Source: Strategic-Culture.org, by Eric Zuesse Was the Cold War against communism, or against Russia? Russia was our ally in World War II, and we’d have a Nazi world today if 26 million Russians had…
Source: But I Thought the Cold War Was Supposed to Have Been About Ideology
Putin has had enough of the relentless barrage of US accusations that he, personally, “hacked the US presidential election.”
The Russian president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that the US must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its elections or prove it. Peskov said it was “indecent” of the United States to “groundlessly” accuse Russia of intervention in its elections.
“You need to either stop talking about it, or finally show some kind of proof. Otherwise it just looks very indecent”, Peskov told Reporters in Tokyo where Putin is meeting with Japan PM Abe, responding to the latest accusations that Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.
Peskov also warned that Obama’s threat to “retaliate” to the alleged Russian hack is “against both American and international law”, hinting at open-ended escalation should Obama take the podium today at 2:15pm to officially launch cyberwar against Russia.
Previously, on Thursday, Peskov told the AP the report was “laughable nonsense“, while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused “Western media” of being a “shill” and a “mouthpiece of various power groups”, and added that “it’s not the general public who’s being manipulated,” Zakharova said. “the general public nowadays can distinguish the truth. It’s the mass media that is manipulating themselves.”
Meanwhile, on Friday Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister told state television network, Russia 24, he was “dumbstruck” by the NBC report which alleges that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in an election hack.
The report cited U.S. intelligence officials that now believe with a “high level of confidence” that Putin became personally involved in a secret campaign to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. “I think this is just silly, and the futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious,” Lavrov added, according to the news outlet.
As a reminder, last night Obama vowed retaliatory action against Russia for its meddling in the US presidential election last month. “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing,” Obama told National Public Radio.
US intelligence agencies in October pinned blame on Russia for election-related hacking. At the time, the White House vowed a “proportional response” to the cyberactivity, though declined to preview what that response might entail. Meanwhile, both President-elect Donald Trump, the FBI, and the ODNI have dismissed the CIA’s intelligence community’s assessment, for the the same reason Putin finally lashed out at Obama: there is no proof.
That, however, has never stopped the US from escalating a geopolitical conflict to the point of war, or beyond, so pay close attention to what Obama says this afternoon.
According to an NBC report, a team of analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Friday that they believe the outgoing administration is likely to take action which could result in a significant barrier for Trump’s team once he takes office in January.
“It is unlikely that U.S. intelligence reports will change Trump’s intention to initiate a rapprochement with Moscow, but the congressional response following its own investigations could obstruct the new administration’s effort,” Eurasia Group analysts added.
At the same time, Wikileaks offered its “validation” services, tweeting that “Obama should submit any Putin documents to WikiLeaks to be authenticated to our standards if he wants them to be seen as credible.”
We doubt Obama would take the whistleblower organization on its offer, even if he did have any Putin documents to authenticate.
First things first, John Podesta lost and so we are surprised at the temerity of the demands in his Washington Post op-ed today… “The more we learn about the Russian plot to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and elect Donald Trump, and the failure of the FBI to adequately respond, the more shocking it gets,” he begins…
The former acting director of the CIA has called the Russian cyberattack “the political equivalent of 9/11.” Just as after the real 9/11, we need a robust, independent investigation into what went wrong inside the government and how to better protect our country in the future.As the former chair of the Clinton campaign and a direct target of Russian hacking, I understand just how serious this is. So I was surprised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI discovered the Russian attack in September 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior Democratic National Committee officials. Instead, messages were left with the DNC IT “help desk.” As a former head of the FBI cyber division told the Times, this is a baffling decision: “We are not talking about an office that is in the middle of the woods of Montana.”
What takes this from baffling to downright infuriating is that at nearly the exact same time that no one at the FBI could be bothered to drive 10 minutes to raise the alarm at DNC headquarters, two agents accompanied by attorneys from the Justice Department were in Denver visiting a tech firm that had helped maintain Clinton’s email server.
This trip was part of what FBI Director James B. Comey described as a “painstaking” investigation of Clinton’s emails, “requiring thousands of hours of effort” from dozens of agents who conducted at least 80 interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. Of course, as Comey himself concluded, in the end, there was no case; it was not even a close call.
Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.
Perhaps, Mr Podesta, that is because the email ‘scandal’ was an actual thing – laws were potentially broken, and the evidence was there. Perhaps The FBI in fact focused on facts, not conjecture about a Russian hack? But please continue…
There are now reports that Vladimir Putin personally directed the covert campaign to elect Trump. So are teams of FBI agents busy looking into the reported meeting in Moscow this summer between Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser, and the Putin aide in charge of Russian intelligence on the U.S. election? What about evidence that Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks and knew in advance that my hacked emails were about to be leaked? Are thousands of FBI person-hours being devoted to uncovering Trump’s tangled web of debts and business deals with foreign entities in Russia and elsewhere?Meanwhile, House Republicans who had an insatiable appetite for investigating Clinton have been resistant to probing deeply into Russia’s efforts to swing the election to Trump. The media, by gleefully publishing the gossipy fruits of Russian hacks, became what the Times itself calls “a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.”
