Death notice

The ineffably grand Valery Giscard D'Estang, former President of France, has died of complications linked to Covid-19. He was 94. He said the most bitter regret of his career was the badly drafted family reunification law of 1976, which permitted immigrant workers to bring their relatives to settle in France. 

He had intended relatives to be restricted to children and spouses but he was careless about the way the law was drafted. I am not sure whether he regretted the law altogether. He did not foresee the way it would change France.

De Gaulle, who begins his memoirs saying he always had a certain idea of France, would never have permitted family reunifications. I quoted De Gaulle before on this blog:

"It is very good that there are yellow French, black French, brown French. They show that France is open to all races and has a universal vocation. But on condition that they remain a small minority. Otherwise, France would no longer be France."

Giscard also legalised abortion, against fierce opposition from the Church, most of the Gaullists and much of the UDF, his centre-right party, on a free vote, with the votes of the Communists and Socialists. Thanks to this law there are eight million fewer Frenchmen, women and children.

As well as the transformation of France through far reaching immigration changes, legalising abortion and making divorce easy to obtain, Giscard's other important achievement, with Helmut Schmidt, is the European Monetary System, which became the Euro. 

The evil that men do lives after them.

Unlike his patron De Gaulle, whom he betrayed, and like his protégé Jacques Chirac, who betrayed him, he was an elitist, liberal, progressive moderniser pretending to be right of centre. 

Macron, who resembles Giscard in his enthusiasm for a united Europe and for mass immigration (though these are contradictory), is very much the same, except he admits he is 'neither left nor right'. 

Mitterand, conversely, was on the right or had been, but kept very quiet about it. He was a Petainist pretending to be a socialist.

2020 news items, including the Washington Post headline: ‘Washington’s aristocracy hopes a Biden presidency will make schmoozing great again.’

Manchester University undergraduates say using the colour black as an adjective, in expressions like black market or black day, is based on 'colonial history' and is now outdated. University students have demanded the word "black" be banned from lectures and textbooks amid claims it symbolises "negative situations".


Women are doing significantly more domestic chores because of the the pandemic. "Everything we worked for, that has taken 25 years, could be lost in a year," says UN Women Deputy Executive Director Anita Bhatia. She says there is a "real risk of reverting to 1950s gender stereotypes".

Former Pfizer Vice President and Chief Scientist, Dr. Michael Yeadon has said: “There is absolutely no need for vaccines to

Lady in Waiting

The review, in my least favourite magazine in a very crowded field, the London Review of Books, of a new memoir of Princess Margaret, contains some gems.

To the reviewer, Mrs. Christopher Logue, I wish to say: the authoress is Lady Glenconner, not Glenconner.

"Glenconner was one of the queen’s maids of honour, attending rehearsals in Westminster Abbey – where it became apparent that the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, was not up to the job. The job was to help the queen change into her various ceremonial robes. The marquess, who had probably never had to ‘dress himself, let alone anybody else’, was completely flummoxed by the hooks and eyes, which had to be replaced with poppers, and the queen reported afterwards that the violent way he pushed her every time he did one up was ‘tiresome’."


"Having Margaret to stay at Glenconner’s own house in Norfolk was like entertaining a well-meaning but impulsive child. Margaret’s attempt to be helpful by making her own morning tea stalled when she couldn’t work the kettle, and ‘more than once’ she was found to have dismantled the chandelier and to be washing it in the bath."

I used to think the 1950s colourless and drably modern, but that was not true. Certainly they were not, and nor were the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, in what were once called the best circles. It all makes me feel terribly sad to think how England has changed. The intellectuals, many of whom are certifiable, have done so much harm. 

A spectre is haunting Europe

A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. So begins the Communist Manifesto and Marx was right - Communism was a spectre, in the sense of being non existent but causing fear. I stole this idea from AJP Taylor.

Now the spectre that hunts Europe is Nazism, which is an even less real danger than Communism was in 1848.

Yet this fear of being like the Nazis, in some way or another, is remaking the world.

Of course nonexistent dangers can become real one day - as happened in Russia almost 70 years after Marx wrote, thanks to the cunning of Lenin. Mussolini's fascism or Nazism won't come back, but some extremist ideology might arise. The liberals of all parties who rule the developed world seem to be doing everything they can to make happen.

Knut M. Wittkowski said this on LinkedIn yesterday

Never again? — When I grew up in Germany, I understood that "never again" should people die because others were "just following rules". Now in the US, I'm facing the same dilemma Germans faced during the 3rd Reich.
As a virus disease with R0=2, SARS-CoV-2 will spread until 50% of the population are immune. About 25% have immunity from previous CoV infections, 25% need to develop immunity de novo. Of course, vulnerable people should be able to protect themselves by wearing a mask. Then the virus will spread predominantly among low-risk people who will become immune until, within a few weeks, the 25% is reached and the vulnerable can „unmask“.
I'm not obese, don't smoke or have diabetes, COPD, ... , so I'd like to act responsibly and give the more vulnerable an advantage from wearing a mask. Unfortunately, I‘m often forced to wear a mask, too. Hence, if I'm "just following the rules", I'm increasing the risk that somebody vulnerable will become infected and die. Even worse, those who die don't count toward the 25% threshold, so more of the vulnerable will die. (This is one way "mitigation" causes more deaths in an epidemic.)
I'm now facing the same dilemma as my grandparents: as a professional, I need to "just follow the rules" and accept that this will cause deaths.

