RUTHFULLY YOURS

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

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-trumpian-candidate-1538329424?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=4&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Donald Trump’s candidacy was “the empty gin bottle” that voters had “chosen to toss through the window,” David Gelernter wrote in an October 2016 Wall Street Journal op-ed. As Brazilians go to the polls Oct. 7 to elect a new president, they’re tossing their own empty bottle, perhaps one that once held the potent sugar distillate called cachaça.

The Trumplike candidate is Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party, a 63-year-old, thrice-married former army captain. Although he has been in Brazil’s Congress since 1990 he is widely viewed as an outsider and wears his political incorrectness as a badge of honor. He’s also leading in the polls, much to the consternation of “experts” in places like New York and London.

Mr. Gelernter’s America was more than simply frustrated with an anemic economy. President Obama and Hillary Clinton had “emasculated” voters, he wrote. Their rebellion was against progressive snobs who belittled conservatives and their traditional values.

Yet the Trump base alone couldn’t have elected the president. It took voters like Mr. Gelernter, whose profile as a professor of computer science at Yale puts him squarely in the category of the “elite,” to produce the unforeseen victory. Confessing no admiration for the real-estate developer, Mr. Gelernter said he would vote for him “grimly.” Why? Because the alternative was too awful to contemplate.

With 28% support, according to a Datafolha poll released Friday, a Bolsonaro victory is far from certain. Electoral rules require a candidate to earn 50% plus one of valid votes cast to win in the first round. If necessary, a runoff election will be held Oct. 28.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13042/eu-internet-censorship

Even before such EU-wide legislation, similar ostensible “anti-terror legislation” in France, for example, is being used as a political tool against political opponents and to limit unwanted free speech.
In France, simply spreading information about ISIS atrocities is now considered “incitement to terrorism”. It is this kind of legislation, it seems, that the European Commission now wishes to impose on all of the European Union.
Social media giants — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft, Google+ and Instagram — act as voluntary censors on behalf of the European Union.
The European Commission states that it is specifically interested in funding projects that focus on the “development of technology and innovative web tools preventing and countering illegal hate speech online and supporting data collection”, and studies that analyze “the spread of racist and xenophobic hate speech in different Member States…”

In March, the European Commission — the unelected executive branch of the European Union — told social media companies to remove illegal online terrorist content within an hour — or risk facing EU-wide legislation on the topic. This ultimatum was part of a new set of recommendations that applies to all forms of supposedly “illegal content” online. This content ranges “from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement.”

While the one-hour ultimatum was ostensibly only about terrorist content, the following is how the European Commission presented the new recommendations at the time:

“… The Commission has taken a number of actions to protect Europeans online – be it from terrorist content, illegal hate speech or fake news… we are continuously looking into ways we can improve our fight against illegal content online. Illegal content means any information which is not in compliance with Union law or the law of a Member State, such as content inciting people to terrorism, racist or xenophobic, illegal hate speech, child sexual exploitation… What is illegal offline is also illegal online”.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/As-I-see-it-Europes-appeasement-of-Iran-568240

Remarks this week about Iran by US National Security Adviser John Bolton contained some of the most ferocious language ever used by an American administration about a foreign state.

Bolton told the Iranian regime: “If you cross us, our allies or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay. Let my message today be clear: ‘We are watching, and we will come after you.’”

Earlier this year the US pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran, re-instituting potentially crippling sanctions against the regime. At the UN, President Trump delivered a similar message. America, he said, would not allow “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism” to possess “the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth.”Bolton went further and threatened “terrible consequences” for those doing business with Iran. But Britain and Europe are intending to do exactly that.

Earlier in the week, the EU and the three European co-signers of the Iran deal – Britain, France and Germany – said they would set up a new payment system to allow oil companies and businesses to continue trading without relying on the US-led global market. Commentators agree this sanctions-busting ruse is unlikely to work.

Big companies are already pulling out of Iran because the US says they can trade with Iran or America but they can’t do both. The European maneuver is likely merely to antagonize the US. As its Secretary of State Mike Pompeo angrily said, the Europeans were now “solidifying Iran’s ranking as number-one state sponsor of terror” with “one of the most counterproductive measures imaginable for regional peace and security”.

So why are the Europeans hell-bent on propping up Iran and the wretched nuclear deal? Economic self-interest is an important factor, but it’s not the only one.