12 May 2013. A Word on Certain Loud Republican Circles Amongst Us

Birds of a feather flock together… and they’re GOOD birds, not shitbirds.

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I say the following… so, don’t instigate a witch-hunt of those who hate the immoral and pernicious pabulum dispensed by the Republican Party. It’s time for Christ’s Church to disassociate itself publicly from the American Religious Right, the US Republican Party, and the so-called Pro-Life Movement (one can oppose abortion, yet, oppose this rightwing construct). After all, HH is/was friends with Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz, Gennady Zyuganov, Pyotr Simonenko, and Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. Birds of a feather flock together! HH doesn’t associate with godless laissez-faire liberals such as Wet Willy Romney, Paul Ryan, the American Enterprise Institute, or Mikhail Prokhorov… he doesn’t hang around braying libertarian shitbirds.

The MP is well-aware of the vitriolic Whites (“nobility”) that dominate some parts of the ROCOR. Such people got the boot in Russia, but their Western sugar daddies protect them here in the diaspora (yet, such sorts caterwaul about their “traditional” stance and love of Russia). The MP is “fed up” (as one put it) with the boorish anti-Soviet rhetoric found in certain ROCOR circles. Of course, it respects valid criticism, but the slurs, defamation, and hatred deployed by well-known parties isn’t welcome, needed, or truthful (especially, as some of the loudest Whites are on the US government payroll). They’re tired of the Whites strutting about and bad-mouthing the USSR. After all, the USSR WAS Russia.

At present, loud Republicans have appointed themselves “commissars” of opinion in our Church. It’s time to oppose them! They’re not telling the truth. Christ’s Church doesn’t stand for raping the working folk to benefit the Affluent Effluent, and that’s that. HH believes that the “Free Market” is a fraud, and has said so explicitly. That tells you much about the ROCOR loudmouths in the District, doesn’t it? Do note that the Centre won’t take in James Paffhausen… by the way, it hasn’t been for the lack of trying on the part of the Republican faction in the ROCOR. Sanity still reigns at the Centre. We should get with the programme… but shall we? Time will tell us…

BMD

Russia and the USA Want Talks Between Syrian Régime and Opposition

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On Tuesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Russia and the USA would set up an international conference on Syria by the end of this month. He’s optimistic that it’d involve both the Syrian government and opposition forces. At a meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, Kerry said that the conference would aim at facilitating a solution to the Syrian crisis through political dialogue. Lavrov added that the Syrian government assured Russia that it’s ready to participate in the conference, saying, “But, of course, so far, these are just words that have yet to be transformed into actions”. He went to say that the Syrian opposition hasn’t commented on the proposal. So far, opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have refused to sit down for talks with the régime in the past, saying that Assad’s removal is a non-negotiable issue. Lavrov pointed up that the conference would be a follow-up to last year’s international meeting in Genève that drafted a peace roadmap for Syria.

The communiqué passed in Genève by the UN Action Group on Syria, which includes Syria’s neighbours and the permanent members of the UN Security Council, proposed to start with the creation of a transitional government drawn both from the opposition and Assad’s administration. Both Kerry and Lavrov stressed that Russia and the USA support the Genève roadmap, seeing political dialogue as the only solution for Syria. Kerry said that the alternative is increasing violence, a humanitarian crisis, and the country’s disintegration.

Moscow and Washington have clashed over Syria in the past; the USA put the responsibility for the civil war on Assad’s régime, whilst Russia insisted that the opposition should share the blame for the conflict. Russia blocked several UN Security Council resolutions on Syria, saying that they were biased in favour of the opposition. The USA supported the Syrian opposition, providing the motley coalition of forces (which includes many radical Islamists) with non-lethal military equipment. Recently, a bill filed with the US Senate proposed the supply of weapons to the Syrian insurgents. Kerry said the bill’s fate depended on the American inquiry in progress into reports that the rebels used chemical weapons, but added the matter may become a moot point if the government and the opposition begin dialogue. More than 70,000 have died in the two-year-long present conflict in Syria, according to the latest UN estimates.

8 May 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20130508/181018883/Russia-US-Want-Talks-Between-Syrian-Govt-Opposition.html

Editor’s Note:

Let’s not put too fine a face on this. The USA has woken up to the fact that Islamist radicals would benefit from the toppling of Assad. Besides that, Russia and China are adamant… NO MORE BOMBS! To put the kybosh on the idea of “intervention”, it’s unaffordable (there ain’t nuttin’ in Motha Hubbard’s cupboard, kids… Bush wasted it all on the adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan) and it’d destabilise the entire region (the Gulf States are most jittery on that score, and they’re American allies). Look carefully at:

Recently, a bill filed with the US Senate proposed the supply of weapons to the Syrian insurgents. Kerry said the bill’s fate depended on the American inquiry in progress into reports that the rebels used chemical weapons, but added the matter may become a moot point if the government and the opposition begin dialogue.

