What they said

“The Holy Spirit is practical, he is not an idealist. He wants us to concentrate on the here and now, because the time and place in which we find ourselves are themselves grace-filled.” Pope Francis yesterday, in a sermon for Whitsun.

“To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money." Gerald Brenan

"Home is where, if you have to go there, they have to take you in." Robert Frost

"I am always prepared to recognize that there can be two points of view - mine, and one that is probably wrong."  J.G. Gorton

"The task of the 20,000 police officers who spent nearly 18 hours on continuous duty was lightened by the best behaved multitude in memory. Despite the hundreds of thousands that packed the centre of London for 24 hours, there was not one reported incident of a pickpocket at work. A Scotland Yard official said last night;'It is a tribute to the crowds behaviour'." In a newspaper report from Coronation Day, 1953.

“I think the new English men and women coming up now are falling into a world of ‘personal truth versus truth truth’ and that does not make a rational society. Somehow I have lost my optimism about clear-eyed, level-headed, open-hearted generations following ours.” Sir Tom Stoppard interviewed in the Daily Telegraph, May 20th

“As I get older, I think about death less and less. I have less time in front of me so I am less inclined to look backwards.” Ibid.

Matt Goodwin

@GoodwinMJ

**for the first time on record the price of a pint breaches the £8 threshold in London** I know there are bigger problems in the world but ...

Threats to the Disunited Kingdom

The chief threats to the United Kingdom are from illegal immigrants (much the most urgent and important), refugees, Islamists, the Irish and Scottish nationalists, the European Union, which necessarily has interests that conflict with the UK's and which wants to ensure that Brexit does not work, and the USA, which dominates us politically and culturally and which gave us their 1960s nervous breakdown, PC and Woke. 

Russia is not on the list, although she is a threat to the American empire, to Moldova and possibly to the Baltic States, including Finland. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, however, is very wicked and sets a precedent as dangerous for the world as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The UK, like the EU, is right to support the Ukrainians, so long as the economic cost is reasonable. 

The biggest danger of all is liberalism, which has subsumed most of the Tories and all of the Labour Party to the right of Jeremy Corbyn.

It's embodied in the hierarchy of the Church of England and the BBC. Liberalism is what has produced so many disastrous changes in her kingdom in the seventy years Queen Elizabeth II has reigned over it.

Surprisingly, considering their successive leaders, many Tory MPs are sound. They opposed lockdowns and achieved Brexit. They care about the Union with Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

Most of those same Tories, remembering the Cold War, belong to the war party which wants a long proxy war with Russia. Enoch Powell would certainly not have done, but he is long dead and much reviled.

Offices of the Illustrated London News decorated for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee

 

I remember this, at the 1976 US bicentenary. The band played 'That's Why the Lady is a Tramp'.

Like the Queen Gerald Ford was unelected and inherited his position. He was stupid (he famously couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time) but an excellent president, much better than most of his successors, especially the present incumbent.

 

I was only a child. 

Bucharest is the nicest place in the world to be in June

New St. George's Church which is older than Old St George's.

Razvan Church seen from Calea Mosilor

New St. George's Church 

Coltea Church

 

Historians will argue forever about the origins of the 2022 Ukrainian war

Talking about it being completely impossible to tell the real left from the real right anymore (or to tell the left-of centre from the right-of-centre, come to that) I listened yesterday to James Delingpole talking to Vanessa Beeley, of Syria fame. 

I have lots and lots of doubts about her and her friend Eva Bartlett, though they clearly passionately believe in their views. I came to the conclusion, after a very great deal of research, that they were right about the people of East Aleppo being pleased when the Syrian army with Russian help got rid of the rebels who were holding East Aleppo. I came to the conclusion that the narrative of the Economist and FT was a pack of untruths. I don't have any view about their views on many other things like the White Helmets.

But I was convinced by something VB said in the talk with James Delingpole, that the Russian intervention in Syria in 2015 (which I welcomed, despite the Russian brutality) was a reaction to what she called the coup in Ukraine in the precious year.

They both think the Russian intervention this year is a response to Banderist atrocities. I don't. 

But then I don't know what happened in Donbass in and after 2014 precisely. It's not easy to find out. The impression I get is that the two enclaves are full of unhappy people who want to be left alone, rather than by people who side with Putin. 


I do think the way America has behaved from 2014 in Ukraine provoked Russia (that's obvious). 

I do not know if things would be different had Nato not been extended eastwards or whether conflict was inevitable between two rival powers with different political values and interests.


Donald Trump warned about the importance of good relations with Russia, and he was right.

