The question therefore is: is the present-day Putinist regime Leninist in essence?
In order to answer this question we have to separate what is essential to Leninism from what is not, and ask whether Putin retains that essence even if in many other ways his regime may be very different… Our thesis is that the essence of Leninism is loyalty to Lenin himself, and that while many things have changed since 1917, devotion to Lenin, and a refusal to condemn him or his reincarnation, Stalin, remains the bond binding together all the epochs of Soviet and post-Soviet history to the present day, as witnessed above all by the continuing worship of his body in the mausoleum on Red Square. Lenin’s teachings are no longer believed in, his party no longer holds power, even his vitriolic hatred of God and Christianity has gone. But he himself remains alive and well in the hearts of the majority of the Russian people. And it is this psychological and spiritual bond, more powerful than any ideological sympathy or antipathy, that makes Leninism a continuing force. Moreover, it is a force that any succeeding leader like Putin can tap into – so long as the idol still remains in place. And why does the idol still remain in place? Because neither in 1991 nor at any other time has there been any thoroughgoing repentance for the sins of the Soviet past or formal renunciation of Lenin.
IN 1948, BBC Radio broadcast a debate between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston, a Jesuit historian and philosopher, on the existence of God.
Here is Part one; a recording of Part two can be found here.
Copleston argued that the existence of God could be proven philosophically, while Russell maintained that neither the existence or non-existence of God could be proved.
“CONSIDER first, the reason why so many persons become bolder every day in sinning. It is because God is slow to punish. If every time that a man uttered a blasphemous word he felt his tongue suddenly torn by cruel vermin, if his hands were withered as soon as he committed a theft, if whenever he was guilty of deception his intellect were clouded, if when any one falls into some shameful act of sensuality he were instantly covered with a disgusting leprosy, thinkest thou that there would be so many blasphemers, thieves, cheats, and dissolute persons in the world? It is because God is so slow to punish, because He is so longsuffering and silent, because He seems to take no notice, that men become so audacious: ‘Because sentence is not speedily pronounced against the evil, the children of men commit evils without any fear (Eccles. viii. 11).’ What monstrous wickedness; such persons are, indeed, “children of men,” and not of God. To sin deliberately because God is good! It is easy to see that such children cannot belong to God, since they are so entirely different from Him. They are children of perdition, for this is the meaning of the expression ‘children of men.’ ‘The Son of Man” is always used in the best sense in the Sacred Scriptures; but ‘children’ or ‘sons of men,’ always, or nearly always, in a bad sense. ‘O ye sons of men, how long will ye be dull of heart (Psalm iv. 3)?’ ‘The children of men have spoken vain things (Psalm xi. 3).’ Thou seest, therefore, that to abuse God’s mercy by sinning the more shamelessly, is to be in the number of the reprobate.”
The following is somewhat interesting in light of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex move to Frogmore Cottage and now to North America:
If you open up a copy of the 1623 First Folio to the play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, page 44 you will see George Page asking his wife Margaret: “How now Meg?”. Turn to page 48 and you will see three references to Frogmore (two of them associated with Anne Page). Finally look on page 49 and you will see George Page referring to the “wilde Prince and Pointz” (the Prince of course being Prince Hal/Harry). The only other times that the name ‘Meg’ occurs in the First Folio is twice in Much Ado About Nothing (Margaret) and once in The Tempest, Stephano drunkenly sings a bawdy song (where coincidentally Meg is preferred to Kate; though I personally like them both equally). Frogmore only appears in TheMerry Wives of Windsor.
How now, Meg? This question was asked of Margaret Page by her husband soon after she was reading a letter sent to her by Falstaff, when she then pondered the elevation of Alice Ford’s status to Knighthood (Sir Alice Ford?; page 43). Meghan Markle was married in the Chapel where Knights of the Garter are elevated to that status (Prince Harry is not yet a KG). How now Meg, indeed!
Frogmore plays a key role in being the place where peace is brought by the Host of the Garter between Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans in their dispute with each other pertaining to the suit for the hand of Anne Page. The Sussexes desire to retain Frogmore Cottage as their own Haven of Peace while they are living in the UK resonates well with Shakespeare. Read More »
HERE IS the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, without the pole dancing, the wagging rear ends, the pelvic thrusts, the black leather, the overpaid striptease dancers, the cute children in cages, the fireworks, the occult symbolism and the lewd, jungle sounds. Phew, that was a lot to edit out!
