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This Month's Scripture Verse:

1 But false prophets also appeared among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their indecent behavior, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep..
II Peter 2:1-3

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Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Views From The Outside For October 27, 2026

 Views From The Outside

The purpose of this page is to list news stories and reports from mostly Western sources outside of the U.S. You can use Google Translate to translate articles that are printed in another language. 

So far, news sources include:

International

From Canada

From England

From France

From Germany

From Russian Source 

From Spain

From Switzerland

From Ukraine


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Monday, October 26, 2026

I Kind Of Voted Today

The wife and I went in to vote early. Only because of tremors I have had since the 1980s, I needed the wife to fill out the form and mark the ballot.

Gone are the days when I could afford to vote for 3rd party candidates. Those days are in the past because of the current corruption and insanity of the Republican Party. Conservative parties do not need to be insane like today's Republican Party. But what we see now is the result of authoritarianism infecting the party and revolving around a leader who needs serious help, not power. Trump is, like his hero, Vlad Putin, not facing reality. Only Putin has much more intelligence and a better hold on reality than Trump. But one of the tragedies of our time is found in the fact that as either leader gets more militarily aggressive, the closer mankind comes to experiencing mutually assured destruction as warned against in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto (click here for the source). 

Of course the Democratic Party is no prize. Run by a bought out DNC, the Democratic Party is responsible for making Trump and his cohort seem like the only rational choice to many Americans. I have run into some of those American Trump voters and though that group is not a monolith, one characteristic they have in common is ignorance spurred by taking up residence in a small information bubble.

The short of it is that in almost every single federal, state, and local election, a vote for a Republican is a vote that helps enable the Trump's agenda. It is a vote for recreating America in Russia's image. And, finally, it is a vote for Vlad Putin. Neoliberalism has taken over much of the world and its logical consequence are corrupt oligarchies like the one that rules over Russia. And though we should vote for the Dems here, a vote for them is not necessarily a vote against Neoliberalism. In most cases, it is simply a vote that slows down Neoliberalism to a crawl at best. But at least electing Dems will protect the free speech rights of those who oppose Neoliberalism.




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Friday, October 23, 2026

We Need To Be Relentless

Bulgarian Bulge by Don Ellis

The above link is to one of my favorite pieces of music with one of my favorite recorded piano improvisations. For the technically minded, the time signature of this music continually switches between 33/16 and 36/16. It is Bulgarian folk music played by a jazz big band recorded in 1971. I  have been enjoying learning how to play a piano version of this music thanks to the graciousness and generosity of Ellis's then pianist, Milcho Leviev, who is originally from Bulgaria and who helped me start to learn how to play it. And though I cannot play the piano version of this piece like he can and how it should be played, I have had, and still have, fun trying to learn how to play it. It is my favorite piece of music to play. I will always be grateful for the kindness that Leviev showed to me.

If you access the link, you might be required to login into a Gmail account--I am not sure if non-gmail accounts are recognized by Youtube--in order to play this particular Youtube page. I am providing this link and pointing to the last part of Leviev's solo because, if my music knowledge is correct, it is based on a part of the 4th movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony only it is played in 33/16--that is if my music knowledge is correct. Regardless of whether that is correct, the theme played by Leviev repeats around 5 times with variations and to me, this points to the title of this blog article. To me, the last part of his improvisation conjures up the notion of being relentless. And for any of us who oppose Trump's authoritarian direction for our government, we, not just seasoned activists, need to step up and be relentless in our opposition to Trump and where he is leading our nation. Again, we, which involves everyone who opposes the direction in which Trump is leading our nation, need to step up, show up, and peacefully and legally act up.

Where is Trump leading our nation? Even before the 2024 election, either it was stated in this blog or I had said to individuals and in comments on the internet, that if Trump is elected, Russia will be our future. And it isn't just the corruption of his administration, his zeal for more and more power, his suppression of free speech on an institutional level, and his use of religion as a façade for the corrupt oligarchy is for the ever growing authoritarian rabbit hole he, and a gang of seemingly disjoint groups, are taking this nation . But his domestic policies are not the only indicators of  his authoritarian direction, consider his foreign policies, especially his actions  and words about Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, as well as who he seems to admire the most. 

At the beginning, he blamed Zelensky and Ukraine for the war as he was making some false claims about it. He really never condemned the invasion nor did he put pressure on  Putin to stop. And now, his support for Putin and Russia has become oververt and exlicit. And in the proposed summit between JinPing, Putin, and Trump, it appears that what a former MI6 chief predicted: a world dominated by three strongman leaders who divy up the nations between themselves (click here for the blog article).

