassador to another is generally supposed to do his best to keep the relations between the two at an even keel. Friendly would be better, but civil is the minimum requirement.

But suppose an ambassador was given a different task: to make sure the relations went from bad to worse. How would he go about it?

The quickest way would be to insult the host country by stating that the most tragic event in her history was her own fault. This trick certainly worked for Sergey Andreyev, Putin’s ambassador to Poland.

It has to be said that Russia and Poland haven’t been the best of friends since before either country got its present name. However, if we narrow the historical perspective to the last 100 years or so, the hostility between the two has been more pronounced than ever.

Shortly after the Bolsheviks grabbed Russia they sent their cavalry in the general direction of the Channel. Germany and France were the targets but, unfortunately for the impatient Soviet youngster, Poland lay in the way. Unaware that the Red steeds had winds of progress behind them, the Poles routed the Red Army ineptly led by the subsequent hero-martyr Tukhachevsky.

The Soviets got their own back in 1939, when their pact with Nazi Germany partitioned Poland between the two evil powers. A week later, on 1 September, the Second World War started.

Contrary to the popular misapprehension, the war against Poland wasn’t exactly a cakewalk for the Nazis. Though originally stunned by the blitzkrieg, the Poles managed to regroup to the east of the Vistula, and their resistance was growing stronger by the day.

The Germans were paying the price for their arrogance. Expecting a bloodless takeover, like those of Austria and Czechoslovakia, they hadn’t prepared for the war properly. As a result they were running out of essential supplies, especially aircraft bombs.

Their new Soviet allies (who by then had amassed more weaponry than the rest of the world combined) helped, restocking the Nazis’ arsenal, as they later did during the Battle of Britain. But the Nazis demanded more tangible action, and the Soviets obliged. On 17 September they knifed Poland in the back by attacking her from the east. That put paid to the resistance, and the two predators divided the spoils stipulated in the pact.

The SS Einsatzgruppen came in the Wehrmacht’s wake and began to exterminate Jews in the western part of Poland. Similarly, the Soviet army was followed in by the NKVD, which had by then gathered vast experience in mass murder.

Several hundred thousand Poles were immediately deported to Siberia, to the accompaniment of pistol shots fired through the heads of the usual suspects: aristocrats, priests, teachers, writers, scientists, administrators – and POW officers. The widely publicised massacre of 22,000 such people at Katyn and elsewhere was the culmination of that process, far from its entirety.

It took Poland another 50 years to regain her independence from Russia and subsequently to be blessed by the presence of Mr Andreyev. As part of the blessing, they were astounded to hear that the ambassador’s version of events was rather different from the truth.

The Soviet Union, explained His Excellence, didn’t really attack Poland. And even if it did, the dastardly Poles had only themselves to blame. They oppressed their Ukrainians, whom Russia has an historical duty to protect (a view not universally shared in the Ukraine, it has to be said).

Not only that, but Poland had refused to enter the anti-Hitler coalition the Soviets had desperately sought (presumably while also seeking a coalition with Hitler).

The Poles gasped and tried to guess what on earth the good ambassador could possibly have meant. Having failed to figure out the puzzle, they made the irrefutable ethnic point that neither Molotov nor Ribbentrop was Polish.

It’s pointless wondering why Putin’s diplomats ignore elementary etiquette, never mind the truth. After all, Andreyev’s superior, Foreign Minister Lavrov routinely uses the foulest of obscenities in his official capacity.

Once, for example, when his British counterpart made a timid observation about civil rights in Russia, Lavrov said “Who are you to f***ing lecture me?” proving thereby that the KGB school excels at teaching colloquial English, split infinitives and all.

Putin’s diplomats clearly see themselves not as mere envoys, but as the vanguard in the war on the West, which should put us all on guard. Poland in particular has every reason to worry, what with her unfortunate geographical position just west of the country currently under Russian attack.

Putin is trying to exacerbate Russia’s current pariah status, possibly to prime his brainwashed populace for a subsequent military adventure. But hey, if you listen to some of our pundits, that’s all right: Vlad, after all, is the strong leader we so sorely lack.

P.S. Jeremy Corbyn has promised that, should he ever become PM, he’d never use, whatever the provocation, nuclear weapons, to which he is “totally and morally” opposed. Of course it was only Nato’s readiness to use such weapons that prevented the Soviet conquest of Europe, a development to which Corbyn would have been opposed neither totally nor morally. Our mutual friend Vlad should take notice.

