By lunchtime it had been replaced with the rather more vanilla “Israelis go to the polls in tight election race”. I preferred the original version; so much more revealing – in every sense of the word.

[via Alex Massie]

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Radical leftists and Islamists (we really must find an umbrella term that saves me typing all that out every time, so closely do they self-identify these days) are busily spreading the rumour that the Israeli assault on Gaza is being bankrolled by Starbucks, who have apparently donated all their profits this past two weeks to the Zionist war effort. For further details, over to our old chum Yusuf Al-Qaradawi:

“They used to hand a sign on the doors of their shops: ‘We benefit our most important partner, which is Israel, we help in the education of students in Israel, we help build up the Israeli defense arsenal,’ and so on. People go and drink their expensive coffee. Instead of paying 2 riyals for a cup of coffee, they pay 20 riyals. This Starbucks is Zionist. Why do we not teach the nation to make do with its own products, when possible, even if they are of lesser quality? This is the only way the nation will rise. My brothers, put the boycott against the nation’s enemies into action. Every riyal you pay turns into a bullet in the heart of your brothers in Gaza and in other Islamic countries.”

I’m sure I need hardly add that this is, er, grande crappucino. Starbucks has no special charitable or business links with Israel (indeed, it closed all its Israeli stores in 2003) and, as Snopes.com points out, the myth about Starbucks profits being used to fund the Israeli military comes from a spoof letter purporting to be from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, but actually penned by one Andrew Winkler and published on the ZioPedia website with a subsequent disclaimer clearly identifying it as parody. (Schultz himself is an avowed friend of Israel, which is no doubt how the story got started in the first place.)

Needless to say, satire is not the anti-war movement’s strong point. Several branches of Starbucks have been attacked in cities from Beirut to London and the chain forced to issue an official denial of this ludicrous story. But the fake Schultz memo sticks, like some ersatz internet version of the Protocols; websites republish the claims, Facebook groups pop up, and Starbucks is now semi-officially one of the financial props of the Zionist entity.

Nor is the damage restricted to overpriced coffee shops; British supermarket chain Marks and Spencer has also been targeted by demonstrators; ostensibly that’s because it stocks Israeli produce, like every other supermarket chain in Britain, but I wonder if it’s entirely coincidental that ‘Marks’ is one of this country’s more famously Jewish-founded businesses and a long-standing bugbear of anti-Semites throughout the Middle East. Indeed, if you tune into Iranian TV – and even Iranians watch the Superbowl – you will discover that there’s barely a large multinational anywhere that doesn’t siphon off profits to support the miracle on the Med. (Pepsi stands for “Pay Each Penny to Save Israel”, apparently, which I must admit sounds rather catchy.)

Of course, some might say that this is all rather handy, given those close links between the far left and the radical Islamist right; for your average member of the Socialist Workers Party, the only thing more satisfying than smashing a shopfront is surely the knowledge that you’re striking a blow for Palestine at the same time. But, deeper than that, as Brendan O’Neill points out at Spiked Online, it is arguably symptomatic of a wider malaise, what he calls a “cultural anti-Semitism” – “the projection of disillusionment with Western culture and values on to Israel, also known, in our politically illiterate times, as ‘the Jews’”.

How far that’s true I’m not sure; but it’s an interesting article and worth reading in full. In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than stopping off at Starbuck’s on your way home. Sure, it’s overpriced, but at least all those profits are being spent on shiny fighter planes.

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‘‘The British and the Americans are dead set on bringing Zimbabwe back to the UN Security Council, they are also dead set on ensuring that there is an invasion of Zimbabwe but without themselves carrying it out. In those circumstances they will stop at nothing including abusing both the office and personnel of the secretary general. ‘‘We would not be surprised if they spring a ‘mission’ involving the UN.”

