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Johannes at his baptism site_crop and Mars Man

and Kathryn from Omaha TV

Kathyn from Mars

Kathryn of Omaha TV is on,  Mars TV is connected, and Mars Man is with Barack Husain Obama in Honolulu in an undisclosed location under a coconut tree.

Kathryn: Go ahead, Mars Man, you are on!

Mars Man: Thank you, Kathryn. Viewers, we are here with the US President hiding in Hawai. Dear Mr. President,  how does it feel to be on eternal vacation in your homeland?

BHO: I take the Fifth.

Mars Man: Excuse me, sir, but you are not in Congress. You can speak freely here, no fear. Your obedient servants in America must’ve felt that they needed that new car smell you talked about.

BHO: They’re misguided. My smell is pretty good. Just got half a gallon of aged Old Spice on sale in the drugstore. As for my eternal vacation, that’s in the eye of the beholder. Eric Holder will get me back soon.

Mars Man: But Holder has also been deposed.

BHO: He will find a subtle way, as he did with Fast and Furious. And there is still the Executive Order. And I have my pen and phone. And I still have a free Obama phone, and if they take that away, I have a few boxes of them left in my wine cellar here.

Mars Man: You must’ve heard that John Kerry went to Paris to apologize for your absence at the World Rally in Paris and that he was accompanied by a singer totally unknown in France nobody could hear.

BHO:  We tried Beyoncé, but the Military blocked her from going. Joe Biden was willing, but he sings false.

Mars Man: You must feel pretty impoverished here in your new hiding space.

BHO: It’s no different from the White House. We were pretty broke, anyway. And have a lot of debt.

Mars Man:  Something on the order of nineteen plus trillion, we hear. That’s a great legacy.

BHO: The same as other Presidents. Bill and Hillary were dead poor when they left. That freaky Bush had to sell his football club to pay off his. I’ll just write another book and get my money back.

Mars Man: Hillary’s publisher lost millions on hers.

BHO: Sure, but she kept the ten million dollar advance. I can write and speak a lot about my legacy, and they’re willing to pay me high fees in the millions, dwarfing Hillary’s extra fees for nonsense speeches about how poor she was. I grew up in the ghettos of Nairobi and Jakarta.  I can talk about my birth certificate. Best hoax ever.

Mars Man: What legacy would you speak of?

BHO: I have many. Take Obamacare. Carries my name. Historical. Fast and Furious. To rub that silly nose of Arizona Sherriff Joe Arpaio in it.  IRS Audits of those wealthy Republicans that yielded a lot of money from unlawful Cayman tax shelters, and stopped those subversive Tea Party extremists. Worth at least ten speeches at a million a pop.

Mars Man: But your Democrat party lost the elections.

BHO: You’re wrong. We won. Two-thirds didn’t vote because they supported my policies.

Mars Man:   But the Republicans have the majority in Congress thanks to voters not supporting your policies.

BHO: All rubbish. What Republicans? They always cave when I raise my finger or call on Sharpton to blackmail them. Why do we need a Republican party anyway? One party, the Democrats, is good enough. Would save the taxpayers a lot of money.

Mars Man: What are the many other legacies?

BHO: Stopping the Keystone pipeline. After all, I have a lot of shares in Buffett’s railcars transporting oil. Solar energy, called Obamasun. Millions of acres covered with solar panels. All made in China. Biofuels. Windmill farms.

Mars Man: But we are told Solyndra went bankrupt with five hundred million taxpayer money gone down the drain, the electrical car got busted, and wind farms kill the American Eagle, your treasured national symbol.

BHO: In any war, be it drones or fossil fuels, we face collateral damage. An unintended consequence we shall have to accept as the cost of doing business. As for the national symbol, too bad for the bird, but Obama’s face would be good enough, especially because it’s black. And black is beautiful.

Mars Man: Benghazi was a major failure of your Administration. Four brave Americans dead among which your Ambassador. Why was that poopoed by your underlings?

BHO: I’ve said many times before that Benghazi was Hillary’s Department. I can’t help her three o’clock phone was off the hook. I tried my best to help her out by sending Susan around the Sunday shows and because Susan loves me she did a fabulous job. Everyone believed she told the truth, as we always do.

