Dick's Blog

Another ten years have passed, and I don’t see a solution coming. Indeed the issue is worse, especially in Europe. Islam has never been interested in understanding Christianity, but I don’t think Christians understand Muslims either. This point becomes moot however, because a little understanding only seems to reveal the impasse more clearly. Just a few years back, we often heard that the God of Islam is the same as the God of Christians. Well, that sounds nice, except that each considers the other as infidel which nullifies the concept. The Muslim looks at violence as a necessary ingredient of righteousness. The Christian cannot excuse violence except that history has shown that timely action against evil is important.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that Islamic terrorism is an ambiguously defined enemy. America is well defined opponent for Islam.

If I were to ask a 3-year-old, “What’s your favorite color?” I would typically expect to hear, blue, red or lellow. Brown would indeed surprise me as would teal, crimson, turquoise, chartreuse or any other elite color. Green is still a very nice color, but something has happened to GREEN. It is more than a color. It’s now an attitude, a mindset, a fervor sparked by the concept that earth, our home planet, is being damaged, even destroyed, if we do not step up to the task by “going GREEN.” . . . What?

I know that some young people are not fond of hearing their parents and grandparents reminisce. Excessive repetition notwithstanding, I don’t really understand that attitude. I’ve always loved to learn about the “olden days” from my parents and grandparents and their contemporaries. It’s never a mistake to consider the past. It’s how we all “got here.”

Desperate Recycling of Long Ago
Back when I was a kid growing up in California during World War II, I clearly remember recycling efforts. It was a big deal! Metals, including tin cans, lawn mowers, and even the foil of chewing gum wrappers were collected. We also recycled worn out tires. Rubber was very scarce because rubber trees were far away and transporting rubber was hazardous with enemy warships everywhere. Interestingly, synthetic rubber for tires was quickly developed.

Recycling was done not out of any consideration for going GREEN. It was done only to improve the availability of basic materials required in the war effort during WWII. I can guarantee you that absolutely no one was pre-occupied with concerns of global warming. The war was won by desperate actions such as recycling.

The New “High Calling” of GREEN
It seems that going GREEN is now the high calling of anyone who attended a US elementary school within the last 30 years. It easily catches the fancy of kids and sticks with them far into adulthood.

Going GREEN has many faces that are dead serious, yet well within the understanding of kids. It introduces students to a myriad of “earth concerns” such as endangered species, excessive logging, coal mining and coal burning, oil wells and pipelines, and the imbalance of greenhouse gasses in the earth’s atmosphere that we think might be causing global warming. We are talking here about things believed to be caused by the daily practices of human beings, things that seem to be within the realm of corrective action even for kids. Actually, much of the corrective action would call for significant reversal of lifestyle improvements.

Logging in Oregon
My wife and I live in Oregon where logging is king. I should say, “was king.” When we came here from California 45 years ago, there were lumber mills all over the state, each with a huge sawdust burner called a “wigwam.”

Clear cutting was and still is the most efficient way to log. The remaining “slash” was burned on site, to purge the land of pests before re-planting. It was a well reasoned process that produced a quality product.

But tourists and city dwellers complained about the “ugly” clear cuts and the smoke, a typical reaction from people who had no interest or understanding of the good that was being done. Too many of them thought that the trees would eventually be gone forever. The truth is that we have more trees than ever.

Near our home we have seen near-by clear cuts come and grow. About 40 years ago we planted several rows of Christmas trees. They grew too fast for us to do the proper grooming before harvest. Those trees are now tall enough (over 100 feet tall) to be good lumber.

Clear cuts start to look interesting after about 3 years. Young Douglas fir trees grow rapidly here in Western Oregon. They are typically ready for harvest in just 50 years. Yes, kids, I know that 50 years seems to you like a long time, but nobody has\to wait. Mature trees are always available. About 5 years, after planting, the new trees are large enough for me to stand among and hide. If you are over 20 years old, it is truly an inspiration to watch trees grow.

Young Oregon Forest

Kids and Trees
Yet it’s infinitely more inspiring to watch kids grow and truly mature into responsible adults. Trees do not become “responsible” with maturity, but they do become useful when they are harvested. Kids not only become useful before maturity, they also become responsible, productive and even creative as in the image of God himself. Trees become tall with maturity; kids become productive and creative with maturity.

