40. Sinful Race

Meditations in Job : 40.  Part of the sinful human race

Job 15:14 “What is man, that he could be pure, or one born of woman, that he could be righteous?

As we have commented before there are some Christians who focus on sin and failure and in this respect they are like Eliphaz who, you will remember is speaking against Job for the second time. Previously when he spoke, he indicated that he had received the spirit encounter and the result of that was a mindset that put man down and derided him. We reminded ourselves about being made in the image of God and of being loved by God. We may need to do that again!

So here he is having just put Job down by suggesting four times that Job’s words were rubbish. Now he goes on to speak again of the failures of mankind. Essentially our verse today says that no person born of a woman can be pure, everyone is a sinner. Now of course we have no dispute with that, for Paul said, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom 3:23). The difference between Eliphaz and Paul is that Eliphaz gets bogged down in it while Paul goes on to say, “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Rom 3:24). Paul only speaks of our sin in the context of our salvation. Eliphaz follows the same track that we saw in Ch.4 & 5, referring to the ‘holy ones’, the angels. In chapter 4 he had said, “If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay.” (v.18,19). Here he says, “If God places no trust in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes, how much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water!” (v.15,16). It’s the same old argument being repeated. God doesn’t trust his angels who are close to Him, so why should he trust mankind. As we commented when we considered that earlier passage, that is only true of the fallen angels, and as we now know, God loves us and sent his Son in human likeness to die for us so, no, mankind is not abhorred by God, but loved.

Eliphaz now says he wants Job to listen to him on the basis of the wisdom that he has picked up from the elders through the years: “Listen to me and I will explain to you; let me tell you what I have seen, what wise men have declared, hiding nothing received from their fathers.” (v.17,18). You obviously are clueless, Job, is what he infers here when he says patronizingly, “Listen to me and I will explain to you.” And why does he think he can teach Job some things? Because I have seen it, I have picked it up from the wise men before me who passed on all they had learnt from their fathers and “(to whom alone the land was given when no alien passed among them)” (v.19), i.e. right at the beginning when no one else was there and they were the first in the land. That’s where MY wisdom comes from! So what has he learnt from them?

“All his days the wicked man suffers torment, the ruthless through all the years stored up for him. Terrifying sounds fill his ears; when all seems well, marauders attack him. He despairs of escaping the darkness; he is marked for the sword.” (v.20-22) i.e. the wicked (who he surely associates with Job) and ruthless man will receive torment, and enemies will attack him and leave him in despair (yes, this is Job!) He piles it on: “He wanders about–food for vultures; he knows the day of darkness is at hand. Distress and anguish fill him with terror; they overwhelm him, like a king poised to attack,” (v.23,24) i.e. he feels utterly hopeless, in darkness, filled with distress and anguish. So, Eliphaz, you do understand what Job is going through, so why can’t you feel for him? Answer, because you would rather condemn him! There’s a reason behind all this, continues Eliphaz; it is “because he shakes his fist at God and vaunts himself against the Almighty, defiantly charging against him with a thick, strong shield.” (v.25,26) You’re a rebel, Job, and you’ve brought all this on yourself! Watch how he now piles it on Job, heaping him with more and more negatives and there can be absolutely no doubt that this is specifically about Job: “Though his face is covered with fat and his waist bulges with flesh,” (v.27) Is Job so well off that he is rather over developed? Well it’s unkind to mention it anyway! Moreover “he will inhabit ruined towns and houses where no one lives, houses crumbling to rubble.” (v.28) – his home will be desolate and as a general statement, “He will no longer be rich and his wealth will not endure, nor will his possessions spread over the land.” (v.29) – his riches will have been taken. But it’s worse: “He will not escape the darkness,” (v.30a), the anguish of darkness will go on and on and he won’t be able to escape it.  “A flame will wither his shoots,” (v.30b), the burning irritation of his sores will undermine his life, “and the breath of God’s mouth will carry him away,” (v.30c), i.e. God’s decree will undermine his security and carry him away.

