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This video is only a bit over three minutes in length… even if you don’t know Russian or Ukrainian, watch it for the visuals. Pyotr Simenenko, the head of the KPU, is seen receiving an award from a bishop of the UOC/MP. There’s been much lying on the part of extremist rightwingers in the Church here in the diaspora… both Vlasovtsy (remember the CIA-run KONR?) and konvertsy. The Church in the various Orthosphere homelands stands for Social Democracy and Social Justice… Archbishop Ieronymos Liapis of Athens and all Greece, the First Hierarch of the Local Church of Greece said this:
Homelessness and even hunger… phenomena seen during (World War Two)… have reached nightmare proportions. Patience amongst Greeks is running out, giving way to a sense of anger, and we can’t ignore the danger of a social explosion any longer. The medicine we’re taking has proven fatal for the nation. More painful and more unjust measures are now set to follow along the same hopeless course.
His Holiness said:
The modern economy is built largely on fraud; it creates money out of thin air. Money’s a token of human labour and of our God-given resources, such as coal, ore, and oil, along with our intelligence, physical labour, culture, and spirituality. However, every company produces its own money in the form of shares, which is passed onto the secondary market, becoming not just simple securities; they’re traded and used as items of speculation. If these mere phantasms earn billions, not even backed by labour or real capital, then, how can such an economy exist? Who’s going to pay for all of this? Why, the simple worker is going to, who produces the value behind all of this bubble. We need a fair economic system where money and capital are equivalent and are the expression of real work. …
An economic system built only on the striving for profit, on indifference to the fate of people, on disregard for moral norms, is deprived of stability, and can collapse at any moment, burying the fate of people under its rubble. …
If society embarks on the road of such recklessness consumption, our earth will go under. It’s already been proven that if the average level of consumption of the whole world matches that of the United States… our basic resources will run out in 40 to 50 years. God didn’t give us these resources to live like this. In this sense, the crisis may teach us much… such as restraint and rational use of our financial opportunities. The most important thing is to learn Christian asceticism. This doesn’t mean life in a cave or permanent fasting. It’s the ability to regulate one’s consumption and the condition of one’s heart, and win victory over one’s passions and instincts. It’s important that the rich and the poor alike possess these qualities. The trinkets of modern life make one giddy, and inebriate the human consciousness. People believe in advertisement, fashion, stereotypes, and this virtual world as if it were reality.
Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communists in Russia, said:
We, the members of the Russian Communist Party, like all the honest people in our country, which are an absolute majority in Russia, marshal our forces so that our beloved homeland can pass through our current difficulties with decent dignity. Let the great values and aspirations of labour, justice, equality, brotherhood, and truth, things that are bedrock to the timeless Christian faith and the communist ideal alike, triumph in our lives. I greet all the clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church, indeed, all Orthodox Christians, in the light of the Risen Christ, I wish you spiritual vigour and physical strength. I believe that we can revive and raise up all the Russias if we act as one!
I shall NOT flinch… the statements of our hierarchs in the Orthosphere homelands show us that people like James Kushiner (and all the other “Touchstonistas”), Jonas Paffhausen, and all the other prancing rightwingers in diaspora Orthodoxy who attack the political Left with specious and self-serving arguments to be loud braying frauds and Orthophonies (what the Apostle called “loud clanging cymbals”). Our Church does NOT support the “Me First” policies of the Republican Party… our Church does NOT support “trickle-upon” crockonomics. Most emphatically, our Church does NOT support the lies being bandied about by the Right about single-payer healthcare.
Look at this video. I’ve seen a great deal of evidence, audio, visual, written, and personal, that indicate that our Church stands for SOCIAL JUSTICE… not greed and self-service. Don’t settle for shop-worn lies. After all, Our Lord Christ wasn’t crucified for sucking up to the powers-that-be, was He?
Barbara-Marie Drezhlo
Saturday 11 February 2012
Albany NY
