In the name of that common future RAGA expresses condolence to the Russian people on the recent loss of their brave sons in legitimate military action south of the Turkish border.>>

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

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

Last Newsletter Antidote 19 was on Labor Day in the USA. This time we want to express RAGA's condolence to the Russian people because of the airplane tragedy over the Sinai peninsula.

We also want to congratulate the Russians on their National Unity Day. In the USSR they celebrated October Revolution on November 7th, now New Russia commemorates on November 4th the popular uprising which ended Polish occupation of 1612, and generally signifies the end of the Time of Troubles (1605–1618) and the enthronement of the Romanovs.

Back to business, I am happy to forward the invitation from Professor Stephen Cohen and The American Committee for East-West Accord to this important discussion of US-Russia relations

REMINDER: ACEWA Event on Capitol Hill on Nov 4 at 2pm
​The Crisis in US-Russia Relations, from Ukraine to Syria: Is Congress Overlooking its Causes and Potential Solutions? Hosted by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Rep. Ted Yoho, Rep. Charles Rangel, Rep. Steve Cohen, Rep. Jim Himes, Rep. Rick Nolan, Rep. Alan Grayson, Rep. Peter Welch, and Rep. Barbara Lee   Wednesday, November 4, 2015, 2pm

​Also, Jon Utley, a friend of mine, RAGA associate, and the publisher of The American Conservative magazine (true Conservative, not Neo-Con) asked me to forward an invitation for another conference in favor of a more sound US foreign policy:

Summit on Realism and Restraint
Wednesday November 4, 2015
8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
(breakfast included) 
at the Jack Morton Auditorium of George Washington University's Media and Public Affairs Building

805 21st St., NW
Washington, D.C. 20052
Register here: 
http://theam.cn/1PWR4pL

For an association of Good Will, like RAGA, it behooves to listen to both sides, including
Putin: Does Anyone Even Listen To Us?
 Video http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42961.htm#.VgX1yIIxLRY.gmail

"We are not invading anyone?" - "Why are you threatening us?" Putin answers questions from a UK journalist in relation to his intentions of getting along with the US. The treaty that he refers to in the conversation is the The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty or ABMT). The United States withdrew in 2002.

Posted September 25, 2015
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42961.htm#.VgX1yIIxLRY.gmail

One RAGA associate listened to the whole of Putin's speech, and that's what he thinks:

<<​A very impressive speech  from The Man...  Not sure where he was holding forth, but certainly saying things that badly need to be said.    ​I've been wondering for a long time why he doesn't use this valuable talent he has more often.  It has seemed he has been tongue tied in the face of the western threat.  HuffPost even referred to him as Mr. Evil, or something akin thereto in a headline in the last couple days.  Disgusting and disheartening to see how low America and its subservient western allied henchmen have stooped to get at Putin. >> 

As we want RAGA readers be the best informed people in the USA, below is a selection of the latest significant articles. In case your links don't work, I provide a key quote:

1. Katrina vanden Heuvel: Would you take us to war with Russia?

by Fusion | October 22, 2015 2:22 p.m.
http://fusion.net/video/219507/katrina-vanden-heuvel-would-you-take-us-to-war-with-russia/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=FusionRSS

Will the next president avert a new Cold War between the United States and Russia over Ukraine? Katrina vanden Heuvel, the editor and publisher of The Nation, wants to know. Make the wrong move, she warns, and you risk a disaster for “women, children and other living beings".

2. In Putin’s Syria Intervention, Fear of a Weak Government Hand
By STEVEN LEE MYERS,OCT. 4, 2015

“Nations shouldn’t be forced to all conform to the same development model that somebody has declared the only appropriate one,” he declared at the United Nations. The Soviet Union, he said, had once sought to export “social experiments, pushing for changes in other countries for ideological reasons, and this often led to tragic consequences and caused degradation instead of progress.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/europe/in-putins-syria-intervention-fear-of-a-weak-government-hand.html?ref=topics&_r=0

3.  Ray McGovern, Seeing Syrian Crisis Through Russian Eyes.
October 29, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Consortiumnews"

