"Western media tries to soften Zelensky’s crime by talking about banning the 'Russian' Orthodox Church" by Lucas Leiroz

 

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Western media tries to soften Zelensky’s crime by talking about banning the “Russian” Orthodox Church

Lucas Leiroz

August 28, 2024

It is not just the criminalization of a church linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, but true persecution of the faith of more than 80% of Ukrainians

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Recently, Ukraine finally passed a total ban on the Orthodox Church, making the faith of more than 80% of the Ukrainian people illegal. The decision did not surprise anyone, as several laws restricting the Church’s activities had already been approved in the country since 2022 – in addition to the de facto persecution of Orthodoxy taking place since the Maidan coup in 2014. However, even so, the Western media continues trying to soften the crimes of its proxy regime.

The current main narrative in the Western media is that Ukraine has banned the “Russian Orthodox Church”. By calling the Orthodox Church on Ukrainian soil “Russian”, the media induces public opinion to believe that the ban only affects a specific religious group linked to Moscow, and does not harm the Orthodox faithful as a whole. However, this is an easily refutable lie.

Unlike the Catholic Church, Orthodoxy does not have a “universal bishop” – like a “Pope” – and its administration is therefore divided into regional jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction of the Church is absolutely sovereign, with Orthodoxy being a Communion of Faith between different Autocephalous Churches. Each Autocephalous Church administers a canonical territory, with no Church being authorized to interfere in the internal affairs of another’s territory.

The canonical territory of an Autocephalous Church is not necessarily restricted to the borders of nation states. Canonical territorial delimitation concerns the historical development of Orthodoxy in a region. State borders are much more unstable than canonical borders – which, although they can change, require much more time to develop such reconfigurations.

In the case of the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, Russian jurisdiction extends to almost the entire post-Soviet space, in addition to some regions of Far Asia, such as China and Japan. Ukraine, for obvious reasons, has always been part of the canonical jurisdiction of Moscow and never wanted to stop being so. There are even reports that canonical autocephaly was already offered to Ukrainians by the Russians, being rejected.

In the case of very large canonical territories, such as Russia’s, it is common for there to be division into local “sub-jurisdictions”. These sub-jurisdictions sometimes correspond to the specific territories of some nation states. This is precisely the case with the Orthodox Church of Japan and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for example – both sub-jurisdictions subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate. These regional churches have broad administrative autonomy, but do not have canonical sovereignty (autocephaly).

It is important to emphasize how these divisions are purely administrative in nature, although they correspond to historical, cultural and political factors. There is no such a thing as an “ethnic division” of Orthodoxy, being this type of segregationist mentality – known as “phyletism” – banned as a heresy in the Orthodox Communion.

So, it must be said very clearly that by banning the canonical Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) on Ukrainian soil, the Kiev regime simply banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself. In other words, the faith of 80% of the Ukrainian people has become illegal in the country.

Zelensky did not simply banish the Church. He also called the Orthodox Christians of the Moscow Patriarchate “Muscovite demons” in his speech on Ukraine’s “independence day.” Furthermore, Artyom Dmitruk, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who voted against the Church ban, is being persecuted by the regime, having even suffered attacks on members of his family. The police are also reacting with violence against all demonstrators protesting against the ban on the Church, having then an official situation of religious persecution in the neo-Nazi regime.

It is also interesting to mention that there are efforts by the Western media to promote an ultranationalist Ukrainian schismatic sect – the so-called “Kiev Patriarchate”. The group was created by some former Ukrainian ultranationalist clerics in the 1990s following unsuccessful minority demands of autocephaly for Kiev. Since 2014, the sect has become a kind of Ukrainian “state church”, receiving strong support from the Maidan Junta – including the handover of canonical Church assets confiscated by the Ukrainian state.

This sect is known for venerating as saints the so-called “national heroes” of Ukraine, such as SS member and Holocaust collaborator Stepan Bandera. Furthermore, the group carries out several blasphemous acts against Orthodox Christianity, preaching a kind of Russophobic “anti-Orthodoxy”.

Unfortunately, however, political interference in religion has been strong in Ukraine, mainly from external actors. The “Kiev Patriarchate” was recently “recognized” by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in an illegal intervention maneuver in the canonical territory of Moscow. Constantinople is fortunately isolated in its decision, being supported only by the Autocephalous Churches of Athens and Alexandria.

