The Migrant Crisis

I note with interest that the media and various government ministers use the term 'migrant' now to cover everyone trying to enter Britain or, for that matter, Europe. Very occasionally the word 'refugees' creeps into a report, but is quickly replaced in all further references by 'migrant'. What's the difference? In my dictionary a 'migrant' is one who leaves one country/town/ or the land and 'migrates' to find work away from his/her roots or origins. Karl Marx argued for the 'right' of workers to do this, saying in effect that it should be the right of a worker to move to where his work will be adequately rewarded.

A 'refugee', by contrast, is one escaping a war, oppression or some other event which may be a 'natural' one such as a volcanic eruption. But herein lies the rub -- if our media and political masters apply the word 'refugee' to the 2 or 3 million people currently in holding camps in various countries in the EU (800,000 in Germany alone), a whole raft of so-called 'International Laws' will kick in and with them the armies of 'Human Rights lawyers' who feed off contesting any and every attempt to remove those who don't qualify for admission anywhere.

Let's also admit that it is also the case that our various bureaucracies are often biased, frequently unfair, and usually so 'rule bound' as to be utterly uncaring, unfeeling and pretty nearly reduce the people they deal with to a point of being no longer 'human', but just cyphers in the system. An article in The Spectator addresses several of these points, but, as ever, attracts comments from those who see only a threat to their own comfort, have never been in a position where they cannot remain in their homes, and who comment from a perspective of ignorance of the realities of the world. Many of those who have commented on the article seem to have missed the author's point completely. Stephano Hatfield makes the telling point that there is a difference between an 'economic migrant' and a 'refugee', yet Theresa May, the current UK Home Secretary, seems to conflate them, linking 'migrants' from other EU States with the refugees pouring in from the failing Islamic States of the Middle and Near East, North Africa and the Civil wars in several West African states with the undoubted groups migrating for economic reasons.

Then there is the hysteria stirred up by the British Press and politicians, about the 'siege' of the Channel Tunnel, and the migrants trying to board trucks, cars and anything else heading for Britain. This is, it must be acknowledged, in part due to the last Labour government's drive to open the immigration doors to all manner of immigrants from cultures which bear no relationship whatever to that of Europe, much less Britain. What gets lost in all this, is that while the UK goes into an almost ludicrous frenzy over fewer than ten thousand 'migrants' trying to enter the UK by these means, Germany is dealing with 800,000, Italy with another 250,000, Greece (remember the ones with the financial problems) over 100,000 and France with numbers approaching those of Germany. Yes, there is unhappiness about it, but they are dealing with it quietly and efficiently. Yes, it is a political football in most countries, but much less so, it seems, than in the UK -- which is dealing with a fraction of the numbers everyone else is coping with.

More worrying is the very point the author of The Spectator article is making with his link to the family of Anne Frank. Vilifying the refugees simply creates an atmosphere in which it becomes easy to isolate them and then turn them into an 'enemy' - which, alarmingly, seems to be happening already if when one reads the UKIP and similar minded parties and their supporters rants and comments. Another Spectator article published today points to the fact that almost 10 million people in Syria are now 'displaced', and trapped because the borders around that benighted land are now closed. The 2 million or so in camps in Jordan are trapped as well. Forbidden to work, families are dependent, children are rebelling and teenagers are defying their parents and sneaking off to join militias 'at home' because that is better than sitting around waiting for the next handout.

To those who argue these folk should have stayed where they were and fought back against the oppression, consider this; if your family home were reduced to a pile of rubble, and the attacker threatens to behead you, your children and rape your wife and daughters - would you 'remain in place'?

We should be concerned at the Home Secretary's deliberate linking of the refugee crisis with the European freedom of movement for workers. The freedom of movement within the EU of workers is NOT the problem, but linking it to the 'migrant/refugee' crisis gives opponents of such movement (and the UK does have a bit of a 'history' there) gives the politicians and the media the chance to whip up antipathy against ALL migrant workers, especially those from EU countries. By calling workers from other EU countries 'migrants' and in the same breath calling those fleeing Africa, the Levant and all the other countries suffering massive conflict or grinding social poverty 'migrants' she is setting them all up to be vilified and hounded out of the UK.

I'm inclined to agree with the latest Spectator article, in that we may have an obligation to 'rescue' people, but we do not have an obligation to house, feed, clothe and employ them here. We do have some responsibility for ensuring they are supported in all efforts to improve the situations which have driven them to flee their homes. In places like parts of Libya and Syria or Iraq, I would suggest there is a need to find ways to make the refugee camps more like functioning societies rather than a 'waiting area'. Why can't the refugees be given employment looking after their own needs in the camps? Why should this be forbidden? Why bring in teachers from the local area, when you have qualified people sitting around idle?

To solve this problem we need to do more to provide something meaningful for those who have escaped, which will encourage them to stay in the camps. We also need to look very carefully at how we can break the cycles of corruption, abuse and conflict which bedevil so many lands and are causing this tide of human misery. Only then can we hope to even begin to deal with it.

Race or Religion?

Listening to a discussion yesterday on the conflict and tensions between 'Palestinians' and 'Israelis' one of the debaters, an earnest young woman, clung to her theme that 'Jews' are simply members of a 'religious movement' and not a distinctive 'race'. Her argument is the familiar secular/humanist one that revolves around the diversity of Jewish genetics, and the relative comparison with 'Palestinian' Arabs. Both, it can be said, are 'Semitic' peoples, and therefore, it is argued, the only distinction is 'religion'. This argument misses a key element of 'Jewishness' - which is that the 'religion' does not, as Shakespeare would phrase it, 'a Jew make'.

Anyone can 'convert' to Judaism, but that does not make them a 'Jew'. To be a Jew, you have to have been born of a Jewish mother. In typically pragmatic fashion, the Jewish 'Law' of inheritance states that 'a man may have many fathers, but only one mother' and therefore inheritance is through ones mother, not your father. As the admirable programme for the BBC by Simon Sharma on the History of the Jews explains, they are a very diverse population. A true 'rainbow' nation, and Judaism (the religion) is just as diverse. It is a monumental mistake to claim they are 'just followers of a religion' and not a 'people' of distinct lineage, whatever the 'genes' indicate. Unless one is completely isolated from contact with other human tribes for, I suspect, at least a thousand years, the chances of retaining one particular 'pure' genetic lineage are pretty remote.

One has only to look at the modern human population of Europe to see this. What makes anyone English, German, French, Scottish or Swiss? Genetic samples of any population with produce matches across the entire spectrum. Does this make us all members of some Pan-European 'tribe? Are all Scots inflicted with red hair and blue eyes? Of course not, but those who argue that 'Jews' are not distinct as a racial group try to advance that argument. In fact, they are misled by their own propaganda, since whether a Jew has his most recent roots in Europe, the steppes of Russia, or the US, there are a number of particular 'markers' in their genes that link them. Once again, that simple statement of 'many fathers, only one mother' comes into play. It is something that should be far more carefully considered - especially in relation to the Jews, who, as Simon Sharma so ably points out, have been the world's 'whipping boys' since the beginning.

So, if their genes are as diverse as everyone elses' (barring the already mentioned unique markers) why is their religion such a unifying force? After all, there are probably as many Jews who do not believe or practice it, as there are those who do. Why, as Simon Sharma tells us, do even those who do not believe or regularly 'practice' the religion, still call themselves 'Jews' and why do they still mark the major festivals following the timeless rituals? That is what seems to confound the secularists, because the 'religion' is a product of the 'race'.

What we call the Old Testament is a remarkable document. Though much of it is allegoric narrative, particularly the first five books, parts are a historical narrative of folk memory, and later parts are the moral discourse on the abuse of power and wealth by the political classes that lead, eventually, to the dispersal, it is a remarkably cohesive story. It is the story of the creating, the welding together, of a people, 'The Jews', as a single unit even in a worldwide 'diaspora'. Few, if any, people on Earth have such a cohesive identity as the Jews. It is far more than their genes, and it transcends their religion, but it is a mistake to attempt to categorise the one without the other. The Bible underpins both the Jew as a race, and the 'Jew' in religion, but, once again, one has to realise that the 'religion' and the 'race' are not just intertwined, but are both badges of 'indentity'.

Yes, they are, by and large, a Semitic people, but that is simply a 'category', a 'label' for those who love to force large issues into small pigeonholes so they can ignore the more complex matters in dealing with them. That, I suspect, is why we have so many problems politically in the world today. By reducing everything to the 'lowest common denominator' those in power, and those on the peripheries who love to voice an opinion on such things, try to ignore and suppress the very real, and far more complex issues such actions are intended to hide. By denying the Jews a distinctive 'Racial Identity' the 'problem' of Israel/Palestine can be reduced to one of 'religion' and from there, the belief can be advanced, that 'religion is the cause of the conflict'.

Convenient, but far from accurate, and a major reason that no solution is likely to be found anytime soon. When those who bandy about the idea that 'being a Jew' is the same as 'being a Muslim' finally realise their assertion does not stand up to scrutiny, we may perhaps begin to find solutions to many more problems in this post 20th Century world.

A Day To Remember.

Seventy-five years ago today, Neville Chamberlain finally admitted that apeasement had failed, and failed miserably. Britain joined France in declaring war on Hitler's Nazi dominated Germany over the invasion of Poland. Historians will always be sharply dividied over whether or not it could have been avoided had Britain and her allies shown more determination in 1938 over the Südetenland question. The fact is that from 1920 up to 1936 we'd built almost no new warships, cut our armed forces to the bone and even scrapped our tanks. To crown it we'd not invested a great deal in developing what we had - so in 1938 we weren't in a position to make a stand.

