Chaplain dismissed for Benediction to atone for gay pride event

Father Mark Morris, Catholic chaplain at Glasgow Caledonian University, formerly Glasgow Poly, has been relieved from his duties by the University after he announced in his parish newsletter that he would pray the Rosary and hold Benediction at his parish church (unconnected with his role at the university) in reparation for what the newsletter called

 “the gross offence to God that is Pride Glasgow.”

He did this in response to a request from a parishioner.

The University Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Pamela Gillies, who is co-author of You, Me and HIV: Making Sense of Safer Sex for Those with Learning Difficulties, issued this statement:

Kissinger: Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era

Henry Kissinger makes interesting, though elliptical and "halting" remarks about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in an interview in the Financial Times, which you might or might not find locked behind the paywall. It opened for me the first time but not when I tried to reread it.

On Donald Trump:

“I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.”

Dr. Kissinger wanted an American-Russian summit but not one like the one that took place this week.

Neo-con jihadis

Paul Gottfried explains here that of course neo-cons are imperialists. He uses the word imperialism as if it were a bad thing, when in its time British imperialism did a huge amount of good, as well as some bad things. The neo-cons had idealistic motives for wanting to export their values to the world but unlike the great Clive of India, who was not idealistic at all, their legacy is disastrous. 

Vladimir Putin is a bad man, as was Peter the Great. Putin's bloodless invasion of the Crimea and the bloody proxy wars he wages in Eastern Ukraine are completely unjustified, but his perception that he is combating US and EU imperialism is accurate enough. 

Seen on Facebook: time is the new currency

This guy last night...he said time was the new currency. It is more precious than money, or material things. Giving people your time is love. What do you think? I think I agree.


Someone once said the broad difference between Americans and Europeans is the first like stuff and the second like time.

Europeans are not the men their grandfathers were

Roy Greenslade hypocrisy

Annoying left-wing journalist Roy Greenslade has long one of my bêtes noires, but I did not know until now that he was sympathetic to the political arm of the murderous I.R.A. 

Ruth Dudley Edwards comments on Roy Greenslade's article in today's Guardian:

So Roy Greenslade, one-time writer for An Phoblacht [Sinn Fein's official magazine] (under a pseudonym) and longtime friend of such IRA luminaries as Pat Doherty and John Downey - the alleged Hyde Park bomber - is worried for democracy because of Donald Trump. He ends his column quoting the worries about post-Brexit human rights expressed by Martina Anderson MEP, who served time for being an IRA bomber and is proud of ex-colleagues who murdered in the name of Irish unity. I notice he appears to have stopped disclosing his An Phoblacht connections which he did only because of protests to his new editor.

Bath Club

The old Bath Club in Dover St., in St. James's, owned a Canaletto. A member once told a waiter he had heard they had a good Canaletto and could he bring him a bottle. The waiter went away and returned to say tactfully that there were no more bottles left.

How popular are Trump, Merkel, May, Macron, Trudeau and the Italian governing coalition?

Polls can be terribly unreliable, but are always interesting.


36% of Germans find Putin more likable than Trump. 70% find Putin less frightening.

71% of Russians have an unfavorable view of Trump.

77% of Britons did so before his visit, though 51% thought him right to make his views clear on Brexit.

However, Trump is doing much better in the polls in his home country than Mrs. May or Messrs. Macron and Trudeau in theirs. He is one point behind Mrs. Merkel.

Donald Trump - 47%. 

Theresa May - 25%. 

Macron - two recent polls put him on 32% and 34%.

Angela Merkel 48%. 

Justin Trudeau 34%.

Five Stars/League coalition government in Italy 60%.

Postcard from 1793 contrasting British and French Liberty

Donald Trump is accused of lying, but it is his truthfulness that really angers people

I had been looking forward to President (that STILL sounds odd) Trump's visit to Great Britain for months. Everyone has, I imagine, except Theresa May and her colleagues.

He sometimes disappoints, but his visit to Britain has already proven to be a virtuoso performance. He is what the world badly needs, a troll of genius. 

But it is not about 'the great cause of cheering us all up', though he does cheer up many conservatives. It is about changing the world.

Because the world exists in people's minds and is shaped by discourse. President Trump's great achievement has been to change the previously narrow limits on permissible discourse, the previously very cramped Overton window.

