Socialism and the End of the American Dream

A lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut alleges Heritage Pharmaceuticals, EpiPen-maker Mylan NV, and others conspired to manipulate U.S. drug prices. The suit was filed on behalf of the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, and at least 12 others. Naming Heritage Pharmaceuticals Inc. as the “ringleader” of the alleged conspiracy, the suit claims the prices of doxycycline hyclate, an antibiotic, and glyburide, a treatment drug for diabetics, were kept artificially high due to a scheme involving Mylan, Mayne Pharma, Aurobindo Pharma, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and Citron Pharma LLC. Federal prosecutors claim the price-fixing scheme was orchestrated by executives who have left Heritage. The suit is part of an ongoing, two-year long antitrust investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice. According to the New York Attorney General’s Office, former Heritage executives Jeffrey Glazer and Jason Malek conspired with others to avoid competition by “[entering] into numerous illegal conspiracies in order to unreasonably restrain trade, artificially inflate and manipulate prices and reduce competition.” By resorting to price-fixing, companies involved may have believed they would secure their market shares without presenting a major risk to one another. This alleged scheme, the suit argues, has caused “significant, lasting and ultimately harmful rippling effect in the United States healthcare system.” The 20 states named as plaintiffs in the suit claim the companies were aware of the legal ramifications of their actions and took steps to hide their intent and actions as soon as the investigation was launched.

Recently, Mylan was chastised for inflating the price of the EpiPen, a device used to combat life-threatening allergic reactions. As Anti-Media reported in August, news organizations “had a field day” when reports showed the price of the autoinjector had gone from $57 each in 2007 to $600 for a double package in 2016. During a hearing before Congress over the EpiPen scandal, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch called the outraged reactions to the price hike “overblown.” Adding that the price of the autoinjectors wouldn’t change anytime soon, Bresch defended the company’s decision, claiming “[Mylan]’s profit on its $609 EpiPen two-packs is about $50 per pen.” When examining Mylan’s involvement in politics since Bresch was named the company’s executive, it becomes apparent that Mylan may have had the opportunity to approach regulators from a privileged position due to the fact Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is the CEO’s father. By 2010, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had changed federal guidelines associated with epinephrine prescriptions, allowing Mylan to change its EpiPen labels. By shifting packaging and selling twin-packs instead of single pens while marketing the devices to “anyone at risk,” Mylan widened the EpiPen market. In 2013, a congressional bill pressuring states to have stocks of EpiPens on hand was signed into law. It was conceived after a local seven-year-old died due to an allergic reaction to peanuts.

Mylan lobbied heavily for this bill and spent over $1 million that year alone in lobbying efforts. Due to this legislative success, up to 47 states now “require or encourage schools to stock the devices.” But as the company led the fight to introduce the EpiPen to a larger audience, it also led a legal battle to bring its competitors to their knees by influencing regulation that artificially raises costs of doing business for other companies. From our August report: “In 2009, Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, and Mylan sued Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. over a patent infringement. At the time, the Israeli company was accused of using Mylan’s design without permission. But in 2012, both parties reached an agreement, and Teva was allowed to seek approval from the FDA for its epinephrine injecting device. “According to Gizmodo, Teva has failed to obtain approval from the FDA to develop affordable generic versions of the EpiPen. The company says it won’t try to go through the same process again until 2017. “The only other device that was closer to competing with Mylan’s EpiPen was Auvi-Q, and it was also driven out of the market. In 2015, the company launched a recall campaign claiming the devices could be delivering faulty dosages.”

