Your’s Truly was in the process of coming out with another post on the recent atrocity in France and why a growing number of us “are Charles Martel,” as opposed to that piss-ant Charlie Hebdo.
Events in Greece however require our immediate attention.
As most of you know, I have not been a fan of Greek politics for a variety of reasons; the most prominent being that the entire Greek political scene is hopelessly corrupt. So corrupt that it requires a logarithmic scale to calibrate it as opposed to an ordinary McLaughlinesque scale of 1 to 10. (“On a scale of one to ten, Morton, one being a nullity and ten being metaphysical certitude, where would you put ‘X’?”) The other reason is because I’m a conservative, a traditionalist, (in the American sense) a classical liberal, and (in the Greek context) a monarchist. On that last issue alone, everything that has transpired in Greece over the last 40 years has been ipso facto illegitimate.
The new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras and his SYRIZA Party are no different in this regard. They have drunk from the same globalist/secularist brew that has laid waste to Greece and is in the process of destroying Europe. I mean nothing to take away from the man personally. He’s smart, educated, attractive and he does have the courage of his convictions (even if they are the wrong convictions). Having said that, it’s refreshing that his cultural Marxism is at least open –unlike that of the other political parties.
Moreover, he practices what he preaches. In his personal life, he live with his mistress, upon whom he’s sired two children, none of whom are baptized. Even die-hard communists (like my father’s first cousin, the village atheist) baptized their children, either for peace in the family or as some sort of cultural solidarity with the Greek ethnos. One gets the impression that he could be just as home in New York, Paris or London as he would be in Athens. All of these raise alarms in my quarter.
So, will he succeed? Probably not. Especially if he doesn’t recognize the fact that it was the Neoliberal policy of open borders that has ruined Greece. Let me be direct: Europe has a tiger by the tail, and that tiger is the righteous nativism of the indigenous peoples of Europe. If the political class doesn’t grasp this fact, then the only possible future for Europe is one of racial and ethnic strife, even up to genocide.
During the campaign, he said all the right anti-EU things. Upon election, the first ambassador he met with was the Russian one. This spoke volumes. Then he rightly called the Ukrainian government what it really is: a mishmash of neo-Nazis, State Department toadies, and Uniates. (OK, I threw in that last one but it’s true nonetheless.) If he keeps on talking like this and more importantly, acting like this, then Greece’s new-found recalcitrance would be a geopolitical game-changer. It would in fact be “the first defeat.”
What do I mean by this?
As everybody knows, the first defeat inflicted upon the Axis powers was the defiance of General John Metaxas in the face of Italian aggression in 1940. Greece literally routed Il Duce’s legions, thereby necessitating Hitler’s invasion of the Balkans. Years later, when historians were able to digest the war, many pointed to the fact that Mussolini’s defeat derailed the German invasion of Russia by several weeks. Hitler in fact chose the same day –June 21–to invade Russia that Napoleon did. If memory serves, it was Churchill who described the Greek victory over Mussolini as “the first defeat.”
The crumbling of EU/US sanctions over Russia would be salutary not only for Greece, but for Europe as well. It could possibly end the hyper-hegemonic claims of the Neocons and their avaricious quest for more war, more plunder, and more debt (all to be paid to the private banking corporations that control the Federal Reserve). Previous to the Charlie Hebdo affair, other European leaders have called for an end to these insane sanctions, including the president of France and the deputy chancellor of Germany. It’s not hard to see why. They have hurt Russia but the economic blow-back on Europe has been severe as well. Nobody has gained by them and if anything, they’ve strengthened Putin’s hand. And when they do collapse (and collapse they will in one form or another), Putin will then bestride the geopolitical landscape even more the colossus than he is presently.
Unfortunately, SYRIZA is already caving to the EU. Having enjoyed a brief day in the sun, they’ve turned tail and agreed that the Russian sanctions shall go on. This of course will piss off Barbara Stan Drezhlo who doesn’t seem to understand that Leninism (and all types of Leftism) is a diabolical ideology built on a foundation of lies. Just when he thought that the Greeks would ride to the rescue of Holy Russia, this unpatriotic party showed their true, globalist colors. Like the rest of European establishment, they can’t imagine life other than being lick-spittles who will gladly eat crumbs from the master’s table. I guess Aristotle was right: some men are born slaves.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Tsipras engineer the “Grexit” and say “OXI!” to further sanctions. But he is not of the same mettle that General Metaxas was. Neither are the Greek people of the same fortitude for that matter. Two, three and four generations of socialism has a way of sapping the fighting spirit of a once-proud people. Instead, what that horribly depressed country will experience is more of the same. More socialism, more immigration, and more budget cuts. Tsipras simply doesn’t hold any cards now that he’s thrown away the Russian ones. It’s sad, after making all the right moves initially, he spat in the face of the only sympathetic hegemon out there. He’s got maybe a year before he’s thrown out on his ear. And when the sanctions do expire, Putin will remember who was with him and who wasn’t.
It will now be left to another country, perhaps France’s National Front or Britain’s UKIP to hold fast to the patriotic ideal. The animal spirits of the Europeans will be emboldened when the time comes.
It’s gonna take awhile. Then again, the road from October 28, 1940 to May 8, 1945 was a long, hard slog as well. But victory will come, only now it will take longer. SYRIZA’s about-turn only lengthened the war. It’s sad, Tsipras could have been the Metaxas of this struggle but instead he chose the way of Vichy.
You have it nearly right. The last step is to acknowledge that Greece is modern Europe’s first failed state, post-WW II. You also need to point out the complicity of the corrupt Greek Orthodox Church of Greece in Greece’s downfall. Thus, Stalinist political doctrine, a corrupt and greedy electorate, corrupt church, military, and political processes and people–are the lethal cocktail th destroyed Greece.
“corrupt and greedy electorate”
Does this refer to the propensity of Greeks not to pay their taxes? Because there is nothing wrong with that in my view.
George,
For a good book on the Greek activity at the start of the second world war I highly recommend “”The First Victory, Greece in the Second World War” by Dr. George C. Blytas. Dr. Blytas is a member of St Basil’s in Houston. The book reads like a novel. The publisher is Cosmos Publishing, the American Hellenic Institute Foundation.
Read the book, excellent.
Michalopulos:
CHARLES MARTEL battled the MOORS. MICHALOPULOS battles BUGBEARS of his own DERANGED IMAGINATION.
And OOM battles Orthodox Christianity.
As a Bulgarian who’s been living in the UK for over 20 years I can safely – and happily say – that UKIP is a horrible party full of moronic idiots led by a braying donkey with no discernible talent. I do heartily wish that dear old Nigel fails miserably in his quest to become an MP. Though for sheer enjoyment I would so love to see him sitting in between George Galloway and Dennis Skinner in the Commons.
UKIP is the UK’s only hope.
A most excellent read.
Thank you
Syriza’s Original 40 Point Manifesto:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-29/syrizas-original-40-point-manifesto
37. Withdrawal of Greek troops from Afghanistan and the Balkans. No Greek soldiers beyond our own borders.
40. Closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO.
Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos on WWIII and the end of Turkey and the return of Constantinople:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP4ts8cmNNg
Removing themselves from NATO would enable Turkey to try to seize some islands or other territory, which is right before WWIII (Russia vs. NATO), during which Greece will be neutral, Russia rolls over Turkey going all the way to the Persian Gulf and the borders of Israel before what I would guess is mutual nuclear destruction with the USA/NATO (5:18 of video, “anyone who will take part in this European war will be lost”).
In midst of the war:
“The English and Americans will give us Constantinople not because they love us but because this will be consistent with their interests.” (which probably includes keeping Greece neutral as opposed to actively allied with Russia.)
(Feb. 1st, 2015) Obama Admits US “Brokered” Coup in Ukraine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QAXmf5_EOs
“And since Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine — not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he [Putin] was caught off-balance by the protests in the Maidan and [Ukraine’s then-President Viktor] Yanukovych then fleeing after we had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine.”
That deal wasn’t with lawful government of the Urkaine. You can’t “broker a deal” with Nazis to “transition power” to these same Nazis by violent overthrow of the government and expect your puppets to be seen as legit. All the civil unrest, genocide, and civil war that has happened in Ukraine (with the probable exception of the quick/bloodless annexation of Crimea) was meant to happen by the US regime (or at least considered an acceptable possible risk/cost).
