Blagging Blog

Easter 2020, the Triduum, the Virus

2020-04-10T08:05:00.003+03:00

Last year 2020 and This year 2021

What actually happened to me today and what happened in 2020 is eerily similar.

El Greco's Jesus Carrying the Cross, 1580

There are minor differences, of course.

For one, the sun did not shine today. For the other other, the Covid Corona Wuhan Flu has been gnawing away at us for one year, and a bit. Our society is frayed at the bones - in a manner of speaking. Last year at this time, we were filled with naive optimism not really understanding how insidious this plandemic was going to be.

This year's Triduum started with the lack of congregants in the church - a sad reminder that this plandemic is more than just the untimely death of the weak and ill, but it is a knife in the heart of the societies which nurture us into common-sense and social responsibility. This plandemic is fraying our collective nerves - it is turning our fear of social collapse into something we can actually taste.

I mentioned this so the deacon, by using a culinary metaphor.
He asked how I was feeling - a sincere question I last heard from him many months back.

"Like an overcooked hen."

"Unsalted." He added - inside a long second with a glint of sharp sarcasm behind his spectacles - and with the cunning of a cordon bleu chef.

"No more palpable though." I added with cautious one-upmanship.

Then it occurred to me that I should have used a few more adjectives - a spent desiccated over-cooked unfit-for-stock-soup hen - would have been of a superior clang and elicited a needed chortle from the deacon.

The Good Friday service was presided over by the pastor. The nuns of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour (Bridgitine nuns) were in full attendance and three other parishioners, including myself and the deacon playing chiming in, in the solemn parts. It was a pale imitation of last years Good Friday devotion.

A Mass on Good Friday is supplanted by a devotion or the Acts of Reparation for the sufferings and insults that Jesus suffered. During his Passion on Good Friday prayers are provided in the Raccolta Catholic prayer book are recited but, or course, in Finnish.

Succinctly put, for the casual Christian, Good Friday is observed on the Friday before Easter Sunday. On this day Christians commemorate the passion, or suffering, and death on the cross of Jesus Christ. Many Christians spend Good Friday in fasting, prayer, repentance, and meditation on the agony and suffering of Christ. (Pope John Paul II referred to Acts of Reparation as the "unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified".)

The Easter Triidum is the most significant time in the Christian Calendar.

It is in this short period we learn that the shadow of Christ' Death is is unbound by fear, sorrow, or darkness. In these short three days we also learn that death has no dominion over our Saviour.

Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him (Romans 6:9)

Below is from my 2020 Easter Post
The Triduum started on Holy Thursday

The church was empty.

The Deacon came to meet me. I received Holy Communion. We exchanged words of concern for how we - the world - has come into this darkness.

In spite of his youth, he was right when he said - I paraphrase him - Christ will Rise three days hence. No one can steal this from us, from our faith. That is how we have survived past catastrophes and will survive this one.

He being a Polish speaker, his English was

overlaid with phrasing which is seldom used today.

I left the church, making it emptier.

Outside, a local man was reading the small Virus Poster.

I trundled for my daily while locked into Bach's St Johns Passion (K Richter) taking an especially long walk around the ‘back’ of the city.

The sun blissfully shone. I smiled at every passing face as they arched around me. Not everyone smiled back.

The city was deserted in the early hour I walked to the church but was not filling up. I exaggerate. There were no more now.

Our trip to our summer house gave us perspective on the dire state of our small society.

All things were as they were before the Covid. The neighbours were out sunning. Others, unseen, were doing what they do on a Thursday morning. The oldest couple in our cup-de-sac was out for a morning walk.

The crocus were valiantly sticking up their coloured heads. Some butterflies fluttered about dazed but hopeful. A bumble bee inspected the new exposed earth marking where the tulips would make their entry into the world. The blue sky reflected off the rippling sea. None of these things were concerned with our worries.

And noticing this, I relaxed.

Good Friday is, oddly, unexplainably, one of my favoured days of the year. I suppose because is a day of reflection and those days are far between.

My hope is that we will reflect on the majestic gift that has been given us: a way to Salvation.

11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be filled.

12 This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.

13 Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

14 You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.

15 I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends. because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.

16 You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

17 These things I command you, that you love one another.

18 If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me before you.

19 If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

John 15, 11-19

I end with one of the most dolorous laments from Corinthians.

⁵⁰Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God: neither shall corruption possess incorruption.

⁵¹Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed.

⁵²In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed.

⁵³For this corruptible must put on incorruption; and this mortal must put on immortality.

⁵⁴And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.

⁵⁵O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?

⁵⁶Now the sting of death is sin: and the power of sin is the law.

⁵⁷But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

⁵⁸Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmovable; always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:51-58

Self censorship

2020-01-06T08:28:00.001+02:00

There is a self-preservation at play when one decides, leaning toward the better part of discretion, keep mum on an issue which will clearly cause rifts with friends and family. There are many such issues in today's jaundiced world. Many of the these which may cause public and private ruptures have to do with the social malaises which fray the very seams which bind our society

The one that came into focus today, at a very early hour of the day as I read my morning dose of news was the issue of gay marriage.

Like many lazy, weak-kneed liberals, I looked the other way and utter some pap like "Live and let live" and continue to look the other way as the proponents of such a clearly stupid and anti-humanist idea bully anyone within earshot how righteous their cause is. Of course, sex is that which motors all cultural and social mores and must not be questioned - every since sexual revolution the sixties of the past century - is the fuel for most of the social changes infecting the West presently

Of course, it was clear that the tactic of the proponents of same-sex marriage is anything but to allow me to live in peace by glibly babbling a sentiment I actually do not feel.

The proponents used the insidious retort if I groused at the idea of same-sex marriage as dystopian bullying with

"What's the problem, it won't affect you. And besides, once you accept the idea then all is well and we will not push for any more concessions from a society we despise because it will not fully engage with us in our debauchery and not just look the other way."

The article I read today by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D., (the first time have come across his name that I can recall) and it carries the mildly enervating rubric " USA Today: Obergefell Was Never About ‘Freedom to Marry’ "

The article was originally published in the almost defunct on-its-last-gasp magazine USA Today. What is revealed is what we all know all along: Gay marriage was a pre-curser to all the LGBT*** fatuous insanity poisoning the cultural and social landscape of the West.

We have dug a deep hole for ourselves and the view from deep inside this hole is dark.

Adding a second metaphor to the dismay I feel, I will say : A bell once rung cannot be unrung.

I fear the worse is yet to come.

I hope not.

I write this in full appreciation that last night I snuck into the cathedral to watch a rehearsal of Giacomo Carissimi's Roman Oratorio. This thought, this act of sneaking in to witness the flourish of profoundly stirring art at its glorious best keeps some glimmer of hope beating in my chest.

Heloooo, I'm back !

2019-10-02T16:00:00.000+03:00

The spring and summer has been so filled with work around the summer house that I have not actually had enough energy to read emails several days at a stretch.
But now, after short stay in Lisbon and the decimating flu which hit me as the express bus pulled into the the Cathedral Square bus stop, I decided to do a catch up with local, national, European and International news.
The most important local news is the depopulation of the many outlying villages into the home town (a city of two hundred thousand). This trend will peak in 2035 but how it will look is unclear. Then the matter of the growing wolf population has become a bit more urgent. This may explain why people are moving to the larger urban centres ... although ... wolves have been filmed even in neighbourhoods close to city centre. The European news have a been blended into the national news as Finland has the Presidency of the EU has been playing a hapless pivotal role in Brexit. The Finnish Prime Minister put his undiplomatic foot on a gob of equine scat when he offers an opinion on the British Brexit pirouette.

“We are not going to open this agreement we negotiated between Britain and European Union,” Prime Minister Antti Rinne told a news conference in Helsinki

Then the bathroom and laundry room renovation took over my thoughts.
I shook myself out of these reveries.
I turned on the telly (in the middle of day - are rare as a hairless hedgehog but flu has locked me in) survey some of the waggish drollery the House of Commons dyspeptic Royal Opposition Right Honourable backbenchers are flaying Her Majesty's Government ... and lo, I find a new hero. Geoffery Cox, the present Attorney General, whose booming barrister baritone and sharp wit has his detractors spluttering in short vexed yips.
The jibes and barbs he shot, hither and thither, seemed more 'humane' than the party leader's (Boris) amusing argot flinged at the benumbed cod-mouthed, fleck bespeckled Jez Corbyn (or Jezbollah to some).
There were many memorable moments. I laughed and gurgled. I even surprised myself at some of the japery the backbenchers thinking - ah the old days when I worked for an English County. (I had reporting duties directly to the Council and did indeed sit in for a cross examining of the Council on policy matters concerning the EU and the role of the County etc. I can say I came out alive. Just.)

