On Dec. 19, the Electoral College electors are scheduled to meet in their respective states to cast their votes for president and vice president of the United States. This vote will come amidst the most serious challenge to the legitimacy of the democratic process in U.S. history, including evidence of the unprecedented impact of foreign intervention and influence.

To preserve the foundations of the American political system and strengthen the president-elect's legitimacy, the electoral college should delay voting until the dual White House and Senate reports on Russian involvement in the election are issued.

According to reports, the consensus view within the CIA is that Russia has blatantly interfered with the U.S. presidential election. Not just to destabilize the electoral system, but to pick the winner.

The Syrian army is now in full control of Aleppo.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that the events taking place in the city of Aleppo are a "historic moment", and said the world will be different after the "liberation of Aleppo".

The Duran reported today...

Following the mass surrender yesterday of Jihadi fighters and their evacuation under escort by the Russian military to Idlib, the Russian military has confirmed that the Syrian army is now in full control of Aleppo.

Assad said in a video published on the Syrian Presidency's Twitter account...

"What is happening today is the writing of a history written by every Syrian citizen. The writing did not start today, it started six years ago when the crisis and war started against Syria."

UK and West are "frustrated" with Moscow's success in eastern Aleppo, including with humanitarian aid deliveries, the Russian envoy to the UK told RT in an exclusive interview. The diplomat said that London lacks proposals on similar action in Syria.

The statement by the Russian envoy to the UK, Aleksandr Yakovenko, followed his meeting with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. On Thursday, Johnson summoned Yakovenko and his Iranian colleague, Hamid Baedinejad, separately to talk about British "concerns" over the situation in Syria and Moscow's and Tehran's actions there.

[NOTE: On the morning of December 11th, German Economic News headlined "Brutal Power Struggle in the U.S.: CIA Is Targeting Donald Trump" ("Brutaler Machtkampf in den USA: CIA nimmt Donald Trump ins Visier"), and the following essay places that event into its essential broader global and historical context — because the future of America, and of the world, will be shaped by the outcome of this power-struggle, which cannot be truthfully understood outside of that broader context, regardless what happens. PS: The CIA's alleged allegations in that matter are lies, and here's how a former British Ambassador tells how he knows that they're lies.]

Everyone knows that jihadists, and people who fund their terrorism against the United States and against other (non-fundamentalist-Islamic) nations, are enemies of every (non-fundamentalist-Islamic) nation, including the United States. However, what isn't well known is that the U.S. federal government is itself secretly allied with jihadists and their funders — secretly allied with (and dependent upon) the enemies of all nations (including the U.S.) that aren't fundamentalist-Islamic. Our government is secretly allied with jihadist groups in a number of countries, and is allied especially with the Arab royal families who finance jihadists in all countries (except their own — none of those royals wants jihadists to attack their own countries: their deal with jihadists is for them to attack only other countries).

Even thirteen years after the 9/11 attacks against the U.S. by a team of 19 jihadists — 15 of whom were Saudis — the former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was saying in an email to her friend John Podesta on 17 August 2014, that "we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region."

The phrase "the government of Qatar" refers to the Thani family, who own that country; and the phrase "the government of Saudi Arabia" refers to the Saud family, who own that country. She was referring to the Thanis (and their vassals) and to the Sauds (and their vassals) — they're the main and enduring sources of funding for ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other 'terrorist' (actually jihadist) groups. (The word 'terrorist' is used in order to make the public think that jihadists are no different from, or are basically similar to, other types of terrorists, such as Timothy McVeigh, and many different types of terrorists. But jihadists belong actually in a different and more dangerous category from those, and that's the type of terrorist which is posing a significant national-security threat, in the United States, and in many other countries.)

One might want to, as Hillary Clinton said, "bring pressure upon" — as opposed to harm or kill — an ally. However, an enemy (which is what those families actually are) is supposed to be treated differently (and far more harshly) than that. Ms. Clinton was stating that the U.S. government should bring pressure upon the Thanis and the Sauds, to stop their funding foreign jihadists such as Al Qaeda and ISIS — their funding of groups that endanger Americans. However, no indication has been presented showing that either Ms. Clinton or her State Department even brought pressure upon those allies — not even 13 years after the 9/11 attacks, which attacks those Arabic royal families (especially the Sauds) financed — and those 'allies', according to her, were still doing this.

