This parable is based on the 1912 movie Falling Leaves. It illustrates the conditions of effective prayer.

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0:00 This is a parable nested within a movie titled Falling Leaves. It was shown in theaters during 1912.

0:04 Our story opens with Winifred on the piano as she and her younger sister, Trixie, sing together.

0:10 Winifred begins coughing uncontrollably and she is led from the room leaving Trixie alone and bewildered. One can only imagine the child’s feelings of helplessness.

0:25 After examining Winifred, the family doctor talks with her mom. Trixie’s presence goes unnoticed as she is listening intently. She sees the doctor motion towards the garden and hears him say: “By the time the last leaf has fallen from the trees, Winifred will have passed away.”

0:35 Trixie is clearly distraught as she says her prayers before bedtime.

0:44 She can’t sleep, so she puts on her shoes and springs into action, with a plan to save her sister.

0:50 Trixie is in the garden as she asks God to bless her efforts.

0:56 She picks up the first leaf from the ground and carefully ties it back on the tree. She works continuously through the night, to save the life of her sister, in the only way she knows how.

1:09 Just before dawn, through what can best be described as the choreography of the Spirit, a man that is passing by notices the child acting strangely.

1:20 Curiosity gets the best of him as he enters the garden.

1:24 He then asks the child what she is doing.

1:35 Trixie explains “I am tying these leaves back on the tree to keep my sister from dying.” The expression on the man’s face encourages Trixie to tell him about her sister as she acts out the symptoms of Winifred’s disease.

2:00 The man says he might be able to help and our joyful little heroine then leads him towards the house.

2:10 The man greets the mother of the girls and hands her a business card that identifies him as a bacteriologist.

2:20 (Business Card (Doctor Earle Headly – Bacteriologist)) The man explains he is a doctor and believes he has found a cure for Winifred’s tuberculosis.

2:25 He is introduced to Winifred and explains the treatment. Winifred is ready to try pretty much anything at this point. Trixie’s prayers are answered. Not because of her social, religious or economic, or status. Not because of any set formula or the meaningless repetition of words. It was because the longing look of an innocent child touched the heart of our loving, Heavenly Father. And Trixie has also taught us something about the simple prayer of faith. For it is the sincerity of a prayer that is the assurance of its being heard.

2:55 (Dissolve to AU Logo)

Creativity is integral to many aspects of life, from being an effective problem solver to a good artist, but the brain function underlying this important trait is not well understood. A study published in Neuroscience uses EEG (electroencephalogram) technology to explore which brain regions are active during creative thinking.

Consider the Source

When Jesus gave us a promised helper, the Spirit of Truth, he made it possible for us to enjoy his presence continuously. This gift, from the Way, the Truth, and the Life is fully capable of leading us; along the Way, into all Truth, so that we may enjoy the most abundant Life possible; just as the Master said. Those who put Jesus on the cross to die thought that his influential presence would somehow be diminished when, in fact, his ministry has been augmented by the spirit complement that indwells and also envelopes us.

There are those who would usurp the authority of the Spirit. They are the great pretenders, that habitually elevate their personal evaluations, to the level of absolutes. They may think they’re justified while attacking the underpinnings of another person’s faith. They might feel as though they are qualified to perform the equivalent of psychological or theological surgery on the souls of others. And they might presume to impose their individually circumscribed and personalized science, philosophy and religion on our brothers and sisters.

Jesus did not call us to remove anything from the hearts and minds of our siblings. He instead demonstrated how we may put ennobling truths into the minds and hearts of humankind. These truths are usually found, in a highly concentrated form, within the parables Jesus shared with his disciples and the Apostles. Today, I offer for your consideration, a contemporary parable that focuses on the quality of such concentration.

If you have ever known someone that suffers from depression, or if you have experienced it personally, you probably know something of what is sometimes called the binocular trick. This analogy is used to describe habit where the individual magnifies or exaggerates problems, while they demagnify, disqualify, or minimize their blessings. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, perceived blessings and curses may be as well.

