{"id":328265,"date":"2017-09-29T19:15:40","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T18:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/russia-gates-shaky-foundation\/"},"modified":"2017-09-29T19:15:40","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T18:15:40","slug":"russia-gates-shaky-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/russia-gates-shaky-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia-gate\u2019s Shaky Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Special Report:<\/strong> The Russia-gate hysteria now routinely includes rhetoric about the U.S. being at \u201cwar\u201d with nuclear-armed Russia, but the shaky factual foundation continues to show more cracks, as historian Daniel Herman describes.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-24654\"\/>By Daniel Herman<\/p>\n<p>Anyone who watches the news knows that Russian hackers gave Democratic National Committee documents to WikiLeaks and hacked voter databases in 21 states. Prominent Democrats call these shenanigans \u201ca political Pearl Harbor.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3009\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/USSMaine1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/USSMaine1-300x236.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3009\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/USSMaine1-300x236.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/USSMaine1.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3009\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/USSMaine1-300x236.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/USSMaine1-300x236.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/USSMaine1.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">USS Maine, which exploded and sank in Havana Harbor in 1898, touched off the Spanish-American War<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>On the blog Daily Kos, one contributor cries \u201cwe were robbed!\u201d (arguing that somehow Russian meddling gave Trump a victory in North Carolina, where his margin was 180,000, and where no evidence whatsoever indicates a successful hack of voter databases).<\/p>\n<p>In a new video propamentary, er, docuganda, or something like that, Morgan Freeman declares \u201cwe have been attacked. We are at war. This is no movie script.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before we hop on the Morgan Freeman train, we might want to consider some history. In 1898, the American press \u2014 taking the word of naval investigators \u2014 reported that a Spanish mine had destroyed the battleship, U.S.S. Maine. Leading newspapers promptly called for war, and the U.S. government obliged.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the U.S. became an imperial power with the acquisition of Cuba and the Philippines and a few other odds and ends, at the bargain cost of 2,500 American soldiers dead, plus another 4,000 lost in the Filipino rebellion that followed, not to mention the lives of tens of thousands of Filipino opposition fighters. Only later did it come to light that the Maine was destroyed by a boiler explosion.<\/p>\n<p>In 1915, leading newspapers again whipped up the American public by announcing that a German submarine had sunk the unarmed passenger ship, Lusitania. Two years later \u2014 and in part due to lingering outrage over the Lusitania \u2014 the U.S. went to war, this time costing 116,000 American lives and over 200,000 wounded, not to mention creating a patriotic frenzy at home that led to beatings, lynchings, and attacks on civil liberties. Decades later, divers proved that the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/09\/29\/russia-gates-shaky-foundation\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Special Report: The Russia-gate hysteria now routinely includes rhetoric about the U.S. being at \u201cwar\u201d with nuclear-armed Russia, but the shaky factual foundation continues to show more cracks, as historian Daniel Herman describes. By Daniel Herman Anyone who watches the news knows that Russian hackers gave Democratic National Committee documents to WikiLeaks and hacked voter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-328265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}