Author Archives: Lila

Carnage Of Russia’s Christians Under Bolsheviks

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Srdja Trifkovic  writes about the 20th century as the worst century for Christian martyrdom (45 million).

This carnage dwarfs any of the crimes of the Inquisition or of the conquest of the Americas and dwarfs in absolute terms any previous Christian martyrdom, even under the Romans:

According to the respected and reliable OUP World Christian Encyclopedia (2001), there have been many more Christian martyrs in the 20th century–over 45 million–than in all of the preceding 19 centuries of Christianity. Of that number, some 32 million were killed by “atheists” and over 9 million by Muslims. The “atheists” denote, overwhelmingly, Soviets and their Communist cohorts and satellites, but also include Nazis and their allies. The Spanish Republic was an especially efficient Christian-killing machine. In terms of the size of the targeted population and the timespan of only two and a half years, the Compañeros did almost as well as the Tovarishchi.

It may be argued that among the Bolsheviks’ victims many were slaughtered not because they were Christians-as-such, but because they were “objectively” real or potential enemies of the state, i.e., Tsarist army officers and aristocrats, peasant farmers (“kulaks”), artists, academics, or middle class professionals. But while it would be admittedly erroneous to count every Christian, however nominal, who died under Communist persecution as a “New Martyr,” there is no doubt:

  1. that Christians were targeted with particular ferocity for the very reason of their faith;
  2. that the Russian Orthodox Church and other Christian confessions–notably Eastern Rite Cattholics–were subjected to systematic destruction on a titanic scale; and
  3. that the majority of victims targeted for supposedly “secular” reasons of class, profession, or political beliefs, were also Christian believers whose faith was inseparable from other traits of their personality.

We’ll never know how many of those countless victims were “in a situation of witness for the Faith” at the moment of death, which is the convential definition of martyrdom. Of the mental state of the killers, however, and specifically of their intention to eradicate Christianity by whatever means, there is no doubt at all. In 20 years (1918-1938) the number of churches that remained open in Russia was reduced from 54,000 to under 500–to less than one percent, that is, of the pre-Bolshevik total. In all some 600 bishops, 40,000 priests, 120,000 monks and nuns, and millions of laypeople were martyred for the Orthodox Faith in Russia in the five decades after 1918. The survivors were also confessors: they survived, but theirs was a living martyrdom…….
…Attempts at “killing the soul” started only months after the Revolution of 1917. Irina Skariatina remembered the desecration of her church while Metropolitan Benjamin was serving an all-night vigil in Petrograd in 1918 when the church was surrounded by hundreds of soldiers who subsequently broke in, talking, laughing, swearing, smoking, spitting loudly:

They came up the aisle to the altar where the Metropolitan and twelve assisting bishops and archimandrites were officiating and, pushing them aside, prodded the golden coverings of the altar with their bayonets (“to see if any firearms were concealed,” they explained), then threw cigarette ashes into the Chalice and finally spat into it, throwing it on the ground as they left the altar on their way out. The congregation, paralyzed with horror, did not move at first. Then suddenly it broke loose, a multitude of people maddened by the outrage, all acting under the same impulse of boundless indignation. In a second the soldiers were stopped, surrounded, and would probably have been torn to pieces alive (despite the fact that they were armed and the congregation was not), had not the Metropolitan come forward and called out in a loud voice the words of Christ: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” adding, “Let them go in peace and do not leave your places for we shall proceed with the service.” He was obeyed, of course …

Such fortitude did not save him from the firing squad in 1922. Patriarch Tikhon, amidst the rising ocean of blood, called on his flock to share the cup of martyrdom: “If it becomes necessary to suffer for the sake of Christ, we call upon you, beloved sons and daughters of the Church, we call upon you to suffer to-gether with us. If a redeeming sacrifice is required, the death of the innocent sheep of Christ’s flock, I bless the faithful servants of the Lord Jesus Christ to pain and death for His sake.”

By that time the mind-boggling scale of the Soviet killing machine made obvious a fundamental difference between anti-Christian pogroms carried out by Muslims in the previous 13 centuries and those perpetrated by 20th century totalitarians.”