Not that we were in much better case in 1939, but at least we'd made a start at re-arming.

War makes very strange bedfellows. Hitler's invasion of Poland was facilitated by the now infamous 'Non-aggression Pact' he'd made with Stalin, a feat that caught western negotiators completely by surprise. But it didn't last and barely a year later, he invaded his 'ally' and thrust the Communists into an alliance with Britain, a perhaps even less likely 'friendship'. I suspect that few realised, on this day as they listened to Chamberlain announcing the failure of diplomacy, that it would engulf the whole world, or that it would take five long years to destroy the evil cancer of Nazism.

Ironic that we now face an ideology as evil, as destructive and as vicious - and are just as unprepared.

The Never Ending Conflict ...

The good news is that we have a new ceasefire in the war between Hamas and Israel at the moment. It is an incredibly fragile one, and it isn't clear why Hamas have suddenly accepted the terms they rejected less than a month ago. One does wonder just who they think they're fooling celebrating 'victory' on what remains of the streets of Gaza. Their campaign has seen the destruction of their tunnels, the demolition of hundreds of homes, the waste of lives and the misery visited on their people. In return they have killed a few Israeli soldiers, a tourist to Israel, a baby and a small number of civilians. Gaza lies in ruins. If this is 'victory' in Arab eyes, it is a travesty of it. It isn't even a 'Pyrrihic Victory'.

I have some very strong views on the debate over the Israeli action against Hamas, which does not mean an automatic endorsement of Israel's actions, nor of those on the Hamas side. In part this is because I have friends in both camps, and I know that my support for Israel has alienated some in the UK. I am a firm believer in the fact that Israel has the right to exist, and to defend itself against those that wish to deny her that right. There have been a lot of 'wrongs' on both sides, but there is something far more sinister at work here as well. The main stream media seldom mentioned, until forced to (and then usually qualified by words such as 'alleged' and, 'unverified sources'), the daily bombardment of Israeli towns and cities from Gaza. They make even less mention of the humanitarian efforts the Israelis are making 24/7 in Gaza and in the 'occupied' West Bank, such as food supplies, medical supplies or the supply of fresh water and electricity to 80% of Gaza. Yes, the Israelis are blockading Gaza, and they have good reason to do so. Why should Hamas and the other terror groups be given carte blanch to import missiles, munitions and other war materials unrestricted? How is that likely to produce peace?

Listening to the likes of Jon Snow and others calling the Israelis war criminals, murderers and 'apartheid' promoters simply makes me angry, since it also betrays the fact that these people find they can excuse anything and everything Hamas, Fatah and all the other Jihadist groups do against Israel, but the dirty, nasty, land stealing, baby killing Jews deserve no sympathy, no justice and definitely no homeland. The insistence on a 'return to the 1967 boundaries' is a recipe for yet another conflict, yet another attempt to annihilate Israel. East Jerusalem is the very heart of ancient Judea. It has no direct connection with either the Prophet or the Quran (it is mentioned only once in the entire Quran), and though under the terms of the 1949 UN Agreement, Jews were assured access - that was very quickly denied.

Jewish visitors to the Wailing Wall were subjected to abuse, harrassment and stone throwing. The Jordanian Army turned the Old City and the Temple Mount into an armed camp. Their 'engineering' works destroyed huge amounts of archaeologiocal evidence of the old Judean city, Christian remains and, in particular, surviving parts of the Temple itself. All of this is a matter of record, as is the use, prior to 1967, of the Golan Heights to fire random artillery, rockets and missiles into Israel by state supported terror groups. Gaza is the site of the ancient Philistine cities and settlements, and it is also the site of the tombs of several of the Old Testament prophets. Once again, devout Jews wishing to visit those sites - again a 'right' enshrined in the 1949 Agreement - found themselves harrassed, excluded on flimsy grounds and eventually denied access completely.

There are two ironies here. First that had the Arabs accepted the proposal by the 1947 UN Commission, they would today have the West Bank, a larger 'Gaza' and all of the Negev. The Jews accepted the proposal, the Arabs did not, and prepared to 'throw the Jews into the sea'. Despite all the odds, and even the fact the British had armed the Arabs, and blockaded the Jews - the Jews won, the Arabs lost. And the second irony is that they are unable to recognise that their own unwillingness to find a solution is what continues the conflict.

Suporters of 'Palestine' (a fiction dreamed up in Whitehall and now perpetuated for ideological purposes) like Mr Snow et al refuse to actually read Hamas and Fatah literature. If they did they would have to confront the fact that it clearly states these organisations have only one goal - the total annihilation of Israel. So, in the meantime, they continue to play the propaganda game, promoting the 'genocide of Palestinians' at the hands of those evil Jews. In their minds Israel has no right to exist except as a 'province' of greater Palestine under the total control of Hamas or Fatah.

Were I Jewish, I know what my response would be.

The longer this conflict continues, the worse it gets. Hamas and Fatah are funded by the same shadowy figures who funded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and who are funding the ISIS thugs in Iraq and Syria. Mr Snow obviously doesn't read either the Hamas or the IS website either. Hamas is committed, in its charter, and in every publication, to the destruction of Israel, and the 'eradication of Jewish settlement' in ALL of Israel. The IS website declares categorically that the new Caliphate is to be 'cleansed' of Jews, Christians and Apostates. Perhaps Mr Snow, and his fellow supporters of 'anti-Zionism' (which seems to mean anything to do with Israel), would care to live in this Islamic 'paradise' when it is created. He may get the chance, since their long term objective is the reconquest of all the lands held by the Ottoman Turks at the height of their power - and that included most of Eastern Europe, the Ukraine, Crimea, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, what is now Slovakia and a lot of what is now the southern parts of the Russian Federation, all of North Africa - and lately they have added Spain, Portugal and Sicily to their list.

The level of destruction the Israelis have gone to in Gaza does concern me, but I am equally concerned by the fact that UNWRA premises are being used to store rockets by Hamas and by the very biased presentation of anything supporting the Israeli case. Worse, each time the UNWRA people find munitions, instead of having them impounded or destroyed, they pass them back to the Hamas leaders. Reports from Asian news agencies (now excluded and barred by Hamas) reported that Hamas had its military command posts set up inside hospitals, and beneath schools - all carefully NOT reported by the sycophantic western 'anti-Zionist' media and the UN's 'people on the ground'.

This is not the behaviour of 'neutrals' which the UN claims it is. I am also deeply concerned by the fact that Hamas fires its rockets from children's playgrounds, from schools and from hospitals. We have recently seen footage on TV taken from a helicopter of armed terrorists commandeering an ambulance and using it to reach their target. There are other reports, of captured and killed terrorists caught in or emerging from their tunnels on the Istraeli side of the border, armed with suicide vests, and with tranquiliser darts and drugs. The plan, apparently, being to get behind Israeli lines and kidnap civilians - no doubt to be beheaded on YouTube as ISIS do.

When will the likes of Mr Snow admit the truth of the fact that Hamas is using women and children as human shields, knowing full well that as soon as their 'shields' are killed by a counter strike, Mr Snow and his media pals will be on TV wringing their hands and crying that Israel makes war on women and children? Why do they not report that the last ceasefire was broken by Hamas continually while the Israelis held theirs? Israel offered an extension - Hamas replied with rockets, and then cried foul when their own missiles fall short and hit a hospital and two other targets on their own side. Why do the Western 'Liberal' media insist on holding Israel to a higher standard of conduct than the terrorists they are fighting? No matter what Israel does to try and ease the situation, or to provide humanitarian aid, the western media either ignore it, or downplay it. The Israelis are always reported as 'alleging' something (if not actually being accused of lying), and anything and everything the Hamas or Fatah spokesmen say, is absolute 'truth' - even when it can be shown to be manifestly false.

If talks break down, it is always Israel's fault, never the 'Palestinians'. It is always reported that 'Israel refused to negotiate' when, in fact, there were never any 'negotiable' points on the table from the other side either. If Israel does concede anything it is reported that 'it wasn't sufficient' or it 'doesn't measure up to expectations'. One could be excused for thinking that nothing other than the total surrender of the Israeli government, and the handing over of everything to the Palestinian Authority-Hamas will ever satisfy sections of the UK Media in particular. Their reasoning is that Israel has no right to exist at all, and this stems from the often quoted statistic that in 1920 'only' 6% of the land was owned by Jews. What that statistic does not show is that under the Ottomans, Jews were severely restricted in buying or owning land, and it got worse under the British Mandate. It also does not cover the fact that  many Jews 'rented' land from Arab neighbours, nor is there any mention of the fact that from 1919 onwards there was a massive migration of Arabs to 'Palestine' as the British had named it.

Much is made of the claim that Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam. Yet it is mentioned ONCE in the entire Quran, and the supposed visit of the Prophet - on a winged horse, on the night of his death so he could 'ascend' to heaven from the Temple mount is a later 'tradition'. By contrast, it is the site of the Jewish capital until 77AD, and despite the best efforts of the Romans, the Arabs, Byzantines, Crusaders, Abbasids, Ottomans and just about everyone else, there has always been a Jewish presence here. This is verifiable by tax records (Dhimmi taxes), by orders from various governors and sultans and a long archaeological record (where it hasn't been deliberately destroyed by 'Palestinains' desperate to conceal it). An interesting comment from the Peel Commission, appointed to look into creating a 'Jewish Homeland' under the Hashemite Kingdom then being created to have control over the whole of what is today Israel and Jordan. The report states that the Arabs objected to the fact the 'Jews occupied all the best farmland' and wanted it confiscated and reallocated to them. The Commission felt obliged to point out that, until the Jews bought the land, it had been desert and sand dunes, and that the Jews had built irrigation systems, improved the soil and turned it into viable land for agriculture.