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

Even a broken clock gives the right time twice a day, says the folk wisdom. By the same token, even evil men may occasionally say something true – but with one important proviso:

Such men may tell the truth, but they’ll never tell the whole truth or nothing but the truth.

My friend Vlad is a case in point. His speech at the UN General Assembly caused a ripple of laughter in the audience every time this rapist of the Ukraine, serial murderer and gangster appealed to the sanctity of international law.

That was like Hitler insisting on his commitment to racial equality, Dr Shipman stressing the importance of proper care for the elderly or Jeremy Corbyn publicly dedicating his life to the monarchy in general and the Queen in particular, God bless her.

Yet I can’t fault Vlad’s comments on the reasons for the Middle Eastern carnage much as I’d like to. Taking issue with his conclusion that Russia should be trusted to sort things out is much easier, and I’ve done so a few times over the last fortnight.

Vlad the Broken Clock was absolutely right when blaming the West, as embodied by Dubya, Barack, Tony and Dave. But for the criminally stupid 2003 foray into Iraq and Afghanistan, violence in the Middle East would not have reached endemic – and potentially global – proportions.

The West’s keenly felt urge to unseat Middle Eastern dictators because they don’t subscribe to the principles enshrined in the US Constitution could only have come from the triple whammy of modern politics: Idiocy, Ignorance and Ideology.

The ideology of democracy über alles is as vile as any other – nothing but God and his commandments are über alles. Everything else must be based on pragmatic judgement, which in this case should have told our spivocrats that in politics there exists such a useful concept as choosing the lesser evil.

That’s why, rather than chasing the democratic pie in the Middle Eastern sky, they ought to have realised that the only possible alternative to such tyrants as the Shah of Iran, Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad et al wasn’t a presidential democracy complete with a bicameral congress and baseball Little Leagues but… well, exactly what we have now.

Incidentally, the same Triple-I feeblemindedness is applied retrospectively to judging historical personages, such as Francisco Franco. Il Caudillo certainly didn’t have wings on his back and, by the standards of the Doctors of the Church or even most US presidents, he was rather rough around the edges. But in 1936 the only available alternative to Franco was neither one of the Doctors of the Church nor even one of the US presidents. It was Stalin.

Had the wrong side won, Spain today would be like Romania. Hence Franco’s victory made him his nation’s saviour, not the ‘fascist’ of the bien pensant fantasy. The same logic fully applies to the Middle Eastern tyrants.

That’s essentially what Vlad the Broken Clock was saying, and for once he was right. Obama, however, endorsed the Triple-I approach to foreign policy in so many words. We should never “support tyrants like Bashar al-Assad,” he said, “who drop barrel bombs to massacre innocent children, because the alternative is surely worse.”

This ignores what’s obvious to any sane person: there are only three things the West can do in Syria. One, nothing. Two, support Assad. Three, support Isis.

Since, thanks to the Triple-I actions of the past, doing nothing is no longer an option, and Obama himself acknowledges that the alternative to Assad is “surely worse”, then supporting Assad is the only course of action that’s morally tenable and indeed mathematically possible.

Where Vlad proves that his clock is broken after all is in his attempt to use the mayhem as a hoist raising himself to a dominant position in the region. That’s like a doctor correctly diagnosing a chronic migraine and then prescribing potassium cyanide to treat it.

Russia’s domination of the Middle East would have worse strategic consequences for the West than any other possible outcome. Applying to the situation the same irrefutable logic that’s evidently beyond Obama, Putin’s kleptofascist regime calling shots in the region is the cyanide used to treat a headache.

How wrong do we have to be to make someone like Putin sound right on anything? My first impulse is to say, as wrong as wrong can be. But that would be underestimating our leaders’ talent for expanding the limits of folly towards infinity.

So things are going to get worse – before they get worse still.

 

 

 

  

 

 

No? Not a good idea? Well, let’s at least discuss it as mature adults, in Parliament for preference.

Don’t even want to do that? Fine, I have lots of other ideas.

Selling human flesh in supermarkets, replacing the Houses of Parliament with a replica of the Gherkin, having one Open Rape Day every month, banning white men from public service – you name it.

I realise you may disagree with these ideas, but that’s good. A clash of ideas, with truth emerging at the other end, is the essence of our parliamentary democracy, isn’t it?