That is, Kerry’s given the US government a face-saving fig-leaf. The opposition will refuse to sit down with Assad… then, the USA will piously (and hypocritically) withdraw its former offer of arms. “They won’t sit down for peace talks… they’re terrorists intent on mayhem”. Let’s not be coy, the Boston bombing incident makes it politically impossible for any American régime to cooperate with any group that even looks like it might have Islamic militants within it. Any road, most of Obama’s rhetoric on Syria was election-year hogwash, not meant to be taken seriously by mature adults. Reflect on this… Wet Willy would’ve gotten the USA involved in a very sticky wicket just to placate the Religious Right troglodytes in the GOP. God IS in His Heaven… the Old Master does it again (just like when he defused the claptrap over Iran)… hey, anybody who still chain-smokes, backs Spartak, plays the guitar, goes white-water rafting, and cusses when he wants to can’t be all bad.

BMD

A Reflective Romney Emerges from Seclusion, Rips Obama

This is why Wet Willy lost… any questions? He refused to condemn the racism in the Republican Party (especially amongst white Southerners)… he paid the price. God sees and judges, doesn’t He?

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Four months after his bitter election defeat, a reflective Mitt Romney said it “kills” him not to be president and admitted that he made mistakes in his losing White House campaign… particularly, his failure to win over minority voters. In his first television interview since November’s loss to US President Barack Obama, Romney levelled a fresh blast of criticism at Obama for failing to lead and putting politics ahead of results in the confrontation with congressional Republicans over the budget and spending cuts. Romney said in an interview on Fox News Sunday, “It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done. Obama’s still campaigning rather than bringing people together to craft a deal. I don’t see that kind of leadership happening right now. The hardest thing about losing is watching this critical moment, this golden moment slip away with politics”.

Romney’s interview was the first step in a slow public re-entry for the former Massachusetts governor, who’s been largely secluded at his southern California home with his wife Ann since the November loss. In two weeks, Romney will make his first public speech since the election, to a conference of conservative activists in Washington DC (shall JP and Potapov and their drooling konvertsy pals going to be there? Perspirin’ minds wanna know: editor). In the Fox interview, taped last week and aired on Sunday, Romney mostly avoided questions about the heavy criticism he has received from his fellow Republicans for running a lacklustre and gaffe-prone campaign. He said, “I don’t spend my life looking back”, adding he wouldn’t run again, but he’d still be active in public life. He said that he should’ve done a better job in appealing to minority voters including blacks and Hispanics, calling his failure “a real mistake”. Romney, who called for “self-deportation” of illegal immigrants during the Republican primaries, lost the vote of more than 70 percent of Hispanics to Obama. Most of the illegal immigrants in the USA are Hispanics.

4 March 2013

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_03_04/A-reflective-Romney-emerges-from-seclusion-rips-Obama/

Editor’s Note:

Note well that Willy doesn’t mention his cowardice in the Vietnam War… how he got his gazillionaire daddy to buy him a phony clergy deferment so that he wouldn’t have to serve in the forces. All of the Republipukes holler about their patriotism. If that’s so, I’d ask them, “Why did you vote for a shameless draft-dodger (Romney) and why do you take credence in two others (Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly)?” Yes… why do they lionise unpatriotic greedy SOBs who’ve done nothing but rip off this country? That’s what this perspirin’ patriotic leftist wants to know… and I’m NOT alone in wanting that. Russia put Khodorkovsky in jail for attempting to sneak money abroad to avoid taxation… bully for VVP! That’s what we need to do with Romney… he boasted about his millions in “tax haven” money, didn’t he? Tells you volumes about the Republiphonies and their duped supporters, doesn’t it? They LOVE a man who boasts of illegality… fancy that. I think that I’m going to hurl to clear my system of rot…

BMD

21 January 2013. Oppose the Anti-Lifers Who Pose as “Pro-Lifers”… It’s What God DEMANDS of You

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The so-called “March for Life” is coming up. The usual cast of suspects is making the usual Sturm und Drang concerning it. At one time, before I wised up, I supported the Pro-Life Movement. Then, I looked beneath the surface, and what I saw appalled and repelled me. The same pols who supported so-called “Pro-Life” measures were also for:

