Putin decided that though Ukraine cannot now pay for coal and will soon go bankrupt, so that any ‘sale’ of coal to Ukraine will be a donation, Russia will nonetheless supply 50,000 tons of coal per day to Ukraine in order to help them through the winter.

The big deal, so far as I can tell, is that someone somewhere might be having fun in a manner not approved by the local leftist mullahs. But in going after metal, our keystone kommissars have picked an almost aggressively stupid topic. There are few who are crustier and more prickly than metalheads, nor many more committed to hedonism for its own sake. Good luck getting them on the egalitarian bandwagon.