Trifkovich, sadly, fails to notice the million or more Muslims killed in Iraq and other countries by Zionist Christians or their allies, the blow-back from which drives Islamic violence. He fails to reveal that Islamicist violence is often manufactured or instigated. He fails to analyze both Muslims and Socialists as tools of a more subtle and calculating power.

Even so, he is right to warn Western Christians that they too face a future of persecution:

The New Martyrs’ example and their legacy is precious, because in this, 21st century, it will be the turn of Western Christians to experience martyrdom. In Western Europe they will be persecuted by the unholy alliance between the postmodern, Christophobic velvet totalitarianism of the therapeutic hyper-state, and a resurgent Islam which already accounts for a quarter of all newborns in France. In the United States they will be persecuted for refusing to accept the destruction of the moral foundation of the society, currently epitomized by abortion, by “gay marriage,” and by the ever-expanding speech and thought codes. Instead of being thrown to the lions or sent to Siberia, the resisters will be subjected–by some monstrous mechanism devised by an ever more activist judiciary–to the mandatory “sexual diversity orientation sessions,” or feminist-led pro-abortionist “right-to-choose education workshops,” or “immigrant rights sensitivity training,” after which the continuing refusal to recant will lead to compulsory “therapy” and forced medication. This scenario is not farfetched on either side of the Atlantic. Western Christians should be prepared for martyrdom.”

How Rothschild Looted Tsar Nicholas Romanov

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Modern History Project:

One of their [the Rothschilds] greatest triumphs was the successful outcome of the Rothschilds’ protracted war against the Russian Imperial Family. The family name of the Romanovs was derived from Roma Nova, New Rome.

[Lila: It’s certainly true that the Russian Tsars had always considered themselves the Third Rome from the very start and the defender of Orthodox Christianity.  This was so especially after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 when many precious Orthodox relics were transferred to Moscow.  These are some sources for the name Romanov:

1. Son of Roman (traditional Russian patronymic ending -ov/off)

2.  A medieval Italian name Romano (or a variant)

3.  Jewish/Polish/Russian name of Romanov from  Belarus, habitational name derived from town of Romanova or Romanova Slutsk (also, Lenino).  (There is apparently also another Romanova, now called Ramanava, also called Lenino, in Gorki district).

4.  Isabel de Madariaga, “Ivan the Terrible,” (Yale University Press, 2008 ) – descent from Prus, brother of August of Rome.

“The Secret World Government,” Count Cherep-Spiridovich, 1926.

[This can be fairly characterized as anti-Judaic as well as anti-Semitic in the classic sense.]

(Cherep-Spiridovich was a Pan-Slav White Russian activist, whose theories allegedly fueled Henry Ford’s anti-Semitism).

The “The Secret World Government” (pdf online).

The information on Prus is on page 62.

Romanovs traced their descent from one Glanda Cambilla, a descendant of the Roman prince Prus, brother of the Roman emperor August, who settled and gave his name to the region of Prussia. Cambilla came to Novogorod in the 13th century and changed his name to Cabilla. His grandson, Theodore, became regent on the death of Ivan the Terrible, and his grandson Michael eventually became czar in 1613.

I will repost this separately and expand on the credibility of these sources.]

It embodied the ancient prophecy that Moscow was to become “the New Rome.” The family originated with Prince Prus, brother of Emperor August of Rome, who founded Prussia. In 1614, Michael became the first Romanov Czar.

After the fall of Napoleon, the Rothschilds turned all their hatred against the Romanovs. In 1825, they poisoned Alexander I; in 1855, they poisoned Nicholas I. Other assassinations followed, culminating on the night of Nov. 6, 1917, when a dozen Red Guards drove a truck up to the Imperial Bank Building in Moscow. They loaded the Imperial jewel collection and $700 million gold, loot totalling more than a billion dollars. The new regime also confiscated the 150 million acres in Russia personally owned by the Czar.

Of equal importance were the enormous cash reserves which the Czar had invested abroad in European and American banks. The New York Times stated that the Czar had $5 million in Guaranty Trust, and $1 million in the National City Bank; other authorities stated it was $5 million in each bank. Between 1905 and 1910 the Czar had sent more than $900 million to be deposited in six leading New York banks: Chase, National City Bank, Guaranty Trust, J.P. Morgan, Hanover, and Manufacturers Trust. These were the principal banks controlled by the House of Rothschild through their American agents: J.P. Morgan and Kuhn, Loeb Co. These were also the six New York banks which bought the controlling stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1914. They have held control of the stock ever since.

