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​

On behalf of RAGA for Peace I am sad to announce the news below.

I met Lyudmila Alexeyeva briefly in New York around 1985. We had a great rapport: both graduated from Moscow State University, both had to flee from the USSR. I was a defector, but she warmly took me under the wing of human rights. She new that a huge majority of Soviet defectors had no secrets to betray, they just wanted to keep their integrity intact. Eternal Briss, my dear friend Lyudmila! Vladislav Krasnov

***********
​
Russian human rights champion Lyudmila Alexeyeva dies
By Robert Hackwill • 09/12/2018
A leading Russian rights activist and former Soviet dissident has died at the age of 91.
Lyudmila Alexeyeva passed away in a Moscow hospital after a long illness.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/09/russian-human-rights-champion-lyudmila-alexeyeva-dies

Born Lyudmila Mikhaylovna Alexeyeva
20 July 1927
Yevpatoria, Crimea, Soviet Union
Died 8 December 2018 (aged 91)
Moscow, Russia
Nationality Russian
Citizenship Soviet Union (1927–1977)
United States (1982–2018)
Russia (1991–2018)

Lyudmila Mikhaylovna Alexeyeva (Russian: Людми́ла Миха́йловна Алексе́ева,20 July 1927 – 8 December 2018)[1] was a Russian historian and human rights activist who was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group,and one of the last Soviet dissidents active in modern Russia.

In April 1968, Alexeyeva was expelled from the Communist Party and fired from her job at the publishing house.[4] Nonetheless, she continued her activities in defense of human rights. From 1968 to 1972 she worked clandestinely as a typist for the first underground bulletin The Chronicle of Current Events devoted to human rights violations in the USSR.

In February 1977, Alexeyeva fled from the USSR to the United States following a crackdown against members of The Chronicle by Soviet authorities.[6] In the US Alexeyeva continued to advocate for human rights improvements in Russia and worked on a freelance basis for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America.[6] She became a US citizen in 1982.[7] She wrote regularly on the Soviet dissident movement for both English and Russian language publications in the US and elsewhere, and in 1985 she published the first comprehensive monograph on the history of the movement, Soviet Dissent (Wesleyan University Press).

https://www.euronews.com/2018/12/09/russian-human-rights-champion-lyudmila-alexeyeva-dies

Людмила Алексеева будет похоронена в Вашингтоне
Дата похорон станет известна позднее

МОСКВА, 11 декабря 2018, 17:16 — REGNUM  Российская правозащитница Людмила Алексеева будет похоронена в США — там же, где и другие члены её семьи. Об этом 11 декабря сообщил агентству «Москва» её сын, профессор Университета Индианы в Блумингтоне Михаил Алексеев.

«Здесь, в Москве, состоялось прощание, а похороны пройдут на кладбище церкви Сент-Джон в Вашингтоне. Там похоронены её мама, муж и старший сын», — сообщил Алексеев.

Подробности: https://regnum.ru/news/2535635.html
​
Любое использование материалов допускается только при наличии гиперссылки на ИА REGNUM.

​Sincerely,

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

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​

​
​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​

​I confess I do admire Solzhenitsyn, especially as far as US-Russia relations are concerned, RAGA stands with him. But occasionally I disagree with him, as you can see in my recent article 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

Владислав Краснов.  Император Михаил II в Доме Солженицына -  
http://www.raga.org/novosti/imperator-mikhail-ii-v-dome-solzhenitsyna   


Below are other highlights:

Who Putin Is Not. Falsely demonizing Russia’s leader has made the new Cold War even more dangerous.

By Stephen F. Cohen SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

The specter of an evil-doing Vladimir Putin has loomed over and undermined US thinking about Russia for at least a decade. Henry Kissinger deserves credit for having warned, perhaps alone among prominent American political figures, against this badly distorted image of Russia’s leader since 2000: “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy. It is an alibi for not having one.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/who-putin-is-not/

By Paul Grenier  ·  Friday, September 7, 2018
Are the divisions that fragment the United States primarily driven by some deep flaw in its political life, or was the United States doing just fine, thank you very much—until Russia came along during the 2016 presidential race and started sowing division and dissension? Framed that way, the question answers itself. Whatever some state-sanctioned Russian actors may have done to pester the American political process, it is obvious that America’s deep divisions exist for reasons having essentially nothing to do with Russia. They long precede the last election.

