"U.S. Says Hong Kong’s Autonomy Is Gone"

The Trump administration said it could no longer certify Hong Kong’s political autonomy from China, a move that could trigger sanctions and have far-reaching consequences on the former British colony’s special trading status with the U.S.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced the decision Wednesday, a week after the government in Beijing declared its intention to pass a national security law curtailing the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong citizens.

“Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws in the same manner as U.S. laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997,” Pompeo said in a statement. “No reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground.”

(Source)

Soleimani's Death More Significant Than Bin Laden's

https://www.westernjournal.com/gen-petraeus-says-soleimanis-death-significant-bin-ladens/

The Kurds

Trump has come under intense criticism for withdrawing military support for the Kurds. Perhaps that's well-deserved. I haven't studied the issue, so I have no firm opinion one way or the other. But I'll venture a few generic observations:

1. The talk about "abandoning" a military ally is intellectually devious. It's not like the Kurds came to our rescue. The alliance was always enormously lopsided. They need us far more than we need them. They weren't doing us a favor. We were doing them a favor. They were doing themselves a favor by forming an alliance with us. But what do we actually owe them? 

2. Does the US military have a duty to maintain a military presence in the Mideast to prevent some Middle Easterners from slaughtering other Middle Easterners? No.

The job of the US military is to protect the lives of Americans. American soldiers have no duty to be killed or maimed to protect foreigners. Their lives aren't forfeit to save the lives of foreigners. Their lives aren't less valuable than the lives of foreigners. And their own families have a prior claim on them. 

3. I share the concern for the fate of Syrian Christians. But Christians throughout the Muslim world are at risk. Does that mean we should start a war with every Muslim country that persecutes Christians?  

Ich bin ein Hongkonger

A Hong Kong businessman named Jimmy Lai hopes our political leaders will support Hong Kong. He even suggests politicians consider flying to Hong Kong. Like JFK flew to Berlin during the Cold War, calling himself a Berliner.

1. I suppose Trump could fly to Hong Kong and do the same. That would be a bold move if Trump did that. Politically speaking, it'd be a big gamble. He could win big or lose big.

   If Trump did that, he might sway a lot of Asian-Americans to vote for him. In fact, he might sway a lot of moderates in general.

   Not to mention Trump might sway other nations if he took the lead in supporting a democratic movement in Hong Kong. He might be able to move a lot of the international community to take action as well.

   On the negative side, it could end up igniting an international crisis or something along those lines. This in turn could impact his political fortunes.

2. Of course, it would sorely anger China. However, why would Trump care about angering China? For one thing, he's already angered China with the trade war. Yet the trade war has brought China to the table to discuss fairer trade practices and so on. That's because the trade war hits China where it hurts most, i.e., their economy. Otherwise the next decades could see the Chinese economy overtake ours and all that that would entail. At least to my knowledge, even a majority of Democrats support Trump attempting to stem China's global ascendancy.

3. I suppose the major problem would be this would signal to Hong Kong that we support them, but if push comes to shove I'm not sure what we could do to support Hong Kong against China. After all, if China did invade Hong Kong, then I don't know what we could actually do about it short of going to war which of course no one wants.

   At least as far as I can see, the best option is if we can convince other nations China is currently doing business with to stop doing business with China, then that would hurt China's economy. If the threat of this is viable, then it might dissuade China from touching Hong Kong. However, this doesn't necessitate Trump flying to Hong Kong. It could be accomplished behind the scenes, as it were.

4. The issue for China is that they regard Hong Kong as theirs, along with other places like Taiwan, which China argues European colonial powers took away from them. Of course, China likes to push this narrative because they know it often works on guilt-ridden Westerners.

   However, above and beyond politics, and in terms of "moral authority", it comes down to democracy vs. communism. If we believe in democratic ideals, then why not support democratic movements (though that's not to imply we should always do so)? Indeed, China supports spreading communism abroad.

Protesters in Hong Kong waving the American flag and singing the American National anthem as they advocate for democracy. Wow! pic.twitter.com/CKyFstud22

— Kaya Jones (@KayaJones) August 12, 2019

Are Arabs secularizing?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48703377

China's "long march" to world hegemony

Hugh Hewitt interviews Victor Davis Hanson on China. The entire interview is interesting, but what follows below is an excerpt from sections I found to be informative. I don't necessarily agree with everything.