It is also forgotten that the UN Commission drew up plans to create a 'Two State' solution following the Arab uprising of 1936 - 39 against the British, and the conducting of a terror campaign against the Jewish population. This proposed dividing the country to create a long narrow 'Israel' along the coastal strip with a bulge inland toward Jerusalem, with a much larger 'West Bank' and a 'Gaza' double the present size. The 'West Bank' section would have included all of the Negev and Israels Gulf of Eilat port. Jerusalem would have belonged to no one and everyone, and would have been managed by an international council as a 'free city'. The plan was accepted by the Jews, and rejected by the Arabs - resulting in the 1947 - 48 war which saw the Arab side lose almost everything. The Egyptian army barely held onto the present area known as Gaza, and only the British Commanded and led forces of the Jordanian King succeeded in holding what is now the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Disgracefully, they immediately turned East Jerusalem into an armed camp and set about denying access to archaeological sites - many of which they destroyed. Until 1967 Jews had no access at all to their Holy sites in the West Bank, or the holiest of all - the Temple Mount.

It was recently said to me that 'someone has to tell the 'Zionists' to stop teaching their children to hate Palestinians'. Sadly, it isn't the Jews who actually teach this in their schools, that is what goes on in Palestinian schools - even those run by UNWRA.  While I can understand the 'Palestinian' people's frustration and anger, the solution does lay in their own hands. If they genuinely want peace, they have to be prepared to make a few concessions themselves. Only by reining in the hotheads who see killing Jews as a national sport, can they hope to bring an end to retaliation. Only when the PLA and its police actually start treating those who murder Jews as criminals instead of heroes can they expect the Jews to take them seriously. We have to bring down the levels of hatred between to the two groups, and that has to start with dropping the labels. Not every Jew is a 'Zionist'. In fact, I doubt any of them are, but it is a term certain parts of the Western Media, and all of the Arab media, have come to equate to 'Nazi'.

As I see it, we are all the losers, whoever wins this battle. As long as the 'Palestinians' think they can get away with playing the 'victim' card to the sycophantic western media gallery, supporters and politicians, they will continue the struggle, and prolong the agony. Israel will not give up Jerusalem, regardless of whether the British Foreign Office calls it Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. The Israelis know that Mr Obama, with his Islamic sympathies, will soon be gone, and they will deal, as they always have done, with the realities and whoever comes next. They know they can depend on no one in the West, least of all the US and UK governments, both of whom have, at various times, tried to sell them down the river. They will not give up the Golan Heights either, since with an enemy occupying those, almost all of Israel is open to shell and rocket fire. Just today, there is new doubt cast on the UN 'Peace Force' stationed there, as the 'border crossing' has been seized by an al Qaeda splinter group affiliated to IS. I suspect the next move will be by IS to attempt to 'seize the Heights' for the Caliphate.

Then there is the question of 'settlements' - always portrayed by Hamas and the Western Media as being built on land 'seized' from Palestinians. In fact the 'settlers' have been buying this land from Palestinians (despite a decree from the PLA declaring this to be 'treason'), many of whom have taken the money and gone elsewhere (sometimes into Israel!) abroad. Many of those who have sold are Christians, desperate to leave because they are being persecuted by their Muslim neighbours and know what awaits them if Hamas or Fatah win. The best analogy with this is to consider a situation in which someone in England buys a house in North Wales and wants to live there. Suddenly his neighbours don't speak English, he can't get served in the local shop, his children are bullied, his pets terrorised, his rubbish bins go unemptied. Now, if he is a determined man, he finds other properties for sale in the area, invites, and assists, his friends to buy them, and soon the locals are complaining their land is being stolen and their country invaded. Who is to blame?

Something else never acknowledged in the western media is that Israel is the ONLY democracy in the Middle East. It is not a 'Theocracy' and everyone, Jew, Muslim, Christian, Arab or whatever, has a vote. There are even 'Palestinians' in the Knesset. Show me another Middle Eastern country where Jew, Christians and members of other faiths, or 'non-native' Muslims, have the same protections and rights. There isn't one. Much is made of the falling numbers of Christians in the 'occupied' territories - but the Israeli census shows that the numbers of Christians and other faiths is growing in Israel. The reason is not that hard to find when one looks at how Christians are treated elsewhere in the Middle East.

As with so  much else in today's world, the whole conflict in Israel/Gaza has become completely polarised.  Everyone is playing a game of all or nothing, and everyone - except, remarkably, the Israelis - is demanding that Israel must surrender security, land, peace to satisfy the 'Palestinians'. No one seems to be saying that peace negotiations are a two way affair, and that said 'Palestinians' must come to the table prepared to put aside their rhetoric and their weapons. Until they do accept that, I cannot see anyone achieving anything better than a stand-off.

As long as the supporters of 'Palestine' (which never existed between the Roman Empire's demise and the British occupation and Mandate) continue to foster the "Israel must surrender" rhetoric, there can never be a peaceful solution or settlement. As long as it continues on this path, we will continue to see these horrendous scenes, and as long as Hamas et al receive the acclamation and support of the Western Media and its 'Liberal' supporters, we will never see a willingness to negotiate. As long as that situation continues, we will all lose.

Dealing With A Cult Of Death.

Recently I have read an article by a Jewish Rabbi who makes a very good point on the subject of religious fundamentalism. In essence, once a person becomes so fixated on attaining ‘heaven’ they lose contact with reality, and with the essence of almost every religious teaching  - which is to live THIS life to the fullest possible extent, no matter how impoverished or hard it may be. The problem is that if we focus to intently on our vision of ‘heaven’ we very quickly find that it is a justification for every kind of evil act - in pursuit of the ‘greater good’.

This is what drives groups like Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and, I suspect, some elements of groups like Hamas, the Taliban (an ironic title if ever there was - it is said to mean ‘scholars’), Al Qaeda and others. It certainly motivates some Christian groups as well, fortunately, at this time, not to physical violence. The ISIS group, at present, provides us with the most visible evidence of what a group motivated by such a self-righteous ‘vision’ can produce. They justify their actions by arguing that the ‘final days’ and the return of ‘heavenly peace’ promised in the Quran can only be achieved by the recreation of the Caliphate. They further argue that the original Caliphate ‘failed’ because it allowed ‘kufars’ to continue practicing their ‘false’ faiths and live among the faithful.

Their solution is simple - forcibly convert the ‘kufars’ or kill them. Each death in the name of this programme is presumed to earn them brownie points in the heaven to come. Plus, of course, since it is a ‘holy’ war, if you die fighting for this cause you are a ‘holy’ martyr and assured of a place in ‘paradise’.

Interestingly, both Judaism and Christianity (mainstream, not the sectarian versions) have a very ‘physical’ view of the life hereafter and that is shared by Islam. Mainstream Christian teaching since early times has suggested that the ‘second coming’ and the ‘resurrection of the dead’ will be a physical event - with everyone restored to their physical bodies at the age that Jesus was when he died. The Jewish view is similar, and in Islam this is the leading concept as well. The Bible probably has the least to say on exactly what form the ‘life to come’ will take. While it contains many defences to a life after death, it uses a lot of allegorical descriptions to illustrate to the point. The problem comes down to trying to describe something outside of human understanding or experience, in human terms and within parameters the human mind can grasp. It is my understanding that the Quran follows a similar route - many references to ‘paradise’ or a ‘new Eden’ and to ‘the faithful’ populating it - but not a great deal on the details. Most of the teaching followed by extremists in that faith comes from something called the Hadith - a collection of ‘sayings’ attributed to the Prophet. It’s provenance is somewhat open to challenge since it was first written down a long time after the Prophet’s death.

The problem with obsessing about attaining the ‘life hereafter’ is that you stand a good chance of becoming insufferably ‘religious’ and ignoring the real tenets of the faith you supposedly follow. This was Christ’s problem with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, both groups obsessing about ‘The Law’ or ‘The Ritual’ (the Sadducees were the Temple priests) to the point they forgot, or perhaps ignored, the real teachings of their faith, which is, as Augustine of Hippo put it, to ‘Love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your being - and then do as you please.’ The truth is that if you really do the first, it is impossible to do anything ‘evil’ in the second part. In essence, this is what Jesus meant when he gave us the ‘Great Commandment’ (which Augustine paraphrased) and the second to love everyone else as we love ourselves. Follow those two commandments - which actually sum up the Ten Commandments very succinctly - and you cannot do what ISIS, Hamas or any other terror group are doing.

So where has it all gone wrong? Why are we seeing these black clad jihadis shooting, bombing and beheading their way across the Middle East? 

In part we have to acknowledge that Islam has historically a pretty dire record of conquest and forced conversion. Many today do not know that North Africa, the Middle East, most of modern Pakistan and the southern areas of what are now independent states of the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire, were Christian. They were converted to Islam by force or coercion after being overrun by Arab, and later Seljuk, Ottoman and other Islamic conquerors. The Caliphate was centred on Baghdad and flourished - ostensibly liberally - until it was sacked by the Mongols in 1326 AD. While it is often described as ‘tolerant’ it depends on your viewpoint. Certainly it allowed alcohol and was fairly relaxed about the practice of other faiths - Jewish or Christian. But, what is less well known, is that Jews and Christians were banned from holding government office unless they converted, and that they paid a punitive ‘tax’ to retain their faith. Later this was extended to a requirement to provide the first born son to the Caliph as a ‘servant’. These boys were forced to convert, and in some cases were castrated as well. The Ottoman Empire was still practicing this in the late 19th Century in Bulgaria and the other Balkan states under their control. 

