These children have had hard luck. Despite their age, they have much seen and experienced much. How did it affect their psyche, and how do we understand what’s happening in their hearts? Outwardly, they, like all children, play and laugh… only the drawings tell us what really happened to them.
15 January 2011
Photo Polygon
If JP expects us to swallow his lie about an “unofficial visit”, he must think that we’re all idiots…
Read this:
http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/1385323.html
http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/1385432.html
It’s clear from what happened that Fathausen is in Moscow answering questions about his incompetent handing of the Seraphim Stroheim affair. No one of any importance met him. His Nibs didn’t… Fr Vsevolod Chaplin didn’t… Metropolitan Yuvenaly Poyarkov didn’t… Archbishop Mark Golovkov didn’t… not even the Blunder showed up to greet him. The OCA is dead-ass broke, so, it’s obvious that the Centre sent him the money for this unannounced soirée.
Let’s talk turkey… such visits are usually announced far in advance, usually 90 days in advance, at least. Bishops just don’t flit off to the Centre on “unofficial visits”… that just isn’t done. In short, Fathausen is in Moscow to answer Big Daddy Kirill’s questions… and he’d best step lively, or he’ll find the Tomos lifted without as much as a “by your leave”.
There was no photo gallery on the website… no honour guard from the Russian forces at the airport… JP is being treated like a minor suppliant bishop, not a First Hierarch. Not good… not good at all. Things ARE getting curiouser and curiouser. It’s woodshed time for Paffhausen! He’s totally screwed up the Storheim affair… I’ll bet that Fr Vsevolod and Metropolitan Yuvenaly are gonna rake him over the coals in private… I’d PAY to see that.
Barbara-Marie DrezhloSaturday 15 January 2011
Albany NY
Editor’s Postscript:
A friend sent me the following:
Look, they’re still lying about his résumé:
“After his 1988 graduation from Saint Vladimir’s Seminary, Crestwood, NY, Metropolitan Jonah lived in Russia for one year, where he worked for Russkij Palomnik at the Patriarchate’s Publishing Department before entering the renowned Valaam Monastery“.
This is a lie. Russki Palomnik was an unofficial publication of the deposed sodomite cleric Gleb Podmoshensky of St Herman “Monastery” in Platina CA, it was NOT put out by the MP (everyone knows this, so, why lie?)… and JP was never an official member of the brotherhood at Valaam. It’s obvious from this that underlings who received copy from Wood did the web postings, and they posted them verbatim without checking them out. Boring, it’s not! DO pass me the jug and take a healthy snort yourself…
BMD
This vid also includes footage with Firdaus Kabirov, Vlad Chagin’s tough-as-nails teammate (let’s see… he’s a Tatar and a Honoured Master of Sport, too)…
Here’s the result of the USA’s aid to the mujahideen… a great thank you, wasn’t it?
The Soviet Union was the first to become involved in the geopolitical game that the West is now playing…
Thirty-one years ago, the Soviet Union sent its first contingent of troops into Afghanistan. This event has passed into history, so, we shouldn’t interpret it ideologically or use contemporary standards to judge it. In the West, and not only there, many clearly thought that the Soviet leadership’s decision to invade Afghanistan brought only negative consequences to the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. In fact, this step of the Soviet leadership, like many events in history, was complex and ambiguous. It didn’t have any purely negative effects, but there weren’t any completely positive outcomes stemming from it, either. Critics were mistaken in thinking that so-called Soviet totalitarianism was completely in the wrong, just as they were mistaken in believing that the so-called Western democracies were innocent and guiltless.
Of course, there’s no denying that the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan resulted in significant suffering, both for ordinary Afghans and for ordinary Soviet citizens. The war in Afghanistan imposed a heavy burden on the Soviet economy, overshadowed the domestic political scene, and the confrontation between the East and West blocs rose to a higher level. However, it’s also impossible to deny the fact that the Soviet presence in Afghanistan also had positive aspects. The Soviet Union, at great cost, carried out modernisation projects in Afghanistan, which laid the framework for the current Afghan economy. Everything that, somehow, still functions in Afghanistan had its genesis in projects initiated during the Soviet military presence. If the Soviets hadn’t done this, then, Afghanistan would have remained mired in the Middle Ages, and the situation would have been much worse than what we see today.
