While everyone worries about the insanity of an ascending Donald Trump, Europe suffers the onslaught of another powermonger, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Unlike Trump whose demented outlook may yet scare the US establishment into accountability, while at the same time dealing a much-needed blow to the out-of-control movement of political correctness, Erdogan is entrenched in power. He won’t scare anyone into sense; on the contrary, he’s scaring people out of their minds, playing master puppeteer with the weak leaders of the EU.

(The article in the Spectator sums it up nicely, and the accompanying podcast puts everything in perspective — see bottom)

The news is not good. Europe seems to be on the cusp of an age-long dream first conceived in the Ottoman Empire centuries ago: the dismantling of Europe’s gates along the Balkans and the flooding of the continent’s lands by the subjects of a sultan hell bent on holding permanent sway over Europe, one step at a time.

Be you liberal or conservative, left or right wing, agree or disagree with the words used in the article below, or this here op-ed, you have one thing in common: you are being manhandled. Europe has just been strongarmed into opening its borders to 80 million Turkish citizens in exchange for (and here’s the hair-raising clincher) Erdogan holding back 2.7 million refugees from Syria and Iraq, among other places. He expects a €3billion+ payout to handle them, with the figure going up at his whim, and visa-free travel in the Schengen area for all Turkish subjects. Fail to comply with his demands and he threatens to open the floodgates and overwhelm the continent with millions of undocumented migrants and refugees.

A callous, heinous, vile way of conducting politics no matter which side of the border you are standing, or which part of the political spectrum you occupy. Any way you look at it, Erdogan is playing Risk with the lives of 2.7 million displaced individuals plus 500 million EU citizens, pushing his agenda onto Europe no matter what.

This is not an opinion, it’s a fact; a fait accompli. Bar a retraction on the EU’s part, this ‘deal’ is going ahead.

Be you left or right, liberal or conservative, or somewhere in between, you are now faced with two choices: disagree over how to qualify the situation, fighting over the terms used to describe it and the politics that guide it, calling each other names (fascist pig, socialist scum, bigot, loony, crony etc), deepening the civil turmoil already weakening the European Union — or deal with Erdogan’s actions in unison, as the situation arises. The continent demands it, and so does its union.

I guess Erdogan isn’t that different from Trump after all. He may yet scare the establishment into accountability. He may even scare it into responsible action.

From your annoyingly history-savvy Spin Doctor,

Eyes open, mind sharp.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/how-recep-tayyip-erdogan-brought-the-eu-to-heel/

‘Jesus. Such an annoying prick.’ ~ Caiafas

‘I know.’ ~ Judas

Easter. The Holy Week. A period when Greek Orthodox Christianity gathers to celebrate the sacrifice and resurrection of the Son of God in the name of a world purified from evil and ignorance, in holy congregation, in a tongue no one understands.

The situation is tragicomic. All sermons and liturgies are delivered in Koine, a version of Greek which no one speaks, save the preachers, the linguistics professors, and your odd 110-year-old veteran. Churchgoers are addressed in a language they don’t understand. They don’t get the body of the ritual, certainly not word for word, and mumble their way through the service like teenagers in a concert, jabbering lyrics they never really paid attention to, striving to keep up, making shit up as they go along. Happy to be there. Privileged. Present in conscience, if that, but certainly not in mind. How can you be fully present when listening to hours and hours of untranslated ceremony?

To be fair, some are more present than others. They may not understand what is being said, but they are committed to the ceremony, reading from the liturgical texts, enunciating every word, getting involved, excited, without ever grasping the full extent of what they’re saying. It’s like reading Shakespeare in Olde English, first edition, going through the impenetrable language and getting a whiff of things (not that the Scripture compares to Shakespeare in quality, just in inaccessibility), catching glimpses, never really getting the entire message but trying nonetheless. Left with a big hazy blank at the end of it. Churchgoers experience that. They do their best to keep up, poor souls, reading from the liturgicals, raising their voices during the odd passage they’ve memorized from childhood, lighting up at the sight and sound of the occasional word they do recognize, meandering through the rest of it, chanting gibberish gibberish Christ gibberish something Grace gibberish something Lord Almighty, Light something something Praise the Lord something gibberish something Amen.

