RUTHFULLY YOURS

Russia has changed since the days when I fled the old Soviet Union, but a recent visit to my former homeland suggests not as much nor in the ways I might have hoped. When the best and brightest feel their futures lie elsewhere and queue up to leave, prospects are grim and unlikely to improve.

Like Bilbo Baggins and his unexpected journey, my wife and I did not specifically plan to visit Russia, the country of our unhappy lives until we migrated to Australia. In my travel diary of years ago, I finished the Russian chapter by saying we were departing “with the heavy heart, knowing full well that we will not return.” At the time I wrote those words we were grieving the sudden loss of life-long friends who shunned us at best, abused us just as often. It was a shock to discover when we announced that we had been approved to leave the barely suppressed hostility and poisonous envy where friendship and laughter once prevailed.

The unforeseen visit to St. Petersburg I am about to describe was a stop on the Baltic cruise we took. The limited time we spent there cannot be regarded as the only source and foundation for this article, as the thoughts contained in it were forming for some time. My recent visit served to crystallise them. The identities of the people with whom we spoke will not be revealed for obvious reasons.

Avoiding foreign ‘contamination’.

All foreign cruise ships are docked in the farthest corner of the port, at a considerable distance from the city. This separation from the ‘corrupting’ Western influence is augmented by elaborate checkpoints for visa and passport control, unique among other states in the region.

Traditionally, Russian governments have been determined to stop Western influence contaminating the purity of the Russian mind without sacrificing the very much needed tourist dollar. It is a fine balancing act, which the Russian elite has maintained in order to isolate, or at least to distance, the masses from the rest of the world. Abominable standards in the teaching of foreign languages also help.

The days spent in the Russian Federation were, to put it mildly, instructive. We were able to speak to local people, much to the displeasure of our tour guides, who warned each other that some Russian speakers were in the group and they should therefore be extraordinarily careful in their off the cuff comments.

Appearances.

The overall impression of St Petersburg was one of shabbiness, with crumbling facades, a general grubbiness and an oversupply of police. Except for the very center of the city, with its famous monuments and palaces, the rest of the metropolis left an impression of neglected maintenance and a general lack of care.

People were dressed better than I recalled from memories of Soviet days, especially the young. Equally, there were all kinds of uniforms, including a granny in semi-military garb who occupied a glassed-in booth at the bottom of the Metro escalator. She appeared to do bugger all but keep a sharp eye on those going up and down — a sensible job, perhaps, in light of the Metro system’s recent terror bombings. Elsewhere and everywhere there are so many uniforms to be seen the town seemed like a heavily armed convention of boy scouts and girl guides.

There were many attractive young faces on the streets of St Petersburg and the so-called ‘Landau Index’ was somewhere between six and seven. Never heard of the landau Index? Let me explain this unit of measurement, which seeks to calibrate female attractiveness. It was invented by the legendary Soviet nuclear physicist Lev Landau, who was an equally legendary connoisseur of a female beauty. Upon arrival in a strange town he would take up station on a main thoroughfare and appraise the first ten women of reproductive age. The number of pretty faces was his eponymous index. Three fetching faces would be a low rating, five medium and seven considered to be high. This measure was jokingly accepted by the USSR’s male populace and, by my entirely subjective reckoning, St Petersburg rates very high on the scale.

Religion’s resurgence

In a city church we visited the publicly demonstrated piety of worshippers astonished me — a man raised in the atheist USSR, where religion, any religion, was not only frowned upon but actively discouraged and adherents persecuted.

Inside the church, women wearing hijab-like headscarves caressed the little rails in front of icons, kissing those barriers, crying over them, muttering endearments and heartfelt pleas to Heaven. They surrendered their positions only when the crush of the insistently prayerful behind forced them from their supplications. I found it difficult to watch such unrestrained emotional outpourings. I felt too much like a voyeur observing another’s passionate yearning.

Men were not that far behind in their devotion. Young men, somewhere within the 30 to 40 years’ age bracket, were crossing themselves ostentatiously, bowing in front of icons, whispering prayers, endlessly crossing and bowing, immersed in their very personal conversations with the Divine, demonstratively lost in their devotions and oblivious to the world at that moment, yet acutely aware of its presence. It was a weekday, the middle of the working week. Instead of earning the daily bread by the sweat of their brows, these young men of productive age were whiling their day in prayer. An atmosphere of exalted expectation, of investing all hope in the expectation of imminent miracles, was a near-tangible presence. The candle-scented atmosphere of unhappiness was palpable and contagious, so I left. Stepping outside under the grey St. Petersburg sky I felt better.

Reprinted from Hoover.org.

Recent elections in France, the Netherlands, and Austria, in which Eurosceptic populist and patriotic parties did poorly in national elections, suggest to some that the EU is still strong despite Britain’s vote to leave the union. Yet the problems bedeviling the EU ever since its beginnings in 1992 have not been solved. Nor are they likely to be with just some institutional tweaks and adjustments. “More Europe,” that is, greater centralization of power in Brussels at the expense of the national sovereignty of member states, is not the answer. The flaws in the whole EU project flow from its questionable foundational assumptions.