Note that although Eliphaz hasn’t directly referred to Job, it is obviously him that he has in mind, so now he brings him a warning in the same indirect manner: “Let him not deceive himself by trusting what is worthless, for he will get nothing in return.” (v.31). Whatever you seem to be trusting in will not help you, and “Before his time he will be paid in full, and his branches will not flourish. He will be like a vine stripped of its unripe grapes, like an olive tree shedding its blossoms.” (v.32,33). You are going to be cut off so that any fruit that was apparent will be stripped away. Job had appeared prosperous but now that is all stripped away and he has nothing. Why? “For the company of the godless will be barren, and fire will consume the tents of those who love bribes.” (v.34) God sorts out the godless so they will not be fruitful and when they take bribes, God’s justice will fall on them and their homes and possessions will be taken. “They conceive trouble and give birth to evil; their womb fashions deceit.” (v.35) This sort of person breeds trouble and, by implication, it will turn round and bite them!

What an example of ongoing condemnation! Now there may be a number of truths built in there but the trouble is that these generalities DON’T apply to Job. This is not happening because he had defied God (v.25,26), he is not godless and doesn’t take bribes (v.34) and he doesn’t breed trouble (v.35). These are all FALSE ASSUMPTIONS of Job in Eliphaz’s mind. Zero out of ten for wrong assessment, Eliphaz!

Marx & Lenin

.

Marx and Lenin Revisited

Oct 06, 2009 - By:  Paul Craig Roberts

“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” Karl Marx

If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.  Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods to financial capital’s accumulation of profits based on the purchase and sale of paper instruments.  Their predictions are far superior to the “risk models” for which the Nobel Prize has been given and are closer to the money than the predictions of Federal Reserve chairmen, US Treasury secretaries, and Nobel economists, such as Paul Krugman, who believe that more credit and more debt are the solution to the economic crisis.

In this first decade of the 21st century there has been no increase in the real incomes of working Americans.  There has been a sharp decline in their wealth.  In the 21st century Americans have suffered two major stock market crashes and the destruction of their real estate wealth.

Some studies have concluded that the real incomes of Americans, except for the financial oligarchy of the super rich, are less today than in the 1980s and even the 1970s.  I have not examined these studies of family income to determine whether they are biased by the rise in divorce and percentage of single parent households.  However, for the last decade it is clear that real take-home pay has declined.

The main cause of this decline is the off-shoring of US high value-added jobs. Both manufacturing jobs and professional services, such as software engineering and information technology work, have been relocated in countries with large and cheap labor forces.

The wipeout of middle class jobs was disguised by the growth in consumer debt. As Americans’ incomes ceased to grow, consumer debt expanded to take the place of income growth and to keep consumer demand rising. Unlike rises in consumer incomes due to productivity growth, there is a limit to debt expansion.  When that limit is reached, the economy ceases to grow.

The immiseration of working people has not resulted from worsening crises of over-production of goods and services, but from financial capital’s power to force the relocation of production for domestic markets to foreign shores.  Wall Street’s pressures, including pressures from takeovers, forced American manufacturing firms to “increase shareholders’ earnings.” This was done by substituting cheap foreign labor for American labor.

Corporations offshored or outsourced abroad their manufacturing output, thus divorcing American incomes from the production of the goods that they consume.  The next step in the process took advantage of the high speed Internet to move professional service jobs, such as engineering, abroad.  The third step was to replace the remains of the domestic work force with foreigners brought in at one-third the salary on H-1B, L-1, and other work visas.

This process by which financial capital destroyed the job prospects of Americans was covered up by “free market” economists, who received grants from offshoring firms in exchange for propaganda that Americans would benefit from a “New Economy” based on financial services, and by shills in the education business, who justified work visas for foreigners on the basis of the lie that America produces a shortage of engineers and scientists.

In Marx’s day, religion was the opiate of the masses.  Today the media is.  Let’s look at media reporting that facilitates the financial oligarchy’s ability to delude the people.

The financial oligarchy is hyping a recovery while American unemployment and home foreclosures are rising. The hype owes its credibility to the high positions from which it comes, to the problems in payroll jobs reporting that overstate employment, and to disposal into the memory hole of any American unemployed for more than one year.

On October 2 statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com reported that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has announced a preliminary estimate of its annual benchmark revision of 2009 employment.  The BLS has found that employment in 2009 has been overstated by about one million jobs.  John Williams believes the overstatement is two million jobs.  He reports that “the birth-death model currently adds [an illusory] net gain of about 900,00 jobs per year to payroll employment reporting.”