The Mongol invasion shattered the Caliphate, but the new rulers didn’t bring a new religion with them, and were themselves gradually converted to Islam. It is an unacknowledged fact that Islam has been the reason underlying more invasions and conquests than any other religion, and while Christianity has certainly had its moments - especially during the Reformation - it hardly holds a candle to Islam in this regard.

Why the difference? 

Judaism grew up in a world dominated by religions that glorified death. Some practiced human sacrifice, most practiced animal sacrifice, and some had some rather strange combinations of both. Perhaps the most shocking of all was the sacrifice of male infants by the Phoenicians (and some reports say the Philistines) by tossing the living child into the stylised maw of a furnace, still, according to the Roman histories, practiced in Carthage at the time of the Punic Wars. Many had fertility rites that today would shock even the most open minded ‘liberal’. This is where some of the Levitical strictures against certain practices and activities arise and though these are carried over into the Quran (which draws heavily on the Old Testament, parts of the New and on a huge amount of Gnostic literature now known as the Pseudepigraphica (False Books) - so called because they are not written by the claimed ‘authors’ and are even verifiably not from the period they are supposed to have been written in), their origin is not acknowledged by the adherents of the extremist groups - and sadly, by some of the ‘scholars’ who support them.

Christianity, for the first hundred or so years, remained closely linked to the Synagogue and the Jewish worship and even teaching. It did suffer, to an extent, from a ‘martyr complex’ in some areas, where, if one reads the history of some of the early martyrs, they deliberately sought martyrdom in the belief that Christ would return within their (curtailed) lifetimes. While this re-emerged during the Reformation, and is still marginally visible among the more fundamentalist branches of the Christian family who fixate on the prophecies they read into the Book of Revelations. Once again, the problem is the fixation on gaining ‘the next life’ and frequently a loss of the need to live the present one to the fullest extent.

One possible explanation for Islam’s more entrenched ‘martyr complex’ is that it has no ‘centralising authority’ structures like the ‘church’ hierarchies of Christianity. Thus everyone is able to place their own interpretation on the teachings they have inherited, and many are drawn to the question of bringing about the arrival of the promised ‘paradise’. It is this focus that gives rise to the unhealthy mindset that says no amount of suffering, no limit to the number of casualties, is too high to achieve the desired end. Thus Hamas can have no shortage of volunteers willing to sacrifice their lives in this world, to destroy the ‘enemy’ and attain ‘paradise’ where they can live in a state of bliss while awaiting the final call to rise with the faithful and take over the earth.

In focusing their thoughts on a ‘martyr’s death’ they lose the true message of faith which is, simply, to live, and to live well. Once again, turning to the teaching of Jesus and the Old Testament Prophets, the essence of the faiths they taught, is to live life to its fullest. Their teaching is simple, by following the simple instruction to love God, and to treat everyone you encounter with respect and kindness, you will reap the same treatment from them. Everything in the Bible - both Old and New Testaments is about living, not about dying, and, as I understand it, the same applies to the Quran. By turning that on its head, and focusing on death, those who do, create a ‘death cult’ whose purpose is no longer about love and life, but about power, murder and enslavement.

I would venture to suggest that this is one major reason we cannot hope to see peace in Gaza or the West Bank at any time in the near future. The Jewish state is founded on the ideals of Judaic teaching about ‘life’, while their opponents seek to destroy them, their faith and their state - and are prepared to die themselves to achieve it. Hamas, Fatah and the other factions are all members of what has become a Cult of Death. In their mindset death in achieving their aim will guarantee a place in Paradise. Their ‘holy’ struggle justifies anything and everything, even bringing death and destruction to those they love.


Islam has descended into being a ‘cult of death’ and, as such, sows the seeds of its own ultimate failure. The Huffington Post columnist, Mehdi Hassan, himself a follower of Islam, points out in a recent article (The Hand Choppers Of ISIS Are Deluded), that Islam as a ‘political’ movement has failed at every attempt to create an ‘Islamic State’. Look about you - all the ‘failed states’ causing problems in the world today are ‘Islamic’, and all of them try to impose the Sharia and the thinking of the 7th Century to government - with predictably disastrous results. In every attempt to create such a Utopia, all too rapidly power becomes entrenched in the hands a small and usually corrupt clique. Law and order break down as people find themselves compelled evade certain strictures and corruption spreads as policy is increasingly left in the hands of those who blind themselves to suffering or see only their own very narrow vision of 'heaven'. It is in this cesspit that the radical preachers, the haters and the violent find a ready field to develop and expand their perverted theology. 

It is the failure, among western ‘thinkers’, politicians and campaigners for ‘secularisation’, and their fellow travellers of humanism and atheism, to understand this difference between Judaism, Christianity and Islam that will bring hardship and disaster to us all. Their constant assault on Christianity, and their open bias against Judaism, has created a vacuum, the perfect breeding ground for this radicalised and twisted version of Islam. The demonstrations over the last weekend in the UK, with hate filled slogans being chanted, and placards waved that should, frankly, have resulted in arrests, are a warning. We are not dealing with a movement that promises hope, peace or love - we are dealing with a cult that sees death and destruction as desirable ways to achieve their aims. Peace doesn’t stand a chance against that mindset. 

When is a Terrorist not a Terrorist?

When is a murderous gunman a 'freedom fighter', and when is he a 'terrorist'? This is a question we need to sort out pretty quickly. It has often been argued in the past, that it depends on which side of the relevant 'cause' you support. Alternately, it depends on how big a crowd you can 'persuade' to attend a demonstration against whoever they are against. So a 'demo' of 150,000 in London apparently turns Hamas into 'freedom fighters' and makes Israel 'aggressors'. This allows the demonstrators to demand that Israel stop defending its citizens and allows Hamas and all the splinter groups hiding under its mantel, to bomb, murder and kidnap their way into possession of all of Israel. For those who hate Israel and wish to see it destroyed, Hamas are 'freedom fighters' and not 'terrorists'. Their every excess is justified by the 'cause' they fight for, the total destruction of Israel, and the subjugation of all its inhabitants to Sharia Law, or at least their version of it. For their supporters, no 'bad' deed can be laid at their door, everything is Israel's 'fault' presumably simply for existing and for defending itself.

It is noteworthy that these same demonstrators argue that they are justified in NOT demonstrating against, or renouncing the excesses of, ISIS and the suppression of all other faiths in most Islamic lands, on the grounds that they are the result of 'western aggression' and support for Israel. As ever, when one looks at terrorists, one is confronted with a double standard. The government/people/nation under attack are always, in the minds of the terror group's sympathisers and supporters, "aggressors" or "abusers" and the terrorists are branded "liberators" and "freedom fighters". As always, there is a refusal to accept that there may be some justification for the vigorous defence of the status quo, and a refusal to condemn the excesses of the terrorist group. The favourite canard of the supporters is "it is always necessary that some must suffer for the greater good ..." George Orwell certainly knew the mind of the idiots who trot that out in defence of any excess perpetrated by their favourite ideologues or 'freedom fighters'.

The situation in Southern Africa thirty years ago was similarly divisive. To their supporters the ANC were 'freedom fighters' as, forty years ago, Mugabe's Patriotic Front were. To their supporters, every killing, every murder of their own people as well as every 'white man/woman/child' was a justifiable killing in the name of 'freedom', and every black person killed by the same terrorists, was an 'unfortunate casualty in the name of the struggle'. Of course, if you were on the receiving end of this, then the ANC and the PF were 'terrorists' and remain so. It is very easy to shout slogans, wave banners and pontificate about the 'justice' or the 'justification' when you are not the target, and will not have to live with the consequences resulting from the triumph of your favourite bunch of terrorists. The trouble is that there is no clear definition of either term, no generally agreed situation that makes you one or the other - and there is no dirtier, more inhumane or genocidal 'war' than a 'civil war' conducted by masked or disguised fighters from within a population.

The western Media (mostly 'liberal/left') has, at various times, hailed as 'liberators' the likes of Che Guevara, Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Sukarno, Ho Chi Min and any number of others - most of whom have turned out to be nothing other than vicious psychopaths hell bent on attaining and keeping power at all costs, no matter how many people die so they can achieve it. I frequently wonder how many of those who wear the teeshirts emblazoned with Che Guevara's image know they are celebrating a classic psychopath responsible for bringing misery and poverty (and possibly creating the drug cartels) to so much of South America and the Caribbean today. Not many, I suspect. And those that do, don't care. It was, and is, all about being a 'rebel' and having a 'cause'. That last is, in my view, borne out by the fact so many of those who do wear that image, or display it in homes and offices, are 'single issue' campaigners for something.

The truth is there is no such animal as a 'freedom fighter'. Those that do join such 'armies' are often seriously misguided, sometimes psychopathic or psychologically disturbed. They are often brutes whose only 'cause' is advancing their own form of tyranny. The current group terrorising the Middle East, ISIS, are classic examples. Yet again, they were hailed, among others, by the western liberal media, as the 'freedom' fighters 'striving to overthrow the oppressive dictatorships' of so many of the Arab countries. And now their true colours are emerging, we hear no word of condemnation from the same 'liberal/left'. Instead they try to divert attention to Israel's supposed 'war on children' - quietly ignoring the evidence that Hamas has used schools as munitions dumps, fires their rockets from heavily populated areas, and hides their 'soldiers' among groups of women and children.

