​Before interviewing Petro Poroshenko on 9/25/2016, CNN’s Fareed Zakariah had made ads for the show suggesting that Petroshenko is an “authority” on Vladimir Putin because, supposedly, “no one knows Putin better than Poroshenko.” In fact no one but the Russian people, who confer on Putin an over 80% popularity rating, truly know their president, whom they adore. So if Fareed wanted people to really know Putin, then why did they choose as an authority a man who considers Putin his worst enemy, who has only met with Putin a few times and has mainly discussed the aftermath of a disaster created by Western meddling aimed at harming Putin and Russia? Well, let’s see: we are on the eve of the presidential debates and the only motive for choosing the anti-Putin Poroshenko would be to give the US people a distorted image of Putin. Why? Because Donald Trump is perceived as being pro-Putin and CNN sees it as their mission to have Trump defeated. I doubt if their viewers are unaware of this duplicitous strategy. I saw through it instantly – with great aversion.

Secondly, Poroshenko claims that there are x-number of Russian troops on “Ukrainian” soil. That is not true. There are none.

Let me explain:

1--Ukraine does not have a legitimate government in Kiev. The so-called “government” there is the heir to an illegitimate regime under Yatseniuk, who was hand-picked by Victoria Nuland of the US Department of State – as revealed by a now-notorious phone conversation proving that it was the US, and not the Ukrainian people, who installed an anti-Russian current government (this is  based on a transcript leaked to the BBC, as reported here), of which Poroshenko is an extension.   Not only did the US government install Yatseniuk as president but it also, along with George Soros and other Western actors, was deeply involved in the bloody illegal Maidan coup. Fareed himself interviewed George Soros personally in May of 2014 and in that program, Soros admitted that he was involved, as I showed here in an extensive analysis of Soros’ remarks to Fareed. Obviously, if the Maidan coup had been the spontaneous grass-roots movement that it was billed as, there would have been no need for foreign intervention. Yet several European heads of state and officials were there, including German foreign minister Steinmeier. Obviously they did not go because they knew the coup would succeed without them and their agitation. Therefore, the current government in Kiev is not a properly and democratically elected Ukrainian government but rather a foreign government installed by subterfuge and controlled by the US and its anti-Russian allies. It is therefore illegitimate and should be disbanded.

2--Novorossia is not part of the Ukraine. It is a Russian speaking region that was part of the pre-coup Ukraine but now has its own government and its own military. In the same way as Scotland was allowed a referendum to determine its own fate, Novorossia is entitled to determine its own future course and is being illegally denied that right by the Western Establishment. The US-led illegitimate Kiev government deliberately provoked the Russian speakers in what is now Novorossia (Donbass, Lugansk) by denying them the official use of their native language, Russian, causing them to wish to split from Ukraine. Their demonstrations were met by military responses, including murder of citizens by aerial bombardments and assassinations, by the Kiev government, which are ongoing today, as shown at this site, which provides regular updates of Kiev’s violation of the Minsk treaties and ceasefires.

The US and the Kiev regime knew full well that this ban on the Russian language would be offensive to people who had been using Russian in their homes, in their schools, in their local government, on street signs and in official documents of all kinds.

To add insult to injury, Kiev collaborated with groups, such as the Azov battalion, which had ties to the German Nazis in the Ukraine and helped exterminate the Ukrainian Jews. Kiev’s ties to these fascists are extremely offensive to Russians, whose country was practically devastated by the Nazis and lost 11 million soldiers, between 7 and 20 million civilians, and billions of dollars worth of industrial capacity, precious monuments and art treasures, to the Nazis – but also managed to kill 4 times as many Nazis as the rest of the allies combined. To the Russian people, seeing the fascist fighters of US-backed Kiev killing Russian speakers was as if the Western allies had suddenly sided with Hitler. The Washington Post, in a rare report less critical of Russia than usual, recounts this story, closing it with:

“…we shouldn’t forget how the Soviets won World War II in Europe.”

While the highly unpopular US puppet Petro smears Putin, arguably the world’s most popular national leader, as dishonest, he Poroshenko is the dishonest one because he denies the crucially important reality expressed in this point and in point no. 1 above.

Speaking of dishonesty, Poroshenko’s government pretends that it no longer is responsible for the payment of its debt for gas supplies because of alleged Russian involvement with the Novorossian military. That is not true. The real reason that Kiev will not pay is because the corrupt Ukraine government and business class have bankrupted the country and they simply cannot afford to pay this debt.

Thus the reality that Fareed Zakaria carefully shields his audience from is that Poroshenko is an illegitimate, and very unpopular leader (see this International Business Times article), and that the bait that was offered to the Ukrainians to induce them to execute their Maidan coup was precisely something that is no longer available to them, namely, EU membership.  They were cheated.

There are several reasons why EU membership is not available to Ukraine:

—The country, as detailed above, is insolvent and would represent a burden on the already foundering EU, which has since lost one of its key members and tax payers, ie, the UK

—The EU is tearing apart at the seams, with several insolvent member states, an insolvent Deutsche Bank, and a host of third parties in member states that, if able to gain control, will give the people referendums on leaving the EU. If – or rather when – even one more major state exits, the EU will collapse.

—One crucial reason for this vulnerability of the EU is the policy of forcing member states to accept refugee quotas, despite the extreme unpopularity of this policy.

—Another reason for the EU’s vulnerability is the Russia sanctions policy imposed on the EU by the US, which has caused a deep rift in Europe, whose businesses are losing millions as a result of this policy. German businesses are lobbying hard for an end to the sanctions against Russia, as reported by the WSJ.

Poroshenko has been presiding over a country that has lost significant territory and seen double-digit negative economic growth since it began allowing the US to write national policies that deliberately provoke Russia (in a fruitless effort to isolate Russia) and what is now known as Novorossia.

Putin presides over a country that had a GDP of 1,362 billion in 2015 at a population of 146 million.

The GDP per capita of Ukraine was 2,824 USD in 2015 (down from 3,123 the previous year), compared to 9,000 USD in Russia in 2015, or about 3 times less – despite sanctions.
So you can argue over whose fault the Ukrainian failure is, but one thing remains certain: The country that decided to go its own way is arguably 3 times better off economically than the country whose leaders dragged it into a proxy war on the US side. Back when Ukraine was trading freely with Russia, it was still struggling but at least it was solvent. Now, after US meddling, it can no longer pay its debts.

And whether or not Poroshenko is an authority on Putin, yesterday’s CNN interview is still a case of the mouse jumping the cat.

Contact CNN’s Fareed Zakaria (fill in short form at bottom):
http://edition.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?126

​All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues! 

Last RAGA Newsletter Antidote 28 of July 6 had a link to my Russian translation of Ambassador Chas W. Freeman's June 9, 2016 talk U.S. Policy and the Geopolitical Dynamics of the Middle East. It can be switched back to the English original.
http://www.raga.org/1053105410421054105710581048/-charles-w-freeman-jr  

RAGA posting attracted the attention of Jonas Alexis, the author of two scholarly books and regular contributor to the site Veterans Today. He engaged me in a series of wide-ranging interviews. Below are some glimpses.

1. Israel, the USA, Russia, and Vladimir Putin: Interview with Vladislav Krasnov (Part I) By Jonas E. Alexis on July 11, 2016

Alexis: In a recent article published by RAGA, Chas Freeman, who served in the United States Foreign Service and the State and Defense Departments, argues that: “The United States needs to wean Israel off its welfare dependency and end the unconditional commitments that enable self-destructive behavior on the part of the Jewish state.”[1] Do you agree with him?

Krasnov: Yes, I do. Ambassador Freeman’s illustrious and varied career in the State and Defense Departments, in the Pentagon, etc., made him a natural candidate in 2009 at the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency to chair the National Intelligence Council, which merges intelligence from sixteen U.S. agencies into National Intelligence Estimates.

It was very unfortunate that his promotion was blocked by the Israeli lobby which could not stand his criticism of Israel.[2]Thus, the country was deprived of the BEST INTELLIGENCE it needed to sail in the turbulent waters of global politics. This was bad for the US, the Middle East, Europe, and Russia.

Read more http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/11/israel-the-united-states-russia-and-vladimir-putin-interview-with-vladislav-krasnov-part-i/


2. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Truth Can and Will Destroy the New World Order and Satanism
By Jonas E. Alexis on July 14, 2016
"Solzhenitsyn did as much as anyone to end the Communist experiment in Russia"

Krasnov: We know that US Ambassador William Joseph Burns did meet with Solzhenitsyn in 2008, just a few months before the writer passed away. Here is what was reported:

“According to Burns, Solzhenitsyn positively contrasted the eight-year reign of Putin with those of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, which he said had ‘added to the damage done to the Russian state by 70 years of communist rule’. Under Putin, the nation was rediscovering what it was to be Russian, Solzhenitsyn thought.”[4]

Alexis: Do you agree with Solzhenitsyn’s assessment of Putin?

Krasnov:  Yes, I do. Moreover, I think Solzhenitsyn would have been pleased with Putin’s performance SINCE 2008, even though Burns was right to point out that “the writer’s praise for Putin wasn’t unqualified.” Solzhenitsyn was a man who could not be subservient to anyone.

Alexis: Did you meet either Solzhenitsyn or Putin?

Krasnov:  I never met Putin. As to Solzhenitsyn, although I met him only once, I corresponded with him for many years and during late 1990s, when he moved back to Russia in 1994. I talked to him on the phone every time I came to visit Russia.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/14/alexander-solzhenitsyn-truth-can-and-will-destroy-the-new-world-order-and-satanism/

3. Alexander Solzhenitsyn on Russian-Jewish Relations and Ukraine.  July 28, 2016

Krasnov: ...as I said in our earlier interview, there was no reason for the US to take sides in a conflict among Ukrainian citizens, many of whom want to speak Russian and be friends with Russia. We should have shown in Ukraine the same patience, perseverance and Good Will as we have shown toward the national issues in the UK, Belgium, Spain or Canada.

Alexis: You seem to be well informed about Ukraine, but have you written about it?

Krasnov: Yes, I did visit Ukraine both under the USSR and after it became independent. In 1955 I took part in archaeological digging for ancient Greek colonies in the Crimea. In late 1950s I was a member of an ethnological field research team studying national self-awareness in Western Ukraine. In 1996 I served as an interpreter for a US team exploring ways for improving security of Ukrainian nuclear-power stations. More than once I visited the Crimea. As soon as the current conflict flared up, I hurried to write “What the West Missed about Ukraine.”[9]

Alexis: From what I see, we in the US missed a lot, not just about Ukraine, but about Russia as well. We seem to be more interested in name calling than facts. What do you think about the Zionist-controlled media calling Putin the “new Hitler”?

Krasnov:  It’s a shame. First they were shouting “Heil Hitler” to Milosevic, then Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Bashar Assad, and now to Putin. Such persistent and systematic name calling is a classic example of psychological warfare and covert operation. It’s just diversionary tactics. It works only to inflame passion and vacate reason.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/28/alexander-solzhenitsyn-on-russian-jewish-relations-and-ukraine/
One of these interviews was picked up in India which, as you know, is a BRICS member.

4. Solzhenitsyn: Truth can and will destroy the New World Order and Satanism - part II
Jonas E Alexis & Vladislav Krasnov
14 August 2016.  http://vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4040

Alexis: I remember that one of the battle cries of Soviet dissidents was the demand for glasnost, meaning giving “voice” (glas) to any subject on which Soviet leaders put a taboo.
 
Krasnov: Exactly so. That’s why while writing my book, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth, I tried to give a voice, an opportunity to speak to every brave and cogent Soviet intellectual or expat dissident who, not being satisfied with Gorbachev’s schemes to save Communism, called for a Russian future BEYOND Communism, a future which could not be gained unless Russia recovered its thousand years deep national roots, including its Christianity.
 
