THE VIRTUE OF NATIONALISM

January 25, 2024

One of the best written books you will ever read is The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony. There is too much in it to quote here. But note this:

“The European Union does, despite the propaganda, have a powerful central government whose directives are legally binding on European nations and on their individual members . . .  It lacks a strong executive – an emperor – capable of conducting foreign affairs and waging war . . .”

“The European nations are, as everyone understands, dominated by Germany. The European Union is a German imperial state in all but name. However, as long as Germany seeks to avoid building up its military and taking responsibility for the security of the continent, the EU will apparently remain an American protectorate – a protectorate that is also an empire in its own right. Should the United States ever withdraw its protection, all the talk of Europeans pioneering a new form of political order will quickly evaporate. At that time, a strong European executive will be appointed by Germany and empowered to maintain the security of the continent. Then the reconstitution of the medieval German empire in Europe will be complete, and the English-inspired experiment with an order of independent national states in Europe will have reached its end.” (pp, 152, 153, 154)

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ISRAEL AND US DISAGREE ON FUTURE OF GAZA

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long been opposed to Palestinian statehood. And he has reiterated this view, saying Israel must have security control over all land west of the River Jordan, which would include the territory of any future Palestinian state. “I tell this truth to our American friends, and I also stopped the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel’s security,” he said. While not surprising, the very public nature of this latest dismissal of the US diplomatic push for a two-state solution is likely to cause frustration among Israel’s allies, writes correspondent Mark Lowen. Asked about Mr. Netanyahu’s comments, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby recognized that the US and Israel “obviously” see things differently. Mr. Netanyahu’s focus on destroying Hamas may also be at odds with a majority of Israelis who, according to recent polls, would rather  prioritize bringing home hostages. More than 100 remain in Gaza after being kidnapped during the 7 October attacks in which about 1,300 people were killed.   (1/19/2024)

ENDING PALESTINIAN SUFFERING

Palestinians in Lebanon are “prevented from employment in 39 professions such as medicine, law and engineering . . . are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon’s public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work…” — United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees, updated September 2020.

Arab citizens of Israel…. can own, buy and sell property, can vote and run in national and local elections, have equal access to free public healthcare, education and other services . . . Many Arab Israelis serve in senior positions in hospitals, universities and colleges, courts, the civil service, and even in the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces.

Neither Syria nor Lebanon grants citizenship to the Palestinians living there . . .

[W]hat is happening inside the Syrian detention centers against the Palestinians is “a war crime by all standards.” – Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, alquds.co.uk, November 29, 2023.

By ignoring the profound suffering of the Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, these self-proclaimed “pro-Palestinian” activists and groups are once again proving that their goal is not to help Palestinians, but only to make Israel into a pariah state.

If these activists and groups want to end the suffering of the Palestinians, they should be demanding that the Arab countries end their discriminatory and repressive measures against their Palestinian brethren. The activists and groups should also be raising the plight of the Palestinians at every available international platform instead of blaming Israel.   (Bassam Tawil, Gatestone, 1/16/2024)

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TIMES SQUARE MACHETE ATTACKER PLEADS GUILTY

When Trevor Bickford was 19 years old, on Dec. 31, 2022, he ventured to Times Square along with multitudes of New Year’s Eve revelers, but he was not interested in joining the festivities. Instead, he attacked three NYPD officers with a machete. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to three charges of attempted murder, and while his motive is abundantly clear, authorities appear to be completely indifferent about what its implications are for the future.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Bickford, who came down to Times Square from his home in Wells, Maine, said this as he entered his guilty plea: “On Dec. 31, 2022, I attempted to kill three NYPD officers with a knife while they were working in Manhattan. I know what I did was wrong and I’m sorry.” That’s swell, but it would have been more helpful if young Bickford had explained why exactly he was sorry now for an act that he carried out in accord with his newfound beliefs and ideology.

AP added that Bickford “shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ — the Arabic phrase for God is great — before striking the officers in the head with the machete and trying to grab an officer’s gun, authorities said. One officer suffered a fractured skull.”

AP’s explanation was inaccurate: While most media outlets routinely translate “Allahu akbar” as “God is great,” it actually means “Allah is greater.” That is, the god of Islam is superior to anything that non-Muslims worship or hold dear. This declaration of superiority frequently accompanies acts that are designed to enforce the subjugation and submission of the non-believer or “infidel,” amounting to a kind of explanation of why a particular act of violence is being perpetrated.

It was unusually forthright of this far-left news service to bother to mention the politically incorrect fact that Bickford shouted this at all. AP even went so far as to add that “authorities say he had studied radical Islamic ideology and decided to wage jihad against U.S. officials.

Yet while AP was unusually forthright about Bickford’s motive, Bickford himself may have been trying to obscure it:  “At the outset of the hearing,” AP tells us, “Bickford said he was taking three medications for treatment of schizoaffective disorder.” In Europe, it is extremely common for clear cases of jihad violence to be dismissed as mental illness, with the perpetrators hospitalized rather than imprisoned.

There was no doubt, however, when Bickford was arrested. He had a handwritten note in his backpack, asking his family to “please repent to Allah and accept Islam.”   (Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, 1/15/2024)

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TURKISH PARLIAMENT SAYS “YES” TO SWEDEN

The Turkish Parliament has officially approved Sweden’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership bid after months of deliberation.

On Tuesday, the Parliament plenary in Ankara voted 287-55 in accepting Sweden’s application to NATO. 

Before the document is filed with the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., the papers will be returned to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey for his signature and final approval.

Erdogan, who recently endorsed Sweden’s admission, is anticipated to sign.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO in May of that same year. NATO’s border with Russia was doubled when Finland joined the alliance in April 2023, however, Sweden’s accession process has been plagued with setbacks.

Analysts maintain that NATO would benefit from Sweden’s entry by expanding its northern reach and strengthening its defense of the east. 

Prior to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military actions, Sweden and Finland had avoided membership in military alliances.

Hungary is the only member state that has not yet ratified Sweden’s accession.

In order to negotiate the conditions of Sweden’s membership bid, Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, announced on Tuesday that he had extended an invitation to Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden, requesting that he visit Hungary to negotiate and discuss his terms.

“Today I sent an invitation letter to Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for a visit to Hungary to negotiate on Sweden’s NATO accession,” Orbán said on X (Twitter). (OAN, 1/24/2024)

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BANNING A POLITICAL PARTY – NOT SO EASY

More than 800,000 people took to the streets of Germany’s major cities over the weekend to protest against Alternative for Germany (AfD), following reports that members of the right-wing party have been discussing a radical plan to expel millions of migrants.

Independent investigative news site Correctiv reported on a meeting of right-wing groups including the AfD and the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). They were planning “for the so-called remigration, or expulsion, of millions of people who have immigrated to Germany,” said Deutsche Welle.

The story “jolted the nation awake from its winter slumber,” said The Guardian, “triggering sackings and resignations” and “mass rallies across German cities.”

It also prompted “a politically risky debate over an outright ban of the country’s second-strongest party,” the paper added.   (The Week, 1/23/2024)

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BRIEFLY

Britain’s shrinking army is “not what it used to be,” a top US general has warned, as the UK’s armed forces face a funding, procurement and personnel crisis just when they are most needed.

The UK has taken the lead – along with the US – in conducting military action against Houthi rebels in Yemen, with Rishi Sunak authorizing RAF air strikes last night for the second time in two weeks. This fits with Britain’s vision of itself as a “tier one” military power, loosely defined as having a full spectrum of capabilities, including a nuclear deterrent and a navy, army and air force capable of being deployed anywhere in the world.

But even the UK’s closest allies see this as fantasy, with a senior US general telling the then defense secretary Ben Wallace in 2022 that Britain was “barely tier two.”  (The Week, 1/23/2024)

The race for the Republican nomination is “all but over,” said the BBC, after Donald Trump won the New Hampshire primary. It is a highly significant victory for the former president and puts him in pole position to become the party’s candidate in November’s White House election. Joe Biden said it was “clear” Donald Trump would be the 2024 Republican nominee and warned that “the stakes could not be higher.”  (The Week, 1/24/2024)

A Tory MP said the party must replace Rishi Sunak as prime minister or be “massacred” in the general election. Writing for The Telegraph, former cabinet secretary Sir Simon Clarke said the Conservatives have “lost key voters” and need a leader who “shares the instincts of the majority.” But Priti Patel accused Clarke of “facile and divisive self indulgence” and backbench Tories “used WhatsApp groups to attack the former levelling-up secretary,” said The Times. (The Week, 1/24/2024)

The head of the Army is to “warn that the British public will be called up to fight if the UK goes to war,” claimed The Telegraph. In a speech later, General Sir Patrick Sanders will say the government will need to “mobilise the nation” if there is a war with Russia. Gen. Sir Patrick has been “openly critical of troop cuts” and believes there should be a “shift” in the mindset of regular British people, where they “think more like troops.” But the paper understands he does not support conscription.  (The Week, 1/24/2024)

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GET A HEARING AID

Some seven million people in the UK could benefit from wearing a hearing aid, according to RNID, but five million of them don’t regularly wear one. And they may be risking early mortality as a result, a study has found. For the research in the US, 10,000 adults with an average age of 49 had their hearing tested. Almost one in five of them were found to have hearing loss and were asked about how often they used a hearing aid. All of the participants were then tracked for ten years. Analysis of the results revealed those who had poor hearing were more likely to die during the period of the study – but those who wore a hearing aid regularly had a 24% lower risk of early death than those who did not. This was the case even after adjusting for age, sex, education, socioeconomic status and the severity of the hearing loss. The study didn’t look at why it might be the case, but previous research has found links between hearing loss and increased rates of depression, dementia and social isolation. Lead author Dr. Janet Choi suggested that improved hearing leads to better mental health and healthier, more active lives.   (The Week, 1/19/2024)

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Now and Forever

by Bob Arbogast — Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Scripture Reading — Matthew 19:16-26

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” - Matthew 19:24

The kingdom of God is eternal. It’s the ultimate reality, when everything will be good at last. Surprisingly, though, the kingdom is also right here, right now—wherever Jesus is present in the flesh or by the Spirit. We can see that in Matthew 19. A rich man who comes to talk with Jesus is very interested in having eternal life—that is, life in the kingdom of God. But does he really want that kind of life? When Jesus tells the man, “Sell everything, give to the poor, and follow me,” the man can’t do it. He can’t take those three steps. It’s really hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. That’s what Jesus says. And he means more than entering the eternal kingdom in the future. He also means living the way of the kingdom right here, right now. Among other things, the way of the kingdom is selfless and generous. And the way of the kingdom includes deeply trusting in God to meet every need. Sadly, the rich man in this story wasn’t ready to live that way. Not here, not now. How about you? Are you ready to live the way of the kingdom here and now? If not, will you want to live that way in eternity? (Our Daily Bread, 1/24/2024)

PAKISTAN AND IRAN’S COMPLICATED RELATIONS

January 18, 2024

Pakistan has hit targets in Iran’s south-eastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. According to Tehran, nine people were killed, none of them Iranian nationals. Iranian state media said missiles struck near the city of Saravan, close to the border with Pakistan and its Balochistan province. Iran had targeted that area on Tuesday in an attack that, according to Islamabad, killed two children. Pakistan and Iran have long accused each other of harbouring militant groups that carry out attacks from regions along their shared border. Iran’s recent missile strikes send a message to its enemies – especially Israel and the United States – that it’s more than capable of hitting targets well beyond its border, writes diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams. According to retired Lt Gen Asif Yaseen, a former Pakistani defence secretary, Islamabad would have been under pressure to respond. And, as Adams puts it, each has “perhaps, met the demands of public opinion,.  (BBC, 1/18/2024)

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ITALIAN GOVERNMENT CALLS FOR EU ARMY

ROME, Jan 7 (Reuters) – The European Union should form its own combined army that could play a role in peacekeeping and preventing conflict, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said.

