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Romanias prime minister has refused to repeal decrees that critics say will free corrupt officials from jail early and shield others from conviction, despite international condemnation and the biggest popular protests since the fall of communism.

We took a decision in the government and we are going to press ahead, Sorin Grindeanu said after a meeting of his ruling leftwing Social Democrats (PSD). The party leader, Liviu Dragnea, blamed an ongoing campaign of lies and disinformation for opposition to the decrees.

The PSD won elections [in December] with a huge vote. The governments power is legitimate, Dragnea said, labelling the centre-right president, Klaus Iohannis, the moral author of last nights violence.

Iohannis has threatened to take the ordinance to the constitutional court, the last legal resort to stop the emergency decrees passing into law. He said on Thursday he was impressed by the protests, adding that Romanians had clearly what they want: the rule of law.

The European commission vice-president, Frans Timmermans, urged the government to urgently reconsider, saying that Romanias EU funding could be at risk.

In a separate statement, the US, Germany, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands and France said the government had undermined progress on rule of law and the fight against corruption over the past 10 years.

Clashes broke out in Bucharest after hundreds of thousands demonstrated across Romania in a second night of protests. Bottles and firecrackers were hurled at police in the capital, who responded with teargas. Twenty people were arrested and eight injured, authorities said.

In the largest demonstrations since the fall of communist dictator Nicolae Ceauescu in 1989, up to 300,000 people braved subzero temperatures to participate in protests across 50 towns and cities, including 150,000 in the capital. There were shouts of Thieves and calls for politicians to be locked up.

On Tuesday night the government passed an emergency ordinance that would, among other things, decriminalise cases of official misconduct in which the financial damage is less than 200,000 lei (38,000). The decree is due to take effect in a little over a week.

The government says the order and another draft bill on jail pardons are needed to ease prison overcrowding and bring the criminal code into line with recent constitutional court rulings.

But many worry the changes will reverse an anti-corruption push in Romania that saw the then prime minister Victor Ponta go on trial in 2015 over alleged tax evasion and money laundering charges he denies. Prosecutors are currently investigating 2,150 cases of alleged abuse of power.

On Wednesday opposition parties filed a no-confidence motion against the government, which is led by the PSD and has only been in office a few weeks. The PSD bounced back in elections on 11 December, barely a year since mass protests forced it from office.

Dragnea is currently on trial for alleged abuse of power and is already barred from office because of a two-year suspended jail sentence for electoral fraud handed down last year. He denies any wrongdoing in relation to the latest charges.

Business minister Florin Jianu announced his resignation on Thursday, saying he disagreed with the governments stance, while PSDs deputy chair, Mihai Chirica, called on the government to scrap the decree and send it to parliament for debate.

Jianu said on Facebook: I dont want to have to tell my child that I was a coward and I agreed to something that I dont believe in ... This is what my conscience tells me to do.

The British embassy in Bucharest said it would be concerned if the decree were to shrink the scope of corruption offences and was concerned by the very limited nature of consultations with all relevant stakeholders.

Justice minister Florin Iordache, who has come under fire for publishing the decrees, will temporarily hand his duties over to a subordinate in the ministry, spokeswoman Carmen Lita said. She said it was because he had a heavy workload preparing this years budget.

The protests on Tuesday and Wednesday follow a demonstration last Sunday that drew 40,000 people, including 20,000 in the capital, and another a week earlier involving more than 15,000. More protests are expected later on Thursday.

The size of the protests and the range of protesters is hugely significant and shows the depth and breadth of anger, said Dan Brett, an associate professor at the Open University. However, [those] who [might] benefit from the law have no interest in backing down. They are working on the assumption that as with most protests they will soon fizzle out and so can be ignored.

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Romanian PM to 'press ahead' with corruption decrees as protests grow - The Guardian

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Marek Jdraszewski, the new Archbishop of Krakow, said belief in the interchangeability of male and female, and trans ideology, was a fundamental denial of reality and absurd from a scientific point of view.

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The archbishop, whose diocese was once held by Pope John Paul II, told Catholic News Agency that Pope Francis had emphasised to him in a meeting the danger of gender ideology because it breaks with the anthropological vision of what the man [is] according[to] the work of the Creator God.