Then I rolled on and did the upcoming Canada election. J'ai rien a dire !

Of course, there is no need to avoid the dark politics of the USA. I found a commentator on Fox News (Gawd, I would have claimed sheer madness of any person who would suggest I watch Fox news. It is not that long ago - at around the time Trump won the election in 2016.
How times change. How we change.

In any case, the present TDS kerfuffle is something about a whistleblower who, apparently, has no direct knowledge of the tune he is blowing on his whistle. In short, someone is playing 3-dimensional political chess and it isn't Peerless Pelosi.

David Starkey: the elite is guilty of treason -- The Brendan O'Neill Show

2019-09-17T09:28:00.001+03:00

This Starkey is not the Ringo bloke who battered drums for a Liverpudlian sixties boysband and got immensely rich along the way. This Starkey is a Yorkshireman. Yes, he does not sound like a gurgling coal miner nor a fishmonger bu' he is an Yorkshireman. Yes, he does sound like a Cambridge toff whose drawn out vowels in the word YEEAAH (year) should make anyone smile in mirthful bemusement. It also puts me en garde, thinking, hoping, wishing that this might well be educational.
I would never claim that the Yorkshiremen I have known were circumspect, and indeed Dr Starkey thankfully, carries this genetic disposition. By which I mean he is not circumspect much as a babe in arms is not circumspect.
Unlike a babe in arms, his choice of adjectives suggests a vocal precision of a man whose skill in carefully crafting argument to reveal deep historical truths. This too is the same precision he uses to reveal the ongoing farce that is being played out on the Scattered Isle. His meticulous nouns, the sparse strewing of Latin (with no anglicized paraphrasing) hither and thither, and the surgical application of historical fact is breathtaking. It should suggest to the listener that one's critical ear should be dropped into the brolly stand by the door.
I knew a man like this: It was long back during my first school years where Brother Terence, of the Congregation of Christian Brothers (at what was then St Mary of the Angels Boys School), read history to we, his charges, enunciating his words so very carefully that even the rough Irish boyos and still rougher boys from my home island (although we were very few) might understand each word, regardless whether they spoke the language he was reading, or not. Miraculously, even the thickest amongst us was elevated to moments of total understanding.
And so it is with Dr Starkey.

This picayune intellectual is an historian and broadcaster of singular pluck. In this rare interview, David Starkey speaks to Brendan O’Neill. In one rather alarming but titter inducing phrase, he calls the British nomenklatura, the English and Scottish political class, the establishment ... ‘lying, deceiving shits’. It is awe inspiring that such a small man can put so much power behind such a small and vulgar word. The adjective though is the added condiment that gives the phrase the needed pondus.

As for his host, Brendan O'Neill, I have little to criticise, probably because O'Neil uttered no more than paltry question or two and allowed Dr Starkey to shine.

Holy Week MMXIX and the burning of Notre Dame in Paris

2019-04-16T18:27:00.003+03:00

Holy Week is a time for reflection on les temps perdus, thoughtful consideration of what has happened in one's life, resolutions, a search for inspiration, a time of sadness and a time of joy. It is a time when we come to the understanding that we are redeemed.
_____Hosea 13:1 : Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O Death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion will be hidden from My sight.The burning of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, overwhelming sadness hangs on the shoulders all people of goodwill and faith.

The bourdon – named Emmanuel – tolled for most major events in the history of France: Including the coronation of kings, papal visits and to mark the end of two world wars. The Mother Church of Notre Dame was important in French history, in European history, in world history. It had a central role in the cementing Christianity in the Frankish lands. It was the stage for some very important events in European History. The Church was especially important as the birthplace that became the University of Paris and thereby the spark of academic roiling of Europe's coming generations.

It's importance as the academic centre of the world cannot be understated.

My personal fascination is the role the cathedral played in the development of Western Music, especially polyphony. The period was known as Ars Antigua, from 1160 to 1250, brought into the world the likes of maître de chapelle Pérotin, surely one of "the best composers of organum," (archived in Magnus Liber Organi ) who developed what became known as organum quadruplum—four-voice polyphony. He was preceded by Leonin who developed the clausulae—melismatic st of style in Gregorian chant. He is suggested that Léonin might have been the first composer to use the rhythmic modes, and may have invented a notation for this new methodology (the original note values of the chant were greatly slowed down and a fast-moving upper part is superimposed).

It is also suggested that Léonin might have been the first composer to use the rhythmic modes, and may have contrived a notation for this style. ###

_____

The human ear took some time to accept the sounds bouncing off the walls of the cathedral in its early years. Some ears were offended by these unfamiliar noises whereas others heard the voices of angels. " John of Salisbury(1120–1180), philosopher and Bishop of Chartres, taught at the University of Paris during the years of Léonin, but before Pérotin, was one of the those of two minds. He attended many services at the Notre Dame Choir School. In his Policraticus he offers a first-hand description of what was happening to music in the High Middle Ages, writing:"

Bad taste has, however, degraded even religious worship, bringing into the presence of God, into the recesses of the sanctuary a kind of luxurious and lascivious singing, full of ostentation, which with female modulation astonishes and enervates the souls of the hearers. When you hear the soft harmonies of the various singers, some taking high and others low parts, some singing in advance, some following in the rear, others with pauses and interludes, you would think yourself listening to a concert of sirens rather than men, and wonder at the powers of voices … whatever is most tuneful among birds, could not equal. Such is the facility of running up and down the scale; so wonderful the shortening or multiplying of notes, the repetition of the phrases, or their emphatic utterance: the treble and shrill notes are so mingled with tenor and bass, that the ears lost their power of judging. When this goes to excess it is more fitted to excite lust than devotion; but if it is kept in the limits of moderation, it drives away care from the soul and the solicitudes of life, confers joy and peace and exultation in God, and transports the soul to the society of angels." ####

Music was only one part of the storied history of the cathedral. It has been a focal point in the life of many significant events throughout its history. Many important historical figures have been influenced or influenced Notre Dame's story: Napoleon, Abelard, Maurice de Sull, Joan of Arc, Henry VI, king of England, King Louis VII of France, James V, king of Scotland, François Mitterrand Charles de Gaulle, Pope Alexander III (1163), Victor Hugo, Jean Ravy, Cardinal Robert de Courçon, Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Templars, St. Denis, Architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Baron Haussmann, Napoleon III, Matisse Picasso ... and Robespierre. It is this last named, the guiding hand of the French Revolution, which oversaw the decimation of the cathedral (and not a small number of Frenchmen whom he made sure fell from the guillotine, fed the mob and became food for the Hounds of War.
It was at the tail end of the French Revolution that the cathedral was sold to a scrap merchant who had plans for the stone for a growing Paris. However, before it was dismantled, Napoleon came on the scene and saved the cathedral. He stopped the sale, turned over the cathedral to the care of the Catholic Diocese which called on the faithful to resurrect the Mother Church from its misery. New life was breathed into Notre Dame. It stood for another 230 years after the desecration of the French Revolution. The bees in their hives on the roof drew a sigh of relief and made honey. Yesterday the bourdon fell silent: it will toll no more. The cathedral burned to cinders. And the beehives on the roof fell with the the spire.

### According to W.G. Waite, writing in 1954: "It was Léonin's incomparable achievement to introduce a rational system of rhythm into polyphonic. (source Wikipedia)

#### From Wikipedia

Kirkman 2010, p. 163 n. 72.

Hayburn 1979, p. 18.

John of Salisbury 1938, Book I Chapter 6.

Waaa?

2019-01-25T07:43:00.001+02:00

No comment? Dr Phil?
Just watch to the end of the vid.
Dystopia, squared? Cubed?
A teachable moment? (Whoever came up with this phrase should be made to watch this video sixty three million five hundred and seventy six times, and even if they are dead, the casket or urn shall be wired up to have this video shown until the target figure is met.)

Baizuo

2019-01-23T14:57:00.000+02:00

I write this as an FYI: this follows up on my previous blag on the Covington Affair.

I found the following text in Urban Dictionary.

Baizuo (pronounced "bye-tswaw) is a Chinese epithet meaning naive western educated person who advocates for peace and equality only to satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority. A baizuo only cares about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment while being obsessed with political correctness to the extent that they import backwards Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism.