• perpetual warfare in foreign parts
• the gutting of the social safety net to fund corruption-riddled defence contracts
• opposition to single-payer healthcare to benefit their corporate paymasters
• derisory tax rates upon their wealthy contributors
• the promiscuous use of the death penalty
• the increasing role of the “security state”
• using prison as a “solution” to the so-called “drug problem”
• shitcanning all labour and environmental regulations in favour of libertarian “economic freedom”
• the extending of personal and human rights to corporations

Whew… and that’s NOT exhaustive! In short, they OPPOSED what the late John Cardinal O’Connor rightfully called “the seamless garment”. There’s a reason why Timothy Cardinal Dolan didn’t come out in favour of Wet Willy in the late presidential election… Willy was AGAINST the “seamless garment”, and Dolan couldn’t support him without ripping up Catholic social teaching.

We have loud sorts amongst us. Follow the money… Potapov is (or was) a mid-level US government flunky (a propagandist targeting the Orthosphere, no less!)… Freddie M-G is (or was) an apparatchik at NPR… Dreher and Mattingly are rightwing stink-tankers… Webster is a stink-tanker and a chaplain in the US Army Reserve. When you add in that Lyonyo’s a member of the CFR (Anne Schmemann works in a CFR office that issues mendacious and self-serving apologias for American aggression abroad) and that Serge Schmemann and Sophia Kishkovsky are part of the New York Times Pravda-machine (the jewel in the crown of the American Corporate Media), well, what does that tell you? They’ve all sold out to the godless powers-that-be for a comfortable life and above-average incomes. You can follow Christianity or you can follow Sergianism. It’s interesting… the ones who loudly accused the MP hierarchy of “Sergianism” during the Sov era now stand exposed as Sergianist cheerleaders for Free Market buccaneering and bloodsucking. Fancy that… what they criticised, they now espouse. God DOES have a sense of justice, doesn’t He? Do you want to honour Christ, or, do you want to worship Mammon (the Almighty Dollar)?

Choose well… your eternal destiny does rest upon it…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Monday 21 January 2013

Albany NY 

Internet Revolution in Russia

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Probably, the diversity of political life that we’ve all witnessed in the outgoing year overshadowed an internet revolution that took place in Russia. A survey conducted by TNS Global says that the number of internet users in Russia has reached 70 million (or 50 percent of the population). In 2011, Russia left Germany and France behind in that respect, a poll by ComScore shows. Recently, Google unveiled the results of a survey showing that Russian students spend about 4 hours a day browsing the web, longer than other students worldwide do.

At present, it’s obvious that the internet’s more popular than television is. In April, Yandex, Russia’s largest browser, reported 19 million visitors a day, whilst Первий Канал (Pervy Kanal: Channel One) had an audience of nearly 18 million. “This is a real revolution for the Russian media, Damir Khalilov, who runs the GreenPR marketing agency, said, “The internet, and, in particular, social networking sites enjoy a wider audience. Advertisement is going online. It means that the internet has played a far more important role in shaping public opinion. The intensity of the so-called PR wars on the internet increased this year”.

This has also been a breakthrough year for Russia in terms of the use of internet in political life. Web cameras were in all polling stations across Russia during the 4 March presidential election, allowing every internet user to watch the election process at home. The initiative to install web cameras brought the internet to remote districts of Russia. It took Rostelecom 79 days to install new routes of internet connection. The mere fact that most Russian internet companies have tried to access foreign markets (and Yandex has already reached Turkey) speaks for itself.

In October, Mark Zuckerberg, one of the co-founders of the social networking site Facebook, visited Moscow to attend a competition for application programmers titled Facebook World Hacker Cup. By the way, the 2012 winner comes from Russia. Some experts believe that Mr Zuckerberg came to Moscow to lure away the country’s best programmers, whilst others say that he was interested in exploring the potential of the Russian internet market. German Klimenko commented, “I think that Zuckerberg’s no longer responsible for Facebook`s headhunting. A strong PR campaign was held to attract Russian users to Facebook and make them spend less time on Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. Time will show whether this campaign was totally successful”.

Of course, there’s still much room for improvement as far as the development of the internet in Russia is concerned. However, progress is obvious. Moreover, what’s also important here is that internet revolutions usually do more good than harm.

7 January 2013

Arkady Beinenson

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_01_07/2012-Recap-Internet-revolution-brought-to-Russia/

Editor’s Note:

Willard Romney lost the 2012 US presidential election because the Republican Party is stuck in the 1980s. Republicans don’t want to face the fact that the internet revolution wiped out television as a potent medium. I rarely, if ever, watch the boob tube… and I’m not alone. Barack Obama used the internet much more skilfully than the Republicans did. The Republicans’ love of money blinded them. To put it bluntly, they thought that they could buy the election. Here’s the problem… money doesn’t work the same way in the internet as it does on over-the-air broadcasting (both TV and radio)… interestingly enough, cable has WEAKENED broadcast’s punch, not strengthened it (by shattering the market into niches instead of megablocs).