Yes another Nazi analogy - I wish people would stop making them - but I wonder if he is right. 

Three quotations from today's Sunday Times

“I don’t think he [Donald Trump] has a master plan here,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative radio host. “You see this with the stumbling and bumbling but generally he realises he needs to position himself not as a loser but as a victim. Being a loser is off-brand for him. But being the victim and a leader of a grievance movement? That has political and commercial benefits.”

David Axelrod, Obama’s former strategist, on CNN during the election campaign: “Biden ... is kind of Mr Magoo-ing his way through. You keep worrying that he’s going to hit a wall, but he’s moving forward.”

“He’s the only person who could have beaten Donald Trump,” a former Obama official said. “Anyone to the left would have completely lost the election, and there is no one further to the right.”

Important clause in small print in the armistice in Nagorno Karabakh

I considered visiting the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan last year when I went to Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan. Azeris are Turks or at any rate very close cousins to the Turks. As a result of the peace deal Nakhchivan will now be linked by road as well as air to the the rest of Azerbaijan. This is important because it means Turkey, which has a very short border with Nakhchivan, will be connected by road now to Baku. This is a huge victory for Erdogan.

He also puts Turkish peacekeepers alongside Russian ones in Nagorno Karabakh.


I had hoped to visit Nagorno Karabakh this autumn. In the long forgotten pre-pandemic era it was reachable from Bucharest by a cheap flight at 00.40 to Yerevan and a picturesque 5 or 6 hour drive. lt is much more my sort of peace than this delightful mass market tourist village where I write this- but with only a few people and they mostly Turks I love it. I shall blog about it.

Stefan Voloseniuc and disappearing Romania

Romania-Insider has the story of Stefan Voloseniuc, an impressive man who came to England as a navvy speaking no English and now has a company with a 30 million GBP turnover. He is standing to be representative of the Diaspora in the Romanian Parliament.

What a good idea that is - if the Diaspora should have a vote let them have their own MP.


The article informed me that over 600,000 Romanians living in the UK have applied for the EU Settlement Scheme, which allows them to stay in the country after Brexit. Meanwhile, the total number of Romanians living abroad is somewhere between 4 and 6 million, according to various sources, compared to a resident population of just over 19 million in Romania.


This is a catastrophe for Romania. The same catastrophe that afflicts all the former Communist European Union member states.

The French vocation

Ed Husain, in an article in today's Spectator entitled Macron is preparing for intellectual battle against Islamism:

"In Britain, we are worryingly blind to the dangers of the narrative of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and their allies. Boris Johnson is a Renaissance man who debated the superiority of the Greeks with Mary Beard at night while he was mayor of London by day. To take on this debate in support of the Enlightenment is to join Macron in defence of civilisation. It is to remind the West again of who we are and confidently invite Muslims to come on board. Time is not on our side."

Yes but enlightenment values are not what Catholic, monarchist France is. They are what French republicans care about, but they do not define them either. 

Enlightenment values do not a Frenchman make. Nor an Englishman. Arguably an American is made of values, though that can be argued either way and I have argued against it several times on this blog. Trump should have critiqued Islamism but it would have been counter-productive. Stopping people from outside Europe settling in France would be the best and simplest step to take to do battle with Islamism.

Charles de Gaulle said: 

"It is very good that there are yellow French, black French, brown French. They show that France is open to all races and has a universal vocation. But on condition that they remain a small minority. Otherwise, France would no longer be France. We are still primarily a European people of the white race, Greek and Latin culture, and the Christian religion.... Those who advocate integration have the brain of a hummingbird. Try to mix oil and vinegar. Shake the bottle. After a second, they will separate again. Arabs are Arabs, the French are French. Do you think the French body politic can absorb ten million Muslims, who tomorrow will be twenty million, after tomorrow forty? If we integrated, if all the Arabs and Berbers of Algeria were considered French, would you prevent them to settle in France, where the standard of living is so much higher? My village would no longer be called Colombey-The-Two-Churches but Colombey-The-Two-Mosques."

The Knut thinks Covid-19 is gone, lockdowns have bred Covid-20A and will breed Covid-21

I was very hopeful that Covid-19 was fading away fast in August, though certainly not in Romania. Now the word is overjoyed that there might be normality by the spring because of the Pfizer vaccine.

