Best Believe: Personnel IS Policy

reddit |  Now, the transition is getting an assist from Heritage Foundation officials including Becky Norton Dunlop, a distinguished fellow at the foundation; former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, a distinguished fellow emeritus at Heritage; Heritage national security expert James Carafano; and Ed Feulner, who helped found Heritage. Rebekah Mercer, a Heritage board member and major pro-Trump donor, is on the transition team’s 16-member executive committee, and a transition team source said she is working with Heritage to recruit appointees for positions at the undersecretary level and below (though she has struggled to find people interested in taking lower-level jobs, according to a New York Times report).

The transition team also includes other prominent activists and thinkers with close ties to Heritage, such as former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the activist involved with several conservative groups who is running Trump’s domestic transition team. He has written for Heritage and has personal relationships with many at the organization.  Fist tap Dale.

Breakdown

Mike Pence, self-described "evangelical Catholic"

Chris Christie, Roman Catholic

Newt Gingrich, Roman Catholic, Council on Foreign Relations

Michael T. Flynn, Roman Catholic

Rudy Giuliani, Roman Catholic, 9/11 coadjutor, alleged Knight of Malta

Jared Kushner, fan of the Count of Monte Cristo ("Count of the Mount of Christ;" story about the Jesuit General getting revenge on all of the Order's enemies during its suppression)

Steve Bannon, chief strategist and Senior Counselor for the Presidency of Donald Trump, former executive chair of Breitbart News, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown

Lou Barletta, Roman Catholic

Chris Collins, Roman Catholic

Tom Marino, Roman Catholic

Devin Nunes, Roman Catholic

Anthony Scaramucci, Roman Catholic, Council on Foreign Relations

Eric Trump, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown and serves as board member of Georgetown's Business, Society, and Public Policy Initiative

Ivanka Trump, attended Jesuit Georgetown for two years

David Malpass, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown, Vice President of the Council for National Policy, leading appointment selections for positions involving economic issues

Keith Kellogg, trained by Jesuit at Santa Clara University, leading appointment selections for positions involving national defense issues

Michael Catanzaro, trained by Jesuits at Fordham University and St. Ignatius High School, leading the policy implementation team for energy independence

Andrew Bremberg, graduate of Catholic University of America Executive Legal Action Lead

James Carafano, Jesuit-trained from Georgetown University , reported to be the primary aide to the State Department of Trump administration transition team

Ed Feulner, Roman Catholic former President and founder of Heritage Foundation; Jesuit-trained from Regis and Georgetown Universities

Ken Blackwell, Jesuit-trained from Xavier University, leading appointment selections for positions involving domestic issues.

Boris Epshteyn, Trump's foremost spokesman; Jesuit-trained from Georgetown.

Valodya Begins The Lawful Purge of the Russian Bankster 5th Column

thesaker |  While the word was focused in rapt attention on the outcome of the US Presidential election, Vladimir Putin did something quite amazing – he arrested Alexei Uliukaev, Minister of the Economy of the Medvedev government, on charges of extortion and corruption. Uliukaev, whose telephone had been tapped by the Russian Security Services since this summer, was arrested in the middle of the night in possession of 2 million US dollars. Putin officially fired him the next morning.

Russian official sources say that Uliukaev extorted a $2 million bribe for an assessment that led to the acquisition by Rosneft (a state run Russian oil giant) of a 50% stake in Bashneft (another oil giant). Apparently, Uliukaev tried to threaten Igor Sechin, the President of Rosneft and a person considered close to Vladimir Putin and the Russian security and intelligence services.

Yes, you read that right: according to the official version, a state-owned company gave a bribe to a member of the government. Does that make sense to you? How about a senior member of the government who had his telephone tapped and who has been under close surveillance by the Federal Security Service for over a year – does that make sense to you?

This makes no sense at all and the Russian authorities fully realize that. But that is the official version. So what is going on here? Do you think that there is a message from Putin here?

Of course there is!

