The Decline of American Empire

Events in recent times have taken an interesting turn (to say the least). My own recent visit to Russia expanded my horizons substantially. Simply put, much of what we are being told about that country is neither fair nor accurate. The steady drumbeat for war we hear is not warranted by any stretch of the imagination.

The question is why? Why do we continually hear over the decades a call to “spread democracy” throughout the Arab world? Why does this call mandate the removal of secular leaders ruling over stable, secular countries?

Why was Moammar Ghaddafi taken out as leader of Libya, and before that Saddam Hussein in Iraq? Why is Yemen crumbling? Why is it necessary to take down the Assad dynasty in Syria? At every instance in our meddling, the world has taken a decisive turn for the worse. Whether it’s the Christian Holocaust of the Middle East or the destruction of Western Europe.

And now we are kissing up the theocrats in Iran. Men who constantly humiliate us and our President at every turn.

Is there a pattern here?

Actually there is. For decades we’ve labored under the impression that our economy is denominated in dollars. Legally, that’s still true. In reality however, it’s denominated in something called “petrodollars.”

Please take the time to watch the embedded video. It provides an historical perspective on how we got here and why we are forced to go into wars in order to prop up the petrodollar. And rather than killing the messenger, I ask my critics to point out any mistakes that may have been made.

Comments

  1. I think this is definitely part of the story but I would argue we need to go back further — specifically, to the years leading up to the crash of 1929. What happened then is very similar to what happened in the years leading up to the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown. In simple terms, rent-seeking behavior and the financialization of the economy gained precedence over productive initiatives that are necessary for a healthy economy grounded in productivity, wide employment, and innovation. As a consequence of the crash, Glass-Steagall was passed, including the controversial Regulation Q that regulated how much interest could be charged. This provided a buffer against speculation and an over emphasis on securities that had led to the over-leveraged economy leading up to the crash of 29.

    Over the next seven decades, the constraints and firewall created between commercial and investment banking by Glass-Steagall would be chipped away until it was repealed under Clinton. Walter Wriston, the man behind what would become Citigroup, was, in many ways, one of the chief architects behind financialization and the rent-seeking economy that has come to define the neoliberal, post WW II economy. The story the video tells here is a consequence of policies set in place as part of an end-run around Glass-Steagall and Regulation Q. When banks offer higher interest rates, that effects how many investment dollars pour into securities, as well as what kinds of loans banks are interested in, resulting in a preference for financial speculation as opposed to investment in business and the average homeowner / consumer. As Regulation Q was chipped away at, speculation and rent-seeking increased, encouraging fluctuations in the value of the dollar, inflation, and savings. The petrodollar agreement was, I suspect, an attempt on the part of the financial and political elites to stave off a collapse of an overheated, speculation-driven economy that became more of a problem as the productive, innovation driven economy of the 50s gave way to a more speculative driven economy in the 60s, under-girded in part by the weakening of Regulation Q and the rise of securitization, both of which helped fuel rent-seeking behavior.

    Because of this, I would argue that the reason why Clinton, McCain, Bush, and Pelosi can be on one side against Trump is because the divisions between left and right, Republican and Democrat are obsolete: what we have now are neoliberals — those that believe in financialization, free trade, rent-seeking, and international agreements to facilitate these things, and nation-staters who are opposed to aspects of the neoliberal agenda. Most of the prominent leaders in both the Republican and Democrat parties are neoliberals. In simplest terms, they favor Wall Street over Main Street.

  2. Pat Reardon says

    My own recent visit to Russia expanded my horizons substantially. Simply put, much of what we are being told about that country is neither fair nor accurate.

    Thank you, George.

    This expansion of your horizon does not surprise me. Since my time in Syria a few years ago, I have not believed a single word from either our government or the news media.

    • Gregory Manning says

      I’m with you Father.
      When I first arrived in Vietnam in 1968 I spent the first month in Saigon before being shipped out to the field. During that month I learned that international businesses thrive during times of war and the least reliable sources of information about what was going on in the world were the American media. It’s not simply their prejudices but, worse, their embarrassing ignorance out of which those prejudices arise. I routinely follow what is going on in the Middle East and Russia/Europe and I never, never rely upon MSM. All of my internet bookmarks are overseas sources. I can’t emphasize enough what a disadvantage American citizens place themselves at by believing that anything happening outside of the continental U.S. is of little or no consequence and that the MSM media can be relied upon to tell them what, if anything, is newsworthy. It is foolish for citizens to believe that their nation is the center of the known universe.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Ditto. If Robo-anchor/ette on MSNCBABSCBS says anything at all about Russia/Syria/Kafiristan I’ve decided it’d be wise to believe the opposite.

        • Being able to read at least one non-English language (the more, the better) helps enormously with sifting the truth out. During the 2015 Sylvester (New Year’s Eve) rape attacks by male Islamic immigrants/invaders of Germany, there wasn’t a peep that I could find in U.S. media. The BBC had a vague story, but some intrepid German-language sites put true coverage out there until their own government started trying to say, “No, really, folks, nothing much happened.”
          Even the German police departments were instructed to remove references to “Vergewaltigen” in their reports. After some weeks, the fertilizer hit the ventilation device in Germany and the truth began to seep out about what had happened at Cologne–yes, on the plaza in front of the great cathedral–and in many other cities and towns in Germany and Austria that same night.
          (now for the rhetorical question) Has anyone here seen American coverage of this widespread, fully coordinated terror attack on Western women in these two German-speaking countries that night?
          Imposing Sharia by terror. Not good. Sounds like what’s happening with Fr. Josiah and his church. And the German police (and ours???) were given instructions to “massage” their police reports.
          Hmmmmm…

          • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

            Vesta! Those attacks, according to all the American media reports I read, said that the rapes took place on SYLVESTER EVE, not on Sylvester. And when all these media referred to rapes, what word were they translating , if not Verwaltigungen? What word, according to you, translates as “massage?”

            I must confess that I enjoy reading what non-readers of the print media claim the media print!

        • Reality Checker says

          Intones the besotted consumer of surreal static from Faux-News, Breitbart, InfoWars, Coulter, Limbaugh, Izvestia and TASS.

          LOL

        • Terry Myles says

          Who do you believe – RT?

          • Michael Warren says

            How about something other than the DNC to start? I know that might be hard for you.

      • Peter A. Papoutsis says

        100% correct. The MSA is so much propaganda it is not even funny. I stopped believing them for a very, VERY long time. Who still believes that the MSA is telling them the truth? Answer : No one!

        Peter

  3. Some thoughts:

    The producer of this video does have quite a few things right. His longer term chronology is off and he is a bit too sentimental about Saddam Hussein and Ghaddafi. He does not really understand the part that religion and culture play in this, preferring instead to focus almost exclusively on economics. Economics are important, and there is an economic war going on, it’s true. However, there are deeper cleavages as well that have and will again overwhelm concern about day to day standards of living.

    The United States may very well have taken out both regimes for the reasons stated in the video. It would not surprise me in the least. I personally am more convinced by the “neo-con” theory of why these wars were prosecuted, but that’s another thing entirely. The spread of “democracy” in the Muslim world could be seen as making the world safe for Israel and American oil and Western Europe. It’s just that it has had the opposite effect; yet the neo-cons persist, as do the Samantha Powers type progressive interventionists.

    I’m not persuaded by the petrodollar thesis. Currency is currency. A method of counting. National currencies have equivalents in each other. However, the fact that we are off the gold standard is no doubt relevant and important. A floating currency is based on confidence, not material reality.

    And that’s the rub. That’s what will eventually continue to erode American world hegemony. The BRICS countries are working on alternative financial arrangements, the Western Europeans are complicit and there is nothing the United States can really do about it. We are busy defending ourselves against cyber attacks by China and Russia (two thermonuclear powers) which sometimes hamper or shut down sizeable portions of major sectors of the American economy.

    Remember, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Orthodoxy. God. Christ. Theosis. These are the touchstones, so to speak. It is no tragedy that Saddam is gone and that Iraq is now Shiite. The Shiites are closer to Christianity than Sunnis, whom we might as well start calling “Amalek”. This is so because the Persians were monotheists before Islam came knocking down their door and they “improved” it from the Arab version. They introduced al-Khidr and other facets which gave the Light room to shine in Islam, despite its origins.

    Nonetheless, Sunni eschatology is irreconcilable with Orthodox Christian eschatology:

    http://www.orthodoxservices.org/Rapture.htm – this is a site on Orthodox eschatology, refuting the Protestant Rapture theory. It outlines the relationship between Orthodox and Sunni Islamic eschatology. If this is accurate, and it seems to be, we are destined to collide. Sunni Muslims will have to either be converted or conquered. There is no other alternative. However, Christ may be the One to do this in the End as a mercy at the Final Battle.

    But enough of that, back to cases. US currency is monopoly money. It is supported solely by the confidence of the investing public. No net. The printing presses are still working overtime. The only criterion is confidence in America. What could go wrong?

    Well . . .

    . . . for starters, we could bite off more than we can chew. Assuming endless resources, can we convert them? Do we have the present ability to do so? And if not, why print money as if it were free? Because if you print money as if it were free, pretty soon, it will take on the chief characteristic of being “free”. It will loose value.

    “But we have a war machine and a welfare state to support?”, you say.

    Methinks you’re slightly overextended. To the tune of trillions of dollars, actually. $60-70 trillion in long term, unfunded obligations as we speak. That’s a significant problem.

    I suggest you start believing in the miracle of the fishes and the loaves, because you’re going to need an exit strategy.

    Nonetheless, it’s not as bad as it might seem. It’s really only a matter of transformation of resources into usable forms. But this continues to elude us. Siberian oil is a rough example. How do you get to it to bring it into use?

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/100823089

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-20/siberian-surprise-russian-oil-patch-just-keeps-pumping

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Russia

    If you understand what that last link means, if it is true, then you are quite intelligent.

    So in the long term, even the Sunni Muslims are not a problem. Nor is the Wild West.

    Just how bad will it get before it gets better? As bad as mankind wants to make it. That’s the deal. Forbidden fruit. We think we know good and evil. There was no evil on earth until the serpent intervened.

    The Apocalypse is like the Bhagavad Gita. It is a way to theosis. But it is layered. How much happened in the first century of Christianity, as opposed to subsequently, as opposed to the near future, is anybody’s guess. One can attain theosis by reading and re-reading things like the Apocalypse of St. John or Mystical Theology of the Orthodox Church while one is laboring for his daily bread. It is only a matter of deeper and deeper understanding. At some point, one will want to move onward and upward from these too.

    Bear this in mind: God has allowed a great deal of suffering in the world to date. Orthodoxy has taught for some time that the millennium is between the Ascension and Second Coming. This is true. There is a millennium within the millennium too. It is the history of the “Byzantine Empire”. There is a latter day Christendom as well which had to fall as the last chains were removed from that one. That was the fall of Tsarist Russia.

    Now it’s a whole new ballgame and a reboot is imminent. But there will be a time of troubles before this comes. No need to guess when it will begin. The time is short.

    There is no need for conflict between China and Russia. They can cooperate to their mutual benefit. Christ is in Pure Land and Chaan. I’ve seen Him. Fr. Seraphim Rose said as much in his works.

    There is no need for conflict between Russia and the United States either. Russia is secure in the Russias, in its sphere. It can trade and form Eurasian partnerships and move onward and upward. A new Tsargrad, if the Lord wills it. The problem is world poverty and deprivation, Sunni Islam and Secular Progressivism (along with Western religion and irreligion). I have not encountered anything else that cannot be resolved into Orthodox Christianity if their adherents are patient and can bear a completion of their faiths.

    Cheers

    • George Michalopulos says

      As usual, Misha, you’ve given us a lot to chew on here. If you would, I really have to take issue with your claim that the petrodollar is not the driving force behind the removal of Saddam and Ghaddafi.

      While it’s true that Saddam provided ample excuses vis-a-vis human rights abuses to do him in, his atrocious activities during the Iran-Iraq war somehow didn’t inflame our moral sentiments. As for the gassing of the indigenous Kurds, he took his cues from Tiananmen Square and Bush the Elder’s toasting of Deng Xiao-ping. Then there are the rampant human rights abuses inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israelis.

      I’ll grant you that Saddam’s abuses were of a magnitude or two greater than what was meted out by the Chinese and the Israelis but we’re only talking about differences in degree. I still think Saddam’s interest in switching to the Euro for his oil exports had something to do with why the US felt it had to pull the trigger.

      As for Ghaddafi, his proposed development of the gold-backed dinar is the only thing that makes sense of the West’s policy to take him out. Even in light of the catastrophic events that we suspected would be unleashed our leaders felt they had no choice. That’s scary and it shows to me just how precarious our economic situation really is.

      • George,

        Like I said, it’s possible that they were taken out for the very reasons raised in the video. I do not discount that possibility. But I tend to think that things aren’t as clean and are more messy than people make out in their theories. There’s a lot to reality, even if it can be boiled down.

        I like the petrodollars theory in general. It is just that I don’t rely on one thing to explain everything else in terms of motivation. For example, I’m sure Saddam Hussein’s fate was sealed the day George W. Bush became president. Hussein tried to kill his father. That’s all the reason he needed, believe me. Hussein was a dead man walking as soon as the Supreme Court rendered its decision putting him in power.

        With Ghaddafi, you may be right. I always wondered about that myself and it does make sense. Ghaddafi was being a relative good boy regarding the whole terrorist thing. He had repented to a considerable extent. He did have his own political theory though – jamahouriya, or something like that. Not exactly democracy but an authoritarian representative communalism. It makes sense that he would look at oil from a national welfare perspective. That may be all that was needed to get him killed.

        For the larger picture, petrodollars is also relevant. But it is bigger than that, George. Petrodollars is in the big picture and may be the equivalent of say, cotton, in the Civil War. However, there is a greater spiritual struggle going on that merely dances around the false prophet of oil.

        • George Michalopulos says

          Misha, as usual, you’ve given us much to ponder. The only fly in the ointment re Iraq and Bush the Younger is that there were reports early in his administration that he wanted to undertake a rapprochment with Saddam as we had him pretty much where we wanted him.

          To this day, I don’t think he actually wanted to take us to war (I’m trying to be fair here). According to Bob Woodward, even when he was getting ready to authorize force, he forced George Tenet (the CIA director and uncle of the present Patriarch of Jerusalem) to be honest about Iraq’s WMD. In Woodward’s book, Bush was very reluctant about his WMD but Tenet assured him that “it was a slam-dunk.”

          Of course the neocons had engineered a plausible scenario. I believe that at the end of his tenure, Bush realized he’d been had by these odious people and that’s the reason that he refused to pardon Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief-of-staff. Colin Powell likewise resented bein used and that’s why he stabbed McCain in the back when he came out and publicly endorsed Sen Obama.

          • George,

            Do you remember the scene in The Godfather where Michael says, “I’m with you now, pop.?”

            What gets lost in the mix, and why I thought getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good idea at the time, though nation building I knew was a fools errand, is because he had the audacity to contract a hit on the former President of the United States for what he did in office. Bill Clinton made a serious error in not taking out Saddam Hussein after the plot was discovered. You simply can’t allow that to go unpunished. It’s dangerous. You have to hand him over to his worst enemies at that point.

            You see, it could put a chill on what other presidents do. “What if my successor would not protect or avenge me?” That is the game the Democrats have played for sometime now and Europe has played right along. International “criminal” prosecutions against administration officials, even presidents, for things they did in office. That is an invitation for other leaders to run our foreign policy.

            Bush, Jr. did the right thing regarding Saddam Hussein in the sense that he had to die at the hands of those whom he feared and tortured. It was just. But the nation building was infantile stupidity on a massive scale.

            • George Michalopulos says

              I see your point. Taking out Saddam should’ve been done via covert ops though.

              • Well, they found him in a “spider hole”. I can see that with the doubles, etc. it may not have been easy. Yet they should have done it in the cleanest way possible while leaving someone we could work with in charge, with that I will agree.

      • George W. Bush told the world his entire rationale for attacking Saddam Hussein just a few months after he took up residence in the White House. I heard this bit of text myself, on KCBS News in San Francisco, from GWB’s own lips:
        “I’m gonna get Saddam Hussein for what he did to my dad.”
        And everything thereafter, including giving Sec. Colin Powell completely bushwa “evidence” to present to the U.N., was subsidiary to that statement.

        • George Michalopulos says

          Vesta, if that’s true (and I have no reason to doubt your veracity) then that means we as a nation are totally screwed. You are talking about a conspiracy so vast and long-lasting that it includes the Supreme Court.

          • Common knowledge.

            George Tenet lied and 4000 died.

            Watch video of GW, you can skip ahead to about 1:15 or so, I think he says it at 1:21 or so…

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmATUzBwxY

            • While I am sure it is common knowledge, I’m not convinced it is true. What happened, really, is that Saddam Hussein desperately wanted the world to think that he had WMD because he saw that as a deterrent to Iranian and US aggression, just like nuclear weapons. He was a macho Arab. He had to save face to stay in power so he skirted everything he could get away with. On the original Kuwait thing, he may even have received what he thought was a green light from that ditsy Madeline Albright.

              All the other intelligence agencies, including the Israelis, thought that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s. He would not lift a finger to try and disprove it because he wanted the impression to linger. It was a matter of survival to him.

              Now, did he have them? Maybe, maybe not. He may have had them in mobile sites in separated components, but in large enough quantities to be able to be useful to him. They found some evidence of that. However, such sites could easily be moved into Syria in the event of war. There was evidence of that movement as well. He may not have wanted to actually use chemical weapons extensively on American troops for fear of the backlash if he was captured by us or by anyone else in the area. He just wanted the deterrent. And we might never know the whole truth. But there was some truth to the “yellow cake” story in Africa and other things being stated. It’s just that it wasn’t the whole truth.

              The fool’s errand was nation building. Replanting democracy in a region that had never even gotten to Magna Carta, and with a religion aggressively hostile to the rule of the people unguided by divine writ. Serious error there. We should have decapitated the government and assured that another strongman whom we could deal with emerged quickly as firmly in control. We could then pull what troops we had back to bases around the oil fields, fund and arm the new government, and be done with it. But no, neo-cons have to “make the world safe” for Israel.

              Idiots.

              • You have to weigh and balance motivations to see the truth.

                What would be more motivational to Bush Jr? Avenging his father and his father’s error in crushing Hussein in Iraq or Hussein’s theoretical wmd?

                The answer is simple. Any personal matters are motivators-the rest of the story makes it acceptable to the world. I think you have forgotten Mr Blix. No? If my recall us correct; they were unable to find any traces of wmds. And we still attacked.

                • It was personal and underfunded by the taxpayer.

                • But they definitely did find mobile labs with elements separated and there was a lot of traffic across the Syrian border. I haven’t forgotten anything.

                  Nonetheless, wmd or not, Saddam Hussein had to be dealt with because of the hit he put on an American President. He died an awful death at the hands of those he oppressed. That’s justice.

                  Now, what happened to Iraq as a result of Amercan nation building was certainly not justice. However, it actually worked out in a way in the long run despite all the carnage. Iraq is now Shiite controlled and in league with Iran. That is a good thing. It is no longer really a part of the Sunni problem except to the extent that ISIS and the Sunnis are still operating there.

                  Shiites and Sunnis are very different. More different than most people give them credit for. That is why Russia makes nice with the Shiites but keeps the Sunnis at arms length. There are treaties and polite relations, to be sure, but it is different. Shii Islam is much closer to Christianity than Sunni. You would have to know a lot about how it is organized, its mysticism and its eschatology to understand that, but its true. Sunnis will tell you that it’s all the same, that the Shiites are just a minor sect.

                  Shii Islam is only a small minority of Islam but it is an Islam that either was what Muhammad initially had in mind, if he were someone whom God chose to lead the Arabs and Persians to Christ, OR a correction of what a demon conveyed to Muhammad implemented by the Persians who could see the reality behind the whole matter. Regardless, Shii Islam resolves into Orthodox Christianity much more easily than does Sunni Islam. By its eschatology, Sunni Islam does not resolve at all. It is perpetually inimical to Christianity. Shii Islam places an intermediary figure in the picture. The Mahdi. The Rightly Guided One. Jesus, in Shii eschatology, will merely assist this Mahdi.

                  This is significant because the Islamic Jesus will be the Christian Antichrist. Whoever will be the true Antichrist, the Muslims will recognize as Jesus returned. But the Shii have someone above this Antichrist who is supposed to help him teach the “Christians and Jews” true Islam.

                  This is all a very stealthy way of getting everything resolved in Orthodoxy. It has a lot of twists and turns, but He works in mysterious ways.

    • Isa Almisry says

      “Methinks you’re slightly overextended. To the tune of trillions of dollars, actually. $60-70 trillion in long term, unfunded obligations as we speak. That’s a significant problem.

      I suggest you start believing in the miracle of the fishes and the loaves, because you’re going to need an exit strategy.”

      I shall have to remember that cogent remark.

