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| - Yes, they are still eating cheeseburgers! |
I have no idea whether this is good, bad or indifferent. Or just a conflict between different special interest groups. But...it does look rather silly to ban fake meat while *not* banning fast food! I mean, what´s up with that?
This law was recently approved by the Florida state senate. I´m old enough to remember when this was a Bircher-related conspiracy theory. I assume somebody somewhere realized that the "chemtrail" issue can be used to further climate change denialism. And here we are...
State lawmakers are moving to ban non-existent "chemtrails"
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| Unclean animal? |
Around 1990, person or persons unknown were standing just outside T-Centralen,
the main metro station in the Swedish capital of Stockholm, passing out
religious tracts of unclear provenance. Most commuters took them…and promptly threw
them away in the trash bins! We´re talking hundreds of tracts here. I might
have been the only person who kept the two tracts being passed out, but still
today – over 30 years later – I still haven´t read all of the material they contained.
So this is a review of only one portion of one of the tracts.
The tract or booklet in question is titled “Finding Peace Within: A book
for people in need”. The publication date is 1989. The publisher is given as Inspiration
Books East (IBE) in Alabama. It´s clear from the contents that we´re dealing
with a Seventh Day Adventists. However, I´m not familiar with the exact
relationship between the SDA Church and IBE. “Finding Peace Within” contains
two texts: “The Way to Christ” by Ellen G White and “The Christian Way” by L
Munilla and C E Wheeling. However, the booklet is marketed as a self-help book
in positive thinking on the front and back covers. Only if you actually open
it, do you realize that it´s a fairly old fashioned Bible tract. It´s said to
have been translates to over 100 languages, but at least 30+ years ago, Swedish
clearly wasn´t one of them, since it was passed out in English in the Stockholm
metro!
I´m not an expert on every nook and cranny of Seventh Day Adventist
theology, but “The Christian Way” sounds reasonably orthodox-Adventist to an
outsider with a working knowledge of fringe Christian denominations. Some time
ago, I discussed with one of my perennial commentators whether or not the SDA
Church believes that God has a physical body. If read carefully, the tract is
strangely non-committed on this point. It seems to affirm the Trinity, but without
actually using the term. However, it also seems to suggest that “heaven” is an
actual location in or beyond the sky. There, Christ sits on the right hand of
God´s throne. There is no clarification, but it does sound literal. But how can
this be squared with a trinitarian godhead?
An important point in Adventist theology is that God´s Law from the Old
Testament is still in force. This Law is identified with the Ten Commandments,
which (of course) include the command to keep the Sabbath on Saturdays. The
booklet proves by quoting both Catholics and Protestants that the Sabbath was
transferred to Sunday due to Church decision/tradition. This is unproblematic
if you indeed are a Catholic or a High Church Anglican. It´s more problematic
for, say, Baptists. The authors have even located a Catholic magazine which
says that only the Seventh Day Adventists are consistent with the Protestant
belief in “sola Scriptura”. More unexpected is the claim that the distinction
between clean and unclean food is still in place. Don´t eat herons, bats and
white owls! Do the IBE follow Jewish dietary restrictions? There is also a more
general emphasis on healthy living, including abstention from alcohol, tobacco
and drugs. Modest dress, regular tithing and prayer are also important for the Christian
life.
The soteriology is somewhat distinct. The Millennium is a literal
1000-year period, but not on Earth, but rather in heaven. The resurrection of
the righteous takes place at the Second Advent of Christ, and these are raptured
to heaven together with the righteous that are alive at the time. The wicked will
be destroyed (or remain dead if they passed away before the Second Advent). During
the Millenium, Earth will be completely desolate, with Satan as its only
inhabitant. When the thousand years have ended, the wicked will be resurrected (!),
only to be deceived once more by the Devil. Meanwhile, the New Jerusalem have
descended to Earth, together with all the righteous. Satan and his minions will
try to take it. This fails (surprise) and they are destroyed once and for all. Note
the Annihilationism.
The tone of “The Christian Way” is rather strident. We are admonished to
be baptized by immersion. This life is the only “probation” we´ll ever get. The
time is near: Jesus Christ can come at any moment. However, the pamphlet also
emphasizes that the second coming will be unexpected – perhaps a warning not to
concoct elaborate eschatological schemes. A necessary warning due to Adventist history?
If apocalyptic radical Protestantism can really make you find peace within
is not clear to me at the present time, but I promise I´ll finally read E G
White´s portion of the tract as soon as I can!
So neither Donald Trump nor Nikki Haley endorse the recent decision of the Alabama Supreme Court to de facto ban IVF. Hmmm...
Maybe they both realize that the abortion issue does the GOP more harm than good. So better not support crazy over-reach.
Donald Trump calls on Alabama legislature to preserve IVF
Alabama takes on globo*pedo*. From Breitbart News. The failure of feminists and leftists to defend children against Big Pharma, Big Shrink and god knows what else (globo grooming?), has led to a situation in which Southern Republicans (!) can hypocritically put themselves forward as "defenders of children´s rights". Not to mention the right of female athletes...
"We will not let out-of-state liberals tell us what to do"
"Biden Administration should stay in their lane"
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| Probably not workers in need of a union... |
I support the unionization drive at Amazon, but the following comment from the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is nevertheless quite interesting.
Note that Joe Biden (!) and Marco Rubio (!!) expressed support for the union. Rubio has tried to reimagine himself as some kind of Trumpista-without-Trump. And Biden is, well, the president of the United States. There has also been a lot of virtue signalling about the whole thing from "liberals" who usually couldn´t care less about working class people being non-unionized (certainly not their servant staffs).
One thing not mentioned by WSWS is the implicit racism in claiming that the (largely Black) workforce at the Bessemer plant was simply too stupid to see through the simplest tricks of the Amazon management, such as "mysterious mailboxes" and what not. Of course, it´s probably a form of classism, but it´s ironic that these kinds of paternalistic arguments are used towards African-American workers by a "woke" BLM-ish White elite...
