Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues! In RAGA December 24, 2017 Newsletter Antidote 31, I re-affirmed RAGA's essentially non-political stance, but congratulated Donald Trump on his victory and wished him success in his presidency, especially, implementing new peace initiatives he promised in regard to Russia. Since then I have been watching the American political scene with amazement, disgust and unease about a steep decline of civility in US public life. The Big Media seem to be determined to make life miserable for the new president whose electoral victory nobody dares to challenge in a court of law. CNN openly discussed feasibility of his assassination, while the Washington Post almost daily ridicules his every move. Individually RAGA people may have strong political convictions or inclinations, but as a peace-loving community we try to over-rule political passions in favor of a sober realization that both the USA and Russia, as supreme nuclear powers, have a responsibility before humankind to find a way to co-exist and interact for mutual benefits. History shows that a nation engaged in civil strife is more likely to embark on reckless military adventures abroad. So, I am worried twice: as a citizen of the US, I am troubled by its internal turmoil, and as a citizen of the world, I fear an eruption of hatred inside the USA may spill over to other countries and destabilize the world. Below is a collection of sobering facts and opinions sent to me or collected by RAGA associates, beginning with an article by a conservative journalist and former member of President Reagan's team and presidential candidate himself: 1. “America First”: An Inaugural Address for the Ages. By Patrick J. Buchanan As the patriotic pageantry of Inauguration Day gave way to the demonstrations of defiance Saturday, our new America came into view. We are two nations now, two peoples. Though bracing, President Trump’s inaugural address was rooted in cold truths, as he dispensed with the customary idealism of inaugurals that are forgotten within a fortnight of the president being sworn in. President Trump’s inaugural was Jacksonian. 2. Moral Supremacy and Mr. Putin. By Patrick J. Buchanan, February 07, 2017 Is Donald Trump to be allowed to craft a foreign policy based on the ideas on which he ran and won the presidency in 2016? Our foreign policy elite’s answer appears to be a thunderous no. Case in point: U.S. relations with Russia. ....Asked during his taped Super Bowl interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly whether he respected Putin, Trump said that, as a leader, yes. O’Reilly pressed, "But he’s a killer... Putin’s a killer." Trump replied, "There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?" While his reply was clumsy, Trump’s intent was commendable. 3. Old friends Ed Lozansky and Jim Jatras discuss America's choice in both English and Russian What Is Best for America - Russia as a Friend or a Foe? By Edward Lozansky and Jim Jatras - Monday, January 16, 2017: <<For Donald Trump and the overwhelming majority of the American people, including those who did not vote for him, the choice between friend and foe is obvious. The whole history of U.S.-Russia relations proves that if we work together it’s a win-win scenario. However, it appears that for Trump’s enemies lurking in what he calls the Washington “swamp” Russia is more useful as a foe, and all who disagree are either directly recruited by Vladimir Putin or are deplorable zombie tools of Kremlin propaganda.>> 4. The First phone call Trump- Putin discussed on RT Restoring the countries’ bilateral relationship is underway. Putin and Trump want this – but will it happen? CrossTalking with Dmitry Babich, Edward Lozansky, and Alexander Mercouris 5. Emails were leaked, not hacked, according to US intel specialists William Binney, Ray McGovern, JANUARY 5, 2017, <<the alleged interference by Russia and WikiLeaks in the U.S. election, it is a major mystery why U.S. intelligence feels it must rely on "circumstantial evidence," when it has NSA's vacuum cleaner sucking up hard evidence galore. What we know of NSA's capabilities shows that the email disclosures were from leaking, not hacking.>> 6. Some people are unhappy about Trump's presidency The Neocon Lament. Nobody wants them in Trump's Washington PHILIP GIRALDI • JANUARY 24, 2017 The think tanks sit around and come up with formulations that benefit certain groups, individuals and corporate interests and then reap the rewards when the cash is handed out at the end of the year. How fantastic it would be to see lobbies and the parasites who work for them put out of business, particularly if our much beloved neoconservatives are simultaneously no longer calling the shots on national security policy and their think tanks are withering on the vine. What a wonderful world it would be. As a scholar formerly associated with Hoover Institution (it was then just about the only anti-communist think tank in the USA where Alexander Solzhenitsyn did research), I found the article WORTHY to be posted on facebook https://www.facebook.com/vladislav.krasnov 7. Skepticism about Trump's willingeness or ability to change things. The Trump Enigma: Is Trump Draining or Replenishing the Washington Swamp? By Kerry R Bolton | Jan 13, 2017 <<Does Trump believe he can harness American’s oligarchs for America’s interests, as Putin has done in Russia? Or is Trump simply selling out double-quick, in a revolt against plutocracy that might be the biggest con job since Trotsky returned to Russia courtesy of the U.S. State Department and British Secret Service? How will conflicting views among the White House team be reconciled? Can there be any coherence in the Trump administration? Is Trump out of his depth, blinded by hubris, or does he have a Machiavellian plan?