Oh come, all ye faithful!
EDITORIAL
Oh Holy Putin!
Our stomachs were turned last week by the revolting news that Russian children were being encouraged by the Kremlin to offer up Orthodox prayers of worship to their new god, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Here are the horrifying details:
Even as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin denied that a personality cult has grown around him, news broke Thursday that St. Petersburg children were being encouraged to pray that God bless Putin and shield him from “demoniacal temptation.” St. Petersburg’s Suvorov Military College presented printed Orthodox prayers to talented local children aged 8 to 14 who were invited to an International Children’s Day event at Tavrichesky Palace on June 1, Yelena Sakhno, who helped organize the event, said Thursday. The prayers were among the gifts tucked into goody bags distributed to the 150 children. “We didn’t consider the inclusion of Orthodox literature among the presents to be reprehensible,” Sakhno told The Moscow Times. “The prayer for the head of state is traditional in the canons of the church service,” she added. “The Prayer for the President,” first reported by Fontanka.ru, calls on God to “send Your Archangel Mikhail to the aid of Your servants Dmitry and Vladimir” and to “shatter” their enemies and save them from “demoniacal temptation.” The text echoes the Russian Orthodox Church’s “Prayer to Archangel Mikhail.”
Let’s be perfectly clear: The Putin regime is establishing an official state religion in Russia, and doing so for the most crass of political motives. It is ignoring the reality that Russia is rapidly becoming a Muslim nation and creating an oppressive, powder-keg scenario of religious exclusion totally contrary to the principles of the Russian Constitution solely so that the Kremlin can use religion (Russia’s current patriarch is a former KGB agent) to leverage its power and control.
You have to hand it to Vladimir Putin: Unlike his Soviet ancestors who feared religion, Putin sees how easily he can corrupt and control the sheep-like “men of god” who run the Orthodox church, how easily he can turn religion into a potent ally of his dictatorship.
It’s wildly ironic that Russia, which so frequently criticized the prevalence of religion in American society because of the Soviet legacy of atheism, is now becoming one of the most religicized stats on the planet. As we’ve previously documented, Putin is creating a direct policy role for the Russian patriarch in his government, and in exchange is being proclaimed a “Holy Russian Emperor” by the church.
This action, which smacks of Nazism, goes hand-in-glove with Russia’s pathological skinhead nationalist movement. It will encourage more race murder, more social divisions, more internal hatred, more and more violence. It’s an obvious contributing factor to the fact we reported in our last issue that Russia has been judged one of the very most violent nations on the planet.
And the Russian people are directly complicit in this abomination. They have allowed their government to liquidated opposition parties and independent media, so these actions proceed unchallenged. No nation can survive barbarism of this kind for long.
La Russophobe 
The Russian people are complicit only in their own slave mentality, and their stupid instinct to forever idolise whoever happens to be the top dog in their country.
As for the opposition parties, what opposition? Honestly apart maybe for Kasparoff, who doesn’t really stand a chance of ever garnering any popular support in Russia on account of being ‘too smart’ (and btw if someone in Russia tells you you are ‘too smart’ that’s usually meant as an insult here), all the rest of them are little more than a bunch of disgruntled former functionaries who fell out of favour with the powers that be and are now trying desperately to get back to the trough, Nemtzov, Kasyanov etc, they’re just like Putin it’s just that at the moment their rival gang is running things in Moscow.
Now there’s the oligarchs, like Khodorkovski and Berezovski (or should I say former oligarch in this particular case), but those guys have been known to be interested exclusively in pursuing their own goals so why should the ordinary Russians bust their asses for them?
Now as for that prayer thing, you know the ROC is a joke, some time ago some public opinion agency polled ordinary Russians in central Russia on religion, when they asked them about their religious affiliation 80% said Russian orthodox, when they asked them if they believed in God a mere 20% of the respondents said they did.
Very on-point. And the Kasparov is too smart my ass: he might be clever, but he’s bad at public appearance, often talks nonsense and barely has any meaningful support.
The problem here is that Russia absolutely lacks a culture of politicians. As in, not bureaucrats and Party functionaires, but the normal, democratic breed, the ones climbing from some labor union or city level upwards. Some say Putin&Co exert special effort to prevent any non-clown’ish oppositionaires from ever appearing on the radar, but even if that is so, they sure are having easy times at that. Last time Russians had any sort of natural, democratically selected leaders climbing up on their actual support and understanding what it takes to earn people’s favor… well that probably were district and guild leaders from before 17’s Revolution. Nowadays, a word “politician” is a clear insult for most ordinary people, they wouldn’t care much even if it’s “their” politician.
