Below is an excerpt from a speech given by Russian President Vladimir Putin last month at the Valdai International Discussion Club. Regardless of what one thinks of Russia or Mr. Putin, his words are apropos and well worth listening to.
Many thanks to Oz-Rita for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
A relevant comment posted at Vlad’s place:
Well, he ought to know. Vladimir Putin used to be the head of the KGB, didn’t he? I’ll bet he knows exactly how Western civilization got so ****ed up, doesn’t he, and I’ll bet he even knows the names of the KGB agents who did it to us. I’ll bet he knows exactly how guys like Howard Zinn and Norman Finkelstein and Gloria Steinem and Noam Chomsky got to be so such household names in the very countries they worked so tirelessly to undermine.
But, in a funny way, doesn’t that make listening to what he says to his own people all that much more germane? Who, but one of the guys who created this politically correct nightmare would know how dangerous it is and how much it should be avoided? He’s telling his own people not to eat the poison meat that he personally put out for the enemy the night before. For God’s sake, listen to him!
Transcript:
Address by the President of Russia
Vladimir Putin
At the Valdai-Forum
19 September 2013
(an extract)
A further challenge (=Danger) for the national Russian identity is connected to the processes we observe outside of Russia. They include foreign policy, moral and other aspects.
We see that many Euro-Atlantic (= the West) States have taken a course where they deny or reject their own roots, including their Christian roots which form the basis of Western civilisation.
In these countries, the moral basis and any traditional identity are being denied – national, religious, cultural and even gender identities are being denied or relativised.
There, politics treats a family with many children as equal to a homosexual partnership (juridically); faith in God is equal to faith in Satan.
The excesses and exaggerations of Political Correctness in these countries indeed leads to serious consideration for the legitimisation of parties that promote the propaganda of paedophilia.
The people in many European States are actually ashamed of their religious affiliations and are indeed frightened to speak about them.
Christian Holidays and celebrations are abolished or “neutrally” renamed, as if one were ashamed of those Christian holidays. With this method one hides away the deeper moral value of these celebrations.
And these countries try to force this model onto other countries, globally. I am deeply convinced that this is a direct way to the degradation and primitivization (of culture). This leads to deeper demographic and moral crisis in the West.
What can be a better evidence for the moral crisis of a human society (in the West) than the loss of its reproductive function?!
And today nearly all “developed” Western countries cannot survive reproductively, not even with the help of migrants.
Without the moral values that are rooted in Christianity and other world religions, without rules and moral values which have formed and been developed over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity (=become brutes).
And we think it is right and natural to defend and preserve these moral (Christian) values.
One has to respect the right of every minority to self-determination, but at the same time there cannot and must not be any doubt about the rights of the majority.
At the same time as this process at a national level (in the West) we observe on an international level the attempts to create a unipolar, unified model of the world, to relativise and remove institutions of international right and national sovereignty. (Putin speaks about the US-Imperium).
In such a unipolar, unified world there is no place for sovereign states. Such a world needs merely vassals.
From a historical perspective, such a unipolar world (of the USA) would mean the surrender of one’s own identity and of God-created diversity.
Russia will side with those who defend the point of view that important global decisions have to be made on a collective basis, and not in the interest of only one state (USA) or one group of states (NATO).
I believe it was Guillaume Faye who said “Quite simply, we need to form a new Warsaw Pact, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”
This old cold war warrior is inclined to agree, and that really is saying something.
Someone else also proposed something similar…
Russia supposedly has population of 20% muslims,
Probably more if truth be known.
My prediction is russia may very well lead the charge against islam, and indeed i hope so, these [culture-enrichers] need sorting out proper and soon!
Beslan, moscow theatres, subways, and last week the murder by knife of a russian lad in front of his woman in a moscow street!
Russians have long woken up, i prey they will smash islam in russia, there are laws also against extremist materials and propaganda, a russian court recently banned a russian translation of islamic books.
I was recently in russia, maykop, in maykop there exists massive mosque, and they also have built big apartment accomadation blocks nearby, now empty, but they making plans for future islam in russia, so there worshippers have also places to sleep near the mosque.
I hope russia is also taking note of these evil savages, plans and activitys, and acts very soon against them!!
There can be no islam in europe or the civiised world!!!
Ban islam now!
Ban the koran now!
Act now while we still can.
Sobieski_99
Russians have a capacity to absorb inhuman amounts of punishment, then at the point that it looks hopeless for them they win. It’s one characteristic they share with the British. We are not natural opponents, the rivalry is a product of the British Empire, with that gone we should look at Russia more rationally. The Russians have lost their Empire too. So there’s another commonality.