John O'Sullivan Retweeted

Theresa May's Chequers plan is "the biggest loss of British sovereignty since Britain's accession to the EU in 1973"
- Sir Ivan Rogers, UK ex-ambassador to EU, and very stauch remainer.


Andrew Lilico
I'm a Johnsonian (Frank) more than a Johnsonian (Boris), but I've followed Boris since his Telegraph days in Brussels. The evidence is clear: He was always tempted by Brexit & when the referendum made it politically possible, he chose Leave and helped win it. Genuinely, thanks.

Trump's visit to Britain is going to be richly comic.Think Evelyn Waugh. I cannot wait.

'Donald Trump has said it is for the British people to decide if Theresa May should stay on as Prime Minister and suggested he will meet Boris Johnson during his visit to the UK.
'Speaking on the White House lawn, the US President said that Mr Johnson is "a great friend of mine" and said that the UK is in "turmoil". He suggested that his meeting with Vladimir Putin will be "easier" than his meeting with Mrs May.
'He said: "I have Nato, I have the UK which is in somewhat turmoil, and I have Putin. Frankly Putin may be the easiest of all. Who would think, who would think.

The EU will decide Britain's fate and Theresa May will not be forced to quit

“If you want to succeed in politics,” Lloyd George is said to have observed, “you must keep your conscience well under control."

David Davis should have resigned on Friday after the twelve hour cabinet meeting decided in favour of a soft Brexit. Still he did resign, after thinking about it all weekend, and his decision deserves respect. 

He does not want to bring down Theresa May. He could have brought her down in the twenty-four hours after the election result last year but chose not to, out of loyalty and because he had advised her to call an election. Though he did not advise her to campaign for seven weeks in a dispiritingly robotic and mindless way, repeating over and over the meaningless mantra 'Strong and stable' as her advisers had instructed her to do.

His delay means Boris Johnson's resignation is not about principle but about maintaining his position as leader of the Brexiteers, or rather of those backbench Brexiteers that do not agree with Michael Gove that what the cabinet decided on is the best we can get.

Boris Johnson's problem is that after being very rude about the proposals in the meeting he then surprised colleagues by pledging to back it with enthusiasm. One cabinet minister said:

The Queen's first Foreign Secretary was Anthony Eden, whom she later knighted

Today, 66 years after Eden kissed hands as Foreign Secretary, the Queen appointed Jeremy Hunt to replace Boris Johnson.



5 April 1955 was decided upon as the date when Churchill would finally tender his resignation to the Queen, to be succeeded as Prime Minister by Eden. The evening before, Churchill hosted a farewell dinner, attended by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, at 10 Downing Street. After the dinner, his long-serving secretary John 'Jock'  Colville found the Prime Minister sitting on his bed in evening dress, wearing the Garter and staring into space. Colville asked him softly what he was thinking about. Colville imagined he was looking back over his 55 years in politics, but instead Churchill said, “I don’t believe Anthony can do it.”

Theresa May humiliated in cabinet

Liberal Democrat David Laws was a member of the 2010-15 coalition cabinet and often attended cabinet. In his diary he recounts an incident in 2012 when the cabinet discussed Chinese visas.


“This soon turned out to be a full-frontal attack on the home secretary. Theresa May remained very quiet, seething with anger, while the chancellor, sitting right next to her on her left, launched his scathing attack.

“Cameron got visibly angry and began to go through all the points on the chancellor’s list, one by one. Theresa stuttered and stumbled and looked desperately through her briefing notes for the answers that she needed — but without finding any. Other ministers looked embarrassed at seeing the home secretary squirm so badly.”

"Senior cabinet ministers aren’t usually humiliated in this way, and I doubt Theresa May will forget this.”
This is an extract from David Laws' memoirs. We very easily imagine Theresa May squirming. She is not nearly as clever as Messrs. Cameron and Osborne, was a hopeless Home Secretary and is now an incompetent Prime Minister.  She cannot say anything interesting. Was there ever a Prime Minister with less verve or originality?

Exactly

“The referendum was a vote of confidence in our institutions, even though it was a vote of no confidence in the people running them.”

