mardi 30 décembre 2008

Vols (ou semblables) en temps de Noël ...

1 ... Bagage recompensé à Arles, aussi en temps de Noël (julien calendrier)

2 Mon compte Facebook ne respond plus à mon adresse électronique et mon mot de passe. C'était il y a une heure environ mon dernier login était sur l'ordi du Secours Catho. Quand j'avais marqué des amis pour les inviter à mon groupe Keep Utah Moral, je cliquais sur "envoyer" et dut me reconnecter, ce que fut impossible avec la même adresse électronique qui m'avait servi et le même mot de passe.

Soupçon: réseaux psychiatriques ou franc-maçonniques (ou les deux) qui me traquent pour me "protéger de moi-même" ou pour me donner "un parcours initiatique". Mon groupe Keep Utah Moral n'est pas au goût de ces gens là.

jeudi 25 décembre 2008

Joyeux Noël, lecteurs

Glad Jul, läsare
Fröhliche Weihnachten, meine Leser
Merry Christmas, readers!

mardi 23 décembre 2008

Between Sunday of Genealogy and Christmas Day

I am referring to Fr Huneycutt that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the end of this genealogy, since He is also indeed the Christ.


Part 1 , Part 2 , Addendum., Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6, Long But Final

This on - and against - Dan Brown's bestseller and blasphemy "da Vinci Code"

PS:

Why did Sophie finally believe Teabing? Was she too polite to disagree with the host? Was she under a spell? Was she so tired of being persecuted she felt totally dependent on Teabing? Was she already a half apostate ready to take any excuse for quitting Christian dogma?

Only one character is less credible than Sophie, and that is Silas. He is so out of the way as an ascetic, as an Opus Dei, as a bum.

samedi 6 décembre 2008

Bonne fête, Nicolas!

Je pense au président français notamment.

Vous auriez eu le pouvoir, je pense de ne pas supporter que le Théléton se deroule jusqu'aujourd'hui.

Je cite mon site musical:

Théléthon, DPI/DPN - non! (liens)
Je ne veux pas que ma musique soit jouée pour bénéficier au Théléton, tant que l'organisme soutient le DPI ou la DPN!

http://associations.societegenerale.fr/EIA--Des_catholiques_varois_critiquent__la_strategie_eugeniste__du_Telethon-sv-asso-rq-afp-actu-8507.html


comparaison:

"The Nazis believed that medical research had been too abstract. They proposed instead to concentrate on more practical measures. They emphasized prevention of illness, as well as cure."



http://www.lewrockwell.com/gordon/gordon24.html


Vous auriez le pouvoir de légiférer ou intervenir administrativement contre soit le Diagnostic Pré-Implantatoire et le Diagnostic Pré-Natal, soit le deroulement d'un événement qui les supporte financièrement, et les jours que ça se deroule.

jeudi 4 décembre 2008

(Les juifs ne disent pas) "Athena Parthenos"

Les dernières années ou la dernière dizaine d'années il est devenu à la mode de dire, qu'à l'époque des évangiles le mot "parthenos" ne signifiait plus "vierge", mais "jeune femme".

Je me trouvais à Lund quand on était en train de faire une étude sur le sujet. La conclusion était comme dit.

Elle est basée sur certaines analyses des textes et contextes du mot: eller ignore ou fait fi des autres.

D'abord elle fait fi d'une contexte sociojuridique chez les hébreux, dont St Matthieu. Une fille était censé demeurer vierge jusqu'au mariage, viols à part, autrement elle risquait d'être lapidé. Que cela parait inhumain n'est pas à propos: je propose pas du tout qu'on recommence les lapidations, qui faisaient partie de l'Ancien Testament, je propose qu'il y avait une telle loi mosaïque, et par conséquant les hébreux avaient besoin d'un mot pour désigner la virginité.

Et, si nous, pour ainsi dire, interrogeons la langue grèque, le mot pour vierge était "parthenos": "Athena Parthenos" comme déesse protectrise d'Athenes, "Artemis Parthenos" chez les tragédiens classiques en témoignent. Les examples sont peut-être des archaïsmes à l'époque rélévante, il sont de plus examples payens, détestés comme impurs par les hébreux, mais on ne peut pas conclure qu'il considéreraient la glosse "parthenos" comme impure, ni qu'il ignoreraient ces examples (bien entendu: leur loi leur prohibait de prononcer les nom des divinités payens!), que les hébreux d'Alexandrie (la ville de la traduction des Septante) ignoreraient la littérature classique, soigneusement codifié et "canonisé" par les doctes de la même Alexandrie. Et si la langue courante n'avait pas de mot inéquivoque pour vierge, on peut pas prétendre qu'il n'auraient pas pu prendre un archaïsme comme terme technique.

De plus, les examples dont je me souviens comme arguments pour nier que le mot "parthenos" signifiât encore "vierge" (je confesse n'avoir pas lu l'article, seulement parlé avec l'autrice ou coautrice) se basent, d'une coté sur une situation ou l'équivoque pourrait y avoir, de l'autre' sur une situation dans laquelle le concepte de vierge a évidemment été reduit à la plus superficielle, mais également la plus technique physique base du concepte.

La Septante utilise bien sur le mot "parthenos" dans la prophécie d'Isaïe, cité par St Matthieu. Et le texte masorétique utilise un mot que les hébraïstes ou des hébraïstes contemporains traduisent par "jeune femme". Mais il y a des divergeances entre la Septante et le texte masorétique qui de toute façon ne peuvent être expliqué qu'en acceptant que l'original hébreux de la Septante diffère du texte masorétique, notamment les généalogies de la Génèse qui donnent environs deux fois le temps entre création et déluge dans la Septante que dans le texte hébraïque extant. Le texte masorétique n'est donc pas un argument valable pour réinterpréter le mot "parthenos" dans la Septante.

Les livres I et II Epître aux Corinthiens, (ch. 7 respectivement 11), l'Apocalypse (ch. 14), étant ecrits aussi par des hébreux (SS Paul et Jean) donnent un contexte dans laquelle le mot "vierge", en grec "parthenos" garde tout son valeur et n'est ni reduit à une technicalité physique, ni utilisé par manque de précision.

Alors, il n'y a aucune raison de nier ou même mettre en doute, que "parthenos", dans la Septante d'Isaïe et l'Evangile de St Matthieu signifient très précisement "vierge".

H G Lundahl

jeudi 20 novembre 2008

Et les Cohen Gadol après Notre Seigneur, jusqu'à la destruction de Jérusalem?

St Matthieu, comme je viens de le dire, n'a pas malbouché les noms de Cohen ou de Lévi, malgré le déicide commis par leurs bouches au Sanhédrin qui condamna Dieu.


Malheureusement, les kohanim y compris les Cohen Gadol ensuivantes, n'ont pas généralement profité pour se convertir.


Un d'entre eux a mis à mort St Jacques le Juste1. Un autre a introduit l'obligation scolaire2, étrangère à la législation mosaïque, apprise des païens Athéniens, cause majeure probable de la mentalité ghetto que la descendence charnelle du peuple de Dieu de l'Ancien Testament montra même avant d'être mis en ghettos.3


Ils ont continué de visiter le temple que Kaïphe avait désacré. En fin Dieu a eu marre. Le culte mosaïque a cessé en l'an 70.


Hans Lundahl,
7/20 nov. 2008,
Carpentras.

1Wikipedia: Hanan Ben Hanan. 2008-11-20.

URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanan_ben_Hanan. Accessed: 2008-11-20. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5cTCAfzXP) - quoiqu'il y a une autre version de ce martyre!


2 Wikipedia: Compulsory Education, History. 2008-11-20.

URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#History. Accessed: 2008-11-20. (Archived by WebCite® at http://www.webcitation.org/5cTBDo1sS) Voir History et la rérérence à Iehoshua Ben Gamla.


3Comme l'obligation scolaire reste un moyen efficace d'introduir des mentalités très bornées après ça, et dans des autres peuples. Conférer les introductions d'obligation scolaire ou d'instruction en Troisième République de la France, Union Soviétique, Allemagne Weimarienne et Hitlérienne (Reichsschulpflichtgesetz vom 6. Juli 1938) après la Prusse ...

samedi 4 octobre 2008

Judaïté de Mathathiahu Ha-Lévy

Notons que je ne dis pas judaïsme, celle-ci étant une hérésie pharisienne dans la compréhension du Chemâ Israël, beaucoup mieux compris par St Athanase, qui l'a commenté et dont le commentaire a été inséré dans l'Office matinal Catholique Romain tout à fait comme le Chemâ l'est dans l'office matinal de la synagogue.

Passons à sa judaïté, alors:

Il était issu du tribu de Levi, il avait la formation d'un écrivain. Après avoir commis le péché d'être publicain, il a fait son Téchouva par la grace de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ. Il a écrit le premier évangile en vue de convertir les juifs et il fait des allusions est des tours de phrase qui sont spécifiquement judaïques.

