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This Month's Scripture Verse:

For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
I Timothy 6:10

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Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Views From The Outside For May 19,2026

 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, May 15, 2026

What Can Peace Through Strength Mean?

The President has been trying to justify his actions and his new $1.5  trillion DOD budget by saying he plans for peace through strength. Of course what that means is implied rather than spelled out. What the President wants Americans to believe that, for him, it means that for him, as the Commander and Chief,  that he is defending our nation from aggression. That our nation must be militarily strong enough so that no nation would dare to attack us. But such an understanding assumes that 'peace through strength' can only have one meaning. My suspicion is that that saying has  more than one meaning. 

To decipher what 'peace through strength' can mean requires that we define what the words 'peace' and 'strength' could mean. And the problem with that is that each of those words can have at least 2 meanings.

For example, how could peace come through strength? We should note that how strength results in peace is that strength acts as a form of intimidation. That if we are strong enough, others would be too afraid to attack us. But such a use of strength is a passive form of intimidation. Passive intimidation means that the mere existence of our state of strength can make others to afraid to attack us. 

Active intimidation is when a group or nation exercises force to show its strength and what could happen if attacked. In other words, a nation or group will exercise that force again unless a given nation or group complies with the stronger one's demands. And so when we look our President's policies, he seems to be employing both forms of intimidation.

As for peace, we can see from America's culture wars, that peace can mean being coerced into complying or to peacefully coexist as equals. Note that with the first form of peace comes hierarchy. That is the peace being sought is when one nation or group is dominating, in varying degrees, over another nation or group. 

The latter is what we see how. some Christians approach their role in society. That these Christians want to have a certain measure of control over a society that consists of non-Christians and Christians. An alternative to fighting culture wars is for us Christians to decide to coexist as equals with unbelievers in society. That is, we will disagree with the cultural values of many unbelievers, but we will defend their equality in society by defending their right to live out those values. That we will not try to coerce unbelievers to at least behave in ways that follow our own cultural values.

If we look at Trump's attempts to rewrite trade deals, we find that Trump used both forms of intimidation to coerce complieance with his demands. Trump used the economic dependence that other nations have with the U.S. as leverage, which would be passive intimidation. He then employed active intimidation by issuing new tariffs to further his advantage over America's trading partners. It isn't that his tactics always worked; it is that that was his approach.

Trump has used his military capture of Maduro from Venezuela and his attacks on Iran as active intimidation over other nations so that they could see what could happen if they either don't comply with his demands or thought about attacking us. His new $1.5 trillion DOD budget is to provide a passive form of intimidation.

What is most dangerous here is the form of peace that Trump is pursuing. Though he is always marketing his actions and those of his opponents in ways to make it appear that  he is seeking the kind of peace that most people want in the world, in reality, as the National Security Strategy of 2025 (click here for the document) reveals, Trump's peace through strength means coercing other nations, especially in the Western Hemispher, into some level of compliance. Such a peace is, more often than not, a peace without justice. And that kind of peace often begets future conflicts.

Peace through coercion is what we see in Trump's attempts to get a deal with Iran to end the war. Trump is not in a hurry to end the war, because, IMO, both the Stock Market and major businesses are benefiting from the war and ceasefire. Those businesses include those that belong to the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex. That means that he doesn't appear to care about the economic hardships that most American citizens,as well as those around the world, are suffering from. Nor does he appear to care about the war victims. And so what kind of peace can we expect if Trump has his way with Iran?

The kind of peace we pursue says much about what 'peace through strength' actually means.




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Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Views From The Outside For May 12, 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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Friday, May 8, 2026

The 2nd Amendment And The Middle East

American conservatives are fond of, and even zealous for, proclaiming peopleˋs right to bear arms. But much of their enthusiasm loses its luster when applying that right to those outside of our borders.

Take Israel and the Occupied Territories for example. Many conservative Americans will mindlessly repeat the claim that Israel has a right to defend itself. But how many of those same conservative Americans will also say that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves. And guess which group is most threatened by the other.

