27 January 2013. Ho Hum Department… OCA Official Website Does Incompetent Botch Job on Mollard Installation and So-Called “March for Life”

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Click here for oca.org’s “reportage” on the so-called March for Life. It’s done in an unprofessional and incompetent manner. Were there any other Orthodox clergy present besides the OCA members? The images did show a Coptic cleric, after all. Who was he? How many clergy were present? How many Orthodox archdioceses marched along with Mollard? How many marchers were in the group? Note well, most of the images were tightly-focused, to give the impression of a larger crowd. A local source told me that the crowd overall wasn’t as large as he expected… this occasion has been losing momentum over the years. He said, “It’s like a balloon with a slow leak… it’s just a little bit smaller every year”. It’s become entangled with the Republican Party… that keeps many away. Pro-Life isn’t merely opposition to abortion…

Click here for oca.org’s excuse of a post on Mollard’s installation. This didn’t report any news; it wasn’t journalism, it was cheerleading of the most sycophantic sort. Patriarchia.ru would’ve had the names of the bishops present at the Dixie Fry and what Local Churches they represented. Lyonyo had no names posted at all. Vlad Legoida wouldn’t have included the biographical data… there would’ve been a link to an online bio; it was wasteful non-reportage to fill up the page, that’s all. Furthermore, the images were of extremely-poor quality and there were too many of them posted, leading to a confusing and incoherent visual presentation. At most, there should’ve been twenty images, no more… that’s what an important event on patriarchia.ru gets. The piss-poor dark snaps reflected poorly on the OCA… it was hutsky-klutsky all the way. Yet, one could see that George Schaefer and Yustinian Ovchinnikov were there. The ROCOR sent a vicar bishop (not a ruling bishop)… the Centre sent it’s man in New York. Note well that the Blunder stayed away. By the way, there was no post on patriarchia.ru on this… just watch, it’ll be there tomorrow, posted by the Blunder’s greasy eunuchs in Bolshaya Ordynka. In the end, this was a botch from stem to stern… Vlad Legoida would’ve had a complete post up within hours of the event’s end. What a buncha maroons.

To cap off this sorry story, the Ukies had a sellout crowd of nearly 400 for their metropolitan’s installation dinner. The OCA installation dinner didn’t even get 150… and over half of them were freebies handed out to flesh out the crowd. Do note that no images of Mollard’s installation banquet were up on either oca.org or Facebook. This indicates APATHY of the most-serious sort. Not even the First Families wanted to come for this dinner (usually, they all flock to such shindigs… if for nothing else, to show their support of the new apparat). Furthermore, Eastern PA is just up the road a piece from the District, and the poor turnout means that many of his former parishioners didn’t want to come to this event, either. This doesn’t augur well for the OCA in general or for Tikhon Mollard in particular. He’s a smiling genial incompetent… he’ll keep the OCA charade going for at least another two years (whilst Lyonyo and Dahulich brawl in the background). Oh yes… do watch for the Storheim verdict in Canada… and Mollard’s reaction to it. That’ll be interesting, kids…

By the way… there’s still no news or buzz on Fatso’s reception into the ROCOR. The Centre’s completely silent… and that’s not good for Jimmy and Potapov, by the way. There’s an anti-American mood in Moscow right now, and the chances of a Far Right loon getting into the ROCOR with the Centre’s blessing doesn’t look good. If they were going to move, they’ve had over a month to do so… and the Monomuckos letter campaign won’t do a bit of good. This isn’t a popularity contest, after all (thank God)…

BMD

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Auschwitz… History to Remember… but Never Repeat

Catholic St Maximilian Kolbe, who died in the Auschwitz extermination camp… not all of its victims were Jews…

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On January 27, a Russian exhibition will reopen in the museum devoted to the history of World War II in the Polish city of Oświęcim, better known under the German variant of its name… Auschwitz. During that war, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, one of the most terrible Nazi concentration camps was in Auschwitz. In 1947, the Polish government turned the former camp into a museum, with the aim of it to be a constant reminder of the Nazi horrors, so that we wouldn’t repeat them. The organisers chose 27 January for the Russian exhibition’s reopening because the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz camp on 27 January 1945.

