Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: Saturday Feb 9

by A. Joseph Lynch and Dr. David Pence

THE WEEKLY BRIEF

Pope Francis offers Mass on the Arabian peninsula Feb 5.2019 

135,000 of the million Catholics in UAE attend--almost all manual laborers 

The unprecedented public celebration of the Eucharist-the first Papal mass and
 the largest public Christian ritual in UAE history  

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

THE POPE IN THE UAE: Bishop welcomes him-this momentous day. Social practices in the UAE like working females in public and freedom of worship for non Muslims show the stark contrast of the Wahhabi UAE and the Wahhabi Saudis. The Qatar Wahhabis who are more like UAE call this deep difference the Wahhabi of the Sea and the Wahhabi of the Sand. (Zenit Catholic News on significance of the day).

The Conference on Human Fraternity also emphasized the importance of national citizenship. The first panel was all female. This shows that any serious discussion of an anthropology of agreement will recognize sexual distinctions in social roles. There was no discussion of integrating women into male roles but about finding the proper contributory role of women. This is truly a discussion of the anthropology of accord. (ed: Politics as fraternity-Latin American thinkers remind us that liberty and equality were accompanied by a third musketeer-fraternity)

The mutual critique of atheistic modernity by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Egypt's Al-Azhar, was reminiscent of  Benedict XVI talk at Regensburg.  Human fraternity rests on a theocentric anthropology (The signed document).  This is a radical departure from the Social Darwinism  and atheistic anarchy that underlies the   "foreign policy realism "  of so many Western thinkers.

Muslims and Catholics share this God centered worldview while the Enlightenment West is wedded to individualism & materialism.  Along with this crucial theocentric reconfiguration is the public celebration on the Arabian peninsula of the Sacrifice of the Mass. No big deal to the modernists --just symbolic ritual. But for one million Catholics in the UAE (total population 9 mill) the ability to call down the Spirit and incarnate the Body of Christ to give glory and praise to the Father is what makes life worth living. To be free to worship in the country where they work is like having an oxygen tank for a deep sea diver.  135-180,000 Catholics and 4000 Muslims attended. May God be praised.
The capitalist vs communist paradigm is passing. Theocentric nations and religions must organize international relations before the individualists and materialists who traffic globalism engulf us in more wars without end. Pope Francis has a clear strategy of fraternity as the basis of relations with the two great civilizations the Church has been estranged from-China  and the Muslim world. (Francis unique approach to Muslims.)
A WARNING:This event will not go unanswered by Wahhabi Salafists of the Saudi, al Qaeda, ISIS variety. Remember the great offense that Osama bin Laden was avenging on 911 was the harboring of infidel troops on the Saudi Holy Land. Now the UAE monarch has allowed the high priest of the Crusaders to come in the middle of the Land of Islam and publicly offer the great Trinitarian Tribute of the Mass. The secularists may dismiss this act--salafist jihadists won't.
 

The Catholic Liturgy (this picture not in UAE)

    

                                       

The Muslim Council of Elders

There is an anthropological dimension to Fraternity that Muslims understand far better than the Atheist West. It usually culminates in a council of male elders. The Pope meets in this forum much more readily than Angela Merkel. The Council of Bishops under the Pope at Vatican II and now the regular Synods of Bishops are analogues of the male elders.  A Muslim council of elders is never looking for gender equity but always seeking true communal representation.
The Social Justice that begins with the duty man owes God (religion) is a very different social justice than the ideology beginning and culminating in the autonomous individual. The Catholic-Muslim dialogue-a common word between us and you-- is possible because we both submit to God and order public life around hierarchical male groups.

THE CONVERSION OF AMERICA BY EUCHARISTIC ADORATION: by Fr John Hardin on website Roman Catholic Man by Fr. Richard Heilman of Wisconsin.

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

STATE OF THE UNION: President Trump gave a sensational State of the Union followed by his talk at the National Prayer Breakfast quoting FDR's D-Day prayer.  All great American projects should begin in prayer. He began his talk by saying this is an event to praise "the glory of God and the power of prayer." Here is a telling interview with a charismatic pastor who wrote God and President Trump.

AMAZON'S BEZOS, THE WASHINGTON  POST,  EXTORTION AND THE SAUDIS: Breaking the tie of Israel and America to MbS of Saudi Arabia would reorder the Mideast away from Sunni jihadism toward the acknowledgment of national actors - Israel, Iran, Iraq and Syria to start and probably two Yemens - Shiite North and Sunni South. If it takes all this new intrigue to get journalists to focus on the truly malignant force in US politics - Saudi Arabia - then embarrassing pictures of Mr. Bezos are a small price to pay. Most stories so far are a mixture of the tawdry and the usual contorted attempts to "pin it on Trump or at least his evil influence" but there are more interesting angles to be explored.    AMI( National Enquirer) executive David Pecker has real financial ties to the Saudis and published the gaudy monograph of MbS to accompany his last visit to the US. The Saudi role in 911, the prolongation of the Iraq war by targeting Shiites as apostate Muslims, the instigating and arming for civil war in Syria, the arming of al Qaeda in the war against the Shiite Houthis in Yemen and the campaign for war against Iran are all far bigger stories of malignant Saudi behavior than the Khashoggi murder. But apparently it is the Post's coverage of Khashoggi that is making Bezos a target (that is his take).  If this is what it takes to turn the spotlight of American media on the nefarious role that the Saudis have played in shaping American foreign policy  for half a century--it is well worth it. The Washington Post is a talented pool of journalists. If they could break through the hate Trump psychosis, the Saudi story has a lot more history, relevance and content than Russia buying facebook time during elections..( ed: Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013 for 250 million. Within this linked article is another  link to an interesting interview with him.)

III. A CULTURE OF LIFE IS A CULTURE OF PROTECTION

SUPER BOWL 2019

How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?" BobDylan

Los Angeles Cheerleaders add two males to squad in 2018

It's been a long...long time coming but I know a change is gonna come. Sam Cooke

                                                                

Martin Luther King Assassinated during this Memphis Sanitation Workers strike 1968

The Meaning of the Movement He Died For.

THE SUPER BOWL: The 2019 Super Bowl was a defensive struggle in which the best coached and most disciplined team emerged with victory. The young losing coach was incisive and magnanimous in defeat. The winning team spoke of the brotherhood of football and the love and loyalty that animated their efforts. Multiple commercials during the event celebrated female empowerment and social justice brand gender confusion. It was rank propaganda often featuring NFL head Roger Goodell as a Social Justice Warrior. He appears to be running for office. If he thinks he has access to the male vote he should pause. We dummies in the heartland understand how the reality on the field of patriarchal fraternity is exactly the opposite of the fantasy world of his advertisers and the propaganda of his public service announcements. The Christian interracial movement of brotherhood is not the father of the atheist drive to obliterate sexual differences and masculine identity. The ethic of masculine sports was hijacked during commercials but the masculine communal work ethic is still alive and well on the playing field. And while the frenzied emptiness of the half time show matched the commercials, the opening civic liturgy struck a different chord. The twin sisters from Atlanta sang the national prayer that gives meaning to the world of American football in their opening spiritual - "America, America, God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea." 

THE REAL STORY OF NATHAN PHILLIPS AND NICK SANDMAN: 15-minute video.

GUIDE TO THE MANOSPHERE: A brief, if somewhat salty, description of the secular men's movements that followed the rise of modern feminism. Three groups are described in this video: MRA's (men's rights activists), MGTOW's (men going their own way), and the Neo-Masculinity Movement. The speaker calls himself Coach Red Pill (the "red pill" is a reference to a pill used in the film The Matrix to wake people up from the illusion of the Matrix to see ugly world in which we really live). We may describe these groups, respectively, as dominated by anger, disengagement, and pagan-hedonism. There's plenty of toxic masculinity to be found here; what is still needed is consecrated masculinity.

IV. THE NATIONS

A DISCUSSION AT BROOKINGS INSTITUTE ON THE GEOPOLITICAL STATE OF THE MIDEAST: The whole discussion. Some selected insights:

NATAN SACHS: So the shorthand, I’d say, is four-plus-two. Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, plus the United States and Russia. And, if we include Egypt, which still wants to be a major player, and in some cases such as Gaza still is, perhaps it’s four-plus-two-plus-one.

