According to the Pentagon’s latest memo on the subject, the armed forces will no longer accept new recruits diagnosed with gender dysphoria or recruits who’ve had hormone treatment or reassignment surgery.
Already-serving members (who have been estimated to total anywhere from 1,320 to 6,630) may stay, but will be treated as members of their biological sex rather than their “gender identity,” and held to the dress and grooming standards of the former. Current medical treatment will continue for current members already diagnosed with gender dysphoria, but new transition procedures will not be offered. Read More »
Venus, a Landseer Newfoundland with a Rabbit, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer; 1819
In Praise of Self-Deprecation
The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.
The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.
The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.
DANIEL McADAMS from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity interviews Phil Giraldi about the storm over Rep. Ilhan Omar:
Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar (MN) has stirred up both political parties with her comments on the Israel Lobby, has infuriated the Republicans with her aggressive line of questioning for Trump’s “regime change” expert Elliott Abrams, and has driven the Democrats mad with her criticisms of Barack Obama. Is she on the right track, or off the rails?
“IF THE Lord should give you the power to raise the dead, He would be giving you much less than He does when He bestows suffering. By miracles you would make yourself a debtor to Him, while by suffering He may become debtor to you. And even if sufferings had no other reward than being able to bear something for that God who loves you, is not this a great reward and sufficient remuneration? Whoever loves understands what I say.”
Since the days of “Beatlemania,” the script-writers of the modern world have added the tactic of using the “real lives” of celebrity “role models” ™ as stealth cultural weapons of mass degeneration. The Beatles were introduced to America as four innocent, relatively clean-cut young lads in nice suits from Liverpool, England who sang mindless yet harmless songs. Within five years, their Jewish handlers had completely transformed them into drugged-up, counter cultural, pseudo-intellectual hippies. And millions of the formerly clean living American teens, who had originally taken the innocent bait, copied their musical gods — blindly following lead singer and admitted “One Worlder” John Lennon (“imagine there’s no countries”) into political and social radicalism.
A more recent example of this mass manipulation would be the shocking transformation of Miley Cyrus. From 2006-2011, Cyrus starred on the popular Disney Channel show “Hannah Montana.” The show seemed innocent and harmless enough (though the character lived a double life). With their parents’ blessing, millions of young girls grew up with Miley / Hannah.
In 2013, just two years after the show went off of the air, her handlers pulled the switch. Cute little innocent Miley Cyrus shocked the world with her pornographic “twerking” against the crotch of male singer Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV Awards. And thus it came to be that a “dance” previously contained within the ranks of the skankiest of lowlife bar sluts soon became a “normal” part of the pop culture.
Then we have “The Kardashian” whores of “Reality TV” fame. Though there was no “bait & switch” tactic utilized here, the stupid show — followed religiously by millions of silly young women and girls — was used to heavily promote inter-racial marriage and trans-genderism (Bruce / Caitlyn Jenner was step dad to the Kardashian sluts.) Read More »
E. MICHAEL JONES is at his best here in this wide-ranging interview. Don’t miss his discussion of the woman who threw a chair at him in a restaurant, apparently because he was wearing a suit, and of why so many people are filled with rage. (I’m not sure who the interviewer is here. As with many amateur interviews on the Internet, it’s rough in spots, but she elicits good commentary.)
IMAGINE you have just been robbed and beaten. As the robber runs away on the street, he stops and starts to scream hysterically: “Help! Help! I’m in pain. I’m in pain. Oh! Oh! He hurt me! He hurt me!” The police show up. They automatically believe the thief is the victim. The hysterics distract them, and the robber has passed the loot to a friend.
That’s exactly what last week’s House Resolution 183 represents: hysterics by defenders of criminals. “Oh! Oh! They have hurt us! They have hurt us!” Criticizing Jews is supposedly tantamount to committing genocide. “Help! Help! I’m in pain!”
