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

We may be a bit off the precise timing, but our seasonal greetings to people of different faiths are just as cordial: Merry Christmas, Delightful Diwali, Ecstatic Eid, Happy Chanukah, and a prosperous New Year to you all! 

The more we have tried to improve the US & Russia relation, the more we realize that it can hardly be done without replacing the now prevailing paradigm of "clash of civilizations" by a realization of common destiny of humankind.

So, let me save your time for holidays celebration, by placing just two items inside RAGA Antidote 55 greeting.

First, I am delighted to forward the holidays greeting from Rich Siegel, an American musician and singer, who does his best to overcome the pernicious divide between Israel and Palestine, Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land. I got Siegel's greeting via Israel Shamir's readers list. (Shamir is my old friend who first emigrated from the USSR to Israel and then, upset about Israel's racist attitude toward Palestinians, moved back to Russia and now resides in Sankt-Peterburg). 

Rich is an American peace-loving singer and musician. As a Jew, he is nonetheless happy to say "Merry Christmas" to Christians and "Happy Hanukkah" to Jews regardless whether they are in the USA or Israel or Russia or anywhere.  But he feels especially distressed by the injustices and even terrorist attacks committed by Israeli extremists against Palestinian Muslims and Christians and even against  Archbishop Atallah Hanna of Christian Palestinian Church in Jerusalem.

Rich quotes Archbishop:
​
“I would like to remind all Christians all around the world there is no point in celebrating Christmas if you do not pay attention to what is happening in Palestine as it is the birthplace of Christ and where Christianity originated and spread its message throughout the world.” ~Archbishop Atallah Hanna~

December 2019  

Unfortunately, the Archbishop believes that in his opinion“ISRAEL” IS RESPONSIBLE FOR POISONING ME". Quds News Network. Amman, Dec. 23, 2019. http://orthochristian.com/126648.html In Russian see  https://russian.palinfo.com/news/2019/12/25/A

The second item is devoted to Professor William Brumfield of Tulane University who has done more for the restoration of the glory of Russian Christian architecture after the ravages of Soviet anti-religious campaigns than just about anybody. As RAGA friends may have noticed, just about every newsletter for the past several years ends with Professor Brumfield's photographic record of Russian Christian architectural monuments with brief and lucid commentary. Please read about Brumfield's recent trip to Moscow and his talk at The Andrei Rublev Museum ( https://www.moscovery.com/andrei-rublev-museum-of-ancient-russian-culture-and-art/  ) on December 23, 2019 in conjunction with his recent award by the Russian government.

I like to think that Siegel and Brumfield are just two American examples of cross-religious, cross-ethnic, and simply global solidarity that is so essential for the survival of the Planet. That is why lately, RAGA has become affiliated with the Global  Harmony Association, founded by Dr. Leo Semashko of Sankt-Petersburg twelve years ago and now attracting global membership. A former Marxist-Leninist, Leo is determined to turn around Marxist class-struggle into class-cooperation, solidarity and HARMONY. Please take a look at Leo's personal page https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=253

My own writings, both in English and Russian, can be also found there
https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=752  

Finally, as a non-Jewish member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), I am just as concerned with the recent stabbing attack on five people at the home of Hasidim Rabbi in Monsey, N.Y., but I remain hopeful it was an act of a mentally unstable man rather than expression of Jew hatred in general.The governor called the violence an “act of domestic terrorism” after a suspect was arrested in Harlem. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/nyregion/monsey-synagogue-stabbing-anti-semitic.html  

WASHINGTON, December 6 (2019). /TASS/. Russian Ambassador to the USA Anatoly Antonov has awarded the Order of Friendship to a renowned American historian specializing in Russian architecture, professor of Slavic studies of the Tulane University William Craft Brumfield, the Embassy said on its Facebook page. https://tass.com/society/1096371 The award ceremony was held during the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.

"Today it’s a great honor for us to present professor Brumfield with a high state award of the Russian Federation - the Order of Friendship in accordance with the Russian presidential decree signed on October 26, 2019, for achievements in strengthening friendship and cooperation between the nations, fruitful activity in conciliating and mutually enriching the cultures of our nations and peoples. Please accept our most cordial congratulations!" Antonov said. https://tass.com/society/1096371

As RAGA readers know, just about every RAGA newsletters for several years has ended with Professor Brumfield’s brief and precise photographic record of Russian religious heritage, often Orthodox Christian churches and chapels that fell apart from age, abuse and vicious desecration during anti-religious campaigns of Soviet government.  

In a sense, William Brumfield has been playing a role similar to that of Savva Yamshchikov and dozens other selfless Russian restorers of Russian religious art after decades of Soviet abuse. As Wikipedia says, Savva Yamshchikov (1938 –2009) was a leading expert on Russian provincial art, particularly medieval icon painting and of the 18th and 19th centuries. Graduated from the Moscow University, Yamshchikov worked at the All-Russian Art Restoration Center in Moscow. He went from one province to another in order to find medieval icons that required cleansing. Yamshchikov …advised Andrei Tarkovsky on the film production of “Andrei Rublev” and Sergey Bondarchuk on the film Boris Godunov.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savva_Yamshchikov

December 23, 2019, William Brumfield gave a great talk to Muscovites in the Museum of Andrei Rublev. It was the best place for him to speak. “The idea to create a museum of religious art emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War. During the years of Stalin’s fight with religion and the devastating war, a great many Orthodox churches in the Soviet Union had been looted or badly damaged. The museum staff restored the remaining works of art and searched for other artifacts. The museum’s opening took place in 1960.” https://www.moscovery.com/andrei-rublev-museum-of-ancient-russian-culture-and-art/

So here William presented his latest book “Puti k Belomu Moriu” (‘Ways to the White Sea’) which is actually a Russian translation of his book “Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North” published by Duke University Press in in Durham, London, 2015. As I currently reside in Moscow, it fell upon me to say a few words about William after his introduction by the Museum rep.
 
I told the audience how I founded the Russia & America Good Will association (RAGA.org) in early 1990s. After the collapse of the USSR, all former Soviet associations of friendship also disintegrated, including the one in Washington DC.  That’s why I decided to fill the vacuum with an organization that was essentially non-political and non-partisan.  We favor neither Democrats nor Republicans, neither Capitalism nor Socialism, neither neoliberal economics nor Neo-Conservative politics.  After over 70 years of isolation from the outside world, former Soviet citizens, as well as Americans, needed People-to-People contacts. To make those contacts more rewarding we should abandon all prejudices and act always in the spirit of Good Will.

As former professor of Russian Studies and-- after moving to Washington DC in 1991-- as a free-lance interpreter and translator I knew full well that in addition to whatever cultural and language barriers, all former Soviet citizens – and I worked not just with Russian and Ukrainians, but also Georgians, Azerbaijanis and all Central Asian republics –badly needed to overcome the political prejudices and restrictions imposed on them by Soviet propagandists.  On a much smaller scale and with meager resources, RAGA had been doing the work similar to that the Open World Leadership program (https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9908/rlp.html ) founded Dr. James Billington (1929 – 2015) of the Library of Congress and Russian Academician Dmitry Likhachev (1906 – 1999), a former GULAG prisoner on the Solovky Islands , photographed by Brumfield.

Sharon Tennison’s Center for Citizen Initiatives (https://ccisf.org/) in San Francisco has also served as RAGA’s role model, as well as Eduard Lozansky’s  American University in Moscow (http://us-russia.org/)

Among RAGA’s favorite sources is The American Committee for East-West Accord, Ltd. (https://eastwestaccord.com/). RAGA relies on such perceptive authors as Dr. Gilbert Doctorow who watches the world from Brussels and Patrick Armstrong, a former Canadian diplomat, who always presents an excellent overview of US-Russia events.

In addition to RAGA, I have published my own articles on the site of Fitzgerald Friffin Foundation (as W George Krasnow), Johnson Russia List (https://russialist.org/), Veterans Today, and Antiwar.com. I have been interviewed by Dr. Kevin Barrett’s Truthjihad Radio.  Lately, The Unz Review and Russia-Insider posted a number of my articles.

Whenever I can I try to acquaint Russian people with how Americans view Russia. I have also translated into Russian a number of such outstanding American authors as Patrick Buchanan, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Allan Brownfeld, Chas Freeman, Charles Bausman, and Marjory Cohn.

In Russia, where I currently reside, my articles appeared in Predstavitelnaya vlast’ (http://www.pvlast.ru/archive/index.565.php), an independent State Duma magazine, and in a number of local newspapers. I was also often interviewed by RADIO RADONEZH, an independent Christian radio station that broadcasts worldwide. In Russia, RAGA closely works with the Global Harmony Association founded by Dr. Leo Semashko of Sankt Peterburg (https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=253) some twelve years ago. I have published my articles there too: https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=884

Overall, I must conclude that Professor Brumfield’s pictographic presentation of the uniqueness of Russian civilization to the outside world, especially to the Americans, constitute an important ingredient to RAGA’s peace-promoting endeavors, and I personally congratulate him on receiving a high award from the Russian government.
To see Brumfield’s pictographic art, any RAGA reader can review previous issues of RAGA Antidotes. 

​Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

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."

​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​

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

Congrats!
Let me congratulate everyone with the Thanksgiving Holidays! And never forget about our predecessors in America, the native Indians!

ATTENTION - About using TOR or Opera VPN Browser to visit RAGA from other countries! For some time I have heard the reports that RAGA became inaccessible for readers located in Russia and, perhaps, some other countries. No worry:  try - out TOR Browser. It is easy to install, and it is FREE: https://www.torproject.org/download/ See more options at the end!

Right away, read two outstanding reviews of two outstanding books by two outstanding peace champions.

​Professor Michael Brenner reviews Edward Snowden's book "Permanent Record" 

There was a time in America when a Snowden would be celebrated as the model of an idealistic young man whose devotion to principle placed justice before self-interest. Nowadays, the baying pack of scoundrels,  careerists and bumblers who run the country howl for his traitorous hide.  Obviously, there are exceptions. Yet, one is hard-pressed to identify voices raised on his behalf. 

http://www.raga.org/news/edward-snowdens-permanent-record-book-review-by-prof-michael-brenner-must-read

​How to Save the Planet and Ourselves

Now Chris Hedges reviews Roger Hallam's New Book
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author  

If you read only one book this year, it should be Roger Hallam’s “Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse.”
Hallam’s lucid and concise book, which echoes Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” says what many of us now know to be true but do not say: If we do not replace the ruling elites soon we are finished as a species. It is a cogent, well-argued case for global rebellion—the only form of resistance that can save us from ecosystem collapse and human-induced genocide. It correctly analyzes the failure of environmentalist activists in groups such as 350.org to understand and confront global corporate power and thus make a meaningful impact as we barrel toward ecocide. “Common Sense for the 21st Century” is a survival manual for the human species. “The corrupt system is going to kill us all unless we rise up,” Hallam, a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, bluntly warns.  https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-to-save-the-planet-and-ourselves/  

PeopleNow.org Newsletter #1  

Ron Fisher www.dfpa.org,
doing business as PeopleNow.org
Fisher@PeopleNow.org
703-725-7849
Arlington, Virginia
Ron Fisher Bio  

​More opinions

Gordon M. Hahn: Fables of Ignatius
Nov 24, 2019 08:47 pm
It is now important for every American to realize that he or she can get little to no reliable news from the US mainstream media on Ukraine, Russia, or even the United States itself.With it becoming ever more clear that the US government and media have been covering up especially the Democratic Party’s collusion with Ukraine’s government in order to facilitate the self-enrichment of DP leaders’ family members, undermine the presidential candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump (however unpresidential he may be) and foment liberal-socialist revolutions globally, the participants are moving into high gear propaganda mode. A recent piece from David Ignatius is a good place to begin to highlight the intensification.... 
https://gordonhahn.com/2019/11/22/fables-of-ignatius/

25 Times Trump Has Been Dangerously Hawkish On Russia
November 19, 2019 • Caitlin Johnstone discredits a CNN listicle on Trump’s “softness” towards Moscow. In fact, she writes, the U.S. president has  actually been consistently reckless towards Moscow, with zero resistance from either party. 
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
​
CNN has published a fascinatingly manipulative and falsehood-laden article titled “25 times Trump was soft on Russia,” in which a lot of strained effort is poured into building the case that the U.S. president is suspiciously loyal to the nation against which he has spent his administration escalating dangerous new cold war aggressions.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/19/25-times-trump-has-been-dangerously-hawkish-on-russia/  
​
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/11/18/for-wall-street-russia-has-become-bullet-proof/#75f5c706ffd4  ​

Covert Operative In Ukraine Controversy Revealed To Be Associated Press – OpEd

November 15, 2019 By William Dunkerley
CONCLUSION:At this point it is necessary to reflect upon what AP is up to. What kind of role is it playing in bringing vital political news to American voters? A quote from Walter Cronkite can help put this into perspective: “We all have our likes and our dislikes. But… when we’re doing news — when we’re doing the front-page news, not the back page, not the op-ed pages, but when we’re doing the daily news, covering politics — it is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism.”  I can’t think of a rational argument that would support a notion that AP is practicing even basic journalism. It has exploited the presumptive trust enjoyed by its Stylebook — a bible in the journalism field — to covertly propagate one-sided “background” to its unsuspecting readers. If one accepts Cronkite’s concept of journalism, there no longer seems to be reason to trust AP’s Stylebook. It’s wrong on the political issues. It’s even wrong on the simple matter of how to spell the Ukrainian president’s name. The Stylebook might more honestly be termed a political document that manifests an insidious propensity to propagate false and misleading information. What a sad and troubling conclusion that is. 
https://www.eurasiareview.com/15112019-covert-operative-in-ukraine-controversy-revealed-to-be-associated-press-oped/  ​

Inconvenient Truths.  Alarming things we have learned under Trump, but not always about him.
By Stephen F. Cohen  NOVEMBER 6, 2019
The current state of US-Russian relations is unprecedentedly dangerous, not only due to reasons cited here—a new Cold War fraught with the possibility of hot war. Whether President Trump serves one or two terms, he must be fully empowered to cope with the multiple possibilities of a US-Russian military confrontation. That requires ridding him and our nation of Russiagate allegations—and that in turn requires learning how such allegations originated.  
https://www.thenation.com/article/inconvenient-truths-2/  

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Impeachment Pantomime
The political theatrics that begin Wednesday raise several questions. For starters, will Joe Biden be investigated for mounting evidence of corruption? And why is the  corporate media turning the CIA “whistleblower” into a phantom in plain sight?
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/12/patrick-lawrence-the-impeachment-pantomime/

John Brennan's CIA Trump Task Force - Could it become Obamagate?
By Philip Giraldi
November 12, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - There is considerable evidence that the American system of government may have been victimized by an illegal covert operation organized and executed by the U.S. intelligence and national security community. Former Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director Jim Comey appear to have played critical leadership roles in carrying out this conspiracy and they may not have operated on their own. Almost certainly what they may have done would have been explicitly authorized by the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, and his national security team.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52532.htm

RAGA.org thinks the "Neo-Con" title says it ALL. Cheers to David Stockman for saying it. Vladislav Krasnov
Up In Smoke: The Neocon Assault on Syria Is Finally Over
By David Stockman
October 24, 2019 "Information Clearing House"  

...Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming that the Arab Spring and the conflict in Syria were the result of external intervention and subversion....   

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52440.htm  

​Is Ukraine vital to U.S. security?
By Edward Lozansky - - Wednesday, November 27, 2019
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Trump can certainly compete with Hollywood’s most successful drama or comedy shows. However, when we deal with national security issues one expects the actors, in this case members of Congress and witnesses, to tell the truth. In this case, some do, but some regrettably do not. The whole picture, said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, looks like a “Soviet-style” event.  ...In this political atmosphere, anyone who calls for resumption of U.S.-Russian dialogue is labeled as Mr. Putin’s bootlicker or useful idiot at best. It was French President Macron who pronounced NATO’s brain to be dead and has come up with some ideas on how to avoid, in the words of former Sen. Sam Nunn and many other serious analysts, the process of “sleepwalking into nuclear catastrophe.”   Will Washington listen? Chances are not good, but what is the alternative?
⦁ Edward Lozansky is president of the American University in Moscow.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/nov/27/crosstalk-is-ukraine-vital-to-us-security/

Everyone Is a Russian Asset
America laughed at Hillary Clinton’s remarks about Tulsi Gabbard, but her ideas fit perfectly in the intellectual mainstream
By MATT TAIBBI

Hillary Clinton, not long ago the nominee of the Democratic Party, had some choice words about the state of American politics Friday.
  “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said on a podcast with former Barack Obama aide David Plouffe. “She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
  Clinton appeared to be talking about Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a combat veteran. She wasn’t done, teeing off on former Green Party candidate Jill Stein:
  “[Jill Stein’s] also a Russian asset… Yeah, she’s a Russian asset — I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/clinton-gabbard-russian-asset-jill-stein-901593/

​Hillary Clinton Is A Psychopath And A War Criminal: Prof. Francis Boyle
Dialogos Radio Interviews Prof. Francis Boyle
   The transcript of Dialogos Radio’s interview with international lawyer and professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois. This interview aired on their broadcasts for the week of February 18-24, 2016. Find the podcast of this interview here.
    MN: Joining us today on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series is international lawyer and professor of international law at The University of Illinois Dr. Francis Boyle. Boyle has served as legal counsel to the Palestinian Authority, to Hawaiian independence groups, and served on the legal team which led to the conviction of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. Professor Boyle, welcome to our program today.
https://www.countercurrents.org/boyle020316.htm

Pepe Escobar: The Road to Damascus: How the Syria War was Won
​Oct 23, 2019 10:58 am
What is happening in Syria, following yet another Russia-brokered deal, is a massive geopolitical game-changer.  

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/10/18/pepe-escobar-the-road-to-damascus-how-the-syria-war-was-won/  ​
​

Everybody Betraying Everybody in Syria
After some eight years of civil conflict, the situation in Syria is basically reverting to the pre-conflict norm, writes Graham E. Fuller.
By Graham E. Fuller
grahamefuller.com
Just what have we witnessed in the recent events in Syria? It’s hard to know, given the avalanche of superficial and over-the-top headlines in most U.S. media: betrayal of the Kurds, handing Syria over to Russia, caving to Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan, bestowing a gift upon Iran, allowing ISIS to once again run wild, end of U.S. leadership.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/10/16/everybody-betraying-everybody-in-syria/

Restoration of the Monastery of St. Dimitry of Rostov
https://www.rbth.com/travel/331320-rostov-iakov-monastery

Comparison of early 20th-century photographs in the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) with photographs from William C. Brumfield Collection  (National Gallery of Art) . 

232nd article in "Discovering Russia" series. 
General link:  https://www.rbth.com/special-discovering-russia

Monumental art in Yaroslavl: Church of the Prophet Elijah
https://www.rbth.com/travel/331251-yaroslavls-church-prophet-elijah
​
Comparison of early 20th-century photographs in the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) with photographs from William C. Brumfield Collection  (National Gallery of Art). 

231st article in "Discovering Russia" series. 
https://www.rbth.com/special-discovering-russia

Rebuilding a masterpiece of wooden architecture. the Intercession Church from Ankhimovo:
https://www.rbth.com/travel/331188-intercession-church-petersburg

Comparison of early 20th-century photographs in the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) with photographs from William C. Brumfield Collection  (National Gallery of Art) . 

