Only the Catholic Church....

 

Mr. Ashenden resigned as Chaplain to the late Queen and became a Catholic after a Muslim was invited to recite from the Koran that Jesus is not the Son of God in Glasgow's Episcopal Cathedral. He now writes for the Catholic Herald.  

A simple fact

'Jesus didn’t write a book. He founded a Church.

'The Bible came from the Church, not the other way around.

'To accept Scripture and reject the Church is to forget who preserved, discerned, and canonised the Word.-

Patrick Coffin

How many very tedious and uninformed discussions would be avoided if everyone accepted this obvious historical fact. Educated Protestants do.

Journalist Gideon Levy is the noblest Israeli

Two very admirable things Pope Francis did were to call for peace in Ukraine and Gaza.

Saying Russia was not entirely to blame for the Ukrainian and calling the Israeli actions genocide were very unpopular in the Western media, unlike most things he said which non-Catholic journalists loved. 

He called up the people in a Catholic church in the Gaza strip each day. 

Thinking about his outspoken condemnation of Israel I feel like quoting Gideon Levy quoting Daniel Blatmann, in an article in the English edition of Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz three days ago.)

Francis glowered a lot

A number of people have praised Pope Francis's smiling face. This surprised me. I remember him scowling a lot. Some people said they disliked the look of him when he first walked out on the balcony after his election. I too had a had feeling about him then. Blogger Steve Skopje who has since lost faith wrote recently:

"When I decided to start my little revolutionary publication, OnePeterFive, it stemmed from the strong, inexplicable sense I had, when I first laid eyes on Bergoglio as he emerged as Pope Francis, that there was something deeply evil at work. It was a powerful, preternatural experience, one I later learned was shared by a number of people around the world — enough to make it more than a coincidence. Too few to be sure what it meant."

He was an angry man who on one occasion slapped a member of the public. He swore a lot too, but he also prayed for hours a day and had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

He is about to be buried in one of my favourite churches where others popes are buried including a much greater man, Pope St. Pius V who created the coaltion which led to the defeat of the Mahometan fleet at Lepanto which saved Christendom. Francis told us that Christendom no longer exists.



He said that the Church should not add burdens to people but burdened Catholics by telling them to share his views on climate change, economics, immigration and capital punishment on top of all the almost innumerable other doctrines we have to believe. In fact the Pope is not infallible on climatology or politics but Catholics do not realise that they are not bound to assent to all his thoughts.

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it: a beautiful funeral for a miserable sinner

Why is Biden who favours partial birth abortion and gender reassignment at the late Pope's funeral? 

Why wasn't he excommunicated, come to that? I believe Pope Benedict XVI ordered this but Cardinal McCarrick, as he then was, didn't pass on the order.

Editorial in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz this morning is headlined: 'Don't Look Away: Israel's Annexation of the West Bank Is Already Here'

From the editorial:

At a time when the Israeli right has adopted the "Trump vision" of transferring two million Gazans for the sake of creating an American Riviera and the Israel Defense Forces is preparing the ground there for a supposedly temporary extended stay on which the infrastructure of renewed settlement is being established, annexation of the West Bank is no longer moving at a snail's pace. It has risen to its feet and is proceeding apace.

The annexation is already here. By the time it is formally declared, it will already be too late to stop it – the process will have been completed.

That is the modus operandi of the settlers and the government – to do everything short of a formal declaration, knowing that no one is paying attention and that no one really cares.


From inside pages:


Sources in Washington say that the White House is not pressuring Netanyahu to end the war – in part because it does not want to jeopardize his coalition.




Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan, said she was told by "senior officials" that Netanyahu is trying to secure a partial deal that would mean her son remaining in captivity as "personal revenge" for her criticism of the PM.

Quotations

Sexual desire, when reciprocal, gives life to a conspiracy of two people against the rest of the conspiracies going on in the universe.
It's a conspiracy of two.
The plan is to offer the other a chance to breathe amidst the pain in the world.
John Berger, "My beautiful"
(Translated Milton Fernandez)


Describing Israel’s military campaign in November 2023, Pope Francis said, “this is not war, this is terrorism”, which led the editor of the Jerusalem Post to accuse him of “unconditional support for Hamas”.


"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that, before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." Father John Sheehan an American Jesuit, June 5 2002

“Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is…life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you.” The Upanishads. Misattributed to Pope Francis.

The new British Foreign Secretary

 

David Lammy is now British Foreign Secretary but no cleverer, despite studying at Harvard Law School. When he was on the BBC's quiz programme 'Celebrity Mastermind' he said Marie Antoinette won the Nobel Prize for physics, Henry VII became king when Henry VIII died and Red Leicester is the blue cheese that accompanies port. It is the Henry VII answer that disturbs me most.

Previous Foreign Secretaries included Castlereagh, Canning, Salisbury, Curzon .....

The legacy of Pope Francis

I was told by a well-known English priest long ago not to let Francis rent space in my head and I prefer to think about Benedict XVI.

For a long time I ignored papal news, but it became impossible.

I remember the deal with the Chinese Communists allowing them to appoint bishops, the arrest of Cardinal Zen by the Chinese Communists and the silence with which the Vatican greeted the news, the protection of a series of priestly sex criminals and embezzlers.

The suppression of the Tridentine Mass broke Benedict XVI's heart and those of many other people. 