Ukraine Crisis – What You’re Not Being Told:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWkfpGCAAuw
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see Tsipras engineer the ‘Grexit’ and say ‘OXI!’ to further sanctions. But he is not of the same mettle that General Metaxas was. Neither are the Greek people of the same fortitude for that matter. Two, three and four generations of socialism has a way of sapping the fighting spirit of a once-proud people. Instead, what that horribly depressed country will experience is more of the same. More socialism, more immigration, and more budget cuts. Tsipras simply doesn’t hold any cards now that he’s thrown away the Russian ones.”
The below is what socialism always produces and how it always ends (default):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97ECZMvbLxg
So I goes to the landlady Merkel,
I said, “You let me slide?”
I’ll have the rent for you tomorrow.
the next day I don’t know
So said let me slide it on you know people,
I notice when I come home in the evening
She ain’t got nothing nice to say to me,
but for five year she was so nice
Lord, she was lovey-dovey,
I come home one particular evening
The landlady Merkel said, “You got the rent money yet?”,
I said, “No, can’t find no job”
Therefore I ain’t got no money to pay the rent
She said “I don’t believe you’re tryin’ to find no job”
Said “I seen you today you was standin’ on a corner,
leaning up against a post”
I said “But I’m tired, I’ve been walkin’ all day”
She said “That don’t confront me,
long as I get my money next Friday”
Now next Friday come I didn’t have the rent,
and out the door I went
So I go down the streets,
down to my good friend Putin’s house
I said “Look man I’m outdoors you know,
can I stay with you maybe a couple days?”
He said “Uh, Let me go and ask my people”
He come out of the house,
I could see in his face
I know that was no
He said “I don’t know man, ah Russian people kinda funny, you know”
I said “I know, everybody funny, now you funny too”
So I go back home
I tell the landlady Merkel, I got a job, I’m gonna pay the rent
She said “Yeah?” I said “Oh yeah”
And then she was so nice,
Lord, she was lovey-dovey
So I go in my room, pack up my things and I go,
I slip on out the back door and down the streets I go
She a-hollerin’ about the front rent, she’ll be lucky to get any back rent,
she ain’t gonna get none of it
Commie bums could be just the right people at the right time to stumble their way into the perfect place that Greece needs to be to fulfill prophecy. “More socialism, more immigration, and more budget cuts.” That stuff all sucks, and in fact Greeks will be starving according to Elder Paisios prophecy, but it is micro level stuff as long as Greece somehow manages to get out of NATO and doesn’t get dragged into WW III.
George:
Syriza’s pas-de deux with Putin is political theater, akin to Varoufakis’ sartorial protest ( Look at me! My shirt is untucked! Take that you, EU, you! ) Who knows, likely the Syrizistas will go bare chested a la Putin for Independence Day. By OXI Day, they’ll be nudists, perhaps by choice, perhaps not. This is just the kind of political silliness that only serious Greeks could generate.
The reality is that the Greek government is broke with no means to repay its debt. It is just like the man who owed 10,000 talents. The Greek government’s external debt is over 175% of Greece’s GDP. The Greek government has over 1.1 Trillion USD in unfunded pensions that it cannot pay. This is the result of decades of political pandering by both the New Democrats and the Socialists. Fully 25% of the Greek economy is composed of government make work jobs. Greeks have generous benefits without the tax base to support those benefits. Greek hairdressers are able to retire with a full pension at age 50 because of their “dangerous work with hazardous chemicals”
The Greek government has impoverished the nation with promises it cannot pay for, and which it has funded with loans from the EU. For years the Greek government hid its debt and cooked its books until the Vatopedi monastery scandal exposed the chicanery.
In short the Hegumen and Sakellarios of Vatopendi monastery connived to get the Greek government to trade a wasteland lake in rural northern Greece for 2 Billion USD of prime real-estate in central Athens, including the site of the Athens Olympics, now turned into a shopping mall.
And you think the “evil West” is venal and corrupt?
For more on the Vatopedi scandal and the crash of the Greek economy read “Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds in Vanity Fair at:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010
In any case Greece is broke and the only way Tsipras and co. can fund their promised largesse is to convince the German tax-payers to fund the whole mess. While thumbing their nose at the Germans looks good on Greek TV, Angela Merkel is not answerable fro Greek voters; but to the German voters, who are tired of paying taxes to bail out lazy deadbeats.
In the real world, unlike Cloud-Cuckoo Land, those who write the checks make the rules. The Syrizistas are posturing in public now to cover the fact that they will ultimately agree to the very same austerity measures as Samaras. After all, if they don’t the EU will hold next weeks allowance, due on Saturday.
If the Syrizistas default and leave the EU, who then will fund their social spending and their Trillion dollar pensions?
No one.
Sugar daddy Putin has his own financial crisis. Oil is below $50 per barrel for the foreseeable future. Russian has already spent 25 % of its sovereign wealth in the past two months rescuing Rosbank and Sperbank from default. The Kremlin’s repeated attempts to rescue the ruble from free fall have already failed. And the war in Ukraine goes on.
Look for greater sanctions in the coming days – and Tsipras will sign on like a good little boy.
Francis, for once I mostly agree with you. I guess you didn’t get my sarcasm or the not-thinly-veiled contempt I have for Leftist ideologies –SYRIZA included.
Having said that, SYRIZA could redeem itself if it was able to pull off the “Grexit” or failing that, stop the suicide of Europe’s insistence on maintaining the insane sanctions against Russia.
As for the war in the Ukraine going on, it seems to be winding down. Ukrainian men are deserting and/or not responding to mobilization efforts, Kiev is ruled by clowns, and an anti-EU/US backlash is brewing because they are coming to the realization that Nuland is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Oh, and Kiev is getting ready to default.
I agree George, but you and I know that the globallists wanted it this way. Only Russia stands in its way and the globallists know it. That’s why they got America and the EUROPEAN to sanction Russia and precipitated the war in Ukraine. It’s anybody’s guess what will happen.
The vote in Greece was the people’s way to stop the wholesale raping of their country. Not that Greece’s socialist policies and corrupt government didn’t play a hand, a big hans, but they made a deal with the Devil and the Devil Is Going To Get its due. I hope Syriza pulls it off, but I do not think so.
Peter.
Well, according to this article the so-called Europeans, especially the Germans, are attempting to school the Greeks and force them into continuing austerity measures in Greece. http://www.businessinsider.com/r-different-delivery-one-message-to-greeces-new-leaders-2015-2
Greek pride and stubbornness may just get Greece out of the Euro Zone unless Syriza caves. Inexperienced Neo-Communists and Crony Capitalists at logger heads. Love it. NOT!
Peter
This is not for a post. It is personally for you George.
George, you cannot escape it, hide it or silence it. That is mimicking the very problem itself, an isolated closed system of self centered self protection. Conform is self centered self protection and transform is other centered Jesus at risk. No Jesus risk and no Jesus return. Omission of the Great Commission is the omission of Jesus. There is no Jesus risk in that. Conform omits Jesus by replacing Him with something else. The something else is conforming to idolatry and that is SATAN.
The Orthodox are conform over transform and that is their demise in America. Jesus + Something Else + Conform is idolatry and idolatry is the corruption of the EOC. Only Jesus + Nothing works. The Orthodox prop ups of ethnicity/ethnic culture, authoritarian closed system and the exclusive isolating claim have demographically imploded the Orthodox in America. There are 7 more sin prop ups and you, sir, do not know what they are. Orthodox not knowing is the idolatry of the closed system that closes out knowing. Satan does not want the Orthodox to know what they are.
The Orthodox serve two masters. That is Jesus + Satan. That is Jesus + Something Else + Conform. The Bible tells you what the outcome of that is. You can see the proof of it in the dying state of Orthodoxy. Satan always has a counterfeit to Jesus. Jesus is transform and Satan is conform. Which one is your church following?
George, has Orthodoxy experienced the greatest decline in its history in the last 100 years? Yes, tell me how that is not the result of Jesus + Something Else + Conform. Tell me that is not serving two masters which only results in the master of church death in authority over your dying church. Who is that master, George?
The definition of a dying church is, the 7 last words of a dying church are, We Have Always Done It This Way. That is the Orthodox Way to its dying church grave in America. All I tell is true and it all comes true. It all comes true.
Yes, George, you were given the solution and you killed it like I said the Orthodox do. You are the proof. You are practicing the prop up block. The Orthodox cannot handle the truth of themselves. No Orthodox solution to the Orthodox failure works. Simply put, you don’t like being told that.
Yes, I know George, you believe Orthodoxy is the Jesus solution to itself and yet you have no solution that works and all solutions tried fail. The definition of church irrational failure is the belief that the same failed solution over and over again will this time not provide a failed solution. Jesus + Nothing = Your Only Rational Solution. Simply put, you don’t like being told that.
