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I’m in plain type; my interlocutor is in italics
What about Fr Foty? Would you want him in your choir? He did an impromptu duet with A B Gradsky (one of the judges) at his audition!
He’s amazing and so unassuming. You can even hear it in his voice.
Would you call him a “Monastic Innocent” (I do mean that in all sincerity)? Did you see where G V Leps gave him a list of people to pray for? That wouldn’t happen here!
I guess that you could say that. What he’s doing is truly beautiful, and I (like Dostoevsky) believe that beauty will save the world. Through all this exposure and social media, Fr Foty is doing more good than he could probably imagine.
Would you say that he embodies the revival in the Motherland?
He’s definitely evidence of that.
I think that we’ve had a quiet revival here. Compared to 1980, the Russian Orthodox elements are closer than ever… I believe that we’re on the verge of great things. I’ve lived through the dry years… I know…
It’s definitely an exciting time. I just pray that nothing gets in the way of the revival, be it external forces or internal snakes like the EP.
I hope to live to see a united Russian Orthodox Church here in the diaspora before my earthly death. I pray for that…
I think a lot of people dream and pray for that. I mean, who wouldn’t want that (we all know who, though)?!?
It’s time for the OCA, the ROCOR, and the MP/USA (and MP/Canada) to stop the foolishness. It’s time to form three united metropolias in the North American diaspora… one for Alaska, one for Canada, and one for the rest of the USA. They would function under the legal charter of the ROCOR… but that’d only be a legal formality. To speak frankly, all-Orthodox Unity here is a chimera; it’s not realistic, not at the present, at least. However, we can grasp all-Russian Orthodox Unity… the Serbs did it… the Arabs did it… we can do it, too. Everything comes in its good and proper time. Now is the time to fix up our own house before we go trying to repair someone else’s. I think that all decent and honourable people of good-sense and good will can understand that. I DO want to see Russian Orthodox Unity here before my earthly death… and I DO pray for that mercy…
BMD
My earlier posts on Fr Foty are here and here
click here for a VK vid of Fr Foty singing The Circle of Life from The Lion King (no lie) (you can’t embed VK vids on WordPress)
Voices from Russia 
Interesting Lacunae in RT Reporting…
Tags: mass media, media, Media bias, Media of Russia, media spin, political commentary, politics, RT (TV network), Russia, Russian, United States, USA, Western media
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Firstly, read this. Interesting, no? Well, it doesn’t mention earlier rallies of Ukrainian higher officers and units. Now, read this. Note well that the RT article doesn’t mention Admiral Berezovsky at all! I’d say that the commander of the “Ukrainian” Navy rallying to Russia wasn’t small beer! Now, read this… ask yourself, “What happened to all the troops that rallied to Russia and refused repatriation to the Ukraine and what happened to all the matériel stockpiled there?” Here’s something from Krasnaya Zvezda, the Russian military journal. This is for internal consumption… it isn’t propaganda. Note well that the RT report said nothing of this battalion coming over almost completely en bloc to Russia!
This present RT report smells like bullshit to me. No… not false… simply not giving the whole story. WHY? I’d say that one reason is that RT is trying to reinforce the “stupid factor” amongst the Anglos. That is… they’re trying to pretend that their attention spans are as short as those of the Anglo political class (which is about the same as a sex-crazed gnat in heat during the height of the mating season). People like McCain, Biden, Nuland, Clinton, Rubio, and Cruz are grasping idiots… their actions show that. RT is playing up to their stupidity and ignorance. It doesn’t matter if any of us tell the truth… these arrogant bastards are so hubristical that they only attend to voices that tell them what they want to hear. Besides that, Biden and Clinton have pre-existing (and rancidly deep) Russophobia… they showed that in 1999 when they contemptuously spat on the late Patriarch Aleksei Ridiger when he asked the Americans not to bomb Belgrade on Orthodox Easter.
McCain’s recent statement that the USA could supply all of Europe and the Ukraine with natural gas in two years was vacuity on parade. Firstly, American natural gas production has topped off… secondly, many jurisdictions are banning fracking… thirdly, the drop in oil prices means that the energy multinationals have much less to invest in exploration, exploitation, and infrastructure. The only way to ship natural gas from the USA to Europe is via LNG tanker… there are only so many such vessels and none of the present tonnage is available for such traffic as they already have full employment shipping LNG. Remember, the drop in oil prices means that energy conglomerates will have difficulty properly maintaining their present fleets, let alone adding to them. That’s to say, the infrastructure doesn’t exist… there’s no funds to develop it until oil prices recover. In short, McCain’s boast is GIGO.
Lastly, read this… it’s a howler! WOW! 40,000 troops… that’s 3 division-equivalents, which works out to 9 brigade-equivalents, which comes out to 27 line battalions. The peacetime Russian Army has 41 brigades and 2 divisions… not counting the stockpiled equipment for reserve formations (which mostly don’t exist in Western armies). NATO is going to deter 47 Russian brigades with 9 NATO brigades! In fact, it’s less than that, for it includes an inordinate amount of special ops bubbas. These troops can raid and reconnoitre, but they can’t hold ground. They simply lack the heavy equipment and manpower. What’s more, this notional force comes from all the NATO members… with varying TO&Es… varying equipment… varying operational doctrine… varying logistics and provisions pipelines. In short, it’s a clusterfuck waiting to happen. The largest single national contingent would be the two manoeuvre brigades of US Army Europe (6 of the 27 battalions of this notional force). The USA has no more troops in Europe at present and has plans to have stockpiles for only two more brigades as reinforcements (I discussed the difficulties of such a movement here).
This is a non-starter from the git-go… and VVP knows it. That’s why he’s emulating Br’er Fox and lying low. I wonder why RT (and most other Russian English-language media) isn’t giving the full story that one gets in the Russian-language media. It’s almost like the English-language and Russian-language productions come from two different teams with two different POVs and goals. Be careful… the Western reportage is outright lies… the Russian reporting is good in Russian… inconsistent in English. The media organisations do know what’s going on, as the Russian coverage invariably has excellent reportage and op-eds. The English sometimes echoes Western bullshit, sometimes it tells the truth… I truly feel bad for those with no facility in Russian. The news in English is nasty from the West, wobbly from Russia (I don’t think that expats are the reason… all-too-many Russian English-speakers are pro-Western neoliberals). Stay tuned… it bids fair to be interesting…
BMD