It was cruel. Pope Francis was, by all accounts, ruthless and, I suspect, sometimes vindictive.

His personal austerity was fine but I wish it had been a private thing. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires he travelled by bus, often with a journalist present. 

The papal apartments that he did not use needed to be cleaned and kept in order, while he took the room at a hostel where another priest could have lived.

At a time when Europe was being invaded by infidel economic migrants he urged governments to accept more, though in practice almost all who got here were allowed to stay. Pope St Pius V who organised the Catholic alliance which defeated the Turk at Lepanto was made of different stuff

Former Archbishop Vigano, whom Francis excommunicated, says he told Francis about McCarrick's crimes to no result. He said today, "His soul has not disappeared. He will have to account for the crimes he has committed." "Crimes" may be harsh and Vigano is a bit crazy now but, as Francis memorably said, who am I to judge?

Not all priests or popes, unfortunately, have been especially nice men. May God have mercy on Francis's soul.

The Pope has died

I prayed yesterday for the Pope's abdication and a good successor. Now we learn of his death.

I am certainly not happy he has died, but certainly not sad. 

The best Pope in many centuries was followed by the least gifted.

Pope Francis died two weeks after former Cardinal Theodore "Uncle Ted" McCarrick who was credibly accused of sexual offences going back to the 1980s. 

Pope Francis was his protégé and that of the group of cardinals who called themselves 'the St Galen Mafia'. They got Francis elected. Francis then cancelled the restrictions that Pope Benedict XVI had placed on McCarrick. 

In a talk at Villanova University in Philadelphia six months after Pope Francis's election, Mr McCarrick said:

“Before the Conclave, nobody thought that there was a chance for Bergoglio”

"A very interesting and influential Italian gentleman” [asked me], ‘What about Bergoglio?’

"And I was surprised at the question.

"I said, ‘What about him?’

"He said, ‘Does he have a chance?’

"I said, ‘I don't think so, because no one has mentioned his name. He hasn't been in anyone's mind. I don't think it’s on anybody's mind to vote for him.”

"He said, ‘He could do it, you know.’

"I said, ‘What could he do?’

"He said, ‘He could reform the Church. If we gave him five years, he could put us back on target.’

"I said, ‘But, he’s 76.’

"He said, ‘Yeah, five years. If we had five years, the Lord working through Bergoglio in five years could make the Church over again.’

"I said, ‘That’s an interesting thing.’

"He said, ‘I know you’re his friend.’

"I said, ‘I hope I am.’

"He said, ‘Talk him up.’

"I said, ‘Well, we'll see what happens. This is God’s work.’

"That was the first that I heard that there were people who thought Bergoglio would be a possibility in this election."

Mr. McCarrick continued: 

“[Francis] has an understanding of human nature, an understanding that, though he says some things that maybe would surprise us, but the interesting thing is that if you examine what he is saying, it is what the Church has said all the time. Maybe not what the canonists have said all the time, or what different theologians have said all the time. But the teaching of the Church all the time is the teaching of Pope Francis.”

And:

“If he has two years, he will have changed the papacy. The longer he is in, the more I think it is likely that we could say that he has changed the papacy".

Quotations

"If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic." 

Muriel Spark, a Jewish convert to Catholicism

For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time."

Thomas De Quincey, "A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839)

"He died in exile: as with all men, it was his lot to live in bad times." 

Jorge Luis Borges 

Oriental wisdom

British parliamentary procedure, insurance systems, steam power, and public education were all described in considerable detail in Chinese texts of the 1830s. Yet despite this, major misconceptions endured. Many still believed British land warfare capabilities were weak, and that tea embargoes would collapse the British economy. Yan Sizong declared: Once the barbarians fail to obtain tea and rhubarb, they will fall into illness… Their whole nation can hardly survive.

Britain through Chinese Eyes: Anglo-Chinese Relations before the First Opium War Sebastian Yang

Christ is risen!

The Resurrection of Christ, Piero della Francesca

The Jesus Seminar, a group of liberal, publicity hungry New Testament scholars who were very fashionable in the USA around the turn of the century, disbelieved most of the Gospels, thought Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God and his corpse was probably thrown into a shallow dirt grave, where it rotted away or was eaten by wild dogs. 

In fact few non-Christian historians doubt the crucifixion happened (the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus records it) and that something happened very shortly afterwards to create a movement which swept the civilised world. 

The non-Christian New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann said ‘It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.’ 

The Resurrection, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (All Hallows Church, Allerton)

These experiences were also enough to lead Peter and Paul to suffer death rather than renounce their faith that Jesus had risen from the tomb and was the Son of God. Their martyrdom under Nero is not questioned by any historian, as far as I ever heard. Peter is said to have been crucified upside down at his request because he did not believe himself worthy of the same death as Jesus, but this seems to be a legend.

The resurrection is the most significant thing in the history of not only the West but the world, whether or not you believe it happened.

Talleyrand met a young man at a party who asked him for his advice about how to start a new religion. The renegade bishop turned pagan replied, 'First die and on the third day come again'. 

Mark Liberman gives advice on begging the question, an expression almost always used 'wrongly'

Should we join the herd and use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question"? Or should we join the few, proud hold-outs who still use it in the old "assume the conclusion" sense, while complaining about the ignorant rabble who etc.?

