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RAGA Antidote 57 – Krasnow’s Antiwar Newsletter: CODID-19, Putin, Belarus, Krasnov's NEW BOOK, Seattle riots, Solzhenitsyn, Karl Marx, Anti-Nuclear Manifesto, Thomas Sowell ... and more INSIDE!

9/4/2020

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PictureW. George Krasnow, Ph.D
Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues!

​Happy Labor Day!


It has been a long hot Summer! And it isn’t yet over, with California fires and all. Alas, not much good news from America.

​
1. America’s malaise
​

Chris Hedges: America’s Death March. August 10, 2020
Regardless of the outcome, the U.S. election will not stop the rise of hyper-nationalism, crisis cults and other signs of an empire’s terminal decline, writes Chris Hedges. The terminal decline of the United States will not be solved by elections. The political rot and depravity will continue to eat away at the soul of the nation, spawning what anthropologists call crisis cults — movements led by demagogues that prey on an unbearable psychological and financial distress. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/10/chris-hedges-americas-death-march/

​Chris Hedges may be too radical. But what about The Washington Post? Ishaan Tharoor, a versatile observer, wrote on July 10, 2020) The pandemic and the dawn of an ‘Asian Century’/ The rolling disaster that is the U.S. coronavirus response has crystallized some hard truths about the country. Its political polarization has meant that Americans have not agreed on basic public health guidelines or collectively followed the social distancing practices enforced in other countries. Its deepening socioeconomic inequities saw the pandemic ravage some of its most vulnerable communities. And its commander in chief, rather than galvanizing a united front and leading a global effort, undermined international institutions, blamed foreign adversaries for his woes and blamed domestic rivals for the crisis. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/07/10/pandemic-dawn-an-asian-century/
​

Elsewhere, Riot declared, dozens arrested and officers injured in Portland, Seattle, Chicago protests/ AP. Aug. 17, 2020 

Dozens were arrested over the weekend in major cities including Portland, Seattle and Pittsburgh amid demonstrations over systemic racism and police brutality in the wake of the death of George Floyd in police custody. Video taken Sunday showed a confrontation blocks away from a peaceful protest in Portland after police declared a riot overnight Saturday. Protests, often violent, have happened nightly in Portland for more than two months after Floyd's death on Memorial Day in Minneapolis. 
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/17/riot-declared-dozens-arrested-portland-seattle-chicago-protests/5598568002/


Personally I feel especially disturbed by such news from the cities I have known since late 1960s – early 1970s where I spent my student years. That’s where the seeds of violence today were then planted. The year 1966, my first in the US, I spent at the U of Chicago. Even then the gang of “Blackstone Rangers” encroached on the university campus. The next five years--at the U of Washington, Seattle--were in the grip of anti-Vietnam war movement. Legitimate antiwar protests among students were infiltrated by radical left. My professor’s office was attacked and vandalized for he taught a course about Soviet influence via CPUSA. At one time Seattle claimed the largest number of home-made bomb explosions, including on campus, in the country. Eldridge Cleaver’s pro-gang and pro-rape book “Soul on Ice” was the rage of town. He was then the Black Panther Party leader. When a few years I met him at the Hoover Institution, he greatly mellowed in his views. He had travelled to a number of Communist countries and found out that the racial discrimination was not confined to the USA. I was delighted to hear that he and his wife became admirers of Solzhenitsyn. Read my article Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today 
http://www.raga.org/news/aleksandr-solzhenitsyns-relevance-today/ 


You may want to glance at the book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, the two New Left leaders who later changed their  mind. They may not have made amends about their destructive activities against their country but, like Cleaver, they had “second thoughts about them. For more details, read my recent article, Sighing-and more- at the Secrets of Jewish Genius: Vladislav Krasnov’s Rebuttal to Bret Stephens’s The New York Times’ article.

http://www.raga.org/news/sighing-and-more-at-the-secrets-of-jewish-genius-vladislav-krasnovs-rebuttal-to-bret-stephenss-the-new-york-times-article 

 This time I suspect there are again some influential moneyed people who want to inflame the racial issue by any means, including falsifying George Floyd’s cause of death. I hear it from various sources, including Destructive Generation, an American antiwar activist and RAGA’s long-time supporter. Ray unequivocally states “George Floyd was NOT ‘murdered’. He was not even ‘killed’. He ‘died’ of catastrophic heart failure while being arrested for criminal behavior. He had a heart attack, after he went violently berserk and violently resisted arrest.” His article is aptly titled “The Forest is Over Yonder, Right Behind Them Trees”. 

In his article “Seattle's Bolshevik Revolution” Mike Whitney is exactly right when he says “These aren’t protests, this is political warfare the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1960s. Peaceful protesters” do not attack police stations with crowbars and firebombs, they don’t vandalize Starbucks and retail shops, and they don’t lay siege to public land and declare their own sovereign state. These are fanatical ideologues who believe the system must be obliterated and replaced. They are today’s Bolsheviks and they mean business.” See Mike’s full article “Seattle's Bolshevik Revolution”
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/seattles-bolshevik-revolution/

However, the Russians can hardly gloat over America’s political disarray, domestic violence, civil strife, cultural chaos and MONUMENTAL confusion. 

ALASKA:  Sitka to remove monument to Alexander Baranov, first Russian governor of Alaska. 5 Jul, 2020/The city council in Sitka, Alaska has decided to remove a statue of Alexander Baranov, the explorer and first governor of Russian Alaska. The resolution lists a number of serious accusations against the man. Baranov worked for the Russian American Company, which was the vehicle for the Russian government’s effort to expand into the Americas. For almost three decades he was the de facto governor of Russian colonies on the continent. Sitka – called Novoarkhangelsk by its Russian founders – served as his capital.https://www.rt.com/usa/494777-sitka-baranov-statue-removal/

I have been to Alaska a couple of times. In 1987, I visited Sitka where met some members of the Tlingit Indian tribe and had a friendly conversation with its chief. I was impressed that they were Russian Orthodox Christian; many bore Russian names, even though their knowledge of Russian language was very limited. It’s true that they did not prosper, but I did not feel any hostility to Russians or white Americans for that matter.

Now take a look at Last year ‘Cultural diplomacy’: Russian America holiday proposed by Defense Ministry to promote ‘humanitarian cooperation’ 15 Oct, 2019    https://www.rt.com/russia/470962-russian-america-day-celebration/

There is a lot more to it! WHY Russia Saved the United States: The Forgotten History of a Brotherhood. By Matthew Ehret. August 23, 2020. Via The Duran https://theduran.com/why-russia-saved-the-united-states-the-forgotten-history-of-a-brotherhood/ ?

Why did Russia’s Czar Alexander II deploy the Russian navy to the coasts of the USA during the height of the Civil War in 1863? What dynamic shaped the rise of the great rail building traditions across Russia, the USA, Germany, Japan and France in the 19th century and how did this process shape the sale of Alaska and planned Bering Strait rail connection between old and new worlds?

As a matter of fact, even the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist Marxist-Leninist ideology of the Soviet Union did not stop it from celebrating Russian exploration of Alaska. As Wikipedia says, Juno and Avos (Russian: Юнона и Авось), a popular Russian-language rock opera first staged in 1981, celebrates another Russian explorer, Nikolai Rezanov, and his love affair with  a daughter of the Spanish governor of California. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_and_Avos_(opera)


Moreover, having spent a major part of my life in California, I was always grateful to its government for preserving Fort Ross, a former Russian fortress turned into Fort Ross California State Park. This is a unique cultural monument that testifies to the openness of American people to other cultures. As a member of the Congress of Russian Americans (https://www.russian-americans.org/) feel the need to preserve Baranov’s monument in Sitka, Alaska, I sighed the petition below and hope you do the same
https://www.change.org/p/city-of-sitka-assembly-preserve-the-alexander-baranof-monument-in-sitka-alaska/psf/share?after_sign_exp=default&just_signed=true

As a Russian American, I am just as concerned with the preservation of  Fort Elizavety (Fort Elizabeth)), the last remaining Russian fort on the Hawaiian islands, built in the early 19th century by the Russian-American Company/

Today’s fashionable trend to reject the colonial heritage of America beginning with Christopher Columbus and George Washington, with its emphasis on the abuse of the non-Whites, is as ill-informed as it is childish. Hey, the Vikings had explored America even earlier, around the year 1000 AD. Had the Africans or American Indians the same level of ship-building skills, they would have done about the same if landed in Europe. In fact, Hannibal did invade the Roman republic from Africa and Shakespeare’s Othello was not exactly an angel.