230th article in "Discovering Russia" series. 
General link:   https://www.rbth.com/special-discovering-russia

ATTENTION - About using TOR or Opera VPN Browser to visit RAGA from other countries! For some time I have heard the reports that RAGA became inaccessible for readers located in Russia and, perhaps, some other countries. No worry:  try - out TOR Browser. It is easy to install, and it is FREE: 
https://www.torproject.org/download/

Opera is also free and offers similar VPN function: 
https://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn

*TOR and other VPN browsers are restricted in some countries so know your local laws before using these programs. Act at your won risk. 

BBC News: The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev full interview
The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that current tension between Russia and the West is putting the world in “colossal danger” due to the threat from nuclear weapons.
In an interview with the BBC's Steve Rosenberg, former President Gorbachev called for all countries to declare that nuclear weapons should be destroyed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYVsKoQXATY

Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

​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​

Edward Snowden’s book is not a ‘coming-of-age’ saga. It is necessary to say that at the outset. One of the peculiarities of our times is the penchant for rendering everything in terms of so-called ‘human interest.’  The most profound events, the most penetrating analysis, the most stirring ideas – all are reduced to personality. Whether it is the personality of the author, a representation of the subject, or some background character, we wonder: Who can write about Hillary without immediately bringing up Bill?

So, it is no surprise that the reviews of Snowden’s revelatory and instructive account of his experience place undue stress on background, his relationship with his now wife Lindsay Mills (an admirable person), his workplace colleagues. They come up dry in terms of the man. They are totally irrelevant to the crucial issues of America’s Intelligence obsession/abuse.

Admittedly, Snowden does offer us a descriptive account of his life’s progression – but it is all quite prosaic. You don’t find either ‘Snowden’ or the meaning of what his has exposed (in the book as well as in the ‘papers’) by looking at the outer contours of his life. That does not deter reviewers, of course. They are driven by three things: our culture’s pervasive voyeurism, the bottom line of whatever media company they’re writing for, and – most powerfully – an escape from the responsibility to address the grave and shameful matters that he discusses. The last is at once an intellectual challenge and a career risk.

Snowden’s awakening to the distressing illegal activities of the NSA/CIA nexus was gradual. Omens were there early on – as was his discomfort with the Intelligence world’s ethics. He joined the CIA in 2007 just a few years after the 9/11 trauma. Let us recall that period. The country was panicked; a quiet hysteria was everywhere. So was a thirst for vengeance. Official Washington lived with the dread of more attacks to come. Few understood the dimensions of the threat or its mainsprings. The brooding atmosphere was like a lingering winter ground-fog. It has yet to fully disperse. The Intelligence agencies felt the imperative to act, i.e. to do something without delay. Thinking it all through was neither any office’s clear responsibility nor seen as a logical prelude to taking action.

In typical fashion the impulsive response was to mobilize resources – money and technology, the two prized assets in the United States’ Intelligence arsenal. The money was duly appropriated. How to spend it was the challenge. Disposing of $75 billion a year is not easy when you already possess an apparatus larger than that of all the world’s other Intelligence services combined. Technology came to the rescue as the quickest way to absorb all those dollars. That is to say, technology and its human consorts numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Recruiters combed the universities to lay their hands on pretty much any live body that came within reach. Many bodies responded to their blandishments.  Patriotism was a big sell. So was the prospect of a well-paid, secure job. Credentials were secondary – with somef exceptions. Language skills were one, especially Arabic, Farsi and other neglected ‘exotic’ tongues. IT capabilities were in even greater demand. For nerds, it was like Paradise – the promised land of 77 jobs open to the bearded, the tattooed, the loners, the addicted tinkers. Diversity left room for the conventional, too.

Snowden was pretty conventional on most counts. Consumed by IT to the point of neglecting his formal studies, he had an independent cast of mind, unawed by authority, but not a born rebel. After kicking around in a number of schools and jobs interspersed with a stint in the Army, he wound up applying to a position advertised at a consulting firm called COMSO. He was 23. (Snowden never bothered to find out what the acronym stood for; apparently it’s owned by BAEA Systems). A few exchanges of electronic correspondence led to an interview in a non-descript office in a non-descript building in Greenbelt, Maryland with an everyman non-descript recruiter.

A cursory conversation concluded with the man telling Snowden “the job is yours, Edward. What sort of salary are you looking for?” Snowden’s $50k request rose to $62k at the man’s prodding – he was bent on getting the amount as high as reasonably possible. Why? His outfit wasn’t going to pay it; rather, the U.S. government via the CIA would with the recruiting company getting a fixed percentage. ‘Cost-plus” is what they call it. These were (are) the terms on which roughly 80% of the ‘contractors’ who make up the NSA (and technical CIA workforce) got their jobs. Some switch to the more secure status of a straight government employee, some jump back and forth -as did Snowden.

In effect, the famed Intelligence community turned over recruiting responsibilities for staffing the great “War On Terror” to private, for-profit firms. Some were big defense contractors like Lockheed Martin – others small-time operations that acted as little more than a dating service. A strong preference was given to candidates who had advanced skills and some experience. The NSA and CIA didn’t want to be bothered training them. It did, though, take 6 months to indoctrinate and to socialize them.

As Snowden writes, “restructuring your intelligence agencies so that your most sensitive systems were being run by somebody who really didn’t work for you was what passed for innovation.” It did line the pockets of both the dating services and the top administrators who would eventually parachute into lavishly paid positions at those same outfits.

Security clearances? A formality. Given that 835,000 people have wound up with TOP SECRET clearances, it was derisory. A Mickey Mouse polygraph exam: “have you ever been a member or supporter of al-Qaeda?..” A cheap sedative would get you through even if you did have something awkward to hide. Background checks were of the kind done by shop-worn FBI agents in regional offices who show up in a professor’s office with a checklist of banal questions. “Has Jane Doe, to the best of your knowledge, ever belonged to an organization that seeks the overthrow of the United States government? To the best of your knowledge, is Jane Doe addicted to any illegal substance or engaged in alcohol abuse?”

An honest answer would be: “How the hell do I know?” Never having had the pleasure of being invited to a pre-dawn gathering of her and her confederates where they practiced suicide bombings while under the influence of the drug of the month, all I could say was ‘NO.’ The likelihood of having provided cover for a sleeper agent of a terrorist organization was virtually non-existent. The sober truth is that the number of such who have surfaced since 9/11 numbers is in the low single digits. Those few slipped through the fingers of an FBI whose considerable resources were spent entrapping and directing poor sods who, left to their own devices, never would have gotten up from their bar stools or dragged themselves away from their PCs.

Such security measures, existing at the time of Snowden’s recruitment, were ill-suited to identify a dedicated young American whose intelligence, courage and integrity prompted him to take the risk of revealing that the Intelligence agencies he worked for were violating the law and the Constitution on the orders of 3 successive Presidents and their appointees.

In theory, agents of hostile governments (a bestiary now composed of Russia, Iran, China, Hezbollah, Syria and the ever-menacing Mr. Maduro in Caracas) could have taken advantage of the Intelligence agencies slapdash recruiting methods and flawed IT security to penetrate into those ever-expanding data banks. None have managed what Snowden did – at least not from the inside. They could have – if the intent existed. Just respond to a job announcement inserted by the non-descript man in the non-descript office (and take that sedative when they hook you up to the polygraph).

Ironically, one of Snowden’s frustrations before government criminality wracked his conscience was the lackadaisical response of his superiors to his pointing out the seriousness of those flaws – and more serious technical flaws in their systems -and to his recommendations for remedying them.  His initiative produced nothing in the way of remediation.

The system – organization, modes, persons – Snowden describes exhibits some singular features. Most striking is the disproportionate effort and resources devoted to its maintenance. His arrival came at the moment when the CIA and NSA were charging ahead full-bore to build and deploy a vast, high tech apparatus for accumulating, storing and sifting vast amounts of Intelligence data. That involved hardware, software, real estate, dense networks of personnel scattered around the globe and – not least – an intricate, multi-layered organizational complex. Communication was the common denominator.

Communications among unwitting sources picked up by a mind-boggling array of surveillance devices; communications within the Intelligence administration – horizontally, vertically, matrixed into storage sites, out of storage sites; communication among technicians, analysts, directors, and policy-makers. The last, of course, was least developed or standardized. Witness Mr. Tenet, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney.

Maintaining the systems consumed the lion’s share of the resources.  Actual deployment/activation was relatively cheap. Transmission/storage was another ‘gas-guzzler.’ Add in the enormous waste and redundancy involved in relying on a galaxy of predatory contracting firms, and you have the answer as how to spend $80 annually while accomplishing very little of value.

Further evidence of how pervasive is the technology driven operations of the IC is the disparagement of human Intelligence. We do know that this shift began several years before 9/11. Still, when Snowden arrived in Geneva on his first overseas assignment, the CIA still was hunting and signing up real live sources. Even Snowden the nerd was mobilized to try his hand – despite an aversion to gala parties and alcohol. An expatriate Saudi supposedly involved in oil and money had been identified as someone to look into.

Snowden was told to make the first contact before passing him on to a ‘pro.’ This episode quickly turns comedic – not because of Snowden’s naïveté but due to the bumbling of his senior operator. The latter wound up being recalled to Maclean. The humiliated Saudi wound up back in the Kingdom nursing a life-long grudge against the Yanks who had pulled the rug out from under his posh Geneva sedan chair.

This occurred just about the time that the CIA honchos made the fateful decision to drop those old-fashioned methods of seducing/ buying/blackmailing/running agents. The substitute method was simplicity itself. Predictably, it was technology grounded, antiseptic and did away with the need for most human faculties. Step 1: identify somebody who might know something worth having. Step 2: ‘tap’ as many of his/her electronic communications as possible. Collect and store the data for future ‘algorithm-fication.’  Installation, the only sensitive part of the process, became progressively easier as surveillance technology developed ever greater sophistication. Clean & easy.

HUMINT was being marginalized just as old-fashioned SIGNET was being recast as “cyberintelligence.” That foreshadow the morphing of “mass surveillance’ into “bulk collection” and “metadata” – the former connotation suggesting the bi-annual municipal trash service and the latter impressive but unfrightening.

By 2011, Snowden – now promoted to a bigger job with expanded access – was fully aware that the United States was committed to a massive, global strategy of electronic surveillance. The ultimate aim was to assemble a vast horde of data about everyone who conceivably was worth tracking, and hundreds of millions about whom you knew nothing. BUT about whom you might to know something at some future time – whether on the basis of specific reference or the algorithm printouts. That realization left him deeply disturbed.

Moreover, a harsh truth was emerging. The developing system paid scant attention to legal constraints or privacy rights of any kind. Indeed, a powerful logic was at work that was driving the process toward a total disregard for the 4th amendment. Its strictures could not be accommodated by the technology – hardware & software. The organizational drive within the Intelligence agencies steamrolled all other considerations. Regard for the sensibilities of foreign governments didn’t figure in the equation. Precedent setting and possible retaliation similarly were given no thought (“this is America – isn’t it!”) The emotions that fueled the War On Terror were still eclipsing reason – and they were being inflamed by politicos around the country.

 Finally, there was unanimity among higher-ups – in the Intelligence agencies, in Congress, in the courts, in the Justice Department and in the White House under 3 successive Presidents - in holding to the view that the law had to bend before the exigencies of the threatening times. The Privacy vs Security trade-off as it mistakenly was called by all and sundry – including renowned law professors writing in the New York Review of Books and other esteemed places. In truth it was a conflict between the Law and Lawlessness.

The difference between the two formulations is elementary – but fundamental. The concept of “security vs privacy” has no standing whatsoever in the law – regardless of the standing it might have in the policy realm or philosophical discourse. (‘Mitigating circumstances’ may be acknowledged; however, they come into play only at the sentencing stage. A crime is a crime is a crime). The readiness to obscure that difference, therefore, had nothing to do with intellect. Rather, it demonstrated that we were not ready to go down a road to where Constitution met political expediency.  That attitude has contributed to the persecution of Snowden.

There is a straightforward way to reconcile the two. If one feels that the privacy vs security balance is weighed too heavily in the privacy direction, then there is a method for shifting it, i.e. pass new legislation &/or constitutional amendment. Of course, if you are in panic mode and believe that the exigencies are so acute as to put the Republic at risk, then you are tempted to circumvent the law - especially easy to do when the President is directing you under prodding by the Vice-President.

People like Snowden were not privy to the details. But the implications of the technical tasks they were doing pointed to the conclusion that such a compact was in place. Lawlessness was destined to win.

In particular regard to elite political consensus, let us recall the bipartisan cabal formed by President Bush in 2002 to launch a radical surveillance program that they acknowledged was illegal and nullified the 4th amendment. There was the Deistic push to all that followed. That story was recounted by James Risen in his 2006 book STATE OF WAR – a story that his New York Times editors had in October 2004 but withheld under direct pressure from the Bush White House.

The cabal’s members included all the Congressional leaders from both parties (Pelosi, Daschle, Feinstein on the Democratic side), the Attorney General John Ashcroft, Chief Justice Rehnquist, Robert Mueller – Director of the FBI, as well as the heads of the principal Intelligence agencies and their chief subordinates: General Michael Hayden at the CIA, George Tenet at CIA, and Admirals Thomas Wilson and Lowell Jacoby at DIA. They were sworn to secrecy – an oath they’ve observed to this day. The big IT companies provided helpful services while denying that awkward fact. After all, they were doing something similar for their own deceitful commercial purposes.

Thereby, the equivalent of a “Line of Blood’ was drawn that placed the leaders of America on the side of clandestine criminality. That truth foreclosed any chance of the country’s coming to terms with what constitutes a revision of the Constitution without due process. Overcoming it was certainly not something that an Obama had either the conviction or courage to try doing. Snowden did. The vehemence of his denunciation and persecution by Obama and other self-styled liberal humanists can be explained by the juxtaposition. *

They, and America’s political class generally, cannot understand a man like Snowden. Just what makes him tick is beyond their comprehension. That dread of the unknowable stokes their passionate enmity toward him. Moreover, he might inspire others of similar character. The prospect of an upwelling of such persons exposing the deceit, lawlessness and incompetence - that had become endemic in the most sensitive corners of the American government was nightmarish. Even worse, it undercut their cultivated self-image as public servants of rectitude. Therefore, the instinct of Obama, Holder, Hillary, the NYT editors’ et al was to crucify Snowden.

Snowden rose rapidly into more and more responsible positions – propelled by his talents, his innovative mind and technical curiosity. With promotion came even greater access to the sweep of the IC’s surveillance activities. From Tokyo to Maryland to Hawaii, he encountered PRISM in all its troubling dimensions.

“PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD US-984XN. PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google LLC under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle, among other things.”

It was his involvement with PRISM that convinced Snowden of the imperative to expose it. For he was now an active contributor to a criminal operation – an aggressive multi-dimensional program that was routinely violating Americans’ basis constitutional rights while promising even deeper encroachments. Nobody was inclined to do anything about it.

Under the pressure of being Dell’s chief technologist for the CIA account and recoiling from the programs he was directing, Snowden began to suffer nervous seizures. It was finally diagnosed as a form of epilepsy.

Back in Hawaii, his plans began to crystallize. They were encouraged by a talk given there by the CIA’s chief technology officer ‘Gus’ Hunt. He informed the audience that “At the CIA, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.” There were journalists there from the ‘high tech’ press and journals. Hunt mentioned to them, in a private discussion, that the agency could subject to surveillance every one of their communications – much of it through their smart phones, activated or not. None of them reported on what was said. Mysteriously, a video of the talk appeared on You Tube – site visited by a total of 302 people in 6 years. Some of those journalists might very well be commenting on Snowden’s book in reviews heavy on the Lindsay element.

The date was March 20, 2013. Exactly 7 days earlier, General James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In response to a direct question from Senator Wyden as to whether the NSA conducted mass surveillance of Americans, Clapper replied: ‘NO.” His lie represented criminal perjury, a perjury ignored by all parties.

Have we gotten our money’s worth? If not – why? You decide.

• In the Spring of 2008, legislation to extend the broad powers of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FSIA) was before the Congress. Senator Barack Obama made strongly worded comments committing himself to opposing it – indeed, to filibuster against it. When the bill came up in June, he voted in favor. Responding to criticism of his volte-face, he wrote an open letter disparaging his critics as ‘my left-wing friends.’  Three months earlier, he too had been one of those distained left-wingers. That was an augury of things to come.  

In the wake of the Snowden revelations, President Obama assured the country that “no one is listening to your phone calls.” It was a bald-faced lie. Right then it should have been obvious what manner of man was on the threshold of the White House. Such is our capacity for self-delusion that even today, 11 years later, I know of no public figure of the Democratic persuasion who is prepared to hold Obama to account. Yet they are free and easy with their denunciation of Edward Snowden – the villain, the traitor.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/10106919/Obama-on-NSA-surveillance-scandal-nobody-is-listening-to-your-phone-calls.html

Michael Brenner mbren@pitt.edu
You may also like to see Glen Grweenwald’s twit to me about the book
Glenn Greenwald@ggreenwald

 • Sep 12
Just got our copy of Edward @Snowden's book/memoir, Permanent Record! So much has been said about this great & courageous hero; now he finally tells his own story in his own words. It's out on Constitution Day - Sept 17 - but you can pre-order now https://amazon.com/Permanent-Record-Edward-Snowden/dp/1250237238

And my response to Greenwald
w george krasnow@vlad62slav

Edward Snowden is a hero for the global peace, and Glenn Greenwald be praised for his loyal support to Snowden and other peace champions. Snowden's book is a must for the citizens of the world.
 
P.S. For self-disclosure I must admit I have not read Snowden’s book but I wrote an article about him shortly after his defection. It was published by RAGA 

To Defect or to Integrate? The USA vs Edward Snowden 4/29/2014 

http://www.raga.org/news/to-defect-or-to-integrate-the-usa-vs-edward-snowden
​
I am also a former Soviet defector and the author of Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List.
https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Defectors-Wanted-Institution-Publication-ebook/dp/B07CQPFH5S
​
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​

​It is important we do not confuse Gandhi's Non-Violent philosophy with cowardice. As Gandhi himself put it: "Let no one say when I am gone that I taught the people to be cowards. I would far rather that you died bravely dealing a blow and receiving a blow than died in abject terror. Fleeing from battle is cowardice and unworthy of a warrior. Cowardice is worse than violence because cowards can never be non-violent." See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha  

When an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead, some 53 times more powerful that the one dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, is detonated over Manhattan in the apocalyptic nuclear exchange with Russia, the center of the blast will reach four to five times the temperature of the sun and the resulting fire storm will cover 90 to 150 square miles and will rage for several hours, based on an assessment by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.  People and animals in the direct light of the fireball will be mutilated with third degree burns as far away as Corona, Queens, and Crown Heights, Brooklyn.  There will be no survivors within five to seven miles of Midtown Manhattan.

When command centers in and around the Russian capital are attacked with Trident nuclear warheads from a single submarine, “The total number of people who would die within 12 weeks in Moscow and the surrounding areas would be around 3 million, including around 750,000 children,” according to a study by John Ainslie. “Several million people would be injured.”  With all major hospitals in the area destroyed or rendered inoperable by radiation and fire, there will be no burn beds to alleviate the horrific wounds sustained by millions of people who are not completely incinerated.

