Recently, Yours Truly was taken to task for an essay published last week about Carl Bildt and his contention that “Orthodoxy is the enemy.” In this same essay, I referenced the fact that years earlier, Zbigniew Brzezinski had said the exact same thing.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Now this did not stop some of my critics who lambasted my credibility. One wrote that a Google search about Brzezinski revealed no such thing. Another said that I owed Mr Bildt “a public apology.”
Well, well, well, it turns out that I was right. Brzezinski had, in fact, said that “Orthodoxy was the enemy.” Thanks to one of my many thousands of readers, it turns out that my critics were wrong. A Google search performed by this gentleman turned up several anti-Orthodox and Russophobic statements made by Mr Brzezinski. (You can read the statements here. Go directly to the sixth paragraph.)
John Chryssavgis
Chryssavgis (ghostwriter of the EP’s environmental missives) and by extension Istanbul made an unforced error in that they didn’t address Bildt’s and Brzenski’s bigoted remarks but chose instead to propagandize the fact that Istanbul represents a kinder, gentler Orthodoxy. He compounds these errors by stating things that are immaterial and/or beside the point. Omissions of fact are preponderant in Chryssagvis’ diatribe. Tendentious arguments and tenuous implications are made that Russia is “imperialistic” and that Putin draws his militaristic strength from his personal faith. Chryssavgis is quick to point out that Orthodoxy “recognizes tolerance and champions religious freedom and human rights” leaving us with the false impression that Russia –a multi-confessional country with a robust and free press–does neither.
He further compounds his errors by implying that because many on the Right in America (specifically Pat Buchanan) agree with Putin then there must be something wrong with Putin. (What exactly is wrong he is unable to tell us.) Curiously, the closest he comes to an actual j’accuse against Buchanan (and by extension Putin) is that Buchanan is appalled by the sewage that passes for culture in the West.
Liberal Orthodox
don’t like him either.
To my mind, the question at hand is manifold: (1) why didn’t the Phanar condemn Bildt and (2) was Chryssavgis given orders to publish a countervailing argument highlighting the differences between the “progressive” Patriarchate of Constantinople versus the “regressive” Russian Orthodox Church?
Now, I will gladly accept the apologies of my critics who think my credibility is shot.
George
Here’s the quote from the source you cited above:
“The orthodoxy is the main enemy of America. Russia is a defeated country. It will be divided and put under guardianship.”
I read this as the status quo of a united Eurasia being an enemy. If we misquote and exclude the article(the) and capitalize orthodoxy, we are still left with a statement that, in its entirety, is illogical and disjointed. You’re misinterpreting.
Mr Farsalas, how would you like it if Brzezinski instead said “…Greece is a defeated country. It will be divided and put under guardianship”?
I don’t see how that analogy applies. Are you suggesting that an attack on a traditionally Orthodox nation is also an attack on the faith itself?
Cyprus, Serbia, Ukraine…I’d say it’s turning out that way.
OK, try this on for size:
https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/#inbox/145facdbbc12f7b2
It’s always about the loss of sovereignty. Ever wonder why the Phanar espouses universalism as opposed to national autocephaly?
Google account? Can you try that link again?
No one should be so stupid as to report that someone spoke with capitalization. If the man said that orthodoxy is the enemy, no one but a wannabe Goebbels, or someone at the end of his intellectual rope could report the man said Orthodoxy is the enemy.!
“The victory over the Soviet Union was particularly achieved with the help of these non-military methods. The strategy, which did not intend any coexistence with the Soviet Union, but aimed at “disassembling” the Soviet system, was elaborated by the Reagan administration in 1982.6 The plan included seven strategic initiatives, among them as point 4: Psychological warfare, aimed at producing fear, uncertainty, loss of orientation both among the nomenclature and the population.7 This war was not only waged against communism, but against Russia, as Brzezinski’s direct statements testified: “We destroyed the USSR, we will also destroy Russia.” “Russia is a dispensable state, anyway.” “The orthodoxy is the main enemy of America. Russia is a defeated country. It will be divided and put under guardianship.8”
Vladyka,
If you go to the footnote, you will notice that the article from which the quote is taken is in Russian. Russian has no articles. “Orthodoxy is the main enemy of America.” and “The orthodoxy is the main enemy of America.” would be identical in Russian:
“Православие – главный враг Америки. Россия – побежденное государство. Она будет разделена и помещена под опеку”. (8) – http://www.yaplakal.com/forum3/topic644478.html [the same article on “Soft Power”, in Russian]
Also, the last quote regarding Orthodox believers at the end of the main article George cited does not capitalize “orthodox”, nor is it capitalized in the original article:
Он объединяет православных верующих и способствует сотрудничеству религиозных общин. Патриарх является духовным лидером всего народа, а не только православных“. (36)
In short, you’re the Goebbels here. Brzezinski was obviously referring to the Orthodox faith as practiced in Russia.
I like your style, Misha.
The Brzezinski quotes look of dubious provenance to me. I’m not persuaded…..
The rest of the thrust of your piece is right on, though, George.
Mr Mortiss, all I can say is that a named author wrote an essay which he backed up with adequate footnotes and that he cites his sources.
I don’t think George’s credibility was raised OR lowered hereby.
Some Orthodox Islam , Orthodox Marxism, Orthodox Stalinism, Orthodox Fundamentalism, and some Orthodox Christianity (like that of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s tale within a tale) qualify as The Enemy.
I would like to see evidence that Brzezinsky ever referred to the Orthodox CHURCH as the enemy.
The only reason I find the assertion that he said it credible is that Brzezinski is a well-known Russophobe who spent decades masquerading as an anti-Communist.
You’re going easy on him. Last week, “Orthodox England” spoke about Brzezinski calling him “a well-known Christ-hater and Russophobe…” (By that author a tankard of ale! I like such full-throated denunciations.)
Great post, George.
Thank you, Deacon
The sixth paragraph cites as its source for the quote in question:
“Quoted from: V.I.Jakunin, V.Bagdasarjan, S.S.Sulakšin, Novye technologii bor’by s rossijskoj gosudarstvennost’ju [New Technologies in the Fight against the Russian State], Moskva, 2009, p. 50”
How about we get a Russian speaker to actually look it up? And can someone tell us a bit more about the source? After all, Russians can do propaganda just as well as anybody else, and the inclusion of the definite article “The Orthodoxy is the main enemy…” sounds to my ears more like a mistake a Russian speaker might make, but not something Brzezinski would say. That’s not enough for me, George. If Brzezinski proposed something as ludicrous as dividing Russia and putting it “under guardianship” it would be all over the place, in the MSM and elsewhere. All I see is something likely invented out of whole cloth. As it happens, I teach history, and I’d ask you to go back and verify with more sources, or at least hedge your bets.
When I google the following: “orthodoxy is the enemy” brzezinski – the first few sites that come up are threads from Monomakhos. You should be proud of that!
Yes, “Russians can do propaganda.” That’s an excellent point. This could all be part of an intricate and subtle disinformation campaign. But before we go and do moral preening, we need to ask: do we “do propaganda”?
It seems to me that the incessant “Tsar Putin, would-be-conqueror of the world” is a little over the top, don’t you think?
It’s mindless if you ask me. How can Russia conquer Western Europe, much less the world? How could Russia send enough boots on the ground to control a population that is at least 50 million people larger than herself? The US spends more on defense than the next twenty-five nations of the world combined.
All this Russophobia is overheated and frankly, comical.
This is just silly, George. Of course America uses propaganda as a tool of its foreign policy. To point that out is not anti-American; to point out that Russia does so is not anti-Russian or Russophobic. “Everybody does it!!” is one of the lamest “arguments” in the book.
The rest of what you seem to accuse me of (ie suggesting that Russia will invade Western Europe and believing that I think Putin is some sort of Tsar) is just your own imaginings of what I think about the situation. Nowhere did I suggest that. In fact, in other comments (re Syria) my estimate of Putin’s power is much lower than yours is, since you credited him for Assad’s survival, and I think many other factors play an equal if not greater part in that.
The fact remains that you have a single source of extremely dubious provenance for this supposed quote, and no serious journalist or historian would take it at face value to indicate what Brzezinski believes about Orthodox Christianity. I see that other commenters have made this point in great detail, so I’ll stop here.
Matt, I never suggested that you believed the febrile propaganda that’s blaired 24/7 in the MSM. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t blaired 24/7 and that we aren’t captive to it. I just wanted to point out that if the article in question is propaganda, then it’s not a very good piece of propaganda. It’s received nowhere near the coverage than what we’re exposed to. It was found in an obscure journal and if it wasn’t for the bishop’s after-dinner remarks, I never would have heard of it.
