Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, March 5

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

THE NEW YORK TIMES TELLS THE BIGGER STORY OF LIBYA AND MRS. CLINTON'S ROLE: More than the failure of Benghazi, the cultural cluelessness that got us there.

A SHORT VIDEO HISTORY OF SYRIAN CONFLICT: Excellent ten-minute synopsis with video narrated by Max Fisher of Vox. The Russian strategy -- finding their own "moderates" to deal with. Russian history with the Kurds is a major component of its strategy in Syria and the Mideast.

TURKEY'S ROAD FROM SECULAR ATATURK TO ISLAMIST EDUCATION - WHO IS FETULLAH GULEN? The Turkish Islamist educator - an introduction.

US TROOPS TO HELP AGAINST BOKO HARAM: A government led by a Muslim ready to be helped.

A SUNNI-SHIA PRIMER: The differences in a good chart form.

II. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

POPE AND MEXICO: Pope, Dope, and Mexican cartels.

THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH: The Geneva Bible before King James kept the anti-Catholic footnotes and diagrams as prominent features. To be a Protestant Christian was to be a foe of the Whore of Babylon: Rome.

JOSEPH PIERCE - CATHOLIC CULTURE MAN: On Dragon Culture and Virgins. The West without the Church opts for Suicide.

III. GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA AND EUROPE

AN UPDATE ON RUSSIA AND U.S. ON UKRAINE: Victoria Nuland and Russian minister.

THE NATION: A LEFTIST MAGAZINE IS RIGHT ABOUT RUSSIA/UNITED STATES RISKS OF NEW WAR: An interview with professor Stephen Cohen on the new Cold War.

THE MORE PACIFIST PRESIDENTS AND THEIR PROPENSITY FOR AIRSTRIKES AND DRONES: President Obama's worse legacy from a progressive.

BRITISH REFERENDUM TO LEAVE EU (BREXIT): Boris Johnson, the charismatic mayor of London, has added respectability and popularity to vote for exit from EU June 23 by Brits.

IV. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

THE NEO-CONS WILL SUPPORT HILLARY: Robert Kagan, a neocon intellectual, now says in the open what a lot of Pat Buchanan conservatives have said will happen all along. The neoconservatives of the Weekly Standard who now have their champion in Marco Rubio, must soon admit that their next closest foreign policy ally is Hillary Clinton. This group of "conservatives" have never cared about the sexual inversion of the gender ideology. They are petrified of Donald Trump. Mr. Kagan, who now has endorsed the lady who gave us Libya. is married to the lady who gave us the Ukraine mess: Victoria Nuland. Even though Vicki was a Bush appointee, Hillary Clinton in proper feminist fashion was instrumental in aiding Nuland's career rise in the State Department. Mrs. Nuland played the pivotal role as our assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs in the collapse of diplomacy in the Ukraine. Kagan, with more than fifty other GOP neocons, signed an open letter against Donald Trump this week on War on the Rocks.

THINKING ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS: Great insight on Clinton Revolution. The new Democrats under Bill Clinton adopted Republican positions on trade and labor. Women and Hillary: a view from the leftist 'Nation Magazine'. Not really a surprise that Hillary Clinton feminism is for the government, university, and Wall Street upper middle-class beneficiaries of affirmative action for college educated. Sanders appeals to thousands of women who can't afford to be for Hillary.

UNDERSTANDING SANDERS: LABOR, ZION AND SOCIALISM - NOT SO MUCH ABRAHAM AND MOSES: An excellent biographical note by J. J. Goldberg of the Jewish magazine Forward. This is an honest explanation of the tradition which formed the worldview of Bernie Sanders - a socialism of the soil.

BUCHANAN ON CHINA, TRADE, AND TRUMP: Why was the Catholic thinker Pat Buchanan banished from so much of the intellectual discourse of the Republican party? Marginalizing Mr. Buchanan made the Fox News kind of conservative thought a lot less like thought. Mr. Buchanan has been a champion of the industrial working man vs. global free traders since he made his own conversion from the ideology many years ago. He sees in Donald Trump a Republican who will defend the productive base of the country and the men who do such labor.

TRUMP, KASICH, AND THE MARCH 3 DEBATE: In the March 3rd Republican debate, we learned a little more about the foreign policy stances of both John Kasich and Donald Trump. Governor Kasich "took a little trip around the globe" and gave a snapshot of his thinking. The friendly avuncular candidate suggested maritime posturing in the South China Sea against the coastal expansion of China while arming the Ukrainians against Russia.

"Now let's move over into the Middle East. The Egyptians, they know they're on their last legs there because of the attack from ISIS. The Jordanians are - - really have been our friends. They know that they are at risk. So do the Saudis. So do the Gulf states. They are our allies, really, or have similar aims, we need to bring them closer to us. Turkey a critical avenue to the Middle East. We have to bring them towards the West, and not towards the East."

Mr. Trump suggested three names he would listen to in foreign policy. None of these men have actually advised him.

I think Richard Haass (President of Council of Foreign Relations) is excellent. I have a lot of respect for him. I think General Keane (Chairman of Institute for study of War) is excellent. I think that there are -- I like Colonel Jacobs (Medal of Honor winner) very much. I think are really excellent but in the end it's going to be my decision.

Trump's hopes for Russia set him apart from the other candidates:

Putin said about me -- I didn't say about Putin -- Putin said very nice things about me. And I say very nicely, wouldn't it be nice if actually we could get along with Russia, we could get along with foreign countries, instead of spending trillions and trillions of dollars?

And finally Trump is becoming more explicit about the "families" involved in terrorism, especially the 9/11 attack. This is a not so veiled reference to the Saudis as the real perpetrators of 9/11.

Well, look, you know, when a family flies into the World Trade Center, a man flies into the World Trade Center, and his family gets sent back to where they were going -- and I think most of you know where they went -- and, by the way, it wasn't Iraq -- but they went back to a certain territory, they knew what was happening. The wife knew exactly what was happening. They left two days early, with respect to the World Trade Center, and they went back to where they went, and they watched their husband on television flying into the World Trade Center, flying into the Pentagon, and probably trying to fly into the White House, except we had some very, very brave souls on that third plane. All right?