  4. Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

    I didn’t watch the video because I’ve never approved of American Imperialism, while that title seems to approve of it. Question: WHO is calling to “spread” democracy throughout the Arab world WHEN? [“Why do we continually hear over the decades a call to “spread democracy” throughout the Arab world?”]
    Saddam Hussein bombed, invaded, and used mustard gas against Iran. The blatant use of mustard gas qualifies Hussein as a monstrous OUTLAW. {“Why was Moammar Ghaddafi taken out as leader of Libya, and before that Saddam Hussein in Iraq?”]
    No one is trying to take down the Assad DYNASTY [“Why is it necessary to take down the Assad dynasty in Syria?”], but only that one member of that dynasty who as President of Syria uses poison gas on those Syrian citizens who want him out. He thinks that his politically correct protection of some Syrian Christians GIVES HIM A BLANK CHECK TO DO ANYTHING! Referring to a “Christian Holocaust in the Middle East” indicates a misunderstanding of what a holocaust is in terms of quality and quantity of murders, and it (deliberately?) diminishes what Jews endured in Christian Europe! The Coptic Christian population of Egypt has advanced to 13 million from eleven million ten years ago! “HOLOCAUST?” Where is any Christian suffering in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with its hundreds of thousands of Armenian andAssyrian Christians with their splendid Churches and shrines and elected representatives in the Parliament (Majlis), and with its St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Tehran? And what is this nonsense about Iran’s “theocrats”? [“Men who constantly humiliate us and our President at every turn.”] The only (unsuccessful of course) attempts at humiliating our President are made by the congress dominated by the Republican party, especially that ignoramus, Senator Tom Cotton who surpaassed George M. by complaining that Iran has become so aggressive that “they have already taken over Tehran!” (and he’s an Ivy Leaguer!)

    It IS true that we have shamefully, for almost a century, been allied with oily Saudi Arabia, with the most anti-Christian government on earth which provided the money and manpower for 9/11 and which forbids our Jewish and Christian armed forces chaplains to even wear their OFFICIAL Cross or Star of David collar insignia in Saudi Arabia, and requires that services be conducted behind sand dunes or any place else that will shield Saudi Arabian eyes or ears from having to behold them!

    • George Michalopulos says

      I don’t believe that Your Grace is being fair: I don’t think this video is laudatory about “American imperalism” as much as it is being dispassionate about it. I’ll grant you that Nixon’s gambit was a masterful geopolitcal stroke but we must remember the dog’s dinner he was saddled with. I think his main objective was to get us out of Vietnam (which he did). And to make sure that the USSR was contained.

      Like all masterful gambits it has outlived its usefulness. Like NATO for example. Eisenhower, the first head of NATO saw it only lasting for 10 years and he begged JFK to end it.

    • Your Beatitude: I cannot agree more with your words,
      “It IS true that we have shamefully, for almost a century, been allied with oily Saudi Arabia, with the most anti-Christian government on earth which provided the money and manpower for 9/11 and which forbids our Jewish and Christian armed forces chaplains to even wear their OFFICIAL Cross or Star of David collar insignia in Saudi Arabia, and requires that services be conducted behind sand dunes or any place else that will shield Saudi Arabian eyes or ears from having to behold them!”
      Every time I hear a Muslim trying to cast him/herself in the posture of a victim, I strengthen my mind with the knowledge of Saudi Arabian policies regarding non-Islamic persons:
      –No Bibles may be in possession of anyone entering or leaving the KSA.
      –No churches, synagogues, or other institutions of non-Islamic religious observance may be constructed, maintained, or repaired.
      –Any Western woman who has work in the KSA must be completely covered up in transit to and from work or while otherwise publicly visible (I got this one from my sister-in-law, who worked in Saudi as a nurse in the late ’90s/early ’00s.)
      Your information about the insignia of office being forbidden from public wearing is, sadly, more of the same.
      “The kafir must be made to feel his lesser status,” is definitely the prevailing philosophy of the KSA, as it was of the founder of this ideology, Muhammad. Islamic Supremacy is in the DNA of the Koran/Quran; simply open one at random and you’ll find verses/surahs about how “we” are to be destroyed. Deepest irony, though, is that the holiest object in the Ka’aba is believed to be a metorite, together with large idols from the time of Muhammad.
      I have long pondered in puzzlement the way the U.S. has maintained its long and close friendship with KSA, given KSA’s subjugation of women, its non-existent human rights laws, its religious intolerance, and the rest.
      Victims, ha!

      • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

        Vesta, Saudi Arabia’s main enemy is neither Israel nor America: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran which has large Armenian and Assyrian Churches with hundreds of thousands of members, an even more ancient Jewish community, with synagogues, attached Hebrew schools, delicatessens and, along with the Christians and Zoroastrians is represented by official elected representation in Parliament (Majlis). Today one may note that the Captain of the Iranian football team is a Christian who sometimes is filmed crossing himself during matches. American tourists might want to visit the popular pilgrimage sites, Esther’s Tomb, and Apostle Thaddeus’s Grave church. Patriarch Kiril of the Russian Church continues the dialogues with Iran’s Islamic leaders which was begun under the previous Patriarch Alexi. Of course, the REPUBLICAN establishment in the U.S. is solidly behind Saudi Arabia against Iran.

  5. M. Stankovich says

    Mr. Michalopulos,

    Exactly how many abortion clinics were able to tour in your whirlwind vacation? Russia continues to statistically overwhelm every European nation – and pointedly, the US – for medical abortions on demand in the first trimester, and with virtually no impediment or impunity through the second. The availability of oral contraceptives is said to be less than 25% in major cities, too expensive for most women to even consider, and the quality and reliability of condoms for men the subject of jokes & memes. Nevertheless, the Patriarch of Moscow – with the Moscow District reporting one of the highest abortion rates in the country – has not publicly addressed the matter in more than a year. Holiness in the “motherland” is apparently measured in increments of denial.

    • As I have shown in previous posts, abortion in the RF has declined precipitously. The Church and lawmakers are also constantly pushing new restrictions. Take the log out of your own eye before you try to remove the splinter from your brother’s.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Even if the RF is not succeeding in reversing the abortion rate (and they are) the fact remains that both Church and State are open in their displeasure of this procedure and actively working against it. Think of how different that is from the US, where even pro-life politicians have given up the fight and all the major institutions actively promote it.

        • Mr. M: I rarely respond directly to your comments (posts, yes! but comments not too often).
          You may find it heartening–I did–that many recent funding bills, both on state and federal levels, separated “health” functions from “abortion.” Indeed, Planned Parenthood (on whose mailing list I am for observational purposes) solicits its list strongly for funds so that abortion services can be maintained. This, to me, says that the restricted funding is proceeding as we are told it will.

        • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

          George, if, as you write, “both Church and State are open in their displeasure of this procedure and actively working against it,” why isn’t it ILLEGAL?

        • Which major institutions actively promote abortion?

        • Michael Warren says

          Yes, we are well aware of your pro abortion political statements stated here in defense of Planned Parenthood funding and in condemnation of Pro Life Orthodox action.

          The russophobic fraud goes on. … But only the foolish and the most ideologically depraved of liberals are left to believe anything you have to say.

      • M. Stankovich says

        I would have thought it predictable to assume that my comment would be grounded in the fact that I have no investment in melodrama, such that I am strongly of the opinion that one “vineyard” planted at the Right Hand of the Master is every bit as efficacious as another; and that my opinion of such matters would be shaped on data:

        Sedgh, G. et al. “Abortion incidence between 1990 and 2014: global, regional, and subregional levels and trends.” Lancet, Volume 388, No. 10041, p258–267, 16 July 2016

        In case you were unaware, The Lancet is a British medical journal generally seen second in influence only to the New England Journal of Medicine. This is an excellent study by reason of both methodology and content.

        As I re-read my original post, I never disputed the “precipitous decline” of the abortion rate in Russia, but I certainly challenge your insinuation of a specific correlation with moral or “religious” influences; the “precipitous decline” is decades in the making, and a strong case could be made for “patriotism” in the face of a severe population decline as the most significant motivational factor. Further as this new study reveals, highly restrictive abortions laws – “Church and lawmakers are also constantly pushing new restrictions” (and Patriarch Kirill was quoted in 2013 as saying,”Russia’s ability to stand up in the face of modern pseudo-values depends to a large extent on the active stance of Russian parliamentarians”)

        are not associated with lower abortion rates. When countries are grouped according to the grounds under which the procedure is legal, the rate is 37 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age; where it is prohibited altogether or allowed only to save a woman’s life, compared with 34 per 1,000 where it is available on request, a non-significant difference.

        The fact is, the number of medical abortions in Russia has been halved in the period of this new research study – from 88 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44, to only 44 – but this is still 85% higher than the medical abortion rate in North America, and the rate has changed by only 8% since 2010. There were nearly 950,000 officially reported medical abortion procedures – a number widely held as purposely under-reported – in 2015. Medical abortion continues to be available as part of the free healthcare package of mandatory medical insurance at state hospitals, and from private facilities. Every insured woman over the age of 16 can request free termination of a pregnancy within the legal terms. The deputy health minister of the Moscow region, told the NY Times just this month that 85 percent of the time, the decision to have an abortion is the independent choice of the woman and done for reasons other than health: housing problems, strained finances, absence of husband, other children present in the household. The Patriarch said, “If we could just cut in half the number of abortions, there would be steady and powerful demographic growth.” It has been halved, there has not, and he has apparently “given up the fight.”

        The suggestion that in pointing out the splinter in Russia’s eye I am missing the log in my own eye is ludicrous, indeed. I am suggesting you are, in effect, doing exactly the opposite by attempting to argue away the base similarities. “Salvation has come to the world…” we sing, and where you seek it is where you shall find it.

        • Yes, Stankjoshka,

          But I am not the one who is Russia bashing in bringing up the abortion rate in the context of George’s otherwise positive recon mission. I merely pointed out that Russia’s abortion rate is in precipitous decline. You agree. So you had no point to begin with, apparently.

          As to salvation being wherever you look for it, that is not true. Salvation is in Jesus Christ alone. Orthodoxy has a perfect icon of Our Lord, no one else does. That is the difference, and that makes all the difference in the world.

          And, in case you haven’t noticed, America is far from being an Orthodox country. The lip service you seem to accuse Russia of paying to Orthodoxy would be a good start here, but we don’t even have that. Just crickets.

          No one disputes the proposition that the Church has an increasingly central role in Russian society either. In fact, progressives there lament the fact on an almost daily basis, as to the minions of the evil one here, like Kasparov, et al. I know Russians. None of these guys are concerned about V. V. Putin. A strong man will always lead Russia if it is healthy. The only question is which strong man. Those who decry Putin’s autocracy have other candidates in mind.

          Regardless, the Western, failed form of government cannot prevail there. It is too close to their former, negative experience in much of its rhetoric. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and gave it to Goodwill.

          So dream on Russophobes, Mother Russia is reborn and isn’t going anywhere. Would that America could become reborn. But the prevailing powers do not believe in such things, only “reinvention”.

          • M. Stankovich says

            Truly, there are just times you need to abstain from “commenting” on a topic a bit over your head.

            “In case you haven’t noticed, America is far from being an Orthodox country?” Um, yeah, precisely as set forth in our Constitution, separating church and state. You’re the lawyer, but I snagged this point in 6th-grade Civics. But how in the world are you able to reconcile “Holy Russia” and imply “the Church has an increasingly central role in Russian society” when there are more than one million state-sanctioned medical abortions yearly; a service included as a “no additional cost” benefit under the healthcare benefits package of the majority of working women in Russia. And you would refer to me speaking of this this horror of a travesty of Orthodox morality and the sanctity of human life as my “bashing” Russia and “Russophobia?” Michael Warren is dead. Long live Michael Warren.

            • George Michalopulos says

              Dr S, that’s a rather facile analysis. The several States which joined together to create the Constitution were already themselves overwhelmingly (Protestant) Christian in demography, ethos and culture. They could conceive of nothing else given their respective mindsets.

              The First Amendment was crafted to ensure that the national Congress would not establish a national Church, not prevent the various States from enjoying or creating for that matter their own respective state churches.

              • Reality Checker says

                The First Amendment was crafted to ensure that the national Congress would not establish a national Church, not prevent the various States from enjoying or creating for that matter their own respective state churches.

                Well, yeah. My guess, however, is that had they envisaged, say, a church of Oklahoma, a church of Texas, or the church of Utah, even the Masons & Deists and Jews would have had grave second thoughts about the language of 1A. Might even have run screaming to Rome.

                • George Michalopulos says

                  RC, you really don’t know American history, do you? I guess that’s why you can’t answer my question about Papa Joe Kennedy.

                  • Reality Checker says

                    My neighbor’s cat could probably answer your stupid and irrelevant question about JK Sr. I doubt you could cogently answer mine about your point in asking it.

                    Let me speculate on that, though, help you out a bit. I made an aside about Trump’s grandfather, who we know made his pile in “hospitality,” during the Yukon Gold Rush in Seattle and British Columbia. You post a tangential and typically inept retort, asking me about a former bootlegger who got himself appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James, i.e., a dazzlingly iconic social climber. Presumably intending thereby to special plead a lame tu quoque. But I’m guessing here. In short, you smuggle in a guy from the other party, and his ancient history, which is completely peripheral to that thread’s discussion — which you may or may not recall concerned Trump’s character, fitness and qualifications for the Presidency.

                    By elongating this trail of transparently evasive BS harassment ad nauseam, your tactics are obvious: you hope you can sidetrack your low-info, short-attention-span habitués. You hope they won’t notice that you continue to evade the real serious and highly pertinent questions that were raised. Like: What’s behind your zealous pimping for Putin’s foreign policy? For one example, as playing out in Ukraine, where it’s contrary to the interests and wishes of the majority of the Ukrainian people, who want to cast their lot with the European Union and the rule of law rather than kleptocrats.

                    But you’re not going to answer the question, for the simple reason that no decent, honorable answer is possible. You fool no one. Except yourself, maybe.

                    Spare me your vague, bluffing slurs. Yeah, I knew the Constitution doesn’t exclude state churches, clown. And that there were such churches in some of the colonies turned states. But then Texas, Oklahoma and Utah didn’t exist at the time, did they? And who could have imagined . . .

                    • George Michalopulos says

                      RC, I’m glad to hear about your neighbor’s cat being able to answer my question, if you get him on your laptop maybe he can type the answer for you.

                      You can’t seriously bring up the word “kleptocrat” in the same sentence with support for Hildebeast. Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation, quite possibly the greatest money-laundering operation in history.

                    • Reality Checker says

                      You can’t seriously bring up the word “kleptocrat” in the same sentence with support for Hildebeast. Ever heard of the Clinton Foundation, quite possibly the greatest money-laundering operation in history.

                      This is an egregious case of grossly deceptive, libelous rhetoric.

                      U.S. Treasury Dept. definition:

                      Money laundering is the process of making illegally-gained proceeds (i.e. “dirty money”) appear legal (i.e. “clean”). Typically, it involves three steps: placement, layering and integration. First, the illegitimate funds are furtively introduced into the legitimate financial system. Then, the money is moved around to create confusion, sometimes by wiring or transferring through numerous accounts. Finally, it is integrated into the financial system through additional transactions until the “dirty money” appears “clean.”

                      You’re skating on very thin legal ice here. Given how the term money-laundering is typically bandied about these days, for you to charge The Clinton Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization, with being ” …the greatest money-laundering operation in history” is to accuse them not only of having illegally obtained money, but furthermore, money which is itself profit made from the commission of serious crimes such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, illicit arms trade, extortion rackets, illegal gambling, smuggling, prostitution, and so forth. Dubiously assuming that using well-defined terms in accord with conventions of proper English usage matters to you in the least. So let’s hear some examples of such sources of income to support your assertion, please.

                      After you’ve failed to come up with anything remotely supporting your hysterical assertion, and recanted your libel, we might look into the meaning of “slush fund” and so-called “pay for play” and see what evidence there is for that.

                    • George Michalopulos says

                      I can bring up the word kleptocrat when speaking about Mdme Clinton and will continue to do so. You know who else is feeling the heat about the Clinton Foundation? Clinton herself who informed us that she is going to close it down if she’s elected president. And also The Huffington Post, is feeling the heat as well as The Boston Globe and The New York Times.

                      I’ve already said two years ago that the Oligarchy will somehow push Clinton over the finish line. However things are far more volatile now than they were two years ago thanks to Mr Volatility himself. I would be very careful about the various “gold standards” you are viewing as Gospel. According to some of these same “gold standards” Bush was supposed to lose Ohio in 2004 (and thus the election) and Romney was a “lock” in 2012.

                      True story: at the Y every morning I commiserate with a very distinguished gentleman about 10-15 years older than myself. Very successful, investments, stocks, bonds, etc. He’s a self-described “thoughtful liberal,” a “U-U” (Unitarian-Universalist), etc. Very much a man of the world. He’s not happy with Hillary, knows all about her corruption but says that Trump is “dead in the water.” The prediction markets, everything. The GOP will hold the House but not the Senate.

                      I told him “not so fast.” He said, I’ll give you 10 to one odds that the Senate will go Dem. I said, “I’ll take that bet.” He said, let’s keep it civil, how about you bet $1 and I’ll bet ten? OK sez I. “That way, when the GOP loses the Senate, all you owe me is $1, if I lose I give you ten.” We shook hands.

                      I said, let’s raise the stakes re the presidential. “Same odds, I’ll give you ten if I lose, you give me a hundred.” We shook hands.

                      Then we started talking some more, I told him about the Brexit and how the prediction markets were completely wrong. I told him about Biden and how his son is on the board of directors of some Ukrainian oligarch’s oil company and that’s what’s behind the Eastern Ukraine crisis. He didn’t know that. He also didn’t know about Nancy Pelosi and how her husband is president of Monsanto and how Putin screwed Monsanto over.

                      About 15 minutes later, he said, “let’s modify those odds. I don’t feel right about those odds when the prediction market only give 3-2 or 3-1. I’d feel guilty.” I said, “you shouldn’t, I can afford $10. It’s just two happy meals at McDonald’s.” He insisted that we make the odds less dramatic.

                      The question is why? That was two weeks ago. he should have been confident. In his shoes I’d have given 20 to one odds. Since then Hillary’s health has plummeted, the Clinton Foundation is stinking to high heaven, and God knows what else.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      You mean the Ukraine where the US/EU overthrew a popularly elected government to install a genocidal, Uniate, banderofascist, colonial regime against the will of the peoples of the Ukraine?!

                • A number of states had state religions at the time the 1A was ratified. It says “Congress shall make no law . . .”, not the states. Like I said, states had their own religions until 1833. They didn’t have to “envisage” anything. It was right in front of them.

                  • Reality Checker says

                    The counterfactual case wherein the Constitutional Convention’s attendees actually envisaged, preternaturally, the sort of state churches likely to emerge from the following absolutely non-existent, theretofore undreamed of entities, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah, was the explicitly phrased context framing a point you seem to have missed, though I know not how. That my implicit suggestion would elude you, however (re: the mysterious nature of such entities), is more understandable. That is what I meant they might well have had difficulty envisaging, since even today we have serious difficulty with that. This mystery is the core of my point, if that helps.

                    “. . . My guess, however, is that had they [viz., the participants in the CC] envisaged, say, a church of Oklahoma, a church of Texas, or the church of Utah, even the Masons & Deists and Jews would have had grave second thoughts about the language of 1A. Might even have run screaming to Rome.”

                    I stand by this point.

            • Anonymous M. Stankovich,

              What part of “not a democrat” do you not understand? I am not a small “d” democrat. I literally, seriously and sincerely believe that democracy, Western style or otherwise, is a very bad way of governing. I would much, much rather have a monarchy or a system with a very strong executive and at my first convenience, I will become a citizen or subject of such a country.

              And I realize that we have an “Establishment Clause” in the Consitution. But it was put there to prevent the Federal government from picking one Christian denomination and making it the official religion of the United States. The individual states had their own state religions up until about 1833 when Massachusetts became the last state to voluntarily abolish theirs (Congregationalism). There was no such thing as separation of church and state in American law until the Supreme Court began reading it into the Constitution in the 1940’s in a fit of anti-Catholicism. Look it up, that’s the legal history of it.

              “Establishment of Religion” is a legal term of art. It had a fixed designated meaning at the time it was used in the Constitution. It referred to adopting one particular version of the Christian faith as the official religion of the state, funding it exclusively and making service in public office contingent upon being a member in good standing of that church.

              “Google” it if you have further questions, Stankjoshka.

            • Michael Warren says

              The whole abortion in Russia red herring of this unread dilletante was gone over and answered already: he was shone to not only be wrong but an intentionally slanderous liar.

              This vile russophobe neither knows anything about Russia nor Orthodox theology. In fact, he is a poor representative of the Renovationist think tank in Crestwood which spawned him. His rank hubris mingled with liberal hate is about as relevant as the legacy of the Syosset which allows him to ooze his vitriole.

