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Light Sabers

Russian senator: Trump's toughest battle may be with US media waging info-war against him


Sputnik
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:29 UTC
trump
© AP Photo/ Mark J. Terrill
The toughest battle Donald Trump may face is the one with US media "waging the info war against him", a Russian lawmaker wrote.

US future President Donald Trump may have to face the toughest battle of his presidency not fighting Daesh and negotiating with China, but handling the media at home, member of the Russian parliament's upper house Alexei Pushkov said Friday.

"Perhaps, Trump's main challenge will be not China, not North Korea, not even Daesh, but US media, which are still waging the info war against him," Pushkov wrote on his Twitter.

Trump's inauguration is set to take place on January 20.

The US president will assume the office amid mainstream media questioning his victory in November 8 election over US intelligence services' allegations that Russia may have meddled in the election to stack the odds in Trump's favor. Moscow has denied the accusations.
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Megaphone

Ukrainian MoD: CrowdStrike is wrong, Russians did not hack Kiev's artillery


Sputnik
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:23 UTC
ukraine soldiers
© AFP 2016/ GENYA SAVILOV
Kiev seems to be breaking the mould. Claims that Russian hackers allegedly disabled most of the Ukrainian army's D-30 howitzers are false, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Friday.

In late December, the US-based cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike claimed that Russian intelligence infected an application used by Ukrainian forces to speed up howitzer fire with trojan malware between 2014 and 2016, covering the span of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The firm, which has a history of accusing Russia of various hacking operations such as the recent compromising US Democratic Party leak, claimed that the cyberattack resulted in as much as 80 percent of Ukraine's howitzers being disabled.

"Due to various media reports that 80 percent of Ukrainian D-30 howitzers had been destroyed by a Russian hacker cyberattack, the army command of Ukraine's armed forces states that the given information is not true," the ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine's missile troops and artillery remain combat-ready, well-equipped and are able to carry out the necessary tasks, the statement added.

The Donbass conflict erupted in April 2014 as a local counter-reaction to the West-sponsored Maidan coup in Kiev that had toppled legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych in February. Residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions held independence referendums and proclaimed the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Kiev has since been conducting a military operation, encountering stiff local resistance.
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Laptop

Best of the Web: New "Russian hacking" intel report: Still no evidence

Bernhard
Moon of Alabama
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:13 UTC
russia hacking
After Hillary Clinton was defeated in the U.S. presidential election the relevant powers launched a campaign to delegitimize the President elect Donald Trump.

The ultimate aim of the cabal is to kick him out of office and have a reliable replacement, like the Vice-President elect Pence, take over. Should that not be possible it is hoped that the delegitimization will make it impossible for Trump to change major policy trajectories especially in foreign policy. A main issue here is the reorientation of the U.S. military complex and its NATO proxies from the war of terror towards a direct confrontation with main powers like Russia and China.

The cabal consists of President Obama, the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton, neoconservatves like the State Department's cookie dispenser Victoria Nuland, the Republican senators McCain and Lindsay and the military-industrial complex. (One of the few neocons planted near to Trump, former CIA director James Woolsey, threw the towel today and left the Trump transition team.)
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Bulb

Clearing the decks: Trump orders Obama-appointed ambassadors to quit by Inauguration Day

Jonathan Barrett and Tom Westbrook
Reuters
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:04 UTC
obama
© REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has issued a blanket mandate requiring politically appointed ambassadors installed by President Barack Obama to leave their posts by Inauguration Day, the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand said on Friday.

"I will be departing on January 20th," Ambassador Mark Gilbert said in a Twitter message to Reuters.

The mandate was issued "without exceptions" through an order sent in a State Department cable on Dec. 23, Gilbert said.

He was confirming a report in the New York Times, which quoted diplomatic sources as saying previous U.S. administrations, from both major political parties, have traditionally granted extensions to allow a few ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.

Officials from the State Department and Trump's transition team were was not immediately available for comment.

Comment: Since the Obama Administration forgot about diplomatic etiquette and good taste when it kicked out Russian diplomats with very little notice just before the Russian New Year, this feels like just desserts.

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Oscar

Forbes predicts Russia will be global winner in energy and diplomacy for 2017


RT
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 18:13 UTC
Putin Abe Japan visit
© Alexander Zemlianichenko/AFP /Getty ImagesJapanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) shows the way to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a joint press conference in Tokyo on December 16, 2016. It was Putin's first visit to Japan in 11 years.
The last months of 2016 brought strategic largesses for Russia from three 'rather unfriendly corners' - the US, Japan and Qatar, Forbes magazine wrote. Those benefits will allow Russia to play from a position of 'enormous' strength this year, it added.

In a December article, Forbes contributor Nishtha Chugh said Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election, as well as multi-billion dollar energy deals with Japan and Qatar, were the "perfect gift" for Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's two-day state visit to Japan could "serve as a primer for anyone looking to do business with Russia in 2017".

Sixty commercial deals were inked between the two countries during that December meeting. Among those deals energy agreements signed by Russian state-owned oil firm Rosneft and a conglomerate of Japanese companies.

"Potentially billions of dollars will flow between Japan and Russia on joint offshore exploration, the construction of another LNG plant in Sakhalin and a gas pipeline connecting Hokkaido," Forbes said.

