Russian Affairs: Putin, Talbott, Aslund... (Jan. 24, 2000)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2000/1-6

Jan. 24, 2000

Russia Is Being Castigated Again in the West: Canadian Columnist Calls Russia a “Lump of Dung”

Who Is the Real Putin?

A Communist or a Christian? Clinton Administration Official Praises "Porous Borders"

1. Canadian Columnist Calls Russia a “Lump of Dung,” Yet Gets to Keep His Job!

OTTAWA, Jan. 20 – They used to call Canada one of the world’s “most tolerant” countries. Now this once benevolent term can be increasingly used in reference to Canada’s tolerance of anti-Slavic hate-mongers within its media.

A "lump of dung wrapped in a cabbage leaf hidden in an outhouse," is how the Ottawa Citizen columnist, John Robson, described Russia in his Jan. 7 (Orthodox Christmas Day!) column titled "Russia Under Putin Will Suck."

Of course, Robson is only one of a chorus of Slavophobic voices which can be heard in the New World Order media ever since Vladimir Putin, Russia’s acting president, succeeded Boris Yeltsin on Dec. 31 (see “Putin Putting Russia Back on World Powers Map,” TiM GW Bulletin 2000/1-2, Jan. 5). But Robson’s was a voice of extreme vulgarity.

So upset was Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to Canada, with the Ottawa Citizen’s columnist, that the matter was escalated to Moscow. Churkin also wrote to the Ottawa daily newspaper, and complained personally to the Canadian Foreign Ministry, which had to try to smooth things over.

"This malicious display of Russophobia is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda,” Churkin wrote. “Fanning ethnic or national hatred has since been universally recognized as a most degrading pursuit" (you may also wish to check out some of the TiM editor’s own encounters in Bosnia with this Russian diplomat - see "Perfidious Albion" Strikes Again, Aided by "Uncle Sam" - July 1995).

"They agreed it was insulting. We hope there will be more respect for Russia in future and that such incidents will not be repeated," a Russian diplomat told Reuters.

Things finally “came to satisfactory end” on Wednesday (Jan. 19), according to the English-language Moscow Times, when Robson printed a column of apology to those he had offended (it is available at the Ottawa Citizen Web site -http://www.ottawacitizen.com/ ).

That’s what the Moscow Times calls a “satisfactory end?” Some American columnists have been fired for far less - for politely and respectfully telling the truth about Israel’s arms sales to Red China, such as A.M. Rosenthal, for example (a Jew, by the way - see “New York Times Columnist Fired for Speaking the Truth,” TiM GW Bulletin 2000/1-4, Jan 13). At least now the readers of this paper (the Moscow Times), mostly the ex-pats in Russia, know what side its bread is buttered on.

Meanwhile, Robson, this Russophobic hatemonger is still on the Ottawa Citizen payroll, will be ready and able to spread more hate in his future pieces after merely offering to eat some of his own dung in public.

"The purpose of this column is to offer a sincere and detailed apology for my Jan. 7 column on Russia," Robson wrote in his apology. "It was offensive and hurtful and I am extremely sorry for what I wrote. Had I not been away for the past week, I would have apologized sooner.

"The vulgarity of the ... comparison of Russia to a lump of dung contributed to its offensiveness. They were cheap shots and I regret them. But what was really wrong was that I wrote it in such a way as to suggest that I feel contempt for all members of an ethnic group ... and I am ashamed of it."

Officials at the Canadian Foreign Ministry said Moscow did not file a formal complaint over what was the latest in a series of negative columns on Russia written by Robson. But Russian diplomats were quick to show their outrage in person.

In the Jan. 7 piece, Robson also said Russia would never be a normal country, and there is nothing acting President Vladimir Putin can do to change that. "Normal for Russia is filthy, corrupt, menacing and hollow. Nothing good has happened there, nor will it. Russia is a lump of dung wrapped in a cabbage leaf hidden in an outhouse.”

"Russia is doomed by history and culture. It stinks, literally and figuratively, and always has. People there have no manners. ... The bottom line is: Russia has sucked, sucks and will suck," Robson wrote, this time twisting Communist Party propaganda, which said "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live."

TiM Ed.: Meanwhile, Robson also continues in his job as the deputy editor of the Ottawa Citizen’s editorial page. Meaning he will be free to shape opinions of the Ottawa Citizen readers in the Canadian capital in accordance with the NWO Russophobic agenda.

Which goes to show us how sincere Canada is, that once tolerant country, about quashing hate-propaganda in its embryo before it grows and spreads. Except for the supposed anti-Jewish comments, to which this once tolerant country reacts with such vehemence that it doesn’t mind abridging some of its citizens’ rights of free speech in the process. But that’s a different story for another editorial at another time…

PHOENIX, Jan. 24 – Once upon a time, Winston Churchill described Russia as a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." But that was back in the days when Joseph Stalin ran the Kremlin communist government; when things were “red” and “white,” if not black and white in Russia. And when the American and British people were supposed to forget Stalin’s murderous crimes against their Christian brothers in Russia, because this FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Churchill pal was killing more Germans (Christians, again) than Russians during WW II.

