As Halloween is the antithesis of All Saints’ Day (November 1), kindly allow me to beat John Zmirak to the punch-bowl and reverse his custom (or “motsuc sih esrever”) of supplying booze recipes at the end of each of his delightful Holy Feast Day articles. Tonight is an occasion to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe, the secular patron saint of American Gothic … [Read More]

In Beijing I had a friend and confidante, an academic who was a Communist Party member, and a Buddhist. In the capital city of what is arguably the most brainwashed and intellectually and morally barbarised country in the industrialised world, she was one of the tiny handful of marginally independent-minded and authentically inquisitive Mainland Chinese I have ever met. She was … [Read More]

What fresh Hell is this? A mere seven years after Boris Yeltsin’s Pink Elephants were dispossessed of Russia’s nuclear football and something approximating political and economic stability began to reign in Russia, now Vladimir Putin the most intelligent, liberal and reliable head of state Russia has seen since Tsar Alexander II, with the possible exception of Gorbachev—has come under the cross-hairs … [Read More]

Boris Nikolayevitch Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically elected head of state, has died.  At least twice in his years of power he begged the Russian people for forgiveness for his failures.  The first time was shortly after the attempted coup in August 1991; Yeltsin said to the parents of three men who died in that almost bloodless event, “Forgive me, your President, … [Read More]