In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, Tajani said that closer European cooperation on defence was a priority for the Forza Italia party that he leads.

“If we want to be peacekeepers in the world, we need a European military. And this is a fundamental precondition to be able to have an effective European foreign policy,” he said in an interview published on Sunday.

“In a world with powerful players like the United States, China, India, Russia – with crises from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific – Italian, German, French or Slovenian citizens can only be protected by something that already exists, namely the European Union,” he added.

European defense cooperation has risen up the political agenda since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago.

However, efforts have been more focused on NATO expansion, with EU nation Finland joining the alliance last year and Sweden also on track to become a member.

Tajani also said the 27-nation EU should streamline its leadership and have a single presidency, rather than the current structure of a European Council president and a European Commission president.

The foreign minister became leader of Forza Italia following the death of Silvio Berlusconi last year.

European Parliament elections in June will be the first gauge of the party’s popularity after the loss of its charismatic former leader.   (Reuters, 1/7/2024)

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GERMANY CONSIDERING COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE

The Bundeswehr is facing a dramatic shortage in personnel. Now Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has rekindled the debate over reintroducing conscription. (https://p.dw.com/p/4ahmH)

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is considering the reintroduction of compulsory military service.

At the end of October, the Bundeswehr said it counted 181,383 soldiers in its ranks — that’s still some distance from the target of 203,000 that the German military hopes to reach by 2025. This has given rise to concern in times of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has once again reminded Germans how quickly conflicts can erupt in Europe.

Since taking office at the beginning of 2023, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has been thinking about ways to make the Bundeswehr more attractive as a career. He said he has received 65 concrete proposals from his ministry on recruitment and reforming training methods.

Even conscription, something Germany ended in 2011, is also up for debate. “There were reasons at the time to suspend compulsory military service. In retrospect, however, it was a mistake,” Pistorius told newspaper Die Welt earlier in December.

He also cited the case of Sweden, where compulsory military service was suspended and then reintroduced. “I’m looking at models, such as the Swedish model, where all young men and women are conscripted and only a select few end up doing their basic military service. Whether something like this would also be conceivable here is part of these considerations,” said Pistorius.  (Volker Witting,  DW, 12/29/2024)

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ISIS calls on Muslims to carry out jihad massacres of ‘Jews, Christians, or their allies on the streets of America’

As well as Europe and the world. Expect the overwhelming majority of peaceful Muslims to rise up and stop these hijackers of the Religion of Peace any day now. “Pro-ISIS Posters Incite Attacks On New York City: ‘Go Get Them, Oh Monotheist,’” MEMRI, January 11, 2024)

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TAIWAN ELECTION MAKES CONFLICT WITH CHINA MORE LIKELY-

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has won an unprecedented third consecutive presidential victory, in an election closely watched by the world.

President-elect Lai Ching-te is taking over from Tsai Ing-wen, who has served the maximum two terms in the top job, after claiming more than 40% of the vote. “This is a night that belongs to Taiwan,” Lai, currently vice president, told supporters at a rally after his two main opposition rivals both conceded defeat following Saturday’s election. “We managed to keep Taiwan on the map of the world.” 

Global leaders have congratulated Lai, “drawing ire” from China, which had hoped to see the pro-sovereignty DPP ousted, said The Guardian. In a statement issued after the election result was announced, Beijing insisted once again that “Taiwan is part of China.”

While most foreign policy experts are speculating about the future of the island’s fractious relationship with the mainland as tensions increase, others are focusing on what the election reveals about the changing face of Taiwan. 

Identity is “a hugely sensitive issue for this island of 23 million people,” wrote NPR’s international correspondent Emily Feng from capital Taipei. Although more than 90% of the population “can trace their roots to mainland China,” the majority “now identify in polls as Taiwanese only,” which is “a huge shift from just 30 years ago.”

A generational divide exists, however, with younger people more likely to be turning their backs on the mainland.

Taiwan’s “burgeoning identity” is being “tested” by the election, wrote Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, the BBC’s Taipei-based Asia correspondent. This was the first election in which all three presidential candidates were of Taiwanese descent, rather than from families that arrived from China in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War. 

Beijing’s “persistent claims” of sovereignty are “making a bristling, younger generation rethink how they see themselves,” he continued.  (The Week, 1/15/2024)

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BRIEFLY

The German Armed Forces are facing a possible forced withdrawal from Iraq. This situation follows last Thursday’s US drone assassination of the commander of an Iraqi Shiite militia. Responding to the attack, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al Sudani declared that he is determined to end the presence of the US-led military coalition in Iraq, which includes a Bundeswehr contingent. Unauthorised US operations on Iraqi territory such as the recent murder would, he said, no longer be tolerated. The foreign military presence has been under attack for years, especially from organizations of the Shiite majority, which include forces aligned to Iran. Western governments, on the other hand, insist on keeping units in Iraq, saying their troop deployments are legitimized by the ongoing fight against IS. A military presence is also seen as useful in the ongoing tussle over Tehran’s influence. The build-up of tensions is also occurring in the wake of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. Any withdrawal would result in a significant loss of influence, also for Germany, in the Middle East.   (German Foreign Policy, 1/12)/2024

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The Tories are heading for an “electoral wipeout” on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour, according to a poll.  The YouGov survey is “the most authoritative opinion poll in five years,” said The Telegraph, and it found that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will “sweep to power” with 385. Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, it predicted, in the “biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906.”  (The Week, UK, 1/15/2024)

Six people have been arrested across the UK on suspicion of a conspiracy to disrupt the London Stock Exchange. According to the Metropolitan Police, activists from the Palestine Action group were intending to target the exchange today, with plans to cause damage and “lock on” in the hope of stopping trading from opening. It may have been “one part of a planned week of action,” claimed Detective Superintendent Sian Thomas.   (The Week, 1/15/2024)

The US military said its fighter jets shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired from Houthi militant areas of Yemen towards a US destroyer operating in the Red Sea. The “mid-air interception” is the latest episode in the Red Sea where the Houthis have been attacking international shipping to support Palestinians under siege from Israeli forces in Gaza. A leading Houthi supporter, Hussain Al-Bukhaiti, told the BBC that fighters would target US and UK battleships if strikes on Yemen continued.  (The Week, 1/15/2024)

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SOME THOUGHTS

“And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” (Matt. 24:6-7)

It seems like there’s a proliferation in the number of wars being fought around the world.

We’ve gotten used to the war in Ukraine.   In the last three months a potentially more dangerous conflict in the Middle East has replaced Ukraine on our TV screens.  In the last few days, we’ve had to add another Middle East trouble spot, as the Houthis have become a target of the US and UK. And it’s still possible that Lebanon could open up another offensive against Israel.

Now, there’s increasing violence in the Red Sea as Western shipping is a favorite target for pirates.

Slightly east (but only slightly), Iran and Pakistan are in dispute, in a war that could go nuclear.

And we haven’t even mentioned Taiwan and China.   The Taiwanese elected to power a government that is guaranteed to provoke China.

We are also seeing more of “famines, pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.” 

So, does this all bring us closer to the end? 

“But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”  (Matt 24:36-37)

All we can do is wait.    Wait for the second coming of our Messiah.   We have God’s assurance of that soon-coming day!

TRUMP INDICTED

Donald Trump is to become the first former US president to face criminal charges after being indicted by a New York grand jury yesterday.

A Manhattan jury decided that the former president should face “what sources said were more than 30 counts related to business fraud” over hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, reported CNN’s White House reporter Stephen Collinson.

Trump, who is alleged to have had an adulterous relationship with Daniels, has denied any wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of “political persecution and election interference” ahead of his 2024 bid.

The indictment is “the latest stunning barrier shattered by the nation’s most unruly president,” said Collinson. But some pundits claim that being prosecuted could ultimately boost Trump’s bid for a second stint in the White House.  (The Week, 3/31/2023)

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The attack on Netanyahu’s right to govern –  The true agenda of Israel’s mass protests has been laid bare

Whatever one thinks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, any true Israeli patriot will surely react viscerally to US President Joe Biden’s outrageous attack on Israel’s right to govern itself without foreign interference.

On Monday, Netanyahu announced he was suspending his coalition’s judicial reform legislation in order to negotiate a compromise with the opposition.

The next day, Biden told Netanyahu to “walk away” from the legislation, saying he was “very concerned” about the health of Israeli democracy.  Warning that Israel “cannot continue down this road,” he added for good measure that he wouldn’t be inviting Netanyahu to the White House “in the near term.”

It is deeply disturbing that the US should brazenly and insultingly interfere in the internal affairs of another country and tell its prime minister how to behave.  Biden was supposedly speaking as Israel’s friend, but he sounded like a colonial administrator barking at the natives to fall into line.

While Likud politicians hit the roof, left-wing and centrist politicians and commentators got behind Biden and kicked Netanyahu even more viciously in the head.

After three months of mass protests, incitement to hysteria and ludicrous hyperbole about the end of democracy that have caused Israel untold social, financial and reputational damage, those who shared responsibility for the crisis took their cue from Biden and blamed Netanyahu instead.  (Melanie Phillips, 3/31/2023)

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This Sunday, Finnish voters will choose the party and prime minister who will lead the nation in its historic step into NATO membership.