---

HEWITT: Well, you came to mind because of an extraordinary speech that was given on May 21 by President Xi Jinping of China. And he went to the geographic location of where the long march began 80-plus years ago, Jiangxi Province, and he told a cheering crowd, "now there is a new long march and we should make a new start." That's significant, I think, Dr. Hanson, and I wanted to go through with you today what the long march was, what happened in China during World War II, and where we are now as a result of both of those things. Let's start with the Long March...

HANSON: I think one thing to remember is that when he [Chinese President Xi] mentions the Long March where he was almost exterminated, Mao, and then subsequent we have a war that took 16 million, and then subsequently the Civil War, which took another 7 or 8 million, Xi is saying that we're victimized, we've all been counted out during the Long March, the war, the civil war second phase, and we're going to fight to the end.

And so I think that's the message. We should also remember it suggests to us that this myth that the Chinese Communist apparatus somehow liberalizing as it becomes wealthier and as trade becomes freer is not true. They still see themselves as hard Stalinists that have been picked on and victimized and will prevail against overwhelming odds.

Patsy for Islam

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/705679944/new-zealand-listens-to-muslim-prayers-a-week-after-mosque-shootings

The message she sends is that NZ has a PM who's a sob sister and patsy for the forces of sharia, jihad, and dhimmitude. If she really wishes to show solidarity with Muslims, she ought to take the next step and undergo female genital mutilation.

Brexit and the papacy

What do Brexit and the papacy have in common? I'm so glad you asked. 

Even when Catholicism was strong in Europe, there was always a power struggle between the papacy and Catholic monarchs. On the one hand, the papacy had its own foreign policy. The papacy is an institution with international ambitions. So the papacy championed domestic and foreign policies that enlarged the scope and power of the papacy. On the other hand, a French monarch championed domestic and foreign policies that benefited France, a Spanish monarch championed domestic and foreign policies that benefited Spain.

So there was always a divergence between national self-interest and papal self-interest. By the same token, it's my impression that people who voted for Brexit were fed up with a supranational bureaucracy imposing policies on England that were not in England's self-interest. Many English voters are naturally partial to domestic and foreign policies that benefit the English.  

The Prime Directive

I was asked to comment on the Prime Directive. As someone who watched TOS when it premiered, as well as watching a number of spinoffs, that question has a certain nostalgia. I doubt any deep thought went into whatever TV producer concocted the Prime Directive. I assume it was one of those on the fly decisions. But despite its philosophically undistinguished origins, the Prime Directive is an interesting, provocative concept. 

The Prime Directive is a blanket ban on interference with the internal development of less advanced alien cultures and societies. However, that proved to be dramatically suffocating, so it was routinely flouted by screenwriters, although sometimes a ST episode centered on the controversial nature of the directive. Let's begin by considering some defenses and real-world counterparts to the Prime Directive:

This land is mine

i) The late great Jewish tenor Richard Tucker make a stirring recording of "The Exodus Song":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iVMzRRx2PI

Depending on your viewpoint, that's political propaganda. Since I'm not Jewish, and I wasn't raised in the Middle East, I can't identify with the song at a personal level. I don't have that emotional attachment to the geography.  

Although Trump's decision to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem is mainly of geopolitical significance, it reignites familiar hermeneutical debates about the future status of Israel in Bible prophecy. Gary Burge wrote a predictable complaint about Trump's decision in The Atlantic. 

ii) This is a perennial issue in theology. It raises deep and difficult questions about the hermeneutics of prophecy, continuities and discontinuities between the old covenant and  new covenants, God's fidelity to his promises, &c. 

I'm not a Zionist, but I'm not opposed to Zionism. I'm noncommittal. That's because I think long-range prophecies are often rather obscure ahead of time. We only see how the pieces fall into place in retrospect. I consider Zionism to be a viable option. Time will tell. 

iii) It's been a while since I've read standard expositions of Dispensationalism. And I'm not sure what the current state of Dispensationalism is. For instance, it's odd that Dallas Theological Seminary hasn't published any next-generation commentaries on Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation. In fairness, Buist Fanning is slated to publish a commentary on Revelation, while Eugene Merrill did publish a fine commentary on Zechariah several years ago.

