Watching mothers and children reunited can’t help but tug at your heart strings.  The terror visited on Jews is now visited on the whole world.  Somebody else can look at the pictures.  The huge demonstrations on American soil claim that there were no atrocities.  These protesters think they’re entitled to their own truth.  Two taps on the chest, and they can come up with anything.  “My truth.”

Another day, with two thirds of the hostages still being held, war has resumed.  As you know, news outlets are all over it with reporters nearby.  Israel’s spokesmen have been resolute.  Hamas must be destroyed for all time.  They’ve purportedly committed mind bending atrocities. 

The interviews are beginning.  For the rest of our lives we’ll be re-living the hell they went  through.  Can you imagine being held underground for six weeks?  That would be psychologically damaging all by itself.  But these returned hostages endured malnutrition and who knows what else.

When you think about it, they’re visiting terrorism on the entire world!  The news reports what they can, and even that isn’t fit for human consumption.  Videos come with warnings, and I for one am not going to watch any of it.  Some of the terrorists wore body cams and helmet cams.  

Their argument is circular.  They’re crazy by their own admission.  “Of course they are crazy,” the story goes.  You know who made them crazy, and therefore it’s not their fault.  They’re just innocent victims, made insane by Israel.  

Some are now reasoning about what happened in 1948 with the UN mandate that created Israel.  That was 75 years ago.  Is history to be undone?  The terrorists think so.  Their rebellion has not gone so well, as you can see.  It’s not going well now.  You’ve seen the utter destruction.  It’s like something out of a horror movie.  

When have you ever seen maps dropped, announcing future bombing locations to stay away from?  Israel told the residents, the innocent victims caught between combatants, to get out.  But that’s not what the terrorists had in mind.  Human shields is the name of the game.  It’s their whole strategy, beyond committing acts not fit for the mind.  

Maybe something is going on.  Personally, I think everybody’s had just about enough of saving the planet, global warming and orders from doctors.  Along that line, did you see what Elon Musk told the advertisers who had fled after Media Matters put out a fraudulent meme, claiming that Elon’s company was placing big name corporate advertisers next to “racists” screeds?  This might make a difference, eventually.  He told them off, like he didn’t even care.  We’ll see what happens.  He’s suing Media Matters.  Hope he puts them out of business. 

There are some signs that people all over the world have had enough of this new age, anti-God philosophy.  Most people don’t want the government breathing down their neck, making prohibitions and demands.  We like the Constitution, thanks very much.  But other nations in the world don’t have our Constitution.  Holland, New Zealand (shock), and Argentina have elected conservatives.  You can only take so much. 

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – December 1, 2023 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The news of the day is the release of hostages from Gaza back to Israel.  They’ll all have stories to tell.  What, are we supposed to have respect for the terrorists now?  No doubt, people who are getting their loved ones back are ecstatic.  People who are being released are full of joy.  But the terrorists aren’t releasing everybody.  They’re still hiding behind most of the hostages.  Now they’ll try to wring concessions out of Israel.  

Qatar is being used as the middleman.  It kind of makes you sick, realizing that terrorists are being negotiated with at all, but they took hostages.  And they’re always bragging about how brave they are.  Give me a break!

Geert Wilders is a name we’ve known for some time in Dutch politics.  He’s been, let’s say unimpressed with the importation of Muslims into Holland.  He was actually banned from travel to England.  What he’s said was too incendiary, and the Brits were afraid there would be trouble if he came to England.  A member of the House of Lords invited him to screen his film entitled Fitna, which calls the Koran a fascist book and links scenes of terrorist attacks with “scripture.”  It drives the Muslims berserk.  But now he has a chance to form a government in Holland, and it will mean having to deal with former political enemies.  The EU is mighty concerned.  It could upend their whole agenda, saving the planet and importing Muslims into Europe.  

That’s not the only concern for the worldwide woke agenda.  In Argentina Javier Milei has won the election and is threatening to shake things up. Inflation is running at 150%, and he has big plans to fix it. According to Reuters, “His plans include shutting the central bank, ditching the peso, slashing spending…”  He supports the United States and is routinely called the Donald Trump of Argentina. Maybe he’s going to put his country on the U. S. dollar.

As you know, North Korea successfully put a spy satellite in orbit with the help of the Russians.  Kim Jong Un has apparently made friends with Putin, so North Korean rockets don’t blow up on the launch pad.  

All in all, everything’s not going according to plan. Saving the planet has taken a backseat to the Middle East war. People who don’t believe in their master plan to crack down on westerners who don’t have time for their machinations have been elected in Holland and Argentina. Uh oh.

How this hasn’t yet fallen apart under its own weight is a mystery. After years of indoctrination, the theory is getting old. They’re having to discount battery cars, and they’re still not selling. Global warming or otherwise, people like to get where they’re going.  

Things are falling apart for the current administration too. Let me count the ways. Joe is in a lot of trouble. Whether he knows or not is unclear. But there’s evidence piling up and subpoenas being handed out.  We just might get another respite.  