Why Trump wants to lead our nation down that path is not  yet clear. Is it because of his admiration for Puting? Or is it because Putin has enough dirt on Trump to make him act like a puppet? Is it a combination of the two? Or are there some other reasons?

We should note that Trump has some notable domestic allies who are supporting/enabling  his actions. First, there are many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians who have a penchant for authoritarianism that now includes the intense fear of the LGBT community having escaped its prison of marginalization. According to some of them, a dictator like Putin who oppresses that community in Russia is preferable to a democracy in which they would have to share the nation as equals. That is because to Putin and at least some who follow Trump, Democracy brings decadence. It is as if the SCOTUS Obergefell decision was the last straw in the moral degradation of our nation. Of course the only morals that they are considering are related to sex. For when it comes to the dehumanization and the following expolitation and abuse of groups based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and one's biological sex, such are not signs of moral degredation.

Of course there are also the techno-oligarchs and other wealthy elites who are either Trump's enablers or his puppet masters. For the sake of profits, these wealthy elites have morphed into moral chamelions who do whatever they  can to appease the current governmental leaders of our nation. Their ability to change  their moral colors come from their desire to keep maximizing their corporate profits.

When we see the power that Trump has already garnered, the direction of the future of our nation in which Trump is leading us, and those who have Trump's back, we are in a desparate situation. And so  we find that our Obi-Wan Kenobi, our only hope, has a name is spelled 'RELENTLESS.' These midterms might be our last stand for an unforeseen time period. It is like we are in game 7 of the last World Series that will afterwards  will not be played for an indeterminant amount of time and so for all players, including all pitchers regardless of their series workload, we must have an 'all hands on deck' attitude. All of us, not just us seasoned activists, must be relentless in peacefully and legally resisting Trump's Presidency. 

And part of that resistance involves voting against almost every Republican candidate. Because, for almost every Republican candidate, a vote for a Republican is a vote that further enables the Revolution that the Trump-led Republican party is pursuing. We should expect that Trump's authoritarianism will, IMO,  increase significantly if Trump's party holds majorities in Congress.

One more thing must be said. What is now needed the most by this country is for more Americans to become less consumer oriented and more activist active. That does not mean that we make a complete break from being happy consumers--that is if we can afford to be that way. It does mean that, at this point in time, we become more activist and less consumerist in how we live our lives. This is how we must be if we are to save our Democracy from the logical concequence of our current form of Capitalism: a corrupt oligarachy. The midterms just might be our last chance to stop Trump's express train motoring toward a Russian style government.



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Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Views From The Outside For October 20, 2026

 Views From The Outside

The purpose of this page is to list news stories and reports from mostly Western sources outside of the U.S. You can use Google Translate to translate articles that are printed in another language. 

So far, news sources include:

International

From Canada

From England

From France

From Germany

From Russian Source 

From Spain

From Switzerland

From Ukraine


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Friday, October 16, 2026

Should A Blue Wave Succeed, We Still Have Much Of The Same War To Fight

 Many of my fellow protesters are very much hoping for, if not expecting, a Blue Wave to sweep over the midterm elections and install a relevant Congress. Of course, should the elections be fair enough to produce such a result, we need to remember January 6, 2021 to expect how Trump might respond to challenging elections. What would he do either to try to rig the elections or block the installation of newly elected Dems is anyone's guess.

But, as we might do in logic, suppose that there is a big Bkue Wave, and the Dems make Congress relevant again, what can we expect? As Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden have shown, we will have more freedom of speech but a kindler and gentler same economic system. And so the basic question is what will life be like after Trump? How different will it be? What can we expect?

In terms of economic systems, we should note that starting with Reagan, our nation transitioned from relying on a Bretton-Woods  system for Capitalism, which started after the end of WW II and extended to through the 1970s, to  Neoliberalism or a Neliberal form of Capitalism.

What is Neoliberalism? It could best be explained by the Biblical story of Cain and Abel (click here for the pertinent part of this story). In that story, Cain kills his brother Abel out of jealousy. When God asks Cain about the whereabouts of his brother, Cain responds with a rhetorical question: 'Am I my brother's keeper?'

Those who wish to directly benefit from Neoliberal policies, which include a huge reduction in tax rates that would have funded social safety net programs and the cutting of regulations that would have protected the people and the environment, desire to rhetorically ask Cain's question. What is the justification for this cutting  of social responsibilities? It is the assertion that everyone is solely responsible for their own plight in life. And so whatever results from the cuts in those safety nets and protective regulations, the end result is that each person is solely responsible for their own standing in life.