This is a big moment for Finland. For decades, its leaders tried to safeguard its security by remaining officially neutral in conflicts between giant neighbor Russia and the West. A clear majority of Finns considered that the more prudent choice. Since the end of the Cold War, Finland has drawn closer to NATO but remained outside the alliance to avoid provoking the Kremlin.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Finnish minds quickly changed. Polls say nearly 80% of Finns support full NATO membership, and the alliance is eager to welcome a valuable new partner.

Finland’s application cleared its one remaining hurdle on Thursday as lawmakers in Turkey, the last NATO member needed to make it official, approved Finland’s bid. Nothing left now but paperwork.

And this Sunday, voters in Finland will choose the party and prime minister who will lead the nation in this historic step. At stake are all 200 seats in Finland’s parliament, which are now divided among nine different parties.

Current Prime Minister Sanna Marin hopes her center-left Social Democrats will win enough seats to lead the next government, allowing her to finish the NATO process she pushed into motion last year. Polls suggest the race will be close because the center-right National Coalition Party and the far-right Finns Party both appear strong. (Gzero Signal, 3/31/2023)

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FRENCH RIOTS SHOW NO SIGNS OF ENDING

More than one million protestors took to the streets in France on March 24, 2023, in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pension reforms, which would raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64. This was the 10th day of national mobilization since January 19, 2023, and the demonstrations show no sign of stopping. After Macron’s government lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly in the 2022 legislative elections — leaving it unable to pass the law through a simple majority — the government decided to use a constitutional tool called Article 49.3, which allows it to pass a law in parliament without a vote on the text. The decision resulted in the government facing two votes of no confidence, which it didn’t lose — but the main one, pushed by a centrist minister of parliament, fell short by only nine votes, indicating how volatile the political situation in France is right now. Macron has said that he will not back down, though there is precedent for the government using Article 49.3 and then later withdrawing the law in response to massive and continuous public protests. (Tara Varmar, Brookings, 3/31/2023)

Last week, Uganda’s parliament passed legislation that criminalizes identifying as LGBTQ, which puts individuals at risk of life imprisonment, or in some cases, even death. Similarly, draconian legislation over identifying as LGBTQ is under consideration in Ghana, and VP Kamala Harris’s visit to Zambia this week – for a summit celebrating democracy – is stoking anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. As of 2023, many parts of the world are still unsafe for the LGBTQ community, as same-sex acts are deemed illegal in 65 countries, from Latin America to Oceania. The death penalty is a possibility in 11 countries worldwide.  (Gzero Signal, 3/31/2023)

TO THE POINT

• KING CHARLES ON OFFICIAL VISIT TO GERMANY.  King Charles III was due to visit France and Germany last month, to try to put things right following Brexit.  By putting these two countries first, England hoped to show it remained deeply committed to Europe.   Sadly, the French trip was canceled by France due to ongoing rioting in the country.   The visit to Germany was highly successful.   The audience was surprised when Charles spoke German half the time during a speech to the Bundestag.   It should be remembered that Charles has many relatives in Germany and visited the country over thirty times before becoming king.

• SCOTLAND’S FIRST MINISTER — A replacement has been found for Nicola Sturgeon.   Scotland’s new First Minister will be Humza Yousaf, an Indian national from the Punjab.  His appointment comes just a few weeks after Rishi Sunak became British Prime Minister.  Mr. Sunak is also of Indian descent.  Kate Forbes, an earlier and more competent candidate was not successful due to her conservative and Christian stance on sex outside of marriage.

• NEWQUAY DEMO — A small demonstration continues in Newquay, Cornwall, against asylum seekers who have been given a local hotel to stay in while their cases are heard. 

• INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION FOLLOWS LATEST SCHOOL SHOOTING – There have been so many school shootings, it was a surprise last week following the shootings in Nashville to see condemnation of the US in the international press.   How can the world’s premier nation possibly allow this to happen?  How can the US lead the western world when it can’t even keep its schoolchildren safe?  A few more and we may find these shootings have international ramifications.

FINAL THOUGHT

Philippians 2:12 – Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

NEUTRAL SWITZERLAND MOVES CLOSER TO NATO

As Finland and Sweden are about to join NATO, Switzerland is preparing to draw closer to the western military pact. Switzerland is seeking “new forms of cooperation” with NATO, Defense Minister Viola Amherd declared. This would be possible despite the country’s official neutrality. Concrete proposals for expanding the cooperation will be submitted in September. Notwithstanding its neutrality, Switzerland has been cooperating with NATO since the 1950s, mainly informally, at first, and formally only after joining the Western alliance’s Partnership for Peace program in 1996. “Common tactics, techniques and procedures for missions” have long been established, as was noted on the occasion of the participation of a Swiss fighter squadron in a current air force exercise of NATO member countries. The purchase of F-35 fighter jets, decided by Bern in the summer 2021 – which is being met with protests – also serves to draw the country closer to NATO. The Ukraine war facilitates legitimizing the rapprochement to NATO.  (German Foreign Policy, 5/19/2022)

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San Francisco Bishop Bans Pelosi from Communion

The archbishop of San Francisco told U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that she is barred from receiving communion over her support for abortion rights, the archdiocese said in a letter released Friday.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said in the letter that he had previously asked Pelosi to “publicly repudiate your advocacy for abortion ‘rights’ or else refrain from referring to your Catholic faith in public and receiving Holy Communion” – or face the consequence of being denied access to the rite.

“As you have not publicly repudiated your position on abortion, and continue to refer to your Catholic faith in justifying your position and to receive Holy Communion, that time has now come,” the archbishop said.

“I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance,” he added.

“Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi’s position on abortion has become only more extreme over the years, especially in the last few months,” Cordileone wrote. “Just earlier this month she once again, as she has many times before, explicitly cited her Catholic faith while justifying abortion as a ‘choice,’ this time setting herself in direct opposition to Pope Francis.”  

Pelosi, a lifelong Catholic from California, said she would work to pass a law to confirm women’s continued right to abortions after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed access to the procedure nationwide.  (Newsmax, 5/20/2022)

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WATER SCARCITY SPREADING

The amount of water on Earth has been more or less the same for the past 4.5 billion years. But today, a growing number of the world’s people don’t have access to enough of it. In fact, nearly half of the world’s population lives in places that face water scarcity for at least one month every year. And more than 1.2 billion people lack regular access to clean water altogether.

For many of them, the situation is getting worse by the day, as climate change causes more frequent droughts or conflicts prevent people from getting to freshwater sources. The lack of access to clean water for drinking, cooking, and crops can cause illness, starvation, and death.

Small wonder, then, that water scarcity is one factor behind some of the world’s most intractable conflicts: Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, and now Russia-Ukraine.

The desperate search for water also has millions on the move. The UN warns that water scarcity could force some 700 million people from their homes in the coming years, in mass migrations that will test governments, humanitarian organizations, and societies alike.  (Gzero Signal, 5/22/2022)

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US WILL GO TO WAR TO DEFEND TAIWAN

“Yes, that’s the commitment we made.” With those few words, Joe Biden has today set himself on a collision course with Beijing that could redefine – or at the very least reaffirm – Asia’s security landscape. 

The president’s comments were not the first time he has hinted that the US would come to the defence of its allies in Taiwan should China launch an invasion. In August, a senior Biden administration official was forced to point out that Washington’s long-held position of “strategic ambiguity” had not changed after the president suggested he would launch a defence of the democratic island. But no such clarification followed today’s intervention.

Speaking in Tokyo after announcing a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, Biden went further than ever before in outlining his commitment to defending Taiwan from Beijing’s mounting aggression. His resolve is “even stronger” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said. “America is committed to a One China policy but that does not mean China has the jurisdiction to use force to take Taiwan.”

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin was quick to outline Beijing’s “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to Biden’s comments, warning that “China has no room for compromise or concessions on issues involving China’s core interests such as sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

“China will take firm action to safeguard its sovereignty and security interests, and we will do what we say,” he warned.    (The Week, 5/23/2022)

A FEW HOURS LATER

President Joe Biden this morning said, in answer to a reporter question, that the US military would intervene to defend Taiwan from any attack from China. The comment was walked back by the White House officials later who said Biden simply meant the US would provide equipment rather than troops should China invade. The US has long held a policy of “strategic ambiguity” towards the island. Biden, who is in Asia for meetings with allies, had earlier boosted the offshore yuan when he said he will review Trump-era tariffs imposed on China. It seems likely that any goodwill with Beijing gained from that move was quickly extinguished by the Taiwan comments, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin saying the US should “avoid causing grave damage to bilateral relations.”   (Bloomberg, 5/23/2022)

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TRAVEL SPREADS MONKEY POX TO US, UK and CANADA   

Cases of suspected and confirmed Monkeypox are being investigated in a number of European countries, the US, Canada and the UK, according to health authorities and local media reports.

The latest new cases were reported in France, Italy and Sweden.  It follows the confirmation of cases in the US, Spain and Portugal on Wednesday, as well as the investigation of 13 suspected cases in Canada.

Monkeypox is most common in remote parts of Central and West Africa.  Cases of the disease outside of the region are often linked to travel to the area.

Monkeypox is a rare viral infection which is usually mild and from which most people recover in a few weeks, according to the UK’s National Health Service.  (BBC, 5/19/2022)

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TO THE POINT

• Germany’s Scholz wants Western Balkans in EU – BERLIN, May 19 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he will travel to the Western Balkans before a meeting of the European Council takes place next month, bearing the message that the region belongs in the European Union. The six Western Balkan countries with EU membership aspirations – Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo – have been engaged in years-long reform process, Scholz told lawmakers in Berlin on Wednesday. (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-scholz-wants-western-balkans-eu-2022-05-19/)

• German intel chief says espionage at Cold War levels – The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Thomas Haldenwang, president of the BfV intelligence agency, says levels of espionage now are as high as during the Cold War, if not significantly higher.  (Associated Press, 19 May 2022)
  (https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/german-intel-chief-espionage-cold-war-levels-84829615)

• The number of people admitted to hospital with eating disorders in England has surged by 84% in the last five years, according to an analysis by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. There were 24,268 admissions for illnesses such as bulimia and anorexia in 2020/21, up from 13,219 in 2015/16. Tom Quinn, from the eating disorder charity Beat, said he was “very concerned” about the rise, which has been seen across all age groups. Experts say the Covid pandemic has made an already growing problem even worse.   (The Week, 5/19/2022)

• Western officials have accused Vladimir Putin of “weaponising” global food supplies by stealing grain and destroying agricultural equipment during the war in Ukraine. The officials fear Moscow has embarked on a “deliberate policy” of disrupting food supplies, causing a global crisis and putting people in developing countries in danger of starvation, The Telegraph reported. The UN estimates that 1.7 billion people in more than 100 countries are being affected by the surge in food, energy and commodity prices.  (The Week, 5/19/2022)

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FINAL THOUGHT

A great deal of attention is being given in the UK to the high cost of living brought about by recent and on going challenges.    It seems to dominate Sky News which is a 24/7 news channel based in the UK.  

