YouTube:
Discussion Notes:
US primaries: it seems very likely that the candidates will be respectively Trump and Clinton now. Where does that leave us from a Christian, an American and a world perspective? We know Ted Cruz’ perspective:- http://www.
Does the mainstream (i.e., liberal) media really want Trump to be the nominee? See link.
In addition, I continue to heard reports of a whole range of stories, some of which are beginning to come out from Trump’s upcoming fraud trial, to mafia ties being readied for after he locks up the nomination. In a year that in normal circumstances would be diffcult for Democrats, and with such a bad candidate as Hillary Clinton virtually impossible, Trump would be about the only way the Dems could win. http://thefederalist.com/
I still have quite a lot of the items where the US and the UK don’t understand each other left over from last week… one of which is that we completely fail to understand why anyone would vote for Trump (whose surname is unfortunately, via the meaning of a brass instrument, also a term for a fart in some areas of the UK… which might lead me to comment on people who emit a lot of hot air which smells bad).
From Elgin:- I am troubled by things such as this. If these are really that dangerous where is the government demanding a recall of all such products? Are these prohibited in the EU?
No, they aren’t prohibited in the EU. If there is a link, it seems to be considered a very very slight one. The situation is different if you consider talc which is inhaled, which I believe can be linked with mesothelioma.
In the last day or two, we have seen tear gas used on two sets of migrants in Europe, one on the Macedonian border (where Macedonia has decreed that they will only accept a very limited number of migrants crossing even considering that they virtually all want merely to transit Macedonia en route for Northern Europe, thus creating a buildup of 7000+ migrants in a camp on the border designed for only 2000) when they tried to storm a gate in the border fence, and near Calais and the tunnel entrance where (with UK prompting) the French have cleared a substantial amount of a refugee camp (called “the jungle”, so not a desirable location) which is composed of people wanting to come to the UK and whom we won’t let in. Meanwhile, there are over 1.5 million refugees currently in Turkey and a similar number in Lebanon, and the flow doesn’t seem to be reducing much. While there is currently an uneasy ceasefire in Syria (not including ISIS and al-Nusra), few people think there’s a long term solution on the horizon. The issue of the Christian imperative to hospitality, particularly to the distressed, is not figuring large in the consciousness of most of the (majority Christian) EU countries. This is accentuated by tear gassing some of them…
Meanwhile, in the UK, the campaigns for staying in the EU and leaving it are just taking off (there’s a clear link, as a lot of people in the UK are paranoid about refugee numbers and think that staying in weakens our position). Both the main political parties are divided, with quite a few prominent Conservatives joining the “Out” campaign, while significant numbers of Labour voters and a rather smaller number of their MPs are not following the traditional internationalist line one would expect of the left (not that much of the Labour Party is very left these days – compare the Democrats in the States). There are issues here a little similar to those in the States of attitudes to the Federal government (the EU in some ways functions a bit like a federal government for Europe), but the main one is trade. Personally, I’m not wonderfully happy about the way the EU operates, but losing privileged access to a market of 55 million people would be so damaging that I can’t countenance exit (and besides that, Norway, which is not in the EU, finds that it has to pay up and regulate itself pretty much as would be the case if it were a member, but without having a vote…). What I fear is that the dislike of even bigger government and the fear of immigrants will outweigh the fear that we’ll tank our economy…