The following is our translation of an article from topcor.ru.


May 15, 2019
 
The “American Dream” stirs the soul of many Russians. For some reason, they believe that there, in a foreign land, fortune will surely smile on them, and life will immediately become prosperous, both materially and psychologically.
 
 
That was what Toliatti-born Elizaveta Rumyantseva thought, who moved to the United States 23 years ago. For Elizaveta, who holds a diploma in history teaching, it was clear in the middle of the “dashing nineties” that here in Russia, her future is either as a beggarly state employee or endless drudgery for the owner of a market or store. As a young woman back in 1996, Elizaveta made the decision to leave for the United States, since an opportunity was available – she had relatives in America who had emigrated immediately after perestroika.
 
We talked with Elizaveta in a cozy cafe on a Moscow street. Yes, this was not idle talk - Elizaveta has already been back in Russia for 4 years. Today she remembers with a simultaneous smirk and shudder the nineteen years she spent in the United States. The Russian woman did not like it in America, and for good reason.
 
“The most important thing is people. We also have families with black sheep, but the majority of Russians are still good, sincere, and most importantly, real people. America is the realm of phoniness. There they may smile at you, but in reality they don’t perceive as a person,” says Elizaveta.
 
Just after arriving in the USA, the Russian woman immediately faced a number of problems. She was unpleasantly struck by housing prices - an ordinary American,  unlesshis parents had real estate, could just barely afford to buy an apartment in a major city such as New York or San Francisco. They live in rented housing, paying for rent the lion's share of their monthly income.
 
Housing prices are a direct cause of a large number of homeless people. And it's not only drunks who wind up on the street, as in Russia, but also honest hard workers who simply don’t have enough money to rent a house.
 
The second problem is crime. There are more people in prison in the US than even in Stalin’s USSR. But after all, only a small percentage of the criminals are in jail, and the big ones are at large, where they feels quite at ease, despite the harsh customs of the American police. In some areas of American cities it is generally impossible to enter without an escort of armed guards. But many of us have heard about crime and high prices. There are much more interesting features of life in the States.
 
“Few people know that rat poison, ie, sodium fluoride, is added to drinking water in the US,” says Elizaveta.
 
Speaking of rats, there are lots of them. This i because of the dirt on the American streets, the huge number of fast food outlets with scraps and other garbage. Homeless people also add to the problem.
 
According to our interlocutor, Russia is treated in the United States with a great deal of wariness. Many Americans are intimidated by the media and live in constant fear of nuclear war, or a Russian attack.
 
“Americans are afraid of us, and their stereotypes are built on stupid Hollywood films and very superficial television programs,” says Elizaveta.
 
After many years of torment in the States, Elizaveta realized she could not accept American reality. Some succeed in this, some stays in the States forever, but are deeply unhappy, but our interviewee made a firm decision to return to Russia.
 
“Now I am at home, and to my young acquaintances who are dreaming of leaving for the West, I recommend thinking three times before making a final decision whether you want to live in filth, in constant fear, surrounded by criminals and homeless people,” says the Russian woman.
 
Author: Ilya Polonsky

It's been 5 years since Russia annexed Crimea, do Crimeans feel Russian now? Will Ukraine never get back its territory?
 
Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief and Political Analyst (2015-present)
 
Sevastopol. Video made in July 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T6upSfGCxE
 
At 2:20 the crowd shouts "Rosssiya, Rossiya, Rossiya". At 2:30, Putin speaks in front of the huge crowd. He is not protected and feels no fear. He obviously knows that he runs no risk, because almost everyone in Sevastopol feels Russian and everyone loves him and sees him as a hero and saviour of the people. It was only a few months after the annexation. The film shows on-screen inscriptions that are quotations from the Ukrainian press claiming that Crimeans were forced to cheer Russia "under machine gun fire" and "in the wake of armoured tanks." The West will do everything in its power to convince its subjects that Russia is a dictatorship, but the objective truth is evident in this video and in others made in Crimea after annexation.
 
The biggest lie is that Russia is an aggressive nation. It was not Russia, but a European aggressor, that invaded and conquered Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, a large part of Germany, Poland and Spain from 1805 to 1812.
 
It was not Russia that invaded and occupied France during the Second World War. It was a European aggressor.
 
It was not the Russian Federation that invaded Serbia in 1998-1999 and killed 13,500 Europeans - almost all civilians - with aerial bombs. This mass murder was committed by NATO.
 
The truth is that Russia did not invade Crimea. Russian military installations and troops were already there, thanks to the close ties that joined Ukraine and Russia before the violent and illegal coup of 2014 that overthrew a legitimate democratically elected government in violation of Ukrainian and international law. It was the United States who sent Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and NGOs such as USAID (a CIA creation), an Open Society Foundation of George Soros, and it was European nations like Germany that, through the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, undermined Ukraine by promoting the illegal coup d'état with their false promise to allow Ukraine to become a member of the EU.
 
After this illegal coup, Russia decided to hold a referendum in Crimea and the results showed that 95.5% of voters voted in favour of Russia's accession. International observers from various countries were present.
 
According to the website https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/international-observers-find-crimean-referendum-strongly-and-voluntarily-supported-by-the-crimean-people-250658201.html:
 
"A group of international observers from Israel, Spain, Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Latvia, Moldova and Serbia who have been invited by the Central Electoral Commission of Autonomous Republic of Crimea visited the largest cities of Crimea - Simferopol, Yalta, Evpatoria, Alushta, Saki, as well as many villages in the countryside.
 
"All observers unanimously noted that the referendum was held in strict compliance with international standards."
 
It is obvious that the Russians did not invade Crimea or seize the territory. They simply complied with the will of the Crimean people, who had been Russian since 1783 when the Ottoman Empire was defeated there by Catherine The Great. It would be more correct to say that Crimea acceded to the Russian Federation rather than that Russia annexed Crimea. That is what makes this question so remarkable. How could a people with over 2 centuries of history as a Russian speaking people immersed in a Russian culture not feel Russian?
 
Finally, the question "Do Crimeans feel Russian now?" reveals the impact of Western propaganda, influenced by Washington, on the entire West, who believe, despite the information we have on Crimeans, that Crimeans did not feel Russian before annexation. The truth is that Crimeans have always felt Russian and never identified as Ukrainians. The famous short story writer and playwright Anton Chekhov spent the last years of his life in Yalta, where he wrote the short story "Дама с собачкой" ("The Woman with the Little Dog"), which takes place in Yalta in the late 1890s If you read this tale, you can easily see that the people of Yalta speak Russian and see themselves as Russians and not as Ukrainians.
 
