Does your faith need strengthening? Are you confused and wondering if Jesus Christ is really "The Way, the Truth, and the Life?" "Fight for Your Faith" is a blog filled with interesting and thought provoking articles to help you find the answers you are seeking. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." In Jeremiah we read, "Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall seek for Me with all your heart." These articles and videos will help you in your search for the Truth.
By Gardiner Harris and Stanley Reed, NY Times, June 26, 2018
The United States said on Tuesday that it will impose sanctions against all importers of Iranian oil by Nov. 4, a surprisingly tough position that roiled oil markets and is likely to further alienate allies and adversaries alike.
The policy shook financial markets that had become accustomed to waivers for American sanctions that in years past had been granted to companies in countries like India and China as long as they showed steady reductions in their imports of Iranian oil.
But a senior State Department official said Tuesday morning that such routine waivers were not likely to be issued by the Trump administration.
Sanctions experts expressed a mixture of bafflement and scorn at Tuesday’s announcement. They noted that countries like India and China never entirely ended their imports of Iranian crude even before Tehran agreed to the 2015 nuclear accord.
Following Washington’s withdrawal from the deal, European allies vowed to resist reimposing of sanctions. And in the midst of an increasingly bitter trade war with China, the likelihood that Beijing will entirely end its imports of Iranian oil is dubious, analysts said.
“They’re going to go after the Central Bank of China just before the midterms?” said Daniel Fried, a top White House and State Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush. “The next day’s headline will be: ‘Dow Drops 5,000 Points.’”
Peter Harrell, a former sanctions official in the State Department, dismissed the idea outright. “I don’t see China and India going to zero,” he said.
This month, European leaders applied for waivers to the renewed American sanctions against Iran, saying that preserving the agreement was vital to the security of their respective nations. Few expected the waivers to be granted, but Tuesday’s abrupt announcement, which largely ruled them out, could cause further strains.
European diplomats spent months negotiating a side agreement to the Iran deal with Brian Hook, a top State Department official, hoping such an agreement would persuade Mr. Trump to stay in the accord. In April, President Emmanuel Macron of France told Mr. Trump in the Oval Office that negotiations with Mr. Hook were about to yield a strong agreement. “Who’s Brian Hook?” Mr. Trump responded, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange.
The failure of the nuclear negotiations, Mr. Trump’s unusually combative posture at the recent Group of 7 meeting in Canada and his recent imposition of trade tariffs have left European allies weighing how far they can and should go to defy the United States. A growing number of large European companies have announced, however, that they intend to abandon Iran.
Robert A. Pape, director of the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats, said that sanctions only work when a country’s military suppliers participate in the effort. With Russia and China likely to continue to supply Iran with sophisticated hardware despite the sanctions, the Trump administration’s efforts are not likely to succeed, he said.
“This is big stick diplomacy, and that has a long history of failure,” Mr. Pape said.
Katherine Bauer, a former Treasury Department official, said that countries are likely to balk at the Trump administration’s maximalist posture.
“The risk is that you push countries to look for ways around sanctions,” she said.
Dennis Edwards: Is Donald Trump isolating America even from its former allies and in so doing preparing for the fulfillment of Bible Prophecy?
In Revelation chapter 17 we see the 10 nations, which come out of the former Roman Empire, join for a short period with the "Beast" or Antichrist to destroy the great Commercial Prostitute's city in one hour by fire.
Many Bible Eschatalogy students believe New York City could be the present day fulfillment of Babylon the Whore of Revelation chapters 17 and 18. Donald Trump's policies of isolation, "America First," could very well lead to the ten nations of former Roman Empire aligning themselves with Russia.
Many believe the Antichrist will have something to do with Russia. Some say he will come out of from Russia, others say he will have a close alliance with Russia. In any case, Trump's actions are only isolating America further from the rest of the world. America is closely aligned with Israel. Will the desruction of Babylon the Whore, which could very well be America, occur at the time of the invasion of Israel from the north?
Is Trump pushing us further along the road to eventual confrontation and world destruction as predicted by Jesus and the book of Revelation? Will it happen in our life time, or that of our children or grandchildren? Be attentive. It may be later than you think.
Cornelia or Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch Christian. Born 15th April 1892 Corrie saw the outbreak of World War II and after the occupation of Holland worked along with her father to help Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust. While many quietly kept their heads down to stay alive, Corrie, her father and other family members took great risks to help the Jews of Holland. These risks would eventually lead to many of the family being imprisoned.
After the war Corrie returned to The Netherlands and did much good with her life, travelling the world as a public speaker, appearing in more than sixty countries around the world, and writing many books until her eventual death in 1983, on the day she came into the world, 15th April.
Her most famous book is The Hiding Place, and it’s a personal favourite of mine. Corrie’s resilience and faith during her time in captivity cannot fail to lift the heart, despite the horrors she lived through and so I am honoured today to be the one to collect some of my favourite Corrie Ten Boom quotes and share them with you.
I’d have to confess to not being a very religious person, but through The Hiding Place I learned that faith in anything can get you through hard times, that love is greater than any evil, and in the end forgiveness is the only key to a happy life. Thank you, Corrie.
In the first week of June two farms were attacked in the South African province of Free State. The modus operandi was more or less the same. Armed intruders tied up the victims and stole guns, cash, mobile phones–whatever they could get their hands on–and then fled in the farm vehicles
Attacks on farms, which are particularly vulnerable due to their isolation, are the nightmarish reality for those living and working on the land in South Africa, which is tormented by a level of heinous crime Australians struggle to comprehend.
Dan Kriek, the president of AgriSA, the largest representative body of commercial farmers in South Africa, condemns both attacks “in the strongest possible terms”.
But there is a difference between the two that troubles him.
One of the attacks, on a white farmer and his wife, was reported in the media. But the other attack–where the victims were two black farmers–received no coverage.
“The point I am trying to make is the media is not reporting the true state of affairs–farm attacks and farm murders are shared by all racial groups in this country,” Kriek says.