My Orthodox Prayer for the Demonical Tyrant, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin:
“May Almighty God, remove him and his criminal rule from off the back of the Russian people and land, and that right soon, O Lord! AMEN!”
Some more IDIOTIC propaganda from a person who doesn’t have a CLUE of what she is talking about.
Ethnic Russians still account for 80% of the Federation’s population, and since the fertility rates of all major Muslim ethnic groups have declined to below replacement-level rates it is certain that Russians will retain a firm majority into the foreseeable future. And even if Russians and Tatars magically swap demographic places, almost nothing will change because vodka has long since dissolved away the Koran in Russia.
“Alarmist analysts like Daniel Pipes and Paul Goble, Islamic fundamentalists and certain plain demented Russophobe bloggers raise the specter of Russia’s transformation into a majority Muslim nation within the next 50 years. As is usually the case with such sensationalist claims, closer examination clears up the clutter. If you read Russian, take a look at Will Russia become Muslim?, otherwise…
First, the share of ethnic Russians declined from 81.5% of the population of the RSFSR, to 79.8% of the population of the Russian Federation – a time of low Russian birth rates and rapid Muslim expansion. Even a crude linear extrapolation of these rates forward, ignoring demographic transitions and aging, gives a figure of 68.7% ethnic Russians in 2050.
Second, even this is a pointless exercise, of course, as a quick look at current regional TFR proves. The two biggest ethnic Muslim groups, the Tatars (3.8% of the population) and the Bashkirs (1.2%) transitioned to sub-replacement fertility rates at about the same time as ethnic Russians. Today, Tatarstan has a TFR of 1.4 and Bashkortostan has a TFR of 1.6, which is not significantly different from that of majority Russian regions.
Even the current rapid population growth seen in the Caucasian Muslim republics conceals a major demographic transition during the 1990’s. Although a huge youth bulge contributes to current high birth rates, it should be noted that all the Caucasian republics now have sub-replacement fertility rates, with the sole exception of Chechnya where the TFR was 3.1 in 2007. Incidentally, I suspect it is no coincidence that it is Chechnya which also had by far the bloodiest recent history – when you have just one son to lose instead of several, it is that much harder to send him off in the service of violent separatism or radical Islam.
Third, the reason some people fear or relish the idea of an Islamic Russia is because they associate Russian Muslims with their less socially developed counterparts in the Middle East. Actually, vodka has long since dissolved away the Koran in Russia. Tatars, who make up more than a third of Russia’s Muslim population, are almost as secular to Islam as ethnic Russians are to Christian Orthodoxy. Even amongst the Chechens Wahabbism never truly took root, despite the best efforts of Arab mujahideen. As Fedia Kriukov put it, “the whole idea of Muslim takeover is predicated on one giant falsification — the substitution of the term “Muslim” for the term “representative of a traditionally Muslim ethnicity”…Absolutely nothing would change in the country if Tatars became the majority, however unlikely that situation is.”
Taken from Anatoly Karlin’s blog. He actually provides sources and his writing MAKES SENSE, unlike this blog, which shamelessly accuses Putin of being a KGB agent, without EVER providing sources.
You are a demented and crazed RUSSOPHOBE.
What are you, a total retard, to come here and speak numbers and say words like “extrapolate”, “demographic transition”, and this “sub-replacement fertility”?
We are speaking BELIEFS here, you demented moron!
And our BELIEFS clearly prove that Russians drink much vodka and die out!
:D
Засунь свои BELIEFS в твою вонючую ЖОПУ, Dritry :D (aka Dmitry: Debil or Dmitry: Durilka kartonnaja)
80% ? HA HA
(Need I say more?)
According to some Western scenarios of the 1990s, if the Soviet Union had stayed together it is likely that Russians would have lost their majority status in the first decade of the 21st century.[8] This differential could not be offset by assimilation of non-Russians by Russians, in part because the nationalities of southern republics maintained a distinct ethnic consciousness and were not easily assimilated. {think Borg}
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One Irkutsk resident said in his blog that when he called himself a Siberian, “the census taker responded that ‘there is no such nationality’ and wrote down Russian. I forced her to write ‘Siberian,’” he continued, but she changed it so that the individual involved became “a Russian Siberian” and will undoubtedly be counted as an ethnic Russian.
Dmitry Osipov, a Novosibirsk resident, reported something similar. In his case, the census taker did not even ask his nationality but simply wrote down “Russian.” “I forced him to correct that,” but he tried to answer that “there is no such nationality, but without fanaticism and with a smile.”