Mr. Michalopulos seems to suffer from a selective memory in his recounting.
I for one certainly did, as you repeated that contention based on an edited tweet that wasn’t what Carl Bildt actually said.
It becomes so much easier to prove a point if you can simply change the words of the person you are targeting to match your assertion! Carl Bildt never contended that “Orthodoxy is the enemy”, but you are contending that he did based on a fabrication.
Yes, that was me. I’m not entirely sure why you wouldn’t think you owe Mr. Bildt an apology? Do you deny you attributed a statement to him through your reblogging that he didn’t actually say? I suppose you did just reattribute to him a sentiment that he never actually stated in your follow-up essay. Does it become true if you repeat it enough times? What wondrous things I could assert Mr. Michalopulos contends if I am freed from the shackles of having to base them on his actual words!
I should reiterate: I didn’t accuse you of fabricating the edited Bildt tweet. I merely blasted you for having reposted it without actually having verified it was in fact correct, or that the the supposed meaning even made sense in the context of other statements made by Mr. Bildt in the context of Christianity, much less Orthodoxy.
Before diving into the specifics on those remarks, let me be clear: conflating these two ‘statements’ appears to be attempting to sweep under the rug your error in publishing false statements attributed to Mr. Bildt rather than admitting to your mistake. And that’s even if Brzezinski actually said such a thing, which has not yet been verified (more on that below).
In fact, you appear to be engaging in the exact opposite of taking accountability by doubling-down and charging in this follow up essay that Mr. Bildt made ‘bigoted remarks’ (your words). What exactly were these bigoted remarks of Mr. Bildt?
Considering you didn’t even get Bildt’s quote right when it was available for verification with less than a minute’s browsing of his Twitter account, you should have paused far longer than inserting an alleged comment with no easily verifiable citation.
Well intentioned second-degree or third-degree hearsay is, of course, the kind of thing you want to stake your integrity on. By your own accounting, neither the bishop and the layman who recounted the supposed comments of Brzenski had personally witnessed him saying it. In other words, they might have believed their source, but you have absolutely no insight into how they came by that knowledge, only that it was not firsthand.
Considering this: there might be some bishop out there who might have read your blog, but not the comments, and thus might have the idea that Bildt said something he didn’t, I point to your own blog as a cautionary tale about the dangers of misreporting and the subsequent game of telephone.
I never commented on Brzezinski. You don’t get to pretend my criticisms in regards to Bildt were wrong because you think you were validated on a subject I didn’t even weigh in on.
Now this gives an opportunity for a fun exercise of examples in trying to validate sources! Now, considering Brzezinski’s background, it’s clear the man has an axe to grind in regards to Mother Russia, and I have little doubt we can find some choice anti-Russian quotes from the man’s life, but the man is a washed up Cold Warrior talking head who hasn’t been relevant in decades. Using Brzezinski to try and color perceptions of active modern foreign ministers is just odious.
But back to the sourcing! In this instance, Mr. Michalopulos apparent inability to do his own research has been accommodated for my a sympathetic reader! Of course, if someone handed me a link to a piece of information validating something I wanted to believe is true, my first reaction is to dig into it and vet it.
The monomakhos approach seems to be to gleefully republish without doing any vetting whatsoever or investigating the source. That can’t possibly come back to bite you! Let us look at that paragraph:
What a bunch of saucy quotes! Although if we google for various saucy quotes, the only hits are either the source material or or a couple pages linking to the source material. That’s not the mark of good sourcing. But wait, we have a footnote!
Oh joy, it isn’t a citation to actual Brzezinski comments, it’s a citation to a Russian language book whose subject matter is (surprise) about Everybody Hating on Russia. Oh well, it’s a breadcrumb to follow. And digging into the book, oh look, page 50 does indeed have those saucy quotes in Russian, attributed to Brzezinski!
Of course, they are linked to footnotes. Le sigh. Even worse, the footnotes are to stale 404 links. But we have titles referenced, so a bit more searching, and voila! We have the source document for the quotes in the book. Also in Russian. And it’s a big long “political portrait” of Brzezinski. But it sources the quotes! Apparently a Brzezinski interview with Open Media Research Institute, published through the journal “Transition : issues and developments in the former Soviet Union and East-Central and Southeastern Europe.” on November 15, 1996.
And that sadly, hits an archive paywall which means that rather than having immediate access to the original source interview in English, I have to wait something on the order of 12-48 hours. But, I will have it! Now, that took some actual serious research work. This particular example wasn’t 30 seconds of googling, more like an hour of serious work to backtrack through multiple layers to actually ID a source document with the actual words of the subject and set up to be able to access it. But, in my book, if I’m going to attribute words to a man, I’m going to make sure he actually said those words, even if it takes that level of effort to verify.
Now, I will make a follow-up post to this one with Brzezinski’s actual comments from the interview once I am able to read it. It is entirely possible that it will contain comments as inflammatory as stated because, you know, Brzezinski. However, this does not change the fact that Mr. Michalopulos is playing Russian Roulette with his credibility with such lazy sourcing, because let us look at the details:
In order to find the relevant English comments by Brzezinski, the only apparent source is a very…special essay by a special author hosted by a special institute. Which contains such gems as:
The B’nai B’rith, the Masons, the Lions Club and the ever popular George Soros for the conspiracy bingo!
And thus, as a primary source of evidence, you link to that guy, publishing on the site of a group seemingly associated with the Swiss VPM crowd which uses English quotes translated from Russian by a Russian book, which references them from a Russian “political profile” of Brzezinski, which translated them from English from their original source interview in an obscure journal published in the mid-90s that you couldn’t be bothered to track down.
It will be interesting to see if anything was, how shall we say, entertainingly translated from English to Russian. Because it is, of course, impossible that someone Russian might have an axe to grind with Brzezinski. As far as I can tell the Russian to English seems pretty close, but I don’t pretend to be a fluent Russian speaker (although I have linked the relevant Russian source material above).
Let is digest this statement: you are criticizing Chryssavgis for not addressing remarks that one man never made, and remarks that another man might have made in an obscure journal in 1996 whose only English reference is reverse-translated from Russian in an 2010 essay on an obscure website because you featured them prominently on your blog? That can’t possibly…
Oh, never mind. There is really no other way to put this: you come across as criticizing Ecumenical Patriarchate for not taking direction from your blog in weighing in on foreign policy crisis. And we’ve just analyzed what you want them to use as the basis.
I stand by what I said in all particulars. Bildt’s words are in the public record as are Brzenziski’s. Either man can retract them or correct the record.
I’m not going to let you get away with Brzenziski so easily. Three quotes by three different named men are attributed to him and are in the public record with references. That one of them may have been “reverse-translated” means nothing. You’re just trying to dodge the fact that you thought I was fabricating them in the first place because you wrote that you couldn’t find them through a Google search. When in fact they were found very easily via Google.
Nor is it important that the journal in which they were reported is “obscure.” The Iran-Contra scandal was broken by The Beirut Star, hardly a major news journal.
George Michalopulos wrote:
Yes, they are. Right here. The problem is you didn’t quote him from the public record, what you quoted in your original essay is not what he said. You are not quoting from the public record, you are quoting from a lie.
Bildt doesn’t have to correct the record, you should be correcting the record on your blog, because you published a falsehood.
A falsehood which, you apparently don’t care about. Perhaps you should reread the comment I made in the previous thread, which you didn’t bother to respond to directly.
As far as Brzenziski…
I never thought you were fabricating Brzenziski quotes and I never wrote I couldn’t find them through a Google search. You are confusing me with another commentator, you’re also ascribing malice that even the other commentator didn’t imply (fabrication).
Given the fundamental core subject of this discourse, it causes me deep amusement that you didn’t even bother to check a handful of comments on your own blog or even click the ‘View all Comments’ button next to my name to make sure I was the person who said the things you are attributing to me.
Perhaps you care to correct the record?
You know, if you had bothered to try and find the words you thought I said in order to quote them back to me to demonstrate I was ‘dodging’, that little mistake could have been avoided. Have you noticed in responding to you I’m directly blockquoting sections of your actual comments? Have we noticed a common theme yet?
I’m not the one doing the dodging, I’m the one doing the leg work to track down exactly where Brzenziski might have spoken those words and whether or not it is exactly what he said. Which, really, should have been your job in the first place. You’re welcome. Hopefully I’ll have access to the source text tomorrow or the next day.
And success. I have succeeded in retrieving the original interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski in the 15 November 1996 Transitions titled “TRANSITIONS ONLINE: CENTRAL/EASTERN EUROPE: Airliner Gathering Speed-Without a Pilot”
This is the actual source document referenced by the Russian blog referenced by the Russian book footnoted by your “proof” article in an English journal posting from a very special author. It appears it is possible to access it without actually going through a paywall, so I link it here.