Wikipedia describes Baizuo (/ˈbaɪˌtswɔː/;^[1] Chinese: 白左 báizuǒ, literally "white left"^[2]). in this way: a derogatory Chinese neologism used to refer to Western leftist liberal elites.^[3]^[4]^[5] It refers to the left faction in the culture wars in Western politics, implying support of multiculturalism, political correctness and positive discrimination. In more than 400 answers submitted by Zhihu users during 2015 to May 2017, the term is defined as referring to those who are hypocritically obsessed with political correctness in order to satisfy their own feeling of moral superiority motivated from an ignorant and arrogant Western-centric worldview who pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours. A related term is shèngmǔ (圣母, 聖母, literally "holy mother", title for the mother of an emperor), a sarcastic reference to those whose political opinions are guided by emotions and a hypocritical show of selflessness and empathy, represented by celebrities.^[6]

In short: The Chinese see the baizuo as ignorant and arrogant westerners who pity the rest of the world and think they are saviours.

Justin Trudeau's worldview is a low-resolution caricature of an adult's worldview. He iuos a perfect example of a baizuo.

Baizuo perfectly describes the mob which piled on the Covington Catholic School students. What it misses is that the mob, and each member, in spite of signalling how virtuous they are, showed their true colours and these had nothing do with virtue. What they showed is how that they are shallow, hateful, detestable, horrid, unpleasant, nasty, disagreeable, objectionable, insufferable, rotten, loathsome, abominable, execrable, odious, repellent, distasteful, obnoxious, offensive, foul, vile, ghastly; oh and ... beastly.

Nota bene !
Urban dictionary is half-serious and half-waggish. It is up to you to winnow the wheat from the chaff.

How to burn 'em at the stake without lighting a fire

2019-01-23T12:34:00.003+02:00

OK, I admit I got sucker punched by the original story of the Covington Catholic School incident some days back.

Let me restate it this way: I was hornswoggled when and by taking a quick look at CNN, for a an update on the daily news in NA. I was thinking that I would be inundated with pig-swill but like water and duck, it would flow off the back. No. Not possible. I was hooked by the newest "dumpster fire" going the social media round.

This time it was story about some snide, sniggering white boys at the Lincoln Memorial pulling teenage pranks over an old geezer with bad dental work and poor drum skills. Odd, I thought. This story is oddly odd, I thought again for good measure. I watched the video, subsequently, several times, trying to suss out the truth, I concluded, like Scully, the truth is out there somewhere. Obvioulsy, I concluded in this way this because CNN is notorious for publishing - er, there is no other word for it - fake news. I checked other news sources. There seemed to be the foul stink of the blind mob in the air.

At first, I admit, I was not completely taken in by the first short video which hit the airwaves. The commentary was nothing more than subdued vitriol - the kind to which our virtuous betters so gleefully subject us when adjudication on right and wrong is necessary.

A pang of guilt did try to smack me across the gob. It felt like a small fillet of halibut. Yes, I did. Then I gulped and did believe what video showed. Gulped again and refused to swallow the clearly edited video. Then I waited.

I was skeptical - as is my idling mode - and concluded that video was too short hence more was sure to come and I suspected, correctly as it turns out, that there was more video material to turns out. After all, I reasoned, there are several hundred people watching this event unfold and each one has the mobile cocked for action.

O dearie me: What seemed to be a video about this was really a video about that. The truth starting leaking out in mere hours.

Two days later, the truth is looking very grim - not for the original villains of the story but the promoters and the purported heroes of the story.

The principal promoter of the fake narrative is ... drum role ... CNN.

This American broadcaster has been stepping on rakes lately - or more rakes than is statistically possible to step on in such a space of time (2 years) - promoted this video with the vim of a jihadist going full non compis mentis at the bodies pilling up under his bleeding knife. The other promoter and now proven liar is a "tribal elder" - as he is described by the heartbroken CNN anchor - of a mid-west indigenous tribe. When so much reverence is being showered on any snaggle-toothed man who does not deserve more than a nod of the head, then I fear for those who have sanctified their new tragic hero. As it turns out the truth is no longer out there but has now come home to roost.

It starts with another crew of characters which seems to have been forgotten - purposefully it seems - in this social media melee - the belligerent and virulently racist Black Hebrew Israelites. This is a truly odious group of racists who use language the likes at which the most battle hardened doughboy would blush. Why have they been purposefully left out of this narrative?

In any case, the crafted narrative cued up by CNN actually began to fall apart yesterday. The story started to turn away from the young boys whom, via the first video, were characterized as smirking racist, Build-the-Wall screaming Trump supporters whose major crime was to disrespect an honourable Indian Elder. Then the, Elder, by the name Nathan Phillips, AKA Nathan Stanard, Native American, started clogging the airwaves with mystical pronouncements and clearly (after watching the latest long videos - one lasting two hours) fibbing through his missing teeth.

What is very odd and I mean not-amusing, is the backtracking by some of the media. The frenzy into which they had flown at the initial spark of the 3 minute video became subdued followed by an ebbing vitriolic verbiage then a whisper and then it died down (1). Finally, most of the initial instigators of mass mob hysteria have slapped themselves out of their self-induced virulent reverie and have started their timidly mumbled mea culpas. (Not CNN though).

In one CBS interview, the cur-ish interviewer asks one of the boys if he should apologize or should he feel guilt. This is just pure balderdash, piffle. Feel guilt for what? For doing nothing? Standing about? Smiling like a goofy teenager? About being scared? For being naive?

The weaselly words uttered by the adults whose job it is to know better - like the so-called journalists who have promoted their version of this story - should now stop temporizing and state clearly " the boys did nothing wrong and they do not have to apologize for doing nothing wrong". The kind of nonsense still floating about especially from the right-wing media is that, surely, the boys should share some of the guilt for something, anything ! This is pouting insouciance - the kind of show that children put on when they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

It would be very convenient if the boys do take some of the blame for the hoopla because it then mitigates - and even absolves - the vile condemnation they suffered at the hands of the adults who should know better. Is it not the duty of the adults in our society to protect those less capable of defending themselves from the marauding forces of evil? Is it not the duty of of the adults in our society to tell the truth, and to protect the innocent from the threats the bullies and thugs? For goodness sake, most of these young boys do not yet shave.

I end here because I need my energy to handle the next outrage-fest to spring up any moment now.

-----

I found this video (attached to this blag) which reveals essential detail on the Native American Nathan Phillips, AKA Nathan Stanard who has been consecrated into sainthood by the likes of the CNN and the Hollywood elites.
(Warning: the character in the Youtube video is an iconoclast who may touch some raw nerves).

And speaking of the Hollywood elites ... who of these vile Übermensch has apologized for the diabolical attacks on the Covington School students? (The worse is Jim Carrey: Born in Newmarket: an Ontario village of no importance, then and now, and in the sixties which, if memory serves me right, had water issues thus, perhaps, explaining why Carrey is a bedwetter and slightly mad as in gaga madhatter kind of mad ).
Update Jan 25, 2019: Jim Carrey - see his latest painting on Twitter.

------
Here is a link to Newsbusters: It grades the coverage on a scale of Good, Bad and Ugly - just like a spaghetti Western).

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIXIzvyAlLA

This is another link which has all the long videos taken at the site.
https://www.change.org/p/diocese-of-covington-immediate-apology-to-the-students-and-community-of-covington-catholic-high-school

Here is a link to Newsbusters: It grades the coverage on a scale of Good, Bad and Ugly - just like a spaghetti Western).

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kyle-drennen/2019/01/22/good-bad-ugly-how-media-covered-false-smear-covington-kids

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIXIzvyAlLA

A link to Nathan Phillips' attempt to break into to disrupt a Mass at DC’s National Shrine Cathedral.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/nathan-phillips-rally-attempted-to-disrupt-mass-at-dcs-national-shrine-91038

Another interesting item in Nathan Phillips portfolio:

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/native-activist-who-harassed-catholic-teens-identified-as-actor-from-2012-skrillex-video-about-attacking-police/

Update Jan 22, 2019
It seems that the person who started this madness - i.e. the one who sent out the edited first video which brought the virtuous high-minded riffraff out of the woodwork - is a teacher in California. However, it now seems the bloodhounds of the Interweb have fingered an account in Brazil behind the California account suggesting nefarious deeds and very bad actors. Russians? Here we must take a breath. I have worked most of my professional life in the Interweb and cellular telecommunications, developing software and hardware. There are ways of explaining why a California account has an address in Brazil none of which have anything to do with conspiracy but more to do with hiding your digital footprint because you are not a very nice person (paedos, for example use this technology to cover their tracks) and you want to hide behind a digital mask so that you can freely and anonymously set small digital bonfires. Why? Perhaps a person with dark motives?

(2) Yes, there are people and organizations out there which still cling to the original story line in spite of the hard concrete evidence that the original story was a hoax, a lie, a perfidy perpetrated by people fueled by hate.

Sigh!

