Catholics in Belarus… the annual Pilgrimage of Our Lady of Budslav… they have freedom of religion… any questions?
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On Wednesday, The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) dismissed the allegations made by the Religious Freedom Report published by the US State Department about Belarus as outdated and failing to take into account the current situation in the country. Maria Vanshina, deputy head of the MID Information Department, said in an English-language statement, “As for the State Department’s report, it’s permeated with trite phrases and the usual abstract rubber stamps, which the authors of the report rewrite every year, without even taking the trouble of doing reality checks. For the Belarusian side, the report is of little interest, being an internal State Department document submitted to Congress”.
In its latest report on religious freedoms worldwide, published on Monday, the US State Department described Belarus as a country where “laws and policies restrict religious freedom”, despite the fact that this is enshrined in the constitution. The report claimed, “The law restricts the ability of religious organisations to provide religious education and to freely import and distribute religious literature”. Vanshina noted, “The Republic of Belarus, regardless of such reports, strictly adheres both to its international obligations on the protection of religious freedoms and to its domestic law. A clear demonstration of that is Belarus’s report on the implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination which reflects the real situation with the protection of religious rights and liberties and contains concrete measures taken by the Government of Belarus in this area”.
The annual Religious Freedom Report purports to detail the status of religious freedom in 195 countries throughout the world. The US State Department presents it to the US Congress under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.
22 May 2013
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/world/20130522/181292365/Belarus-Dismisses-US-Religious-Freedom-Report.html
Editor’s Note:
The US government has no warrant to publish such a document, as its authority and jurisdiction doesn’t extend beyond the US borders, full stop. Now, if another country were to publish a document giving the details of American-owned sweatshops throughout the world (one wonders if SVS and St T‘s own stocks in such enterprises… if so, for shame!), well, that would have the Americans (especially, the smug and smarmy Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostalist phonies) in high dudgeon. “How dare they! It’s all for their benefit! They voluntarily signed contracts!” I find it amusing that those who point fingers at others about “freedom” are vicious and greedy slave-drivers of the worst-possible sort, who wax rich in their McMansions on the sweated labour of Third World workers. They haven’t changed since the time of Dr Johnson, who observed, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” American Anglo-Saxons were soulless exploiters then… they’re soulless exploiters now. After all, their true motto isn’t “In God we trust”… it’s “pecunia non olet… money doesn’t stink”. I’m NOT the only person to have noticed that…
BMD
Voices from Russia 
Brezhnev Pips Lenin as Russia’s Favourite 20th Century Ruler
Tags: Boris Yeltsin, Iosif Stalin, Josef Stalin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, Levada Centre, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nicholas II of Russia, Nikolai II, Opinion poll, political commentary, politics, Public opinion, Russia, Russian, Russian history, Soviet, Soviet Union, Stalin, USSR, Vladimir Lenin
THIS is what the people want… any questions?
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In an opinion poll released on Wednesday, Russians viewed Leonid Brezhnev as the most positive of all Soviet and Russian leaders in the 20th century, but Vladimir Lenin and Iosif Stalin were close behind. 56 percent of respondents in the Levada Centre survey viewed Brezhnev (who ruled the USSR in 1964-82) positively. Often mocked in jokes for his increasingly-visible senility at the end of his life, people still respect Brezhnev for maintaining stability and increasing living standards among millions of ordinary Soviet citizens during his time in office as General Secretary of the Communist Party. 55 percent of respondents saw Lenin, (who led the Bolsheviks into power in 1917) positively. Stalin, whose almost-three-decade rule saw many of his fellow countrymen perish in GULag labour camps, was judged to have been a positive influence by 50 percent of respondents. Just 21 percent of respondents viewed Perestroika-era leader Mikhail Gorbachyov’s rule positively, whilst only 22 percent were positive about Boris Yeltsin, post-Soviet Russia’s first president. 48 percent of respondents saw Tsar Nikolai Aleksandrovich, deposed and executed by the Bolsheviks, as a positive influence. Levada carried out the poll on 19-22 April, with 1,600 respondents from all over Russia.
22 May 2013
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130522/181291682/Brezhnev-Pips-Lenin-as-Russias-Favorite-20th-Century-Ruler.html
Editor’s Note:
This confirms something that I’ve suspected for quite some time. Amongst ordinary folk, there’s much regard for both Tsarist and Communist rulers, as they see them as respectful of the common people. Neither Yeltsin nor Gorbachyov got positive reviews, as the people see them as bum-kissers of the pseudo-intellectual pro-Westerners who hold ordinary Russians in contempt and of greedy Free Market buccaneers who raped the working class. Let’s keep it simple… the people who voted for Lyonyo, voted for Koba, Ilyich, and Good Tsar Nikolai, too. They didn’t vote for Gorbachyov and Yeltsin. The people want a Red Tsar… not the Free Market… not the oligarchs… not the pro-Westerners… not the White Liberal Phonies of February (remember, had not Kerensky imprisoned the tsar, he might have survived… the righties are silent about that)… not the Nazi collaborators who fled to the West (and who sold themselves into the service of Western intel agencies against the Orthosphere). That pisses off the likes of Victor Potapov (which led to his vile, revolting, and hypocritical tantrum on the ROCOR official website… after all, he’s a well-known Langley operative). Will he leave the canonical Church if Russia continues to move leftward? Do stay tuned… this show ain’t over yet, kids…
BMD