Having read a post on Putin and the Russians, I find that I must respond.  You may notice that I have been silent on many topics, having spent three weeks without internet in New Mexico, and recently having returned from the bi-national encounter in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, México, where I visited the site of the murder by a US border patrol agent of the young man (age 16) known as José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, shot ten (10) times over the border by a border patrol agent.  Two of the Mexicans I interviewed in Nogales (Sonora, México) at the site of the shooting this past Monday stated that if it had happened the other way, that a young US man had been killed by a stray shot across the border, the US would have declared an international incident and would have bombarded México. Remember Fallujah?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/magazine/10-shots-across-the-border.html?_r=0

I find it disturbing that the US government and military hierarchy continue to demean Russia and accuse Vladimir Putin, its current president, for activities that the US has long performed.  As a long-time and proud socialist, I find this hypocrisy to be boundless.   

1.  The United States of America government and military hierarchy bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, unleashing massive horror and permanent destruction upon a population for no reason that can be fathomed.  The first attack took place on August 6th and immediately killed 80,000 people; the second attack, three days later, coming after the devastation of the first one, killed another 40,000 people. Tens of thousands died later from radiation exposure.  If there was no excusing the bombing of Hiroshima, the bombing of Nagasaki was sheer and unadulterated cruelty and imperial excess.

 http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/bombing-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

2.  The U.S. government and military hierarchy have continuously used depleted uranium in its military weaponry, and left our veterans and the people in those regions to suffer its consequences. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/us-depleted-uranium-weapons-civilian-areas-iraq

3.  The U.S. government and military hierarchy have kept up a system that led to the abuses in prisons such as Abu Ghraib.  Although always speaking of ‘rogue’ performers, investigation of the facts has led to the indictment that these abuses were encouraged and condoned by the military hierarchy.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/world/meast/iraq-prison-abuse-scandal-fast-facts/

4.  The U.S. government and military hierarchy have allowed the Zionist lobby to poison the minds and intent of our people and our government officials in order to hide the ongoing abuses in Gaza, the largest open-air prison in the world.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/12635-noam-chomsky-my-visit-to-gaza-the-worlds-largest-open-air-prison

5.  The U.S. government and military hierarchy have kept countless individuals imprisoned in Guantánamo, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.  Most have been tortured and abused, provided no medical care or improper care, and are still waiting for release despite promises of return home.

http://www.nytimes.com/topic/destination/guantanamo-bay-naval-base-cuba

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/world/cia-torture-guantanamo-bay.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FGuantanamo%20Bay%20Naval%20Base%20(Cuba)&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

6.  The U.S. government and military hierarchy have perpetuated crimes against immigrants who are forced to flee their lands which we have laid waste to, making it impossible for people to survive.  Many of these are children.

Many of the returning “felons” that officials speak about have committed the “felony” of returning to the U.S. to be with their children, since returning after deportation now constitutes a felony punishable by a long term in a federal prison.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/06/complaint-us-border-control-abuse-unaccompanied-migrant-children

7. The U.S. government and military hierarchy have been training torturers in schools run both by Israeli forces and by US instructors at schools such as the School of the Americas (now the Institute for Western Cooperation), who then go back and torture and kill their own citizens.  See, for example, the story of the killing of US nuns, priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, and Oscar Arnulfo Romero, martyr, assassinated by a graduate of the US run SOA while celebrating mass in El Salvador, and recently beatified by Pope Francis in May of last year.  See, for example,

www.soaw.org.

8. During the Vietnam War, which should never have been undertaken, the U.S. government and military hierarchy committed atrocities such as the My Lai massacre, in which most of a small hamlet were murdered in cold blood.  As a long-time member of Veterans for Peace, and the former wife of a United States soldier who was sent to Thailand and Cambodia, I have been told again and again that My Lai was not at all an isolated incident.

http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre

If Russia has committed atrocities, it was Russia and its soldiers who stopped Hitler’s armies at great loss to their people.  I refuse to speak about the “bullying” Putin when the U.S. government and military hierarchy regularly bullies anyone and everyone who refuses to follow it in brutality.