A French court on Monday convicted International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde of "negligence" for her role in a controversial €400 million payout to a French tycoon in 2008 while she was finance minister. The Court of Justice did not hand down a sentence, a decision welcomed by her lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve, as a "partial" victory. “We wanted a complete acquittal, instead we got a partial one,” said Maisonneuve. “The court has decided to not to penalise her – in fact, the court even decided this should not go on Madame Lagarde’s criminal record.” Lagarde, 60, was accused of approving a controversial €400 million ($425 million) payout to businessman Bernard Tapie in an out-of-court settlement when she was finance minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

An arbitration panel ordered the payout to Tapie in connection with his sale of sportswear company Adidas. The panel upheld Tapie's claim that the Crédit Lyonnais bank had defrauded him by intentionally undervaluing Adidas at the time of the sale and that the state – as the bank's principal shareholder – should compensate him. It was Lagarde who, in her role as French finance minister, ordered the case to be heard by an arbitration panel instead of proceeding through the regular courts. Critics say that Lagarde ensured Tapie received preferential treatment by referring the matter to arbitration as a quid pro quo for his financial support for Sarkozy during his 2007 presidential bid. They also argue that the state should not have paid compensation to a convicted criminal who was bankrupt at the time and would not have been able to pursue the case in court. Tapie spent six months in prison in 1997 for match-fixing during his time as president of popular French football club, Olympique Marseille.

Tapie was placed under formal investigation for committing fraud in late June of 2013. He was ordered to pay back the money starting in December of last year. The "Tapie affair" has entangled several other high-profile figures, including Sarkozy’s ex-chief of staff Claude Guéant and Stéphane Richard, Lagarde’s former chief of staff at the finance ministry and now chief executive of Orange. Lagarde was appointed managing director of the IMF in July 2011. Lagarde served as French finance minister from June 2007 and also served as minister of foreign trade for two years. Before entering politics she worked as an anti-trust and labour lawyer, and was a partner with the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie.

Andrey Karlov, Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey has been shot and killed by a gunman in Turkey’s capital Ankara. Karlov was shot while delivering a speech at a phot exhibition. The gunman is believed to have been an Islamist who was motivated by Russia’s military intervention in Syria.

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed that Ambassador Andrey Karlov has been shot and killed in Ankara on December 19. The Russian Embassy in Turkey’s capital Ankara noted that it is believed that the gunman was a radical Islamist. The gunman allegedly shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo! Don’t forget Syria! As long as our brothers are not safe, you will not enjoy safety … Whoever has a share in this oppression will pay for it one-by-one … Only death will take me away from here”.

The gunman discharged his gun after Karlov had completed his speech. The Ambassador was rushed to hospital with a gunshot wound but succumbed to his injuries. The shooter was shot dead during a special police operation. At least three other persons were reportedly injured. The assassination came only one day before Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavuşoglu  was to Moscow to for talks with his Russian and Iranian counterparts Sergei Lavrov and Javad Zarif about the situation in Syria. Cavusoglu was already on his plane to Moscow when the attack happened.

On Thursday, the Senate passed a bill that puts every American who travels by plane at risk.  It is among the stupidest pieces of legislation ever written and it explains– to a great extent– why the US Congress has a public approval rating of 13 percent and is among the most loathed institutions in America. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the House last Friday in a 375-34 vote. On Thursday, it cleared the senate with a 92 to 7 margin.  The bill will now be sent to Obama where it is expected to be signed into law. According to an article on SOFREP titled  “Congress authorizes anti-aircraft missiles for Syrian opposition”: Congress for the first time authorized the Department of Defense to provide vetted-Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles. The provision is contained within the $619 billion Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the Senate on Dec. 8 and the House on Dec. 2. Under the bill, the Secretaries of Defense and State must submit a report to Congress explaining why they determined Syrian groups need man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). (SOFREP: Trusted News and Intelligence From Spec Ops Veterans, “Congress authorizes anti-aircraft missiles for Syrian opposition”)

