Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Obama seeks to tie Trump’s hands, imposes more sanctions on Russia

By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | December 20, 2016

The Obama administration leaves office with a sting in its tail, announcing more sanctions against Russia over Crimea and the war in the Donbass.

The additional new sanctions are minimal and largely symbolic.  They affect nine regional units of the Russian gas producer Novatek, a number of subsidiaries of the Russian Agricultural Bank, Crimean Ports, Crimean Railways, the Stroiproekt Institute, which is one of the organisations involved in designing the Kerch bridge project, the Karst company, which is one of the main subcontractors for the Kerch bridge project, the Transflot shipping company, two ships belonging to the Transflot company (Marshal Zhukov and Stalingrad), and FAU Glavgosekspertiza Rossii, which is the Russian agency responsible for expert reviews of design documents and findings of engineering surveys.

In addition individual sanctions have been imposed or extended against 7 individuals.

Six of these individuals (Kirill Kovalchuk, Dmitri Lebedev, Dmitri Mansurov, Mikhail Klishin, Oleg Minaev, and Mikhail Dedov) are sanctioned because they are connected to Bank Rossiya, ABR Management, or Sobinbank.

Bank Rossiya was placed on the US Treasury’s original sanctions list in 2014.  The Obama administration believes – quite groundlessly – that Vladimir Putin has a personal connection to Bank Rossiya, and has insinuated that he is in fact its owner.  There is in fact no evidence that Vladimir Putin had any special connection to Bank Rossiya before US sanctions were imposed on the bank in 2014, though after the sanctions were imposed, and in response to them, Putin publicly said he would open an account with it.

The seventh individual placed on the sanctions list is a Russian businessman, Yevgeny Prigozhin.  The US Treasury justifies its decision to place him on the sanctions list in this way

Prigozhin has extensive business dealings with the Russian Federation Ministry of Defence, and a company with significant ties to him holds a contract to build a military base near the Russian Federation border with Ukraine.

Prigozhin is moreover accused of

having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, senior officials of the Russian Federation.

The expression “senior officials of the Russian Federation” is widely recognised code for President Putin himself.

If there is an overarching theme to these new sanctions, it is that they either sanction individuals and companies engaged in upgrading Crimea’s infrastructure – in particular the Kerch bridge – or continue the practice of targeting individuals the Obama administration has (wrongly) convinced itself are custodians of Vladimir Putin’s mythical billions.

The Russians have already made clear that the new sanctions will not affect the Kerch bridge project, and that they reserve the right to undertake what they call an “asymmetric response” to them.

What does the Obama administration achieve by imposing these ineffectual sanctions a month before it leaves office?

The short answer is that the sanctions do not seem intended to target Russia so much as Donald Trump, who has made clear that he wants to improve relations with Russia.  In particular they seem designed to make more difficult the Senate confirmation of Rex Tillerson (Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of State) who as CEO of Exxon has made known his opposition to the sanctions.  Quite possibly demands will be made that Trump and Tillerson commit themselves to maintaining the sanctions in order to secure Tillerson’s confirmation.

If so then this shows the extent to which hostility to Russia has become for the Obama administration an obsession.  It seems that even in its dying days it is doing all it can to make sure its hostility to Russia remains US policy even after it is gone, by trying to tie the hands of the next President, who is known to favour a different policy.

The Russians themselves have understood the frankly pathological quality behind this latest action, making dark predictions that it won’t be the last one before the Obama administration ends its life.  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said as much shortly after the new sanctions were announced

I won’t be surprised if on January 20, the day of inauguration of the next US president, one minute before Donald Trump takes office, at 11:59, we will once again see behind some curtain, in the corner, those who continuously produce such kind of decisions once again inventing certain rescripts, decisions, pushing into an abyss relations with Russia that are already in tatters due to Washington’s irresponsible and senseless policy.

Whether that is indeed what will happen, and whether the Obama administration really can tie the hands of the next President in this way, remains to be seen.  In the meantime it is a frankly sad and even disturbing way for the Obama administration to see out its life.

December 20, 2016 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

Fewer than one third of Americans agree that Russia is responsible for US election hacks

c0ddhkuw8ae4z_f

Sputnik – 20.12.2016

Almost half of American voters do not agree with the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that the government of Russia is responsible for cyberattacks related to the 2016 election, a new Morning Consult/Politico poll revealed on Tuesday.

When asked which statement came closest to their views, 46 percent said, “We cannot be sure about who is primarily responsible for hacking and cyber-attacks that may have impacted the US election.”

