Thursday, December 30, 2004

Bush boosts Asia help to $350 million

George Bush has already taken heavy criticism for his stingy and belated offer of help to the tsumani-stricken region of south Asia. He deserved it! Colin Powell is now on the stomp trying to whitewash the offer as a flexible one that will rise as demand necessitates. (Three cheers for Mr. Powell. He will be so glad to escape from this administration.)

Trouble is - the President is strapped for cash. His disastrously miscalculated war in Iraq has opened a bottomless pit of spending for which the nation will be paying for decades to come. Domestic programs are being nickle and dimed to death for his face-saving nation-building enterprize. Where will he find the $350 million relief money?

Remember when the President sat for 7 silent minutes in a classroom after he heard the news of the WTC attacks? With the same craven inactivity he sat in Crawford, Texas enjoying his family Christmas while the rest of the world was jumping into action to respond to the earthquake tragedy. When he finally awoke from his indecision his talk was of LEADING the rescue and recovery action after a few hasty phone calls to India and Australia and an offer of $15 million. Not surprisingly this has been judged as yet more evidence of his isolationist and arrogant role in the world.

It would be heart-warming and endearing if, for once, the United States forgot about image and posture and simply rolled up its sleeves and buckled down to the task with everyone else, LIKE everyone else. Mercifully, the US agencies and organizations that are now on the job in south Asia are not infected with the same mentality as their President. They will be powerful and effective.

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Okay - here I am

WARNING: Please don't read this blog if you want to think in short sound bites; or can cope with nothing more profound than the latest network TV pop-psyche. But if in order to get you to think I have to stick a metaphorical finger up your nose until you wriggle, at least you will have paid some attention. Even if you don't agree. But do me this favor: do not so barricade yourself into the rightness of your opinions that you could never conceivably change them. Hey, I make you a promise - show me good reason to think otherwise and I will modify my opinions too.

Here I am - a Green-Carded Brit, who is glad to be living in the States because almost anything is preferable to living in Blair's Britain. The state of public affairs in Britain seems to be more petty, more sordid, more over-taxed and more washed-out with excessive, globally warmed-up rain than anything I can find in the U.S. That's probably not quite true - but it feels good to say it!

Now here we go:

The Western World is awash with it - massive, incontrovertible evidence that George Bush totally miscalculated his insane invasion of Iraq and that he now lives in a self-reinforcing world of spin, thinly covered by bluff. According to the polls nearly 50% of Americans are taken in by the argument that if WMD were not actually found, well, What the hell - Saddam was a bad guy, so it was as well to take him out anyway. The people of Iraq are now free. And they might just keep Dubya on for another four years.

This is bolstered by the empty fiction that it is disloyal for us to attack the Commander-in-Chief while his troops are in harm's way fighting under the Stars and Stripes; and even if he did get it wrong it's better to stick by the President than ditch him and install Mr. Flip-Flop Kerry. (More of him later.)

The British have some neat phrases that to dispose of this American anti-intellectualism - What a load of bollocks!! I'm not saying that all Brits would use this phrase to describe the apparent ongoing support of the status quo, but it seems that more of them have opened their eyes to Blair's folly than have Americans to Bush's gung-ho, shoot 'em up strategies.

Dubya's poodle is in deep sh*t - more than most American's know. This week The Daily Telegraph revealed that yet more secret and damning papers have been released that show how profoundly critical were many of Blair's own administration a full year before the invasion of Iraq. Here's the opening paragraph:

"Tony Blair was warned a year before invading Iraq that a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large numbers of troops there for 'many years', secret government papers reveal."

You may read the full text at
Electronic Telegraph

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

The real meaning of Fundamentalism

Just a quick word on the origin of this much used, much abused and much misunderstood word "fundamentalism".

In 1909 there appeared the first of a series of 12 paperback volumes under the title The Fundamentals (I have a full set). These were mailed free of charge to "every pastor, evangelist, missionary, theological student, Sunday School Superintendent, YMCA and YWCA secretary in the English-speaking world *" Over 3 millions copies were eventually circulated.

The booklets were a protest against what was felt to be a considerable drift in protestant theology in the late 19th century caused by the growing popularity of Darwinism and High Criticism - a scholarly methodology providing new tools for the interpretation of the Bible.
The authors of the papers in The Fundamentals were some of the finest evangelical preachers and theologians of their day; men of great learning and repute.

The Fundamentals were a call back to what the publishers believed to be the core issues, the basics, the FUNDAMENTALS of the historic Christian faith. They rebutted both Higher Criticism and Darwinism and re-affirmed their belief in the full verbal inspiration of the Bible as being the infallible revealed word of God, the nature of man as a sinner, the divinity of Jesus Christ, his atoning death, the necessity of faith in Christ for salvation, and so on.

The Fundamentals proved to be a rallying point for those who were of this persuasion. And just as the early followers of John Wesley were dubbed "Methodists" by others, so the adherents of The Fundamentals became dubbed "fundamentalists". As we know, this theological position came in for some abuse during the famous Scopes Money trial when evolution/creation became the nub of the issue.

But note: These 'fundamentalists' may have become somewhat naive or simplistic as time went on, but they never became political extremists. They did not take up guns and bombs in defense of their religion. That would have been antithetical to all they believed. They were mainstream evangelical protestants. Period. To illustrate, Billy Graham is a good example of a true fundamentalist.

So you can see there could be no such thing as a 'Catholic' fundamentalist. Even less so could you have a 'Muslim' fundamentalist, let alone a 'Hindu' or 'Buddhist' fundamentalist.

Yet somehow the word 'fundamentalist' got detached from it original meaning and misapplied to people who might be better described simply as extremists or religious fanatics. Whatever is the profile of these people it does NOT jibe with the fundamental teachings of conservative evangelical Protestantism - Fundamentalism.

If there is a common thread to be found in the abuse of this word it is an undue, blinkered and lop-sided adherence to whatever the religious adherent believes are his/her infallible scriptures. That can be very satisfying to simple minds which need simple answers.