Daniel Vla: E SFANT! Voievodul Mihai Viteazul, mucenic al neamului şi mărturisitor al ortodoxiei
Iata ce putem citi la Sfântul voievod Mihai Viteazul, mucenic al neamului şi mărturisitor al ortodoxiei:
Mihai Viteazul a trăit între anii 1558 – 1601 , anii de domnie fiind 1593-1601.
Domn al Munteniei (Valahiei), a Transilvaniei (Ardeal) şi a toată Ţara Moldovei (Principatului Moldova, Voievodatului Moldova)
Drapelul Munteniei pe timpul lui Mihai Viteazul
Stema lui Mihai Viteazul dupa Unirea Principatelor româneşti
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Asasinarea lui Mihai Viteazul la Turda, gravură realizată la Leiden, Olanda, 1703
Mihai Viteazul a fost ucis
în urma unei conspiraţii?
Generalul Basta György şi-a atras asupra sa oprobriul contemporanilor şi al posterităţii, pentru mişeleasca crimă a eroului de la Călugăreni.
Numeroase relatări trimise la Viena şi la Praga au descris în fel şi chip asasinarea lui Mihai Viteazul.
Basta György, autorul crimei, recunoaşte într-o scrisoare trimisă Arhiducelui Mathias, viitorul împărat habsburg, în care se consemnează: “Mihai a fost ucis conform poruncii primite de la Împăratul Rudolf al II-lea, iar eu am executat-o”.
Szamoskozi Istvan şi G. Beduccino ambii contemporani ai evenimentelor relatează: “A fost trimisă o mare trupă de valoni în tabăra valahului Mihai, în urma unui sfat de taină ţinut de Basta György şi căpitanii săi în noaptea de 18 august 1601, cum să-şi desfăşoare trupele pentru o confruntare cu valahul”.
Ieremia Movilă, într-o scrisoare din 28 august 1601 relatează: “La sosirea armatei imperiale la cortul lui Mihai, s-a ajuns chiar la o luptă înverşunată între cele două tabere”.
În ceea ce priveşte rămăşiţele pământeşti ale lui Mihai Viteazul, relatările provenite din tabăra imperialilor, apoi cele provenite din informaţiile ambasadorilor străini acreditaţi la Praga, cât şi din Raportul trimis împăratului Rudolf al II-lea şi cele ale căpitanilor din Ungaria Superioară, nu amintesc nimic despre soarta rămăşiţelor pământeşti ale lui Mihai. De remarcat este faptul că toate sursele au înregistrat actul criminal şi consecinţele sale politice, refuzând în corpore să se refere la rămăşiţele pământeşti.
Pentru a înţelege mai bine ce s-a întâmplat cu rămăşiţele pământeşti ale lui Mihai Viteazu, voi prezenta câteva surse, după care cititorii îşi vor putea face o părere despre acest eveniment tragic, din Istoria Românilor.
1. Ieremia Movilă într-o altă scrisoare adresată la 1 septembrie 1601, Cancelarului Leon Saphiena din Lituania se arată: “Vă mai înştiinţăm cu siguranţă cum că Mihai Vodă pieri la Turda în 19 ale lunii august 1601, ucis din ordin împărătesc. Înainte a fost împuşcat pe la spate, apoi i-a fost tăiat capul, iar corpul său a fost expus pe câmp deasupra unui cal mort. Basta György nu a permis să fie înhumat.”
2. Szamosközy Istvan în versiunea lui arată: “Ucigaşii lui Mihai au târât trupul afară din cort şi a zăcut trei zile în pielea goală la marginea drumului. Capul lui cu barbă, l-au aşezat pe hoitul unui cal, iar în cele din urmă l-au înmormântat nişte sârbi într-o groapă mică.”
3. Ciro Spontani secretarul generalului Basta György, relatează în memoriile sale sub titlul “Historia della Transilvania”, apărută la Veneţia în anul 1638: “După uciderea lui Mihai s-a ţinut un consiliu la care au participat conducătorii ambelor armate – imperială şi valahă – ele au declarat supunere faţă de ordinele generalului Basta György. Aici s-a hotărât trimiterea corpului lui Mihai în Ţara Românească, socotindu-se că dacă nu l-ar fi trimis, boierii valahi n-ar alege alt domn. Capul a fost îmbălsămat şi încredinţat Comisului lui Mihai, care l-a cerut în cea mai mare stăruinţă spre a-l duce în Ţara Românească”.
4. Iacob Thon – istoric, analizând izvoarele franceze contemporane evenimentelor din anul 1601 scria: “Trupul lui Mihai a fost aruncat în pielea goală să zacă spre oroare, pe malul râului, până de cu seară, într-un mod nedemn. Noaptea a fost înmormântat în acelaşi loc din ordinul lui Iohan Schneckenhaus, tribun al miliţiei sileziene.”
5. Palma Cayet istoric, în lucrarea sa “Chronologie septenaire”, Paris, 1905 descrie cam aceleaşi fapte, despre uciderea lui Mihai cum arată şi Iacob Than. Tot la Paris au mai apărut şi alte lucrări despre viaţa şi moartea lui Mihai. În luna decembrie 1601, a apărut şi lucrarea numită: “Discovers de la mort de Michael”.
6. Vistierul Stavrinos în anul 1601 şi Palamide în anul 1607, greci de origine, descriu şi ei despre soarta rămăşiţelor pământeşti a lui Mihai. Palamide scria: “Trei zile şi trei nopţi corpul lui Mihai a rămas aşezat pe un cal al său ucis în învălmăşeală, iar trupul a rămas neîngropat. Mulţi valahi se strângeau acolo, priveau cu jale şi clătinându-şi capetele plângeau, apoi adresau injurii generalului Basta György. După trei zile şi trei nopţi, nişte valahi de-a lui Mihai l-au îngropat noaptea, pe ascuns şi tare mult l-au plâns“.
7. Brancovics în “Cronica sârbească” arată: “Am petrecut mulţi ani pe lângă Mitropolia Română din Alba Iulia. După uciderea lui Mihai, Basta György a îngăduit ca atât capul şi trupul să fie îngropate împreună la Mitropolia din Bălgrad”.
8. Bisselius – istoric iezuit, a prezentat poziţia imperială. În anul 1675 şi-a spus părerea: “Capul lui Mihai a fost dus de Basta György, care, în Şedinţa Consiliului, aştepta în cel mai mare neastâmpăr rezultatul negocierilor, iar trupul său a rămas în pielea goală şi neîngropat o zi întreagă”.
9. Szamosközy, Simigianus, Wolfgang, Bethlen, se inspiră din izvoarele ungureşti, destul de târzii, dar ele se referă la anul 1601 şi toţi trei relatează: “Trupul lui Mihai a fost dus în Biserica Românească de la Alba Iulia”.
10. Miron Costin în Letopiseţul său, analizând cronicile româneşti, privind aducerea în mare taină în Ţara Românească a capului lui Mihai arată: “Oamenii bătrâni, contemporani cu acele vremi, au afirmat că lui Mihai Vodă i-au tăiat capul şi l-au dus la Basta György, iar trupul său până a treia zi a stat neîngropat le vederea tuturor”.
11. Radu Popescu în Cronica sa nu spune nimic despre soarta trupului lui Mihai. Un anonim a adăugat la sfârşit: “De aceia să povestim despre un boier care a fost la Mihai Vodă, anume Turturea Postelnicul. Atunci au fost legat, Mihai Vodă cu Turturea Postelnicul, jurământ tare şi mare cum să se caute unul pe altul până la moartea lor. Şi de să va prinde lui Mihai Vodă să pieie într-altă Ţară, să nu-i lase oasele acolo ci să le aducă în Ţara Românească. Iar de se va prinde să pieie acest Postelnic Turturea într-altă ţară, să nu-i lase Mihai Vodă oasele, ci să le aducă în Ţara Românească să le îngroape creştineşte. Drept aceea, dacă văzu Postelnicu Turturea că tăiară pe Mihai Vodă mult s-au nevoit pentru jurământul luat ca să aducă oasele lui Mihai Vodă. Ci n-au putut, ci a luat numai capul de l-au dus în Ţara Românească şi l-au îngropat la Mănăstirea Dealu, de la Târgovişte. Şi au făcut milă mare care au fost lăsat Mihai Vodă să le dea acelei mănăstiri”.
12. Radu Mihnea, Domnul Ţării Româneşti, la 11 ani de la uciderea lui Mihai Vodă, a atribuit Postelnicului Turturea satul Găuriciul… “pentru multă şi bună şi credincioasă slujbă cu care a slujit domnia lui multă vreme neîncetat, cu multă trudă, încă şi în alte ţări străine până în Ţara Nemţească. Postelnicul Turturea el a furat capul lui Mihai Vodă şi l-a adus aici în Ţară, de la slujit şi l-a îngropat cu multă cinste, ca pe un adevărat Domn”.
Istoria Poporului Român a înregistrat mai multe cazuri în care au fost asasinaţi pe nedrept conducătorii de ţară, de către unele cercuri interne în cârdăşie cu cele externe. Vă rog stimaţi cititori să reflectaţi cu profunzime şi să vă întrebaţi: de ce românii îşi ucid conducătorii?
Ne punem pe bună dreptate întrebarea: oare unde au fost românii? Pentru a înţelege mai bine sensul acestei întrebări şi mai ales la uciderea mişelească a lui Mihai Viteazul la Câmpia Tordei, am să prezint o poezie cutremurătoare din marea operă a poetului, gazetarului şi a omului de excepţie Adrian Păunescu:
“Capul lui Mihai Viteazu la Turda se ridică,
Şi întreabă de ce Ţara a rămas aşa de mică
Şi Câmpia Turdei tristă îi răspunde lui cu jale:
“Fiindcă astăzi ducem lipsa capului Măriei Tale!”
Nu mai acuzaţi străinii că ne taie domnitorii,
Că intimidează Ţara cu guverne provizorii
Eu atât aş vrea să aflu, arătându-ne obrazul:
Totuşi unde au fost românii, când a fost tăiat Viteazul?
Nu voi consuma otravă pentru nici un fel de Basta,
Totuşi unde-au fost ai noştri, şi atunci, şi-n vremea asta?
Cum se-ajunge pân’ la gâtul Voievodului de Ţară,
Dacă nu-s trădări acasă, lângă ura de afară?
Capul lui Mihai Viteazu ne-a lăsat numai cu trupul,
Nu contează că străinii nu aveau nici pic de scrupul,
Eu, de-o singură-ntrebare, mă scârbesc şi mă mânii
Totuşi unde-au fost, românii? Totuşi, unde sunt românii?”
Prof. dr. Ion CORNEANU
Sursătext:http://www.dacoromania-alba.ro/nr31/mihai_viteazul_a_fost_ucis.htm
Din cele relatate mai sus, găsim suficiente motive să credem că, nu numai capul voievodului a fost adus în Ţara Românească, ci şi trupul. Şi cum el fiind un martir al neamului şi un mărturisitor al ortodoxiei, Dumnezeu, se pare l-a învrednicit a avea sfinte moaşte, după cum aflăm:
… în 2010, în apropierea Bisericii, a fost descoperit un schelet fără cap, clavicule şi coaste.