Not Even Putin Has Dealt With His Cosmopolitan Elites....,

unz |  When Putin came to power he inherited a Kremlin every bit as corrupt and traitor-infested as the White House nowadays. As for Russia, she was in pretty much the same sorry shape as the Independent Nazi-run Ukraine. Russia was also run by bankers and AngloZionist puppets and most Russians led miserable lives. The big difference is that, unlike what is happening with Trump, the Russian version of the US Neocons never saw the danger coming from Putin. He was selected by the ruling elites as the representative of the security services to serve along a representative of the big corporate money, Medvedev. This was a compromise solution between the only two parts of the Russian society which were still functioning, the security services and oil/gas money. Putin looked like a petty bureaucrat in an ill fitting suit, a shy and somewhat awkward little guy who would present no threat to the powerful oligarchs of the semibankirshchina (the Seven Bankers) running Russia. Except that he turned out to be one of the most formidable rulers in Russia history. Here is what Putin did as soon as he came to power:

First, he re-established the credibility of the Kremlin with the armed forces and security services by rapidly and effectively crushing the Wahabi insurgency in Chechnia. This established his personal credibility with the people he would have to rely on to deal with the oligarchs.

Second, he used the fact that everybody, every single businessman and corporation in Russia, did more or less break the law during the 1990s, if only because there really was no law. Instead of cracking down on the likes of Berezovski or Khodorkovski for their political activities, he crushed them with (absolutely true) charges of corruption. Crucially, he did that very publicly, sending a clear message to the other arch-enemy: the media.

Third, contrary to the hallucinations of the western human rights agencies and Russian liberals, Putin never directly suppressed any dissent, or cracked down on the media or, even less so, ordered the murder of anybody. He did something much smarter. Remember that modern journalists are first and foremost presstitutes, right? By mercilessly cracking down on the oligarchs Putin deprived the presstitutes of their source of income and political support. Some emigrated to the Ukraine, others simply resigned, and a few were left like on a reservation or a zoo on a few very clearly identifiable media outlets such as Dozhd TV, Ekho Moskvy Radio or the newspaper Kommersant. Those who emigrated became irrelevant, as for those who stayed in the “liberal zoo” – they were harmless has they had no credibility left. Crucially, everybody else “got the message”. After that, all it took is the appointment a few real patriots (such as Dmitri Kiselev, Margarita Simonian and others) in key positions and everybody quickly understood that the winds of fortune had now turned.

Fourth, once the main media outlets were returned back to sanity it did not take too long for the “liberal” (in the Russian sense, meaning pro-USA) parties to enter into a death-spiral from which they have never recovered. That, in turn, resulted in the ejection of all “liberals” form the Duma which now has only 4 parties, all of them more or less “patriotic”.

That’s the part that worked.

So far, Putin failed to eject the 5th columnists, whom I call the “Atlantic Integrationists” (for details, including their names, see here) from the government itself.. Even the notorious Alexei Kudrin was not fired by Putin, but by Medvedev. The security services succeeded in finally getting rid of Anatolii Serdyukov but they did not have power needed to put him in jail. I still think that a purge will happen while Alexander Mercouris disagrees. Whatever may be the case, what is certain is that Putin has not tackled the 5th columnists in the banking/finance sector and that the latter have been very careful not to give him a pretext to take action against them.

Russia and the USA are very different countries, and no recipe can simply be copied from one to another. Still, there are valuable lessons from the “Putin model” for Trump, not the least of which that his most formidable enemies probably are sitting in the Fed. One Russian analyst – Rostislav Ishchenko – has suggested that Trump could somehow force the Fed to increase interest rates, which would result in a bankruptcy domino effect for US banks which might be the only way to finally crush the Fed and re-take control of US banking. Maybe. I honestly am not qualified to have an opinion about that.

Poverty Not a Priority for Politicians Pushing Perversion

NYTimes |  The golden main dome of a new Russian Orthodox cathedral now under construction on the banks of the Seine shimmers in the sun, towering over a Paris neighborhood studded with government buildings and foreign embassies. Most sensitive of all, it is being built beside a 19th-century palace that has been used to conceal some of the French presidency’s most closely guarded secrets.

The prime location, secured by the Russian state after years of lobbying by the Kremlin, is so close to so many snoop-worthy places that when Moscow first proposed a $100 million “spiritual and cultural center” there, France’s security services fretted that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer, might have more than just religious outreach in mind.

Anxiety over whether the spiritual center might serve as a listening post, however, has obscured its principal and perhaps more intrusive role: an outsize display in the heart of Paris, the capital of the insistently secular French Republic, of Russia’s might as a religious power, not just a military one.

While tanks and artillery have been Russia’s weapons of choice to project its power into neighboring Ukraine and Georgia, Mr. Putin has also mobilized faith to expand the country’s reach and influence. A fervent foe of homosexuality and any attempt to put individual rights above those of family, community or nation, the Russian Orthodox Church helps project Russia as the natural ally of all those who pine for a more secure, illiberal world free from the tradition-crushing rush of globalization, multiculturalism and women’s and gay rights.

Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end?

politico |  If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? They’re uneducated?

You’d be wrong.

In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.

That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. And because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible that Trump’s fan base will continue to grow.

My finding is the result of a national poll I conducted in the last five days of December under the auspices of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, sampling 1,800 registered voters across the country and the political spectrum. Running a standard statistical analysis, I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate. Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter.

Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. From pledging to “make America great again” by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.

Not all authoritarians are Republicans by any means; in national surveys since 1992, many authoritarians have also self-identified as independents and Democrats. And in the 2008 Democratic primary, the political scientist Marc Hetherington found that authoritarianism mattered more than income, ideology, gender, age and education in predicting whether voters preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. But Hetherington has also found, based on 14 years of polling, that authoritarians have steadily moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party over time. He hypothesizes that the trend began decades ago, as Democrats embraced civil rights, gay rights, employment protections and other political positions valuing freedom and equality. In my poll results, authoritarianism was not a statistically significant factor in the Democratic primary race, at least not so far, but it does appear to be playing an important role on the Republican side. Indeed, 49 percent of likely Republican primary voters I surveyed score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale—more than twice as many as Democratic voters.

Political pollsters have missed this key component of Trump’s support because they simply don’t include questions about authoritarianism in their polls.

highest paid public employee orchestrated university’s entry into the wealthiest and most powerful football conference

NYTimes |  Mr. Pinkel announced Friday that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, and would resign after the season. More than 20 of his former Missouri players are in the N.F.L., and some speak of him as almost a father figure. “He’s backed us in all situations,” said Shane Ray, a linebacker now with the Denver Broncos.

He also is the highest-paid public employee in Missouri; a shrewd negotiator, he receives an annual salary of more than $4 million. He helped orchestrate the university’s entry in 2012 into the Southeastern Conference, the most powerful and wealthiest college football conference in the nation.

Refusing to stand by his players would have been unwise.

“He didn’t have any choice,” said Lorenzo Williams, a former defensive tackle and team captain and a great admirer of Mr. Pinkel’s. “If black players aren’t comfortable here, he’s basically standing against them. How many black recruits is he going to attract?”

Mr. Pinkel’s seeming endorsement of the protests played less well with some alumni and supporters. Had the Tigers canceled their game Saturday night in Kansas City, Mo., the university would have had to pay $1 million to its opponent, Brigham Young.

By early evening Friday, a couple of hours after the coach announced his coming resignation, Vice Chancellor Thomas S. Hiles sent out an email in hopes of mollifying alumni.

“We have heard from many of you, across the spectrum of viewpoints,” he said. “We want to acknowledge your concerns, expressions of support and anger.”

There is the never incidental question of the team’s won-loss record. After a string of successful seasons, and 10 bowl games in 14 years, the Tigers were 4-5 entering the Brigham Young game.

Mr. Pinkel did not help himself last week by conveying a visible discomfort with his king-toppling of the university president. On a sports-radio show last week, he backpedaled.

Why did he send out the tweet on Sunday expressing solidarity not just with the players but with the protesting student group?

That, he replied, was a mistake.

“I have somebody who tweets for me a lot to get info out, and that person should not have put that hashtag on,” he said.

What’s your view on the resignation of the president and chancellor?

“That is something the university systems did,” he said. “That was secondary to me supporting my players.”

Did these administrators become collateral damage?

“You can describe it any way you want to do it.”

frustrating insertion of the blood funnel, koch guided by a fringe theory of domestic politics and economics

marketplace |  We went to Koch Industries headquarters last week to spend about an hour with co-owner, chairman and CEO Charles Koch. Koch and his brother David, both billionaires, are also known as dedicated right-wing political fundraisers.

Ryssdal: Charles Koch, welcome to the program.

Koch: Thanks, thanks for having me.

Ryssdal: There you are, Boston, Massachusetts, 1961. Couple of graduate degrees from MIT, and you come back to Wichita, Kansas. Why?

