The lime tree (Yarra River from Kensington Road, South Yarra) by Frederick McCubbin (1917)

TREES are among the greatest works of art. They are so clearly designed for human enjoyment. This guitar piece, “The Old Lime Tree,” by the Russian composer Sergei Rudnev, played here by Stefan Schmitz, translates the serene shade of an old tree into sound.
 
 

“As of a few months ago, our country has spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, wasted. And the lives, the lives, thousands and thousands and thousands of lives. $6 trillion and thousands of young, beautiful lives.

“We started 16 years ago and it’s in far worse shape than it was 16 years ago by many times over. So, we spent all of this money, all of these lives.

“And let me tell you, I came in and took over a very, very difficult hand. But we’re going to get it fixed. That’s what you put me here for. We’re going to get it fixed.”

– President Donald Trump, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, June 21, 2017

CHRISTOPHER BOLLYN writes at his site:

What is most significant about Trump’s common-sense comment on the money and lives wasted on the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East is that the media completely ignored this comment. The same media that spins articles from every Trump tweet concerning Russian “interference” in the election ignored this important comment made by the commander-in-chief about the wars in the Middle East and delivered in a speech on June 21. This fact says a great deal about who is deceiving the people about the War on Terror – and who is not. The controlled media has, after all, consistently supported the deception of 9/11 and the fraudulent War on Terror.

THE Grenfell Tower high rise apartment flat in West London allegedly burst into a raging conflagration within minutes on June 14 — after a fire reportedly broke out in a faulty freezer in one apartment. (A fire in a freezer?) Seventy-nine people were reportedly killed in the blaze. This number and speculation of many more victims have been widely reported, but as of last week authorities said only nine people were identified as victims.

There are numerous strange elements to this story, including the unusual nature of the fire itself which spread so quickly and appeared to consume the outside of the building. New exterior cladding is being blamed. Is it possible that a highly flammable substance was used in an age of strict building codes? Civil unrest is brewing with reports of similar substances in other buildings.

News reports, however, of the fire included what appear to be staged tales, such as the story — reported as fact — that a baby was dropped by a distraught mother on the tenth floor and caught by a bystander below. A fanatic nun was also on the scene, lending drama to the event. After questions emerged about her status as a nun (the Church has no such record of this Sr. Ruth), it was proved she is a nut and an “anti-Semite.”

In an interview, one oft-cited witness broke out laughing when describing residents fleeing from the fire. The reporter reaches in to hug him, apparently to disguise the fact that he had lost control.

Notice a man in this interview (standing next to the interviewee) cannot contain himself from smiling and almost breaking out into laughter while the interviewee is describing the death of his relative.

What’s the bottom line? Obviously a fire occurred. But there is as yet no hard evidence that many people were killed. There are also numerous suggestions of staging and what appears to be deliberate fanning of public unrest. (The Muslim woman in this interview strikes me as an actress and paid agitator; in any event she says many things that could not possibly be true.) Muslims are being encouraged to believe they were deliberately targeted, and blacks are being encouraged to believe that hundreds were killed at the prompting of social conservatives and some are saying the government murdered the poor (more here.)

It’s a raging inferno, folks.

Engineered social chaos serves a purpose.

Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame University

“1 VOICE of Jesus: My Child, thou art created for happiness. This experience affirms, this reason proves, this faith teaches.

Thou seekest incessantly for happiness, and thou dost well. But leave off seeking thy happiness in things created: in them thou shalt not find it.

No object of this world can satisfy the longings of thy heart; even shouldst thou alone possess at once all things created, thy heart should still be empty and wretched.

Things of this earth awaken the thirst of the heart, they cannot allay it: yea, the more thou dost possess, the more eagerly shalt thou thirst. How canst thou find in creatures that which exists not in them? Can any one give what he does not possess?

2. Shalt thou obtain what no mortal was ever able to obtain? Behold, the wisest of men abounded in all good things, he was affluent with ever-fresh delights, he astonished nations with his boundless wealth, he had filled the uttermost lands with the renown of his glory.

Yet, on account of the void of his heart, he is forced to exclaim: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.

Grant that thou possess whatever thy heart may long for in this world: that thou be lord of the whole earth: that all men do thee honor: try all things; and thou shalt find that thou hast as yet found nothing, except vanity and affliction of spirit.

3. Do not wonder at this, My Child: thy heart is not made for this world. Therefore, whatever this world contains is unworthy of thy noble destiny and of thy heart’s affection.

