America Has No Problems

Problems, problems, everybody has problems. Look at Russia right now. Those protesters - they’ve got problems. If they don’t get prior permission for their rallies they will now be fined thousands of dollars. The opposition leaders have problems: the police raided their apartments, seized all their hi-tech gear and “investigations are ongoing.” Pussy Riot has problems. Ksenia Sobchak has problems… jeez… so many problems.

Save Us From The Moderates

Recently in Texas we had some elections, and I was very interested in the smears politicians hurled at each other. The worst thing a politician can be called here is a “Washington Insider” as the Federal Government obviously represents nothing but waste, incompetence, cronyism and assaults on freedom. Some of this contempt is undoubtedly deserved, but it’s not as if the Feds are entirely awful. For instance, Washington runs the military, which most Texans support very strongly.

YOU SAY “помидор” I SAY “помідор”

Last week, fists flew in the Ukrainian parliament over the latest attempt to grant the Russian language a measure of official status in the country. Fat politicians brawled with other fat politicians, while outside, an angry crowd protested. From her jail cell, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko denounced the bill as a “crime.” Earlier, she had characterized it as an apparently sacrilegious assault on “an issue that is holy for many of us.”

White Indians

Recently there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle in Massachusetts, where Ted Kennedy’s old senate seat will soon be up for grabs. Having kept it in the family since 1955, it went Republican at the last election, which is akin to the Biblical prophecy of “'The Awful Horror' standing in the place where he should not be" (Mark  13:14) as far as Democrats are concerned. Hoping to win it back this November, the party has put forward a high cheek-boned member of the privileged, white, upper middle class liberal intelligentsia, a Harvard law professor named Elizabeth Warren.

How I Got Back to Nature

Like many British people, I grew up disconnected from nature. Though my small town was close to forests and woods and water, we pretty much left the animals and plants alone. Specialists, known as “farmers”, were our mediators. Every now and then you might go for a ramble between fields, but that was about it, even though (in Scotland at least) you are never very far away from a herd of sheep.

March of the Pygmies

Right now it seems as if the leadership of the entire planet is coming up for election. At least that’s the impression I get from the news: there are changes of leadership everywhere, or at least in those places where the population is allowed to have a say in such matters. But when I look at the results, I can’t help thinking that the people coming into power are completely incapable of meeting the challenges of our times.

Watching Kim Jong-un

What would it be like to be told at age 27 that for the next four decades you were going to have to kill, starve and oppress millions of people if you wanted to stay alive? A strange question you may think, and yet not an unreasonable one. It is after all, precisely what happened to Kim Jong-un, the son of Kim Jong-il and now leader of the world’s most oppressive state.