SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA (Anti-Communism, and Socialismphobia, McCarthyism, HATING
RUSKIES) ANTHOLOGY #8
December
31, 2025 NEW YEAR’S EVE
Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
What’s at Stake: IMAGINING PEACE WITH RUSSIA
John Lennon, “IMAGINE” (1971)
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
HAPPY NEW
YEAR THANKS TO SCOTT RITTER, PEACEMAKER
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These two images date back to December 1988,
the first New Year’s celebration that saw US inspectors living and working in Votkinsk, implementing the INF treaty.
This particular
celebration was instrumental to my personal evolution as a human being, helping
me transform from someone who viewed the Soviet Union and its Russian
population as an enemy, to someone who understood that these same people posed
no inherent threat to America, and that our joint future would be better served
pursuing peace over conflict.
This experience is an aspect of “mental
warfare”, where the tools used to shape thoughts and values are used for
constructive purposes.
Here we are, some 37 years later, still
struggling to overcome the burden of the Cold War.
But the fact that we are still here, and still
struggling to fulfill the noble concept of peace on earth and goodwill toward
mankind, is in itself a victory of perseverance in the face of adversity.
Happy New Year to my fellow Americans and all
the people of Russia.
Victory (peace) will be ours!
Real
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CONTENTS Soviet/Russiaphobia
#8
SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA,
EXPOSING US BIGOTRY v. RUSSIA and ADVOCAGING THE IMPORTANCE OF SCHOLARSHIP,
KNOWLEDGE, PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, EXCHANGE PROGRAMS
Because
I received Scott Ritter’s New Year’s Eve message only just now, and it is so
appropriate to the contents of Anthology #8 (and nos. 1-7 equally well). I have
framed Ritter’s hope in historical contexts of WWII, long hatred of
Soviets/Russians, seeing Russians as others see them, and, my largest collection,
possibilities large and small of peace. I have divided the contents roughly into three
groups: 1. SovRusso phobia by US and the West; 2. Toward Peace: Acknowledging SovRuss
from diverse perspectives; 3. Peacemaking.
I recomment these articles if you
are short of time, but I hope at least all of us connect via Ritter’s New Year’s
greetings
Prabhat Patnaik on the importance of the Soviet Union to the
defeat of the Nazis.
Gary Wilson on the Odessa Massacre v. Western
story.
Any of Ritter’s 3 other articles.
My chronology.
TEXTS Soviet/Russiaphobia #8
I.
SovRussophobia.
II.
Seeing the World as Others See It
III.
Peacemaking
I. US FOREIGN POLICY: Hatred of Soviet Union and
Russia
See
Soviet/Russia as Others See Them
Jacob Mikanowski. “The Bleak Prophecy of Timothy Snyder.” April 12, 2019. [This review of Snyder’s On
Tyranny includes a severe criticism of Snyder’s
Russophobia.
–D]
1945-1952, Anti-Communists Bring Nazi Scientists to US.
Annie Jacobsen. Operation
Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to
America. Little, Brown, 2014. Review by Dick
Bennett.
Following WWII, 1945 to 1952, the US
brought 1,600 Nazi scientists to the US, many of them ardent Nazis, one already
convicted of mass murder and slavery, and gave them citizenship and employment
in the government. and citizenship.
(Jacobsen “puts a spotlight on twenty-one of these men.”)
Why did the US embrace war criminals in
contradiction of our values and against whom the awful war was fought? Jacobsen
shows how influential in subverting values and the war’s achievements was
Sovietphobia and anti-communism/socialism. I say phobia because the
hundred-year animosity by the US against the USSR (now Russia) beginning in 1918 reflects a deep pathology within our leaders and population. Jacobsen asks: “Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or
did it help America win the Cold War?”
Her book demonstrates that it was not either-or, but rather Operation
Paper Clip was both a moral outrage and a significant part of the Cold War, for
it provided part of the energy of the “national security state” that the US
became and is today. Her book shows “how
dark government can get in the name of national security” when the US
government brought Nazis to the US and installed them in positions of
technological influence and, for some, high prestige, in a “Cold War” (often
atrociously hot) to defend capitalism against an economic competitor described
as “enemy.”
“They came to America at the behest of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff” and as “the lesser of two evils—that if America didn’t
recruit these scientists, the Soviet Communists surely would.” To oversee the project, the Pentagon created
the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) as a subcommittee of its Joint
Intelligence Committee “solely and specifically to recruit and hire Nazi
scientists and put them on weapons projects and in scientific intelligence
programs within the army, the navy, the air force, the CIA (starting in
1947)….” To help us “understand the
[pathological, bigoted, warmaking, warmongering] mind set of the Joint
Intelligence Committee,” Jacobsen offers this information: “Within one year of the atomic-bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the JIC warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the
United States needed to prepare
for ‘total war’ with the Soviets—to
include atomic, chemical, and biological warfare—and they even set an estimated
start date of 1952. This book focuses on
that uneasy period, from 1945 to 1952, in which the JIOA’s recruitment of Nazi
scientists was forever on the rise,” including “individuals previously deemed
undesirable….”(xi).
Under Operation Paper Clip these
scientists continued their armaments research “at a feverish and paranoid pace
that came to define the Cold War. The
age of weapons of mass destruction had begun, and with it came the treacherous
concept of brinkmanship—the art of pursuing dangerous policy to the limits of
safety before stopping. Hiring dedicated
Nazis was without precedent, entirely unprincipled, and inherently dangerous
not just because. . . ‘These men are enemies,’ but because it was counter to
democratic ideals” (ix-x). Paper Clip
“left behind a legacy of ballistic missiles, sarin gas cluster bombs,
underground bunkers, space capsules, and weaponized bubonic plague….It is a
story populated with Machiavellian connivers and men who dedicate their lives
to designing weapons for [as warmongers always promise] the coming war….”
Albert Einstein, who fled Nazi Germany
months after Hitler took power, understood Paper Clip: “He appealed to President Truman to cancel
Paperclip, calling anyone who served Hitler unfit for US citizenship.”