In my opinion, those are both bad choices. If you use the phrase to mean "raise the question", some pedants will silently dismiss you as a dunce, while others will complain loudly, thus distracting everyone else from whatever you wanted to say. If you complain about others' "misuse", you come across as an annoying pedant. And if you use the phrase to mean "assume the conclusion", almost no one will understand you.

My recommendation: Never use the phrase yourself — use "assume the conclusion" or "raise the question", depending on what you mean — and cultivate an attitude of serene detachment in the face of its use by others.

Mr Liberman's full note on this point is here. 

I read it two or three times over the years when, as just happened, somebody 'misuses' the phrase, to remind myself what the row is about. That might mean I am a pedant, which I am, but one who dislikes the sort of (false) pedantry that objects to, for example, England being used when United Kingdom is meant or 'his' to mean 'his or her'.

Serene detachment is a good policy when it comes to grammatical errors and towards people who hold political views you strongly dislike.

I am not setene, however, about using decimate to mean reduce to one tenth (it means reduce by one tenth). I dislike split infinitives and very, very much dislike 'presently' used to mean 'at present'. 

Yet these solecisms also have a very long pedigree. 

I suppose I need to be Zen.

One thing I shall not be serene about. Conduit has two syllables and rhymes with pundit.

  

Marco Rubio: Trump is ready to walk away from Ukraine-Russia peace deal efforts within days if progress isn't made because he has 'other priorities'

On March 11, Mr Rubio said that if Russia did not accept a ceasefire “then we’ll know unfortunately what is the impediment to peace here”. 

Russia has not accepted a ceasefire, shows no signs of doing so soon and killed many Uktainian civilians going to church last Sunday, which was Palm Sunday. 

Mr Rubio has not drawn a conclusion and Mr Trump says the Russian attack was 'a mistake', which possibly it was.

What rankles is that the partial ceasefire suggested by Mr Putin, preventing attacks on power stations, helped Russia and hindered Ukraine, yet Ukraine, doubtless at Mr Trump's request, accepted it.

Mr. Trump in his 1987 bestseller The Art of the Deal said: 'It never pays to be in too much of a hurry'. Yet he is in much too much of an obvious hurry is in his dealings with Russia. Russians approach negotiations very slowly.

From April 2017: Why should Great Britain or America fight for the Sunnis?

 Obviously, the USA and UK should never have invaded Iraq. They should have launched a short punitive expedition into Afghanistan in 2001, restored the monarchy and then allowed the Taliban to come back. Nation-building was always (a liberal) folly: Afghanistan and Iraq were not post-war Germany, as should have been clear.

But having broken it, as Colin Powell warned, the USA bought Iraq. Leaving it alone led to ISIS. So what is the solution?

I don't know. Unfortunately, the USA may now back the Israeli-Saudi-Sunni alliance against the Shia crescent (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah). I hope Mr. Trump resists this temptation.

Almost all the terrorist atrocities against Western Europe and the USA are committed by Sunnis, yet we are constantly told that Iran, which is fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, is the great threat. Why? 

A. J.P. Taylor was an aphorist comparable to George Bernard Shaw

"He [Bismarck] only considered the interests of his own country - always the worst offense that a statesman can commit in the eyes of foreigners."

["On the other hand, she [Signora Meloni] must avoid giving any impression that she is acting solely in Italy’s interests rather than for the EU as a whole." Daily Telegraph today.]

"Once men imagine a danger they soon turn it into a reality."

Quotations

"I am.” 

G.K. Chesterton's two word essay answering the question, “What’s wrong with the world?” 

"In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man."

From a wonderfully fizzing article by philosopher John Gray that attacks everyone.

 "In Europe, including Britain, the chief beneficiaries of the eclipse of humanism are Islamism and ethnic nationalism. Woke is not a sustainable successor ideology. Hyper-liberalism is still deeply embedded in our ruling institutions; but for most of its followers it is a career strategy, and the institutions – universities, quangos and the like – are unlikely to survive coming fiscal crises intact. Suppressed in the Gulf States and other Muslim-majority countries, radical Islamist movements spell the end of the British experiment in multiculturalism and French republican laïcité. Just as globalisation was supposed to spread “democratic capitalism”, mass immigration was meant to result in conversion to liberal values. The opposite is happening. In a generation or so, if current trends persist, an Ottoman-style millet system – in which different religious communities are governed by their own laws – may coexist uneasily with nationalist governments. A Europe of equal freedom for every religion, under a rule of law that applied to all, would soon be a distant memory."

The future of Europe, Neagu Djuvara and Bernard Lewis said, is to be Muslim, part of the Maghreb. Not Russian or Chinese as Gray thinks is possible. 

De Gaulle, quoted today by Arnaud Bertrand

"No nation worthy of the name has friends—only interests." 

It reminds me of Bismarck's remark:

"The nation that copies another is lost."

My old China

"Because if you starve a blast furnace, there is no easy way to start it up again. Such things cost tens of millions of pounds. Quite why Jingye was planning this remains a mystery. The company never seems to talk to the media. It hasn’t explained its rationale. The most plausible theory is that it plans to relocate most of the operations in Scunthorpe to existing mills (and new ones) in China. Another more outlandish theory, not entirely dismissed by officials in Whitehall, is that it could be acting under orders from Beijing, who would welcome the demise of another leg of British industry. For the time being, though, no-one really knows." 

