Friday, January 30, 2015

Nineteen Reasons to Love Fast ‘Food’



From NaturalSociety.com:

Ever wonder what makes up highly popular fast food, such as McDonald’s chicken nuggets or french fries? If the fast food giants recently launched ‘transparency campaign’ tells us anything, it’s that the public is increasingly demanding truth and change. But what McDonald’s ‘truth campaign’ isn’t telling us is that much of its food is lathered in questionable, health-compromising ingredients.

In the most recent transparency video from McDonald’s, Grant Imahara explains that there are 19 ingredients in America’s favorite fries, one of which is polydimethylsiloxane, which is used in the production of silly putty. This seemingly ‘essential’ french fry-Silly Putty ingredient has been making headlines, and I can tell you that it won’t be the last headline you see.

During his ‘investigation,’ he found that dimethylpolysiloxane is used in the making of McDonald’s fries along with a petrol-based chemical called tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ). While anyone might immediately suspect that these ingredients may pose a hazard (and you wouldn’t be wrong), Grant reassures viewers that these are both safe additives used for perfectly good reasons.

 . . .

Source:  Michael Barrett, ‘The 19 Ingredients in McDonald’s Fries - Including a Form of Silicone Found in Silly Putty’, http://naturalsociety.com/19-ingredients-mcdonalds-fries-including-form-silicone-found-silly-putty/, posted 27 Jan. 2015, accessed 30 Jan. 2015

As we have said before, when Southerners begin to turn away from these wretched and harmful fake foods, we will know that we are going in a better direction (in a worldly sense, at least).

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

The Russian ‘Invasion’ of the South



In a development thæt will surely give Russia-hating neo-cons like Fox News’s Megyn Kelly and þose (those) of like mind even more reasons to hate the South, it seems that more and more Souðrons are embracing Russian Orthodox Christianity.  The Eastern American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Of Russia has produced a short movie, Orthodox in Dixie (about 40 minutes long), documenting some of the why’s and wherefore’s of this movement within the South (South Carolina in particular).


This should not come as too great a surprise.  Stark Young, in his essay ‘Not in Memoriam, but in Defense’, wrote that ‘the South belongs to [certain qualities]’, not they to it (I’ll Take My Stand, LSU Press, 2006 [1930], p. 336).  In theological terms, this means that the South, despite the layers of dirt and grit and grime that have caked upon her soul because of the Great Schism and the Reformation, in some larger measure than is true of other countries still belongs to Christ God and His Church rather than to the world.  She has sadly loosened her grasp since the War in her desire for Mammon, yet still she clings to her God and Master. 

What is true of the South is all the more true as it regards Russia, the Third Rome, who inherited the role of protector of the world’s Christians after the fall of Constantinople (the Second Rome or New Rome) to the Turks in 1453.  The Russian Church thus being at the center of worldwide Christianity, and by virtue of this counting among her sheep peoples of numerous countries and languages, the South should not be ashamed in any wise to call the Russian Orthodox Church her spiritual home, her momma.  Indeed, from the foregoing it is natural that she should consider her such.

But whether our teachers and guides are present-day Russians or pre-Schism, pre-Conquest Englishmen like St Hilda or St Cuthbert, what is important is for Dixie to return to the original, unblemished Faith of Christ and His Apostles, the Faith proclaimed by His Holy Orthodox Church, His one true Body in the world.  Therein, and only therein, lies our salvation, our joy, and the fulfilment of the gifts Southerners have been given individually and together as a country by God the Holy Spirit.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Russia, a Southern Friend

From Pat Buchanan’s article on the now-happening he calls ‘Putinism’:

 . . .

Call it Putinism. It appears to be rising, while the New World Order of Bush I, the “global hegemony” of the neocons, and the democracy crusade of Bush II seem to belong to yesterday.

 . . .

What do these leaders have in common?

All are strong men. All are nationalists. Almost all tend to a social conservatism from which Western democracies recoil. Almost none celebrate democracy or democratic values the way we do.

And almost all reject America’s claim to be the “indispensable nation” or “exceptional nation” and superpower leader.