I visited Yalta in the early 1970s and was able to speak Russian with everyone I met. They did not even have a foreign accent - Ukrainian. I was with a group of foreign students of the Russian language that travelled from Moscow by bus to a seaside resort, and for the entire weekend, did not know I was in Ukraine. I thought I was in Russia!

​ 

 
Vince Dhimos
 
I was recently exchanging views with an Israeli over the word anti-Semitism and I contended that the word anti-Semitism is a misnomer because, based on the root word “Semitism,” it would have to apply to all Semites, not just Jews. But my opponent said that this is a very old word dating back to 1879 when it was coined in Germany by Wilhelm Marr, who started the tradition of Jew hating in that country. My interlocutor maintained that any word that is used in a certain sense for that long could no longer be changed (even thought it was coined by a Nazi?), since it was well entrenched in everyone’s mind, that books and articles had been written containing the word “anti-Semitism” in the currently accepted sense and so on.
 
He was right in a way because the word is certainly well established in its meaning of “anti-Jewish.” However, there are a lot of words in the English language that have several meanings because people realized the need to update the vocabulary and have added more-precise meanings to them. The meaning of “anti-Jewish” could co-exist alongside the more precise meaning of “antagonism toward all Semites, “ which would be true to the etymology of the word.
 
If anti-Semitism means specifically anti-Jewish sentiment, based on the contention that a misnomer should never be rectified because it is widely accepted and no longer a misnomer, then what about the American Indians? Why do we now say Native American and not Indian? For centuries, we had a name, ie, American Indian, that was perfectly unambiguous due to its common and widespread usage in the meaning that everyone clearly understood, but after all that time, we changed it to avoid offending the people to whom the name referred. It was a ridiculously politically correct change but semantics is politics in the US.
 
If we pursue this line of logic to its end, then we should not be using the word anti-Semitic to refer only to anti-Jewish sentiment because we thereby create confusion, suggesting that there is no such thing as anti-Arab sentiment when in fact I daresay this phenomenon is more prominent in the Israel-dominated Gaza strip and Jerusalem than anywhere else in the world, and if the usage of the word were true to its root “Semitism,” then the Israeli government would be one of the most anti-Semitic (in the unambiguous sense) in the world, although the US has also practiced the most grievous form of anti-Semitism of all, having slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Arabs with aerial bombs in the last 2 decades (though some put the number in the millions considering the effects of sanctions).  Yet we are told that this grievous harm to Arabs is not a form of anti-Semitism, even though the Arabs – like the Jews – are properly called Semites, which no one denies.  The refusal to open the meaning of “anti-Semitism” to include the rest of the Semites is purely political, and it is an affront to all Arabs, who also have a perfectly legitimate claim to victimhood as a result of senseless wars.
 
The fact is, whenever language is influenced for political reasons, we wind up with a winner and a loser, with one of two groups being harmed or slighted and the other benefitting at its expense.
 
To deny that abuse of Arabs is anti-Semitic is to deny that Arabs are Semites. But if they are not Semites, then what are they?
 
Further, if a person is anti-Arab and ant-Jewish at the same time, what is he if not anti-Semite?
 
Clearly, the reason Israelis and Zionists insist that we adhere to an artificial and rigid rule that effectively denies the Semitic character of Arabs is purely political and is a denial of the Arabs’ right to be properly denoted as Semites, with the Israelis and Zionists arrogating the stem “Semitic” exclusively to themselves, just as they arrogate part of the Golan Heights to themselves when in fact the Golan Heights are 100% Syrian.
 
Of course, anyone who dares to point out this abuse of the Arabs by denial of their identity as Semites is cynically called anti-Semitic, which is the height of absurdity. A defender of Arab rights is, by dint of mathematics, less anti-Semitic (in the sense clearly denoted by the root of the word) than a defender of Israeli apartheid. Yet by malicious manipulation of language, this person who uses language in a scrupulously correct manner is, absurdly, condemned as anti-Semitic.
 
So are the Jews to blame for this misappropriation of language?
 
No, not really. The biggest offenders are the US Evangelicals who blindly subscribe to the ideology of Zionism and blindly defend everything the Israeli government decrees, and support the Likud Party and all the heinous rules imposed on America, for example, by AIPAC (including, of course, the proposed clearly unconstitutional anti-BDS law forbidding participation in any boycott of products made illegally in Palestine), believing steadfastly that each Israeli politician is led by the spirit of the Almighty and never could do anything wrong. Their belief is motivated by the fear that if they should fail to properly adore Israel, they would be the recipients of the curse enshrined in Genesis, where God is speaking to Abram, but Evangelicals generally believe He means Israel:
 
Genesis 12:3 King James Version (KJV)
 
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
 
The blind acceptance of modern secular Israel as the reborn Israel prophesied in Ezekiel 37 has shaped foreign policy in Washington and has made America a slave to Israel and to all the pronouncements of Zionists for decades. Indirectly, this blindness of the American people has led to eternal wars and continues to do so today.
 
Yet Ezekiel 37 is not foretelling the Israel of today. Verse 24 of that chapter says that the resurrected Israel will have David as its king and will be obedient to God’s decrees.
 
A poll shows that 65% of Israelis describe themselves as “irreligious.”
 
US Evangelicals will only kick to habit of worshipping Israel first and Jesus last when the US economy has fallen so far that everyone can see that the people who impose Israel worship on the entire US government and even foist it on the rest of the world are not being blessed as foretold in Genesis for a nation that no longer exists.
 
And that fall is just around the corner.

Video from ABC News showing thousands of ISIS militants entering Syria unimpeded during the "War on Terror."
​

Vince Dhimos answered a question at Quora:
 
Why doesn’t USA show any interest in defending Christian minorities in Middle East, while its leaders proclaim themselves Christians?
 
https://www.quora.com/Why-doesn-t-USA-show-any-interest-in-defending-Christian-minorities-in-Middle-East-while-its-leaders-proclaim-themselves-Christians/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present)
 
Answered 8m ago
 
I will show in the following how US officials, while claiming to be Christians, implement a consistent anti-Christian foreign policy.
 