Jonah the OCA solution, your solution said, I have the most profound respect for the bishops on stage with me.
All the bishops on stage were corrupt. George, your Jonah solution was himself corrupt to have said that. Did Jonah as solution prove to be a failed solution? Oh, I see, it was those he has the most profound respect for that caused his failure as the solution. Yes, George, keep believing that and see where it takes your church.
I predicted he would last about two years. George, how long did he last?
I have other means of speaking into the Orthodox. You have been spoken into yourself and you do not like it. That is why you will not post me. You will call it another reason, but that is the real reason.
Jesus + Nothing is the only solution that works. Satan who is the master of plus something else plus conform knows that and he is the block to knowing that. The serving two masters church results in serving one master who is a idolatrous, corrupt, failed, irrelevant, abusive and dying. He is the biggest loser in all of eternity and if the Orthodox serve that master they will be turned into the biggest loser in Christianity and that is exactly what has happened. Now by Gods only true church exclusivity prop up deny it and continue to watch your church die a slow, ugly and painful death by how I tell you it is dying that death.
The props have been knocked out in America and the Orthodox cannot stand up on their own two Jesus feet and walk without them in America. As your church dies the reasons why it dies become more and more glaring as does Orthodox denial of the reasons why your church is dying does too. You are the denial proof. The exclusive opinion of itself hates being told what lies it believes in its exclusive opinion of itself that are causing their exclusivity to die in America. It hates that someone outside of that exclusivity can see through it and tell them why they are dying as a church. It offends their pride, arrogance and self righteousness in their exclusive claim by exposing who they really are in their exclusive viewpoint of themselves and so they reject it. It does not line up with the delusion in the deception of who they exclusively believe they are and so they reject it.
Those who denied Jesus in the Gospels had the same problem with Jesus as the Orthodox do today.
Jesus knocked their prop ups out from under them and that exposed them and they did not like it. He exposed that they were not who they exclusively believed they were. John 8:31-59. The props under your church and that have held it up have been knocked out and your church has fallen to the ground and cannot get back up.
All church growth and relevancy and what can kill it dead are found in the Gospels and NT. They then picked up stones to kill Jesus and when they do they kill Jesus in their church dead and their church goes dead as a result. The more EOC kills Jesus in its midst the more it dies. It goes corrupt and dying by the degree the wrong master rules in authority over it and he is allowed to destroy it by the degree you give him authority over it.
Lose the objectivity of Jesus in the Gospels and NT by replacing Him with another master as the authority of Jesus and Gods Word in your church and your church goes spiritually bankrupt dead without the Jesus + Nothing solution. It dies by idolatry of the liar, thief and murderer master who it serves over Jesus who ALONE is to be master. The master of murder will murder your church dead. The master of life is its only solution to its church death.
Yes, George, continue to talk about other things than the real problem and its only solution and be a deceived enabler of the wrong master and who is killing your church dead in America. Believe in that lying master, bow to him, obey him, serve him and glorify him. See him as the Divine All Holy master like he wants all of you too and he will kill your church dead and he is!
There is a solution to your church state. The more it dies the more its state goes away. If it erases itself it erases the problem of its failed, corrupt and dying state. All the problems go away as your church goes away. That is your masters solution. It is not the living Jesus as master solution, but you can believe it is and enable your church death and you are! The Orthodox hate being told the spiritual reality of this and I know why. They do not want to believe by exclusiveness that the lying master they bow too, follow and obey is their enabling of their own church death. Bow in idolatrous reverence worship to the evil incarnate master and he will kill your church dead.
The Matthew 4:1-11 and Matthew 6:24 choice is all yours to make. Those who make the wrong choice will deny the why and how that they did by the deception in the lying delusion that they believed in and that led them to make that wrong choice.
Yes, George, don’t tell the church what the spiritual problem is and what its only spiritual solution is. You can’t if you have made the wrong spiritual choice, the wrong master choice. You will not able to spiritually see though it and speak into it for being it. A church wrong choice of masters will result in a wrong outcome for that church.
George, is Orthodoxy in America, is your jurisdiction, are you yourself, following the wrong master? Do you look to that master to be the solution to the problem that this wrong master creates?
I see right through you and your church. I follow the right master and so I can. If I didn’t I couldn’t. That is a spiritual fact in spiritual truth. If I didn’t I couldn’t and I do and so I can.
There are many other ways of delivering the Jesus + Nothing solution to the Orthodox than your blog.
In spiritual reality your blog is all about Jesus + Something Else + Conform and in ways it does not see and will deny if exposed to you. I don’t need this blog and I never did. I am dependent upon Jesus + Nothing and nothing else. There are other effective ways to speak in and I always seem to find them. There is no Orthodox block that can stop Jesus + Nothing from speaking in to the Satanic lie of Jesus + Something Else + Conform.
Jesus + Nothing has grown to approximately 800 million in about 500 years. It is the cutting edge of Jesus Christ salvation relevancy to the largest mission and evangelism field there ever has been and it is China. If you cannot stand up with Christ two feet only propping you up relevancy here you will not be able to stand up on and with the two feet of Jesus relevancy propping you up there either. As your church dies by Jesus + Something Else + Conform the living true church of Jesus exponentially grows and lives by Jesus + Nothing Else.
The evangelical church of Jesus is not dying. It is exponentially growing.
What you got Orthodox? I know what you got. I can see it dying right before my eyes.
I would wish you the best, but that would be dishonest and because I see your church end.
I would not wish you the worst, but I see the worst end for your church.
I pray you come to the end of yourselves in your dying church of Jesus + Something Else + Conform and find the Jesus + Nothing only solution to the dying end of your church.
No Jesus = No Jesus Solution and Your Church Dies in America. I know what that will result in as the never ending problematic irrelevant survival existence state it will be forced to carnally exist in. A church can spiritually die and continue to exist.
George, no other solution will work, but don’t listen to me the one whose church is not dying but is living for Jesus like I have said. If you are ever in the Modesto, Cal area get in touch and I will take you to a church that is dynamic, alive, relevant and growing and not coming to a failed and corrupt end. I am fine with agreeing to disagree and then you can come to my church and see what you are disagreeing with. Yes, I want to see you disagree with it as you stand in the midst of it. I want to hear you say as you stand in the midst of it that this is heresy that practices apostasy in comparison to the EOC. That it is the heresy and apostasy of Satan in comparison to your Gods only true church exclusive divine all holiness that has no comparison. So don’t come visit and so you don’t have to make the comparison to your church that has no comparison to it. Keep believing it is the comparison that has no comparison to it. See where that takes your church. You are Jesus open system and bottom up inclusive pluralistic invited to visit anytime. Welcome to the Jesus + Nothing church.
Love Jesus, Worship Jesus, Rescue Like Jesus and Live for Jesus. Become more like Jesus. That is what the Jesus + Nothing church I belong too on the local level is. We focus on those who do not yet know Jesus as their salvation and are not really interested in converting the already converted as our evangelism to a lost, wounded, traumatized and broken world.
I am Jesus here for you George. I really am and no matter how you Orthodox react to who you think I am and that I am not. Oh, yes, I am uncompromising no church corruption, cultism, irrelevancy, abuse and death and like few Christians you will ever meet are, but that is for you and not against you and no matter how you Orthodox interpret it in your church death in America.
No Jesus risk and no Jesus return. You get the church you Jesus pay the price for, Jesus sacrifice for and Jesus take the risk for. You get the church you Jesus die to self for by coming to an end of yourselves in your Jesus + Something Else + Conform church. I see the church you have and invite you to come see the local church I have. Just let me know and I will be there for you. I promise you will see a church that is not dying like the only Orthodox parish in Modesto is. You will see the living church of Jesus that is not spiritually dead!!!
Sincerely,
Ashley Nevins
You may see this as the death knell; I and many other converts see this as the reason we became Orthodox.
The fact is that “Jesus+Nothing,” in actual practice, is “What I think Jesus wants+Nothing”. That is Protestantism in a nutshell. There is no authority outside of “Jesus,” which in actual practice, means there is no authority. John Shelby Spong believes he is in line with Jesus too, in some bizarre way. It means nothing.
Of course the Church should not cover up scandal and it should not protect clerics who are destructive. However, your vision of the Church spells certain death. Flee from the idol of “relevance” and all it entails. The Church is relevant because of what it is, not because of how the culture sees it.
Dear Mr. Nevins:
Thank you for your remarks. I am glad you’re involved in a church that’s so very enriching for you that you’d like to share it with everyone, especially George.