A lens is a concentrator. In the case of telescopes it also serves as a light gathering device. The first person to apply for a patent for a telescope was Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey. In 1608, he laid claim to a device that could magnify objects three times. His telescope had a concave eyepiece aligned with a convex objective lens. One story goes that he got the idea for his design after observing two children in his shop holding up two lenses that made a distant weather vane appear close. Others claimed at the time that he stole the design from another eyeglass maker, Zacharias Jansen.

Jansen and Lippershey lived in the same town and both worked on making optical instruments. Scholars generally argue, however, that there is no real evidence that Lippershey did not develop his telescope independently. Lippershey, therefore, gets the credit for the telescope, because of the patent application, while Jansen is credited with inventing the compound microscope. Both appear to have contributed to the development of both instruments.

Adding to the confusion, yet another Dutchman, Jacob Metius, applied for a patent for a telescope a few weeks after Lippershey. The government of the Netherlands turned down both applications because of the counterclaims. Also, officials said the device was easy to reproduce, making it difficult to patent. In the end, Metius got a small reward, but the government paid Lippershey a handsome fee to make copies of his telescope.

In 1609, Galileo Galilei heard about the “Dutch perspective glasses” and within days had designed a scope of his own — without ever seeing one. He made some improvements — his creation could magnify objects 20 times — and presented his device to the Venetian Senate. The Senate, in turn, set him up for life as a lecturer at the University of Padua and doubled his salary, according to Stillman Drake in his book “Galileo at Work. Legend has it that Galileo was the first to point a telescope skyward. He was able to make out mountains and craters on the moon, as well as a ribbon of diffuse light arching across the sky — the Milky Way. He also discovered the rings of Saturn, sunspots and four of Jupiter’s moons.

A parable is, in essence, the means to convey truth to people with a wide variety of capacities to comprehend. In substance a parable is also known as a parabolic analogy. It is called that because it is analogous to the way a lens, an acoustically tuned amphitheater, or a satellite dish makes use of curvature and forms a directing arc to concentrate the light, the sound, or the radio waves on some target.

There are three kinds of light: physical light, intellectual insight, and spirit luminosity. Jesus, the master story teller, made use of the narrative’s directing arc to focus us on the truth of the matter. When we read these stories we make use of physical light to enhance our intellectual insight. When we are responsive to the Spirit of Truth’s divine leading, our spirit luminosity brings the components of truth: the facts, meanings, and values into precise focus.

On August the 19^th in 2019, Business Roundtable members issued a Statement on The Purpose of a Corporation. In it, the signatories said “While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.” Among the stakeholders listed were customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.

People, associating for a common purpose and acting corporately embody the most authentic and basic definition of a corporation. Within that context, there are many variations of corporate governance wherein the producers, consumers, and others with broader interests call the shots. They are the ones with stakes that are deeply set within their communities. They tend to be more cooperative and less exploitative. Sure, they’re profit motivated, but this is usually tempered with genuine service motivation.

Despite their assertions with respect to their model of corporate governance, members of the Business Roundtable have consistently promoted a paradigm shift that effectively subjugates the will of those doing the actual work, to that of what our nation’s Founders once described as “foreign potentates.” They shop the world for cheap labor without much regard for the communities in which they operate or the people whose favor they court.

Contrast this to Edmund Burke’s model “gentleman of fortune,” wherein he championed the middle class values of hard work and sobriety:

“When he designed the improvement of this, he did not take the ordinary Method of establishing Horse races and Assemblies, which do but encourage Drinking and Idleness but at a much smaller expense he introduced a Manufacture which, though not very considerable, employed the whole town, and in time made it opulent.”

Edmund Burke (1729-1797 (Anglo-Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher))

The CEO of McDonalds received a pay package of just over $20 million in 2021. The average hourly pay is approximately $7.40 per hour for a Cashier. That is just fifteen cents above the minimum wage that was established on July the 24^th in 2009. Still, even though the current boss makes 1.3 million times that of a cashier, he still can’t insure the English muffin is toasted for the company’s signature breakfast sandwich.

The shareholder rights movement is behind the quality deficit, the tamped down wages, and the hollowed out benefits packages. It has effectively gutted the middle class while also retarding any real movement towards universal health care within the USA. It doesn’t require even a modicum of management genius to understand that employees and families, stewing in hormones of stress, are expensive to insure.