The Czar also had $115 million in four English banks. He had $35 million in the Bank of England, $25 million in Barings, $25 million in Barclays, and $30 million in Lloyd’s Bank. In Paris, the Czar had $100 million in Banque de France, and $80 million in the Rothschild Bank of Paris. In Berlin, he had $132 million in the Mendelsohn Bank, which had long been bankers to Russia.

None of these sums has ever been disbursed; at compound interest since 1916, they amount to more than $50 billion. Two claimants later appeared, a son, Alexis, and a daughter, Anastasia. Despite a great deal of proof substantiating their claims, Peter Kurth notes in “Anastasia” that: “Lord Mountbatten put up the money for court battles against Anastasia. Although he was Empress Alexandra’s nephew, he was the guiding force behind Anastasia’s opposition.” The Battenbergs, or Mountbattens, were also related to the Rothschild family. They did not wish to see the Czar’s fortune reclaimed and removed from the Rothschild banks.

Kurth also notes:

“In a 1959 series on the history of the great British banks, for example, the Observer of London remarked of Baring Brothers, ‘The Romanovs were among their most distinguished clients. It is affirmed that Barings still holds a deposit of more than forty million pounds that was left them by the Romanovs.’ Anthony Sampson, editor in chief, said no protests were made. This story is generally considered to be true.”

The Fruit of Peace

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Ann Diener writes about an early collaboration between Palestinians and Israelis:

According to Wikipedia, “Jewish immigrants to Palestine adopted the Jaffa orange variety from Arab farmers. Partnerships in growing and exporting these oranges was an example of Arab-Jewish cooperation despite rising political tensions.

“By 1939, Jewish and Arab orange orchards in Palestine covered 75,000 acres (300 km2), employed over 100,000 workers, and their produce was a primary export. During World War II (1939–1945) citrus-growing declined, but recovered after the war with the vigorous assistance of the British Mandate authorities.”

“Jaffa oranges are harvested in Israel between November and March, with the marketing season beginning in September and extending through until April. More than half the annual crop is exported, and Israel is a main provider of other citrus fruits to the European Union.”

The Jaffa orange groves were a sign of success of cooperation post the writing of the “Iron Wall.”

Currently, more attention is paid towards the failures that include rockets in Israel and destruction of Arab society in Palestine through warlike activities potentially based on the “Iron Wall” thinking and isolation of Israeli society with the premise that the wall will keep them safe and force the Palestinians into submission with the threat of “enormous suffering.”

What if the solution was found in the exact opposite tactic, one of cooperation to produce success for both sides, like that of the Jaffa orange?

According to the Hope Simpson Royal Commission Report of 1930, “The cultivation of the orange, introduced by the Arabs before the commencement of Jewish settlement, has developed to a very great extent in consequence of that settlement. There is no doubt that the pitch of perfection to which the technique of plantation and cultivation of the orange and grape-fruit have been brought in Palestine is due to the scientific methods of the Jewish agriculturist.”

Therefore, maybe after over sixty years of conflict, the government of Israel should consider former President Ronald Reagan’s famous line, “Tear down this wall,” in their mindset. and try a new, more positively based strategy. Then, maybe we will see a better headline like “Jewish Agriculturalist and Arab Products Create Perfection with Orange,” rather than “Children Terrified and Burnt to Death in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

The Tel Dan Stele

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From BibleArcheology.org:

“The nation of Israel was in conflict with the Arameans for about 300 years, from the time of David, ca. 1000 BC, until Assyria annexed the Aramean city-states at the end of the eighth century BC. Most of the conflict was with the city-state of Damascus that, under Hazael, dominated Israel in the second half of the ninth century. A recently discovered inscription, the Tel Dan Stela, takes us back to those days.

Discovery and Significance of the Tel Dan Stela

The largest fragment of the Tel Dan Stela, Fragment A, was discovered at Tel Dan in northern Israel in July 1993 (Biran and Naveh 1993; Wood 1993). Then, in June 1994, two additional joining fragments, labeled Fragment B, were found (Biran and Naveh 1995). Together, Fragments A and B represent only a fraction of a much longer inscription. The language is Aramaic and it celebrates the victory of a king of Aram over Israel and Judah. It is the first royal inscription from the kingdom period to be found in Israel.

