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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​How to Save the Planet and Ourselves

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

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

PeopleNow.org Newsletter #1  

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

​More opinions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And my response to Greenwald
w george krasnow@vlad62slav

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

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

http://www.raga.org/news/to-defect-or-to-integrate-the-usa-vs-edward-snowden
​
I am also a former Soviet defector and the author of Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List.
https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Defectors-Wanted-Institution-Publication-ebook/dp/B07CQPFH5S
​
All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

Dear Dr. Leo Semashko and all GHA peace-lovers!

 I congratulate you all on Mahatma Gandhi's 150th anniversary.  We have an additional reason to celebrate  because we were able to  publish - on time! - Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolence Starting Point. Spherons' Genetics and Statistics, a collection of outstanding articles by GHA activists including my friends, such as Rudolf Siebert, John Avery, Ela Gandhi, Rene Wadlow, Mairead Maguire, Andre Sheldon and more.

 Special thanks to you, Leo, for including my article "Mahatma Gandhi and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" and also providing the readers with its Russian translation in the parallel Russian collection. The latter is perhaps especially timely as Russia has been lately playing the role of  the katechon (from Greek: τὸ κατέχον, "the one who withholds"), that is keeping the balance in view of the dangerously erratic policies in the USA and UK. Let us hope that since the time of Leo Tolstoy the Russians have been learning more of nonviolent philosophy and strategies of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and other nonviolent heroes.

As to the GHA's failure to unite and consolidate its membership in search for an equitable  solution for the Kashmir problem just remember that it takes a lot more courage and perseverance to find a peaceful solution than to start a war. Gandhi's violent death, his martyrdom remind us that the cause of peace is safeguarded by the heroes.

As you wish, in November, I will take a copy of the Gandhi Book to the USA to be deposited at the Library of Congress, the largest book and digital documents depository in the world. I promise to keep celebrating Gandhi's Non-Violence the whole year!

In Peace and Harmony, 
I remain truly yours,
Vladislav Krasnov (see my GHA personal page)
https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=752  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, some news!

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

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

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

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

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

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

AUDIO PODCAST VERSION

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

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

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

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

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

Other ways to access my interview with Kevin Barrett:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace and Justice to the World. 
миру мир и благоволение в сердцах

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

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

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

Vladislav Krasnov writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

2019 "Information Clearing House"

We have come such a long way since time immemorial, since we were hunters and gatherers living in caves and bundled in hides, trying to invent fire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for the modern sticks and stones, they will be of no use to us. About the only thing we can do to save ourselves from them now is remove all the fast fingers from the proverbial button.

All nuclear sticks with short fuses on hair trigger alert have long outlived their senselessness. Launch on warning will save no one, but destroy us all.

We’ve had a number of close calls already. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was one such “man who saved the world”[iii] on the night of September 26, 1983. There were others. Next time, we may not be so lucky.

We are playing the Russian roulette as a race, and in the barrel of cosmic odds all it takes is one evil nuclear bullet. We must at least take the finger off the trigger, so we don’t do the irreparable by accident.

We must heed the call of the courageous Daniel Ellsberg,[iv] the author of terrifying but largely overlooked The Doomsday Machine[v] and a nuclear war planner in the early part of his career. And Global Zero,[vi] ICAN[vii] (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize), and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists with its Doomsday Clock,[viii] moving ever closer to midnight, who have all been working for years to bring this about, to give us all our mind and survival back.

Our common most-pressing universal task is to help them bring it about. Every action in this direction counts. As Nikola Tesla,[ix] whose genius brought us so many of the comforts of our civilization, put it, “The action of even the tiniest creature leads to changes in the entire Universe.”

We don’t have much time left to make it happen in our lifetime, and not pass this problem to our children, if they should have a future at all.

It’s high time to end all wars. We certainly have no business in Iran or Venezuela after Iraq and Libya.

Israel, first and foremost, needs to understand that you can’t build your own happiness on other people’s grief and graves. Even if you have suffered much in your own life. The law of karma doesn’t change because of it. There will still be heavy consequences, and you still have to pay what you owe, and reap what you sow, even if you conceal it really well. Sooner or later, it will be apparent, if not for us, then for our children, as it was recently well explained in Laurent Guyénot’s book “From Yahweh to Zion”.[x] That was to a large extent the meaning of the Shoah last tragic century.

Truth is one and the same for everyone. To love and trust is always better than to fear and hate.
Let us all love one another. You never know if you are saying goodbye for the last time. Nobody wants to be ill remembered.