2. Racial tensions flair up
​

Teaching Russian Studies at US universities I had a number of Black students who, on the average, performed, perhaps, slightly better than the Whites. They certainly took pride in the fact that Russia’s greatest poet Aleksandr Pushkin was partially Black as his maternal great-grandfather was African-born (Ethiopian) general Gannibal who was named after Hannibal! 
In fact, Thomas Sowell, an outstanding Black American economist and social thinker (he turned 90 on June 30, Happy Birthday, Tom!) was one of my favorite scholars at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He was one of the few avowed anti-Marxists and I wrote a salutary review of one of this many books, MARXISM: PHILOSOPHY AND ECONOMICS. (Review by: Vladislav Krasnov, International Journal on World Peace, Vol. 5, No. 3 (JUL-SEP 1988, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20751285?seq=1)
Picture
Aleksandr Pushkin
Moreover, when Allan Brownfeld, a Jewish friend of mine, wrote a well-researched article about Karl Marx’s contemptuous attitude to the “Negroes”, I quickly translated it into Russian and posted on a Russian Perevodika site. "Want to Bash A Dead, White Male? Try Karl Marx!" http://www.salem-news.com/articles/february212013/karl-marx-ab.php/Most miss the fact that Marx was an adamant racist. Below is Russian translation link: Хочешь отлупить белого человека? Начни с Карла Маркса! Автор: Алан Браунфельд (Allan Brownfeld) Перевод Владислава Краснова (W. George Krasnow)
http://perevodika.ru/articles/22621.html?sphrase_id=4769083

So, the real issue is not genetic, ethnic or racial differences but rather the ethical standards. That’s why I dedicated my recent article to “Mahatma Gandhi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ” to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr, a political leader who, at the time of civil and racial strife, reminded the USA that the Gandhian philosophy of Non-Violence harks back to the fundamental Christian commandment to “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” and even “to turn the other cheek” to the offender to show him your superior determination. (http://www.raga.org/news/mahatma-gandhi-and-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn and also at a site in India http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4950)

I believe that the great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) may provide a spiritual guidance to the people of the United States right now, just as he was able to provide such guidance to the Russians when they were chafing under the yoke of Marxist-Leninist theory of violent world revolution. “It is in our human nature to … apply ordinary, individual, human values and standards to larger social phenomena and associations of people, up to and including the nation and the state as a whole,” he wrote in 1973 when he was still in the USSR. “Whatever feelings predominate in the members of a given society at a given moment in time, they will serve to color the whole of that society and determine its moral character. And if there is nothing good there to pervade that society, it will destroy itself, or be brutalized by the triumph of evil instincts.” 

So wrote Solzhenitsyn in his underground essay REPENTANCE AND SELF-LIMITATION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS when he was still in the USSR
http://my.ilstu.edu/~jguegu/ALEKSANDRSOLZHENITSYN.pdf


After his forced exile and settling in the USA he elaborated on the topic in Harvard Commencement address A World Split Apart (1978)

“The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of entirely destroying the other”, observed Solzhenitsyn about the Cold War chief antagonists during the 1970s. “However, understanding of the split often is limited to this political conception, to the illusion that danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is a much profounder and a more alienating one, that the rifts are more than one can see at first glance. This deep manifold split bears the danger of manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a Kingdom -- in this case, our Earth -- divided against itself cannot stand.” https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart
​

3. A Need for a Cure

On a personal level, faced in the 2016 presidential election with the choice of Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump, I backed away from both and voted for the Green Parry’s Dr. Jill Stein. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein As RAGA’s president, I chose the one who promised the best chance for improving US-Russia relations. I also liked her critical attitude to GMO, Wall Street, as well as her approval of whistleblowing dissidents and defectors, like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Still, my choice was instinctually prompted by the awareness that the country needed a medical DOCTOR to heal its aggressive policy abroad and social, racial and inter-ethnic conflicts at home. It needed it then as a preventive measure. It needs a medical attention now even more for healing and convalescence.

If Solzhenitsyn is not enough then, perhaps, the testimony of the US born Thomas Ggovio (916 – 1997), an American Communist who went to the USSR looking for the Utopia of social, racial, and economic justice. Read his 1979 book with the long title. Dear america! Why I Turned Against Communism The Odyssey of an American Communist Youth Who Miraculously Survived the Harsh Labor Camps of Kolyma – January 1, 1979.
Dear America! Why I Turned Against Communism
Picture
​Having read a number of books on this topic, I value SGOVIO’s very highly as one learns there many things one cannot find even in Solzhenitsyn’s The GULAG. My greatest surprise is that, in spite of excellent reviews by readers, this book is virtually UNKNOWN in the West where Cultural Marxism rules the roost.

4. But what’s New in Russia?

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned, German hospital says. Published: Aug. 24, 2020 By Associated Press, 39 Doctors said they do not believe his life is at risk.

Russia's most famous opposition leader, @navalny, has been rushed to the hospital, with reports that poison is suspected. If confirmed, it is a crime against the whole of Russia. There can be no democracy without dissent. Edward Snowden  @Snowden
As before, I let the Canadian Russia watcher Patrick Armstrong report:

CONSTITUTION passed comfortably. The ads varied between happy families and – the one projected on the US Embassy facade – in 1993 we were yours and now we’re ours. Sums up the main changes. As to the term reset many argue that it is designed to kill any succession in-fighting (or foreign fiddling): even if Putin quits after this term, he can still come back. I still see it as a cheap trick. https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2020/07/09/russian-federation-sitrep-9-july-2020/
 RUSSIA AND COVID. Latest numbers: total cases 870K; total deaths 14,606; tests per 1 million 203K. Russia has done 29.7 million tests (third after China and USA); among countries with populations over 10M it’s second in tests per million and of those over 100M first. The Health Minister says mass vaccinations will begin by October. https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2020/08/06/russian-federation-sitrep-6-august-2020/

Also Aug. 13, 2020. Moscow (CNN)Russian officials in Moscow tell CNN they have offered "unprecedented cooperation" with Operation Warp Speed (OWS), the US multi-agency body set up to accelerate access to effective Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. But the officials told CNN that the "US is not currently open" to the Russian medical advances." https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/13/europe/russia-us-coronavirus-vaccine/index.html

Aug. 17: Vietnam's health ministry is looking to buy a bulk order of Russia's coronavirus vaccine, state media said, despite global skepticism over its effectiveness and safety. President Vladimir Putin announced Russia is first in the world to approve a vaccine. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/17/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-aug-16-a69117

There are, however, other approaches to COVID-19. Ellen Brown, an Attorney and prominent alternative author, describes one, while warning against a potential abuse of COVID by “Police state”. Read:

From Lockdown to Police State: the “Great Reset” Rolls Out
ELLEN BROWN • AUGUST 22, 2020 •
Mayhem in Melbourne. On August 2, lockdown measures were implemented in Melbourne, Australia, that were so draconian that Australian news commentator Alan Jones said on Sky News: “People are entitled to think there is an ‘agenda to destroy western society.’”
https://www.unz.com/article/from-lockdown-to-police-state-the-great-reset-rolls-out/

Brown finds a plausible alternative in Sweden’s approach to COVID-19. According to her “Not restraining the populace has allowed Sweden’s curve to taper off naturally through “herd immunity,” with daily deaths down to single digits for the last month.” I am inclined to agree. I lived in Sweden, speak Swedish, and learned to respect this nation for the daring to go its own way, be it in social-democracy, political neutrality or just reliance on common sense.

In any case, Ellen Brown is right to warn: “Life as we know it will change. We need to ensure that it changes in ways that serve the people and the productive economy, while preserving our national sovereignty and hard-won personal freedoms.” I am proud to be her colleague in the Global Harmony Association. 

Ellen Brown is not alone. Listen to Atty. Thomas Willcutts on Science Propaganda Machine & COVID Censorship/August 18, 2020 Kevin Barrett at  https://kevinbarrett.heresycentral.is/
One way or another, these days Russia seems to be doing, at home and abroad, better than the USA.

5. No wonder that a large number of prominent Americans declare: It’s Time to Rethink Our Russia Policy

America’s current mix of sanctions and diplomacy isn’t working. An open letter on how to reconsider our approach to Putin—and whoever comes next was originally signed   By ROSE GOTTEMOELLER, THOMAS GRAHAM, FIONA HILL, JON HUNTSMAN JR., ROBERT LEGVOLD and THOMAS R. PICKERING. August 5, 2020 in POLITICO

…U.S.-Russia relations are at a dangerous dead end that threatens the U.S. national interest. The risk of a military confrontation that could go nuclear is again real. We are drifting toward a fraught nuclear arms race, with our foreign-policy arsenal reduced mainly to reactions, sanctions, public shaming and congressional resolutions. The global Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting serious worldwide economic decline, rather than fostering cooperation, has only reinforced the current downward trajectory…  


...Restoring normal diplomatic contacts should be a top priority for the White House and supported by the Congress.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/05/open-letter-russia-policy-391434

This is music to my ear. That’s what RAGA has been saying since 1992. Among a hundred plus prominent Americans who joined the call are people I like to quote in RAGA Newsletter, especially, in the RAGA Antiwar Antidotes series running since about 2014.

In addition to my former colleagues at the Monterey (now Middlebury) Institute of International Studies Anna Vassilieva and Bill Potters, I was glad to see the names of Tom Graham and Robert Legvold, as well as Matthew Rojansky, The Kennan Institute; Dimitry Simes, Center for the Nat. Interest; Stephen Walt, Harvard University; John Mearsheimer, U of Chicago. However, I did not see there—wonder why-- Stephen F Cohen, Nicolai Petro, Gilbert Doctorow nor Nikolas K. Gvosdev. Should not the drive to enroll the support of prominent Russia specialists be intensified before the Presidential elections? 

6. Belarus is close to my heart. As a student of ethnology at the U of Moscow in the late 1950-s I spent several summers there doing research on their ethnic self-awareness. We went to all major towns from Minsk and Mogilev, Gomel and Grodno, Lutsk and Brest. We did the field research in the countryside. We found no significant difference with the Russians of the RSFSR. Russian was spoken everywhere, even though some intellectuals in Minsk insisted on using Belorussian. At the Moscow U student dormitory I had Belorussian room-mates. During the 1990s I served as interpreter for Belorussian groups touring the USA and always sensed the feeling of mutual goodwill.

