Maajid Nawaz, British activist and radio presenter

 https://youtu.be/zJX3byjYSMc

Interview with Joe Rogan. But not full.  You'll remember Rogan was "cancelled" because he wouldn't toe the line about Covid. He is available on subscription on other channels. Most sites I check say, Not available. 

Podcast notes: #1780 - Maajid Nawaz | Joe Rogan Experience • Podcast Notes

  Comments from other listeners.

"I normally want to leave people to discover on their own but i cannot recommend this episode enough, the most succinct 3+ hr (with ALL the proof) explanation for the current state of world affairs and our potential future that I've heard."

"Joe gets canceled by the media then comes out with an interview no media would even dare to report on. Good way to shut down the negative hype around Rogan right now!!"

"Terribly important interview. Joe is the greatest he has ever been. Obviously challenged by all this, but who wouldn't be. Maajid is obviously a true man of faith, it is amazing what he has accomplished despite so much opposition. Much support to both of them!"

"I've listened to just about every JRE, and started listening 10 years ago. Maajid is one of the most interesting and articulate person I've ever listened to on the podcast. So glad he's out there."

America First worked and protected Europe and Ukraine

Despite all the fretting over Trump's "America First" rhetoric, his administration strengthened relations with key partners. The Biden Administration has lost them all.

The two invasions of Ukraine—2014 against Crimea and now against the Ukrainian homeland—took place under two weak Democratic presidents. President Trump’s combination of military build-up, tough talk and unpredictability arguably kept malign Russian ambitions at bay.

Follow the five points in this article. https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/21/what-trump-got-right-about-central-europe-ukraine-and-the-politics-of-security/

Katie Hopkins from UK warning America.

https://youtu.be/ToDsfkwvikw

Do-gooders think they are helping migrants when in fact they are helping traffickers and criminals organized to make money from people's misfortune.  She has interviewed them.  All the old conflicts emigrate with the refugees. Charities aren't always charities. Media mocked Trump for "Sweden has fallen."  But she was in Sweden where she was the only white person.

Third gender option--Kamala Harris

Candidates chasing the gender realignments looking for new causes. 

1. Destroy God's word and creation stories of all cultures/religions, 

2. Destroy any statistical record in health/accomplishments and athletic prowess awards for women, 

3. Destroy "toxic masculinity" with mind control and hormones. 

4. Slash the birth rate (already below replacement level). 

5. Be God.

In order to identify as "woke", I think Kamala Harris should change her first name to Harris, wear no make-up, shave her head, and put on plumber's pants, complete with the crack.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-third-gender-option-federal-ids?

Jeffrey Varasano says the 2020 platform for the Democrats is "It's a formula for Marxist revolution. Take every pillar that supports your opponent and criticize it from all angles on any grounds. It doesn't matter the reason. What matters is the repetition and that critique come from all directions from within the intelligentsia. So they attack institutions while they simultaneously infiltrate then morph them from within."

Across the pond in Great Britain, "Suzie Green allowed her teenage son to have sex-realignment surgery in Thailand which included penis removal (something that is not permitted in the UK). Caroline Farrow (a Catholic journalist) commented that in her view this was child abuse. Green denies this and says it was done with the best interest of her child, who is now identified as female." Guess which woman is being investigated as a threat in Great Britain--the woman who exercised her authority to remove her son's penis and pump him full of hormones, or the woman who exercised free speech and "mis-gendered" this poor child? And it's coming here.

https://theweeflea.com/2019/03/23/jordan-peterson-caroline-farrow-jayne-ozanne-and-the-death-of-free-speech/?

Do you (or anyone) understand the European Union?

This film is obviously biased--the producers want Britain to leave the EU.  But what is interesting is the bureaucracy it describes, created to be obscure, and how this fits into an idea of "We the People." I'm convinced that the Brits are subjects of a vast machine they didn't elect and can't get rid of.  Now maybe you think that's a good idea, because power without accountability is pretty much what we have, and we're not members.  The EU bureaucracy has 10,000 employees (if that's what they are called) who are paid more than the British Prime Minister--no idea how many total.  They have their own housing, shopping centers, entertainment, restaurants and art museums.  "Investing in your future."  Sounds familiar doesn't it, but to get back one pound, Brits have to pay about 2.5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTMxfAkxfQ0

Looking through the comments, I thought this one was interesting. "I'm Polish and have lived in the UK for over 10 years now. So, from my personal perspective open borders were beneficial. However despite a chance that I might have to leave this beautiful country, I truly hope British people will overwhelmingly vote to be a sovereign nation once more. Come on Brits! You've got once in a lifetime opportunity to get your country back - don't mess this up!."