„Un preot din Rădăuţi, părintele Gheorghe Aniţulesei, care a ajuns la Plăviceni împins de acelaşi tulburător impuls care mă adusese şi pe mine, împreună cu câţiva prieteni la fel de «nebuni» – scrie Miron Manega, în «Predoslovia unui pelerin» (prefaţa la volumul «Mănăstirea Plăviceni, importantă vatră de spiritualitate» – lucrarea de licenţă a părintelui stareţ Teoctist Moldovanu) – este mult mai înflăcărat în credinţa că aceste oseminte aparţin Voievodului, ba chiar desluşeşte un înţeles dumnezeiesc în această descoperire: «Eu spun că Dumnezeu a vrut ca, odată cu capul, să fie cinstit şi trupul Sfântului Voievod, nedescoperit încă la acea dată.» (…). «În vara anului 2010, trupul (osemintele) a fost descoperit, în mod miraculos, la Mănăstirea Plăviceni, judeţul Teleorman, la o distanţă de 5-6 m de biserica din incintă. Un grup de muncitori a dat foc la nişte hârtii şi surcele pe locul menţionat. Fratele părintelui stareţ Protosinghel Teoctist Moldoveanu le-a spus muncitorilor să stingă focul, pentru că o să-i certe stareţul că au făcut focul atât de aproape de Biserică. Muncitorii au început să bată cu lopeţile, spre a stinge focul prin înnăbuşire, şi, din cauza loviturilor, pământul s-a surpat. A venit şi părintele stareţ, care a spus să fie îndepărtat pământul, spre a se vedea ce se află în acel loc. A fost găsit un schelet uman fără cap.» Mai spune părintele Gheorghe Aniţulesei, în cuvântul rostit în Biserică, la aducerea unei părţi din osemintele celui presupus a fi Mihai Viteazu: «Pe data de 25-10-2011, m-am deplasat spre această mănăstire cu gândul că, de vor vrea Dumnezeu şi Sfântul Mihai Viteazu, să primesc ca dar pentru Biserica «Învierea Domnului» din Rădăuţi o părticică din osemintele acestui Mărturisitor, când va fi recunoscut oficial ca Sfânt, cum este, Biserica va primi cel de-al doilea hram: Dreptcredinciosul Voievod Mărturisitor Mihai Viteazu. Ajunşi aici, împreună cu şoferul maşinii cu care am fost, împreună cu părintele stareţ Teoctist, am desfăcut racla din Biserică, în care erau osemintele Voievodului şi am rămas uluit de mireasma care a ieşit din oseminte. Am vrut să iau o claviculă pentru Biserica din Rădăuţi şi atunci am constatat că claviculele şi coastele lipsesc: încă un indiciu care arată autenticitatea trupului, exact cum spun istoricii despre părţile din trup care au fost luate de asasini ca trofeu. Am primit în dar atunci o parte din laba piciorului drept al Sfântului. Iată că, prin mila lui Dumnezeu şi rugăciunile Sf. Voievod Mihai Viteazu, o părticică din trupul lui a fost adusă în Moldova, după 410 ani şi mai bine».”
Cititi va rog si:
Viața Sfântului Mihai Viteazul
Domnitorul Mihai Viteazu ESTE SFANT. Si s-ar parea ca i s-au gasit si SFINTELE MOASTE
VIDEO (film artistic): „MIHAI VITEAZUL”
Sfinte Părinte Justin roagă-te lui Hristos Dumnezeu pentru noi!
SACCSIV - blog ortodox 
Schimbând subiectul: În 2009 Norvegia a interzis prostituția (mai înainte ea fiind legală) iar un studiu comandat de guvern a arătat că acest lucru a redus traficul de ființe umane iar violența împotriva femeilor a rămas la același nivel:
https://news.yahoo.com/norways-closely-watched-prostitution-ban-works-study-finds-134956066–finance.html
Cele mai folosite argumente referitoare la legalizarea prostituției sunt că traficul de sclavi sexuali se micșorează iar violența (conjugală dar nu numai) scade… lucruri care sunt infirmate de studiul de mai sus
ApreciazăApreciază
e Sfant are moaste ce au mireasma cu ajutorul lui Dumnezeu le-am sarutat si eu cand au fost aduse ceva timp in urma in Bucuresti
ApreciazăApreciază
Interviu cu Părintele Rafail Berestov despre problemele vremurilor noastre
– Binecuvântaţi, Părinte.
– Dumnezeu sa vă binecuvânteze.
– Astăzi apar tot mai multe cărţi care ne învaţă cum să supravieţuim în situaţii extreme: în caz de calamităţi naturale, războaie, acte teroriste. în ele găsim recomandările militarilor, ale vânătorilor, ale alpiniştilor, dar, pe lângă acestea, pe ce ar trebui să mizeze creştinul ortodox în situaţii excepţionale?
– Desigur, pe dreapta credinţă. Bineînţeles că el trebuie să aibă un duhovnic şi duhovniceşte să se mărturisească lui. Să fie iubitor de aproapele său, să aibă rugăciune neîncetată. Noi trebuie să ne întrunim duhovniceşte. Eu îi sfătuiesc pe fraţii mei monahi să se ocupe cu gimnastica. Când eram în munţi, eu îi sfătuiam să facă sport pentru a se întări fizic. Noi ştim că suntem bolnavi cu toţii, dar când ne ocupăm cu sportul şi postim cu bărbăţie, devenim mai puternici fizic şi mai hotărâtori.
În genera,l noi trebuie să ne ocupăm nu numai cu sportul, tineretul credincios ar trebui să se unească în grupuri, să înveţe arta milităriei, sportul, lupta. De asemenea, să însuşească deprinderea de a împuşca, de a alerga, să facă diverse exerciţii militare şi, dacă e posibil, să înveţe a folosi toate tipurile de armament.
– Părinte, din ce cauză mulţi locuitori ai Moscovei, ai Sankt-Petersburgului şi ai altor oraşe mari, caută să cumpere case în locuri ascunse sau în sate părăsite?
– Aici este o necesitate dublă. Una este globalizarea, care destrăbălează tineretul, drogurile, toată murdăria video, iată de ce se duc familiile în locuri ascunse. Celălalt scop este – în caz de război, masonii-satanişti, urâtorii de oameni, doresc să piardă o mare parte din omenirea care trăieşte în oraşele mari. Dacă vor lovi în toate oraşele mari, atunci vor distruge foarte multă lume, deoarece milioane de oameni trăiesc acolo.
De aceea noi trebuie să ne dispersăm, să dobândim putere militară pentru a ne apăra viaţa şi ţara, să locuim împreună pentru a putea lupta împotriva globalizării, care este pregătirea pentru primirea peceţii lui antihrist. în general, toată lumea se uneşte în numele lui antihrist, dar noi trebuie să ne unim în numele lui Iisus Hristos. Aceasta va fi deja o luptă cu antihristul. Astăzi toată politica devine o teologie: ori cu antihrist ori cu Hristos. Noi suntem cu Hristos, şi trebuie să murim pentru Iisus Hristos, aşa cum El a murit pentru noi. Amin.
– Amin. Rezultă că globalizarea nu este doar un proces mondial de unificare economică, politică, teritorială, cum ar fi Comunitatea Europeana, Nord-Americană, Africana şi altele, dar este un proces duhovnicesc ce ţine de mântuirea noastră în Hristos. Adică, felul în care noi privim globalizarea este în legătură strânsă cu credinţa noastră în Domnul nostru Iisus Hristos?
– Exact aşa este. Dacă noi nu vom înţelege ce-i asta globalizare şi vom fi atât de relaxaţi, indiferenţi şi orbi cum ne spun şi ierarhii noştri: „luaţi (n.n. documentele actuale), asta nu-i nimic, asta nu are nici o putere, luaţi sau nu luaţi aceste cifre, este doar o ademenire”. Cifrele anume sunt o simbolistică ori diavolească, ori a lui Hristos. Anume această simbolistică a cifrelor poartă în ea duhul lui antihrist.
Dacă noi o vom lua, noi ne vom împreuna cu antihrist şi cu numele lui 666. De aceea pentru credinţa noastră în Iisus Hristos, noi vom lupta pentru salvarea Ortodoxiei, şi pentru Rusia (n.n. respectiv, fiecare va lupta pentru patria lui, noi – pentru Moldova). Şi ne vom uni în schituri, în mănăstiri, în comunităţi, ca să fugim din această lume destrăbălată. Noi ne vom uni în numele lui Iisus Hristos.
– Ce înseamnă comunitate creştinească în zilele noastre?
– Aceasta este o unire în numele lui Iisus Hristos. Preotul cu parohia lui pleacă din lumea aceasta plină de sminteli într-un sat sau poate chiar şi în pădure, şi acolo în linişte şi singurătate îşi educă fii duhovniceşti. Ei toţi se unesc în numele lui Iisus Hristos. Acolo ei se roagă, acolo îşi învaţă copii, acolo sunt medici, care îi lecuiesc pe bolnavi, acolo ei au gospodăria lor, ei se mântuiesc, rugându-se. Poate chiar au prin preajmă şi schituri de călugări.
– Dar nu aveţi în vedere oare crearea acestor comunităţi aşa cum ameredienii au fost nevoiţi să se retragă în rezervaţii atunci când îi urmărea pericolul de cucerire? Nu înseamnă asta oare că astăzi poporul rus trebuie să-şi creeze rezervaţii în propria ţară?
– Aceasta ar putea fi chiar convenabil ca noi să ne retragem în asemenea rezervaţii, cât mai departe de aceşti cuceritori. Noi fugim de ei şi ne unim în numele lui Iisus Hristos, în comunităţile noastre creştine, cu fii noştri duhovniceşti, ne rugăm, ne mântuim, îndeplinim rolul nostru pe pământ, ne ostenim, facem rugăciuni, ne bucurăm, organizăm sărbători.
– Ceea ce s-a întâmplat de fapt cu ameredienii a fost o urmare a cucerii continentului. Să înţelegem că şi Rusia este astăzi cucerită?
– Exact, Rusia este cucerită şi doar Rusia şi Europa, ci în mare parte, toată lumea ori e cucerită, ori luptă, aşa cum americanii luptă cu arabii, vrând să-i unească cu Israelul, să-i supună Israelului
– Părinte, dar crearea acestor comunităţi, izolarea într-un stat liber, nu înseamnă laşitate şi trădarea Rusiei, lăsarea ei în mâinile duşmanilor?
– Unirea în numele lui Hristos este o bărbăţie. Probabil vom fi prigoniţi, şi chiar tare prigoniţi, dar noi vom fugi de lume, ca să nu-i smintească pe copii noştri, să nu devină narcomani, beţivi, pederaşti şi aşa mai departe. Ei îşi vor crea comunităţi ca în primele veacuri – comunităţi în numele lui Iisus Hristos. Vând totul, se unesc şi totul devine comun. Anume aşa sunt comunităţile noastre, asemănătoare cu cele din primul secol al creştinismului. Cu smerenie, în dragoste comună, în boală, în suferinţe, în bucurii – totul împreună. Iată în felul acesta – totul în comun. Prin urmare, aceste comunităţi sunt foarte necesare Rusiei, ele trebuie să fie cât mai multe. Printre altele, aceasta ne va ajuta să salvăm Rusia de cuceritori în războiul de partizani.
– Care trebuie să fie veriga de legătură în aceste comunităţi, că doar în ele vor locui oameni cu diferite caractere şi deprinderi? Şi când se adună mai mulţi oameni împreună, apar multe neînţelegeri, contraziceri, polemici. Ce-i va uni şi împăca pe toţi?
– Veriga de legătură, de împăcare este starea lor comună duhovnicească, părintele lor iubit, pe care ei îl iubesc şi îl cinstesc. El întotdeauna îi va povăţui cu blândeţe, cu bucurie şi toţi în faţa lui se vor smeri şi-l vor asculta. Stima faţă de acest părinte duhovnic îi va împăca pe toţi. El îi va smeri şi-i va împăca pe toţi.
Vreau să adaug cel mai important lucru– cu noi este Dumnezeu. Dacă noi suntem creştini, dacă noi suntem ortodocşi, dacă noi ne unim în numele lui Iisus Hristos, atunci şi Iisus Hristos va fi cu noi. El nu va îngădui ca duşmanii noştri, sataniştii să-şi bată joc de noi. „Cu noi este Dumnezeu, înţelegeţi neamuri şi vă plecaţi căci cu noi este Dumnezeu”. Dumnezeu nu poate fi pângărit, asta voi cu toţii deja o cunoaşteţi. Amin. Duşmanii noştri vor vedea puterea lui Hristos şi vor veni să înveţe de la noi ortodocşii – Ortodoxia. Amin.