Elaine Scarry, a Professor at Harvard University, in her recent interview in Boston Review invokes these and many other horrors that miraculously have not yet happened and warns: “I’m almost at the point of believing that there is a wanton refusal to see the imminent peril, a refusal to understand not just that we have a responsibility to reverse it, to dismantle it, but that we have the ability to do so, and that if we don’t, it is going to happen. I don’t know if it’s going to happen this year, or whether it’s going to happen this century, but it’s almost inconceivable that nuclear war isn’t going to happen.”

With hundreds of nuclear-tipped ICBMs in Russia and America on hair-trigger alert and a complete break-down in nuclear arms control agreements and communication between the world’s two largest nuclear superpowers, no words ring truer or more urgent today. 

Ernest Moniz and Sam Nunn, bemoaning this erosion of “strategic stability” in the U.S.-Russia relations, write in the Foreign Affairs magazine on this year’s somber 74th anniversary of Hiroshima Day: “Not since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis has the risk of a U.S.-Russian confrontation involving the use of nuclear weapons been as high as it is today. Yet unlike during the Cold War, both sides seem willfully blind to the peril.”

As the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining vestige of nuclear arms control architecture between the U.S. and Russia, is set to expire in 2021, and “all nine nuclear powers are…modernizing their nuclear weapons production facilities and adding new, improved types of nuclear weapons to their arsenals,” it is really hard to miss the gravity of what we are witnessing in the world today.  We have to start working on easing that omnicidal tension now, before it is too late.  In order to do this, we have to finish what we weren’t able to resolve in the 1990’s.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the world had a real chance of pursuing the path of peaceful co-existence.  The horrible nightmare that we all lived in during the second half of the twentieth century, in constant fear of mutually assured nuclear destruction, seemed to be over.  There were bright, peaceful years ahead.  But something went awfully wrong…

What we are experiencing today causes even more fear, and you can’t really call it a “nightmare” any longer.  It’s been a long time since everybody awoke, but most are still pretending to be asleep.  Good luck trying to wake them up, as Gandhi was well aware.  In the meantime, the Doomsday Clock is ticking, and the nuclear odds are not in our favor.

To stop the clock, before the minute hand irreversibly hits the eternal midnight, we are going to have to give up our misplaced faith in our own exceptional uniqueness and insularity.  It is that faith that allows us to see ourselves as superior to the rest of the world and, simultaneously, allows others to manipulate us.  What politician would be able to convince his constituents that the continuation of endless war is good for them, if they didn’t already believe that it would be necessary to preserve and impose forcefully on the rest of the world the freedom-loving fire of their benevolent exceptionalism?

That was precisely how, in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, which, in the words of the late Lynn Margulis, was “the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations,” the neoconservatives were able to con America into adopting the concepts of unilateralism and pre-emptive military action.  After all, we know better what’s best for the rest of the planet, truth and justice be damned; we are the victims, we are different, and we’ll to dictate to others by our God-given privilege the rules and conditions of their dependent, inferior, and completely isolated existence.

Once we’ve let this faith in our uniquely-blessed exceptionalism and our vengeful self-righteousness, whether American, or Jewish, or Evangelical Christian, nurtured carefully by the state and mass media, blind us into such an illusion, we lost our chances for peaceful development in the world.  Russia, which was infected by the Bolsheviks with a similar belief system in the twentieth century, paid for it dearly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The United States is about to experience the same tragedy that it was forewarned about by the Russian ordeal.

The only thing that can help us now is the realization that we are all brothers and sisters.  We are all in this together; we are all the same and all so different.  We all share the same fundamental interests.  The other person’s happiness is no less valuable and important than ours.  And her pain no less terrible and unbearable than our own.  All those who say otherwise are our only enemies.  We have no others.  We have to overcome them with our self-enquiry and ensuing action.  There are many organizations and international efforts trying to bring peace and security to us all, but they need our collective and individual help.

First of all, there is the Appeal of the Hibakusha, the A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.  The Appeal, signed by over 9 million people around the world, states:

We, the Hibakusha, call on all State Governments to conclude a treaty to ban and eliminate nuclear weapons. The average age of the Hibakusha now exceeds 80. It is our strong desire to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world in our lifetime so that succeeding generations of people will not see hell on earth ever again.

You, your families and relatives, or any other people should not be made Hibakusha again. We believe that your signatures appended to this appeal will add up to the voices of hundreds of millions of people around the world and move international politics. They will finally save the future of our blue planet and all life on it. We earnestly appeal to you to append your signature to this petition.

Let’s get these signatures to 100,000,000 and make the Hibakusha and our voices heard!

Second, there is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) itself, which was adopted at the UN on July 7, 2017.  On Hiroshima Day 2019, Bolivia became the 25th country to deposit its ratification instrument of the TPNW.  The Treaty will enter into force once it’s been ratified by 50 States, so we are now halfway to making nuclear weapons illegal under international law.  Organizations, such as ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) and Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations), need all the help we can provide them to make full ratification of the TPNW a reality.

Third, we need to follow the lead of the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) and bring the nuclear disarmament issue into the 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaign.  On July 1, 2019, the USCM, a nonpartisan association of 1,408 American cities with populations over 30,000, unanimously adopted a Mayors for Peace resolution “Calling on All Presidential Candidates to Make Known Their Positions on Nuclear Weapons and to Pledge U.S. Global Leadership in Preventing Nuclear War, Returning to Diplomacy, and Negotiating the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons”.  The USCM “calls on all Presidential candidates to pledge, if elected, to reverse U.S. opposition to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and to embrace its humanitarian values and goals”.  We have to bring this resolution to the attention of our mayors, public officials, and Presidential candidates.  And we need to help United for Peace & Justice, CodePink, World BEYOND War, and other peace organizations make this resolution, along with others adopted by the USCM in the past, front and center in a number of critical campaigns, including Back from the Brink and Divest from the War Machine.

Fourth, there was the Basel Appeal on Disarmament and Sustainable Security addressed in January  2019 to Presidents Trump and Putin, Secretary-General of NATO, and to the chairs of U.S. congressional and Russian parliamentary committees on defense and foreign relations, by mayors, parliamentarians and representatives of civil society organizations from some 40 countries, including the mayors of 18 U.S. cities.  Their joint appeal calls on the U.S., Russian and European leaders to preserve the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (from which the United States formally withdrew on August 2), extend the New START Treaty until 2026, adopt ‘no-first-use’ and rescind ‘launch-on-warning’ policies, and work towards a nuclear-weapon-free world through “enhanced dialogue and engagement with other nuclear-armed States.” 

The endorsing mayors and parliamentarians also call on the Russian Duma and U.S. Congress to refuse to authorize or allocate funding for the nuclear weapons banned by the INF Treaty, reaffirm their commitment “to acting resolutely for a nuclear-weapons-free and less militarized world,” and “call on cities, parliaments, governments and civil society around the world to join us in this endeavor.”  You can already see these calls at work in several Congressional resolutions in the U.S., such as the No First-Use Act introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Adam Smith.

As  Christine Muttonen, Jacqueline Cabasso, and Alyn Ware write on IPS, “it may not be all up to Trump and Putin.”  They quote U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who observed: “People want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

This power-from-below approach – taking concerted action on nuclear risk-reduction and disarmament in federal, state and city legislatures – is just beginning…There are powerful levers parliaments, cities and civil society can use to stop the unraveling of the arms control regime and prevent an arms race…

It is our responsibility as an informed public in what is supposed to be a participatory democracy to help them engage these levers.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, there are the indispensable nonviolent acts of civil disobedience that must become our reality for the foreseeable future.  We have plenty of examples of this in our past, from Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in the U.S., to Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha and the Indian independence movement, which was influenced heavily by Leo Tolstoy’s philosophy of “non-resistance to evil by force.”  Tolstoy was, in turn, moved by the Doukhobors (Духоборы, “Spirit Wrestlers”), whose pacifism and anti-war preaching led to government persecution in 19th-century Russia and whose immigration to Canada, following their 1895 mass burning of guns in Transcaucasia, Tolstoy helped finance, along with the British Quakers.  The Doukhobors tradition is alive in Canada to this day.

The Plowshares movement is a courageous example of anti-nuclear protests and nonviolent resistance to war in the present-day world.  The movement was started by the Reverend Daniel Berrigan, his brother Phillip and six other activists, known as the “Plowshares Eight”, when they trespassed onto the General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, PA, on September 9, 1980.  They hammered on nuclear warhead nose cones, poured blood on documents, and prayed for peace, before being arrested. A prolonged court battle followed, with over 10 felony and misdemeanor charges piled on by the federal government.  The eight were convicted and served from five days to over 14 months in prison for their protest.

There have been 100 similar actions throughout the world since then, with the latest event organized on April 4, 2018.  On that day, marking the 50th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, seven Catholic plowshares activists entered Kings Bay Naval base in St. Mary’s, GA, the largest nuclear submarine base in the world.

The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7) said in their pre-action statement, “Weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, create nothing but a false sense of security.  They cannot constitute the basis for peaceful co-existence between members of the human family, which must rather be inspired by an ethics of solidarity.  Nuclear weapons eviscerate the rule of law and force white supremacy, perpetuate endless war and environmental destruction, and ensure immunity for all manner of crimes against humanity…A just and peaceful world is possible when we join prayers with action, [beat] swords into plowshares.”

The KBP7 proceeded to symbolically and nonviolently convert the nuclear weapons of mass destruction stored at the base by hammering on a statue of a Trident II D5 missile and pouring their own blood on it.  They were arrested, and several of them, including the 79-year-old Liz McAlister, have spent the next 17 months (as of this writing) in jail, awaiting trial (now set for October 21) and facing 25 years in prison, if convicted of the multiple charges brought by the federal government.  Compare this with the 13 months served by the multimillionaire pedophile, sex trafficker, and alleged Mossad agent Jeffrey Epstein out of an 18-month sentence in 2008 for molesting 36 underage girls, some as young as 14 years old, and you’ll get the idea of whose interests the government and the justice system truly represent and why our nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience are so important.

It takes exceptional courage and dedication to do what the Plowshares Eight, KBP7, and the rest of the Plowshares movement have done, and very few of us will ever be able to rise to their level.  But we all have to stand in solidarity with these heroes, when they need our help the most.  Please join Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other Nobel Peace Laureates and distinguished supporters from around the world and sign a global petition to U.S. Attorney General William Barr to dismiss all charges against the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.

We can also look to the British-based group Extinction Rebellion (XR, for short) for inspiration in using “acts of peaceful civil disobedience to disrupt the business-as-usual which is sending our species on a one-way track to extinction.”  The movement was founded in May of 2018 (one month after the KBP7 action) by 94 academics who co-signed a letter declaring that “When a government willfully abrogates its responsibility to protect its citizens from harm and to secure the future for generations to come, it has failed in its most essential duty of stewardship. The “social contract” has been broken, and it is therefore not only our right, but our moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction and flagrant dereliction of duty, and to rebel to defend life itself.”

Extinction Rebellion has since brought together thousands of people around the world in nonviolent direct actions against the governments’ criminal inability to address the “direct existential threat” to humanity of climate change and ecological collapse.  Major roads and bridges were blocked and hundreds of demonstrators arrested.  XR organizers have called for a general strike around the world this October.  As Chris Hedges writes in Fear vs. Fear,

The 10-day protest in April in London led by Extinction Rebellion—which saw 1,130 people arrested as crowds repeatedly shut down major parts of the city in demonstrating against the failure of the ruling elites to confront the climate catastrophe—is what we must emulate…

Switch off the electronic images. Ignore the media burlesque. The endless political shows, which turn presidential campaigns into mind-numbing, two-year-long marathons, are entertainment. Do not trust anyone in power. We will save ourselves by building mass movements to overthrow corporate power. I am not certain we will succeed. But I am certain that if we fail, we are doomed.

Elaine Scarry observes in her interview for Boston Review that “It might be embarrassing to have to stand on a street corner with a sign or attend a public meeting.  Imagine, though, if we forgave the complicity with past acts of enslavement or genocide by saying, ‘People saw that it was wrong, but they considered it too intellectually obvious, too compromising of their dignity, to have to stand up and protest.’”

Discussing the meaning of the Second Amendment as the repudiation of a “standing army” that serves at the discretion of a single individual, without the consent of the citizens who are instead to be armed for their mutual self-defense, she notes that “A nuclear weapon is everything that was detested (and regarded as illegal) in the ‘standing army…’”  We have surrendered our right to self-defense, which underlies every other human right, to a “thermonuclear monarch,” who is “so thrilling, so important, so vulnerable that he alone deserves a fallout shelter.”

As for America’s political landscape,
Right now it seems there are only two options: keep the right to bear arms and continue to witness shootings in schools, streets, and workplaces, or repeal the right to bear arms altogether. But there is a third alternative: the left has to listen to the right, and the right has to listen to the left…Ours is a citizenry that needs to relearn what courage is; it’s not shooting schoolchildren, and it’s not firing nuclear missiles at the innocent citizenry of a foreign nation.

The Chinese writer and poet Lu Xun wrote, “Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing–but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.”  May we all walk this path to peace.
 
Author: Anna Tolstoyevskaya grew up in the Soviet Union and came to the U.S. as a student of Philology and Foreign Service in the mid-1990s. She is an analyst by trade and an Austinite at heart, having spent a third of her life in that beautiful city. She can be reached at atx3017@gmail.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
www.RAGA.org​

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

Congrats!
​Let me congratulate Russian readers with the beginning of school year across the whole country, and the American readers I wish a Happy Labor Day!

ATTENTION - About using TOR or Opera VPN Browser to visit RAGA from other countries! For some time I have heard the reports that RAGA became inaccessible for readers located in Russia and, perhaps, some other countries. No worr:  try - out TOR Browser. It is easy to install, and it is FREE: 
https://www.torproject.org/download/

Opera is also free and offers similar VPN fiction: 
https://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn

*TOR and other VPN browsers are restricted in some countries so know your local laws before using these programs. Act at your won risk. 

Now, some news!

Ron Unz's Strategy for the Alt-Media to Defeat the Mainstream Media Is Brilliant
Vladislav Krasnov Jul 25 2019, 9373 views 213 comments
 
Ron Unz’s article “The Alternative Media Can Defeat the Mainstream Media” makes a lot of sense, especially, as viewed against the background of his own articles in which he does not shy away from criticizing Jewish religion, Zionism, or ingrained habits. Above all, he welcomes others to do the same. In fact, he does more to undermine the moneyed Jewish MSM establishment than many alleged or real anti-Semite. Charles Bausman deserves the credit for rerunning Unz’s important strategy-minded article in Russia-Insider. 

I think that Ron Unz is right in focusing on the media. “Groups advocating policies opposed by the American establishment should recognize that the greatest obstacle they face is usually the mainstream media”, he says. And adds, “In Clauswitzian terms, the media often constitutes the strategic “center of gravity” of the opposing forces”.

READ MORE and feel free to participate in the debate it generated.
https://russia-insider.com/en/ron-unzs-strategy-alt-media-defeat-mainstream-media-brilliant/ri27507

The above article is also posted on RAGA site. However, since a few months ago, RAGA has been inaccessible from Russia. Indirectly one can access RAGA by using TOR Browser. 
Please try to use TOR Browser! Easy to install and FREE.
https://www.torproject.org/download/

Alternatively try Opera VPN: https://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn
 
Then please try the link below.
http://www.raga.org/news/ron-unzs-strategy-for-the-alt-media-to-defeat-the-mainstream-media-is-brilliant-vladislav-krasnov-phd

That is how it happened when I invited Kevin Barrett and his readers/listeners to join the debate about my article about Ron Unz’s “strategy” to Beat the Big Media

AUDIO PODCAST VERSION

"Dear Kevin,
"This is to invite you and your readers/listeners to a debate on Jewish-Gentile relations that my article 'Ron Unz's Strategy for the Alt-Media to Defeat the Mainstream Media Is Brilliant' generated on the pages of Russia-Insider. 

"So far there are over 213 comments, and it is good as far as hits are concerned. However, I've noticed a negative dynamics because emotional negativism toward Jews seems to predominate. I can understand that the anger toward Jews in general is, at least, partially understandable and perhaps justifiable. However, I am convinced that all Jews are not alike. Moreover, the number of Jews who challenge Zionism, especially its current pro-Netanyahu trend, is growing. Some Jews are even more forthright about secretive Jewish shenanigans than the alleged 'anti-Semitic' authors of The Protocols of the Wizards of Zion were.

"Therefore I feel that it is incumbent upon us-- the 'Whites', Gentiles, Christian, Muslim, and secular non-Jews--to respond in kind and welcome such dissident Jews as Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir (whom I know personally and admire his work), Ron Unz, Brother Nathanael Kapner and several more into the community of truth-seekers.

"And you, Kevin,  are the person who is best qualified and positioned to do so. You're a converted Muslim familiar with Christianity. And you are a secular scholar. You work well with Veterans Today and now a regular author of Ron Unz's site. What is personally very important to me, you know who Mikhail Bakhtin, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn are. You know that Russians were able to overcome Marxist-Leninist ideological and political monopoly ('monologue') via a dialogue and actually polyphony of many dissident authors as soon as glasnost was established. In the US we should be able to stave off the monologic tendency of Big Media by letting Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other genuine dissidents to speak up. And that's what you are doing at TruthJihad Radio."

http://www.raga.org/news/video-vladislav-krasnov-and-kevin-barrett-on-russia-and-jewish-gentile-relations-interview  (again this link may not open in Russia)

Other ways to access my interview with Kevin Barrett:

От: Kevin Barrett <truthjihad@gmail.com>
Date: Aug. 13, 2019
To: Vladislav Krasnov <president92@gmail.com>

Hello George,
Our discussion is now uploaded:
https://kevinbarrett.heresycentral.is/2019/08/krasnov-unz/ 
​and  at YouTube:  https://youtu.be/1xNzsxBLaZI 
It will be broadcast Thursday 1 to 2 pm Eastern on https://NoLiesRadio.org
Thank you for the great discussion, and for your patience.
Best, Kevin

Manifesto of Survival - by Anna Tolstoyevskaya
8/27/2019
http://www.raga.org/news/manifesto-of-survival
switch to Russian
http://www.raga.org/novosti/manifest-vizhivaniya
 
However, unless you use TOR Browser, you can read it only in English
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51635.htm
 
Our civilization has reached amazing heights of scientific and technical development, but we still have not learnt to see a human being in each other. And a friend. We are still throwing sticks and stones at one another, except they have become so much bigger and heavier. Too heavy even for our planet.

And now we are facing the question of whether anyone will be around tomorrow to greet the sunrise.

Yet, we still have a chance to save our mother planet from and for ourselves, and continue meeting sunsets and sunrises with her. And with our friend, in humanity and in spirit.
 ….
And we’ll finally find Christ in each and every one of us. A true son and daughter of our true god, infinitely beautiful universal consciousness in all its manifestations on earth and in heaven.
Let there always be the Sun!
 