For posterity:
Let us revisit those quotes from the “proof”:
“We destroyed the USSR, we will also destroy Russia.”
“Russia is a dispensable state, anyway.”
“The orthodoxy is the main enemy of America. Russia is a defeated country. It will be divided and put under guardianship.”
Go ahead and try and find those quotes in the interview. Go ahead and try and find what he said that could even be remotely mangled into those quotes. The word ‘orthodoxy’ appears once, in this context:
In which, it is perfectly clear that he is speaking of Communist doctrinal orthodoxy, not Orthodox Christianity. And America isn’t even referenced.
Still think you were right?
Yes I do, and I’ll tell you why: whenever I look at a country, culture or even a conflict, I adhere to the maxim: “by their fruits you shall know them.”
Using this maxim, I can see that ever since 1974, whenever the US has intervened in any civilizational conflict, it has invariably taken the side of the anti-Orthodox force. I’m talking about Cyprus, Kosovo, and now Ukraine. Even in Syria, it has done what it could to cripple a state which has heretofore protected Christians. Sad to say, it did the same thing with Iraq. In the conflict between the Wahabbi Brunei, Saudi Arabia and Iran, it takes the side of Wahabbism. (I’ve been critical of Iran in the past, still am, but there are way more Christians there than in any of the Wahabbist countries.) Aren’t you just a little curious as to why this is so?
As for Georgia –which was between two Orthodox nations–the US stood mutely by, paralyzed as it were, unable to decide which Orthodox nation should suffer.
Brzezinski’s qualifications are immaterial. One must always look to the end-result, not the qualifications. (Churchill had no intention of destroying the British Empire; regardless, it was the net result of WWII.) He represents the NWO and in that new Order, there is no place for Christian Orthodoxy. It is merely a consumerist-based, materialist philosophy, regardless. Western consumerism on steroids is, always was, and always will be, the antithesis of Christian civilization. To believe otherwise is delusional.
In other words, with this statement of yours:
You proclaim that to you, the fact that Brzezinski didn’t actually say what you previously claimed he said is irrelevant, because what you believed he said was the real truth. Not, you know, his actual words. Which, apparently makes you fully feel justified in perpetuating a lie that Brzezinski said something he didn’t actually say. Are you trying to be a poster child for a Orthodox Post-modern Relativistic Morality cabal?
So the Communist regime of the Soviet Union was the pro-Orthodox force? That’s an interesting take.
I’m sure there are some Ukrainian Orthodox Christians out there who would take umbrage with being described as an ‘anti-Orthodox force’ because they don’t like what Russia is doing.
This is extra-rich considering Brzezinski’s actual comments in the interview.
It’s funny that you made a charge that I was ‘dodging’ based on comments I never actually made (which is another trivial mistake you are apparently incapable of owning up to), and here you are, when faced with the point-blank question of whether Brzezinski did make a statement you were insisting he did upon confrontation with his actual words, we find you, rather than addressing the accuracy of the quotes you were claiming, spouting nonsense like:
Which, yeah, is pretty much the rhetorical equivalent of “Look, isn’t that the Goodyear Blimp!”
From where I sit you basically have two options:
You can concede that neither Bildt nor Brzezinski actually said Orthodoxy Christianity was the enemy of (fill in the blank), because, you know, they didn’t. Which pretty much implies correction if not outright retraction of your two essays.
The other option is to continue to stonewall and leave things as-is, which, given the lack of support for your claims (and, in fact, conclusive evidence that your claims were based on unwittingly repeating false statements), would involve moving from having been mistaken to actively participating in perpetuating lies and falsehood with full knowledge of the inaccuracy of your claims.
Is that really what you want your blog to be?
Where to begin?
1) According to three named sources, Brzezinski actually did say those things. The proof is there, in the footnotes. Or are you assuming that those are fabrications? Thatis far from “irrelevant.”
2) Many Ukrainians would take umbrage at my characterization. Many others however have joined the Russian forces. Entire brigades of the Ukrainian Army have gone over to the Russians as well as a high-ranking Ukrainian admiral. Would you care to explain their intentions?
3) There was no “pro-Soviet regime in Ukraine.” There hasn’t been one for twenty years. Now who’s credibility is at stake?
4) As for what Bildt did or din’t say, I take the position of Will Rogers in that “I only know what’s in the papers.” If REX retracts what they published then I will do so as well. Until then, it’s in the public record and it’s up to Mr Bildt to set the record straight.
As for Brzezinski, see point #1 above.
Thankfully, these points can be concisely responded to:
.
No, it is not, as I have conclusively demonstrated. They weren’t ‘three named sources’, they were three co-authors of an obscure Russian book who were as lazy or different to the truth as you seem to be. They are footnotes ultimately leading to an actual interview with Brzezinski which I linked above, containing his full and complete actual words. Which you apparently didn’t bother to read. Because if you had, you would know the answer to this:
Would be yes, those quotes were fabrications because in the footnoted interview Brzezinski did not actually say those things. It was beyond a malicious translation into outright fabrication. I do not have to assume they are fabrications, I just proved that they were.
You do not understand how ‘sourcing’ words, sourcing does not mean that you get to pick a source that lies about what a person said when they cite a material in which that person does not actually say any of the things, and then proclaim it to be the truth.
I agree, it is far from irrelevant, that you, George Michalopulos got played for a sucker with fabricated quotes and rather than owning up to it, continue to pretend that fabricated quotes are proof that Brzezinski said something when in fact I have pointed you to the actual interview that he supposedly said such things where they are nowhere to be found.
The actual truth appears to be utterly irrelevant to you. Perhaps I should find “three named sources” willing to claim that you ostentatiously said in one of your essays that “George Michalopulos said “all left-handed people should be put in internment camps and sent to gas chambers.” and include a footnote to one of your essays in which said no such thing.
By the rules you are applying, that you never said any such words on your blog is irrelevant. Three named sources have a quote claiming to stated you want to gas all the southpaws. Truth! You have no way to denying it, you monster, there’s a footnote, it’s proof!
Unless you are suggesting that no Ukrainians are actually true Orthodox Christians, you’ve made my point for me.
I wasn’t referring to Ukraine. I was referring to the small detail that the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a clash of civilizations during that whole Cold War business. If the US were really dedicated to always coming down on the ‘anti-Orthodox’ side, one would think it would have been a bad idea to let the USSR collapse!
So what a Russian propaganda outlet says Bildt says is the “public record” and the actual words Bildt spoke on his official twitter account are not. Got it.
And as I have stated, what’s in the public record is not what REX reported and you reblogged. And thus your willful refusal to recognize the truth and promote a lie is in the public record as well. May God have mercy on your soul.
Four points of my own.
1) The words Mr. Michalopulos attributed to Mr. Bildt were inaccurate and conclusively proven be false.
2) The words Mr. Michalopulos attributed to Mr. Brzezinski were inaccurate and conclusively proven to be false.
3) The response of Mr. Michalopulos with being presented with clear and concise evidence that he was misreporting inaccurate quotes attributed to Mr. Bildt and Mr. Brzezinski was to completely ignore or even acknowledge the evidence and repeat that his inaccurate sources were in fact truth, even when proved to be lies.
4) Mr. Michalopulos has thus proved he is an unreliable reporter and cannot be trusted to accurately report what other person has said. Every word he writes is best regarded as fiction.
Nate, please see Monk James Silver’s reply. As far as I’m concerned, that settles the matter.
http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/atbbc.htm
BTW, this blog post antedates my essay. It seems the Zbig thing had been percolating for quite some time.
What is interesting about the orthodoxengland post is that it mirrors a couple dozen other blogs attributing those words to Brzezinski without actually providing a source. In other words, somebody claimed it and a bunch of people ran with it without anyone ever trying to verify the veracity. If enough people repeat it, it must be true!
What is even more interesting, in that when trying to once again source the supposed quote, I do find reference to Brzezinski categorically denying he ever said that:
http://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/georgia-and-the-geopolitics-of-orthodoxy
Now, the dilemma for Mr. Michalopulos here is this: one of his more amusing statements was that Mr. Bildt needed to “set the record straight” even though there was no need to do so when the record consisted his own original words on his Twitter page. But here, we have Mr. Brzezinksi “setting the record straight”, but will Mr. Michalopulos accept it? Or will he instead prefer to believe orthodoxengland and the other web pages that claim Mr. Brzezinksi said such a thing without providing any citation of where he said it.
OK, so let’s get this straight:
1. the meme of Zbig’s anti-Christianity has been around a long time.
2. it has been reported in journals with named sources.