Le généalogie de Notre Seigneur en est un example déjà très connu. Il passe trois générations des rois maudits - lesquels? le mari, le fils et en fin du compte même le petit-fils d'Athalie, fille de Jézébel que met en évidence Racine (qui se faisait amateur de généalogie) dans le drame homonyme. Connu à l'égal est le vers ou Notre Seigneur s'identifie très clairement avec la signification du nom divin, ce que St Matthieu accepte évidemment: "avant que fut Abraham je suis".

Ce que Pilate aussi met en évidence, puisque l'acronyme de son chef d'accusation était, en Hébreux, le Saint Nom de Dieu. "N'écrivez pas le roi de juifs, mais ce qu'il a dit: je suis le roi des juifs". C'était un mensonge, puisqu'il ne l'avait pas dit directement, les juifs, sauf ses accusateurs l'avaient dit, Pilate aussi, il n'avait que confirmé, il n'avait pas lieu d'avoir citation directe comme ça, mais ça aurait donné un autre acronyme.

Passons aux moins connu: il met en scène* un événement ou tous les prêtres juifs (avec une exception auquel je reviendrai) d'un moment donné commettent déicide judiciaire. Pareillement tous les lévites présents à cette occasion. Mais les appeler prêtres et lévites aurait été un manque de respect au noms de Cohen et de Lévy. Il appelle donc les lévites de cette occasion "écrivains" ce que n'est pas un titre sacré, et les prêtres il les appelle "souverains prêtres" précisement parce que ce n'est pas correct de mettre Cohen Gadol dans le pluriel, du point de vue mosaïque, mais ce n'est pas un mensonge non plus, car les Kohanim se succedaient an pour an tirés par sort de remplir les fonctions rituels de Cohen Gadol: St Zacharie, père de St Jean Baptiste en son an, Hanne et maintenant Kaïphe dans les leurs et c. Ça en tour était imposé par les Romains, avec la monarchie hérodienne, après le très célèbre et pour certains dangéreux Cohen Gadol Jonathan Maccabée**.

Encore: il les met aussi en scène* embêtant Notre Seigneur sur la croix, et Celui-ci ne les repond pas. Mais en priant il leur explique parfaitement bien pourquoi il ne les repond pas, et ce qu'il en pense. Le psaume Elôi, Elôi lema sabachtani, que St Mathieu et St Marc seuls citent à cet instant, contient en effet les mots "les tauraux de Basan m'entourent" et il y est fait mention également de lions et de chiens. Il a donc évité de repondre à des insultes que son ancêtre David avait qualifié comme des mugissements de bêtes, en même temps qu'il avertit leurs consciences de ce qu'ils sont en train d'accomplir. Là aussi "les pharisiens et les sadducéens, les souverains prêtres et les écrivains" contiennent pas d'allusion aux mots sacrés kohanim ou lévite. Ni bien-sur à Cohen Gadol au singulier, qui l'est encore plus saint. Et ils cessent de ricaner, comme s'ils avaient compris, juste ajoutant "il appelle Elie" comme dernière ricane. Cette scène de St Mathieu, reprise par St Mark, prouve bien que ces évangiles furent écrits à un temps ou l'Eglise s'adressait encore avec privilège aux juifs, tandis que les deux autres sont plus tardifs.

Comme je viens de le dire: Cohen Gadol n'existe que dans le singulier dans les livres de Moïse. Et St Mathieu s'adressait aux Hébreux. Ils ont du demander une explication pourquoi l'évangéliste utilise une locution tellement non-torahique que l'est "souverains prêtres". Explication simple: parce qu'ils l'étaient tour à tour, rituellement. Mais comment Moïse avait-il pu l'ignorer et écrire Cohen Gadol juste dans le singulier? Reponse athée: il n'avait pas parlé avec Dieu. Irrecevable à la fois pour le judaïsme et le christianisme. Vrai reponse, déjà donné par Notre Seigneur: "Si vous croyiez Moïse et les prophètes, vous me croiriez, car c'est de moi qu'ils parlent."1

Quand Moïse parle du Cohen Gadol, il parle de Notre Seigneur. Le seul prêtre qui était irréprochable à l'occasion était le à la fois prêtre et victime.2 Quand Kaïphe exprime son cynisme, c'est miraculeusement Notre Seigneur qui à travers ça exprime sa générosité divine. Ce qu'expose aussi St Paul en écrivant aux Hébreux.

Mais Notre Seigneur n'était pas un Cohen? Oui, la Théotokos était née tardivement au mariage de St Ioïakim Halakhmi et Ste Hannah Cohen, dont Ste Elisabeth était la nièce. Et la Théotokos est élévée au temple, parce qu'elle est une Cohen de famille et aussi l'Arche de la Nouvelle Alliance: Elle allait contenir dans ses entrailles le Verbe qui grava le Décalogue sur les pierres contenues dans l'Arche de la Vieille. Elle n'avait pas la souillure qui excluait d'ordinaire les femmes du Saint des Saints, elle était, seule parmi les filles d'Eve née pure. Le prêtre qui l'admettait faisait une exception plus sainte que le rituel ordinaire, possibilité par ces trois circonstances. Ça nous enseigne le Protévangile de St Jacques le Mineur, Frère du Seigneur. Donc Notre Seigneur est un Cohen à la fois qu'un Halakhmi. Et il est le Cohen Gadol dont parla Moïse. Déjà le sermon sur la montagne le met en évidence comme un grand parleur, à l'instar de son ancêtre Aaron. voir là-dessus J'avais écrit quelque chose de mésinterprétable !!!

Iokhannan Lundal
que Notre Dieu et Christ ait miséricorde de moi pécheur,
car en écrivant ces vérités je n'étais pas pur de péchés du coeur

1Citation à peu près, l'exacte, en Anglais: If you did believe Moses, you would perhaps believe me also, for he wrote of me. (Douay Rheims, Bible Online)
2Voir p. ex. ce beau texte ci sur la Sainte Communion (Grand Prêtre=Cohen Gadol)
*"Mettre en scène" se dit, dans le jargon académique des savants de littérature, dans le sens "raconter en détail". Ça ne veut pas dire que ça soit faux ou trompeur.
**L'attente imminente du Messie a très certainement été aiguisée par ce déréglement rituel.



PS, ajouté le 18 octobre 2008 (ou 5, selon le vieux calendrier):
écrit dans Juifs et Chrétiens au temps de la rupture:

"Dans les années 90-100, aux Bénédictions récitées trois fois par jour par les juifs pieux, les pharisiens de Yabné ajoutent la Malédiction des Nazaréens et des hérétiques[2]. Les chrétiens, ces Nazaréens, sont totalement isolés et des juifs et des romains. C'est dans cette situation dramatique que sont rédigés les évangiles."


Cela s'applique au quatrième évangile, celui de St Jean, mais ni à St Matthieu, ni aux autres synoptiques, tel St Marc, ou encore St Luc, que nous fêtons aujourd'hui (ou celèbrerons en treize jours), et qui suivent St Mathieu dans une terminologie à l'origine issu du respect de certains traditions juives, comme je viens de le dire.

PPS: En anglais, par Daniel Fanous: The Person of the Christ: The Earthly Context of the Saviour (Review).

mardi 30 septembre 2008

Aquinas agrees more or less with St Gregory Palamas (and not with sceptics or rationalists - link in title)

Comments before you click the link to read it:

One difference: Thomas Aquinas calls the light of grace "created", though he does not try to prove that point, he only argues that it is needed a light that exceeds all merely human light.

Another: he believes that the blessed in Heaven see the very essence of God, not just his energies. This is the one point where Rome actually condemned the fifth council of Constantinople ... apparently agreeing by implication that Barlaam was condemnable.

A pseudo-difference: Aquinas says that what is illumined by grace is our intellect. Later misuse of the word has made him being misunderstood as meaning "the ability to argue". To Thomas the ability to argue is only a very secondary side of intellect. Rationality is an imperfection of intellect, as compared with intuitive intellect. To him intellect means "that which understands", i e what the Greek language calls nous.

A convention: before saying what he thinks, he always leaves the word, so to speak, to his adversaries - or rather to what they would say and quote for themselves.

dimanche 28 septembre 2008

Patriotisme athée ... insensé

Par malheur, il y a des idées tellement repandues en dépit de leur mauvaise qualité, que je les entend même de mon entourage autrement très intelligent!

"En tant que française, je tiens à la laicité de l'école!"

Croyez-moi, l'autrice de ces mots n'était pas une naze complette, loin de ça! Elle savait même qu'il y a des fortes grandes problèmes de l'école, elle allait voir "entre les murs" (que j'avais pas les sous de voir).