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THE US-BACKED INDONESIAN GENOCIDE SIXTY YEARS LATER
BY ROGER PEET.
CounterPunch (March 18, 2025). The prospect of industrial-scale mass murder
of leftists and other social undesirables was very appealing to the
right-wing sectors of Latin American nations, and graffiti scrawls that
proclaimed “Jakarta is Coming” were seen in several cities on the South American
continent in the years following Indonesia’s crisis. READ MORE |
McCarthyism,
Anti-communism
MCCARTHYISM: SOV/RUSSOPHOBIA USED AGAINST US CITIZENS
Steve Batterson. The Prosecution of
Professor Chandler Davis: McCarthyism, Communism,
and the Myth of Academic Freedom.
Monthly Review P, 2023.
· Authors
· Praise
Exposes
the destruction of academic careers—and the complicity of educational
institutions—in McCarthy's America
The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis tells the true tale of
a mathematician who found himself taking an involuntary break from chalking
equations to sit opposite a row of self-righteous anti-Communist congressmen
at the height of the McCarthy era. Courageously asserting the First
Amendment to confront a system rapidly descending into fascism, Davis
testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He became
one of a small number of left wingers who served time for contempt of Congress.
In this fascinating and disturbing narrative, author Steve Batterson takes a
deep dive into extant archival records generated by the FBI, HUAC, the
University of Michigan, and repositories holding the papers of former Supreme
Court justices. He examines the plights of six faculty and graduate
students—including three future members of the National Academy of
Sciences—whose careers were disrupted by the anticommunist actions of a wide
range of personnel at the University of Michigan. He focuses on the seemingly
conflicting Supreme Court decisions on labor leader John Watkins and Vassar
College Psychology instructor Lloyd Barenblatt. And he examines the role played
in the trial by Felix Frankfurter, a longtime Associate Justice on the Supreme
Court, close advisor of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and co-founder of the ACLU. In
the process, Batterson exposes the ways that McCarthy’s righteous emissaries
relied on all kinds of institutions in 1950s America—from Hollywood studios to
universities—to sabotage the careers of anyone with a trace of “Red.”
Post-WWII Anti-Communism in Hawaii
. . .But I can tell you that the McCarthy era
disproportionately affected Hawaii's academia, trade union officials,
journalists, and activists. I know this from reading about the labor history of
Hawaii and having the unique opportunity to meet many of the people who were
ensnared by McCarthy's anti-communist pogrom.
Red-Baiting in the Islands: The Trial of the Hawaiʻi Seven
Red-Baiting in the Islands: The Trial of the
Hawaiʻi Seven
#195 in the Moʻolelo
series Of all the strikes up to that point, the 1946 sugar strike brought an
end to Hawai‘i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Hawaii
Sent by Greg Elliott.
Anti-Russia propaganda is alarming
From Abel Noah 7-20-18 Dick, I am witnessing an alarming level of pro-war
anti-Russian sentiment being driven by mainstream media. Many otherwise
intelligent liberal democrats are locking arms with neocons in hostility to
Russia. The following story is a good example of this apocalyptic
foolishness, that we need war with Russia, followed by a wise Truthdig
article by Norman Solomon urging more sane thinking. The article says:
"Make no mistake: Hacking the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s time
we responded accordingly." My
response:
Make no mistake: Nuclear War will be a million times worse than everything else
Trump has done. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/16/putin-russia-trump-2016-pearl-harbor-219015 https://www.truthdig.com/articles/climb-down-from-the-summit-of-hostile-propaganda/
SovRussophobia has recently become confusing by the support
by Trump of some of Putin’s positions regarding the Ukraine War v. Democrats
and many Republicans.
“Trump’s Helsinki Press Conference and Public Disgrace.” Gary Leupp, Professor of History at Tufts
University.
July 20,
2018. FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/20/trumps-helsinki-press-conference-and-public-disgrace/ [Our topic is complicated in this case by
Pres. Trump being the exception to the general phobia. –D]
Samuel Johnson famously declared, “Patriotism
is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” It is surely the first recourse of those
hell-bent on toppling Donald Trump as U.S. president, not for the many, many
right reasons, but to use ingrained Cold War Russophobia to achieve the goal.
The verdict is near-unanimous. Trump made a
fool out of himself in Helsinki. He embarrassed himself and the nation. He
insulted U.S. intelligence services. He was shameful. He betrayed his country.
He elevated and legitimated Putin while diminishing himself. He committed
treason.
The Washington Post, the New York Times, the
Wall Street Journal, all condemnatory. Similarly CNN and MSNBC.
“An extraordinary and dark day,” announced
objective journalist Anderson Cooper on CNN Monday night. “There’s no question
this is a sad day,” declared eminently mainstream CNN anchor Chris Cuomo
minutes later.
The always growling Jake Tapper just asked his
CNN audience: “How will the Helsinki Surrender affect public opinion?” This is
the anchor of both the weekday show “The Lead with Jake Tapper” and the Sunday
“State of the Union” program. A veteran of ABC and the White House
Correspondents’ Association. A supposedly objective journalist, reporting
straight- (and grim-) faced about a “surrender.”
MSNBC observed that “all Americans will always
remember where they were” when they heard Trump’s remarks in front of Putin
Monday, July 16, 2018. Like Pearl Harbor. Like 9/11. The day the U.S. president
publicly caved into the Soviet—oops Russian—dictator, crediting his statements
over those of his intelligence team. . . .
“Old
McCarthyism Is New McCarthyism: ‘Russian Ties.’”
Sign the petition to investigate the Trump
U.S. Attorney nominee with Russian ties.Civic Shout <info@civicshout.io>
Add your name to the petition: Tell the FBI to investigate
Trump U.S. attorney pick's Russian ties.
Dick,
Donald Trump has tapped Ed Martin to be the next U.S. attorney
for Washington, D.C. — and the red flags are screaming.
