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China has taken an aeroplane of the United States, one evidently jammed with sensitive monitoring equipment, and all of this, by the simple expedient of attacking it with air force jets. Forced to land on its oriental soil, it is now soiled further with prying eyes, by various reports, possibly not averse to taking what perhaps is a welcome addition to sundry other spoils of the last year or so. It is good to have the USA for a resource in invention; so much cheaper than inventing yourself.

If what many deem international airspace can be called Chinese, and any one can say what it is when it seems a good thing to that nation, then of course, shoot anything: why not ? or so harass and harry it that a collision may occur, or in any other way secure its early landing ? Such a plan would be far from beyond belief. The "interception" which is reported to have occurred at least appears a sure action, initiative, and that a collision occurred would imply an intimacy about the proceeding, to say no more, intended as provocative, obstructive, or both.

After all, if in some way or other, it were to be forced to land, what a coup! They might find out anything, while arguing that the US ought not to allow its pilots to be so troubled by Chinese pilots that a collision would be even possible, and making other sounds of menace. The British bluster that could emanate at times of yore, seems now well learned by Chinese authority, who have asked for an apology, but not it seems from themselves for theft and kidnapping people who were not in agreed airspace belonging to China, or for the damage one of their planes wrought on the US one, resulting from  some form of initial interference, or for the "detention" of US citizens.

Jiang Zemin does appear right in one part, namely in his reference to calling right wrong; but appears to have forgotten which one it was that was wrong about being right. On any ordinary reading, it is China, for abusing the privileges of hospitality, resulting from "interception" in what is not recognised as its own country, acting as if another nation's property were its own, and manifestly seeking to obtain military secrets resulting from opportunity secured by interference.

Of course if there were some rule that no one can use international airspace - or what is not agreed private air space - to do what he wants, then that would be violated by those who seek to monitor such exceedingly aggressive posturings as China has, for example, recently made towards the free country of Taiwan, to which some of its pursued citizens went for safety from the absolutist, atheist socialism which was forced on the country after World War II.

If they come anywhere near Taiwan, it is but one more insurrection of compulsion over liberty, of a non-elected government over an elected one. It would involve things such as plans to compromise the liberty of those relatively few remaining Chinese who enjoy a good measure of it, in Taiwan, whereas the mainland already swelters in a heat not merely meteorological, and appears no match for the productivity of the eyed Island.

Whether then, the interception involved actual gunfire on the US aeroplane, as some reports appear to indicate, or clumsy manoeuvring and provocation, the result is the same: bring down the US plane and inspect it. If this, by some marvel, were not at all involved in the plan to use aggression in the air, in the first place, the result is not altered. The course now taken utilises the result as freely as if it had been planned, and the bravado with which it is pursued, fully equipped with bluster about apology while they pry and investigate what is not their own; so that it at least fits neatly with such a possibility as prior plan. Certainly, the plan was not peaceful.

Thus whether or not the securing of the US aeroplane was planned, and whether or not the US plane was fired on, the current methods of China in the matter bring about the same thing: refusal to desist from appropriating what they wish of the property of another country, interested in protecting, as is its custom for some time, those whom others wish simply to over-run. The fact that they have already, with no possible show of law, taken over the rest of what could be called China, in no way increases any imaginary 'right' to prosecute their compulsions on those who prefer China otherwise, and find it better to move towards consulting the people about government, towards the point of voting for representatives.

In any of the possibilities, therefore back of this aerial episode, the provocation is the same; in one case it is much heightened; in all cases it is significant, and can only with the utmost difficulty be differentiated from war, as with Hitler, before Munich. If this does not come, perhaps the methods of Munich need not come either. It is not that peace-making is not a blessed art; but rather than when bullying tactics are used against a nation the US has in practice and word given indication it wishes to protect from aggression, with whatever pretext, the time may come when once again, its belligerence needs to be chastened, and its endeavours made costly. Meanwhile, the method of simply TAKING United States knowledge, to the extent it desires, from a plane which the US regards as international airspace, is the one China has chosen.

