RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/hezbollah-south-of-the-border-a-rare-u-s-government-update/

As a working journalist in 2007, I traveled to Nicaragua to find out why Iran had just set up shop in the country after the election of U.S nemesis President Daniel Ortega. In Managua, I found the Iranian compound in a posh neighborhood, guarded by a coterie of Nicaraguan troops. For about three days, I episodically knocked on the tall metal gates asking to interview the new Iranian ambassador. “Soon, very soon, but not today,” a polite aide always told me.

Frustrated that all I was getting to see was the peak of a limp Iranian national flag jutting up over the tall gates, I clambered up to the roof of a tall neighboring building and shot some photos of the compound’s interior, spy-like, then went off to interview Sandinista leaders and regular citizens about the Iranians encamped in their country.

Then, just as now, there was good reason for public interest and inquiry. What Iran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah were doing at that time in Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Tri-Border Area of South America mattered on several American security and foreign policy counts. For one thing, as the 1992 and 1994 Hezbollah bombings of Jewish facilities in Argentina demonstrated, Iran and Hezbollah in America’s backyard projected a credible threat of physical retaliation against American interests and allies should saber-rattling ever go military over Iran’s nuclear program. That’s no less true today, as President Trump and various Iranian leaders trade war cries over sanctions and nukes. A U.S.-Mexico border, meanwhile, beckons just a few countries away.

For years, the main source of updated reporting about Hezbollah south of our border came from think tanks and some media, sometimes citing sources of unknown provenance. Certainly, not much ever came from the U.S. government or American intelligence agencies tracking the situation because that stuff is kind of secret.

However, an update of sorts on Hezbollah in Latin America is available from an official government source. The U.S. State Department released its annual “Country Reports on Terrorism” last month, looking back on the year 2017. The information about Hezbollah in Latin America had to be stitched together from tidbits here and there in its 340 pages (the entirety of which can be read here). What gives this information more gravitas than other sources about Hezbollah in Latin America is that State Department analysts put it in, and it survived internal review processes. Decent intelligence probably backs it up.

For starters, Hezbollah has indeed “maintained an interest in the region” through 2017, primarily “in financial and fundraising activities.” The report also hints at darker Hezbollah pursuits in the region. Countries where Hezbollah has been active in recent years include Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Panama, Bolivia, and Argentina. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13058/yemen-crisis-united-states

Despite hard fighting and air strikes from Saudi and United Arab Emirates warplanes, the Houthis still control about one-quarter of Yemen’s sprawling desert lands, including its capital city, Sana’a.

The UAE Red Crescent Society recently distributed food aid in Southern Yemen, temporarily sparing some 1,000 families the horror of starvation. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, directed the emergency response project.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration, has quietly met the challenge. The U.S. has shipped more than $854 million in aid since the start of fiscal year 2017. The good news about the bad news is that the U.S. in engaged and helping.

“The world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” said U.N. World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley, is in Yemen.

He is not exaggerating. More than 75% of the country needs humanitarian aid—a greater percentage than any other nation on Earth, according to the U.S. Department of State

Some 18 million Yemenis (out of a total population of 22 million) are hungry, homeless and increasingly hopeless.

Civil war has driven them from their homes, burned their schools and bombed their hospitals. In the markets, the shelves are empty as few trucks arrive from sea ports and rebel roadblocks menace the few deliverymen that dare to take the roads into the sun-scorched interior. As a result, mothers, some too hungry to nurse their children, have flooded into refugee centers, overwhelming

international aid workers. The men, those who have not been murdered or maimed by war, wait in the shade of U.N. tents for food and medicine that too often is not enough.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-instincts-triumph-on-trade-1538433226

The midnight Sunday deal between U.S. and Canadian negotiators was a decisive victory for President Trump’s unconventional approach to trade. Even the administration’s fiercest critics are calling the revisions significant. For the first time, Mr. Trump and his allies can point to significant progress toward his core campaign promise of renegotiating trade deals to the benefit of the U.S. workers.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement requires that cars be made with 75% North American components to escape tariffs. Forty percent of each car must also be manufactured in facilities where workers earn $16 an hour or more on average. Crucially, Canada has also cracked open the door to its dairy markets for American farmers.

