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Ares
25th July 2015, 09:33 AM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael S. King is a private investigative journalist and researcher based in the New York area. A 1987 Graduate of Rutgers University, King's subsequent 30 year career in Marketing & Advertising has equipped him with a unique perspective when it comes to understanding how "public opinion" is indeed scientifically manufactured.

Madison Ave marketing acumen combines with "City Boy‟ instincts to make Michael S. King one of the most tenacious detectors of "things that don't add up" in the world today. Says King of his admitted quirks, irreverent disdain for "conventional wisdom" and uncanny ability to ferret out and weave together important data points that others miss: "Had Sherlock Holmes been an actual historical personage, I would have been his reincarnation."

King's other interests include the animal kingdom, philosophy, chess, cooking literature, history, (with emphasis on events of the late 19th through the 20th century).



INTRODUCTION

As of the date of this publication (April 2014), a Google Search for the term "Putin thug" yields an astonishing 850,000 results; about the same as for "Putin murderer". Coming in at about 500,000 results is "Putin tyrant". Even the whimsical "Putin the Terrible" is pushing 100,000. Most of these negative results source back to some bloviating American politician, commentator, editorial writer or journalist for a major American publication. Others trace back to European parliamentarians or periodicals.

To be sure, favorable Western reviews for Russia's enigmatic leader are also readily available; but the preponderance of the Western sourced adjectives used to describe Vladimir Putin, be it from the "left" or from the "right", is clearly of a negative nature.

But in Russia itself, the perception is vastly different. Ever since his rise to power, Putin's approval rating among the Russian people has hovered between 70-80%; far higher than that of any American President or European Prime Minister. (1) Indeed, many Russians regard him as the savior of Mother Russia; with some referring to him as "Putin the Great". Some among Russia's Orthodox Christian faithful today believe that Putin was God sent, literally!

Even Putin's most hysterical Western detractors unanimously concede that his talents and abilities are unusually formidable. Putin came from a very humble background. As a young boy, he was full of energy, fond of Martial Arts, and not one to shy away from trouble. His 5th grade teacher, Vera Gurevich, recalls young Vlad:

"In the fifth grade, he still hadn't found himself yet, but I could feel the potential, the energy and the character in him. I saw that he had a great deal of interest in language; he picked it up easily. He had a very good memory and an agile mind.

I thought, something good will come of this boy, so I decided to give him more attention, to distract him from the boys on the streets." (2)

In High School, Putin studied Chemistry at a Technological Institute (which is probably very close to obtaining a Chemistry Degree from some American colleges). He would later obtain a Law Degree from what was then known as Leningrad State University. Brainy Putin later earned a Ph.D in Economics, while also mastering the German language in his spare time. He is basically conversant in English and French. Putin is also well versed in History and Literature (including English & American works) and an aficionado of Ballet, Ice Hockey, Opera and both Classical & Blues music.

In 1983, Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva, a beautiful Flight Attendant with whom he would have two daughters. He is a passionate outdoorsman, animal lover, good with a gun, and holds a Black Belt in Judo. He served 16 years in the Intelligence Service, rising to Russia's Intelligence Chief after the USSR collapsed.

Love him or hate him; one thing is for sure; Putin is no joke. To parody a well known beer commercial, "He is, the most interesting man alive."

Clearly, the negative Internet Search super majority and the Russian population super majority cannot both be right about Mr. Putin. So, who is right? Or does the truth about Vladimir Putin lie somewhere in between? Why so much Putin-hating in the West?

As the astute reader has probably already deduced from the title - The Talented Mr. Putin: What the Government-Media Complex Doesn’t Want You to Know About the New Russia – this work intends to set forth a body of evidence which will strongly support the Russian majority‟s perception. Though the style may seem much more breezy and conversational than the conventional academic sedatives which normally deal with such matters; be assured that the scholarship displayed throughout is as unerring as it is meticulously sourced. This is no opinion piece. It is an organized, concise collection of hard and proven facts which, when weaved together, will state their own conclusions; conclusions which the Western "Powers That Be" have concealed from you, but cannot refute.

And so, dear reader, turn off your TV news and put down your morning newspaper for a while. As the late comedian and social commentator George Carlin used to say; "It‟s all bullshit, and it‟s bad for you."

Just pretend that you have never even heard of Vladimir Putin, until now. With confrontation looming (if certain players have their way), the people of the "free world" cannot afford to be misled any longer. Of course, you will render your own final verdict regarding Mr. Putin. But how can it be a just one until you have at least considered the organized array of facts which are about to be presented?

That said, let's climb into my time machine, and enjoy a wild ride from past to present.

CHAPTER 1


Rus Warriors through the Czars


More than 1100 years ago, diverse groups of seafaring Norsemen known as 'Rus' settled in modern day Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia; giving their name to the latter two. The Rus governed over native Slavic and Finnish tribes. Some historians believe that these Vikings were invited in to bring order. Others theorize that the Rus conquered the territories and then established their rule over the Slavs and Finns. In any case, the history of Russia is long and storied.

In 988, the Rus state, centered in Kiev (modern day Ukraine) converted to Christianity; which it adopted from the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire). For this reason, Russia is sometimes referred to as “The Third Rome”. That fusion of Rus, Slavic and Byzantine cultures formed the basis of Russian culture for the next 1000 years.

Kiev Rus ultimately disintegrated as a state because of the brutal Mongol invasion of 1237–1240 and the death of about half the population of Rus. Remnants of the Mongol invasions can still be seen in the faces of some modern day Russians (Tatar Mongol mix).