Those problems have been identified and analyzed for decades. EU economic growth and per capita GDP consistently lag behind those of the U.S., in part because of over-regulated dirigiste economies, over-generous social welfare transfers, expensive retirement benefits, restrictive employment laws, and higher taxes. Some countries have addressed these problems, most importantly Germany. But Germany’s economic success has exacerbated the stark contrast with the poorer performing Mediterranean countries. They are still struggling with debt and deficits, and suffering double-digit unemployment rates, particularly among the young, which range from 15 to 25 percent. Germany’s current dominance makes the EU look less like a union of sovereign states and more like a German economic empire.

Particularly ominous is the case of France, the second largest economy in the EU. France is facing cumulative national debt––government, household, and business––that totals 250 percent of its GDP, up 66 percent since 2007. This total does not include unfunded pension and health-care obligations. New president Emmanuel Macron has pledged neoliberal reforms to begin correcting this unsustainable drag on growth, yet previous attempts at even minor changes by French presidents have been met with street demonstrations comprising millions of protestors. It remains questionable whether there is the will among the citizens and their political leaders to face the harsh cuts and painful adjustments necessary to right France’s fiscal ship. Given the size of France’s economy, a fiscal crisis similar to that still troubling Greece will severely stress and further fracture the EU.

Europe’s economic woes are entwined with a serious socio-cultural problem: Europeans are not having children. Birth rates are at 1.58 child per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Since human minds and entrepreneurial creativity are modern capitalism’s most valuable resource, a shrinking and aging population––by 2030, one in four Europeans will be 65 years or older––bodes ill for future economic growth, leading to fewer and fewer workers paying taxes to support more and more of the aged drawing benefits. Pragmatic considerations aside, the failure to have children is also a failure to invest in the future or even concern oneself with the fate of one’s country beyond this life. Such attitudes promote an Après nous, le déluge mentality, and turns la dolce vita into the highest good.

Islam was created 600 years after Christianity not to affirm the Bible, but to discredit it; not to co-exist with “the people of the book” — Jews and Christians — but to replace them.

It is hard to read Islamic law books without concluding that Islamic values are essentially “a rebellion against the Ten Commandments”.

Islam violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” when Allah commanded Muslims to kill Allah’s enemies, and in the process, kill and be killed in jihad if they are to be guaranteed heaven.

Accepting a parallel legal system would effectively nullify actual freedom for many of the people possibly forced to use it, and the ability to receive equal justice under law. Sharia is the reason there is a death warrant out on this author, on Salman Rushdie and others, for apostasy.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, of the “Ground Zero mosque”, once again wrote a deeply inaccurate article reprimanding Americans for their supposedly “right-wing caricature” of Islamic law, sharia, which he insists is not a threat to American law. In his recent article “The silly American fear of sharia law”, he denied that sharia is incompatible with US laws and the constitution. Oh, really?

Imam Rauf tries to blame sharia’s amputation and stoning on Biblical Law:

“Sharia is not about amputations and stoning. These extreme punishments carry over from earlier, biblical law” and “Within the history of Islam, they have rarely occurred. What Islamic law does prescribe are the same do’s [sic] and don’ts of the Ten Commandments.”

Imam Rauf’s article is, to say the least, misleading — especially regarding the Ten Commandments. Sharia is not only incompatible with Western legal system but is the direct opposite of Western values; it has violated all ten of the Ten Commandments.

Islam was created 600 years after Christianity not to affirm the Bible, but to discredit it; not to co-exist with “the people of the book” — Jews and Christians — but to replace them. It is hard to read Islamic law books without concluding that Islamic values are essentially “a rebellion against the Ten Commandments.”

Islam has little respect for human life — of either Muslims or non-Muslims. To begin with, Islam violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Sharia punishes sins against Allah, such as blasphemy and apostasy, with execution. This is while it prohibits prosecuting Muslims who kill apostates, and also parents and grandparents who kill their offspring. Allah commands Muslims to kill Allah’s enemies, and in the process, kill and be killed in jihad if they are to be guaranteed heaven.

“Surely Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their belongings and in return has promised that they shall have Paradise.106 They fight in the Way of Allah, and slay and are slain. Such is the promise He has made incumbent upon Himself in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Qur’an.107 Who is more faithful to his promise than Allah? Rejoice, then, in the bargain you have made with Him. That indeed is the mighty triumph.” (9:111)

The concept of adultery and loyalty in marriage is totally different. Loyalty is expected from the woman under penalty of death, but men have a lot of room in that regard, the result of the rights of polygamy and temporary marriage for Muslim men. Thus, in Islam, the concept of marriage as a covenant of loyalty between one man and one woman does not exist.