              Hillary’s party accuses Russia and the Russian church “of engaging in a war on women.” Because Russia is wrestling with the Western liberal, American, social doctrine of abortion on demand. Although Russia has a greater incidence of abortion than some countries, let us rember a few things:
              1). Abortion had been illegal in Russia until the “liberal social reforms” of Kruschev hailed by the liberals in the West, including Americans, as “positive democratic steps.” Mind you the American government today insists on abortion rights being part of US foreign aid. Russia is not invested in the murder of unborn children on the international stage and domestically acts to combat abortion.
              2). The current Russian government and the Church have undertaken steps to “make abortion rarer” inaugurating programs to encourage and subsidize larger families, helping to alleviate the economic strains of pregnancy: ie, subsidizing families to have children to avert abortions.
              3). This ignorant russophobe was called on this propaganda before where American Pro-Life sources were documented as praising the efforts of the Russian church and the Russian government to turn back the pervasive Western liberal abortion culture of death. He was shown to be a slanderer and liar then and he was shut up.
              4). It should be taken into account that this mendacious slanderer has defended Planned Parenthood in the past: a). Arguing against Congressional defunding of this group after it was caught red-handed trafficking in the vivisected remains of human children.
              b). Arguing that it wasn’t the business of Orthodox Christians to involve themselves in the policy of the secular state, hatching bogus arguments as to the secularization of the Church’s mission involved in participation in public policy.
              5). Yet he tries to disparage the Russian church and government for not moving fast enough to undo the societal damage of the very liberal policy for which he cloaks advocacy? He defamed +Metropolitan Jonah for publicly opposing abortion. … Of course, this has to do with masking the failure his Renovationist party brought to the OCA, trying to obfuscate the clear ascendancy and primacy of the Third Rome in the Orthodox world. His party of failure and Eastern Rite Protestantism wants to chart a course to Reformation with Istanbul despite the dwindling presence and authority of that apostatizing, Uniate body. A good percentage of the OCA is done with his Renovationist nonsense and wants authenticity and fidelity in its place. Ergo he tries to disparage them and feebly fan flames of russophobia to prevent the sure coalescence of a new Russian party. Persecution of sober episcopal candidates and clergy notwithstanding, Stinkovitch and his liberal, ecumenist reformers in Syosset and Crestwood are the obsolete and failed past. It is only a matter of time and organization before their deleterious legacy will be rejected, overturned, and the American church be putback in track. Arguing with him is like debating with a homeless alcoholic the merits of temperance and labor.

              I want to make this plain at the outset. I respond here encouraged by the blog owner. I had ceased participation and encouraged others to do so because the personal attacks and fraud of a perpetual group of Eastern Rite Protestants came to be not worth my time (or theirs). You can only answer and show a fool and his friends to be wrong so many times before realizing that in his desperation the jerk will stop at nothing, including outright fraud and slander, to spew his nonsense. The likes of poseurs like Stankovich are best answered by silence to avoid giving legitimacy to their fringe drivvle. He and his friends, clerics in convalescence and those ridiculously ignorant of the concepts of autonomy and the role of brotherhoods in sobornost, are Eastern Rite Protestant malcontents without a context who are best served in the Episcopal church which has realized their ecclesiastical vision. I encourage them to go where they belong as they certainly are not legitimate voices of Orthodoxy.

              • M. Stankovich says

                Mr. Michalopulos,

                Michael Warren writes:

                I want to make this plain at the outset. I respond here encouraged by the blog owner.

                This confirms my long-held suspicion, and is all I need to know. I want to make this plain at the outset: One invites filth into one’s home because it matches the motiff. If, somehow, under your blazing Oklahoma sun, you have imagined encouraging Michael Warren, Scott Pennington, and monk James as counterpoints to me, 1) you blatantly & shamefully – as a faithful, encouraging, and supportive, long-time participant in your site – insult me to my face; and 2) you have foolishly selected from the Minor Leagues in attempting to do so.

                Brothers & sisters, prepare yourselves for the right-hand column to be nothing more than a “laundry” list preparation of what Scott Pennington, while playing “parody,” has to say; what Michael Warren demands you believe & say; and the monk Tartuffe insisting how you should say it (being the ace language guy and all).

                But you won’t find me.

                • George Michalopulos says

                  Dr S, I invite many correspondents to comment if they have been mentioned and I see no response from them (for whatever reason). Some correspondents I don’t have to invite to respond as they readily defend themselves or their position at their earliest convenience.

                  This is a courtesy I extend to many, not merely Mr Warren. (Who I must admit provides a penetrating analysis even if I don’t agree with everything he writes. He has certainly expanded my horizons vis-a-vis Russia.)

                  Several years ago I wrote a rather long monograph disputing a historical analysis by a well-known Orthodox historian. I sent him the monograph before I published it as a courtesy as well. I find it difficult at this stage in my life to write such long essays anymore but if I do, and if it is one that takes issue with earlier essay, then you can be sure that I will send it to the author of the piece that I have taken issue with.

                  • George, the problem with Michael Warren isn’t just what he says, but how often he says it. There have been times that he has taken up nearly the entire recent comment sidebar. An isolated incident wouldn’t be a serious matter, but this would go on for days and weeks.

                    Once a post reaches a certain number of comments, the vast majority of new comments that get read and responded to are ones that appear in the sidebar. (This was more obvious when we had thumb votes.) When one person is taking up most of that sidebar space by commenting over and over, that person is hijacking the discussion. For others, the issue is not just that the hijacker makes for dull reading, but that there is little point in adding to a one-sided discussion. When the board is less of a dialogue than a monologue, why bother going to the trouble of composing a comment that no one will see?

                    I honestly found it hard to read Monomakhos until Warren finally quit posting earlier this summer. I was simply sick and tired of every visit here becoming a compelled viewing of the Michael Warren show.

                    George, if Michael Stankovich and I are seeing eye to eye on something, it means hell has likely frozen over, but also that it’s likely to be about something essential. I am not going to stomp away and insult you like Stankovich did, but I had to tell you that Warren has negatively impacted my experience here. Monomakhos has been critically important as a free forum to discuss current events in the Orthodox Church, but the discussion is not free as long as Michael Warren is able to center everything around himself.

                    • George Michalopulos says

                      Helga, I don’t know the principals involved. I’m just an Okie who runs what’s come to be a very popular blog in the Orthodosphere. Anybody is invited to participate provided they keep things as civil as possible. I would no more evict Mr Warren than I would Dr Stankovich or yourself or anybody else.

                      Free speech isn’t pretty at times but the only antidote to free speech one doesn’t like is more free speech.

                    • George,

                      Helga has a point here with which I largely agree, albeit for different reasons.

                      I must say that Mr. Warren’s comments are often worth reading if he would simply refrain from childish name-calling and personal attacks. It isn’t primarily his point of view or the previous volume of his comments that is offensive; it is his attitude toward those who disagree. He could learn from Misha whose comments here often match MW’s past volume but are largely free of loathsome personal attacks. It is one thing to disagree – even vehemently at times – and to make one’s point. It is quite another to treat the image of God in other persons as worthless trash to be crushed as an unwelcome insect. I suspect this is what our Lord had in mind when he said,

                      “And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.”

                      And lest Mr. Warren feel that he is being singled out for this criticism, he is most certainly not alone in being a serial offender on this forum. I would even admit that, toward the end of his previous rapid-fire commenting spree his words were generally more circumspect in this regard.

                      Free speech and its proverbial antidote may be an American virtue in terms of political discourse, but perhaps a blog that purports to be an expression of Orthodox Christianity might consider this as a reasonable standard of moderation – an editorial watch, as it were, before our mouths and a protecting door round about our lips, someone to cover our shame when we fail to exercise self control on our own. One whose comment has not been posted as a result of such moderation could then recognize the reason and re-post his comment free of this passion of personal attack.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Mr. Michalopulos,

                      I have to believe that having been head-to-head with you on these matters, you would not imagine it difficult for me to take your responses seriously.

                      Free speech isn’t pretty at times but the only antidote to free speech one doesn’t like is more free speech.

                      Michael Warren referred to me as a “jerk,” but so did Fr. Patrick Reardon. I did not respond in kind to an ordained Orthodox Priest, but you censored my response regardless. In fact, you have routinely censored my responses to Fr. Patrick, Fr. Hans, Fr. Alexander Webster, Mr. Banescu, and so on, and it quite obvious that you had notified them of a comment made referring to them, and published their response ahead of everyone else. Certainly this your privilege, Mr. Michalopulos, it’s your show; but it certainly would make the appeal to free speech disingenuous. I have been here more than five years, Mr. Michalopulos, and you’ve never notified me once. Speech is not free when it is manipulated.

                      Finally, as one who “runs what’s come to be a very popular blog in the Orthodosphere,” what is your responsibility, Mr. Michalopulos, as an Orthodox Christian, to defend and promote the Truth/truth. And it would seem to me important to note that running parallel to the column of discussion on this site is the symbol of Him who is the Truth. Two other popular blogs have a rule that, if you would accuse another Orthodox Christian, it is incumbent upon the accuser, not the accused, to corroborate their accusation; that is after all, the explicit instruction of the Holy Scripture and the Holy Fathers (and the reason monk James was permanently banned from another forum). The truth is not “sketchy nor vague,” difficult to discern, nor subject to endless dispute: “But above all things, my brothers, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yes be yes; and your no, no; lest you fall into condemnation. (Jm. 5:12) As I have said for five years, as the threshold for truth falls, the level of chaos rises. No one but you can stop this.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Firstly, my posting to defend myself after a liberal gang of Syosset-Crestwood tried to shut me down was not intended to either monopolize the discussion nor to prevent anyone else from sharing her opinion. As I recall you did indeed share your opinion intimating that documented evidence where +Alexander affirmed Uniate ecclesiology was not as important as finding out the content of his confessions and the reasons for his discipline by his spiritual father. I stopped posting precisely because of that low level of discourse.

                      Secondly, third person personal attacks very much indicate your intention. You seek to censor opinions you disagree with and set parameters for discourse you find comfortable. While I simply would ask that proven slanderers, people who distort Orthodox theology, who traffic in personal attacks when it is clear they have nothing else to say, people espousing Eastern Rite Protestantism in the place of Orthodoxy, those clearly engaged in fraud should be called on it and if the incidents of this type of immoral, sectarian behavior be aggregious enough, be excluded from polite discourse. I find it disagreeable that such a simple standard meet cowardly resistance.

                      Finally, I have no intention to either now or ever force anyone to read my statements. They may be ignored, perhaps without such fanfare. But if a handful of sectarian frauds defending the Uniate paper trail of one of their own by defaming me seek to engage in a campaign of defamation of character, I most certainly will defend myself and act to end it.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      So Mr. Brian has an issue with “childish personal attacks” yet has no problem with their chief offenders, Stankovitch and CO. Since I don’t engage in namecalling but truth in labeling, let me set the record straight. Those who fabricate figures to engage in anti Russian agitprop are properly referred to as russophobic, frauds, even jerks. Those who contrive plastic anthropologies arguing the deifying merits of gay sex using long and decontextualized quotes to namedrop are rightly called liberal, gay crusading hacks. Those who rely on redaction to intentionally decontextualize literature to serve their agenda often missing where their material even contradicts them are diletantes. Those who argue the merits of BEM, Uniate ecumenical consultations, holy scripture reinterpreted in relativism to promote reformation are rightly termed Eastern Rite Protestants. So too are the ersatz catechists who insist on forming converts in pew and organ obeisance to a liberal elite at war with a two thousand year old legacy of orthopraxis observed in 95%+ of the Orthodox Church they term “fundamentalist.” Such people ARE RENOVATIONISTS and poisoning souls and are not Orthodox but sectarians.

                      Now Stankovitch anywhere else would have been banned in disgrace for advancing his bigotry by fabricating figures he was proven to have intentionally provided to mislead and defame others. Since that is the MO of his desperate party, that indeed makes him a jerk, a liar, a bigot. I have only acted to delegitimize their heterodox misrepresentations of Orthodoxy here.

                      If the shoe fits…

                      Now, Brian, I don’t know you, and I don’t care to, but if the best you have to offer is a personal attack levelled against me insisting I conform to your or even Misha’s sensibilities, I can honestly state you aren’t prepared to engage in free discussion which challenges, even rejects, your view of the world. When you leave your bubble, you will realize the real world when it speaks honestly does not subject itself to a biased, liberal filter. Up until that point, your rude, third person attack levelled against me is simply ridiculous.

                      Now I have contacted the owner and made it clear that I won’t allow you liberals to jump me without defending myself. I have underscored that is my threshold for participation here. So if the owner decides to encourage your liberal message discipline by not allowing me to respond to you in kind, you can be rest assured I won’t intrude on your liberal pep rallies. But be reassured that even at 10 – 1 you lost the argument in the marketplace of ideas and needed censorship to float your tired and sectarian points of view. That does not bode well for you and yours in free discussion. Let’s be honest-free discussion is what you all are too fundamentally weak in your positions to engage: that’s why you demand censorship. Your worldview is obsolete.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Mr. Michalopulos,

                    I guess the operative word in your statement is many, as you never extend me this courtesy when others were “mentioning” me.

                    If I may offer you a “penetrating analysis, Mr. Michalopulos:

                    The whole abortion in Russia red herring of this unread dilletante (sic) was gone over and answered already: he was shone (sic) to not only be wrong but an intentionally slanderous liar.

                    This is not a factual assessment of a significant research article published in the British medical journal, Lancet. This is an imbecilic insult directed at me personally. Do you, in all sincerity, Mr. Michalopulos, believe Michal Warren read the article from which I excerpted? Do you, in all sincerity, Mr. Michalopulos, believe Michal Warren has better data than what I I excerpted? And do you, in all sincerity, Mr. Michalopulos, believe Michal Warren that I have intentionally misrepresented data from an internationally published medically journal?

                    Is there a single living, breathing human being, Mr. Michalopulos – especially yourself – who can directly quote me defaming Metropolitan Jonah for publicly opposing abortion? Arguing against Congressional “defunding” of Planned Parenthood? Is there anyone but me who accurately described the “cult of medical miracles” that subsists on the sale & trade of human body parts & tissue specimen? Can you name another person on this site except me who has brought to everyone’s attention the fact that major vaccines for the prevention of childhood diseases come from a genetic source based on an aborted fetus line? Or that kidneys extracted from a live human fetus were transplanted into a rat – God forgive us! – in what is called the “future of transplant medicine?” Or that the technology exists – and is now in use in at least one known experiment in China – focused on splicing human germ cells, at the very base of our humanity?

                    And say it again to me, Mr. Michalopulos: “I invite many correspondents to comment if they have been mentioned and I see no response from them – This is a courtesy I extend to many, not merely Mr Warren. ” He, Michael Warren, has expanded your horizons, Mr. Michalopulos? Shame on you for even speaking to me in such a manner. Shame on you. I strove to bring light here, and you align yourself with creeps who have already driven away the best of the contributors you had.

                    • Peter A. Papoutsis says

                      Michael,

                      What do you think of the new Genetic Deletion/addition technology that has come about along with the new Chimeras in embryology that scientists are now destined to perform given the ban on such research has been lifted? To say that I am nervous is a universal understatement. May God have mercy on us as we are about to embark on a road that we should not travel.

                      Peter

                    • Michael Warren says

                      This slanderer was answered in a long post showing he fabricated figures to intentionally promote russophobic propaganda denying the reemergence of Orthodox Russia. When he was shown to be a liar, a total fraud, he lost all credibility in advancing any given analysis of Russia. He is a proven russophobic bigot.

                      I provided months ago articles from American Pro Life sites praising the Russian government and the Russian church for acting to reverse the culture of death and abortion received from the West, America, under Khruschev.

                      This last desperate voice of Crestwood ignores both my entire reply, the response which discredited his russophobic bigotry and the historical context of abortion in Russia.

                      He also ignores his not so closeted advocacy for Planned Parenthood and animus toward Pro Life policy in American politics.

                      What more needs be said to reject this semiliterate fraud, Stankovitch?!

                      Attacking my spellchecker is now a rebuttal?!

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      What should be occurring, in a robust forum of Mr. Michalopulos’ contes de mes vacances, is an honest discussion of the contradiction of “appearance” verses reality in Russia:

                      1) You simply cannot suggest a more pervasively moral “society” in Russia versus the United States, per se, when the on-demand medical abortion rate is 85% higher in Russia. State-sanctioned murder of an innocent fetus has absolutely no “context” but murder, and it is occurring at the rate of greater than 1,000,000 times per year, simply for the socio-economic convenience of women.

                      2) American pro-life sites can site the ROC for praying for rain in the Sahara Desert to equal success: the rate of “reverse” of abortions in Russia in the past six years – for which there is any documented evidence of a the ROC’s systematic adressing of the abortion issue is less than 8%, which is statistically insignificant. An achieved survival rate of 8% for a new cancer medication would be considered a failure.

                      3) As is customary, when you have nothing – and I mean nothing – by way of intelligent, documented (an actual citation or reference), factual data to offer, you are forced to claim “fraud” – and in this case, data derived from one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world – and to attempt to discredit me personally.

                      And this, Mr. Michalopulos, is the reason you extended this imbecile Warren a “courtesy” contact to return to your blog because you have been so “enlightened” by his insights about Russia? Is this the portend of every ensuing discussion to come, Mr. Michalopulos? “What more needs be said to reject this semiliterate fraud, Stankovitch?!” Really?

                    • Michael Warren says

                      1 ). BUT YOU HAVE SPOKEN OUT AGAINST US POLICY TO DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD AFTER THEY WERE CAUGHT RED HANDED TRAFFICKING IN THE REMAINS OF UNBORN CHILDREN AND EVEN ATTACKED ORTHODOX LEADERS IN THE USA FOR PUBLICLY PROTESTING THE EVIL OF ABORTION AND EVEN CONDEMNED THEM FOR INVOLVEMENT IN US POLITICS? Yet Russia and the Russian Orthodox church pursuing a Pro Life trajectory are not moving fast enough for you?!
                      2). YOU HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO FABRICATE FIGURES IN THE PAST FOR YOUR PERSONAL LIBERAL, RUSSOPHOBIC CRUSADES AND ARE A PROVEN LIAR. We all know how Pro Life and Russophile British society and think tanks are. Britain, a country which demonizes the Pro Life movement as “extremist.” A country which insists on “abortion on demand as a human right.” Britain, a nation which covers up such things as banderofascist immolations of peaceful protestors in trade human buildings to “deprive Russian propaganda of a forum.” You russophobic hacks are desperate and craven.
                      3). SHOW US WHERE US PRO LIFE SITES ARE PRAISING THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT AND RUSSIAN CHURCH FOR PRAYING FOR RAIN IN THE SAHARA. SHOW US WHERE THIS IS A POLICY OF THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. PROVIDE LINKS. If the Russian Church and Russian government were indeed praying for rain in the Sahara that would be a sign of the reemergence of the Third Rome AND THE STATE EMERGING FROM MILITANT ATHEIST SECULARIZATION TO PROMOTE A FAITHFUL ORTHODOX SOCIETY. While in America (and in Britain) militant secularism defines marriage rights for homosexuals, bathroom rights for crossdressers, narcotics rights for drug addicts, incestual rights for families. You shout at Russia and the Russian Church from a Sodom and Gamorah whose policy record you have publicly defended. It is time for you to leave, liberal, russophobic hypocrite.
                      5). Russia forbid, outlawed, abortions until Khrushchev. Russia punished abortionists and those who obtained “legal” abortions prior to Khruschev. The West argued that was “totalitarian and repressive Stalinism,” hailing Khrushchev’s legalization of abortion as “progress in human rights.” Britain and the USA coerce abortion and family planning as conditions of foreign aid. Your political orientation sees limiting abortion in public policy as “a war on women.” It is time for you to take your russophic circus act elsewhere.
                      6). For its part, the Russian church lobbies the Russian government, promotes public policy to encourage the limit and banning of abortion. The Patriarch exercises pechalovanie in combating this moral evil. The Putin government has begun subsidizing married couples to have larger families and educating the populace about abortion to end it. The Russian government is pursuing policies to restrict abortion. The abortion rate has fallen. In the USA, your Kenyan emperor has written funding abortion into his Obamacare and forces Catholic and Orthodox institutions and employers to pay for it going so far as to take them to court to do so. Your liberal democrat fellow travelers in their platform this year call for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment forbidding government funding of abortion. You have liberal spokespeople popping up on CNN, Ashley Judd, celebrating their two abortions, encouraging young women to have them. In NYC, over 70% of babies conceived by minorities are aborted. In New York-New Jersey area, over 30% of all babies conceived are aborted. This is seen as civil rights in action by your sick and twisted liberal, AMERICAN political persuasion. And you will not take this beam out of your own eye in addressing abortion in Russia because it is a bedrock, a sacred institution, of your American liberal political persuasion. How dare you defame Russia and the Russian Church for acting against abortion when you politically crusade for it in your Western Sodom and Gamorah culture?!

                    • Pat Reardon says

                      Michael Warren referred to me as a “jerk,” but so did Fr. Patrick Reardon.

                      Father Patrick apologizes and seeks your forgiveness.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Do trust, Fr. Patrick, that mine was a statement of juxtaposition, not in a classification where you do not belong.

