Patrick Cockburn this week

 

Quotations

"Now people say that the toughness of Ukraine's investigation of corruption shows what a great country it is. Yet people had to take to the streets to stop Kiev's anti-corruption squads from being muzzled by the current govt."


Peter Hitchens yesterday on X. And these investigations are caused by decisions in Washington DC.

Jeffrey Epstein Aided Alan Dershowitz’s Attack on Mearsheimer and Walt’s “Israel Lobby”

John Mearsheimer talks very well about the attempt to suppress his and Stephen Walt's book here. The last thing his adversaries wanted, he says, was a public debate.

Ryan Grim

@ryangrim

In 2006, two academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, wrote a paper called “The Israel Lobby,” which argued that a loose group of Israel supporters used their connections and financial resources to tilt US foreign policy in Israel’s direction. One of them, Stephen Walt, was academic dean of The Harvard Kennedy School, which put him at the pinnacle of his profession. The savage response to the paper was like nothing academia had ever seen. We can now report that Jeffrey Epstein helped coordinate the counterattack with Alan Dershowitz, while Larry Summers was Harvard president. And Les Wexner was one of the largest donors to the Kennedy School, if not the largest. Epstein controlled Wexner’s money. In other words, a loose group of powerful supporters of Israel used their financial resources and connections behind the scenes to destroy the reputations of two academics who wrote a paper arguing that a loose group of Israel supporters was using their connections and financial resources to shape American foreign policy. Story here

Professor David Gibbs sees Kosovo as a precursor for Ukraine

I recommend this wonderful talk.


"So much of what, if you look back at Yugoslavia both the tone and the substance, so much of this evokes what's happening now in in Ukraine. Again the disparaging of negotiations - okay you don't negotiate with evil men you pulverize them through military force. There's also a personalisation. In the cold war it was never personalised. It was communism we were fighting even under Stalin, it was never we're fighting Joseph Stalin that wasn't said at all, right, but with the end of the cold war you had incredible simplification of analysis. Why do we have problems in the world? There are evil men out there with names like Milosevic or Gaddafi or Putin, all right? And so because you have these evil men who come just out of nowhere, out of pure evil, no social context, no depth of analysis, nothing, evil men. It's amazing people, educated people, would talk this way but of course they did and do on a regular basis today."

This evil men or homicidal maniac theory of history goes back before Kosovo. It is the reason why Hamas, for one example, is seen as a demonic force. 

Demonic and evil are words that do not throw light on politics but extinguish it.

A picture I found on Google+ in 2014 that makes me feel very happy and excited to live in Bucharest.

 

Quotations

"Something must be done. This is something therefore this must be done." I heard Michael Stewart say that to the House of Lords.

".... today, Phnom Penh once again has a population of about 2m, as it did in 1974 before the Khmer Rouge. However, 80 per cent of these people are “newcomers”, with no ancestral, cultural or generational link to the old Phnom Penh. The original population that was kicked out in 1975 has never truly returned.
Setting down my beer, I started taking notes, hoping to find a way to illustrate this astounding change. I wrote the lines “imagine if this happened to London, if most of the population was replaced in two generations, how incredible it might… And then I stopped.

Europe and the UK seem determined to continue the war in Ukraine. Will Russia win or will it continue for many years?

John Mearsheimer thinks there will be no peace until Russia wins the war in Ukraine, because Europe and Ukraine are determined to prevent one.

Andrew Napolitano: Will the war in Ukraine end on the battlefield or in a conference room?


Retired Col Lawrence Wilkerson: Neither. In my view, it will not end. We're going to have a low burning conflict probably for the next decade or so. and the forces in Ukraine will be principally responsible for that with possibly some support from certain characters in Europe if they're not completely cast out of office in the next 9 to 12 months. So I don't think Ukraine is going to do anything but go down to a low simmer that Europe and the West in general can tolerate, but we're not going to get a conclusive end to it.

Happy Thanksgiving

To my American friends celebrating Thanksgiving I wish them a happy occasion and remind them of a joke of Garrison Keillor, whom I love. 

"My ancestors were puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time."

I am not sure what Thanksgiving is about but it is about puritans landing in America. G.K. Chesterton said,

"The English might very well establish another Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the happy fact that the Pilgrim Fathers left England."