Koch: Well my father had, uh ... I was working for a consulting firm back there, which was then one of the leading consulting firms, Arthur D. Little, and I was learning a lot, and it was a great place to be when you're single. All the girls schools there and they had jazz bars. I mean it was terrific. I loved it. Learning a lot, doing consulting for all sorts of big companies -- process development, product development, management services. And so my father starts calling me, urging me to come back to Wichita, and I remember what it was like growing up under him. Like, starting at age six he had me work in virtually all my spare time, and I don't mean doing easy stuff. Like, started out at age six digging dandelions at, you know, 100 degree temperature, and I'm thinking, "Why did my father hate me, and all my friend's fathers love them?" Because they're out swimming, and having a great time, and here I am digging that. And you, because you have to dig down. If you pull them up the roots will stay there, and they come right back.

Ryssdal: That's right.

Koch: So I'm out there digging, and then I soon graduate to bailing hay, shoveling out stalls, milking cows, digging ditches, all this other stuff, and that continued until I started working other places. And -

Ryssdal: So you say he was tough, your old man was?

Koch: So he was tough, yeah. His philosophy was this. He said, "I don't want my sons to be country club bums. So I'm going to make them work." Now, I was a little difficult. I was  independent, kind of a free spirit, so I would try to find ways around this, and years later I ask him, I said, "Pop, why were you so much tougher on me than my younger brothers?" He said, "Son, you plum wore me out. Which I resemble that, but thankfully he stayed with it because he taught me work ethic. And he was tough. Well, and one of his favorite sayings, being Dutch, is, "You can tell the Dutch, but you can't tell 'em much." So he had a strong will, but he also had great integrity, great humility, treated people with dignity and respect, and he had a tremendous thirst for knowledge. And so I absorbed some of that, not probably to his standard, over, over time.

why most people are idiots...,

if you're not bringing math skills to the problem - then representative democracy is a problem

theatlantic |  Gates is on a solo global lobbying campaign to press his species to accomplish something on a scale it has never attempted before. He wants human beings to invent their way out of the coming collision with planetary climate change, accelerating a transition to new forms of energy that might normally take a century or more. To head off a rise in average global temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels—the goal set by international agreement—Gates believes that by 2050, wealthy nations like China and the United States, the most prodigious belchers of greenhouse gases, must be adding no more carbon to the skies.

Those who study energy patterns say we are in a gradual transition from oil and coal to natural gas, a fuel that emits far less carbon but still contributes to global warming. Gates thinks that we can’t accept this outcome, and that our best chance to vault over natural gas to a globally applicable, carbon-free source of energy is to drive innovation “at an unnaturally high pace.”

When I sat down to hear his case a few weeks ago, he didn’t evince much patience for the argument that American politicians couldn’t agree even on whether climate change is real, much less on how to combat it. “If you’re not bringing math skills to the problem,” he said with a sort of amused asperity, “then representative democracy is a problem.” What follows is a condensed transcript of his remarks, lightly edited for clarity.

pope enacts confession/repentence/forgiveness jubiliee, and still can't catch a break......,

thenation |  In reality, the letter offers false compassion. It’s one of many missteps this Pope has made in what is, I’m sure, a sincere effort to understand and honor women. For instance, he has insisted that the subject of women priests is off the table. And while he speaks of putting more women in positions of power in the church, he rejected the idea of appointing women to head Vatican agencies as tokenism. He talks about the “feminine genius” of women who are kind, conciliatory and self-sacrificing, and he says we need a new theology of women (not persons)—but he does nothing about it. 

It’s notable, too, that the launch date for the Jubilee Year is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, an infallible church doctrine which holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived free of the stain of original sin, unlike the rest of us, including women. That holiday reminds women of the impossibility of meeting the saintly ideal of being both virgin and mother. Ever since Eve, the sins of the world, especially those related to sex, fall on our shoulders. 

Just a few days ago the Pope, claiming to be a “bit feminist” praised nuns for their courage. He noted that nuns “have this desire to always go to the front lines. Why? Because you’re mothers, you have the maternal instinct of the church, which makes you be near” to those who suffer. This inability to see women as anything other than mothers contributes to the inability to see the decision not to continue a pregnancy as a denial of womanhood, a sin against nature. 

Most troubling about Francis’ letter is that at the same time as he gives all priests the power to absolve the sin of abortion, he orders them to counsel the women who confess about the grave harm they have done. No doubt some priests will be kind. But some priests are picketing in front of abortion clinics and raging against abortion on Sundays. I fear for the well-being of a woman who sincerely seeks reconciliation and ends up in the confessional of one of these priests. 