Thou art created for greater things, thou art born for things everlasting, thou art destined to things without limit. Do not then give thyself up to what is low and mean, since thou art made to rule forever.

What could it avail thee to gain the whole world, if thou shouldst lose thy soul? Surely, thou wouldst be twice unhappy: here, on account of the wicked state of thy conscience, thou wouldst suffer a torturing agony; hereafter, thou wouldst have to undergo misery everlasting.

Blessed, therefore, is he who spurns whatever may mislead the heart; who nobly casts aside every obstacle to true felicity ; who, mindful of his noble destiny, seeks happiness above all in his Creator.”

   — From The Imitation of the Sacred Heart (J.P. Walsh, 1865) by Peter J. Arnoudt and J.M. Fastre, a manual of practical truths and divine wisdom pertaining to the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus — a symbol of divine love and an inducement to seek purity of heart and tranquility.

FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF Lawrence Auster:

The factual, mathematical skills and lack of imagination [of Asians] feed them into the bureaucratic engineering mentality that is hurting us.

The worship of Asians is the worship, or gnostic deification, of engineered reality. That’s why liberals and neocons are so eager to have them.

Asians have never believed in a transcendent God. They worshipped the order of the cosmos, ancestors, ritual form. Today they worship materiality. They are not good for us.

(See the previous entry for affirmation of his point. Yoga is a denial of the transcendence of God. Note, Mr. Auster is talking about the worship of Asians, not healthy, normal relations, such as those he had with the owner of his neighborhood dry cleaners, an Asian man who was genuinely saddened by his illness before his death.) Read More »

THE LATEST fad in yoga involves intimacy with goats.

Read More »

Umbrella revolution in Hong Kong

WANT TO stage a fake people’s revolution in a country that refuses to submit to globalist rule? Most of the “people’s revolutions” of the last 100 years, including the Communist revolution, were sold as revolutions of the poor against the rich, but were really revolts of the rich against the rest of humanity.

The Anti-New York Times offers a recipe:

Ingredients:

A ton of American cash from the CIA and/or George Soros
Small army of undercover CIA agents
Controlled “Human Rights /Pro Democracy” groups
Idealistic “Western wannabee” college brats
Easily manipulated do-gooder “libtards”
Professional signs & banners written in English
Bribable / blackmailable journalists
Bribable / blackmailable politicians
Bribable / blackmailable academics
Corrupt Union bosses
Violent “Agent Provocatuers”

And:

Pick a catchy theme or color for your “revolution”. Examples include “Prague Spring” (Czechoslovakia, 1968), “Velvet Revolution” (Eastern Europe 1989), Saffron Revolution” (Myanmar), “Cedar Revolution” (Lebanon), “Rose Revolution” (Georgia), “Orange Revolution” (Ukraine), “Green Revolution” (Iran), “Arab Spring” (Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria etc) and Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Revolution”. It’s all about marketing, baby!

HUEY PIERCE LONG, JR., the famous politician from Louisiana, challenged the powers that now control our world and was assassinated. Would American have been different if he had lived and been elected president? Well, for one, we might not have entered World War II. He was an ardent isolationist and nationalist. We might also not be living through an historic concentration of wealth at the top. Long believed in “sharing the wealth.” He opposed the Federal Reserve and the central bank racket.

Why weep or slumber, America?
Land of brave and true,
With castles, clothing, and food for all
All belongs to you.
Ev’ry man a king, ev’ry man a king,
For you can be a millionaire;
But there’s something belonging to others,
There’s enough for all people to share.
When it’s sunny June and December, too,
Or in the wintertime or spring,
There’ll be peace without end,
Ev’ry neighbor a friend,
With ev’ry man a king.

— From “Every Man a King”
The theme song of Huey P. Long’s “Share the Wealth” movement
Lyrics by Huey P. Long

A little background:

“Huey Pierce Long Jr. (August 30, 1893 – September 10, 1935), self-nicknamed The Kingfish, was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a member of the United States Senate from 1932 until his death by assassination in 1935. A Democrat, he was an outspoken populist who denounced the wealthy and the banks and called for a “Share Our Wealth” program. As the political leader of the state, he commanded wide networks of supporters and was willing to take forceful action. He established the long-term political prominence of the Long family. Read More »

RICHARD EDMONDSEN at Fig Trees and Vineyards reports on the editing of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert to remove Oliver Stone’s comments about Israel. The show was an anti-Russia hate fest.