In fact, I was not so much an author but rather a conductor of a polyphonic choir against the endless monotonous Communist tune. Solzhenitsyn was one of those voices, but his main influence was that I consciously translated his literary strategy into Russia’s spiritual quest for a future BEYOND Communism.

The timing of my interviews coincided with the 8th anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's death in Moscow on August 3, 2008. It's wise to review his writings related to East-West relations, especially the prophetic Harvard Commencement speech on 8 June 1978. Here are some highlights:

<<In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. But Western intellectuals still look at it with interest and with empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East...
         But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive....
      Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of many years of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.>>

Now we know that Solzhenitsyn was prescient that Western assumptions in 19991 that post-Soviet Russia would happily surrender to US global domination proved wrong.

These days Russia marks the 25th anniversary of the Soviet coup d'état attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Boris Yeltsin who was then President of the Russian Federation managed to squash the attempt, and his victory effectively meant the end of nearly 73-year long Communist rule. 

The putsch attempt coincided with the First Congress of Russian Compatriots on August 18-30, 1991, in Moscow. For me personally it was a great event which I witnessed at close range as I was invited as a participant among over 400 "White Russians" from dozens of countries of Russian diaspora. In fact, this Congress was the beginning of re-unification for all Russians regardless of their political, ideological or religious convictions since Lenin expelled "bourgeois" Russian philosophers in 1922. It was the end of ideological civil war that Soviet government had conducted against all other non-Marxist-Leninist Russians of different persuasion. In our delegation there were descendant of former White Army officers, offsprings of the Romanov dynasty, clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church Overseas, exiled dissidents and human rights activists. I represented the Congress of Russian Americans, an ethnic organization created in 1973 to preserve Russian heritage in the US.

After Boris Yeltsin emerged victorious on August 22 he addressed our gathering in the Palace of Conventions in the Kremlin. First he announced, to a hearty applause, that the Russian national tri-color was to replace the Red Flag of Communism. Then he thanked us for keeping the spirit of Russian culture alive in exile. Finally, he promised that a new post-Communist Russia will re-constitute itself as a great, prosperous, free, and peaceful country. I was among several Russian emigrees to thank him for his anti-Communist, but very patriotic speech. I managed to get on stage to shake his hand and give him my freshly printed new book, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of Russian Rebirth, saying that it contained "a script for New Russia's development". He cordially shook my hand saying he was pleased that both of us were natives of the same Perm region. Some members of the American delegation took a snap shot of the event (see attachment) and gracefully sent me a copy when I was back in California. 

Now the book is available in Russian Новая Россия: от коммунизма к национальному возрождению. I gave a copy of it to my friend at the Library of Congress (see a photo attachment)

Although Mr. Yeltsin was unable to fulfill his promise to create a great and proud independent Russia, which was partly due to US heavy meddling in the neo-liberal shock therapy reforms in Russia, he certainly gave Russia a healthy push away from the bankrupt Communist system. Remarkably, the opening of the Congress of Compatriots on August 19, 1991 coincided--perhaps timed to coincide--with the great Russian Orthodox Feast of the Transfiguration (Преображение Господне) to inaugurate the transformation of the USSR to Russia. 

Russians are not the only ones who insist on the uniqueness of their civilization. Just take a look at the writings of Kerry R Bolton who hails from New Zealand. He reminds us that as early as 1930s there was a German writer who claimed for Russia a special role in the world.
This Super-Popular German Writer Predicted Russia Would Inherit The Earth (Spengler). By Kerry Bolton, Sat, Aug 13, 2016 | 
<<‘Wait, the time will come when ye shall learn what the orthodox Russian faith is! Already the people scent it far and near.....’ 
     Beyond Spengler and religious differences, "a recent comment by an American visitor to Russia, Barbara J. Brothers, as part of a scientific delegation, states something akin to Spengler’s observation: The Russians have a sense of connectedness to themselves and to other human beings that is just not a part of American reality. It isn’t that competitiveness does not exist; it is just that there  always seems to be more consideration and respect for others in any given situation.">>
http://russia-insider.com/en/super-popular-pre-war-european-writer-predicted-russia-would-inherit-earth-spengler/ri16025

One does not have to agree on everything with either Spengler or Bolton, but when I looked for the latter online, I found an earlier article by him that is just as pointed.

Spiritual Roots of Russo-American Conflict, by Kerry R Bolton,  August 14, 2015    
 
<<The rivalry between the USA and Russia is something more than geopolitics or economics. These are reflections of antithetical worldviews of a spiritual character. The German conservative historian-philosopher Oswald Spengler, who wrote of the morphology of cultures as having organic life-cycles, in his epochal book The Decline of The West ...wrote of Russia in terms similar to the ‘Slavophiles’. Spengler, Dostoyevski, Berdyaev, and Solzhenitsyn have much of relevance to say in analyzing the conflict between the USA and Russia. Considering the differences as fundamentally ‘spiritual’ explains why this conflict will continue and why the optimism among Western political circles at the prospect of a compliant Russia, fully integrated into the ‘world community’, was so short-lived.>>
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/08/14/spiritual-roots-of-russo-american-conflict/

By the way, I recommend the above Foreign Policy Journal (FPJ) as a source of alternative opinion. Its editor Jeremy R. Hammond is the author of the new book "Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" .

Spengler may be "Super-popular", but another German philosopher and his contemporary, Walter Schubart (1897-1942), is virtually unknown. Yet, he is just as profound and relevant. (Wikipedia has him only in German). His book "Europe and the Soul of the East" ("Europa und die Seele des Ostens") was first published in Switzerland in 1938. Schubart points out a number of differences in world outlook between the western man and the eastern man. He thinks that the West has fallen prisoner to materialism and therefore undergoes a profound crisis and that its awakening has to come from the East, from Russia. Better known among Russian emigres, his book is now available in Russian Европа и Душа Востока, Москва, "Русская Идея", 2000.

Tragically, as a Russophile Schubart had to flee Nazi Germany for Riga, Latvia, where he taught at university. Alas, when Soviets occupied Latvia, Schubart was hauled to the GULAG. Only recently was it established that he died in a GULAG prison in 1942 in Kazakhstan.
So much for Russia. But how about the USA? 
Civil Unrest in the United States, Stability in Russia. By Theodore McIntire, Aug 12, 2016. The author is a Major (Retired) of the US Air Force and a peace activist.
<<It is ironic that in recent years many in the United States have encouraged and/or celebrated unrest and regime change in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Ukraine, and even in Russia. In reality, it must be  remembered that societal upheaval can have dangerous repercussions and the most recent developments appear to be much more harmful for the United States than for Russia.>>

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/civil-unrest-united-states-stability-russia/ri15945?utm_source=Russia+Insider+Daily+Headlines

Finally, Gilbert Doctorow, a RAGA friend and associate, is the most topical: 

War or Peace: The Essential Question Before American Voters on November 8th. By Gilbert Doctorow, Wed, Aug 3, 2016.
<<For reasons of Hillary’s past record of ill-considered adventurism abroad and for reasons of the mad advisers from the Neocon camp whom she has in her inner circle today, it could be a fatal mistake to vote Hillary Clinton on November 8th, says Gilbert Doctorow. "As regards Russia, Hillary has been pouring oil on the flames of potential conflict for years now.  She has publicly likened Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, an insult that no one dared to apply to Russian (Soviet) leaders during the 50 years of the Cold War.  That coming from our nation’s senior diplomat virtually closes the door on diplomacy and reason, leaving us with brute force to settle our differences.">>

Meanwhile, don't forget to visit Russia either with Sharon Tennison's Center for Citizen Initiatives or on your own! Last year the number of Western visitors increased in spite of sanctions! 

The Kremlin Opens to the World as Putin Orders Greater Access.
Tourists are to glimpse many areas of Russia's hidden political heart for the first time. By Howard Amos, Aug. 16 2016 — 12:15  

According to decrees published Aug. 1 there will be an extra tourist route through the Kremlin including access to a new archaeological museum where visitors can see the remains of the Chudov Monastery and Ascension Convent, which were destroyed by the Communists in 1929. Public access points are also slated to be installed in the Spasskaya Tower on Red Square, which houses the famous Kremlin clock, and the Borovitskaya Tower on the complex’s opposite side.
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/the-kremlin-opens-to-the-world-54995?mc_cid=42d2086cc3&mc_eid=2638580034

RAGA is proud to associate with the best minds of America, Russia and the world.

Now forget all wars, conflicts, sanctions, counter-sanctions, the ugliness of politics etc and enjoy the beauty of the rest of the Summer, even as I enjoy mine in northern Russian taiga.

Sincerely,

W George Krasnow (Vladislav Krasnov)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

Malice to None. Good Will  to All. 
Peace and Justice to the World.

​​Alexis: I would like to quote Solzhenitsyn:

“Every people must answer morally for all of its past — including that past which is shameful. Answer by what means? By attempting to comprehend: How could such a thing have been allowed? Where in all this is our error? And could it happen again?

“It is in that spirit, specifically, that it would behoove the Jewish people to answer, both for the revolutionary cutthroats and the ranks willing to serve them. Not to answer before other peoples, but to oneself, to one’s consciousness, and before God. Just as we Russians must answer — for the pogroms, for those merciless arsonist peasants, for those crazed revolutionary soldiers, for those savage sailors.”[3]

This is indeed a brilliant answer to a thorny question. This is what makes Solzhenitsyn different from other writers in the twentieth century because he always brings a moral dimension to thorny issues. Would you not agree?

Krasnov: I do agree with both Solzhenitsyn’s answer and you seeing it in moral terms. I could not have answered it better than he.

Alexis: So what about Peter Eltsov’s claim that Solzhenitsyn’s attitude to the Ukrainians may have influenced Putin’s policy on Ukraine, in particular his move on the Crimea? In Eltsov’s words,

“the fiercely nationalistic Solzhenitsyn suggested that post-Soviet Russia must include Ukraine. Solzhenitsyn did not see the Ukrainians as a separate nation.”

“‘All the talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is recently invented falsehood,’ he wrote in a 1990 essay, ‘Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals.’”[4]

Krasnov: I don’t know Mr. Eltsov, but I believe he is not an American. He has an American education and has lived in the US for a while, but most likely he is a Russian expat who obviously feels he is part of the US intellectual establishment, which we all know is heavily anti-Putin. It’s good he turned his attention to Solzhenitsyn’s important 1990 essay in which the writer gave his vision of what needed to be done when the USSR was just about to fall apart.

However, I think Eltsov misread Solzhenitsyn’s views as “fiercely nationalistic” or anti-Ukrainian. Besides, Putin did not need Solzhenitsyn to decide on his policy toward Ukraine today. Nearly all Russians, certainly those who lived and were educated in the USSR, think the same way. More importantly, a great number of Ukrainians think the same way. Even USA Today reported that

“Crimea’s election committee said that 97% of voters backed a union between the largely ethnic-Russian peninsula and the huge neighboring country.”[5]

What Eltsov missed in Solzhenitsyn’s 1990 essay is that he favored a tri-lateral East Slavic union of the Belorussians, Ukrainians and Russians as a backbone of whatever national state might emerge after the USSR. In fact, as early as 1973, Solzhenitsyn wrote a Letter to the Soviet Leaders[6] which he mailed to each member of the Soviet Politburo. He did not challenge their political power but enjoined them to jettison Marxist-Leninist ideology in favor of a national sovereign state.