Update Jan 24, 2019
Following up on the Covington Catholic School incident, I found some very distressing ipso facto analysis and responses by the bad actors who started the infamous plot to tar and feather children with the vilest of crimes: racism. The odious motives ascribed to the young boys did not play into this narrative painted by the tolerant liberal left spinning in dervish insanity. The morality police on the left were so flummoxed they fought back by hitting below the belt.

Even a (Baptist) Bishop Talbort Swann purposefully, in a means-spirited fulmination misrepresented the facts clearly evident in the videos in the public domain. One might expect that a Christian minister might find the mercy to interpret to et the events in the most generous way. But instead demonize children by ascribing motives to them for which he has no way of proving only proves that his heart is filled with dark evil.

He was only one small voice. The bigger voices such as the Washington Post and the Guardian defended their biased, intolerant and chauvinistic reporting by blaming the Covington Boys for not being humble and bowing in abject contriteness at the hounding mob that tried to ruin their lives. In defending this their contemptible pompous self-justification, their claim amounted to this: the boys were too good to be true and therefore they could not be so stop putting on a facade and show us your dark hearts. In addition, they felt as though the conservative did not play fair by not allowing the liberal media in getting away with their bombast and deceit and hypocrisy.
So, for the sin of quietly standing their ground, respectfully with a touch of braggadocio, and not allowing themselves at being bullied, they are condemned as racist scum.

@ This past summer I had to confront a group of pubescent teen-agers on the beach. They really were getting out of hand. My intervention was comical and I knew that it was going to be futile. As it turned out, I said what I had to say, they ganged up on me, a few neighbours patted me on the back for the effort but the young boys and a few girls, certainly no more than 14 or 15, did not come back and carry on as they had been for some nights. What these children were not is evil nor demonic and certainly not humble. They were feisty, but that's OK, then and in hindsight. They were children at one of the important nexus in their lives - the one in which hormones are conspiring to get you into trouble, every minute of they waking picayune lives. Apparently many of the high-moral finger-waggers scrumming into the Covington fray have forgotten what it was like when they were 15 years old.

Why spend so much energy on this incident ?
There is an old saying in Canadaland: when the US sneezes, Canada gets a cold. The truth is this. If the USA is doing well, then its neighbours and allies do well. There is also the subsidiary truism that whatever happens in the USA, it will come to us two years later. What is going on in the USA is important because social ructions which are tearing at the seams of the social fabric of American society are bound to come to our shores. Heck, they are already here.

There are observers who suggest that this was all about a "smirk". This has been called a face crime.
It was George Orwell who first used this term in his seminal work "1984".

“He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.”

George Orwell, 1984

Update Jan 25, 2019

The following article lists the chronology and makes claims as to the veracity of purported facts (especially by Nathan). Clearly, something is rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark where fiction is fact

and vice versa.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/24166739

Even one of the keenest of social observers on the left (I bite my tongue as I write this with begrudging respect) Brendan O'Neill takes a cricket bat to the narrative promoted by the besserwisser virtue-signalling outrage mob - and gets a full century .

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/01/21/this-is-a-new-low-for-the-twittermob/

Finally, and hopefully my last installment on this sordid débâcle, is the op-ed by a person who seems to inject herself into hot-button issues for a reason that seems unclear. And, she inevitably takes positions that are so daft it hurts the brain just to contemplate that anyone can be this delusional.

https://www.thewrap.com/alyssa-milano-red-hats-maga-hats-in-trumps-america-its-not-enough-to-not-be-a-racist/

My first car

2018-12-17T05:49:00.001+02:00

It was a sedan model. I think it ran over one of my best mates, but he survived: the car, I mean. 

We were up to our Friday night japes and for some odd reason, we, a not-so-loud troupe of suburban milch-toast wannabe-toffs decided to manhandle the Fiat 1100 Familiare Sedan to the bottom of the street where I lived. By this I mean that a slew of Etobicoke's finest youth used pure masculine muscle to get the Fiat to its home base. 

For some unexplainable reason, It, was decided that half the crew would sit in the car while the other half pushed. While the car was rolling (crawling) the half sitting in the car would jump out at which point the other half of the crew doing the pushing would jump into the car - the bait and switch, if you will.  Why and how this arrangement came about is unclear. I, for one, would never have come up with such a convoluted plan although being the driver I was free to not participate in anything this remotely stupid.

You may well ask: Is stupidity a suburban thing?

The fact was that the fuel gauge indicated that the car engine was starved for fuel - which it was - and given our level of joie-de-vivre there was not a boy amongst us who understood that a coughing engine was a symptom of  significance. It was many years later that I came to appreciate that a car engine running on petrol fumes, Fiat or not, will conk out. (Ah, the wisdom of youth is too often a few years too late). To be fair to myself and my cheese-paring  companions we had spent our money on better things that evening. However, we were shortsighted. Suppose one of us was dying of starvation at the very moment. We would have been hard put to gather the funds to buy an Apache burger  to stave off his imminent death. Of course, we spent our money on frivolities like cheap wine. What else does one do in his prime hormone-infested years but slap down coin-of-the-realm at the local LCBO for the cheapest and best plonk to be had? Surely it is more clever to look into the immediate future and think that maybe leaving spare change in the left pocket for  an imperial  gallon, never mind two, of Supertest's finest cru is a better plan. Huh ! A better plan is not always the best plan. 

Anyway, it would have been a mute point because at two in the bleeding AM the petrolheads best-est hangout at the corner of Anglesly and The West Mall was padlocked for the night ... we are talking about the sixties of the previous century. (Gosh, am I that old?)

To this day, I puzzle how it was that the mate-of-mine who got run-over wended his way home. He lived on the extreme end of our allotment, a good two-three klicks to the north. Did he limp?

Replies

  Rego Daniel OK old matey, I get ya. The trips we made together were a bit frenetic - some educational - some verging on incursions into the twilight zone. We were two scruffy men who seemed to have the presence of three-four, yes, but well mannered and yes having a Morecombe and Wise air about us, we were, I was cunningly good at cadging the parson's church keys from frightened grannies in our forays deep into the mid-England shires. A tad mad, I agree. The least problematic of our outings was our Bastille Day in a French village which name I do not recall: Tcha, funnelling the best Gallic draught down our gullets and keeping ourselves upright is not in the same class as the tribulations of which I write above ... but yes I get your point - and yes again, some of the other outings to which I subjected you were on the verge of mad hatter stuff. Should I apologize?

Richard Newbold Ha! One I'd forgotten. Longwy, I think, more than 20 years ago, now. I'm more thinking of the times our outings ended in hysteria all round - finding the emergency room in a hospital in Slovakia to look at your cracked ribs only to be told by a tiny, heavily pregnant young lady we had reached "Gynekologia" (still the only word of Slovakian I know) - or watching you more and more frantically trying to sell Leicestershire delicacies such as Bombay Mix to Germans partaking in an afternoon of Wurst-chomping at the Saarland County Fair. Carrying a car short on fuel like a sedan chair seems like an uneventful day in your World by comparison.

Rego Daniel Oh, and the car in Germany: It was an of-the-production-line Peugeot 306 Estate (supplied by the County Council - due, in no small part to my constant chivvying Allan - RIP ) went smoky on me somewhere near the Fair. I may and should be forgiven for the mistake: I tanked up with petrol which is a no-no in a car with a diesel engine. Luckily, the Peugeot dealer chappies in too-clean overalls were kinder than Basil Faulty on an off-day and came close to dissassembling the engine to flush it. I am unimpeachable though: I blame German exceptionalism - green plastic encasing a nozzle at the fuel pump is for PETROL NOT DIESEL. This is what I screamed down the car's fuel spout when the smell of Dieselkraftstoff hit my nasal tract. Upon lifting my head from the semi-submission-to-fate truckle I noticed the gaze of the woman on the other side of the pump island eyeing me with fretting suspicion. I think I was very ill after this. It was the flu not the fuel.

