Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org <http://www.raga.org/>) and antiwar colleagues! As Thanksgiving Day approaches, I wish to express gratitude to the American people on behalf of dozens former Soviet dissidents and defectors, myself included , who found refuge and hospitality in the USA from persecution in the USSR. Most of the survivors are now happily ensconced in their native Russia, including Lyudmila Alekseeva <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyudmila_Alexeyeva>, a human rights activist, whose story I briefly mentioned in my July newsletter when President Vladimir Putin visited her home to give her an award on her 90th birthday. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ3B_hS-5v0>(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ3B_hS-5v0 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ3B_hS-5v0>) Another such person was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), the famous Russian writer and 1970 Nobel Prize winner for literature who was expelled from the USSR in 1973 and then settled in Cavendish, Vermont, staying there for over twenty years before returning to free Russia in 1994. As it happens, President Putin likes to quote Solzhenitsyn, <https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-putin-solzhenitsyn-1990-essay/26561244.html> particularly his non-ideological definition of Russian patriotism. En route from Russia to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family in Northern California (where I used to teach at Monterey Institute of International Studies) I came across a welcome news: Solzhenitsyn's last major work, a two volume book published in Russia way back in 2002, is finally translated to English. _1--_The Crucifixion of Russia: A History of the Russians and the Jews <https://www.amazon.com/Crucifixion-Russia-Russians-translation-Solzhenitsyns/dp/1548660272>A new English translation of Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together Paperback – Large Print, July 5, 2017. by Columbus Falco (Author) https://www.amazon.com/Crucifixion-Russia-Russians-translation-Solzhenitsyns/dp/1548660272 <https://www.amazon.com/Crucifixion-Russia-Russians-translation-Solzhenitsyns/dp/1548660272/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YSCZ5KWJDBR1WE72KRZW> Below is Amazon ad: Revised Editions are Larger Print--- UNCENSORED Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is considered by many to be the greatest writer of the 20th Century, with the arguable exception of George Orwell. Significantly, both Solzhenitsyn and Orwell were former Communists who became bitterly disillusioned with Marxism through their own up-close-and personal experience, and spent a large part of their literary lives denouncing the Marxist monster which so brutally disfigured their lives and their century. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s fiction and non-fiction classics include One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, The First Circle, and an immense body of other work which is considered instrumental in breaking down the Communist system in the Soviet Union and leading to the end of Communist rule in Russia and Eastern Europe. His life and work is living proof that it is still possible for a single great mind to affect world events and bring about change in the human condition. spent roughly ten years toward the end of his life researching and writing a monumental and definitive work entitled 200 Years Together: Books by Columbus Falco - The Crucifixion of Russia. https://www.amazon.com/Crucifixion-Russia-Russians-translation-Solzhenitsyns/dp/1548660272/ <https://www.amazon.com/Crucifixion-Russia-Russians-translation-Solzhenitsyns/dp/1548660272/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YSCZ5KWJDBR1WE72KRZW> I feel rather partial to this news as I was probably one of the first to defend a Ph.D. thesis about Solzhenitsyn's great novel "The First Circle" which was later published by the University of Georgia press under the title "Solzhenitsyn and Dostoesvsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel" <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/876071.Solzhenitsyn_and_Dostoevsky> (1979). Being fully aware of Solzhenitsyn's outstanding contribution to the West's shedding illusions about Communism, I wondered why his last work dealing directly with the emergence of Communism in Russia was being ignored, that is, until 2017. Well, one person who might appreciate Solzhenitsyn's last book is Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli dissident now settled in UK where he plays jazz and thinks profoundly on how to extricate the World from the current Dystopia. Please read his book: 2--Being in Time: A Post-Political Manifesto Paperback <https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Time-Post-Political-Gilad-Atzmon/dp/191107220X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511204142&sr=8-1&keywords=Gilad+Atzmon+Being+in+time&dpID=413ZzxiwCjL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch> – 24 May 2017/. By Gilad Atzmon. Amazon's ad: The events of 2016 - Brexit and Trump - broke the mould which shaped ideas of democracy, politics and social identity. In this book Gilad