In a desperate attempt to bring down (and reduce taxes) it was announced that 91,000 civil servants would be laid off.  This is the same 91,000 hired since 2016.  (Why were they hired in the first place?)   Understandably, people are very upset.   That’s the equivalent to, in America, 455,000.   But, somehow, the government has got to cut spending.

At the same time, Members of Parliament (MPs) are being given a pay rise of 2,200 pounds  (a pound buys roughly $1.25).    Insensitive, to say the least.

Sky went to Blackpool, a holiday resort in the NW of the country, which, apparently, is the poorest city in the UK.   Their report on poverty was spoiled a little by an interview with the local vicar who was holding a Starbucks in his hand. 

Signs on the sea front were for fish and chips/ burgers and chips for 5.99.    Somebody must be buying them.

Concern was expressed about ethnic pay differentials – that should certainly be highlighted:  why are Indians more successful than other ethnic groups?  Of course, it wasn’t the Indians who were profiled.   The Treasury in the UK is run by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, a native Indian and a very successful businessman.   His wife is also a millionaire in her own right.   His wife took advantage of a British tax loophole which enabled her to make her millions without paying any UK income tax.

The problem is that the UK seems to be back to pre-Thatcher days, obsessing over living standards and the cost of living.

Jesus said “the poor you have with you always.” (Mark 14:7)  No matter what a country does, there will always be poor people.  No matter how successful the economy.

Yes, decisions can be made that relieve the burden on the poor, but the government’s responsibility lies with giving everybody the opportunity to be successful, to make more money to ease their plight.

Boris Johnson has many faults, but in this his gut instinct is right.  Give people the opportunities to make more to take care of themselves. It’s going to a tough period through this economic nightmare (other countries will follow).

CHINA SET TO INVADE TAIWAN

The military in China deployed forces all around the island of Taiwan in a set of large-scale military drills that one Chinese military analyst called a ‘dress rehearsal’ of possible real action. (Photo credit: nowtheendbegins.com)

US intelligence officials have warned that China is attempting to build a military capable of invading Taiwan. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines yesterday told the Senate Armed Services Committee the threat to Taiwan between now and 2030 is “acute,” adding that China is “working hard” to “put themselves into a position in which their military is capable of taking Taiwan.”  Last week, it emerged the US has held talks with the UK to discuss how to cooperate more closely on reducing the chances of a war.

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US intelligence suggests that China is actively working to build a military capable of storming Taiwan and reuniting it with the mainland by force, a senior official has warned.

Addressing the Senate Armed Services Committee, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines described the threat to Taipei between now and 2030 as “acute,” warning that Beijing wants to build its military capacity to a level where it is able to invade the island regardless of the support provided by the US and its allies.

“It’s our view that [China is] working hard to effectively put themselves into a position in which their military is capable of taking Taiwan over our intervention,” Haines said. She declined to provide a timeline when asked when an invasion could happen, while stating that it is not yet known what lessons China has learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Haines and Defense Intelligence Agency head Lieutenant General Scott Berrier also told the committee that it is still believed China would rather not use force.

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GOING WITHOUT IN THE UK

As many as 1.5m British households will soon face bills for food and energy that will exceed their disposable income after housing costs, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has warned. Householders are being encouraged to get their finances in the “best shape possible” amid evidence of increased stress over the cost-of-living crisis, Sky News reported. Addressing rising energy and food costs, Boris Johnson yesterday said: “We will continue to use all our ingenuity and compassion for as long as it takes.”  (The Week, 3/11/2022)

(Sky News should be more careful.  In one town that was very poor, they showed a vicar with a Starbucks cup in his hand.    Whereas the British government arguably does have some responsibility to make sure that people have enough to eat, that does not extend to take-outs (take-aways in the UK), cable TV, the family dog, mobile phones, or computers.)

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GERMANY TRAINING UKRAINIANS

The training of Ukrainian soldiers on the Self-Propelled Howitzer-2000 has begun in Germany. As was reported, the first Ukrainian soldiers already arrived in Germany on Tuesday. Yesterday, they began their training program at the Bundeswehr’s artillery school in Idar-Oberstein (Rhineland-Palatinate). Since some time, that German state has developed into the hub for military support for Ukraine – with deliveries of combat equipment to Poland via the US airbase Ramstein. NATO’s Air Allied Command, which directs alliance aerial operations in eastern and southeastern Europe, is also headquartered at the airbase. These operations include air patrol missions of also German combat jets in the Baltics and at the Black Sea. According to the Minister of the Interior of Rhineland-Palatinate, Roger Lewintz (SPD), that state, which shelters also various other US bases, will receive an “enormous boost in significance,” as the hub, no longer for US wars in the Arab world, but for NATO’s operations against Russia.   (German Foreign Policy, 5/12/2022)

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THE COLORADO RIVER IS IN CRISIS, AND IT’S GETTING WORSE EVERY DAY

The Colorado River is in crisis — one deepening by the day. It is a powerhouse: a 1,450-mile waterway that stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez, serving 40 million people in seven U.S. states, 30 federally recognized tribes and Mexico. It hydrates 5 million acres of agricultural land and provides critical habitat for rare fish, birds and plants . . . by Karin Brulliard, Washington Post, 14 May 2022 ,(photos by Matt McClain,  Videos by Erin Patrick O’Connor),  https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/colorado-river-crisis/

. . . But the Colorado’s water was overpromised when it was first allocated a century ago. Demand in the fast-growing Southwest exceeds supply, and it is growing even as supply drops amid a climate change-driven megadrought and rising temperatures. States and cities are now scrambling to forestall the gravest impacts to growth, farming, drinking water and electricity, while also aiming to protect their own interests. In an emergency move this month, the federal government held back water from Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, where the water is at a historic low.  Days before, Las Vegas turned on a low-level pumping station that will deliver water from fast-drying Lake Mead, the largest U.S. reservoir, even if the Hoover Dam fails.  Across the river basin, the tremors of this crisis are already being felt throughout communities that depend on the Colorado.  The Washington Post traveled along the river, from its start to its finish, to examine how people and places are coping with a shrinking lifeline in a hotter and drier landscape.   (Washington Post, 5/14/2022)

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WARNING ON IRANIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The European Union is basically admitting that it views the nuclear deal with Iran’s ruling clerics from the perspective of economic opportunity. That should not be the objective of the nuclear talks. Instead, European leaders ought to be seeking a strong deal that will prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, especially — as they should have learned from Russia by now — because those nukes may soon be aimed at their countries.

By revealing its desperation to buy oil, the EU is empowering Iran’s ruling clerics to gain the upper hand in the nuclear talks and obtain even more concessions to revive the nuclear deal. Desperation, to the Iranian regime, means weakness.  (Gatestone, 5/14/2022)

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SINN FEIN AND MUSLIM EXTREMISTS GAIN IN UK ELECTION

The United Kingdom’s local elections at the beginning of May were dramatic. Across Britain, much was made of the fact that the ruling Conservative Party lost almost 500 council seats in the wake of scandal and sleaze. Meanwhile, endless hours of analysis on the BBC have been dedicated to Northern Ireland, where Sinn Fein, the political offshoot of the IRA, achieved a majority for the first time.

But it is in the London borough of Tower Hamlets where more focus should perhaps be placed. The Islamist-linked Aspire Party has just won a sweeping victory.  It now controls a majority 24 of the 45 seats available, with the party’s founder — Islamist activist and fraudster Lutfur Rahman — now the mayor.

This is not Rahman’s first stint in charge of this important London borough. He served as mayor from 2010 to 2015, initially as a representative of the Labour Party. His tenure was marked by widespread Islamist extremism, cronyism and outright corruption — all exposed by expertly-conducted documentaries and investigations from mainstream British media, although largely ignored or downplayed by police and national politicians.

The danger Rahman posed was apparent from the beginning. In his first year, Rahman was thrown out of the Labour Party for his Islamist links, after a local secular Bangladeshi politician, Helal Abbas, revealed Rahman’s ties to theIslamic Forum of Europe (IFE).  (Melanie Phillips, quoting Sam Westrop, Middle East Forum, 5/12/2022)

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A GLOBAL ALLIANCE OF DEMOCRACIES?

A noteworthy element of the war in Ukraine has been the contrast in response to it by the United States and key Western European countries on the one hand, and several U.S.-allied states located outside of the Western cultural and geographical core on the other.

Public discussion in the United States, Britain and other countries has primarily depicted the conflict in moral and historical terms. For example, U.S. political scientist and former senior official Eliot Cohen, writing in The Atlantic in April, contended, “For those of us born after World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Upon its outcome rests the future of European stability and prosperity.”

In March, an article in Foreign Affairs suggested that the response to the Ukraine invasion could “consolidate a global alliance that unites democracies against Russia and China and thereby secures the free world for a generation to come.”  (Jonathan Spyer, MEF, 5/11/2022)

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 UK ASYLUM SEEKERS

• “Access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need, not on the ability to pay people smugglers . . .    If you illegally enter the UK via a safe country in which you could have claimed asylum, you are not seeking refuge from imminent peril — as is the intended purpose of the asylum system — but are picking the UK as a preferred destination over others.” — New Plan for Immigration, UK Home Office.

• “We cannot sustain a parallel illegal system . . .   We can’t ask the British taxpayer to write a blank cheque to cover the costs of anyone who might want to come and live here . . . Nor is it fair on those who are seeking to come here legally, if others can just bypass the system. It’s a striking fact that around seven out of ten of those arriving in small boats last year were men under 40, paying people smugglers to queue jump and taking up our capacity to help genuine women and child refugees.” — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, April 14, 2022.  (Soeren Kern, Gatestone, 5/13/2022)

• The European Commission has raised the prospect of a trade war with the UK, vowing to respond with “all measures at its disposal” if London rewrites the Northern Ireland protocol, reported The Guardian. Yesterday, foreign secretary Liz Truss announced plans for a bill that would make key changes to the protocol, including “waiving all checks on goods flowing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland where they are not destined for the Republic of Ireland,” said the paper. Maroš Šefčovič, a European Commission vice-president, said that “unilateral actions contradicting an international agreement are not acceptable.”  (The Week, 5/18/2022)

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TO THE POINT

• The legacy of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may well end up being Russian dominance of eastern Ukraine.  The war is still too young to predict where the eventual lines of control will be drawn. But it could also prompt the arrival of NATO troops in Finland – barely 100 miles from Putin’s home city St. Petersburg – in a strategic catastrophe for the Kremlin.   (The Week, 5/16/2022)

• SWEDEN AND FINLAND TO JOIN NATO – Boris Johnson has signed mutual security pacts with Sweden and Finland, agreeing to come to their aid should either nation be attacked.  The deals, which also state that the countries would assist the UK in a crisis, represent “a warning shot to Moscow in case it is tempted to invade Sweden and Finland before they are expected to join Nato,” said The Telegraph. Today, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö is expected to announce his approval for Finland to join Nato, marking an end to the country’s decades of neutrality.   (The Week, 5/13/2022)

• With the addition of Sweden and Finland almost every nation in Europe will be a part of the NATO military alliance.  In time, this could make Europe a military superpower.   The next step likely will be a decoupling from the United States.   This is needed to fulfill prophecies about Europe at the end time. (Revelation 17:12-24).    It’s amazing how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is helping move things along.

