Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues!
On behalf of RAGA I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year of 2016 AD!
But before you open your stockings stuffed with Christmas gifts, I want you to relax with a cup of coffee and digest a couple of antidotes I usually prescribe to counter the anti-Russian MSM propaganda. Except, this time, the antidotes are extremely powerful. The first one is
This Ship is Sinking' Says Former Bush Official
Abby Martin interviews retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former national security advisor to the Reagan administration, who spent years as an assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell during both Bush administrations. Today, he is honest about the unfixablecorruption inside the establishment and the corporate interests driving foreign policy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgig1QVU2lY
Published on Dec 11, 2015
In the belief that Vox Populi vox Dei, I selected the best ones:
How do I give this interview 1,000 thumbs up?! Thanks for the gargantuan dose of truth Colonel Wilkerson. The American people need to bathe in this information until they finally get it.
This may be one of the most important interviews people should watch right now, and as I type this it has a paltry 1,065 views. This needs to go viral. (P.S. As of December 24 it got over 100,000 views).
War is the most profitable business in history. It has absolutely nothing to do with ideology, conscience, democracy, defense or national security. Pure and simple economics. The biggest export from the U.S. is weaponry and death.
AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME interview!!!!! Thank you for a great resource to help wake people up. I will be sharing this interview with many, many people!
Repent brothers and sisters. and pray for Gods will to be done!
Col. Wilkerson is a modern day patriot, like we have not seen the likes of for far too long. Shame, we don't have more intelligent people like the Colonel, who stands up to the neo-cons who have ruined US and continue to place people in their political parties to do even more damage. How did we fall so far, so fast?
Great interview that will unfortunately accomplish exactly zero. The System in all of its pernicious forms and layers has such an immense stranglehold over "reality" such as it is, it really is all quite hopeless. And to top it off the average American is an NFL, reality-show addicted,SUV driving moron who could care less.
We have gotten so far off the path of our ideals, the intentions of our founding fathers and the admonitions they gave us about large standing armies and seeking foreign monsters to destroy, the evils of central banks in which they, not the government, control the currency, that we have lost our identity as a people. What's worse is millions of Americans don't realize what has happened, and yet more millions don't care.
MR WILKINSON SHOULD BE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT , he seems to be the only guy with a brain.
Several commenters have suggested that unless something Real Big happens in 2016, such as the election of Col. Wilkerson to US Captaincy, the unwieldy, unruly, and over-confidant Ship of State, over-loaded with financial debt, as well as weapons and ammo of destruction, may collapse and sink. Abby Martin, whom many RAGA readers know as a great professional journalist during her affiliation with RT, does an excellent job getting Col. Wilkerson say the ESSENTIALS. He introduces him as a war hero who flew 1000 combat missions in Vietnam, an American patriot and Republican who belonged to the innermost circle of the US war machine. Now he says that US "national security state" is subservient to the military-industrial-financial complex and is geared toward an interminable war. Alas, in its quest for sheer power, it is so zealous at expansion that its EFFECTIVENESS decreases and might collapse under its own weight. He finds the present situation unsustainable.
Unfortunately, in the assessment of Israel Shamir, the situation in Russia leaves much to desire.
Putin Blues
ISRAEL SHAMIR • DECEMBER 23, 2015 • 2,700 WORDS
The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection
http://www.unz.com/ishamir/putin-blues/
Israel Shamir is a friend of mine and RAGA associate of long standing. He is a former Soviet dissident who emigrated first to Sweden, then to Israel where he came to oppose the official Israeli attitude toward Palestinians. In fact, he became a champion of equality and human rights throughout the world. Fluent in several languages, Israel is one of the best political analysts of the USA-Middle East-Russia conundrum. That's why The Unz Review regularly runs his articles to offer Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media. In this article too, he discusses the role of Israel in the Syrian conflict that nobody in either Russia or the USA dares to touch.
<<Israel has a good working relations with Daesh, too. I was told that Daesh troops entered the Palestinian camp al Yarmuk being equipped with long lists of Palestinian activists. They were assembled and publicly executed. The Palestinians think that Daesh received the names from Israeli secret service and acted upon their request. Moreover, Daesh never ever attacked a Zionist target.