After the 13th century, Moscow became the cultural center of Russia. By the 18th century, the Tsardom of Russia had become the enormous, resource rich Russian Empire, stretching from the Polish–Lithuanian Union eastward to the Pacific Ocean. The word for king, Tsar, is Russian for Caesar.

Expansion towards the west introduced Russia to Western culture, which, at that time was far more advanced. In the late 1600‟s, Tsar Peter (Peter the Great) led a cultural revolution that replaced some of Russia‟s medieval social and political system with a scientific, Western oriented, system. The Tsarist House of Romanov (which takes its name from the Roman Empire) indirectly traces its lineage back to Peter. The Romanovs will rule Russia until 1918.


The Golden Age of Russian culture and imperialism blossomed under the Reign of Catherine the Great during the late 1700‟s. Catherine presided over the age of the Russian Enlightenment. The Smolny Institute, the first state institution of higher education for women in Europe, was founded by her. Catherine also founded the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Hermitage is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world and has been open to the public since 1852. Its stunning collections, of which only a small part is on display, comprise about three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world.

During the early 1800’s, Russia repelled Napoleon’s great invasion, a conflict fought over control of Poland and other reasons. Russians were very proud of their victory in the first “Great Patriotic War”. So much so that Tsar Alexander I signed a manifest on Christmas Day in 1812, declaring his intention to build a grand cathedral in honor of Christ the Savior "to signify our gratitude to Divine Providence for saving Russia from the doom that overshadowed Her" and as a memorial to the sacrifices of the Russian people.

The awe inspiring Moscow cathedral took 40 years to build and still more to decorate. Christ the Savior Cathedral holds a special spiritual, cultural, and historic significance for the Russian faithful. Keep this in your memory bank because we will again visit this Cathedral at future points of this narrative.

During the 1850’s there was the Crimean War against Britain, France and the Ottoman Turkish Empire; a war which was imposed upon Russia by the two Western imperial powers. Russia lost that war.

From 1877-1878, Russia fought and won, the Russo-Turkish War. But when Britain’s Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli aggressively injected himself into the peace treaty (Treaty of Berlin), Russia and its Slavic allies in south eastern Europe were forced to accept a ‘raw deal’; a deal so flawed that it would later play a role in the outbreak of World War I (by driving a nasty wedge between Russia and its Austro-Hungarian ally). (1) It’s a fascinating story, but again, it digresses. Just know that the long history of Western powers maneuvering against Russia repeats itself time and again.

During the 1800’s, Britain actually fought two wars in Afghanistan, on Russia’s southern border. The ludicrous pretext for the Anglo-Afghan Wars was to “protect India” from Russia. The real reason was Britain’s desire to compete against Russia for influence in Central Asia. Disraeli once wrote to Queen Victoria of his plan to: “to clear central Asia of Muscovites (Russians) and drive them into the Caspian Sea.” (2)

It should be noted that Benjamin Disraeli was very closely attached to the House of Rothschild (3); the wealthiest family in world history. (4) The Rothschild enmity towards Russia is now 200 years old. As we shall see later on, the anti-Putin Rothschild Banking Dynasty is still working against Russia to this very day.

Disreali's invasion of Afghanistan ended badly for the British. They withdrew in 1880 and Disreli's political influence was finally checked. This fierce historic rivalry between Russia and Rothschild-Britain became known as "The Great Game"; the chessboard being Afghanistan. Indeed, "The Great Game" is still being played to this day. And you thought we went into Afghaintan to "get Osama Bin Laden"!

In 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated after the 5th attempt on his life. Bomb throwing Red terrorists (Communists / Anarchists) were responsible. The Tsar’s son, Alexander III, and grandson, Nicholas watched the Tsar’s legs get blown off. The resulting anti Red backlash caused many Reds to flee to America. Wonderful!

By 1905, the Reds, partially funded from western sources (long story but true) were strong enough to attempt a violent overthrow of the Tsar. That fateful year also witnessed the bombing assassination of Tsar Nicholas’s uncle, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and the loss of a war with Japan. During that war, the Japanese received massive financial assistance from Wall Street banker Jacob Schiff, (5) as well as some final diplomatic favoritism from Wall Street’s wholly owned warmonger, President Theodore Roosevelt. (6) (The historical image of a blue blooded TR being the scourge of the Wall Street “Robber Barons” is mythical; as is the image of TR the ‘war hero’.)

After the war, Japan expressed its gratitude to Schiff by awarding him the Order of the Sacred Treasure. In 1907 he was again honored with the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun. Schiff was personally awarded the Order by Emperor Meiji in the Imperial Palace.

Schiff’s support of the Japanese military was not motivated by any special love for Japan, of course. What motivated Schiff was the ongoing mutual animosity between Tsarist Russians and the Jews of Russia; an animosity that was also shared by the House of Rothschild. During the late 1700’s, ancestors of the Schiffs and the Rothschilds had actually shared a double house in Frankfurt, Germany. (7)

Though the Red uprising was finally put down, Russian prestige and position had been weakened, both at home and abroad. Many of the Red terrorists who managed to get out of Russia obtained refuge in Western Europe or America. Leon Trotsky and his gang actually settled in Brooklyn; where they plotted their future return.



In 1911, Russia’s popular reformist Prime Minister, Pyotr Stolypin, was shot to death in the Kiev Opera House; in front of Tsar Nicholas and his two daughters.

