My daughter related that in health class today they saw a small film on two girls, on anorexic and the other (her friend) was bulimic. Her remark on coming home, “Now I feel fat.”
FAIL!!!
Good morning.
Recently, a conversation led me to read this book Stalin’s Slave Ships: Kolyma, the Gulag Fleet, and the Role of the West which was an interesting and quick read. This led me to a question … before which I pose, I will offer some background.
The Kolyma basis is a river valley system in the arctic and sub-arctic regions of western Siberia. This region is rich in mineral resources, and in 1932 Stalin decided that retrieving the gold from the river valley was important, and that free-market was not the solution. Instead, perhaps typically, he decided to use slave labor. For the first few years, Kolyma was one of the “better” prison/slave camps in the gulag system, but that changed in the later 30s to being the very worst. About a million persons were shipped to Kolyma between 1932 and 1953. The first parts of the journey by rail and part by sea and it is on the sea portion of this voyage the book noted above concentrates. The vessels used in this part of the passage were mostly obtained from the US. Mr Bollinger points out that he can find no evidence that anyone in th West was aware of the purpose of those ships when they were sold to the Soviets. During the war, the management of the Kolyma fleet, as did virtually everything in the Soviet world, moved to the military. The Kolyma fleet split time during this period between transporting slaves and stuffs to the Kolyma camps and transporting war material as part of the US/Soviet Lend-Lease program.
Military books that I have read on WWII point out that the victory over the Axis powers was a near thing. Many authors point to a small number of crucial decisions and events which if had been made or fallen out differently would have likely meant that Hitler may have won. The US Lend-Lease program has been pointed as a one of the important factors in giving the Soviets the breathing room to stave of defeat. The point to take away from this is Lend-Lease was critical to the Allied war effort. There were two routes for ships supplying the Soviets, an Atlantic route up past Norway to Murmansk and a Western/Pacific route. The Kolyma fleet was part of this latter group. Prior to the US directly entering the war and Japan/US hostilities being in the open, Soviet (non-US) ships were preferred for transport of material via the Pacific route.
The Kolyma vessels were in a rough trade. They were older steam powered ships that plied ice choked Arctic seas and were badly in need of repairs. Many times these ships put in they were repaired by US shipyards.
Which leads us to the question at hand.
Consider yourself in the role of the American President. Kolyma vessels have docked in your ports for Lend Lease operations. By 1944 to 1945 two things have become clear:
- Germany’s fate is sealed and the Allied victory is assured.
- Kolyma is a part of the gulag/slave camp system and these ships needing repair are part of that system.
Recall also, Stalin and the Soviets at this point are allies and Lend-Lease has been a vital part of the war effort.
So. Do you authorize repair of the vessels? These vessels split time between slave transport and carrying Lend-Lease material. What do you do? What records might you leave regarding your decision?
Historically, the repairs were made. Was that the right decision?
This is a question, probably mainly for the right, but the those readers on the left might offer their two cents.
The $800b stimulus package has now been acknowledged by the President and pretty much everyone with their heads not in the sand to have been a waste. This criticism is especially strongly held on the right. However, what if the stimulus package instead of being useless road projects and expansions of bridges to nowheres (for example expanding the Byrd airport) had only one single project/point to which it was aimed. That is to say, all $800 billion was allocated to one thing. That the stimulus only allocation was to build and install 40-50 new Gen-IV nuclear reactors (or best current technological practice) throughout the country accompanied by ’emergency’ executive orders designed to steamroll any and all environmental and green-activist objections. Furthermore these plants might have been be small and quickly installable and all fast-tracked to be on-line by, say, late October 2010.
Here’s the question(s).
I offer that the my answer might be yes (and with an “alas” on the last) to all three questions. What d’y’all think?
What happens when you give all sorts of socialist "freebie" to your populace, and then realize (sooner or later) that it’s going to cost too much, and thus try to take away a tiny portion of those "freebies"?
PARIS, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Striking French oil refinery workers shut down a fuel pipeline supplying Paris and its airports on Friday and airport workers grounded some flights as protests mounted to derail an unpopular pension reform.