There's a lot in this movie that is a message for the United States about regulation and how it is faceless, unelected, (in the historical, post WWII part) and not beneficial for the people.

Brit claims she’s obese because the government doesn’t give her enough money

If you read any article by the poverty pimps or academics in the USA, the same case is made. We don't give enough money to the poor to buy healthy food so therefore they buy high calorie, high fat, highly processed food with SNAP. That's just silly. Ounce for ounce, healthy food is much cheaper than processed. You can buy 10 lbs of potatoes for the cost of 16 oz. of potato chips. Oranges, apples, bananas, etc. are far cheaper than bags of fruit flavored snacks. She’s also never heard of walking—the greatest exercise ever.

I googled a comparison cost of living site, and although UK is socialist, almost everything is higher than in the U.S. (food is about 11% higher), except renting a tennis court for an hour and disposable income--those are lower. But even so, she could do better by contributing some of her own labor and preparing real food.

“It would be good if the government offered a cash incentive for me to lose weight. I’d like to get £1  for every pound I lose,” 25-year-old Christina Briggs said.

Briggs said losing weight is currently impossible because she doesn’t have enough money to buy healthy food or join a gym.

http://www.nationalreview.com//article/388887/350-pound-woman-im-obese-because-i-dont-get-enough-taxpayer-money-katherine-timpf

 

And tattoos are expensive, too.  What’s a poor girl to do?

Claire Berlinski on Sweden

Hysterical. The author of There is no alternative; Why Margaret Thatcher matters (2008 Basic Books) explains why socialists will bring up Sweden when justifying socialism:

“In his view [Neil Kinnock who disliked Thatcher], and he is perfectly clear about this, the alternative to Thatcher was a planned economy.

And the evidence he offers that such an economy can create anything other than a human hell is Sweden.  Let me finish the sentence he wouldn’t let me finish [in her interview with him, p. 151-53].  Socialists love analogies to Sweden.  But they are always unconvincing because they are based on some fantasy Sweden, rather than on an actual Nordic country bordered by Norway and Finland.  In this Sweden of lore, every single woman is also eighteen years old, blonde, busty, lonely, naked, and waiting for you in the sauna.  Kinnock is simply mistaken about Swedish unemployment statistics.  In the early 1990s, Swedish unemployment rose to 13 %, higher than ever experienced in Britain after Thatcher came to power.  In the period Kinnock is discussing, Sweden in fact experienced a precipitous slide in the prosperity league—from fourth place in 1970 to sixteenth place in 1998.  In fact the policies Kinnock admires nearly ran Sweden into the ground.  Only when they were abandoned did the Swedish economy begin to recover.  You may as well argue that the command economy has been a splendid success in Narnia.”

Berlinski agrees with her critics that she didn’t plan for Britain’s economic transition—precisely because if the government plans the economy, it is no longer free, and if it isn’t free, the transitions are likely to be in the bread lines.

Fewer children adopted after equality rules force agencies to shut

Many Lutherans are misled about the end result of the push for equality for all things homosexual. Our congregation, UALC, has recently left the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which had decided to impose on its 10,000 congregations the minority belief that God will bless non-celebate gay clergy. As one Lutheran writer (not of that synod) noted, it is a form of secular fundamentalism, whereby the prevailing culture must be obeyed or you are not a loving, giving congregation. When I say misled it's because, 1) most of those 10,000 congregations never even got a chance to vote, or were unaware that the task force after of 20 years of failing kept rewriting and nudging and finally won in August 2009, and 2) this isn't the end of the story.

