All those not Radical Sectarians should fear a Republican victory… they wish to use the power of the state to ram their sectarian notions down our collective throats…
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A political convention is a boring affair for the average man. However, in the USA, especially, when it nominates a presidential candidate, a convention becomes similar to a reality show. The Republicans who gathered in Tampa FL proved this once again. The Republican National Convention named Mitt Romney its candidate for US President. His wife made the most emotional speech; her half-hour long speech raised a storm of applause, which ended when her husband went onto the stage and kissed her. One should mention that Romney’s nomination was only a formality. The main aim of the congress was endorsing the Republican candidate and disparaging his Democratic rival, current US President Barack Obama. Public opinion polls show that neither of the candidates holds a decisive advantage. The struggle is going to be tough, but the Republicans used a velvet glove for their first punch… the heartfelt speech of the US first-lady candidate. “This man will not let us down”, Ann Romney said, speaking against the background of old family photos. The audience gave her a standing ovation.
Mitt Romney is due to make his policy statement at the congress on Thursday. However, the main points of his election programme are already obvious. Its larger part is dedicated to a wide range of internal problems, such as the restoration of economic growth, fighting unemployment, dealing with the government deficit, the problem of abortion, and opposing homosexual marriages. Not much attention’s been paid to foreign policy; however, this part of the programme raises lively interest abroad. As for Russia, the Republicans have confirmed that they look upon Moscow as an opponent. Earlier, Romney called Russia the foremost geopolitical enemy of the USA. Now, this position is enshrined in his programme, even though without undiplomatic wording. The programme stated that the growing hegemony of China in Asia, Russia’s activist position, and the threat of cyber-espionage and terrorism are extremely dangerous. However, the Republican Party points up that the USA and Russia have common interests, such as fighting terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and developing trade.
Valery Korovin, the Director of the Centre for Political Expertise, explained a reason for such harsh rhetoric, saying, “It’s a fact… Russia and the US are geopolitical opponents. This logic is based on the confrontation of two kinds of civilisations, and the Republicans openly speak about it. The Democrats think the same, but use more roundabout expressions, and choose to use soft smart force. As for Romney, he’s only a presidential candidate, so he doesn’t care about beating around the bush and bluntly calls a spade a spade”. At the same time, Korovin doesn’t think that people should get carried away by forecasts and comparing the results of public opinion polls on Romney’s and Obama’s popularity. He emphasised that the US election campaign has little bearing upon real presidential election mechanisms. Party conventions are part and parcel of this process. This makes Obama’s sarcasm about the Republican convention understandable; he called it an amusing show.
29 August 2012
Andrei Ilyashenko
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_29/Republicans-choose-presidential-candidate-and-external-enemies/
Editor’s Note:
Both major American political parties are hostile to the weltanschauung of Orthodoxy. Full stop; that’s all that there’s to say. However, the Republican Party is MORE hostile to us… it hates our Church… it hates our People… it hates our Civilisation… however, it hates our Sobornost most of all. You see, the Republican Party of today is based in naked and unashamed GREED… in “individual rights”. Russia holds to a Communitarian code that’s held the Russian Narod together from the beginning.
Americans are full of hubris… they actually believe that they can overturn our Civilisation and Church and turn us into mindless animalistic nihilistic consumers just like they are. That’s the challenge facing us. Indeed, it sharpens for us what we are. We are NOT “Americans who profess Orthodoxy”, rather, we are “Orthodox who happen to live in America”. We have to face a harsh fact… contemporary America is based on an ethos that’s profoundly wicked and anti-Christian. In fact, the ones most sunk in the morass of the zeitgeist are the so-called “Religious Right”. What they profess bears no resemblance to the Christianity of the Holy Apostles, and we should say so, loudly.
There is MUCH more to Christianity than the mere illegalisation of abortion or a blind witch-hunt against “immorality and depravity”. We can follow Franklin Graham (who spits on his sincerely-believing father’s legacy) or we can follow HH (who said, “We respect all human choices, including those in human sexuality. We do reserve the right to disagree”). I follow HH, what about you?
Of the two political parties this year, the Republicans are the greater of two evils. No sincerely-believing Orthodox Christian should vote for them. God do save us from fire, flood, and the Objectivist views of the Grand Old Phonies… please, do.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
As John Robles Sees It… USA in Afghanistan: Who’s the “Savage?”