For those of us who grew up believing that sending an unsigned letter is act of cowardice, the sophistries of the largest corporations are clearly problematic. The public discourse has been converted from what Marshall McLuhan once described as a whirlpool of information to a cesspool of disinformation thanks to the fully graspable wing-nuts big business has installed on the Supreme Court of the United States. Integrity challenged justices have legalized political bribery. They have personally benefitted from dark money nominations, confirmations, and accommodations thanks to those who are hostile to the Consent of the Governed.

While Roundtable members pay lip-service to community, they have demonstrated no reverence for government that is of, by, and for the people. The earnings calls that reveal no hesitation for price gouging, the obfuscated and off-the books expenditures that insure a steady flow of dark money that is used for deceptive practices, and the funding of culture wars designed to distract combine to make it clear, The Business Roundtable was not sincere when it said it intended to balance the interests of all stakeholders.

The Roundtable is mostly comprised of corporations where outside investors exercise a controlling interest. As such, they feel no need to explain how gearing everything for the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth benefits the average Joe. They exhibit no remorse for converting our elected representatives into their own ventriloquist’s dummies. And they do this surreptitiously, insuring that any consent of the governed is never informed consent.

The largest American Corporations use the infrastructure of the United States while making no meaningful contribution to the public treasury. They are too cowardly to publish reasoned opinions over their own signature precisely because they use the roads, the bridges, the airports, and the air traffic control system while incessantly chanting their tax cut mantra and using public funds for stock buybacks. They have embraced the grift that privatizes gains while socializing losses.

“I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the Bank. … You are a den of vipers and thieves.”

– Andrew Jackson (On closing the Second Bank of the United States in 1834)

The people that do this were raised in the most affluent neighborhoods, they enjoyed the company of their most advantaged friends, they went to the best schools, and still, they never learned: When they cover their eyes, we still see them.

On December the 1^st in 2021, during oral arguments about a Mississippi abortion case, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor addressed the court’s politically motivated willingness to abandon precedent and thereby sully the rule of law. She posed a question: “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?” On September the 9^th in 2022, Chief Justice John Roberts said: “Simply because people disagree with opinions, is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court”

To many observers, the most prominent feature of today’s High Court is the ability to dumb-down the cardinal precepts of the Constitution while using high sounding words. Like the lackadaisical employee trying to look busy, Justices search far and wide, for obscure legal opinions, while ignoring the cardinal precepts articulated so beautifully in the words advanced by the Founders of one American nation. The Declaration of Independence included the statement “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” While questioning the legitimacy of public perception, Roberts is just one of several Justices that like to masquerade as originalists and textualists. They dishonor themselves repeatedly as they steadily undermine and corrode the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic.

The prevailing public perception is informed, in part by sophistries rooted in delusional notions of infallibility historically held by popes and kings. Absolute judicial immunity has been upheld for even the most injudicious of judicial acts. When individual members gain lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court, through an array of deceptive practices that are undergirded by the dark money nominations, confirmations, and accommodations the Court has condoned, how can it ever avoid the perception that the so-called independent judiciary is just one more product of political process?

Although the democracy covenant is real, the authenticity of each democracy and the fidelity of any representative republic is always in question. In the United States, malign actors have excised the Constitution’s Preamble while also excavating under it. They have advanced a dis-integrating agenda while maintaining that the Preamble was never intended to be an integral part of the Constitution and was, therefore, to have no operating effect. Instead they have enabled racially motivated gerrymandering, the purging of voter rolls without documentary evidence of death or relocation, and prevaricating politicians actively deceiving the electorate. Any effort to perfect the union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, must take a back seat to their sociopathic notions of corporate personhood.

The corporate veil insures that the judiciary’s slogan “equal justice under law” is placed squarely on a plane of unreality. While people associating for a common purpose and acting corporately embody the most authentic and basic definition of a corporation, courts throughout the land have effectively shielded those executives and officers who have used legal fictions as a vehicle for criminal activity. The person behind the wheel of a motor vehicle plowing through a crowd of people would be held legally accountable for their actions. Not so for an executive using the corporate vehicle to promote opiate addiction, causing forest fires, engaging in theft through price gouging, and actively distorting the public discourse. The corporate elite are reliably protected by the fully graspable wing-nuts they have installed on the Court. Judges are turning tricks for a corporatocracy composed largely of foreign potentates actively engaged in the kind of political bribery the Justices themselves have enabled. As long they personally benefit from Dark money, the problem will not go away. 