That’s why a company-strength contingent of our pundits welcome with thunderous hosannas Jeremy Corbyn’s ascent to Labour leadership and, potentially, premiership.

To be sure, our so-called conservative columnists state they have no time for ‘most of’ Corbyn’s ideas, leaving the reader with the task of guessing which of his ideas they find acceptable. This disclaimer usually comes at the beginning, both to confirm the writer’s conservative credentials and to set the scene for the inevitable ‘however’.

However, and here the pundits triumphantly toss their hats up in the air, they love our parliamentary democracy with the passion some men reserve for women, the erotic element and all. And for our beloved democracy to function properly, it must feed off a debate on conflicting ideas.

A generally sound thought, that, but few generally sound thoughts this side of the Bible can survive without an attached set of nuances and qualifications. This particular thought will die in the absence of a satisfactory answer to the question “What constitutes an idea worthy of the name – or of debate?”

Obviously those I proposed above don’t fall into that category. They aren’t ideas, I hear you say, they are manifestations of various mental disorders. They should be dismissed out of hand.

Fine. But then I submit that Corbyn’s ideas aren’t ideas either. They are a manifestation of a deep-seated and lovingly cultivated hatred of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, along with everything this commonwealth stands for.

Compared to his cherished notions, my proposals begin to look positively benign. Yes, if acted upon, they’d upset most people and bring the country into disrepute. But they wouldn’t destroy it, as Corbyn’s ‘ideas’ would.

Wholesale nationalisation, maximum wage, a great hike in taxes on the productive classes, printing money as fast as the presses can manage, uncapping welfare benefits – such measures would create not so much an economic crisis as an economic wasteland.

Disbanding our army, abandoning the Trident nuclear deterrent, leaving Nato would take Britain several rungs down from her current second-rate status in the world. For the first time in her history Britain would be unable to defend herself against enemies from within or without.

Imposing a boycott on Israel and strengthening ties with Hamas, Hezbollah, Isis and all other Corbyn’s self-acknowledged friends in the region would almost certainly lead to a major, possibly world, war in which we’d play the role of disarmed targets.

Uniting Ireland under the aegis of Corbyn’s IRA friends and getting rid of the monarchy would put paid to the United Kingdom. It would then become an Islamic republic thanks to Muslim immigration, which, according to Corbyn, should be unlimited.

These are the kind of ideas that our respectable pundits believe ought to be debated in Parliament as a vindication of our cherished democracy. Chaps, are you out of your  minds?

Someone who mouths such ‘ideas’ should do so in a saloon bar, at a street corner, with pedestrians giving him a wide berth, or – ideally – in the rubber room of a reliably secure psychiatric institution. Parliament isn’t the place for deranged rants.

The problem with our pundits, with only a handful of exceptions, is that – how shall I put it without offending anybody – they aren’t very bright. Oh I’m sure their IQ scores are stratospheric, but IQ only measures potential.

To develop a potential into intelligence, a person should train himself how to think, and this is a lifetime endeavour, at the end of which the trainee will learn not to take on faith certain axioms of modernity.

By far the most pernicious axiom is that “all men are created equal”. By inference, so are all ideas – regardless of their enunciator’s competence.

As an illustration, back in 1979 the American public was following a debate on the safety of nuclear energy. The opposing parties were Edward Teller, a great nuclear physicist, and Jane Fonda, who probably thought physics was what one did in a gym to make sure those breast implants settle properly.

Teller had his ideas, Fonda had hers, so let the public decide who’s right. All ideas are created equal, aren’t they? They all deserve to be heard, discussed and either accepted or rejected.

Of course in a sane world only sane ideas would qualify as such. But who says we’re living in a sane world? Hence our columnists getting their rocks off over Corbyn’s ideas serving parliamentary democracy, especially since the subversive cretin espouses them in all sincerity.

So what’s wrong with the idea of reintroducing slavery then? Corbyn’s ‘ideas’, if brought to fruition, would make slaves of us all anyway.

Let’s face it, voting in a general election is like buying a pig in a poke. How do we know that the new government won’t make a pig’s ear of its job to lead the nation?

In a way, one could say that these days the electorate is prepared to act as so many guinea pigs – and have as much of a chance to end up in clover.

Dave has now been conducting his experiment on Britain for six years, every one a vindication of the old adage that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

We are well justified in thinking that his idea of leadership is all about leading the nation like so many pigs to the slaughter. Part of the problem is that Dave has soft principles, which leaves him unable to make hard choices.