<<We doubt that John Brennan is up to playing that kind of role, or that Dunford, for example, could be persuaded to do what a Marine predecessor, Gen. Smedley Butler, refused to do, join a coup against the sitting U.S. President (in Butler’s case he rejected a right-wing scheme to remove President Franklin Roosevelt from office).But there is reason to think that Obama believes he has more to fear than the fate of his policies. One report alleges that he privately told friends of his fear of ending up like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.>>

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. From 1981 to 1985, McGovern prepared the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43267.htm

4. Eric Margolis, “The Russians are Coming“, September 18, 2015
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/eric-margolis/the-russians-are-coming-the-russians-are-coming/

<<Republican candidates like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Carly Fiorina appeared to be itching for war with Russia. They are creatures of America’s chief neocon, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.  Most non-Americans must have been horrified to observe such warmongering and pandering to Israel’s far, far right...One wonders if these amateur strategists could name more than one Syrian city. Or if they understand that Syria is as close to Russia as New York is to Columbus, Ohio?>>

5. Mike Averko of New York sets straight some of the perfidious media distortions in Getting Russia Wrong Again
Michael AVERKO | 21.09.2015
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/09/21/getting-russia-wrong-again.html

    <<In his article, Karatnycky distorts what Russian President Vladimir Putin said about Joseph Goebbels. This distortion is perplexing, given that the contents in the hyperlinked July 10, 2014 Times of Israel article, clearly show that Putin wasn't suggesting any positive admiration for Goebbels.>>

    <<Upon reading this, I was reminded of Stephen Cohen's November 12, 2003 Moscow Times article "The Struggle For Russia", which includes: "Democracy in Russia has been failing ever since Yeltsin made oligarchic privatization possible by destroying an elected parliament in 1993, and neither side is interested in truly reviving it: the oligarchs are zealous monopolists, not free-market reformers, and Western investors interested in Russia's huge oil reserves have already indicated that they care about official guarantees of the contracts, not who signs them: Putin now controls elections sufficiently to get substantially the legislature he wants: and no one of Jewish origin, as are Khodorkovsky and most of the other oligarchs, could be elected president of Russia.">>

   <<On the subject of Jewry in Russia and the overall state of ethno-religious relations in that country, there remains some closed-minded thinking, as evidenced in Julia Ioffe's October 16, 2013 New Republic piece "Russians Still Love Pogroms". Her tabloid screed is indicative of an inaccurate collective stereotyping.>>


6. Edward Lozansky, September 22, 2015, surveys "US Foreign Policy Landscape: McCainiacs, ObamaKerrys and RohraBradleys." He concludes:Unfortunately the first two types dominate the presidential candidate field.
<<Now, what does all this leave us with? Are we heading for a regime change in Russia as McCainiacs push for and ObamaKerrys wouldn’t mind attempting at all despite the high chances of a nuclear holocaust? Or should we listen to the RohraBradleys, try to moderate our appetites for running the planet, and choose a policy of reasonable compromises?>>

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/us-foreign-policy-landscape-mccainiacs-obamakerrys-and-rohrabradleys/ri9877

7. Challenging those in the establishment media who have seen the existential threat in Ebola, ISIL, and Russia, the veteran contrarian journalist Robert Parry asks (and answers in a resounding affirmative)
Are Neocons an Existential Threat?

Wednesday, 16 September 2015 00:00
By Robert Parry, Consortium News | Op-Ed
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32823-are-neocons-an-existential-threat

    <<The neoconservatives arguably have damaged American national interests more than any group in modern history. They have done more harm than the marginal Communists pursued by Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, more than the Yippies of the 1960s, more than Richard Nixon's Watergate burglars in the 1970s or the Iran-Contra conspirators in the 1980s.

    The neocons have plunged the U.S. government into extraordinarily ill-considered wars wasting trillions of dollars, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, and destabilizing large swaths of the planet including the Middle East, much of Africa and now Europe. Those costs include a swelling hatred against America and a deformed U.S. foreign policy elite that is no longer capable of formulating coherent strategies.