In my book, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth,[7] I devoted a whole chapter to Solzhenitsyn’s Letter, arguing that had Soviet leaders followed his advice for reform in 1973, the transition away from Communism would have been less painful and much easier. On nationalities issue, Solzhenitsyn suggested that Soviet leaders allow referenda in “border areas” if they wanted to secede. His attitude was certainly not chauvinistic. I would call his attitude on nationalities issue rather liberal.

Alexis: It seems he was ahead of his time…

Krasnov: Yes, and he was ahead of both Russian and Western liberals. To be sure, the Ukraine-Russia issue is a difficult one. Solzhenitsyn was prescient about it. Here’s what he wrote in 1968:

“It pains me to write this as Ukraine and Russia are merged in my blood, in my heart, and in my thoughts. But extensive experience of friendly contacts with Ukrainians in the camps has shown me how much of a painful grudge they hold. Our generation will not escape from paying for the mistakes of our fathers. …

…We must hand over the decision-making to them: federalists or separatists, whichever of them wins. Not to give in would be mad and cruel. The more lenient, patient, coherent we now are, the more hope there will be to restore unity in the future…

“…Let them live it, let them test it. They will soon understand that not all problems are resolved through separation. Since in different regions of Ukraine there is a different proportion of those who consider themselves Ukrainians, those who consider themselves Russians and those who consider themselves neither, there will be many difficulties there.

“Maybe it will be necessary to have a referendum in each region and then ensure preferential and delicate treatment of those who would want to leave.”[8]

Eltsov is certainly wrong calling Solzhenitsyn “fierce nationalist”. But, as I said in our earlier interview, there was no reason for the US to take sides in a conflict among Ukrainian citizens, many of whom want to speak Russian and be friends with Russia. We should have shown in Ukraine the same patience, perseverance and Good Will as we have shown toward the national issues in the UK, Belgium, Spain or Canada.

Alexis: You seem to be well informed about Ukraine, but have you written about it?

Krasnov: Yes, I did visit Ukraine both under the USSR and after it became independent. In 1955 I took part in archeological digging for ancient Greek colonies in the Crimea. In late 1950s I was a member of an ethnological field research team studying national self-awareness in Western Ukraine. In 1996 I served as an interpreter for a US team exploring ways for improving security of Ukrainian nuclear-power stations. More than once I visited the Crimea. As soon as the current conflict flared up, I hurried to write “What the West Missed about Ukraine.”[9]

Alexis: From what I see, we in the US missed a lot, not just about Ukraine, but about Russia as well. We seem to be more interested in name calling than facts. What do you think about the Zionist-controlled media calling Putin the “new Hitler”?

Krasnov:  It’s a shame. First they were shouting “Heil Hitler” to Milosevic, then Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar Assad, and now to Putin. Such persistent and systematic name calling is a classic example of psychological warfare and covert operation. It’s just diversionary tactics. It works only to inflame passion and vacate reason. It is sick.

The main thing about Putin is not his KGB background, but his maturing while witnessing Western obstruction to Russia’s rebirth as a sovereign Christian nation with freedom for all religious and secular beliefs. I believe it was in Solzhenitsyn’s footsteps that Putin called Lenin and the Bolshevik traitors who lead Russia to the defeat in WWI and laid a time bomb under its future. In one of his messages to the Federal Assembly, Putin used Solzhenitsyn’s definition of patriotism, not as an ideology, but as a feeling of attachment to one’s county, its spiritual traditions, its people, and its soil.

Anyone who dares to challenge the Big Media MONOLOGUE should be prepared for being denounced as a Hitler, anti-Semite and worse, regardless of whether the challenger is Chas Freeman, John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt[10], Solzhenitsyn, Jimmy Carter[11] or Putin. As my friend Israel Shamir puts it, the Masters of Discourse are jealously guarding their domain and would love to expand it further by declaring a taboo on any subject where they are at disadvantage.

Alexis: I think we have provided enough food for thought here. Let us conclude with Solzhenitsyn himself:

“And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!”[12]

“I avoid exactly that which your question implies: I do not call for any sort of scorekeeping or comparisons between the moral responsibility of one people or another; moreover, I completely exclude the notion of responsibility of one nation towards another. All I am calling for is self-reflection.”

What is your take on the book?

Krasnov: I think Solzhenitsyn is absolutely right in saying that the book is not about “scorekeeping.” Its driving force is more akin to the program of “Truth and Reconciliation” that was implemented in South Africa after the end of the apartheid rule there. As to whether Solzhenitsyn is fair to the Jews, there is enough blame to go around for people of all nationalities and ethnic groups who participated in the Bolshevik Revolution, both inside Russia and abroad, including the USA. Again, the book is not about blaming but about understanding what had happened in order to avoid repeating the mistake.

Alexis:  Why is the establishment here in America reluctant to have the book translated and discussed?

Krasnov:  I am puzzled too. They might claim that the book won’t sell, but why not try? I suspect something else is at play. Since the downfall of the USSR, the USA has taken upon itself the role of not just political, but ideological hegemony of the world. Its ideology has been formulated by a group of so called neo-conservatives who are not genuine conservatives at all but imposters, mostly, from the ranks of former Trotskyites who found it convenient to advance Israel’s goals in the guise of super-patriotic ideology of America’s Manifest Destiny.[1] Solzhenitsyn’s book would certainly lay bare that sometime some Jews play a sinister role in history.[2]

As I said, Solzhenitsyn does not lay all blame on the Jews, certainly not on religious Jews or those aspiring for a national home. Rather, his book is an invitation to a dialogue between Jews and non-Jews. However, it is a dialogue on equal footing which Zionist extremists, or any totalitarians for that matter, abhor most. They like only monologue, be it Marxist-Leninist under the USSR or Zionist in the US today. To be sure, the US is not a totalitarian society, but it could become one, if the American people allow themselves to be brainwashed by the nearly monopolistic Big Media.

[1] See for example Murray Friedman, The Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); for a history of the movement, see Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left From the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Alexander Bloom, Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (New York: Anchor Books, 2008); for a very short version of this  issue, see Francis Fukuyama, “After Neoconservatism,” NY Times, February 19, 2006.

[2] For historical studies on this, see E. Michael Jones, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History (South Bend: Fidelity Press, 1998); Barren Metal: A History of Capitalism as the Conflict between Labor and Usury (South Bend: Fidelity Press, 2014).

[3] “SPIEGEL Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn: ‘I Am Not Afraid of Death,’” Spiegel International, July 23, 2007.

[4] Peter Eltsov, “What Putin’s Favorite Guru Tells Us About His Next Target,” Politico, February 10, 2015.

[5] “Crimea votes to join Russia; Ukrainians prepare for war,” USA Today, March 17, 2014.

[6] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Letter to the Soviet leaders (New York, Harper & Row, 1974).

[7] Vladislav Krasnov, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth. (Bolder: Westview Press, Bolder, CO 1991)

[8] Solzhenitsyn’s foresight on Ukraine proves eerily prescient. May 20, 2014. http://rbth.com/arts/2014/05/20/solzhenitsyns_foresight_on_ukraine_proves_eerily_prescient_36791.htmlt was written in 1968, published in 1974 (The Gulag Archipelago, Part 5, Chapter 2)

[9] W George Krasnow, “What the West Missed about Ukraine.  March 14, 2014 http://www.raga.org/news/what-the-west-missed-about-ukraine

[10] John M. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar & Straus, 2007).

[11] Former US President, Jimmy Carter is the author of the book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid (2006) which Zionists dislike.

[12] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Solzhenitsyn Reader (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), 558.

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org

As to Ukraine, I feel a lot for the Ukrainian people as I do respect their desire to have their own identity and statehood. But I also respect the will of millions of Ukrainians to want to live side by side with the Russian people. Among RAGA associates there are some of Ukrainian descent, and our attitude of Good Will remains the same. After all, in language, customs and religion the Russians and Ukrainians are not as different as the Scots, the Irish and the Brits.

So why do we not fan the flames of hatred in Northern Ireland against the UK? Why did U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland scheme with Ambassador Pyatt in Ukraine while “f-ng” downgrading our allies in the EU? Why did the U.S. support the coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 which put the livelihood of millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens at risk? Why did we not teach the Kiev government such Western values as patience, dialogue and compromise? Why did we not propose such Western models of ethnic co-existence as Switzerland, Belgium, and Canada?

Once the governments of France, Germany, and Poland reneged, with our blessings, on the agreement[10] of February 21, 2014 to settle the crisis with Viktor Yanukovich[11], the unraveling of law and order set in. Under the circumstances, the parts of Ukraine where Russian speakers predominated became restive, and the overwhelming pro-Russian majority of the Crimea orderly voted for cessation from Ukraine and re-joining Russia.

I think Putin acted prudently and decisively. If he did not, the Crimea would have plunged into a bloody civil war like the one we witnessed in the Donbass. The United States and the EU should be grateful to Putin for sparing them a quagmire worse than in the Donbass.

Alexis: What message do you think Russia is trying to send to America? Do they want peace or war? If peace, why have US officials been unwilling to work with the Russians?

Krasnov: It is foolish even to suggest that Russia wants war. At the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 17, 2016, a few days after Freeman’s talk, Putin said:

“America is a great power – today probably the only superpower. We accept that. We want to and are ready to work with the United States.”[12]

Putin seems to be ready even to bend over to accommodate the youthful exuberance (or hubris?) of the United States. If in the past Putin expressed his preference for multi-polarity to oppose U.S. quest for domination in the unipolar word, now he seems to be willing to give the United States the bragging rights as the biggest, strongest and most handsome kid on the block.

The problem is not just the failure of US diplomats to give Putin his dues. They missed entirely the emergence of a new Russia that is fundamentally different from the late USSR. Responding to those Russia watchers who are worried about the resumption of the old Cold War, I have argued in “The Folly of a New Cold War”[13] that the problem is more serious because U.S. strategists don’t understand the realities of the new Russia.
Alexis: You are a Solzhenitsyn scholar, and Solzhenitsyn is arguably one of the rarest minds and perceptive writers the twentieth century ever produced. Solzhenitsyn praised Putin for his tremendous work, and no one ever really challenged him on this.

Krasnov: First of all, thanks for focusing on a Russian writer who belongs as much to Russia as to the USA, Jonas. He wrote in Russian. However, it was the United States that gave him a refuge when he was forcibly deported from the USSR. He lived here from 1976 to 1994. Enjoying the freedom of research and expression unavailable then in his beloved Russia, he produced a very substantial body of work at his home in Cavendish, Vermont. Even though he had gotten a Nobel Prize in literature in 1970 before he was exiled from the USSR, his major works were published here. Scholarship on Solzhenitsyn was first produced in the West too. So I am pleased but not surprised you regard him as a towering figure of the 20th century.

Alexis: Peter Eltsov of National Defense University disparagingly linked Solzhenitsyn with Putin in an article. He said: “Indeed, it is one of history’s ironies that the No. 1 internal enemy of the Soviet Union has now become a spiritual guru to a former KGB officer who repeatedly voices nostalgia for Soviet times.”[1]

Krasnov: The linkage per se does not surprise me. However, Eltsov does it in a negative context. Apparently he excludes even as a possibility of a genuine spiritual regeneration. I regard this linkage as a good omen for the future of Russia. In the late 1980s, when the Gorby mania was on a rampage in the West and Reformed Communism was the ultimate dream of the US intellectual establishment, I wrote Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth,[2] in which I foresaw Russia’s return to its Christian roots.

In fact, my book was dedicated to the Millennium of Russian Baptism in 1988. At that time in the USSR it was strictly verboten for Soviet soldiers even to wear a crucifix or any other religious symbol. Now, if you watch the military parade on the 9th of May, Victory over Germany Day, you will see on Russian national TV how the commanding General Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s Defense Minister, crosses himself publicly before he enters the Red Square through the Kremlin Gate. If you did not see it, I am not surprised. The Big Media indulges in Putin-phobia to divert attention to the greatest event of the past 25 years, Russia’s spiritual rebirth, of which Putin and Shoigu are just two examples.[3]

I would love VT followers to see this video on the meeting of Putin and Solzhenitsyn in 2008.

