(Publisher: Times Books; 1st edition (October 1, 2013); http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret/dp/0805094970)

In this presentation, journalist Stephen Kinzer talks about his book, The Brothers, about Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles.  Allen was the head of the CIA from its inception, pursuant to the National Security Act of 1947*, under president Truman, through Eisenhower’s administration and into Kennedy’s.  John Foster was Secretary of State for a good portion of his brother’s reign at the CIA (Dulles Airport is named after him).  Kennedy fired Allen Dulles in 1962 for the Bay of Pigs debacle in which the CIA tried to mousetrap the president into invading Cuba.  In this presentation, Kinzer discusses the three factors that influenced the Dulles brothers’ ideology and how it has carried over in our national security policy and philosophy.  (57 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6aV-fUnb1M&feature=share

*The creation of our current national security apparatus, including the CIA, can be traced back to the National Security Act (NSA) signed by President Harry Truman in 1947 designed to “contain” the Soviet Union, which Truman and his staunchly anti-Communist advisors had decided was going to be the next enemy after WWII.   Truman’s Secretary of State George Marshall had warned him at the time of the potential unaccountability and abuse of the agencies being created by this legislation, stating that it especially granted the CIA powers that were “almost unlimited.”  The particularly egregious sentence cited by most critics of the NSA of 1947 is one that allows a president to direct the CIA to “perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security….”

As I’ve shown with other posts, Russia is doing a lot better than what a lot of western corporate media, and even some of our most senior politicians, claim.   As the below excerpt of an article by demographics expert Mark Adomanis shows, Russia still has a ways to go on some mortality and quality of life issues, but the progress that has been made in the Putin era in certain areas is remarkable and deserves to be acknowledged:

As I hope the graphs demonstrate, a decade or two ago Russians were living in a totally different universe. The rates of death from various kinds of social ills were so much higher as to be essentially incomparable. However, quietly and with little fanfare Russia has seen significant improvements, which have not abated since the start of the economic slowdown at the end of 2014. Indeed, in early 2016 the evidence suggests that improvements to Russian public health have actually accelerated, with overall mortality plunging by around 5%.

 

Yes, there is still a lot of work to be done. The murder rate, in particular, is still a lot higher than it is in Europe. But the differences are increasingly differences of degree, not of kind. The suicide rate, for example, is currently about 76% higher in Russia than in the EU. That sounds absolutely terrible until you consider that, back in 2001, the Russian suicide rate was 340% of the EU’s.

Full article with graphs and charts here:  http://www.intellinews.com/comment-russia-is-becoming-more-european-despite-the-politics-and-rhetoric-99883/

Reports of Russia’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

That’s the conclusion of Simon Saradzhyan,  a researcher with the Belfer Center at Harvard University, who analyzed Russia, from 1999 to the present, using several different models of performance.   These models take into consideration GDP, energy consumption, steel production, urban population density, and military strength.

[It should be noted that these models didn’t take into consideration other significant markers in which Russia rates well, such as levels of education and infrastructure – Natylie]

According to Saradzhyan:

Taken together, these measures suggest strongly that Russia has either risen or retained its position relative to its five competitors [U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Italy] and the world as a whole so far in the 21st century.

It is well known that the Russian economy stopped growing in 2014 and started declining. The World Bank estimates that Russians GDP shrank by 3.7 per cent in 2015 and that it is poised to shrink by up 1.9 per cent in 2016, before starting to grow again next year. However, the losses of these three years will not erase the cumulative gain in Russia’s power as a nation since 1999.

Looking forward, Russia faces a number of long-term challenges, including an obsolete and inefficient economic model, poor quality of governance, pervasive corruption, demographic fragility, instability in neighbouring countries and separatist threats to Russia itself.

We don’t know yet whether and when these challenges may acquire such an acute character that they may reverse the resurgence of Putin’s Russia described above. One thing is certain, however: Russia’s size, resources and military might all ensure that it remains a global player that will continue to affect the western world and the global order as a whole in profound ways for years to come, and should be treated accordingly.

