Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, June 4

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch 

I. ISLAM AND THE MIDDLE EAST

KOSOVO AND SAUDI FUNDING OF JIHAD: Kosovo has become a center of Jihadists with easy access to European cities because of Saudi-funded mosques. The New York Times is waking from its own slumber on this issue. How the Saudis funded Kosovo mosques. The author, Carlotta Gall, is the British reporter who explained in her excellent book on Afghanistan that we have been fighting The Wrong Enemy. Now she has exposed the other twin tower of the Sunni Salafists - the Saudi Wahhabis. Here is our review of her book and several others on Pakistan as a source of jihad. It is very encouraging that the mainstream media is employing their freedom and resources to uncover this story for the benefit of the country.

UNDERSTANDING THE REAL ENEMY - PROFESSOR RABIL AT NATIONAL INTEREST: It really is the Salafist Sunnis - the Professor modifies Petraeus and Trump.

MESSAGE TO PAKISTAN: The drone strike against Taliban chief in Baluchistan could mean an end to negotiations with Taliban and de facto state of war with Pakistan.

II. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

MRS. CLINTON, NEOCONS, AND FOREIGN FUNDERS OF THE FOUNDATION: Neoconservative intellectuals at the Weekly Standard, National Review and talk radio have lost their mojo on the Republican side of the presidential race. Every Republican candidate except Senator Paul and Mr. Trump was talking their interventionist game (John Kasich was arming Ukrainians when last seen). Their view is still very prevalent in the “foreign policy establishment” ("the Blob" as President Obama and Ben Rhodes call them). They still have a candidate and her name is Hillary Clinton.

The Clinton Foundation is at the center of a peculiar kind of laundering scheme. The questions asked in 2015 about their foundation donors are answered here. The Clinton Foundation released a list of million-dollar-and-up gifts. The Saudis found many ways to give.

ANTI-TRUMP CONSERVATIVES STAY IN A FANTASY WORLD: I have always respected Hugh Hewitt as a conservative but open intellectual. However, facing the failure of neocon foreign policy and the candidacy of Donald Trump, he seems to have lost it. Here he advises Mr. Trump to quiet his establishment critics by installing a foreign policy team that Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio would agree on. Didn’t Mr Trump beat those two men rather soundly while advocating substantive disagreements about foreign policy?

It was a brilliant tactic and substantially very important that Trump put pro-life and judicial conservatives at ease with his disclosure of possible Supreme Court judges. Given the increasingly narrow vision of the pro-life movement, this should settle them. It is too bad they aren’t equally encouraged by Trump’s advocacy of a possible alliance with Orthodox Russia in protecting Christians in the Mideast and destroying ISIS. Sadly, the myopic ideological Catholics in Republican politics have missed all this. Mr. Trump is not sad when Christians are beheaded in the Mideast. He is angered, and he is ready to offer them real protection which to our shame has not yet been done.

USA - MALE VS FEMALES IN ELECTION BUT WE ARE ONLY AT THE START: Disconnected males finally have a voice.

III. NATIONS ROUND UP

CHINA AND CHRISTIANS - THE PROJECT TO BUILD CHINESE IDENTITY IS NOT HOSPITABLE TO TRANSCENDENT CLAIMS: Crosses come down in Zhejiang province - a Christian heartland. There are 60 million Christians in the Chinese population of 1.35 billion.

SURROUNDING CHINA: Pat Buchanan asks what are our strategic interests in supporting Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia in disputes with China in the South China Sea. AOA’s  attempt to make sense of the situation with 'Map on Monday: China, the Philippines, Vietnam and the Geopolitics of the Sea.’ is coming Monday.

THE PHILIPPINES' NEW PRESIDENT - A MILITANT NATIONALIST PROTECTOR BUT READY TO TALK WITH CHINA: Duterte wins -- tough on crime and brash of tongue.

INDIA, IRAN, AFGHANISTAN: The alliance that will help end our longest war.

AUSTRIA - THE NATION VS EU: 60% of men and rural voters defeated by 60% females and big cities.

IV. MASCULINE CHARACTER OF PUBLIC LIFE

AMERICA IS TRIBALIZED AND ONE OF THE TRIBES IS A PAGAN MASCULINITY: This is a long article with several interesting references starting with violence against a Mr. Trump rally, and shut-down violence at a college talk by Milo Yiannopoulos. Scroll down for the very informative comparison of pagan Jack Donovan and his tribal masculinity vs. Brad Wilcox, a good Catholic man at UVA. In their appeal to men there is no contest as Donovan scores a first round knock out.

