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. 

Men and women

'Not long ago Harvey Mansfield took a call from a journalist. She wanted a comment on a former colleague. Mansfield, a 73-year-old professor, said: “What impressed all of us about him was his manliness.”

'There was silence at the other end of the line. Finally the female voice said: “Could you think of another word?” It was then that the professor realised that manliness has become a dirty word. And if “displaying qualities considered admirable in a man” (as the dictionary has it) has become unacceptable, then presumably being a man is unacceptable, too. Wondering how this could be, he

America is still neo-con and the biggest danger to world peace

Since the start of the millennium America has been the great danger to world peace, except to some extent when Obama and to a much greater extent Trump were presidents, though the latter started arming Ukraine.

You may have forgotten that General Wesley Clark said in 2003 how he had met a senior military officer in Washington in November 2001 who told him that the Bush administration was planning to attack Iraq ('Why?' 'I don't know') and then Syria, Lebanon (!), Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

The neo-cons or the impulses that drove them never went away. They led to offering Nato membership to Georgia and Ukraine, to the colour revolutions, to American involvement in the 2014 revolution in Ukraine and to where the American empire is now.

Messrs. Trump and Vance have isolationist instincts in Europe but not when it comes to the Middle East. 

I hope they want peace with Xi as well as Putin.

I hope they want peace with Iran which, as Wesley Clark said in the clip I linked to above, knew she was under grave threat as soon as America conquered Iraq.

The Cold War (as opposed to containment) was unnecessary even when Stalin was alive but it made perfect sense at the time.

The new cold war makes no sense and the only hope of resisting the US defence establishment is if Trump wins.

American support for Israel (which started only with Lyndon Johnson) makes no sense to me either but is a given, whichever party wins the White House. 

But who knows if Donald Trump would be a peace president there too? 

If he is a genuine friend of Israel he will demonstrate, in Bill Clinton's phrase, tough love.

Happy birthday, sir!

Group Captain John Hemingway, DFC, AE, a Dubliner who is thought to be the last of 'the Few', celebrates his 105th birthday today. He was shot down four times during the war.

British news in brief

The Times today: 

The Royal College of Physicians has advised doctors that they are “uniquely positioned” to talk to patients about climate change and to raise the issue with them in consultations.

The Daily Mail today:

Scotland's police officers will be paid to take part in Pride parades despite the force cutting back on fighting crime, the Mail can reveal.

Uniformed officers are being urged to represent the overstretched force at LGBTI marches in exchange for pay or a day off in lieu.

While hundreds will be on active duty policing the marches, senior officers have requested that other staff join the parades to show support for the marchers.