Robert Tombs

I so love a good political crisis - and especially this one

If it's the Chequers deal, Brexit doesn't mean Brexit. Jacob Rees-Mogg

Tom Newton Dunn‏Verified account @tnewtondunn More

Should Boris follow you out? David Davis: “People can only make these decisions of principle by themselves”. No pressure then. @BBCr4today

Andrew Neil‏Verified account @afneil More

John Barron MP asks key question which PM dodges. Regulatory alignment with EU means any free trade deals with 3rd parties means imports from 3rd parties would have to conform with EU rules.

1. Tim Stanley‏Verified account @timothy_stanley 18h18 hours ago
   

   Bet when the histories are written we'll find it wasn't just the customs plan - which is not *that* awful - but the way it was pushed onto the Cabinet that triggered this. Contrast the 1976 IMF loan crisis. TWO MONTHS of Cabinet meetings. All ideas exhausted. Respect shown.
2. Paulvew added,

   
   

   Tim StanleyVerified account @timothy_stanley

   Re-upping this: my verdict on May's customs plan. Unlike Davis, I think it's okay. Like Davis, I fear the concessions to come. And after the last 48 hrs I'm even less certain the government is capable of getting everything Britain needs from the EU http://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/theresa-mays-brexit-customs-plan-not-a-betrayal-but-a-weak-hand-to-play …

I bet Mr Trump will stir Theresa May's pot

Mr Trump is coming to the UK on Friday 13 July. I so hope he stirs the Brexit pot and trolls Theresa May, offering us a free trade deal if they scrap her plan. I bet he does. Those two can't stand one another.

She deserves it, after the way she reprimanded him for retweeting three video clips of violent Muslims, that came from a tiny right-wing party called Britain First. Nothing was said about the alarming contents of the clips themselves and no-one disputed the things portrayed in them happened. But as ever the story suddenly was about Islamophobia.

I almost (but not quite) feel sorry for Mrs May who, after learning of her Foreign Secretary's resignation, on top of Mr. Davis's at midnight, and then defending her policy in the House all afternoon, goes off to meet the new Austrian Prime Minister.

In the House, the cameras kept panning to Liam Fox, who looked unhappy throughout and did not nod as the Prime Minister spoke. Will he resign next?

Boris Johnson resigns but his delay may be fatal for him

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's resignation came as a big surprise to me though it should not have done.

Nor should David Davis's resignation at midnight last night.

Mr. Davis's resignation left Boris without credibility, but so does the report that he promised at dinner with the cabinet on Friday evening, after its 12 hour meeting at which Boris's Brexiteer faction lost badly, to defend Theresa May's cabinet's Brexit position wholeheartedly.

Mr. Davis seemed to invite the Foreign Secretary to resign when he was asked about him in an interview on Radio 4 this morning. David Davis put him in a very difficult position indeed, whether intentionally or not. A resignation by Boris Johnson and other cabinet ministers on Friday evening would have been much easier for Boris Johnson. Donald Davis has resigned on a matter of principle and honour. Boris's resignation is a ruse and he is damaged goods.

The problem for the Tories and all parties in Britain is structural. It takes months to elect a new leader and the people worst qualified to make a decision - party members - get to do so. That's why, appalling though she is, it's hard to see the party dropping its incompetent and ill starred leader.

But what matters now to me that somehow in this scrum the ball might be, to use a rugby expression, fumbled and Britain ends up not leaving the EU at all. And to cap it all being ruled by a Trotskyite far left populist government.

The Queen's first Foreign Secretary in 1952 was Anthony Eden, whom she later knighted. Now she will appoint another.

I thought this tweet gets it right.

Damian Thompson@holysmoke This is what happens when you hang on to a Prime Minister who is easily as selfish and unprincipled as Boris. The room-temperature IQ doesn’t help, either.

The day the dream died

There is an Indian proverb that says a woman conquers a man by her stillness.

Two women leaders of very different calibres, Angela Merkel, who is a very successful national leader, and Theresa May who is certainly not, illustrate the effectiveness of stillness and slowness in getting them what they want. Each made disastrous mistakes from which they cannot recover when they made uncharacteristically sudden and unheralded decisions (to let in limitless migrants and call the 2017 snap election).

The British cabinet's very long delayed decision about what deal they want with the EU means adopting something rather like the arrangement Norway has with the EU. This enables Norway to escape the common fisheries policy but means she obeys laws she does not help to make. Norway also has to pay vast amounts to trade with the EU and permit free movement by citizens of EU countries, things the British Government hopes optimistically to avoid.  