He believes the media portrayal of the farm murders as an onslaught on white farmers does nothing to help social cohesion in a country still haunted by apartheid.
“The whole narrative, the fact black farmers and farm workers get attacked and murdered, gets lost in the whole conversation. How do we–in a country with our history–then convince the whole of society this is a problem we all need to address?”
Kriek, a mild-mannered white farmer with a prize cattle stud near the town of Tweeling in the Free State, is at the epicentre of an emotive debate around race, rural violence and land reform that is roiling South Africa.
There are few more affected than Kriek–as AgriSA president and a farmer he knows many of the victims of farm attacks.
Far-right extremists, both in South Africa and other countries including Australia, claim white South African farmers are facing a genocide.
Most people don’t accept the hyperbolic claims of a white genocide–it is difficult to equate South Africa with Rwanda or Nazi Germany.
But there is a concern among white farmers (large-scale commercial farms are almost all white-owned) that they are being deliberately targeted.
They are alarmed by farm attacks and murders–in some cases involving gruesome torture–and land reform aimed at addressing racial disparities in land ownership.
“From the farmers’ perspective the political landscape has recently become more hostile, largely as a result of calls by political leaders for more radical land reform,” says Dr Johan Burger from the Institute for Security Studies.
“They point to statements by various political leaders such as those accusing white farmers of having stolen the land and calling for the expropriation of land without compensation.”
The vexed questions of whether white farmers are killed at a higher rate than the rest of the population and whether attacks are a normal part of crime or fuelled by racial animosity are the source of much conjecture in South Africa.
In 2015 the South African Human Rights Commission said most evidence presented to it suggested the criminal element but it did not dispute some farm attacks and murders were motivated by hate or racial hostility.
This debate will be reignited at the end of June when Ernst Roets, the deputy CEO of Afrikaner-rights group AfriForum, launches a book, Kill the Boer, warning a “looming process of ethnic cleansing should be regarded as a serious threat”.
The narrative of a white persecution has gained considerable traction in Australia, where about 163,000 (mostly white) South African-born people now live.
Earlier this year Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton caused a diplomatic furore when he said Australia had “the potential to help some of these people that are being persecuted”.
His comments followed a spate of headlines in Australia including “South Africa’s white farmers attacked, raped and forced from land”, “Whites persecuted, but who cares?” and “White minority ‘targeted’ in South Africa”.
Dutton said these people “need help from a civilised country like ours”.
Dutton has never specifically referred to white farmers. However his comments caused uproar in South Africa.
“Oz minister who wants white SA farmers has history of racist rants,” screamed one headline.
“I was pissed off,” says South African Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom.
“It was reckless, irresponsible and it was just pandering to a right wing group. I think there was a lot of concern about this statement.”
A spokeswoman for Dutton said Australia’s program “doesn’t discriminate on any basis. The minister has never suggested otherwise and therefore I would discount ill informed comment.”
It’s a miracle Johnny Muller is even alive, let alone that he can still see and doesn’t have brain damage.
Muller, a dairy farmer from a property near the town of Frankfort in the Free State, was shot while struggling with an intruder during a farm attack on September 24 last year.
He shows us the scars; the bullet entered above his right eye and came out on the left side of his neck. It dodged an artery.
Someone told the family the barrel of the gun must have been almost touching his head or it would have blown out a bigger hole. “We didn’t google that,” Johnny’s wife Dalene says drily.
The Mullers believe the motive for the attack was theft: ‘I don’t think all farm attacks are for money reasons, I think some are just to hurt and injure people, but in our case they really wanted money,” Dalene says.
Somehow she managed to press a panic button. The intruders escaped in the Muller’s bakkie (small truck) when they heard the alarm.
“I closed the door and I told the children: ‘Daddy has been shot. We don’t know if he is dead or alive, probably dead, but we cannot go out there.”
It’s hard to imagine the agonising wait for help in the Muller’s cheerful kitchen, with its fruit salad tablecloth, and multi-coloured sign that says “Many people have eaten here & survived”. (The sign, Johnny says, smiling, was there before the attack.)
Dalene says although the farm attacks are a problem, they are not the only people suffering in South Africa.
“There are a lot of people being hijacked, there are a lot of people being attacked in their houses, even in the cities.”
The family never considered not coming back to the farm. “This is where we live. We decided we are not going to let some barbarians ruin our lives.”
Do they think many other South Africans farmers would be interested in coming to Australia? “I think there would be some. In this area I don’t think there would be many,” Dalene says.
Earlier this year Tony Abbott claimed that “something like 400 white farmers have been brutally murdered over the last 12 months”.
However South African police say there were 47 farm murders and 561 farm attacks in 2017-18 (they do not identify the race of the victims or their occupations). The highest recorded number of farm murders was in 1997-98 when there were 153.
AfriForum disputes the police figures and says the real toll is higher. It says there were 84 farm murders last calendar year.
AgriSA, which represents about 28,000 farmers, says an increase in farm attacks during the past two financial years is in line with national crime statistics.
The spectre of violence is everywhere in South Africa. A guard with an automatic gun stands outside Wimpy, a fast food chain in a suburban Johannesburg shopping mall. A metre away a child eats his hamburger.
Middle-class houses hide behind towering walls, topped with electric fences and coiled barbed wire. Signs warn of armed security.
Our car windscreen is cracked from an earlier “smash and grab”–a brick through the window at a robot, which is what South Africans call traffic lights, followed by “give me your cell phone or I’ll shoot you”.
The life of almost every South African I meet has been scarred by violence. They tell horrifying stories of brutal home invasions, carjackings and murders with the same tone of sad resignation Australians use to talk about cancer.
In 2016-17 there were more than 19,000 murders in South Africa–an average of 52 every day. Most victims were young black men.