If we look at Israelˋs neighbors, very few are allowed to acquire enough arms to have a deterence against aggression from a neighbor. Palestinians have been forbidden from such acquisitions. But so to has Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. One has to wonder when Saudi Arabia and Egypt will have reached their quota for weapons. And yet, Israelˋs regional policies strongly suggest that its immediate neighbors should insist on acquiring as many weapons as possible in case of future military actions practiced by Israel.

Itˋs not true that there are no Palestinians who are allowed to be armed. And certainly, Lebanon has an army. But despite the constant attacks by Israel on Lebanon prior to  the recent war against Iran, Lebanon is not allowed to acquire any force that could deter Israel from its military actions. And so this is where we need to admit to the privilege Americans have to bear arms rather than claiming that it is a right. That is because regardless of whether one is talking about freedom, liberty, or rights, when equality is absent, what we are really. talking about is privilege.

Why don't Israel's neighbors have the same right to bear arms like some Americans believe that they themselves are entitled to? That has to do with America's Security Strategy. In that work, the U.S. government's goal is to prohibit any non American-friendly Middle Eastern nation from gaining a strategic advantage over the area. That boils down to only granting Israel the "right" to acquire as many arms as its heart's desire.

And so the short of it is that America limits the acquisition of weapons to those nations that it deems to be an actual or possible threat to its interests. Therefore, we need to ask if our government can limit the weapons that a foreign nation can have depending whether our government feels threatened by them, why can't our government limit the weapons that its citizens can have when others feel threatened,  or even worse, by those weapons?


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Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Views From The Outside For May 5, 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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Friday, May 1, 2026

What Does The Iran War Tell l Us About Which Religion Is The Religion Of Peace

 Many of my fellow Christian friends often tell me that Christianity is the religion of peace while Islam is not. Of course, such claims are made with a selective use of both history and the present. And so I thought that we could compare the religions of the countries involved in the Iran War to see which religion is the religion of peace. 

We have 3 horse race here to determine the winner. We have Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Christianity will be represented by the U.S. Judaism will be represented by Israel. Islam will be represented by Iran, Pakistan, and the Gulf Coast Countries. Answers to the following questions will determine the winner(s). We should note that the answers are obvious.

What is the religion of the country that is currently engaged in ethnic cleansing of indigenous people from the land that it is trying to annex? 

What is the religion of the country that practices/sponsors a significant amount of terrorism? 

What is the religion of the country that has provided the most help in getting the current ceasefire talks started? 

What is the religion of the country or countries that have not retaliated after being attacked multiple times? 

What is the religion of the country that threatened the Pope?

What is the religion of the country/countries that has/have caused thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people in the recent war?

What is the religion of the nation that has broken multiple ceasefires?

What is the religion of the nation that has threatened a whole civilization?

What is the religion of the country/countries that has/have exercised the harshest suppression of its citizens?

In this 3 horse race, we have neither winners nor religions that even show. What we have is a religion that places. That religion is Islam. And so while many Americans brag about the Judeo-Christian values of America's founding, the current Iran War implies that such boasting is empty and, instead, should be a lament. And I am writing this as a religiously conservative Christian. I should add that though in this case, the nation that represents Christianity is hurting the reputation of Christianity, there are too many times where I have done the same with some of the decisions I have made.

Still,  how the U.S. and Israel are representing their respective religions is going a long way to discredit those religions on a national level. In terms of Christianity, Christendom did much to discredit Christianity in the eyes of many which contributed much to the birth of Critical Theory and Post Modernism. Who knows what reactions that the current representatives of Judaism and Christianity, represented by Israel and the U.S. respectively in this article, will produce in the future or perhaps the near future in different parts of the world including the in Israel and the U.S.?

What we should note about America's past actions is that they were done covertly as to give the impression that the American government cared about exhibiting the appearance of being concerned for international law. And so what was done in the shadows is now not only being done in the open, it is done with much arrogance.




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Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Views From The Outside For April 28, 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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