I am pleased to offer followers of this website links to the lengthy interview which Canadian journalist Trish Wood taped with me on Friday, 25 February and released on the internet yesterday.
The program opened with an excellent introduction to the subject of the Russia-Russia-Russia problem in America, namely segments from the 2019 presentation of his then newly published book War With Russia? by professor Stephen Cohen. As you may be aware, I was a colleague of Steve’s in the fight for sane relations with Russia and I greatly valued his friendship up to his untimely death a little more than a year ago.
Trish Wood also put in the introductory segment of the podcast some wise words by the widely known commentator on US-Russian relations, Vladimir Pozner, taken from an address he made in 2018 at Yale University. He spoke about the danger presented by general indifference both in the USA and in Russia to the risks of nuclear war. This indifference is in stark contrast to the mortal fear of such a war among the broad populations of both countries back in the midst of the original Cold War from the 1960s till the 1980s
Regrettably the last point is all too relevant to where we sit today, on Sunday 27 February, when both Russia and the United States have put their strategic nuclear arsenals on full combat alert.
Yesterday, in answer to a journalist’s question why the United States is just imposing economic sanctions on Russia as its response to the ongoing Russian intervention in Ukraine, President Joe Biden said that “the alternative would be World War III.” This sounds sage, but anyone with some knowledge of history will wonder how the President and his advisers have forgotten or never learned the lessons of Pearl Harbor. The fact known to every fair minded historian of that subject is that the attack on Pearl Harbor was precipitated precisely by very harsh sanctions on Imperial Japan which jeopardized its access to hydrocarbons and so imperiled their economy. At a certain point economic warfare leads to kinetic warfare. In our relations with Russia today, it appears that we are crossing that tipping point.
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/gilbert-doctorow-inside-russia/id1513237951?i=1000552280022
https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/twcritical/id/22262462
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022
Gilbert Doctorow 
We are almost at the beginning of Lent, commemorating Jesus’ retreat to the mountain to contemplate the sins of the world. Although the world has changed, human nature has not.
We can now destroy life on earth, certainly ‘as we know it’. Nuclear technology has now made this possible. [I was taught Physics by the man who first split the atom, in 1932, paving the way for the development of nuclear technology. He was a pacifist.]
Jesus wept.
We are left to fume and rage .. about the mess we have created, while denying it is us. The cravings of the human mind has not changed in these last 2000 years.
Jesus would still have cause to weep, even more so, given the knowledge bestowed upon us by so many great moral teachers over recent millennia.
Humans, of all races, colour, creeds, and dispositions, still crave wealth and power, and the mental stimulation of chance, gambling, sex, and drugs.
Empires have come and gone; but money-lenders still defile the Temple of God, and always will.
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