Take a Look at Some Happy Talk from the Zacchaeus Wood Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment…

“There’s nothing to see or tell… we say so! Our commission says so, too”. All right… tell that to the judge! Court’s in session!

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Read this. They’re all Renovationists… save for Mr Patico, whom I’m sure was bamboozled into this… his daughter was Kristi Koumentakos, who had her privacy violated by Ray Velencia, a priest in the OCA (a scoundrel who was in good odour with the SVS/Syosset Mafia). Mr Forrest is a knee-jerk pacifist, Vassa Larina is a defender of Uniatism (her faculty advisor is Bob Taft, and I’m told that he’s paying for her studies; if true, it deepens her guilt), and Alex Patico is an innocent bystander (as I said, his daughter was savaged by an OCA priest). Except for Mr Patico, they’re all Renovationists. When you understand that Zacchaeus Wood (the head of the OCA Representation in Moscow) runs the English side of Pravmir and Pravoslavie, the “slant” of the article is obvious. Wood is trying to hide the mess from the Koumentakos scandal and the current imbroglio in Canada (to use Mr Patico in this is unconscionable).

The Church in this country is dysfunctional and in need of drastic repair. For instance, the converts are creaming their jeans over the OCA’s so-called commission to investigate the Storheim affair. Earth to konvertsy… this bootless little board wasn’t set up until a criminal investigation into the matter began in Winnipeg. To speak bluntly, Fathausen had the chance over a year ago to set up such a commission, but he refused, he told someone he was conducting an investigation per OCA guidelines. I have documentary proof of this… I’d willingly share it with the magistrate (but I’m sure that they have it already (Your Worship, trust me, you do))… you konvertsy and autocephalist fanatics can suck wind. I have no obligation or duty to share it with you. I’m willing to “put it on the line”… but not to a bunch of yahoo HOOMies and puking newbies.

In short, JP had the chance to investigate this in-house a year ago, but he refused… ergo, the proceeding in the courts. Therefore, some “window-dressing” is needed to distract the unwashed hoi polloi. That’s what this article is. Don’t be fooled. We have a LOT of work to do… it can’t start until the tottering edifice of the OCA falls. Fathausen doesn’t want you to peek behind the curtain… I’m certain that something’s there, and we must dig it out, by whatever means we need to use.

I truly wish that things were as “sweetness and light” as Mr Wood presents… but that isn’t the case, so we all have a dirty job to do. I’m for beginning the task, what about you?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Tuesday 2 November 2010

Albany NY

 

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A Moment of Truth for Obama

Today is the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, and the mid-term Congressional and Gubernatorial elections in the USA taking place now are bound to shake  the foundations of the ruling Democratic Party and question the prospects of President Obama’s re-election in 2012. As predicted by the most recent Reuters-Ipsos poll, Republicans will gain about 231 out of the 435 seats in the lower chamber of the US Congress, the House of Representatives. According to the same poll, they are unlikely to win a majority in the Senate, but are destined to reduce today’s majority of the Democrats (which stands at 57 vs. 41 with two independents leaning to the Democrats) to 52 vs. 48, or 53 vs. 47.

There is nothing new in the fact that the ruling party loses support in the mid-term elections. It is enough to remember 1994 when the Democrats, for the first time in about 50 years lost their majority in both chambers of the Congress. Most commentators at that time were sure that the loss meant inevitable defeat for then-President Bill Clinton in 1996. Nothing of the kind happened and Bill Clinton, despite all the controversies surrounding his image, was safely re-elected. Now, commentators are speculating whether the Democratic defeat at the mid-term elections is going to mean that Barack Obama will become a one-term President like Jimmy Carter. In today’s American political lexicon, “Jimmy Carter” is virtually a synonym for “flop”. It is very much doubtful that Barack Obama would like to add his name to this list. However, most commentators point out that the present-day situation is completely different from that of 1994. At that time, dissatisfaction of Americans with the liberal policies of the establishment had little to do with President Clinton personally. Today, all the flops in domestic politics, be it Medicare, taxes, employment, etc, are directly associated with the name of the current President.

Foreign policy issues do not seem to bother American voters as much as domestic ones. Nevertheless, anyway, the forthcoming defeat of the Democratic administration is sure to alter US foreign policy as well. In the times of George W Bush, Russian-American relations hit their lowest level in decades. When the Democratic administration took hold of the White House, it showed its desire to press the “Reset” button in the US-Russian relationship. It remains questionable whether the intention was genuine, or whether it was purely aimed at changing the image of the US foreign policy. Anyway, while Democrats controlled both the executive and the legislative branches, the task of improving relations with Russia seemed to be more than attainable. Now, the situation is going to change. Republicans are sure to get back the control over the House of Representatives and get a much louder voice and influence in the Senate. Meanwhile, there are some very important US-Russian treaties still waiting for ratification. They include the new START treaty and an earlier one on cooperation in the sphere of “peaceful atom” signed in 2007 and postponed after the events in the South Caucasus in 2008. Pavel Podlesny, the head of the Centre for Russian-American relations at the Institute of US and Canadian Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences), said in a recent interview, “If the Republicans win the elections, that might mean that the treaty will be further postponed, which may mean a collapse of billions-worth agreements”. On the other hand, director of Russian and Eurasian programs at the Institute of National Strategy, Washington, Nikolai Zlobin, was more optimistic. He said, “A defeat of the ruling party during the mid-term elections is only natural. It might be more difficult for the administration to pursue its foreign policy when Republicans control the House of Representatives. However, at base, the problem isn’t the foreign policy issues or the treaties as such, but the interests of this or that constituency. Therefore, the new representatives will look closer at one issue… how much they can bargain for the sake of their own electorate”.

2 November 2010

Boris Volkhonsky

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/11/02/31207212.html