Daily Archives: December 27, 2012

The New World Disorder Goes On

Statistics from the 2011 UK census, just released, show that 59% of the population of England and Wales still calls itself Christian. This figure is down from 72% in 2001. Clearly, the fall is because the older generation, who are nearly wholly nominal Christians, is dying out. It is surprising that this figure for even nominal Christianity is still so high. We would have thought less than 50%. (The figure for practising Christians is probably about 3%). At the same time, this census has not surprisingly revealed that over a quarter, 25%, of the population has no religion at all.

Clearly, the figure of 59% who call themselves Christians has been boosted by the massive immigration to the UK since 2001. Immigrants have been admitted by governments greedy to exploit the hard work of Christians from Eastern Europe, especially Poland, and Africa. (True, governments have also been greedy to exploit the masses of poor Muslim immigrants allowed into the country in recent years – but with cultural consequences which they will live to regret. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/11/census-2011-religion-race-education).

Other Western European countries report figures very similar to Britain for apostasy and mass atheism. It is clear that practising Christians today are a very small minority in all Western European countries. Moreover, it is a minority that is already undergoing indirect persecution. Unless there is an as yet unforeseeable movement of repentance, this persecution will become direct. By 2021, the figure for nominal Christians could easily be as low as 40%, perhaps less. Even in the USA, the number of ‘Christians’ is falling fast. (And most of these seem to be sectarians, compromised by poor education, US nationalism and happy-clappy fundamentalism, which trends have supported the extremes of the Republican Party).

All this comes against a background of direct worldwide persecution of Christianity in Africa and Asia. Nigeria, Mali, the Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia are only some of the countries concerned. Millions of Christians there have been massacred in recent decades. Today, the Copts of Egypt are being severely persecuted, thanks to the seizure of power by the Western-backed Muslim Brotherhood. However, the most serious situation of all is in Syria. Here the Orthodox Patriarch has just died. His flock, once concentrated in western Syrian centres like Damascus, Aleppo and Homs, is being scattered and murdered. We cannot help thinking that Patriarch Ignatius, who always supported Pan-Arab nationalism, must have died of a broken heart at seeing his country and people being torn to pieces, victims of geopolitics and greed.

The latest anti-Syrian fantasy accusation is that the Syrian government is set to use chemical weapons against its own people. This is nonsense. Its stocks of chemical weapons only exist out of fear that Western-armed and financed, nuclear Israel, whose stockpiles of chemical weapons are 180 time superior to that of Syria, may use its chemical weapons against Syria. This fantastic accusation is an excuse, as were the invented, non-existent ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq an excuse; international rumour has it that Western nations together with Islamists are planning an attack on Syria at the end of December and the assassination of the Syrian President.

The curious thing about the whole anti-Christian Arab winter is that the aggressive, secularist and anti-religious West has allied itself with Muslim fanatics against Christianity. Of course, we should not find this curious. The West already did this in Afghanistan in the 1980s, arming to the hilt those it now calls ‘Taliban insurgents’, but then ‘heroic freedom-fighters’. And the British did the same in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, freely allowing the Ottomans to persecute and massacre the Christians of the Balkans. And when Turkey, taking advantage of the Western-organised revolution in Russia in 1917 to massacre one million Armenians, the West was also silent. Today the US and the UK continue to allow Turkey to occupy 40% of Cyprus and massacre the Kurds and persecute Greeks and Armenians. But then of course the UK itself gassed the Iraqi Kurds in the 1930s and the Western Powers supplied Iraq with poison gas to massacre its Kurds in the 1980s.

The meeting of diametrically opposed extremes is nothing new. Did not the Romans and the Jews connive to crucify Christ? Did not Roman Catholic Crusaders and Muslim Turks connive to destroy the Capital of Christendom and the millennium-old Roman Christian Empire? Did not the Mongols and the Teutonic Knights attempt to destroy Russia under St Alexander Nevsky? Did not German generals and American capitalists connive to finance the Russian Revolution? Did not NATO and Albanian Muslim terrorists connive to steal the most ancient part of Serbia?