The most stunning aspect of the document is the reference to Judah as the “House of David.” For the first time, it was thought, the name David appeared in an extra-Biblical document. At about the same time, however, two French scholars, André Lemaire (1994) and Émile Puech (1994), independently recognized the same phrase in the Mesha Inscription, which has been around for well over 100 years (Wood 1995). It now likely that the name David is in a third inscription. Egyptologist K.A. Kitchen believes that the phrase “highland of David” appears in the Shishak inscription in the Temple of Amun at Karnak, Egypt (1997: 39–41). All this at a time when a number of scholars were challenging the existence of the United Monarchy and a king name David!

Unfortunately, the beginning of the Tel Dan Stela is missing. This is where the name of the king who commissioned the memorial, and the event which occasioned it, would have been recorded. With the discovery of Fragment B, however, we can assign the stela’s place in history with near certainty. Parts of the names of two kings are preserved in Fragment B: Joram, son of Ahab, king of Israel from 852 to 841 BC, and Ahaziah, son of Jehoram, king of Judah (the House of David) in 841 BC. With this new information it is possible to assign the stela to Hazael, king of Aram-Damascus, who undoubtedly set it up in Dan to commemorate his victory over Joram and Ahaziah at Ramoth-Gilead in ca. 841 BC (2 Kgs 8:28–29).”

Guillaume Faye – Use EU to Stem Immigration

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Guillaume Faye, allegedly an important voice of the European right, gets it spectacularly wrong:

“Although Mr. Faye is a man of words and ideas, he stresses that “one doesn’t fight for ‘ideas,’ one fights for a people.” And for what people do identitarians fight?

An Antwerpian of Belgian nationality, a Catalan of Spanish nationality, a Lombard of Italian nationality . . . are my compatriots. They are fellow Europeans. But a West Indian, an African, an Arab, or a Chinese who possesses a French Nationality Identity Card are not my compatriots, though in strictly judicial terms they may be considered French.

Mr. Faye notes that immigrants may sometimes call themselves “French” or “Belgian” but never manage to become Scots, Bavarians, or Sicilians.

The tragedy of the struggle is that Europe “is at war and doesn’t even know it.” So long as their shopping carts are full, Europeans will not wake up to the crisis of dispossession. For those who see clearly, however, traditional European distinctions of Left and Right are petty distractions. The only distinction that matters is who is, and who is not, part of the European struggle against oblivion.

To be sure, there are questions of strategy. Should a French identitarian hope to return to a France that is authentically French, or should France cede sovereignty to a strong, self-conscious Europe? Should a European patriot try to use the powers of the European Union to hurl back the Third World or should he try to undermine those powers in the expectation that racial consciousness can arise only at the national level? These are legitimate questions on which identitarians may disagree.

They should all agree, however, that traditional Christians and non-believers must work together to preserve Europe. Mr. Faye is not a Christian, but believes that a traditional Catholic should be able to say “I respect all the Christians of the world, but nic et nunc [here and now] I fight for my people above all, whatever their religion.”

He notes that neither Judaism nor Islam has ever been “masochistic” like Christianity, but points out that Christianity itself is not the source of our collapse: “We shouldn’t forget . . . that the egalitarian virus is also found in non-Christian conceptions of the world and that Medieval Christianity knew how to protect itself from it.” As for liberal, mush-minded Christianity, he sees no salvation for it, and wishes it would disappear.

Historical ignoramuses

Mr. Faye is slashingly contemptuous of the mentality of the elites who are herding Europe into the abyss, calling them “historical ignoramuses” and “stargazing intellectuals.” He wonders if they can really believe we will live happily ever after in the multi-culti utopia, for there is no “mixing of cultures,” only conquest:

India, China, Black Africa, the Arab-Muslim or Turkish-Muslim world, etc., are affirming their identities, tolerating neither a colonising immigration nor a cultural mélange on their soil. Only our pseudo-European elites defend the dogma of a ‘mixed planet,’ which is pure illusion.

Nor can Mr. Faye excuse the naiveté (or duplicity) of those who would open the West to strangers in the name of Western values those strangers will never adopt. Our rulers say that because Europe accepts pluralism and celebrates differences, it should welcome millions of Muslims or Hindus—who despise pluralism and hate differences. Mr. Faye concludes that “it’s absurd to demand the right to differences for those who would deny it to others.”