7. 
Dmitri Trenin, Director, Carnegie Moscow Center, reported via David Johnson’s Russia List on August 17, 2020

Game Over for Lukashenko: The Kremlin has had enough of Lukashenko, but it cannot allow Belarus to follow the path of Ukraine and become another anti-Russian, NATO-leaning bulwark on its borders. https://carnegie.ru/commentary/82493


Putin: Russia is ready to provide security help to Belarus
By: By YURAS KARMANAU and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
August 27, 2020 MINSK, Belarus — (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that he stands ready to send police to Belarus if protests there turn violent but sees no such need now…“We have agreed not to use it until the situation starts spinning out of control…,” he said. https://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/putin-russia-stands/7ODQZLQKXYUR2FZBF5VLARQS7M/
8. A View from outside of Europe. Belarus: Scramble for heart of Europe. AUGUST 4, 2020 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
By all indications, change is in the air in Belarus. For good or bad --
one cannot tell — the ground beneath the feet of the Belarus strongman
President Alexander Lukashenka is shifting…Belarus under Lukashenko
preserved the former Soviet system in the westernmost edge of the
extinct empire — no oligarchs, state-owned industry, stable employment
and social security but economic stagnation and repressive state
security apparatus. http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article9775.html


Ajal Goyal, an Indian friend of Russia, writes from Moscow re Belarus:
There are such amazing pictures and videos... I would never support Maidan type foreign sponsored violent coup and protests. But these non-violent, peaceful, civilized and cultured protestors (compared with Maidan, Yellow Vests, and Black Lives Matter) are very Gandhian and they deserve love and sympathy of everyone. Hope neither Lukashenko nor Poles or Lithuanians will push violence because that will be end. Peaceful protests should continue and there should be no violence against them. There should be no manipulations or infiltration of these protests by Europeans or Americans either.
​

9. For several years RAGA has been affiliated with the Global Harmony Association founded in 2005 by Leo Semashko, a former professor of philosophy in Sankt-Petersburg. The GHA’s goal is to beat the emergency of COVID-19 in spite of growing nuclear arms race, the impotence of the UN and general chaos and unpredictability of global powers. Below is the Anti-Nuclear Gandhian Manifesto launched by the GHA.
Picture
Nobel Appeal.
We, the Nobel Peace Laureates (NGOs and persons),
          Call the nations, governments, UN and Security Council to stop the 75 years world's “heading toward nuclear death” and to ban nuclear weapons! Can our reason, will, responsibility, humanism, conscience and human moral come to reconciliation with nuclear suicide, which has been generously funded by “a seriously ill humanity” during 75 years? How much money and attention we devote to the Covid-19 epidemic and how stingy and indifferent to the genocidal nuclear epidemic.
We call to re-prioritize the humanitarian threat of the two epidemics and to focus of political will, science and funding on banning nuclear weapons and joint building a global security/peace system. Banning nuclear weapons will free up significant investment to fight Covid-19, economic crisis and environmental catastrophe.
Our "Anti-Nuclear Manifesto" is the development and substantiation of the great legacy of global security/peace and “new thinking” of Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, the IPPNW founders and others, whose ideas became prisoners in the 75-year-old Babel Tower of the military-industrial complex silence/oblivion. Banning nuclear weapons will change strategic, long-term priorities, liberate the peaceful legacy and free humanity from the genocidal weapons hostages in XXI century.

Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN, NGO Nobel Laureate 2017,
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Laureate 1976,
John Avery, Nobel Laureate 1995,
Ernesto Kahan, Vice President of IPPNW, NGO Nobel Laureate 1985.
 
Preparing nuclear weapons,"we are already living in the rubble of World War III.
Nuclear weapons are all nations shared enemy."
Bernard Lown,
1985 Nobel lecture​
I was honored to be invited to submit my comments to the Manifesto: 

Vladislav Krasnov (aka W George Krasnow), Ph.D., historian, anthropologist, President of the Russian-American Goodwill Association, RAGA, www.raga.org, USA, president92@gmail.org https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=752

“The need for nuclear disarmament has always been recognized by the leaders of the United States and Russia, the two powers possessing 95% of their nuclear potential. At one time, the USSR responded to US atomic strikes against Japan with its own nuclear arms race. The Soviet leaders justified it with the Marxist-Leninist ideology of irreconcilability with capitalism, which supposedly inevitably degenerates into imperialism. But even during the apogee of communism in the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made significant progress in curbing the nuclear arms race. Awareness of the growing risk of nuclear war forced them to abandon ideological schemes for a pragmatic goal: the survival of their own countries—and of life on Earth!

Since 1992, our peacekeeping organization of Goodwill between the United States and the post-communist Russia (www.RAGA.org) has been looking for every opportunity to control nuclear weapons up to their complete ban on the entire Planet. That is why we joined the coalition of the Global Harmony Association (GHA). Alas, now the whole world is on the edge of the abyss.

The "Peace/Cyberspheronics Manifesto" (30 pages), created by the GHA, is the Manifesto of Gandhian Non-Violence. It demands the prohibition of all nuclear weapons and poses a historical question: Will former ideological opponents be able to find common ground in eliminating this mutually deadly weapon? The same question I asked in my 2019 article “Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn.” https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=884

If some 35 years ago the USA and the USSR had a modicum of mutual trust, today it is practically nonexistent. All past restrictions on nuclear weapons have been dismantled, opening a new race for Weapons of Mass Destruction. This brought humanity to the precipice of a nuclear disaster. According to nuclear scientists (Mecklin, 2020), there are only 100 seconds left on the Nuclear Disaster Clock. It is high time to understand the salutary role of our Peace/Cyberspheronics Manifesto, with its focus on global security.

Only mutual concessions between the United States and Russia can restore trust, ensure good political will on both sides, and revive the atmosphere of cooperation that existed under Reagan and Gorbachev. Otherwise, the risk of nuclear war will grow like a snowball until it buries everyone under its avalanche. It is the will of every citizen that determines the shift towards cooperation that this Manifesto breathes. Our optimal goal: Voluntary mutual renunciation of all nuclear weapons and their complete ban in all countries in the coming years.


Our efforts toward nuclear disarmament can hardly be successful unless we also strive for social, ethnic, racial, and religious harmony and justice in each and every nation of the world. We work in coalition and synergy with other holistic movements, such as "The Third Way" economics formulated by Louis Kelso and his successor Norman Kurland. We are guided by Gandhi's advice: "The Satyagrahi's goal is to convert, not to coerce, your opponent."  https://peacefromharmony.org/

I was delighted that my statement was next to that of my American colleague Norman G Kurland, JD, President, Center for Economic and Social Justice, USA, thirdway@cesj.org. Below are excerpts


Norman Kurland, JD, President, Center for Economic and Social Justice, thirdway@cesj.org,

“The elimination of nuclear weapons, as well as complete/general disarmament, by and large, are impossible without a fundamentally substantiated common and holistic scientific platform/theory of the “Global Security/Peace” system. But this system …(must) ensure global economic equality and economic property rights for every person. Their well-founded theory and convincing practice over several decades in the United States was presented in the works of Kelso (1958, 1968), Kurland (1982, 2014, etc.) and many of their followers. This theory allows us to answer the question: After the COVID-19 pandemic, how can we unite to build a more just future for every world citizen? https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=414

10. History, August 19, 1991: The “White Russians” arrive at Moscow 

It was in August of 1991 when the relations between the USSR and the USA have already taken a turn to the better, I was a lucky witness and participant of a truly historical event. I was among over 400 “White Russian” émigrés delegates who on the wave of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost were invited to Moscow for The First Congress of Russian Compatriots (Первый Конгресс Соотечественников: read a memoir of Mikhail Tolstoy in Russian https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/pervyy-kongress-sootechestvennikov). The event was sponsored by the Parliament of the Russian Federation (RSFSR) then headed by Boris Yeltsin (1931 – 2007). Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR, was at the time on a summer vacation in the Crimea. The Congress by itself was a unique historical event as it was the first organized meeting of Russians of different ideological persuasions since 1922 when Lenin ordered the expulsion of hundreds of dissident Russian “philosophers” (actually, all sorts of anti-Communist intellectuals) shipped to Germany. 

For almost 70 years Soviet leaders forbade all contacts of Soviet citizens with the Russian émigrés, allegedly in order to prevent an infiltration of spies and just to keep Marxist-Leninist purity of the country. With the policy of glasnost by 1991 the prohibition became ineffective. Still, inviting so many “White Russians” (in fact, among us there were some Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews etc.) for formal meetings in Moscow was unprecedented: after all, among the invited there were many of noble origin, including even some from the Romanov Tsar dynasty. 

In addition to being Professor of Russian Studies at the Monterey Institute of International StudiesI, I represented the Congress of Russian Americans as its Board member. Apparently, the suspicion of treason as a defector and the author of Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List, was lifted as I was also allowed to visit, in addition to Moscow, my native Perm for the first time in 29 years—at the expense of the government!  

11. August 19 is The Day of Transfiguration

Foreign delegates, including myself, were housed in Hotel “Moskva” (later razed) near the Kremlin Wall. As we were waking up on the morning of August 19, 1991, the rumors spread of a chaos in the streets. Later we learned that it was the coup d’etat against Gorbachev by orthodox Communists. Nonetheless we continued to walk, in small groups of acquaintances, across the Red Square to the famous Dormition (Uspensky) Cathedral inside the Kremlin Wall for a formal opening of a week long program. We passed by several armored personnel carriers with their crews in disarray, and often engaged into small non-threatening talk with crowds of onlookers. 

