So Enoch Burke has been in jail for 3 weeks and no sign of resolution. The only way they can get rid of him is to admit to constructive dismissal and pay him damages. Why constructive dismissal? Because when he was hired there was probably nothing in his contract about ‘dead’ names and preferred pronouns. Mr. Burke would not have accepted this at that time. This being a new thing for the school he is within his rights to say ‘I didn’t sign up for this’ and you can’t demand it of me. At this point leaving him in jail will be interpreted as vindictive. Hate speech laws are not in place yet and they are sure to be very controversial. Most people can distinguish between hate speech and compelled speech. Both are different forms of fatuous authoritarianism. The media that continues to say that Mr. Burke is keeping himself in jail through not purging his contempt are not effective against the truth that he is a teacher who is resisting the lunacy that humans are bio-machines that can be tinkered with and modified limitlessly to the extent that a boy can become a girl. Is it a precursor of the more ambitious program of transhumanism? Possibly. Both are symptoms of the dismissal of God and nature.
Tuesday 27 September 2022
Saturday 17 September 2022
Oh, Oh Antonio Gramsci
John Waters talking to James Collins
A masterly summary by John Waters of how Marxism evolved from being about class war and economics into Cultural Marxism which focused on the infiltration of institutions such as the Press and the University to promulgate their doctrines and the switch away from the proles to the other ‘oppressed’ classes such as blacks, gays, women etc and the general demonization of the white male patriarchy etc, family, etc. The coining of the ‘long march through the institutions’ is ascribed to Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, and it was taken up by Rudi Dutschke a 68‘r as a slogan. Wikipedia tells me that he was a guest of Conor Cruise O’Brian in Ireland and considered for a while staying here. The Cruiser was our first public intellectual and our second Fintan O’Toole wrote his M.A. thesis on Antonio Gramsci. Clearly a great devotee. In a dismal screed against Enoch Burke he compared him to Genghis Khan. The reason Finto can’t analyse the transgender thing too closely is because certain of the feminist faithful are T.E.R.F.'s and want to save the 100 yard dash for born women athletes not to mention changing rooms etc. We must never forget that in post modernism there are no contradictions because there is no definitive truth. To that end I am transitioning to His Excellency and my autonym is ‘whatever’ (you’re having yourself). sláinte an bhradáin, gob fluich ‘is bas in Eireann should it survive.
(health of the salmon, wet gob, and death in Ireland)
Vain Journey
Please stop talking about your journey. You may never get there. Stay with Nisargadatta’s ‘I Am’ and you have
arrived. I don’t know this but I believe
it which makes it truer than knowledge. Man cannot know truth of this sort but he can
embody it.
Friday 16 September 2022
Enoch Burke is back in Jail
Dismissing Enoch Burke's application for an injunction against his being placed on administrative leave with pay, the learned judge said that placing him on said leave was not an attack on his religious beliefs.
This is so contrary to common sense. When someone is suspended from their job is that not a clue that can be twigged? Maybe the performance is not what it ought to be or the hand is found to be in the till. ‘Dear me, is that my hand, well I never’.
If his religious beliefs precipitated the suspension then ipso facto that is an attack on his religious beliefs. He is sincere about them and it is clear that the Church of Ireland (similar in doctrine to Episcopalian and Anglican) has departed from biblical Christianity. As a deictic demonstration of this the board meeting was adjourned sine die. This would likely have dealt with the injunction to stay off the school property which ran until the disciplinary hearing. Now of course he is back in jail. Once free he might turn up again and there would be another injunction. Who will blink first? Not I think Enoch. This could run for a while.
Wednesday 14 September 2022
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
In Greenland when a man wrestles with his soul he generally wins. Fowler for a change has no faith Catholic or Protestant but he believes in death and his love for Phuong the young Vietnamese girl who as the book opens has called on him to find out where her present lover Pyle might be. Six months have passed since she left him for the younger man who is willing to marry her. This is a book that should be read twice for its film of retrospective irony. Pyle does not show and then the knock at the door and the summons to the Surete and an interview with Vigot who awaits him:
"That was why I refused a cigarette from the French officer at the Surete. After three pipes I felt my mind clear and alert: it could take such decisions easily without losing sight of the main question-what do they want from me? I had met Vigot before several times at parties-I had noticed him because he appeared incongruously in love with his wife, who ignored him, a flashy and false blonde. Now it was two in the morning and he sat tired and depressed in the cigarette smoke and the heavy heat, wearing a green eye-shade, and he had a volume of Pascal open on his desk to while away the time.”
((Pyle has been murdered and as a Frenchman Vigot is obliged to consider a passionnel motive.))