In particular, the Nazis intended this camp for the killing of nationalities that, according to incoherent Nazi “theory”, were “underdeveloped” peoples. More than 1.1 million people died in the Auschwitz camp, including about 900,000 Jews, at least 140,000 Poles, and about 23,000 Roma. Every day, trains brought thousands of people, including many old people and underage children, to this camp from more than 30 countries… Romania, France, Czechia, Slovakia, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, the Netherlands, the USSR, Poland itself, and others. The Nazis immediately killed the majority of new arrivals comers in the gas chambers. Witnesses said that, every day, the camp’s crematoriums disposed of about 8,000 corpses.

Those not immediately killed had to perform debilitating work. The daily ration consisted of 300 grammes of bread and a cup of watery soup. After several months spent in such conditions, people turned into living skeletons. Besides, medical experiments… if one could call sophisticated torture medical experiments… were performed in Auschwitz. One of the doctors (if could call sadists doctors), Josef Mengele, dubbed the “Angel of Death”, was especially notorious for his cruelty. When the Red Army liberated the camp, they found only 7,000 people alive there.

The organisers of the Russian part of the Auschwitz museum’s exposition don’t hide the fact that they want it to upset visitors. Hard as it may be, such horror would help people to realise one thing… we must never allow Nazism to rise again. Olga Sokolova, One of the Russian organisers, said, “The visitors should realise that they’re witnessing a hideous occurrence. Of course, only the part of the exposition devoted to the camp’s liberation by the Red Army should produce positive feelings”. There are eight expositions in the Auschwitz museum, devoted to this-or-that particular country, from whence the prisoners who suffered in the camp came from… Poland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, France, and Belgium. A part of the exposition is devoted to the Roma people. For the last five years, the Russian section remained closed. Officially, it was under renovation, but the real reason was a cooling of relations between Russia and Poland.

Victor Skryabin Deputy Director of the Moscow Museum of World War II and one of the organisers of the Auschwitz exhibition, pointed up, “Russia and Poland might have certain disagreements concerning politics, but I believe that these disagreements shouldn’t affect the two nations’ need to commemorate World War II’s victims. After all, many Soviet people, including about 15,000 Red Army men, died in the Auschwitz camp. One of the aims of our exposition is to show the criminal nature of Nazism. We also wish to emphasise that the Red Army liberated the camp, and, of course, to commemorate the dead”.

The camp in Auschwitz was the largest, but it wasn’t the only extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Europe. There were ten such camps, four of which were in Poland. In total, about the Nazis killed 3 million people in extermination camps.

25 January 2013

Maria Dunayeva

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_01_25/Auschwitz-history-to-be-remembered-but-never-repeated/

Editor’s Note:

Horrid as it was, the Holocaust wasn’t unique. Mankind has indulged in mass murder throughout history, especially, when others lived on land coveted by this-or-that group… two prominent examples being the Israelite ethnic cleansing of Old Israel (the Biblical version of events) and the American campaign against the Native population (justified by the racist doctrine of Manifest Destiny). I’m four-square against anti-Semitism, but I’m equally-against the white-washing of the historical record to fit a convenient mythos. Never forget this… ordinary human beings carried out the Holocaust. Ordinary humans could do it again… and DID… in the Rwandan Genocide and the Cambodian Genocide. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee…

One last thing… the agitation by some Jews against the Carmelite convent at Oświęcim was unjustified and hateful in the extreme. Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun, died there. St Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan monk, died there. They weren’t the only Catholic victims of this horrific place. In short, some Jews were upset that the Carmelite nuns were praying for the soul of Edith Stein… a convert from Judaism to Christianity. I hate religious bigotry of all sorts… I despise anti-Semitism and Jewish anti-Christianity equally. Thank God, only a small minority of Christians and Jews actually engage in such filth… but it should be a warning to all of us… the urge to evil exists in all groups. Never forget… just as there wasn’t ever a “pure” human group, there’s never been a totally-evil one. We should keep a watch over our hearts… Solzhenitsyn reminded us that there’s a bridgehead of evil in every soul… we forget that at our peril…

BMD

Getting Sick Not an Option for Many American Workers

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Like the protagonist of some cold medicine commercial, Robert said that he couldn’t afford to get sick and miss a shift at the upscale restaurant where he waits tables six nights a week in the American capital. Robert, 31, told RIA-Novosti this week, “It’s expensive to live in this city. You can’t just be missing days”. Robert, who asked that his last name not be published because his employer hasn’t authorised him to speak to the media about this job, actually has more access to paid sick leave than many Americans do. He works in Washington DC, which is one of just three American cities… along with one state, Connecticut… to guarantee paid sick leave for employees. An estimated 40 million American workers have no paid sick leave, which the US federal government defines as a “benefit” rather than a right.