As I recall, one of the lynchpins of classical Dispensationalism goes like this: the OT is chockfull of prophecies about Israel. These are about Israel in the sense that they are worded in terms of Palestinian sites and a Jewish people-group. And the prophecies are often tied to Yahweh's past dealings with that people and place. 

By contrast, OT prophecies have far less to say about the future of the gentiles. There are some striking oracles and promises, but few compared to what-all is said about Israel. 

That raises something of a conundrum: where is the church in OT prophecy? How could the OT be silent on something as important and definitive as the church? That's a "mystery".

In classical Dispensationalism, when the OT talks about Israel, that's what it means. Israel (i.e. that place and people-group) is the intended referent. The language is what it appears to be. 

And there's certainly nothing outlandish about that assumption. However, it may not be quite that simple.

iv) Israel was always a mixed multitude. Abraham's household included circumcised foreigners. And the Exodus generation included many individuals who weren't direct descendants of Jacob (Exod 12:38). So the core identity was never purely or merely ethnic.

v) An obvious reason the OT has so much to say about Israel and comparatively little about gentiles is because it is generally written to Jews. It talks about them because so much of what it says is addressed to and for that particular audience. It says less about outsiders, in part because that's not the regular audience. The only gentiles who'd even be privy to OT prophecy were gentiles in the geographical ambit of ancient Israel. So the sample audience selects for the sample content. 

vi) In addition, OT prophecy may focus on the Mideast because that was the known-world to the original audience. You're not going to have prophecies about places and people-groups in far-flung regions of the globe because that would be unintelligible to the original audience. 

But that raises the question of whether the geographical locus is to some degree a stand-in for future developments, which might be far more expansive. 

vii) Apropos (iii), on one view, OT prophecies ostensibly about Israel are exclusively to Israel. They are only about Israel. 

At the opposite extreme is the view that Israel is a placeholder for the church. On that view, prophecies ostensively about Israel are exclusively about the church. They are only about the church–in contrast to Israel.

One problem with that identification is the Exodus, where God delivers a people-group in covenant fidelity to promises he made to Abraham and the patriarchs. That's based on generational continuity. So you can't just swap that out and swap in a different people-group.

viii) Another interpretation is to view Israel as inclusive of Israel, but not exclusive to Israel. It might be inclusive of believing gentiles. Gentiles who share the messianic faith of Abraham, David, and the prophets. 

And that's a throwback to the multi-ethnic composition of Abraham's household, as well as the multi-ethnic composition of Exodus-generation (iv)–who had a shared faith and history with the patriarchs. 

ix) Apropos (viii), Israel, in OT prophecy, may refer, not to Jews in general, but to believing Jews. Messianic Jews. A Jewish remnant throughout the course of sacred history. 

Their lives may be intertwined with other Jews, just as Christian congregations generally consist of families, not all of whom are believers. 

x) I once had a conversation with Meredith Kline. Even though he had a Jewish background, he was an ardent opponent of Zionism. His objection to me on that day is that God couldn't give the Jews that land in perpetuity because geological cycles change the complexion of the land over time. Eventually, the landmarks are gone. 

Scruton on Trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufcZsxgASF0

America First

Trump ran on an "America First" platform. I don't know what he means by that. We'll find out, based on what he actually does, or attempts to do. 

His slogan (which doesn't originate with him) raises the question of whether it's good or bad for a US president to have an America First policy. 

i) Obama is a self-hating American. He used to go around the globe, apologizing for American history and foreign policy. He presumed to speak on behalf of Americans generally. 

One problem with his groveling behavior is that he typically issued these apologies to countries with hideous human rights records. 

ii) America First doesn't imply that America is better that every other country. Rather, it's a statement of priorities. The job of an American president is to act in the best interests of his constituents. He's an elected representative of the American people. He's supposed to work for their benefit. 

iii) And that's a viewpoint which other heads-of-state are supposed to assume in reference to their own countries. The Scottish Prime Minister should have  Scotland First agenda. And so on and so forth.

iv) Nationalism doesn't imply that you think your country is the greatest country on earth. I don't think any one country has all the best things. 

However, some countries are definitely better than others. Some countries are horrible places to live. There are superior and inferior cultures. 

v) Putting national self-interest first doesn't imply an imperialistic outlook, where you conquer and subjugate other countries for their natural resources, to enrich your own country. And what's good for your own country may be good for other countries as well.

vi) America First doesn't imply isolationism. For instance, countries often enter into formal or informal military alliances. Take information sharing between the intelligence agencies of two countries. That can be mutually beneficial to the national security of each country. 

