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DECEMBER 26, 2012, 
VOLUME 31 #6

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Christine Farenhorst provides an overview of some of the highlights and lowlights that took place in God's world over the last 365 days. In this issue she looks at events from January 2012 to June 2012. The January 16 issue will continue with July to December. In all these events, the good, the bad and the incredibly sad, we see God's sovereign hand at work. For His is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Peter Glover discusses the shift taking place in the United States and what that may mean for the world order. Gerry Wisz offers some analysis from a business perspective. 

EDITOR'S OVERVIEW

John Van Dyk

This web site gives you some of the flavours we have to offer, the aroma of each issue, an appetizer to whet the appetite. Ultimately of course we'd like you to taste the whole meal being served. Sample copies are available. Drop us a line, a letter, an email requesting the current issue. Food for thought; food for growth.
 

THE UNITED STATES:
On the road to post-Christendom?

British writer Peter Glover offers his personal perspective 
of events in 2012 with an eye to what may unfold in 2013

PETER C. GLOVER

This year, instead of key “events” I propose to track the much more significant “themes” or trends underlying the increasing Grand Narrative in the West generally: the slow drift away from Judeo-Christian morality. At the heart of this drift, I perceive a significant development in 2012 which is set to continue in 2013. It is a surge in the moral drift of the last bastion of Western Christendom, the United States. And that should matter to us all. Because what happens in the United States has a ripple effect across the West, and beyond.  

The key theme across much of the world as we swept into 2012 was the tough global economic climate. In the US, as I write this, a deal between the White House and Congress still remains to be done to avoid the country’s economy going over the so-called “fiscal cliff.” However, all the signs are that any deal is not likely to reduce America’s mind-boggling $16 trillion deficit. With the election effectively voting to boost further the soaring nature of America’s “entitlement society,” the US debt is unlikely to reduce significantly in 2013. But there is one major bright spot for the US – as in the Canadian – economy in 2013: domestic energy reserves.  
  
China, with its cash-rich economy, has in 2012 been busily buying up property and businesses as well as making enormous investments in key energy resources, including Canada’s massive oil sands industry and in the nascent US shale gas industry. 2012 was the year the US finally discovered it had more domestic oil and gas reserves than the Middle East. U.S. and Canadian energy resources combined mean that North America is now the “new middle east.” While drilling on federal lands was largely blocked by the Obama administration, shale gas development reached new heights. Though President Obama would later claim the credit for the success of the domestic energy industries and the thousands of new jobs created, it was almost exclusively achieved on private, not federal lands. Domestic energy development in the US contributed significantly to edging down unemployment figures during the year. For the very first time energy independence is being talked about as a serious prospect for the United States. And just as important for world politics is its corollary, the diminishing power of the global energy tyranny that is OPEC. The revitalized US and Canadian energy industries are set to have a further dramatic impact on both sides of the border during 2013. 

The President's post-election prayer

Norm Bomer contrasts a tale of two presidents - one in Uganda, the other in America.

A TALE OF TWO PRESIDENTS?


NORM BOMER

“Lord forgive us and give us a new beginning. Give us a heart to love you, to fear you and to seek you.” Thus spake the President. “We want... to be known as a nation that fears God and as a nation whose foundations are firmly rooted in righteousness and justice to fulfill what the Bible says in Psalm 33:12: ‘Blessed is the nation, whose God is the Lord. A people you have chosen as your own.’”
  
Okay, whose dream are we seeing here? Or through the eyes of America’s mainstream media, whose nightmare? The American President hate-mongering against his own free and progressive society? Has he abandoned his gay marriage agenda and his relentless promotion of abortion? And, gasp, in the very month of his successful re-election campaign with promises of eliminating such intolerant speech! 
  “Lord forgive us and give us a new beginning. Give us a heart to love you, to fear you and to seek you.” And then, to clinch the nightmare with, “I pray for all these in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
  Has America’s chosen leader gone mad, undermining the nation’s social progress and legal precedent as well?
  No, no. Relax. This offensive prayer was not spoken by Barack Obama. It was spoken by Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda on the occasion of his nation’s 50th Anniversary of its independence from Britain.

THE STATE OF BUSINESS AT THE END OF 2012

The state of America at the end of 2012

PINCHED AND STRAITENED
Pay to pay as the new American business model

GERRY WISZ


Some will have noticed that the day after the U.S. presidential election, Wall Street tanked quite severely, and it hasn’t regained its losses at this writing. The writing on the wall became apparent for American business: “You will pay, and pay some more.”
  How? President Obama has made clear that investors will pay more taxes on their investments, that he wants anyone earning $250,000 or more annually to pay more in taxes, and that Obamacare – which will require public and private companies to provide health insurance, including abortion “services,” for all full-time employees – is here to stay; and companies will pay. How abortion qualifies as a “health insurance service” is, of course, another question.
  Last year, business, which has hunkered down for several years since the mortgage meltdown, had begun to at least lift its gaze upward here and there. There was some spotty hiring; U.S. manufacturing saw a few months of positive numbers; the real estate market showed that it wasn’t entirely dead, with homes beginning to sell, even briskly in some regions, and mortgages and mortgage refinancing seeing some renewed activity. Consumer activity remained lukewarm, but some months saw surprising, though not dramatic, increases.
  The cell and smartphone market continued to explode, with the iPod moving into the “must-have” column for many; people who can’t afford a monthly car payment still somehow manage to buy and pay for a smartphone and its data plan. The PC industry likewise continued its advance, as had the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Where business flourished last year was mainly in the “distractions” industry.
 

CHRISTMAS 2012

DECEMBER 5, 2012
CHRISTMAS ISSUE

Did you miss this one?

MARCH 21, 2012

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