A Montecito Yankee in King Charles’ Court

 From The Hill:

It is as if Harry and Meghan are producing their own Hollywood version of Survivor: Buckingham Palace. It might make for amusing scuttlebutt and binge-watching, were it not for the existential national security threats confronting both the U.S. and its closest strategic ally.

In terms that Mark Twain could best understand, the last thing the British monarchy needs now is a Montecito Yankee in King Charles’ Court. Harry and Meghan, alongside Scobie, are failing to read both the room and the world right now.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are conducting an ideological global war against the West. That dystopian World War III is already kinetic in Ukraine and the Middle East, and its expansion toward Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific looms. (Read more.)

Share

New Light On One Of Victorian London’s Most Notorious Workhouses

 From All That's Interesting:

Excavations of the workhouse have focused on areas that were demolished after bombings during World War II, according to the BBC. In what was likely once the female ward, archaeologists found well-preserved walls “standing up to a meter high, coated in vibrant blue painted plaster,” suggesting that residents at St. Pancras were not living in grim spaces.

They also uncovered dishes bearing the image of St. Pancras alongside the words “Guardians of the Poor St. Pancras Middlesex,” as well as items like a ceramic hot water bottle and a bone toothbrush with horsehair bristles.

“While the facilities are spartan, the inmates were not there to be punished,” Williams explained, according to The Guardian. “There were gardens, an infirmary and nursery. These acknowledge their needs as much as the heated rooms, or the pale blue paint on the walls.” (Read more.)

Share

No Ukraine Aid Without Enhanced Border Security

 From Just the News:

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that any aid given to Kyiv must be packaged with security for the U.S. southern border.

“These are our conditions because these are the conditions of the American people,” Johnson said, according to The Hill. Zelensky arrived on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning to try to persuade Congress to continue to provide aid to help Urkaine prevail in Russia's war on the country. Johnson reportedly had a good meeting with Zelensky, but said afterward House GOP's stance remains the same: funding for Ukraine must come coupled with border security. (Read more.)

Share

The Music of Heaven

 From ChurchPop:

Mathematical accountant Fernando Ojeda made the incredible discovery.

“The Instituto Superior de Estudios Guadalupanos gives me the mission of studying the image by applying the only science that had not been done before in image studies, Mathematics,” Mexico resident and mathematical accountant Fernando Ojeda said. “Previous studies made to the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, I reasoned the following: if the stars of the mantle are the constellations of the sky at the time of its impregnation, the dress represents proportionally the main hills and volcanoes of the orography of Mexico, if the whole image keeps the golden ratio, then it has perfect symmetry, therefore it has music,” Fernando Ojeda said. “[The mathematician] Pythagoras pointed out that where there is perfect symmetry there is music.”

“As their positions were different, I considered that each star, according to its position, and each flower center, according to its position, was a certain musical note," Ojeda continued. He placed the image inside the drawing of a golden rectangle. A music expert then superimposed the drawing of a piano and documented the notes expressed by each point of the flowers and stars. (Read more.)

Share

In Your Name

 From The History Desk:

Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, and Palestine, are owned and operated by politicians that the people tolerate. Their rich politicos sleep with the oligarchs; sometimes literally. Nonetheless, there are more of the people than there are of leaders. Palestine has the numbers to overthrow Hamas. Just as the serfs and peasants had the numbers to overthrow their masters, back in the day. Of course, back in the day, there were no Marxists to tell the peasants they were oppressed.

Today, it is safe to say, there are enough Palestinians, 2 million, to overthrow the leadership of Hamas. If they do not attempt to overthrow that failed leadership, then they are in agreement with them: Which makes their current circumstances their responsibility.

Westerners who scream out about the “children” need to make themselves available as foster parents and organize a rescue operation for the Palestinian children. Recall that was a thing during the Viet Nam war as the Americans began to pull out. However, when a parent does something dumb, like tolerating psychopaths wreaking havoc next door, their children need rescuing. Parents like that should not be allowed to raise their own kids. Because now their kids will think it is all the fault of Israel that they are miserable. They won’t think to blame their parents, or their democracy that put this sorry bunch of men, make that older men, into place.