Author: Anna Tolstoyevskaya grew up in the Soviet Union and came to the U.S. as a student of Philology and then Foreign Service in the mid-1990s. She is an analyst by trade and an Austinite at heart, having spent a third of her life in that beautiful city. She can be reached at atx3017@gmail.com

Mr. President: Send Sam Nunn to Moscow
U.S.-Russia ties 'in a state of strategic instability'
By Edward Lozansky - - Wednesday, August 14, 2019
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
  Nowadays it is hard for anyone much under the age of 50 to imagine, but once upon a time the threat of nuclear war and the prospect of planetary extinction were things people actually worried about. Backyard bomb shelters, duck and cover in the classroom, LBJ’s 1964 “Daisy” ad, apocalyptic books and films like On the Beach, The Day After and Dr. Strangelove both reflected and fed genuine fears that a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union, whether deliberate or accidental, would mean at least “the end of civilization as we know it” and maybe the end of all life on Earth.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/14/crosstalk-trump-should-send-sam-nunn-to-moscow

RAGA.org agrees with both Nixon and Simes. Vladislav Krasnov
Delusions About Russia
Russia is a dangerous adversary. But treating it as an outright enemy could result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, triggering mortal threats to its neighbors which otherwise may not be in the cards.
By Dimitri K. Simes
TWENTY-SIX years ago at a national policy conference in Los Angeles co-hosted by his foundation, Richard M. Nixon observed that one of America’s most fundamental foreign policy objectives was to build a new international order after the collapse of the Soviet Union which included the newly-democratic Russia as a partner. He stated, 
    "In discussing Russia, it is first necessary to dispel a myth. The Russians did not lose the Cold War. The Communists did. The United States and our allies played a crucial role in containing communism and in rolling it back, but it was democratic Russia that gave the knockout blow to communism on December 14th in 1991. So therefore, we should treat Russia today not as a defeated enemy but as an ally and a friend who joined with us in defeating communism in Russia."
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/delusions-about-russia-7232

​Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects Paperback – May 31, 2011
by Dmitry Orlov  (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865716854/ref=asc_df_08657168545963217?tag=shopz0d-20&ascsubtag=shopzilla_mp_1475-20;15652473671832126344610080302008005&creative=395261&creativeASIN=0865716854&linkCode=asn
The United States is in steep decline. Plagued by runaway debt, a shrinking economy, and environmental catastrophes to rival Chernobyl, the United States has been retracing the trajectory of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s toward national bankruptcy and political dissolution. By comparing a collapse that has run its course to one that is now unfolding, Dmitry Orlov holds a unique lens up to America's present and future.

RAGA.org agrees with Martin Gilman that Russia can survive any sanctions and get out stronger. Vladislav Krasnov
Martin Gilman
Professor of Economics, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow; Former Senior Resident Representative, Moscow Office, International Monetary Fund (1996-2002)
Event Documents
How Russia Is Surviving Western Sanctions Event Slides (3.51 MB)...
See More  
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/how-russia-surviving-western-sanctions

LIBERALISM. Putin’s interview has stimulated some (more) silliness among people who probably haven’t read it. “What is happening in the West? What is the reason for the Trump phenomenon, as you said, in the United States? What is happening in Europe as well? The ruling elites have broken away from the people. The obvious problem is the gap between the interests of the elites and the overwhelming majority of the people… Our Western partners have admitted that some elements of the liberal idea, such as multiculturalism, are no longer tenable… [the liberal idea] has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.” Well, what’s incorrect? Putin has a better understanding than all the op-eds about populism. Western elites respond with a barrage of clichés.  
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2019/07/11/russian-federation-sitrep-11-july-2019

​"Volodymyr Zelensky’s Landslide Victory in Ukraine May Become a Slippery Slope," Nicolai Petro, The Nation, July 25, 2019.  
Well-organized, partly government funded, and armed to the teeth, nationalist groups currently exert a much greater influence in Ukrainian politics than their paltry electoral results would suggest. Even as their leaders vie among themselves for dominance, whenever their common agenda of a “Ukraine Above All” is challenged, such groups have resorted to violence and intimidation, to which state authorities have often turned a blind eye.  

From the US government’s perspective, therefore, Ukraine will continue to be a disappointment, but American policy-makers have only themselves to blame for this. By blatantly siding with Poroshenko on the country’s most divisive political, religious, and cultural debates, US policy became totally identified with him, and widely resented as a form of “external administration.” We are now seeing the backlash in the rising support for neutrality rather than membership in NATO, in growing pro-Russian sympathies and popularity of the opposition parties willing to make peace with Russia, and in the doubts that Zelensky himself has recently expressed about whether Western politicians really have Ukraine’s best interests at heart, when they urge him not to negotiate directly with Putin.
https://www.thenation.com/article/vladimir-zelensky-ukraine-election/  
​
Petro’s announcement
My previous piece on Zelensky, which appeared in The National Interest, is now also available in Russian: "Неужели национализм станет ядом для нового президента Украины?" 

MOSCOW, July 24. /TASS/. On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad and toured the exhibition dedicated to the life of Russian emigrants who fled the country after the Bolshevik revolution. The president was accompanied by Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. After the museum tour, the president left a note in the Honorary Guests Book. He thanked the museum organizers for creating "a remarkable, interesting and informative exposition about the life of Russian emigrants."
He also spoke with Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Natalia Solzhenitsyna, thanking her for her work on the exposition. He stressed that people must not forget the tragedy of Russian emigrants and must not repeat the mistakes that had caused it.    https://tass.com/society/1070246  
You may like to know that I am an early admirer of the Russian writer and the author of
Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel Hardcover – 1980
by Vladislav Krasnov  (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Solzhenitsyn-Dostoevsky-Study-Polyphonic-Novel/dp/0820304727
See also my articles
Emperor Michael II in the Solzhenitsyn House - Author: Vladislav Krasnov
http://www.raga.org/news/emperor-michael-ii-in-the-solzhenitsyn-house-author-vladislav-krasnov
Mahatma Gandhi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Two Giants Who Blessed the 20th Century. Will Vladimir Putin, Other World Leaders Listen?
VLADISLAV KRASNOV • JANUARY 25, 2019.  • 8,100 WORDS •
http://www.unz.com/article/mahatma-gandhi-and-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-the-two-giants-who-blessed-the-20th-century

Wooden church from the time of Peter the Great
Church of St. John the Divine on the Ishnya (near Rostov)
https://www.rbth.com/travel/330722-wooden-church-bogoslov
Early 20th-century photographs from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) and photographs from William C. Brumfield Collection (National Gallery of Art)  
224th article in "Discovering Russia" series. 
General link:   https://www.rbth.com/special-discovering-russia
 
Commemorating a battle between Moscow and Tver
St. Theodore Convent in Pereslavl-Zalessky
https://www.rbth.com/travel/330797-convent-theodore-pereslavl-zalessky
Early 20th-century photographs from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) and photographs from William C. Brumfield Collection (National Gallery of Art)  
Sent from St. Theodore Convent as part of a project documenting the convent's architecture and art.
 
Also in Pereslavl-Zalessky:
https://www.rbth.com/travel/328978-goritsky-monastery-pereslavl-zalessky
​

​Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

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."

​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​

Vladislav Krasnov writes:

"Dear Kevin,
"This is to invite you and your readers/listeners to a debate on Jewish-Gentile relations that my article 'Ron Unz's Strategy for the Alt-Media to Defeat the Mainstream Media Is Brilliant' generated on the pages of Russia-Insider. 

"So far there are over 150 comments, and it is good as far as hits are concerned. However, I've noticed a negative dynamics because emotional negativism toward Jews seems to predominate. I can understand that the anger toward Jews in general is, at least, partially understandable and perhaps justifiable. However, I am convinced that all Jews are not alike. Moreover, the number of Jews who challenge Zionism, especially its current pro-Netanyahu trend, is growing. Some Jews are even more forthright about secretive Jewish shenanigans than the alleged 'anti-Semitic' authors of The Protocols of the Wizards of Zion were.

"Therefore I feel that it is incumbent upon us-- the 'Whites', Gentiles, Christian, Muslim, and secular non-Jews--to respond in kind and welcome such dissident Jews as Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Atzmon, Israel Shamir (whom I know more), Ron Unz, Brother Nathanael Kapner and several more into the community of truth-seekers.

"And you are the person who is best qualified and positioned to do so. You're converted Muslim familiar with Christianity. And you are a secular scholar. You work well with Veterans today and a regular author of Ron Unz's site. What is personally very important to me, you know who Bakhtin, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn are. You know that Russians were able to overcome Marxist-Leninist ideological and political monopoly ('monologue') via a dialogue and actually polyphony of many dissident authors as soon as glasnost was established. In the US we should be able to stave off the monologic tendency of Big Media by letting Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other genuine dissidents to speak up. And that's what you are doing at TruthJihad Radio."

Dr. Vladslav Krasnov (also known as Wladislaw “George” Krasnow) of RAGA.org was a dissident in the former Soviet Union, where deviating from the official Communist Party line was a serious thoughtcrime. He defected to Sweden and then the United States in the 1960s, earned a doctorate in Russian Literature at the University of Washington, and has written three books and worked for many leading think tanks and government agencies.

​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!  

Happy Independence Day to all Americans! 

As it happens, on June 12, Russians celebrated the so called day of Russia's Sovereignty, or simply Russia's Day. After the 73 years of travelling on a long and tortured road toward the Utopian goal of ideological World Communism, Russian people were glad to come down to earth and try to recover its national identity as an ancient Orthodox Christian nation co-existing not just with its Slavic brethren--Belorussians and Ukrainians--but also people of Tatar, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian and Mongol origin, along with their Muslim, Buddhist and shamanic religious affiliations.

Moreover, June 12 is also the day of remembrance of Michael Romanov in my native city of Perm and a number of other towns. The younger brother of Emperor Nicholas II and de-jure the last Tsar who on March 13, 1917 granted the Russian people the right to decide on the form of government by universal ballot  for Constituent Assembly.(At that time neither women not blacks voted in the USA). Lenin and the Bolsheviks allowed the election to take place, but having lost by a large margin, they dissolved the Constituent Assembly by force and dispersed protesting demonstrations by gun fire. Michael II and his secretary Nicholas Jonson were abducted from their hotel in Perm on June 12, 1918, and probably murdered in the outskirts of Perm, even though their remains were never found. Their memory has been annually honored by a long cross-bearing procession, exhibits and forums in Perm and a number of other cities.

The best book to read is Donald Crawford, The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II (https://www.amazon.com/Last-Tsar-Emperor-Michael-II/dp/1466445009). Or you could read online https://www.rulit.me/books/the-last-tsar-emperor-michael-ii-read-311858-1.html. The late Mr. Crawford was a real gentleman and great researcher of Russian history. He was also a personal friend of mine. He quoted me on his book: “A ground-breaking work. There is no figure in modern Russian history that can better serve as a bridge from Russia of the old to a new Russia than Mikhail Aleksandrovich Romanov”. 

May 19, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  We have come such a long way since time immemorial, since we were hunters and gatherers living in caves and bundled in hides, trying to invent fire.

Now we have TV and iPhone, we drive cars and fly planes. We can talk to and see each other from the opposite sides of the world.

Our civilization has reached amazing heights of scientific and technical development, but we still have not learnt to see a human being in each other. And a friend. We are still throwing sticks and stones at one another, except they have become so much bigger and heavier. Too heavy even for our planet.

And now we are facing the question of whether anyone will be around tomorrow to greet the sunrise.

Yet, we still have a chance to save our Mother Planet  from and for ourselves, and continue meeting sunsets and sunrises with her.  And with our friend, in humanity and in spirit.

Who is he, or her, this friend? Why do we like or hate him? How can we understand and forgive him? Learn to see yourself in her. And your own reflection. After all, we all learn from each other.

How can we learn to love truth and peace, and do no harm to each other, and respect others in ourselves?

Our time in this Universe is not unlimited, and we still have so much to discover.

To help our planet heal from the wounds caused by us and time. To protect and save our disappearing siblings, sharing with us this magnificent ecosphere. To slow down, or at least not exacerbate with emissions and pollution, the ominous warming of our shared environment. It is truly, in the prophetic words of Chris Hedges, “The Last Battle.”

As for the modern sticks and stones, they will be of no use to us. About the only thing we can do to save ourselves from them now is remove all the fast fingers from the proverbial button.
By Anna Tolstoyevskaya
​
Yes, Manifesto is an important and urgent document that should be read and widely distributed. It quotes Albert Einstein who enjoined his Cold War contemporaries  to reduce nuclear bombs stockpiles lest we destroy the world and reduce next generations to the savagery of sticks and stones. Its authorship alludes to its Russian origin, but it was revealed to me that the author has been educated and is well versed both in the United States and Russia, the two countries that possess the largest number of nuclear weapons and most advanced delivery systems.

​Let me, however, quote an yet another letter that broadens the issue. It was written in praise of Christopher Bollyn, an American activist, that has been tireless in exposing the truth about 9/11.

A LETTER FROM RUSSIA

Christopher,
I admire what you do. If we all live 20 years more without a thermo-nuclear war destroying everything, you and few other brave individuals will definitely be appreciated and remembered for what you have done as the world's greatest heroes.

What you do will one day bring the disclosure of 9/11 truth to more people, and if it happens early enough and the perpetrators feel enough pressure to step aside (or be prosecuted), then the total death scenario can be avoided – saving all of us as a result. If the current masterminds of 9/11 remain in control, however, it is only a question of time when they decide on a perfect moment to have a global "re-set" to the system.

You say "Solving 9/11 ends the War." 
"Solving 9/11" – you and a few others have accomplished this already through years of hard work. The next hurdle is the cognitive barrier, the inability of millions of adults to accept the reality that it actually did happen, and that the authorities in many countries need to be challenged to do something minimally acceptable to restore justice.

To most people, to accept this truth is like dealing with a hypothetical situation to learn that the mom and dad you lived with all these years are actually not your real parents, but rather criminals who pretend to be your parents for some pure financial gain or other benefit, and who feel nothing wrong about killing you at some point if that maximizes their final benefit. Instead of continued comfortable life....what are you going to do now? Go to the police? Move out, find another place to live? Run to neighbors and ask for help? Go and kill the bastards at night? Or maybe ignore the guy trying to tell you this truth as an insane lunatic, and come back to comfortable everyday life.

Completely new thinking, new insights are needed to overcome it.
When does the information, the knowledge of truth become compelling for an average person living in the western world (and Russians mentally are not very different from it, unfortunately) to act and to seek a minimal next step to be done?  I have no solution for this, and before it emerges, what you and few others are doing about 9/11 truth, is our only chance to survive.

Thank you for what you do and all the best wishes as well! 

A reader in St. Petersburg, Russia

http://www.bollyn.com/a-letter-from-russia-2/

Both Bollyn and his anonymous admirer in St. Petersburg make it clear that the dangers of a nuclear conflagration come not so much from the most powerful nuclear countries but may stem from rogue elements of smaller countries, such as Israel. And even come from a failure of nerve.

Bollyn is more adamant and more specific: The "War on Terror" is, after all, a massive fraud based on the huge hoax of 9-11, which was used to drag the United States and other militaries into the Middle East. The deception was used to create an utterly false Zeitgeist, as it abused the military and bled the U.S. taxpayer of trillions of dollars. http://www.bollyn.com/about-christopher-bollyn/

bollyn@bollynbooks.com 

Of course, Bollyn is just one of many Americans, including hundreds of engineers, who refuse to believe the official story of the destruction of WTC. One of the more original naysayers is Dimitry Khalezov who claims that the towers were demolished by special nuclear charges. Who is Khalezov?

According to Wikispooks,  Dimitri A. Khalezov is a former citizen of the Soviet Union,  commissioned officer of the so-called “military unit 46179”, otherwise known as “the Special Control Service” of the 12th Chief Directorate of the Defense Ministry of the USSR. The Special Control Service, also known as the Soviet atomic (later “nuclear”) intelligence was a secret military unit responsible for the detection of nuclear explosions (including underground nuclear tests) of various adversaries of the former USSR and was responsible for controlling observance of various international treaties related to nuclear testing and to peaceful nuclear explosions. After 11 September 2001 Khalezov undertook extensive research on the collapse of the three World Trade Center Towers. The research is claimed to demonstrate, beyond reasonable doubt, that the three WTC towers were demolished by three underground thermo-nuclear explosions, making the subsequent "Ground-Zero" name for the site accurate in the traditional and accepted meaning of the term.
​
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Dimitri_Khalezov

Traditio Wiki is even more specific, especially in Russian language

<<Дмитрий Халезов: «… Сопротивление материалов — это не моя профессия. Моя профессия в данном случае — это логика, здравый смысл и сбор и отфильтровка информации…… я всего лишь утверждаю, что…я лично знал зам.директора Моссада Майка Харари и обсуждал с ним это дело до событий, а также обмывал с Майком Харари само событие за ранним завтраком 12 сентября 2001 года, после чего и я и он были арестованы в Бангкоке по просьбе американского ФБР для экстрадиции в США, которая по понятным причинам обломилась, учитывая личность Харари..>>

In short, Khalezov claims he was friends with the Mossad’s Mike Harari and that they had a drink to celebrate the WTC destruction.

https://traditio.wiki/Дмитрий_Алексеевич_Халезов
​
Bollyn agrees with Khalezov about the Mossad involvement in the distruction of WTC, but not about nuclear charges.

Bollyn says in an interview:  I grew up in Norman Rockwell's America with a strong belief in our inalienable rights and the freedom of speech, a freedom I was known to exercise frequently.  My 9/11 research and journalism are a result of my belief as an American that I have the right to express my thoughts without fear of reprisal.  The brutal assault I suffered by undercover police at my home in August 2006 and the malicious prosecution that followed showed me that there are corrupt officials in my hometown (virtually all of them) that were willing to violate my constitutional rights (a federal crime) and commit perjury in court in order to play their role in a conspiracy to try to silence me.  As a consequence, I lost my job as a journalist and we had to leave our home but I have not lost my belief in the freedom of speech.  I know that the truth will prevail and in time we will know who committed the false-flag terrorism of 9/11.  We will see that those who attacked me and tortured me with a TASER as they broke my arm in front of my wife and 8-year-old daughter were actually taking orders and committing crimes for those who are behind the 9/11 cover up.
     
Question:  I am sure you know this creep Mike Harari (who is said to be behind the false-flag terror attacks of 9/11). But what do you make of this from Veterans Today?

Dimitri Khalezov...has revealed from first-hand knowledge that Mike Harari organized the 9-11 massacre...His explanation is devastating in its simplicity. The conversion of three steel-built skyscrapers to fine powder is only possible with nuclear explosions underneath them. Thermite, nano-thermite and thermate may well have been used by the killers to cut beams and girders but they would not have turned concrete to powder, or steel for that matter.

Bollyn Responds:  Mike Harari is certainly in that group of senior Mossad terrorists who are involved as high-level managers of the 9/11 attacks. 

It is especially easy to manipulate public opinion in the age of fake and misleading news. A few years ago Lisa Marie White wrote an article in the form of a letter to “Dear American Liberals” whom I personally find the mist confused individuals in the West. As I currently reside in Russia, I am happy to cobfirm that Lisa’s observations coincide with my own.
​
​Please read Dear American 'Liberals': Everything You Think You Know About Russia Is Wrong Russia is actually ahead of the United States on many issues championed by the American Left

This article from our archives was first published on RI in June 2015
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/dear-american-liberals-everything-you-think-you-know-about-russia-wrong/ri7616

...According to this chart, the incarceration rate in Russia lands somewhere between the U.S. states of Washington and Utah. You read that correctly. The entirety of the Russian Federation has a smaller percentage of its population in prison than the state of Washington. Washington has approximately 7 million residents; Russia has 143 million people. While Russia, China, and the United States overall have the highest prison rates per 100,000 people, the United States has 707; Russia has 470; and China has somewhere between 124 and 172. I wonder when I will see the New York Times gleefully trumpeting this fact as part of a smug commentary on the U.S.'s backward slide.