http://www.telospress.com/russia-gate-as-symptom-the-crisis-of-american-community/

As the US is meddling in the Middle East in an alliance with Israel, please read this remarkable article by a Washington Post famed columnist Dana Milbank, September 21, 2018

<<My rabbi, Danny Zemel, comes from Zionist royalty: His grandfather, Rabbi Solomon Goldman, led the Zionist Organization of America in the late 1930s, and presided over the World Zionist Convention in Zurich in 1939. So Zemel’s words carried weight when he told his flock this week on Kol Nidre, the holiest night of the Jewish year, that “the current government of Israel has turned its back on Zionism.”...…A poll for the American Jewish Committee in June found that while 77 percent of Israeli Jews approve of Trump’s handling of the U.S.-Israeli relationship, only 34 percent of American Jews approve. Although Trump is popular in Israel, only 26 percent of American Jews approve of him. Most Jews feel less secure in the United States than they did a year ago…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/israel-is-driving-jewish-america-farther-and-farther-away/2018/09/21/de2716f8-bdbb-11e8-8792-78719177250f_story.html?utm_term=.efc054250abb&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1
 
By Edward Lozansky - - Wednesday, September 26, 2018

ANALYSIS/OPINION:
 During the past six months, the U.S. and Russia came close at least three times to a direct military clash in Syria with unpredictable consequences, including possible use of nuclear weapons. Each time unthinkable disaster was avoided at the last minute, but no one knows if we will be lucky again the next time.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/26/crosstalk-us-russia-play-chicken-syria/

As usually, we have Patrick Armstrong's sound recommendation:

STRATEGIC CULTURE FOUNDATION. Let me put in a plug for this site. It has now acquired quite a stable of writers (myself included) and is a good place to get alternative views to those repeated by the drearily monotonic Western outlets.

https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2018/10/25/russian-federation-sitrep-25-october-2018/

By Daniel J. Mahoney, the author of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent from Ideology, on Putin's and Solzhenitsyn's Russia, August 07, 2018

The time has arrived for some moderation and clarity in thinking about contemporary Russia and its relationship to the Western world. Ronald Reagan was not wrong in the 1980s to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Its death in 1991 was a welcome victory for liberty, peace, and political civilization. But post-communist Russia is not the Soviet Union and it cannot reasonably be called an “evil empire.” The continuity between the two political orders is woefully exaggerated in the West, with some on the left hating contemporary Russia, a half-authoritarian autocracy, more than they ever opposed communist totalitarianism.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/08/07/post-communist_russia_is_not_the_soviet_union_137730.html

The Trajan Manifesto By Martin Sieff, Edward Lozansky, James Jatras and Gilbert Doctorow - Tuesday, September 4, 2018

First, the United States should follow the strategic principles executed by the Roman emperor Trajan at the end of the first century AD.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/4/trajan-manifesto/


Finally, a very independent observer,  Ajay Goyal, My life of Zen, on Oct 8, 2018, findsTen reasons Moscow is the best capital city in Europe

Moscow of 2018 is a new city with a rich heritage and history. The city has gone through a massive facelift with new and modern infrastructure and institutions. Here is how it compares with London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and other great European cities.

https://medium.com/@ajay.zen/ten-reasons-moscow-is-the-best-capital-city-in-europe-d1a904af9c39
 
Sincerely,
W George Krasnow (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич)
President, RAGA
www.raga.org

Peace and Justice to the World.

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

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

​Excerpts from the press conference of the Trump-Putin summit were displayed in mostly extremely cynical ways all over the western press. This reaction has been so spectacular that it has become an event in its own right. What does this tell us about American politics and press in general?

In this program, Dr. Vladislav Krasnov, former professor and head of Russian studies at Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the President of the Russia & American Goodwill Association expresses his point of view.

Dr. Krasnov starts the program by explaining why America's reaction to the summit did not come as a complete shock to him: "I have been watching the decline of civility in the United States and pretty much in the rest of the western world since 1991. I was a defector for the Soviet Union when it was a totalitarian, ideological monopolistic country, and in order to find out what was going on in the world, I had to defect. I am grateful to the United States that I was given a home, refuge, and an ability to study different sources, to understand different ideologies, different opinions. At that time, the United States was a beacon of hope because there was a plurality of different opinions. But now, since 1991, I look with more and more despair at what is happening to America, particularly as it pertains to be the leader of the western world."

