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Ex-Argentine leader Cristina Fernandez indicted, tied to nuns and guns scandal

Hugh Bronstein
Reuters
Tue, 27 Dec 2016 17:11 UTC
Fernandez de Kirchner
© REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner waves to supporters as she leaves a Justice building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 13, 2016.
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez was indicted on Tuesday on charges she ran a corruption scheme with a public works secretary who was arrested in June while trying to stash millions of dollars in a convent.

A federal judge accused them and other officials of the Fernandez administration of crimes "including the deliberate seizure of funds principally meant for public road works."

Corruption charges have long swirled around Fernandez and her husband and predecessor, the late Nestor Kirchner. She denies wrongdoing and accuses Argentina's current leader, Mauricio Macri, of using the courts to persecute her.

Comment: This is nothing compared to what the US has done to Argentina:

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Vader

Middle East expert: Daesh 'could have been wiped out in 2 months if it wasn't serving US interests'


Sputnik
Wed, 28 Dec 2016 16:55 UTC
Iraqi soldiers ISIS flag
© Thomas Coex/Agence France-PresseIraqi army soldiers hold a flag from the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group up-side-down on November 23, 2016, near an Iraqi army base in the outskirts of Mosul
A senior US commander has calculated that it will take at least two years to push Daesh out of Iraq and Syria, and to capture or kill any jihadis attempting to escape. Speaking to Sputnik, geopolitical analyst Navid Nasr suggested that the terrorists could actually be destroyed in a couple months, if they weren't serving US geopolitical interests.

Speaking to a Daily Beast reporter on Sunday, US commander in Iraq Lieut. Gen. Stephen Townsend said that the current Iraqi and US-led coalition offensive against the Daesh (ISIL/ISIS) terrorists is unfolding about as well as can be expected, and will take up to two more years of hard fighting.

Geopolitical analyst and Middle East expert Navid Nasr has a different view. Speaking to Radio Sputnik, the independent expert suggested that Daesh could be erased from the map in a matter of months, not years, if it wasn't serving the geopolitical interests of influential regional and global powers including the US.

Kicking off with a discussion of the terror group's origins and home base of support, Nasr explained that unfortunately, "a lot of people still fail to appreciate the backstory of Daesh, and also what communities they're rooted in - the communities that gave birth to this organization. We're talking about Saddam [Hussein's] base of support in northern and western Iraq - the [so-called] 'Sunni triangle'."

"You have to remember that many people in Mosul greeted Daesh as liberators - and not just for ideological reasons, but because a lot of the fighters in Daesh are their cousins, their brothers, their fathers," the analyst said. "They're rooted in those communities in Iraq. That's where certainly all their major leaders and commanders, but [also] a lot of their fighters, come from. It wasn't Sauron who whipped them up like orcs - they're rooted someplace, they came from someplace, and a lot of them came from those communities in Iraq."
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Wine

Even if Russia interfered in U.S. election, the U.S. had it coming

Gordon M. Hahn
Russian and Eurasian Politics
Tue, 27 Dec 2016 17:09 UTC
Yeltsin and crowd
© Oleg Lastochkin / SputnikPresident Boris Yeltsin greeting rally participants outside the R.S.F.S.R. Supreme Council.
Two can play at almost any game. Russia is now accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S presidential election campaign by hacking Democratic and republican party committees and Hillary Clinton's illicit e-mail server and sending the uncovered documents to Wikileaks for publication allegedly in order to help Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat candidate Clinton. But since the collapse of the USSR, the U.S. has used a variety of means to interfere in the domestic politics of the post-Soviet states, including those of Russia. Those who implemented and supported those policies should have foreseen that some day a potentially resurgent Russia would exact revenge for such interference. That revenge came in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Throughout the post-Soviet period the U.S. has used the State Department, USAID, CIA, the military, and NATO to interfere in the domestic politics of post-Soviet states comprising Russia's traditional sphere of influence. Russia's eventually aborted transition to democracy was not viewed in Moscow as the occasion for foregoing that sphere of influence. Rather, Moscow hoped to maintain that sphere of influence and become a guarantor of democratization in Eurasia in partnership with the U.S. until NATO expansion was approved in Washington and Brussels in the mid-1990s. There is no need to demonstrate all the specifics of said interference outside Russia in the post-Soviet space, given the blatant a priori or post facto Western approval of numerous color revolutions in the region from Bishkek to Kiev. Rather, it would be more direct to point out just a few examples of Western interference in Russian domestic politics since the Soviet collapse.
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Bomb

