Brexit prevents Scotland seceding

"Sturgeon had told friends after the last referendum that it would be political suicide to call another one until separation was backed by 60 per cent of voters. But that point never came. Even now, there’s a (slim) majority for the Union – and that’s after Brexit, an inflation crisis, a not-wildly-popular Etonian in No 10 and the partygate debacle. Fraser Nelson in the Daily Telegraph today." I've said since before the Brexit referendum that Brexit makes Scottish independence almost impossible, when all the clever men and women were saying the opposite.

British Chief of Defence Staff thinks Russia is doing badly

British Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Anthony 'Tony' Radakin said that Russia may achieve "tactical successes" in the next weeks, but the idea that the war had been a success was "nonsense". "President Putin has used about 25 per cent of his army's power to gain a tiny amount of territory and 50,000 people either dead or injured." We shall see what we shall see. What I fear is a long drawn out war that destroys Ukraine, as Anglo-American intervention destroyed Iraq and Libya. I do not want another cold war. The original one was unnecessary and could have led to world war. I do think that Russia under Vladimir Putin must always be a pariah. I did think that sanctions must remain in force after peace is made, but it looks now that sanctions will probably cause a world recession. So far they are hurting the UK and Europe west of Ukraine worse than they hurt Russia. So let's hope for a swift peace and an end to most of the sanctions imposed since the invasion.

The Catholic Church's and the BBC's teaching on "transgender"

The Catholic Church's teaching on "transgender" was repeated in December 2012, during his Christmas address to the Roman Curia, by Pope Benedict XVI who described the view that one can choose ones "gender identity" as a "profound falsehood". Pope Francis ha repeated the Chirch's oppositon. He said in 2016 that teaching children that they have the ability to choose their gender, is a form of ideological "colonization". For him colonialism is a bad thing, just so you know. In June 2019 the Catholic Church published 'Male and Female He Created Them', which rejected the term transgender and said the idea that people could choose or change their gender was a "confused concept of freedom". The Protestant churches are divided on the matter but the BBC, it seems is not, according to a news report yesterday.

"BBC training instructed journalists to lobby politicians and protest for trans rights, raising questions about impartiality. "Trainee journalists were told to use their “magical ally powers” to “influence politicians” and change the minds of the media in favour of rights for people who wish to change gender. "One journalist who attended the training session, run by a trans group, said that it conflicted with the BBC’s code on impartiality and left him questioning whether he was being instructed to break those rules."

Biassed reporting by the BBC again, as every day

BBC World a moment ago. "A Congressional Committee has heard more damning evidence about President Trump's attempt to overturn...." I switched off at that point. It is for the viewer to decide what is damning (and damning is a very strong word, though not for the sophisticated BBC). The BBC was always biassed (against Mrs Thatcher, for example) but not like this. A worse example of its partiality is its continual use of the word 'false' rather than 'strongly disputed'. 'False' is a value judgment and has no place in a news report. Besides, it is impossible to prove a negative. BBC journalists, who tend to have gone public school and Oxford or Cambridge, should know that.

The Old Town, Str. Smârdan at the intersection with Str. Șelari, in 1900

From the German news website, Welt

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has made an open threat to possible Western gas supplies to Ukraine. Medvedev wrote on Telegram that he had read that Ukraine had received liquefied gas from its "masters abroad" and wanted to pay for it in two years. "But there's a question: Who says Ukraine will even be on the world map in two years?"

This morning in the Antim Monastery

 

The revolution turned out, when it came, to be Islamist (first published on June 15, 2017 - Tim Farron was briefly leader of the British Liberal Democrat Party)

"Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society." Antonio Gramsci

The revolution that Marxists expected for so long has turned out, when it came, to be Islamist. 

What Marxism and Islamism have in common, of course, is nihilism.

Just as God sublimely says 'I am Who am', meaning He is life itself, evil is essentially destruction. Evil is a very real thing but wholly negative, death not life. 

Everything in history is at base theological. Liberalism, for example, is puritanism, even if few liberals are any longer Nonconformists and many have no religion. In the place of Christianity they now consider abortion and homosexual rights as sacred.

But they approve of these things for puritanical, not cavalier reasons.

This story which I posted in 2016, a week before the Brexit referendum, shows how much being in the EU corrupts a sense of nationhood

My British Remainer friend at dinner last night made various arguments for staying in the EU, such as all reputable economists think we should (certainly not true), and then said he thought nationals of other EU countries who live in the UK should have had a vote in the referendum. 

This was like the thirteenth stroke of the clock, that not only was not convincing in itself but cast doubt on the other twelve. 

I don't think he gets the idea of nationhood.

Helmut Schmidt thought the Russian intervention in Ukraine was justified

Interesting quotation from the Economist's obituary five years ago of Helmut Schmidt, who apparently thought Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine was justified.

"As publisher of Die Zeit, Germany’s most heavyweight weekly, he became its leading commentator—more influential there in shaping opinion, perhaps, than as an embattled chancellor. He deplored worries about climate change: population growth was a far bigger problem. Intervention in other countries’ affairs was a mistake (though he made an exception for Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine: that was a justified response to Western meddling)."