A national debate over mandatory sick-pay grabbed headlines in recent weeks in the USA, which is in the grip of a flu outbreak that health authorities said has reached epidemic proportions. The USA is one of the few industrialised nations that don’t have a federal law mandating paid sick leave, a situation that critics say pressures ill employees to come to work out of fear of losing a pay-cheque .. or their jobs. They say that this results in decreased employee productivity and increased public exposure to infectious illnesses, particularly when workers like Robert and other food service employees… whose jobs involve face-to-face contact with the public… shrug off symptoms and clock in anyway.

According to a 2010 study at the University of Chicago, more than two-thirds of Americans reported going to work whilst ill. According to the study, employees without paid sick-leave are 18 percent more likely to show up at work sick and 10 percent more likely to send their sick children to school or day-care. New York City legislator Gale Brewer told WNYC radio in an interview earlier this month, “I’m sure right now as we speak kids are going to school sick. Their parents can’t take a day off”. Arguably, New York City is the current epicentre of the sick leave debate, with local lawmakers pushing for the nation’s financial capital to guarantee sick pay for workers. Brewer is backing a bill that would mandate that businesses with five employees or more must offer some sort of paid sick-leave; the legislation has received backing from a range of civic and religious groups, as well as celebrities like American feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem.

However, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said such that legislation would hurt business during already difficult times, a position that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed as well. New York Times columnist Michael Powell noted with irony that Bloomberg’s opposition to the bill is at odds with his reputation as a public-health activist… an image burnished by enacting public smoking bans and crackdowns on oversized sugary drinks. In October, Powell wrote, “Bloomberg worries a lot about our health; he’s banned smoking in bars and vat-size cups of soda, but suggest that a couple of women should be allowed to take off a day rather than cough bacteria into the chicken quesadillas, and his free-market spine stiffens”.

According to a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, the lack of paid sick-leave in the USA helped lead to an additional five million infections during the Swine Flu outbreak in 2009. This week, Michael Sinesky, who owns several bars and restaurants in New York City, told the AP that the bill would hurt his operations, particularly in the destructive wake left by Hurricane Sandy late last year, saying, “We’re at the point, right now, where we can’t afford additional social initiatives”. Lawmakers in several other American cities are pushing for mandatory paid sick-leave bills as well, including Portland OR and Philadelphia PA, whose mayor, Michael Nutter, vetoed a bill requiring sick pay in 2011. Joel Mathis, a columnist for Philadelphia Magazine’s website, argued this week that the city should pass paid sick leave legislation in order to protect customers as well as workers. Mathis wrote, “Want the flu with your fries? Some pertussis with your poutine? A cold with your cold beer? Because that’s what the current system is designed to provide”.

25 January 2013

Carl Schreck

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20130124/179003388/Getting-Sick-Not-an-Option-for-Many-US-Workers.html

Editor’s Note:

That’s why I went to work feeling poorly this past week… I lacked sick days as part of my compensation. Of course, according to the rightwing received-wisdom, I’m a “taker”… I deserve nothing but a swift boot in the arse for laziness according to Steve Forbes, Wet Willy Romney (have you seen how quickly the Repulicants dropped their erstwhile standard-bearer?), and James Paffhausen. Then again, Steve Forbes said on 12 October 2012, “Yes, [Romney] will win this election, despite all the claptrap to the contrary”… he believes in crackbrained foolishness such as the gold standard. Romney actually believed his own propaganda (what would one expect with a youthful nappy-wearing incompetent such as Priebus at the head of the RNC (he was white, though!)?)… and Paffhausen actually thinks that he’s a victim of the OCA Holy Synod and that he deserves “compensation”. Not very good for the “makers” of this world, eh? Shitbirds of a feather flock together… never forget that. Yes, taking care of sick people is “Pro-Life”… more so than waving a placard in a bootless “March for Life“. Think on that, if you will…

We need a “new” New Deal… the sooner, the better…

BMD