Respondents said tracing cyber-attacks is complicated and the intelligence groups now claiming Russian meddling “are the same ones that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Twenty-nine percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “We know with near certainty that Russia is responsible for hacking and cyber-attacks that impacted the US election.”

Those respondents said that US intelligence agencies have used advanced techniques to determine who is responsible for the cyberattacks “and we are only playing into an unfriendly country’s hand when we deny this.

A quarter of respondents said they were not sure or had no opinion on the election hacking.

In general, the responses followed opinions along party lines, with 63 percent of Republicans and 28 percent of Democrats saying the United States cannot be sure about the origin of the attacks, according to the poll.

Outgoing President Barack Obama suggested during his last news conference on Friday that the cyberattacks were likely initiated at the highest levels of the Russian government.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied Washington’s claims of election-meddling, characterizing them as absurd and an attempt to distract Americans from domestic issues.

December 20, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | 6 Comments

The Real Saboteurs of a Trump Foreign Policy

8c3f80a1-994a-4047-8f91-6dd59f779da1

By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • December 20, 2016

The never-Trumpers are never going to surrender the myth that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee to defeat Clinton and elect Donald Trump.

Their investment in the myth is just too huge.

For Clinton and her campaign, it is the only way to explain how they booted away a presidential election even Trump thought he had lost in November. To the mainstream media, this is the smoking gun in their Acela Corridor conspiracy to delegitimize Trump’s presidency.

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sees Russian hacking as a way to put a cloud over the administration before it begins. But it is the uber-hawks hereabouts who are after the really big game.

They seek to demonize Putin as the saboteur of democracy — someone who corrupted an American presidential election to bring about victory for a “useful idiot” whom Clinton called Putin’s “puppet.”

If the War Party can convert this “fake story” into the real story of 2016, then they can scuttle any Trump effort to attain the rapprochement with Russia that Trump promised to try to achieve.

If they can stigmatize Trump as “Putin’s president” and Putin as America’s implacable enemy, then the Russophobes are back in business.

Nor is the War Party disguising its goal.

Over the weekend, Sen. John McCain called for a congressional select committee to investigate Russian hacking into the Clinton campaign. The purpose of the investigations, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, “is to put on President Trump’s desk crippling sanctions against Russia.”

“They need to pay a price,” Graham chortled on Twitter.

“Crippling sanctions” would abort any modus vivendi, any deal with Russia, before Trump could negotiate one. Trump would have to refuse to impose them — and face the firestorm to follow. The War Party is out to dynamite any detente with Russia before it begins.

Among the reasons Trump won is that he promised to end U.S. involvement in the costly, bloody and interminable wars in the Middle East the Bushites and President Barack Obama brought us — and the neocons relish — and to reach a new understanding with Russia and Putin.

But to some in Washington, beating up on Russia is a conditioned reflex dating to the Cold War. For others in the media and the front groups called think tanks, Russophobia is in their DNA.

Though Julian Assange says WikiLeaks did not get the emails from Russia, this has to be investigated. Did Russia hack the DNC’s email system and John Podesta’s email account? Did Putin direct that the emails be provided to WikiLeaks to disrupt democracy or defeat Clinton?

Clinton says Putin has had it in for her because he believes she was behind the anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow in 2011.

But if there is to be an investigation of clandestine interference in the politics and elections of foreign nations, let’s get it all out onto the table.

The CIA director and his deputies should be made to testify under oath, not only as to what they know about Russia’s role in the WikiLeaks email dumps but also about who inside the agency is behind the leaks to The Washington Post designed to put a cloud over the Trump presidency before it begins.

Agents and operatives of the CIA should be subjected to lie detector tests to learn who is leaking to the anti-Trump press.

Before any congressional investigation, President-elect Trump should call in his new director of the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo, and tell him to run down and remove, for criminal misconduct, any CIA agents or operatives leaking secrets to discredit his election.

Putin, after all, is not an American. The CIA saboteurs of the Trump presidency are. Will the media investigate the leakers? Not likely, for they are the beneficiaries of the leaks and co-conspirators of the leakers.

The top officials of the CIA and Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, should be called to testify under oath. Were they behind anti-Putin demonstrations during the Russian elections of 2011?

Did the CIA or NED have a role in the “color-coded” revolutions to dump over pro-Russian governments in Moscow’s “near abroad”?

If Russia did intrude in our election, was it payback for our intrusions to bring about regime change in its neighborhood?

What role did the CIA, the NED and John McCain play in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014? McCain was seen cheering on the crowds in Independence Square in Kiev.