Would that this were true. It’s rapidly becoming a cliché to describe just about everything as the most pressing item in the incoming President’s in-tray — terrorism, the economic crisis, you name it — but while the growing humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe may not occupy the headline writers’ attention to the same extent, it is urgent and it is getting worse. Having evidently got bored of watching his people starve, Mugabe is now presiding over a cholera epidemic that has claimed hundreds of lives and could kill tens of thousands more unless urgent action is taken. The outbreak has been made worse by the breakdown of the water and sanitation systems even in Harare, and with no water, drugs, blood or food for patients, and intermittent electricity supplies, the hospitals are shutting down. Meanwhile the international community has ratcheted up the rhetoric, but little else. While the EU extends its travel ban on Zimbabwean government officials (a ban that seems to be waived every time Mugabe is invited to an international summit, or a Pope dies), the regime returns the favour; a group of international mediators, including Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter, were denied entry to Zimbabwe last month. (Mind you, I wouldn’t let those two in either.) As for regional bodies such as the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, they’re busily putting pressure on the opposition MDC to accept a "power-sharing" agreement that could scarcely be more worthless if it were signed in bullshit.   Thanks to the desperate situation in Afghanistan and the bungled aftermath of the Iraq invasion, "regime change" is the dirtiest of phrases, and not one that’s likely to be on Obama staffers’ lips. Remaining options, though, are few and far between. Economic sanctions can have little effect on a country with no economy, and diplomacy is clearly a non-starter without proper regional support. But the stance of the Mbeki government in South Africa has been shamefully weak (a dereliction of duty that stands second only to their policies on AIDS), and only the possibility of a refugee crisis on its border with Zimbabwe, combined with the harsher rhetoric of Mbeki’s presumed successor, Jacob Zuma, holds out any real hope for a more pro-active South African role. By then, however, it will be too late for those who are dying as the infrastructure of the Zimbabwean state collapses around their ears, taking their lives with it.

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The phrase that has caught everyone’s attention, of course, is the punchline; Obama is portrayed, like Colin and Condi, as compliant “house Negroes”, who in Malcolm X’s infamous categorization were too docile to rise up against their oppressors, unlike their counterparts “in the field”. (As news outlets have carefully pointed out, the Arabic word used in the message, “abed”, does not actually mean “Negro”, though it’s rendered as such in the subtitles. In fact it can mean either “slave” or “black”; Arabs use the same word fairly interchangeable for both ideas. One wonders what Malcolm would have made of that.)

Lest there was any doubt that he was sharing the Al Qaeda perspective on African-Americans’ long march to freedom, though, Zawahiri (if indeed it is he) hammers the real point home with characteristic subtlety:

“You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews”

…accompanied by obligatory photo of Obama wearing a kippah.

As a reminder that we are dealing with antediluvian minds, this is at least welcome, if (one would hope) redundant. But while the crass use of racially loaded language may jar horribly to western ears, at least we have some idea now of the narrative that Islamists intend to construct around America’s first mixed-race President, and the implicit threat to Muslims who seek accommodation with Israel and the West, rather than conflict.

Still, at least they didn’t call him an Uncle Tom. Endorsing McCain was bad enough, but if I thought Al Qaeda were Naderites I’d be starting to question their judgement.

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Jared Leto, from 30 Seconds to Mars, made the crowd stand in honour of the US President-elect Barack Obama. Amid rapturous cheers, he said: "Liverpool, let’s hear it for Barack Obama."

Perry responded: "Maybe Europe will love us again now."

I can only speak for myself when I stress that Katy’s message was in no way compromised by the image of her entering the arena, moments earlier, straddling a giant chapstick. But her careful use of the qualifier “maybe” was entirely redundant; there’s no question about it. Europe loves you again now. Can you feel it? Doesn’t it make you warm inside? What? Oh.