The Supreme Court of the United States is responsible for the wholesale conversion of what Marshall McLuhan once described as a whirlpool of information into a cesspool of disinformation. For this, the Court has no plausible deniability. Attacks on the informed consent of the governed are obvious to anyone capable of pattern recognition. The inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth, together with their featherbedded executives, have bludgeoned the public’s collective intellect thanks to SCOTUS decisions in Buckley versus Valeo in 1976, First National Bank of Boston versus Bellotti in 1978, and Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission in 2010. The Court’s incoherent opinion with respect to broadcast station ownership in the Prometheus case also masked a clear attack on viewpoint diversity. And, a series of rambling net-neutrality decisions allowed anti-democracy communications companies to avoid the obligations of common carriers while retaining unfettered access to public utility rights-of-way.

If the federal Judiciary is really interested in restoring its legitimacy, it will do so through demonstrating a new respect for the consent of the governed. It will do so through adherence to the Declaration and the whole of the nation’s value proposition. It will stop using the shadow docket. And, it will include in every opinion, a clear explanation of how each of its decisions serves the interests of We the People as they are so clearly stated in the Preamble to the United States Constitution.

On the streets of Asheville, North Carolina, most major intersections feature weathered individuals who are flying signs that read “Anything Helps!” At the break of each day, the doorsteps of small retail shops host sleeping people who have been conditioned to believe their entire net worth is contained within the knapsack they use for a pillow.

The demand among those who are self-medicating helps the drug trade thrive, while in plush offices overlooking the city certain inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth look down upon their victims with disgust. On a facebook group called WNC Common Ground, a recent post contains the crossed-out words “I want to help the needy.” Appearing just below is the statement “I want to help dismantle the systems that make them in need.”

At their initial briefing in March 1977, some members of the newly formed President’s Commission on Mental Health expressed their belief that economic cycles, war, racism, sexism, elitism, poverty, stigmatization, alcoholism, and an inadequate health system had each contributed to the prevalence of mental disorders within the United States.

Today, the lack of any unified structure for funding or service integration has forced many individuals with serious mental illnesses out of rehabilitative settings to survive in homeless shelters, on the streets, or in jails and prisons. Jimmy Carter’s Commission was created by Executive Order to recommend policies that would help us overcome obvious deficiencies in the mental health system. Its work led to the formulation of a national plan to provide much needed assistance for those with chronic mental illnesses.

The envisioned system of care and treatment for persons with serious mental illnesses was never created. The penny-wise, pound-foolish that masquerade in conservative garb won the day. And, in 1981 the Mental Health Systems Act was gutted. Mammon serving evangelicals have but one loyalty. They will work tirelessly to enrich themselves, in ways that work to the detriment of everyone else, with no accountability. They foment culture wars while siphoning every form of equity out from under the distracted masses. The quip “I’m too poor to pay attention” is not a joke. Poverty is, by design, a tool of the ruling class.

You may recall a story in which Jesus watched a crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. He saw many rich people throw in large amounts. Then a poor widow arrived and put in two very small copper coins, a contribution worth only a few cents. Jesus said, “This poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on.”

Today the richest of the rich like to characterize themselves as philanthropists even though their charitable contributions typically amount to mere tokenism. Even that is dwarfed by the amounts they pump into dark money political campaigns to undermine any meaningful progress the people who do the work might otherwise enjoy. The federal minimum wage has been stalled at seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour since July of 2009. Typical worker compensation has risen only 12% since 1978 while CEO compensation has grown 940% during the same period.