The division of wealth is stark. Just a few kilometres from Johannesburg’s affluent financial hub of Sandton, where tourists pose under a gigantic statue of Nelson Mandela and then have a glass of Chenin Blanc, is the township of Alexandra.
One of the poorest urban areas in South Africa, the township, its population almost entirely black, is crammed with corrugated iron shacks. Most don’t have running water so the people use communal pumps and outdoor toilets.
The World Bank says South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with its poverty “a demonstration of the enduring legacy of apartheid”.
When Mandela campaigned ahead of South Africa’s first multiracial elections in 1994, his slogan promised: “A better life for all”.
But democracy has not ended all white privilege.
Almost 25 years after the end of apartheid, two thirds of agricultural land is still in the hands of the white minority. Less than 9 percent of South Africans are white.
The African National Congress failed to achieve its target of a 30 per cent transfer of farmland to blacks by 2014. In December it adopted a policy position that land should be expropriated without compensation to accelerate reform.
The government insists there will be no “smash and grab interventions”, referring to the violent land grabs that occurred in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, and the economy and food security will not be adversely affected.
Farmers have been assured productive agricultural land will not be taken.
Land expropriation without compensation would only occur in limited situations, such as where land was sitting idle for speculation. Cases would be tested in the Constitutional Court.
But still there is uncertainty and fear.
This is exacerbated by militant populist politician Julius Malema, who has urged blacks to occupy white-owned land. He says he is not calling for whites to be killed … “for now”.
Malema, then a member of the ANC, also caused an outcry in 2010 when he sang the apartheid-era song Shoot the Boer, Shoot the Farmer, which a High Court judge ruled constituted hate speech.
Malema was later expelled from the ANC and formed the radical ultra-left Economic Freedom Fighters party, which commands just 6 per cent of the vote, but his inflammatory comments have alarmed white farmers.
“Politicians say ‘Kill the farmer, kill the farmer’ so they get it in their heads,” Johnny Muller says.
In 1998 Nelson Mandela said the government deplored the “cold-blooded killings on farms”.
Farm attacks were made a national security priority alongside other special crimes such as gang violence, cash in transit robberies and taxi violence.
But AfriForum is concerned the government has since de-prioritised it as a crime, including abolishing the commando system, a voluntary part-time force of the South African Army that assisted police.
AfriForum claims farmers are three to four times more likely to be killed than the average South African and the significance of racial and political motives is underplayed.
Despite the backlash from South Africa, Dutton has said he will “not step back” from the necessity of providing support to people who face persecution.
Somewhat ironically, given its advocacy promoting the plight of South African farmers overseas, AfriForum is not especially enthusiastic about Australia’s offer to take farmers.
“We were very grateful that there is recognition of the problem, that there is acknowledgement outside of South Africa that there is a problem in South Africa,” Roets says.
“But we know that exporting people would not solve the problem, at least not the collective problem. We would want to fix the problem here.”
It is difficult to imagine a more unlikely pairing. Allen Ginsberg, beat poet and icon of the counterculture, and Richard Helms, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 1966-1973, during the most controversial years of the Vietnam War. But in March 1971, in a drawing room of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC, the two came face to face in a fittingly bizarre encounter.
Ginsberg, due to give a reading at the gallery that evening, approached Helms with a wager. He told Helms that he suspected the CIA of being involved in the illegal opium trade in South-East Asia. If he was right about this controversial allegation, Ginsberg proposed that Helms should agree to meditate for one hour every day for the rest of his life. “It is terribly important to get him into an improved mind-consciousness,” Ginsberg later told reporters.
But if Ginsberg was wrong, and Helms could demonstrate the innocence of his agency, then Ginsberg agreed to gift Helms his Vajra, a brass Buddhist-Hindu ritual instrument that symbolised “the lightning doctrine of sudden illumination”. Confident that, on this score at least, the CIA had nothing to hide, Helms agreed to the bargain.
A year later, Ginsberg sent Helms a clipping from the Far Eastern Review that reported a number of sightings by journalists of piles of raw opium being readied for sale in full view of CIA agents. A January 1972 exposé in Ramparts Magazine, which five years earlier had first exposed details of the CIA’s infiltration of the National Students’ Association, lent further credence to Ginsberg’s charges.
Accompanying the clippings, a smug Ginsberg sent Helms some notes and advice on meditation techniques.
Perhaps more troubling for Helms though, particularly at a time of mounting public suspicion of the CIA, was the publicity that Ginsberg gave to these allegations.
A few months after their encounter Ginsberg wrote an open letter to Senator Clifford P Hansen asking him to investigate the matter. Hansen refused, and instead issued a firm rebuttal in an open letter that was drafted for him by the CIA’s public affairs staff.
But Ginsberg wasn’t one to give up. The following winter, he raised the issue again, this time on television, as a guest on the Dick Cavett Show. And then in March 1972 Ginsberg published the first draft of his ever-evolving poem “CIA Dope Calypso” in an issue of Earth Magazine that contained a series of damning articles about the CIA by other authors.
The poem drew heavily from the analysis of Alfred W McCoy, a graduate student at Yale who was commissioned by Harper and Row to write a study of the purported heroin epidemic in Vietnam. Ginsberg had met McCoy at a rally in New Haven to free Black Panther leader Huey P Newton.
McCoy’s book, based on more than 250 interviews with heroin dealers, police officials, and former French and American intelligence agents was published later that year as The Politics of Heroin in South-East Asia. Needless to say, it supported Ginsberg’s accusation that the CIA were complicit in the opium trade.
When the CIA found out about McCoy’s book after he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, they took strong objection to it. Cord Meyer, the CIA’s deputy director of plans, was sent to pay a visit to Harper and Row’s offices in New York and petitioned the publisher to share the galley proofs with them prior to publication. Reluctantly, Harper and Row consented.
