Friends, THIS IS BIG!  This would not be happening if there wasn’t determination and agreement on the part of Trump and others in the Republican party.

This is déjà vu for me.  I was there in 1993 when the notable Democrat and Republican Congressional delegation came to Russia. I was able to brief them in StPetersburg’s Consulate, thanks to an invitation from Consul General Jack Gosnell. Everything changed for us and for US-Russia relations afterward. Leaders of both parties were in the delegation–they were searching for a shred of hope that the relationship could work. They were open to our suggestions and began funding programs that brought the two citizenries together for training and downloading of workable grassroots solutions.

I don’t think funding will be possible today, but I look forward to the goodwill and intellectual support that may now be coming. It’s certainly needed!

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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The Duran
July 3, 2018

American Congressional Delegation Arrives in Moscow

Delegation made use of the Sapsan high-speed railway to travel between St Petersburg and Moscow on a six-day trip to Russia

By Seraphim Hanisch

There is an American congressional delegation traveling in the Russian Federation. According to TASS, the delegation has seven members:

• Senator Richard Shelby [R-Alabama]
• Senator John Kennedy [R-Louisiana]
• Senator John Hoeven III [R-North Dakota]
• Senator John Thune [R-South Dakota]
• Senator Jerry Moran [R-Kansas]
• Senator Steve Daines [R-Montana]
• Representative Kay Granger [R-Texas]

CNN reported that the delegation went to Russia at the invitation of the United States Ambassador to Russia, John Huntsman. The agenda is described as “high-level meetings”, though Senator Shelby declined to say specifically with whom.

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Friends, please read carefully the article below. It addresses directly what has happened, what is happening and what needs to happen across America. After reading the first four paragraphs at my Toyota dealership, I stopped and immediately sent the author my gratitude for presenting the truth in so few packed words––then voraciously read the remainder of it with deep appreciation after arriving back at my office.

Katrina vanden Heuvel has set the stage for what she terms “a desperately needed fierce and energetic citizen intervention—a movement that demands both a reckoning and a change in course.”

This is imminently doable leading up to 2019. Conditions in the U.S. and worldwide are shifting at a phenomenal rate. Rampant subterfuge and false rumors are now being exposed daily, such that even our disengaged mainstream population are beginning to open their eyes and minds and are shocked at what is happening daily in the media.

Let’s figure out how to join our networks, present our citizenry at large with “how to” options in which to participate in “citizen interventions”… so together we can make the most of this crucial period into which we are rapidly moving.

After reading the article below, send your ponderings, bold ideas and commitments to this process! We will share and discuss them on line … and more going forward.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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The Nation
June 20, 2018

Why We Need a Wider Foreign-Policy Debate

The establishment consensus has failed. Citizen intervention can change that.

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

A reckoning with America’s failed national-security policy is long overdue. Donald Trump’s reckless machinations are destructive, but so too is the bipartisan establishment consensus that has defined our role in the world for decades and remains remarkably unshaken, despite its evident bankruptcy.

Our calamitous misadventures in the Middle East and the global financial collapse of 2008 dramatically exposed the failures of this consensus. Yet while citizen movements have begun to transform domestic politics, they have been virtually invisible when it comes to foreign policy. This special issue of The Nation challenges what has been a remarkably narrow debate in this area. Without pretending to offer a grand strategy, it provides alternative perspectives, grounded in values widely shared by the American people. We seek to instigate not only a more open debate, but a new call to action.

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Dear CCI Friends,

Excuse that this article is a bit late. I’ve been traveling in Russia. There was little time for anything other than constant activity with yet another terrific delegation of Americans, this time Sister Cities International leaders.  Gratefully, information like the below is as relevant today as when it was first printed.  Hopefully a Summit between Trump and Putin is underway, but one can never tell until their planes take flight.

Professor Steve Cohen dissects the reasons why this particular presidential Summit in 2018 is so critical. I personally believe if the two of them sit down together, the results may be good for us all.  Their personalities are very, very different.  Their modes of operating are polls apart, yet Trump may instinctively trust Putin’s INTJ demeanor. Does anyone want to guess what Trump’s Myers-Briggs personality type might be?

Cohen is deeply concerned about the future of our planet, as is every thinking person, and he offers 10 reasons why this hoped for Summit is absolutely crucial.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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The Nation
June 6, 2018

The Necessity of a Trump-Putin Summit

Ten ways the new US-Russian Cold War is increasingly becoming more dangerous than the one we survived.

By Stephen F. Cohen

(Audio available here.)

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (You can find previous installments, now in their fifth year, at TheNation.com.)

Recent reports suggest that a formal meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is being seriously discussed in Washington and Moscow. Such ritualized but often substantive “summits,” as they were termed, were frequently used during the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War to, among other things, reduce conflicts and increase cooperation between the two superpowers. They were most important when tensions were highest. Some were very successful, some less so, others were deemed failures. Given today’s extraordinarily toxic political circumstances, even leaving aside powerful opposition in Washington (including inside the Trump administration) to any cooperation with the Kremlin, we may wonder if anything positive would come from a Trump-Putin summit. But it is necessary, even imperative, that Washington and Moscow try.

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Dear CCI friends,

I hope you will take the time to scan Professor Nicolai Petro’s important analysis: Are We Reading Russia Right?

Increasing numbers of American experts on Russia have begun speaking out on the absurdity of reading Russia “wrongly.”

Discrediting and demonizing Russia has come into being slowly over two decades or more. Americans have absorbed it as logical and true. However, much of it has been pure fake news––designed to carry out objectives totally unknown to the average citizen.

The lid is coming off of the boiling pot of disastrous decision making, and the result could be a civilization-ending nuclear exchange. Experts like Professors Steve Cohen and Nicolai Petro, alarmed by the handwriting on the wall, are speaking out. Professor Petro spent the academic year 2013-2014 in Ukraine as a Fulbright Research Scholar.

Nicolai Petro: Are We Reading Russia Right

TheNation
May 23, 2018

McCarthyism and firsthand recollections of Soviet surveillance practices.

(Audio available here.)

By Stephen F. Cohen

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (You can find previous installments of these conversations, now in their fifth year, at TheNation.com.)

Cohen has several reactions to the recent revelation that a longtime CIA-FBI “informant,” professor emeritus Stefan Halper, had been dispatched to “interact” with several members of Donald Trump’s campaign organization in 2016. He discusses each of them:

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