Very well said. The Great Game proved to create an animosity that should never have occurred. You are correct that both peoples do their best when they are “up against it.”
Sadly, no. Not if biblical prophecy continues its batting average. Russia joins forces with Islam in the end and is destroyed quite thoroughly.
NOPE! The WEST is already joining forces with muslims…and they have a muslim PRESIDENT already!
Obama is obviously a Muslim.
The Russ have been dealing with Asia since 700AD in a turbulent series of invasions that they have managed to repeatedly shrug off.
If anything they provide evidence that resistance to the immivasion is possible.
I like to think that Putin was the guy who subtly encouraged the East Germans to barrier crash the wall.
do we know exactly what he did in East Germany? He may have been the architect of the end of the cold war as an operative in East Germany. He’s more nationalist than he is a universalist.
“Who, but one of the guys who created this politically correct nightmare…”
That would be impossible, since one can find evidence of PC MC long before even Lenin was in diapers (I’m sure there’s a cool Russian word for that).
Hi Hesperado,
While I was typing my trademark 2(euro)cts in Notepad, more replies were posted on GoV, including your thoughts on Lenin’s diapers. Haven’t posted here for a while, so I’m pleased to see my comment placed right after yours.
Also glad to see your remark about PC MC appear before my own contribution. That’s how it should be, considering the right order of things 😉
As always, kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
PC was required once the supply of migrating Slavs dried up.
Now Slavs are migrating to the west we have a chance at knocking out the Africans and Asians.
Me thinks the struggle against the state of Islam should be a grassroots matter, for people seeking to preserve Liberty (defined as “freedom from..”).
Though I’m not sure what benefits a state-sponsored “War on Islam”* – a war, that is, thought up by bureaucrats – would bring “Us the People”, it sure as h*ll will benefit and empower the nanny-state, usually to the detriment of our already waning civil liberties.
Just my 2 (euro)cts from Amsterdam,
Cheers,
Sag.
* The PC/MC statists don’t even have the guts to call it by its proper name. They prefer their war against a tactic, this “War on Terror” which in all likelihood will be an even bigger success than their infamous “War on Drugs” 😉
“Me thinks the struggle against the state of Islam should be a grassroots matter, for people seeking to preserve Liberty”
Sagunto, I think the struggle isn’t really against the state of Islam.
If we wish to preserve liberty in the West we have to defeat the Marxist/PC influence in our own western countries. If we can do that then Islam is a trivial problem. If we cannot do that then we will never defeat Islam.
@månesteiner,
Appreciate your POV. To be sure, my point wasn’t about what the struggle is really against, I just thought it important to stress that the fight against Islam shouldn’t be left to statists, Russian or US based, I don’t care.
However, since you brought up the subject of the real struggle, my guess would be that to really undermine Islam, while at the same time promoting freedom, the real battle (in the US as well as in Europe) will be against the welfare/warfare state. Abolish or minimize the state and there’s no more goodies for favoured minorities. The result would be that Muslims will leave, since they’re mostly incapable of surviving in free-market conditions, while our civilization was defined by it. Islam is inherently parasitic, so we must deny it its host which is the welfare state. It would be akin to killing two ugly birds with one stone.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
It would be nice if your ideas were able to be carried out. But our overlords have abolished the free-market system, replacing it with various forms of crony capitalism. We all be parasites now:
Got a pension?
A bank account?
A mortgage?
“Free” health care?
Your pension belongs to the govt the day they decide it does.
Ask Cyprus about bank accounts.
Ask those whose mortgages were foreclosed.
Try getting health care when the fiat currency keeping together the medical house of cards collapses and euthanasia becomes the new universal health benefit for anyone over 60.
Smart families who thought ahead produced enough children to provide a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant and an undertaker. Families full of professors aren’t much use in today’s milieu, though crooked banksters with pocketsful of fiat currency could be of some assistance.
[Nice to see your return, Sag. I trust all is well in Amsterdam. Hope you make yourself comfortable enough to stay around for a while…we are definitely fond of the Netherlands.
Every country should be so lucky as to produce just a single Geert Wilders. The once-great US can only belch forth poseurs who have no love of their country- or whose actual country of allegiance is open to question.]
Hi Dymphna,
What can I say. You’re absolutely right that free-market conditions don’t exist anywhere in the West. Only the “black market” or the “system D economy” comes to mind with regard to self-reliance and not paying taxes 😉
We’ve had a medical issue over here that now seems to have settled down to routine check-ups in the form of MRI scans (my wife was diagnosed with a brain tumour in January this year. She had brain surgery in June).
