08/23/14

The Ikar

Motzei Shabbat (After Shabbat)

“The Ikar” (the essence of the matter)

Tomorrow night my eldest granddaughter goes off with her class to Poland for a week, to visit death camps and related sites. In Israel doing this is a rite of passage. She and her 12th grade classmates have been exceedingly well prepared. I was with her for Shabbat, and I told her that I will wait, once she returns, for her to let me know she is ready to speak with me about her experience. She thanked me for this, saying that she suspects in the beginning she will be so filled with powerful emotions that there will not yet be any way for her to speak about them.

So, why put these kids through this?

Because it IS the ikar, and never has this fact been more clear. We’re looking at an existential issue for Jews, and not “just” history. The year 2014 is shaping up more and more like 1938, as anti-Semitism – including in its violent manifestations – becomes more “acceptable.”

But there is one stunning and essential difference: Today there is an Israel.

Would that every young Jew in the world would grasp this reality. But what matters most is that young Israelis comprehend it. And they do.

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Commentator Michael Freund touched me deeply when he wrote recently about his son’s army service, in “The holiness of the IDF uniform.” In this meditative essay, he described his brief moment of panic, when he realized that his son, who was about to serve in the IDF, might have been going to college in the US instead, had his family not made aliyah when he was one year old.

But then, very quickly, he saw an overwhelmingly significant reality about the IDF uniform and what it represents (emphasis added):

“It is a piece of Jewish history, an item that countless Jews for the past 2,000 years could only dream of: A Jewish uniform that belongs to a Jewish army tasked with defending Jews in their own land.

“What could possibly be more holy?”

http://www.michaelfreund.org/15182/idf-uniform

Credit: Jewishmiracles

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To defend our people and our land is our moral imperative. Most especially to defend it against those such as Hamas who incorporate into their ideology destruction of Israel and the Jews.

Our right to do this should be a “no brainer.” And yet we are besieged by those who – as Prime Minister Netanyahu has so often pointed out – grant us that right in principle but rush to block our ability to actually exercise it. They readily seek to cripple our self-defense, even in the face of our existential threat: monitoring us as no other nation in the world has ever been monitored, critiquing what they have absolutely no right to critique, and talking about “international law” that is largely invented.

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Today, in my own meditative mood, I realized how I’ve begun to be tangled in my writing – which attempts to describe this deplorable situation, again and again and again. It is not clean and clear; it is forever convoluted. How it wearies the soul.

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They are still launching rockets, my friends. Hamas has not let up. In the last 24 hours, there have been some 100 rockets – launched at Be’ersheva and Ashkelon and Ashdod. In the communities closest to the Gaza border, in Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council. In the region of Tel Aviv – with sirens sounding in Rishon Lezion, Holon, Yehud, Givatayim, and Bat Yam.

Yesterday, little four-year old Daniel Tragerman, of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, was killed by mortar fire emanating from Gaza. His parents were in process of preparing to leave the kibbutz when he was hit. He simply didn’t make it to a shelter in time. The barrage on Nahal Oz was heavy.

Daniel Tragerman (photo credit: Courtesy)

This cannot stand. This must not stand.

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Egypt is planning on extending invitations to all parties to return to Cairo for more negotiations. The Times of Israel reports that Netanyahu and al-Sisi of Egypt speak frequently and at length. But unless I’m really missing something, the notion of more negotiations with Hamas is simply nonsense. Hamas – which has demonstrated its failure to honor commitments again and again – says they will return on their terms only.

Is there any effective alternative to another ground invasion?

Is there a plan that the government has to bring this situation to an effective end?

Are the members of our government prepared to turn their backs to those who critique us and monitor us, and finally sanction a non-holds barred response – even in terms of attacks by air – that puts an end to this situation?