As we approached the Cathedral, it became clear that we will not be greeted by Boris Yeltsin, the official host. He was too busy dealing with the coup. But Patriarch of Moscow Alexy II was on hand and he greeted us wormy. The spiritual symbolism of his greeting more than recompensed for Yeltsin’s absence. As the fate decreed, August 19 is the Day of Christ’s Transfiguration, a major Orthodox Christian holyday. In our day and in our presence it augured the coming Transfiguration, a metamorphosis in Greek (preobrazhenie in Russian), of the avowedly atheist and even anti-religious Soviet regime into a New Russia, a secular country to be sure, but fervently seeking a spiritual rebirth. 

The Patriarch indeed played a significant role in squashing the coup attempt, as “he denounced the arrest of Mikhail Gorbachev, and anathematized the plotters. He publicly questioned the junta's legitimacy, called for restraint by the military, and demanded that Gorbachev be allowed to address the people. He issued a second appeal against violence and fratricide, which was amplified over loudspeakers to the troops outside the Russian "White House" half an hour before they attacked. Ultimately, the coup failed, which eventually resulted in the breakup of the Soviet Union.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_Alexy_II_of_Moscow

A couple of days later, after Yeltsin took charge and managed to defuse the coup, he triumphantly addressed the full assembly of “White émigrés” in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. The climax was his announcement that the Russian republic inside the USSR is reverting from the Red Flag of Communism to the old imperial tricolor of Russia as its state symbol. When the audience broke into a tumultuous applause, Yeltsin assured the “Russian Compatriots Abroad” that the demise of Communism would not lead to the demise of Russia’s great power statue. 

I was among several émigré delegates who wanted personally to thank Yeltsin for a patriotic speech in which he sought to overcome ideological and political divisions for a future Russia. At the very last moment, I managed to get onstage and went straight to Yeltsin surrounded by body guards and well-wishers. I caught his attention by saying that, “like you, I am a native son of the Perm region but currently reside in California. That’s where I wrote a book about the evolution of the USSR from the Red flag of Communism to Russian national tricolor,” I told Yeltsin while handing him a freshly printed copy of Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth. 
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Gen. Aleksandr Korzhakov, Mikhail Tolstoy, Boris Yeltsin and Krasnov
​“Since both of us come from the same Perm region, you may like to know that in my book, dedicated to Russia’s Baptism a thousand years ago, the event that played out in Moscow in the last few days, are kind of prefigured. Please ask your assistants to translate the last few pages and you may see that they contain a script for the events that just played out”. Smiling broadly, Yeltsin strongly shook my hand and cordially thanked for the gift”.  Returning to the States, I never heard from him again. However, one of the émigré delegates took a snapshot of the event and later mailed it to my Monterey address.

I don’t know whether Yeltsin noticed my lapel button on which the American flag and CRA Russian national tricolor were already joined together.

12. Back to Perm, the home town

The Soviet sponsors of the Congress were provident enough to allow Russian émigrés delegates to visit not just Moscow but their birth place and relatives, if any. It was my first chance to visit my native Perm since 1962 when I escaped from the USSR. My parents were already dead, but my two sisters and brother waited for me there as I knew from letters exchange. After the Congress program was over on August 28, I took a Trans-Siberian train to Perm, the last major city on the European side of the Urals. I stayed there just few days, August 30 to September 4, to re-connect with my relatives, fellow high-school students and neighbors. 

My main mission was to lay memorial wreath on my parents’ grave. However, I ordered yet another wreath to remind the citizens of Perm that the last de-jure Emperor of Russia was Michael II. After all, Michael Romanov was assassinated in Perm on June 12, 1918, that is five weeks prior to the Yekaterinburg massacre of his brother Tsar Nicholas and his family. So I called up a dozed of my relatives and friends, including a priest and a former GULAG prisoner, and then we had a somber ceremony of honoring the memory of Michael and his secretary Brian Johnson by affixing another memorial wreath on the wall of the sinister building on Karl Marx Avenue 5. Later in the year Perm citizens followed up by mounting there a memorial plaque and restoring to the street its historical name, Sibirskaya.

I have written more on the historical role of Perm in the aftermath of the Bolshevik 1917 revolution in my article Emperor Michael II in the Solzhenitsyn House - Author: Vladislav Krasnov
​

More about Perm in post-Soviet Russia you can find in the article below

Jon Basil Utley at 80 “He is One of Us” (Memoirs of Two Trips to Russia) 8/7/2014 A Tribute by W. George Krasnow at Jon’s birthday party in Washington on March 12, 2014

Sadly, Jon Utley, my dear friend and RAGA associate passed away in late March 2020.  So let me augment the above praise with the obituaries

Antiwar.com on Twitter: "RIP Jon Basil Utley, A great freedom ...
​

twitter.com › antiwarcom › status  Mar 24, 2020 - RIP Jon Basil Utley, A great freedom-fighter and peace activist. Read a tribute to his life by Eric Garris,  his friend and editor of http://Antiwar....You may also like to read an obituary by Doug Bandow “The Passing of a Great Advocate of Liberty and Peace: Jon Basil Utley, RIP”. 

As I have done it before, I am happy to present how Historian and architectural expert William Brumfield takes a photographic excursion into the past of my native PERM. TRAVEL JULY 24 2020

WILLIAM BRUMFIELD
https://www.rbth.com/travel/332485-perm-historic-neighborhoods
​

Since this major city of the northern Urals is my native city of Perm, I am particularly grateful to Professor Broomfield for doing a fine job of both taking new photographs of Perm and juxtaposing them with those taken by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky before the October 1917 Revolution. It is a double achievement in preservation of Russian architectural monuments and making them known to the outside world. 

It may be useful to recall some historical facts and legends about Perm as a town and region:
--10th Century: it first appeared in the ancient Russian chronicle as a name of a “far east” region among several united by the Kievan Rus;
--in 11th century Icelandic sagas mention Bjarmaland as the easternmost region of Viking expansion;
--16th century: Yermak Tomofeyevich (Ерма́к Тимофе́евич), a Cossack ataman, used the Perm region’s major rivers the Kama and the Chusovaya River  as a springboard to cross the Ural Mountains and conquer West Siberia, making the Perm region Russia’s main gateway to the East;
--The year of 1723: Emperor Peter the Great gave to ore excavating metallurgical factories near today’s Perm a township status;
--1781: Catherine the Great elevated the city of Perm to the seat of General Governorship stretching across the Urals to wide expanses of Western Siberia. 
--1885: George Kennan, an American explorer, visited Perm during his journey across the Empire. Generally critical of Tsarist autocracy, he found Perm to be the most American city, at least, in the rectangular streets planning which apparently originated from Catherine the Great’s infatuation with European rationalism;
--1916: Perm State University is founded; Perm supplied war materials, esp. artillery to the WWI front;
--1918 – 1919: during Civil War Perm was contested between the Reds and the Whites (Admiral Kolchak); the abduction and execution (?) of Michal Romanov was part of it; 
--1940 – 1957: during this period of my growing up, Perm ceased to exist as it was re-named to Molotov, the Communist leader (Vyacheslav Molotov) perceived at the time as Stalin’s next in line; one can only imagine how proud we the kids were of the city’s contribution to war efforts;
--1957, the historical name of Perm was restored during Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign, but the city and the region remained “zakrytyi gorod”, that is off limits for foreign visitors, even some time after the dissolution of the USSR;
-- 2005, Senator Barack Obama visited Perm, along with Senator Richard Lugar, as part of the US-Russia agreement of nuclear weapons control. There was an unexpected delay at the airport. (https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/nuclear-agreements/2005-08-lugar-delegation-detained-for-three-hours-in-perm-after-inspecting-nuke-weapons-facility) After Obama had been elected president in 2009, one of the off-limits factory engineers asked me to forward to him a friendly letter, with an apology for racial slurs he may have heard while in Perm and inviting him to visit Perm unofficially since it is now an open city. I forwarded the letter to President Obama but did not hear back.

Beyond war and politics, Perm is also a cultural center:

--Perm Opera and Ballet Theater named after Peter Chaikovsky is one of the oldest (since 1870) and most vibrant in Russia (my niece, one of its graduates, had a dancing tour of India and later performed leading roles in the Capetown Ballet Theater, South Africa)
--Sergei Diaghilev grew up in Perm where his grandfather founded a private high-school which now houses the Dyagilev Memorial Museum with annual programs open to foreigners
--Boris Pasternak poetically transformed Perm into Yuryatino, “the town of Yuri,” in the novel Doctor Zhivago. 
--Perm State Art Gallery is renowned for its collection of native Permian wooden sculpture and several collections of Russian and European art. Tragically, since the 1920s this fine gallery has been housed, at the behest of Communist authorities, in the former the grand Cathedral of Savior Transfiguration on the banks of the Kama. Moreover, it is in the neighborhood of a City Zoo that the atheist rulers of Soviet Russia placed on top of an exclusive cemetery for clergymen and dignitaries of Perm. 

This is a good stop to call the reader’s attention back to William Brumfield outstanding juxtaposition of the color photograph from the two very different periods of Russia’s history, before the Revolution and thereafter. The credits go to Professor Brumfield, but also to the Library of Congress that was provident enough to purchase Prokudin-Gorsky’s collection when after the October Revolution he was driven to the destitute ranks of While émigrés.  Is it not amazing that a pure-blooded American has devoted forty years of his life—he has started around 1980 when Soviet authorities looked a scans at him while his Russian hosts began to use glasnost to challenge the official policy of sacrilege against and neglect of Tsarist architectural monuments, especially, Christian churches. So please take another look and see whether new Soviet and post-Soviet architecture surpasses in beauty the old one, so viciously and wantonly destroyed by the political fanatics.