3. it was so widespread that when he went to Georgia in 1999, he was confronted with his words.
4. one of my correspondents remembered hearing him say those words on TV.
5. said correspondent remembers discussing those words with others who heard them a little after the TV show in question.
QED. Or are we supposed to imagine that not only is my correspondent and his acquaintances delusional but the entire Georgian nation?
I’m sorry, the matter is closed as far as I’m concerned. The weight of evidence is against you Mr Trost. Don’t get me wrong, you did a good job muddying the waters but you’ve only asserted that the three sources named in the article were mendacious. You have not proved it by any stretch of the imagination.
If you want to keep on trying to prove Brzezinski’s innocence in the matter, you may continue to do so but at further risk to your credibility. I plan on moving on.
Ciao.
Wow, what a reliable source, praising the ex-KGB Putin and throwing mud and lies on one of the last of the new martyrs, assassinated on his way to Liturgy, most likely by the KGB :
As far as I’m concerned, the question at hand is whether Brzezinski said the things George quoted. Nate Trost has shown Brzezinski did not. And yet George stands by his story, not because it’s factually correct, but because it serves his larger ideological understanding of the world!
(I’m not commenting on the merits of that understanding, some of which I agree with! But let’s make sure that it’s served with facts and accurate reporting).
Mr Trost’s analysis of Brzenziski’s words are a too clever by half. Ordinarily this type of logorrhea misses the larger point. In polemical debates, there’s an old saw: “when you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
Brzenziski clearly is a Russophobe and as part of the NWO he and his ilk are against the Christian moral tradition. The homo-jihad that he and others are promoting are clearly evidence of that.
If you will permit me, let me give you another example. Our SecState, John Kerry recently informed the world that he was “gravely troubled” by “the Christian [!] government of Nigeria’s” stance against same-sex marriage. (Where have we heard the words “gravely troubled” before?” Both he, Hillary Clinton, and Imam Obama have used this as wiggle room to not condemn Boko Haram for –get this–enslaving and forcibly converting Christian girls in Nigeria. These bozos can’t even bring themselves to condemn plain Islamist savagery done in the name of Islam.
The fact is, they don’t care.
Now, what causes seemingly normal people to act this way? The Gospel is clear, Christianity is clear. And yes, Christianity is the most persecuted religion on earth as has been proven time and again. Yet NWO types go out of their way to divide Christians from each other (a la Ukraine) or removed those leaders who protect them (Assad, Saddam). Are you, Mr Trost, et al not the least bit curious as to why this is so? Why in every instance between Orthodox Christians and Muslims does the West take the side of Muslims? Why in those cases involving conflicts between Uniates and Orthodox it takes the side of Uniates? Why in those cases involving conflicts between Sunni Salafists/jihadists and Shia Muslims does it take the side of Sunni/Salafists?
Talk about misdirection:
There is no analysis needed. it is a simple question of: did person A say thing B. It is a yes or no question, not the subject of analysis or debate. Given the nature of the quotes and the ultimate source material it is a clear black and white issue, just as if I were to claim “George Michalopulos wants to send all left-handers to the gas chamber.”
You are entitled to believe whatever you wish about “NWO stuff”, that does not, however, give you free license to lie about what assorted men have said to try and prove points about your beliefs.
It’s not a polemical debate, I am formally calling you out New Testament style before witnesses for your behavior. I am not debating you over the fundamental nature of truth.
Nate, now I’m formally calling you out: Is it your ideological contention that keeps you defending the anti-Christian NWO order types or being unable to see their fundamental hostility to Christianity?
Where am I making ideological contentions? By all means, quote them to me. You are repeatedly failing to engage with substance of my points and going off about ideologies and irrelevant tangents unrelated to simple matters of fact.
And while you’re at it, show me in the New Testament where it is written ‘the ends justify the means’. Because that sure seems to be your Gospel. At this juncture, I can only presume you read a biblical commentary which attributed that quote to the Bible with a footnote.
Matt (May 14, 2014 at 10:47 am) says:
As far as I’m concerned, the question at hand is whether Brzezinski said the things George quoted. Nate Trost has shown Brzezinski did not. And yet George stands by his story, not because it’s factually correct, but because it serves his larger ideological understanding of the world!
(I’m not commenting on the merits of that understanding, some of which I agree with! But let’s make sure that it’s served with facts and accurate reporting).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While I will avoid commenting on ‘Matt’s’ feelings about George Michalopulos’s POV, I can state two matters of fact. First, Nate Trost has NOT shown that Zbigniew Brzezinski did not say what GM attributed to him; he has shown only that he hasn’t (yet) attested it in his research.
Second, and more importantly, ZB DID indeed say something like the words which GM ascribes to him.
In 1996 or shortly thenafter, I watched a televised interview in which ZB unambiguously averred: ‘Now that communism has been defeated, the only remaining enemy is the Russian Orthodox Church.’ That’s exactly what he said.
Naturally, I was shaken and shocked by the naked horror of this dead-eyed man’s blunt, irrational, even delusional statement. I had no way of rewinding or otherwise playing it back. I didn’t think fast enough to phone the station and see about obtaining a copy.
Anyway, I was at Columbia University/Union Theological Seminary in NYC just several days later, participating in a conference discussing orthodox concerns in Europe vis-à-vis the USA, and I had the opportunity to describe ZB’s unsettling performance in the context of my comments.
Several others in the group then spoke up to say that they were aware of ZB’s insane display, and we all thought that we’d be able to track it down and offer a response. But no one was able to find it in those early days of search engines, and no one (to my knowledge) has found it since.
It’s my contention that the US State Department and/or the CIA required the media to purge the record before it got any more play and further embarrassed the US. If that’s the case, the interview may yet be found, but lacking that single sentence thanks to redaction for ‘reasons of national security’.
Oh, how I regret not asking for a copy or at least a transcript of that interview on the very day it was broadcast!
Thank you Fr. BTW, one of my sources for this was “Orthodox England.” Now with your response, confirmation just keeps rolling in.
Monk James wrote:
It’s a bit more nuanced than that, what my research demonstrated is that the “proof” GM is pointing at is nothing more than fabricated quotes. They are purported to be from a specific interview with Brzezinski in which he never actually said any of the things attributed to him.
If GM were to find other instances where he could demonstrate Brzezinski said the things that he is attributing them, then he could merely edit his essay and leave his core charge against the man intact. However, even if that were the case, integrity demands a correction/retraction and a mea culpla for having based it the source he is using. Because it turned out to be a fabrication.
To illustrate in a different light, consider this hypothetical: someone gives GM a memo detailing acts of corruption by members of Syosset which GM runs on his blog. It later turns out that 1) the memo was a fabrication and 2) the members were guilty of crimes, just not the ones specified in the memo.
From where I sit, in such a scenario, even though the men were guilty of a crime, integrity would still demand an apology and retraction of the false memo and false accusations. By the logic being demonstrated here, apparently people disagree. Which is, to put it mildly, flabbergasting considering the supposed ethos on which this blog is based.
US foreign policy has never been specifically been motivated by any purpose of defending Christianity or Christians. This is not some latter-day thing; it has been true since the very beginning.
It’s not “anti-Orthodox”; it is and always has been indifferent to the Orthodox and other Christians, as such.
On the contrary, President McKinley’s foreign policy was motivated in part by his evangelical Methodism. Here’s a sample pertaining to the “Spanish-American War”:
“When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them. I sought counsel from all sides—Democrats as well as Republicans—but got little help. I thought first we would take only Manila; then Luzon; then other islands perhaps also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way—I don’t know how it was, but it came: (1) That we could not give them back to Spain—that would be cowardly and dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany—our commercial rivals in the Orient—that would be bad business and discreditable; (3) that we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government—and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker), and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States (pointing to a large map on the wall of his office), and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!”
[Quoted in General James Rusling, “Interview with President William McKinley,” The Christian Advocate, 22 January 1903, 17. Reprinted in Daniel Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, eds., The Philippines Reader (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 22–23.]
That is interesting.
But though I’ve met a lot of Christian Philipinos, I’ve never met a Protestant one, much less a Methodist! There must be some…..
This reminds me of what some have said here in the past about the Grant administration’s policy toward the Orthodox in Alaska. A “christianizing” US foreign policy would be a dubious thing, indeed.
President McKinley’s evangelical Protestant fervor apparently kept him from viewing Roman Catholic Filipinos as either civilized or “Christianized.” I cited the case simply to rebut your contention, “US foreign policy has never been specifically been motivated by any purpose of defending Christianity or Christians.” That was a particularly egregious case of extreme sectarianism. However, much of early U.S. foreign policy invoked divine providence and, occasionally, explicit Christian themes–such as the “Manifest Destiny” championed by many advocates of westward expansion to the Pacific.
