It's not as though the word of God has failed
Ray Stephens here sings a wonderful song that expounds the obvious, just as true now as in 1987:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drMMBE6KRbI
These disgusting people, and the suckers they deceive, certainly proclaim to the world that the putative disciples of the Wisdom of God are more filled with folly than anyone else - which is not to mymind proclaiming the name of Jesus or his gospel. But the nice thing is that this foul desert is what we are told to expect. If it proves the warnings of Jesus and the apostles to be true, it is surely not evidence that we should not believe them.
But in this one thing I resemble Elijah: he was wholly unaware of 7000 faithful people who had not bowed the knee to Baal nor kissed him, and these days so am I. God willing, in the coming year that may change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drMMBE6KRbI
These disgusting people, and the suckers they deceive, certainly proclaim to the world that the putative disciples of the Wisdom of God are more filled with folly than anyone else - which is not to mymind proclaiming the name of Jesus or his gospel. But the nice thing is that this foul desert is what we are told to expect. If it proves the warnings of Jesus and the apostles to be true, it is surely not evidence that we should not believe them.
But in this one thing I resemble Elijah: he was wholly unaware of 7000 faithful people who had not bowed the knee to Baal nor kissed him, and these days so am I. God willing, in the coming year that may change.
posted by Peter Attwood at 12/30/2015 07:34:00 PM
8 Comments:
Yes, God willing.
I pray for you often.
The New Years Eve Attacks in Cologne Germany and to a lesser extent in other German cities:
This past weekend I spoke with some residents of Cologne who seem to have a greater unnderstanding of what happened there than American reporters do.
From the very beginning it has been reported in the German press that the attackers seemed to be predominately of North African heritage. I wondered myself, can a German tell the diffeence between someone from say Algeria or Morrocco and someone from Syria or Iraq? What I was told is that the problems caused by people from Algeria, Morrocco Tunisia, and Libya is not new. Algerians and Morrocans, and Tunisians have no chance of being granted asylum in Germany. They know when they get here that they have no chance of being granted asylum. Therefore they know that they will never be intergrated in to German society.
That gives them only one goal from the moment that they get here. That goal is to make as much money as possible by any means possible before they get sent back to North Africa or to prison.
This explination makes a lot of sense, to me anyways.
I guess that I personally can not expect the people from these countries to act any differently considering the difficult situations that they come from. I also can not expect the Germans to act any differently when they demand that the Police round them up and send them back. If this were the USA these illegal immigrants would get less than minimum wage jobs and be denyed medical and legal protection for decades unless they get deported first. In Germany they get room and board and get forbidden from working until they get deported. The policies of both countries not only encourage those deported to try and come back again they encourage new waves of people to try their luck going northward.
Americans and Europeans both owe a debt to people from the south. While it is true that many of our jobs have been exported to poorer countries so have our polluting industries. Western oil companies and mining companies have caused a lot of environmental damage in the south. But at what point can it be said that the debts of Americans or Europeans are being exceeded by the costs of massive immigration?
curt
One clear difference between the American and European approaches is that in the USA the well off benifit from the availability of exploitable labor while the poor loose out like strikers loose out to scabs. Do not get me wrong I want to see every person in Mexico or Algeria be able to earn a decent living. Massive emmigration should not be the solution. Fair economic policies, internationally, should be the solution.
I fear that even if fair policies could be put in to place the future effects of climate change will more than cancel them out.
curt
Humanity seems to be failing. Yet there was (is) plenty of potential talent out there.
This talent was just not able to organize itself effectively enough or fast enough to be able to decisively overcome the psychological conditioning caused by environmental factors which caused large numbers of people to behave in a destructive manner.
That is certainly not a very specific or helpful paragraph. It will fit nicely on the gravestone of humanity though. *°°°
Curt
Was the last chance for the United States, and for that matter the world, not to fail, the 1972 election between McGovern and Nixon? Or, was that election the only chance that we had not to fail? Considering that the 1972 election was not even close would it not be reasonable to say that we never really had a chance?
I have recently pointed out, in a place where it will never be found except by Louis Proyect, that the way WW 2 went down was not kosher. No, I am not refering to the fact that the Japanese Codes had been broken so Roosevelt probably new about the attack on Pearl Harbor in advance. What I am refering to is the way that the western allied leaders dilly dallyed around in fighting the Nazis in Germany.