This achievement shines all the more promising now in view of the monumental madness of hatred-motivated wanton destruction of US historical monuments, from Gen. Robert Lee to George Washington and Columbus. Political extremists and some plain hoodlums from Antifa (United States) and BLM follow in the footsteps of the Communist Bolsheviks of Russia who had engaged in bacchanalia of monument destruction as a prelude to “purges”, that is measures to “purify” the ideals of Revolution by executing all dissidents from the Right and of the Left, especially their own “treacherous” comrades.

In spite of the tense US-Russia relations, American sanctions and Russian counter-sanction, Perm is well-connected to the outside world; it is as open as ever in its history. Perm State University alone has over 400 students and there are several other advance level schools that have foreign students. The Opera and Ballet Theater’s art director is the world-famous Teodor Currentzis, a Greek.  Moreover, Perm is a Sister city to both Louisville, KY and Oxford, UK. In fact, I used to interpret for a Russian delegation when they visited Louisville. I am also on the receiving end of the Oxford-Perm newsletter. The late Donald Crawford, the author of The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II, twice visited Perm and is well regarded in academic community. 
​

The name of Perm is perhaps the least erasable among all peopled places on Earth. After all, Permian Period, in geologic time, was the last period of the Paleozoic Era. And, thanks to Roderick Murchison (1792 - 1871, a Scottish geologist, it owns its origin to my native city. According to Wikipedia, after doing geological studies in the Ural Mountains, Murchison “announced the Permian system to geology in 1841, based on explorations in Perm Krai undertaken with Édouard de Verneuil”. It is certainly good to see that co-operation of three countries – Russia, Britain and France – is thus recognized. However, one may well add the forth, the USA, if we recall that there exists the University of Texas at the Permian Basin. That makes it close to universal recognition.
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A Roderick Murchison Memorial Rock on the premises of High-School № 9 named after Alexander Pushkin in Perm
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The Permian Period began 298.9 million years ago and ended 252.2 million years ago, extending from the close of the Carboniferous Period to the outset of the Triassic Period.

May Perm enjoy the same permanence!

Finally, I am happy to announce the FORTHCOMING BOOK 
From The East to The West a message of Peace 
Published by Sanbun Publishers, New Delhi, INDIA

​Vladislav Krasnov (aka W George Krasnow), Ph.D., is the author of Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel, and Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth. Former professor and Head of Russian Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, since 1992 he has led Russia and America Goodwill Association www.RAGA.org, now affiliated with the Global Harmony Association, founded by Dr. Leo Semashko to advance Gandhi’s ideal of Non-Violence. 
https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=938 

To those who preached violence and called nonviolent actionists cowards, he replied: "I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence....I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour....But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment."
 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha

HAPPY LABOR DAY

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

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

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Steve Sniegoski, Pete Buttigieg, and Ron Unz

7/8/2019

1 Comment

 
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Get Ready for the 2020 Presidential Race
Jews & Gentiles United
A response to Stephen Sniegoski’s The Green New Deal, Israel, and Mayor Pete in The Unz Review
By Vladislav Krasnov (aka W George Krasnow)

​We are lucky being able to discuss just about anything, including such taboo topics as the Holocaust, Hitler, or Jewish influence in The Unz Review. Thanks to our host Ron Unz whom one grateful reader called “an incredibly brave human being”[1] for exploring taboo topics himself, selecting a team of independent authors and encouraging readers’ comments. I agree with this reader. That’s why I had invited Ron as a featured author for RAGA.org.
​
As to Steve Sniegoski, I have known him for years as a fellow contributor to FGF.com, a conservative site dedicated to Championing Western Civilization and the great legacies of Sam Francis and Joe Sobran.[2] At the turn of millennia, I joined a group of scholars and Washington policy wonks, some from the Reagan administration, who regularly met in the Washington DC area diners to discuss all the misadventures of US foreign policy. Jon Utley,[3] Ron Unz’s successor as the publisher of The American Conservative magazine[4] in Washington, was one of the organizers. Steve Sniegoski was among our leading presenters. Soon he published The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel

The article at hand
[5] is very perceptive as it takes into account the change of demographics and of cultural and political climate in the country.  Steve wrote it not to make fun of the would-be presidential candidate’s name or sexual orientation. His thrust is rather to suggest that the eventual outcome of the election will be decided by the demographic change and influence of Big Media.

“Should Buttigieg run for president, the mainstream media would likely expand its worship of him and double down on the faults, real or imagined, of Trump. It would seem that Buttigieg is the ideal Democratic candidate, lacking the baggage afflicting Sanders and Biden. This, of course, does not guarantee that Buttigieg will be the Democrats nominee for president or vice-president but about the only thing that could derail Buttigieg’s campaign would be the discovery that he is really a straight man.”

This conclusion, made with tongue in cheek, should be enough to dissuade those readers whose thinking stops as soon as the subject’s unusual name starts. As Anon[253] • Disclaimer says: “Well l think the author is head over heels for Buttleg or whatever his name is”. Alas, he failed to see that Steve’s conclusion was made tong in-cheek.

[1] See http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-holocaust-denial/ Comment 408. Otterboy, August 28, 2018

[2] http://www.fgfbooks.com/AboutUS.html

[3] Jon Utley http://www.fgfbooks.com/Utley/Utley-bio.html. See also my article about him
Jon Basil Utley at 80 “He is One of Us” (Memoirs of Two Trips to Russia)  Tribute by W. George Krasnow at Jon’s birthday party in Washington on March 12, 2014

[4] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/about-us/

[5] The Green New Deal, Israel, and Mayor Pete. STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI • MAY 11, 2019
https://www.unz.com/article/the-green-new-deal-israel-and-mayor-pete/#comments

​After perusing the flow of comments, I have two impressions. First, there are too many negative remarks about Jews in general, without indicating their specific political orientation. Second, the overall defeatist mood is evident in the alleged Jewish takeover of the formerly “WASPish” US establishment. Did we forget that Trump won the election in spite of the fact that out of 1000 largest media outlets only 50 were on his side? One does not have to admire Trump, but the lesson is: Even a small number of alternative sites can defeat the Big Media! True that even a small number of Jewish moguls on Trump’s side were able to subordinate his foreign policy to the Neocons. But the fact is: a presidential candidate can beat the Mega Media if his message is properly calibrated.
​
Can it be done in the forthcoming 2020 election? I think ‘yes’, if priorities are properly selected and duly stressed.
​ 
  1. With the avalanche of information via Internet, the Cyber agreement among the super-powers is urgently needed.[1] James Cardin cogently argues in The Nation magazine, a cyber “wild west” is not in the US national interest.
  2. An agreement on the limitation of nuclear arms is just as urgent, for a break-down of Internet and ensuing chaos may lead to a global nuclear holocaust even if nobody wanted to trigger it. Failing to reach such agreement, super-powers effectively abdicate their responsibility for Life on Earth.
  3. Domestically, the peace dividend from the above agreements would allow the US to reduce the overblown defense budget and spend more on education and healthcare to make the country more competitive economically, more fair and socially cohesive, and worthy of emulation abroad.
  4. There is a need to open new investigation of 9/11 because the official version of terrorist destruction of World Trade Center has been challenged not just by alleged political “conspiracy theorists” but also by a large group of structural engineers who deem the official explanation technically impossible. You think 9/11 was an inside job?[2]

[1] Read, e.g.  Time to Pursue an International Cyber Treaty? By James Carden, APRIL 30, 2019
The Mueller report findings show a cyber “wild west” is not in the US national interest.
https://www.thenation.com/article/international-cyber-treaty-russia-china-dnc/

[2] You think 9/11 was an inside job? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg
See text and sign petition  https://shop.ae911truth.org/DVD-Cased-9-11-Explosive-Evidence-Experts-Speak-Out-DVD-ESO-CASED1-PP.htm
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Cui bono? It looks like it was a coup d’état to put the nation on war footing for ongoing US misadventures in the Middle EAST. It cost us 2744 lives lost in New York; 1 million lost in Afghanistan and Iraq and counting; 6, ooo US troops killed in a war on terror; $4.5 trillion lost to US tax payers. Moreover, our civil liberties have been impaired by:  The Patriot Act; Military Commissions Act; Department of Homeland Security; TSA (just take your next flight!) and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012). The engineers remind us that today American citizen can be subject to search and seizure without a warrant; detained or imprisoned indefinitely without charge, without evidence, without lawyer, without a trial, and even tortured or assassinated merely for being accused. The engineers conclude: Ignoring the World Trade Center evidence is no longer an option.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddz2mw2vaEg
See also Experts speak out. Richard Gage (a leader) Americal Institute of Architects. 1500 engineers and 10 000 other people questioned. https://911planeshoax.com/

Be it as it may, but I believe the first question any presidential candidate must be asked is this: Do you take seriously the 9/11 official story?

