Quotations

"May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude.” Leonard Cohen

'Frommer believed that travel should be demanding, both physically and cerebrally. He saw it as one of the finest methods of self-education. Early on he realised the intrepid traveller’s essential truth: the less you spend, the more you enjoy. Dormitories, hostels and even a geriatric ward were his lodgings of choice. Luxury hotels were to be avoided. “They insulate you totally from the life and people of a country,” he said, while sightseeing was “inane”.' Daily Telegraph obituary for Arthur Frommer

"My ancestors were puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time." Garrison Keilor

“If you started measuring global temperatures from medieval times there's been a general cooling of about four degrees." Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist, in 2018

Popcorn

Knowing that war would break out in Ukraine President Iohannis put together a coalition of the centre right and left. The Romanian electorate has now rejected the government, the leaders of both the big parties and the whole less than mediocre existing political class including even the so-called far right party, AUR.

It is richly comic to watch all the establishment parties be smashed simultaneously. 

Both candidates who will compete in the final round are anti system idealists, in their very different ways, but Elena Lasconi is only opposed to the Romanian system which she wants to bring into line with Western Europe. She is the anti system and pro system candidate, the candidate of social and economic liberalism, business and the urban university graduates. She represents a European future, Calin Georgescu resembles Viktor Orban, Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Junior. The European Union will punish Romania very severely if he wins.

That was a surprise

Good lord! I had not even heard of Călin Georgescu until my very interesting and nice young waiter on Friday appealed eloquently to us to vote for him. 

A President who doesn't obey Washington or Berlin? Is it possible? 

No it is not.  

The media and the Americans will try very hard to prevent him winning but the majority of voters would certainly vote against him anyway. 

It's the economy, stupid.

Romanian politicians are happy to obey America and the European Union, which is very good for attracting foreign investors, but many Romanians are not. I knew this from talking to taxi drivers who blame America in part or wholly for the war in Ukraine. I risk sounding like Nancy Pelosi saying 'Donald Trump is - not- going to be President of the United States' but a man who says pre-war mystic fascist Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was a great Romanian will not be President of Romania.

It is not exactly democratic that he did so well because another sovereignist candidate was disqualified on dubious grounds and that he was in trouble with the law for praising Codreanu. What happened to free speech in Romania? 

I wonder if the politicians will listen to the opinions of the 30 percent of the population who back the sovereignists or (more likely) treat them with the contempt Romanians usually have for peasants and the working class.

It's a protest vote and just possibly people in the incoming administration in Washington will hear the protest and take it into account.

The news

My taxi driver blamed the Ukrainian war on Nato expansion (a majority of cab drivers do), blamed America for its intervention in Syria and Afghanistan and divided the blame between Israelis and Arabs. He thought Margaret Thatcher damaged British society enormously. We agreed on most things, especially on the need for women to have more children. I suppose, as Baudelaire said, love is a crime that requires an accomplice. Every regime, he said, has its good and bad points. He thought Biden the worst US President for thirty years but there I demured. Biden though absolutely terrible beyond words is not as bad as George W Bush.

The Daily Telegraph this morning disgusts me more utterly than normally

It's simply propaganda, whether about Ukraine or Israel, and probably reflects the MI6 line. Its fury at the ICC for issuing a warrant for the arrest of Netanyahu contrasts with its enthusiasm for the one for Putin's arrest. I am trying to cancel my subscription. 

Yesterday I renewed my subscription to Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz to find much more objective news. 

Quotations

Democrat supporting US journalist Cenk Uygur:

'Sarah Palin was very nervous before her VP debate with Biden in 2008 and then she realized she just had to memorize the talking points on each issue and give that answer no matter what the specific question was. Are we sure that's not what Kamala Harris did this entire campaign?' 

Glenn Greenwald

@ggreenwald

The US and UK are now actively working on the missiles they provided Ukraine to launch inside Russia. Ukraine can't launch them on their own. They need US intelligence and military support to guide them. Putin knows this. Would the US be OK with that?

Absurdly the international deep state apparatchiks say Tulsi Gabbard might give classified information to the Kremlin

2022 

 

"Dear Presidents Putin, Zelensky, and Biden. It's time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love, for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country-- no military alliance with NATO or Russia—and therefore alleviate the legitimate security concerns of both US and NATO countries as well as Russia, because there would be no Russian or NATO troops on each other's non-Baltic borders. This would allow the Ukrainian people to live in peace." 


