We Should Follow Our TRUE Leaders…

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Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of internet “Sturm und Drang” from relatively unformed sorts. One of the worst was when two well-known konvertsy ganged up on Frank Schaeffer. Mr Schaeffer stated the classic Church teaching on Symphonia, which most konvertsy disregard (and hate). The Church views the state in very positive terms… it doesn’t share the sectarian hatred of government one little bit (note well that the konvertsy NEVER gave up that particular heresy)! Of course, all the usual suspects pilloried Mr Schaeffer (I got my share for sticking up for him). My belief is that he comes in for especial vitriol because he’s a convert, but he doesn’t toe the “konvertsy line”.

Another fave target of the toddlers is Lazar Puhalo. Having met the man, I can say that whatever else is true, he’s genuine, and he gives a shit. That goes a long way in my book. Everyone knows that the konvertsy have a sick absorption with homosexuality. Bishop Lazar had a family member who committed suicide due to pressures from idiots. A Cabinet member wrote me:

He infuriates right-leaning culture warriors when he applies both science and compassion to issues related to sexuality and gender (he had a close relative hounded into suicide over his identity, hence his passion on the subject)… they won’t brook any talk of acceptance or questioning of their “traditional” take on “unnatural” sex.

Kids… what they trot out aren’t doctrines or dogma of the Church… they’re theologoumena, often very controversial ones. Do note that many of them are “spiritual children” of wayward “gurus” such as Seraphim Rose and Gleb Podmoshensky… do note that these paladins founded a “monastery” without real guidance or having real monastic formation. Neither spent time in a real monastery as part of the brotherhood under obedience before “retreating from the world”. That, in itself, isn’t Orthodox in the least. For instance, St Herman was a monk at Valaam before leaving for Alaska… that’s the real way… men and women go out from established houses, after having internalised the ascetic way, and, then, form new houses.

The only wonder is that Platina didn’t go sour earlier. All that we have in the way of records on it are hagiography, not history… worthless puffery, in academic terms. However, I’d commend you to ponder this… Paffso was acridly anti-homosexual, yet, his “spiritual father” was Gleb Podmoshensky, and Manton’s life is like that of Platina. I’d say that we should study the lives of REAL elders such as Serafim Vyritsky, Sampson Sievers, and Zosima Sokur… the latter elder’s gifts bore fruit recently when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich (a spiritual son of Elder Zosima) refused to use unbridled force against the rioters in Kiev. Viktor Fyodorovich proved himself a true son of the Church… by their fruits ye shall know them.

That’s the real world choice on offer… we can follow real elders and receive solid spiritual food, or, we can follow semi-converted charlatans purveying semi-heretical pabulum. I’ve chosen… that means that I’ve also REJECTED. I’ve chosen to follow the path indicated by St Serafim Vyritsky… by Elders Sampson and Zosima… I’ve chosen to reject the path indicated by Seraphim Rose and Gleb Podmoshensky. You can’t choose both… you can have Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, or, you can have the Orthodoxy of the Ages…

Let me leave you with something that I wrote several years ago… it hasn’t lost its savour:

St Serafim [Vyritsky] made TWO sets of prophecies… do remember what prophecy is (as compared to “clairvoyance”, the knowledge of the future). Prophecy tells us what “could” be, if we don’t mend our ways. It’s the “Sign of Jonas”, as Thomas Merton put it so well. Also, all too many take “prophecy” as something “literal”, when it’s more “literary”. Prophecy is much like what Scrooge said to the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, “Tell me that these are the shadows of what could be, and not what will be!” Remember St Jonas in Nineveh… he preached the city’s destruction, but since the Ninevites repented of their sin, the destruction didn’t occur.

