I've just finished reading "War With Russia?" by Stephen F. Cohen. It's a
collection of essays that he's written about the development of Russiagate,
mostly from 2013 to October 2018. Cohen is a Professor of Russian History
and Culture who taught at Princeton University and is, I gather, now
retired. He is married to Katrina Vanderhugen, the publisher and editor of
The Nation Magazine which is a 150 year old magazine. He is also a brave man
because he points out all of the lies and distortions in the demonizing of
Putin and the targeting of Russia as an enemy, and the dangerous course that
this kind of propaganda puts our country on. He's also very brave because
very few people, particularly those in the public eye, are willing to say
what he is saying. I never bought Russiagate, but I did believe everything,
or just about everything negative, that was said and written about Putin. So
this book has educated me. I have my own feelings about Russia, having
visited there and compared it to China, and having read so many negative
things about the country over the years. I was also professionally involved
with adoptions from Russia and there were things that I learned about the
bureaucracy and about the culture through that experience. So I'm in the
process of sorting all of this out. I did discover that Bookshare has a book
that I looked for when it first came out, but couldn't find. It is Oliver
Stone's Interviews With Putin which came out in 2017 with an introduction by
Robert Scheer, a man whom I dearly love. So I'm going to read that next. I
remember hearing Stone talk about those interviews, probably on Scheer's
radio program which is a podcast.
We can so easily be misled by the media because we have been conditioned to
believe the pictures they paint of foreign leaders. But having seen how
stories regarding Maduro and Chavez and precisely what happened and is
happening in Venezuela, and watching what actually happened in Ukraine, and
discovering that Israel is not a democratic country and the savior of the
Jews, I caution people to read and listen to everything, cautiously,
suspisciously.
Miriam