Trees have an “after life” only if they are cut down and shaped. Kids have eternal life only if they live this life seeking God and believing in God. It isn’t the GREEN, “earth-first” agenda that brings eternal life.

The Green Agenda is being implemented.
Public lands in Oregon have been shut down with only private lands currently available for harvesting. Nature is doing the “forest management” for public lands and the United States is not a significant participant in the international dimensioned lumber market. We do ship our best un-milled logs abroad from our private lands.

In this slow economy few have noticed that logging in Oregon has slowed to a shuffle. The GREEN agenda has won this one, at least until things pick up.

The Global Warming Hypothesis Accepted without Proof
Politicians looking for revenue to finance governmental bureaucracies want to legislate and regulate power plant emissions and vehicle emissions so that violators can be taxed and fined for non-compliance. By targeting only large corporations, politicians avoid the ire of the voters. Unfortunately, few voters make the connection that penalizing large corporations has anything to do with them. When gasoline prices soar, they simply blame the big oil corporations and not their senators. The disconnect is huge and very destructive.

EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Steps in
Apparently Obama has taken charge and loves it. After a quiet takeover of the global warming debate, the EPA is now actively establishing the rules regulating control of carbon dioxide emissions. These rules, include the “Cap and Trade” shell game that creates a strange currency where air pollution liabilities are somehow bought and sold. I’m thinking that this will be best done in a fancy new Las Vegas casino.

Mankind’s influence on Global warming is, very likely, insignificant. This EPA involvement is, at the least, a blatant tyrannical action. What we have here is a sobering demonstration of the huge gulf that separates the Obama Administration from the people. All of this is evidence that bureaucratic government must shrink so that
“. . . government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”— Abe Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address

Surely Abe is turning over in his grave!

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.     Jer 6:14 NIV

On February 11, 2011, a huge vacuum was created in Egypt when Hosni Mubarak relinquished his control of Egypt, by popular demand. Well, at least it was the loudest demand.

My question was: Does Egypt stay in limbo until its scheduled September election, or does some other leadership crash the scene? The demonstrators’ call was for “democracy,” implying to me the need to build a whole new government structure.

After what has seemed to be a long silence, I read today that Amed Shafiq, who was appointed as Egypt’s Prime Minister just weeks ago, has resigned. His replacement is Essam Sharaf who is getting mixed reviews from the revolutionaries, but this would probably be expected any way. Egypt’s supreme Military Council has today, March 3, 2011, appointed Sharaf to work on forming an interim government using input from the former president’s cabinet. We all hope and pray that these actions bring about an effective people’s government for Egypt so that will provide a constructive and soothing influence in the Middle East. So far, the Egyptian military is controlling the behavior of the Egyptian populace, to avoid full anarchy.

But no sooner were we overcome by the question of what will rush in to fill the huge Mubarak vacuum, we noticed a widespread upheaval already going on in virtually all Muslim nations in the region. Indeed, the Muslim nations lined up on the North African coast were all on fire with destructive demonstrations and unrest.

Tunisia, the site of ancient Carthage, was first.

Carthage Ruins

After receiving his university degree, Mohammed Bouazizi, age 26, returned to his Tunisian home to get on with his life and get a real job. Unfortunately, “letters” added to ones name do not guarantee a job anywhere. Indeed, a degree can render one “over qualified.” Even I ran into that specious problem way back in the dark ages after my college graduation. It helped me re-evaluate my aspirations and re-focus my job search. Fortunately, it showed me that my reserved personality couldn’t really fit the mold that my potential employers thought I needed in my anticipated career of broadcast engineering. Being an extreme extrovert and commensurately “crazy” just wasn’t “me.”

The result for me was to focus on my creativity in electronics. My first career employer, Collins Radio Company Pacific Division, saw that hope and gave me the perfect break.

I had my problems and Mohammed Bouazizi, had his, but he had two more than I. He had to seek employment when jobs were scarce, but worse, he had to seek employment within a society that had been mortally weakened by dependence upon the government. Keep this theme in mind as we proceed.