The reason most US politicians claim to be Christians is because voters generally want them to and based on what really amounts to a redefinition of Christianity, which is based on a misreading of the scriptures. Most Evangelicals, who make up the biggest voting bloc in America, adhere to this redefinition, which Jesus would not recognize. Surprisingly, this means that very few Americans subscribe to the teachings of Jesus Christ, but most claim to do so. Most Evangelicals believe that their adherence to this anti-Christian misreading and their support for a warlike government that consistently kills and displaces Christians abroad, will actually hasten the Second Coming. They are clearly deluded.
 
This ironic phenomenon has been explained previously in detail at New Silk Strategies:
​
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/quora-why-does-trump-recognize-jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-jerusalem
 
On the campaign trail, Trump had complained that Syrian Christians could not get visas to the US under Obama.
 
But when he became president, he too refused visas to most Christian Syrians.
 
In 1973, President Nixon signed a deal with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia that made the US a mercenary force for the Saudi dictators — in exchange for their charging ONLY US dollars for their oil and for keeping their reserves in US dollars.
 
So what kind of country has the US, supposedly a Christian country, chosen to partner with to save the US dollar?
 
Saudi Arabia jails people who try to worship Christ, even in their own homes (by contrast, Iran has 600 Christian churches, but the US government demonizes that country, which figures high on the Saudis’ blacklist because it is Shiite-run). We can infer from this that Christianity does not figure high on the list of things that official Washington considers worthy of protection.
 
Every US-waged war since the conclusion of the aforementioned agreement (except the Granada and Panama wars) has been fought to defend national leaders who oppose Christianity (along with Shiites) and oust leaders who tolerate Christianity. Saudi Wahhabism seeks a religiously pure Muslim world where only Sunni Wahhabists can roam freely. Even Shiite Muslims are not tolerated. You can claim this is a coincidence if you really need to, but you are free to reach your own conclusion if you dare. Saddam Hussein was very tolerant of Christians, and even had one in his cabinet. Iraq is also Shiite-majority, which does not set will with the Saudis. With the moral support of anti-Christian Saudi Arabia, the US attacked Iraq, and immediately after the US “won,” thousands of Assyrian Christians, who had lived in peace side by side with their Muslim brothers in Iraq, were forced to leave. The militants who forced them to leave were adherents to the SAUDI religion of Wahhabism, many of whom later organized to form ISIS.

ISIS would not have been formed without US intervention. The group’s first organizers founded the group in a US-administered prison in Iraq and ISIS then expanded throughout Iraq and into Syria. Now pay attention: as the US was claiming to wage a “War on Terror,” thousands upon thousands of white Toyota trucks full of armed ISIS fighters were allowed to travel across the desert in broad daylight. You can still see videos of them on line. The US bombers stood down and did not attack a single one of them, even though it was then known that these people were terrorists who decapitated people who disagreed with their intolerant and violent religion. How is this a war on terror, you ask? You ask rightly.
 
But that was just the beginning of the destructive effects of US policies on Christianity. As a result of this and subsequent US-waged wars in the Muslim world, millions of Muslims, many of them radicalized and imbued with dangerous attitudes and intentions toward Europeans, where Christianity still persisted in certain places, though in a generally weakened form. The result was a dilution of the original Christian culture and a strong Islamizing tendency that further weakened the Christian culture. Thus, the attack on Christianity was two-pronged:
 
Prong 1—decimation of Middle Eastern Christian communities, and
 
Prong 2—the dilution of Christian culture and behaviour in Europe.
 
There are also additional factors in the massive de-Christianization effort throughout the West, including a stultifying political correctness that made it impossible for Europeans to discuss the problems of mass migration openly and without fear. Some note that the atmosphere of intimidation and fear is similar to that which had once prevailed in the Soviet Union.
 
The US not only helped ISIS get started, but then allowed them to enter Syrian populated areas and mingle with the civilians where they would be extremely difficult to eradicate. Ask yourself: coincidence? Well, it is helpful to know that Bashar al-Assad and his father Hafez were the most pro-Christian leaders in the Middle East. So under the treaty concluded between Nixon and Faisal, this would all make sense assuming Washington officialdom is totally amoral, wouldn’t it? And it would make sense for the US and its puppets in Europe to say “Assad must go” and for the US to claim that Assad was using poison gas on his own people, even though it was known that terrorists also used chemical weapons. No proof was ever presented to the US that Assad had actually done these things. After all, we can surmise that the officials in Washington would lean over backwards to make them happy to save the US dollar. And the Saudis were indeed happy. US-Saudi relations couldn’t have been better. Yet the peoples targeted by the US-Saudi team suffered immensely. Their homes were blown up, their loved ones were killed and maimed. But the arms manufacturers thrived. Murder is good for business. Morality was no longer a consideration in Washington.
 
ISIS is the most virulently anti-Christian organization on the planet and was founded and allowed to grow under the watchful eyes of the country that claimed to be fighting a “War on Terror.” As a result of this negligence, ISIS militants killed or force-converted Christians in Syria wherever they found them. This could not have helped but please the Saudis, who were sending arms and fighters to Syria with tacit approval of Washington. But was it just negligence or was it intentional aiding and abetting of anti-Christian terror?
 
Even now, US proxy Israel – which wants to eliminate Assad and has a strange partnership with Saudi – is launching missile attacks on Syria claiming it is pre-empting an Iranian attack, even though the Iranians have never attacked Israel and have fought bravely against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Iran did fire missiles into the Israel-occupied Golan Heights but the Golan Heights are Syrian sovereign territory and the Israeli troops stationed there are trespassing. But the US pretends that this occupied land belongs to Israel and claims, preposterously, that Iran has no right to help Syria recover it.
 
The US also claims that Iran is its mortal enemy even though the Iranian volunteers have done an admirable job – along with the Russians and the Syrian army — of eliminating ISIS in Syria. Of course, absurdly, Trump claims HE has eliminated ISIS all by himself. Which is fine with the Syrians and the Russians as long as the US just leaves and lets them get on with their job of eliminating the last of ISIS and al-Qaeda, concentrated mostly in Idlib Province (despite the official US claim that they are defeated).
 
The US, via its military arm NATO, also attacked Libya, a country whose tolerant president protected Christian African guest workers from terrorist attacks. The US knew that there were terrorists waiting for Ghadaffi to exit his hiding place and would kill him. And that is what happened – to a leader who defended Christians and promoted tolerance. ISIS militants went into Libya shortly after Ghadaffi’s death, captured some of these Christian guest workers and decapitated them. It was shown on video throughout the world. The Saudis were happy. US officialdom feigned outrage.
 
