JAYANT Bhandari, who emigrated from India to Canada, where he is a writer and business investor, discusses the Indian mentality: Concepts like fairness, justice, trust, empathy and impartiality are completely alien concepts to the Indian mind. They cannot differentiate between right and wrong. They simply can't differentiate between what is right and wrong. They do not have the concepts, the Western value concepts that you think are a part of the natural existence -- they aren't. Indians are indifferent even when there is no cost involved in doing the right thing, in delivering fairness or justice. I would go as far as saying that ... if they could deliver fairness and justice without any personal cost they would still prefer not to do it because they see doing the right thing as a sign of weakness. I guess anyone who has been to India on a budget of less than $50 a day would recognize what I'm saying here. If you spend $500 a day you will never understand. [...] Indians cannot maintain the institutions established by the British. These institutions have been completely hollowed out and corrupted. They have become predatory --- the Constitutions and laws hold no value in that country. The only forces driving these institutions are bribes and connections. You go in front of a judge and you bribe the policemen and the bureaucrats ... right in front of the judge. That's how openly bribe is conducted…
DIANNE writes: I've been going through old posts and found this one. Feminism and the female vote was the precursor to what we have now. I understand this. And I agree about women boxing. I would almost take it a step further and say, all women's sports masculinize them, but there is almost no one I could express this to now! There is no emphasis on homemaking skills anymore -- just sports and assertiveness. Women aren't sweet anymore, and don't need to be "nice" to men; they think they don't need them. It's sad.
"WE frequently hear it said, referring to the duty of removing slavery, that we must break every yoke. Many who say this reckon that in the United States there are three million two hundred and four thousand three hundred and thirteen 'yokes,' this being the number of slaves. "Now, you can not pass through the south and not see that a very large number may at once be struck from this reckoning of yokes; that there are very many slaves who, if you should propose to break a 'yoke' for them, would not understand you. The question is not as to enslaving a new people; nor does it relate to the Antilles, nor to Guiana, nor to Mexico; it relates to these people who are here; and the proper question is not an abstract one with regard to slavery, but what is best for this people in their circumstances. The troubles which we impute to their condition are many of them like the most of our own, viz., 'borrowed troubles;' we make them in our thoughts bear the burdens of all the possible evils which theoretically belong to the system of slavery. Even if we take all these into view, the amount of happiness among them compares favorably with that among the same number of people elsewhere. If there are some evils to which they are exposed, there are others from which they are exempt. The feeling involuntarily arose within…
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“IT is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes, amid a campaign in which Donald Trump’s threats to women’s reproductive rights have played a central role.
“Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.
“Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
"SOMETIMES, when I read spiritual treatises, in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles in the way and a host of illusions round it, my poor little mind grows very soon weary. I close the learned book, which leaves my head muddled and my heart parched, and I take up the Holy Scripture. Then all seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul, perfection seems easy; I see it is enough to realize one's nothingness and give oneself wholly, like a child, into the arms of the good God." --- St. Thérèse of Lisieux
"Understand that to love Jesus, to be His victim of love, the weaker one is, without desires or virtues, the more apt one is for the operations of that transforming and consuming Love. The desire to be a victim is enough of itself, but one must consent to stay always poor and without strength, and that's the difficulty, for where are we to find the truly poor in spirit? He must be sought afar, says the psalmist. He does not say we must look for him among great souls, but 'afar,' that is in lowliness and nothingness. Ah! do let us stay very far from all that is brilliant, let us love our littleness, love to feel nothing, then we shall be poor in spirit, and Jesus will come for us, far off as we are, He will transform us in love's flames." -- St. Thérèse of Lisieux
IN 1976, 40 percent of all jobs paid enough to support a family of five. Today, the "living wage" is a pipe dream for most families. And no one in national politics is advocating for the financial welfare of the traditional family despite its proven benefits to society as a whole.
FOR those who rush to the conclusion that Hurricane Helene was somehow caused either by weather engineers in the government (conservatives) or by global warming (liberals), I urge you to examine some of the storms of the past. Both these scenarios can’t withstand serious consideration.
