𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 (by Antonio Machado)

 

It's possible that while sleeping, the hand

that sows the seeds of stars

started the ancient music once again

 

 - like a note from a great harp -

and the frail wave came to our lips

as one or two honest words.

 

(Translated by Robert Bly)

 

 

What EXACTLY Happened That Completely Changed Trans?

“The Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert talk about the two "hungers". There is the Great Hunger and there is the Little Hunger. The Little Hunger wants food for the belly; but the Great Hunger, the greatest hunger of all, is the hunger for meaning...There is nothing wrong in searching for happiness. But of far more comfort to the soul is something greater than happiness or unhappiness, and that is meaning. Because meaning transfigures all. Once what you are doing has for you meaning, it is irrelevant whether you're happy or unhappy. You are content - you are not alone in your Spirit - you belong.”

~ Laurens van der Post

The Rise of Totalitarianism: Banks Denying Services Based on Political Views (by Theodore Dalrymple)

 

When the Berlin Wall fell, I naively supposed that freedom was secure, that never again would the spectre of totalitarianism return to Europe. I failed to take into account what I should have known, that the thirst for power is at least as great as that for freedom. Freedom and power are forever locked into a kind of Manichaean struggle, as are good and evil, and the thirst for power is perfectly capable of making an instrument of supposed good causes.

History doesn’t repeat itself, at least not in precisely the same way. The new totalitarianism doesn’t resort to thugs in the street and the midnight knock on the door. It’s somewhat more subtle than that, but no less ruthless and dangerous for all its subtlety.

In Britain, a well-known politician, Nigel Farage, has had his bank account closed by a bank called Coutts that specializes in rich clients. It’s owned by the much larger National Westminster Bank, whose largest single shareholder by far, since the banking crisis of 2008, is the British government.

Mr. Farage is a well-known figure, the scourge of the Euro-federalists, and probably more responsible than any other single person for the referendum vote in 2016 for Britain to leave the European Union. Like most public figures with strong opinions and a strong personality, Mr. Farage is both widely admired and widely detested. If you ask someone about him, he’s unlikely to answer, “On the one hand, on the other …”

Mr. Farage has been friendly with Donald Trump and has been opposed both to the excesses of transgender ideology and to the pursuit of zero emissions. But he has done nothing illegal that so far has been revealed, and the bank admits that in his dealings with it, Mr. Farage has always been polite and correct.

When Mr. Farage first announced that Coutts had closed his account, the bank at first claimed that it was because he didn’t have enough money in it and that the closure was, therefore, for purely commercial reasons. This turns out, however, not to have been so.

If the documents obtained from the bank by Mr. Farage are genuine, it proves that the bank closed his account for purely political reasons. As Mr. Farage himself said, these documents read like something from Stasi headquarters. I quote just one or two of the statements in the documents (apart from anything else, the English used is a tribute to the appalling state of British secondary and tertiary education):

“Given [Nigel Farage’s] high profile and the substantial amount of adverse press connected to him, there are significant reputational risks to the bank in being associated with him. While it is accepted that no criminal convictions have resulted, commentary and behaviours that do not align with the bank’s purpose and values have been demonstrated. … The comments/articles [on ESG/diversity and inclusion] are not in line with our views or our purpose.”

Quoting a Guardian article, one document states: “First it was Brexit, followed by a spurt of very successful campaigning to ensure that Britain left Europe on the most stringent and self-harming terms. For a while, Nigel Farage then opposed Covid restrictions. Now, he is reviving his old hostility to action on the climate emergency.”

And referring to some of Mr. Farage’s Twitter posts, one document states, “Opposes clamping down on ‘disinformation.’”

There are 40 pages of this stuff, which, of course, didn’t find their way into the bank’s files by themselves or by accident, but instead were the product of considerable human labor, paid for by the bank’s depositors and shareholders, including the government.

It isn’t a question of whether Mr. Farage is always right or sometimes horribly wrong; when the bank says that it “uncovered” something that he said, as if he had recorded saying it by secret microphones, it makes itself ridiculous. Not even his worst enemies, or perhaps his best friends, would accuse him of hiding his light under a bushel.