Residents in Bratsk, Tomsk, Omsk, Kemerovo and other Siberian cities reported similar situations. All of them were forced to include “Russian” in their declaration of nationality, although one Tomsk blogger said that while he “of course is a Russian,” he wanted to call himself a Siberian, not a “Russian” Siberian. If blocked, he said, he would be “a Martian.”
This pattern has been so widespread, Globalsib.com continued, that it suggests census officials had told their workers how to act. One census taker admitted as much. He told a resident of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka that his bosses had told him that anyone who is a Russian citizen is thus a Russian by nationality.
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/86669/#ixzz13LTmvikA
“russians” do not want to be “russian”.
Siberian nationalists issue appeal to the world
Oct 13 at 11:49 | Paul Goble
Siberian nationalists, encouraged by the response to their call for residents of that enormous region to declare themselves Siberian by nationality in the upcoming Russian Federation census, have now issued an appeal to the broader international community about what they see as the coming of age of the Siberian nation.
“We have been able to overcome the forcible imposition of an alien identity, the destruction of our culture, and the suppression of free speech which had blocked our development and self-determination,” the appeal says And it continues that “while there are difficult problems ahead,” the Siberian nationalists say they see the way clear to do so.
Read more:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/86108/#ixzz13OnCaS8X
RUSSIA:
CENSUS AND RELIGIOUS STATISTICS
RFE/RL- 4 September 2002
Posted 4 September 2002 on Religioscope
Orthodox Church lobbies to include confessional prference in census data. But the Russian government disagrees. Meanwhile two-thirds of Russians profess faith in God.
Antonii Ilin, spokesman for the Foreign Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, has said that the Russian Orthodox Church has a “direct interest” in including a question about citizens’ religious confessions in the questionnaire of the national census, which will be conducted in October, strana.ru reported on 27 August.
Ilin said such a question would be “very useful because it would highlight the real percentage of [the population espousing] traditional confessions in Russia.” Ilin added that not including questions about citizens’ religious adherence would deprive the census of its “spiritual and cultural significance.”
However, Vladimir Zorin, the government minister who oversees nationalities policy, said there is no urgent need to include this question, the website reported. Such data is already available at the Justice Ministry, which he said is responsible for registering religious organizations. Zorin noted that no religious confession — except for the Orthodox Church — has advocated including this question in the census, and it was not asked during the last few censuses conducted during the Soviet era.
More than two-thirds of respondents to a recent survey by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) claimed to be adherents to one or another religious confession, Izvestiya reported on 25 August. According to the survey, 58 percent of respondents declared themselves Orthodox believers, while 5 percent said they were Muslims and less than 2 percent said they belonged to non-Orthodox Christian confessions. Thirty-one percent declared themselves atheists.
Of those who said that they believe in God, 60 percent said that they had never read any biblical text.
Of those who claimed to be Orthodox believers, 42 percent said that they had never been in an Orthodox church, while another 31 percent said that they went to church “not more than once a year.” “The biggest difference between believers and nonbelievers is not how often they go to church, but whether or not they pray to God,” said VTsIOM sociologist Aleksandr Golov.
This news item was originally published by RFE/RL, (Un)Civil Societies, Vol. 3, No. 36, 4 September 2002. Copyright © 2002. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. http://www.rferl.org
http://www.religioscope.com/notes/2002/071_russia_census.htm
I despise Putin as much as the next person, but I don’t see a problem here. In fact, the worse your ruler is, the more important it is to pray that he be saved from temptation. And the enemies to be shattered by the Archangel Michael are primarily the demons – i.e., the tempters.
If there is a problem at all here, it is that Putin is perhaps being implictly treated as the head of state. Currently, Medvedev is the head of state, and he should normally be the beneficiary of prayers for the ruler.
In the Antiochian Archdiocese, I think we normally just pray for “the President of the United States” without naming him.
What is exactly the context of the government-sponsored (if not forced) prayers? And what is the context of registering who follows which religion?
“In Soviet Russia church goes to you” :D
As to the government-sponsored prayers:
You pray for Putin, the government pays you per word.
But first you need to register as a licensed prayer-for-Putin.
Have you received your license already?
My, I have been holding it for almost 30 years by now. Are there any reasons to think otherwise?
:D
Well, OK, let’s say I did not use the best words to describe it. How would you characterize it when a St. Petersburg Military College encourages children to pray that God bless Putin and shield him from “demoniacal temptation.”
