Quotations

"The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy." Elon Musk

 

"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.'

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. 

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. 

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.

Elon Musk is right about Ukraine

Elon Musk@elonmusk:

What I said over 2 years ago was that Ukraine should seek peace or suffer severe loss of life for no gains.

The latter was Zelensky’s choice.

Now, he wants to do that again.

This is cruel and inhumane.

Elon Musk@elonmusk Oct 3, 2022
Ukraine-Russia Peace:

- Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.

- Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).

- Water supply to Crimea assured.

- Ukraine remains neutral.

Jeffrey Sachs, Fred Weir and Anatole Lieven explain the Ukrainian war

Of course Europe and Great Britain must make a settlement along with the USA with Russia, rather than rearming. How can the chanceries of Europe be so obtuse? 

You probably know some of what Jeffrey Sachs said in his brief speech at the European Parliament by now, if you don't form your views from the reporting in the traditional media, which are propaganda vehicles for CIA and M16. 

Professor Sachs is invaluable on most subjects and very succinct. One of the best minds in the world. He is incapable of being dull.

Here is Fred Weir who is a veteran Canadian correspondent in Moscow.

'We know that Donald Trump perfected his schoolyard bully persona, shouting "you're fired!" over and over during 14 seasons of an awful reality TV show that he co-created. It's quite apt that the Times of London headline this morning reads: "Trump fired Zelensky like he was a loser on The Apprentice." 

So it's unsurprising that he brings the same public grandstanding, hectoring style to diplomacy. I suppose he thinks it will work. But Volodymyr Zelensky is the elected leader of Ukraine, and publicly humiliating him is going to alienate the people he represents. I'm a Canadian, and I'm pissed-off, on principle, over the way he belittles our prime minister and ruminates about annexing Canada. Even in Moscow, where wrecking the US-Ukraine relationship should have a popular following, I don't think anyone is much impressed by that spectacle.
It's bad, bad, very bad diplomacy

'But someone has to set the histrionics aside and calmly analyze the underlying dynamics and suggest what, if anything, can be salvaged for the sake of the peace process. So, here's a good stab at that by Anatol Lieven and George Beebe, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.'

I asked Mr Weir did Zelensky up the ante in Donetsk in November 2021 provoking a reaction, as some people tell me?

He gave me permission to quote his reply.

I have no special knowledge about all that. I know what the Russians say, and can make some general observations from having been talking with them, and watching events, for years. First, Zelensky was elected on a clear peace platform. I was in Ukraine to cover the election -- I went to Mariupol to take the temperature -- and there is no doubt that people voted for Zelensky on the belief that he would implement Minsk II and negotiate peace with Russia. The Russians began to give up on him, and any hope for Minsk implementation, in the months after Putin and Zelensky met in Paris in December 2019. Second, the refusal of the West to negotiate a new security architecture for Europe, which would have kept Ukraine neutral, among other things, was probably the final straw for Putin. I'm not advocating for him -- I would have thought he had lots of options short of war -- but at some point in late 2021 he and a small circle of advisers clearly made the decision to invade, in the belief that they could effect a quick regime change and solve all their Ukraine problems at one fell swoop. That failed, in an epic way, and Moscow negotiated that abortive peace deal with Ukraine. He keeps referring to it. So, the main terms would have been Ukrainian neutrality, substantial demilitarization, and rights for Russian speakers. I'm guessing those will be the same bottom lines now, plus territory.

Hope at last

Trump's Ukrainian policy is very hopeful. America isn't interested in Nato. Is this a good moment for the United Kingdom to lose interest in Nato and European entanglements? To trade with everyone but not to get involved in wars in faraway countries between people of whom we know nothing?

What Germany and France and the European Union should do is join America and Ukraine in making a durable permanent settlement with Russia. Russian interests and those of the EU and Nato and Ukraine can be teconciled. Also please let us not have a cold war. No cold wars with Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela or Afghanistan please.

Theatre of the absurd: was Zelensky ambushed by Trump and Vance?

Was Zelensky ambushed by Trump and Vance or was Vance on what lawyers call a frolic of his own? 

I am broadly in favour of Trump's Ukrainian and even Nato policy but the press conference, though huge fun, was disgraceful. It made Trump look small not big. 

And how does this strengthen America's position negotiating with Russia?

Zelensky is annoying certainly but should have been treated respectfully as a head of state. 

World leaders in future should refuse to take part in press conferences with Trump. 

The London crowd will not cheer Trump's second State Visit to London but nor would they have done anyway nor will the King enjoy it.

But his mother hosted Ceaușescu.

Still is politeness better than telling the truth?

Trump intends to bring peace and Zelensky wants the war to continue. The Observer today explains that Zelensky is to blame for the disastrous press conference. He should not have visited Washington.

<The officials believed that had all been communicated to Ukraine, as was the advice that senators gave Zelenskyy on Friday morning to praise Trump and not litigate the issue of wanting stronger security guarantees to his face.

