Vladimir Putin's holy war

Some traditionalist websites praise Putin as the chief enemy of a Satanic new world order

In St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin's home town, there is a bust depicting him as a Roman emperor. More revealing, however, are the icons which, apparently seriously, depict the Russian president as a saint.

Russian documentaries extol Putin as the man who resuscitated Russian spirituality. Kirill I, Patriarch of Moscow and head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has described his leadership as a"miracle from God".

Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian state has carefully nurtured its relationship with the Church. Putin especially is not only a powerful political actor but - like the Tsars - a religious one. In his speeches he presents himself as defender of Christian values abandoned by the degenerate West.

It's an unlikely role for a former KGB officer accused of murdering his political opponents, but many Russian Christians seem comfortable with the idea. Photographs of Orthodox churchmen positively grovelling in front of Putin are not hard to find.

More recently the president has presented himself in a new role â€“ as the potential saviour of Middle Eastern Christians. And even his critics wonder whether he may, in fact, have a point.

The rise of ISIS has plunged Christians in Iraq and Syria, already desperately threatened, into an unimaginable crisis. Savage murders and displacement are removing all trace of some of the oldest Christian communities in the world.

National Council of Churches: Worldviews, Activities, and Agendas

By Jacob Laksin
DiscoverTheNetworks.org
2005

Since its founding in 1950, the New York City-based National Council of Churches (NCC) has remained faithful to the legacy of its predecessor, the Communist front-group known as the Federal Council of Churches, which the NCC absorbed in 1950. At one time an unabashed apostle of the Communist cause, the NCC has today recast itself as a leading representative of the so-called religious Left. Adhering to what it has described as 'liberation theology'-that is, Marxist ideology disguised as Christianity-the NCC lays claim to a membership of 36 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox Christian denominations, and some 50 million members in over 140,000 congregations.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NCC has soft-pedaled its radical message, dressing up its demands for global collectivization and its rejection of democratic capitalism in the garb of religious teachings. Yet the organization's history suggests that it was-and remains-a devout backer of a gallery of socialist governments.

In the 1950s and 1960s, under cover of charity, the NCC provided financial succor to the Communist regimes in Yugoslavia and Poland, funneling money to both through its relief agency, the Church World Service.

In the 1970s, working with its Geneva-based parent organization, the World Council of Churches, the NCC supplied financial support for Soviet-sponsored incursions into Africa, aiding the terrorist rampages of Communist guerrillas in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, and Angola. ..."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/nccexpandedagenasactivities.html

Did Communism Fake Its Own Death in 1991?
American Thinker ^ | January 16, 2010 | Jason McNew

In a [] 1984 book [New Lies for Old], ex-KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted the liberalization of the Soviet Bloc and claimed that it would be a strategic deception. ..."

"Golitsyn's argument was that beginning in about 1960, the Soviet Union embarked on a strategy of massive long-range strategic deception which would span several decades and result in the destruction of Western capitalism and the erection of a communist world government."

"Golitsyn published his second book, The Perestroika Deception, after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. This book contained further analysis of the liberalization, in addition to previously classified memoranda submitted by Golitsyn to the CIA. The two books must be read together to get a complete picture of Golitsyn's thesis."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/did_communism_fake_its_own_dea.html
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Link to read "New Lies for Old" online:
https://archive.org/details/GolitsynAnatoleTheNewLiesForOldOnes
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Link to read "The Perestroika Deception" online:
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-TVvzZzfXiMBkMdvD

Putin has as well a holy war against the middle class of Russia:

Japanese company Toshiba is closing its Russian division for television sets and kitchen appliances Toshiba CIS, Kommersant newspaper reported Monday, according to Russian news agency TASS.

“We have completely left the Russian consumer market. We have sold all the goods as early as last December, when there was a peak of sales, Toshiba Rus Director Hiroaki Tezuka told the newspaper.
Read more on UNIAN: http://www.unian.info/economics/1211283-toshiba-leaves-russian-tv-and-kitchen-appliances-market-media.html

The Russian statistical agency says that 20.3 million Russians, nearly one in seven, now live in poverty according to official measures, a number that does not include those living in occupied Crimea and Sevastopol but one that is two million more than a year ago.

In reporting these figures today, Aleksey Golyakov of “Novyye izvestiya” points out that this figure is based on the minimum income that the government estimates is needed maintaining a decent standard of living and the actual incomes of Russians

This shift is widely recognized by Russians: a VTsIOM poll found that two-thirds of them say that “over the last five years, the number of poor in the country has risen,” with over 40 percent saying this is incompatible with Russia's constitutional claim to be a social state.

Commenting on the results, Yevgeny Gontmakher, the deputy director of IMEMO, says that the Putin regime has behaved in such a way that it has been making the situation worse. At a time of crisis, most governments spend more on social needs in order to protect “the most valuable thing of all - human capital.”

But the current Russian regime has cut spending on health, education, and other social needs in order to boost spending on the force structures and the bureaucracy. Unless that changes, the share of Russians under the poverty line will continue to rise - and the share of Russians who see this as a problem will continue to increase.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.se/2015/12/two-million-more-russians-fall-into.html

Without a doubt, Putin’s cooking up some complex scheme for Russia to replace the US as the world top superpower, with Obama’s willing and eager cooperation. Despite Obama and Kerry’s public (smoke ‘n mirrors) moaning and groaning, Putin is marching right along with his expansionist agenda. Of course Obama has already given KGB/FSB Putin everything he’s wanted on missile defense and nukes, meanwhile slashing our own military.

The share of class in Russia shrank from 20% to 15%. On other other hand, economic hardship may not have the same impact as in other countries:

Russia's middle class: We don't blame Putin

From the article:

And for middle class it's important to feel that you are a citizen of a very important country."

The sentiment mentioned above shows that they don't want to settle for being just another country in exchange for more food on the table. Different tolerance for economic hardship.

Yes, Russians will accept more hardship than citizens of Western countries. They are used to big swings, but:

For the first 15 years of Putin's rule, Russians’ standard of living rose steadily; but it has fallen sharply since November 2014. Real wages are set to plummet by 10 percent this year. Real pensions are also declining, and spending on health care and education is set to fall by 8 percent next year.

The big question is how Russians will respond when they realize that the decline in their standard of living is not temporary, as it was in 1998. In 2014, Russiaâ€™s GDP was $2.1 trillion (at the current exchange rate). It has plunged to $1.1 trillion. These numbers do not reflect purchasing power, but the Russian middle class measure their salaries in dollars. So far, public reaction has been muted, but a two-week protest by Russiaâ€™s truck drivers over a new highway toll suggests that popular quiescence may not last.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/12/14/commentary/world-commentary/putins-newfound-prudence/

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