Because of this weakness, the only two demographics that Wet Willy won were White Evangelicals (both male and female) and White Males in general (White Females rejected Willy, although Willy won White Evangelical Females… there’s a story in that thar hill, kids). Black, Hispanic, female, non-Anglo White, and leftist blooggers stepped up and fought the Koch/Rove media machine to a standstill. The word spread instantly throughout the web, and Willy found that every blunder he made was broadcast across the country in nanoseconds. Barack Obama isn’t a white knight on a charger, but he’s preferable to the alternative… and he’s more hip to the modern world and its advances, especially, the “proletarianisation” of the media caused by the internet.

This is also true in Orthodox media. Both oca.org and the ROCOR website are horrid, unresponsive, and beastly. On the other hand, patriarchia.ru is one of the most crack internet operations out there. They post the news as it happens, even on Christmas and Easter. When HH visited Maternity Home nr 3 after Christmas services, the images were up that very day, and there was no excuse given, “It was Christmas, and the staff was off”. Lyonyo, Jillions, Lil’ Mizz Ginny, Victor Potapov, Rod Dreher, and the ROCOR site webmaster all deserve to be taken out to the woodshed for a Cossack horsewhipping. Their laziness, lack of attention to detail, and downright-weaselly posts are obvious even to the slow learners.

The internet is revolutionising more things than just social networks and politics… just ask James Paffhausen and Herman Swaiko. Think on that, kids…

BMD

President Putin Tops List of Most Powerful People in the World

Putin: It’s a Really Big Shoe

Sergei Yolkin

2012

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Those of us “of a certain age” remember the old Ed Sullivan Show, with Ed’s signature line, “It’s a really big show”. In his idiosyncratic accent, it came out as “It’s a really big shoe”, and all the caricaturists, comedians, and satirists of the time had great fun with it. Putin‘s “a really big shoe”, and, on top of all that, this caricature refers to Nikita Khrushchyov, the last effective Soviet leader who wielded actual power. Remember Khrushchyov banging his shoe at the UN? It’s also redolent of TR‘s “Speak softly and carry a big stick“. It’s another multilayered Yolkin visual pun… with no words, yet!

BMD

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An article in a leading American magazine, Foreign Policy, named President Vladimir Putin as the most powerful person in the world, with the top spot left empty. The author, Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group, explained why no one was ranked first, as “in a G-Zero world, everyone’s waiting for someone else to shoulder responsibility for the world’s toughest and most dangerous challenges”. He based the ranking on “a quick, informal survey around Eurasia Group on power and global politics”. Bremmer wrote, “The leaders you’ll see named further down this list are preoccupied with local and regional problems and don’t have the interest and leverage needed to take on a growing list of transnational problems”.

After the empty top spot, Putin came in second. Foreign Policy posted, “In Russia‘s personalised system, this is still the person who counts. He isn’t as popular as he used to be, and his country has no Soviet-scale clout or influence, but no one on the planet has consolidated more domestic and regional power than Putin”. US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, ranked third, following the Russian president, German Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel is fourth, and US President Barack Obama was in fifth place. In the next five places were European Central Bank head Mario Draghi (6), Chinese Communist Party Secretary General Xi Jinping (7), Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (8), International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde (also 8), and Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abd al-Aziz (10). This article was widely reported in the Russian media as saying that the Foreign Policy ranking names Putin as “the most influential person in the world”, although the article itself makes no such claim.

4 January 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/politics/20130104/178575064/Foreign_Policy_Names_Putin_Worlds_2nd.html

Editor’s Note:

If a person holds the top spot in a listing of world leaders, there’s no doubt that he’s “the most influential person in the world”. Do you want proof? The USA hasn’t intervened in Syria nor has it bombed Iran… as Russia has given both countries tacit guarantees. Putin’s even standing up to the oligarchs by scrapping the flat tax and introducing luxury taxes… as the USA refuses to. Yes, the greedsters can be smashed down… if one uses the police power and taxing power of the state. Russia under Putin is doing so… the USA is refusing to. Trust me, if the Koch brothers were in the slam for trying to buy the American election, the rest of the bourgeois cowards would fall into line, and rather smartly too. The Koch brothers deserve what Khodorkovsky got… and so does Willard Romney. All of the tax haven gazillionaires have to be brought to heel… and we can do it. However, shall we? That remains to be seen…

BMD