“Not guilty,” I said. I told myself that it was true.....
I told myself again I was innocent, while he went down the stone stairs to where the refrigerating plant hummed in the basement.
After Fowler aka Fowlair has related to Phuong the news of her lover’s death she that night moves back in with him. Then the novel breaks into a flashback about the start of the men’s friendship and because we have been told that Pyle was responsible for the death of at least 50 men we know that he must be a C.I.A. spook pilotfish here to meddle while the Indo China war is going on which France is losing and America is about to take the torch to light up its own defeat. It’s about 1954 and 20 years of conflict yet to come and Saigon is still French Saigon on the beautiful bou’ Rue Catinat where Greene himself stayed in the Continental Hotel. Fowlair puts Pyle in the picture:
“And now,” I said, “there’s General The. He was Caodaist Chief of Staff, but he’s taken to the hills to fight both sides, the French, the Communists. . . .”
“York,” Pyle said, “wrote that what the East needed was a Third Force .”Perhaps I should have seen that fanatic gleam, the quick response to a phrase, the magic sound of figures: Fifth Column, Third Force, Seventh Day. I might have saved all of us a lot of trouble, even Pyle, if I had realised the direction of that indefatigable young brain. But I left him with the arid bones of background and took my daily walk up and down the rue Catinat. He would have to learn for himself the real background that held you as a smell does: the gold of the rice-fields under a flat late sun: the fisher’s fragile cranes hovering over the fields like mosquitoes: the cups of tea on an old abbot’s platform, with his bed and his commercial calendars, his buckets and broken cups and the junk of a lifetime washed up around his chair: the mollusc hats of the girls repairing the road where a mine had burst: the gold and the young green and the bright dresses of the south, and in the north the deep browns How often I had explained all this before. I was a record always turned on for the benefit of newcomers-the visiting Member of Parliament, the new British Minister. Sometimes I would wake up in the night saying, “Take the case of the Caodaists.” Or the Hoa-Haos or the Binh Xuyen, all the private armies who sold their services for money or revenge. Strangers found them picturesque, but there is looking picturesque in treachery-and distrust.
“And now,” I said, “there’s General The. He was Caodaist Chief of Staff, but he’s taken to the hills to fight both sides, the French, the Communists. . . .”
“York,” Pyle said, “wrote that what the East needed was a Third Force .”Perhaps I should have seen that fanatic gleam, the quick response to a phrase, the magic sound of figures: Fifth Column, Third Force, Seventh Day. I might have saved all of us a lot of trouble, even Pyle, if I had realised the direction of that indefatigable young brain. But I left him with the arid bones of background and took my daily walk up and down the rue Catinat. He would have to learn for himself the real background that held you as a smell does: the gold of the rice-fields under a flat late sun: the fisher’s fragile cranes hovering over the fields like mosquitoes: the cups of tea on an old abbot’s platform, with his bed and his commercial calendars, his buckets and broken cups and the junk of a lifetime washed up around his chair: the mollusc hats of the girls repairing the road where a mine had burst: the gold and the young green and the bright dresses of the south, and in the north the deep browns and the black clothes and the circle of enemy mountains and the drone of planes.
Greene as that chunk of citation demonstrates is a master of atmosphere and the insidious murmur of intuition. This is not going to go well, the cranes seem to nod, but in between there are adventures and expeditions into the countryside which at night reverts to the control of the enemy. Coming back from a religious festival their car gets stranded on a perilous road and they have to take refuge in one of the watchtowers. What happens is perfect for a movie and indeed two were made. But do yourself a turn and read the book. It’s a classic.
Monday 12 September 2022
My Boring Life
As a domestic hero I am called on to hang shelves from time to time. ‘No problemo’, I talk in the argot of cheerful mechanical. ‘Where do you want it then?’ I went to my stores and looked for plugging rod,/rawlplugs but none did I find therein. Fine I think I can get some after my dentist plugs another hole. It’s just a small shop in the village near us with a good range of hardware where I have bought odd things like chain oil, screws, scythe stone, seeds etc. During Covidology this shop devised a table with a screen across the door behind which stood the proprietor. You gave your order and he or she went back into the shop to fetch it. When today I went up there to get rawl plugs I could see the same set up. I asked ‘Are you still running the Covid setup?’ Yes was the reply. ‘Good luck with that’ I said and turned on my heel.
Since Feb. last mask mandates and all the rest of it have been removed in Ireland and now there is a steady flow of information about the misinformation that was fed to the public back in 2020. The 95% risk reduction of infection promulgated in the msm was not accurate. In fact the paper by the New England Journal of Medicine that underpinned the emergency usage of the vax actually showed a .84% absolute risk reduction which means that out of 119 persons inoculated one would be protected from Covid.
