News From Around the Orthodox World

The article about Chambesy further demonstrates that the Chambesy Agreement and the Episcopal Assembly process are houses built on sand.

The big players in this process, the EA and the MP, are both completely dependent on civil government or business sponsors, and are therefore captive to those player's agendas. The Greek government is already broke, and the Russian government is not far behind (although this has escaped the attention of the Western media so far). 

What is more, these Patriarchates are also morally compromised by their subservience to wordly politicians and those politicians' agendas.

The MP has violated a half dozen of the Apostolic Canons through it's daughter schismatic 'Abkhaz Eparchy', and the EP gave the MP a pass on these canonical crimes in return for political and financial considerations. Russian bishops have "blessed' the very acts and means of genocide against Georgian Orthodox Christians. They did so "on camera" and didn't even bother to deny these horrific crimes! They have frustrated the cause of justice for the afflicted, and God Himself will reject them in the end. As the articles attached below show, this is already happening. 

The current issue of Vanity Fair Article magazine has an article that demonstrates the pivotal role of Athonite monks in precipitating the Greek debt crisis. Read the entire article here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010

(A short excerpt is attached below). These monks look more like card sharks and real estate tycoons than examples of Christian modesty and poverty. Indeed, these holy fathers seem indifferent to the damage they have done to the church's reputation in society. In both Greece and Russia, less than 5% of the population participates in the church regularly, and this is why these patriarchs rely on political or financial sweetheart deals to maintain their finances. Is this a paradigm that could ever work in America?
Of course not.

The sad fact is that our Orthodox people have forgotten God. This is the root and cause of all our problems, yet no-one sees this. There is a terrible judgement coming; but who is there to warn the people?

May the Lord have mercy while there is still time!

The EA process will collapse because the foundations are rotten. We will never solve the jurisdictional crisis until we first address the moral rot, the ethical nihilism, that infects our church at the highest levels. We can shrug our shoulders and quote the old Greek proverb: "the fish rots from the head down", or we can, as the people of God call out to our leaders with the voice of the prophet Isaiah :

"You have become a dissatisfaction to me: I will not forgive your sins. When you stretch forth your hands to Me: I will turn My eyes from you. Although you make many prayers, I will not listen to you. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Put away the evils from your souls before My eyes. Cease from your evils. Learn to do good. Seek judgement and redeem the wronged. Defend the orphan and justify the widow. Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD, although your sins are like crimson, I will make them white like snow, and although they are as scarlet, I will make them white as wool." Isaiah 1:14-18

Excerpt from Vanity Fair: "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds"

By now Doukas thought of these monks less as simple con men than the savviest businessmen he had ever dealt with. “I told them they should be running the Ministry of Finance,” he says. “They didn’t disagree.” In the end, under pressure from his boss, Doukas signed two pieces of paper. The first agreed not to challenge the monks’ ownership of the lake; the second made possible the land exchange. …. In exchange for their lake the monks received 73 different government properties, including what had formerly been the gymnastics center for the 2004 Olympics—which, like much of what the Greek government built for the Olympic Games, was now empty and abandoned space. And that, Doukas assumed, was that. “You figure they are holy people,” he says. “Maybe they want to use it to create an orphanage.”
What they wanted to create, as it turned out, was a commercial-real-estate empire. They began by persuading the Greek government to do something it seldom did: to re-zone a lot of uncommercial property for commercial purposes. Above and beyond the lands they received in their swap—which the Greek Parliament subsequently estimated to be worth a billion euros—the monks, all by themselves, were getting 100 percent financing to buy commercial buildings in Athens, and to develop the properties they had acquired. The former Olympics gymnastics center was to become a fancy private hospital—with which the monks obviously enjoyed a certain synergy. Then, with the help of a Greek banker, the monks drew up plans for something to be called the Vatopaidi Real Estate Fund. Investors in the fund would, in effect, buy the monks out of the properties given to them by the government. And the monks would use the money to restore their monastery to its former glory.
From an ancient deed to a worthless lake the two monks had spun what the Greek newspapers were claiming, depending on the newspaper, to be a fortune of anywhere from tens of millions to many billions of dollars. But the truth was that no one knew the full extent of the monks’ financial holdings; indeed, one of the criticisms of the first parliamentary investigation was that it had failed to lay hands on everything the monks owned. On the theory that if you want to know what rich people are really worth you are far better off asking other rich people—as opposed to, say, journalists—I polled a random sample of several rich Greeks who had made their fortune in real estate or finance. They put the monk’s real-estate and financial assets at less than $2 billion but more than $1 billion—up from zero since the new management took over. And the business had started with nothing to sell but forgiveness.