How is it possible that the most privileged group in America, the group that has brought us excessive mass immigration, indebtedness, multiculturalism, racial politics, unjust foreign wars, legal abortion, staggering financial crimes, ethnic networking that has crowded out others from top colleges and jobs, Holocaustianity, fraudulent evolutionism, psychiatric quackery, same-sex “marriage,” exhausted working mothers, pornography, the drug epidemic, sex for teens, transgenderism for tots, media monopolies that have near total control over the flow of information — and more, gets away with claiming to be the victim?
It’s the chutzpah of the robber crying out. It’s so outrageous it stuns normal people into submission. The screaming, hysterical victim has moral status. He is so loud, so aggressive, so insistent, he prevents clear thought. Victims rule.
There’s another trick the robber plays. The police show up. The robber points to his victim and he says, “This man is claiming I robbed him. I can’t believe it! This man is sick! He’s irrational. He’s deeply irrational and he’s filled with hate. He belongs in a mental institution! Take him away!… Oh, I’m filled with pain! I’m in pain! The hate is killing me! Oh no! Help me! I’m going to die from hate!!”
And the real victim is taken away to be rehabilitated.
THE resolution condemning “white supremacism” passed by the House of Representative last week represents a familiar phenomenon, which Tobias Langdon at The Occidental Observerexamines in contemporary Britain:
It’s like the set-up for a joke: “This young Jewish woman and this young Muslim woman walk into a classroom.” But the joke turns out to be a sick one: the Jewess and the Muslim are there to instill guilt in White children and grievance in non-White children. ….. The ideological contradictions are monumental, because Jews and Muslims are both highly clannish and xenophobic groups. The Jewish nation of Israel privileges the Jewish majority and ensures that minorities are kept firmly in their place. Muslim nations like Pakistan actively oppress non-Muslim minorities, often in ways that read like something out of Alice in Wonderland: “the new [blasphemy] laws in Pakistan were also noteworthy on other counts: there were no agreed standards of evidence; no requirement to prove intent; no penalties for false allegations, and no clear guide-lines for what actually constituted blasphemy. Most remarkably, accusers retained the right not to repeat offending statements in court in case it aggravated the blasphemy, leaving the accused vulnerable to a sentence without knowing what was said or done to have constituted blasphemy.” Read More »
FROMan essay by the late great, persecuted columnist Joseph Sobran (1946-2010):
It was once considered “anti-Semitic” to impute “dual loyalty” to Jews — that is, to assert that most American Jews divide their loyalty between the United States and Israel. This is now passé. Today most politicians assume, as a matter of course, that Israel commands the primary loyalty of Jewish voters. Are they accused of “anti-Semitism” for doing so? Does this assumption cost them Jewish votes? Not at all! Dual loyalty nothing! Dual loyalty would be an improvement!
Once again, it’s a practical necessity to know what it would be professional suicide to say. No politician in his right mind would accuse Jews of giving their primary loyalty to Israel; but most politicians act as if this were the case. And they succeed.
You can read Jewish publications like Commentary for years, and you’ll read interminable discussions about what’s good for Israel, but you’ll never encounter the slightest suggestion that what’s good for Israel might not be good for America. The possibility simply never comes up. The only discernible duty of Jews, it seems, is to look out for Israel. They never have to choose between Israel and the United States. So much for the “canard” of dual loyalty.
The very word anti-Semite is reminiscent of the term anti-Soviet. It serves a similar function of facilitating imputations of ill-defined guilt. Read More »
PEOPLE diet to lose weight and to look better. But judging from the evidence, it often doesn’t work. Perhaps they are dieting from the wrong motives. In a spiritual fast, one learns to control the appetite — not for any worldly gain but for other-worldly gain. The spiritual fast strengthens the will. The modern world needs fasting and abstinence more than ever:
But, alas! the generality of men consider these observances as duties incumbent indeed on persons in a retired or religious state, but wholly inapplicable to those, who take an active part on the theatre of the world. In opposition to this so fatal an error, I assert, that the practice of penance is, to persons in the world, above all others, of the most imperative obligation. The man of contemplation might possibly find, in the constant meditation of the truths of eternity, in the undisturbed application of his mind to prayer and celestial things, in the sacred and sublime occupations of his state, wherewith to combat his inordinate appetites. In the world, on the contrary, all things tend to excite and augment their violence. In the world, besides the evil propensities of nature, you have to struggle against the force of general example, against the seductions of pleasure, artfully decked out in its most attractive garb to enchant and captivate. There the passions are soothed and flattered; there virtue is without honour; there vicious indulgence, in almost all its shapes, is excused, in many is even applauded. In the world, then, the practice of self-denial is of the first necessity; there, if you are not mortified, your ruin is inevitable.