There is no need to elaborate before there is a candidate who would agree on the validity of the issues. But there is one person I have in mind. He is no other than Ron Unz, our open-minded and tireless host. I did not raise the issue with him when we met in April. But he would certainly qualify: excellent education, broad knowledge of history, highly intelligent, open-minded, a successful entrepreneur and skillful communicator. The declared candidates might envy Ron’s electability: ---in 1994 he was second in the race for California governor;-- in 1998 sponsored California Proposition 227, to modify the state's bilingual education by English immersion classes.
​
As California is the first state where the majority is non-white, Ron has the advantage as a conservative patriot who is nonetheless liberal enough to unite the nation across racial, ethnic, and religious lines. He might emerge as a national leader for whom indeed “there are no Jews, nor Hellenes”.
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Ron Unz and the author at Jing-Jing, Palo Alto, April 3, 2019
Regretfully, many comments in TUR tend to lump all Jews together, regardless of their political leanings. Even though the majority of American Jews traditionally vote Democrat, they are just as torn in several, even opposite, directions as the Gentiles are. There are ardent religious Jews, as those belonging to Neturei Karta, Orthodox Jews United Against Zionism, who oppose Israel’s violent political ideology.[1]

There are secular Jewish American groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace[2] that bravely defend Palestinian rights and lead the BDS movement. As a non-Jewish member of JVP, I feel I am better informed about Israel and its American Jewish critics. The JVP just announced a May 19, 2019 meeting at which “forty Jews of diverse backgrounds tell a wide range of stories about the roads they have traveled from a Zionist world view to activism in solidarity with Palestinians and Israelis striving to build an inclusive society founded on justice, equality, and peaceful coexistence.”

[1] Neturei Karta opposes the so-called "State of Israel" because the entire concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law. https://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/index.cfm
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Voice_for_Peace
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And there are other American Jews who believe that Zionism goes against the grain of Judaism as a universal religion that eschews territorial attachment.[1] One of them is Allan Brownfeld[2] of the American Council for Judaism.[3] I’ve been reading Allan’s articles on global issues since the 1980s and translated some to Russian.[4] He is one of the most astute American political thinkers.

Then there is Israel Shamir,[5] an early Soviet dissident who immigrated to Israel in 1968. After serving as paratrooper in the IDF and fighting in the 1973 war, Israel became disillusioned in Zionist reality. Now he has emerged as most persistent critic of Israel’s right-wing Zionism. A friend of Palestinians, he was baptized as an Orthodox Christian. At my invitation, in 2001 he was the distinguished speaker at the club of disenchanted Washington conservatives where both Sniegoski and I were active participants. Not an American, Shamir is nonetheless most imaginative and prolific author of TUR.

[1] See my 2012 article The World for Israel, or Jews for the World? By W. George Krasnow, January 09, 2012. http://original.antiwar.com/krasnow/2012/01/08/the-world-for-israel/.
[2] http://www.fgfbooks.com/AllanBrownfeld/aBrownfeld-bio.html
[3] http://www.acjna.org/acjna/default.aspx
[4] http://perevodika.ru/articles/1196711.html?sphrase_id=4433208
[5] http://www.israelshamir.net/Biography.htm
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Israel Shamir on a Russian TV screen
I have not yet exhausted my list of Jewish friends of mine and--I dare say--of Russia. But let me mention one more who just alerted us that the USA and Israel are preparing a war on Iran. “A collection of colonists plop themselves down in the middle of the Muslim world with plans to expand—into a world, mind you, not too keen about it all—and we’ve got their back? I mean, Bibzy (Netanyahu) wants to fight the Iranians down to the last American.”[1] So says Mr. Milton Kapner,[2] a New York Jew who, after converting to Orthodox Christianity became Brother Nathanael, an ardent and tireless preacher against “pernicious” influence of the “establishment Jews” on US political and cultural life.

As the founder and president of RAGA.org, I make it a policy to include in our RAGA newsletter all good writers who favor a peaceful co-existence with Russia and non-aggressive US foreign policy world-wide. I welcome them regardless of their political leanings—Left, Right, Liberal or Conservative—as long as they present facts and cogent arguments. One might say I practice political polyphony having transferred this term from Solzhenitsyn’s artistic strategy.[3] I pay no attention whether the authors are Jewish or not.

As personally I tend to be Conservative, I may favor such authors as Pat Buchanan or Paul Craig Roberts. But I am always happy to provide links to Sharon Tennison,[4] Ray McGovern, Stephen Cohen, Ed Lozansky,[5]  Gilbert Doctorow,[6] Naomi Klein, Medea of CODEPINK,[7]   Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, and my personal friends Dan Lieberman of Alternative Insight[8] and Martin Sieff. As far as exposing US meddling in Russian reforms under Boris Yeltsyn to help create the oligarchic system, none is better than Professor Janine Wedel,[9] the author of “Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe”.[10] And don’t forget Gilad Atzmon,[11] a jazzman and the author of Being in Time-- A Post Political Manifesto.[12] Don’t his artistic jazz improvisations spell the same doom for the militant Zionism as jazz in the USSR[13] did for totalitarian Communism?

The same “big tent” polyphonic approach I apply in selecting authors to translate into Russian and post either on RAGA or the Russian site PEREVODIKA: Noam Chomsky, Chas Freeman,[14] Marjorie Cohn, and Allan Brownfeld appear next to Pat Buchanan, Chris Hedges, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, and Charles Bausman whose pioneering Russia-Insider article It's Time to Drop the Jew Taboo I immediately translated and had it posted both on RAGA.org[15] and PEREVODIKA.[16]

One translation of which I am particularly proud was that of “Six Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of His Time.”[17] I was asked to do so by Dr. John Andrew Morrow, Canadian-American scholar who researched the Arabic sources. John was so impressed with the medieval Al-Andalus in Spain and Portugal where Muslims, Christians, and Jews co-existed for over seven centuries that he learned Arabic and converted to Islam. As Amazon.com describes his book, “accepted as law for nearly 1400 years, these documents were common knowledge to educated Muslims and Christians until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, after which they virtually disappeared from collective consciousness.” Knowing of the importance of religious tolerance in Russia today, I translated his book to Russian, and had it posted in Russian internet.[18] I also wrote a commentary for an established Russian magazine.[19] Later Mr. Adgezal Mamedov of Azerbaijan[20] had it translated and published in Azeri language. After all, we should not forget that Islamophobia in the USA often goes hand in hand with Russophobia.

I was fortunate with people who offered me their sites for free posting and interviews. Dr. Kevin Barrett interviewed me for his Truth Jihad Radio.[21] Yes, he is a Muslim convert. But for me he is, first of all, an American patriot, a scholar who insists that the First Amendment is our foremost treasure. He knows how to protect best this treasure for himself and his fellow citizens. Kevin is a rare American familiar with the work of Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)[22] who introduced the notion of polyphony as a necessity of having competing ideological views for any country to remain free. For such unorthodox views Bakhtin was quickly hauled to the GULAG because the USSR recognized only one and only Marxist-Leninist ideology.

But the banner of polyphony and heterodoxy was soon picked up by Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989),[23] Andrei Amalrik (1938-1980),[24] Anatoly Ivanov, Vladimir Osipov,[25] and dozens other Soviet dissidents. The USSR refused to coexist with polyphony of different persuasions, and soon Amalrik, Solzhenitsyn, and dozen others were expelled from the country. Amalrik, who was my fellow student in History Department of the University of Moscow, was the author of the prophetic book Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?[26] He did not see his dream come true as he died in a traffic accident while visiting Spain in 1980.

Dr. Barrett thinks that now Russia and the USA reversed their roles. Since the time of glasnost and the fall of USSR, Russia has been moving toward a greater heterodoxy—dialog and polyphony in public discourse—whereas the Mainstream Media in the USA tries to turn it   into a monologic society in which “political correctness” rules the roost. Kevin knows what he is talking about because for he lost his academic position for sticking to the 9/11 contrarian view and encouraging others to speak up their mind. That this is not an easy task is evident in his latest articles “Sorry, Ilhan, Jews HAVE Hypnotized the World”[27] and "The Holocaust" Is a Myth That Conceals Our Shame.”[28]

Dr. Barrett is not alone to challenge the official wisdom. Ray McGovern, a former high CIA official in the Reagan administration, has been also harboring dissident thoughts. In January 2003, Ray co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)—and the name “for Sanity” is just right-- to expose how intelligence was being falsified to “justify” war on Iraq. In 2011 Ray was seized and badly beaten in front of Hillary Clinton when she spoke at George Washington University about the need for freedom of expression – in Iran. It was during her speech Ray stood up with his back turned toward then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.[29] It was then I wrote for Veterans Today, a site of former military and intelligence officers turned dissidents, “A brave Man stands abuse. Vets for Peace Demands Apology from Hilliary Clinton.” [30]

Recently, March 13, 2019, Ray and his team of VIPS published their authoritative opinion that “The final Mueller report should be graded “incomplete” due to the speciousness of the story that DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking”. According to the VIPS, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s testimony cannot be trusted because “The materials brought out by Edward Snowden in June 2013 showed Clapper to have lied under oath to the committee on March 12, 2013; he was, nevertheless, allowed to stay on as Director of National Intelligence for three and half more years. Clapper fancies himself an expert on Russia, telling Meet the Press on May 28, 2017 that…Russians are “typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever.”[31]

As I myself had to escape from the USSR,[32] just to keep my sanity intact, it is natural to me to identify with US dissidents, including Edward Snowden, whose forced defection to Russia made me write a warning to the USA, To Defect or to Integrate? The USA vs Edward Snowden.[33]

It is hardly accidental that I find my fellow dissenters at Veterans Today. Lately I was interviewed by Jonas E Alexis, a Black American scholar and the author of “Zionism Vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology Is Undermining Western Culture.”[34] He now teaches math in South Korea. Titling the interview Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Truth Can and Will Destroy the New World Order and Satanism,[35] Jonas focused our dialogue on the importance of freedom of expression.