Francis is trying. But his own inability to understand women as people, not mothers, will enable those priests to hear only that part of Francis’ message that tells women they did a bad thing—and not recognize why women did the best thing they could, given their circumstances.

that early childhood vocabulary is IQ determinative...,

theatlantic |  Re­search sug­gests that poor chil­dren hear about 600 words per hour, while af­flu­ent chil­dren hear 2,000. By age 4, a poor child has a listen­ing vocab­u­lary of about 3,000 words, while a wealth­i­er child wields a 20,000-word listen­ing vocab­u­lary. So it’s no sur­prise that poor chil­dren tend to enter kinder­garten already be­hind their wealth­i­er peers. But it’s not just the poverty that holds them back—it’s the lack of words. In fact, the single-best pre­dict­or of a child’s aca­dem­ic suc­cess is not par­ent­al edu­ca­tion or so­cioeco­nom­ic status, but rather the qual­ity and quantity of the words that a baby hears dur­ing his or her first three years.

Those early years are crit­ic­al. By age three, 85 per­cent of neur­al con­nec­tions are formed, mean­ing it’s dif­fi­cult for a child who has heard few words to catch up to his peers once he enters the school sys­tem.

While the word gap might sound like an edu­ca­tion prob­lem, the health consequences can be dire—and the be­ne­fits of elim­in­at­ing it can be im­mense. Pub­lic-health of­fi­cials in Geor­gia re­cog­nize this.

“This is pure bio­logy,” Brenda Fitzger­ald, Geor­gia’s Health Com­mis­sion­er and the wo­man in charge of state pub­lic-health pro­grams, said dur­ing an in­ter­view at her At­lanta of­fice. “Which is why it’s a pub­lic-health ini­ti­at­ive.”

Chil­dren with more words do bet­ter in school. Adults who were good stu­dents and earned a col­lege de­gree have longer life ex­pect­an­cies. They are at a lower risk for hy­per­ten­sion, de­pres­sion, and sleep prob­lems. They are less likely to be smokers and to be obese.

“There is no way we can sep­ar­ate health and edu­ca­tion,” said Jen­nifer Stapel-Wax, dir­ect­or of in­fant and tod­dler clin­ic­al re­search op­er­a­tions at the Mar­cus Aut­ism Cen­ter in At­lanta, and the self-de­scribed “chief cheer­lead­er” for the effort.

* * *

So in Geor­gia, from the gov­ernor’s of­fice on down to nurses and WIC (Wo­men, In­fants, and Chil­dren) clin­ics like the one the Pate boys vis­ited in Ma­con, the solu­tion and the mes­sage are clear: Talk with your baby (and help im­prove the state’s well-be­ing).

That second part is not touted much, but doc­tors and nurses be­hind the cam­paign hope that by en­ga­ging par­ents in the first part early and of­ten, the second part will fol­low—and they can al­le­vi­ate the need for costly in­ter­ven­tions down the line.

francis spoke truth to the squid...,

wsj |  Move over, Sen. Elizabeth Warren—there’s a new high-profile critic of the world’s largest banks, and he has over a billion followers.

Pope Francis dedicated a few lines of his 183-page encyclical on the environment on Thursday to the topic of the failures of banks and markets. In the Holy Father’s view, “[t]he lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated” and the governments’ response to the crisis have only set up the financial system for a future panic:

Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system, only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises after a slow, costly and only apparent recovery. The financial crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to develop a new economy, more attentive to ethical principles, and new ways of regulating speculative financial practices and virtual wealth. But the response to the crisis did not include rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world.

While praising business as a “noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world,” His Holiness called out the financial sector for having outsized influence over the political process and endorsed limiting its reach:

[E]conomic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment… To ensure economic freedom from which all can effectively benefit, restraints occasionally have to be imposed on those possessing greater resources and financial power.

The pope’s views may be backed by some recent research: On Wednesday the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said that curbing certain kinds of bank lending could ameliorate income inequality around the world and increase economic growth.

the worship of markets and the acceptance of greed are moral problems..,

WaPo |  “Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations? Where profits alone count, there can be no thinking about the rhythms of nature.” 

The pope condemns the current global economy “where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment. Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked.” 

Wall Street comes under particular criticism: “Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated.” As a result, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of the deified market, which become the only rule.” 

For Pope Francis, the market and the economy must be bound by rules that serve “basic and inalienable rights.” At the center of these is work: “We were created with a vocation to work.” Work is the setting for “rich personal growth . . . creativity, planning for the future, developing our talents, living out our values . . . giving glory to God.” Therefore, priority should be given to “the goal of access to steady employment for everyone, no matter the limited interests of business and dubious economic reasoning.” 