But the FBI’s role is particularly troubling because of its power and responsibility — and because this is part of a trend. The Justice Department’s Inspector General issued a damning report this summer about the FBI’s failure to prioritize cyberthreats more broadly.
So it’s a vast right-wing conspiracy between The FBI, The Republican establishment (who hated Trump!!!), and Vladimir Putin?
Finally Podesta concludes with more warmongery and bitterness…
“The election is over and the damage is done, but the threat from Russia and other potential aggressors remains urgent and demands a serious and sustained response.”
‘Over’ indeed.
Overnight Media Digest
WSJ
– Russian hackers tried to penetrate the computer networks of the Republican National Committee, using the same techniques that allowed them to infiltrate its Democratic counterpart, according to U.S. officials briefed on the matter. http://on.wsj.com/2hBTGNq
– Facebook is inching closer to fact-checking the news on its platform, a role that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg shunned a month ago, by rolling out steps to weed out “the worst of the worst”, the social media platform said on Thursday. http://on.wsj.com/2hBPXzB
– Yahoo Inc’s move to force some users to reset their passwords following a newly disclosed security breach could disrupt the planned sale of its core assets to Verizon , security experts say. http://on.wsj.com/2hBM3XB
– Natural-gas giant Chesapeake Energy is drilling ‘supersize’ wells that run for miles underground, hoping to produce more fossil fuels for less cost and turn its fortunes around in an era of low oil prices. http://on.wsj.com/2hBRaHl
– The evacuation of thousands of civilians and rebels from the last opposition-held pocket in Aleppo began, forcing residents who pleaded to escape the violence to accept they might never return home. http://on.wsj.com/2hBRc1V
– Dow Chemical finally gained the right to convert $4 billion of preferred stock into common shares, ridding the company of an expensive burden and depriving Warren Buffett of another lucrative crisis-era investment. http://on.wsj.com/2hBOdXi
FT
– French nuclear group Aveva received a 500 million euro offer for a 10 percent stake in a in a new nuclear fuel company that will be split off from its parent. The company named is preparing to split off its uranium mining and nuclear fuel activities into NewCo.
– Gilead Sciences was ordered by a jury to pay a subsidiary of Merck & Co $2.54 billion in damages in a patent-infringement trial over two of Gilead’s Hepatitis C drugs.
– Facebook is setting up a partnership with fact-checking organisations and will try out new ways to report and flag fake news this week to try to address the “worst of the worst” hoaxes spread by spammers.
– Italy’ largest bank by market capitalisation Intesa Sanpaolo has been fined $235 million by U.S. regulators for violating anti-money laundering and bank secrecy laws.
NYT
– Facebook Inc said on Thursday that it had begun a series of experiments to limit misinformation on its site. The tests include making it easier for its 1.8 billion members to report fake news, and creating partnerships with external fact-checking organizations to help it indicate when articles are false. The company is also changing some advertising practices to stop purveyors of fake news from profiting from it. http://nyti.ms/2gPxMaJ
– A security researcher said hackers are offering records of more than 1 billion Yahoo Inc users on Dark Web, after the company disclosed the largest known data breach in history. http://nyti.ms/2h6Ug4Z
– The prosecutor in the trial against Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, raised the possibility that she would be acquitted of criminal charges linked to the misuse of public funds, after he called the case “very weak” on Thursday. http://nyti.ms/2gHDWqb
– A wide-ranging investigation into generic drug prices took its most significant turn yet on Thursday, as state attorneys general accused two industry leaders, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Mylan NV, and four smaller companies of engaging in brazen price-fixing schemes – and promised that more charges were coming. http://nyti.ms/2hDjisZ
– California’s state energy agency voted unanimously Wednesday to approve new regulations for energy efficiency in desktop computers and monitors. The rules passed by the state’s energy agency represent another step in California’s efforts to drastically lower its greenhouse gas emissions. http://nyti.ms/2hqOPkb
Britain
The Times
* Online food delivery group Just Eat Plc has announced plans to buy its rivals Hungryhouse in Britain and SkipTheDishes in Canada, for a total of about 300 million pounds ($372.54 million). (http://bit.ly/2hM3rMb)
* Lloyd’s of London said it had begun finalising plans to set up a new EU-based subsidiary and was looking at five European cities as homes, with Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris understood to be on its shortlist. (http://bit.ly/2hM5pw8)
The Guardian
* The Dutch company Heineken NV and the investment firm Patron Capital have won a 400 million pounds ($496.72 million) battle to take over Punch Taverns Plc, which has more than 3,000 pubs across UK. (http://bit.ly/2hLTSN4)
* British Communications Workers Union said the Post Office had rejected its offer to suspend strike next week after talks over jobs, pay and pensions broke down on Thursday. (http://bit.ly/2hM2kft)
The Telegraph
* Britain will be presented with a 50 billion pounds ($62.09 billion) “exit bill” by the European Union as soon as Theresa May triggers Article 50, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier is warning. (http://bit.ly/2hLURgq)
* Tesco Plc’s former commercial boss Kevin Grace has been told that he will not face charges from the Serious Fraud Office over the 326 million pounds ($404.83 million) accounting scandal that threw the supermarket into crisis and cost him his job. (http://bit.ly/2hM0yej)
Sky News
* Retailer JD Sports Fashion Plc is to launch an investigation following claims aired in a documentary that conditions are “worse than a prison”. (http://bit.ly/2hLTBK1)
* Rentokil Initial Plc, the support services group, has agreed a deal to combine parts of its workwear and hygiene units with Haniel, a privately owned German company. (http://bit.ly/2hLYQtx)
The Independent
* European pay-TV firm Sky Plc has agreed to a takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox for 11.7 billion pounds ($14.53 billion)in a deal that could create one of the most powerful media groups in the UK. (http://ind.pn/2hLPf5E)
* The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold at 0.25 percent – but the minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee’s latest meeting also state that the recent strengthening of sterling is likely to help contain inflation. (http://ind.pn/2hLW86X) ($1 = 0.8053 pounds)
Donald Nixes P.D.B! Smart Move!