On the UAE's outsized role

BRUCE RIEDEL: Perhaps we could change the dynamic to four-plus-two-plus-one-plus-a-half, with the half being Abu Dhabi. I mean that in two ways. One, it is all about Abu Dhabi, it’s not about the UAE. Dubai has strikingly different foreign policy views than Abu Dhabi. Dubai wants to be to Iran what Hong Kong or Singapore are to China. Abu Dhabi has an antagonistic relationship with Iran. And the other reason it’s a half is that as wealthy as Abu Dhabi is, it’s a city-state. And it has all the weaknesses of being a city-state. The Pentagon likes to call it the “Sparta of the Middle East.” They think that is a compliment. I would remind people, Sparta produced nothing, and today is a field in the Peloponnese.

But Abu Dhabi has outsized influence. It now controls more ports in the Horn of Africa and Yemen than any other country. The forces it’s arrayed in Yemen are the real ground forces, not the Saudis anymore. It’s become what Qatar was about 10 years ago when Hamad bin Jassim was the half and conspired to be the whole in influencing the region. Now we really have Mohammed bin Zayed.

JEFFREY FELTMAN: The United Arab Emirates play a very significant role in defining the politics of the Persian Gulf. Their strategic goals are counter-revolution, counter-Muslim Brotherhood, protection of the Emirati government system, and crucially, stability in Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates have become extremely concerned about the stability of Saudi Arabia, see Mohammed bin Salman as the key to Saudi stability, and have invested in his success. The participation of the United Arab Emirates in the Yemen war is largely because of Saudi Arabia. As I understand it, the diplomacy of the Horn of Africa was mostly done by Abu Dhabi, but the ceremony was in Saudi Arabia. This shows the influence of Abu Dhabi but also shows that Abu Dhabi wants to play up the stability and leadership role of Saudi Arabia. It’s worth thinking about the relationship between Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown price of Abu Dhabi, and Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The fight with Qatar was born more in Abu Dhabi than in Riyadh, and it was used to help elevate Mohammed bin Salman into his current position perhaps earlier than might have otherwise happened. It became a tool by which Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince because his predecessor Muhammad bin Nayef was accused of being too pro-Qatar, too indulgent of Qatar’s Muslim Brotherhood sympathies. I think Mohammed bin Salman probably feels a certain loyalty to Mohammed bin Zayed over how he became crown prince and why.

Iraq

BRUCE RIEDEL: Let’s not forget about Iraq, which has significant deposits of oil and natural gas, and a population that’s large enough to be significant. If you were to ask, “what is the power that is going to break this four-plus-two-plus-one structure and emerge and become another power?,” it’s almost certainly the Iraqis. They will come back at some point.

US role in Mideast

BRUCE RIEDEL: I am struck by a paradox. America’s military footprint in the Middle East today is more widespread than it’s ever been before. We now have American troops in Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Israel, Egypt, and every Gulf state. Iran and Lebanon are the only two countries I can think of in the region where is there is no American troop presence. This reinforces a point that Martin made earlier, which is that Americans are tired of it, understandably. We look to be in an ever-growing quagmire with no end in sight, involved in civil wars that no one expects to end anytime soon, and we’re in the crossfire in all of them.

JEffREY FELTMAN: The fight within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) against Qatar is an example of declining U.S. influence. Those of us that worked in the government remember the many times that we would bring together the six GCC countries for various meetings, usually with an anti-Iran focus. And it was clear that there were differences between Doha and Abu Dhabi, and between Doha and Riyadh even then. But somehow we were able to manage this. That no longer seems to be the case. The United States has not been able to help the GCC overcome this ideological difference between the Muslim Brotherhood-Qatar crowd and the anti-Muslim  Brotherhood-UAE-Saudi Arabia crowd.

BRUCE RIEDEL: The Iran example points to another odd thing. Since 1979, no Middle Eastern country has taken oil off the market. Only the United States has taken oil off the market. It’s been American sanctions against Iraq, Libya, and Iran, and now Iran again, that have reduced oil on the market. It isn’t the region that’s a threat to the market. If you look at the historical record of the last quarter century, it’s the United States of America that’s a threat to the market.

Saudi Arabia

BRUCE RIEDEL: I think there are four principal Saudi objectives. The first is to counter Iran. The Saudis see Iran as their principal threat in the region, and they rapidly go from countering Iran to countering Shi’ism. This is rooted deeply in Wahhabi ideology. There’s virtually no difference in their minds between the two.

The second is counter-revolution, and by that I mean countering moves toward democratic political reforms in the region, which Saudi Arabia is adamantly against. Saudi Arabia makes no secret it is an absolute monarchy and has no intention of ever becoming a democratic state. 

The third is counterterrorism. Here there’s a paradox of course. Saudi Arabia is determined to fight terrorist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, which target Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is also, because of its Wahhabi ideology, often the petri dish in which radical Islamic ideas flourish, particularly in the Muslim communities in Europe. 

The fourth is to counter Israel. Although here I think there are more signs of confusion within the Kingdom than we’ve seen heretofore.

I make two overall comments about this. From the Saudi standpoint, many of these issues overlap. A good example is the intervention in Bahrain in 2011, which was undertaken to counter Iran, counter democratic reforms, counter Shi’ism, and, since anyone who is espousing all of those things must be a terrorist, to counter terrorism as well. They only lacked an Israeli angle. And I’m sure if they tried, they could have found one.

The other thing I would say is that when you look at issue number one—countering Iran—the sorry story for the Saudis is that they’re losing, and losing badly. Lebanon and Syria were essentially lost to the Iranians in the 1980s, and the Syrian civil war has just moved them even further out of the Saudi orbit. Iraq was lost by the disastrous decision of the George W. Bush administration to intervene and then to foolishly hold elections, which guaranteed a Shiite takeover, at least from the Saudi standpoint. Yemen is a more complicated story, but the bottom line there is that the Saudis have gotten themselves into a quagmire that costs them billions of dollars a month, and costs the Iranians, at most, a couple of million dollars a month. If anyone was to look at this as a corporate entity, they would say this is a disastrous decision for you to make. 

Which gets me to my last point. Saudi Arabia may have more aspirations for regional leadership today than it has ever had. Witness that they just signed a peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea in Saudi Arabia, and brought in Djibouti as well. The prime minister of Pakistan made his first foreign visit to Saudi Arabia, and President Trump made his first foreign visit to Saudi Arabia. Yet while the Saudis are definitely very active diplomatically, questions about the stability of the Kingdom are higher now that they’ve been in 50 years. And there is a very serious question about what the line of succession is going to produce, and whether it will be disrupted by some kind of internal political upheaval. It is very fascinating that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has spent the last four months sleeping every night on a yacht off Jeddah in the Red Sea because he doesn’t feel safe sleeping on the ground. 

Let’s turn to Turkey. It seems to me that a central and surely driving concern of Turkish engagement in the Middle East is its internal politics, including the role of President Erdogan and a repositioning of Turkish domestic politics toward Islam. 

KEMAL KIRISCI: First of all, it’s Erdogan’s strategy, not Turkey’s. The easiest way to capture his strategic perspective is reflected by two different hand gestures he frequently employs. From about 2012 to about nine or ten months ago, Erdogan’s strategic perspective on the Middle East was symbolized by the four-finger Rabia salute, denoting solidarity with the Muslim Brotherhood. From this you can deduce the poor relations with Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, the close relations with Qatar, and Turkey’s ambiguous, confusing policies over Libya. 

But during the run up to the presidential elections in June 2018 he raised his other hand too in a four-finger salute, denoting “one state, one nation, one flag, one language.” This is Turkish nationalism pure and simple. And that helped him win the elections with 52 percent of the vote by receiving a substantial part of the nationalist votes. So his strategic perspective now is a very confusing and conflicting one because voices captured by the nationalist four finger hand sign are openly telling him that he has to build bridges with Bashar Assad and pre-empt the emergence of a Kurdish autonomous entity in northern Syria and ensure the return of at least some of the 3.5 million Syrian refugees. And that a huge economy like Egypt cannot be ignored. And to get on with Israel and the United States. So in a nutshell, I think we’re seeing a tug of war in Turkey’s strategic perspectives between two very separate constituencies that have coalesced under these two hand gestures.

