China will redouble its efforts to nationalize Christianity, a senior Chinese official announced on last Thursday (8/07).

"The construction of Chinese Christian theology should adapt to China's national condition and integrate with Chinese culture," Wang Zuoan, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, said at a Shanghai forum on the "Sinicization of Christianity," according to Chinese state media.

Gu Mengfei, deputy secretary-general of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement - a state-sanctioned umbrella organization for Protestant churches - elaborated on the initiative. "This will encourage more believers to make contributions to the country's harmonious social progress, cultural prosperity and economic development," Gu said.

As the name implies, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement - which long predates the establishment of the People's Republic of China - has Chinese nationalism at its core.

The Three-Selfs are the three principles of self-support (financial independence from foreigners), self-leadership/governance, and self-propagation (indigenous missionary work).

Nonetheless, the officials' comments last week indicate that the Chinese Communist Party intends to further tighten its grip over Christianity. There are a number of possible targets and motivations for the crackdown.

The struggle between the productive and the destructive never ends. The productive are those who add more value and wealth than they consume, and the destructive are those who destroy more value and wealth than they create. Will 2014 be a year of production or destruction?

Those private individuals, firms or institutions such as the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that make economic forecasts for the United States or the global economy are actually making judgments about the outcomes of the struggles between the productive and the destructive.

The good news is that most people will work hard and honestly to create more wealth for their families in 2014 -- whether they are creating a new business or product, or just doing a really good job. The bad news is that in the United States, individuals and businesses now face $54 billion more in new federal taxes and a torrent of new regulations and rules that, for the most part, make life harder.

Will the saga of the world's most famous fellatrice return to haunt Hillary in 2008?  There's this fascinating whisper making the Washington rounds that says yes.

While convoluted and circumstantial, a number of plugged-in Washingtonians believe it.  The story starts with Boris Yeltsin.

Yeltsin was President of Russia from its emergence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to 1999.  In October of 2000, part three of his autobiography was published, Midnight Diaries.  In it, there was an astounding revelation:

That in "late 1996," after Bill Clinton's re-election in November, he (Yeltsin) received a highly classified report from his Foreign Intelligence Service (Russian acronym SVR, formerly a branch of the KGB).  Russian intel had learned that the President of the United States was having an affair with an intern named Monica Lewinsky.

This was over a full year before the world learned of the scandal via the Drudge Report internet website on January 19, 1998.  The President of the United States was about to be blackmailed.

The Kremlin's gamble has gone horribly wrong. The eastern regions of Ukraine have failed to rise in mass support for Putin's front organizations, led by political operatives from Moscow, and patently run by the Russian security apparatus (FSB/GRU) as even Russian newspapers admit.

Mr. Putin has failed equally to drive a wedge between America and Europe, or to paralyze the EU by playing off one country against another.

Mr. Putin now faces draconian sanctions from the US, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia together. He can strike back by asymmetric means -- perhaps a cyberattack -- but tit-for-tat retaliation can achieve nothing. There is no equivalence.

Russia's economy is no bigger than California's. This is an economic showdown between a $40 trillion power structure, and a $2 trillion producer of raw materials that has hollowed out its industrial core.

Mr. Putin is counting on acquiescence from the BRICS quintet as it confronts the West, and counting on capital from China to offset the loss of Western money. This is a pipedream. Beijing will reduce Russia to a vassal state of China.  Vladimir Putin is quickly becoming the ruination of Russia.

Important Announcement:  the last section of this HFR is devoted to addressing concerns regarding the New TTP Forum.

The theme for the week is Birds of a Hubristic Feather.  The shades of Sophocles and Aeschylus are looking up at us from the depths of Hades in sad wonder that humans in power never learn the lesson the Greeks knew so well two and a half millennia ago.

Thus we get such marvelously good news this week as Pelosi Galore announcing that Dems Won't Run from Obamacare in Midterms. You're just not going to get a better example of masochistic hubris than that. 

It's of course the path to electoral disaster in November.  Zero could take a different path, but can be supremely confident this will never happen - because Zero is a solipsistic narcissist who lives in Hubris City.  In addition, he's ignorant, uneducated, and actually pretty stupid - all his affirmative action Ivy League degrees notwithstanding.  He's glib and shrewd and smooth - but not smart. 

Now,is there anyone on the planet more hubristic than Zero?  Why, yes - that would be Vladimir Vladimirovich Pooty-Poot Putin.  Oh, look!  He's riding a horse without a shirt! Oh! He's so big and tough and strong!  Oh, what a pile of horse manure.