Fareed Zakaria lists as “crucial elements of Putinism … nationalism, religion, social conservatism, state capitalism and government domination of the media. They are all, in some way or another, different from and hostile to, modern Western values of individual rights, tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and internationalism.”

Yet not every American revels in the sewer that is our popular culture. Not every American believes we should impose our democratist ideology on other nations. Nor are Big Media and Hollywood universally respected. Patriotism, religion and social conservatism guide the lives of a majority of Americans today.

As the Associated Press reports this weekend, Putinism finds echoes across Central and Western Europe. Hungary’s Viktor Orban has said he sees in Russia a model for his own “illiberal state.”

 . . .

“Of the 24 right-wing populist parties that took about a quarter of the European Parliament seats in May elections, Political Capital lists 15 as ‘committed’ to Russia,” writes the AP.

These rising right-wing parties are “partners” of Russia in that they “share key views — advocacy of traditional family values, belief in authoritarian leadership, a distrust of the U.S., and support for strong law and order measures.”

While the financial collapse caused Orban to turn his back on the West, says Zakaria, to the Hungarian prime minister, liberal values today embody “corruption, sex and violence,” and Western Europe has become a land of “freeloaders on the backs of welfare systems.”

If America is a better country today than she has ever been, why are so many, East and West, recoiling from what we offer now?

Source:  ‘The Rise of Putinism’, http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/12/patrick-j-buchanan/putinism-is-rising/, posted 17 Dec. 2014, accessed 23 Jan. 2015

With many American and Western European elites, including more and more so-called conservatives (David Cameron, Limbaugh, O’Reilly, etc.), championing the ‘Western values’ of ‘freedom, openness, and tolerance’ (that is, post-Christian moral depravity) and other destructive ideas (Mammon worship, etc.), it is not difficult to answer Mr Buchanan’s rhetorical question. 

The question we Southerners need to ask ourselves is this:  Do we feel quite at home in a union with those who espouse ‘Western values’ rather than Christianity?  If not, then we need to once again consider peacefully leaving that union and allying ourselves with those who are truly our spiritual kinfolk.  As traditionalists in other countries have already learned, Russia is surely among them.

Dr Joseph Farrell elaborated on this in his ‘blog post of 11 Dec. 2014:

Recently I had a private conversation with a friend of mine about what is going on in Russia, and the West’s assessment of it. During our conversation, I stressed that one of Russia’s principal assets is a kind of “soft power” that the modern post-Christian West has little understanding of. Indeed, I stressed that in a certain sense, the Russian Federation is probably the only genuinely “post-secular” state in the world, having lived through the horrors of Communism and Marxism, which, let us recall, were “post-Christian” western imports imposed on Russia by force (and considerable Western financial backing, a story the Russians know all too well). In a sense, then, Russia understands something about the inevitable outcomes of the type of materialism reigning in the contemporary “post-Christian” secular West that the West itself has not yet reached. In essence, in our conversation I was arguing for the hypothesis that Russia was, from a certain point of view, further down the path of history than the West. Russia lived through its “post-Christian” stage and has emerged on the other side of it, and is engaged in something entirely new, and it is this “something new” that Western analysts, with their secular and “scientific” outlook, are missing entirely.

No sooner had we concluded our conversation (On Dec. 2), than Mr. Putin gave what, in effect, is the Russian equivalent of the State of the Union address before the assembled deputies of the Russian State Duma(and I must kindly thank Ms. D.O., a regular reader here, for bringing this to my attention):


I want to draw your attention to the opening remarks of Mr. Putin’s address:

“Of course, we will talk about this year’s landmark events. You know that a referendum was held in Crimea in March, at which its residents clearly expressed their desire to join Russia. After that, the Crimean parliament – it should be stressed that it was a legitimate parliament that was elected back in 2010 – adopted a resolution on sovereignty. And then we saw the historical reunification of Crimea and Sevastopol with Russia.

It was an event of special significance for the country and the people, because Crimea is where our people live, and the peninsula is of strategic importance for Russia as the spiritual source of the development of a multifaceted but solid Russian nation and a centralised Russian state. It was in Crimea, in the ancient city of Chersonesus or Korsun, as ancient Russian chroniclers called it, that Grand Prince Vladimir was baptised before bringing Christianity to Rus.