...It's been brought to my attention that Russian ladies need Western feminism. I disagree. Acquiring access to family planning is central tenet of mainstream feminism. American feminists have been trying for years to get conservative Republican politicians to stop trying to restrict their access to birth control and abortion. I am not here to argue for or against abortion. I am here to tell you that abortion is free and legal in Russia, and has been for quite some time. So what would the appeal of Western feminism be for Russian women? Are they going to give them something they already have? American feminists can't even get free abortion and they can? So Russian women need feminism for what, exactly?

...Russia, like many developed nations around the world, has universal health coverage. No, it is not perfect. Most systems like Russia's face problems such as coverage gaps and budget shortfalls, but it is a system that Russia has had in place since Soviet times, and is a guarantee that it gives to all of its citizens. Also, did I mention there is free abortion?...
​
https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/dear-american-liberals-everything-you-think-you-know-about-russia-wrong/ri7616

https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2019/06/27/russian-federation-sitrep-27-june-2019/

PUTIN DIRECT LINE. (Eng) (Rus) Deep in the weeds, this one: trash (apparently piling up since Soviet times), healthcare, maternity and child care issues, farming, corruption (declining said Putin, it’s the inevitability of punishment that matters), over-zealous inspectors, protecting Russia’s electronic/internet/cyberspace against attacks (several mentions of Washington’s attacks on Huawei), air routes, water supply. “Russia’s greatest problem” was to secure “higher labour efficiency”. Little on foreign issues other than that Putin & Co stand ready to talk (but I get the impression that they don’t expect they’ll get much chance to). Sanctions had led to substitution: “Look, if ten years ago I… had been told that we would be exporting agricultural products worth $25.7 billion, like we did last year, I would have laughed… ” Suppose Russia gives in? he doubted sanctions would ever stop – Huawei again. Why is he polite to those “slinging mud at us”? he was brought up that way and rudeness isn’t useful in negotiations. And we learned a reason why he does these things; “a direct line that is intended to bring the bottlenecks into focus and to find solutions to these problems”. A theme this year was how orders from the centre often aren’t fulfilled on the ground. He and the producers observed that “Problems end as soon as Direct Line starts”. I re-read one of his earlier ones (from 2002) and I would say that today’s concerns are smaller, they’re more about the uneven implementation of strategic plans or fine tuning some strategy than the need for big solutions for big problems. Which is a sign, of course, of how far things have improved since then. (In those days, Russia was finished.) See below.

STATISTICS. I saw these numbers the other day. Life expectancy steadily climbing. Meat consumption up. Murders down. All reasons why Russians generally believe that Putin & Co are getting the job done. (And, it should always be remembered, half of those who don’t like him, don’t because he hasn’t occupied Ukraine or bombed Tbilisi into obedience. Russian exceptionalists, so to speak.)

Read more
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2019/06/27/russian-federation-sitrep-27-june-2019/

​Here is a preview song from our new album ~ He has the Sky.
Happy Weekend!
John

​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!  

1. Some good news for the start of the beautiful Summer. As one of the founding members, I am glad to announce that The US Peace Memorial Foundation has decided on UN PEACE PRIZE NOMINEES!

Our Founding Members have nominated six individuals and four organizations to be considered for the 2019 US Peace Prize.

The 2019 Peace Prize nominees are:

Ajamu Baraka
Erica Chenoweth
Stephen D. Clemens
Thomas C. Fox
Bruce K. Gagnon
Jewish Voice for Peace
National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth
Sally-Alice Thompson
Women's March on the Pentagon
World BEYOND War.

You may read about their antiwar/peace work in the US Peace Registry.  The information published there will be the only data considered by our Board of Directors when making the selection.  Read about previous recipients at www.uspeacememorial.org/PEACEPRIZE.htm.

The US Peace Memorial Foundation directs a nationwide effort to honor Americans who stand for peace, by publishing the US Peace Registry, awarding the annual US Peace Prize, and planning for the US Peace Memorial in Washington, DC.  These projects help move the United States toward a culture of peace by recognizing thoughtful and courageous Americans and U.S. organizations that have taken a public stand against one or more U.S. wars, or who have devoted their time, energy, and other resources to finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts.  We celebrate these role models to inspire other Americans to speak out against war and to work for peace.  

​Thank you very much for your ongoing support.

Michael D. Knox, PhD, Chair
US Peace Memorial Foundation
Knox@USPeaceMemorial.org

As one of the founding members of US Peace Memorial Foundation, I want you to know that RAGA is not alone in its peace-promoting endeavors. Though disappointed that my preferred nominations did not go through, I am glad to see several deserving groups and individuals on the list.
​
I am especially delighted to see there the Jewish Voice for Peace, of which I am a proud non-Jewish member. JVP has been at the forefront of the Non-Violent efforts to dissuade the Right-wing Zionist government of Israel from its racist oppression of the Palestinians both inside and outside its borders, a policy which former President Jimmy Carter condemned as apartheid. 

2. Now I hurry to forward to you the sad news about Lyndon LaRouche passing away and the event in his memory sponsored by the Schiller Institute. I have met Lyndon and heard him speaking more than once. I regard him as one of the most outstanding champions of PEACE and international harmony. May his life serve as a model for the younger generation in seeking a peaceful and just world. My condolences go to Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Lyndon’s widow and tireless helper in all his endeavors. I hope that she and Lyndon’s large family of followers will carry his banner into the future.
​

You are invited to attend the LaRouche memorial in Tysons, VA (Spring Hill metro station on the Silver Line).

Though he left us on February 12 at the age of 96, LaRouche’s economic and philosophical principles continue to influence the policies of nations and people throughout the world. The transformation of China, and the impact its Belt and Road Initiative has had on the world, is the most vivid example of how universal ideas change history. 

It is long past the time for those ideas to directly shape the policies of this nation. The urgent, first step in doing that is the exoneration of the name and the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche. We are currently circulating an exoneration petition. And, we will soon be issuing a pamphlet entitled, “The World Needs the Exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche” to further that fight.  

The Schiller Institute invitation to the memorial concludes: “Now, in 2019, when the United States and the world, could finally move beyond the childhood of the human race, abandoning the fratricidal wars of self-destruction, the true ideas of Lyndon LaRouche must be remembered, in words and in music. That is the purpose of this memorial.” 

Please join us in honoring Lyndon LaRouche and in dedicating ourselves to the fulfillment of his vision.

​LaRouchePAC Washington DC
http://action.larouchepac.com/
 
I voted for the exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche and hope you do likewise.

3. Also forwarded is the letter by Joe Lombardo of the United National Antiwar Coalition.  UNAC has initiated to petition to Attorney General William Barr demanding that the charges against Julian Assange be dropped and that Chelsea Manning be freed.  The petition is here:
 https://unac.notowar.net/petition-in-support-of-julian-assange-ad-chelsea-manning/
 Please sign the petition and share it with others.

I did sign and added my comment: The persecution of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange reminds me that of former Soviet dissidents. But where is the Soviet Union? Does the USA want to go the same way?

4. Take a look at the article below
UN Torture Report: ‘Demonized’ Assange Has Faced ‘Psychological Torture’. By Joe Lauria. May 31, 2019 

The UN special rapporteur on torture has blasted four nations for imposing psychological torture on Julian Assange. ‘A Relentless and Unrestrained Campaign of Public Mobbing, Intimidation and Defamation’.  Warns of ‘Criminalization of Journalism’. Special to https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/31/un-torture-report-demonized-assange-has-faced-psychological-torture/
​
5. Meanwhile, Russia-Insider reports that  NSA Gave Israel Access to All US Citizens' Communications Data, Leaked Documents Show. US also cooperated with helping Israelis conduct targeted assassinations against Hezbollah…The Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU), the NSA's counterpart in Tel Aviv, convinced the Americans to circumvent the legal prohibition on providing surveillance data for targeted assassinations during Israel's 2006 war with Lebanon, according to the newest revelation from the archives obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden... Almost no strings were attached to this bonanza – the Israelis could even release the identities of Americans whose information had been scooped up in the dragnet…Read more https://russia-insider.com/en/nsa-gave-israel-access-all-us-citizens-communications-data-leaked-documents-show/ri27167
​
6. Below is an article by Jean Ranc, an American admirer of the Russian dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I met Jean at Northern Vermont University during Solzhenitsyn’s Centennial Conference in September 2018. As it turned out, she is a former Dartmouth-clinically-trained-UNC Dept. of Psychiatry psychologist, and her article has to do as much with psychology (if not psychiatry) as politics. https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/13/russophobia-wmd-weapon-mass-deception/

7. Martin Geddes
Published on Sep 9, 2018
"Where We Go One We Go All" was inscribed on the bell on JFK's boat. It is a rallying cry for unity, and now headlines an extraordinary set of events.
I wrote this article in early July, and it caught the attention of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) patriots and supporters. It also explains the context and purpose of the QAnon operation.
The original article is here: https://medium.com/@martingeddes/wwg1....

At over 100,000 views it is easily the most read article I have produced in 15 years, so it clearly has hit the zeitgeist!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEuAG0I88io 

8. A time like no other in history
Having applied all of my integrity, intellect and insight to researching the matter, my belief is that we are witnessing right now one of the greatest communications events in history. Indeed, it is arguably the singularly greatest. So, what is this event, and why does it deserves this extraordinary description? The answers are to be found in how the (Western) mass media has been trapped by the most exquisitely constructed double bind.
http://www.martingeddes.com/wwg1wga-the-greatest-communications-event-in-history/

9. As a result, since 2018, the Doomsday Clock marks two-minutes till midnight, something not seen since 1947.
“I think that it’s genuinely a call to recognize – and this has been somewhat missing in the media coverage of the issues – that the risks of nuclear war are particularly high now,” the expert added.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/risk-nuclear-war-now-highest-since-world-war-2-un/5678292
Risk of Nuclear War Now Highest Since World War 2: UN
By Telesur
Global Research, May 23, 2019
teleSUR 21 May 2019

......This restructure of nuclear agreements is partly due to strategic competition between China and the U.S, and a new “arms race” between the North American nation and Russia. With disarmament talks stalemated for the past two decades, 122 countries have signed a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, expect states with the weaponized material.

By Stephen F. Cohen
​
Now in its third year, Russiagate is the worst, most corrosive, and most fraudulent political scandal in modern American history. It rests on two related core allegations: that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an “attack on American democracy” during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to put Donald Trump in the White House, and that Trump and his associates willfully colluded, or conspired, in this Kremlin “attack.” 
https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-zealotry-continues-to-endanger-american-national-security/

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/8/crosstalk-whats-to-be-done-about-the-dire-state-of/

...For many in Washington, capitalist Russia is much worse than the communist USSR, with Russiagate having become an important weapon in internal partisan squabbles in the United States. Despite the fact that special counsel Robert Mueller found no trace of Trump-Putin collusion, Republicans and Democrats continue to accuse each other of conspiring with the Kremlin. As Tucker Carlson of Fox News correctly stated: “The Russia story cannot die. CNN, The Washington Post, the Democratic Party, many others have too much invested in that story. The fact it’s been proven to be untrue is irrelevant to them.”

Faced with a Justice Department investigation of the Obama’s administration’s “worse than Watergate” scandal, the Democrats will do everything they can to keep the Russia scare intact.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/8/crosstalk-whats-to-be-done-about-the-dire-state-of/

11. The Duran
June 1, 2019
The popularity of Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin provides continuity and stability.
By George Callaghan
[https://theduran.com/the-popularity-of-putin/]

What explains the exceptional and enduring popularity of President Putin? I am a day one opponent and vociferous critic of Vladimir Putin. However, as a fair-minded person I am obliged to acknowledge that he commands the approval of a high majority of Russian people. How can this be accounted for? Having first visited Russia in 1994 the transformation over quarter of a century has been remarkable.

In the early 1990s the nation was on the skids. The people were without hope. Dejection was etched on every face. Once proud war veterans were reduced to selling their metals for bread. Society was in freefall. In 1991 the USSR dissolved. Within two years there was open fighting on the streets of Moscow and hundreds of people were killed in the constitutional crisis October 1993. The Russian Government could not even control its own capital. Gangsterism was rife and there seemed no way out of the impasse. Hyperinflation played havoc with the economy. There was mass unemployment. Even those who had a job were not paid for months. The police were wont to shake people down since they had no other way to keep body and soul together. The country was embroiled in a grueling Chechen conflict. Drug abuse and religious cults spread like wildfire. Many assets were bought by vulture capitalists. Moscow was infested with a flock of foreign speculators whose ignorance was matched only by their arrogance. Russia's nose was rubbed in the dirt. Nothing was secure and everything was uncertain. Refugees from other former Soviet republics flooded into Russia and could not be provided for. The country was in turmoil.  Confidence in public organs was at an all-time low. Many feared that the Russian Federation would become a failed state.

Now a mighty nation is back on its feet. Upheaval is over. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin provides continuity and stability. His vigorous and virile leadership is appreciated by the masses. His style is decisive and he has often achieved impressive results.

The economy has grown almost every years since 1997. Unemployment is low. Wages are paid on time and they are much higher than in the 1990s. The state executes its functions efficiently. People are no longer gulled by Chaucerian chancers. Inflation is low. People have faith in their institutions. The Armed Fores are paid on time and are very well equipped.

The Chechen Conflict is long over. Ramazan Kadyrov maintains very strict order in his homeland.

Russia has become such an alluring place to live that economic migrants are pouring in from across the globe. Tourism is also blossoming. The economy is diversifying. Staging the Winter Olympics and the World Cup were both coups.

Education is flourishing. Many people are now fluent in English. Others are mastering Chinese.

There are few beggars to be seen. Even the poorest live decently.

Infrastructure has improved dramatically. Things are in a good state of repair. The national projects promise to upgrade transport links. There will be renovation of buildings and other networks.

The population is growing slowly. In the 1990s people had no faith in the future and most chose not to have children.

The situation is imperfect. Economic growth should be higher. Confrontations with the West have led to sanctions. Corruption has not been completely rooted out. The government interprets 'extremism' too broadly. People grumble that state pensions are niggardly.

For good or ill Russia is making its presence felt on the world stage. The Russian mission Syria is greatly valued by the long suffering people there. They regard Russia as battling to defend the values of the enlightenment against barbarian obscurantism.

President Putin enjoys favourable press coverage wall to wall. This certainly boosts his ratings. However, despite the press corps deference there is no doubt that he is genuinely popular. He does not have a 100% approval rating. I have to be realistic. Even when people are disappointed with the prime minister or other ministers this does not mean that blame attaches to the head of state. He will be  a hard act to follow.  

12. Dr. Leo Semashko, GHA Founder and Honorary President &
All Global Peace Leaders;
Greetings from GHA India

GHA Message to the World Citizens and Peace Leaders
“World Environment Day 2019” 5th June 2019

World Environment Day is the United Nations day for encouraging
worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment. It is the
biggest annual event in the world to mark the environmental thinking
among the people for protection of our planet.

Protecting Earth Planet, Promoting Peace, & Beat Air Pollution,”
World Environment Day 5 June of the United Nations:
https://www.un.org/en/events/environmentday  

Dear All: I would like to share this network on its 50th anniversary with you.  Best wishes, Lana

​Dear Friend,
A recent global report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns of the unprecedented destruction of nature and the decline of species around the world. The report is an alarming wake-up call that each one of us must take bold action to save our planet. To get there will require radical economic, social, political and technological transformations in order to avoid the worst impacts of the current biodiversity crisis we are facing. This week provides several opportunities to address these issues while raising awareness and taking action!

Today— World Environment Day and the International Day for the fight against Illegal Unreported Unregulated (IUU) Fishing—we are asking you to take bold action to help save our planet and protect our species! With so many animals fighting for their very existence, every action is essential to create the shifts necessary to protect our planet from an environmental catastrophe. 
​
 ACT NOW TO PROTECT OUR SPECIES!

By Jan Ranc,  April 13, 2019

We’ve become trapped in a contrived “reality” promulgated by neo-conservative warriors under cover of neo-liberal “democracy-spreading-humanitarian-interventionists” to justify an American Empire promoting itself as the indispensable “Liberal World Order”.
​
Resume: Russophobia, as psycho-social-political pathology, is diagnosed as a disorder in The West since before the 1000-year-old Roman-Orthodox religious schism and most recently manifested with a vengeance in the course of the 2013-14 with Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass surveillance by the US and its covert activities leading to the Ukraine coup with Russophobia used thereafter as a weapon of mass deception to inflame this latent pathology in the public. Read more: https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/13/russophobia-wmd-weapon-mass-deception/

Jean Ranc - a psychologist retired from the University of North Carolina Department of Psychiatry, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

13. Russiagate Zealotry Continues to Endanger American National Security. If Venezuela becomes a Cuban Missile–like Crisis, will Trump be free to resolve it peacefully? By Stephen F. Cohen, MAY 8, 2019

Now in its third year, Russiagate is the worst, most corrosive, and most fraudulent political scandal in modern American history. It rests on two related core allegations: that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an “attack on American democracy” during the 2016 presidential campaign in order to put Donald Trump in the White House, and that Trump and his associates willfully colluded, or conspired, in this Kremlin “attack.”  Read more https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-zealotry-continues-to-endanger-american-national-security/
​
14. What's to be done about the dire state of U.S.-Russia relations? By Edward Lozansky - - Wednesday, May 8, 2019.
The way things between U.S. and Russia are going, we are quickly approaching a repeat of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which was a pivotal moment of the last century. Back then, both nations stood “eyeball to eyeball” in a way that could have resulted in a nuclear exchange, the deaths of 100 million people on each side and a doubtful future for the planet. Read More https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/may/8/crosstalk-whats-to-be-done-about-the-dire-state-of/

15. Risk of Nuclear War Now Highest Since World War 2: UN
By Telesur. Global Research, May 23, 2019
… since 2018, the Doomsday Clock marks two-minutes till midnight, something not seen since 1947. “I think that it’s genuinely a call to recognize – and this has been somewhat missing in the media coverage of the issues – that the risks of nuclear war are particularly high now,” the expert added. ......This restructure of nuclear agreements is partly due to strategic competition between China and the U.S, and a new “arms race” between the North American nation and Russia. With disarmament talks stalemated for the past two decades, 122 countries have signed a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, expect states with the weaponized material.... https://www.globalresearch.ca/risk-nuclear-war-now-highest-since-world-war-2-un/5678292
​
16. The Duran’s George Callaghan reports from Russia on June 1, 2019 that “The popularity of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin provides continuity and stability.”
https://theduran.com/the-popularity-of-putin/
In the early 1990s the nation was on the skids. The people were without hope. Dejection was etched on every face. Once proud war veterans were reduced to selling their metals for bread. Society was in freefall. In 1991 the USSR dissolved. Within two years there was open fighting on the streets of Moscow and hundreds of people were killed in the constitutional crisis October 1993. The Russian Government could not even control its own capital. Gangsterism was rife and there seemed no way out of the impasse. Hyperinflation played havoc with the economy. There was mass unemployment. Even those who had a job were not paid for months. The police were wont to shake people down since they had no other way to keep body and soul together….President Putin enjoys favourable press coverage wall to wall. This certainly boosts his ratings. However, despite the press corps deference there is no doubt that he is genuinely popular. He does not have a 100% approval rating. I have to be realistic. Even when people are disappointed with the prime minister or other ministers this does not mean that blame attaches to the head of state. He will be  a hard act to follow.  
 