There is a political explanation for this process. The Patriarch of Constantinople is always a Turkish citizen. It is law in Turkey that only a Turkish bishop is elected Patriarch – which, in practice, means that only bishops who were soldiers in the Turkish Army (and consequently in NATO itself) are qualified to command the local church. The current Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, is a former Turkish/NATO soldier, having certainly gone through a process of Western brainwashing in his youth. Furthermore, for decades the Patriarchate of Constantinople has been recognized by Orthodox theologians as an institution heavily infiltrated by doctrines condemned by the Church, being in a gradual process of separation from the rest of the Canonical Communion.

There is also a political explanation for the fact that only Athens and Alexandria “supported” Constantinople on the Ukrainian issue. At first, both churches, as well as the rest of the Orthodox world, condemned Constantinople, but political blackmail was used to make them review their decisions. Greece is an Orthodox state, where clerics are like “public servants”. Being a member of NATO and the EU, the Greek state threatened to cut financial support to the Church in case of condemnation of Bartholomew’s anti-canonical actions – which would leave clerics without a salary for their basic expenses. In the same sense, Alexandria is an economically weak Patriarchate, dependent on Turkish and Greek money for its financing, which led the local jurisdiction to “support” Constantinople.

Bartholomew has strongly influenced events in Ukraine. He has participated in several meetings and telephone calls with Turkish, American, European and Ukrainian diplomats, military personnel and intelligence officers, always helping to develop plans to weaponize religion in Ukraine in favor of the West. Unfortunately, this anti-canonical situation made communion between Moscow and Constantinople impossible to be maintained. There is currently a crisis in Orthodoxy similar to that of the Middle Ages that led to the rupture between Western Roman jurisdiction and the rest of the Church.

All of these topics are extremely complex for the Western public, who are not familiar to the traditions, rules and nomenclature of the Orthodox Church. But it is important that these clarifications are made because only then is it possible to debunk the fallacy spread by the mainstream media that the “Russian” Church was banned in Ukraine. In fact, Kiev banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself, which has always been part of the Moscow Patriarchate, this canonical union not being a reflection of any political tie, but of a common historical-cultural development.

"The western way of war – Owning the narrative trumps reality" by Alastair Crooke

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The western way of war – Owning the narrative trumps reality

Alastair Crooke

August 26, 2024

German equipment visible in Kursk has raised old ghosts, and consolidated awareness of the hostile western intentions toward Russia. “Never again” is the unspoken riposte.

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War propaganda and feint are as old as the hills. Nothing new. But what is new is that infowar is no longer the adjunct to wider war objectives – but has become an end in and of itself.

The West has come to view ‘owning’ the winning narrative – and presenting the Other’s as clunky, dissonant, and extremist – as being more important than facing facts-on-the ground. Owning the winning narrative is to win, in this view. Virtual ‘victory’ thus trumps ‘real’ reality.

So, war becomes rather the setting for imposing ideological alignment across a wide global alliance and enforcing it via compliant media.

This objective enjoys a higher priority than, say, ensuring a manufacturing capacity sufficient to sustain military objectives. Crafting an imagined ‘reality’ has taken precedence over shaping the ground reality.

The point here is that this approach – being a function of whole of society alignment (both at home and abroad) – creates entrapments into false realities, false expectations, from which an exit (when such becomes necessary), turns near impossible, precisely because imposed alignment has ossified public sentiment. The possibility for a State to change course as events unfold becomes curtailed or lost, and the accurate reading of facts on the ground veers toward the politically correct and away from reality.

The cumulative effect of ‘a winning virtual narrative’ holds the risk nonetheless, of sliding incrementally toward inadvertent ‘real war’.

Take, for example, the NATO-orchestrated and equipped incursion into the symbolically significant Kursk Oblast. In terms of a ‘winning narrative’, its appeal to the West is obvious: Ukraine ‘takes the war to into Russia’.

Had the Ukrainian forces succeeded in capturing the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, they then would have had a significant bargaining chip, and might well have syphoned away Russian forces from the steadily collapsing Ukrainian ‘Line’ in Donbas.

And to top it off, (in infowar terms), the western media was prepped and aligned to show President Putin as “frozen” by the surprise incursion, and “wobbling” with anxiety that the Russian public would turn against him in their anger at the humiliation.

