PRESIDENT MUBARAK DEMURS CITING UNAVAILABLITY -- Just A Minute Radio for Thursday 110203

            Sometimes you need a little background to make the picture come alive.

 

            I’ve been watching and listening to explanations of what’s going on carefully – but I don’t get what I recall of the events leading up to this particular crisis. It’s not as if we’ve not had any difficulty in the Middle East before.

 

            You can – as I did – hunt around amongst the old newspapers and more recent history books trying to get a perspective of why all the hi-octane tempers over there in the area roughly called “The Holy Lane” or, more reverently – The Middle East.

 

            We won’t go back to the days of Moses and his ride in the ark on the Nile… but perhaps if the papers etc. would give you a little more background…. For instance these violent scenes we’re seeing on TV… they didn’t just grow up overnight.  The Suez and all the conflicts around Israel and Philistia – essentially that part of the world at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea – and the countries surrounding it will give you a better idea of the forces that existed there… before oil was discovered and developed in that part of the world.  

 

            Conflict has been there since the times of the Pharaoh’s and before… You recognize of course the Tigris and Euphrates valley … commonly recognized as the cradle of civilization.  But much more recently, even after the fall of the Roman Empire political and economic forces have been at work that contribute to the volatility of the region. 

 

            If you just study the time from say the end of  WWII and read what’s been going on – I was surprised as to how much conflict, argument and continuing back and forth has gone on even since the opening of the twentieth century.  I’m not as good a history student as I should have been. But most of us have only vague ideas of where the boundaries are – and how commerce and development came on even since say the beginning of the 20^th Century… Just bite off that little piece and chew on it a while… it takes a bit of doing to realize all the factors that were – and still are – shaping our world and how we get along with one another. 

 

            OK… enough of the history lesson for today… just trying to awaken interest as I wish mine had been awakened back then.  History always seemed to be full of dates to remember and boundaries to mark on maps etc. – but the really interesting part of all that is … HIS STORY…  that’s not spelled wrong… it’s just to wake up your (and my) brain.  The people in the world down through the ages are telling HIS (the Lord Jesus’) story and how HIS Father… is dealing with mankind.  Now you may not believe me… that’s OK. 

 

            General Lew Wallace – a skeptic during the War Between the States – set out to write a history that would de-bunk Christianity… interestingly – he, himself became a Christian because of the research he did.  Who knows… maybe you will too!

 

            Cordially, IN HIM

 

            Jack

 

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“JUST A MINUTE”

PRESIDENT MUBARAK DEMURS CITING UNAVAILABILITY

          Just a Minute: - I can imagine, Egyptian President Mubarak, is not happy with the way things are working out.  It was in 1981 when shots rang out on the streets of Cairo and his predecessor Anwar Sadat fell to the ground victim of an Islamic Jihad assassin’s bullet.  It opened the way for Mubarak and his 30 year reign in Cairo.

          Sadat was hardly back home from celebrating his Camp David achievement of shaking hands with Jimmy Carter and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat to seal a Middle East peace treaty.  But peace treaties have exceptionally short life in the Holy Land for in 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was also assassinated this time by an extremist orthodox Jew. 

          Few people now remember the Suez Crisis of 1957, and declaration of the Eisenhower Doctrine, sending ships -- and aircraft from right here in Greenville -- to the Middle-East demonstrating the President’s intention to settle-down hot tempers and forever drawing the U.S. into the politics of the region.

          To some degree we’ve been here before… just with short memories.

          <>I’m Jack Buttram. (END)

 

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