THE beast in Disney’s new version of Beauty and the Beast has horns — like Baphomet. See the report at Fellowship of the Minds, where Dr. Eowyn writes:

The message of Disney’s new Beauty and the Beast movie is this:

The Devil is just misunderstood! He just wants your love! The Devil loves you and wants to give you riches and finery. All you gotta do is tell him you love him, and he’ll turn into a handsome prince, and you’ll live happily ever after.

A CLERK OF OXFORD, a blog about medieval England, has a number of interesting posts about the celebration of Candlemas, or the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, which brings to a close the 40-day liturgical Christmas season and marks the occasion when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem. On this day, candles are blessed and carried in procession. From the day’s Gospel:

At that time: After the days of Mary’s purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they carried Jesus to Jerusalem, to present Him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord: Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord; and to offer a sacrifice according as it is written in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons. Read More »

Master of Bagnacavallo; Initial S with the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

CANDLEMAS HYMN

The angel-lights of Christmas morn,
Which shot across the sky,
Away they pass at Candlemas,
They sparkle and they die.

Comfort of earth is brief at best,
Although it be divine;
Like funeral lights for Christmas gone,
Old Simeon’ s tapers shine.

And then for eight long weeks and more,
We wait in twilight grey,
Till the High Candle sheds a beam
On Holy Saturday.

We wait along the penance-tide
Of solemn fast and prayer,
Whilst song is hushed, and lights grow dim,
In the sin-laden air.

And while the sword in Mary’s soul
Is driven home, we hide
In our own hearts, and count the wounds
Of passion and of pride.

And still, though Candlemas be spent
And alleluias o’er,
Mary is music in our need.
And Jesus light in store.

Source

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS writes:

The easiest and surest way for the Trump administration to stop the refugee problem, not only for the US but also for Europe and the West in general, is to stop the wars against Muslim countries that his predecessors started. The enormous sums of money squandered on gratuitous wars could instead be given to the countries that the US and NATO have destroyed. The simplest way to end the refugee problem is to stop producing refugees. This should be the focus of Trump … [and his critics.]

PLANNED. Carried out. Orchestrated.

Frau Wilhelmine Gedon, 1869

THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION says it is offensive to “transgenders” to refer to “expectant mothers,” Breitbart reports. They should be referred to as “pregnant people” instead.

This seems crazy — even crazier than usual in a crazy time, but the progressive elimination of “mother” and “father” is nothing new and has been well underway for some time.

The promotion of transgenderism is one more stage in the ongoing destruction of the family.

PETER MICHAEL KETCHAM, an employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for 14 years, has publicly criticized the government agency for ignoring the scientific errors found in its report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC 7) after the September 11, 2001 attacks. He spoke on the issue earlier this month.

Ketcham studied the collapse of the building after his departure from the agency. “I quickly became furious,” he says. “First I was furious with myself. How could I have worked at NIST all those years and not have noticed this before? Second, I was furious at NIST. The NIST I knew was intellectually open …  and enthusiastic about exposing the details of its research. The more I investigated, the more I concluded that NIST had reached a pre-determined conclusion.”

He calls NIST one of the “crown jewels” of the federal government, making its lapses hard to understand.

Ann Corcoran

ANN CORCORAN has been following the refugee resettlement “humanitarian-industrial complex” in America for ten years. She reports on the abuses, and is not opposed to all help for refugees. She writes today at her website Refugee Resettlement Watch:

Over the years I have concluded that the program is out of control and is desperately in need of reform. 

I am paid by no one to write RRW, this has been a charitable effort on my part. I have no office, no staff, no interns!

I fully support President Trump’s EO on a moratorium on the US Refugee Admissions Program and have no comment on other aspects of the so-called ‘ban’ because many issues raised are outside of my area of expertise.

That said, although I support the short moratorium, it does not go far enough. It is an insufficient amount of time to fully investigate how the program has been administered since it was signed in to law by Jimmy Carter in 1980.

The USRAP has operated in virtual secrecy for the ten years I have followed it where local communities are kept in the dark until refugees start arriving.  Largely driven by nine major federal contractors*** who along with the US State Department collude to keep citizens from knowing what is planned for their communities.

When citizens learn what is happening and start asking questions about costs, security, cultural upheaval they are unfairly labeled racists and haters.

