O sanctissima, O piissima, Dulcis Virgo Maria!
Mater amata, Intemerata:
Ora, ora pro nobis!
Tua guadia Et suspiria Juvent nos, O Maria!
In te speramus, Ad te clamamus,
Ora, ora pro nobis!

O most holy one, O most lowly one,
Loving virgin, Mary!
Mother of tender love,
Queen of the heavens above,
Pray for us here below!
Virgin ever fair, hear our fervent prayer,
Look upon us, Mary!
Bring to us your treasure, grace beyond measure;
Pray for us here below!

FROM an article by Darius Shahtahmasebi:

Sanctions are always a prelude to war. Though few are aware, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was arguably in response to America’s attempt to cripple Japan’s booming economy through embargos and asset freezes, ending Japan’s commercial relationship with the United States and provoking the desperation that led to their attack.

In August 1990, the US began a sanctions regime against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 1991, the United States invaded Iraq and completely decimated its armed forces, also directly targeting its civilian infrastructure. Following this devastation, the US extended and expanded these economic sanctions on Iraq as further punishment. The U.N. estimated these sanctions led to the deaths of 1.7 million Iraqi civilians, including between 500,000 and 600,000 children. Read More »

“Kevin MacDonald (evolutionary psychologist and author of ‘The Culture of Critique’) explains how he came to understand the Jewish Question, and the pivotal role of Jewish ethnic activists in the cultural and demographic revolutions which have reshaped European societies during the 20th and 21st Centuries.”

Even though MacDonald is an evolutionist (everything has a physical, biological basis), and thus limited in his understanding of history, some of his insights are important.

DOUG MAINWARING writes at Lifesitenews:

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has produced a Twitter ad meant to pay tribute to Gay Pride events now taking place in Amsterdam. The only thing is, the tweet serves to do the exact opposite.

The ad shows three sets of seat belts. The first consists of two “female” ends. The second pairs two “male” ends. The third depicts a male with a female end and is clearly the only seat belt pairing that actually works.

If KLM equipped its aircraft with set number one or number two, its entire fleet would be grounded for safety reasons. And if even one passenger’s seat was outfitted with double male or double female ends, the plane would not even be allowed to pull away from the gate because of the safety hazard presented to that one passenger.

Only the set of “complementary” seat belts protects passengers from harm. The others have no real value. In fact, they invite danger.

One of the best responses to the airline’s tweet came from Rick Canton: “Fly Royal Dutch Airlines, where your only chance of surviving a crash is buckling up the heterosexual way.” Read More »

GOD tempteth no man (Jas. i. 13); He simply permits man to be tempted. It is the devil who hammers at you when you are tempted. “Our wrestling is against the spirits of wickedness in high places ” (Eph. vi. 12). On earth we are surrounded by robbers; many of us are overcome and wounded by them. 

The conflict with the spirit of evil is a more critical struggle; it is carried on covertly, and against a more powerful adversary–one who spares no pains and knows no shame; who, when he is repulsed, returns all the more defiantly to the attack. For six thousand years he has tempted mankind; such long practice has made him perfect. He excites within us concupiscence of the flesh, or concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life (1 John ii. 16). In this threefold manner he tempted Our Lord. Many temptations come upon a man through no fault of his own (witness Job); some are the result of culpable negligence (witness Eve). The evil enemy as a rule attacks our weak point, our affection for creatures. Like a fowler, he attracts the birds to his net by offering them the food they like best. Physical infirmities give the devil more power over us; everyone knows how apt the sick are to be fretful, impatient and exacting. The devil sets to work craftily. He transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14); that is, he deceives us by assuming an appearance of candor and piety. His artifices prove his weakness; he would not resort to them were he powerful enough to do without them.