Nowadays, however, things are far more complicated in Russia. Who is the real Vladimir Putin? A former KGB apparatchik, who has been biding his time pretending to be a “reformer,” until he got to power when he is showing his true communist nature? That’s certainly the prevailing view of the New World Order (NWO) Russophobic commentators.

Or is Putin a new “savior of Mother Russia,” a Christian and a true patriot who will restore this vast country to its former place as a world superpower?

Or is he just another “here today, gone tomorrow” Russian politician, just like a series of prime ministers whom the former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, had recycled through the Kremlin’s top management post.

To the skeptics we replied that, the jury is still out on Putin. But with passing week this January, we could see more signs which suggested the point two above may be the most likely. Here’s an excerpt from the TiM editor’s Jan. 10 comment sent to a Russian TiM reader, now living in Baku, Azerbaijan:

“The jury is still out on Putin. My own mind's not made up about him, either. But his early moves have been encouraging. Such as firing Dyachenko (Yeltsin's daughter), for example, and going down to Grozny on New Year's Day. And that's all we can go by. For now...

Since Jan. 10, of course, Putin has made quite a few other moves which reaffirmed our initial assessment. Such as firing on Jan. 11 Pavel Borodin (of the “Yeltsin family”), and demoting Mikhail Aksyonenko (of the “Berezovsky family”). And his doing an end-around the “reformists” in the Russian Parliament, whom he frustrated enough to shoot themselves in the foot, by boycotting a crucial session of the Duma last week (see the 4. Aslund: Right at Being Wrong (a letter to the WSJ).

But perhaps the most surprising and revealing part of Putin, which may have caused all the wrath the godless NWO commentators unleashed on him, was that, far from being a hardcore communist, Russia’s new popular acting president may be a born-again Christian.

It was Orthodox Christmas Eve (Jan. 6), and Vladimir Putin went straight to the essence of the Christian understanding of the holiday. "Why did Christ come into the world?" he said, apparently speaking without prepared text, or a teleprompter. "To liberate people from sickness, troubles, from death. In its essence, Christmas is a holiday of hope."

Putin's Jan. 6 remarks were vastly different from the conventional holiday pronouncements by Russian politicians, who usually confine themselves to praising the role of the Orthodox Church in Russian history, and in promoting social harmony. Putin's remarks could have come straight from a sermon.

“As the world tries to understand the often-inscrutable acting president, attempting to figure out what exactly he did as a KGB officer in Germany and an aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg, at least one of his personal characteristics is becoming clear: He is an active Orthodox Christian with a more than passable knowledge of the faith,” the Moscow Times reported on Jan. 21.

When Putin became president on Dec. 31, he specifically asked for the Russian Patriarch Alexy's blessing for the three-month transitional period. And Putin received it, as the Russian news agencies and television reported.

Putin also made the sign of the cross and listened attentively during the televised Christmas service in the newly opened Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow (which Stalin had razed).

But did you ever hear about any of this - in this predominantly Christian country (America), and the “land of the (supposedly) free?” We certainly haven’t. We’ve only learned this from our Russian sources. Instead, we’ve been inundated here in North America with various Russophobic comments, such as those by the New York Times columnists (Safire), or that by the Canadian hatemonger described above.

One exception is the Newsweek, which reported last week that Putin became religious three years ago, after rescuing his two daughters, now ages 13 and 14, from a fire at a “dacha” (country home) near St. Petersburg. Journalist Yevgenia Albats, who co-authored Newsweek's profile of Putin, said she had received the information from "a very close friend of Putin's," according to the Moscow Times.

At the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity on the Sparrow Hills, where Putin stopped by for half an hour on Christmas Eve, people could easily tell he was a real believer. "You can instantly tell if a person is a believer or not," Priest Alexander Antipov, who serves at the church, said in an interview with the Moscow Times on Jan. 18. "Putin is a believer."

"He was the first politician who asked for the Holy Patriarch's blessing," he said. "If any cause begins with prayer, it is already good. It means that the person has a moral basis in life. Let's hope!"

A prominent Orthodox priest in Moscow who asked not to be identified said he had talked with Putin about matters of faith before he became prime minister, and confirmed that he is a "believing Orthodox man."

Priest Maxim Kozlov, dean of Moscow State University's St. Tatyana Chapel, said the fact that Putin is a believer does not necessarily say much about him as a politician. "But it gives us hope that a person, who understands himself as an Orthodox Christian, would refuse to do certain things in politics," Kozlov said. "Unfortunately, we cannot say the same about others. There, money rules everything."

