The Dogs Of War

 It took me quite some time but finally I'm so far as to write a book review, well, actually two of them, something which I have been planning to do for the last couple of months, lol! So here comes.

The 1st book is called The dogs of war by Frederick Forsyth, the author probably most known for The day of the jackal, a fictional story about an assassination attempt on President De Gaulle. I watched the movie version of it and reviewed it on this blog several years ago. Both books were written in the early 1970s which means that they are quite politically incorrect and would probably offend tender modern sensibilities.

The dogs of war is a story about a group of mercenaries which is hired by a wealthy and unscrupulous British businessman to organise a coup in a fictional African country with large resources of platinum. The main character is their leader Cat Shannon, a man of mixed Anglo-Irish heritage (who is blond, blue-eyed and very handsome and successful with women, btw). The novel is quite long (nearly 400 pages) and goes into great detail describing the preparations for the military operation and all the shadowy financial transactions taking place. 

Despite its length, it's not actually boring and I read it quite quickly. Speaking about "politically incorrect", it describes Cat's s8xual life perfectly. I won't go into it further due to the reasons of decency, but suffice to say, that while he is 33 or thereabout his girlfriend is 19, the fact which would make any feminist have a fit.

As the story keeps developing, the reader gets a strong feeling of the impending doom, which is already hinted at on the very first page by the epigraph chosen by the author, a somewhat altered quote from The Mayor of Casterbridge by T. Hardy:

That... be not told of my death, 

Or made to grieve on account of me,

And that I be not buried in consecrated ground,

 And that no sexton be asked to toll the bell,

And that nobody is wished to see my dead body,

And that no mourners walk behind me at my funeral,

 And that no flowers be planted on my grave,

 And that no man remember me,

To this I put my name.

And yet, the end was totally unexpected to me, and a somewhat of a shock. I won't add any spoilers because I hope that you read this book for yourself.

Book n2 is what one could call vintage as it was written nearly 100 years ago, in 1928 by Nevil Chute, an author totally unknown to me before, but when I did some research I found out that he was actually quite famous in his time and even wrote Hollywood scenarios.

 It's called in English So Disdained and it's a fictional espionage story presented in a way to make you think it really happened. It has not one main character, but two. The narrator Peter Moran, who currently works as the steward of Lord Arner and Maurice Lenden, a pilot. Lenden and Moran served together in WWI and meet again 10 years later under strange circumstances. 

Moran learns that Lenden had great difficulty adjusting to peaceful life after the war was over, due to the fact that flying is his passion but there are not enough job opportunities. After his marriage falls apart due to his inability to earn a stable income, Lenden travels to the USSR and starts working as a flight instructor but later gets involved in an espionage affair. After he tells his life story to Peter Moran he gets a malaria attack (he caught malaria while working in South America) and is very sick and in need of help.

Though the story is called So Disdained I haven't noticed anything like this in the novel at all. In fact, it's totally vice versa. Peter Moran and everyone around him take a sudden and unexplained liking to Maurice and try their best to help him, save him from the counterespionage service and the communists even to the point of risking their own career and life. 

The novel is short and fast-paced and leaves you in suspense till the very end. And yet, the end, again, is quite predictable when you contemplate the fact that it was written back in the day when honour was not an empty word and any stain on it could only be erased by blood. 

I'm not sure whether you can easily find this book (I happened upon it in a second hand store) but I highly recommend it to anyone.

Pentecost

 Today is the Feast of Pentecost so we are having a long weekend. Tomorrow is a free day, too! The weather has been nice so far, sunny and the temps above +20*C but it's going to somewhat cool off tomorrow. I hope you all are having a good time:)

News On Sugar

It used to be that you were recommended to eat no more than 50g added sugar per day, but now the amount is reduced to about half of it, in any case for women. Sugar appears to be really not that great for you after all:

AHA Sugar Recommendation

To keep all of this in perspective, it’s helpful to remember the American Heart Association’s recommendations for sugar intake.

• Men should consume no more than 9 teaspoons (36 grams or 150 calories) of added sugar per day.
• For women, the number is lower: 6 teaspoons (25 grams or 100 calories) per day. Consider that one 12-ounce can of soda contains 8 teaspoons (32 grams) of added sugar!  There goes your whole day’s allotment in one slurp.
  

Is Christianity A Suicide Pact?

 No, it's not. An interesting post from The Orthosphere:

 Christianity is not a suicide pact unless we make it a suicide pact, in which case it is a suicide pact and we all die.  We make Christianity a suicide pact when we imagine that a Christian has overcome the world and its tribulations, whereas the truth is that Christ overcame the world and we Christians remains in it...

A Christian should turn the other cheek, but he does not have an infinite store of honor to lose and can survive only so much insult and slander.  He must not be “hasty in his spirit to be angry,” but neither should he be without a spirit to be angry.  A Christian should show forbearance and longsuffering but not servility. 

Matt Walsh Banned By Fox News

 Things are getting more weird by the day...

Valhalla Calling

 

Ascension Day

 Today is the Feast of Ascension. It is a holiday in my country so everyone was free today and we had festivities in town. 