The non-farm payroll number is always the headline report.  However, Williams believes that the household survey of unemployment is statistically sounder than the payroll survey.  The BLS has never been able to reconcile the difference in the numbers in the two employment surveys.  Last Friday, the headline payroll number of lost jobs was 263,000 for the month of September.  However the household survey number was 785,000 lost jobs in the month of September.

The headline unemployment rate of 9.8% is a bare bones measure that greatly understates unemployment.  Government reporting agencies know this and report another unemployment number, known as U-6. This measure of US unemployment stands at 17% in September 2009.

When the long-term discouraged workers are added back into the total unemployed, the unemployment rate in September 2009 stands at 21.4%.

The unemployment of American citizens could actually be even higher.  When Microsoft or some other firm replaces several thousand US workers with foreigners on H-1B visas, Microsoft does not report a decline in payroll employment.  Nevertheless, several thousand Americans are now without jobs.  Multiply this by the number of US firms that are relying on “body shops” to replace their US work force with cheap foreign labor year after year, and the result is hundreds of thousands of unreported unemployed Americans.

Obviously, with more than one-fifth of the American work force unemployed and the remainder buried in mortgage and credit card debt, economic recovery is not in the picture.

What is happening is that the hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP money given to the large banks and the trillions of dollars that have been added to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet have been funneled into the stock market, producing another bubble, and into the acquisition of smaller banks by banks “too large to fail.” The result is more financial concentration.

The expansion in debt that underlies this bubble has further eroded the US dollar’s credibility as reserve currency.  When the dollar starts to go, panicked policy-makers will raise interest rates in order to protect the US Treasury’s borrowing capability.  When the interest rates rise, what little remains of the US economy will tank.

If the government cannot borrow, it will print money to pay its bills.  Hyperinflation will hit the American population.  Massive unemployment and massive inflation will inflict upon the American people misery that not even Marx and Lenin could envisage.

Meanwhile America’s economists continue to pretend that they are dealing with a normal postwar recession that merely requires an expansion of money and credit to restore economic growth.

———————————————–

Paul Craig Roberts [ email him ] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term.  He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal .  He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

5 Items For A Successful It Career Through Education

1. Receive a Bachelor’s Degree In today’s competitive workforce certifications are not enough. To get the job, Computer, or promotion you want a bachelor’s degree is almost necessary. This will be, Computer, on your resume forever and distinguish you as part of the highly, Computer, sought after educated workforce. Many employers will use a degree as the first step in weeding out applicants, this is a simple and efficient manner for them to automatically find higher qualified applicants. Having a degree will get your resume viewed by more hiring managers than if you did not have one. Make sure you get a degree from an accredited university. You may want to seek out a traditional university, an online university, or alternative specialized university. Whatever choice you make the most important thing is that you learn new skills and get a degree. 2. Get Certifications Attend a university that you will not only get a Bachelor’s degree but also certifications. Some certifications you, Computer, could receive are the Microsoft MCSD certification, Java 2, WebSphere, DB2, and more. This will help you meet requirements for high-end technology jobs. Think about what you want to do in the future, almost every computer field has specialized certifications that employers are looking for. Try not to waste your time getting a certification in a field that you do not necessarily want to pursue a career in., Computer, If you want to be a programmer do not waste time getting an A+ certification. 3. Gain Experience Experience can set you apart from the competition when applying for a job. Find a university that has a strong emphasis on project-based learning or internship opportunities. Universities that help you gain more than an education by offering several projects you can participate in are worth pursuing. I have known many students who waste time away in college working as a waitress or telemarketer. In almost all fields you can find lower entry-level jobs that will give you a paycheck plus valuable experience that will be useful in, Computer, the future. If you follow this guideline you will graduate, Computer, with a list of, Computer, experience that is impressive on your resume, Computer, and, Computer, be far ahead in the game compared to your fellow students. 4. Seek Out Financial Aid Gaining an education costs money, but for those that need additional help there are programs available to help pay for tuition and education costs. Request more information from universities, Computer, to see which financial aid plans you may be eligible for. If you are academically advanced, a minority, or financially disadvantaged there, Computer, may be scholarships available to you as well.5. Time is of the Essence! Many people spend 4-6 years at a traditional university to obtain their bachelor’s degree. This is ok in many cases because traditionally universities still look the most impressive on a resume. However, Computer, if you know you want to work in the computer industry you may consider an accelerated program to assist you in getting, Computer, the skills and education you need to get started in your career sooner. Online universities and specialized technical universities often offer programs where you can get your B.S. degree in, Computer, under 2 years, this is worth looking into. It is also common knowledge that traditional universities often do not give their computer science graduates the actual programming skills, Computer, they need to be competitive in the workplace, their, Computer, curriculum often consists mainly of theory compared to application.About Neumont UniversityNeumont University’s class of 2005 averaged a starting salary of $60,700, thirteen percent above the national average.* The accelerated bachelor’s degree program lasts just 28 months. That allows our highly qualified graduates to enter the workforce 1 years earlier than their colleagues at four year universities. The campus is located in beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. Each quarter, student teams work on a real business project. Each team works with the business representative and mentors to develop solutions that are ultimately implemented by the businesses. With more and more employers demanding real-world business experience from graduates, Neumont University’s curriculum is proving to be a boon for students and their future employers. Most of Neumont’s graduates are placed in their jobs before they even graduate, due mostly to the coursework our students do with businesses. Our first graduating class had a 91% percent placement, and most of, Computer, the graduates had two job offers before graduation.