My Comment

Somebody should inform the ignorant Mr. Faye that exactly what is happening to Europe has already happened to other countries. They’ve already had an alien culture imposed on them (European) long before Europe began to get a taste of it.  Or do new-right thinkers crack open the history books only after their birth-dates?

As for using the EU – which is a prize of the globalist project-  to dismantle it, only a fool or a tool would suggest it.

File, along with Raspail, as another NWO front and diversion.

One can learn something from racists. But   propagandists  are another matter altogether.

 

Roots, Not Symptoms, Mr. Raspail

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Michael Hoffman, whose  other views I don’t necessarily endorse, sees through Jean Raspail’s race-war propaganda classic, “The Camp of the Saints”:

How strange – not one word from Jean Raspail about who is really at fault for the invasion of France–the French themselves! Who were (and are) too hedonistic and selfish to average three or more French children per couple. Into this vacuum quite naturally (i.e. by the iron law of biology) rush those people who have enough sense to reproduce themselves (the Muslims) and who need lebensraum. Raspail deals, as do so many others, with symptoms and scapegoating: “those politicians” and that “sepulchral media” who vex “the still healthy body of the French nation.”

I assure Monsieur Raspail that the French people are desperately sick, not healthy, and that the “sepulchre” was built by the French themselves and the bones one finds there are of the aborted children who would have obstructed the multiple vacations, the second house, the third car. This sepulchre is also peopled by the spectre of millions of French children who were never conceived, for the same reasons.

Those white nations which do not have sufficient spark of life to reproduce themselves are indeed doomed, but this is no “conspiracy.” These are the inevitable wages of the Masonic, “secular Republic” that is France. The same is true for Italy, where the Catholic Church has auto-destructed and Germany, Spain, Sweden...all secular, all playboys and playgirls.

One cannot merely pay lip service to Christianity, tossing a bone to a mere nostalgia. The French, or for that matter the American intellectuals, even on the Right, dare not look to see what culture and religion prevailed when Charles Martel marched to Poitiers in 732, when Isabella reconquered Granada in 1492, when Pius V was victorious at Lepanto in 1571 and Nicholas, Graf von Salm in Vienna in 1529 and John Sobieski in that same city in 1683.

The West today, ruled ideologically by the spirits of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin, Albert Pike, Sigmund Freud and Menachem Mendel Schneerson cannot conquer, except from the cockpit of a glorified airborne video game attached to missiles.

Who is to blame for the demise of Europe– the healthy, fertile Muslims or the anemic, self-extinguishing denizens of the House of Usher? If lebensraum was a virtue for the Germans is it a vice for the Muslims? The most primitive pagan in the jungle knows what the “advanced” Europeans do not know, that sex without children is death!

And the current “Crusade”? It was only forty years ago that Jacqueline Kennedy wore a black veil at the funeral of her assassinated husband, and Christian women throughout Europe and America–sophisticated women of the middle and upper classes–wore head coverings in church. Now crusader George W. Bush is on a campaign to “free Muslim women” from standards of propriety and modesty not so different–at least in spirit– from what prevailed universally in the West as recently as four decades ago.

France has banned girls from wearing head scarves in its public schools, lest the girls appear too modest, and this in a France where rectums and genitals are on display on every street-corner kiosk, yet there is a morbid fear of the least display of chastity.

The Muslims rightly despise us because we have lost all self-respect; because we are not the people of the West any longer, but the people of the alchemical crucible of constant, ruinous transvaluation.

The West cannot turn its back on God and retain any territory anywhere, and when I say God I am not speaking of the god of the rabbis.

Roots, not symptoms, Monsieur Raspail.”

The Declining Value of Elite Credentials

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Of Two Minds.com:

“Economist Michael Spence developed the job market signaling model of valuing employees based on their credentials in the 1970s. The basic idea is that signaling overcomes the inherent asymmetry of information between employer and potential employee, i.e. what skills the employer needs and what skills the employee actually has is a mystery to the other party.

Credentials (diplomas, certificates, grad point averages, test scores, etc.) send a signal that transfers information to the employer about the opportunity cost the potential employee sacrificed for the credential.

It is important to note that the credential doesn’t necessarily signal the employee’s actual skills or knowledge– it only signals the amount of human and financial capital the employee and his family invested in obtaining the credential.

Signaling boils down to something like this: if Potential Employee A graduated from a prestigious Ivy League university, and Potential Employee B graduated from a lower-ranked state university, this doesn’t signal that Candidate A is necessarily more intelligent than Candidate B; it does signal, however, that Candidate A probably worked harder to get into and graduate from the prestigious school.

The signal is: Candidate A will work harder for the employer than Candidate B, all other qualifications being equal.

The Signal Value of credentials is the entire foundation of higher education. The higher education system does not actually test or credential the body of knowledge or working skills of graduates; it simply accredits that the graduate sat through a semi-random selection of courses and managed to pass the minimal standards–or alternatively, that the graduate gamed/cheated the system to gain credit without actually doing any real learning.

The reason tens of thousands of parents are sweating blood to get their child into an Ivy League university is the signaling power of that degree is widely viewed as having the near-magical ability to guarantee lifelong highly compensated employment.

But the power of higher education credentials is eroding for systemic reasons.

1. Credentials of all sorts are in over-supply: there are more people holding credentials than there are jobs that require those credentials.

2. Higher education does not prepare graduates for the real world of work in the emerging economy, so the signaling value of a diploma has been lost.

3. The opportunity cost paid by those graduating from college is now more noise than signal.

4. The intrinsically ambiguous signal value of a credential cannot be substituted for real-world accreditation of real skills and working knowledge.

In essence, the failure of signaling to accredit actual skills and knowledge bases is being acknowledged by employers. This accreditation is precisely what diplomas fail to do. Specialty programs (nursing, medicine) accredit the skills and knowledge of the graduates, but this is not true of the vast majority of diplomas and credentials.

The job-market value of a college degree was relatively high in the 1970s when Spence developed the Signal Model because the number of workers with college diplomas was still relatively modest (around 15% of the workforce). The most basic function of the market–supply and demand–worked in favor of what was relatively scarce–a college diploma. As a result, the assumption that the applicant had worked hard to obtain the degree was more signal than noise.

Nowadays, conventional credentials such as college degrees are in over-supply: around 40% of the work force has a college diploma of some sort, and an increasing number of college graduates are taking jobs that do not require a college education.

This is reflected in the declining wages of college graduates: Even the Most Educated Workers Have Declining Wages.

While the cost of higher education has skyrocketed (tuition is up 1,100% since 1980), the educational yield of higher education has declined. The national study Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, found that over one third of college students “did not demonstrate any significant improvements in learning critical thinking and other skills central to success in the new economy” and concluded that “American higher education is characterized by limited or no learning for a large proportion of students.”.

From this dismal record, we can extrapolate that another third gained marginal utility from their investment of tens of thousands of dollars and four years of study.

Google is widely viewed as a bellwether of the new economy. It is noteworthy, then, that Google has found that academic success has little correlation with being productive in the workplace. Lazlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, made the following comments in an interview published by the New York Times in June 2013:

One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.s (grade point averages) are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.s and test scores, but we don’t anymore. We found that they don’t predict anything.What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.

Signaling an ability to grind though four or five years of institutional coursework is no longer enough; the signaling needed to indicate an ability to create value must be much richer in information density and more persuasive than a factory model diploma.”

 

Buiter’s Bunny Boiler – Part II

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Willem Buiter, once a critic of the banksters, albeit, as much as an insider can be,  is now doing their bidding:

Bloomberg, via LRC/North:

“In a new piece, Citi’s Willem Buiter looks at this problem, which is known as the effective lower bound (ELB) on nominal interest rates.

Fundamentally, the ELB problem comes down to cash. According to Buiter, the ELB only exists at all due to the existence of cash, which is a bearer instrument that pays zero nominal rates. Why have your money on deposit at a negative rate that reduces your wealth when you can have it in cash and suffer no reduction?

Cash therefore gives people an easy and effective way of avoiding negative nominal rates.

Buiter’s note suggests three ways to address this problem:

Abolish currency.

Tax currency.

Remove the fixed exchange rate between currency and central bank reserves/deposits.“

So  perhaps that was what that scandal with Helene Mees was all about.