Hallelujah! Never has Divinity been so transcendentally addressed. Bless you, child. You have reached a divine state of consciousness through a combination of boredom, confusion, lethargy, rote and recital, daydreaming, oxygen deprivation and pure herd instinct.

Never mind the efforts of Jesus Whose efforts were specifically designed to make the word of God accessible to all people. All people.

Imagine if churchgoers understood every word they chanted and sung. Imagine if they had the chance to engage with the sacred text in that emotionally charged context. The feeling of lighting up and being part of the show as a participant, not an observer lost in translation … imagine feeling like that during the entire service.

Nah! Too logical and rad. Can’t have that. Sorry folks, rote and recital is the way to transcend your way to the Lord. Go on, learn those lines, snap snap. Stop wasting time. Get on with it.

And stop asking questions and raising hell. Hubris and curiosity killed the cat, and Christ. It crushed and crucified Him. But He was the Son of God and did it for you, sacrificed Himself for you so that you may be delivered. He died for your sins so you don’t have to, and was resurrected in order to show you the way. Do as you’re told and His death will not have been in vain. Everything will be fine. He will rise again to save you. He will deliver you, if you let Him. Just kill your annoying questions, and your curiosity, too, and stop demanding to understand the words used to praise Him.

Christ has risen, brothers and sisters! Truly risen! Praise the Lord.

See you next year. Now repeat after me: Christ gibberish something Grace gibberish …

By Nicolas D. Sampson

‘The Greek Orthodox Church: an institution that wants the devotion of its subjects badly enough to threaten them with damnation if they don’t attend it, but not badly enough to translate the old-language texts with which it addresses its subjects so that said subjects may be part of the service. An institution that has veered from the essence of its Lord’s teaching far enough to be on par with the Pharisees, whom Christ rose up to confront in the first place.’ ~ THE OTHER DIMENSION

They ask me why I don’t go to Church during Easter. Why I prefer to spend time alone, secluded from others.

Simple. I’m a semi-gnostic / agnostic spiritualist, meaning that I believe in a higher power, a Demiurge of sorts, but have little faith in organized religion. The way the Church goes about its business is ridiculous in my eyes, and so are the ways in which the faithful observe its diktats, especially in this day and age. In the best of times, the faith is a glorified stage performance, and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as it remains within the confines of civility. Now it’s nothing but a second-rate circus, at least on the island of Cyprus.

Here’s how it works. Going to church in Cyprus is a sure way to feel possessed by the vile spirit of mindlessness and corruption the Christ rose up against in the first place. All around sanctimoniousness and showing-off. I can’t stand the pretense, the noise, the fanfare and carnival. I can’t stand the endless gibberish. Listening to a service delivered in the old tongue, which no one fully comprehends, is a waste of time, not to mention insulting and dangerous. The refusal of the Church to adapt to the times is exactly that, insulting and dangerous, if not self-righteous and mean-spirited.

Above all, I am unable to swallow the irony of it all, the fact that I’m attending liturgies and sermons delivered by self-righteous preachers and their minions in ways I cannot understand or engage with, sermons and liturgies concerned with the actions of someone Whose call to Divinity was His inspired defiance of the corrupt preachers of the day.

The godly rebel known as Christ rose up with great hubris, as almost everyone knows, challenging the Pharisees and Sadducees and all authoritarian clergy and their self-righteous agendas, calling the world to engage with the word of God in terms that made sense on both mental and spiritual levels. He ‘translated’ the Scriptures for the average person using simple allegories to relate their messages to the audience. He bade everyone to apply these creeds in ways that could be understood and shared.

So please tell me, how the hell could I ever go to church today? Why? To hear today’s Pharisees go about their business in a manner that is all too reminiscent of yesterday’s Pharisees — all in the name of Christ, no less, the rebel whose very essence was opposed to ‘business as usual’? The irony is too great. The disrespect to the teachings too deep to ignore.

No. I prefer to spend my time away from church, so that I may stay a little closer to the message of God, for what it’s worth. I stay away from church to keep my spirit a little less tainted and a little more open to the notion of something truly otherworldly.

Watch this space for Part 2…

By Nicolas D. Sampson