Puritanism runs through American culture like Southend through a stick of Southend rock. 

The puritans, even more than the Pharisees, get a rather unfair press. I, for one, shall be sorry when the USA loses its Protestant religiosity which is what makes the country what it is. But even if Americans cease to be religious they will still be puritans, albeit, as they are now, debauched puritans. 

Political correctness is all about puritanism. One of the most attractive things about Orthodox countries, like Romania, is that they do not have puritans. It is Protestant countries like England and America that are bedevilled with them, like wasps in summer. 

On the other hand puritans are much better at book-keeping and probity in general than other faiths. It is no coincidence that Orthodox countries score above Catholic and Protestant ones in every index of corruption. 

Calvinism and puritanism flourish even after belief in God dies. When the left likes homosexuality and sexual freedom it does so for puritan reasons, not cavalier ones. 

Mr. Obama today likened the Syrian refugees whom he wants his country to accept to the pilgrim fathers. He has a point. Muslims are puritans as well, of course, Calvinists plus polygamy, so maybe Muslim immigrants in America will fit in. I am sure that, unlike the original puritans, the Muslims will not displace the natives. They may, however, cause quite a few changes.

 

First posted 2015.

The suspect in Wednesday's Washington D.C. shooting of two National Guardsmen is a 29-year-old Afghan national. Bill Kristol is a leading neo-con who started the Never Trump movement.

Max Blumenthal

 

Max Blumenthal

@MaxBlumenthal

·

Nov 25

Sympathy for Israel among registered US voters has cratered, and it's never coming back Most Republicans under 29 favor Palestine over Israel, and the number surges among those who identify as "America First" That's why Israel is demanding a 20 year MOU to lock in military aid

Woman is born free and is everywhere in chain stores

"When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favourite things in the world were, I answered, “smoked salmon and Bach.” (Now, sixty years later, my answer would be the same.)" Oliver Sacks

"Woman is born free and is everywhere in chain stores."

Spectator cartoon.

The end of an old song - as Lord Chancellor Selkirk said when the Act of Union passed the Scottish House of Lords

 I hate this so much. 

Anti-Israelism

Pro-Palestinian Jews seem never to complain about antisemitism, as they would if it were a big problem. 

So I presume it isn't much of one. 

It may become one as Israel becomes a pariah state, 'the West's North Korea', as a half-Jewish friend of mine predicts.

Jews in the British and American media who support the Israeli government's actions complain a lot about antisemitism but infuriatingly they conflate being anti-Israel with antisemitism.

The Daily Telegraph is the worst offender in this regard. Unfortunately I was conned by the paper into renewing my subscription but I can't be bothered to read it.

It's equally propagandistic about Ukraine.

Netanyahu said he would destroy Hamas but didn't really try and anyway it was always obviously impossible. 

I have to feel Hamas's existence helps him.

Pro-Israel people follow Middle Eastern news starting from the presumption that Israel and its well-being is a good thing - for disinterested bystanders, especially in former European colonies, the news looks very different.

Pro-Israel people, however, don't necessarily understand this and some make the mistake of thinking Israelis are fighting for values when they are fighting for land.

Quotations

‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’ Robert Frost,The Death of the Hired Man.

'What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one.' Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

'I would say to the Taiwanese: Do you really want to be the Ukrainians of East Asia?'

"I said to the Ukrainians do you really want to be the Afghanistan of Europe? I would say to the Taiwanese: Do you really want to be the Ukrainians of East Asia? The answer is absolutely no. Be careful, the United States cannot save you. In fact all it can do is get you destroyed because Taiwan will be safe and secure if the United States stops its provocations … [It] doesn’t care about Taiwan, I’m sorry to say. It cares about its competition with mainland China, and Taiwan is a piece of the game." Jeffrey Sachs

Schopenhauer

The extremely right-wing zoo owner John Aspinall said that before making a point you consider important preface it with "As Schopenhauer once said".

Has $48 billion in aid to Ukraine been stolen? Is Zelensky involved or the Estonians?

Romanians have never doubted that a huge amount of money from the US and Europe was being stolen by Ukrainians. Nor have I because I live in Romania, but a lot of allegations on the internet are Russian in origin.


Now here is something interesting.