The USRAP as a multi-billion dollar a year industry is unsustainable and it is time Congress performed a much needed review. Read More »

Composer Paul Hindemith

ADAM GARRIE writes at The Duran:

In order to make American culture appear freer and more open than the Soviet culture, in 1950 the CIA established the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organisation which would promote the most radical art of the western world, art so radical that most people in the West didn’t particularly care for it. One might cynically say it was more Operation Paganini than it was Operation Gladio.

Out were composers whose melodies everyone implicitly knows, and in came atonal music, dissonant music poly-rhythmic music.

I personally  listen to all of it from Beethoven to Stockhausen, so I write this without fear or favour. But I must say, if one wants to attract a general audience, I should think Tchaikovsky’s 6^th or Beethoven’s 9^th have wider appeal than Pierre Henry stabbing a tape recorder with a pencil (yes, it sounds more or less as you think it would do).

The CCF organised concerts throughout the world featuring the mostly atonal music of the so-called Second Viennese School including composers like Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and latterly Hindemith – in other words the composers whose records never sold much in the free market place compared with the likes of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms and Mozart.

So the CIA, in promoting ‘the American way’, were actually promoting music that most people in America shunned.  Instead most people actually preferred the accessible orchestral music promoted by the democratic Soviet ideal!  You really couldn’t make this stuff up.

Here’s an hilarious cartoon.

Hello, Paris Symphony Orchestra?

This is the CIA. You play anymore Tchaikovsky and we’ll break your oboes.

Could the CIA be behind the awful music in supermarkets (and drugstores, clothing outlets and chain restaurants?) There’s a conspiracy theory for you! Read More »

An 8-year-old girl killed in U.S. drone strike last week

GLENN GREENWALD writes at The Intercept:

In 2010, President Obama directed the CIA to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime, and the agency successfully carried out that order a year later with a September, 2011 drone strike. While that assassination created widespread debate … another drone-killing carried out shortly thereafter was perhaps even more significant yet generated relatively little attention. Read More »

[Post revised. Read full text of Trump’s executive order here. I have reconsidered some of my initial appraisal of it after giving it further thought.]

RON PAUL says sensible things about foreign policy. From Paul’s Institute of Peace and Prosperity:

President Trump’s recent Executive Order banning entry to citizens of seven mostly-Muslim countries for 90 days has sparked protest and outrage. Lost in the din created by the protests is the fact that these seven countries have something in common: they have been targeted by the US for bombs or regime change. Where Iraq and Syria are now considered terrorist threats, for example, before US regime change and invasion there was no terrorist problem. Iran has never attacked or threatened the United States, but it is on the list of banned countries. Saudi Arabia was [allegedly] complicit in the 9/11 attacks on the US and 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi citizens, however somehow the Saudis escaped President Trump’s notice. Is this really about protecting us from terrorism, or is it about politics? We discuss today in the Liberty Report. Read More »

MORE than 1,700 American rabbis have signed a public letter calling for America to take more refugees:

We, Rabbis from across the United States, call on our newly elected officials to keep America’s doors open to refugees.

Faced with the largest refugee crisis in all of human history, the United States must continue to be a safe haven for people fleeing religious persecution, genocide, and terror. Read More »

THE opposition to Trump in the first weeks of his presidency is so extraordinary, it is arguably a threat to the institution of the presidency itself. In his column, “A Color Revolution is Underway in the United States,” The Saker looks at possible ways Trump could fight back, including attempting to prosecute those who have participated in the 9/11 cover-up and opening a news channel. The Saker writes:

The forces which are currently trying to impeach, overthrow or murder President Trump are a clear and present danger to the United States as a country and to the US Federal Republic. They are, to use a Russian word, a type of “non-system” opposition which does not want to accept the outcome of the elections and which by rejecting this outcome essentially oppose the entire political system. [Note: Has anyone tried to murder Trump? That seems overblown.]

I am not a US citizen (I could, but I refuse that citizenship on principle because I refuse to take the required oath of allegiance) and the only loyalty I owe the USA is the one of a guest: never to deliberately harm it in any way and to obey its laws. And yet it turns my stomach to see how easy it has been to turn millions of Americans against their own country. I write a lot about russophobia on this blog, but I also see a deep-seated “Americanophobia” or “USophobia” in the words and actions who today say that Trump is not their President. To them, they micro-identity as a “liberal” or as a “gay” or as “African-American” means more than the very basic fundamental principles upon which this country has been built. When I see these crowds of Trump-bashers I see pure, seething hatred not of the AngloZionist Empire, or of a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy, but a hatred of what I would call the “simple America” or the “daily America” – the simple people amongst whom I have now lived for many years and learned to respect and appreciate and whom the Clinton-bots only think of as “deplorables”. Read More »

