Steve Cordle

3 yrs - Youtube

So, the preacher's sermon stepped on your toes, eh? Well, before you call him and complain about your hurt feelings, check out this Minute Message

3 yrs

Today in 1917 in Vincennes, France (not far from Paris) the exotic dancer, courtesan and alleged spy Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, better known by her stage name of Mata Hari is executed for espionage by a French firing squad. Sometimes erroneously thought to be German, she was Dutch by birth.

Mata Hari first came to Paris in 1905 and found fame as a performer of Asian-inspired dances. She soon began touring all over Europe, telling the story of how she was born in a sacred Indian temple and taught ancient dances by a priestess who gave her the name Mata Hari, meaning “eye of the day” in Malay. Though it made for an interesting story, the reality was Mata Hari was born in a small town in northern Holland in 1876. She acquired her superficial knowledge of Indian and Javanese dances when she lived for several years in Malaysia with her former husband, who was a Scot in the Dutch colonial army. Regardless of her authenticity, she packed dance halls and opera houses from Russia to France, mostly because her show consisted of her slowly stripping nude.

She became a famous courtesan (what they used to call a "kept" mistress or prostitute, particularly one with wealthy, powerful, or influential clients). By the outbreak of World War I her catalog of lovers had come to include many men of various nationalities, including Crowned Prince Wilhelm of Germany.

It was reported that Hari was so used to being watched and admired by men so much of the time, she never noticed or even suspected that she was being watched and followed, but as early as 1915, Mata Hari was under surveillance by British MI-5 (Military Intelligence, Department 5). Because she had a Dutch passport and her home country was officially neutral in the war, she could pass between belligerent countries with relative ease.
An intelligence report in February 1916, said that she was “in relation with highly placed people and during her sojourn in France she made the acquaintance of many French and Belgian officers“.

“She is suspected of having been to France on important missions for the Germans,” the report said.

In February 1917, French authorities arrested her for espionage and imprisoned her at St. Lazare Prison in Paris. In a military trial conducted in July, she was accused of revealing details about allied tanks (then a new weapon) resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers. She was convicted and sentenced to death and after all appeals were exhausted, she was shot by a firing squad. When facing her executioners, she did not so much as flinch and even refused a blindfold. Some reports say she blew a kiss to the firing squad just prior to their opening fire.

Mata Hari’s role and value in espionage is debated to this day. My Scottish grandmother certainly believed she was a spy and got what she deserved. While there is some evidence that Mata Hari acted as a German spy and for a time as a double agent for the French, the Germans had written her off as an ineffective agent who produced little usable intelligence. What is known is that her military trial was riddled with bias and circumstantial evidence, and it is probable that French authorities trumped her up as “the greatest woman spy of the century” as a distraction for the huge losses the French army was suffering on the western front (losses so significant that some French army units had to be disbanded).
After her execution. Mata Hari’s physical remains were buried at the graveyard in Vincennes and a stack of letters was found in her prison cell that were turned over to her lawyers.

(History channel, roughdiplomacydotcom, chimeramyth.blogspotdotcom, historygossip, times of London, commentary)

3 yrs - Youtube

A link to my YouTube channel and sermon from last Sunday. In Matthew 9:35-38 we see Jesus modeling ministry for us. Jesus never sat back and waited for the people to come to Him, Jesus went out where the people were. Please note: nowhere does the Bible command lost sinners to come to church…but it does command us saints to go and tell people about Jesus!

3 yrs

Shalom, Thanks for the add. Purrrraying that our all mighty graciously loving Lord and Savior will bless you as you bless others every day. Mt. 10:42; Jn. 3:1-36; 1 Jn. 4:1-21; Zeph. 3:17; Nu. 6:24-26; 1 Cor. 15:58

3 yrs

As I started writing this essay, it dawned on me there is one question I never asked either of my parents. My mother (born in England in 1932) was 7 years old on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland triggering World War II. Dad (born in Alabama in 1936) had just turned 5 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America went to war. I never asked them where they were or what they were doing when those events happened. For no other reason than curiosity, I wish I had asked those questions. Everybody knows what today in history is and anyone who is old enough to have the memories of that day can tell you exactly where they were when they heard the news.

It was Tuesday and I was in my office in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada on the phone with one of the church members. She was an American living over the border in New York. During our conversation, she mentioned that she heard a news report of a bomb exploding at the Pentagon, but did not have any details. Once off the phone I went to the men’s room and then stopped in the room where some ladies gathered every week to work on quilts to sell as a fund raiser for a Christian school. I mentioned my phone conversation and that a bomb wet of in D.C. One of them said they had heard about it and that a bomb had gone off at the World Trade Center.

I went back to my office and turned on the radio to WBEN in Buffalo, NY. They were in live coverage (CBS News, I think) of events in New York and DC. I decided to go next door to the house and turn on the TV. I went in and turned on CNN who had footage of the smoke coming out of the north tower. From the right-hand side of the screen came a plane that slammed into the south tower. It took a minute for it to sink in what just happened, in fact my first though was that it was CGI.

Not much got done work wise the rest of the day. I bounced between CNN, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) all the major television news outlets and the radio. WGR in Buffalo didn’t talk sports like they usually did. The morning show was a male-female duo whose names I have long since forgotten, but I remember the female co-host saying she was willing to grant a wide margin of error as to whose a** we kicked for the attack. For the most part, that was American sentiment that day.

In Canada, there was a swelling of good will and support for Americans. Our neighbors displayed American flags in their windows and yards. Like American airspace, Canadian air space was ordered closed and planes had to land wherever they could find a runway long enough to land. Out in Atlantic Canada, so many planes landed that hotels quickly ran out of rooms. Gymnasiums were quickly made into emergency shelters to accommodate the overflow. In the town of Gander, Newfoundland with a population in 2001 of about 9,600, the people took in around 7,000 stranded travelers, some of the town’s residents opened their homes to total strangers for several days.

Pundits were expecting up to 40,000 dead, but thankfully, the numbers were much lower at 3,000 dead, including 24 Canadians. Many more have had long term effects from the attacks, those being physical and mental.

The long term political and social effects of the attacks are still be felt and argued about, especially in America, but I didn’t want to get political for this post, so we’ll save those discussions for other posts at other times.