Rumblings of Unrest in Russia published in Lebanon newspaper 03/29, 2017

While we in the U.S. have been absorbed in our national news coming out of Washington D.C. and other places, some interesting things have been happening in Russia of which we need to take account. On March 26, more than 1,000 people were arrested in Moscow, along with smaller numbers in 82 different Russian cities. Those arrested were protesting against Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev because of allegations published earlier this month by a political opponent of President Putin and the Prime Minister. Medvedev is a former president of Russia and a close ally of Vladimir Putin. It was estimated that altogether 60,000 people turned out for the protests throughout the country.

The allegations were made by Alexei Navalny, a 40 year old politician in Russia who has expressed opposition toward Putin and Medvedev and other officlals, charging them with high levels of corruption. Navalny’s high profile expose alleged many accounts of corruption on the part of Medvedev, claiming that he controls vast estates in Russia, together with other assets including two yachts and vineyards in Tuscany in Italy and that he has amassed a huge fortune that far exceeds his official salary. These allegations do not sit well with the average Russian family which is struggling with the country’s worst recession in over 20 years , and Navalny has taken advantage of the situation by launching a series of scathing investigations against Medvedev.

The economic downturn has also come about by the sanctions leveled after Crimea and the fall in global oil prices, according to a recent report by NBC News.

Presidential elections will be held in March 2018 and Navalny has openly declared that he plans to run against Putin in the election. The Russian government, currently controlled by Putin and Medvedev, insists he won’t be allowed to run because he has been found guilty in several criminal cases, including embezzlement. Navalny says these charges are fake and designed to keep him from running against Putin.

Navalny’s strategy in making Medvedev the target of his charges of corruption appears to take into account the fact that Putin is still popular with the Russian people, whereas Medvedev is widely disliked and is seen as weak, and further many Russians hold him responsible for the weak economy. But there is more behind the protests - there is general dissatisfaction among the people as expressed by a pensioner in Moscow who is quoted as saying, “I’m fed up with this mess.”

Putin’s popularity rating has not dipped below 80% in recent years and observers believe that lingering patriotic enthusiasm over the annexation of Crimea in 2014 will carry him to a fourth term as president. Russians call the return of Crimea their second-greatest point of pride after the victory over Nazi Germany. I guess you could say they believe Putin has made Russia great again.

However, according to the Economist, economic issues and corruption worry Russians more than the unresolved war in Ukraine, so Putin should not rule out the possibility that Navalny's

supporters remain a strong force in the country.

Although several arrests of the protestors were made last week, the Russian government isn’t coming down on those arrested as harshly as usual because most of the protestors were people in their teens and twenties, and Putin needs the youth vote in the upcoming election. However, according to the NBC news story, Navalny’s office was raided by security services, the head of his staff was charged with extremism, and Navalny was fined $350 and jailed for 15 days.

CNN notes in its reporting on the demonstrations that they come at a time when the safety of critics of Vladimir Putin is under scrutiny. On Thursday of last week a former Russian lawmaker and vocal critic of the Russian government, Denis Voronenkov, was shot dead outside a luxury hotel in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

Navalny has not commented on the killing. The U.S. State Department spoke out against the arrests, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Navalny’s report by saying “not the first creative effort from this well-known convicted citizen.”

Passion

“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age”.. (James Joyce) I’ve often been accused of being too passionate, of caring too much about certain things. But I believe that passion, also defined as fervor or zeal, is one of the essential core values of human life, along with the Apostle Paul’s Biblical list of the virtues of faith, hope and charity. Passionate people have strong opinions and usually articulate them very well. We are also perfectionists, and we don’t handle incompetence in the public arena very well, all of which tend to preclude us from being the most popular person in the room. I long ago accepted the fact that I won’t have the largest funeral in Lebanon, nor will my obituary make the front page. But not everyone seems to care that much about anything other than their own lives. T.S. Eliot once said, “It is obvious that we can no more explain pas...

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

Years ago, there was a movie called “A River Runs Through It” based on a novel by Norman Maclean. I didn’t see the movie, but the title has been running through my head for several days now. The Rio Grande is just one of hundreds of rivers that runs through this great North American continent. More than 60,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the Mexican border in the past nine months, many of them using the Rio Grande as their point of entrance. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Congressman describes his recent trip to the river during the pre-dawn hours. He saw pregnant women and those with nursing infants and small children, and many teenagers, 72 people in all that morning and a third of them were children unaccompanied by adults. Border agents pulled on blue latex gloves when they saw them arriving. One told the Congressman that many of them have scabies, lice and even more serious infectious diseases that probably won’t be noticed until after they have traveled with others on buse...

LIQUID PRAYERS

I'm often asked why Tears fall from my eyes When my prayers ascend to the throne; It's so easy for me To shed tears, don't you see; That's the way I make my needs known. For the tears that I shed In the prayers that I've said Have all been kept by Him In a bottle rare; He has placed them there He has never forgotten them. For every tear Is a liquid prayer That waters the seed that we sow. Through the good times and bad Whether happy or sad The tears help our prayers to flow. Feel a tug in your heart? Then let the tears start When you take to God all your cares. He knows what you need; He hears when you plead; For tears are just liquid prayers. Written by Joan Rowden Hart 12.17.01, based on Psalm 56:8, “Thou tellest my wanderings; put thou my tears into thy bottle; are they not in thy book?” This poem was inspired by my dear friend, Betty Shanks of Farmington , Mo , who coined the phrase “liquid prayers” after I had preached a sermon ...

Straight From The Hart

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