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The residents of the south have had it. They’re leaving in large numbers. What they are being told by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has got to be less then reassuring. After Shabbat tonight, I picked up various sources who cited his comments today – and I turned away deeply unsettled:

“The goal of the [Israeli] decision makers is to bring Hamas to the negotiation table in Cairo under terms that Israel decides, and to achieve a ceasefire deal as demanded by Jerusalem,”http://www.timesofisrael.com/day-48-mortar-victim-daniel-tragerman-4-to-be-buried-sunday-fire-from-lebanon-rocket-hits-beersheba-car/

That’s it? I’m assuming for the moment that there is likely more, as yet unspoken.

Hamas will not agree to Israel’s terms until it has been defeated. The goal, then, it seems to me, is not bringing Hamas to the table, but defeating it.

Communications Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud), who is a member of the Security Cabinet, said today that a serious ground invasion is being considered:

“Has the final decision been made? No, but we are closer to it than we have ever been before.

“Hamas continues a war of attrition and we are pounding them by air, but this is not a situation that can persist for weeks. The purpose of a ground offensive could be retaking Gaza fully and the collapse of Hamas rule, or specific attacks on the organization itself.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184334#.U_kckJvlrIU

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There have been a handful of rockets launched from Lebanon into the Galil tonight.

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I’ve been advised by someone considerably in the know with regard to the PA, that Abbas’s motivation at present is “staying relevant.” He must appear to be a player of significance so that he is factored into future situations and does not simply get lost. Perhaps. Abbas is playing it to the hilt – great buddies with Mashaal of Hamas as they plan mutually for attempting to bring Israel to the International Criminal Court.

08/23/14

Gen Dempsey: ISIS Cannot Be Defeated Without Going Into Syria – America’s Newsroom

08/23/14

American Betrayal: Nuremberg and the Nazi-Soviet Pact

By: Diana West

An overheard conversation between top Nazis Goering (front left) and von Ribbentrop (front, second from right) set off the chain of events revealing to the public the existence of the Hitler-Stalin Pact’s “secret protocol,” which included evidence of Soviet war crimes committed in tandem with the Nazis. The Allies suppressed the document at the Nuremberg trials.

—

Today is the 75th anniverary of the non-aggression pact between the Hitler and Stalin, the latter becoming (after Hitler attacked Stalin on June 22, 1941) the member of the “Big Three” known as “Uncle Joe.” In the commemorative essays discussing the twin dictators’ earlier alliance of August 23, 1939, which would be followed by Hitler and Stalin’s conquest of Poland the following month, the pact’s secret protocol that divided the nations of central and Eastern Europe between them is also mentioned. I have yet to see, however, any discussion of how that secret protocol became known to the public.

That disturbing story of near-suppression takes us past the war to the trials of the Nazi high command in Nuremberg — widely hailed the model of international justice. But what a morally rotten exercise it was, as war criminals (Soviets) sat in judgment of war criminals (Nazis) while war crimes (British and US) were occurring all around (Operation Keelhaul, the little known British-US-enabled “repatriation” from the West of millions of Soviet-claimed persons to death/the Gulag, was in full swing).

There, in a Nuremberg prison yard, a German defense lawyer by chance overheard top Nazis (von RIbbentrop and Goering) discussing the contents of the still-secret protocol, which offered evidence of Stalin’s guilt in committing “conspiracy to wage aggressive war,” one of the key charges against the German high command. With Stalin trying to blot out his alliance with Hitler from the record — with full support of his British and American allies — how did the secret protocol ever come to the world’s attention?

Here is what happened at Nuremberg, as discussed in Chapter 2 of American Betrayal, pp. 54-58.

… Even to participate in these trials, the Western Allies had to overlook Stalin’s crimes and pretend they had not taken place within the timeline of the war whose very outbreak was precipitated by the infamous 1939 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact negotiated by German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. After all, the Nazis and Soviets had begun World War II together as allies with the invasion of Poland. The Germans invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939—a well-known date—and the Red Army invaded from the east on September 17, 1939.

Not a well-known date.

Why?