– Dar dacă duhovnicii noştri, preoţii, ne spun să nu ne facem griji că nimic straşnic în toate astea nu-i?
– Iată aici foarte bine scrie. Citiţi, iată aici este răspunsul: (Părintele citeşte) „Poate cineva cu supărare va spune: „la ce bun toate aceste reflecţii despre antihrist?” Unii chiar o numesc „propagarea antihristului”.Voi răspunde cu cuvintele arhiepiscopului Averchie: ”Fraţilor, dacă veţi auzi că cineva în bătaie de joc, cu un zâmbet ironic pe faţă sau cu răutate şi supărare priveşte vestea despre venirea lui antihrist, a doua venire a lui Hristos, sfârşitul lumii şi Straşnica Judecată, să ştiţi că aveţi de-a face cu o persoană care, mai mult sau mai puţin, este atrasă de slugile lui antihrist, în pregătirea cât mai rapidă a înscăunării lui pe pământ. Să vă temeţi de aşa oameni ca de distrugătorii sfintei noastre credinţe şi Biserici”.
– Părinte, care este cel mai evident semn că se apropie sfârşitul, implementarea peceţii? Iar faptul că oamenii acceptă astăzi cipurile, paşapoartele biometrice sunt cumva legate de pecetea lui antihrist?
– Nemijlocit, acestea sunt legate de pecete. Chiar de la început masonii au început a elibera aşa – numitele paşapoarte ruse, care de fapt nu sunt ruse ci masonice, ele nu conţin nici un element rus, ci trei de şase – 666. Acesta şi este, după spusele Sfântului Ioan Teologul, numărul numelui lui antihrist. De aceea, aceasta neapărat se referă la numele lui antihrist. In numele cifric, care este atribuit fiecărei persoane, este un nume antihristic, aşa cum la Sfântul Botez la ortodocşi ne botezăm „În numele Tatălui. Amin. Şi al Fiului. Amin. Şi al Duhului Sfânt. Amin.” Şi trei scufundări în apă. Prin cei trei de şase – 666, nouă oamenilor ni să dă nume de diavol, împotriva voinţei noastre, şi mistic ne uneşte cu antihrist.
Oamenii care nu înţeleg aceste lucruri sunt ca nişte orbi, Slavă Domnului, majoritatea oamenilor, totuşi, au început să înţeleagă, chiar şi cei care mai înainte se indignau, spunând: „Ce vorbiţi? Cum să trăieşti fără paşaport, este o nebunie!”, astăzi spun: „Da, cu adevărat se pregăteşte pecetea lui antihrist”. Cel mai grăitor semn că ne apropiem de timpurile lui antihrist este însăşi globalizarea, unirea tuturor popoarelor şi lupta cu toţi cei ce nu vor să se supună lui antihrist şi ordinii mondiale. Cu toţi luptă, încercând să-i umilească – aşa este politica, aceasta e legea lui antihrist. Toate vorbesc despre sfârşitul lumii, despre apropierea împărăţiei lui antihrist şi a peceţii lui.
– Părinte, mulţi vă învinuiesc că vă ocupaţi de politică, vorbiţi de pecete, numere, paşapoarte. Chiar este aşa, că le vorbiţi oamenilor numai despre aceste lucruri sau îi mai sfătuiţi şi să se roage? Sau rugăciunea este doar pentru monahi, iar mirenii trebuie să citească doar rugăciunile de seara şi de dimineaţă? Are oare rugăciunea lui Iisus vreun rol hotărâtor în viaţa duhovnicească a creştinului din ultimele timpuri?
– Cea mai hotărâtoare acţiune asupra sufletului omului, asupra creştinului, o are rugăciunea lui Iisus. Ea ne apără pe noi de atacurile demonilor, care au loc prin intermediul radioului, televizorului şi a toată electrotehnica. Toate acestea sunt făcute ca să-l ispitească pe om. Rugăciunea lui Iisus este o îngrădire de influenţa diavolească. Anume sub această influenţă diavolească nimeresc oamenii în narcomanie, beţie, mândrie, omucidere şi multe alte păcate. Unica protecţie este rugăciunea lui Iisus. Amin.
– Părinte dar rugăciunea lui Iisus este numai pentru monahi sau şi pentru mireni?
– Pentru toţi. Unii spun că această rugăciune este doar pentru monahi, iar mirenii nu au voie să o spună, căci se vor rătăci. Prostie. Această rugăciune este de la Dumnezeu. Rugaţi-vă neîncetat, această rugăciune este pentru toţi creştinii ortodocşi ca să fie îngrădiţi şi să poată vorbi cu Dumnezeu.
Este o proorocie a stareţilor pentru timpurile de apoi, cum că acei creştini care se vor afla sub influenţa binecuvântătoare a rugăciunii lui Iisus, vor putea deosebi cursele lui antihrist. Anume rugăciunea lui Iisus, dacă este spusă cu smerenie şi atenţie, îţi dă vedere duhovnicească şi poţi desluşi toate capcanele diavoleşti şi te poţi păzi de ele şi pe alţii îi poţi preîntâmpina de pericol – adică să nu ia documentele electronice şi să nu accepte cipul.
– Părinte şi o ultimă întrebare, mulţi sunt indignaţi astăzi că preoţii nu exprimă acea poziţie pe care ar vrea s-o audă creştinii ortodocşi. Din această cauză mulţi pleacă din biserică, se roagă acasă, nu mai participă la Sfintele Taine. Care este atitudinea sfinţiei voastre faţă de aşa situaţii – se poate sau trebuie să mergem la bisericile unde slujesc preoţi ce exprimă poziţie neclară faţă de semnele vremurilor noastre?
– Biserica lui Hristos este un stâlp şi o mărturisire a Adevărului. Cui Biserica nu i-i mamă, aceluia Dumnezeu nu i-i tată. Prin Biserică noi trebuie să intrăm în împărăţia Cerurilor, de aceea nimeni să nu iasă din Biserică. Dacă este vorba de unii provocatori, de ce îi ascultaţi?Ascultaţi de Biserica lui Hristos! Ascultaţi-i pe oamenii duhovniceşti, care vă vor vorbi spre mântuirea sufletelor. Provocatorii întotdeauna trebuie să existe dar ei pentru asta sunt, ca noi să-i biruim. Aşa a fost dintotdeauna în Biserică, aşa este şi acum, aşa va fi şi în viitor.
– Deci, se poate şi trebuie să purcedem la Tainele bisericeşti?
– Da.
– Dar atunci când în cadrul acestui Sobor necurat (n.n. al optulea Sobor ecumenic), care se apropie, vor fi luate hotărâri antiortodoxe, atunci va trebui ca creştinii să părăsească bisericile?
– Atunci creştinii vor rămâne în Biserica Ortodoxă a lui Hristos. Iar rătăciţii, care vor schimba adevărurile bisericeşti, vor crea biserica lui antihrist. Iar noi, creştinii devotaţi, preoţii, monahii şi credincioşii, vom rămâne cu toţii în Biserica lui Hristos şi vom rămâne credincioşi Sfintelor ei Taine, sfintelor canoane şi statului ei . Noi vom avea şi preoţi devotaţi, şi episcopi, şi diaconi, şi mireni, care cum au fost ortodocşi aşa vor i rămâne credincioşi lui Iisus Hristos până la urmă. Iar necredincioşii îl vor primi pe papă, ca şi cap al Bisericii, care este deja antihristul, căci capul Bisericii este Hristos şi noi rămânem cu Hristos. Amin.
– Vă mulţumim, Părinte.
May 8, 2013 http://www.aparatorul.md/
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http://vremuritulburi.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/nu-voi-mai-vorbi-multe-cu-voi-caci-vine-stapanitorul-acestei-lumi-si-el-nu-are-nimic-in-mine-ioan-14-30/
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http://www.2012en.ro/2009/12/mihai-viteazul-legenda-istorie-mit/
http://ziarullumina.ro/interviu/mihai-viteazul-este-singurul-domnitor-roman-cantat-toti-balcanii-ca-eliberator-al
http://www.formula-as.ro/2012/1013/din-culisele-istoriei-98/iubirile-lui-mihai-viteazul-14909
http://gen90.net/pagini-de-istorie-mihai-viteazul-intre-erou-legendar-si-strateg-militar/
http://art-historia.blogspot.ro/2012/02/craniul-lui-mihai-viteazul.html
https://istoriiregasite.wordpress.com/tag/mihai-viteazul/
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JUNTA FORCES PUTTING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AT RISK OF ENVIRONMENTAL ARMAGEDDON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZWWoKKGEL0#t=144
Today is 10th of August, 2014. My name is Pavel Brykov, I am the Press-Secretary of STIROL Concern. I would like to make a statement. During the recent weeks the town of Gorlovka, and in particular the territory of the country’s largest chemical giant – STIROL Concern – have been under constant bombardments.
They are delivering strikes, shoot mortars. Ukrainian troops are using GRAD multiple rocket launchers and even URAGAN launchers. In particular on the 5th of August they made five salvos from the heaviest mass destruction weapon, which Ukrainian army has – URAGAN multiple rocket launchers, and they also made several salvos from GRAD’s – all this specifically targeting STIROL. The town and the chemical factory are bombarded each day at any time of day and night.
I would like to make an official statement that due to irresponsible actions by the Ukrainian army residents of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are exposed to a lethal risk every day – the risk of an environmental disaster, which scale is very difficult to predict, because any accident at STIROL will result in a leakage at Gorlovka Public Chemical Plant, where they are still string the “blood poison” – mononitrochlorenzene.
The minimum exposure radius considering the wind rose, the river basins and the Azov Sea aquatic area, will be at least 300 km. I don’t understand why this fact is being silenced by the Ukrainian media.
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11th August 2014, city Zaporozhye, future Zaporozhye republic.
Remnants of 24th brigade, which Kiev junta send to Donetsk and Lugansk republic again, rebelled at city Zaporozhye. (confirmed by Kiev junta media)
These photos were shared as photos of remnants of 24th brigade, which run out from siege near border of Russia. Kiev junta trying to send them to war against Donetsk and Lugansk republic. But soldiers of 24th brigade refused to die for Kiev junta.
Kiev junta tried to fool them, soldiers of this brigade came to military exercises. But really Kiev junta wanted to replenish brigade mobilized citizens of Ukraine, taught them shortly in military training area in Kharkov region. Later Kiev junta going to use them as cannon fodder again.
Then soldiers of these brigade got this information, they came out of the wagons in the city of Zaporozhye, far from the borders with the Kharkov region.
This story was shared by anti- junta activists and bloggers
Some sources reported about clashes between soldiers of Ukrainian army and fascists from „National guard”, it was reported at 10th August.
News about rebellion of soldiers were confirmed by Kiev junta media
http://z-city.com.ua/Бойцы-24-ой-бригады-не-верят-командованию-и-не-желают-ехать-из-Запорожья-в-Харьковскую-область.-11.08.2014
http://mikle1.livejournal.com/4543683.html
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11th August 2014, Lugansk republic, state
Photos of Kiev junta forces, which try to cut connection between Donetsk and Lugansk republic at 9th August.
Remnants of 95th brigade of Ukrainian army, one of best of Kiev junta division. These photos were made at location between towns Krasniy Luch and Miusinsk, Lugansk republic at 9th August. This brigade together with 24th brigade tried to capture these 2 towns and cut one of connections between Lugansk and Donetsk republic. Also it was try to run from boarder with Russia, there these 2 brigades were under constant shelling by Novorossia forces.
It happened at 9th August and caused panic in social networks that Donetsk was surrounded. Really forces of Kiev junta found death here.
Guards in towns Krasniy Luch and Miusinsk were not big, Kiev junta got this information by US instructors. USA using drones here, it is help of US regime for fascists junta. But these guards fight until arriving of armored units of Novorossia fighters, who defeated Kiev junta forces.
