‘Nations that assert independence risk confrontation with US’

The US suspects Russia of an email server intrusion of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to unnamed sources, the hacker attack occurred on July 25 and did not touch any classified information. Still the US officials can’t provide any evidence of that.

RT: So the US military is again blaming Russia for hacking its servers without providing actual proof. What’s your take on that?

Caleb Maupin: This is just another example of the Western media creating a narrative. This is just a constant theme in the US press that somehow Russia is aggressive, that Russia is threatening the US. It is a constant theme but it’s false. In fact it is the US that is escalating tensions with Russia. US troops and US military hardware are pouring into Eastern Europe; the US overthrew the democratically-elected government of Ukraine and replaced it with a virulently anti-Russian government. The US continues to fund anti-government forces in Syria, which is a country allied with Russia. So it is the US that is attacking Russia, and yet we get a barrage of media stories trying to make it as if it is the other way around and it is very disturbing. No evidence has been presented, and it really makes no sense: why would Russia be motivated to hack the computers of the US?

RT: The UK has also accused Russia of hacking into Snowden Files putting MI6 agents under threat. Back then there was no sufficient answer to the question of why Moscow was blamed.

CM: Yes, why would any country seek a war with the US? The US has the biggest military budget of any country in the world; it plays a central role in the economy. Countries around the world do not want a confrontation with the US. It is the US that repeatedly forces the confrontation on any country that asserts its independence, whether that country is Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China, or Russia. No matter what, if a country asserts their independence that is when the US enters a confrontation with them.

The reality is that the US is engaging in cyber terrorism around the world, and that has been made blatantly apparent. Chinese computers and Chinese government computers frequently are hacked by the US. And Edward Snowden revealed that the US has a vast apparatus of cyber warfare that it has been engaging in around the world, but we never hear anything about that. But then these unsubstantiated claims against Russia, against China, show up in the media and it is supposed to justify further hostility and confrontation, when it is the US who is the source of aggression in all of these international situations.

RT: You mentioned that it was revealed by Edward Snowden that the NSA and GCHQ had hacked the Russian security firm Kaspersky Lab. How does that sit with US accusations of hacking by Russia?

CM: Yes, even the most compliant US allies – like Germany and Poland – have been subjected to spying from the US with the cellphone calls and all kinds of private e-mails being recorded by the US. US leaders are really out of control: spying on people around the world, cyber hacking people around the world. But then every so often a story comes up and we are supposed to hate Russia here in the US, because Pentagon officials tell us that something has been hacked. Well, I don’t trust the government in the US. And most people here in the US don’t trust their government. If you look at the polls, people don’t believe this – they know that the big oil companies, the owners of natural gas corporations here in the US, as the prices go down, they want to drive Russia out of international markets. They don’t like having a competitor like Russia exporting oil and natural gas, and they are creating an international confrontation which is very dangerous.

I think people in the US want peace with Russia and with every other country in the world. I think that is what people in Russia want as well. Wall Street and the Pentagon are really forcing an international confrontation on the world that people of the world don’t want. People want peace.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.  RT report reprinted with permission.