Were I (and many others) far too optimistic or have the epidemiologists who advise governments got things badly wrong? 

Knut Wittkowski, until 2018 Head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at Rockefeller university, is sure that they got things badly wrong. he said on Linkedin on Sunday:

The original virus is not spreading anymore in most of Europe and the Northeast. It's an epidemic, not an endemic. It is gone like Influenza-B-19 and Influenza-A-20. What is beginning to spread now in Europe is not the same virus as before, it is 20A.EU1/2 with six evasive mutations to resist natural and vaccine immunity and cause COVID-20. If we don't "mitigate", it will be gone in two months, with lockdowns it will take another 9 months, enough to breed a new strain for COVID-21.

Why Trump lost - he did not appeal to white men enough

My instinct was that Trump could win. The polls, which I came round to believing only on the eve of the election, were utterly wrong. Many, many Republicans do not trust pollsters. They think they are part of the Blob. 

I should have trusted my instinct. You always should. In 2016 my instinct told me Trump would win but I let a very intelligent American Democrat pal persuade me he knew better than me. This time, Biden had had a lead in the polls over Trump since September last year but while votes were counted Trump for some time seemed the winner. 

Women didn't lose the election for Trump nor did Hispanics or black voters whose votes swung to him. It was white males who lost it for him. BLM riots should have made them flock to him. His Democrat son in law is to blame. Or to be congratulated, depending on your politics. 

Thankfully, in my opinion, Biden will not seek a second term and the Senate's Republican. The Supreme Court is no longer the judicial wing of the Democratic Party. It will interpret the law objectively, not treat the Constitution as a living document. 

Will Trump win in 2024 or will a new right winger emerge? Whatever happens I hope the Republican Party of the Bushes is dead forever.

No colonial guilt in the 3rd century BC

'So now, in the first place, I shall recount the ancient ordeals of our ancestors, drawing remembrance thereof from their renown. For they also are events which all men ought to remember, glorifying them in their songs, and describing them in the sage sayings of worthy minds; honouring them on such occasions as this, and finding in the achievements of the dead so many lessons for the living.' 

Lysias, one of the ten Attic orators included in the "Alexandrian Canon" in the 3rd century BC. 

Are vegans pro-life?

The first line of this post on Reddit is: "I got super offended reading through a vegan board saying human life also falls under veganism." Readers add comments to reassure the offended person that pro-life vegans are, in fact, very rare.

The offended person said she had become pregnant as a result of rape and had an abortion. I am very sympathetic to her.

The late Sir John Mortimer, author of Rumpole, used to say it was a shame that people tended to have political views in packages and that to be opposed to hunting foxes meant being in favour of abortion.

He was a socialist who hunted. I think it is odd that many people who think killing foxes is wrong don't think abortion is. But there you are.

The threat to Great Britain and Europe is not Russia, obviously - you know that

The head of MI5 said today that Russian espionage was the most aggravating problem caused by a state actor, but though Russia provided spells of bad weather and Iran was a danger, China was a far greater challenge in the long-term and resembled climate change.

This reminded me of David Frost saying that in England we have the best secret service in the world. Unfortunately it belongs to Russia.


Churchill suddenly said to Harold Macmillan during the Cairo Conference in 1943 late one night: 

'Cromwell was a great man, wasn't he?' 

'Yes, sir, a very great man.' 

'But he made one great mistake. Obsessed in his youth by the fear of the power of Spain he failed to observe the rise of France. Will that be said of me?

Whether it is said of Churchill or not, it should be. 

Germany was not a threat to the British Empire and would not have been a threat to France had France allowed her a free hand to erase the borders in Central and Eastern Europe created at the Paris Peace Conference. France, of course, had no means of preventing this, even with England's support. 

Bolshevik Russia was to be much less of a threat to Western Europe than Germany. Stalin never had any desire to extend his rule beyond the countries which his army occupied. As for Khrushchev, in 1955 he offered to allow a demilitarised Germany to be reunited, with free elections. Eisenhower and Adenauer turned the offer down.

Now Russia is a declining power, not a threat outside her own backyard, not able to impose order in Nagorno-Karabakh now any more than 30 years ago. 

China is a threat but where exactly do her interest and Europe's conflict except in economic competition? Islamic terrorism a bigger one of a different kind, but illegal immigration and massive numbers of asylum seekers are a bigger threat and Islamification the biggest of all, as the late Bernard Lewis and the late Neagu Djuvara warned us. 

Both centenarians who died recently thought it inevitable that Europe would become Islamic, but as AJP Taylor said, nothing is inevitable until it happens.

Covid in Belarus

Data for deaths from all causes suggest that Covid related deaths in Belarus are about three times higher than the 690, out of a population of 9.5 million, to which the government admits. 

Covid deaths are probably often classed as deaths from pneumonia.

Still the number is comparable with the number of deaths from a bad flu season. This is despite a complete lack of social distancing or other restrictions, which make Sweden seem positively paranoid. 