The fact remains that the Soviet presence helped open the minds of many Afghanis. A small cadre of educated Afghanis arose, not only amongst the leadership, but also in all the country’s ethnic groups. The Soviet Union conducted major educational efforts in Afghanistan; this wasn’t restricted only to those the Soviet Union needed to realise its ideological ambitions, such as government officials and military personnel. Rather, we must point up that the primary focus of the Soviet effort in Afghanistan was to establish a broad general curriculum, introducing modern standards in primary and secondary education, and founding a higher education system. Before then, Afghanistan lacked anything of the sort.
Responsible Soviet officials realised that modernisation in Afghanistan would be impossible without building up the people. You could invest millions in the construction of mines, energy facilities, and industrial plant, but without involving the Afghans in the process, without forming new skills amongst the people who would work in these facilities and services, nothing coherent would come of all the effort. Today, unfortunately, the educational system established during the Soviet presence, especially higher education, has degenerated.
In the West, pundits called the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan an attempt to push Soviet ideology, to increase the number of its satellite states. The Soviet Union was the first to become involved in the geopolitical game that the West is now playing. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t obscure the lessons that the Soviet presence in Afghanistan taught us. The main warning is that any attempt to modernise Afghanistan on an ideological foundation, whether the basis is communism or Western neoliberal “democracy”, is doomed to failure. Eventually, the Soviet Union had to withdraw from Afghanistan. Today, the Western coalition is coming to the same impasse that the Soviets did, and this applies not only to their military presence. Any attempt to rebuild Afghanistan according to the idiosyncratic moral vision of the Western Coalition lacks any future.
There is another important point related to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Critics of the Soviet action argue that, because of it, it led to the rise of radical Islamocism seen today. Such criticism is duplicitous. The level of Islamisation of Afghan society before the Soviet troops came, and after they withdrew, remained about the same. One has to realise that many of the enemies of the Soviet Union used Islamocist rhetoric to build up resistance to the Soviet military presence. They reworked Islamic ideas, reinterpreting the concept of jihad in their own way. These ideas of Islamic radicalism and jihadism weren’t native; they weren’t from the Afghan people. They came from offices in intelligence agencies in certain countries, hundreds, or even thousands, of kilometres from Afghanistan. These agencies introduced the Wahhabists from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, and Western states armed and equipped them for a proxy war against the Soviet Union. Amongst these groups was Al Qaeda. The West doesn’t quite deny that this happened, but they don’t like to talk about it, either. Recognition of the facts wouldn’t be pleasant for the members of the former and current Western élite. Moreover, it would lead Western societies to ask themselves a fair question… “What was our role in the emergence of those with whom we fight today?”
24 December 2010
Voice of Russia World Service
http://rus.ruvr.ru/2010/12/24/37701329.html
Editor’s Note:
Let’s keep this focused. The USA favoured groups that fought for Muslim theocratic despotism over those that wanted a secular national republic. The CIA funded bin Laden and brought him and his minions from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Later, in 1992, the USA pressured Russia to stop supporting the DRA, as the DRA was holding its own against the Islamocists with Russian aid. Ergo, the Islamocists took over the country… with the USA’s blessing. In short, if bin Laden attacked the USA in the late 90s… if his cabal planned and executed the 9/11 attack… the USA can’t complain! He was their creature… they created him… they armed him… they funded him. Today, the USA supports the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and the Republican Party smiles a drooling leer of approval when the Karzai junta persecutes local Christians… it’s good for business, and what’s good for business (and the oligarch’s bottom line) is good for the country.
I think that there’s something SERIOUSLY wrong with this picture.
