It seems, no, it IS a fact that all around the world conditions, life, countries seem to be getting worse or at least not improving as fast as it should. With terrorism, war, poverty, disease, materialism and immorality you can pick from any and see how far this world is regressing.

I wrote about the ironies/ ambiguities in life, how things are never simple to have a good side and a bad side and how maybe that's because we don't depend on God and try to rely on our own methods. Pertaining to Christians this should be an easy observation to make but in practice things can get confusing, out of hand and not have the effect it should. Christians are supposed to be peaceful, forgiving and humble, yet looking at history and today's events how can that be possible?

One main reason Christianity spread so far and became popular was due its proclaimed as the official religion of the Roman empire during the reign of Constantine (the Great). Constantine fought and won many wars and was a strong ruler. At times he had to fight to protect Christians and defend his rule from usurpers and so consequently through his faith and strength Christianity rose from a minor and persecuted religion into a major faith of the Empire. The point of this brief history lesson is that order to uphold and defend his faith and Empire Constantine had to undertake violent action -war, killings, against his enemies or perish. I then think that in modern life, God still wants us to uphold His faith which involves resisting and acting against evil but really it's confusing and hard to know when to forgive and when to fight.

Take the fight against terrorism. We all know what happened Sept. 11th-the Towers were destoyed and thousands of lives ended by middle eastern extremists on board planes. From then on, the US undertook a bold campaign to destroy terror and establish democracy and righteousness across the world wherever terror existed. The US first obtained goodwill and encouragement from the international community (China, Russia,the Europeans, etc) and built a coalition to strike at and destroy "evil". The first target was Afghanistan and the US succeeded in destroying the Taliban movement and shattering Al-Quada (though they still exist and have been regrouping quietly since then) thus freeing the whole country from oppresive Taliban rule and establishing a new government with a charming, modern leader Hamid Karzai.

Now taking their aim of destroying evil and restoring justice and democracy into consideration what they did in Afghanistan was very good. Actually No, it wasn't. In order to bring justice towards the evil Al-Quada and Taliban government that sheltered them, the US under George WB and his 'henchmen' Don Rumsfeld, D Cheney and company (see "Richard Clarke"...) made alliances with nations like Russia and Pakistan while maintaining and strengthening ties with Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states and Central Asian nations like Uzbekistan.

Russia has had its own Islamic fundamentalist/ terrorist war going on with its invasion and occupation in Chechnya in which many tens of thousands have been killed, imprisoned, raped and hundreds of thousands made homeless and refugees. With the continuing brutality of the occupation, Chechynan resistance movements have become more fundamentalist with countless hardened muslim fighters being trained and developed with many having gone on to fight against the US in Afghanistan.

Now though the Chechynans resistance are led by fundamentalists and have used tactics like suicide bombings and hostage takings, you cannot ignore the brutalities and overwhelming force that the Russians have commited in seeking to rein in a people who since at least the18th century they have exploited and ruled unjustly. Russia has managed to occupy most of the nation and capital, while destroying towns, villages and infrastructure and forcing Chechnyans to flee into refugee camps in neighboring regions-Dagestan. For a while, Western nations and human rights organisations have condemned Russia for undertaking this military campaign but with the US need to form a "Coalition of the willing" after 9-11, the Russians managed to solicit ,in return for aid like intelligence sharing and flight zone permissions, an understanding from the US that the Chechynans are terrorists and extremists and the Chechynan war is an interior matter and a war against terror itself with the result the US now remains silent over the atrocities there.

In effect the Russians have made the US turn a blind eye to grave injustices (in Chechyna) while making an alliance to combat "evil" in Afghanistan and terror which the Russians continue to perform in their own conflict but now without any interference and criticism from anybody else.

I know I've been writing a lot of stuff that may seem confusing and really stupid (like who gives a damn about events over there...it's all messed up, right?) but it is important to be aware of things going on all over the world especially when there's so much evil and confusion in existence.