Given the USSR’s 1939–41 attacks on Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Bessarabia alone, as John Laughland writes in his 2008 book A History of Political Trials, “the Communists were therefore guilty of exactly the same crimes against peace as the Nazis. They were also guilty of numerous atrocities.”56

At first, this was another concept that brought me up short, another point of clarity that should have been obvious but had somehow been obscured by the fog of that vaporous arsenal clouding our understanding of the past. It wasn’t right to convict Hitler’s successors of charges that Stalin was equally guilty of and call it not only justice but Perfect, Lodestar Justice for the Ages. One of the many proofs of the corruption of Nuremberg lies in the fact that when a German defense counsel named Alfred Seidl brought forward the first public evidence of the secret protocol to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact that divided the nations and peoples of Europe between Hitler and Stalin—evidence of Stalin’s guilt of committing “conspiracy to wage aggressive war,” one of the key charges against the German high command—Seidl’s evidence, a verified copy of the protocol, was ruled inadmissible. In open court—and not just any open court, but the model court of a new international order—the Western Allies signed on to a Soviet conspiracy of silence conceived of and directed by Stalin. Mean- while, Stalin, it turns out, had empowered a secret commission at Nuremberg “to prevent at all costs any public discussion of any aspects of Nazi-Soviet relations in 1939–1941, and, first and foremost, of the actual existence, let alone contents of the so-called secret protocols,” writes Arkady Vaksberg in his 1990 biography of Andrei Vyshinsky, Stalin’s Prosecutor. Vyshinsky headed that secret commission. “However, all his [Vyshinsky’s] worries proved unfounded; the foreign members [of the tribunal] were quite kindly disposed toward their [Soviet] Allies and certainly no desire to strain relations.”57

In this cozy court, Seidl set off an unanticipated eruption of the facts, which the U.S. government, already in possession of the Nazi archives, might well have known even before the German lawyer made his case. Quite by chance, Seidl had overheard von Ribbentrop in the prison yard revealing the secret protocol and its contents to Hermann Göering. Seidl then embarked on a very vocal search for the document, up and down channels, eventually and clandestinely receiving a photostat of the document from an unnamed U.S. officer, who we might assume was fed up with Nuremberg “justice,” too. While the evidence wasn’t admitted in court, it entered the equally important court of public opinion. On May 22, 1946, the day after Seidl was overruled at Nuremberg, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch published the once-secret protocol in its entirety, thus thwarting the conspiracy of silence.

It’s possible that without Seidl’s “indomitable” efforts, as the Post-Dispatch described them, we might never have learned about the secret protocol— certainly not for some time. The fact is, not a jot about the Soviet criminal case came to judgment at Nuremberg—not the NKVD massacre of some twenty thousand Polish officers known as the Katyn Forest Massacre (charged to the Germans), not the forced “repatriation” of some two million Soviet-claimed refugees, which occurred thanks to essential assistance from British and U.S. troops—our very own war crime—which was still under way in Ger- many and elsewhere even as Nuremberg unfolded. Yes, as we’ve seen, Vyshinsky, Stalin’s all-purpose fixer and prosecutor at the notorious Moscow show trials of the 1930s (the Great Purge that liquidated tens of thousands of Soviet citizens58), kept showing up to ensure, minder-style, “that everything went off as planned, and especially to ensure that no discussion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was allowed in the courtroom.”59 However, as we’ve also seen, the presence of the man Britain’s chief prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross called “Stalin’s foremost proxy” was likely unnecessary, what with “the Tribunal,” as Telford Taylor, chief American counsel at Nuremberg, writes in his Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, “doing its best to protect [the Soviets] from embarrassment.”60

Shades of George Bush at Malta, forty years later.