Second, you may want to read what one member of the above group, Ann Wright, writes about Russia as well as her suggestions on Bridging Divides of a New Cold War, June 15, 2016.
​
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/15/bridging-divides-of-a-new-cold-war/
or http://www.raga.org/news/call-for-a-national-debate-on-us-regime-change-policy-by-center-for-citizen-initiatives

Ann's credentials follow:
Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She was a US diplomat for 16 years and served in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.  She resigned in March 2003 in opposition to President Bush’s war on Iraq.  She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

RAGA is happy to join Sharon Tennison and her Center for Citizen Initiatives in calling for a national debate on US foreign policy
http://www.raga.org/news/call-for-a-national-debate-on-us-regime-change-policy-by-center-for-citizen-initiatives

NATO sabre rattling against Russia was not to the liking of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Speaking to Germany's "Bild am Sonntag" newspaper, Steinmeier (SPD) said more dialogue and cooperation with Russia are needed, not what he deemed military posturing.

"What we shouldn't do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and war cries," Steinmeier said in comments made available ahead of publication on Sunday. "Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance's eastern border will bring security, is mistaken.

Steinmeier pointed to the deployment of NATO troops near borders with Russia in the military alliance's Baltic and east European member states.

On June 7, NATO launched exercises codenamed "Anakonda-16," which simulated a Russian attack on Poland. The two-week-long drills involve some 31,000 troops, including 14,000 from the United States, 12,000 from Poland and 1,000 from the UK, as well as dozens of fighter jets and ships, along with 3,000 vehicles.
Alexis: Explain how Israel has been an impediment to serious advancement in the Middle East and how the regime has brought one geopolitical disaster after another.

Krasnov: Unlike Freeman, who was the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989-1992), I am not an expert on Israel or the Middle East, even though way back at the University of Moscow I took a course in Arabic and in 2014 visited Israel/Palestine.

Also, throughout my life I have been associated with a great number of Jews and Muslims in both Russia and the US. I have several Jewish friends who are as worried about the future of Israel as Ambassador Freeman.

Freeman fleshes out a number of strategic mistakes which Israel has made and for which the U.S. covers up, beginning with the extremely daring Zionist dream of placing a Jewish state in a culturally inhospitable neighborhood, a mistake which, I think, Israel’s founders shared with Western Empire builders who used to be eager to bear “the white man’s burden” of “civilizing” the “benighted” faraway countries but now are at loss about what to do with the disarray inside their countries. Israel may meet the fate of those empires unless it returns to realism.

To avert the disaster, Freeman suggests, Israel has to abandon its 1973 commitment, made after the Yom Kippur war, to maintain a “qualitative military edge over any and all potential adversaries in its region”. Freeman makes clear that the U.S. pays for this commitment as well:

“Confidence in Israel’s qualitative military edge is now the main source of moral hazard for the Jewish state.  Its effect is to encourage Israel to favor short-term territorial gains over any effort to achieve long-term security through acceptance by neighboring states, the elimination of tensions with them, and the normalization of its relations with others in its region.  U.S. policy inadvertently ensured that the so-called ‘peace process’ would always be stillborn.”

Without a permanent settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rest of the Middle East is bound to stay in turmoil in the foreseeable future.

Alexis: Freeman writes, “Dealing with the Middle East as we prefer to imagine it rather than as it is doesn’t work. The United States needs to return to fact-based analysis and realism in its foreign policy.” How, then, should we deal with the Middle East?

Krasnov: One of the reasons I liked Freeman’s article was his appreciation of the way Russia and its president Vladimir Putin approach the Middle East. It has been a long while since an American strategist of his stature had a word of praise for Russia and her leader.

“Mr. Putin’s intervention in Syria in 2015 relied for its success on ingredients similar to those in the pre-Tora Bora U.S. intervention in Afghanistan,” says Freeman, mercifully allowing that the U.S. too is capable of realism in foreign policy. But what were the reasons for Putin’s success? Freeman explains:

“The Russians committed a modest ration of air power and special forces in support of a Syrian government that had amply demonstrated its survivability in the face of more than four years of Islamist efforts to take it down. The Russian campaign had clear political objectives, which it stuck to.”

It sounds simple but it did the job. In Freeman’s assessment: “The (Russian air) campaign reduced and partially contained the growing Islamist threat to Russian domestic tranquility, while affirming Russia’s importance as a partner in combating terrorism.”

Moreover: “Moscow also put its hands on the stopcock for the refugee flow from West Asia that threatens the survival of the European Union, underscoring Russia’s indispensable relevance to European affairs.”

Finally, “(Russia) demonstrated its renewed military prowess and reestablished itself as a major actor in Middle Eastern affairs”.  Freeman seems to tease those who barred him from the National Intelligence Committee when he says: Russia showed it “could be counted upon to stand by protégés when they are at risk, drawing an invidious contrast with the American abandonment of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.”

Alexis: It is obvious that the Powers That Be would love to see Vladimir Putin’s head on a silver platter. They have already branded him “the new Hitler.”[7] Dozens of books have already been written denouncing him as a madman. Jewish writer Masha Gessen of the New York Times has never missed her opportunity to attack Putin on really stupid grounds.[8] What’s your assessment on him in Ukraine?

Krasnov: The main reason they hate him is his success. He has shown that Russia does not need to return to the belligerence of the Soviet Behemoth to assure the respect and wellbeing of the Russian people who are no longer trapped inside its borders, who read and watch what they like, travel around the globe and feel confident that their country can withstand any sanctions and is not afraid of NATO saber-rattling. Yes, it much prefers peace but is ready for the worst. Just read these impressions of a group of Americans who recently travelled to Russia with Sharon Tennison of the CCI.[9]
Alexis: Thank you for the information. The masses in America are being buried beneath the avalanche of disinformation, colossal hoaxes, fabrications, and just bold lies. I am still stunned that the Zionist Media would even suggest that Putin wanted to rebuild the Soviet Union. One has to sink very low to propagate such nonsense. Anyway, anything on US Ambassador William Joseph Burns?

Krasnov: We know that US Ambassador William Joseph Burns did meet with Solzhenitsyn in 2008, just a few months before the writer passed away. Here is what was reported:

“According to Burns, Solzhenitsyn positively contrasted the eight-year reign of Putin with those of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, which he said had ‘added to the damage done to the Russian state by 70 years of communist rule’. Under Putin, the nation was rediscovering what it was to be Russian, Solzhenitsyn thought.”[4]

Alexis: Do you agree with Solzhenitsyn’s assessment of Putin?

Krasnov:  Yes, I do. Moreover, I think Solzhenitsyn would have been pleased with Putin’s performance SINCE 2008, even though Burns was right to point out that “the writer’s praise for Putin wasn’t unqualified.” Solzhenitsyn was a man who could not be subservient to anyone.

Alexis: Did you meet either Solzhenitsyn or Putin?

Krasnov:  I never met Putin. As to Solzhenitsyn, although I met him only once, I corresponded with him for many years and during late 1990s, when he moved back to Russia in 1994. I talked to him on the phone every time I came to visit Russia.

Alexis: What did you talk about?

Krasnov: I won’t go into details, but generally he asked me about what was going on in the US and I asked him of his readjustment to Russia, especially, to the tragic years of the oligarchic rule in the 1990s.

Alexis: Since you are a Solzhenitsyn scholar, and since you wrote Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel way back in 1979,[5] does the book have any relevance almost forty years later?

Krasnov: Well, as you said, it’s a work of scholarship, and my primary purpose was to help American readers understand Soviet realities via Solzhenitsyn. I wanted to put Solzhenitsyn’s novels within the Russian literary tradition, tracing it back to Dostoevsky who, while letting his heroes argue for their diverse world views, also gave freedom to the reader to choose his favorite.

As to its relevance, I once had an interview with Kevin Barrett[6] who asked the same question. I told him that the polyphony of literary heroes needs to travel from novels to the polyphony of ideological views in real life. I think Solzhenitsyn sensed this need during the totalitarian rule of the Marxist-Leninist ideology in the USSR, and his literary work did much to undermine it. Many American intellectuals, Dr. Barrett is just one of them, feel the same need in the USA where Big Media and the Zionist-controlled intellectual establishment want their MONOLOG monopolizing the world.

Alexis: I remember that one of the battle cries of Soviet dissidents was the demand for glasnost, meaning giving “voice” (glas) to any subject on which Soviet leaders put a taboo.

Krasnov: Exactly so. That’s why while writing my book, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth, I tried to give a voice, an opportunity to speak to every brave and cogent Soviet intellectual or expat dissident who, not being satisfied with Gorbachev’s schemes to save Communism, called for a Russian future BEYOND Communism, a future which could not be gained unless Russia recovered its thousand years deep national roots, including its Christianity.

In fact, I was not so much an author but rather a conductor of a polyphonic choir against the endless monotonous Communist tune. Solzhenitsyn was one of those voices, but his main influence was that I consciously translated his literary strategy into Russia’s spiritual quest for a future BEYOND Communism.

I noticed that you have a whole string of questions, all of which focus on the ethical imperative to tell the truth. Am I right to assume that your educational background influenced you, first, to question the secular predominance in the US educational system and, second, made your views more compatible with Solzhenitsyn’s and Russia’s renewed Christianity?

Alexis: Very good question, but there is no way to delve into all the details here. Let me be brief. I have always been interested in metaphysical issues. That’s how I got to study mathematics and philosophy. My first major was psychology, but I switched it very quickly because I disagreed with some of the fundamental principles I was learning about Freud, Jung, Adler, Maslow, Fromm, Rogers and others. I came to realize that modern psychology wasn’t as rigorous as I once believed in high school and some of it is just common knowledge.

I remember I went to one of my professors to talk about some of my issues because they were really important to me, and I could not get a satisfying answer at all. So, I dropped out of psychology within one semester. That was back in 1999, and I knew next to nothing of revolutionary movements during that time.

I was OK in math and science in high school, so I quickly changed major. I got interested in history right after I realized that practical reason cannot really be understood without a historical context and background.

To make a long story short, I quickly discovered that no philosophical, political or intellectual project can make sense without what Immanuel Kant called practical reason (categorical imperative), and practical reason cannot really exist without metaphysical Logos.

As a corollary, any individual who dismisses practical reason in his project will inexorably end up propounding internal contradictions and incoherency. That’s what happened to Darwin, and his intellectual children have never recovered from that. I have written numerous articles on this, among them “Vladimir Putin: The New World Order Worships Satan,” “Soros, Practical Reason, and the World-Wide Criminal Organization,” “Dark Lord Soros Meets Charles Darwin,” “Metaphysics of the New World Order: Contempt for Morality and Practical Reason,” “Social Darwinism, Einstein and Determinism,” “Fashionable Nonsense, Fads, and Fallacies in the Name of Logic and Science,” “Scientific Frauds, Academic Gangsters, and the Khazarian Theory Revisited,” etc.

I also realized that Solzhenitsyn was basing his critique of the former Soviet Union on both practical reason and metaphysical Logos. That’s how I got to appreciate his non-fiction work.

Krasnov: You obviously base your premise upon what you say is Logos. If that is the case, then why it is usually said that Christian Zionists are no less responsible for Israel’s obstinacy in occupation of Palestine than Jewish and Israeli right-wingers?

Alexis: This is a very complicated issue which requires a long and complicated answer. If people would like to study this in much detail, numerous scholarly studies have already been written on it.[7]

Let’s just briefly say that Christian Zionism is part of the revolutionary project which got its inception in the 16th century but which blossomed in the 19th century, when a con man by the name of John Nelson Darby came on the scene.