I am surmising you are the father of Scott Nevins, and that being the case I understand why you’d want nothing to do with the Orthodox at all, can’t say I blame you, but I can say I am deeply saddened by Scott’s death and all that led up to it, and that there are likely many, like me, who are deeply sorry for your loss of Scott. I cannot even begin to imagine your grief or what you have lived through over these years.
I know only what I have seen on the Pokrov website of your family and all that occurred. If I could fix it, I would. As it stands, I can only cry with you, and pray for you and Diane, which I have. God helping me, I’ll keep it up.
May God bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you, and may The Man of Sorrows, Jesus Christ the Lord be your True Friend and Comfort forever.
Sam
Sam,I think most of us are in harmony with your laudable prayers and other efforts to help assuage Ashley’s pangs of guilt over the suicide of his son.
This is such a cheap shot that I recoil every time you mention it Bp. Tikhon Fitzgerald.
You don’t pour fire on a man’s wound. You just don’t do it. You are doing it to discredit him and silence him.
Stop it. It is unworthy of the office you have been granted.
If you want to challenge Ashley, challenge his method of analysis instead of trying to hurt the man in order to discredit and silence him. Your approach is no different than Syosset sending people who trouble them to St. Luke’s.
Ashley’s error is searching for the perfect paradigm. I could write a critique on this and it would be convincing but I don’t want to take the time. Organizational structures, when they become paradigmatic, when they move from an adaptive model to paradigm, die because they become closed to new information and insight — creativity is quashed, no new life is born, no self-correction can take place, adaptability is lost.
Ashley is correct that this condition afflicts Orthodoxy in areas. He is wrong in thinking a more perfect paradigm is the solution. (Paradigms don’t exist in real life. They are rationalistic constructs imposed on reality. Paradigms always quash creativity and thus always quench the work of the Holy Spirit which will not and cannot be bound by human constructs.)
But as for you Bp. Tikhon Fitzgerald, start walking worthy of the vocation to which you have been called.
Fr. Hans:
AXIOS AXIOS AXIOS
Bishop Tikhon, Some things never change. Your insensitivity and cruel comments being one of those things. I pity you. The comments you make hurt no one more than they hurt you. You are a Bishop, which means you are supposed to be a servant and a leader……..a protector of the Faith! Your job is to be an example for the Faithful. It’s perplexing that you ever got into this line of work. Christ’s life should be our example. Do you think He would make such a cruel comment? Jesus wouldn’t rub salt in the wounds of a person suffering from grief. You have a way of getting to people when they are at their most vulnerable and kicking them in the teeth.
I’m afraid that anything you might have to say about the teachings of the Church lose all meaning when you act in such an UnChrist like way. Again, I pity you.
Such a cheap shot from a member of the hierarcy. So sad. Bp, look at what you just wrote and consider how this man now feels.
Fr. Hans,
And sometimes it is simply necessary to state the obvious.
You would do well to investigate the mechanism of “reaction formation,” and I will leave it at that. We defend ourselves from painful suffering by unconsciously focusing on matters that are irrelevant, distracting, and provoke alternately powerful emotions such as anger & rage; but ultimately, they serve to prolong – and even worsen – the inevitable realization that we are helpless.
To allow Mr. Nevins to endlessly publish his irrelevant “distractions” unencumbered; for participants here to “walk on eggshells” because of the circumstances of his suffering; and for you to lash out against Vladyka Tikhon for “pouring fire on a man’s pain” and trying to “hurt the man” does nothing but encourage this pathology to continue. Am I the only one to read Mr. Nevins speaking of the “joy” and “inspiration” of his “living church,” yet his messages are venomous attacks and railings against the Orthodox. So why doesn’t he leave us, a dying circus of hypocrites and liars, Fr. Hans? Because he needs us. And we do him no service by playing along with his denial. And let me add that yours was the cheap shot – and truly ignorant and unworthy of your vocation – in regard to your comment about St. Luke’s. I am astonished.
Mr. Nevins, I do not know where you live, but if you are interested in speaking with a professional who can assist you in examining this entire situation of the loss of your son, I would be honoured to assist you. Leave me a message with how I might contact you here.
Michael, come on man its simple decency. I agree with you that we shouldn’t play into his game, but a Bishop of the Church shouldn’t insult him and rub his face in his son’s death? No way, that’s wrong!
I agree with you that he needs help, but not insults, especially from an Orthodox Bishop! By doing what he did Bishop Tikhon has become no better of a Bishop than the so-called Bishop that believes in the legitimacy of Transsexualism.
How is Bishop Tikhon “above reproach” and refraining from being “Quarrelsome?” (1 Timothy 3:2-3) by saying what he said to Ashley?
No buddy he was wrong and we can tell him he was wrong. It’s just common decency.
Peter
Hi, Father Hans. You want to engage that man ideologically. He doesn’t need that, and it has been shown to result in nothing salvific…on the contrary. Are you sure you are concerned with his salvation? I am sure I am, Go ahead and “challenge his method of analysis.” God be with you!. I hope you feel better after giving your instructions to me! Don’t forget to pray and thank Almighty God, the All Holy Trinity for EVERYTHING!
If I were younger, I’d save: “Organizational structures, when they become paradigmatic, when they move from an adaptive model to paradigm” as example of Antiochene high patristic hypothesizing!
Interesting how Greece, a so called Orthodox country, is dominated by corruption. Maybe the AB of Greece or some prophetic leader should call the country to repentance as the OT prophets did with the nation of Israel. Only God can save Greece or any other country..Repentance is central to change not a different political party. “Trust not in princes or sons of men for in them is no salvation.”
Great post.
Excuse me but you were and continue to be insulting to him. It has nothing to do with leading him to salvation, it has to do with being a decent. Too bad you cannot tell the difference. Fr. Hans is right this is beneath your office. You owe him an apology, and if you cannot do that then just stay quiet and leave him alone.
Peter
God be with and bless Peter A. Papoutsis, guide him and keep him safe from all the assaults of the evil one!
Let’s give thanks to Almighty God, the All-Holy Trinity for everything! And let’s remember, Peter and Father Hans, that Ashley did not cause the suicide of his son, even though HE, obviously, feels guilty about it.
I’m surprised you see insults and sin in this perception…but I really do not mind, although some of Father Hans’s spirited moralizing is not free from wordiness and self-indulgence.
Good heavens Bishop Tikhon!
Ashley has a dislike of Orthodoxy related to his son’s death that presents here largely as a pathology because this is a place where Orthodox toot their horns. Don’t you have the wisdom to let it ride man? Hey, I know, I’m going to go hang out in and Orthodox chat room and see how many of those jerks feathers I can ruffle or I’ll go tell them why they are so screwed up…..etc.
Instead of letting it ride, you find it necessary to represent the church in a nasty, mean spirited fashion that bolsters that very pathology. Yup, they are screwed up jerks.
I met a girl once who lauded her religion over the Orthodox religion calling mine dead works and her’s living works. It was really not worthy of a response because they played the modern guitar and we only sing. And frankly, from my perspective, the only thing we ought to be offering Nevins is our prayers.
He can follow another religion. This is America. Stop reacting to him like a child and feeding the pathology. The pathology is not guilt-it is hatred and blaming the Orthodox faith.
Offer him your prayers and nothing more. And you owe him an apology as well.
I will continue to pray that the man gets over his guilt,. and I recommend this to others. including Mr. Fall, who did exhort me to “offer” Mr. Ashley my prayers…”‘and “that’s all.” (although he himself could not resist adding MORE, as indicated in his closing shot!) I do apologize for not taking a bigger part in the matter when Scott was still amongst us.
If anyone claims to perceive contrition in Mr. Nevins’s messages, they have WAY more discernment than I.
My feeling is that the death of his son did not phase Mr. Nevins in the slightest, or interrupt his anti-Orthodox campaign….the campaign was only intensified by those guilt feelings. I PRAY he gets over them.
I realize that some here are motivated by a feeling of antipathy toward Elder Ephraim hardly less viral than Mr. Nevins’s, and that some of the negativity thrown in my direction is surrogate. And I expect to see a dozen or so “Dislikes’, especially from those most given to moralizing. That’s what this place is for, no?
I hate to continue, but was the chicken or the egg first?
I sincerely do not know.
That is, did Ashley dislike Orthodoxy before Scott joined the church or after Scott joined or after Scott left? I thought it was all related to Scott’s passing. Or are you just creating this vision as a cover for your own mean spiritedness? I’m confused completely now. Call me stupid I suppose.
As for contrition by Ashley, I see no reason to expect contrition from him, why would you?
As for voting, I think I voted like maybe 3 times total and really don’t think it is worth the button push.