A little arm-twisting by the powers-that-be?

While Mees has agreed to a deal that keeps her out of jail, she is said to be planning a suit for defamation against the economist.

 

Subversion Of Language As Thought-Control

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Note: I have had time to read more at Kreeft’s website, and, though I think he’s a good writer and thinker, he’s also wrong on several things. Here’s one:

He claims Hinduism is pantheistic. It is not. It is panentheistic (in its most developed forms), which is quite a different thing.

It is also monistic in some traditions, theistic in others,  and even materialistic in still others.

Whether this is the sign of an agenda being pursued, I don’t know,  not having read enough of Kreeft.

ORIGINAL POST

Peter Kreeft, a Christian professor of philosophy, the author of 75 books defending Christianity, explains how cultural subversion works through language:

In light of the President’s recent “evolution” on same-sex marriage, here’s a 2004 interview Dr. Peter Kreeft gave to the Boston College Observer (text posted at PeterKreeft.com):

What are your thoughts on the current debate about gay marriage?

Dr. Peter Kreeft: As a philosopher the thing that strikes me most is the brilliant strategy of the gay marriage movement. Like Orwell in 1984 it sees that the main battlefield is language. If they can redefine a key term like “marriage” they win.

Control language and you control thought; control thought and you control action; control action and you control the world.

Mussolini knew that too. He made it illegal for Italians to say “hi” in the traditional way. The Italian for “how are you?” is “Come sta lei?” “Lei” is the feminine inclusive pronoun. Fascist ideology held that this was emasculating and weak, so you had to say “Come sta lui?” from now on. “Lui” is the masculine pronoun. So no one could say “hi” in Italy without identifying themselves as pro or anti-fascist.

In America, the feminists have succeeded in exactly the same way. They’ve labeled the traditional inclusive language, the language of every single one of the great books of Western civilization written in English, as exclusive because it uses “he” and “man” to include women; and they’ve labeled their new artificial ideological invention, which insists, contrary to historical fact, that “he” and “man” exclude women—they’ve labeled this “inclusive” language. And amazingly, nearly everyone follows like sheep!

So it will be easy, I think, for them to redefine marriage. Hell, they’ve already redefined “human beings” or “persons” so that they can murder the littlest ones whenever they want to. Why should they feel any guilt about dishonesty when they don’t feel any guilt about murder?

I think you will find that there is an overwhelmingly strong connection between these three agendas: gay marriage, feminism, and abortion.

Lila: It was the reading I did while researching my blog posts that led me to the same conclusion –  something I’d sensed when I was much younger in a more inchoate fashion:

Very seldom do you find people who are for one but not the other, or against one but not the other. And what they all have in common is this attitude toward language: it is what the most powerful and insidious propaganda film in history called “the triumph of the will.”Already in Canada it is a crime, punishable by a fine or even imprisonment, to speak against homosexuality in public. Politically incorrect ideas, such as Biblical morality, are now defined as “hate speech.”

One of the things I fear from this is an ugly backlash against homosexuals. If the truth is now whatever we will, then just as there is nothing to stop society today from redefining marriage, there is nothing to stop it tomorrow from redefining personal dignity and rights so as to take them away from homosexuals. The Nazis did exactly that.

The Church is the best friend of homosexuals, both because she tells them they are made in God’s image and have intrinsic dignity and rights and are called to be saints, and because she is the only social force left that insists on moral absolutes—so when they sin against themselves she says NO, just as she does to heterosexuals who sin against themselves sexually, but when others sin against them she says NO also.

No one else dares to say NO. She speaks up for everyone, including homosexuals.

Read the rest at PeterKreeft.com.

Some of the best friends I’ve had in this country have been homosexuals. Their intelligence and empathy for a foreigner (I’m actually a foreign-born citizen) helped me immeasurably in my life.

Several of them were spiritually inclined; all were more than ordinarily intelligent and perceptive.  No personal animosity toward them as people, no physical repugnance toward their sexuality (“homophobia” properly called) motivates me.

I simply see in the diabolically subtle propaganda surrounding this issue frightening portents of the future for everyone, including homosexuals themselves, as Dr. Kreeft convincingly argues.

The one who says “no” is not necessarily the one who is inimical to you. The one who says “yes” is not necessarily your friend.