The NYTimes article entitled “What Is the President’s Daily Brief?” by Charlie Savage [Dec.12, 2016] correctly points out that POTUS Trump will not read/listen to his President’s Daily Brief [PDB].
Trump claims the following:
“You know, I’m like a smart person.” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years—but eight years. I don’t need that. But I do say if something should change let us know.”
Right on!
Once again, Trump has broken with an antiquated intelligence tradition where the WH occupants and their toadies receive a daily assessment of the status of world events as the intelligence community assesses it. Yet, Trump knows all too well that this PDB is nothing more than the CIA trying to suck up to every POTUS since Harry Truman.
CIA is being marginalized by Lt.Gen. Mike Flynn because he knows, like myself and many other intelligence practitioners, that the CIA is highly politicized and ineffective. The agency will provide a view point of the world that reaffirms its own sense of importance. The PDB is really not worth the money nor the time required to produce it on a daily basis.
The fifteen different military intelligence agencies which do not directly prepare the PDB are far more relevant to the WH situation room and combatants in the kinetic field of battle than anything that the CIA can ever produce. For the most part, the PDB is quite boring to read. Like most civilian intelligence, it suffers from being static, repetitive, and inconsistent.
As Andrew Liepman, a former CIA official, who prepared the PDB said:
“I think that over time, the intelligence community has overcorrected and become almost boring and robotic in language,” he said. “The community takes great pride in that predictability and consistency.”
What is missing in the narrative about Trump’s nixing of the PDB is the simple fact that Donald can rely on a variety of seasoned military generals who are far more conversant with counter-terrorism, China, and the Middle East than anybody in the CIA.
For the most part, the CIA has been its own instrument of self-destruction. It has engaged an obscene numbers of covert activities overseas that have led to the creation of the following problems: Al Qaeda, ISIS, Benghazi tragedy, Afghanistan war, Sunni vs Shi’ite wars, Iraq dissolution, Syria civil war, et.al.
With four US military generals in key positions of the USG, they should be the only ones to determine when and if American taxpayers will foot the bill for another unnecessary war. I have always assumed a basic truth about the military. No general wants to create a war which he/she cannot not win.
It’s time that we reorganize the 16 different branches of the bloated intelligence community and rid ourselves of redundancy, laggard analyses, and the artificial divide between a covert operative and analysts.Those are antiquated concepts that came out of a Cold War era that in which we prevailed despite a faltering CIA that could not/would not think out-of-the-box.
Trump is breath of fresh air. He will blow away the engorged bureaucracies streaming out of our over-inflated military-industrial complex. Example:
The F-35 fighter jet may be good for the IDF. Yet for Americans, those planes are totally useless when we have all the kill power required in our nuclear subs, cyber-command, and Electronic Warfare capabilities. We have wasted $400 billion on these useless fighter jets when the internet binary numbers cost us almost nothing and can devastate a society in fractions of a second.
Former POTUS Gerald Ford said the following:
“I’ve had a lot of experience with people smarter than I am.”
Right on … Babies aren’t people anyway so what difference does it make. Remember that abortion is OK all the way to birth so obviously the baby can be scarified to some bizarre theory of self esteem.
(There is no way in hell I would believe the following story. Why should I? NBC is part of the Obama team who have lied to us for eight years. ) (Go fly a kite.) Why Didn’t Obama Do More Ab…
Veteran financial guru Larry Kudlow, who served as the Donald Trump campaign’s senior economic adviser, predicts to Newsmax TV that President-elect Donald Trump is assembling the type of cabi…
Source: KOMMONSENTSJANE – LARRY KUDLOW: TRUMP TO END OBAMA’S ‘WAR AGAINST BUSINESS’
Originally posted on John A Pappas: My friends it can not be shown any better from the recount in Michigan that the fix was in for Hillary Clinton to win the presidential election. This is what hap…
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