Let’s stop giving our attention to all the gossips, scandals and squabbles that are broadcast at us from every screen. They might be profitable for someone for some time, but definitely not for us.

We need to work and take care of each other, our young and our old, and not get plunged as a whole society into massive karmic debt that no one will be able to repay.

We need to learn to listen and understand what we are being told and why. No need to hypnotize us. It won’t work anyway when we are all awake and withdraw our consent.

There are many spiritual and conscious streams flowing through us. As Rudolph Steiner[xi] used to say, we can and should learn to recognize and tell them apart. The success and happiness of our own life depend on it.

And we need to pay attention to these streams and not to the venal voices of the mass media. Let them show their true selves for what it’s worth, but don’t be swayed by them. “The traits we see most clearly in others exist most strongly in ourselves,”[xii] according to the ancient wisdom of Vedanta expressed in the words of Deepak Chopra.[xiii]

We have no use for the representatives and leaders who think only of themselves. Lots of money and power doesn’t make you either good or happy. They can spew their silliness, court intrigues and lies to themselves for now.

When big money is removed from politics through the grassroots efforts of organizations such as RepresentUs,[xiv] others, like Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders, whom we can trust and respect, will come to replace them.

And no one will be able to manipulate and scare us any longer.

“When human beings today speak of ‘God’ they mean only their angel, the angel who guides them through life,” taught Rudolf Steiner in The Karma of Untruthfulness, a series of lectures on the origins of WWI. “But they persuade themselves that they are speaking of a being higher…”

At long last, we’ll recognize in Yahweh but one of our jealous tribal angelic reflections from the time of sticks and swords, as explained masterfully in Laurent Guyénot’s[xv] From Yahweh to Zion.[xvi]

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

​
SOURCES AND REFERENCES:
___________________________

[i] Christopher Hedges (born 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, and visiting Princeton University lecturer. His books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco, which was a New York Times best-seller; Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt (2015); and his most recent America: The Farewell Tour (2018).   Hedges  is a columnist for the progressive news and commentary website Truthdig. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times.  Нe  contributed to The New York Times entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002.He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges

[ii] Chris Hedges, “The Last Battle”. APR 29, 2019
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-last-battle/
THE BEAVER LAKE CREE NATION, Treaty No. 6 Area, Canada. I am driving down a rutted dirt road with Eric Lameman, a member of the Cree nation.
“Over there,” he says, pointing out where he was born in a tent 61 years ago.
We stop the car and look toward a wooded grove.
“That’s the mass grave,” he says softly, indicating a clearing where dozens of Cree who died in a smallpox epidemic over a century ago are buried…”
 
[iii] Stanislav Petrov (Russian: Станислав Евграфович Петров; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who became known as "the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.
On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm, and his decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol, is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
 
[iv] Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is an American economist, activist and former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of the U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers. On January 3, 1973, Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years. Due to governmental misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. dismissed all charges against Ellsberg on May 11, 1973. He is also known for having formulated an important example in decision theory, the Ellsberg paradox, his extensive studies on nuclear weapons and nuclear policy, and for having voiced support for WikiLeaks, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden. Ellsberg was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006 and the 2018 Olof Palme Prize for his "profound humanism and exceptional moral courage."
 
[v] In December 2017, Ellsberg published The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. He said that his primary job from 1958 until releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971 was as a nuclear war planner for US Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. He concluded that US nuclear war policy was completely crazy and he could no longer live with himself without doing what he could to expose it, even if it meant he would spend the rest of his life in prison. However, he also felt that as long as the US was still involved in the Vietnam War, the US electorate would not likely listen to a discussion of nuclear war policy. He therefore copied two sets of documents, planning to release first the Pentagon Papers and later documentation of nuclear war plans. However, the nuclear planning materials were hidden in a landfill and then lost during an unexpected tropical storm.[62] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
 
[vi] https://www.globalzero.org/ We are at a turning point: The world has never faced so many nuclear flashpoints simultaneously and the risk that nuclear weapons will be used — intentionally, mistakenly or accidentally — is the highest it’s been since the height of the Cold War. Since its launch in Paris in 2008, Global Zero has grown to include hundreds of eminent political, military and civic leaders and hundreds of thousands of engaged citizens globally. By combining cutting-edge policy analysis, backchannel diplomacy, media outreach and public engagement, we’re blazing a trail for governments to follow — one that leads to the lasting peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

Trump Administration Barreling Toward New Nuclear Arms Race With Russia
1 August 2019, US News: “The death of the INF Treaty, without any plan in evidence to compensate for the deterioration of arms control, will only accelerate our downward spiral into nuclear chaos and potential catastrophe.” – Jon Wolfsthal, director of the Nuclear Crisis Group, on US withdrawal from the INF Treaty. https://www.globalzero.org
 
[vii] https://www.icanw.org The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations in one hundred countries promoting adherence to and implementation of the United Nations nuclear weapon ban treaty. This landmark global agreement was adopted in New York on 7 July 2017.
 