JACK DONOVAN AND TRIBAL MASCULINITY: Mr. Donovan is man who is very much worth reading. A Sky Without Eagles and The Way of Men are good introductions. This is his website. Let’s say upfront there are problems, but he is consistent and eloquent. What if we had a few bishops and seminarians who spoke as he does about brotherhood? We would renew the Church in America. We should learn from him and try to convert him. A few Donovan quotes:

"[Something] doesn't need to be 'nice' in order for it to be true. Reality doesn't bend over to accommodate fantasy or sentimentality."

"The horizontally oriented person sees the sickly rabbit suffer, and to save that rabbit, he... would shoot every single eagle out of the sky."

"The bound rods of the fasces represent strength and the authority of a unified male collective… True unity can't be imposed from above. It’s an organic phenomenon. Profound unity comes from men bound together by a red ribbon of blood."

"What kind of a man must ask women 'what kind of man may I be?' Not a man, but a boy—a mere child picking flowers for a kiss on the cheek and a pat on the head."

"When you have a power base, women are easy enough to attain—one way or another."

THE AOA CORRECTIVE: RELIGION TO UNIVERSALIZE AND TERRITORIAL LIMITS TO DEFINE THE MALE BOND OF CITIZENSHIP:
What is missing in Donovan’s tribal masculinity and many of the neo-pagan European movements are the transcendent dictates of religion and the universalizing truth of a common human nature. The territorial definition of citizenship is another antidote to extended kin and racial solidarity as the sole  basis of the nation. Religious and civic nationalism are correctives to ethnic social organization. This lesson was learned in the bloody battles of the last three centuries. This is a troubling blind spot in the writing of both Mr. Donovan and Pat Buchanan. Christian civilization is a public brotherhood project which does not eliminate the kinship of family and tribe but extends it to the men of a common territory. The model is the twelve kinship tribes of Jacob being forged after a wrestling with G-d, by a common law and land into the nation of Israel.

REPUBLICANS AND THE FEMALE DRAFT: Duncan Hunter, the California congressman, put women into a selective service bill to show the absurdity of the present attempt to integrate women into all levels of military training and fighting. Representative Hunter believes gender roles are essential in certain fundamental societal tasks, but that puts him out of sync with the Republican establishment. Not surprisingly, Washington’s favorite Republican warrior soldier John McCain is all for women in the draft. Duncan Hunter is a great example of a male protector but the Republicans have been getting this part of the culture war wrong for a long time.

Friday BookReview: NORMAN BORLAUG, slayer of famine

"Mother Nature has been creating transgenetic plants -- crossing genetic barriers -- for eons. Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy; starvation is."               

 (Dr. Borlaug, d. 2009)

  

                         

Here is Bill Gates' reaction to the staggering impact of the life of Norman Borlaug:

Through my work at the foundation, I’ve been fortunate to meet some amazing people who have had a huge impact on the world. But, one person I’ll always wish I could have met is Norman Borlaug, a remarkable scientist and humanitarian whose work in agriculture has influenced my thinking and the foundation’s work with small farmers in the world’s poorest countries.

Fortunately, there is a great biography of Borlaug, The Man Who Fed the World, which I highly recommend. Although a lot of people have never heard of Borlaug, he probably saved more lives than anyone else in history. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s, Borlaug and a team of scientists successfully developed and introduced high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat seeds and new growing methods in Mexico, dramatically increasing the country’s agricultural production. 

Just as Mexico was reaping the agricultural, social, and economic rewards of Borlaug’s efforts, tens of millions of people were on the verge of starvation in South Asia. One scientist, Paul R. Ehrlich, provocatively predicted in a controversial 1968 book, The Population Bomb, that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation over the next few decades – no matter what anyone did. 

Undeterred, Borlaug led the effort to ship thousands of tons of the wheat seeds developed in Mexico to farmers in India and Pakistan. In just a few years, wheat yields in both countries nearly doubled. India and Pakistan became self-sufficient in wheat production. And Borlaug, who became known as the father of the Green Revolution, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

It’s interesting to me how much criticism there has been of Borlaug over the years. It’s almost like people forget, or perhaps never really understood, what he did for humanity. It’s estimated that his new seed varieties saved a billion people from starvation. 