Pour moi, ça ressemble à: "Pour moi comme citoyen soviétique, je tiens à l'athéisme d'état." En fin de compte, la Troisième République avec son école laïque fut le modèle de l'enseignement laïc athée obligatoire de la Soviétique. Une tyrannie sert comme modèle à une autre plus dure. Certains appellent ça "le progrès". Rohoboam a tâché ça après Solomon, dont les taxes étaient visées d'abord comme exceptions pour bâtir le temple: le résultat fut la sécession des dix tribus. Si le XIXème siècle en France (la laïcité d'école était bien antérieure à la séparation de l'église et l'état en 1905) et le XXème siècle en Soviétique n'ont pas montré tant de sécessions, c'est peut-être parce que le poudre à fusils avait rendu les états modernes trops puissants pour la réussite de tels aventures. En temoignent les sécessions échouées des chouans, des sudistes, des Cristeros, des peuplades (entre Brest et Brest-Litovsk, il me semble qu'il y en avait un nombre) qui l'ont fait avec l'aide militaire de Hitler et qui ont payé ça après 1945.

Il me ressemble fortement qu'une tyrannie une fois portée trop longtemps peut s'intérioriser. Les arrière-petit-fils des chouans ne se sont pas soulevés contre la Troisième République. Les arrière-petit-fils des gens qui malgré leur catholicisme ont subi l'école laïque de Jules Ferry* reclament cette tyrannie pour tous, comme un bienfait.

Les parents athées qui veulent avoir un enseignement athée pour leurs enfants, pourraient autant payer une école privé pour être athée, que les catholiques payent actuellement les écoles privés (réautorisées après la guerre de 1940-45, déjà pendant dans la zone libre) pour être catholiques. Et si les athées se plaindraient: on paye déjà l'école publique pour être laïque, les catholiques pourraient en bon justice repondre: et nous, pourquoi devrons-nous payer l'école deux fois?

Hans Lundahl
Avignon
16/29 Septembre 2008

*"Ministre de l'Instruction publique de févr. 1879 à nov. 1881 et de jenv. à août 1882 (et en même temps président du Conseil de sept. 1880 à nov. 1881), Ferry réalisa une oeuvre scolaire qui devait changer profondement la mentalité française."
(entre autre en balayant l'opposition du Sénat à ses lois par décret, lois qui gênaient fortement la liberté parentale et celle de culte sauf pour les non-catholiques)
"Le premier ministère Ferry avait été marqué également par deux lois consacrant les libertés de réunion ... et de presse ... et surtout le début de la grande politique coloniale, qui devait être l'autre aspect essentiel de la carrière de Ferry."
(Tunisie, Congo, Madagascar, Tonkin)

p. 1764, vol. D-F
Michel Mourre, Dictionnaire Encyclopédique d'Histoire

mercredi 24 septembre 2008

Bättre under Mussolini!

Citat:
Det rör sig om en långärmad, vid skjorta som räcker ner till knäna. Dess utseendemässiga släktskap med städrocken är ingen tillfällighet i detta skurborstens förlovade land. Och liksom städrocken är skolförklädet oerhört missklädsamt. Det är bara dumstruten som fattas och det stackars barnet ser ut som en komplett åsna. ”Il grembiule” har överlevt i en del privatskolor. Nu ska den tillbaka till den vanliga grundskolan. Det har skolministern Mariastella Gelmini bestämt, och det är bara en av hennes kontroversiella, nygamla idéer. Liksom sina kollegor i Silvio Berlusconis regering är hon fast besluten att genomföra drastiska förändringar, med rottingen i högsta hugg.
Kommentar: Jag har under nittiotalet arbetat på polisens arkiv i Malmö ett halfår. Efterkrigstidens invandrarenhet hade få, men några dock, invandrerskor från Italien. Under år som varit Mussolini hade några haft två, tre, fyra eller fem års sammanlagd skolgång. Efter den nya skolreformen i det annars så sköna Italien tror jag att skolflickor komma att bli nostalgiska tillbaks till den eran derstädes. Nu är det nio års elände som gäller.

dimanche 21 septembre 2008

Geocentric observation

I watch the sky and see
The Sun is going low.
Tomorrow it will be
Arisin' again so slow.
And all I know agree
It's hot, a fiery glow:
The question that is burning
Is who of us who's turning.

Some say that it is we
Who turn around each day
And that the turn we see
Is made the other way
- But I think it is he
Who turns around to pray
To his eternal Maker,
Our Keeper without Shaker.

Hans Lundahl

samedi 13 septembre 2008

Schliemann followed by astronomers (link)

After clicking the link, click on the news paper clip!

vendredi 12 septembre 2008

À Lourdes demain (lien, vers Abbé de Cacqueray)

Commentaire personnel: comme orthodoxe je suis attaché aux sièges apostoliques (y a-t-il des sièges épiscopales non apostoliques?) et aussi je souhaite que le pontif de Rome retrouve à Lourdes la lucidité pour dénoncer des erreurs tant de Vatican II que certains d'avant.

PS: Autre bon lien tradi: "The Dinoscopus" 9/11 Questions. Le suivant, guerilla gardening, n'est pas mal non plus.

J'ajoute: nouvelle royaliste.

mercredi 10 septembre 2008

Medhåll - noll

Citat:

20-åringarna har inte mognad nog att reflektera över sitt föräldraskap, utan kopierar oftat de egna föräldrarnas mönster och så sker ingen utveckling. Så fortsätter de medeltida värderingarna att råda. Med högskoleutbildning, jordenruntresor och olika jobb får man en större utblick över världen och fattar att det finns många vägar att gå.

Kommentarer:
  • 1 ett nyfödt barn behöfver intet en reflektion öfver föräldraskapet från föräldrarnes sida, utan mjölk, gerna från moderns bröst, samt bytta blöjor, kläder och sängkläder:
  • 2 författaren till de hemska raderna erkänner att hans mål är att "utveckling" skall ske och "de medeltida värderingarna" bort: detta har barnet intet ett dugg behof af, minst af allt som nyfödd,
  • 3 författaren erkänner sig jobba på Rosengård, om det är som lärare eller socialarbetare vet jag intet, men uppenbarligen är det hans jobb att afråda från, evt "i extrema fall" sabotera, ungt moderskap.
  • 4 Ute i verlden är ungt moderskap ett ganska naturligt val. Ungt faderskap också, der 14-åringar ha rätt och möjlighet att försörja sig.

vendredi 5 septembre 2008

jeudi 4 septembre 2008

samedi 30 août 2008

Cooperatives, cartels, guilds, corporativism Catholic and Fascist

... and other collected fragments on guild socialism, distributism, fascism et c.

Last post, I spoke about the milk giants cartel in Sweden. As far as I've heard, or can remember, it originates in a series of dairy farmers' cooperatives.

These cooperatives fought dishonest retailors who simply watered milk down. This was how crooked free market capitalism was back when Chesterton was young. At least, that is what I heard. Be it noted that already in those times, the farmers were not selling their milk directly. Probably because the work was too hard.


They needed cartels to do so, and Sweden ended up with these four or five milk cartels. A real oligopoly.

But cartels can change too. The guilds, so bragged by both distributists and corporativists, originated as a kind of cartels, fighting against feudal overlordships over the towns, then constituting towns, and guaranteeing a level price thought of as just. The principle that each patron is an ex-empleyee (ex-journeyman) and each employee (including future patrons) an ex-apprentice, and the equal treatment of employees and apprentices involved considerable advantage to the apprentices that never went beyond employees. Dr Byrne has shown that even before the end of the Middle Ages, some guilds were already more cartels than level price justice.


...

In further response to Fantasia on a Theme of Hilaire Belloc by Dr Carol Byrne





The core of Belloc’s view was the primacy of revolutionary political action in the reconstruction of society, and his affinity with Rousseau’s theory of the General Will – to which individuals would have to give up their rights (redefined as “selfish” individualism) – indicates that Belloc’s view was characterized by profound totalitarian instincts. This is confirmed by his biographer who avers that, in Belloc’s world view, political power was “something to be seized…and centralized to the highest point of efficiency.”


So Carol is judging Belloc's political thought not by what she read in his own works - or not alone - but also (?) after works about him? The biography by R. Speaight? And also of "common knowledge" (as they say) on works by another writer (Rousseau) with whom he had "affinities"? The method is some kind of guilt-by-association.



Belloc and Chesterton, though not wishing autocratic take-overs in England, were not dead against everything autocratic. But they were against anything totalitarian. What is the difference? Autocracy means that one man for and by himself decides about the state, totalitarianism means a state which leaves nothing and nobody unaffected by its decisions.



Let us quote Chesterton on the theme he called THE RETURN OF CAESAR:



The Totalitarian State is now making a clean sweep of all our old notions of liberty, even more than the French Revolution made a clean sweep of all the old ideas of loyalty. It is the Church that excommunicates; but, in that very word, implies that a communion stands open for a restored communicant. It is the State that exterminates; it is the State that abolishes absolutely and altogether; whether it is the American State abolishing beer, or the Fascist State abolishing parties, or the Hitlerite State abolishing almost everything but itself.


