Refugees and Chaplains

In a recent Counterpunch article by Andre Vltchek entitled the "Refugees are Coming", he identifies the One Percenters of the world as the neo-colonialists who have, through their greedy imperialist policies, claimed the whole world as their oyster at the expense of its inhabitants. For those of us who yet live in the world's few remaining peaceful enclaves, we are now freshly informed that the carnage and bloodshed caused by the West in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the Congo, is producing a "world of people" on the move to what they hope will be places of refuge. Andre also describes the hatred and the selfishness of the people in the historic "Colonizer Nations" who resent the onslaught of destitute humanity to their shores. The   vehemently claim that they have no responsibility to care for them, when in many cases their plight is directly attributable to their country's arrogant foreign policy.

Where Andre and I part company is his conclusion, conspicuously placed in a paragraph of its own, attributing the declared religion of the perpetrators to be the philosophical basis on which they do their deeds. He says,  "In the West, in the Christian West, in fundamentalist West, such arrangement is obviously tolerable",  inferring that Christianity is somehow responsible.

Nothing could be further from the truth.
One need go no further than Matthew Chapters 5 and 6 to conclude that the behavior, he attributes to  christianity is not Christian despite its institutional status or its attempts at justification.  For want of another term, and perhaps I am inventing one, such behavior should be called "Pharisee-ism.".  Jesus told the story of the two men praying in the temple, the one a Pharisee and the other a Publican. The Pharisee in pride proclaimed to God his gratefulness for not being like other men, praying often, giving to the poor, professing his loyalty, while the Publican with his head down and beating his breast said, "God  be merciful to me a Sinner."Jesus declared that only the the Publican was justified.

In our contemporary world then, who..... in this illustration would you identify as the follower of Christ? and who would be the Pharisee ? With no hesitation, the institutional christianity of the west is the Pharisee, so why persist in  measuring Christianity by its false professors rather than a measurement using the words spoken by the very author of "the Way" Himself? 

In another well timed article illustrating the depth of this hypocrisy, "Onward Christian  Military Chaplains- Marching as to War", Rev. William Alberts correctly identifies the false doctrines and justification of military chaplains who, for the sake of their career, aid and abet the atrocities of the West, by comforting the troops that commit them. There is no measurement problem here, if we again measure the christianity they profess with Jesus' teaching in The Sermon on the Mount.
"By their fruits shall ye know them"  Matthew 7:16  It's a very simple test and no matter what post you hold in worldly christianity, be it Pope or Deaconess. How you respond publicly to this human tragedy is vital evidence of your conversion ( or no) to "the Way"---  and every one who claims to profess, can take the test.

If Vltchek errs in his wrongly tagging Christianity, Alberts does not go far enough in identifying complicity among professors of Christianity. Because of the alternate media and the internet, we live in an informed world, much different to previous generations. Before the internet, the establishment media had its way with us, and I suppose religious leaders could rightly claim that they did not have enough conclusive evidence nor was any offered by the establishment media. In that far off time, very few knew of the evil policies that are now justified by the west.  But now, there is no excuse. No religious leader, or for that matter, no sincere Christian, can claim ignorance and remain silent.

That said, I would not claim to judge, but by remaining silent, such persons have no cause for confidence in professing that they follow Christ. Their information world is now bigger than their society, their culture, their church, career, and the petty ignorance of uninformed peers. If they would have assurance of who they are before God, they must stand with the oppressed and teach others to do so.

Banners .... to raise

We live in a society where everyday, we have to resist unsolicited advertising, and yet we admire the giant daylight signs and the clever advertisements for they are a soft form of entertainment. So there is a dichotomy there, one half of us assenting and the other resisting advertising. I conclude that we have little choice for we have to travel and read and communicate and along the way, those with something to sell or promote have set up their signs. It comes with the territory-- the age of consumerism.

So what about what we believe?  If the world will sell us consumer goods, can we sell them just causes ? All of us are passionate about some things in life, and by that I mean that we would like to infect others with our passion. The world is full of evil, and along the way some, would like to make a difference -- to correct something.
I.E. Some of the causes, I embrace adorn this post .

What prevents us ?

Money. Advertising in any form, even a lowly bumper sticker costs  money. E-mail Banners cost nothing and like Google ads or signature blocks they can be attached to every message.

Insecurity.  Privately, we all embrace causes, but we suffer with a natural reticence to say "this is right, and this is wrong". True ?  However, in our  generation, we can now be the researchers. The shyness can go. The alternate media provides ample opportunity to do independent research. Additionally, there are brilliant minds out there who have a passion for the truth and have embraced the internet as their means of making a difference. We have access to all of them, the sincere, as well as the schills and apologists.

Peer Pressure. What can I say other than time and circumstance wait for no man. If we do not seize the opportunity to speak to others, the moment passes and is gone forever. Will concern, reinforced by a new confidence to confirm the truth, overcome peer pressure?

Your Career Channel.  If you are caught up in an enterprise or employment or profession that profits from an injustice, you may just have to choose. Maybe the thought of choosing will never arise as you have been successfully programmed by your training to deal with all the moral issues that result from your vocation or work.  I say..... beware.

 and lastly ..