October 

"Kamala Harris was in Europe a few days before Putin invaded Ukraine, speaking very clearly and loudly about how Ukraine should become a member of NATO. This was one of the main instigators, crossing the red line that Russia, during Putin's reign and before him, has held."For any objective-minded person, you can see why they wouldn't want NATO missiles sitting in Ukraine, the country with the biggest border with Russia. Kamala Harris has put us, the American people, in this position, where we are closer to the brink of World War III and nuclear war than we ever have been before. We are staring down the barrel of nuclear Armageddon because of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden." 

American revolution

The gallant British and the brave American Tories lost the war of 1776-83. The only American conservatives  were then deported.

We should have freed the slaves and won with their help, then executed the Founding Fathers. 

Our defeat led to the French Revolution and eventually to Marxism, girls in slacks and all the horrors of the modern world.

Since then all Americans have been liberals, except for the somewhat influential Marxists and the insignificant fascists.

Now England, of course, is an American colony.

Perhaps Mr Trump will be an isolationist and set us (and the rest of the world) free, but I know he won't.

Quotations

Ed Miliband, after losing the 2015 election (which meant David Cameron had to fulfil his promise to call a Brexit referendum), said: "When you win, everything you did was an act of genius and when you lose, everything you did was the work of a fool."


Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: "Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career."


Mario Vargas Llosa: "We live as many lives as we read books."

A. N. Wilson: “Being Russian, unless you are preternaturally stupid or wicked, produces violent inner tensions and conflicts, reflected in nearly all the great imaginative geniuses to emerge from Russia in the last two centuries. On the one hand, you know that you have been born into a ‘God-bearing’ nation, whose destiny is to keep burning the flame of truth while the other nations languish in decadence. (The truth may be Orthodox Christianity or the creeds of Marxist-Leninism, but the feeling is the same.) You know that the Russians are best at everything from poetry to gymnastics, and that they invented everything: ballet, bicycles, the internal combustion engine. You know that Russia has more soul than any other country – that its birch avenues, its snows, its ice, its summers are all the more glorious than the manifestations of nature in more benighted countries. There is only one drawback, which is that it is completely horrible to live there.” 

Is Trump America's De Gaulle?

Tom Gallagher once asked me this and Richard Vinen, a fine historian, explores the idea in Unherd.


I'd prefer to say he is the antithesis of Franklin D Roosevelt. That is a good thing, in case you were in doubt.

When I was 19 the joke was "Ronald Reagan's hero is Calvin Coolidge, Nancy Reagan's is Calvin Klein".

It is Ronald Reagan's achievement that the joke is no longer funny because liking Coolidge is respectable.

I have come to join his fan club.

Donald Trump has certain things in common with Silent Cal, when it comes to policy not personality. Perhaps he should bring tiger cubs into the Oval Office.

The BBC's Katty Kay said in 2016 that Trump was really a Democrat but he turned out to be one of the very few Republicans still standing, by which I mean Coolidge Republicans.

Trump is right-wing but left and right no longer mean very much and the parties in most countries no longer make sense. 

My favourite journalists are mostly leftists like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Tahibbi, Max Blumenthal, Patrick Cockburn and Caitlin Johnstone, on foreign affairs. 

They are far more like my romantic Toryism than any British Conservative politician. 

Theresa May was to the left of Tony Blair. 

Boris Johnson was the most left-wing Prime Minister since Harold Wilson.

This is from Allister Heath in yesterdays' Telegraph. (He is usually very good, but not when he rejoiced at Liz Truss's budget.)

"America is now Trump country, at war with progressivism, open borders, international bureaucracies, net zero, Jihadism, military adventurism and the Left-wing media. The old order is dead, never to be resuscitated; for better or for worse, American politics has finally caught up with globalisation, deindustrialisation, the resurrection of history (contra Francis Fukuyama) and the internet’s explosive rise.

"Donald Trump is 78, but he is a very modern politician with an intuitive grasp of how social fragmentation and the rise and fall of institutions can work for him. He has learnt to bypass network news and The New York Times. His brand of populist, multi-racial, working-class, highly online, Right-wing politics has captured the new centre-ground. It now looks as if 2016 was a mere dry run, derailed by Covid; 2024 is the real deal, a revolutionary moment, a reconstitution and realignment of American and Western politics around fresh principles, many excellent but some much more malign."

Another question is: is Putin Russia's De Gaulle? They do have certain things in common, though very much that separates the Christian gentleman from the ex-KGB thief.

A famous victory

They said I'm going to start wars – I'm going to end wars. 