Tags: Afghan National Army, Afghan War (American), Afghanistan, John Robles, Koran, legal affairs, Musa Qala District, NATO, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, political commentary, politics, Taliban, United States, United States Armed Forces, USA
America’s “gift” to Afghanistan… reflect on this, Wafflin’ Willy wants to increase such… that’s EVIL…
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Another case of the American Forces desecrating remains ended with a slap on the wrist for some of the perpetrators, whilst others received no disciplinary action. On the same day, another military tribunal brushed off the burning of Korans, with those guilty also escaping serious punishment. Against a backdrop of increased Afghan resistance to NATO and the beheading of 17 partygoers by Islamists, the question as to who really are the “savages” in Afghanistan begs to be asked. Once again, as with almost every case involving egregious misconduct by American troops, committing what can only be characterised as war crimes, those involved received nothing more than the proverbial slap on the wrist, and such cases are in the hundreds, if not thousands. We don’t know the real figures, as most such events remain unknown and unreported.
This time, one could call the events in question benign by American standards. For some reason, probably to minimise backlash, both judgments came at the same time. One was a ruling on cases of soldiers urinating on Taliban corpses, and the other concerned soldiers burning the Koran. on Monday, reports indicated that in the case of the Marines urinating on Taliban corpses, some of them received unspecified administrative “discipline”, despite American claims that it was a “huge” embarrassment causing a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation, as well as condemnation and an apology from United States Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, and even US Secretary of State Clinton, who vowed that they’d find and punish the culprits. The other judgment also released on Monday, involving the burning of Korans by American troops, an event that caused widespread riots, multiple deaths, and calls from the Taliban and Islamists to kill foreign troops in Afghanistan and Americans in order to defend Islam’s Holy book. Despite the outrage and deaths caused by their actions, nothing “criminal” really occurred, according to the USA.
Like I said, these were benign events by American standards, after Abu Ghraib and similar events in Iraq, the mass murder of almost 20 civilians whilst they slept in their homes earlier this year by a “deranged” sergeant, cases of cutting off body parts as trophies (including the cutting off of fingers, noses, ears, and even the peeling off of faces), families being set on fire, denial of medical care to large numbers of civilians leading to their deaths, snipers posing with Nazi symbols, multiple cases of rape and sodomy, and massacre after massacre after massacre, for sure, Marines simply urinating on corpses seems almost comic. The Taliban aren’t very much better, however, they trail far behind compared to the overall creativity and level of atrocity of NATO’s finest. Their savagery is just as brutal as that committed by some of the NATO forces, but less widespread and frequent. The latest event attributed to the Taliban, but denied by them, and, quite possibly, carried out by “insurgents”, was the beheading of 15 men and 2 women for having a party with dancing and music, something they view as immoral and un-Islamic.
The Afghan authorities has launched an investigation with President Hamid Karzai saying,”…the attack shows that there are irresponsible members amongst the Taliban”. The beheading of the partygoers occurred in an area of Musa Qala District that’s almost totally under Taliban control. Governor Nematullah Khan of Musa Qala said, “They were having a music party and the Taliban came, killed them, and cut off their heads”. On the same day, to the south, ten Afghan soldiers were killed at a checkpoint and an Afghan soldier killed two NATO soldiers whilst they were on joint patrol, bringing the number of NATO victims of Afghan soldiers to 42 this year alone. Now, so-called “green-on-blue-killings” are a further sign of the utter failure of almost 12 years of “coalition” occupation. These are facts the West would rather hide, because, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, every move against the citizenry and every bomb dropped was done illegally. Both of these countries were attacked in illegal acts of military aggression for involvement in events they had nothing to do with, namely the events of 9/11, as both countries never threatened or even posed a threat to the USA, yet, they’ve paid the price and been illegally occupied, so it isn’t surprising that the people are fighting back.
Going back to the subject of slaps on the wrists for those committing atrocities, for me, the reason why they never pay the price for their illegal behaviour has been clear for a long time. How on earth could the American judicial system or the American military deem anything their own killing machine does to be illegal, if the whole war and occupation of Afghanistan is in-and-of-itself illegal to begin with? The truth is an extremely dangerous thing, especially, when it’s something that might end plans for world domination, and that’s what it’s all about, but it looks like they may be failing. In Afghanistan, a country decimated by close to 12 years of war, the truth’s hidden on a daily basis, and, as sites such as Wikileaks have found out (the hard way), reporting on the facts is something that the US Empire won’t allow.
The destruction and atrocities that the US unleashed on the Afghan people continue on a daily basis, and they’re something the US has attempted, time and time again, to hide. As they continue, so will the response from the Afghan side. In Afghanistan, the USA obfuscates, hides, and doctors the facts at every turn, so that even finding an accurate count of the number of civilian deaths in the country is almost impossible, with numbers ranging from about 10,000 to the millions. Yet, one thing is crystal clear… the USA has failed in Afghanistan, and there’s little likelihood that there’s a way out for it. One question that I feel truly begs to be answered is quite a simple one… who, in fact, are the real “savages” in Afghanistan?
John Robles
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_08_28/US-in-Afghanistan-who-s-the-savage/