After the accession of King Salman to the Saudi throne, Turkey developed close relations with Muhammad bin Nayef and managed to sustain a collaborative relationship against all odds. However, once Mohammed bin Salman successfully maneuvered himself into the position of crown prince in July 2017, the picture began to change dramatically and the Saudi-Turkish relationship became increasingly strained. This coincided with an escalating crisis between the two sides when Saudi Arabia together with Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt severed all ties with Qatar and imposed an economic blockade over Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its refusal to terminate its ties with Iran. In response, Turkey sent additional troops to its small military base in Qatar as a deterrent against a possible Saudi military intervention, which would seek the overthrown of Tamim al Thani, the emir of Qatar. Turkey further deepened its ties with Qatar establishing a new food logistic line via Iran, enabling it to withstand the blockade. Yet, what aggravated matters for Erdogan most were Mohammed bin Salman’s policies toward Israel, his willingness to entertain Trump’s Middle East peace plan with Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his close relationship with Jared Kushner, and his decision to pledge $100 million to help with reconstruction in northeastern parts of Syria controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds.  The murder of Khashoggi thus became a golden opportunity for Erdogan to embark on an ambitious project and seek a change in the line of succession to the Saudi throne by discrediting the legitimacy of the crown prince. The whole Khashoggi affair has benefitted Erdogan domestically as well as internationally, even though it is not evident that he succeeded in achieving his ambition to see Mohammed bin Salman removed from power. Yet, throughout the saga, Erdogan kept King Salman out of the scandal and showed deference by referring to him as the custodian of the holy mosques. This suggests that for the time being Erdo??an is likely to continue to seek a pragmatic relationship with Saudi Arabia, especially at a time when Turkey is going through economic difficulties and needs Saudi finance and trade. However, the presence of Mohammed bin Salman at the helm of Saudi foreign policy will ensure that both sides remain locked in a major rivalry as far as the future of Middle East geopolitics is concerned.


What are Israel’s strategic objectives in the region? 

NATAN SACHS: I think there are just three strategic interests, and then a fourth outcome of them. The first strategic interest is itself often described as threefold: Iran, Iran, and Iran. This is the Israeli focus on countering Iran and Iranian influence in a variety of different realms. The nuclear realm, which still underlies a lot of what Israel thinks about, and is in some ways the only existential threat that the Israelis, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, identify on the horizon. Countering Hezbollah, Iran’s main proxy, as Suzanne described it, and the main conventional military threat that the Israelis identify—it’s not the Egyptian military or the Syrian military, as in the past--Hezbollah is the one the planners are really concerned about. Israel’s military planners are actively preparing to counter Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal or an attack targeting the Galilee. The third realm of Iranian influence is Syria and Iran’s military presence there. This is another major concern for the Israelis. As a byproduct, Israel has invested in its relationship with Russia, now a very important focal point and an important Israeli interest, as we saw recently in the headlines.

Speaking of Russia

ANGELA STENT: Russia’s return to the Middle East after the withdrawal from the region that followed the Soviet collapse is one of Putin’s major foreign policy achievements. Unlike in Soviet times, Russian policy is pragmatic and non-ideological, which gives it considerable flexibility. Russia has ties with all the major regional players, irrespective of their internal politics. Indeed, Russia is the only major power that talks to the Shiite states, the Sunni states, and to Israel. It has been able to establish cooperative ties with the region’s main protagonists and antagonists: Israel and the Palestinians; Israel and Iran; Iran and Saudi Arabia; Turkey and the Kurds; both Libyan governments; and Hamas and Hezbollah. Putin has taken advantage of the U.S. ambivalence about its future role in the region to re-assert Russia’s influence there. Indeed, Russia has begun to replace the United States as the go-to player in this fractured region. Its intervention in Syria and support for Assad have enabled Putin to achieve one of his major goals—Russia’s return to the global board of directors. Russia is in the Middle East for the long haul. It is seeking to convert its decisive role in Syria—ensuring that Assad prevailed and stayed in power—to a broader role of regional power broker. But there is also a domestic element here. Russia has an ongoing problem with radicalization and jihadism amongst its Muslim population—20 million and growing. The Kremlin viewed the Arab Spring, particularly what happened in Libya, as a dangerous precedent for what could happen elsewhere—including in Russia. Putin has given the figure of 4,000 people who have gone from Russia to fight with ISIS. Russia wants to ensure that these jihadists do not return home and it seeks to minimize the ability of foreign terrorist groups to radicalize Russian citizens.

Since Putin came to power, Russia has developed close ties with two countries that were shunned in the Soviet times—Israel and Saudi Arabia. In the Israeli case, the driving factors are Iran and domestic politics. Netanyahu depends on Russia to restrain Hezbollah’s activities in the Golan Heights and 1.4 million Israeli citizens come from the former Soviet space and retain links with Russia and its neighbors. In the Saudi case, the driving factors are Iran and oil. Like the Israelis, the Saudis seek Russian help in containing Iran. And the two countries are cooperating on restricting oil production to maintain higher prices. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia—like the Trump administration—- hope that Russia will curtail Iran’s role in Syria once the war is over. But that overestimates Russia’s influence over Iran. Russia will remain in Syria once the war is over and is actively seeking Western help in its reconstruction. But Putin has said that Iran will remain in Syria. However, the Russian-Iranian relationship could become more conflictual once the war is over.

QATAR WILL HOST THE WORLD SOCCER FINALS: To warm up they took the Asian Cup against all odds. They won most of their games in Abu Dhabi, UAE where their fans could not come to follow them because of the blockade. The UAE fans during the semifinals were rude and disgraceful throwing shoes at players after they scored points. See discussion above about the different roles Qatar and UAE play in Mideast affairs and also the huge cultural difference between Dubai of the UAE  and Abu Dhabi of the UAE.

A TERRORISM CONFERENCE: Brookings Institute John Allen concludes with a call not to invade Iran because the overwhelming cause of worldwide terrorism is jihadist Sunni. He also implies Syria and other real states should be supported not overthrown if we desire peace. Bruce Reidel showed the destabilizing effect of the Saudi under Muhammad bin Salman.  The think tank conversation is improving.

IN YEMEN: US ARMS SOLD TO SAUDIS ARE IN HANDS OF AL QAEDA AND A FEW ARE WITH HOUTHIS: The arms are in hands of Al Qaeda because they are willing to fight the Shiites so the Saudi Arm Merchants give the guns to the men who will use them.  The Houthis only get US arms when they take them from defeated enemies  in battle. From the beginning of MbS war against Shiite Houthis , the journalists who knew Yemen (see Gregory Johnsen analysis) reported this will only help Al Qaeda.

WHO ARE THE HOUTHIS? UNDERSTANDING YEMEN: Excellent short history by Bruce Reidel.

ABOUT VENEZUELA: The worldwide leftists are stuck in a failing paradigm.

CHINA AND THE TECH WAR;  THE THOUGHT OF XI JINPING: 5G is the new Sputnik. Good explanation of the party state nationalism of Xi Jinping.

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitics Review: Saturday December 22

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

THE WEEKLY BRIEF
President Trump, General Mattis, and the Emergence of  a Nationalist Foreign Policy. 