So for the moment, all is well. I’ll be around.
Kind regs and all the best from Amsterdam,
Sag.
@Sag
Best wishes for you and your wife.
Dymphna, it has already happened in the UK…!
“The abolition of the credit system has become notorious as the biggest and perhaps most damaging tax grab of Mr Brown’s chancellorship. It became known as the ultimate stealth tax since it only became clear in the following years how serious a dent it was to leave in pension funds.
Actuaries have claimed the move cost schemes £5 billion a year and plunged the pension system into crisis. They allege that Britain has gone from having one of the best pension systems in the world to one of the worst.” The Telegraph, 31st March 2007.
…ah, the joys of socialism.
“Abolish or minimize the state and there’s no more goodies for favoured minorities. The result would be that Muslims will leave,…” Are you kidding? Leave and go where – back to the hell holes they came from?
@MatP,
Nope, not kidding at all. But since it’s really beside my point whether or not Muslims would actually leave, I should have stated that differently.
Point is, that Muslims – being the parasites they are – will be ill suited to prosper in truly free-market conditions. Some will indeed leave, in search of “greener pastures” and some who stay will wither away in our lands. No more gov to shower them with all kinds of favours, no state enforced employment according to diversity quotas, no more nanny state to milk dry and they’re pretty much done for.
Cheers,
Sag.
Sag..
What does the Christian Maluku people think about all the Islamisation of Belanda?
We don’t need Putin to tell us the KGBs part in our downfall. The warnings have been there for decades, and WE have chosen our current path. Just google in Frankfurt school or Yuri Bezmenov, and you will get a step by step blueprint of the path to our destruction. The Frankfurt school’s pamphlet has been around since at least the thirties, below is a link to a Bezmenov lecture THREE DECADES ago which he sets out the plan. NUMBER ONE on the list is the destruction of faith, and the destruction of culture, moral values, family, and everything that goes along with it. BUT WE REFUSE TO LISTEN, we’re too clever, logical, scientific, educated, enlightened, GROWN UP, to be taken in by all that mumbo jumbo. Funny, I can remember GB/US being much happier, safer, friendly, freer, united places,generally at peace with themselves when they WERE Christian countries, just a few short decades ago. Law abiding people actually appreciated and respected our police then, and they didn’t go around pointing assault rifles at citizen.s heads, or mowing down eleven year old kids playing with toy guns in those days.
Russia has learned this lesson, after almost a century of misery and oppression, and you can’t fault Putin for learning it along with them. He is now THE worlds leading statesman, and the Russian state and people are well on their way to achieving the cultural, social and financial stability that we once took for granted, before we became so clever
They are casting off the cloak of misery and oppression as eagerly as we (collectively) are taking it up, and drawing it ever tightly around us. We are walking into this hell with OUR EYES WIDE OPEN, (and our ears and minds firmly closed)
You will NEVER beat the liberal/islam alliance with logic or reasoned argument. Anyone who has tried with either group will tell you that they are impervious to both. ONLY a set of passionately held cultural and spiritual beliefs that you refuse to compromise and will defend to the death will stop this two headed monster. ‘SECULAR DEMOCRACY’ fit the bill? Hardly, that is the nag that we are riding now, and it is being used to cut the ground from underneath us. but we ARE enjoying ourselves (for now).
here is the link to Bezmenov http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZnkULuWFDg
And here is a link to an article in Pravda about the Christian revival in Russia but it is well worth a read and the video is awesome http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/22-07-2013/125204-russia_beast-0/
I am beginning to wonder what it was that he did in the KGB during his time in East Germany. He was there when the USSR seems to have loosened the chains. Maybe he figured something out about the way Demographics in Western Europe were you going. He’s awfully concerned about them now as it turns out.
A lot of people were trapped in a system they hated, even if they had to toe the line if they were to survive, get along. Some like Bezmenov defected and carried on the fight from the outside, and indeed are STILL fighting, trying to warn us. Some, like Gordievsky risked terrible retribution by working on the inside to bring the soviet regime to an end, others, like Solzenytzin were openly defiant. Others, for all we know may have, for all we know just quietly seethed, or worked in less obvious ways to free their country. Either way, you can only judge them on their words and actions today. I can’t imagine any other world leader haranguing his officials and people in support of (Christian) conservative values and morality, and there is no other white world leader (leaders of any other colour are allowed, encouraged to) who will unashamedly speak about maintaining the cultural, ethnic identity of his people. He is also (knowing the name of the game) taking no nonsense from pressure groups, liberal denouncers. He knows that giving in to pressure groups, political correctness is the thin end of a very thick wedge. As people have pointed out, he’s seen how effective those tactics have been in wrecking the west. The guy gets my vote.
