Politics & Economics

Nothing like the EU to inspire idiocy

Nothing like the EU to inspire idiocy

February 17, 2016 at 5:19 pm 0 comments

Actually, this isn’t fair, it’s not just the EU. Defending any unsound proposition can make even an intelligent person sound silly. Take atheism, for example. Someone who doesn’t believe in God may be bright, within certain limits. But even an extremely intelligent man sounds idiotic when he tries to defendRead More

Russian totalitarianism and British naivety

Russian totalitarianism and British naivety

October 22, 2015 at 9:10 am 0 comments

Oscar Wilde said that the best way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Unfortunately many Brits use this method for getting rid of the fascist temptation. When they find something wrong with Her Majesty’s government, they turn their thoughts not to restoring history’s greatest constitution butRead More

Toughest job in the world

Toughest job in the world

October 3, 2015 at 5:55 pm 0 comments

Even if Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has made the claim himself, you can rely upon the truth of it. A few dozen right wing activists, spoiling for a fight, gathered outside Ukraine’s national parliament.  A company of riot police had been drawn up in front.  The super patriots launched an assault. One threwRead More

Corbyn’s disastrous elevation

Corbyn’s disastrous elevation

September 16, 2015 at 7:42 pm 0 comments

In a globalised world, Britain’s disasters will rebound on everyone, and make no mistake about it: Corbyn’s elevation to Labour leadership is disastrous. To Marx the spectre haunting Europe was that of communism, but he was only partly right. Communism is only a facet of a larger entity: evil. AtRead More

Syrian refugees, European havens and wanting ‘to be a person’

Syrian refugees, European havens and wanting ‘to be a person’

September 13, 2015 at 7:55 pm 0 comments

As he alighted from a boat recently on the island of Kos in Greece, an out of breath Syrian refugee was met by a journalist’s microphone and said simply  – ‘I want to be a person. Here I can be a person’. Yet another man nearby said in  broken EnglishRead More

Kremlin.ru [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]

Psychological ploys of Russian political life

August 11, 2015 at 3:13 pm 0 comments

It is difficult for western Europeans to understand the nature of deception in Russia’s current regime. Not that there is anything new about it – decades of refinement in dissembling, disinformation and projection  – beyond the comprehension of most ordinary people – is entrenched in Russian political life. Using psychologicalRead More

Saving an imagined Ukraine

Saving an imagined Ukraine

August 2, 2015 at 7:00 pm 0 comments

Ukraine’s western friends can’t help until the blinkers come off. “Save Ukraine!” went up the cry from the columns of a most respected newspaper. On 20 July The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece entitled “Crucial Weapon in the Defense of Ukraine.” Its authors were Stephen J. Hadley, a former nationalRead More

The lesser evil carries the day

The lesser evil carries the day

May 10, 2015 at 7:41 pm 0 comments

Photos of Dave grinning pretty for the camera, his arm around Sam, are emetic. But not, one has to admit, as much as photos of Ed indulging in public foreplay with Nicola Sturgeon would be. (They’re probably not involved, but you can forgive me for getting the wrong impression.) TheRead More

Has post-Soviet Russia really morphed into a bulwark of Christian morality?

Has post-Soviet Russia really morphed into a bulwark of Christian morality?

April 26, 2015 at 7:40 pm 4 comments

In today’s upside down world, Russia, which for seventy years had aggressively exported atheist materialism, both overtly and covertly, is becoming the defender of the principles that used to be the badge of the Christian West, while a composite swathe of authorities in the West are now openly promoting theRead More

Conservatism vs. libertarianism

Conservatism vs. libertarianism

March 20, 2015 at 4:28 pm 1 comment

“O liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!” cried Marie-Antoinette on her way to the guillotine. Indeed the Enlightenment shifted liberty to the fore of political desiderata. Since that shift, and largely because of it, the world has suffered the most oppressive tyrannies in history. This brings us toRead More