Russian Foreign Ministry says Russian embassy in Syria comes under mortar fire again


Sputnik
Wed, 28 Dec 2016 18:07 UTC
Russian embassy in Syria
© Sputnik/ Michael AlaeddinRussian embassy in Syria
Russia's embassy in Damascus has come under mortar fire again, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

"On December 28, at 13:00 and 13:19 Moscow Time, the Russian embassy in Syria was shelled by terrorists again. One mine, which luckily did not explode, fell in the courtyard of the compound of the Russian diplomatic mission's administrative buildings. The second [fell] in the immediate vicinity of its territory. Sappers were involved to clear the unexploded ammunition," the statement said.

Comment: Further reading:

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Propaganda

#FakeNews: Politico "confirms" NATO auditor general death by "suicide"


IRIS
Wed, 28 Dec 2016 16:58 UTC
MSM lies, Media failure, fake news
A second mainstream press outlet has decided to weigh in on the mysterious death of NATO Chief Auditor Yves Chandelon - in an attempt to publicly sanitize the case and the people's minds once and for all.

Yesterday, December 27, Politico Europe published the 'conclusive' and the one and only acceptable version of the unfolding of the Chandelon case.
"High-ranking NATO official Yves Chandelon, whose body was found in his car in the Belgian town of Andenne on December 16, killed himself, the chief prosecutor in charge of the case told POLITICO. ... Local media reported that Chandelon's family initially dismissed investigators' view the death was a suicide, believing it was suspicious. The prosecutor's office said some members of the family subsequently changed their minds when investigators found a one-page, handwritten note in the car. ... The prosecutor's office will continue to investigate the death and is still conducting a handwriting comparison, though family members have stated they believe it is Chandelon's handwriting on the note."
The information included in the above excerpt is entirely false and shows all the signs of family members being pressured into silence because the initial reports about the opinions of Chandelon's family concerning his alleged suicide are in complete contradiction with that what Politico Europe is now trying to feed its readers and the rest of the world.

Comment: Previous developments in this story:

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Snakes in Suits

U.S. secret agreement with Palestinians prior to U.N. Security Council vote on Israel's illegal settlements

Stephen Lendman
Global Research
Wed, 28 Dec 2016 17:49 UTC
Child holding Palestine flag
According to a document published by the Arabic Al-Youm Al-Sabaa broadsheet, John Kerry and national security advisor Susan Rice told a Palestinian delegation headed by Saeb Erekat and intelligence chief Majed Faraj in Washington that the Obama administration would abstain on SC Res. 2334 if its wording was balanced - 10 days before last Friday's vote.

The five-page Arabic document discussed the meeting between both sides. If authentic, it indicates US involvement in wanting the resolution adopted - no surprise given its abstention.

It affirmed the illegality of Israeli settlements, what's been known for nearly half a century, no world community action ever taken to halt Israeli lawlessness, on this or any other issue affecting Palestinians and regional peace.

The day before the Security Council vote, the Israeli Hebrew language Walla broadsheet published a similar report. Both sides denied colluding ahead of Res. 2334's adoption - failing to prevent leaks of their meeting.

According to the document Al-Youm Al-Sabaa published, Kerry promised "full (US) cooperation," saying he'd deliver an address explaining Washington's position - provided Palestinians agreed with principles he presented in his 2014 framework proposal.

Comment: See also: A UN Resolution 2334 on Jerusalem: Barack Obama's poisoned Christmas gift to Donald Trump

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Vader

The Democratic party and the audacity of denial

George Neumayr
The Spectator
Wed, 28 Dec 2016 16:38 UTC
obama
© White House photoThe Denier in Chief
Obama still can't take any responsibility for Hillary's loss.

"Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan," said John F. Kennedy. The self-serving behavior of Democratic pols since Hillary's loss adds credence to that observation. Look at how they eagerly explain the defeat away as a failure peculiar to Hillary. She "didn't know why" she was running, says Joe Biden. They console themselves with the spin that defects in Hillary's personality, not in their policies, account for the loss.

Still wrapped up in his self-image of wonderfulness, Obama says that he would have won the election. Even though he had campaigned for Hillary on the pitch that she would continue his glorious policies, he refuses to see her defeat as a repudiation of his "vision" and remains "confident that, if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it."

Never mind that his coattails disintegrated whenever Democrats grabbed at them. They have suffered sweeping defeats at every level of government during his presidency.

Obama was useless to Hillary in any of the states that she needed to win. If anything, Hillary's defeat makes Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012 look almost like flukes — a function not of the strength of his "vision" but of the weakness of his Republican opponents.

Comment: The people rejected more that just Obama's legacy. They rejected Killary's vision of endless war and a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

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Attention

Kissinger back in the limelight: Advice likely to give Trump boost on detente with Russia


Sputnik
Wed, 28 Dec 2016 15:34 UTC
Henry Kissinger
© Sputnik/ Alexey Nikolsky
Veteran US diplomat and strategist Henry Kissinger will give credibility to President-elect Donald Trump's plans to improve relations with Russia, 40 years after Kissinger stepped down as US secretary of state, ex-CIA officer Phil Giraldi told Sputnik.

"I don't think Kissinger will contribute anything substantive but, as a leading realist, he adds credibility to the effort to repair relations, which makes the ongoing contact valuable," Giraldi, a former CIA case officer and US Army intelligence officer, said on Tuesday.

Kissinger, the architect with President Richard Nixon of the US detente policy with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, now has a plan on how to reconcile Moscow and Washington that is of interest to Trump, the German newspaper Bild reported on Monday.


Comment: Ever the opportunist, war criminal Kissinger is cozying up to Trump


Comment: Even Russia seems interested with Kissinger: Keeping your enemies close? Russia would welcome Henry Kissinger's expertise in Russia-US relations

Along with China's curiosity: China, grappling with Trump, turns to 'old friend' Kissinger to defuse tensions

But Trump must be aware:

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Handcuffs

Ankara opens first trial of alleged plotters in July coup attempt


RFE/RL
Tue, 27 Dec 2016 15:57 UTC
Turkish soldier
© Agence France_PresseA Turkish soldier stands guard next to the courthouse where the trial of alleged coup plotters is taking place in Istanbul.
The first trial of alleged plotters in Turkey's July failed coup attempt has started in Istanbul with 29 police officers facing sentences of up to life in prison.

The officers face a range of charges, including attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, and membership of a terrorist organization.

Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for 21 of the policemen and sentences of between 7-1/2 to 15 years for the other eight, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.

More than 40,000 suspects have been detained in relation to the July 15 coup attempt that led to some 270 deaths.

Tens of thousands have been fired or suspended from their jobs.

The Turkish government accuses U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the coup.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the plot.
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Gift

A UN Resolution 2334 on Jerusalem: Barack Obama's poisoned Christmas gift to Donald Trump

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Wed, 28 Dec 2016 15:18 UTC
East Jerusalem
UN Security Council Resolution 2334 - acquiesced in and quite probably engineered by the Obama administration - by reaffirming that Jerusalem is not Israel's capital and that east Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory - seems intended to tie Donald Trump's hands.

UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which has just passed the UN Security Council on a 14 to nil vote (the US abstaining) is being widely reported as US President Barack Obama's parting shot at Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu.

Supposedly Obama reversed traditional US policy, whereby the US would have 'protected' Israel by vetoing a Resolution such as this, in order to spite Netanyahu whom he personally dislikes.

Israel's furious response is allegedly the result of Netanyahu's anger at Obama's action.
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