But the significance of his work goes even further. When people get enough food to eat, their health improves and they are less susceptible to disease. In children, especially, improving their nutrition dramatically improves their brain and physical development. Much of the dramatic increase in productivity coming out of Asia over the last few decades is due to Borlaug’s Green Revolution.

One of the criticisms of Borlaug’s methods is the overuse of fertilizer. Even as great as his seeds were, they don’t grow magically. It’s true that there is a negative effect from the overuse of nitrogen, one of the key ingredients in fertilizer. It can flow into rivers and create algae blooms that kill fish. Today, as we look at increasing agricultural productivity, we do need to be smarter about how fertilizer is used in order to avoid these problems. For example, it can be applied in smaller doses near the root and irrigating can be done in a way that minimizes the flow of nitrogen into rivers. 

The other main criticism was that the Green Revolution mainly benefited large farmers. In the first decade, it was those farmers who could afford fertilizer and understood seeds that did better. But in the second decade, there was an equally beneficial effect for small farmers. We do a lot of work through the foundation to help small farmers in poor countries, so we’re always watching out for inequities that hurt them. 

Over time, the Green Revolution expanded to include other key crops such as rice and maize (corn). But for a variety of reasons, the agricultural innovation needed to create a breadbasket for Africa never got off the ground...

Here's a good 8-minute video overview of Borlaug's career. Thanks to his work, by 1963 Mexico was able to become a wheat exporter!

It's encouraging that even President Obama is a supporter of biotechnology.

Excerpts from a 2000 interview with Dr. Borlaug:

Does the European ban on biotechnology encourage elites in developing countries to say, "Well, if it's not good enough for Europeans, it's not good enough for my people"?

Borlaug: Of course. This is a negative effect. We always have this. Take the case of DDT. When it was banned here in the U.S. and the European countries, I testified about the value of DDT for malaria control, especially throughout Africa and in many parts of Asia. The point I made in my testimony as a witness for the USDA was that if you ban DDT here in the U.S., where you don't have these problems, then OK, you've got other insecticides for agriculture, but when you ban it here and then exert pressures on heads of government in Africa and Asia, that's another matter. They've got serious human and animal diseases, and DDT is important. Of course, they did ban DDT, and the danger is that they will do the same thing with biotech now. 

What do you see as the future of biotechnology in agriculture?

Borlaug: Biotechnology will help us do things that we couldn't do before, and do it in a more precise and safe way. Biotechnology will allow us to cross genetic barriers that we were never able to cross with conventional genetics and plant breeding. In the past, conventional plant breeders were forced to bring along many other genes with the genes, say, for insect or disease resistance that we wanted to incorporate in a new crop variety. These extra genes often had negative effects, and it took years of breeding to remove them. Conventional plant breeding is crude in comparison to the methods that are being used with genetic engineering. However, I believe that we have done a poor job of explaining the complexities and the importance of biotechnology to the general public. 

A lot of activists say that it's wrong to cross genetic barriers between species. Do you agree?

Borlaug: No. As a matter of fact, Mother Nature has crossed species barriers, and sometimes nature crosses barriers between genera--that is, between unrelated groups of species. Take the case of wheat. It is the result of a natural cross made by Mother Nature long before there was scientific man. Today's modern red wheat variety is made up of three groups of seven chromosomes, and each of those three groups of seven chromosomes came from a different wild grass. First, Mother Nature crossed two of the grasses, and this cross became the durum wheats, which were the commercial grains of the first civilizations spanning from Sumeria until well into the Roman period. Then Mother Nature crossed that 14-chromosome durum wheat with another wild wheat grass to create what was essentially modern wheat at the time of the Roman Empire.
Durum wheat was OK for making flat Arab bread, but it didn't have elastic gluten. The thing that makes modern wheat different from all of the other cereals is that it has two proteins that give it the doughy quality when it's mixed with water. Durum wheats don't have gluten, and that's why we use them to make spaghetti today. The second cross of durum wheat with the other wild wheat produced a wheat whose dough could be fermented with yeast to produce a big loaf. So modern bread wheat is the result of crossing three species barriers, a kind of natural genetic engineering. 

Environmentalists say agricultural biotech will harm biodiversity.