Putin – and Russian media did not say a word on that. Perhaps Putin is right; Russia does not need such a strong enemy as Israel, since Israeli leaders can say “Jump, Uncle Sam,” and Uncle Sam will ask “How high?” >>
Here is a couple of insights into Putin's Russia:
<<Putin went, hat in hand, to Yekaterinburg for the grand opening of Boris Yeltsin’s Memorial Centre (price tag – nine billion roubles) and referred kindly to the loathed late President who appointed him his successor. People were furious seeing their president enjoying himself among the carpetbaggers of Yeltsin’s regime.
Can you imagine Fox TV transmitting Russian propaganda? In Russia, a major chunk of Russian media, state-owned or subsidised by the taxpayer, transmits pro-Western and anti-Russian agenda, alleged the eminent film director Nikita Michalkov, a staunch supporter of Putin, in his video seen by over two million viewers in a few days. He called upon Putin to assert his line and banish the enemies within, but state TV refused to broadcast the video.>>
Here is Israel Shamir about US presidential campaign and its effect for Russia:
<<Trump – or any straightforward decent politician who does not take orders from the Masters of Discourse – would be able to play ball with Mr Putin, by classical rules of international law. Trump and Putin could return the concept of sovereignty to its privileged position. This would end many wars. The war in Syria began when Mr Obama and Mr Hollande said “Assad must go”. By the classical rules, no state may interfere in the affairs of another sovereign state. From the Russian point of view, the war in Syria is first of all a war for sovereignty and against global Imperial vassaldom>>.
Another friend of mine is Allan Brownfeld. Like myself, he is a contributor to the website of Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. He is also active in American Council for Judaism which has adopted a strong anti-Zionist stand. A Jew, Allan Brownfeld has penned down the best Christmas greeting to all Americans, regardless of their creed. "Christmas 2015: a time for the introspection our society desperately needs". In addition to FGF site, it was also posted by the conservative Chronicles magazine.
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/christmas-2015-a-time-for-the-introspection-our-society-desperately-needs/
By:Chronicles | December 21, 2015
Brownfeld quotes the British author Malcolm Muggeridge who during the 1980s lamented the West's inability to resist Communism because Western politicians had renounced Christian values, "I firmly believe that our civilization began with the Christian religion, and has been sustained and fortified by the values of the Christian religion, by which the greatest of them have tried to live. The Christian religion and these values no longer prevail, they no longer mean anything to ordinary people. Some suppose you can have a Christian civilization without Christian values. I disbelieve this. I think that the basis of order is a moral order; if there is no moral order there will be no political or social order, and we see this happening. This is how civilizations end."
Had Western leaders retained a modicum of Christian values--the EU statutes don't even mention Europe's Christian underpinnings---they would have noticed that Russia of today is considerably more Christian than she ever was since 1917. Yet, they resent and denounce the New Russia more than they ever did the USSR.
To people who, like Donald Trump, call into question the loyalty of American Muslims, Brownfeld says that "Intolerance toward those of different faiths or races or ethnicities is the opposite of what Christmas embodies."
<<Christmas 2015 comes at a time when we need the kind of introspection and consideration of what is really important in life which it provides. Christmas, of course, is many things. It is a season of celebration and family reunion, a season of merriment and good cheer. More than this, however, it is a time for contemplation of the meaning of life—and of our own lives—and of seeking our answer to the question of what God expects of us.
This holiday season, all of us, whatever our religious beliefs, would do well to reevaluate the real gods in our lives and in the life of our country. Intolerance toward those of different faiths or races or ethnicities is the opposite of what Christmas embodies. As the popular hymn proclaims, "In Christ there is no north or south, In Christ no east or west." And while Jesus told us to "love our enemies," we seem barely able to tolerate those with whom we simply disagree on this or that public policy.>>
Ed Lozansky too worries about the rudder-less and leader-less US Ship of State
Does America Have Any Leaders Left?
Where is the new American leader who can inspire the country and the world to save civilization?