A vacillating prime minister who doesn’t have the power of his convictions because he has no convictions may initiate any number of promising measures, but he’ll never go the whole hog.

Whatever is promising runs the risk of being unpopular, and do you think Dave will ever risk his own political future for the sake of doing the right thing? Yes, and pigs will fly.

Yet trying to explain to a modern politician that he should place the nation’s interest before his own is like casting pearls before swine.

I must say I share Dave’s amazement at the ease with which he and his jolly friends took over the Tory party. He didn’t say it was like stealing acorns from a blind pig, but he might as well have done. That is a comment not so much on him as on the party, which has Conservative in its name but not at its core.

The popular tendency is to blame Dave’s ineptitude on his class. Class envy, not to say hatred, comes naturally to today’s masses, who seem to believe that living high off the hog one’s whole life from birth ought to disqualify one from high office.

True enough, being raised in an ivory tower may give a man a rather skewed view of life – but it doesn’t have to. Intelligence and sensitivity could fill the gap left by insufficient experience, preventing the man from being pig-ignorant of hard realities.

However, when a man with neither intelligence nor sensitivity looks on life from the vantage point of an ivory tower, the result can be devastating – not so much for him as for the nation he gets to lead. He will never bring home the bacon.

One look at Britain’s great PMs of the past will show that few of them were either paupers or proletarians. Churchill, for example, proves that living in hog heaven doesn’t automatically mean making a pig’s ear of leading the country at a time of troubles.

In a similar situation, could Dave be relied on to save Britain’s bacon? Somehow one doubts it. All he’s good at is telling us porkies about the country’s state and prospects, or his own intentions.

The porky he has been trying to sell the nation most persistently is that somehow he can force enough reform on the EU to make it consonant with Britain’s interests.

“Ja,” commented Frau Merkel with a wink and a sly smile. “Und schweinen will fly.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

New York, 25 September, 2015.

In a move that surprised most observers, Pope Francis has delivered a fiery oration calling the West to arms in defence of our civilisation against an increasingly militant Muslim world.

In the part of the speech dealing specifically with the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, His Holiness said:

“If it were announced to you that the enemy has invaded your cities, your castles, your land; had ravished your wives and your daughters, and profaned your temples – which among you would not fly to arms? Well, then, all those calamities and calamities still greater, have fallen upon your brethren, upon the family of Jesus Christ, which is yours. Why do you hesitate to repair so many evils – to revenge so many outrages? Will you allow the infidels to contemplate in peace the ravages they have committed on Christian people? Remember that their triumph will be a subject of grief to all ages and an eternal opprobrium upon the generation that has endured it. Yes, the living God has charged me to announce to you that He will punish them who shall not have defended Him against His enemies.

“Fly then to arms; let the holy rage animate you in the fight, and let the Christian world resound with these words of the prophet: “Cursed be he who does not stain his sword with blood!” If the Lord calls you to the defence of his heritage, think not that His hand has lost its power. Could He not send twelve legions of angels or breathe one word and all His enemies would crumble away into dust? But God has considered the sons of men, to open for them the road to His mercy. His goodness has caused to dawn for you a day of safety by calling on you to avenge His glory and His name.

“Christian warriors, He who gave his life for you, today demands yours in return. These are combats worthy of you, combats in which it is glorious to conquer and advantageous to die. Illustrious knights, defenders of the Cross, remember the example of your fathers who conquered Jerusalem, and whose names are inscribed in Heaven; abandon then the things that perish, to gather unfading palms, and conquer a Kingdom that has no end.”

It didn’t take you long to detect the hoax, did it? Of course not. The speech was indeed delivered, but I used a wrong attribution.

The speaker wasn’t Pope Francis but St Bernard of Clairvaux. The place wasn’t the American city of New York but the Burgundian town of Vézelay. And the date wasn’t 25 September, 2015, but  31 March 1146.

Bernard had been asked by Pope Urban II to preach a Second Crusade. So he did, outside the St Mary Magdalen Basilica overlooking the town from the top of a steep hill.

A huge crowd, including Louis VII of France and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, gathered and, looking down from St Bernard’s vantage point, the basilica close and the hill slope must have looked like a sea of human heads. The sea was still: everyone was hanging on to every rousing word.

Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not wishing for another Holy Crusade – and I’m certainly not going to advocate anything like that in print.