In 1914, Russia, having been cleverly lured into an alliance with new “friends” France and Britain, and seeking to settle old scores with the Ottoman Turks, joined what would soon turn into “World War I”. Unfortunately for Russia, Turkey was party to an alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary (both of which had been Russian allies until British Prime Minister Disraeli caused a ‘divorce’ in 1878) (8). This therefore pitted Russia against Germany and Austria-Hungary in a mutually destructive war that was to soon bring down all three Empires, and Ottoman Turkey too.

CHAPTER 2

The Bolshevik / Soviet Revolution



As they had during the 1905 War with Japan, the Communist revolutionaries used popular discontent over World War I and an economic crisis to foment another attempt at Revolution in 1917. The Bolshevik Reds promised agitated mobs that they would bring about a “worker’s paradise” - an earlier version of “Hope & Change”. Red leader Lenin returned to Russia in “the sealed train”, bringing with him sacks of gold given to him by the German banker Max Warburg; whose brother Paul was the chief architect behind the 1913 founding of the Federal Reserve System (Central Bank of the United States). Warburg and the German government knew that a revolution would undermine the Russian government and ultimately knock Russia out of the war. But Warburg’s motives were less than “patriotic”.

Financiers such as the Warburg Brothers, the Rothschild Clan, John D Rockefeller, JP Morgan and Jacob Schiff coveted control over Russia’s vast territory and resources. They saw the mighty Empire as the chief obstacle to their ultimate vision of global economic integration; an ambitious idea which, even back then, was openly discussed within the elite circles of London, Paris and New York.

In February of 1917, Tsar Nicholas was forced to abdicate. Russia became a democratic Republic led by the socialist Alexander Kerensky. The Tsar and his family were taken into custody with the expectation that they would eventually be exiled. Probably due Rothschild’s influence, Britain, the Tsar’s supposed “ally” refused to grant asylum to the Romanov family.

In October of that same year, the Bolsheviks staged a second revolution. Kerensky was overthrown and the Bolsheviks seized the city of St. Petersburg. Their dictatorial power grab would trigger a civil war. When the Tsar and his family fell into Bolshevik hands, efforts to exile the Romanovs ceased.

The Royal Family was marked for death. As a boy, Tsar Nicholas had witnessed the bombing murder of his grandfather, Alexander II, in 1881. The same fate now awaits him and his beautiful family.

On the evening of Jukly 16/17, 1918, the Romanov Family was awakened at 2AM, told to dress, and then herded into the cellar of the house in which they were being held. Moments later, Bolshevik killers stormed in and gunned down the entire family, their doctor and three servants. Some of the Romanov daughters were stabbed and clubbed to death after initial gunfire had failed to kill them. News of the brutal murder of the Romanovs sent shock waves throughout Russia and all of Christian Europe.

For the next 4 years, a civil war between the Reds and the “Whites” raged throughout Russia. Against this backdrop, the Communist International, known as “The Comintern”, was established in Moscow. The Comintern stated openly that its intention was to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international "bourgeoisie" (the entrepreneurial class) and for the creation of an international Soviet republic (world government)."

To win the Civil War, the Reds used strategic terror to intimidate their White adversaries into submission. On orders from Lenin and Trotsky, the "Red Terror" was announced by Yakov Sverlov. The Red Terror was marked by mass arrests in the middle of the night, executions, and hideously creative tactics of torture. As many as 100,000 Russians were brutally tortured and murdered during the Red Terror, carried out by the ‘Cheka’ (secret police).

Lenin and Trotsky’s oppression of the Russian people broke their strength and will to resist the Reds. ‘The Famine of 1921’ was partly due to the folly of central economic planning, as well as to a deliberate effort to kill off any Russians still not willing to support the Red takeover.

The Communists-Bolsheviks had run the money-printing presses to finance their civil war and welfare schemes. When inflation followed, they imposed price controls; causing farmers to lose money by farming. The shortages were compounded by the Reds’ seizure of seeds and food. The horrific famine was then used to selectively feed those regions submissive to the Reds, and starve out those loyal to the White factions.

Hungry Russians and Ukrainians resorted to eating grass and even cannibalism. The horror escalated when Lenin deliberately blocked foreign relief efforts. When the death toll reached 8-10 million, (1) Lenin finally relented. Were it not for the mostly American aid, the death toll for Lenin and Trotsky’s cruel folly might have doubled or tripled.

The demoralizing terror took a heavy psychological toll on the frightened people of the former Russian Empire. By 1922, many will have been broken into total submission to the Red monsters of the dreaded Cheka. At the conclusion of the Red Terror, Red Famine, and Red-White Civil War, Lenin and Trotsky formally established the Soviet Union with its capital city in Moscow. The former Russian Empire was now also known as the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

The Communist giant spanned the Eurasian landmass. Of its multi-ethnic "republics" the Russian republic was by far the largest and most populated. The well-known criminal brutality of the Soviets shocked the world, as did the bold Communist declarations to overthrow all other nations from within; including the United States. For these reasons, three consecutive American Presidents (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover), all refused to diplomatically recognize the Soviet Union. It was not until 1933 that President Franklin D Roosevelt, with string support from the NY Times & Washington Post, granted recognition to the Soviet Union.

As Bolshevism fastened its death grip over Russia, the parallel movement known as Globalism was gaining added momentum in the West. During this time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (now Chatham House) was founded in London and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was established in New York City, with “Father of the Federal Reserve” Paul Warburg serving as CFR’s first Director. To this day, these influential “think tanks” work toward global economic and political integration. To that end, these same players set up the ‘League of Nations’ (forerunner of the United Nations) soon after the end of World War I.

"Chatham House Rules" of secrecy govern the members of both of these exclusive clubs. Membership is by invitation only. Members may discuss generalities of group meetings, but are expected to remain discreet concerning who attends the meetings and what is said.