Martin is unqualified and dangerous. He also tried to hide his ties
to Russian media in the paperwork required for his nomination in paperwork
required for his nomination. A right-wing provocateur with no
prosecutorial chops, Martin failed to disclose over 150 appearances on
Russian propaganda TV networks between 2016 and 2024.
As The Atlantic and The Hill have reported, Martin used his
airtime on Russian media to push election lies and praise Trump. He’s been an
active apologist for extremists and a mouthpiece for foreign interests. This is
exactly the kind of threat the FBI was built to confront, and why Rep. Jamie
Raskin is demanding an investigation.
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Contributions from supporters like you make the Civic Shout
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Dick Bennett’s Reply to Civic Shout
Foundation, a voice of the Democratic Party.
4-28-25. I am a lifetime Democrat who believes that
Soviet/Russophobia has poisoned our country and been the motivation behind
most and perhaps all of our wars, so your letter is
especially repugnant. You sound like the anti-communist Democrats
of post-World War II....to the present. Here is the link to my
Anthology #6; it will lead you to Nos. 5-1; and I am working on Nos. 7-. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/02/omni-sovietrussophobia-and.html
Nothing I just said supports Mr. Martin, but
his oligarchical proclivities find parallels not only in Russia but within the
US both Democrats and Republicans.
James R. (Dick) Bennett, Prof. Emer
Who Is Civic Shout
Foundation? Google:
“Civic
Shout is the platform for progressive change. We help individuals, progressive
nonprofits and Democratic campaigns make the world more just, inclusive
and fact-focused.“ But Old AND New McCarthyism
is riddled with innuendoes drawing from a repertoire of 100 years of bigotry
against the Rooskies to scare its readers.
--D
James W.
Carden. “The New York Times Presents:
Russia for Dummies.” ACURA (Apr
16, 2025).
Johnathan Mahler is undeniably a successful
writer. But with his latest offering for the New York Times Magazine,
‘How the G.O.P. Fell in Love With Putin’s Russia,’ he shows himself to be
woefully out of his depth. Worse, his thesis, that Trump has embarked on a
deeply un-American love affair with alien, authoritarian, far-Right Russia, […]
Read in browser »
II.
Seeing
the World as Others See it
“London Review of Books: Sheila Fitzpatrick in the Soviet Archives.“ ACURA (Jun 05, 2025). [Interview of Fitzpatrick by Daniel Soar. May 14, 2025.]
When Sheila Fitzpatrick first went to Moscow in the 1960s as a young academic,
the prevailing
understanding of the Soviet Union in the West was governed by the ‘totalitarian
hypothesis’, of a system ruled entirely from the top down. Her examination
of the ministry papers of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Commissar of
Enlightenment after the Revolution, challenged
this view, beginning a long career in which she has frequently
questioned the conventional understanding of Soviet history and changed the
field with works such as Everyday
Stalinism. In this episode, Sheila talks to Daniel
about her work in the Soviet archives, about some of the obstacles
researchers face, and her latest books, Lost
Souls and The
Death of Stalin. […] Read in browser »
WHO
DEFEATED THE NAZIS IN WWII?
WWII,
NORMANDY LANDING, VICTORY OVER THE NAZIS, and the SOVIET UNION
[The US and allies would have likely lost WWII in Europe had
it not been for the massive sacrifice of human and material resources by the
USSR. Had the Western powers included the USSR on VE Day, the Cold War might never
have occurred. –Dick]
Obliterating the truth about Nazi defeat
Prabhat Patnaik. Mronline.org (5-18-25).
NAZI
Germany was basically defeated by the Soviet Union. The sacrifice made by the
Soviet people in defence of their country in that war was utterly unimaginable.
WWII
SOVIET UNION V. NAZI GERMANY
“The
Margin of Victory” by Scott Ritter. May 9, 2025.
. . .We prevailed on D-Day. But the margin of victory was slim.
One of the factors that played a major role in
successfully managing this margin of victory was the “other war,” the one most
Americans know very little about—the war on the Eastern Front between the
Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Those
familiar with the history of the Normandy operation may be familiar with “Operation
Bagration,” the Soviet offensive against Nazi Germany’s Army Group Center
which unfolded from June 22 through August 19, 1944. This offensive was
ostensibly timed to prevent the Germans from transferring troops from the east
front to Normandy. The Soviets employed a combined force of approximately
1,670,300 combat and support personnel against a German force of some 849,000
soldiers.
Soviet troops advance during Operation
Bagration. . . .
During Operation
Bagration, which ended on August 30, 1944, the Soviets suffered some 670,000
combat casualties, while inflicting losses of 539,480 killed, missing or
captured Germans. In short, in just five weeks, the Soviets had destroyed 22
German divisions. To stabilize the front, Germany had to transfer 46 divisions
to the eastern front, including several divisions that were supposed to be
arrayed against the US and British forces in France.
But the real story of the critical role played
by the Soviets in helping guarantee a US-British victory over the Germans at
Normandy was the Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive which took place between
December 1943 and May 1944. Here, the Soviets lost some 270,000 killed, and
another 840,000 wounded—greater losses than the entire US military suffered
fighting against both the Germans and Japanese—while inflicting 380,000 casualties
on the Germans.
Destroyed German
tanks, Operation Bagration
But this isn’t the
full story.
Because of the Dnieper-Carpathian offensive, on the eve of the Normandy
invasion Germany withdrew from France some 46,000 troops and nearly 400 tanks
and assault guns organized into some of the most elite combat formations in the
Germany military, to reinforce German positions arrayed against the Soviets. These were troops that otherwise would have
been deployed to counter the D-Day landings at Normandy, making the possibility
of Eisenhower having to read his draft defeat statement more possible. The margin of victory was slim.
But the Soviet contribution to allied victory
in Normandy doesn’t stop here. . . .
MORE[!]
Vijay Prashad. “The
Historical Revision of Buchenwald.” Consortium
News (4-12-25).