Donald Trump in his victory address at Mar-a-Lago

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday that Donald Trump will be tested on his statements that he can stop the war within hours.

Any objective observer could see Kamala was unqualified for the job. Even Kamala at times, behind the cackle laugh and the word salads and the baffling array of accents, seemed to know she wasn’t up to it.

But they pressed ahead with her anyway. In the end, it didn’t seem to matter to the virtue signalling Left that Kamala’s position had been achieved by chance to a greater extent than anyone since Lyndon Johnson. That, a diversity hire for VP, she was able to fall into the presidency slot because Joe Biden needed to be put out to pasture with no time for a contest.

Trump wins decisively

Trump has won Pennsylvania and Fox News has declared him the winner of the US presidential election. CNN says he needs 4 more electoral college votes, which inevitably he will obtain. The Biden-Harris administration deserves this. It's been almost as bad as the Bush-Cheney administration.

Quotations

“You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Israel in trouble

“The REAL enemy that we have is not Iran…is not Hezbollah….is not Hamas... it's from within, the messianic, crazy, extreme groups of Israelis that think that they can kick out the Palestinians and annex the territories. Netanyahu depends on them… he allows them to do things which are totally intolerable and unacceptable.” Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last night.

'Netanyahu, Gallant and Halevi are gambling with Israel’s very existence… they never think for a moment about the day after. They are disconnected from reality and exercise no judgment … When the catastrophe strikes, it will already be too late … These three megalomaniacs imagine that they are capable of destroying both Hamas and Hizbullah and ending the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran … They want to accomplish everything through military pressure, but in the end, they won’t accomplish anything. They have put Israel on the brink of two impossible situations [–] the outbreak of a full-fledged war in the Middle East, [and secondly] continuing the war of attrition. In either situation, Israel won’t be able to survive for long. Only a diplomatic agreement has the power to extricate us from the quagmire into which these three men have dragged us.' IDF (retired) Major General Itzhak Brik

'The consensus in the defense establishment over the progress of the war is surprisingly broad. All senior officials, from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on down, have been speaking in near-unison for a week. After a dizzying series of military and intelligence successes in the past three months, the war in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon has just about exhausted itself, with only a few necessary measures remaining. Once these are completed, it would be best to try to reach agreements that will end the fighting in the north and south and include the release of all hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.' Ha'aretz two days ago

“I met many [neocons] at the Hudson Institute, where [I] had worked for five years in the mid ‘70s; some of them, or their fathers, were Trotskyists. They picked up Trotsky’s idea of permanent revolution. That is, an unfolding revolution – whereas Trotsky said what began in Soviet Russia was going to spread around the world: The neocons adapted this and said, No, the permanent Revolution is the American Empire. It’s going to expand, and expand, and nothing can stop us – to the entire world”. Profesor Michael Hudson quoted by Alistair Crooke 

Hallowe'en

Hallowe'en does not have origins in paganism, Satanism, Samhain, Druidic festivals, or the occult. It's purely Catholic, just like Christmas, and like Christmas was commercialised by American big business.The Feast of All Saints was originally only a local feast day in Rome. Pope Gregory III transferred the Feast of All Saints from May 13th to November 1st. Pope Gregory IV then extended this feast to the Universal Church. This was before the Great Schism, when the Orthodox recognised the primacy of the Pope. The Americans received Hallowe'en originally from England. The English Halloween tradition was apple dunking but I never came across it.

Quotations

“It is the perversity of the Tory party to want to get us out of the European Union when, of course, we’re much more than ever unlikely to be able to look after ourselves as an independent state because of the quality of our political system. The people who want to get us out are obviously of an undesirable kind. That the future should depend on Farage is part of the sickness. The real horror is for him to have any influence at all.” Peregrine Worsthorne quoted in the New Statesman in 2016. His friend Auberon Waugh supported the UK  belonging to the EEC and EU for the same reason.

Auberon Waugh was appalled when he went up to Oxford, he recalled, “by how few public schoolboys there were, appalled by the number of earnest, working-class youths whose humourless faces betokened young men on the make.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Harvard 1978 - what a great man he was

'The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other. However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much

News

"Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that Israel "will encourage the voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens." Western diplomats told Haaretz that Israel has not done enough to quiet concerns that it is acting to remove the entire civilian population from northern Gaza." Haaretz 21 October 2024

Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein opposed the creation of a Jewish state

After he had been asked by Dr. Chaim Koffler of the Jewish organisation Keren Hajessod to sign a petition condemning the Arab riots of 1929, in which more than a hundred Jewish settlers were killed, Sigmund Freud replied as follows.

