Replies

North Korea: Another Proof The Planet Has Shifted

Because of the United States President George W. Bush and allies, the planet will never be the same. One ripple affect after another is revealing itself. It is verifiable in in-your-face world events.

The Korean peninsula situation is an immediate result of Iraqi Freedom, as are other global sites. The Korean talks presently taking place are a direct result of the three-week win war in Iraq.

Again, the US-led coalition did not seek the world’s love. As a major spin of the Iraqi war, the coalition demanded and got the world’s respect. Bush and colleagues are determined to see that respect through on major and minor levels. The free, sane world should applaud — loudly, consistently.

With South Korean delegates in Pyongyang demanding that North Korea abandon its nuclear agenda, the critical pressure continues. Washington, of course, is smack in the middle. The result? Pyongyang states it won’t make any guarantees of a nuclear-free North Korea unless Bush guarantees a non-aggression treaty.

Right on, Bush! Right on, US-led coalition! Right on, Iraqi Freedom three-week win war.

Right out, France. Right out, Germany. Right out, Russia. Right out, UN. And stay right out for Iraqi Freedom has proven you are more deterrent than help. You are more frustration than assistance. You are more for your own gain than the liberty of others.

Iraqi Freedom has cut everything in half — the right and the left, the true and the false, the self-giving and the self-serving. The planet shift has taken place and will never return to what it was.

May the world — free and still captive — never forget that it was the tenacity of a President George W. Bush who saw the matter through. Of course, there were the friends, but there would have been no stand-by friends if Bush had not stood alone on principle to see the matter start and finish.

Consequently, South Korea is demanding the North Koreans guarantee a nuclear-free peninsula. The North Koreans, like some others we have found out in recent days, know how to lie in major degree. Such fact is forcing itself out as a sore boil on the globe’s flesh. With that, there surely are those with the power to lance it.

In Beijing last week, a North Korean told a US official that North Korea has atomic weapons that might be tested or sold or used. What would eventuate would all depend on the United States’ response to those facts!

North Korea stated today that it will again reiterate its "new, bold" proposition to the United States, according to South Korean spokesman Shin Eun-sang. South Korean is putting on the pressure at this moment to force North Korean into truth declarations and a pro-anti-nuclear stance; however, North Korea goes back to its statement that it all depends on Washington.

"We made it clear that we can never accept North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons," Shin said. "We emphasized that the North should dismantle nuclear weapons, if it had any, as well as its nuclear facilities," according to the Associated Press.

In other words, it all depends on Bush and colleagues, as much has been depending on Bush and colleagues in the past crucial months due to the planet having shifted markedly because of Bush and colleagues.

+

Jesus' War With The Enemy

It was that stark bony look. Calvary was smitten. Its face was just as we had been told in Scripture: rocky and dented with eye sockets, protruded with a nose-shape and vacant as a stare of death.

Along with other tourists, we trudged up the mountain, cameras in hand.

Three scrubby trees were at the very top. There Priscilla sat on some twisted tall grass spikes as I focused her in direct center of the photo. I imagined that that is where the crosses would have been punched in God's otherwise good earth.

It was a hot day.

It was time to leave the Place of the Skull--Golgotha.

In the valley was the Garden Tomb. We meandered toward it, in no hurry, sensing a reverential cast to all of nature. Greenery was everywhere. Bundles of flowering buds peered up to greet us. Sunshine filled all the gaps.

Slowly I made my way to Joseph of Arimathea's empty gravesite. It was carved out of the hillside. A trough had been dug in front of its beautifully crude stone door. Inside that trough the weighty rock slab would have been rolled to seal shut the entrance. No entrance. No exit. Tight. Any corpse inside was there for good, or whatever.

Robbers would have stolen from the tombs if the stone had not been secured.

I walked inside. There was no rock slab now to prohibit. The morning air welcomed my back to keep me moving till inside that resting-place. My eyes adjusted to see the remains of shelves where bodies would have been positioned.

There I pictured His young frame wrapped in clothes, spices tucked in about the sorry piece. A separate cloth would have been wound about his head.

I suppose there were others making the same interior pilgrimage as I. But I don't recall any shadows but my own.

Timeless. It seemed as if I had left time and had no desire to return.

But time called out its practicality. With that, I was in the sun again, milling about the many as we hunkered down on rocks and patches of grass to receive the sacrament.

There was no reason to chat. No one wanted to chat. There was too much going on inside--not so much noise but voices from another time and friends from another culture than ours.

There was simply no way around it. One could not get to the dawn of the first day without going through the trudge up Skull's Mount, then making it into the valley where an empty borrowed tomb stood awaiting the gaping and the saved.

Sometimes in spring when I walk about Maine's Lakes Region, I get that same feeling from the sun, especially when near a garden.

+