It’s just that… well, don’t you wish sometimes that our civilisation were still animated by the same indomitable spirit, still led by the same type of men?

Instead we have an utterly corrupted populace enthusiastically applauding Pope Francis’s sermons of political correctness, multiculturalism and nonviolence – whatever the provocation.

Well, that’s progress for you. St Bernard didn’t even know the word. It probably didn’t exist in his backward time. And if it did, it certainly didn’t mean a civilisation cutting its own moral and spiritual throat.

 

 

 

It has been a dozen years since the Americans (with us in tow) set out to introduce democracy in the Middle East. Twelve being a round number in the non-metric Anglophone world, it’s time to draw up the interim tally of what this noble expedition has achieved:

A death toll of at least 2,000,000. Some will say it’s a fair price to pay for democracy. Others will argue that this mass slaughter is then a fraud: the product paid for was never delivered.

Injecting passion into the Islamic world and making it universally committed to jihad.

Getting rid of tyrants who alone managed to keep a lid on said passions and prevent the region from sinking into a blood-soaked chaos, which it has since done.

Creating ISIS, a well-armed, well-financed and well-trained gang, at present 250,000-strong and growing fast.

Having Europe inundated with masses of migrants of whom some have a good reason, and most a good pretext, to move to sunnier economic climes.

Turning to Iran for assistance. Lifting, as a fair price for it, the economic sanctions, thereby giving the ayatollahs new billions to spend on global trouble-making. More crucially, in effect giving Iran a cart blanche to develop nuclear weapons.

Glorious achievements all, but one takes the baklava: inviting Putin’s kleptofascist regime to become a powerful, potentially dominant, force in the Middle East.

Western observers, even those who lament this last achievement, don’t think it as towering as the others. In fact, however, it may well shift the strategic balance in Europe towards its most evil regime.

Back in the 19^th century, when Russia was infinitely more benign than she is now, Britain and her allies fought the Empire’s southward expansion several times, in the Balkans, the Black Sea and Central Asia.

In the 20^th century it was understood that Western bases south of Russia would have a restraining effect on Soviet ambitions, in the Middle East and elsewhere, while Soviet bases there would present a strategic danger to Western interests in many areas, including Europe.

In 1940 Britain used the RAF base at Mosul to prevent Russia from occupying Finland at the end of the Winter War. The threat was simple and direct: stop or we’ll take out the Baku oil fields, then the principal source of Russia’s hydrocarbons.

Russia, on the other hand, perfected the strategy of establishing military bases in a region and then using them as the spearheads of conquest. That’s how the three Baltic republics were incorporated into the Soviet Union: Soviet bases came first, invasion second.

Putin seems to have learned the lessons taught by his role model Stalin. Faced with the West’s meek but still annoying opposition to Russia’s attack on the Ukraine, he decided to check the offensive and get entrenched in the parts already occupied.

To that end, Russia is busily creating in Eastern Ukraine and Kaliningrad a network of heavily armed bases. At the same time, Putin has issued an ultimatum to Belarus to accept Russian air force bases on her territory.

Hence Belarus may be next in line for Russia’s bases-first-conquest-second treatment, but Syria may just beat her to it. Russia has established several bases there, filling them to the brim with jets, tanks, artillery and soldiers.

Although no official agreement has been published, it’s clear that America has struck a Faustian deal with Putin, selling her soul (and commitment to sanctions against Russia) for the chance to leave the Middle East with a portion of her face intact.

Putin is all too happy to pose as the intrepid fighter for Christian interests (as represented by the KGB junta he fronts) against the Islamic threat (as represented by ISIS) – and, revoltingly, the West plays along.

Meanwhile confusion reigns. ISIS threatens Assad, who has always been Russia’s client. Hence for Putin stopping ISIS also means defending Assad.

On the other hand the West, while wanting to stop ISIS, also wishes to get rid of Assad. Fair is fair: what’s sauce for the Saddam goose is also sauce for the gander of his ideological Ba’athist twin.

In fact, before ISIS acquired its name Dave was ready to commit British troops on its side, and only a last-ditch stand by Parliament prevented that criminal idiocy.

Now John Kerry hypocritically objects to Russia’s military build-up in Syria because it may lead to clashes with Western forces there, presumably as they leave. “These actions could provoke a further escalation of the conflict,” declares Kerry, conveniently forgetting that it was America that invited Putin in.