Life expectancy, especially for men, is not long in Belarus anyway because of smoking and heavy drinking. This means Belarussians usually die before they reach the ages at which most people in Western Europe die of Covid.

I have seen a young Belarusian academic in the West and a Belarusian on Twitter say the government's cavalier attitude towards the virus is one reason for the demonstrations each weekend. 

It may be so, but I wonder if they are influenced by opinion among their peers in the West. The Western media repeat this line.


Certainly so far Belarus is doing much better than her neighbours Russia and the Ukraine.

The battle for Western civilisation is taking place now

The term “political correctness” was coined by Anton Semyonovich Makarenko, Soviet educationalist and NKVD officer, in the 1920s. He was hailed by Unesco in the 1980s as one of the four most influential educationalists of the twentieth century.

Its principles were part of Leninism from the start. In the short-lived Communist dictatorship in Hungary in 1919, Georg Lukacs, the Commissar for Culture introduced pornographic sex education in schools, forced nuns to watch pornographic films and demonised the family.


The Russian Revolution was not supposed to happen in Russia. It was supposed to happen in Germany, and possibly Austria and Hungary.


When the revolutions in those countries quickly failed, Communists asked why and for Marxists there could only be one explanation: false consciousness on the part of the workers.


After the Romanian army marched into Budapest to get rid of the Bolsheviks (whom they knew wanted to recapture Transylvania and other lost Hungarian territories) Lukacs set up the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt to marry the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Freud, from which emerged the Frankfurt School of Marxism.


Lukacs famously asked: “Who will save us from Western Civilisation?” and tried to do the best he could to do so himself.


He was considered a great literary critic in England in the 1970s and 1980s and probably today. At least, his books continue to be published by Penguin Books, that arbiter of literary fashion.



Now we have Black Lives Matter (BLM) saying on its website that it specifically targets “the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement” and Rebecca Futo Kennedy of Denison University argues that Western civilization and study of the classics only provides cover for racism and sexism. Ancient Greece was “an imperialist, anti-immigrant society convinced of its own superiority because of its ethnic purity.” Aristotle “tells his readers that women are naturally subordinate to men.” If men, sorry people, of good will do not denounce Western civilisation, we “give sanction by our silence to the classical past’s uglier tendencies and embolden those who would use it as justification for present racism and misogyny.”


I owe the information in the last paragraph to Paul Gottfried, sturdy fighter for truth, justice and freedom, writing in Chronicles yesterday. He draws the lesson that it is Anglo-Saxon culture and Western civilisation, not the principles of the US Constitution, which are the basis of the USA and which are under attack.

'Confederates were simply the easiest targets in the opening days of the upheaval. Conservatism, Inc. and other useful idiots, blinded by their deification of Lincoln and his misguided constitutional theory, could not accept that the arguments employed against Confederate monuments could be logically extended to the entirety of American history. The cultural revolutionaries want to destroy the civilization that produced not just Lee, but Grant, Webster, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington. This is about power and the ushering in of a new order. Paeans to the Gettysburg Address or the Grand Army of the Potomac will only hasten our destruction.  

'As the nation dedicated to a proposition breathes its last, we must embrace Western civilization, which forms the core of our heritage from the mother country. Western civilization is the true target of our enemies, the modern-day Jacobins, and it is the best this world has to offer.'

 

One of President John Tyler's grandsons has just died

I have been wondering for years whether Lyon Gardiner Tyler were still with us, but saw no mention in the news of him. Sadly he has now died aged 95. 

He was the grandson of President John Tyler who, after President William Harrison died in 1841, established the convention that the US Vice-President becomes President on the President's death.

Yes. Lyon Gardiner Tyler was President Tyler's grandson. 

His grandfather became president after President William Harrison had given the longest inauguration speech in American history, in the rain, to demonstrate that he was in good health and was thought to have caught a cold while doing so that killed him.  

When Tyler was acknowledged and sworn in as President he was 29 years older than Queen Victoria, who had ascended the throne four years before. Her grandchildren included King George V and the Kaiser. 

The unfortunate President Harrison had a grandson, Benjamin, who was the 23rd President from 1889 to 1893 and died in 1901.

Harry Truman's eldest grandson, for comparison, is 63.

Tyler was a Whig, a Virginian and a slaveowner. Under him the USA invaded and conquered Texas, which was thoroughly unjust but also glorious. Later, after trying to prevent the civil war breaking out, he ended up on the Confederate side, the legally justified side in my opinion. 

John Tyler's father had been Thomas Jefferson's room-mate at William & Mary college.

Lyon Gardiner Tyler's father could remember the US Civil War and became head of William & Mary college.

Lyon Gardiner Tyler is survived by a daughter and by his brother, who is 91.