Quotations

 "The notion that democratic countries are peace loving because they enjoy strong support from populations whereas autocratic, authoritarian countries are necessarily warlike.... because they are fragile, do not enjoy support of the populations and so they tend to look for foreign wars to maintain their hold over the population. That's a very simple notion. Dead wrong of course but try to find people in the European political classes who would disagree with that. This is the whole European values story.... To bring them back to common sense is a vast, vast task." Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, talking to Glenn Diesen

From the blog of John Helmer, Australian correspondent in Moscow since the Soviet era

Several hours after Witkoff had left meeting with Putin, Trump implied that he is blaming the Russians for the failure of the talks so far, and is planning a new ultimatum. “Russia has to get moving”, Trump tweeted.  

Source: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114319592702753512 

A well-informed source in Moscow says that Trump and his subordinates have been surprised by the Russian terms for ending the war. “The Russians have told Americans they will have Odessa and a land corridor to Moldova. They have offered ports on Dnieper River for access to the sea for the Ukrainians. There has been no demand about Nord Stream. Money is being discussed on the sidelines but not in the main talks. In the main room [in Riyadh on February 18] Lavrov and Ushakov brought no papers and asked Americans [Rubio and Waltz] to dust off the December 2021 treaty draft. The Russian positions shocked the Americans. They were told the Ukraine will be demilitarized and its forces will be turned into paramilitary and police. The Americans were also surprised how little Russians cared about Zelensky or his British and Europeans backers. The Americans were told there will be no Ukrainian paramilitary force east of the Dnieper – only police. A new Russian demand was tabled for autonomy of eight Ukrainian oblasts, with Kiev army forces removed. In general, the Russians propose turning the Ukraine into a genuinely federal structure with provisions that Banderites can never take power in Kiev and that the central forces will be limited in their capabilities, supplementing the police if and when Banderites take to the streets. The main purpose of any such force will be de-nazification and keeping it that way. There are demands also about the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.”

If they want Odessa the Russians must first capture it, obviously. I hope to God they don't. 

The war in Gaza 'serves mainly political and personal interests, not security interests'

Nearly 1,000 current and retired members of the Israel Air Force Reserve published a letter yesterday calling for the return of all hostages and an end to the fighting in Gaza.

They wrote: "Currently, the war serves mainly political and personal interests, not security interests. The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals and will lead to the deaths of the hostages, Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians, and to the attrition of the IDF reserve forces."

Unfortunately newspaper readers in Europe are often unaware that this fighting has never been about destroying Hamas, something which is impossible and which Netanyahu is not even trying to achieve. Yet it was common sense from the start.

The IDF Chief of Staff said that most of the signatories were not in the active reserve list but those that were would be dismissed if they did not retract. 25 signatories did so.

Netanyahu blames the letter on foreigners. I wonder whom he has in mind. Soros? Could be but probably it's a spontaneous plea for common sense and humanity.

Quotations

Quotations

Oliver Cromwell the Timelord

My readers will be pleased to know that one of the grandsons of John Tyler (10th U.S. President, 1841–45) is still alive, although his brother died a few years ago.

Here is an excerpt from an article Simon Jenkins wrote at the turn of the millennium headlined “Oliver the Timelord (An extraordinary memory reminds us of the ambiguities of time)".

A man of my acquaintance was addressed, when a child, on the subject of Oliver Cromwell. The speaker was a lady of 91. She told him sternly never to speak ill of the great man. She went on: "My husband's first wife's first husband knew Oliver Cromwell - and liked him well." It was an admonition my friend has not forgotten.

Quotations

'One of the many insane things about modern day America:
Tell me what someone thinks of vaccines - and I'll tell you with 95% predictive accuracy what he thinks of the war in Ukraine...'

Eric Krause today

John Mortimer said he was unusual in supporting hunting foxes and abortion but come to think of it why should people who think killing unborn babies is permissible think killing foxes should not be?

I am 5 or 6 removes from King Charles II

After writing that I am four removes from Napoleon (that don't impress me much) I did a few moments more research. 

I met Harold Macmillan, who links me to lots of people, including Thomas Hardy who knew and corresponded with Frederic Harrison. 

Probably there were a myriad other links between Macmillan and Harrison, but as Harrison's books were published by the family publishing firm Macmillan & Co I think it very likely that Harold Macmillan met Harrison himself. After all, he knew well other famous authors whom the family firm published, like Hardy, Kipling and Conrad.

In any case, Harrison died in 1923 and it is possible that in the 1980s I met someone else who met him.

Harrison went up to Oxford in 1848 where he met Martin Routh, who was then still President of Magdalen College, despite having been born in 1755. 

When Routh was a little boy he met an old lady who, as a girl, saw King Charles II walking his spaniels in Magdalen Grove. 

I, who this morning read the news about Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, am either five or six removes from the King of England who hid in the royal oak tree with Henry Wilmot to avoid being found by the Parliamentarian soldiers below, following the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Had they seen him he would have been tried and executed, like his father in 1649.

McCarrick is dead. He was a part of a much bigger evil

Mr. (formerly Cardinal) Theodore "Uncle Ted" McCarrick has died. 