Alexis: I remember that one of the battle cries of Soviet dissidents was the demand for glasnost, meaning giving “voice” (glas) to any subject on which Soviet leaders put a taboo.
Krasnov: Exactly so. That’s why while writing my book, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth, I tried to give a voice, an opportunity to speak to every brave and cogent Soviet intellectual or expat dissident who, not being satisfied with Gorbachev’s schemes to save Communism, called for a Russian future BEYOND Communism, a future which could not be gained unless Russia recovered its thousand years deep national roots, including its Christianity.

Then I went on to set up Jonas’s next question:
Krasnov: We know that William J. Burns,[36] former US Ambassador in Moscow and now president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, met with Solzhenitsyn in 2008, before the writer passed away. Here is what was reported: “According to Burns, Solzhenitsyn positively contrasted the eight-year reign of Putin with those of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, which he said had ‘added to the damage done to the Russian state by 70 years of communist rule’. Under Putin, the nation was rediscovering what it was to be Russian, Solzhenitsyn thought.”
​Alexis: Do you agree with Solzhenitsyn’s assessment of Putin?

Krasnov:  Yes, I do. Moreover, I think Solzhenitsyn would have been pleased with Putin’s performance SINCE 2008, even though Burns was right to point out that “the writer’s praise for Putin wasn’t unqualified.” Solzhenitsyn was a man who could not be subservient to anyone.
Curious of how Jonas, a born American, perceive Solzhenitsyn, I asked:
Krasnov: What do you like most about Solzhenitsyn?

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

I heartily agreed with my inquisitive, knowledgeable and honorable VT debater Jonas E Alexis.
Responding to a RAGA newsletter some years ago, Brother Nathanael asked me if I was willing to translate Solzhenitsyn’s Two Hundred Years Together.[37] I declined but learned that Brother Nathanael was determined to walk in Solzhenitsyn’s footsteps as a truth teller, a feature that he shares with Ron Unz, with all their differences.

Ron Unz is also an unabashed admirer of Solzhenitsyn. “Throughout most of my life,” admits Ron in one of his incisive articles, “Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn was generally regarded as the greatest Russian literary figure of our modern era, and after reading all of his works, including The First Circle, Cancer Ward, and The Gulag Archipelago, I certainly concurred with this assertion.” However, as soon as Solzhenitsyn “hinted (in Two Hundred Year Together) at the very prominent role of Jews in both financing and leading the Bolshevik Revolution, and afterward staffing the NKVD and administering the Gulag labor camps,” not only was his book ignored in the USA, but “His literary star seems also to greatly waned…  I only very rarely see his name mentioned these days in any of my regular newspapers.” [38]  

I was reading the above lines when I was getting ready to go Solzhenitsyn’s Centennial conference at Northern Vermont University last September. It then emailed Ron to ask if he would want to come to our conference and share his American perception of the Russian writer. Being busy as always Ron politely declined. But then I knew that The Unz Review was the best venue for my report about the conference. As soon as it was ready, I sent it to him and it was carried in TUR as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today. International “Reading Solzhenitsyn” Conference in Lyndon, Vermont, September 7-8, 2018.[39]

Here is the conclusion: “Solzhenitsyn, more than anybody else unites Russia and the USA in their urgent task and duty to secure a peaceful, free, fair, and harmonious global commonwealth in which every nation is a proud member”.

What is now at stake is not just the precipitous deterioration of US-Russia relations, but the survival of the Planet as we know it. Is it not childish to compete for whom is the Best, the Strongest or the Handsomest on the Planet while threatening a nuclear war? Is it not better to join forces in harmonious and mutually enriching co-operation to cope with the ever-mounting issues, such as climate warming, depletion of resources, pollution of air, earth and seas, poverty and malnutrition in many parts of the world, uncertainties of space exploration, all of that exacerbated by fake news? Clearly, a new paradigm for world relations is urgently needed, in which usual egotism of national politics must yield to the ethical imperative of global co-operation for the security and well-being of the Planet, with all its peoples, animals and plants.

As a member[40] of the Global Harmony Association,[41] founded by Leo Semasko,[42] a former Marxist and now peace-activist, I just got an email letter from Rene Wadlow,[43] President, Association of World Citizens,[44] saying: “We must restore optimism and continue to sharpen our inborn instincts for life, for the positive, for self-preservation, for survival and human fulfillment at ever higher levels of consciousness. We must conquer the duality, the dark, the bad, the negative, and the suicidal. These all contain dangerous self-feeding processes of destruction. We must turn instead to the mysterious self-generating powers of hope, creative thinking, love, life affirmation and faith.”

Clearly, the greatest need now is not for politicians as usual, but for wise men and women of different nationalities, religions convictions and ideologies whose Number One priority is the survival and welfare of the Planet. That’s why in a follow up to the Solzhenitsyn Centennial piece, I wrote Mahatma Gandhi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Two Giants Who Blessed the 20th Century. Will Vladimir Putin, Other World Leaders Listen?[45] In addition to the two giants, I also named Nelson Mandela of South Africa and our own Martin Luther King Jr. I am sure there are other actual and potential leaders, men and women, who are among us but whom we have not yet called to full life in truth and justice.

Author: Vladislav Krasnov (aka W George Krasnow),
President of Russia & America Goodwill Association (
RAGA.org).
Email to
President92@gmail.com or president@raga.org
May 2019
​
[1] Brother Nathanael Come On Back To The War  http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1364  Brother Nathanael May 14, 2019 @ 10:11 pm

[2] Milton Kapner https://wikiality.fandom.com/wiki/Real_Jew_News

[3] Vladislav Krasnov, Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel. U of Georgia Press, 1980. https://www.amazon.com/Solzhenitsyn-Dostoevsky-Study-Polyphonic-Novel/dp/0820304727

[4] Sharon Tennison and her organization https://ccisf.org/

[5] https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/edward-lozansky/

[6] http://www.raga.org/apps/search?q=Gilbert+Doctorow

[7] Medea Benjamin, https://www.codepink.org/medea_benjamin

[8] Dan Lieberman http://www.alternativeinsight.com/

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_R._Wedel

[10] Janine Wedel https://www.amazon.com/Collision-Collusion-Strange-Western-Eastern/dp/0312238282  See also my companion article, Did Shock Therapy Help Russia? About Anders Aslund’s Capitalist Revolution
http://www.russialist.org/archives/2008-88-39.php #39 - JRL 2008-89 - JRL Home
Date: Tue, 6 May 2008 From: W. George Krasnow"

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Atzmon

[12] Gilad Atzmon’s book https://www.gilad.co.uk/being-in-time

[13] Generally accepted at first, jazz was soon proclaimed as a symbol of the hated West. With the onset of the Cold War, it was vilified. “Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he’ll betray his country” was a propaganda slogan in those days.https://www.rbth.com/history/329154-why-american-jazz-was-banned

[14] Charles W. "Chas" Freeman Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W._Freeman_Jr.

[15] Пора Отказаться от Табу на Еврейскую Тем. Иначе не поймёшь ни российскую геополитику, ни историю. Автор: Чарльз Баусман 1/22/2018

[16] Пора отказаться от табу на еврейскую тему. Иначе ничего не поймёшь в противостоянии США и России. http://perevodika.ru/articles/1197472.html

[17] Six Covenants https://www.amazon.com/Covenants-Prophet-Muhammad-Christians-Time/dp/1621380025

[18] John Andrew Morrow - 2018 - ‎Religion. Islām and the People of the Book Volumes 1-3: Critical Studies on ...
ШЕСТЬ ОБЕТОВ ПРОРОКА МУХАММЕДА ХРИСТИАНАМ МУХАММЕД СЫН ... ВЛАДИСЛАВ КРАСНОВ Содержание Глава 1: Обет пророка Мухаммеда ...
https://books.google.ru/books?isbn=1527509672

[19] 2016 №7, 8 (150-151) У нас в журнале «Представительная власть» уже вышла Ваша совместная статья о критике ДАИШ и Обетах пророка Мухаммеда. См. анонс по ссылку. Имам (д-р Морроу) осуждает ДАИШ http://www.pvlast.ru/archive/index.s132.php  Краснов В.Г., Ильяс Абд аль-Алим Ислам.

[20] Adgezal Mamedov https://gorchakovfund.ru/en/news/view/adgezal-mamedov-friendship-between-russia-and-azerbaijan-is-a-social-mandate-of-our-nations/

[21] JIHAD (n.) Effort, struggle, or striving to (1) be a better person, or (2) defend the community.
"The best jihad is a word of truth flung in the face of a tyrant." http://www.truthjihad.com/

[22] Mikhail Bakhtin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakhtin

[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/t iki/Andrei_Sakharov

[24] Andrei Amalrik  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Amalrik.