Quotations

"History knows no resting places and no plateaus. All societies of which history informs us went through periods of decline; most of them eventually collapsed." Henry Kissinger

"The only time anyone should watch the news is to study how psychological manipulation works on the general public." Anonymous, on Facebook

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;

Quotations

"To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up."
Ogden Nash's words apply not just to marriage but to life in general. Please never say 'I told you so.'

What the British thought about immigrants ten years ago

The British authorities blame the far right for the recent riots, but 67% of British people think immigration policy in recent years has “a great deal” or “fair amount” of responsibility” for the unrest, according to a new YouGov poll. 

The British Future survey, which had a very large sample, was published in December 2014. It showed that 25% of British adults thought that all immigrants, legal or illegal, should be repatriated. 52% disagreed and 23% didn't answer. 

These figures are here at p.17.  

23% of the population back then were very far right indeed and the silence of another quarter is eloquent.

Quotations

"I am never more serious than when I am joking." Robert Frost

"I’m incredibly proud of my brother. Selfishly I will have him back to enjoy whatever time we have left.” Frank Biden talking to the TV channel CBS, making it sound like Joe Biden is very far gone, but we knew that.

Tyrannies prefer foreigners to citizens

"It is also a habit of tyrants to prefer the company of aliens to that of citizens at table and in society; citizens, they feel, are enemies, but aliens will offer no opposition.” Aristotle on Tyranny. I am ashamed that I have not read it and will quickly. Clearly it is highly topical.

Today is the late Queen Mother's birthday

Today is the birthday of the late Queen Mother, who was born in 1900 and died in 2002. Here is a painting of her by Laszlo from 1925 when she was Duchess of York. 

She was a close friend of my beloved Mgr Alfred Gilbey who was born in the same year, 1900, and each year they competed in a race down the stairs of the Travellers' Club which by convention always resulted in a tie. 

The Duke of Windsor, Edward VIII, who by his abdication made her queen, referred to her as Cooky. 

The Queen was a good Queen to the King and his subjects. She was heartily loved, especially for her liking for alcohol and racing. 

She was very slightly a royal edition of Giles' Grandma.

She had very old fashioned views about race and inaugurated the statue to Bomber Harris erected with money raised by the public.

At a country house Friday to Monday, discussing P.G. Wodehouse, she said 'People say he's not true to life, but look around you.'

She said the BBC radio soap opera 'The Archers' was the only way she had to know how the middle classes lived.

The Duchess of Windsor never loved the man who gave up the throne for her and deceived him with the former champagne salesman Ribbentrop, whose views on Jews she largely shared. He remains the only member of the Travellers' Club to have been hanged.

A droll headline in the Wall Street Journal

 

Lennonism is the big danger to Christian civilisation, not Leninism

Przemysław Babiarz, a Polish commentator, was suspended by the state broadcaster TVP for criticizing John Lennon's song 'Imagine' during the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, calling it “a vision of communism.” He remarked, “A world without heaven, nations, and religion. This is a vision of peace that is supposed to embrace everyone. Unfortunately, this is a vision of communism.”
Info: Yahoo

Worse than Watergate

Arnaud Bertrand:

Ex-CIA agent Philip Agee: "In CIA, we didn't give a hoot about democracy. If a country did not cooperate with us, democracy didn't mean a thing, and I don't think it means a thing today." 


Scott Adams@ScottAdamsSays Jul 29


Hiding Biden's mental condition is worse than Watergate. Way worse.

(I agree with that but did not know that the expression 'worse than Watergate' had been used often in the past in America.)

Sanctions fail

According to Alistair Crooke, who was often right about the Syrian war, one egregious folly was the American belief that Russia could be defeated by economic sanctions. Do they read no history? When did sanctions ever overturn a government? Why are the Americans doing untold harm by sanctions against Syria, for heaven's sake? To hurt Iran but Iran is not a threat. Or sanctions against Iran herself, Cuba absurdly, the Taliban in Afghanistan or Venezuela? Why?


The decision of Ukraine to stop negotiating with Putin was disastrous. David P. Goldman tweeted recently:

'It wasn't only Biden who believed that sanctions would destroy Russia. A couple of weeks later, I attended a private conference with several former Republican cabinet members, who all believed the same thing. We shouldn't give Putin an off-ramp, one of them said: Putin and Xi are locked in a car headed downhill toward a brick wall and we should let them crash. The whole of the uniparty US foreign policy elite signed on to this idiocy. Now that Putin has handed their heads to them, they want to double down to cover up their blunders.'