Certainly U.S. visitors and residents over here noticed the change almost immediately; apocryphal reports even spoke of American girls spontaneously being offered flowers on the streets of Paris. (You must never underestimate the opportunism of a Frenchman.) Politicians from across the spectrum were maintaining a public silence, but privately crossing their fingers and praying for a Democratic victory; their subsequent congratulations had an unfamiliar tone to them which at first I couldn’t place, so long was it since I’d heard sincerity in their voices. If the member states of the EU had electoral college votes up for grabs, Obama would have swept the continent 27-0.

The press were especially pleased. The week’s most predictable about-turn was to be found in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, for eight years the house broadsheet of every self-respecting left-wing Bush-hater on this side of the pond. In a gushing editorial, they rejoiced that “So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in the eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world”, conveniently ignoring the fact that they have been doing much of the caricaturing this past decade. “Today is for celebration, for happiness and for reflected human glory. Savour those words: President Barack Obama, America’s hope and, in no small way, ours too.”

This ludicrous theme recurs again and again in European reactions to Obama’s triumph. It is perceived in some sense to be a victory for Europe; somehow, it vindicates European values, the European outlook on the world. How or why this should be the case is not entirely clear, though there’s no doubt that Obama’s urbane cosmopolitanism hews closer to the way Europeans like to think of themselves than Bush’s grating cowboy image. But the myth has already started to take root; finally they have listened to us and seen the error of their ways, the European chatterati tell themselves, with a preening amour propre that is faintly ridiculous to behold.

Wiser voices have urged caution. Matthew Parris, the most sane and sanguine of British conservative commentators, tried to prick the bubble of misplaced euphoria in a column in the Times towards the end of last week:

He, we sense, understands. He cares. He is like us, understands us, surely agrees with us, even though he has not yet said so. He would be our friend if ever we were to meet him. In some strange way he knows us already, though we have never been introduced. He is the pop star whose poster adorns the adolescent’s bedroom wall… the David Beckham who is surely deeper/cleverer/gayer/more cultured (depending on your bent) than he seems; the Queen Mother who, if she ever had come to tea, would have got on with us like a house on fire.

It is desperately important that we never meet these people, for reality would be cruel.

A reality check, too, from the head of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, Sir Trevor Phillips, who warned that a British Obama would never manage to rise to the top in our own society. Colin Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants, once expressed similar reservations about his own prospects had his family chosen this country ahead of the US. But quiet surprise that Americans have chosen a black leader has been more in evidence than much critical analysis of the reasons why it hasn’t ever come close to happening here.

For those Europeans, and Brits, who delight in criticising American policy at every turn, it has been the convenient refrain of the past eight years that they are not anti-American but anti-Bush. When the last high-fives have been done and the balloons are cleared away, it will be time for Europe’s new pin-up to get down to business, and it will surely be a mere matter of weeks before the first howls of outrage start emanating from the usual quarters. We will see then what their excuse is this time.

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Meanwhile, the Mugabe re-election drive is in full swing: under the oversight of the army and police, killings, beatings and intimidation are being employed to cow the population into voting for ZANU-PF, with scarce food rations being used as political weapons to secure the support of a starving electorate. Voter registration in MDC areas is being severely curtailed, and officials have taken to simply handing out billions of dollars of Zimbabwe's all-but-worthless currency in return for votes. Mugabe bellows darkly of "going to war" if the country is "taken over by lackeys." Given the vast scale on which these elections are being perverted, he may not need to.

Reporting restrictions make it difficult to know exactly what is happening on the ground, with most Western media banned from the country or operating under intolerable circumstances. But information about the harassment and violence being suffered by opposition activists is filtering out by other methods, some of them remarkably innovative. Chief among these has been the advent of blogging, which we have seen in previous situations such as the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah two years ago and the short-lived Burmese uprising of last autumn.

Where mainstream media are sometimes unable to operate freely, whether due to restrictions imposed by repressive regimes or the exigencies of wartime conditions, lone bloggers have often come to the fore in passing on vital information denied to us through traditional means. In Lebanon in 2006, Beirut residents sat on their balconies describing Israeli aircraft coming overhead; students in Haifa liveblogged from bomb shelters until the all clear was sounded. Some of these firsthand accounts provided valuable context to the reports on the evening news bulletins; others challenged the conventional wisdom we were being fed by our media, whatever you thought that was.