Note:  the original article, which appears at the Financial Times, is behind a pay wall, but you can read the full article here:

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/no-russia-not-decline-least-not-any-more-and-not-yet/ri14211

The British PR firm Portland Communications has determined that Russia has increased its soft power and has now made it into their top 30 ranking of countries with respect to soft power, noting specifically:

The highest place that Russia took in an individual category was that of “engagement” (8^th out of 30 countries), which primarily implies diplomacy and influence in the international arena. The study’s authors point out that, along with the U.S., Russia has played a key role in efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement in Syria.

 

….Listing the other strengths of Russia, the study’s authors noted the wide coverage of its state-owned media among international audiences and the preservation of some of its economic power in spite of the country’s financial crisis over the last few years.

 

Portland Communications placed a specific emphasis on Russia’s rich culture.

 

“Russia’s global cultural appeal draws in more than 29 million tourists annually,” it said. “Whether it’s history, art or literature, Russian culture is widely appreciated and studied.”

http://rbth.com/international/2016/06/15/russia-ranks-among-top-30-countries-worldwide-in-terms-of-soft-power_603091

 

Meanwhile, a poll conducted by Pew has revealed that, despite hysterical claims by some western politicians and corporate media, most Europeans do not consider Russia to be a major threat, citing instead ISIS, climate change, the influx of refugees and economic instability as far greater concerns, as reported by EU Observer:

Everyone knows that westerners have a short attention span these days.  So, just in case you, dear western reader or viewer, may have forgotten since yesterday, here’s another daily reminder:  Russia is a backwards hellhole.

Got it?

Nothing good ever happens there.  Not ever.

Everyone is miserable beyond belief.  Everyone.

Except maybe president Putin, as he frolics with his 365 different girlfriends and counts his billions of stolen rubles that he keeps stashed in the underground bunker of his opulent mansion at an undisclosed location.

This was my thought as I read Boyd Tonkins’ review of Svetlana Alexievich’s Second Hand Time, a book that reportedly follows 10 families in the post-Soviet era.

I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading the book, but the portrayal by Tonkins in his review (titled “The Hopeless Wasteland of Modern Russia”) pretty much fits the now hackneyed caricature of Russia presented in the corporate western media.

I couldn’t help but wonder how a book might portray the U.S. to a foreign audience if it followed this same formula:  only talk about the worst aspects of life in the U.S., magnify it greatly, add in some cheesy melodrama and soap suds, and repeat ad nauseum.

Perhaps it would look something like this:  half of the population has committed suicide and the other half would probably like to; Obama is personally responsible for every bad thing that happens in every corner of the U.S., from sea to shining sea; 90% of Americans are currently drowning their sorrows in methamphetamine or Oxycontin; every single person of color is killed by the police; everyone is homeless; all Americans, to show how noble and philosophical they are in their misery, go around quoting Theodore Dreiser and James Baldwin.

Some choice quotes from long-suffering Americans may include:

“You can’t buy democracy with loads of corporate cash…you needed free elections and we didn’t have them.”

“Yes, we stood in line for Black Friday at WalMart…but it was America and we loved it.”

“Hillary the Democrat is our shortest joke.”

“From the genocide of the Native Americans and slavery to recent massacres in Iraq and Libya, blood soaks the pages.”

Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone whitewash any country’s history or leadership.  However, most Americans – if the shoe were on the other foot – would probably get tired of seeing their country, despite its many faults, constantly talked about only in this light, with no nuance, no complexity and no context.  This would be especially true if the one engaging in this kind of depiction had such a hard time seeing the mote in their own eye and spent more time haranguing about someone else’s supposed faults than they did fixing their own myriad problems.

But I guess that’s the benefit of being exceptional and indispensable.

(To read the original review by Boyd Tonkins that inspired this satirical post, go to http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/the-hopeless-wasteland-of-modern-russia/)

(http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49285.htm)

Apologies for so many posts, but this is a period of more tensions between US/NATO and Russia since the Cuban Missile Crisis and we need to pay attention to this issue since Americans seem to be distracted with the presidential election and other items.

Listen to Stephen Cohen’s latest interview with John Batchelor for more on NATO’s military exercises in the Black Sea – the equivalent of China or Russia’s military conducting exercises in the Gulf of Mexico, how the Kremlin perceives these provocative actions, and politics toward Russia of Poland and the Baltic nations.

https://audioboom.com/boos/4667614-anakonda-16-on-the-russian-frontier-stephen-f-cohen-nyu-princeton-eastwestaccord-com