Hodgepodge of this and that

Dear friends,

Unfortunately, I need to hit the road for two trips these next couple of days and until Monday my schedule will be rather crazy.  This post will therefore be a "hodgepodge of this and that" in which I will try to plug a few holes.

Old Ez posted this question:

Saker you should do more - many more! - of these cultural write-ups. The cultural aspect of this war is paramount in my opinion. As an aside, it seems to me that in a situation of acute social dislocation, a married priest is less likely to tend to his flock and more likely to rush home to his wife and children and see to their safety first and foremost. I suppose such an individual would simply be a "bad priest" in the event. In the Orthodox rites, are there any problems with nepotism or hereditary fiefdoms in the clergy/clerical offices?

Alas, I had not time to answer it.  Thankfully, a friend of mine who is a Hieromonk (or priest-monk) did, and here is his reply:

A tentative answer from an Orthodox priest-monk (unmarried, by definition) :
That a married minister should tend to his wife and children, it goes without saying (otherwise, how could he be expected to uphold family values?). This should not be a matter of any concern in itself: we can see married professionals in many critical service areas (police, hospital staff, fire brigades and so on) whose jobs are not hindered a bit by the mere existence of their wives and children. If anything, sadly, it's the family itself that could be somewhat neglected by the necessities of a time-consuming job. Orthodox Christian rites are long, and coupled with attention to many faithful, they do sometimes put a strain on a priest's family, just as it happens to the families of other committed professionals. That is why the priest's wife must give an explicit consent to her husband's ministry, for him to be ordained a priest by his bishop. It also explains why Orthodox faithful are supportive and generally patient with their married priests, when it comes to safeguarding an area of family life and intimacy for their pastors.
We must also take into account that an unmarried priest is not necessarily lacking a family. What about parents or a widow mother, who could be cared about by a priest son in a parish house just as likely as by any other children? What about brothers and sisters and any number of nephews and nieces? After all, the very word "nepotism" comes from the privileges accorded to nephews and nieces. In the Catholic Church, it certainly refers to illegitimate children raised as "nephews" to divert a public stigma, but in just as many cases it refers to actual nephews and nieces of unmarried (and presumably chaste) priests who had a tendency to unfairly promote the interests of their kin.
As for the hereditary clergy, that is an obvious risk, just as for any profession in a traditional society where children tend to inherit their parents' (and especially their father's) profession. In itself it is not such a scandal: when we see the son of a soldier, a judge/lawyer, an artisan or a politician taking on his father's job, we certainly feel no noticeable degree of indignation, although there must be an obvious edge of "unfair advantage" in his training. And a priest's son is well trained, almost by definition. Whereas a policeman's son cannot accompany his dad on service, a priest's son is expected to serve in church when dad is celebrating! This gives literally years of free practice, serving at the altar, in the choir, and in any number of parish activities.
Do we have hereditary lines of priests? Yes, we do. Is this a sign of bad practice? It does not have to be so, but yes, alas, it might degenerate, especially in times of social turmoil, when priests may be overtly protective of their families' interests (just like many other professionals, by the way). What do we have to avoid this tendency? We have unmarried bishops! We did have married bishops in the ancient Church, in centuries where the office of a bishop was much similar to the office of a present day parish priest. But as soon as the bishop started to have a directing and coordinating role over a large number of priests, the threat of a hereditary directive role was immediately detected - and countered. Admittedly, this system worked well. It has worked well for more than one millennum and a half, and still does not show signs of needing serious repair.

If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to address them to Father "PM" (as in priest-monk, not his real initials) as I would absolutely love to "draw him in" to this blog :-)

[Sidebar: also, if my memory is not mistaken, there used to be a canonical prohibition against sons of priests becoming priests, but it was later lifted because it proved not to be a problem.  Don't quote me on that - I have not seriously studied canon law in over 25 years now and my sclerotic brain might have imagined it all]

Podcast: I will record it on Monday and try to post it the same day.  If I can't, the ETA will be Tuesday of next week.

Russian silence on MH17:  many of you have wondered why the Russians are sitting on evidence.  Let me tell you that I would bet the house on the fact that not only do they have all the radar recordings from their military surveillance, but that they also have all the radio intercepts from all the communications between this aircraft and the ATC.  I did some work for the Air Force intelligence of my country of birth in Europe and I call tell you that we tracked and recorded *everything*.  Even far away from us.  And I know for a fact that so do the Russians.  So why the silence?