A similar pattern emerged in Burma last year, with the junta's clampdown on reporting from inside the country making traditional reporting all but impossible. Small independent newspapers, resistance groups and bloggers filled the gap, with photos of demonstrations being posted to the web and picked up by news agencies hungry for fresh pictures — any pictures — to accompany their stories in the era of 24-hour rolling TV news. But the shortcomings of these outlets quickly became clear; with limited internet penetration into the impoverished country, it was easy enough for the government to block access to blogging platforms for residents of Rangoon and other cities, and the piecemeal supply of information eventually dried up.

The same sort of problem applies in Zimbabwe, whose citizens have long had more pressing problems than a dearth of affordable broadband connections. But information is coming through, thanks in part to the advent of trends such as microblogging, made possible through platforms like Twitter, which (for the benefit of readers as technologically backward as I am) allows users to post information from any internet connection or, crucially, a mobile phone, and makes it easy for others to access the resulting updates. Organisations such as Sokwanele, a civic action group operating out of Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries, are collating information from local activists and observers and disseminating it via RSS feeds and Twitter, and posting photos of demonstrations and police brutality to specially set up Flickr accounts, in ways which the authorities are simply powerless to stop. They even have an interactive Google map charting instances of voter fraud and intimidation by the authorities, and you can follow Morgan Tsvangirai's campaign via Google Earth.

This is not the first time that services like Twitter have been used to outwit security services. A Berkeley student covering an anti-government protest in Egypt used his cellphone to post the one-word update "Arrested" when the police picked him up, and was released within the day. But Zimbabwean activists can count on no such deus ex machina; no embassy or consulate is waiting to spring into action to release those incarcerated in Mugabe's jails. And this is where the limitations of technological advances are most evident. As in Burma, telling the outside world what is happening to you is one thing, and getting them to help you is quite another. Whether through impotence, overstretch or apathy, there is little appetite for Western intervention in the wake of Iraq (as discussed by Daniel last week), and Thabo Mbeki's South Africa, the one regional agent who might realistically exert some diplomatic leverage, has been utterly spineless in the face of Mugabe's brutal campaign against his own people.

And so we watch and wait for the results of next week's elections; and, thanks to the bravery and ingenuity of a few committed activists, we have a front row seat for Zimbabwe's continuing death agony. But we're unlikely to get up from the sofa, no matter what happens. So, yes, the revolution will be televised – but to what end?

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In the run-up to the game, the Polish tabloid Super Express devoted its back page to a gruesome depiction of the Polish coach holding the severed heads of Joachim Löw and Michael Ballack, the German trainer and captain respectively, beside the headline “Leo, give us their heads!” A minor diplomatic incident ensued, with the situation defused only by an in-person apology from the Polish coach to the two decapitated Germans. “This is shit,” exclaimed Leo Beenhakker angrily. “Here one sees what sick people there are in this world.” Though the match itself was unremarkable, rival fans clashed afterwards, with some 150 detained; it is reported today that some of the German fans were heard singing Nazi and anti-Semitic chants.

Polish antagonism towards their neighbors has shown little sign of abating with the passage of time; last year, the then Prime Minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, caused outrage when he suggested that Poland’s voting rights in European Union institutions, weighted according to population, be rebalanced to take account of the millions killed by the Germans during the war. But in a continent which has largely banished conflict as a means of settling grievances, football is often the continuation of war by other means. Local rivalries exist in all sports everywhere, but Europeans are particularly good at using them as an excuse to dredge up old grudges.