Today, Syria is the target of the extremists. Islamist mercenaries, especially from Libya, Qatar, the Caucasus and Central Asia, are being shipped in and armed by the US. Qatar wants to put a gas pipeline through Syria to supply Western Europe with natural gas. Turkey wants the same pipeline to go through its territory too. The stakes are all the higher, for it is now known that Syria too has huge reserves of natural gas, which have not yet been exploited by Western companies – as they are now doing with impunity in Libya. And if Syria falls back into the Middle Ages because of Islamic fundamentalism, the West will rejoice; such backwardness will allow it to exploit the country at will.

The massacre and exile of a million or two Syrian Christians is not going to stop this. However, although the West was left free to take over Libya, it is not being left free to seize power in Syria. Syria has friends, first of all, in China. And the West fears China’s economic power. Secondly, there is Russia, which hopes to extend the already-existent Eurasian Union to the whole Orthodox Christian and Central Asian world. And thirdly, there is Islamist Iran, which is hostile to atheism. If the new atheist West really wants to spark a Third World War, it really is doing its best. We live in dangerous times. The 17 US Navy ships, the 5 British ships, the French aircraft carrier and those of other nations at present gathered off Syrian coasts, and the forces at the US bases in Turkey, Kuwait and in the Gulf, spell danger.

St James the Great-Martyr of Persia / Iran
27 November/10 December 2012

2013: On Russia’s Future Direction

The ruthless atheist Gorbachov and the alcoholic Yeltsin were great destroyers of Russia. They allowed the tearing asunder of the historic country, which it had taken its rulkers centuries to assemble, encouraging the ultra-capitalist sell-off of public assets to criminals, future oligarchs, (‘privatisation’) and profound corruption. At the same time they made the last 22 years of Western-fomented permanent warfare in the world possible.

The current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, is intent on correcting the present deviation of history, hoping to end both its unipolarity, by strengthening the Eurasian Union, and its plutarchy, by introducing a luxury tax. It is plutarchy, government by a tiny, ultra-rich elite, that is responsible for worldwide poverty, the current artificial banking crisis and the bankruptcy of most Western countries.

Despite Putin’s weaknesses, he is attempting to weave together a New Russian / Eurasian synthesis which is called on to replace the present oligarchic system. This synthesis includes strong, sovereign government that regulates society, providing social justice with real employment, accommodation, health care and education for all. However, it also includes free market competition for business, without State capitalism, and personal and collective responsibility, founded on hard work and honesty, the cultivation of spiritual values and national identity. It opposes the Godless, materialist West, which already exported and tried to impose permanently its atheist materialism on Imperial Russia in 1917.

Exploiting Russia’s many weaknesses, it achieved success for a time. However, after the Western Fascist Invasion of 1941, the multinational country very slowly and very painfully began to heal itself. Incredibly, in 2012 this long-drawn out healing process is still ongoing. Many of the hangovers of Soviet times still have to be overcome. Place names have to be changed, statues removed and the mummy of the evil pharaoh Lenin, has to be taken away. And then there are Soviet psychological reflexes. Much has been done – but much remains to be done.

As reported by the RIA-Novosti Agency (http://en.rian.ru/russia/20121212/178101146.html), President Putin set out his vision for the future on Wednesday 12 December. In his state-of-the-nation address in Moscow, President Putin said that the coming years would be turning points in Russian and World history, that Russia needed to be economically independent, preserving its national and spiritual identity.

He explained that ‘three-child families should be the norm’. He added that Russian society lacks the ‘spiritual braces’ to hold it together, and that it should look to education and ‘traditional values’ to change that situation, thus reversing ‘the trends of the last 15-20 years’. He noted that, ‘It pains me to speak of this… but Russian society today lacks … kindness, sympathy, compassion towards one another, support, and mutual assistance; it lacks those qualities that always made us stronger throughout our long history’.

He went on to say that while government interference in people’s convictions and views smacks of ‘totalitarianism’ and is ‘absolutely unacceptable’, the government should focus on strengthening society’s ‘spiritual and moral foundations’ through education and youth policy. He has instructed the government to prepare a supplementary educational programme focusing on bringing up children, that is, preparing young people for adulthood through moral education and conferring on them rules of etiquette, values, and traditions. He pointed out that schools are losing out, in terms of impact on young people, to the internet and electronic media, and that they should restore the ‘unconditional value’ of the schools by updating their curricula and offering a wide range of options, accessible to all children, regardless of family income.