Larry Johnson on the Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom podcast yesterday said the $100 million which has recently been found to have been stolen by Zelensky's close associate is 'peanuts'. (He was talking about Timur Mindich, the man with the golden lavatory seat who has fled to Israel.)

'The US Department of Defense is now investigating based upon my my business partner's whistleblowing document, providing actual evidence, bank accounts, etc, they're going after $48 billion that have been diverted, much of it into Zelensky's accounts. B I L L I O N. 

'And you want to know why Kaja Kallas is so keen on keeping this thing going?'


'Don't tell me she's dipping in.'


'Most of the money went through banks in Estonia.'

Quotations

 

"Classical education in the English public schools consists of casting sham pearls before real swine." Anonymous in HL Mencken's A New Dictionary of Quotations (1942)

Quotations about the late massacre in Gaza

 Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, the left-wing American ice cream company: 

"The words 'never again' are a big part of growing up Jewish. When I saw the slaughter in Gaza, I came to understand that...they just meant 'never again for us'."

My old pal Andrew Lownie now says two sources have told him Epstein hired a hitman to kill Andrew, quondam Duke of York

The protagonist of Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear says during the blitz, addressing the wraith of his dead Edwardian mother, 'The world has been remade by William the Queux. He should see it now.

Andrew says a prisoner was employed to kill Epstein. The BBC describes this as a conspiracy theory but it is clearly true. But who employed the murderer?

Even bitter pills can make you better (Dominic Johnson)

I thought the sketchy proposed Ukrainian deal unacceptable but am coming round to accepting it with sadness. It is better than the alternative. The first cold war was unnecessary and did nothing but harm. I don't want a second one. I hope this deal changes and weakens Nato and the European Union. Will it bring down Macron, Mertz and Ursula v d Leyen? That would be nice but I am not sure it will. It's a blow for MI6 which is good.

What will Britain do? Nothing we can do, much as MI6 has done its upmost to bring about and continue the war. We are in the position vis-à-vis the US that Bulgaria (not Romania) was vis-à-vis the USSR.

The same goes for the Western and much of Eastern Europe. 

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said, “I don’t like the term rearm. I think the EU is a political project of soft power … This is my principled objection to the term of rearm.” 

Does this map make you proud?

It does me. If you are Romanian probably not, as Romania was ruled by empires until 1877-1918.

Actually Liberia should not be marked as red. It was an American colony before being a godforsaken place, resembling but very much worse than apartheid South Africa, where Americo-Liberians, less than 1% of the population, oppressed the indigenous people. Ethiopia except under brief Italian rule and independent Liberia were the two worst ruled countries in Africa until decolonisation. Russian Asia including Central Asia was also a European colony. Persia and Turkey were independent. 

Vladimir Putin talking to Tucker Carlson on 16 August

"We would have never considered to even lift a finger if it hadn't been for the Maidan coup. We had agreed to Russia's 1991 borders...but we never agreed to NATO's expansion and we never agreed that Ukraine would be in NATO.

"The only way for lasting peace in Ukraine and Europe is a recognition of Russia’s legitimate security interests and a compromise.

The US would never have allowed Mexico or Canada to hypothetically join a Russian-led military alliance, and would have deposed the governments pursuing membership in less than a week."

Quotations

"There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodope ! that are not soon mute, however tuneful : there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last." Walter Savage Landor. My favourite sentence in English literature.

I agree with all three of these

“If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feeling. Now Marx is not inspired by kindly feeling. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat, but what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois. And it was because of that negative element, because of that hate element that his philosophy produced disaster. A philosophy that wishes to do good must be one inspired by kindly feeling and not by unkindly feeling.”

A Conversation with Bertrand Russell (1952).

Former Mossad chief says Israel has planted booby-trapped and manipulated devices—including pagers and walkie-talkies—across “all countries you can imagine”

Jake Wallis Simons of the Daily Telegraph, an ardent Zionist, conducts this interview which he describes as astonishing.

It is. 

Kingsley Amis said that If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

That is my philosophy.

It might not be a good philosophy.

From the Office of National Statistics

 

X disabled Hebrew translation today - 'to prevent misinterpretation of inflammatory posts'

 

Who was the boss Epstein mentioned in the emails?

