John Laughland

Latest by John Laughland in Chronicles

• News

  January 2014

  Cold War Leftovers

  We sit listening to how the Plymouth Brethren cannot get registered with the Charity Commission in the United Kingdom; to Greeks from Turkey about how horrible the Turks are, and to Turks from Greece about how horrible the Greeks are; and to Scientologists about how everyone is horrible to them everywhere.

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• News

  April 2013

  Gay Marriage: A Tale of Two Parliaments

  By a curious coincidence, bills to legalize gay marriage are passing through the British and French parliaments almost simultaneously.

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• News

  October 2012

  Attack the Symbols

  By any chalk, Pussy Riot are marginal extremists. The pregnant woman, Nadezhda Tolokhinnova, now convicted, has a disturbing look in her pretty eyes, which suggests either drug abuse or a personality disorder: The scene with the cockroaches is perhaps an allusion to the delusional parasitosis that can be brought on by amphetamines.

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• Correspondence

  May 2012

  Putin and the West's Suicide

  Penza is much like other provincial Russian towns: Laid out on a grid, its streets are full of the modern clutter of shop awnings, while the people are well dressed. There is a comforting sense of normality.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  March 2012

  ICC Rising

  It was a sad day for conservatives when, on December 5, 2011, Laurent Gbagbo rose to speak in the antiseptic courtroom of the International Criminal Court. Polite, old-fashioned (if a little verbose), well-dressed (but obviously not very well), the 66-year-old former president of Ivory Coast was clearly upset to find himself a prisoner, having been a dignified head of state for the last decade.

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