Mars Man: But you said you could keep your doctor, your insurance plan and pay much less premium, and none of that proved true.

BHO: That’s old hat. We’ve explained all that. Sometimes the truth is better not told.

Mars Man: What is your view on Trumps’s take-over of your Government?

BHO:  It’s illegitimate. They won’t get away with it. My underlings have launched an appeal to the High Court.

Mars Man: Judge Roberts may not be as friendly to you this time as he was with Obamacare. Both of you seem to have peculiar views on what is legitimate. But the way we see it on Mars, things will be a lot better in the USA, even the world. Your trillion foreign debts are going to be paid off; demonstrations will stop, and Russia and China will shut up. The IRS will be abolished, and taxes will be greatly reduced. Americans believe in themselves again. People say they’re relieved not to see you on TV anymore with your hands wobbling while you’re running down the steps of Air Force One.

BHO: Don’t ridicule my daily exercise. I can’t play golf all the time. As for Russia, we made rubble of it. China needs our money for our Solyndra panels. Iran will get their bomb regardless, so why bother. Not even the military can do anything about that.  It will put the Shiites and the Sunni Muslims on a level playing field. Israel has the bomb already, so why not Saudi Arabia, too.

Mars Man: People on Mars are glad we are away far enough when it all blows up.

BHO: That’s how it is said in the Scripts: doomsday is here. I said I would fundamentally transform America and I did. Even the world. You can’t take that away from me. That’s my greatest legacy. I have to go back to Michelle now. She promised me a dinner of suckling pig if I voted for her Senate seat.

Mars Man: Fair enough, Mr. President. Greetings from Mars…..

The TV screen goes blank because a bomb went off somewhere. We are trying to fix the connection.

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ENCHANTÉ – Don’t Cry For Me Iraq

john
During the ongoing Congress Hearings of the Trump Cabinet nominees, the American relation with Iraq and the Middle-East came up several times. Few of us understand the Middle-East and many scholars who have lived and studied in this mysterious group of nations tend to say they still do not understand it fully either, though they are able to analyze its travels through history better than anyone watching the daily news. I was fortunate to be associated with a World Bank managed UN Trust Fund after the US-led invasion of Iraq and learned much from this experience, among others by traveling frequently to Jordan and Lebanon. Previously I visited Saudi Arabia (Jeddah) several times.

www.britannica.com

I still remember sitting in front of the TV looking at the “Shock-in-Awe” images in 2003, seeing explosions like you see in movies or now on your tablet playing one of those silly war games. Then we saw how the US implemented the invasion thereafter. In my long-time project management experience at the World Bank, my immediate impression was, as it so often happened with well-intentioned projects in my Institution, it is very easy to start something on paper, but getting it implemented well is a wholly different ball game. And so it went: very bad. It had not been thought through. Though I was on the fence on the rationale for invading Iraq, after the surge in 2007 a noticeable improvement occurred in our project management (this will be a repeat of a previous post next time). Perhaps in hindsight, it was a strategic mistake to go after Sadam Hussain, but once that was done, it was even a greater mistake to withdraw from Iraq all together in 2011, without leaving any protection on site. And so, my deepest frustration was that with American foreign policy management, national politics and partisan ideology often screw up world affairs. The hearings brought this out.

That’s why I posted this blog in 2014 and I consider it still very relevant today.

“With respectful reference to Tom Rice’s lyrics and Andrew Webber’s fabulous musical, Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina, I just wonder how it would look like if Saddam Hussein rose from his grave and gave a speech to the Iraqi populace from the statue from which he was toppled, “Don’t Cry For Me, Iraq.”  Saddam would sing it with his heavy baritone (he could surely not sing it like Madonna, www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Spy3Nd2D6w):

 

Saddam Statue toppled

Wikipedia on Saddam Hussain

“And as for fortune, and as for fame I never invited them in” (meaning the Allied forces…)

“Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired” (to show them how he had “no WMD”, just to ridicule “Bush”)

“They are illusions” (Western propaganda about his cruel rule)

“They are not the solutions they promised to be” (my hanging on the gallows)

“The answer was here all the time”(I could do much better than they)

“I love you and hope you love me” (Don’t I look much better now?)