Check out Dr. Malhotra on this video. min 2:31
Sunday 11 September 2022
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Daniel Deronda is really two books joined at the fingertip. Gwendolen and Daniel could easily have been separated and two books quite long enough on their own would have resulted. The Gwen book would have been the better one and the Daniel a much weaker portrait of that one sided moral figure, the paragon. That book of Daniel is riddled with maundering reflections about Judaism and has a slew of coincidences that would have embarrassed Dickens.
Miss Harleth is first introduced to us at the gaming tables losing what she previously won. Deronda is an onlooker and clearly disapproves which she feels chidden by. His moral high ground is gained easily and ought perhaps have been more established by Eliot. But there it is, we are expected to take his ascendency as the fulcrum of their interaction. The beauty of the young woman is constantly being emphasised along with her wilfulness and domineering ways who is catered to in every way. My uncharitable thought was, could this be the revenge of the exceedingly plain George Eliot. She does lay on the beauty’s moral deficiencies and I could feel an ‘Emma’ book emerging. No that did not happen, Eliot being clever but somewhat humourless and inclined to tell and tell and not show.
The confusing thing is that the first chapter at the casino, and her letter from home telling of the financial ruin of the family and her return home is really a flash forward. Then you get the growing up background resplendently prosperous, the cynosure of every eye etc and a fine archer, a perfect Diana and not quite a maiden for all her days. She marries the cad Grandcourt for his money and to save her from being a governess, quite a horrible idea. Why intelligent as she is she won’t help her younger sisters with their lessons. With Grandcourt lying back and thinking of England doesn’t help much.
There’s lots of good scenes in the book and if the Daniel, Mirah, Mordecai/Ezra section could have been misplaced there would have been an excellent novel left. I believe that when it was translated into Hebrew they kept that and dropped the other.
Thursday 8 September 2022
The Book of Enoch Burke
Enoch Burke was suspended on full pay from his post as a teacher at Wilson’s Hospital School in Co. Westmeath. This is a Church of Ireland establishment. He had refused to address a student by their preferred pronoun ‘they’. ‘I will not call a boy a girl’ he said as it would be against his religious principles as an Evangelical Christian. What principles the Church of Ireland/Anglican/Episcopalian have in relation to trans issues is a matter of delicate theological scrying. My intuition would be latetudinarian and the fact that he was suspended would indicate some assumption of wrongdoing to be investigated. Now Burke as a long time veteran of rows with authorities is perfectly aware that this suspension was a form of silencing while a good reason for firing him was ginned up. No he wasn’t going to go quietly and chose a church service attended by staff, students and parents to object to his treatment and to transgenderism in general. Not very polite but quite effective which drew down on his head an injunction to stay clear of the school while his case was being decided. He didn’t do that but insisted on turning up for his timetabled hours. So off to prison till he agrees to purge his contempt which he will not do.
My opinion unlearned as it is: Burke is winning and to get rid of him they will have to come to a massive settlement. As far as I know the student if under 16 cannot apply to have his gender pronoun recognized, if between 16 and 18 can but it is a more lengthy process than the formality for the over 18 years of age person. Now Enoch is not challenging this but opposing his right to freedom of religious conviction and practice to the school’s mandate. This could go Supreme.
Summary of the state of play so far:
state of play:
Wednesday 7 September 2022
Brhadaranyaka Upanisad on the Organs and their Objects
“When through these successive steps, sound and the rest, together with their receiving organs, are merged in Pure Intelligence, there are no more limiting adjuncts, and only Brahman, which is Pure Intelligence, comparable to a lump of salt, homogeneous, infinite, boundless and without a break, remains.” (commentary by Sankara on II.iv.11)The ‘lump of salt’ refers to the famous metaphor of the dissolution of a lump of salt in water. The one taste of salt is found in all the solution. Yes, the objection goes, but there you mention only the objects being merged in the consciousness of them; what of the very organs of perception? This is a very cogent objection and it moves the analysis away from what might be considered a form of idealism back into the realism of the person in the world. Sankara’s answer is a profound switch to a seeming materialist monism.
“True, but the Sruti considers the organs to be of the same category as the objects, not of a different category. The organs are but modes of the objects in order to perceive them, as a lamp, which is but a mode of colour, is an instrument for revealing all colours. Similarly, the organs are but but modes of all particular objects in order to perceive them, as is the case with a lamp. Hence no special care is to be taken to indicate the dissolution of the organs; for these being the same as objects in general, their dissolution is implied by that of the objects.” (ibid)