zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — Washington Post, meet Pravmir ]
.

Putin and the Patriarch: a Christian Jihad in al-Sham!

I was prepping this for yesterday’s post, saving relevant articles in their own little folder, but got sleepy before actually writing this business up, and today’s Washingtomn Post does the job better than I could have, so you can go read The Christian zeal behind Russia’s war in Syria to get the basics.

Most striking feature of that story, ICYMI, is this tweet:

Russian Orthodox priest blesses a Russian military base using an icon of Stalin. HT @vorobyov pic.twitter.com/bWKnLE1nTk

— James (@historyboy77) June 18, 2015

I’m not sure whether that’s a Russian base “facing” Syria or Ukraine — the WaPo seems to have illustrations of both, which is a tad confusing — but an icon of Stalin?

**

Aside from the base and its purposes, however, it’s worth noting that Pravmir in late June discussed How the Church to respond to the attempts to make the image similar to the icons of Stalin? (lacking Russian, I have to go with Google Translate’s translation), and that Archpriest Alexander Saltykova explained:

The Church has responded to the recent actions A. Prokhanov, as well as before it meets a number of similar cases involving attempts to write psevdoikony of Stalin and Lenin, Hitler and such historical figures.

So Saratov archdiocese called the action A. Prokhanov “blatant provocation”. His attempts to organize a “religious worship” “psevdoikony depicting IV Stalin’s “cause” regret and resentment. ”

It is also recalled that the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church “has repeatedly emphasized,” that “canonization persecutor of the Church and the organizer of the bloody mass repression impossible” and “The very idea is absurd.”

See also:

Saratov archdiocese apologized to the believers of the ceremony with the icon of Stalin

Saratov archdiocese called a provocation action of the writer, the founder of the “Izborsk club” Alexander Prokhanov. Thus, members of the clergy have commented on the incident at the air base in Engels, where the priest was consecrated by order made izbortsev icon of “Our Lady Sovereign”, which is surrounded by Soviet marshals depicted Generalissimo Joseph Stalin.

**

Seems there’s a little more to this story than meets the Washington Post eye.

I’ll be interested to see what John Schindler makes of this, and also welcome comments from any others interested in Russia and or Orthodoxy reading here..

[ by Charles Cameron – omnium gatherum — USMC predicting 2045 — is 2031 The End? — Saudis. friend or foe? ]
.

Splitting hairs, atoms, black swans?

I’m thinking of Lise Meitner as I view the Marine Corps’ ambitiously titled Security Environment Forecast 2030-2045. Who would have thought in 1919 that Hahn, Meitner and Strassmann in 1935 would begin a program that resulted in 1939 in her 1939 paper Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction — which in turn led to Moe Berg‘s attending a lecture by Heisenberg, the Trinity test at Alamagordo, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

And yet the period from 1919 (Treaty of Versailles) to 1939 (fission theorized) is only 20 years, and from 1919 to 1945 (nuclear warfare) is 26 years — equivalents, respectively, to the periods from 2015 (today) to 2035 (a third of the way into the USMC’s period of prediction) and 2041 (still within the UMSC timeline).

In view of this comparison, is the MCSEF’s assertion plausible?

Analysis of patterns and trends in seven categories, including demographics, technology, resource competition, environmental stresses, globalization, governance, and urban littorals, enables projection 15 to 30 years into the future of four plausible world futures: a baseline future, two alternative futures, and a “preferred” future.

— and we haven’t even considered how much influence von Neumann and Turing would have by 1945, as understood in 2019..

**

2031 will be the End of Days:

— for the record, yes, because Christ was crucified in 31 CE:

— at least according to the video Passage through the Veil of Time.

As a sidenote, the USMC Futures Directorate either hasn’t run across this date-setting (likely) or (most improbable) dismisses it as lacking sound reasoning or evidence. Ha!

**

Saudi Arabia — on or off the hook?

Sources:

Seattle Times, Judge drops Saudi Arabia from Sept. 11 lawsuit

The Independent, The evil empire of Saudi Arabia is the West’s real enemy