But the CIA’s intervention backfired. Against their objections, Harper and Row chose to publish the work in full, and sped up the production of the book by a month to cash in on the controversy. “I had hoped that my work would be interesting enough to spark a public debate,” McCoy later wrote, “now the CIA, by attempting to suppress it, has itself sparked the debate”. After it was published, Ginsberg was often seen marching at protests with a copy on his head, exclaiming “he had something on his mind”.
It was not the first time the CIA had been subjected to Ginsberg’s particular brand of activist irreverence. During the trial of the “Ann Arbor Three”, a group of White Panther activists accused of blowing up a CIA recruitment station in Michigan, Ginsberg appeared as a defence witness, proclaiming himself as the spokesperson for all young people under the age of 28 in his vociferous opposition to the CIA (a claim that was vigorously rejected by the prosecution).
But perhaps there was a grain of truth in Ginsberg’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek exaggeration. He was undoubtedly one of the most high-profile representatives of the American counterculture and anti-war movement.
As a result, he played a small but significant role in raising the American public’s suspicions about their most secretive foreign intelligence agency at a time of immense discord and social upheaval. And, in the process, he helped to cement the CIA’s place in American culture as a lightning rod for wider public anxieties regarding secrecy and the excesses of US foreign policy.
Dennis Edwards: The trouble is the men behind the politics of heroin have never been brought to face the consequences. They continue to rule and reign from behind the scenes. They put up Presidents and remove them. The make Popes and have Popes removed. They make financial crisis and later solve them. They are none other than the famous Illuninati who are the hidden movers and shakers in the world. They follow closely their Lord, the spiritual forces that work in the children of disobedience. Read the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" to get a feel for their ideology.
At least 230 civilians have died in Libya in the chaotic, multiparty air war that has followed the ouster of dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, a report has found.
The study from Airwars, a London-based watchdog group, and New America, a Washington-based think tank, examined the outcome of 2,158 strikes conducted since September 2012 by at least seven local and international actors, underscoring the fraught and fractured nature of post-revolution Libya.
After a NATO-led air campaign helped Libyans topple Gaddafi in 2011, the country has descended into a simmering civil conflict that included the establishment of rival Libyan governments and the rise of militant groups, including a virulent local branch of the Islamic State, that have taken advantage of ungoverned areas to grow strong.
The report, which The Washington Post obtained ahead of its release this week, is the first comprehensive examination of the death toll caused by air operations in Libya’s post-revolution period.
Using social media accounts and other sources to assess individual incidents, researchers concluded that at least 237 and as many as 387 civilians were killed in those strikes. At least another 324 civilians were wounded in those attacks, the report found.
While the civilian death toll appears to be far smaller than that caused by Western air operations against militants in Iraq and Syria, one important feature of the Libyan conflict has been its murky, mysterious nature.
According to Airwars and New America, strikes have been repeatedly conducted in Libya not only by rival local factions and the United States, but also, with far less transparency, France, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. But fewer than 50 percent of reported strikes have been publicly declared, leading to questions about responsibility and accountability when civilian deaths do occur.
“Not one belligerent has taken responsibility for a single civilian death in Libya since 2012, and that’s a continuation of what we saw with NATO back in 2011,” said Chris Woods, director of Airwars. “It’s a tragedy for the Libyan people.”
Among Libyan actors, the report found that forces led by Khalifa Hifter, who has emerged as eastern Libya’s most influential power broker, have been responsible for the largest share of civilian deaths since 2012. Backed by outside powers including Russia, Hifter has vowed to clear Libya of extremist militants who have taken root since Gaddafi’s death.
But Hifter has been criticized for harsh tactics and his refusal to support the Western-backed Government of National Accord that seeks, in a rivalry to his own power, to assert authority across Libya.
Hifter’s self-proclaimed Libyan National Army is believed to have conducted about 1,100 strikes resulting in at least 95 civilian deaths, and potentially as many as 247, researchers found. Most of the attacks by Hifter’s forces have taken place in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Derna and in the country’s central oil region.
The GNA, which has fewer air assets, has conducted about 54 strikes, probably resulting in seven to 63 deaths, the researchers said.
Of the outside powers involved in post-revolution Libya, the United States has played the most significant military role. According to Airwars and New America, U.S. aircraft have conducted about 525 strikes on militants in Libya since September 2012.
That included an intense four-and-a-half-month operation in 2016 to push the Islamic State out of Sirte, the coastal city that became the group’s most important stronghold outside of Iraq and Syria.
U.S. Africa Command has said its operations have caused no confirmed civilian casualties in Libya during that period, but Airwars and New America assessed they probably resulted in 11 to 75 noncombatant deaths.
U.S. estimates of civilian casualties have been far lower than those from outside groups, partly because the U.S. military does limited follow-up after strikes occur to assess whether civilian deaths took place.
Often, it has been difficult to determine who has been behind a particular strike in Libya, with no local factions or foreign actors taking responsibility and locals assigning blame to multiple parties.
“This is one of the world’s forgotten wars,” said Peter Bergen, a vice president of New America. “The NATO intervention didn’t end the conflict; it precipitated a new phase and Libya is now an arena for proxy warfare.”
Researchers say the smaller civilian death toll in Libya–compared with over 6,000 in Iraq and Syria–is due to Libya’s lower population density and, perhaps, poorer reporting.
Earlier this week while most of the world was transfixed on the World Cup, the Trump/Kim handshake, or a multitude of other sundry events, Julius Malema, aka the Hitler of South Africa, was busy telling white people in his country that he’s not going wage genocide against them. Yet.
In an interview with TRT World News published this week, Malema said, “We have not called for the killing of white people. At least for now. I can’t guarantee the future.”
When the reporter mentioned that some people might view these remarks as a call to genocide, Malema responded, “Crybabies. Crybabies,” but later warned white South Africans that “the masses are on board” for “an un-led revolution and anarchy”.
Malema is a prominent politician in South Africa and at the forefront of his country’s movement to confiscate land from white property owners and redistribute it to the country’s black population.
No actual specifics about the plan have been revealed, of course.
