I’m on the other side of the Celtic Sea at the moment and got the chance to watch a fascinating documentary on the More4 channel about Russia. (I know the country well, having worked there many times, and my wife is Russian, so we have an interest in its future).

There’s some facts from the programme here –http://www.channel4.com/more4/docume...ture.jsp?id=43 maybe it will provoke an interesting thread of its own (which is why I thought this might belong in the Backroom). I wanted to use an element of the programme to highlight a little recognised attribute of the USA – her generosity of spirit, still strong.

The Mehzet Turks are a persecuted people that have been displaced into the Krasnodar region of southern Russia. I have encountered Russian racism on many occasions, but the plight of these people – Muslim outsiders – was deeply moving. Self-styled ‘Cossacks’ who used rampant nationalism to justify horrific attacks were in control of the region and encouraged/employed by the authorities, just as in Imperial times. (Tsar Vladimir has a personal bodyguard made up of these nutters). In the worst insult to their countrymen possible, these brutes had copies of Mein Kampf on their shelves, and gave Hitler salutes to the camera.

The Turks were trapped, but, and this is the point of my post, they revealed that they had been given permission to emigrate to the USA by the American government. All 30,000 of them. As one woman said, “We have done nothing for the Americans, yet they welcome us. Our own people try to kill us.” They did not want to leave their homes, but it looks like they have no choice.

This touched my heart. For two hundred years, the US welcomed the refugees of my own homeland escaping from the persecutions of the British. Several of my own ancestors were kept safe in the Land of the Free – before they returned to free our own home.

It’s heart-warming to see that the USA still welcomes the poor and persecuted. Maybe one day, the administration will treat Putin with the contempt and international isolation he deserves. Worry less about Iran and more about a brutally nationalistic, nuclear-armed Russia dying on its feet.

If I may say: God Bless America.