The question is whether it’s the role of a bank to examine its clients’ views and deny them service if those views don’t accord with those of the chief executive, as if the latter were indisputably true and from which it were heresy to dissent. Is a bank an inquisition?

The chief executive of the parent bank, Alison Rose, said soon after her appointment that “tackling climate change would be a central pillar” of her work, and on the occasion of the so-called Pride Month last year said, “Our focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is integral to our purpose of championing the potential of people, families, and businesses.” This year, the company headquarters were covered in the rainbow colors of the LGBT flag, with lettering the height of humans declaring “Championing the power of Pride.” Under her leadership, staff may “identify” as women and men on alternate days, should they so wish.

Of course, when she said that “diversity” and “inclusion” was “integral” to the bank’s purpose, she was using these terms in a strictly technical sense to mean “everyone who thinks as I do and has a fair bit of money.” The diversity “integral” to the “purpose” of Coutts doesn’t include those people with less than $1 million to deposit, who even in these days of currency depreciation remain a small minority. People bank with Coutts because it’s exclusive, not inclusive.

The chief executive, however, is safely within what we might call the Coutts Community, because she was paid about $5.2 million last year. The prospect of being barred from the bank will no doubt inhibit anyone who banks with her banks from suggesting in public that she’s paid too much.

Even more alarming, perhaps, than the initial closure of Mr. Farage’s account on political grounds, which might have been the decision of an individual zealot and his or her apparatchiks, is that (according to him) 10 other banks, acting as a kind of inquisitional cartel, have refused to open accounts for him. Many of these banks will no doubt have been fined in the past for dishonest and large-scale illegal practices, but the one thing they will not tolerate is freedom of opinion.

We used to look with horror on the KGB (the Soviet Union), the Stasi (East Germany), the Securitate (Romania), the Sigurimi (Albania), and so forth, but now we find versions of them—as yet pale versions, it’s true—among us, giving to life a constant undercurrent of fear. As the police caution used to put it after the arrest of a suspected criminal, “You don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence against you.”

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The Rise of Totalitarianism: Banks Denying Services Based on Political Views (theepochtimes.com)

 

 

Only Introverts can Relate to this - Matt Walsh | Liberal Master

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In full: Rowan Atkinson on free speech

LGB Alliance say their voices were SILENCED following legal battle with ...

𝗜𝗻 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘀 (by Edward Hirsch)

 

Like a stunned piano, like a bucket

of fresh milk flung into the air

or a dozen fists of confetti

thrown hard at a bride

stepping down from the altar,

the stars surprise the sky.

Think of dazed stones

floating overhead or an ocean

of starfish hung up to dry. Yes,

like a conductor's expectant arm

about to lift toward the chorus,

or a juggler's plates defying gravity,

or a hundred fastballs fired at once

and freezing in midair, the stars

startle the sky over the city.

 

And that's why drunks leaning up

against abandoned buildings, women

hurrying home on deserted side streets,

policemen turning blind corners, and

even thieves stepping from alleys

all stare up at once. Why else do

sleepwalkers move toward the windows,

or old men drag flimsy lawn chairs

onto fire escapes, or hardened criminals

press sad foreheads to steel bars?

 

Because the night is alive with lamps!

That's why in dark houses all over the city

dreams stir in the pillows, a million

plumes of breath rise into the sky.

 

 

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Necromancy for the Bitter (by Brian Koukol)

I planted a coast live oak seedling
in the front yard today,
not with my own vestigial hands, 
but through the sentinel, pallbearing palms
of an able-bodied surrogate.

I can see it now, six inches tall and
stolid against the gentle breeze—
a pittance of cupped, spiny-toothed
leaves dangling from a stem curved in
proud contrast to my corrected scoliosis.

