Ghosts In The Machine

I would like to welcome the Holy Father to the club of those of us who are ineligible for Labour Party membership. My own lifetime ban goes all the way back to Tony Blair, so I would be pleased to introduce the latest such honoree to its many, many benefits.

On 30th April, The Times announced the death of the Ghost of Kyiv. On 2nd May, the Ukrainian Air Force admitted that he had never existed. But then, on 12th March 2018, The Times had announced that Sergei Skripal was dead. Why is Sun Bingo paying for this?

Sergei Lavrov's remarks were crass, and uncharacteristically inept when Israel's attitude hitherto is considered, but the Soviet Union lost 27 million people to Hitler, and most of them were not Jewish. The Western myth that we fought the War solely or primarily because of the persecution of the Jews does not exist in the former USSR. "But Zelenksy is Jewish," does not answer the point about Ukrainian Nazis. If the worst insult that you can give to Jews is to call them anti-Semitic, then someone needs to take that up with the British Labour Party.

Doubts about this whole business are coming more and more to the fore. Where will this increased military aid to Ukraine end up? Once these things are out there, then they are out there. They might eventually fall into any hands at all. Eastern European countries are increasingly falling out of line with the sanctions regime, and there remain Polish and Hungarian claims to parts of Western Ukraine. If Azovstal is indeed about to fall, then Mariupol is about to become a major entrepôt to rising Eurasia. At that point, all bets would be off.

Meanwhile, here as in the United States, limitless funds are available for this war even though extreme poverty and everything that goes with it are out of control. People who talk about "bearing the cost" of this or that invariably do not have to do so themselves. Precisely what cost will be borne by, for example, leader writers and columnists on The Times?