17. Also from Russia Dr. Leo Semashko, former Marxist philosopher, but now the Founder and Honorary President of Global Harmony Association sends
GHA Message to the World Citizens and Peace Leaders
“World Environment Day 2019” 5th June 2019
​
World Environment Day is the United Nations day for encouraging
worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment. It is the
biggest annual event in the world to mark the environmental thinking
among the people for protection of our planet.

Protecting Earth Planet, Promoting Peace, & Beating Air Pollution,”
World Environment Day 5 June of the United Nations:
https://www.un.org/en/events/environmentday  

Manifesto of Survival
​
May 19, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -  We have come such a long way since time immemorial, since we were hunters and gatherers living in caves and bundled in hides, trying to invent fire.
Now we have TV and iPhone, we drive cars and fly planes. We can talk to and see each other from the opposite sides of the world.
Our civilization has reached amazing heights of scientific and technical development, but we still have not learnt to see a human being in each other. And a friend. We are still throwing sticks and stones at one another, except they have become so much bigger and heavier. Too heavy even for our planet.
And now we are facing the question of whether anyone will be around tomorrow to greet the sunrise.
Yet, we still have a chance to save our Mother Planet from and for ourselves, and continue meeting sunsets and sunrises with her. And with our friend, in humanity and in spirit.
Who is he, or her, this friend? Why do we like or hate him? How can we understand and forgive him? Learn to see yourself in her. And your own reflection. After all, we all learn from each other.
How can we learn to love truth and peace, and do no harm to each other, and respect others in ourselves?
Our time in this Universe is not unlimited, and we still have so much to discover.
To help our planet heal from the wounds caused by us and time. To protect and save our disappearing siblings, sharing with us this magnificent ecosphere. To slow down, or at least not exacerbate with emissions and pollution, the ominous warming of our shared environment. It is truly, in the prophetic words of Chris Hedges, “The Last Battle.”
As for the modern sticks and stones, they will be of no use to us. About the only thing we can do to save ourselves from them now is remove all the fast fingers from the proverbial button.

By Anna Tolstoyevskaya
I found myself so much in agreement with the Manifesto, that I immediately translated it to Russian. Please click!
 
Манифест Выживания

19 мая 2019 г. «Информационный центр» - "Information Clearing House"
Мы прошли долгий путь с незапамятных времен, когда мы были ещё охотниками и собирателями, населяли пещеры и грелись под шкурами, пытались подчинить себе огонь.
Теперь у нас есть телевизор и iPhone, мы ездим на машинах и летаем на самолетах. Мы можем поговорить и даже увидеть друг друга в любой точке Земного Шара.
Наша цивилизация достигла удивительных высот научно-технического прогресса, но мы до сих пор не научились видеть человека друг в друге, и Друга в Человеке. Мы все еще готовы бросать камни друг в друга. Правда, «камни» теперь стали очень большими и тяжёлыми.  Даже слишком тяжелым для блага Нашей Планеты.
И теперь мы стоим перед вопросом: Доживёт ли кто-нибудь из нас до Завтра, чтобы приветствовать Восход Солнца?
И всё-таки у нас есть ещё шанс спасти нашу Мать Планету от себя и для себя, чтобы продолжать встречать закаты и восходы солнца вместе с Ней. И с нашим другом по человечности.
Кто он или она, этот друг? Почему мы его любим или ненавидим? Как мы можем понять и простить его? Учитесь видеть себя в другом человеке. И видеть в нём своё собственное отражение. Ведь мы всегда учимся - друг у друга.
Как мы можем научиться любить истину и мир, не причиняя друг другу вреда и уважая других в себе?
Наше время во Вселенной не безгранично, и нам еще многое предстоит открыть.
Мы должны помочь Нашей Планете исцелиться от ран, нанесенных нами и временем. Чтобы защитить и спасти исчезающие виды животных и растений, наших сожителей во нашей общей великолепной экосфере. Чтобы уменьшить или, по крайней мере, не увеличить объёмы выбросов и загрязнений, замедлить зловещее потепление нашей общей окружающей среды. Это действительно «Последняя битва» (“The Last Battle”), как пророчески написал Крис Хеджес.
Что касается нынешних «палок и камней», то они нам не нужны. Единственное, что мы можем сделать, чтобы избавиться от них сейчас, это не дать блудливым и нервным  пальчикам дотянуться до Кнопки.
​
The author: Anna Tolstoyevskaya (Анна Толстоевская)

​15. For those who would like to hear my May 30, 2019 interview in Russian about my recent trip to the USA, please click on the shaded line below to retrieve it from the archive. It is a 50 minute discussion with the independent Russian Orthodox Radio "RADONEZH" which broadcasts globally. Or just read the Radio introduction of the author below.

Антонина Арендаренко продолжает серию бесед с В.Г. Красновым, писателем, ученым, главой общества российско-американской дружбы «Добрая воля» www.Raga.org.. Он только что вернулся из поездки по США.
​
О собеседнике: В.Г. Краснов - президент и основатель RAGA.org. Когда СССР обвалился в конце 1991 года, обвалились и все официальные советские и просоветские «общества дружбы», в том числе Национальный совет Американо-советской дружбы (NCASF),он решил заполнить этот вакуум не политикой, не идеологией, но чувством Доброй Воли, каковым Бог щедро наделил как россиян, так и американцев. В очередной поездке по США В.Г. Краснов побывал в Библиотеке Конгресса, Монтерейском Институте международных исследований, На Западном побережье 31 марта ему посчастливилось попасть на воскресную службу и на трапезу в Церкви Иконы Казанской Божьей Матери в Сан-Франциско. Настоятель храма здесь Отец Ювеналий, чистокровный американец и даже потомок президента Авраама Линкольна. Будучи молодым, он так увлёкся трагической судьбой Романовых, что выучил русский язык, закончил Православную семинарию и теперь ведёт службу на церковно-славянском языке.

16. Finally, the psychologist Jean Ranc’s poem about a dead-end gender war. In spite of our boasting of progress and sophistication, we have hardly advanced at all since the time when Adam threw at Eve the terrible accusation and still…
 
 
Going Nowhere
 
Pity the hollow men who only know
how to say No!
After creating false gods and
phallic weapons in the image of
themselves they defend their world
to death
against the Woman who dares
to weave a new world of Peace.
They smash her loom
turn her shuttles into guns
censor her Word
crush her Love and kill
her children.
So how can we save ourselves from
these men who only know
how to turn the earth
into money and debate
who has
the biggest and
most powerful weapon
for protecting
his riches
even at the risk
of destroying us all
in their nuclear war?

- By Jean Ranc | A psychologist retired from the University of North Carolina Department of Psychiatry, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA                        

Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

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."

​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 HIGHLIGHTS

As I set my foot on the American soil, I was delighted to read Professor Gary Saul Morson’s outstanding review of Solzhenitsyn’s “March 1917”, the third and last part of Solzhenitsyn’s majestic “The Red Wheel” trilogy about Russia’s downfall, finally published in the US.[i] “In Russia, history is too important to leave to the historians,” writes Morson.  “As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explained in his 1970 Nobel Prize lecture, literature transmits “condensed and irrefutable human experience” in a form that “defies distortion and falsehood. Thus literature . . . preserves and protects a nation’s soul.”  

In truth, the Horrorcost of the Bolshevik totalitarian rule for the Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Muslims, Christians and all Non-Bolsheviks by far exceeds anything what the accolades of the Jewish Holocaust during WWII could master. Above all, it was not the Germans exterminating Jews and other “racial inferiors” during a fierce war, but Jews and Russians killing Jews and Russians—and all other—deviant from the Party Line. The bosses of the GULAG, often Jewish, were killing the “Trotskists,” “Zionists” and other former comrades because the “party line” kept on changing. This made Vasily Grossman ( 1905 –1964), a Soviet (Jewish) writer, wander in his proscribed novel  Life and Fate (1960): Was Marxist “class struggle” morally superior to the Nazi race war? Grossman’s novel waited twenty years before being published in 1980 abroad.[iii]
 
Most recently, Dmitry Bykov, the famed Russian poet and literary critic, speculated that “Hitler would have won over more in the USSR if he'd dropped the Antisemitism.” Remarkably, after a huge “patriotic” uproar, the lawyers decided that Bykov’s remarks do not constitute “disrespect for society” or “profanity against Russia’s military glory.” It was a huge victory for the freedom of speech in Putin’s Russia. Bykov was also off the hook for “rehabilitating Nazism,” disappointing those who were convinced that Bykov had crossed the line. (Meduza,  5 March 2019).[iv] An admirer of Solzhenitsyn, Bykov wrote a brilliant article about the failure of modern Russian nationalists to understand either Solzhenitsyn or Dostoevsky.[v]

On March 29 I had a breakfast with Jon Utley in Washington Harbor. The publisher of The American Conservative, Jon has been a peace-maker and my personal friend since the 1990s. In 2005, I helped him find out what happened to his Russian father Arkady Berdichevsky, a Soviet trade mission official, who was arrested alleged for “Trotskitst” sympathies in Moscow in 1936 when Jon was 2 year old. He got a “light” 3-year sentence. But then all correspondence with Freda Utley, Jon’s mother, stopped. As it turned out, Arkady was sent to a GULAG camp in Vorkuta, re-tried there for organizing a hunger strike and sentenced to die. We found a general location of mass executions site where he was executed along with hundreds of others in March of 1938. You may want to read my article about Jon[vi] or see Documentary: Return to the Gulag: Jon Utley’s Search for His Father.[vii]         

Learning of my forthcoming trip to California, Jon Utley asked me to give his warmest to Ron Unz, who preceded him as the publisher of The American Conservative and now publishes The Unz Review, one of the best alternative web-zine in the country.

On March 29, I visited the Library of Congress to hand a number of books to Grant Harris, a former graduate student of mine at the Monterey (now Middlebury) Institute of International Studies and now the head of the LOC’s European Division. Several books were from a Russian professor and Solzhenitsyn scholar from Krasnoyarsk University whom I had met during Solzhenitsyn’s Centennial Conference at Northern Vermont University in September 2018.

[i] https://www.amazon.com/March-1917-Center-Culture-Solzhenitsyn/dp/0268102651 
[ii] (“Solzhenitsyn’s cathedrals” by Gary Saul Morson | The New Criterion. Vol. 37, No. 8 / April 2019).
[iii] About Grossman’s novel read https://www.thenation.com/article/maximalist-vasily-grossman/
[iv] https://meduza.io/en/news/2019/03/05/russian-poet-is-off-the-hook-for-saying-hitler-would-have-won-over-more-in-the-ussr-if-he-d-dropped-the-antisemitism)
[v] http://www.solzhenitsyn.ru/o_tvorchestve/articles/general/index.php?ELEMENT_ID=1965
[vi] http://www.raga.org/news/john-basil-utley-at-80-he-is-one-of-us-memoirs-of-two-trips-to-russia
[vii] http://www.hacer.org/hacers-exclusive-video-channel-in-youtube/

As president of RAGA, I feel my duty to help cultural exchange between Russia and the US, the little that remains of it due to the ongoing russophobia of leading US media. In that I am guided by this utterance of James Billington (1929-2018), the former Library of Congress director: “If Americans cannot penetrate into the interior spiritual dialogue of other peoples, they will never be able to understand, let alone anticipate or affect, the discontinuous major changes which are the driving forces in history and which will probably continue to spring unexpected traps in the years ahead. To put it another way, if we   cannot learn to listen to others as they whisper their prayers, we may well confront them later on when they howl their war cries.”
    
The above is from the article “Russia’s Mission” by Professor NICOLAI N. PETRO, my former colleague at the Monterey (now Middlebury) Institute of International Studies. He has been one of the most perceptive and honest observer of Russia-US relations. He sees “Russia’s Mission” in President Putin’s efforts to engage his NATO opponents in “civilizational realism” in the hope to “forge a new and more ‘congenial’ world order”. (NOV 14, 2018).[i]
 
Arriving at San Francisco on March 30, I called Ron Unz. Upon receiving Utley’s greetings from Washington, he kindly invited me and my daughter Vera for a lunch at Jing-Jing Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto. Based on a number of his articles, including the one stressing the support of Jewish American bankers for the Bolshevik revolution, I had already welcomed him as one of RAGA authors.[ii] (). 

Now in front of me sat an introspective, polite, almost shy man eager to listen and understand rather than talk and blame anyone. We agreed the surest way for the United States to survive as a viable democracy and a beacon of hope for the downtrodden is not to force “democracy” on others but start by respecting their sovereignty. Domestically, let people of different persuasions engage in a friendly dialog. Be they Conservative or Liberal, Right or Left, Capitalist or Socialist—as long as they eschew violent, vile and offensive means of propagating their ideas—all are welcome.

[i] Petro’s article https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/online-articles/russias-mission
[ii] http://www.raga.org/news/welcome-ron-unz-and-american-pravda

Ron and I agreed that we should promote polyphony and the art of mutually beneficial dialog, as Socrates practiced it. And be mindful that sometimes democracies TOO get out of hand, turn demagogic and brutal, just as the Athenian populace condemned Socrates to death. Ron and I agreed that generally conservatives have upheld best the banner of liberty. The nearby Hoover Institution was just about the only anti-Communist US think-tank where Solzhenitsyn found a plenty of materials on the brutality of Communism in Russia. I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Hoover Institution for publishing my book “Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List”.[i]
 
It just crossed my mind that one of Jon Utley’s close associates, the Austrian philosopher Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909 – 1999) suspected, as the ancient Greeks did, that DEMOCRACIES have the tendency to degenerate into a mob rule and tyranny. His self-description as a "conservative arch-liberal" may sound self-contradictory, but actually is not. The best ways to preserve the foundations of civil order in the world is not forcing “democracy” on the “benighted” nations but rather, while respecting their sovereignty, show them the advantages of liberal attitude toward censorship and human rights. A polyglot who mastered several languages, Kuehnelt-Leddihn exerted considerable influence on the conservatives in the USA. See Lee Congdon’s article “Kuehnelt-Leddihn and American Conservatism”.[ii]

The conservatives, like Utley, Kuehnelt-Leddihn or Unz should not be confused with their opposites, the aggressive and dogmatically pro-Zionist Neo-Cons. According to Wikipedia, the ascendance of the Neo-Cons in US foreign policy has to do with The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think tank founded in 1997 in Washington by  William Kristol and Robert Kagan under the motto: "American leadership is good both for America and for the world."[iii]
 
However, in a bold 2006 article “The Israeli Lobby” (later a book, The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy) Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt traced the origin of anthe Neo-Cons to an earlier event. In 1996 a group led by Richard Perle submitted to Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel, a report titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The insisted on a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East via a propaganda campaign to emphasize Israel’s affinity with "Western values." The report pushed an aggressive policy, including the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and dismantling of Syria by proxy warfare. Thus, at least since 1996, the US global strategy has been in alliance with and—some would say—subordinated to Israel’s security needs as perceived by the right wing Zionists.

My next appointment was an April 5, 2019 radio interview with Dr. Kevin Barrett about Solzhenitsyn, Gandhi, and Peace in the World https://kevinbarrett.heresycentral.is/tag/vladislav-krasnov/ Kevin is an American dissident and former university professor who lost his job for sticking to the “irreverent” view that 9/11 was an inside job for mobilizing public opinion in favor of US military offensive in the Middle East, North Africa, and vis-à-vis Russia. My interview followed that with Richie Allen, a popular Irish radio show host opposing censorship in UK. [iv]  

The key note for my own 2nd hour interview- Listen HERE - with Kevin was Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic utterance:

[i] https://www.hoover.org/research/soviet-defectors-kgb-wanted-list
[ii] https://www.crisismagazine.com/author/lee-congdon
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
[iv] https://sarahwestall.com/richie-allen-speaks-censorship-insignificant/.

In placing this quotation in front, Kevin was just on cue. His mission is the pursuit of truth. That’s how he presented me:  Vladislav Krasnov, a.k.a. George Krasnow, discusses his recent articles “Solzhenitsyn’s relevance today” and “Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn, the Two Giants Who Blessed the XXth Century.” The latter article serves as a spring board for advocating a new Paradigm for Global Relations, including an alliance of Civilizations to save the Planet from Nuclear destruction.”  Listen HERE   (remember I am in the 2nd half of the scale)

​There is no need to text the radio voice. But a brief overview might save your time. Kevin and I started with my book Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth written when I was still professor of The Monterey Institute. Appearing just before the end of the USSR in 1991, the book was not only predictive of--but also aimed at preparing both American and Russian public opinion for-- the emergence of a New Russia. In fact, I presented a copy to Boris Yeltsin right after he had squashed the August 19, 1991 Communist coup attempt and replaced the Red Flag of Communism with Russia’s national tricolor. 

Starting with Solzhenitsyn’s vision of post-Soviet future, I presented a number of Soviet and some Russian émigré authors who took advantage of a relative freedom of expression under Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost’ to argue that the country should abandon the straitjacket of Marxism-Leninism and go “beyond” Communism. Solzhenitsyn was of primary importance. I discussed a number of his essays that pointed toward Russia’s post-Communist future, such as “Letter to the Soviet Leaders” (1973), REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS (1973), Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals. The last one was widely published in the USSR in August 1990.

Solzhenitsyn was also important as I employed his polyphonic method in selecting authors of different persuasions. In the subtitle I used “National”, not “nationalist”, rebirth. This is because “nationalist” smacks of possible xenophobic and chauvinistic tendency which Solzhenitsyn and the majority of my authors deplored. If they were “nationalist”, it was only in a positive sense of adhering to the best of national traditions. The majority of my authors favored a national, now I would say identitarian alternative to Communism--that is restoring Russia’s traditional pre-1917 national identity, her historical roots, religious beliefs and customs--to replace the official Marxism-Leninist ideology which by 1991 seemed to have fallen into a coma. Having returned to Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn refused to support Boris Yeltsin and the “shock therapy” reforms that brought the country on the brink of anarchy and civil war. Only with the 1998 ascent of Yevgeny Primakov as Prime-Minister and then Vladimir Putin as President did Solzhenitsyn feel reassured that Russia has regained its national sovereignty.

During these post-Soviet years I found myself in agreement with Solzhenitsyn’s dissatisfaction with Yeltsin’s government. Having moved from California to Washington DC, I founded the Russia & America Good Will Association (RAGA.org) to help overcome an enormous cultural gap between the USA and post-Soviet Russia still plagued by the vestiges of Soviet mentality. My chief advantage was the familiarity with both, plus my ability to travel back and forth, as well as across the States, often as a contract interpreter for the USDS.