Mr. Nevins was posting the same screeds against the Church before his son committed suicide.
To whomever voted thumbs down, it is simply a factual statement.
screed /skrēd/
noun: screed; plural noun: screeds
1. a long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious.
Dan Fall. Mr. Nevins was posting here against Orthodoxy long before his son killed himself. He blamed Orthodoxy for his son going to an Orthodox monastery and being taught there. He had the same anti-monastic pathology as the Pokrov ladies. The passing of his son seems, however to have increased his powers of reproduction as far as anti-Orthodox rants go. Didn’t you KNOW how aggressive he was in trying to get his son away from Orthodox monasticism? Scott’s death OBVIOUSLY did not even make a ripple in the ocean of his wordiness, except that now they seem TO ME to have an additional impetus of guilt/self-dramatisation.
well, thanks for the history lesson
I will again suggest you simply pray for Nevins, rather than assess his feelings in the context of Orthodox thinking when he wants nothing to do with Orthodoxy, and is only using your nastiness in defending the faith as a self-fulfilling I told you [Orthodoxy was bad] so.
I mean if the kid has a problem with only eating sugar; you don’t give him all the candy he wants. In fact, you give him none unless he eats something else.
Stop feeding his demons.
And Nevins, you have my prayers. I’m sure you are reading this…
Hi, Dan. I’m sorry if you disapprove of my assessments of Mr. Nevins’s feelings “in the context of Orthodox thinking.”
I will continue to do so, even if this bewilders you, and causes you to strike out with such melodramatic expostulations as, especially, “Stop feeding his demons.’ Perhaps you’d care to divulge what you think Mr. Nevins’s “demons” are? My personal assessment “in the context of Orthodox thinking,” is that the main demon is his feeling that he is responsible for his son’s decisions, when it is his son, Orthodox or not, who was responsible for them.
I don’t disprove of your assessments. I see no value in them. They present you as mean and Ashley as a victim of your meanness.
Whether his demon is guilt or Orthodoxy matters not.
You won’t redefine it through unsolicited psychological assessment.
Perhaps you would prefer that I give a psychological assessment of your paternal relationship to explain your path in life? To explain why you are unable to respond as Christ might. I will surmise that is not the case.
Take my advice man. If it is longer than a paragraph; discount fully.
Dan, if you are contemplating making even one reference to my father I suggest you be very, very careful. You may sit in your chair and make any amateurish projections about ME you choose. I’m sorry if your interpretation of my writing here has caused you any perturbations; however, I would suggest you refrain from presuming to know ‘what Jesus would say” in any situation including this outlet. What HE has said should be enough for us.
Oh Bishop Tikhon..Of course I would not speak about your paternal relationship-of which I know zip.
But you seem to think it is okay for you to speak about the relationship of Ashley n Scott.
I was trying to make a point…you missed it.
And the history of Christ needs to be emulated in our lives, so we must try to live as we believe Christ would have us. The history is insufficient and of no value if we cannot move forward as best we can.
You continue to make Nevin’s points valid. By allowing yourself to speak about that paternal relationship while condemning me at the suggestion of such behavior visavie you.
Bishop Tikhon-you sir should go and pray with Nevins in person…ask his forgiveness and pray for the soul of his departed child.
Mr Fall refers to my “paternal relationship”.. I think he means my relationship with my father; however, that is my filial relationship. My “Paternal relationships” are with my children, spiritual children. I also think he confuses “disprove” with “disapprove.” If Mr. Fall is dyslexic, I feelsorry for him and will pray for him in that respect as well. As for these discussions of Mr. Nevins’s foolish posts here, I won’t accuse Dan of “moving the goal posts” but of continuously adjusting his remarks according to his changing UNDERSTANDING of where the goal posts are.
And with you my good Bishop.
BTW I only see insults that are real. Just like you do.
have a good night and God bless you.
Peter.
The good bishop may be delusional, from what he has said in the past few weeks.and in need of a good therapist.
Let’s pray for him.
See below, Timmy–this was covered in my reply to your foolish question of February 10th below and my lazy reply of February 19th.. May God Almighty always be with you! By the way, there’s much more to lile, especially at your young age, than getting to have a thrilling conversation with a real bishop…I understand the quickened pulse and toe-curling, but you’re missing a lot in life and in Orthodoxy.I’m 82 and I’ll stand on my record, bad as it may be—these conversations are like the rustlings of mice in the walls, as far as I’m concerned. You make me feel like an old man feeding squirrels or pigeons in the park..
Nice BTW knifing belies the piety of the rest, no? Bobby Burns got it right..
Who is this supposed Bp Tikhon? This can not be a real clergyman devoted to God’s word. He is ruthless and and insulting to a poor suffering man. Anybody know where he is a clergyman, so we can all stay away?
He used to be until people got fed up with this kind of nonsense and had him removed and (as far as church governance is concerned) neutralized. Now he is reduced to taking out his vitriol on the internet in this sort of forum against anyone and everyone. It is a sad situation; Lord have mercy on him.
Too late, Timothy, too late!! After 3 years in the U.S. Army and 8 as a US Air Force officer, I went off active duty in the Pentago and became a member of the clergy in (hold your breath, then take ten deep ones) in December, 1971 on St. Nicholas Day at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington DC, only to be transferred the following year to Los Angeles where I became Protodeacon and then, in 1978, I was petitioned to become a Priest, and about a year later appointed Rector of the Los Angeles Cathedral—I remained Rector there until retiring in 2006; however, the Diocese elected me their Bishop in 1989, so my “paternal relationship” as Danny calls it, lasted a long time. I could have retired in 1997, but I stayed until I had ordained a vicar who would succeed me. I consecrated temples and tonsured Readers elevated Subdeacons, ordained Deacons and Priests, and the Diocese flourished and grew IN SPITE OF MY FAILINGS. I was touched at my magnificent retorement “bash” in Las Vegas which the Diocese gave me. Further information about my “paternal relatioinships” (as Dan Fall calls them) can be found on thee DVD on the topic of my episcopal ministry which was made by Fr. David Thatcher and shown at that banquet. There’re bound to be some copies around. I believe I am the only Orthodox bishop in America who has seen the possibilities of the Internet as a forum no less interesting than the Athens of St. Paul’s day and has been willing to get down and dirty with the people there. I realize that many would prefer a feeble and benevolent, HUGGING HIERARCH who would concentrate more on looking like an icon and dispense Orthodox ‘Lore” and making ladies of a certain age (and some men!) comfortable. Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald did NOT raise that kind of son. Oh, Archbishop Dmitri of blessed memory is the main human being causing my entry into the ranks of the clergy in 1971 at age 29. Believe it or not, I’m uncomfortable once again writing of myself, but I pray it might prevent oh, Dan Fall, from embarrassing himself by further projections (see Psych 101), such as the one he just offered us.
I don’t know so much about Vladyka’s failings, but I can vouch for the extremely high regard in which he was held by his clergy and faithful. There weren’t many places in the OCA I would have been willing to go, but I felt confident going to a city with an OCA DOW parish, and in every way that Vladyka Tikhon impacted on the parish while I was there, it did not disappoint. The problems I encountered could generally be traced to the effects of long-standing systemic rot at the national level, and Vladyka can’t be blamed for those. May the DOS be blessed with a similar “failed” episcopacy with their new bishop.
Vladyka’s main “failing” in my view is that he was unable to take over the OCA liturgical commission at the national level and get rid of the rot and chaos. But that was probably an Augean stables task.
I agree that the socialist Syriza has made promises that it can’t keep, of course, just like the previous socialist New Democracy and Pasok governments, who put Greece in this position in the first place by spending too much and stealing the rest, and surrendering Greek sovereignty to the EU. The immediate economic result of Greece leaving the Eurozone would be a huge devaluation of Greek money, and a return to the Drachma. It would be very difficult for a few years, but eventually, Greece would attract more foreign investment, and build its manufacturing and tourism industries, and could eventually mend economic fences with European countries, while building connections with the east and America. Its pride as an independent nation would be restored. Greece can’t survive as Greece being in perpetual obligation to foreign countries, and spending more than its revenues. Good lessons for the USA.
Did anybody read the Guardian where leaked Mosad emails show that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu was lying about Iran’s nuclear readiness capabilities?
Peter
Yes. Netanyahu has consistently played fast and loose with the truth where Iran is concerned. And he’s always sore about Iran’s Jewish community stubbornly refusing to emigrate to Israel and their sarcastic invitation to Israeli Jews to emigrate to Iran!’ And while the whole world has observed that the USSR has been wiped off all maps, he likes to claim that expression applied to Israel means destruction of Jews.