Bill Burns, head of CIA, opined that “Russia would offer no concessions on Ukraine, until Putin’s over-confidence was challenged, and Ukraine could show strength”. Other U.S. officials added that the Kursk incursion – in itself – would not bring Russia to the negotiating table; It would be necessary to build on the Kursk operation with other daring operations (to shake Moscow’s sang froid).

Of course, the overall aim was to show Russia as fragile and vulnerable, in line with the narrative that, at any moment Russia, could crack apart and scatter to the wind, in fragments. Leaving the West as winner, of course.

In fact, the Kursk incursion was a huge NATO gamble: It involved mortgaging Ukraine’s military reserves and armour, as chips on the roulette table, as a bet that an ephemeral success in Kursk would upend the strategic balance. The bet was lost, and the chips forfeit.

Plainly put, this Kursk affair exemplifies the West’s problem with ‘winning narratives’: Their inherent flaw is that they are grounded in emotivism and eschew argumentation. Inevitably, they are simplistic. They are simply intended to fuel a ‘whole of society’ common alignment. Which is to say that across MSM; business, federal agencies, NGOs and the security sector, all should adhere to opposing all ‘extremisms’ threatening ‘our democracy’.

This aim, of itself, dictates that the narrative be undemanding and relatively uncontentious: ‘Our Democracy, Our Values and Our Consensus’. The Democratic National Convention, for example, embraces ‘Joy’ (repeated endlessly), ‘moving Forward’ and ‘opposing weirdness’ as key statements. They are banal, however, these memes are given their energy and momentum, not by content so much, as by the deliberate Hollywood setting lending them razzamatazz and glamour.

It is not hard to see how this one-dimensional zeitgeist may have contributed to the U.S. and its allies’ misreading the impact of today’s Kursk ‘daring adventure’ on ordinary Russians.

‘Kursk’ has history. In 1943, Germany invaded Russia in Kursk to divert from its own losses, with Germany ultimately defeated at the Battle of Kursk. The return of German military equipment to the environs of Kursk must have left many gaping; the current battlefield around the town of Sudzha is precisely the spot where, in 1943, the Soviet 38th and 40th armies coiled for a counteroffensive against the German 4th Army.

Over the centuries, Russia has been variously attacked on its vulnerable flank from the West. And more recently by Napoleon and Hitler. Unsurprisingly, Russians are acutely sensitive to this bloody history. Did Bill Burns et al think this through? Did they imagine that NATO invading Russia itself would make Putin feel ‘challenged’, and that with one further shove, he would fold, and agree to a ‘frozen’ outcome in Ukraine – with the latter entering NATO? Maybe they did.

Ultimately the message that western services sent was that the West (NATO) is coming for Russia. This is the meaning of deliberately choosing Kursk. Reading the runes of Bill Burns message says prepare for war with NATO.

Just to be clear, this genre of ‘winning narrative’ surrounding Kursk is neither deceit nor feint. The Minsk Accords were examples of deceit, but they were deceits grounded in rational strategy (i.e. they were historically normal). The Minsk deceits were intended to buy the West time to further Ukraine’s militarisation – before attacking the Donbas. The deceit worked, but only at the price of a rupture of trust between Russia and the West. The Minsk deceits however, also accelerated an end to the 200-year era of the westification of Russia.

Kursk rather, is a different ‘fish’. It is grounded in the notions of western exceptionalism. The West perceives itself as tacking to ‘the right side of History’. ‘Winning narratives’ essentially assert – in secular format – the inevitability of the western eschatological Mission for global redemption and convergence. In this new narrative context, facts-on-the-ground become mere irritants, and not realities that must be taken into account.

This their Achilles’ Heel.

The DNC convention in Chicago however, underscored a further concern:

Just as the hegemonic West arose out of the Cold War era shaped and invigorated through dialectic opposition to communism (in the western mythology), so we see today, a (claimed) totalising ‘extremism’ (whether of MAGA mode; or of the external variety: Iran, Russia, etc.) – posed in Chicago in a similar Hegelian dialectic opposition to the former capitalism versus communism; but in today’s case, it is “extremism” in conflict with “Our Democracy”.

The DNC Chicago narrative-thesis is itself a tautology of identity differentiation posing as ‘togetherness’ under a diversity banner and in conflict with ‘whiteness’ and ‘extremism’. ‘Extremism’ effectively plainly is being set up as the successor to the former Cold War antithesis – communism.