I think coup is the wrong word

A senior Washington official told Seymour Hersh, “Obama called Biden after breakfast [on July 20] and said, ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th Amendment,'”  Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries were  directly involved. There was nothing noble or self sacrificing about Biden's decision not to run. He had no choice. He is to be condemned for deciding to run again when he was clearly unfit. Now the media is trying to create huge enthusiasm for Kamala Harris.

Demonic forces at the Olympic Games

The spokesman for the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch was reported in the newspapers yesterday saying the parody of the Last Supper at the Olympic Games 'is the direct consequence of influence of a demonic nature'. 

I am glad some Catholic priests said similar things. I bet Archbishop Welby didn't.

All men dream: but not equally.

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

T.E. Lawrence, in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Yahya Sinwar of Hamas is such a man.

Quotations

"Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies. And when they get in a frenzy, they will sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their cruel and stupid habit, and there is no cure for it." Hunter S. Thompson

"To be clear, there are millions of intense Christians who vote Republican to defend the creed. Just not enough to elect a president. For that, it is an arithmetical must to bolt on the kind of Trump fan that I am likelier to encounter. These characters react as I do upon seeing an ancient and sublime place of worship (“What a darling Sofitel it would make”) and aren’t just liberal so much as outright incurious about people’s domestic doings. Their grievance isn’t with the cultural settlement of the 1960s, but with that of the 2000s, if that means woke-ism, trade and a foreign-born population above 10 per cent of the total." Janan Gamesh, star writer at the Financial Times

It WAS intended as a parody of the Last Supper.

I was wrong it seems and the controversial scene in the Paris Olympics opening ceremony was intended as a parody of the Last Supper. 

Even if it were not so it is a very odd beginning to games which are intended to be about health and strength. 

The original Olympics were about manliness and so was the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 but the next one in 1900 had women taking part. Some say women were banned from the sacred precinct where the ancient games took place but Pausinias wrote that virgins could view the competitions, but married women had to remain on the south side of the river Alpheus.

Those early games had no opening ceremonies and perhaps as well.

The participants in the original Olympics were completely relaxed about homosexuality, of course, and drag was an essential part of the Athenian drama because, as in Elizabeth I's reign, only men were allowed to act.

Is this picture blasphemous?

 

Clearly not. It is mocking the enemies of Christ.

Was the scene of drag artists sitting round a table in the Paris Olympics opening ceremony blasphemy? I didn't watch it but was it actually mocking Leonardo da Vinci's the Last Supper? 

From the picture it didn't remind me at all of the Last Supper and the official Twitter/X account for the Olympics wrote it was actually an “interpretation of the Greek god Dionysus”. 

Is the newspaper outrage all my Aunt Fanny? I think so.

Don't be manipulated by the media, gentle reader.

Quotations

"I know
I'm not attractive
to everyone
but
I
only want
to be attractive
to the ones
that see
the poetry
in me"
~Frida Kahlo

'France, from "the eldest daughter of the Church" to the teenage daughter. Or as Karl Rahner said, modernity is the “runaway son” of Christianity.' Massimo Faggioli

"How right it was to begin the day, as men once did, with a prayer, a call for help! Ignorant of whom to address ourselves to, we will end by grovelling before the first cracked god to come along" - Emile Cioran

We live in an age of narcissists: Biden is as narcissistic as Obama or Trump and much less competent than either

By the way, I am not talking about malignant narcissists who resemble psychopaths, just people motived by vanity.

 This is Freddie Gay two days ago, quoting the senile US President:

“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term,” he said. “But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”

"Oh, the humility! Everybody knows, however, that Biden should have given this speech years ago, when he was less far gone. But his “personal ambition”, his lust for power and his epic self-regard meant that he refused to give way until he had no choice....

"But the American people have not chosen Kamala Harris. She would not have won the Democratic primary through democratic means. She has instead been foisted on a party that is desperate to stop Donald Trump and doesn’t really know how to do it. “History is in your hands,” concluded Biden. “The power’s in your hands.” In the large and crowded field of Biden lies, that stands out as the biggest."

I agree completely.

We live in an age of narcissists: Messrs Biden, Obama, Trump, Macron, Johnson, Liz Truss and Theresa May (she was entirely motivated by vanity). Even the Pope has this vice. 