The very powerful senior civil servants of the Treasury, which is the centre of power in the British government, as I always feared and expected, have persuaded the

A 'Duty to Hate Britain'

A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country.

I hope I write well but on the subject of migrants I cannot write better than Douglas Murray, Deputy Editor of the Spectator and a prophet. He is almost the only prophetic voice in modern England, which is in her greatest danger for centuries. On the subject of immigration the media and almost every other public figure there deal in lies and cowardly evasions. 

I really do recommend you read his masterful account of the career of tube bomber Ahmed Hassan who came close to murdering a lot of people in London in September. Some brief quotations:

At Brooklands College in July 2017, Ahmed Hassan was awarded a prize as "student of the year". He used the £20 Amazon voucher he received to purchase the first of the ingredients he needed to build his bomb...

At every stage, the British state helped Hassan in every way it could. It took in a person who had no right to be in the country -- who indeed had entered the

Macron fights Orban for Europe's soul

Emanuel Macron is the most important and significant politician in the world right now and sees his career as a Manichean struggle of liberalism against the forces of what he considers darkness. 

He is right and his success or failure will have huge consequences. 

Ben Judah reports that he sees his term as an existential battle against populism in Europe trying to breakup the European Union and sees Brexit in this light. 

This makes sense, but is not good news for the wretched British government. Nor for the Hungarian government, though they seem to know what they are doing.

On June 18, France ambassador in Budapest, Éric Fournier, send a report to the Quai d'Orsay which was leaked to Mediapart on Friday. In it Fournier said Viktor Orban is not  a populist or an extremist. These things, he said, were press inventions.

The Declaration of Independence is hate speech

The Liberty County Vindicator, a local newspaper in a small town in Texas, was uploading the Declaration of Independence in parts to their Facebook page when the tenth instalment was disallowed by Facebook as “hate speech”. It was the part where the Declaration says of poor, benign King George III:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

The real meaning of the Statue of Liberty

BBC news item this morning:

The woman who climbed up on the Statue of Liberty and sat on the monument's base is in detention, police say.
Tourists were evacuated from Liberty Island in New York Harbour on Wednesday during a three-hour stand-off with local and federal authorities.

Four quotations

“Remember, together with the Chinese we comprise a quarter of the world’s population.” Enver Hoxha, quoted by Simon Heffer in the latest issue of the Sunday Telegraph.

“Of course the UK is one state to the EU’s 27, but in economic terms our departure is equivalent to the 19 smallest members heading for the exit.” Henry Newman

'Trump and the Invasion of the West'

I cannot read the future and nor can you, but Donald Trump's decision to arrest illegal immigrants as they crossed the American border, therefore of course separating them from any children accompanying them, will almost certainly win him a lot of votes in 2020 and very possibly the White House. 

His standing in the opinion polls rose after the arrests, though his standing among the high-minded and soft hearted fell even further.

Why will this help him?

First, children being incarcerated (rather comfortably, as it happens) is a very memorable picture. Donald Trump likes to create mental pictures, as when he said 'Build the Wall'. It will convince people who were not convinced before (including me) that he is serious

The morality of the Guardian

This short article, by someone called Udham Singh, is worth reading. It makes a rather persuasive case that writers for The Guardian newspaper are intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt, rather than simply deeply misguided.  

He thinks the Guardian is flat-out wicked, rather than mistaken, but I am not sure what the distinction is. Lenin, Stalin and Hitler were misguided but sincere in their ideals. 

Mr Singh says:

When it comes to straight, white men, no generalisation is sweeping enough, no bad statistic is dodgy enough, no amount of abuse is severe enough when directed at The Guardian’s favourite enemy. However, when it comes to non-

The moon rose blood-red and a two-headed cow was born that night

Germany was apparently knocked out of the World Cup last night - and by a weak team. The Guardian report says:

"There are certain events so apocalyptic that it feels they cannot just happen. They should be signalled beneath thunderous skies as owls catch falcons and horses turn and eat themselves.

Pastiching auguries from Livy, etc, is a joke I trot out regularly, so next time I do so do not imagine, gentle reader, that I cribbed it from a Guardian sports writer.

Italy did not even qualify. Are these things a parable for the world of Trump, Brexit, Salvini, migrants, etc, etc? Not really - it's the dear old sympathetic fallacy.

