12 November 2011. The Pot Still Boils… “Occupy” Still Carries On… Despite Repression

Athens (Central Athens Peripheral Unit. Attica Periphery) GREECE

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Santiago de Chile (Santiago Province. Santiago Metropolitan Region) CHILE

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Bogotá  (Distrito Capital) COLOMBIA

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12 November 2011. A Point of Unity… All Saints in Spain… Our Lady in Brazil…

Catholics paint tombstones on All Saint’s Day. Casabermeja (Province of Málaga. Autonomous Community of Andalucía) SPAIN

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Catholic woman praying. Basílica do Santuário Nacional de Nossa Senhora do Aparecida (Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida). Aparecida (São Paulo State. Southeast Region) BRAZIL

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You CAN tell Christians apart from Evangelical Sectarians without a scorecard! Christians DO things and we venerate Holy Shrines and Objects (including our departed relatives). Evangelicals have NO sense of the “Holy”… they never have, they never will. It’s how you can tell that there’s nothing of God in their conventicles. Don’t hate them… but do oppose them whenever and wherever they arise. They’re not of Our Lord Christ and His Church, and that’s that.

BMD

12 November 2011. A Russian POV… American “Victory” in Pakistan. A Road near Shikarpur (Sindh Province) PAKISTAN

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Contrary to the glowing reports on Fox News, the war is going so poorly for the American forces in Afghanistan that they can’t secure their LOC in Pakistan. Insurgents in Pakistan attacked this tanker lorry on the road in Sindh Province. What’s more, the USA is wasting millions on “security contractors” that are undisciplined and can’t get the job done. It’s time to bring the troops home and end the wars in foreign parts. Let’s invest the money we’re wasting now on defence contractors on building up the American economy (oh, dear… does that mean that Cheney’s pals won’t get to buy McMansions? Horrors!). This photo from the Russian ‘web tells it all… the US can’t secure its rear… it’s time to cut our losses and leave. If the Afghans want to keep on fightin’… we can’t  stop an intramural Donnybrook. In any case, Afghanistan is so battered that it’ll take it a century to recover completely. Let’s not forget to thank the Godfather of the Afghan Wars… Zbigniew Brzeziński. He funded and supported Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda… all because he hated Russians and would do ANYTHING AT ALL to hurt them. Reflect on the fact that 9/11 was a DIRECT RESULT of American bungling and miscalculation. Had we never intervened in Afghanistan in the late ‘70s and 80s, the Twin Towers would be standing today. Think on that…

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Saturday 12 November 2011

Albany NY

Orthodox Spain

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The first MP parish church will arise in Madrid, the capital of Spain…

The city authorities finally gave official approval for the MP to build a church dedicated to the Nativity of Christ. It’ll be the only stone Cathedral-type MP church in all the Iberian Peninsula. The solemn consecration of the cornerstone shall occur in early December as a part of the formal closure of the Year of Russia in Spain. Fr Andrei Kordochkin, the rector of the future church, told VOR, “Orthodox believers in Madrid had wanted such a church for many years. Metropolitan Kirill Gundyaev of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the present Patriarch, proposed the idea of building this church almost ten years ago. When I arrived in Madrid, we held Orthodox services in a room that was almost non-suitable for the purpose, for it was a small space on the ground floor of a high-rise apartment building, which previously had been a greengrocer’s shop. We had to decide where to find more spacious quarters and we had to find a permanent site for our parish. So, when President Dmitri Medvedev visited Spain two years ago, then, Mayor Ruiz-Gallardón of Madrid promised to resolve the problem of allocating property for our Orthodox Church”.

“We signed a lease for a plot of ​​756 square metres in one of the most prestigious areas of the city for a term of 75 years in the middle of 2010. Pending regulatory approval, were actively pursued architectural studies, which attracted the best professionals in both Russia and Spain. Both Russian and Spanish architects worked together on the architectural design work. Our chief Russian architect was Aleksei Vorontsov, who’s quite famous in Moscow. Everybody knows that he designed the Russian Orthodox church in the Cuban capital of Havana, and an Orthodox church complex in Jordan. A Spanish architectural office carried out the technical details of the project. On the one hand, the church will look like a traditional Russian church building; on the other, we’ve tried to make it look trim and modern, in order to fit it into the Madrid landscape”.

The laying of the cornerstone and the beginning of construction of an Orthodox church in Madrid in 2011 is all the more symbolic since it’ll be the 250th anniversary of the founding of the first Orthodox parish in Spain. In 1761, the Russian envoy Nikolai Repnin founded a parish dedicated to St Maria Magdalene. Today, there are about ten Russian Orthodox parishes in Spain, but there’s only one small wooden church, a chapel in the town of Altea. In the absence of normal churches, Russian Orthodox believers have to use converted goods spaces, or they rent worship space from Catholics and Protestants, as well as from other Orthodox churches such as the Serbians, Romanians, and Greeks. Fr Andrei said, “However, the other Christian confessions usually grant our requests. Understanding and concessions build interfaith dialogue and interfaith relations. We all want good and neighbourly relations; we have very friendly relations with the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox communities of the other Local Churches, such as the Romanians and Greeks. We have very good relations with the Georgian Orthodox community. It was only recently that the Georgians founded their own parish in Madrid, until then, they worshipped with us. During the eight years that I was in Madrid, I can’t recall a single instance where someone held us up at a roadblock or put a spoke in our wheel. The Spaniards are very kind, friendly, and open people. For many of our parishioners, Spain’s their comfortable second home”.

Voluntary donations from believers will fund the building of the future Church of the Nativity of Christ. Already, there are sufficient funds to begin construction work. Not so long ago in Madrid, the parish registered a special foundation, which will deal with the material and spiritual affairs of the cathedral. Among the trustees and donors is Grand Princess Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, a distant relative on the paternal side of the last Russian Tsar Nikolai II and the putative head of the Russian Imperial House.

10 November 2011

Milena Faustova

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2011/11/10/60147442.html