Edward Lozansky (Dec 16,2015)
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/search-next-american-leader/ri11884
<<There were even some encouraging words pronounced by John Kerry during his December 15 meeting with Putin in Moscow when he said that “The United States and our partners are not seeking regime change in Syria. We see Syria fundamentally very similarly and want the same outcomes; we see the same dangers, we understand the same challenges.”
It remains to be seen if this is indeed a real change in Washington’s thinking or just due to Kerry’s exhaustion, since judging from Obama’s statements he is still in a state of denial regarding the disappearance of a unipolar world ruled by Washington.
There are some who think it’s too late and the train for our civilization as we know it is hurtling downhill to the abyss, but we must prove that this is not the case.>>
Clearly, Lozansky's paramount concern is the same as that of Col. Wilkerson, Israel Shamir or Allan Brownfeld: US-Russia rift has the potential of spinning out of control and resulting in a global destruction.
That's why even The New York Times begins to see that
A New Approach to U.S.-Russia Relations Is Needed
Jeffrey Sommers, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and a senior fellow at its Institute of World Affairs, is visiting faculty at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia.
DECEMBER 10, 2015http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/10/trade-an-end-to-sanctions-for-putins-help-against-isis/a-new-approach-to-us-russia-relations-is-needed
<<It’s clear Putin never intended to seize Ukraine, or even the Donbass — even though domestic pressures weighed heavily on him to act. Instead, Putin’s actions signaled that the status quo over NATO’s forward movement must change. The Donbass was his leverage. Putin is a tough nationalist, but rather than fueling the fire of Russian revanchism, Putin is actually the one carefully dousing those flames.>>
Now is the Christmas gift I promised. A beautiful Syrian girl sings--for all of us--the Silent Night carol in Damascus:
Fairuz -sawt el eid [silent night] Christmas carol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58t3e3xUWmk
On behalf of RAGA I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year of 2016 AD!
But before you open your stockings stuffed with Christmas gifts, I want you to relax with a cup of coffee and digest a couple of antidotes I usually prescribe to counter the anti-Russian MSM propaganda. Except, this time, the antidotes are extremely powerful. The first one is
This Ship is Sinking' Says Former Bush Official
Abby Martin interviews retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former national security advisor to the Reagan administration, who spent years as an assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell during both Bush administrations. Today, he is honest about the unfixablecorruption inside the establishment and the corporate interests driving foreign policy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgig1QVU2lY
Published on Dec 11, 2015
In the belief that Vox Populi vox Dei, I selected the best ones:
- SGTreport.com 1 day ago (edited)
How do I give this interview 1,000 thumbs up?! Thanks for the gargantuan dose of truth Colonel Wilkerson. The American people need to bathe in this information until they finally get it.
- mtopper66 1 week ago
This may be one of the most important interviews people should watch right now, and as I type this it has a paltry 1,065 views. This needs to go viral. (P.S. As of December 24 it got over 100,000 views).
- Critical Thinking 1 week ago
War is the most profitable business in history. It has absolutely nothing to do with ideology, conscience, democracy, defense or national security. Pure and simple economics. The biggest export from the U.S. is weaponry and death.
- David B 6 days ago
AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME interview!!!!! Thank you for a great resource to help wake people up. I will be sharing this interview with many, many people!
- Pavel “tree” Stepanov 1 day ago
Repent brothers and sisters. and pray for Gods will to be done!
- dadgumtooten • 2 days ago
Col. Wilkerson is a modern day patriot, like we have not seen the likes of for far too long. Shame, we don't have more intelligent people like the Colonel, who stands up to the neo-cons who have ruined US and continue to place people in their political parties to do even more damage. How did we fall so far, so fast?
- William Blake • 2 days ago
Great interview that will unfortunately accomplish exactly zero. The System in all of its pernicious forms and layers has such an immense stranglehold over "reality" such as it is, it really is all quite hopeless. And to top it off the average American is an NFL, reality-show addicted,SUV driving moron who could care less.