Darby had a pernicious influence on another con man named C. I. Scofield. But the seed of the Zionist movement really flourished in 1800s. As one scholar puts it,

“By the 1830s philo-Semitism and anti-Catholicism were becoming the flipsides of the same coin. Hugh McNeile [an Irish-born Calvinist]…became one of the most outspoken anti-Catholic orators of the 1830s and a leading voice of those advocating the new philosemitic message.”[8]

Similarly, in his book Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements, rabbi Louis Israel Newman argues that Jewish revolutionaries have supported virtually every subversive movement in the West, and Christian Zionism is no exception.[9]

Heinrich Graetz, the father of modern Jewish historiography, agreed: “Whenever a party in Christendom opposes itself to the ruling church, it assumes a tinge of the Old Testament, not to say Jewish spirit.”[10]

The overarching theme of the Christian Zionist movement is the elevation of the Jewish people and Israel above the law, above practical reason, and sometimes even above metaphysical Logos (as in the case of people like John Hagee).

So, whenever people start to defend Christian Zionism, despite numerous evidence to the contrary, it is an obvious sign that you are in the presence of either useful idiots, political or religious whores, or cowards.

Krasnov: What do you like most about Solzhenitsyn?

Alexis: What I specifically like about Solzhenitsyn is that he was committed to the truth, regardless of where it took him. In fact, he wrote arguably the most controversial book in the twentieth century, 200 Years Together, which has yet to be translated in the English language.[11] Solzhenitsyn said that the first step of a courageous man is to not take part in a lie. Shouldn’t that be an encouragement for us today?

Krasnov: Sure, the truth shall set us free! And the failure to acknowledge the truth and indulgence in lies will put us back to moral and intellectual bondage. This is applicable to Russia, the USA, and everywhere

Alexis: Why are the Zionist-controlled media reluctant to praise Solzhenitsyn? And why do they persist in calling Putin the “new Hitler”?

Krasnov: Certainly the Jewish intellectual establishment is very reluctant to praise Solzhenitsyn now. They know he did as much as ANYONE to end the Communist experiment in Russia. Moreover, having been deported from the USSR, he strengthened the Western world by resisting the Soviet expansion. He helped turn around pervasive pro-Soviet sentiments of the left-liberal intellectual establishment, where Jews predominated, into criticism of the USSR and Soviet bloc. This was evident in the USA during the 1970s when I wrote my first book. My students felt the impact of Solzhenitsyn’s writings, taking a more critical view of the USSR and becoming more patriotic US citizens.

Solzhenitsyn’s impact was just as strong in Western Europe as anywhere else. In France a whole generation of left-leaning intellectuals, the New Philosophers[12], abandoned pro-Soviet sympathies in favor of the US. I once had a long conversation with Eldridge Cleaver, and he told me Solzhenitsyn helped him turn to God and away from radicalism.

Now the Jewish establishment is reluctant to give credit for the denouement of Communism to Solzhenitsyn or any Russian for that matter. They prefer to credit Russian Jewish dissidents who came to the US during the 1980s or those who immigrated, en masse, to Israel during the 1990s. Of course, the Neo-Cons claim lots of credit too.

That’s why they ignore Solzhenitsyn’s last major work, Двести лет вместе, 1795-1995[13] (“Two Hundred Years Together”[14]) dealing with the origin of the Bolshevik Revolution, even though it led to the great woes for both Russians and Jews, especially for those aspiring to live in Zionist Israel.

Alexis: Eldridge Cleaver got caught up with a movement he didn’t fully understand. That movement was known as the Black/Jewish alliance.[15] I don’t think Cleaver understood that he was being manipulated at the time. David Horowitz himself admitted that Robert Scheer became “the key person to launch the career of Eldridge Cleaver.”[16]

Krasnov: Thank you for clarifying on Eldridge. My conversation with him was not wide-ranging so I am unaware of many things. However, I did read David Horowitz’ book The Destructive Generation that was very revealing about Jewish Communist infiltration of the USA. Alas, I hear that he now turned into a Zionist zealot.

Alexis: What career was Horowitz talking about? The Black Panther Party, which, like Black Lives Matter, was an essentially messianic project. The Black Panther Party would have been buried long ago were it not for people like Scheer, David Horowitz and Sol Stern, who promoted violent groups and individuals in the defunct magazine Ramparts.

Horowitz’s brethren were and still are using “racism” as the linchpin to promote violence in major cities in America. The Black Lives Matter movement is a classic example. Interestingly enough, Dostoevsky talked about how revolutionaries were manipulated the large section of the black population.[17]

Dostoevsky’s indictment was written back in 1877, and the Black Panthers proved Dostoevsky right. By 1967, Harold Cruse messed everything up when he declared that Jewish revolutionaries were using blacks like remote control. Virtually every serious historian of that era says the same thing, including David Levering Lewis and Jewish writer Gelya.[18] The late academic Israel Shahak noted,

“The apparent enthusiasm displayed by American rabbis or by the Jewish organizations in the U.S.A. during the 1950s and the 1960s in support of the Blacks in the South, was motivated only by considerations of Jewish self-interest, just as was the communist support for the same Blacks…

“Stalin and his supporters never tired of condemning the discrimination against the American or the South African Blacks, especially in the midst of the worst crimes committed within the USSR…Its purpose in both cases was to try to capture the Black community politically, in the Jewish case to an unthinking support of Israeli policies in the Middle East.”[19]

Jewish scholar Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins University goes so far as to say that through the Black/Jewish alliance, “Jews were able to weaken their conservative Southern adversaries as well as their Northern white working-class rivals within the Democratic Party, and to virtually destroy the traditional party machines upon which these forces depended for their power.”[20]

There you have it. People were being used as pawns in the service of a larger messianic ideology, which was and still is essentially against practical reason, against Logos, and against all mankind.

What’s the solution to all this madness? More subversive movements? More insurrections in places like Ferguson and Dallas? The answer to that is no. The solution is simple: people need to submit their will to practical reason and Logos.

What unites decent people is practical reason in the moral and political firmament, and anyone who is docile to it is our friend and ally. I think it is what Alexander Solzhenitsyn would have recommended. Subversive movements are obviously lies, and Solzhenitsyn has some damning things to say about lies:

“Our way must be: never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies begin—step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scale of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world.”[21]

[1] Peter Eltsov, “What Putin’s Favorite Guru Tells Us About His Next Target,” Politico, February 10, 2015.

[2] Vladislav Krasnov, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth (New York: Westview Press, 1991).

[3] I reported this episode in RAGA Antidote Newsletters. It was also reported by http://thesaker.is/something-truly-amazing-happened-today/

[4] Luke Harding, “WikiLeaks cables: Solzhenitsyn praise for Vladimir Putin,” Guardian, December 2, 2010.

[5] Vladislav Krasnov, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979).

[6] http://noliesradio.org/archives/74314

[7] See for example Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004); E. Michael Jones, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History (South Bend: Fidelity Press, 2008).

[8] Donald M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 102.

[9] Jones goes into great details of this in his book.

[10] Quoted in Jones, Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, 149.

[11] E. Michael Jones has discussed the content of that book at length in his study The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History (South Bend: Fidelity Press, 2008), 731-758. Parts of 200 Years Together can be found online.

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Philosophers.

[13] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Двести_лет_вместДвести лет вместе — М.: Русский путь, 2001/2002.

[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Hundred_Years_Together.

[15] See Jones, Jewish Revolutionary Movement, 950-951, 96-966.

[16] Quoted in ibid., 957.

[17] Quoted in ibid., 691.

[18] Murray Friedman, What Went Wrong?: The Creation & Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 59.

[19] Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion (New York: Pluto Press, 1994), 103.

[20] Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 225.

[21] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Solzhenitsyn Reader (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), 558.

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org

“The United States needs to wean Israel off its welfare dependency and end the unconditional commitments that enable self-destructive behavior on the part of the Jewish state.”

The German foreign minister has said recent NATO maneuvers could further inflame the security situation in eastern Europe. He has called for dialogue with Russia ahead of an upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw in early July.

"What we should avoid today is inflaming the situation by warmongering and stomping boots," Steinmeier told Bild in an interview to be published Sunday.

"Anyone who thinks you can increase security in the alliance with symbolic parades of tanks near the eastern borders, is mistaken," Germany's top diplomat added.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/germany-slams-nato-warmongering-russia-115515814.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw

Berlin (AFP) - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has criticised NATO for having a bellicose policy towards Russia, describing it as "warmongering", the German daily Bild reported.

http://www.dw.com/en/steinmeier-criticizes-nato-saber-rattling/a-19339585

RAGA associates Ed Lozansky and Jim Jatras have already made a substantial conceptional contribution to US foreign policy debate in their article: “Hello, Lenin!” Three components of america’s misguided foreign policy" 

By: Edward Lozansky and Jim Jatras, June 20, 2016
Vladislav Krasnov graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in history and anthropology. He has a Master’s degree in Slavic languages and a Ph.D. in Russian literature from the University of Washington. He taught at numerous institutions, including the University of Texas (Austin), Monterey Institute of International Studies, the Hoover Institution (Standard University), etc. He was formerly a visiting scholar at Sapporo University, Japan.

Krasnov is the author of Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1980),  Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1985), and Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth (New York: Westview Press, 1991). He is the president of RAGA, Russia & America Goodwill Association. This is our first in a series of interviews. The second interview will be on Solzhenitsyn and his relation with Vladimir Putin.

Alexis: In a recent article published by RAGA, Chas Freeman, who served in the United States Foreign Service and the State and Defense Departments, argues that: “The United States needs to wean Israel off its welfare dependency and end the unconditional commitments that enable self-destructive behavior on the part of the Jewish state.”[1] Do you agree with him?

Krasnov: Yes, I do. Ambassador Freeman’s illustrious and varied career in the State and Defense Departments, in the Pentagon, etc., made him a natural candidate in 2009 at the beginning of Barak Obama’s presidency to chair the National Intelligence Council, which merges intelligence from sixteen U.S. agencies into National Intelligence Estimates.

It was very unfortunate that his promotion was blocked by the Israeli lobby which could not stand his criticism of Israel.[2] Thus, the country was deprived of the BEST INTELLIGENCE it needed to sail in the turbulent waters of global politics. This was bad for the US, the Middle East, Europe, and Russia.

The article you cited, “U.S. Policy and the Geopolitical Dynamics of the Middle East,” convinced me that it was bad for Israel too. Freeman delivered his speech before the Center for the National Interest last month. I found it so singularly important that I translated it to Russian and posted, along with the English original, on the site of Russia & America Good Will Association.

After all, RAGA’s mission is to promote, first, better relations between the US and Russia; then to strive for peaceful resolution of all global conflicts. People’s diplomacy is especially needed now when our diplomats abandon their vocation in favor of boastful bombasts often leading to actual bombing.

You noted Freeman’s main thrust: “The United States needs to wean Israel off its welfare dependency and end the unconditional commitments that enable self-destructive behavior on the part of the Jewish state.” As American citizens, we bear the tax burden for the armaments that the U.S. have supplied to Israel for generations.

Americans also suffer great losses on the battle fields of the Middle East and elsewhere in the “global war on terrorism” that the U.S. helped to precipitate.[3] More than a million Iraqis have already lost their lives.[4] Trillions upon trillions of dollars have been completely wasted.[5] The net result is that we have not achieved greater security for either ourselves or the Israelis.

Alexis: Freeman moves on to say that US foreign policies are based on “ideological fantasies and politically convenient narratives rather than on inductive reasoning and reality-based analysis.”[6] Do you agree?