Borlaug: I don't believe that. If we grow our food and fiber on the land best suited to farming with the technology that we have and what's coming, including proper use of genetic engineering and biotechnology, we will leave untouched vast tracts of land, with all of their plant and animal diversity. It is because we use farmland so effectively now that President Clinton was recently able to set aside another 50 or 60 million acres of land as wilderness areas. That would not have been possible had it not been for the efficiency of modern agriculture.

                                         

Durum wheat in Italy

A question from an interview with the 'Times of India':

What is your answer to the criticism [that] you introduced lethal combinations of fertilisers and pesticides to agriculture?  

Here's the magnitude of the problem. There's 70 million metric tons of nitrogen used now to produce a massive amount of food. To produce this amount of nitrate from cattle dung, we will have to multiply the present cattle population, close to 1. 5 million animals, by a factor of seven. You have to multiply 75 million tons of nutrient nitrogen coming from chemical fertiliser by a factor of 50 to organically produce that amount. Think of the additional land needed to produce this manure. We will have to cut down huge amounts of forests to graze the cattle. . . there should not be all this confusion. But it comes back again and again. The reason is, there are so many people who have never produced food themselves, speaking in theoretical terms about organic versus chemical. They have no concept of how to integrate all the factors needed to increase food production. 

                                       

Superb overview of Korean War by Victor Hanson, with one big omission

What's the deal with so many of our conservative intellectuals? Lovers of American military power, they forget why we fight. Not for freedom as a process, but for freedom to worship, to work, to learn, and to make families. Especially to worship God -- our first duty as men.


Check out this short video on the Korean War narrated by Victor Davis Hanson (part of the fine collection produced by Dennis Prager, a strong believer that "the Name of the Holy One should be blessed forever and ever." Maybe he can gradually show the professor the vacuity of secularism).

                               

Victor Hanson omits any reference to religion, and what it has meant to South Korea. About 30 percent of their population is now Christian. (The figure, even in 1945, may have been as low as two percent.)

The largest Pentecostal church in the world is in Seoul. This article explains the vibrancy of the Catholic Church in Korea.

In this country CORPUS CHRISTI is celebrated today

                   

See our post of last Thursday by David Pence.

"IC XC" -- Greek shorthand for Jesus Christ

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, May 28

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

POPE FRANCIS ON EUROPE: His text on receiving Charlemagne Award. A controversial French interview afterwards. Do Islam and Christianity both have "an idea of conquest inherent to them"? Well, we are preaching the Kingdom of God and we are trying to spread it. We want freedom in the civic order so we can propose Christ to all nations, and men can give God the assent of love. We, too, seek to conquer. There is plenty in the pope’s interview we can object to as laymen involved in politics and international relations, but divorcing Christianity from conquest may not be the fight to pick.

CARDINAL SARAH ON AMERICA: Now there was a Catholic Prayer Breakfast! The cardinal from African Guinea and the Prefect of Divine Worship for the whole Church is one of the clearest voices in the Church today. He told Americans that the loss of God is at the root of the destructive gender ideology which is undermining civilization. He has given us a manly model of how Catholics should speak in our present American culture. Rather than harping on the procedural claim for ourselves of religious liberty we should employ the liberty we have to tell the truth about God, man, and woman. So let us not clamor for OUR RIGHTS, OUR RIGHTS for more liberty. We are not one more victim group being oppressed. Let us exercise the authority which we have -- clearly, consistently, persistently to give honor to God. Let us call God the Giver of Life and abortion a form of domestic violence which desecrates the feminine. Let us condemn sodomy as a desecration of brotherhood, and an abomination against Nature and Nature’s God. Why is it so easy for conservative Catholics to condemn Donald Trump with such gusto, and yet not call for impeachment against the judges who equated the abomination of sodomy with the sacrament of marriage? Cardinal Sarah elsewhere has called gender ideology and jihadist Islam the demonic forces of our day. To follow him is not to cry for freedom, but to speak with courage.
  To conservative critics of Pope Francis, the cardinal reminds them of filial piety - a virtue not well practiced in the anti-patriarchal West. "He is our father." More about Sarah at the Prayer Breakfast: Utopia and America without God will fail.

Cardinal Sarah, on prayer, has also called for a return to liturgical orientation during the Eucharistic prayer, the Gloria, and the penitential rite. This should begin at cathedral Masses and work its way from there into the parishes. Will our bishops take the lead?

POPE FRANCIS AND COMMISSION ON WOMEN DEACONESSES: Our own A. Joseph Lynch explains the history of the deaconess as rising out of gender distinctions within Christianity and aimed at women serving as women to the Church.

