Bringing Russian and American citizens together in Peace since 1983.
Dear CCI Friends,
Please watch this amazing interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrmWpI_s7rc
Jeffrey Sachs and Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! discuss stopping the war in Ukraine. Biden is on saying he is open to negotiating if conditions are reasonable. Please witness this amazing discussion.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Dear CCI Friends,
We at CCI are attempting to counter the coverage in mainstream media regarding the Russia/Ukraine/NATO tragedy. It worsens by the day.
Today’s article is by Dan Kovalik, author of “The Plot to Scapegoat Russia”. I met Dan in 2017 shortly after his book was published. It was so ‘out there,” I was worried for his safety. However, he is still alive and educating. Please give us your thoughts, pro and con, on his latest piece below.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
November 30, 2022
By Dan Kovalik
Once a Pittsburgh sister city also known for its steel industry, Donetsk, and the greater Donbas region in which it is located, has been at war since 2014. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, 14,000 people died in this conflict, even before Russia began its military operations in February. I’ve just returned from there.
Before Russia’s intervention, the conflict had been between the people of that region and the government in Kiev, after an unconstitutional coup took 2014. This coup, known as “Maiden,” was — as then US Ambassador to Ukraine Victoria Nuland explained in a recorded telephone conversation — managed by the United States.
The coup brought to power a pro-Western, anti-Russian, government, which contained elements which were far-right and even Nazi. The best known element, as the Nation Magazine reported in 2019, is the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has been part of Ukraine’s National Guard since 2014. Its commander Andriy Biletsky once wrote that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”
The Biden administration refuses to tell the American people the truth: Ukraine is not winning and will not win this war.
The American Conservative
November 29, 2022
By Douglas Macgregor
The national political and military leaders who committed America to wars of choice in Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, did so as a rule because they were convinced the fighting would be short and decisive. American presidents, presidential advisors, and senior military leaders never stopped to consider that national strategy, if it exists at all, consists of avoiding conflict unless the nation is attacked and compelled to fight.
The latest victim of this mentality is Ukraine. In the absence of a critical root-and-branch analysis of Russia’s national power and strategic interests, American senior military leaders and their political bosses viewed Russia through a narrowly focused lens that magnified U.S. and Ukrainian strengths but ignored Russia’s strategic advantages—geographic depth, almost limitless natural resources, high social cohesion, and the military-industrial capacity to rapidly scale up its military power.
Ukraine is now a war zone subject to the same treatment the U.S. armed forces inflicted on Germany and Japan during the Second World War, on Vietnam in the 1960s, and on Iraq over decades. Power grids, transportation networks, communications infrastructure, fuel production, and ammunition storage sites are being systematically destroyed. Millions of Ukrainians continue to flee the war zone in pursuit of safety, with ominous consequences for Europe’s societies and economies.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration repeatedly commits the unpardonable sin in a democratic society of refusing to tell the American people the truth: contrary to the Western media’s popular “Ukrainian victory” narrative, which blocks any information that contradicts it, Ukraine is not winning and will not win this war. Months of heavy Ukrainian casualties, resulting from an endless series of pointless attacks against Russian defenses in Southern Ukraine, have dangerously weakened Ukrainian forces.
Dear CCI Community,
A most unusual happening has occurred nationally and internationally. Highly respected author and MD, Benjamin Abelow, quickly wrote a powerful 76-page booklet entitled “How the West Brought War to Ukraine” in mid-2022. In addition, he created a passionate 12-minute video titled, “How the US and NATO Led to the Crisis and the Risk of Nuclear War.”
Then, a PR miracle began happening: European outlets began publishing Abelow’s information freely to tens of thousands of local people. We assume this is the first time ever.
The Swiss newsweekly Die Weltwoche (“The World Week”) published a special edition of Abelow’s tiny book in German and distributed it to their 40,000 subscribers and newsstand buyers. A private citizen then paid for the printing of 300,000 copies of the booklet and for the mass mailing to every household in the cantons of Zurich and to most or all households in the Bern canton. Free mass distribution in Europe was something that author Abelow never anticipated!
On other fronts, the Slovene edition now seems to be finalized for publishing by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which is also making a PDF version freely available as a download. A Polish edition looks very likely with both Polish and Slovene editions to be published during the first months of 2023 or, just possibly with luck, before Christmas. An international book broker is currently exploring licensing translations in France, Italy, and other countries in Europe and in Asia (including both the PRC and Taiwan), and in South America. This volunteer mass production means of spreading information seems to have never been done previously.
The Ukraine War is actually a money laundering Ponzi scheme. The public was tricked into investing funds not for “the survival of the world”, but as scrutiny increases, more evidence is pointing toward the fact it was the greatest such scheme in history.
Europe is getting colder, energy products are getting much more costly, inflation higher by the month. The situation could quickly make an enormous difference in how Europeans respond to the US and NATO war. We Americans need to take a lesson from Europeans as they move forward in this challenging situation.
Order your copy of Abelow’s booklet from Google today (cost is $4 to $6), watch the YouTube video and please, educate your friends and colleagues. Forward the video to as many persons as possible. Our very future may depend on rapid distribution of these ideas
By Benjamin Abelow (Author) Format: Kindle Edition)
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Imprimis
By Christopher Caldwell
September 2022
Claremont Review of Books
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 4, 2022, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on the topic of Russia.
According to what we hear from the White House and from the television networks, the issues at stake in the Ukraine War are simple. They concern the evil of Vladimir Putin, who woke up one morning and chose, whether out of sadism or insanity, to wreak unspeakable violence on his neighbors. Putin’s actions are described as an “unprovoked invasion” of a noble democracy by a corrupt autocracy. How we ought to respond is assumed to be a no-brainer. The United States has pledged vast quantities of its deadliest weaponry, along with aid that is likely to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and has brought large parts of the world economy—particularly in Europe—to a standstill.
Now, whenever people in power tell you something is a no-brainer, there’s a good chance that it’s a brainer. And the Ukraine War is more complicated than we’ve been led to assume.
There are reasons why the U.S. might want to project power into the Black Sea region. But we must not ignore that the politics of the region are extraordinarily complex, that the Ukraine conflict is full of paradoxes and optical illusions, and that the theater we are entering has been, over the past 150 years, the single most violent corner of the planet. And unless we learn to respect the complexity of the situation, we risk turning it into something more dangerous, both for Europeans and for ourselves.