On April 11, 1945 the U.S. took over the
Buchenwald concentration camp. But it was communist prisoners who organised and
liberated the Nazi camp. Today, such heroic victories of anti-fascist
resistance are under attack. Read here...
PART III ORGANIZING FOR PEACE
US PEACEMAKERS
AND PEACEMAKING WITH RUSSIA
TEXTS
|
US
PEACEMAKERS AND PEACEMAKING WITH RUSSIA: Changing Our Manner of Thinking
Ritter in Votkinsk,1988.
Scott Ritter. “Russophobia is a disease of the mind. Citizens Diplomacy is the CCure. cure.” August 22, 2025.
Diplomacy Is the Cure.” [See Annie Jacobson on Operation Paperclip at beginning.]
. . .The issue of Russophobia in America today should be a concern for us all. Russophobia
is designed to exploit the ignorance of the American people by promulgating falsehoods
about the reality of Russia that are designed to generate fear, fear
which is then exploited by those whom we elect to support policies which
postulate Russia as the eternal bogeyman. This mage is then used to justify
defense spending and national security postures that have put the United States
on a highway to hell that can only end with a nuclear Armageddon.
In short, Russophobia represents an existential threat to the security of the
United States and the entire world. It is one of the most dangerous threats
facing the American people today, and yet it is fostered by mainstream media,
academia and the permanent bureaucracy of government, all of which are deeply
infected with the intellectual poison produced by Russophobia.
The antidote to this poison is knowledge and
information that can only be garnered through direct contact between the
American and Russian people.
This is where citizen diplomacy comes in.
I have been actively engaged in citizen
diplomacy with Russia since April 2023, when I first travelled to Russia to
promote the cause of peace through nuclear disarmament. At that time, I engaged
in the practice of repairing trust between the American and Russian people “one
handshake at a time.”
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|
The Challenge Coin I brought with me to Russia
in May 2023
I shook many hands during this trip.
I returned to Russia in December 2023 to bring
in the New Year, promoting the concept of “Waging Peace” by learning more about
the Russian reality, and bringing that reality back with me to the United
States, where I sought to share it with anyone and everyone willing to listen
and learn.
The poison of Russophobia, however, runs deep
in the blood of the United States, and my efforts at conducting citizens
diplomacy were deemed a threat by the administration of President Joe Biden,
which sought to criminalize my efforts, dispatching the FBI to my home under
the false pretext that I was acting as an agent of the Russian government. The
Biden State Department revoked my passport, deliberately preventing me from
travelling to Russia in the summer of 2024, where I planned on engaging in
citizens diplomacy on a scope and scale greater than previously practiced.
I refused to be intimidated by this obvious
lawfare being waged against me and the cause of peace I promoted. While I
fought to get my passport returned, I continued to engage with the Russian
people, attending several functions at the Russian Embassy (including a piano
recital, and both Russia Day and Victory Day celebrations).
. . I also worked with a Russian counterpart, Pavel
Balobanov, to resurrect the landmark 1985 “Spacebridge” organized by
the late American journalist, Phil Donahue, and his Soviet counterpart, Vladimir
Pozner. One June 18, 2025, Pavel and I conducted a three hour “Citizens
Summit” bringing together an American audience in Kingston, New York with a
Russian audience in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The reaction of all involved was
overwhelmingly positive.
On July 15, 2025 (my birthday) my passport was
finally restored to me. Shortly thereafter, the FBI began returning property
they had seized in the raid on my home. Elections matter, and the results of
the November 2024 Presidential election saw the Russophobia of the Biden
administration replaced by the policies of peace promoted by Donald Trump.
These policies were founded in the notion that America was best served by
learning to live in peace with Russia. Free speech was once again a concept
protected by the government, even when the concepts promoted—such as good
relations between Russia and the US—ran afoul of the Russophobic narratives
promoted by mainstream media, academia, and the permanent government
bureaucracy.
My week in Russia (August 9-18) was one of the
most productive examples of citizen diplomacy I have ever been engaged in—and
keep in mind I travelled to Iraq in September 2002, where I was the first and
only foreigner to address the Iraqi parliament in a valiant but ultimately
failed effort to prevent a war by getting the Iraqis to allow UN weapons
inspectors to return to work. The timing of this visit was serendipitous—I
landed as the Alaska Summit between President Trump and President Putin was
announced, and as such I was perfectly located to take the pulse of Russian
public reaction, both to the potential of the summit, and its results.
One of the messages I received repeatedly from
the scores of interviews I conducted with Russians from every walk of life was
how important it was to the Russian people that President Trump understood
that, when it came to the issue of peace between Russia and the US, the Russian
people were fully supportive of his efforts. I promised that I would do my best
to relay this message to President Trump, and today I am making good on this
promise. . . .
[LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP from Scott Ritter for the Poughkeepsie Peace
Initiative: Kucinich, McGovern, Postol, Ritter]]
President Trump
As part of my Project 38 initiative, I have
brought together a team of like-minded people, all experts in their respective
fields, for the purpose of helping craft a vision for arms control with Russia,
built on the premise that the last remaining treaty between the US and Russia
which limits the size of our respective nuclear arsenals—the New START
treaty—should be extended (it expires on February 4, 2026), and that the
need for limits on intermediate range nuclear forces which were lifted
with the demise of the INF treaty (President Trump withdrew from this treaty in
August 2019) are essential for European and global security and stability.
Together with this team—former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, former CIA
analyst Ray McGovern, and MIT Professor Ted Postol—I have written a letter
praising President Trump for his courage in agreeing to meet with President
Putin, appraising the President of the results of my recent trip to Russia, and
informing the President that this team—which we call the Poughkeepsie Peace
Initiative—stands ready to support his peace efforts with Russia by
engaging in citizens diplomacy for the betterment of relations between the US
and Russia.
This is Citizens Diplomacy in action. If you support the cause of waging peace
and the work of citizens diplomacy, please consider donating to the cause. Our
work is solely funded by your contributions. Thank you!