Former German Chancellors on immigration

"We need to consider very carefully at what point our society's absorptive capacity has been reached." Willy Brandt in a government policy statement in 1972.

"Chancellor Kohl said...that it would be necessary over the next four years to reduce the number of Turks by 50 percent - but he could not say that publicly... It would be impossible for Germany to assimilate the current number of Turks." (Minutes of meeting on 28 October 1982 between Helmut Kohl and Margaret Thatcher, reported in Spiegel Online on August 1, 2013.)


"The idea that a modern society would have to be able to establish itself as a multicultural society, with as many cultural groups as possible, I think is outlandish.  After all, one can not turn Germany into a melting pot after a thousand-year history since Otto I. . " - Helmut Schmidt Frankfurter Rundschau, September 12, 1992
"We have to stop further immigration from foreign cultures."
Helmut Schmidt (2005)

"Europe can not become a new home for millions of people worldwide in need."
Helmut Kohl

"We reject a widening of immigration from third countries, because it would overwhelm the ability of our society to integrate." 
(CDU Party Program 2002)

"If we continue to deny control of the asylum problem, one day we will be swept away by the voters, including our own, and we will be turned into whipping boys. I tell you, in the end, we are complicit when fascist organizations become active. It is not enough to warn against xenophobia; we have to tackle the causes because otherwise the population will deny us the intention, the will and the strength to get the problem under control. "
SPD elder statesman Herbert Wehner (1982)

More immigration quotes

After the former first ladies criticised the Trump Administration for separating illegal immigrants from their children Ralph Nader:

"Would be nice if Laura Bush and Michelle Obama had expressed similar heartfelt concern for the tens of thousands of children killed or seriously maimed by the wars of their husbands in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere"

Quotations

"Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul." Sir Charlie Chaplin writing to his daughter.

"I am born into a situation that I did not create, and am encumbered from birth with obligations that are not of my own devising. My basic debt to the world is not one of justice but of piety, and it is only when I recognize this fact that I can be truly myself." Sir Roger Scruton

England's senior divorce judge welcomes end of traditional sexual morality

Sir James Munby, the judge who is President of the Family Law Division in England and Wales, in a speech at the Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Society on 30th May:

“What is the family?
“Time was when most people probably thought the answer was not merely clear but obvious. Today it is more complex.

Recent immigration quotes

Viktor Orban:

"There is no document ... which states that if you enter the EU you must become an immigrant country...We tolerate the fact that some Member States ... admit migrants .. they should tolerate the fact that we do not wish to do so". 

Ed West‏ @edwest

Scandinavia is egalitarian and conformist partly because the most independent-minded people went to America https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/03/30/2186656/how-america-made-scandinavian-social-democracy-possible/ … via @woke8yearold possible England is so unreligious for a similar reason

Gideon Rachman wants a world government

Nothing is more old fashioned than a future that has failed.

Gideon Rachman, who writes for the Financial Times, is an intelligent man who nowadays still thinks Brexit can be prevented. 

I stumbled by chance across this article from 2008 by him, arguing for world government.

He quotes Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, who has written:

“For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible”

and Jacques Attali, who founded EBRD and advised President Sarkozy:

Mary McAleese: Infant baptism breaches fundamental human rights

How much Southern Ireland has changed. Former Irish president Mary McAleese now says that infant baptism breaches fundamental human rights.

I can't see how she can stand up that argument but her remarks might be pointing towards the future. She would have more of a case, I suppose, if she argued against bringing children up in a religion. It is Muslims and Hindus who will prevent that idea ever being implemented. 

The second biggest social change since the 1980s in Europe (after single sex marriage) is that comparative religion, before the 1980s something only studied at post-graduate level, is now taught to children as young as five.

Nil nisi bono - not necessarily

I do not like to speak ill of the dead, unless it is someone like Edward Kennedy, but I do not share the widespread admiration for American journalist Charles Krauthammer, who died recently. 

I have to say that he was on the important things disastrously wrong, not a conservative at all, but like many in the post-1952 Republican Party a right-wing liberal internationalist.

In a 2005 speech he called neoconservatism

"a governing ideology whose time has come."