The Kosovo war, the earliest of these wars, was a scenario like all the rest. The entire Western political class and msm waged a propaganda campaign claiming that the Serbian president was committing genocide against the Kosovars, who were mostly Muslims, and then NATO launched criminal aerial attacks on the European city of Belgrade in response to these allegations – but they were unproved. But Serbia was Christian and pro-Russian, and that was a sin in the eyes of the Western elites. 13,500 people were murdered in the war, mostly by NATO from the air.
 
After the war, Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the UN criminal law tribunal, conducted a thorough investigation and found that the Serbian-perpetrated actions against the Kosovars did not rise to the level of genocide and were in fact punitive action against Kosovar-perpetrated terrorism against the Serbs. Further, she found that during and after the war, these Kosovar militants were collecting and selling organs from Serbian prisoners.
 
 
The Kosovars started receiving relief aid from the Saudis during the Kosovo war. Prior to this, Albanians (including those in Kosovo) were known for their liberal interpretation of Islam and were relatively peaceful and tolerant toward other religions, including Christians. After the war, however, they sent imams and built Wahhabist mosques that indoctrinated young people to become jihadists, and Kosovo soon started sending more jihadis to Syria than any other European state. Kosovo is now a very dangerous place for the few Serbs who still have their homes there. Kosovo was the cradle of Serbian Christianity (Orthodox) but today virtually every church and Christian cemetery in Kosovo has been razed, burned or vandalized. One might argue that the Clinton administration knew nothing about the Saudis and their activities, but Hillary admitted in a leaked email that she knew the US was tolerating Saudi-backed Islamic terrorists in the Middle East. Thus it is hard to believe that this radicalization was not known to the US authorities and their vassals who waged war on Serbia.
 
And then there was the Afghan war and the CIA clandestine intervention that started it. This intervention occurred in 1979, just 6 years after the infamous Nixon-Faisal agreement was concluded. The situation at that time was this:
 
According to an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former secretary of state under Carter, the Russians had been supporting a secular regime that was fighting al-Qaeda, which the CIA had trained and supported to help drive out the Russians. Now you will no doubt realize that a secular regime is a step forward in a country that implements Sharia and persecutes women for the slightest infraction. The Soviets were helping to civilize the country. This CIA action gave rise to the Russian war on Afghanistan (which the Western press claimed was all Russia’s fault).
 
Of course, any support for a secular government in the Muslim world would upset the Saudis and the US intervention in that country was welcomed by them. The US was protecting its currency by promoting terror. Al-Qaeda, the US protégé, would go on to kill 3,000 Ameircans on September 11, 2001.
 
For the amoral officials in Washington to plot such intrigue, it was a small price to pay to defend the world’s reserve currency.
 
Small, that is, if one no longer holds old-fashioned Christian values.
 
Nowadays, NATO officials and US military reps tell us that Western soldiers must be brave and uphold “Western values.”
 
But when modern pols and journos talk about Western values, they are not talking about the values taught by Jesus, are they? In fact, no one today can adequately define these values.
 
The Bedrock on which Western faith has been anchored for millennia is disappearing fast, thanks to our elites.
 
There is only one country in the world that still clings to that Rock, and that is Russia, the country we are told is our enemy. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that “enemy” has not once engaged in any foreign or military policies that targeted Christians. In fact, it has sought to fight anti-Christian terrorists in Syria since September 2015.
 
The fact that the US fabricates narrative after narrative to portray Russia as an enemy is the most conclusive proof of all that Washington’s ultimate goal is to eliminate Christianity.
 
Americans who express anti-Russian sentiment are either part of the plot or are hopelessly deluded.
 
2 Thessalonians 2 King James Version (KJV)
1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?
6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

New Silk Strategy’s translation from ria.ru:

https://ria.ru/analytics/20171231/1512008653.html?referrer_block=index_only_ria_2

The story reminded our translator of Zoshchenko, a comic short story writer who liked to poke fun at his contemporary Soviet authorities.

How the Russian wolves raided Finland. New Year's blog

12-31-2017

Igor Romanovich
​
Igor Romanovich, author of the blog Green Tea
 
New Year's Eve. The Russian-Finnish border. A pack of Russian wolves crosses the border at the river.

They amble around, occasionally meeting their Finnish colleagues.
 
The colleagues are sleek and fat. Everyone is wearing an electronic collar. It's Europe. No shooting or hunting allowed, and animal rights are protected.
 
The Russian wolves frown at the Finnish wolves in disapproval. They’ve eaten ...
 
Well tended Finnish farms. Pigs, chickens, geese.
 
Flying feathers, squealing pigs, snapping jaws of the hungry aliens.
 
The farmers look on sadly. They all have guns, but you cannot shoot. It's Europe, animal rights are protected. They just shout hopelessly, tolerantly shaking their fists: "Wolves, you are very bad!"

Finnish scientists sound the alarm. There are illegal wolves in the country! Without electronic collars, names or records. It's a mess. What if they're offended?

A group of Finnish zoologists and huntsmen hastily mounted on snowmobiles. Carbines with tranquilizer needles, wolf collars with GPS.

They walk around the forest by the lake, where the pack rests after lunch. They travel in a chain, so that none of them gets out of line.
 
The pack rises, bypasses the zoologists at the flanks and attacks them from the rear.
 
Growling, snapping jaws, piercing howls. Snatches at pants, shotguns, collars and abandoned snowmobiles; suddenly everything is faster in the cold.
 
Now what? The answer is obvious - call Russian zoologists. It’s their wolves, they know them better, so let them help.

Call to St. Petersburg, complaint.

They said they’d send a group of young talented scientists, but, unfortunately, not for free, since there is capitalism now and no more gifts from Lenin. The installation of a pack of collars with sensors will cost three hundred and thirty euros for each young scientist. And twenty cases of Finlandia vodka for wiping microscopes in the laboratories.

Deal.

The Ural truck came, with a protective paint job. It disgorged tall laconic young zoologists in winter camouflage. Machine guns, machine pistols, night vision equipment. Finnish zoologists are concerned about bullets? You realize this is Europe.

The senior researcher checks the unloaded ammo and calms down – it’s tranquilizer darts. They will sleep like the dead. Restrained laughter of young scientists.

They load the bundles of collars onto the truck bed, blow cold breath into their sleeves, quietly confer. Go.
 
They returned in the morning. Tired, but satisfied. Report: the wolves are collared.
 
Finnish zoologists at monitors. There they are! Red dots move on the monitors. Hooray! Here's the pay, as agreed.
 