                • Michael Warren says

                  Let me take this opportunity to amplify my denunciation of this disgraced Crestwood russophobic nothing and brand him Renovationist hostis humani generis. That goes for his fellow sectarian creatures, regaled in fraud and serfs indentured to Eastern Rite Protestant agitation. The gauntlet is thrown down…

                • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                  M. Stankovich, you’re spot on here, but we Americans should all sympathize and have mercy on the Trumpites and Putinists who have all had a couple really bad weeks, and Trump seems even to be dropping out and only pretending to want to be elected, for if there’s one thing Trump will NEVER do is reveal his income tax returns,,,never, ever! If G. Michalopolos reaches out in desperation to the Carpatho-Russian Rumpelstiltzkin of down west side Detroit it’s like a sub-Saharan desperately trying to get across the Mediterranean to Italy with the assistance of the Owl and the Pussycat!

                  • Michael Warren says

                    This is precisely indicative of the unread, liberal stupidity I am denouncing. The abortion on demand, war on women banner is taken up and given an imprimatur from a convalescent, fringe, clerical clown in Los Angeles charging forward with a rainbow flag for Hillary to protest Putin’s rejection of American social liberalism by shouting abortion is still legal in Orthodox Russia. Orthodox Russia, which has to be overthrown so that Hillary, Obama can liberalize it and “enlighten it with American (or is it Kenyan?) democracy” (pilfer, colonialize and enserf Russia). A crusader against Orthodox morality attacking Putin for not signing on to American immorality. Let’s be clear-the russophobes in the diaspora hate the new Russia because it is arising in Orthodoxy in defiance of their debauched and murderous, Western liberal worldview. But they aren’t very competent even in coordinating their slanders as they contradict one another in slapstick parody with inconsistencies and ad hominem hatred for Russian Orthodox voices: the desert sun has baked the collective brain of Eastern Rite Protestant trolls to produce this rabid drooling.

                    Here it is coupled with an attack upon Carpatho-Russians (because every Russophile to a banderofascist or their liberal allies must be Carpatho-Russian, except for the Little Russians, Belorussians and Great Russians in the old Metropolia which these unfortunate liberal russophobes arrived from the margins to replace). The Kuban and Carpatho Rus’ do not share a common geography, dialect, culture, or history. Neither does Orel. But they are constituents of Great Russia, and have been for centuries. Of course, history, geography, common sense, truthfulness were never the hallmarks of the enablers of banderofascism.

                    Somebody must be switching the meds out or drugging the babyfood at the old folks home for retired (sic!) meta-bishops in LA. But, honestly, who really cares?! This raucous, geriatric fringe supports the liberal social engineering and colonial program of Hillary Clinton: that in and of itself amplifies my point, indicts Stinkovitch as a fraud, and illustrates precisely how sectarian and non Orthodox these failed Renovationist, russophobic relics are. Checkmate.

                    • Checkmate?

                      High rates of abortion are typically well correlated with low use of contraceptives-a complex phenomena if you think about it(duh). If you accept crude data, the rates of pregnancies ending in abortion are about double in Russia vs the US (citations found for 60% vs 22%, but probably not that wide a spread). And most likely it is because women in Russia are not spending money or do not have money to spend on pregnancy prevention.

                      Ironically, abortion is probably more expensive than contraception. But the hope I don’t get pregnant method is free.

                      All the church really needs to do is tell women to use contraceptives. This alone would be the simplest way to reduce abortion in a country with a high abortion rate. Of course, this gets all bogged down in details about which contraceptive method is considered abortion to the point more abortion procedures get performed, etc. And lo and behold, the ROC made a statement in 2010 approving condoms(we all know how bad most men despise using tires for pregnancy prevention). But since the anti-abortion movement decided any method of contraception that ends a started cell division is abortion; the real credits for higher abortion rates and a stymied church directing women to use any contraception instead of getting abortions belong to the …drum roll please… liberals. What a figurative money shot! And imagine all the people you can get to join your movement.

                      And in Warren’s World, that’d be Russophobe, Renovationist, non-Orthodox, sectarian, clerical clown, Eastern rite Protestant troll, hostis humani generis (enemy of mankind) liberals. I’m pretty sure I missed a few.

                      Using contraceptives of any kind should be promoted, but most likely if the church just said condoms were okay in 2010, the culture is really behind on that discussion. We were taught to use contraceptives back in the 70s. I get why blaming liberals is a better plan. It is far less embarrassing than truth.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Checkmate was spoken accurately because it answered his points and showed him to be a hypocrite without either substance or honesty. You seem to be making the same errors, but you are at least unashamed to profess your liberalism, even smugly dogmatic in doing so. Let’s go into that.

                      Your liberal contention is that the Russian state and Russian Church must adapt Christian morality to suit your liberal sexual revolution. It makes the russophobic and ignorant argument that birth control is somehow neither available nor affordable in Russia, while in all actuality it is cheaper than in America. You also deliberately choose to miss the historical context of abortion in Russia which had been illegal until Khrushchev, but then was imported with the Western sexual revolution in the 1960s. Then legalized abortion was cast as “democratic reform, progress.” It was hailed by the West as “a step forward.” You argue the Church and state must further embrace Western, liberal conceptions of sexuality and then teach people who have had access to affordable condoms and birth control pills on how to use them, rather than promoting Orthodox Christian morality and subsidizing pre-natal health and larger families. That is fundamentally where you admit you neither know the Russian context nor even respect Russian people. Russia, until recently, had a negative demographic trend and was losing population. Birth control is, thus, not Russia’s priority, but, rather, stable, population growth is. Abortion in Russia occurs either as, sadly, a matter of convenience or a matter of crisis pregnancy, not because birth control is either unavailable or unaffordable or something Russians are too ignorant to know how to use. The Orthodox Church is Pro Life and has no place for the San Francisco values you feel it should embrace. The Russian state is reemerging in affirmation of traditional values as the Third Rome. In Russia, the Church and state have endeavored to educate the populace about abortion, act to limit it, and subsidize families to have and raise children. That is the priority. Your liberal fellow traveler said that is not the case. You argue it is unfortunately the case. …

                      Russia already educated the populace about contraception under Lenin… Russians are aware of how to get contraception and use it, and they can afford it. So I think speaking at Russia from a liberal bubble convicts you of the same russophobic bias shared by the liberal fraud you are defending. And just a word of advice-Obama/Hillary San Francisco values paternalism is the last thing Orthodox Christians and states either must embrace or even entertain!

                      So, in sum:
                      1 ). It is not the Church’s business to adapt Christian morality to cater to modern Western, liberal, sexual immorality. San Francisco values, liberalism in toto (and any “conservatism” which reinforces Western social engineering), and Orthodoxy are irreconcilable.
                      2). Russia has a declining population which makes birth control counter-productive to the interests of the Russian state. So your San Francisco values demands on the Russian church and state are coming from another planet addressing a crisis without a Russian context and demanding a liberal degenerate solution. That is not only inappropriate, it is offensive. But that is the typical MO of craven Western, McCultural colonialism.
                      3). The Russian people have been aware of and had access to affordable birth control since Lenin. The contention that Russia and Orthodoxy are not enlightened enough about birth control is steeped in ignorance, liberal hubris, and underscores the incompetence of immoral, Western liberals in addressing Russia.
                      4). The Russian Church and state are actively engaged in both combating abortion and addressing the demographic crisis: your comments obliquely admit that to the detriment of your fraudulent, russophobic fellow liberal. You, however, have a problem with the Russian church and state in any way reinforcing Orthodox morality and insist on accomodation of liberal, Western sexual mores. So you offer admission that an Orthodox Russia is emerging but that is offensive to your Western, liberal, intolerant sensibilities. This all evidences that Russia is indeed acting against abortion in a way which reflects Christian morality demolishing the contention that the Russian Church and state are not combatting abortion. Your contention is they are not liberal enough and not in touch with your Western standard of sexuality, immorality, that they are too conservative. Hence, you contradicted your friend, addressing me with a yes/but to say the Russians “should get with it” and get on board with your anything goes, Obama/Hillary model of sexual profligacy. The Russian church has to bless Woodstock free love according to you to adequately address abortion. Again, that San Francisco values solution and Orthodox morality are mutually exclusive.

                      Thank you for making my point and contradicting your liberal, fellow travelers to advance your strident, liberal plan for sexual revolution in the Russian Orthodox church foisted upon the Russian state and culture. Unlike your russophobic, liberal pals, you were honest in stating that an Orthodox Russia is precisely your ideological problem which must conform to the social policies of the Obama administration. You ground your critique in a colonial demand for Sodom and Gamorah 2.0 whether or not Russians are “enlightened enough to realize it is in their best interests and what they must do.” You and Hillary are the Western liberal messiahs Orthodox Russia must embrace to create a society with which your liberal worldview will dialogue. A cheap, colonial pastiche. You have reinforced my contentions. Indeed, checkmate.

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      Warren made this comment about me “Here it is coupled with an attack upon Carpatho-Russians ”
                      I have never ever attacked Carpatho-Russians.
                      I referred to Warren as a “Carpatho-Russian Rumpelstiltzkin,” That’s all. WHY DOES WARREN HATE BEING IDENTIFIED AS A CARPATHO-RUSSIAN?
                      I’m not asking him because he’d try to elevate himself by claiming someone is ‘stalking” (tee-hee!) him! Delusions of grandeur–there’s a technical term for them in one of the social sciences—-anybody?
                      Oh, yes, I agree with Father Helga on the matter of Warren’s incontinence.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Your intention is to insult me by calling me a Carpatho Russian in that I have stated that I am not and have made clear my ancestry. You wish to disparage my All-Russian orientation by limiting it to the Rusin movement. I support that movement, but it is not reflective of my heritage.

                      My ethnic heritage firstly is none of your business. Secondly, you don’t share it. Thirdly, your crass russophobia and unread ignorance have repeatedly disredited anything you have to say about Russians and Ruthenians and their history. Especially since you can’t even appreciate what these terms and identities embody historically. Pushing quack, Uniate, Galician agitprop, which is part Goebbels and part Vatican, discredits anything you have to say about this topic. Finally, your tactless behavior and traffic in personal insults to push a FAILED, LIBERAL, RUSSOPHOBIC AGENDA underscores how inappropriate and unstable you are and how you are unfit to even claim to be a retired, Orthodox churchman. You are an embarassment to the OCA, to Orthodox converts, even to American liberals. It’s about time you reflect on the fact that you were retired in disgrace for being an abusive, virtual bishop who was a liability to the Orthodox mission in North America. To me you are an eyesore and out of control, irrelevant, liberal disgrace.

                      I laugh to scorn how people calling for censorship to promote liberal, message discipline squawk when they fail miserably in advancing their agenda when they have 4, 6, 10 to 1 odds in their favor, then clearly are proven to be wrong repeatedly, even outright dishonest and answered in such a way which highlights their ineptitude even illiteracy in addressing topics, double down on the same, poison the well, Syosset-Crestwood, Eastern Rite Protestant, russophobic GIGO. These people are ignorant clowns. Now, on issues of birth control, Russian history, Orthodox teaching and policy this sectarian FRINGE will shortly be answered, and the outcome will be painful yet again in detailing the fraud. Old folks home episcopal failures, cereal box meta-educated Stankovitch, banderofascist Reality, San Francisco values Anonymous, et al. have quite a rough patch coming. I look forward to finally breaking the back of this fringe, LIBERAL canal of hate. And I will. In the next few days, we will witness the beginning of the end of their knuckle dragging, mouthbreathing, sectarian hate.

                    • Here’s the thing about contraception: Russia also has a demographic problem. So reducing the abortion rate through promoting contraception might seem like a good idea, and it would certainly be an improvement of sorts, but still the icon is skewed.

                      The thing to do is to encourage reproduction, marriage, childbearing, childcare, etc. Make it profitable. Marriage bonus. Child bonus. Free daycare. Mothers’ unions for collective childcare so that mothers/wives can go and take care of domestic matters.

                      It may be necessary to redivide the workplace, not in a draconian way but in a sorting type way so that women are focused on domestic matters and men are focused on income. Less women in the workplace would drive up wages – smaller pool of prospective employees. Also, control of borders would be necessary so that jobs could not be filled by foreign nationals, depressing wages.

                      Overpopulation as a problem is simply a false meme. Demographic winter is a greater danger. That is the current problem in Western democracies, for instance.

                      But all of this is what happens when you get away from the Law of God which is quite patriarchal.

                      Here is a Harvard review of Demographic Winter. Notice, she never actually confronts the data:

                      http://kathrynjoyce.com/articles/review-demographic-winter-the-decline-of-the-human-family/

                • Monk James says

                  M. Stankovich (August 18, 2016 at 3:11 pm ) says (after several other absurdities):
                  ‘Brothers & sisters, prepare yourselves for the right-hand column to be nothing more than a “laundry” list preparation of what Scott Pennington, while playing “parody,” has to say; what Michael Warren demands you believe & say; and the monk Tartuffe insisting how you should say it (being the ace language guy and all).

                  ‘But you won’t find me.’

                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                  Well, THAT’S a relief!

                  Michael Stankovich routinely gives evidence that he mistakenly thinks that everything is somehow about him. In reality, it’s not.

                  But — because he thinks it is — he expects everyone to engage his ideas here and elsewhere even if other correspondents are not so inclined. But MS can’t stand to be ignored (a purely subjective feeling on his part) and so occasionally goes off on a disrespectful toot like this one.

                  I forgive him without reservation nd I ask his forgiveness as well. May the Lord forgive us both and us all.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    I hereby grant you, Tartuffe, and every soul otherwise inclined & paralyzed, freedom and unconstrained release, now and for all times, from any obligation, unidentified force of action, compulsion, or narcotizing expectation to pay attention to me. Youze free, monk James. And the moment you man up and apologize for you gross errors regarding endocrinology (the facts of which the FDA/CDC reaffirmed 2-weeks ago in their annual safety & efficacy review of contraceptives for women in the MMWR), all debts will be paid in full. Truth is the issue – not you, certainly not me – truth.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      I thought you were leaving because your Syosset – Crestwood, fraudulent, Renovationist message discipline was being rejected and you were called on being an agendized, russophobic fraud?

                  • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                    Monk James, try not to turn into a spiritual showoff!

                • Oh, my goodness! I’m so fortunate as to have read that meltdown by Anonymous M. Stankovich. Truly inspiring, George. We are amused.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Wow, Scott, I don’t know what came over me. The sun was in my eyes. Someone took control of my faculties. I thought about asking George to delete it, but he doesn’t do that anymore… Wait! That wasn’t me. That was you! Ha! It was all a parody!

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Wow, Scott, I don’t know what came over me. The sun was in my eyes. Someone took control of my faculties. I thought about asking George to delete it, but he doesn’t do that anymore… Wait! That wasn’t me. That was you! Ha! It was all a parody!

                    • Michael Warren says

                      To them who do not accept with a pure and simple faith and with all their soul and heart the extraordinary miracles of our Saviour and God and of the Holy Theotokos who without stain gave birth to Him, and of the other saints, but who attempt by sophistic demonstration and words to traduce them as being impossible, or to misinterpret them according to their own way of thinking, and to present them according to their own opinion,

                      Anathema! Anathema! Anathema!

                      -The Synodikon of Orthodoxy

                    • Sometimes, Stankjoshka, I wonder if even you have any idea what you’re talking about, let alone anyone else. But that’s what I love about you. A true wild card – random events generator.

        • Michael Warren says

          If abortion were so disagreeable to this russophobic fraud he would support Congress defunding Planned Parenthood for trading in the remains of unborn chidren. He would support North American Orthodox Pro Life action. He would recognize, as North American, Pro.Life groups do the campaign in Russia by the Church and government to deal with abortion. He wouldn’t engage in fabrications of figures and russophobic agitaprop to do so. And he couldn’t ideologically be liberal.

          But, no, he is a russophobic hypocrite, a liberal fraud with an Eastern Rite Protestant agenda…

    • M. Stankovich says

      So, Michael Warren, Scribes, Pharisees, & Hypocrites, Attorneys at Law, I apparently am worthy of of your time and obsessive effort, and we’re back to your fiery, boring, and repetitive accusations of my felonies against your raisin-in-the-sun “Holy Russia.” Let’s be straight: I don’t give a rat’s ass about Russia. It means nothing to me and you are preparing yourself for a CVA over the wrong fool. Flourish like the Cedars of Lebanon, Russia! Dress Putin as the Emperor and and let him come for Communion at the altar. What do I care? Warren, put pins on your hat, stand at the rail station and point East like Lenin at Zurich, you fraudulent poseur, and you will still be in my prayers. What is it my business? If you and morons like you imagine you will be saved by associating your weak egos with the soil of a “mythical” Pasternak novel, be my guest. Russophobic? You left this forum because you were nailed to the wall as a liar and imbecile. Period. Moving on…

      ἰδοὺ γὰρ ἀλήθειαν ἠγάπησας! You love the truth! (Ps. 50:8) Anyone – and I mean anyone – who loves the truth can put themselves aside, debate, tolerate mistakes they might make, and even accept correction and apologize for error. Better that I feel temporarily embarrassed, Michael Warren, then someone believe something from me that is incorrect, or even harmful. You obviously do not share this belief, and you willfully fabricate and lie to meet your needs. You are even incapable of keeping your own grandiose pronouncements not to address my posts lest someone mistake you for bestowing “credibility.” Here’s my thought: redouble your effort and strengthen your commitment. Man up. You will not control nor dictate what, nor when I write on this forum. Ever. If Mr. Michalopulos feels no responsibility for you openly ridiculing a Bishop of the Orthodox Church – warned by St. Chrysostom as analogous to offending the Lord Himself, and whose glory, we are are told by St. Ignatius Branchianinov, if we could see it, “surely you would fall down” – you would realize that filth reigns. Don’t even wash your hands. You’re a big league influence in World Orthodoxy, Mr. Warren. That’s why the OCA faithful rose and booted out Bishop Alexander… Oh, wait. They didn’t do any such thing. The “we” you spoke of apparently consisted of Mr. Michalopulos. And Brian. But you insulted the living hell out of him today… Small world.

      • Michael Warren says

        The russophobic, Eastern Rite Protestant, defeated meltdown continues.

        A liberal fraud who is found lacking and dishonest on every point of contention and propagates a Western liberal Renovationist overthrow of Orthodoxy has lost all credibility and shown himself to be nothing but an incompetent Syosset-Crestwood mouthpiece resorting to namecalling when he is repeatedly discredited.

        Russia, the Third Rome, is the future of Orthodoxy. Syosset-Crestwood Renovationism is a failure, a banal episode which will be swept into the dustbin of history with its fringe, Eastern Rite Protestant 1% AND FORGOTTEN.

      • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

        Michael, Rumpelstiltzkin is a devotee of the Putino-Papistic ideology ruling Russia today. Abortions REMAIN LEGAL under Putino-Papism, and NOBODY publicly denounces them as immoral. Nobody enacts a law against abortions in Russia, and there is NO public campaign to make abortions illegal there: Russia, the World Capital of Abortion!
        I love Russians and Ukrainians in equal measure—they, at their best, very much resemble Americans, in that both see “the big picture” They have BIG HORIZONS —the Steppe, as we have BIG HORIZONS – the Prairies! Rumpelstiltzkin diminishes Russia and Russians as persecuted weaklings desperately needing his support——-on Monomakhos!. I hope his foot doesn’t get stuck in the floor as he stomps!
        Putin reminds me somewhat of some tribal big shot–not Russian at all–something left over from the Horde.

        • Michael Warren says

          Must have shorted the pudding at the Old Folks home. North American Pro Life groups have praised the efforts of the Russian government and the Russian church in combatting abortion. While Eastern Right Protestant meta-Bishops who support Hillary Clinton’s crusade for abortion rights “to fight the war of women” and affirm the Pro Choice/Pro Infanticide politics of liberalism seen to lack all moral authority in addressing abortion in Russia.

        • Michael Warren says

          Must have shorted the pudding at the Old Folks home. North American Pro Life groups have praised the efforts of the Russian government and the Russian Church in combatting abortion. While Eastern Rite Protestant meta-bishops who support Hillary Clinton’s crusade for abortion rights “to fight the war on women” and affirm the Pro Choice/Pro Infanticide politics of liberalism lack all moral authority in addressing abortion in Russia. Hypocrisy and ignorant russophobic innuendo only amplify the illegitimacy of an argument made against abortion in Russia by a person who by his political convictions votes for abortion as policy in his own nation. Endorsing infanticide as an Orthodox churchman no less.

    • Michael Warren says

      Russophobic propaganda answered often here, where this fellow shown to be fabricating figures, ignoring historical facts and current events in Russia, ideologically caught in applying double standards, and intentionally perpetrating fraud.

      • M. Stankovich says

        What I do not see not see – what I never, ever see here is a single verifiable citation, a single verifiable article, a single verifiable report of actual data, beyond your furiously pronounced agitation, that I am anything but correct. And, not just simply correct, mind you, but undeniably, irrefutably, based on the best data & evidence available, only a complete idiot would attempt to deny it CORRECT that you have to post six times that you have proved I am a liar. This, Mr. Warren, is otherwise referred to as faggotry, and I, for one, salute you, if only because I appreciate the level and extent of your frustration.