“He’s telling his own people not to eat the poison meat that he personally put out for the enemy the night before. For God’s sake, listen to him!”
Like most successful politicians, everything Putin says is calculated for political gain. You can’t for a minute trust a word of it. Acting in self interest, he’ll occasionally say things which accidentally coincide with your beliefs. Don’t fall for it.
He’s a liar, a KGB thug and he’ll stab you in the heart with your own mothers silverware over a petty grievance. He’s out for himself only.
The only difference I see between the lying commie Obama and the lying commie Putin is that Putin had to climb to power in a tougher neighborhood. The Community Organizer had his power handed to him.
I find it strange how some people make judgement on Putin without knowing anything about him. Hi was a KGB agent oh my god!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Whats wrong with being a KGB agent? Only the smartest and most competent people got excepted into KGB. He was only 30 at the time of USSR collapse. Do you really believe he was a huge KGB master mind who tried to undermine western societies?. Soviet Union prior to its collapse had lost faith in communism and was trying adopt western system. The ideological war was lost for many decades. The role of Soviet Union in creation of subversive movements in the West may be true in its early period but not in later.
Although Russia has many problems such as corruption and incompetency in many areas, however Putin is likely the best leader Russia could have at the moment.
I know he was a big deal in the East German KGB office. The
KGB there appear to have green lighted the end of the GDR and let the East Germans reunite with their compatriots. This was one of the watershed events of the cessation of the Cold War.
Words are cheap, and it is the cheap words that need to be heeded. Putin is not using cheap words in this speech because he is laying out exactly what ails the West to which he does not want his own nation falling into.
This is a well thought out speech with elements of truth that we who are slowly killing off our own nations need to take note of.
Putin maybe the Russian equivalent to a dictator, but he is no fool when it comes to seeing the very obvious direction now being steered to throughout the West for which he wants no part of.
And for that we should be thanking him!
Rather than speculate on his motives, simply look at the logic of his words. They agree with my thoughts and reading over the last several years. Don’t fall for either an ad hominem approach or one that trusts him because he is saying something we like to hear. The important thing is that what he is saying is true, and he has the political power to make it be heard. What’s more his behavior backs his words. It may not be the nicey-nicey way of doing things but it is effective, and that is what counts.
Having read “American Betrayal” and watched some Bezmenov I’m currently working my way through Pacepa’s “Disinformation.” I refuse to take Putin at face value. If I’ve learnt nothing else its the pervasive power of “the Lie” to fool even the best of us.
It is interesting that Putin criticises the West for its demographic collapse when Russia is losing its population at the rate of 140,000 a year. The only area of growth is the proportionate percentage growth of the Russian military which – according to the latest figures I saw 2 years ago – will be majority Muslim by 2016.
It is utterly fascinating that both Communism & Islam have such fully developed doctrines of lying. I can only conclude that there really is a spiritual power behind each one. Believe a spokemen for either one without verification? You’d be a fool. Whereas we all know Obama is a bald faced liar, I have yet to be convinced that the apple Putin has fallen that far from the Communist tree.
Yes Putin criticizes the birth rates and other problematic aspect in western societies not as criticism of the West but as a common problem as Russians do see themselves as Europeans and westerners in a sense of the word. Putin is talking about our Russian Identity which is not quiet defined. We are influenced from both West and East. Yes the problems that ail the West are not alien to Russia.
” … got to be so such household names in the very countries they worked so tirelessly to undermine.”
Did the elite not rejoice in their intellectual superiority while chewing on the latest liberation theory spoon fed to them by those household names to be regurgitated at the dinner party table and did they not take refugee in that collective of the elite with the sense of entitlement that afforded them the morality to stomp over the homeless man on the way to the Opera, these were not feeble minds reciting a Soviet nursery rhyme they were in it for their own prestige and gain. Treachery is the substance of the traitor not the ideology of the opponent.
If the IEDs don’t get you the Cold War rhetoric will freeze you to death, Multikulti Globalisation or Sovereign Nations, that is the choice is it not?
I would like to hear from those who criticize Putin the reasoning for their dislike for him. Please provide details of his improper actions towards the West. As far as Russians are concerned he still has the majority support, and is the preferred leader. So what is your criticism for him as far as the interests of your country/ies are concerned?