Of course, as with so very many cheap methods, there is a long-term problem. What if the USA were not there: where then would the cheap results and productivity enhancements come from, in time of need, to meet the thronging needs of the oppressed nation!

However, it is, to be sure, a little better now, since Deng in particular took to using many of the free enterprise methods, long despised but so productive; and this ludicrous contradiction of its so pure principles, ones deemed too good for recalcitrant Russia in former days, is nevertheless quite profitable. After all, provided unelected people can rule the masses, and have the authority of lords, if not the incomes as well, and certainly the priorities once associated with that other and earlier form of aristocracy, what does it matter ?  That is to say, to the rulers! After all, slaughter of youth as at Tiananmen is necessary for stability, we are advised officially, as no doubt likewise for the continuing efforts so well attested in  Paul Marshall's work, Their Blood Cries Out, to suppress free thought, crush sincere worship and harry whatever is thought to endanger their rule.

Stability ? That is quite a good name for dominance untouched, if you ignore the moral aspect, that simple thing which Communism used to mouth, the welfare of the people, those who have souls, lives, thoughts, ideas and vocations.  These however, who are these ? but those to be told, directed, commanded or commandeered for the Party, its purposes and its power. The people are subjugated and to be pitied; the rule is subtle and its assaults on the people of Christ are closely documented in paths that become only a people sold. But what of those who do not participate in the sale!

When memory brings back how narrowly China was lost to this establishment of atheism, this moral vacuum, that invents its own morals, but not its own brains or bodies, makes rules that suit, treats human beings as ballast on the State journey, objects for its  welfare, a State without meaning, an invention of fever with all the pangs of one, this fictitious invention, when the tiring Chiang Kai Shek's armies having been much used against Japan, now met these who issued forth to their destruction! it is a grief. This lovable people are taken. China smiles well if you sell your soul; but the price, infinite, is ludicrous in comparison with the tortured procedures of oppression, even if some, select, as in so many other systems, swim on the surface of superficial prosperity, content with their sale, subjects of State.
 
 

• When one  thus ponders the magical potions of dreams and muscles joined to make China servile to new rulers,
• arising in the devastations wrought by Japan on a tired people;
• and sees the parallel in Russia,
• this time after World War I,
• when, with shattered armies on the one side,
• and tireless dreams of property on the other,
• the people were enticed, no, not to vote,
• but to co-operate adequately for the narrow win which led to Communism opening its maw,
• like some huge amoeba,
• enshrouding the lost in its digestive processes,
• what is left but to lament!

It is well to lament

for the estimated tens or even more, of millions slaughtered at the vicious whim of invalid thought, intemperate hatred of this or that, so long as it was not oneself or what one could collect about one,

through the violence of this chaotic world of Communist thought bewitched into
producing directions into an undirected world
(cf. News 98, SMR pp. 925-926),
law into a disordered system,
prescription into the vacuous, and
actually making people for one instant believe such intoxication (cf. Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital Millenium  8, and SR   9 , SMR p. 614 and Index) -

rather well brought out in Dostoevsky's work, The Possessed,  and in fictional conversations, no stranger than these.
 

As to  the perfidy, pretence and cynicism, lust and parody of man,  it is for a lamentation. As to the butchery, and prolonged insult and assault, torturous, insidious, it is one of the chief calamities that have ever stricken this race, in its gullibility, vulnerability and mania for control without God by those blighted by ignorance, and little incommoded by love. How readily is this wrought when a populace has long refused the truth, and so is assailed by flesh.

If one can rejoice, it is at the courageous  realism of the Christians who, turned into objects for digestion in the amoeba's middle, gave nothing to its appetite, and like Solzhenitsyn, exposed its perfidy, that dream which became a Niagara amongst nightmares, and charged for the folly of those who took it, or perhaps like Lenin (cf. Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 8, SR   9,
Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming... Ch. 1) alleged that they did, while eaten themselves by a cynicism, which made them yet the hungrier.

