The old days

My father and grandmother in my 1960s and 197Os childhood and adolescence thought things were better in the old days, though they were the first to say that people were very hard up in the old days. I never believe them until I came to live in Romania in 1998, when it had the standard of living of England circa 1949. Then I saw that they were right. The old days were better.

[In case you doubt my working class credentials my grandmother was a cashier at the Co-op, whose left-wing politics she despised as she did Labour. Ian Smith and Enoch Powell were her heroes.]

Quotations

"Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. I preferred her to sceptres and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her. Neither did I liken to her any priceless gem, because all gold is but a little sand in her sight, and silver will be accounted as clay before her. I loved her more than health and beauty, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases. All good things came to me along with her, and in her hands uncounted wealth." Book of Wisdom 7:7-11

"Netanyahu's government is not seeking to revive negotiations for a hostage release deal and is pushing for the gradual annexation of large parts of Gaza, senior defense officials told Haaretz." Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz today

Quotations

'I am the flail of God. Had you not created great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.' Genghis Khan

“I don’t like eloquence. If it isn’t effective enough to pierce your hide, it’s tiresome; and if it is effective enough, then it muddles your thoughts." The Continental Op in Dashiell Hammett's pulp fiction story “Zigzags of Treachery” (1924)

“Her eyes were blue, her mouth red, her teeth white, and she had a nose. Without getting steamed up over the details, she was nice.” Another story by Hammett

'The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.' Margaret Atwood.

'If you care about preserving a distinctive British or English culture, and not just a generic “this could be any liberal democracy” brand of liberalism, the BBC is the only game in town.' Stephen Bush, Financial Times 6 October 2024

Quotations

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Cardinal Sarah in April 2019 in an interview with French journalist Nicolas Diat

“It is a false exegesis to use the Word of God to promote migration. God never wanted these heartbreaks."

"The church cannot cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration." 

“As during the fall of Rome, elites are only concerned to increase the luxury of their daily life and the peoples are being anesthetized by ever more vulgar entertainment. … The barbarians are already inside the city.”

”If Europe disappears, and with it the priceless values of the Old Continent, Islam will invade the world and we will completely change culture, anthropology and moral vision.” 

More here. 

 

Quotations

"People talk about grandiose plans to "reshape the Middle East" at the moment, but to be honest I think it's more likely that, by the time this is over, it will just be more of the same except that Iran will now have the bomb." Philippe Lemoine

"God is a fire that warms and kindles the heart and inward parts. Hence, if we feel in our hearts the cold which comes from the devil – for the devil is cold – let us call on the Lord. He will come to warm our hearts with perfect love, not only for Him but also for our neighbour, and the cold of him who hates the good will flee before the heat of His countenance." St. Seraphim of Sarov

"The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk— I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind."
Rudyard Kipling

“The horror of progress can only be measured by someone who has known a landscape before and after progress has transformed it.” Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Only the dead have seen the end of war (Santayana, not Plato)

“There are some commentators and even some people within the defence establishment who raised the question: Why the hell not hit the nuclear military programme? A little bit more than a decade ago, I was probably the most hawkish person in Israeli leadership arguing that it was worth considering very seriously, because there was an actual capability to delay them by several years. That’s not the case right now, because Iran is a de facto threshold country. They do not have yet a weapon – it may take them a year to have one, and even half a decade to have a small arsenal. Practically speaking, you cannot easily delay them in any significant manner.” Ehud Barak on Wednesday. He is now 82.

"A nuclear-armed Iran would bring stability to the region." Professor John Mearsheimer

'Our job is to keep the Palestinians radicalized. Most of them would settle in a moment for peace, some deal that will let them get on with their lives. We need to keep them angry.' Saleh al-Arouri, a Hamas leader who took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities and was killed in Lebanon by a drone in February, speaking in March 2007 to Bronwen Maddox.

"According to their conservative estimate, at least 118,908 people have been killed in Gaza through direct violence, starvation, and disease, and they say that the real death toll is almost certainly higher than that. This estimate represents a loss of life nearly three times greater than the current official count from Gaza’s Ministry of Health." Responsible Statecraft referring to the detailed appendix to a letter published two days ago by 99 American health workers who served in Gaza.