Repentance or degeneracy… that’s the choice facing Russia… and us. St Serafim pointed up what could happen in either case. What happens in future is our call… God DID give us Free Will. We’re NOT marionettes manipulated by a Divine Puppeteer… we’re NOT automations following the dictates of a “god” “who has a plan for your life”. We’re free men and women, endowed by their Creator with the OBLIGATION to choose. That’s how much God loves us… He allows us the COMPLETE freedom to choose our fate. That’s scary to so many… that’s why they find either Materialism or Sectarianism comforting… they down Ol’ Scratch’s cheap spiritual vodka in order to blind themselves to Christ’s Reality. However, a hangover ALWAYS follows a toot… and that goes for spiritual drunkenness as well. Ponder that, if you would…

Choose well…

BMD

 

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First Media Outlet Fined for “Gay Propaganda” in Russia

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Editor’s Note:

This is the FIRST case against a media outlet since the law came into effect last June. I seem to notice a disconnect between reality and all the brouhaha in the West. This is what’s real, kids… the other’s bullshit. Aren’t you ashamed to have listened to CNN and Fox? You KNOW that they don’t tell the whole truth… they do their best to satisfy their oligarch paymasters, not you, after all. Silly wabbits…

BMD

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On Thursday, local news website Amurburg.ru reported that, for the first time, the Prokuratura opened a case against the media under the anti-gay propaganda legislation introduced in Russia last year; a newspaper editor who reported about a school teacher allegedly fired because he was gay received a fine. The court fined Aleksandr Suturin, editor-in-chief of Molodoi Dalnevostochnik (Young Far Easterner) in the Russian Far East, 50,000 roubles (1,430 USD. 1,590 CAD. 1,600 AUD. 1,060 Euros. 880 UK Pounds). Suturin blamed the verdict on a “shadow morality police” and “brown plague”, saying that he’d appeal the decision. Molodoi Dalnevostochnik, the oldest publication in the Khabarovsk region, came under fire because its website has a label warning that only people above the age of 16 should visit its website. A law passed in June prohibited “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations among minors”. The age of majority in Russia is 18.

The story in questioned, entitled “A History About Gay-ography”, dated back to September. It detailed the claims of a local geography teacher and gay rights activist who said that he had pressure to quit his job at school and Neo-Nazis assaulted him because of his sexuality. Suturin denied in court that the report constituted “propaganda” of gay relationships. The law against “gay propaganda” provoked a backlash in the West and prompted calls to boycott the Sochi Olympics taking place next month. The law prohibits informing underage children about the “attractiveness of nontraditional sexual relationships” and giving them “distorted ideas about social equality of traditional and nontraditional sexual relationships”. However, President Putin repeatedly said in public that the law doesn’t amount to discrimination of LGBTs.

30 January 2014

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140130/187051137/First-Media-Outlet-Fined-for-Gay-Propaganda-in-Russia.html

Abortion Rate Hits Record Low: Thanks to Birth Control Advocates!

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The Guttmacher Institute reported that the American abortion rate fell to a 30-year low, through a survey of known abortion providers in the country. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of abortions fell to 1.1 million a year, a drop of 13 percent. Overall, abortion was in a long-term decline for most of the time it’s been legal. In 1981, 29 women per 1,000 ages 15-44 had an abortion. In 2011, it was only 17 per 1,000. Anti-choicers should avoid congratulating themselves for the decline, however. As the Guttmacher press release indicates, this descent happened before the most recent wave of abortion restrictions began closing clinics. Instead, it seems that women are just getting pregnant less often. Over the same period, the birth rate was also in decline, hitting a record low in 2012.

Sorry, Mike Huckabee, it’s probably not because women decided that they find sexual intercourse debasing. Instead, pro-choice activists and groups like Planned Parenthood, with their tireless work at making contraception socially acceptable and affordable, should take the credit. Contraception use, especially highly effective long-term forms like the IUD, is up. Indeed, contraception has become universal, with 99 percent of sexually active women having used contraception before and 62 percent of women reproductive age using contraception now. In fact, it isn’t urbane single ladies haunting conservative nightmares… the Sandra Flukes of the world who delay getting married… who love birth control pills. Married women are more likely to use contraception than never-married women are. More women are also getting very early abortions with medication; the abortion pill figuring in 1 in 4 non-hospital abortions, up from 17 percent in 2008. Unfortunately, some states passed medically unnecessary laws, serving no other purpose but to turn what should be an easy way to get an abortion into a major hassle, stymieing efforts to increase access to medication abortion.