You would probably agree that a Military College is an arm of the state. And everybody in the world knows that when any Army in the world (not just in Russia) “encourages” the soldiers to do something, it means it orders them to do that.
So, what is it? A forced prayer or government-sponsored prayer? If this was not in a military setting, OK, maybe there could be some other explanation. But in the Army, it looks like one of the two, and either is an ugly monstrosity in my view.
By the way, as to the licensing. You thought your were funny, didn’t you? But is it true that the Russian state has to license a church before it can exist?
To Roland, a fellow Orthodox Christian,
You said, ‘But I don’t see a problem here’.
WOW! this official praying for the head of state, for the existing/ruling government,…yes, that is the age-old tradition of the Orthodox Church, as St. Paul says, ‘For all authority is from (permitted by) God’, and good Orthodox Christians are to , NORMALLY, obey civil laws, and to respect such authority, AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT CONTRADICT God’s laws. Have you not noticed, my fellow Orthodox brother, that the present regime in Russia is a hang-over neo-soviet GOD-LESS STILL! Gangster TYRANNY, which routinely oppresses and murders and perverts morals and uses it’s captive, state-church, the Moscow Patriarchy, (founded by Joseph Stalin in 1943), to cover up it’s crimes??
Where have you been? or do you wear blinders?
So, this issue is not some churchy intellectual or translation of precise wording debate, as to ….who…is ‘the head of state’, for whom we traditionally DO pray, but rather WHO is this monster?…and how long will God and the Russian people tolerate him and his fellow gangsters?
Therefore our only Godly prayer, has to be for God to remove this evil ruler, not quibbling about the exact wording of an official prayer FOR him and his criminal government, especially when composed and put into public service by this pseudo-church, this KGB run Moscow Patriarcate.
Come on! get real!
As far as the Archangel Michael, he is recognized as God’s messenger, fighting for God and goodness, and against evil, and against the servants of the Devil.
V. Putin, Mr. Medvedev and their entire gangster entourage have PROVEN, that they serve evil, i.e. The Devil.
It is more likely, that they are connected to AntiChrist, than to God.
Haven’t you noticed this yet?
Really not?
Or are you fooled seeing them holding lite candles in church, crossing themselves vigorously, kissing icons, and making all sorts of public ‘pious’ statements-?
Forget praying …for…them, but rather pray to God to free the Russian land and people from their demonic despotism.
V. Putin, Mr. Medvedev serve The Devil.
Am I the only one who considers this argument a little bit too far-fetched?:)
Dimitry,
‘ a little bit too far-fetched’ to say that ‘Putin and Medvedev serve the Devil’-?
Clearly you must be an athiest, who does not believe in the existence of either God or His opposite, the Devil?
Too bad for you!
You are a fool.
Do you even believe that there is a right and a wrong, in this world?
Also, you must be a supporter of those immoral criminals? But I can put the central problem in a different way: These evil men and their government hurt/harm/oppress/murder, and violate ALL sorts of aspects of ANY moral-laws, i.e. they are antihuman…and monsters.
Even athiest humanists, cannot possibly approve of such behaviour.
Yet, these false men, pretend, to believe in God and in the Orthodox Church’s morality.
Those are all the historic signs, of being servants of THE DEVIL.
Truly Godly rulers, could not do these evil DEEDS that these men do.
But, I guess that you excuse what they DO, don’t you?
Shame on you, as you obviously have NO morality.
Clearly you must be an athiest? You are a fool.
So sad Immanuel Kant is not here to hear you, he could have created just another proof of His existence.
Those are all the historic signs, of being servants of THE DEVIL.
Sunshine, you have no f*cking idea how stupid you sound.
‘Dmitry’,
You have no idea how…. blanken….stupid you sound. So there! Ha Ha!
Your idiotic words prove nada!
Psalmoschik,
As I said, I despise Putin as much as the next person. If anything, that was an understatement. I am actually pretty outspoken in this matter. When people try to portray Russia (or Serbia, for that matter) as an Orthodox nation, I correct them: Russia is a neo-communist nation whose ancestors were Orthodox. I have no illusions about the evil of communism (the greatest evil ever invented by man) or the evil that Putin and his cronies represent.
But that does not excuse us from praying for him. We are commanded to pray for our enemies. And this prayer in particular – to save a ruler “from demoniacal temptation” is not exactly a pro-Putin prayer – it is more of an anti-Satan prayer. It is little more than an extension of the concluding petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Very true Roland.