It’s hard to watch the news. We’ve just observed Thanksgiving here in America, and God has blessed this nation beyond comprehension thanks to Abraham. The Middle East?  Europe? We’ll just have to watch it play out. Luckily we have the outline.

Mark Armstrong

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – November 24, 2023 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Migrants on the German military ship Rhein. Photograph: Alfonso Di Vincenzo/Kontrolab/LightRocket via Getty Images

‘Go Back to Where you Came From’ analyses the problem well but has few solutions

As the Syrian refugee crisis spread across Europe in autumn 2015 the leader of a Dutch far-right party, Geert Wilders, warned of an Islamic invasion – “an invasion which threatens our prosperity, our security, our culture and identity”. He was not alone, all over Europe – even in traditional liberal democracies such as Holland and Denmark – white populist politicians have cynically exploited economic crisis and the migrant influx for their own political ends and have been rewarded with levels of support unprecedented since before the last world war.

Austria came within a whisker of electing a far-right president. In the recent French presidential election the National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, took second place. Even in Germany, where the weight of history hangs heavily, a white nationalist party recently took 13 per cent of the vote and now has more than 90 seats in the Bundestag. In the UK, despite the implosion of Ukip, globalisation and migration have led to impending British withdrawal from the European Union. And in the United States similar forces have led to the election of a narcissist who, like hardline nationalists everywhere, trades on fear and prejudice. As the author says, political views and parties that were once peripheral are now mainstream. How has this happened?

Actually the causes are not hard to divine. Globalisation has led to the disappearance of many traditional working-class jobs in the general direction of China and India, and in many areas they have been replaced by low-skilled, minimum-wage jobs, rising levels of unemployment and a growing sense of alienation. Unsurprisingly the victims of this process are looking for someone to blame for their plight and inevitably their attention has been directed to the growing number of foreigners in our midst. In the US the Mexicans get the blame. In Europe it is the rising tide of migration from eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa that has fanned the flames. This, combined with a widespread feeling that the liberal elites who have personally benefited from globalisation, who do not live in the ghettoes and whose livelihoods and culture are not threatened by mass migration, are indifferent to the feelings of the have-nots. Recent outbreaks of Islamist terrorism have only exacerbated the situation.

Germ of truth
Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a former op-ed editor at the New York Times, has painstakingly documented this phenomenon. He has interviewed populist politicians across northern Europe and engages with their arguments. Although inevitably they attract a fascist fringe, many are not crude nationalists, their arguments are often sophisticated and contain a germ of truth. Some started on the left and have moved steadily to the right. Likewise many of their voters switched directly from left to right without passing through any middle ground.

The author’s conclusion, however, is uncompromising. “Far right leaders are correct that immigration creates problems; what they miss are that they are the primary problem.” He goes on, “The greatest threat to liberal democracies comes not from immigrants and refugees, but from the backlash against them by those on the inside who exploit the fear of outsiders to chip away at the values and institutions that make our societies liberal. By attempting to deal with the challenges of immigration by publicly denouncing judges, casting aside constitutional protections of minority groups and stripping some citizens of their nationality, many of the world’s most advanced democracies are hitting the self-destruct button rather than take on new passengers.”

I don’t entirely buy this. Given that the author concedes, albeit quietly, that mass migration is a problem, one might reasonably have expected that he would have something to say about how we got to where we are today and what is to be done. He might, for example, have pointed out that it was a serious mistake for Angela Merkel, who is in many respects an outstanding leader, to say at the height of the refugee crisis that Germany would take all comers. Likewise it was a mistake for Tony Blair’s government, when the EU absorbed east European countries, to waive Britain’s right to a moratorium on free movement on the basis of predictions about the likely flow of migrants that proved to be utterly wrong.

Hard questions unanswered
Nor is it sensible for the EU to treat all arriving migrants as potential refugees from persecution when they openly admit that their motivation is economic. After the fall of the tyranny in Tunisia, for example, the first thing that happened was that thousands of young men got on small boats and sailed to southern Italy. What ought to have happened is that they should have been given a decent meal and a bed for the night and then sent home. Instead they were asked if they wanted to claim political asylum and allowed to melt away into the hinterland. Ditto for most of those coming from most of west Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Even in the case of Syria, we should be taking only UN-certified refugees directly from the camps, not simply those with the means to pay people smugglers to get them into Europe.

We should be in no doubt as to the seriousness of the crisis. The collapse (aided by the West) of viable government in Libya has opened up a massive backdoor into Europe, which needs to be closed as soon as possible. Population movements on this scale have the capacity to bring down governments. Italy and Greece, which are bearing the brunt of the crisis, are receiving precious little help from the rest of the EU. The overall effect is driving European politics back towards a dark age. The author has accurately analysed the problem, but has dodged suggesting answers to some of the difficult questions that inevitably arise.

Chris Mullin is a former UK Labour minister. His autobiography, Hinterland, was recently published in paperback.

Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/chris-mullin-far-right-is-driving-europe-back-to-dark-age-1.3247024

The post Chris Mullin: far right is driving Europe back to dark age first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.