The Politics of Dancing

  Ancient and medieval history is littered with tyrants, Caesars, Kings, despots happy to lay waste to a province, destroy a city, killing innocent civilians to make a point. Sadly, the 20 th century saw, in Europe a return to such barbarity. Still, after Nuremberg, after Auschwitz and Soviet and Nazi crimes there was a belief that the kind of war fought in Europe from 1939 – 1945 was a thing relegated to history. But the world cannot be changed by magical thinking or the supposed healing power of time. We remain great apes sharing 99% of our genes. Evolution has yet to reach the stage when cooperation is universally seen as better than competition and conflict. And in a line from hunter gatherers through Genghis Khan, Ivan the terrible to Hitler Stalin there have always been great apes like Putin who will wage war, destroy cities, and murder women and children on a whim. We need to climb down from the pedestal of ‘civilization’ we have erected for ourselves and address the qu...

  History ls littered with national myths, uncomfortable realities glossed over, and exceptions presented as the norm. From Joan of Arc to Britain alone in 1940. We were not, unless you exclude Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and the rest of a still extensive empire. The myths, often tinged with the strong elements of truth can be extraordinarily resilient and fact proof. This is particularly true of the Nazi Soviet war of 1941 to 1945. Within Russia the myths of this period are particularity poignant, The Great Patriotic War, excludes the fighting in the west prior to June 22 nd , 1941, and, obviously, the Nazi Soviet pact. It excludes the vast amount of war material, especially petroleum supplied to the Germans, material without which it is unlikely that the Wehrmacht could have defeated France.   The war narrative, understandably, begins with the German invasion. Though Stalin’s disastrous decisions are glossed over.   It is First and foremos...

  Kyiv 2022 When evil like a toxic cloud Descends upon a modern city And children die and mothers weep When no amount of love or pity Protects the vulnerable and weak. There is no god or God’s to pray to No moral taught no lesson made Only the ancient,   ancient sorrow Only the ancient, ancient trade And young men raised for better things   shape the ancient, ancient skill Of Learning how to die and kill.

  East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£20). I. Most historical events inevitably diminish in impact with the passage of time. Not so with the Holocaust, which, certainly in my own case, the impact has grown in scale and horror as I have grown older, and others have told me of a similar response. That this should be is so is not hard to fathom. The steady process from petty indignities to the mass delegitimization, increased humiliation, ostracization, and eventual murder, the attempted genocide, of an entire race of people happened on the European continent, in one of the most literate and cultured nation states, within living memory. Men, women, and children were rounded up, marched into nearby woods or wasteland, and shot, to be thrown into ditches they had been forced to dig. Later the process involved herding jews into ghettos, starving, and then stuffing them into cattle trucks and transporte...

 THE BBC AND NADINE DORRIS  The TV licence is an anachronism, it is not of course alone, this country is awash with anachronisms from the Royal Family, to the House of Lords I could go on. When we wish to keep anachronisms we call them traditions, when we wish to dispose of them, we call them relics. As anachronism go the TV licence strikes me as of greater value than the Royal Family, and much greater value than the House of Lords. Indeed, the BBC is an institution that enriches British life and culture and is admired throughout the world. [1] The same cannot be said for the House of Lords, rancid and corrupt, a carbuncle on British democracy. Alas the licence fee will have to go, not because of the reasons put forward by the Culture Secretary[sic] Nadine Dorries, a woman who understands as much about culture as a dead hedgehog. A Dead Hedgehog opines The reason that the licence fee is no longer viable has however been provided by Ms Dorries, inadvertently or not. It is ...

      Like Trump,   Vladimir Putin is a master at bully and bluff. He knows how to play a weak hand well and is acutely aware of the weaknesses of liberal democracy and the constraints imposed upon his enemies by fidelity to the rule of law and accepted norms of behaviour. Thus far, from Georgia to Crimea, he has got away with levels of criminal recklessness virtually scot free.   But   ‘success’ like this can be heady, and even the most composed of poker players can overplay their hand. Public opinion in autocratic and   semi-autocratic states is a complex affair, measuring it is difficult, but it does exist, as the rulers of Kazakhstan are just finding out. For Putin’s Russia, which belongs in the second category, the pressures are similar but more complex than many similar autocratic states. The pressure of public expectations of reasonable incomes that keep pace with prices, matched by the competing pressure to meet the demands of greedy...

  Covid and Liberty Anyone who does not have any concerns about the curtailment of liberty created under the draconian, albeit necessary, response to Covid is not fully awake. Once accrued governments rarely roll back powers. Once having acclimatised the population to restrictions governments are apt to become trigger happy in imposing them. That stated, the threat from Covid is all too real and no right wing (UK), or left wing (US), conspiracy theory can alter this reality. These two competing challenges create serious problems with respect to safeguarding against abuse of power, not helped by the legions of fruitcakes taking to social media and or the streets selling their own specially concocted brand of crazy. The threat these people create to public health has proved disastrous in the US and to a lesser extent here in the UK Most pernicious are the so called ‘anti-vaxxers’ who have contributed immensely to the failure to stem the tide of infection in the US. Even he...