Bibi may be clinically insane.
Possibly, George, although I tend towards the view that he’s a large, industrial-strength JERK! The Jews deserve much better after all they’ve endured from Gentiles.
Netanyahu is only following in the footsteps of his predecessors on both sides of the Atlantic.
Hasn’t it been said since the ’80s that Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons? Yet people still believe it.
Russia’s support for the Siriza coalition of Marxists, atheists and anti-Othodox activists demonstrates the Kremlin’s cynical habit of promiscuous ideology, supporting whatever party will give Russia an advantage vis a vis the civilized world.
uesday, February 17, 2015
Putin, in Reaching Out to the Right in Europe, has Not Forgotten the Left, Kubansky Says
Paul Goble
Window on Eurasia 2/17/2015
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/02/putin-in-reaching-out-to-right-in.html
Staunton, February 17 – Vladimir Putin’s ostentatious flirting with right-wing nationalists in Europe has attracted so much attention that many have devoted too little attention to the fact that Moscow continues to work with left-wing groups there just as it did during the Cold War, according to Igor Kubansky.
In a commentary on Rufabula.com today, Kybansky argues that “the victory of the left radicals in Greece shows that the priorities of the Kremlin in its search for ‘agents of influence’ has not changed a great deal since the times of the USSR” (rufabula.com/articles/2015/02/10/the-specter-of-communism-over-europe).
For many in Ukraine, the West and even in Russia, he says, “it has long been a commonplace to say that “in the West, the ultra-right supports Putin,” and point to the French National Front, the Hungarian Jobbit movement, the Bulgarian Ataka party and “various Serbian organizations.”
And these same commentators point to the rightwing Golden Dawn group in Greece which declares that it “does not want to see Europe slavishly subordinate to American policy” but rather a Europe to which Russia would belong” and says that Berlin and Washington organized the Maidan in Ukraine and the persecution of Orthodox Christians there.
But Putin has other friends in Greece and in Europe, and they are to be found on the left. Among them is the SIRIZA group in Greece which, as Kubansky points out, “is well-known for its pro-Russian attitudes and links with [Russian] imperialists” of the Dugin variety even though it supports Gay rights, backs same-sex marriages and opposes clericalism.
A clue to the reasons for Moscow’s backing of SIRIZA as well as the Golden Dawn can be found in a statement by Eurasianist leader Aleksandr Dugin who once said if he had to choose between being “with the gays against the US or with the US against the gays, [he] would choose being on the side of the gays” (arctogaia.com/public/tatu.html).
That speaks volumes about Moscow’s priorities which Kybansky says reflect the fact that “Russia prefers to see in power in European countries a mix of Maoists, Trotskyites, Stalinists, and all the rest of the left” more than it wants those who are on the far right, however cozy Putin may be with them out of tactical considerations.
“The most reliable allies of Russia in the foreign policy arena remain the left of various masks: North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, and other such regimes,” which were closely associated with the Soviet Union. Moreover, “Russian continues to support ‘the struggle of the Palestinian people against Israeli aggression.’”
Kubansky says that he does not know whether the European far right “sincerely considers that Russia has completely changed and become a ‘traditional,’ ‘rightist’ state or whether instead [its ] prefer to close their eyes to the obvious.” And the obvious is very, very clear, the Russian analyst suggests.
It is this: “present-day Russia however much it tries to convince everyone of the opposite has no relation to historical Russia. All its roots are from the USSR and only from the USSR. It is not ‘a reborn Russian Empire.’ It is simply something Soviet,” part of the regime that began to collapse in the 1970s.
And Kubansky adds as a confirming postscript the following note: “As is well known, an ultra-right party, strongly opposed to the US and sympathetic to Moscow leads in all the polls in Spain. Judging from everything,” he concludes, “the Russian Federation is preparing to take revenge for [its loss in] the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939.”
America does the same thing, except with terrorists. In one country we arm Al Qaeda and in another we fight them.
Geopolitics is a massive game of nonsense, and this phenomenon is not unique to Putin.
At least Putin has his country’s interests in mind. That can’t always be said of our president.
Personally, I despise SYRIZA. Unfortunately, they’re the only game in town as far as the Greeks are concerned. Just curious though: what do you think about our alliance with Uncle Joe Stalin during WWII?
Michalopulos:
LIE.
Michalopulos:
FALSE ANALOGY.
George wrote:
It was an expedience during war time, with no more lasting significance than the Molotov Ribbentropp Pact.
What mattes more is what happened at the end of the war. The U.S. rehabilitated and rebuilt its former allies and opponents alike. The Truman plan saved your own Greece. The USSR, on the other hand enslaved and looted its neighbors.
Putin’s attempts to re-built the Soviet Empire are failing because the Ukrainians, Georgians, Mioldovans and Eastern European despise Russia as much as they despise Putin.
After 25 years of war, ethnic cleansing and occupation, the younger generation in Georgia absolutely hate Russia, the Russian language and Russian culture in all its forms. While the older generation might speak of their appreciation for Russian culture, the young will have none of it. If they know of a “good” Russian they will say “he’s an exception or he’s really not Russian”. The accumulated bitterness and anger will take generations to abate. The same is try in all the post Soviet states. Read on below.
America is the place that every aspires to. Russia’s own people are fleeing in droves (~60,000 emigres per year).
Putin’s own flunkies park their families in the UK, send their children to the US to study, keep their money in England or Switzerland. The descendants of Khrushchov, Brezhnev, Andropov and Gorbachov are all living in the US. Foreign Minister Lavrov’s daughter studies at Columbia. Medvedyev’s son has applied to MIT, and daddy has sent notices that he hope the ‘current situation’ won’t affect the application. Who goes to Russia, besides the traitor Snowden and washed up movies star tax cheats like Deaprdieu?.
Russia is a dying empire.
Ancient cultures and societies have a collective memory and reverence of the past. April 9 th will be the 26 commemoration of the “April 9th incident” when Soviet tanks surrounded peaceful college student protestors and dozens were burgeoned to death with shovels and pickaxes. August 7th, August 12th and September 27 are other public commemorations of the other Russian massacres of innocent civilians marked by public Panishwida’s celebrated by the Patriarch, public addresses and memorial marches. There Georgian’s have plenty of reminders of Russian perfidy and brutality.
And who made it possible for the USSR to “enslave” Eastern Europe? Are you aware of the ethnic cleansing of the Germans that we perpetrated after WWII (close to 12 million)? Or that certain cabinet-level advisors to FDR actually wanted to perpetrate a genocide against the Germans?
Our hands are not all that clean.
The accomplishments of the Soviet Army made it possible for them to remain in Eastern Europe. However, it is a fact that the greatest ethnic cleansing in history was perpetrated on the Germans. Turning East Prussia into a Russian colony was one of the worst aspects of it. Koenigsberg, its capital, was the home of Kant and many German scholars of global stature as well as of the wonderfully mundane chanteuse, Marlene Dietrich and others/ Koenigsberg became “Kaliningrad” named after an early mayor of bolshevik MOSCOW, and under that atheistic moniker it became a metropolitan See of the Russian Church. They’ve slyly changed the name of Stalingrad. bit they left the name of Metropolitan Kyril’s see intact. The previous Soviet ethnic cleansing of almost all Tatars from their historic homeland, Crimea, by Stalin allowed Putin today to claim Crimea as “Russian.” Most of us Americans remain willfully ignorant of this and much more historical truth—-there’s no “APP” one can refer to!!!! Christians are burned by NeoMuslims of ISIL and Americans are busy taking selfies and maintaining our world renowned Obesity, while claiming to be Christian, even Orthodox Christian!
While the murder of Christian by Muslims is sobering and horrific, far worse is the mass murder and ethnic cleansing of Orthodox Christians by those who claim to be fellow Orthodox, although in reality, these murderers are indeed the sons of Judas and Sviatopolk Kainopodobnyi Okayanniy.