President Trump is withdrawing US troops from Syria and reducing the 15,000 Afghan mission by 7000 men. (Joshua Landis from the University of Oklahoma is probably the best commentator on Syria in America. He shows the key role of Turkey in this move. We apologize that RT was the only news source for Landis analysis.)The foreign policy establishment represented by Lindsey Graham and Bob Mendenz are apoplectic. They should be. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has resigned stating his reasons in a principled letter.  General Mattis said the President deserved a Secretary of Defense who shared his policy goals. There are not many men around who will fit that bill.  Very few men who have advanced in the military or foreign policy establishment in the last 30 years advocate the Trump nation to nation approach. General Mattis was very clear in stating his own views about strengthening alliances, confronting malignant actors and being wisely wary of competitors. His positions are the conventional wisdom of the last several National Security Strategy reports. (We discussed this a year ago in Globalist Generals and a Nationalist President). These conventional "bipartisan" Western goals are not the President's.
 President Trump as a nationalist wants to establish more nation to nation relations. He understands in the Mideast that it will be nation states-Turkey, Iraq and Syria that establish order where ISIS once reigned free. His desire for strong nation states to establish order in the region is in contrast with Israel which often prefers failed or civilly divided states as neighbors.  President Trump does not agree with the last three National Security Strategic assessments which saw Russia as "a revisionist power" who along with China "want to shape a world antithetical to our values and interests." Trump does not see grand strategy as the three encirclements of Russia, China and Iran. He is unfortunately very aggressive in isolating Iran. He has Republican and military support for his aggressive anti Iran coalition joined by the Saudis, Sunni Gulf kingdoms and Israel. (Hopefully this one large contradictory emphasis will be exposed and reversed by the Khashoggi--MbS affair and more investigation of the Saudi role in the 9/11 attacks.)   Trump has never wanted to encircle Russia and he is open to a competitive great power relation with China instead of a South China Sea "containment of the emerging enemy" approach. The US foreign policy experts and the "western alliance" globalists all oppose his instincts.
Most military men have been educated in the West vs the Rest worldview.  This is also true of British and Australian foreign services who want the English speaking West to prevail over a multilingual multi civilizational alliance of the great nations. {One of the reasons Fox News is so schizophrenic in its coverage of Trump is that as a news organization, they have no cultural feel for American nationalism. Their Australian roots(and their overloaded English accented white boy commentators representing "the West") have favored a "Western values, Anglo modernist white individualistic" synthesis over a territorial American nationalistic multiracial religious working man accent.
 There are almost no Fox, CNN, ABC or PBS commentators who could explain(much less advocate) the alternative vision of China, Russia and the US bandwagoning rather than confronting, encircling and power balancing. President Trump doesn't have a Kissinger to explain the larger Nixon like realignment he is formulating. Unfortunately there are no Democratic Senators who can overcome the hate Trump movement to join him in a serious  antiwar initiative. This is the bitter fruit of partisanship that found no Republican senators aiding President Obama in his reluctance  to bomb Syria and his bold initiative with Iran.
 President Trump has resisted his own party and our failed military strategists. For his first two years in office he needed loyal military men in his top offices to protect his office even more than promote his policies. Now he must initiate or perish.  He needs fellow citizens, educated journalists and statesmen to follow his lead in learning from the history of the 20th century to formulate an American nationalist foreign policy.  It will take us all to break the stranglehold  of lobby funded careerists like Sen. Robert Menendez, ambitious presidential candidates like Senator Marco Rubio and honest but mistaken patriots like General James Mattis. This is especially true in applying nationalist perspectives to Mideast foreign policy. 
 (Addendum 12/23/2018: General Mattis in his resignation suggested late February 2019 as his departure time. President  Trump a few days later said it would be Jan 1. The media exploded that Trump was "forcing Mattis out early". When a high ranking  subordinate tells his commanding officer he doesn't agree with his policy but he'd like to stay an extra two months, no commander in chief worth his salt would comply. In a corporation the human resource department would accompany you to your desk and get your personals as you surrendered internet access and are terminated immediately.
 Ask Harry Truman about the duty of Presidents to maintain civilian control over popular generals. The Hate Trump Psychosis has the Left cheering for the globalist military network continuing unwinnable wars in Syria and Afghanistan  against  an elected  President trying to extricate us. These are wars about national governance that our military can't win... but can't bring themselves to leave. Our officers need the authority of an elected president to bring the troops home. We all need the foreign nation states of  Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan to establish political compromise and military control in their respective countries. Order follows from strong nation states in agreement about their shared boundaries. Every American nationalist and every left wing anti war progressive should be singing together: "Thank God for President Trump." )    

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

A NEW INNER CIRCLE NEEDED: Pope Francis governs by trusting top allies for advice and delegation of tasks. The effectiveness of his governance depends on how well he discerns the trustworthy. Unfortunately several top cardinals who have won his trust must be convincingly exposed as part of the problem not the solution.  In America they include Donald Wuerl and Blasé Cupich. In Honduras it is Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga. If seminarian abuse isn't enough, here is a widow.  The Honduran bishops deny. Maradiaga right hand man is out. All from July, 2018.

TURN YOURSELVES IN: Pope Christmas Message: To abusers he said, "Turn yourself over to civil authorities and prepare for Divine Judgment."  He thanked journalists for uncovering crimes. He also condemned "the infidelity of those who betray their vocation"..."they hide behind their good intentions to stab their brothers and sisters in the back to sow weeds, division, and bewilderment. They resemble Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus Christ and did not repent. They find spiritual and intellectual excuses to continue on their path to perdition."  He still concludes that the light of Christmas is greater than the darkness of corruption.

MARSHALL AND MICHAEL: Interview Taylor Marshall and Michael Voris - very interesting profile. His momma's lesson on abortion was a key and the faith of his dad and their loyalty to Notre Dame. On Pope Francis, all three of these good men are off base. Voris has an impressive  background as an investigative reporter. He is one of the very few authentic reporters on the depth and details of clergy corruption. His own grievous lack of filial piety toward the Holy Father is matched by one of the co hosts who seems to revel in the  "resist authority" zeitgeist. The EWTN hosts are also guilty of stabbing the Pope repeatedly in the back while ignoring the investigative work and crimes in their own dioceses. There is no courage in attacking the Pope while running from the local stench that cries out for expose.  It is a difficult task to combine filial piety, fraternal correction, and the necessity for an exorcism  of the huge cancerous homosexual network from within the apostolic fraternity.  It is a difficult necessary task which will  require many talented, courageous and prudent bishops, priests, and laymen. Bashing the Pope is no way to establish patriarchal fraternity. Investigating by name and offense the diocesan networks and corrupt religious orders is essential. This effort will be lay led at first.  They will have an effective place to bring evidence when serious bishops appoint diocesan Eliot Ness like promoters of justice to coordinate the inquisitions.  Michael Voris is a very wounded warrior but he is a warrior in a time of war. His betrayal of Pope Francis just when we need to unite many Catholics against our most corrupt clergy is sowing great confusion. Marshall Taylor is a good teacher swallowed by his own pomposity in betraying the Pope. Both of these men are opening to an alliance with Catacomb Catholics who oppose Vatican Two, the Luminous Mysteries, the Novus Ordo, and Pope Francis. This is the wrong coalition. These men can not  provide a glue for a priestly fraternity and a Maccabean brotherhood of laymen. Their misdirection is feeding the power of chicken hawk enablers like James Martin. The Pope must be our axis of unity not a paternal punching bag.

WHAT'S IN A NAME? The Ukrainian government nears passing a new law that would force the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to add "Russia" to its title since it recognizes Patriarch Kiril as its spiritual head and prays for him accordingly in the liturgy. Under the new law, Ukrainian Orthodox priests would be banned from visiting and ministering at Ukrainian military installations. Meanwhile the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church" title would be transferred to a schismatic church separate from Kiril. After Christmas the Ukrainian parliament will begin to consider a law that would be used to transfer church property...

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

PRESIDENT-LED REFORM: Real Criminal Justice Reform - a Trump-Kushiner bipartisan triumph. The First Step Act.   The Trump consensus in 2020 will not be forged by a plea to "suburban women". It will be a nationalist "work and protect" appeal to black, brown, yellow, and white men to come together as fellow citizens and strengthen our common identity as Americans again under God. Men bond by territory even more deeply than race, class, or party. Christianity orders us to be brothers.  Each particular nation gives men a practical historical and territorial form to express and live out the public love of brotherhood. Public interracial cross-class brotherhood is as fundamental a form of Christian love as male-female marriage. It turns out the nationalists pay more attention to the imprisoned males than the feminist lavender coalition on the left or the war party tough on crime gang on the right. This was a serious reform that made a reality out of two favorite chants: "black lives matter" and "love trumps hate".  It was bipartisan in the best tradition. There is a group of Democrats who could help him considerably in both his infrastructure building agenda at home and his empire dismantling abroad.

FAREWELL WEEKLY STANDARD: Weep not for the Weekly Standard.

NAZIS IN AMERICA? A famous German reporter for the country's largest newspaper came to America to find the rural supporters of Donald Trump. He wanted to show the Nazi specter that is alive and well in small town America. Actually the largest ethnic group in America is German if you don't lump all the Hispanics. The State of Minnesota has the 4th largest Germanic proportion (38%). The German scribe came to Fergus Falls, Minnesota and spun quite a yarn. Trouble is those Minnesota yokels found out about his fairy tale. The rural-big city divide found the truth tellers from the country exposing the big city reporter who has lost his job. There really aren't a lot of cryptic Nazis in Fergus Falls but there is a William Tell-like resistance to tyrants and liars.

APOLLO 8 AT 50: This Christmas marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission - the first time man orbited the moon. When three American men made the journey, they brought their Bibles with them and delivered a Christmas message the world would not have heard had the Soviets beat us there first.