R.I.P. George Alberts

I just learnt yesterday with very great sadness that my friend George Alberts died last night a week after being admitted to hospital suffering from Covid. 

In hospital he was put on a ventilator and under sedation and received good care, but the disease had progressed too far. His lungs deteriorated very badly and he died of a heart attack.

He was a very good friend to Romania and a well known Bucharest figure with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the criminology of banking and very much else.  

He gave good parties, had many friends, was very emotional and soft-hearted beneath his crusty surface and a lover of good wine and travel.

I know he would have agreed with at least most of what I have said in the article I posted yesterday, just before I heard the dreadful news, about the way the media suppress discussion of how the authorities are dealing with Covid. 

We agreed about most things, apart from Brexit. He was an ardent admirer of Donald Trump, a lot more than me.

He had a lot of good stories, including ones about being present in Tbilisi as the Soviet Union fell apart and being asked to set up the National Bank of Georgia. Or have I misremembered?

Rest in peace, George.

'From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.'

Hilaire Belloc - he later disowned this verse because he said it wasn't true and it isn't, but it is not so far off the truth.

From an otherwise silly Nick Cohen article in the Guardian last year

'When Tony Blair was elected in 1997, 60% of the English population was white and had left school without A-levels. When Theresa May lost her majority in 2017, that proportion had fallen to 40%. Over the same period, the share of the English population who were university graduates, members of an ethnic minority group or both went from 17 to 40%. In Britain, as in the US, progressive politics will be drawn to appeal to minorities and the educated, while rightwing politics will be drawn to appealing to “the whites”.'

Apart from that paragraph, the article is not worth reading, just malign nonsense. Mr Cohen's sympathies are firmly enlisted with graduates and ethnic minorities, not "the whites". 

The British Conservatives are not pretending to be PC. They are true believers.

“I’ve been told off in the tea room for referring to ‘my wife’ because that’s ‘possessive’. By a Conservative MP, actually. But that’s the state of the world.” 

Ben Bradley, Conservative MP for the formerly safe Labour seat of Mansfield

Fratelli Tutti

A highly intelligent Catholic friend who unlike me has read the new encyclical sent me this email.

One hallmark of leftist publications is making assertions that upon examination are revealed as false or, at best, half-truths kitted out in the livery of obvious popular wisdom (vox populi). One such example in Frutti Tutti, there are many, is Francis' assertion that the Church has never considered ownership of property to be an inviolable right. This is from paragraph 15 of Rerum Novarum by Leo XIII: "Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found."


Of course, Francis prefers to cite his earlier writings more than the writings of his predecessors and Scripture - one supposes he places greater faith in the former than the latter two.


Another hallmark of leftist authors is to pull out of context phrases that support their expressed point of view (aka Cherry Picking) but that turn out not to do so when examined in context. See Francis' use of Aquinas on private property or John Paul II on capital punishment.


The third and most common technique in leftist composition is projection, that is, ascribing to others the very thinking that they do themselves. See Francis' reference to the manipulation of words - democracy, liberty, freedom, etc. - to impose ideological conformity and delegitimize contrary points of view.


And, Frutti Tutti is verbose, unstructured, lacks any discernible stylistic quality and if it has a voice, it is a whining garble mixed with a mumble punctuated by hectoring shouting.


In my not so humble opinion. Yours Ed

Churchill on rule by experts

"Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character.

Sir Winston Churchill

This reminds me of the words I quoted not long ago from Lord Salisbury:

"No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe."

Ray Bradbury saw it all coming

"They passed a law. Oh, it started very small. In 1950 and '60 it was a grain of sand. They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.”
The Martian Chronicles; 1950. Acknowledgements, Chris Carter

What authority does Pope Francis's new encyclical have?

'This was the week Pope Francis chose to issue a left wing pamphlet, which being pope he was able to dignify with the status of papal encyclical.' 

Damian Thompson, until this year editor of the Catholic Herald, on Fratelli Tutti.

Rorate Caeli

@RorateCaeli

·

Oct 3

The new encyclical "Fratelli Tutti" is basically an ode to Fraternity, in the French revolutionary concept of the word

Edward Pentin

@EdwardPentin

·

Oct 5

He doesn't mention the word "abortion" but defends the lives of the unborn in the context of a "throwaway society".

'Neoliberalism is, in fact, a very Catholic set of beliefs....The Pope says that he fears that the world is becoming deaf, incapable or unwilling to listen to the complexities of others. But that’s nothing to do with liberal economics. Indeed, it is the market that allows us to listen, see, hear, and reach out. Its flourishing has been the most incredible force for good that humanity has ever seen.'  

Matt Kilcoyne in the really excellent Unherd (it's free, by the way). 

Personally, I associate Catholicism rather with feudalism than neoliberalism or social democracy, but I know this is out of date and not in line with modern European values.

Do Catholics have to accept what the Pope teaches about economics, politics and climatology? 

