Pushilin sez DNR hasn’t Received News of When the Teleconference of the Contact Group Will Occur

______________________________

Today, D V Pushilin, Vice-Chairman of the DNR Peoples Soviet and DNR Delegate to the Contact Group said, “We still don’t have any information about when the Contact Group teleconference will take place”. Earlier, he said that the delay in the next round of negotiation was due to obstructionism by the Ukrainian side. Repeatedly, the LNR and DNR argued for the urgent implementation of a new round of the Contact Group. The Novorossiyan side insists on a speedy and simultaneous convening of the four core subgroups of the Contact Group:

• on economic issues and rehabilitation
• on refugees, internally displaced persons, and humanitarian assistance
• on political affairs
• on security issues

Meanwhile, an EU-Ukrainian summit opened in Kiev, attended by senior EU representatives, with an agenda focused on three main points:

• providing macro-financial assistance to Kiev
• the conflict in Novorossiya
• preparations for the Riga summit “Eastern Partnership” 21-22 May

According to the British newspaper Financial Times, besides all this, Germany and several other European countries are putting pressure on Kiev to accelerate its implementation of the Minsk agreements, especially the political sections. According to diplomatic sources in Germany, the general position is that “Kiev has to be more compliant”. In turn, a source in UK government circles told the Financial Times that the Ukraine should fulfil its obligations and give Russia room to manoeuvre.

27 April 2015

DAN Donetsk News Agency

http://dan-news.info/politics/v-dnr-poka-tak-i-ne-postupila-informaciya-o-date-videovstrechi-kontaktnoj-gruppy-pushilin.html

Advertisement

A Tale of Two Reports… One HAS to be False… Which One?

______________________________

Editor’s Foreword:

Read BOTH of these through. The second is crank and false, but I urge you to read it ALL. Don’t just read what’s pleasing to you. That’s what the Rush Limbaugh lot does, and you’re better than that. Why are the Westerners lying?

BMD

******

On Thursday, in the Ukraine, the Rada rushed through wide-ranging powers to suppress opposition protests and label NGOs as “foreign agents” if they receive money from abroad. The measures threaten jail terms for protesters who block entrances to government buildings and 15 days in detention for those who take part in unapproved demonstrations, even if peaceful. Protesters face up to 15 days in detention for covering their faces with masks or helmets. Police can hold people for up to 15 days if they set up tents, stages, or other makeshift structures without approval from city authorities. Apparently, the government aims these moves at the thousands of people (sic) in anti-government protests on the Maidan in Kiev.

The Financial Times said that demonstrators faced up to 10 years in prison for blocking access to government buildings, a tactic of protesters in Kiev since anger erupted over Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich’s rejection of an association agreement with the EU in November. Instead, Yanukovich opted instead for closer ties with the Customs Union of the Eurasian Economic Community (TS EvrAsES), a move that prompted street protests. The measures, introduced on 14 January, passed by a show of hands; the pro-presidential majority of 235 out of 450 deputies supported them. They couldn’t use the Rada’s electronic voting system as opposition deputies blocked it.

The package of 11 laws, which go to Yanukovich for his signature, threaten up to a year’s hard labour in prison for anyone convicted of libel, including on the internet. It requires all internet media to register with the authorities. Emulating a similar law in Russia, the legislation mandated that civil society groups and NGOs label themselves as “foreign agents” on their publications if they receive any funding from abroad. The legislation outlaws motorcades of more than five cars by threatening to confiscate their vehicles and revoke drivers’ licences for two years if they don’t have permission from the MVDU. The move targets members of Automaidan, a pro-EU movement that puts on motorcades around Kiev, the members use their cars to block riot police vehicles, as well as to deny access to government buildings and to pre-trial detention facilities holding arrested activists. In one of their larger protests, thousands of honking cars drove within 350 metres (1,150 feet) of the president’s suburban residence outside Kiev on 29 December.