When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. I saiah 1:15
Ethnic cleansing of Georgians in Abkhazeti
http://digitalcaucasus.blogspot.com/2007_12_02_archive.html
In spring 1992, especially in June-July, acts of armed aggression and attacks got systematic character on highways and railways of Georgia. These attacks caused serious economic damages to the country. Criminal bands robbed trains and seized Georgian and other countries’ goods. Georgian government had no choice but to defend the highways and railways by the national army in order to secure safe travel of goods. As Autonomous Republic of Abkhazeti was the main area of the criminal bands action, on August 1992 Georgian central leadership decided to bring additional troops into Abkhazeti. This decision had been preliminarily submitted to the region leaders’ approval. It was personally coordinated with Chairman of Supreme Council Vladislav Ardzinba. The movement of the Georgian Army within the Georgian territory became a reason for starting the conflict. Here is what was written on this subject by Chervonaya Svetlana – Ph.D., leading specialist of Institute of Technology and Anthropology of Academy of Sciences of Russia (see the bibliography):
“Shevardnadze did not start this war. By noon of the 14th of August 1992, «the Georgian party» had not fired a shot, none Georgian soldier had been brought into Sokhumi yet, and nothing was threatening the peace in Abkhazian towns and villages. Vladislav Ardzinba declared this war on Georgia in his radio speech. He drew the Abkhazian people into the heinous crime. Vladislav Ardzinba announced total, forced «general mobilization» (every man from 18 to 45). He provided the soldiers with arms seized or stolen from Russian arsenal, and promoted unlawful actions of the Abkhazian armed troops in Abkhazian towns, villages, and roads (the “enemy” had not even reached this territory). The Abkhazian separatists searched for everything they considered worthy, terrorized and killed Georgian peaceful inhabitants. Abkhazian snipers opened fire to people being in Sokhumi sanatorium. They shot scores of Russian holidaymakers on the beach of the air defense forces’ and other sanatoriums. These were the crimes that had to be stopped. The criminals must answer for these deeds. The political purposes of the organizers of these crimes are known: division of Georgia, drawing Russia into a war, Soviet-communist revenge and restoring the Soviet Union.”
That is how the war broke out.
“…When they [Abkhaz] entered Gagra, I saw Shamyl Basaev’s battalion. I have never seen such a horror. They were raping and killing everyone who was captured and dragged from their homes. The Abkhaz commander Arshba raped a 14 year old girl and later gave an order to execute her. For the whole day I only could hear the screams and cries of the people who were brutally tortured. On the next day, I witnessed the mass execution of people on the stadium. They installed machine guns and mortars on the top and placed people right on the field. It took a couple of hours to kill everybody…”
Georgian government repeatedly appealed to the UN, CSCE, and other international organizations to intervene, while at the same time refusing offers of Russian military assistance. Several UN Security Council resolutions and decisions failed to lead to a de-escalation of the conflict. On July 27, 1993, a Russian-brokered trilateral agreement on a cease-fire and principles for the solution of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict was signed. Complete demilitarization of the region, supervised by Russia, was to follow the separation of the military forces of the two sides. However, the UN failed to implement its long-sought decision to send a large group of military observers to Abkhazeti. Furthermore, the Russian military observers insisted that Georgians did not participate in the supervision of the withdrawal of heavy weaponry.
“…When the Abkhaz entered my house, they took me and my seven year old son outside. After forcing us to kneel, they took my son and shot him right in front of me. After they grabbed me by hair and took me to the nearby well. An Abkhaz soldier forced me to look down that well; there I saw three younger men and couple of elderly women who were standing soaked in water. They were screaming and crying while the Abkhaz were dumping dead corpses on them. Afterwards, they threw a grenade there and placed more people inside. I was forced again to kneel in front of the dead corpses. One of the soldiers took his knife and took the eye out from one of the dead near me. Then he started to rub my lips and face with that decapitated eye. I could not take it any longer and fainted. They left me there in a pile of corpses…”
At the end of August 1993, S. Shoigu, chairman of the Russian Emergency State Committee, declared on Russian television that demilitarization had reached a stage at which resumption of the war would be impossible. Large numbers of hopeful refugees returned to their ruined homes and began rebuilding. Then on September 17, a surprise attack by Abkhazian tanks and artillery, supported by their Russian North Caucasian and Cossack allies, forced the remaining disarmed Georgian troops, together with tens of thousands of civilians, to flee in panic. Many of these victims later starved or froze to death in the Svaneti mountains. Shevardnadze himself, who was besieged along with the defenders of Sokhumi, had a narrow escape. The sudden clandestine Abkhazian rearmament remains a mystery only for the extremely naive.
“…The Abkhaz separatists killed people of other nationalities as well, including those who tried to protect Georgians. After the city was seized, the streets were covered with bodies. Separatists destroyed the Baramidze, Chkhetia, Baramia, Gvazava, Dzidziguri, Absandze, Shonia, and Kutsia families, as well as many others…”
The war ended in late September 1993 with Abkhazeti’s virtual secession from Georgia through a radical ethnic cleansing of its multi-ethnic population and the destruction of its cities, including Sokhumi.Just at the beginning of the war adherents of Vladislav Ardzinba started killing, tormenting, raping, and robbing the inhabitants of Georgian nationality. At first Georgians of the following towns and villages experienced the sadism of the separatists: Gagra and Gudauta, Akhaladze, Bzipi, Ipnari, Otkhara, Akhali Sopeli, Eshera, Kochara, Ketevani, Labra, Kvitouli, Kindgi, etc. Ugrekhelidze, an inhabitant of the village Eshera, was forced to dig a hole of his own height, then he was pulled out his teeth and nails, and buried alive. They left his hand above the ground (the symbol of the Abkhazian banner.) Another Georgian was captured, cut his veins. Then the Abkhazian separatists poured his blood into glasses and drank it. After this they let him go to Sokhumi to tell everybody how Abkhazians drank Georgian blood. The Abkhazian butchers captured sisters – Eka Jvania (17 years old) and Marina Jvania (14 years old), Leila Samushia and others in village Pshadi. They undressed them in front of their parents and neighbors, and raped them. After this the Abkhazian butchers executed all of them by shooting. The Abkhazian “liberators” did not spare workers of education system. They execute by shooting 78 teachers and lecturers. For instance, a teacher Bichiko Ekimiani, Armenian, was executed by shooting together with his family in his own house; a teacher of a secondary school at village Kochaki, Bajiko Vekua firstly raped, then tormented and killed; Bichiko Baramia – an assistant professor of Abkhazian University, diseased and disabled man was executed by shooting together with his wife; Shota Jgabadze – professor was executed by shooting when he was operating a wounded patient. It’s just a drop in the ocean of separatists violence. 30000 innocent people were killed in Abkhazian War in 1992-1993.
“…They captured a young girl. She was hiding in the bushes near the house where they killed her parents. She was raped several times. One of the soldiers killed her and mutilated her. She was cut in half. Near her body they left a message: as this corpse will never be as one piece, Abkhazia and Georgia will never be united either…”
The war was over in September 1993, by actual separation of Abkhazeti From Georgia, by genocide of Georgian population, by destroying towns. As a result of the war 200000 people were forced to leave their own places of residence. The refugees moved to various regions of Georgia.In spite of Russian repeated recognition of Georgian territorial integrity, since the beginning of militant actions representatives of Russian Federation officials, several ministries, and departments, various political parties and organizations have been supported the separatists with political, military, economical, financial and moral aid. Even before the conflict, on March 1992, Autonomous Republic of Abkhazeti without submission of Georgian government approval began making economic agreements with Russian Federation. In early March V. Ardzinba applied to B. Eltsin for economical aid. On March 19, 1992 B.Eltsin ordered Krasnodar and Stavropol Administration leaders to make direct trade-economic agreements with Abkhazeti. The orders were fulfilled during the next three months.
South Ossetia one year on: Georgians wait in fear for Russians to return
A year ago, the Kremlin shocked the world when it sent troops into Georgia. Today, the war clouds over South Ossetia are gathering once more.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/georgia/5956499/South-Ossetia-one-year-on-Georgians-wait-in-fear-for-Russians-to-return.html
By Adrian Blomfield in Gori
6:19PM BST 01 Aug 2009
When the dull throb of homesickness becomes too overpowering to resist, the former inhabitants of Eredvi perform a bittersweet ritual.
The last Georgian Police check-point on the way to Tskhinvali. Check-point is located in Ergneti on the administrative border of South Ossetia. The Russian and Ossetian checkpoint is about 100 m further down that road.
Clambering up a steep hill outside the Georgian city of Gori, they fix a borrowed pair of binoculars on the gutted cottages that, until a year ago, they called home.
Closer inspection is impossible. Though Eredvi is just a few miles away, it lies in the breakaway province of South Ossetia and their way is blocked by Russian troops and the local militiamen who burned their village down.
Though his eyes are weak and his body wracked by illness, Tengiz Razmadze occasionally makes the trip to the top of the hill, listening as his younger son Zaza describes the ruins of the little house at the end of the village.
Mr Razmadze has no need to see for himself. He lived through the destruction of his home, refusing to leave even as the roar of Russian bombers filled the skies during five days of war last August, killing his neighbours and striking his house.
