Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, January 6

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

THE WEEKLY BRIEF
A LIGHT FOR THE NATIONS: THE REVELATIONS OF THE CHRISTMAS SEASON 
January 6th the Church continues the Christmas season by manifesting (Epiphany) that this baby born in Bethlehem is the King of Kings and Lord of Nature.  The three wise men represent the kings of the gentile nations who are led by a light appearing in nature as a star.  The Sunday after the Epiphany, the season concludes with the Baptism of Jesus which is another manifestation of the Baby in Bethlehem now matured as the Man from Galilee at the Jordan River.  Christ's Baptism is called the Theophany-the manifestation that at the heart of reality is the interpersonal relationship  of a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the One Living God. We humans are created in the image of this interpersonal union and meant for a similar communal destiny as a unified interpersonal spiritual organism. Our project here at AOA is to show how the nations as sacred brotherhoods carry out God's Providence in history. Along with the Eucharistic Church and marriage, the nations are interpersonal forms of communion that are physical reflections of spiritual reality.  The little baby born in Bethlehem matured to be a man who was crucified and rose from the dead. His Body now further matures in the Apostolic Church and is made more manifest when nations are baptized into the brotherhood of men and the fraternal order of the nations.    Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God.

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE MASCULINE BOND AT THE NAMING OF JESUS: The circumcision of Jesus.

FEMININE ICONOGRAPHY AT CHRISTMAS: A virgin submits to the Spirit and becomes the Mother of the Savior of humanity - she is always covered. A modern woman steals the baby - she takes as her uniform her own nudity. The uncovering of woman in public like the abandonment of the Fatherhood of God in theology and dissolution of masculine brotherhood in nations  is another of the sexual transgressions in rebellion against the sacral order.

OHIO PRIEST COMMITS SUICIDE IN CHICAGO: If you just read the Catholic press, you might miss the 16 year old male in this story. Another very popular priest being gay and being Catholic.

THE RICHEST, MOST CORRUPT OF ALL THE BISHOPS - THE GERMAN NATIONAL CONFERENCE : Soft on homosexuality, hard on not paying church tax, generous on pensions for gay dominated clergy, miserly toward Catholic hospitals.

THE CATHOLIC WEB: Fifteen most popular Catholic sites and their traffic.

KEEPING CUSTODY OF THE EYES - SAINT LUCIA AND THE BLESSING OF SMARTPHONES: Chesterton says all good things must be protected by thankfulness and restraint - blessing the phones may be a better idea than it sounds.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

THE WORST DISASTER: The deaths in Yemen are directly related to Muhammed bin Salman -much worse than Crimea, much worse than any work of Iran. We could stop it. A good review of Yemen. 

QATAR RESISTS WAHHABI SAUDIS THE BEST WAY: In Qatar a nationalist resurgence. Stratfor sees the same development.

DORE GOLD AUTHOR OF HATRED'S KINGDOM EXPLAINS HIS (AND ISRAEL"S) CHANGE ON SAUDI ARABIA. NOT CONVINCING BUT INTERESTING: From Dore Gold (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs):

• When I wrote a book about Saudi Arabia's contribution to the rise of global terrorism after 9/11, back in 2003, the Israeli security establishment at the time estimated that between 50 and 70% of the Hamas budget came from Saudi Arabia. But something happened since then that changed this picture.
• In May 2003, Riyadh was struck by a triple suicide bombing attack - 18 people were killed and Saudi Arabia shifted from being on the side of those who were launching these terrorist attacks to those who were victims of terrorism. Basically, Saudi Arabia from that point onward was on the same side as the United States and Israel.
• While it was true that Wahhabi Islam was associated with the revival of jihad in the Arabian Peninsula, the ones who were really behind the ideological push towards renewed terrorism were organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, which had sought and received sanctuary in Saudi Arabia.
• So what draws Israel and Saudi Arabia to the same side of the fence today?
• First, there are the Sunni extremist organizations. Both al-Qaeda and ISIS have mounted a threat to both our countries.
• Second, clearly Iran looms large in the regional problems that both Israel and Saudi Arabia face. Just a few years back, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash, revealed that analysis of Iranian missile tests indicated that there were two cities on the Iranian target list: one was Riyadh and the other one was Tel Aviv.
• There's a third common thread tying Israel and Saudi Arabia together. Both countries are facing Iranian efforts to destabilize our strategic environment.
• The Iranians have been seeking to encircle Israel by supporting terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip to our south, in Lebanon to our north, and now in Syria and possibly even the West Bank in the period ahead. Today, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran that is providing the bulk of funding to the Hamas budget.
• For Saudi Arabia, it's clear that Iran has entered into Yemen through the Houthis to the south, they are trying to take over Bahrain which they regard as a province of Iran, and they have these huge Shiite militias that have been active in Iraq as well.
• Over the last number of years I have met with senior officials who in the past worked for the Saudi government. I am convinced that Israel and Saudi Arabia share common concerns. I think Israel should make every effort to try and bridge the gap with Saudi Arabia, even discretely, even though there are glitches that can occur as two countries with very different backgrounds try and find common ground.