“Don’t cry for me, Iraq.”

Well, with medieval ISIS on the attack, Nouri al-Maliki letting it all happen, and the brave Kurds squeezed, we are all in tears, crying for Saddam, the “good old days”.

Sure, Saddam was a ruthless tyrant. Iraq suffered huge crimes under his reign. Shiites and Kurds got emaciated on various occasions.

 

Kurds gassed by Saddam

Wikipedia on Saddam Hussain

Iraqis were hard-pressed and frequently mistreated. But is Sunni ISIS not infinitely worse? At least under Saddam, Christians could live relatively undisturbed, though forced to pay the minority taxes. Even Jews originally lived relatively well among the Iraqi Arabs until Palestinian partition occurred in 1948, when some 150,000 Jews lived in Iraq. From then on, they suffered harshly and left, and in the seventies, the UN forced Iraq to let the remaining Jews emigrate. Saddam tried to make Mosul more Arab by moving Arabs into Kurdish areas and chasing out the Kurds. Now ISIS is beheading, killing, and torturing infidels on a large scale.

However, there seems some similarity with Eva Peron’s love for Argentina and Saddam’s love for Iraq: he wanted to keep Iraq wholesome with his despicable mixture of Marxism and Nazism that his Baath party emulated, and he felt he had to do so with an iron fist because of Iraq’s multiple religious scissions and millennia-old tribal differences.

Despite the fact that Iran provoked him into it, fighting an eight-year long war with Iran did not achieve anything.

 

Iranian child warrior The mutual slaughter

en.wikipedia org

springtimeofnations.com

Saddam with his troops iranreview.org

the guardian.com

iranreview.org

 

Still, it might have proven to the West that having Iraq doing the fighting was better than having the West to confront Iran. Then the allies came in to punish Sadam for attacking Kuwait and Israel, and later because he was developing and hiding WMD. He had used them against Iran and the Kurds, and to hide them stored them in bunkers, or shipped them to Sunni tribes in Syria or back to Russia where they came from using unseated commercial airplanes (with the help of “Chemical Ali”; remember that weird general jumping on TV?). This in anticipation of UN-resolution 1441 that sent UN “Inspectors” to Iraq as of 2002 but who could not find them anymore. (Remember also the desperate Hans Blix, who was accused of being “pro-Saddam”, finding only empty warehouses?). Proof:  Syria used them in their current war with their rebels (or the rebels found them and used them to terrorize Syrians).

Recently, after ISIS metastasized,  ISIS occupies the Al Muthanna Chemicals Weapons Complex, Saddam’s ultimate chemical weapons facility, located less than 50 miles from Baghdad. Apparently, a lot of that material is still left in spite of what leftist pundits and commentators wanted us to believe that they did not exist during the Bush presidency. And what about Saddam’s nuclear program that was “dismantled”? All that uranium, bought from Niger, which was said to have been shipped to the USA?

 

Syrian use of poison gas Ghouta_massacre1

daylymail.co.uk

cbsnews.com- Wikipedia.com

How eager were the “mainstream media” in the USA and Europe at the time to fall into the trap of the “non-wmd” propaganda! Only to pummel “Bush” who defeated their favorite global warming enthusiast Gore, as eager as they are now to support Hamas in its attacks on Israel. But “mainstream media” pundits are known to disregard history if they ever studied it, or facts when they don’t like them. They go by the emotions of their equally uninformed audience. What a carnival of animals (apologies to Camille Saint-Saens).

Carnival des animaux 1-B&N Carnival 2-

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These were the last words in Saddam’s letter to his people, issued by his lawyers upon his execution: “Dear faithful people, I say goodbye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take refuge in him and who will never disappoint any faithful, honest believer … God is Great … God is great … Long live our nation … Long live our great struggling people … Long live Iraq, long live Iraq … Long live Palestine … Long live jihad and the mujahedeen.”

It’s doubtful that Saddam’s merciful God is helping much in current Iraq or what Saddam thought should be Palestine in spite of UN resolution 181 of 1948. For Arab dictators, it is difficult to accept a majority vote in the UN if they don’t agree. (Today, UN-membership has changed totally and, with it, its political colors. Anti-Israel majority votes are happily agreed.) But it’s also doubtful that Saddam’s “long live jihad and the mujahedeen” would have welcomed ISIS.