However, it is, as we know too well, intellectually fashionable today to sanitize U.S. foreign and domestic policy alike from any trace of “religion,” especially Christianity. We could do without McKinley’s high-pitched Methodism, but I think we’ve turned our backs on our distinctive American heritage in favor of bowing before the false deities that populate the pantheon of militant secularism. Alas, like prayer, Bible reading, and Christmas decorations (and Hanukkah decorations, too,) in public schools, religion as a positive motivation has vanished from U.S. foreign policy only to be replaced by a rigorous “crusader” zeal for the nouveaux secular ideologies of diversity, multiculturalism, freedom, democracy, and human rights–all viewed, of course, through the prism of the political left alone.
Well done, Nate – I hope you get hired as a professional fact-checker somewhere!
It’s not the same article or interview. Brzezinski doesn’t address the points in the quote from the article George posted at all. I’m sure he’s spoken extensively on the subject but the article Nate refers to is not the one from which the quote is taken. One might just as easily assert that the author of the Russian article made up the quote out of whole cloth. But you’d have no proof for that either.
Nate,
The Russian article from which the list of Brz quotes is taken has one footnote (65) for about six different statements. The sources are separated but the one you quoted is not the one from which the Orthodoxy is the Enemy quote is taken. As I have time, I will track down the other five but the interview you quote would likely only be the source of the first quote in the series, not the “enemy” quote.
Good catch! The citation in the book did take those direct quotations (and in particular “Православие – главный враг Америки”) from the wiki, however, re-reviewing the machine translation of the wiki, you are correct that the inline reference to the interview comes before the other quotes. Unfortunately, I don’t actually see any footnotes or citations for the Orthodoxy quote in particular in the wiki text, perhaps a native Russian speaker could better identify them.
So, Misha is correct, I retract my claim that the Transitions interview is the sourcing of the “Orthodoxy is the enemy” quote, because on further review it clearly is not. I lay this stuff out in detail for a reason (especially since I make no claim of Russian fluency) and have no problems with admitting when I make an error.
Unfortunately, for Mr. Michalopulos this still leaves the dilemma that we still then do not have a definitive time, date, location or forum in which Brz said those words. It’s purely apocryphal.
The Brz stuff was a rabbit trail I didn’t even wish to go down considering I have no objections to referring to the man as odious. I get a bit testy about concrete assertions of proof however, and especially when Mr. Bildt is dragged back into it, which in his case was a ridiculous open and shut case of malicious editing which Mr. Michalopulos categorically refused to acknowledge.
Nate,
I respect your honesty! I read Russian passably well but am taking a serious summer load toward a graduate degree. When I have the time I will read through each; however, it may very well be a “rabbit hole” as you suggest. Not that that proves or disproves the quote, just that sourcing this may be a problem given its age.
As to Brz:
“For Brzezinski, doing damage to Russia is a hobby.” – James K. Galbraith, Democracy inaction, Salon.com, November 30, 2004
And the hits just keep on coming…
The Brzezinski line is in passing. Most of that article claims that George W. Bush stole the Ohio election, and thus the Presidency, in 2004 – not sure that I’d call it a reliable source.
The cybersphere is not the “public record”.
Quote disproven as to connection with Orthodoxy the religion first time you brought it up, George. Why the repeat?
George wrote:
Well, If you have not heard it before, I can tell you exactly what is wrong with Putin. Putin is a cold-blooded murderer of his own population and his neighbors.
Putin has the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, both Russian, and non-Russians, Orthodox and Muslims, religious and secular persons – all of them killed for the sake of Putin’s own schemes to create and empower his tyranny.
1. When he acceded to power in 1999, Putin determined to re-conquer the region of Chechnya, which had won de-facto independence in 1996. In order to gain public support for this war, Putin’s FSB (KGB) bombed three apartment complexes in Russia, causing the deaths of over 300 ordinary Russian citizens. Putin blamed the bombings on Chechen terrorists and used it as an excuse to re-ignite the Chechen war. A fourth bombing in Ryazan was prevented on September 22, 1999 when residents caught FSB agents planting the explosives. Two days later Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the Ryazan incident had been a training exercise. However ballistic evidence clearly tied the bombings to the FSB (KGB). This crime is carefully detailed in the book “Blowing Up Russia” by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky.
2. After the revelations of this crime, Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in London with radioactive Polonium by Andrei Lugovoi, a member of Putin’s United Russia Party, a member of the Russian Duma and an SVR (KGB) agent. The British Crown prosecutor indicted Andrei Lugovoi with the statement: ”We are 100% certain who killed Litvinenko and how”. Naturally, the Putin government has refused to extradite Lugovoi to England where he could be tried for this crime.
3. The 1999 re-conquest of Chechnya was carried out with brutal force, resulting in the deaths of over 100,000, nearly all of then ordinary civilians, all of them Russian citizens. The cities of Grozny and Gudermes were bombed to rubble. Over 50,000 citizens perished in Grozny alone, buried in the rubble of their own homes by their own government’s ”Defense Ministry.”
4. The Chechen War was marked by widespread and vicious attacks on unarmed civilians, torture and rape. In one notorious case, the Russian Captain Yuri Budanov, kidnapped a 10-year-old Chechen girl, Kheda Kungayeva. Budanov raped, tortured and then smothered this 10-year-old child in a fit of rage. After the war, Budanov was convicted of this crime; but served only a token sentence. Budanov is even today celebrated as a hero of Russian nationalism for his ‘heroic act’ of raping, torturing and murdering a 10-year-old child. If you want to know why the Muslims of the Caucasus have turned to violent jihadism, it is because the supposed Orthodox Christians in the Kremlin TAUGHT them to do so!!!
5. After Budanov’s conviction, the Human Rights lawyer who brought the case, Sergei Markelov was gunned down in broad daylight in the very shadow of the Kremlin walls. This could not happen without the collusion of the police and government.
6. During Putin’s reign, over 300 Russian journalists have been assassinated for reporting unpalatable facts about the Putin government’s involvement in human right abuses and criminality. Among these are Anna Politkovskaya, and Natalia Estemirova, both shot for reporting the Russian government’s crimes in Chechnya.
7. Sergei Magnitsky was an auditor at the Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan, representing the investment advisory firm Hermitage Capital Management, which had been accused of tax evasion and tax fraud by the Russian Interior Ministry. Mr. Magnitsky uncovered evidence of the theft of hundreds of millions of rubles in tax receipts by government officials. For this he was arrested and detained in the infamous Butyrka prison. He was beaten and deprived of medical attention for his diabetes. He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and cholestasis and received inadequate medical care. A human rights council set up by the Kremlin found that he was beaten up just before he died. His case became an international scandal and led to the adoption of the Magnitsky Bill by the US government at the end of 2012.
8. As revenge for the Magnitsky Bill, the Putin government blocked adoption of Russian orphans by US citizens. In so doing it has eliminated the one chance those orphans have at receiving the necessary nutrition and medical care they need to survive. Approximately 25% of those orphans suffer from HIV infection. Most of them suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome and / or the effects of pre-natal drug exposure. All of them suffer from malnutrition and neglect. This law that blocked their potential adoption by foreigners in effect is a death sentence for many of those orphans. This alone demonstrates the Satanic cynicism of the Putin regime.
9. In 2008, Russian military forces under the direct command of Vladimir Putin invaded the sovereign territory of the Republic of Georgia for he third time under he pretext of protecting Ossetian rebels. The Russian government’s explanation of the August 2008 invasion has been deconstructed by Russian investigative journalist Yulia Latynina and the film documentary “Uroki Russkogo” (Russian Lessons, by the cinematographers Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya. This film can be viewed in its entirety on You Tube in 12 segments.
10. During the August 2008 war, the Russian military deliberately targeted civilians, bombing apartment complexes in order to instill terror. The Russians and their Ossetian allies carried out acts of ethnic cleansing and murder. They attacked the ancient (5th century) Georgian Orthodox Cathedral of Ghvrtaeba and the Shrine of the Protomartyr Razhden in Nikazi. They then looted, desecrated and burned those Orthodox Holy Places. To make matters worse, these actions were publicly “blessed” by bishops of the Moscow Patriarachate (Feofan of Saratoveand Panteimon of Kabardia). These infernal “blessings” were televised in both Russia and Georgia. You may watch the video for yourself on you Tube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FRMy143Nm0
Portions of this documentary plus additional footage are now available with English voice over, titled “Orthodox Occupancy Part 1 and Part 2” at the following urls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dWSx4scmP0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmw7jY3gzj4&feature=related
A television documentary on the destruction of Ghvertaeba and the work of reconstruction carried out by Metropolitan Isaiah may be viewed at:
http://pik.tv/en/war/film/1755
You decry the ‘decadence’ of the West, but excuse Putin’s mass murders. Your moral compass is simply defective. Your arguments are as despicable as your facts are flimsy.
