Cicero's Songs

Despite the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and his wife, together with killing or wounding several senior members of the Iranian government on February 28th, Trump's war of choice against Iran appears to be facing significant problems. Firstly, the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran have not dissolved into chaos. They have moved quickly to install Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Hosseini, as the new Supreme Leader. Mojtaba Kahmenei is said to be very close the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and especially its paramilitary wing, the Basij. These are the two institutions that have been the primary organs of repression and are certainly responsible for thousands, probably tens of thousands, of deaths since the recent unrest began. The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei, who is rumoured to have been wounded in the attack that killed his parents, is therefore not a sign that the Islamic Republic is seeking to moderate its positions. Sure enou...

In October 1956 Britain and France,with Israeli support, launched military strikes against Egypt.  The military operation was entirely successful, and within a matter of days it appeared that all the operational objectives would be achieved.  However, almost immediately, the United States put so much pressure on their allies that the operation became unsustainable. Nine days after the attack was launched the Eden government declared a ceasefire and within two months all of the British and French attacking forces were withdrawn, leaving Egypt the clear victor, Eden himself was forced from office in January 1957.  The point was that even the formerly equal wartime allies were compelled to recognize the power reality- the hostility of the United States to the operation could not be overcome. From then onward the United Kingdom generally aligned its policies with the United States. It is tempting to consider that any American attempt to seize Greenland might be met with simil...

In the first decade of the twentieth century the relationship between the British and German Empires fell apart. Britain had tacitly supported the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership, to the point of sacrificing the Kingdom of Hanover in 1866. This friendly relationship reached its apogee with the short reign of Kaiser Friedrich III in 1888. Liberal, open minded and generally pro British, by virtue of his marriage to Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, Vicky, it seemed that Germany under the new Kaiser was poised to become a progressive ally of the British Empire that would spread democratic rule and liberal prosperity across Europe and the World. As we know, throat cancer put an end to Friedrich III after only a few months, and in the year of Three Emperors, Germany went from the military conservative rule of Wilhelm I to liberal Friedrich III to the unstable and expansionist Wilhelm II.  Within a matter of little more of a year the second new Kaiser turned German polit...

 No one is quite sure which Frenchman in the 1920s suggested that "the United States is the only country that has gone from barbarism to decadence, with out the usual interval of civilization". It may have been a right wing French newspaper, it may have been Georges Clemenceau, though in any event it was treated as more a witty riposte to some US policy than a serious description of the then burgeoning power of the USA. The point was that the election of Warren Harding in 1920 had upended American foreign policy. Instead of joining the League of Nations- a body actually proposed by the Americans under Woodrow Wilson- the United States lapsed into a distant neutrality. The US "return to normalcy", left European, indeed global security without the worlds largest economy, without the pre-eminent power of the US armed forces, so recently the source of the allied victory in the First World War.  With the hindsight of a century, the early 1920s have some significant paral...

For some time public figures have received threats. Rarely do they take them seriously, and in fact only very occasionally are they serious. However in recent years the political discourse has grown very ugly. Although neo-Fascists and populists have fanned the flames of popular hatred, in fact the crisis of "civility" goes back a pretty long way.  After forming a coalition with the Conservatives in the UK, the Liberal Democrat leader faced significant abuse: dog shit through the letter box and all the rest of it. This routine and increasingly extreme abuse against MPs has now become simply an occupational hazard. In the 1950s MPs were generally respected, which is why the profumo scandal was so impactful, but now they are pretty universally denigrated and derided. In fact I believe that the majority of MPs are decent and honourable people who by-and-large deserve our respect, there are very few prepared to express that point of view.  However, it is fair to say that those ...

