The World Takes a Step Closer to Insanity

With the US elite and the elites of its vassal states (‘the G7’), representing a mere 10% of the world, unable to agree on further war crimes against Syria and attacks on Russia (though every day for the last week the roads in the East of England have been full of military traffic and the skies full of military planes, all heading for the Russian border in Estonia), the world breathes a little easier. As for the warmongering British Foreign Secretary, he has not yet understood that Britain has not been a Great Power for 100 years, but is merely the poodle of Washington. That self-evident truth is clearly not taught at Eton. The temporary victory of the Trotskyite neocons in Washington may however be shortlived:

http://www.unz.com/tsaker/a-multi-level-analysis-of-the-us-cruise-missile-attack-on-syria-and-its-consequences/

Syria

Where is the Declaration of War from Congress? This is a blatantly unconstitutional act by the President, whom I voted for. Not to mention where is the proof that the poison gas attack was not a false flag attack to trigger U.S. intervention? And since when is dying by poison gas worse than getting napalmed or firebombed to death? Where is the President’s campaign rhetoric about “America First” and staying out of foreign wars? Syria is NOT a vital interest of the United States. Period. This reeks of Israeli, NeoCon, and Military-Industrial Complex subversion of this Presidency.

From an American Correspondent

Sadly, the probable provocation of chemical weapons (‘Made in Turkey’ according to various sources) in Syria has further ruined US relations with the rest of the world. The affair reeks of the infamous, fabricated American War against Spain in 1898 or the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, which both gave the US military industrial complex the excuse to start Wars which led to invasions, occupations and the slaughter of over 2 million innocent people. (However and whyever would the Syrian government (‘regime’ in propgandaspeak) launch a chemical weapons attack, when it has no chemical weapons? Meanwhile the same complex slaughters hundreds of women, children and ‘beautiful babies’ in Mosul, while maiming and killing British bombs take Yemen back to the Stone Age. Such is the abhorrent hypocrisy of the Western Powers.

The question now is what is the future of the bitterly divided USA? The unprovoked US attack on a sovereign country many thousands of miles away, without any mandate whatsoever, merely reinforces the trigger-happy, cowboy image of the US around the world. The USA is more and more seen as a terrorist state, with its propaganda inventions of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and foundation by the CIA in the 1980s of Al-Qaeda. It was after all the US neocons who created Islamic Sate through their maniacal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Carried out largely for domestic reasons in order to reassert a tottering presidency, this attack could have consequences that could be very serious internationally. Syria, quite literally, borders on Armageddon. Is that really what the American people want?

Is Putin the ‘Preeminent Statesman’ of Our Times?

As the Western world kills thousands in the Yemen (10,000 in the last year beneath a rain of British bombs), in the Ukraine (10,000 Ukrainian citizens in the last two years), in Syria (by ‘moderate’ terrorists with Western arms) in Mosul (over 300 civilians murdered and many more maimed in March alone by US warplanes), and aggressively builds up its forces in Estonia to threaten Russia, the silence of the United Nations in New York astounds. Here are the views of an American Republican, Pat Buchanan:

Is Putin the ‘Preeminent Statesman’ of Our Times?


Thursday – March 30, 2017 at 8:35 pm

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By Patrick J. Buchanan

“If we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the preeminent statesman of our time.

“On the world stage, who could vie with him?”

So asks Chris Caldwell of the Weekly Standard in a remarkable essay in Hillsdale College’s March issue of its magazine, Imprimis.

What elevates Putin above all other 21st-century leaders?
“When Putin took power in the winter of 1999-2000, his country was defenseless. It was bankrupt. It was being carved up by its new kleptocratic elites, in collusion with its old imperial rivals, the Americans. Putin changed that.

“In the first decade of this century, he did what Kemal Ataturk had done in Turkey in the 1920s. Out of a crumbling empire, he resurrected a national-state, and gave it coherence and purpose. He disciplined his country’s plutocrats. He restored its military strength. And he refused, with ever blunter rhetoric, to accept for Russia a subservient role in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business leaders. His voters credit him with having saved his country.”

Putin’s approval rating (at 85%), after 17 years in power, exceeds that of any rival Western leader. But while his impressive strides toward making Russia great again explain why he is revered at home and in the Russian diaspora, what explains Putin’s appeal in the West, despite a press that is every bit as savage as President Trump’s?

