Echoes in Eternity

Well, as usual the United Nations are stuck attempting to determine the correct verb to use in another of their meaningless "statements." If it weren't so deadly to those in Darfur and elsewhere, it would be quite comical. In this case, the UN couldn't bring themselves to "deplore" Iran's recent kidnapping of British troops, but they did express "grave concern." What a bunch of pompous fools. Not only do they spend hours negotiating a STATEMENT, they also are so arrogant as to assume that whatever silly verb they use will actually make a smidgeon of a difference to Iran.

What they should do is what Newt recommended the other day.

I would say to them, I would right now say to them privately, within the next week, your refinery will no longer work. And within the following week, there will be no tankers arriving. Now if you would like to avoid being humiliated publicly, we recommend you calmly and quietly give them back now. But frankly, if you’d prefer to show the planet that you’re tiny and we’re not, we’re prepared to simply cut off your economy, and allow you to go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts, because you will have no gasoline left.

I've added two more links to the left. Blackfive is a blog written by a ex-military officer who has many ties to the current conflicts in the Middle East. Basically, he tells the stories that the media won't tell you. The "Someone You Should Know" link is a sub-blog of Blackfive and tells stories of honorable people who are making sacrifices over there. Here is a sample. And the couple's wedding photo. Meanwhile, we have a Democrat-controlled and Republican-enabled Congress stabbing these brave soldiers in the back with a retreat strategy before they've even been given a chance to succeed.

We don't fight for oil, or Halliburton contracts, or hatred. We fight for this:























And this:

Regarding the problem northern Eurasia is having keeping babies alive either after they are born or in utero, here is a short snippet of an article from a couple years ago that I stumbled across today.

"The number of women who have abortions in Russia annually greatly exceeds the corresponding figures in Western European countries," [Vladimir Kulakov, deputy director of the Russian Women’s Health Center] said. "The quality of abortions performed is often very low and the women’s health is often at risk, with 30 percent of them dying," he added.

“There are more than 6.5 million infertile women in Russia today,” RIA Novosti quoted Kulakov as saying. “15 percent of Russian couples are facing the problem of infertility.”

6.5 million infertile women?!?! That's 1 in 10! A 30% death rate of women who have abortions? So not only are they killing off the next generation, they're killing off their own generation as well.

Here is a graph of what Russia's population is projected at for the next 50 years. Most of Europe isn't much better.


Meanwhile, this is what Saudi Arabia's population (and most predominantly Muslim countries) is doing:


















I wonder who will be making the rules in Eurasia by mid-century...

The title of this post comes from the slogan for a campaign in Germany to persuade new mothers to place their unwanted babies in hospital "baby hatches" rather than killing them or leaving them to die somewhere. Unfortunately, this has become necessary since there have been more than 20 newborn babies murdered this year in Germany by mothers who didn't want them and didn't care enough to put them up for adoption. Here is the article.

Desperate mothers are being urged to drop their unwanted babies through hatches at hospitals in an effort to halt a spate of infanticides that has shocked Germany.

At least 23 babies have been killed so far this year, many of them beaten to death or strangled by their mothers before being dumped on wasteland and in dustbins.
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Experts believe that the true figure is even higher. Professor Helmut Kury, a criminologist, say: “Some women have a greater fear of losing their partners than of losing their child. They take desperate measures to save a relationship.”
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But the baby-drops, modelled on foundling wheels that were first used in Italy in medieval times, are not the final antidote to these killings. “Often the mother is under such psychological pressure that she doesn’t even register alternatives like the Baby-Klappe,” Dr Neises said.

But they do offer an alternative for some mothers. The drop-off point is usually hidden from view, shielded by trees and away from security cameras. The baby is put on to a tray that slides through a hole in the wall and is gently lowered into a heated cot. An alarm bell alerts nursing staff — but only after the mother has been given sufficient time to make a getaway. The baby can be reclaimed, usually up to three months later, should the mother change her mind.
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Initial scepticism started to melt after a woman in eastern German was arrested for letting nine of her babies die. Some were buried in plant pots in her garden.

Germany already has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe and is having its population every 40-50 years. And those that are having babies don't appear to keen on keeping them.