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“We face a choice
between a negotiated settlement in Ukraine and the possibility of a
catastrophic war.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel, James Carden for The Nation
[Photo omitted]A Ukrainian soldier waits for orders next to the artillery
at his fighting position as the Russia-Ukraine war continues in the direction
of Liman, Ukraine, on May 25, 2024.(Diego Herrera Carcedo / Getty)This
article appears in the June 2024 issue,
with the headline “A Wider War in Eastern Europe?”
Violence continues to haunt Eastern Europe. the
attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on May 15
inevitably conjures up the memory of the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand in Sarajevo 110 years earlier, which led to the First World War. It
is, tragically, not an exaggeration to say that Europe (and crucially, this
time, the United States) again faces a fateful choice: between a negotiated
settlement in Ukraine and the possibility of a third, and perhaps final, world
war.
If recent statements by US and European
officials are to be believed, there is a growing consensus in favor of war. . .
.
Meanwhile, key officials—including French
President Emmanuel Macron, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, and German
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock—are calling for the delivery of
even-longer-range weapons. The New York Times also
notes: “Britain, Germany, and France are working to base defense contractors in
Ukraine to help build and repair weapons systems closer to the combat zone.”
Russia has responded to these developments with a series of threats.
Russia and the West have started down the
perilous path of tit-for-tat belligerence. The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement claiming that Russian forces would “practice the issues of
preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons…in response to provocative
statements and threats by certain Western officials against the Russian
Federation.”
The question remains: Are these the signs of an
approaching and tragic “inflection point”—and if so, can it still be avoided? [By December 2025 Trump was negotiating with both
sides for a peace treaty. –D]
THE RUSSKIES ARE COMING AGAIN
PATRICK LAWRENCE: Could
the Russians Seize Congress? Consortium
News (4-16-24).
The Russian have been
coming, off and on, for seven-plus decades. While these conjured imaginings may
be laughable, the consequences of a culture of Cold War fear are far from
funny. Read here...
ORGANIZING
FOR PEACE CONTINUED.
“October Revolution: The first general
recognition of women’s equality in History.” Editor. (3-12-24). The land of the October revolution: a country
of women walking on the road to emancipation
For War or Peace in nation’s
magazines?
“The Color of Propaganda, From the
Cold War to Russia Today”
April 14, 2025
Russian-Eurasian Student Organization
The Russian-Eurasian
Student Organization is hosting a lecture by Professor Katherine Hill at 5:30 p.m., Monday, April 14, at Gearhart
102, titled The Color of Propaganda, From the Cold War to Russia Today.
The Russian-Eurasian Student Organization is
hosting a lecture by Professor Katherine Hill (Reischl; former prof. of Russian
at Princeton and Stanford; Deloitte) at 5:30 p.m., Monday, April 14, at
Gearhart 102. Titled The Color of Propaganda, From the Cold War to Russia
Today, the lecture explores the power words in shaping opinion and inciting
action. Combine those strong words with stirring images, and we have the
embodied power of propaganda. The lecture will dive into a past history of
"soft propaganda" in the latter half of the 20th century to better
understand how today's propaganda war between Russia, Ukraine and the US
grabs and holds hearts and minds. With a focus on periodicals,
including Amerika and Soviet Life magazines,
it will connect the printed page of yesteryear to the rapidly shifting
landscape of social media today.
In 2018, Hill published the book Photographic
Memory: Cameras in the Hands of Russian Authors, published by Cornell
University Press. She is also a creator of the Digital Humanities project on
Playing Soviet on Soviet children's books.
ACURA Panel Discussion:
“40 Years of Gorbachev with Jack Matlock, Geoffrey Roberts and Katrina vanden
Heuvel. “ ACURA (Apr 14, 2025).
Last
month marked 40 years since Mikhail Gorbachev was selected as the eighth
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following the
death of Konstantin Chernenko. To mark the anniversary of
Gorbachev’s coming to power, ACURA brought together Amb. Jack
Matlock, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and Geoffrey Roberts for a panel moderated by
David Speedie.
Prabhat Patnaik. “Europe’s apparently puzzling bellicosity.” Peoples Democracy, April 6, 2025. Mronline.org (4-6-25).
Capitalism, Imperialism, Political EconomyEuropeNewswire
ONE of the puzzling
phenomena in world capitalism today is the bellicosity displayed by Europe
vis-Ã -vis Russia. The claim that Russia has imperialist designs towards Europe,
which the European ruling circles keep repeating, is clearly absurd. It is NATO
that moved eastwards, in violation of a promise made by the U.S. administration
to Gorbachov, and provoked Russia; and it is NATO members, notably U.S. and UK,
that torpedoed the Minsk agreement reached between Russia and Ukraine which
would have prevented the war. NATO’s objective clearly was to subjugate Russia
and control its rich natural resources, by recreating the relationship that
Western imperialism had developed for a while with that country when Boris
Yeltsin had been its president. The claim that it is Russia that wants to
over-run Europe, like the earlier Cold War claim that it was the Soviet Union
that wanted to subjugate Europe, is so absurd that it is almost childish.
The question however
is this: after the U.S. has decided to bring the Ukraine war to an end and
thereby implicitly denied this claim of Russian aggressiveness, why does Europe
still persist in propagating this myth? . . .
Ukraine
Proxy War by US v. Russia
“Blockbuster Article Prepares Americans For
Defeat In Ukraine”
By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com. Popular Resistance.org (4-5-25). A March 29 article on America’s involvement
in the war in Ukraine in The New York Times by Adam Entous
“reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly
than previously understood.” “Understood” is a euphemism. It means the American
and global public were lied to. The article reveals that the war in Ukraine
truly was, as former British prime minister Boris Johnson and U.S. secretary of
state Marco Rubio have already said, a proxy war against Russia. U.S. military and intelligence were
involved in every stage of the war, including supplying the weapons, the
training, the planning... -more-
MCCARTHYITE
SEN. TOM COTTON
Col.