As RAGA president, I tried to help A New Russia get on her feet.
* In March 1998, published in The Washington Post a paid ad with the greeting to Russia’s Prime-Minister Yevgeni Primakov when he turned his plane back when the US had started bombing Yugoslavia;
* In March 1999, wrote an Open Letter to Bill Clinton protesting US interference in Russian reforms; it was signed by over a hundred American experts http://www.raga.org/news/raga-open-letter-to-clinton;
* In 2001, warned “Don’t Count Russia Out,” in a polemical article welcoming Vladimir Putin’s assertion of Russia’s sovereignty; http://www.raga.org/dont_count.html
* In 2008, I wrote a comprehensive article Did Shock Therapy Help Russia?, describing the collusion between of the Gaidar-Chubais group in Russia and the Harvard clique of Andrei Shleifer and Jonathan Hay, who got the contract on doing reforms in Russia without competitive bidding. As the two got involved in illegal investments, Harvard University was forced to pay the largest penalty in its history. In my research I was greatly helped by Janine Wedel’s book Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989-1998.[i]
* Then came “Obama’s Perestroika Challenge: US & Russia”, by W.George Krasnow, 7 January 2009, insisting on “Abandoning the fantasy of U.S. unipolar world domination and recognizing Russia's legitimate national security concerns” among other recommendations;[ii]
* When President Obama failed to reset US-Russia relations and continued George Bush’s policy of confrontation, I engage him in a letter exchange suggesting that, instead of vain demagogic efforts to spread “democracy” throughout the world, the USA should, first of all, honor the right of each nation for “sovereignty”.[iii]

In 2014 my book was published in translation, Новая Россия. От коммунизма к национальному возрождению. [iv] In its Preface Professor Aleksei Lyubimov, the editor of a Duma magazine[v] and member of the Diplomatic Academy, recommended the book as “balanced and dispassionate”. He also praised it for offering a number of different, even opposing viewpoints, “for calling for societal consolidation, and a civilized dialog and polyphonic interaction between the Westernizers and Slavophiles, the advocates of free market and socialists, Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews. In his opinion, the whole world needs to cooperate with independent, free, prosperous and peace-loving Russia”.

My book was the last of a series of four publications undertaken by the Center of Contemporary Russian Studies which Dr. Nicolai Petro and I founded around 1988 at the Monterey Institute. We deliberately used “Russian” to challenge numerous Soviet Studies think-tanks across the States. As soon as Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed glasnost’, that is a degree of freedom long suppressed in the USSR, we felt that the Communist Utopia will not last long. We felt that US academic establishment needed to prepare for a New Russia for which the recovery of its historical, cultural, and spiritual identity was essential. That’s why the book was dedicated to the Millennium of Russia’s baptism in the year 1988. I did not expect that the millions of Soviet atheists would overnight confess Jesus Christ. Nor did I expect that the New Russia would abandon secular freedom of conscience. But I expected that all its citizens, whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish, would feel free to confess their convictions.

The main thrust of the book was antithetical to that of Professor Richard Pipes (1923-2018) who once headed Russian Center at Harvard. The difference was that while we in Monterey looked upon Russia’s re-emergence with a hope, Pipes felt that the USSR must be feared precisely because it retained too much “Russianness” from its past. In a sense, my book was the extension of my 1979 debate with Pipes in The Russian Review in the USA and Encounter magazine in UK. See “Richard Pipes’s Foreign Policy Strategy: Anti-Soviet or Anti-Russian?”[vi]

In his writings Pipes entirely dismissed the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideology on the behavior of Soviet leaders. Moreover, he failed to see how powerful pro-Communist and pro-Marxist forces outside the USSR, including “Cultural Marxism” and “Catholic Marxism,” were facilitated Soviet strategy throughout the world.  

In fact, one of the reasons for the West’s current hostility toward Russia today is the failure to recognize during the Old Cold War that Communism was not just a Russian, Chinese or Cambodian event, but a common, West-centered, affliction of humankind with the virus of violence. It was advertised as the most effective, quick, scientifically “required” cure of all injustices of the world. I call it “West-centered” because Lenin and his Bolsheviks always prided themselves that their Marxist ideology was based on the ideas of French Revolution, German philosophy, and British labor movement. But the “Russian proletariat” was called upon to spread these Western ideas for the sake of world revolution. As to the terror of French Revolution, its degeneration into Napoleon’s wars of conquest, Lenin dismissed as non-consequential. Thus the October Revolution of 1917 was driven by the desire of the Bolsheviks to re-play the French Revolution and be more “Western” than the West.

The prominence of Jews in the Bolshevik leadership, a taboo topic for many years, has been lately elucidated by a number of authors, especially by MARK WEBER.[vii] Ron Unz himself shed light on the assistance to the Bolsheviks from Jewish donors from overseas.[viii]

What remains overlooked is that the Bolsheviks, whether Jewish, Russian or Latvian, were largely deracinated individuals who were hardly representative of their ethnic or religious group. Karl Marx himself, though from rabbinical families on both sides, was baptized and acted as an ardent Christian in his youth. But then, denouncing “everyday Jews” as misers and blood-suckers, he turned into fanatical atheist and God-fighter. His denunciation of all religions as the opiate of the people is well-known. Anti-religious fanaticism of the Russian Bolsheviks was just as stark. Lenin was as much an anti-Christ as Trotsky anti-Moses if not anti-Yahweh.
One might say that the totalitarian tendencies of early Bolsheviks were inspired less by Lenin’s mixed Jewish and “Mongolian” or Stalin’s “Asiatic” Georgian background, but rather by the complex of inferiority they felt vis-à-vis the West. The brutality of their early Soviet regimes largely stems from the desire to surpass the West in the most “progressive” Western idea of a violent world revolution as a short-cut to a socialist paradise on Earth. The Bolsheviks succeeded in surpassing the anti-clerical and anti-Christian ardor madness of the French Revolution. Professor Talmon was right in tracing “The Origines of Totalitarian Democracy” to the French Revolution. According to the book-selling site, Jacob Leib Talmon[ix] (1916 –1980) was Professor of Modern History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He studied the genealogy of totalitarianism, arguing that political Messianism stemmed from the French Revolution, and stressed the similarities between Jacobinism and Stalinism. He coined the terms Totalitarian Democracy and Political Messianism.

“The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy” was first published in 1952, re-published in 1986. I read it some thirty years ago while working on “Russia Beyond Communism”. But the book did not become dated. If anything, it is even more relevant now. As the book-sellers say, This study is an attempt to show that concurrently with the liberal type of democracy there emerged from the same premises in the eighteenth century a trend towards what we propose to call the totalitarian type of democracy. These two currents have existed side by side ever since the eighteenth century. The tension between them has constituted an important chapter in modern history, and has now become the most vital issue of our time.

In my dialog with Kevin Barrett I argued that the issue is especially inflamed now when the USA and its allies declare themselves so much in love with democracy that they eagerly impose it on any country, allegedly, for its own benefit.

Unfortunately, in our propensity to denounce all “the reactionary,” “arch-conservative” and “rightists” defenders of status quo while bathing in the self-satisfying glory of all-atoning “progressivism” we forget that the defining watershed of modern age was the Bolshevik coup-d’état in October 1917 which lead to the longest totalitarian rule in history. If the Oliver Cromwell revolution and civil war turmoil in England lasted two decades (1642- 1662), the French Revolution just ten (1788-1999) and then degenerated into Napoleon’s dictatorship and wars of conquest, the October1917 Revolution in Russia drugged on for nearly 73 years (1917-1991).

Alas, it distinguished itself not just by unusual longevity but also by its counter-productive result as it ended with re-introduction of capitalism it vowed to destroy. It was counter-productive in achieving the goals it set: the liberation of working people, first in Russia and then the rest of the world, from exploitation and abuse by capitalists, money bags and the latter day imperialists. It did expropriate the capitalists and other money bags in Russia in 1917-1919. But when the Communist party rule evaporated at the end of 1991, socialist economy was quickly replaced, often by former Party functionaries, by crony-capitalism just like in the US, except the taxation in Russia is not progressive and anti-monopoly laws against the oligarchs are largely ineffective.

The Bolsheviks were right in never calling their revolution “Russian” because they conceived it as the beginning of world revolution and knew that its essence was rather anti-Russian.

Toward the end of the hour Kevin and I discussed my translation into Russian of John Andre Morrow’s book:

Six Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of His Time: The Primary Documents[x]

Dr. John Andrew Morrow (Imam Ilyas ‘Abd al-‘Alim Islam) is a Métis Canadian Muslim scholar who embraced Islam over thirty years ago at the age of sixteen. He has studied the Islamic sciences for over three decades at the hands of both traditional Muslim scholars as well as Western academics. He completed post-doctoral studies in Arabic in Fez and Rabat and considers Morocco to be his second home. He worked as a university professor for two decades, retiring from teaching after reaching the rank of Full Professor. He has authored a vast body of work, including over one hundred academic articles and thirty scholarly books.[xi]
Intrigued by early Muslim-Christian cooperation, John discovered it was based on a number of the Prophet Mohammad’s early agreements with Christian communities. One such Covenant, with the Christians of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Sinai, had been known in Tsarist Russia. But in the atheist USSR, historical record of Muslim-Christian cooperation became a non-issue. Agreeing with John that anti-Christian attitudes of Islamist extremists, such as the ISIL (Daesh), do not reflect the mainstream Muslim tradition, I translated John’s booklet to Russian and had it posted on a Russian site.[xii] Later my friend from Azerbaijan had it translated into Azeri.

Diverse authors and publications: 
*--On Thursday March 28, Dan Lieberman, a good friend of mine for many years, a journalist, playwright, and, sometimes, a tennis partner, treated me with lunch downtown Washington. Dan is a tireless publisher of Alternative Insight.  And “Alternative” it really is! Dan never fails to challenge US policy toward Russia, as well as its subservience to Israel’s interests in the Middle East. This time he was especially upset with The New York Times publishing an Oct. 19, 2018 article by Adam Goldman, "Justice Dept. Accuses Russians of Interfering in Midterm Elections," which Dan finds erroneous. His attitude to the Mainstream media is articulated in his article The Media is the Mischief
 
*--My Californian son-in-law Sammy presented to me Thomas Cowan’s book, Human Heart, Cosmic Heart: A Doctor’s Quest to Understand, Treat, and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease. [xiii]I read the book on the Aeroflot flight back to Moscow.  I find Dr. Cowan’s argument compelling, especially since it is buttressed not just with careful medical research, but also with the anthroposophist philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) with its holistic approach to all sources of knowledge: heart, blain, and soul.  

*--John, my lawyer, whom I have known since mid-1990s when he registered RAGA.org, has always delighted me with his broad interest in Russian arts, ballet, music, and architecture. During a coffee break with him I was pleasantly surprised that it was he who emailed to me Gary Saul Morson’s profound review article about Solzhenitsyn that made me so happy on the first day in America. It seems, the academic establishment here begins to recognized that by writing The Red Wheel, (including March 1917), Solzhenitsyn created a credible non-Communist version of Russian history distinct from both Russophobic and pro-Marxist mainstreams. 

*--Another associate from Solzhenitsyn’s Vermont Conference suggested I read a book on russophobia by a Swiss journalist. I am happy to recommend it to all RAGA readers: Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria by Guy Mettan.[xiv] “Why do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia?” wonders the book seller rephrasing Mr. Mettan. “How it is that Western antipathy, once thought due to anti-Communism, could be so easily revived over a crisis in distant Ukraine, against a Russia no longer communist? Why does the West accuse Russia of empire-building, when 15 states once part of the defunct Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO, and NATO troops now flank Russian borders ...”

        It is one thing when a Russian like me or Putin complains about russophobia, but to hear it from outstanding journalist in Switzerland, the oldest republic in Europe, known for its neutrality and tri-lingual peaceful co-existence is a lesson to all who aspire to a membership in a civilized world, and that includes Ukraine!
 
*--An exceptional book from Eastern Europe is GRAND DECEPTION: The Killing of William Browder” by Alex Krainer. Alas, it is NOT carried by the foremost book-seller in the world, Amazon.com. As Krainer explains, “My book, published only last month (August 2017), was starting to get some traction and in its first four weeks gained very positive reviews from readers (seven 5-star reviews and one 4-star review). That’s when Browder’s legal counsel Jonathan M. Winer stepped in. He contacted CreateSpace and demanded that my book be delisted alleging that it contained defamatory content. CreateSpace promptly obliged, suppressing the book and instructing me that I needed to, “work with the disputing party until a resolution is reached.” [xv]

       Now Krainer’s book Grand Deception: The Browder Hoax may be purchased here.[xvi] The book seller explains: “Suppressed and banned by the CIA's supplier, Amazon, “The Grand Deception: The Browder Hoax” is a highly intelligent, frank and entertaining take-down of one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the US public and the world – The Magnitsky Act. Krainer’s study of Bill Browder’s book and actions is a riveting, unflinching expose of one of this decade’s big hoaxes.”

   If Mettan is a neutral Swiss, Krainer hails from Monte Carlo, Monaco. Moreover, born in Rijeka, Croatia, he is supposed to be hostile to Russia. But he is not because he is belongs to The Truth Alliance and proudly proclaims: “We aim to inspire public debate and open minds for a dialogue. We reject false “truths” telling that we need to be afraid and “protected” and that the “other” needs to be demonized and, ultimately, killed or otherwise destroyed. We reject lies and propaganda for those who deny us our own dignity and our own humanity.”

     It is easy to see in this a challenge to the New World Order, more specifically, to “The New American Century” proclaimed by the Neo-Cons in 1996. I hope this challenge will be sustained by, first and foremost, the peoples of Eastern Europe who, like the peoples of Russia, have carried the main brunt of Communist totalitarianism. Most appropriately, Krainer quotes Václav Havel, the dissident Czech writer who went to the office of president virtually straight from his prison cell.  “Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed — be it ecological, social, demographic, or a general breakdown of civilization — will be unavoidable.” Not for nothing, Havel was called a “Czech Solzhenitsyn”. “The catastrophe” Havel feared is now even more imminent than in his time and it can hardly be avoided without Alex Krainer’s The Truth Alliance as long as  the US and its European allies vilify Russia.
 
There was a disappointment on my trip too. Next day after my arrival at Washington on March 25, Benjamin Netanyahu was to speak at the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) meeting at the Walter E Washington Convention Center. The JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), of which I am a non-Jewish member, called for a rally to protest against Netanyahu’s belligerent and uncompromising attitude toward Palestinians. 

At least, since Mearsheimer’s and Walt’s 2007 book The Israeli Lobby and the US Foreign Policy, I have been acutely aware of the problem. That’s why some years ago I joined the JVP as a genuine pro-peace human rights organization favoring a compromise between the Jews and Palestinians in Israel and elsewhere. I have admired JVP’s Non-Violent tactics, including participation in BDS actions against Israel across the USA. This time I responded to JVP’s call to protest against Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington as I hoped to meet JVP Washington area members. However, I saw none: either I was a bit late or they called off the protest as Netanyahu failed to appear sending instead a youTube pep talk. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank called Netanyahu's pep talk “a knife in the heart of the U.S.-Israel relations”.[xvii]
 
Well, my disappointment was soon compensated by JVP appeal to Madonna to cancel her appearance at Eurovision contest to be held next month in Israel. As the JVP newsletter says, “...Israel shouldn’t even be hosting Eurovision in the first place. The core values of the contest – inclusion, diversity and unity – are the polar opposite of Israel’s unequal laws, apartheid roads and numerous human rights violations.”
Choose Freedom: Boycott Eurovision, Madonna!

[i]  http://janinewedel.info/collisionreview_ForgnServ.html
[ii] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/obama-s-perestroika-challenge-us-russia/
[iii] http://www.raga.org/news/to-mr-barack-obama-potus
[iv] https://www.labirint.ru/books/438669/)
[v]  Lyubimov http://www.pvlast.ru/glavred/
[vi] Krasnow vs Pipes Debate  https://www.jstor.org/stable/128605?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Also The Russian Review vol.38, no.2, 1979; also the Encounter (April 1980).
[vii] See Weber’s article “The Jewish Role in the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's Early Soviet Regime. Assessing the Grim Legacy of Soviet Communism.” http://www.unz.com/pub/jhr__the-jewish-role-in-the-bolshevik-revolution-and-russias-early-soviet-regime/ 
[viii] See his “The Bolshevik Revolution and Its Aftermath,” 8/27/2018.
[ix] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3400147-the-origins-of-totalitarian-democracy
[x] Morrow’s book https://www.amazon.com/Covenants-Prophet-Muhammad-Christians-Time-ebook/dp/B00VTWYERS
[xi] https://www.islamicity.org/by/john-andrew-morrow/
[xii] https://books.google.ru/books?isbn=1527509672
[xiii] Thomas Cowan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30006169-human-heart-cosmic-heart
[xiv] Guy Mettan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34237648-creating-russophobia
[xv] https://thirdalliance.ch/krainers-take-amazon-ban/
[xvi] Alex Krainer https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JabbaQ Price: $14.99 USD. Words: 79,970. Language: English. Published: September 2018. 
[xvii] Dana Milbank https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-republicans-chutzpah-at-aipac/2019/03/26/21c12356-4fff-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html

The JVP is not alone in defending Palestinian rights in Israel, and – the right of free speech guaranteed to Americans by the First Amendment.

“Why So Much Fuss About A Conference In North Carolina?”
APRIL 24, 2019  By LARA FRIEDMAN

The attacks on the UNC-Duke conference—alongside continuing efforts to pass laws defining criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism—demonstrate that, although the president clearly has something else in mind when he talks about protecting free speech on campus, the truth is that campus free speech, when it comes to Israel, is very much under attack today—by those who want to shut down all criticism of Israel.[i]

About Julian Assange’s predicament
The best comment on Julian Assange’s dangerous predicament was by Caitlin Johnstone, “The Prosecution of Julian Assange Is Infinitely Bigger Than Assange” Caitlin Johnstone Tue, Apr 23, 2019

'They’re trying to win this fight against Assange in brutal fashion to ensure that they win all future fights as well'

Caitlin adds… “The other day I published a massive mega-article attacking the major smears about Assange I’ve encountered. There are 27 of them in total so far, and I’ll be adding more soon. This mountain of smears exists because instead of paying attention to the world-shaping dangers I just outlined which threaten to make it impossible to oppose the leaders of the US-centralized empire who are marching us towards either extinction or dystopia, people are babbling about Assange’s personality, or whether or not he cleaned up after his cat while at the embassy.” [ii]

Personally, I cannot add much about the Assange case to what I have already said about Ed Snowden.  To Defect or to Integrate? The USA vs Edward Snowden.[iii] Unless the US learns to integrate peaceful dissent and welcome dissidents to open public dialogue, it will disintegrate and go the way of the USSR.

The Notre Dame Cathedral and Russia
Then there was the Notre Dame Chathedral fire. It may need some time before we could put it in a proper perspective. The best comment I have seen so far was by Charles Mills who writes for the same conservative, but not dogmatic site Fitsgeral Griffin Foundation, where I also write.  “The blood of martyrs is still there to water Paris, but it will not do so as long as official and Paris-run France persists in glorifying Bastille Day, the Tricolor, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and the Marseilles as national symbols, not as symbols of the Terror”, writes my FGF colleague. Read Notre Dame de Paris by Charles G.  Mills.[iv]

Although I am not as “Catholic” as Charles is, and am not as familiar with French history, I see his point as I do know that the French Revolution inspired the October Revolution in Russia where the Bolsheviks tried hard to surpass the French Revolutionary in their anti-clerical and anti-Christian fervor.

In 1931, led by Lazar Kaganovich (1893-1991), one of Stalin’s Jewish henchmen, the Bolsheviks blew up the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the largest church building in Moscow. In a tragic irony of history, this Cathedral had been erected as a sacred memorial to the defeat of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.  Napoleon’s aggressions against the established order of Europe were born out of the God-fighting spirit of the French Revolution whose ideals of Equality, Brotherhood, and Liberty Napoleon also betrayed.