Up until the present day, the membership roster of the CFR & Chatham has consisted of top names from politics, media, banking, business, and academia. Membership has included Finance Capitalists, Communists, “Neo-Conservatives”, ambitious careerists, and starry eyed academic types. The chosen few recruited by these Globalist groups often find themselves on a fast track to greater fame and fortune. Prior to the actual establishment of the CFR, these Globalists had worked to destroy the Tsar. Today, their successors seek to destroy Putin.

Ares
25th July 2015, 09:34 AM
CHAPTER 16

The Tragedy & Triumph of the Sochi Olympics.

The run up to the March 2014 Winter Olympic Games (hosted by Sochi, Russia) was marked by an intensive 30 day pre-Games hate campaign led by the Sulzberger-Ochs Family’s venerable “paper of record”, the New York Times. First there was the oft repeated half truth that “Putin’s Games” would be the most expensive Olympic Games ever; coming in at an eye-popping $50 billion dollars. The not-so-subtle insinuation was that an egomaniacal dictator was raiding the public treasury to feed his grandiose ego. Some even likened Putin to corrupt Roman Emperors of antiquity, who would squander enormous sums of public money for the “bread and circuses” of the Gladiatorial contests.

Again, the reality was something different. It was indeed true that Putin wanted the grand events to show to his people, and to the world, that Russia was back to its rightful place of honor as one of the world’s leading nations. But the Western media’s narrative omitted two important data points regarding its tiresome, and unconfirmed, mantra of “$50 Billion …. $50 Billion….50 Billion”.
First of all, only about 15% of that sum went towards construction of the actual Olympic venues. The bulk of the funds were used to upgrade the infrastructure of the spectacular sea & ski town of Sochi. (1) Long after the Olympics are gone, Putin’s investment in Sochi will yield permanent vacation based commerce and tax revenue for the surrounding region.

The other big “lie of omission” was in failing to highlight the fact that a substantial percentage of this wise investment in Russia’s future came from private investors. (2) In line with Putin’s economic philosophy of “industry captains”, these Russian heavy- hitters answered the call to action; knowing that the new Sochi will pay back handsome rewards down the road.

Perhaps the piranha press of the Western world should be more concerned over the staggering debts and deficits that their own governments are running up:

(US Debt-GDP Ratio: 100%, France: 90%, UK: 90%, Germany: 80%,...... Russia: 11%) (3)

Then came anti-Sochi story after story plastered on the front page of the New York Times and across American TV screens. With breathless enthusiasm, scribblers of every stripe and talking heads of every network informed us of the stray dogs who were being euthanized, the hotel door that wouldn’t open, the broken toilet, the elevator that malfunctioned, the bed that was missing pillows, the looming terrorist attacks (which never materialized), the specter of homosexuals being persecuted in Sochi, “yellow water” here and unfinished construction there, plus other trivialities too petty and too numerous to even recall. Plug the term “Sochi Problems” into your search engine, and enjoy a good laugh as you plow through the 39,000,000 + results.

The ultimate “slap in the face” to Putin came from Obama’s diplomatic boycott of the games. Neither Obama nor a single official from his administration attended “Putin’s Games”. Not even his Globe-trotting wife, who was present at the London Summer Games of 2012, deigned to attend the ceremonies in Sochi. Now when Michelle Obama and her massive entourage of ‘soul sistas’ and other assorted hangers-on pass up an opportunity for yet another a taxpayer funded vacation, you know something is afoot!

EU Presidents and Prime Ministers stayed away as well. But many Asian leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, did come to pay respects to the new Russia and its man of the hour, the talented Mr. Putin.

To tweak the Russians some more, Obama dispatched three retired homosexual athletes to constitute the majority of official US delegation. Lesbian tennis star Billie Jean King, lesbian hockey player Caitlin Cahow, and homosexual figure skater Brian Boitano arrived in Sochi amidst imaginary “concerns” for the safety of homosexuals. Just for good measure, Obama also sent Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of the Praetorian Guard, (“Homeland Security”) to Sochi as well. Though not openly lesbian, the husky voiced and stocky Napolitano is widely believed to be, eh, “in the closet”, shall we say?

In advance of the event, the headlines blared: “Obama Sends Message By Naming Sochi Delegation.” (4) Now these individuals were not delegates who just happened to be homosexual. They were sent to Sochi precisely because they were homosexual.

About an hour or so prior to what would turn out to be a truly unforgettable Opening Ceremony, little Bobby Costas, the odious sports reporter hosting American TV coverage, interviewed ‘Obama the Absent’ via satellite. The self important Costas had already peppered his audience with snide anti-Russian zingers. As expected, as planned, Costas allowed Obama to stick his own knife into Putin. With Costas playing the role of ‘straight man’, the Comedian-In-Chief delivered his rehearsed and wholly inappropriate punch lines before to a national audience:

"He (Putin) does have a public style where he likes to sit back and look a little bored during the course of joint interviews. …… My sense is that's part of his shtick back home politically as wanting to look like the tough guy. U.S. politicians have a different style. We tend to smile once in a while." (5)

No class Obama. Let’s see you say that to Judo Master Putin’s face!

But the propaganda blitz was soon dealt a silencing blow. The Opening Ceremony at Sochi was a jaw-dropping spectacle that even the envious losers of America’s chattering class had to admire. The proud people of a new Russia put on a dazzling technological feast for the senses; highlighting the history, music, dance, architecture, science, art, and literature of the 1100 year old nation. One could not help but be struck by the difference between the Russian celebration of sport and culture; versus the worsening degeneracy of America’s annual “Super Bowl Half Time Show” (Janet Jackson’s flashed breast, Madonna’s gyrating pelvis, Beyonce’s earth-shaking ass etc).

