10 November 2017. Whither Thou Goest, ROCOR?

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I wrote the following to a clergyman I consider a friend:

However, [the ROCOR Synod] dances to Potapov’s tune because he has money. Apparently, Langley wants to revive the old CIA-ROCOR alliance. This time, the people won’t have it. There’ll be those who’ll remain loyal to Ilarion and his Synod (I don’t see him losing Australia), but that won’t be due to Langley money, most will simply be Brother Junipers. However, most of our people are post-Sov emigres, not anti-Red DPs or ex-White elements (most of those are gone outside the Golden 400). Indeed, both the KPRF and CPUSA not only allow believers, they DEFEND them (one of the critics of Matilda was from the Moscow KPRF Gorkom… she said that no one has the right to offend believers).

We live in a new world where the verities of the 60s, 70s, and 80s are gone forever. We live on the “new shore”… where Reds and believers not only coexist but are one and the same… the old shibboleths are gone… for good. Remember… Nikodim Rotov was once a demonic figure to most of us, but most of us now know that he did his best to preserve the Church under harsh conditions. We have a seemingly-new Church that’s really the old Church. We find that all our Russian legacies… Old Russia, Moskovy, Imperial Russia, and the USSR… must live together or we have no legacy at all. If we try to cut anything off, we’d do what Stolypin warned us against (“If you cut off one of our Russian eagle’s heads, it’ll only make him bleed to death”). It may sound odd, but Marxism, tsarism, and Christianity are converging. I know that you may not agree with me totally, but I know that you are a fellow traveller of good heart, and that suffices for me. Have patience and keep good cheer. You do have a friend, here…

I removed all tell-tales that might hint at the identity of my interlocutor. The ROCOR is in serious straits indeed. The episcopate is isolated from the people and doesn’t seem to realise that times have changed and that the old ways and old expressions no longer work. The people are post-Soviet, so they ignore all diatribes against I V Stalin. The ROCOR is now mostly former-Sov émigrés, so the former anti-communist shibboleths no longer have traction. If the ROCOR Holy Synod continues on its present course, it’ll lose many parishes to the direct jurisdiction of Moscow. In fact, in Geneva, elements in the ROCOR Synod threatened to boot out clergy unless they signed a questionable document expelling a pious couple. Some feel that Metropolitan Ilarion Kapral is too lenient and not up to it. If things continue as they are, much of the present ROCOR may go under Moscow because of sheer incompetence. By the way, Paffhausen now weighs about 400 pounds (@180 kilos)… he’s ballooned since the OCA got rid of him. It’s ultra-obesity… a real tragedy.

No one knows how this play will end. However, it’ll be “interesting”, and we all know what that Chinese idiom really means…

BMD

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Religion Isn’t a “Problem”… Neoliberal Crapitalism is the Problem

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Some think religion is a “problem”. We disagree. Faith is a matter of personal choice. People of faith want a new society too. The CPUSA stands for unity between believers and non-believers. Join us in the fight against the Trump Agenda.

11 January 2017

CPUSA

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Editor:

This isn’t the antitheistic Communist Party of the 20th-century. That party and that era are gone, absolutely and irretrievably. This is a new era… communists have learnt from their errors, for they believe in the dialectic. That is, “thesis confronts antithesis, leading to a new synthesis”. The old party-line of antitheism simply didn’t work and was actually counterproductive. It left out people who could’ve been friends of the Party (even good members of the Party) and the Party stupidly froze them out of society. That is, the Party made needless enemies.

Communists are nothing if not practical and pragmatic. Believers are now welcome as comrades. As Comrade Zyuganov put it:

Christ was the first communist!

Defined that way, I’m proud to be a leftie.

BMD

Brother Ajamu Speaks…

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The North Koreans aren’t going to denuclearise (I may have made up a word) as long as they see the USA as an existential threat. Therefore, what this warmongering criminal is saying is that she supports an attack on that nation. Moreover, there’ll be others standing with her ready to send the working class and poor off to die for nothing… once again.

All hail the “Ministry of Truth” being called for by liberal Democrats where CNN, NYT, MSNBC, and Wash Post determine what truth is.

There’s a story and there are questions about hacking that aren’t  part of the discussion. During the campaign, my staff was hacked, both phones and computers. I had 12,000 emails stolen and the campaign and party had intrusions. Now, who had an objective interest in doing that… the Russians? We know who, but don’t have the evidence, so up to this message, we haven’t made a big deal of it. We always understood that this was just the dirty nature of a corrupt bourgeois politics that the ill-informed refer to as democracy. So later for that BS concern about the Russians from citizens of a state that hacks, murders leaders of other nations, overthrows governments, and allows its own citizens to be murdered with impunity by its police forces.

Ajamu Baraka

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Rostov-on-Don to Erect Monument to Famed Spy Richard Sorge, Not Solzhenitsyn

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Rostov-on-Don decided to erect a monument to famed Soviet spy Richard Sorge instead of one to Solzhenitsyn. The monument will be near School nr 80, named after Sorge. The decision to install the memorial took place at the last meeting [of the committee] on the names of socially-significant places. The recently-deceased Honoured Sculptor of Russia A A Apollonov created a bust of Sorge as a part of the project “Alley of Russian Glory”. The dedication of the memorial will be sometime in November.

Richard Sorge was a Soviet spy of the 20th-century, stationed in Japan, who had a cover as a German journalist. He received the award of Hero of the Soviet Union posthumously in 1964. One of the streets in Rostov-on-Don is Ulitsa Sorge.

8 November 2017

Lyubov Aleksandrovna Shlyapkina

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