>> 8. RAGA's long-time friend and colleague from Canada, Patrick Armstrong, also cools some hot heads about Trump in his standard JANUARY 26, 2017, RF SITREP, TRUMP’S FOREIGN POLICY. In his inaugural speech he said that other countries were quite right to put their own interests first. Has any other US President in recent decades ever said that? The official site continues the echo of President Adams’ policy to not go abroad to seek out monsters. All to the good – the world has suffered enough from the Exceptionalists – 26 thousand bombs in 2016. However, some things disturb me. I don’t like the hostility towards Iran from him and his team – Iran (much stronger today thanks to the inept machinations of Washington, by the way) may be a concern for Israel and Saudi Arabia, but it isn’t for us; to say Iran is “the foremost state sponsor of terrorism” while ISIS/Daesh is “the greatest threat globally” is not only idiotic but self-contradictory. https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/01/26/russian-federation-sitrep-26-january-2017/ 9. RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP 9 FEBRUARY 2017. BY PATRICK ARMSTRONG <<Wikipedia says Canada’s GDP is greater than Russia’s and Germany’s is about two and a half times greater. There’s something deeply misleading and, in fact, quite worthless about these GDP comparisons. Russia has a full-service space industry including the only other operating global satellite navigation system.>> 10. ERIC ZUESSE | 13.01.2017 | has more misgivings about Trump. Trump Team Targets Iran Maybe the only good thing that one can reasonably say about Donald Trump as U.S. President is that, unlike his electoral opponent Hillary Clinton, he’s not heavily committed to forcing World War III. In fact, unlike her (and President Obama), he’s not (at least not yet) at all committed to conquering Russia. But still, America’s aristocracy rules; only now they’re aiming to conquer Iran, instead of to conquer Russia. 11. The latest NEWS is especially disturbing: Russia Considers Returning Snowden to U.S. to ‘Curry Favor’ With Trump: Official. By CYNTHIA MCFADDEN and WILLIAM ARKIN. FEB 11 2017 U.S. intelligence has collected information that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden as a "gift" to President Donald Trump — who has called the NSA leaker a "spy" and a "traitor" who deserves to be executed. 12. My own exchange of letters with Obama at the end of 2016 may seem too old to be relevant. I disagree. Just about all recommendations I offered to Obama have even more validity now, under Trump. You can find this exchange on RAGA site in both English and Russian, but I would like to draw your attention to the site of Ms Sandhya Jain of India who found the exchange interesting enough for her readers. After all, both India and Russia are BRICS members. Focused on Russia and the USA, RAGA has a number of peace-minded allies elsewhere. We value friendship with the UK's Westminster Russia Forum whose president Nicholas Cobb is a long time friend of Russia and also my friend http://westminster-russia.org.uk/about-the-wrf/meet-the-wrf-team/). Just yesterday I got a letter from another Brit, David Roulston, of Oxford Perm Association I have known David since about 2008 when I was visiting my native Perm to promote a Russian cause best known in English thanks to Donald Crawford's excellent book The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II. Our cause is not for monarchy or against it. The cause is to uncover the Truth from the 73-years of Communist lies to destroy it: Lenin's Bolshevik revolution was not against the Tsars but against the democratically elected Constituent Assembly which Michael II instituted (he ruled for ten hours) and which the Bolsheviks dissolved after loosing the election. In his letter Dr. Roulston complains about the same we complain in the States: the overwhelming Russophobic lies of the MSM. "Although our association is non political," writes David, "We meet twice a term to exchange views on 'misleading/false' reporting in the UK and US press of Russia and Putin. I use the ACEWA and Sharon Tennison sites for many of the articles. I am amazed how bad the UK press is in publishing misleading or false reports - even the Guardian." I am also glad to introduce Dr. Leo Semashko of St. Petersburg who has been tirelessly working for peace on a global scale I also introduce Leo's American friend Professor Rudolf J. Siebert, Department of Comparative Religion, Western Michigan University, Michigan, USA http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=51 More than 11 years ago, I became a member of the international peacemaking organization Global Harmony Association (GHA: http://peacefromharmony.org). It brings together thousands of individual and collective members from over 60 countries, and has a prominent place in the global civil society. The GHA has published 8 books, and has created more than 50 projects of global peace for 12 years (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=472). The GHA has created a Global Peace Science (GPS) with the help of 174 co-authors, including the President of India, Abdul Kalam, three Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, and dozens of distinguished scientists and peacemakers from 34 countries, including 59 of them, coming from the US (http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf). ...You and President Putin are pragmatists in the best sense of the word, and both of you are the peacemakers, who can make use of the proposed soft-power resources, in your quest to find a new vision, new minds, ideas and approaches (Trump) for your common peace geopolitics... ...Our deep concern is to ensure, that your peace program is not only a pre-election promise, that is easily forgotten, but that it will find its development and validation in a radical change of the US relations with Russia, which recently have reached a very dangerous point in the nuclear standoff.Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues! Since RAGA's last Newsletter Antidote 30 (of October 11), the USA got a new President. While re-affirming RAGA's essentially non-political stance, we congratulate Donald Trump on his unexpected victory and wish him success in implementing new peace initiatives he promised in regard to Russia. We also wish to congratulate American citizens on their ability to resist the anti-Russian slant of the Big Media's and political establishment's neo-con influenced pundits. We hope that our readers see RAGA's contribution to helping move the country into a more realistic, benevolent and sound mood, more conducive to dealing with Russia as a sovereign and proud nation. I take this opportunity to thank many American and non-American authors whose articles I cited in RAGA's newsletters (now available on the internet). One of them is Sharon Tennison, a long-time antiwar activist (CCISF.org). October 3, 2016 she issued an alert that I quoted in RAGA's previous newsletter: <<We need to flood President Obama with demands to back off of this insane policy to pursue a war with Russia. Call and email daily!>> Call the White House: 202-456-1111 (9 thru 5 EST) Email the President: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ I responded immediately and pasted my email letter to Obama inside the newsletter. Meanwhile a Russian woman from the Crimean translators association liked my letter so much that she translated it to Russian On October 14, Veterans Today ran my Open letter to Obama with an introduction "From Russia with Love" by its staff writer Jonas Alexis. He wrote that <<(Krasnov's) honest letter deserves a fair hearing precisely because New World Order agents have already been beating the war drum against Russia. >> Now I felt challenged to write a long rebuttal to Obama. Finishing it on November 7 (before the election), I mailed it to the White House as Priority Mail on Nov. 12. After translating my response to Russian, I asked RAGA's site manager to post both the original and Russian translation. On Nov. 18 it was done, however, without footnotes or hyperlinks Both Obama's letter and my rebuttal are also published, with hyperlinks and footnotes, on Veterans Today site: Also, my Open letter and Obama's official reply were picked up by Signs of the Times (SOTT) added this nice blurb: W. George Krasnow (also published as Vladislav Krasnov), Ph.D., runs the Russia and America Goodwill Association, a non-profit organization of Americans for friendship with Russia. Formerly, he was a professor and director of Russian Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. Under the name of Vladislav Krasnov he published three books: Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: A Study in the Polyphonic Novel, Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth, Soviet Defectors: The KGB wanted List. His op-ed columns have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, San Diego Union, and Dallas Morning News. At the end of my rebuttal to Obama I offered a ten-points agenda that is just as relevant for the incoming president. In particular, I wish somebody could comment on Chas Freeman's approach the Middle East (lest Trump now stirs greater turmoil by giving Jerusalem and West Bank to Israel as he promised in his campaign); on the need to restrict the power of the corporate media (over the three traditional branches of government) and the need for Obama to pardon Ed Snowden (lest our email exchange is tampered with next time we write under the new POTUS). And remember, it is still not too late to demand dialogue with Russia and demand Presidential Pardon for Ed Snowden! If any of you wish to post "Krasnov-Obama Letter Exchange" as a single unit, you are encouraged to use this indexation for each letter: 1. An Open Letter from Vladislav Krasnov (raga.org) to Obama. 2. Obama replies to Krasnov (W GeorgeKrasnow, RAGA.org). Or ask me to send it to you as a word document. While in the States, besides performing my civic duty, I also connected a couple of journalists from Denmark and Russia with two retired peace-loving US war veterans both of whom encouraged me to write the letter to Obama. Of course, I enjoyed the sights of both Washington and San Francisco. As always, I am grateful to Professor William Brumfield of Tulane University for helping Americans appreciate the uniqueness of Russian civilization in a series of photographs of remote Russian historical sites. It needs to be repeated that since 1991 -- 25 years ago! -- Russia has been rediscovering its ancient spiritual roots, including those embodied in its church architecture, -- and William's photographs celebrate this Russian rebirth! My current article for Russia beyond the Headlines focuses on the town of Maloya spirituALroslavets, which played a major role in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow: http://rbth.com/special_projects/discovering_russia_1/2016/12/02/maloyaroslavets-where-napoleons-fate-was-sealed_653127 To see the slide show full screen, click the 4-arrow icon at lower right of photo window. This is the 163 rd of my articles and photo essays on Russia's architectural and cultural heritage for the foreign-language service of the Russian national newspaper Rossiiskaia Gazeta. A unified link to the series can be found at: http://rbth.ru/ discovering_russia Through this link a total of 4,627 photographs from my documentary work in Russia are now accessible. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! Sincerely, W George Krasnow (Vladislav Krasnov) President, RAGA www.raga.org
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