Somehow, all I seem to be blogging about recently is the suicidal folly of conservative bloggers

President Obama has behaved well in the matter of torture. He has published the memos that authorized them, including the names of their authors, but has refused to prosecute anyone himself. The option still exists for any organization or citizen to sue, especially, the lawyers who debased the rule of law by judging that specific forms of torture were allowable under US law; but as the President said, it would be wrong to prosecute people lower down the pole, who had received authorization - and as good as orders - from above to do as they did.

It is a common argument that prisoners in Guantanamo were and are treated well, probably better than the average jailed American (or British, or Italian) citizen. That is not so surprising when one realizes the bizarre compromises with conscience that American legislators and bureaucrats have inflicted on the nation; like that a small minority of probably quite unlucky murderers (most American murderers receive life or shorter sentences) can get killed, but only after an appeals process that can last twenty years; that the man who is to receive a lethal injection has the injection area carefully disinfected first - for fear, one supposes, that the corpse could suffer from an infection. The intersection of a never abandoned instinct for brutality with an obstinate set of rights set in stone produces the most bizarre results, and to have a system that at the same time guarantees its inmate three meals a day, Qur'an and any other book they may want to read (apparently Harry Potter is a great favourite), exercise and TV, while also allowing brutal "interrogation techniques" and the chance of being delivered to loving fellow-countrymen whose techniques are apt to be even harsher - it is nothing but a typical product of this strange mind. That, as such, is not surprising.

What I do find surprising is that, at this time of day, there still are responsible adults, capable of walking on two feet and of writing decent English, who would deny that what the bureaucratic scum allowed was torture. Forget that one prisoner seems to have been subjected to waterboarding for more than 250 times - and that after he had already talked without any stimulation. What really shocked me was to find that one of the "techniques" in question was sleep deprivation for up to a week. You try it, ladies and gentlemen. You try it for two days, and tell me whether it is not torture. And tell me, too, whether a man who has been subjected to seven days of this abomination will be in a state to answer elaborate questions in a sane and coherent manner. It is not just an abomination morally; it is also complete idiocy from the standpoint of results. Only a diseased intellect could think that it is not torture, or that it is justified.

And this is what conservative bloggers have been defending all over the internet. Well, gentlemen, I hope you like your Obama presidency, because if you carry on as you are, you will have him for a good long time.

And while we are on the subject of incorrigible folly...

Since the Roman Empire, the willingness to march and sweat and shed blood for a country has been rewarded with citizenship. So it is with the French Foreign Legion, so, I gather, with the US armed forces.

The British, however, still need to reach to the level of civilization and self-respect of the ancient Romans.

The Gurkhas are one of the elite units of the British Army and indeed of any army in the world. Their claim to be "the bravest of the brave" has never been seriously contested, their presence on the battlefield spreads terror among the enemy (that was certainly the case with Argentinian troops in the Falklands War) and their importance to Britain is such that when the independence of the Indian Empire was negotiatied sixty years ago, one of the conditions was that Britain could go on recruiting Gurkhas. There was no such condition for any other Indian unit, not even for the respected and feared Sikhs.

And yet, no Gurkha soldier who served before 1997 is allowed, not only to become a British citizen, but even only to reside in Britain.

The current British government, already sufficiently degraded and unpopular, has further shown itself incapable of learning by delivering a final, crushing "no" to a campaign to remedy this obvious wrong. They added insult to injury by making up a scare story about 100,000 Nepalis coming to settle in Britain. Apart from appealing to the lowest instincts of the worst kind of voter, this is ridiculous: given the armies of more-or-less legal immigrants present in Britain now, many of whom despise her laws and her values and treat it as occupied land, is it really so bad to welcome a number of Nepalis who have given lifelong evidence of their loyalty to the flag under which they enlisted?

One of the elderly gentlemen who demonstrated for their right to settle wore a Victoria Cross. Look it up.

EDITED IN Parliament has just given the Government a bloody nose over the issue (April 29). Ayo Gorkhare!