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622)

. . . . true devotion does no harm whatever, but rather gives perfection to all things; but when it is not compatible with our lawful vocation, then, without doubt, it is false. “The bee,” says Aristotle, “extracts honey from flowers without injuring them, and leaves them as entire and fresh as she found them.” True devotion goes still further, for it not only does no injury to any vocation or employment, but, on the contrary, adorns and beautifies it. As all sorts of precious stones, when cast into honey, receive a greater lustre, each according to its color, so every one’s vocation becomes more agreeable when united with devotion. By devotion, the care of the family is rendered more peaceable, the love of the husband and wife more sincere; the service of the prince more faithful; and every employment more pleasant and agreeable. —- St. Francis de Sales

From The Introduction to the Devout Life, by St. Francis de Sales:

The angels on Jacob’s ladder had wings, yet nevertheless they did not fly, but went in due order up and down the steps of the ladder. The soul which rises from out of sin to a devout life has been compared to the dawn, which does not banish darkness suddenly, but by degrees. That cure which is gradually effected is always the surest; and spiritual maladies, like those of the body, are wont to come on horseback and express, while they depart slowly and on foot. So that we must needs be brave and patient, my daughter, in this undertaking. It is a woeful thing to see souls beginning to chafe and grow disheartened because they find themselves still subject to imperfection after having made some attempt at leading a devout life, and well-nigh yielding to the temptation to give up in despair and fall back; but, on the other hand, there is an extreme danger surrounding those souls who, through the opposite temptation, are disposed to imagine themselves purified from all imperfection at the very outset of their purgation; who count themselves as full-grown almost before they are born, and seek to fly before they have wings. Be sure, daughter, that these are in great danger of a relapse through having left their physician too soon. “It is but lost labour to rise up early and late take rest,” unless the Lord prosper all we do. Read More »

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Regarding Callista Gingrich, a candidate (apparently) for the position of Ambassadress to the Holy See in the Vatican: As a lifetime connoisseur of science fiction who, in the present semester, as many times in the past, is teaching a course on the topic, I believe that I recognize Mrs. Gingrich.

She is the “person” above from the campy sci-fi flick Mars Attacks (1996).

In Mars Attacks, the nameless woman is not a woman at all, of course, nor is she human; she is a simulacrum cooked up by the invading Martians to seduce the world’s political leaders, preparatory to their invasion. True, Newt Gingrich, although only probably human himself, is no longer a political leader; but I believe that Callista (“she”) married him when it appeared that he was or might be. I agree with you that this entity would be perfectly matched to the Vatican ambassadorship, as I take it for granted that Jorge Mario Bergoglio (also undoubtedly “very spiritual”) is not, as he claims, “from Argentina,” but from the Mothership, which is orbiting somewhere between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt.

WHY isn’t Kellyanne Conway, mother of four and advisor to Trump, hailed as a great model for women? Doesn’t Trump get credit for being pro-woman because of his advancement of her?

Conway is one of the most articulate and fearless women in American politics. But she stands for the wrong politics, in the eyes of feminists, (she’s also Catholic) and therefore she is not really a woman. She is a feminist’s worst nightmare.

Conway will speak at the March for Life in Washington, D.C. today. Watch live streaming here. [Update: Her full speech, which is excellent, is available here.]

After eight years of Obama, who did everything he could to expand abortion “rights” and induce women to kill their unborn children, the March for Life is especially energized this year. This is a march for hope and love, not a march of anger and fear.

ELIZABETH POE, owner of a yarn shop near Nashville, Tennessee, refused to sell the nauseatingly garish pink yarn used for Women’s March hats. She wrote in a Facebook post:

With the recent women’s march on Washington, I ask that you if you want yarn for any project for the women’s movement that you please shop for yarn elsewhere. The vulgarity, vile and evilness of this movement is absolutely despicable. That kind of behavior is unacceptable and is not welcomed at The Joy of Knitting. I will never need that kind of business to remain open. Two wrongs will never ever make it right.

As the owner of this business and a Christian, I have a duty to my customers and my community to promote values of mutual respect, love, compassion, understanding, and integrity. The women’s movement is counterproductive to unity of family, friends, community, and nation.

I do pray for these women. May the God work out His love in their hearts and continue to heal and unite Americans.

Yeah, Elizabeth! Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!