Two thoughts come to mind from this story. One, the argument that legalized abortion and contraception eliminates or significantly reduces the number of "unwanted" babies appears to be proven wrong by this situation. Germany already aborts nearly 1 in 5 of their babies, and 30% of German women are childless as is, with all sorts of contraceptives available. Yet, INCREASINGLY mothers are killing their babies post-birth. Second, if most of these women are killing their babies so that their BOYFRIENDS don't leave them, it would appear that the complete disregard for marriage in Europe has reaped the whirlwind. We are living in evil times when mothers throughout the world can throttle their infant children to death for no reason other than motherhood makes them uncomfortable. I leave you with a graph. One hint, it's not the percent of pregnancies taken to term. Communism appears to haunt Eastern Europe to this day.

Here is an article from Newsweek from 1975 describing the "almost unanimous" scientific opinion that global COOLING was going to cause worldwide famines and a minor ice age.

They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

That sounds so familiar.

Here is a thought-inspiring post I found on another person's blog. It makes one think.

There are no curses strong enough to properly convey what I feel toward people capable of this. King David perhaps said it best in Psalm 11:5-6.

The LORD examines the righteous,
but the wicked and those who love violence
his soul hates.

On the wicked he will rain
fiery coals and burning sulfur;
a scorching wind will be their lot.

This is actually the only place I have found where the Bible indicates that God can hate people. We're taught that God hates sin but loves the sinner. But here, for those who love violence, He hates them within His soul. I do not want to be nearby when God pours out His wrath on the terrorists in Iraq who killed those children.

As you already know by my past posts here and here regarding "global warming," I am not loath to express my disdain for this current fad. In that vein, Mark Steyn has written another great column this week; once again taking the "climate change" craze and tearing it asunder.

The aphorism usually attributed to Chesterton seems pertinent here: once man has ceased to believe in God, he'll believe in anything. Most of the post-Christian West seems to have decided that, if the here and now is all there is, then we have to keep the here and now right here and exactly as it is now for all time. Environmentalism is, in that sense, the apotheosis of our present-tense culture. It is, of course, anti-nature. Far from "honouring your mother" (as the Gaia bumper stickers commend), it explicitly dishonours her: it assumes she is not a living evolving entity but exists in a fixed state whose condition is determined by man--or, at any rate, wicked capitalist Anglo-American man.

Here is an enjoyable little obituary written by (who else?) Mark Steyn. Enjoy!

What with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Islam, there’s been a huge proliferation of Stans in the news. There’s Tajiks and Uzbeks, a Nuristan and a Nurestan, there’s a Baluchistan and a Balochistan and probably a Biloxistan, there are Kremlin-pressured Stans (Bashkortistan) and vowel-challenged Stans (Kyrgyzstan) and Stans that sound vaguely like some big Corporate-Mergerstan (Karakalpakstan). There’s Waziristan, where Osama bin Laden is said to be holed up like a Muslim Pimpernel: they seek him in Waziristan, they seek him in Overtheristan.

So, in a world of Stans, with every Nickelandimistan clamoring for attention, how do you make yours Stan out from the crowd? This was the challenge faced by an obscure Communist apparatchik called Saparmurat Niyazov in 1991 when his Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic suddenly found itself pushed out onto the world stage as the newly independent nation of Turkmenistan. In Soviet Central Asia, Turkmenistan was pretty much the end of the line Stan-wise. You flew in from Baku across the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, the Stan that thinks it’s a Jan.

I have placed a Fred Thompson for President logo at the top of this blog. So far, I have not been particularly keen on any of the Republican frontrunners; each for their own reasons. Guiliani doesn't have the convictions to stand behind his newfound conservative social policies, and it's hard to see an admitted adulterer winning the Presidency (at least from the Republican side of the aisle). McCain is a politician first and a conservative second. He's very wishy washy on some key issues and has made some huge errors in judgment in the past in the name of "bi-partisanship"; plus he's really old. Romney has some history of liberal social policies like Guiliani, plus he was elected governor by Massachusetts, which worries me. The rest of the names out there likewise are either worrisome in their conservative credentials or appear likely unelectable come November 2008. Which brings me to Fred Thompson. He is a strong conservative without any past leftist leanings, he's got name recognition from his time as a senator from Tennessee and his current stint as the head District Attorney Arthur Branch on the NBC show Law and Order, he is still heavily involved in politics as he helped aid Chief Justice Roberts' confirmation process and has been a leading advocate for Scooter Libby, and, to my knowledge, has little or no past personal issues.

So here's hoping he says yes to a run for president.