Quotations

"I do not support the Irish ban [on abortion], and it is easily evaded by taking the ferry to England but, if and when it collapses, Ireland as a country with a distinct moral culture of its own is finished; Ireland will have become a mere off-shore island." Christie Davies, 'The Strange Death of Moral Britain" (2004)

"Feminism is poison." Margaret Thatcher

Quotations

When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality - other than equality before the law - that government poses a threat to liberty. Margaret Thatcher

No-one can build the bridge on which you, and only you, can cross the river of life. 
Nietzsche

In praise of Sir Christopher Chope

Sir Christopher Chope MP has provoked outrage in England by crying out 'Object' and thus sabotaging a private member's bill criminalising taking 'upskirt' photographs of women. 

Such pictures are yucky and reprehensible, but does this mean it is useful to make them illegal and with a penalty of up to two years' imprisonment? Whatever your view, one has to admire a conservative who wants to limit the power of the state and insist on Parliamentary scrutiny of legislation.

What the papers say - I have found four plums

In his upcoming book on US immigration, my brilliant friend Reihan Salam — himself the son of Bangladeshi immigrants — makes a bold argument: America must either restrict immigration or risk civil war as rising inequality and racial tension combine.
I hope Salam is right that the American melting pot can somehow be salvaged. But I have no such hope for Europe. No one who has spent any time in Germany

Bucarest, mon amour

“There's not a city in the former Soviet Union [she meant Bloc] which hasn't been christened The New Prague (apart from Bucharest, and if you've been there you'll know why).”
Guardian travel article by Joanne O'Connor

I remember the 1989 Lonely Planet Guide to Eastern Europe (individual countries didn't merit their own guides) included Bucharest in its list of ten things to avoid in Eastern Europe. I don't remember what the other nine were but they were things not places.

'Public officials have a duty to direct propaganda at the population'

Speaking before an audience at an event held by the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Stengel, head of the office for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the State Department from 2013 to 2016, argued that governments have a responsibility to direct propaganda at their domestic populations and ultimately control the political narrative.

“Basically, every country creates their own narrative story and, you know, my old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the ‘chief propagandist’ job....We haven’t talked about propaganda… I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

Some Americans find these remarks shocking because, unlike people in Europe, Americans still believe, by European standards, in limited government.

Move along, nothing to see.

John McDonnell supported the IRA's use of ‘the ballot, the bullet and the bomb’

According to a story in The Times in 2015 John McDonnell, who will be Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance) if the Labour Party come to power in England, told a public meeting at a pub in South London in 1985, attended by Sinn Fein and left-wing Labour Party members, that ‘the ballot, the bullet and the bomb’ would end British rule in Northern Ireland. He then called local Labour councillors who had boycotted the meeting ‘gutless wimps’ and said ‘a kneecapping might help change their minds’. A kneecapping means having their kneecaps shot off.

You can't generalise

No-one esteems aphorisms any more. Were Wilde around today (and not in gaol for going to bed with underage boys), every quip he made would get the response: Oscar, you can't generalise.

Or rather it was so until Twitter. A very useful achievement of Twitter was to relaunch the aphorism, before they increased the maximum number of characters in a tweet.

Quotations

"It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for that (fughedabout scientific and academic intuitions and snap judgments; they don’t work and your standard intellectualization fails with complex systems, though not your grandmothers’ wisdom)."
Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"Society is a shared inheritance for the sake of which we learn to circumscribe our demands, to see our own place in things as part of a continuous chain of giving and receiving, and to recognize that the good things we inherit are not ours to spoil" Sir Roger Scruton, How To Be a Conservative

An empty wish

I am far from being a huge admirer of Mr Trump (though his presidency is enormous fun) but I do wish England (by which I mean the UK) had him to lead us out of the EU, not the pygmy we have.

I hope pygmy is not a racist expression.

Boris Johnson has come round to the same futile wish, to judge by his recent speech made

Ivano-Frankivsk in balmy summer weather

After Bucacs we went on, through green countryside glowingly fertile, to one of my favourite towns, Ivano-Frankivsk, known till 1962 as Stanislau or Stanisławów. 

It was founded as a Polish fortress in 1663 and was named after the Polish hetman Stanisław "Rewera" Potocki. Like Bucsacs, it became a largely self governing city and was later incorporated into the Austrian empire in the first partition of Poland.

Loss of belief in Man is a consequence of loss of belief in God

It is very sad that many people think animal lives are as important as human lives. Worse, they feel that this is a noble sentiment. 