• WHY THE BLACK SEA IS KEY TO RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE –The international community must act to end a Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports that threatens to trigger a global food shortage, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned.  Moscow’s invading troops have “pounded” the southern Ukrainian port of Odessa with missile strikes in recent days, Al Jazeera reported. Following aerial attacks on Monday that “hit a shopping centre and a depot, killing one person and injuring five others,” Zelenskyy said that “for the first time in decades, there is no usual movement of the merchant fleet, no usual port functioning in Odessa.”

• “What does this fear that if the Alito decision overturning Roe becomes law, all these other decisions are in peril as well, tell us? It suggests that the national establishment lacks faith that the American people have truly and fully embraced the social reforms that progressives have gotten the Supreme Court to impose by fiat.” (Pat Buchanan, 5/13/2022)

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FINAL THOUGHT

A mass shooting by a white supremacist occurred Saturday afternoon in Buffalo, New York.    The police were quick to identify the perpetrator, an 18-year-old.   This is astounding as they still haven’t identified the mass shooter in a Colorado supermarket from March last year.   He also shot dead ten people.  Here is what was posted subsequently:

“On March 22, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Ten people were killed, including a local on-duty police officer.  The alleged shooter, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa, was arrested after being shot in the right leg. He was temporarily hospitalized before being moved to the county jail.  After undergoing mental evaluations during the legal proceedings, Al-Issa was found mentally incompetent to stand trial in December 2021 and in April 2022.”

Whereas Mr. Biden was very quick to say Saturday’s shooter was a white supremacist, nothing was said about the Muslim who shot dead ten white people, except that he was “mentally incompetent” to stand trial.

At the same time, much has been said to ridicule the “racial replacement theory.”    Yet others in politics are telling us we have to get used to the idea that by the end of this decade whites will be a minority.   It should be no surprise that people are getting angry and resorting to violence.   In no way does this condone violence, which should never be used against blacks, whites or Asians.

NATIONS PREPARE FOR WAR

Finland and Sweden are expected to jointly apply for NATO membership in mid-May, according to reports published yesterday in both countries. Thus, both Helsinki and Stockholm are definitively giving up what is left of their formal neutrality. The Finnish-Swedish rapprochement to NATO – including their participation in NATO wars – had already begun back in the 1990s. Both countries have been so closely linked to the alliance that experts recently remarked that their joining NATO is almost nothing more than a “matter of formalization.” This “formalization” will now take place. It will create a new strategic imbalance in northeastern Europe. Sweden’s island, Gotland, which will soon become part of NATO, can control the sea routes, for example, to St. Petersburg and to Kaliningrad. The approximately 1,340 km long Finnish-Russian border will become NATO’s external border. Moscow has announced it will counter this with arms buildup measures in the High North and possibly deploying nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.   (German Foreign Policy, 4/26/2022)

Suitcases stuffed with cash from taxpayer-backed Covid loans were seized at the border as people tried to smuggle them out of the country, reported The Times. The paper’s investigation found that other recipients of financial support during the pandemic used the money to fund gambling sprees, home improvements, cars and watches. As much as £17bn of the £47bn the government spent on bounce-back loans for businesses will never be paid back and about £4.9bn of it is suspected to have been lost to fraud.  (The Week, 4/27/2022)

The euro dropped to a five-year low against the dollar during Tuesday trading, falling further than during the worst of Covid panic in March 2020. It adds pressure exactly when it’s not needed on the European Central Bank, and on investors in European assets:

The fundamental reason for a weakening euro is clear enough. Expectations for rate hikes in the U.S. have increased far beyond similar expectations in the eurozone since the beginning of the year. The ECB is itself growing more hawkish, but the gap is still widening: 

A strong dollar helps to tighten financial conditions in the U.S., suiting the Federal Reserve. But a weak euro, which tends to make imports more expensive, is exactly what the ECB doesn’t need. Import price inflation in the major European economies is already easily at its highest since the creation of the euro in 1999. A weaker euro directly increases prices of imports — and increases the risk of demand destruction as families simply give up on spending: Bloomberg, 4/27/2022)

Kim Jong Un has issued a threat that he is planning to speed up development of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and have missiles ready to fire without warning.  During a military display in the capital city Pyongyang, at which The Times said “intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), hypersonic weapons and other military hardware were on display,” the North Korean leader vowed to ramp up the development of atomic weapons despite international opposition to further tests.

“We will continue to take steps to strengthen and develop our nation’s nuclear capabilities at the fastest pace,” Kim said at the event held to mark the 90th anniversary of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army. “The nuclear force of the Republic must be ready to exercise its responsible mission and unique deterrence anytime.”

According to the Arms Control Association, a US organisation that tracks nations’ military capabilities, North Korea was estimated to have between 40 and 50 nuclear weapons and enough fissile material to build six to seven nuclear weapons per year as of 2022.   (The Week, 4/27/2022)

“We have been remarkably lucky so far,” writes Allister Heath in The Telegraph. “Human beings invented nuclear weapons 77 years ago, but haven’t used them to slaughter each other since Nagasaki” in 1945, towards the end of the Second World War. “With good fortune comes hubris and complacency: the chances of another major global conflict – and, at worst, another world war – are much higher than we realize, and are continuing to increase”, said Heath. “The fact that Russia has performed so poorly on the Ukrainian battlefield is good news, but should not lull us into a false sense of security.” With the post-1945 consensus now “withered”, our world “is becoming more, rather than less, dangerous: there are plenty of other wannabe Putins, and they are better equipped to sow death and destruction.”   (The Week, 4/28/2022)

Washington Times columnist Tim Young tweeted, “Joe Biden struggling to say ‘Kleptocracy,’ which is ironic since his family literally is one.”   (Washington Times, 4/28/2022)

SHOULD WE TAKE A DIVE IN OUR LIVING STANDARDS?

On BBC Radio’s Moral Maze this week, my colleagues and I pondered our responsibility to the future. Do we have such a responsibility? What is the trade-off between the future and the present? As fuel prices go through the roof in order to (ahem) save the planet, should we be prepared to take a dive in our living standards for the benefit of our grandchildren and those coming after them? Is that a morally sustainable position as gas prices rocket and today’s poor are forced to choose between heating and eating? Can anyone even work out what will actually happen in the future, or are all such prognostications merely idealistic fantasies among those who want to make the world anew? And is optimism or pessimism the default position for the thinking person?   (Melanie Phillips, 2/10/2022)

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COULD NORTHERN IRELAD BREAK AWAY FROM THE UK?

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Michelle O’Neill was forced to greet visitors this week in a drab upstairs meeting room at the rear of the Stormont Parliament Buildings in Belfast, its faded posters and scattered chairs a stark contrast to the classical grandeur of the chambers at the front of the complex.

A leader of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party, Ms. O’Neill had just vacated her office as deputy first minister of Northern Ireland’s government after the first minister, Paul Givan, a member of the main unionist party — that is, the main party supporting Northern Ireland’s current status as part of the United Kingdom — abruptly resigned. Under the power-sharing agreement that governs the territory, she automatically lost her post as well.

But if the upheaval turned Ms. O’Neill into a temporary vagabond, it also served to underline a momentous political shift in Northern Ireland: 

Assuming that current polls hold, Sinn Fein, with its vestigial ties to the paramilitary Irish Republican Army and fervent commitment to Irish unification,  will become the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly after elections scheduled for May.

That could catapult the 45-year-old Ms. O’Neill into the post of first minister, and it helps explain why Mr. Givan quit when he did.

His Democratic Unionist Party is desperate to rally its voters before the election. Its most emotive issue is the North’s trade status in the wake of Brexit, which is governed by a complex legal arrangement known as the Northern Ireland Protocol. Unionists complain that the protocol, which requires border checks on goods passing between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain, has driven a wedge between the North and the rest of the United Kingdom. (“Upheaval in Northern Ireland”, Mark Landler, New York Times,  2/10/2022)

Belgian Philosopher Daniel Schiffer Tells Europe:  ‘Deprived Of Their Rights And, Under That Mobile Prison Burqa, [Afghan Women] Are In Pitch Darkness; They Are Experiencing Islamic Fascism… That In The Past Even Nazis Were Not Able To Imagine’  (MEMRI, The Middle East Media Research Institute, 1/11/2022)

Iran Is Insisting On Its Demands From A Year Ago: The Biden Administration Must Lift Sanctions, Recognize It As A Nuclear Threshold State, And Accept Its Expansion In The Region (MEMRI, 2.14/2022)

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GERMANY IN AFRICA

The debate concerning terminating the Bundeswehr’s mission in Mali is gaining momentum. France wants to make its decision concerning how, or whether, it intends to continue to pursue its military intervention in this West African country by the end of the month. This was caused by the fact that the military government in Bamako refuses to continue to put up with the paternalism and high-handed attitude of its former colonial power and other European countries, and is openly defying them. Most recently, in reaction to serious accusations raised by France’s foreign minister, the French ambassador was expelled from the country and France’s Sahel policy sharply criticized. Mali cannot “be transformed into a slave,” declared Prime Minister Choquel Maïga, at the beginning of the week. “Those times are over.” German Minister of Defense Christine Lambrecht’s trip to Mali this week was canceled on short notice. Berlin is contemplating whether to discontinue the EU’s training mission, but continue participation in the UN’s MINUSMA mission. As a correspondent in Bamako reported, “many people” are “delighted” at the prospect of the EU troops withdrawal.  (German Foreign Policy, 2/13/2022)

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TIK TOK MAY BE A HIGH RISK

By 2020, TikTok reported nearly one billion active users worldwide—less than four years after its launch.