Temptation is not in itself sinful, only acquiescence in the suggestions of the tempter is sin. Hence we ought not to be alarmed and uneasy when we feel the incentive to sin, but we should trust in God’s help, saying: “O Lord, make haste to help me! Jesus and Mary be my help!” To tremble in the hour of temptation betrays a want of confidence in the divine assistance; the devil will assail the fearful soul only the more fiercely. Unless we remain calm, we cannot possibly conquer. Those who lose their composure are like a bird caught in the net; the more it flutters and tries to escape, the more it becomes entangled in the meshes. Our Lord promises us: “In your patience you shall possess your souls” (Luke xxi. 19). The good Christian is like a soldier, who as a rule rejoices when war breaks out, in the prospect of gaining rich booty.

2. God allows us to be tempted out of mercy, for the good of our souls. As the schoolmaster examines his scholars in order to give them a good testimonial, so God deals with the souls of men; He allows us to be tried by temptation to give us the opportunity of manifesting our loyalty to Him, and acquiring a claim to the recompense He promises us. Thus He has only our welfare in view. The tempter however, the evil enemy, means no good to us; he aims at our ruin, as the history of Job testifies. Temptations may therefore be said to be a mark of the divine favor. 

Source

Ernst Zundel, right, immediately after his release from prison in Germany

THE GERMAN dissident Ernst Zündel, 78, died last week in his home country.

Mr. Zündel was called a “holocaust denier,” but he did not deny mass suffering of Jews in World War II.

He challenged the official death toll and accounts and for this he experienced “multiple costly criminal trials, two years’ imprisonment in solitary confinement in Canada, five years imprisonment in Germany, the burning of his home and its contents by an arsonist, and his deportation and subsequent banishment from the United States and Canada,” as author Michael Hoffman put it.

A columnist in The Toronto Sun this week continued the vendetta against Zündel by regretting that he did not die in agony.

In 1985, Zündel’s legal team grilled expert witnesses at his trial in Canada, known as “The Great Holocaust Trial.” It was the first time ever in a public Holocaust trial that the defense was allowed to cross-examine experts and survivors. Their testimony, particularly that of a leading historian on the subject, fell apart under intensive scrutiny and shattered their credibility. Michael Hoffman, author of The Great Holocaust Trial, writes:

The most eminent “Holocaust” historian of the 1980s was Dr. Raul Hilberg. During the Great Holocaust Trial he was compelled to admit on the witness stand that there was no scientific evidence of homicidal gassings. “I’m at a loss” were the shocking words this “leading Holocaust scholar” uttered when asked by Christie to cite such evidence.

Zündel went to jail for his public writings and broadcasts anyway. He was banned from this country for life earlier this year, and was unable to be reunited with his wife here. According to Hoffman,

His lifelong campaign to counter anti-German hatred and Talmudic bigotry has been transformed through the alchemy of media falsification into itself an act of hate, and it is at this omega point that Ernst’s persona has been frozen by the Establishment. “He was a hater!” That’s all we’re supposed to know, or need to know, about his life and work. Read More »

A Peaceful Read, George Goodwin Kilburne; 1869

“WE UNDERSTAND absolutely nothing about modern civilization if we do not admit at first that it is a universal conspiracy against all interior life.”

— George Bernanos

Feeding the Chickens, Frederick Osborne

BRADEN N. PLYLER writes at The Counter Revolution:

American capitalism is as intrinsically evil as communism. This isn’t a controversial or centrist position to take. Capitalism and communism are not a dichotomy, as there are a plethora of other systems to choose from. While in the West communism is viewed as a force of evil, and capitalism its opposite, they have more in common than one would think.

Both are two sides of the same coin – materialism. Any idea which supposes material ownership is above morality (or in a case where morality is exclusively based on rules pertaining to materialism) is a system in which God and people do not matter.

While communism is a system which usually erodes and fails after a certain amount of time, secularist capitalism is a slow and agonizing death. Morality should never be a “free market”, and truly, luxury or greed should never be what dictates economic policy.