- Ron · 1 day ago
We have gotten so far off the path of our ideals, the intentions of our founding fathers and the admonitions they gave us about large standing armies and seeking foreign monsters to destroy, the evils of central banks in which they, not the government, control the currency, that we have lost our identity as a people. What's worse is millions of Americans don't realize what has happened, and yet more millions don't care.
- ringo · 15 hours ago
MR WILKINSON SHOULD BE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT , he seems to be the only guy with a brain.
Several commenters have suggested that unless something Real Big happens in 2016, such as the election of Col. Wilkerson to US Captaincy, the unwieldy, unruly, and over-confidant Ship of State, over-loaded with financial debt, as well as weapons and ammo of destruction, may collapse and sink. Abby Martin, whom many RAGA readers know as a great professional journalist during her affiliation with RT, does an excellent job getting Col. Wilkerson say the ESSENTIALS. He introduces him as a war hero who flew 1000 combat missions in Vietnam, an American patriot and Republican who belonged to the innermost circle of the US war machine. Now he says that US "national security state" is subservient to the military-industrial-financial complex and is geared toward an interminable war. Alas, in its quest for sheer power, it is so zealous at expansion that its EFFECTIVENESS decreases and might collapse under its own weight. He finds the present situation unsustainable.
Unfortunately, in the assessment of Israel Shamir, the situation in Russia leaves much to desire.
Putin Blues
ISRAEL SHAMIR • DECEMBER 23, 2015 • 2,700 WORDS
The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection
http://www.unz.com/ishamir/putin-blues/
Israel Shamir is a friend of mine and RAGA associate of long standing. He is a former Soviet dissident who emigrated first to Sweden, then to Israel where he came to oppose the official Israeli attitude toward Palestinians. In fact, he became a champion of equality and human rights throughout the world. Fluent in several languages, Israel is one of the best political analysts of the USA-Middle East-Russia conundrum. That's why The Unz Review regularly runs his articles to offer Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media. In this article too, he discusses the role of Israel in the Syrian conflict that nobody in either Russia or the USA dares to touch.
<<Israel has a good working relations with Daesh, too. I was told that Daesh troops entered the Palestinian camp al Yarmuk being equipped with long lists of Palestinian activists. They were assembled and publicly executed. The Palestinians think that Daesh received the names from Israeli secret service and acted upon their request. Moreover, Daesh never ever attacked a Zionist target.
Putin – and Russian media did not say a word on that. Perhaps Putin is right; Russia does not need such a strong enemy as Israel, since Israeli leaders can say “Jump, Uncle Sam,” and Uncle Sam will ask “How high?” >>
Here is a couple of insights into Putin's Russia:
<<Putin went, hat in hand, to Yekaterinburg for the grand opening of Boris Yeltsin’s Memorial Centre (price tag – nine billion roubles) and referred kindly to the loathed late President who appointed him his successor. People were furious seeing their president enjoying himself among the carpetbaggers of Yeltsin’s regime.
Can you imagine Fox TV transmitting Russian propaganda? In Russia, a major chunk of Russian media, state-owned or subsidised by the taxpayer, transmits pro-Western and anti-Russian agenda, alleged the eminent film director Nikita Michalkov, a staunch supporter of Putin, in his video seen by over two million viewers in a few days. He called upon Putin to assert his line and banish the enemies within, but state TV refused to broadcast the video.>>
Here is Israel Shamir about US presidential campaign and its effect for Russia:
<<Trump – or any straightforward decent politician who does not take orders from the Masters of Discourse – would be able to play ball with Mr Putin, by classical rules of international law. Trump and Putin could return the concept of sovereignty to its privileged position. This would end many wars. The war in Syria began when Mr Obama and Mr Hollande said “Assad must go”. By the classical rules, no state may interfere in the affairs of another sovereign state. From the Russian point of view, the war in Syria is first of all a war for sovereignty and against global Imperial vassaldom>>.
Another friend of mine is Allan Brownfeld. Like myself, he is a contributor to the website of Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation. He is also active in American Council for Judaism which has adopted a strong anti-Zionist stand. A Jew, Allan Brownfeld has penned down the best Christmas greeting to all Americans, regardless of their creed. "Christmas 2015: a time for the introspection our society desperately needs". In addition to FGF site, it was also posted by the conservative Chronicles magazine.