Trump has promised a more hopeful foreign policy than that of the Republicans he denounced and is succeeding. No more wars where vital interests are not imperiled. No more U.S. troops arriving as first responders for freeloading allies.

The real saboteurs of his new foreign policy may not be inside the Ring Road in Moscow; rather, they may be inside the Beltway around D.C.

The real danger may be that a new Trump foreign policy could be hijacked or scuttled by anti-Trump Republicans, not only on Capitol Hill but inside the executive branch itself.

Copyright 2016 Creators.com

December 20, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bana Al-Abed’s Last Tweet

Inside Syria Media Center – December 20, 2016

Hashtag #lasttweet began to appear in Twitter frequently after government troops engaged the final phase of Aleppo’s liberation in recent weeks.

Bana al-Abed, an alleged seven-year resident of the largest city in Syria, was the first who created an Internet hysterical fit designed to discredit the process of recapturing Aleppo. Her Twitter account was registered in September, 2016, amid intensified fighting in Aleppo. There are many details of the horrors of war on her page. And the girl blames not the terrorists but the Syrian government and its allies. Tweets are actively retweeted and not only by the Syrian opposition, but also by the mainstream Western media. For example, The Washington Post called Bana the Syrian Anne Frank (who wrote a diary in Nazi-occupied Netherlands).

At the same time, no one draws attention to the strange nuances. First, tweets appear very often. It seems that the little girl posts the information about the situation in the city 24/7. Aleppo is a city of constant fighting, with no constant energy source and water supply, and there is often lack of food and medicine. The more so, no one can easily access the Internet and cellular network due to damaged infrastructure. Second, her account looks perfect it terms of English language. Third, celebs, Western journalists and popular opposition bloggers contribute to the viral dissemination of Bana’s posts. It took just three hours to collect more than 3,700 likes and more than 5,000 retweets after the publication of one of the first tweets of Bana. According to Social Rank website, the request “Who was your first follower?” shows the first subscriber of Bana was an Al-Jazeera journalist Abdul Aziz Ahmed.

rank

Social Rank website shows the results of the request

Moreover, J.K. Rowling promised to send the girl a Harry Potter book and by doing so the writer made a very good ad and emphasized the problem of Bana. Despite the fact that Syria has always been at a high level of literacy of the population (more than 90 percent in fact), Aleppo has been involved in the civil war for four years. At the same time we are forced to believe that the seven-year-old child has such a good command of a foreign language that she is ready to read a book of several hundred pages in the original language.

Speaking of the language it should be noted that a Syrian activist Maytham Al Ashkar who is originally from Al-Zahraa in northern Syria, currently in Beirut, but often travelling to Damascus and Aleppo contacted the 7-year-old Twitter star, Bana Alabed, on November 27, offering to evacuate her family from eastern Aleppo. After a month, someone who identified herself as Bana’s mother responded. When he got contacted by Bana’s account, he started to chat in Arabic since they are all Syrians and Arabic is their mother tongue. However, it was obvious that the person behind the account preferred English as a language of communication.

The more so, according to the media, Bana’s mother studied law. This means that she has studied the Syrian curriculum for 12 years, which is all in Arabic, plus 4 years at university, where all the subjects are taught in Arabic

The girl and her mother didn’t arrange the possibility of evacuation which could be provided by the journalist. So, Maytham Al Ashkar decided that the girl is just a face, a tool used by the British intelligence. (British – because of the strong relationship between the Bana’s account and the White Helmets funded and sponsored by the UK)

Twitter conversation between Maytham Al Ashkar and al-Abed’s account

It should be noted that Bana not only writes these tweets but also her mother Fatima al-Abed who is a teacher at a local school. It is she who helps her daughter to write so grammatically correct. Nevertheless, all this raises a number of questions: who is really writing on behalf of Bana and where from? There are a number of other controversial issues. Inside Syria Media Center will try to investigate the Bana project.

On November 27, Bana reported that her home had been destroyed after the shelling. The house is allegedly located in Joured Awaad quarter in the eastern part of Aleppo. Meanwhile, about 20 shellings performed by the anti-government forces were registered in the provinces of Aleppo on November 26. The armed groups of the Syrian Free Army fired multiple launch rocket systems against Bayada and Salah al-Din quarters of the Aleppo city. In addition, terrorists of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and ISIS fired multiple launch rocket systems, tube artillery, mortars and small arms several times against Shurfa inhabited area, Binyamin, Dahiya al-Assad, Jamaiyah Fahat, Amri, Ashrafiyah, Art Sabah, Akyul, 1070, Hai Zahraa Awwad, Kastello trade center, al-Assad military academy, area of the former military school, and Higma school in the Aleppo city.