Smoking Out Islamists via Extreme Vetting

http://www.danielpipes.org/17198/smoking-out-islamists-via-extreme-vetting

O Little Town of Bethlehem

One pop atheist slam against Christianity is our fixation on a "Bronze Age" religion. Now, this is thoughtless trope that's copied from one atheist to the next. It is true, however, that this objection singles out something distinctive about the Judeo-Christian faith. It is rooted in the past. Rooted in historical events. Events that have an address as well as a date.

For Christians who observe the church calendar, it's striking to consider how modern-day Christians worldwide sing Christmas carols about Bethlehem. Western Christians, in what has been for centuries the power center of the world, turn their attention to a hamlet on the periphery of the Roman Empire. Even by 1C standards, Bethlehem was the antipode of Rome, capital of the then-greatest empire of the known world. 

If it weren't for Christianity, everyone would fixate the political, military, and economic power centers of the world. Big Western cities. Entertainment capitals. Pro sports. It's all about the winners.  

Unbelievers are obsessed with the present. Who has power. Who has status. Who's on top. Who's is currently the richest man in the world? Who is currently the most successful movie star or rock star? Who is currently the most successful quarterback, or basketball star, or soccer team? 

It's all about now. Unbelievers disdain the past. Disdain the backwaters of the world. 

The Christian frame of reference is entirely different from the humanist frame of reference. Even for Christians residing in the power centers of the world, that's not our polestar. That's not the standard of comparison by which we measure what's important.  

Of course, Christians think about the future, too. But it's a future that's rooted in the past. And it's a future set in the hereafter or the world to come. 

Cuban healthcare

http://blog.acton.org/archives/90402-the-truth-about-cubas-health-care-system.html

Bible prophecy and the CIA

Critics blamed the CIA for failure to anticipate the breakup of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, a primary task of the CIA was to keep tabs on Russia. Huge resources were devoted to that task. 

In fairness, there may well have been CIA employees who saw it coming, but they weren't high enough in the agency for their views to be known outside the agency. They weren't official spokesmen.

Why did the Soviet empire collapse? A major factor was economics. It was an overextended empire. Communist economic policies were unable to generate the GNP necessary to sustain the Russian war machine. In that respect, the collapse of the Soviet empire was inevitable. 

However, that's arguably a necessary rather than sufficient condition. In addition to economic pressures, the timing of the collapse depended on the actions of key people, viz. Gorbachev, Reagan, Thatcher, Yeltsin, Walesa, John-Paul II.

Even if the Soviet Empire was economically unsustainable over the long haul, the timing was contingent on the presence of certain players in strategic positions. If you had a Putin rather than a Gorbachev, he might delay the inevitable. You might have a steady decline rather than sudden collapse. Rather like the Ottoman empire. 

Perhaps, moreover, the breakup of the Soviet Union was not a foregone conclusion. Suppose Russia had had a leader like Deng Xiaoping or Zhou Enlai, who promoted economic freedom without promoting political freedom. Reforming the economic system but not the political system. Combining capitalist economics with repressive government. That might have enabled Russia to subsidize its imperial ambitions. 

So the outcome was contingent on individual human factors as well as large-scale economic trends. And that's what made it unpredictable.

This illustrates why the future is hard to foretell. Even if you have some objective factors and trajectories to work with, extrapolations from the present may be unreliable because the outcome is dependent on independent variables. The rise and fall of certain leaders. Lucky or unlucky timing. That's not something which humans can foresee far in advance. And this is what makes fulfilled Bible prophecy impressive. 

The world's Muslims

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/

ISIS is getting whomped by Russia (it seems)

I've been seeing articles like this one today:

ISIS left so weakened by airstrikes and desertion it could be wiped out in just HOURS

Maybe that's a bit overly-sensational. But it appears as if the Russian military means business.


The response from the west (the US included) has been more along the lines that "Assad is worse than ISIS":

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-04/cameron-says-russia-is-making-grave-mistake-in-syria-bombings

It seems as if the west is trying to "thread the needle" -- that is, degrade ISIS while not giving Assad any advantages. Russia doesn't feel the west's sense of propriety.