Russia Now at Risk of ‘Religious War’ Across the Country, Experts Warn


SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Paul Goble
Staunton, September 23 – Increasingly sharp disputes in many cities of the Russian Federation over whether Muslims should be allowed to build a mosque, disputes that have already spilled over into violence in Syktyvkar and Moscow this week, threaten to unleash “a religious war” across the country, experts say.
The number of people now directly involved in these disputes is small and “real tensions” at the societal level” are not intense, but Aleksey Levinson, a sociologist at Moscow’s Levada Center, argues that the situation could easily get out of control because of the way the media is playing up these disagreements (www.svpressa.ru/society/article/30919/).
Speaking to “Svobodnaya pressa” journalist Anton Razmakhnin, Levinson suggests that “those who have decided now to play the anti-Islamic card are taking a great risk.” In response to such “aggressive” opposition to mosques, Russia “can get not just a war in the Caucasus but something much worse a full-scale jihad in every city where there is a conflict of this kind.”
In both the Moscow and Syktyvkar cases, Razmakhnin notes by way of introduction, the number of people involved on both sides of the disputes has been small. Moreover, these disputes have been going on for some time without attracting much attention. But coverage of massive Muslim participation in the Uraza-Bayram celebrations triggered something
When Razmakhnin asks Levinson why he was so pessimistic about the future, the latter replies that was “because “fundamentalist Islam and precisely this trend is becoming more active … after the protests is a very strong organizing and cementing phenomenon,” one that has “all the signs of a young, active and militant religion” and that no one knows how to stop.
Levinson dismisses the idea that the increasing activism of the Russian Orthodox Church could block this. In his view, the sociologist said, “the mobilizing potential of Christianity [in general and not just the Russian Orthodox Church] now is much weaker than that of Islam,” something the followers of all confessions need to understand.
“To launch a new crusade now,” he argues, “would be insanity – under current circumstances of Christian civilization, such a response would be equal to a battle between crowds of peasants and old women with an organized army. No, contemporary Christianity should not play at such a war.”
Instead, Levinson says, the best outcome is likely to be achieved by “the tactic of the soft assimilation of Islam, its integration into a secular and ecumenical civilization. Such a course of events would allow [Russia and the world] to avoid the escalation of force and new religious wars. To stand above religion and to lift the Muslim up to this level is our chance.”
“Unfortunately,” Levinson continues, the world at present is skittering “toward confrontation. And Russia is no exception. I see that a clash is very probable but we will hardly win it. But with the help of ecumenism, we could achieve a good peace, but this variant of development of events still is not very probable.”
Razmakhnin then asked another expert for her views on the clashes over the construction of mosques. Valeriya Porokhova, a specialist on Islam who has translated the Koran into Russia, says that it is important to draw a distinction between the lumpen elements that are taking part in the clashes and the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Church’s upper echelons, she says, “are more friendly to Islam for these are two traditional religions which have common interests and face common challenges.” But “at the lower level, especially among lay Orthodox activists, hostility to Islam is strong: why are there so many of them? Why are they so well-organized?” And that “threatens” peace in Russia.
She suggests that one needs to look beyond the emotions of the moment because they reflect not just religious differences but the ways in which the powers that be conduct their relations with people of faith. Instead of holding public hearings and discussions, Porokhova says, officials do everything in secret, something that sparks anger in and of itself.
“In other words,” she suggests, “the problem which really threatens peace in Russia is not in the mosques as such but in the authoritarian way in which cities take decisions, including on the most sensitive issues.” Whatever decision is reached in this way will be “insufficiently legitimate” to those on the losing side who were not able to participate in reaching it.
That reality can be seen, the specialist says, if one compares the tensions over mosques in Russia with those in European countries. There, “if a case involves a decision about prohibiting or permitting the construction of a mosque in a particular region, this decision will be taken by democratically elected authorities, and the level of trust in this decision will be greater.”
Unfortunately, Porokhova concludes, this, “the main question,” is one that in Russia, “none of the key players has raised. Instead of democratization, practically all somewhat powerful forces are pushing Russia to a new civil but now already religious war,” when the application of democracy could prevent that.
 