Dr. Krasnov feels that this is happening because America developed a sense of hubris after seeing that the Soviet Union collapsed. It felt that now, it had won. "I think that the Soviet Union collapsed due to internal problems. They [the Americans] became too proud, and you know what happened to Icarus and his father Daedalus when they flew to close to the sun….This hubris has manifest itself into two new words. One is called neoliberalism and the other is called neo-conservatism, and they presume that both are good for the whole world….The issue is not that Russia is doing something wrong. There are many wrong things in Russia, but Russia is not a totalitarian country, it has tendencies which are leaning towards more plurality, whereas in the United States — and I am very grateful to the United States for giving me refuge — but now the tendency in the United States is towards monopoly and monopoly of opinion. The actual power in the United States has probably now shifted to the media. The power of the media is so enormous that it is a kind of totalitarianism…" 

Host John Harrison asks why Jo Biden accused Trump of ‘embracing our No. 1 Enemy' and asks is this what America really thinks, that Russia is America's No. 1 enemy? Dr. Krasnov says that America has decided itself that Russia is an enemy. "I don't think that after 1991 Russia has projected itself as an enemy. If anything, the United States has been more aggressive. The decision to retain NATO was one thing, but when they decided to expand NATO closer to Russia's borders, and thus infringe on Russian sovereignty…it's a natural reaction of any country, whatever the political system, but the people in charge of each country have to take care of the sovereignty of their borders…"

Dr. Krasnov says that a widening gap is opening up between what leaders say and what is reported in the media. "I read the Washington Post every day, I used to when I lived in Washington and I do it now, out of habit, and I know many of the guys who write those things, so I am in touch with both the United States and Russia, and when I watched the event in Helsinki it was apparent that there was one story which is presented by president Trump, and President Putin, and another story which is presented by the media. I also read press releases from the White House; I have to, as President of the Russia America Goodwill Association. I am non-partisan, I am not a political person…my main task is to preserve and strengthen peace which is being severely threatened now throughout the world. The chance of nuclear war and self-annihilation of the whole earth is now higher than ever."

To the question: "how many Americans actually, believe what they read in the press?" Dr. Krasnov answers: ‘Actually many don't believe it. The media is now despondent; they do not know what to do. …I want Americans to try to be decent to one another, including the media people, to try to show some objectivity and for the sake of objectivity, they could downplay their hateful positions towards one politician or another. Let diplomacy win against emotionalism, both leaders have the strong points and weak points, let them negotiate, and essentially I think that the former US Ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, who I respect very highly, the one who served in Russia, just before the Soviet Union collapsed, he said that we should go not only back to the classics, to Plato and Aristotle, but also to our own sixth President of the United States — John Quincy Adams. He suggested that the United States should not go abroad in search of monsters to try and destroy them, it should protect its own liberty and not try and impose their notion of liberty on other people…"

Dr. Krasnov referred to the British political theorist and philosopher Edmund Burke who insisted that each country, including the fledgling United States of America (at the time), has the right to go it alone, that each country has the right to choose its own form of government. "We need more democracy in Russia and in the United States", Dr. Krasnov says, "but the moment we say that the whole world has to be democratic, we are undermining the whole basis of civility."
​
We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com

https://sputniknews.com/radio_brave_new_world/201807211066575854-what-does-the-media-reaction-to-the-summit-show-us/


​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​

​Mon Apr 09, 2018 3:29 pm
​
Well the time is approaching, coming close to zero hour. I'm on round two of trying to obtain my Russian visa, first time shot down due to minor technicalities. Sooo, hopefully, by the 17th or so I should have it in hand and will be on my way to SVO. A couple days in Moscow, maybe a side-trip to St Pete then down to Rostov for the trip to Donetsk. Russell Bentley has agreed to meet us at the border to help me get in, my friend Sergey should have no problem since he is Russian. May be a bit of an ordeal for me. We are looking at 2-3 days there to do some documentation that we plan to put on Sergey's channel on YouTube (Real Russia Channel).

Seems like we are on the verge of WW3 with the Zionist republicrats spoiling for war with Russia. I am embarrassed and ashamed to be an American. What a horrible time.

​Fri May 18, 2018 12:48 pm

Okay, just got back from 23 days in Russia and had a very successful trip which included meeting Russell Bentley in Donetsk and Vladislav in Moscow! Really, all want very well considering how many chances there were for things to go wrong. I would have never gotten into DPR had it not been for the help of Russell Bentley BTW. Had long conversations with FSB both going in and coming back out. Luckily, I had been pre-cleared going in or else I never would have made it. We made several good videos which I'll include here:

​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! 