Comment: Forbes must be hiding under a rock. Russia's business with Japan comes after years of deals with other non-'Western' countries, and it is these later nations, more so than than Western-centric countries, that are paving the way for a different kind of global order. But yes, Forbes is probably right that Russia will be the premier global leader in 2017, just as it was in 2016.

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War Whore

Pentagon approves $128 billion nuclear submarine project as Military-Industrial Complex lapdog Obama leaves office


RT
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 18:20 UTC
uss ohio
© Lee Jae-Won / Reuters
In its final month in office, the Obama Administration has approved a fleet of 12 Columbia-class nuclear submarines to replace the aging Ohio-class, with a bill that is more than $125 billion.

On Wednesday, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Frank Kendall signed an 'acquisition decision memo' that officially passed the program through "Milestone B," the last stage before the Engineering and Manufacturing Development Phase.

At an estimated cost of roughly $8 billion per vessel, the total project, along with $13 billion in research and development, and the cost of the nuclear reactors, makes the project the third most expensive defensive program in the US, after the $379 billion F-35 aircraft and the $153 billion multiservice ballistic-missile defense network.

"I'm hoping to have it done before I leave," Kendall said in an interview with Bloomberg.


Comment: While regular Americans are barely getting by, the Pentagon is rolling in hundreds of billions of tax payers dollars. Feel any safer?

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Bad Guys

UK's foreign policy: Human rights abusers pay Britain's Sandhurst millions to train their troops


RT
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 18:08 UTC
British Sandhurst cadets
© Sang Tan / Reuters
Armies guilty of terrible human rights abuses are sending their officers to learn soldiering at Sandhurst, Britain's prestigious military training academy, it has emerged.

Sandhurst Royal Military Academy has been training despots and henchmen for some of the most infamous regimes in the world, including Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and even Colonel Gaddafi's Libya.

The academy is so good at teaching repressive militaries, it has received £30 million ($37 million) since 2007, with Bahrain the biggest customer to date, having paid £2.24 million in 'tuition fees' to the British version of the United States' prestigious West Point.

Human rights group Amnesty International UK questioned whether the military academy had any checks in place to ensure its customers aren't shooting protesters or torturing people.

Comment: Sandhurst is a tool for the British elites to carry out their bloody agendas:

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Attention

UN warning: Sabotage of Damascus water supply afflicting 5.5 million residents constitutes a war crime


RT
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 15:05 UTC
Damascus
© Mikhail Voskresenskiy / Sputnik A view of Damascus from Mount Qasioun.
The UN has warned that the water crisis afflicting the Syrian capital may constitute a war crime. Millions of people have been deprived of running water after a reserve located in rebel-held Wadi Barada was cut off.

"In Damascus itself, 5.5 million people have had their water supplies cut or minimized," the UN's humanitarian adviser to Syria, Jan Egeland, told reporters in Geneva on Thursday.

In December, the running water supply for Damascus was shut off, having reportedly been contaminated with diesel fuel. This deprived millions of people of drinking water, and came amid fighting in the rebel-held area where the reservoir is located.

Comment: See also:

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Heart - Black

Step by disgusting step: How Killary and Obama incubated ISIS

Jerome R. Corsi
World News Daily
Wed, 04 Jan 2017 17:32 UTC
obama clinton
Arming of Syrian jihadists mirrored disastrous Libya policy

By piecing together recently revealed WikiLeaks emails with evidence that has emerged over the past several years, it's become increasingly clear that President Obama and his secretary of state at the time, Hillary Clinton in 2011, armed the Free Syrian Army rebels in an effort to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, mirroring a strategy already under way in Libya to help al-Qaida-affiliated militia overthrow Moammar Gadhafi.

A consequence of the strategy was the emergence of ISIS out of the loosely coordinated Free Syrian Army coalition as well as the disastrous Benghazi attack in which a U.S. ambassador was murdered.

Various WikiLeaks emails examined by WND indicate the Free Syrian Army was among the first splinter rebel groups Clinton and Obama armed. The Obama administration apparently was hoping to replicate the regime-change strategy in which it armed al-Qaida-affiliated militia in Libya, including Ansar al-Sharia, the group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack at Benghazi.

The WikiLeaks email evidence shows a shift in policy in which Clinton and Obama appear to have decided in 2011 to topple the governments of Gadhafi in Libya and Assad in Syria, even if it meant arming radical Islamic terrorist groups that traced back to al-Qaida.

As WND reported last week, WikiLeaks emails back up Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's assertion that U.S.-led coalition forces have given support to terror groups, including ISIS in Syria.

The claim derived further support from a recording leaked to the New York Times of Secretary of State John Kerry admitting the Obama administration not only hoped ISIS would depose the Assad regime, it also gave arms to the jihadist army and its allies to carry out the task.
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Bomb

Suicide bomb: ISIS strap explosives to disabled fighters in wheelchairs

Kara O'neil
The Mirror
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 17:37 UTC
ISIS man in the wheelchair is loaded with explosives
The man in the wheelchair is loaded with explosives
Disturbing footage has emerged of ISIS soldiers strapping bombs to disabled fighters in wheelchairs.

The men are then tasked with suicide missions - including car bomb attacks .

Footage released by a purported ISIS network shows the soldiers helping a man out of a vehicle and into his wheelchair .

The man, who has no legs, is loaded with explosives and interviewed before being wheeled away to complete his mission.
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