As the Snowden documents and David Sanger's great new book and other books make plain, and as U.S. officials are wont to brag, the U.S. intelligence services break into computers and computer networks abroad at an astounding rate, certainly on a greater scale than any other intelligence service in the world. Every one of these intrusions in another country violates that country's criminal laws prohibiting unauthorized computer access and damage, no less than the Russian violations of U.S. laws outlined in Mueller's indictment...

It is no response to say that the United States doesn't meddle in foreign elections, because it has in the past-at least as recently as Bill Clinton's intervention in the Russian presidential election of 1996 and possibly as recently as the Hillary Clinton State Department's alleged intervention in Russia's 2011 legislative elections. And during the Cold War the United States intervened in numerous foreign elections, more than twice as often as the Soviet Union. Intelligence history expert Loch Johnson told Scott Shane that the 2016 Russia electoral interference is "the cyber-age version of standard United States practice for decades, whenever American officials were worried about a foreign vote." The CIA's former chief of Russia operations, Steven L. Hall, told Shane: "If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all." Hall added that "the United States 'absolutely' has carried out such election influence operations historically, and I hope we keep doing it."

Nothing gets the phony "Resistance," corporate media and neocons more hysterical than when Trump isn't belligerent enough while meeting with foreign leaders abroad. While the pearl clutching was intense during the North Korea summit, the reoccurring, systematic outrage spectacle was taken to entirely new levels of stupidity and hyperbole during yesterday's meeting with Putin in Finland.

Those damn Russians! How much longer are we going to abide their continued malicious actions. I mean at what point are we going to say enough and stand up to these insidious gangsters. I mean to list the number of times they unleashed heinous plots to destroy America and kneecap the people is one too many to count. If I were to indict Putin and his associates for the way they have contributed to social inequalities in our country, I would need volumes to detail their malice.

For the sake of brevity, I'm going to list 20 developments in the past ten years alone where Russians went out of their way to hijack our democracy and poured gasoline on the fire of inequalities that is consuming our nation. Consider the following:

Retired Air Force Colonel David Antoon agreed to pay $100 to settle what were felony charges for emailing his former Cleveland Clinic surgeon articles the doctor found threatening and posting a list on Yelp of all the surgeries the urologist had scheduled at the same time as the one that left Antoon incontinent and impotent a decade ago.

He faced up to a year in prison.

Antoon's 10-year crusade against the Cleveland Clinic and his urologist is unusual for its length and intensity, as is the extent to which Cleveland Clinic urologist Jihad Kaouk was able to convince police and prosecutors to advocate on his behalf.

Antoon's plea deal last week came as others in the medical community aggressively combat negative social media posts, casting a pall over one of the few ways prospective patients can get unvarnished opinions of doctors.

A sick family raped children during a 30-year campaign of abuse branded the "worst ever case of its kind" by a judge. Twisted Antony Potts and three members of his family carried out a string of child abuse offenses over the course of three decades.

The 49-year-old was described as a "deeply depraved man" as he was jailed for life at Birmingham Crown Court. He was convicted of 13 counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and nine counts of inciting a child to perform a sexual act and cruelty.

Antony was joined in the docket by his dad, Keith Potts, who was caged for eight years alongside his wife, Julie, both for child cruelty. Antony's wife, Elaine, and family friend Joanne Hoye were also both jailed for four years after pleading guilty to neglect.

Brother Joshua Potts admitted to multiple counts of rape and sexual assault against children, while his sibling Nathan, 26, was jailed for 16 years for two counts of rape of a child, four counts of sexual assault, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and sex with another adult.

The self-described volunteer rescue group has been repeatedly accused by Damascus of being the "media arm" for Syrian jihadist groups, and been charged with staging false flag chemical attacks in a bid to prompt a Western military intervention in Syria.

The US and its allies have ramped up plans to evacuate hundreds of members of the White Helmets and their families from southern Syria's Quneitra governorate as Syrian forces continue to clear the area from anti-government forces, US officials have told the AP.

Two anonymous US officials said to be familiar with the evacuation plans noted that the US and its British and Canadian allies were leading the operation to evacuate members of the NGO out of Syria to neighboring countries, and then on to Western European countries including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and possibly Canada.

The officials and a member of the group AP reached for comment said the operation was likely to happen soon due to the Syrian military's continued push to expel militants from southern Syria. "These are hard hours and minutes. This is the worst day of my life. I hope they rescue us before it is too late," the White Helmets member said.

Russian demonization and Russophobia have gripped the US, where politicians would rather impeach Trump than avert a nuclear war with Russia, professor emeritus at both Princeton and New York Universities Stephen Cohen believes.

While US media and establishment still cannot settle nerves after Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Cohen, who is also contributing editor at The Nation, and Chicago University professor John Mearsheimer, bashed the Russian bogeyman approach in an interview to Vice news.

Cohen has been labelled as Russian president's apologist, with "tsunami" of attacks on him. However, the scientist says that those people are just uniformed, with Mearsheimer adding many refuse to engage in fair dialogue with both of them merely because they would "lose the debate."

"We've demonized Putin and we've putinized Russia, so we've demonized Russia. Russophobia is running amok in this country." Cohen said. "I've seen these things from the inside. I've re-thought and re-thought how we got to the edge of war with Russia, where we haven't been since Cuba in 1962. And I have concluded it is 95 percent our own doing."

A huge explosion and fire have engulfed an oil storage facility in Khomein, central Iran, leaving two people dead and one injured, according to local media citing officials.

An oil purifier unit in Khomein industrial park caught fire around noon on Friday, Irna reports.

"The fire has been thoroughly contained, but the fire fighters are still on the scene to ensure the cooling operation," Deputy Governor of Markazi Province Fathollah Haqiqi said as cited by the agency.

Firefighting crews from Khomein and the nearby provinces have been mobilized to battle the blaze, according to Tasnim. The agency also reported that two people working on the site disappeared, and one was injured in the blast.

Up to 14 people have reportedly been injured in a knife attack in the northern German city of Luebeck, local media reports. Police managed to detain the suspected attacker following what was described as 'carnage' by witnesses.

The incident happened in Luebek's district of Kuecknitz. People "jumped out of the bus and screamed, it was terrible, and then the injured were taken away," an eyewitness named Lothar, who lives next to the scene, told Luebecker Nachrichten (LN).

Another eyewitness, who was in the bus at the moment of the attack, told LN that "one of the victims had just offered his place to an elderly woman as the perpetrator stabbed him in the chest."

"It was carnage!" she added.

Facebook must comply with Germany's laws banning Holocaust denial regardless of its own internal polices, authorities gave a warning to the company CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who said Holocaust deniers' comments should not be removed.

"There should be no place for anti-Semitism anywhere!" German Justice Minister Katarina Barley said in a Twitter post in response to Zuckerberg's recent comments he made in an interview to the Recode technology news website. She went on to say that anti-Semitism includes "verbal and physical attacks on Jews as well as the denial of Holocaust" and is "punishable by us and will be strictly prosecuted" in Germany.

Disney director James Gunn has a years-long history of "joking" about his own fantasies about raping and molesting children. Gunn also has a history of making racist and homophobic jokes about the Holocaust, rape, Jews, AIDS, and Mexicans.

Gunn is most famous for directing Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel. He also has an executive producer credit on Avengers: Infinity War. All are Marvel products. The following is important...

Marvel is owned by Disney.

Disney also owns ABC Television, the network that produced the hit series Roseanne.

ABC fired Roseanne Barr after she apologized for one terrible tweet she defended as a joke.