Since 2011, which is where this research ends, much changed in the USA. In the past year, the ability to prevent unintended pregnancy improved under the Affordable Care Act through the contraception mandate and Medicaid expansion, which will help reach low-income women who experience the highest levels of unintended pregnancy. Medically unnecessary but draconian state-level regulations in places such as Texas shut down many clinics… so many that the remaining ones can’t handle the overflow of demand. (This almost certainly reduces the number of abortions counted, if only because the number of people counting them is going down.)

However, that brings us to illegal abortion, which is notoriously hard to document yet seems to be rising in response to the shutdown of abortion clinics in red states. As Lindsay Beyerstein reported in the New Republic, one doctor in the relatively small town of Harlingen TX reports having worked with about 100 patients since November who needed help with incomplete miscarriages, most of whom almost surely self-aborted with an ulcer medication available over the counter in México. Since the medication is effective at aborting a pregnancy entirely without a doctor’s help, the number of women in the area who resorted to this is likely many times that. An unintended consequence of shutting down abortion clinics is that it’s going to be harder to assess what the real abortion rate is in the USA. Of course, “out of sight, out of mind” is probably good enough for the anti-choice politicians who created this problem in the first place.

3 February 2014

Amanda Marcotte

Slate

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/02/03/thanks_contraception_the_u_s_abortion_rate_hits_an_all_time_low_mostly_because.html

Editor’s Note:

Do you want to cut induced abortions, both surgical and medicated? Then, you’d favour increased access to contraception… you’d favour keeping the social safety net strong and repeal the Clinton “welfare reform”… you’d favour increased education on sexual matters… you’d favour single-payer healthcare reform and the coverage of birth control services. Do note well that the so-called “Pro-Life” movement favours NONE of these things. The Pro-Life movement is a bunch of anti-abortion hypocrites who block sidewalks and wave placards to feel good about themselves as they advocate the warmongering and heartless GOP agenda.

I do NOT advocate abortion. I believe it to be a tragedy… indeed, many of my pro-choice friends have used the same words. I do NOT defend abortion… but I won’t demean that opposition by linking it to ruthless greedster politicians who have no other real aim but global hegemony and raking in the gelt. It’s NOT a black n’ white cartoon… although people like Trenham (a ranting konvertsy priest) try to make it so. Here’s the real-world choice… you can stand with Fr Vsevolod Chaplin and HH, who say that the use of contraception is licit via oikonomia, or, you can stand with loudmouths like Trenham (and that whole shake n’ bake Ancient Faith Radio crowd) who scream that it’s sinful. I seem to find that HH and Fr Vsevolod have MUCH more stature than Trenham and his pals do… and I’m not alone in thinking that.

Let’s do REAL Pro-Life… let’s end the wars in foreign parts… let’s end the bloodbath in Texas and other Southern states (with their promiscuous use of the death penalty)… let’s end the Clinton “welfare reform”… let’s end the Bush tax cuts for the rich and abolish the cap on FICA taxes (that’ll make Rush, Wet Willy, and Sarah pay their fair share for a change… watch ‘em howl!)… let’s see to it that there’s universal and untrammelled access to the best healthcare (and no doctor could “opt out” of the system to treat only rich patients)… THEN, and only then, could we call ourselves “Pro-Life”… everything else is a disgusting figleaf…

BMD

 

Russian Newlyweds Who Beat Up Cops Are Thrown in Separate Jails

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A Russian couple that tied the knot a bit too rowdily, including beating up three cops, will have to delay the start of their married life by 18 months… which they’ll spend in separate prisons. In a statement on Wednesday, the Chuvash Republic branch of the SK Rossii said that the couple’s trouble began on the second day of the wedding, when the drunken groom took a rental car for a drive. The 24-year-old ended up crashing the car into a bus station and fleeing the scene on foot to a hidey-hole nearby. The groom came out of hiding only to try to stop police from towing away the car. When words failed him, he teamed up with his bride, who by that time had arrived on the scene, and repeatedly punched, kicked, and headbutted three cops. That last action is what got them the prison time, on charges of assaulting an officer on duty, although the couple retains the right to appeal. The incident took place in September, but the court didn’t report the verdict until Wednesday. Investigators didn’t release the couple’s names, but they said that the bride was 23 and that both were unemployed, with criminal records.

5 February 2014

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/crime/20140205/187223987/Russian-Newlyweds-Who-Beat-Up-Cops-Are-Thrown-in-Separate-Jails.html