Krasnov: I could not agree more. Currently the United States has replaced the USSR as the ideological iconoclast, except, instead of “class struggle” and “world revolution” to overthrow “capitalist exploitation”, the United States preaches “free-market economy”, “democracy”, and “Western standards of civility.”

This ideological obsession allows us to meddle in domestic affairs of any country whose government we dislike. We do it by guile when it works, like in Russia during the 1990s, by bombing as in Yugoslavia in 1999, by a full scale invasion like in Iraq in 2003, by hybrid warfare like in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and by drone intimidation just about anywhere.

Indeed, US politicians have abandoned “reality-based analysis” and indulge themselves in “ideological fantasies and convenient narratives” to justify their actions. We know how badly such fantasies ended for the USSR.

If in the old Cold War, the USSR was indeed espousing a different value system based on militant atheism and persecution of religion, since 1991 Christianity is being reborn in Russia and religious freedom reaffirmed throughout the country.[14] It is all the more ironic and potentially tragic that the West does not recognize that Russia could be an ally in the advancement of peace and civilized order in the world.

The one area where the two countries must work together is the Middle East. Freeman makes it clear that the problems cannot be solved unless Israel comes to the realization that its best chance for survival is not an unquestioned military domination, including a nuclear war blackmail, but accommodation with its neighbors, first of all, the Palestinians.

Both Russia and the United States have high stakes in the area. The USSR was a heavy contributor to the armament of the young Israeli state, and Stalin was one of the first to recognize it in the false hope to put its Zionist leaders under Communist control. The United States under Truman managed to swing Israel back under the U.S. patronage.

Currently, Russian Jews who immigrated to Israel during the 1990s constitute the most substantial block of voters. It seems that only a joint pressure of the US and Russia could move Israel’s political elite to abandon ideological or quasi-religious fantasies of right-wing Zionists in favor of fact-based analysis that clearly dictates a peaceful compromise.

by Jonas E. Alexis

[1] Chas Freeman, “U.S. Policy and the Geopolitical Dynamics of the Middle East,” Russia & America Goodwill Association, June 9, 2016.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Freeman,_Jr.

[3] See for example Kerry Sheridan, “Iraq Death Toll Reaches 500,000 Since Start Of U.S.-Led Invasion, New Study Says,” Huffington Post, October 15, 2013.

[4] It was reported that “360,000 veterans may have brain injuries.” Gregg Zoroya, “360,000 veterans may have brain injuries,” USA Today, March 5, 2009.

[5]  Ernesto Londono, “Study: Iraq, Afghan war costs to top $4 trillion,” Washington Post, March 28, 2013; Bob Dreyfuss, The $6 Trillion Wars,” The Nation, March 29, 2013; “Iraq War Cost U.S. More Than $2 Trillion, Could Grow to $6 Trillion, Says Watson Institute Study,” Huffington Post, May 14, 2013; Mark Thompson, “The $5 Trillion War on Terror,” Time, June 29, 2011; “Iraq war cost: $6 trillion. What else could have been done?,” LA Times, March 18, 2013.

[6] Freeman, “U.S. Policy and the Geopolitical Dynamics of the Middle East,” Russia & America Goodwill Association, June 9, 2016.

[7] Lincoln Mitchell, “Is Vladimir Putin a Wimp or a Russian Hitler?,” Observer, December 26, 2014; Philip Rucker, “Hillary Clinton says Putin’s actions are like ‘what Hitler did back in the ’30s’,” Washington Post, March 5, 2014; Paul Johnson, “Is Vladimir Putin Another Adolf Hitler?,” Forbes, May 5, 2014; Philip Rucker, “Hillary Clinton’s Putin-Hitler comments draw rebukes as she wades into Ukraine conflict,” Washington Post, March 5, 2014; Garry Kasparov, “Vladimir Putin and the Lessons of 1938,” Politico, March 16, 2014.

[8] For a recent example, see Masha Gessen, “The Soviet Union Is Gone. Why Do Lenin Statues Remain?,” NY Times, June 14, 2016.

[9] Russians Ask “Why Do You Demonize Us When We Are So Much Like You?”, July 4, 2016, http://ccisf.org/category/june-2016-trip/

[10] Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_settlement_of_political_crisis_in_Ukraine

[11] Viktor Yanukovych denounces ‘coup’ as he leaves Kiev http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10655398/Ukraine-crisis-Opposition-demands-Viktor-Yanukovych-resign.html

[12] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-forum-putin-usa-idUSKCN0Z31G4

[13] http://www.raga.org/news/the-folly-of-the-new-cold-war-by-vladislav-krasnov

[14] I have translated into Russian Patrick Buchanan’s article “Is Putin One of Us?” in which he suggests that Russia, rather than modern Western secularists, stands for traditional Western values.

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org

<<The Bolsheviks sacrificed the interests of the Russian people in pursuit of their Marxist-Leninist vision. ...The same way as members of the old Soviet nomenklatura depended on Marxism-Leninism both as a working methodology and as a justification for their prerogatives and privileges, the entrenched duopoly of Democrat liberal interventionists and Republican neoconservatives relies upon an ideological imperative>>
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/hello-lenin-three-components-of-americas-misguided-foreign-policy/>>

Lozansky followed up with an article published on the site of Echo of Moscow, a leading liberal outlet in Russia. Here he was even more explicit in calling for a fundamental change of US foreign policy. In fact, he has called for American "Brexit" from unnecessary globalist over-commitments, especially NATO, which should be replaced by a sort of International Anti-Terrorist Organization working jointly with Russia and China. I let the curious translate the below into English with the help of Google.

<<В Америке Brexit пробудил некоторые схожие чувства у тех, которые помнят, что 240 лет назад их предки совершили своего рода AmerExit из Британской империи и теперь, вдохновленные событиями в своей бывшей метрополии, начинают подумывать о другом выходе, на этот раз, из «евро-атлантического» блока НАТО.
...
Несомненно, что во времена СССР НАТО играла полезную роль для сдерживания агрессивной советской политики, но в настоящеt время эта организация полностью утратило весь смысл своего существования, кроме, разумеется, обслуживания собственной бюрократии. Не только Трамп, но и все большее число американцев понимают, что этот блок должен быть либо распущен, либо трансформирован в некую новую структуру, например МАТО — международную анти-террористическую организацию.

В этом случае, логичным было бы тесное взаимодействие МАТО и Шанхайской организации сотрудничества ШОС для решения общих проблем и возвращения к тому, к чему призывал еще Джордж Буш старший в 1991 году — созданию новой дуги безопасности от Ванкувера до Владивостока.>>
http://echo.msk.ru/blog/lozansky_e/1795638-echo/

Speaking of inter-cultural communications, here is the link to my own translation of Ambassador Chas W. Freeman's brilliant June 9, 2016 talk U.S. Policy and the Geopolitical Dynamics of the Middle East at the Center for the National Interest. It contains a detailed analysis of US errors in the Middle East, the Mother-Board of All Errors. It also offers suggesions for the errors' correction.
My Russian translation is available at: http://www.raga.org/1053105410421054105710581048/-charles-w-freeman-jr  It can be switched to the English original.

Finally, I let Professor Michael Brenner entertain you with his a satire on of where US foreign policy is currently heading, a sort of Declaration of US Right and Obligation to Intervene anywhere anytime in the world..

Friends & Colleagues

It is a purloined draft of a petition circulating in and around Congress of a formal Resolution stating the sentiment and will of that venerable institution. The ultimate goal, I understand, is to have it anointed as an official declaration of the Republic destined to be placed in the Library of Congress under glass next to the Declaration of Independence. It is rumored that a coarser version sponsored by Senators Cotton and Cruz is lurking in the background. An unauthorized copy has come into my possession and is available upon request.
 
Cheers

Michael Brenner
mbren@pitt.edu
 
THE DECLARATION OF INTERVENTION
 
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one nation to invade and occupy another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the superior station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle it, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to do so.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all nations were created equal but since have diverged, that one enlightened nation among them is charged by its Creator with certain Duties and Obligations to promote Peace, Prosperity and the pursuit of Personal Preference.  That other nations are beseeched by their Creator to accept the tutelage of a more Progressive nation so as to ensure their peoples what is judged to be their Liberty, Freedom and such Lives as remain to them. That this power is derived from the consent of Providence. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of its citizens welfare, That to meet these obligations, one Government was Created to judge whomsoever endangers the security and wellbeing of its people and its neighbors, it is the Right of the Chosen Nation to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to it shall seem most likely to effect the Safety and Happiness of themselves and others.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes - with the exception of our Latin American neighbors; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of indolence renders them indifferent to such abuse, reducing them to objects of absolute Despotism, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security and our own.

For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Careers, our Consultancies and our Profane Interest.

Lest someone doubts the seriousness of Professor Brenner's concern, here are his credentials:

Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh; a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS-Johns Hopkins (Washington, D.C.), contributor to research and consulting projects on Euro-American security and economic issues.Publishes and teaches in the fields of American foreign policy, Euro-American relations, and the European Union.
 
Author of numerous books, and over 60 articles and published papers on a broad range of topics.  These include books with Cambridge University Press (Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation) and the Center For International Affairs at Harvard University (The Politics of International Monetary Reform); and publications in major journals in the United States and Europe, such as World Politics, Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy, International Studies Quarterly, International Affairs, Survival, Politique Etrangere, and Internationale Politik.  His most recent work is Toward a More Independent Europe Egmont Institute, Brussels.
 
Directed funded research projects with colleagues at leading universities and institutes in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, including the Sorbonne, Bonn University, King’s College – London, and Universita di Firenze.
 
RAGA is proud to associate with the best minds of America, Russia and the world.

Now forget all wars, conflicts, sanctions, counter-sanctions, the ugliness of politics etc and enjoy the beauty of the Summer, as I enjoy mine, not far from the place which attracted the attention of my colleague and Rus Lit buff Professor William Brumfield of Tulane University. Thank you, William!

<<My current article for Russia beyond the Headlines is devoted to the restoration of an elaborate late 19th-century wooden mansion (dacha) in the forests near Chukhloma in Kostroma Province: http://rbth.com/special_projects/discovering_russia_1/2016/07/01/the-terem-at-astashovo-grand-dacha-in-the-chukhloma-forests_608137  To see the slide show full screen, click the 4-arrow icon at lower right of photo window. 
This is the 153 rd of my articles and photo essays on Russia's architectural and cultural heritage for the foreign-language service of the Russian national newspaper Rossiiskaia Gazeta. A unified link to the series can be found at: http://rbth.ru/ discovering_russia   Through this link a total of 4,407 photographs from my documentary work in Russia are now accessible.>>

Sincerely,

W George Krasnow (Vladislav Krasnov)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

Malice to None. Good Will  to All. 
Peace and Justice to the World.

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org

Let us take a step back and put what is happening in a historical context. Russia has suffered a great deal at the hands of foreign invaders, losing 22 million people in World War II. Most of the dead were civilians, because the country was invaded, and the Russians have vowed to never let such a disaster happen again. Each time Russia had been invaded, she emerged victorious. In 1812 Nepoleon invaded Russia; in 1814 Russian cavalry rode into Paris. On June 22, 1941, Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed Kiev; On May 8, 1945, Soviet troops rolled into Berlin.

But times have changed since then. If Hitler were to attack Russia today, he would be dead 20 to 30 minutes later, his bunker reduced to glowing rubble by a strike from a Kalibr supersonic cruise missile launched from a small Russian navy ship somewhere in the Baltic Sea. The operational abilities of the new Russian military have been most persuasively demonstrated during the recent action against ISIS, Al Nusra and other foreign-funded terrorist groups operating in Syria. A long time ago Russia had to respond to provocations by fighting land battles on her own territory, then launching a counter-invasion; but this is no longer necessary. Russia’s new weapons make retaliation instant, undetectable, unstoppable and perfectly lethal.