You read that right, Congress just passed a bill that will provide shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles to lunatic jihadists who will undoubtedly use them to take down American or Israeli jetliners. The argument that these Islamic militants are fully vetted is complete nonsense as both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have repeatedly shown. According to a recent article in the New York Times, rebel groups supported by the USG  “have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of al Qaida in Syria formerly known as al Nusra.”  The Wall Street Journal reports that rebel groups are “doubling-down on their alliance with al Qaida. This alliance has rendered the phrase ‘moderate rebels’ meaningless.” Everyone who has followed developments on the ground in Syria knows that the distinction between the “good” terrorists and the “bad” terrorists is pure bunkum. The various militias are merely the many heads of the same homicidal anti-government hydra that has killed over 400,000 Syrians and decimated a large part of the country. The CIA should not be assisting any of these madmen let alone providing them with lethal state-of the-art weapons that will inevitably be used to take down US aircraft.  Here’s more from the same article: The inclusion of the provision represents a departure from previous versions of the NDAA. The original House bill specifically prohibited the transfer of MANPADS to “any entity” in Syria, while the Senate bill did not address it. So, the original bill forbid “the transfer of MANPADS” to Syrian militants because it was considered too dangerous. But now that Obama’s proxy-army is getting pulverized in Aleppo,  Congress has taken off the gloves and gone into full-revenge mode.  Isn’t that what’s really going on?

And it looks like Obama has already given this crazy policy a big thumbs up. Check out this “Presidential Determination and Waiver ….on the Arms Export Control Act to Support U.S. Special Operations to Combat Terrorism in Syria” that the White House issued late Thursday: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2249a of title 10, United States Code, sections 40 and 40A of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) (22 U.S.C. 2780 and 2781), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby: determine that the transaction, encompassing the provision of defense articles and services to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing U.S. military operations to counter terrorism in Syria, is essential to the national security interests of the United States.(Presidential Determination and Waiver) It looks to me like our Nobel prize-winning president just gave Congress’s idiot plan his ringing endorsement.

Gustavo Díaz of Venezuelan currency website “Dólar Today” declared his admiration and support for opposition leadership on the Miami-based television program “Agárrate” with Venezuelan Patricia Poleo this week. Díaz is a retired military official and served as security chief for Pedro Carmona Estanga who swore himself into the Venezuelan presidency after orchestrating a coup d’état against former President Hugo Chávez in April 2002. "We were the first ones to call [the Bolivarian government] 'dictatorship', 'totalitarian', 'tyranny', 'Chávez is a tyrant," he said, explaining the hard right-wing orientation of the website.  Dólar Today tracks the black market exchange rate between the US dollar and South American bolivar based on the dubious rates set by Colombian currency traders in Cúcuta.  Caracas has denounced Dólar Today’s allegedly outsized role in what it has called an "economic war" aimed at destabilizing the country. The website, it says, has influenced the bolivar’s devaluation and manipulated the exchange rate by evading government currency controls.    Díaz expressed praise for well-known opposition leaders such as Leopoldo López, Antonio Ledezma, and Maria Corina Machado, among others. 

The three are notorious for their ties to the US Embassy and for allegedly instigating violence against supporters of the Bolivarian government. Ledezma, former mayor of Caracas, was arrested by authorities in February 2015 in connection to the 2014 guarimba protest violence and the failed “Blue Coup” attempt against President Nicolás Maduro’s government. Ledezma is currently under house arrest. López, for his part, was the public face of the violent 2014 anti-government protests known as "The Exit", which left 43 dead, the majority of whom security personnel, government supporters, and passerby. He was sentenced to a 13 year prison sentence in September 2015.   Díaz resides in Alabama, United States after seeking asylum in 2005. The other two founders of Dólar Today live in Seattle and Miami according to Díaz’s interview. Dólar Today has faced two lawsuits filed by the Bolivarian government for “cyberterrorism” due to their alleged destabilization efforts. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in November, Díaz admitted to his intentional attacks against the government saying, “It's ironic that with Dólar Today in Alabama, I do more damage to the government than I did as a military man in Venezuela."