ANTI-TRUST laws have not prevented the sometimes intense consolidation of retail businesses to the detriment of the consumer. A good example is eyeglasses:
This week, the Los Angeles Times spoke with two former executives of LensCrafters: Charles Dahan and E. Dean Butler, who founded LensCrafters in 1983. Both admitted that today, glasses are marked up nearly 1,000 percent.
“You can get amazingly good frames, with a Warby Parker level of quality, for $4 to $8,” said Butler. “For $15, you can get designer-quality frames, like what you’d get from Prada.”
Butler added that shoppers could get “absolutely first-quality lenses for $1.25 apiece.” When hearing that some glasses sell for $800 in the US, he laughed. “I know. It’s ridiculous. It’s a complete rip-off.”
Butler and Dahan confirmed what shoppers have already suspected: There’s price gouging in the optical industry. The main culprit? The eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, which essentially controls the industry. [Source]
THERE are but few social questions which have not been ably and spiritedly treated of by the public writers of the age, who have devoted their talents to the study of what is called Political Economy; and it has often been a matter of surprise to us, that they should have overlooked a subject of such deep interest as this,–the results produced on society by the abolition of Lent, that is to say, of an institution, which, more than any other, keeps up in the public mind a keen sentiment of moral right and wrong, inasmuch as it imposes on a nation an annual expiation for sin. No shrewd penetration is needed to see the difference between two nations, one of which observes, each year, a forty days’ penance in reparation of the violations committed against the Law of God, and another, whose very principles reject all such solemn reparation. And looking at the subject from another point of view,–is it not to be feared that the excessive use of animal food tends to weaken, rather than to strengthen, the constitution? We are convinced of it,–the time will come, when a greater proportion of vegetable, and less of animal, diet, will be considered as an essential means for maintaining the strength of the human frame.
The entire “Catholic Church abuse story” has long ago ceased about being about “justice for victims” and “bishop accountability.” The actions of law enforcement, the media, tort lawyers, and so-called “victims groups” are now nothing less than a full-on assault against the Church because of its teachings on sexual ethics. The issue of sex abuse committed decades ago is just a pretext for this attack, and the absurd criminal conviction of Cardinal George Pell on ludicrous abuse charges is simply the latest proof of this.
See Pell’s police interview above.
Clerics truly guilty of the sexual abuse of minors deserve the death penalty. There is cause for grave doubt, however, of the charges leveled against Pell.
[Note: While this website does not accept the legitimacy of cardinals who embrace Vatican II, it recognizes that sex abuse media stories and prosecutions in many cases amount to defamation of the true Catholic Church. The many charges against Pell and others, whether true or false, also amount to a chastisement against the modernist, phony religion which has supplanted the Catholic faith in churches across the land.]
TODAY IS ASH Wednesday, the first day of the penitential season of Lent, the day when ashes are placed on the foreheads of the observant as an act of self-abasement and a recognition of mortality:
“For dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.”–Genesis 3: 19
Or as Johnny Cash would say, “Sooner or later God’ll cut you down.”
There is no mention of this custom of ashes in the New Testament, but it is found in the Old Testament, mentioned in Esther iv. 1, and Dan. ix. 3. The English abbot Ælfric of Eynsham describes the observation of Lent in the 10th century:
On that Wednesday, throughout the world, as it is appointed, priests bless clean ashes in church, and then lay them on people’s heads, so that they may remember that they came from earth and will return again to dust, just as Almighty God said to Adam, after he had sinned against God’s command: ‘In labour you shall live and in sweat you shall eat your bread upon the earth, until you return again to the same earth from which you came, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ This is not said about the souls of mankind, but about their bodies, which moulder to dust, and shall again on Judgement Day, through the power of our Lord, rise from the earth, all who ever lived, just as all trees quicken again in the season of spring which were deadened by the winter’s chill.