The Chicago ‘back-room’ may be imagining that a confrontation with extremism – writ widely – will again, as it did in the post-Cold War era, yield an American rejuvenation. Which is to say that a conflict with Iran, Russia, and China (in a different way) may come onto the agenda. The telltale signs are there (plus the West’s need for a re-set of its economy, which war regularly provides).

The Kursk ploy no doubt seemed clever and audacious to London and Washington. Yet with what result? It achieved neither objective of taking Kursk NPP, nor of syphoning Russian troops from the Contact Line. The Ukrainian presence in the Kursk Oblast will be eliminated.

What it did do, however, is put an end to all prospects of an eventual negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Distrust of the U.S. in Russia is now absolute. It has made Moscow more determined to prosecute the special operation to conclusion. German equipment visible in Kursk has raised old ghosts, and consolidated awareness of the hostile western intentions toward Russia. ‘Never again’ is the unspoken riposte.

"Vaccination Campaign in Gaza: Polio Eradication or Transition to Bio-Warfare?" by Mike Whitney

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Vaccination Campaign in Gaza: Polio Eradication or Transition to Bio-Warfare?

Mike Whitney • August 26, 2024

 • 1,600 Words

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This is seriously creepy.

Over a million doses of polio vaccine have been shipped to Israel in preparation for a mass vaccination campaign in Gaza. The vaccines are an emergency response to the first confirmed case of polio reported in Gaza last month. According to an article in the New York Times:

UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, said it was delivering the vaccines in cooperation with the World Health Organization… UNRWA; and other groups. UNRWA officials said they hoped to deliver the first vaccines to Gazan children starting on Saturday….

The Gaza Health Ministry confirmed that the vaccines had reached Gaza and that preparations to begin the campaign to inoculate children under 10 were underway…. the U.N. said on Monday that its already hamstrung humanitarian operations had been brought to a temporary halt after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of Deir al-Balah, where the agency has its central operations.

But a senior U.N. official… said… that there was no change to plans to begin polio vaccinations, despite the fact that the temporary pause in the U.N.’s humanitarian mission. Polio Vaccines Arrive in Gaza, but Distributing Them Is the Next Challenge, New York Times

So, the UN is unable to distribute humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, but they are charging ahead with a mass vaccination campaign?

Doesn’t that sound a bit strange? Keep in mind, the Israelis have been preventing food, water and medicine from entering Gaza for months which has led to mass starvation and a sharp uptick in preventable diseases. But now we are expected to believe that they care about the physical well-being of the people they have been bombing to smithereens for the last 10 months?

I’m not buying it. Here’s more from the Times:

Speaking from Zawaida, in central Gaza, Mr. Rose, of UNRWA, said that more than 3,000 people would be involved in the vaccination campaign, about a third of them from UNRWA. Mobile health teams would help deliver the vaccines to shelters, clinics and schools, but he said a humanitarian pause was needed for parents and children to safely meet aid workers at those sites.

Aid workers “will do our absolute utmost to deliver the campaign because, without it, we know that the conditions will just be worse someday,” Mr. Rose said. “It is not guaranteed that it will be a success.”

For children who contract polio, he added, the prospects of receiving proper treatment remain “incredibly bad” while many of Gaza’s hospitals and health clinics are closed or only partly functioning as a result of the conflict. New York Times

Promotional Video for Polio Vaccine Campaign in Gaza

It just gets weirder and weirder.

So—according to the Times—aid workers will require a “humanitarian pause” (aka—A ceasefire) the likes of which Netanyahu has stubbornly refused for 10 months straight. But now—after just one confirmed case of polio—he’s expected to reverse the policy in order to save the same the people he’s been pulverizing for the last year? Isn’t that what the Times is saying?

And how do we explain Mr. Rose’s sudden concern for young Palestinians when he was nowhere to be found when these same children were having their arms and legs amputated without anesthesia, medication or even proper sanitation. It’s a real mystery. Here’s more:

The W.H.O. chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a statement on Thursday that a 10-month-old child in Gaza had contracted polio and had become paralyzed in one leg.(NYTimes)

One child? Is he kidding?

Hasn’t Tedros noticed the mountain of carnage piled up across the entire 25-mile Gaza hellscape or has he been in a vaccine-induced coma for the last year?