For years the influence of the CIA in Hollywood was hidden and unacknowledged. Now it’s more of an open secret; not publicized, but pretty easy to read up on if you care. Just ask the spy agency’s Entertainment Industry Liaison. Yes, such a thing really exists.You see, the CIA’s man in Hollywood wants to help actors, authors, directors, producers and screenwriters “gain a better understanding” of the intelligence agency in order to ensure “accurate portrayals” of its activities. It even wants to help fire up the neurons and actually give you some good ideas if you’re coming up short in that department. Indeed, the CIA provides “inspiration for future storylines” and lists them on its website. Of course, it’s all in the interest of creating authentic and balanced portrayals of US intelligence agencies and the US military. And they’re quite busy, too. Between 2006 and 2011, the CIA public relations office had input into at least 22 film and movie projects.In a column for the Washington Post in 2011, David Sirota noted that the Pentagon too enlists the help of Hollywood for PR purposes when things are going awry and Americans are becoming weary of war. Movies like Top Gun in the 1980s and Zero Dark Thirty more recently were made in consultation with the Pentagon and White House. The result of this “creative input for Pentagon assistance” bargain created an entertainment culture “rigged to produce relatively few anti-war movies and dozens of blockbusters that glorify the military” and which amounts to “government subsidized propaganda,” Sirota wrote.

The CIA has had a hand in creating TV shows like 24, Homeland and Alias. The Americans — an FX show about two Russian spies living undercover in the US — was created by a former CIA agent, and the agency reportedly approves the scripts for each episode.A piece in the Guardian in 2008 called the CIA’s involvement in Hollywood a “tale of deception and subversion that would seem improbable if it were put on screen”. Of course, it’s unlikely to be put on screen, given that the agency which provides guidance on CIA-related movies (...) is the CIA.

Remember the “inspiration for future storylines” list mentioned earlier? Well, guess what? The liaison’s “current pick” for a possible future movie project is about one Ryszard Kukliński — a Polish colonel and spy for NATO who spent years passing secret Soviet documents to the CIA. I wonder why they’d be interested in that sort of thing right now. It couldn’t be anything to do with deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, could it?It may sound like conspiracy theory, but the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment revealed that the the US State Department has actively sought out the biggest players in Hollywood and tried to enlist their help with what they called “anti-Russia messaging” for the public’s consumption through innocent entertainment. In other words, the government asked Hollywood for help producing propaganda — although I’m sure the State Department would call it something nicer.Richard Stengel, the US under secretary for public diplomacy, wrote to Sony CEO Mark Lynton explaining that the government needed help countering both ISIS and “Russian narratives” and said this wasn’t something the State Department could do “on its own”. He suggested convening a meeting of media executives to discuss ideas, content, production and “commercial possibilities”. Lynton responded with a list of media executives at other entertainment companies including Disney and Fox. It’s unclear from the emails whether that meeting Stengel requested ever happened, but judging by much of the recent entertainment industry output, one might be forgiven for assuming it did.

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt. As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened. The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype: The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government. Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.” “I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things. “If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States. “America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.” But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB. It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling. Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake. In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

On December 11, Craig Murray posted the article, entitled ‘The CIA’s Absence of Conviction.’ It was quickly shared by several hundred Facebook users — but 12 hours later, the post had received a mere 22 visits via the social networking site.

The former ambassador then published another article, calling out Facebook’s clampdown. Within hours, visitors from Facebook skyrocketed. “There’s no doubt Facebook suppressed my piece. Evidently, someone at the site saw I’d realized what was going on and flicked a proverbial switch, because not long after my supplementary post, visits from Facebook exploded. Overall, the article’s been viewed around 150,000 times now, with half of that traffic flowing from Facebook.”

The suppressed article set out to counter allegations of Russian hacker involvement in the Podesta and DNC email leaks. Murray said he was “incredulous” at how the CIA’s “unsubstantiated” “blatant lie” had grown as a media story. “A little logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. They claim to “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilize a US election, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or made subject to banking and other restrictions — even though the CIA knows who the individuals are?” Beyond logic, Murray told Sputnik with certainty the source of the emails was an “insider leak”, from “someone with legal access” to the emails — he’s certain, as he’s met one of the leakers in question. They are “certainly not Russian,” he added. “The worst thing about all this is it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries — and of course bigger budgets for the CIA.”