The only “glitch” in the otherwise flawless show was the failure of one of 5 giant Olympic rings to fully expand and light up. Astute observers were quick to notice that the unopened ring just happened to be the very ring which represents the Americas. (6) This is only conjecture of course; but could this “glitch” have been Putin’s version of a “Sicilian message”; his way of acknowledging the rude absence of American politicians? Maybe.

In another apparent insult to “anti-gay” Russia, the Olympic team from Germany - an oh-so “progressive” nation which now permits animals to be tied up and raped in fast-spreading Bestiality Brothels (7) - marched into the Opening Ceremonies wearing hideous, multicolored rainbow uniforms; the unmistakable theme of International Homosexuality & Transgenderism (Cross Dressers). The TV talking heads assured us that the unprecedented rainbow design had nothing to do with “gay rights”. But astute observers weren’t buying the “coincidence “claim.

Due to her own concerns over “human rights”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also skipped the Sochi ceremony. The manly Mrs. Merkel’s hypocrisy exceeds even that of Obama. You see, in “free” and “democratic” Germany, parents who get caught home-schooling their children can be stripped of custody and sent to prison. (8) Likewise, scholars who dare to question the conventional narrative of World War II are also thrown in jail. (9)

In the upside down worldview of Frau Merkel, shielding children from homosexual propaganda, or home-schooling them, or defending your historic cathedrals from pornographic trespassers, is regarded as an affront to the conscience of “The International Community” (bow your head on solemn relevance as you speak those words).

On the other hand, allowing the most deranged and debased lunatics to tie up and rape dogs, sheep, goats and llamas in for-profit “Erotic Zoos” (10) is considered a form of “tolerance” for “alternative lifestyles”.

Good God! Putin is right. The West is sick; sick in its mind, sick in its heart, sick in its soul.

Toward the end of the Games, Bobby Costas, that self- aggrandizing, lying, little Lilliputian liberal, again swerved into politics; sanctimoniously delivering a prime-time monologue attacking Russia’s “human rights” record. (no mention of US transgressions such as Iraq, Libya, Predator Drones, torture camps, NGO plots, etc) But no amount of propaganda could overshadow the renewed spirit so clearly evident in Putin’s resurgent Russia.

The Russian Olympians went on to win more medals than any other country; overtaking the US on the final day of “Putin’s Games”. To cap off Putin’s, and Russia’s, proud day in the sun, the Closing Ceremonies turned out to be just as stunning and just as educational as the Grand Opening. But Russia’s moment did not last very long. Near the end of the games, with an NGO- orchestrated crisis about to climax in Ukraine, the anti-Putin drumbeat resumed at fever pitch.

What could Vladimir Putin possibly have done to merit such disrespect and enmity from America’s ruling class? Has Russia bombed sovereign nations into submission? No; that was the US that did that (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya). Has Russia set up torture camps for prisoners of war? No; that was the US that did that (Guantanamo, Abu Graib) Has Russia killed women, elderly and children with Predator Drones? No; that was the US that did that (Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia) Has Russia used subversion to foment “spontaneous” protests and internal coups of foreign governments? No; that was the US that did that (Georgia, Ukraine (twice!), Egypt, Tunisia and many more) Is Russia threatening to attack any other country? No; that is the US doing that (N. Korea, Iran, Lebanon, Syria).

o, what “crime” is Vladimir Putin really guilty of? Two things; let us reiterate:



1. Refusing to allow his people to be controlled by the architects of Globalism:

Putin: ”The UniPolar world refers to a world in which there is one master, one sovereign, one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. This is pernicious - At its basis there can be no moral foundations for modern civilization.” (11)



2. Blocking Israel’s long awaited ‘Holy War’ against Syria, and Iran:

Hillary Clinton: “I do not believe that Russia and China are paying any price at all for standing up nothing at all - for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime (Syria). The only way that will change is if every nation represented here directly and urgently makes that Russia and China will pay a price.” (12) (emphasis added)



It is only the magical alchemy of the news media’s illusion makers that has transformed peaceful Russia into a “threat to world peace”; nothing more. In recent years, Hollywood and the New York ad agencies have also joined the propaganda blitz, albeit in very subtle way.

In 2013, the long dead genre of anti-Soviet dramas returned with the FX (FOX affiliate) series The Americans; produced by an actual “retired” CIA agent, Joe Weisberg.(13)

On Super Bowl Sunday of 2014, a comical M&M’s candy commercial featured murderous Russian gangsters threatening to cut up and eat the giant “living” M&M which they had kidnapped and thrown into the truck of a car.

In March of 2014, the latest ‘Muppets’ Movie featured a nose-picking Russian villain (Kermit the Frog’s evil “look alike”, Constantine), and Tina Fey as a stern Russian camp guard in a Siberian Gulag. That same month saw the re-release of the old anti-Soviet comic book, Rocky & Bullwinkle. Can the return of the classic Cold War era TV cartoon be far behind?

In 2015, a movie about the Russian monk Rasputin (another long dead genre) is due to be released. Super star Leonardo Dicaprio will play the part of the bizarre mystic who so enthralled the last Czarina, Aleksandra.

This subtle drip-drip campaign, though seemingly fun and harmless on its face, is indeed penetrating the public mind. The most effective forms of marketing are those which influence your subconscious perceptions without you even realizing it. The masters of manipulation know all too well how to control our buying habits; and they want us to buy into the related ideas of anti-Putinism, anti-Russianism and maybe, just maybe, World War III.