The first Vatican Council, the one conservatives like, said in Pastor Aeternus, chapter 4, n.7.

This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this see so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all.

That does not mean Catholics always have to agree with the Pope. They certainly don't, as the great Mgr Alfred Gilbey told me, but Pope Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis says:

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me"; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.

But what exact authority do these words in Humani Generis have? It's something of a circular argument.

The Syllabus of Errors was an annex to the encyclical Quanta cura and condemns socialism and modern civilisation. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannia,

As the errors listed had already been condemned in allocutions, encyclicals, and other apostolic letters, the Syllabus said nothing new and so could not be contested. Its importance lay in the fact that it published to the world what had previously been preached in the main only to the bishops, and that it made general what had been previously specific denunciations concerned with particular events. Thus perhaps the most famous article, the 80th, stigmatizing as an error the view that “the Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile himself to and agree with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization,” sought its authority in the pope’s refusal, in Jamdudum Cernimus, to have any dealings with the new Italian kingdom.

The Pope's latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, was greeted with very much less deference than encyclicals by previous popes, but then when Pope Pius IX promulgated the Syllabus of Errors Twitter had not been invented.

Catholic Twitter made much of these words of the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, who is quoted several times and praised by the Pope as his inspiration in the encyclical.

 

"The four schools of law all concur that apostasy is a crime, that an apostate should be asked to repent, and that if he does not, he should be killed." 

The Imam does not share the Pope's view on the death penalty, nor can a Muslim, but criticism of him for approving of it for apostasy is unfair. The Imam has to believe in his religion or convert, just as popes are supposed to believe in theirs.
By the way, did you know the Chief Rabbi of Italy converted to Catholicism in February 1945, partly because of his admiration for Pope Pius XII? 
Let us hope the Imam follows this excellent example.
A liberal theologian very active on Twitter called Massimo Faggioli says that the Church is changing and changed in the past, over for example her teaching on war and usury. I thought the teaching on usury had not changed but been politely ignored. 
Now the Pope admits to changing teaching on capital punishment and seems to make other changes. It is confusing for us laymen with busy lives and disquieting. 
But it sounds like Professor Faggioli, who seems to think liking Donald Trump incompatible with Catholicism, is saying what many others think: that the Church since the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s is not the same Church as the one before.

In my lifetime has there been any politician who has achieved something?

He made no difference to my life but Rudy Guiliani, for making New York City safe, is the one who comes to mind. I wanted him to be President until someone told me to google "Rudy Guiliani ferrets". I did and changed my mind.

Gorbachev brought about the end of Communism in Eastern Europe - a great thing, but the opposite of what he intended to achieve, which was to revitalise Leninism and the Soviet Union. Does this count as an achievement?

The politicians who changed my life for the better are Conservatives: Rab Butler for inventing grammar schools and the Conservative councillors on Southend-on-Sea Borough Council, who withstood the pressure from Labour governments, Labour and Liberal councillors and civil servants to turn Southend's grammar schools into comprehensives, as happened almost everywhere in England. Never forgive the post-war Liberal Party for the many bad things they wanted to do, had they ever been allowed to get into power.

In the Chinese Communist Bible, Jesus Stones the Woman

In a new Chinese Communist translation of the Bible, Jesus stones the woman taken in adultery.

Give Peace a Chance

The older I get the worse I think war is and the more obvious it is that very, very few wars are necessary evils or better than the alternative. 

I am reluctant to disagree with Robert Tombs, who is a genius and who supervised me at Cambridge, but  the two World Wars and possibly the wars against Napoleon (I haven't studied the Napoleonic wars) in hindsight may well fall into the category of unnecessary. The Crimean War, the English and US Civil Wars and the two Boer Wars obviously do.

I am most pacifist about revolutions and especially the American, French, Russian and Iranian ones.

But I am not a pacifist. There are just wars and war is a necessary evil. America was right to bomb Hiroshima (not Nagasaki). 

In my time, the Falklands War and the first (contra Edward Heath and Denis Healey) but not the second Iraq War were just. 

I doubt now if the Kosovan War was. I supported it at the time. I wanted what used to be called 'the Powers' to intervene in the Bosnian War, while Simon Heffer and his mentor Enoch Powell were opposed to interventions in the former Yugoslavia. At the time I was very opposed to that point of view, but now am no longer quite so sure. 

The Pope's new encyclical Tutti Frutti Fratelli Tutti, which was promulgated or published or whatever happens to encyclicals yesterday, says

It is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war'.

Yet Pope Francis is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln, whose war against the South cost 700,000 lives all told, including people who died of disease, and he wanted Hillary Clinton to become President even though she had promised that regime change in Syria would be her top priority.

Here are some other opinions about pacifism.

Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, the effect is negligible. But when whole peoples become pacifistic it is a symptom of senility. Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. As long as man continues to evolve, there will be wars...