Answer: Putin stands against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be. Years ago, he aligned himself with traditionalists, nationalists and populists of the West, and against what they had come to despise in their own decadent civilization.
What they abhorred, Putin abhorred. He is a God-and-country Russian patriot. He rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War’s end by the United States. Putin puts Russia first.

And in defying the Americans he speaks for those millions of Europeans who wish to restore their national identities and recapture their lost sovereignty from the supranational European Union. Putin also stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.

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The U.S. establishment loathes Putin because, they say, he is an aggressor, a tyrant, a “killer.” …Yet…what has Putin done to his domestic enemies to rival what our Arab ally Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood he overthrew in a military coup in Egypt?

What has Putin done to rival what our NATO ally President Erdogan has done in Turkey, jailing 40,000 people since last July’s coup — or our Philippine ally Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers?

Does anyone think President Xi Jinping would have handled mass demonstrations against his regime in Tiananmen Square more gingerly than did President Putin this last week in Moscow?

Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West, when standing up for Russia’s interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.
He not only remains popular in his own country, but has admirers in nations whose political establishments are implacably hostile to him.
In December, one poll found 37 percent of all Republicans had a favorable view of the Russian leader, but only 17 percent were positive on President Barack Obama.

There is another reason Putin is viewed favorably. Millions of ethnonationalists who wish to see their nations secede from the EU see him as an ally. While Putin has openly welcomed many of these movements, America’s elite do not take even a neutral stance.

Putin has read the new century better than his rivals. While the 20th century saw the world divided between a Communist East and a free and democratic West, new and different struggles define the 21st.
The new dividing lines are between social conservatism and self-indulgent secularism, between tribalism and transnationalism, between the nation-state and the New World Order.

On the new dividing lines, Putin is on the side of the insurgents. Those who envision de Gaulle’s Europe of Nations replacing the vision of One Europe, toward which the EU is heading, see Putin as an ally.
So the old question arises: Who owns the future?

In the new struggles of the new century, it is not impossible that Russia — as was America in the Cold War — may be on the winning side. Secessionist parties across Europe already look to Moscow rather than across the Atlantic.

“Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism,” writes Caldwell. “That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that’s true even here.”

After a Century of Demonic Possession

Destiny exists. In Christian language it is called God’s Will. God’s Will exists not just for individuals, but also for whole nations. Whole nations receive a calling to do God’s Will. Such is the case for Russia. Its calling came as part of the process of 2,000 years of Christian history. This history began with Christ and went through two great events. The first, after nearly 300 years of persecution and martyrdom, was the proclamation of the future St Constantine as the first Christian Emperor, on 25 July 306 in York in Britain. The second was the martyrdom of the future St Nicholas II as the last Christian Emperor to date, on 17 July 1918 in the very centre of Northern Eurasia. By his martyrdom he united East and West, becoming the personal embodiment of the double-headed eagle. His martyrdom marked the start of a century of demonic possession, during which the Christian Empire was abolished.

Between St Constantine and St Nicholas, the centre and capital of the Christian Empire was transferred from distant European Rome, become provincial, to the Eurasian New Rome (Constantinople) and from there, after its sacking by the West in 1204 and the East in 1453, to the Third Rome (Moscow). By 1453, having passed through the dark crucible of aggressive Western ‘crusades’ and the Eastern Tartar yoke, Russia was ready to accept its Divine destiny as the defender of Christendom against heretics and infidels alike. For over 500 years it lived for Christ, despite setbacks, weaknesses and further Western assaults, until the fateful year of 1917, when it was betrayed. 100 years on from then nearly all now understand that huge and tragic mistake of accepting the illusory Western ideology of Marxism in 1917 with its utterly false promise of paradise on earth, which at once turned into hell on earth.

Today, however, Russia, through repentance for its delusion and through the restoration of Orthodoxy, is on the path once more to its inevitable destiny. True, Russia faces once more, just as in 1917, Western-funded and Western-orchestrated dissidence by greedy and corrupt oligarchs (who, ironically, camouflage their real power-grabbing aims under the mask of being against corruption). For them Russia is simply to become another nationalistic state, like so many others in Western Europe, which, as the provincials they are, they idolize. Russia has, they say, no multinational and international, that is, no Imperial, vocation. This is exactly what the West (the self-appointed ‘international community’, in fact a tyrannical, anti-international ghetto) wants Russia to be reduced to.