Everything about this mass vaccination campaign stinks to high heaven. The last thing Israel wants is more healthy Palestinians. We know that for a fact. Here’s more:

UNICEF and the W.H.O. have called on “all parties” in the conflict to put in place a weeklong humanitarian pause in Gaza to allow both rounds of vaccines to be delivered, saying that “without the humanitarian pauses, the delivery of the campaign will not be possible.”

COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry’s agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories, said in a statement on Monday that the vaccines had been delivered to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel. The agency added that the campaign would be conducted in coordination with the Israeli military “as part of the routine humanitarian pauses” that it observes, which, it said, would allow Palestinians to reach vaccination centers. (NYTimes)

Did you catch that last part? The campaign is going to be “conducted in coordination” with that great humanitarian organization, the Israeli Defense Forces. How does that square with the fact that Israel regards Palestinian children as Amalek? Are they planning to save them from polio so they can gun them down on the streets of Gaza sometime in the future? How does that work exactly?

And why in heaven’s name would Netanyahu agree to “a weeklong humanitarian pause in Gaza” when he brazenly rejected the Biden-backed ceasefire, the UN Security Council-supported ceasefire, and the relentless appeal for a ceasefire from the vast majority of countries around the world? How did the WHO persuade him to change his mind when all the others failed?

But rest assured, Netanyahu would never agree to a humanitarian pause unless it helped to advance his own political agenda, which is the total expulsion of the native population. That’s the only reason Bibi would change his policy. Which is why we suspect that there is more here than meets the eye.

Would it surprise you to know that vaccines have been used in Africa, Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines as anti-fertility drugs? Would it shock you to know that western elites have used vaccine campaigns to target people who didn’t realize that they were being used as lab rats in a nefarious eugenics experiment? This is from an article at Global Research:

“According to LifeSiteNews,… the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association is charging UNICEF and WHO with sterilizing millions of girls and women under cover of an anti-tetanus vaccination program sponsored by the Kenyan government…

… all six samples tested positive for the HCG antigen. The HCG antigen is used in anti-fertility vaccines, but was found present in tetanus vaccines targeted to young girls and women of childbearing age. Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, stated in a bulletin released November 4:

“This proved right our worst fears; that t his WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine. This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization but was ignored. Mass Sterilization”: Kenyan Doctors Find Anti-fertility Agent in UN Tetanus Vaccine?“, Global Research

RFK Jr on Polio Vaccine

And here’s another article from Global Research titled UN Forced to Admit Gates-funded Vaccine Is Causing Polio Outbreak in Africa:

The United Nations has been forced to admit that a major international vaccine initiative is actually causing a deadly outbreak of the very disease it was supposed to wipe-out.

While international organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO) will regularly boast about ‘eradicating polio’ with vaccines—the opposite seems to be the case, with vaccines causing the deaths of scores of young people living in Africa. Health officials have now admitted that their plan to stop ‘wild’ polio is backfiring, as scores children are being paralyzed by a deadly strain of the pathogen derived from a live vaccine – causing a virulent wave of polio to spread.

This latest pharma-induced pandemic started out in the African countries of Chad and Sudan, with the culprit identified as vaccine-derived polio virus type 2. Officials now fear this new dangerous strain could soon ‘jump continents,’ causing further deadly outbreaks around the world.

Shocking as it sounds, this Big Pharma debacle is not new. After spending some $16 billion over 30 years to eradicate polio, international health bodies have ‘accidentally’ reintroduced the disease to in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and also Iran, as the central Asia region was hit by a virulent strain of polio spawned by the pharmaceutical vaccine. Also, in 2019, the government of Ethiopia ordered the destruction of 57,000 vials of type 2 oral polio vaccine (mOPV2) following a similar outbreak of vaccine-induced polio. The same incident has happened in India as well. UN Forced to Admit Gates-funded Vaccine Is Causing Polio Outbreak in Africa, Global Research

Joe Rogan on the African Polio Vaccine Scandal

It’s worth noting that the World Health Organization is not a benign public health agency selflessly seeking to eradicate disease and sickness wherever they may be found. Quite the contrary. It is a flock of power-mad internationalists who seek to push through a “global pandemic treaty…. that would grant it absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more. (Children’s Health Defense ) In short, the WHO is a tyrannical global government accountable to no one. Sound familiar?

And if the WHO is teaming up with Netanyahu to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza, we can be reasonably certain that they’re up to no-good. In fact, we can be sure of it.