But TikTok may have a dark side. TikTok is a Chinese company, and all the private information that the app is collecting may be fed directly to the Chinese regime, experts have warned, citing a range of Chinese laws that compel companies to cooperate with regime authorities when asked.

“All of your data on that phone,” said Fleming, “everything you do, and everything that you have stored on your phone is being sent out of the country, possibly to be used against you.”

“The Communist Party of China is collecting vast amounts of data,” said Fleming. “It may not be used against you today. But this information might be used against you, your company, or your country in the future.”  (“Tik Tok” users feeding data to CCP, Lorenzo Puertas, The Epoch Times, 2/13/2022)

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RUSSIAN THREATS MAY FORCE SWEDEN AND FINLAND TO ABANDON NEUTRALITY

In response to the mounting tension with Russia, Sweden has been boosting its military preparedness and has sent soldiers and heavy military equipment to its largest island, Gotland, strategically located in the Baltic Sea, just 330 kilometers from Kaliningrad, the headquarters of Russia’s Baltic Fleet …. Sweden has been observing a deteriorating security environment in recent years with repeated Russian incursions into Swedish airspace and territorial waters.

Unlike Sweden, Finland, which shares a long land border with Russia, never stopped investing in its defense capabilities. It recently ordered 64 F-35 fighters, at a value of $9.5 billion, to replace its existing and ageing combat jets. According to Finland’s former Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, Finland “can mobilize a reserve of 280,000 trained soldiers, which no other country in Europe can do.”

In a meeting with Sweden and Finland on January 24 about the worsening security situation in Europe, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg invited the two countries to join NATO, stressing that each country has the right to choose its own military alliances.

Denmark is deploying four air force fighter jets to the Baltic states and a Danish Navy frigate will most likely be patrolling the Baltic Sea, as a contribution to NATO’s patrolling in the region. This is “a very clear signal to Russia,” Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen said.  (“Russia driving Sweden and Finland into arms of NATO,”  Judith Bergman, Gatestone, 2/14/2022)

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PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS

“When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, they tried to appear moderate – but there’s no sign that Christianity will be anything other than a death sentence.” – World Watch List-2022

“The persecution of Christians in India has intensified, as Hindu extremists aim to cleanse the country of their presence and influence. The extremists disregard Indian Christians and other religious minorities as true Indians, and think the country should be purified of non-Hindus …” — World Watch List-2022.  (Gatestone, 2/13/2022)

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ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS ACCUSED OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Turkey’s Islamist government is set to complete a pair of construction projects in New York City that, among other uses, will house Turkish-American students and expose Muslim youth to Turkish propaganda and extremism.

However, Turkey’s indoctrination of Muslim youths isn’t the only reason why New Yorkers should oppose the Islamist government’s real estate plans. A notorious Turkish foundation accused of numerous cases of child abuse and rape will fund and administer one of these dormitories.  (“Turkish Islamic Foundation linked to child sexual abuse”, Burak Bekdil, 1/30/2022, MEF)

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TO THE POINT

• “An entire generation are puzzled by the idea that anyone has the right to say things they don’t agree with . . . for most people, true free speech has ceased to exist . . . On some issues, such as the transgender controversy, it is virtually impossible to say anything without attracting the attention of the Thought Police.” — Peter Hitchens, author and journalist, Daily Mail, December 11, 2021 

• Boris Johnson is expected to deny allegations that he broke lockdown laws and tell the Met police that his presence at Downing Street gatherings was simply part of the working day, said The Guardian. The PM has until Friday to respond to a questionnaire sent by the Met that may lead the force to issue him with a fixed penalty notice. No. 10 is not planning to publish Johnson’s defence. Scotland Yard is expected to reveal the number of government staff members fined for having attended lockdown-busting parties but not provide their names, reported The Independent.   (The Week, 2/15/2022)

• Justin Trudeau has temporarily invoked the Emergencies Act to crack down on anti-vaccine mandate protests. The Canadian PM said the unprecedented step would be “time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address” and would not involve military deployment. Under the new powers, protesters may see their personal and corporate accounts frozen by their banks, as well as their vehicle insurance suspended.   (The Week, 2/15/2022)

• The megadrought gripping the US West is the worst the region has seen for centuries, scientists have warned. According to a study published in the Nature Climate Change journal, the period from 2000 to 2021 was the driest in 1,200 years. The study described 2021’s drought as “exceptional” and said all indications are pointing to the extreme conditions continuing through 2022, CNN reported. The human-caused climate crisis has made the US West’s drought 72% worse, the scientists said.    (The Week, 2/15/2022)

• Petrol prices have hit record highs as the cost-of-living crisis worsens, said The Times. The average cost of petrol rose to 148.02p per litre on Sunday, above the previous high of 147.72p last November. The AA said that diesel also hit a new high, at 151.57p per litre. * Analysts believe that prices will continue to rise with records broken almost daily, said The Times. The increases have been caused by a rebound in global demand as the pandemic eases, combined with cuts in production.

(*That’s about $8 per gallon.)

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FINAL THOUGHT

Governments are often out of touch with reality and out of touch with the common people.  In a democracy, this is dangerous.

We have seen this happen over the last few weeks with the “trucker convoy” in Canada.   The truckers were dismissed as a bunch of white supremacists, Nazis, racists, etc, the usual claptrap from the “progressives”. In truth, the trucker rally evolved into a freedom rally joined and supported by Canadian families of different races, ethnicities and religions. Police, fire and veterans also in attendance.

It’s the usual stance of the Left, when faced with a revolt from the working class, who they claim to represent.   All they were demanding was to sit down with the prime minister, to talk it through.  But the prime minister, rather, left town and went to an undisclosed destination.  In other words, he left town rather than meet the “rabble.”   It’s rather ironic that a political leader of the left is frightened of the working class!

Rehoboam was the third king of the Davidic monarchy of Israel almost 3,000 years ago.

David was the first king and Solomon the second.   When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam, became king.  

Solomon had been a lavish spender, mostly on expensive building projects.   The people were suffering under a burden of heavy taxation, rather like people in the western world today. (A friend of ours in Canada pays 52% income tax.  In addition, there’s a high provincial sales tax.)

When Rehoboam took over, the people asked him to reduce their burden.

“Your father made our yoke ^[a]heavy; now therefore, lighten the burdensome service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.”  (I Kings 12:4).   He took three days to speak to some of the elders of Israel and received the following advice:  ^“And they spoke to him, saying, “If you will be a servant to these people today, and serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.” (verse 7)

Unfortunately, Rehoboam did not listen to the elders.  Rather, he turned to young men, his cronies.

“And now, whereas my father put a heavy yoke on you, I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!’.” (verse 11)

“So the king did not listen to the people.” (verse 15)

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, refused to listen to the truckers.  Rather, he listened to the arrogant, liberal intellectuals who surround him.  They are as much out of touch with the people as he is.  But he’s comfortable with them.   Today (Monday) he announced a State of Emergency, the first time the Emergency Powers Act has been used in the country. This is comparable to Martial Law in other countries; it suspends civil rights afforded to citizens in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The result in ancient Israel was a tragedy from which the country never recovered.    Ten of the twelve tribes who made up the Kingdom of Israel rebelled against Rehodoam, who was left with just Judah and Benjamin.   Rehoboam’s new kingdom took the name of Kingdom of Judah.

In Canada, Saskachewan and Alberta have broken ranks with the prime minister. The country is not likely to fall apart because of this, but if future governments do not listen to the people anything could happen.   Ontario Monday abolished most Covid restrictions.

The Bible is rather frowned upon in Canada, so it’s unlikely the prime minister has read the chapter on Rehoboam.   Don’t expect him to suddenly listen.

The immediate issue here was Covid mandates, required by a heavy-handed government.  90% of truckers had already received the vaccine, but rules and regulations made it difficult to do their jobs.  They also had concerns about their children getting the vaccine.  Hence the revolt.  Not surprisingly, the government showed no compassion or sympathy.  (The US is just as bad!)

The prime minister may feel that he is doing the right thing by ignoring the truckers and sticking to Covid mandates.   But he risks the same fate as the Bourbons and Romanovs, two other ruling elites that separated themselves from the people and would not listen.

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A LETHAL STATE OF DENIAL

Western society has its head buried in the sand . . .

In both Britain and America, the security agencies have allowed themselves to become increasingly focused on a reportedly rising threat from white supremacism. But the overwhelming threat to the west comes from Islamic extremism.

The security establishment is reflecting a wider state of denial. In both countries, the political, media and cultural establishment has blocked itself from acknowledging the true nature and extent of Islamic radicalization.  (Melanie Phillips)

While terrorist attacks by lone white supremacists provoke instant claims of a dangerous cultural trend, terrorist attacks by lone Islamists tend to provoke instead the claim that the perpetrator was mentally ill and therefore his actions had no wider significance.

Thus, Akram has been widely reported as having had serious mental health problems. Yet the JC talked to his former doctor, who said Akram had been “a confident man who didn’t need any mental help” and had no mental health complaints in his medical notes.

It’s not just that media coverage of the Colleyville attack has been muted, with virtually no acknowledgment of the attacker’s antisemitism.  (“A lethal state of denial,” Melanie Phillips, 1/21/2022)

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THE WEST’S POLICY TOWARD RUSSIA NOT WORKING

Prior to Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s talks with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, criticism was raised over Berlin and Washington’s current confrontational approach to Russia. The West’s policy toward Russia, which is “only based on deterrence,” has “been unsuccessful,” according to the political scientist Johannes Varwick in an article published by a leading German journal. Extensive negotiations with Moscow are indispensable. They should include the perspective of Ukraine’s “neutrality” (“Finlandization”). Contrary to claims by politicians and the media, Ukraine’s “free choice of alliance” is not the only applicable principle in international agreements regarding the country’s possible NATO accession. Several OSCE documents oblige European states to choose their security arrangements, such as joining a military alliance, “not at the expense of the security of other states.” German media, on the other hand, are advocating a further escalation of the dangerous conflict. (German Foreign Policy, 1/18/2022)

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Russian Duma Member Yevgeny Fyodorov Suggests Nuclear Strike On Nevada: The U.S. Thinks Russia Is Bluffing; Striking U.S. Defense Dept. Facilities With A Ballistic Missile Will Prove Otherwise; We Should Threaten American Territory, Not Ukraine  (MEMRI, 1/26/2022)