Or on AUSTRIA:





Dollfuss died like a loyal and courageous man, asking forgiveness for his murderers; and the souls of the just are in the hands of God, however much their enemies (with that mark of mere mud that is stamped over all they do) take a pleasure in denying them the help of their religion. But Dollfuss dead, even more than Dollfuss living, is also a symbol of something of immense moment to mankind, which is practically never mentioned by our politicians or our papers.



...



Whether we call it the Empire, or the Old Germany or the culture of the Danube, what Austria meant and means is this. That it is normal for Europeans, even for Germans, to be civilised; that it is normal for Europeans, even for Germans, to be Christians; and, we must in historic honesty add, normal for them to be Catholics.



He meant no offence to the Orthodox Serbs, their villages were the nearest contemporary example of his distributist ideal. Catholic he used as opposite of Protestant, like in the essay WHY PROTESTANTS PROHIBIT:



Protestantism is in its nature prone to what may be called Prohibitionism. I do not mean prohibition of drink (though it happens to bea convenient comparison: that none ot the ten thousand tyrants of Mediterranean history would ever have dreamed of uprooting the vine since Pentheus was torn in pieces); I mean that the Protestant tends to prohibit, rather than to curtail or control. His theory of Prohibition is rooted in his theory of progress; which began with expectation of the Millennium; but has ended in similar expectations of the Superman.


Chesterton totalitarian? A man who respected Mussolini, admired Dollfuss and abhorred Hitler? A man who thought of "Protestant prohibitionism" as too totalitarian? Because he thought, after the restoration of small property in England to levels still seen in parts of Italy - like the olive fields of Olivetta - a restoration he thought of as having to be done mainly by personal striving of the dispossessed to become legal and legitimate owners of their work (workplace, machinery or tools, stock of raw material, et c), he thought corporativist regulations might be necessary to keep it small?


Belloc admired Napoleon. And Napoleon was a tyrant against some - like against Cadoudal and Le Duc d'Enghien, also against the king of my Swedish & Scanian forefathers, Gustav IV Adolf, by letting the Czar open war against him.



...

With all due respect to Il Duce ...



... I do not think the occasion is well chosen to go about killing every Communist in sight, as I saw on a page dedicated to him (I hope it was a joke).

I mean: when he did it, and only them who resisted, the Communists tended to be very violent. I mean, Rosa Luxemburg was not killed for founding a womens knitting cooperation or a trade union. She, Bela Kun, Trotskiy ... they were basically killing a lot of innocent people who owned more than they or happened to have more power. And the people with more property were not necessarily Bill Gates or such-like, they were often enough if very rich (by their standards, not Mr Gates') inheritors, and often enough, whether inheritors or not, small family enterprise owners, including farmers. And priests were usually not even rich, personnally. Killing Communists back then meant defending innocent people against an army of pillagers


Now the situation is somewhat different. Communists tend to be citizens, often poor citizens, often the kind of people Mussolini defended with his original blackshirts.



...

Was Robespierre a hippie?



Read this, for starters.

Furthermore, the foundation of modern leftist thought can be traced in an unbroken chain from Rousseau and Robespierre, who respectively led the thought and action of the French Revolution, to Mussolini, Hitler, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, the hippy movements of the sixties, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

Robespierre took the "popular will" part of Rousseau. Leninist Communism takes the part about (private, non-communal) property being theft and the foundation of war; not without retaking "popular will" part. But hippy movement is rather the "Emile" part of Rousseau, a k a free education, alas along with antidogmaticism, a k a Savoyard Vicar. Rousseau wrote many things, and many of them differ. Lumping all of them together because they hanker back to Rousseau is ... plain stupid. That includes classifying Robespierre as a Hippie.

A more pleasing thought: was St Ambrose of Milan a hippy? Most definietely NOT, since he was against long hair in men. (My excuse for it is poverty, and growing the beard too: when in 2004 I had a chance to cut the beard I insisted on cutting the hair too, indeed I shaved it to the skin.) And yet, his chapter thirty ("on doing good deeds") of book one of On Duties is much closer to hippie culture than to some of its late modern adversaries.

What is a cartel? Snow and milk business compared


In further response to Fantasia on a Theme of Hilaire Belloc by Dr Carol Byrne.




The dynamics of free market Capitalism ensure that there is enough competitiveness for prices to remain within the grasp of consumers, and that no one firm controls enough of the whole market to be able to set its price indefinitely – those businesses which succeed are the ones that produce a better and more diversified product at a lower price. If any business tries to charge higher prices than its competitors, it will lose all its business to competition; as soon as it tries to undersell its competitors, they will have to reduce their prices to keep their customers. These are the powerful counter-tendencies and self-correcting measures which act to prevent the formation of a general cartel, as Distributists fear.



A cartel is that thing in Medellín that deals in narcotics, right? Well, that too.



According to Dr Carol Byrne cartels are impossible because each participant in the competition is too concerned with his own expansion and profit to submit to the rule of a cartel, limiting his chances for immediately profiting by taking market shares in order to insure long time profits by keeping up prices.



Actually, due to this egotism and this competition, every enterprise is always trying to snatch market shares from every other enterprise than itself ... or its partners. And since this is done thoroughly and since most enterprises are not partners of other enterprises in same sector and market (like by mutual shareholding or by double loyalties of physical persons) the enterprise that sets the lowest price forces all the rest to follow suite (I remember a "gazoline price war" like that ... last millennium; and OPEC is of course not a cartel).



Back to Medellín, then. Well, not physically, I am not going there to make a scoop. But to common knowledge or safe guesses about things like the Medellín narcotics cartel. Supposedly - according to Dr Byrne's line of thought - the one thing that allows them to be a cartel is that the police take down all their small competitors, if there have been any. Otherwise the price of their "snow" would be considerably lowered, not only by getting rid of the money they need to pay criminals and crooked officials, but simply by competition. I must therefore conclude, since dairy is legal, either there are no milk cartels, or the milk cartels have managed to make (potentially dangerous) competition illegal.



In Bombay* milk is usually not sold in air tight plastic bottles, like in France, nor in tetra-packs like in Sweden. Early in the morning, just after milking, the farmer leaves for the city and serves the milk from a bucket, like soup from a kettle. In Sweden or Norway, a farmer who sold unpasteurised milk to his neighbours across the street in the same village (and these neighbours, like themselves, had a fridge!) was sued last millennium. Or maybe this one. But taking your milk to town and serving it from the bucket like soup from a kettle is - at least outside India, all over the "free world" - forbidden, nowadays.



Otherwise this would be both cheap and tasty. Cheap because transport to central dairies in refrigerated milk tank cars costs, pasteurising costs, maybe other processes like skimming in alpha-Laval machines cost too, packaging in tetra-packs costs, transport in refrigerated trucks to the stores cost, and the stores take their percentage too : the "Bombay way" would give the farmer a higher price and the customer would still pay less. Tasty, because the milk is neither pasteurised nor skimmed, and above all fresh same morning from the udder.



And saving transport and storing is as hygienic as making transport and storing very elaborately hygienic. But if the hygiene adequate for milking into three buckets and driving them to town selling it within a few hours is not adequate for transporting milk across half Sweden and selling it up to three days later, somehow - it is not deemed adequate for selling your own milk 10 km from where you live either.



Because this egotism that ensures that Skaanemejerier or Arla (or Norrmejerier or Milko) wants to expand (these last years they have all tended to expand over all of Sweden, but before Sweden was divided into their regional monopolies), equally guarantees that the farmwife selling her milk would want it ... is it not so? And when she would expand (as any judge in this business would presume she would sooner or later, even against her denial) then that system of hygiene would be again inadequate (which, to my, of course, distributistically biassed mind, is the reason she would either not expand or else buy more complex hygienic arrangements if she did).



Speaking of the will to expand - Dr Byrne herself, and her collegues at University, are presumably unsatisfied with their livelyhood, and eager to expand? Somehow I doubt it. And somehow, this mythically universal ruthless egotism is both used against the hypothetical little upstart enterprise, when it is questioned "yes, that may be all right now, but how about later, when you will want to expand?" and for the real companies, as an argument that makes sure they form no cartel!



The real threat to Sweden's four dairy giants is not adding Finnish Valio to a competition of four national giants rather than four times a single regional giant. The real threat to them is precisely the reintroduction of the Bombay way of dealing with milk.



Let us return to Bombay. After all, it is a very very hot place, there are flies ... how do Indians avoid getting sick from drinking milk? If hygienic laws are applied even in cold Sweden or Norway, maybe at least they should apply there? Or does Bombay offer another solution?



  • A) They do not buy and drink fresh milk after a certain hour.


  • B) They do take the milk home to boil it. Like the basic milk candy recipy: boil, take off the skin, put it aside, take off next skin, put it on top of the first, and so on: afterwards the milk skins are "baked" to candy, usually with tasty additions.