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he was considering imposing a lifetime ban on U.S. military procurement officials going to work for defense contractors, a move that could dramatically reshape the defense industry.Three days after publicly rebuking Boeing Co over the cost of the next-generation Air Force One presidential aircraft, Trump floated the idea of such a ban at a rally for Republican supporters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana."I think anybody that gives out these big contracts should never ever, during their lifetime, be allowed to work for a defense company, for a company that makes that product," Trump said. "I don't know, it makes sense to me."He added that he "got the idea yesterday" as he thought about "massive" cost overruns for military equipment but needed to "check this out" first before making any decisions.Trump said such a ban would make "a big, big difference because the purchasing in this country is out of control, for everything, not only military."

Ögmundur Jonasson said US authorities first told him in June 2011 that there was an 'imminent attack' on Iceland's government databases But when they arrived in August, Jonasson claims the FBI 'sought Iceland's cooperation to frame Assange and WikiLeaks' Jonasson said he then immediately kicked them out of Iceland The story was widely reported on in 2013, but Jonasson made no mention of the US trying to frame Assange It became known that the mission was part of a 'wide-ranging investigation' into Assange and WikiLeaks Jonnason said himself he made it clear he is on 'Assange and WikiLeaks' side'

Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday that an agreement on the evacuation of militants from eastern Aleppo, Syria had been reached and that the evacuation could start within hours.

On Tuesday, ahead of the UN Security Council meeting, Chrurkin tol the press: “My latest information is that they indeed have an arrangement achieved on the ground that the fighters are going to leave the city“. During the Security Council session, Churkin stressed that the evacuation of civilians from the remaining “rebel-held” districts of Aleppo was no longer necessary because the militants had agreed to evacuate. Churkin also noted that the counter-terrorist operation in Aleppo would conclude within hours. Militants are in the process of evacuating the city through corridors of their own choice and will leave in the direction of Idlib province, he said. He also noted that the militants were allowed to take their families with them. Syrian and Russian State media show images of celebration, Aleppo citizens who are praising the army while images have largely been “sanitized”. Some allegedly “independent” media also show captured “rebels” being mocked but treated relatively fairly, at least while they are paraded before the cameras.

Moreover, nsnbc’s source in Aleppo also reported that an unknown number of insurgents is determined to stay behind and to battle it out with the advancing Syrian forces despite their hopeless position. The insurgents are holding no more than between 4 – 5 square kilometers of the city but house to house combat in densely populated areas is notoriously slow and dangerous. Churkin’s assessment that all of Aleppo could be “liberated within hours” seems overly optimistic he said.

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government. Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.” “I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things. “If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States. “America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”

As the hysteria about Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. election grows, a key mystery is why U.S. intelligence would rely on “circumstantial evidence” when it has the capability for hard evidence, say U.S. intelligence veterans. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity MEMORANDUM Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless A New York Times report on Monday alluding to “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” leading the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump” is, sadly, evidence-free. This is no surprise, because harder evidence of a technical nature points to an inside leak, not hacking – by Russians or anyone else.

We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack. Here’s the difference between leaking and hacking: Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization and gives it to some other person or organization, as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning did. Hack: When someone in a remote location electronically penetrates operating systems, firewalls or any other cyber-protection system and then extracts data. All signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the National Security Agency would know it – and know both sender and recipient. In short, since leaking requires physically removing data – on a thumb drive, for example – the only way such data can be copied and removed, with no electronic trace of what has left the server, is via a physical storage device.

These collection resources are extensive [see attached NSA slides 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; they include hundreds of trace route programs that trace the path of packets going across the network and tens of thousands of hardware and software implants in switches and servers that manage the network. Any emails being extracted from one server going to another would be, at least in part, recognizable and traceable by all these resources. The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network. The various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like “our best guess” or “our opinion” or “our estimate” etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been “hacked” cannot be traced across the network. Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked. The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods. Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.

This is the way the Obama administration ends; not with a bang, but a pathetic whimper. Queen of War Hillary "We Came, We Saw, He Died" Clinton's campaign - fully supported by President Obama — spent a whopping $1.2 billion and floundered ignominiously at the US presidential election. So Obama decided that the consolation "prize" is to order the "intelligence community" - a contradiction in terms - to conduct a "full review" of how the evil Russians handed out the Big Prize to Donald Trump.

