Eight million men copped out of the last British general election. Nine million women – almost  a fifth of registered voters – stayed home. Apathy sucks in a democracy exporting nation. Worse, the subversive celebrity, Russel Brand, is spreading the Gospel – voting is a con. Quartering the evangelist – and press-ganging lapsed suffragettes – is not an option. It gives the UK a bad press in Iran. Also, Brand has exactly 9 million followers on Twitter.

Fortunately Britain has Harriet Harman.The deputy leader of the Labour Party has produced a weapon of mass instruction, a deep pink bus furbished with a flat-pack kitchen table. Cosy “woman to woman” chats, throughout the kingdom, will ensure there are no female absconders from the polls in May.

Those who carped the bus was pink and girlie were shamed into silence. “It doesn’t have big eyelashes on the front… the colour is really magenta”, said Ms Harman  – “or cherise” said her sidekick and fellow suffragist, Gloria de Piero. Dosh speaks louder than words. Advance sales in Saudi Arabia , Canada and Australia confirm the Barbie bus is now the icon ‘to die for’ in the West.

In the East, Russians know what they paid in blood to defend democracy. Almost 14 million of them perished in World War II, some 480,000 at the Battle of Stalingrad which turned the tide against the Nazis. By comparison 450,000 Britons were killed through the entire war. Recently six veterans of that dreadful battle wrote a ‘Letter of the Living’ to German chancellor, Angela Merkel. They warned her that Nazism was on the rise and could only be stopped by the truth. Without that Europe might soon hear ‘Heil’ everywhere again.

“Here in the 70th year after the victory over Nazism, we, veterans of that terrible war and participants in that most horrible combat, are aware that a spectre again is haunting Europe, a spectre of the Brown Plague. This time it is Ukraine that has become the nursery of Nazism… the fountainhead of an ideology in ultranationalism, antisemitism, and inhumaneness…

They are murdering innocent people simply because …they do not wish to live in a government led by Banderists.

Banderists are followers of the so-called Ukraine Liberation Army, which, we remind you, Frau Merkel, fought in the time of the Second World War on the side of the Vermacht, and with the SS Galizia Division, who distinguished themselves in the murder of Soviet Jewry. They exalt their idealogical forebears, renaming the streets of Ukrainian cities after Nazi war criminals!

The truth is, Frau Merkel, that in Ukraine an all-out orgy of fascism is going on. ..But the west has taken a very strange position, and we do not understand it. The position can be understood as accommodating Ukrainian Nazis. It is understood in Ukraine as the position of Europe, and it is beginning to be perceived as such in Russia…

Why do the people of Europe look calmly upon the massive violence in Ukraine? Is it simply because there is no mention of it in your mainstream media? Then where is their well-known independance? Independance from facts? Independance from truth? What is the actual goal of your economic sanctions? Weaken Russia as a power? Support Fascism in Ukraine? Or just to eliminate our pensions which we get as veterans of the World War?”

It is worth reading this deeply moving and perceptive “Letter from the Living” in its entirety. It is the voice of history. But there will be no answers from Ms Merkel or indeed the mainstream press gagging for war.

Fascism is a political option for managing capitalism’s recurrent crises of overproduction. But the developed capitalist nations themselves are now increasingly repressive, brutal and ugly. Democracy is a veneer, the theology of neo-liberalism the supreme authority. A partisan judiciary and rabid press do the work of the mob. Security cameras are everywhere and entire cities can be locked down.

Politicians promote war and austerity for the benefit of giant corporations and too big to fail banks. False-flag operations like the 9/11 attacks are part of a lethal repertoire. The fascist brigades of political Islam are natural allies and CIA assets. Frau Merkel will not say so but the West is actively funding and encouraging fascism in the Ukraine.

It is now well known that the US spent $5 billion organising the putsch in Kiev a year ago and triggering the civil war. But the world is asked to believe – without a shred of evidence – that the Russians were involved in shooting down Malaysian airliner MH17  killing some 300 passengers. The black boxes remain silent in London.

The eminent Dutch journalist Karel van Wolforen says: “The punditry and editorials that have grown out of this have gone further than anything among earlier examples of sustained media hysteria stoked for political purposes that I can remember…America’s history, since the demise of the Soviet Union, of truly breathtaking lies: on Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, Libya and North Korea; its record of overthrown governments; its black-op and false flag operations; and its stealthy garrisoning of the planet with some thousand military bases, is conveniently left out of consideration.”

He asks: “Will the moment come when it becomes clear that the Ukraine crisis is, most of all, about placing Star Wars missile batteries along an extensive stretch of Russian border, which gives Washington – in the insane lingo of nuclear strategists – ‘first strike’ capacity? ”

The cease fire announced this week is completely cynical.The fascists in the Ukraine can depend on continued military, monetary and ‘moral’ support from the coalition of the willing, including Britain.This is not the answer the veterans of Stalingrad deserve. But it is the truth.

Meanwhile the wheels on the Barbie bus go round and round and the UK government stays in America’s pocket.