One common refrain among workers is that “It’s hard to gain traction in this economy.” At some point we must ask ourselves if at least some of those we perceive as professional alms-takers have simply given up. Are they flying a sign or asking for change so they can live high on the hog in Lauderdale? A few maybe. But it is far more likely they lack work skills as well as coping and social skills to get ahead in an economy that’s geared against them. If you’re a beggar, and someone bigger and meaner doesn’t push you off your preferred street corner, it may be because they plan on robbing you of your entire haul at the end of the day. Skid row is not easy street. And even professional victims deserve a chance to grow out of it – to enjoy a better life.

In the mountains surrounding the City of Asheville, the Cherokee Indians had a functioning democracy long before a self-serving subset of We the People decided to march the region’s natives along the Trail of Tears. Skin pigmentation would be the disintegrating rock upon which such tyrants would center their pathetic claims of superiority. They have always been quick to pay lip service to democracy; as long as it wasn’t multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, or multi-racial.

Slavery hasn’t gone away. The pimp has sex slaves. Those with drug habits are slaves to others who keep them supplied. And, those who roll pennies so they can buy enough gas to get to exhausting and mind-numbing jobs are wage slaves to those who exploit them. 55% of the inflation we saw in 2022 is attributable to price gouging effectively enslaving the consumer. The street people are performing a valuable service. They are a constant reminder of the unmitigated selfishness attributable to those who gutted the Mental Health Systems Act and otherwise perpetuate poverty.

While the magalomanic cult that has captured the Republican party feigns reverence for the Way, the Truth, and the Life, it embraces the opposite. A boisterous few have reached a level of discord that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards nailed with the lyric: Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints; As heads is tails just call me Lucifer ’cause I’m in need of some restraint.

Trumpi-Inanity effectively leverages the FIBS tactic. The Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear that have been used by Joseph Goebbels, Joe McCarthy, and Stephen Miller only work with the constituency built by Donald Trump. Even though this tiny whiney minority is emotionally charged, intellectually stunted, obnoxiously boisterous, and morally defective, such a gaggle of societal misfits carries a message that appeals to individuals inclined to betray every ideal the nation once held if they can indulge their bigotry.

Though it masquerades as “Christian Nationalism,” none of the group’s biblical heroes were white with the exception of Pontius Pilate who asked “What is truth?” Clearly MAGA cultists have a tenuous relationship with the truth and they continue to redefine it in ways that suit their unholy quest.

There appears to be no consistency within their distorted value proposition although we have seen how such cultists can be persuaded to consistently vote against their own interests. And, we must also understand that the people who have a sense of superiority, based upon nothing more than their skin pigmentation, will never accept any form of democracy that is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-racial. They are quick to say that the United States is not a democracy but rather a republic. In actual fact it is an unrepresentative republic and an inauthentic democracy.

The unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled liberty touted by such malign actors is antithetical to everything Jesus taught and exemplified. And yet, the Luciferian doctrines are spewed weekly from church pulpits throughout the nation.

Since its inception in 1974, CPAC has grown into the largest and most influential gathering of pseudo-conservatives in the world. It is the conservator of nothing. During its conference held in Hungary they learned at the feet of Viktor Orbán who regards China, Russia, India, Singapore, and Turkey as models of governance. He simultaneously promotes anti-Americanism, Euroscepticism, and a persistent opposition to Western democracy.

As a featured speaker at CPAC Dallas, Orbán received a standing ovation. A headline in The New Republic read: “CPAC’s Four-Day Sermon of Unrelenting Fear Has Set Trumpism on a New Path.” Between 2010 and 2020, Hungary dropped 69 places in the Press Freedom Index and 11 places in the Democracy Index. Orbán’s government operates as a kleptocracy and that fact alone would make him a hero of the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth.

In a July 2022 speech, Orbán criticized the “mixing” of European and non-European races, saying “We are not a mixed race and we do not want to become a mixed race.” Two days later he said that he was talking about cultures and not genetics. During his tenure Hungary has seen a curtailing of press freedom, an erosion of judicial independence, and the undermining of multiparty democracy.

Trump won the CPAC presidential straw poll with 69 percent of the vote. Texas Monthly displayed a banner headline which read: In Dallas, Donald Trump Provided a Violent Blueprint for Seizing Power. The ballroom featured five enormous screens that showed flames engulfing the American flag while the crackling sounds of fire were all pervasive.