We rejoiced as Libya was torn apart and Gaddafi overthrown. We rejoiced as Tunisia was riven, then Egypt, and finally Syria - and we poured money and arms into funding and supplying the 'rebels' of the 'Arab Spring'. The Muslim Brotherhood were beneficiaries, and through them, ISIS and Hamas got the latest weapons and munitions. Yes, we made a good call there then. ISIS is now said to have a 'fighting fund' of over $2 billion, and it's major funders are the State of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and - oh dear - the Muslim Brotherhood which has been enjoying funding from the US among others. Again and again, the liberal/left make the mistake of falling for their own prejudice. We loathe the government or the leader of a state - so those who seek to overthrown him must be good guys. They must be friends - and we throw resources at them.

Then we are surprised when they turn out to be worse then the 'devil they cast out'. We never seem to learn that a man with a gun, a bomb vest strapped to him, and a mortar or a rocket launcher in his hands is NOT a 'better' person than his 'enemy'. Above all we never seem to get it into our heads that 'the enemy of my enemy' is NOT necessarily a friend. He may well be an even worse enemy. A terrorist is a terrorist whatever his cause, however 'justified' it may be. A man who tries to shoot or bomb his way to power is filled with hatred, and hatred is a poison which eventually extends that hatred to everyone who doesn't agree with the first man's 'vision'.

There are some shocking images emerging from Syria and Iraq, images the majority of western governments and media seem determined to ignore. President Obama has authorised 'bombing' of ISIS groups and forces, but how does he propose to identify them? Not all of them are wearing anything identifiable as a uniform. So, like all terrorists - they hide among civilians. Bomb them and you kill civilians. Kill civilians and the liberal/left media scream 'murder' at the western military (or Israel), but justify Hamas, ISIS or any other 'terror' groups' campaign of murder.

ISIS brings us a further dimension. Children as young as 10 are being 'encouraged' to swear 'allegiance' to the new 'caliph'. Video footage they are putting out shows children declaring they want to 'die a martyrs death for the Caliph'. Where are the sensible heads in all of this? Ah, adorning fences after ISIS made examples of them for daring to oppose their vision of Paradise. As is often said, for evil to triumph, it is necessary only for good men to do nothing. And this is the fruit of the ideology that has driven the west for the last five or six decades. We are now afraid to speak out; to say what is obvious, because to do so will result in our being accused of Islamophobia, racism, or 'cultural ignorance' - which is ironic, because those who use that last, are generally utterly ignorant of the 'culture' they seek to defend.

Terrorism, in all its forms, is a cancer that erodes liberty, personal freedom and ultimately the nation state. Like cancer it requires radical treatment. There are NO half-measures. Either surrender to the terrorist immediately, or be prepared to embark on a campaign as vicious as theirs. There is no negotiation with them. We have to accept that they are fanatics, and you cannot negotiate with a fanatic, since they deal only in absolutes. We have to stop playing the semantic card, make up our minds, and suppress terrorism. Plant a bomb in the name of a 'cause' and you are a terrorist. Join up with others, and take up arms against a legitimately elected (which does not necessarily mean it has to be by what you or I consider 'democratic' process) government - and you are a terrorist. Terrorists cannot, and must not be tolerated, no matter what the cause.

Those who truly want to see peace in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank have to stop supporting kidnapping, shooting, stone throwing, bombing and rocket firing targeted at Israel and Israelis or any other state and ts people. They will retaliate, just as any of our nation states would. If you want 'peace' in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Gaza or anywhere else, stop supporting those who think they can achieve their aims through the bombs, stones and bullets you are supplying through your donations. If Hamas, ISIS, or anyone else want peace, they must go to a negotiating table with no weapons and no preconditions. Otherwise they must be seen as terrorists.

Recently Gerry Doyle, a US based Radio and TV commentator, made the point that, with the support of gullible western 'liberal' sympathisers, terrorist groups have come to believe that they can win. Hamas think they can beat Israel no matter how many of their own civilians die in the attempt. ISIS believe they can overthrow every government in the world and impose their 'Caliph' on everyone. Both get  support through all manner of third parties, such as the state of Qatar, elements of the Saudi government, 'humanitarian' agencies who provide goods and materials they can trade for weapons, 'supporters' who raise money for them (often under various guises which conceal who it is really supporting) and the benign ignorance of politicians whose 'multi-cultural' ideology blinds them to what is really happening. Such as traffic being stopped in Bradford and 'donations' demanded, with threats implied, for the support of the 'Palestinian Resistance'. They will continue to thrive and to advance their cause as long as we are prepared to 'tolerate' their continued existence and activities of both the 'fighters' and their supporters.

It is said there are some 500 British 'fighters' with ISIS, a similar number from Germany, and from the US. There are others from France, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands - from every European state in fact. We are told the police 'know', or suspect they know, who they are. Fine, but then, when they eventually return to their home countries they must be arrested and charged with the crimes they have committed in the name of their cause - and preferably subjected to the same 'sentence' they have handed out to those they have killed or captured in the course of their 'war' on the people of Iraq and Syria. Sadly, I doubt they will be - because the armies of 'human rights' lawyers are probably already lobbying and lining up to make sure these psychopaths are not subjected to any legal actions for their campaigns of murder.

I do not believe anyone can be called a 'freedom fighter', whether he is a Ukrainian 'Russian', a Chechen, a Pushtun Taliban or a Nigerian tribesman who thinks he should be in control of all the other tribes in his homeland. In my view they are all terrorists and must be captured and either executed, or put away in a place where they and their evil poison can never be imposed on anyone else. Frankly, those who support them should be treated the same way.

Islam in Britain - A Voice of Reason ...

Soon after I had settled in Britain, a huge hew and cry broke out in the national daily newspapers around a headmaster of a school in the North East. He'd committed, in the eyes of the politically correct brigade, the unforgiveable sin of saying that unless immigrants were encouraged to integrate, and to speak English, adopt English norms, standards and laws they risked being ghettoised, and becoming an alien society within ours. This drew the ire of the multiculturalists and their allies among the fundamentalists in certain communities who wanted to preserve their own, often very restrictive, culture.

By denying their wives the opportunity to learn and speak English, or to mix with their English neighbours, they created enclaves where their children could be taught to believe that everything English was evil, to be shunned and eventually changed to 'an Islamic state'. Headmaster Honeyford dared to challenge this - and lost his job for it. I have wondered since how those in the Bradford Council feel now, 30 years on, when exactly what he was concerned about has come to pass. An article in The Spectator covers the whole sorry saga - and, for me at least, raises some rather important questions about the morals of those who pursue these politically correct agendas. It seems they have few, if any, qualms about destroying someone who dares question their vision.

More recently I had the pleasure of reading another article, this time written by a leading Muslim academic, who wants the law in Britain changed to ban - that's right, BAN - the wearing of any form of face mask and the Burkha. As he rightly argues, this is NOT a 'requirement' of the faithful from the Quran, but from the far less reliable Hadith. Nor are the Burkha, the Hijab and the full face covers usual anywhere outside of Arabia and some other desert areas, such as the Sahara. In short, there is no such things as an 'Islamic Dress' or uniform for men or women. Dr Taj Hargey, writing in the Daily Mail, states -

Contrary to the claims of its advocates, it has nothing to do with Islam but is a cultural fad imported from Saudi Arabia and primitive parts of the Islamic world.

Interestingly, supporters of the Burkha, often non-religious promoters of "Multiculturalism" refuse to listen to these and other calls. The usual route is to dismiss them as the desire of lecherous non-Muslim men, as in a Huffington Post article on the subject by a self-proclaimed 'religious activist'. He states, inter alia (including the regurgitation of all the usual 'Most Muslim women choose to wear it out of respect) that -

Extremists who call for banning the burqa appear to be largely illiberal, patriotic, and non-Muslim men who use the burqa as a means to persecute Muslims.

He ignores completely the fact that many women are forced to wear it, and that it is not a matter of choice for many. He also states that the French ban on the Burkha is contrary to Art. 8 of the European Treaty on Human Rights - a charge now struck down by the much maligned European Court of Human Rights in a case brought by a British Muslim group and lawyers. I'm not a fan of either the Treaty or the Court concerned, but for once they seem to have been struck by a dose of plain common sense. Of course the Islamists and their supporters are up in arms about it and there are talks of defying it in France and forcing the authorities to act. I suspect they'll find the French authorities a lot less touchy-feely about it than we in the UK would be.

Dr. Hargey knows what he is talking about. He is, after all, an Imam and an associate professor at Oxford. That he is hated by his more fundamentalist fellow believers, reviled in their media and threatened with violence should not surprise anyone. He wants to see an end to the isolationism in the UK Muslim communities. He frequently points out that the Hijab is not worn by most women outside of the Middle East, or was not until fairly recently. Famously, Kemal Attaturk, in secularising and modernising Turkey in the 1920s, 'banned the Burkha' by a clever strategy - he ordered that henceforward all prostitutes MUST wear it in public. Overnight, no one wore it.

What Dr Hargey wants now is to petition Parliament to debate a ban on the Burkha, and unlike others, he has thought about the implications. In his address he states that such a ban would apply to people wearing Balaclavas and ski-masks in public places. I doubt he'll win, our political classes are far too afraid of upsetting the Islamist beast they have welcomed among us, and I have yet to hear any of the politically correct brigade recant or admit that their wonderful vision of a society of multiple cultures sharing the same place is a failure. Or to hear any of them admit that Mr Honeyford was never, as they painted him, a 'bigot and a racist'.