(ret.) Ann Wright. “Senate Intelligence Committee hearing turns
ugly with McCarthy-style lies about CODEPINK: Women for Peace.” CovertAction
Magazine on March 26, 2025. Editor.
Mronline.org (3-30-25).
On March 25, at the U.S.
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of
intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Senator Tom Cotton, accused on
national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for
Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.
Empire, Imperialism, Inequality, MovementsAmericas, United StatesNewswireCODEPINK, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee
On March 25, at the
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five
heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Senator Tom Cotton,
accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK:
Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.
During the hearing
CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following
the presentation of
the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about
global threats to U.S. national security and yelled “Stop Funding Israel.”
This was because
neither Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and Vice Chair Mark Warner had
mentioned Israel in their opening statement nor had Gabbard mentioned
the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.
Photo:Women of Code
Pink protest yet another injustice and war promoted on Capitol Hill.
[Source: thehill.com]
As Capitol police were
taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy
hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic
that was funded by the Communist party of China.” Cotton then said if anyone had something to
say to do so.
Refusing to buckle or
be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and
yelled, “I’m a retired Army Colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK
and it is not funded by Communist China.” I too was hauled out of the hearing
room by Capitol police and arrested.
After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his
McCarty lie, . . . MORE
“European Court rules Ukraine guilty in Odessa massacre.” Editor.
mronline.org (3-23-25).
This ruling has received
limited coverage in Western media outlets, as it confirms the Ukrainian
regime’s support of the neo-Nazis through its inaction and refusal to take any
measures against the killers. [I placed
this in the peacemaking section because it demonstrates the importance of the search
for truth of historical facts in choosing or not to go to war.
Originally published: Struggle-La Lucha on March 20, 2025 by
Gary Wilson (more by Struggle-La Lucha) | (Posted Mar 22,
2025)
Empire, Fascism, Imperialism, State RepressionAmericas, Europe, Ukraine, United StatesNewswireAnti-Maidan, Elon Musk, European Court of Human Rights, Maidan coup, Odessa, President Donald Trump
On March 13, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a scathing ruling, holding
Ukraine responsible for the massacre of scores of anti-Maidan activists in
Odessa on May 2, 2014. This ruling has received limited coverage in
Western media outlets, as it confirms the Ukrainian regime’s support of the neo-Nazis
through its inaction and refusal to take any measures against the killers.
On that day, nearly 50
anti-fascists were massacred. Activists were attacked by a racist neo-Nazi mob
and driven into the House of Trade Unions, which was then set afire. Some
anti-fascists were burned alive; others were shot or beaten to death as they tried
to escape the blaze. The youngest victim was just 17.
(For more on the
Odessa massacre, see the interview with massacre survivor
Alexey Albu conducted by
Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Melinda Butterfield in Simferopol, Crimea, in
September 2014.)
The Court ruled that
there had been “violations of the right to life/investigation on account of the
authorities’ failure to… prevent the violence in Odessa and to ensure timely
rescue measures for people trapped in the fire.”
The Court decision
makes clear that firefighters were instructed not to respond to emergency calls
from people trapped in the city’s House of Trade Unions when it was set ablaze.
The Maidan coup regime actively wanted these people to die.
The 2014 Maidan coup
In February 2014, a
U.S.-backed coup overthrew the elected government of Ukraine and installed a
far-right regime representing Western imperialist interests, local oligarchs
and neo-Nazis. It’s known as the Maidan coup, which refers to the central square in Kiev,
Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where pro-NATO rallies were staged.
Many Ukrainians
resisted the Maidan coup, particularly in the working class. In the Maidan
civil war, fascist gangs emerged as a force for the coup. Resistance to the
coup was strongest in the eastern section of the country. In Odessa, a neo-Nazi
pro-Maidan gang targeted the Odessa House of Trade Unions, near the center of
the resistance. The building was firebombed and at least 46 anti-fascists and
labor activists were burned alive.
The resistance to the
Maidan coup has continued from 2014 to today. The independent Donetsk People’s
Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic were created when the people there voted
overwhelmingly (89% and 96%) to secede from the Maidan regime. They have been
subjected to continuous attack since then, particularly by the Ukrainian
National Guard’s Azov regiment, a neo-Nazi stormtrooper-like operation. More
than 14,000 were killed in Ukraine’s war on Donetsk and Lugansk before Russia’s
special military operation to stop the neo-Nazi war on these independent
republics.
The U.S. had
orchestrated the 2014 Maidan coup, seeking to seize control of Ukraine’s
resources and to dominate the region, particularly targeting Russia. After
years of bloodshed, their plan failed.
Rare Earth minerals
Now, Trump wants to
stop the massive military campaign against Russia (estimated cost so far is
$183 billion since 2022) to focus on a bigger target: China. Don’t mistake
Trump’s tactics as a pursuit of peace. Trump is demanding a massive price for
ending the proxy war against Russia: Ukraine’s mineral wealth–said to be worth
$13 trillion total. . . . MORE
Andrei Martyanov. AMERICA’S
FINAL WAR. Clarity P, 2025.
From the publisher:
Washington’s
eight years of preparing Ukraine and its armed forces for war with Russia was a
mistake of historic proportions, due to its misperception of American military
power based on its 1991 Gulf War victory against a minor military player.
Washington believed its own propaganda about crippling sanctions on Russia,
about the viability of its Ukrainian proxy army, and the economic and military
weakness of Russia, spelling doom for the American empire and its “rules-based
order”.
By
2023 the Kiev regime could no longer exist without the West’s support, both
financial and in war materiel. By 2024 Russia will have not just exhausted
Ukraine, but also demilitarized NATO as a whole, exposing the industrial and
military impotence of the US and its European vassals.
The
United States military as a whole, and the USAF in particular, have no
resources or means to close the ever widening gap in capability between
American and Russian Air Defenses, insofar as such systems as the S-500 are
already being produced serially in Russia with their immense range of more than
500 kilometers against aerial targets, not to mention their full integration
with Russia’s Air Force and Air Defense. The air space of Russia is becoming
increasingly prohibitive to penetration by any combination of USAF and NATO
forces.