[25] About Ivanov and Osipov, the two of my friends and fellow students at the University of Moscow, read The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism (Princeton Legacy Library). By John Dunlop. Paperback – 2014
https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-Russian-Nationalism-Princeton-Library/dp/0691610789

[26] Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? Hardcover – 1970/by Andreĭ Amalʹrik (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Will-Soviet-Union-Survive-until/dp/B0006CPGLA

[27] “Sorry, Ilhan, Jews HAVE Hypnotized the World”, KEVIN BARRETT • MARCH 15, 2019 http://www.unz.com/kbarrett/sorry-ilhan-jews-have-hypnotized-the-world/

[28] "The Holocaust" Is a Myth That Conceals Our Shame.”[28] KEVIN BARRETT • APRIL 15, 2019
 http://www.unz.com/kbarrett/the-holocaust-is-a-myth-that-conceals-our-shame/

[29] http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/18/ex_cia_analyst_ray_mcgovern_beaten

[30] “A Brave Man stands abuse. Vets for Peace Demands Apology from Hilliary Clinton”. By Dr. George Krasnow - February 18, 2011. https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2011/02/18/vets-fo r-peace-demands-apology-from-hillary-clinton/

[31] https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/13/vips-muellers-forensics-free-findings/

[32] See my book, Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List. (Hoover Institution Press Publication) by Vladislav Krasnov  (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Defectors-Wanted-Institution-Publication/dp/0817982329

[33] To Defect or to Integrate? The USA vs Edward Snowden. 4/29/2014
http://www.raga.org/news/to-defect-or-to-integrate-the-usa-vs-edward-snowden

[34] Zionism Vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology Is Undermining Western Culture Hardcover – April 3, 2018
https://www.amazon.com/Zionism-Vs-West-Talmudic-Undermining/dp/1546224599

[35] http://www.raga.org/news/vt-veterans-today-alexander-solzhenitsyn-truth-can-and-will-destroy-the-new-world-order-and-satanism  11/8/2018

[36] William J Burns  https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/1014

[37] Two Hundred Years Together (Complete Edition in 2 Volumes) / Dvesti Let Vmeste - v 2-h Tomah (in Rus)
By Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  It became finally available in English under the title The Crucifixion of Russia: A new English translation of Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together by Columbus Falco. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36499209-the-crucifixion-of-russia

[38] “The oddities of Jewish religion” https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-oddities-of-the-jewish-religion/?highlight=Ron+Unz+Oddities+Oddities

[39] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Relevance Today https://www.unz.com/article/aleksandr-solzhenitsyns-relevance-today/ It was also carried by Global harmony Association http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=864
 
[40] Vladislav Krasnov https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=752

[41] Global Harmony Association https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=home

[42] Leo Semashko personal page https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=253

[43] https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=272

[44] Association of World Citizens http://www.worldcitizensunited.org/

[45] Mahatma Gandhi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Two Giants Who Blessed the 20th Century.http://www.unz.com/article/mahatma-gandhi-and-aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-the-two-giants-who-blessed-the-20th-century/  It was also carried by https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=884 and on a site in India:  Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn: Two Giants who blessed the 20th century – I.  By Vladislav Krasnov

http://vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4950 Gandhi and Solzhenitsyn: Two Giants who blessed the 20th century – II. http://vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=4951
 

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

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WHY I CARE ABOUT AMERICA? Message from a Russian

8/12/2018

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In this video Dmitry Tamoikin shares his thoughts about the United States and Russia, highlighting why everyone must pay close attention to what is happening in these two nuclear superpowers.

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

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The Russia "National Security Crisis" is a U.S. Creation

7/29/2018

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President Trump's warm words for Vladimir Putin and his failure to endorse U.S. intelligence community claims about alleged Russian meddling have been called "treasonous" and the cause of a "national security crisis." There is a crisis, says Prof. Stephen F. Cohen, but one of our own making. Visit https://therealnews.com 

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

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STONES & GLASS HOUSES - Michael Brenner

7/29/2018

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Picture
​Friends & Colleagues

Our attention has focused for the past 18 months on the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. If true, these seemingly heinous acts are said to strike at the very roots of American democracy. Understandably so. Someone spending $95,000 to prise out of the Democratic National Committee vaults details of how Debbie Wasserman-Schultz tried to rig the primaries in Hillary Clinton’s favor constitutes a grave threat to the integrity of the American electoral process. When we add to that offense the outrageous release of the transcript from Ms  Clinton’s highly lucrative chat with the financial heavies at Goldman Sachs, our heads swoon at the audacity of the perpetrators. So dense is this thicket, so heavily freighted with consequence, that the most diligent mind struggles to absorb it all during the lazy dog days of summer.
​

An effort to escape from this unnatural burden led me to boldly take the risk of flying UNITED toward a salubrious destination. The serenity of those ‘friendly skies’ provided the leisure to contemplate other recent news – in particular, the doings of the United States in upholding the principles of national sovereignty and political freedom elsewhere in the world. A short list of the places where we have been active follows.

Cheers
Michael Brenner
mbren@pitt.edu
 
1. In ENGLAND, Trump aggressively promoted Boris Johnson as a brilliant leader despite his direct challenge to Prime Minister Theresa May last week.
2. Also re. ENGLAND, Sam Brownback, the US ambassador for international religious freedom, protested to the British Ambassador the jailing of racist agitator Tommy Robinson who targets Muslims

3. In SCOTLAND, Trump lashed out at Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish National Party, with a barrage of highly personal insults.

4. In GERMANY, Trump has striven to weaken the position of Chancellor Angela Merkel through denunciations of her judgment and domestic policies

5. In POLAND, the Trump administration has lent its full support to the ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic government when it was facing opposition to its autocratic moves

6. In HUNGARY, it has done the same in support of Prime Minister Viktor Orban

7. In SAUDI ARABIA, Trump warmly embraced Crown Prince Mohammed ben-Salman despite his shake-down of other Saudi leaders and dangerous crack-down on the Shi’ite community

8. In ECUADOR, Washington has encouraged current Prime Minister Lenin Moreno to pursue a vendetta against former President Rafael Correa because of the latter’s social democratic policies and unwillingness to kow-tow to American business interests

9. In NICARAGUA, the United States is backing the campaign to overthrow the democratically government of Daniel Ortega

10. In BRAZIL, the Trump administration gave its full public backing to the ‘constitutional’ coup against Prime Minister Dilma Rousseff because of her independent foreign policy line on issues that went against the grain of American policies and her mild challenge to American financial interests

11. In ARGENTINA, the CIA/FBI connived with political foes of then president Cristina Kirchner to resurrect long discredited accusations that she was implicated somehow in the 1994  bombing of a Buenos Aires synagogue ascribed (probably falsely) to Iran. That contributed to her loss in a run-off to  Mauricio Macri – scion to one of Argentina’s biggest fortunes and graduate of Columbia Business School. 

The week after his inauguration Macri flew to New York to cede $6.5billion dollars to Wall Street hedge funds which had speculated in Argentine debt in 2001 and was being hotly contested in the courts. He also submitted to a Washington demand that he give the U.S. armed forces basing rights in PATAGONIA. The Pentagon evidently sees the base as strategic counter to a move by Russia, China or Iran to threaten America by striking through the soft underbelly of the Western Hemisphere. That is in violation of the Argentinian constitution. But, then again, isn’t that what indebted friends are for?

12. In HONDURAS, the United States strong-armed the OAS not to penalize the government of President Juan Orlando Hernandez for its blatant rigging of the election last year

13. In BOLIVIA, the U.S. has been conspiring with business interests and the oligarchical elite to overturn the government of reformist President Evo Morales. In the recent past, the American ambassador coordinated their efforts to topple Morales through orchestrated demonstrations in the mining and business hub of Santa Cruz.

14. In PARAGUAY, Washington encouraged the oligarchical establishment to usurp the powers of the Presidency by impeaching the first progressive head of state in over 60 years. In 2008 the voters chose Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic Bishop whose reformist policies were anathema to landed interests and big business. His governing as a Gospel Christian could not be tolerated. He therefore was duly impeached on absurd trumped-up by a simple majority vote of the Colorado Party opposition in the legislature. The elites' economic performance while in office since 1945 had as its greatest accomplishment the maintenance of the world’s only railroad still fueled by wood – evidently an attraction of some sort to the Obama administration in its promotion of a neo-Liberal economic order. 

15. In VENEZUELA, the United States has used every weapon short of military force to overthrow the democratically elected government of President Nicolas Maduro

16. In UKRAINE, the United States continues its military, financial, and political support for President Poroshenko whose was brought to power by an American orchestrated violent coup against his democratically elected predecessor

17. In RUSSIA, the United States pursues a relentless campaign of slander against the democratically elected government of President Vladimir Putin and provides direct support via its embassy to opponents

18. In LIBYA, the United States and its European allies have arbitrarily attempted to impose an ersatz government lodged on a yacht in Algiers harbor that has no popular support or legitimacy 

19. In SYRIA, the United States has stationed troops against the will of the sovereign government in Damascus and provides material support to jihadist opponents (al-Qaeda & Assoc) fighting to overturn it.

20. In IRAN, Trump leads a thinly concealed campaign to overthrow the current government

21. In YEMEN, the United States has chosen sides in a civil war that involves participation in a homicidal air campaign carried out by Saudi Arabia and other outside parties

22. In the PHILIPPINES, Trump personally has bolstered President Rodrigo Duterte in his program to build a lawless autocracy

23. In SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, the United States is actively involved in the internal politics of a dozen or so countries

24. In LEBANON, The United States has been relentlessly engaged in a campaign to consolidate the power of its US-dependent government led by Rafik Hariri and to undercut Hezbullah and President Aoun

25. In AFGHANISTAN…..

26. In IRAQ…

25 - INFINITY

Then, lest we forget, there are the sub rosa programs of the United States to strengthen democracy world-wide. One: the comprehensive surveillance of electronic communications globally. The product upon occasion makes its way into the hands of our favorites in the political game of other countries. Two: we regularly conduct drone strikes on persons WE determine are a menace to somebody else’s welfare and serenity, e.g. in Pakistan, Libya. By some stretch of the imagination, killings by HELLFIRE missile on their own soil, too, might be considered political interference. Three: more specifically, cyber attacks on sensitive computers and data banks, e.g. STUXNET in Iran

So it goes.

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#HELSINKI2018: Trump - Putin joint press conference | VIDEO | Full version | FOX NEWS

7/16/2018

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

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