One virtue of capitalism is that compared to communism, private property is allowed. Truly, private property is the basis of the need for the state and healthy to man. Where it fails to uphold private property is that wealth concentrates very quickly as agrarianism tends to give way to urbanization. Land and wealth concentrates among a certain elite, who usually end up bribing or paying off government officials, which usually gives rise to socialist-like policies. Even worse, mass capitalism of all aspects of society would be anarchy, where the worship of capital is above all other values. No morality would exist but greed.

My proposition is that freedom can be found in a system which acts as if God and people truly did matter, which is rarely the case of communism or capitalism. The [first] is a worship of the state with the end goal of mass luxury, and the latter the idolatry of wealth without good reason.

A system based on natural law and agrarianism is healthy to man. A system which encourages small business and farming which includes the family rather than slaving away for corporations is extremely beneficial.

[…]

Embrace the local. Reject the globalist ideologies of modern capitalism and communism, and their variants.

JANE S. writes:

Okay, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Karen Rinaldi is right: marriage and motherhood are drudgery. She implies that a career is fulfilling and liberating. But she does not give a jot of supporting evidence.

Presumably, an established author like Rinaldi works from home, or maybe rents an office space. She is an elite who enjoys more autonomy and creativity than the majority of women in the workforce. I don’t know who if anyone cramps her style, unless it’s her publisher.

She should spend some time in the high-tech work environment, where you are under constant surveillance, where you are required to wear a badge that tracks your every move, where digital timekeepers monitor everything you do down to the microsecond, including your bathroom breaks.

We can then see time how long it takes before she’s had enough. It won’t be long. Then she can explain how spending eight hours a day suffocating in a cubicle is so much better than staying at home changing diapers.

Today’s typical work setting is not only more oppressive and soul-crushing than Rinaldi imagines, in her fictitious female empowerment world. Workplace bullying is rampant. It is said to be four times more prevalent than harassment based on illegal discrimination.

And, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute, “Woman bullies famously target other women in 80% of cases.” A supervisor is not only much harder to please than a husband, the supervisor who makes your life hell is more likely to be a woman. I can personally vouch for that. Read More »

THERE’S no such thing as transgenderism in classical ballet.

As the brilliant E. Michael Jones says in this interview about his new book, “How Meyer Lansky took over the Cincinnati Ballet and what Four Ballerinas did about it,” ballet is about male/female relationships. Feminism and the entire social engineering project to confuse sexual differences are contrary to the romantic ideals of ballet, which glorify male and female and their efforts to understand and complement each other.

Modern dance is entirely different. It turns dancers into “sex robots” and is essentially about failed relationships.

“Every year we have to suffer through a new version of the sex robot dance at the Cincinnati ballet,” says Jones, whose son is a ballet dancer for the Cincinnati company. “… Everybody got sick of it.”

Four ballerinas rebelled against the sex robot dance and its political agenda. They realized that every time they did modern dance, they were “silent propagandists for failed relationships,” Jones says.

Learn more about Jones’s book — and what the mobster Meyer Lansky has to do with all this — in the interview with Judith Sharpe. It will be available free at In the Spirit of Chartres for another week. The final ten minutes of the interview are especially important. Read More »

THIS is a funny cartoon (found here) that makes the same point I made in recent entries (here and here).

Tattoos are projections of pretend strength. Judging from appearances, individuals who suffer from weakness and uncertainty are more likely to get tattoos. Many people today are wimps inside. Their childhoods have been chaotic and often sad and confusing. Their minds have been reduced to mush by pseudo-education and popular culture. They have no courage or inner strength. Their bodies are mush too. Many look like walking marshmallows. The tattoo is a symbol of toughness, formerly favored by military men and outlaws. Just last week, I met a government clerk who had a huge tattoo across her chest that was visible under her blouse at work. She was otherwise sallow and unhealthy looking. The cast of her complexion was that of someone who had spent a long period of time in a prison cell. Despite her best efforts to appear tough, she projected an overwhelming impression of softness, or squishiness, and defeat, not confidence.