1)  Soviet/Russian military culture is totally obsessive-compulsive with secrecy.  Russian military intelligence is even worse by several orders of magnitude.  Yes, Putin can order them to release whatever he wants them to release, but there will be a lot resistance, foot-dragging and, in particular, arguments of why this might not be the best idea.  And they are right because

2) Why reveal your own intelligence and commit a massive diplomatic faux-pas when this stuff will most likely be leaked on its own.  I am not referring to public diplomacy, but to real behind-the-scenes diplomacy.  Does anybody seriously believe the Russians don't know about 9/11?  That Putin is honest when he calls the idea of an inside job "crazy" (has he did several times).  I can tell you that I know for a fact that there are a lot of non-written rules between the US and Russia, stuff which both sides have agreed upon.  For the US to have Russia get involved in the 9/11 issue would be seen as a massively hostile act, a provocation of the first order, and God only knows what Uncle Sam could do in response to that.  So the rule here is "stay away from m our internal issues" and both sides more or less abide by it even when they pretend not to.  The US has a much worse track record on that, but the Russians are old-9fashioned if you wish, there are stuff which they will not do to the US just to embarrass or hurt it.  But the Russians, with their gradual leaks, are telling the USA "keep accusing us and we will leak more".  So in "real world diplomacy" these leaks are threats.  I am also sure that the Russians are telling the US "look, you botched your false flag, now don't come crying to us - deal with it, bury it if you want, but don't come pissing us off with those ridiculous accusations or else more leaks will happen".

Latin Christians have been very upset at me for bringing up the past.  My I suggest that it is for the victim of abuse to decide whether and for how long he/she wants to remind the abuser and everybody else of what she/her had to endure and not for the abuser to tell the victim to STFU?

Nasty comments:  The new blog is being worked on, but I want to gradually introduce the same moderation rules here as I planned on the new one.  For the time being, you can still see them here: http://thesaker.net/moderation-policy/ .  Please pay attention to rule 3#: "any comment designed to make me angry will make me angry and will be removed in anger".  Just saying... :-P

Oliver Stone: check out his interview with one of the nastiest most liberal, pro-US, pro-Zionist pro-everthingwrongontheplanet reporter in Russia, Vladimir Pozner, here: http://vimeo.com/111675614 (I know, Pozner is smart, and he smiles a lot.  He is still a despicable SOB no better than Savik Shuster).

Amazing comparison on Gilad Atzmon's website:

The next couple of day: I will try my best to moderate as fast as I can.  To those angry about the slow pace of moderation I can only say: "sorry, I also have a life in meatspace"

Cheers and kind regards to all,

The Saker

Some thoughts on this and that

I have been thinking about various issues this week, but I had too little time to write even a semi-coherent post about them. So I am sharing my musings with you in the raw - just as they came to me.

Uncle Shmuel is just so predictable:

Israel and the USA agreed to the format for an investigation of the storming of the Mavi Marmara and the other ship. Really? No kidding?! What a surprise. The Israelis will investigate themselves, with one US observer and one European "Shabbez goy'. And what does the rest of the planet have to say? Do you hear screams of outrage? Or even maybe hysterical laughter? Nope. Silence. Everybody is looking away.

I say the Nazis should have investigated themselves at Nurenberg too

"Agent provocateurs" on the Mavi Marmara?

I am getting more and more stuff in my mailbox suggesting that the Israelis somehow fell for a carefully planned Turkish "provocation". For example, check out the essay Israel gets Serbed by Gray Falcon. Frankly, all those articles come from authors who either have a bone with Turkey or dislike Islam, or both. The comparison with what happened in Bosnia is ridiculous. There is absolutely no doubt who killed whom on the Mavi Marmara: the Israelis murdered 9 passengers. This is not a false flag like the Markale bombings in Sarajevo or the fake Racak 'massacre' in Kosovo. Simply because Muslims and Turks were on the wrong side of the war in the Balkans does not at all mean that they are wrong in this case. We should not judge parties, much less so side with them, but we should look at each case on its inherent merits. For example, what Turkey does in Kurdistan is appalling. But that does not mean that Turkey is wrong in its outrage about the latest Israeli lunacy. In the future, we might even see a situation in which the USA or Israel are on the right side of some issue, and in that case we should not pull out a laundry list of all the past or current wrongs of these two regimes. To side "with Turkey" in this case is not to side with Turkey, much less so endorse its politics, but only to side with international law, decency, and common sense.