Results of battle you can to see in photos below.
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Ukrainian armed forces have encircled the east Ukrainian city of Donetsk in preparation for a bloody assault on the city’s population. Kiev is slowly tightening the noose around the pro-Russian separatist stronghold, threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in a city that claimed nearly one million inhabitants prior to the US- and German-backed onslaught.
The Obama administration’s policy of escalating pressure on the Russian regime by backing the Kiev regime’s indiscriminate murder of civilians and destruction of infrastructure in east Ukraine is driving the situation towards war between nuclear-armed powers.
Alexander Zakharchenko, a Ukrainian national who last week replaced Alexander Borodai as the head of the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic, warned that there would be a large number of casualities if the Ukranian forces moved to retake the city.
Facing an imminent and bloody attack, Zakharchenko stated that the DPR was “ready for a cease-fire to prevent the growth of the humanitarian catastrophe.” Sergei Kavtarzade, a member of the DPR security council and aide to Borodai, called for a more limited ceasefire to allow for the opening of humanitarian corridors.
Kiev rejected calls for a ceasefire, instead demanding a complete surrender from the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and in the areas throughout eastern Ukraine which remain under rebel control.
In response to the ongoing US-backed military campaign, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a ceasefire in east Ukraine and the rapid deployment of humanitarian aid supplies to stem the crisis. He told reporters, “We believe the issue is pressing and must not be delayed. The question is under the Russian president’s control. I am certain that we will be able to agree on this aid as soon as possible.”
Lavrov also stated that a ceasefire was required by an agreement, which has not been honored by the Ukrainian government, signed by Ukrainian and Russian diplomats in April that called for both Kiev and the pro-Russian separatists to refrain from violence.
According to UN estimates, 730,000 Ukrainians have fled to Russia since the Ukrainian regime began military operations and a further 117,000 people have been displaced internally.
The UN also estimates that more than 1,129 people have been killed and 3,500 wounded in the east since the Ukrainian government began its operations in April. Many of the civilian casualties have come as a result of indiscriminate artillery shelling of residential areas by Kiev-backed forces.
At a meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council on Friday, US Ambassador Samantha Power warned against any humanitarian intervention by Russia in eastern Ukraine. She laid blame for the crisis in the country entirely at Russia’s feet, stating that “the humanitarian situation needs addressing, but not by those who have caused it.”
Raising the prospect of war with Russia, Power stated that “any further unilateral intervention by Russia into Ukrainian territory, including one under the guise of providing humanitarian aid, would be completely unacceptable and deeply alarming, and it would be viewed as an invasion of Ukraine.”
Power’s presentation is a pile of reactionary and hypocritical lies, designed to shift blame for the catastrophe from the United States and its European imperialist allies onto Russia.
The ongoing attacks by the Kiev regime against Ukrainian civilians in the Donbass region are the outcome of the Obama administration’s support for the fascist putsch that ousted pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovich in February. The pro-Russian separatist groups which emerged soon after the coup in the Russian-speaking east have been ruthlessly crushed by Kiev military forces and fascist militias such as Right Sector with the full backing of the United States.
While it cynically claims not to want Russian intervention, the Obama administration has done everything in its power to provoke and goad Russia into such an intervention. Its policy was to install a violently anti-Russian, far-right government in Kiev and consolidate it through a violent war against the east Ukrainian population, with fighting taking place less than 50 miles from the Russian border. It is intent on humiliating the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, creating the conditions for its collapse and the carve-up of Russia itself.
That very scenario is now beginning to play out in eastern Ukraine. US statements insisting that Russia should not intervene militarily to halt the bloodshed unleashed by its puppet regime are deeply hypocritical. Only three years ago, the US claimed that the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi might launch armed repression in Benghazi and seized upon it to launch a bloody war that devastated Libya, toppled the Gaddafi regime, and led to the brutal murder of Gaddafi himself.
Yet now, as the people of Donetsk are surrounded by US-backed Ukrainian armed forces and fascist militias which threaten an imminent attack, Power denounces Russia for entertaining the possibility of a military intervention.
Power was a leading advocate of the bombing of Libya by US-NATO forces and has strongly promoted the US proxy war for regime change in Syria, including Sunni Islamist militias similar to ISIS itself. She is pushing the ongoing US bombing campaign in Iraq against ISIS, an organization fostered by the US and its allies in Syria, on the “humanitarian” grounds that a US war is necessary to protect Iraqi civilians from ISIS.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/11/boeu-a11.html
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On October 11 in London, the European sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International held a meeting on the lessons of the Second World War.
The event was jointly convened by the Socialist Equality Parties of Britain and Germany, with the participation of the supporters of the ICFI in France. We will be publishing several of the speeches made to that meeting, beginning with the contribution by WSWS Editorial Board member Julie Hyland.
The horrors of the Second World War were such that they brought forth a new term, genocide. Yet 70 years on, such commemorations that have been held to mark this catastrophic experience have been either low key, or non-existent. The gathering of 20-or-so heads of state in Poland on September 1 attracted barely a mention, aside from the spat between Russian and Polish representatives.
There was no official commemoration in Britain, which is remarkable given that generations of school children are raised on how this was its “finest hour”.
I could find no record of Prime Minister Gordon Brown marking the anniversary. The only reference made by Brown was in a speech on September 4 in which he spoke of the “overwhelming sense of awe and humility at the scale of achievements and the record of service and sacrifice”—a tribute belied by the fact that it occupied just three lines in his remarks.
Someone who did comment on the anniversary was right-wing British historian Niall Ferguson. A fervent defender of the virtues of the British Empire and a supporter of the 2003 Iraq invasion, in his book Colossus on the American imperial experience Ferguson portrays empire as the antidote to anarchy and barbarism. His criticism of the US under the Bush administration was whether it was prepared to devote the necessary resources to conducting this strategy effectively, and especially whether it was prepared to carry through the necessary changes at home.
The main point of the Guardian article of September 5 was that traditional explanations for the Second World War were too parochial and euro-centric.
To back this up, Ferguson pointed out that the German invasion of Poland did not bring an end to 20 years of peace, as is generally depicted. There had scarcely been a year without serious violence in some corner of the world, after World War I ended in 1918. This has led some to present the first part of the 20th century, between 1914 and 1945, “an almost continuous European civil war,” he wrote.
“Even this conception does not quite suffice,” he continued. “For the world historian, it makes more sense to conceive of the period from 1904”, the date of the Russian-Japanese war over Manchuria, “until 1953 as something more like a 50 years’ war.”
This was because the “leitmotif” of this period “was conflict between and against the western empires over the central question of who should rule the great Eurasian landmass,” an area with such wealth of land and raw materials that control over it would determine the contest for domination of the world.
It was in this context that one should evaluate Hitler’s policy of Lebensraum—of a contiguous land area stretching as far as the Volga—as well as Japan’s assault on eastern China and Asia. This was an effort by two aspiring powers to wrest this strategic region from British, French, Russian and American control.
Ferguson’s identifying the centrality of Eurasia in the Second World War is not new. It was the major preoccupation of the period.
The first modern “Eurasian strategy” for world domination had been elaborated, not surprisingly, in Britain by imperial strategist Halford Mackinder. His paper, presented not coincidentally in 1904, to the Royal Geographical Society was entitled “The Geographical Pivot of History”.
In it he defined the Eurasian land mass, comprising the interlinked continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, as a “world island”, the heartland of which stretched from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic.
Mackinder’s concern was that developments in technology, particularly transportation, had opened up the Eurasian land mass and its tremendous resources for penetration by Germany or Russia, threatening the British Empire.
“Who rules east Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the world-island; who rules the world-island commands the world,” he warned.
Mackinder’s strategy would later come in for criticism, but at the time it was followed closely by leading statesmen. Amongst those reportedly convinced by his appraisal was one Rudolf Hess who was said to have introduced them to Hitler.
Imperialism
Ferguson is an opponent of Marxism. And while he complains at traditional depictions of the Second World War and rejects that it had its roots in either ideology or economic depression, he is similarly unable to explain the deeper driving factors behind its eruption.
In truth, the battle for Empire was intimately bound up with the profound contradictions of capitalist profit system.
Analysing the First World War, Lenin had defined the development of imperialism as one in which finance capital and gigantic capitalist monopolies dominated the globe. Entailing “reaction all down the line”, it had “grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries,” each struggling to establish its dominance over territory, sources of raw materials and “spheres of influence.”
Through means of war, the respective bourgeois powers sought to overcome the contradiction between the development of a highly integrated world economy and the outmoded nation state system, based on private ownership of the means of production, by establishing their global pre-eminence over all others.
The working class could lend no support to this fratricidal struggle. Its task lay in abolishing national divisions and capitalist property relations through the reorganisation of the world by means of social revolution. That is precisely what the Bolsheviks had set out to do with the seizure of power in Russia in October 1917.
None of the contradictions that lay behind the outbreak of the first imperialist slaughter were resolved at its end. If anything, they had become more putrid.
Outside of a successful extension of the Russian revolution into Europe in particular, the inter-war years proved to be only a temporary respite. As Trotsky warned in 1934, the inevitable re-eruption of conflict would be even “crueller, more destructive than its predecessor.”
Europe especially was subject to growing national tensions, economic dislocation and social upheavals.
Economic crisis meant that between 1928 and 1932 world trade fell by 30 percent and industrial production by some 50 percent. Everywhere the bourgeoisie responded with protectionist measures, such as the Smoot-Hawley act in the US. Meanwhile, the social conditions of the vast mass of the world’s population deteriorated rapidly.
Trotsky had issued the call for a new Fourth International in face of the terrible events in Germany, which had seen Hitler come to power without a shot being fired in opposition. The disastrous policy of the German Communist Party and the Comintern’s defence of it confirmed that the Third International had been destroyed by the Stalinist bureaucracy from the standpoint of international socialism.
The Fourth International was founded in 1938 on the eve of the war’s outbreak. Under tremendously dangerous conditions, an emergency conference in Paris in May 1940 adopted the Manifesto of the Fourth International on Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution.
Addressing itself to the workers and oppressed masses of the world as the only social force capable of reorganising the globe on rational and progressive foundations, it warned that in the struggle between rival slave owners for the re-division of the world and its resources, “the capitalists are destroying and laying waste to everything created by the labor of centuries.”
In a tragically prescient forecast, it warned of the dangerous rise of chauvinism and “especially of anti-Semitism. In the epoch of its rise, capitalism took the Jewish people out of the ghetto and utilised them as an instrument in its commercial expansion. Today decaying capitalist society is striving to squeeze the Jewish people from all its pores; seventeen million individuals out of the two billion populating the globe, that is, less than one percent, can no longer find a place on our planet! Amid the vast expanses of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.”
Afghanistan
At the beginning of my remarks, I said that I could only find three lines of reference to the anniversary of the Second World War in any remarks made by Brown. Those three lines were contained in a speech he made to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the remainder of which was taken up with a defence of the government’s strategy in Afghanistan and a rebuff to those who question whether British troops should be there.
Brown might not have wanted to make analogies between British involvement in Afghanistan and the 70th anniversary too obvious, but they exist nonetheless. This meeting takes place under conditions of an increasingly tense debate over how best to subjugate Afghanistan, which has seen open clashes between sections of the military top brass in the US and the Obama administration.
The top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal has called for as many as 60,000 additional troops to be despatched to the country. He outlined his demands, also in a speech to the International Institute in London, and has won support from the upper echelons of Britain’s military and much of the media.
Whatever the outcome of this debate, one thing is clear—there will be no peace in Afghanistan. While sections of the American establishment are concerned at being drawn further into the Afghan quagmire, Obama has already ruled out any scaling down of troop numbers, while Brown is considering the despatch of anywhere between 500 to 1,000 additional forces. There is complete unanimity in ruling circles that the one course of action favoured by the majority of American and British people—withdrawal from Afghanistan—is out of the question.
