Blessed are They that Urge

After several days during which she has evidently had more important things to do, the Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed solidarity with the Pope's courageous declaration that God has taken a dislike to war and somebody ought to do something about it. Although the heir of Urban II, Eugenius III, Gregory VIII and Innocent III explicitly limited his concern to the Christian East, his comments have been interpreted as criticism of the Persian Crusade; so perhaps her Grace found it necessary to check with her own Supreme Governor and ensure that her codicil would cast no pall of heresy over his forthcoming state visit to the kingdom of the Trumpster. The Archbishop herself will soon be heading to Rome, in order to join with the Pope in demonstrating unto the Saviour the error of His commandment at Matthew 6 vi, so doubtless matters will become clearer after that.

A Necessary Update

While criticising the Righteous State may be morally equivalent to Holocaust denial, there is clearly room for flexibility when it comes to certain other aspects of the Second World War. Shortly after Mr Churchill and his American chums had saved the world and liberated Auschwitz, the political and military leaders of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire were tried and sentenced on charges including conspiracy to wage wars of aggression. Fortunately for Mr Churchill's Israeli heirs and their own American chums, Britain's present Chancellor has overruled these verdicts, pronouncing military aggression an error rather than a crime. Were it not for the damage to business interests, Team Starmer would no doubt find the Persian Crusade legitimate and understandable; and were it not for the likely loss of networking opportunities should life's little ironies cause another Labour administration to toddle into another unpopular military quagmire, His Majesty's Government would probably consider the whole adventure praiseworthy.

College Politics

Various states of the US are conspiring to overthrow the electoral college, which can cause presidential elections to hinge on a few swing states, and can occasionally put someone in the White House on a minority of the popular vote. This century's beneficiaries from the latter anomaly have been the Trumpster, his head-tribble, and the alcoholically demented chimpanzee who fronted for the late President Cheney. It is to be hoped that the Democratic Party will manage a little better on the issue of electoral reform than did the mainland's Liberal Democrats, who touted proportional representation as their flagship policy for some years and then casually threw it out for the sake of a special relationship with the hard right. In the US as on the mainland, it also remains to be seen whether any amount of proportionality can help much when the only choices on offer are between business as usual and fascism, or between variants of business as usual distinguishable mainly by their corporate branding.

Imitation of Christ

Even Christians, who proudly outsource their personal morality to a megalomaniacal Bronze Age djinn, occasionally draw a line somewhere; and for some of them the Trumpster and his head-tribble crossed that line by exhibiting themselves in the guise of the Saviour. After squeals of righteous indignation from various saintly sorts who have been fine with the administration's miracles from authoritarianism at home to aggression abroad, the blasphemous eidolon has now been removed. In fairness to the Trumpster and his head-tribble, this cancel-culture commotion is merely one more example of Christian ignorance concerning their own imaginary friends. Whatever His inadequacies in the all-important realms of pocket-picking and pussy-grabbing, Jesus threatened torture and genocide for everyone who disagreed with Him, offered purely transactional love and forgiveness, and was probably not fluent in the English language; so the implied comparison is hardly a far-fetched one.

The Law Decrees that You Feel Safer Already

Despite a recent ruling by some enemies of the people in the High Court, the Metropolitan Police and the Minister for Britishness Enforcement continue to cover themselves in glory over Palestine Action. Not content to rest on her lily-white laurels as recipient of the Reverend Tommyrot Yaxleyson Compassionate Award for Wog Disposal, the Minister strives tirelessly to prove herself worthy of the government whose moderate and sensible priorities conferred an ambassadorship on Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring while suspending Diane Abbott for implying that skin colour might sometimes be a factor in racism. Thus patriots will rejoice, if they know what is good for them, that while various facilitators of the Gaza cleansing and fellow-travellers on the Persian Crusade remain at large at the taxpayer's expense, over five hundred more beastly terrorists have been arrested for the heinous crime of writing words.

Diplomatic Language

The glories of the American astronaut programme began with a military officer performing a Cold War stunt in a craft named Friendship 7, and the revived programme's current triumph has continued that happy Orwellian tradition. Pioneers for the militarisation of the moon have been hailed as "ambassadors for humanity," while the Trumpster and his head-tribble have celebrated victory over China by announcing cuts of twenty-three per cent to NASA's overall budget, and double that for its science budget. The same administrator who spouted the guff about ambassadors said everything would be just fine, while the chief of space policy at the Planetary Society protested that the measures are "discordant." Since the measures are absolutely coherent in terms of benefiting private profiteers and removing such time-wasting, un-Christian obstacles as scientific inquiry and the prevention of martyrdom through rapid unscheduled disassembly events, anyone working for an organisation founded by Carl Sagan surely ought to know better.

What Justice Looks Like

After a mere forty-eight years, the Christian state of Texas has condescended to formalise the non-execution of a long-term death row inmate. Being a brain-damaged schizophrenic with mental retardation and the racial handicap, and doubtless with the concomitant degree of wealth that tends to make such people more personally culpable than their betters, the man has had no legal representation in three decades, and has therefore remained in the queue for the ultimate justice despite having been found intellectually ineligible for the privilege relatively soon after his conviction. He is now likely to be re-sentenced to life imprisonment which, given his prospects if put out onto the streets, is probably about as merciful as the Christian state of Texas could be.

Torn Between Two Lovers

Many are the moral dilemmas that arise for those in charge, and a particularly horny one has emerged to toss Team Starmer. A major infoslop merchant has decided not to help His Majesty's Government inflate the AI bubble any further just now, and has halted plans to automate the great British intellect and do for the service economy what the sainted Thatcher did for the miners. Since His Majesty's Government has been approving phantom projects with all the alacrity of the National Johnson handing out contracts to pandemic profiteers, the inevitable squeals about excessive regulation are presumably AI-generated as a matter of corporate routine; but the complaint about high energy prices does have some merit. Thus Team Starmer finds itself caught between the equally exalted and yet conflicting interests of the infoslop merchant and the energy profiteers: a cruel choice for a government so manifestly and sincerely enamoured of both.

Crusade Camp Follower

Having fulminated indignantly over the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism and the recklessness of the mad mullahs in daring to retaliate when under military attack, the CEO of Team Starmer has toddled off to the Middle East in order to wax lyrical upon the virtuous moderation of the head-chopping House of Saud and the civilised restraint of the Netanyahoo's onslaught in Lebanon. He is also expected to thank Britain's plucky little servicepersons for their anticipated contribution towards keeping the Strait of Hormuz only slightly less open than it was before Britain's favourite ally launched the assault that got it so efficiently closed. Given that the Trumpster and his head-tribble regard negotiations as a holding action between military assaults, and that the Righteous State is already implementing its habitual ceasefire policy of not ceasing fire, Britain's petro-chums will obviously be jolly reassured that the CEO of Team Starmer is there to help sort things out.

His Own Man

Those who accuse Team Starmer of parroting the Farage Falange will have egg on the other side of their faces in the wake of the latest peace offering by the Trumpster and his head-tribble. A forthright slab of social-media diplomacy has promised the death of a civilisation unless Iran does as it's told, and the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange was among those who reacted unfavourably. By contrast, the CEO of Team Starmer has not reacted at all, except to continue the mainland's facilitation of wink-wink defensive operations. So now we know: even the CEO of Team Starmer can disagree with the Farage Falange now and then, provided the latter has balked at openly condoning a credible threat of genocide.