Urgent matters first:

1. My friend and RAGA associate James George Jatras sent the following appeal:  

Dear Friends:
The petition below was posted on the White House website today. It is self-explanatory.  Please go to the link to sign. Distribute widely via email and social media.  Thanks, Jim

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/president-donald-trump-should-hold-early-summit-russian-president-vladimir-putin

I signed it myself and posted it on RAGA facebook. I suggest you do likewise.2. CONGRATS to Ed and Tatiana Lozansky, RAGA's old-time peace-loving friends !

Read about them Celebrating 1982: A Pivotal Year
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/21/celebrating-1982-pivotal-year/
or here https://www.facebook.com/RAGAforPeace/

3. Ed Lozansky's persistent efforts to promote US-Russia friendship do not go without resistance. Smear campaign against Ed Lozansky continues unabated. This time Ksenia Kirillova, a Russian journalist living in the USA, suggests that it was Lozansky who had formulated the Kremlin's strategy of undermining American democracy. One would think that Radio Svoboda's (Freedom!) task should not be contrary to any peace-promoting efforts. The link is in Russian, but I am sure much of the same stuff Kirillova says one can find in any US paper. https://www.svoboda.org/a/29229380.html

4. RAGA also joins in supporting 2018 PEACE PRIZE NOMINEES
<<We are pleased to announce that our Founding Members have nominated seven outstanding Americans to be considered for the Foundation's 2018 Peace Prize. They are Daniel Ellsberg, Nancy Mancias, Colman McCarthy, David Swanson, Sharon Tennison, Sally-Alice Thompson, and S. Brian Willson.>> https://mailchi.mp/uspeacememorial/2018-peace-prize-nominees?e=1b14d9bd2d

About half of the nominees have been quoted either in RAGA Antidotes or in my own writings. All deserve recognition!

5. When I was a student at the University of Moscow, around 1957, there appeared a very mellow, romantic, and totally unpolitical song, Moscow Nights,which soon became very popular in the USSR and world-wide. Since the song is about relaxing Summer time, I hope you'd enjoy it right now, performed by Dmitry Hvorostovsky, a world-renown opera singer who recently passed away, and Anna Netrebko, likewise a famed opera singer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D_UepJMizs) Moscow Nights - Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Anna Netrebko | Russian Songs with English Subtitles:

As to Jerusalem becoming an undivided capital of Israel, you may want to read my 2012 article "The World for Israel, or Jews for the World?" It was about a forum in Washington dedicated to the legacy of Rabbi Elmer Berger, one of the early American anti-Zionists. By W. George Krasnow, it published January 09, 2012 on the Antiwar site

http://original.antiwar.com/krasnow/2012/01/08/the-world-for-israel/ 

There I wrote in 2011: "Zionist claims on Jerusalem as an exclusive capital of Israel have inflamed anti-Israeli and anti-American passions in all Muslim countries. It has helped the fanatical jihadists win the hearts and minds of millions of Muslims who came to mistrust their moderate and secular politicians for their failure to defend Muslim rights to Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, as sacred to their cultural tradition". 

I suggested it then and say it now that Jerusalem literally belongs to all humankind as the birthplace of the world's three major religions. It should be put under the jurisdiction of the United Nations, administered as a cultural treasure of the world, a place where Jews, Christians, and Muslims could live in peace, harmony, and brotherhood and thus inspire the rest of mankind to religious, racial, ethnic and cultural co-existence and co-operation.

​This article is also available in Russian "Израиль играет судьбой мира, иудаизма и еврейства. Памяти раввина Элмера Бергера". Автор: Владислав Краснов
http://perevodika.ru/articles/20787.html?sphrase_id=3249777&ELEMENT_ID=20787%3Fsphrase_id%3D3249777&PAGEN_7=2


Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, Brown University, made very sensible speech "U.S. Policy and the Geopolitical Dynamics of the Middle East"
http://www.raga.org/news/us-policy-and-the-geopolitical-dynamics-of-the-middle-east-chas-freeman


I immediately translated it into Russian for the benefit of Russian policy makers: "Политика США и геополитическая динамика Ближнего Востока. Наши прошлые ошибки и видение будущего" - Автор: Charles W. Freeman, Jr. Переводчик: Владислав Краснов (W. GeorgeKrasnow)
http://www.raga.org/novosti/-charles-w-freeman-jr


Another favorite American journalist of mine is Allan C. Brownfeld who in early l980s served as a member of President Ronald Reagan's transition team and made policy recommendations. I have admired his writing since the Old Cold War. Like myself, Allan has been a contributor to The Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation site (http://www.fgfbooks.com/AllanBrownfeld/aBrownfeld-bio.html).