Epstein, like Osama bin Laden, resembles a James Bond villain but Epstein may be even more consequential. 

3 times in the emails he refers to his boss, one time visiting the UN. Who was his boss? 

I can hazard a guess. Can you?

Max Blumenthal, who is a very good journalist, speaking at the weekend to Judge Napolitano said this.

'Virginia Giuffre where did she come from? According to Donald Trump himself, I don't even know why he said this, she came from his own salon at Mar-a-Lago, right? And was taken from there by Jeffrey Epstein. So, there's a lot there. 

'And this to to the MAGA base, this showed that they were actually in with the pedophile elite, that Donald Trump was actually part of the deep state, that he was part of this sort of white collar criminal class that exists above the law. that is not accountable to the public and that he was lying to them. 

'And additionally, the whole 12 day war with Iran in which Netanyahu had Trump like a puppet, he was playing him like a marionette a month before, showed them that he was not America first and that he was a complete tool, along with the Gaza genocide. 

'Charlie Kirk was experiencing this with the MAGA base because they were his audience. And at the same time, he had a class of Zionist billionaires trying to puppeteer him on behalf of Netanyahu who were also keeping Trump in line. 

'And he was not as easy to puppeteer as Donald Trump, as we now know. And he was chomping at the bit. He was upset with what he called moral blackmail. 

'And the next thing you know by September he's dead. I don't know if there's a connection there but he was sort of a proxy for what was taking place inside the MAGA base. And now the crisis continues to play out.'

Unfortunately this seems to be true. We should have been told 10 years ago.

 

What they said

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.” Charles Bukowski

“Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.” Erich Fromm

'Doesn't matter what you do, you always get John McCain." Douglas Macgregor talking about the putative US war against Venezuela.

"The most powerful country in the world." Max Blumenthal talking this weekend about Israel. (He said something like "nobody can believe Epstein acting alone had more power than the most powerful country in the world, Israel." It now occurs to me to wonder if he might have meant the USA not Israel, but he knew what he was doing.)

Here are Epstein’s emails in a searchable database

Here is a searchable database of the recently published emails from Jeffrey Epstein.

BBC

"Like most British institutions, the BBC hires from universities where progressive assumptions dominate. It operates in metropolitan circles where those assumptions go unchallenged. Anyone holding a dissenting view is marked as strange – not wrong, but off – as though conflicting views suggest cognitive and moral failure. In such an environment, success depends largely on cultural fit. Eventually, your worldview stops being a perspective you hold and becomes the lens through which you see reality." Frederick Alexander

Young British arts graduates rarely sympathise with Israel, but you only have to compare how the BBC covers Ukraine and Gaza to see that the BBC is biassed against Russia and in favour of Israel.

Epstein’s emails

"They [Epstein’s emails] are a skeleton key for understanding the dynamics of Donald Trump’s America, one in which the wealthy and powerful appear not as master operators but as bumbling sycophants, eager to cozy up to influence no matter how villainous or depraved." Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic

Today King Charles III is 77 and the fourth oldest reigning British monarch

Today King Charles III is 77 and the fourth oldest British monarch, after his mother Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, King George III and King George II. 

The Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, lived to 77 and 11 months but had abdicated long before.

If you are a Jacobite, King James III and VIII lived in exile for 77 years and 5 months before being buried in the nave of St Peter's in Rome with all the honour due a King of England, Scotland and Ireland. 

King Charles III was the oldest monarch to ascend the British or English or Scottish throne, though had the Electress Sophia not been caught in a shower and lived a month later she would have been older.

A limited hangout

What the media are letting us know about Epstein is called a limited hangout. 

According to Victor Marchetti, a former senior CIA man, a limited hangout is "spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.'

I thought the Prince Andrew revelations would distract people from the real story but the media cannot indefinitely control the narrative and I think this might now be out of their control.

The BBC is biassed against Trump and in favour of immigrants, abortion and Israel

BBC presenters shared Israeli perspectives on Gaza 2,340 times, compared to Palestinian perspectives 217 times.

This revelation was not a resigning matter for senior BBC figures.

BBC World is dreadful very often when it comes to the news. I was listening this morning to some young BBC woman called Razia Iqbal explaining that the idea that Epstein was killed is a groundless conspiracy theory. 