    But the neocons are no longer just threatening the existence of the Republic; they are now endangering the continuation of life itself. They have decided to launch a new Cold War against Russia that will push the world toward the brink of thermo-nuclear war.

    Of course, the neocons will frame their doomsday strategy as all Vladimir Putin's fault. They will insist that they are just standing up to "Russian aggression" and that anyone who doesn't join them is a "stooge of Moscow" or "weak." They will dictate the shape of the debate just as they have in countless other situations, such as guiding Americans to war in Iraq over non-existent WMD stockpiles.>>

8.Professor Paul Robinson of U of Ottawa, Canada, dispels the hopes of those in the West who have counted on Russian liberals to challenge Putin

RUSSIA’S MISSING LIBERALS
OCTOBER 21, 2015 PAUL Robinson 9 COMMENTS
This week my class will be discussing Russian liberalism, or rather the lack of it, and seeking to explain why liberalism as we understand it in the West has not proved successful in Russia. 
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/russias-missing-liberals/

Explains Robinson:

<<(Russian liberalism was) tainted by the experiences of the 1990s, when shock therapy brought rapid de-industrialization, rampant inflation, and a whole host of social problems such as a steep decline in life expectancy. The prevailing political narrative in Russia is of liberal policies leading to social and economic collapse in the 1990s followed by a period of growth and stability once the people now running the country took over in the 2000s. As long as this remains the dominant view, Russia’s liberals are going to have difficulty attracting votes.>>

Before a patient reader is rewarded with beautiful pics below, please do something that will make you feel good about yourself

Here is an initiative on which USA, Russia, EU and everybody else can work together.

We, the undersigned, call upon all political powers: beyond all questions of political affiliation, and in the true spirit of human solidarity and decency, to categorize the crimes being committed by ISIS and other Takfiri terrorists against Christians, Twelver Shiites, Ismailis, Alawis, Sufis, traditional Sunnis, and others, as acts of religious, cultural, and ethnic genocide.

Will you take 30 seconds to sign it right now? Here's the link:
 http://www.change.org/p/all-political-players-the-genocide-initiative

​My current article for Russia beyond the Headlines is devoted to Dudinka, the northernmost port in Siberia:  

​http://rbth.com/arts/2015/09/18/dudinka_on_the_yenisei_the_path_to_norilsk_and_the_taimyr_peninsula_49389.html   For best results with the slide show (full screen), click the 4-arrow icon at lower right of photo window.

This is the 134 th 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 

​​​​​My current article for Russia beyond the Headlines is devoted to Poshekhonye, a well-preserved small town in Yaroslavl Province known through the work of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin as a byword for Russian provincial life: http://rbth.com/arts/2015/10/02/poshekhonye_an_enduring_corner_of_provincial_russia_49579.html

​For best results with the slide show (full screen), click the 4-arrow icon at lower right of photo window.

And a bonus! To those who have not yet been to Moscow, below is the famous Tretyakov Gallery: Amassing over 170,000 pieces of world-class Russian art here at the Tretyakov has been the work of many art collectors and historians.  Today the museum stands as a living monument to the inexplicable gift the Russian people have had for centuries––that of creating deeply poignant historic canvases, chiseled marble and other artistic works in many mediums.  Don't miss this place when you are in Moscow, it reveals increasing depth with each visit.  Mel captured more than we see in this hour long Youtube and we didn't scratch the surface.  His intent was to show the development of the history Russian art––meanwhile he seemed enchanted by the museum guide as you may note.

A Tour of the Tretyakov Gallery/Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viyrb1pBr94

Malice to None. Good Will  to All. 
Peace and Justice to the World.
миру мир и благоволение в сердцах

From RAGA site:
"We are an association of Americans who believe it is in the U.S. national interests to foster friendship with Russia on the basis of mutual Good Will and non-interference in each other's affairs. RAGA is a gathering of people who share common interests in Russia's history, culture, religion, economy, politics and the way of life. We feel that Russian people have made outstanding contributions to humankind and are capable of greater achievements. We envision Russia as a strong, independent, proud and free nation and as a partner in achieving peace in the world."

Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (=Vladislav Krasnov)
President, RAGA

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