I have not detected it in Kamala.

I can't think of US presidents before Obama who were narcissists, any earlier British prime ministers or any pope. 

I suppose it's a symptom of what the Kremlin in the Cold War used to call Western decadence. The West was not so very decadent them, but is now.

I could say much more about Joe Biden's inadequacies, his indecisive, weak leadership, his contribution to Russia invading Ukraine and to what is happening in Gaza. His sister said he was not mentally fit to be president in 2020, though she changed her mind recently. 

Then there is what his daughter wrote in her diary about showering with him.

A number of feminists in 2020 said they believed the rape allegation in 2020, although they were still going to vote for him.

Now even MI6 outlets like Con Coughlin in the Telegraph think Kamala Harris a bigger threat to the West than Trump. Maybe that's UK deep state thinking, that Trump accepts Nato and will not make peace with Russia, while Miss Harris does not like Netanyahu. Perhaps they think the Palestinians somehow endanger British interests more than Russia (obviously neither do).

I hope Donald Trump, with all his faults, wins because he might end this stupid, pointless cold war with Russia and China. 

As for the Middle East, there is no point in hoping for peace there. 

It is the tragic legacy of a mistake in British colonial policy which cannot be undone.

David Goldman writing as 'Spengler' in Asia Times yesterday

In 2022, I argued that a demographic imperative—the declining population of non-Muslim parts of Asia versus the growth of Muslim populations—would push India, Russia and China toward a strategic rapprochement.

The Ukraine war has driven these prospective rivals together. India’s bottomless appetite for discounted Russian oil propelled its imports from Russia to US$67 billion in 2023 from only $8.7 billion in 2022. India, moreover, acts as Russia’s distribution agent, re-selling Russian oil and distillates to third countries.

It is noteworthy that although India and China have an ongoing border dispute, India has never joined the US and its allies in condemning China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim population. The United States meanwhile has accused India of human rights abuses against its Muslim minority.

The article is here.

How much misery and destruction American sanctimony causes in the world. 

I admit that this was a charge levelled against England when we went around suppressing slavery and suttee. This time it's true and England is America's most loyal satellite.

I have a feeling Kamala Harris will defeat Donald Trump

I have a feeling Kamala Harris will defeat Donald Trump. 

She knows how to come across on video. She looks like she'd be amusing to have a drink with. She has a wonderful, exuberant laugh and is good looking. She is another generation from Mr Biden and Mr Trump.  

I imagine young women will often love here.

She is not fresh but seems it. 

She gives no signs of being intelligent. She must be more so than President Biden but she lacks his animal cunning.

She was a prosecutor, not a human rights lawyer, which is to her credit.

She comes of bad parents who, having had the good luck to be allowed to immigrate to the USA and be made American citizens, were nevertheless left-wing activists, protesting against the country which admitted them. 

Her father was a Marxist academic, exactly the sot of immigrant who should not have been allowed into the country.

She has been a terrible failure as border czar, has horrible opinions on most things, but after presidents like George W Bush and old man Biden who can say she is not able to do the job?

She is in hock to big business and billionaires, but that is true of almost all US politicians, including J D Vance. (I wonder where the $80 million in donations to the Harris campaign came from - is some of it from foreign governments?)

On the other hand, I might be wrong. It seems Presidents Obama and Biden think she can't debate and can't win. 

(Oh dear. After watching this I see she is indeed an idiot. And has a voice that is unbearable. Still, Reagan was an idiot savant.)

What a strange system the Americans have which throws up such odd presidents. 

In some ways it's very corrupt and undemocratic. America is bought by billionaires and foreign governments. Its media are shameless propaganda. In some ways (good and bad) it's very much more democratic than anywhere in Europe. Someone like Mr Trump, who says what people think, could not have entered politics and within months won power in Europe.

Why is America making economic war on any of these countries?

 From the Washington Post.

American oligarchy

The American presidential election in November will be the first since 1976 not to have a Biden, Bush or Clinton on the ballot. 

It will however have a Kennedy and he'd make a very good President. He'd rid the Democrats of woke. Unfortunately the Democrat establishment sabotaged his attempt to run against Biden and he left the party.

The election will be only the second since 1948 not to have one of five names, Biden, Bush, Clinton, Nixon or Dole, on the ballot. The other one was 1964.

I don't think Joe Biden is a good man

Now suddenly power has ebbed from him and we see the foreign policy disasters of his administration as the result of his senescence.