The BBC is good but so bad. I don't see any bias against Israel though. I do see bias in favour of feminism, abortion, immigrants, single sex marriage et al.

The BBC have been clearly terrified of offending the powerful pro Israel crowd. 

They have been biassed on the whole quite strongly in favour of Israel. 

Will Epstein be Trump's Watergate?

Ten years ago today Islamists attacked cafes in Paris and carried out a massacre at the Bataclan concert hall leaving 132 people dead. 

Ann Coulter tweeted that 'tonight Donald Trump was elected president' 

Ann Coulter was long ago disenchanted with Trump and ten years later he is president the second time and is implicated in the Epstein emails.

It wasn't the Watergate burglary that brought down Nixon.

It was the cover-up.

Trump's oafish attempt to row back on his loud campaign promise to reveal the Epstein files will do him immense harm and might do immense harm to the only special relationship the USA has, the one with Israel.

For a while it seemed that America First somehow meant Israel First too - but now the MAGA movement is dividing over Epstein and over Israel.

Unlike with Watergate the media is seized by a sublime lack of curiosity about Epstein, except in relation to Andrew, quondam Duke of York and Trump. 

It is the trafficked women and Andrew Lownie and now members of the US Congress who keep the story going. 

Why is that?  

When will someone investigate what Epstein was doing and where he came from, how he became rich and powerful and was given as a present the most expensive house in Manhattan? 

Global warming, if it is happening, might shortly be reversed

I am not sure I knew about BBC 4 but I am told it broadcasted a good programme last night about the sun, including the continuing reduction in sun spots. 

If that goes on at its present rate we might, in the not too distant future, experience the sort of mini ice age which Europe suffered three hundred years ago (the last time the sun spots disappeared).

Max Blumenthal is usually well informed

The new President of Syria was in Al Qaeda and ISIS but was welcomed to the White House this week (on the US public holiday to honour soldiers  called Veterans Day). 

Max Blumenthal credits or blames Nato with his overthrowing Assad and this is true in the sense that Turkey, which is in Nato, did it and no doubt the USA and UK assisted. 

The old Palace of Justice

 

Virgin whore dichotomy in Romanian male inner life

There was time very long ago when I thought the juxtaposition in a Bucharest taxi of an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a photograph of a topless girl was ungodly and later I thought it amusing but for decades I haven't even noticed.

Caitlin Johnstone mentions the elephant in the drawing room

 

Quotations

Who was it who said that Browning's poetry sounds like coal arriving at the house next door?

Tennyson said reading Ben Jonson's verse was like swimming in treacle.

“Nothing happens that God has not foreseen from all eternity; this thought gives me great courage”. St. Thérèse of Lisieux

“If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do." Bertrand Russell

"God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill." William Gurnall

'Maduro is a wicked dictator, though I don’t think the US should invade Venezuela to topple him for national security reasons (if we do, then let us hear no more criticism from Washington of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for same).' Rod Dreher

"Every Labour government in history has left office with unemployment higher than when it was elected. Looks like Starmer is heading the same way." Ian Dale

"I have many political disagreements with Tucker Carlson as well as some important areas of agreement. But the more I look both at him and the American political class as a whole the more attractive a future president he seems to me. There is the whiff of JFK about him. Handsome eloquent funny personable. He questions more, and asks the questions the politicians don’t want asked. He is ready to be persuaded as evidenced by the political journey he’s been on. An Episcopalian Christian, a good family man, a man who brings his dogs on stage! I could see why the American people love him. And he stands out more given the flatness of the surrounding landscape. I reckon he should go for it…" George Galloway

One in 12 people in London is an illegal immigrant.

Religion, tribes and land (they are not making any more of it) are the most important things in history, obviously, not class or economics.

Culture determines economics, religion and race (race as in English, French, Cornish races, etc) determine culture.

This is why the Palestinians fight the Israelis and vice versa. This is why the assault on the West, formerly known as Christendom, by migrants matters.

Ed West in January said this.

'As a result of this failure to act, we have reached a situation where one in 12 people in London is an illegal immigrant. This places huge strain on infrastructure and services, worst of all being its effect on the existential housing crisis; as immigration-driven demand is not matched by supply, so rents continue to soar ahead of wages.'

