echoes

 

"Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it," some once famous wag is reputed to have said.

Another famous wag purportedly remarked; "History is bunk."

Today the internet is alive with chatter from the lunatic fringe of the Catholic Church predicting the end of the world.

They won't always be wrong.

In their meanderings and maunderings I hear echoes of earlier times.

I'm somewhat rueful about such things.

I've thought it was the end of the world since my childhood.

A book and film entitled The Late Great Planet Earth appeared when I was preparing for the Leaving Cert exam, claiming the world would end in 1986.

I was quite frustrated about this as it left me just enough time to complete my school examinations as mandated by the Irish educational system.

In the intervening years I've never believed we were in the middle of anything other than the Apocalypse.

The mass murders perpetrated by communist regimes in China, Russia and Africa throughout my lifetime looked to me like the Apocalypse.

The abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide culture of America and Europe looked to me like the Apocalypse.

The rise of drug gangs dominating towns, villages, cities and countries throughout the world looked to me like the Apocalypse.

There's a one liner in the book of Revelation that goes something along the lines of: "In spite of all the horrors they are seeing, people will not stop their murders, their fornications, their sacrifices to satan and their thefts."

That looks very much like precisely what we have not stopped doing in the face of the evils engulfing our world.

At the present moment I seem to hear more yet stranger echoes from history,

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's smash and grab on Ukraine is likenable to Stalin's attempt to conquer Finland in 1939 as the world was distracted by Nazi Germany going toe to toe with England and France in what would become World War Two.

I'm suggesting the bloodbath of Ukraine, like the earlier bloodbath in Finland, is actually a side show to the real World War which is unfolding contemporanously. The Ukrainians like the Finns have decided not to roll over.  But the real World War like the last one, involves the culmination of a hell inspired attempt to wipe out the nation of Israel whose present day foes in my assessment are the equivalent of the Nazis.

Israel may seem small and distant to us here in Ireland.

Yet Ireland and Britain and Western Europe and the USA have in recent months all been roiled as never before by pro Palestinian street demonstrations whose participants seek to eradicate Israel from the map.

Many among our own political pseudo elites are scared stiff of the restive Muslim populations that have moved into our midst.

Israel is far away but the war against her is here and now, and indeed everywhere and in every era.

I would instance the British government Justice Minister Mike Freer who a few months ago received threats from Muslim activists and promptly resigned.

People have to be fairly ambitious and determined to become British Justice Ministers dontchya know.

Mr Freer walked away in five minutes when he discovered who was threatening his life.

Let me be clear.

A new world war may indeed involve seemingly diverse elements such as the continuing charnel house in Sudan, or a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan, or the Chinese vassal North Korea devastating South Korea, or Putin going nuclear on his victims.

My profound conviction remains that the epicentre in some strange high mystical sense is still Israel.

Just like in World War Two when the Nazis found time while undertaking the conquest of twenty nations, ie humanity, to try to wipe out the Jews.

I see other echoes from the past in current events.

Putin's provision of nuclear technology and high ordinance weaponry to Muslim thug States like Iran, is likenable to Stalin's arming of Hitler. Putin's secret machinations with Iran and its ilk may be likened to the 1939 signing of the Soviet Nazi non aggression pact between communist Russia and Nazi Germany. In the end Stalin's alliance of convenience with the Nazis cost Russia many many millions of lives as the Nazis inevitably turned on their former benefactors,

I have a feeling Putin's maniacal attempt to farm the Islamic Republic of Iran will end the same way.

And in September last year when Muslim Azerbaijan launched a surprise attack on Armenia, Putin, the spider of the Kremlin, did not use his army to help the Armenians, precisely so that Armenia would be humiliated militarily and rendered completely dependant on him for security in the future.

Putin further refused to aid the Armenians a few months ago when Azerbaijan seized the Armenian inhabited exclave of Nargorno Karabakh and expelled its 105,000 Armenian inhanbitants.

I liken Putin's inaction duringt he Azeris depradations in Nagorno Karabakh to Stalin holding back the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw in 1944 as the Nazis massacred the Polish citizens of that city.

Stalin's failure to help the Poles was intended to weaken Poland to such an extent that it could later be more readily incorporated into what would become the Soviet bloc.

Back to the present.

While all this is happening my assessment is that the Vatican, the moral conscience of the world, is in the hands of a false Pope.

India, sometimes styled the world's most populous democracy, has just elected a politician to high office in the Tamil Nadu region whose name is Stalin and whose father, also called Stalin, is a power broker in that region.

Can you hear the echoes?

The Stalins of India are quite open about the fact that they were named after the aforementioned Russian mass murderer Joseph Stalin.

Stalin is their first name, not their family name.

So no current revelation about the Russian Stalin's murder of thirty million people (and counting) has been enough to deter the Hindu Stalins from using the name as an honorific.

Stalin pere is ranked the 22nd most powerful man in India.

Father and son say they are atheists but claim not to have any particular hostility to religion.

Classy, classy people.

Meanwhile, the United States of America having been governed for four years by President Joe Biden, a man who doesn't know what he believes, now looks set to re elect Biden's predecessor former President Donald Trump, a man who believes in nothing.

Yet another formerly famous wag has supposedly noted: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce."