Upon This Inglorious 77th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz/Holocaust (Generally), May I Post My Personal Tribute to Victims and Survivors and Those (Such as the Much-Resented Simon Weisenthal Institute) Doing Their Darnedest to Bring Justice To Such

And though it in no way diminishes the evil of said infamy, I personally believe, as someone who considers himself a careful Bible student over many decades, that one way the Lord on High will one day bring good out of that most diabolical chapter in (in)human history...

...is by using it to shine a spotlight upon that equally infamous and diabolical chapter in human history, the Cross of Calvary (whereby an Individual as opposed to an entire people group, suffered horrendously at the hands of a merciless and unmerciful bloodthirsty mob)...

in this way (and I fully appreciate the thought/insight may well not be original, though I did indeed come to/arrive at it on my lonesome (with the Holy Spirit's guidance I have little doubt):

When in years to come - if that's how long the prophecy has to run - the Jewish nation is beseiged around and about by, according to Scripture, pretty well every nation upon earth, and perhaps two-thirds of their populace is wiped off the face of the earth (if that fairly common interpretation of prophecy is indeed correct), they will recall the treatment meted out to One of their own in the faraway distant past...

...and then everything will quite literally 'click' for them...

No, I'm in no way, shape or form seeking to find yet another sort of justification or rationale or excuse for those aforementioned horrors and barbarities and evil - God, as the Newer (and indeed Older) Testament scriptures make very clear, is not - indeed cannot be, consistently with His holy and loving character - ever 'the Author of evil'...

And yet, as Romans 8:28 makes abundantly clear, 'penned' by a man who in earlier times was a most relentless, brutal and bloodthirsty foe of the new sect of 'the Way' as it was then termed, God has a way of taking the most horrible things and making something beautiful out of them...

And thus and so the wonderful prophecy of the penultimate book in the Old Testament will yet come to fruition:

And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.

In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem...

And the land shall mourn, every family apart...

It's - LONG PAST TIME - the U S of A Acknowledged Its Own Inglorious Role In Baiting the Russian Bear: Its Unashamed and Quite Simply Shameless and Shameful Post(Cold)-War Triumphalism - Indulging Self-Righteous Self-Exaltation and Smug Gloating Over the Ex-USSR Post-the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Implosion of the Soviet Union - Has Yielded Its Baleful Fruit of Long-Simmering Resentment On the Part of the Russian People and Leadership...And, I'm Sorry to Say, the Fault Has Not Been With the Latter...

Though it doesn't justify the Russians - aka Vladimir Putin - amassing troops upon Ukraine's border: far from it (indeed, their ongoing effective war of attrition against Ukrainians begun back in 2014, far as I can discern, hasn't ever actually ceased, though admittedly news reports from the Crimea and the Ukraine generally these days are extremely sketchy at the best of times - and as that deep and profound thinker Smeagol-Gollum well put things "These aren't decent times!")...

Nevertheless 'the West' (as in the United States of America) has long since wrong-footed the entire situation (by which I refer to its aforementioned post-Cold War triumphalism, in particular its unwarranted and prideful attitude and posture) and has thus in a large measure contributed to things deteriorating to their present-day state.

But expect a long-overdue apology on the part of the Yanks? - you better forget it!

Being ever and only in the right means, as one songster so (un)aptly put matters, never having to say you're sorry...

But only in the mind and heart of an arrogant believer in the Cold War era maxim that might ever makes right, and victory calls for a sense of smug self-satisfaction and gloating...

...rather than a much more appropriate sense of modest self-abasement and gratitude.

Having long since chosen the latter course, whatever the relative rights and wrongs of the military actions of the current Russian regime, America's trajectory is sadly ever onward, as secular observers have long since noted, from (long since becoming) the self-anointed global cop...and ultimately into an inglorious outworking of the Scriptural depiction of Revelation's false prophet speaking like a dragon and enforcing the sign, the mark, of the first sea-beast's authority...

And believe you me, the end-game will not be pretty, not one wee bit, I can readily assure you!

One Hum-Dinger Of A Brat: (One-Time) Cardinal Ratzsinger, Long-Serving Head of the Roman Catholic Church's (Modern-Day) 'Inquisition', Aka Pope Benedict XVI, Is Effectively Implicated As Coverer-Up-In-Chief Of the Vatican's Crimes Against Kids: Hey, How About, As My Brother Just Said, HIS BEING EXCOMMUNICATED? Yeah, Right (As Kiwi Billboards Might Express Matters)!

The Party Is Finally Over For Boris Johnson, And The Chickens And Roosters Are Busily Scrambling Over Each Other to Find A Place to Roost

The bottom line is, the optics, as they say, are simply awful/dreadful: in what can only look like a one-fingered salute to the British people in *their hour of trial and tribulation the national powers-that-be seem to be having a jolly old time, thank you very much, at the expense of the longsuffering masses.