As for the short woman: I could have used a "gynekológ" just then because, frankly, I felt very pregnant. I mean, Richard, really, have you ever suffered from purported cracked ribs? Would you say, do you know that the symptoms are unlike being pregnant?  It could have been worse though because I think the way I landed on the camera - the lens jabbing me in the ribs as they do on such occasions - it could have been worse. Imagine if the lens had been a long-ish small lens, the size of your pinky, that one finds on digital cameras. I would have had my chest perforated with a digital lens. It does not bear any thinking. Anyway,  I saw my myself a few seconds into the future as I flew over the handlebars of my Peugeot bicycle,  with my ribs  being cushioned by my precious stout Nikon and spurting up  like an uncoiled spring, dusting myself off pretending like nothing happened. Again Basil Fawlty comes to mind. The lesson to be drawn is that when  on a steep-ish tertiary (paved) road in the wilds of Slovakia do not  take  snaps with an oversized camera while cycling downhill -and for gods-sake, do not put the viewfinder to your eye.  It did not end here though. The drive home to Salo was a string of ouches. Even I got a  tired of my own whinging grunts.  The indignity culminated when I faced off with the "unsurance" adjuster. It is undignified to babble on about  one's searing chest pains  to an  unbelieving hefty person who inspects her fat fingernails as one is treliving grief, trauma and turmoil. OK, I did put it on a bit thick - something I seldom do. Nevertheless, it is dispiriting, bone crushing, to be pish-poshed in such an off-handed manner. She not only did not believe my story but she  demurred as I put descriptive adjectives to my travails on the drive back to Salo. It was worse than the actual accident, I assured her. I left defeated. Yes, I could have bleated,  carped and written a blistering denunciation to he highest echelons of the insurance firm but instead I changed insurance carrier and locked up the Nikon in a drawer in which it remains.

CNN = NPC = Toobin tooting

2018-10-22T20:31:00.001+03:00

///

My take on this  vlog  by J Ward - although a bit more than a year old  but worth watching - takes me into the realm where  fantasy and truth coincide . 
I thank John Ward for his dialectic tearing down of Tootin Toobin's inane patter. Ward sets fire to CNN's acteurs principaux in rapid succession, making this vlog enjoyable but also prescient. I chortle at the poetic double-double entendre (like Tim Horton's over-milky double-double) and  snideful snarky-poesie (of John Ward)  because it is very much like the foam on a cappuccino on that Timmy's double-double where it, obviously, has no place. In addition, John Ward offers up  a  juicy tidbit on our master Legal Beagle, ergo: Toobin mesmerizingly tiddled a woman, couchetted her somewhere privé by whom he fathers a child, all the while being  married to another woman. Not an  unimportant factoid when the person who preens as an upright, solid, moral, decent human being is anything but(t). In addition, this very person who also claims suzerainty over all matters jurisprudence is as sharp and thick as a smithy's anvil. Good digging, John W.

It also becomes apparent that the CNN producers listening in on the intellectual thrashing  meted out by the "sexiest woman alive" are on their collective backfoot,  unable to decide at what point they should whisper into Anderson Cooper's earpiece to break into the throttling the "sexiest woman alive"  to which the meagre brained Toobin is subjected. 

Eventually, Anderson toes in and gives Toobin the nod, releasing CNNs cowering attack dog to "respond" to tigress Foley. Poor quaking sod ... alas  Toobin (not Anderson although I mean him too) tries to take on the Beast Foley but Toobin being too clever by half and most clearly just a pair of clever clogs made from the hollow tulip tree  ... is crushed like a slug underfoot (while trying to have his cake and eat it too). 

How do I know this? Look at how Toobin's eyes flit about looking for an excuse to scream "I surrender!"  but upon receiving not-unkind eye contact from the Tigress, he nods in feisty but nevertheless supine defeat much like a bovine on the chute leading into the abattoir.  He mumbles in bewildered buffoonery and suddenly I feel a pang of guilt at his suffering. But this lasts a fleeting six microseconds. 
As Toobin's  focuses in on the  on the eyes of the sexiest woman alive, he knows that the only thing left is to admit defeat. He wants to scream "Slap me. Please  ! I want to have a baby with you. "  She does read his plea and thinks "Piffle !" and continues to dismantle his shabby ego. It ends with a whimper from Toobin and a bewildered shuffle from Cooper.

Thanks John Ward. Catch  ya up.﻿

John Ward

Published on 23 Jun 2017

Sexiest Woman Alive Elizabeth Foley (who is the sexiest woman alive) bends and spanks CNN chief legal analyst/adultererJeffrey Toobin over the uncompromising knee of constitutional law. Like this video? I could use your help to keep making them. https://www.patreon.com/JohnWard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqhDHz10vLA&t=12s

Benjamin Franklin's take on Democracy

2018-10-22T17:46:00.000+03:00

Succinctness is a gift. A well formulated apologue is genius.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch ...

Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”

Benjamin Franklin

Zucked !

2018-08-19T06:15:00.001+03:00

I like playing with language. At least the ones I can speak with reasonable fluency.
I find English the most pliable when I engage in what is called punning or word-play. I am fairly adept at this game. Willing or unwilling participants in my attempts at mangling the English language to suit a comedic purpose either groan or giggle at my wily attempts.
The groaners are the Canadians and Americans, but in truth, they can, unexplainably, flip either way. The staid English and canny
Scots will not giggle but guffaw. This might be construed as either appreciation or disdain.
I know few Aussies or Kiwis but I suspect the ones I do know nudge and wink in glee with a clever touché.
It is not a given that the Lusitanians will participate when a smartiepants contorts their idiom for farcical purposes, however, those that do, grimace then utter a wicked smile as if to say, "I get it, you are too clever and wicked."
The French appreciate it to a point but utter "Maudit !" under their collective breath at my attempt at levity. Parlaying a word into levity seems a bit frivolous especially when it is done by "un étranger." However, if the word-player, the calembourist (if I may), must not show any sign that they know what they are doing. There must be a pause of a long minute then all is forgiven or forgotten or both. Oddly, Quebeckers veer from this and laugh, teeth - if any - being shown as if on an odontological parade.
The Spanish are similar to their northern neighbours however I only know Castilian native-speakers and Galicians. The latter are too dour to appreciate word play but then again they are unsure if they are Portuguese or Castilian speakers. The former are annoyed when they appreciate that they cannot participate at a pace with which they saunter.
Swedish speakers, in Finland, usually "get it" but do not participate in a genuine fashion because it is a very foreign concept. The Swedes "get it" but are not amused. That's it. Not amused.
Finnish speakers do not "get it" and if they do they do not react. A blank expression suggesting deafness is the best result one can get.
Germans guffaw instantly and with gusto. Then they try it and bugger it up and then get lost in a time warp.
Austrians seem to overcome the time warp and actually sputter a good giggle, now and then.

This is all a long way around to get to the main issue.
I have been following a web site with the fetching handle "twitchy" - dedicated to finding the most memorable or infamous or squishingly stupid or absurdly lacking in self-awareness tweets. It is here I came upon the word Zucked.

I read the mordant headline and of course, it became clear that this word plays on the infamous finger-wagging besserwisser Facebook founder chappie.
I admit that it took me a few microseconds to "get it". Surely, sharper folk understood, instanta, to what this word- Zucked - alludes ... !
I admit I was slow but it was still the wee hours of the morning and I had a few things on my mind and ... like the previous evenings downpour had dumped 30 mm of rain drenching the firewood Anyway, I read the article. (Or this ...)

The gist of the article is this.
Facebook banned Prager University videos and disingenuously apologized for making a "mistake" in removing the videos. Since the material had not broken FB standards, they were restored. Prager's 3 million subscribers can now breathe a sigh of relief. For now.

The bigger picture though is that many people and organisations with the wrong ideas or out of step with the current year are being banned, blocked or dropped from these "private" platforms. For example, if I were to say that the present Canadian PM (J Trudeau) is a feckless, vapid, low IQ human being whose only saving grace is his hair and then back this up with a list of his gaffes, calamitous policies, and moral turpitude, I may well find myself shadow-banned or even have my account(s) closed down.
Today, however, a dust-up for Wrong-Think is not in the hands of the agents of the national security services but the internet mobs and their duplicitous apologists FB, Twitter and MSM. Of course, the security services are enlisted by the national governments with the appropriate change in legislation so as to make it possible to cudgel anyone who promotes Wrong-Think under the rubric of hate or hate-speech. For example, if I were to put a knife to the throat of the present eraäs Golden Calves, you know, gay marriage, islam, trans-sexual politics, I would face a barrage of foaming-at-the-mouth hate and finally I would be shut down or maybe even imprisoned.
The odd thing is that it is precisely in the countries where people have had the most freedom of self-expression where Group-Think is gaining foothold. I name Canada, but Sweden is in the same league and is very probably the country most in thrall to Group-Think in Europe. Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe it is worse for Wrong-Thinkers Germany. Or the UK.

In Europe, the ware on Wrong-Think has been happening for some time and sadly people are getting used to this new status quo. This also happened in the early nineteen thirties in Germany, although Germany was not alone for the same phenomena was also present in the UK, France, and the Benelux Countries. We are now, it seems, in the grip of the same fever of insanity that gripped the Europe eighty years ago. Go figure.

The difference today and then is that the modern-day censorious class are the liberal elites, the progressives, the leftists of all stripes. These elites believe that it is perfectly acceptable to have the lunatics running the asylum because, after all, they are equal to everyone else and must be respected and since everyone is equal to everyone else, why not extend this courtesy to the criminals class and let them run the prisons ... and ... if anyone objects to this clearly insane anti-common-sense world view, they should be called Hitler to their faces and in all public fora, punched hard in the nose and then thrown in a concentration camp.

