West Still Asking: Who is Mr. Putin? - September, 2008

The living legend, the great Czar of Eurasia, one of the greatest statesmen the world has known: Watching Vladimir Putin feels like watching history being made. The political mechanisms put in place by Putin will one day prove to have saved western/European civilization and by extension humanity from another dark age. The Russian Federation today is the last and only front against the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance, it is the only front against Pan-Turkism, the only front against Islamic extremism, and the only front against the world's newest form of Bolshevism - Globalism.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is believed to have said that the natural wealth found in the vastness of the Russian Federation was too much for one country to posses. It's obvious that the West would have loved to live off the carcass of the Soviet Union, and they managed to do so somewhat during the 1990s. But Putin's rise to power put a stop to it. Within a few short years he turned a failed state into a great world power once again. 


And now the West is still trying to figure out who is this Mr Putin and what went wrong with their grand plans to exploit the Eurasian continent at will and with impunity.

I firmly believe that western/European civilization, Apostolic Christianity and political sanity on earth will have been preserved as a result of the sudden emergence of the Russian Federation as a superpower reasserting itself in global affairs. I also hope that the presence of a powerful Russia will somehow force the population of the United States to rediscover their humble "democratic" roots as a republicv and not as an empire. 

Nonetheless, imagine the geopolitical state of world today without the existence of the Russian Federation. Putin's appearance on the political stage was, in a sense, God sent. What Putin and his supporters in the Kremlin managed to accomplish during the past decade was in my opinion one of history's most important turning points. I firmly believe that Putin will someday be ranked amongst the finest rulers of the world.

Vladimir Putin turned me, an Armenian nationalist and an American libertarian - into a Russophile.

Arevordi

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West Still Asking: Who is Mr. Putin?

 
September, 2008

It would be very difficult to name another international leader who has had more trash - potato peels and all - dumped on his doorstep than Vladimir Putin, the former two-term Russian president and present prime minister that "the West" loves to loathe. But perhaps in no other business than politics does one's accumulated amount of garbage speak volumes about the natural abilities of the politician in question. Indeed, it is only the retired, resigned or impeached who sit dejected on the porch of power, waiting for the postman to deliver the next batch of steaming hate mail. But like the judo expert he is, Putin is at his most effective when on the defensive, twisting the black press to his general advantage. The work of analysts, pundits and politicians, laboring to unravel the mystery of the Putin puzzle after almost a decade, has become an entire cottage industry unto itself. The unemployment rate in American academia alone would jump a full percentage point should Vladimir Putin ever opt out of the political game. And of course, the Russian leader's stint with the KGB back in the Soviet era only enhances the intrigue.

The perennial question, ‘Who is Mr. Putin?' has not taken a pause since that magnetic moment in 2001 when US President George W. Bush dared to gaze into Vladimir's steely poker blues, whereupon the Texas oilman - no easy pushover for partners, we must assume - declared to the world: "I looked him in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy... I was able to get a sense of his soul." You could almost hear the collective shriek from the US intelligence community from Washington. So American experts had basically two uncomfortable choices: declare their commander-in-chief incompetent, dim-witted or the unwitting subject of some new Manhattan Project, or Vladimir Putin as he is now portrayed in the western world: cold, cunning and calculating. The subject of Putin's soul - despite so many other matters of urgency - continues to haunt the US political scene. In an effort to show her strong feminine side, apparently, Hillary Clinton, while campaigning for the Democratic nomination, said, "He was a KGB agent... By definition he doesn't have a soul," to which Putin cooly replied, "I think that a head of state must have a head as a minimum. And in order to build interstate relationships, one must be governed by the fundamental interests of one's own country rather than by emotions."

