Wednesday 18 March 2015

Not the meek, but the brave, the bold and the violent will inherit the earth (Matt 5 v 5)

The brave, the bold and the hard men go out, explore, conquer and claim land as their own.  Very cheeky but, so typical of us lot!*
The brave, the bold and the tough claim for themselves what they find, then colonise and turn them into their peoples.
The brave, the bold and the get up and go make their own empire and maintain their control by coercion, force, violence.
I think, our grab and brag ways around the globe can be likened to an octopus with its tentacles reaching out to every corner of the planet to claim land and people for ourselves.

Jeremy Paxman, in his TV series on the Victorians, with their fast expanding empire, quoted a saying of theirs, "Grab and brag; occupy and fortify"!

The brave, the bold and the violent will control the earth's resources and get what they want.
Those who inherited the earth fully supported the Arab Spring and the replacement of leaders they no longer liked. 
The brave, the bold and the violent will spend four years trying to overthrow their enemy, President al-Assad of Syria.
The brave, the bold and the violent will overthrow the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  The new military leaders got a slap on the wrist from the United States of the World for their undemocratic ways.  
The brave, the bold and the violent will oust the elected, pro Russian, President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine to put in their pro Western man, Petro Poroshenko.  Killing protesters in a revolution to get a leader sympathetic to the West!
The brave, the bold and the violent will take ever more land in Judea and Samaria to house the fast growing State of Israel.
The brave, the bold and the violent will stamp out any chance of there ever being a state for the Palestinians.

Only the meek share land with their neighbours.
Only the meek allow themselves to be governed by whoever.
Only the meek allow themselves to be incorporated into a Fascist state or a Communist state or an Islamic state without fighting back, violently.  The meek go for more subtle ways to fight back - if they can.
Only the wise and meek Judeo-Christian West maintain democracy and capitalism and introduce education for girls, cricket and voting for Afghanistan, after 13 years of warring on the Afghans (I mean the Taliban - those vicious Muslim extremists who will not accept our good and perfect Western ways - like our demon democracy that is not even based on fair votes!)
Only the wise and meek Judeo-Christian West have their massive arsenals of weapons of mass destruction to stop them being attacked by the Russians, the Communists and the Muslim extremists.
Only the wise and meek nations stop other nations from acquiring weapons of mass destruction - if they possibly can.
Only the wise and meek Judeo-Christian nations imposed sanctions on Russia for taking back Crimea after 60 years but, not on themselves for war crimes on Gaza and, before that the years of war of aggression on Afghanistan and Iraq - of course not; silly me to even think such a thought!

Only the meek put out their tentacles in taking for themselves land around the globe and, in the years of this century, exhibiting: Guantanamo Bay, rendition, torture, coups, aggression, illegal unnecessary wars and, now, drones to do our killings for us without fear of our heroes taking any casualties. They get away with it because they are the rich and powerful nations that are part of the Christian, capitalist, democratic, pleasure seeking, freedom loving West.
The supposedly meek, Judeo-Christian Western powers, have indeed inherited the earth.

Unfortunately, over these last 101 years of UK wars somewhere around the world, first Christian Western powers threw their weight around in the Middle East and, then, the Jewish people in the State of Israel since 1948, have all set a very bad example to the Muslims.  Some of them have, finally, flipped to form Islamic State.  We have sown the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind.  We opened Pandora's box.  Our violence, I think, bred their violence.  Revenge leads to yet more revenge.  The radical Muslims have finally learnt our violent, coercive, death dealing from drones, ways.  Except, we are all safe and secure in our homes, as long as we don't go anywhere near the Muslim majority countries.

Evidence:
Letting the Arabs down after the Christian nations war of 1914-18.
Yet, the Arabs were fighting on our side thanks, largely, to T E Lawrence.
France and the UK were given the mandates to rule certain countries in the Middle East.  The UK was given Palestine.  We quickly threw in the towel when Israel's terrorist gangs got to work and the State of Israel was soon born without the blessing of the surrounding Arab nations.  It also helped to salve our conscience over doing so little to stop the Nazi genocide in Poland and Germany in the 1930s and 40s.  The House of Commons showed itself to be anti-Semitic in the '39-'45 war.
(How do Christians interpret that catastrophe for the Jews, from a theological perspective?  eg: Exile for Israel from the Promised Land to Babylon when they disobeyed the Lord God.  Were they not also without their Promised Land from 70 AD to 1948?  1900 years dispersed around the world?  What brought that about?  Was it a really big disobedience to bring about the attempted genocide of God's Chosen People by a formal and long standing Christian nation in the 1930s and 40s?)
Us lot - the supposed meek and mild of the earth - are much, much more guilty of the most terrible discrimination, expulsions and persecution of the Jews than any Muslim peoples down the centuries.
The Suez Crisis of 1956, when UK, France and Israel ganged up against Egypt to get back the Suez Canal under their ownership.  Even the US was horrified and, Russia and America condemned it!
The overthrow of President Mosadeq of Iran over his nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.  We put in our own man - the Shah of Iran - to secure our influence and his countries co-operation with the Christian, freedom loving, democratic West.
The shooting down of the Iranian airbus by an American warship.  The Lockerbie downing of our American airliner followed later in the same year.


* James Cook (1780s) claimed New Holland (Australia) for Britain: "an illegal theft of a continent from its indigenous people" (Vanessa Collingridge on 'Timewatch' 19 March 2015)

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