If you are concerned over the relationship that Russia has with Iran, you should ask yourself which countries are building Mosques and sponsoring islamisation of western societies. The answer is that Iran has very negligible role in this whilst the Western “friends and allies” Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States have very big role in it. The Muslim ethnic groups in Russia are all Sunnis with Saudi Arabia doing all it can to sway them towards Wahhabism to distabilise Russia. Its only natural for Russia to use Shia to do the same to Saudi Arabia.
Putin has stepped nicely into the moral vacuum created by America’s descent into lies, deceit, and robbery of its own citizens. Putin is good for Russia, and in the end that is the only thing that counts in world politics. He does what he thinks will bring Russia back to her former place in the galaxies of states.
We – the world in general – are safer with Putin in place than we are with the Obama maladministration and its endlessly amateurish incompetency. and that is an awful reality.
Better a former KGB organizer than a community organizer. At least the first knows what he’s doing.
Oh, and Putin is less likely to set off Iran’s crazies than Obama is.
Putin may be good for Russia, or not, but is Putin good for the rest of us? I don’t think Obama’s pathetic weakness, which Putin is rightfully taking advantage of, is a justification for Putin’s ambitions.
“Better a former KGB organizer than a community organizer.”
Yes. If you have to live under a tyrant best to live under your local street thug who knows
how to fistfight. Academically trained dictators don’t last too long against homegrown real thugs.
If forced to choose to live under Obama or Putin, I’ll take Putin.
“He served—but served Polycrates—
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.”
-Byron
“In such a unipolar, unified world there is no place for sovereign states. Such a world needs merely vassals.”
Says the tsar of the Russian empire, whose network of vassal states is one upon which the sun never sets…
Please tell what vassal states you are talking about?
Pingback: For God’s Sake, Listen to Putin! » Savoir ou se faire avoir
These replies have morphed into a discussion of the messenger. Are you unable or unwilling to grasp what Putin was saying, or is it a deliberate attempt at distraction?
Very good. Although I would not trust Putin’s words alone on behalf of my own country, I was very impressed with his knowledge and ability to recall things that related to the subject at hand. By comparison Putin makes the current US president look like a mental midget (and Obama truly is, just read some of his actual writings). I can picture Putin’s opinion of the current POTUS to be contemptuous and completely free of respect for that person.
I agree with much or most of what Putin has to say. Obviously implementation in Russia would be much different than, say, the UK.
Putin sends us a message and people get all wacked out about the fact that he used to be a COMMIE!! A KGB commie!! OH just wow!
MOST Western leaders have sold their souls to the Saudis and their religious enforcers.
Putin knows this and is warning ANY people of the WEST who will LISTEN!!! Like you said…FOR GOD’s SAKE LISTEN to him…. PLEASE!
Maybe he is a little like Cassandra….
Sew the wind, reap the whirlwind. – Ancient Wisdom
Better get some really sharp needles IF you intend to SEW the wind …. it just will NOT hold still for sewing… : )
The more I see of Obama, the more I like Putin 😉
http://littlenotesfromparis.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/potus-putin-and-boobs.html
@Sagunto,
Those welfare systems were requisitioned and targeted for destruction by the progressive cadre, in the UK. The subsistence welfare system is being demolished, the disinherited that are being forced into destitution and being evicted from their homes are not majority enricher but the indigenous poor and disabled.
The important point is the ideology that is driving and motivating the demolishing of the UK welfare systems is of the progressive agenda not of the market libertarian – big political difference and even bigger difference in the socioeconomic outcome.
In the UK the left were authoring the destruction of the welfare state long before the conservative Iain Duncan Smith, basically the “spoilt” indigenous poor and disabled are to be no better off than the enricher criminal – it is the progressive politics of indigenous debasement.
Vlad Putin has stepped nicely into the moral vacuum that British politicians are to morally bankrupt to occupy.
@J R,
Point taken, well said. Same happening over here in Holland.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
I am an Orthodox Christian. So is our other blog admin, CzechRebel, and some of our team members.
What if we had a truly Christian leader of a large nation today?
The great news is: We do!
If any of you out there in the dextrosphere are able to deal with the Russian climate and learning at least something of the Russian language, I strongly suggest that you visit Russia, and while there, visit some Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries.
That’s on my bucket list.
Howard Jacobson, a Jew, gives a wonderfully spirited defense of Christianity:
https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/FrAwdqeLf4s%26hl=en_US%26fs=1%26
Says the guy Helping Iran toward the Nuclear Bomb…
Pingback: “Muslims have only four mosques in Moscow — obviously that’s not enough. … We deserve more respect.” — Winds Of Jihad By SheikYerMami