To Roland,
Well then, you pray your prayers and I will pray mine.
Does not, ‘deliver us from the Evil One’, in the correct Orthodox English translation of the Lord’s Prayer, also include the meaning,..deliver us from the Evil One’s …servants?
At any rate, Roland, the saints of our church teach, as is in the Bible, ‘God cannot hear the prayers of the (unrepentent) wicked!’
Putin and gang, are WICKED to the very core.
And, at any rate, God does WHATSOEVER HE WILL!…no matter what mumbling- carefully worded prayers we humans address to Him, on any subject.
And, God is ALL-Virtue.
In His eyes, unvirtuous behaviour is an abomination. So, to mutter this official prayer FOR Putin & gang, is not in the same category as, ‘praying for our enemies’.
Prayer for our enemies, means, praying for those other individuals, who have done us personal wrongs, this does not apply to despotic tyrants, who are mass oppressors and murderers, who terrorize whole nations.
It would be more in keeping with the church praying FOR the Byzantine Apostate Emperor, Leo the Isaurian (Armenian) “Of Thrice Cursed Memory”…who is anathematized (cursed) every year, on Orthodoxy Sunday. We are commanded to NOT pray for him! We know that his soul is with the Devil, whom he served when he was alive.
The only logical and righteous prayer for those living Ruling monsters, is for God to, “bless them, and REMOVE them!”.
Amen.
But, beware, you may displease God by your continued praying for Putin, as his captive MP clergy do and teach. I believe, that God does NOT bless those who utter such foolish blasphemous ‘prayers.’ It is the same as asking God, to ‘bless and preserve Satan’.
Our church teaches, that there is no hope for the salvation of Satan.
The return of Holy Tsarist Russia, like, FINALLY ;)
Anatoly Karlin is not qualified to make any analysis as he is a useful idiot. Daniel Pipes and Paul Goble, on the other hand, are known and respected analysts.
About “respected analyst” Paul Goblin:
Adomanis about Goble: “His job is to studiously dig through rags like Novaya Gazeta, find the most unhinged anti-Putin rants he can lay his hands on, translate them, and then print them as “authoritative” sources. His editorializing takes place through his choice of content, which is inevitably alarmist and hysterical in tone (and frequently revealed to be extremely inaccurate). I’m just amazed that after all these years he still has the patience to churn out amount of content he does so I can at least admire his persistence.”
https://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/interview-russia-blogger-mark-adomanis/
Paul “Goblein” Goble
:’D
“Let’s be perfectly clear: The Putin regime is establishing an official state religion in Russia, and doing so for the most crass of political motives. ”
Wow. Soon Russia will turn into Israel!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Israel#Religion_and_citizenship
Israel was founded to provide a national home, safe from persecution, to the Jewish people. Although Israeli law explicitly grants equal civil rights to all citizens regardless of religion, ethnicity, or other heritage, it gives preferential treatment in certain aspects to individuals who fall within the criteria mandated by the Law of Return. Preferential treatment is given to Jews and their relatives who seek to immigrate to Israel. This serves to increase the Jewish population and provides asylum to people who face religious discrimination in the countries they emigrate from.
The criteria set forth by the Law of Return are controversial. The Law of Return differs from Jewish religious law in that it disqualifies individuals who are Jewish by birth but who converted to another religion, and also in that it grants immigrant status to individuals who are not Jewish by birth but are related to Jews by marriage.
It is ignoring the reality that Russia is rapidly becoming a Muslim nation
So is Israel. So is France.
And does this article tells a word about Georgia (country), oh Georgia (country) on my mind?
What it is like to be a Muslim, or Armenian Christian in Georgia (country)?
“Vladimir Putin is indeed an Orthodox Christian believer…who confesses, takes Communion and realizes his responsibility to God for the high service entrusted him, and for his immortal soul…He who really loves Russia and wishes it well, can only pray for Vladimir, placed at the head of Russia by God’s will”
http://politicom.moldova.org/news/ukraine-putin-tells-west-to-stop-interfering-in-little-russia-201153-eng.html
“Let God’s blessing be with all those… who visit the Russian Orthodox Church on YouTube,” added Kirill,
Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/85902/#ixzz124frf4t5
Joke of the day?
Moscow “church” KGB “priest” consecrates a strip club.
http://biletskyi.blogspot.com/2010/10/b.html
moscow KGB “church” :
Journalists “MK” discovered in a Moscow church icon depicting Joseph Stalin.
http://biletskyi.blogspot.com/2010/10/blog-post_22.html