In December 1941, Imperial Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor. After the subsequent declaration of war, within three days, the Japanese had sunk the British warships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, and the rapid Japanese attack led to the surrender of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941 and the fall of Singapore only two months after Pearl Harbor. These were the opening blows in the long war of the Pacific that cost over 30,000,000 lives and was only ended with the detonations above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "History doesn't often repeat itself, but it rhymes" is an aphorism attributed to Mark Twain, and in a way it seems quite appropriate when we survey the current scene.  In 1941, Imperial Japan, knowing its own weakness, chose a non-conventional form of war, the surprise attack. Since the end of his first Presidential term, Vladimir Putin, knowing Russia's weakness, has also chosen non-conventional ways to promote his domestic...

It is a basic contention of this blog that Donald J Trump is not fit for office. A crooked real estate developer with a dubious past and highly questionable finances. he has systematically lied his way into financial or other advantage. His personal qualities include vulgarity, sexual assault allegations and fraudulent statements on almost every subject.  He lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes. He has, of course, been under criminal investigation practically since before he took the oath of office. The indictment of some of closest advisers is just the beginning. His track record suggests that in due course there is no action he will not take, whether illegal or unconstitutional in order to derail his own inevitable impeachment and the indictments that must surely follow the successful investigation of Robert Mueller into his connections with Russia. However, all of that is a matter for the American people.  It is also a matter for the American people...

On August 9th 1974 Gerald Ford took the oath of office to become president of the United States. In his brief speech he said: " My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over... Our  Constitution  works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men." 43 years later, the American Republic is being tested in a way it has never been tested in the 241 years since the declaration of independence.  It is not just that Donald Trump is a vulgar, boorish, lecher . It is not just that he has consistently lied about his businesses and has consistently used mafia levels of intimidation and fraudulent promises in order to cheat his way out of trouble . It is not just that his absurd self-regard renders him utterly unfit for any public office. It is not even that Trump was over three million votes behind in the popular vote. There are three intersecting crises in America today. They are economic, political, and constitutional. The United States is no l...

In espionage the standard of proof is a variable measure. There are very few times that information can be said to be "beyond reasonable doubt". Nuances and circumstances acquire great significance and it requires an analyst with a deep sense of intuition to piece together an accurate narrative from small pieces of partial information. There may be much data, but to find the information it contains is like putting together a shattered mirror, where you do not know whether you have all the pieces. Thus intelligence can be a double-edged sword, and it is dangerous to rely purely on secret intelligence without bringing one's own sceptical biases into the equation.  Spies are much given to using two quotes from Sherlock Holmes: the first dictum is about positive truth: "once you eliminate the impossible, what ever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth". The second is "the curious incident of the dog in the night time" "the dog did noth...

It has been a long hiatus from blogging. Partly it was that I have had little time and less inclination to comment of a series of utterly catastrophic events for Western values. I began to feel that the fear of the implosion of the West that this blog was founded to warn against had actually happened. The withdrawal of the UK from Europe and the advent- one can hardly say that losing by three million votes was an election- of Donald Trump in the United States are two malign sides of the same discredited coin. A spectacular failure of confidence and a betrayal of what open societies are supposed to stand for. In ancient Rome, a victorious general could be granted a Triumph- a truly extravagant ceremony where the Triumphator was promoted for one day above all mortal Romans. In the midst of this adulation a slave would travel with the hero saying: "Respice post te. Hominem te momento" (Look [to the time] after you [are gone]. Remember you are only a man. This "moment...

The United States Presidential debates seem to have confirmed two things. The first is that Donald Trump is totally unsuitable to be the President of the United States.  I mean, not just inappropriate for the job, but most likely utterly catastrophic. His contempt for the niceties of the US constitution was just the cherry on a particular odorous cup cake of crap. His demeanor- petulant, childish, and his opinions- ignorant and boorish, suggest that as President he would respond to the slightest provocation with over reactions that could lead to breakdown domestically and war internationally. The second thing the debate confirmed is that he could still step into the oval office next January. Despite the fact that literally no business leaders back him, despite his failure to release his tax returns, and despite his insulting and patronizing comments about more or less anyone who is not Donald J Trump, this man could become the President of the United States. Even thoug...