When are you going to stop embarrassing yourself with this endless stream of ignorant skata?
First of all, you state that it was the FSB which blew up those apartment complexes and that Litvinenko exposed it. Do you have proof of that? It’s certainly possible but it’s equally possible that these are assertions. Like the assertion that Bush/Cheney planned 9/11.
Also, if Putin was wrong to prohibit Chechnya from seceding from Russia, was Shakaashvili wrong for prohibiting the Ossetians and the Abkhazians from seceding from Georgia? If not (in the latter case) why not? (This is a trick question, I want to see if you’re intellectually consistent.)
Finally, exactly how many “hundreds of thousands of citizens” has Putin actually killed? Please give actual numbers, time-frames, and areas of conflict. The name of actual battles (like Kursk) would be good, or massacres (e.g. Katyn forest). The reason I ask this is because outside of Ukraine (which blew up because of Western interference) all indications are that the RF is pretty peacable. Business seems to be booming and the economy growing. Are you sure that Putin is going around murdering people in Russia willy-nilly?
Mr Frost just hates anything Russian …………..his MO “Russian military deliberately targeted civilians”
same story ………………..
Francis, the first and last links don’t work, FYI.
My goodness, the same tripe they threw at Bush regarding 9/11. I will admit that it is dangerous to publish such defamation in Russia and I encourage Frost to move there and do so at his earliest opportunity rather than slinging mud from a safe distance.
what is really sad in all of this is that the Unia that was forced on the Orthodox looks like it succeeded in its quest to divide the Orthodox church and cripple it…. OCA’s Chancellor John Jillions said “Even that word “uniate” I can’t say without cringing, because it is an offensive, pejorative term for Eastern Catholics (or Greek-Catholics).
Looks like we forgot about “Talerhof” ..as for the Ultra Ukrainian Nationalists? Their great-grandpas harassed the Rusin Russophiles in World War I (and packed them off to the death camp at Talerhof).
I’m not at all surprised by Archdeacon John Chryssavgis’ limp and feckless response. All we ever hear from the Ecumenical Patriarchate is drivel, and this is just one more example of it. Pathetic.
A response to the link to the first story on this subject: Thanks, for the site. “Orthodoxy is the Enemy” were the exact words expressed to me in a local altar by a tearful Serbian priest here in Bavaria. As he finished putting away the holy vessels after liturgy on the Sunday after NATO’s infamous Easter bombing some 15 years ago, when his village in Kosovo was quite literally annihilated – family home, farms, shops, the one and only church, two schools, women, children, babies, old folks, … the works, all wiped out; a village “cleansed” by bombs labelled “MADE IN THE US”, Father Slobadan said, with downcast eyes and despairing tone, “Look Nicolai, for the West, Serbia is not the enemy, ‘Orthodoxy is the enemy’ – always was, and always will be.”… Later that week, I read in the Guardian how during the Easter Sunday bombing one of the British airmen loading bombs to be dropped on Serbia that same day, on one of them, painted the words, “HAPPY EASTER.”
With love in Christ Resurrected!
The “West” doesn’t even know what (captital O) “Orthodoxy” is. Most don’t even know it exists. Surely the American Orthodox here know that; I certainly do, as a recently-received refugee.
The old comparison I once heard: all of the Eastern Orthodox in the US wouldn’t get close to the number of Catholics in the Chicago Archdiocese alone. Either literally true or close to it.
Good grief. Rulers, all rulers these days, are immersed in the world and engage in evil. The world is the enemy of the Church. Putin is no better than any of the others but I doubt that he is any worse. He may be less constrained in some areas than other rulers, but that does not mean that all US Presidents since Eisenhower have not at least been tempted to take out opponents, foreign or domestic and some did (Republican and Democrat alike). We the people are irrelevant to all of them.
The EP just wants to get over on the MP so nothing from that source can be trusted. Nothing new there.
George, you do not do yourself any favors by constantly defending Putin. Mr. Frost, same way in reverse. It is unlikely that anybody actually knows anything other than propaganda and anecdotal stories. Neither is good evidence.
Oh,
BTW Christ is Risen! Death has been despoiled. We will not be called to account concerning the behavior of rulers–Ecclesial or earthly on Judgment Day. As always, the more we are faithful, the less evil there will be in the world.
Glory to God for all things!
I hold similar views. There’s a lot more Russo-indifference than Russophobia in this country.
I had the great privilege to travel in Russia in the last days of the Bolshevik regime, and to attend liturgies twice, once in a tiny obscure church in Moscow, and once in the Alexander Nevski monastery church in [then] Leningrad. The first had a small attendance of older folks, and I stood out like a sore thumb. They were very welcoming, though.
The second was at noontime, and the big church was packed with young professional people, hundreds of them. This was 1987, and going to such services was becoming common as a way to protest the regime.
The country is beautiful, and its history and culture has always been of great interest to me. That said, historically Russia has meant the opposite of England, whose history, politics, and culture I find immeasurably more sympathetic.
I confess my attitude is changing some, with the slow collapse of said Anglo/American “history, politics, and culture”.
We don’t have to believe Putin is a saint to believe that he’s a good ruler from both a practical and a religious perspective. So what’s the basis for saying he’s no better than any other ruler? Was Ronald Reagan no better than Bill Clinton? Can’t some rulers be better than others, and can’t we express a preference, and defend our preferences, without being accused of hero-worship?
Reagan better than Clinton–yes on a certain level. Both were very good political animals who profited by mistakes of their opponents.
It seems to me that George has gone beyond simple preference.
In my opinion there has been one great President – Washington; several who took the country into disasters such as Lincoln, Wilson.
Some really bad ones: Harrison and his successors to Lincoln.
Most are historical non-entities like most of the Presidents in the 19th century after the Civil War. Rulers are rarely
good sometimes evil but most incompetent. Jury still out on Reagan. Eisenhower looks better and better.
Obama is an abject failure on every level. It is his moral and political bankruptcy that helps make Putin look better.
Michael, if you will permit me to correct the record re my admiration for Putin: I do admire the man as a leader who looks out for the best interests of his people as he sees it. Having said that there is much that gives me pause. For instance, the Duma recently passed a law outlawing criticism of WWII. To me this violates everything I hold dear re free speech.
Of course, Russia doesn’t have a First Amendment. Neither does any other country. But before we get all hot and bothered, these same abridgments of free speech are alive and well in France, Germany, Austria etc. Merely questioning events in WWII (like the extent of the Holocaust) can get you thrown in prison. Russia is rather late to the game in this respect so I can’t unload on Putin (who is an authoritarian) while far more liberal countries in Western Europe have been plying this game for decades now.
Another reason I find myself coming to the defense of Russia and Putin is because our MSM is perpetrating a propaganda campaign that is easily belied by the facts. For what purpose? Clearly to get us in another useless –and unwillable–war. Like many of my readers, I have two sons (aged 27 and 23)and I don’t want to see them risk life and limb for something like “democracy in Russia.” Especially since the US and the RF had no territorial disputes or even fundamental ideological disagreements any more.
What has George said about Putin that is so unreasonable?
Nothing in the post or in his comments here. He doesn’t deny the obvious or assert the absurd. He just doesn’t believe every accusation against Putin by flaming Russophobes like Francis Frost. Neither do I.
The worst that can be said about George here is that he too easily believed that Brzezinski said something he was alleged to say but apparently didn’t say. But, hey, it’s not so unreasonable to believe that a Pole like Brzezinski would think that Orthodoxy itself is what’s wrong with Russia.
One more thing: What was so bad about Millard Fillmore? You’ve said he was “really bad.” Tell us why.
Was he worse than Clinton? You’ve said Clinton was “very good.” Was he better than Fillmore? Only by the most worldly of measures.
Millard Fillmore was a place holder–someone had to be President. He was President because Zachary Taylor died. He was the last Whig, a dying party. He could not even gain the nomination for his party for a term on his own. He tried to temporize on slavery when that was no longer possible. Franklin Pierce who succeeded him was a depressed alcoholic. Fillmore and that mass of Presidents between Jackson and Lincoln took what had been a position of real leadership and government into a political job which it has been ever since. They no longer saw themselves a passing on the great Constitutional tradition.
It was what caused Henry Adams (grandson and great grandson of the Presidents Adams) to eschew even attempting to be President with the comment: “A man of my quality can no longer be elected President.”