Taylor’s 1992 “personal memoir” of Nuremberg only skimmed what he called the trials’ “political warts,” the “biggest wart” being “the presence of the Soviet judges on the bench.” Why? By way of explanation, Taylor invoked the “hatred and fear of communism and the Soviet Union . . . voiced throughout the United States,” which is no explanation at all. As for the Moscow show trials, he gently broke it to readers on page 639 that the trials “had a very bad name.” Then there was that “very ticklish matter” of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Taylor writes. Even a practically kindly passing reference to the perfidious agreement by prosecutor Shawcross was infamously omitted in deference to Soviet sensibilities.61 These were the lies and hypocrisy that led to such ghastly scenes as when, with Hermann Göring and Rudolph Hess in the dock, the Soviet prosecutor Roman Rudenko spoke on February 8, 1946. Taylor writes, “Rudenko described the [German] invasions of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and then . . . the Soviet Union. Certain events contemporaneous with the destruction of the Polish state seemed to have been erased from Rudenko’s memory” (emphasis added).

“Certain events,” of course, referred to the massive, simultaneous and, at that moment in the proceedings, ongoing Soviet role in said Polish destruction. Taylor’s account continued, quoting the words of the Soviet prosecutor, “On September 1, 1939 the fascist aggressors invaded Polish territory in treacherous violation of existing treaties,” [Rudenko] declaimed, and read from a document . . . to show “how the gangster assault of Hitler’s Germany on Poland was prepared in advance” (emphasis added).

“Prepared in advance”? Even Taylor doesn’t fail to notice Rudenko’s omission, writing, “Of course, the crucial ‘preparation in advance’ was the Nazi-Soviet treaty.”62 Taylor makes no additional comment on this brazen hypocrisy, an altered state of mind that the West dysfuntionally tolerated to a point where even as late as 1986, Soviet officials could with impunity denounce references to the historical consequences of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact as being “disinformation about the prewar policy of the USSR” and a “hackneyed lie that the Soviet-German Treaty of 1939 opened the path to the second world war.”63 Never mind that it did. Taylor does, however, note a memorable observation made by Nuremberg psychologist Dr. G. M. Gilbert: “Gilbert recorded that Goering and Hess, in disgust, took off their headphones. During the lunch break, Goering was scornful: ‘I did not think that they [the Russians] would be so shameless as to mention Poland.’ ”64

When Göring and Hess have the moral high ground, you know you’re in trouble—or at least you should. Knowing or not, everyone who participated in the charade at Nuremberg was complicit. In a 1962 essay titled “Who Betrays Whom?” the British writer and ex-Socialist Malcolm Muggeridge, who had famously and to the detriment of his journalistic career borne early witness to the horrors of Soviet collectivization and forced famine in the 1930s, had this to say: “Let us hope that mankind will sometime recover sufficient equanimity to get a laugh out of the spectacle of English and American judges sitting alongside Soviet ones, and solemnly pronouncing Germans guilty of the use of forced labour and of the partition of Poland.”65

Germans, but not Soviets.

No such knowing derision has ever compromised the solemn regard in which Nuremberg is still held, still respected as a civilizational milestone. Given the travesty of Soviet immunity alone, this vaunted tribunal gives off the noxious fumes of a Western show trial, albeit one conducted not to establish the phony guilt of defendants but rather to establish the phony legitimacy of the court itself—specifically the Soviet Union’s rotten central role in it. How else to regard a judicial proceeding where Moscow show trial judge Iona Timofeevich Nikitchenko presided?66 In his Nuremberg memoir, Telford Taylor opaquely introduced late-twenty-century readers to Nikitchenko as “an army judge advocate,” but in 1936, Nikitchenko made mass murderers’ row as one of the judges who signed the spurious death sentences of the “old Bolsheviks” in the first of Stalin’s public show trials that initiated the Great Purge decimation of a generation of Russians.67 ”We might agree, at least retrospectively,” Robert Conquest wrote in 2005 regarding Nikitchenko’s blood-soaked spot on the Nuremberg bench, “Nuremberg can be pronounced defective on this basis alone.”68

But we do not so agree, retrospectively or otherwise. Such a thought doesn’t enter our minds. Nuremberg “justice” as jointly apportioned by “Allies” who included hardened criminals-against-humanity from the USSR lives on as “a moral reference point.”69 How can that be? How can we look at darkness and see purity? Once again, Mikhail Gorbachev’s failure to accept the reality of half a million trucks and jeeps wasn’t and isn’t the only amazing game of denial in town.