Truth be told, the Bush Administration could have found out that most of the WMD had been removed but they did not: they, the allies and Congress wanted to get rid of Saddam as he was a pest in the region. In hindsight, Saddam could possibly have been contained at that time, leaving it to him to deal with the Iranians. The West could have continued protecting Israel with overwhelming military aid while maintaining tough sanctions on Iraq. Too bad hindsight never catches up with actuality. It would have saved many lives, including Iraqis, as well as so many soldiers maimed for life, and trillions of dollars gone up in smoke.

 

Iraqi army takes over

credit: financialspots.om

The name “Iraq” was drawn from ancient Sumerian history dating back to the Sumerian civilization in the “Uruk” (“Ur” meaning ” city” in Sumerian) period that reigned that area some 4000 years BC! The 600-year Ottoman Empire (“caliphate”) which supported Germany and included millennia-old Mesopotamia, was dismantled upon Germany’s defeat in 1918 after World War I. The then League of Nations, established under the aegis of Woodrow Wilson,  turned Palestine, Transjordan and the three Mesopotamian Ottoman provinces (Mosul, Baghdad, Basra) into British protectorates.

Churchill and his “40 Thieves”  (see Churchill’s Folly by historian Christopher Catherwood, 2004, Carrol & Graff) drew up “Iraq”, ignoring tribal regions.  In fact, at the time of the British protectorate, the southern Shiites near Basra tried to form their own regional sovereignty as they were suspicious of the Shiites in the north. For a well-researched article on the creation of Iraq in 1922, read Don Chapman’s interesting 2007 piece on http://archives.midweek.com/content/columns/Print_Story/following_churchills_folly_in_iraq/

 

Past caliphates show the surface they occupied.

 

Abbasid Caliphate and Umayyad Emirate Baghdad capital ca 755 AD  Iraq map

Under the Ottoman empire,  “Iraq” comprised three provinces Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra.

Ottoman Empire

pbs.org

Several upheavals occurred in the Iraqi part, forcing the British to send troops in 1943. Sixty years later American and allied troops, including the British, invaded once more.  The never ending story of the Middle-East.

British troops in Iraq 1941

An honor guard from the 3rd Battalion, 41st Iraqi Army brigade presents arms at a ceremony for Iraq's National Sovereignty Day, June 30, at a defunct sugar factory near Majaar Al Kabir in Maysan province. Iraqi soldiers occupied the base vacated by Soldiers from Company B, 4th Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment attached to 2nd Squadron, 13th Cavalry Regiment following the ceremony. The U.S. Soldiers relocated to Forward Operating Base Hunter in rural Maysan province.
An honor guard from the 3rd Battalion, 41st Iraqi Army brigade presents arms at a ceremony for Iraq’s National Sovereignty Day, June 30, 2008. Financialspots.co

In Iraq’s new Constitution, under American pressure, Iraq was divided into 18 “States”. Federalism, let alone democracy, is an unknown form of Government in the Middle-East and it never worked in Iraq or anywhere else (except for democratic Israel). A unified Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish government is a pipe dream. Now we are dealing with an Iraq shattering back into several pieces, mostly according to religious and tribal adhesion, amidst ruthless intolerance and genocide of religious minorities.

I am sure that Saddam would not have let ISIS cross his border. Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi army seemed totally impotent and, like the White House – although warned by its intelligence services that knew of ISIS in Syria -, it was taken by surprise. Maliki being a Shiite politician with strong Iranian ties – after all, he lived in exile in Iran for some eight years during Saddam Hussein’s regime – was unable or perhaps unwilling to form a unified Shiite-Sunni-Kurd government, which created deep Sunni resentment. The USA having withdrawn its troops left a terrible vacuum. Again it shows that short-sighted local American politics based on polls only bring havoc. With some greater effort in trying to convince Maliki, the USA could have left troops to support fledgling Iraq, but Iran told their ally to keep the USA out, and Obama (happily) caved. Saying now that keeping troops would not have prevented ISIS from entering Iraq is trying to justify irresponsible inaction, surely on the side of Maliki but also the USA.