Capturing the Supreme Court by installing graspable wingnuts may suggest the contempt for, and the demise of, constitutional imperatives will continue to play out in legal proceedings. But, if the inflammatory rhetoric emanating from CPAC is any indication, pseudo-conservatives are planning something far more violent.

If future historians are forced to write the post-mortem on American Democracy, they will likely focus on the extent to which the criminally insane were coddled and enabled by all three branches of government within the United States. Spiritual discernment is not a sought after feature within a counterfeit Christianity. The various off-brands would rather engage in the selective amplification, filtration, and contextualization of facts with the intent to deceive.

The Supreme Court has, in recent years, legalized political bribery. It has converted what Marshall McLuhan once described as a whirlpool of information into a cesspool of disinformation. And now it claims it has returned decision making authority to the people at the state level as it gives a wink and a nod to those engaged in political and racial gerrymandering, state legislatures that are now illegitimate.

Those who do enjoy some level of spiritual discernment can clearly understand that all the culture wars have just one purpose. And that is to distract us from the class warfare that has been thrust upon us. The Party of Unmitigated Selfishness that once called itself the Grand Old Party, has a record of filibusters and votes that reveal an unspoken value proposition for which they have no plausible deniability. Their platform is simply this: The rich get richer and the poor die.

Vladimir Putin is a criminally insane kleptocrat. He has been enabled in his nefarious deeds by a variety of self-serving sycophants. Many of these amassed fortunes in ways that have consistently worked to the detriment of the Russian people. And now that Putin has engaged in war crimes against an emergent democracy, his enablers are losing access to their bank accounts, they are having their yachts seized, and they are being targeted for criminal prosecution.

Unfortunately, the free world has failed at times to differentiate between the rank and file Russian people and the egomaniacal tyrants that have, by arbitrary assumption, occupied leadership positions in former Soviet states. On December the 25^th in 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. And yet, due to the ineptitude of the United Nation’s Office of Legal Counsel, Russia illegitimately occupied the former Soviet’s permanent member seat on the UN Security Council.

As Russia used its misbegotten veto power to cripple emergent democracies around the globe, it retarded societal evolution. Even though the Soviet Union ceased to exist, though the once captive socialist “republics” became independent nations functioning as emergent democracies, the anti-democracy government of Putin wielded power that was unjustified by any coherent analysis. In light of this, it’s hard to believe the United Nations is poised to remain relevant as it puts forth a variety of meaningless and toothless resolutions.

The interests of world peace are not well served by vacillating politicians. We’ve all seen them, proactively straddling the fence or deliberately staking out firm positions somewhere between wishy and washy. On the question of democracy versus autocracy, we’ve heard them say “democracy is not all it’s cracked up to be.” And yet, they are unable to articulate any vision for the future that they’re willing to share with the general population. That is because they’ve sold out to oligarchs whose values are so abhorrent, they must operate under the cover of darkness. 

Obvious solutions are ignored by incumbent politicians as well as the press. They lament the news blackout in Russia while failing to deploy an array of Radio Liberty transmitters along that country’s borders. They complain about Russia’s veto on the UN Security Council while failing to challenge it’s illegitimate permanent member status. They have their followers backbiting someone they’ve labeled as the enemy while encouraging constituents to run from something seen as the centermost bone of contention at the heart of their petty grievances.

Still, we must ask why anyone would favor autocracy unless they are somehow intent on fleecing the public. We willfully tolerate such ineptitude at the commanding heights. Although, the Russian people have no apparent alternative due to the misinformation through state media together with the inaction of those who once made effective use of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe.

We are left with the slim hope there are officials, within the Russian military, that maintain some affinity with, and loyalty to, the Russian people. Such officials undoubtedly see through the feigned concern Vladimir Putin has for ordinary Russians. They must realize that, in the final analysis, the only thing Putin has ever done for Russia is to retard its progress while siphoning off any equities it once held. Because of Putin and his unmitigated selfishness, the country is now saddled with crushing sanctions and an insurmountable debt to Ukraine and the rest of the world. 