The visitors busy themselves loading the boxes, recounting the money, and the Ural disappears in a snow haze.
 
The observation of the new wolves during the first days thrills the Finnish scientists. The dots on the monitor move in a strictly defined algorithm. All day they go back and forth in a distinct chain, and in the evening they gather in a neat circle and do not move until morning.

Scientists began the study "Behavioral phenomena of Finnish wolves in the winter." The Nobel Prize is just around the corner.

The second night the Finnish zoologist Mika Mäkinen cannot sleep.

The strange habits of the wolves disquiet the inquisitive scientist.

In the evening he mounts a GPS radar system on his snowmobile and goes to the forest to the place where the red dots are clustered.

In his imagination he sees a wolf pack, gathered for a big pow-wow around Akella.
 
They turn toward Mika. "Greetings, young Finnish zoologist Mika!" Akella solemnly says, "Come join our pack! You will be the first Finnish Mowgli!"

Mika smiles dreamily and steps on the gas.

That's the place. Mika drives into a large clearing in the forest. Akella is not there, instead he sees a laconic structure of logs with a sign bar.

From inside comes the ringing of glasses and the cheerful singing of Finnish woodcutters. Timber trucks stand darkly around the structure.

Mika's jaw drops in surprise - at the bottom of each log truck flashes the familiar light of an electronic collar.
..............................
The Russian-Finnish border. Border post. Festive New Year's table.

The head of the outpost holds in his hand a glass of Finnish vodka.

"How are our wolves, Comrade Lieutenant?"

"They've already eaten and are resting in the enclosures, Comrade Major!" They’re showing a bit of frostbite.

- Good. And that frostbite is no problem! The border wolf must endure all hardships and deprivations of military service. What can we do if we don’t send dogs next year. By the way, how are our bears there?

"They are engaged in military and political training, Comrade Major!"
​
- Well. By February 23 we will send them to Norway. They also have vodka, euros and animal rights protection there. Happy New Year, comrades

The world’s most dangerous cult (it’s not Wahhabism) Part III
 
Vahan Bogdasarian
 
However, Christian Zionists willingly and cheerfully approve of everything the ruling warlike Likud Party of Israel does or wants to do, including genocidal war plans against Iran and the Lebanese political party Hezbollah, which we remind the reader, is an indispensable contributor to the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We have previously touched on this subject here and here and have mentioned that these Zionists not only devoutly believe that the modern day Israel is God’s special chosen nation but worse, have infected many of their countrymen with this ideology. It was easy to accomplish this because many Americans are imbued with the idea of going to heaven and avoiding hell, and in Genesis God said that those who bless Israel will be blessed while those who curse it will be cursed. The other Bible passage that they think supports their view is the prophecy of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37.
 
These interpretations, however, are fatally flawed, firstly because the dry bones mentioned as representing a resurrected Israel in Ezekiel 37 are said by the prophet to have David as their king, and instead have a perpetually angry ethnocentric mortal, the secular Netanyahu, as their leader, and secondly, such a rigid adherence to a scripture verse for the sole purpose of saving one’s soul from hell fire runs counter to Christ’s teaching against legalism and his love doctrine. He would certainly never have exhorted His followers to support any wars that the modern state of Israel declares on anyone for the purpose of grabbing more land. Indeed, these Zionist cultists haven’t a scintilla of love for their fellow men, let alone for their perceived enemies, whom they would gladly slaughter by the millions if a prominent Christian Zionist (John Hagee perhaps?) told them such were God’s will. There is not a spark of Christian love in their attitude toward many non-Americans, including Syrian Christians, whose lives are threatened by the Western demand to overthrow the pro-Christian Assad. And yet their pastors stoutly uphold this absurd interpretation of the scriptures that makes them yearn for the death of their perceived enemies out of a selfish desire to save their souls while ritually mouthing the utterly meaningless words “I stand with Israel.” None of these same “Christians” ever followed that up by declaring “and I also stand for the Syrian Christians.” Because they don’t.
 
The murderous heretical sects in Europe later served as models for the radical Enlightenment’s rejection of the belief in God. But it was not God who had sown death and carnage across Europe. It was the profane use of God as an instrument to fend off the just consequences and confession of their guilt instead of a source of forgiveness in exchange for sincere repentance.
 
This has been a long and detailed commentary, but this subject, which is almost never covered in the press (reporters who tread on this territory are routinely dismissed, slandered or persecuted), deserves to be amply covered. Further fascinating material on the heretical militants of Europe can be found in the aforementioned freely downloadable book “The Socialist Phenomenon.”
 
Lest you be tempted to think that telling the unvarnished truth about modern Israel is taboo for all Jews, the Orthodox Jewish organization True Torah Jews has warned about the danger of Zionism to the Jews themselves, mentioning various “Christian” organizations that urge Jews to leave their homes and emigrate to Israel. They mention in particular, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).
 
“The IFCJ isn’t alone. Groups like Christian Friends of Israeli Communities (CFOIC) and Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) all have immigration at the top of their agendas.

“Sadly, with the emphasis on moving to Israel at all costs, claims of Philo-Semitic feeling on the part of these and other groups start to ring hollow. Especially in light of the fact that much of the money given goes towards West Bank settlements, which place everyone in that region, Jew and non-Jew, in the line of fire. I might be slightly exaggerating by saying that sending someone to live there is like buying your child a house in downtown Aleppo, but only slightly. [this was written prior to the liberation of Aleppo from ISIS by the Russians, Iranians and Syrians]
“Israel’s many provocations, military, diplomatic and otherwise, both in the domestic sphere and abroad, feed anti-Semitism, throwing gas on an already raging fire. If you doubt it, visit the website for the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, a branch of Tel Aviv University. Yearly reports show the clear and undeniable correlation between Israeli militarism and rises in anti-Semitism worldwide. When Israel does or says something foolish or aggressive, people die. Non-Jews die. Jews die.

“Dear Friend of the Jewish People,

“You say love Jews. If I were to speak candidly, giving charity to organizations that encourage Jews to move to a nation that is, statistically speaking, the most dangerous place in the world for a Jew, is anti-Semitic. Not intentionally so, there is no malicious intent in it, but the fact remains. It’s an action that runs against the best interests of the Jews.”

