Immigration Crisis: What You Need to Know

Refugees from Syria are walking on foot to get to Germany because Germany is the one European state that seems excited for more immigrants. This is perhaps because their population is currently declining while the population of many other European nations is rising.

England offered up asylum for 20,000 people. Germany laughed and said they were ready for 500,000 every year for several years. Well done, UK. Your number looks kinda small. Apparently Germany doesn't need any help.

Hungary has offered police escort for the migrants on their border to help them get to Germany and Austria.

Perhaps what you really need to know is that these migrants have been travelling for a while, even though the media has just reported it. (Thank you photojournalists for making this a news story in the first place.) They are running from Syria and the unrest there for their very lives.

What they desire is peace, protection, and security. Maybe even a chance to start a new life outside of a civil war. And that's what you need to know.

In other news, I said the words "Civil War," so now I'm thinking of Captain America 3.

Also, how about them Bengals? Then again, it was the Raiders. Time will tell.

How Saudia Arabia Combats ISIS by Low Oil Prices

Here in America recently, we've really enjoyed that oil prices have been decreased as of late. It feels absolutely wonderful to go to the pump and not feel your wallet decrease in weight (just out of curiosity, why is this still an expression? We all just use plastic cards and place them back in our wallet when done.). 

But there is a much more significant reason why low oil prices right now are a beautiful thing. A reason that has greater geopolitical significance, as well as the potential for much greater benefit for people around the world, then anything economic. 

ISIS is now having difficulty making a profit on their smuggled oil sold through the black market. 

Ever since the United States officially got involved in the ISIS controversy, they knew that one of the best ways to destroy the organization was to cut off their profit from their oil smuggling. The United States had then urged Turkey to strengthen border control to prevent ISIS access to Turkey's black market. 

But regardless of access to black markets, if oil prices as a whole goes down, it becomes hard for ISIS to actually make meaningful profit on the black market to begin with. This means that our currently low oil prices is good because it might just slow the atrocities of ISIS. 

But what has caused these low oil prices to begin with, Believe it or not, evidence indicates that this is Saudi Arabia's attempt at squashing ISIS right now. 

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest exporter of oil controlling 18% of the world's petroleum reserves. This gives them immense power over the oil prices. If they speed up production, prices go down. If they slow down production, prices naturally inflate. This of course is all due to the law of Supply and Demand. 

Right now, Saudi Arabia is pumping oil quickly and that is a large contributor to the lower oil prices. They themselves are losing revenue through this. But they believe that ISIS poses a threat to their security, so they are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face. 

Saudi Arabia is in this for the long haul too. They believe that they can withstand these lower oil prices for 8 years. 

Would it be incredibly cheesy to end this post with "God bless Saudi Arabia?" 

Too bad. God bless Saudi Arabia. 

Why State and Church should be Separated

I apparently can't count my weeks or know the difference between a politics post and an ethics post because I just did two ethics post in consecutive weeks. Whoops-a daisy. So I guess this leaves me answering the question three weeks after I promised to answer it in two weeks. My apologies.

So why does the state need protection from the church while the church needs protection from the state?

We shall once again look to history to see why. Let us begin with why the church needs protected from the state.

The year is 1547 and the country is England. Thirteen years prior, the Act of Supremacy had been passed. This act gave authority over the church (papal authority) to the monarch.

In 1547, under the reign of the first largely radical protestant monarch, Edward VI, the Act is used to make supreme changes to the official Church of England to make it more protestant. At which point, of course, protestants consider England to be a safe haven and openly worship there.

But then Edward VI dies. He is succeeded by Queen Mary I. If there is one word to describe Mary's religious leanings, it would be simply -  Catholic. Mary uses her new-found power over the church to drastically undo all of Edward's reforms. But most dreadfully of all, she uses her power to persecute and even kill protestants who would argue with Catholic doctrines.

At which point, we can see clearly two pitfalls of a state-dominated church, or put another way, two reasons why the church needs protected from the state. First the political whims of the state can easily destabilize the church. Second, free exercise of religion is not protected because the coercive power of the state is used to persecute religious minorities.

I'm hoping that with my audience, I don't need to argue that persecution of religious minorities is a bad thing, but if I do: dehumanization, tyranny, oppression, suffering, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, etc.

But perhaps we don't see a reason why state must be protected from the church. After all, the state is under the authority of God, so why shouldn't they also be under the authority of the church?

To see the pitfalls, we need look no further than the Middle East. (Note: many oversimplifications will emerge in this post as Middle Eastern politics is just simply complex.)

In the Middle East, many countries are controlled either officially or unofficially by the church within that country. Ultimately, most of the tension politically both within and between nations comes as a result of tension between the two major Islamic denominations: Sunni and Shiite.

And of course, one need not look far to see the persecution that Middle Eastern countries tend to place upon religious minorities, whether within the religion of Islam or not.

Thus, we see the problems with a church-dominated state as well. First, the whims of the church can destabilize the state. Second, free exercise of religion is not protected because the coercive power of the state is used to persecute religious minorities.

So yes, we need to protect both entities from each other because without that, we see no true stability. More importantly, we see no true protection for the freedom of religion.

Whatever Happened to Ukraine?

Let's face it. The world is a huge place and a significant amount of importance happens every single day. There is no way that a news source will cover everything that happens throughout the entire world.

That's all commonplace, but I think we all tend to think a little warped about the effect that this actually has on the news. 

Because here's the thing. We tend to believe that an event simply has resolved itself to a new equilibrium if the news stops reporting on the unrest in the area. For instance, there was a ceasefire agreement in the conflict of Ukraine and Russia, but we heard reports early on that tension still remained and that the ceasefire was extremely fragile. 

Then the IS story was stressed in the news because it's kinda a big deal, so we stopped hearing about the conflict along the border of Ukraine. As we stopped hearing about it, we obviously stopped thinking about it entirely, and may even believe that it has simply stopped being an issue. 

I have posted in the past about keeping up with secondary sources to discover the truth about the news stories that are being presented, but what about doing research on issues that were in the news, but now are no longer? Do we continue to follow them to the full resolution? Or do we just let the news tell us that this other story is more important because it is more immediately dangerous and we all know danger sells? 

Yeah, so I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think we should let the news determine what we are interested in from current events around the globe. Unfortunately, we can't know everything about every culture in the world, but we should ensure that our extensive knowledge is not dictated by the coverage news sources provides.

If you were interested in the Ukraine crisis and the plight of those people when the news was covering it, you should still be interested in it now, and be looking to see what is happening as that progresses.