FROM NEW YORK'S FR. RUTLER: "The Charismatic Movement filled a spiritual void for many in the chaos following the Second Vatican Council, and was commended for that even by popes, but it had its risks. An isolated emphasis on the Holy Spirit could lead to Spiritualism, as such emphasis on the Father could become Deism, and an emphasis on the Son could become Humanism. Charismatic manifestations that emphasized gifts of the Spirit apart from fruits were faulted as far back as Eusebius and Augustine in their repudiation of Montanism... It is curious that when many people stopped praying in Latin, they began waving their hands to speak in faux-Aramaic."

II. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY AND GEOPOLITICS

THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY: A drone strike in Baluchistan of Pakistan displays the deep rift between the U.S. and Pakistan. There have been many drone strikes in Northwest Pakistan, but this is a new area and infuriates the Pakistan government which sees this as a breach of sovereignty. An opening to Vietnam in the form of arms sales - not quite beating those old swords into plowshares. Both acts trouble the waters with China.

LEBANON THE NEXT FRONT: Be ready to call Hezbollah an ally.

SOUTH AMERICA AND HER ARAB POLITICIANS: What a great boon for the notion of South America as a "source Church" if a new generation of South American leaders with Mideast roots could transcend the socialist/capitalist debate, and bring their Christian nations into the international arena as proponents of Christian realism.

NEW DEFENSE MINISTER IN ISRAEL TILTS TOWARD RUSSIA - JUST THE BEGINNING: The emerging relationship of Russia and Israel is going to disrupt a lot of the myopic foreign policy thinking in "think tank" Washington. The migration of Soviet Jews to Israel after the USSR played such a hostile role in the 1967 Six Days War was a wake-up call for many Soviet Jews. What is counter-intuitive is how the revival of Orthodox Christian Russia has led to a public warming to the Jews there. In Putin’s Russia the Jews as Jews are called to play an honored role as part of Russia’s multi-national history. The appointment of the Russian-speaking Lieberman as defense minister could be a game changer. Putin has deep personal ties to many Jews - an uncommon affinity. President Putin said the first Soviet government was 80-85 percent Jewish, and in the name of a false ideology harmed both Jews and Russian Orthodox. The Jewish library once seized by the anti-religious Soviets is now returned by the practicing Christian. It is becoming more and more clear to perceptive Israelis how deeply tied Putin is to Jews in his childhood and inner circle. All of this takes added import as one considers the new role of Russian-speaking Israelis. Russian is the third most common language in Israel; and Putin says he considers Israel to have a special relationship with Russia as part of the Russophonic world. Wikipedia on Russian-Israeli relations is full of facts most of us don’t know, but all of us will soon. Putin has also made Russia a safe haven for European Jews - but this Christian leader will not be embracing homosexuals any time soon.That confuses some secular Jews, but not Orthodox Jews or traditional Christians.

CHINA - FIFTY YEARS AFTER THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: Don’t ask, Don’t tell.

III. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

MR. TRUMP IN SPOKANE ON THE STUTTERING AMERICAN MALE: "If [Clinton] didn't play the women's card, she would have no chance, I mean zero, of winning," Trump said. "She's playing the women's card. She's going — " [here Trump's voice drips with sarcasm] "'Did you hear that Donald Trump raised his voice while speaking to a woman?' Oh, I'm sorry!" And then: "I mean. All of the men, we're petrified to speak to women anymore. We may raise our voice. You know what? The women get it better than we do, folks. They get it better than we do. If she didn't play that card, she has nothing." Women in the audience started cheering at this.

TRUMP AND TECUMSEH: American men off the reservation by Dr. Pence.

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

MEMORIAL DAY - MAY 30 - A DAY TO REMEMBER AND COMMIT: The religious and military bonds of a culture of life.

FEMINISM, FERTILITY, AND CIVILIZATION: Rod Dreher column.

REMEMBER THE BOYS: Anthony Esolen on Boys to Men.

U.S. ARMY - PLEASE ASK AND WE WILL TELL: Eric Fanning, gay Secretary of the Army - no big deal?

A CHRISTIAN BIAS TOWARD ORDER AND A WILLINGNESS TO FIGHT FOR IT - THE WISDOM OF AUGUSTINE: Order and Chaos by Jakub Grygiel at American Interest.