http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20001&Itemid=72

Separatism Spreads in the North Caucasus while Moscow Blames Outsiders


SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Mairbek Vatchagaev
Many observers have noticed that the situation in the North Caucasus is further deteriorating against the backdrop of two recent suicide bombings in the region, despite complacent reports of Russian officials who try to portray the desirable as reality.
According to Russian authorities, the intensity of rebel activity increased by a third from 2008 to 2009 (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/163438/). Although the data are not yet available for 2010, there is no doubt that it will be marked as the most active period of the past several years. These numbers are the clearest evidence. Even in the Russian government’s own account available to the public, there have been four times as many actions qualified by Russian authorities as terrorist acts from January to August 2010 than in 2009 (http://finam.fm/news/71509/). That means 37 cases in total.
As usual, Russian propaganda is trying to explain the negative trend by pointing to increased foreign influence over the region. In the Russian understanding, it is impossible for the armed resistance movement in the North Caucasus to exist and survive autonomously. The Russians seem to present the organization of the North Caucasus rebels as some commercial branch that cannot subsist on its own without the overseas market. The mythical financial injections that pseudo-analysts have much talked about over the course of 11 years of war in the North Caucasus have never in fact been substantiated with evidence; neither has the flow of funds to the actual perpetrators from individuals alleged to have ordered terrorist attacks ever been clearly proven. In general, such allegations are meant for ordinary people who are prone to believe everything shown on Russian TV.
Year after year, the Russian propaganda machine has been trying to prove to the rest of the country that the whole world has risen to weaken Russia and to break it up. The West is alleged to be the usual suspect even without providing specifics, while the United States is portrayed as having its share in the scheme (http://forum-msk.org/material/fpolitic/4100001.html). Those allegations do not seem to be very ethical given the ongoing reset of relations between Washington and Moscow.
Georgia is yet another enemy in the eyes of Russia. Here, the imagination of the Russian military and politicians goes way beyond any realistic calculation. Without even bothering to look at a map of the Caucasus, they discuss how “mercenaries” carrying heavy bags stuffed with money and weapons penetrate the North Caucasus from Georgian territory. But the border there goes along the mountains and steep cliffs which rise 4,000 meters above sea level or even higher and are perennially covered with ice and snow. Even in the summer, there would be very few who would go on that kind of trek even without toting any bags.
The West is once again starting to believe that Chechnya is a nominal republic within the Russian state; otherwise, it would be difficult for them to interpret the numerous discrepancies between the Russian constitution and the actions committed by Moscow’s emissaries in Chechnya (www.la-croix.com/article/index.jsp?docId=2439318&rubId=4077). It must be stated that whoever comes to power in Chechnya cannot afford to make his own policies, according to common Russian tradition, as do the leaders of the other regions of the Russian Federation. In Chechnya, the intricacies of the very specific situation require that everything that happened over the past 20 years be taken into account. Anyone who tries to encroach on the historical memory of the Chechens will lack authority to speak on behalf of even the smallest portion of the Chechen population.