Thus, if tomorrow a war were to break out between the US and Russia, it is guaranteed that the US would be obliterated. At a minimum, there would no longer be an electric grid, no internet, no oil and gas pipelines, no interstate highway system, no air transportation or GPS-based navigation. Financial centers would lie in ruins. Government at every level would cease to function. US armed forces, stationed all around the globe, would no longer be resupplied. At a maximum, the entire landmass of the US would be covered by a layer of radioactive ash. We tell you this not to be alarmist, but because, based on everything we know, we are ourselves alarmed. If attacked, Russia will not back down; she will retaliate, and she will utterly annihilate the United States.

The US leadership has done everything it could to push the situation to the brink of disaster. First, its anti-Russian policies have convinced the Russian leadership that making concessions or negotiating with the West is futile. It has become apparent that the West will always support any individual, movement or government that is anti-Russian, be it tax-cheating Russian oligarchs, convicted Ukrainian war criminals, Saudi-supported Wahhabi terrorists in Chechnya or cathedral-desecrating punks in Moscow. Now that NATO, in violation of its previous promises, has expanded right up to the Russian border, with US forces deployed in the Baltic states, within artillery range of St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, the Russians have nowhere left to retreat. They will not attack; nor will they back down or surrender. The Russian leadership enjoys over 80% of popular support; the remaining 20% seems to feel that it is being too soft in opposing Western encroachment. But Russia will retaliate, and a provocation or a simple mistake could trigger a sequence of events that will end with millions of Americans dead and the US in ruins.

Unlike many Americans, who see war as an exciting, victorious foreign adventure, the Russians hate and fear war. But they are also ready for it, and they have been preparing for war for several years now. Their preparations have been most effective. Unlike the US, which squanders untold billions on dubious overpriced arms programs such as the F-35 joint task fighter, the Russians are extremely stingy with their defense rubles, getting as much as 10 times the bang for the buck compared to the bloated US defense industry. While it is true that the Russian economy has suffered from low energy prices, it is far from being in shambles, and a return to growth is expected as early as next year. Senator John McCain once called Russia “A gas station masquerading as a country.” Well, he lied. Yes, Russia is the world’s largest oil producer and second-largest oil exporter, but it is also world’s largest exporter of grain and nuclear power technology. It is as advanced and sophisticated a society as the United States. Russia’s armed forces, both conventional and nuclear, are now ready to fight, and they are more than a match for the US and NATO, especially if a war erupts anywhere near the Russian border.

But such a fight would be suicidal for all sides. We strongly believe that a conventional war in Europe runs a strong chance of turning nuclear very rapidly, and that any US/NATO nuclear strike on Russian forces or territory will automatically trigger a retaliatory Russian nuclear strike on the continental US. Contrary to irresponsible statements made by some American propagandists, American antiballistic missile systems are incapable of shielding the American people from a Russian nuclear strike. Russia has the means to strike at targets in the USA with long-range nuclear as well as conventional weapons.

The sole reason why the USA and Russia have found themselves on a collision course, instead of defusing tensions and cooperating on a wide range of international problems, is the stubborn refusal by the US leadership to accept Russia as an equal partner: Washington is dead set on being the “world leader” and the “indispensable nation,” even as its influence steadily dwindles in the wake of a string of foreign policy and military disasters such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the Ukraine. Continued American global leadership is something that neither Russia, nor China, nor most of the other countries are willing to accept. This gradual but apparent loss of power and influence has caused the US leadership to become hysterical; and it is but a small step from hysterical to suicidal. America’s political leaders need to be placed under suicide watch.

First and foremost, we are appealing to the commanders of the US Armed Forces to follow the example of Admiral William Fallon, who, when asked about a war with Iran, reportedly replied “not on my watch.” We know that you are not suicidal, and that you do not wish to die for the sake of out-of-touch imperial hubris. If possible, please tell your staff, colleagues and, especially, your civilian superiors that a war with Russia will not happen on your watch. At the very least, take that pledge yourselves, and, should the day ever come when the suicidal order is issued, refuse to execute it on the grounds that it is criminal. Remember that according to the Nuremberg Tribunal “To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Since Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” is no longer a valid defense; please don’t be war criminals.

We also appeal to the American people to take peaceful but forceful action to oppose any politician or party that engages in irresponsible, provocative Russia-baiting, and that condones and supports a policy of needless confrontation with a nuclear superpower that is capable of destroying America in about an hour. Speak up, break through the barrier of mass media propaganda, and make your fellow Americans aware of the immense danger of a confrontation between Russia and the US.

There is no objective reason why US and Russia should consider each other adversaries. The current confrontation is entirely the result of the extremist views of the neoconservative cult, whose members were allowed to infiltrate the US Federal government under President Bill Clinton, and who consider any country that refuses to obey their dictates as an enemy to be crushed. Thanks to their tireless efforts, over a million innocent people have already died in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, the Ukraine, Yemen, Somalia and in many other countries—all because of their maniacal insistence that the USA must be a world empire, not a just a regular, normal country, and that every national leader must either bow down before them, or be overthrown. In Russia, this irresistible force has finally encountered an immovable object. They must be forced to back down before they destroy us all.

We are absolutely and categorically certain that Russia will never attack the US, nor any EU member state, that Russia is not at all interested in recreating the USSR, and that there is no “Russian threat” or “Russian aggression.” Much of Russia’s recent economic success has a lot to do with the shedding of former Soviet dependencies, allowing her to pursue a “Russia first” policy. But we are just as certain that if Russia is attacked, or even threatened with attack, she will not back down, and that the Russian leadership will not “blink.” With great sadness and a heavy heart they will do their sworn duty and unleash a nuclear barrage from which the United States will never recover. Even if the entire Russian leadership is killed in a first strike, the so-called “Dead Hand” (the “Perimetr” system) will automatically launch enough nukes to wipe the USA off the political map. We feel that it is our duty to do all we can to prevent such a catastrophe.

Evgenia Gurevich, Ph.D.
Victor Katsap, PhD, Sr. Scientist
NuFlare Technology America, Inc.
Andrei Kozhev
Serge Lubomudrov
Dmitry Orlov
The Saker (A. Raevsky)

Article originally published: ​https://off-guardian.org/2016/06/04/open-letter-a-russian-warning/

Chapeau, Mr Browder! Hats off for this incredible man. Last month, he succeeded in stopping a film screening in the European parliament and took off a few articles from American web sites. This week, he turned the only US screening of a film critical to his version of events into a ruckus. No freedom of speech for his enemies! His lawyers prowl around and issue summons to whoever digs in his sordid affairs. His hacks re-wrote his Wikipedia entry, expunging even discussions of the topic: despite hundreds of edits, nothing survived but the official version. Only a few powerful men succeed purifying their record to such an extent. Still, good fortune (a notoriously flighty lady) is about to desert Mr Browder.

Who is this extremely influential man? A businessman, a politician, a spy? The American-born Jewish tycoon William Browder, says The Jewish Chronicle, considers himself Putin’s Number One enemy. For him, Putin is “no friend of the Jews”, “cold-blooded killer” and even “criminal dictator who is not too different from Hitler, Mussolini or Gadhafi”. More to a point, Browder is the man who contributed most to the new cold war between the West and Russia. The roots were there, still he made them blossom. If the US and Russia haven’t yet exchanged nuclear salvos, do not blame Browder: he tried. For a valid reason, too: he was hit by cruel Hitler-like Mr Putin into his most susceptible spot, namely his pocket. Or was there even a better reason?

Browder, a grandson of the US Communist leader, came to Russia at its weakest point after the Soviet collapse, and grabbed an enormous fortune by opaque financial transactions. Such fortunes are not amassed by the pure of spirit. He was a ruthless man who did as much as any oligarch to enrich himself.

Eventually he ran afoul of Mr Putin, who was (and is) very tolerant of oligarchs as long as they play by the rules. The oligarchs would not be oligarchs if they would found that an easy condition. Some of them tried to fight back: Khodorkovsky landed in jail, Berezovsky and Gusinsky went to exile. Browder had a special position: he was the only Jewish oligarch in Russia who never bothered to acquire the Russian citizenship. He was barred from returning to Russia, and his companies were audited and found wanting.

As you’d expect, huge tax evasion was discovered. Browder thought that as long as he sucked up to Putin, he’d get away with bloody murder, let alone tax evasion. He was mistaken. Putin is nobody’s fool. Flatterers do not get a free ride in Putin’s Russia. And Browder became too big for his boots.

It turned out that he did two unforgivable things. Russians were afraid the foreigners would buy all their assets for a song, using favourable exchange rates and lack of native capital, as had happened in the Baltic states and other ex-Communist East European countries. In order to avoid that, shares of Russian blue-chip companies (Gazprom and suchlike) were traded among Russian citizens only. Foreigners had to pay much more. Browder bought many such shares via Russian frontmen, and he was close to getting control over Russian oil and gas. Putin suspected that he had acted in the interests of big foreign oil companies, trying to repeat the feat of Mr Khodorkovsky.

His second mistake was being too greedy. Russian taxation is very low; but Browder did not want to pay even this low tax. He hired Mr Magnitsky, an experienced auditor, who used loopholes in the Russian tax code in order to avoid taxes altogether. Magnitsky established dummy companies based in tax-free zones of Russia, such as pastoral Kalmykia, small, Buddhist, and autonomous. Their tax-free status had been granted in order to improve their economy and reduce unemployment; however, Browder’s companies did not contribute to economy and did not employ people; they were paper dummies swiftly bankrupted by the owner.

Another Magnitsky trick was to form companies fronted by handicapped people who were also freed from paying tax. In the film, some of these persons, often illiterate and of limited intelligence, told the filmmaker of signing papers they could not read and of being paid a little money for the millions passing through their account.

(Mr Browder does not deny these accusations; he says there is nothing criminal in trying to avoid taxes. You can read about Browder and Magnitsky tricks here and here, and learn of the ways they attacked companies using minority shareholders and many other neat schemes.)

Eventually Magnitsky’s schemes were discovered and he was arrested. Ten months later, in 2009, he died in jail. By that time, his patron Mr Browder was abroad, and he began his campaign against Russia hoping to regain his lost assets. He claimed Mr Magnitsky had been his lawyer, who discovered misdeeds and the outright thievery of government officials, and was imprisoned and tortured to death for this discovery.

The US Congress rushed in the Magnitsky Act, the first salvo of the Cold War Two. By this act, any Russian person could be found responsible for Mr Magnitsky’s untimely death and for misappropriation of Browder’s assets. His properties could be seized, bank accounts frozen – without any legal process or representation. This act upset the Russians, who allegedly had kept a cool $500 billion in the Western banks, so tit for tat started, and it goes to this very day.

The actual effect of the Magnitsky Act was minimal: some twenty million dollars frozen and a few dozen not-very-important people were barred from visiting the US. Its psychological effect was much greater: the Russian elite realised that they could lose their money and houses anytime – not in godless Putin’s Russia, but in the free West, where they had preferred to look for refuge. The Magnitsky Act paved the road to the Cyprus confiscation of Russian deposits, to post-Crimean sanctions and to a full-fledged Cold War.

This was painful for Russia, as the first adolescent disillusionment in its love affair with the West, and rather healthy, in my view. A spot of cold war (very cold, plenty of ice please) is good for ordinary people, while its opposite, a Russian-American alliance, is good for the elites. The worst times for ordinary Russian people were 1988-2001, when Russians were in love with the US. The oligarchs stole everything there was to steal and sold it to the West for pennies. They bought villas in Florida while Russia fell apart. That was bad time for everybody: the US invaded Panama and Afghanistan unopposed, Iraq was sanctioned to death, Yugoslavia was bombed and broken to pieces.