How amazing that the Russian parliament in the earlier days of 'democracy', following Yeltsin, should stop to receive Bibles. But it is not only to get the book, it is to look, and see, and understand, and believe, and be converted, and live like it, with love for one's neighbour and worship for God, the Maker, the Creator, the Redeemer, so that it is not thought which works, alone, but life, and the power of God: it is this which is needed. While Russia languishes, its new head toying with two flags, the imperial eagle and the dictatorial hammer and sickle, weapons used on the thought of the people with violence for long, China is in acquisitive mode.

How right is the Biblical warning: Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people! How ripe are the warnings so often given to Jerusalem, to the nations, in Jeremiah, Isaiah! They do not tarry, but events now enter with the dash of the dynamic that nears the predicted end. Neither Matthew 24 nor II Thessalonians 2, or I Thessalonians 5, suggest that the events of the present predicted era, languish. They augment rather like a cyclotron. The unbearable cannot by its very nature last long (cf. Matthew 24:22); and this time, the phenomenon of violent falsity being world-wide in divine conception, as God surveyed the scene we now inherit, there is a limit.

It may not have arrived yet; but its methods and precincts are now inhabited.

The dealings as with friends, with enemies of God, activated by teaching decree and invasion of the minds of men with force, is never wise. It leads to just such contrived relationships and awful alternatives as could arise now, and if not now, at any time. With so much sunk in China, the US and Taiwan for that matter, stand to lose enormously if that nation simply takes what is in her land, as she has taken the US plane now. Nor is it without national exemplification in the past. Russia, as we have seen, has done her latter day deals likewise, with perilous approaches to what some call 'rogue' States, those who seem accustomed to seeking their will in paths of violence as a principle of operation, whether religious or secular, and not averse to using nuclear means to these ends.

Perhaps to have ignored in most favoured nation treatment the all but incredible violence offered to so many on such a plane of spirit and thought, as occurs in China, will in due course take its toll. However,  it is not this possibility, but the concern for righteousness which is necessary. Self-interest is merely irrational, since no created self is central to the universe. It produces necessary distortion, and probable conflict, rarely denied.

Yet in one or the other, China or Russia, modes and dreams surge still, based on nothing, providing nothing but debasement of the race, tutorship by those who lack the knowledge, and direction by the police who lack the understanding.  Have not Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago and other works, and Koestler in his Darkness at Noon, in this way and that, like the stench to memory of the millions of slow and violent deaths, all too well exposed the hideous natures of these persistent crimes against humanity, better unadorned with most favoured nation treatment!  (cf. Joyful Jottings 24).

So it continues to smoulder, the ideology of tar, of tarnish and of control; but for what ? It is the I AM of politics: IT IS. It brooks no questions. Unlike the true God, it can supply no answers, but it does have guns.

If however this is a benevolent dictatorship, in what is the benevolence which thinks for you, plans for you, and makes you a moral cipher in its philosophic antilogisms, its irrational absurdities of hatching truth to tell where none is found to exist, and so making knowledge available from nullity. But of all this we have spoken before, and that not a little (see Indexes, Communism).
 
 

Now our interest in this significantly parasitic power, this China abased which, with foreign aid swells its vaunted but barren lust, must yield as we further compare its situation with Russia.

Here the aid is not so much in the form of massive investment, as in China, a contribution which of course could be snatched as easily as the US aeroplane, though nobody appears too concerned about that. It is not so much in the form of a strong industrial base being built, as for China with such an oversight as can only make one wonder how blind blindness can become. Rather it is in the form of simple gifts, or loans if you prefer, World Bank enterprises, as if to enable the giant Russia to oppress the better, making arms contracts with US enemies, not merely as such, but as radioactive sources. What Chernobyl has contributed is indicative of what North Korea or Iran could do. Such gratitude is the evidence of the wisdom or lack of it, of making such funds available.

And this ? It is but the beginning of the matter. While power drips from incensed lips, the world is not wide enough for safety. THAT, it is only with the Lord. The world prepares itself for its further follies with strength, so puny as to be pitiable, but so current as to invite the end of the Age.