But instead of the common good, we have constructed an economy built on private interest and unrestrained appetite, an economy that excludes the poorest and most vulnerable. For Pope Francis, “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” derive from the same distorted global market economy.

.........

Pope Francis is seeking a far more profound change: economic policy grounded in moral values, measured not by how much money the few make but the respect accorded the rights of all and the health of the environment. Conservatives say he should stick to theology. But he already is sticking to theology, understanding that the worship of markets and the acceptance of unrestrained appetites are moral problems, not technical ones. If this statement on climate is most welcome, his teachings on the economy offer a critique necessary to finding the way out of these problems.

authentic christendom united on ecumenism, ecology, economy...,

time |  How can one not be moved by the criticism of our “culture of waste” or the emphasis on “the common good” and “the common destination of goods”? And what of the vital importance attributed to the global problem of clean water, which we have underlined for over two decades as we assembled scientists, politicians and activists to explore the challenges of the Mediterranean Sea (1995), the Black Sea (1997), the Danube River (1999), the Adriatic Sea (2002), the Baltic Sea (2003), the Amazon River (2006), the Arctic Sea (2007) and the Mississippi River (2009)? Water is arguably the most divine symbol in the world’s religions and, at the same time, the most divisive element of our planet’s resources.

In the final analysis, however, any dissent over land or water inevitably results in what the Pope’s statement calls “a decline in the quality of human life and a breakdown of society.” How could it possibly be otherwise? After all, concern for the natural environment is directly related to concern for issues of social justice, and particularly of world hunger. A church that neglects to pray for the natural environment is a church that refuses to offer food and drink to a suffering humanity. At the same time, a society that ignores the mandate to care for all human beings is a society that mistreats the very creation of God.

Therefore, the Pope’s diagnosis is on the mark: “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” Indeed, as he continues to advance, we require “an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the underprivileged, and at the same time protecting nature.” It is also no surprise, then, that the Pope is concerned about and committed to issues like employment and housing.

Invoking the inspiring words of Scripture and the classics of Christian spirituality of East and West (particularly such saints as Basil the Great and Francis of Assisi), while at the same time evoking the precious works of Roman Catholic conferences of bishops throughout the world (especially in regions where the plunder of the earth is identified with the plight of the poor), Pope Francis proposes new paradigms and new policies in contrast to those of “determinism,” “disregard” and “domination.”

In 1997, we humbly submitted that harming God’s creation was tantamount to sin. We are especially grateful to Pope Francis for recognizing our insistence on the need to broaden our narrow and individualistic concept of sin; and we welcome his stress on “ecological conversion” and “reconciliation with creation.” Moreover, we applaud the priority that the papal encyclical places on “the celebration of rest.” The virtue of contemplation or silence reflects the quality of waiting and depending on God’s grace; and by the same token, the discipline of fasting or frugality reveals the power of not-wanting or wanting less. Both qualities are critical in a culture that stresses the need to hurry, the preeminence of individual “wants” over global “needs.”

In the third year of our brother Pope Francis’s blessed ministry, we count it as a true blessing that we are able to share a common concern and a common vision for God’s creation. As we stated in our joint declaration during our pilgrimage to Jerusalem last year:

“It is our profound conviction that the future of the human family depends also on how we safeguard – both prudently and compassionately, with justice and fairness – the gift of creation that our Creator has entrusted to us … Together, we pledge our commitment to raising awareness about the stewardship of creation; we appeal to all people of goodwill to consider ways of living less wastefully and more frugally, manifesting less greed and more generosity for the protection of God’s world and the benefit of His people.

can shinzo abe help japan recover a little testicular fortitude?

NYTimes |  In Japan, where conformity takes precedence over individuality, one of the most important values is to avoid "meiwaku" — causing trouble for others. And sympathy aside, the two Japanese purportedly slain by the Islamic State group are now widely viewed as troublemakers.

So is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Many Japanese feel that if the hostages had not ignored warnings against travel to Syria, or if Abe had not showcased Tokyo's support for the multinational coalition against the Islamic State militants, Japan wouldn't have been exposed to this new sense of insecurity and unwelcomed attention from Islamic extremists.

"To be honest, they caused tremendous trouble to the Japanese government and to the Japanese people. In the old days, their parents would have had to commit hara-kiri (ritual suicide) to apologize," said Taeko Sakamoto, a 64-year-old part-time worker, after first expressing sympathy over the deaths of Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa.

