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.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/01/indonesia-tsunami-appeal-international-help-mass-grave-dug-1300/

Some 1,200 Indonesian convicts are on the run from three different detention facilities in devastated Sulawesi after the region was rocked by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, a justice ministry official said Monday

The warning came as volunteers began to dig mass graves for the bodies of more than 1,000 victims in an attempt to prevent an outbreak of disease.

Four days after a 7.5 magnitude quake triggered a tsunami that slammed into the city of Palu, the country also appealed for international help on Monday as it struggled to cope with the sheer scale of the disaster.

At least 832 people so far are confirmed dead after the waves battered the Sulawesi coastline but the toll was expected to rise sharply as rescue workers reached areas that had been cut off in the disaster.

Authorities said prisoners had seized on the opportunity to break free. One prison in Palu city – built to hold just 120 people – saw most of its 581 inmates storm past guards and escape to freedom through walls collapsed by the massive 7.5 magnitude shake.

Inmates had also fled from another overcapacity facility in Palu by breaking down its main door and another in Donggala, an area also hit by the disaster. The Donggala jail was set on fire and all 343 inmates were now on the run, Utami said.

Fears are growing of a humanitarian emergency as supplies of medicine, food and water run low. A shortage of heavy equipment has left rescuers struggling to reach desperate victims calling out from the ruins of collapsed buildings.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/kavanaugh-rorschach/

At this point, we don’t know how the SCOTUS nominee’s saga will turn out. And it is precisely because we don’t, and can’t, that the pro forma, gender wars projections of misandrist opinionistas tell us much more about them than they realise, or, lets face it, than they care.

No one knows whether Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations describe an event that actually happened, or happened exactly as she describes it. We may learn more, from the FBI investigation, or not. Whatever the result, the lurid circus that is the U.S Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation process, and now the hearing into Dr Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault by Judge Kavanaugh, (when she was 15 and he was 17) is a Rorschach screen to the American mind.

For those who don’t know, the Rorschach test is a series of inkblot prints used to explore unconscious thinking, or bias. Since the black-ink images represent nothing in particular, the interpretations given to them by subjects can only come from the mind of the subject. It was popular in the early twentieth century when psychoanalysis held sway, but is very seldom, if at all used these days. It survives best as a prop for jokes, like the one where the frustrated subject, looking at image after image of meaningless black smudges, berates the psychologist: “I don’t see how showing me pictures of my parents having sex is supposed to help me with my problems.”

And the famous Get Smart sketch where the doctor testily upbraids Smart for crassly remarking that all the ink blots look like a man and a woman having sex:

Doctor (with German accent): “You’ve got a very one track mind, Mr Smart”.

Smart: “Well doctor, you’re the one with the all the dirty pictures.”

You get the point.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/nationalists-in-germany-now-the-second-largest-party/

Despite charges from mainstream politicians that it is “fascist,” the right-wing Alternative to Germany party is now polling second, ahead of the left-wing Social Democrat Party.

The party’s growing popularity may be due to its strong stand against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s lax immigration policies. Or, it could be because it offers a clear alternative to the oddball coalition cobbled together by Merkel of Social Democrats and the chancellor’s CDU party.

Last month, when an AfD politician in parliament stood up and lambasted Merkel for her lax policies, the chamber erupted in insults and smears of AfD. That caused the 19 AfD deputies to walk out of parliament.

NPR:

It is the latest sign that many citizens are drawn to a populist movement that is reshaping politics in Germany, a trend that’s playing out in Europe and elsewhere. AfD politicians are regularly accused of extremism and don’t shy from the type of nationalist rhetoric that mainstream German politicians largely have shunned since World War II. After launching in 2013, Alternative for Germany has grown powerful by focusing especially on the public’s fears and frustrations over the country taking in record numbers of migrants and refugees in recent years.

That’s the superficial view. But there’s a lot more to the AfD’s growing popularity than stoking nativist fears:

So, how has the AfD managed to garner so much support for its “alternative” for the country?

According to Werner Weidenfeld, a political scientist at the University of Munich, the party appeals to a variety of sectors. “The AfD supporters are not all right-wing radicals,” he says. There is a range of backers, including “disappointed middle-class” citizens and “some right-wing extremists.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-canada-scramble-for-nafta-deal-beforemidnightdeadline-1538330067

U.S. and Canadian officials were nearing a deal Sunday afternoon on rewriting the North American Free Trade Agreement, hoping to complete the new accord by the U.S.-imposed midnight deadline, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Trump administration officials told stakeholders over the weekend that they were on a path toward reaching their goal of having a draft of a trilateral agreement between the two countries and Mexico that could be published by late Sunday.

After a month of difficult negotiations between Washington and Ottawa— talks that seemed to break down altogether last week—there now appears to be a broad agreement by the top political leaders in both countries to pull out the stops and finalize an accord over the weekend, these people said.

Negotiators cautioned that, as of Sunday afternoon, disagreements between the two sides remained, especially on the nettlesome U.S. demand for greater access to Canada’s politically sensitive dairy market. And, people familiar with the talks said it wasn’t clear there would be enough time to close the gaps by the end of the day, especially since the two countries didn’t resume intensive negotiations to resolve differences until the weekend.

Still, the weekend activity was the most optimistic signal in weeks that the Trump administration was working to keep the quarter-century-old commercial bloc continentwide, rather than breaking it up, as President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do.

The U.S. and Mexico reached their own agreement a month ago on overhauling the agreement and invited Canada to sign on by Sept. 30.

Talks with Ottawa stalled last week, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told Congress Thursday he didn’t think an agreement with Canada was likely by that deadline. Mr. Trump has said he would be willing to consider a new Nafta that excludes Canada if Ottawa didn’t make what he considered sufficient concessions on his timetable. The deadline doesn’t preclude Canada from joining a revised Nafta later. CONTINUE AT SITE