ENGLAND will officially end 47 years in what is known as the European Union later today, more than three years after the Brexit referendum in which a close majority voted to leave. The New York Times reports:
Flags will line Parliament Square and The Mall, the ceremonial avenue leading to Buckingham Palace, and government buildings will be lit up in the red, white and blue of the Union Jack.
A countdown clock will be projected onto the front of 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence, along with a commemorative light display to “symbolize the strength and unity” of the four nations of the United Kingdom, the government said.
Donald Trump’s so-called Deal of the Century unveiled this past Tuesday is actually a deal with the devil. This so-called Middle East Peace Plan would more accurately be called the “Permanent Palestinian Enslavement Act”—otherwise known as the “Save Benjamin Netanyahu’s Derriere Act.”
On the very day that Netanyahu was formally indicted on corruption charges by the Israeli Knesset, Donald Trump rolls out his “Deal of the Century” Middle East peace plan. As with Trump’s assassination of General Soleimani, this is nothing but a ploy to try and save Trump’s partner in crime and fellow Zionist, Benjamin Netanyahu—and to further endear himself to the much beguiled Christian Zionists within America’s evangelical voting bloc.
The people who live under the yoke of Israeli oppression in Palestine, however, know exactly what this is all about. And they rightly reject it. [cont.]
Juliet on the Balcony, Thomas Francis Dicksee; 1875
Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare’s testimony to the position and character of women in human life. He represents them as infallibly faithful and wise counsellors, — incorruptibly just and pure examples — strong always to sanctify, even when they cannot save.
Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes;—he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage; and the still slighter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. In his laboured and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round him; but he is the only example even approximating to the heroic type. Coriolanus—Caesar—Antony stand in flawed strength, and fall by their vanities;—Hamlet is indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he sinks into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, comforted, saved by Rosalind. Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope, and errorless purpose: Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Catherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; conceived in the highest heroic type of humanity.
Then observe, secondly,
The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and, failing that, there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; the virtue of his one true daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, she all but saves him. [emphasis added] Read More »
PHILADELPHIA rock group Sheer Mag has a message for America — played at a Bernie Sanders rally last fall. (As if Bernie is anti-establishment! Ha! Ha! Ha!) If Democrats don’t win in November, these college grads are gonna get tough!
Expect the Bayonet
From the sorrow we created
A fragile state of blood and whim
Made for rich men in their white skin
People bolder than I
Stood up to the lie
That equality has left! (my, my)
But it leaves no doubt in my mind
I’ve been reading the news and you’ll surely regret
If you don’t give us the ballot, expect the bayonet!
Well, expect the bayonet! (yeah, yeah)
Expect the bayonet!
Don’t say I didn’t warn ya
‘Cause for every man high upon the hog
There’s a dogwood forest buried in the fog
How naked is your eye?
Do you ever wonder why
You’re being asked to recompense
When it’s the last sign of your defence?
So you better resolve or you’ll surely regret
If you don’t give us the ballot, expect the bayonet!
Well, expect the bayonet! (Yeah, yeah, yeah)
My hunch is that these kids “in their white skin” have never known a day of hard manual labor and wouldn’t know what to do with a bayonet.
When they say “rich men in their white skin” who made a “fragile state of blood and whim” do they mean people like this?
They may be good musicians, but they strike me as singers not for the oppressed, but tools for the powerful. Subversive rock isn’t subversive.
“WHEN you gossip about a person it means that you have removed the person from your heart. But be aware, when you remove a man from your heart, Jesus goes away from your heart with that man.”
“BE NOT therefore dismayed or troubled but continue to give thanks to God for all things, praising, and invoking Him; beseeching and supplicating; even if countless tumults and troubles come upon you, even if tempests are stirred up before your eyes let none of these things disturb you. For our Master is not baffled by the difficulty, even if all things are reduced to the extremity of ruin. For it is possible for Him to raise those who have fallen, to convert those who are in error, to set straight those who have been ensnared, to release those who have been laden with countless sins, and make them righteous, to quicken those who are dead, to restore lustre to decayed things, and freshness to those which have waxen old. For if He makes things which are not, come into being, and bestows existence on things which are nowhere by any means manifest, how much more will He rectify things which already exist.”