“I also want to thank your father, Vice President Dick Cheney, for his support and for what he has done to serve our country." Kamala Harris, at a rally with Liz Cheney on Thursday

'I mention a 2019 essay in which he called Donald Trump a good president and wonder if he will be cheering him on in this US election too. “Yes,” he says. “Trump won’t start wars,” he adds, topping up our glasses. What if he stops supporting Ukraine? “That’s good,” Houellebecq says. But Ukrainians want to liberate their territory, I say. “What do I care? At the start of the war, I was surprised because I thought Ukraine was Russian,” he says. “It’s better for nature to take its course,” he adds in the spirit of might is right. “People who have humanitarian ideas are a catastrophe. It doesn’t work and motivations are doubtful.”' Interview with Michel Houellebecq in The Financial Times, 13 September 2024

Quotations

"Show me a man who enjoyed his schooldays and I'll show you a bully and a bore." Robert Morley

"Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot." Holly Golightly in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's

American empire

July 2023 as the Ukrainians were being slaughtered in the failed offensive and the US complained Ukraine was too "casualty averse", Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post why this war was successful: "Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance." David Ignatius, Washington Post, June 2023, quoted on Saturday by Glenn Greenwald

Most dramatic events in the Middle East since October 7 last year

"September 27th is the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough. I have spent countless hours studying Hezbollah and there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade them was possible." Jared Kushner

"Obviously, the extraordinary events of the past fortnight have been widely reported, but their significance has been grossly underplayed. Taken together, what with the pagers and the walkie-talkies and the killing of leader after terrorist leader, they are Israel’s greatest success since 1967’s Six Day War." Charles Moore

R.I.P. Dame Maggie Smith

Here are Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams reading Death in Leamington to Sir John Betjeman. It's my favourite of his poems, the one that certainly deserves to live. 

They read it well but not nearly as well as I do, in my head.

Quotations

Talmud Enjoyer @jew_AndAhalfMen

If Nasrallah wanted to fight the Zionists, he should’ve just bombed his own headquarters himself

'"We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence." 

'Pascal’s description of this particular misery could be very easily applied to any of the social media platforms. There is a great disconnect from reality when we interact with the internet, and even when we use it as a tool. But it is rarely a tool. Rather, it is a form of manipulation and behaviour modification. The absurd and sorrowful part of it is that it seems inescapable.

Quotations

 'Under the liberal pre-war planning] system, Cambridge’s huge success in life sciences would have allowed it to grow, both up and out, ‘connected by new train lines, trams, tubes, and roads. It would likely have a population of at least a million today, just as Glasgow grew from a population of 70,000 in 1800 to over 700,000 in 1900 to facilitate its world-leading shipbuilding industry.’ Ed West

Talmud Enjoyer @jew_AndAhalfMen

If Nasrallah wanted to fight the Zionists, he should’ve just bombed his own headquarters himself

'"We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence." 

Quotations

'How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.' Marcus Aurelius 

'Love is what makes growing up bearable.' Eve Pollard

'The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.' Graham Greene

'Punishment should be delivered in a swift and brutal manner, while rewards should be dispersed in small amounts over time.' Machiavelli

'You gotta have a body.' Jayne Mansfield

Quotations

"It is entirely conceivable that life's splendour forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from our view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons."
Franz Kafka, Diary, 18 October 1921

"Only the educated are free." Epictetus

"What do you want liberation from? What is there to be proud of? I don't believe in rights for homosexuals." Quentin Crisp to Peter Tatchell in 1974

"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be." Voltaire

"Those who travel about England for their pleasure, or, for that matter, about any part of Western Europe, rightly associate with such travel the pleasure of history; for history adds to a man, giving him, as it were, a great memory of things—like a human memory, but stretched over a far longer space than that of one human life. It makes him, I do not say wise and great, but certainly in communion with wisdom and greatness."
Hilaire Belloc, First and Last (1911)

Quotations

"Walking is man's best medicine." Hippocrates

"Nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man." The Reverend Dr Gaster in Thomas Love Peacock's Headlong Hall

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries."  A.A. Milne

Interesting

From Ned Donovan's blog.

Since Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 a tradition developed, the origin of which is slightly unclear, that any slave who touched the British flag would immediately be free and granted protection from future slavery by the King or Queen of the time. As flags can sometimes be quite high up, this legend evolved to allow someone to instead touch a flagpole and receive the same magic effect.

Netanyahu is "seeking to run out the clock until the American election"

US officials told the New York Times that Prime Benjamin Netanyahu is "seeking to run out the clock until the American election", meaning he will postpone a deal over the captives held in Gaza until the election in order not to help Kamala Harris.

Swedes at Poltava

The Russians want us to believe that they killed many Swedes at Poltava three days ago and this is why the Swedish Foreign Minister has suddenly resigned, but there is no evidence for this.

Poltava means a lot to Russians, Ukrainians, Swedes and anyone who knows some history or knows Dr Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes.

On what Foundation stands the Warrior’s Pride?
How just his Hopes let Swedish Charles decide;