Read more about it over here.

Martha Stewart And Swimsuit Cover

Thoughts on the  issue:

She looks quite decent for her age.

To present a woman as old as her as a s8x symbol is ridiculous.

In a traditional society, no woman of any age would be on a publicly available magazine cover in these types of "clothes"

Western women will seize any opportunity to get (nearly) naked in public.

 

Christian Vengeance

 Great post, highly recommend:

Lawful authorities – and one must keep in mind this does not mean all claimants to authority – just are God’s means to execute His vengeance. Rulers, both Christian and non, are ministers of God’s wrath to punish evil.

If a Christian believes Romans 12 prohibits Christians from ever carrying out vengeance, Romans 13 would thus prohibit any Christian from ever working in civil authority – from being a ruler to a lesser magistrate to a soldier to even a police officer. Few Christians, outside a few cults and tiny sects, actually believes this, and it wasn’t an historical belief among Christians. 

That has been the traditional understanding of these passages for like nearly 2 thousands years until we got liberal Christianity which, imo, has its roots both in the spirit of this age and in unnatural pacifism of Anabaptists like Mennonites and the like. 

H/t to Will at Patriactionary

Happy Mother's Day, Everyone!

A Birthday Present

 Just thought I'll post the pics in case you all forgot how I look like:)

A new skirt

And a cardi:

Thanks, Mum and Dad! :)

And Then They Call Housewives Lazy

How dare you! No, I mean really how dare you!

ramzpaul

There is a reason all these young women love their jobs, they are paid for doing virtually nothing all day long. Housewives, btw, are often told that their life is boring. Compared to that? I remember I once read a discussion about the lifestyle of a young couple who were both in IT and worked remotely. Someone wrote something along the line that insects have a more interesting life. Well, at least those IT guys actually worked, lol.

Why Do Americans Love British Royalties So Much?

 I mean you guys fought the revolution to be free from the British monarchy:) By the way, we have royalties, too, but nobody seems to be interested in them.

Speaking Of Prayer

 Here is a great resource for those who may have difficulty with praying in own words. It also includes (some) Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox prayers:

Connectus

Things You Can Do At Home

 Years ago I was reading a discussion on a right-wing forum. Men were talking about traditional family and what it means and one Catholic guy said that married women should never work outside home. Someone asked him, suppose they don't have any children, what is your wife expected to do the whole day? He answered with one word: "Pray".

It produced such an impression on me that even now, after many years, I still think about it. In our society prayer is a very underestimated activity. We are supposed to be frantically busy, out there doing something and it includes housewives. In fact, I know some women who while not holding a job are practically never at home rushing from one place to another from early morning till late in the evening. 

Now don't get me wrong, they are often involved in worthy pursuits which may include charity, helping others, volunteering etc but can one be called a "stay-at-home anything" while she is seldom there at all? Is being constantly out and about the meaning of life?

I will admit that I tend to fall in the same trap myself. There is always something to do outside home, some place to go, some people to visit, but I have noticed that it makes personally me (won't presume to say everyone) rather unsettled and stressed by the end of the day. It also doesn't combine well with housework such as cooking and cleaning. In fact, when I took the trouble to somewhat restrict my outside activities and social life I started feeling better. 

An old proverb says that a man's home is the world while the woman's world is her home and feminists did an excellent job challenging it. There's no denying that modern women are taught to go out into the wide world and try to change it, this includes Christian and conservative women who are encouraged to take part in various church projects and even political protests and such. I'm not saying it's all wrong, mind you, or presuming they have bad intentions. Their intentions are, no doubt, noble, but if you are a believer, you realise that it's not always necessary to leave your house to change things.

I won't pretend to know the tradCath teachings in all the detail, but the trad Protestants used to teach (and some still do) that a woman, or at least, a married woman is to be a keeper at home, and so it appears that if she wants to make the world a better place, that's where she should begin. So if you find yourself with nothing to do suddenly, like your kids are grown and left, for instance, you can just dedicate more time to prayer and Bible study. 

There are many housewives who try to defend their lifestyle by enumerating all the things they do every day and even calculating how much money their labour is worth. They save money on daycare, they save money on eating out etc. It's all fine, but behind it there is still modern liberalism lurking, you know the way of life which is all about material reward.  It's not really a Christian way of thinking as the Scriptures warn us many times about the dangers of being attached to wealth and worldly goods. 

The love of money is the root of all evil

Prayer is underestimated as an activity because there is no price tag attached to it. And yet, it is no less important. I guess it must be easier for the traditional Catholics to understand it since from the very beginning they had (and still have) all these monks and nuns whose chief occupation is to pray and who are respected for this while they seldom even leave their convent/monastery. But surely, you don't need to be a Catholic to believe in the power of prayer? 

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

 

Is No-Fault Divorce Next?

 One could only hope, but somehow I doubt it:

Ironically, marriage is one of the only contracts into which one can enter without being held liable to the terms of the agreement. Using an Internet site is literally more contractually binding, which only underlies the absolute absurdity of the legality of divorces that allow one party to unilaterally break the contract for no reason and without any penalties.