Remarkably, one of the first major construction projects in Moscow after the fall of the atheist USSR was rebuilding the destroyed and desecrated Cathedral of Christ the Savior. This was not an easy task because the previous building was not just destroyed, but its foundation was dug out to make a huge public swimming pool under open sky. One way or another, currently the Cathedral serves as the spiritual center for all of Russia where the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church presides over the liturgy during major events of Russian religious history.

It appears then that, after having suffered the greatest persecution of Christians since Nero, Russia rebounded and restored its spiritual health while retaining a secular state with freedom of conscience for denominations. The question is whether France and other countries of Europe can successfully guard and preserve the spiritual heritage of Western civilization without taking into account Russia’s newly gained spiritual experience?

[i] Lara Friedman https://lobelog.com/why-so-much-fuss-about-a-conference-in-north-carolina/#more-48412
[ii] Caitlin Johnstone https://russia-insider.com/en/prosecution-julian-assange-infinitely-bigger-assange/ri26841
[iii] Krasnow http://www.raga.org/news/to-defect-or-to-integrate-the-usa-vs-edward-snowden
[iv] Charles Mills http://fgfbooks.com/Mills-Charles/2019/Mills190419.html
​

Presidential election in Ukraine
Can Zelensky Make Ukraine Great Again? April 22, 2019

Is the ouster of Petro Poroshenko a turning point in Ukraine's crisis or just another disappointment? By Nikolas K. Gvosdev.[i]

  Outgoing Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko is to be commended for presiding over an election that was generally free and fair and, more importantly, in accepting the outcome. Privately, however, he may be breathing a sigh of relief that he will not have to take responsibility for some of the major decisions Ukraine is facing—decisions which will prove to be difficult and unpopular.

 His successor, comedian Volodomyr Zelensky, fits squarely in the mold of anti-establishment populist candidates who have been winning elections all throughout Europe—and his attractiveness as a presidential candidate for having played one on television carries echoes of how Donald Trump’s public persona in The Apprentice likewise helped to boost his presidential prospects.

...Zelensky is going to find he won’t have much of a honeymoon—either within Ukraine or with Ukraine’s main foreign partners and its key rival. How much leeway he will get remains to be seen—and it is way too premature to determine whether his election marks a turning point in Ukraine's crisis or another disappointment.

Nikolas Gvosdev is professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College and the former Editor of the bi-monthly foreign policy journal, The National Interest. Wikipedia

US decision on Golan Heights violates UN Security Council resolutions – Putin. Published 8-04-2019

 The US’ decision to recognize Tel Aviv's sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights region violates UN Security Council resolutions – a position that Moscow has already made clear, Russia's president said.

The US’ decision to recognize Tel Aviv's sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights region violates UN Security Council resolutions – a position that Moscow has already made clear, Russia's president said.[ii]

The Orchestration of Russiaphobia Is The Prelude To War.
April 22, 2019 | By Paul Craig Roberts

…The Russian government’s naive and gullible response to Washington played into Washington’s hands. By responding to Washington’s orchestrated Russiaphobia as if it were some kind of mistake based on bad information, the Russian government allowed Washington to keep the process of demonization alive and thereby contributed to the ongoing demonization of Russia. If, instead, the Russian government had denounced the demonization of Russia as Washington’s act of preparing Americans for war with Russia and had taken a belligerent rather than a complaining stance, the realization that Washington’s policy had serious cost would have spread throughout the US and Europe and voices would have arisen against Washington’s dangerous and reckless policy. Today in place of the uniformity of voice against Russia, there would be dissent opposing Washington’s irresponsible provocations.[iii]

RUSSIA’s KULTURA TV channel
The most significant event in Russia right now is on a state supported KULTURA TV channel. It is a multiple one-hour series program called Propovedniki (Evangelists).[iv]

It is about the suppression of dissent in the USSR and Soviet bloc countries within the officially allowed but unofficially controlled and abused Christian Orthodox Church. So far I have seen four documentary programs: about Archpriest Alexander Men, Professor Sergey Averintsev, Archpriest Paul Adelheim, and Metropolitan (of the Orthodox Church in Montenegro) Amphilohie (Radovich).

The three Russians were not political dissidents, but they held the light of spirituality alive in a country where Marxist-Leninist materialism was the ruling ideology. Archpriest Men helped hundreds of Soviet intellectuals return to Christianity by preaching and writing books distributed by samizdat in overseas editions. He also helped Alexander Solzhenitsyn hide a GULAG manuscript. However, in 1990 he was assassinated, and his assassin was never found. Archpriest Pavel Adelheim himself spent three years in the GULAG camp where one of his legs had to be amputated due to abuse by the guards. He was assassinated in 2013 by a lunatic who came to him for a “cure”. Sergei Averintsev was university professor and a world authority on Byzantine, but secretly he served as a reader in a parish that attracted many Soviet intellectuals.

Metropolitan Amphilohije started his spiritual assent in Communist (and officially atheist) Yugoslavia. He studied in several seminaries abroad. Once when he was in Greece he met Solzhenitsyn whom he awarded a special personal cross for his devotion to truth. Metropolitan Amphilohije still devotes his mission to the unity of Slavic and non-Western peoples against the encroachments of the materialistic West. See his extensive interview THE ORTHODOX CHURCH IS STANDING IN THE WAY OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER. [v]

There are more documentaries about modern evangelists to be shown on Russian TV channels for there were many martyrs in the USSR who held the hope for Russia’s rebirth alive. However, Russian TV channel is secular and does not engage in religious proselytizing. It has been running a number of programs devoted to the remembrance of the events of Russian history that were distorted or silenced during the Soviet period. A number of programs are devoted to cultural achievements and events—in arts, music, movies, and theater--in all countries in the world, from Japan and China to ancient Egypt and modern Europe. In view of Western sanctions against Russia, the current emphasis on strengthening cultural ties with Asian countries, especially India, is understandable. TV Channel Kultura, for instance, has run for several months an Indian production of the ancient Indian epic “Sita and Rama”.

Russia’s Outreach to India—and the World
Not all efforts to strengthen cultural ties with foreign counries, especially non-allied countries of the East, are sponsored by the government. Dr. Leo Semashko of St. Petersburg, a peace activist, has created Global Harmony Association (GHA) 15 years ago entirely on his own. Now he is an Honorary President because he entrusted the leadership to its current President Dr. Subhash Chandra of India. But Leo remains active, always trying to build a global outreach. On the GHA’s masthead there are the winners of Nobel Peace Prize Dr. John Avery of Denmark and Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland, GHA Vice-Presidents Susana Roberts of Argentine, Surendra Pathak of India, Delasnieve Daspet of Brazil ; and Ayo Amale, GHA Africa President.[vi]

A couple of years ago Leo, upon reading some of RAGA Antidote newsletters, Leo invited me to join the Global Association which  I gladly did. No doubt, similarity of our backgrounds helped. I graduated from Moscow State University in history; he went to graduate school in philosophy of the same university. Both of us got fed up with Marxism-Leninism and became dissidents. Both of us have felt a great attraction to Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of Non-Violence. When the GHA president declared the year of 2019 “Gandhi World Year”, Leo invited me to submit something to honor Gandhi’s 150th anniversary. Which I did, by writing Mahatma Gandhi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Two Giants Who Blessed the 20th Century.[vii] Learning of my participation in the Vermont conference on Solzhenitsyn’s Centenary in Spetember 2018, the GHA site posted also my article “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today”.[viii]

Yesterday, April 26, 2019 I went to the English Language Club of Moscow to hear the lecture by  Dr. Leena Sareen of India about Economic Development of India. She teaches Theory of Intercultural Communication at the Department of Psychology of Moscow Region State University  and has 10 years of experience in multinational companies as a coordinator between Russia and India. It was interesting to learn that out of India’s 1,364 million people  666 million use the internet, and 126 million of them use English. Now I am even more proud that some of my articles found their way on the site of my email pal and friend Sandhya Jain.[ix]

HAPPY EASTER GREETING--from Bethlehem, Palestine
In conclusion I am glad to transmit a HAPPY EASTER GREETING from Bethlehem, Palestine. It is authored by Dr. who describes himself as follows
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinenature.org

I have been receiving Mazin’s elucidating newsletter for quite some time and pasted them on my FB page. A Christian Palestinian of mixed origin, he celebrates Easter twice, according to both Gregorian (as in the USA) and Julian (as in Russia) calendar. In 2014 I was fortunate to visited Israel/Palestine on a Russian Orthodox pilgrimage tour, and seeing Bethlehem was one of the highlights.

There is no need to relate Dr. Qumsiyeh’s whole letter. You could read it by clicking the links. But the few lines describing the Easter Hope of the Palestinian people are in order:

We aspire to a certain future when refugees are allowed to return and all people of all religions live in equality and justice. Jerusalem/Bethlehem will then become a true light unto the world. We are grateful that there has been tremendous growth of actions by civil society around the world to push for human rights and justice in this “Holy Land”.  This has included some really significant actions for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) from Israel in the same way we did with Apartheid South Africa. Palestine will rise from the ashes like a Phoenix. We believe indeed in a resurrection!

Reading these lines, remember how in 1974, after being thrown out of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn predicted that he and his books will return to a free Russia. My American colleagues did not take him seriously and some thought he was mad. Was it because they did not believe in a Resurrection?               END

[i]  Nicholas Gvosdev https://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-zelensky-make-ukraine-great-again-53677
[ii] http://us-russia.org/6130-us-decision-on-golan-heights-violates-un-security-council-resolutions-putin.html
[iii] https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/04/22/the-orchestration-of-russiaphobia-is-the-prelude-to-war/
[iv] Evangelists https://tvkultura.ru/brand/show/brand_id/62714/
[v] https://pravoslavie.ru/81604.html
[vi] Global Harmony Association https://www.peacefromharmony.org/
[vii] Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=884
[viii] Krasnov, “Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today” https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=864
[ix] http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4040

​Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

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."

​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​

It is long overdue to express New Year 2019 Good Wishes to everyone reading these pages, especially since news continue to be alarming.

In his annual February 20, 2019 address to the Federal Assembly, President Putin outlined goals to revive Russia's ailing economic and social situation. Only 15 minutes out of the 90 minutes address were devoted to international politics. The highlights are both grave and challenging:

—“If the U.S. really is going to deploy missiles on the European continent, it will exacerbate the international situation and create a genuine danger for Russia, as there will be missiles with a 10-12 minute flight time to Moscow." —“Russia will be forced to create and deploy weapons that can both be used on the territories from which the direct threat to us originates, as well as the territories where the centers of decision-making are located." —“We are ready for disarmament talks, but we are no longer going to knock on a closed door." 

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/02/20/the-highlights-of-putins-federal-assembly-address

In view of the worsening global situation, I have been focusing, on the RAGA's behalf, on some public peace-seeking initiatives. Below is my letter, slightly abbreviated, to Leo Semashko's Global Harmony Association (GHA) in which I stress the need for a new paradigm of global politics.

Dear Leo and GHA colleagues,
many thanks to Leo and his internet experts for posting my recent article Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today in which I discussed International implications of a recent “Reading Solzhenitsyn” Conference in Lyndon, Vermont, September 7-8, 2018 http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=864

In conjunction with of Gandhi's 150th anniversary, I produced a sequel, an essay Mahatma Gandhi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Two Giants Who Blessed the 20th Century  Will Vladimir Putin, OtherWorld Leaders Listen?

VLADISLAV KRASNOV • JANUARY 25, 2019 • 8,100 WORDS •
http://www.unz.com/article/mahatma-gandhi-and-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-the-two-giants-who-blessed-the-20th-century/

The explicit purpose of the essay was to honor such wise and peace-promoting people as Gandhi, Solzhenitsyn, Leo Tolstoy, Martin Luther King Jr. (it was timed near the MLK Day in the USA), Nelson Mandela and several more. 

We all know of Samuel Huntington book"The Clash of Civilizations?"where, after the collapse of Communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe, he predicted that "the fundamental source of conflict will not be primarily ideological or economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural".  

There is no reason to rejoice at the prospect of cultural--rather than economic or ideological-- hostilities and possibly wars, especially now when such wars present a real risk of annihilating humankind. I believe that public initiatives, such as the GHA, Rene Wadlow's The Association of World Citizens (AWC)),  Andre  Sheldon's GlobalStrategyofNonviolence.org, Sander Hicks' newyorkmegaphone.com, and several others offer a different, more promising and more harmonious paradigm for international relations based on the need for all civilizations, now matter how different, to co-exist for the benefit of all. So, implicitly my essay on Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn aims at buttressing this new paradigm of international relations embodied in the above organizations and individuals.  

Consistent with this purpose, RAGA joins Andre Sheldon's initiative in encouraging people to sight the petition below. Namaste! Here is the Link where you could sign the petition:   SAVE GANDHI'S HERITAGE ​​

Peace and Love
Andre Sheldon

Director, Global Strategy of Nonviolence, For the Children 
Facilitator, CALL to WOMEN, a World-Wide Unity Campaign
Cell number: +1-617-413-9064, Home number: +1-617- 964-5267
Email:  Andre@GlobalStrategyofNonviolence.org          
Website: www.GlobalStrategyofNonviolence.org 
Facebook: Global Movement of Nonviolence

RAGA agrees with Gandhi about indulgences that increasingly plague the WORLD:
​
1.Wealth without work 2.Pleasure without conscience 3.Knowledge without character 4. Business without ethics 5. Science without humanity 6. Religion without sacrifice 7. Politics without principles

I am happy to acknowledge that I borrowed the above Gandhi maxims from Jan Oberg, a tireless peace champion from Lund, Sweden, where I once started my post-Soviet carrier at Lunds Universitet. Please open their blog https://transnational.live/category/tff-global-posts-2019/

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 14 FEBRUARY 2019
ON FEBRUARY 14, 2019 BY PATRICK ARMSTRONG IN RF SITREP RUSSIA COLLUSION. US Senate says none. Clinton’s excuse for her shattered campaign has generated much damage: censorship, stronger war party, hysterical TV, attacks on anyone who bucks the war party, destruction of the last bits of “journalistic standards”, bogus charges, mangled innocents like Maria Butin....

CURRENCY WARS. The Central Bank of Russia update: total USD holdings down to 22% from 46%, Euros and Renmenbi holdings up; gold 2,112 tonnes. Total external debt $453.7 billion, lowest in nearly 10 years. Moody’s upgrades debt rating. Washington’s economic war is failing.
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2019/02/14/russian-federation-sitrep-14-february-2019/

THE PUTIN I KNEW FEBRUARY 5, 2019 PAUL Robinson 34 COMMENTS In my last post I drew attention to a strange schizophrenia in the way many commentators view Russia. On one hand, there’s what I will call model one, in which they blame the country’s problems and its supposed aggression on the authoritarian nature of Russia’s political system. On the other hand, there’s model two, in which they consider these problems to be the product of some supposedly innate characteristic of the Russian people – the ‘Russian soul’, as it were.

........Instead we get a combination of model one and model two, both of which oversimplify. Mixing them together – by personalizing Russia’s problems while simultaneously blaming them on innate national characteristics – serves only to confuse and to reinforce simplistic prejudices... https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/the-putin-i-knew/

On the Russian Orthodox Day of Baptism on January 19, 2019, VlADIMIR PUTIN issued a very cool, even cold, challenge to Western leaders by taking icy religious plunge. Yes, there are photos, reported The Washingrton Post.

The president appears healthy.
By Alex Horton. January 19, 2018

Russian leader Vladimir Putin dipped into frigid waters early Friday at a lake to mark the Orthodox observance of the Epiphany, which commemorates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/19/shirtless-putin-takes-icy-religious-plunge-and-yes-there-are-photos/

Professor Nicolai Petro, a former colleague of mine at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, sums up the Ukrainian bitter predicament of the past four years. https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/The-Tragedy-of-Ukraine-19910

<<As the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year,  the country remains mired in debt, corruption, and strife. The country seems to be caught up, again, in a vicious cycle that has been repeating itself for decades, if not centuries. Classical Greek tragedy gives us a deeper look at the reasons behind Ukraine’s persistent failure to achieve social stability, and suggests remedies. The tragic cycle can be broken through a compromise in which individual, social and divine aspirations for justice are reconciled. As long as Ukrainian leaders seek to achieve justice without compromise, the nation’s self-destructive cycle is likely to persist.>>

https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/number/The-Tragedy-of-Ukraine-19910

The Tragedy of Ukraine: Hard Lessons to Learn From Classics,” Russia in Global Affairs, vol. 16, № 4 (October/December 2018), pp. 52-71.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewnyUJgyA4

Is war between China and the US inevitable? | Graham Allison
TED. Taking lessons from a historical pattern called "Thucydides's Trap," political scientist Graham Allison shows why a rising China and a dominant United States could be headed towards a violent collision no one wants -- and how we can summon the common sense and courage to avoid it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewnyUJgyA4

In my previous report about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Centenary in the USA and in Moscow. I mentioned that Margo Caulfield, Director of Cavendish Historical Society, wrote a book, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Writer Who Changed History/ Paperback – February 20, 2016. It is rated 5.0 out of 5 stars and has 2 customer reviews: 
https://www.amazon.com/Aleksandr-Solzhenitsyn-Writer-Changed-History/dp/1530160855/
​
Remarkably, the book was written for students in grades 4th-7th, but will have considerable appeal for older audiences and can be used in any number of classes including history; psychology; literature; social studies; or biography. While there are many notable aspects of Solzhenitsyn’s life, we want readers to understand how his life unfolded and to help them use this information to better understand their own lives and the choices they make now and in the future. 

As I am about to visit a couple of high-schools in my native town of Perm, the gateway to Siberia, I know their students will be glad to hear that their US counterparts appreciate the Russian writer "who changed history". Solzhenitsyn, by the way, made a point of visiting Perm for several days when he triumphantly returned to Russia in 1994 by taking a r/r train from Vladivostok to Moscow. He had a number of friends in Perm with whom he wanted to restore the connection broken by his forced exile to the West.

I urge you to also read: 
https://www.thewriterwhochangedhistory.com/guide/

It is very educational. Besides, all proceeds from the sale of The Writer Who Changed History: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn will be used for the Cavendish Historical Society’s Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn project.

Let me repeat again that, as the RAGA's founder, I thank Margo Caulfield for reflecting the best attitudes toward Russia that I have found among Americans of all walks of life. Her letter to the Russian people (that I cited in my previous report) reaffirmed my faith in America which once gave me a refuge and hospitality but now appears to be less civil at home and more war-like abroad than it was when my native Russia was in the grip of totalitarian Communism. I am re-affirmed that RAGA is needed in both countries. I also feel that Solzhenitsyn, more than anybody else, unites Russia and the USA in their common task--and sacred duty--to secure a peaceful, free, fair, and harmonious global commonwealth in which every nation is a proud member. Solzhenitsyn's truthfulness and courage in search of peace between our nations is the cornerstone of the new paradigm for global politics, if we want the Planet to survive.  

As before, let me conclude with Professor William C. Brumfield's  yet another picturesque report on the uniqueness of Russian civilization and its travails under Soviet rule:

Dormition Cathedral in Yaroslavl:  Destroyed in 1937, rebuilt 70 years later:     https://www.rbth.com/travel/329728-yaroslavl-dormition-cathedral
​
Early 20th-century photographs from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) and photographs from William C. Brumfield Collection (National Gallery of Art, Dept. of Image Collections) ​

Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org
Facebook

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."

​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​