The bill allows Ukrainian authorities to block online pages, if experts believe their content unlawful. Ambassadors of the USA and the EU in Kiev said that they had concerns that the legislation didn’t pass using due procedure. The reforms came a day after a court published a ban on protests in the centre of Kiev until 8 March, provoking fears amongst opposition groups of an imminent police crackdown on the Maidan rallies. The police denied these clams.

16 January 2014

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/world/20140116/186601073/Ukraine-Proposes-Sweeping-Crackdown-on-Dissent.html

******

Editor’s Warning:

Pull on your waders and hold your nose, but do read it all. Its lies… but it’s what the papists and Langley want you to believe. Keep the truth at hand… it’s the antidote to propaganda…

BMD

******

Perhaps sensing inevitable backlash, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich offered an olive branch to the Uniate Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGKTs) by saying religious bodies could offer services anywhere. On Tuesday, the president’s press office issued a statement after the Ministry of Culture of the Ukraine sent a warning letter to church officials about their work with pro-EU demonstrators. According to the presidential press service, Yanukovich said, “People should have the right to pray where they wish. We need to relax legislation to make sure that believers can pray where they wish”. Agence France-Presse reported that the Culture Ministry sent a letter to church officials saying that they broke the law by offering outdoor services to protesters.

For two months, upset Ukrainians besieged the Maidan in Kiev after the government abruptly rejected association with the EU in favour of ties with Russia. The UGKTs erected tents in the square where people can pray, go to confession, and even have babies baptised. The letter to “Supreme Archbishop” (Верховный архиепископ) Svyatoslav Shevchuk reminded him that it’s illegal to hold services outside a church. According to AFP, Shevchuk said in response, “We thought that persecuting priests was a thing of the past”. On the UGKTs website, Shevchuk said that the church plays an essential role in preventing human rights abuses. He also called for “honest and open dialogue. Our church has always been true and will remain so for the future despite any threats”.

The church dates back centuries and is unique in that it embraces Byzantine (sic) {“Byzantine” is papist-speak for New Roman: editor} traditions and the Roman Catholic Church. The USSR forced it underground in the 20th century as a threat to its rule. Hundreds of UGKTs clergy went to the GULag for refusing to embrace Orthodoxy. Today, the UGKTs appears one of the forces behind the present protests. Since Ukrainian independence in 1991, the UGKTs has resurged in its old Galician heartland. AFP says that it has 5.5 million followers, or about 12 percent of the population (not so… according to official figures, the UGKTs is 8 percent of the Ukrainian population, with about 4 million believers in the country: editor}.

15 January 2014

Global Post

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/140115/ukraines-greek-catholic-church-stares-down-government-and-wins

Editor’s Afterword:

Do note this:

Perhaps sensing inevitable backlash, President Viktor Yanukovich offered an olive branch to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGKTs) by saying religious bodies could offer services anywhere.

That’s crapola. On Thursday, President Yanukovich didn’t offer an olive branch, he told these smarkacz brats to shape up or ship out. Most of the protesters are from the west of the country… known troublemakers and pro-Western quislings (don’t forget how the Galician Uniates fought for the Nazis in the VOV). Here’s another LMAO statement:

The church dates back centuries and is unique in that it embraces Byzantine (sic) traditions and the Roman Catholic Church.

The UGKTs came about as the result of the Union of Brest in 1596, when the Polish authorities forced many of the Orthodox on its territory to join the Catholic Church (many resisted… that’s where people like Pyotr Mogila came in). The papists allowed them to keep Orthodox ritual, but they had to accept all the pretensions of the Pope of Rome and had to acknowledge him as Supreme Lord of the Church (later on, they had to embrace Papal Infallibility, too). They had no existence outside of Polish or Habsburg domains until recently.