Oswald Spengler

 

That Europe was still Christian except for its Jews, privileged survivors when the pagans were exterminated, but its very un-Christian central ideology was the Iliad’s: men love war, women love warriors. European wars over the centuries were fought by volunteers, whose urge to fight was far more widely admired than deplored, not least by women desirous of virile mates.

...As for the post-heroic ideas that have largely displaced the Iliad’s elemental prescriptions, they are varied and changeable and drifting right-ward of late, but among the better-educated anti-racism, feminism, post-colonial guilt, and a pacifist presumption remain the dominant mix, perhaps best exemplified by the Norwegian politician Karsten Nordal Hauken. In both a TV appearance and an April 6, 2016 article, Hauken proclaimed his own strong feelings of guilt and responsibility, because a male Somali asylum-seeker was being deported after serving four-and-a-half years in prison for rape: “I was the reason that he would not be in Norway anymore but rather sent to a dark, uncertain future in Somalia. … I see him mostly as a product of an unfair world, a product of an upbringing marked by war and despair.”

Hauken’s guilty plea may seem strange because he did not capture, prosecute, or judge the Somali. Yet there can be no doubt about his personal connection to the case: Karsten Nordal Hauken, self-described as “male, heterosexual, young Socialist Left Party member, feminist and anti-racist” was himself the object of the rape.”

Edward Luttwak in a fine essay in the Tablet, the American Jewish magazine, not the British (supposedly) Catholic one.

Biden looks likely to win

Today a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press.
Oswald Spengler 

Civilized debate has been ruled out by the D.C. smart set which considers the Trump agenda, endorsed by 60 million Americans in 2016, subversive and treasonous.
Ilana Mercer

My abiding impression of the debate five nights ago, between Messrs Trump and Biden? 

I am left angry at the way the moderator talked over his condemnation of white supremacists, whatever they are, and heckled him to condemn the Proud Boys, who are extreme, according to the BBC World Service last night, because they want to stop immigration, revert to traditional female and male roles in marriage and are proud 'Western chauvinists' who say they believe in the superiority of Western civilisation.

This is my abiding impression, because it is the failure to condemn the Proud Boys is what the media want our abiding impression to be.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Joe Biden leads by 10 points after President Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. A majority of Americans think the President could have avoided the infection if he had taken the virus more seriously. They are probably right and he has shown a characteristic lack of concern for other people.

George W Bush was one of the worst presidents in history (only Lincoln, Wilson and LBJ are comparably bad) but he was a gentleman and had impeccable manners. Not so Donald Trump.

I think Joe Biden is going to win next month, even though he is  a cipher, and this will mean the pre Trump structures of power will consider themselves justified in America and Europe, which on the whole is a thoroughly bad thing. 

The Democrats will return to power like the Bourbons, having learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

My powers of prediction are not good. At the start of the year I said Bernie Sanders was bound to lose to Donald Trump. I was persuaded out of my hunch that Trump would win in 2016 by a clever American Democrat I was friends with on Facebook and the Brexit result came as a big surprise. I never imagined either that there would be a Pope like the present one.

Quotations

Prince Metternich is reputed to have said:

"The Balkans begin at the Rennweg",

a street that led southwest out of the  Vienna, but no-one seems certain that he did.

Another version is, 

"Asia begins at the Landstrasse".

Sir Lewis Namier:

"...Nor can he [Metternich] be blamed for Austria's intellectual backwardness; with him or without him Vienna has never produced anything truly great or creative, only a fine blend of a peculiar internationalism with an intensely local colouring - somewhat like Metternich himself."

Listener: Is it possible to predict the future?

Radio Yerevan: Yes, the future can be predicted with complete accuracy. It is only the past that keeps changing.

Queen Margaret in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, Act 1, Scene 4:
I prithee grieve to make me merry, York. Stamp, rave and fret, that I may sing and dance.

She was good, quiet, dull, and amiable, and young only because she was twenty-three. E.M Forster

Begging the question

This is from an article about 'begging the question', from a fascinating site or blog called Words at Play, the run by Webster's Dictionary, and the people who hate its 'misuse'. 

(I am with the haters, though I had to check I remembered the correct meaning. Although I am so passionate a believer in freedom that I have been accused of being a libertarian, it clearly shows my basically authoritarian tendencies. I believe in freedom but I want society to police itself somewhat rigorously, and very rigorously when it comes to grammar.)

There is a segment of the population that would be enormously relieved if phrases like a question that begs an answer replaced the usual begs the question uses. These are people who think using beg the question to mean "to cause someone to ask a specified question as a reaction or response" is completely and thoroughly wrong. There are probably more of these people than you think, and they are judging the rest of us.

For these people, the only "correct" way to use the phrase beg the question is with the meaning "to ignore a question or issue by assuming it has been answered or settled."...

It seems Pope Francis did give money to Hillary Clinton's campaign - but it's only interference by Russia that's important

From Damian Thompson's latest philippic against the Pope, in the US Spectator. 