III. THE NATIONS

ISIS IS GONE - TIME TO GO HOME: The US is in Syria to help Israel against Iran. Time to leave? 
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Excellent review of UAE and their young ruler MbZ who is a serious influence on Saudi MbS. The UAE is aggressively pro-monarchy, anti-populist, and anti-Muslim Brotherhood. They see Qatar and Al Jazeera as an enemy.

MORE LITTLE WARS TV: The guys from Little Wars TV teach us this week about little-known yet pivotal battle from the American Revolution at Princeton.

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitics Review: Saturday December 8

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

POPE FRANCIS SPEAKS: Homosexuality in the Priesthood - the Pope is speaking. Who will listen and gather round him to impress this as the central impediment to reform? Remember that Cardinal Roger Mahoney used his time at the USCCB conference in Baltimore (November 2018) to push for deeper affectivity among bishops. It is all about affectivity and brotherly love - that is for sure. Pope Francis' answer to homosexual affectivity in the priesthood or religious life? "Not that kind of affection!"  Every manly American bishop and priest should answer the thoroughly corrupt Roger Mahoney the same retort. We need fraternal affectivity, Roger, but NOT YOUR KIND OF AFFECTIVITY.  Christianity is a movement to restore man to the Father by building a public brotherhood of fathers in the Apostolic Church and among the territorial nations. The mission of the Apostles and the duty of bishops today will be the theme of the January retreat of the American bishops. That is exactly what they should be praying about and discussing with each other.
"Rise up o Men of God, 
His kingdom tarries long, 
Bring in the day of brotherhood, 
and end  the night of wrong."

PROMOTERS OF JUSTICE AND LAYMEN DIGGING DEEP: Investigations of the homosexual corruption among Bishops and priests in America is best done by fellow Americans. Bishops interested in reform should appoint promoters of justice who will work with various independent investigators and other promoters to produce serious reports about the corruption in both local presbyteries and national/regional networks. This video by Michael Voris showing the historical roles of John Reardon of Detroit, Joseph Bernadine of Chicago, and Theodore McCarrick of Washington DC is a very good start to the kind of historical understanding that must inform local investigations. This short ten minute video is a prime example of why serious investigations around the world  must be done by local laymen, priests and bishops. The locals know the local graveyards best.

Rome is necessary to laicize and punish but each diocese and conference must prepare the dossiers of the individuals and networks who have to be removed. Local bishops can suspend and shame.  Local juntas of laymen and priests can begin investigations to aid the still unappointed promoters every diocese needs. The promoters of justice and their staffs should watch movies about cleaning out corrupt police departments and national spy agencies finding traitors within. They will be good training films.

MODERNIST REVOLUTIONARIES TURN ON FRANCIS: America Magazine and James Martin misread the pope and then dismiss him because he is not a psychologist. It is time for the conservative Catholic media to circle the pope and AMPLIFY his remarks. For those of us who have never dismissed the Pope, these comments are very consistent with what he has taught in all his major writings on sexual identity as part of the created order. He has always treated gender ideology as an imposition of colonialism and an anti-ecological approach to God's gift of creation. That is not the language of American conservative Catholic capitalists but it is the way our Pope from the South explains what we all know is the fundamental teaching of the Church on sexual order and sexual abominations.

FRANCIS IN THE MIDEAST: Pope Francis will visit UAE in February as the first pope to visit the Arabian peninsula. Fraternity and Brotherhood is the theme.

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH (1924-2018), RIP: President Bush grew up in a culture when the elites were still nationalists and the sons of the elite were expected to join all the males of the nation in military service. George Bush was a patriot and a statesmen. He and his lifelong friend James Baker brilliantly continued the American Russian peace making foreign policy that led to the reunification of Germany. They were opposed by Margaret Thatcher and the Brits. They were creating a new world order based on peace between the great nations who had been allies in WWII and then enemies during the Cold War.  He had been ambassador to China and was opposed to the "Contain China" crowd. He and Baker were committed to ending the old alignments and making strong relationships with Russia and China. The baby boomers who followed them never understood the new relationships among nation states that was necessary to replace the bipolar world of the West vs Soviet Union/ Communist China bloc.

A generational leader Bill Clinton and a fiscal conservative Texan Russ Perot who warned of "a great sucking noise" ( jobs being lost to Mexico and poorer countries) made Bush a one-term President. We are all the poorer for that. His grandson George Bush wrote this: "Finally, my grandfather was thankful for his God. Gampy once said: "God is good, but his love has a cost: We must be good to one another." It was his faith and his love for others that drove him, that fulfilled him, and that led him to a calling in public life." 
Father and son. Two presidents. Beautiful eulogy by his eldest son.

MORE EULOGIES: "We are here in the House of the Lord..." James Baker eulogy in the Houston church. Historian Jon Meacham eloquent, humorous, patriotic and penetrating opening eulogy. The Catholic biographer knew the heart and soul of his Episcopalian subject. It is striking how different funerals are when we bury a man who prayed and believed. Senator Allan Simpson talk was also very funny and instructive. He ended with a pointed practical instruction by a statesman and a believer. Pat Buchanan on the world George Bush left behind and the baby boomer presidents who sat by President Trump at the funeral.  Gorbachev remembers real Russian collusion. 

PATRIARCHY, CHRISTIANITY, NATIONALISM, PROTECTIVE SEX ROLES-the story of a life. 
 Reba McEntire sang the Our Father. The priest anointed the body in a flag draped coffin. The brown skinned grandchildren said their prayers for the patriarch. Funerals are meant to stop us from the everyday to reflect on the whole. What a gift to us all from President Bush and those who loved him.  

ELIZABETH WARREN - A PROFILE: A very interesting profile of Elizabeth Warren who actually made her way to political office by understanding and talking about the very real debt problem facing young two income families in the US. She became "famous" because of an appearance on the  Dr Phil TV show.  The problem of "family formation" is one that Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson talk about as well. They should have a friendly discussion with Senator Warren.   This article gave me a very different view of the Oklahoman from Massachusetts.

III. THE NATIONS

FRANCE, CATHOLICS, THE RIGHT, AND THE NATION: A very encouraging article about how deep the French are thinking about the globalist troubles that surround us. There is something brewing in the Church's eldest daughter. American patriots can learn from the French again. From the New York Review of Books Article about the communal Catholic strand in the French Right by Mark Lilla. (The Lilla link leads to his web page and a terrific interview with a very well informed articulate German woman interviewer.) Lilla is America's most articulate liberal defender of the national identity of citizenship over the clientele identities of smaller grievance groups. Listen to the whole interview. At the very end, his discussion of symbols, civic memory, the blood of patriots and a national loyalty of the heart (not just constitutional rationality) is quite missing from the academy and media where he somehow still survives. Here is his own religious biography up to 2005.

From the article on France:

"Continental conservatism going back to the nineteenth century has always rested on an organic conception of society. It sees Europe as a single Christian civilization composed of different nations with distinct languages and customs. These nations are composed of families, which are organisms, too, with differing but complementary roles and duties for mothers, fathers, and children. On this view, the fundamental task of society is to transmit knowledge, morality, and culture to future generations, perpetuating the life of the civilizational organism. It is not to serve an agglomeration of autonomous individuals bearing rights.

Marion Maréchal used to be difficult to place ideologically. She was more socially conservative than the National Front leadership but more neoliberal in economics. That’s changed. In her speech at CPAC she spoke in culture war terms, giving La Manifas (a 300,000 people protest against changing the nature of marriage)  an example of the readiness of young French conservatives to “take back their country.” And she described their aims in the language of social organicism:

"Without the nation, without the family, without the limits of the common good, natural law and collective morality disappear as the reign of egoism continues. Today even children have become merchandise. We hear in public debates that we have the right to order a child from a catalogue, we have the right to rent a woman’s womb…. Is this the freedom that we want? No. We don’t want this atomized world of individuals without gender, without fathers, without mothers, and without nation."

If all French eyes are not on Marion, they should be. Marion is not her grandfather, though within the soap-operatic Le Pen family she defends him. Nor is she her aunt (Marine Le Penn), who is crude and corrupt, and whose efforts to put new lipstick on the family party have failed."

EMERGENCE OF NATIONS: Nations out of Empires. One of the better descriptions of the different nations emerging from WWI. The author describes himself as "a lifelong student of presidents, history, and sports." 