In addition to ethnic similarity, a common language, common elements of their material culture, a common territory, even though its borders were not marked then, and a nascent common economy and government, Christianity was a powerful spiritual unifying force that helped involve various tribes and tribal unions of the vast Eastern Slavic world in the creation of a Russian nation and Russian state. It was thanks to this spiritual unity that our forefathers for the first time and forevermore saw themselves as a united nation. All of this allows us to say that Crimea, the ancient Korsun or Chersonesus, and Sevastopol have invaluable civilisational and even sacral importance for Russia, like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the followers of Islam and Judaism.

And this is how we will always consider it.”

In short, Mr. Putin was drawing attention to the central defining role that Eastern Orthodoxy has always had and played in the formation of the Russian national and cultural identity,  and we would do well to mark his words, for they are most decidedly not the words of a typical American Dummycrook or Republithug “pimping God” during an election cycle. These are most decidedly not the words of a man in a weak position simply appealing to the only thing he has left: religion. These are not words intended solely for a domestic audience or consumption, but for a global one. As I put it long ago in another of my works, Russia is a mystery and enigma to the West not because it is Russia, but because in spite of all efforts to squelch and destroy it, it is Orthodox.

 . . .

In the face of all these things, note again Mr. Putin’s emphasis on Russian culture and hence, identity and nationhood:

“If for some European countries national pride is a long-forgotten concept and sovereignty is too much of a luxury, true sovereignty for Russia is absolutely necessary for survival.

Primarily, we should realise this as a nation. I would like to emphasise this: either we remain a sovereign nation, or we dissolve without a trace and lose our identity. Of course, other countries need to understand this, too.  . . .

The policy of containment was not invented yesterday. It has been carried out against our country for many years, always, for decades, if not centuries. In short, whenever someone thinks that Russia has become too strong or independent, these tools are quickly put into use.”(Emphasis added)

Now compare this rhetoric with that of Mr. Obama or other American politicians in recent history, who are always reminding us, and the rest of the world, that the USA is “the indispensable nation.” There is none of the “Aryan hubris” in Mr. Putin’s remarks. He is not arguing for Russia’s indispensability, but merely for its cultural identity and uniqueness. Rather, there is a solemn rehearsal of the West’s recent activities since the fall of the Soviet system, and Russia’s response, and a warning:

 . . .

We will protect the diversity of the world. We will tell the truth to people abroad, so that everyone can see the real and not distorted and false image of Russia. We will actively promote business and humanitarian relations, as well as scientific, education and cultural relations. We will do this even if some governments attempt to create a new iron curtain around Russia.

We will never enter the path of self-isolation, xenophobia, suspicion and the search for enemies.

All this is evidence of weakness, while we are strong and confident.”  . . .

To be sure, his own speech outlines salient features of corruption within Russia.But he is absolutely clear and consistent in his messages to the West: Russia intends to wage a propaganda and culture war, and will not tolerate, for an instant, cultural absorption into some post-Christian western New World Order. That is why the western elite so hates him, and Russia.  . . .

Source:  ‘President Vladimir Putin’s “State of the Union” Speech to the Russian Duma’, http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/12/president-vladimir-putins-state-union-speech-russian-state-duma/, accessed 6 Jan. 2015

May the Lord grant a warm and everlasting friendship between the Southern and Russian peoples.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

The Proper Uses of Islam (by Western Elites)



Father Andrew Phillips shares some enlightening words in the wake of the Paris shootings:

In the eleventh century, the Western world, then meaning only some parts of Western Europe, finally rejected any kind of spiritual centre outside itself and made itself into its own spiritual centre. Thus, having become ethnocentric, it started to view all other civilizations as cannon fodder for its wholly unprincipled and egoistic purposes. All other civilizations became ‘good’ if they supported the exploitative and genocidal egoism of the West, but ‘barbaric’, ‘backward’, ‘primitive’ and ‘anti-democratic’ if they did not.

 . . .