This fact alone demonstrates how false the hopes were that the election of Obama as president would put an end to war.
Even more recently, when Obama made the announcement that he intended to suspend the deployment of a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, some in the British media claimed that it marked a dramatic shift from the Bush era, and a turn towards more equitable international relations. We even witnessed the obscenity of Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Price.
In fact, the decision over the missile defence shield and the discussions over strategy in Afghanistan are purely of a tactical nature. Some in Washington have concluded that in order to win the war in Afghanistan, while maintaining the occupation of Iraq, it is necessary to it to draw on the support of its European allies and other powers such as Russia.
But the essential fault-lines remain. As the International Committee of the Fourth International has insisted, a renewed scramble to re-divide the world is underway. And despite the passage of more than 60 years, there is a continuum between this struggle and the one that characterised the first half of the 20th century.
Due to the role played by Stalinism and social democracy in suppressing revolution, the Second World War did not end with the overthrow of capitalism. With the defeat of Germany, its partition and the Cold War division between the Soviet Union and the capitalist nation states under the political and economic hegemony of US imperialism, European capitalism was resuscitated.
For all the tensions involved in these relations, this framework provided a degree of equilibrium to international relations. Ferguson acknowledges as much when he states that the 50 years of war only really concluded in 1953—that is, with the advent of the Cold War.
But the basic contradictions were only suppressed, not abolished. One has only to review the period since 1991, which saw the dissolution of the USSR and the collapse of the Eastern European states, to confirm this.
The International Committee was alone in rejecting claims that what was involved in these overturns was the “collapse of communism” and the “triumph of liberal democracy”. Rather, we insisted that the same economic forces that had undermined the national autarkic regimes and shattered the post-war arrangements—the developments in technology and globalised production—had opened up a new period of convulsions, that could not find resolution under capitalism without the violent restructuring of political and economic relations.
This was especially the case when these overturns had opened up vast new areas of the globe previously sealed off to capitalist penetration by the October 1917 revolution—including some of the greatest untapped oil reserves in the world, especially in the former Soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea.
The United States has responded most aggressively to these changes. It is not only that its efforts to establish a truly global empire were hampered for some seven decades or so by the existence of the Soviet Union. The opening up of these areas coincided with a major reversal in the fortunes of the US, which has been transformed from the world’s premier creditor nation to its most indebted.
Under conditions where its declining economic might could be challenged, not only by its old rivals in Europe, but by new emerging powers in China and India, it has sought to exploit the one advantage it still possessed—its military superiority—in order to offset its economic weakness.
It is this that accounts for the outburst of US aggression since 1991—beginning with the first intervention in the Persian Gulf that year, through the attack on Yugoslavia, the interventions against Iraq and Afghanistan and now threats against Iran.
We have repeatedly drawn attention to the statements of the leading ideologues of US imperialism, in particular those of Zbigniew Brzezinski—a former adviser to the Carter Presidency and now a leading adviser to Obama.
In his book, The Grand Chessboard, published in 1997 Brzezinski outlined the importance of Eurasia—home to 75 percent of the world’s population, 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources—as “the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played.”
“…the issue of how a globally engaged America copes with the complex Eurasian power relationships—and particularly whether it prevents the emergence of a dominant antagonistic Eurasian power—remains central to America’s capacity to exercise global hegemony,” he warned.
For Brzezinski, the US cannot expect to dominate Eurasia single-handedly. Its economic decline and the rise of other powers means that pursuance of its long-term objective of domination over the Middle East and Central Asia are best served by attempting to effect a balance of powers most in its favour, while giving no other nation the upper-hand.
To this end he has been supportive of enlisting the aid of other powers, and has backed British and German calls for the United Nations to convene a conference on Afghanistan. Far from bringing peace to Afghanistan, however, this is a cynical mechanism through which the European powers are seeking to establish a greater role for themselves in the attempts to carve-up Central Asia.
Nor is Afghanistan the sole target. By enlisting greater international support, the US hopes to pursue its objectives against Iran.
Let me read to you an article by Robert Kaplan, the right-wing commentator. In a May/June 2009 piece for the Foreign Policy magazine entitled “The Revenge of Geography”, Kaplan also evoked Mackinder and his thesis on Eurasia as the guide to our times. Just as the European powers had found themselves with no room to expand in the early 20th century, thereby leading to global conflicts, a similar process is underway today.
Kaplan, of course, cites Eurasia itself, and the emergence of China amongst others, as the source of this instability. He enumerates numerous Eurasian “shatter zones”, including what he defines at its “Persian core, stretching from the Caspian Sea to Iran’s north to the Persian Gulf to its south”—home to virtually all of the greater Middle East’s oil and natural gas, as well as the central point for the world’s shipping lanes as well as numerous oil pipelines.
Iran, he notes, is the “only country that straddles both energy-producing areas”.
In remarks which make clear the real content of Western complaints that the recent elections in Iran were “stolen”, as well as the reactionary role played by the various petty bourgeois pseudo-left left groups in lining up behind the Mousavi opposition movement, he sets out what he euphemistically describes as the policy of “containment” for Iran. The purpose, he explains, is “to impose pressure on the contradictions of the unpopular theocratic regime in Tehran, such that it eventually changes from within”. Regime change, in other words, backed up with the threat of force.
“We all must learn to think like Victorians”, Kaplan writes. Especially, “as the ongoing recession will likely cause the global economy to contract for the first time in six decades. Not only wealth, but political and social order, will erode in many places, leaving only nature’s frontiers and men’s passion as the main arbiters of that age-old question: who can coerce whom?”
A renewed struggle to divide the world
There is no such thing as a “benign” hegemony or friendly balance of power.
Who says Germany, China, Russia or any other power will simply acquiesce to America’s leading role in any new international balance of forces?
In the last week we have seen reports that the Gulf States, along with China, Russia, Japan and France, have been secretly planning to end the use of the dollar in dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies. The reports have been denied, but last month China took the decision to sell its first batch of sovereign bonds in Yuan to foreigners.
Writing in the Independent, Robert Fisk cited a warning by Sun Bigan, China’s former special envoy to the Middle East, that “bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable” between China and the US in the area. “This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil—yet again turning the region’s conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy,” Fisk wrote.
The point is that the renewed struggle for control of raw materials and resources has an objective logic. Writing in the Guardian, September 17, Tristram Hunt opined that though few may recall Mackinder’s name, “foreign policy is now played out in his shadow.”
“Today, in Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and even Iran, an overt and covert battle for the Heartland grinds on… the tensions of our own times have brought back to life the musings of one of the most influential academics of the 20th century.”
Already the shores around Somalia, which sits between the geo-strategic waterways of the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, are home to 25 to 30 naval warships from France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the US—all supposedly against pirates.
To take another example, what are the consequences of the US-led extension of the Afghan war into Pakistan for the stability of this region, bristling with nuclear weapons, and for its ally China?
Only in August 2008, we saw the outbreak of a proxy war between US and Russia where, with Washington’s backing, the Georgian administration launched an attack on Russian forces in South Ossetia. On that occasion, what essentially concerned a battle for control over export routes for Central Asia’s energy resources concluded without further incident.
For how much longer? Businessnews Europe reported September 30, that the oil-rich former Soviet republics had attracted billions of dollars in funding from China in particular, as the “Eurasian region is already seeing growing rivalry between global majors and national companies from Russia, China, India, Japan and South Korea hoping to secure access to the region’s mineral wealth.”
Up until this point, concern at American unilateralism has largely dictated the response of the European bourgeoisie. And again, for how much longer?
Writing in the New York Times on September 7, for instance, John Vinocur complained that it was no longer possible to rely on Germany.
Its “ambiguous” relations with Russia, its rejection of an EU wide bailout, its “murkiness” over NATO and, not least, its decision to “save” Opel, with Russian funding, at the expense of dumping a major GM asset, had all brought into question its reliability as a US ally.
Stephen F. Szabo, executive director of the Transatlantic Academy, located at the German Marshall Fund’s offices in the United States, went further. “Berlin plays a decisive role in shaping a coherent and successful” policy by Washington and Europe towards Russia, he wrote. However, he continued, “Voices in the West are raising concerns about Germany’s reliability as a partner.”
Szabo cited the right-wing Weekly Standard’s complaint that “the Germany of today is not the partner the United States once had,” as well as the remarks by Brzezinski that, should “the romance between Russia and Germany go[es] too far, it could strike a blow against European integration.”
Listen to Szabo’s language: “There has long been an undercurrent of worry about Germany’s reliability as a partner, dating back to the Rapallo complex of the 1920s, when Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics engaged in a policy of accommodation that raised concerns in Western Europe about a potential anti-West alliance, and more recently, references to a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in which Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed to carve up Poland in 1939, an action that opened the door for Hitler to begin World War II.”
Militarism and the attack on social conditions, democratic rights
At the centre of the battle for global supremacy is a massive assault on working class living standards and democratic rights.
The point I want to stress is that the processes I have sought to outline have been underway for some time and were developing under conditions of an apparent boom.
In reality, as is now all too apparent, the rising stock markets and record profits were the outcome of an orgy of financial parasitism in the interests of the super-rich, paid for by massive indebtedness of broad layers of the working class, lower wages and greater levels of exploitation.
The result is an economic crisis broadly acknowledged to be the worst since 1929, and even beyond this.
The US administration is considering a probable increase in troop numbers to Afghanistan just over one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which triggered near global economic breakdown.
Let me read you this account from the Sunday Times October 3, just four weeks after Lehman’s downfall. In that period, the British government had been forced to patch up a rescue operation between HBOS and Lloyds TSB, while it had partly privatised Bradford & Bingley.
The article recounts how one of the top Treasury civil servants informed a group of investment bankers that the Royal Bank of Scotland—the largest bank in Britain, with a loan book bigger than any other bank in the world—was bust.
“Although the public didn’t know, a torrent of money was flooding out, withdrawn by big companies, central banks and wealthy individuals… Unless a government bailout could be agreed that weekend, RBS would be shut down first thing on Monday.”
“If RBS collapsed,” Kingman continued, “one third of payments made every day would stop. Wages would go missing, bills go unpaid, savings disappear overnight.”
There is no reason to doubt this account. The bourgeoisie, driven by short-term self-interest, have behaved as criminal economic wreckers over the last decades, bringing entire economies—such as Iceland and Ireland—to the point of devastation.
The well-known economists Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke in April produced a comparison between the immediate aftermath of the Crash of 2008 to that of 1929. The study, which attracted 30,000 viewers in just two days, and more than a 100,000 in one week, showed that the impact of the 2008 crash surpassed that of 1929, with production down 12 percent, as compared to 5 percent in the six months that followed the 1929 Crash, and trade by 16 percent, as compared to 5 percent in the earlier crisis. Across the board, global manufacturing had fallen, and the export trade was down sharply—by 20 percent in Germany, 46 percent in Japan and 23 percent in America.
Last month they updated this appraisal. Despite certain indications of a recovery, they concluded that the “proportionate decline in stock market wealth remains even greater than at the comparable stage of the Great Depression”, and that the “collapse of global trade, even now, remains dramatic by the standards of the Great Depression.”
I should add that China, the world’s second largest exporter, fell 23.4 percent in August compared to the same month last year.
Now Eichengreen and O’Rourke’s assessment comes under conditions where almost $11 trillion has been spent bailing out failing banks and trying to repair the financial system—$10,000 for every person in the world’s largest economies.
The UK and the US spent the most, with the UK spending proportionally far more—94 percent of its GDP, compared to 25 percent in the US.
Over the next five years, UK government debt is expected to rise from £600 billion to £1.4 trillion, while the US national debt could double to $10 trillion. Even that is not the end. According to IMF calculations, British bank losses of about $1,300 billion were just the start. They are expected to write down a further $1,500 billion by the end of 2010.