[viii] https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/ A new abnormal: It is still 2 minutes to midnight
2019 Doomsday Clock Announcement. Washington, D.C. • January 24, 2019
Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger. There is nothing normal about the complex and frightening reality just described. Read more
 
[ix] Nikola Tesla (/ˈtɛslə/;[2] Serbo-Croatian: [nǐkola têsla]; Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American[3][4][5] inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
 
[x] From Yahweh to Zion: Jealous God, Chosen People, Promised Land...Clash of Civilizations –2018 by Laurent Guyénot (Author), Kevin J Barrett (Translator)
https://www.amazon.com/Yahweh-Zion-Jealous-Promised-Civilizations/dp/0996143041 See there also “How I Discovered 'the Jewish Question'": Laurent Guyenot, author of From Yahweh to Zion. A video interview with Kevin Barrett, Published on Mar 16, 2018.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVV_LfdUcpk
Laurent Guyenot's "From Yahweh to Zion" may be the best book ever written on what used to be called "the Jewish question." In this interview Dr. Guyenot explains how his study of the Deep State, specifically its role in 9/11 and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, led him to a historical re-examination of Judaism and Jewish identity politics. "From Yahweh to Zion" raises many "Jewish questions" including: Is Judaism/Jewishness a religion or an ethnicity? What is the Jews’ relationship to God, and to Jesus and the prophets? What accounts for the Jews’ ability to maintain tribal cohesion over more than 2500 years? Why have Jewish communities so often been at odds with their non-Jewish neighbors? Why have Jews been over-represented—in many non-Jewish societies throughout history—in positions of wealth and power? Why does this over-representation seem to be increasing today? Why is this issue off-limits for discussion in polite company (including the mainstream media and the academy)? Is Jewish tribal cohesion an important factor in the Deep State? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVV_LfdUcpk
 
[xi]  Rudolf Steiner  was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, economist and esotericist. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including The Philosophy of Freedom. Wikipedia
Born: February 1861, Donji Kraljevec, Croatia
Died: March 30, 1925, Dornach, Switzerland
Rudolf Steiner. The Karma of Untruthfulness: v. 1: Secret Societies, the Media, and Preparations for the Great War. https://www.amazon.com/Karma-Untruthfulness-Secret-Societies-Prepa
rations-ebook/dp/B07NB3YRCX/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
 
[xii]  Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire Glimpses of the field of infinite possibilities by Deepak Chopra
 
[xiii] Deepak Chopra (/ˈdiːpɑːk ˈtʃoʊprə/; Hindi: [d̪iːpək tʃoːpraː]; born October 22, 1946) is an Indian-born American author, public speaker, alternative medicine advocate, and a prominent figure in the New Age movement. Through his books and videos, he has become one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in alternative medicine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
 
[xiv] https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/ We bring together conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between to pass powerful anti-corruption laws that stop political bribery, end secret money, and fix our broken elections. The American Anti-Corruption Act sets a standard for local, state, and federal laws that fix our broken elections, stop political bribery, and end secret money.
Sign here to Co-sponsor the Anti-Corruption Act
 
[xv] Laurent Guyénot. Author. After earning an engineering degree (ENSTA, 1982), Laurent Guyénot pursued his interests in the history and anthropology of religions, earning his doctorate in Medieval Studies (Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2008). His current research focuses on the religious and civilizational backgrounds of Zionist geostrategy. ... Google Books  Born: April 27, 1960. See also his  https://www.voltairenet.org/auteur125605.html?lang=en
 
[xvi] From Yahweh to Zion Kindle Edition by Laurent Guyénot (Author), Kevin Barrett  (Translator)
Who is Yahweh? Where did he come from? How did this jealous, vengeful, exclusivist god shape the destiny of his chosen people? Can we trace a direct connection, through twenty-five centuries, linking the cult of Yahweh to contemporary Zionism? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0798DF7K1/

I found myself so much in agreement with the Manifesto, that I immediately translated it to Russian    - W George Krasnow