THE YOUNG AUSTRIAN NATIONALIST-POLITICIAN: Sebastian Kurz and Austria. Sebastian Kurtz and Catholicism. Kurz was born in 1986. He is the youngest head of government in the world. He was elected Austrian chancellor in December 2017. Austria has 8.7 million people (1/10 of Germany). 90% speak German but they are a nation of their own. 75% are Catholic. The next largest ethnic group are Turkish. When he was Austrian foreign minister, Kurtz added the duties of "Social Integration" to his office. Like Orban of Hungary, Kurz sees the Christian Europe of Nations as an alternative culture to the European bureaucracy of autonomous individuals. There was a famous movie about an Austrian nationalist who stood against the Anschluss of the Germanic Reich. He sang this love song to Austria just before his family  escaped the oncoming Nazis who were destroying national borders in the name of racial empire.

SAUDIS AND CHINESE IN HORN OF AFRICA: The role of Ethiopia. 105 million people 63% Christian/33% Muslim. The one nation of Africa whose nationhood did not spring from colonialism. The second largest army in Africa. A new Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed - openings to democracy may unleash mobs as likely as republics.

SUDANESE IN YEMEN: Saudi Princes get the black guys to kill the Shiites; the role of Sudan in the war on Yemen. 

PRESSURE ON THE SAUDIS: Muhammed bin Salman is now toxic to a longtime Saudi apologist - Lindsey Graham. Since President Trump has embraced MbS, the Democrats are suddenly in lock step against him and the war in Yemen. That is all to the good. The creative nationalism President Trump has brought to American foreign policy is being turned against our participation in wars in Yemen and Afghanistan. Right now there is one Achilles heel and it is our support for MbS and the Saudis. Whatever path it takes to break this alliance so we can look at what really has happened to us over the last 20 years will be well worth it. The Ambassador from Saudi Arabia is not much help in this crisis (Bruce Reidel on The Crown Prince's tough diplomatic task. His brother is not a lot of help here in US.). Senators, Money, and Saudi Laundering. There are long time Saudi apologists turning against the war in Yemen and MbS. That is a good start but not enough. Senators who have not examined the relationship of Saudi Arabia to Salafism and Sunni terrorism  may pose as great foes of MbS. Good enough. But the deeper question is why we support Wahhabi Islam's favorite cover state. This has made our Mideast strategy incoherent for two decades.

ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS: New Openings.

SPANISH NATIONALIST PARTY: The strongest  showing yet  for a party dedicated to strong national identity against regional autonomy movements, an end to laws imposing radical feminism, a stricter regulation of immigration, a return of Gibraltar from the Brits, and a celebration of bull fighting and hunting.

INDIA: A civilization for sure, but is it a nation? This article does not address that but it does remind us of the cultural ways the other Asian giant may be a more significant force in the future than the narrow calculations of mercantilists now measure.

GOOGLE FRIENDSHIP: The friendship that made Google huge. A great article about two men, coding, search engines, and why two heads are often better than one.

PRESIDENT JACKSON: Andrew Jackson, standing armies, and citizen militias.

LITTLE WARS TV: The Germans invented wargames in the 19th century to help think though battles and campaigns before they were fought. In 1913 H.G. Wells wrote a book of war game rules, Little Wars, for civilian gentlemen to war game for education and recreation. A modern day group of men, many of whom are veterans, created a very educational YouTube channel, aptly called Little Wars TV, dedicated to teaching history through war games. Here is their short introduction to war games. And in this video, the men recreate the part of the modern day Battle of Fallujah (a battle in which some of the players took part). While giving a serious reflection on their combat and discussing the issue of creating an educational game replaying a battle that living veterans have fought, the channel keeps each battle simulation light-hearted with the losing team suffering some playful humiliation (in the above video they had to eat an MRE from 2004).

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitics Review: Saturday December 1

By Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

POPE FRANCIS ON HOMOSEXUALS IN PRIESTHOOD
         "No place for that kind of affection."        A fuller set of answers from new book interview.

DEATH OF BISHOP MORLINO: Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison Wisconsin died of a heart attack this week. Here is a priest reading an August 18 letter from Morlino to his diocese about the abuse crisis. It is a bracing letter. RIP.

CLERICALISM AND SODOMY: A chilling historical narrative by a priest from Florida.

HONDURAS: The caravan to the US began in Honduras. Where are the nation's fathers? Where are the authorities to care for the people fleeing their country? There are 9.5 million Hondurans. Half are Catholic; 35% Protestant. The people flee when the civic and religious leaders have failed. Here's what some of the highest Catholic clerics have been up to.

FIX YOUR OWN DIOCESE FIRST--IT IS HARDER AND IT TAKES MUCH MORE COURAGE AND PRUDENCE. BUT ONLY IN SUCH LOCAL TRUTH TELLING BROTHERHOODS WILL THE NEW MASCULINE PERSONALITIES EMERGE NEEDED TO RENEW THE APOSTOLIC CHARACTER OF CATHOLIC MANHOOD.
Every diocese and every national conference needs a purging. There can be no purging unless there is serious investigation. Serious investigation does not need Rome except in the serious investigation of Rome. In fulfilling this investigative and reporting duty, we must salute the work of Michael Voris and his group at Catholic Militant. Every diocese needs a similar serious investigative group without the breathless visual reporting. First make a dossier--the forum for its best publication is not always weekly public consumption.
American Catholics should first live the joy of the gospel and carry on our communal life of worship, ordered love, useful work and acts of mercy. At the same time fraternities of laymen, priests and bishops should communicate and gather to name the traitors in our midst. This must happen at the local level first. The New York and Washington Catholic media elite should spend  their time exposing the huge homosexual networks in those two dioceses and quit tearing down the Holy Father.
Kill the Father, Pope Francis should resign, Impeach President Trump! These cries come from the demonic sexual confusion set against the patriarchy of God, the apostolic fraternity of the priestly Church and the masculine character of civic rule. The Pope says there is a Satanic element in the desire to destroy the fraternity of the bishops with the Pope. He says the Accuser wants to expose the faults and failures of bishops (including the Bishop of Rome) to tear down the whole structure. That is absolutely true. It does not mean  bishops should never be exposed, removed and condemned. The Catholic right yells, "He is calling Vigano the devil." Vigano's overreach in calling for Pope Francis to resign was a deceptive distraction from the letter's far more important exposures of evil. Maybe the Evil One can stain even a truthful letter and the self serving pride of Vigano was a portal of entry.
 The Vatican should have shut down the American bishops's lame attempt at new procedures.  It is not going to be a lay committee who will reform the church. It is going to be bishops truly speaking personally and directly to the traitors among their local bodies.  There was a tiny tiny hint of that at the last Bishop's meeting. A lot more honest accusations are needed and soon.  Let's hold on the new "policies". Patriarchal fraternity is the Apostolic form Christ laid as the foundation stones of His Church. A renewal of that male public form of fatherly and fraternal love will reform the priesthood.  It will be a reformed synod of bishops with the pope. It will be a presbyteral synod of priests with a bishop. It will be a few monks and a new abbot in a monastery. It will be a household or province of reformed Jesuits or reformed Dominicans calling out others those depraved orders. It will be brotherhoods of laymen and priests telling the truth and building the bonds of brotherhood which are the antidote to homosexual cliques and clericalism. These public brotherhoods are the path and the model toward a reformed  apostolic priesthood which remains the icon of the Father's love for the Son and the template for the nations.
Catholic men avoid building Catholic brotherhood in our own parishes and dioceses because it takes commitment and will surely lead to conflict. It is much easier to play the Wizard of Oz in the world of TV, You Tube,  and blogs. It is easier to decry the Father in Rome than gather men face to face to investigate and then confront local priests and the local bishop.  It is not obvious how to light up  the homosexual dens masquerading as religious orders in one's own county. But it must be done and not by the Pope.  Let us fast and pray for courage. Let us light a thousand local fires and pull back the rifles aimed at Pope Francis.

II. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN: Reidel on MbS.

MIDEAST CONFERENCE: Very good discussion on Mideast at conference sponsored by The American Conservative telling the difference between friends and enemies. They seem clueless on religion but many of the participants know the area they are covering very well, especially Joshua Landis on Syria and the Iraqi expert, Abbas Kadhim from Johns Hopkins.

PEACE TALKS IN AFGHANISTAN: Afghan government and Taliban begin talks. This could be the beginning of the end.

