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# No Russian Ever Called Me a Terrorist
March 20 2014
Written by Howard Friel.
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***JUST ASKING***-Are recent events in Ukraine and Crimea more important than the mitigation of climate change?
Are they more relevant to Americans than our own Stasi state and our broke cities, abandoned public schools, decrepit infrastructure, rickety railroads, rotten jobs, and chronic unemployment?
If not, why do the politicians and the press all act with such overwrought indignation toward Russia and its president as if they were?
After all:
Is Vladimir Putin the one bugging all of our telephone calls, emails, SMS messages, and Internet use?
And photographing our post office mail and license plate numbers as if we were all criminals and terrorists?
Is Putin walking around la de da amid indications that the NSA probably has the U.S. Congress under surveillance?
Is Putin the one refusing to do anything about the CIA spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee?
Is Putin the one doing irreparable damage to the Bill of Rights and separation of powers?
Was Putin the one who violated (twice) the oath of office as president to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”?
Did Putin invade Iraq and destroy that society?
Did Putin lie to the American people about the reasons for that invasion?
Did Putin kill one million Iraqis?
Did Putin spend $1 trillion of the American public’s money on the Iraq invasion?
Did Putin invade Afghanistan?
Did he spend $700 billion on the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan?
Does Putin have a “kill list” to murder suspected terrorists without due process and outside any field of battle?
Has Putin thereby increased the risk of terrorism against the United States?
Is it Putin who prevents Edward Snowden from returning to the United States after performing one of the great acts of service to our Constitution in the history of this country?
Is it Putin who has Julian Assange, a foreign journalist, trapped in the London embassy of Ecuador like a caged animal?
Is it because of Putin that the American journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jacob Appelbaum can’t come back to the United States without risk of imprisonment?
Has Putin prosecuted more Americans under the Espionage Act than other U.S. presidents combined, and it’s not even World War I or World War II?
Is Putin the one negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership -- NAFTA on steroids -- in secrecy?
Is Putin our corporate-controlled president, ergo the reason for the secrecy of the TPP?
Was it Vladimir Putin who ran for president in the United States in 2004 and 2008, and thereafter in both instances royally screw the very constituencies that elected him?
If not, why are the politicians and the press SO mad at Putin?
Doesn’t it makes sense that if you live in a glass house you shouldn’t throw stones?
Isn’t that how, in this case, you can start a war between nations with nuclear weapons?
***(Howard Friel is author of Chomsky and Dershowitz: On Endless War and the End of Civil Liberties. He also wrote the [The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight about Global Warming](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0300171285?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim). This article was posted first at [CommonDreams.com](http://CommonDreams.com))***
***-cw***
**CityWatch**
**Vol 12 Issue 24**
**Pub: Mar 21, 2014**
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