IN AN interview on Good Morning Britain today, Anne Frank’s stepsister Eva Schloss said that the sensational photos released internationally of Auschwitz when it was liberated from the Germans 75 years ago were fake. She said the Soviets, who released the photos, admitted to her that they were staged later. At minute 4:47 in the interview, she discusses the famous pictures. She lived at Auschwitz for one year. She noticed that the photos [did not] include snow, but there was heavy snow at the time of liberation.
Mrs. Schloss said her mother, who later married Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, was selected to be “gassed” at the camp, but was not. They were also supposed to be part of a “death march,” but overslept that day, she said.
Auschwitz, located in Poland, was visited monthly by International Red Cross inspection teams during the war, up until the last few months. The teams were permitted to speak to prisoners alone. In a 1650-page report by the Red Cross, there was no mention of gas chambers. (Read more here.) Here is a video tour of Auschwitz.
Will the elderly Mrs. Schloss be jailed for her comments that the photos were fake, as was the 91-old-German woman Ursula Haverbeck, who has never harmed anyone or advocated violence and is currently in jail for publicly challenging the official historical record of World War II events?
This is not the first time there has been open admission of error. In 1990, the official death toll of inmates at Auschwitz was reduced from four million to 1.5 million. Despite this reduction by 2.5 million, the official total of all deaths in the Holocaust has never been correspondingly reduced.
By the way, did you know that Winston Churchill, General Dwight Eisenhower, and Charles de Gaulle were all holocaust deniers? In the more than 7,000 pages of historical memoirs they wrote on World War II, they never mentioned gas chambers, even though they would have had every reason to vilify the Germans.
I sincerely hope Mrs. Schloss is not put in jail because no one should be in prison for simply questioning history. Maybe Mrs. Schloss made an innocent admission, or maybe — who knows? she had a rough childhood — she is tired of Jewish children being psychologically traumatized by historical errors.
Every year on this anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the world, and especially the Jewish community, should honor the dead and celebrate the good news.
What is the good news?
The good news is that things are not nearly as bad as people thought. Jews were never killed by the millions — or even the thousands — in gas chambers during World War II at places such as Auschwitz. Certainly, many died in these camps. They died of disease and, during the final months, of hunger. But Jewish children need no longer lie awake at night, frightened and deeply shaken by the thought of an industrial-style slaughter of inconceivable proportions in gas chambers. They are free. They have been liberated. There is enough tragedy in the world for them to ponder without this horror of horrors. As Robert Faurrisson, the famous researcher, wrote:
The Jewish survivors of Auschwitz and, in particular, the “children of Auschwitz,” that is, those who were born in the camp or who spent their early years there, are living proof that Auschwitz never could have been an “extermination camp.”
Not only was there never any order, plan, or trace of any directive or budget for an undertaking as enormous as the systematic extermination of the Jews would have been, not only is there no autopsy report in existence establishing the death of even a single prisoner by poison gas, or an official expert’s report on the weapon used in the crime, but (and despite what some authors of best sellers would have us believe) there is not even a single witness of the gas chambers.
A SHY, Italian widow who was always busy tidying up her property and had for years taken care of her husband, who had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, lived across the street from us when we were growing up. Whenever there was a big snowstorm, my father or brother would go over to her house and clear her driveway with a snowblower.
A huge pot of chicken that she made herself would arrive the next day. It was a traditional Italian recipe for chicken stewed in many cloves of garlic. It was the essence of garlic and was delicious.
Here is one version of the dish. You don’t have to use exactly 40 cloves of garlic. I often use fewer to save time. Whenever I make this, I think of our neighbor, who had experienced great tragedy in her life. I think of her resilience and her shyness. And, I think of snow.