It is the habit of stale, old, angry men to turn young men into an angry mob who will do their killing, and be killed, for them. That is what Palestine has for its leadership.

Let me rework Shakespeare’s words a bit.

The fault, dear Palestine, does not lie in Israel, but in yourselves that you are without comfort.

Choosing democracy means all the people of a certain age are responsible. The good, the bad, the ugly. Therefore, when babies are taken as hostages, and some murdered, this ugliness is done in your name. When you, the people, allow such atrocities then you have to take the throwback. Or, get rid of the bullies in your playground.

If Palestine thinks Israel mistreats them, then there are resources for this grievance. And I don’t mean that mass of political whores in the United Nations. Come to think of it, they enable this mess, and the UN doesn’t seem to have the desire to end it. They cannot end it because they must remove politics from the situation.

Hamas is a Marxist, political organization that keeps its own people oppressed. Like all good Marxists, they always blame others. Nothing is ever their fault. Marxism, however, historically, is always about envy.

Palestinians, seemingly, have no choice. That they have no control over their fate. Balderdash. One has to want a better life, to get a better life.

What does history tell us about people who are “oppressed?”

Will Durant, in his book, “The Age of Faith,” which thoroughly covers the Middle Ages, talks about how the serfs could make demands on their masters; by reminding them, in no uncertain terms, the master owed their serfs stability, and consistency. The lady of the manor or castle, took care of the poor, paid the midwife, and distributed alms during the Christmas and Easter seasons. During the pre modern ages, everywhere, it was understood there would be no survival without the community at large.

In the best seller, “The Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity,” the authors, Graeber and Wengrow, make the point that hunter-gatherer societies were varied. Some groups were loose, freedom lovers who tolerated the occasional ne'er do well, and some had strong leaders who had the power of life and death over all members of their group. Mostly, there were groups who took care of one another, who contributed to the well being of the group. There were no city-states until well into the 8th millennia, BC. If one felt oppressed, one left the group.

In such small, nomadic groups, it is easy to see that whatever the group decides to do, each individual member has to take responsibility for it. If they waged war, it was done in their name, and of course, they would have to take up arms to defend their position, whether or not they were the aggressors. As is done then, and today, if an army crosses a nation’s borders, the defenders have a duty to defend their country. Aggressors, however, cannot complain when the citizens of the broached nation defends itself. That is why war is a tricky business. A people who would wage war, do so at their own risk.

If the Palestinians cannot get stability and consistency from their leaders, so that they can move forward with their lives, then they must rid themselves of those leaders. Or, continue to suffer the consequences. Because who, in their right mind, sits still whilst their leaders invite war onto their front porch? So the question has to be asked; if you vote for a thug, or tolerate a thug, is that because you are a thug as well?

Unpleasant question, yes. We are overdue on asking the unpleasant questions.

Wars are always reactionary. It is the excuse we give for fighting them. Because some fool or fools made decisions years back, which resulted in people dying. When no one can let go of their hurt and humiliation, and pass it on to future generations, that’s when they turn into “freedom fighters.” By now, in the history of the world, one would think that old, unsuccessful term, would get buried in reality. Because most “freedom fighters” are just a set of thugs that want to be rid of the other side so that they can rule. And the other side wants to be rid of them. We have all seen where that leads. (Read more.)

Share

At Christmastime Remember the Needy

 

Share

A Tudor Christmas

 From Historic UK:

Carols flourished throughout Tudor times as a way to celebrate Christmas and to spread the story of the nativity. Celebrations came to an abrupt end however in the seventeenth century when the Puritans banned all festivities including Christmas. Surprisingly carols remained virtually extinct until the Victorians reinstated the concept of an ‘Olde English Christmas’ which included traditional gems such as While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night and The Holly and the Ivy as well as introducing a plethora of new hits – Away in a Manger, O Little Town of Bethlehem – to mention but a few.

The twelve days of Christmas would have been a most welcome break for the workers on the land, which in Tudor times would have been the majority of the people. All work, except for looking after the animals, would stop, restarting again on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night.

The ‘Twelfths’ had strict rules, one of which banned spinning, the prime occupation for women. Flowers were ceremonially placed upon and around the wheels to prevent their use.