What remains to be seen is what local Iraqi Shiite politicians and activists like Mukthadar Al-Sadar with his Mahdi army and the Grand Ayatolla Ali-al-Sistani will do when ISIS approaches Baghdad, and if Iran will intervene when the Shiites are threatened.

 

MOQTADA-AL-SADR -AFP

AFP

Ayat allah sistani

sheikjehad.com

Sources say the Iranian Qud is already there, assisting Nouri al-Maliki. Sadar, a Sunni Imam, is against US forces propping up Maliki to protect Baghdad, so is Iran.  Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar are the main Sunni states in the Middle East. Sunnis are 90 % of the Islamic population, Shiites only 10 percent (mostly in Iran, Iraq and Oman). Egypt’s role has substantially strengthened politically in its mediation between Israel, the Palestinians, and Hamas. How will they react to Sunni ISIS?

Sunni-Shiite divide

 

Inaction in Syria helped create ISIS and allowed it to grow from a small force to some 10,000 fighters (many more now in 2017), many of whom are radicalized Islamists from Western nations. It is being said polls reveal Americans are sick of fighting other people’s wars. But don’t they realize that rats take vacant territory? Is it not lack of leadership to hide behind that so-called sickness of the American people and do nothing? Should the leadership not point out the dangers of not willing to fight? And that, if you don’t, these rats may finally end up in New York port? Individual Islamists in the US may already have contact with ISIS through cell phones and e-mail and can rapidly be radicalized. Remember the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston bombing.

Why did Hamas come to power in Gaza? Because the Palestinian Authority was unable to manage Gaza after Arafat was gone. What ISIS is doing in Iraq is worse than what Hamas is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas and ISIS are both Sunnis. The danger of them connecting is clear. ISIS wants all, and “Levant” includes Jordan and Lebanon, both bordering Palestine and Israel, the reason why ISIS calls itself ISIL, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. A dire prospect.

Unfortunately, for Western countries, they must defend their comfort at the cost of losing it, but tell that to the comfortable TV-looking beer drinking Westerners who imported millions of Islamic people to do work for them they don’t want to do, and who are now protesting in their streets. It takes good leaders to wake up their citizens, and good leaders are rare today. Beware whom you invite into your house!

The origins of World War II stemmed for a good deal from wishful pacifism, cowardice, procrastination, and collaborators (!),  in the hope that it would not be all that bad as some were convincingly predicting. Suddenly Europe was run over and America and Canada had to help to protect themselves. Now America and Canada have large Islamic populations with no sense of assimilation with the history of their hosts, and the pride that goes with it, and, with their open borders, the potential for terrorist attacks is plenty, even more than was the case with 9/11.

 

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As long as the West has been involved in the Middle-East, it has been unable to implant its “rational renaissance” thinking that began in the Renaissance and overtook Islamic reactionary thinking, despite its past wealth of scientific, medical, and artistic creativity. Oil made it worse. Many different peoples in the Greater Middle East, including Iran, are ruled by religious mantras, outdated historical principles, and an unstoppable array of new masters of intolerance and cruelty, such as ISIS.

My fear is that ISIS is just one more ugly Middle Eastern sore but the most vicious so far that will run its course causing many deaths and suffering, until its dreadful barbarity is eradicated by the Middle East itself, when it finally realizes that the 21st century has arrived and they must adapt to modernity rather than creating outdated caliphates, yelling with rockets to throw the Jews into the sea, screaming fatwas about planting Allah’s flag on the White House, and propagating that Islam is the only true religion.

No US and European pacifism will help. Peace through strength will. It had better start now.”

Next time: a soft-pedaled effort by the UN and World Bank to steer Iraq toward economic development.