It was only as Ossetian militiamen, bent on revenge, embarked on drunken looting sprees in Georgian villages like Eredvi that lay on Ossetian soil, that he finally decided to flee.
He reached Gori, a supposedly safe sanctuary deep in undisputed Georgian territory, only to find that his older son Zviadi had just been buried, after being killed in a Russian air strike.
Zaza Razmadze saw the explosions that killed his brother. Running through the choking dust and smoke that darkened the sky above Gori, he stumbled on his body in the forecourt of the block of flats where Zvio, as his family knew him, lived.
It was here that The Sunday Telegraph came across Zaza Razmadze, cradling his brother’s head in his arms and imploring him to live as he ripped off his own shirt to try to staunch his wounds.
Photographs of his grief were to become the defining images of the short but brutish war Georgia and Russia fought a year ago, images so compelling that the Kremlin sought to dismiss them as fabrication.
In the garage where the two men worked together, Zaza Razmadze has built a shrine to the brother he loved, a small fountain above which he has carved the word’s “Zvio’s Stream”.
Jerkily he recalled that hot August day, explaining that – unbeknown to him – as he tended Zvio’s body his brother’s wife, eight months pregnant, was also dying in the flat above.
“They had left the previous day,” he said with quiet but forceful bitterness. “I still don’t know why they came back.”
The only person who could answer that question is his nephew, eight-year-old Dito. Wounded in the blast that killed his parents, Dito is still to traumatised to speak of what happened.
Two months ago, Zaza Razmadze got married. But any happiness that brought remains clouded by grief and anger, emotions that are caused to burn more deeply by a conflict that was frozen but never resolved – and by talk of a new war.
“If war resumes, every citizen of Gori will fight,” he said. “Even the women will fight, even my new wife. We have nothing to lose.”
In the 12 months since a war that stunned the world, Georgia has slipped from its consciousness.
Yet tensions remain high. At least 28 Georgian policemen patrolling the administrative boundary have been killed by sniper fire or remotely detonated mines since the end of the war. At border crossings, now sealed, Georgian and Russian guns remain trained on each other.
Less than 100 yards separate the Russian and Georgian flags that flutter above identical dugouts, protected by sandbags and concrete barriers at the crossing of Ergneti.
Capt Zura, the officer commanding the Georgian side of the line, pointed out Russian sniper positions on the roof of an abandoned hotel. “The Russians make a lot of trouble, especially at night when they are drunk,” he said.
Later that evening, Georgian officers at a nearby crossing said they had come under fire, claiming that a rocket-propelled grenade had exploded above their positions.
Such is the instability that the International Crisis Group, a leading conflict prevention think tank, warned in June that “extensive fighting could again erupt.”
A European Union investigation is still trying to establish who was responsible for last year’s war, which ended in a humiliating battlefield rout for the Georgian army. But western diplomats in Tblisi say it is fairly clear that Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-western president, walked into a carefully laid Russian trap by launching a massive assault against the Ossetian rebels, who had long enjoyed Moscow’s support.
Some military analysts in Moscow say that Russia is now contemplating a new war to oust Mr Saakashvili, whose determination to seek Nato membership for Georgia has consistently infuriated the Kremlin.
Remarkably, the Georgian leader has defied widespread predictions that failure in the war would cost him his job – despite four months of protests called by Georgia’s fragmented opposition.
But elsewhere, the omens do not look good. Since recognising the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another Kremlin-backed rebel enclave in Georgia, Russia has deployed thousands of troops in both provinces and has begun building new military bases.
The Russian defence ministry angrily declined immediate comment on its troop levels in the two provinces and accused The Sunday Telegraph of failing to respect its dignity.
The Kremlin has also forced the withdrawal of two international observer missions from the conflict zone and, in breach of its ceasefire commitments, has prevented the third, the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM), from operating in either South Ossetia or Abkhazia.
Even more worryingly, the EUMM came under attack for the first time when an ambulance driver was killed in an assault on a monitors’ convoy near Abkhazia in June.
“It was a definite attack on the EUMM,” said Steve Bird, a Foreign Office official attached to the mission. “The mine used in the attack was remotely detonated.”
The EUMM says that Georgia has abided by the ceasefire agreements, brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, that ended last year’s war, but the Russians have not.
In one of its most contentious moves, Russia used the days after the ceasefire to seize control of Akhalgori, a largely Georgian district of South Ossetia that had been under government control for over a decade.
Russia now allows buses to carry displaced Georgians to their homes in Akhalgori, which – unlike those elsewhere in Ossetia – have largely escaped the arsonists. But most are still too afraid to stay for long.
The Sunday Telegraph received a brusquer welcome at the Russian checkpoint when it sought permission to take photographs of buses crossing into Akhalgori. “Go and take your pictures in Georgia,” the Russian commanding officer said, before stalking off in a rage.
Observers suspect that Russia’s tactics are partly aimed at laying the groundwork for a new war. A pretext could be created, they say, either by engineering a cross-border incident that results in Russian casualties – or by accusing Georgia of helping anti-Kremlin rebels in Russia’s nearby North Caucasus region.
In a potentially disturbing omen, Russia on Saturday threatened to “use all available force and means” to defend its civilians after claiming that Georgia had launched several attacks on the separatist capital Tskhinvali in recent days. Georgia denied the allegations and the EUMM said it had been unable to verify Russia’s claims.
Last week it also claimed that North Caucasus rebels were operating in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge.
“There is definitely a pattern to what the Kremlin is doing,” said a senior Western diplomat in Tbilisi. He said that Moscow wanted control over Georgia, both to prevent the construction of a gas pipeline that would reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Russia and to find an easier way of supplying its own troops in Armenia.
But with Russia unlikely to find a pliant successor to Mr Saakashvili, the diplomat said a major war was unlikely. Instead, he predicted that Russia would make creeping advances deeper into Georgian territory or launch occasional bombing raids, as part of a campaign to destabilise its neighbour.
“Georgia would protest to the international community but without guaranteed success,” he said. “The law of the strongest will apply.”
In the meantime, for tens of thousands of Georgians uprooted from their homes or scarred from those few days of war, daily life grows ever more desperate.
Over three days last week, The Sunday Telegraph revisited villages in Georgia that bore the brunt of the Russian advance and the brutal reprisals by the accompanying Ossetian militias.
The border village of Ergneti has been all but abandoned, save for the occasional family that ekes out an existence in the charred ruins of their homes.
Ivane Dvalishvili showed us the rusted remains of his grandson’s first bicycle, almost all he had salvaged from the rubble. His 80-year-old neighbour, Gaioz, had neatly swept his destroyed possessions into large piles by the blackened walls of his house.
A year ago, during an intense Russian arterial assault, the Sunday Telegraph took shelter with Makhvala Orshuashvili by the wall of her garden in the village of Tkviavi, where she fed us peaches from her orchard, shouting over the noise of the shells.
We found her where we left her, sitting on a bench outside the garden – only this time she was wearing a black headscarf to denote mourning.
When the Ossetians came through, raping and pillaging, they came across her husband returning home with bread. Telling him to run, they shot him in the back and he died later of starvation after rejecting food.
Makhvala cowered in terror inside her house, listening as the drunken soldiers played a stolen guitar on the street outside.
Back in Gori, stung by the financial crisis and the aftershocks of war, Zaza Razmadze is lucky if he takes home more than £5 a day, half what he earned before the conflict.
With that he must support the families of eight relatives who were also forced out of Ossetia when the militias embarked on what the Council of Europe has described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Georgians.
The Georgians of South Ossetia, about 25,000, are now housed in identikit camps that have mushroomed near the administrative boundary with the rebellious province.
A small, whitewashed cottage in one of the camps now houses Zaza Razmadze’s father, Tengiz. Blind in one eye, his eyesight failing in the other, Mr Razmadze ekes out an existence in his half-painted rooms, furnished with only a narrow bed, a flimsy table and a small television, on the £17 a month provided by the state.
Like other Georgians in South Ossetia, he was never rich. But the fecund soil allowed them to create fruit orchards and vegetable gardens. In their new accommodation, Ossetia’s displaced can no longer fend for themselves.
Tengiz Razmadze seems a broken man, much older than his 60 years. He is trying to summon up the mental and physical strength to commemorate the first anniversary of his son’s death on Aug 9. But it will be a struggle. “I don’t know if I can survive the pain and sorrow again,” he said.
The same killer of Christians are still holding Metropolitan Isaiah of Nikazi – Tskhinvali hostage behind the occupation line in occupied Akhlgori.
Poor Germans. But they probably could have avoided the problem in the first place!