"Agent provocateurs" on the Mavi Marmara? - part 2

Clearly, some folks on the Mavi Marmara had improvised weapons and they resisted the Israeli assault. So?! What is wrong with that? I personally wish that ALL ships headed for Gaza would actively resist any Israeli force attempting to seize them. Let's face it, it is ONLY the fact that some passengers resisted which forced the Israeli to show their ugly and inhuman face to the rest of the world. I say - well done, resisting passengers! Keep up the good work. First, why should anyone NOT resist when being boarded by de jure and de facto pirates in international waters? Why do Somali pirates get one treatment, and Israeli pirates another one? So let's cut the hypocrisy here and openly say what should be obvious to all: violently resisting with improvised weapons was an excellent idea. The only possible argument against that is that this resulted in deaths. Well, guess what, Israelis kill Palestinians in Gaza every damn day! If I remember correctly, 4 of 5 Palestinians were killed the very day the Mavi Marmara was taken to Ashdod. Sure, nobody should be forced to risk his/her life, but the guys who chose to take that risk did not do so in vain. In fact, their deaths were far more useful than the deaths of the thousands Palestinians in Gaza since the so called Israeli "withdrawal" from Gaza.

Iran really has only one real and trustworthy friend and ally: Hezbollah

I have been lurking on various Arab and Palestinian websites again and again I get a sad, really discouraging feeling: Arab tribalism and anti-Persian bigotry is alive and well. There is a constant flow of anti-Iranian propaganda on Arab websites. No matter what the Iranians say or do, they are always accused of "using the Palestinian cause" for their dark and mysterious motives. The fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran never did anything against any Arab state, or the fact that Iran did more for the Palestinian cause than all the Arab states taken together matters little here. I suspect that some Arabs have a deep seated sense of inferiority since, after all, they have never been able to effectively stand up to Israel - nevermind Uncle Sam - whereas Iran has done just that, and successfully. The ONLY Arab force which managed not only to stand up to Israel, but to actually whoop it was Hezbollah, which is openly and totally allied to Iran. Of course, the vast majority of Arabs are either secular or Sunni, and both of these groups are still deeply infected with the virus of tribalism which the Baathist ideology always promoted. So for these neo-Baathist secularists or Sunnis to see a Shia and Persian power do more and better for the Palestinians than what they ever could is humiliating. And to deal with this humiliation they do a truly Orwellian double-thinking trick: they support and take pride in Hezbollah, while hating and badmouthing Iran. They dismiss Hezbollah's consistant and central message that Hezbollah is deeply grateful to Iran, and fully and totally allied with it. Our confused neo-Baathists simply see all the systematic statements of Hezbollah about Iran as "pragmatic propaganda" to keep benefiting from Iran's support. How they totally mis-read Hezbollah is really amusing to me. But then, I even heard these secularist dismiss the centrality of the Shia faith and piety to the Hezbollah movement....

Some will just never "get it" I suppose

Brazil and Lula:

I have to admit that I was very impressed by Lula's role in the negotiations with Iran. Not so much because of what these negotiations actually achieved, but because Lula openly defied the USA and Israel by even engaging in such negotiations. Could it be that I underestimated Lula and that he is far more principled that I had given him credit for? I sure hope so. The signs are encouraging.

So what's the deal with Erdogan?

Good question indeed. What the hell is going on with the Turks?! They used to be Israel's and the USA's most faithful ally, and yet they seem to be really seriously breaking these ties. One interesting theory that I heard is trying to replace Iran as the #1 defender of the Palestinian people (poor Arab nationalists... first they have the hated "Persians" as the biggest defenders of Palestinians, and now the no less hated "Ottomans"...). Could it be that Erdogan is trying to become so popular in Turkey as being "un-overthrowable" by the Turkish military? Listening to Erdogan and Assad standing next to each other at a press conference I was left marvelling at the ability of the Zionists to piss off absolutely everybody and, in the process, turn former enemies (like Turkey and Syria) into allies against it.

Have a great week-end everybody!

The Saker