Still, when one Imam has the courage to stand up and say the, to fundamentalists, unsayable, there is hope that the wider society will start to wake up, reject the illiberal idiots who claim to be creatiung a 'free and fair society' and throw out their cockamamy ideologies. Islam is currently going through a massive internal power struggle for its heart and soul. As Dr Hargey says, the Arabisation of Islam is proceeding unchecked. The Hijab is not required by the Quran, nor is the Burkha, nor are the black gloves, facemasks and so on. These are all from the Hadith and the Berber culture of Saudi Arabia. They are not native to Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and any number of other 'Muslim' countries.

I hope he succeeds in his objective. It will be a first step toward breaking the current trend toward a return to the Dark Ages for us all.

Religion has caused all wars?

Came across an interesting article recently at Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM), which prompted me to do some digging of my own and I found that my own research accords with what they have published. One frequently reads that 'religion causes wars' or that 'all wars in human history' were caused by religion. But, is this fact?

Let's start with the wars of early human history. What part did 'religion' play in the Egyptian wars of expansion? Or the Assyrian wars of conquest? Or Babylon's? How about the Persian invasions of Asia Minor and Greece? Or Ghengiz Khan's invasions of Eastern Europe, Persia, India and China?What of the Roman conquests? Motivated by Jupiter worship? Hardly. Religion played no part in these at all, though I have seen a claim that, because the Bible mentions some of them, and that God was involved in defending Israel or Judah, they were 'religious' ... Pretty tenuous, especially as the same person was arguing from the position that the entire Bible is a fabrication, a falsehood and therefore not worth reading. From the same argument comes the claim that the conflict between the invading European settlers of the Wild West and the Native American tribes was a 'religious war'. The reason given for that claim is that the various politicians who sent in the army or sought to drum up support from the settlers labelled the Red Indians as 'unbelievers' and 'savages'. Right.

A recent book, The End of Faith, renews the claim that 'religion is the most prolific source of violence in our history', but, as I've just stated, a very cursory look at about a 1,000 year span of pre-Christian history suggests religion had no part in a millenium of wars of expansion and conquest. Again, a survey of the wars in the next thousand years, one finds a similar pattern, with one exception - the Islamic Wars of conquest into the Christian Kingdoms of Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya and the rest of North Africa, and, of course, the Byzantine Empire and the Zoroastrian, Hindu and Buddhist lands of Persia, Babylon, Afghanistan and India. But even these actually represent only a small proportion of all the wars going on at the same time everywhere else.

Once we hit the Crusade period, those with an axe to grind against religion (usually, specifically, Christianity) really have a field day. Those evil Crusaders who attacked the peaceful, inclusive and tolerant Muslims with no provocation. Quite. In fact the Crusades were a response to Muslim persecution of Christians, not very different in some areas to what is happening everywhere in the Muslim world to Christians, and other non-Muslims, today. Though we are presented, by revisionists today, with an image of a peaceful 'paradise' of flowering art and scientific creativity in Muslim controlled Spain, and of scientific innovation and research elsewhere in Muslim lands, what is forgotten is that most of this was built on trades, skills and studies already in existence when they conquered these lands.

The Viking invasions, the Germanic Celtic invasions of Gaul, Spain and Italy were not 'religious' and even the often quoted war on the Cathars had, as an underlying motive, the suppression of a group who threatened the power and authority of the French nobility and Crown. William the Conqueror's wars, and those of his descendants, were certainly not 'religious' and the same can be said of many more. Yes, the Thirty Years War, had religious roots, and Phillip II of Spain certainly had a religious excuse for his attempted invasions of England, but his real motive was to avenge his sister's being 'sleighted' by Henry VIII. Cromwell's wars in Scotland and Ireland had a large religious element, but the primary objective was the suppression of support for the Crown. Other researchers have analysed the causes and motivations of the wars of our history and concluded that only around 6% in total of over 1,700 recorded wars, had any religious motivation - and a little over two thirds of those were Islamic invasions. The defining characteristic of a 'religious' war is that it is waged for the purpose of forcing a group or population to 'convert' or in order to suppress and destroy a rival faith. Those who wish to destroy all faith ignore that, and argue that any mention of 'faith' in any context in any war - or the use of any terminology associated with any 'faith' - makes it a 'religious conflict'.

Can one argue that the Conquistadores were conducting a 'religious' war on the Aztecs, Incas and others? The answer, if one bothers to check who gained what and why, is a clear 'no'. The much maligned Roman Catholic Church's 'men on the ground', have left a large volume of correspondence to Rome and to the Kings and Queens of Spain and Portugal protesting and objecting to the manner in which populations were being enslaved, impoverished, stripped of wealth and treasures. The anti-religious folk all point to the decoration of churches and claim this 'proves' the church was behind the robbery - but in fact the wealth which went to decorating churches represents about 0.1% of the total that went to secular treasuries and fueled further wars of expansion and conquest in Europe.

Even a cursory look at the causes and motivations for England's external wars of the 16th to 19th Centuries shows no 'religious' motivation, but a strong secular/commercial one. A murderer waving a Bible is no more a Christian than Richard Dawkins - except in the minds of those who wish to see said murderer as 'a Christian'. Hitler, it is often said, was a Roman Catholic and therefore his 'motivation' for the Holocaust and for his war on Russia and everywhere else, was 'religious'. The fact is that he was Roman Catholic by baptism, confirmation and education - it would have been remarkable if he was not in Austria at the time he was born - but he did not practice it post WW1. In fact he was scornful of all religious leaders, mocking them publicly. He never attended Mass, and rejected the suggestion he appoint a 'Chaplain'. Religious motivation? Hardly, but he was influenced by Marx to a degree, and by the ideas of prominent secular and humanist thinkers. It's all in his book if you read it.

Stalin hated religion, dynamited churches, had priests and bishops sent to the Gulags in Siberia - but again, there are modern revisionists who want to argue that he was motivated by his 'religious beliefs'. He himself declared he had none. In fact, he had priests rounded up and shot, and sent elderly bishops to Siberia and labour camps. If that is an example of his 'religious' belief driving him, it is a strange one.

Then there is the question of the Churches making deals with both Hitler and Stalin. Rome (in)famously signed treaties with both Mussolini and with Hitler. Easy, of course, to criticise, but now consider for a moment, the fact that in order to keep the churches open, and allowed to minister to those who remained faithful to the Christian teaching, rather than the twisted Nazi and Communist ideologies, they had no choice but to do deals with the 'Devil'. Again, it is easy to say they should not have, but that begs the question of how you minister to those who do remain faithful, and keep faith alive in a hostile and aggressively anti-faith environment. The charge Jesus left his followers is to 'minister to the faithful' - not abandon them to the wolf packs. As a part of that ministry, many of the faithful became involved in hiding fugitive Jews and other 'undesirables' and the churches provided comfort and succour to those who did so.

Today we see the active persecution of the church in China, where churches are being bulldozed and congregations penalised by the officially atheist regime. I have actually seen ignorant idiots safely in 'liberal' western societies advocating similar actions to be taken to 'destroy Christianity' on the grounds that it is evil, brainwashing, anti-science and, of course, responsible for all wars, conflicts and - to quote Stephen Fry and Phillip Pullman  - "responsible for the deaths of billions in the Americas and elsewhere." As I am unable to find any support for their assertion that the entire Spanish (and Portugese) conquest of the Americas was actually driven by the Roman Church (or any other) - whose priests and bishops spent an inordinate amount of time trying to stop the rape, murder and plunder of the Conquistadores and their successors - I find their numbers suspiciously dramatic and a little inflated.

That there have been, and are, some rather nasty and bloodthirsty religions in the past is undeniable. Even the Buddhist faith practiced human sacrifice until it was forcibly ended by the British and others. In Burma the British were horrified by the sacrifice of 200 young men to appease the spirits at the site of the 'new' capital being built in the 1860s - and launched a campaign which ended in the country being made a 'Protectorate' to end it. Mr Fry and his ilk, I suspect, simply ignore the fact that Judaism and Christianity did not, and do not, practice the genocidal system of sacrificing their enemies, and proclaim there is no difference. Ethnic cleansing has many faces, few of them 'religious' (though I'm sure someone will point to the passages in the Bible that command racial purity and the expulsion or murder of non-Jewish wives and offspring. What is more there is NO evidence this was ever actually practiced, then or later.). The fact is that Christianity expressly forbids such practices, and, once again, if you look at ALL the evidence, it quickly becomes apparent that while 'religion' is often used as a cloak, the real motivation is often 'commercial' and nothing whatever to do with any 'faith'.

Usually the motivation is 'capital gain' in the form of land seized, slaves obtained, treasure taken, and prime examples are the Muscovite wars of conquest and expansion, China's seizure of Tibet and the removal of ethnic Tibetans and their replacement with ethnic Chinese. Or Stalin's mass removal of Cossacks, Tartars, Ukrainians and Georgians and their replacement with ethnic Russians - the source of much of the problem in the Eastern Ukraine today. As with any ideology, everything can be twisted by those who are clever at manipulating others (and humanity is full of those who never look beyond the exciting message, or the charismatic messenger). When it suited Hitler, he made a point of being photographed with clergy. Stalin ordered some hastily released Bishops and priests to bless banners and the troops heading for the suicidal battles of the 'Patriotic Front'.