Long after my ventilator is sent to palliate
another among the unfortunate dying
and my lungs are but dust
on a slagged pair of Harrington rods,
the little oak might be a three-foot whip,
battered but not broken by the ephemeral desert breath
that creeps over mountains named by the Spanish for
some saint that never kept their end of the deal.

If drought holds off for a year or three
and my oak escapes the quirks of fate,
one day it might spread and thrive
until its carpet of jagged leaves bloody
the bare feet of a child or passing Pomeranian
and I live again through their pain.

Necromancy for the Bitter by Brian Koukol - Poems | Academy of American Poets

 

 

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave

and eats a bread it does not harvest.

 

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,

and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

 

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,

yet submits in its awakening.

 

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

save when it walks in a funeral,

boasts not except among its ruins,

and will rebel not save when its neck is laid

between the sword and the block.

 

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,

whose philosopher is a juggler,

and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking

 

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,

and farewells him with hooting,

only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

 

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years

and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

 

Pity the nation divided into fragments,

each fragment deeming itself a nation.

 

~ Kahlil Gibran

(Book: The Garden of The Prophet)

Men are not mothers (by Jean Hatchet)

The media pretence is insulting to women

A huge row erupted this week as a trans-identified man named Mika Minio-Paluello was filmed by ITV’s News at Ten programme — for a slot on the rising costs of water as part of the cost of living crisis. During the segment, which aired on Wednesday 28th June,  Minio-Paluello, the Climate and Industry Lead for the TUC, stated that rising prices are “tough if you’re a mum like me, already struggling to get the things that my kid needs”. 

The segment was predictably, grossly offensive to women for a number of reasons. Women generally don’t care if a man wears a dress and earrings and discusses the economy, but they do care if a national television company, with an average nightly audience of 1.7 million viewers, selects a man to speak on behalf of struggling mothers, whilst claiming he actually is one. This looks deliberately provocative of ITV, who cannot possibly be unaware of the current debate around gender identity and the resulting clash with women’s rights. 

Many women found the news item to be yet another example of institutional gaslighting on the undeniable reality of female bodies. Minio-Paluello was not vox-popped in the street — a film crew went to his home. A researcher chose him to speak on an issue disproportionately affecting poorer women and their children, and would have known he was a man identifying as a woman, because it would be impossible not to know. Further, an editor allowed the claim that he is a mother to be included in the segment knowing this is a fiction and that a man cannot give birth. Only female people can be the mother of a child. It is cruelty to children to involve them in the adult self-indulgences of gender identity. 

Men are not mothers, whatever they choose to identify as. ITV should have had regard for the women watching who are actually struggling to feed their children, and respected them sufficiently not to subject them to a man role-playing their experience on a major news programme. Mika Minio-Paulello’s elaborate act of motherly domesticity perhaps offered him a sense of validation, but what it offered to struggling women was an added insult to their plight as the less financially solvent members of society in the current crisis. 

In his Climate and Industry Lead role at the TUC, Minio-Paulello probably has a pretty decent salary. TUC policy officers are paid in excess of £52,000. As the Women’s Budget Group state in their report “The Cost Crisis”, “women, with their lower earnings and savings, are coming to this crisis from a disadvantaged financial position”. For researchers and producers at ITV to choose a comparatively well-paid male to opine on the cost-of-living crisis and resulting issues facing women, as though he belongs to the category of both “mother” and “struggling”, is hugely insulting on the part of ITV. Presumably if the section had been discussing disabled people financially affected, then a man without a disability would quickly have been dismissed from consideration as a relevant interviewee?

Staged news segments, where people are filmed at home doing domestic tasks, will often seem wooden and unrealistic. Many, including myself, made fun of aspects of the actions filmed. Minio-Paluello, wearing a skirt and dangly earrings, was filmed washing dishes under the tap and taking a comically small washing up bowl to the washing machine where he loaded just four or five items into the machine. Nevertheless, it was doubly insulting to see the choice of female stereotype, doing dishes and laundry, being compounded by the performance of them by a man. One of the many objections of feminist women critical of gender identity is the way trans-identified men rush to perpetuate the female stereotypes  feminist women have long sought to overthrow. 