During the Twelve Days, people would visit their neighbours sharing and enjoying the traditional ‘minced pye’. The pyes would have included thirteen ingredients, representing Christ and his apostles, typically dried fruits, spices and of course a little chopped mutton – in remembrance of the shepherds.

Serious feasting would have been the reserve of royalty and the gentry. Turkey was first introduced into Britain in about 1523 with Henry VIII being one of the first people to eat it as part of the Christmas feast. The popularity of the bird grew quickly, and soon, each year, large flocks of turkeys could be seen walking to London from Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire on foot; a journey which they may have started as early as August.

A Tudor Christmas Pie was indeed a sight to behold but not one to be enjoyed by a vegetarian. The contents of this dish consisted of a Turkey stuffed with a goose stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a partridge stuffed with a pigeon. All of this was put in a pastry case, called a coffin and was served surrounded by jointed hare, small game birds and wild fowl. Small pies known as chewets had pinched tops, giving them the look of small cabbages or chouettes. (Read more.)

Defense for the traditional date of Christmas, HERE.

Share

Our LGBT Empire

 From The American Conservative:

In August 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged that his government would introduce legislation to create civil partnerships for gay couples. The bill was approved by the Ministry of Justice in October 2023. Instituting gay marriage will require a constitutional amendment, which Zelensky has said will have to wait until after the war ends. In the meantime, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in June 2023 that two Ukrainian men seeking a marriage license had been illegally discriminated against and, as a signatory to the European human rights convention, Ukraine must pass a law that grants them equal treatment. In theory, it ought to be possible to be part of the democratic world and not buy in to America’s particular version of non-traditional sexual morals. In practice, apparently, it is not. (Read more.)

Share

The Papal Prophecies of Joachim di Fiore

 From Kristen at Catholic Exchange:

Relying on the theory of the three ages of human history, di Fiore’s writings assume a swiftly approaching apocalypse.

The Age of the Father characterized the Old Testament. The Age of the Son references the life of Jesus and the establishment of the New Covenant. The Age of the Holy Spirit encompasses the rest of human history, from the Ascension until the Apocalypse. We are necessarily living in this third age—and to di Fiore, the immediacy of this trajectory took precedence in his interpretation of Church events and short future.

The book consists of di Fiore’s 30 prophecies, or “oracles” concerning the popes, buttressed by his prophecies on the Dominican and Franciscan orders, and rounded out by his interpretation of the number of the beast in the Book of Revelation. Appendices include a 17th century image providing a cyclic interpretation of the oracles, and the 16th century papal prophecies of Bl. Giodcocho Palmerio.

Readers who hope to draw clear parallels to known pontiffs will likely be disappointed, as the prophecies are almost entirely inscrutable. The editor does not interpret or elaborate upon the specific prophecies, leaving that task to the reader. He recognizes the perplexing nature of the prophecies, stating: “Whereas identifying the popes referred to in the probably non-genuine prophecies attributed to St. Malachy is a relatively straightforward task, understanding the prophetic utterances attributed to Blessed Joachim is far from simple (as any aspiring interpreter of them will very soon discover!) Nevertheless, it is the hope of the translator that modern readers may find these mystical oracles, despite their obscurity and ambiguity, to be beautiful, striking, and thought-provoking.”

My attempts to understand the prophecies got me nowhere, but I did notice several emergent themes.

First, the apocalyptic nature of the writings is evident: for example, Oracle XV states “This is the final beast, terrible in aspect, who shall draw down the Stars from the Heavens,” using cosmic and final language reminiscent of the Book of Revelation.

Second, the succession of popes fluctuates between the good, the bad, and the conflicted. “Fraudulently you have entered, powerfully you have ruled. But weeping, you shall die!” (Oracle VI) suggests a corrupt leader, while the virtues of the pope in Oracle XVI are praised: “A good work! He shall bestow a treasury upon the poor.” Some reigns are not so straightforward: Oracle XXVIII celebrates the illustrious “second life” of a man from a prominent family, but prognosticates that “after just two years, he shall enter the rock again, dead.” The distinction between pope and antipope is not made, leaving much to retrospective speculation. (Read more.)

My posts on the St. Malachy prophecies, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Share