So even if someone thinks this land grab is social justice, it’s at least reasonable to acknowledge the massive corruption that plagues South Africa’s government.
And presuming that a multi-billion dollar expropriation wouldn’t be fraught with graft is just plain naive.
There has also been zero acknowledgement that forced exprorpriation of private property would cause a wave of defaults on real estate mortgages, triggering a massive banking crisis and unforgiving recession.
South Africa already has a prime example about the economic consequences: Zimbabwe’s own land expropriation plunged that country into an economic cataclysm spanning two decades.
Yet these all seem to be irrelevant details.
Malema even went so far as to downplay Zimbabwe’s economic catastrophe, saying “You cannot [measure] the Zimbawean revolution based on the capitalist definition.”
I’m not sure what Marxist definition he’s using to measure success.
But we do know that two decades after land redistribution in Zimbabwe (which used to be considered the breadbasket of southern Africa), more than a quarter of the population is in danger of starving to death.
So even by the most basic metrics, Zimbabwe’s policies have been a total failure. Copying them is tantamount to suicide.
It’s truly astonishing that someone so dangerous and out of touch has been able to rise to power. And even more astonishing how quickly it’s happened.
A decade ago few people had heard of Malema. Now he commands millions and grows more powerful each day.
Swift, radical changes like this are common around the world, and throughout history.
In 1913, just a few years before the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks were a tiny group of radicals. Four years later they had taken over the entire country.
In 1928, the Nazi party was an obscure joke, winning a mere 2.6% of the votes in the national election that year.
Not even five years later, Adolf Hitler was German chancellor and had been awarded supreme power by the Enabling Act of 1933.
Point is, the world can change very quickly.
That’s why I’ve long been a strong advocate for having a Plan B.
It’s great to maintain a positive outlook and remain hopeful for the future. I certainly do. But sometimes circumstances don’t turn out like we hope.
Sometimes a tyrant rises to power. Sometimes financial markets crash overnight. Sometimes the most unexpected outcomes become reality.
Acknowledging these possibilities doesn’t make you a pessimist or an alarmist.
Rather, it’s rational and prudent to take basic, sensible steps to protect what you care about most, and what you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
For example, if you keep 100% of your wealth and investments domiciled in the same country where you live, you’re taking on unnecessary risk… especially if your home country is heavily indebted and legendary for civil asset forfeiture and frivolous lawsuits.
One sensible tactic would be to consider moving at least a small portion of your wealth to a different jurisdiction known for strong asset protection laws.
Another idea-- some people may be surprised to discover that they’re eligible for citizenship in another country due to some long-lost ancestor.
Ireland, Poland, Italy, Spain, and a number of other countries all have laws making it possible for descendents of their nationals to become citizens.
And a second passport is a great asset . It ensures that, no matter what happens, you’ll always have another option… to travel, live, work, invest, do business, and bring your family.
That’s the whole point of a Plan B. You might not ever need it. But if you can prudently reduce your risk at minimal cost, there’s absolutely no downwide in having one. It just makes sense.
Chapter 30 from Where is America in Bible Prophecy"
Football, Fatima and Fado – the FIFA-Olympic Connection
The story goes that the last dictator of Portugal, J.A. Salazar, who was Prime Minister from 1932 to 1968, when asked what was necessary to rule the country, responded with the three ‘Fs:’ football, Fatima and Fado. He was saying that all that he needed to control the country was sports, religion and music.
Fatima, of course, stood for the religious element. The town of Fatima was where the famous three Catholic children were supposed to have seen a vision and to have received a message from the Virgin Mary. The apparition event took place just prior to WWI. Portuguese tradition has it that Mary’s appearance at Fatima and the public’s embracing response was the reason that Portugal was able to remain neutral during the war.
The ‘F’ for Fado stood for the typical sad folk music popular in Portugal at the time, while the ‘F’ for football, obviously, stood for sports. During those years Benfica was Portugal’s greatest football team, and Eusebio, a famous striker, was the star. When a famous Italian team offered Eusebio a large contract to come play in Italy, Salazar prohibited it, saying that Eusebio was a national treasure. Salazar knew the value of football over the masses and so kept their champion at home.
We all remember the words of Karl Marx, who said that religion was the opiate of the masses. Salazar amplified the opiate to include the music and sports industries, which at the time of Salazar were still in their infancy in comparison with today. But of course the Romans and Greeks had used sports in the same way. In the time of Rome’s decline it is said that the people demanded more circus and bread even while Rome was being surrounded by its enemies.
Today we could amplify the list of opiates further and include the giant commercial centers where thousands rush every weekend to shop for all the things that money can buy. These are the new temples of mammon, where the faithful go to worships the new idols. We buy gadgets that give us more time on the Internet where we can watch more sports, music or religious events, or even have Internet sex or watch movies that promote all the values we don’t want our children or grandchildren to have. And yet, with all our things and momentary pleasure, we still do not satisfy the deepest yearning of our soul for truth, love and eternal happiness. Like the Apostle John has said,
Love not the world neither the things of the world for all that is of the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, is not of the father but of the world. And the world passes away and the lust thereof, but whosoever doeth the will of God abides forever.[1]
Jesus said something similar,
A man’s life consists not in the abundance of things which he possesses.[2]
Apostle James put it a different way. He said,
Ye adulterers and adulteresses know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.[3]
The apostle is saying here that if we are lusting after the things of the world, or living for them only, we are committing spiritual adultery with the world. That is why we will never be ultimately happy. Man is not just a physical being. He is spiritual being, and he must seek first his spiritual needs. As Jesus said,
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.[4]Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceed out of the mouth of God.[5]
In the Old Testament the Lord said through Isaiah,
Why do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And you labour for that which satisfies not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline you ear, and come unto me: hear and your soul shall live.[6]
Man is constantly trying to find happiness in the things that are not eternal and therefore in the end do not bring ultimate happiness. His amusements help him escape from the predicament he finds himself in. They help him escape from his life without meaning and purpose. They help him escape the daily grind of making a living to acquire more things. In the end, he winds up empty, wondering if this is all there is to life. He ends up concluding he should “Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.”[7] He spends his time trying to take care of and satisfy his body and its needs and desires, while neglecting his spirit, his eternal soul which will last for eternity. Like the old poem He Fed His Body But Starved His Soul.