(more…)

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ENCHANTÉ: Hamas mistreats the Palestinians

Below follows a column I wrote in 2014 at the time of the Hamas intrusion into Israël, which I am repeating now in view of the recent anti-semitic resolution adopted by the UN Security Council which was orchestrated by the outgoing Obama Administration and enhanced by a most disturbing John Kerry speech. Though this latest UN Security Resolution does not deal with the Hamas terrorism, as it should have, it clearly shows how biased the UN has become when it deals with Israël. Instead, the Husain Obama/John Kerry duo slaps Israël on settlements in East Jerusalem which from millennia times was in Jewish hands and only became “Arab” in 1949 when Jordan’s King Husain’s superior army overpowered the small army of the just established state of Israël (1948). Jordan annexed it thereafter. Since then it has remained a contested area, which Israël “occupied” when it took it back in the 1967  six-day war.  The UN Security Council condemned this in the famous Resolution 242 which required Israël to “withdraw from the territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

As a WW II kid who has seen his Jewish playmates in Holland hauled away by the Nazis never to return, this resolution and the US involvement was way over the top, extremely biased and against the American spirit, which was instrumental in assuring the Jews a State of their own in 1948: ISRAEL, in the lands where Jews had lived for thousands of years and long before Islam emerged in the year of 630 a.d.

“Let me tell you that ENCHANTÉ  is for Israel, but has good ties with Arabs too. Let me also tell you that ENCHANTÉ  has Palestinian and Islamic friends and that we sometimes agree to disagree but remain good friends. At a personal level, it works. At the political level, the Israeli-Arab conflict seems insoluble. (more…)

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ENCHANTÉ – Christmas and Mary

bernadette-lourdes

 

Franz Werfel, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1890 and died in Beverly Hills in 1945, wrote a wonderful book in 1941, entitled The Song of Bernadette, telling the story of a young impoverished peasant girl who, in 1858, is attracted by the apparition of a beautiful lady at a cave at Lourdes in France while gathering wood with her two sisters. The book became a New York Times bestseller for a year and was turned into a movie in 1943, directed by Henry King, for which Jennifer Jones, acting as Bernadette, received an Oscar Award. The beautiful lady does not tell her name, only says she is the Immaculate Conception.

mary-at-lourdes

Credit: www3.nd.edu/wcawley/cors016.htm

The Immaculate Conception (“free of sin”) of Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, and daughter of Joachim and Anna, is a dogma of the Catholic Church that developed over the centuries. It is not to be confused with the conception of her son, Jesus. This occurred after overshadowing of Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit and is celebrated by the “Annunciation” and “Incarnation of Jesus Christ” – on March 25, nine months before December 25. Mary’s immaculate conception appears in the Quran and Muslims also accept the virgin birth of Jesus. This has little to do with radical Islamic elements attacking Christian centers and displays this time of the year, which stems from their hatred of what Christianity represents as opposed to their literal interpretation of Quranic dictums. But the satanic way Christianity is attacked nowadays by fellow citizens in the US and elsewhere in Europe is no less demonic.

 christmas-market-with-soldiers

Credit: express.co.uk

I saw the movie about Bernadette first at my Jesuit boarding school in the fifties and remember being moved by it. Lourdes has since been a pilgrims place where miracles took place to “prove” the veracity of Mary’s existence as a critical element of Christian belief. The movie starts with the statement: “For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible.” It’s an appropriate summarization of the state of mind of believers and non-believers on this subject. Personally, I never felt comfortable with the doctrine that virginal conception was identified as “sin,” and that both Mary and her son had, therefore, to be conceived by supranatural means.

I was dismissed from a theology class when at the age of 17 I asked why it was considered “sin” if a man and a woman, even if “holy,” had sex in marriage to conceive children. But then, I was born from a very Protestant family and converted to Catholicism at 10, only because my mother told us to. Martin Luther departed from the Catholic doctrine by stating that Mary was conceived the natural human way (“in sin of sinful parents”), but he also said that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit who “purified [Mary] so that this child was born of flesh and blood, but not with sinful flesh and blood.” Lutherans may adhere to this modified doctrine but, as I understand it, most Protestants do not. I considered it more a mythological concept, as the natural sexual relationship between man and woman remained taboo for so many centuries and a subject one did not “talk or write about.” It remained a matter of utmost hypocrisy until erotic literature exploded in the sixties.

luther

 Martin Luther – Credit: law2.umkc.edu

Whatever the doctrine, the birth of Christianity is what is relevant. The world has evolved and Christianity with it, but Christmas remains a central feature of our Western Civilization based on Judeo-Christian principles as expressed in the Ten Commandments. At the later stage in our life, we notice the differences of how we practiced our religion then and now. But the nativity scene is still a pivotal scene of the year. It tends to be overshadowed by the commercialized gifts craze, but in many families, it remains of paramount religious importance and so are the Christmas carols.