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SWIFT OFF THE TABLE

 In the discussion on western sanctions against Russia, suspending the country from the international banking payment system SWIFT is off the table, according to a report. Even though recently it had been contemplated to exclude Russia from the international banking payment system in case of a military escalation of the Ukraine conflict, it is no longer considered a realistic option, government sources contend. The expected damage for the West would simply be too high. The EU states, including Germany, would, for example, no longer be able to pay for gas deliveries from Russia, a suspe’nsion of deliveries could be the consequence. In addition, Moscow and Beijing already have their own payment systems, which could quickly become competition for SWIFT, if Russia is suspended and this would jeopardize the West’s dominance over the international banking payment system. If the report is confirmed, it would be a serious setback for the West’s sanctions policy, which would lose its most effective financial weapon. Sanctions against Russian banks are now being considered as an alternative.   (German Foreign Policy, 1/19/2022)

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POPE BENEDICT IGNORED ABUSE

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is among three senior German clerics implicated in misconduct by a report into clerical sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich between 1949 and 2019 released today, Madoc Cairns writes that the then-archbishop Joseph Ratzinger is accused of failing to take action in four cases of alleged sexual abuse while he was Archbishop of Munich between 1977 and 1982; Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the present Archbishop, is accused of inaction in two such cases and Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, his predecessor, is accused of inaction in 21 cases. Cardinal Marx is due to give a press conference later today. “In a total of four cases, we came to the conclusion that the then-archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger, can be accused of misconduct,” one of the report’s lawyers, Martin Pusch, said. Two cases involved clerics who abused while he was in office and received criminal convictions by secular authorities, but were allowed to perform pastoral duties within the Archdiocese without corresponding action being taken in canon law. In a third case, a cleric with criminal convictions for abuse outside of Germany was transferred to Munich, and, Pusch said, the evidence suggests Benedict knew of the priest’s previous behaviour.  Richard Scorer, an English lawyer who represented a number of abuse victims in the UK’s Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), said: “Pope Benedict was as complicit as other senior Catholics in covering up abuse scandals in his own backyard.” (The Tablet, UK, Catholic, Editor’s newsletter, 20 Dec 2022)

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Teddy Roosevelt statue removed from outside American Museum of Natural History in New York

NEW YORK, 19 Jan 2022 (Reuters) – Workers on Wednesday dismantled a towering statue of President Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. The “Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt,” commissioned in 1925 and unveiled to the public in 1940, depicts Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man on foot at his side. It has been criticized by some as a symbol of colonialism and racism.

(https://www.reuters.com/world/us/teddy-roosevelt-statue-removed-outside-new-york-museum-2022-01-19/)

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Germany wants to attract 400,000 skilled workers from abroad each year

BERLIN, Jan 21, 2022 (Reuters) – Germany’s new coalition government wants to attract 400,000 qualified workers from abroad each year to tackle both a demographic imbalance and labour shortages in key sectors that risk undermining the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

“The shortage of skilled workers has become so serious by now that it is dramatically slowing down our economy,” Christian Duerr, parliamentary leader of the co-governing Free Democrats (FDP), told business magazine WirtschaftsWoche.  “We can only get the problem of an aging workforce under control with a modern immigration policy… We have to reach the mark of 400,000 skilled workers from abroad as quickly as possible,” Duerr added.  Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, Duerr’s libertarian FDP and the environmentalist Greens agreed in their coalition deal on measures like a points system for specialists from countries outside the European Union and lifting the national minimum wage to 12 euros ($13.60) per hour to make working in Germany more attractive.  

The employer-friendly German Economic Institute estimates that the labour force will shrink by more than 300,000 people this year as there are more older workers retiring than younger ones entering the labour market.  This gap is expected to widen to more than 650,000 in 2029, leaving an accumulated shortage of people of working age in 2030 of roughly 5 million. The number of Germans in employment grew to nearly 45 million last year despite the coronavirus pandemic.  After decades of low birth rates and uneven migration, a shrinking labour force also poses a demographic time bomb for Germany’s public pension system, in which fewer employees are burdened with the task of financing the pensions of a growing mass of retirees who are enjoying longer life expectancy.

(https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-wants-attract-400000-skilled-workers-abroad-each-year-2022-01-21/)

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Germany has offered financial aid to Ukraine in an apparent bid to calm a diplomatic storm triggered by Berlin’s refusal to provide military assistance to deter Russian aggression.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that “economic stabilisation” was “one of the decisive measures” of support that Germany could provide to the war-threatened former Soviet state. “It is important that we especially keep the economic situation in Ukraine in mind,” she told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

Baerbock added that “we are very closely on Ukraine’s side in terms of both financial and economic support”, but refused to specify what such aid would entail. Baerbock’s promise of economic aid came after Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko accused Germany of “betraying its friends” by banning arms exports and supporting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Europe.  (The Week, 1/27/2022)

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Denmark, New Zealand and Finland top list of least corrupt nations while South Sudan is the worst and US drops out of top 25 amid ‘continuous attacks on free and fair elections’

• Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries on a scale of a ‘highly corrupt’ 0 to a ‘very clean’ 100
• Denmark, New Zealand and Finland tied for first place with 88 points each
• South Sudan was at the bottom of the list with 11 points, making it the worst country for corruption.

(https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10438219/Anti-corruption-fight-stalled-COVID-not-helping.html)

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Dominic Raab has said that it is “extremely unlikely” that British troops will be sent to the Ukrainian-Russian border as fears mount that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent.

The deputy prime minister told Sky News’s Trevor Phillips on Sunday that the UK would “support” Ukraine in “defending themselves” and warned of “very serious, severe economic consequences” for the Kremlin in the event of a Russian invasion.

Raab told Phillips that the UK was standing “shoulder to shoulder” with Ukraine, but stopped short of committing to sending more British troops to the border, where more than 125,000 Russian troops are reported to be stationed.  (The Week, 1/25/2022)

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Russian, Syrian pilots conduct joint air patrol mission along Golan Heights

The mission involved Russia’s Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft and the A-50 early warning and control aircraft, as well as Syria’s MiG-23 and MiG-29 planes.

MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. Russian and Syrian military pilots have conducted a joint air patrol mission along the Golan Heights and the Euphrates River, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “The mission’s route ran along the Golan Heights, the southern order, the Euphrates River and over northern Syria,” the statement reads. “Russian pilots took off from the Hmeymim Air Base, while Syrians took off from the Seikal and Dumayr airfields outside Damascus,” the ministry added. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the mission involved Russia’s Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft and the A-50 early warning and control aircraft, as well as Syria’s MiG-23 and MiG-29 planes. “During the patrol mission, Syrian pilots controlled airspace and provided fighter cover, while Russian crews practiced attacks on ground targets,” the statement specified. The ministry said that pilots had practiced strikes on air targets and ground targets at a training range in central Syria. “The two countries’ pilots developed skills for cooperation in various situations.  This kind of joint missions will now take place on a regular basis,” the Russian Defense Ministry stressed. (https://tass.com/defense/1392105)

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The UK’s official Covid-19 death toll is being questioned after the release of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The request asked for data on “deaths purely from Covid with no other underlying causes”. The data provided by the ONS shows that there have been more than 17,300 Covid-19 deaths not related to any pre-existing health conditions such as asthma, diabetes or heart disease.  (The Week, 1/26/2022)

Emergency measures to stem the spread of Covid-19 have “allowed corruption to go unchecked” in countries worldwide, according to a newly published report.

Researchers at Transparency International (TI) found that more than 130 nations “have made no significant progress against corruption in the last decade”, and that the ongoing health crisis has been “used in many countries as an excuse to curtail basic freedoms and side-step important checks and balances”.  (The Week, 1/26/2022)

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TO THE POINT

New Zealand has cut off the only route into the country after the head of the country’s quarantine system warned of a tenfold increase in Covid-19 cases at the border.

Health officials announced yesterday that “new spaces in the country’s managed isolation and quarantine system (MIQ) would not be released,” The Guardian reported. Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said the effective closure of the border was “temporary,” but gave no indication of when travel to the country would be permitted again.   (The Week, 1/19/2022)

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FINAL THOUGHT

A few weeks ago I shared with you that I had read Hayley Mills’ autobiography, Forever Young.  I have long since returned the book to the library so I can’t look up what page the following was on, but I do remember that Hayley’s maternal grandmother “shocked” the family by announcing that she had become a British Israelite.   Most people are not comfortable with people taking the Bible seriously.

British Israelites come from all walks of life and have differing beliefs on other scriptural issues.  But they hold the British Israelite teaching in common.  The British Israel World Federation is based in the United Kingdom but operates in other countries of the Anglosphere.

British Israelism (sometimes called Anglo-Israelism) is the belief that the nations of NW Europe are descended from the Lost Ten Tribes of ancient Israel.   It then follows that the end-time prophecies in the Bible relating to Israel apply to those nations.

Genesis 48:13-16 is a key passage here.  This is where Jacob (Israel) gives his blessing to the two sons of Joseph, his eleventh son.   The prophecy is very exact and detailed. ^“And Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them near him. ¹⁴ Then Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head, guiding his hands knowingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn.”  You can’t get more detailed than that.  

Ephraim was to be the greater recipient of Israel’s blessings; Manasseh was secondary.

As Ephraim was the younger son, and the tradition was that the eldest should receive the primary blessings, Joseph stepped in to try to put things right.  But Jacob would have none of it.

But his father refused and said, “I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.”   (verse 19).  

There you have it.  Two brothers, each receiving their grandfather’s blessing.  One brother was to become a multitude of nations, the other a “great” nation.    The (British) Commonwealth of Nations and the United States. 

Wikipedia has this to say on British Israelism:

“According to Brackney (2012) and Fine (2015), the French Huguenot magistrate M. le Loyer’s The Ten Lost Tribes, published in 1590, provided one of the earliest expressions of the belief that the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and associated peoples are the direct descendants of the Old Testament Israelites. Anglo-Israelism has also been attributed to Francis Drake and King James VI and I, who believed he was the King of Israel. Adriaan van Schrieck (1560–1621), who influenced Henry Spelman (1562–1641) and John Sadler (1615–74), wrote in the early 17th century about his ideas on the origins of the Celtic and Saxon peoples. In 1649, Sadler published The Rights of the Kingdom, “which argues for an ‘Israelite genealogy for the British people’.”

Aspects of British Israelism and its influences have also been traced to Richard Brothers, who published A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times in 1794, John Wilson’s Our Israelitish Origin (1844), and John Pym Yeatman’s The Shemetic Origin of the Nations of Western Europe (1879).

“The extent to which the British clergy became aware of the existence of the movement may be gauged by the comment which Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801–1890) made when he was asked why he had left the Church of England in 1845 in order to join the Roman Catholic Church. He said that there was a very real danger that the movement “would take over the Church of England.”