There was a man that some folks called great,
said he’d done good, had grappled with fate.
He’d won some fame and some riches, too.
But in the crowd there were those that knew;
the soul of him so miserably small,
that real greatness he knew not at all.
For all through life he had missed the real goal,
he fed his body but starved his soul.
He had no time for the little things,
that so much peace and contentment brings;
a faithful friend or a child’s tender look,
a promise sweet from the dear Old Book,
a little talk with a Friend Divine,
a little walk where the wildflowers twine.
He was just half a man, not well rounded, whole;
who fed his body but starved his soul.
And when that day of accounting came
in God’s own time, death called his name;
then the poor, frail, worthless, empty shell,
he groomed and fed and tended so well,
was left behind just an earthbound clod,
while his shriveled soul went to face his God.
All unprepared and paid the full toll,
for he had fed his body and starved his soul.
So come my friend and take time today,
to read God’s Word and walk in His ways.
We’ll follow the trail that higher goes,
to regions where the soul larger grows.
You’ll never hear them say of you then,
just one of the common herd of men.
So if you would be well-rounded and whole,
read God’s Word to nourish your soul.[8]
Are we feeding our physical body with food and drink and entertainments of the flesh to the full, while our spirits are empty and longing for satisfaction? Do we feel like the Rolling Stones’ famous song,I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.[9] We can’t get no satisfaction because all we’re trying to do is satisfy the flesh. But the trouble is that the flesh is never satisfied. It always wants more and more and never has enough. Like the Proverb says,
No matter how many beautiful woman a man has seen, he will always look at another one. Like the rich Romans in the time of Rome’s great wealth and abundance who would attend banquets full of food and sex and alcohol. They would eat to the filling of their stomachs, only to vomit it all up, so they could fill themselves up once again. Like some of the scandals of recent times of rich politicians or wealthy businessmen well in years seeking sex with young girls hardly eighteen years of age. The flesh is never satisfied, it always wants more. But as Jesus said,
But in this article I wanted to look at the World Cup and Olympics and see what kind of affect they have on the economies of the countries that host the games. I also wanted to see if these sports events are part of the spiritual web woven to catch men within its borders and prohibit them from finding the way, the truth and the life. John Perkin’s Economic Hitman[12] which we have talked about earlier, explains of the infrastructure contracts that Third World countries are forced to accept from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These contracts ultimately leave the country poorer than when they started. Are FIFA and the Olympics part of the great financial sorcery to bind heavier burdens on the poor economies of the world in order to keep those economies and those peoples submissive to the international bankers?
Some time ago I did a study about the countries who had hosted World Cup and Olympic events. Some articles on the subject and a YouTube link can be found at the following footnote.[13] I had seen the affects of these games in Portugal, Greece, and Spain, where the governments invested large amounts of euros loaned from Europe. These loans went to improve infrastructure and to build the needed stadiums in the hope of reaping the financial benefits of the games. In the end we found out that the financial benefits hardly warranted such a financial investment, and the government and people were left with a big financial loan to pay back.
That’s why we saw the manifestations in Brazil before the World Cup soccer games, as some have come to realize that the games bring no relief to the poor and needy. They only serve to increase the wealth of the wealthy through construction contracts. Some cities are left with stadiums they do not know how they will pay off or maintain. But since football is part of the web to keep men caught, as Salazar so confessed, the Internationals keep sports as a high priority on their agenda. They want a pacific populace. They want a population which will not rise up against their masters, the financial elite. They want a population that will submit and adhere to the financial injustices perpetrated against them.
They bind heavy burdens grievous to be born and they themselves touch not the burdens with one finger.[14]
The bankers and politicians create big national debts and then expect the population to pay it back to them. Something is wrong with this picture, but the silent majority blindly go like sheep to the slaughter. Sports is one of today’s opiates that keep them walking in submission to their corrupt leaders.
But one of the problems today is the Muslim youth, many of whom have not integrated into the Western society. They remain aloof and therefore out of control through the normal methods of manipulation. The religious element usually helps governments control their populations. They’ll gain financial or influential favors because of their cooperation with the government. But radical Islamic movements from the Middle East embittered by the events that have occurred there are in this case feeding rebellion and violent acts of aggression as we have recently seen in France. But that’s a whole other topic. Let’s keep to FIFA and sports.
Of course FIFA always justifies the extra expense for the host country, saying it is good for the country's pride and national identity. Local government politicians will also parrot FIFA’s mantra knowing that big money coming into the country will mean contracts for their friends and supporters and something more in their own pockets. In the end, FIFA always manages to walk away richer than before, while the host country almost always has a great burden to pay and often some “white elephant” stadiums that are a burden on the local economy. In recent years, only Germany and the USA have had World Cup or Olympic events in which they have managed to break even. Many countries are waking up to the fact that the World Cup and Olympics are bad business.
But the truth is that for generations governments have used sports as a way to distract the population, keep them content, and foment national pride. Sports are an amusement. They keep men from thinking about their own problems. A man may have a poor and miserable job and life, but he can find self-esteem in his favorite champion who helps his team to victory over their rivals. The spectator gains euphoria through the victory his team wins on the playing field. His mind is distracted from his own wretched condition and he finds a sense of meaning in his favorite player and team.
Interestingly enough, the word amusement means “away from thinking.” During the time of the spectacle the fan is not thinking about his problems, but is absorbed in the game, as if he himself were playing. He forgets his problems and worries and dissatisfactions with life and his government, and for those moments he is amused. The word “muse” comes from the Greek for “to think” or “to ponder.” As in the word “atheist” the “a” before a word is used as a negative. A theist is a person who believes in God. An atheist is a person who does not believe in God. “Muse” means to think or ponder. “Amuse” means to not think or ponder or to be away from thinking or pondering. We seek out amusements for that very reason. They help us get away from thinking about our problems, whatever they may be.