Note that the second sentence completely misses the point. The first sentence might be an underestimate.

The threat to world peace

I slowly and reluctantly came to see first that America was the greatest threat to world peace.

I later saw that Israel was even more of a danger.

But in fact the biggest danger to the world is specifically the US Israel lobby.

Calvinists and Evangelical Protestants play a huge role, as they do in many bad things, as well as Jews and neo-cons like John Bolton.

A moment ago I was reading Stephen Pollard, my least favourite journalist in a crowded field, and I learnt that Resolution 3379, which was passed fifty years ago today by the UN General Assembly, declared Zionism to be “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” 

He considers the resolution antisemitic.

Of course he does.

I wonder if he approves of English ethnic nationalism. 

I rather bet it worries him. He has written against golliwogs.

I think British colonialism did very much good on balance (think of North America) but clearly not in Palestine. 

I don't imagine any impartial person will disagree. 

Still Israel exists. 

But if the American Israel lobby loses its power Israel will have to get along with the Arabs and Persians.

The alternative is Israel being what an American half Jewish friend of mine calls her- the West’s North Korea. This is what she is now.

Jews are central to world history despite being few in number, which is as God intended if you believe in Him.

In case you missed this story, which you easily could have

The Israeli equivalent of the judge advocate general (meaning the most senior military judge) released a film of Israelis sodomising an Arab prisoner (there have been a number of such cases, alas). 

For doing so she has been charged with a crime. 

She threw her mobile telephone into the sea but it was recovered. 

She then tried to kill herself. 

I am not making this up.

What a way to run a country.

It would make a good film but Hollywood wouldn't touch it.

Quotations

'The nearest a member of the British royal family has come to facing a criminal investigation was when Princess Anne was charged with an offence under the Dangerous Dogs Act in 2002 after her dog bit two children in Windsor Great Park. She pleaded guilty, and was fined £500 and paid £500 in compensation.'
Andrew Lownie in the Sunday Times yesterday

US Presidents are not usually remembered: Truman, Reagan and Trump will be

'In fact, perhaps Obama’s most consequential act was to roast Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011, a humiliation which supposedly spurred the real estate mogul to stand for president. I saw one person on Twitter liken it to a 21st century Sarajevo assassination.' (Ed West on January 29, 2025.)

Obama was also consequential because on his watch Victoria Nuland overthrew Yanukovych and provoked the invasion of Crimea and, in the longer term, the invasion of 2022. His Iran deal and the way he handled Russia after she conquered the Crimea in 2014 look good now - not so the way he handled Libya, though Hillary and Samantha Cameron are maybe more to blame.

It's great that he kept out of Syria - but he should not have drawn a red line about using chemical weapons. 

By the way, why have we heard no more about that since Assad fell?

He was fortunate in his successors.

Few American presidents are consequential. 

Truman, Johnson, Reagan, Bush the Younger for very bad reasons and Trump.

However Johnson is forgotten and so will the Bushes be (schoolchildren will mix them up - same name, went to war with Iraq).

Kennedy is remembered for now and almost started World War Three but was not president long enough to achieve anything much. USAID was his monument and it has been torn down. 

Nixon went to China and ruined Cambodia and Laos.

It occurs to me writing this that US foreign policy has been a catalogue of disasters from FDR onwards.


Hoover looks very good now and had he still been in the White House in 1940 Pearl Harbor would not have happened - possibly England and France might not have gone to war.

Lest We Forget

Colin Cavendish-Jones gave me permission to quote this comment.

On Remembrance Sunday, I find myself wishing that politicians from all parties would maintain twenty-four hours' silence. I have just seen, for some reason, Remembrance Day messages from Kier Starmer and Boris Johnson, both evil men, liars, cowards, and traitors who have not the slightest notion of honour or sacrifice. I would like to remember the fallen without hearing from despicable politicians. Perhaps we might turn to poets instead, A. E. Housman, for instance.
Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

This is a postcard I bought in 1976 or 1977 in  a convenience shop in Trafalgar Square. Apparently the picture was taken in 1973.

Jeremy Thorpe, on the left is summarised thus in the index to Dominic Sandbrook's Seasons in the Sun: The Battle For Britain, 1974–7 (2013):

Have I read that book? I think so but am not sure. If not, I must.