Hazel (1954 — made landfall in North Carolina as a Category 4; killed 175 in the U.S. and caused the highest wind ever recorded in Philadelphia), Agnes (1972 — more than 43,000 structures were destroyed or severely damaged in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; the city of Wilkes Barre, Pa. never fully recovered), Hugo (1989 — with extensive damage to South Carolina and North Carolina), Floyd (1999 — with 105 mph winds when it made landfall at Cape Fear, NC) and Sandy (2012 — with serious inland damage as far north as New England) — these are some of the hurricanes of the past.
The science for creating and directing major hurricanes is very unlikely. Not that weather engineering doesn’t exist, but this kind of storm involves massive atmospheric systems and trillions of tons of water. It’s beyond human intelligence and means. Real life is not like the recent movie Twisters, where a super-cool and extremely pretty meteorologist is able to calm immense winds by pushing a few buttons. If things were that simple, many of us would have been blown away by now after those dastardly weather schemers sent winds into our communities.
The damage in some cases (I’m not referring to the latest in the Smokey Mountains) is caused by human beings who build in areas prone to flooding or build inadequate levees or dams.
The most amazing thing about the weather is how it follows certain regular laws, even during what to us are catastrophes. This regularity of a vast system of winds and waters, so complex human beings despite eons of study still struggle to make accurate predictions let alone control it, and the fact that we are not all swirled into the void by high winds, are signs of our Creator’s providential care. The weather itself is proof of an Intelligence that governs all. We are subject to a fallen creation, but even so the hurricane, tropical storm and tornado are the exceptions. The sun comes out the next day. Though we should be compassionate after a major storm, where is the gratitude for the thousands of days without major storms?
Here’s a good comment for those in the “catastrophic global warming” category from Spiked:
Each year, hurricane forecasters issue their annual predictions for the Atlantic hurricane season. This year, with the Earth experiencing a temperature spike, there was near unanimity among forecasters that the Atlantic would experience a remarkable jump in hurricane activity, with one news outlet saying this would be a ‘supercharged’ hurricane season. However, the reality thus far, with two-thirds of the season behind us, is that it has been no more eventful than average. Meanwhile, activity in the world’s other oceans has been uniformly low. So much for ‘supercharged’ hurricanes. (more…)
FROM “Forced Labor: What’s Wrong with Balancing Work and Family” by Brian C. Robertson (Spence Publishing, 2002):
“The satisfactions of motherhood have little to do with ego-gratification or the pleasure derived from seeing the immediate results of one’s toil; they are, rather, the satisfactions of complete self-giving to a totally dependent creature. A society that measures success exclusively in terms of material or professional attainment is unlikely to accord much status to the hidden work of the mother in the home. More likely to value the mother’s unique contributions is a culture whose ideal is self-giving, be it the sometimes monotonous, consistent toil of the breadwinner borne for the sake of the family or the same toil borne at home for the same reason. It is not mere coincidence that a society in which the predominant view of work was Catherine Beecher’s “self-sacrificing labor of the stronger and wiser members [of the family] to raise the weaker and more ignorant to equal advantages” venerated the mother at home, while a society that views work as a means of self-aggrandizement holds her in contempt.
“A good mother must have total devotion to her work, but not because of the prospect of payback in the form of immediate results or pecuniary reward. The accomplishments of a day’s work of mothering are impossible to quantify and will only manifest themselves, possibly, in the distant future. The truth that civilization itself depends on such intangibles only underscores the fact that the goals involved in the work of parenting are much more remote and less susceptible to analysis based on results than are the market-oriented goals of professional or wage work. The product of a mother’s work is not a project or a paper, but a person, with his or her own personality, temperament, and free will. (more…)
"WHAT are the nefarious consequences of the artificial limitations and subsequent misdirectioning which the current financial system imposes on our economic activities? They are legion: the instability of the business cycle, constant inflation (mostly cost-push, but also demand-pull), the misuse of economic resources, economic inefficiency, waste, and sabotage alongside forced economic growth, an ever-increasing mountain of societal debt that is, in the aggregate, unrepayable, recurring financial crises, heavy and often increasing taxation, wage and debt-slavery, servility, the usurpation of the unearned increment of association by the private banking system, the centralization of economic wealth, privilege, and power in fewer and fewer hands, forced migration, cultural dislocation, unnecessary stresses and strains, social conflict, environmental degradation, and international economic conflict leading to war, etc., etc." --- Oliver Heydorn of the Clifford Hugh Douglas Institute
I DON’T LIKE to watch TV news about devastating storms because there’s so much hype and distortion, but I found this video that gives you an idea of the damage of the recent hurricane that swept the Southeast.