Many Americans today lack any sense of the glorious heritage of their own spiritual natures and that the body is literally a temple of an immortal soul created in an individual act of creation by God himself. We were created out of nothing and are only held in existence every moment of the day by the will of God. Tattoos are rank ingratitude.

Most people in the modern world are insane and don’t realize it. They are not living in reality. Our society is insane and imposes a fantasy world upon them.

They don’t realize that God has revealed himself and explained quite a lot. They don’t realize life has a divine purpose and there are specific instructions to follow. If they did, they would shed the facade of strength and seek the real thing from above. Strength comes from God. The path to heaven is arduous but the alternative — as we see all around us — is much worse.

FROM “How Donald Trump Threw Peace and Prosperity Under an AIPAC Bus” by Phil Butler:

Shortly after 11:00 AM, Wednesday August 2, 2017 US President Donald Trump declared full scale economic war on Russia. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is joined by millions of us who’ve now lost all hope of peace and reconciliation in the world. Cold War II is on.

Dmitry Medvedev attacked Trump’s decision to sign the bill in the same way most of us analysts will, chastising the US President after his clear bow to a US Congress unified in its hysteria against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But the Russian Prime Minister did not delve into just “why” Trump is praying to the altar of neo-conservatism today. Trump feigned disagreement with sections of the law his team said are “unconstitutional”, but the force behind these sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea is hidden. Let me enlighten you on what is really taking place in Washington.

Two days ago, a close colleague of mine was on the line from Greenwich, Connecticut to discuss my upcoming book when the conversation turned to these new Russia sanctions. My colleague related a story from Capital Hill and an insider who explained the vote on the sanctions law. The gist of this insider’s revelation was that the overwhelming “yes vote” in Congress indicated one powerful player behind the curtain – America’s pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

When I heard AIPAC stood behind, my mind immediately reverted to images and sound bites of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Their mutual gratification society handshakes, the syrupy sweetness of the Israeli’s recollections on young Trump – and then I thought on the Saudi arms deal and the wider frame of the Arab Spring. Sorry to consolidate so many facets here, but if Trump and all of Washington has acquiesced totally to the will of AIPAC, then America is all done. Looking again at Russia’s Medvedev:

“Trump’s administration has demonstrated total impotence by surrendering its executive authority to Congress in the most humiliating way.”

The point of this new sanctions law is revealed simply. If AIPAC controls the Unites States Congress, and if the President of the United States has surrendered his executive authority to that body, then the Israeli lobby controls the Government of the United States – lock stock and barrel. In other words, a foreign sovereign nation and ideology rules America – and it rules it with impunity.

Link here.

Here is more analysis by F. William Engdahl, who writes:

The ever-so-wise members of the Congress of the United States have just passed one of the most bizarre pieces of legislation in US history. Unilaterally, it makes illegal and severely punishable investments by European companies in international energy projects where Russia is involved. But it does far more. Unlike earlier US sanctions acts, the EU countries were not even consulted on the new act. It may well be that the bill, HR-3364: Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (sic) and its Senate counterpart will mark the irreversible decline of the United States as a global power and forge new ties between Russia, China, Iran and, yes, the major states of the EU including Germany.

FROM a sermon on The Transfiguration of Jesus by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876:

THE garments which clothe our soul, are the good works which we practise, according to our station in life. If each one of these were performed with the purest intention, and were free from every stain of imperfection, what an adornment they would prove to be, how they would embellish the soul, and what a gain they would be for heaven! Unfortunately this is seldom the case. There are few of our works whose brightness is untarnished by sin.

We will consider today, particularly, the stains which deface our daily works, and meditate upon the best means of avoiding and guarding against them. Mary, thou who, according to Holy Writ, standest robed in garments of gold, before the throne of the Most High, thou, purest of the pure, in thought and deed, grant that we, taught and guided by thee, may gain strength to free ourselves from every stain of imperfection and sin! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God.