MLM vs JOB PT1

I have worked with several MLM companies in the past, while some I have had some success, with others none at all.  It is my firm belief that with any legitimate MLM company you should be able to make some type of income without ever enrolling one person into the company. 

Now please understand I am not saying that you can or can’t make a six-figure income without a team.  But if you will, lets reflect on involvement with companies that ravish and rave about so called systems, training and tools and you go  to meeting after meeting and spend more money than you make. Only to hear someone say “check your belief “. 

Still today I look around and I see MLM companies opening and closing their doors to distributors, some ground floor opportunities, while others simply revamp their compensation plans  to attract new distributors.  Many people still prefer much more to be involved with MLM either part-time or full-time over just working a traditional 9-5. 

After hearing several stories about the good, the bad and yes, the ugly from distributors, many distributors believe that being involved with an MLM company can teach you how to deal with people both personally and professionally. Others claim to get involved on accident, while some simply get involved because of a friend or relative any there is a vast majority that get involved on the premise of making huge amounts of income . 

Still after all of the stories you hear from people who MLM hop and look for the next big opportunity, I wasn’t satisfied with just these opinions.  I still have to know MLM vs JOB who wins.  Take a look at todays economy and the so called recession that we are in still people wast lots of hours away from home working 1,2, even 3 jobs in some cases.  Many have been less fortunate to be in the layoff, or downsize population.  Huge Companies are closing every day yet in every employment publication the same companies are hiring every week. Why?

 Stay tuned for more. 

View This Poll
trends

Obama is the loser in the stimulus plan as US sheds more jobs in September

The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September, the highest since June 1983, as employers cut far more jobs than expected. The report is evidence that the worst recession since the 1930s is still inflicting widespread pain. Persistently high unemployment could weaken the recovery as consumers, concerned about their jobs and incomes, restrain spending. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the U.S. economy. The Labor Department said Friday that the economy lost a net total of 263,000 jobs last month, from a downwardly revised 201,000 in August. That’s worse than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 180,000 job losses, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

OBAMA NOW OWNS THIS ECONOMY because his lame-assed solutions have not worked and will continue to downward spiral until someone with a plan steps up to the plate and give America what we need to survive this depression. PLEASE CALL IT WHAT IT IS – WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A VAST AND FULL OUT DEPRESSION, WORSE THAN THE 1930s and we have our parents and their generation to thank for it.

Yeah we helped put us all in the dumpster  but it was GEORGE BUSH and his FATHER that helped push a tottering America down the wall of poverty. Obama is just there now to sweep us into the sewer.  That stinky health care reform he’s been touting hopefully will NEVER go through and become law. If it does watch what happens in America – I think too many people are riled up and pissed off to allow American politicians whom we voted in and who work for us to dictate that we now owe mandatory insurance for health care where the premiums are outrageous and the services are diminished. C’mon Washington – take your head out of your asshole and sell the doo doo – you’re stinking up our lives.

It’s time we get rid of Washington and the Federal Government once and for all. Not violently – let’s use the internet to do it.

—-Bonju Patten

Full Time v. Part Time Job

By Eki Qushay Akhwan

Regardless of the title (which can be very nominal), a full-time job, first and above all is, I think, a job that is done wholeheartedly with all the singularity and unifying efforts, energy, concentration, and time it takes to accomplish a well-defined goal that it has been set to achieve. Anything less than this will, despite the title, become only a part-time job or a collection of part-time jobs.