“I hope we do have good relations with Russia. I say it loud and clear and I’ve been saying it for years. I think it’s a good thing if we have a great relations with Russia. That’s very important. And, I believe, some day that will happen. It’s a big country, it’s a nuclear country, it’s a country we should get along with, and I think we will eventually get along with Russia.”

He also warned that Germany was controlled by Russia because of the Nord Stream pipelines and that European weakness would lead to Russian aggression.

He also armed Ukraine with lethal weapons, which Obama had not done. He did so in order to let American companies make money.

Had he been re-elected this awful invasion would not have happened. That is certain.

I said this ten years ago during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations

The Prince of Wales said last night 'And we're now celebrating the life and service of a very special person, over the last 60 years.' This is not true. The Queen is a good constitutional monarch but is not a very special person at all and humble enough to know that it is the crown that is special not the woman who wears it. Through no fault of hers, she has reigned over 60 in many ways disastrous years.

Caitlin Johnstone's message to her fellow Americans on July 4 last year

It's important to understand that the imperial propagandists don't just tell us what to think; they also train us how to think. Feeding us bad information is only half their job; the other half is shaping the cognitive frameworks by which we form opinions about that information.

This is why the mass media have "opinion" segments as well as "news" segments. They're not there in case you were curious what Johnny McThinktank's opinions are on the issue of the day (they know you weren't), they're to model the acceptable parameters of thinking on that issue. And the acceptable parameters of thinking will always take it as a given that the mechanisms of oligarchy and empire mustn't be interrupted or inconvenienced in any way. Differing opinions will be modeled on how those mechanisms should be advanced, but never if they should.

That's how come the renowned expert PhD pundit will often have a less truth-based worldview than your stoner flatmate with an eighth-grade education. Because they've been trained on both what to think and how to think, they'll pour all their intellect into defending lie-based worldviews.

The most dangerous extremists of our age are not radical jihadists, nor fundamentalist Christians, nor white supremacists, nor communists, nor anarchists, but mainstream adherents to the status quo politics that are murdering people around the world and driving us to armageddon.

Caitlin Johnstone is on the left. As my friend Tim says, it is completely impossible to tell left from right anymore. 

Mr and Mrs Johnson were booed (and cheered too) when they walked up the steps of St Paul's Cathedral to the Jubilee service yesterday

Here is the clip. 

I heard boos and some cheers but listening to another clip the boos were very loud and persistent. 

It has been suggested that some clips have been edited to make the boos seem louder. I don't know.

'When Queen Victoria opened the People’s Palace in the East End in 1887, she heard, she told her prime minister, Lord Salisbury, “a horrid noise . . . (quite new to the Queen’s ears) ‘booing’ she believes it is called”. Salisbury was reassuring. He saw it as London’s failing. “All that is worthless, worn out, or penniless naturally drifts to London.' (Lord Finkelstein in the Times today).

If only we Prime Ministers still spoke like that and if only we had a Tory prime Minister like Salisbury today.

A TV presenter called Carol Vorderman said on Twitter in reply to the video: 

‘Bring Your Own Boos. The message could not be clearer Boris.’ 

A good pun.

No Republic any time soon

 

Divine liturgy in the Antim monastery this morning.

 

Royal Air Force flypast yesterday spelt out 70.

'Germany Risks Becoming Sick Man of Europe Again as Woes Mount. Only Estonia is expected to post slower growth in 2022'

In the 70s and early 80s it was Great Britain that was the sick man and Germany and Japan the wunderkinden. Now Germany, as detailed in this Bloomberg item, and Europe is sick. Great Britain will be fine if she downplays NATO and concentrates on trade not wars.

I often disagree with Daniel Jupp, but he is right here.