His predatory sexual advances to seminarians were well known even in the 1980s, apparently, but he became one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church. 

Pope Francis was his protégé and cancelled the restrictions that Pope Benedict XVI had placed on Uncle Ted. 

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote: Chaucer and Margaret Thatcher

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote...

My favourite poet began his most famous work in the springtime of England, when we were devout Catholics. What would Chaucer think of us could he see us now, as I hope he can?

He'd certainly be pro-European as his England was half French, still essentially ruled by Norman French and indulgent of sexual sins except for men on men. 

I read in the early 1990s A.W. Ward's Life of Chaucer (1909) in the Macmillan Men of Letters series. Ward said that even though Chaucer's England was very different from ours the English were already very enterprising and good at business. 

I suddenly saw with much pain that I had been wrong about Mrs Thatcher. She was a conservative (In her time I had never thought she was) and trying to restore England.

I am one person away from Mark Twain and Thomas Hardy, four from Napoleon

 

From 'The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick-Maker: The Story of Britain Through Its Census, Since 1801' By Roger Hutchinson (2017)

I wrote before in this blog that Frederic Harrison said his first memory was of his father paying a very rare visit to the nursery in 1837 and saying,

'Frederic, I am going to tell you something now that you will remember for the rest of your life. The King is dead.'

Good advice

 

Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is.
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

The Ukrainian forces are far closer to US high command than the Houthis are to Iran

I think, gentle reader, that you assumed the American forces are very closely involved in the Ukrainian war but this article from the NYT shows how closely. 

Fred Weir, veteran Canadian journalist in Moscow, shared it (to public) on Facebook today with these words. 

Oh great, this will really help to counter the Kremlin's mendacious claim that Russia is fighting a war in which Ukraine is just a proxy for the US and NATO efforts to crush Russia. Putin may have the Russian people totally bamboozled, thinking they're up against the united West, but fortunately we've got the NYT to investigate and reveal the Truth:

Lord Skidelsky explains the Ukrainian war very well

Please watch this short interview with one of our two or three best living historians. 

Key points:; Ukraine has not been defeated but done well; Russia expected to instal a subordinate government quickly; if Ukraine needs security guarantees so does Russia; if Russia is a threat to her neighbours why is she not a threat to her democratic neighbour Mongolia? (Because Mongolia is not going to join Nato?) 

We have a post-imperial reflex that uses the words 'we must' all the time - we must not allow the Chinese to mistreat the Uighurs for example - when we don't have the power to do anything about it! 

Jack Matlock: Kosovo gave Putin 'an almost perfect precedent' for Crimea

Jack Matlock was the penultimate US Ambassador to the USSR. In a very insightful and profound discussion published yesterday with Glenn Diesen, he compares the war against Serbia in 1999, in which Nato "killed over a thousand men", with the bloodless Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. 

"That gave Putin a precedent, an almost perfect precedent, for the taking of Crimea." 

He says the 2014 revolution in Kiev 'was actually a coup d'état'. People said this in 2014 and I did not see it, but yes it was a coup  in which the Americans' involvement was crucial.

How splendid the US old school diplomats were before, as Mr. Matlock says, the neo-cons 'took over the foreign policy of both our political parties' to justify heavy defence spending.

I think he is right that it was the military industrial complex wanting money that was to blame.

He says that "when we tried to spread democracy by military force or economic compulsion we failed and ended up losing a lot of our democracy at home".

'O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world.'
(As You Like It Act 2, Scene 3)

Dominic Cummings retweeted this

 

CBDC means "central bank digital currency", a digital currency issued by the European Central Bank on behalf of the European Union.

Margaret Thatcher could have ended John Major's premiership in 1995 and possibly aborted New Labour

Sir Julian Seymour, who has died aged 80, ran Margaret Thatcher's private office from 1991 until he retired in 2001. From his obituary in the Daily Telegraph:

When John Major, exasperated at the machinations of the Eurosceptic Right, called a leadership contest in 1995, Lady Thatcher was tempted to back John Redwood. Seymour told her that for a former Tory leader to publicly back a challenger to a sitting leader would be a step too far. “I told her I always thought JR a bit odd, and an impossible bet for PM at any time,” he recalled.

He got no reaction, “other than that look when you know either that she privately agreed or was thinking about it, but was never, ever to be drawn into agreeing out loud. In summary, heart will have said Redwood, head will have said No.”

John Major later revealed that had he won two fewer votes in that leadership election (only MPs could vote in that more civilised era) he would have resigned. 

Had Lady Thatcher backed him he would have won at least two fewer votes and history might have been different. 

Who would have been his successor? John Redwood, Michael Portillo, Kenneth Clark, Michael Heseltine?

Would Great Britain have been spared Tony Blair?

Acknowledgments Lakshmi Kapoor for the first three

"There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn't."

John von Neumann, autodidact who pioneered the modern computer, operator theory, game theory, learned calculus and differential equations at age 6.

The neo-cons, who want the US to dominate every part of the world, have still not gone away.

From June 20, 2014, Stephen M. Walt, writing in Foreign Policy. 