Perhaps the most famous of these is the rivalry between Holland and, yes, Germany. When the Germans hosted these championships 20 years ago, the Dutch convoys came across the border singing "In 1940 they came, in 1988 we came" (it's catchier in Dutch, apparently). Two years ago, the fans traveled back across to Germany for the World Cup clad in WWII-style orange plastic helmets. The atmosphere is reasonably light-hearted these days, but there is no mistaking the undercurrents running beneath the surface.

Other match-ups are more hostile. Games between Greece and Turkey, or Serbia and Croatia, have in recent years seen major clashes between supporters. Armenia and Azerbaijan took it one stage further; their two qualifying matches for this competition were simply canceled amidst childish wrangling over venues. As for Israel, they clock up the air miles competing in the European football set-up, rather than against their Arab neighbors.

But, just as football fans can use the sport to express hostility, it can also serve as a vehicle for more positive nationalist sentiments. In the Gorbachev era, for example, with Soviet republics beginning to scent independence, fans used local club sides as proxies for the national teams that were still some years off. And so supporters of Ararat Yerevan, say, would look forward to games against "Georgia" or "Lithuania," not Dinamo Tbilisi or Žalgiris Vilnius, and chant the name of their opponents’ home republic in solidarity.

In some parts of Europe, club teams remain a focus for regional or national pride. Barcelona is still sentimentally seen as a substitute for a Catalan national side (despite being stuffed with foreign players), AEK Athens historically draw their support from the descendants of the displaced Greeks of Asia Minor, Glasgow Celtic "represent" Scotland’s Irish Catholic community. As for my own country, it has been seriously argued that devolution of government from Westminster to Edinburgh was delayed by two decades due to the timing of a referendum on the issue just months after Scotland's shattering failure at the 1978 World Cup.

But we who follow the sport with maniacal devotion (I'm typing this with one eye on the France-Romania match in the corner of my screen) do have a tendency to exaggerate its powers. The most remarked example of football as vehicle for social cohesion from recent years is probably France’s World Cup-winning team of 1998, whose members comprised a veritable rainbow of races and immigrant backgrounds; Armenian, Basque, Senegalese and Caribbean. The crowds celebrated in the Champs-Élysées under a giant picture of the great Zinedine Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, illuminated in red, white and blue under the slogan "Zidane Président." The chattering classes in France loved it.

Only Jean Marie Le Pen and his National Front chose to strike a sour note: "France cannot recognize itself in the national side," he griped. "Maybe the coach exaggerated the proportion of players of color, and should have been a bit more careful." Le Pen's casual racism seemed out of step with the time, but four years later he was in a runoff for the Presidency against Jacque Chirac, and few would say that Zidane's iconic image has done much for relations between "native" French and the country's large Muslim population. Perhaps sport serves as a focus for national pride when other outlets aren't available; maybe it's a safety valve that allows us to mock our enemies without (usually, at least) fighting them in the streets; maybe it can hold up a mirror to our society and help up see ourselves as others see us. Maybe it can even change that society for the better. But hang on; in the corner of my screen, it looks as if the French team of 2008 may finally be stuttering into life, so let's wrap this up.

The actual football game between Germany and Poland? It passed off without incident. The Germans won, as the Germans usually do. Appropriately, both goals were scored by striker Lukas Podolski, who was born in Poland and left when he was a child. He did not celebrate.

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they don't have policy platforms. This means that when an unqualified minister is appointed, he cannot even fall back on a coherent set of guidelines, making him even more useless than would otherwise be the case. For another, ministries in more advanced societies are stacked with professional civil servants who help limit the damage that can be done when a crook or a dolt is named as their boss.

I love it. Still, for most Lebanese this is no laughing matter. Last month's peace deal in Doha, Qatar, hammered out a fragile coalition deal between Lebanon's patchwork of ethnic and religious minorities, and has widely been seen as a victory for our old friends Hezbollah, who have seen their veto on government policies formalised in the new constitutional arrangements.

US reaction has been lukewarm, to say the least, and Israeli opinion is even more pessimistic. After all, they launched a war against Hezbollah to try and neutralise their power; now the bastards are practically in government. But ordinary Lebanese are, at least for now, hoping that the peace deal can bring some much-needed stability to their country and, crucially, the investment that goes with it.

