Dear CCI Friends,

I want to share with you my favorite young news journalist in Moscow, Dmitri (Dima) Babich. He is one of our “CCI Experts.” I’ve known Dima a long, long time.  He is very fond of America, speaks flawless English and always finds something light-hearted to say regardless of how difficult the situation is between Washington, D.C. and Moscow.  We break into gales of laughter with his humor … or on rare occasion we experience a moment of pathos with him.

One such moment came with a CCI group in 2017. One traveler asked, “How come Russians are so good to us wherever we go across your country, even when the relationship between our countries is so dire?”  Silence fell over the room. Seemingly stunned for a moment, Dima quietly uttered his truth, “You know we have always had a love affair with America and Americans. From the very beginning this was so. And the remnants are still alive in our society and come out when people like you appear on our streets or in meetings.”  His words fell on the group like a blanket of poignancy.

In the video below, Dima seemed, for the first time, to try to educate us Americans about how it feels to be in his shoes …. in ordinary Russians shoes.  Russians read our U.S. news on the Internet and keep up with much of what is going on in our country and their own. Russians on the whole are considerably better informed than most Americans. Many have English training in their backgrounds. Today even their metro stops are announced in Russian and in English. Presently, they are more worried about the future than are we. Our NATO troops and weapons are just minutes from Moscow and St. Petersburg. How would we feel if Russian troops were in the state next to ours?

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Dear Friends of CCI,

We present you three videos below of Dr.Vladimir Kozin, lead expert at the Military-Political Studies Center, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, regarding weapons of mass destruction and what must be done to prevent their use on civilian populations again.  He urges that in order to ensure the existence of our species on planet Earth, America and Russia must start using diplomacy and negotiations with each other and must halt rumor making and demeaning one another.

These videos were taped during our May 2017 CCI “Experts” presentations in Moscow.  Unsolvable challenges with equipment at the time resulted in only one YouTube being made during the 2017 trip.  Our 2018 videographer, Regis Tremblay, got the 2017 video material and created this three-part YouTube series below. They are terrific! Kudos to Regis!!!

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For some reason we Americans on the whole aren’t aware of how close we are today to war that could go nuclear in a few moments. Unfortunately there is little about it in mainstream media.  In the 1970s and 80s, when tensions were as high as they are now,  there was much more coverage in newspapers, magazines and on TV.  We must wake up before it’s too late. Look at the history of WWI and WWII and other wars throughout the world where countries bumbled into major wars with no serious thought about outcomes. The results were millions of lives lost, cities and nations blown to bits, and new leadership that rose out of the dust.

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