Trans activists who challenged women objecting to the news item online, focused on the discussion of how women do laundry, and called us sexist — rather than, which is significantly more difficult for them to address — how women are the only humans capable of producing children. 

Rosie Duffield MP came under great attack for her polite, yet truthful tweet on the matter where she stated simply, “I am sure this is a lovely, intelligent and decent human being. This was an important piece. This is not however a struggling ‘mother’.” Stella Creasy MP, in a crafty criticism of Duffield tweeted, “Still don’t think MPs should police what parents can or can’t call their children”.

Creasy appears to sidestep the actual issue of a man claiming to be a mother in front of a huge television audience, to present Duffield, who didn’t mention children at all, as an oppressor of children. This is a sly reframing when the focus for most dissenting women is the fiction of a man calling himself a mother. This was a man in his own home, but he was also on national television telling what is in effect a lie. The personal is political.

Rosie Duffield told me:

If washing up while wearing nail varnish and dangly earrings are activities that qualify anyone to call themselves a mother, then does that make me a farmer every time I pull on my wellies? Joking aside, this leads to yet another assessment from Twitter’s collective philosophers about gender stereotypes and the clash with biological reality. Feminists of course assert that mothers are more than the functions of our womb, and of course some women’s reproductive systems don’t function as they would wish. But only a biological woman is capable of having and using those parts, if able and choosing to. This remains the only legal and globally understood definition of the word ‘mother’.

As many commentators, including the TUC, clamour to condemn the “abuse” of Mika Minio-Paluello online, few seem to have regard for the struggling mother who has still not been heard. Telling a man that he isn’t a mother isn’t abuse. Telling a man that he uses too much water to do laundry isn’t abuse. Being truthful about the reality of human reproduction isn’t abusive. 

Asking women to quietly collude with a man performing motherhood, by calling them bigots and transphobes if they object to the appropriation of their experience, is a betrayal of women, mothers and children. We all know where children come from, because we all came from a woman.  

Men are not mothers | Jean Hatchet | The Critic Magazine

Identity Crisis: Doctor Sounds Alarm on ‘Transgender Assembly Line’

 “When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are not strengthening her prosocial sense; you are damaging it...and the first person she will stop protecting is herself."

~ Martha Stout

 “We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”

~ Anais Nin

The Valuable Time of Maturity (by Mário de Andrade)

  

"I counted my years and discovered that I have
less time to live going forward than I have lived until now.

I have more past than future.
I feel like the boy who received a bowl of candies.
The first ones, he ate ungracious,
but when he realized there were only a few left,
he began to taste them deeply.

I do not have time to deal with mediocrity.
I do not want to be in meetings where parade inflamed egos.

I am bothered by the envious, who seek to discredit
the most able, to usurp their places,
coveting their seats, talent, achievements and luck.

I do not have time for endless conversations,
useless to discuss about the lives of others
who are not part of mine.

I do not have time to manage sensitivities of people
who despite their chronological age, are immature.

I cannot stand the result that generates
from those struggling for power.

People do not discuss content, only the labels.
My time has become scarce to discuss labels,
I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry…
Not many candies in the bowl…

I want to live close to human people,
very human, who laugh of their own stumbles,
and away from those turned smug and overconfident
with their triumphs,
away from those filled with self-importance,
Who does not run away from their responsibilities ..
Who defends human dignity.
And who only want to walk on the side of truth
and honesty.
The essential is what makes
life worthwhile.

I want to surround myself with people,
who knows how to touch the hearts of people ….
People to whom the hard knocks of life,
taught them to grow with softness in their soul.

Yes …. I am in a hurry … to live with intensity,
that only maturity can bring.
I intend not to waste any part of the goodies
I have left …
I'm sure they will be more exquisite,
that most of which so far I've eaten.

My goal is to arrive to the end satisfied and in peace
with my loved ones and my conscience.
I hope that your goal is the same,
because either way you will get there too .. "