The first offensive opperations that the allies launched against Germany was the invasion of north Africa in November 1942. They then followed up with invansions of Silicy and Italy before landing in France. These operations were all senseless irrelevent detours designed not to win the war against Germany but to give the Germans more time to kill more Soviets, and to make sure that the communitsts did not come to power in Italy, after the defeat of Germany.
If the western allied leaders had really been serious in defeating Germany in the shortest amount of time they would have occupied Sweden in 1942 in the same manner that they had occupied Iran in that war. Yes there would have been socme casualties in the war for Scandanavia. But in comparison with the losses suffered in the mediterainian theater they would have been small.
How can I make this assertion and claim to be a better military strategist than the entire leadership of the western allies, assuming that they were operating with honest intentions? I will get to that now.
Curt
First of all although Germany had a first rate army, in 1940 at any rate, it had a fourth rate navy. It possessed almost no surface warships and what warships it had were designed as raiders not for sea battles against other battleships. The submarines possessed by the Germans at that time were really not any different than the submarines of WW1.
Then there was the German Air Force. It was second rate. The Royal Air Force was defeating the Luftwaffe even before the USA entered the war.
So it would not have been all that risky for an invasion fleet to sail in to the North Sea and head for Oslo in 1942. From there Sweden is just around the corner. Of course the Germans would have tried with their air craft and subs to stop this fleet and they no doubt would have sunk some of the ships in this fleet, at heavy costs to themselves though. These ships would have been protected by the fighter aircraft of the RAF and US Air Corp flying out of Scotland for a good part of the way. Then they would have been protected by fighter aircraft of the US Navy and Royal Navy for the remaninder. But carrier protection would not have been indefinate in the eastern North Sea. After arrriving off the coast of Sweden the western allies could have given Sweden an ultimatum 30 minutes before the troops landed. Either Sweden, which had been supplying the German war machine with Iron, declares war on Germany and allows allied forces to come ashore unopposed to aid them in the war against Germany, or Sweden declares war on the US and UK for daring to infringe on their neutrality, like they did in Iran.
What would the Swedish leadership likely have done? Even in the unlikely case that the Swedish leadership would have ordered the military to oppose the invasion what chance would a country of 5 or 6 million people have? Furthermore what are the chances that the Swedish population would have actually oppossed the invansion?
Now the German occupation forces in Norway probably would have been ordered to attack the allies in Sweden.
Curt
Fortunately for us the Germans would not have been able to send any resupplies to their forces in the Norway as they had no navy. So if the Germans could have even made it a place to attack the allies they soon would have nothing more to attack them with other than the bayonetts on the end of their rifles.
As things progressed the allies would have suffered some losses but it would have been able to replace those losses much faster than the Germans. The Germans would not have been able to prevent the allies from consolodating their control over Scandanavia. The allies could have then used Scandanavia to bomb Germany with fighter escorts and to use it as a jumping off point to invade Germany in 1943 not 1944. Once that invasion started Germany would have been KOed in 2 to 6 weeks.
So if my observations are so accurate why did the allies follow a different strategy? I think the behavior of the allied leaders betrays what they were really thinking.
It is apparent to me, I do not know about you, that the allied leaders were hoping that Germany would actually defeat the Soviets. Then at great costs to the working classes of the USA and the UK they would have defeated Germany alone and occupied all of Europe. By the middle of 1942 it was clear that was not going to happen. So, they had to plan to invade western Europe before the Soviets could get there. But, also give the Germans more time to kill as many Soviets as possible. That Jewish children were dying in concentration camps counted for nothing in their calculations.
Essentially are esteemed national leaders in the war against the Nazis were treating the citizens of their countries as fools. Were they in fact fools? Who in the UK or USA was aware of the disparity between the navies of the two sides? Who could have understood that there was something amiss in the strategy that was being followed by the leadrship of the UK and USA? The citizens of the UK and USA were clearly taken advantage of by their leaders. Does that mean that they were fools?
Curt
I do not really know anything about the people who read this site or if it is more than two or three. So, the following might be to obvious to mention. A theoretical person might say, "So, this was long ago. People are smarter now." Yes it is true that we might have had elections over the past 70 years but one group of people have not been elected over the years, that is the generals. The generals of the 1940s selected the generals of the 1950s and those of the 1960s and so on.
But is that a cause for concern. The generals are after all under civilian control,
right?
Curt
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