Karl Marx predicted that the poor man would eventually turn against the rich and over throw their unjust rule over the poor. Why has not this prediction come to pass, when the poor far outnumber the rich? As the Caesars of Rome and as Salazar of Portugal confessed and the elite of the world know, amusements - whether they be music, sports or religious events - are important to control the masses and govern a nation. The rich have learned they need to share a tiny bit of their wealth with the poor to keep them passively submissive. Today we have the middle class, though many claim it’s a diminishing sector. We also have politicians who are suppose to be attentive to the needs and wants of their constituents, but are actually controlled by big money and its interests. It’s a sad day for the poor man. But never mind - let’s go have a beer and watch the game! Shall we? [To go to the next chapters click here]
[7] 1Corinthians15:32 If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, What advantages it me, if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die.
All Bible verses are from the King James Bible, although I have changed some of the old English. Any similarity to any modern version is only by coincidence. Bible verses other than the King James have been foot-noted properly.
Copyright @ Dennis M. Edwards (photos used from Google Images for educational purposes only)
“The United States of Amnesia.” That’s what Gore Vidal once called us. We remember what we find it convenient to remember and forget everything else. That forgetfulness especially applies to the history of others. How could their past, way back when, have any meaning for us today? Well, it just might. Take the European conflagration of 1914-1918, for example.
You may not have noticed. There’s no reason why you should have, fixated as we all are on the daily torrent of presidential tweets. But let me note for the record that the centenary of the conflict once known as The Great War is well underway and before the present year ends will have concluded.
Indeed, a hundred years ago this month, the 1918 German Spring Offensive–codenamed Operation Michael–was sputtering to an unsuccessful conclusion. A last desperate German gamble, aimed at shattering Allied defenses and gaining a decisive victory, had fallen short. In early August of that year, with large numbers of our own doughboys now on the front lines, a massive Allied counteroffensive was to commence, continuing until the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when an armistice finally took effect and the guns fell silent.
In the years that followed, Americans demoted The Great War. It became World War I, vaguely related to but overshadowed by the debacle next in line, known as World War II. Today, the average citizen knows little about that earlier conflict other than that it preceded and somehow paved the way for an even more brutal bloodletting. Also, on both occasions, the bad guys spoke German.
So, among Americans, the war of 1914-1918 became a neglected stepsister of sorts, perhaps in part because the United States only got around to suiting up for that conflict about halfway through the fourth quarter. With the war of 1939-1945 having been sacralized as the moment when the Greatest Generation saved humankind, the war-formerly-known-as-The-Great-War collects dust in the bottom drawer of American collective consciousness.
From time to time, some politician or newspaper columnist will resurrect the file labeled “August 1914,” the grim opening weeks of that war, and sound off about the dangers of sleepwalking into a devastating conflict that nobody wants or understands.
Yet a different aspect of World War I may possess even greater relevance to the American present. I’m thinking of its duration: the longer it lasted, the less sense it made. But on it went, impervious to human control like the sequence of Biblical plagues that God had inflicted on the ancient Egyptians.
So the relevant question for our present American moment is this: once it becomes apparent that a war is a mistake, why would those in power insist on its perpetuation, regardless of costs and consequences? In short, when getting in turns out to have been a bad idea, why is getting out so difficult, even (or especially) for powerful nations that presumably should be capable of exercising choice on such matters? Or more bluntly, how did the people in charge during The Great War get away with inflicting such extraordinary damage on the nations and peoples for which they were responsible?
For those countries that endured World War I from start to finish–especially Great Britain, France, and Germany–specific circumstances provided their leaders with an excuse for suppressing second thoughts about the cataclysm they had touched off.
Among them were:
* mostly compliant civilian populations deeply loyal to some version of King and Country, further kept in line by unremitting propaganda that minimized dissent;
* draconian discipline–deserters and malingerers faced firing squads–that maintained order in the ranks (most of the time) despite the unprecedented scope of the slaughter;
* the comprehensive industrialization of war, which ensured a seemingly endless supply of the weaponry, munitions, and other equipment necessary for outfitting mass conscript armies and replenishing losses as they occurred.
Economists would no doubt add sunk costs to the mix. With so much treasure already squandered and so many lives already lost, the urge to press on a bit longer in hopes of salvaging at least some meager benefit in return for what (and who) had been done in was difficult to resist.
Even so, none of these, nor any combination of them, can adequately explain why, in the midst of an unspeakable orgy of self-destruction, with staggering losses and nations in ruin, not one monarch or president or premier had the wit or gumption to declare: Enough! Stop this madness!
Instead, the politicians sat on their hands while actual authority devolved onto the likes of British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, French Marshals Ferdinand Foch and Philippe Petain, and German commanders Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff (pictured at left). In other words, to solve a conundrum they themselves had created, the politicians of the warring states all deferred to their warrior chieftains. For their part, the opposing warriors jointly subscribed to a perverted inversion of strategy best summarized by Ludendorff as “punch a hole [in the front] and let the rest follow.” And so the conflict dragged on and on.
Put simply, in Europe, a hundred years ago, war had become politically purposeless. Yet the leaders of the world’s principal powers–including, by 1917, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson–could conceive of no alternative but to try harder, even as the seat of Western civilization became a charnel house.
Only one leader bucked the trend: Vladimir Lenin. In March 1918, soon after seizing power in Russia, Lenin took that country out of the war. In doing so, he reasserted the primacy of politics and restored the possibility of strategy. Lenin had his priorities straight. Nothing in his estimation took precedence over ensuring the survival of the Bolshevik Revolution. Liquidating the war against Germany therefore became an imperative.