President Trump’s critics will ask, not unfairly, if the incremental gains are worth a year of upheaval and strained relationships among the Nafta partners. Free-trade supporters will argue that the new, more restrictive pact will slow growth in the North American economy and erode the foundations of the global trading system. Indeed, there is no guarantee the USMCA will make it through Congress, especially if the Democrats take one or both houses in the coming midterms.

But for Mr. Trump, trade deals with Mexico, Canada and South Korea—and progress in discussions with the European Union and Japan—allow him to wrong-foot his critics once again. Contrary to the dire warnings in many quarters, Mr. Trump’s unorthodox methods haven’t set off ruinous trade wars or caused a global depression. And while the new agreements are hardly revolutionary, many Americans not familiar with the fiendish complexity of trade negotiations will take the USMCA as a sign that Mr. Trump’s aggressive methods work. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-wages-a-religious-war-against-ukraine-1538329125

Russia’s assault on Ukraine unfolded along military, economic and diplomatic lines. Vladimir Putin’s Moscow also is waging a less-noticed war on Ukraine’s religious sovereignty. To understand this, look at the structure of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The church consists of 14 autocephalous, or self-governing, churches. Religious and national identities often overlap, as in the Orthodox Churches of Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia. Each national church falls under a particular patriarchate, and the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople is considered first among equals.

In recent centuries, Ukrainian believers had belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. Shortly before the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a council of bishops in Ukraine declared the church’s independence from Russia. In the ’90s, the new leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church—Filaret, the metropolitan bishop of Kiev—came under pressure from Russian church and security officials to resign. He refused. In 1997 the patriarch of the Russian church excommunicated him and declared his followers schismatics.

An estimated 12,300 parishes in Ukraine continue to follow Moscow and belong to what is known as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Meantime, some 5,100 parishes switched to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, led by Filaret.

Patriarch Filaret seeks recognition of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as autonomous and independent, and he is about to get it. The ultimate arbiter in this dispute is Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. On Sept. 23 he confirmed his intention to issue a tomos, or decree that confers the independence of a local church, for Ukraine.

The ties between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate are as old as Russia itself. Throughout its history, the Russian Orthodox Church had been subservient to the state and an unshakable supporter of autocracy. Since the late 15th century, the church provided Moscow’s rulers with a political theology of manifest destiny, asserting that Moscow had become the Second Jerusalem and the Third Rome (Constantinople being the second).

The emergence of the atheist Soviet state in 1922 dealt a severe blow to the church. The state confiscated most ecclesiastical property. It destroyed many churches while turning others into storage places. Steeples that rose high enough became jamming stations to prevent Voice of America or the BBC from reaching Soviet citizens. Few seminaries survived. Those that did, trained a small number of priests. The KGB infiltrated the priesthood, informing on clergy and promoting Soviet interests abroad.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-the-polish-tiger-1538329241

Poland recently became the first country in nearly a decade to graduate from emerging-market status and enter the ranks of the world’s developed economies. In September it joined countries such as the U.S., Germany and South Korea in the FTSE Russell index of advanced economies. For Poland, the first country in East-Central Europe to join the index, the distinction is the fruit of a long effort to build a flourishing market economy on the ruins of the communist system that the Solidarity movement helped topple in 1989.

It is especially gratifying for me as Poland’s prime minister. Thanks to the efforts of millions of Poles, our economy and financial markets now meet the highest standards of integrity, transparency and sound regulation demanded by international investors.

When Poland embarked on this remarkable journey, its economy was in a shambles. In 1989 per capita gross domestic product was only $1,800 in today’s dollars. Now it is $16,000. Poland is the biggest economy in the former Soviet bloc and the seventh largest in the European Union.

While many prospered, others were left behind. Too often connections, not hard work, provided success. In 2015 my party became the first to win an outright parliamentary majority since the fall of communism. We won the elections by promising to tackle corruption and pursue an inclusive growth strategy. The Law and Justice Party aims to embody the ideal of community that inspired the Solidarity movement and has always been a part of Poland’s social fabric.