Washington D.C., December 12, 2016 – Newly declassified documents show that the risk of nuclear proliferation at the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 was even greater than publicly known at the time, with 3,429 Soviet strategic warheads scattered outside of Russia in various former Soviet republics, according to today’s posting by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The publication marks the 25th anniversary of the day President George H.W. Bush signed the historic Nunn-Lugar legislation into law, beginning a flow of U.S. funding that helped secure the post-Soviet nuclear weapons as well as reduce chemical and biological dangers, with the hands-on cooperation of Russian, Kazakh and American military personnel and scientists.

Obama also accurately described himself and his own record of militarism. To defend against charges that he Loves the Terrorists, he boasted: As commander-in-chief, I have not shied away from using force when necessary. I have ordered tens of thousands of young Americans into combat. … I’ve ordered military action in seven countries. By “ordered military actions in seven countries,” what he means is that he has ordered bombs dropped, and he has extinguished the lives of thousands of innocent people, in seven different countries, all of which just so happen to be predominantly Muslim. The list includes one country where he twice escalated a war that was being waged when he was inaugurated (Afghanistan), another where he withdrew troops to great fanfare only to then order a new bombing campaign (Iraq), two countries where he converted very rare bombings into a constant stream of American violence featuring cluster bombs and “signature strikes” (Pakistan and Yemen), one country where he continued the policy of bombing at will (Somalia), and one country where he started a brand new war even in the face of Congressional rejection of his authorization to do so, leaving it in tragic shambles (Libya). That doesn’t count the aggression by allies that he sanctioned and supported (in Gaza), nor the proxy wars he enabled (the current Saudi devastation of Yemen), nor the whole new front of cyberattacks he has launched, nor the multiple despots he has propped up, nor the clandestine bombings that he still has not confirmed (Philippines).

[As the military historian and former U.S. Army Col. Andrew Bacevich noted in the Washington Post after Obama began bombing Syria, “Syria has become at least the 14th country in the Islamic world that U.S. forces have invaded or occupied or bombed, and in which American soldiers have killed or been killed. And that’s just since 1980.” That is the fact that, by itself, renders tribalistic Westerners who obsessively harp on the violence of Muslims such obvious self-deluded jokes.]

Forces of the Islamic State reentered the Syrian city of Palmyra on forcing Syrian troops to withdraw to the suburbs. The campaign against Palmyra was launched nine months after Syrian and Russian forces liberated the ancient city and UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Islamic State columns launched coordinated attacks from the east, north and south of the city. ISIS threw an estimated 4,000 troops into the renewed battle for Palmyra. ISIS fighters also seized the Tar mountain, close to the Palmyra Citadel, west of the city, in tandem with shelling the citadel with mortar shells and heavy artillery. A local source reports that ISIS gathered troops from Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zor to launch the attack. Losses, including heavy losses from fierce fighting have been reported on both sides. However, no official casualty figures from the standoff were released.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility for the twin bomb attack near Istanbul’s Beşiktas’s Vodafone Arena Stadium that killed 38 people and wounded 166 Saturday night. The TAK, a PKK offshoot is believed to be infiltrated and at least in part handled by Turkish and NATO intelligence. The bombings happened as a drat resolution for sweeping constitutional change was presented in parliament and as the U.S. declared its solidarity with Turkey in its fight against the PKK.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) published a claim of responsibility for the deadly twin bombing in Istanbul Saturday night. The TAK mentions several reasons for the bombing; among the primary ones is the continued imprisonment of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan. The TAK split off from the PKK in the early 200os. The organization has no more than about 200 – 300 armed members. Most objective political analysts and intelligence analysts consider the TAK to be an organization that, at the very least, has been deeply infiltrated by, and one that is at the very least in part managed by Turkish and NATO intelligence structures. The TAK are notorious for carrying out low-cost, high-public-profile attacks that result in support for otherwise controversial Turkish government or NATO policies. The TAKs strategy, including attacks on non-combatant civilians, is largely inconsistent with the policy and the strategy of the PKK. The latter primarily launches guerrilla attacks against military targets.