Farfetched you say? Wait until you read the next chapter.

http://www.tomatobubble.com/id550.html

Ponce
25th July 2015, 10:53 AM
Putin for president........of America......after all, we already have one who is not an American...all that this one did was to open the door for other foreigners to also be able to become president of the USA............why hell, Ponce for president of the USA......ups, sorry, I forgot I don't qualify because I am a real US citizen.

V

Cebu_4_2
25th July 2015, 05:49 PM
Synopsis please?

Ares
25th July 2015, 06:49 PM
Synopsis please?

It's worth the read. :)

crimethink
25th July 2015, 08:35 PM
Irony of the Week Award goes to...Ares! For posting a piece lionizing one of the world's foremost "statists," while shrieking like a little girl about "statism" when someone tells him reality about how things really work in America.

I have respect for Putin, but Ares should not, in order to not be a hypocrite.

Ares
25th July 2015, 08:47 PM
Today, 11:35 PM
crimethink

Great Value Carrots
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This is nice, I can get used to this.

Ponce
25th July 2015, 10:46 PM
Why placed crimething on ignore?.....I love to see when he keeps falling into his own traps hahahahahahahah.

V

crimethink
25th July 2015, 11:20 PM
This is nice, I can get used to this.

http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/63618061.jpg

Still a lying hypocrite, even if you won't admit you read this.

Ares
26th July 2015, 06:07 AM
Why placed crimething on ignore?.....I love to see when he keeps falling into his own traps hahahahahahahah.

V

Just got tired of his defeatist statist world view. He can continue sucking the state sponsored kosher cock that he loves so dearly. I'm done debating that idiot.

Ponce
26th July 2015, 08:11 AM
Even from a "idiot" you can learn many things...for example... I learned that Ponce is really GREAT hahahhahhahahhhah.......is ok guys, that's only my inferiority complex talking hahahahahahah.

V

crimethink
26th July 2015, 11:26 AM
Just got tired of his defeatist statist world view. He can continue sucking the state sponsored kosher cock that he loves so dearly. I'm done debating that idiot.

You don't "debate" shit. You just go off on anyone who dares - dares - challenge your extremely narrow position on the world. You flat out lie about others' positions, with consistently homoerotic obscene language. You are a coward who is unable to refute commentary with anything but "you suck cock."

This thread here, lionizing a staunch "statist," Putin, demonstrates what a hypocrite you are. Are you "sucking Putin's cock" with this thread?

Jewboo
26th July 2015, 03:26 PM
I learned that Ponce is really GREAT hahahhahhahahhhah.......




https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2a/60/f8/2a60f874312f3ecf48f622d177a446ca.jpg
Ponce Numero Uno








:rolleyes: GO BACK TO CUBA

monty
28th March 2017, 01:25 PM
How to Think About Vladimir Putin (https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/think-vladimir-putin/4/)

March 2017 • Volume 46, Number 3 (https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/think-vladimir-putin/) • Christopher Caldwell (https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/author/christophercaldwell/)Christopher Caldwell
Senior Editor, The Weekly Standard
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ChristopherCaldwell.jpg

Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. A graduate of Harvard College, his essays, columns, and reviews appear in the Claremont Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Book Review, the Spectator (London), Financial Times, and numerous other publications. He is the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, and is at work on a book about post-1960s America.



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The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 15, 2017, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona.

Vladimir Putin is a powerful ideological symbol and a highly effective ideological litmus test. He is a hero to populist conservatives around the world and anathema to progressives. I don’t want to compare him to our own president, but if you know enough about what a given American thinks of Putin, you can probably tell what he thinks of Donald Trump.

Let me stress at the outset that this is not going to be a talk about what to think about Putin, which is something you are all capable of making up your minds on, but rather how to think about him. And on this, there is one basic truth to remember, although it is often forgotten. Our globalist leaders may have deprecated sovereignty since the end of the Cold War, but that does not mean it has ceased for an instant to be the primary subject of politics.

Vladimir Vladimirovich is not the president of a feminist NGO. He is not a transgender-rights activist. He is not an ombudsman appointed by the United Nations to make and deliver slide shows about green energy. He is the elected leader of Russia—a rugged, relatively poor, militarily powerful country that in recent years has been frequently humiliated, robbed, and misled. His job has been to protect his country’s prerogatives and its sovereignty in an international system that seeks to erode sovereignty in general and views Russia’s sovereignty in particular as a threat.

By American standards, Putin’s respect for the democratic process has been fitful at best. He has cracked down on peaceful demonstrations. Political opponents have been arrested and jailed throughout his rule. Some have even been murdered—Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading Chechnya correspondent shot in her apartment building in Moscow in 2006; Alexander Litvinenko, the spy poisoned with polonium-210 in London months later; the activist Boris Nemtsov, shot on a bridge in Moscow in early 2015. While the evidence connecting Putin’s own circle to the killings is circumstantial, it merits scrutiny.

Yet if we were to use traditional measures for understanding leaders, which involve the defense of borders and national flourishing, Putin would count as the pre-eminent statesman of our time. On the world stage, who can vie with him? Only perhaps Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey.

When Putin took power in the winter of 1999-2000, his country was defenseless. It was bankrupt. It was being carved up by its new kleptocratic elites, in collusion with its old imperial rivals, the Americans. Putin changed that. In the first decade of this century, he did what Kemal Atatürk had done in Turkey in the 1920s. Out of a crumbling empire, he rescued a nation-state, and gave it coherence and purpose. He disciplined his country’s plutocrats. He restored its military strength. And he refused, with ever blunter rhetoric, to accept for Russia a subservient role in an American-run world system drawn up by foreign politicians and business leaders. His voters credit him with having saved his country.