He also stressed the importance of teaching history and the Russian language and emphasised the need to strengthen national identity, partly through connecting ‘historical epochs into a single whole’, for Russia has ‘a millennial history’. In that vein, Putin suggested creating a long-overdue memorial to the heroes of World War I and restoring famous Imperial military units, including the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments. At last he wishes to make it easy to live in Russia and obtain Russian citizenship for those abroad, to make people want to live in Russia, again reversing the trend of the last 20 years, when Russia has lost so many of its people due to emigration.

Without elaborating, Putin said, ‘We must wholly support institutions that are the bearers of traditional values and have historically proven their ability to transmit them from generation to generation’. He also praised grassroots charity activism, which is on the rise in Russia, and promised a separate meeting with volunteers in the unspecified near future.

Monk Moses the Athonite: ‘Europe is Committing Suicide’

12/12/2012

Monk Moses the Athonite has been an ascetic on the Holy Mountain for thirty-five years. He is an icon-painter, poet, critic and writer. He has published 52 books and written over 1,000 articles. His works have been translated and published in many countries around the world. He is the senior secretary of the Sacred Community of the Holy Mountain. For some twenty-five years he has been the Elder of the hermitage of St John Chrysostom and of the hermitage of the holy great-martyr Panteleimon attached to Koutloumousiou Monastery.

monk moses

We are publishing a few extracts from an article by Fr Moses, in which he analyses the contemporary situation in Europe and Greece.

‘Greece has long been in a state of reanimation. The Greek language is being murdered every day. All around reigns the darkness of disintegration and a gloomy and violent national nihilism.

The desire to make money quickly and easily has led many into making tragic mistakes. Impatience and lack of seriousness are costing us dear. The thirst for riches has taken Europeans to extremes. Contemporary Europe is totally deChristianised.

The Vatican is reaping the fruits of deforming Christian teachings. The most horrific cases of child rape are taking place. Western people are running from ‘God is dead’ to Eastern gurus, desperately hoping to find at least some semblance of spiritual life. Some 2,000 branches of Protestantism are competing for a flock. The deChristianisation of Europe is on a very large scale and will lead to even more catastrophic consequences.

Europe has forgotten Christ and is embracing Islam. It seems as if it wants to commit suicide. Mosques are rising up in place of churches.

We are not against other religions, but we do want to defend Orthodoxy. Or do they now want to take away from us even this last right?

We look to the resistance of people who cannot be bought off. There are quite a few of them. It is time to stop being quiet. Our country needs spiritual regeneration.’

Source: http://www.agioritikovima.gr

Meeting of Native American Chiefs of the USA and Canada to Take Place in Moscow

Pavel Sulandziga, Chairman of the Working Party for the Development of the North, Siberia and the Far East in the Russian Parliament, has announced an extraordinary meeting in January 2013. It will take place in Russia and is between the chiefs of the Native American tribes of Canada and the USA and native leaders worldwide.

Sulandziga added that the association of indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East had sought contact with native Americans for a long time to work together. Now, for the first time ever, they had invited an outsider, himself, to their Chiefs’ Council, which takes place on 21-22 December.

He plans to speak there on two themes. Firstly, he will touch on establishing cooperation and joint action. Currently, he is the chairman of the working party on international co-operation between the indigenous peoples of Russia and other countries in the Russian Parliament. His party works in a number of fields related to the development of indigenous peoples. This includes education, youth culture, self-government, cultural development and other matters. Secondly, he will talk about the Evenk people, since the Sioux Chiefs’ Council voiced its support for them.

Sulandziga is currently working on the visit to Russia of a number of Native American chiefs from the USA and Canada, as well as the leaders of indigenous people from other countries. Willie Littlechild, the Honorary Chief of the Crees from Alberta in Canada, Aali Kirskitaua, vice president of the Sami Parliament, and Henry Harrison, chief of the Thabas tribe from Alaska, have already confirmed their participation. They will come to Russia in mid-January, for a meeting of indigenous peoples for a joint discussion of problems and cooperation.

12 December 2012

Voice of Russia World Service Link

2013: Challenges before the Church

As 2012 draws to a close and we enter 2013, we both look forwards and look backwards. 2013 is the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan and the 400th anniversary of the House of Romanov. This will be followed by other years commemorating momentous centenaries: 2014, the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War; 2017, that of the Revolution, the immediate entry into that War of the USA, the British agreement to found the State of Israel and the Armenian genocide – all within a few months of each other; 2018, that of the martyrdom of the Russian Imperial Family and the end of the First World War; 2019, the Treaty of Versailles, whose injustices made the next German War inevitable.