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/christmas-2015-a-time-for-the-introspection-our-society-desperately-needs/
By:Chronicles | December 21, 2015
Brownfeld quotes the British author Malcolm Muggeridge who during the 1980s lamented the West's inability to resist Communism because Western politicians had renounced Christian values, "I firmly believe that our civilization began with the Christian religion, and has been sustained and fortified by the values of the Christian religion, by which the greatest of them have tried to live. The Christian religion and these values no longer prevail, they no longer mean anything to ordinary people. Some suppose you can have a Christian civilization without Christian values. I disbelieve this. I think that the basis of order is a moral order; if there is no moral order there will be no political or social order, and we see this happening. This is how civilizations end."
Had Western leaders retained a modicum of Christian values--the EU statutes don't even mention Europe's Christian underpinnings---they would have noticed that Russia of today is considerably more Christian than she ever was since 1917. Yet, they resent and denounce the New Russia more than they ever did the USSR.
To people who, like Donald Trump, call into question the loyalty of American Muslims, Brownfeld says that "Intolerance toward those of different faiths or races or ethnicities is the opposite of what Christmas embodies."
<<Christmas 2015 comes at a time when we need the kind of introspection and consideration of what is really important in life which it provides. Christmas, of course, is many things. It is a season of celebration and family reunion, a season of merriment and good cheer. More than this, however, it is a time for contemplation of the meaning of life—and of our own lives—and of seeking our answer to the question of what God expects of us.
This holiday season, all of us, whatever our religious beliefs, would do well to reevaluate the real gods in our lives and in the life of our country. Intolerance toward those of different faiths or races or ethnicities is the opposite of what Christmas embodies. As the popular hymn proclaims, "In Christ there is no north or south, In Christ no east or west." And while Jesus told us to "love our enemies," we seem barely able to tolerate those with whom we simply disagree on this or that public policy.>>
Ed Lozansky too worries about the rudder-less and leader-less US Ship of State
Does America Have Any Leaders Left?
Where is the new American leader who can inspire the country and the world to save civilization?
Edward Lozansky (Dec 16,2015)
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/search-next-american-leader/ri11884
<<There were even some encouraging words pronounced by John Kerry during his December 15 meeting with Putin in Moscow when he said that “The United States and our partners are not seeking regime change in Syria. We see Syria fundamentally very similarly and want the same outcomes; we see the same dangers, we understand the same challenges.”
It remains to be seen if this is indeed a real change in Washington’s thinking or just due to Kerry’s exhaustion, since judging from Obama’s statements he is still in a state of denial regarding the disappearance of a unipolar world ruled by Washington.
There are some who think it’s too late and the train for our civilization as we know it is hurtling downhill to the abyss, but we must prove that this is not the case.>>
Clearly, Lozansky's paramount concern is the same as that of Col. Wilkerson, Israel Shamir or Allan Brownfeld: US-Russia rift has the potential of spinning out of control and resulting in a global destruction.
That's why even The New York Times begins to see that
A New Approach to U.S.-Russia Relations Is Needed
Jeffrey Sommers, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and a senior fellow at its Institute of World Affairs, is visiting faculty at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia.
DECEMBER 10, 2015http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/12/10/trade-an-end-to-sanctions-for-putins-help-against-isis/a-new-approach-to-us-russia-relations-is-needed
<<It’s clear Putin never intended to seize Ukraine, or even the Donbass — even though domestic pressures weighed heavily on him to act. Instead, Putin’s actions signaled that the status quo over NATO’s forward movement must change. The Donbass was his leverage. Putin is a tough nationalist, but rather than fueling the fire of Russian revanchism, Putin is actually the one carefully dousing those flames.>>
Now is the Christmas gift I promised. A beautiful Syrian girl sings--for all of us--the Silent Night carol in Damascus:
Fairuz -sawt el eid [silent night] Christmas carol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58t3e3xUWmk
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