'I’m not one of those people who think the British Royal Family secretly control the world. They can’t even stop the media revealing their tampon fantasies. They can’t stop gold digging lunatics like Diana and Meghan doing enormous damage to their reputation.
'They are so powerless that Prince Andrew becomes just about the only person to attend an Epstein party that everyone knows about.
'I think they do, despite the stupidities of individual members, a great deal of good as an institution. They prevent an additional layer of politicians, and that alone is a national service of great value. Much of their activity is worthy in the way that mind numbingly tedious small acts of kindness are worthy.
'I wouldn’t want to open a supermarket in Doncaster or host the Charity Raffle for the British Foundation for Skin Diseases. But they do. And it’s good that somebody does.
'I’m a Royalist because I don’t think you can be a serious conservative without wanting to preserve the living embodiment of more than one and a half thousand years of British history.
'The present Queen, for example, is directly descended from King Ine of Wessex. That’s a recorded lineage that literally goes back into near the misty origins of Englishness itself. Ine claimed descent from Anglo-Saxon gods. Other than the U.K. and Japan, how many nations have symbolic leaders who can claim a personal link to mythology? If you don’t think that’s cool, there’s something wrong with you.
That’s not to say I consider the present Queen’s reign a glorious one. 'It’s the opposite. It is 70 years of almost continual national decline, including the death of nearly every British value she herself possesses. Those 70 years have seen only two British Prime Ministers who were both loyal and good. Only two who were competent at anything other than corruption and self enrichment. The rest were all fools, crooks, charlatans and mountebanks, if not active and determined traitors. And we are where we are because of that.
'The present Queen chose to preserve the institution via neutrality. She would say or do nothing in contradiction of her ministers. The Royal power, already shrivelled to almost nothing, became a sword that never leaves the scabbard. Quietly, diligently, with great personal sacrifice and warmth, she did the little things, the charitable things, the things which nobody could question. But this in fact robbed the British people of their last line of defence. Every institution and every Parliament turned to crime, the crime of treason, while the Monarchy watched, and watched, and watched.
'She might not have been able to change a thing. She might not have been able to preserve the old verities and values, or steer by prodding her governments towards something other than the charted route of constant decline. But the stasis of her reign meant that no attempt was ever made. She was perhaps a shrewd monarch, sensing the end would come if she ever did stir. But how we needed a more active champion, above the stinking garbage offered by our main political parties, in those seven decades. For seventy years she played the role of a prisoner in golden robes whilst her Kingdom was robbed blind. secretly control the world. They can’t even stop the media revealing their tampon fantasies. They can’t stop gold digging lunatics like Diana and Meghan doing enormous damage to their reputation.
'They are so powerless that Prince Andrew becomes just about the only person to attend an Epstein party that everyone knows about.
'I think they do, despite the stupidities of individual members, a great deal of good as an institution. They prevent an additional layer of politicians, and that alone is a national service of great value. Much of their activity is worthy in the way that mind numbingly tedious small acts of kindness are worthy.
'I wouldn’t want to open a supermarket in Doncaster or host the Charity Raffle for the British Foundation for Skin Diseases. But they do. And it’s good that somebody does.
'I’m a Royalist because I don’t think you can be a serious conservative without wanting to preserve the living embodiment of more than one and a half thousand years of British history.
'The present Queen, for example, is directly descended from King Ine of Wessex. That’s a recorded lineage that literally goes back into near the misty origins of Englishness itself. Ine claimed descent from Anglo-Saxon gods. Other than the U.K. and Japan, how many nations have symbolic leaders who can claim a personal link to mythology? If you don’t think that’s cool, there’s something wrong with you.
'That’s not to say I consider the present Queen’s reign a glorious one. It’s the opposite. It is 70 years of almost continual national decline, including the death of nearly every British value she herself possesses. Those 70 years have seen only two British Prime Ministers who were both loyal and good. Only two who were competent at anything other than corruption and self enrichment. The rest were all fools, crooks, charlatans and mountebanks, if not active and determined traitors. And we are where we are because of that.
'The present Queen chose to preserve the institution via neutrality. She would say or do nothing in contradiction of her ministers. The Royal power, already shrivelled to almost nothing, became a sword that never leaves the scabbard. Quietly, diligently, with great personal sacrifice and warmth, she did the little things, the charitable things, the things which nobody could question. But this in fact robbed the British people of their last line of defence. Every institution and every Parliament turned to crime, the crime of treason, while the Monarchy watched, and watched, and watched.
'She might not have been able to change a thing. She might not have been able to preserve the old verities and values, or steer by prodding her governments towards something other than the charted route of constant decline. But the stasis of her reign meant that no attempt was ever made. She was perhaps a shrewd monarch, sensing the end would come if she ever did stir. But how we needed a more active champion, above the stinking garbage offered by our main political parties, in those seven decades. For seventy years she played the role of a prisoner in golden robes whilst her Kingdom was robbed blind.'

Turkey not Turkiye

News agency today:

Turkey’s government has sent a letter to the United Nations formally requesting that it be referred to as Türkiye, the state-run news agency has reported.
The move is seen as part of a push by Ankara to rebrand the country and dissociate it from the bird of the same name and negative connotations associated with it.

I hope this one, like the turkey, does not fly. I am very sorry the foreign powers agreed to the Shah's request in the 1930s, when Aryans were all the rage, to call Persia Iran.

We the English decide what to call foreign countries and places in our language, or should do. No more Mumbai or Yangon. 

