Let's all mock Mark Thompson

For the man is ridiculous and has not understanding of what he is saying. The Christian Institute reports (and it has not been denied though nobody from the BBC is saying anything)

The head of the BBC, Mark Thompson, has admitted that the broadcaster would never mock Mohammed like it mocks Jesus.

He justified the astonishing admission of religious bias by suggesting that mocking Mohammed might have the “emotional force” of “grotesque child pornography”.

But Jesus is fair game because, he said, Christianity has broad shoulders and fewer ties to ethnicity.

What he really means, we must assume, is that you can mock Jesus all you like and while many people of differing ethnicity might feel upset and besmirched, they are unlikely to blow Mark Thompson up or cut his throat. Does he actually know anything about Islam? For his information it has no more specific ties with ethnicity than does Christianity and is mocking ethnicity really the worst thing one can do? Does he even realize how appallingly insulting and patronizing to Muslims that statement is?

More on the galloping major

My friend Derek Turner (as usual, full disclosure) has said everything that needs to be said about the egregious Eric Joyce (formerly major in the Education Corps, now MP for Falkirk).

An unexpected development

Jan Fleischhauer notes in Der Spiegel and interesting, unexpected and not entirely happy as far as the Germans are concerned political development.

The German parliament is set to approve a new multibillion euro bailout package for Greece on Monday, but instead of thanks, southern Europeans are expressing their dislike of us. Germans will have to get used to their new role: We have become the Americans of Europe.

Since then the German parliament has approved the most recent bail-out package but the abuse from southern Europe will, undoubtedly, continue. I suppose, there is a funny aspect to it all.

Well, now, how convenient

The news from Russia on Sunday was of the last anti-Putin demonstration before the election next Sunday. Russian laws forbid demonstrations and political meetings on the day of election or just before it. So, on Sunday 30,000 or so people encircled the centre of Moscow (as they are no longer allowed to hold meetings actually in the centre). People came from many other cities and joined in. Mostly, the day went peacefully with just a little bit of trouble and some arrests.

Here is a very entertaining description of events with some excellent pictures by the journalist Lucian Kim. He reminds us that

Last week Vladimir Putin recalled the heroic defense of Moscow against Napoleon’s invading army in an effort to rally supporters and cast his opponents as foreign agents. But it’s too late. Putin has already lost the Russian capital.

Of course Russia’s vast police force still physically controls Moscow. Yet as Putin positions himself for a third term as president, he no longer commands the hearts and minds of Muscovites.

The once and future President of Russia is given to comparing his opponents with foreign invaders and constantly accuses them of being in the West's pay, the implication being that Russians are not capable of political thinking or activity unless somebody from outside bribes them to do so. According to the various accounts, this is beginning to annoy people in Moscow (which any leader of Russia must hold or he might as well give up being leader) and in other places.

Meanwhile, the still-Prime Minister Putin has been lambasting the Baltic states as well on the subject of their minority rights policies. The countries in question do have some problems with their Russian population, many of whom are there because their grandparents and great-grandparents were encouraged to settle and take up the places left empty by Balts who had been deported to Siberia in 1940 and again in 1945.

The problems, however, are not quite as great as the still-Prime Minster tries to make out in order to sound really tough.

Both Estonia and Latvia have large ethnic Russian minorities among their populations, a legacy of Soviet-era migration policies. Most have taken Estonian, Latvian or Russian citizenship, however around 100,000 in Estonia and 290,000 in Latvia have still not opted to apply. Application for Estonian and Latvian citizenship in most cases requires passing a language examination.

 In the recent referendum in Latvia an attempt to make Russian the second state language was defeated.

Russian is the first language for about one-third of the Baltic country’s 2.1 million people, and many of them would like to accord official status to the language to reverse what they claim has been 20 years of discrimination.

But for ethnic Latvians, the referendum was a brazen attempt to encroach on Latvia’s independence, which was restored two decades ago after a half-century of occupation by the Soviet Union following World War II.

Many Latvians still consider Russian — the lingua franca of the Soviet Union — as the language of the former occupiers. They also harbor deep mistrust toward Russia and worry that Moscow attempts to wield influence in Latvia through the ethnic Russian minority.

There never was the slightest chance of that attempt succeeding.

On Monday, however, we got the "real news" and one cannot help feeling that it came at a very convenient moment for the once and future President. It seems that the Ukrainian security services have ... ahem ... uncovered a plot to blow up President Putin as he will be by then immediately after the election next Sunday.

The murder plot was allegedly exposed after the blast in Odessa on January 4, which was initially thought to be a domestic gas explosion. However, it transpired to be an accident during the preparation of an explosive device.

Channel One showed Osmayev in detention saying: "The ultimate aim was to travel to Moscow and try to assassinate Premier Putin." One of the men, Ruslan Madayev, 26, died in the blast but Ukrainian special forces seized a second, Ilya Pyanzin, 28, two days later. Osmayev, who was shown with blotches of green antiseptic covering wounds on his face, was captured at the beginning of February. The men had a laptop with several videos of Mr Putin's cortege travelling through Moscow on it.

For some reason there is a great deal of scepticism being voiced about this highly convenient announcement that follows the news of another large-scale demonstration.

Dmitry Oreshkin, a political scientist, said the "timely" appearance of the assassination plot was "a sign that the real leaders of Vladimir Putin's political apparatus – people from the FSB – are trying an old trick to mobilise public opinion using the logic: 'Enemies are all around us. We have just one decisive, effective, clever national leader who they are trying to destroy.'" Oreshkin said the electorate was expected to react by consolidating around Putin against the external threat, giving "a considerable boost to his ratings".

Other stories confirm the scepticism and indicate that there are certain discrepancies between the various stories as they are and have been put out. It seems that the Putin assassination attempt has been a late addition to a story that started off as one of a possible gas leak caused explosion.

Let's face it, many of us wondered whether something of this kind might appear in the run-up to that election though this seems to be crude even by Putin's standards. However, let us look at the bright side: at least there have been no bombs in apartment blocks.

End of the Synonblog

I don't necessarily agree with everything Mary-Ellen Synon writes about the EU and its shenanigans and so it should be. People have different opinions. Hers are based on knowledge of facts, people and events, which she often interprets differently from the way I do. So be it.

It is, however, with some sadness that I record (as the Boss did earlier today) that she has just posted her last blog on the Daily Mail site, which is now infested by ra-ra Heffer clones. It is a goodie, though. She suggests that the Scots have a look at Ireland's experience as a small state member of the EU before they vote for "independence within the European Union", an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Ms Synon tells us that she will be concentrating more on journalism but does not specify the outlet(s). Let us hope that her well known attitudes to the project will not prevent her from acquiring those outlets.

It's show time

Deanna Durbin is one of my favourite singers on film. Yes, I know much of what she made was kitschy and sentimental but when she opens her mouth and that glorious voice comes out one can forgive her anything. Here she is in her first grown-up role in a film called First Love with the young and dashingly handsome Robert Stack.

This is rather sad

Yes, of course, one cannot regard the death of the great M. R. D. Foot, war-time SAS veteran, historian of the secret war and especially of the SOE, writer, lecturer and (to my astonishment) editor of Gladstone's letters, at the age of 92 as tragic but it is still sad. Somehow I assumed he would go on for ever. Whenever I heard him speak or read his latest articles I felt that death would not come for this spry, upright gentleman who assured people that the key to staying healthy was to walk several miles every day.