The
US has fallen behind, and it won’t be able to catch up.
“Andrei
Martyanov’s latest work reinforces his status as one of the most important
analysts of the rot that pervades the U.S. military and its failure to craft a
workable national security strategy. He effectively uses the War in Ukraine to
illustrate the arguments he presented in his first book, Losing
Miiltary Supremacy. Any political or military leader keen on making
America’s military great again should read this.”
—LARRY JOHNSON, former CIA analyst and State
Department counter-terrorism advisor
“… This
is a Khinzal narrative that instantly blows up a painstakingly built
Western-controlled edifice of power, corruption and lies. Of course, a must
read.” —PEPE ESCOBAR,
journalist, AsiaTimes
“Andrei Martyanov’s book is a wake-up call.
Set against the backdrop of the Ukraine, he provides an uncompromising and
masterful analysis of the Western way of understanding war. ”
—COL JACQUES F. BAUD (Rtd), Former Swiss
Strategic Intelligence Officer
BIGOTRY v. SOVIET UNION/ RUSSIA CHRONOLOGY
--Dick
1917: Bolshevik October Revolution and Western
Invasion by US, UK, and France to defend the Tzarist regime.
1941:
Nazi Siege of Leningrad, the third great invasion of Russia from the West, is
stopped.
1945:
U.S. & Russian Soldiers Shake Hands & Pledge Peace, 21 million Russians
killed in WWII.
Post-WWII, Cold War Anti-Communist
Cold War 1945 US Nuclear weapons arsenal rapidly
expanded.
1945-1952:
Nazi Anti-Communist Scientists Brought to US
Key NUCLEAR
WEAPONS dates…..
Get
dates for JWF and BB
1962-3: Kennedy
Efforts toward Peace & Arms Control
1963:
Kennedy and Kruschev Threaten to Make Peace, Kennedy Assassinated (see James
Douglass, J.F.K. and the Unspeakable)
1984: Dr. Helen Caldicott. Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear
War reports US “clinical pathology toward Soviets.”
1988:
U.S. Exceptionalism and Cold War intensifies
1991 USSR collapses, Russia
becomes the new enemy
2001 NYC Towers
Bombed, War of Terror
2003
to 2024: Victoria Nuland and other Anti-Russia Hawks
Defeat
in Afghanistan, Pivot to Far East and China
2015 “Revising
U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China” for the Council on
Foreign Relations by Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis to contain China
2015 The Committee for East-West Accord founded by the late
Professor Stephen F. Cohen
2020 Daniele Ganser. USA the Ruthless Empire
2021 ACURA
founded, successor organization to CEWA
2023:
Biden Appointment of Anti-Russia Hawk Nuland
Red Scare 2.0 Neo-McCarthyism
Russiagate’s Durham Report Whitewash
Drone Attack on the Kremlin
Scott Ritter Visits Russia for Peace &
to Understand Russia.
2024:
Mistruths About Russian Imperialism Feed War Propaganda.
Russiagate used to Smear and Discredit
Pro-Gaza Activists.
2025 Trump reverses course,
declares acceptance of Putin’s demands for peace: the four oblasts and
CRITICAL THINKING
ARPBS 9-22-23 offered an excellent documentary of
the life of Floyd Abrams,
“American Masters, ‘Floyd Abrams: Speaking Freely.’” He was, “insatiably
curious,” his daughter remarked, “about the other side” of controversies. Thus he
spent his lifetime seeking to understand the legal justice system in order to serve the often desperate needs of individual human
beings to survive that system with physical and mental health intact.
I was struck by the parallels between the
struggles of civil liberties and rights defenders to report the US history
accurately via the First Amendment and the struggles of defenders of peace and
non-violence to report the destruction of Gaza and the opponents of the Ukraine
War. --D
Jeremy Kuzmarov. “Intelligence Services Have
Penetrated and Corrupted Human Rights NGOs, Says Former Senior Lawyer with the
Office of the UN High Commissioner.” CovertAction
Magazine (6-29-24).
On April 7, 2022, the UN General Assembly voted to exclude
Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. The resolution received the
required two-thirds majority of those voting, minus abstentions, in the
193-member Assembly, with 93 nations voting in favor and 24 against. The vote
was highly politicized and reflected the success of the Western information war
against Russia... READ MORE →
MEDEA BENJAMIN and DAVID SWANSON. NATO: What You Need To Know. Preface by Jeffrey Sachs. OR Books, 2024. NATO: What You Need To Know
by MEDEA BENJAMIN and DAVID SWANSON.
Intelligence services have penetrated and corrupted human rights
NGOs, says former senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner. Jeremy Kuzmarov.
Mronline.org (6-14-24). On April 7, 2022, the UN
General Assembly voted to exclude Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
Jacques Baud. Governing by Fake News: 30 Years of Fake
News in the West. Max Milo, 2022.
Baud opposes hatred of Russia passim and in
three concentrated sections, nos. 8, 9, and 10.
A sample of his commentary is found in pp. 11-31.
13-14.
“What are the facts that allow one to say that. . .Vladimir Putin is ‘obsessed
with interference in our democracies’ or that ‘Russia invaded
Ukraine’? Literally none…but it is
enough to establish a foreign policy, to strike and kill innocent people.”
19.
To justify US wars, “it has been necessary to present the enemy as worse
than us [in the West].” For example, in
contrast to the reporting of US and Western leaders, like President Biden,
“when referring to Russia, ‘power’ becomes synonymous with ‘government’” and
“the Russian army becomes ‘Putin’s forces.’”
“It is thus accepted as an indisputable fact that Vladimir Putin,
invariably described as the ‘master of the Kremlin,’ is a ‘dictator’ or a
‘muscular autocrat’ in such way that it is no longer necessry to demonstrate
this.”
24.
“Fueled by the prevailing ‘Russophobia,’ the myth that the Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan is at the origin of jihadism is still alive and
well. . . .But this is not true.”