Even more hypocritically, or else ignorantly, Kerry allows that Putin might only want to safeguard Russia’s naval base at Taurus, her sole foothold on the Mediterranean.

Yes, and Stalin only attacked Finland because he wanted to safeguard Leningrad, occupied the Baltics to safeguard Russia’s western borders and raped Poland to safeguard her Ukrainian and Byelorussian minorities.

Chalk this up as the West’s crowning achievement: Putin is on the way to becoming the principal Middle Eastern warlord. Our leaders should be pleased with themselves. Twelve years well spent.

 

Now that Ashcroft’s book has come out, everyone and his brother is talking about Dave Cameron’s youthful indiscretions, throwing stones as if they themselves were without sin.

Being a kind, liberal and forgiving man, I feel like saying to them, come on, fellows.

Who among you wasn’t a bit wild during your university years? Who didn’t drink like a whole school of fish? Who didn’t trash the odd restaurant or two? Who didn’t use every known drug, either naturally or synthetically derived? Who didn’t try to score some of those drugs off two KGB officers on a Crimean beach?

Who, I ask you, didn’t copulate with everything that breathed – and a few things that didn’t, like a dead pig’s head (I assume Dave didn’t go the whole hog)? Rather than ganging up on Dave, you should praise him for his necrophiliac prudence.

Let’s be honest, if a young man bursting with testosterone has to corrupt someone’s morals, a dead pig is preferable to a live girl. After all, 50 years later the girl could, at the same time, complain to the police and sue her abuser for zillions, something a dead pig won’t do because a) it’s dead, b) it’s a pig and, most important, c) it won’t have the money to instruct a shyster lawyer.

Actually I’m inadvertently slandering Dave by suggesting that the porcine episode had something to do with amorous gratification. In fact, it was at base social rather than sexual.

Doing that to a dead suckling (not to be confused with a live sucking) pig was part of the initiation ritual at some quasi-masonic Oxford student society, not dissimilar to Yale’s Skull and Bones.

There the aspirant is supposed to masturbate publicly in a coffin surrounded by Skull and Bone members. I always picture that ritual when looking at the list of famous Boners, which includes both Bush presidents and the current Foreign Secretary John Kerry. And no one in the States bats an eyelid! How come we are so prudish?

Who among you… Well, actually, on second thoughts I’m sure that most of you have not done all the things Dave is alleged to have tried in his young days. Specifically those things, that is.

Yet most of us did all sorts of wild and crazy things in our salad days – and those indiscretions don’t even show as much variety as Dave can boast. We all did roughly the same stupid things.

The difference is that some of us still managed not to grow up as total nonentities and some, like Dave, didn’t. And that, rather than his drinking, drugs and dead farm animals, is what we should be talking about.

The question we should be asking is not ‘did he or didn’t he?’, but how is it that a man so openly devoid of any qualifications, be it those of intellect, morality or character, is in a position to lead a nation caught at the crossroads of a dying civilisation.

What is it about our system of government that allows this particular substance to rise to the top with unfailing regularity, only once interrupted in the post-war years by the emergence of Margaret Thatcher? One could say all sorts of negative things about her, but what she definitely wasn’t was a self-serving, spivocratic featherweight.

So what have we done to deserve all those subsequent Johnnies, Tonies, Gordies and Daves? I try to answer such questions in my book How the West Was Lost, the second, paperback, edition of which is coming out in a couple of weeks.

You can either read it or, better still, come up with your own answers. What none of us should do is dismiss the question as inconsequential. It isn’t. It’s a matter of life or death.

 

 

 

 

 

I was sorry when the great Pope Benedict XVI retired. So much so that I actually questioned whether this is the kind of job in which retirement should be allowed.

However, Benedict’s successor, Pope Francis, has made me warm up to the notion on several occasions. The last time was yesterday, when His Holiness saw fit to thank Fidel Castro for “his contribution to world peace in a world saturated with hate and aggression.”

Yes, and I’d also like to thank Hitler (posthumously) for his contribution to race relations, Lenin (posthumously) for all he did for Russia, Pol Pot (posthumously) for having solved the problem of overpopulation and Jeremy Corbyn for his staunch royalism. Thanks all around.

One wonders if Pope Francis has any advisors to point out in advance that certain things he plans to say are not just ridiculously ideological but factually incorrect.