FIGHTING CONTINUES IN SYRIA: Staying in Syria to fight Iran. A nationalist foreign policy would treat Syria as a nation with the right to make its own allies. Loving one's country leads to one set of policies. Hating some other country leads to another. We have adopted the shared hatreds of Saudi Arabia and Israel for Iran. This is the neocon policy that Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain all have advocated. President Trump is more bold and forthright than them. He is no less horribly wrong. Where is the anti-war Left when you need them?

SAUDI HISTORY: Caspian Report on History and Nature of Saudi Arabia. They do these kind of presentations very well. A good introduction to understand the country. Less than half an hour. The showdown with Saudis will be over Yemen. That is the right first objective. A senate resolution to defund the war.

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE: American soldiers look at "thank you for your service" and the militarization of American foreign policy. Also conscription, volunteer army, and the loss of a republican notion of the citizen soldier. A terrific discussion from needed voices. It would be great if Fox News would use some of these guys instead of Canadian, Australian, and British "conservatives" and in laws from the Weekly Standard to generate serious American commentary.

WOMEN IN COMBAT: General Stanley McChrystal is against Robert E Lee and for women in combat. A lot of crew cut veterans are going to become gender warriors as they try to get the Democratic nomination for President.

BRITISH COLLUSION: Why British intelligence is so against a release of documents in Trump collusion matters. They will show deep collusion of British and Australian intelligence in Trump dossier. Brennan helped because he hated Trump. The Brits helped and led in many ways because they do not want a US-Russia alliance which would downgrade their role in the world. It is very hard for conservative media to understand white Anglo speaking "allies" can be enemies to our nation.. It took a real American nationalist like Donald Trump to expose the rift between the interests of the British Empire and the American nation.

III. THE NATIONS

MEDIA COVERS NATIONALISM: Powerline discovers Nationalism. Great! A talk by Israel's greatest public intellectual - Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism. Hazony is unlike most public Jewish intellectuals in America. Hazony believes in a living God and worships Him. He not only thinks and writes. He prays. His thinking is a fruit of his ongoing submissive posture toward G-d and his careful reading of Providence in history. The talk is excellent and the questions from Yale students are very impressive revealing even more about Hazony's project. The last question he fields is on God and nationalism. He contrasts empiricism, Protestantism, and nationalism vs. the universalizing rationalism of the Enlightenment. Stay for it all. Another short talk by Hazony to a Jewish think group: God, Nationalism, Conservatism, Judaism.

A FRENCH NATIONALIST: Charles DeGaulle and the Nation.

A HUNGARIAN NATIONALIST: Profile of Viktor Orban of Hungary. There is no-one in Europe as clear as the Hungarian leader that Communism and Secular Liberal Democracy are fruits of the same Enlightenment tree. Christianity, nations, and marriage are the forms that cultivate the sacred bonds which elevate human life as a participation in a sacred order. Orban loves Christian Europe as a Europe of nations. He considers liberal democracy an enemy of the higher goods and advocates Christian democracy (or "illiberal democracy"). The "disenchanted cradle of western modernity" has given us spirituality without religion, fluid genders, and open borders. Christianity develops through a culture of patriarchal religion, territorial nations, and monogamous heterosexual marriages. One is formless and leaves us with autonomous individuals. One has forms which prepares us for the sacred bonds which lead to Everlasting Life. 

ISRAELI SJW'S: David Goldman on the replacement of Judaism with Social Justice warriors. A brilliant faithful analysis culminating in the nation of Israel as the paradigm of a sacred covenant under God.


THE KERCH STRAIT: Democratic loving peaceful Ukraine against Russian thugs? Maybe Not. Russia considers the Kerch Strait to be inside territorial Russia. They expect any ship passing through to apply for permission. For them this was like an attack on Crimea proper. For   Ukraine both Crimea and the waters off its coast are part of Ukraine. A deliberate provocation before an election the present president was losing. The US media can't be troubled by details. They have an explanation. "Putin is like Trump. He is a bully." No more story needed. Pat Buchanan has a little more historical approach asking Why should the US fight for Kerch?

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

SACRED KINGSHIP: A Chicago lecture on the sacral nature of kingship by Francis Oakley. Legitimate political leadership must maintain the body politic in harmony with the Cosmic Order.

CONTROLLING INSTITUTIONS: Cultural traditionalists can win the baby war but if we don't control socializing institutions like media and schools, the atheistic moderns will beat us through our own children coming of age.

DEGENERACY IN HIGH PLACES: Jeffrey Epstein and Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta story by Miami Herald. Sexual degeneracy in very high places - let's make a deal.

CASUALTIES OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION: Last Tango in Paris(1972). What happens to women who participate in real or simulated sex scenes on camera? Does it damage them in a far more substantial and lasting way than male counterparts? The firing of David Edelstein as film critic for his "butter joke " on the death of Bernardo Bertolucci reminds us of the rape screen in Last Tango which was added to the script and foisted on the 19 y/o actress Maria Schneider by 48 y/o Marlon Brando and Director Bertolucci. There was not "real penetration" but the scene was filmed and shown to the world. Bertolucci wanted authentic fear and tears from his actress so he didn't tell her what Brando was going to do to her in that scene. Her tears and terror were real. Her humiliation was real. Her subsequent acting and moral life was in shambles. A lot of very hip people think Last Tango in Paris was "an important movie." This is not a "me too" moment but a time to reflect on the horrible consequences of the sexual revolution which unveiled what is meant to be covered and sacred. 

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, November 24

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CHURCH

Fact: The New York Archdiocese Commission that uncovered the abuse of a minor by Theodore McCarrick offered financial compensation to victims in exchange for a promise they would not sue the Archdiocese.

                                                                 THE US BISHOPS 
    FROM NOVEMBER BALTIMORE MEETING TO JANUARY CHICAGO RETREAT      
                                                        AWAITING THE MACCABEES

They sold the young boys for harlots. exchanging a young girl for the wine they drank... Announce this to the nations. Proclaim a holy war! Alert the warriors! Let all the soldiers report and march. Beat your plow shares into spears and your pruning knives into spears. Let the weakling boast, "I am a warrior."   Joel 4:

Cardinal Vigano was right about the infestation of the Vatican with a homosexual subculture but he was very wrong about the influence of Theodore McCarrick on Pope Francis.  However the influence of Donald Wuerl and Blaise Cupich on the Pope  is undeniable and pernicious. They are his most trusted American advisors. One significant contribution American laymen and priests could give the Church and Pope is to make a serious case against both of these men.  The evil of these men has not been properly and definitively exposed. That has not been done yet.

On the diocesan level, each Bishop should appoint a cleric as promoter of justice in his diocese. He can use lay and private investigator techniques as well as direct interviews and chancery records to assess the worthiness of every priest in his diocese to offer Mass and remain a priest. Any priest who has committed pedophilia(sex with a minor under 18)  or incest(sexual relations with a family member) or sodomy(sexual relations with a male of any age with or without consent) should be barred from any priestly sacramental acts. Procedures should then be initiated for laicization and loss of any benefits or privileges of the priestly office. The initial act of authority is a duty of the local bishop--not a lay committee and not the Pope. The higher authorities are needed to formalize laicization.
(Pedophilia, Incest and Sodomy should be clearly delineated in Canon Law as " by the act separation offenses" (graviora delicta) against sacred orders. These desecrations of the fatherhood, filiation and fraternity of the Apostolic Priesthood are more profound trespasses than the current misguided approach of classifying  these depravities as individual failures in "keeping the sixth commandment". That formulation is a serious "category error."