Any future lifting of sanctions should not occur without an equitable formula for war reparations to Ukraine. And any consideration for such relief should be contingent upon the Russian people arresting Putin and delivering him to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for war crimes. Putin should become the enduring example, for all kleptocrats and kleptocrat wannabes, that the people of the world will no longer tolerate deceptive practices by those seeking to deprive others of their livelihoods, their possessions, and their other fundamental rights. 

Beyond the commonly articulated and delineated rights, every person on earth has a divinely bestowed right to be the arbiter of their own destiny, and to associate for an altruistic purpose. Humanity has a duty to protect such benefactors and we should make a concerted effort to insure their work continues unimpeded. The Putin-like caballers fear exposure above all else. Their main enemies, in addition to physical light, are intellectual insight and spirit luminosity. Therefore they moved quickly to block social media and general access to the Internet.

Radios however are widely available. The failure to array frequency agile Radio Liberty broadcast transmitters along Russia’s borders suggests an embarrassing ineptitude. So does the UN intransigence with respect to denying Russia veto power. High officials have shown they cannot be trusted to even read the UN Charter and discover that non-Soviet Russia never was a permanent member of the Security Council. Unless the Charter is hopelessly defective, they could at least devise a method to remove those countries operating in ways that are antithetical to the organization’s cardinal precepts or, in the case of Putin’s Russia, are actively engaged in war crimes.

On February the 23^rd in 2022, Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations, issued a challenge to the governing body. He said: “Mr. Secretary-General, please instruct the secretariat to distribute among the members of the Security Council and the members of the General Assembly a decision by the Security Council dated December 1991 that recommends that the Russian Federation can be a member of this organization, as well as a decision by the General Assembly dated December 1991 where the General Assembly welcomes the Russian Federation to this organization.”

The Ambassador also said it would be a miracle if the Secretariat could produce such documentation. He knew that the Office of Legal Affairs had been playing fast and loose with the Charter after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics finally collapsed in December of 1991. An entirely new government was formed, and the Russian Federation, in clear violation of the United Nations Charter, had arbitrarily assumed the former government’s permanent member position on the Security Council. This was clearly enabled through the inattention of the UN’s Legal Counsel. While Secretary General António Guterres sat stupefied, Kyslytsya referred to Article 4, paragraph 2 of the UN Charter which reads:

“The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.”

Although the Russian Federation was formed in the hope that the people of Russia would finally become the true arbiters of their own destiny, it is now a kleptocracy. It is a very different country from the onetime ally that was among the 51 countries “committed to maintaining international peace and security” when the United Nations was founded on October the 4^th in 1945. According to Oppenheim’s International Law, as it refers to the United Nations, “Permanent membership in the Security Council was granted to five states based on their importance in the aftermath of World War II.”

That was long ago. The caustic mix of autocracy, inauthentic democracy, and kleptocracy on the Security Council has rendered the UN largely impotent. It is no longer an effective champion of those governments that derive their just authority by any informed consent of the governed. And the one thing that might make a difference, that might move the UN beyond the status of a debating society, the Secretariat steadfastly refuses to do. But, the General Secretary is not the only one.

In 2022, on the February 27^th episode of CNN’s State of the Union, Linda Thomas Greenfield – the US Ambassador to the United Nations said: Russia is a member of the Security Council, that’s in the UN Charter.” With this statement, Ambassador Greenfield has exhibited a reckless indifference to the truth. In actuality the Charter, in Article 23 states:

“The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council.”

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republic’s seat on the UN Security Council was never legally transferred, by any due process, to the Russian Federation. There was no Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after what the Guardian newspaper described, as “the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history.” The dissolution of the Soviet Union between 1988 and 1991 was characterized by a process of internal political, economic and ethnic disintegration which resulted in the end of its existence as a sovereign state.

In late 1991, the leaders of three of the former Union’s founding and largest republics; the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Byelorussian SSR declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed. They were later joined by eight more former Soviet republics.

The United Nations is willfully compromised. The member states, with the exception of Ukraine, have not taken any action to correct the problem/s with the Security Council. There was no recommendation by the Security Council and there was no decision by the General Assembly to “grandfather in” the Russian Federation or, for that matter, any other country that has undergone significant change since an original determination was made that it qualified for membership in an organization founded to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.