Meanwhile, with that paternal profundity, which children must find from their political parents, one learns from DW TV in Berlin, the news that now in Russia,  the N TV - an independent body and hence notorious, and one which had evidently gained a loan from the Gas company - found itself a target for control from that body. Later, it was taken over by the Gas company, with ... difficulties of management and finance the ... reason given. Sitting in the Gas company with not a little power ? President Putin.

The Russian journalists, the DW TV news (still free, it seems in Berlin for the present) indicated, with local report shown, were not in any mood to consider the reason given for the take-over, to be the truth. To them, it was the end of freedom of expression in Russia - presumably by TV at any rate.

So does Communism, with due aid from abroad, make its strides on the back of its supporters, the World Bank and the many who having had freedom, have made enough use of it, to be able to send off funds to the oppressors. Perhaps USA will learn before long, that while its vast resources are so easily harnessed by Russia, and harvested by China, and the latter's industries are so significantly swollen by foreign 'investment', the time could come when it will regret its laxities, lack of discipline and of care, as Rome did in the 5th century A.D..
 
 

Meanwhile, in the USA, the usual trend proceeds: from the Bible to various philosophies, outside the churches, within them, in moving towards self-help, self-fulfilment, self-realisation, liberty within, or health of mind by taking care not to do this or that, rather in the way Nietzsche so scathingly indicated in his Thus Spake Zarathustra, after which, in due course, not surprisingly, he became insane. Increasingly, it is not the people of God versus the atheists, in terms of the US and contrasts abroad with pungent competitors or opponents; but even within its shores, it is becoming a haven for a diversity of evil philosophies, like so many rodent cancers, eating away the good flesh, entering with impudence into many bodies still surprisingly called churches, and moving the political will into the hinterland of the secular, humanistic, self-serving and careless.

To be sure, President Bush congratulated the Christian Broadcasters, who had, for their part,  been unimpressed with the National Association of Evangelicals, in their increasing liaison with the NCC. As one of them remarked, that was NEW! It was also a healthy sign.
 
 

However, the trends are not so readily turned, and short of a massive revival not unlike that of 1859 and later years, the USA is in danger of growing more and more parallel to some of the spiritually depraved nations, in the political and philosophical sense, in terms of Biblical righteousness; but with the difference, that so far it is still relatively free. With the lead given by our own nation, Australia, both in Victoria and as far as the Internet is concerned, at the Commonwealth level, with possible aggressive adoption by South Australia - a matter still pending: much of that too may soon be lost.

For this, if you do not yet know of it, see Galloping Events Ch. 7, End-note *2, News 145, and
Pall of Smoke and Diamond of Joy, Chs. 1,  3, 10.

If you do not follow the Lord and His Christ, with heart and soul, then it is likely to be a shallow superficiality which neither saves nor keeps, nor has power nor glory. No nation can long endure without this ministration, except in shame. Whether Assryia or Egypt of old, whether Babylon or Rome, USSR or any other, they come to go; they have their opportunities if by any means they might seek the Lord (Acts 17:26-27,31). They are rich; they lose it; they are wise; they show folly; they are exalted, they become abased, they command, they inherit servitude. No nation has anything, being but a company of people, except it find its source, has this as its own resource, and in this their God, the only true God, find their redemption, one by one; and only then does righteousness exalt a nation, for of right there is nothing without truth, and of that none without the absolute God whose it is, who has spoken, and without whom only the prolixities of futile philosophy, endlessly argue their trackless wastes, self-condemned before they begin. History is one long laboratory to attest the same. (Cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6,  7,  30,  SMR Chs.  3,   5 , 10.)

But now ?

Events are coming like a mirror, to see who is like the assaulted citadel of old, the rejoicing city which dwelt carelessly. The past is not an armoury, unless its truths be heeded; the armour of weaponry can be stolen; hearts stolen from the Lord, can moreover easily betray the nation. It is time to seek the Lord. Jostling with other unbelief, is a gamble of small wisdom, little prosperity and rash defilement. It is like dancing on the roof of an apartment building, on fire.
 

For background on this News Item, see Ch. 3 of Heart and Soul, Mind and Strength.