I will offer a few suggestions along the b line, not because drinking milk while fresh is a worse idea, but because it is not very much more to say about it:




  • A) Some people enjoy milk and sugar in their coffee - or tea. To such, European customs offer an equivalent to that Indian way of preserving the milk: take the fresh milk, add an equal proportion of sugar, boil till volume is halved, and the colour is hazel nut brown. This will keep consumable for a year, if kept in a closed jar. I found the recipy in a Russian cooking book, but the emigrés on Côte d'Azur may be behind the fact that the product is also found ready made by factories in France.


  • B) Let the milk go sour, heat until it curdles, separate the curdles from whey in a clean cloth and make fresh cheese of the curdles.


  • C) Let the milk go sour, skim the cream, make butter of it.


And what is the milk and dairy cartel - since such it is - doing about the Bombay system? Tetra-Pak was these last years into the arrangements for introducing vacuum packaging into Bombay or Delhi or whatever.


Hans Lundahl,
17/30 August,
Arles







*from Portuguese Boa Bahía/Bom Bahía : "Mumbay" is no ancient name, just anti-colonialist balderdash to wash off the memory of the Portuguese colony - no matter, since I am here praising one commercial custom of small commerce in that city.


series: 1 Defending Distributism 2 Mom & Pop Stores ... 3 What is a cartel? Snow and milk business compared

mercredi 27 août 2008

Paléolithique

Je n'entretiens aucun doute sérieux sur l'existence du paléolithique. Mais, comme créationniste de l'école création récente de l'univers, je crois tout simplement pas aux dates allégués.

C14 peut tromper. Si au paléolithique le taux de C14 dans l'atmosphère était vastement inférieur à l'actuel ou à la moyenne imaginé par les compteurs, alors les os et peaux d'animaux de l'époque vont se montrer beaucoup plus vieux que réellement. Comme inversement le Saint Suaire, s'il y a eu de contamination quantitativement sérieuse de matière organique comme suie de bougies ou huile (dans une incendie de 1532, le suaire étant plie, une moniale a éteint le feu - qui donna les quatre marques de brulures - avec ce qu'elle avait le plus accessible, à savoir huile: suffisamment pour que son froid éteigne le feu malgré sa nature inflammable: ma référence pour l'huile est ma mémoire d'une émission télé en 1978 ou 79, mais pour la date wikipédia), il n'y a pas seulement le C14 des textiles et des tâches sanguinaires, mais aussi le C14 naturellement de plus haut taux parce que plus récent de cette huile et de la suie. Ou encore, si le divin rajeunit et le diabolique vieillit, si le divin préserve et le diabolique détruit, on peut aussi compter sur la possibilité surnaturelle, que le suaire garde son C14 moins affecté par le temps que normal - et que certains rélictes d'ogres sont plus vite viellis que normal, ce que donnerait des dates fantaisistes pour les humanoïdes farouches. D'autres ont dit que les néanderthals étaient des hommes presque millésimaires - les patriarches avant le Deluge tels que les décrit la Genèse.

Si la date fait dispute, néanmoins nous les créationnistes (en tant qu'on puisse parler d'une contre-culture comme d'un mouvement homogène ou établi, un "nous"), nous ne doutons pas qu'il y a eu d'hommes qui vivaient aux Les Eyzies de Tayac en Dordogne et qui, qu'elle qu'était leur rapport avec les agriculteurs dans la suite d'Adam, montraient une culture qu'on déchiffre communément comme une culture de chasseurs et cueilleurs. Ni qui leur oeuvre artistique comprenne la grotte de Lascaux. Ni - surtout pas - que la tradition d'interprétation (telle que la lectio divina pour la Bible) ait été perdue.

Car interpréter l'art de Lascaux, c'est comme reconstruir le proto-indo-européen ou encore le proto-nord-européen pré-indo-européen et pré-fenno-ugrien (un hobby linguistique de Tolkien qui nous a donné Le Seigneur des Anneaux presque comme sous-produit). L'énigme persiste, les solutions différents se succèdent.

A certaine époque, il s'agissait de scènes de chasse et de magie de chasse. Plus tard, les Vénus paléolithiques ont été interprétés comme la grande déesse mère de tout gibier comme des hommes. L'écosophie tachait de "réhabiliter" cette culte prétendument pas seulement féministe et chamaniste mais aussi sans échelle de valeur et pré-rationnelle.

Maintenant ça se remet en question aussi. Apparamment les habitants de Dordogne étaient loin d'être féministes avant le mot, mais plutôt ultra-machistes qui disposaient de leurs femmes comme des choses, sinon comme de marchandises au moins comme d'objets de diplomathie. Car auprès des divers animaux, il y a des vulves. Pour les féministes écosophes, c'était une prière à la déesse mère de reproduir tel ou tel gibier, mais pour Emmanuel Anati - interviewé par François Dufay pp. 22 et suivv. L'EXPRESS 14/8/2008 - les animaux sont des clans et les vulves sont le nombre des femmes cédées à un tel ou tel clan. Il s'agit

"d'une sorte de contrats de mariage: on fournit cinq réproductrices au clan du Bison..." (p 22).

Et les Vénus paléolithiques sont désormais très difficiles à interpréter, mais probablement des mascots - déesses inférieures ou des porte-bonheur - domestiques pour les accouchements (ibid. p 26).

Enfin, G K Chesterton, in his Everlasting Man (voir p. 16 ce lien), ajouta une autre théorie: Lascaux et les autres grottes étaient peut-être des crèches à décor magnifique.

Pourquoi pas, enfin? Comme le C14, il s'agit des signes non-verbales et non accompagnées d'une explication verbale traditionnelle depuis l'époque, et par là-même interprétables et réinterprétables à souhaite et d'avantage! Comme le dit C S Lewis: "the man who made the worst pottery might have made the best poetry - and we shall never know". Emmanuel Anati reprend ça: "Je pense qu'il existait pas seulement des peintres, mais aussi des troubadours. Autour de cet art pariétal, il faut imaginer de la musique, peut-être des danses, de la socialisation, des rélations sexuelles" (p 23, article cité). Mots clefs: existait, car les éventuels troubadours paléolithiques sont décédés, et ils n'ont pas laissé, ni textes en écriture alphabétique, ni enrégistrations sur CD; et encore imaginer, car la réconstruction de ces textes manquants - ou tout simplement de leur signification et fonction générale - est un oeuvre tout aussi fictif que la Silmarillion comme reconstitution des mythes nordiques avant leurs états connus dans les Edda, Kalevala, et c.

La Genèse, au moins, reclame être la mémoire retenue des débuts de l'humanité. Ses textes composants (les chapitres) sont tous suffisamment simples pour avoir été transmis oralement sans défiguration jusqu'à ce que Moïse les léga aux lettres.

Hans Lundahl
14/27 août 2008
St Césaire d'Arles (NC)
Arles

lundi 25 août 2008

Mom & Pop Stores ...

And what happened to the medieval Mom and Pop merchants who could not produce goods in larger quantities or deliver them to distant ports? They could not compete with the politically dominant “cloth barons”, and many found themselves extremely disadvantaged. (footnote already cited in my first response)

That was cloth. What about cobbling? If we take Sweden, I know my grandfather (born 1900), as a young, very poor man was cobbler's apprentice for a short while. He showed me an awl he had used. It is used for shoemaking. I e shoes, unlike the era of ecco (founded in 1963), Scholl (over 100 years), and their the Goodyear Welt shoe toe laster - gramp used a pincer (see picture to left, where right is that machine, both near bottom) - were long a local product. Gentlemen usually had them sewn individually. A Swedish television series shows a shoemaker's nephew in a curious friendship with a girl living in the house of the "häradshöfding" (judge/notarian of a hundred). The point here about this series is that the shoemaker was poor and had many children to feed- living, mainly, from his shoemaking. Shoe repairing, as in modern malls, would not have sufficed. In that village, shoes were obviously produced and sold in a mom & pop shop.

Later my grandfather became a qualified worker in a very big business indeed: he was a distiller of our then state monopoly of Swedish distilling, V&S. But when I was born in Vienna (1968), he found a friend there: a vinyard owner, wine producer and taverner in a combination seen in Austria since Maria Theresia. He and even more his wife were part of my childhood. That is a mom & pop shop (with agrarian roots) for you, and less poor than cobbling!


In Austria as in Germany and France ... God knows how many other countries ... it is still usual to buy your bread fresh from a local bakery. Some of them buy half-baked from a central factory and only add the last five minutes, but this is not universal. Even those who do that for one bread or two (la baguette/la banette, le pain au chocolat/la chocolatine) may be baking other products from scratch.

Arabs (with other Orientals) are a model for mom & pop shops! The family works, pays part of their earnings to a family hoarding, from which family members may then make rent free loans to - for instance - open shops. Usually they are either restoration or oriental merchandise in Europe. In Lund, studying in the early nineties, I was neighbours with a Persian double business - restaurant and food store. Brother and sister were the two owners. And how many cyber cafés are owned by Arabs? The technology as such is very big business, but the local access is very distributist.