Let me define what I mean by “done wholeheartedly with all the singularity and unifying efforts, energy, concentration, and time it takes to accomplish a well-defined goal”.

No jobs can be a fulltimer unless it is done wholeheartedly, that is, with a loving or at least interested dedication to the task at hand. Anythind done with less than that will make it only a nominal full-timer, at the very least; or, may even make it just a part-timer if external conditions – such as the level of remuneration or working conditions – deminish it further. This first condition, I think, is the prerequisite for the other things, with the key words being “singularity” and “unifying”. This means that all the efforts, energy, concentration, and time dedicated to this job should be contained within a single or unified structure that functions as the vehicle, the driver, and at the same time the road to attain the set goal. There can not be different vehicles driven by different drivers travelling on different roads because such a thing can only lead to one’s getting lost or confused.

All this said, the goal should also be well-defined because without a clearly set destination, however good the vehicles, the drivers, and the roads are, they will not be of any efficient use. Things will only go round and round until all are exhausted and be turned into a skeptical confusion.

I hope you understand why I’m saying all this. We have been in this condition for a long time. My job title – ours if you like – has been a full-time job, but what we have been doing, I think and observably so, has been nothing more than a collection of part-time jobs. Yes, we teach. That’s our responsibility and the very thing that defines our job title. Yes, we ought to do some research and write scientific journal papers, granted as necessary paraphernalia to the advancement of our field of work and a sign of our loving and interested dedication to our job. Yes, we need to do some sort of community service because only then can we attain some sort of utility or usefulness with whatever we have. All this constitutes a unified package that will lead us to the goal set – within the permissible limits of the vehicle – for this job: to educate and improve humanity. The problems that I see now is that our job has become more diverse than the above descriptions. It has included – to my, nay, our dismay – a lot of other things that don’t belong to the agreed parameters of the descriptions. We have now included in our set of tasks an unreasonable amount of administrative work that is not directly related to our job descriptions. Worse still, we have been commanded from all directions by different drivers wanting us to take different roads and go to different directions. Some of them want us to do the managerial contruction work, some supervision work, and still others want us to do nothing more than clerical administrative work that – in the light of our abilities and qualifications – can be degrading. I know all these things are done for the sake of our common roof, our own house, a place where we all have vested interests in. But can we not have a proper distribution of assignments appropriate to our respective competencies? Should a farmer not be planting and caring for his plants and let the duties of transporting their harvest to a transporter? Should a carpenter not be making a cupboard, chair, tables and all kinds of wooden furniture and let the duties of making the nails, the hammer, all other implements he needs to an ironmonger or toolmaker?

Modern management is laid upon the foundation of specific job distributions precisely because logically, empirically, and scientifically it has been proven that no one, however agile and multitalented he or she is, can perform multiple tasks with equal dexterity and efficiency. Although multitasking is possible, it is by no means desirable in a highly specific, professional, and demanding job. To this end, the multitasking that we now have to perform have degraded our profession from a full-time job to nothing more than a collection of part-time jobs, each competing for our attention, dedication, efforts, time and energy that should otherwise have been singularly and unifyingly be given to the the only road ahead and the destination that we have agreed upon?

New consortium buys Neqtar

(CFD.net.au – Contract for Difference, Share, Forex, ETFs, Commodities Traders) – The financially-troubled Sunraysia winery Neqtar has been sold.
Neqtar and its partner company SDS Beverages went into receivership in June owing about $65 million.However, a new consortium of seven investors called Redlands Wine Company has bought the winery business.

<p style="margin: 0px 0px 0.8em; font-family: Verdana,'Lucida Grande’,'Bitstream Vera Sans’,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;”>The group includes at least one of Neqtar’s major grower creditors, Mildura businessman Greg Hutchison.</p> <p>He says he is hoping the purchase is seen as a vote of confidence in the future of the region’s wine industry but says rebuilding the business will be a major task.</p> <p>“I acknowledge it’s had a troubled past but … we are not looking at the past in relation to the winery itself and there have been different reasons for the problems there,” he said.</p> <p>“I’m not underestimating the size of the job ahead of us. We are looking at acquiring the assets and we have to completely rebuild the business.”</p> <p> </p><p>Source: New consortium buys Neqtar</p>