Loss of belief in Man is a consequence of lack of faith in God.

Love of animals is beautiful but often strongly felt by misanthropes, sentimentalists and extremists. Goering wept whenever one of his dogs died, despite all the indications that he was a psychopath.

I spoke to a friend who is Green Party member who thinks animals as important as humans. He much prefers to put it this way, rather than the other way around. He is not alone in thinking this in the Green Party, a party that attracts many very worrying people and is much the most extreme and frightening mainstream-ish party in European countries, whether Germany, England or elsewhere. 

It is not benign at all, but people think it is.

Buczacz

I blogged about Buczacz last year and Professor Omer Bartov's excellent and searing book about the murder of the town's Jews. I have now visited the pretty little town. In warm weather on the first day of June it brought to mind Sherlock Holmes' remark about the vilest alleys not hiding as much sin as the smiling and beautiful face of the countryside. 

Buczacz was founded in the seventeenth century by Polish nobles in what was effectively the Wild East. The  nobles who started towns encouraged the settlement of Jews, desirable immigrants because of their commercial expertise. The Jews came east tired of constant friction with Poles. The Jews lived in their own community and were largely preoccupied by their own religion until the nineteenth century. In the 1920s 60% of the townspeople were Jewish.

The electorate is the problem

Populist voters are the problem. Politicians should dissolve the electorate and choose a new one.

Oh wait, they are doing so.

Even if you are not interested in history, history is interested in you

Many people are completely ignorant of and uninterested in history, before about 1963. 

Ignorant, for example, of how very little immigration there was into Europe, after the Muslim invasions of the Dark and Middle Ages, which were halted and finally after long centuries rolled back by the warriors of Spain, Portugal, central Europe and the Balkans.  

But even if you are not interested in history, history is interested in you.

Sir Roger Scruton

"Mismanaged sexual feelings lead to a society of casual encounters, jealousies, and aggressions, in which there are neither lasting commitments nor sacrifices on behalf of children."


"This period of courtship was also one of display, in which men showed off their manliness and women their femininity. And this is what we mean, or ought to mean, by the 'social construction' of gender. By playacting, the two partners readied themselves for their future roles"

First woman to join infantry regiment since defence chiefs lifted ban on females serving in combat units quits after two weeks

A headline in the British press restores ones faith in human nature.

First woman to join infantry regiment since defence chiefs lifted ban on females serving in combat units quits after two weeks

Apparently 

"In 2016, then Prime Minister David Cameron said it was essential that the make-up of the Armed Forces reflected society and he lifted the ban on women serving in combat units."

I have to concede what people keep saying to me is true, that there was really virtually no difference between the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour Blairites. Theresa May, of course, is a Blairite and so is Michael Gove.


The full story is here.

New Zealand adds “sex work” to “employment skills” for those wishing to migrate

The New Zealand immigration service has added “sex work” (as prostitution is increasingly described) to the list of “employment skills” for those wishing to migrate.
Julie Bindel, The Guardian, Monday 30 Apr 2018

Abbott declared support for IRA defeat of Britain

[Diane] Abbott, who will become home secretary if Labour wins the election, said in the 1984 interview that Ireland “is our struggle — every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.”

Andrew Gilligan
May 21 2017, The Sunday Times

Quotations

"People triggered by blood probably shouldn’t be in medical school. People triggered by ideas probably shouldn’t be in university."
Stefan Molyneux 

“A nation that cannot get angry about the slaughter of its own children is a nation that has lost its moral anchor.”
Brendan O'Neill 

"You wouldn't believe the things they have said about me. They have said I am Georgian... forgive me for saying this... even much uglier things, they have even called me an Armenian, but I am Turkish."
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a 2014 interview on the NTV news network

'The nation state is the political masterpiece'

What matters in politics, more even than freedom or tradition, is the nation. It's a truism and yet I bet in our day many people, who are not Marxists, do not agree. 

'The nation state is the political masterpiece' as Raymond Aron said - but making central and eastern Europe into nation states was Procrustean and painful.  The process by which Eastern Europe became the collection of nation states that we know today was in many ways regrettable (the Habsburg Empire was a European Union that worked, at least until the Hungarians were taken into partnership) but also hard to avoid because, as travel became easy and people were taught to read, a common language and sense of national community became necessary. 