Allow me to suggest that the United States should consider taking a page out of Lenin’s playbook. Granted, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, such a suggestion might have smacked of treason. Today, however, in the midst of our never-ending efforts to expunge terrorism, we might look to Lenin for guidance on how to get our priorities straight.
As was the case with Great Britain, France, and Germany a century ago, the United States now finds itself mired in a senseless war. Back then, political leaders in London, Paris, and Berlin had abrogated control of basic policy to warrior chieftains. Today, ostensibly responsible political leaders in Washington have done likewise. Some of those latter-day American warrior chieftains who gather in the White House or testify on Capitol Hill may wear suits rather than uniforms, but all remain enamored with the twenty-first-century equivalent of Ludendorff’s notorious dictum.
Of course, our post-9/11 military enterprise–the undertaking once known as the Global War on Terrorism–differs from The Great War in myriad ways. The ongoing hostilities in which U.S. forces are involved in various parts of the Islamic world do not qualify, even metaphorically, as “great.” Nor will there be anything great about an armed conflict with Iran, should members of the current administration get their apparent wish to provoke one.
Today, Washington need not even bother to propagandize the public into supporting its war. By and large, members of the public are indifferent to its very existence. And given our reliance on a professional military, shooting citizen-soldiers who want to opt out of the fight is no longer required.
There are also obvious differences in scale, particularly when it comes to the total number of casualties involved. Cumulative deaths from the various U.S. interventions, large and small, undertaken since 9/11, number in the hundreds of thousands. The precise tally of those lost during the European debacle of 1914-1918 will never be known, but the total probably surpassed 13 million.
Even so, similarities between the Great War as it unspooled and our own not-in-the-least-great war(s) deserve consideration. Today, as then, strategy–that is, the principled use of power to achieve the larger interests of the state–has ceased to exist. Indeed, war has become an excuse for ignoring the absence of strategy.
For years now, U.S. military officers and at least some national security aficionados have referred to ongoing military hostilities as “the Long War.” To describe our conglomeration of spreading conflicts as “long” obviates any need to suggest when or under what circumstances (if any) they might actually end. It’s like the meteorologist forecasting a “long winter” or the betrothed telling his or her beloved that theirs will be a “long engagement.” The implicit vagueness is not especially encouraging.
Some high-ranking officers of late have offered a more forthright explanation of what “long” may really mean. In the Washington Post, the journalist Greg Jaffe recently reported that “winning for much of the U.S. military’s top brass has come to be synonymous with staying put.” Winning, according to Air Force General Mike Holmes, is simply “not losing. It’s staying in the game.”
Not so long ago, America’s armed forces adhered to a concept called victory, which implied conclusive, expeditious, and economical mission accomplished. No more. Victory, it turns out, is too tough to achieve, too restrictive, or, in the words of Army Lieutenant General Michael Lundy, “too absolute.” The United States military now grades itself instead on a curve. As Lundy puts it, “winning is more of a continuum,” an approach that allows you to claim mission accomplishment without, you know, actually accomplishing anything.
It’s like soccer for six-year-olds. Everyone tries hard so everyone gets a trophy. Regardless of outcomes, no one goes home feeling bad. In the U.S. military’s case, every general gets a medal (or, more likely, a chest full of them).
“These days,” in the Pentagon, Jaffe writes, “senior officers talk about ‘infinite war.’”
I would like to believe that Jaffe is pulling our leg. But given that he’s a conscientious reporter with excellent sources, I fear he knows what he’s talking about. If he’s right, as far as the top brass are concerned, the Long War has now officially gone beyond long. It has been deemed endless and is accepted as such by those who preside over its conduct.
In truth, infinite war is a strategic abomination, an admission of professional military bankruptcy. Erster General-Quartiermeister Ludendorff might have endorsed the term, but Ludendorff was a military fanatic.
Check that. Infinite war is a strategic abomination except for arms merchants, so-called defense contractors, and the “emergency men” (and women) devoted to climbing the greasy pole of what we choose to call the national security establishment. In other words, candor obliges us to acknowledge that, in some quarters, infinite war is a pure positive, carrying with it a promise of yet more profits, promotions, and opportunities to come. War keeps the gravy train rolling. And, of course, that’s part of the problem.
Who should we hold accountable for this abomination? Not the generals, in my view. If they come across as a dutiful yet unimaginative lot, remember that a lifetime of military service rarely nurtures imagination or creativity. And let us at least credit our generals with this: in their efforts to liberate or democratize or pacify or dominate the Greater Middle East they have tried every military tactic and technique imaginable. Short of nuclear annihilation, they’ve played just about every card in the Pentagon’s deck–without coming up with a winning hand. So they come and go at regular intervals, each new commander promising success and departing after a couple years to make way for someone else to give it a try.
No, it’s not the generals who have let us down, but the politicians to whom they supposedly report and from whom they nominally take their orders. Of course, under the heading of politician, we quickly come to our current commander-in-chief. Yet it would be manifestly unfair to blame President Trump for the mess he inherited, even if he is presently engaged in making matters worse.
The failure is a collective one, to which several presidents and both political parties have contributed over the years. Although the carnage may not be as horrific today as it was on the European battlefields on the Western and Eastern Fronts, members of our political class are failing us as strikingly and repeatedly as the political leaders of Great Britain, France, and Germany failed their peoples back then.
Congressional midterm elections are just months away and another presidential election already looms. Who will be the political leader with the courage and presence of mind to declare: “Enough! Stop this madness!” Man or woman, straight or gay, black, brown, or white, that person will deserve the nation’s gratitude and the support of the electorate.
Until that occurs, however, the American penchant for war will stretch on toward infinity. No doubt Saudi and Israeli leaders will cheer, Europeans who remember their Great War will scratch their heads in wonder, and the Chinese will laugh themselves silly. Meanwhile, issues of genuinely strategic importance–climate change offers one obvious example–will continue to be treated like an afterthought. As for the gravy train, it will roll on.