Older (background):

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/03/saudis-vs-iran-sunnis-vs-shia.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/foreign-fighters-flow-to-syria/2014/10/11/3d2549fa-5195-11e4-8c24-487e92bc997b_graphic.html

Shedding dead skin

Arminian theologian Randal Rauser did a post entitled "Is American Religious Conservatism driving people away from the church?"

http://randalrauser.com/2015/07/is-american-religious-conservatism-driving-people-away-from-the-church/

i) Why is this Canadian obsessed with American evangelicalism and American politics? Does Rauser think his native land is too unimportant to discuss? 

What about Canadian religious conservatives? What doesn't he talk about them?

The cultural wars in the US are paralleled in Canada. So why does he fixate on the US to the exclusion of his native land?

One explanation is that he's a coward. If he were to attack his fellow Canadian Christians, that would provoke a backlash, so he uses American evangelicalism as a stalking horse.

ii) I also notice that he's more charitable to atheists than members of the religious right. That shows you that his sympathies are closer to atheism than conservative evangelicalism. 

iii) He pounces on Sarah Palin, even though she's a marginal figure. Moreover, her baptism=waterboarding quip received scathing criticism from members of the religious right. So it's not as though that's representative.

And yet, one constantly hears rhetoric about shrinking government coupled with a pathological aversion to new taxes, as if that’s the way to “starve the beast” (thanks, Grover Norquist).

I oppose the default assumption that all our money belongs to the gov't, and it's just a question of how much money the gov't is willing to give us. That's the philosophy of a totalitarian state. All property belongs to the gov't. It's then a question of how much the gov't will share with the public. 

While every other developed nation in the world has socialized health care for its population, time and again I’ve heard American religious conservatives strongly oppose it.

Because the quality of healthcare deteriorates under socialized medicine.

Despite all this fear of big government, I hear not a whisper of concern among American religious conservatives about big military, despite the fact that by some estimates the military sucks up more than half of all government spending. 

i) Not from what I've read:

http://www.usfederalbudget.us/federal_budget_estimate_vs_actual_2014

ii) American military power has been seriously degraded during the Obama administration. 

iii) More to the point, if you have the second best military in the world, that puts you at the mercy of the nation with the best military in the world. The country with the most powerful military is in a position to dictate to militarily weaker nations. Would you rather to be vulnerable Russia, China, Iran, &c? 

iv) I expect Canada benefited from being adjacent to a military superpower. During the Cold War, Russian didn't dare invade Canada. The US wouldn't tolerate a Soviet occupation force sitting on our border. 

And while American Christian conservatives rage against Obamacare, on the whole they are bizarrely silent on government surveillance of the civilian population.

Rauser offers no evidence for that claim. How does he distinguish Christian conservative opposition from political conservative opposition to government surveillance of the civilian population? Not only are libertarians critical of that, but several contributors to National Review are critical of that. How does Rauser know that's unrepresentative of how many conservative Christians view the issue? He routinely shoots from the hip.

And while we’re talking about corrupt banks, how about the fact that British bank HSBC laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for the Sinaloa drug cartel? Why don’t American evangelicals get angry about that? Why haven’t they even heard about it?

Why should American evangelicals be mad about the shenanigans of a British bank? It's it the duty of the British authorities to deal with that.

Consider the case of the approximately half a million Iraqi children who died in the mid-nineties as a result of the Clinton administration imposing strict sanctions to punish Sadam Hussein.

i) No, those were UN sanctions. 

ii) And in any event, he cites no evidence that American evangelicals supported the sanctions regime. 

Regardless, time and again I have found conservative Christians distressingly cavalier when it comes to government policies and military actions (e.g. drone strikes) that lead to the death of foreign civilians.

Every war has civilian casualties. Is Rauser a pacifist? If so, then he objects to combat casualties as well. 

When people think Christianity is about support for big military, opposition to socialized medicine and immigrants, and callous indifference to the poor and the environment, it’s no surprise they are leaving the church.

i) How many Latin American immigrants does Rauser have living in his home at any given time? I'm sure he demonstrates his superior charity by opening his doors to them. 

ii) How does he define "callous indifference to the poor"?

iii) Environmentalism is callous towards the Third-World poor. 

iv) If this causes folks like Rauser to leave the church, then that's a promising trend. The church is better off without them. Like shedding dead skin.

Should Christians support a Palestinian state?

http://philosproject.org/should-christians-support-a-palestinian-state/