God created the man as male and female, while gender ideology does everything possible to cancel differences between man and woman, the archbishop said.

This is absurd from a biological point of view, and it does not deal just with the human being: gender ideology has dramatic consequences in social life and in current culture.

We cannot be open to this ideology, that is profoundly against God the Creator and against everything Christ himself taught us, he said.

His comments come less than a month after another Catholic bishop, Cardinal Antonio Caizares, slammed gender theory as a denial of reason that undermines the traditional family, which in turn leads to social problems such as juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, prostitution and violence against women.

In a statement released on the feast of the Epiphany, the cardinal said: We must fight for human dignity and against every type of discrimination, but denying biological differences between men and women is not a solution.

He had previously described gender ideology as the most insidious and destructive ideology in all history.

An LGBT group filed hate speech charges against him last year, accusing him of using words that were full of hatred, homophobic and sexism, and incite hatred against those who do not fit into the archaic models defended by the Catholic hierarchy.

The charges were dismissed just days later.

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Gender Ideology Is More Dangerous than Communism, Says Bishop - Breitbart News

Members of Boiko Borissovs GERB party and of the centre-right Reformist Bloc coalition held separate wreath-laying ceremonies in central Sofia on February 1, the day of remembrance of the victims of the countrys communist regime. The day also was marked by a special statement by former justice minister Hristo Ivanovs Yes Bulgaria party.

In a brief statement marking the day, released in mid-afternoon, Bulgarian head of state President Roumen Radev said that in the countrys history, there were still many open wounds and unclosed pages.

As head of state, I share the conviction that only together, telling the whole truth and without trading in the past, can we overcome the divisions in our society. Every innocent victim deserves our respect, Radev said.

In 2011, the then-government headed by Boiko Borissov voted February 1 as the day of commemoration of the victims of communism, acting on a proposal put forward by former presidents Zhelyu Zhelev and Petar Stoyanov, at the suggestion of former political exile Dimi Panitza.

The February 1 date was chosen because it is the anniversary of the 1945 killing of 147 people, including Prince Kiril, three former prime ministers, military generals and MPs, following the death sentences handed to them by a communist Peoples Court.

That Peoples Court followed large-scale extra-judicial killings of people, from local mayors to priests to police chiefs, journalists and others, at the time of the communist takeover of Bulgaria.

In the course of the Peoples Court process, from December 1944 to April 1945, a total of 12 special courts operated. More than 28 600 Bulgarians were arrested, 11 122 were put on trial, and a reported 9155 were sentenced, 2618 of them to death, while 1126 were given life sentences and others were imprisoned from one to 20 years.

The ensuing years did not see an end to repression, as large numbers of Bulgarians were forced into labour camps or otherwise internally displaced.

Radevs predecessor as President, RossenPlevneliev, who after winning election on the ticket of Boiko Borissovs centre-right GERB party was in office from 2012 to January 2017, participated over the years in wreath-laying ceremonies at commemorative events for the victims and also issued a number of statements on the issue, not only on February 1 but on other occasions, such as the commemoration of victims at the political prison camp at Belene.

Speaking at the first commemoration that he attended as head of state, in February 2012, Plevneliev said that the Peoples Court had become a symbol of the repression of the Bulgarian people.

At that ceremony, he said that the 20th century was marked by ideologically-motivated political violence, of which millions of European citizens became the victims. The difference is that in Europe the victims of this violence are remembered and revered, while in this country you still hear the calls to forget the past, Plevneliev said.

In the years since the November 1989 fall of Bulgarias communist regime, dealing with the past has been a keenly-contested issue between centre- and right-wing political forces that took on the mantle of anti-communism, and socialist politicians who have an entirely different view of the countrys communist past.

An act of Parliament approved by Bulgarias National Assembly in April 2000 deemed the communist regime and the Bulgarian Communist Party criminal. Sixteen years later, a group of centre-right MPs in the now-departed 43rd National Assembly tabled legislation providing for the outlawing and removal from public display of communist symbols, legislation that got first-reading stage approval by the time Parliament was dissolved to make way for early elections.