"What, if anything, might reduce the neoconservative influence to its proper dimension (that is to say, almost nil)? I wish I knew, for if the past ten years haven’t discredited them, it’s not obvious what would. No doubt leaders in Moscow and Beijing derive great comfort from that fact: For what better way to ensure that the United States continues to lurch from crisis to crisis, and from quagmire to quagmire? Until our society gets better at listening to those who are consistently right instead of those who are reliably wrong, we will repeat the same mistakes and achieve the same dismal results. Not that the neoconservatives will care." 

More US war crimes

 'Rules of engagement that permit destroying an entire civilian apartment building to kill one alleged terrorist is part of Joe Biden’s legacy. It’s still a war crime though, and Waltz’s text is a confession.' Matt Duss, who was Bernie Sanders' foreign policy adviser.

'Obama and John Brennan drone-bombed wedding parties repeatedly, and even groups of people standing around, if they suspected that one "legitimate target" was in the vicinity. It's of course a war crime, and if anyone applied this logic to the US, they'd be branded "terrorists."' Glenn Greenwald

The US attack on the Houthis is a much bigger scandal than the group chat

The best way to stop the Houthis attacking shipping is to give them what they want, which is a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. 

Max Blumenthal calls the Houthis "the one force mounting one of the only principled humanitarian interventions in my lifetime". 

You know not to trust a news source when it refers to the Houthis as 'Iranian proxies'. They obviously are not. They are as Blumenthal says 'fiercely independent'.

I wonder if there are any Iranian proxies as opposed to Iranian allies. 

The mainstream media wants us to believe Russia, Iran and China are the threats to the West. 

In fact the West is the main threat to the West.

It seems from the discussions in a group on Signal, in which they added by mistake the editor of the Atlantic (I am not making this up), a man that hates Trump, that the purpose of the very high level committee that decided to attack Yemen was to protect shipping, not just Israeli shipping. 

They obviously do not read John Helmer's blog and do not know it was only Israeli shipping that the Houthis targeted, until the US and UK intervened against them when they not unreasonably targeted American and British ships too.

27 March footnote. Houthis are still firing missiles after 12 straight days of US airstrikes.

The Munich Agreement was a fatal mistake by Hitler

Years ago it seemed no-one was talking common sense. 

That was because I took my news from the mainstream media. 

Now thanks to the internet you can follow Jeffrey Sachs to understand what is happening and Christopher Caldwell and John Mearsheimer. My work here is almost done.

No incident ever resembles Munich 1938. In this short clip Professor Sachs points out that America has used analogies with Munich for 50 years for a series of things and, even if they were apt, which they never were, Hitler thought the Munich agreement had been a trap into which he fell. 

By disregarding his promise of no more territorial demands in Europe, when he invaded Czechia in March 1939, he exposed his hand and brought down disaster on his head.

Churchill said 'History will be kind to me because I intend to write it'. So he did and so it has been, but his view of the period between 1933 to 1939, as you would expect of the view of any politician talking about his record, is very partial and very misleading. 

It is a myth (Chamberlain as Vortigern to Churchill's King Arthur) which I learnt at 8 and it is a myth that everyone still believes. 

It's the foundational myth of the American empire, though it was not America but only Britain and France (Chamberlain  and Deladier) who, in historian Maurice Cowling's words, were 'crazy enough to go to war with Germany without having to'. 

The history of the Western world since 1945 is a meditation on the powerful legend of Munich and Hitler. 

Had Churchill died in 1941 he'd have died an eccentric failure. Had Franklin Roosevelt left office in 1939 after two terms as President of the United States he'd have been a failure too. The New Deal was a failure. Instead they have been transmuted.

It is worth playing fair with Russians or not playing at all (Bismarck)

Don't expect that once you take advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever. The Russians always came for their money. And when they come - do not rely on the Jesuit treaties you signed and which you hope will get you acquitted. They are not worth the paper they are written on. Therefore, it is worth playing fair with Russians or not playing at all. Otto von Bismarck 

Denmark, which controls Greenland, is not doing its job, it’s not being a good ally. If that means that we need to take more territorial interests in Greenland, that is what President Trump is going to do. Because he doesn't care about what the European scream at us. J.D. Vance two hours ago. I loved every word of his speech at Munich and his more recent thoughts on Europe committing suicide, but this is utterly appalling. This is the veil off and the America that has ruthlessly taken over the world seen clearly.

Quotations

Samuel Johnson did not worry about problems. He did not use the word "problem", for at that time that word was used specifically for mathematics - not about the concerns of his era.

Jorge Luis Borges

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

Otto von Bismarck


The first rule of politics is : never invade Afghanistan.


Harold Macmillan

Water

“You cannot see your reflection in boiling water. Similarly, you cannot see the truth in a state of anger. When the waters calm, clarity comes.” 

Is this from a film I never heard of called Kung Fu Panda?

"Calm the muddy water, 

It becomes clear." 

Tao Ti Ching

In Haaretz, the Israeli centre left newspaper, today

More from the article:

Donald Trump's attack on the Houthis

American journalist Dan Perry is perversely mistaken today.

Trump 2.0’s approach to domestic reform, trade and alliances has been reckless. Trump's tariffs disrupted global markets; his handling of Ukraine and Russia emboldened adversaries; and his treatment of allies left many questioning America’s commitment to global leadership. But in the Middle East he's made some right moves, understanding what Biden seemed to miss: Peace through strength is sometimes the only way. Such is the long-overdue assault on the criminal hashtagHouthis.

