Blog 13 Midsummer New Year of Johns Eve 2012



The Real Corner of the Room.



Disbelief in reality (in spite of disbelief in the existence of God) is the wonder of our times. In spite of the demonstration firings of intercontinental missiles by Russia only a week ago (see Voltaire Network, com ), the ‘all heal Glossover’ media smearing Vaseline and started churning out one obfuscation after another.

Beginning with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who confirmed that Syria was at the stage of a civil war, came the French call for mandatory observation of the UN Security Council’s mediator Kofi Annan's Syria peace plan. Also BBCs Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17356556 observes that:

“Of course, in reality there is minimal chance of Russia or China allowing such a resolution to pass. But the French move is a clear signal of the increasing gravity and concern with which the crisis in Syria is being seen.”

Note the disbelief embodied in the phrase: “…increasing gravity and concern”. In other words, reality is not to believed yet, but can take a few more hits of disbelief.

Strange as this may seem to some, the decline of international relations to a level approaching a “world war” level, is nothing new.  It is, indeed, the curse of the East.

Ever since the days when secular governments first corrupted and finally destroyed (with the ‘Russian Revolution’) the unique system of governance known as the “Byzantine Commonwealth”, it has been so. Almost unknown today, this system of government included a group of nations, which “took their cultural inheritance from Constantinople, but generally ruled themselves.”

This era of the “Byzantine Commonwealth” began with the conversion of St. Vladimir in Kiev to “Christianity’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_the_Great . Indeed, it happened even before Vladimir took power. To quote from the Wikipedia link:

Though Christianity had won many converts since Olga's rule, Vladimir had remained a thoroughgoing pagan, taking eight hundred concubines (besides numerous wives) and erecting pagan statues and shrines to gods. He may have attempted to reform Slavic paganism by establishing the thunder-god, Perun, as a supreme deity. "Although Christianity in the Kiev existed before Vladimir’s time, he had remained a pagan, accumulated about seven wives, established temples, and, it is said, taken part in idolatrous rites involving human sacrifice."

If “idolatrous rites involving human sacrifice” is an accurate statement, then we have here one of the first confirmations or Robdert Grave’s contentions that human sacrifice in ancient England and Europe was common. No doubt, it was true also for what was then proto-Latvia just entering onto the arena of historical times through Livonia.
The link goes on to inform: “In 983, after another of his military successes, Prince Vladimir and his army thought it necessary to sacrifice human lives to the gods. A lot was cast and it fell on a youth, Ioann by name, the son of a Christian, Fyodor. His father stood firmly against his son being sacrificed to the idols. More than that, he tried to show the pagans the futility of their faith: ‘Your gods are just plain wood: “never will I give my son to the devils!’" cried Fyodor.


It gets yet even more interesting: “An open abuse of the deities, to which most people in Rus' bowed in reverence in those times, triggered widespread indignation. A mob killed the Christian Fyodor and his son Ioann (later, after the overall christening of Kievan Rus, people came to regard these two as the first Christian martyrs in Rus and the Orthodox Church set a day to commemorate them, July 25[I am happy to say, this is a day before my birthday).

To repeat: “…deities, to which most people in Rus' bowed in reverence in those times.” Among such deities were Ivan, Jahnis, and evidently one “Ioann”, son of a Christian.

This is where the word “Christian” and the issue of its legitimacy becomes really interesting. The question necessarily arises why Ioann, son of a Christian, was not a Christian himself? And, yet again, was there not, at that time, another Christianity competing with the one of which Vladimir is presumed not to be one. I mean, what with eight hundred comcubines, plus many wifes—what Christian would dare himself such “too sexy for my love” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39YUXIKrOFk  to be ruler of Rus?

I will leave some of this ‘interesting’ material for the next blog.