In direct reference to Tunisia, Brian Whittaker of www.gardian.co.uk says: “Finally, we are seeing the breakdown of a long-standing devil’s compact where, in return for submitting to life under a dictatorship, people’s economic and welfare needs are supposedly taken care of by the state.”

The only quibble I have with “Whittaker’s Theorem” is that it applies to any socialist government, not just a dictatorship. A full-blown oligarchy running a republic can socialize and anesthetize the populace so that people forget how to enjoy being productive. I’ve been watching developments that look like this right here in the United States.

Being taken care of is the attractive, but fatal, flaw that seduces us and weakens us until we cannot cope with the slightest challenge. Over these past weeks we have seen an explosive chain reaction throughout the Muslim states of North Africa and the Middle East. “Give us democracy,” they chant. Too many of them mean, “Take care of us.”

In the very same time frame, uprisings occurred in America, beginning in Wisconsin. Public employees, including some teachers, are shouting, in so many words, “Take care of us.” It’s pretty much the same complaint as in Tunisia, but with far less justification. Thankfully, real violence was not applied in Wisconsin. These are difficult times for all of us. The main difficulty that union members have that the rest of us don’t have is the burden of paying union dues, dues that end up promoting socialist structures that anesthetize us.

Most of us do not depend on the artificial power of parasitic unions that exist to lobby our legislators and to reshape our values. Unions have been damaging the education of our children by causing more teachers to focus on their physical comforts and financial benefits than on their fascinating job of sparking children to excel.

So when Mohammed Bouazizi decisively took charge of his life and established a produce stand in the city of Sidi Bouzid, authorities shut him down for lack of a permit. Already distressed, Mohammed saw no better way of “making a difference” than by public immolation.

On December 17, 2010, he set himself ablaze in the street. Another young man joined Bouazizi’s movement by climbing a power pole and, reaching for the wires, purposely electrocuting himself. Bouazizi was taken to the hospital and treated for his burns. He died there on January 5, 2010.

The Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali finally left Tunisia for somewhere in Saudi Arabia on January 16, 2011, as the people demanded. Now he and various members of his family are being sought for arrest. Large amounts of money have been taken from Tunisia.
The presidents of Algeria and Morocco have so far survived in a modicum of order after brutal demonstrations.

President of Algeria for 49 years, Abdelaziz Bouteflika is a pro at this. He recently lifted a 19-year state of emergency, lowered some prices, and has pledged almost $300-billion for development of the country. Algeria is a US partner and Muslim ally in the war on terrorism. Yet the populace is far from happy, and could become even more volatile.

But if I had to select the worst of the 5 Islamic nations on the North African Coast, it would be Libya.

Qaddafi

The other day, I went shopping in a nearby Fred Meyer department store, heading for men’s shoes. My only casuals were these tennies with an array of “artfully” stitched-up panels of off-white to shades of gray and black. When they got dirty, my scrubbing made them look worse, because the surface color was removed. They are definitely not even close to wearing out, but I needed something more presentable.

Just as the main entrance door of the store was closing behind me I saw this large brown gunny sack coming from Women’s Clothes, walking across my path. Trying desperately not to stare, I nonchalantly looked for a face. It had none! But I saw two peepers through a black slit. Someone was inside, hiding. Then as I walked by the women’s clothing section, it’s identical twin was browsing the racks. No more looking. I went straight to Men’s Shoes. . . . . What would have happened, had I said “hello?” Mary probably would have fainted when I reported it. I report everything to Mary . . . almost everything. It’s usually safe.

Despite my intense focus on shopping for shoes, my head was spinning on those burkas. I couldn’t resolve their presence by using humor to make it trivial. Whether these women chose to make themselves invisible or their men folk forced them to do it, either way, for me, it looks demeaning for them. It urges me to think as though these burkas were deployed by some Islamic authority. It makes me feel like it’s supposed to mean, “Hello, America, Islam is here. What are you going to do about it?” Of course, it’s not what these women are trying to say.

I can’t be sure it’s an “in your face” tactic of Islam, but in the long run, knowing the little that we know about Islam, we’d be foolish to be complacent. Again, confronting these innocent women is certainly not the right approach. They have little choice. It’s probably their ingrained religious belief, otherwise they are just coming along to get along.