"Pompeo is beside himself with rage that the leader of a Church that condemns voluntary abortions chooses to say nothing about the the forced variety to which Uighur women are subjected.... 

"Francis is desperate to see the back of Trump. The Vatican spent a lot of money back in 2016 trying to secure the election of Hillary Clinton. Now it is effectively bankrupt, which is why it’s so keen to refresh its relationship with a dictatorship with money to burn. Refusing to meet Pompeo at least deprives the Trump administration of photo opportunity."

At least indirectly, money contributed by Mass goers in the annual Peter's Pence collection (it's this Sunday, by the way) went to Hillary four years ago. Will the Vatican subsidise Joe Biden this time?

Damian Thompson strongly suspects that the Vatican secretly receives large subventions from Communist China, but he has no evidence. 

What an interesting theory, that money from a Communist tyranny, that forces women to have abortions, is accepted by the Pope and passed on to a candidate who backs single-sex marriage and abortion and will appoint judges in the mould of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

'Is the Pope a Catholic?' used to be sarcasm. I think, if the phrase is ever used nowadays, it's often a genuine enquiry. 

Deaths in nursing homes make up between 40% (Germany) and 80% (Canada) of Covid deaths, but people in nursing homes make up 0.6% of population

(From Swiss Policy Research.)

"..the UN expects that the political reaction to the pandemic may put the livelihood of up to 1.6 billion people at immediate risk and may, by the end of 2020, push an additional 130 million people “to the brink of starvation” and an additional 150 million children into poverty."

"In most Western countries, nursing homes account for about 40% (Germany) to 80% (Canada and some US states) of all covid deaths, but they encompass only about 0.6% of the population."

Who will save us from the WHO?

Knut Wittkowski, Ph.D., said yesterday:

'Just as a comparison [with Covid-19): In 2018, 10 million people became cases (in the usual sense, meaning: fell ill) and 1.5 million people worldwide died of tuberculosis. TB is endemic, rather than an epidemic, so a lockdown to prevent the spread of TB could save many of these deaths.'

He was commenting on LinkedIn on a comment by Arlyne Beeche, Ph.D., on a BBC news story under the headline:

Coronavirus: Two million deaths 'very likely' even with vaccine, WHO warns

This headline is misleading. What Dr Ryan of the WHO said, in answer to a question, was that two million dead was 'not impossible' and he went on to say it was 'very likely' if testing and tracing, quarantines and measures to impose social distancing were not implemented. He just does not know. How can he?

The two million deaths would be two million who died with not of the virus, I think. The Hong Kong flu in 1968 killed a million around the world and the 1957–1958 Asian flu killed1.1 million.


Arlyne Beeche wrote this comment on the story, on LinkedIn.

The scientific support behind these claims is extremely weak. First, it is safe to assume based on the early introduction of SARS2 that it is far more widespread than has been detected, simply based on its transmission dynamics, and asymptomatic and mild profile. Second, there is no discussion on the protective T cell immune response. Third, deaths WITH COvID-19 and DUE TO COVID-19 are mixed and overinflate numbers deaths. Finally, fourth, total deaths “with/due to” COVID are falling. So, what is the basis for this irresponsible claim that is creating unprecedented harm to the masses due to the lack of long term vision? Look at the data. These irresponsible (WHO et al) approaches are harming our young (and old) generations. Who is considering the long term, not yet visible negative ramifications of this short sighted line of thinking? One examples: Kids need exposure to each other and their environment to strengthen their immune systems, and this is actively being removed. This is “public health” today? This will certainly increase preventable diseases.

My walk along the Dambovita

 

Men and dogs

The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.

Marquise de Sevigne

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.

Mark Twain

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

Mothers of large families (who claim to common sense)

I absolutely love Amy Coney Barrett for being a mother of 7 and Mrs Von Der Leyen too (useless in most other respects though she is). The latter is a Protestant, by the way. Jacob Rees-Mogg gets an honourable mention for 6, though Boris Johnson's 6 are slightly less honourable. But a demon came to me and reminded me of Hilaire Belloc's The Tiger.

The tiger, on the other hand,
Is kittenish and mild,
And makes a pretty playfellow
For any little child.
And mothers of large families
(Who claim to common sense)
Will find a tiger well repays
The trouble and expense.

‘Ballot harvesting fraud’ involving Somali refugees in Minnesota

The BBC, which cannot hide its desire for Donald Trump to leave office, and the Guardian tell us every time that President Trump talks about ballot fraud that these accusations are unsupported by any evidence, even though it is impossible to prove a negative. 

Anyway it's not true. 

Today very grave evidence of fraud is revealed. I wonder if the press will give it much importance.

'A ballot-harvesting racket in Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis district — where paid workers illegally gather absentee ballots from elderly Somali immigrants — appears to have been busted by undercover news organization Project Veritas.'