Much is sometimes made of the fact that those on both sides of any conflict invoke the protection of God for their side, but this doesn't 'prove' anything other than our natural desire to hope that we will survive - or at least find a path to a 'better place' than the battlefield if we die there. As my grandfather once remarked, "there are no atheists in a shell hole when death is raining down on you".

Despite the atheist, humanist and secularist propaganda, the vast majority of wars are not 'caused by religion'. They are caused by ideological agendas, by human greed, envy, spite and the hope of gain. This is what motivated Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, what drove the bush wars in Angola, Mozanbique, Vietnam and Korea. The desire for political advantage and power is what drives the various civil wars in Central Africa, in Syria and in Ukraine. These can only be called 'religious' if we are to declare political ideology to be a 'religion'. I suspect that will really cause a few wars.

Propaganda is a powerful tool, and it has been used against people of faith very effectively for the last hundred years or so. Sadly, even though the evidence against the charge that "religion is the cause of all wars in history" is right in front of the vast majority, they will still swallow the lie and not check the facts. A case, perhaps, of 'don't confuse me with facts; my mind is made up'. And that, my friends, is a very sad commentary on the state of western thinking, freedom and access to information. A very sad commentary indeed.

Conflicts of Message

I cannot help wondering why there is so much “surprise” among liberals, the media, and the families of those who have gone off to indulge in a little ‘Holy War’ in Syria/Iraq. I am sure those who have been on TV and in the Press discussing the issues of how the children of immigrants, or the grandchildren in some cases, have turned their backs on Britain, or have become ‘disaffected’ by our society, are intelligent people. Unfortunately they seem to be totally blind to several, to my mind, very important points. 

First, let me be clear, I am an immigrant. I arrived in the UK at the age of 40 with a wife and three very young children. My wife and I were of British and European descent, but even so we were aware from the first of some very large cultural differences between what we had left and what we had now joined. We made a very definite decision to put aside everything we had known and embrace fully the ‘British’ way of doing things. It certainly wasn’t easy, and we had no safety net, no back-up of friends and relatives to lean on as we stumbled from one trip hazard to the next. But we survived. And our children are now adults, UK educated, UK integrated, and know no other ‘culture’. It hasn’t been easy for them either, but they have adapted and adjusted and that makes me very proud of them. 

This was why, when the cult of “Multi-Culty” first took off in the 1990s I wanted nothing to do with it. I predicted then, and I am now convinced I was right, that it would lead to division, conflict and tears. Consider this scenario; A family migrates from a non-European culture seeking better opportunities, better living standards, better education. They arrive, they find a home, employment and settle the children into schools - but they keep their own ‘culture’ at home. Immediately the children are isolated because they never have the chance to see how others live. Their parents continue to dress in the clothes they wore in the ‘old’ country, continue to speak the ‘old’ language (in some instances the mother is actively discouraged from learning English) and when they come home from school or work they eat the food of the ‘old’ country, speak the language and dress as they did there. Yet, as one young woman in this position candidly told the BBC, when she went ‘home’ on a visit to her parent’s family, she was treated as a stranger, a non-member of that community and told she was not of that ‘people’ any longer. 

But, back in the UK, she is told she is, or that though she lives in Britain, is British, has been educated and raised in Britain, she must keep her ‘cultural roots’ and practice her own culture, not the British one. As she remarked, she has a sense of no longer belonging anywhere, so why are we surprised when the children of immigrants feel they have no identity with the country that has educated, housed, fed and employed them? I assume the well intentioned injunction to ‘keep your own ethnicity, culture, etc.’, mantra was supposed to make them feel at home, but it has had the opposite effect in fact. How can I be British if I wear clothes more suited to the deserts of Arabia or the Indian sub-continent? How can I be British when I go home and have to speak a language from the Middle East or somewhere else because my parents haven’t learned to speak English?

Several commentators have in recent days held forth at some length on the subject of why these young men might have become ‘disillusioned’ with Western society. Some blame ‘British Culture’ for the alienation, one gave the excuse that ‘Britons have failed to understand the other cultures in our midst’. It seems the promoters of ‘Multi-culturalism’ simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that many of these recent immigrant cultures are at complete odds with our own, and the stress created by trying to maintain one which clashes on almost everything ‘British’ is bound to cause a problem. It is interesting that some of the parents involved appeared on television in the clothing of their homelands, not in what might be considered ‘Western’ dress. If, at home, the children have been encouraged to think of themselves as belonging to a different society to the one they are living in, why are their parents surprised that the children don’t respect the culture they live in?

Changing countries is not easy, and there is always a danger of handing down to the next generation an idyllic picture of ‘the Old Country’. The danger is that the next generation then develop that mythology - an example would be the idea that in a society ruled by Sharia Law would be a better regulated society, women would be in the home, behaving modestly, family honour would be protected, girls would do as they were told, and so on. Then they are faced with the reality of modern Britain. Morals are not those taught in the Quran, Sharia Law is not recognised, the majority of people either have no faith, or are Dhimmi’, women are allowed to do as they please and religion does not govern peoples’ lives. It certainly doesn’t take much persuasion to convince gullible young men to campaign for a ‘Religious State’ and the imposition of the idyllic society their parents have projected.

Add to this the officially promoted kowtow to every demand for these minority immigrant groups at ‘official’ level, which is resented and resisted at street level, and you have a youth which feels it does not belong. Their roots are not British, at home they do not experience ‘British’ home life, and they don’t fully experience what might be called ‘British life’ at all. Nor do they want to. They don’t go to Pubs with their ‘mates’, they don’t go ‘Clubbing’ with their girlfriends (officially at least), and tend to form friendships only with those from their own background and culture. So why do they stay?

A cynic might say that it is because they would find it difficult to survive if they went back to the ‘Old Country’. They might not get the Income Support, Housing Benefit or whatever, and they would certainly not enjoy the freedom they currently have, or the access to health care, education and leisure. Plus, they would find themselves to be strangers in a land not quite what they had been led to expect.

The lady commentator from a Pakistani background touched on a part of it when she said that when she visits Pakistan, she is definitely not regarded as anything other than someone from Britain, and not a Pakistani. If you were born in Britain, you are, at least in legal terms, British, and not whatever your parents ethnic background might be. But that also creates a conflict. 

The cultural conflict is not one we have had to face before this. I am frequently told that Britain is the ‘great melting pot’. That previous waves of immigrants have settled, retained their unique cultures and integrated. Oops, there’s the problem. Integrated. Those earlier waves of immigrants came from European cultures. The early Brythic peoples were followed by the Celts, the Gaels, the Romans, the Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Danes, Normans - and later the ‘quiet’ invasions, the Flemish, the French Huguenots, European Jews, Dutch, Polish, and others - all from Europe. They settled, they integrated, spoke English, dressed as we do, accepted British law, the authority of our courts, Parliament and so on. 

With Multi-culturalism, that is not happening. In fact it is being promoted as a bad thing to happen. So why are we surprised that we now have the children of immigrants who have a golden mythological vision of the society their parents left; a disaffection for the British culture and heritage (which they are constantly told isn’t theirs), and a burning desire to make it change to their vision of Utopia?

We reap what we sow. Unfortunately, those who sowed the seeds of “Multi-Culti” refuse to accept responsibility for the harvest we must all now reap. 

Blinded by the Bias ...

Sometimes one reads an article online which makes one sit back and wonder whether one is living in a parallel universe to the author. Some of the articles and comments on the subject of 'climate change' are a good example, but politics and, at the moment, the events in Ukraine and Crimea are fuel for many such. Today's prize must, I think, go to the Iranian Ministry of (Mis)Information which has announced that the US 'shot down' the missing Malaysian airliner in order to disrupt Iran's relations with China, Malaysia and Korea ...

The one that really caught my attention this week, however, was an article on a blog which asserts that the EU's 'interference' and 'breech of faith' in 'forcing' the Ukrainian government to sign up to full membership of the EU 'forced' Mr Putin to act to 'protect' Russia. The fact that this was written by someone who lives and works in the UK, and is an otherwise intelligent person (as I judge from the erudite articles he posts) I found a little disturbing. Though I know he is very anti-EU, this was stretching things in my mind. It didn't take me a lot of searching the find numerous articles from sources outside the EU (and therefore 'tainted' in the minds of the anti-Europe lobbies) that present a more balanced picture. It goes back a few years, and the Ukrainian 'dream' of joining the EU begins during the Presidency of Mrs Timoshenko, though it could predate her. It was the Ukrainians who, no doubt looking west over their border and seeing how standards of living in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Roumania and the Baltic States has risen far more rapidly than to their East, who wanted to join up and share this improvement.

Not unnaturally, the EU Heads of State (not the Commission), were cautious. Suggestions that they could also join NATO were dismissed, but not, it seems in the more rabid minds of some parts of the British and Russian Press. A 'Trade Agreement' was proposed by Brussels, but the Ukrainian government wanted more and that triggered unease in Russia. Timoshenko was swept from power in what is now said to have been the most massively 'rigged' election in a 'democratic' country and a pro-Russian (He is in fact an ethnic Russian whose family were 'transplanted' during the Stalin years) declared President. The negotiations with the EU promptly stalled and that rubbed salt in the wounds, made far worse when Mrs Timoshenko was dragged into court on what now seem to be very flimsy charges and jailed. Not unnaturally, the ethnic majority of Ukrainians made their feelings known in no uncertain terms, which provoked a Moscow directed response of suppression.