After reading this great piece by Mark Steyn, I suddenly felt like perhaps global warming is one of those issues to which Jesus referred when he said that "false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect—if that were possible." While Al Gore may have not done any miracles (besides resurrecting his political career), he has millions of people considering him a great prophet. While it may seem harmless to believe that global warming needs to be addressed, it is not. The remedy that is now being promoted by Gore and his liberal brethren will destroy the world's economy and kill millions of people if allowed to be fully enacted.

A couple of days before the Oscars, the Reverend Al gave a sell-out performance at the University of Toronto. "From my perspective, it is a form of religion," said Bruce Crofts of the East Toronto Climate Action Group, who compared the former vice president to Jesus Christ, both men being (as the Globe And Mail put it) "great leaders who stepped forward when called upon by circumstance." Unlike Christ, the Eco-Messiah cannot yet walk on water, but then, neither can the polar bears. However, only Al can survey the melting ice caps and turn water into whine. One lady unable to land a ticket frantically begged the university for an audience with His Goriness. As the National Post reported, "Her daughter hadn't been able to sleep since seeing ''An Inconvenient Truth.'' She claimed that seeing Mr. Gore in person might make her daughter feel better." Well, it worked for Leonardo DiCaprio.

It is scary that people can be so easily fooled. While "climate change" hysteria may die off in a few years, it has shown me how easily people, including Christians, can be taken in by a worldly philosophy. The unsaved have no hope, thus they are terrified of anything and everything. Christians should be ashamed to let themselves fall into such anxiety. After all, "heaven and earth will pass away..."

It's stories like this one that made me create this blog. If nothing else, I can help open people's eyes to how totalitarian the rest of the world (in this case, Europe) truly is.

Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.
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Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938 and ordered all children to be sent to state schools. The home-schooling community in Germany is tiny. As Hitler knew, Germans tend to obey orders unquestioningly. Only some 500 children are being home-schooled in a country of 80 million. Home-schooling families are prosecuted without mercy.

Last March, a judge in Hamburg sentenced a home-schooling father of six to a week in prison and a fine of $2,000. Last September, a Paderborn mother of 12 was locked up in jail for two weeks.
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All German political parties, including the Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel, are opposed to home-schooling. They say that "the obligation to attend school is a civil obligation, that cannot be tampered with." The home-schoolers receive no support from the official (state funded) churches, either. These maintain that home-schoolers "isolate themselves from the world" and that "freedom of religion does not justify opposition against the obligation to attend school." Six decades after Hitler, German politicians and church leaders still do not understand true freedom: that raising children is a prerogative of their fathers and mothers and not of the state, which is never a benevolent parent and often an enemy.

The situation is no better in Europe as a whole. Last year, the European Court of Human Rights upheld Hitler's schooling bill, saying that "schools represent society, and it is in the children's interest to become part of that society. The parents' right to educate does not go so far as to deprive their children of that experience."

We already know that the American political left believe that the government should raise our children, how long before those thoughts become majority opinion in this country as they obviously have in Europe?

To modify Dylan Thomas, the world has gone gently into that dark night.

Once again, without further adieu, Mark Steyn's article from the Western Standard this week.

This is the way the world ends, with childish jingles of "Food Not Bombs," the anarchist chic of Emma Goldman anarcho-rock, and a mournful experimental cello obbligato.

Great, now psychologists are saying that we've been telling our children that they're special too much. No offense to psychologists reading this, but you can always count on a pseudo science like psychology to change its mind more often than Elizabeth Taylor changes husbands.

Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."
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[Co-author W. Keith] Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies.

"Permissiveness seems to be a component," he said. "A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for."

It's kind of funny how Christian principles keep being proved correct.

Every Friday, Dennis Prager spends an hour of his 3-hour long radio program discussing happiness. He always provides a unique and much-needed perspective on the moral necessity of people being (or at least acting) happy as much as possible. With that in mind, his weekly column today addresses that very issue.

When we think of character traits we rightly think of honesty, integrity, moral courage, and acts of altruism. Few people include happiness in any list of character traits or moral achievements.

But happiness is both.

Happiness -- or at least acting happy, or at the very least not inflicting one's unhappiness on others -- is no less important in making the world better than any other human trait.
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The pursuit of happiness is not the pursuit of pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure is hedonism, and hedonists are not happy because the intensity and amount of pleasure must constantly be increased in order for hedonism to work. Pleasure for the hedonist is a drug.

But the pursuit of happiness is noble. It benefits everyone around the individual pursuing it, and it benefits humanity. And that is why happiness is a moral obligation.