Pope Francis is urging retreats and face to face encounters among bishops so a truth telling separation can occur between the Petrine apostolic priests who have failed but are reforming themselves vs the Judas priests who have defiled the sacred bond and must be expelled. There can be no integral apostolic fraternity until there is a violent separation and exorcism of the many evil clerics. To avoid these acts of separation and punishment in the name of priestly unity and affection is an evil form of clericalism which must be rooted out.
The bishops do not owe abuse victims sympathy or a role in decision making. They owe them a purified priesthood. This will take courage and acts of authority; not sympathy and acts of service. The February worldwide meeting of bishops needs a template of bishops in some nation calling each other out by name. The 197 US dioceses and 2900 worldwide dioceses need an example of a bishop who starts cleansing the priesthood of his local church. The February worldwide bishops' meeting is not coming too late because "the Vatican has no sense of urgency." It may be coming too early because no Donald Trump Bishop has yet found his voice nor has a Philippine like diocese found Duterte's punitive sword.
Our bishops are still having difficulty accusing one another by name--starting with Rembert Weakland. Not a one was brave enough to confront Cardinal Levada or Cardinal  Mahoney face to face when they dared to speak at the Baltimore Conference in November, 2018. Not a single bishop  was sharp enough to ask Cardinal Cupich who was winking at  "sexual acts by consensual adults" if that is his euphemism for sodomy. His fellow bishops were not agile  enough to use his speech as a signal to declare adult consensual sodomy by a cleric as an act that forever separates a man from the holy act of consecration. (Cupich removed a famous Latin Mass priest in Chicago for just that sin).  Cardinal Cupich should be asked  how many Chicago priests have desacralized the collar and altar by committing sodomy since they have been ordained. It is a big number in Chicago. It should have been a big issue in Baltimore. The Lord commanded the apostles to do as He had done after washing Judas from the group. Local bishops know the local offenders much better than the Pope or any committee he might appoint. Papal or Vatican authority is needed for laicization but investigation and ritual separation is part of the oversight duties of local bishops. Laymen should be feeding clerics with well documented dossiers on local Judas priests so that conversation among priests and bishops can begin in every diocese.

"When thy glorious disciples were enlightened by the washing of the feet before the supper, then the impious Judas was darkened. " Eastern Holy Thursday Liturgy

The Second Vatican Council was not a Council of the Laity. It was a Council about the Apostolic Church bringing the Word and Eucharist to the Modern World.  It was about the brotherhood of bishops as an Apostolic Church being a light to the nations. It was about the well formed sacramental priestly Church asserting itself in the middle of the 20th century to meet the Pentecostals of the South  full of the Spirit but in search of Confession and the Mass. The Council was a Council of Bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome. It was an ecclesial act of masculine priestly authority in a world searching for meaning after centuries of war, revolution, and skepticism.
 In his diocese surrounded by his priests or in a synod accompanied by his fellow bishops, the main actor in rebinding humanity to Christ is the Bishop in apostolic fraternity. If a single bishop would grasp his apostolic identity and respond to the disgrace of priestly desacralization like Phineas or Mattathias Maccabee, both the sacral Eucharistic office of the bishop and the fruits of Vatican Two would be truly revealed. Pope Francis is pushing his Bishops to be men in face to face fraternity. This is the proper form of patriarchal fraternity-- not lay reform committees.  Pope Francis will be as surprised as we are when a few good men respond to his challenge.    A lot of "the first" will turn out  last.
Let us fast and pray that something new happens when the American Bishops go to pray together in January. By going to Chicago, they will be gathering at "the scene of the crime" for there was no cleric more central to the homosexual desacralization of the Catholic priesthood than Chicago's  Cardinal Joseph Bernadine(1928-1996).

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM AND IMMIGRATION: Forget the suburban women, the new nationalists have to go into the inner city and get the males. A real beginning is criminal justice reform to reverse the disastrous Clinton triangulation scene. Next is insuring that citizens without college degrees can get a living wage doing manual labor. This can only happen by stopping the swamped market in labor created by porous borders.

BANNNON AT OXFORD UNION: Steve Bannon explains the 2008 bailout and the populist revolt - a perspective not often shared of America's "bailing out the elite." Presidents Bush and Obama are not sinister. They were over their heads. Both were pliant to winds much stronger than their own sailboats could ever manage.

TRUMP AND THE SAUDIS: President Trump on Saudi Arabia. The virtue of President Trump is the clarity with which he explains our policy. The tragedy is that he is continuing the incoherence of supporting the Kingdom which is the protector of the Salafist Sunni leaders who are responsible for terrorist jihadism. President Trump once advocated closing our borders to Muslims "until our representatives figure out what the hell is going on." We have not yet figured that out and President Trump has allied himself with the religious movement that beheaded Christian men on the shore of the Mediterranean and killed 3,000 of our own on 9-11-2001. Israel has no interest in our understanding this more clearly because they want us in an alliance against Iran. President Trump is carrying out the logic of the foreign policy establishment that President Obama resisted. This is a huge strategic blunder about foreign policy which calls for a correction by the Senate. Instead there is an obsession with investigating the person of the President and threatening impeachment by the House. Our attention is misdirected; our allies and enemies are confused.   See more below on MbS and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

THANKSGIVING DAY WAS ON NOVEMBER 22: Here is how Woodrow Wilson consecrated the day in 1918:

“Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-eighth day of November, next, as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease upon that day from their ordinary occupations, and in their several homes and places of worship to render thanks to God, the ruler of nations.

Don't call it "Turkey Day". Remembering John Kennedy - our religious countryman when liberals could still be masculine.

III. THE NATIONS

RUSSIA'S JOURNEY: From Orthodoxy to Atheism, back to Orthodoxy.

US AND CHINA IN EAST ASIA: China and US naval dominance East Asia.

NATIONAL FINANCES: Money, Currency, Gold Silver and Nations. A ten-part series: the secrets of money - a gold-centered introduction. A good way to start thinking about money and national currencies.

Khashoggi and MbS
There are very few leaders in the Mideast who think public life should not be organized around the religious culture of the dominant population. Israel has recently declared itself as  a Jewish nation.
Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini was trying to organize a larger Muslim ummah than the Iranian nation. The sobering war with Iraq and negotiations with multiple nations and civilizations while dealing with the enmity of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US had driven subsequent Iranian leaders to understand Iran as Muslim but also a particular Shiite nation among the nations.  A central dispute between Sunni Muslims about the future of Mideast political organization has been a "republican" form of Islamic rule vs the monarchical principal. Muhammed bin Salman and Jamal Khashoggi were on different sides of this dispute. Qatar (TheWahhabis of the Sea) are on opposite sides of this dispute  with Saudi Arabia(The Wahhabis of the Land).  Al Jazeera, the most successful of all Arabic media empires, has reported favorably and honestly about mass movements against royal families or military dictators.  Shutting down that news outlet is a major demand of the Saudi led boycott against Qatar.  The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was a good example of a mass organized movement of non Royalists who honestly won an election and then were overthrown(by the el Sisi military coup). The Saudis opposed the Brotherhood and financed the coup. Qatar media aired the grievances of the Brotherhood.
 The advocates of Sunni purification and monarchical rule are the Saudis and UAE. Egypt has joined them in an "anti populist" coalition of rulers. They have found Israel as an ally in their stance against Iran which supports most popular grass roots movements to restore Islamic rule. Many of the popular movements in Sunni majority countries  are more tolerant of the Shia populations than the Wahhabis and Saudi royal family. This is noted in countries with significant Shia minorities--Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Syria. None have joined the Saudi attack on Yemen's Shiites(the Houthis) or the blockade of Qatar.
Jamal Khashoggi was no "western liberal."  He believed in the Muslim revival without the excesses of MbS in Yemen, hatred of Shiites  and stoking war with Iran. He knew where a lot of bodies were buried. He favored popular movements and elections including the work of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Muhammed bin Salman (see Islam and Mideast section)saw him as a formidable ideological foe. If Khashoggi's death opens the American press and public to see the incoherence of our support for MbS and the Wahhabi front, his death will not be in vain. The greatest obstacle to such a reassessment is the temptation of the press to look at this only in terms of another chance to bash the unique perverseness of  Donald Trump. This will obscure two decades of failed policy, religious blindness and strategic incoherence. 

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

ATHEIST-HOMOSEXUAL HIJACKING: Why have American schools and the Democratic Party become so militantly homosexual and anti God? Profile of AFT head - Randi Weingarten. Born in 1957. Cornell University (BS) and Yeshiva University (JD). Considers herself very religious. President UFT 1998-2008.  AFT President-2008-. Came out as Lesbian 2007, partner psychotherapist Liz Margolies. Now with female rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum. "Married" Mar 25, 2018.

Hillary Clinton and AFT Weingarten's  "Rabbi wife". 

Picture of Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer's daughter's wedding.

ABORTION DECLINE: Abortion rates drop in US last decade. In 2005 20% of pregnancies in the US ended in abortion. In 2015 it was 15%. There were 320 million Americans in 2015. There were 640,000 abortions. Black babies were aborted 3.5 times the rate as white babies. Guttmacher Report.