Other commitments delineated in the Charter Preamble, such as the ones to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, to preserve the dignity and worth of the human person, to insure equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom are worthy objectives. The problem is that certain members of the UN Security Council have exhibited nothing but contempt for these principles. The UN is defining itself every day through its sincerity or a lack thereof.

While Russia’s leader may surround himself with tacticians, he is by no means a strategist. There is no such thing as a coherent strategy in the absence of a coherent value proposition. And likewise, tactics seldom lead to meaningful victory when divorced from strategic thought. Like so many other kleptocrats, Vladimir Putin is willing to sink his own country for personal gain. His only motivation is one of self-gratification. He has no real vision for the future of Russia other than to siphon off any remaining equities from its people and to try and recapture past glories.

His terminal ego is looking to re-acquire former Soviet states that have intentionally moved on. He was late to the game in developing a focus on rare earth minerals, instead doubling down on fuels the rest of the world is actively working to phase out. And, he conducts himself in ways that have made him a pariah within the evolving world order. He’s not fooling anyone beyond those whose political discourse is fed exclusively by his state owned media.

Vladimir Putin surrounds himself with yes-men. And those who would keep him honest are Novichok’d, imprisoned, or otherwise marginalized in punitive ways. He has enriched himself at the the expense of the Russian people and plans to siphon the life plasm out of Ukraine in similar ways. The invasion of troops is just a precursor to an invasion by his wholly owned and operated oligarchs. And the outrage expressed by other world leaders only serves to underscore the impotence of the United Nations.

If the UN is unable to purify the body, through the removal of a war-mongering tyrant from the Security Council, than it is unable to hold the mantle as a champion of peace. Unlike the UN, NATO has the option to re-charter in ways that would get it out from under the limitations imposed by the Security Council. Within the UN, Putin can veto any resolution that would put his ego in check. The Security Council is an outmoded relic that may have been justified in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Today, it makes no sense at all. It gives an elevated platform and excessive prominence to those illegitimate leaders that hold power in their home countries, by arbitrary assumption, rather than by popular vote.

John Wycliffe, in the preface to his Fourteenth Century translation wrote: “The Bible is for Government of, by, and for the people.” As inauthentic republics and democracies come down somewhere between wishy and washy with respect to this principle, the world is largely without leadership and politics has eclipsed statesmanship.

This is the question that Putin has thrust upon the entire world. Will we continue to recognize tyrants, from inauthentic democracies, as heads of state? Or will we only recognize governments that are authentic democratic republics? The time for proactively straddling the fence is over. Sanctions that hurt Russian citizens rather than Vladimir Putin and his sycophants, are of limited value.

If Putin wants to recapture the “glory days,” when the Soviet Government was the focus of evil, than we should get focused on the individual that has defined himself as the real enemy. As one might expect, Putin’s value’s are so abhorrent that he must operate under the cover of darkness, suppressing anything that might give the people of Russia a government that derives its authority from informed consent.

On May the 14^th in 2021, the government of Russia designated Radio Liberty’s website as a “foreign agent”. The broadcast service’s bank accounts were frozen. The Russian mass media regulator initiated 520 cases against the broadcaster with total fines for the its refusal to mark its content with the “foreign agent” label estimated at $2.4 million. On May the 19^th in 2021, Radio Liberty filed a legal case at the European Court of Human Rights, accusing the Russian government of violating freedom of expression and freedom of the media.

It is clear that Putin will not benefit from any close examination of the truth. He fears Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty almost as much as he fears NATO. He knows the broadcasters played a significant role in the collapse of communism and the rise of democracies in post-communist Europe. In light of this history and Putin’s ongoing acts of war, continuous saturation broadcasts into Russia should occur in every conceivable way. Every Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty asset should be brought to bear to insure the Russian people understand just what was taken from them and how.

Putin fully intends to pillage and plunder Ukraine in similar ways. The people of that country want an of, by, and for the people Ukraine. Whereas Putin wants an all for Putin and Putin for Putin Ukraine. Putin has no value proposition that will resonate with the people of Russia or Ukraine. Accordingly, he has no vision for anything beyond his orgy of darkness and death. If the people in those countries want a future of light and life, they must be intentional and work for it.