For example, the Muslim world could be massacred, as in the eleventh century in the Iberian Peninsula, as in the Crusades, as today in the Gaza Strip, because Muslims are ‘in the way’. However, when it suited and suits the unprincipled purposes of the West, the Muslim world could and can become its closest ally, as in the anti-Christian Crimean War and in Bulgaria in the 19th century when the West supported anti-Christian massacres by Muslims, as in the West’s contemporary support of barbaric anti-Christian dictatorships in Saudi Arabia (whose Muslim fanatics were responsible for 9/11 but which was not invaded), in Qatar and Bahrein, as in Chechnia, Kosovo and Bosnia, where the West supported the establishment of anti-Christian Muslim criminal mafia governments, as in Afghanistan, where the CIA set up Al-Qaida, as in Iraq, where the CIA-imposed dictator Hussein was then betrayed by the West once he had outlived his usefulness and lived to see his country pillaged and over a million of his people massacred and exiled, as in Libya, where Britain and France bombed the legitimate regime to pieces and ensured that its armouries were pillaged by Muslim fanatics, as in Syria, where the West financed and trained fanatical Muslim terrorists and encouraged their own Western-born jihadis to fight there – until they started carrying their jihad into Iraq and now into France, or as in the Crimea where it supports the Muslim Tartar minority against the Christian Russian majority.

Thus, modern ‘radical Islam’ is a Western invention.  . . .

Source:  ‘Paris: Violent Extremism Breeds Violent Extremism’, Orthodox England events ‘blog, http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/paris-violent-extremism-breeds-violent-extremism/, posted 8 Jan. 2015, accessed 20 Jan. 2015

As if on cue, in comes arch-Globalist and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal in an effort to stir up more American militarism against Muslims. 


The usefulness of Islam to the corporations behind the wehrmacht and the police state systems of the [u]nited States and Western Europe, it would seem, has not quite reached its end.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Keeping the ‘Charlie Hebdo’ Killings in the Proper Frame of View



Jay Dyer has a good essay which helps us do this.  It begins,

In the 1971 film The French Connection, New York police detective “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) uncovers an underworld drug smuggling operation involving the importation of millions of dollars in heroin by a French cartel that planned to use a media personality as an unwitting front.

This week, we were shocked to learn that Onion-like French satire publication Charlie Hebdo had been attacked by terrorists, with Al Qaeda taking responsibility for the murder of twelve of the magazine’s staff and guests. While it is tempting to get bogged down in “fluid” situation details, we must always recall similar patterns of such events in the recent past which will serve to inform the greater context of this new event in the never-ending “war on terror.”

Naturally, the first historical reference that comes to mind is Gladio, the infamous NATO “stay behind” networks in Cold War Europe that utilized terror attacks and shootings in public venues (amongst other things) to later be blamed on leftist and socialist groups.  Gladio thus represents the so-called “conservative” side of the dialectic running operations against the so-called left. The Aldo Moro incident in Italy, for example, involved a staged assassination of a socialist minister by a NATO-run Marxist front.  NATO/Gladio operations have never ceased, as we see the same patterns at work in more recent false flags.

The French intelligence service, DGSE, works hand in hand with NATO and other western intelligence agencies, and over the past few years has assisted in the training of Al Qaeda offshoots in the attempt to topple Syria’s Bashar Assad. The “Free Syrian Army” has notoriously been armed and funded by Atlanticist power elites since 2012, when the CFR called for more use of Al Qaeda and the FSA, to 2013, when we saw Senator John McCain and others meeting with rebranded Al Qaeda leaders. As we look back on events associated with French and Euro terror, the images converge.

In 1995, Rachid Ramda, a member of radical Islamic organizations predictably titled “Islamic Salvation Front” and the “Armed Islamic Goup”, bombed the French RER subway, killing eight. According to an interview with Liberacion, Ramda described his past involvement with Western NGOs and Doctors Without Borders – both classic intelligence covers, casting doubt on the official narrative of Ramda as the typical fundamentalist stage prop of so many mainstream media terror tales. This event recalls the NGO affiliations of the so-called ISIS video victims, as well as Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

 . . .