St. John, speaking in the Apocalypse of the saints in heaven, says: “They were clothed in white robes.” These white garments and these shining, precious material of which they are made, says he, are righteousness and good works. This material is made up principally of our daily works. For, in order to become holy it is not necessary to perform great and astonishing outward deeds. The Almighty has not chosen or called every one for such a career; hence every one has not received the divine grace which it requires. As to those great works of which we read in the lives of the saints, they were not the means of making them what they were; it was, rather, the perfection with which they performed their daily duties which made them so rich in merit.

A friend of St. Francis de Sales used to say of this saint, that he did nothing unusual, and yet all that he did seemed unusual, on account of the perfect manner in which it was performed. And what are the stains which cling to our daily works and deface them, and often even totally destroy them, by robbing them of all merit for the life to come? They are these:

First, the stain of indolence, arising from a want of energy to rise early, and always at the same time, in order to say our morning prayers and to implore God to protect and bless us during the day. All who are indolent in rising, who begin the day slothfully and without devout, earnest prayer, stain thus early in the morning the robes of their soul. Read More »

AS IF women weren’t demoralized enough when it comes to sacrificing ambition for motherhood and home, New York Times writer Karen Rinaldi comes up with a new twist on the Don’t-Waste-Your-Life-At-Home argument.

She says motherhood is essentially selfish.

Rinaldi, the author of The End of Men, writes:

Christ in the Storm, Rembrandt

He who is afraid of falling distrusts his own strength, avoids as much as possible all dangerous occasions, and recommends himself often to God, and thus preserves his soul from sin. But the man who is not fearful, but full of self confidence, easily exposes himself to the danger of sin: he seldom recommends himself to God, and thus he falls. Let us imagine a person suspended over a great precipice by a cord held by another. Surely he would constantly cry out to the person who supports him: Hold fast, hold fast; for Gods sake, do not let go. We are all in danger of falling into the abyss of all crime, if God does not support us. Hence we should constantly beseech him to keep his hands over us, and to succour us in all dangers.

— St. Alphonsus Liguori

Family Reunion for Alex Kafri. Haaretz

ALEX KAFRI “was given to believe” that his father’s family had been entirely wiped out in German gas chambers during World War II, Haaretz reports.

But Kafri recently learned after his father’s death that in fact he had many relatives on his father’s side. A huge reunion took place in London last week. This is a happy story, folks.

May there be many more of these happy reunions.

This story is as happy as the admission by Polish and Jewish authorities that after years of reporting that four million Jews were killed at Auschwitz, no more than 1.1 to 1.5 million inmates of various religions died there. The whole world should rejoice that millions did not perish there! Read More »

ALAN writes:

George Orwell wrote:

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

But naked brutality would be needed only to tyrannize people who can recognize evil and summon the will to oppose it. In the years when Orwell wrote, many people could do both. Today, most Americans can do neither.

In place of naked brutality, I see a somewhat different vision of the future: It stares at us wherever we look—in public places, on public transit, in newspapers, in magazines, on television, on the Internet, in commerce, in advertising, in retail stores. It is the image of a young feminized woman having “fun” and wearing a perpetual, vapid, adolescent-witted smile: Multiculti mush and poison dished out by the Feminoid Sisterhood fronting for Nanny Government.

Equally bad are the endless announcements on public transit instructing passengers to “use the sidewalks and crosswalks for safety”, recited in computer-generated recordings designed to mimic a woman’s voice.

Imagine a “partnership” of Feminoids and Nanny Government instructing us for our own good.
I need a good laugh: Tell me that Washington, Jefferson, and the other early Americans would have listened to such announcements and said, “O Thank you, benevolent Nanny Government, for giving us those instructions. We are so dumb that we would have walked directly into a stampede of horses were it not for those instructions provided by such a sweetheart government.”