Satanic Manifestations? From Russia-Ukraine War Infernos To Ethiopia-Tigray Massacres
Sub-Title: How Do You Pitch In?
There was non-universal acceptance among European leaders of Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, the Chancellor’s post-meeting statement revealed the sad reality of the horrific dark side of some humans in power.
These two statements are particularly jarring.
The Austrian leader said Putin had blamed the Ukrainians for “being responsible for the crimes in Bucha.” Video footage, however, shows Russian forces gunning down a civilian there.
During a briefing in Moscow following the meeting, Nehammer said he was not “particularly optimistic,” adding that “the offensive (in Ukraine) is being prepared with determination.”
Throughout the history of inexplicable slaughter of hundreds of thousands and even millions of human beings as during the Holocaust, “the offensive has always been prepared with determination by the heartless perpetrators.”
The photos of this forest near Kyiv reveals horrors of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
On April 21, 2022, the United States government announced that it is providing nearly $313 million in additional humanitarian assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help people affected by the ongoing conflict in northern Ethiopia. It added:
“Across the Afar, Amhara, and Tigray regions, continued fighting and lack of humanitarian access has left as many as 9 million people facing severe food insecurity and has forced more than 2 million people to flee their homes. In Tigray alone, more than 90 percent of people need aid, while across all three northern regions as many as 1 million people are projected to face famine-like conditions by June”.
Bobby Ghosh | Bloomberg reports in the Washington Post that the World’s Deadliest War Isn’t in Ukraine, But in Ethiopia. The article goes on:
“Though the war’s true toll is impossible to know, researchers from Belgium’s Ghent University estimate as many as half a million people have died so far: between 50,000 and 100,000 from the fighting, 150,000 to 200,000 from starvation and more than 100,000 from the lack of medical attention”.
Satan manifests itself across the wide spectrum of human existence. From the macro level to the micro level. From international carnage as we are witnessing in Ukraine, Ethiopia and other disastrous hotspots in the world to family and personal devastations.
For millennia, great thinkers have wrestled with the conundrum of the explanation for these “Evil” events — Hell In Session on Earth !!!
Profoundly bothered by what he witnessed during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), the ongoing decay of the great Athenian Democracy and the death of his teacher Socrates (469–399 BCE) by drinking the hemlock, Plato (c.428–347 BCE) gave us his massive literary works. These volumes include his magnum opus, The Republic with particular focus on the issue of Justice. These works have been foundational in the entire history of Western Civilization in, among other things, how to prevent and deal with tyrants, oligarchs and dictators.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) in his contemplative essay: Paradox of the Greatness and Wretchedness of Man ponders this astonishing contradiction:
“Such is the state in which men now are. There remains to them some feeble instinct of the happiness of their former state; and they are plunged in the evils of their blindness and their lust, which have become their second nature”.
It is this “second nature” that is in full display in the wielding of power by the tyrants and dictators who appear on the landscape of human history on and off. Sadly, these figures in leadership positions still feature prominently in our time.
How do the observers — world leaders and regular citizens — respond?
The fierceness of the demonic determination with which the offensive is carried out is so profound that it requires all hands — of God fearing people — on deck to overcome the perpetrators.
One of the prime examples of collective involvement is William Wilberforce and the Clapham Circle teaming up with the young British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger to end slavery in the British Commonwealth.
So, how do you and I respond as we behold the very worst of humanity callously matching across the landscape?
What is your role and my role in the dire circumstances and extraordinary difficulties of the innocents trapped in these lethal hotspots in our world?
a. Assuage the agony of those lucky to be alive by donations or philanthropic service or both?
b. Choose to sympathize with the victims and sit on the fence in the safety and comfort of our abode?
c. Call out Evil for what it is as loudly as we can and “be against something, but not for something”?
d. Choose to pray and fast (Matthew 17: 14 –21), hoping the pain, agony and mutilations would cease?
e. Any combination of a-d?
f. And yes, strive to respond to that “Inner Voice” that whispers “who will answer” to your ears and heart and mine !!!