BMD
THIS is what the GOP worships… Blind Greed. What identity does such have with Our Lord Christ? NONE, I’d say…
John Paul II Wojtyła (1920-2005), the Pope of Rome
“Being Pro-Life is ‘Paramount’ to the Republican Party Platform” is a quote from Reince Priebus, the new RNC Chairman, elected after the party ousted Michael Steele as its head in the wake of the failure of the GOP to win control of Congress with a veto-proof supermajority. Of course, the Republicans don’t want to admit that the extremism of most of the so-called “Tea Party” candidates lost them the election… indeed, they don’t want to admit that some of the TPers were downright barmy and ridiculous. Mr Priebus is a unashamed gun nut who owns five guns, a grasping and covetous liar who’s desperately trying to cover up his role in his law firm’s pursuit of “stimulus dollars”, and a soulless and dreary hypocrite who uses the term “pro-life” to designate “anti-abortion”. That is, Mr Priebus is your usual Republican charlatan… he wants to criminalise abortion, but he wants to rip up the social safety net, ergo, leaving poor women out in the cold. After all, we have to continue our subsidies to the rich via inane “tax cuts”… we can’t “subsidise immorality”. They’re sorts who peddle racism as an argument… “If you vote for healthcare reform, only those lazy niggers are going to benefit… You know why we have a deficit; it’s all the fault of those lazy welfare niggers”. Of course, the Republicans don’t state this openly… but I’ve heard it often… it’s common enough in all-white circles (is that the true reason for the ouster of Steele? Let’s be frank, the GOP is the party of choice for racists in this country).
It tells you volumes about the current GOP. It tells you why Frank Schaeffer, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, and C C Goldwater have abandoned the Republican Party… I find that I’m going that route myself. I look at what his His Holiness says in his statements on social justice… I look at what other legit Christian leaders have to say (do check out what John Paul II Wojtyła had to say on the topic of Neoliberalism)… and only one conclusion is possible. Neoliberalism is satanic in its money-hungry covetousness, its self-centred smugness, and its false and smirky religiosity (you see this throughout Sectarianism, to be frank).
Instead of going on ad infinitum, let’s see what John Paul Wojtyła, the Pope of Rome, had to say about the economy:
These reforms imply that society and the State will both assume responsibility, especially for protecting the worker from the nightmare of unemployment. Historically, this has happened in two converging ways: either through economic policies aimed at ensuring balanced growth and full employment, or through unemployment insurance and retraining programmes capable of ensuring a smooth transfer of workers from crisis sectors to those in expansion.
Furthermore, society and the State must ensure wage levels adequate for the maintenance of the worker and his family, including a certain amount for savings. This requires a continuous effort to improve workers’ training and capability so that their work will be more skilled and productive, as well as careful controls and adequate legislative measures to block shameful forms of exploitation, especially to the disadvantage of the most vulnerable workers, of immigrants and of those on the margins of society. The role of trade unions in negotiating minimum salaries and working conditions is decisive in this area.
Finally, “humane” working hours and adequate free-time need to be guaranteed, as well as the right to express one’s own personality at the work-place without suffering any affront to one’s conscience or personal dignity. This is the place to mention once more the role of trade unions, not only in negotiating contracts, but also as “places” where workers can express themselves. They serve the development of an authentic culture of work and help workers to share in a fully human way in the life of their place of employment.
The State must contribute to the achievement of these goals both directly and indirectly. Indirectly and according to the principle of subsidiarity, by creating favourable conditions for the free exercise of economic activity, which will lead to abundant opportunities for employment and sources of wealth. Directly and according to the principle of solidarity, by defending the weakest, by placing certain limits on the autonomy of the parties who determine working conditions, and by ensuring in every case the necessary minimum support for the unemployed worker.