We lost Constantinople.

The Americans who removed Trump now want to do the same to Putin

Biden and the part of the American defence establishment that plotted to undermine Donald Trump hope they can remove Vladimir Putin. 

I think they did so long before he invaded the Ukraine in this year. Did they do so before he invaded in 2014? 

It depends whom you mean - Obama ridiculed Romney in the 2012 debate when he said Russia was America's main defence threat - but people like Victoria Nuland are another story.

It was Donald Trump, interestingly, who armed Ukraine to the hilt - Obama was much more cautious.

Full Russian control of the Donbass is a matter of days away. America is now fighting Russia.

'German Lieutenant General (ret) Roland Kather, a former Kosovo Force (KFOR) commander and member of the NATO Military Committee (MC), the seniormost NATO military authority, said that “full [Russian] control of the Donbass is a matter of days … but preparations are already being made to go further.”'

This is from the first in a daily summary of the Ukrainian war in Asia Times. I have been following Sir Lawrence Freedman, Mark Galeotti and Major General Mick Ryan, but the first two of these are keen on a prolonged war. I don't quite trust their objectivity. Freedman thinks victory for Ukraine is possible.

In what is now a proxy war between Russia and America anything is possible.

On the other side this article by Caitlin Johnson from May 8 makes the case that Biden is the worst US President of all time. Readers know my view that Lincoln is that but Biden could be as bad as Lincoln or George W Bush. He could be leading the world to the edge of disaster or over the edge. 

I quote from the article:

Statements from the administration in fact indicate that they expect this war to drag on for a long time, making it abundantly clear that a swift end to minimize the death and destruction is not just uninteresting but undesirable for the US empire. Ukrainian media report that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Zelensky on behalf of NATO powers that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.

...In an alarmingly rapid pivot from the mass media’s earlier position that calling this a proxy war is merely an “accusation” promoted solely by Russia, we’re now seeing the use of that term becoming more and more common in authorized news outlets. The New Yorker came right out and declared that the US is in “a full proxy war with Russia” the other day, and US congressman Seth Moulton recently told Fox News that the US is at war with Russia through a proxy.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to realize we’re at war, and we’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians,” Moulton said. “We’re fundamentally at war, although it’s somewhat through proxy, with Russia. And it’s important that we win.”

H.M Queen Elizabeth II is more popular in Romania than anywhere else, including the UK

 

H.M. the Queen's Platinum Jubilee bank holiday starts in England today with much ceremonial and partying. 

The Queen is more popular in Romania than in any other country according to this survey.

The Queen's Platinum Jubilee matters, says John Winterson Richards. I quote him, with permission.

We are unlikely to see anything like it again. By this I mean not only that, at my present age, I am unlikely to live to see another Monarch reign for 70 years. I mean that we are unlikely to come together as a nation to celebrate anything anymore.
Britain is no longer a United Kingdom. We are deeply divided. It is not simply the normal difference of opinions - the sign of a healthy democracy. On the contrary, it seems we are not allowed to have opinions on a lot of subjects these days.

Going to Hell in a handcart. Fifteenth century glass at Ticehurst, East Sussex

 

Give peace a chance

Yesterday I happened on an article from the Washington Post from several years ago, about racism among Evangelical Christians as it happens, but it could have been about anything, and was astonished at the extraordinary bias, distortions and untruths it contained. 

The WP and New York Times back in the 1990s were serious papers, but not any more. 

The idea of believing what they and the rest of the American media say about Ukraine or anything else political (excepting to a limited extent the Murdoch press) is a bad idea. 

To be on the same side as Anne Applebaum, the FT and the Economist, which treated the government capture of East Aleppo from Al Qaeda as a dark day for civilisation is equally a mistake.

But, on the other hand, even though Anne Applebaum, the FT and the Economist represent big dangers to Western civilisation, Putin and Xi are even worse.

Many people whom I respect, like Charles Moore, say that if Russia half wins in Ukraine that will endanger the world. 

If America wins (because Nato is America's empire) that will endanger the world too. It will be a huge victory for globalism and the pseudo West.

Let's have a negotiated peace as soon as possible, but one is not possible yet. 

I fear America will give Ukraine the hope that complete victory is possible and the result will be the destruction of Ukraine. Already a country which thirty years ago had 50 million inhabitants now has half that number.

An interesting article about the war is here, headlined 

The War in Ukraine Can Be Over If the U.S. Wants It

and this one is by my favourite journalist, Christopher Caldwell, in (oddly enough) the NYT. 

The American establishment (or deep state) is not united on the war. Part of it wants a short war. Let's hope that part wins.