        But until the day you – and anyone like – comes to terms with the fact that light cannot abide with darkness; that a “holy nation” cannot sanction the taking of the life of its most vulnerable in the unborn; that the transcendent music of “symphonia” is “archangelski glas” with voice of the Archangel, “And the angel answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit shall come on you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:35), not “unity” with a government that sanctions murder. You would sell a whitewashed tomb like a cheap car with a bad transmission. You will always be found out, and you will always fail. Our Gos will not bless the deceit of atrocity that cries out to heaven. It is not me, my Russophobia, my anything that should concern you. It is rather the truth. And the truth is undeniable.

        • Michael Warren says

          Except there were over twenty citations, maybe closer to forty, and quotes exposing you for being a russophobe and making things up over three months ago. That deprives you of any legitimacy as you are a libelous troll who doesn’t know what he is talking about. YOU HAVE BEEN PROVEN TO FABRICATE LIES TO ASSERT A RUSSOPHOBIC AGENDA. Being Dan Rather with Alabama ANG memos written on Word for Windows from 1987 insisting they are authentically from 1972 makes you a hysterical liar. Such people only need to be proven as liars once: then everything else is just ideological excess without scruple or truth. You were proven to be a fraud and prevaricator. You were given a red ticket when your russophobic “facts” WERE SHOWN TO BE MADE UP. The rest of your unread, russophobic nonsense from that point lost all weight and became the unhinged hate of an ignorant bigot. So only fellow russophobic hatemongers like yourself take the Klan scat you traffic in seriously, Dr. Crestwood Metzger-Duke.

          • M. Stankovich says

            Five will do it. Five correcting me – five fraudulent that I provided. Let’s see ’em.

            • Michael Warren says

              Then almost forty happened, your fatuous, russophobic fraud was exposed and here you still are spewing your hate Russia, Eastern Rite Protestant nonsense.

              You are not Orthodox. Please shut up and go to the Episcopal church where you belong. They are the only ones gullible and liberal enough to take you seriously.

    • Michael Warren says

      Your ignorance of Russia and admitted Russophobia and documented slander, made up statistics, fraud here is public knowledge. You are a Russophobe, admitted and proven. You are a libera Renovationist with an agenda.

      If you were so concerned with abortion you wouldn’t attack Orthodox action against it in the US and you wouldn’t stand in the way of the US Congress defunding the abortion industry, Planned Parenthood.

      You are here simply to deceive and smear Russia to promote your degenerate liberal ideology and sectarian Eastern Rite Protestant reformation.

  6. Michael Bauman says

    All Empires die, crumble and devolve into dust with only memories left behind to be falsely glorified or falsely demonized depending on the need of the moment in times yet to come.

    What is that to us?

    • Michael Bauman says

      Except to be there to help pick up the pieces.p

    • Thomas Barker says

      Mr. Bauman asked: “What is that to us?”

      It provides a person with root identity. For example, you know you’re Russian if in the back of your mind you’re still at war with Afghanistan, the U.S., Germany, France, England, the Ottoman Empire, the Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, Mongols, Tatars and Khazars.

      • Michael Bauman says

        Mr. Barker, “root identity”. I don’t even know what that means. I was referring to the fall of the American Empire. One thing history shows us is that all Empires fall and die. It is in their very nature just as our bodies are subject to entropy so are all the works of our hands.

        Soviet Russia displayed a rotting Lenin in his tomb. The Church celebrates the empty tomb of the Risen Christ.

        In Washington DC, the Washington monument us constantly being repaired, to site one example.

        In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew.

        Certainly the shared experience of those in the Russian Church, the Greek Church and the Antiochian Church are different in some respects and that gives quite a bit of flavor, but they are similar in more ways.

        ….and we need to reach into what is Western and American so that it can be transformed. We have yet to do that, tending to shun as uncouth anything outside heritage. So we actually become more subject to secularism.

        My “root identity” is in Christ because He alone knows me and calls me to Himself as I am. There is nothing in this world that should define me.

        Only my sin allows that to occur.

        “All things shall pass away, but my word will not pass away”

        • Gregory Manning says

          Michael B.
          What do you mean by this?
          “….and we need to reach into what is Western and American so that it can be transformed.”
          Gregory

          • Michael Bauman says

            We need to find a way to baptize this or at least what used to be our culture. Personally I think that Fr. Moses Berry has a start on it with his work in Ash Grove, Mo.

            The early Church did it with the Greek culture. I realize that our culture is the least hospitable one the Church has ever faced.

            But, using the American ideal of freedom and risk taking and actually reforming those into the Orthodox understanding in the spiritual life might be a start.

            Also, there is a unmet desire for real experience of God. We need to develop a vocabulary that will communicate the reality we have. The triad of purification, illumination and theosis has too many cognates in the fake new age spirituality.

            We need to be traditionally creative to answer the questions in ways that can be heard. Otherwise we will continue to be an import.

            At the very least such an effort would allow us to address the temptations and attacks of secularism more effectively.

            I also believe that Fr. Stephen Freeman is working in that direction but we need others. We need good translators.

            Me, all I can do is live the life of the Church more completely.

    • Michael Warren says

      Thankfully, the Third Rome is rising again.

      • Peter A. Papoutsis says

        Thankfully the Church is already here and this third Rome bs can be disregarded. We don’t need a Russian Gospel, just THE Gospel!

        • Michael Warren says

          We are well aware how in some quarters Unia with Rome is preferred to Orthodoxy, Orthodox fidelity and witness, which is championed by the Third Rome and its civilization. RUSSIA, THE THIRD ROME, which may just be the last society on earth left defending the Gospel in the face of a liberal, Western, anti-Christian onslaught.

          So BS? Yes, indeed, expressed in the words of those opposed to an Orthodox state and civilization. Thankfully, that fringe 1% has no consequence and no future, and the Third Rome will end up in its largesse ministering to these voices of russophobic hate. Some espousing Eastern Rite Protestant Reformation in the Orthodox Church are all too distraught about their mortality and the approaching triumph of Orthodoxy. Kicking against the pricks as always must be a painfully awkward exercise in pride and futility.

          • M. Stankovich says

            Fr. Florovsky keenly observed that, “Byzantium had failed, grievously failed, to establish an unambiguous and adequate relationship between the Church and the larger Commonwealth. It did not succeed in unlocking the gate of the Paradise Lost. Yet nobody else has succeeded, either.” And anyone who ever heard Fr. Georges or Fr. John Meyendorff speak on the topic also know their opinion was, “and no one ever will.” “The gate is still locked. The Byzantine key was not a right one. So were all other keys, too. And probably there is no earthly or historical key for that ultimate lock. There is but an eschatological key, the true “Key of David.” (Florovsky, GF (1974). “Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert” in Christianity and Culture: Volume Two in the Collected Works of Georges Florovsky. Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Company).

            I still await some clear justification by which an Orthodox Christian could reasonably reconcile any formal relationship between the church and state where the state not only sanctions the single greatest provision of medical abortions in the western civilized free world, but pays for them for any female above the age of 16. And adding further insult to this prima facie observation of darkness and shadow, we are told that even mentioning the reality of an abortion rate 85% greater than North America is Russophobic, immoral, prideful, and futile!.

            And while I’m pissed off, let me also register my complaint to those who would take the beautiful, poetic, transcendent, and theological/ancient philosophical term “symphonia” (and I would refer you to the Greek text of the Feasts of the Fathers of the Councils, where their decisions and pronouncements are frequently described in musical terminology, “woven together in beautiful harmony/symphony as hymn sung to God”) and defile it by misapplying it in this atrocious situation.

            “An Orthodox state and civilization?” With the government openly sanctioning more than a million medical abortions on demand to children as young as 16-years of age with no cost, at a rate virtually unchanged since the day this Patriarch assumed the throne, have you lost your mind? “What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? And what has light to do with darkness?” (2Cor 16:14) The only thing painful is to witness the “futile” attempts to avoid this issue in three threads, and watch the sales pitch that Russia is assuming a role of “moral leadership” when their atrocities cry out to heaven.

            • Michael Warren says

              This fraud has been answered on his abortion slander of Russia, where the historical context of abortion in Russia was provided and his russophobic propaganda was answered with the reality on the ground in Russia and found to be an off base, russophobic smear. He himself has declared his disdain and hatred for Russia. He has shown his repeated lack of understanding of people like Fr. Florovsky and Fr. Meyendorff, decontextualizing them for political purposes. He has even been shown to fabricate statistics and engage in russophobic fraud when his arguments fell through. This man is a russophobic fraud and an incompetent liar.

              Symphonia was seen in old Israel with the rule of the Judges and its Kings, where GOD’s blessing fell upon some governments which acted according to HIS will and HIS condemnation fell upon others which did not. Russian and Byzantine symphonia likewise had similar episodes. Emerging Russo-Byzantine symphonia will have similar historical import. But, contextually, to apply a rigid, theocratic standard universally to all peoples, times and places to then go on to say it falls short because x, y, z doesn’t quite occur is to act out of prejudice and irresponsibly prevent the possibility of appreciating Orthodox Christian civilizations, states which clearly evidence symphonia of one kind or another, despite their falling short of the thresholds of artificial, academic ideals.

              Fr. Meyendorff came from a Paris School which both witnessed and affirmed the messianism of Russian Orthodox civilization forged in an overtrown Russian Orthodox state. Fr. Florovsky indicates that with the transformation of the the Tsardom into the Empire especially under Peter I that the pretense of Byzantine political economy and Church-state relationship was rejected for then modern absolutism, but he goes on to chronicle the survival and gradual recovery of Russian Orthodox civilization in subsequent centuries where he himself inserts his Neo Patristic synthesis as a corrective course in the establishment of an Orthodox theandric civilization, sowing the seeds of future cultures, even states, which can be formed in it. Fr. Florovsky’s and Fr. Meyendorff’s words are assessments of the past, perhaps doctrinaire, which don’t limit the future at all, but, rather, try to guide it with Orthodox courses. Following such Orthodox prescriptions can only aid to better appreciate the theandric life and its foundation in a symphonic relationship between Church and state.

              • M. Stankovich says

                I am able to translate the Greek from the Septuagint. Five examples will do it. In my last conversation with Fr. John Meyendorff, he inquired as to my interest in projects of translating Migne PG. 3 examples from the Fathers will suffice here, Mr. Warren. Hop to it, pal. Symphonia is not so easily discovered, despite your loose associations, no pun intended.

                • Monk James says

                  M. Stankovich (August 27, 2016 at 2:11 pm) says:
                  ‘I am able to translate the Greek from the Septuagint.’ SNIP
                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                  Several of Michael Stankovich’s side-by-side garbled renderings which he recently presented here suggest that he is NOT able to do this accurately, although I envy his elegant greek font.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    Oh Madonna Mia! And Tartuffe also accuses empty handed. “Suggest,” I am not to translate the text accurately, Tartuffe? Then why didn’t you rush to defend the integrity of the Holy Scripture with the same vigor you foolishly & arrogantly denounced my commentary on contemporary intrauterine devices? I believed the answer is, “lesson learned.” Lick your wounded ego & recall I just actually defended you in another thread because it is not about you or it is not about me; it is about the truth/Truth. When you attempt to lower this to a level of personal insult, you are inept.

                    • Monk James says

                      Non sequitur.
                      I urge Michael Stankovich to get better at biblical Greek before he again expresses himself on that subject here, or — at least — to stop embarrassing himself by continuing to vaunt his imagined expertise in that area of study.

                      As always, I forgive MS’s tartuffois insulting me, and I ask his forgiveness.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      The insubstantial trinity of faggotry – Tartuffe, Warren, & Pennington – not a genuine, legitimate citation, correction, or quotation from the Holy Scripture, the Holy Fathers, or the Sacred and saving Tradition of the Orthodox Church to correct me. You are the embarrassing case of three heads synergistically compounding the foolishness. For all your accusation, how is it possible you are not able to come up with five simple errors from the extraordinary number of my fraud and mistakes? Five. And please, behold my prediction as to who would dominate the right hand column of this site for anyone first arriving: the insubstantial trinity of faggotry, Tartuffe, Warren, and Pennington.

                      Do you think there is any money to be made sponsoring an abortion clinic tour of Russia for American healthcare professionals?

                    • I’ve never criticized your Greek, Stankjoshka. Not sure what your problem is with me. Certainly not my problem.

              • Michael Warren says

                Did you not get I don’t take russophobic frauds seriously? We have witnessed your acumen in your redacted theolgical quotes which you don’t understand, your fabricated russophobic statistics which are nothing but you showing how much of a dissembler you are, and a bevy of other namedropping, narcissistic nonsense where you present yourself as an expert only to evidence you are nothing but a posing clown who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Plastic anthropologies, patristically claiming “the deifying nature of gay sex.” Fr. Florovsky misinterpreted to teach continual Reformation and not acquistion of the Patristic Mind in Neo Patristic synthesis. St. Cyprian of Carthage not calling for the Baptism of heretics. The agendized, semi-literate buffoonery has no place in serious conversation. You are a hack and a liar.

                I have been clear in defining symphonia as cooperation between Church and state to create an Orthodox culture which socializes a citizenry. I have also aluded to symphonia existing in so called secular, Western, liberal states to describe how secularism replaces the role of the Church in acting symphonically with the state in Western, secular nations. If you don’t understand the concept because you haven’t been educated enough to appreciate plain English or you refuse to understand what is clearly stated, that is your personal hang up and lack of education which has no bearing on this discussion which doesn’t include you. Because you are a fraud. You are a russophobic bigot. You are a meta-educated, Renovationist dissembler who speaks in talking points and can’t comprehend anything outside of your pathetic, liberal paradigm. Here you are shouting it.

                Charles Taze Russell claimed to be an expert in Ancient Greek. Joseph Smith stared into a hat with dirty rocks in it, “seer stones,” deciphering invisible golden plates written in Ancient Hebrew hieroglyphics. Zachariah Sichin translated the Ancient Sumerian cunneiform tablets of the Anunaki from Planet X. All were experts in ancient languages until they were shown not to be. All were loud mouthed frauds just like you. None of you can be taken seriously or should be given a forum.

        • Terry Myles says

          Thank you Mr. Papoutsis – truly just THE Gospel!

    • Very well said, Michael B.!!!!!!

      It all is dung under the outhouse compared to the New Jerusalem.

  7. George Osborne says

    George, I’ve followed you travelogue with interest and now this piece that seems to originate from your experience. Just a thought: are you aware of the “Jerusalem syndrome?” It is a well-documented form of mania that occasionally manifest in travelers to the Holy Land where they are overwhelmed by the sense of historic holiness that they suffer one of the several types of delusions, such as identifying with a Biblical figure, etc. Might there also me a “Moscow syndrome?” Going from an Oklahoma “Methodist church on every corner” situation to an Orthodox temple on every corner could be, I imagine, equally overwhelming. I not guessing that you are manic in any sense but I am wondering if your observations will stand the test of time and sober reflection once you have more completely mentally and spiritually absorbed your experience? Pace, my friend.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Mr Osborne, excellent point. In my defense, I’ve been to Greece six times in my life and have seen the inundation of churches, shrines, temples, etc. For me, I believe what I experienced in Russia and which overwhelmed me is the contrast between a resurgent, unapologetically Christian land and my debased and degenerating homeland.

      Also, I am aware of the Jerusalem syndrome. I first heard about it from my Hebrew teacher many moons ago. He had many humorous stories to tell.

  8. Isa Almisry says
  9. Michael Kinsey says

    The way of the world chooses the only solution that they can possibly agree with. Raise taxes. SDR’s special drawing right seems to be the UN and Chinese led basket of currencies that will replace the dollar. Cornering the gold market elevates the SDR as the most likely raiser of taxes. Isn’t that special! Still there is no way to stop the massive methane burps coming from a quickly thawing Artic, Alaska, Siberia, Greenland. The methane heats the globe even warmer, which melts even more methane deposits, of which there is enough on the planet to kill all life about 6,666 times. The green tree is drying, And their solution will be, RAISE TAXES.

  10. Michael Kinsey says

    To quote Hitlery, our potential, and very mentally and physically ill next president. Never let a good crisis go to waste. None better than global warming, because it is real, and it’s a bit more reality than they can handle. Shale oil fracking emits very sizable amounts of methane into the air. They pay no taxes on it. The rancher pays for every cow pie and gaseous emission his herd produces. Mean while Al Gore gets to be a billionaire.This type of duplicity is all we can expect from the NWO and the US Military/Industrial complex. The antichrist will employ the rip offs world wide.

  11. Reality Checker says

    . . . RC, I’m glad to hear about your neighbor’s cat being able to answer my question, if you get him on your laptop maybe he can type the answer for you.

    So I guess I’m still not getting an answer to my question. You appear to be directing me to consult with that cat, thus suggesting you’re still waiting. If it wasn’t answered, I think you’d need to state it more distinctly.

    I apologize for rudeness and any offense given in a couple of posts and ask your forgiveness for that. The repellent and quite baseless arrogance so often present in a few of your more prolific correspondents’ posts isn’t something I want to add to. Beyond avoiding arrogance, there’s the matter of respect for truth and the facts that M. Stankovich has rightly underlined with such emphasis. I would go further than he though and direct that admonition to you personally and suggest more consideration of the content of your own posts. You need to develop a far better sense of a due respect for factual accuracy and basic overall honesty than you sometimes demonstrate here. And I urgently advise you to make sounder judgments about the quality of your information sources. Some of those are absolutely execrable and unworthy of public endorsement by someone who professes to represent the Christian faith.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Tell you what: ask me again which questions you want me to answer and I’ll answer them. Unlike you who still won’t answer a very simple question about Joe Kennedy’s wealth. In the meantime, since your neighbor’s cat is so knowledgable then why don’t we just cut out the middle man and I can correspond with him?

      • Reality Checker says

        Mr. M., I offered above that JK Sr. was at one time a bootlegger. I presume your readers would know what that means. Was this not an adequate reply to your question?

      • Reality Checker says

        No, I doubt you’ll answer questions you’ve dodged at least five times.

        There’s plenty of blame to go around in this wicked old world. Soviet and “post”-Soviet Russia very much included. So once again: Why do you prefer their destructive meddling in the ME to the West’s? Why do you favor their destructive meddling in Ukraine (for example, actively causing millions of deaths by famine, ethnic cleansing, mass deportations and importations of populations, etc.)? Why are you against allowing the vast majority of Ukrainians to get what they want: their chance to be part of the civilized, rule-of-law led European Union that Putin seems to be trying to deconstruct and disintegrate with his financial support of its enemies among the nationalists and far-right there? Where are you coming from exactly? And did you know that the RF has actively forwarded to the Levant many of the worst of the worst Chechen malefactors, whose very existence it worked so hard to create the conditions for in the first place, with its savagery in Chechnya? How does that fact fit into your ludicrous cartoon? Today they staff the top leadership of ISIL, a terrorist state the RF helped foster by goading Assad, reportedly, into perpetrating similar savagery upon at first peaceful protesters in Syria.

        • Michael Warren says

          Peaceful protestors aren’t funded, directed, armed by the CIA/Mi6/MOSSAD and then linked to Banderofascist and Islamist terrorist cells and then orchestrated to overthrow popularly elected regimes as in the cases of the Uniate, banderofascist Maidan and Al Qaida-ISIS insurgency in Syria.

      • “In the meantime, since your neighbor’s cat is so knowledgable then why don’t we just cut out the middle man and I can correspond with him?”

        Priceless, George! Cats do have more sense than some here…

      • M. Stankovich says

        In that you are actually entertaining questions, will you be returning to the account of the re-entombment of Blessed Archbishop Dmirtrii of Dallas – an event I have stated was an extraordinary blessing bestowed upon you, and then to us – or is it essentially on extended “hold” while you are “enlightened” by Michael Warren?”

        • George Michalopulos says

          Soon, Dr S, soon.

        • Peter A. Papoutsis says

          Michael,

          Is this a legitimate study that was recently done on Human Sexuality?

          The New Atlantis

          Peter

          • M. Stankovich says

            Peter,

            To say Paul R. McHugh, MD is “arguably the most important American psychiatrist of the last half-century” is a bit grandiose in my estimation, but he most certainly is recognized as a significant voice of authority as the former chief of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. He was a pioneer in the development of sexual reassignment surgery, and he was critical in Johns Hopkins decision to stop performing these procedures as failing to meet the primary goal of resolving the dysphoria at the heart of transgender dysphoria disorder. Further, he is a devout Roman Catholic and he openly practices medicine pursuant to his faith.

            In quickly looking at the executive summary, while I disagree on several points regarding orientation & gender, for the most part I believe this is an excellent survey. I had just begun writing a summary of the first published findings of the CDC on Sexual Identity & Health-Realted Behaviours of children in grades 9-14 in 6 years for elsewhere, but if Mr. Michalopulos invites an “essay” combing the topics, I would be happy to provide it.

            • Peter A. Papoutsis says

              Thanks Michael. Nowadays you have to ask just to be safe. See you, literally.