We recall how with every generation, every 25 years since 1914, history has been patterned by momentous events. 1914, the First War and the European suicide; 1939, the second part of that suicide and the Western Slav and Jewish holocaust; 1964, the social revolution and the Western abortion holocaust; 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire, leaving only one Superpower, and all the consequences of this, good and bad, for Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Africa, Northern Ireland, the EU, China and the Muslim world. We wonder what the year 2014 may bring.

For the Russian Orthodox Church, the past 25 years have brought freedom, renaissance and unity. Over 80% of the multinational population of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan is Orthodox. 164 million people confess the Russian Orthodox Faith, 75% of the total.

Although concentrated in one seventh of the world, the Russian Orthodox Faith is confessed by sixty-two nationalities, in Japan and China, in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in Central Asia, and, via the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, throughout the whole world. This has meant that the thirteen other far smaller Local Orthodox Churches, many of which have suffered spiritually bruising and compromising Westernisation, are now inevitably looking to the Russian Orthodox Church for global Orthodox leadership in the globalised world.

However, there are also great problems.

Inside Russia, the Church has been subject to a year of persecution by renovationism. This renovationism has often been supported ideologically by the writings of various, at present fashionable, schismatic Russians from the emigration in France and the USA, who refused to remain faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church Tradition. However, that renovationism is only a front and has a much deeper political aspect.

Openly supported by the Western Powers, their intelligence agencies and their so-called ‘NGOs’, remaining Soviet-style atheists have wanted to destroy the Church, exploiting both vestiges of hopelessly old-fashioned Soviet ideology and fashionable anti-Christian Russophobic Western ideology, exploiting the naïve and the satanic. Steeped in the ideology of Russia’s anti-Russian wreckers, Gorbachov and Yeltsin, they are anxious that the Church is beginning to influence the Russian State for good, bringing it back to Christian values. Ths, they have wanted to slander the Patriarch, the clergy and Church teachings. Their devilish intentions have not succeeded.

The demographic problem also remains profound in all Orthodox countries, regardless of whether they are in the EU or outside it. Until the States concerned can provide decent and affordable conditions in which mothers can give birth to and bring up children, supported by responsible fathers and husbands, this demographic problem will deepen. ABC, Alcoholism, Abortion and Corruption, continue to ravage all the Orthodox countries: Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Romania, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Russian Federation itself.

Internationally, there is the threat from the Muslim world. The Western-exploited political protests in Bosnia, Kosovo, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and especially the war in Syria could easily spill over. Syria is virtually a neighbour of Russia. The situation in the nearby Caucasus remains fragile. Central Asia, bordering Afghanistan, could easily be affected. Here the West is playing with fire, risking ‘blowback’ from its meddling.

Then there is the missionary challenge. China, soon to become the world’s greatest economic power, is on its way to becoming the largest Christian nation on earth. It must become Orthodox, overcoming the facile errors of the widespread semi-Christian Western schisms, which are all but dead in the spiritually bankrupt Western world itself. Since the apostatic West has little interest in the real words of Christ and His Orthodox Church, let the East take up the yoke that is light.

The solution to economic and demographic problems and missionary challenges is to restore the Orthodox Christian Commonwealth, Romaiosini, Holy Rus. The embryonic Eurasian Union, set to overtake by far the stagnant and bankrupt EU, is the starting point for this. We would expect Orthodox countries, which have fallen into the EU temptation, partly because of the Russophobic reaction to the oppression of the old Soviet Empire, to withdraw from the German-run EU Europe or be ejected from it in the coming years.

A new generation of unprejudiced politicians in those countries will judge if today’s Russian Federation is deSovietised and can therefore be trusted. Their countries will need the support of the new Eurasian Union – the Russian Federation, Kazkhstan and Belarus. This Union could spread its protective influence into Eastern Europe (to the Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bosnia in particular) and the Middle East, where Orthodox minorities live.

There are many temptations, many failings, many weaknesses and many attacks on the Church to come. The Orthodox Faith has to be preached worldwide before the end – and we have only just started. All the great days and the great challenges are before us. We are only setting out on a long and huge road. The real revolution, the spiritual one, is yet to come. May the grace of God guide us.

30 November /12 December 2012
Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called