While Christian Zionists are focused solely on the Old Testament in support of their pro-Tel Aviv views, a New Testament interpretation of Christ’s words regarding Israel is presented here advocating the complete opposite. The author also points out how the highly influential megapastor John Hagee calls for a pre-emptive strike on Iran to protect Israel, when in fact it would unleash a firestorm on the poor Israelis and plunge the region into chaos. The difference between Hagee and his ilk and the heretics in 15th and 16th Century Europe discussed above is that these early militants had a limited influence on others and their destruction was limited geographically and temporally, whereas Hagee has a powerful influence on the minds of many American Christians, who in turn strongly influence US foreign and military policy. Thus, for the pleasure of Israeli lobby AIPAC, Trump frequently repeated, even during his campaign, the refrain “Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terror.” Most Democrats are in full agreement with this absurd assessment and both parties are aching for war against the entire Shia world – the world that has held ISIS at bay for many years and has never sent a terrorist to Europe or the US. The fact that Trump is still blindly seen as anti-Establishment makes the current situation as dangerous as it has ever been. Only the dominant and stabilizing influence of Vladimir Putin in the Middle East, and the simultaneous collapse of US prestige in the region, prevent the outbreak of a conflagration of Biblical proportions.

New Silk Strategies had shown in a previous resource (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) that there has been a tectonic plate shift in enlightened thought from West to East. This shift has enabled Christian thought to proceed unimpeded in a different part of the world, where the original body of thought can develop without the interference injected at the time of the European “Enlightenment” that interrupted the development of Christianity by discrediting it. This paper is an attempt to take up the broken thread. We shall start with Jesus.

Jesus and early Christians believed the Jews were no longer the chosen ones but that the church had replaced them.

The most important factor in the change in Christian attitudes toward the Jews may have been the Holocaust, which made martyrs of the Jews and opened the floodgates to acceptance of Zionism throughout the West. Somehow, Westerners were duped into believing that Judaism was synonymous with Zionism. This, along with a general falling away from the faith, made Christian leaders take their focus off of Jesus as their Saviour and place it on Israel as a kind of ersatz saviour, particularly since such was politically safer. What most forgot was that the nominally “Christian “Germany had discarded all Christian principles in its treatment of the Jews. Thus, post-war, there was no justification to relinquish Christ’s original teachings about the Jews. Their only duty was to love these Jews, not to displace Palestinians who had lived, worked and farmed for centuries in the land from which God had long banished the Jews for their disobedience and turn it over to people calling themselves Jews but who were largely irreligious and lacked a uniform DNA that might have served as evidence of their claim to be descended from Abraham.

I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars--I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. Revelation 3:9
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Stephen Sizer writes:

“The post-Apostolic Church Fathers believed that the Jews ceased to be God's 'chosen people' when they rejected Jesus Christ. Instead they understood the church to be the new Israel.”

Modern Christianity has reversed Christ’s vision and replaced their Saviour with the secular state of Israel. If God had warned that those opposing His obedient people of ancient Israel would be cursed, what can modern “Christian” Zionists expect when they set the disobedient modern Israel (still under the curse of the diaspora) against the Christians in the Middle East (by powerfully propagandizing against the leaders who protect them) and even participate in the persecution by clandestine support of “moderates” who would force sharia law on these Christians or even banish them?

How ironic that people calling themselves Christians would ignore Christ’s words regarding Israel and turn back to the pre-Christian Old Testament to defend the policies of a warlike country that rejects their Saviour.

Does anyone in America stand for Jesus any more? Anyone?
 
Relevant resources:
 
http://www.christianzionism.org/Article/Sizer06.asp
 
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/culture/the-us-church-israel-first-christ-second

​http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/a-foreign-power-writes-us-legislation-you-ok-with-that

Vahan Bogdasarian
 
Two things came to mind as I read this account.

1. Are ISIS fighters really worse than these 15th qne 16th Century militants calling themselves Christians?

 

1. These religious fanatics behaved just as wantonly and lawlessly as the participants in the atheistic French Revolution. In fact, the early heretics (such as Dolcino) were hailed as models by some of the Enlightenment philosophers.  (If you reread “East vs West: Who are the enlightened ones?” Part I, Part II and  Part III, you will see how that resource ties in with this one).

 
A siege outside the city eventually took its toll amid the abominable bloodshed, and like all of the heretical leaders before him, the magnificent Bokelson, when captured, became a snivelling whiner even offering to rat out his confederates in return for clemency. But in view of all he had done, it is not surprising that no one pitied him.
 
“In the square where once he had sat on a throne, he was tortured with hot irons, and then his heart was pierced with a red-hot dagger.”
 
Thus the enemies of these sects, the Catholics, were no more merciful than they in terms of their eagerness to shed blood, based, of course, on Biblical passages that they took for commandments (isn’t it true that, for many of the faithful, their favourite Bible passages seem to defend their own vices and lusts?). The Inquisition needs no further review, and the massacre of the Huguenots in Paris is another of many instances of how the Catholics dealt with “heretics.”
 
Likewise, American defenders of slavery in the first century of the American colonies and post-revolution US also relied heavily on a skewed view of the scriptures to support their racism. Thus, these pro-slavery “Christians” relied on a belief that the swarthy-complexioned Ham was cursed and his sons would also be cursed by being forced into slavery. They ignored the fact that according to the Bible, Ham himself was not cursed and only his son Canaan was, whose complexion is not known. (However, historians tell us that the Canaanites, also known as the Phoenicians, were a Semitic people and hence not black sub-Saharans).
 
Biblical scholar Tony Evans explains:
 
“This process is known as sacralization, the development of theological and religious beliefs to serve the interest of a particular … group.”
 
As fortune willed it, most of these heretical cults were indeed able, with only the most rudimentary training and equipment, to rampage virtually unhindered across wide swaths of territory for many months and even years, killing, marauding, sacking and burning the churches and monasteries of their perceived enemy and massacring enemy monks and priests.  Even to many unbelievers, it must have seemed as if nothing could stop them and that surely God must be on their side. During this time of virtual impunity one could scarcely blame them for believing that they enjoyed divine protection. Armed with a rapidly growing faith in their invincibility, they fairly flew from victory to victory over their stunned and incredulous adversaries.
 
In each case it was not until they had destroyed or appropriated incalculable treasure and killed countless innocents that the authorities were able to amass sufficient trained and armed military forces to defeat them in battle, finally killing them by the thousands, and capturing their leaders, thereby stopping the destruction. It was in many cases only as the leaders were led away to the stake and the kindling set afire that they glimpsed the awful consequences of their tragic misinterpretation of the scriptures. How must they have felt as the tongues of flame licked the soles of their feet and their dreams of ushering in the Kingdom of God ended up so ignominiously, literally going up in smoke!
 