France’s airport operator played down worries of fuel shortages, but strikes at all of the country’s 12 refineries and fuel depot blockades prompted motorists to stock up on petrol.
Truck drivers also were set to join the fray as momentum built for a day of street rallies on Saturday.
The widening protests have become the biggest challenge facing President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is struggling with low popularity ratings as he tries to appease financial markets by stemming a ballooning pension shortfall.
This is why ObamaCare is so dangerous. It will cost too much at some point (history bears this out) and either services will have to be cut back or taxes raised or (more likely) both. In America we don’t have the same socialist culture and expectations they have in France, but that’s our future if we continue down this road.
As Christians, should we abandon the political parties that have moved to the left and right and establish a radical center? Calvin College professor Steve Monsma argues that we should, in a post at the fine new blog at Q Ideas. He has tired of the polarization of politics and finds much of it unchristian. He writes:
This leads me to plead for a radical Christian center. Centrism may appear to be wishy-washy and undecided or so apathetic that one refuses to take sides. But a radical Christian center is far from being either. It is radical in that it goes to the root of today’s political issues, asking basic questions of purpose, value, and worth. It puts the common good ahead of partisan advantage and narrow special interests. If you don’t think that is radical, you haven’t been paying much attention to this fall’s partisan election campaigns
I’m not surprised that Dr. Monsma is exasperated. Generally, Christian academics don’t like partisan politics, for two good reasons. First, in the heat of political fights, there tends to be a suspension of godly character. Second, political campaigning is, for the most part, the repetition of simple messages.
While I personally sympathize with the need for more moderate positions on many issues and cringe at the tired rhetoric of political extremes, I don’t believe a move to the center is the answer. And to call centrist political positions “Christian” is as misguided as it is for progressives or conservatives to assume that there enlightenment is generated by the Light of world.
There is much for Christians and all people of good will to dislike about political campaigns and the methodology and practices of the major political parties, but it isn’t rigid political positions that make partisan politicking distasteful or less Christian.
It would be a shame for Christians to eschew partisanship, which is the sinew of our political process and has helped produce nearly 250 years of stability and peaceful transition of power. Instead we should call and work for three things in political argument– at all times, but especially in the most virulent campaign months:
Authentic passion
Flamboyant language, exaggerated charges, and the demonization and stereotyping of the opposition are particularly distasteful when they rely on borrowed passion. We roll our eyes at the repeated talking points that are foisted upon by an endless stream of political spokespersons or candidates who fail to do their own thinking. Our response is totally different when we hear the deep groans of an aggrieved soul, whether it is a partisan of the left or right. Authentic passion is the lubricant of healthy and vibrant political discourse.
Robust honesty
Nothing makes political argumentation more unChristian than dishonesty. We have to continue to insist on honesty from the left, the right, the center, or the uncommitted. We need to end not only bold lies, but the disguised lies the pervert understanding. Christians in the political process will not only tell the truth, but will refuse to tell a sideways truth that gives a false impression, or will lead the listener to a false conclusion. We suffer from an avalanche of statements that—although not lies—routinely hide the truth. We are disgusted when politicians use statistics or characterizations that are true on the surface but impede genuine clarity. Robust honesty in the political process will restore confidence.
Uncommon civility
Just as damaging and unChristian is campaigning that tears apart people, disrespects opponents, and inflames the base obsessions of constituencies. Ad hominen attacks damage politics and keep good people from choosing to subject themselves to the character assassination of the political game. Candidates and campaign leaders often decry negative campaigning, then turn to the tactics if they fall behind. Poll numbers improve when candidate tear at the fabric of the opponent’s character, but they leave us all disgusted with partisan politics. As Christians, we should insist on uncommon civility from those who seek to represent us in government.
Good morning.
One of the ongoing themes that I endeavor, with little success, is to identify critical ideas on which the progressive/left and conservatives (and for that matter libertarians) differ in their views of political and social matters. If have the good fortune to have two liberal/progressive dialog partners here. In recent conversations over the last few months this difference has arisen and I wonder if this point of difference is applicable to a wider groups, i.e., right/left, and significant.