The West fears the spiritual power of Russian Orthodoxy, its Christian Civilization and values, its call to the Risen and Living Christ against the dead Western Mammon. This comes at a time when the European Union, the Fourth Reich, in the words of the notoriously Russophobic British Foreign Minister Johnson, is in chaos. This collapse comes as a result of its hubris in imposing the euro, its open Muslim immigration policy (refusing to solve the problems at source), and Brexit, which itself is the result of the two above policies. At the same time, Roman Catholicism, the medieval ancestor of the centrally-controlled EU tyranny, is also in chaos, under a Pope who appears to be a liberal humanist rather than a Christian, that is, an anti-people (anti-populist, in his own words) Pope.

While Brexitland UK is refusing to pay the EU for indulgences in what is a Second Reformation, 500 years after the first one, a magnificent Russian church of All the Saints is being raised up in Strasbourg, the capital of the EU. (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=eglise+russe+strasbourg&rlz=1C1CAFB_enGB663GB665&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOyuz9uYHTAhWkD8AKHXTCCmMQ_AUICCgD&biw=1024&bih=470). It is a symbol of the rise of Russian Orthodoxy in the spiritually degutted Western tip of Northern Eurasia, as its local Orthodox saints are being included in the Russian Orthodox calendar. It means that all Russian Orthodoxy in Continental Europe, already 80% of the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe, will come under the direct jurisdiction of Moscow. It leaves the Anglosphere under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. This is the Will of God, not of man.

The Battle for the Soul of the Anglosphere

The term Anglosphere has come to be used to mean the English world, what old people used to call the White Commonwealth and the USA. Roughly it means the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Arguably, it could also include parts of South Africa and countries such as Ireland. The Anglospere in terms of power and finance is by far the most important part of the world, the part that others either copy or else fear, either admire or detest. Clearly, by far the most important part of this Anglosphere is the USA. Great Britain ceased being ‘Great’ a long time ago, but in fact the USA is today’s ‘Great’ Britain, as it continues the same policies as Great Britain did in its time of worldly glory, 100-200 years ago, only with all the power of modern technology.

Churchill accurately predicted that Britain would always prefer the USA (‘the ocean’) to mainland Europe. I remember a conversation in a famous French School of Management 25 years ago, when a Frenchman asked me why the UK was so ‘anti-European’ (= by which he meant anti-European Union – what he mistakenly believed to be a French project), as the UK is geographically not in Africa or Asia, but clearly in Europe. I answered simply that geography had nothing to do with it; blood is thicker than water, British people sent their Christmas cards to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, not to mainland Europe. At that point a German businessman in the class spoke the truth to the discomfort of the Frenchman (and also of many Englishmen), saying that for Germans of his generation Britain is simply ‘the front end of the USA’.

All this is politics, history and geography. But I mention it because it was not always so. Once the English, although politically weak and small in number, had saints and their main export was holiness. All this was over 1,000 years ago. Here then is the battle for the soul of the Anglosphere. To begin to return to that holiness or to continue as now, not just in England, but also to lead the Anglosphere gradually towards that, that is the question. A return is impossible? Probably that is so. After all, why have so few English-speaking (and also in general Western) people joined the Orthodox Church and then actually become Orthodox? Because they reject the depth of repentance vital after 1,000 years of layer after layer of heresy. Self-justification is much easier. But it is not enough to take a Greek name: being a Hellenophile is not Orthodoxy. What is necessary is the cleansing of souls that have been polluted and corrupted by an anti-Orthodox mentality and world-view and then to return to the saints.

The chances of our victory in the battle for the soul of the Anglosphere are minute. But that does not mean that some individual reparation is not possible and if many individuals were to choose this path, then surely there is still hope. Once, the Reformation, separation from Rome, led to excommunication. This led to the Tudor trading conquest of the world through pillage and tyranny. Brexit, separation from the Treaty of Rome, is leading to economic excommunication. This could lead to some new spiritual insight, some return to the holiness of the ancient past. Our God is the God of wonders.

