Originally published Jul 17, 2018

Following Trump’s summit with Putin, Representative Mike Rogers (R) of Alabama issued a tweet that quite concisely summarized the chief lies that have been used to demonize Russia and keep us plowing our money into the military-industrial complex.

Russia:

Waged continuous & increasingly aggressive cyberattacks against us
Interfered in our 2016 elections
Annexed Crimea
Shot down a civilian airliner
Supports Assad in Syria
Invaded our ally Georgia
Murdered opponents in London

Should I continue?

Here is my likewise concise commentary:

Cyberattacks — I’m sure that Russian intelligence does a fair amount of hacking; our own Deep State is the world champ in that department.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-...

Interfered in 2016 election — Utter, unmitigated BS.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/what%E2%80%99s-left-russiagate%E2%80...

https://caucus99percent.com/content/hilarity-alert-moon-alabama-explains...

https://caucus99percent.com/content/mueller%E2%80%99s-new-indictment%E2%...

Annexed Crimea — Of course they did; the Crimean people demanded it after a neo-Nazi-instigated coup, which we fomented and rendered successful by immediately recognizing the coup government — a coup that unseated the President that they had overwhelmingly voted for. Thanks to this coup, an agreement that Yanukovich had just made with the EU to hold early elections and leave office was rendered null and void — an agreement that would have prevented the subsequent civil war. After a neo-Nazi mob in Odessa burned 50 or so ethnic Russians alive, the duly elected parliament of Crimea (a part of Russia for two centuries until Khrushchev inexplicably gave it to the Ukrainian SSR) voted to hold a plebiscite on re-unification with Russia; the voters approved it by a huge majority. Russia never invaded Crimea — its troops were already there in line with an agreement it had with Ukraine. And anyone who thought that Russia was going to cede to NATO its only southern naval base in Sevastopol was insane.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/02/27/cheering-democratic-coup-u...

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/14/putin-did-it-conspiracy-th...

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/03/09/crimeas-case-leaving-ukraine

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44481.htm

Shot down a civilian airliner — After studying the evidence, I think that the most likely suspect in the downing of MH-17 was the private militia of Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, which thought they were shooting at a plane carrying Putin. The JIT tribunal which convicted Russia was a kangaroo court in which Ukraine had veto power and supplied almost all of the evidence, and its explanation of Russia’s involvement was a Rube Goldberg farce based on analyses made by the neo-con-affiliated organization Bellingcat.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/ukraine-organized-kangaroo-court-jit...

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/08/was-putin-targeted-for-mid-air-ass...

Supports Assad in Syria — Thank goodness, Russia came to the aid of Syria to prevent the Syrian people from being slaughtered and enslaved by jihadi psychotics which the CIA and our Mideast allies had sicced on them. The claims that Assad and his troops have been egregiously criminal in their efforts to expel the jihadi hordes are rooted in the unverified claims of NGO affilliates of the jihadis, notably the White Helmets.

https://caucus99percent.com/content/did-syrian-army-ever-use-chemical-we...

https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/white-helmets-report-on-douma-proven-to...

Invaded Georgia — South Ossetia seceded from Georgia (without Russian intervention) after the Soviet Union split up. Georgia refused to acknowledge the secession, and broke a UN-brokered truce when they attacked South Ossetia’s capital in 2008. Russia entered South Ossetia, with the enthusiastic approval of the South Ossetians, to expel the Georgian troops. Russia has never annexed South Ossetia.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/26/accusing-russia-and-listening-to-h...

Murdered opponents in London — Dubious, especially in regard to Skripal. The Mossad of our buddy Israel brags about its overseas assassinations.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/07/the-holes-in-the-officia...

Whereas, during this century, the nation which Rogers represents has caused the death, maiming, and displacement of several million people in the Mideast and North Africa in illegal and ultimately catastrophic wars of aggression, and through support of the jihadi invasion of Syria. The current refugee crisis in Europe is a direct result of these crimes. We are currently supporting the Saudis in their genocidal assault on Yemen. We have interfered in literally dozens of elections overseas over the last several decades — most notably, we put massive support behind the re-election of the drunkard Yeltsin, who allowed foreign capitalists to loot the Russian economy while the Russian standard of living and life expectancy plummeted. And we actually did shoot down a civilian (Iranian) airliner.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/united-states-navy-shoot-iranian-passe...

The Donald Trump quote which Rogers was responding to castigates us for “many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity” which have led to our current strained relations with Russia. While I can’t pretend to read the Donald’s mind, he may be referring to the fact that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO has expanded progressively eastward, right up to Russia’s borders. This explicitly violates a pledge that the U.S. and NATO made to Gorbachev; in exchange for Gorby allowing East and West Germany to unite as part of NATO, we explicitly promised that NATO would not be extended “one inch” to the east. This expansion insured an ever-growing market for the U.S.-made military hardware which NATO members were required to buy — and hence has been avidly supported by our Deep State and our politicians. Russia, naturally, has taken a dim view of this betrayal. Also, under the Bush administration, the U.S. unilaterally abrogated the ABM treaty in a thinly veiled attempt to achieve first-strike capacity against Russia. Which is why Russia felt forced to develop an entire new generation of nuclear weapons, which they only recently have revealed.

It’s not my intention to argue that Russia is uniquely virtuous among the nations, or that Putin is free of sin. I’ve never been to Russia, have no Russian friends, have no Russian ethnic heritage. (I will acknowledge that I treasure the great music and literature that Russian geniuses have given the world, and am grateful to the Russian people for defeating the Nazis at incredible cost.) But it’s more than clear that the constant demonization of Russian and Russians by our Deep State, our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and the mainstream media that serve as their lackeys, is intended to insure the existence of a boogeyman needed to justify our wildly excessive spending on our military — and, more specifically, the continued existence of that Cold War relic NATO. David Stockman has laid this out brilliantly in his most recent essay.

https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2018/07/16/the-vlad-and-dona...

Whereas Stockman is a fiscal conservative, I’m an FDR Democrat — a.k.a. Berniecrat. And I realize that, in order to provide our citizens with the expanded range of social benefits that FDR envisioned and Bernie seeks to implement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EZ5bx9AyI4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQcmzGIKrzg

we will need to control and ultimately slash the massive amounts of money we plow into our largely useless military empire. Both Bernie and Dwight Eisenhower have realized that ultimately we must face the choice between Guns and Butter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vabeos-F8Kk

https://harpers.org/blog/2007/11/eisenhower-on-the-opportunity-cost-of-d...

Our true enemies are not the Russians or the Chinese or the Iranians or even gangs of Salafist jihadi maniacs (too primitive and trivial to represent a significant threat) — they are the people who deceive us into fearing and despising others, so that an ungodly portion of our wealth will continue to be spent on war and military establishments, rather than on efforts that can make our lives more enjoyable and secure. As Rodney King memorably said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”