              Peter

          • Michael Warren says
            • Peter A. Papoutsis says

              MW you will slowly see the finding of this study peer reviewed, attacked and finally accepted. This is the way of science, not politics and SJW. The real question is how many lives will be harmed and destroyed in the process?

              Now more than ever we need to unite as Orthodox Christian and give the Gospel to all the world.

              Peter

              • Michael Warren says

                This study isn’t new knowledge. Psychiatrists have been treating homosexuality as a pathological condition this entire time. Many honest scientists hold to the tenet sexuality is learned behavior.

        • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

          Michael, the accepted Orthodox ways of referring to the pious departed hierarch are: ” the ever-memorable N (and rank)” or “N. of blessed memory.” You referred to “Blessed Archbishop Dmitri.” That indicates you number him among those saints called “Fools-for-Christ’s sake,” as in “Blessed Andrew of Constantinople, Fool-for Christs’s sake.
          We do not have a system like the Roman Catholic one, where “blessed” indicates a step towards canonization..Exceptions? Yes, “Blessed Great Princess of Russia, Olga,” who was not a Fool-for-Christ’s sake.

  12. Reality Checker says

    Your latest is full of diversionary BS and propaganda, with comical lies that would have taken you 5 seconds of googling to fact-check and avoid. (If you cared enough about the truth to bother, which you obviously don’t.) Pelosi’s husband has nothing to do with Monsanto, never did have. I called you out on your libelous assertion that the Clintons run “quite possibly the greatest money-laundering operation in history,” asking you to support this ridiculous slime with some reasons and evidence, but you just slither off, ignoring the request, and content yourself with babble about your alleged right to smear HRC as a kleptocrat.

    . . . I told him about Biden and how his son is on the board of directors of some Ukrainian oligarch’s oil company and that’s what’s behind the Eastern Ukraine crisis. He didn’t know that.

    Yeah, that must be what’s behind it. The fact that a Russian dictator (and Orthodox theology student) murdered millions of Ukrainians by famine 80 years ago, and, in addition to his genocidal mania, later on shipped maybe hundreds of thousands of the survivors off to the gulag after the war — all of these facts have not a thing to do with why most of Ukraine’s people today are seriously rattled by another Russian dictator threatening them again, with God only knows what this time. It’s all Biden’s son’s fault! I didn’t know that, either. Nor do I know what on earth they could be thinking, many of them, preferring the European Union to being trapped in Putin’s RF. They must be insane.

    Or maybe it’s you who’s just nuts.

    Too much stupid, sleazoid goofballery for me. I’m constantly agape, wondering how much of your s**t could be typed with a straight face. Overall your blog seems more like a psych ward than anything else.

    • Michael Warren says

      There were three famines in the Soviet Union prior to 1950. One after.

      The first one occured in the 1920s and affected the Volga region, the Don and the Kuban, and what was then the Donbass, territorially part of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic. It occured because the grain bank established by the Tsar Martyr Nicholas II to address the reoccurence of famines in Southern Russia was neglected due to war, by the Provisional Government, and then due to the Civil War, and it was used by the Cheka as an instrument of pacification of insurgency. When it began, the Ukrainian nationalist Petlura government, along with Vynnichenko and Konovalets disregarded the needs of the starving, refused assistance, turned hungry migrants away with force in some instances, even approved of this ruthless method of War Communism.
      2). At the beginning of the 1930s, industrialization was seen as a national good by all the peoples of the Soviet Union. Stalin endeavored to do so by raising capital by flooding the world market with Soviet grain with the intention of creating a global monopoly on grain as the Dustbowl Drought was ravaging the American heartland. It was thought a shortfall in price due to the glut would later be recovered by monopoly market control and pricing. He again did not fill the grain bank established by Holy Tsar Nicholas II: he even raided it and confiscated seed grain from the peasantry as a means of achieving collectivization. This caused a famine in the Ukraine, on the Volga, in the Rostov and Stavropol oblasts of Southern Russia, affecting a larger area in the RSFSR than in the Ukraine affecting a larger populace with more victims. This program of collectivization was carried out by local government agencies and officials. In the Ukraine, it was carried out by Ukrainians in the Ukrainian language for the revolutionary progress of the Ukrainian nation, a revolutionary Ukrainian nationalist campaign. Ukrainian institutions such as the UAOC (the Ukrainian “autocephalist church” AKA Boundbrook and Canadian Ukrainian Orthodox), supported and legal since Lenin, supported. Ukrainian nationalists warred against the kulaks. Ukrainian revolutionary nationalists ignored those starving of famine both in the Ukraine and Southern Russia as “counter-revolutionary criminals.” Ukrainian leader, Filiwiw, shot his own mother dead publicly in Kiev for embarasaing him by publicly begging him to recant the theft of grain, in tears beseeching him to feed starving people. The Soviet press even found this act of Ukrainian nationalist revolutionary fervor disagreeable. In Uniate Galicia, occupied by Poland, Vynnichenko and Konovalets presented this Soviet Ukrainian government as a realization of revolutionary, Ukrainian aspirations and even engaged in agitprop for it. In the Ukraine, the golodomor was created by revolutionary, Ukrainian nationalist agitation, supported by Ukrainian nationalist institutions against “reactionary and exploitative elements, bourgeois fifth columnists.” To this day, Uniate Galician agitprop does not take into account Ukrainian nationalist complicity in the golodomor, nor the fact that it affected Southern Russia more severely and that 2 of the 3 million starved were not Little Russians (Ukrainians), but Great Russians, Tartars, Chechens, Northern Caucasian peoples.
      3). After WWII, due to wartime ravages and small harvests coupled with a crop failure in Southern Russia, a famine occured in what was now considered the Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia and Kazakhstan. Ukrainian nationalist collaboration, mainly GALICIAN UNIATE BANDEROFASCIST, with the NAZIs and carrying out of NAZI scorched earth policies were factors in this golodomor which claimed over a million.

      In the 1960s, a famine occured in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tadjikistan due to an ecological disaster caused by UKRAINIAN Khruschev’s asinine attempt to divert the Aral Sea to grow corn on the Central Asian steppes. Close to two million starved to death.

      In 2014, 2015, 2016 Banderofascist forces invading the Donbass have systematically destroyed harvests provoking humanitarian disasters, using golodomor as a means of ethnic cleansing. Russia has provided over 50 humanitarian convoys in the largest humanitarian relief operation since the Berlin airlift to prevent hunger in the Donbass and the Eastern Ukraine (Novorossiya). Over 30000 civilians in the Donbass have been murdered by the banderofascist, American, colonial government in Kiev.

      Let’s provide more context. In 1913, the Galician Famine occured in Austrian occupied Galicia, Carpatho Rus’, Bukovina, Poland, Eastern Slovakia. At that time, the Russian Imperial government mobilized the Russian Empire to provide food and relief for their starving Russian and Western Slavic Brothers suffering Austro-Hungarian occupation. At that time, Ukrainian nationalist, Uniate politicians in the Austrian parliament protested, calling for the Austro-Hungarian authorities to stop Russian aid at the border “to interdict Russophile agitation and prevent a setback to the Ukrainian national awakening.” Ukrainian nationalists were prepared to have over a million Ruthenians (Ukrainian nationality was a quack, fringe identity: historically these people were Rusins) and Western Slavs starve rather than receive food and relief from Russia. Holy Tsar Martyr Nicholas II, Tsar’ of ALL the Russias, had the relief from Russia stamped with Austrian insignias and accompanied with documents stating it was provided by the Austro-Hungarian crown rather than allowing over 1 million to starve. During WWI, when the Russian army entered Galicia, the Holy Tsar’ Martyr visited Lvov where he was greeted by the native populace as “kormilets,” i.e. he who feeds us.

      While Joseph V Stalin, former Orthodox seminarian and later initiator of an All-Russian social democratic resurgence, reunited Galicia and Bukovina which had been detached from Rus’ with the Mongol invasion (Carpatho Rus’ had been conquered by the Magyars already in the eleventh century). Galicia had been betrayed by its nobility and surrendered to Polish dominion and repression in the fourteenth century. In the sixteenth century, Getman Vygovsky signed the Treaty of Hadiach after defeating the Russian army at Konotop: he rose against the Russian army composed of Great Russians and Cossacks because Galicia and the Western Ukraine were not included in the Russian Empire but diplomatically negotiated to remain under Polish occupation. The Treaty of Hadiach even established Getman Vygovsky as the monarch of these Russians and created a Russian principality within recz pospolita to quell Russian Orthodox insurrection. That treaty went so far as to outlaw and disband the Unia in recz pospolita: it abolished and apologized for the Brest Unia. Then the Polish Lithuanian monarchy renegged on it and Vygovsky, murdered, died in disgrace. With the partitions of Poland, more Ruthenian territories were reunited with Rus’. Galicia, however, passed to Austrian control. In the late seventeenth century, the Austrian crown forced a new Unia upon Galicia which had rejected the Unia of Brest. A twenty-five year campaign of lynchings, repression and Jesuit brutality installed the Unia in Galicia. It was met by a guerilla war with the gaidamaks which lasted into the Napoleonic era, where the Galician peasantry rose up for Orthodoxy and unity with Russia. Into the mid nineteenth century, the Russian brotherhoods in Galicia pressed for All Russian unity, literacy, and cultural identity before being violently repressed by the Austrian secret police. Austro-Hungarian repression coopted Russian institutions and presses by brutally giving them to Ukrainian nationalist bodies whose quack nationality the Austro-Hungarian government had concocted. These same Ukrainian nationalists in WWI denounced Russophiles and Slavophiles to the Austrian secret police. These Rusins opposed to quack Ukrainian national identity were dispossessed, imprisoned, lynched, and finally rounded up in the world’s first concentration camps, in camps like Talerhoff, where approximately 2 million were beaten, worked, starved to death. Victims denounced for the crime of Russian ethnicity by Ukrainian nationalist Uniates. This was a time when return to Orthodoxy in Austria meant banishment, exile, losing ones children, imprisonment, lynching. Possessing an Orthodox book from Russia was a crime punishable by stiff fines, prison.

      This is the context for Stalin’s reunion of Galicia, Bukovina and Carpatho-Rus’ to Rus’, after over 800 years of separation and foreign oppression. Stalin even acceded to Ukrainian nationalist agitation by including Galicia, Bukovina and Carpatho Rus’ in a Ukraine to which they were never historically constituent (neither were Novorossiya, the Crimea and much of Slobozhanschina). Stalin allowed the Ukrainian nationalists to suppress historical, Rusin identity and language. Indeed, he acted to create a territorial Ukraine the Ukrainian nationalists long demanded. This Russian Orthodox chauvinist got out of the way of Ukrainian ethnogenesis in these territories.

      Stalin even went further as to affirm the very Ukrainian raison d’etre by ending the Unia which was imposed by deception, disenfranchisement and atrocities: the Ruthenians had initially rose up against recz pospolita and pursued reunion with Rus’ because of Unia. The gaidamaks fought a guerilla war to prevent then remove it from Galicia. Millions died at Talerhoff because of Ukrainian Uniate nationalism. But Russian Orthodox chauvinist Stalin fulfilled the Ukrainian nationalist dream. And Stalin gave the Galicians the first free choice they had had in 800 years at the Lvov Sobor of 1948: Uniates were posed with a historical opportunity to return to Orthodoxy from which they were torn by Jesuit brutality and pogroms or to remain loyal to Rome and become Latin Rite Catholics, thereby putting the religious counterfeit and hate crime of Unia to bed once and for all. Over 95% of Galicians chose to return to Orthodoxy once they were given the choice.

      Stalin was wrong in many things, committed many crimes, but probably one of his greatest mistakes was catering to Ukrainian nationalism and becoming the father of the Ukrainian state and a panderer to Ukrainian nationalist quackery, i.e. “ethnogenesis.” Without Russian Orthodox chauvinist Joseph V Stalin there would be no Ukrainian nation today.

      There shouldn’t be: ukrainstvo is a crime against humanity.

      While the role of Uniate and other Ukrainian nationalists when one accurately appreciates the histories of famines in the Ukraine, Galicia, the Soviet Union as a whole finds them complicit in the golodomors!

      • Reality Checker says

        Stalin was wrong in many things, committed many crimes, but probably one of his greatest mistakes was catering to Ukrainian nationalism and becoming the father of the Ukrainian state and a panderer to Ukrainian nationalist quackery, i.e. “ethnogenesis.” Without Russian Orthodox chauvinist Joseph V Stalin there would be no Ukrainian nation today.

        OK. That little rhinestone of brazen, multi-dimensional fraud sums up paragraphs of truly sui generis disinfo. I’m in awe. Also, a 2-sentence specimen worthy of a clinical textbook on fake bravado & phony cajones, of saying something ultra-provocative behind a persona that you would never in a trillion gazillion years so much as dream of daring to say to men whose loved ones were tortured and slaughtered in the Donbass since 2014 to their faces. I’m here trying to picture that scene. You’re ridiculous.

        Is this comical red trolling for the Soviet Union (!) done as an amateur, or are you a paid pro? I don’t expect an honest or manful answer of course, but I am really curious.

        Moral madness of this depth — a professing “Christian” as passionate Stalin apologist — I mean, who knew this was even possible among Homo sapiens sapiens? Not me, that’s for sure.

        I gotta ask though — why should such hair-raising, unheard of things surprise? The MP has given his blessing (!) to the erection of a statue (!!) in Oryol of Tsar Ivan IV (!!!)

        Independent television channel Dozhd has questioned the church’s support for the monument, since Ivan the Terrible’s right-hand man, Malyuta Skuratov, strangled Philipp II, Metropolitan of Moscow, in 1569 after the metropolitan clashed with the tsar.

        Several Russian cities have erected monuments to Stalin in recent months as surveys have shown the Soviet leader’s popularity increasing. In May, the town of Ozrek in the Kabardino-Balkaria region put up a golden bust of him.

        So what’s next, Michael Warren? Suppose surveys show that the Russian populace grow restless for ever more splendid rites to solemnize the immanentist patriotic glory for which you are so keen. For example, the veneration and censing of these new Stalin monuments, say, or, more in accord with tradition, of those icons one hears about, written of Ivan IV, Peter I and Uncle Joe. Do you think there’s a chance we could expect a ukase, in your emerging “symphonia” of Rome III?

        I can envisage a real show-stopper along this trajectory — think Jurassic Park meets Gorky Park: a “resurrection” of that still-carefully preserved “relic” of V. I. Lenin, brought to you by cloning technique. Wouldn’t that be patriotic, “Russophilic,” and pious, by your lights, MW? Something tells me it would be a tonic boost to your “faith,” anyway. Yours, and Babs’s.

        • George Michalopulos says

          RC, for all of Ivan Grozny’s crimes, he was a piker in the murder department compared to England’s Henry VIII.

          • Reality Checker says

            That’s debatable, though I don’t care to bandy the point with you. Something that’s little known in the West is that among his many other notable achievements, Ivan the Terrible was the Founding Father and anointed inspiration of the Okhrana, NKVD, Cheka, KGB and the modern FSB: they’re all the unholy progeny of his policy of oprichina.

            I’m not aware of one human being in the West who’d want to canonize Henry VIII and write holy icons in his honor. What’s more, a profane abomination of this order isn’t even conceivable here now, or ever, really. And yet, in stark contrast, the MP has repeatedly had to publicly discourage those of his flock clamoring for the canonization of Ivan IV.

            For the Ripley’s Believe It or Not file.

            • Michael Warren says
            • Michael Warren says

              But if he would have been a sexually confused Galician, Uniate aristocrat who prayed for the “success of holy crusade of Adolph Hitler” and blessed SS divisions and concentration camp guards, whose rotting, stinking corpse ended up pickled in a vat in a Vatican basement to become a “holy confessor of Unia,” you’d be selling his icons with Ukrainian embroidered doilies on them, right? Wait, you are a venerator of Galician SS father, Auschwitz supreme Eastern Rite chaplain, Sheptytsky!

          • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

            George! “for all of Ivan Grozny’s crimes, he was a piker in the murder department compared to England’s Henry VIII?” Did Henry the 8th murder his own son? Wasn’t Henry a PIKER in the marriage department compared to Ivan? What Saint of the Church was murdered on the order of Henry the 8th? The Holy Hieromartyr Metropolitan Philip was murdered by Ivan’s lapdog, Maliuta, on the Tsar’s orders. You need to brush up on your history!

            • Michael Warren says

              Well if he would have bombed Belgrade churches with ordnance with “Happy Easter” inscribed on it on Pascha to divert attention from stained blue dresses, you would be telling us about how he was your hero and how you saw a vision of his icon at your old folks home today after you took your meds.

        • Michael Warren says

          Seems you have been rebuffed and are ashamed of what you advocate.

          Joseph Stalin assembled the modern territory of the Ukraine. He imposed Ukrainianization on the Rusins and denied, the historical Rusin identity. He assembled the “ethnographic Ukraine” the quack, Galician nationalists clamored about. He began the program of Ukrainian ethnogenesis. He is the father of the modern Ukrainian state. Without Stalin, there would be no Ukraine today, no Ukrainian nationalism. Ukrainian nationalists owe everything to Stalin. These are the simple fact you banderofascist enablers can’t face: Russian chauvinist, Orthodox seminarian Joseph Stalin is the father of the Ukraine. Deal with it.

          For all your talk of Joseph Stalin, he was the one who liberated Auschwitz and Sobibor, staffed with Ukrainian camp guards and blessed by Uniate Galician SS chaplains. It was Slipy and Sheptytsky who held moliebens in Uniate churches “praying for the holy crusade of Adolph Hitler.”

          It is pretty clear you are a russophobe and you don’t have a clue about what Russian is, whether we are talking about Ivan IV or the Ukraine.

          You have a problem with the Donbass? Let’s hold an internationally monitored referendum on secession and accession to the Russian Federation. While we are at it, let’s disband, get and imprison the Uniate, banderofascist death squads. Let’s hold the banderofascist colonial regime culpable for crimes against humanity. Let’s make public who is getting what money for selling the vivisected organs of illegally imprisoned dissidents on the world market. Let’s allow every oblast a democratic referendum on Russian language, secession, accession to the Russian Federation and let’s call in unbiased international monitors to make sure the vote is fair. No? Why not? Because your banderofascist, colonial state won’t win and Putin will be vindicated. Exactly.

          If Ukrainian nationalism were so legitimate, it wouldn’t be using banderofascist death squads to quell dissent, prevent democratic referendums and murder civilians. That’s what you and your Ukrainian nationalist gang of Uniate thugs is all about.

          Let have democratic referendums and see if Ukrainian ethnogenesis receives a vote a confidence.

          Yes, I am an unapologetic Red. I don’t even you and what you stand for. As a matter of fact, I relish the day when you and yours will be tried at the Nuremberg trials.

          • I’ve never really understood the whole Ukraine thing.

            There are two words in Russian for Russian: Russky and Rossisky. All of Rus’ is entitled to the first term, as am I, at least arguably by birth. The other term has to do with subjects of the Russian Empire or citizens of the Russian state. But its not a black and white distinction. Witte and Ekaterina Velikaya ought to be testament to that. Equal opportunity, within reason. The real qualification is ferocity. Russians abhor weak rulers. That is why Nikolai II is such a question mark. Strong in some ways, weak in others. It is dangerous to be weak in Russia and dangerous for Russians to be weak. That is a lesson we have learned well.

            The Law of God has to apply. That’s why they made it so there wouldn’t be another female tsar, it’s unnatural. St. Paul and the Holy Spirit would never have approved. I mean, Catherine was “one of a kind”, like Deborah or Lady Thatcher. You just don’t see that every day and when you do see it, it’s probably because there is a shortage of real men.

            In any case, Yukies are fine with their own language and culture or as Russians. The important thing is that they not be in opposition, dualistic and dueling. Just go with the flow and be proud of your “true colors” so to speak, the blue and gold thing.

            Now homosexuality is a bit different. It will all get laundered out in the wash as well, however, it is a sin. It’s pardonable, of course. But not in perpetuity. One has to give it up sooner or later. Abominations are like that. There seems to be a lot of worry about that here so that’s why I’m addressing it.

            A person can be excellent in every other way and yet feeding that homosexual inclination can block theosis. That is what St. Paul meant regarding homosexuals not being able to inherit the Kingdom of God. It’s not that they are cursed for all eternity. God forbid.

            It is that that psychosis inhibits appreciation of the Higher, thus it has to be resolved before progress can be made. Abomination is confusion. Homosexuality is Confusion. But it is resolvable and indeed will be resolved, one way or another. It must needs be laundered in the toll houses if nowhere else. One can, of course, die in sin. Be my guest. But being the battleground of angels and demons after one passes is not exactly Disneyworld.

            We say “War is hell.” So much more the one that goes on in ones soul.

            So, cheers!

            • Michael Warren says

              The Ukraine has undergone three periods of depolonization where mova, never the language of the people in its current form of an imbecilic Galician Surzhyk, came to be rejected as the speech of a Ruthenian peasantry once enslaved by Recz Pospolita. Russian is the peoples’ language in the Ukraine. Russia is their historical nation and their ultimate destiny.

          • Reality Checker says

            You’re a seriously glitched hot mess. Get help.