While Ash Wednesday seems filled with gloom, it is no accident that it occurs as spring approaches, as Ælfric notes. “Lent” is from an Old English word “lencten” meaning spring. As this beautiful French Lenten hymn, found at The Clerk of Oxford, suggests, Lent has its own gladness:
To bow the head In sackcloth and in ashes, Or rend the soul, Such grief is not Lent’s goal; But to be led To where God’s glory flashes, His beauty to come nigh, To fly, to fly, To fly where truth and light do lie.
Lent also is a time of military preparation. The great army of Christ strengthens itself to do battle. Pope Benedict XIV said in an encyclical on May 29, 1741,
The observance of Lent is the bond of union in our army; by it we are distinguished from the enemies of the Cross of Christ; by it we turn aside the chastisements of God’s wrath; by its means, being guarded by heavenly succours during the day, we fortify ourselves against the prince of darkness. If this observance comes to be relaxed it is to the detriment of God’s glory, to the dishonour of the Catholic religion and to the peril of souls; nor can it be doubted that such negligence will become a source of misfortune to nations, of disaster to public affairs and of adversity to individuals.”
The Pope’s words are prophetic, and we can rightly blame the state of the world today on the failure of many Christians to observe Lent. It’s interesting to note that every “white nationalist” alive today is a descendant of people who observed Lent. And yet how many white nationalists will be fasting today?
The First Prayer from the Mass for Ash Wednesday in the Saint Andrew Daily Missal:
O ALMIGHTY AND ETERNAL GOD, spare those who are penitent, be merciful to those who supplicate Thee; and vouchsafe to send Thy holy Angel from heaven, to bless and sanctify these ashes, that they may be a wholesome remedy to all who humbly implore Thy holy name, and accuse themselves as a result of the consciousness of their sins, deploring their crimes before Thy divine clemency, or humbly and earnestly beseeching Thy sovereign mercy: and grant through the invocation of Thy most holy name that all who may be sprinkled with them for the remission of their sins, may receive health of body and safety of soul. Through Christ our Lord.
THE Virginia governor’s wife leading students around the governor’s mansion made the mistake of asking a teenager to imagine the experience of a slave:
The tour guide handed raw, prickly cotton to some young black students who were part of a group visiting the oldest operating governor’s mansion in the country, one that was built with slave labor. She asked them to imagine what it would be like to be a slave picking the crop.
What made the request only more shocking, a mother of one of the children said, was who was asking it: Pam Northam, the wife of Ralph S. Northam, the embattled governor of Virginia, who is trying to repair his relationship with African-Americans after a scandal over a racist yearbook photo and an admission of wearing blackface.
But, taking all this seriously if you can (more and more the news reads like it was written by bright 14-year-olds and the normal adult has to strain to adopt the same mentality and immaturity just to understand what is going on), wouldn’t Mrs. Northam have been wrong to have handed the cotton to a white student?! Read More »
Photo Courtesy of Architectural Revival on Twitter
“THE thing now with modernist art that has dominated for so long is that we have no more art. Most museums of modern art for me could be closed down without any interest. My test is always this: if you take a piece of so-called modern art and you put it next to the dumpsters and rubbish in the courtyard and it is taken away, it’s not art – because anyone with any sensitivity or any intelligence will recognize a work of art. It has something more about it than just rubbish.
This is where I come to the parallel of music and architecture. Building a very large complex is symphonic work. If you build a large complex over twenty or thirty years – like building a town – you need some discipline which is going to ensure that there will be harmony of parts despite the contrarianism of the users who are going to inhabit it. You need some simple discipline, which can be understood and shared by a large number of people. That is what traditional architecture was about; and that is why we have these incredible treasures of traditional architecture still surviving, despite the will to deform or to destroy them or to wipe them out.”