The Houthis are no more criminals than other actors in the drama, but then grave crimes are being committed by the other parties, including or especially the US. 

Many countries have deep states but not Israel, it seems

The EU is set to exclude the US, UK, and Turkish arms companies from its €150 billion defence fund if their respective countries don't sign agreements with Brussels. That is of course. 

Why did the UK not threaten to leave Nato as a bargaining chip during Brexit negotiations?

Because the UK is ruled by what Dominic Cummings calls the Blob and Messrs Trump and Vance consider is the transatlantic deep state (think William Hague).

Many countries have deep states. Romania (cancelled election) and the UK (Brexit struggle) are two obvious examples.

Some do not, such as Israel. Netanyahu is able to swat away, so far, the opposition of the courts, the generals and the secular Ashkenazi left-of-centre establishment that ruled the country after 1948 until Begin and the Likud (successors to the Irgun) took power.

Quotations

"The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy." Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience two weeks ago

 

"While the Army has 108,000 personnel, since 2018 more than 155,000 illegal migrants – most of them young men from Islamic nations like Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran — have entered Britain on some 4,300 boats." Matt Goodwin on Saturday

 

 

With countries and marriages, some unions work, others don't

The anti-system, pro-EU party USR (Save Romania Union) is the anti-system party that young Romanians with degrees and the Western European media like. 

But to many Romanians the EU and the Nato seem the system from which Romania needs saving, so there is another sort of anti-system party, the so called sovereignists. 

Election Bureau: Opposition to Romania’s membership of the EU and NATO makes a candidate unfit to stand in the presidential election

After rejecting the candidacy of Calin Georgescu, who came first in the cancelled presidential election in November and stands at 40% in the polls, on Saturday Romania’s Central Election Bureau went on to reject the candidacy of a another right-wing "sovereignist" politician, Diana Sosoaca. The decision was upheld by the Constitutional Court (CCR).

According to the Associated Press:

The CCR argued that her public discourse, including opposition to Romania’s European Union and NATO memberships, made her unfit to uphold the constitutional obligations of the presidency.

Quotations

'If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.'

Nietzsche


'I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.'

Said recently

Russia is already menacing our skies, our water, our streets.

Sir Keir Starmer yesterday

Try seeing Ukraine as a second attempt by the people who brought you Iraq. Instead of ‘Fascist Saddam has WMD!!!’ you have ‘Nazi Putin’s going to invade Poland then march to Paris!!!’ 

Peter Hitchens 

I wrote this exactly one year ago to the day but did not post it - now Trump is making war on Lennonism at home and abroad

"The world has now been diminished completely. There is no variety anywhere. You go off to the Congo and in the forest will find an advertisement for Coca Cola."  

The explorer and writer Sir Wilfred Thesiger said this in an interview he gave in his nursing home in 2001, a couple of years before he died. 

This was why I always wanted to be in Eastern Europe before the end of Communism. I wanted another world. I sought a kind of ecstasy, ex stasis, standing outside myself. 

The Emperor Donald

I am not accusing Donald Trump of trying to make money out of the presidency (that's very much more the Clintons and Bidens). I am implying that he's a barbarian, when I say he reminds me of A.E. Housman's one great poem, Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries.

These, in the days when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Oscar Wilde, child abuser

Wilde was a wonderful playwright and aphorist, but he should not be admired for cheating on his wife with rent boys (male prostitutes).  

He was probably also a paedophile, as Lord Robathan (as he now is) pointed out in the House of Commons in 1999:

'We should be careful about romanticising Oscar Wilde, as the placing of a statue of him in the Strand last year did. Clearly, he was persecuted by the father of his male friend, Lord Alfred Douglas, the Earl of Rosebery [he meant Marquess of Queensbury, of course]. He wrote some fine plays and was quite a good poet. However, those who are concerned about paedophilia and sex tourism should know that Oscar Wilde was a paedophile and a sex tourist--[Interruption.] Labour Members shake their heads. Let them read the biography--[Hon. Members: "We have."] I can quote from memory that Alfred and Oscar competed for Neapolitan boys in 1897. What is that if not paedophilia and sex tourism? Let us hear no more nonsense about Oscar Wilde being a martyr to homosexual equality.'

I recommend E.F. Knight's Albania: A Narrative of Recent Travel (1880)

The book is here and for free.

One day last autumn I was sitting in my Temple chambers, wondering what I should do with myself in the Long Vacation, when I was aroused from my reverie by the entrance of my clerk...

And so begins for E. F. Knight the journey that led him to write 'Albania: A Narrative of Recent Travel', which he published in 1880. A friend showed me a first edition of the book a couple of years ago. I loved the flavour of Oxford, Cambridge, public school and England at the zenith of her imperial self-confidence. In

Why do European governments want the war in Ukraine to continue? Genuine question.

Old fashioned left-wingers are more insightful than "conservatives" when it comes to foreign policy.

I miss the anti-war left (the formerly pacifist German Greens are now the most warlike party in Germany, etc), yet its heart is still beating. 

Here is left-wing feminist Almut Rochowanski, in Responsible Statecraft today, on the mood in the chanceries of Europe 

"A closer look at Europe also shows that a new bellicism has swept up the continent’s elites and gone into cataclysmic overdrive in recent weeks. Nowhere has this new martiality been more pronounced than in Germany, where political leaders and a new crop of “military experts” egg each other on.