            • Michael Warren says

              Spoken by a person who confuses inartful insults and hollow, liberal smugness as legitimate responses to factual rebuttal. You are narcissistic enough to either be Stinkovitch or some pathetic bootlick idolizing his meta-educated hubris.

            • Just the unapologetic truth. No autopsy, no foul. When the sun shines on all of it, that is what it looks like. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

        • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

          Thanks, “Reality Checker,” whoever you are. That Carp Rumpelstiltzkin seems to be telling himself that Stalin somehow created Mazeppa and Shevchenko! But he’s here because George sent him an S.O.S., so, get used to those hysterical little rants again!

          • Michael Warren says

            A mustered out meta-bishop speaks out for child rape, death squads and ethnic cleansing in the Ukraine, HISTORICALLY RUSSIAN TERRITORY, in Novorossiya, aping his Galician Uniate ministry of Truth programming. Stupid is as stupid does: and look at the historically illiterate fellow travelers sieg heiling the Trizub, the ornament of Ukrainian concentration camp guards at Auschwitz… These troglodytes are on the side of an NAZI collaborationist ideology which was condemned at Nuremberg.

            BTW, for those who actually care about historical accuracy, Schevchenko referred to himself as Russian or Little Russian by nationality, but NEVER as of “Ukrainian nationality,” and he was well aware of the quack nonsense of Dragomanov and Kostamarov. He was so “Ukrainian nationalist” that he immortalized Gaidamak Gonta, who was an AVOWED ALL-RUSSIAN ORTHODOX UNIONIST, lamenting the betrayal of his RUSSIAN ORTHODOX UNIONISM. To ice the cake of a RUSSIAN SCHEVCHHENKO, his personal journals are WRITTEN IN THE RUSSIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE, NOT the bastardized, half-Polish, mish-mash mova. They show him to be a Polonophobe, a strident opponent of Unia, who as a Russian Orthodox narnodnik, lamenting the cosmopolitan betrayal of Russian Orthodox Unionism by the Russian Imperial government and St. Petersburg society. Schevchenko and myself in our positions disagree in very little.

            While Mazeppa did not even have the support of the majority of the Zaporozhian Cossacks (I know – my family opposed him). He also referred to himself as “Russian” or “Little Russian” by nationality, supported the Kiev, Ostrogh, Vilna and Lvov RUSSIAN BROTHERHOODS, and was a vehement enemy of Unia. To him the Ukraine and Unia WERE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, IRRECONCILABLE. Modern day Galician Uniate nationalists would be referred to as “janissaries,” YANICHARI, by Mazeppa and considered personae non grata: in his Ukraine, Unia was outlawed and Russian Orthodoxy was the state church.

            So, yes, Russian chauvinist, Orthodox seminarian, Stalin ABSOLUTELY DID MORE FOR UKRAINIAN ETHNOGENESIS than either Schevchenko or Mazeppa. Hands down. He is the father of the Ukrainian nation. He also is a more authentic Ukrainian in his disdain for Unia than Uniate Galician banderofascists.

            So I thoroughly enjoy bursting the banderofascist bubble and outing the truth that Ukrainian nationalism is ahistorical quackery driven by ignorance of history and banderofascist propaganda. So the choice is historic truth or quack, Uniate Galician Reichskanselerei, Aryan propaganda. Here we have known russophobic, liberals giving NAZI salutes as if they were at an online Nuremberg rally. Pathetic.

          • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

            What I said: “he’s here because George sent him an S.O.S., so, get used to those hysterical little rants again!”
            And…… “Rumpelstiltzkin! Rumpelstiltzkin!”

            • George Michalopulos says

              Your Grace, please forgive me but I did not “send out an SOS” to Mr Warren. I merely informed him that he was being mentioned in a forum and if he would like to respond. As I said to another commentator, I have extended this courtesy to others as well. I would do the same for you.

              • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                Remember that DOS desert monastic and his essays on “Merely-ism?” George just gave us an example—he “merely” informed him, etc. I know things are not always what they appear to be, but Rumpelstiltzkin’s reappearance dovetailed nicely with a need to SOMEHOW mitigate Trump’s bungling failure and Putin’s consistent strategy of doing away with Ukraine’s independence. It won’t work though! Trump will slash his wrists or make a pass at Mark Rubio before he’ll risk publication of his tax returns!

                • Michael Warren says

                  The Ukraine is Russian territory, and as soon as soon as democratic referendums occur, the peoples of the Ukraine will both validate Russky Mir and their historical Russian identity.

                  In every instance this episcopal disgrace has cited Uniate, Banderofascist “historiography,” his banderofascist agitprop when challenged by historical fact consistently is shown to be wrong. He supports ethnic cleansing and war crimes in the Donbass. He supports use of neo-nazi death squads to repress democratic referendums. He supports the rape of children and murder of pensioners. Because he supports the American, Banderofascist, colonial regime in the Ukraine. This is the essence of his russophobic hate of Russia, the Third Rome.

                  Now, the owner of this blog did ask me to participate. I intend to make sure that marginal people who came into my Church do not get away with giving it a black eye with their crass and tactless behavior. Fired, marginal hacks who in better times would never have even been in the proximity of the Orthodox episcopacy are non-normative of it and by their uncouthe behavior symptomatic of its debasement by Syosset-Crestwood. It is because of the largesse of the Russian Metropolia that unsavory and distasteful people like this man were given the opportunity of receiving the best possible opportunity in Russian Orthodoxy. Here this sociopathic person evidences how his baseness of character is an insult to the legacy of Russian Orthodox inclusiveness and generosity. The generous character of Russian Orthodoxy which gave him a chance when anyone else would have shut the door and left him to vulgar places where people of such low character congregate. This unfortunate man is the most obnoxious representative of what is known in Russian Orthodox circles as a “crazy convert.”

                  He came into our Russian Orthodox Church. We received him as our own. Only to witness russophobia and advocacy for liberal, San Francisco values in the place of the Russian Orthodox worldview which gave this man an opportunity at a true life in CHRIST. Liberal, American society had rightly disposed of him as an undesirable: they knew him for what he is. We should and must vet these types of people better as the Orthodox Church in America. Now he has the audacity to traffic in insults and hatred of Russia. KHAM.

                • I suppose this would be an example of disgrace. An obviously flaming retired “bishop” of the lavender mafia projecting suicide and gay overtures onto Trump.

                  I guess at some point they figure they might as well just let it all hang out, shame being so ten minutes ago. In any case, behold an icon of the OCA. This is what it really is deep down underneath public parking and all the rest.

                  But we all knew that fallen humanity is a sight to behold. Episcopal grave yard – in the end, nothing left but a little black dress and a panagia where faith used to be, if it ever was present.

                  Rough and tumble.

          • Reality Checker says

            Your Grace, MW seems near to bursting from trying to hold contradictory positions and sensibilities — not in tension but in synthesis. I don’t claim to have a solid model in my head of what’s really going on today in eastern Ukraine; all I know is that with disinformation coming from many sides, especially the cynical and highly organized RF multi-media propaganda blitz of lies, these nihilistic trolls, the typical fog of war (even one in slow motion) and general political and moral confusion endemic to the region, all thrown into the demonic cauldron of background radiation from Hitlerism & Stalinism that still pollutes Europe and Eurasia — only horror seems likely to emerge from this darkness. But one thing I know for sure is that a self-acknowledged “unapologetic red,” an “Orthodox Christian” Stalin-apologist (sic) has close to zero credibility as a source of semi-objective, reliable information. This is not a psychically stable combo, and close to combustion. Any view broadcast from the rabbit holes he haunts is not credible, to put it charitably. So George has given us another reason to wonder just how gravely compromised his judgment is, inviting someone as semi-demented as MW to vent on his irresponsible Bedlam of a blog. His motives are more suspect to me than ever. But God is his judge.

            Hard to see much difference in corruption and essential moral insanity between a red and a brown take on socio-economic and political conditions today. Of course as usual, when things are this bad and you refuse to choose sides, that means you’re probably destined at first to be the victim of false accusations and eventually the crossfire. But far better that than where these two camps are marching. Seems to me that the best we can do in the meantime is try to preserve and remain in the center, by the Grace of God.

            • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

              Reality Checker, the best and most recent summary of Ukraine’s history was published last year by the Harvard professor, Dr. Serhii Plokhy. Its title is THE GATES OF EUROPE: A History of Ukraine. Basic Books, New York. 2015. 395 pp. $29.99 US at Amazon.
              It’s totally free of any sort of flag-waving, of course..
              Simon Sebag Montefiore, Michael Ignatieff and Peter Pomerantsev all give the book raves.
              Another well-known book by Dr Plokhii is THE LAST EMPIRE which received many awards, including the Pushkin House’s Russian Book Prize.

              • Michael Warren says

                Banderofascist propaganda which flirts with the notion that “the defeat of Adolph Hitler was a tragedy for humanity.” Galician Uniate propaganda as evidenced in your liberal lovefest has continually been shown to be historically challenged. Only an idiot recommends Uniate Banderofascist, quack literature. So it suits you both very well in your debased, russophobic mediocrity.

              • Reality Checker says

                Thank you for recommending this title, your Grace. I had not heard of it. “The Last Empire” rings a bell though.

            • Michael Warren says
            • Michael Warren says

              Crimes Committed by Ukraine’s Military and Chasteners: from Illegal Arms Trafficking to Human Organs Trade

              Numerous reports on systematic destruction of populated areas in the Donbass and Luhansk regions by Ukrainian military have been becoming public domain. The evidence has been plentiful: photos, videos, international observers and journalists’ reports. Neither the United States nor Europe have paid attention on the information as they considered it to be part of the «Kremlin’s propaganda». Western media outlets have painted the use of internationally banned arms and warfare tactics as legal means of waging war against terror. Now the OSCE has to recognize the fact that the crimes have been committed by Ukrainian military and soldiers of chasteners’ battalions, for instance the use of non-conventional weapons, the elimination of civilians and torture of prisoners. According to the report by Amnesty International, the servicemen of Aydar battalion practiced kidnapping and tortures of civilians. Some time ago international observers discovered mass graves of tortured people. 

              Those who live in Donbass have many times reported «mysterious graves» findings. Two movable crematoriums have been bought in Germany to get rid of the bodies. The burnt soldiers were reported to be missing in action. Many corpses have been burnt without registration and leaving any trace whatsoever. On September 23, 332 Ukrainian military were put into grave near Dnepropetrovsk without making precise the names of the perished. Only 22 names were known. On September 22, in Zaporozhye 55 unrecognized corpses of Ukrainian soldiers were buried. In Dnepropetrovsk 11 more unrecognized servicemen, who had lost their lives in Ilovaisk, were put into grave. 

              The atrocities committed by Neo-Nazi militants need to be described more in detail. Alexander from Donetsk has spent a few weeks in prison. He says they beat him up the first two days without asking questions. Then they used force during interrogations passing him from one organization to another. He did not know anything to share and finally ended up in the hands of the Ukraine’s Security Service. «They put a sack on my head and started to beat me with legs. Still I was happy to be a prisoner of the Security Service because I knew they would not kill me while asking questions». 

              The OSCE observers discovered the mass grave near the 22-th Kommunarka mine in Lower Jug. Presumably, civilians were shot by the soldiers of the battalion Aydar. The victims were treated inhumanely, many bodies had hands tied behind his back, and they were shot in the back of the head at close range. One body belonged to a pregnant woman, the other female corpse was decapitated. The traces of torture are clearly visible, murder scheme is the same: hands tied behind, shot in the head. Self-defense militia forces managed to find four burial locals and six graves Ukrainian soldiers. Mass graves near Telmanovo, Yenakievo, Starobeshevo and other settlements, many more. Some graves were well hidden, some mined, as well as burial in Lower Jug. In general, the pattern is similar everywhere: signs of decapitated bodies, through bullet wounds, severed limbs. 

              Reports came from Ukrainian military hospitals that in some cases human organs were extracted and exported to the United States and Europe to be used for transplant… As Carla del Ponte, former Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Court, remembered in her book The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals, Albanian Kosovars did the same thing. 

              The evidence is plentiful – Ukraine has become a safe haven for human organs traffickers. Ukrainian doctors say there are foreigners working in the national hospitals and they discuss on the phone which human organs of wounded soldiers could be sold and used for transplant. Ukrainian hackers broke and circulated the correspondence between former lawyer of Yulia Timoshenko Sergey Vlasenko and German doctor Olga Weber. The main suppliers of the goods were referred to as the commanders of the National Guard. Allegedly donated organs are taken under the order of Western buyers. It’s not the only instance. In the first days of Maidan protests the Neo-Nazi from Svoboda political party headed by Oleh Tyahnybok seized the crematorium at Baykov Cemetery in Kiev. There were some doctors among them Tyahnybok had worked with before they were reported to be involved in human trafficking schemes. After that a number of mysterious disappearances of people occurred in Kiev. 

              The last prisoners’ exchanges between Novorossia self-defense units and Ukrainian military revealed the cases of fraud. The military tried to present local peasants as prisoners of war. It will take time to identify those were taken prisoner holding weapons in their hands – were they shot, dead as a result of torture or sold for organs? Europe can help by putting an end to the support it provides for military criminals in Kiev and the Neo-Nazi on their service. 

              http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/09/26/crimes-committed-ukraine-military-and-chasteners-from-illegal-arms-trafficking-to-human-organs-trade.html

        • Michael Warren says

          I would like to know what you think you know about Stalin and Ivan IV.

          I really want to know where I am wrong in what I wrote regarding Stalin and his role in assembling the territory of the modern Ukraine, in supporting Ukrainianization and in acting to fulfill the manifest destiny of the quack, Uniate Galician “Ukrainian nationalists.” You can’t disprove it. So save us the ad hominem blather. It just shouts you lost but aren’t adult enough to reform your ignorance.

          Ivan IV was a tragic figure, shaped by a climate of conspiracy and sedition. His rule is remembered as a time when the Russian Tsardom emerged to chart an independent course of a Russia which would confront the West and restore its patrimony while determining to hold the East to account for its past incursions into Russia to bring it to heel. His vision, Russian revanchism ultimately charged Russia in the course to superpower and was a statement of the reemergence of Rus’ as a global power. The monument is appropriate.

        • Michael Warren says

          Thank you for conceding my historical points which rebuff your banderofascist propaganda.

  13. Peter A. Papoutsis says

    My oh my even some in the GOAA are against ecumenism. God bless Constantine Zalalas. He’s been fight ecumenism in the GOAA far longer than I and others. Check it out. May God open the eyes and hearts of the GOAA and the EP.

    Ecumenism fighting against the Church Fathers

    Peter

    • Michael Warren says

      Problem is according to the Cretan Robber Synod, statements like this are considered sectarian, even schismatic, and subject to the disciplinary authority of the Phanar. So voices like this in the GOA under Istanbul are condemned and subject to punitive, ecumenist reprisal. Must be hard being Orthodox in a place where Orthodoxy is persecuted.

    • Do you know Zalalas? I would be careful endorsing a man you may not know solely on the fact the he is an anti-ecumenist. The monks at Holy Transfiguration in Boston are rabidly anti-ecumenists yet riddled with questionable practices. Please remember that Palamas engaged in dialogue with Muslims. Mark of Ephesus engaged in dialogue with Catholics and Chrysostom protected monks that were followers of Origen. You would have probably considered Jesus an ecumenist after His meeting with a Samaritan women.

      • Michael Warren says

        Witness and evangelization are not ecumenism. Ecumenism consists in unfaithful, sectarian dialogue aimed at “discovering the truth by sharing essentials in an encounter which manifests the invisible church in CHRIST,” i.e. Protestantism. CHRIST founded HIS Church for the Samaritan woman: HE didn’t, as an ecumenist heretic would say, acknowledge the “common truth and the reality of the church” they both shared “disregarding the inessentials and fundamentalist bigotries of the past.” HE fulfilled the Law, not reduced it to include Samaritanism.

        In other words, religious syncretism, ecclesiological and theological relativism, ecumenism is fundamentally irreconcilable with Orthodoxy. It is an alternative religion which exists to replace Orthodoxy. Ecumenism is heresy.

        Fr. Constantine (I believe Zalalas is now a Rassaphore monk) is well versed in Orthodox theology and has an Orthodox understanding of Scripture and the Holy Fathers. He represents the theological emphasis and spirituality of the best currents of the State Church of Greece. Comparing that in any way to the nameworshipping heretics in Boston evidences a lack of understanding of ecumenism, Orthodox, schism and an Orthodox phronema.

      • Peter A. Papoutsis says

        I have been reading and listening to his lectures for 10 years, and his audio tapes and books are offered at St. Chrysostom Greek Orthodox Womans Monastery in Pleasant Prarie, Wisconsin.

        As for HTM I have heard the accusations, but do not have any direct proof of misconduct. Not discounting it, but I just do not have any proof. However, even if true HTM’stance against ecumenism is still correct, just like ROCOR’S stance and pronouncement against ecumenism that still stands.

        Further you engage in classic redirect. You cannot attack the message so you attack the messenger. Sorry, not going to work. Message is finally getting out about the heresy of Ecumenism. I guess I can understand why that would bother you.

        Peter

        • I think there are different definitions of ecumenism. Witnessing to Christ with an Orthodox phronema is an imperative. No one that I know, and I reference some that would be considered ecumenists, including the EP, suggests that we create a “new religion” taking the common points from all faiths. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Light and no one can be saved without Him. His forgiveness is essential for salvation. Heaven is not going to be a congregation of nice people, but rather forgiven people.

          That being said, there are those among the anti-ecumenist camp who state that we should not even dialogue with non-Orthodox, quoting the epistle of John–to not even greet a heretic. This is the kind of anti-ecumenist attitude that offends me and to which I refer.

          Furthermore, these same individuals claim there is not grace outside the church. Who are we to determine where the grace of God is working “the Spirit blows where if wills”. We can be assured of salvation and grace within Orthodoxy. I have had many grace filled conversations with non-Orthodox. How could someone embrace Christ in an Orthodox Christian context if grace is not at work.

          • Peter A. Papoutsis says

            I can only go by St. Paul’s and St. John’s epistles. Dialogue is NOT the same as ecumenism. Dialogue to show our fallen brethren their error is one thing and should be encouraged. Creating a new religion based on general notions of God and spirituality that IS happening. It does not have to be formally in writing and sanctioned for it to happen. It is just happening.

            Also, I agree the Spirit goes where it will, and grace is given to whoever God wills, but we His Church stay put and give dispense Grace within the Church.

            So let God be God and allow Him to do what He wants because He is God and can do what He wants. But for us we must follow the Gospel and stay put and preach the truth.

            That’s the difference.

          • Michael Warren says

            There are Saints which define ecumenism as such. The founding documents of the WCC and NCC define ecumenism as such. Orthodox participation in ecumenism defines it as such.

            Do tell how Orthodox witness CHRIST, Orthodoxy – HIS True Church, in ecumenism. Show us the fruits. Who has been converted to Orthodoxy as a result of participation in the WCC/NCC? How are statements like BEM and acknowledgement of the grace of the “sacraments” of the heterodox reconcileable with the ecesiology and theology of the Orthodox Church? What about the sister church ecclesiology of the fallen see of Istanbul? How is it that hierarchs, HERESIARCHs, of the church of Istanbul have addressed the WCC as the Church, while consciously not witnessing Orthodoxy as the Church? What about Istanbul’s “ecumenism of love”? How is any of this not branch theory?

            There are the Holy Fathers and the Holy Canons which state that heretics and schismatics do not have grace. How is it you are unaware of them? How can you speak for Orthodoxy being so unaware of them?

            Witness of Orthodoxy, the Truth, evangelization and invisible church, Protestant syncretism are two different things, mutually exclusive. Orthodoxy is the Truth witnessed in holiness. Ecumenism is heresy witnessing the merit of unity in betraying truth to promote a denatured synthesis of error in sin.

            Seems your Eastern Rite Protestantism is showing its spiritual counterfeit roots.

  14. There is a joy in ones heart that comes from having absolute faith in God, or as near absolute as one can attain in the fallen state of man. Yet, there is also a joy in spiritual battle. The positive side of spiritual battle is just that, asserting that absolute faith. The negative side is dealing with Legion, logismoi, and those led by the evil one to tempt God’s Church.

    Now God could defend His own Church directly without anyone else’s help if He so chose. But He has never so chosen to exclude others from the effort. Thus there have been many Orthodox apologists and saints who have defended the Church against all enemies of Christ from the day of Pentecost forward – greater and lesser ones. Just as Christ gave the general injunction to go forth and baptize all nations, so He gives us the injunction to give a lively account for the joy that is in our hearts. And the Church Fathers were models of how one should deal with the heterodox in fact and in spirit.

    So, happy Transifiguration and blessed Dormition Fast! And may we all grow in the Kingdom of Heaven which is always at hand.

  15. Ok, deep breaths everyone . . .

    If I have been a bit pointed in my responses and conveyed a sense that anyone is not welcome here or that their opinion is not welcome and helpful at fleshing out the present condition of man, so to speak, then one should not take that message from my remarks.

