In George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass triple album he has a song called Awaiting on You All in which he claimed that the Pope owned “51% of General Motors And the stock exchange is the only thing he’s qualified to quote us.” Hmm…. So I wanted to Fact Check this startling claim. But how?… Read More When George Harrison Fibbed About the Pope
“Towards the end of the show someone out in the crowd … knew I wasn’t feeling too well,” recalled Dylan in a 1979 interview. “I think they could see that. And they threw a silver cross on the stage. Now usually I don’t pick things up in front of the stage. Once in a while… Read More Dylan’s Cross.
“Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream”—John Lennon Perhaps it is one of those curious fearful symmetries that the words of John Lennon quoted above are found in the Beatles’ album titled ‘Revolver’…and that he was finally gunned down, shot multiple times in the back by a “fan”. I grew up reading Kerouac… Read More John Lennon and The Seductions of Beautiful Nothing
The events of 1968 had a strong bearing on his shift to a more conservative outlook. Excerpted from “POPE BENEDICT XVI: A Biography of Joseph Ratzinger.” (c) 2000 by John L. Allen, Jr.The Continuum. Joseph Ratzinger arrived at Tübingen [University] in 1966, still enthusiastic about the promise of Vatican II and ready to take his… Read More How the ’60s Changed Ratzinger
Me: Please tell me why the French national anthem began The Beatles’ All You Need is Love. A.I. The Beatles opened “All You Need Is Love” with the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” to symbolize unity and internationalism for a global audience. When The Beatles performed “All You Need Is Love” on June 25, 1967,… Read More The Beatles, A.I., and La Marseillaise
Apropos of everything: Because Martin Heidegger forsook his early roots in Thomistic [objective] Christian philosophy, the unapologetic Nazi who enjoyed philosophy was forced to create a new and eccentric philosophical superstructure [undecipherable and irrelevant to most human beings] to dodge the consequent existential void. It was necessary because his system toppled the Holy Trinity in… Read More Being and Bunk.
A Gorgeous Concept (one story) Album by Sinatra: ‘Watertown.’ Read more about it in Wikipedia. More importantly, give yourself a break and hear it. (Click the cover image) My feelings about Sinatra are similar to my feelings about The Beatles. James K. Fitzpatrick put it very well, “I think Sinatra was a musical genius…” “But…” … Read More Time Out.
I don’t mean to rain on Patrick Madrid’s (or anyone’s) parade. But consider. He writes in bold letters on ‘X’ that the Beatles are the “Greatest Band in History. Don’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like The Beatles!“. But the Beatles cast both genius and deepest shade. I’m in my 7th decade of life. I’ve loved… Read More The Beatles and Where We Are.
… the campaigners trying to legalise class-A drugs – a network stretching to the top of the US government….Timothy Leary remembers Aldous Huxley saying, “We must spread the word… The obstacle to this evolution, Timothy, is the Bible.” Many proponents suggest that drugs can help us evolve to a more perfected state – what Stamets… Read More Inside the Psychedelic Elite
Note: Mary Daly died in January 2010. It is good to be tolerant, even of incoherent things, we are told today. The devil himself ought to be given a seat at the table. So the courts have ruled. But that can’t stop us from noticing that Mary Daly represents the meltdown of the dissident transgressive… Read More Mary Daly: The Witch of Boston College
Or, dreams come true… In No Speed Limit, author and cultural analyst Steven Shaviro writes, “In his science fiction novel Pop Apocalypse, Lee Konstantinou imagines the existence of a “Creative Destruction” school of Marxist-Leninist thought. The adherents of this school “interpret Marx’s writings as literal predictions of the future, so they consider it their mission… Read More The Creative Destruction school of Marxist-Leninist thought.
Before there was Gloria Steinem or Michel Foucault, there was Dada. And it was deadly serious. Kickoff, Demolition time. “Dada thrives on contradictions. It is creative and destructive. Dada denounces the world and wishes to save it.” So says one narrator of journalist-filmmaker Mick Gold’s Europe After the Rain, a 1978 Arts Council of Great Britain documentary… Read More 1914. Europe After the Rain.
Learning the First Notes All Over Again. In Fellini’s film “Orchestra Rehearsal” the Conductor found himself in the midst of a revolt. The musicians had long murmured against he Conductor on account of his rigorous methods, demands and practice sessions. The exchanges between them and he were bitter. Time did not heal this rift but… Read More Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal.
It gladdens the heart to hear that some time ago Jordan Peterson’s wife is reported to have converted to Christ and the Catholic Faith. Will her husband follow her example? Will he part with his longstanding apparent guru, Carl Jung, and reject Jung’s neo-gnostic transvaluations of the Savior? All Catholics must sincerely hope so, for… Read More Jordan Peterson & The Jung Cult
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War Independent, UK. 1995 For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works… Read More Independent, UK: Modern art was Government ‘weapon’.
A fascinating look at the devolution of culture and the arts over time through the lenses and timelines of Beat, Folk, and Rock ‘n Roll. Superseding orthodox Marxism and other political and social movements, theBeat Movement was the ovum of all later decadent movements in both cultures and music . The Encyclopedia Brittanica defined the… Read More Psychedelia, Beat, Folk, Rock’n’roll…and Us
“The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer – the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace – including some intended… Read More How Evil Thee, Sidney? How Evil We?
“The issue [of the week] is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”–Students for a Democratic Society, Marxist SDS. Revolutionary Con Man Saul Alinsky. Inciting “Power Responses”: No boys, no girls, no mothers, no fathers, no religion…“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for‘ (Apropos of the above hymn to Obama, ironically, Black… Read More Always the Revolution
Damian Thompson associate editor of The Spectator writes, “Ludwig van Beethoven had a profound faith in God. He was born and raised a Catholic and on his deathbed he asked to receive the Last Rites. He told the priest, ‘I thank you, ghostly sir – you have brought me comfort.’ One of his closest friends,… Read More Why didn’t Beethoven Go to Mass?
By Mallory Millet. Front Page Magazine. Feminist icon Kate Millett passed away recently in Paris at the age of 82. Her 1970 book Sexual Politics, called “the Bible of Women’s Liberation” by the New York Times, had a seismic effect on feminist thought and launched Millett as what the Times called “a defining architect of… Read More My Sister Kate: The Destructive Feminist Legacy of Kate Millett
“Vilified by fellow Victorians for his sexuality and his dandyism, Oscar Wilde, the great poet, satirist and playwright, is hailed today, in some circles, as a “progressive” sexual liberator. But this is not how Wilde saw himself. His actions and pretensions did not bring him happiness and fulfillment. This study of Wilde’s brilliant and tragic… Read More The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde. Joseph Pearce.
Andy Warhol’s self portrait (not the first photo seen here, but the purple thing…) sold some years back for $32.6 million. But that’s mere chump change; the highest price I’d seen fetched for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. Imagine. I mean, the pop painter, printmaker and so-called… Read More Perception as Value. Andy Warhol.
“Have you ever noticed how television and print media will scream themselves hoarse in news documentaries, editorials and heavy analytical pieces about “rising pornography, crime, violence, gunplay” etc.? And yet in the same TV Guide announcing the latest special on “The Crisis of Sex and Violence in America,” there will appear an advertisement for “Miami… Read More Media Inducing the Double-Mind
by Charlotte Allen, 2001 WICCA, sometimes known as the Goddess movement, Goddess spirituality, or the Craft, appears to be the fastest-growing religion in America. Thirty years ago only a handful of Wiccans existed. One scholar has estimated that there are now more than 200,000 adherents of Wicca and related “neopagan” faiths in the United States,… Read More The Scholars and the Goddess
Catholic Critique 