At the same time, the activity of the government troops was concentrated in the area to the south of the city of Hanano. So, the question arises: why does the girl insist on her house being fired upon and ruined while none of the parties opened fire near her house.

It is also unclear why the walls and the furniture in Bana’s room are not affected by the attacks, and always look new, despite the fact that the girl is constantly complaining that she frequently has to move into a new house. Moreover, the curtains on her photos are always tightly closed and the girl is always clean dressed.

On November 22, Bana published a video which showed her walking down the street in a terrorist-controlled district. Very few people are seen in the area. Getting into the shot, some of the occasional pedestrians are trying to get out of sight. They don’t really care for a little girl being shot. At 0.59, a head appears from a corner and immediately disappears. This looks really suspicious. The high quality of the footage, professional editing, and a tripod (the video is really smooth) – all these prove that the video was staged.

Bana’s tweets are written in English and the girl keeps alleging that Bashar al-Assad “kills children, bombs schools, shells neighborhoods and hurts Aleppo’s residents”. She constantly accuses the Syrian AF of aggressive actions. The little girl’s account is politically straight with messages including popular hashtags. However, in her interview to BBC, Fatima al-Abed stressed that Bana’s twitter wasn’t a propaganda campaign and wasn’t linked to terrorists.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of photos not connected to Bana. For instance, the photos of children allegedly killed in the airstrike at an Idlib school. It’s unknown how the footage got into the hands of Bana’s parents, and why the family doesn’t want to leave east Aleppo for government-controlled areas.

Everything becomes clear when you see the Facebook page of Ghassan, the girl’s father, with lots of his friends tied to various radical groups fighting in Syria.

Omar al-Amd, a Jabhat al-Nusra sniper, one of Bana father’s friends

Besides, some media reported that Bana’s tweets are written by the popular Syrian opposition blogger Abdel Kafi al-Hamdo (https://twitter.com/Mr_Alhamdo). Creating his account in October, 2016, a teacher and an activist gained as much as 17,000 followers.

The propaganda pouring from Bana’s Twitter was mentioned at a high political level. In his interview to the Danish channel TV2, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stressed that the terrorists and their allies promoted Bana’s tweets.

The Hollywood-stylish Bana’s “death” should also be mentioned. First, the girl’s Twitter became inactive just after the government offensive on east Aleppo started. But soon BBC reported that the girl and her mother were alive and that they had come to a safe place. The account was restored and a new Tweet appeared: “Under attack. Nowhere to go, every minute feels like death. Pray for us. Goodbye – Fatemah”.

The ban provoked mass hysteria in the social media, the hashtag #whereisBana quickly became trending. At the same time, Bana’s fake accounts started to post messages about her “death”, which were allegedly written by her mother.

As of today, it should be noted that the project is still active. “Last tweets” have been repeatedly appearing. Probably, the world will witness other news from Bana, whose messages remind us of the story of “Aleppo’s last hospital”.

Till now Bana remains a mystery. The city is completely under government control but no proof of Bana and her mother’s existence has emerged. It is possible that the girl left Aleppo for Idlib alongside the most radical militants (as pointed out by a NBC report) or headed to Turkey in the company of other armed groups. The latter suggestion is supported by the call for help directed at Turkish President Recep Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that Bana published on Twitter.

Locating Bana and showing that she is safe and can start a new, more quiet life, should be of utmost interest for the Syrian authorities. On the other hand, the rumors could be disproved by finding the flat in the eastern quarter of Joured Awwad and proving that exploiting children’s death is nothing but another propaganda plot of the Western media, and that the Bana project is closed.

December 20, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot of ‘Wounded Aleppo Children’

Al-Manar – December 20, 2016

1048773270Egypt’s police detained a man for making staged “wounded children” photos, which he was planning to use to misrepresent on social media as photos of destruction and injured people in Syria’s Aleppo, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said on Monday.

“The shooting team, which included photographer’s assistants and parents of the children, was detained in the Egypt’s province of Port Said,” the Ministry said on Facebook.

According to the Ministry, the police witnessed the shooting process, which was taking place near the vestiges of a building destroyed as illegal under the decision of the local authorities.

A girl standing in a white dress covered in “blood” that later proved to be paint drew attention of a police officer driving by. The girl held a teddy bear covered in the same “blood” and had her arm “bandaged”.

The photographer reportedly admitted that he was going to publish these photos on social media as pictures of Aleppo.

© Photo: Facebook / MoiEgy

December 20, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | 1 Comment