Source:  ‘Puppeteering Terror’, Soul of the East, http://souloftheeast.org/2015/01/09/paris-gladio-false-flag/, posted 9 Jan. 2015, accessed 16 Jan. 2015

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

The Scriptures and the South - Part III



The South’s concern for a proper interpretation of the [u]nited States Constitution has shown forth in the many books and essays written and speeches given by Southern statesmen and men of letters on this subject over the years, from Thomas Jefferson to M. E. Bradford.  Implicit in their argument is that in order to understand the meaning of the instrument of Union rightly, one must know and accept the proper history and tradition that gave rise to it.

Because of the Great Schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation, the South has had more difficulty in approaching the Bible with the same spirit of unity as they have the [u.] S. Constitution.  Who holds to the correct Tradition by which the meaning of the Scriptures may be rightly divided?  Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Baptists, Pentecostals? 

Because of the South’s ignorance of the Orthodox Church, she could never have settled this question in such a way as to bring the sought-for peace and harmony among Souðern Christians.  Southern Catholics and Protestants alike stood (and remain) outside the pure waters of the stream of Holy Tradition that is found only in the Orthodox Church.  So long as they do so, so long will there be division and discord, misunderstanding and soul-sickness among Southern Christians.

For the written word of the Bible is subject to as many different interpretations as there are readers of it (whether these be right or wrong).  St Ephraim the Syrian said it this way:

And a letter cannot speak. A letter, therefore, cannot demonstrate every matter about which a man is seeking to ask questions, because the tongue of the letter is far away from it—its tongue is the pen of the writer of it. Moreover, when the letter speaks anything written in it, it takes to itself another tongue that the letter may speak with it, (the letter) which silently speaks with two mute tongues, one being the ink-pen, the other, the sight of the (reader’s) eye.

Source:  Gabe Martini, ‘The Limits of the Written Word’, On Behalf of All, http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/onbehalfofall/the-limits-of-the-written-word/, posted 13 Aug. 2013, accessed 21 Dec. 2014

Southerners must be humble enough to admit that they need help in understanding the Holy Scriptures, following the good ensample of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:30, 31).  Who should be their teachers?  The Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, men full of the Holy Spirit who have held unwaveringly to the Holy Tradition of the Church.  One such is the Elder Cleope Ilie of Romania.  May his words about Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture sink deeply into the Southern soul and bear fruit an hundredfold. 

 . . .

Inq.: Why isn't Holy Scripture sufficient for faith and salvation, with no need whatsoever of Tradition? This is apparent from the words of the Apostle Paul to Timothy: And that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:15-16). These words are clear. It is unnecessary to add anything to Holy Scripture.

EC: Here he is speaking only of Old Testament Scripture, for the New Testament had not yet been written. Paul wrote to Timothy that a good teacher could use the Old Testament to support his faith in Christ and his instruction in Christianity. According to the notion that you mistakenly assert, it would follow that not one book of the New Testament—those written after the epistles of the Apostle Paul to Timothy—should be accepted. It is enough instead for us to recognize the Old Testament books mentioned in the passage to which you refer.

Inq.: Some people don't acknowledge Tradition because they say that with the passing of time it yielded to many illegitimate elements; so that, especially today, we are no longer able to discern the true Apostolic Tradition from the false.

EC: The Church of Christ determined the truths of the Faith, according to the long course of Tradition, through the teachings and canons of the holy Ecumenical Councils, decrees and the Symbol of Faith [The Creed], and by confessions [of Faith] made by holy and wonderworking hierarchs at the many local synods which have been held continuously since days of old. At these synods, the authenticity and genuineness of the holy Orthodox Faith was firmly established, primarily in those areas where it was attacked by the existing heresies of the time. The irrevocable and inalterable content of Holy Tradition emerges from the totality of those synods. This can be understood by closely examining the essence of the following precepts:

- Do not sanction concepts that contain inconsistencies or contradictions with Apostolic Tradition and Holy Scripture. (A teaching is to be considered worthy of the name ”Tradition” when it stems from the Saviour or the Holy Apostles, and is directly influenced by the Holy Spirit.)

- Tradition is that which has been protected by the Apostolic Church, and has an uninterrupted continuity up to today.

- Tradition is that which is confessed and practiced by the entire universal Orthodox Church.

- Tradition is that which is in harmony with the greater part of the [Church] fathers and ecclesiastical writers.