Atzmon argues that Left and Right have become indistinguishable and meaningless in the post-political universe in which we now live, and much of humanity has been reduced to serving the interests of big money and oligarchies. The freedom to think openly is now just a distant memory. Our Western liberal 'utopia' has turned into an Orwellian catastrophe, and the people are left bewildered and impoverished, and out in the cold. Being in Time is a courageous attempt to grasp the intellectual developments that led towards the current dystopia. The book delves into the bankruptcy of the ideological grand narratives. It explores the colossal failure of the media, academia and politics to detect and address the events that led us towards destitution. It identifies the ideologies that have planted Identitarian politics and the tyranny of political correctness in our midst. We, the people, have been demoted into mere audience in a Greek tragedy that happens to be the story of our own destruction. The time is ripe to understand it all. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Time-Post-Political-Gilad-Atzmon/dp/191107220X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511204142&sr=8-1&k <https://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Time-Post-Political-Gilad-Atzmon/dp/191107220X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511204142&sr=8-1&keywords=Gilad+Atzmon+Being+in+time&dpID=413ZzxiwCjL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch> Gilad Atzmon's sentiments resonate with me. Just at the time when we need a greater freedom of expression, a dialogue between Left and Right, West and East, indeed a polyphony of various ideologies and religions, "/much of humanity has been reduced to serving the interests of big money and oligarchies. The freedom to think openly is now just a distant memory. Our Western liberal 'utopia' has turned into an Orwellian catastrophe.../" Next person on RAGA's alternative list underscores our dilemma. 3--Dr. Gideon Polya's global warning. He has published some 130 works in a five decade scientific career as a biochemist. He is also a leading expert on comparative holocausts and genocides–and has estimated that 32 million Muslims have been murdered due to the wars of aggression triggered by the 9/11 false flag operation. According to Dr. Polya, the holocausts and genocides of the past could be dwarfed by a possible oncoming “terracide.” Scroll down for his latest warning. http://noliesradio.org/archives/138982 <http://noliesradio.org/archives/138982> Here is the voice from Down Under speaking for thousands of scientists: /Dear fellow humanitarian, Below is an abbreviated version of a shocking, quantitative and dire terracide warning from over 15,000 scientists (coincident with the 2017 Bonn COP 23 UN Climate Change Conference) that we are badly running out of time to save the Planet. Science-informed people – and especially those of already climate change-devastated Island Nations and mega-delta nations, and the young who are most threatened by climate change, climate injustice and intergenerational inequity – must (a) inform everyone they can of the need to urgently reverse man-made climate change by a return to a safe and sustainable 300 ppm CO2, this involving 100% renewable energy, cessation of fossil fuel burning, and cessation of methanogenic land use, (b) urge dumping of deadly, climate genocidal and terracidal neoliberalism by supporting the pro-equity, social humanist and Terraphile Greens and Socialists, (c) demand sidelining climate genocidal climate criminals from public life, (d) demand national and international judicial trial and punishment of climate criminals involving inescapable dispossession and custodial retribution with the same rigor as that applied to murderers and robbers in civil society, and (e) demand zero tolerance for climate criminals by urging and applying Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, countries, companies and corporations disproportionately conspicuous in the War on Terra, the greed-driven, terracidal destruction of Humanity and the Biosphere through unaddressed, man-made global warming./ Yours sincerely, Dr Gideon Polya, scientist, Melbourne, Australia. 4--Robert Parry: Russia-gate Spreads to Europe The Russia-gate hysteria has jumped the Atlantic with Europeans blaming Russia for Brexit and Catalonian discontent. But what about Israeli influence operations or, for that matter, American ones, asks Robert Parry who has been alert, brave and conscientious contributor to RAGA. By Robert Parry Global Research, November 17, 2017 ...It’s also true that Israeli leaders have often advocated policies that have proved disastrous for the United States, such as *Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu*’s encouragement of the Iraq War, which Russia opposed. Indeed, although Russia is now regularly called an American enemy, it’s hard to think of any policy that President Vladimir Putin has pushed on the U.S. that is even a fraction as harmful to U.S. interests as the Iraq War has been. https://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-gate-spreads-to-europe/5618709 <https://www.globalresearch.ca/russia-gate-spreads-to-europe/5618709> *5--Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Disregard the lies and blackouts about President Trump’s trip to China November 17, 2017* Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, today called on the American people to disregard the lies and blackouts about President Trump’s trip to China prevalent in the media of the United States and Europe, and to find out for themselves about the historic development that took place. Speaking on her regularly weekly webcast shown on newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com <http://newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com/>, Zepp-LaRouche said: “/I think it’s very important that our viewers around the world really take a look at this themselves; do not go by what the media is reporting. Try to get the speeches, which are all archived; listen to them yourself. View the Chinese TV coverage of Trump’s trip <https://www.cgtn.com/news/report.do?reportId=3d3d414e336b7a6333566d54>. I appeal to your reason not to be fooled by the media, not to fall into the trap of Cold War propaganda. The opposite of what the media is saying is happening. Please, dear listeners and viewers—meaning you—take the time to inform yourself; build your own judgment. You don’t have to believe us, but go to the sources and get the first-hand opinion of what is really happening, rather than relying on media reports./” https://larouchepac.com/20171116/helga-zepp-larouche-americans-must-discover-what-really-happened-trump-s-china-trip <https://larouchepac.com/20171116/helga-zepp-larouche-americans-must-discover-what-really-happened-trump-s-china-trip> *6--The American Conservative: Congressional Realists ‘Could Caucus in a Phone Booth’* Meet the eight: _They may be scarce, but they're indomitable_. By Finlay Lewis <http://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/finlay-lewis> • November 13, 2017 <http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/congressional-realists-could-caucus-in-a-phone-booth/> They could caucus in a phone booth. They are known as “realists,” and their default position on questions of foreign policy and national security is one of skepticism about the value of interventions abroad and of respect for privacy at home. In a debate largely being litigated within the ranks of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill, the realists don’t have a prayer of prevailing in an up-or-down vote against the neoconservative wing of the party, proponents of an interventionist ethos to embed American values in lands far removed from domestic shores and traditions. And yet the realists soldier on. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/congressional-realists-could-caucus-in-a-phone-booth/ <http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/congressional-realists-could-caucus-in-a-phone-booth/> *7--This AFL-CIO report needs to be taken very seriously.* *Incidentally, the AFL-CIO was one of the first to invite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to address American people* / / /WHEREAS, while the United States ranks first by far/ /in military spending, it ranks 7th in literacy, 20th in/ /education, 25th in infrastructure quality, 37th in quality/ /of health care, 31st in life expectancy, and 56th in infant/ /mortality; and/ https://aflcio.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/50_Adopted_WAR%20IS%20NOT%20THE%20ANSWER.pdf <https://aflcio.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/50_Adopted_WAR%20IS%20NOT%20THE%20ANSWER.pdf> /THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the AFL-CIO promotes and advocates for a foreign policy based on international solidarity of all workers, mutual respect of all nations and national sovereignty, and calls upon the president and Congress to make war truly the last resort in our country’s foreign relations, and that we seek peace and reconciliation wherever possible; and/ https://aflcio.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/50_Adopted_WAR%20IS%20NOT%20THE%20ANSWER.pdf <https://aflcio.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/50_Adopted_WAR%20IS%20NOT%20THE%20ANSWER.pdf> *8-- Professor Stephen Cohen, a colleague Sovietologist, maligned and blacklisted* Is This Professor ‘Putin’s American Apologist’? How Stephen F. Cohen became the most controversial Russia expert in America http://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-professor-putin-s/241777?cid=wcontentgrid_41_2 <http://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-professor-putin-s/241777?cid=wcontentgrid_41_2> *9--Anatol Lieven: Here is What I Saw at the Valdai Club Conference* October 30, 2017 One hundred years from now, our descendants are likely to look back on disputes over Crimea, the Donbas and Syria with the same combination of incomprehension and contempt with which we regard the European elites who went to war over geopolitical issues in 1914. They, too, failed to see that the real threats to their comfortable, civilized world came from within their own societies. Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. He is author among other books of /Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry/. Anatol is also my colleague whom I befriended in Washington in early 2000. http://nationalinterest.org/feature/here-what-i-saw-the-valdai-club-conference-22963 <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/here-what-i-saw-the-valdai-club-conference-22963> *10--Philip Giraldi: Israel's American Money Machine* Putin and RT are pikers compared to Israel. Giraldi pulls the curtain back on the people manipulating American 'democracy' on a grand scale. Philip Giraldi, Wed, Nov 15, 2017| 2,509112 Hollywood Jewish royalty was thick on the ground, the grub was strictly kosher and billionaires competed to see who could give the most to such a worthy cause. The 1,200 attendees at the Beverly Hilton Hotel donated a record $53.8 million, with Oracle founder Larry Ellison leading the pack with a contribution of $16.6 million. Israeli media mogul Haim Saban, Hillary Clinton’s most generous supporter, served as host of the event and donated $5 million. Two weeks ago, a similar gathering of 1,200 in New York City dubbed “A Night of Heroes,” attended by GOP major donor casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, raised $35 million, $7 million coming from Adelson personally. FIDF reportedly was sitting on $190 million in contributions for the year before the Hollywood and New York events. Donations to FIDF are tax deductible as the organization is registered with the U.S. http://russia-insider.com/en/israels-american-money-machine/ri21600?ct=t(Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014)&mc_cid=9423b42792&mc_eid=73f16282b9 <http://russia-insider.com/en/israels-american-money-machine/ri21600?ct=t%28Russia_Insider_Daily_Headlines11_21_2014%29&mc_cid=9423b42792&mc_eid=73f16282b9> *11--James Perloff: THE UNTHINKABLE HAS FINALLY HAPPENED: RUSSIA AND AMERICA HAVE TRADED PLACES* As a veteran anti-communist from the late Cold War era, and bitter critic of the USSR, I never dreamt I’d see the day that America and Russia traded places. But it has progressively happened. Is Vladimir Putin the real deal? I believe he is. The corporate media’s continual demonizing of him (most recently with totally unproven claims that he hacked the 2016 election) greatly supports that. Some will say that Putin is only acting; if so, I say give us more such actors. The spirit of the czar and of Christ, which the Rothschild-backed Zionists thought they had forever destroyed in Russia, is rising from the ashes. https://jamesperloff.com/2017/01/03/the-unthinkable-has-finally-happened-russia-and-america-have-traded-places/ <https://jamesperloff.com/2017/01/03/the-unthinkable-has-finally-happened-russia-and-america-have-traded-places/> *12--Patrick Armstrong, a former Canadian diplomat, expertly reviews the latest news from Russia* Such as: SYRIA. The Syrians have libe <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-isis-fall-albu-kamal-islamic-state-end-islamists-army-assad-a8045466.html>rated <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-isis-fall-albu-kamal-islamic-state-end-islamists-army-assad-a8045466.html>Abu Kamal <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-isis-fall-albu-kamal-islamic-state-end-islamists-army-assad-a8045466.html>, the last urban hold of Daesh in Syria; 25 months after Russia intervened. Some American talking heads are still in denial <http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/11/httpswwwalmasdarnewscomarticlebreaking-surprise-offensive-new-front-sees-syrian-army-liberate-key-town-north-hama.html> (more convolution). https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/11/16/russian-federation-sitrep-16-november-2017/ <https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/11/16/russian-federation-sitrep-16-november-2017/> > Finally, I am happy to thank William Brumfield, my friend and Russian Lit prof from Tulane University, who comes up with pictures of Russian churches most of which were not available for the Russians just a generation ago as the majority of church buildings were destroyed or desecrated in the USSR. On this Thanksgiving Day, one should thank the United States and the Library of Congress for preserving the heritage of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskywho was driven to emigration from the Bolshevik Russia *Seventeenth-century monument: Church of John the Baptist at Tolchkovo (Yaroslavl)* *https://www.rbth.com/travel/326757-church-of-john-baptist-yaroslavl <https://www.rbth.com/travel/326757-church-of-john-baptist-yaroslavl> * Juxtaposition of early 20th-century photographs from the Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) with photos from William C. Brumfield Collection (National Gallery of Art, Dept. of Image Collections). 184-th article in "Discovering Russia" series for "Russia Beyond"General link: https://www.rbth.com/special-discovering-russia Sincerely, W George Krasnow <http://www.fgfbooks.com/Krasnow-W.George/Krasnow-bio.html> (http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/Краснов,_Владислав_Георгиевич <http://wiki-org.ru/wiki/%D0%9A%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2_%D0%93%D0%B5%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87>) President, RAGA <http://RAGA.org> www.raga.org <http://www.raga.org> |
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