Why are American intellectuals such ideologues when they talk about the “international system”? Probably because American intellectuals devised that system, and because they assume there can never be legitimate historic reasons why a politician would arise in opposition to it. They denied such reasons for the rise of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. They do the same with Donald Trump. And they have done it with Putin. They assume he rose out of the KGB with the sole purpose of embodying an evil for our righteous leaders to stamp out.

Putin did not come out of nowhere. Russian people not only tolerate him, they revere him. You can get a better idea of why he has ruled for 17 years if you remember that, within a few years of Communism’s fall, average life expectancy in Russia had fallen below that of Bangladesh. That is an ignominy that falls on Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin’s reckless opportunism made him an indispensable foe of Communism in the late 1980s. But it made him an inadequate founding father for a modern state. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose writings about Communism give him some claim to be considered the greatest man of the twentieth century, believed the post-Communist leaders had made the country even worse. In the year 2000 Solzhenitsyn wrote: “As a result of the Yeltsin era, all the fundamental sectors of our political, economic, cultural, and moral life have been destroyed or looted. Will we continue looting and destroying Russia until nothing is left?” That was the year Putin came to power. He was the answer to Solzhenitsyn’s question.

There are two things Putin did that cemented the loyalty of Solzhenitsyn and other Russians—he restrained the billionaires who were looting the country, and he restored Russia’s standing abroad. Let us take them in turn.

Russia retains elements of a kleptocracy based on oligarchic control of natural resources. But we must remember that Putin inherited that kleptocracy. He did not found it. The transfer of Russia’s natural resources into the hands of KGB-connected Communists, who called themselves businessmen, was a tragic moment for Russia. It was also a shameful one for the West. Western political scientists provided the theft with ideological cover, presenting it as a “transition to capitalism.” Western corporations, including banks, provided the financing.

Let me stress the point. The oligarchs who turned Russia into an armed plutocracy within half a decade of the downfall in 1991 of Communism called themselves capitalists. But they were mostly men who had been groomed as the next generation of Communist nomenklatura*—people like Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. They were the people who understood the scope and nature of state assets, and they controlled the privatization programs. They had access to Western financing and they were willing to use violence and intimidation. So they took power just as they had planned to back when they were in Communist cadre school—but now as owners, not as bureaucrats. Since the state had owned everything under Communism, this was quite a payout. Yeltsin’s reign was built on these billionaires’ fortunes, and vice-versa.

Khodorkovsky has recently become a symbol of Putin’s misrule, because Putin jailed him for ten years. Khodorkovsky’s trial certainly didn’t meet Western standards. But Khodorkovsky’s was among the most obscene privatizations of all. In his recent biography of Putin, Steven Lee Myers, the former Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, calculates that Khodorkovsky and fellow investors paid $150 million in the 1990s for the main production unit of the oil company Yukos, which came to be valued at about $20 billion by 2004. In other words, they acquired a share of the essential commodity of Russia—its oil—for less than one percent of its value. Putin came to call these people “state-appointed billionaires.” He saw them as a conduit for looting Russia, and sought to restore to the country what had been stolen from it. He also saw that Russia needed to reclaim control of its vast reserves of oil and gas, on which much of Europe depended, because that was the only geopolitical lever it had left.

The other thing Putin did was restore the country’s position abroad. He arrived in power a decade after his country had suffered a Vietnam-like defeat in Afghanistan. Following that defeat, it had failed to halt a bloody Islamist uprising in Chechnya. And worst of all, it had been humiliated by the United States and NATO in the Serbian war of 1999, when the Clinton administration backed a nationalist and Islamist independence movement in Kosovo. This was the last war in which the United States would fight on the same side as Osama Bin Laden, and the U.S. used the opportunity to show Russia its lowly place in the international order, treating it as a nuisance and an afterthought. Putin became president a half a year after Yeltsin was maneuvered into allowing the dismemberment of Russia’s ally, Serbia, and as he entered office Putin said: “We will not tolerate any humiliation to the national pride of Russians, or any threat to the integrity of the country.”

The degradation of Russia’s position represented by the Serbian War is what Putin was alluding to when he famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This statement is often misunderstood or mischaracterized: he did not mean by it any desire to return to Communism. But when Putin said he’d restore Russia’s strength, he meant it. He beat back the military advance of Islamist armies in Chechnya and Dagestan, and he took a hard line on terrorism—including a decision not to negotiate with hostage-takers, even in secret.

One theme runs through Russian foreign policy, and has for much of its history. There is no country, with the exception of Israel, that has a more dangerous frontier with the Islamic world. You would think that this would be the primary lens through which to view Russian conduct—a good place for the West to begin in trying to explain Russian behavior that, at first glance, does not have an obvious rationale. Yet agitation against Putin in the West has not focused on that at all. It has not focused on Russia’s intervention against ISIS in the war in Syria, or even on Russia’s harboring Edward Snowden, the fugitive leaker of U.S. intelligence secrets.

