Craig Hunter

Photographed (apparently) by Simon Barnes

'What next for Ukraine's captured soldiers' says the BBC. (Was that supposed to be a question?)

Well, I for one cannot believe the "neo-Nazis" of the Azov Battalion are going to be treated very much better than the Russian soldiers who've been captured by the Ukrainians.

But at least the Ukrainians are upholding the Geneva Convention. Right?

Why is grooming OK if you're gay?

Why are gays allowed to get away with grooming?

If this pervert had been straight the police would have woken up to what he was trying to do, gone round to his place, kicked his front door in, ransacked his home, and confiscated all of his hard drives "as evidence"*. (They then wouldn't have looked at them for at least six months, but that's not the point. Let's face it, just the opportunity, every now and again, to rough up a suspected nonce is the reason most coppers sign on. After all, it's easier than trying to catch burglars and murderers.)

One possibility of course is that under the sacred rainbow umbrella it's still the case that pretty much anything goes. It's a politically and culturally sensitive area, and so unless you're a Tory/Muslim/MP/all of the above, they're likely to give you a wide berth. No cop with brains and ambition wants to be accused of "homophobia" in 2022, and any super with brains knows it.

I suspect the "deeper" answer though is that "it's different for men" - which of course means it's different for boys. Men, so the implication goes, cannot be victims of sexual assault in the same way that women can. Touch a woman's knee on the Underground and you're done for. Touch a man's and no one will bat an eyelid: commuters in 2022 don't like being called "homophobes" any more than the rozzers do and, more to the point, men are supposed to be able to look after themselves. (Even more to the point, we're talking Marxist power dynamics here: white people can't be victims of racism†, men can't be victims of sex crimes††.)

Quite simply, it's the old Victorian double standard alive and well. Pace L P Hartley, the past is not a foreign country. As far as sex crimes are concerned it's still very much with us.

And it's coming to your little boy's Catholic school any moment now.

UPDATE: He's also an anti-Catholic bigot. Quelle suprise!

With @Thejfschool saga continuing, time to take a closer look at the author at the heart of it all: @simonjamesgreen. Was his sexually graphic rewrite of the Lord’s Prayer just misunderstood? Should Catholic schools have to promote his work? Must @RC_Southwark apologise? A 🧵 1/

— emitte lucem tuam (@elt01461) May 18, 2022

(And a sicko! Meh!)

*And in all probability they'd have found it too. There's rarely any smoke without fire.
†Tell that to the Poles during WWII - but bearing in mind that as far as Whoopi is concerned even "the Holocaust" wasn't "racist". (It wasn't about "her people", so it wasn't really a thing.)

††Most rapes take place in men's prisons: most rape charities are run by women. Don't ask me how that makes sense.

Varoufakis can fak off

No, I haven't changed my mind in the last two years that Varoufakis is basically just a ridiculous Marxist conman. He never cared about his country. He rolled over and let the EU do whatever they wanted to Greece. In Germany (a country not know for its subtle, sophisticated humour) he was treated as a joke. And quite rightly too!

And the great man hasn't changed either. He still loves the EU, despite what it did to his country, and he condemns liberal "warmongers" without even conceding that the era of liberal "imperialism" is now well and truly over - because Ukraine is now fighting a defensive war, as is the West generally because it has now been so thoroughly poisoned by liberalism that it no longer believes in its own heritage.

And Varoufakis is indeed a very good example of a de-westernised westerner. His country gave the world Homer and Herodotus, but he prefers to pose like an ageing James Dean - not because he has any love for American values (constitutionalism, limited government, individualism, etc.) but simply because pratting about like an American pop-star is cooler than being a Greek.

(Tony Blair, for what it's worth, thought the same thing - only in all probability he genuinely believed in the American Dream, whereas Varoufakis very obviously does not.)

North and South

Is English history really just one long story of North vs. South, as James Hawes says it is? (He's trying to repeat his tale of two countries trick that - admittedly! - worked pretty well for his Shortest History of Germany.)

What about the most important division in English history - that between the two universities at the time of the Protestant Revolt? What about the Civil Wars that followed? What about the conversion of England, for that matter? Does Hawes' North-South divide map onto Celtic (or pre-Roman, at any rate) tribes? What about the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms?

I suppose I should give it a look - one of these days.

UPDATE: Certainly there's no obvious North-South division of political opinions - except perhaps on the issue of tax.

UPDATE II: The simple reality is that the "North-South" divide is at least as much an "East-West" one.

This encapsulates so much. Well done @RoryStewartUK pic.twitter.com/c2fSmw5vWZ

— MilitaryGeek (@Dettingen11) August 20, 2021

"Pro-authoritarian" libertarians?

Of course, the claim that Canadians who are sceptical about the war in Ukraine are "pro-authoritarian" is deeply weird. Canada currently has the most authoritarian government it's ever had, and it's far more likely that "the Unvaccinated" are pro-libertarian than authoritarian - sceptical about the Government's claims about "the vaccines" and equally sceptical about the military-industrial complex's expansion of NATO.

Conversely, those who trusted the Government over the jabs are now trusting them over foreign affairs - and that includes war! So whether Putin wins or loses, the West is becoming a darker, bleaker place, more paranoid, more willing to resort to military and/or paramilitary options rather diplomatic ones, and less able than ever before to see the other side's point of view.