ETC.
Section 8, composed of eight parts, is
entitled “Russia.” Section 9 is entitled
“The Ukrainian Crisis.” Section 10 is
“Cyberwarfare and Interferrence Attempts.”
All are numbered in Baud’s hyper-logical, diagrammatic style.
|
||||
|
Nicolai Petro. “The
Folly of a New Containment. “ ACURA (May
15, 2024). The 2020s have seen the return and new
appeal of “containment” thinking in U.S. grand strategy. Facing the erosion
of unipolarity, the rise of China as a global power, and the newfound
assertiveness of other regional and major powers such as Russia and Iran,
some American strategists have resurrected and retooled this familiar Cold
War […] |
Pavel Devyatkin:
Can Russian-US Scientific Cooperation Be Restored?. ACURA Apr
19, 2024.
US and Russia have a long history of polar
science cooperation. Read in browser »
M. K. Bhadrakumar. “AN ANNIVERSARY THE WEST
WOULD RATHER FORGET.” 2024.
AN ANNIVERSARY THE WEST WOULD RATHER FORGET
By M. K. Bhadrakumar, Consortium News.
https://popularresistance.org/an-anniversary-the-west-would-rather-forget/
[The first half of the essay recounts the Nazi intention to
erase Leningrad and other Russian centers of government and culture in order to
break Russia into exploitable parts. The
2nd half broadens into a discussion of fascism with application to
present-day Israel. –Dick]
“The Contemporary Relevance Of The Nazi Effort
To Exterminate Russians By Enforced Starvation During The Siege Of Leningrad.”
An epochal anniversary from the annals of modern
history on Saturday remains a living memory for the Russian people. The Siege
of Leningrad, arguably the most gruesome episode of the Second World War, which
lasted for 900 days, was finally broken by the Soviet Red Army on Jan. 27,
1944, 80 years ago.
The siege endured by more than 3 million people,
of whom nearly one half died, most of them in the first six months when the
temperature fell to 30° below zero.
It was an apocalyptic event. Civilians died from
starvation, disease and cold. Yet it was a heroic victory. Leningraders never
tried to surrender even though food rations were reduced to a few slices of
bread mixed with sawdust, and the inhabitants ate glue, rats — and even each
other — while the city went without water, electricity, fuel or transportation
and was being shelled daily.
It was on June 22, 1941, that the German armies
crossed the Russian frontiers. Within six weeks, the Army Group North of the
Wehrmacht, armed forces of the Third Reich, was within 50 kilometers of
Leningrad in a fantastic blitzkrieg and had advanced 650 kms deep into
Soviet territory.
A month later, the Germans had all but completed
the city’s encirclement, only a perilous route across Lake Ladoga to the east
connected Leningrad with the rest of Russia. But the Germans got no farther.
And 900 days later their retreat began.
The epic siege of Leningrad was the longest
endured by any city since Biblical times, and, equally, citizens became heroes
— artists, musicians, writers, soldiers and sailors who stubbornly resisted the
iron from entering their souls.
Petrified by the prospect of surrender to the
Soviet Union, the Nazis preferred to lay down arms before the western allied
forces, but Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied
Expeditionary Force in Europe, ordered that the honour of victory should go to
the Red Army.
Herein lies one of the greatest paradoxes of war
and peace in modern times. Today, the anniversary of the siege of Leningrad has
become, most certainly, an occasion that the U.S. and many of its
European allies would rather not remember. Yet, its contemporary relevance is
not to be glossed over. . . . [The importance
of Leningrad’s heroic martyrdom to this anthology’s section on peacemaking is its
potential for arousing sympathy which might reduce fear and hatred for the Soviet/Russian and lead
to world peace. –D]
Bhadrakumar continued M. K. Bhadrakumar. “AN ANNIVERSARY THE WEST WOULD RATHER
FORGET.” 2024. AN ANNIVERSARY THE
WEST WOULD RATHER FORGET By M. K. Bhadrakumar, Consortium News. https://popularresistance.org/an-anniversary-the-west-would-rather-forget/
The author of The Fourth Reich: The Specter
of Nazism from World War II to the Present, historian and professor of
history and Judaic studies Gavriel Rosenfeld has written that “The only way to
mute the siren call of the Fourth Reich is to know its full history. Although
it is increasingly difficult in our present-day world of fake ‘facts’ and
deliberate disinformation to forge a consensus about historical truth, we have
no alternative but to pursue it.”
The justification of political violence is
classically fascist. Last week, we saw a breathtaking spectacle at the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague reminding us that we are now
in fascism’s legal phase.
If the Nazis used Judeo-Bolshevism as their
constructed enemy, Israel is doing the same thing by raising the
bogeyman of Hamas. Fascism feeds off a narrative of supposed national
humiliation by internal enemies.
Meanwhile, what gets forgotten is that there has
been a growing fascist social and political movement in Israel for
decades. Like other fascist movements, it is riddled with internal
contradictions, but this movement now has a classically authoritarian leader in
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has shaped and exacerbated it, and
is determined that in his time in politics it will be normalised.
The probability is high that in a matter of a
few days, the ICJ will give some sort of interim order/injunction to Israel to
end the violence against the hapless Palestinians in Gaza. But the fascist
movement Netanyahu now leads preceded him, and will outlive him.
These are forces that feed off ideologies with
deep roots in Jewish history. They may be defending a fictional glorious and
virtuous national past, but it would be a grave error to think they cannot
ultimately win.
The Russians are learning this home truth the
hard way in Ukraine where “denazification” is turning out to be the weakest
link in their special military operation, given its geopolitical moorings
traceable to Germany’s dalliance with the Ukrainian Neo-Nazi groups in Kiev in
the run-up to the 2014 coup, which the U.S. inherited gleefully and wouldn’t
let go.
This article originally appeared on Indian Punchline.
END #8
#7 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/09/omni-sovietrussophobia-anthology-7.html