What is absent from those who would play the role of Cain in today's world is that they are not solely responsible for their own success. They own their success to the workers who provide the goods and/or services that they have sold. In owing their success to the workers, they should note that the ability of the workers to produce depends on their skills, acquired through education,  the health and welfare of those workers which enables them to succeed at their jobs, and the soundness of the communities and society in which they live which contributes to the workers' ability to better focus on performing their jobs well.

Those who would play the role of Cain also own their success to the customers who purchase their goods and/or services. Part of that includes that the ability of the customers to purchase goods and services. 

Those who play the role of Cain also own their success to venders who provide the materials used in producing goods and services. They also own their success to the people involved in selling or transporting those materials they use in producing their goods and/or services.  

Those who play the role of Cain also own their success to the government that provides legal systems and  infrastructures in which their enterprisess can blossom and education for them and their employees.

And those who play the role of Cain also own their success to the environment that affects everything.

In other words, we see others as acting as their brothers' keepers in helping those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism to succeed while visions of ever increasing profits blind them from seeing their responsibilities in acting as their brothers' keepers.

Neoliberalism thrives on consumerism. But when consumerism passes a certain threshold, it can blind us from admitting our responsibilities in being our brothers' keepers.

Neoliberalism in America started with Reagan. Its principles blinded him from seeing the crimes committed by Pinochet in Chile. Its principles blinded him from seeing the sins that the U.S. was committing in both Central America and the Middle East as well as complicity in the future sins of Neoliberalism by establishing a foundation for it here. 

And so regardless of any size of a Blue Wave occurring in the Midterms, because both political parties ascribe to Neoliberalism, we will still have an ideological war to wage. 

However here, we need to be careful. That is because while Neoliberalism as a whole is destroying our democracy, and even our economy, if we approach its destruction employing all-or-nothing thinking which always causes one to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we will include unnecessarily negative tradeoffs in our war against Neoliberalism. 

We need to battle Neoliberalism because of the harm it is doing. The ever increasing wealth dispaity between the classes and races can eventually infringe on economic growth and could lead to political instability. But something else must be added. As Neoliberalism increases in its intensity and consistency, it will eventually shut down our democracy and will lead to a corrupt oligarchy.

Neoliberalism destroys a nation's democracy by continually reducing the social responsibilities that the business and financial communities have toward society. That reduces a democratic government's ability to create and enforce the parameters in which businesses and financial institutes operate. Democratic governments then become impotent in controlling  businesses and financial institutions. As democratic governments become more and more impotent, power continues to flow from the people who were democratically elected to represent us to business and financial elites. And so as the people lose power through a weaker and weaker democratic government, democracy becomes the shrinking person who eventual becomes so small that it disappears. And waiting in the wings for this disintergration are authoritarian leaders who are more than eager to grab the reins controlling the nation.

But despite the problems that Neoliberalism causes, we must not imitate the kind of thinking that proponents of Neoliberalism employ. That is that we must not take and all-or-nothing approach to the issues here. For just as Neoliberalism takes an all-or-nothing approach in assigning responsibility for a person's plight solely to the individual, one can overreact and take the opposite all-or-nothing approach by putting the whole blame for one's position in society on society itself. We need to avoid  unnecessary all-or-nothing thinking approaches. 

Both the individual and society share responsibility for each person's place in life. And the mix of individual and societal responsibility is different for each person seeing that some are more privileged and/or have more abilities and less obstacles than others. And so what we have to accommodate is a race between those who must jump over hurdles racing against those who don't.  

Because the responsibility for each person's plight in life is shared by society and the individual, we need to recognize that those who directly benefit or even defend Neoliberalism have real concerns. And if we are going to stop Neoliberalism, we have to show its defenders that we all need a different kind of thinking than the all-or-nothing thinking that they are employing. And we cannot do that if we attribute to society complete responsibility for each person's life and their life choices. Rather than competing, supporters of Neoliberalism must understand that there are parts of life and society where we need to cooperate and collaborate to be responsible members of society. 

And so we are all our brothers' keepers. And those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism must add to their belief that individuals are responsible for their own place in society, society, including its economic practices, also shares responsibility for where people end up in life. And thus those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism must embrace, rather than shrink back from their social responsibilities. One way by which they can do that is to not manipulate the government to lower tax rates and reduce necessary regulations.





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Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Views From The Outside For October 13, 2026

Views From The Outside

The purpose of this page is to list news stories and reports from mostly Western sources outside of the U.S. You can use Google Translate to translate articles that are printed in another language. 

So far, news sources include:

International

From Canada

From England

From France

From Germany

From Russian Source 

From Spain

From Switzerland

From Ukraine


<< Previous Views                                                        Next Views >>


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