Were the horrors of those times a lesson given by God to humans? Have they learned it? Will they ever? And what is that lesson? For Christians, it is simply this:

Jesus was once asked by a legal expert:

“what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He [the expert] answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
 
For Jesus, love was the supreme law comparable to a Constitution. It was the legal framework into which everything else had to fit. If in a certain instance, the literal application of the law did not meet the overarching criterion of love, then it had to be discarded in that instance. Jesus illustrated this precept when he came upon a throng about to stone an adulteress and told them “let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” whereupon the throng put down their stones and walked silently away. Jesus was not defying the law, which required them to stone her. He was applying a constitutional test: Did the application of the law meet the love criterion? No, it did not, and that was obvious to everyone present. It was common sense, and common sense – otherwise known as wisdom – is what tells people what love is. No scriptural passage can supersede it because love is Christ's supreme law.
 
Likewise, even assuming the heretics were correct in judging the Catholics for their bullying and their departure from the scriptures, and even if there were vague suggestions in the Old Testament that believers are justified in massacring infidels or blasphemers, Christ’s Supreme Law of Love would not permit this and therefore, individuals who commit massacres cannot legitimately call themselves Christians. Neither can nations that arm and sponsor jihadists call themselves Christian nations. Nor can current Christian leaders reasonably pray for wisdom for their leaders because if they had had wisdom, they could not have been elected as head of a nation for which war is its raison d'être and economic mainstay (see the 3 links under Relevant Reading below).
 
Thus, like their cultist European forebears, the true-believer Christian Zionists, who have been discussed before at New Silk Strategies, are potentially capable of more harm than the Wahhabists of ISIS or Al-Qaeda (or any of the latter’s rebrandings such as Al-Nusra or Tahrir as-Sham). Certainly, the Wahhabist jihadists would slit your throat as soon as look at you if you are a kafir, ie, a person who is not a devout Muslim. But if you are a strict Wahhabist, then you will apply it to a Muslim who you think is not as Muslim as you. That’s the kind of MO displayed by the revolutionary heretics in Europe discussed above.

 
Relevant Reading
 
Pertinent to my phrasing "head of a nation for which war is its raison d'être and economic mainstay":
​​Relevant reading
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/opinion/making-saudi-arabia-great-again-pt-1
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/opinion/making-saudi-arabia-great-again-pt-2
http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/opinion/making-saudi-arabia-great-again-part-3
The above three part series is one of our milestone pieces, which we refer to as resources because they contain concepts resulting from original analyses that can be used as building blocks for future articles. Without reference to these resources, it would be difficult to understand the conclusions and statements made in subsequent articles. These resources are intended to be saved by the reader for reference.

 
Vahan Bogdasarian
 
Many people familiar with the Middle East believe that Wahhabism is the most dangerous cult in the world. Indeed, the intentions of the Wahhabists are as dangerous as they come.
But there is a cult more dangerous than this because, while ISIS is not a state actor and has no thermonuclear arms, this other cult is a major agent in manipulating the use of nuclear arms against people who are not their enemy but who they believe with all their hearts are the enemy of God and must therefore, based on a cult-like interpretation of the scriptures, be destroyed. This teaching pits the West against the Shia world (that’s the Muslims who are fighting ISIS and Al-Qaeda) and its nuclear armed allies Russia and China.
 
The danger of the cult in question lies in two areas:
 
1—their cult is alarmingly popular, particularly in the US, where over 50% of Americans polled favor Israel over the Palestinians (whose land they occupy) and, in addition, their desire for war has support from other powerful agents, both government and journalistic, in their own country and elsewhere.
 
2—Their cult teaches that God supports their desire for war and will keep them free from harm regardless of the risks and perils of the course of action – even a nuclear attack – that their government may undertake under pressure from them. Remember the soldiers in WW I sporting belt buckles with the inscription Gott mit uns. God is always for us, right?
 
The cult in question is Christian Zionism, which we will prove is in fact anti-Christian.

Past centuries have seen, in Europe, various cults strikingly similar to this modern one whose followers were fully convinced that they were executing God’s will and that He would protect them from all harm even as they marauded across Europe wantonly breaking God’s commandments not to kill or steal. This history of militant heretics is vividly portrayed with regards to numerous socialistic Christian sects by renowned Soviet mathematician and anticommunist dissident Igor Shafarevich in his book “The Socialist Phenomenon” (Социализм как явление мировой истории / Sotsializm kak yavlenie mirovoy istoriy).
 
These sects included the Cathars, the Apostolic Brethren, the Adamites, the Taborites, the early Anabaptists and numerous others, all of them imbued with a sense that certain obscure scripture verses conferred to them divine carte blanche to plunder churches and kill Christians with beliefs different from theirs. This conviction of self-righteousness is strikingly similar to the Wahhabist teachings in the Middle East.
 
Thomas Münzer,one of the founders of the Anabaptists, was a charismatic leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany around the time of Luther’s Reformation. In his sermons, he railed against the local authorities, princes and church leaders, who he believed had arrogated to themselves rights that only God could wield and confer. He and his rebel followers plundered and burned churches and wantonly killed priests, citing vague scripture that he thought supported his lawlessness, though his actions violated Christ's Law of Love (more on this later).
 
At the beginning of the 14th century a “heretic” leader founded in Italy a sect that he called the Apostolic Brethren (Fraticelli Apostolici), which opposed the Catholics on several grounds. They opposed the Church not only philosophically but also militarily. According to Shafarevich:
 
“Victory in the wars with the Antichrist Pope, Dolcino foretells, will be won thanks to the interference of a foreign monarch. He pins his hope on Frederick, the King of Aragon and Sicily, who at the time was engaging in a fierce conflict with the Pope. (He had just strung up all the monks in Sicily who were suspected of supporting the papacy.)
Dolcino derived all this from his interpretation of the Biblical prophets”
He slaughtered people who disagreed with his take on scripture.
 
According to this Italian language text, Dolcino was eventually caught and made to watch as his wife was burned at the stake. Then it was his turn. Prior to this, he was subjected to unspeakable torture, such as castration, and his nose was cut off. Where was “love thine enemies” in this horrific clash of Christian vs Christian?
 
