RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.steynonline.com/9726/johnson-vs-johnson

Across the continent and an ocean, Westminster continues to be roiled by Brexiteers and Remoaners locked, like the latter seasons of Dynasty, in ever more demented plot twists. Today Her Majesty’s Government suffered its first resignation since Boris Johnson took over as Prime Minister. The Minister for Universities and Science quit, and is leaving Parliament. His name is Jo Johnson. Any relation? Why, yes. He’s Boris’ brother. In the normal course of events, no normal person knows who the Minister for Universities is, or indeed that such a post exists, or, if aware of this grand office, what the chap who holds it does all day long: He ain’t a heavy, he’s his brother – that’s all. But the junior Johnson, a Remainer, has walked out on the senior Johnson, a Leaver, so it’s the biggest thing since Cain fired his Secretary of State for Sheep-Herding. Boris was his brother’s keeper, but he couldn’t keep him. So the Remainer leaves, putting a question mark over whether the Leaver can remain.

~All sides are throwing around media accusations of “constitutional outrage”, ever since Boris got the Queen to prorogue Parliament and was instantly ungraded from PM to Caudillo of the new dictatorship. I am more sympathetic to the charges against his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, has been claiming for months to want a general election. Indeed, there is no reason not to have one. On Tuesday the Prime Minister formally lost his majority, when some Tory nobody I’d never heard of crossed the floor and became a Liberal. So Boris and his team cannot govern. Indeed, even their minority is shrinking by the hour, as he removes the whip, expels and deselects those who vote against him on Brexit.

And yet Corbyn voted down Boris’ motion for a general election – because the Opposition Leader is determined to force the Government to enact not its own but the Opposition’s policy, by making Boris go to Brussels, grovel, and beg for another extension of Britain’s zombie membership in the European Union. To put it in American terms, the legislative branch wants to maintain the executive branch in power purely as its dead-eyed sock puppet. That is certainly a constitutional abomination, and, cautious as she is in such matters, I have no doubt the Queen regards it as such.

https://youtu.be/VzpaMf3pZGU

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14827/christians-massacred-media-ignore

“In the same week as the awful attack on the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand… more than two hundred Christians were killed in Nigeria. There was hardly any mention of the latter in the news. There were no marches for martyred Christians, no tolling of church bells ordered by governments, no ‘Je suis Charlie’ t-shirts… no public outrage at all.” — Fr. Benedict Kiely, Crisis Magazine, September 4, 2019

NASA’s satellites observed the Amazon fires, prompting world leaders to pledge to protect the rainforest. But the burning, chopping and murder of Christians is not tracked by satellites and their suffering is not seen on our televisions and newspapers. Actually, it seems in the West as if the persecution of Christians does not even exist.

The Vatican and Pope Francis have a choice: to shed light on these persecuted Christians or be accused of willful blindness…. The Vatican should dedicate the next synod to them.

“In the Amazon rainforest, which is of vital importance for the planet, a deep crisis has been triggered by prolonged human intervention, in which a ‘culture of waste’ (LS 16) and an extractivist mentality prevail”, the Vatican stated.

“The Amazon is a region with rich biodiversity; it is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious; it is a mirror of all humanity which, in defense of life, requires structural and personal changes by all human beings, by nations, and by the Church.”

That is why a Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region has been scheduled to meet in Rome from October 6 to 27. In an interview with Italian paper La Stampa, Pope Francis said that one of the biggest challenges to the Amazon region is the “threat to the life of the populations and territory which derives from the economic and political interests of the dominant sectors of society.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14828/moscow-divided

Putin has also succeeded in establishing Russia as the key player in war-torn Syria by marginalizing not only Iran but also Turkey and the United States. Putin adulators are especially proud of his success in playing the Iran card against the United States while squeezing the Tehran mullahs for unprecedented concessions.

The impression one gets in Moscow these days is that reality may have started to bite at the edges of the hubris nurtured by Putin’s opportunistic tactics and the weakness of the Western, especially European, response.

Well-to-do Russians, the backbone of Putin’s system, are sore about the fact that they are no longer treated as welcome friends in the Western world, to which they think they belong. The less privileged Russians are equally unwilling to find their nation grouped together with a number of “Third World” countries such as Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

In Russia, August is often regarded as the uncertain season closing the short summer and opening the path to the long duet of autumn and winter. It was, therefore, no surprise in a recent visit to Moscow to see that sense of uncertainty reflected in the political mood of the Russian elites.

To be sure, the uncertainty one notices is still in filigree. Officials and intellectuals supporting the current government are still full of self-confidence, not to say bombast, defending President Vladimir Putin’s “strongman” politics. Nevertheless, conversations regarding the political situation in Russia soon reveal three sources of uncertainty, perhaps even anxiety.

The first is an as yet tentative concern that though Putin’s current presidential term has some four more years to conclude, it is not at all certain that the current ruling elite could find someone of similar stature to carry the torch. In other words, Putinism may end as other “isms” formed around a charismatic leader, something like Gaullism, Peronism or even Titoism.