MY HUSBAND and I recently celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. His father, whom readers may know from Tales of Chester, once (actually more than once) toasted his wife on their 34th anniversary, celebrated with a glass of beer (actually more than one) at their dining room table.

“To 34 years of savage amusement,” he said, raising his glass.

My husband has likewise given me much amusement — and great happiness.

This song, by the same Irish singer I posted the other day, is dedicated to my husband, the best husband a woman could possibly have. I know where I’m goin’ — and it’s wherever he’s goin’. “Feather beds are soft and painted rooms are bonny. But I would leave them all to go with my love Johnny.”

I know where I’m goin’ an’ I know who’s goin’ with me
I know who I love but the dear knows who I’ll marry

I have stockings of silk, shoes of fine green leather
Combs to buckle my hair and a ring for every finger

Some say he’s black*, but I say he’s bonny
The fairest of them all is my handsome winsome Johnny

Feather beds are soft and painted rooms are bonny
But I would leave them all to go with my love Johnny

I know where he’s goin’ an’ I know who’s goin’ with me
I know who I love but the dear knows who I’ll marry.

*”Mediterranean”

IN the 1970s, British journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge insisted that television news involved deliberate deception.

During lectures on the media in London in 1976, he stated:

I remember once returning to my hotel in New York and noticing on the way that a crowd had assembled outside what was obviously an embassy or consulate of some sort — I found out afterwards that it belonged to one of the Arab countries. There were the usual students assembled — bra-less girls, bearded men, holding slogans with placards on them; also a police van in attendance, and a number of cops standing by with their truncheons — everything set for a demo. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, and was told, as though it should have been obvious, that the cameras hadn’t yet turned up. I lingered on, until they came, and watched them set up and start rolling. Then, ‘Action!’ whereupon, placards were lifted, slogans shouted, fists clenched; a few demonstrators were arrested and pitched into the police van, and a few cops kicked, until, ‘Cut!’ Soon the cameras, the cops, and the demonstrators had all departed, leaving the street silent and deserted. Later, in the evening, in my hotel room, I watched the demo on the screen in one of the news programmes. It looked very impressive.

Muggeridge, who died in 1990 and had worked for newspapers, television and radio during his long career in journalism, was a media prophet.

His writings on the Age of Television anticipated some of the events of 9/11, such as the moment when a BBC correspondent reported the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 before it happened, and the explosion of awareness brought by the Internet.

BBC correspondent Jane Standley reported the fall of WTC 7 fell before it collapsed.

Muggeridge was pro-Communism in his youth (his father was a founder of the Fabian Society), but changed his views after he visited the Soviet Union. He reported on the famine in the Ukraine in 1933, in which an estimated 7 million died. Some of his writings on the subject were suppressed by The Manchester Guardian, the publication for which he wrote at the time. He called Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer-winning journalist who denied the famine in the pages of The New York Times, “the greatest liar I have met in journalism.” Muggeridge became a Christian in his 60s.

His lectures on the media, which later became the book Christ and the Media, fell mostly on deaf ears. Executives at the BBC, where he worked, were not impressed with his view that television production by its very nature, regardless of the good intentions of journalists, involved fantasy and propaganda, not reality.

Muggeridge said he had spoken to the famous novelist George Orwell:

He told me something that I never tire of laughing at and repeating whenever a good opportunity occurs — when he was devising the Ministry of Truth in 1984, the BBC was his model. He worked there in the war, and his Ministry of Truth bears unmistakable traces of this experience — all those long chilly corridors are unmistakably Broadcasting House.

Perhaps Muggeridge is less known than the media critic Marshall McLuhan, who was of the same era, because he was so openly Christian and never resorted to the opaque bloviations to which McLuhan was prone.

He wrote clearly and simply:

I don’t myself in any way equate the invention of printing with the invention of television. There are enormous differences between the two, and one of the most obvious ones is that the printed word — which I hold in veneration — is not subject to the same centralised control as television. In other words, many people can print clandestinely and openly, with flat-bed presses or with rotaries, and so  on; but in the case of television, you have to have, by the nature of the technology, a centralised control. What has not been worked out is whose control, or in what terms that control is to be exercised.

Words, printed words, are words that have arisen in a human mind. They are connected with thought and with art. But photography or filming, is a completely different thing. It is machine made; … it is seeing with, not through, the eye; looking but not seeing.

Muggeridge added:

If you set up a camera and take a film, that is not considered to be anybody’s views; that is reality, and, of course, it is much more fantasy than the words.

SOURCE

ISAAC CHOI, a naturalized U.S. citizen from South Korea, allegedly lied to investors and employees working for his Silicon Valley startup. Christopher Burgess writes at CSO that Choi lied about his education, his work background, and his resources — and sent his employees Photoshopped images of wire transfers when they were waiting to be paid.

Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail,
Lo! O’er ancient forms departing
Newer rites of grace prevail;
Faith for all defects supplying,
Where the feeble senses fail.
To the Everlasting Father,
And the Son who reigns on high
With the Holy Ghost proceeding
Forth from each eternally,
Be salvation, honor, blessing,
Might and endless majesty.

Amen.

IN ACT THREE of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walkure, of the Ring Cycle, Wotan, lord of the gods, punishes his beloved daughter, Brünnhilde. In doing so, he must deprive himself of the thing he so cherishes: her company.

From Wikipedia:

Wotan arrives in wrath and passes judgement on Brünnhilde (since she disobeyed his orders). She is to be stripped of her Valkyrie status and become a mortal woman, to be held in a magic sleep on the mountain, prey to any man who happens by. Brünnhilde begs mercy of Wotan for herself, his favorite child. Wotan consents to her last request: to encircle the mountaintop with magic flame, which will deter all but the bravest of heroes (who, as shown through the leitmotif, they both know will be the yet unborn Siegfried). Wotan lays Brünnhilde down on a rock and, in a long embrace, kisses her eyes closed into an enchanted sleep. He summons Loge (the Norse demigod of fire) to ignite the circle of flame that will protect her, then slowly departs in sorrow.

In this beautiful scene, Wotan takes the higher path. He defends justice, but at a great price.

The scene is a reminder of the sometimes awesome responsibilities of fatherhood and the tender love a good father bears for his children. A father’s authority is grounded in love and is distinct from any other form of authority. Without human fatherhood, we would not understand as well our Divine Father’s all-encompassing love for us.

Happy Father’s Day! Thank you, fathers. Even ordinary men — not gods — make heroic sacrifices and must sometimes risk a child’s happiness for the sake of justice.

JEFF writes in response to the previous post:

Gay “marriage” is certainly an abomination. Sadly, so is most modern heterosexual marriage.

My wife divorced me. She took both of my sons. I get four days a month on the “standard possession” order. I have no conservator rights over my children because I had a far left, Black Lives Matter, radical feminist “judge.” My wife has told my son James, since gaining control, that he is a girl. She dresses him as a girl. Presents him as a girl. She enrolled him in kindergarten as “Luna” his girl name. She’s entered him in a clinic that does sex changes on children.

James is five years old. Five. Years. Old. His saint name is Damien after Saints Cosmas and Damien. May they intercede for their namesake, my son.

[In contrast], what if I had used a surrogate? She could not have taken my sons from me. James would not have been abused. I would not be in this accursed state. The laws have made fatherhood into slavery and motherhood into tyranny.

That gay man has more right to his son than a natural father like myself. The social incentives are poor for everyone.

Hair stylist Laurentius Puranama poses with the son he conceived with an Indian surrogate. Laurentius lives with his son and “husband” in Philadelphia.

A FIRE is raging through our world — an inferno that is consuming the innocence of children.

When the Our Lady appeared to the three children at Fatima, Portugal, she spread her hands and showed them a vision of hell:

“The beam of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a vast sea of fire, in which were plunged, all blackened and burnt, demons and souls in human form like transparent brands. Raised into the air by the flames they fell back in all directions, like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or poise, amidst loud cries and horrible groans of pain and despair which caused us to shudder with fear…”

Are we not glimpsing the flames of hell too?

SHE MOVED THRO’ THE FAIR

My young love said to me “My mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you for your lack of kine”
And she stepped away from me and this she did say
“It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.”

She stepped away from me and she went thro’ the fair
And fondly I watch’d her move here and move there
And then she went homeward with one star awake,
As the swan in the evening moves over the lake.

The people were saying no two e’er were wed
But one has a sorrow that never was said
And she smiled as she passed me with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.

I dreamed it last night that my true love came in
So softly she entered, her feet made no din
She came close beside me and this she did say,
“It will not be long love till our wedding day.”

[There are numerous versions of this old Celtic song. The lyrics above are somewhat different from the song in the video.] Read More »