The two episodes of concerted outrage about Putin among Western progressives have both involved issues trivial to the world, but vital to the world of progressivism. The first came in 2014, when the Winter Olympics, which were to be held in Sochi, presented an opportunity to damage Russia economically. Most world leaders attended the games happily, from Mark Rutte (Netherlands) and Enrico Letta (Italy) to Xi Jinping (China) and Shinzo Abe (Japan). But three leaders—David Cameron of Britain, François Hollande of France, and Barack Obama of the United States—sent progressives in their respective countries into a frenzy over a short list of domestic causes. First, there was the jailed oil tycoon, Khodorkovsky; Putin released him before the Olympics began. Second, there were the young women who called themselves Pussy Riot, performance artists who were jailed for violating Russia’s blasphemy laws when they disrupted a religious service with obscene chants about God (translations were almost never shown on Western television); Putin also released them prior to the Olympics. Third, there was Russia’s Article 6.21, which was oddly described in the American press as a law against “so-called gay propaganda.” A more accurate translation of what the law forbids is promoting “non-traditional sexual relations to children.” Now, some Americans might wish that Russia took religion or homosexuality less seriously and still be struck by the fact that these are very local issues. There is something unbalanced about turning them into diplomatic incidents and issuing all kinds of threats because of them.

The second campaign against Putin has been the attempt by the outgoing Obama administration to cast doubt on the legitimacy of last November’s presidential election by implying that the Russian government somehow “hacked” it. This is an extraordinary episode in the history of manufacturing opinion. I certainly will not claim any independent expertise in cyber-espionage. But anyone who has read the public documentation on which the claims rest will find only speculation, arguments from authority, and attempts to make repetition do the work of logic.

In mid-December, the New York Times ran an article entitled “How Moscow Aimed a Perfect Weapon at the U.S. Election.” Most of the assertions in the piece came from unnamed administration sources and employees of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the Democrats to investigate a hacked computer at the Democratic National Committee. They quote those who served on the DNC’s secret anti-hacking committee, including the party chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and the party lawyer, Michael Sussmann. Then a National Intelligence Council report that the government released in January showed the heart of the case: more than half of the report was devoted to complaints about the bias of RT, the Russian government’s international television network.

Again, we do not know what the intelligence agencies know. But there is no publicly available evidence to justify Arizona Senator John McCain’s calling what the Russians did “an act of war.” If there were, the discussion of the evidence would have continued into the Trump administration, rather than simply evaporating once it ceased to be useful as a political tool.

There were two other imaginary Putin scandals that proved to be nothing. In November, the Washington Post ran a blacklist of news organizations that had published “fake news” in the service of Putin, but the list turned out to have been compiled largely by a fly-by-night political activist group called PropOrNot, which had placed certain outlets on the list only because their views coincided with those of RT on given issues. Then in December, the Obama administration claimed to have found Russian computer code it melodramatically called “Grizzly Steppe” in the Vermont electrical grid. This made front-page headlines. But it was a mistake. The so-called Russian code could be bought commercially, and it was found, according to one journalist, “in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.”

Democrats have gone to extraordinary lengths to discredit Putin. Why? There really is such a thing as a Zeitgeist or spirit of the times. A given issue will become a passion for all mankind, and certain men will stand as symbols of it. Half a century ago, for instance, the Zeitgeist was about colonial liberation. Think of Martin Luther King, traveling to Norway to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, stopping on the way in London to give a talk about South African apartheid. What did that have to do with him? Practically: Nothing. Symbolically: Everything. It was an opportunity to talk about the moral question of the day.

We have a different Zeitgeist today. Today it is sovereignty and self-determination that are driving passions in the West. The reason for this has a great deal to do with the way the Cold War conflict between the United States and Russia ended. In the 1980s, the two countries were great powers, yes; but at the same time they were constrained. The alliances they led were fractious. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, their fates diverged. The United States was offered the chance to lay out the rules of the world system, and accepted the offer with a vengeance. Russia was offered the role of submitting to that system.

Just how irreconcilable those roles are is seen in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine two years ago. According to the official United States account, Russia invaded its neighbor after a glorious revolution threw out a plutocracy. Russia then annexed Ukrainian naval bases in the Crimea. According to the Russian view, Ukraine’s democratically elected government was overthrown by an armed uprising backed by the United States. To prevent a hostile NATO from establishing its own naval base in the Black Sea, by this account, Russia had to take Crimea, which in any case is historically Russian territory. Both of these accounts are perfectly correct. It is just that one word can mean something different to Americans than it does to Russians. For instance, we say the Russians don’t believe in democracy. But as the great journalist and historian Walter Laqueur put it, “Most Russians have come to believe that democracy is what happened in their country between 1990 and 2000, and they do not want any more of it.”

The point with which I would like to conclude is this: we will get nowhere if we assume that Putin sees the world as we do. One of the more independent thinkers about Russia in Washington, D.C., is the Reaganite California congressman Dana Rohrabacher. I recall seeing him scolded at a dinner in Washington a few years ago. A fellow guest told him he should be ashamed, because Reagan would have idealistically stood up to Putin on human rights. Rohrabacher disagreed. Reagan’s gift as a foreign policy thinker, he said, was not his idealism. It was his ability to set priorities, to see what constituted the biggest threat. Today’s biggest threat to the U.S. isn’t Vladimir Putin.

So why are people thinking about Putin as much as they do? Because he has become a symbol of national self-determination. Populist conservatives see him the way progressives once saw Fidel Castro, as the one person who says he won’t submit to the world that surrounds him. You didn’t have to be a Communist to appreciate the way Castro, whatever his excesses, was carving out a space of autonomy for his country.

In the same way, Putin’s conduct is bound to win sympathy even from some of Russia’s enemies, the ones who feel the international system is not delivering for them. Generally, if you like that system, you will consider Vladimir Putin a menace. If you don’t like it, you will have some sympathy for him. Putin has become a symbol of national sovereignty in its battle with globalism. That turns out to be the big battle of our times. As our last election shows, that’s true even here.