By the way, “Byzantine” is a made-up papist concoction… the word only dates back to the mid-16th century, a century AFTER the Fall of New Rome to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Orthodox should NEVER use this word… it straitjackets us into heretical frameworks that we should best avoid. We are the REAL Romans… the Roman Empire persisted for a millennium after Odoacer’s coup toppling the government in Old Rome in 476. That event heralded the falling away of the western borderlands… the civilised core of the Empire in the East remained intact. Indeed, what we know as “Roman Law” came out of the Later Roman Empire (a better term than “Byzantine Empire”… what a fraud!).

Never forget… we Russians received the faith from New Rome… NOT from “Byzantium”. That’s why we speak of the Three Romes… “Old Rome fell to the axes of the barbarians, New Rome fell to the infidel Turks, Moscow is the Third Rome, and a Fourth there never shall be”. Laugh at that if you will, but that’s why we should never capitulate to papist/Proddie categories and terminology. In short, let’s end our “intellectual captivity”, use our own definitions and categories, and grasp our own heritage. We can do it…

BMD

Is Russia Becoming a Theocracy?

THIS is what HH is REALLY up to. The West hates him for that. That speaks volumes…

______________________________

Editor’s Foreword:

Caveat lector! The author of this piece is a neoliberal pro-Western fanatic who graduated from Harvard. Its chock fulla shit, but you need to know what’s out there. Don’t just read what pleases you… that’s what the Rush Limboob Fan Club droolers do. Always attend to reality… or, reality WILL deal with you.

BMD

******

This weekend, the MP held its Archpastoral Council at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. In his speech to the assembly, President Putin said that, of course, Russia isn’t a theocracy, but, “We’re a secular state of course, and can’t allow state life and Church life to merge, but at the same time, we must avoid too, a vulgar and primitive interpretation of what being secular means. Traditional values, believers’ religious feelings, and people’s rights, freedoms, and dignity must all be protected by both the power of public opinion and the power of the law” (emphasis in the original).

He also said that the Orthodox Church and other traditional Russian religions must be involved in “important fields as the support of family and motherhood, the upbringing and education of children and youth, social development, and the strengthening of the patriotic spirit of the armed forces” (emphasis in the original). The social conservatism inherent in having the Church play a greater role in family life (with “fathers” notably absent from the equation), schooling, and, somewhat counter-intuitively perhaps, the war machine, is nothing new. However, whilst the Russian state has actively promoted the Church since the early Yeltsin years, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the statement was the legal element.

Putin’s statement confirmed that some of the most bizarre parts of the prosecution’s case against the members of Pussy Riot… namely, that their actions contravened medieval Church law… may not have been the surreal aberration they seemed at the time. In fact, the following day, Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev also spoke in favour of giving legal weight to religious doctrines. Russian news sources reported that Kirill “backed the idea of criminal prosecution for blasphemy similar the Pussy Riot’s punk performance in Cathedral of Christ the Saviour”; he was quoted as saying, “The law must protect not only symbols of secular importance, but also objects with sacred meaning for the believers and guard their religious feelings from insults”.

The Orthodox Church has been in the news these days. Last weekend, the Financial Times published a long profile of Fr Tikhon Shevkunov, who’s said to be Putin’s personal confessor; whilst the latest issue of The Economist reviews a new history of religion after the fall of communism. The FT noted the paradox that, whilst “only a small minority of Russians attend church regularly” the MP has become one of the country’s most trusted institutions. Geraldine Fegan, author of the book reviewed in The Economist, was quoted as saying, “Putin wants to capitalise on Orthodoxy’s image of permanence, even as his own legitimacy crumbles”.

Certainly, there’s an intimate relationship between the Church, the Kremlin, and big money. After all, Yeltsin financed the Church, in part, by granting it the right to import and sell tax free cigarettes, whilst the most avid sponsors of new houses of worship over the past 20 years have been oligarchs. Many senior members of the Church hierarchy have themselves become quasi-oligarchs, driving expensive supercars, wearing Swiss watches, and living in multimillion dollar apartments. Today, it’s become very fashionable among the megarich to have their own personal confessors… the latest badge of élite status. However, whilst we know that the church, state, and army have refashioned the old tsarist three-legged stool, it’s much harder to see which of them wields the most power in the equation.

