Aoife O'Donovan Performs "Red and White and Blue and Gold" and "Beekeeper"

Off to this lass's neck of the woods, the Hub of the Universe, for the rest of the week.

Flannery O'Connor on Tenderness

If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber

The above would have served as a good epigraph to Theodore Dalrymple's latest — On Sentimentality and Compassion.

Uhtceare

I find myself suffering from the first word on this list almost every morning — 10 Old English Words You Need to Be Using. It helps that there's a word for my affliction, no matter how archaic and rare: "Uhtceare is not a well-known word even by Old English standards, which were pretty damn low. In fact, there is only one recorded instance of it actually being used."

Memorial Day Read

Memorial Day is, by federal law, a day of prayer for permanent peace. But is it possible to honestly pray for peace while our country is far and away number one in the world in waging war, military presence, military spending and the sale of weapons around the world?

So begins Bill Quigley's must-read — Praying for Peace While Waging Permanent War?

Hurray for the Riff Raff Perform "Look Out Mama"

Neocons and other statists and militarists decry the happy fact that Memorial Day for today's Americans is all about hanging out in backyards and having a good time. Perhaps Americans realize in their hearts that no American soldier or sailor has died defending (or promoting) any American's freedom in the past 150 years. So, enjoy the day guilt-free, and enjoy what freedoms you have left.

If I could invite anyone to my backyard this weekend, it might be Hurray for the Riff Raff. I suppose that if only Alynda Lee Segarra, barefoot and all, could make it I wouldn't be all that crushed.

Fede Graña y los Prolijos Perform "Nosotros los locs," "Hoy," "Tonto glam," "A don Jesù," and "El gigante"

"Uruguay belongs high up any list of locations for musical discovery," says Felix Contreras, of this band that "even manage to reflect good old Americana — of the variety situated to our south and their north" — Fede Graña Y Los Prolijos: NPR Music Field Recordings.

Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" Performed by Anna Netrebko, Ian Bostridge, Thomas Hampson, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor, Directed by Antonio Pappano

Father of Reagonomics Quotes Fighting Quaker on Memorial Day

Most American soldiers died fighting foes who posed no threat to the United States. Our soldiers died for secret agendas of which they knew nothing. Capitalists hid their self-interests behind the flag, and our boys died for the One Percent’s bottom line.

So writes Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in Ronald Reagan régime — Memorial Day Is A Hoax. He continues:

Neoliberal Globalization is now looting its own constituent parts and the planet itself. Americans, Greeks, Irish, British, Italians, Ukrainians, Iraqis, Libyans, Argentinians, the Spanish and Portuguese are being looted of their savings, pensions, social services, and job opportunities, and the planet is being turned into a wasteland by capitalists sucking the last penny out of the environment. As Claudia von Werlhof writes, predatory capitalism is consuming the globe. We need a memorial day to commemorate the victims of neoliberal globalization. All of us are its victims, and in the end the capitalists also.

He begings his article with a lengthy quote from Smedley Butler's famous War Is a Racket book and speech:

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Ron Paul's quoted the same speech in the Senate, and surprisingly was not arrested — Rand Paul's Smedley Butler Dog Whistle to the Antiwar Libertarians.

Greteast Generation War Crimes

"The historian Antony Beevor tells Keith Lowe why his next book will confront one of the last taboos of the Second World War" — Antony Beevor: 'There are things that are too horrific to put in a book’. The title refers to the historian in other works having "stopped short of including graphic accounts of German suicide attempts, including the suicides of young children." In others he has "described the rape of German women on a vast scale – a subject that repeatedly drove him to tears."

Microaggression in Henrietta, NY

"Jack Moore used a racist phrase to describe African Americans and many are calling for his resignation" — Henrietta supervisor asked to step down. The racist term was "city cousins."

In Swahili, the language of East Africa and Kwanzaa (but not of the ancestors Black Americans, Barack Hussein Obama notwithstanding), the expression "Hujambo, ndugu" ("Hello cousin") is friendly and not microaggressive, at least according to Mwalimu Erastus Namulala, under whom I studied the language.

Law by Consent, Not by Compulsion

In the Middle Ages — Liberty and Personal Law.

Amy LaVere Performs "Damn Love Song," "Red Banks"," & "Washing Machine"

In town tonight at the Abilene Bar and Lounge.

Great News for Cats...

... bad news for civilization — Single women buying homes with more regularity.

You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover

At least I can, 80% of the time — Quiz: can you identify these classic books by their covers? "Well done! Almost almost perfect. Congratulations! You beat the average score of 5 for this quiz." Not too hard if you use the tried and true process of elimination.

Amudam Café

This local "vegetarian restaurant with a hint of Indian cuisine" is now on my must-eat-at list— Cafe cooks up vegetarian cuisine with an Indian twist. Says the latter of the "husband-and-wife team Anita Kumaran and Kumaran Mahenthiran" who run the place:

You can go anywhere and get meat. It's hard to find places that are purely vegetarian. This is purely vegetarian. We're shedding a new light on food. A lot of people don't know what vegetarian is, and a lot of people are (initially) disgusted by it. But once they try it, they say, "Oh, this is not so bad."

Vijay Iyer Trio Performs "Diptych," "Time, Place, Action - Excerpt 1 (Libra)," "Questions Of Agency," "Hood," & "Time, Place, Action - Excerpt 2 (For Amiri Baraka)"

From Fairport, New York, just next door.

Yankee Taoist Sage

A conservative blog for peace reminds us that Yogi Berra turns 90, saying, "Not quite koans or malapropisms, his famous sayings are full of feeling; we understand them even though they don't literally make sense." Ponder these Yogi Berra quotes and decide for yourself.