"The latter have been abysmally wrong in their predictions of Ukraine’s certain victory and Russia’s imminent collapse again and again, but nevertheless dominate the country’s much-watched primetime debate shows. Last week, Germans were told that the coming summer will be the last one we will be at peace, because Russia will, under cover of war games in Belarus, invade NATO territory."

China's Belt and Road initiative does huge good

At last someone says the obvious: Jeffrey Sachs in this short clip says China's Belt & Road initiative does huge good.

I have been waiting for one person in the newspapers to say this, even in a subordinate clause of a sentence, for years without success. 

“If Europe cannot defeat Russia, how can we defeat China?”

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby

“If Europe cannot defeat Russia, how can we defeat China?”  Kaja Kallas, the first female prime minister of Estonia until 2024 when she took charge of the European Union's Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

I really wish the Ukraine War enthusiasts would pick between "Russia will easily march through Europe if American taxpayers don't finance the war forever" and "ACKSHUALLY Russia is losing" instead of flipping back and forth every day. Mollie@MZHemingway 

“Putin will invade Europe” is the new “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction”. Thomas Fazi

"If we have learned anything from the NATO experience...it is the rediscovery of an old truth: Dependency corrupts and absolute dependency corrupts absolutely. To the degree that Europe has been dependent upon the United States, the European will has been corrupted and European political vitality has diminished. A reconstructed NATO could reverse that process. But it would have to be an all-European NATO, with the United States an ally but not a member." Irving Kristol, "What's Wrong with NATO?", in the New York Times of Sept. 25, 1983.


Niall Ferguson, December 9 2018:

Calin Georgescu has the support of over 40% of the voters but is not allowed to stand in rerun of the presidential election

The Electoral Office decided last night that Calin Georgescu, who won the first round of the cancelled Presidential election in November, will not be allowed to stand in the postponed election. It's a brave new world. Frau von der Leyen and the panjandrums of the European Union will be pleased, so will the Soros people in Bucharest, but in Washington DC there will be another view.

Would there be an uprising like in December 1989? No, though I was told there would be. I thought of walking over to see but could not be bothered.

Some demonstrators appeared as a result of messages on social media, seemingly for the sake of letting pictures be sent around the world in seconds on X.

Almost everyone I know will be relieved except the waiters, porters, taxi drivers and shop assistants, the forty percent of the electorate who would vote for Georgescu and many who wouldn't. 

I think absolutely any citizen should be allowed to stand in an election, even if in prison. Eugene Debs the Socialist contested a US presidential election from behind bars in 1920.

A poll carried out by Verified for the ruling coalition’s presidential candidate Crin Antonescu showed that, if the 2025 presidential elections were to take place next Sunday, 40% would vote for Călin Georgescu, a big increase on the 23% he won in the cancelled election in November. He is followed by Crin Antonescu on 18.5% and the Mayor of Bucharest Nicușor Dan (anti-system independent) on 12%, Libertatea.ro reported.

Saint Mina's church, Strada Coposu - founded in the early 18th century but rebuilt in the mid 19th

 

Give peace a chance

In three years of throwing everything they have at Ukraine, the Russians have taken 13% of a country on its own border (in addition to Crimea and Donetsk taken in 2014). 

Yet absurdly Macron and the Western European leaders think Putin will be at Paris if he is not stopped now.

To eject Russia from its entrenched positions would require a ground assault that might kill several hundred thousand more Ukrainians. 

A negotiated settlement involving a combination of massive investment in Ukraine and loosening of embargos on Russia is the obvious best option. The only option in fact.

Donald Trump has common sense on this issue and common sense is rarer than genius, as Emerson said. 

Donald Trump might be a genius too but you, gentle reader, have your opinion about that. Emerson would certainly have loathed him.

I have a good track record

The CIA/MI6 run mainstream media backed the Islamists and justify their slaughter yesterday of 'pro-Assad forces'. I am glad I regretted the fall of Assad.

I wish there was a reasonable trustworthy source of information abut the news but there is not.

I have a good track record.

I saw the Cold War was unnecessary. I opposed the invasion of Iraq and at first of Afghanistan, though then I went along with it.

I thought on September 11 2001 that something like that was inevitable.

I wanted Ukraine to resist Russia in 2022 when invaded. I wanted negotiations to bring peace in Ukraine in the spring of 2022.

I should have followed Ukraine before the invasion. I'd have seen how the Americans were playing with fire. The Ukrainians got burnt.

It took me years though to understand that it is America that has been the big threat to world peace, not Russia, China or Iran.

I was probably wrong not to like Mrs Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. They were lesser evils than the progressives and to some extent their concern for freedom was genuine. They were the last conservatives to know that equality is a bad thing if you are on the right.

Mrs Thatcher did almost nothing that was conservative but she did raise British morale.

Backing the Democrats before Bill Clinton was a mistake but the mainstream Republican party was and is repulsive.

My big mistakes were cheering on the colour revolutions and not becoming Euroseptic and Natosceptic earlier. I should have backed Patrick Buchanan. I did back Ron Paul.

I should have followed the Arab Israel story and had Netanyahu's number but it bored me to pieces until 7 October 2023.