Prevention, Sanction

It seems to have been omitted from the online version, but in print The Guardian has been vexed that teachers have been missing signs of Far Right radicalisation such as the Sonnenrad. You know, the Sonnenrad that, like the Wolfsangel, is worn by "our" side in Ukraine.

In any case, and let Rishi Sunak take note, it is now a matter of record that, in league with one of the grandest of the Labour Right's municipal grandees, Sir Albert Bore of Birmingham, Michael Gove devised the Prevent Strategy on the basis of a document that they both knew to be a forgery, the Trojan Horse letter.

Meanwhile, all hell is breaking lose against Amnesty International because it has said what we had always known about the Ukrainian use of human shields, even CBS now has an entire documentary on the fact that only 30 per cent of American military aid to Ukraine makes it to the front line, the traffic in Ukrainian women and children as sex slaves is finally making the mainstream news, and Peter Hitchens writes:

For some reason, the USA has for 14 years now been having a costly arm-wrestling contest with Russia in Ukraine. This turned hot eight years ago and has led to horrible numbers of deaths, and much destruction, in Ukraine itself.

I really cannot see what ordinary Ukrainians will ever gain from it. Nor can I see what interest Britain has in it, apart from our endless, rather pathetic desire to please the USA, which neither notices nor cares. Yet we pledge billions in arms supplies, so sustaining the horror. The same goes for all the other European nations now preparing for a chilly winter of fuel shortages and raging high prices.

Is there anybody out there with the wit and courage to bring an end to this idiocy? Or, in years to come, as we sit unemployed in our freezing houses eating bread and potatoes, while Ukrainians pick about in the ruins of their ‘victorious’ country, wondering how to rebuild it, and where all the young men have gone, will we comfort ourselves by saying that it was all worth it?

And:

I have not been overwhelmed in the rush of liberty-loving public figures to defend the blogger Graham Phillips against government oppression.

You may remember that Mr Phillips, the first UK citizen to be sanctioned by his own government, without any hearing or trial, and on the vaguest of charges, is now more or less banned from living. His life has been frozen by a decree.

It reminds me of the way the South African apartheid state used to ban people it didn’t like, making them vanish. Mr Phillips tells me that one of the results has been a spate of people on social media threatening to kill him, or suggesting he should be killed.

What does the once-gentlemanly Foreign Office think about that?

Mr Phillips says the culprits believe he has, in effect, lost the protection of the law.

I recall when almost everyone used to quote the German pastor Martin Niemoller about how we can’t expect anyone to stand up for us if we don’t stand up for others, especially those we don’t much like – and I’m not wild about Mr Phillips.

You know the one: ‘First, they came for the Socialists, and I did nothing because I wasn’t a Socialist…’ Well, it turns out everybody thinks it’s a set of instructions, not a warning.