I said Clinton was a very good political animal. He, like Reagan had the gift of selling himself (regardless of the reality) to people and co-opting the opposition. He was good at wielding power for his own self-interest. That is not a comment on his morality or policies. He is a morally bankrupt person, perhaps one of the reasons he is a good politician.
What is it that you like so much about Millard Fillmore other than his unique name?
The evolution of the office of President: Leaders, Bureaucrats, entertainers. (With some throw backs here and there and an occasional dictator type)
Leaders: Washington to Jackson
Bureaucrats: Van Buren to McKinley (odd man out Lincoln–leader/dictator type)
Teddy Roosevelt was the first entertainer President
Wilson–dictator/bureaucrat type
FDR–the same but with a bit of entertainer too.
Truman has elements of all of them.
Eisenhower probably attempted to be a leader in the old style but the foundation was no longer there to achieve that.
Since then entertainers: some buffoons, some Shakespearean
The Bushes: Bureaucrats
Obama is an entertainer/dictator type.
Entertainers can be effective motivators and sell their policies (created by others for the benefit of a few) but they do not really lead. They are just one more consumer item that has a short shelf-life.
Millard Fillmore was anti-masonry.
He was anti-slavery.
He was not anti-Catholic.
He was a conservative Whig.
He was an anti-fanatic moderate.
He was honestly and charitably bi-partisan.
He worked for peaceful compromise to both limit slavery and prevent war.
He avoided war with England, France, and Portugal without letting them have their way.
He was a constitutionalist, supporting the Constitutional Union Party in 1860.
He defended the Union but opposed the Radical Republicans.
He was humble, turning down an honorary degree from Oxford because he felt he had neither the “literary nor scientific attainment” to justify the degree.
He stood upon his principles even when they were unpopular, at the expense of his political career.
He won 20 percent of the vote as a third-party candidate in 1956 — pretty good for a third party.
So what if other men were too unreasonable to take his side?
And the point is that one ought not make sweeping condemnations of past or present rulers as all bad. And when one does pass judgment on other men, one should be prepared to say why.
George,
You deserve a great deal of respect for allowing posters who present information contrary to your facts and beliefs.
Orthodox Christianity continues to be rent by ethnic allegiancies.
There are a few Churches that do manage to avoid taking sides when there are conflicts in the home land.
The Copts and the Universeral Syriac come to mind, but are they really Orthodox? The Antiochenes miniminize their affiliation with modern Syria. They don’t talk much about being Greek Orthodox either.
You are correct, Greggo,
Even when George is being ultra stubborn, he still allows people on his forum to substantiate where he has gone wrong. And kudos to George for that!
“This regionalization is in keeping with the Tri-Lateral Plan which calls for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward the goal of one world government. National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept.”
This thread is so awesome.
In George’s essay, he justifies the use of feces in rhetoric by placing it on others. If he did so in front of a priest as a ten year old; a good priest would scold him. Those people are nasty as feces! But not me up here on this cloud.
And Nate is so patiently trying to explain orthodoxy per Brz is not church, but George acts like it must be when it is so obviously a reference to holding onto the doctrine of communism.
???
I just find the thing humorous..
Dan,
It is not a reference to holding on to a degree of communism (whatever the h*ll that means). The article quoted him in Russian using the Russian word for the Orthodox faith which later, uncapitalized I might add, was used to refer to Orthodox believers and their faith. It’s utterly obvious in the Russian article to what he is referring – Orthodoxy. Now, the quote could have been made up. Nate has definitely not proven that the source he cites is the source from which the author of the article took the quote.
In the end, it is a dead end, much like the links that Nate encountered along his merry way (you would think he has something better to do with his time).
Now, I don’t think anyone has any doubt the Brz hates Russia, nor that he despises the traditional, anti-progressive influence Russian Orthodoxy has on Russia. His other statements since the dissolution of the Soviet Union are a testament to the veracity of the quote as George interpreted it. The quote just puts a sharp and obvious point to it all.
I disagree with this assertion:
I displayed the actual page of the Russian book cited by the English web blog. The Russian version of the quotes match the English blog posting. The Russian version of the quotes were attributed to a political profile of Brzezinski on a Russian wiki site. I linked to that wiki entry, which contained the exact same Russian version of the quotes cited by the book. The Russian quotes on the wiki page cited as their source a specific interview in a specific journal on a specific date. I located the interview, which was in that journal, on that date, with Brzezinski. Which was written in English. Either the Russian wiki authors cited the wrong interview, which is odd given the specificity of the reference, including the date, or they were utterly incompetent, or malevolent. Which piece of the chain do you think is inconclusive? There was no smoke and mirrors, I displayed all my work. If you’re going to disagree that I nailed the chain, you’re going to be more specific.
At this juncture, the only substantial evidence is an assertion by Monk James that he saw Brzezinski say something along those lines on television. The problem is, that was eighteen years ago. Without a video clip, transcript, or even other reference to the time, date and venue, that is grounds to allege Brzezinski said such a thing, but it is not actual proof, given in the limitations of human memory and comprehension. If Mr. Michalopulos had used the testamony of Monk James to allege it was something Brzezinski said, that would have been reasonable. Declaring proof requires a might higher standard however, and in the process Mr. Michalopulos demonstrated he literally does not understand how sourcing or citation works, and that he would have gotten a F in a high school journalism class.
Which is why it is important to make sure quotes are actually true, otherwise it ends up being a sharp and obvious point through the credibility of the writer.
And that, perhaps is the greatest criticism of these essays, a giant screed about the desires and machinations of powerful New World Order of anti-Orthodoxy. Which truly must be a giant and massive beast! But the essay is hung on quotes of dubious veracity of the foreign minister of Sweden and a washed up talking head who hasn’t been in the hall of power in decades? It’s like if you were writing an essay about the negative influence of rock and roll on popular culture and trotted out a Starship cover band that’s never played anything bigger than a county fair as your center stage villains. That’s just beyond lazy.
Nate, I was gonna leave this alone but you’ve now jumped the shark. Unless you are implying that Monk James is 1) delusional/forgetful or 2) a liar, you have no place to stand on. (I suppose you could say that Monk James is a nom de plume I made up because that’s a possibility but I don’t think even you would go that far.)
Let us assume #1 as the only realistic option. Why do I believe Monk James? For the very simple reason that Western chat show intereviewees are nothing but blow-dried robots saying only the mildest, time-tested, focus-grouped catch-phrases. I guarandangtee you that if Pat Buchanan had stated on public TV that Jews send gentiles off to war for Israel’s sake we’d still be hearing about it. (BTW, we still are.) A bigoted statement about his church said on broadcast TV, I think that Monk James would remember that.
Monk James wrote under his own name, he was very adamant about it and the fact that just a few days after that interview, it was a hot topic at Columbia, where others had either heard it for themselves or from others who had seen it.
But let’s leave that aside. That leaves us with point #2 –Monk James is a liar (or point #3, he’s a fiction created by me to reinforce my own supposedly false assertion.)
OK, let’s go there. How then do you explain that just three years later Zbig had to deny he ever said those words to the people of Tbilisi who called him out on the carpet?
At this point only two options exist: Either Monk James mass hypnotized the Georgians, or planted stories in their newspapers ahead of Zbig’s visit. The only other option is that I have a time machine and I went back in time and planted the stories myself in the Georgian press for the express purpose of embarrassing Zbig.
Then there’s the point that Orthodox England blog reported this and that I heard it from yet another source (an Orthodox bishop here in America). Unless you believe that Monk James, me, Orthodox England, the bishop, and the Essayist are all working in collusion, the only viable option is that Zbig did in fact say those words.
The weight of evidence is overwhelming.
I never accused Monk James of deceit, however, he is human, and human memory is a fallible thing. I believe he believes that he saw on television what he describes. And as I explained, that certainly enough to support a credible allegation that Brzezinski said something along the lines of “Orthodoxy is the enemy”. However, that does not meet any actual journalistic standard of evidence for hard proof. Which is required for the language of your essays because at this point, you are treating it as an established fact, not an allegation.
The bemusing thing is you bring up the meme “ZBig is anti-Christian” and these quotes that everybody knows he said, but, it is proving extremely difficult to definitively date, time and place a single source of such a quote, much less the constant volcano eruption of anti-Christian bigotry that apparently we should be expecting from ZBig. You bring up Pat Buchanan, but with Buchanan, it’s trivial to find video clips, official transcripts, essays, or books that he’s written which are the source of many of his controversial quotes. With Buchanan, even with a fat salary on the line for keeping some of his opinions to himself, he invariably just can’t help it. So what makes you think Buchanan, for whom we could probably definitely source dozens of ugly quotes is comparable to Brzezinski, where at best we seem to have a single apocryphal quote from almost twenty years ago?