The bailouts were presented as an act of altruism, designed to save jobs and living standards. This is a fraud. What was in fact a massive diversion of public funds to protect the wealth of the financial oligarchy is being further used to press forward with a fundamental restructuring of capitalism, through the impoverishment of the working class and oppressed masses.
The stock markets have soared, funded by taxpayers’ monies, and the super-rich have resumed business as usual. To underscore this, the UK has now overtaken the US as the world’s leading financial centre, according to the World Economic Forum. This is a country which spent some 94 percent of its GDP, as I said, on bailing out rotten banks.
Meanwhile, in every corner of the globe, working people are being made to carry the can, with poverty and inequality developing apace. To cite just one statistic, for the first time in history, more than one billion people, or nearly one in every six inhabitants of the planet, are going hungry this year, according to a new report from the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP)—with rising food prices and the economic recession amongst the major factors.
In the advanced countries, far from these bailouts saving jobs, unemployment is rising everywhere and being used to drive down wages and overturn working conditions—as seen at GM and its European division, Opel.
In the US, official unemployment is on target for 10 percent, with some 15 million workers jobless—double the figure at the end of 2007. In reality, the figure is more than 25 million.
In the Eurozone, unemployment is at 9.4 percent, and youth unemployment at 19.5 percent. Again, those are official figures. In Germany alone, real unemployment stands close to six million. Similarly in the UK, official unemployment stands at 2.5 million, with almost one million under the age of 25, but the real figure is far higher.
Everywhere, the demand is for sacrifice. In Britain, Labour and the Conservatives attempt to outdo each other with talk of spending cuts that go further than anything ever before attempted. The Tories made big play of their determination to go the extra mile, but it has been pointed out that even their supposedly “brave” proposed cuts package amounts to just £7 billion of the £100 billion being demanded by big business.
Everywhere the mantra is the same. The national debt is unsustainable and must be repaid. So, to secure the future, people must accept wage cuts and pay freezes, the extension of retirement age and cuts in health and education.
This again is a fraud. Who is it being repaid to? To cite one figure, at least £30 billion per year is being spent just on meeting interest loans on the bailout debt that went to the very same institutions that had to be rescued in the first place.
The truth, as Martin Wolf put it so succinctly in the October 8 Financial Times, is that “The crisis is a golden opportunity to impose discipline and make reforms.”
Of course, while the powers-that-be demand sweeping cuts in social welfare and public spending, there is absolute agreement that the one area that must be safeguarded above all others is defence.
Trade and military war presuppose a major social realignment and the increased militarization of domestic life in every country. It is this which accounts for the growing intervention of the military into US political life—as witnessed by McChrystal’s public insistence on a massive surge into Afghanistan. This is a phenomenon we are seeing repeated here in the UK, with the Tories’ appointment of General Sir Richard Dannatt, former army chief, as their defence adviser, after he, amongst others, had made a number of public attacks on the Labour government over the lack of troop numbers and resources in Afghanistan.
It is impossible to fight war or the social devastation now being carried through without tackling its underlying causes in the capitalist economic order and the nation state system on which it is based. It requires the development of a unified political struggle by workers in every country for a socialist alternative. This is the programme of the Socialist Equality Party.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/10/wwii-o31.html
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The military operations undertaken by the Ukrainian and Israeli governments in East Ukraine and Gaza, although frequently being represented as „anti-terror operations”, in fact involve the mass killing of civilians on the ground, with US support, under the pretext of the state defending itself. As wars are being waged in both countries, the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries are heavily bombarding civilians as Human Rights Watch has confirmed. The civilian toll in Ukraine has been at least 1,129 so far and 1,650 people were killed in Gaza. The UN condemned the massive shelling of schools and seniors’ homes by the Ukrainian military as it condemned the bombing of a UN school by Israel, saying these violated international law. The similarities between the two conflicts and the ideology that produced them may be worth pointing out, as has been done before in different ways by a critic of these policies and also by the ambassador of Ukraine to Israel, though perhaps not by the way the latter had in mind.
The slaughter of civilians, be they ethnic Russian or Palestinian, cannot be divorced from the fact that both the Ukrainian and the Israeli Governments have no intention of granting autonomous rights to these respective populations under their control and may ultimately even see their lives as disposable. The unelected Ukrainian Government did not accept the referendum held in the Donbass in which over 90% of residents voted for self-rule, while in Israel, Netanyahu recently said that he would never support a sovereign Palestinian state. Indeed, both the Ukrainian and Israeli government share highly racist views of these targeted populations.
While the circumstances and histories of these two countries are far from being identical, one must take into account the history of the two regions and the prosecution faced by both ethnic Russians and Palestinians when seeking to understand the present crises. For example, the concern with which ethnic Russians regard the formation of a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit sent to fight Russian residents of East Ukraine, and the high suspicion with which many view the current unelected Ukrainian government that has significant far-right elements, can only be fully understood when one considers the fierce fighting that took place between Ukrainian Nazis and Russians during World War II in the very same areas where fighting is being waged today. Although not identical in the extend of historical atrocities, one cannot grasp fully the current predicament of Gaza, to which 1.7 million Palestinians are confined, without taking into account the fact that many of Gaza’s residents are originally from Jaffa from which they were expelled from or fled in 1948. Subsequent Israeli governments have indeed viewed Palestinians as a „demographic threat”, and Gazans are accustomed to being attacked by Israeli forces since at least 1956.
The highly racist manner in which both Ukraine and Israel view residents under their control who do not fit into the image of the nation they claim to represent, cannot but disturb those who pay attention. The former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk termed Russians in East Ukraine „subhumans”, therefore repeating the phrase „untermenschen” used by the Nazis towards Russians during World War II. Yatsenyuk made no secret of his intentions towards ethnic Russians in Ukraine by writing that „we will commemorate the heroes by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil”, therefore suggesting that ethnic Russians citizens of Ukraine are contaminating the ‘pure’ Ukrainian nation. A leading Ukrainian politician, Julia Tymoshenko, expressed her wish to wipe out the 8 million Russians who reside in the Crimea.
Leading Israeli politicians also have a highly racist view towards Palestinians. Israeli Minister Naftali Bennet referred to Arabs as those „climbing on trees” in the past. The deputy minister of Religious Affairs, Eli Ben Dahan, said regarding Palestinians that „in my eyes they are human animals, not human”. Israeli Member of Parliament Ayelet Shaked, perhaps the Israeli version of Julia Tymoshenko, condoned a mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
In both East Ukraine and Gaza, plans or suggestions have been laid out to repopulate the war-torn territories after a victory is achieved. The Ukrainian government openly said that land in Southeast Ukraine, where ethnic Russians and Russian speakers currently reside, will be given to Ukrainian soldiers for free, in return for their participation in the fighting against residents of these areas. In Israel, Member of Parliament Moshe Feiglin of the Likud Party, suggested that „subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews”.
Needless to say, the Ukrainian and Israeli governments do not seek to represent and guard the rights of the populations over which they rule, a fact that may escape the notice of US State Department Spokesperson Jan Psaki. The first action taken by the Ukrainian parliament after the illegal coup in Kiev, was not to call for a multicultural democracy which would represent all ethnicities, but to revoke the right to use Russian as an official language in areas where a majority of residents were Russian. Although this action was later vetoed, many ethnic Russians who are citizens of Ukraine were quite alarmed by this hostile act taken by the new regime that was never received their vote and where outright neo-Nazi groups share power. In Israel, while a law proposal calling for the removal of the official status given to Arabic did not pass, over 50 laws discriminating against Israeli-Palestinians are in place, ranging from the right to purchase state land to the right to marry freely whom they please.
The massive killing of civilians in both Ukraine and Gaza, with full US support, therefore seems to occur not merely as an inevitable and unwanted consequence of war but due to the low regard that the two governments have towards the lives of ethnic Russians and Palestinians respectively. How else can one explain the massive shelling of residential areas in East Ukraine and the targeting of schools in Gaza in which no weapons were found? The Ukrainian ambassador to Israel noted that the two countries are united in „fighting terrorism” but failed to mention that they are also united in the racist view they hold of the civilians they are attacking. Israel does not see Palestinians nor does Ukraine see ethnic Russians as full citizens worthy of rights.
http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/08/03/israel-and-ukraine-ridding-the-nation-oftheundesirables/
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Ce semnificatie are steaua aia de langa cruce pe „Drapelul Munteniei pe timpul lui Mihai Viteazul”?
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(Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Russia is sending an aid convoy to eastern Ukraine despite urgent Western warnings against using humanitarian help as a pretext for an invasion.
With Ukraine reporting Russia has massed 45,000 troops on its border, NATO said there was a „high probability” that Moscow could intervene militarily in the country’s east, where Kiev forces are closing in on pro-Russian separatists.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso delivered a blunt message in a telephone call with Putin on Monday. „President Barroso warned against any unilateral military actions in Ukraine, under any pretext, including humanitarian,” the Commission said in a statement.
The Kremlin, in its own account of the conversation, made clear that Moscow would indeed send help to largely Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.
„It was noted that the Russian side, in collaboration with representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, is sending an aid convoy to Ukraine,” the Kremlin statement said, without saying when the convoy was going.
U.N. agencies say more than 1,100 people have been killed including government forces, rebels and civilians in the four months since rebels seized territory in the east and Kiev launched its crackdown.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he supported an aid mission but made clear it had to be an international effort under the aegis of the Red Cross, involving the European Union as well as Russia. Poroshenko said U.S. President Barack Obama had also backed the international plan when they spoke on the telephone on Monday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross made no immediate comment, although last weekend it issued a statement acknowledging receipt of an offer from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about organizing aid convoys.
The past week has seen increasingly urgent warnings from Kiev and Western countries that Moscow appeared to be planning an invasion. Western countries say Putin – who has whipped up the passions of Russians with a relentless nationalist campaign in state-controlled media since annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March – could invade to head off a humiliating rebel defeat.
Kiev said it was in the „final stages” of recapturing the eastern city of Donetsk – the main base of the separatist rebels – in a battle that could mark a turning point in a conflict that has caused the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
An industrial metropolis with a pre-war population of nearly 1 million, Donetsk rocked to the crash of shells and gunfire over the weekend, and heavy guns boomed through the night into Monday from the outskirts of the city.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said there was no sign Russia had withdrawn the troops it had massed at the Ukrainian frontier. Asked in a Reuters interview how he rated the chances of Russian military intervention, Rasmussen said: „There is a high probability.”
„We see the Russians developing the narrative and the pretext for such an operation under the guise of a humanitarian operation, and we see a military build-up that could be used to conduct such illegal military operations in Ukraine,” he said.
HUMANITARIAN PRETEXT
NATO believes any Russian humanitarian mission would be used as a pretext to save the rebels, who are fighting for control of two provinces under the banner of „New Russia”, a term Putin has used for southern and eastern Ukraine, where mostly Russian is spoken.
Ukraine appears to be pressing ahead with its offensive, undeterred by the presence of what NATO says are about 20,000 Russian troops massed on the nearby border for a potential ground invasion.
Kiev put the size of the Russian forces much higher. „As of 11 o’clock today, about 45,000 troops of the armed forces and internal forces of the Russian Federation are concentrated in border areas,” Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told a briefing.
He said they were supported by 160 tanks, 1,360 armored vehicles, 390 artillery systems, up to 150 Grad missile launchers, 192 fighter aircraft and 137 attack helicopters.
Kiev has said in recent days that it succeeded in using diplomacy to prevent Russia from launching a ground invasion to protect the rebels under the guise of a humanitarian mission. Moscow announced on Friday it was ending war games in the area.
CITIES „CUT OFF”
Lysenko said Ukrainian government forces had finally succeeded in cutting off the road between Donetsk and Luhansk, the other main rebel-held city, which is closer to the Russian border. Kiev and its Western allies say the route has been the principal means of supplying the rebels in Donetsk with weapons.
