JOHN TWIGG -- Singh haranguing Trudeau for not haranguing Trump??

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh

So yesterday, I came in from doing some chores in time to watch the noon news and was just in time to see (and later re-watch) federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh denouncing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for having failed to adequately denounce U.S. President Donald Trump's handling of the race-war riots breaking out in more than 100 cities across the United States.

 

Talk about a pot calling a kettle black - in this case a pink-turbaned Sikh suggesting a francophone Liberal was too cowardly to confront the most powerful regime in the world, when in reality Trudeau had quite eloquently waited about 20 seconds before declining to criticize Trump's handling of recent events in the United States.

 

I give Trudeau credit for sending a clear message without words in it: Canada is a liberal democracy that tries to be (moderately) more accepting of racial differences than the U.S. is but in keeping with the norms of international relations it is not appropriate (not "diplomatic") for the First Ministers of nations to criticize the domestic affairs of other First Ministers, and in the prudent practicalities of the huge and complex Canada-U.S. trading relationships it would have been foolhardy for Trudeau to lip off at Trump.

 

Surely Singh knows that, or else he's an idiot, and for him to use that angle anyway in order to pander to the NDP's narrow political base says a lot more about Singh than Trudeau - not to mention that the whole U.S. race-relations crisis is yet to play out fully anyway and that the charges against the Minneapolis policemen involved in the wrongful death of black demonstrator George Floyd (which have just been upgraded) have yet to be tried in court.

 

That's a very important point to remember: in justice-keeping courts people are presumed innocent until proven guilty and that's key in the Floyd case too because we do not yet know the full story of why Floyd was arrested in the first place but I'll wager it's more complex and adverse for Floyd than the mainstream media have yet reported and we do know (or at least have heard from seemingly reliable sources) that he had illegal drugs in his system, he worked as a security guard in the drug-laden nightclub scene and allegedly had tried to pass a forged banknote at a convenience store (which caused a teller to call police and thus trigger the whole schmozzle) [among other rumours I can't substantiate].

 

Anyway, the whole story is stunning. The United States economy and society are suddenly paralyzed by race riots that American political leaders have been more or less unwilling or unable to quell, with Trump's use of military forces to try to retain order perhaps only escalating what is already a phenomenally bad moment in U.S. history.

 

First we had global warming, promoted (wrongfully) as an existential threat, then we had the COVID-19 pandemic which really was an existential threat - if not to millions of people then at least to the economies of almost every jurisdiction in the Free World that shut down to try to help fight it, and maybe some communist ones too, starting with China where the deadly virus began. [It probably came from humans eating bats there.]

 

The COVID crisis itself was and still is a huge phenomenal travail upon the whole world, something that killed and still is killing trade and commerce massively and disrupted the lives of billions of people, something that blew away the (unscientific) notions that human-caused global warming was an existential threat urgently requiring global action (which was a cynical ruse spread by a nasty clique of capitalist and political opportunists). [It's mainly natural solar variations that cause climate changes and NOT human carbon emissions.]

 

In fact the depth and breadth of the COVID crisis was and still is profoundly negative, which is evident in a front-page story in the Victoria Times-Colonist yesterday in which a husband and wife on Salt Spring Island had died in an apparent murder-suicide tragedy triggered at least in part by the financial pressures of the COVID crisis.

 

Has the phony climate crisis caused many murder-suicides? Not that I'm aware of, but COVID has, probably more than several thousand mortalities in recent days and weeks, especially in the recent riots in American cities and other local stresses around the world due to the massive disruptions of trade and commerce.

 

And then as if all that wasn't enough along come the race riots and political stresses in the United States, whose toll has yet to be taken, and which could change the outcome of the forthcoming U.S. Presidential election which is arguably the most important pivotal event on humanity's short-term agenda, arriving this Fall, and featuring former president Barack Obama and throngs of purportedly progressive people going overboard in their attempts to thwart a second term for Trump.

 

Sigh. So, what is to be done?

 

I know myself that I've at times been struggling to cope with the profundity of it all; it's existential not only for me but for almost everyone.

 

Is all of that stress part of God's Plan? That's a fair question because it's quite easy to find the foregoing events in Bible prophecies, such as Matthew 24 and Luke 21 among many many others. But really humanity could have avoided all of these troubles if they had repented 2,000 years ago or anytime since.

 

However, the good news is that once humanity learns it needs to live according to God's ideas there will be a period of wonderful peace and prosperity, with a guy we call Jesus coming back to rule and reign for a thousand years and finally teach us how to live more peaceably and prosperously.

 

Meanwhile I can assure Jagmeet Singh that unless he apologizes and retracts a whole bunch of stuff he's said and done in recent months (e.g. pandering to climate issues) I won't be voting for him or his party (unless my local candidate is phenomenally good and is willing to stand up against him, which is unlikely). The other choices remain to be seen.

 

Parting Thought -- important Holy Day Pentecost went unnoticed this year

 

I was so distracted by all of the socio-political pandemonium of first COVID-19 and then the massive riots from the in-custody murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis that I actually over-looked observing Pentecost on Sunday, one of the key Holy Days mandated forever in The Bible, as did many other people.

 

Missing such an event was out of character for me because for about 40 years I have chosen to keep the original Old Testament Sabbath and Holy Days in the belief that properly observing the Sabbaths were to be and thus still are "a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever" in Exodus 31:13 and 31:17 and that includes Pentecost which "shall be a statute for ever in all your dwellings throughout your generations" as it says in Leviticus 23:21 with similar phrases in Lev. 23:31,41.

 

My oversight was partly because my local church like almost all other churches was shut down due to COVID (and Pentecost this year happened to fall on a Sunday) but I also missed their online service which was to have been on the Pentecost theme.

 

I did have Pentecost marked on my calendar too but in the swirl of so many big news media things I just got distracted. But when I realized my error I was led to do some research on what I had missed and what we believers in God and followers of Christ are expected to do on the day that falls 50 days (i.e. "Penta") after the Days of Unleavened Bread (which begins the day after Passover and lasts for a week).

 

But what is the "meaning" of Pentecost?

 

Apart from the 50-days angle, it symbolizes "Christ's sacrifice for the remission of our sins" according to the late Herbert W. Armstrong in his booklet "Pagan Holidays or God's Holy Days - Which" and it symbolizes "the first part of the spiritual harvest - the calling-out of the Church" and later in Acts 2 we see the Apostles of Jesus collected together in the upper room to observe Pentecost when they were visited by the first advent of The Holy Spirit - the risen Jesus in Spirit!

 

So, Pentecost IS a most important day to "remember" and the fact that it went un-noticed this year due to COVID and all and during President Trump's struggles to maintain civil order during nationwide demonstrations is a troubling sign.

 

Do Americans still trust in God?

Maybe some do, but not many.

John Twigg ... is a veteran independent journalist now based in Campbell River. He can be contacted at john@johntwigg.com.