Snowblower Chicken
1 3- to 4-pound chicken, cut into 8 pieces, (or eight chicken thighs) at room temperature
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
About 40 garlic cloves, peeled
2 sprigs fresh thyme (if you have it)
3/4 cup dry white wine or dry vermouth
1 1/3 cup chicken stock
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Dry chicken pieces with paper towel and season chicken generously with salt and pepper. Place a deep, nonreactive pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat, and add oil and butter. When oil is very hot, add chicken pieces and sauté until browned, about 5 minutes. Turn pieces and brown on other side for an additional 5 minutes. Remove chicken from pot. When cool enough to handle, remove skin from thighs and breasts.
3. Reduce heat to medium. Add 1/3 cup stock to pan and scrape up any browned bits. Add garlic and cook, stirring a couple of times, for 5-10 minutes, until browned. Add wine, remaining stock, and thyme scraping bottom of pan. Bring to a simmer.
4. Return chicken to the pot. Cover and place in oven, cooking until juices run clear when a thigh is pricked and garlic is soft, about an hour. Remove chicken from pot. Remove half of the garlic cloves and mash. Return garlic to pot and simmer sauce until reduced by about half. Serve chicken with garlic and pan juices.
“MY WAY is: I consider the poetic sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical expression, then chuse my theme, begin one stanza, when that is composed—which is generally the most difficult part of the business—I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. When I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper, swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my, pen goes.”
THE English folk song “Greensleeves” was not originally a Christmas song. The first of several versions of a ballad to a “Lady Greene Sleves” appeared in the 16th century and has been wrongly attributed to King Henry VIII. This early version is performed by the Baltimore Consort.
“THE CONVERSION of Saul” by Caravaggio is one of the world’s great dramatic paintings. It depicts St. Paul (Saul) on the road to Damascus, when he is struck blind and thrown off his horse, forever changed. Caravaggio completed the painting in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in Rome.You may never make it to Rome to see this incredible painting but you can experience it online.
Why is the horse so important? He is huge, filling two thirds of the canvas. He is clearly not there just as a prop to emphasize Saul’s fall from human pride. The light catches his flank and he is beautifully painted – Caravaggio’s realism at its best. Writers often comment that the horse is oblivious to what is happening, just a dumb animal. But that would mean that Caravaggio has devoted a huge amount of brilliant painting to a subject that is peripheral to the action.
To me what is most striking about the horse is how careful it is not to harm Saul. The horse’s eye is clearly on the prostrate figure. The horse is posed with its front right hoof raised and twisted out towards the viewer as if it is being specially careful about where it is going to put it. Indeed, if you draw in the diagonals of the painting, it is the hoof that is the centre of the painting.
The horse seems to stand there as a metaphor for the power of God. This animal with a strong will and immense power has the potential to inflict serious injury on the fallen figure. But in fact it is behaving with great gentleness, care and indeed compassion.
There is implied violence in this scene and yet, we are being told, no one will be hurt. Saul will regain his sight in a few days’ time and he will be set on a new and wonderful road, preaching peace instead of violence, love instead of religious hatred, reconciliation for the whole world.
God deals with us sometimes in shocking, sudden, even brutal ways. But always his purposes are to do us good and to do good through us. Like the horse here God is mighty and scary, but very careful where he treads. He never crushes us. On the contrary, he raises us up to new beginnings.
Today is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, a singular event in world history.
Saul of Tarsus was a well-educated and fiercely dedicated Jew, a Pharisee and member of the tribe of Benjamin. He was named after Saul, the first king of Israel, who was also a Benjamite, and became known as Paul after his conversion to Christianity.
Although he had been educated “at the feet of Gamaliel,” who was greatly respected for his learning and who himself was a tolerant person (Acts 5:34-40), Saul of Tarsus had a fiery nature and became an anti-Christian extremist. He thought that Christianity blasphemed and felt that Christianity was a threat to his religion. Saul scoured Jerusalem for Christians, and when he found them he had them bound and delivered to prison or to death. He was a witness to the stoning of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as the New Testament notes in Acts 8:1: “and Saul was consenting to his death.”
After considerable success in rooting out Christianity in Jerusalem, Saul, “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” decided to journey to Damascus and continue what he felt was his holy work in that city. It was then on the road there that his dramatic conversion took place, perhaps a few years after Jesus’ death.
(The American Book of Days, Stephen G. Christiansen; H.W. Wilson Company, 200; p. 87.)
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