Christian

I love BBC News. They are quite like the Encyclopedia Britannica - as unbiased as one can find.

This article tells about millions of Russians left in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Information about them is surprisingly hard to find, considering their huge numbers; nearly nil compared to the wealth of data about less than half-a-million Israelis in the West Bank Judea and Samaria. They are quiet and non-violent, stuck in a weird situation - their language remains dominant in business, politics and education, despite the local politicians' efforts to eradicate it; the style of government that came with them, the Soviet one, is almost unchanged, except now it's artificially anti-Russian (very artificially). And their life is not horribly bad, but kinda illogical. Russia, the successor state or USSR that sent them there for work and development does nothing in particular to bring them back, even now that Moscow doesn't (seem to) have any special plans for these lands. That's a lesson in demography. I wonder what it's like to actually live there. It's hard to write complete truth about this; indeed this article does little more than reminding the indifferent world that they exist.

But here's the really interesting part: there is one sentence towards the end, which is not so encyclopedic:

"The presence of a European and Christian population is a factor that encourages secular government. It's a valuable yeast now in these countries," Mr Starr said.

I don't know exactly what this organization, "Central Asia Caucasus Institute", that the said Mr Starr represents, is. But these are the curious points to note here:

1. He calls Russians "Europeans". Whatever.
2. He calls Russians "Christian". Almost all of them are atheists. If there would be a notable wave of Orthodox resurrection, i would hear about it. True, they are not Muslim, but that doesn't exactly make you Christian. And the locals are not so Muslim either.
3. He calls Russians "population". On the behalf of Russians, i dare to proclaim myself offended.
4. The most contradictive part, if you haven't noticed it yet: Mr Starr says that Christian population encourages secular government.

And this is the New World Order for you: Christianity doesn't mean Christianity anymore. It just means belonging to an amorphic, declining and suicidal pseudo-European civilization, whose relation to actual Christianity is - you guessed it - artificial.

It's evolution, baby.