In fact, I have translated a number of his articles for the benefit of Russian readers, most recently the one on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.http://perevodika.ru/articles/1196711.html

Brownfeld also runs the ISSUES magazine of the American Council for Judaism. (http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_author.aspx). He just emailed to me his latest article that has not yet been posted.ISRAEL AT 70:  A GROWING DILEMMA FOR AMERICAN JEWS .  BY  ALLAN C. BROWNFELD.
Below are its most striking passages:

<<As Israel celebrated its 70th anniversary in April, and American Jews wished it well, the fact is that it has become a divisive force in the community, repeatedly proclaiming itself a "Jewish state, while its 50-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and its blockade and isolation of millions of Palestinians in Gaza, shows it acting in a way that violates Jewish moral and ethical values.>> 

<<It is ironic that Jews, who have suffered oppression in many places at many times, would find themselves in the position of denying Palestinians basic political and human rights. Many in Israel are conscious of the dilemma they face.  Bradley Burston, writing in Haaretz (April 4, 2018). declared, "In the case of Zionism, can the victims of anti-Semitism come to acknowledge their---our---own bigotry, our own ingrained prejudices, our own sense of superiority and entitlement, our own history of injustice to the minorities in their midst?"

Israel at 70, Burston points out, is seeing the dramatic growth of racism and intolerance:  "This is a country which...demeans and dismisses and conflates Palestinian lives...In Israel at 70, Zionism means a government of the racist, by the racist, for the racist".>>

Brownfeld's attitude toward Israel is similar to those of Gideon Levy, Norman Finkelstein, Israel Shamir, Ambassador Freeman or Rabbi Alissa Wise.

Jon Utley is the publisher of "The American Conservative" magazine. He has been RAGA ally and my antiwar friend since last Millennium. I am proud to have helped him find the grave of his father, a Russian Jew, summarily executed as a "Trotskyite" (he was not!) in Stalin's purges.

"Clever Lies to Promote War"
by Jon Basil Utley, May 11, 2018
<<...Most recently we had cable news inundating us with stories of a new poison gas attack in Syria. The American Conservative has published a detailed analysis by former arms inspector Scott Ritter questioning the evidence, or lack of it, that the Assad regime initiated the attack.>>
http://fgfbooks.com/Utley/2018/Utley180503.html

The FGF is a basically Catholic site devoted to the preservation of Western values, and I am proud to be one of its authors. Scott Ritter is also my friend since about 2004 when he exposed the hoax about Saddam Hussein's WMD and I wrote about him in RAGA newsletters.

A few words of wisdom written in 2016 by Michael Brenner, Emeritus Professor, the University of Pittsburgh; a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS-Johns Hopkins (Washington, D.C.), about the decline of intellectual standards of US political elite who have surrendered to fantasies in their view of the world:

<<"We can expect that whoever winds up in senior policy positions in a Trump administration ... will be encouraged by the tradition of self-delusion that has become a feature of American thinking about its place in the world. Think of the Middle East where just about everything that we have been doing since 2001 has been guided by a fantastic view of the region – from Iraq, to Syria, to Yemen, to Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Gulf, to Turkey, to Palestine and Israel. This tendency to divorce ourselves from reality so as to perpetuate myths of American omnipotence and superiority is also witnessed at the operational level". >> 

Now disturbing News from ZeroHedge Janitor

Published on May 9, 2018
Ret. CIA Analyst Ray McGovern Brutalized By Police At Haspel Confirmation

Ray has also been my friend and RAGA associate since I posted a story on the Veterans Today site in 2011 when security guards used illegal man-handling techniques on Ray when he peacefully protested against Hillary Clinton's war-like speech.

Now let "The Washington Post" get out of its usual russophobic mode and say something sensible.

"How did the end of the Cold War become today’s dangerous tensions with Russia?"