In the UK, there are adoptable children going without parents because Christian agencies closed rather than place children against their Biblical principles of married couples. In Canada, which has recognized gay marriage for some years and discussion of it negatively from church pulpits is hate speech, the courts are now reviewing polygamy, polyandry and polyamory for legal status and inclusion in employee benefits.

In the U.S. the definition of hate crimes was expanded in 2010 (and the word FAMILY was redefined for employee benefits) in the Defense Appropriations Act, and it's not a stretch to see that it will go from bodily harm to speech causing mental or spiritual distress. In the U.S., the most vulnerable population is not the unborn who can be sliced and diced and ripped from the womb with approval of our President, but an extremely small special demographic with the highest income and education.

So, even if a Christian agency or a Christian church decides to "go along to get along" with the culture, they will then have to face the next hurdle. I'm sure the next ELCA task force on sexuality is already meeting. If a gay couple in a loving stable relationship is acceptable, why not a family where wife #4 hasn't been able to conceive and wants an infant of her own to share with the sister-wives, or why not a woman with four boy-toys who decides she wants to raise a toddler and she can provide a more economically secure home with five incomes instead of one or two, than a married couple with one?

Fewer children adopted after equality rules force agencies to shut - Telegraph

Polyamorists decry anti-polygamy law - The Globe and Mail

Read The Bill: H.R. 2647 - GovTrack.us

China in 1925

This summer at Lakeside I heard an excellent sports and religion lecture on the life of Eric Liddell (Chariots of Fire), who was born in China, educated in Scotland where he achieved Olympic fame, and who died in China in 1945 in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. This week I've been reading "Eric Liddell; something greater than gold" by Janet and Geoff Benge, part of a very well written series for middle school. I thought their brief summary of the China he returned to in 1925 was one of the better ones I've read. And since China now owns us (our debt) and their national memory may be better than ours, maybe we need a refresher.

"Eric's father had written that there were basically three groups involved in the struggle. There were the local warlords, the Nationalists, or the Kuomintang, as they called themselves, and a new group, the Communists, who patterned themselves after the Bolsheviks, who had seized power in Russia and transformed that country into the Soviet Union. The Kuomintang was the largest and most powerful group and found most of its support in the cities. It was also recognized as the rightful government of China, though it by no means controlled the country. The Communists were a small but growing group, and most of their support came from the rural areas in the south of China.

As these different factions fought for control in various regions, it was not uncommon for some villages to change hands between a warlord, the Communists, and the Nationalists five or six times a year. Each time an army passed through a village, the village's occupants had their homes robbed and their food supplies stolen. When an army marched through the countryside, it would steal crops from the field and trample those not ready to harvest so that the other groups couldn't get their hands on them. This in turn had led to famine.

Apart from the fighting itself, China's other enemy was foreign influence. The people of China had been humiliated by the British during the First Opium War of 1839-42. China had many goods that Great Britain wanted to trade for, but the Chinese wanted nothing except silver from the British in return. When the British tried to force opium on the Chinese instead of silver as payment for the goods they wanted, the emperor had refused. He ordered all opium destroyed. This in turn angered the British, who began a war with China. The British easily won, and China was forced to sign a treaty to end the war. Not only did the treaty allow the British to import opium into China, but it also opened up a number of coastal cities where foreigners could live and trade. The treaty left the Chinese people feeling weak, powerless, and very angry.

Once China had been weakened, its neighbor, Japan, saw a great opportunity to expand. In the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, China had lost control of Taiwan completely as well as most of its influence over the Korean Peninsula.

In 1914, three years after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, WWI began in Europe. China eventually sided with the Allies (Great Britain, France and Russia) against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In joining with the Allies, China had hoped to be taken seriously as a nation and gain some respect as a country when the war was over. However, things did not work out that way.

At the Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended WWI, the Allies completely ignored China's demand that in return for fighting in the war, foreign powers should pull out of the country and leave China to govern herself.

The people of China were furious at this result. They felt they had been betrayed by the Allies. This in turn, led to even more bitterness towards foreigners than had existed before the war. To the Chinese, foreigners along with their ways of doing things were symbols of China's humiliation.

It was to this China that Eric Liddell, now 23, would be returning. . . "

And as always, because I'm a librarian, I remind you that to the victor belongs the archives.