It simply doesn't, to use another phrase much in vogue these days, pass the sniff test. That's all there really is to it folks - it's that simple.

And I 'say'(as in print) **that with a tinge of sadness in my voice (i.e. 'heart'); as someone who has found Boris Johnson a bit of a lovable rogue, an idiosyncratic character and comic if you will, but an endearing one at that.

Yes, for folk throughout the length and breadth of the land to be going through the hard yards, the 'hard yakka' as it were through the ongoing ***'gift that keeps on giving', as in covid, and then to turn on their TV sets/tune in to their radios/open their newspapers - yes, and/or 'google it'/'hear' via the internet in one way or another - and see numerous ****'juicy and salacious' tidbits day after day (as the story is drip-fed into their respective media) showing/revealing a smirking elite knowingly and shamelessly getting away with 'stuff' that the plebs and peasants - "let 'em eat dirt!" - could only dream of (in their state of ongoing restrictions) and in the full expectation moreover that their hijinks and frolics will never see the light of day (as in the public glare)...

...could not but strike any wholly impartial and unpartisan observer as an *****unprecedented degree of arrogance and hubris and overreach heretofore unheard of...

...'stuff' ultimately reaching to the very highest echelons and corridors of power, and necessitating one  - and one only - immediate response, one which is so clear and obvious that I'll simply leave you to work it out yourselves, to follow the trail wheresoever it happens to obviously lead...

And that arguably it really requires a mass resignation (of involved ministers and MPs) and/or a snap election to give the British people the chance to start afresh...and asap. (Though I fear for the Brexit, were that admittedly extremely remote and unlikely eventuality to transpire.)

Yes, Labour's (comparatively) new leader is definitely onto a winner (with the people of the United Kingdom) in relentlessly pursuing this (with a zeal befitting Sherlock Holmes in relentless pursuit of the latest clue however labyrinthine the particular tunnel he next entered and explored), and could hardly be faulted were he to press his newfound advantage home without any further ado to the nth degree and beyond...

What else can he realistically be expected to do?

Credulity can only be stretched so far, and it has arguably already been extended well beyond breaking point...  

*As they collectively endure one of the worst outcomes of any nation in the global coronavirus pandemic.

**That is, all the preceding (and all the rest of my opinion piece). 

***As one (if not various and sundry) wag/s has/have well expressed matters.

****Metaphorically speaking, that is!

*****One of such a serious nature that it makes those of ******'our own' David Clark look like minor misdemeanours in comparison...

******David Clark being the New Zealand Government Minister who hardly ingratiated himself with the kiwi public a year-and-a-half ago or so when he, as Health Minister during the global pandemic that is covid-19, went off mountain bike riding, visiting a local beach, and moving house while everyone else trembled in their boots almost setting a foot out their doors.

(A Rather, If Necessarily, Belated) 'Tribute' (Of Sorts) to America's 'EPIPHANY' - i.e. January 6th, 2020 - A Year On: "Good Night, America, How ARE You, Don't Ya Know Me, I'm [Update: I Once WAS] Your Native Son?"

A classic opportunity for behind-the-scenes bipartisan collaboration upon removing Donald J Trump 'el permanente' from the American political scene was then lost for good; and, like so many scholars and academics etcetera, I suspect the opportunity will never come again...

And thus and so that eerie painting that that wag (I mention around Election 2020; upon either this or my other, original blogsite) in the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention Hall was ruminating and reflecting upon (during my brief visit in August or so 1992) perhaps *verily represents the sun descending (off the landscape) - as opposed to rising - permanently on the once proud and great (and once global trend-setting) U S 'experiment in democracy'...

Afterthought: 

Curiously enough, my long-deceased American grandmother would've turned 120 on that day... 

...and perhaps equally eerily, her name, 'Elvera', itself meant the truth.

Acknowledgment:

FULL CREDIT to the (introduction to the) third and final stanza in Arlo Guthrie's inimitable classic 'City of New Orleans'...

TO BE CONTINUED...Sometime soon, don't know when...

Typical (NZ Mainstream) Media Reporting Upon How EVERYONE Is Now Heartily Sick & Tired of Hearing Ceaselessly About 'Covid-Covid-Covid' And Moreover Are Showing Ever-Increasing Signs & Symptoms of Mental Unwellness Over It...And Yet Does THAT At Long Last Stop or At the Very Least Put Ye Proverbial Dent In Their Ceaselessly Going On & On & On About It, Ad Infinitum? NO SIRREE, Not A Jot, a Tittle or Even an Iota...