The state must “place certain limits on the autonomy of the parities who determine working conditions”… we agree with that too. Ergo, the “degegulationist” stance of the Republican Party (and the Conservative (sic) Parties in the UK and Canada (that is, the current Conservative Party in Canada, not the historical Progressive Conservatives)) is against basic Christian principles, it goes against Christian communitarianism, and it rejects the idea that proper limits can be set on human behaviour by the state in economic relations. We must not only reject it… we must oppose those who try to bring such within us with the utmost vigour and tenacity.
The GOP is showing its true face… it’s rather ugly, isn’t it? Remember… “anti-abortion” ISN’T the same as “pro-life”… after all, Satan uses Holy Scripture and he can turn himself into an “angel of light”… don’t be fooled. If you read the quotes at the head of this post again, with care, you come to the realisation that the Republican Party is engaged in an effort to enshrine the basest motivations of man at the heart of its platform (do see Citizens United)… and, we, as Orthodox Christians, must fight such with every scrap of our being. God demands that of us…
Barbara-Marie DrezhloSaturday 15 January 2011
Albany NY
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A View from Moscow by Valentin Zorin… Unwelcome Lessons
Tags: A View from Moscow, cartoons, Central Intelligence Agency, editorial cartoons, George W. Bush, Julian Assange, New York Times, political commentary, politics, Robert Gates, United States, USA, Washington, WikiLeaks
Before you can presume to teach… you must practise what you preach… I think that’s quite beyond people like Mr Gates, let alone buffoons like Limbaugh and Palin…
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Robert Gates, the former head of the CIA, presumed to present the world lessons in democracy. Another name has entered into the ranks of the Solons of American democracy. Robert Gates, the present Secretary of Defence and the former head of such a bulwark of democracy as the Central Intelligence Agency, presumed to present the world lessons in democracy. In his view, he’s a great authority on the subject… after all, he established secret prisons so that CIA officers could torture detainees without judicial oversight. True, he has thus far avoided making public sermons or lessons on the subject, for that would put himself, and the democracy he’s touting into an awkward jam. For, much to his disappointment, his classified “secret” written instructions regarding other countries, including Russia, surfaced when the WikiLeaks site posted them on the Internet. At present, as he tried to teach lessons in democracy to others, the former chief of the US knights of cloak and dagger revealed lapses in his memory that are not acceptable in such a high-ranking government official. Before he joined the present administration, Mr Gates was a tireless foot soldier on George W Bush’s team, whose presidential legitimacy is under question by competent authorities.
George W Bush failed to poll the sufficient number of votes to win the election during the 2000 presidential campaign in the United States. Various calculations show that his Democratic Party opponent, Albert Gore, mustered several hundred thousand votes more. However, following a pause, clearly caused by confusion and obvious embarrassment amongst Washington’s top-echelon leaders, the Supreme Court took over the case, which decided by a margin of just one vote that the presidential mandate should go to Mr Bush. Today, the democracy zealots in Washington tend to forget this episode. Thus, the 43rd US President made it to the White House by the will of Justices of the Supreme Court, not because of the popular vote. However, the Supreme Court is just the apex of the US national judicial system, and its illegal decision, which contradicts the principles of democracy, exposes all the vices rife throughout the US judicial system.
All the preachers of American democracy extol the allegedly unrestricted freedom of the press in the US as a model that all others should follow. None other than the US Government Accountability Office, which found out that the Bush Administration used billions of dollars from the federal budget for policy propaganda in the mass media, questioned this paradigm. Recently, the Washington Post admitted in an article that its editor-in-chief, and his counterpart at New York Times, received a summons to come to the White House (when President Bush was present) and they received instructions not to publish negative information about the Administration’s performance. That this isn’t an outdated concern for the free press of “democratic” America was borne out by the recent arrest, on Washington’s demand, of WikiLeaks website founder Julian Assange, who washed America’s dirty linen in public without permission. There’s a lot more to say about the unattractive manifestations of American democracy. The self-assured and opinionated Washington missionaries yearn to teach lessons in true democracy to the world. However, they would certainly do better if they looked into their own political mirror.
15 December 2010
Voice of Russia World Service
http://rus.ruvr.ru/2010/12/15/36900038.html