In addition, if you do not accept this new world view you are Satan. Sorry, not Satan, because there are people who worship Satan and they must be respected. We MUST be inclusive - all religions are equal - all humans are good even the evil amongst us are good for there is no such thing as evil and so on and anyone who impugns evil on another human being is evil and should be punished, (albeit does not exist, it does exist in some cases) and may even have to face the ultimate sanction if they do not abjectly beg forgiveness. As in do with germs and virus, we cure by elimination.

May God save us from these self-righteous, sanctimonious, duplicitous, deceitful sociopaths.

Motet: Anima Christi composed by Kevin Allen (2006).

2018-06-08T08:51:00.000+03:00

Kevin Allen's music is seldom heard outside the US. In the many years of singing in chamber choirs, I have never sung in a trio and, of course, my first attempt had to be Anima Christi - a motet of singular musical beauty and maze-like simplicity.

After the performance, two days back, I have had the time to reflect, and luckily, compared our take to one carried out by musical professionals in a local provincial chapel. (Squatting beautifully on the shore overlooking the pleasing Kakskerta Sound.) It took some time and ego-puffing to come the conclusion that perhaps Anima Christi, and especially our humble attempt at taking it apart, is not everyone's cup of tea - not for the performers surely.

Anima Christi, although composed a mere ten years ago, feels like a very ancient polyphonic plainchant motet. It is rare in that is both simple and complex - both attributes counterbalancing each other with ease. Counterpoints, here and there, and complex syncopation, make for pleasant listening but blasted awful sweaty work for the singers.

Although I have been singing in chamber choirs for a few decades, I found this piece of music almost beyond my reach. Listening to this recording, I cringe but recognize at once that at the time of the performance, the music fell very nicely on my own ear. A friend who understands this music thing suggested with forgiving precision that we were not flat but that there was imbalance in the voices. Jukka had previously mentioned that we should bone up on the “dynamic” and this was confirmed by the friend who is an expert in this music thing.

The day after this concert (yesterday) I went to listen to a sextet performing the same motet (Atte Tenkanen is the common link in both groups thus explaining why Allen’s motet was sung in two consecutive days a mere twenty kilometers apart) and came to the conclusion that we - the trio which sung in the Turku Dom - were valiant in our interpretation but there was a wavering, clearly audible, uncertainty. Ah well, we do as we can at that moment in time in our quadrant in the Universe.

This music season has been very demanding (for SGA) with many performances and a combination of simple and complex music topped off by a trip to Rome. One of the main differences this year from previous years (we are now five years young) is that SGA is actually being paid for its performances. In addition, several pieces have been specifically penned for SGA. No small thing, I am assured.

Wednesday’s concert (6.6.2018, at Mary's Cathedral, the Finnish Lutheran Church Mother Church located in Turku) was unusual in yet another important respect: the pews of the main nave we filled with patient listeners. In several cases I noticed people with closed eyes - dozing off? OK, it true that the audience was not fulsome in the final applause but then again, we rushed as if fleeing a mob intent on burning us at the stake. Still, I do admit at a slight gobsmacking when standing in front of the altar looking out into the sea of faces waiting to hear a chorus of ancient liturgical music. Are there that many people in our small city interested in ancient liturgical music ? Apparently, it seems to be so.

Robert Mueller should have his historical baggage checked?

2018-04-26T07:15:00.001+03:00

Prof. Dershowitz is a legal beagle with uncompromising

moral rectitude which annoys some people to no end. His stance and support of Israel makes some of his detractors see red and some, no doubt, would cut his throat if it was not forbidden by (Common) law.

Prof. Dershowitz' argument is simple: If you do not stand firm for the rights of your enemies, do not be surprised when the rights of your friends are trampled. Be even less surprised when the hobnailed goons come for you. After all, your enemies would never stand up for you, would they ?

One may love or dislike (or even hate) a public, private, joe-blow persona however it is incumbent upon each one of us to dislike or be disliked without hinder. Let us take, say, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, Justin Trudeau, Randa Jarrar - some of these persona are essentially nitwits, dolts, chuckleheads, pillocks, twits, plonkers and so on - and it is my right to feel how I wish about these people. What is important is that I do not overstep the agreed upon legal tripwires ( such as defamation, call to violence etc.) and I insist that I and They, we, be given the same benefit. No double games, no hypocrisy, no volte-face. In short: What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

I pen an oft quoted poem by Martin Niemöller to which Prof Dershowitz infers

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

I add another often recited counsel : John 8:7

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Alan Dershowitz: Trump foes seek to take away his legal rights -- endangering everyone's rights http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/04/25/alan-dershowitz-trump-foes-seek-to-take-away-his-legal-rights-endangering-everyones-rights.html

The good, the bad and those deserving of a good slap

2018-04-22T06:33:00.002+03:00

You may have missed it but Barbara Bush, the wife of George H. W. Bush, forty first President of the USA, passed away on April the 17th, 2018.

She left behind a legacy that few can claim.

One of the many things which raise her high my esteem is her upright droll humour. Her quick-wit reminded me of my own father who was ever ready to draw a réplique to amuse and sometimes to reveal a small truth. And sometimes both. Unlike me ol' man, she was not beyond knocking herself down a peg. Humility goes a long way in being a true and reliable mensch.

One of her best répliques was having to do with giving up an unimportant affectation for Lent. It is the juxtaposition that makes her, made her, so likeable.
I recall a Franciscan friar who scolded me for a flippant response when he questioned me on what I was giving up for Lent. Yepper, I know of that which she is flippant. (What was my response to the friar? I dare not repeat it for I would only reveal how banal and witless I was - at the tender age of thirteen.)
The focus of this blag though is not Barbara Bush - may she find peace with her Maker - but a rather unappetizing being, a Jabba-the-Hut-like thing who, so it seems, is an Associate Professor in English at the California State University at Fresno, a certain Randa Jarrar.

Jarrar jars with a tweet which starts off ...
"Barbara Bush was a generous and smart and amazing racist who along with her husband, raised a war criminal," Jarrar wrote. "Fuck outta here with your nice words."

This memorable tweet-rant against the deceased Barbara Bush was fuelled by hate. Simple and pure hate. She is an odious human being who gloats with seeming impunity. True, as she indelicately declares, under American custom and US law she has the right to say the most hideous things, including spouting lies and tweaking the truth so as to excuse the most loathsome crimes, without repercussion.
In a video she makes the claim that former airline hijackers did not kill anyone - it was all a lark - and maybe such measures should be taken (by the Left) to attack and dismantle the status quo, in her words, the patriarchy. She is clever enough to know where that thin legal line is which would land her in jail. On the other hand, the University may want to consider that it has the right to protect its "brand" in which case giving her the boot. The danger is that said boot might get stuck up her liberal expansive derrière .

Although I do not like to recommend to anyone to watch contemptible smut videos it might be amusing to look in on the mind of a pervert and sociopath.

Oh, and just to get a bit of balance, the Dark Side a.k.a. as The Vox, clues us in. Steel yourself. The Vox exposes the witch Barbara Bush as a broom-riding hag.

Link: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17257076/barbara-bush-death-randa-jarrar-fresno-state-professor-tweets-free-speech-college

He is resurrected !

2018-04-01T17:05:00.000+03:00

Hallelujah !

2018-04-01T00:00:00.000+03:00

He shall rise !

2018-03-31T17:53:00.000+03:00

Crucified !

2018-03-30T17:50:00.000+03:00

Ecce Homo !

2018-03-29T17:50:00.000+03:00

Betrayed !

2018-03-28T17:48:00.003+03:00

Sucking the oxygen out of the room !

2018-03-06T12:19:00.001+02:00

CNN is at again but this time it is breathtaking - as in sucking the oxygen out of a room with air-breathing mammals. I swear I will not watch CNN from this point on. Full stop. I lie. Of course I will watch it because I actually like re-orientation I must undergo in which I must engage my mental faculties in proving to myself that I have not entered into a parallel universe.

The piece that got my jaw to drop was a fawning piece by CNN on Kim Yo Jong, Little Rocket Man's sister. The depraved glowing language used by CNN is so profound that it took my breath away.