Orthodox England reported the same “everybody knows ZBig said this” quote that other blogs have posted, all copy-pasting each other with nobody actually sourcing where he said it.
If that’s how you define truth, then if one blog purports a George Michalopulos quote of “Let every Major League ballpark be a mass grave of the southpaw. The left-handers must be expunged from our great nation.” and it gets reblogged by a couple dozen other blogs, then it is the truth, because everybody knows you said it, even if nobody knows where!
Haha, no. Monk James is definitely his own man, and I can’t help but note he posted a comment critical of your reblogged interpretation of Mr. Bildt’s comments, which along other similar comments from other readers, not just me, have gone uncommented on by you.
You are misframing. The context of being asked about it appears to have been in a newspaper or magazine interview presumbly during a tour to give a speech, or something along those lines, the foreign citation is kind of hard to parse. Any journalist worth their salt is going to research potential good questions, and I think we can all agree that was a good question to ask. I find it interesting that you are only apparently willing to consider that the question was raised in the first place implies proof that he did say it, but his denial is not worthy of consideration as a contrary point of evidence.
If some Orthodox journal was going to interview you and in the prep research came up with all these allegations that you want to engage in genocide against left-handers, would it really be surprising if you were asked about it?
I should also add, it is probably worth considering the nature of statements Brzezinski was making around the time that he might have said this alleged quote. The Transitions interview I posted was not, in fact, the supposed source of the “Orthodoxy is the enemy of America” quote, as Misha so helpfully corrected me on, however, it does flesh out some of his thoughts including skepticism that incoming western materialism for the former Eastern Bloc is going to be able to fill the void left by communist dogma (not that the latter was really filling anything in the first place). I think it would be relatively uncontroversial to state that in the 80s, the Kremlin was trying to keep Pepsi, Michael Jackson, Levis and Playboy out of the USSR. And in the 90s, the US was shipping all of the above over by the shipload. In that context, with the Communist power structures vanquished, it isn’t bigotry, but simple analysis to note that the only Russian cultural force to fight back against a tide of Western (or American) materialism and vice would be: the Orthodox Church. Now, one can no doubt find people who would consider Levi’s 501s and Thriller superior to the Orthodox faith, butt when Brzezinski seems unconvinced that such things in and of themselves are enough for Eastern Europe, it makes it a bit more difficult to turn him into Hugh Hefner. Rather than being a hedonist, one gets the impression that the only orgasm Mr. Brzezinski ever had in his life was the day the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. All this, I suppose to say: without a transcript or archival footage of the show Monk James recalls seeing, what he recalls Mr. Brzezinski saying might be far less scandalous. Just because Brzezinski dislikes Russia means he likes Michael Jackson and Playboy.
The moral of the story is this: if you want to do the things with your blog that you seem to want to do, in all seriousness you should probably take some journalism classes at a local community college. At this point, you don’t even have an understanding of some of the foundational errors you are making in your composition and assertions. If you do not take steps to remedy your shortcomings, over time your body of work will probably result you having the image something along the lines of an Orthodox blogger who embodies the worst qualities of Dan Rather and Geraldo. I really doubt you want that.
All human beings are fallible. That is why history is up for revision. Case in point: there is no documentary evidence in which Hitler ordered the extermination of Jews and other minorities. That doesn’t mean that (a) it didn’t happen, or (b) that he wasn’t complicit, or (c) that he didn’t order it.
Just because a document and/or video and/or audio no longer of the Zbig interview no longer exists (or more likely, is suppressed) doesn’t mean that we must by necessity ignore credible, eyewitness testimony. Monk James’s statements as to this incident are credible in all regards.
All forensic science, criminal proceedings, etc., are predicated on two things: 1) the memory of eyewitnesses and 2) the appeal to reason (i.e the “reasonable man standard:). In both instances, Zbig’s Russophobia is well-attested.
As for my taking the time to take journalism classes –I’ll pass. I work for a living, at least 55 hours a week and have a life outside of my profession. BTW, in my profession I have to be ever-cognizant of legal issues, think very critically, and measure my words carefully.
Having said that, let us leave aside the credible evidence of Monk James. We are still left with the evidence of this essay and the fact that you have never demonstrated that the original essay (which had named sources) was false in any fashion. I will take this further: three men are quoted in footnote no 8. Have you investigated their veracity? Did you meet these men and/or confront them in any way to find out why they said what they did and what exactly they meant? Were they misquoted? Were they misunderstood? Etc.
I think I’m just going to rest with this:
The problem is that you want to treat the essay as evidence even though it cannot substantiate any of the quotes it attributes to Zbig. Footnote 8 is to a page in Russian book with three co-authors. You keep saying “three named men” as if these words had some type of inherent weight or meaning. This is not a case of three men making direct claims about the witnessing quotes, ala Monk James, or men who had interviewed or analyzed interviews of Zbig. They were just guys who wrote a book and pasted some alleged quotes from Zbig into their book from another source entirely. The theoretical questions you posed don’t even make sense. And as Misha corrected me, it isn’t clear where their source for the quotes even got them from, it may not have even bothered to provide a citation to the quotes in question. It isn’t entirely clear that you bothered to even read enough of what I wrote or what Misha wrote to even understand what is going on. You don’t even appear to understand the basis of the source material you are putting forth as evidence! Again, it isn’t like Monk James recalling having heard Zbig utter those words, it’s a citation chain that offers no ultimate definitely sourcing of the quotes. This is, in fact, rather important.
Although I suppose in the grand scheme of things, if you were never able to see the problem with running an edited tweet of Mr Bildt on your blog that didn’t match the tweet on his official twitter account, not even journalism classes are going to help you.
Up to this moment, given the tendency of the authors to document their claims and a lack of time to plow through the original Russian articles cited, I cannot see any rational reason to argue that the quote is false. It may be questionable, at best. All you have to do to prove your point is find someone to translate all of the six sources named in the article, post them, and show us that the Enemy quote is not therein.
You seem an industrious enough fellow, . . .
Of course, the next demand would be to hear a recording of the interview . . .
Nate Trost (May 19, 2014 at 10:51 am) says:
‘I never accused Monk James of deceit, however, he is human….’ (followed my lots of other things).
Having an unusually sharp memory (nearly eidetic but not quite, they tell me, yet I’m also especially afflicted with not being able to forget what I hear) I can do no more than assert that what I wrote earlier concerning Zbigniew Brzezinski’s astonishing statement that ‘the only remaining enemy is the Russian Orthodox Church’ (note: NOT ‘orthodoxy’) is as true as it can be.
What I can’t remember, though, is ever having myself accused of being human. [[;-D33
“oppressive doctrinal orthodoxy”
What part of the Orthodox Church can be described as oppressive?
You guys are so full of confirmation biases; you can’t even see when you are blatantly wrong.
If I asked you to tell me one thing about Russia that has been oppressive in the last 50 years; you can’t seriously tell me you’d say the church.
If oppressive was an adjective, then it was not a reference to the church….the church basically went dark under communist oppression from all I’ve understood…
“All of this is frustrating to Orthodox Christians, who note that many non-Orthodox are receiving a limited, distorted view through a Putin lens of their Church’s spiritual tradition that values the uniqueness of every human being created in the image and likeness of God. Genuine Orthodoxy recognizes tolerance and champions religious freedom and human rights. This exasperation was confirmed recently when Carl Bildt, Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and one of the architects of the Eastern policy of the E.U. claimed that Eastern Orthodoxy is the principal threat to western civilization.”
I was not aware that Minister Bildt was an Orthodox Christian.
This Orthodox Christian is frustrated by the Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis and his ilk.
Btw, it seems that much of Scandinavia is frustrated with Minister Bildt as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Bildt#2014_crisis_in_Ukraine
Thanks Isa. Not only is the Russophobia of Zbig congealing into hard fact, but the ineptness of Bildt is as well. And the hits just keep on coming…
(It might perhaps interest readers that the mentioned Torsten Kälvemark, is an Orthodox Christian)
“Istanbul represents a kinder, gentler Orthodoxy.”
Dhimmitized?
Whether Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly expressed an animus toward Russian Orthodoxy early in the post-Soviet era (and, for what it’s worth, my recollection is similar to that of Monk James on this message board), this column in The American Interest by Michael Cecire, an “associate scholar” for the Foreign Policy Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania (my own alma mater, by the way), leaves no doubt as to that rather young writer’s dripping hostility against what he terms Russia’s “Orthodox-Nationalist ideology”:
http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2014/05/19/georgias-fifth-column-stirs/
I hope and pray that such dubious religious prejudice does not reflect our current “American” national interest.