By Archie Brown May 4, 2018  

Archie Brown is emeritus professor of politics at the University of Oxford and author, most recently, of “The Rise and Fall of Communism” and of “The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age.”

<<...For Michael McFaul, in his vigorously argued political memoir, “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia,” there is a “new ideological struggle . . . between Russia and the West, not between communism and capitalism but between democracy and autocracy.” As a generalization, that is unconvincing...it is hard to agree that the contemporary ideological struggle with Russia is one between democracy and autocracy. Russia has become substantially more authoritarian in the post-Soviet era than it was in the last years of the Soviet Union, but it retains far more freedom and elements of pluralism than were to be found in the pre-perestroika U.S.S.R.>>

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/how-did-the-end-of-the-cold-war-become-todays-dangerous-tensions-with-russia/2 

Newsweek attacks Ed Lozansky (and deserves the badge of honor from me)

Lozansky, a former nuclear physicist who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1976, is known in Russia policy circles as a mysterious, conservative figure. With analysts warning of a new Cold War, and as the Department of Justice and Congress investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, Lozansky’s efforts to promote Russia in Washington have drawn scrutiny from analysts and even allegations that he is spreading propaganda for the Kremlin.

http://www.newsweek.com/russia-house-washington-dc-edward-lozansky-forum-899928 

Sharon Tennison, another RAGA ally, reports that
“Bottom-Up Diplomacy” is Working!!!April 20, 2018
https://ccisf.org/bottom-up-diplomacy-is-working/

BBC News. Published on Apr 16, 2018
​
Here is Lord West, former First Sea Lord, speaking to the BBC this morning, his thoughts on why he thinks the chemical weapons attack on Douma was a false flag.

"Jimmy Carter Just Issued A Chilling Warning To Trump About Syria"
by Tyler Durden/Fri, 04/13/2018 - 10:44

Former President Jimmy Carter urges President Donald Trump to refrain from launching an illegal military attack on Syria, warning of the serious dangers - including nuclear conflagration - that could result.

"I pray that he would keep our country at peace and not exaggerate or exacerbate the challenges that come up with North Korea, in Russia, or in Syria," Carter told The Associated Press about Trump's recent threats.

"I hope he realizes very profoundly as I did, and as other presidents have done," Carter continued, "that any nuclear exchange could involve catastrophe for all human beings."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-13/jimmy-carter-just-issued-chilling-warning-trump-about-syria

Even  Paul Craig Roberts is alarmed
"America Has No Unifying Moral Culture - It Will Lose a War with Russia", he wrote on Apr 5, 2018
"A country without a unifying moral culture is no longer a country. Yet, what pretends to be a country, the US, is being led into war against Russia, a real country. There is no chance whatsoever of the US prevailing in the oncoming war."
https://russia-insider.com/en/america-has-no-unifying-moral-culture-it-will-lose-war-russia/ri22982?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=d89a40f5e8&mc_eid=73f16282b9

"A recent poll of Americans showed that “74% think America is a dictatorship; only 21% think it’s not.” Perhaps Americans are more realistic about the government than about the ‘news’ media."
http://theduran.com/russias-v-americas-records-on-democracy-and-on-whistleblowers-safety/

Which calls us back to Shamir's article: 
"Since that fateful May 9th day (when Netanyahu was just about the only foreign leader to stand next to Putin during the Red Square parade), Russian media has been treating Israel very cautiously", --observes Shamir. "Even the Gaza massacre didn’t bring many condemnations in the Russian media, though the Russian Foreign Office condemned this brutal act. The official state agency RIA reported that Israeli soldiers shot at “especially aggressive individuals”. The second (largest) state news agency TASS minimized its reporting about the massacre". 
   
  Concludes Shamir with a powerful crescendo: "In short, the Jews overcame their problems by mid-May 2018, and emerged as a leading polity on the planet Earth, in perfect rapport with both superpowers and in control over mind of billions. The massacre of Gaza furnished the proof they can kill with impunity."

Notice "control over minds of billions". It refers to the same phenomenon that Russia-Insider's Charles Bausman described in his article "It's time we drop the Jew Taboo" (http://www.raga.org/news/drop-the-jew-taboo). If we take into account that the number of people who read Russian has greatly diminished since the Old Cold War and is certainly many times smaller than those who use English, US MEGA Media has a field day to manipulate not just US government, but also the public opinion in the world. ​

Prof. Vladislav Krasnov ​

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