Distributist ideals are not dead as realities. As Dr Carol Byrne said herself, mom & pop shops may well co-exist with big business. A capitalist reform going in since Reagan and Thatcher has been reusing distributist themes. Including small companies. G. K. Chesterton himself had no quibbles about the post office being a big business (and indeed, in those days, recently changed by privatisations, a state monopoly). And how many small companies (including some family business) depend on sale by mail order? But she will not concede that the distributist ideal was once the main reality and big business the exception. However, I think she will concede:
  • distributism has diminished, lost market shares (up to whole sectors)

  • big business has taken over market shares (up to whole sectors)

  • this process has been going on in the West since the Crusades introduced capitalism to the West

The conclusion will be that when the process started, mom & pop shops/farms were greater and big business smaller than now.


If in 13th C England cloth trade was exceptional (among some 80 different kinds of guilds) by being big business, and in early 20th C Sweden cobbling was exceptional by being still a mom & pop shop, the conclusion would be that most shops in 13th C were mom & pop shops, as most shops now are owned by bigger businesses. G K Chesterton maintained that this could again be the case.


It seems that Dr Carol Byrne is making a real straw man of Belloc's Mediaevalism - for Chesterton's, it is obviously the case, if it is thought to correspond to "Belloc's":

The facts of history, however, are at variance with this utopian dream. To begin with, it presupposes that the whole of the medieval economy was sustained by subsistence farming and local, small-scale production of goods. According to this view, whatever commerce existed in those days was confined to the small tradesman solely preoccupied with earning a living for himself and his family. So it is simply assumed that there was no commercial activity of any magnitude to justify belief in a class of capitalist merchants in Europe prior to the Reformation.


She is conflating two categories which, though not always neatly separate, were held apart in theory and much of the practise. In Cicero, full honesty applies to autarchy, to own production for own consumption, next step is someone buying what he will consume or selling what he has produced. Buying one thing only to sell it - which is what a merchant does - would be only third level honest, and edging on dishonesty. Though Aquinas contrasts merchants to mainly civil and domestic servants, he makes a minor distinction between selling something as one bought it for a greater price (what is usually called being a merchant) and selling something at a higher price than bought, after improving it (i e being an artisan buying one's raw or proximate materials). Merchants, who sold luxuries from abroad and raw materials not found everywhere (salt, iron, wool - since sheeps don't grass on wheat fields) were obviously Capitalist. But farmers began an existence less feudal and artisans making local products had not ended it and did not end it until the industrial revolution.

Hans Lundahl
14/27 August 2008,
St Cesarius of Arles (NC)
Arles

series: 1 Defending Distributism 2 Mom & Pop Stores ... 3 What is a cartel? Snow and milk business compared

Not Skeeter either ...

You Are Scooter
Brainy and knowledgeable, you are the perfect sidekick.
You're always willing to lend a helping hand.
In any big event or party, you're the one who keeps things going.
"15 seconds to showtime!"


Which Muppet Personality are you?




You Are Tea



You are mellow and reflective. You don't allow yourself to feel in a rush and frenzied.

You're likely to appreciated the ideas or connections that come up over a warm cup of tea.



While you do enjoy the energy of a caffeine boost, you love that it allows you to take a break.

You're not in a rush to do anything. You're content with your life, and in no rush to change it.






You Are an Espresso



At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic



At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung



You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping



Your caffeine addiction level: high






You Are Milk Chocolate



A total dreamer, you spend most of your time with your head in the clouds.

You often think of the future, and you are always working toward your ideal life.

Also nostalgic, you rarely forget a meaningful moment... even those from long ago.

vendredi 22 août 2008

Defending Distributism

In response to http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/tradition/page46.phtml by Dr Carol Byrne

The following quote shows Belloc's misplaced criticism of modern bankers who provide financial services to the world's corporations and institutions:

The bankers can decide, of two competitors, which shall survive. As the great majority of enterprises lie in debt to the banks-any one of two competing industries can be killed by the bankers saying: "I will no longer lend you this money"....This power makes the banks the masters of the greater part of modern industry. (Hilaire Belloc, Economics for Helen, p. 96)

But if banks did not exercise such discrimination, they would be guilty of irresponsibility to their customers; credit lines available to the bank would be cancelled and its share price would plunge, to the detriment of many. It was Belloc's view, expressed in The Servile State, that the mass of small owners would have provided the accumulation of wealth for material prosperity "without the leave of the bankers."



My dear Carol: such powers and responsibilities existed in Mediaeval/Renaissance Venice too. As you say, and as is also witnessed by The Merchant of Venice. Difference: the Jew who exercised them was seen as a villain. At least by the Englishmen who watched Shakespear. The ideal back then, as the ideal for distribustists now, is an artsman or merchant not endebted and therefore not subjected to that kind of power used for the ends of such responsibility. You have made pretty heavy weather out of the fact that large scale banking existed in "the Middle Ages" (around 14-15th C) whereas Distributists hanker back to "the Middle Ages" (around 11-12th C). But the salient fact now as compared to those times is not the presence of banking, but the near absence of business (farming or otherwise) not subjected to its powers by endebtment. Also, back then greed and avarice was seen as guilty, now it is irresponsibility (a wide spectrum, most of which includes either non-greed or non-avarice) which is seen so.



We can also cite the Knights Templar Bankers who established financial networks across the whole of Christendom, making them the world's first multinational corporation! They invested their immense wealth not only in land (e.g. they bought and owned the whole island of Cyprus), farms and industrial pursuits (e.g. financing the building of Gothic cathedrals), the shipping industry (they owned their own fleets) but also in the Pilgrimage industry which brought huge revenues to the Church and created jobs for workers like innkeepers and ferrymen. The Knights also arranged safe transfer of funds for international and local trade, and loaned money to kings, emperors and princes, bishops and entrepreneurs alike. In fact, Templar wealth was so great that it helped shift the balance of power in medieval Europe from the feudal lords to the "merchant class".



Remember what Pope and French King did to them? Chesterton or Belloc (I forget which) admitted that the process with torture was a judicial murder. But their claim was that these powers were fighting for their life against - Capitalism. The kind of economy, not in which private property or even entrepreneurs exist, but in which they control ultimately public power.


One only has to think of the merchant-banking organizations bearing the name of single families – Medici, Lombard, Frescobaldi, Bardi, Peruzzi for example – that were in control of commercial companies and enjoyed great political power and wealth. (See Edwin S. Hunt, The Medieval Super-Companies: A Study of the Peruzzi Company of Florence, Cambridge University Press, 2002)



I have not read that particular reference, but I seem to recall that was something like 15th C (North of Alps; maybe earlier south of them). The Fuggers started their great carreer back then. The Medici bank was founded after 1400 by Averardo. And so on, and so forth. The Peruzzis were, indeed, earlier off, starting their Capitalist company in 1300. They are also less known, therefore probably smaller than the Medicis. "Throughout the Middle Ages" means that your "Middle Ages" start around 1300. Others would say that is when the Renaissance starts - on the south side of the Alps, add a hundred years before it crosses that border.



Distributists criticize the capitalist system for being based on credit (banking, mortgages, loans, credit cards etc) without realizing that these aspects of modern banking are the development of traditional methods dating from medieval times.



A - A Distributist may answer that even in Mediaeval times these things were not ideal.
B - He may especially answer that in Mediaeval times these things were not even regarded as ideal or as a normal basis for business.
C - Which means that he may very well be arguing against the development of them.



It is also of interest to note that the usury laws did not forbid lending capital for business purposes and receiving profits on the investments. (George O'Brien, An Essay on the Economic Effects of the Reformation, London, 1923, p. 70: "The usury code never forbade any transaction analogous to what we now call investing money in business. So long as the person advancing the money was prepared to share in the risks of the enterprise on which it was employed, he was perfectly entitled to share in any of the profits in which the enterprise might result.")



It would seem that that was a kind of shareholding rather than a kind of interest taking. And as for shareholding, the novelty is "limited liability" share holding. Maybe what are now called directed loans were back then precursors of these limited liability companies.



It is one of those ironies of history that Capitalism has been instrumental in procuring many of the things Distributism originally hoped to foster but failed to do so: wider ownership of private property, greater economic participation, co-operative enterprise, etc.



Has that maybe happened after distributism?



And what happened to the medieval Mom and Pop merchants who could not produce goods in larger quantities or deliver them to distant ports? They could not compete with the politically dominant "cloth barons", and many found themselves extremely disadvantaged. (For further details see E M Carus-Wilson, who states in Medieval Merchant Ventures: Collected Studies: "This industry, moreover, was already "capitalist", the weavers and fullers being in effect employees of entrepreneurs, amongst whom the dyers were prominent." Professor Carus-Wilson elaborates on this situation in 'The English Cloth Industry in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries', Economic History Review, 1944. As workers in the textile industry, the weavers and fullers lost their independence when the entrepreneurial dyers, using their political influence as members of the Merchants Guild, abrogated their monopoly rights which they had held by royal charter. This meant that they were subordinated to the authority of the dyers who set earnings and established quality control standards. In London and Oxford, for example, the dyers also exercised pre-emptive rights over their weavers' and fullers' production by restricting their business dealings, and preventing them from taking their cloth (the products of their own labour) to the fairs and regional markets.)



The example tells that this is once again about the English Mediaeval Cloth market, which admittedly led to the growth of Capitalism, as known today.



Late phenomena for Middle Ages, early ones for Capitalism/Renaissance - used to smudge a main picture, in which most artisans, though not most Merchants, were independent of banking.



If Distributism can be seen as ahistorical, it is in this: in towns' trades they go for 11th-12th C, before banking arose in the West. In agriculture they go for the 13th-14th C, when slavery was in practise abolished, when feudalism was decaying and peasantry was there. But maybe there was a golden Moment corresponding to the coincidence of both these stories.


For example, with the discovery of new agricultural technologies, food production has increased much more rapidly than population, enabling millions to stay alive who would otherwise have died of starvation.



Ah, well? Now that is a moot point. How much of the agricultural produce by acre is due to new technologies? How much of the agricultural produce per farmer/farm worker is due to them? A tractor is producing food - for unemployed people who might, some of them, have produced the same food by going behind an ox-drawn plough, having employment as well as food.



Similarly with improvements in technology – the Wright brothers' project would not have taken off the ground without Boeing, Lockheed and other airline companies to develop it for public transport;



Indeed. With consequences like air borne ww epidemics and terrorism. Old technology was not behind september 11, old social morality not behind the indignation for it. And the Airport tyranny (and "plans vigipirates" - ma présence en France, vous savez). And responding to needs of people who live not where their food is produced, because it is produced in new ways that need less men.



In short, it is only the big firms that can turn innovations into products which ordinary consumers (not just the wealthy) can afford to buy or use, surely a benefit to mankind.



You presume that the ordinary consumer must be the one either disemployed or employed by large companies, in whose profits their wage is a small share. If you say that modern Bauhaus architecture ("houses without eyebrows") is the only one affordable for industrial workers and social cases to live in, I may moderately and hesitatingly agree. If you add that a working distributist system is one in which most people have only that class of relative prosperity, I disagree. Also, artisanal products concentrate more than usual on the expensive since the market for the cheap is taken over by ... big business run industries using new technologies. That - along with rising land prices, adapted to an industrial rather than modestly artisanal exploitation - falsifies the prices of artisanal production. At least as far as relative social price is concerned.



A small Wealth Pie brings fewer goods and services, long queues in the shops, stagnation in development, with resultant deprivation of essential commodities (food, hygiene, health care etc.) – not a good idea if you want a long and healthy life above the barest minimum of subsistence.



I take the long queues first, with relief. If fewer live in towns and more on the country - replacing tractors - there are fewer to queue in the shops. Because more eat from what they pick or harvest in fields or gardens. This is where distributism differs most from Communism of the East bloc variety.



Less health care. True. Belloc dreaded a society in which preserving the sick takes priority over giving birth to healthy. Not because he wanted to kill the sick - he was a Christian, and Pol Pot would have nauseated him - but because he foresaw a society in which the balance of generations and otherwise of the working and the depending would verge to a great discomfort. I think this is happening. Death is not a friend, but an enemy. But the fight against death goes by babies more than by preserving invalids. Nowadays doctors are getting closer to dictators, and young mothers ask themselves - or are brutally asked by others, including close relatives - if giving birth is really "responsible". In Germany the old are already so many that old voters outnumber voters raising families. Double working parents with few children; young workers too ill at ease to make fertile couples; all that to maintain a system of old age insurance based on a very big business: the State. It is now supplemented by another big business: insurance companies. But the problem is not who keeps the nominal money between when you earn it and when you get old or sick enough to spend it, but how many work when how many spend. The old age insurance based on bigger things than your own children and your own neighbours ... I do not think it will survive for masses, even if it will for misers.



A little question of definition:



Another advantage of big business is that ownership of such enterprises (and profits from them) is widely dispersed among many shareholders, often including some large institutional investors (insurance companies, pension funds, universities, religious bodies, charitable foundations, and the like.) Their benefits accrue to individuals and to society as a whole. Therefore terms like 'oligarchy' and 'robber barons' are misplaced as a description of the few who become mega-rich in the process. Their wealth is always a source of benefit to communities whether in the form of taxation, job creation, investment, philanthropy or their personal expenditure.



I used the same argument to defend monarchy. If Versailles danced, while peasants starved, Versailles at least employed servants who did not starve. The French King enjoyed not all the food there was in France leaving all other eaters to starve to death. But that does not change the fact that he was King and had powers which neither commons or Aristocrats had. And Capitalism does not means that a small class eats all the ice cream, far from it - but it means that a small class decide who produces most of the ice cream eaten. Because they have shares in Ben & Jerry's or the different avatars of Unilever, but not in the next "Italian" who uses a recipy for more than his own family's private consumption. Unless there is a tourist resort, where people ask for home made ice cream.



Concretely it is in Europe impossible to get Root Beer because A&W has sold its international rights to Coca Cola Company, unless I misremember, who are producing A&W for Asia, but not for Europe.



Difference between a monarchy like Louis XVI and an oligarchy like that of ... well, I had a family connection working for the one which came unsought to my mind, so I pass ... and other big pharmaceutic companies? The job of the monarch is to maintain justice. The job of pharmaceutic companies is not to maintain health, but a consumption of "health related" products. Some of them produce condoms and abortion pills.

Hans Lundahl
9/22 August 2008
Arles

Written the day before in the space of SFR Jeunes Talents Photo Exposition (Thanx for their unwilling participation).

series: 1 Defending Distributism 2 Mom & Pop Stores ... 3 What is a cartel? Snow and milk business compared



mardi 19 août 2008

Between two 15 August

Between the Gregorian one and the the Julian one. By a sinner unworthy, but trying to make peace in his life, and with those he hurt.



I believe the Dormition of Our Lady the Theotokos. She ceased to breathe, her heart ceased to beat. Her earthly life took an end. She was buried. Thomas opened the grave later, and she was no longer there. Probably she was assumed into heaven.



Pius XII tried to make a dogma of that assumption. My problem with his bull is elsewhere.

...Yet, according to the general rule, God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come. And so it is that the bodies of even the just are corrupted after death, and only on the last day will they be joined, each to its own glorious soul.
5. Now God has willed that the Blessed Virgin Mary should be exempted from this general rule. She, by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.



from Munificentissimus Deus

This seems to state that she alone was exempt from "corruption of the grave" (the Latin text I remember is closer to such understanding than this English one) - but if the word means simply death, that seems to contradict the dormition. And if the word fully means corruption, this would seem to contradict all the uncorrupt saints, including St John the Theologian, the adoptive son of the Theotokos.

First I solved this by denying Pius XII was Pope. That would logically have made me a Colinist, but by a misunderstanding I was Palmarian instead. The Palmarian theory that real popes, prisoners in the Vatican had false (or adulterated?) documents published in their name seemed to me to make sense. Now I rather think that the Popes were never meant as direct rulers of the Church Universal. As judges when some of the other bishops fail - yes. As bishops of the other bishops - no. I think their writings (except when confirmed by universal tradition or a council accepted by all the Orthodox Church) could be regarded as the Lefebvrians regard "non-infallible Papal teaching" (Gaudium et Spes, Centesimo Anno).

May God grant me true orthodoxy of faith and help me to make peace with whomever I have hurt who did not really deserve it.

Hans Lundahl
6/19 August 2008
OC Transfiguration Feast
Arles

lundi 18 août 2008

Bon ordre des possédants - liberté des démunis

Ça s'appelle aussi hospitalité. J'en ai eu, heureusement.

Merci, merci!

Ajoutons que je dois le rencontre au fait d'avoir respecté la propriété plus tôt même soir. Squatter dans l'escalier d'un immeuble - oui, mais juste tant que les locataires ou copropriétaires sont d'accord.

samedi 2 août 2008

Anarchie des propriétaires, communisme des démunis ...

Anarchie veut dire qu'on peut faire quoi que ce soit sans être puni par ordre d'un juge, communisme veut dire réglimentation et inculcation d'esprit d'équipe.

Quand à Avignon un mendiant peut être insulté parce qu'il n'aille pas au Secours Catho, quand une fois là il doit payer certains services, notamment d'hygiène, quand à Avignon c'est qu'on blesse des gens si on entre les bibliothèques avec des fringues qui puent, quand à la campagne on se voit interpellé par police et recommendé de prendre travail parce qu'on mendie sa nourriture quand on peut être insulté parce qu'on vient de demander argent que ce soit là ou là .... il me semble que le titre de ce message soit un peu juste quand même.