The key point in to consider is that the progressive/left in question has abandoned the 10th Commandment while the right has not. The 10th commandment speaks against coveting one’s neighbors possessions. A simple ethical generalization of this is that this is an injunction against considering one’s economic condition by comparison with ones neighbor. Read the rest of this entry
I saw the word "Jesus" on the sleeves of the shirts on the Chilean miners as they came up, one by one, in the capsule. (Yeah, we had the streaming video going as I worked from home. What a terrific event.) But no news organization so much as mentioned the other writings on those shirts.
Thus the citizen investigative journalist kicks in where the major media won’t go. The scripture verse on the back is Psalm 95:4.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
Yeah. Wow.
And there’s more at the video below. (Or view it on YouTube.)
Good morning.
Global Warming – a scam? (HT: Ron’s Bloviating) From Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara,
It [Global Warming] is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.
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Yahoo! Yoga Mohler, Yoga, and Yahoo! together.
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So… where’s Checkpoint Charlie? Rep. Loretta “The Vietnamese are trying to take away our seat!” Sanchez thinks a U.S. / Mexico border fence is the same as the Berlin Wall.
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Hope (as in, “we can certainly hope this will happen”)
Good morning. This will be brief, I have to hit the road shortly.
The number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance rose to a higher-than-expected 462,000 in the latest week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, while the number of people still collecting jobless benefits fell to an almost two-year low.
OK, "higher-than-expected", technically. But if it continues the trend, and if it’s clear the stimulus hasn’t done anything to stem the tide of unemployment, why does anyone expect it to go down, or even up just a little? Until companies are more confident that they won’t get stuck with "unexpected" costs by this administration, they’re not going to invest in expansion.
As I’ve said, the Party of No will probably solve this, just by being there.
As citizens struggle to figure out how to rein in a runaway federal government, some Constitutional scholars are taking a closer look at the pros and cons of an Article V Convention as a way to pass amendments that will help limit the size of government:
In August, Missouri became the latest state to rebel against the new national health care law when 71 percent of voters supported a ballot initiative rejecting the legislation’s requirement that individuals purchase government-approved insurance. Several other states will consider similar measures on the ballot this November.
However satisfying this backlash against ObamaCare may be to opponents of the law, these state-based efforts could all be for naught if the U.S. Supreme Court sides with Congress and rules that the legislation’s individual mandate is constitutional.
Such a decision would have far-reaching consequences, giving broad new power to the federal government over individuals and states. It would mean that the interstate Commerce Clause would have been interpreted so broadly as to allow the federal government to regulate the activities of people who choose not to engage in commerce, and within a health insurance market where businesses aren’t even allowed to sell their products across state lines. It would represent the culmination of decades in erosion of the concept of the separation of powers between federal and state governments, and the boldest example of congressional over-reach in the age of Obama.
In that scenario, short of repeal, the only remaining way to fight the law would be to amend the Constitution. Given how polarized the modern U.S. Senate is, it’s highly unlikely that a proposed amendment would garner the necessary 67 votes needed to amend the Constitution in the traditional manner. Yet the Founding Fathers left the states one last check on federal power.
Under Article V of the Constitution, “Congress… on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which… shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States.”
The Constitution has never been amended through a convention of the states, and this route remains controversial, with many conservatives fearing that the meeting would turn into a circus in the modern media age, and open the door to a wholesale rewriting of the nation’s founding document. Yet a new body of research suggests that these fears are unwarranted, and that there are enough checks built into the system to prevent what scholars refer to as a “runaway convention.” With state legislators and grassroots activists searching for ways to limit the abuses of Congress, the possibility has begun to generate more chatter.
The article is lengthy but well worth reading as it closely examines the pros and cons of executing this Constitutional option.
Hat tip: The Volokh Conspiracy
In Yahoo, Yoga, and Yours Truly, Albert Mohler has responded to criticisms of his original blog post questioning the contemporary practice of Christians participating in Yoga (see my post On a Christian Version of Yoga). Take the time to read his latest offering. One interesting excerpt,
I have received hundreds of emails and comments against my article from those identifying as Christians. Not one–not a single one–has addressed the theological and biblical issues. There is not even a single protest communication offering a theological argument.
Indeed.
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