Selfishness.  There's no  antidote for it  except a change of heart.

Nuclear weapons will never be used!

A great deal has been written about the prospects of man's ultimate survival on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The history of civilization has produced mastery of the physical elements in our world so that almost anything that can be conceived, can be built. Warfare  has always been a catalyst for the development of technology that would enable one side to have an  advantage over the other. Never has a war technology been developed, and never used. From such a track record comes an abject fear, that it is only a matter of time until some nation will use a nuclear  device supposedly to their advantage, and the reprisals that follow, will engulf us all.

There is one small glimmer of hope in this human prediction and that is the fact that it is "a given" that the effects of even a successful preemptive nuclear strike, will also bring a slow destruction on the aggressor too. That scenario has never been played out before. The distances between the trench lines in WWI were not great. An undisturbed pastoral scene was the reality a short distance behind the lines on either side. In WWII, the devastation pattern widened to include whole cities of noncombatants, but still remained reasonably localized. With the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima all that changed.

Nuclear radiation blasted high into the atmosphere, travels on wind currents to lay a pattern of  destruction and disease many thousands of miles from the actual blast. It became very evident, very  quickly, that given enough bombs or warheads delivered preemptively to annihilate an enemy, the  aggressor would also die -- only slower. In fact the whole world could die if the pattern of man's ambition to win at all costs was to be repeated as it has been many times in the past. With such  knowledge, dare man unleash the "god of war?"

So why was the bomb used 70 years ago?  This week I have been reading numerous quotes from the  WWII era that deny that the bomb ever had to be used to bring about the Japanese surrender. Admiral Nimitz, General MacArthur, Admiral Leahy, General Bonner Feller, all said at the time, that Japan  was economically and militarily isolated and that before 1945 ended, Japan would surrender even  without an invasion. In addition, the Russians had already received overtures from the Japanese that they wished to surrender to them rather than the Americans.

The military leaders, I have already quoted were expressing an opinion to counter the view that had been generated by the bloody fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The acceptable theory was that the use of the bomb was justified to prevent the deaths of thousands of Americans if Japan itself had to be invaded .

In 1989, historian Gar Alperovitz reported, “American leaders knew well in advance that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not required to bring about Japan’s surrender;” and later, in his 847-page The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (Random House, 1995), “I think it can be proven that the bomb was not only unnecessary but known in advance not to be necessary.” The popular myth “didn’t just happen,” Alperovitz says, “it was created.

When the 70 scientists that were part of the Manhattan project saw the effects of a test bomb on 15 July 1945, they sent a letter to President Truman pleading that he never use it. Truman never received the letter.  From the evidence we have, it is apparent that deep in their souls, they were compelled to admit, that although they were responsible for the first nuclear bomb success, they could see that mankind would now have a weapon that could ultimately destroy everyone. The after effects of a thermo-nuclear war would end life on earth as we know it . Successful though they were in pursuing this invention, they wished no precedent for its use to be a part of their legacy to mankind.

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not military targets . We can only speculate then that Truman's  goal was to send a message to the world -- that America was #1 in the arms race and that Russian intransigence and arrogance that they had just experienced at Potsdam, would not be tolerated. So President Truman made the decision to use the bomb not for military reasons--- but for political.

The bomb was therefore used as a terror weapon against the civilian population of Japan in order to compel immediate surrender to the Americans and to declare to the world that America was the sole nuclear power. In Nuremburg, that same week, the protocols for war crimes were being drafted in order to condemn the Nazi regime. Ironically the protocols included the terror bombing of civilian cities as a war crime. Obviously, the term "war crime " would apply only to the losers.

All the proceeding is my introduction to this Blog entry. What I really am here to say is, that it is my conviction that (miracle of miracles ) Thermo-Nuclear war will never happen. First, the nuclear club is very small and the entry fee is very expensive. Second, the potential devastation is much higher now than it was at the beginning of the nuclear age because of the increased size and effectiveness of the weapons. Cruise missles can deliver nuclear weapons many times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima ..... and everyone knows it. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine therefore, is not dead. Three, there is evidence to suppose that the *2D sanctions, politics and war rhetoric we hear in the news, are belied by published economic and cooperative ties, which indicate that a **3D relationship exists among the Elite of both sides. ....... and Fourth, and most important, the God of the universe has throughout history, systematically revealed knowledge progressively to man, and just because he has allowed him to open the ultimate "Pandora's Box",  He will restrain man and prevent him from destroying the world that He has promised to judge at the last day? To permit the unthinkable would be deny Him glory.  Only a fool can believe that the infinitely complex and precise material universe has no Creator, and that man is at liberty to destroy it.

Psalm 2 : vs 1  and 4 says  " Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing ?....He that  sitteth in the heavens shall  laugh; The Lord shall have them in derision." 

 *2D  refers to events that are published and/or visible to the world . Actions that are analyzed supposedly to reveal motives.
**3D  refers to plans and  relationships which are kept concealed because knowledge of them would  betray plans  that powerful people would want to  remain secret,  especially from their national populations .