When a tradition does not fulfill these stipulations, it cannot be considered true and holy, and consequently cannot be considered admissible or fit to be observed.

Inq.: Notwithstanding all the efforts which you say the Orthodox Church has made and continues to make relative to the truth of Tradition, some believe only the teachings which are contained in Holy Scripture. For the first Christians—they say—accepted only such writings as were contained in Holy Scripture, as it is written: These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so (Acts 17:11). From this it follows that we should observe the teachings we find in Holy Scripture.

EC: The great Apostle Paul, however, commends the Christians of Corinth not because they kept the written teachings, but because they obeyed him and diligently observed the oral teachings that they had received from him. Listen to what he writes; Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and even as I delivered to you, ye are holding fast the traditions (1 Cor. 11:2). I wonder which is better for us to do: to observe only the written teachings, or to follow the great Apostle Paul who extols those who keep the unwritten tradition as well? Furthermore, we have established that the Holy Apostles and Evangelists believed and preached abundantly from Holy Tradition, which they inherited from of old, and which is not written anywhere in Holy Scripture.

Inq.: Where specifically does it appear that the Holy Apostles taught anything other than what was written in Holy Scripture?

EC: Here are two testimonies: The Holy Apostle Jude says in his catholic epistle, including in verse nine: But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment upon him, but said, The Lord rebuke thee (Jude 9). Dearest to Christ, search all of Holy Scripture and see if you will find this citation. Still further down in the same epistle the Apostle refers to the prophecy of Enoch, saying: And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him (Jude 14-20). However, the Apostle Jude is not the only one to speak from Tradition. Listen to what the illustrious Paul says in his second epistle to Timothy: Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith (2 Tim. 3:8). And again the renowned Apostle Paul, guiding the priests of Ephesus, says: Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). Now I ask you who insist on only putting faith in the written word: From where did the two Apostles—Jude and Paul—take these words? For you will not find them anywhere in Holy Scripture.

 . . .

Inq.: How was this Canon of Holy Tradition in the Church preserved over the span of thousands of years? In our age, some allege that the clergy and ecclesiastical writers alter from day to day the truth of Holy Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition, which in the beginning was authentic and genuine? They say that if you have in your hand a book that was published 50 years ago and you put it next to one published recently, they would have nothing in common. It therefore follows that if the hierarchs and priests have done this with the sacred books, they would do the same with the Holy Tradition which the Orthodox boast they have preserved unscathed from [the time of] the Holy Apostles.

EC: What your companions have accepted is not at all correct. The teachings of the Church of Christ are guarded by the Holy Spirit and cannot err (Mat. 10:17-20, John 4: 16-26, 1 Tim. 3:15). The very founder of the Church, Jesus Christ, governs it in an unseen way, until the end of the ages (Mat. 28:20). If some ecclesiastical writers, hierarchs, priests or laity translated the Bible from another language, or amended some passage containing an expression which does not correspond to our present-day speech, this would only be an adjustment and modification of the expression, and not a serious alteration of the substance of the Biblical text. If a Romanian from the time of the Elder Mirtsea or Stephan the Great (1504) were resurrected today and you wanted to speak with him, you would only with difficulty understand him, because the language has developed into something that is not exactly what was spoken then. This is precisely what has happened with respect to the books. With the passage of time, the writers' words or expressions were amended with appropriate present-day language—without however, changing the meaning of the profound and sacred writings. I previously referred you to the foundation upon which Holy Tradition rests, and the means by which its authentic, original image is reliably preserved and conveyed throughout the ages. I am referring to the ancient Symbol of Faith (The Creed), the Apostolic Canons, and the dogmatic decisions of the Seven[2] Ecumenical Councils. To these can also be added the following monumental and meaningful testaments—assurances of the unimpaired preservation of Holy Tradition:

 . . .

Source:  ‘On Holy Tradition’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/38631.htm, posted 10 Aug. 2010, accessed 25 Dec. 2014

The Shooting in France



It is a terrible thing to see so many die and suffer in Paris; nevertheless we mustn’t let ourselves be manipulated yet again by supporters of the New World Order. 