Attempts at lustration of former senior communist party office-bearers in the early decades of Bulgarias transition to democracy were struck down by the Constitutional Court.

In October 2016, the Constitutional Court nullified legislation approved a few months earlier by the National Assembly that removed the statute of limitations on serious crimes committed under the communist regime.

The Dossier Commission, established by statute at the end of 2006 to identify people in various walks of public life who worked for the communist-era secret services State Security and the Peoples Army military intelligence, has publicly disclosed the identities of more than 12 000 agents and collaborators. This disclosure is, by the same constitutional principles that forbid lustration and enshrine the freedom to pursue a profession, no bar to continuing in public life.

(Main photo: Members of the GERB delegation at the Sofia monument to the victims of communism)

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Bulgarian right-wing parties mark day of commemorating victims of communism - The Sofia Globe

A demonstration against decrees to pardon corrupt politicians and decriminalise other offences, on Jan. 29.

Romanias president urged the government to reverse a surprise decision to quashcorruption investigations into officials andannul some other convictions after the measures drew thousands of protesters into the streets of major cities.

About 12,000 people ralliedin freezing temperatures late Tuesday in Bucharest,demanding the government step down. At least 8,000 gathered elsewhere in the eastern European nation. The cabinet earlier backed proposals that had sparked the biggest protests since the fall of communism.Some of the changes require parliamentary approval, while others have already been published in the official journal.

This damages the judiciary and breaches its independence,President Klaus Iohannis said Wednesday, after meeting members of the Superior Council of Magistrates, which monitors the courts and is challenging the governments measures. The only option I wont accept is doing nothing about it. We must make a stand at an institutional level.

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More than 1,000 demonstrators remainedin Bucharest on Wednesday, with further demonstrations planned for the evening. The turmoil sent the leu 1.2 percent weaker, heading to the biggest decline in more than 3 1/2 years and more than erasing its 2017 gain against the euro.

Concerns have arisenin other parts of the region that democracy is under threat. The EU has reprimanded Poland and Hungary for state encroachment on thejudiciary and the media. The government in Warsaw backed away from plans to tighten abortion rules after mass protests. European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker criticized Romanias actions on Wednesday.

The fight against corruption needs to be advanced, not undone, Juncker said in a statement. Were following the latest developments in Romania with great concern.

The government says its trying to relieve overcrowded prisons, where conditions have led to cases being filed with the European Court for Human Rights.I took into account all the requests of the people and amended the bills, Justice Minister Florin Iordache said Wednesday. He said he stands-by his plan, despite the protests.

If the pardons legislation is approved, prisoners serving sentences shorter than five years --excluding rapists and multiple offenders -- will befreed, according to Iordache. A separate emergency decree decriminalized abuse of public office for offenses concerning less than 200,000 lei ($48,000) of damages.

Anti-graft prosecutors, whove locked up hundreds of corrupt officials in a four-year clampdown, said Wednesday that theyre currently working on more than 2,000abuse-of-office cases. In the past two years alone, theyve sent more than 1,000 people to trial, seeking to recover damages in excess of 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion).

Romania ranks fourth-worst for graft in the EU, according to Berlin-based Transparency International. Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea is serving a two-year suspended sentence for electoral fraud and faces anotherabuse-of-office probe in which he denies wrongdoing.

Continued here:
Romanians Flood Streets as Cabinet Defies Protests Over Pardons - Bloomberg

Wolf Ladejinsky, an economist and agriculturalist who fled the Soviet Union in 1921, helped Japan and Taiwan implement major agricultural reforms that led to the countries becoming completely self-sufficient in food production. These reforms also ensured that these countries stayed largely capitalistic.

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Major land reforms were implemented in Japan after World War II. The above picture shows rice farmers in Kochi in 1955. Source: Getty Images

Over the lifespan of the Soviet Union, several dissidents and refugees reached positions of eminence in the United States. However, few of these former Soviet citizens ever managed to implement communist-inspired policies to counter communism itself. This is where Wolf Issac Ladejinsky stood out.