An Autobiographical Note

Archpriest Andrew Phillips was born in 1956 into a family that has lived for centuries on the Essex-Suffolk border in the East of England. He began teaching himself Russian when he was twelve. Following early experience confirmed by reading, he was finally allowed to join the Russian Orthodox Church in 1975. After obtaining an M.A. in Russian in Oxford and working in Greece, he went on to study Russian Orthodox theology in Paris. In 1988 he wrote a first book about the Church in early England and this was followed by five other books on Orthodox themes. After many years spent serving the Russian Orthodox Church in France, Portugal and then England, as senior priest of the Diocese of the British Isles and Ireland of the Church Outside Russia he has since 2008 been rector of the multinational St John of Shanghai Orthodox Church in Colchester, which he founded. Located in his native town, this is the centre of the East of England Orthodox Church trust, which is under the Church Outside Russia and includes a church in Norwich and a community in Bury St Edmunds.

Married with six adult children, serving in one of the largest Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe and working to establish missions from it throughout the East of England, where he travels extensively to isolated families and visits Orthodox in prisons, he also teaches, translates, broadcasts and writes for the website www.orthodoxengland.org.uk, where he especially promotes the veneration of the saints of Western Europe. His work strives to reflect in English the integral Russian Orthodox view of the world. He follows the restoration of Church life in Russia very closely and is a frequent visitor to the Russian Lands. Some of what he writes has been translated and published on websites and in booklet form in Russia and several other countries. He is a member of the Patriarchal Commission for the Diaspora, the representative for Western Europe of the Missionary Department of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, a member of its Diocesan Ecclesiastical Court and of the Theological Committee of the Orthodox Bishops in the British Isles and Ireland.

Russian Church will include more Western saints in its calendar

Orthodoxy in the West will revive. There’ll be Orthodoxy in Britain and Ireland, in France and Germany, in Holland and Spain and in America, too! Every language and nation will have Holy Orthodoxy. This is the charge laid upon our Russian emigration for our repentance.

St John of Shanghai

Moscow, March 27, Interfax – The Russian Orthodox Patriarchate will continue to include the names of the saints venerated in the early West in its calendar.

“This process is not completed, it has only started,” said the head of the Synodal Department for External Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, on the Church and the World programme on the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

As was reported, in early March the Patriarchate included in its calendar St. Patrick and 15 ancient saints glorified in the countries of Europe before the schism of 1054. St. Patrick the Enlightener of Ireland was among them. It was decided that he would be commemorated on 30 March according to the secular dating system.

According to Metropolitan Hilarion, these saints were included at the request of the many Russian Orthodox dioceses in Western Europe.

“There are also other Western saints whom I hope will also soon be included in the calendar of our Church,” said Metropolitan Hilarion.

He explained that the main criterion for including the name of the saint in the calendar is veneration of the saint in a certain locality. Besides this, this saint should have lived before the schism of 1054, “as everything that happened afterwards belongs to the separate history of the Orthodox Church and Catholicism.”

The hierarch noted that it was important that the person had not participated in struggle against Orthodoxy, “as happens with certain Western religious figures.”

He also said that he would not interpret the inclusion of Western saints in the Russian Orthodox Church calendar as a step towards drawing closer to local Church reality,” said the Metropolitan.

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=13661

Civil War in the USA

The division in the USA continues. On the one hand, there are the old neocons, who represent the Western military-industrial complex with its latest massacres of yet more thousands of civilians in Mosul and the Yemen and need to slander Russia as a’threat’ to justify their huge war budgets. The CIA hackers always accuse others of hacking. On the other hand, there is President Trump, no saint, but certainly a pragmatist, who wants and desperately needs to make deals with the real world, outside the ethnocentric fantasies of the neocons, for whom always ‘West is Best: Divest the Rest’.

This division is reflected in Russia. Here the Western neocon elite and its media lackeys sponsor the corrupt oligarchs and their leader Prime Minister Medvedev, opposed by President Putin, who enjoys 85% of popularity among the public. Medvedev represents the unprincipled Euro-Atlanticist cosmopolitan elite with its money, money, money ideology. But the President represents the multinational peoples that make up the Russian Federation. Medvedev is, essentially, a neocon, whereas the President represents the people. It is no coincidence that just as Medvedev’s police were arresting anti-corruption demonstrators, President Putin, in effect the leader of the Russian National Party, was meeting Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French National Party and the leading candidate in the French Presidential race. Europeans together against the Western neocon elite.

Nobody knows the future, but we pray that the lesser evil will win the day.