Incidentally, Putin was nominated Time Magazine's Man of the Year for 2007, for his "extraordinary feat of leadership." Nobody ever said politics was easy. John Kenneth Galbraith described it as forever making a choice between "the disastrous and unpalatable." Putin, like every leader, has made his share of arguably ‘unpalatable' choices, but he could never be accused of not serving the interests of his nation. Perhaps this is the source of the contempt he regularly attracts from abroad: Putin contradicts by 180-degrees the stereotypical image of the ‘Russian leader' - an oxymoron in the west in its own right. Images of Putin performing judo, fishing bare-chested along the Volga, or bringing down a tiger in Siberia are actions that speak far more accurately about the man - and the country at large - than do the contemptible words of jaded critics. Putin's phenomenal political success is underscored by Russia's rapid resurgence since he first stepped onto the political stage. Many critics, however, explain away Putin's political fortunes as due to the lucky spin of the resource wheel; they ignore the fact, however, that Russia had oil and gas prior to Putin's rise to power, yet still managed to wallow in debt and decadence (Here is an easy way to disprove the resource argument: the next time you meet a Russian tourist abroad, ask what type of business they are engaged in. Unless you somehow found an oligarch, the last answer you will hear is "gas and oil").

Having lived in Russia for the duration of Putin's presidency, I am at a loss to explain what irritates the West about this man. After all, he achieved everything "we" demanded from Russia: the economy is back on track; the military has full control over its weapons of mass destruction; and nowhere else is freedom more alive and well than on a Russian street. Finally, Putin fully respected the borders of foreign nations - something the US, NATO and the EU glaringly failed to do. Despite, or because of, Putin's solid record of honoring the territorial integrity of sovereign states, western analysts charged him with actually prompting the Georgians to attack on August 8, as if the Russian prime minister himself held Mikheil Saakashvili's trigger finger to the fire button. "Bush... lingered in Beijing yukking it up with our beach volleyball team," neocon hothead Charles Krauthammer foamed on the pages of The Washington Post, "while Putin flew to North Ossetia to direct the invasion of a neighboring country." Some would call it self defense, Charles.

But few mentioned that Russian forces stopped far from the gates of Tbilisi, while NATO forces in 1999, acting in their own ‘democratic' interests, bombed Belgrade for 78 days to ‘free' Kosovo. Perhaps Putin's problem with getting fair western representation hinges on nothing more than the public's notoriously short memory. But we can be sure that Putin will always remind them of their shortcomings.

Source: http://www.mnweekly.ru/columnists/20.../55345171.html


In other news:


George Bush Isn't in Charge, Says Vladimir Putin


In a thinly veiled dig at George Bush, Vladimir Putin today suggested that the US President was not in charge of American affairs, saying that it was “the court that makes the king”. Amid heightened tensions with the US in the wake of the war in Georgia, the Russian Prime Minister insisted that the US leader was a man of honour and integrity, but blamed members of the administration for the sharp deterioration of relations with Russia. ”I still hope we will maintain good relations, but it is the court that makes the king,” he told a group of foreign journalists in an interview at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. He nonetheless spoke fondly of his relationship with Mr Bush, saying, only half-jokingly: ”I treat President Bush better than some Americans would”. At times Mr Putin displayed genuine anger, particularly when discussing the deployment of US navy warships just off the Russian Black Sea coast. Much of his criticism was aimed directly at the Bush administration which he accused of training and army the Georgian military and encouraging its leadership to launch last month’s assault on the breakaway province of South Ossetia. "Should we have wiped the bloody snot off our face and bowed our head? Should we have waved our penknives?” he said in response to the mobilisation of Georgian tanks and troops.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4734894.ece

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I have come to see the Russian nation as the last front on earth against the scourges of Westernization, Americanization, Globalism, Zionism, Islamic extremism and pan-Turkism. I have also come to see Russia as the last hope humanity has for the preservation of classical western/European civilization, ethnic cultures, Apostolic Christianity and the concept of traditional nation-state. Needless to say, an alliance with Russia is Armenia's only hope for survival in a dangerous place like the south Caucasus. These sobering realizations compelled me to create this blog in 2010. This blog quickly became one of the very few voices in the vastness of Cyberia that dared to preach about the dangers of Globalism and the Anglo-American-Jewish alliance, and the only voice emphasizing the crucial importance of Armenia's close ties to the Russian nation. Today, no man and no political party is capable of driving a wedge between Armenia and Russia. Anglo-American-Jewish and Turkish agenda in Armenia will not succeed. I feel satisfied knowing that at least on a subatomic level I have had a hand in this outcome.

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