US LOSES $32 MILLION DRONE

(https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/18/world/u-s-loses-drone-syria-claims-brought/)

In what is so far the closest thing to a direct clash between the US and Russia over Ukraine, a Russian jet on Tuesday crashed into an American drone over the Black Sea, sending the unmanned craft hurtling into the water.

Moscow disputes the claim, saying its jets didn’t hit the drone. The US accused the pilots of two Russian Su-27s of being “unprofessional” and “environmentally unsafe” for harassing and “dumping fuel” on the $32 million MQ-9 Reaper drone.

But scholars point out that the US didn’t call the act “unlawful.” Russia was evidently within its rights to disrupt a drone in international territory that was almost certainly gathering intel for Moscow’s adversaries in Kyiv. Still, the incident shows the dangers of US and Russian military hardware operating in such close proximity, even if they aren’t in direct conflict.  (Gzero Signal, 3/14/2023)

PRESSURE ON UKRAINE TO END THE WAR

German Green Party Parliamentary Foreign Policy Spokesperson Jürgen Trittin, predicts that, in the fall, the West will put heavy pressure on Ukraine to negotiate with Russia to end the war. The US administration recently sent out signals to this effect, Trittin reported. It would be unwise to continue the support for Kiev in the coming presidential elections, due to a change of mood within the US population. While this is an indication that Kiev must change course, several countries outside the transatlantic West are intensifying their mediation for a ceasefire.

Brazil continues to promote peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Following his visits to Kiev and Moscow, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud confirmed that Riyadh is also pursuing such activities. According to reports, China’s President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive soon for talks in Russia and to subsequently hold talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Unlike the West, Zelensky already welcomes the negotiation initiatives.   (German Foreign Policy, 3/14/2023)

DESANTIS NOT COMMITTED TO UKRAINE

Speaking of those dangers, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has waded into some foreign policy waters of his own, telling Fox News host Tucker Carlson he thinks that the Russia-Ukraine “territorial dispute” is not a vital US national interest and that Biden’s “blank check” for Kyiv is a distraction from more pressing issues like China.

This puts DeSantis at odds with much of the GOP but firmly in line with … former President Donald Trump, whom he is all but sure to challenge for the Republican nomination in 2024.

Political wrangling aside, DeSantis may be trying to catch a broader trend: In February, Polls showed that only 48% of Americans favored providing weapons to Ukraine, down 12 points from May of last year. Is Ron on to something?  (Gzero Signal, 3/14/2023)

WHY WON’T PUTIN ADMIT HE’S WRONG?

More than a year after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the war shows no signs of abating.

Even in the face of heavy, increasing losses, Russian President Vladimir Putin remains resolved to continue fighting but is “grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion,” wrote David V. Gioe, a professor at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies, for Foreign Policy.

Like countless leaders before him who have entered doomed conflicts, Putin “cannot escape a self-made trap.”  He is unable to justify his “incoherent” claims for war and is meanwhile caught in the “sunk-cost fallacy,” whereby he chooses to “continue fighting at even greater cost” rather than “admit to the people that the previous sacrifices were in vain.”  (The Week, 3/14/2023)

ANTI-ISRAEL ORGANIZATION CONDEMNS ANTI-SEMITISM

An American Islamist group notorious for its efforts to demonize Israel and its supporters in the United States is struggling to rehabilitate its reputation by issuing regular statements about the evils of Jew-hatred in American society. Experts warn that the statements do not erase the organization’s long history of demonizing Israel and the Jewish community in the United States.

Hardly a month goes by without the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemning the distribution of antisemitic leaflets on college campuses or the spray painting of anti-Jewish graffiti in driveways in many locations, including Georgia, Louisiana, and Maryland.  (MEF, 3/3/2023)

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STRONGER TIES BETWEEN JAPAN AND SOUTH KOREA

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida are meeting in Tokyo this week in a bid to forge stronger economic and security ties. Diplomatic engagement between the countries has stalled in recent years owing to territorial disputes and Japan’s rearmament amid what Koreans see as Japan’s efforts to whitewash World War II-era atrocities.