As the Cold War came back, some normalcy was restored: the Russians stopped the US from destroying Syria, and Russian officials learned to love Sochi instead of Miami. For this reason alone, Browder can be counted as a part of the power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good. The Russian government, however, did not enjoy the cold shower.

The Russians denied any wrongdoing or even political reasons for dealing with Browder. They say Magnitsky was not a lawyer, just an auditor and a tax code expert. They say that he was arrested and tried for his tax avoidance schemes, and he died of natural causes while in jail. Nobody listened to them, until they demanded that Browder testify under oath. He refused. For two years lawyers tried to give him a summons, but he was a quick runner. There are funny videos showing Browder running away from summons.

Some good sense began to seep into American minds. The New Republic wondered: if Browder was indeed the victim of persecution in Russia and had enlisted the U.S. justice system to right the balance, why was he so reluctant to offer his sworn testimony in an American courtroom?

Enter Mr Andrey Nekrasov, a Russian dissident filmmaker. He made a few films considered to be highly critical of Russian government. He alleged the FSB blew up houses in Moscow in order to justify the Chechnya war. He condemned the Russian war against Georgia in 2008, and had been given a medal by Georgian authorities. He did not doubt the official Western version of Browder-Magnitsky affair, and decided to make a film about the noble American businessman and the brave Russian lawyer fighting for human rights. The European organisations and parliamentarians provided the budget for the film. They also expected the film to denounce Putin and glorify Magnitsky, the martyr.

However, while making the film, Mr Nekrasov had his Road to Damascus moment. He realised that the whole narrative was hinging on the unsubstantiated words of Mr Browder. After painstaking research, he came to some totally different conclusions, and in his version, Browder was a cheat who run afoul of law, while Magnitsky was his sidekick in those crimes.

Nekrasov discovered an interview Magnitsky gave in his jail. In this interview, the accountant said he was afraid Browder would kill him to prevent him from denouncing Browder, and would make him his scapegoat. It turned out Browder tried to bribe the journalist who made the interview to have these words expunged. Browder was the main beneficiary of the accountant’s death, realised Nekrasov, while his investigators were satisfied with Magnitsky’s collaboration with them.

Nekrasov could not find any evidence that Magnitsky tried to investigate the misdeeds of government officials. He was too busy covering his own tax evasion. And instead of fitting his preconceived notions, Nekrasov made the film about what he learned. (Here are some details of Nekrasov’s film)

While the screening in the EU Parliament was been stopped by the powerful Mr Browder, in Washington DC the men are made of sterner stuff. Despite Browder’s threats the film was screened, presented by the best contemporary American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who is 80 if a day, and still going strong. One has to recognise that the US is second to none for freedom of speech on the globe.

What makes Browder so powerful? He invests in politicians. This is probably a uniquely Jewish quality: Jews outspend everybody in contributions to political figures. The Arabs will spend more on horses and jets, the Russians prefer real estate, the Jews like politicians. The Russian NTV channel reported that Browder lavishly financed the US lawmakers. Here they present alleged evidence of money transfers: some hundred thousand dollars was given by Browder’s structures officially to the senators and congressmen in order to promote the Magnitsky Act.

Much bigger sums were transferred via good services of Brothers Ziff, mega-rich Jewish American businessmen, said the researchers in two articles published on the Veteran News Network and in The Huffington Post.

These two articles were taken off the sites very fast under pressure of Browder’s lawyers, but they are available in the cache. They disclose the chief beneficiary of Browder’s generosity. This is Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. He was the engine behind Magnitsky Act legislation to such an extent that the Act has been often called the Cardin List. Cardin is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton, also a cold warrior of good standing. More to a point, Cardin is a prominent member of Israel Lobby.

Browder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime. Almost all involved figures appear to be Jewish, not only Browder, Brothers Ziff and Ben Cardin. Even his enemy, the beneficiary of the scam that (according to Browder) took over his Russian assets is another Jewish businessman Dennis Katsiv (he had been partly exonerated by a New York court as is well described in this thoughtful piece).

Browder began his way to riches under the patronage of a very rich and very crooked Robert Maxwell, a Czech-born Jewish businessman who assumed a Scots name. Maxwell stole a few million dollars from his company pension fund before dying in mysterious circumstances on board of his yacht in the Atlantic. It was claimed by a member of Israeli Military Intelligence, Ari Ben Menashe, that Maxwell had been a Mossad agent for years, and he also said Maxwell tipped the Israelis about Israeli whistle-blower Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu was kidnapped and spent many years in Israeli jails.

Geoffrey Goodman wrote Maxwell “was almost certainly being used as – and using himself as – a two-way intelligence conduit [between East and West]. This arrangement included passing intelligence to the Israeli secret forces with whom he became increasingly involved towards the end of his life.”

After Maxwell, Browder switched allegiance to Edmond Safra, a very rich Jewish banker of Lebanese origin, who also played East vs West. Safra provided him with working capital for his investment fund. Safra’s bank has been the unlikely place where the IMF loan of four billion dollars to Russia had been transferred—and disappeared. The Russian authorities say that Browder has been involved in this “crime of the century,” next to Safra. The banker’s name has been connected to Mossad: increasingly fearful for his life, Safra surrounded himself by Mossad-trained gunmen. This did not help him: he died a horrible death in his bathroom when his villa was torched by one of the guards.

The third Jewish oligarch on Browder’s way was Boris Berezovsky, the king-maker of Yeltsin’s Russia. He also died in his bathroom (which seems to be a constant feature); apparently he committed suicide. Berezovsky had been a politically active man; he supported every anti-Putin force in Russia. However, a few months before his death, he asked for permission to return to Russia, and some negotiations went on between him and Russian authorities.

His chief of security Sergey Sokolov came to Russia and purportedly brought with him some documents his late master prepared for his return. These documents allege that Browder had been an agent of Western intelligence services, of the CIA to begin with, and of MI6 in following years. He was given a code name Solomon, as he worked for Salomon Brothers. His financial activity was just a cover for his true intentions, that is to collect political and economic data on Russia, and to carry out economic war on Russia. This revelation has been made in the Russia-1 TV channel documentary Browder Effect, (broadcasted 13.04.2016), asserting that Browder was not after money at all, and his activities in Russia, beside being very profitable, had a political angle.

The documents had been doubted for some linguistic reasons discussed by Gilbert Doctorow who comes to a reasonable conclusion: “Bill Browder[‘s]… intensity and the time he was devoting to anti-Russian sanctions in Europe was in no way comparable to the behaviour of a top level international businessman. It was clear to me that some other game was in play. But at the time, no one could stand up and suggest the man was a fraud, an operative of the intelligence agencies. Whatever the final verdict may be on the documents presented by the film “The Browder Effect,” it raises questions about Browder that should have been asked years ago in mainstream Western media if journalists were paying attention. Yevgeny Popov deserves credit for highlighting those questions, even if his documents demand further investigation before we come to definitive answers”.

We do not know whether Browder is, or had been, a spy. This should not surprise us, as he was closely connected to Maxwell, Safra and Berezovsky, the financiers with strong ties in the intelligence community.

Perhaps he outlived his usefulness, Mr Browder did. He started the Cold war, now is the time to keep it in its healthy limits and to avoid a nuclear disaster or rapid armaments race. This is the task we may hope will be entertained by the next US President, Mr Donald Trump.

This article was first published in The Unz Review.
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Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

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June 21, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - Some 50 State Department officials have signed a memo calling on President Obama to launch air and missile strikes on the Damascus regime of Bashar Assad.

A "judicious use of stand-off and air weapons," they claim, "would undergird and drive a more focused and hard-nosed U.S.-led diplomatic process."

In brief, to strengthen the hand of our diplomats and show we mean business, we should start bombing and killing Syrian soldiers.
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Yet Syria has not attacked us. And Congress has not declared war on Syria, or authorized an attack. Where do these State hawks think President Obama gets the authority to launch a war on Syria?

Does State consider the Constitution to be purely advisory when it grants Congress the sole power to declare war? Was not waging aggressive war the principal charge against the Nazis at Nuremberg?

If U.S. bombs and missiles rain down on Damascus, to the cheers of the C-Street Pattons, what do we do if Bashar Assad’s allies Iran and Hezbollah retaliate with Benghazi-type attacks on U.S. diplomats across the Middle East? What do we do if Syrian missiles and Russian planes starting shooting down U.S. planes?

Go to war with Hezbollah, Iran and Russia?

Assume U.S. strikes break Syria’s regime and Assad falls and flees. Who fills the power vacuum in Damascus, if not the most ruthless of the terrorist forces in that country, al-Nusra and ISIS?

Should ISIS reach Damascus first, and a slaughter of Alawites and Christians ensue, would we send an American army to save them?

According to CIA Director John Brennan, ISIS is spreading and coming to Europe and America. Does it make sense then that we would launch air and missile strikes against a Syrian regime and army that is today the last line of defense between ISIS and Damascus?

Does anyone think these things through?

Wherever, across the Middle East, we have plunged in to wage war – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria – people continue to suffer and die, and we are ensnared.

Have we not fought enough wars in this Godforsaken region?

Last week, Russian planes launched air strikes on the rebels in Syria whom we have been arming and training to overthrow Assad.

Said John Kerry, "Russia needs to understand that our patience is not infinite." But why are we arming rebels to overthrow Assad?

Who rises if he falls? Moscow’s alliance with Damascus goes back decades. Syria provides Russia with a naval base in the Mediterranean. Vladimir Putin’s support for the embattled Syrian regime in the civil war being waged against it is legal under international law.

It is our policy that appears questionable.

Where did Obama get the right to arm and train rebels to dump over the Damascus regime? Did Congress authorize this insurrection? Or is this just another CIA-National Endowment for Democracy project?

Why are we trying to bring down Assad, anyhow?

U.S. foreign policy today seems unthinking, reactive, impulsive.

Last week, 31,000 NATO troops conducted exercises in Poland and the Baltic republics, right alongside the border with Russia.

For the first time since 1945, German tanks appeared in Poland.

Now we are planning to base four NATO battalions – one U.S.-led, one British, one German, and perhaps one Canadian, as the French and Italians are balking at being part of a tripwire for war.

How would we react if 31,000 Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Iranian and North Korean troops conducted military exercises across from El Paso and Brownsville, Texas?

How would we react if each of those countries left behind a battalion of troops to prevent a repeat of General "Black Jack" Pershing’s intervention in Mexico in 1916?

Americans would be apoplectic.

Nor are some Europeans enthusiastic about confronting Moscow.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the NATO exercises "warmongering" and "saber-rattling." He adds, "Anyone who believes that symbolic tank parades on the alliance’s eastern border will increase security is wrong. We would be well-advised not to deliver any excuses for a new, old confrontation."

Not only is Steinmeier’s Social Democratic Party leery of any new Cold War with Russia, so, too, is the German Left Party, and the anti-EU populist party Alternative for Germany, which wants closer ties to Russia and looser ties to the United States.

This month, we sent the USS Porter into the Black Sea. Why? Says Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, "to deter potential aggression."

While there is talk of a NATO Black Sea fleet, Bulgaria, one of the three NATO Black Sea nations, appears to want no part of it.

The European Union also just voted to extend sanctions on Russia for annexing Crimea and supporting separatists in Ukraine.

Donald Trump calls the NATO alliance a rip-off, a tripwire for World War III and "obsolete." Hillary Clinton compares Putin’s actions in Ukraine to Hitler’s actions in Germany in the early 1930s.

Looking for a four-year faceoff with a nuclear-armed Russia?

Hillary’s the one!

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com 

All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
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