Christmas nativity scene with baby Jesus, Mary & Joseph in barn
Christmas nativity scene with baby Jesus, Mary & Joseph in barn

Those who minimize that importance or even combat it in the name of “free speech” are the quintessential scrooges and humbugs of the season. On the other hand, I noticed many more people wishing me a “Merry Christmas” this year, seemingly unfazed, which seems to emanate from a ubiquitous relief that a new wind is blowing from Washington D.C.

For this reason, The Song of Bernadette remains a movie befitting the holiness of this season. We should be thankful to Franz Werfel for having written his book, to Henry King for having made a wonderful picture of it, to Turner Classic Movies for showing it again these days, and to the Holy Mary for having brought Jesus Christ to the world, and nursed him to the man who founded our worldwide Christian community.

Merry Christmas to you all! This is Togetherness Time!

John

PS: A moving story ending at Christmas:

ENCHANTING THE SWAN: Grad students and musicians Paul and Fiona fall in love when they perform The Swan and agree to marry, but paternal evil blocks their love until The Swan chants their blessing at Christmas. A moving story of inspiring love and music you want to read.

http://amzn.to/1LPFw5o 

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ENCHANTÉ – December 7 Then and Now

Vintage style photo - Japanese WWII aircraft flying over the village of Lae in Papua New Guniea. (Artist's Impression)

I was 5 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.  At that time Nazi Germany had already occupied whole continental Europe, including Holland, for a year and a half. I didn’t hear about Pearl Harbor until  US soldiers liberated us in 1945 and told us about it. I didn’t envisage the horror of Pearl Harbor and the national significance of December 7 until I saw the pictures in musea when I arrived in the US in 1974. The vivid memories of seeing bombs exploding on Schiphol airport in May 1940 when I was 4 1/2 were the ones that had primarily occupied my mind.

At liberation, we also heard the awful stories of the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942, when Allied ships, including several American, British, Australian and Dutch warships (which were berthed at the Marine base at Surabaja in the Dutch Indies) fought a Japanese invasion under the command of Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman. The Dutch Government in exile in London was one of the first to join the US after Pearl Harbor and declare war on Japan. Japan, short of natural resources, immediately set out to expand its realm in Asia by overpowering Singapore and Malaysia, and Borneo and Celebes of the Dutch Indies, to secure itself of abundant oil supplies. Next was the largest island, Java, of the Dutch Indies, which it approached from the island of Bali it had already occupied.

The allied fleet endeavored to stop the Japanese from invading Java, but the Japanese ships were much better armed with heavier cannons and super torpedos that had a reach of 25 miles. Its air force was superior. The more powerful Japanese fleet, which proved much better trained in sea battle at night, destroyed many of the allied ships. Two Dutch light cruisers, De Ruyter, Karel Doorman’s flagship, and the Java, were sunk and Karel Doorman perished with his ship. Several other Dutch warships sank, including the destroyers De Kortenaer and Witte de With.  More than a 2300 sailors, including over 900 Dutch sailors, lost their lives.

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Dutch Archive pictures

Thousands of Dutch families, who lived in the Dutch Indies, were imprisoned in Japanese concentration camps, where many were tortured and died. The Dutch never regained full control over the Dutch Indies, and the Japanese invasion meant the end of its colonial power. After the war, a bloody and cruel independence war erupted in the Dutch Indies, which ended in 1949 when Indonesia became independent. Thousands of Indonesians fled to Holland when the independence war started and were lodged with Dutch families to recover and find a new life. A father with three sons stayed with us.

Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Java Sea show some serious common lessons: In both cases, the enemy was much better prepared and armed. In Holland, this led to building a much stronger fleet after the war. Then, under cover of a powerful ally, the US, efforts to keep up a fierce military power slowed down, a pattern followed by many European countries. The lessons learned were soon forgotten.