    George is in charge of this site and I trust his wisdom regarding participants, “qualifications”, etc.

    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

      Misha! “I trust his wisdom regarding participants, “qualifications”, etc.” Do you really ascribe WISDOM to choice of “participants, ‘qualifications’, etc.,” on Monomakhos?

      And WHAT IN THE WORLD does “fleshing out the present condition of man” mean?

      • Gregory Manning says

        Oh, thank you your Grace. Only 7 days ago Misha gave us all permission to take a deep breath and you have to go and get all snippy with him. If he now retracts that permission because you just had to cop an attitude-and a disrespectful one at that-I’m holding you personally accountable.

        • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

          Gregory, you are most welcome! Sorry you disliked my two questions to Misha. “All snippy” is not part of my vocabulary, but “I see where you’re coming from!”

          • Gregory Manning says

            Your Grace,
            “I see where you’re coming from!” O.K. But if you change your mind I’d be happy to “flesh it out” for you.
            Now about this state of “disgrace” you’re in–anything salacious there or should we make something up flesh that out?

            • Ah, silly little squirrels and their “salacious” details. Use your imagination.

              • Gregory Manning says

                Huh? Could you flesh that out?

                • Hopefully you know to what “белка” refers in Russian. You might ask Vladyka Tikhon if you . . . need a hand, so to speak. As to “fleshing out”, what was not assumed was not saved, thus the literal “enfleshment” of Christ.

                  I suppose in communicating with vermin, getting down into the gutter is unavoidable. Not really my neighborhood though.

        • Gregory,

          You still have my permission to take a deep breath. Vladyka Tikhon has been a disgrace for some time, however, that does not mean that God has given up on him. Repentance is always possible.

          As for me, nothing anyone here says gets to me. I just like the rough and tumble; that’s why I stick around.

          • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

            Misha, I’n ashamed for you…

            • Interesting you didn’t say, “I’m ashamed of you” but “I’m ashamed for you”. The latter indicates to me that something I am doing causes you to feel ashamed of yourself. But really, either one indicates that something I am doing brings shame to you. That is indeed so. I am shining light on the whole situation. If that makes you ashamed, so be it.

              Better in this world than the next.

          • Peter A. Papoutsis says

            Misha I am ashamed for you as well. You may disagree with the Good Bishop, but it never was and never will be a disgrace.

            Peter

            • No, Peter,

              Vladyka Tikhon has been a disgrace to his consecration for some time now. A thorough disgrace. He, of course, has the power to change that by crawling out of the sewer and acting and engaging with the dignity befitting a successor of the Apostles. However, I do not think he will do so. I think he has become so jaded that he is lost until his own accounting at the Particular Judgment.

              May God have mercy on his soul.

              • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                I thank “Misha” for his concluding sentence. As for the preceding witness, I suppose it’s a substitute for reasoned argument. I’m still ashamed for him, poor guy!

              • M. Stankovich says

                There is no other explanation for this rank foolish, other than to say you have lost your mind, Scott. Simply put. Mr. Michalopulos, you may rationalize this in the comforting terms of the Oxford English Dictionary anyway that you wish, but this should never, ever have seen the light of day. Such vicious darkness projected at a Bishop of the Orthodox Church is shocking.

                • Oh, the “righteous indignation”! Yet “the road to Hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lamp posts that light the path.”

                  I really do mean it. And the thing about Pat. Bartholomew as well.

                  Why lie? Hasn’t the Church been compromised enough already?

                  • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                    I feel ashamed for Misha, since he himself knows no shame. Q.E.D.

                    • I’m not amused anymore, Vladyka. That’s the third time you’ve said you’re ashamed “for me” when I have nothing to be ashamed of at all. Projection doesn’t work on me. I’d of thought that you would have figured that out by now.

                      Well, we never cease learning, do we, Vladyka?

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” How does that work in Confession?

                    • A real bishop would understand that penance is not about shame (“Who told you that you were naked?”), but repentance, a change of attitude. But since shame is the primary weapon you use to abuse your authority, I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.

                      That has been the point of this whole conversation, you know.

    • Is there a problem, George?

  16. Reality Checker says

    . . . Old folks home episcopal failures, cereal box meta-educated Stankovitch, banderofascist Reality, San Francisco values Anonymous, et al. have quite a rough patch coming. I look forward to finally breaking the back of this fringe, LIBERAL canal of hate. . .

    MW, I hope you’ll forgive an academic interlude interrupting this broken record of demented logorrhea from your Loony Tune. If you’re sincerely interested in my position on Ukraine, the Stalinist (and Nazi) genocides* perpetrated there, and Josip Bandera, here’s an excellent summary of it:

    http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2010/02/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev/

    It’s the view of Prof. Timothy Snyder, the Bird, White, Housum Endowed Chair in History at Yale University. His view is my view; I defer to solid and well-established authority on such things. I would read with interest any critique you’d dare to offer of that. It’s from 2010, before all the recent developments there. Making it even more impressive to me.

    Have mercy on yourself. Please stop blackening your soul with stupid libels about me and Dr. Stankovich and Vladyka Tikhon and others here too numerous to mention. It’s only making you even more nuts than you already are. Honestly, I don’t want that, and neither should you.

    *I can post other articles and books Dr. Snyder and other scholars have written on this subject, but I strongly recommend you read one in particular, his recently published “Bloodlines: Europe between Hitler and Stalin.”

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/11/11/worst-madness/

    • Reality Checker says

      MW, if the hard-core nationalists (and psychopathic ideologues such as Dugin et al.) who are now working hard to goad (and threaten) Putin into launching an even more violent Anschluss in Ukraine succeed in their diabolical mission, the intended and unintended consequences likely to pile up may well provide a handy distraction, quite useful for him and his circle when the economy disintegrates completely next year or the following (after the money runs out) and the Russian people begin to rebel (his most visceral fear obviously — and with good reason). But it won’t be good for innocent Ukrainians. Or Poles, either, probably. And God only knows who else who may get dragged into this vortex, even the Baltic states — or worse.

      My ancestry is mostly English and German, so I have no genetic dog in your fight whatsoever. But a friend here in the US grew up in Donetsk, and most of his family and friends still in Ukraine have long since fled to Kiev. He assures me that rumors of fascists and neo-fascists in power in Ukraine today are grossly exaggerated Putin propaganda. (I take it you disagree, but your credibility with me sinks further every day.) Though a working scientist and academic here, he actually spends time in that country, visiting frequently. Do you? Or do you get most of your information from paranoid websters and the Kremlin?

      I think Bandera was a terrorist thug and a murderer, fyi. I utterly abhor the type, and regard them as among the worst of criminals. Sleazoids like you who affix hate-filled labels on people about whose opinions you know nothing substantive have a very strong family resemblance to such miscreants, however, if you ask me. Just weaker in your case, and merely the other side of a counterfeit coin. The sort of petty verbal bullies who strike sparks that can help start conflagrations when there’s enough dry wood around, as there is today. Revilers, liars, slanderers, thugs, terrorists and murderers will all end up in the same place, except they repent.

      • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

        Thanks, Reality Checker! That guy does remind one of Bandera, no?
        His logorheatic and wannabe-scholarly output here always reminds one of the actions of a panicked squid, which resorts to SQUIRTING voluminous clouds of ink to hide behind!
        Here are some of the ingredients of the prophylactic ink: Bandero-Fascism, Russophobia, Eastern-Rite Protestantism, Pseudo-this, Pseudo-that, Red-baiting, AND SO ON AND ON! As far as style goes, it’s that of a militant Gay Power propagandist, accompanied by foot-stamping. In the interests of kindness, I’ve referred to the Rumpelstiltzkin syndrome. He wants dreadfully to be stalked by someone, obviously, but loneliness is not a sin….

        • Actually that aptly describes Banderofascist, community organized Obama/Hillary clones with disgraced Eastern Rite Protestant meta-episcopal clowns trying to evade condemnation by ignoring sourced facts which discredit them as mouthpieces for banderofacist ethnic cleansing. Selling their souls to Obama/Hillary to justify genocide perpetrated against Russian Orthodox Christians. I understand Hooked on Phonics doesn’t get one to an adequate level of reading comprehension to appreciate how your evil, demoniac worldview has been appropriately denounced, but a normal, well adjusted human being with a conscience would be more apprehensive in going all in for Neo NAZI, revanchist barbarism in the Ukraine.

        • Reality Checker says

          Your Grace, my participation in conversation with this raving maniac is over. The net result of George’s inviting him back here to “respond” to Dr. Stankovich is that he now publishes this MW’s nauseating libels and character assassination against correspondents here; for example, this typical effluvia, which is at least the fourth instance of his disgusting, vicious smears against me personally. He’s guilty of slinging similar filth vs. others here, including yourself:

          Why are you and yours using ethnic cleansing, child rape, pogroms, WMDs against civilians, massacres, secret imprisonments, vivisection coordinated with Banderofascist death squads to prevent that from happening?! Did you not understand that civilization condemned that type of NAZI barbarism at Nuremberg?!

          If I cared, which I don’t anymore, I would ask this repellant figure to account for the “reasoning” by which he could equate 1) those in the West who express deep concern about the intended and unintended consequences for Europe of the totally proven Russian, and Ukrainian separatists’, troublemaking and far worse in Donest’k and Lugans’k with 2) complicity in the above, whatever objective truth there may be to reports of such horrors that amounts to something more than fabricated war propaganda. (Note the bolded assertion, and the legally actionable libel it contains, or is definitely skirting with.) (These “Fourth Way” gnostics and Dark Enlightenment-type, red/brown hybrid Satanists operating under cover of “Orthodoxy” will be exposed sooner or later. The 8-pointed star, symbol for Chaos Magick, on his Eurasian Youth Union flag and elsewhere in this movement is all you need to know about A. Dugin. For the unaware, he has a long sordid history in dark occult and fascist circles.)

          George: you had better get this poster under control before you have serious legal reason to regret it.

          Somewhat less urgently: How can you fail to recognize the personality disorder evident in some of Misha’s more arrogant posts (not to mention the obvious condition of prelest he constantly demonstrates)? It’s interesting that you would elevate this guy to the exalted post /s of guest essayist before your “standard notification” to Michael Warren.

          • We have been addressing the atrocities you mention: THE BANDEROFASCIST REGIME YOU SUPPORT IS THE CULPRIT! No, Western involvement in the Ukraine created a humanitarian emergency by installing a Neo NAZI genocidal regime in what was once a friendly and allied, Russo-Ruthenian state. The Nuremberg Process committed humanity to fighting such barbarism for all time TO NEVER AGAIN ALLOW IT A PRESENCE AMONGST CIVILIZED PEOPLES.

            Historically, those who are termed “separatists” in the Ukrainian context are those who espouse quack, “Ukrainian nationalism” and act to undo the legal framework of the seventeenth century Pereyaslavl Pact. The people of the Donbass were never ethnographic Ukrainians, Little Russians, and were historically of Russo-Ruthenian, Southern Russian ethnos. They are not separatists, but, rather, advocates for historical and territorial self determination/justice, advocating reintegration into a Great Russia they were politically and territorially placed outside of without a legitimate ethnographic or political mandate.

            In the case of the Donbass, DEMOCRATIC REFERENDUMS WERE HELD WITH OVER 80% TURN OUT WHERE OVER 70% VOTED FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM THE UKRAINE, RATIFYING THEIR DEMOCRATIC, HUMAN RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION. (If liberals have an issue with these referendums, let’s democratically repeat them with UN, impartial monitors! Let’s stop US/EU/Israeli supported Neo NAZI death squads murdering innocent civilians to prevent them from democratically voting because they happen to be Russian or Pro-Russian! Let’s allow ALL the regions of what was once the Ukraine TO DEMOCRATICALLY VOTE THEIR HUMAN RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION, OBSERVED BY UNBIASED, INTERNATIONAL MONITORS, DEMOCRATICALLY VOTING ON FEDERALIZATION OR SECESSION, RUSSIAN LANGUAGE/ETHNOGENESIS or UKRAINIAN ETHNOGENESIS, ACCESSION TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION or INDEPENDENCE!) It was at this time that the Turchinov-Yatsenuk junta with oligarch money sent Neo NAZI death squads into the Donbass to put down democratic referendums they denounced as “terrorism.” In Mariupol on the day of the democratic Referendum, one such Banderofascist death squad massacred the people at a polling site for simply exercising their democratic, human right to self-determination. Similar instances were reported throughout Donetsk and Lugansk. Brutality was used throughout the Russian southeast of the Ukraine with pogroms, secret imprisonments, purges employed to stifle dissent.

            The Russian peoples of the Donbass never accepted Ukrainian ethnogenesis. They are historically peoples who considered themselves Russian living on territories which for the most part were never considered part of the Ukraine but were awarded by Stalin and Lenin to the Ukraine with the intention of creating a self-sufficient, Ukrainian national republic. Great Russian gifts to the Ukraine. Slobozhanschina, Novorossiya, stretching from the Donbass and Sumy-Kharkov to the Rumanian border. No one asked the peoples living on these territories whether or not they wished to be Ukrainians. They did not speak the artificial, half Polish mishmash Surzhyk known as mova. They did not share the Polish serf slave culture of Franko, Lesya Ukrainka and the NAZI Shukhevich. It is only proper that they be allowed the fundamental, human right to determine for themselves whether they will live as Russians, New Russians or whatever else they may democratically choose. That is the crux of the matter. This banderofascist apologist supports Neo NAZI death squads and a banderofascist government putting down the democratic right to self determination of all the peoples of what was known as the Ukraine.

            Now, I will again reemphasize that these banderofascists overthrew a 54% majority, democratically elected government in a US/EU/Israeli orchestrated coup d’etat: the banderofacists represented less than 15% of the population. They represent even less today (~5%). This Neo-NAZI government, junta, was selected and installed by the US State Department. Why wouldn’t the electoral, democratic majority in the Ukraine rise up and act to liberate itself from a foreign oppressor, colonial regime? Why wouldn’t an 85%+ majority reject a foreign sponsored program of ethnogenesis representing a pariah linguistic, religious, cultural, polonized minority?!

            This banderofascist apologist now tries to pass off the Neo NAZI atrocities of the Uniate colonial regime upon its victims. The peoples of Novorossiya have confined their war for liberation to their national territory, which has been subject to an invasion and occupation by banderofascist, US/EU backed forces. Putin at the outset of the banderofascist invasion did not arm New Russian cadres. And as a matter of fact, the arms these cadres initially contracted for from Russian oligarchs were handed over to Banderofascist death squads at the outset of hostilities. New Russian militias relied on war memorial museums and caches of WWII era weapons and ammunition from Soviet, civil defense armories to initially answer Neo NAZI death squads. The first armor New Russian forces had were hastily reconditioned T34s, Stalin tanks and a handful of BMPs from Ukrainian armed forces units which defected to New Russia to fight banderofascism. Later armor and anti-aircraft batteries and munitions were provided by pro New Russian oligarchs who purchased obsolete, 1950s and 1960s kit from Russian arms dealers bound for the scrap heap as there wasn’t much of a market for it in the Third World. International brigades of anti-Fascist volunteers began arriving from abroad to fight Banderofascist ethnic cleansing. Cossacks and Russian veterans arrived to fight Uniate, Galician invasion. As late as early August 2014, Putin refused to get involved in the war in Novorossiya. Finally, with Minsk I, Putin sent Russian advisors and obsolete, Soviet kit in aid to help the New Russian people secure their freedom. This was several weeks after NATO/US/Israeli special forces, supplies and paramilitaries had been involved in aiding the Banderofascist invasion in Novorossiya. Everything from forced vivisection of human organs to WMDs used against civilians to child rape to immolation of dissidents to outright massacres of villages to even chartered, human safaris targeting Donbass civilians were (are) perpetrated by the Banderofacist regime invading Donbass. Such NAZI, genocidal barbarism is what this person is advocating.

            What we have witnessed is the collapse of Reality’s agenda, where in point after point, a substantive, factual response has either contradicted or proven false Reality’s liberal, banderofascist agitprop. Reality’s response has been to Red bait, intensify russophobia, increasingly rely on four letter word answers with strawmen, unsubstantiated innuendos, displaying a general inadequacy and ignorance in addressing given topics. This person’s participation thus falls in on itself as bigotry and smears whose hate is nothing more than barbarism fuelled by ignorance and agitprop.

      • Reality Checker says

        This post was a response to a couple of MW’s false accusations and hallucinations about my views. It got buried. I just wanted to improve its profile.

      • Bandera and his Uniate, NAZI collaborationist cronies have been put on the currency, have had landmarks named after them, honoraria dedicated in their honor, schoolbooks revised to recast them as heroes while denying their genocidal crimes ALL WITH A WINK AND A NOD FROM EU/USA/ISRAEL: you can reflect on that and the provided and sourced information I placed here to show how your advocacy for banderofascism totally rebuts and corrects everything you have had to say, including denying reality for your banderofascist, russophobic propaganda. You act as a russophobic accessory to crimes against humanity.

        The crux of the matter here is simple: LET’S PUT PUTIN, RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY, RUSSIAN LANGUAGE, ACCESSION TO RUSSIA ON A DEMOCRATIC BALLOT REGION BY REGION IN THE UKRAINE, where your anecdotal friend can repatriate and vote if he likes, AGAINST UNIATE BANDEROFASCIST SCHENEVMERLA AFTER A PERIOD OF DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGNING COMPRISING A YEAR AND UN SUPERVISED electioneering. Internationally monitored, democratic referendums: let’s do it!!! Where the banderofacist death squads, Right Sector, UNA-UNSO, all banderofacist paramilitaries, Uniate and schismatic hate groups, their enablers (foreign and domestic) are tried and answer for their crimes against humanity and where their financing is made public knowledge. Let’s make that happen to see who democratically prevails. Why are you and yours using ethnic cleansing, child rape, pogroms, WMDs against civilians, massacres, secret imprisonments, vivisection coordinated with Banderofascist death squads to prevent that from happening?! Did you not understand that civilization condemned that type of NAZI barbarism at Nuremberg?!

    • Michael Warren says

      Firstly, you represent your views. This author is not here to defend himself. And as you have made your ignorant, RUSSOPHOBIC views known, you have embarrassed yourself. When faced with substantive rebuttal, you resorted to crass ad hominem invective and Red baiting. You lost discussion after discussion and now are here saying, “Read X because I dig what he says even though I lack the capacity to put it into my own words and adequately engage topics with substance, nor can my obsolete liberal worldview stand criticism.” Then you should learn, listen and talk less. You speak for you. You express your express your fringe, liberal historically illiterate views. When you are corrected, you lack any substantive replies.
      2). This is a discussion on your quack Ukrainian banderofascist advocacy and russophobic views of history. So either defend your liberal nonsensical stupidity or be mature enough to admit that you don’t know what you are talking about and pull the plug on your ridiculous verbal assaults. But of course a coward who hides in anonymity can’t really be expected to do much more.
      3). It is comical how you try to elude substantive critiques and then ruminate on characterizations which are accurate and given in answer to the pitiful incentives of you and yours. If you don’t know the material, clearly lack an education regarding it, resort to fabrication and insults to float your ridiculous and idiotic liberal worldview, you can be rest assured you will be called on it and you will be torn down. If you don’t like it, I suggest you apologize, become an adult and respect your betters in conversations which clearly show your lack of knowledge and understanding of topic. If you choose not to and intend to snipe out of cowardice with ad hominem remarks, that just shouts you are here to disrupt and that your ideological biases are inadequately represented by you to triumph in the marketplace of ideas. You are an effette liberal and your worldview is not only ignorant and unread, it is sociopathetic.
      4). If you wish to discuss some points from some literature, do so as an adult. Rest assured, if they reflect the lack of scholarship of yourself, Stinkovitch, meta-bishop, or anonymous or whatever liberal dufus, they will be answered and addressed. So far the only thing we have witnessed from you is anonymity, Stinkovitch clone language and asinine personal attacks after your talking points have been substantively eviscerated. You are even smug about it like some sort of parody of a child who simply seeks to gain attention by being sociopathic. Grow up. If you can’t engage a discussion and wither away when confronted with substantive rebuttal, take your unread pity party and gay bar character assassination to the liberal holes they are welcome.
      5). Thank you for admitting you don’t know what you are talking about and can’t coherently and consistently elucidate a sovereign position on any given topic you chose to spam. Thank you for admitting you lack the critical thinking skills to even cogently express your agreement with literature you consider formative. Thank you for conceding that other people speak for you and that you are an inadequate and obnoxious heckler feebly representing their agenda. This will not go well for you and yours.

      • Reality Checker says

        You need an exorcist. I think you could save a lot of time and money if you sought one who offers group rate discounts.

        Best of luck.

        • Michael Warren says

          The expert opinion of a Banderofascist liberal enabler whose sole answer to substantive critique boils down to four letter words… Uniate eldership and all that. Ridiculous.

  17. Cynthia mae Curran says

    Well, Trump may do some good on trade or immigration but he is not the best christian. For one thing he is a big fan of positive thinking Norman Vincent Peale. I think Mike Pence is more of a protestant christian than Trump is.