Indeed, Bukovsky’s notion of Western “ideological collaboration” to serve Soviet ends has a long and storied tradition that, as the example of the 1946 Nuremberg Trials indicates, certainly goes back further than 1991. In both cases, in Moscow in 1991 and at Nuremberg in 1946, Communist doctrine and its leading agent, the Soviet Union, were allowed to slip away unrecognized, unjudged, unpunished. Perhaps it’s possible to say that the difference is that in 1946, the main motivation to protect Communism, while enabled and acquiesced due to Allied expediency, still came from within the USSR, a co-victor, after all, in World War II. In 1991, with the USSR in tatters, the decisive block on passing judgment against the USSR, the Cold War loser, came from the West itself.

Now, what was it I said at the beginning of this chapter about finding equilibrium in the conventional wisdom about the 1989 breakup of the Soviet bloc?

I was just leading you on. …

08/23/14

China Conducts Provocative Aerial Buzz On American Military Aircraft

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Hat Tip: Nevin Gussack

Chinese SU-27 Fighter Plane / AP

Amid the horrific beheading of journalist James Foley last week by ISIS, comes the news that our old battle buddies, the Chinese, decided that it was must see news for the good citizens of Beijing. On a massive television screen displayed in downtown Beijing, an endless loop of bad news for America depicting her as weak and ineffectual was played over and over for all to see. It was propaganda for the masses, meant to emphasize the strength of America’s enemies and play up her fall as a super power in preparation for war. The news included the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri and the beheading of Foley. It is an old propaganda strategy that has been used by many, including the Nazis and the Japanese, only with a new technology twist.

The signs of a coming world war are all around us and becoming more brazen by the day. You see it in Russia who is now launching strikes within the Ukraine and moving their troops across the border. You see it with ISIS committing genocide in the Middle East and threatening American cities. You see it in Israel, who is defending her very existence in the face of annihilation by murderous Jihadists. You see it in the rise of the Caliphate.

But the most blatant signs are with the Chinese and Russian militaries. And both of our communist nemeses are calling America a liar. Them’s fighting words, boys. Or at least, under any half-way decent president, they would have been. Under Obama, it’s cause for another round of golf.

International airspace is just that – international. I’ve got news for the weak-kneed out there… all countries have always watched and spied on each other. Now, China feels superior enough to tell the US you can’t watch us from any distance:

BEIJING, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) — Chinese Defense Ministry here on Saturday urged the U.S. side to stop close-in surveillance of China, and create a sound atmosphere for bilateral military ties.

The ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said in a statement that one U.S. anti-submarine plane and one patrol aircraft flew to an airspace about 220 kilometers east of China’s Hainan Island to conduct close-in surveillance Tuesday morning, and then a Chinese fighter jet took off to make regular identification and verification.

Commenting on relevant criticism made by the U.S. side, Yang said that was “totally groundless,” as the Chinese pilot, with professional operation, kept the jet within a safe distance from the U.S. aircraft.

It was U.S. massive and frequent close-in surveillance of China that endanger the two sides’ air and marine security, and is the root of accidents, he said.

China urged the U.S. side to abide by international law and international practice, respect concerns of the coastal countries, and properly deal with the differences between the two sides on air and marine security issues, he said.

Yang said that the U.S. side should follow the principle of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, take concrete actions, reduce and finally stop close-in surveillance of China, so as to create a sound atmosphere for bilateral military ties.

Not only that, their rendition of events with military aircraft last week differ vastly from American reports. On Friday, the Pentagon came out and called a Chinese jet’s encounter with a US anti-submarine warfare aircraft an “aggressive” and “dangerous” act. A formal protest was aired on the action with Beijing. The Chinese then proceeded to tell us to back off, mind our own business and call us lying liars. All show, because the Chinese don’t want America to see any more of their radical military buildup for war.

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters that the incident took place Tuesday in international airspace:

“We have registered our strong concerns to the Chinese about the unsafe and unprofessional intercept, which posed a risk to the safety and the well-being of the air crew and was inconsistent with customary international law,” Kirby said, adding that the incident was “very, very close, very dangerous.”