„The forces of the anti-terrorist operation are preparing for the final stage of liberating Donetsk,” Lysenko told Reuters. „Our forces have completely cut Donetsk off from Luhansk. We are working to liberate both cities, but it’s better to liberate Donetsk first – it is more important.”
The leader of the rebels in Donetsk, Alexander Zakharchenko, a local man who took over the leadership from a Russian citizen last week, said the fighters were considering mounting a counter attack against government forces in the next two or three days.
And a volunteer government fighter suggested claims that government forces were about to take Donetsk were inflated. „Taking the town is an extremely complicated business and painful … It will take, at the very least, several weeks,” said Andriy Beletsky, commander of the so-called Azov battalion told journalists.
Lysenko said clashes took place in several parts of eastern Ukraine over the past 24 hours, with six Ukrainian service members killed and big losses to the rebel side. Rebel losses could not be independently confirmed.
Municipal authorities in Donetsk said artillery shelling knocked out power stations in the city and hit a high-security prison, killing one inmate and allowing more than 100 criminals to escape.
U.N. agencies say more than 1,100 people have been killed including government forces, rebels and civilians in the four months since rebels seized territory in the east and the government launched its crackdown. Kiev says 568 of its troops have been killed in combat.
Government forces have been advancing since June, pushing rebels into Donetsk and Luhansk, capitals of two provinces that the fighters have declared independent „people’s republics”.
Fighting in recent weeks has focused on the route linking the cities, near where Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in July, killing all 298 people on board. Washington says the plane was almost certainly shot down accidentally by rebels using an advanced Russian missile. Moscow denies this.
Fighting near the site forced the Netherlands to put off a mission to recover human remains and investigate the crash.
The rebels in eastern Ukraine have been led mostly by Russian citizens and they have heavy weaponry that Kiev and its allies say can only have come from Russia. Moscow denies aiding them.
Donetsk is facing an increasing shortage of food, water and fuel. Few people are on the streets, apart from groups of armed separatist fighters. There is relatively little traffic, with petrol in short supply. Those who have not left for the countryside are staying indoors. Banks are closed and pensions and social allowances are not being paid.
Shelling on Monday from the direction of the international airport and the suburb of Yasynuvata to the north knocked out a string of power stations, the municipal authority said.
http://allkyiv.in-site.in/2014/08/11/reuters-russia-sending-aid-convoy-to-ukraine-despite-western-warnings-of-invasion-pretext/
Investigators from an environmental watchdog set up as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement want to investigate whether Canada is enforcing its laws on toxic leakage from giant oilsands tailings ponds.
Canada has already told the Commission on Environmental Cooperation that it doesn’t have that right. The disagreement sets up a second fight between the Harper government and the three-nation body intended to ensure free trade doesn’t degrade environmental enforcement.
“The (investigators) have acted contrary to their authority,” says a letter from Environment Canada to the commission. “The current submission should be terminated.”
The conflict stems from a complaint filed in 2010 by two environmental groups and three individuals.
It cites reports and research from governments, industry and environmentalists that all conclude an unknown amount of tailings from the oilsands are seeping into area groundwater. The groups allege the seepage adds up to as much as four billion litres a year of waste water containing hydrocarbons and heavy metals known to be toxic to fish.
They say such releases break the Fisheries Act and they’ve recommended the commission investigate whether Canada is turning a blind eye to environmental crimes by a powerful and lucrative industry.
“We’ve all seen the accumulating evidence over the past year in terms of linking tailings to local watersheds,” said Hannah McKinnon of Environmental Defence Canada, one of the groups that filed the complaint. “Most of us believe they really don’t have this under control.”
On Thursday, commission investigators recommended the body begin looking into those complaints. Any such move must first be approved by a majority vote of the three NAFTA nations.
Instead of responding to the allegations, Canada tried to block the commission by pointing to a legal action filed by a private citizen in Fort McMurray, Alta., that levelled similar criticisms. The commission is not allowed to investigate any matter that’s before the courts.
That legal action was heard in February. The person who filed it confirmed to The Canadian Press that he considers the matter dead. Nevertheless, Environment Canada argues that because the appeal period isn’t over, the commission’s staff is offside.
That sets up an impasse which could play out similarly to another conflict with the commission over Canada’s handling of wild salmon stocks.
Commission staff have recommended an investigation into whether Canada protects wild salmon stocks adequately from disease carried by farmed salmon.
Canada, the U.S. and Mexico must vote on whether to approve a salmon investigation by Tuesday. Canada has said it will ignore the results.
“We do not intend to engage in or recognize as valid … any further consideration of this submission,” Environment Canada has written.
A vote on whether to proceed with a tailings pond investigation must be held by Oct. 27. The investigation must be complete within 180 working days and the countries have another 150 working days to review it and decide if it will be made public.
The commission’s enforcement powers are limited, McKinnon acknowledged.
“This is just another opportunity to shed legitimate light on these serious problems.”
McKinnon said the recommendation for a review comes as the world grows increasingly skeptical of Canada’s environmental policies.
“The world really is watching the tarsands and watching Alberta and watching the federal government to see if they really are the great environmental stewards that all of the PR claims they are.”
Since the commission was formed in 1995, Canada has been the subject of 37 per cent of complaints filed. Mexico was named in 49 per cent and the United States in 11 per cent.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/08/07/nafta_environmental_body_wants_to_probe_enforcement_of_canadian_oilsands_laws.html
erdogan are belele:
Watching the Harper government bluster and flounder in its attempt to assume a meaningful role in the burgeoning Ukraine crisis reminds me of the old rhyme, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive.”
The latest proclaimed escalation of Canada’s resolve came in the form of a photo op Thursday at CFB Trenton. On hand for the occasion was rarely seen Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, who personally waved off a Royal Canadian Air Force C-130 Hercules cargo plane.
The assembled journalists were told that this aircraft would be en route to Ukraine with nearly $5 million worth of military equipment. A news release itemized that equipment as being “helmets, ballistic eyewear, protective vests, first-aid kits, tents and sleeping bags.” The official rationale for dispatching this kit was that it “will allow Ukrainian security and border authorities to better detect and track the movement of illicit goods and people.”
This certainly sounds like a noble aim, but I’m not exactly sure just how some used camping gear and body armour will achieve that.
One would think those objectives could be better achieved through things like high-tech motion sensors, advanced ground radar systems and unmanned aerial vehicles. But then again, this is the same Conservative government that claimed to Canadians that the six old CF-18 fighter planes (without ammunition) we deployed to Romania and the anti-submarine frigate on station in the eastern Mediterranean Sea are somehow meaningful deterrents to any future Russian military aggression in Ukraine.
Nicholson summed up the hypocrisy of Canada’s latest gesture by stating that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s failure to end his support to armed rebel groups constitutes a real threat to international peace and security.”
If Putin is wrong for furnishing military aid in an escalating civil war, how can Canada be right for adding its own military hardware to the same equation?
It is similarly difficult to understand how Prime Minister Stephen Harper can beat his chest and declare his own strength of character for imposing trade sanctions against Russia, yet when Putin finally imposed reciprocal bans on Canadian products last week, Harper said this only indicated Moscow’s “desperation.”
The same double standard of judgment has been applied since the outset of the crisis last December. In those early days, masses of pro-Western demonstrators took to the streets of Kyiv to protest the pro-Russian politics of elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Marching arm-in-arm with them was none other than Canada’s controversial Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.
In subsequent months, the demonstrations turned far more violent when neo-Nazi radicals, such as the Right Sector and Svoboda Party, occupied Independence Square and clashed with riot police. On Feb. 20, after security forces fired on the crowds, Yanukovych was forced from office and soundly demonized in the Western media for having used excessive force against “his own people.” In total, the clashes in Kyiv during the Mayden Revolution phase resulted in the tragic deaths of about 77 Ukrainians.
Fast forward to the present. What began with eastern Ukrainian pro-Russian demonstrators denouncing the interim, post-Yanukovych, pro-Western Kyiv authority has quickly escalated into an almost full-scale civil war. Instead of Yanukovych’s riot police shooting rifles into a crowd, Ukrainian military forces are employing artillery, tanks, combat aircraft and even short-range ballistic missiles against pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. It is estimated that some 1,100 Ukrainians have been killed in these clashes, many of them innocent civilians.
If Yanukovych was a monster for using force against his own people, how can we not condemn newly elected President Petro Poroshenko for doing the same?
For the simple-minded who believe in a world of clear-cut good versus evil, wherein the just wear white hats and the scumbags wear black hats, it could be argued that being pro-Western means being pro-freedom and pro-democracy. Ergo, if anyone chooses to reject those two unassailable virtues, they deserve whatever fate awaits them.
However, another violent clash Thursday in Kiev’s Independence Square served to illustrate that Baird may have once again been a little off in his judgment of a situation that is far more complex than he originally grasped.
During the last five months, the radical mob that led to Yanukovych’s ouster has never relinquished its occupation of Independence Square. When security forces under the direction of Poroshenko tried to forcibly remove the occupiers, they were met with a hail of Molotov cocktails, billy clubs and chains. Turns out that the “freedom lovers” with whom Baird once so happily marched are in fact anarchist thugs, neo-Nazis and hooligans.
The irony of all this is that Baird accuses Putin of having “let slip the dogs of war” to ignite the current crisis, when Baird himself was the one unlatching the kennels.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1228558-taylor-harper-view-of-ukraine-can-be-naive
un nou conflict in Ucraina??? linga granita cu Romania??? ai nostri ce pazesc???
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Care este de fapt rostul acestor postări GEO? Pentru a alunga vizitatorii sau pentru a fragmenta vreo posibilă discuție pe forum mai ales când sunt atinse subiecte importante?
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Radu Iacoboaie
Sau poate rubrica de comentari a blogului saccsiv functioneaza si ca forum si atunci el posteaza si off spre a informa.
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Radu are dreptate într-un fel, nu numai că se fragmentează discuţii, dar unele postări dispar ( fără să le ştergi tu). Nu e problemă că Geo informează, dar e mult mai bine să comprime informaţia şi să o grupeze pe un singur topic, nu să împrăştie peste tot. Din panoul de comandă se percepe mai greu, dar dacă deschizi efectiv pagina pe fiecare artiicol, vei vedea că unele sunt foarte încărcate, se deschid voalat, pe anumite porţiuni sunt acoperite de pete negre şi dă impresia că site-ul ar fi virusat. ( de fapt sunt mulţi cititori care au semnalat acest fapt ).
Iertare!
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am si o propunere. saccsiv ar putea face un articol special cu teme zilnice si Geo ar putea posta acolo. ii admir munca dar cateodata e greu de urmarit comentariile la subiect. astfel s-ar forma, poate si o arhiva. si cine ar fi interesat ar putea intra acolo.
Doamne ajuta!
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geo
Poate ca blue are dreptate, deci iata ce-ti propun: pune in continuare fotografii si filme insa cand citezi un articol, nu-l mai posta integral, ci doar titlul, link-ul si eventual un paragraf esential.
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o.k. asa o sa fac…recunosc ca nu am vazut decit acum solicitarea…citeva zile voi fi plecat…pina marti…
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>Totuşi unde-au fost, românii?
Tehnica militara a aceor vremuri facea necesar ca o parte a armatei sa fie formata din profesionisti.
Mihai Vitezul avea valoni profesionisti in armata, se pare chiar la Turda. Acestia s-a fi inteles cu Basta pentru un pret mai bun.
In mod repetat, Madalin Voicu si alti membri de frunte ai minoritatii tizanesti din Romania, ii acuza pe romani ca sunt lasi si tradatori, dand ca exemplu asasinarea lui Mihai Viteazul. Trebuie vazut ce spun istoricii, si verificat daca alaturi de valoni nu au fost si romani implicati in tradarea de la Turda.
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>din marea operă a poetului, gazetarului şi a omului de excepţie Adrian Păunescu
Dupa parerea mea Adrian Paunescu a fost mare patriot, da nu crestin autentic.
Nu-l putem compara cu Ioan Alexandru de exmplu.