Harriet Tubman or Andrew Jackson?

Underground Railroad or Trail of Tears? Libertarianism or Statism?

Any decent human being would choose the formers over the latters, of course. But to desecrate the image of the great libertarian (or to "co-opt" it, to use use leftist phraseology), whose home is down the road in Auburn, New York, by placing it on USG bloodmoney? Even worse.


A commenter on one of my old blog's once wrote that an uncle refused on principle to use $20 bills so as not to endorse the man whose Jacksonian democracy marked the first major denigration of the American Republic.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. in "The Changing Face of the Greenback" rightly writes:

The politicians on the paper money are despicable, but they are not PC, so watch for new designs. It all reminds me of what the late Burt Blumert said: that we were far freer when there were symbols, like the American Indian or Lady Liberty, on the money. Then came the decline to dead politicians. If they ever put live politicians on the coins or notes, he added, it’s time to get out.

Rightly it seems I had always loved the Indian Head cent, Buffalo nickel, Mercury dime, and Standing Liberty quarter as a kid. I still so.

The Murder of Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden

My alma mater's Michael S. Rozeff on the heroic Seymour Hersh's must-read revisionist account of a recent event — The Killing of Osama bin Laden: Seymour M. Hersh’s Most Important Article, Why Hersh’s Account Is Credible and Why I Believe It Is Correct, More Confirmation of Seymour Hersh’s Account.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom" Sung by Corul Filarmonicii "George Enescu" Directed by Iosif Ion Prunner

Simon Morrison argues that "scholarship concerned with the Russian composer’s sexuality traps him in a perpetual adolescence – and drags him into modern debates about Russia and the West" — In bed with Tchaikovsky. The article begins

Once more, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s sexuality has come up for debate, and once more, the discussion has nothing to do with the composer’s time or place but everything to do with ours. Tchaikovsky has no say in the matter, so we feel free to interpret his music, even when fixed to words or grounded in dancers’ feet, however we like. Doing so keeps the music relevant. Apparently relevance means dragging Tchaikovsky into the political and cultural conflict between Russia, as the born-again defender of traditional conservative values, and the decadent, declining, same-sex-marriage-sanctioning West.

Cut out the sarcasm and the professor is right about "Russia, as the born-again defender of traditional conservative values, and the decadent, declining, same-sex-marriage-sanctioning West."

Neomasculinity

A conservative blog for peace links to what is "almost a manosphere (red-pill, not necessarily PUA) catechism" — What Is Neomasculinity? Author Roosh V's preamble:

Neomasculinity combines traditional beliefs, masculinity, and animal biology into one ideological system. It aims to aid men living in Westernized nations that lack qualities such as classical virtue, masculinity in males, femininity in females, and objectivity, especially concerning beauty ideals and human behavior. It also serves as an antidote for males who are being programmed to accept Western degeneracy, mindless consumerism, and immoral state authority. The purpose of this article is to list and describe the principal doctrines of neomasculinity.

The Del McCoury Band Performs "Streets of Baltimore"

"The smoke has cleared in Baltimore for now, and one of my favorite American cities is just a little bit less than it used to be," laments Philadelphia native Jim Goad about a city that to him "has always seemed like Philly’s little brother, but with a nasty case of the crabs" — A Space to Destroy.

"The Insidious Wiles of Foreign Influence"

What Washington's Farewell Address 1796 indicted as "one of the most baneful foes of republican government" is clearly behind what Roger Stone exposes to be a particularly insidious foreign potentate's "attempting to buy influence with a woman who might be the next president" — The Saudi 9/11 Cover-Up. the article begins:

The $2 million contribution from Saudi Arabia, however, is the most troubling. Putting aside that the Saudi’s oppress women, denying them the most basic human rights, the self styled “women’s advocate’ should still return that cash. Money from foreign nationals and foreign governments is illegal in US political campaigns. So the Saudis are using their petro-dollars to buy future influence.

It is worth taking a moment to examine how the Saudis have used their vast wealth to effect US foreign policy and have used their influence to hide the facts about the Saudi’s actual role in the events of 9/11 from the American people.

Fred Reed Takes on John Derbyshire in a Lucha Libre

Over folks from the former's adopted home coming the former's former home, which happens to be the latter's adopted home — Ramblings About Messicans. I enjoy both men's ramblings. I have twice visited and have great respect for Mr. Reed's adopted home, and speak her lingo. That said, I side more with the Derb when it comes to our elites electing a new people, hers.

Why? It took the English-speaking peoples 800 years to get from Magna Carta to where we are today. (Admitted, today, or the last 100 or 150 years, is not that much to brag about.) Small numbers of like-minded people, like the Dutchmen who arrived on these shores 250 years ago and left me me their surname, might be able to assimilate to value our hard-won Rights of Englishmen, but mass numbers of aliens? I think not. Witness New York State. Eye-Ties and other downstate ethno-politicos have pretty much doomed us to either fascism from the left or the right. Give us Justin Raimondo's Libertarianism In One Country!

Valerie June Performs "Somebody to Love"

Rap Is Soulless

"Rap is loveless music for a post-marital world," says the Arts & Letters Daily blurb introducing Terry Teachout's article — Love Songs, RIP.

Alas. There was a time when the same community created some of the most beautiful and inspiring music this country has ever produced, as showcased on one my favorite local shows, WRUR's Rejuvenation.

Baltimore

The bionic mosquito calls it what it is — Blowback "to the policies of the right on the one hand and the left on the other."

Getting Depraved Hearted Murderous Thugs Off the Street

Let's hope this is a start — An officer has been charged with depraved heart murder in Freddie Gray's death. What is that?