“Also—and we’ve made this clear—that it undermines efforts to continue developing military-to-military relations with the Chinese military.”

And from Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeff Pool:

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeff Pool said the aerial incident took place 135 miles east of Hainan Island when a Chinese J-11, a version of the Russian Su-27, came within 20 feet of a U.S. Navy P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft.

“The intercept was aggressive and demonstrated a lack of due regard for the safety and well-being of the U.S. and Chinese aircrews and aircraft,” Pool said in a statement, noting it was one of the most dangerous aerial encounters with the Chinese since the April 2001 EP-3 mid-air collision with a Chinese J-8.

Pool called the encounter with the armed Chinese fighter “a dangerous intercept of a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon that was on a routine mission.”

“On three different occasions, the Chinese J-11 crossed directly under the U.S. aircraft with one pass having only 50 to 100 feet separation between the two aircraft,” the spokesman said.

“The Chinese jet also passed the nose of the P-8 at 90 degrees with its belly toward the P-8 to show its weapons loadout,” he added.

“In doing so, the pilot was unable to see the P-8, further increasing the potential for a collision,” Pool said. “The Chinese pilot then flew directly under and alongside the P-8 bringing their wingtips within 20 feet and then before he stabilized his fighter he conducted a roll over the P-8 passing within 45 feet.”

This was a clear brandishing of military might and a threat. Showing their payload, while buzzing the American military aircraft is a direct provocation. This playing chicken started in 2013 and this blog and many others have written on it, warning of the implications of these pre-war games. The jet came from the same PLA air force unit in Hainan that was responsible for similar buzzes in March, April and May of this year. But instead of using military escorts and a warning of shooting down aggressors in international airspace, the Obama Administration would rather keep talking it to death. The Chinese don’t care about Obama’s lame threats and overtures… they care about world power and domination. Obama will keep blathering until America is blown to hell and back. Even then you’ll find him putting on a green somewhere, I’d wager. The only ‘closer’ military relations we are going to have with the Chinese and Russians are in combat. And at this rate, it will be sooner rather than later.

The Russians nudged us earlier this year. In April, a Russian Su-27 flew within 100 feet of a US Air Force RC-135 aircraft during another dangerous intercept over waters north of Japan. A weakened response to that poke brought on the machismo of the Chinese who are letting America know they feel they can now bully us and kick our ass.

This is all occurring during unprecedented Chinese military exercises held recently and currently underway in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea. They are practicing for war and America better get her act together. We may not have till 2016 before we are struck. If it were me, I would strike while America is in the limp-wristed death grip of a suicidal Marxist. Just sayin’.

Why Won’t Putin Help Middle East Christians?

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

An article titled, “Iraq’s Christians See Putin As Savior,” appeared on the website of The Daily Beast in late June. It was picked up by literally dozens of “news” sites all over the Internet, contributing to the perception that Russia was actually prepared to do something on behalf of these Christians and other minorities.

The article referred to “Russia’s increasingly cozy relationship with Middle Eastern Christians” and included a photo of Putin under a halo.

But when the Christians in Iraq actually needed some help, it was the U.S. and Britain which intervened on their behalf. Humanitarian aid was delivered to the minority religious groups under attack, and air strikes were conducted against the terrorists. Later, France and Australia joined in the effort.

The Christian “Stand Firm in Faith” website asks, “So where is President Putin now that Christians are being wiped out in Iraq?”

“So now Putin keeps his shirt on?” writer Timothy Fountain asked.

The latter is a reference to the many photos of a shirtless Putin. He has been shirtless on a horse, holding a rifle and fishing.

Walter Hickey at Business Insider had published “39 Photos That Prove Vladimir Putin Is The Most Badass Leader In The World.” These photos also showed Putin firing weapons, on a motorcycle, and in a race car.

But this tough guy hasn’t lifted a finger of behalf of persecuted Christians in Iraq.