“In 1914, the thirty-fourth year of its publication, the Anglo-Israel Almanac listed the details of a large number of Kingdom Identity Groups which were operating independently throughout the British Isles as well as in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and the United States of America.”   (Wikipedia:  British Israelism)

It’s not surprising that British Israel enjoyed its greatest following in the decades from 1880 to World War I.   This was when the British people ruled over an empire upon which the “sun never set.”   A quarter of the world’s people lived within the empire.   Before the United States became of any significance, the British dominated over everything.   People forget that now. 

British domination lasted 250 years.   When the British lost the top position, the US took over.  But it was never to dominate in the same way and would not last as long.  Already, after only 70 years, we see the US in rapid decline.

There are plenty of books on the subject.   It’s worth looking into.   Because many end-time prophecies relate to “Israel,” which is populated by the Jews, who were just one of the Lost Tribes.   So the prophecies must apply somewhere else.

No other nations have fulfilled these promises.

EUROPE UNDER ATTACK

Daily Star

Today’s triple bombings in Brussels, Belgium, are the latest ISIS attacks.   They follow an attack in Istanbul only three days ago.

Shortly after the Brussels attacks, I watched President Obama, supposedly “the Leader of the free world,” speaking to the people of Cuba.   He began his speech with a brief reference to the Brussels bombings, extending his condolences to the families of those killed. He then continued with the pre-set program, including attending a baseball game.

Once again, I was struck by how the President of the United States is living in the past, rather than the more complex present.   He’s not the only one, of course.   Aspiring presidents are mostly just the same.

It’s a sixties generation thing.

Remember the sixties, when the western world was turning to the left, immediately prior to the birth of multiculturalism, which has been the official religion of western countries ever since?

Liberal thinking has created a very different world from what we had over 50 years ago. Both Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives and Labour, have all wanted the same things, working toward the same goals.

Now, it’s all falling apart and we’re seeing a return to some of the old values, including patriotism, ethnic identity, nationalism, Trump in America, AfD in Germany and UKIP in the UK. Other parties want the same things in Sweden, Finland, Poland, The Netherlands, Italy and elsewhere.

The world is, once again, on the cusp of significant change.

Note the following comment made on the Fox Business Network Monday, prior to the Brussels attack. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Retired), said:  “Not all cultures are equal . . . the Middle East and Islam as currently practiced is currently not compatible with western civilization.”

Following the comment, Englishman Stuart Varney wondered aloud what the implications would be of the EU’s new agreement with Turkey.  While the Middle Eastern country is willing to take back the migrants who do not qualify to stay in Europe, 78 million Turkish citizens will have the right of visa-free travel to all EU member countries.   Many are not likely to return home.

More Muslims = more terrorism!  That’s because a certain percentage will be extremists.  And, as Lt. Col. Ralph Peters observed, the religion as practiced is not compatible with western civilization.

Dealing with the problem requires a major change in immigration policies.  That’s not going to come from most western politicians, who are still influenced by liberal 1960’s thinking that says all peoples are the same and can all mix together peaceably.

Just a few days before the latest terror attacks in Brussels, the European Union signed the agreement with Turkey.  Again, like American politicians, the EU’s top leaders are still living in the sixties – they haven’t woken up yet to the threat from Islam nor have they even begun to figure out how to deal with it.

That will come.  Today’s attacks may be a turning point – the attackers were attacking the European Union ‘s capital, Brussels. One bomb hit the railway station close by the headquarters of the European Commission.  Europe itself was under attack – not just Brussels or Belgium.

Another interesting development today is how quickly the bombers were identified as ISIS by the Belgian authorities.  ISIS later claimed responsibility.  Normally, following an attack in the US or the UK, we are told not to blame Islamists, or that there is no evidence this was terrorism.   Some are still in denial, but others are waking up!   Speaking in Havana, Cuba, President Obama could not bring himself to use the term “Islamic terrorism”.

Daniel 11 is a prophecy about the Middle East, written more than five centuries before the time of Jesus Christ.  It’s amazingly detailed from Alexander the Great until Roman times.  Then it leaps 2,000 years until the present era.  The reason for the leap is that there was no Jewish nation in the Holy Land during that time period. Jerusalem is the epicenter of Bible prophecy, which focuses primarily on the Middle East and Europe.

The two play a central role in end-time events.

“The king of the south” is set to “push” against “the king of the north”, unleashing the military power and wrath of the latter, the prophesied Beast-power of Revelation 17, a revived Roman Empire.   What happened Tuesday in Brussels is likely part of this “push”, following on from Paris and other lesser attacks on Europe.

More attacks will follow.  It will take Europe some time to fully wake up.  But it will come.  It’s either that or we will witness the fall of western civilization!

 

 

FEAR BEHIND CHURCH ATTACK

Photo: EPA ; AP

The killing of nine people in a Charleston church last week and the election result in Denmark seemingly have little in common.   But at the root of both is fear.

The 21-year-old white male who shot dead nine African-Americans wore two badges on his jacket.   They were the Rhodesian flag and the South African flag of the old apartheid regime.   TV reporters were quick to say these flags represented racism and that Dylaan Roof identified with these countries because he, too, is racist.

As usual, there was very little depth shown by reporters.   It’s just not as simple as they made it out to be.

Rhodesia and South Africa were the last two nations on the African continent to be ruled by whites, people of European descent who had colonized Africa in previous generations.   During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s the European powers were rapidly dismantling their colonial empires.   The ruling whites of Southern Rhodesia, rather than have black majority rule forced upon them, declared themselves independent of Great Britain, something that had not happened since 1776.

Why did they do this?   Out of fear, fear of what would happen if the whites handed over to the majority African population.

This fear was not unfounded.   They had seen what happened when countries to the north of them got independence.

Tribalism, violent upheavals and economic collapse were quite normal in the years following independence.   In 1961, the whites of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), at the time in a federation with Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, had been instrumental in saving thousands of people from the Congo who had fled the country after Belgium pulled out.   Chaos and confusion were commonplace in Africa at the time. The whites at the southern end of the continent did not want the same fate to befall them.

In neighboring South Africa, apartheid also had fear at its root.   The white minority imposed segregation to protect themselves from violent crime, murder, and rapes, all of which have increased dramatically since the end of apartheid and the introduction of majority rule.   There was a great deal wrong with apartheid, but post-apartheid South Africa also has serious problems with little hope for improvement.

Which brings us to last week’s Danish election.

Scandinavia has been the last bastion of social democracy, with widely admired societies that have inspired leftist parties around the world.

But these days, social democracy in Nordic countries is in crisis.   The defeat of Denmark’s ruling social democrat party, led by Helle Thorning-Schmidt, means that for the first time in seventy years, Sweden is the only Scandinavian country with a social democrat government in power.   Even there, it’s doubtful it will survive long.

Their decline has been accompanied by a surge in support for anti-immigration, eurosceptic parties.   “Should the Danish People’s party — which came second, nearly doubling its support from the previous vote in 2011 — join a centre-right government, three of the four large Nordic countries would have such a group in power (Finland and Norway being the others),” the Financial Times reports on its website.   After decades of rule by parties of the left, this is a dramatic change.

“There is a familiar progression in the way that the DPP, True Finns, Sweden Democrats and Norway’s Progress party have hollowed out the establishment parties.   As with the DPP, they have started by stealing voters from the centre-left — the working class, the elderly — before taking them from the centre-right.

“It’s a worry and it’s a wake-up call,” says Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister.”   (ft.com)

What’s behind the swing to the anti-immigrant, eurosceptic parties? Fear.   The same fear that motivated the whites of Rhodesia and South Africa.   And the same fear that was behind the church shooting in Charleston.   This is not to suggest that the Danes, the Rhodesians or the South Africans would have been in agreement with Dylaan Roof’s actions.   It is simply that there is a commonality here – and that common denominator is fear.

The Danes are afraid of being overwhelmed by people of different cultures, especially Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East.   A significant percentage of people in every European country share the same fear.   They do not want to see their way of life threatened. These fears are not taken seriously by mainstream political parties, so voters are looking elsewhere.

The same fear led to Rhodesians breaking away from Britain.   Their “rebellion” lasted fourteen years, seven of which were spent at war with homegrown terrorists who wanted to take over the country. When the terrorists took over, white fears were realized when their land, jobs and money were all taken by the post-independence government of Robert Mugabe, who has been in power for over 35 years.

In South Africa, twenty years after apartheid, the country’s biggest problems are corruption, violence and life-threatening crime.   The affluent society the whites created is under increasing threat, driven by African demands for more and more at the expense of the white taxpayer.

In America, too, many whites fear for the future as they head rapidly toward minority status.   A recent announcement by the Obama Administration that instructs government agencies to enforce greater “diversity” in affluent neighborhoods will only make matters worse.

I’m writing this while we are headed back to our home on a train.   We had to change trains in Chicago.   While lining up for the second train, a young white lady next to me complained to her friends that “the Mexicans are pushing in ahead of us.”   A minor incident like this can trigger off a racial confrontation.   This time it was avoided.

The mad, multicultural mayhem created by the ruling intellectual elites is increasingly being found wanting throughout the western world.

We should expect more incidents like the one in Charleston and more election results similar to Denmark.   It could be the start of a white backlash against enforced multiculturalism.   Politicians should take note on both sides of the Atlantic.

A century ago, the world was dominated by Europeans and people of European descent.   Since World War II this has changed dramatically.   Today, only a handful of countries are still run by Caucasians; and, based on demographic trends, all of those will have a majority non-white population within the lifetimes of those now living.

When the dominant culture of a country changes, great upheaval can take place.   Rhodesia is the best most recent example of this.

Dylaan Roof, at 21, was not even born when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.   He may have worn the Rhodesian flag but was ignorant of Rhodesia’s realities.   Race relations were generally quite good in Rhodesia.   The “white” army was 82% black.  If Dylaan Roof had shot nine black Africans in Rhodesia, he would have been tried, sentenced and hanged within a few months.   I remember clearly a young white male who killed a black cab driver and was hanged, if I remember correctly, within 90 days of his sentencing.

The world’s media may have judged Rhodesia a racist society.   In the same way, it now judges South Carolina as seriously wanting in this regard.   But there has been an outpouring of love and support from different ethnic groups since the mass shooting in church.   The Governor of the state, Nikki Haley, has called for the old confederate flag to be taken down from the Capitol building in Columbia, the state capital.

Just as the world’s media stirred up feelings against Rhodesia and South Africa, it will do so against South Carolina.

Watching CNN on Monday morning, I was shocked at how much time was devoted to a one-sided discussion on the future of the “Stars and Bars,” the old Confederate flag.

What Dylaan Roof did was inexcusable and should be roundly condemned.   But he was just one man and a young man, at that.   His actions will not inspire the majority to replicate his act.   But the fears he expressed about the direction America is headed should be openly discussed.   The flag is not the issue.