Morning music
On this day a year ago
Ukraine
Peter Hitchens
“Trans” nonsense
Society in the western world has for some time been displaying signs of total lunacy, and in various ways.
More from the newspapers
See also: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/sep/29/guardianobituaries.veronicahorwell.
Rather ironic surname (of the Guardian journalist, that is), in view of the subject-matter.
More tweets
The Jew Zelensky is somewhere between dictator and figurehead, or between figurehead and puppet, and his regime has shot or imprisoned its political opponents, closed down trade unions, and repressed free speech.
It is noticeable that, in Western news photos and footage, the Ukrainian children repatriated to Ukraine, after having spent time in Russia, always look happy and well-fed.
Why on Earth would Russia, which left Marxism-Leninism behind 30+ years ago, want to invade Western Europe (inc. UK)? How could it even try? The whole idea is ludicrous.
“Wien— das ist’s!“
More “trans” nonsense
We know the way all of that is probably going to end, somewhere down the line…
What is it when, like —and yet unlike— those souls noted in Gray’s Elegy, some “wade through slaughter“, not “to a throne“, but simply “pro bono publico“? Duty? Higher law? “For the welfare of the people is the highest law“: salus populi suprema lex esto [Cicero, De Legibus].
More music
I’ll vote for that…
That comes out very strongly in certain recent msm/System campaigns, including (but not exhaustively) the “trans” nonsense, pro-“Ukraine” (Zelensky regime), “Black Lives Matter” (etc).
Exactly.
Late tweets seen
…apply that to contemporary “Scottish” politics…
American memories
Idly “surfing the net”, I came across a brief obituary of a lady I had met a few times between late 1989 and early 1993, during which years I spent about half my time in the USA (mostly in New Jersey and New York City). I shall not name the lady or her family.
In 1989, I travelled with my then fiancee from New Jersey (near the Jersey Shore) to Fox Chapel, an affluent semi-rural area near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, we having been invited to spend Thanksgiving with a family there.
The couple who owned the large, comfortable house were in their fifties, and their daughter, aged about 25, was a friend of my then fiancee. The father of that family was a nuclear scientist, and his wife what the Americans charmingly call a “homemaker”, a much more respectful term, I think, than the Anglo-German terms “housewife” or “hausfrau”. American to the core, they had both been born and brought up in the Mid-West, but had also lived in Belgium, and had travelled very widely, to dozens of countries from Mexico to the Soviet Union.
The house, though on a semi-rural, semi-suburban road with a few other similarly-large houses, had a large hinterland, mostly not so much a “garden” as a tranche of forest; I think they said about 40 acres, where some of Pennsylvania’s millions of deer were often seen.
The lady’s husband was a tough but very decent type, very solid (in both senses), rather like a more intelligent version of John Wayne (to my European perception). He was a fan of American football, and I think that he had played football himself at college (university) level.
I admired the lady’s collection of Palekh lacquer boxes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palekh_miniature], and also their very American cars, his a Cadillac (I forget the model), and hers a Lincoln Town Car, probably my own favourite at the time, though I myself did not have a licence then (I only held a driving licence —a foreign one— from 1999, and a UK one from 2002).
The couple were very hospitable to me; I have always remembered them with good feelings.
I last saw the couple in Maryland, in (I think) 1992.
The lady mentioned died a few years ago, it seems, aged 85 (at that time, at least, her husband was still living). I was unaware until today, not having kept up with any of those I knew or met so long ago.
I have been struck recently by renewed realization at how transient life is in any one incarnation. We must do what we can while we are still on the Earth.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
How idiotic that British general taking about “a Russian invasion”! The fact that a moron like that reached an important position within the army is very revealing…
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Claudius:
Yes, some of those British Army officers are solid mahogany from the neck up.
I cannot see how their logic works at all. If Russia has difficulty planning and executing an invasion of Ukraine, a territory the borders of which mainly abut Russian Federation territory, where the equipment of the Ukrainian military machine was until recently old and worn, and where the people all understand and most speak (as first language) Russian, then how on Earth could Russia even contemplate taking on the military alliances of Central and Western (and parts of Eastern) Europe, bolstered as they are by American might?
As to why Russia would want to invade the rest of Europe, “answer came there none”.
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Hello Ian: I found this poem by Rudyard Kipling; I wonder what he would say seeing an Indian in Downing Street…
https://www.candour.org.uk/post/the-stranger
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Claudius:
Thank you. Very good. I shall put that on the blog tomorrow.
As to Kipling’s reaction, were he to see Sunak as PM— appalled, probably.
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Ian: Those words of yours about that nice American couple struck a chord with me. Yes, how transient life is. I am very bitter about things that I could /should have done but I did not. The worst part of it is we cannot go back in time to repair wrongs or lend a hand.
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Claudius:
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.β
[Omar Khayyam]
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Thank you, Ian: That is very true. As someone would say “such is life”
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Claudius:
Yes— Ned Kelly (but you would know that, having lived in Australia).
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