While some argue with justification that the U.S. effort has not been enough and too slow, I searched the website of the Russian Embassy in Washington to see if there was an announcement of Russia participating in, or offering the delivery of, aid to Christians and others in Iraq—and could find nothing.

There is no evidence that the “international partners” helping Christians and other minorities in Iraq include Russia. Instead, Putin has been trying to sneak “humanitarian aid” into Ukraine, to benefit the Russian terrorists who shot down the Malaysian airliner with nearly 300 passengers.

One can search the Internet and find all kinds of stories about how Putin is not only defending Christians but is supposed to be a Christian himself. A story carried by the Christian Post said, “Putin has long been a supporter of Christianity and Christian values within Russia. He has called for the Church to play a larger role in citizens’ social lives, better religion classes in schools, and television programs emphasizing religious values.”

Some other stories include:

“Pope, Putin Summit to Benefit Christians” from Newsmax
“Vladimir Putin, Christian Crusader?” from The American Conservative, and written by Patrick J. Buchanan
“Putin Policies Aim to Defend Christian Beliefs” from the Liberty Voice blog
“Vladimir Putin is a Christian Man” from The Daily Stormer (an anti-Semitic site)
“US threatened by Russia’s Christianity” from the Russian Pravda
“Russia will develop as democratic state, defend Christian values—Putin” from the Voice of Russia
“Putin promises to protect Christianity worldwide” from Russia Today

The Timothy Fountain article noted that “Just over two years ago, Russia’s President received a briefing from Metropolitan Hilarion, the foreign relations representative of the Russian Orthodox Church.” Putin was told, “Every five minutes one Christian was dying for his or her faith in some part of the word.”

After hearing several examples of the persecution of Christians, Putin replied with an offer of help and said, “You needn’t have any doubt that that’s the way it will be.”

It turns out that the source of the report about Putin vowing to defend Christians around the world was Russia Today (RT), the well-known disinformation outlet for Russian propaganda.

Indeed, RT, on February 12, 2012, ran a story headlined, “Putin promises to protect Christianity worldwide,” which stated that “Putin has promised to make the protection of repressed Christians in foreign countries one of his foreign policy priorities…”

This is the story cited earlier about the Russian Orthodox head of External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion, saying that every five minutes one Christian was dying for his or her faith in some part of the world, “specifying that he was talking about such countries as Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan and India.”

According to an RT report of Putin’s meeting with Pope Francis, “The Kremlin announced ahead of the visit that Putin and Pope Francis would focus on the state of international institutions and their ability to respond to crises, as well as the protection of Christian minorities in the Maghreb and the Middle East.”

The Russian Embassy website features news of Russian deliveries of “humanitarian” aid to Syria, but nothing to Christians in Iraq. In Syria, Russia is better known for its weapons deliveries to the Assad regime, a long-time Soviet client state.

Last August, so-called Tea Party leader Judson Phillips had written in The Washington Times that “Putin said world leaders must come together to stop the violent persecution of Christians in the Middle East. Something is wrong when Putin is a greater champion for freedom and liberty than the President of the United States is.”

“While Putin has called for protections for the Middle East’s Christians, Obama has been playing golf,” Phillips wrote last August.

Well, Obama went golfing again, but at least he finally did something on behalf of the Christians in Iraq.

Yes, Obama could have done more, and he should have acted sooner. But Putin has done nothing on behalf of Christians in Iraq—except talk. For some reason, this talk impresses some people in the U.S. who should know better.

In terms of action, Putin is delivering Mi-35 helicopter gunships, Mi-28 attack helicopters and Su-25 fighters to the Baghdad regime. One weapons deal alone is worth $1 billion. But there’s no hard evidence these weapons are being used to help or rescue Christians in Iraq.

In his August 12 column, Pat Buchanan calls Putin a potential ally “in a coalition to contain or crush” the Islamic State terrorists. So far, this potential ally has not reported for duty.

It appears that Putin is more interested in doing weapons deals that make rubles for his regime and his cronies. His halo looks like another KGB deception.