To Trump’s aides, Zelenskyy did not heed that advice when he expressed skepticism at JD Vance’s view of making peace with Russia and, in their view, lectured the US vice-president on the history of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine that started in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea.

That set off a downward spiral in the Oval Office as Vance took issue with being questioned about his description of diplomacy, and clapped back at Zelenskyy: “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country.”>

Vance though aggressive was right, of course.

And why shouldn't the public see disagreements between heads of state over war and peace? Many of the pubic, it seems, prefer to lies to honesty. Not that Zelensky was being ingenuous in talking about Putin breaking agreements.

Quotations

"We have to believe in free will; we have no choice." Isaac Bashevis Singer

Everything is different now

I was shocked, disgusted even, by the way Trump attacked Zelensky but just heard this interview in which left-wing journalist Max Blumenthal supports Trump 100%. I start to rethink. The Russians have not won and their cause was not just but yes we need peace very quickly and a neutral Ukraine. We did from the start. America is hugely to blame for this. So is the EU.

The horror!

Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, said of Gaza on CBS’s “Face the Nation” programme on Sunday that “the facts suggest that nobody can really live there in a safe environment for probably at least 15 years.”

Patriotism has nothing to do with values

Anne Maria Waters  (former leading figure in the British party UKIP) said today:

"It's very interesting to discover that "patriots" in Europe and America actually hate our beautiful Western civilisation and would prefer to live under the tyranny of monsters like Putin." 

I largely agree but want to say something about patriots.

I do not like Putin or what I suppose is his tyranny, but patriotism is nothing to do with civilisation - or democracy or values. 

It's simply love of ones country and ones forefathers.

Mr Trump reminds me of Enoch Powell talking about this with Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Philosophy Group at Peterhouse, Cambridge (the college I wish I'd gone to), as described by John Casey.

'Edward Norman (then Dean of Peterhouse) had attempted to mount a Christian argument for nuclear weapons. The discussion moved on to ‘Western values’. Mrs Thatcher said (in effect) that Norman had shown that the Bomb was necessary for the defence of our values. Powell: ‘No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.’ Thatcher (it was just before the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands): ‘Nonsense, Enoch. If I send British troops abroad, it will be to defend our values.’ ‘No, Prime Minister, values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.’ Mrs Thatcher looked utterly baffled. She had just been presented with the difference between Toryism and American Republicanism. (Mr Blair would have been equally baffled.)'

Quotations

'What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass..' Lord Melbourne (Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister, for readers who do not have the luck to be English).

'Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honour them is a great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.' Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Stephen Kotkin, an eminent historian of Russia, gave an interview in which he observed that to achieve stated Ukrainian war goals – the total recovery of lost territory, Putin on trial – “you have to take Moscow”. In fact the Ukrainian leaders knew those goals were not going to be realised.

One page from Philip Short's magisterial 'Putin: His Life and Times' (2022) explains the Ukrainian war

I was travelling a lot and wanted to blog about my travels but have failed to do so. Perhaps I shall find time to write about it. 

Meanwhile, I recently reread the parts of Philip Short's long and magisterial Putin: His Life and Times (2022) that touch on Ukraine and want you to read this one page, about the situation in late 2013.

Quotations

'Here's a direct quote: "If I said what I know about both candidates, they'd have to cancel the election." That's what Jeffrey told me in 2016.' Mark Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein's brother, speaking to The New York Post 1 January, 2025

‘The trick is to survive success. Anyone can survive failure’ Tony Bennett

"If there is a God, his plan is very similar to someone not having a plan." Eddie Izzard

“Losers, like autodidacts, always have wider knowledge than winners, if you want to win you must know only one thing and don’t waste time knowing them all, the pleasure of erudition is reserved for losers. The more things one knows, the more things didn’t go the right way. " Umberto Eco

More quotations

“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” 

Kurt Vonnegut

"Trump routinely deploys all the subversive transgressiveness that campus Leftists claim to value."

Camille Paglia

"If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe." 

Lord Salisbury

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” 

Quotations

"What matters, in the end, is less whether a country is democratic or not, more whether the country is pro-American or anti-American."  Tom Cotton, Chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee.

"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." Charles Bukowski

“We’re the first to pay a price for Trump’s election. [The deal] is being forced upon us … We thought we’d take control of northern Gaza, that they’d let us impede humanitarian aid.” Erel Segal, Israeli journalist

"People who think of conservatism as oppressive and dictatorial have some deviant example in mind, such as fascism, or Tsarist autocracy. I would offer in the place of such examples the ordinary life of European and American communities as described by 19th century novelists." Sir Roger Scruton

"When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction." Mark Twain. He wasn't similarly benign to the Indians. He thought them "a good, fair, desirable subject for extermination if ever there was one".

"When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set." Lin Yutang

"I used to think I was born in the wrong time... now I understand I'm here to keep the old ways alive." Anonymous internet meme

Quotations

Joseph Fasano

"Your gift is not a gift, it's a loan, a loan to do something extraordinary; it's the paying back of that loan, squaring up with yourself and the universe, that's the gift." Dylan O'Sullivan