China's military has carried out its first live-fire drills using an aircraft carrier, state media said.

Dozens of ships and aircraft took part in the exercise "a few days ago" in the Bohai Sea to test weapon performance and training levels, according to a statement posted Thursday on the Defense Ministry's website.

Beijing said last month that its aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was ready to engage in combat, marking a milestone for a navy that has invested heavily in its ability to project power far from China's shores.

The Liaoning was commissioned in 2013 after being purchased as an incomplete hull from Ukraine more than a decade ago.

On December 16th, Verkhovna Rada deputy Nadezhda Savchenko gave an interview to the Ukrainian TV channel Espresso TV, in which she stated that the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics are not terrorists. According to her, "There, some are separatists and some are collaborationists. And there is part made up of the occupied population."

Savchenko also added that Ukrainian authorities need to decide whether they are dealing with an anti-terrorist operation or a war in Donbass, and then it will be easier to define the leaders of the DPR and LPR. What's more, she confirmed that she held a trilateral meeting with the leaders of the republics and representatives from Russia in Minsk. Commenting live on Hromadsky TV, Savchenko also announced that an agreement on exchanging prisoners had been achieved as a result of meeting with Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky. In her words: "We agreed on just how many people can be exchanged. According to the lists, this means 226 from the Ukrainian side and 52 people from the separatists."

Such statements by Nadezhda Savchenko and her meeting with the leaders of the DPR and LPR have provoked a storm of outrage in Kiev. Representatives of the Fatherland Party led by Yulia Tymoshenko have claimed that Savchenko did not coordinate her actions with anyone, adding that they reject any negotiations with the leaders of the unrecognized republics. Subsequently, the Fatherland Party expelled Savchenko from the ranks of the faction.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told her donors that FBI Director James Comey and Russian President Vladimir Putin were the chief culprits for her loss to Donald Trump in November, ignoring problems that were revealed about her campaign.

Addressing a group of donors in Manhattan on Thursday, Clinton claimed her stunning defeat was a product of two "unprecedented" events: FBI Director James Comey announcing the reopening of an investigation into her use of a private email server, and the "unprecedented Russian plot to swing this election."

The Russian backed operation in eastern Aleppo has allowed for a "genuine" separation of radicals from the 'moderate opposition,' opening a "new window of opportunity" for a ceasefire in other places in Syria, says the Russian Defense Ministry. The operation to liberate eastern Aleppo has, in fact, proven unique, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday. "The accomplished operation of the Russian Reconciliation Center [in Syria] to safely withdraw militants from [eastern] Aleppo with their families is unique, not only because the lives of nearly 10,000 Syrians were saved," he stated.

According to Konashenkov, "first and foremost, it is about a genuine and complete separation of militants of the so-called 'moderate opposition' from the irreconcilable radicals, thanks to the efforts of Russian officers from the Reconciliation Center." Konashenkov stressed that Moscow has managed to accomplish "what for a year our American partners considered to be impossible to implement in practice." An obligation to pressure 'moderate opposition' to differentiate themselves from the terrorists in Syria was part of Russia-US agreements signed in Geneva in February and September.

The EU member states have agreed to a Dutch ultimatum on Ukraine, which prevents the country from attaining membership or even candidate status, receiving military or financial assistance from the bloc, and denies Ukrainian nationals the right to live and work in the 28-nation union.

The Swedish government has told municipal authorities to prepare civil defense infrastructure and procedures for a possible war. The move was prompted by Sweden's return to the Cold War-era 'Total Defense Strategy'.

The instruction to ramp up preparedness for an armed conflict was sent to municipal security chiefs by the Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), an authority operating under the Defense Ministry and tasked with civil protection, public safety, emergency management and civil defense.

"This places a high demand on... operational speed, decision making, information sharing, crisis communication, flexibility, robustness and handling secret information," the letter says, according to Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), as cited by the Local.