In short, is Putin using the church, or is the church using Putin? As the embrace between them becomes ever closer, the key power struggle to come may no longer be between the Kremlin and the liberals, but rather Putin and his Patriarchate.

3 February 2013

Vadim Nikitin

Foreign Policy

http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/02/03/is-russia-becoming-a-theocracy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=is-russia-becoming-a-theocracy

Editor’s Afterword:

This is what the crapitalist crowd in the West truly believes… and Orthodox swine like Lyonyo Kishkovsky, Victor Potapov, James Paffhausen, and Alexander Webster nourish their delusions by feeding them crank and bogus intel (in short, they give the Westerners what they want to hear, receiving attaboys and material rewards in return). Do remember how Jordanville lied about its non-existent ties to a putative “catacomb church” during the Cold War to receive Langley’s shilling… the main enablers of that were Basil Rodzianko and Victor Potapov… and how Schmemann worked for the American propaganda machine (how much Langley money did SVS get for that? Perspirin’ minds wanna know… there’s been no OCA analogue of Alexander Lebedeff (a First Family apparatchik, but an honest man when it comes to Church history) to tell the truth).

This is what the American Establishment believes… and there are traitorous Russians, both in the Rodina and in the diaspora, who sell out to them for filthy lucre and personal gain (after all, Potapov DID (or DOES) suck directly on the US government tit). The truth is that HH is a supporter of fundamental social justice, and he argues that it’s imperative for the state to provide a broad palette of social services (INCLUDING universal access to state-provided single-payer healthcare)… and the people that I named do NOT. Where is HH on every major holiday? He’s out in the hospitals and orphanages visiting sick and orphaned kids, that’s where (he also runs the niftiest Yolka in Moscow)… I’d remind you that James Paffhausen did NOT do that… which one of those two is god-pleasing? I’d say that it was HH… and Paffhausen was a gibbering and posturing poseur. Think on that…

BMD

28 October 2012. You Can’t Make Shit Like This Up… The new Putinism: Nationalism Fused with Conservative Christianity

______________________________

Editor’s Foreword:

Here’s a load of utter crapola from the Washington Post crowd. Oh, yes… Potapov (a Cold War-era Langley propagandist), Mattingly (a semi-converted Southern Baptist), Dreher (a Catholic retread who makes himself out to be an Orthodox expert), Freddie M-G (her thoughts are so precious that you have to pay her 25 bucks a throw just to hear them), and Paffhausen (the obsequious disciple of a man deposed for nasty doings) suck up to this lot… not as badly as they do to the Moonies at the Washington Times or to the rightwing nutters on K Street… but they do suck up to this bunch, and they don’t contradict them (they might lose entrée to the right parties and seminars, then, kids). Again, you have to know what the haters of the Orthosphere say. They do want to cut out our heart and soul and replace it with American consumerism (that’s why you shouldn’t trust the “Orthodox” I named… they’re all drooling supporters of the “Me First” Republican Party). It’s rancid… but it’s a necessary read…

BMD

******

Two recent stories offer a revealing… and, to some, unsettling… view of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s emerging state ideology. The new Putinism, you might call it, seems to be a fusion of two older Russian ideas… nationalism, sometimes with an anti-Western tinge, and conservative interpretations of Orthodox Christianity. Both stories portray the coalescing, Kremlin-pushed ideology as a response to rising dissent and, more broadly, an effort to fill an ideological vacuum that has, remained to some extent, since the collapse of the USSR two decades ago. The Financial Times’ Charles Clover chronicles the new ideology’s emergence in the typically vibrant city of St Petersburg, “long regarded as Russia’s liberal window to the West”, but now “the testing ground for a new wave of conservative, Orthodox church-going, pro-Kremlin patriotism that has gripped much of Russian officialdom”. Clover cites recent censorship of classic Russian works by Vladimir Nabokov and Sergei Rachmaninoff, as well as new law that forbids “yelping” and “stomping” at night, possibly aimed at curbing protests.

