But He's Our Son Of A Bitch

No, Newsnight cannot cover the whole of something that had been broadcast over half an hour on that day's Radio Four. But it still gave about half as long to John Sweeney's reprise of his Torture in the 21st Century. Yet it was all about Belarus, with nothing at all on the far worse torture that Sweeney's radio programme had detailed in Uzbekistan.

The cause of solidarity with Belarus remains of the utmost importance, as is appreciated by the Holy See, which was hardly noted for its friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and is therefore hardly likely to favour "the last outpost of the USSR" or whatever absurd thing we are expected to believe that Belarus now constitutes.

Lukashenko's Belarus is one of four countries ever to have effected total nuclear disarmament, giving the lie to the claim that it would be impossible. South Africa tellingly did it at the same time as she gave up apartheid, while Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine were negotiated to it by Jim Baker, as much the successor of Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Reagan in his anti-nuclear activism as he was in his denunciation of the pursuit of Greater Israel. If a country which has disposed of an entire nuclear arsenal is, under the same President, unfooled by the ridiculous claims of an Iranian nuclear threat, then the rest of the world ought to listen most attentively.

But we are not doing any such thing. Well, of course we aren't. Belarus is so critical of her Soviet past that she has given up her nuclear weapons, while at the same time so critical of the decadence of the Postmodern West and its bloodthirsty globalisation that she is explicitly recognised as an ally by the Pope. The cake is iced by pointing out that an Iranian Bomb is as fanciful as an Iraqi Bomb was, and would in any case matter not one jot against hundreds of Israeli Bombs. The cherry on top was an off-colour remark in March which breached the ultimate taboo of the Postmodern West by questioning, however little, the absolute supremacy of the homosexual lobby. So economic sanctions are in order, with military sanctions not taken off the table.

There is none of this, though, for Uzbekistan. Nor for Kazhakstan, Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan. Still less for Olympically corrupt, shamelessly election-rigging Georgia. Unlike those really fighting against Islamist terrorist secession from Unfavoured Nations such as Russia and China, they are our allies in "The War On Terror". They are our invaluable assistants in Afghanistan, great success that that is. They are the paymasters of Tony Blair, Progress, and the public relations company for both, Bell Pottinger. So they can do no wrong. Can they?