Sakamoto also sees Abe as part of the problem, for not being more mindful of the risks at a time when he had already been pushing to expand Japan's military role, which is limited to its own self-defense under the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution after its defeat in World War II.

"I don't want Mr. Abe to do anything else that may be seen as provocation, because that's what would put us at a greater risk," Sakamoto said.

a man who respects himself assiduously prepares to meet violence with ultra-violence - everything else is conversation....,

theatlantic |  Black people know what cannot be said. What clearly cannot be said is that the events of Ferguson do not begin with Michael Brown lying dead in the street, but with policies set forth by government at every level. What clearly cannot be said is that the people of Ferguson are regularly plundered, as their grandparents were plundered, and generally regarded as a slush-fund for the government that has pledged to protect them. What clearly cannot be said is the idea of superhuman black men who "bulk up" to run through bullets is not an invention of Darren Wilson, but a staple of American racism.

What clearly cannot be said is that American society's affection for nonviolence is notional. What cannot be said is that American society's admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. increases with distance, that the movement he led was bugged, smeared, harassed, and attacked by the same country that now celebrates him. King had the courage to condemn not merely the violence of blacks, nor the violence of the Klan, but the violence of the American state itself.

What clearly cannot be said is that violence and nonviolence are tools, and that violence—like nonviolence—sometimes works. "Property damage and looting impede social progress," Jonathan Chait wrote Tuesday. He delivered this sentence with unearned authority. Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America. They describe everything from enslavement to Jim Crow laws to lynching to red-lining.

sistah girl say "whoop them bad chirrens", predictable Cathedral whinery ensues...., REDUX (originally posted 2/19/14)

kctv5 |  A Kansas lawmaker wants to give school teachers and caregivers more power to spank children.

Representative Gail Finney

Kansas House member Gail Finney, D-Wichita, said the bill is designed to restore parental rights. It would expand the current law, which allows spanking without leaving marks. If Finney's bill passes, it would allow up to 10 strikes of the hand and smacks hard enough to leave redness and bruising.

The proposal has its detractors, who say it is antiquated. 

"Twenty, 30 years ago, we didn't sit in car seats, and we do now. So maybe they did spank or were spanked as a child, but now we have research that shows it is less effective than time out. It tends to lead to more aggressive behavior with a child," pediatric nurse practitioner Amy Terreros said. She is a child abuse expert at Children's Mercy Hospital. 

McPherson Deputy County Attorney Britt Colle introduced the idea to Finney.

The proposed bill suggests lightening the spanking laws, allowing parents or anyone given permission by a parent to spank hard enough to leave redness or bruising.

"This bill basically defines a spanking along with necessary reasonable physical restraint that goes with discipline, all of which has always been legal," Colle said. "This bill clarifies what parents can and cannot do. By defining what is legal, it also defines what is not."

Colle said the bill makes it clear that hitting a child with fists, hitting a child in the head or body or hitting a child with a belt or switch is not legal discipline and may be considered battery or abuse.

Deidre Sexton said she would never spank her granddaughter. She enjoys being "Nana" with the

responsibilities of a guardian by day.

But Sexton said she has limits with how she disciplines her 2-year-old granddaughter, and she draws the line at spanking. "Even if the parent tells you. Even if my own children told me you can discipline the grandkids, I wouldn't do it. I would find other ways of doing it," Sexton said.

Kansas proponents of the bill say children are losing respect for authority and that parents need to be able to discipline without fear. But 30 other states disagree, and they've banned corporal punishment altogether.

a church for the poor?

NYTimes |  Pope Francis grabbed headlines recently when he announced that Rome had lifted the block on sainthood for Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador, who was shot dead while saying Mass in 1980. But much less attention was given to another of the pope’s actions, one that underscores a significant shift inside the Vatican under the first Latin American pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Archbishop Romero was assassinated after speaking out in favor of the poor during an era when right-wing death squads stalked El Salvador under an American-backed, military-led government in the 1970s and ’80s. For three decades Rome blocked his path to sainthood for fear that it would give succor to the proponents of liberation theology, the revolutionary movement that insists that the Catholic Church should work to bring economic and social — as well as spiritual — liberation to the poor.

Under Pope Francis that obstacle has been removed. The pope now says it is important that Archbishop Romero’s beatification — the precursor to becoming a saint — “be done quickly.” Conservative Catholics have tried to minimize the political significance of the pope’s stance by asserting that the archbishop, though a champion of the poor, never fully embraced liberation theology.