Along with this I had been watching TV coverage of the deadly riots in Egypt, where even internet access has been cut off. And what is the issue? We seem to be left with the notion that it’s pretty difficult for us to understand the nature of such a clash half-way around the world from us. Thanks to the reporters, the story came across as “Egyptians are tired of bad economic conditions and they want a change.” Mubarak, their president of the last 30 years, must go!

How simplistic! Demonstrations don’t rise to this level and continue for weeks without a more congenital cause.

But let me raise a disclaimer here. I do not know a lot about Islam, but I am very curious. No! I’m desperately trying to understand, but I’m getting no decent understanding about Islam. So I do get nervous when Islam makes its moves, whether it’s producing scary trick-or-treat gunny sacks or it’s flying hundreds of airline passengers into American buildings. Islam, whether it is peaceful, or it is simply getting its “jollies” by terrorizing unsuspecting populations is not acting rationally or helpfully. It is not trying to give us information we can act upon. Call me “Islam-o-phobic” all you want to, but I think Islam is not interested in being rational, reasonable or civilized. It’s only interest is to be weird and scary . . . and deadly.

What little I know about Egypt is that they are mostly Muslim, with a huge Muslim Brotherhood “local 911.” Egypt does include a substantial Coptic Christian contingent. We do know that Muslims around the world hold that Israel and America are the greatest hot-beds for infidels. The word “infidel” is a Muslim generalization for non-Muslims, particularly Jews and Christians who must be eradicated. The word is always a comparative that depends on whose side you are on.

Despite denials from our own president, the “Muslim Brotherhood” seems to be the main opposition to Hosni Mubarak. After “enduring” Mubarak yea these 30-odd years, the demonstrations and riots clearly speak of opportunism. The octogenarian, Mubarak, has weakened. The powerful Egyptian military is ready. The fullness of time has come for the Brotherhood to “salvage” Egypt.

The best I can determine is that the Brotherhood was developed out of Wahhabism and is a major proponent of the purest form of Islam, the extremist form. The “Brotherhood” has a lot of financial power, is very influential in Islam and is focused in terrorist activity. So when you naively try to cozy up to your neighborhood Muslim who is very nice to you, go ahead and be very nice to him in return. Just remember there is another face to Islam that is vicious and full of contempt and hatred for us. They have caused us to put up our guard by applying such measures as body searches in our airports.

Our wavering, yet world-power savoring, president is saying that America must not tell Egypt how to act in their current civil strife. Even I consider his position this time as the height of wisdom, but not for his reasons. It seems dreadfully obvious that whatever America proffers will become justification enough for the Brotherhood to stir the pot against infidel America.

Why then did Obama suggest to Mubarak that he offer this as his last term as president? At that the protesters loudly responded, and the Egyptian Military still sits there, vowing not to limit the actions of the protesters. Well, so much for wisdom.

George Bush, after 911, declared that Islam is a great religion. And then somehow it got around that Islam is a religion of peace. Actually, it’s the most widespread religion on earth simply because it was spread by violence. Particularly now, It continues to be the greatest agent for violence and Christian persecution in the world. Yet even with the surreal demonstration of 911, we thought it impolite to blame Islam, excusing the attack as the work of Islamic extremism. But Islamic extremism is acclaimed by the Wahabis and the Muslim Brotherhood as the purest form of Islam. These powerful sects of Islam are determined to, first of all eradicate Israel, while continuing to infiltrate innocuous Muslim forms into Western Europe and North America as a foot-hold.

So why are the burkas now being deployed in American suburban clothing stores? Is it simply to make us more comfortable toward another strange culture? Or is it a brazen step from the other “face” of Islam, the “purer” form of Islam, that as always, is seeking to subjugate another society of “infidels” under the rule of their warrior-prophet, Mohammed.

Muslims say they recognize Jesus as a prophet, (It’s in the Koran) but they do not know him or follow him who said, ”. . . all those who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

Islam has a billion souls deceived. We do not condemn them who act in innocence. From the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

It is time for us to pray for those billion souls. It’s time for us to pray: “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Today is 02/11/2011, Mubarak has stepped down.

. . . . Jesus is my peace and comfort, much much more than my new Soft Stag shoes.