Juste pour ne pas laisser que des liens aujourd'hui ... 20 juillet/2 août 2008, Avignon

Hans Lundahl

O governo Lula e o combate à castidade (enlace)

The Holy Orthodox Popes of Rome/OrthodoxEngland (link)

Les tradis à Jérusalem (lien)

Airport Tyranny/Dinoscopus (link)

vendredi 25 juillet 2008

Vérités "de droite" et "de gauche"

Evidemment, ni les vérités, ni la vérité qu'elles constituent, ne sont de droite ou de gauche, sauf la vérité que l'homme a ces deux cotés dans son corps. Le théorème de Pythagore ne vote pas de droite, parce que Pythagore croyait (dans sa liste des oppositions, style yin/yang) que la main gauche portait malheur. Les nombres de Fibonacci ne votent pas à gauche parce que da Vince (qui les utilisait) était gauchier.

Avec une évidence pareille, il y a des vérités, dont les partis de droite ou de gauche s'accaparent dans les débats politiques - comment pouvaient-ils autrement attirer les votes? Parfois la logique en souffre:

  • La liberté d'éduquer ses enfants sans électricité dans la maison - écolo, donc de gauche. La liberté de les éduquer sans les envoyer à une école laïque et obligatoire pour tous - chrétienne, donc de droite.
  • La liberté de faire la route et vivre dans la rue avec ses enfants et son époux ou son épouse - hippie, donc de gauche. La liberté de se marier jeune pour les garder ensemble - traditionnaliste, donc de droite.
  • La liberté des musulmanes de porter la voile dans l'école - menace à la chrétienneté de la nation, donc une liberté de gauche. La même liberté pour des vocations monastiques - menace à sa laïcité, donc liberté d'extrème droite.
  • La liberté de fumer haschisch avec modération - anarchique, donc de gauche. La même liberté pour l'alcool - antique, donc de droite.
  • La liberté d'écouter trash metal dans la cour de l'école - anarchique, donc de gauche. La liberté de chanter y-même le grégorien - antique, donc de droite.
  • La liberté d'écarter les chrétiens de parmi ses potes (si l'on est laïc) - laïque, donc de gauche. La liberté d'en rayer les laïcs (si on est chrétien) - chrétienne, donc de droite.
  • La liberté d'une femme de ne pas se marier tôt, de travailler - féministe, donc de gauche. La liberté d'une-même de se marier tôt, d'être nourri par le mari - sexiste, donc de droite.
  • La liberté d'un jeune de ne pas prendre conseil d'un prêtre, mais d'un psychiâtre - laïc et scientifique, donc de gauche ou du milieu. La liberté d'un jeune de ne pas prendre conseil d'un psychiâtre mais d'un prêtre - chrétienne, donc de droite.
  • La liberté de pensé vis-à-vis la Génèse et Josué et la vue et le sens commun d'accepter darwinisme et héliocentrisme et d'éduquer ses enfants d'après ça - laïque et scientifique, donc de gauche ou du milieu. La liberté de pensé vis-à-vis darwinisme et héliocentrisme d'accepter la Génèse et Josué et la vue et le sens commun et d'éduquer ses enfants d'après ça - obscurantiste, donc de droite.
Et c. Et c. Et c. Et, à part la bonne logique, la paix entre les citoyens (évidemment de droite ou de gauche) en souffre aussi, et on voit déjà leur libertés s'effondrer et les pouvoirs des bureaucraties s'augmenter.


Hans Lundahl
12/25 juillet 2008
Avignon

jeudi 24 juillet 2008

mardi 22 juillet 2008

He baptised my granny

My unseen stepgrandmother as well as my stepgrandfather: Heinrich and Agnes Brautmann, were baptised together by Msgr. Ghika

Memory eternal!

I thought he was Latin, I did not know he was born in an Orthodox family. My deepest regret about SSPX is that it is anti-orthodox, that it considers Orthodoxy as schism. My deepest regret about Old Calendarists is that it considers papism as heresy.

My enemies, their methods goals and approximate possible descriptions

When lying accusations * dare not appear
When half told lies * hold people in fear
When virtue is made
To hide in the shade
Like vice and perversion * - psychology's there!

When Chaplin's last marriage * and Sodom's last crime
Are seen as one sickness * in our muddleheaded time
But all is excused
If you will be used
By shrinks or employers * - there's no reason, no rhyme!

When payment is due * for "faults" in the past
According to "justice" * in a network that's too vast
That cares not for truth
When "protecting the youth"
I believe I perceive * Free Masonry's blast:

Or maybe the synagogue's * (part Jewish I am
But foremost a Christian * the Talmud is sham)
Whatever's the reason
It ruins my season
Whoever's behind it * I don't like this SPAM!

These Moslems came late * onto the path of my life
And maybe someone else * is the root of this strife
But some have been trying
To end my defying:
To give me menial work * and a spinster for wife.

lundi 21 juillet 2008

"In der Schule verrohen die Kinder" (Link)

on same theme:

Homeschooling and Socialization

UPDATE: above link no longer works.
Common objections to homeschooling still does. Its answers to objection nr 6 deal with same issue.

dimanche 20 juillet 2008

Royalisme ou royauté? Quoi sert à quoi?

Je crois que la royauté a une chance, parce que les partis politiques divisent la vérité politico-morale et économico-morale entre eux. Parce que trop souvent des discussions internes fort nécessaires dans chacun des partis sont étouffés par le constat "ce n'est pas constructif". C'est à dire: ça sert à l'autre parti, pas au notre. Après, les discussions internes des partis font surface, ayant écarté tout ce qui "n'est pas constructif". Et si quelqu'un qui voulait débattre une vérité "de gauche" (c à d prise par la gauche) dans un parti de droite ou une vérité "de droite" dans un parti de gauche tâche après de se faire entendre dans le débat général, tout débat interne ayant déjà écarté sa position comme "non constructive" se trouve, à cause de ces débats internes, encore une fois étouffé dans le débat général. C'est d'ailleurs exactement ce que disait Ch. Maurras (mémoire éternelle!).

Le royalisme sert normalement à la royauté, et celle-ci sert, normalement et entre autres choses, à rendre cet esprit de parti hors état de nuire, ouvrant le débat à tout ce qui n'est pas trahison ou blasphème. Attention, je parle de trahison envers la patrie (T et ensuite R, feminin) ou l'armé, pas juste "trahison" envers le parti (R et ensuite T, masculin) - un substantif qui avec ses synonymes a fait carrière dans la politique des partis.

Mais on a vu le siècle passé que l'élimination des partis est parfois passé par l'élimination de tous les partis sauf un. Avec un étouffement pour tout débat qui n'est pas interne au parti unique. Il y a une grande différence entre absence de partis (réf angl.) et parti unique dans les élections*. Une restauration monarchique pour et par absence de partis serait bienvenue. Une restauration qui ferait du parti légitimiste le seul parti, ne le serait pas forcement.

Hans Lundahl

*Sans partis, comment établir une proportionnalité entre les votes, s'il y a juste les personnes auxquelles on vote?

A: la proportionnalité porte sur localité partielle ou classe partielle des votants. P. ex. la Commune d'Avignon; il y aura des représentants tels pour centre historique, tels pour St Ruf, tels pour autour de l'Hôpital, et c en foncion des habitants; ou encore tels pour les propriétaires de café, tels pour les employés de Bibliothèque ou Musée, et c. en fonction des catégories socio-professionnels des habitants, et c.

B: si on vote sur plusieurs personnes, et si on vote pour une personne deux fois le nécessaire pour qu'il soit élu, il pourrait avoir deux mandats (sériellement ou simultanément selon son choix ou les dispositions légales ou locales). Ou il pourrait encore supplementer les votes mancants pour l'élection d'un autre candidat.

samedi 19 juillet 2008

"When does His Grace Hilarion sleep?" /Orthodixie (link)

As to post title chosen by Father Huneycutt, composing need not keep one awake for hours on end.

vendredi 18 juillet 2008

How e v e r

Ayers has something to say, its a pity to miss it because of his past:

"This is a time not only of great stress and oppression and authoritarianism, and a kind of rising incipient American form of fascism, and what the government counts on, what the powerful count on, is that we will stay quiet. It's the idea that we can tolerate these intolerable things without screaming, without somehow coming out, joining up and coming out and saying something. It's what they count on in terms of keeping things under control."


It is not by calling adoption "the responsible option" as if every indulgence in teens were not just a sin, but a mismatch to be repaired by loneliness and separation, rather than marriage and mother-/fatherhood, that one will stop (if ever abortions). It is by calling every deviance from "responsability" a disaster to be erased by doing the contrary, that one pushes teens into getting abortions rather than families (and works). It is by demanding more and more qualifications and "preparations for real life" (mine has not started at nearly forty, they are still not letting me stand for my compositions last wednesday) for the simplest tasks, that one keeps teenagers out of work and fatherhood.

Hans