The second instalment in this string of depravity was an interview by ... Oops, gosh. I am wrong on the second instalment.
This time it is MSNBC/ AM Joy promoting hate, spite and feckless turpitude in an interview with Frank Schaeffer, the son of a well known US evangelist (who is deceased and he is surely thankful that he does not have to listen to the blather of his pinhead progegny).
Frank tells us that “White evangelical America, make no mistake now, as the solid bedrock supporters of molesters, of pedophiles, of these sorts of folks, have switched sides and they are no longer representing anything that is–could be called moral by the traditions of any religion.”
Claiming himself to be a “token old white fart” is colourful humility, surely, but it misses the full impact of a true old fart.
Imagine sitting in a VW Bug, with a insipid, verbose, yet short friend for whom you have affection to some degree but wary when he squirms. Past experience has taught you that when he gaslights, he emits stinkers with a half-life of strontium 45 and twice as deadly.
You cringe when he admits that he has not had a good "dump" in a few days and his last meal was mere hours before and it was a rather large helping of Popeye's best chow sloshed down with a pint of the stoutest stout available at local and he was, he grimaces, feeling a bit "moved" by the gurgling in his stomach. This is followed by the letting out of a "sneaky" one. From previous encounters of the pungent tear-evincing kind - you cross yourself (as no evangelist would do ) and pray for almight soul knowing that death's door is mere milliseconds off but ... you still do not want to leave your mortal coil and thrust out to get a hold of the window window only to faint while the voice of this squirming friend says something akin to "it was only a small one, wet yes, but a poot and not a phwot."

This is Frank Schaeffer's crinkly encomium to his fart - the old fart - while Joy interjects with "And at the same time ..."

I apologize for getting CNN and MSNBC mixed up. I find it hard to keep these two apart - as much as we all have a problem keeping Tweedledee and Tweedledum apart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5YZNUBKVi8

Kim Jong Un's sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics

If "diplomatic dance" were an event at the Winter Olympics, Kim Jong Un's younger sister would be favored to win gold.

CNN.COM

Responding to FB post on the slagging of the Donald by using John Lennon’s holy words.

2018-03-05T08:35:00.001+02:00

Let's see! The man who wrote these words is a saint. To some. His name is John Lennon. The man whose words many people drool over in deep admiration was a bird of another feather. Here is a list of the highlights of the anointed holy man we all love to quote with starry-eyed adoration ...

Wife beater
Emotionally abused his son
Pathological Liar
Politically as tuned in as a quokka is about the finer points on the rules of debate in the Canberra Parliament
According to Sir Paul, a mirthless talentless git
A spineless leader which is to say a follower, a poseur, a conformist.
Hypocrite, or humbugger, dissembler, something clearly evident in almost everything he did but especially in the company of that opaque Ono. He was clearly flush but never really spread it around. He spoke of living the simple life with “no possessions” but his address in New York was not a skid-row Bronx postal code.
His psychobabble, induced by his ravenous intake of mind-altering drugs, did not make him an holier or raise whatever little talent he hid under his bushel. True, he did write or composed a few memorable songs, but the libretti he set to what was presumed to be his music was as profound as the goo-goo-ing of a babe in arms. (Yes, the case has been made by intimates that the riffs and melodies attributed to this genuine-as-soybean-bacon artiste where the work of the other three beetling away at their collective art with serious dedication.

Oh, and, lest we forget, he broke up the Beatles - to satisfy whatever undiagnosed sociopathic disorder lurking in his drug addled brain, I would hazard to guess.
You may find out more on this link …
http://listverse.com/2012/05/12/top-10-unpleasant-facts-about-john-lennon/
But back to the ribaldry. The suggestion is that the man in the photo, Alec Baldwin, is a vapid, soul-less man.
I agree.

Anglo American

2018-02-18T12:47:00.001+02:00

And yes, ho hum, it is once again the urban leftist liberal media and fellow sycophants who have their collective knickers in a twist however this time it is barely believable. "BBC: Anglo-American" as used by Jeff Sessions is a racist term.

It seems that injecting "Anglo-American" into any discussion, even a lecture to sheriffs on the origins of this office, are fighting words and more seriously, a sign the person using such a phrase is a deep-fried racist. Oh dearie me.

It would have served Schatz better if he had written:

"I am holy, better than you, of course,

especially if you do not agree with me,

and because of these two things

I am allowed to be unashamedly stupid."

At least it would have been more honest.

To some at least, anyway. Alyssa Milano, an actress of no fame and less skilled than an aardvark in a tutu performing a solo pas-de-deux , seems to believe that Sessions should be fired for using such a term. Ho hum ! Hollywood at its best venal self.

Another twit (ter) with the unfortunate name of Brian Schatz, a senator from Hawaii, no less, and a former top law officer of that state, shat all over his nappies while excoriating the US Attorney General for his choice of words. He uses the phrase "dog whistle" to call out Sessions for the use of this term. It should be said that this unclever trope, i.e. dog whistle, was first used by right-leaning commentators to call out the false claims made by leftist pundits and politicians. It is now being flogged by Schatz because ... because ... because he is woke and uninventive in invective au-point. This, even though Schatz is a legal beagle who knows that on which the historical foundations of Anglo-Amercian law stand. (Yoiks ... Dick the Butcher's words to Jack Cade. *** comes to mind).

FYI: I should warn you that the link above is to an article from the BBC.
This is odd, you may wonder, given that I do not often trust the Beeb to be neutral on the news it reports especially when the matter is as subtle as in this case. However, given that this subject matter directly impinges on the nature of the "special" British - American relationship, BBC does show a degree of candour and restraint. I know how strange it may seem - I mean, gosh, restraint and candour from the Beeb. Hard to credit.

***Shakespeare (2 Henry VI, 4.2.59),

Animus Possession, 12 Rules of Life, Be a Lobster

2018-01-25T12:44:00.000+02:00

Before I get into my typically frenzied tempo of convoluted phrases and asides, I ask my readers to listen to the two attached videos. Be attentive, on tiptoes, with a critical eye and ear, and then proceed to read my screed.
NB: The first video has gone viral.

Why should you bother to humour me?

Because ... from my perspective the snooty interviewer (Cathy Newman) was repeatedly slapped with constrained precision thus eliciting many delicious moments of schadenfreude by a man that presently casts the shadow of a folk hero. And, of course, I wish you to share in my naughty pleasure at the taking down of a galling harpy.

I was moved to write this blag because some friends are posting material which suggests that they have swallowed - hook, line and sinker - the prevailing narrative infesting the minds of the intellectual liberal urban elites. The same nonsense that dribbles off the facile lips of the harpy Newman.

What is this narrative?

It is the trash promoted by post-modernists and the leftist fascisti and their lapdogs the anarcho-syndicalist bullies.

What is this trash?

Here a few words which should help in deciphering my ruminations : Islamophobia, patriarchy, gender, pay gap, personal pronouns, pussy hats, post-modernist feminism, identity politics ... ad absurdum.

We, the majority of reasonable beings, are being strong armed into accepting a narrative by the anglosphere mainstream media which objective is to denigrate who we are.

Who are we, the hated, the despised?

We are no more than everyman who trudges along life's path, wishing no ill on others, hoping for the best for ourselves and our own and, without malice, doing the best we can to make it easier for those around us even taking less for ourselves to make that happen. This is apparently not enough for the very people who scream at the sky in mock agony, in self-anointed holiness. They push a foul narrative which paints the ordinary citizen as hateful, racist, intolerant nativist detritus. Make no mistake though: this narrative and the ideas bolstering this nonsense is also diffusing down to all countries in the West, even into fringe homogenous countries like Finland, Norway, Luxembourg where such ideas are obnoxious and simply incomprehensible to its citizens.

Although my social media friends and followers may not themselves promote some of the nonsense which is daily spouted in the broadcast and social media channels, they do themselves an injustice by not actively resisting the nonsense promoted by the post-modernist rabble. At the very least, we should remind ourselves that the shrill voices of the post-modernists liberal elites is insincere. Simply put: It is fuelled by hate and borders on madness.

When did this all happen?

It has been a slow process. I think that the 1960's were the turning point in western society. The very people fighting to be heard, the left, the dregs of western (European and North American) communists, won a few victories on the streets yet it was in the late 1980's that the left clearly won the class war.

It became apparent just how mature it - peopled by the once dowdy cadres who had preened themselves up - the annointed arriviste had become. Even upon the fall of the Berlin Wall and in spite of the deep funk into which the left had fallen, the cadres had decided (as if their subconscious was connected in a pre-internet web) to seek and keep sinecures in public institutions. Moreover, because they had anchored themselves in every strata of society, much like barnacles clinging with tenacity the hull of a ship, they did not fear being turfed out on the street. (They were as vocal in the eighties. The volume increased cunningly so that no-one noticed it until the metal rock volume is now at brain-damaging decibels).

The cadres of the left found jobs in academia and state agencies and enterprises. The cultural landscape was especially prone to the invasion of these body snatchers. With the stability that comes with the salary of a public servant, the cadres started dressing up, become less smelly, but still it feeding on the pablum of social upheaval.

