Search Results for: russiagate

Against Thanksgiving

What the hell do I mean I’m against Thanksgiving? Can’t I find something worse to be against? How about famine, cholera, war, slavery, rape, murder, torture, environmental collapse, refugee crises, evil heartless lying scheming governments, oil spills, slick propaganda, mass incarceration, entrenched apathy, bigotry, greed, or sadism? Indeed, I’m certainly against all of those things and thousands of others, and more so than I am against Thanksgiving.

But the world’s problems read more

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Top 10 Ways to Stop Trump Nuking Anybody

On Tuesday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on whether Trump can just up and nuke people or not. The hand-picked witnesses, all former military, all said there was some chance that if Trump ordered a nuking, somebody might refuse to carry out the order. On what grounds? No witness or Senator ever mentioned the illegality of war under the UN Charter or the Kellogg-Briand Pact. But one witness brought up “necessity” and “proportionality” as grounds for read more

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UVA’s Miller Center Plans Three Days of Russophobia

Even as some Democrats are at long last growing frustrated with the lack of actual evidence for the past several months of stories about Russia stealing a U.S. election, Russiagate has penetrated so deeply that Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations has declared Russia’s alleged crimes to be acts of war. That Russia’s fictional actions being warfare read more

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What’s North Korea Afraid of?

“Peace” clubs in U.S. schools are likely to teach that a local bully is afraid and in need of help. They are much less likely to teach that about entities involved in the actual subject of peace (meaning the absence of war), such as — to take the example momentarily most prominent in U.S. propaganda — North Korea.

“Ignorance about the Korean war,” writes Blaine Harden, “has . . . led to the cartoonish ahistorical understanding many Americans still have read more

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The Plot to Scapegoat Russia

The Doomsday Clock has been moved closer to midnight than it’s been since 1953. The U.S. has shot down a Syrian plane. Russia has threatened to shoot down U.S. planes. There is no way to overstate the importance of avoiding telling hostile lies about Russia right now.

Dan Kovalik’s book, The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia, is a good place to start if you watch a lot of television, don’t read much about politics, read more

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Why You Should Visit Russia

Just back from a week in Moscow, I feel obliged to point out a few things about it.

  • Most people there still love Americans.
  • Many people there speak English.
  • Learning basic Russian is not that hard.
  • Moscow is the biggest city in Europe (and far bigger than any in the United States).
  • Moscow has the charm, culture, architecture, history, activities, events, parks, museums, and entertainment to match any other city in Europe.
  • It’s warm there now with flowers everywhere.
  • Moscow is safer than U.S. cities. You can walk around alone at night with no worries.
  • The Metro goes everywhere. A train comes every 2 minutes. The trains have free Wi-Fi. So do the parks.
  • You can rent bicycles at lots of different spots and return them to any other.
  • You can fly direct from New York to Moscow, and if you fly on the Russian airline Aeroflot you’ll get a nostalgic reminder of what it’s like to have airplane seats large enough to hold a human being.
  • Everybody says that St. Petersburg and various other cities are even more beautiful than Moscow.
  • Right now the sun is up from 4:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Moscow, and until 9:30 p.m. in St. Petersburg. The longest day of the year in St. Petersburg is 18-and-a-half hours.

Americans seem not to know about Russia. While four-and-a-half million Americans visit Italy in a year, and two-and-a-half million go to Germany as tourists, only 86 thousand go to Russia. More tourists go to Russia from several other countries than go there from the U.S.

If you want to visit Russia and really learn about it, go, as I did, with the Center for Citizen Initiatives.

If you want the best tour guide I’ve read more

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