They want a clash of civilizations


to help usher in the era of global government ruled by Antichrist:  After wrack and ruin have come upon all the peoples of the world, who would want to refuse the promise of the False Christ for peace and plenty?  So they engineer wars in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, etc. and shootings like the one at the French magazine we have just seen.  Ties between one of the shooters and the American intelligence community have recently been uncovered.


Do not, then, join the Hannity’s, John Bolton’s, and the other neocons who are calling for war on ‘radical Islam’.  Islam, to be sure, is a danger; but the greater danger is the transnational Elite who fiddle with glee at the sight of the garish fires of war all over the world and do all in their power to start and continue them.

From them and from our own sinfulness Most Holy Mother of God save us!

Friday, January 9, 2015

Grow Your Own Cancer Fighter

Rather than simply growing grass in our yards per the wishes of Monsanto and other Big Ag and Big Pharma corporations, there are many better options.  One of them is to grow cancer-fighting herbs, like feverfew:

An herb discussed below caused a big upset a few years back when researchers realized it could be more successful at killing cancerous cells than an expensive chemo drug. Since that discovery, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has fast-tracked the plant compounds to be used in pharmaceutical meds. Want to know how to get yours from the natural source without paying Big Pharma for their patents? Read on.

Feverfew (tanacetum parthenium), also known as wild chamomile, is no small herb. Its properties are so powerful it has been shown to outperform anti-leukemia chemo drugs. The active ingredient in feverfew, which is responsible for much of its healing power, is known as Parthenolide.

Until recently, feverfew was used by herbalists primarily as a treatment for migraine headaches and nausea, but it turns out that the extent of its true healing powers were being overlooked.

 . . .

Source:  Christina Sarich, ‘Feverfew Plant Compound Beats Cancer and Chemo’, Natural Society, http://naturalsociety.com/feverfew-parthenolide-cancer-chemo-patent/, posted 1 Nov. 2014, accessed 9 Jan. 2015

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Christian Town Layout



From the dangers of Agenda 21


to the more humane visions of the Congress for the New Urbanism


and Philip Bess


town planning is getting a fair amount of attention.  Father Andrew Phillips, however, in his 2003 essay ‘Sacral Town-Planning’ gave us some of the best touchstones for beginning any new town development.  Here is some of what he had to say.

Introduction

Modern cities are planned not around churches, shrines and crosses, but around temples of commerce, shopping shrines and the car-idol. It was not always so. Contemporary society has descended a long way from the aisles and galleries of churches with squares for religious processions, to the 'new, improved' aisles and mercantile galleries of today with their automobile processions. For there was once such a thing as Orthodox, i.e. Christian, town-planning. What was it?

The Sacred City In Orthodox Russia

The greatest expert on Orthodox town-planning in Russia was undoubtedly the late historian and theologian Fr Lev Lebedev (1939-1997). In a sequence of well-written articles, first published in the 1970's and 1980's in samizdat and smuggled to the West, he described how the plans of all the great mediæval cities, for example, Moscow, Kiev, Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, Sergiev Posad, are all sacred designs in theology. They embody the circle of God's completeness, the triangle of the Holy Trinity, the centrality of the Cross, and the outline of the Heavenly Jerusalem which St John the Divine describes at the end of the Book of Revelation. Thus, in Moscow, the church of St John the Divine is outside the city walls, for he bears witness to the City. Inside the walls, the Kremlin, or stronghold, contains churches dedicated to the Mother of God, the Archangel Michael and the Twelve Apostles - Heaven and Earth meet. Outside it, 'Red Square', actually meaning 'Beautiful Square', was in fact a giant open-air church. Its altar was the well-known church of the Protecting Veil (usually miscalled St Basil's church)1. Thus the whole city-centre was a sacred ecclesial space, its altar a church-building. Russian city walls usually had twelve gates, again to correspond to the description in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 21, 21). In this way the home-cities of Orthodox Russians were images of the Heavenly Jerusalem, images of the world to come in the here and now, Heaven on Earth.

 . . . in the early, i.e. Orthodox, West, the same sort of town-planning operated, for example in Gaul, northern Italy and England [as in Russia--W. G.]. After all, when so many Bishops, Kings, Queens, together with the mass of common people, devoted themselves to the Church, how could their Faith not be reflected in the cities and towns of the new Orthodox world in which they lived? Let us look at examples of town-planning from Orthodox England to illustrate our point.