Anyone who's ever spent time trying to get their heads round the Byzantine power-sharing arrangements of countries like Iraq, Bosnia or Northern Ireland will have a strong sense of déjà vu about the Lebanese deal. Plum jobs, most notably prime minister and speaker of the house, are to be apportioned by faction leaders according to what minority they hail from: Sunni, Shia, Maronites, Druze, Greek Orthodox and Armenians must all be represented. Delicately balanced voting systems, side deals on redrawing the electoral map, compromises on the terrorists’ weapons stockpiles — all the usual ingredients are present and correct.

And sitting there in the opposition is Hezbollah. They've have played a reasonably canny game to get this far; as Thomas Friedman noted in the Times over the weekend, the new deal will allow them power without responsibility, claiming credit for anything positive that comes out of the new government without being blamed for the screw-ups. Indeed, the main opposition party sits in the cabinet while maintaining a private army some 10,000 strong. That must make for some tense budget meetings.

It's not all good news for the Party of God; while their fight against Israel won them plenty of admirers, they've squandered a great deal of that goodwill since, not least following the recent "occupation" of West Beirut and subsequent violence that left dozens of Lebanese dead. But it's no wonder that the US and Israel bite their tongue and swallow, hard. This is not the outcome that they would have wanted, but it may be the best on offer.

The 64,000 lira question, of course, is whether this precarious arrangement will hold. I'm far too wily to offer a firm prediction on that, but you'd have to doubt the bookies are taking too many bets on the national unity government when that quality is so thin on the ground. Already, the process of appointing cabinet members is marked by squabbling and disagreement, as the Daily Star editorial suggested.

The most nervous outside observers, of course, are the Israelis; it's hard to see the ascendancy of Hezbollah as anything other than bad news from their standpoint. There have been signs of progress: the release of deported Lebanese spy Nassim Nasser this weekend coincided with the return by Hezbollah of the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in the 2006 war, raising suspicions of back-channel negotiations between the two. And if there's one thing worse than a weak and divided government in Beirut it would undoubtedly be its collapse, if the alternative were a Syrian- and Iranian-backed client state with an arsenal of rockets pointed squarely at northern Israel. So Israeli interests are tied in with the success of the new constitutional arrangement, however unfriendly some of its constituents. Either way, the problem is that there's very little Israel can do. Like the US, Israel's hands are tied by the knowledge that any involvement would most likely be counterproductive.

As for Damascus, they are now pursuing a twin-track strategy to maintain their influence in Lebanese politics while seeking to escape sanctions for Syrian involvement in the assassination of Rafik Hariri three years ago. With Hezbollah a powerful voice in the Lebanese cabinet, and Syria suddenly coming to the negotiating table with Israel after years of prevarication, the Syrians are — not for the first time — playing a strong hand well. The Lebanese fear is that any deal between those two will be at their expense, and who can blame them? That beautiful country has been the proxy battleground for others for many years now. I wouldn't begrudge them their current optimism, but it may be a while before Beirut's famous Corniche bustles with tourists as it did before all these horrors descended.

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Things seemed to be going pretty well initially. All the arrangements had gone smoothly; flights had been booked, visas cleared, diplomats and academics booked to speak to the delegates. Perhaps most importantly, the Egyptian security services — the biggest potential stumbling-block — had been consulted at all stages and given a list of the participants, and seemed to be cool with the whole trip. The trip's organiser, Levana Zamir, would have been justified in assuming that every eventuality had been foreseen. But she hadn't reckoned with Egyptian TV presenter Amr Adib.