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

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

Ron Unz’s article “The Alternative Media Can Defeat the Mainstream Media” makes a lot of sense, especially, as viewed against the background of his own articles in which he does not shy away from criticizing Jewish religion, Zionism, or ingrained habits. Above all, he welcomes others to do the same. In fact, he does more to undermine the moneyed Jewish MSM establishment than many alleged or real anti-Semite. Charles Bausman deserves the credit for rerunning Unz’s important strategy-minded article in Russia-Insider. 
​
I think that Ron Unz is right in focusing on the media. “Groups advocating policies opposed by the American establishment should recognize that the greatest obstacle they face is usually the mainstream media”, he says. And adds, “In Clauswitzian terms, the media often constitutes the strategic “center of gravity” of the opposing forces”.

​Judging by the discussion that followed, some readers remain suspicious of Unz’s motif. The reader named <<PsyOp  mlnw>> is convinced that <<Speaking "truth to power" is useless...they are impervious to our words: they totally control the levers of power and don't give a hoot what our opinions of them are. just as long as we remain scattered and disorganized, which we are - thanks to people, like Ron Unz, who speak half-truths and obfuscate the real problem.>>.

I rather agree with the reader named Avatar that “To attack Ron Unz just because he is, or may be of the Jewish faith is disgusting. He is offering an important alternative platform to voices that speak truth to power, and if you don't get it, then you are part of the problem as well”.

Recently I discussed similar issues in my article “Get Ready for the 2020 Presidential Race. Jews & Gentiles United.” Among other things, I reproached the defeatist mood of anti-Establishment forces in the USA (http://www.raga.org/news/steve-sniegoski-pete-buttigieg-and-ron-unz ). 

Here I cannot but agree with << Hildisvíni >> who writes that “anti semitism is not a working position. Jews are just specialised to understand the power dynamics of a complex society. If you don't have any on your side you will always lose.” 

Moreover, I would say that the very notion of “anti-semitism” is a cunning trap into which Zionists and other Jewish extremists want to catch as many Gentiles as possible. Indeed, Jews are as divided on the vital issues of today as any nation on Earth. Like any trap, it bears a misleading name alluding to “racial” bigotry. Presumably, the typical “anti-Semites” are Christian WASPs. In fact, one of the most vicious “anti-Semites” was Karl Marx, a Baptized Jew, who denounced Jews as “swindlers” and called for violence against all capitalists, including Jews.  

Above all, the very concoction of “anti-Semitism” is a misnomer designed to confuse the issues.  Anthropologically, the Arabs, including Palestinians, are more Semitic than the majority of Ashkenazi and Russian Jews in Israel. In the US a much larger number of Christian Zionists than Jews vote for whatever Netanyahu wants them to. In Russia, Jews dominated Lenin’s Bolshevik party, but the majority of Jews stayed away from the revolution.  Fanny Kaplan, a Jewish Socialist Revolutionary, unsuccessfully tried to kill Lenin the dictator (he was a quarter Jew) and paid with her life for the attempt. Leonid Kannegisser, a Jewish officer of Russian Army, was executed for assassinating Moisei Uritsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moisei_Uritsky), one of the bloody Jewish founders of ChKa. Personally, I do not approve of violence, but the Communists fomented it on global scale. We certainly cannot conclude all Jews are alike.

When Charles Bausman, the founder of this site, wrote It's Time to Drop the Jew Taboo,I quickly translated it into Russian because I was certain he did not do it to bait Jews, but because the taboo “is making serious discussion of Russian geopolitics and history next to impossible”. I knew his purpose was to fight anonymity of the US MSM establishment and thus increase its accountability for the current US hostility to Russia that threaten the survival of the Planet, an urgent task for Right and Left, Liberal and Conservatives, wealthy and poor, believers and atheists, Jews and Gentiles.

We all are in the same boat.

Vladislav Krasnov, (aka W. George Krasnow) Ph.D., former professor of Russian Studies, is the author of prophetic “Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth”. He is now  president of Russia & America Goodwill Association (www.raga.org)

Article originally published on: https://russia-insider.com/en/ron-unzs-strategy-alt-media-defeat-mainstream-media-brilliant/ri27507

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

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​

​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

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”.

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

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

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

Happy Independence Day to all Americans! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A LETTER FROM RUSSIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

A reader in St. Petersburg, Russia

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

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

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

bollyn@bollynbooks.com 

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

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

Traditio Wiki is even more specific, especially in Russian language

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RAGA News
www.RAGA.org​