It was a long and tiring journey from Nepal to Moscow. Unfortunately, I first had to fly from Kathmandu to Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates). From there I had to board another plane to Rome and then Moscow. But my flight in Abu Dhabi (which was supposed to leave at 2:15 am) was delayed by several hours and my arrival in Rome was just 30 minutes before my flight to Moscow.
I ran like hell (but first had to go through security, lucky for me there was no line) and I made it to my gate for the Moscow flight with 10 minutes to spare. I arrived on schedule in Moscow, but my checked luggage did not, fortunately I had carried my toothbrush in my computer bag.
My friend Leonid Ilderkin (who was one of our guides last spring during our Russia Study Tour) met me at the airport and hired a taxi cab to take me to my hotel in Moscow. Leonid, originally from Ukraine, had to leave his country in 2014 following the US orchestrated coup d'etat that installed a government brimming with Nazis. Leonid is now a leader in the group called Union of Ukrainian Refugees and Political Prisoners and will take me on the night train to the Donbass war zone region of Ukraine on October 23.
Our taxi driver spoke much of the way from the airport to Moscow with Leonid doing the translation. He had many questions for me such as, "Will Trump be reelected?". I was repeatedly asked the same question during my visits to India and Nepal. My answer was, "Who knows?"
The cabbie also spent alot of time describing to me how the CIA runs the US government and nothing happens in American foreign policy that has not been planned. I replied that while I believe that is basically true (since the CIA directed assassination of JFK no one becomes president that the 'deep state' does not control) I do think that there is a war for control currently going on within the 'deep state'. Sort of like a Mafia-style battle for turf dominance.
[Sidebar: While in India attending the Space Law conference, American University History Professor Peter Kuznick told me that Oliver Stone is now working on a new documentary updating his famous JFK assassination movie.]
In the US we have ruling regional oligarchs - Boston, New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle etc - that compete for power. They basically agree on US foreign and economic empire but battle with each other as to which of them will do a 'better job' running this collapsing imperial project. (And of course they are also competing with each other for the spoils of empire.) This is what I see happening today in Washington - competing oligarchs backing either Trump or the Democrats (who are still largely controlled by the Clinton political machine).
I also suggested that the US is losing ground internationally as it is now being challenged by the rising movement for a multi-polar world rather than the singular US domination of global affairs.
I asked Leonid and the cab driver what strategy Russia is using during this current US internal power struggle. Leonid responded that Russia sits back and waits. In the meantime Moscow tries its best to have various countries sit down and talk as we saw with the Iran nuclear deal which Putin played a key role in making happen before Trump yanked the US out of the deal.
I told them both about Hillary Clinton's recent accusation that Putin is now putting together a plan (see blog post below) to 'steal' the 2020 US election. They both laughed uproariously.
So while many Democrats hang on every word of a now discredited Clinton team, most of the rest of the world shakes their heads and can't quite understand why people believe such nonsense coming out of the mouths of people like Hillary. So it goes....
Bruce
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