Bernard Lewis: Will the future see an Islamised Europe or a European Islam?

Bernard Lewis died at the weekend and I thought it appropriate to republish this from a year ago.



In 2010 the greatest historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, predicted that by the end of the decade Iran would abandon political Islam, while Turks adopted some form of Islamist rule. The old man might yet be right.

He also said in 2010 that Muslims were making their third attempt to conquer Europe, an attempt which seemed to have a much better chance at success than the first two as it took the form of peaceful migration rather than military aggression. 

“The only question remaining for us to answer regarding the future of Europe is will it be an Islamised Europe or a European Islam?"

Seen

"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential." - Sir Winston Churchill


US bank Morgan Stanley estimates that the energy needed only for mining Bitcoin will represent some 0.6% of the world energy consumption in 2018.


WikiLeaks Retweeted WikiLeaks
Harvard has announced that Hillary Clinton will receive a medal for "transformative impact on society". But there is only one society she truly transformed. Libya--from the most developed society in Africa, into a smoking, ISIS-infested ruin

Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray in a godforsaken world

Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray have much in common. Both are very intelligent, very eloquent, very charismatic. Neither is particularly conservative but common sense is now considered right-wing. Both think like human beings rather than ideologues. Both have flourished on the internet and above all both are trying to find something with which to replace belief in God.

As Douglas Murray put it,

Having been for some years, as Roger Scruton has put it, downstream from Christianity, there is every possibility that our societies will either become unmoored entirely or be hauled onto a very different shore. Very unsettling

Royal Wedding

Diaries

Tallulah Bankhead: 

"Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time."

Fanny Burney, March 1768:

"To have some account of my thoughts, manners, acquaintances and actions, when the hour arrives in which time is more nimble than memory, is the reason which induces me to keep a journal."

Gwendolen in "The Importance of Being Earnest"

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

Quotations

Joseph Campbell:

"If you want to know what a given society believes in, look at what its largest buildings are devoted to."

Chris Beck, 'Claire Lehmann’s Forum for the Intellectual Dark Web':

“Lehmann contributed to a number of publications before launching Quillette, but claims the Australian media blacklisted her as soon as she started criticizing feminism. She rejects the ‘blank slate’ view that feminists, and progressives in general, have made a centerpiece of their dogma. It’s the belief that humans are strictly the product of culture and socialization, and the rejection of the idea that humans are born with certain innate characteristics.”

Romania and Turkey are the least well educated countries in Europe

This map says Romania and Turkey are the least well educated countries in Europe.

Since WHEN was Turkey in Europe? 

Balkan countries not in the EU are a blank space, unless Turkey is still a Balkan country.

The English on the Irish

Dr Johnson: "The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, Sir; the Irish are a fair people; -- they never speak well of one another."

Quotations

A future Archbishop of Canterbury worried about mass immigration

The modern Anglican clergy's keenness on multiculturalism and immigration contrast with Anglican clergy in previous ages.

It is misleading to argue that England has always been a nation of immigrants. Immigration levels until the last two generations were low, unlike on the Continent. According to the reliable Migrationwatch, more people came to the UK in the single year 2010 than to the British Isles in the whole period 1066-1950. 

Nevertheless, there were always immigrants in England and in the Middle Ages their number was not negligible. A survey of foreigners in England in 1440 listed by name around
20,000 foreigners in England, who made up about one percent of the population. This was long after King Edward I expelled the Jews and centuries before Queen Elizabeth I expelled the few black people in the country. 

Quotations

Ben Judah‏ @b_judah

Ben Judah Retweeted POLITICO Magazine

Anglo Macron hype/hate has nothing to do with his actual performance. For liberals he must succeed, for socialists, nationalists he must fail. All ideologies sense of what must happens converge on Macron right now.

New York Times: "Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!"

I used to support the Democrats in US politics, back in the day of Carter and Reagan. I have changed and so, even more, have they.

I stopped being a Democrat after Bill Clinton had been in office a few months but I was neutral in 2000, strongly backed Gore in 2004 and hesitantly backed Obama, despite his being a European-style Social Democrat and his enthusiasm for horrible things like partial birth abortion, because of his colour, but also because of anger at the way Republicans had ruled since 2000 and because John McCain seemed like another George W. Bush.

Evening sky in Bucharest by Octav Dragan