Wikipedia informs us that Adib is "a media personality with flair, intelligence, and integrity, as well as a sense of humor" and has "an uncanny insight into what interests his audience." Nothing like a bit of Israel-bashing to keep ratings buoyant, it seems. Adib devoted most of his Wednesday evening show to the visit; it was rich of the Israelis to come to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of Israel's founding "in Cairo, of all places." "Why should we bring in Jews born in Egypt", asked Adib, "who preferred to flee to Israel, which has fought us in blood-soaked wars?" Further, he suggested, they were coming to file claims for property that they had "donated" to the government when they left Egypt all those years ago.

Would that the Jews' second Exodus from Egypt had been so willingly undertaken. There were some 75,000 Jews in the country at the end of the Second World War. They had been good citizens during the war years; few Egyptians watched the newsreels footage of German lines advancing and retreating across the desert with quite so much attention. Cairo in those years, like Beirut or Baghdad, was a cosmopolitan city of Arabs, Greeks, Armenians and Jews, but also one that yearned to be free of British occupation. With the 1952 revolution and the coming of Nasser, Egyptians got their wish — but not everyone was invited to the party.

Suez was the perfect pretext: Some 25,000 Jews were expelled from the country without delay, forced to leave with one suitcase and a limited supply of cash, and family members were allegedly taken hostage to ensure that the operation proceeded as smoothly as possible. All those leaving were made to sign documents "donating" their property to the Egyptian government; this was either retained or flipped for a quick sale to the highest bidder. After the Six Day War, most remaining Jewish property was appropriated by the state, and those Jews that had stuck it out decided their time was up. (No real shocker: Nasser's security service was said to be stuffed with ex-Nazis.) What right of return for them, I wonder?

The Jewish community in Egypt is now estimated to be in double figures. Ironically, given last week's events, that tiny community is as well-treated as any in the Arab world. Though typically disgusting antisemitism rages in the government-controlled press, authorities have in recent years co-operated with Cairo's Jews to renovate and rededicate the city's historic Sha'ar Hashamayim synagogue, and those few who remain — elderly now, and fewer with every year — live in peace among the teeming multitudes of modern Cairo.

There are even suggestions that the Jewish community in Egypt played their part in having the visit from their Israeli cousins canceled. Once the TV presenter, Amr Adib, had whipped up sentiment in the popular media, maybe it was more trouble than it was worth to host a visit at this moment in time, however anodyne and harmless it seems to us. Adib is, in strict fairness, not plucking the idea of reparations for the stolen property out of thin air. Israel has been known to use these forced "nationalizations" as bargaining chips in negotiations with the Egyptians; it has even been suggested that these assets might be used to offset Palestinian property claims against Israel itself.

Still, there is no evidence whatever that the Israel-Egypt Friendship Association had anything of the sort in mind. These were just a couple of dozen Egyptian Jews — elderly, too, for the most part — who wanted to visit the great synagogue, and the tombs of their relatives, once more before their time comes. There may not be that many opportunities for them to come back to the country they never wanted to leave in the first place.

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There are plentiful examples of colorful cults from around the world, many of which are harmless (my own favorite hails from the tiny island of Tanna in the South Pacific, whose inhabitants worship our very own Prince Philip as a deity), but in the European media, talks of "cults" normally centers on infamous American examples, from Jonestown through the Branch Davidians to the recent scandal surrounding the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas. Yet there is little doubt that, when it comes to fringe beliefs, Russia is the market leader.

Depending on whom you ask, there are anywhere between 600,000 and a million.Russians in the thousands of sects or cults that have sprung up in the country over the last decade in particular. Most of these, like Pyotr Kuznetsov's True Russian Orthodox Church, have obvious roots in the established state religion. Others are more esoteric, from the Georgian mystic in Lithuania, Lena Lolisvili, who prays to God to energize toilet paper that she then wraps around her patients to "heal" them, to Grigory Grabovoi's "DRUGG" ["friend"] Party, which claimed to be able to resurrect the children killed in the Beslan massacre – for a fee, naturally.