You probably will have heard of the sweet pacifistic Mennonites and Amish in Lancaster County PA. Before they were pacified, their Anabaptist forebears (we mentioned Münzer above) staged a reign of terror in Münster and elsewhere in the 16th Century. They were absolute caricatures of themselves. The first noteworthy leader, Jan Matthijs, after calling for all dissidents to be exterminated, declared war on essentially the whole non-Anabaptist world:
 
An excerpt from Shafarevich:
 
“The Anabaptists made a display of their power almost immediately in a terrible outburst of violence that took place … three days after the election. Monasteries and churches were destroyed, religious objects smashed and saints' relics thrown into the streets.”
 
To show his authority, Matthijs, personally executed one hapless citizen who disagreed with the bloody agenda. The obviously mentally disturbed leader had a vision in which he would take on single-handedly the enemy troops besieging the city. Proclaiming “God’s will be done,” he marched outside the city wall and was hacked to pieces by the lansquenets. Upon his death his comrade in arms Jan Bokelson (Jan van Leyden) announced that he would personally replace Matthijs.
 
If Matthijs was the hors d’oeuvre, Bokeleson was the main course. Once installed in power, he had himself crowned king of the world and began persecuting and killing unbelievers wholesale. He declared all things in common (communism), including all women. At one of his own frequent wedding parties, he saw an unfortunate guest whom he did not recognize and beheaded him on the spot. His pious wives stood round about the gory scene singing “Glory to God in the Highest”.
 
“One woman who refused to become the king's wife, in spite of his several proposals, had her head chopped off in the town square by the king's own hand, while his assembled wives sang "Glory to God in the Highest.’ “
​

Relevant reading
 
Free download of Shafarevich’s The Socialist Phenomenon
http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html

​

​Please watch. The below-linked is an excellent production funded in part by Leonardo DiCaprio.

http://putlocker.io/watch/pxwnM8vz-cowspiracy-the-sustainability-secret.html

One of the interviewees appearing in the video, a former cattle rancher, was arrested under a law designed to protect Big Ag from the truth about their industry! (Freedom of speech? Not if your speech affects the bottom line of an oligarch).

Did you know that when you eat a Big Mac, you are eating a heavily subsidized piece of meat and that it took 660 gallons of water to raise that share of the beef?

And did you know that 91% of the deforestation of the Amazon region is due to cattle grazing?

Or that the world's cattle consume several times the amount of water as the world's humans?

That fishing is no longer sustainable? (Not mentioned in the movie, but true: as compared with 1950 levels, only a remnant, sometimes as little as 10%, of all large ocean fish stock remains).
​
That the organizations entrusted with raising awareness of environmental issues refuse to discuss the main cause of all environmental threats?

So now that you have viewed this excellent video, what is there left to eat, and can you live healthily without meat? The same director answers this question in another film:

http://123hulu.com/watch/GOb0Or6x-what-the-health/hulu.html
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We decided to post this one under the Culture heading since religion is part of culture.
NSS staff

Before you read the below article, we recomment you view this video: https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/396315-uss-liberty-attack-aircraft/
​

By Vahan Bogdasarian 

The mainstay of the Christian Cult of Israel (known as Christian Zionism in its more explicit form), which has existed for over 60 years and largely dominates American Christianity, is the description in Ezekiel 37: 1-14 of the prophet’s dream of a valley of dry bones that come together to form a living body, which the prophet says represent Israel, whose people God had banished from their land for disobedience. The challenge with this and most other prophecies for scholars is the absence of a time frame for its fulfillment and a lack of further details as to the nature of the Israel resurrected -- ´perhaps just after the prolonged captivity in Babylonia. The majority of churches now believe that this resurrected Israel of prophecy is in fact that one with its capital in Tel Aviv. And because Christians are arguably the largest voting bloc, their will translates into national policy, particularly foreign policy, the one that keeps the US constantly embroiled in war after war that the nation loses consistently.
US policies are regularly blamed on a putative “Deep State,” but the backbone of the nation is the people -- which I call the Shallow State for the purpose of this article, which in fact controls the U.S. government to a vast extent not understood by most.

The dry bones prophecy was reportedly recorded in the year 587 BC, 10 years after the start of the first diaspora, ie, the Babylonian captivity. Anyone reading this prophecy around the time it was written would have been convinced that the dry bones were the now-ancient Israel that had just then ceased to exist in the land given the Hebrews by God. In fact, the diaspora ended starting in the year 538 when Persian King Cyrus released all the Israelite captives and allowed them to return to their ancestral land. Was this return of the captives to Israel not analogous to the re-assembling of dry bones?

Indeed this first diaspora ended in 538 BC, when Jewish captives began to return to their homeland. What would that have been but a resurrection of the once-dry bones? However, subsequent Bible scholars prior to the Zionist movement had their own take on this and their words were often spoken with clarity and zeal as well as with what seemed like air tight Biblical logic at the time.

For instance, in 1864, the renowned preacher Charles Spurgeon preached a different slant on the dry bones prophecy than that of today’s “Christian Zionists.” He firmly believed that there would indeed be a resurrected Israel but one that accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah. Thus, compared to today’s Christian Zionism, Spurgeon’s vision of the future Israel was a frankly Christian one. In that sermon he said:

“There shall not be two, nor ten, nor twelve, but one—one Israel praising one God, serving one king, and that one King the Son of David, the descended Messiah.”
​
By contrast, the modern Christian supporters of Zionism include Pastor John Hagee, whose theology is centered squarely on Israel and who once preached that Jews could be a kind of honorary “Christians” if they were faithful to their Abrahamic God and His commandments. A far cry from Christ’s words “no man cometh unto the Father but through Me.” Mainstream Christians could not stomach this perversion of their scriptures, and Hagee was eventually pressured into recanting this heresy. Even so, there are well-known Christian leaders like Texas Senator and ex-presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who hold to the proposition that Christians are called upon to wholeheartedly support the modern state of Israel and all its policies, despite its high percentage of atheists and scarcity of true believers in the Old Testament—and despite the fact that this contemporary Israel is, for example, wholeheartedly in favor of same-sex marriage, which the senator rejects on Christian grounds.

This is a far cry from Spurgeon’s view of Ezekiel’s Israel prophecy, a Christ-centered view that has almost completely died out, along with a lot of other articles of the faith, and along with a firm grasp of family values and a sense of family security. And along with the loss of family security, we have lost a feeling of national and economic security as well. Spurgeon would have told us that the material and the spiritual go hand in hand and when one fails, so does the other.

But he would not have been allowed to speak in today’s churches.

Please post your comments by clicking on Comments at the top of the page. America needs this dialogue as much as any other today!
Thank you!