Post 197--This Confusing World

The heading of the article I draw to your attention today is CNN.  So, I start with them. I was amazed when I saw the heading of this article and when I read its contents. Here we have CNN praising and defending Israel.  They praise Israel for the many Nobel and other awards its citizens have won, far more than any other nation in proportion to its tiny population, certainly far more than the nations that would like nothing better than to see its people erased from the face of the earth. I am not used to such sounds from CNN. Highly unusual.

I agree with CNN on this one. My response to these facts is that I would love Canada to invite the entire Jewish nation to move over to Canada, live where they themselves please and bless Canada with their amazing talents. I cannot imagine how far they would take Canada into the stratosphere of the arts and sciences. Our country would be transformed totally. And the Jews would finally have peace--no one to molest them anymore.

Not only did CNN praise Israel for their accomplishments, but they also criticized the nations that continually criticize Israel; it criticizes the critics. Now, we all know that Israel is not a perfect nation and deserves critique, but what of the nations that major in this critique within the halls of the UN?  The article asks pointed questions about a number of them. Is Israel really worse than those others?  This is a list of rhetorical questions the answers to which are so obvious, they don't need to be spelled out. Why are those nations not taken to task?  What right do they have to critique Israel? Do they have any sort of higher ground from which to expressed their holier-than-thou hypocrisy? 

What amazes me still more is that  Jake Tapper, the anchor of the above CNN programme, expressed all the above in the context of President Trump's declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Ordinarily, one would expect CNN to castigate the President for this action.  After all, the network specializes in berating Trump. That's about all I hear them do, the reason I am tired of them and no longer listen to them.  For once they were able to restrain themselves with respect to their President. Another highly unusual event.  I can hardly imagine such restraint on their part!  Is this the same CNN I know?  If you do not believe in miracles, perhaps you ought to do a rethink! Can you blame me for being confused?

That said, I now provide you with the opportunity to hear it from the horse's mouth as it comes to us from the Algemeiner of December 22, 2017.  As our own CBC likes to put it, "Have a listen."


Top CNN Host Calls Out Human Rights-Abusing UN Member-States for Hypocrisy on Israel

Jake Tapper. Photo: Screenshot.

CNN news host Jake Tapper on Thursday called out human rights-abusing UN member-states for their hypocritical focus on Israel.

On his “The Lead” program, hours after the UN General Assembly passed— by a 128-9 margin, with 35 abstentions — a resolution calling for the United States to drop its recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Tapper noted, “The United Nations General Assembly, from 2012 to 2015, has adopted 97 resolutions specifically criticizing an individual country, and of those 97, 83 have focused on Israel. That is 86 percent.”

Tapper continued: “Now certainly Israel is not above criticism, but considering the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, the lack of basic human rights in North Korea, the children starving in the streets of Venezuela, the citizens of Syria targeted for murder by their own leader using the most grotesque and painful of weapons, you have to ask is Israel truly deserving of 86 percent of the world’s condemnation? Or possibly is something else afoot at the United Nations, something that allows the representative of the Assad government to lecture the United States for moving its embassy?”

Watch the segment below:

T

Post 184--Trump's Clergy Friends

The Religion News Service (RSN) has done us all a huge service by publishing an extensive report on meetings between President Trump and an assortment of what Americans tend to call “white Evangelicals.”  Here’s the bibliographics of the document: 

Adelle M. Banks, Emily McFarlan Miller , Yonat Shimron and Jerome Socolovsky, “All the president’s clergymen: A close look at Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ ties with evangelicals.” Religion News Service, September 5, 2017.

http://religionnews.com/2017/09/05/all-the-presidents-clergymen-a-close-look-at-trumps-unprecedented-ties-with-evangelicals/?utm_source=RNS+Updates&utm_campaign=8dea16e014-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c5356cb657-8dea16e014-127937033

I am merely sharing the URL of these events—yes, “events,” plural—so you can read all about them. Basically, I am doing the same thing these RSN writers have done—passing on info and leave the choice as to what to do with it or how to interpret it all with you. 

I will say, however, that I do not feel these guys and gals represent me, a Reformational writer. If you want to get a feel of a writer like me, read back posts of this blog or go to my website < www.SocialTheology.com >.

I am always concerned that this blog not appear too American or deals with too many American issues. The point is, that American affairs affect Canada more that most of us like. Probably the biggest influence of these American events on us is the way we Canadians interpret them, especially the Canadian media. They are so ignorant of religion in general, it stinks. They are even more ignorant of what they regard as the Evangelical religion of the American south—and even more prejudiced against it. They pass on their wretched interpretation to us so that we react to that interpretation rather than to that community itself.  There’s a whole firewall between that community and us. Its first name is “Canadian media;” its last, “Liberal.” 

So, on the face of it, a short post. If you open up the URL above, it is pretty long.

What do you think of these meetings and the concerns broached in them?