The twin bombings in Istanbul happened not long after Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, (AKP), submitted a 21-article draft for a constitutional amendment in parliament. The proposal aims at abolishing the post of the prime minister and to institute a presidential system instead. The proposed system will vastly enhance the powers for the head of state. An agreement between the AKP and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has been reached while the CHP opposes it “somewhat” and the leftist pro-Kurdistan peace HDP opposes it fully. The draft constitutional amendment was submitted to the parliamentary speaker on Dec. 10, one day prior to the bombings in Istanbul. It is widely believed to be adopted by parliament after the mandatory readings. The draft proposes granting the president the authority to issue decree laws, declare a state of emergency, rule the country with resolutions during states of emergency, appoint public officials and half of the top judges. If the bill passes parliament, may be submitted for a public referendum, although it is questionable whether such a referendum would even be considered valid while the country still maintains a state of emergency and numerous HDP members, including members of parliament and Mayors are jailed or otherwise persecuted. The draft proposes a one-chamber parliament and stresses the country’s unitary system that implicitly rejects a republican model or regional autonomy for Kurdish areas. Peace negotiations between the Turkish AKP government and the PKK during the ceasefire that was unilaterally ended by the government last year, had led the PKK to drop its demand for aa separate Kurdish State in exchange for forms of regional autonomy and cultural self-determination in predominantly Kurdish areas.

Syrian, Russian and allied forces have suspended most of their military operations against insurgents in the remaining “rebel-held” area in eastern Aleppo to facilitate the evacuation of more civilians and to give insurgents an additional opportunity to decide whether they want to surrender of continue a lost battle. However, sporadic fighting continued.

The Russian Defense Ministry, on Saturday, noted that military operations against insurgents in eastern Aleppo had been suspended to facilitate the evacuation of non-combatant civilians. The pause in combat operations also gave insurgents an additional chance to lay down their arms. Insurgents had been given the choice to evacuate to other “rebel-held” areas. Syrian citizens were also given the opportunity to surrender to have their status settled, be granted an amnesty and to return to a normal life.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov stated that “More than 20,000 residents left eastern Aleppo in the first part of Saturday, and 1,217 militants laid down their weapons.” No details about the exact whereabouts of those who surrendered were provided. The evacuation was monitored by drones and webcams and broadcast life. Remaining insurgents are holding on to about ten percent of the area of Aleppo they controlled about three weeks ago. nsnbc could not independently verify that 20,000 have been evacuated, but an nsnbc correspondent located in Aleppo confirmed that “a substantial number of civilians were evacuated to relatively safe places such as makeshift evacuation centers in the Jebrin area. nsnbc’s correspondent noted that “the 20,000 mentioned in some State media reports appear strongly exaggerated and that the number of those who were evacuated on Saturday is closer to about 5,000 – 6,000 persons. Last week the International Committee of the Red Cross commented that some 30,000 civilians had fled eastern Aleppo to government-controlled areas. Russian officers in Aleppo are also coordinating aid efforts with the Red Cross, the Red Crescent and other internationally recognized aid organizations. Meanwhile, a statement issued by the Russian Reconciliation Center said the Russian mine disposal experts continue their work alongside the engineering members within the Syrian army to clear liberated areas in the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo. The Center noted that mines have been removed in an area of 8 hectares, while explosive devices have also been removed from 24 buildings, bakery, two schools, two mosques, power stations and 4.5 km of roads. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad also said that the decision for taking all of Aleppo has been taken, adding that the army recapture of rebel-held areas in Aleppo will change the course of the battles in Syria. The Syrian government also strongly condemned the United States’ decision to legalize the increased transfer of weapons to “rebels” in Syria under the banner of fighting terrorism. It is noteworthy that the U.S. administration has not published any details about how exactly it wants to monitor whom exactly it transfers weapons to and which mechanisms it will put in place to assure that these weapons would be used in the “fight against terrorism”.