Dear CCI Friends,

The full title of the subject of this post is, “The Plot to Subvert an Election: Unraveling the Russia Story So Far,” and it is the headline of a New York Times article that extensively explores the “attack” involving “hacked emails, social media fraud, (and) suspected spies” on the 2016 presidential election.  It was published in September, 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/russia-interference-election-trump-clinton.html

It’s a long, detailed piece that painstakingly makes its case for collusion between Donald Trump, et al, and Vladimir Putin to subvert our electoral process.  

Today we are watching as every point made by the Times is being flipped to build the case that everyone back in 2018, including the Times, making allegations against President Trump was knowingly fabricating, spinning, embellishing – lying, in fact – to subvert the presidency.  Now it’s DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard and the Department of Justice making the allegations.

See the following short list for today’s views on the subject:

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/07/28/robert-parry-the-sleazy-origins-of-russiagate

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/smoking-gun-declassified-durham-appendix-confirms-hillary-clinton-plan-smear-trump-use

https://www.racket.news/p/another-major-document-release?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1042&post_id=169763863&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=8ktuj&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/08/01/ray-mcgovern-the-deep-states-burst-appendix/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=620b2808-39ce-4f67-b7fb-2d5e282a31fb

If you feel you’ve been had, played, conned, led down a garden path, you’re not alone.  And it is a certainty that we-the-victims of this con are not in agreement on who is fooling whom. 

While we wait for the next shoe to drop, I would like to suggest two small, obscure, important books (essays, really) for your consideration.  

“Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” by Josef Pieper, Ignatius Press, 1992 (first published in Germany, 1972)

And to make the point even more succinctly,

“On Bullshit” by Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University Press, 2005.

Both distinguished professors, now deceased, were philosophers concerned with “the nature of truth.”  May we all share that concern.

Please let me know what you think of all of this.

Sincerely,

Paula Day

Center for Citizen Initiatives

Dear CCI Friends and Colleagues,

The following article by Dr. Gilbert Doctorow analyzes the recent ‘trade’ agreement between the US and the EU.  We might as well call it as it really is:  an agreement that Europe will destroy its domestic economies so that Ukraine (not a member of NATO) can sacrifice its citizens for NATO’s cause which is to weaken Russia.  This is necessary, in the minds of the EU leaders, because they are terrified of Russia.  

A mind controlled by terror is a dangerous thing, its response to any stimuli at best unpredictable and at worst wildly irrational.  Consider the words of the leaders of Germany and Estonia as examples – war mongering at its finest.  Why?  Memory lapse?  Death wish?  Banal bravado?

“what Europe needs is not a new army but a new foreign policy” 

https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/europe-capitulates-treacherous-leadership?utm_

For a more positive approach to how we might navigate the future, consider the following.  As some of you know, CCI is in the midst of making plans for a Rule of Law symposium in Yalta.  In the meantime, please consider taking advantage of World Beyond War’s online course on the subject.

“war is illegal on paper but legitimized and normalized in practice”

https://worldbeyondwar.org/war-peace-law-an-online-course/?clear_id=true

Somehow we have managed to get ourselves to the point where we are so terrified of even trying to live in peace that we throw simple tools for settling grievances out the window and commit ourselves to death and destruction instead.  

It is suggested that this is all in the cause of someone, somewhere making a lot of money.  What do you think?

The Center for Citizen Initiatives

Dear CCI Friends,

The revelations coming from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbord on the Russiagate era are so shocking they are being either ignored or brushed off by commentators in the mass media.  Much of the information she revealed on the accusations of collusion between the Kremlin and the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign had been teased out by independent media sources years ago; now, what Gabbard has done is to put hard evidence of a deliberate conspiracy to subvert a presidential election before us.  What many have called the Russiagate ‘hoax’ begins to look like something much darker.

Alexander Mercouris and Alexander Christoforous on The Duran have taken the Gabbord revelations a step further and made a direct connection between the conspirators in the Obama administration (including Obama himself) and the US involvement in the war in Ukraine.  For anyone trying to keep his head above these foul, swirling waters in order to focus on peace with Russia, it is enough to make one weep.

Please take a look at the discussion at the Duran and give us your take on all of this.

Russiagate and the conflict in Ukraine

The Center for Citizen Initiatives

Global Predators No Longer Interested in the Spoils of War In Ukraine

https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/ukraines-corporate-carve-up-collapses

“Ukraine’s Corporate Carve-Up Collapses”

“Quite what will remain of Ukraine when the conflict is over, and whether any financial returns can be gleaned from its ruins, are open, grave questions.”

Ruins of Bahkmut

Dear CCI Friends,

In the article below, Patrick Lawrence presents his rather bleak assessment of the future when the war in Ukraine ends.  After what he refers to as the ‘dead end’ of supposed negotiations between Russia and the US (which, on the American side, have frequently consisted of “social media messages demanding a ceasefire, replete with capital letters and exclamations points, (which) do not count and do not work as statecraft”) Lawrence anticipates a time – a very long time – of Ressentiment.

Ressentiment is a concept that was of great interest to a number of heavy thinkers of the 19^th century. What it boils down to is what we at CCI have been anticipating for the aftermath of the bloodiest war in Europe since WWII since the day it commenced:  bone marrow-deep bitterness, rancor, frustration and blame among the citizens of Ukraine and Russia – and many in the West as well.  These toxic feelings have the potential to poison relations between the countries involved in this war, whether directly or peripherally, for generations to come. 

Please read Lawrence’s article, “Trump Dead-Ends Putin,” and let us know what you think.  And in the next few weeks we will tell you of our plan to put citizen-to-citizen diplomacy to work, in some small way, to counter this inevitability.

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump Dead-Ends Putin – Consortium News

On a far more positive note, please see the video below from the CCI archives titled, “Present! – Charles Heberle: You the People.”  Charles joined the CCI Board of Directors in February, but he was involved with the organization and in work in Russia long before.  In 2015 he was in the first citizens’ delegation to return to Russia with Sharon Tennison following the Maidan coup.  The videoed interview by Mel Van Dusen, also a 2015 CCI delegate, covers his remarkable involvement in ‘teaching democracy’ in Russia in the decade before that.  If you have not seen the interview already, please take a look.  After the first Cold War ended, the relationship between the former ‘enemies’ could comfortably be called the opposite of Ressentiment.  Let’s hope we haven’t lost that connection forever.

Present! – Charles Heberle: You the People

If you have questions or comments about the program, please send them in.  Charles has promised to respond to all.

Best wishes to you all for a gorgeous summer!

Paula Day

Center for Citizen Initiatives