Even some experts from Azerbaijan on the Caucasus see the intensification of rebel activities in the North Caucasus as an attempt by the West to lessen Russian pressure on the South Caucasus by exacerbating the situation in the North (http://kavkasia.net/Russia/2010/1284592054.php). It is hard to agree with that assumption. Russia’s actions against Georgia prove the contrary; now Moscow has two new territories inside Georgia that act as a buffer between the North and South Caucasus. Georgian experts, on the other hand, believe that Georgia should not lose contact with the North Caucasus even if it decides to start negotiations with Russia. They argue that Georgia should keep the North Caucasus republics within a sphere of its potential influence by engaging with them in order to create a single cultural and political space in the Caucasus region (http://kavkasia.net/Georgia/2010/1284588768.php). However, Russia reacts badly to any contacts made by Tbilisi – even unofficial ones – with representatives of the North Caucasus peoples.
The situation in the North Caucasus might as well develop into a religious confrontation given the continued aggressive involvement of the Russian Orthodox Church in the conflict. The fact that Russian clerics confer their blessings on those who go to Chechnya and the North Caucasus in general (http://orthodox-newspaper.ru/events/at14627) can only further antagonize those in the region who sympathize with the armed resistance movement. In canonizing Yevgeny Rodionov, a Russian soldier who died in Chechnya, and declaring that he was killed exclusively for his Christian faith, the Russian Orthodox Church has only created more distrust, particularly given that there are no witnesses or sources of information, while the story is thought to have been fabricated.
The conflict in the North Caucasus has long had the features of an inter-ethnic standoff. Russian authorities, for example, felt compelled to stop drafting Chechen youths into the Russian army because there was a hostile attitude towards them both in the army units and among the local population. The wars have turned Chechnya and Ingushetia into virtually mono-ethnic societies. Dagestan now is undergoing the same process (www.newsland.ru/News/Detail/id/477059/), and Kabardino-Balkaria, with its ethnic Russian population appears to shrinking day by day, and could soon share the same fate (http://news.km.ru/russkix_vyzhivayut_iz_kabardino).
Given all of this, it is not surprising that there is talk behind the scenes in the Russian federal government that the North Caucasus ought to be populated by ethnic Russians while North Caucasus residents should be dispersed across Russia – something that would make the region more tolerant (http://dkvartal.ru/news/99835923). But the history of the North Caucasus shows that there was no tolerance there at the time of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union despite the fact that the Russian population was represented in the region in large numbers.
The policies of the current authorities in Chechnya are pushing the Chechens toward even greater separatism than before the Russian invasion. Until 1999, when the Russian army invaded Chechnya, separatism was naturally based on the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria’s policy of independence from Russian infringements. Modern-day separatism, on the other hand, appears to be an ideologically supported attack on Russian interests in any corner of the country where Chechen communities live. Increasingly, more and more Chechens think that they have a role in achieving the main goal of independence from Moscow.
Source: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/
 
The Moscow Times reports:  ”Russia has the worst record in Europe and Central Asia on homicides of young people, ranking ahead of Albania and Kazakhstan.  The rate for violence-related deaths among people aged 10 to 29 in Russia is 15.85 per 100,000 individuals — 34 times higher than in Germany, the World Health Organization‘s European bureau said in its first report on youth violence.”
Russia’s rate of youth murder is nearly 50% higher than that of the second-place country.
“There is nothing surprising in those figures. It’s common knowledge that the level of crime is higher in Russia than in European countries,” an Interior Ministry spokesman, Oleg Yelnikov, told The Moscow Times.
In other words, the Putin regime knows, and it couldn’t care less.
That’s not all:  ”The suicide rate among Russian minors is the highest in the world and three times higher than the global average for this age group. About 45 percent of young women and 27 percent of young men in Russia have thought, at least once, about committing suicide.”