Putin's frequent appearances together with the patriarch - be it at the Kremlin's New Year's reception or at the Christmas service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral - are seen as a sign that the close relations between the Russian state and the Orthodox Church, which began under Yeltsin, will only deepen under Putin.

Perhaps as a result of his own belief, Putin has been more careful than his predecessors not to alienate Russia's millions of Moslems, particularly during the war against predominantly Moslem Chechnya. He was the first prime minister to receive Russian Moslem leaders in the White House, and stated firmly that Russia was not fighting Islam in Chechnya but only "bandits" and "terrorists."

"Russian Moslems react very painfully to the strengthening of Christianity in Russia's public life," said Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Islam with the Moscow Carnegie Center. But Putin, he said, "has behaved more balanced as far as Moslems were concerned than Russia's previous leaders." ( http://www.moscowtimes.ru/ ).

TiM Ed.: Meanwhile, here’s another excerpt from that Jan. 10 message which we sent to that Russian TiM reader in Baku, Azerbaijan:

TiM Ed.: The anti-Putin venom also poured out of today's (Jan. 24) Wall Street Journal editorial whose title says it all - "Red Alert?" As does the caption under his photograph - "bad beginning." The Journal's editors rolled out again the now familiar charges about Putin's KGB and communist past, without bothering to show their American readers the other side of the coin - his Orthodox Christian faith, as the above story exemplifies. Because the contradiction between the two "C's" (Communism and Christianity), of course, would expose the Journal's editorial for what it is - another example of Russophobic propaganda by the NWO media (see "Putin: Lean, Tough, Scrupulous and Christian").

"Speaking of Yeltsin, it is my personal belief, founded on fairly credible testimony from the various Russian sources, that Yeltsin had put Putin in charge (as prime minister, at first, last August, then, as acting president, on Dec. 31) - because he was FORCED to do it by the Russian military. It was the only way for Yeltsin to leave the scene with some semblance of dignity (and his head between his shoulders), given his subservient behavior toward the NWO (must remember to slap myself on the wrist for using the words dignity-Yeltsin-NWO), and his treason of the Russian peoples' real interests. Which included a wholesale humiliation of the Russian military might." […]

OXFORD, Jan. 21 -- The NWO foxes are finally coming out of their holes, showing themselves in all of their foxy ugliness to the Russian bear and the American eagle, eagerly waiting to dispose of them.

First, Bill Clinton, ostensibly an American and President of the United States, said that he considered himself a “citizen of the world,” not that of the United States of America. Clinton said it while admonishing Boris Yeltsin over Chechnya at the Nov. 18 OSCE meeting in Istanbul, Turkey:

Well, another senior Clinton administration official, Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State and Clinton’s point man for Russia, has now apparently also “misspoken” while telling the truth about the un-American nature of the “Klinton Amerikan” government. Addressing a British audience in a speech at Oxford University in England on Friday (Jan. 21), Talbott hailed the “porousness of borders,” as he put it:

"Will Russia recognize that in an age of global -- and regional -- interdependence, the porousness of borders is a necessity out of which a viable state must make a virtue?” Talbot asked rhetorically (emphasis added).

TiM Ed.: Substitute the U.S. for Russia in the above Talbott comment, and then you’ll understand why patriotic Americans, such as the Reform Party presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan, for example, have made the national sovereignty and our own “porous” borders a major issue in the presidential campaign 2000 (see “Buchanan on the Stump in Arizona”).

By contrast, “Amerikans” like Klinton, Gore and Talbott, the “citizens of the world,” as well as many other closet “reds” in the Clinton administration, are apparently deliberately letting millions of illegal immigrants into our country. Because, in the words of Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State, that’s a “necessity” for a country to be a “viable state.”

Right. And how long will it be, before such a “viable state” which cherishes the “porousness of its borders” as a “virtue” replaces the American eagle with a “red star?”

But Talbott saved the best and the worse of his NWO double-talk for the end of his Oxford speech, when he melodramatically pondered, but did not give a conclusion on, whether Russia would understand that in Chechnya, "indiscriminate aerial attacks, forced movement of populations and civilian roundups" are the work of a "weak and desperate state, not a strong and clearheaded one.''

Well, we can think of at least one other example where "indiscriminate aerial attacks, forced movement of populations and civilian roundups" were the work of a "weak and desperate state, not a strong and clearheaded one.''

The “aerial attacks” were carried out by NATO against the Serb civilians. The “forced movement of populations” were those of the Serbs in Kosovo. The “weak and desperate state, not a strong and clearheaded one,” was one which spearheaded such crimes against humanity - Klinton’s Amerika.

May God help us all to find a way to bring back the real America; the country which our Founding Fathers had created, and for which so many Americans have died for during the last two centuries. Reaching out to our Russian patriotic brothers and sisters, among the biggest victims of the New World Order, may not be a bad starting point.