Grabovoi's audacious tilt at the Russian presidency had to be shelved, sadly, when he was imprisoned for fraud, which was a shame; his first act upon assuming the reins of power would have been to "immediately issue a law prohibiting to die," which I would have liked to see. But the overlap between charlatanism and politics remains; a small group in Novgorod who style themselves the "Rus' Resurrecting" sect worship an icon of Vladimir Putin. "We didn't choose Putin," Mother Fontinya told Moskovsky Komsomolets. "It was when Yeltsin was naming him as his successor [during a live New Year's Eve TV broadcast in 1999]. My soul exploded with joy! 'An ubermensch! God himself has chosen him!'" I cried. "Yeltsin was the destroyer, and God replaced him with his creation". Well, I guess he got her vote.

Perhaps the most famous of Russia's many current Messiahs is Sergei Torop, a.k.a. "Vissarion", a former traffic cop who experienced a spiritual awakening in 1990 and promptly set up a self-sustaining community on a remote mountain in the Siberian wilderness. Now known as – what else? – the "Jesus of Siberia," Vissarion's network of communes is thousands strong, and the holy one claims up to 100,000 followers worldwide. His "gospel" is at once wildly idiosyncratic yet pretty typical of Russian sects; a fusion of classical Orthodox doctrine and Eastern mysticism, with a hefty sprinkling of environmentalism and New Age nonsense thrown in for good measure. And the man himself is modest but firm when asked whether he is indeed the second coming of, you know, the big guy himself: "It's all very complicated," he told a Guardian reporter who went to interview him, "but to keep things simple, yes, I am Jesus Christ."

Vissarion is slightly unusual, in that he does not seem to be fleecing his adherents for every ruble he can get. Salvation, in Russia as elsewhere, rarely comes cheap; many cults demand hefty tithes of their adherents' incomes, and some are patently nothing more than scams. But that's not to say there's nothing in it for the Jesus of Siberia:

"[My wife] was the one woman who would open the whole world of women to me," he says. "Through her, I knew I could understand all women; what women's weaknesses are. There are now lots of women in love with me… For me, all people are equally close and I carry large responsibility for them all. So it is, I need to be free. My wife is now learning how correctly to see and regard me, to understand she's not the only woman in my life. There are a thousand others!"

He may be the Messiah, then, but he's also a very naughty boy.

Russia's Vissarions only thrive, though, because there is a burgeoning market for the snake oil he offers. The fall of the Iron Curtain saw Russians assailed by change from all sides; the drab homogeneity of the country's streets and media quickly became a riot of advertising and information overload, a whirlwind of new products and services competing for the citizens' attention, and their money. In those chaotic Yeltsin years, kooky sects hardly stuck out as they might do in a more settled society; combined with a general rise in religious observance, it is perhaps unsurprising that not all the spiritual answers on offer in the new Russia are entirely sane. And, predictably, a lot of the blame falls on foreign influences. As the chairman of the Russian Union of Writers puts it, "Russia is cloning the cells of immorality that it grasped from Western culture".

For a long time, Russian authorities have adopted a relaxed attitude towards these groups. Their main response, in typical Russian fashion, has been a bureaucratic one; all religions are required to register with the Ministry of Justice, but sanctions for failing to do so are unevenly enforced. The principal opposition to this explosion in religious diversity, predictably enough, is the Russian Orthodox Church, who fire off angry press releases attacking Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists and help to organize seminars with catchy titles like "Totalitarian Sects as Weapons of Mass Destruction".

It's easy to mock the self-interested nature of the Church's warnings, and charismatic loons like Vissarion always make good copy. But one does not have to be a student of doomsday cults to grasp the problem these sects pose, and the scale on which vulnerable people are – potentially – being abused, not just financially but psychologically and, probably, sexually. As the recently discovered letters of Jim Jones follower Phyllis Alexander to her parents demonstrate with chilling clarity, the complete physical and mental submission that comes with cult membership often bears a heavy price. It will come as no surprise if the next Jonestown takes place in the icy wastes of Siberia.

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