But another move by Pope Francis undermines such revisionism. This month he also lifted a ban from saying Mass imposed nearly 30 years ago upon Rev. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, who had been suspended as a priest for serving as foreign minister in Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government in the same era. There is no ambiguity about the position on liberation theology of Father d’Escoto, who once called President Ronald Reagan a “butcher” and an “international outlaw.” Later, as president of the United Nations General Assembly, Father d’Escoto condemned American “acts of aggression” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But there is more to the pope’s action than kindness to an 81-year-old man. In a remarkable turnaround, liberation theology is being brought in from the cold. During the Cold War, the idea that the Catholic Church should give “a preferential option for the poor” was seen by many in Rome as thinly disguised Marxism. Pope John Paul II, who had been brought up under Soviet bloc totalitarianism, was determined to crack down on it. On a visit to Nicaragua, he famously wagged a finger at Father d’Escoto’s fellow priest and cabinet minister, Ernesto Cardinal. The Vatican also silenced key exponents of liberation theology, and its founding father, the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, was placed under investigation by the Vatican’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or C.D.F.

what makes people poor?

NYTimes | Let’s imagine for a moment that there are no political pressures distorting our discussion of poverty and that we can look at it as a technical problem, not a moral one.

Maybe we would find that most explanations – left, right and center – are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing.

Before we take this thought experiment further, we should consider the ramifications of new research that provides insight into urban social disorder, worklessness, the rising salience of education and the shortcomings of government policy.

David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. best known for exploring the costs to American workers of automation and trade with China, has recently expanded the scope of his research on unemployment to look at the consequences for men who grow up in a fatherless household.

In a paper published last year, Autor, working in collaboration with a fellow M.I.T. economist, Melanie Wasserman, found that “the labor market trajectory of males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition; employment rates; occupational stature; and real wage levels.” The trends have been much worse for men than women because “the absence of stable fathers from children’s lives has particularly significant adverse consequences for boys’ psychosocial development and educational achievement.”

Autor and Wasserman cite data showing that “after controlling for a host of individual and family characteristics, growing up in a single-parent home appears to significantly decrease the probability of college attendance for boys, yet has no similar effect for girls.” The authors add that when raised with a nonresidential father, “boys perform less well academically than girls.”

contesting patriarchy-as-governance: lessons from youth-led activism

opendemocracy | The recent waves of citizen-led activism that swept the globe inspired numerous attempts to identify common drivers [23] across diverse instances of public disobedience and protest.  Growing numbers of educated, unemployed, alienated youth, the humiliations  of autocracy, the authority- busting potential of the internet and social media, and the coming of age of Generation Y [24] are among recurrent leitmotifs. These common denominators – broadly  related to the tensions between the global forces of neoliberalism [25]seeking to expand the freedom of capital, and the forces of social resistance struggling to preserve and redefine community and solidarity - provide  an overly broad umbrella for phenomena  as diverse as the Arab uprisings, the Occupy [26] movement, the indignados [27] of Southern Europe, the student movement in Chile [28] or the Gezi protests [29] in Turkey.  Could the lure of the “global” be making us lose sight of more subtle and context specific idioms of discontent? 

In this article, the fourth in a series of reflections on the Arab uprisings (and beyond), I explore the reasons behind the apparent anti-patriarchal thrust of struggles against authoritarianism in some parts of the MENA region, and pose a relatively neglected question: Are there any lessons to be drawn from youth-led activism for a new politics of gender? 

At first sight, the answer would appear to be negative.  A mobilized citizenry was, first and foremost, demanding their social and political rights, clamouring for justice and freedom and an end to state violence and corruption. If and when gender issues came up - as they did[30] in the context of the Arab uprisings - they were treated in a rather truncated manner, mainly to document levels of  women’s participation in popular protests, their subsequent exclusion from formal processes of transition and their exposure to increasing levels of violence. Feminism and women’s rights activism - considered by some as  “old politics”[31] par excellence - appeared to elicit ambivalence, if not outright indifference, among members of a new insurrectionary generation. Yet this distancing was taking place against the background of widespread popular protests against gender-based violence[32], involving both men and women, who were plainly engaged in new forms of grass roots activism and social critique. How can we account for this state of affairs?  Is the language of feminism up to the challenge of capturing the new sensibilities and aspirations animating the actions and idioms of multitudes of youth, both male and female? Or do the lenses we train on the politics of gender inadvertently restrict our vision?