The Sacred City in Orthodox England

Most English towns were laid out in a circle or ellipse, symbolising the Unity and Eternity of the Holy Trinity. Within the circle, however, there was a cross which drew together the circumference of the circle around a central preaching cross or high cross. This usually marked where the Gospel had first been preached in the town by monks, who had then proceeded to baptise townsfolk in the nearest river or stream. Such preaching-crosses, usually set high on steps and sometimes very ancient, can be seen in countless villages all over England and even in many Roman-founded cities, for instance, in Canterbury, York and Chester. (Nowadays, it must be said, in many places this high cross is known as a 'market cross', or else has been replaced by a twentieth-century war memorial, which sums up the history of that dark and godless age).

From the high cross, there radiated out streets, north, south, east and west. (Often they retain these same names today - East Street, West Street etc). Many of the towns founded or re-founded by King Alfred the Great illustrate this, notably Wallingford in Oxfordshire or Chichester in Sussex. However, earlier towns like Bristol and Ipswich show the same pattern. Smaller settlements, even villages, are similar, although they have no defensive walls.

Let us look at two examples of cities in England, one Roman, the other post-Roman in origin, to see this sacred topography in reality.

Canterbury

Where better to start this brief survey than in the City of England's Mother-Cathedral?

Originally a Roman town, Canterbury already had elliptical Roman walls encircling the river before its Christianisation. Taking the original Roman roads, but significantly deviating from them, the first English Orthodox used them to make the sign of the cross over the City, thus quartering it. At the centre of the cross there used to stand not a preaching-cross, but All Saints church, thus making clear the sacred nature and goal of Canterbury - to make a land holy. To the south-west of the cross of streets there used to stand St Helen's church, thus bearing witness to the Cross, as still does Holy Cross church to the north-west of the cross of streets. The eastern quarter of Canterbury, facing Jerusalem, is particularly sacred - within it stands Christchurch, the Cathedral of the Saviour, Mother-Church of All England. Here the high altar is raised up, a model of Golgotha, with chapels beneath it mirroring the topography of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The chapel directly underneath the altar is called the chapel of Adam's Skull, just as at Golgotha. Outside the walls, to the north, stood the church of St John the Divine, keeping watch for the Second Coming. Outside the walls also stood the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the cemetery church) and St Martin's, the original Roman church. Also outside the city walls, to the north-west stands guard the church dedicated to St Dunstan, a beloved Archbishop, who was seen as the Protector of the City.

 . . .

Conclusion

As Orthodox Christianity was gradually lost in England, so the art of Orthodox town-planning was also lost. During the 'Renaissance' (i.e. the rebirth of paganism), Western Europe became obsessed with the rational logic of the 'Classics'. 'Enlightened' in the eighteenth century by heathenism, it began planning towns in God-excluding grids or curves. The few churches that were built took the form of heathen temples. This was a reflection of the mechanistic rationalism of the age and an obvious throwback to Roman paganism. Not so much post-Christian as pre-Christian. Not so much progress as regress. The cross gave way to squares, rows and crescents. The Victorian system went even further, building rows of regimented houses for its serfs, together with a scattering of mock-mediæval churches where the working classes could be made obedient with bigoted puritan moralism.

In our own age, having taken the cross away from the city centre and ruined its sacred geography, intruding buildings disproportionate, especially in height, today's cities and their centres are dying, boarded up or vandalised. For, naturally, without the cross, 'the centre cannot hold', to quote T. S. Eliot. The masses have fled to the temples of commerce out of town where they can worship in the aisles of soulless consumerism. Here man, reduced by Darwin and Freud to an animal with mere bodily aspirations and bodily functions, can worship the gods of bread and circuses, just like the pagan Romans. That was the society that people wanted, now they have it. Whether the still-present memory of the Orthodox past can make a difference or not remains to be seen. But many of the witnesses to past values still stand. Let those who have eyes to see, see.

Source:  Orthodox England, Volume 7, Issue 2, posted 1 Dec. 2003, http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/v07i2.htm, accessed 26 Dec. 2014