Today, we now see that this vanguard of the proletariat has become the hoi-poloi of the post-modernist nomenklatura. They - the well heeled and ever so PC anti-normal progressives - flit about in their electric bicycles in Berlin clanging their bells at stroppy car drivers who dare try to make right turns into their lane (they are nothing but wolves in sheep's clothing when they sit behind their fully-laden 730 Beamers though).

They ski in Aspen demanding snow on snowless hills all the while decrying the rape of the Climate Goddess by heartless Appalachian coal miners.

They cocoon themselves in their air conditioned Prius on their way to a slice of heaven-on-earth high up in British Properties while prattling on the dearest iPhone model about the awful state of the city and the traffic, wouldn’t you know, at 8:00 AM is unbearable blah blah bloody blah.

They down white Zuid Afrika weiswein - complaining that the Tudor Arms-something in a prim Essex hamlet does not have ample car parking, slagging off Union flag wavers and EU maligners all the while looking askance at the threatening table of burly unemployed abattoir workers grappling with near empty pints of a thickhead and unhealthy Younger’s Special

They spend endless hours in Starbucks vapidly discussing each others’ face tattoos then tittering on the adventures of an acquaintance who spends furtive weekends with a boyfriend in Soho but home on Monday evening to a sedate suburban life somewhere in Boston with a wife, of the opposite sex, two children and a mongrel which is tortured with frilly tutus.

They are the moral harbingers of our society telling us what we should think and censoring us when we stray from the path they deem appropriate.

But why now and how did this come about?

Clearly, the trigger that mobilized these comfortably sleeping virtuous moral giants was the election of Trump. Their numbers are engorged by a swathe of fence sitters who - so it seems - were also stirred into loud-ish mumblings by the election of Trump.

The leftist cadres and its new found core of supporters have decided that they together no longer need to stay silent. These social relativists are ready to do battle in the face of the onslaught of the rising conservatism. What annoys, and perhaps even scares them, is that the old pre-post modern left and classical liberals are not swallowing their guff anymore.

The only to keep their power is to make sure that everyone who does not follow them over the cliff will be made to walk the plank.

What has changed since now and then?

The internet, of course.

Having access to social media, instanta, at no personal cost, makes side-taking, high-moral-ground taking and finger-wagging at those who do not toe the party line much easier. It also allows one to inflate one’s own numbers thus influence. Hence, if you wish to virtual signal, or shame an opponent you just zing off a tweet, irrespective of whether you believe what you are ostensibly espousing or that the victim is innocent ... and wait for the sharks to circle the victim. If you are really into reductio ad absurdum you send out something so bizarre that even your children cringe. At the very least you will get a few “likes” and hearts amongst your two hundred or so FB friends. The very best of outcomes is that your perceived enemy, quaking, wees his undies while in abject apology-mode and loses his job. On second thought the very very bestest best outcome is that - and it would be so prima - your attack boomeranged and all the vile hate you spewed on an innocent was poured on your head thus giving you the bonafides to claim victimhood status. Sublime !

Let me take up an example to illustrate.

Recently, a couple of friends decided to take positions on the cultural wars going on in the US of A. They did this on FB. It took the form of a well known philosophical equivalent of getting brown skid marks on your boxers. To put it another way these friends used the common fallacy of appealing to inappropriate authority. And it all had to do with CNN.

According to one friend, Sean Hannity is nothing more than a poseur which is to say he is not a true journalist because he is an high school dropout ergo of no intellectual weight whatsoever and therefore anything he says is suspect. He, Hannity, was compared to a true, sterling journalist whose stage name is Rachel Maddow. (Hannity has also been a house painter and dish-washer which should buy him some street cred? No?)

Rachel is the ideal journalist - or so my friend tells us. She is a D.Phil (Oxon), urbane and sympathetic to a wide swathe of humanity.

Tcha ! This anointed journalist is not my cup of tea and Yes, I have watched her but in mere minutes I find myself being off-put by her smarmy look-at-me-I-am-seriously-clever pastiche, moral grandstanding and ersatz warmth. Too bad: We could have had a good relationship, but listening to Rachel I realized, with alacrity, that she made me more stupid than I am - something I cannot afford given my advanced age and low-octane cleverness.

By contrast, I find it difficult to passively listen to Hannity. Why? He makes my head hurt because he makes it difficult to fence-sit. And being a fence-sitter, par excellence, I resent it.

Getting back to the point my friend was trying to make. It is that newsreaders like Maddow are reliable truth-tellers whereas Hannity is anything but. This is convoluted tosh and an interesting dilemma. Yes? Should I write to my friend and using his own logic suggest that he stop spouting off (since I have more formal and informal education than he) therefore his opinions are less worthy than mine? Should I also point out that FB is no place for poseurs?

Why this long-winded pre-amble?

My hope is that the people who read my blags will allow me to persuade them that sometimes, hidden in my bemusing and amusing screeds, are seeds of truth and, gosh, even wisdom. I blush at my undignified conceit.

Consequently, I invite you to listen to Prof. Jordan Peterson. This clinical psychologist is a true Canuck. Do look past his froggy falsetto and instead listen to his words, his thoughts. He is a brilliant mind. He is also shrewd but in a way that can be vexing - to his enemies. He cannot be nobbled, and he does not suffer fools gladly. His insights are those of a … homo sapiens - a wise being.

The interview on Channel 4 (British Television) with Cathy Newman is one of the best I have watched. I am not alone in saying this. When I first viewed it, the numbers who had tripped over this video was in the twenty thousand and a bit, and as of this writing it is nudging five million. It should also be said that upon the video going viral, Channel 4 is making the claim that Newman is now a victim due to threats made by the “followers” of Prof. Peterson. Balderdash comes to mind. As well as codswallop, bollocks, tommyrot, bunkum, flapdoodle, tosh and twaddle. Furthermore, I say, show me the beef! (Update: the numbers in three weeks of this writing - 7.5 million views).

I followed this up and found stats which actually pointed to the opposite: Namely that it was Prof. Peterson who was being attacked by trolls and in vast numbers.

The second interview is with Tucker Carlson and presents Peterson to the layman.

I also admonish all to listen to the many works of Jordan Peterson on his own Youtube channel.

*FYI*

Canadians, by and large, are not disliked nor liked by anyone outside their own borders. I also believe that Canucks do not necessarily search out for anyone's approval. Indeed, they are also not the kind of people who make noise about themselves. One of the related characteristics of Canadians is that they will apologize for not apologizing quickly enough. And like Swedes, they hold their place in the queue as if it were a religious duty.

If a Canadian does make into the big world of fame and public recognition, it is usually as a newscaster, a Prime Minister with a penchant for being photogenic or, oftentimes, lowly film and telly actors playing walk-on parts in Hollywood B movies with little speaking parts lest they reveal themselves. It is true that Canucks place high nasal vowels in the wrong place - and endearing treait surely - but it will only get you so far in the film industry. Aboot is a preposition not footwear - funny-ish but it is only a one-liner on a comedy venue near the 49th parallel but no further south. If that.

Anyway, I am getting a little away from myself. This blag is about a Canadian who has become a folk hero. He is a lightening rod for the ultra-liberal, self-righteous, unctuous über-mensch whose only goal in life is to despise anyone who does not agree with them. Prof. Peterson fits in very well with the need for a "perfect" enemy as he does not only not agree with these pompous charlatans but he wiggs them out with three things for which they have no defence - facts, logic and humour. This is class of people - these haters ... these frauds - gather around hoping for a chink in his armour - to attack, to draw blood. They are the villains in every story in every culture since mankind sat around a campfire and starting exploring and ultimately defining mankind's twin nature. These back-stabbing Judas portray the dark side of existence - they represent evil. Peterson puts a mirror to their faces and they do not like what they see.

This class of people, these blackshirts, these odious haters - albeit minuscule in hard numbers - possess almighty lungs coupled to convoluted victim logic. And with the backing of the mainstream media in North America and Europe, they scream ungrammatical strands of animus and bitterness with such force that they cow the bravest freethinker. Thankfully, Prof. Peterson is difficult to cow even by one of their own darlings, the harpy über-feminist Cathy Newman.

Jordan B. Peterson on 12 Rules for Life

A) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKjaYXAGSfI

B) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cPcg34TnqE

C) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoRfpuAyw4w

D) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tKEDA-49xE&t=74s

A follow up video below disproves the victim-hood narrative claimed by Cathy Newman: It seems that it was a put out by Channel 4. There was a victim and it was NOT Cathy Newman. Yes, it was Prof. Peterson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tKEDA-49xE&t=74s