Viata lui: amante, copii din flori. La cenaclul Flacara a promovat o ideologie umanist-populista, cultul propriei personalitati alaturi de cel al lui Ceausescu, alaturi de patriotism si valori traditional-nsationale romanesti.
In primul rand s-a straduit pentru binele lui. S-a rupt de Ceausescu la mijlocul anilor 80, dar nu a dus-o rau.
Este preferabil culturnicilor pro-ue de azi, dar nu e un model crestin de urmat.
Cat despre poezia lui, sa asteptam sa vedem ce zic generatiile viitoare, dar cu mesajul nationalist++ din timpul vietii, cred ca va trebui sa asteptam cam mult, pt ca factorii geopolitici nu incurajeaza asa ceva; cel putin prin Romania.
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>Mihai Viteazul a fost ucis în urma unei conspiraţii?
Mihai Viteazul A FOST UCIS DE EUROPA ! O spune Tutea sau Steihatrdt.
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Problema e destul de complicata. Nu pot da un raspuns transant, insa parerea mea e ca trebuie sa dam dovada de rabdare si prudenta. Nu cred ca trebuie sa ne canonizam toti domnitorii vrednici, cred ca e de ajuns sa le pomenim faptele cele bune, sa le facem parastase si sa-i cinstim.
Nu trebuie sa uitam propria istorie, s-o „europenizam”, s-o „corectam” politic, insa nu trebuie sa cadem nici in extrema cealalta.
Exista si alti domnitori vrednici de pomenire: Mircea cel Batran, Ioan Voda cel Viteaz, Matei Basarab. Ce sa facem, sa-i canonizam?
Nu cred ca pentru a acorda unui domnitor respectul cuvenit trebuie neaparat canonizat, ci trebuie amintite faptele lor bune si ravna cu care au condus poporul. Acesta e lucrul cel mai important. Diferenta fata de conducatorii de azi. Le sunt ridicate statui, dar nu se face comparatie intre faptele lor si faptele celor de acum.
Imi amintesc cum s-a scandalizat lumea, pe tacute, atunci cand nomenclatura comunista ii ridica osanale lui Ceausescu si cum il pusesera in rand cu marii domnitori. Privind in urma la ceea ce a facut totusi Ceausescu pentru Romania (independenta energetica, stingerea tuturor datoriilor) si ce a urmat dupa ’89, am ajuns sa-l apreciez. Ceausescu a daramat biserici, a oprimat poporul roman (nu el personal, ci politrucii zelosi), dar a fost ucis in ziua de Craciun. Pentru ce? Pentru ca Romania sa ajunga o colonie. Lucrurile sunt foarte complicate.
In aceasta discutie nu intra sub nici o forma Sfintii Martiri Brancoveni.
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Ionut
Mihai Viteazul nu e Sfant doar pentru ca a fost un mare domnitor.
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Cred că indiferența românilor față de omorârea conducătorilor lor își are rădăcinile în obiceiurile păgâne ale dacilor de dinaintea asimilării ortodoxiei. Dacă citim „Istoria ideilor și credințelor religioase” a lui Mircea Eliade (pe scurt, „Istoria religiilor” cum ne-am obișnuit s-o numim) aflăm că în credința păgână a vechilor daci se afla și obiceiul sacrificării celui mai bun fiu ai conducătorului Daciei pe altarul zeilor de-atunci (în speță Zamolxis sau Zalmoxis, fost preot al dacilor zeificat datorită „puterilor supranaturale” prin care îi uimise pe daci în timpul vieții). În timpul ritualului de sacrificiu, femeile dace dansau și făceau libațiuni cu (înghițeau efectiv!) hălci de carne crudă, în dorința, probabil, de a-i îmbia pe zei la „degustarea” fiului de conducător care tocmai era jertfit. Obiceiul a fost descris și în filmul „Dacii” al defunctului regizor Sergiu Nicolaescu (Dumnezeu să-l ierte!). Referitor la cât de anacronic și irațional, ca să nu mai vorbim de cât de păcătos din punctul de vedere al credinței creștine, putea să fie acest obicei, cred că nu mai are rost să discutăm. Merită, însă, subliniată psihologia dezvoltată prin acest obicei în mentalul dac: fiul de conducător se străduia să ajungă cel mai bun între frații săi, știind bine, însă, că nu o făcea pentru a-și pune în valoare calitățile deosebite în conducerea ulterioară efectivă a neamului său, ci pentru a fi… omorât în numele neamului său! Iar dacul de rând accepta, în numele zeilor, ideea ca cel mai bun viitor conducător al său să fie mai bine omorât decât să ajungă efectiv conducător pentru binele poporului. Aceasta poate fi o explicație pentru resemnarea și indiferența ulterioară o românului de rând în fața sorții conducătorilor săi, poate chiar și pentru psihologia baladei „Miorița”.
Greșeala supremă, din punctul de vedere al acestui vechi obicei păgân care a lăsat astfel de sechele nefirești și dăunătoare în mentalul românilor a făcut-o, însă, regele Decebal care, urmărit de romani după războiul din 105-106, văzându-se înconjurat și fără putință de scăpare, în loc să accepte lupta până la ultima suflare în fața vrăjmașului, s-a sinucis. De fapt, nu cred că a fost vorba, propriu-zis, de o sinucidere lașă, fiindcă Decebal, așa cum a dovedit-o pe câmpul de luptă, cu siguranță nu a fost un laș, ci de propria oferire ca ofrandă pentru îmbunarea zeilor spre a le acorda, până la urmă, dacilor victoria chiar și fără el în calitate de conducător. Cu mintea întunecată de credința păgână, Decebal n-a înțeles că făcea cel mai mare rău, lăsând oștirea și întregul neam fără cap, dar nu ca urmare a unei confruntări directe normale a sa cu vrăjmașul, care ar fi legitimat și sădit germenii unei viitoare ridicări a unui alt conducător puternic al dacilor care să-l înfrunte și să-l alunge pe agresor, după logica: „azi ai fost tu mai puternic și m-ai învins, dar mâine voi fi eu mai puternic și te voi învinge și te voi alunga”, ci ca o consecință a unei aparente lașități tăietoare de orice speranță și promotoare a resemnării păguboase de care ne facem vinovați cu toții astăzi.
Desigur că resemnarea românului nu este rodul doar al acestui obicei păgân sau al acestei greșeli a lui Decebal. Și vicisitudinile ulterioare din istoria noastră inclusiv contemporană au condus la această resemnare: nu se statornicea bine omul în vatra căminului și a satului său, că iar venea zvon de incursiune turcească, sau leșească, sau muscălească, sau mai știu eu de ce alt fel de -ască și trebuia iar sau să lupte, sau să-și ia picioarele la spinare prin munți ca să-și scape pielea, această continuă rupere de ritm conducând la o relativizare a credinței într-un trai mai bun, tihnit, cu un rost bine definit, altul decât cel al luptei continue împotriva agresorului.
Totuși, cred că originile resemnării condamnabile în fața sorții nefaste a conducătorilor noștri se află în acest vechi obicei păgân al dacilor. Și mai cred că este ca un blestem care încă ne apasă pentru că nu vrem să părăsim desăvârșit obiceiurile vechi păgâne ale strămoșilor noștri, ci pe multe dintre ele încă le mai considerăm bune, vrednice de a fi cinstite dimpreună cu noile obiceiuri creștine. Auzim de tot felul de obiceiuri de prin multe locuri ale țării, că dacă în ziua de cutare cineva face cutare sau cutare lucru sau are nu știu ce semn, va avea parte de nu știu ce lucru bun sau rău și respectăm „cu sfințenie” aceste obiceiuri ca pe ceva inofensiv care face, chipurile, parte din tradiția românului. Ba unele din aceste obiceiuri sunt practicate duminica, după slujba Sfintei Liturghii, adică, vezi Doamne, dăm cinstea cuvenită Lui Dumnezeu, dar să nu ne stricăm nici cu dracul. Chiar așa să fie? Să mai avem, oare, dreptul de a conserva, fie și numai formal, aceste vechi credințe demonice, odată ce ne considerăm creștini? Credința că renunțarea la vechile obiceiuri păgâne ale dacilor i-ar necinsti pe strămoși este falsă, pentru că cinstirea memoriei strămoșilor noștri se face prin conservarea și practicarea virtuților lor (care nu puține au fost), nu a obiceiurilor pe care credința cea adevărată le-a vădit ca fiind greșite. Strămoșii noștri au avut vină, dar mică, fiindcă din neștiință s-au lăsat amăgiți de practicile păgâne. Vina noastră este, însă, mare, fiindcă, în cunoștință de cauză privind Adevărul, perpetuăm, chiar și numai la modul formal, aceste obiceiuri și îi necinstim, în fapt, pe strămoși, pentru că e ca și cum am spune: „strămoșii noștri au fost buni și mari și înțelepți, dar uite și ce tâmpenii făceau!”
Cum să ne scape Dumnezeu de blestemul rezultat din vechile obiceiuri păgâne ale dacilor dacă noi înșine nu vrem să ne descotorosim de aceste obiceiuri?
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catalin_b
Doamne ajuta! Iertare frate, te rog mult. Ai citit e-mailurile mele?
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E-mail-urile le-am citit, frate și o să-ți răspund la ele tot pe e-mail.
Am socotit un lucru important să prezint aceste idei legate de articol. Iertare dacă am greșit.
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catalin_b
Nu ai gresit frate, doar ca nu stiam de tine si ce s-o fi intamplat.
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catalin_b
Doamne ajuta!
Iertare, frate.
Ti-am scris acum un e-mail.
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Revin cu o corectură importantă la analiza pe marginea articolului și anume că, în critica adusă regelui Decebal pentru gestul sinuciderii, am trecut cu vederea un amănunt psihologic foarte însemnat: conștiința descendenței romanilor din daci pe care o aveau atât regele Decebal cât și împăratul Traian, datorită căreia războaiele fratricide daco-romane dintre 101-102 și 105-106 au avut un caracter foarte insolit pentru ambele tabere și care, fără îndoială, a conferit momentului în care regele Decebal se afla singur împresurat de vrăjmași un tragism fără precedent și fără alternativă. Rog să fiu iertat pentru că am îndrăznit să judec fapta marelui rege Decebal.
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Mai mult spam va rog cu toate aceste comentarii. Din suflet va spun (caci inima e pamanteasca), TARE as fi vrut sa vorbim despre Sfantul Mihai Viteazul, si despre romani… insa mai bine spam si multe minciuni scrise de alti oameni pe tot felul de retele media masonice si propagandiste IN LOC SA VORBIM LUCRURI INTELEPTE….
O zi buna!
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Mario
Pe cuvantul tau ca tu doreai sa vorbesti de lucruri intelepte?
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A se citi și acest articol scris în apărarea Sf. Mihai Viteazul și a ortodoxiei, despre bătălia de la Călugăreni – 13/23 august 1595 și Sfântul Nicolae, ajutorul tainic al lui Mihai Viteazul cel Sfânt:
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A se citi și acest articol scris în apărarea Sf. Mihai Viteazul și a ortodoxiei, despre bătălia de la Călugăreni – 13/23 august 1595 și Sfântul Nicolae, ajutorul tainic al lui Mihai Viteazul cel Sfânt:
http://activenews.ro/video-419-ani-de-la-batalia-de-la-calugareni-victorie-sau-infrangere-afla-cu-cine-avut-mihai-viteazul-o-relatie-speciala_1854415.html
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[…] Daniel Vla: E SFANT! Voievodul Mihai Viteazul, mucenic al neamului şi mărturisitor al ortodoxiei […]
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[…] Daniel Vla: E SFANT! Voievodul Mihai Viteazul, mucenic al neamului şi mărturisitor al ortodoxiei […]
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[…] Daniel Vla: E SFANT! Voievodul Mihai Viteazul, mucenic al neamului şi mărturisitor al ortodoxiei […]
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