Helmut Schmidt also said in an interview with “Bild” in 2014 that it was “megalomania” on the part of the European Commission to want to annex Ukraine. 

He called for more restraint from the EU:

“You are presenting Ukraine with the apparent choice of having to choose between West and East”

and warned of a war between Nato and Russia. 

Even though he was a Social Democrat, I always liked Schmidt (much more than Giscard and infinitely more than Frau Merkel who is also a social democrat).

Fred Weir in Moscow wrote this on 11 June

Fred Weir is a Canadian journalist who is a Moscow correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor since 1998. He published this article on 11 June, from which I quote.

Nobody, including me, expected to be writing these kinds of stories at this point in this awful war and sanctions orgy. I was, perhaps, better primed for skepticism than most because I've seen this movie many times before. You are supposed to be looking at catastrophe and collapse, and instead your nose keeps pointing you to stories of survival and resilience.

 

I realize that nobody wants to hear this. The trolls who haunt my page will go nuts over this post. But even Russian inflation is declining this month. The rouble is stronger than it's been in years. And here's a fun fact: You can actually buy US dollars in Moscow banks, at a rate of about 57 roubles, and transfer them abroad. It's more difficult than it used to be, but we know it works because we've done it. 

The media misled us and sold us the US Government/MI6 line, as ever

I am very ashamed that it took me this long to realise that the mainstream media are as untruthful and unreliable about Russia and the Ukraine as they are about every other political story. Journalists have let the world down more than any other institution, and that's saying an enormous amount when you think about the bishops and the academics. 

Please, if you read one thing about the war this week let it be this wonderful article by David Goldman.

David Goldman has a brilliant mind. He has made me distrust the gung-ho stuff written by the distinguished military experts like Prof Sir Lawrence Freedman and various retired generals, colonels and majors. 

Freedman strongly trusts the US line and seems terrified of Donald Trump and the 'populists', which makes me suspect he wants and perhaps is engaged in a crusade for liberal values.

I quote from David Goldman's article:

'Now Biden (who tweeted April 4 that he had “reduced the ruble to rubble” and shrunk the Russian economy by half) is blaming Zelensky. NATO Secretary Stoltenberg admits that Ukraine will have to give up territory for peace, echoing Henry Kissinger’s comments in Davos. The CIA is telling the New York Times that we had better consider the possibility that Russia might win to avoid another “intelligence failure” (have we had anything else in the past half-century?). That’s a crock, of course; the U.S. has satellites that can tell what Ukrainian soldiers have for lunch as well as large numbers of military advisers on the ground.

Quotations

"I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world but continual drinking of knowledge"
John Keats

"Thank goodness the sun has gone in and I don't have to go out and enjoy myself."
Logan Pearsall Smith

"No duty is more important than that of returning thanks."
St. Ambrose, quoted by Pope Pius XI.

Four churches before breakfast

 

I didn't take a picture at the Antim monastery. Now a toasted bacon and tomato sandwich al fresco. A good English working class breakfast four yards from the National Bank at the Hilton Garden Inn. How wonderfully lucky I am to live in this city.

Propaganda

I had breakfast with a Cambridge and Harvard educated friend who has been an academic researcher, across several disciplines including economics and the hard sciences, for two decades. She told me she gave up the media years ago because they are inaccurate. She gets all her information about Ukraine from primary sources including State Department and Russian Ministry of Defence press releases and seems much better informed than I.

I really am foolish to soldier on reading the newspapers.


I asked her opinion about climate change. She said it's all baloney. Pleased to hear that. I assumed that but without a scientific background or doing research.


I started watching TV this year after 18 years without it but might strop. The BBC World Service is propaganda about abortion, refugees, climate change and Donald Trump and the Washington 'insurrection'.


I cannot take anything the BBC says very seriously. Countries that ban the Disney film because of a homosexual kiss are homophobic rather than being devoutly Muslim.


They do get basic facts right, unless liberal hobby horses are involved, but there are herds of liberal hobby horses, nowadays, and sacred cows.

Etymology

I am ashamed that I asked myself this afternoon for the first time why no is the abbreviation for number. The answer turns out to be obvious. No is the abbreviation for the Latin word numero.

I also didn't know till today that carnival means farewell to flesh. Of course!

I was in my 20s or 30s before I realised ventriloquist is derived from the Latin words for stomach and speak, even though I was top of the class in Latin.

I have known for thirty years which is the only word in English which comes from Lithuanian. 

It's 'talk'.

Talking about the war

I just asked my IT guy what his opinion was about the war. 

'I don't have one.'

'You must have one.'

'I think the Russians are the victims here. The Americans are doing what they always do which is interfering, trying to control everything.'

It's surprising to me how often Romanians I speak to blame the Americans, usually only in part, for the war.

One of my employees wonders if America wanted this war. The question had crossed my mind.

Piața Sfântul Gheorghe

Sunset last night, seen from a balcony on the 6th floor on the Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism (renamed Unity Bvd)

 

Origins of political correctness: I wrote this on October 14, 2020

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.