Amb. Dore Gold, former director general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli ambassador to the UN, is president of the Jerusalem Center.

IRAN. WHO ARE THE PROTESTERS AND WHY--THE NY TIMES IS STILL A NEWSPAPER AND HAS THE BEST EXPLANATION: Thomas Erdbrink is a Dutch journalist based in Teheran who is the NY Times bureau chief in Iran.  Excerpts from Jan, 2018 article:

TEHRAN — While the protests that swept Iran in 2009 were led by the urban middle class, these protests have been largely driven by disaffected young people in rural areas, towns and small cities who have seized an opening to vent their frustrations with a political elite they say has hijacked the economy to serve its own interests.

Unemployment for young people — half the population — runs at 40 percent, analysts believe. Meanwhile, Iran has spent billions of dollars abroad in recent years to extend its influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The initial catalyst for the anger appears to have been the leak by President Rouhani last month of a proposed government budget. For the first time, secret parts of the budget, including details of the country’s religious institutes, were exposed.Iranians discovered that billions of dollars were going to hard-line organizations, the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and religious foundations that enrich the clerical elite. At the same time, the budget proposed to end cash subsidies for millions of citizens, increase fuel prices and privatize public schools.

The leak appeared to be intended to tap popular resentment, and it worked. Telegram, a social media messaging app used by over 40 million Iranians, blew up with angry comments.

“It made me angry,” said Mehdi, 33, from Izeh, a town in Iran’s poor Khuzestan Province, who asked that his family name not be used out of fear of retaliation. “There were all these religious organs that received high budgets, while we struggle with constant unemployment.”

Last Thursday, hard-liners tried to take back the initiative and embarrass the president, staging a demonstration in the holy city Mashhad, where hundreds chanted slogans against the weak economy and shouted “death to the dictator” and “death to Rouhani.”

An Iranian security official confirmed that the Friday prayer leader of the city, Ahmad Alamolhoda, a prominent hard-liner, had been summoned by Iran’s National Security Council to explain his role in the demonstration. Videos of the gathering then went viral on social media, where people had for weeks been heatedly discussing the proposed budget. Frustrated Iranians elsewhere were emboldened.

In reaction to the protest in Mashhad, Hesamodin Ashna, a trusted adviser to President Rouhani, sent out a Twitter message on Friday, highlighting “the unbalanced distribution of the budget.”

Iran’s military forces, active in several countries in the Middle East, saw their budget increase to $11 billion, a nearly 20 percent rise, he said. The budget for representatives of the supreme leader in universities was increased. An institute run by the hard-line cleric Mohammad Taghi Meshbah-Yazdi was to receive eight times as much as a decade ago. Online anger reached a boiling point.

For decades, those living in Iran’s provincial towns and villages were regarded as the backbone of the country’s Islamic regime. They tended to be conservative, averse to change and pious followers of the sober Islamic lifestyle promoted by the state.

In Qom, the center of Iran’s theological educational institutes, one cleric said he was worried about the level of anger. “People are angry when they see how much money some clerical institutions and Friday prayer leaders are being paid in the budget,” the cleric, Fazel Meybodi, said. “Many of them are old and have no appeal to the youths. They must be changed.”

III. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

SPLINTERS AND BEAMS: In a sexual sewer by Anthony Esolen.

SILICON VALLEY SEXUAL DECADENCE: Worse than you think from the author of Brotopia.

ROGER GOODELL,  NFL COMMISSIONER AND HIS FAMILY MISSION OF SIXTIES PROGRESSIVISM : A profile of Goodell and his dad.

FRANKENSTEIN: Creating outside the conjugal union and the horrors that follow.

IV. AROUND THE WORLD R&G ROUND UP

BUCHANAN ON MUELLER AND NYTIMES: Who colluded with who and who investigated who.

POLAND AND THE EU - CRACKDOWN ON THE GOD AND NATION COUNTRY: The eastern European countries think they are the real Europe - the EU is trying to dissuade them.

BUDDHIST THAILAND AND THEIR SOUTHERN MUSLIM PROVINCES. HOW RESURGENT ISLAM ENCOURAGES OTHER RELIGIONS TO FORM NATION STATES: Monks with Guns. AOA short explanation of Burma and Rohingya ethnic cleansing.