Through the previous twelve years of his hegemony, Mr Putin observed a balance between liberals and conservatives in the ranks of the elite, catering to each group in an effort to play one off against the other. Today, that balance appears to have been jettisoned after liberals deserted him, with protesters taking to the streets last December and high-ranking figures… such as his Finance Minister… joining the dissenters. The Kremlin has turned to the more conservative elements of society. More rural, older, and less educated, they respond well to Mr Putin’s nationalist and slightly paranoid rhetoric as defender of the Orthodox faith from blasphemers and protector of the nation against foreign plots.

In Moscow, Claire Bigg of Radio Free Europe finds indications of a Kremlin effort to institutionalise the new emphasis on nationalism… an entirely new government agency for “promoting patriotism” and safeguarding “the spiritual and moral foundations of Russian society”. It’s hard not to be reminded of Iran’s infamous censorship body, the “Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance”, although Russia’s Directorate for Social Projects appears more about cultivating friendly public sentiments than blocking outlawed ones. Bigg and analysts she spoke with portrayed the agency as an outgrowth of Putin’s “deepening hostility” toward foreign organisations, even comparing it to the Soviet-era propaganda department. However, the most significant link to the Soviet era may have to do with the national pride many Russians felt during their country’s height of power. Nonetheless, the initiative is likely to strike a chord with many Russians nostalgic for their country’s lost global clout. Advocates say the new agency could prove instrumental in both filling the ideological vacuum left by the Soviet collapse and rejuvenating the notion of patriotism, still almost exclusively tied to the USSR’s role in World War II.

Russia’s search for an ideology is a big deal for the populous, ethnically diverse country. This campaign’s propagandistic and anti-liberal overtones aside, it does, at least, seem to address this issue. Nevertheless, nationalism is a powerful force, and in Russia has had a complicated history. As EurasiaNet’s Igor Torbakov warned in February, when Putin appeared to begin his ideological campaign, Russian nationalism has at times carried ethnic overtones. About 80 percent of the country’s citizens are ethnic Russian, and, with birth rates below replacement and the population aging, the Russian economy relies heavily on immigrating minority groups. Widespread harassment of migrant workers is already a problem in Russia. A far-right Russian newspaper editor told the Financial Times, “Putin feels the coming of a catastrophe, of the domination of liberal forces which threaten him with the fate of Muammer Gaddafi. He’s fighting back by restoring the balance between the various ideological groups. In this way, he supports us”.

25 October 2012

Max Fisher

Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/10/25/the-new-putinism-nationalism-fused-with-conservative-christianity/?wprss=rss_world

Editor’s Afterword:

Much of this isn’t even true… but many of the konvertsy eat this shit up. Reflect well on the fact that Paffhausen does, and that Potapov was (or still is) part of the Langley dezinformatsiya machine, as he worked for the BBG, a known Langley front organisation… a fact known to all, it isn’t secret, and I’m unmasking no one. Oh, yes, Basil Rodzianko and Aleksandr Schmemann both took Langley’s shilling willingly, too… did I tell you that Potapov married into the Rodzianko clan (everyone knows how Potapov used the official ROCOR website to pursue a vendetta against a fellow Rodzianko clan-member in public… nice guy)? Fancy that… keeping it all in the family, no? This disgusting pabulum has as much truth in it as the typical Monomakhos post… that is, not much. As one of the Cabinet said about Monomakhos:

The Monomakhos crowd is still dancing around their cauldron… I hope that the hammer falls quickly on them…

This post is shit of the same vintage. However, you must stay informed. READ IT and heed what it means. People are swallowing lies, and that’s never good. The truth WILL set you free, but only if you let it…

BMD