So sad to see these areas and the people affected and to think how difficult it will be for them to rebuild.
ANOTHER white child is beaten up in a government school, this time in Mississippi. Will this boy ever be the same again?
Parents who live in all-white or mostly white neighborhoods generally don’t care about this kind of thing (that usually occurs in poorer areas.) When it comes to the victims of black cruelty, they have hearts of stone. The plight of white children who face aggression on a routine basis never moves them. One is tempted to believe they want young white children to be mauled to assuage their own un-Christian racial guilt.
Ironically, many blacks actually want whites to lead and defend their own societies — and to protect blacks from themselves. (more…)
“THERE has been maturing in the wishes and expectations of all the seditious members of society the advent of a certain universal republic which should be founded on the absolute equality of men and on community of goods, and in which there should no longer be national distinction, nor should any recognition be given to the authority of the father over his sons, nor of public power over the citizens, nor of God over men united in civil commonwealth. All of which things, should they become actual, would cause tremendous social convulsion, such as is now being experienced and felt…”
— Pope Benedict XV, Moto Proprio, Bonum et Sane, 1920
For the latest news on the Universal Republic, see “The Pact for the Future,” adopted by the United Nations last week. Notice that in this document the word “turbocharge” is used four times. In other words, the plan for the world republic known as Agenda 2030 is going to be accelerated dramatically from now on.
To sum up: Equality and peace will reign. Germs will be smashed. Poverty will be eliminated, along with the middle class. The oceans, the sun and the winds will obey the U.N. And every woman will be a man.(more…)
FROM Jeff Fyn-Paul’s Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World (Bombardier Books, 2023):
There is one small problem with [the] image of peace-loving Native American societies: it is completely untrue. Before the Spanish imposed peace on Amerindian tribes from California to Tierra del Fuego, the unrelenting reality of their lives was a Hobbesian war of all against all. (The parallel with Rome, which imposed a similar peace through violence on the Gauls and other tribal peoples of Western Europe, is striking in this regard.) Outside of a tiny area of city-states in Mesoamerica and the Andes, Native American societies were uniformly tribal chiefdoms. Wherever in the world such city-states and chiefdoms have arisen, warfare has been a continuous part of life. As a rule, the majority of males in chiefdoms are trained in the art of war; in city-state areas, elite males train in war while the rest of the males participate in agriculture or crafts that support the warrior elite.
There are very few general truths in the history of global civilization, but one of the most reliable is that in areas where rulers monopolize violence on a small scale, warfare, raiding, and slavery will be endemic. Steven Pinker calls this “the inescapable logic of anarchy.” Only modern-day first-world anarchists for whom war remains an abstraction—e.g., people such as Dave Graeber (whom we met in chapter 2)—would argue otherwise. General peace is only possible when strong rulers monopolize violence on a large scale; this is the only thing that has historically protected people from a near-continuous threat of localized raiding.
The prevalence of violence in tribal society was summarized in a recent interview with Korsai, one of the last Indigenous inhabitants of Papua New Guinea to give up his traditional ways of life. The interviewer noted that the village next to Korsai’s had been enticed by American missionaries to go and live in an apartment building in town. When asked whether he felt he was missing out on modern amenities by not going along with them, Korsai responded: ‘Not for long! Off our neighbours went, and we were left alone on the mountain. And we loved the missionaries—because they’d taken those neighbours away! We didn’t need to worry about being attacked anymore. Also, we didn’t have to get up in the night to attack them!’ Now the Yaifo women could go off to tend the gardens without fear; the gardens were expanded and no one ever went hungry; health dramatically improved. (pp. 164-165)
Further reflections on the peacefulness of the Native Americans can be found in this account of the life of St. Isaac Jogues and this description of his death: (more…)