Probably not, for otherwise he would have been reminded that back in 1962 Castro aided and abetted Khrushchev’s efforts to bring the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. Or else that Castro is a mass murderer. Or that he created his own GULAG. Or that he can be credited with originating the concept of boat people. Or that he sent Cuban troops to Africa to act as the Soviets’ proxies in their attempt to dominate the continent. Or that, in general, Castro’s negative contribution to world peace is rivalled by few of his contemporaries.

On second thoughts, perhaps the Pope didn’t need advisors to point out these universally known facts. I’m sure that he praised Castro not in spite of his crimes but specifically because of them.

You see, after the Second World War the Soviets no longer spoke about their mission to bring about world revolution, or in other words to conquer the world. That remained their goal, but they now gave it a different name: struggle for peace.

The underlying canard was that the West was trying to unleash a world war, and only the valiant efforts of Soviet concentration-camp keepers managed to avert a global catastrophe. ‘Struggle for peace’ became the new Soviet term for their campaign to spread concentration camps all over the world.

The campaign was conducted through the most gigantic propaganda machine in history, putting Dr Goebbels’s amateurish efforts to shame. The machine was operated by hardened professionals, but it was helped along by millions of volunteer supporters around the world, of the type to whom Lenin had ungratefully referred as “useful idiots”.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as he then was, grew up as a leftie even by the standards of his generally left-leaning continent. To him the notion of communist Russia fighting for peace was an article of faith, possibly as firmly ingrained as the articles of the faith to which he pledged his professional life.

I don’t know if he used to spread Soviet propaganda, but it definitely affected him the way propaganda does at its best: not by appealing to reason but by conditioning reflexes.

It must have been by pure communism-equals-peace-struggle reflex that the Pope blurted out his plaudit for the mass murderer who has done as much as any man alive to undermine world peace.

Accidents do happen, even though one wishes that the world’s greatest Church were at this turbulent time led by a man whose reflexes are different. One also fears that, barring the Pope’s premature retirement, the Church won’t remain the world’s greatest for long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suppose for the sake of argument that back in 2003 the US powers-that-be, with their British counterparts in tow, did some soul-searching and set themselves ten long-term goals.

Goal 1: Removing or at least destabilising every Middle Eastern government that has a sporting chance of keeping the region under control.

Goal 2: Turning the region into a blood-soaked chaos, with the rule of heavily armed mob as the sole discernible authority.

Goal 3: Making sure the chaos expands rapidly, threatening to engulf the West’s allies in the region and beyond.

Goal 4: Injecting murderous passion into the whole Islamic world, giving them a common sense of purpose that may eventually trump their internal strife and unite them against the West.

Goal 5: Creating the right conditions for Iran to develop nuclear weapons and use them to blackmail, and possibly attack, Israel first and the West second.

Goal 6: First washing their hands of the region, then not just allowing but positively begging Putin’s fascist regime to take charge, establish a massive military presence, create puppet states and found a naval base compromising Nato in general and its southern flank in particular.

Goal 7: In exchange for Putin’s generous agreement to accept a huge strategic advantage, taking steps towards removing Western sanctions and thereby perpetuating Putin’s brand of kleptofascism at a time it looks wobbly.

Goal 8: Inundating Europe with a flood of Muslim immigrants, thereby drowning the continent’s historical demographics, culture and social order.

Goal 9: Creating every precondition for a series of murderous terrorist attacks by Muslims on the West, with the use of nuclear devices a distinct possibility.

Goal 10: Making Israel’s existence ever more precarious.

Now imagine the same powers, with a slightly different cast of characters, rubbing their hands with glee as they go over the above list, item by item: done… sorted… accomplished… achieved… fulfilled… attained… tick… tick… tick… another tick… Congratulations! We’ve managed to do everything we set out to do.

No, I hear you say. No such meeting ever took place, and nor could it possibly have taken place. The suggestions that it did could only have come from a deranged mind.

To which my answer is, how do you know? I base my supposition on hard evidence, analysis of every step taken by the USA, with Britain in the capacity of the proverbial poodle, since it embarked on the criminal venture going by the name of nation-building and democracy-installing.

What do you base your counterarguments on? General belief in the goodness and wisdom of Western governments run by assorted Dubyas, Tonys, Baracks and Daves? Really.

In fact, my view of these lads is a great deal more optimistic than yours. I give them credit for planning every detail of the ensuing global catastrophe and executing the plan with unwavering commitment and ingenuity.

You, on the other hand, seem to suggest that they are so stupid and immoral that they plunged into these troubled waters without even considering the consequences.