Listening to Ukrainians on our television, and reading their letters in the local press, one gets a different picture to that painted by some UK bloggers whose hatred of the EU seems to blind them to the realities of Moscow's very clear intention of retaining control of Ukraine no matter what. As Josephus pointed out in a previous post here, the Russians wish, for a variety of reasons, to retain a 'buffer' of satellite states between them and the west. There may well be historic reasons for this, but it does ignore the desires and wishes of the majority ethnic populations in all these countries. Stalin's relocation of entire populations are remembered with a great deal of anger, and in some areas that is further fuelling the problems. That is the situation in Crimea (which was never originally part of Ukraine) where the Crimean Tartar population was moved or suppressed and replaced by Russians (the Tartars still form 16% of the population), and it is mirrored in the eastern regions of Ukraine where Russian families were forcibly relocated to displace Ukrainians.

Many reports suggest that the 'citizens militias' that seized control of government buildings in Crimea and set up their own 'autonomous' government were Russian troops out of uniform and acting under orders from Moscow. As evidence it is said they behaved in a disciplines and co-ordinated manner, knew exactly who and what to target and blockaded the Ukrainian troops and ships with a precision that speaks of very careful planning. The Ukrainian Navy is, in fact, trapped in its harbour because a Russian naval vessel has been deliberately sunk across the entrance. The order to do that can only have come from Moscow.

But all of this seems to be ignored by the anti-EU press and bloggers in the UK. To them the 'enemy' is Brussels, the EU commission and everything to do with the EU. I can only wonder what they may be seeing in this that I am not. To me what is very clear is that Mr Putin is determined to expand the 'Russian Federation' back to the borders of the former USSR, to keep the former Soviet Republics firmly in Moscow's control and to restore control of the governments of the former Warsaw Pact countries to politicians 'friendly' to Moscow. He is ruthless enough to stop at nothing as the west should have learned from Chechnya, Georgia and now the Crimea.

One thing I have learned since I moved to live in Europe is that much of what is blamed on the EU in the UK, is in fact arising in Whitehall. It is Whitehall that deliberately (or perhaps incompetently) misinterprets, gold plates, abuses or extends every EU Directive. It is Whitehall that uses every Directive to extend their power and interference - and then blames the EU. Yes, there are some problems with the differences between European Legal systems and the English and Scottish systems, but these are constantly compounded in Whitehall - not in Brussels. It would be nice, just once, to see some balance in this debate, and a little truth in Whitehall, but I fear that will never be possible.

Maybe we need a Mr. Gorbachev. Some 'Glasnost' in the bureaucracies on both sides of the channel would be nice, but perhaps more importantly, some factual and unbiased reporting in the UK media would help as well. I suppose I can dream ...

One speech you won't see widely reported in the UK ...

The Prime Minister gave a very interesting and strongly pro-Israel speech in the Knesset recently as reported in the Blog "The Elder of Zyon". I'm pretty sure the pro-Palestinian Foreign Office apparatchiks will be seething and I am even more certain it will have the usual anti-Israel rentamobs up in arms on our university campuses. It will probably also cost him votes in all the colonised Islamic constituencies of the UK.

Now it remains to be seen whether Mr Cameron can and will deliver on some of his promises. Of one thing I can be very sure, if Ed Miliband wins the next election, it will be back to the anti-Israel situation of the past. Labour did its best to prevent the establishment of the state of Israel, and is strongly alligned to the boycott, sanctions and disinvestment campaign. In recent years their electorate has shifted more and more to the Islamic population, and much of the legislation of the last Labour government provided the platform for the very stunts Mr Cameron mentions in his reference to attempts at 'citizens arrests' of visiting heads of state and public figures.

I shall watch the way this develops over the next eighteen months, with interest. But, given the history, and given the demographic shifts Britain has and is still experiencing with migration from strongly anti-Israel populations, I have no great hopes of any major advances in the attitudes to Israel or the countries achievements.

Tension in the East

At present the world is focused on the tension between the Russian Federation and the Ukrainian people, and, as ever, there is a long history here, and a lot of deceit, passion and ambition. If one looks back in history, the Ukraine has had some very varied fortunes. It straddles one of the 'High Roads of History' and has seen waves of invaders from time immemorial. It has been 'occupied' by Ghengis Khan's hordes, it was once divided between the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Lithuania. Even the Hungarians have held parts of it at times, and from about 1400 onwards, the Russians have gradually absorbed more and more of it.

The people who identify themselves as Ukrainian have been deported, relocated, supplanted and suppressed, but they remain an ethnic and linguistic group. And they have, over the years held onto that no matter where they are, and, if possible, have drifted back to their land. The Crimea is a complicated problem on all sides, since it was not, except geographically, part of the original Ukraine, and its people were the Tartars, a largely Muslim group. Enter 19th Century politics, and the desire of Britain and France to prevent Russian influence spreading into the Middle East, and now we have the Crimean War in support of the dying Ottoman Empire. The outcome is probably best descriobed a stalemate, since Russia retained possession of the Crimea, the Ottomans lost territory and Britain and France got no more than a halt in Russian expansion. Add to this our support (by Naval bombardment) for the White Russian forces in the Black Sea and Ukraine-Crimea and you begin to see the background to the present difficulty.

Like the Georgians, the Tartars and the Ukrainians weren't too keen on the Bolsheviks who were mainly Russian, and fought for the White Russians, probably hoping to win their freedom from the Russian hegemony. Lenin and then Stalin exacted a ferocious revenge for that. Particularly under Stalin, large numbers of Ukrainians were deported from the eastern areas and replaced by ethnic Russians. The Tartars resisted, got 'cleansed', and then deported, and replaced by ethnic Russians again. Post 1945 western leaders - according to Josephus the Correspondent on this blog - may have been naive when they forcibly returned to Russia the captured Georgians and Ukrainians who had joined the German Nazi SS to fight against Stalin. The 40,000 Georgians were executed almost as soon as they landed, and the Ukrainians (some reports refer to two 'Divisions') simply vanished. No doubt some of the skeletons that turn up from time to time are all that remains of them.

The Ukrainians hoped, when the USSR broke up, to be able to restore their independence - lost since around 1600 - and become a part of the western European family of nations with which they identify themselves. They reckoned without the fact that the ethnic Russians, transplanted into their midst, would have none of it. Russia depends on the Ukraine for its supply of wheat. The Ukraine is not called the 'Bread Basket of Russia' for nothing. The problem for the Ukrainians is that, under the treaties binding them to Russia, it is the Kremlin that sets the price they get for it, and determines who they can sell to. Having all but exhausted the oil and gas reserves in the Ukraine, the Russians are now the suppliers of both commodities to that country - and again, the Kremlin dictates the terms, prices and conditions. Every winter in the last few years, the Kremlin has 'turned off' the supply to the western parts on one pretext or another, usually to prevent the sort of overthrow of their puppet regime we have just seen. And then there is the Russian military presence.

The Crimea is a complication. Until Kruschev placed it under the administrative control of Kiev in 1954 it was never a part of the Ukraine. Now, of course, it is essentially an armed camp, bristling with ethnic Russians and Russian troops. Not surprising, of course, since it is the base for the Black Sea Fleet, and the place where all the Russian Duma members have their holiday homes.

Josephus, in an email to me recently, summed it up like this -

I've been reading the BBC news pages on this topic and find some of the usual half-truths and blinding ignorance on display. 

However, they show maps of the ethnic demographic and the votes in the EU/Russia referendum.  The split is almost exactly linked to the ethnic identity in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.  Basically, those with EU neighbours wish to be closer to the EU and those with Russian neighbours whish to be closer to Mother Russia.  I find this totally understandable.

Putins actions, however are being misrepresented, yes he wishes Ukraine to remain a buffer state between him and NATO, it prevents him having a hostile boundary to "police".  The USSR had its buffer states, but they are now mostly EU, most notably Poland and the former GDR.

Putin has (knowing full well he would not be opposed directly) flooded Crimea with troops.  Bearing in mind that 58% of the population identifies as  ethnically Russian and that the Naval lease on the Sevastopol base runs until 2042 this will have been quite easy, it is also rumoured that officials are handing out Russian passports like sweeties.

BUT!  Crimea is not Ukraine, yes Kruschev handed it to the Ukraine Oblast in 1954 but it is a very separate region.  Ukraine could give Putin Crimea and hardly notice the difference.

The real question is "Can Ukraine consider itself one united country when 70%+ of the Eastern populace voted to stay East and 70%+ of the western to go West?"

Should Ukraine split itself along ethnic and language lines?

Bohemia certainly seems happy as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, such splits have been made within recent memory, the Balkans also provide examples, although not perfect ones.

Josephus has found the following images which explain something of the population split rather well.

 

The western powers find themselves caught on the horns of a dilemma here. Should Mr Putin get away with 're-incorporating' Ukraine into the Russian Federation as he evidently would like to do, who among the former Soviet satellite states will be next to be targeted? I suspect that this is a question many are asking privately, and many of the former Russian vassal peoples must be worried. We have seen his enforced partition of Georgia, and there has been a similar 'grab' of part of Moldova. Always the excuse is the same  - to 'protect' the interests of ethnic Russians. 

Funny how no one seems to make the link between these and a certain 'leader' in the 1930s and 40s who made similar claims. Nor does there seem to be any acknowledgement of the right of the majority populations to choose who their governors should be. The fact is that the Russians have consistently flouted the Geneva Convention articles which forbid ethnic transplantations and the seizure of territory from sovereign states by military force. If they are permitted to continue in this manner, what is to stop everyone else from doing the same? There has to be a line drawn in the sand somewhere - but I can't see the present collection of western politicians doing it.