This follows a recent landmark agreement between Tokyo and Seoul for a South Korean fund to compensate victims of Japan’s forced labor camps during its 20th-century colonization of the Korean peninsula – a deal that has proven unpopular with South Koreans for not holding Japan directly and financially accountable.

Improved cooperation would help both countries meet the increasing security challenges posed by China and North Korea in the region. Restoring trade links between South Korea and Japan, meanwhile, will help alleviate high-tech global supply chains.  But for this to work, Kishida’s government must first win over South Korean hearts and minds.  (Gzero Signal, 3/14/2023)

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TALKING POINTS

In an unexpected move on March 10, 2023, Saudi Arabia and Iran declared that they had reached an agreement to renew relations after a seven-year hiatus.  Through Chinese mediation, the two countries agreed to reopen their respective embassies within two months, and to reactivate past Saudi-Iran agreements, among them a 2001 security cooperation agreement. (MEMRI, 3/15/2023)

In Hamburg, Germany, a terror attack took place Thursday, leaving eight people dead including an unborn child.  The attack was in a Jehovah Witness hall.  News bulletins kept repeating that an unborn child was killed.  This is hypocritical when the death toll from abortions in Germany is 94,596 (2021 figure).  What’s one child?

After bludgeoning 77-year-old Lawrence Scully, a sex offender he believed had been harassing his daughter, Levi Axtell drove to the sheriff’s office and handed himself in, covered in blood. Axtell from Cook County, Minnesota “had long been suspicious of Scully parking his vehicle at locations where children were present,” said the Daily Mail. Scully, who was convicted of molesting a six-year-old girl in 1979, died following the attack and Axtell has been charged with second-degree murder.  (The Week, 3/1/2023)

Pakistani security forces on Wednesday withdrew from near Imran Khan’s home in Lahore after failing to detain the former PM, despite having an arrest warrant. The reason: to allow a big cricket match to take place in the city.  (Gzero Signal, 3/14/2023)

Pakistani security forces on Wednesday withdrew from near Imran Khan’s home in Lahore after failing to detain the former PM, despite having an arrest warrant. The reason: to allow a big cricket match to take place in the city. 

As the standoff unfolded, Khan — who used to captain the national team in cricket-crazy Pakistan — took to Twitter, urging his supporters not to give up. He was ousted in a no-confidence vote last April over allegations of corruption and “terrorism”, which he and his supporters dismiss as politically motivated. But since then, Khan has fervently sought to win back the top job, leading a populist movement against Pakistan’s political elite and all-powerful army, whom he accused of being behind an assassination attempt against him in Nov. 2022.  (Gzero Signal, 3/14/2023)

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COMMENTARY

Moslem grooming gangs have become a major problem in the UK.

Frustrated men seek out young girls that they take advantage of.   Often, the girls are treated cruelly.   Partly this is because they have no respect for these girls.

This is very much a culture clash.  Moslem men are brought up to have no respect for women who expose parts of their body.   Also, they have no respect for women who are non-Muslim.   Their targets are mostly white and mostly virgins as they will gladly groom girls as young as 13.

The basic problem here is not sex.  It’s the immigration of men from alien cultures.

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. ”  (Thess. 4::3-8)

This shows that Biblical passages that relate to sex were meant for the Israelites.    Only “lust” was expected from the Gentiles, those who did not believe in the true God.  Now, it’s very much the case that Christian girls (and boys) frequently break God’s laws relating to morality.  It’s little wonder then that girls are being groomed for sex by Muslim gangs.

Hebrews 13:4 considers sex outside of marriage to be immoral: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” This verse can’t just be limited to adultery, since both “sexually immoral” and “adulterous” are listed.

There are many scriptures that show sex outside of marriage is sin.  Just because we have birth control today does not negate those scriptures.

I Cor. 6:18 shows us that sex outside of marriage affects the mind as well as the body. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.