Fast forward to 2016. While it is said that the American military is the best in the world, the political will to keep up its strength has repeatedly been undermined by several American administrations:  Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama emphasized social programs over military strength. 9/11 constituted the second attack on American soil. More than 2400 sailors were killed at Pearl Harbor and close to 3000 people lost their lives during 9/11. The latter was a terrorist attack, but many say it could have been prevented had America been better prepared and kept its eyes open.

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credit: ilsemundo.com

A new type of war was added to our human inclination to destroy each other. It took a long time to recognize that there is no real difference between “formal war” and “informal war”: both intend to destroy Western Civilization and its religious and philosophical democratic principles.  The expansion of radical Islamic fascism signifies the same threat as German Nazism and Japanese Imperialism did, as do the threats of dictatorial regimes like Russia, China, and Iran.

Come 2017; the world is no better place. The Chinese military is spending trillions on military strength and expansion of its territory by building military islands in the China Sea, helped by the greed of the American market buying its goods and borrowing its money to cover its national debt. Russia invades the Crimea and controls eastern Ukraine, without a significant Western response. Iran undermines the Middle East through proxy wars and support of terrorism, causing tremendous civilian suffering in Syria.

syrian-war  Credit: Kansascity.com

The weeks after 9/11 with jets patrolling the skies aided by nearby refueling airplanes gave me that depressing feeling from WW II that we were at war again, and unfortunately we are. Osama’s escape from Afghanistan felt like Hitler’s escape from several coups against him. The indefatigable US Ops finally caught him, but when they did, the harm was already done: Sunni Radicalism had spread throughout the Middle East, Africa, and even the Far East.

Saddam Statue toppled Credit: Wikipedia.com

I sat on the fence about the US invasion of Iraq. I could understand it from a defensive point of view: Sadam used similar bluff as Hitler did, he had invaded Kuwait beforehand, he built nuclear facilities and was working on replacements after the Israelis bombed the first one. He continually launched scuds at Israel and did use poisonous gas on the Kurds. Sadam smartly removed everything concerning weapons of mass destruction to where it came from and used the gullible self-destructing US and world media to accuse the US.  Although the US invasion was badly implemented, after the surge things began to shape up in Iraq. At the World Bank, we noticed a slow but steady increase in a willingness to restore a badly retarded administration to modern normalcy. Despite internal religious strife, administrators became more responsive to stable government. Northern Iraq regained calm and even became prosperous again. When the reconstruction effort ended, I had good hopes that it might take off (see my blogs “Iraq: A Hands-on Effort to Rational Thought,” (9/13/2014); “Iraq: From Western Dream to Fragile State”; (8/23/2014), and “Don’t Cry For Me, Iraq.” (8/11/2014).

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Own Pictures

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Credit: Fox News

The change in American policy under Obama destroyed all that with one swipe. Al-Zarkawi, the Sunni anti-Shiite leader from Jordan, had begun a fierce fight against the American occupation. Although US Ops were able to exterminate him, his force remained active underground. If invading Iraq may be considered a mistake, leaving it abruptly meant compounding that mistake. When the US military left Iraq, Sunny radicals quickly regrouped and despite their internal differences, created ISIS. The rest is history.

As a WWII kid, I hate war with a vengeance, but also know there will always be enemies as there will always be bullies in school. We have to be prepared to be strong enough to scare them off and defeat them. If we don’t, they’ll take us to the cleaners. Administrations like the Obama-ones open us up to being overpowered like Nazi Germany and Japan’s then Imperialism did to the Western World.

I am sleeping a bit better after the recent national elections. There is much hope things will change.

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Credit: Canada Journal – News of the World

In my opinion, the political left of the US has done enormous damage to the fighting spirit and courage of this country. America may be divided (God knows why. Such a great place to live!) but as a foreign guest in the US, I pray they never come back to power. I don’t complain about placing competent generals to head security and military positions. Their decisiveness will keep me from lying awake at night about the future of my American kids and grandkids. We have to stay vigilant to protect our way of life and that of others that share it. Signs in Europe indicate that things are changing there as well.

And if you don’t like my saying these changes are good changes, that’s too bad. Let the other side of the American divide have a chance to show their resolve to make America better and “Great Again.”

 

 

 

 

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