Shame on you. And congratulations to them.

 

 

 

If this title caught your eye, it’s because such a scenario isn’t just implausible but impossible.

Americans are perfectly able, indeed almost guaranteed, to elect nonentities to variously high public offices. But they’ll never allow anyone to uphold the constitution who is ideologically committed to undermining it.

For better or for worse, the USA is a republic. Hence no one who, like me, believes that hereditary monarchy is the only form of government consonant with our civilisation, will be allowed to play an active role in American politics. That’s how it should be. Fair is fair.

Now let’s cross the ocean and land close to home. Her Majesty’s opposition is now led by a communist who hates Her Majesty and everything she (and her realm) stands for, whose chosen newspaper is the Morning Star, founded and financed for decades by the Soviet secret police, who voices support for Britain’s enemies, who is committed to destroying the world’s oldest – and best – constitution.

And who doesn’t mind advertising all that by demonstratively refusing to sing the national anthem.

Should we react the same way as Americans would in my far-fetched hypothetical situation? More specifically, how should our conservative pundits comment on Corbyn’s ascent?

Certainly not the way some of them do.

Dominic Lawson, he of the family where daughters are named after their fathers, thinks there’s nothing wrong with Corbyn’s vocal strike. Our national anthem, he says, is “an uninspiring dirge” that, “unlike the anthems of other constitutional monarchies… praises neither the nation nor people.”

Tastes differ, and I find God Save the Queen to be supremely inspiring. But that doesn’t really matter, for it’s crass stupidity to discuss the melody and the lyrics of the anthem in this context. Does Lawson think Corbyn refused to sing it for aesthetic reasons? Of course he didn’t. He thumbed his nose not to the words but to everything they represent.

“It is a repugnant idea,” continues Lawson, “that someone should be bullied into uttering words he doesn’t believe.” Absolutely. But I’d still be tempted to make the point that someone who doesn’t believe those particular words shouldn’t sit in Her Majesty’s Parliament and have a shot at becoming her prime minister.

Lawson then quotes approvingly an RAF veteran who admires “Mr Corbyn for sticking to his principles… That is what democracy is all about and what we all fought for in the war.”

Now an RAF veteran may be assumed to be a hero, but being an intellectual giant isn’t his job requirement. He may not realise that sticking to one’s principles is praiseworthy only if the principles are. He may not be aware of the fine constitutional nuances of British politics or of the fundamental difference between constitutional monarchy and democratic republic. That’s why it’s a columnist’s duty to explain those things to him. Instead this particular columnist actively encourages ignorance.

The RAF fought the war not for democracy but for God, king and country – for the sovereignty of the realm whose divinely anointed head reigns through Parliament. This is what we all should still be fighting for, in our own ways. And fighting for it logically presupposes fighting against those who wish to destroy the realm from either without or within.

That doesn’t mean that Comrade Corbyn isn’t entitled to hold his perverse beliefs, or that he should be harassed for holding them. It only means that we are equally entitled to protect ourselves from the cannibalistic ideology he espouses.

Peter Hitchens, who shares Corbyn’s Trotskyist temperament if no longer his views, is even more emphatic: “To hell with all the superpatriots who condemn Jeremy Corbyn for not singing God Save the Queen. What are they patriotic for, exactly, if not for the freedom to dissent, the crown of all our liberties and our greatest achievement.”

He then praises Corbyn for being “open and honest”, much as Hitchens himself disagrees with his ideas. But hey, “nobody is right all the time.”

I never tire of saying that Lenin and Hitler, the most evil politicians of all time, were equally “open and honest” about their ideas. I’d rather have statesmen who enunciate and act on the right ideas insincerely than those who honestly state their intention to destroy this country, as Comrade Corbyn does, if not yet in so many words.

Oswald Mosley also exercised his freedom of dissent, which is why he was interned for the duration of the war. A clear understanding existed at the time that commitment to that particular freedom mustn’t be tantamount to a suicide pact.

The realm was in grave danger then, but who in his right mind wouldn’t see that the danger is as great if not greater now, even if it doesn’t take the shape of Luftwaffe bombers? The constitution is being steadily eroded, not to say subverted, and without her constitution Britain isn’t Britain any longer.

Let the likes of Corbyn expand on their evil ideas in pubs or at home. And is it too much to ask that those who write for our papers have a modicum of intelligence and a firm grasp of their subjects?