Born in Ukraine (which was then a part of the Russian Empire) to a reasonably wealthy family in 1899, Ladejinsky lived a comfortable life until the Bolshevik Revolution, when his fathers businesses were expropriated by the government.

He fled the country and entered the U.S. as a refugee in 1922. Quickly learning English, Ladejinsky enrolled in Columbia University, where he earned a BA and then did a graduate degree in economics.

His publications on the collectivization of agriculture gave the world a rare Russian perspective into the policies that were taking place at that time, Vikas Chandran, a former agriculture specialist at the World Bank told RBTH.

His subsequent works and policies were greatly influenced by this one aspect of the Soviet Union, although he almost made it a life mission to stop the spread of communism.

In 1935, Ladejinsky joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture, choosing to focus on foreign agricultural issues. He continued to study the Soviet model, but also paid attention to agriculture in Asia, particularly Japan, India and British Malaya (which includes Singapore and the modern-day peninsular Malaysia).

He increasingly saw land distribution and redistribution as the key to political stability, Ben Stavis, Director, Asian Studies Program at Temple University, wrote in a paper.

He had seen the power of the Bolshevik slogan, peace, land, bread.He gauged that if more peasants owned their own land, communism would lose much of its appeal. Land ownership was profoundly political and land reform could be an anti-communist tool.

In his pre-World War II writings, Ladejinsky stated that Japans occupation of Taiwan and certain parts of Northeastern China were largely on account of land hunger created by an existing feudal system in the country.

In 1945, he joined the staff of General Douglas MacArthur, who was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in post-war Japan. He advocated a peaceful redistribution of land in the war-ravaged country.

Under the Ladejinsky-MacArthur land reforms, more than 5 million acres were taken from large landholders and sold to former tenants.

There was no violence or element of direct force in this, unlike in the USSR of the 1920s and 30s, Chandran said. This has a huge impact on the lives of millions of farmers in Japan. Here, a capitalistic country managed an essentially socialist measure and kept the weaker sections of society from needing assistance from communists.

Stavis attributed the smooth transition to the fact that the landlords could not organize private armies and resist the policies of the occupation forces.

The farmers who received the distributed land formed the bedrock of support for Japans Liberal Democratic Policy. The combination of political stability and a hard working farmer community helped Japan become an agricultural powerhouse.

As farmers, they were highly motivated to invest in agriculture and expand production, Stavis wrote. Japan's agriculture productivity has shown solid growth over the decades.

At the closing stages of the Chinese Civil War, Ladejinsky tried to help the Chinese Nationalists hurriedly implement land reforms but it was too late.

He moved to Taiwan and introduced the policies on the island. The authorities on the island welcome the idea of implementing the land reforms since it would weaken the rural power structure, which was a potential obstacle for the Nationalists.

As in Japan, the land reform in Taiwan was very successful, Stavis wrote. It created a class of small scale farmers, with real incentives to expand farm production. This class was inherently conservative and contributed to the social and political stability of Taiwan.

Both in Japan and Taiwan, the landlords were given industrial bonds and this helped both countries rapidly industrialize.

Later in his career, Ladejinsky met with lesser degrees of success in India and other Asian countries.

He spent most of the last decade of his life in India as a World Bank consultant. Ladejinsky grew increasingly critical as the Indian Government's grand proposals for land reform became weakened by political convenience and competing priorities, according to a New York Times reportwritten after his death in 1975.

Until the peasantry begins to vote in its own interest, the chances are that integrated agrarian reforms in this part of the world by due process of law will be almost impossible Lajedinsky wrote in 1971.

More than five decades after his death, the very process of land reforms still evokes strong emotions in Asia. However, his flexible and calculated approach in the continent helped the U.S. stop the spread of communism.

The fact that Lajedinsky was born in the Soviet Union and advocated land reforms and helping the rural poor made him a suspected communist in the eyes of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Despite being an advocate against communism, Lajedinsky lost his U.S. government job in 1954. A year later, he was reinstated by Dwight Eisenhower administration, which admitted that a mistake had been made.

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How the U.S. used Soviet-style land reforms to counter communism ... - Russia Beyond the Headlines